Cutting Loose

Last weekend, I finally undertook a long overdue, ennui-ridden, housekeeping exercise. My half-hearted attempt at dusting and re-arranging lofty sections of storage nearly had me knocked out cold by a hardbound, 800-page tome. (No, not Sacred Games). In fact, this particular one, by the looks of it, had been around a long, long time. Its pages, yellowed and brittle, gave out that certain musty smell which only the passage of time accords to paper, with a little help from muslin-wrapped mothballs. The book was titled ‘Recipes of All Nations’ compiled and edited by a Countess Morphy.

Chore happily forgotten, I was soon immersed in discovering the origins of this impressive collection. It had no printed details that could give away its age, except for an ink-stamp of ‘The Modern Book Depot, Sialkot Cantt’ and ‘Rs 4.80’ scribbled in a corner. Armed with these titbits, it was easy to assume that it had been a pre-Partition purchase, made nearly seven decades ago. What’s more incredulous, however, is how the good Countess managed to put together such a repertoire without the help of modern-day communication tools.

Countess Morphy was the pseudonym of one Marcelle Azra Forbes, who was born in New Orleans to Irish parents, at the turn of the last century, and later moved to England. Not much is known beyond that, save what is revealed via her prolific writing on cookery through the 30s and the 40s. By her own admission in the Author’s Note, this seminal book on quick-fix recipes, encompassing the popular dishes of roughly 30 countries, was written for the benefit of the ‘modern-day’ housewife: it revealed to her how women in foreign lands solved the eternal riddle about daily food.

Most of the recipes certainly appear easy enough to follow, though not all have precise information on technical details, such as, quantity, temperature and timing. Some exceptions include cooking rice the Indian way. I quote, “Put 1 cupful of Patna rice in a large saucepan of boiling salted water, and from the minute the water is again on the full boil allow exactly 13 minutes”.

While I’m simply an enthusiast of things edible, and no expert, the book appears to be a comprehensive collection of authentic foreign recipes. Certainly, the section on Creole cookery would be the one to experiment with at the onset, given the author’s initial years in Louisiana. This cuisine is a rich blend of the best traditions of France, predominantly, and Spain, interpreted by cooks of aristocratic immigrants, to give it its exotic touch. How else would you describe gumbo fevi, a soup prepared from chicken and okra (!), if not exotic? However, it is the Creole Jambalayas, akin to the Spanish Paella and our delectable biryanis that have pinned New Orleans firmly to the gourmet map. Jambalaya aux chaurices (with sausages) continues to maintain its traditional role as the most preferred one.

The first thought to enter my mind when handed Minal Hajratwala’s debut book for reviewing purposes was: not another angst-ridden diaspora story, please. However, when I got down to reading Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents, it revealed itself to be an illuminating document about the fascinating history of Gujarati’s inhabiting different parts of the world. This nostalgic journey commences at Navsari, a small village in what we now know as Gujarat, returns back to the future, traversing variously, the Fiji Islands, Mauritious, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.

The author’s quest—to find answers to the many questions she is faced with as the daughter of migrants—takes her back into time, to the beginning of the 20th century. Where do I come from? Why did we have to leave wherever home was? Did we gain any or lose some? Questions that intermittently resurface in the mind of every single migrant. Leaving India is Minal Hajratwala’s groundbreaking attempt at unravelling the answers, as she traverses the globe, discovering how her family came to be spread across five continents within the span of a century or thereabouts.

She notes: “Each time we leave, we must leave something of ourselves behind”. Oftentimes it was families as the males left for greener pastures. In Minal’s case, her great-grandfather left for Fiji, an uncle for South Africa and her parents for the US. She spent eight years tracing her family’s journeys trying to string together their story of migration.

Motiram Hajratwala arrived in Fiji in 1909 and set up a tailor’s shop a couple of years later. Soon after he sent for other male relatives and went on to become the proprietor of the largest department store owned by Indians. Ganda, her granduncle in South Africa, came up with the ‘bunny chow’—curry in a hollowed out bread loaf—during the apartheid-ridden days. It is even today a popular street food there. And her parents, educated professionals, left for the US in the sixties to fulfil their American dream.

Throughout the overarching narrative, the author manages to capture the political sentiment of the time; be it the segregation during the apartheid in South Africa, or the stringent immigration laws of the US. The personal stories of different members of her family are well told as she deftly weaves them into the prevalent political situation. Her own story is expectedly confused and questioning; akin to teenagers globally, yet dissimilar as she grows up in a culturally diverse environment.

