Books Read in Dec 2024

 

Another year comes to an end.. 

The calendar created by Surabhi (@vapoursofthought) with lovely photographs she clicked has been my prop for every month's reading wrap up in 2024. As sheets of this beautiful calendar turned, some pretty fast and some achingly slow, I realized I stand at the threshold of another new year. There's a  mix of fear, apprehension and hope, a bag of varied emotions swarms my head; but this has been the norm now for last few years.

I stuck to short reads in December as kid's school routine - his exams and year end projects demanded a lot of my time. There was a lovely, short trip to Mangalore around Christmas time. I attended two lit fests in Dec - The Green Lit Fest on Dec 7th and The Bangalore Lit Fest on Dec 14-15. Living close to two decades now in a city known for its wonderful bookshops and bibliophilic crowd, this was the first time I was attending literature fests. Even if it was a meek start and I managed to spend only a little time at the events, I was extremely happy I got a chance to meet Monisha Raman at the The Green Lit Fest and Sayari Debnath at Bengaluru Lit Fest. They are avid readers, fabulous writers and editors and wonderful human beings I have had the pleasure to know and interact with thanks to Instagram/Bookstagram. 

Coming to the list of reads for Dec 2024 - 

1. Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life by Upamanyu Chatterjee (finally finished this book I had half left half completed by Sep)

2. Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishoi, tr from Norwegian by Caroline Waight

3. The Afterwards by AF Harrold, illustrated by Emily Gravett

4. The Whispering Chinar by Ali Rohila 

5. Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton

6. Veerapandiya Kattabomman by Ma Po Sivagnanam, tr from Tamil by Tara Murali

7. The Wartime Garden by Twigs Way

8. What Child is This by Rhys Bowen (Amazon Short Story Single) 

Two wonderful picture books (The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey and Amadi's Snowman) and two short stories translated from Hindi from the Dec issue of The Bombay Literary Magazine are other additions to the above list. 

I also finished a full year on Good Reads and am sharing my statistics below which clearly indicates my comfort with short reads, books that keep my reading habit going on. Like every year, I have no reading goals for 2025, reading is the only activity I have handy for stress busting and I wouldn't want to do anything that makes it stressful for me. So go with the flow will be my motto :)

The year 2024 presented some wonderful opportunities to share/write my reviews, my first time on Scroll.in and The Green Lit Fest newsletter. I tried to organize my published articles/reviews until now on Link Tree and here is the link - https://linktr.ee/divya.shankar

Here is wishing you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR ! Signing off 2024 and welcoming 2025 with a little wish that may all of us get a little time to do what we earnestly love to until the time it becomes a habit or a comfortable part of our routine. 

Daiva

 

Spirits and totems, their worship, divine possession, ritual dances and songs to venerate spirits - different regions of India, even different countries of the world boast of a huge repertoire of stories on these subjects. Hari Kumar’s Daiva explores the above in a small region called Tulunadu extending from Udupi in Karnataka to Kasaragod in Kerala in Southwest India, the land of his ancestors. There is no doubt the movie Kantara that popularized ‘Bhutakola’ in most Indian households is a big reason for my picking the book, with my experience of watching ‘Theyyam’ as a child in my maternal grandmother’s village in North Kerala being a bigger force.

With a clear disclaimer that the book is not an academic treatise or a critical analysis, the author neither a practicing expert nor a scholar on the subject, the first part of the book is dedicated to understanding the pulse of Tulunadu - the myth behind the land's creation, the cultural practices, languages spoken in this verdant green, bountiful land. Keeping it simple to start with by defining kola, the ritual dance used to express reverence to spirit deities (Satyolu) and seek counsel from them ; paaddanas, a manifestation of the folk song genre transmitted orally down generations, the author adds bulk defining myriad Tulu terms like nema, daiva, bhuta (not Hindi term Bhoot meaning ghosts), nudi. He explains a bhutakola in great detail- the attire, headgear, mask of the artist, preparations before a kola commences, how it begins, progresses and ends etc.

 
The second part of the book compiles folklore surrounding these spirit deities, stories of the immensely popular Panjruli daiva, sibling deities - Kallurti and Kalkuda, valorous warrior spirits Koti Chennaya, Pilichandi (the tiger spirit), Siri, the spirit for women, fierce Guliga & more. For every spirit deity, the daiva araadhane or the kola is different and thanks to the world connected via web, there are videos of each bhutakola to enhance the understanding of the written word here. When we read the folktales of these spirit deities with minor variations due to the different local flavours, we see women getting married at the young age of 7 and several instances where caste practices strictly adhered to. Though these may invite the reader's contempt for the society being archaic and orthodox, just a little scratching beneath the superficial details will reveal how most of the venerated deities are women or lower caste folks who have risen above the oppression they faced.

Sharing some favourite lines from the book - 

"Circumstances sometimes turn believers into non-believers and non-believers into staunch believers. Let it be. In the end, we truly do not know where we are heading. Not even the most commercial spiritual leader can give you the right answer without hiding behind the veil of faith. But what impresses me most about daiva aaradhane is the fact that people, whether working in air-conditioned cubicles in top tech companies or hustling in the humid lanes of faraway cities, every year, thousands of them flock to their native places in Tulu Nadu to witness traditional jaatre, aarat, kola, nema, etc. Such traditions have kept the otherwise divided society bound by the ethereal thread of faith."

