The Thinnai

The word Thinnai (in Tamil) refers to a shared verandah, a raised platform that flanks the main entrance of a house. Open to the neighbourhood, the Thinnai is where menfolk held important meetings, the womenfolk caught up on the local gossip while separating the grain from the chaff, the children played fun games, the street hawkers/sellers displayed their wares to a curious audience, travel weary souls rested their legs for a while; in short - the Thinnai was a silent hoarder of stories and memories. 

When the narrator comes back to his childhood home in Kurusukuppam (a fishermen's ghetto beyond the boulevards of Pondicherry) after years, memories of yore arise from its thinnai. It is here on Bastille's Day years back, an old, weary Frenchman, a wanderer named Gilbert Thaata, rested and narrated the story of his ancestors, the rise and fall of his fortunes and of a blue diamond - the Stone of Sita to an audience in rapt attention that included the narrator. 

Ari Gautier’s The Thinnai, deftly translated from the French by Blake Smith, begins with a lively and  colorful description of Kurusukuppam and its residents who have interesting nicknames. Using humour that switches between sardonic and deadpan, the author exposes many societal problems - generic ones like casteism (even Creoles not spared), superstitions, illiteracy, abject poverty and more specific ones like an anomaly in identity - of self, home, language and faith, an inevitable fallout of the colonial regime. 

The vibrant description of Kurusukuppam and the myriad characters who inhabit it reminded me of another read - Chandrasekhar Kambar's Karimayi , translated from Kannada by Krishna Manavalli. Just as in The Thinnai, Kambar describes the village Shivapura in great detail in his book - the streets, the houses, its residents and how they earned their sobriquets, the drunken brawls between men, men ogling at women, a life heaped in caste rules and superstitions. Both the books also celebrate the art of oral storytelling. 

When Gilbert Thaata narrates his life story, he takes us to Guadeloupe . Born here, to a French father and Indian mother, he unveils the story of Indian indentured labourers who arrived at the Antilles from Pondicherry to toil in the French owned sugarcane plantations after slavery was abolished in the year 1848. The plight of these Indian indentured labourers is detailed out in  - The Cane Cutter's Song by Raphael Confiant , translated from the French by Vidya Vencatesan. 

The narraror's father - Paulin, a Tamil who serves the French army, retires after serving for a bare minimum number of years that entitles him to a pension and settles down in Kurusukuppam. His mention of trenches, ration and gunshots in years of army service fighting for the French state lets David Diop's At Night all Blood is Black pop up in my memory. 

The narrative in The Thinnai, a multitude of stories, that encompasses history of the French empire from 1595, centuries of French colonial legacy from the fall of Bastilles to 1962 Pondicherry secession to India, moves in a wild abandon demanding complete attention from the reader. 

That the Tamil and French influences meld in every walk of life in Pondicherry is evident to anyone who visits the White Town, and the casual utterance of the word - Rue Manakula Vinayagar Koil (the road with an important tourist site and temple) testifies it. It is this amalgam of influences reflected in food and culture that's showcased well in The Thinnai. How the socio-cultural & linguistic scape changes with the creation of Auroville in the year 1968 is also touched upon.  

How the author juxtaposes opposites in writing is brilliant - the way fisherwomen and butchers conduct their business, the varied lifestyle of the narrator’s father and uncle, of Gilbert Thaata's father and Uncle, ideals of communist & capitalist thinkers.

Though Gilbert Thaata’s story is the focal point, it begins only in the second half and this definitely teases the reader’s patience. I also have to admit that as a Tamil, I was poised for a better connect with the text, be it the cusswords or references to movies like - playing the ‘Sappani’, MGR-Nambiar climax fight in Adimai Penn. 

That said, that The Thinnai reminded me of few other reads and gave me more than a handful to read and research about, from the Frenchman Marshall Petain's surrender to Germans to VVS Aiyar and Vanchinathan's role in Indian independence movement, made it really special. 

“I think we forget things if we have no one to tell them to” - Ritesh Batra, director of The Lunchbox, and The Thinnai doesn’t let us forget many important things.

Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun

 

Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika caught my attention with its quirky title. The blurb reminded me of a book I read - Sheet Sahasik Hemontolok by Nabaneeta Dev Sen , translated from Bengali by Tutun Mukherjee.