Towards the end, she candidly writes about her experiments to discover her sexuality fully while in college. Her forays into same-sex relationships reveal to her that she finds them an interesting concept, although bisexuality was her eventual choice. Her need—and her endeavours—to be accepted by her family, alternate views et al, is also poignantly expressed. Leaving India is more than just the story of Gujarati immigrants. It is, indeed, a saga, narrated by a very talented storyteller.

Note: This review first appeared in The Tribune.

Mathew Vincent Menacherry’s debut novel, Arrack in the Afternoon, is the story about Varghese, a failed and drunken poet, who in a rare moment of sobriety decides to end his life. But, miraculously escapes from under the wheels of the truck he throws himself at. Karan, a conniving con man (read marketing guru) spots huge potential in the act and takes Varghese under his wings. Thence begins the fun.

Through unscrupulous media manipulations and carefully orchestrated PR stunts, Karan cultivates Verghese into Vargi Baba, a celebrity god man. The social climb is fast but steady and in no time, he grows to become a sensation in the city. In the process, though, he loses the simple pleasures he cherished in his mundane previous life: his socialist friend Pillachan, who still holds a torch to Communism; Patricia and the free booze at her bar; and reading his favourite authors.

Mathew leads us on a journey through the streets of Mumbai into the sleaze-laden celebrity culture replete with all the glitz and glamour that money can buy; into the pathetic lives of these vulnerable people and how their sadness and emptiness is camouflaged by worldly pleasures. He also recounts the protagonist’s love-hate relationship with Karan and how his bullying nature and abrasive language puts Verghese off. But he meekly suffers in silence, till the very end.

Arrack in the Afternoon is an attempt at exposing Mumbai’s omnipresent dirty underbelly that is tucked away behind money, fame, wealth and melancholy. The tale weaves through the debris and chaos that is modern-day Mumbai and also explores the phenomenon of instant stardom. The narrative is easy paced and humorous for the most part with some delightful moments of dark humour and pathos. The characters are so real, that they could very well be people you know. Varghese, as the reticent, intelligent and strong willed anti-hero is likeable and real. Karan plays the slimy fixer very well. Patricia, Varghese’s patient lover, and Sabu, the decent scribe, are well etched. There are several easily recognisable characters that are drawn from real life—gang-lords, socialites and politicians.

Even though I don’t know any larger-than-life types, I just couldn’t shrug off a consistent feeling of deja vu as I turned from one read-worthy page to another. Then, as the imagery conjured itself up, it seized me that the plot could well be an excellent one for celluloid. The author, a Mumbaikar for close to four decades and unabashedly smitten with the Hindi film industry, is unable to escape the influences. Nor the inferences. Hard-hitting intimate scenes, god men, politicians, exploitation, sleaze in the upper echelons of society: sure-shot ingredients for box-office success. Perhaps you want to look out for the film, too.

Note: This review first appeared in The Tribune.

Shimla has long been at the forefront of India’s colonial history, largely credited to its beautiful landscape and cool environs. A small town rich with events, architecture and memories, Shimla still hasn’t lost its enviable charm. Much has been said, written and shared, about this wonderful town which is a halfway city by now, although, increasingly threatened by an overflow of tourists. It is no wonder then that an endless wealth of writings on Shimla is simply waiting to be packed neatly into read-worthy treasure chests.

Minakshi Chaudhry’s anthology Whispering Deodars is one such chest, brimming with, more often than not, literary gems contributed by an eclectic mix of interesting people who may have shared a past with the Shimla hills. Perhaps, as impressionable students, as dedicated professionals, or, as proud residents. This collection spans a wide range of topics through its numerous personal accounts, as well as, through its sometimes pedantic, and oftentimes objective articles.

A former Governor of Himachal Pradesh, V. S. Ramadevi, shares with her readers A View from the Raj Bhawan. It was during her tenure that a Cabinet decision was taken to convert the Tudor influenced Barnes Court into the Raj Bhawan permanently. H Kishie Singh gives the story of his mother, the redoubtable Malvinder Kaur and her defiant trot across the Ridge. Vipin Pubby recollects his stay the Shimla.

In Be Prepared! A Simla Boy Scout, Ruskin Bond narrates, in his delightfully inimitable manner, how he came by his Boy Scout’s cookery badge as a student of Bishop Cotton School, without having cooked anything in his life. Punam Gupta paints numerous Landscapes of the Mind with celebrated artists associated with the town: Amrita Sher-Gil, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, to name a few.