The author's passion, devotion and fascination for the subject is evident not only in the introduction where he discusses how the book happened but shines all along. Tighter editing and more structure in the contents would have enriched the reading experience. What may just seem like skimming the top layer of information for a Tuluva reader may be pretty cumbersome for a person who doesn't have a connect with the culture. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, it is said; how this book works varies for a believer & for a skeptic, but for both, it clearly has lots to offer.

Books Read in Nov 2024

November came along with a good number of hashtags that helped me read a little more than usual. The past few months have been really stressful, emotionally draining and books have become more essential than ever to preserve my sanity and health. 

Stress reading is just as real as stress eating. I don't think one should feel jealous at the appetite of a person who binge eats due to stress, and likewise, this little space with books that I share, to help me stay sane in really hard times shouldn't evoke envy, I feel. Stress has worked both ways for me - either I haven't read at all or I have read lots, but at the end of the day, it's a fact that I have looked up to books as extremely reliable, very faithful and silent companions that absorb a lot of my stress and leave me with a sense of calm. They have helped me in ways that human beings cannot. This preface before proceeding to the list of reads, I felt, is important, I hope it will help cut some negativity.

List of Reads for the month of November

Short Story Singles (in the order I liked, from most to least) 

• Half Truths and Semi Miracles by Anne Tyler 
• The Tale of the Unknown Island by Jose Saramago, tr from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
• The Cathedral by Raymond Carver 
• The Answer is No by Fredrik Backman, tr from Swedish by Elizabeth DeNoma
• The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman

Novellas 

• Unmoored by Ramachandran Usha, tr from Tamil by Krupa Ge 
• Hidden Treasure by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, tr from Bengali by Ipsa S 
• The Hour between Dog and Wolf by Silke Scheuermann, tr from German by Lucy Jones

The last one is a title I read for #germanlitmonth. I was happy to learn about #novellanovember hashtag as well.

Novels

• The Healing Season of Pottery by Yeon Somin, tr from Korean by Clare Richards
• The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, tr from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood
• Sixty is the New Assassin by Shesh (I read a crime mystery after a long time) 

For #NonfictionNovember 

• Daiva by K.Hari Kumar 

For #graphicnovelreadlong 

• The Lighthouse by Paco Roca, tr from Spanish by Jeff Whitman
• The House by Paco Roca, tr from Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg

Books Read in Oct 2024

 

Books read in Oct 2024 

1. The Go-Between and other stories, by Ghanshyam Desai, tr from Gujarati by Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal 

2. Bhava by UR Ananthamurthy, tr from Kannada by Judith Kroll with the author 

3. Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood 

4. The Music of Life / A Life's Music by Andreï Makine , tr from French by Geoffrey Strachan

5. The Door to Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn, tr from German by Melody Shaw 

6. Cold nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü,  tr from Turkish by Maureen Freely 

7. Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, tr from Spanish by Heather Cleary 

8. Lootaloot by Baburao Bagul, tr from Marathi by Manav Kambli

The Go-Between and Other Stories

 

The go-between and other stories by Ghanshyam Desai, translated from Gujarati by Aban Mukharji and Tulsi Vatsal is a collection of 21 stories taken from the author's collections - Tolu and Bandh Barna, spanning years 1964-2005. 

In most stories, the men lead frustrated lives, they are unable to take a firm stand and blame themselves for being cowardly. Some suspect their wives, their envy and suspicion gnaw at their insides and push them to either murderous thoughts or suicidal. Stories ‘Revenge’, ‘Yet Again’ , ‘Between Two Breaths’ and ‘God's Good Man’ are some stories based on this subject. The element of irony is pronounced in stories ‘Home of One's Own’ and ‘Our Beloved has Come ..’. Violence has a prominent place in many stories here, the first story ‘Plugging the Leak’ portrays domestic violence from which a woman has no escape. In ‘The Chameleon’ and ‘The Crow’, the writing unleashes violence potently, not directly but by using metaphor. 

Most stories end in a finite set of possibilities, popping a what-if question. Emotions of opposite kinds collide, a faint smile plays on lips even when the eyes are wet with tears, a man wishes to scream after losing his beloved wife but his young children stifle his screams and sobs and force him to laugh out loud. Somehow, this reminded me of how we are told to add a tiny pinch of salt to sweet dishes and a little sprinkle of sugar to any salty/spicy dish while cooking.

Most characters are trapped in their past, in memories/ dreaming about happy times, while their present is dreadful and the future bleak. The spectrum of emotions covered is largely dark and negative which intrigued me, made me to learn more about the author. But not much is known about him except that he was a modernist, experimental short story writer, the editor of Navneet Samarpan magazine and his children’s story collection received the Gujarati Sahitya Akademi Award. The translation allowed a smooth reading experience. Enjoyed reading this collection.