Both the books are broadly similar, dealing with the loss of independence, a sense of loneliness and helplessness at one's deterioration of health with old age, everything inevitable. Both are studded with many characters and their perspectives. Both offer a bold take on feminine desire and sexuality, bordering on the erotica. While Nabaneeta Dev Sen's novella is Indian in context, set in the city of Calcutta, Sarah's work is set in the city of San Francisco, allows us to travel briefly to places across the world. 

The protagonist in Like a Mule* is a 75 years old Nigerian woman, a retired English professor - Dr Morayo Da Silva. Let her age not deceive you for she has the verve of a youngster, speeding down the streets of San Francisco in her fancy car. She is feisty, wise, ambitious, kind, headstrong and fiercely independent.

A fall causes her a hip injury, surgery and physical therapy thereafter lands her in a rehabilitation home for old folks. Here, Morayo has plenty of time to revisit her past and we readers are privy to the bittersweet memories and her most intimate secrets. 

Thanks to Morayo, there is love for books and food in the book. Her love for the cosmopolitan environs of the San Francisco city where she resides is as strong as the sense of nostalgia for her husband's hometown - Lagos and Jos, the city of her childhood in Nigeria. Violence between Christians and Muslims and Boko Haram's reign of terror back in her homeland leaves her in angst and so does the racist vitriol in the USA even though both routinely feature in the news.

Childless and divorced years back from her ambassador husband, Caesar, Morayo's loneliness gnaws at her at times even when her day is punctuated by a familiar few around her - a mailman, a florist and his sister, a younger woman who turns her primary caregiver during the therapy, all belonging to different nationalities and cultures.

It is at the end I figure out a possible explanation for the title. Morayo imagines after she comes back home from the therapy center that her friend gets her an ice-cream and she is licking the melted drops of honey lavender & salted caramel from her fingers. The honey lavender is probably symbolic of her passionate love, an undying longing for her lover Antonio whose caress she desires even when dancing on the edge of old age. And the salted caramel maybe reflects her failed marriage which also gave her something sweet - travelling across the world & meeting people from various cultural backgrounds.

 Like a mule, Morayo, is carrying the ice cream to the sun, slowly, letting it melt; letting memories of her past meld into her present for she is a person who cherishes her past as much as she is enthusiastic about her present & unfettered by an uncertain future.

The novella is polyphonic in nature with an array of characters and mélange of perspectives. While this diversity is enriching, the risk of 'too many cooks spoil the broth' feels too close. Luckily, the novella manages to swerve away from it and turns out to be a well layered, good read.

 

Mountain Tales by Saumya Roy

 

Book Review : Mountain Tales - Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings by Saumya Roy

Neither brick walls nor blue tarpaulin can render the destitute and detritus invisible.

Mountain Tales - Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings by Saumya Roy shows how all trails of excessive urban consumerism lead to the Deonar trash mountains in Mumbai. Rotten food, plastic bottles, medical waste, broken glass, twisted wires, construction debris, even piles of old notes after demonetization arrived at this township, spread over 326 acres. Here, the waste lingered without being composted or incinerated, letting trash peaks rise as high as 120ft. 

An area set aside to keep out the deadly plague during an outbreak in 1897, the Deonar mountains have only grown over decades, smoldering and spewing out benzene at times and raging relentlessly at other times, choking the city with toxic methane halo. 

The author, a journalist-activist, chronicles the lives of rag pickers who braving stray dogs and scavengers, inhaling fetid gaseous concoction, risking a silent burial under soft heaps of trash during monsoon & dodging monstrous bulldozers and forklifts made these trash hills their home. Their eyes, trained over years, quickly distinguished the glint of a metal from transparent glass & colored plastics. Sustained efforts from the municipality couldn't evict them from this world they knew, one where others' refuse met their wants. 

Farzana, daughter of ragpicker Hyder Ali Shaikh, is the principal character in this book with a sizable cast. Born at the foot of these trash hills, her life and fate almost always aligns with it. Together they grow and strange twists leave their future in lurch around the same time. 

The author throws light on red tapism that underlines most government projects. Plans to constrict Deonar, turn waste to compost & energy remain in a perennial limbo despite earnest resolution attempts in the city high court by Justice Oka committee. We nod in agreement when the renowned judge Oka remarks - "After becoming a judge I realised .. the real challenge before our legal system is not of docket [legal case file] explosion but of docket exclusion". 

That the garbage crisis is universal is substantiated well with examples from Delhi, New York, Addis Ababa and Campania, Italy.

"Can you ever repair a house while you are living in it?" is a question raised in the book, the author uses this to hint at how Deonar's problems are too many to fix, the waste just wouldn't stop coming and the crisis would never end.

A dexterously crafted nonfiction work that never once feels tedious, a fine debut and a very essential read.

Thank you so much Hachette India for providing me with a copy of this book. 

Softly Dies a Lake

Softly Dies a Lake by Akkineni Kutumbarao, translated from the Telugu by Vasanth Kannabiran is described as an ecological memoir in its introduction. The author writes - The novel is about my childhood. All the people in it are real. The village is real. Kolleru is real. 

The book begins with Srinivas Rao, a man in his 60s, standing on the banks of the Kolleru wondering how the once bountiful lake that swallowed villages mercilessly during floods stood diminished to a 'nothingness' now. He takes a trip down the memory lane, to the times when as a 7 yr old kid (fondly called Seenu by all) Kolleru and his village Pulaparru on its banks made his beautiful little world.

It was here he learnt to swim holding onto a buffalo’s tail, to endure pain while pulling out leeches clinging onto skin, that not all people are fair and just, that ‘united we stand and divided we fall’. Kolleru and his village were his teachers after his doting parents. 

Pulapparu, the home to farmers (Kammadoras caste) and fishermen (Vaddis), with zero caste violence, where the young and old discussed and decided upon matters of importance also boasts of practicing collective farming for the first time in all of India, an ingenious mechanism it devised to save paddy harvests from the wrath of Kolleru during floods. 

With a huge array of characters, who's who in families, the book is little slow paced to start with. But Seenu, the little boy, mostly dressed in loin cloth, free-spirited and joyful makes the read interesting with his naive questions and naughty shenanigans.

The book reminded me of Perumal Murugan's Amma for describing a way of life, bygone and simple, of Na D Souza's Dweepa for showing how nature overturns man's efforts to control it in a blink of the eye, of Anita Agnihotri's The Sickle for highlighting the plight of farmers. 

In a translation that offers great reading experience, Softly Dies a Lake is not just an elegy to Kolleru, but to many lakes that once cradled life but are dying a slow death now. 

The Race to Phar Lap's Saddle

Kids accompanying their parents on a busy work trip brace themselves for boredom and 12 yr old Tara and her 10 yr old brother Neil are no different. When they realize their workaholic parents will stay confined to a small room in the Melbourne museum for 2 full days, entertainment arranged in the IMAX seems to be the only available entertainment option, one they accept with silent resignation. They have their pet Sumo, a golden Labrador, for company.

But a thrilling adventure beckons them when a precious artefact from the museum goes missing. The artefact is the saddle of Phar Lap, a thoroughbred racehorse renowned for its victory studded career in the 1920s. The saddle is the object of their father's research & study, the very purpose of their trip to Melbourne.

Tara and Neil (along with Sumo who reminded me of Timothy from good, old Famous Five mysteries) take it upon themselves to find the missing saddle. Cracking cryptic clues/riddles sends them racing from one iconic tourist destination to another in the city. The search enriches them with titbits of local history, myths, language and culture. 

From a boat trip on the Yarra River, a bird's eye view of the dazzling city from atop the Melbourne Star, a free ride on the Central tram service to learning about eminent personalities like Ned Kelly and James Cook, their quest offers them more than they dreamt of when they arrived at Melbourne. 

Will Neil and Tara save the day or are they on a wild goose chase? 

To know what happens read Rishi Piparaiya's The Race to Phar Lap's Saddle, an adventure for kids aged 8-12 and a mini encyclopedia/travel guide of Melbourne, melded into one.

The book is not all text and has nice illustrations. A section in the end provides interesting information & fun facts about Australia. 

Maps - at the start of the book

Interesting facts - from a section at book's end

A quick, light read for grown ups too if you, like me, knew Melbourne only for the MCG, jumping kangaroos and cuddly koalas and if you aren't looking for a brain racking mystery with a nail biting finish. 

The Race to Phar Lap's Saddle by Rishi Piparaiya is a thrilling, fast-paced adventure and a wholesome read with travel facts and interesting information!

Please visit Cities of Adventure website to learn about other books in this series. Fictional adventure set in the cities of Los Angeles and Washington DC are already available. Upcoming releases/titles set in dazzling cities from across the world already has readers eager and waiting.