My personal favourite is Dr Pankaj Khullar’s Eulogy to the Green Hills; wherein he mentions this swimmingly chuffed writer in his long list of fauna and flora typical of the region. Not by name, of course, but as a bird-type seen only from March to December: the Red-blazered Chelsean! Alongside the pink-cheeked First Grader, the yellow-shirted Collegian, the brown-coated Aucklandian and the Blue-blazered Cottonian.

While Asif Jalal, in his well-researched essay Shimla: An Educational Profile, describes the leading public schools that dot the landscape of this “`85 land of brooks of water, of fountains and deoths `85” The articles vary from light-hearted ones to meticulously detailed ones of the town’s rich historical past. It takes you down memory lane as the place metamorphoses from a sleepy hill station to the seat of the British Raj, enabling the reader to form a complete picture of Shimla’s past and present.

Whispering Deodars is a well-meaning endeavour by the author, who evidently has a deep love, and knowledge, of Himachal Pradesh.

Note: This review has first appeared in The Tribune.

A grand old mansion, Five Queen’s Road, once owned by an Englishman in the fashionable pre-Partition Lahore, is at the heart of the author Sorayya Khan’s book by the same name. She deftly weaves family saga and national history in this moving account of political upheaval and migration.

Defying logic, misgivings, good sense and advice, Dina Lal, a die-hard Lahori, purchases said house in 1947 from its departing owner, despite the carnage on the streets. He refuses to leave his beloved Lahore for presumably safer environs. Hoping to shield himself from the ongoing mayhem, he converts to Islam and takes in a Muslim widower, Amir Shah, and his children, Javid and Rubina, as tenants. As things go, neither of these efforts prevents his wife from being kidnapped by marauders; turning Dina Lal, as a consequence, forever against Shah, as well as, the city he chose not to abandon.

Despite palpable hatred between the two central characters—though they rush to defend each other in times of crisis—a surreptitious friendship develops between Dina Lal and Javid. It remains unchanged till such time that Javid’s Dutch wife, Irene, herself a victim of traumatic memories of World War II, joins the household a decade later. A survivor of war-stricken Maastricht and Amsterdam, Irene arrives fighting her own ghosts. Wittingly, and through encroachments by shop owners, the boundaries at Five Queen’s Road are once again redrawn, taking the long-nurtured feud to a different level altogether. As the story unfolds further, the protagonists come to realise that surviving their own personal tragedies has given them something more in common than was first imagined.

Spanning three decades, Five Queen’s Road, depicts the complex nature of relations between aggrieved mindsets, and documents an important phase of post-Partition history in the subcontinent. When the partition of the Indian subcontinent created two separate countries, India and Pakistan, between 12 and 14 million people left home to cross borders and set up residence anew. Between 500,000 and 1.5 million people died and roughly 83,000 women were abducted, some never to be heard of again. It is this theme that permeates the multi-layered narrative of Sorayya Khan’s second novel.

Reflections on adaptations, mutation, notions of belonging, nationhood, appear close to the author’s heart, as her first novel, Noor, also makes for a remarkable and poignant read about the happenings in East Pakistan during the war of 1971.

Note: This review has first appeared in The Tribune.

“THIS is the philosophy of the prostitute; I am who I am only at this moment in time; my past does not hang from my shoulders and my future is indefinable and so cannot be a concern. I am nothing else and there is nothing else. As I look at myself in the mirror, it dawns on me that the tree was correct—all is created for me alone. I close my eyes tight and hear the tree laughing.”

The Blue Notebook deals with a life you may prefer not to know about. It is the kind of grim fiction that unveils a truth so painful, you will it differently. The ugly reality of a child prostitute called Batuk. Sold into sexual slavery by a poverty-stricken father at the age of nine, this book is her heart-rending story. Although seriously traumatised, stunned and disoriented, she survives her rough initiation, and is sent to a special “Orphanage”, where she is brutally taught her new trade. It is here that Batuk meets her best friend, Puneet, an eight-year-old boy whose beauty is flawless. Boys are especially prized as prostitutes, and are trained to be girl-boys; even as they are castrated before adolescence to enable them to continue their profession.

Written as a journal at the age of 15, the young protagonist’s reflections are a deeply moving reminder of the hardihood of the human spirit. Even though the subject matter is unsettling, the imaginative and beautiful Batuk is an unforgettable character. Having learnt to read and write during a tuberculosis-stricken period at a missionary hospital, Batuk later finds escape from her terrible existence by documenting her musings. It all began when one day, the proprietor of the brothel, Mamaki Briilla, drops a pencil, and instead of returning it, Batuk steals and hides it so that she can recount her early life. Holed up, thus, in a ‘nest’ on the Common Street, a street in Mumbai where children are caged, awaiting customers, she manages to record her haunting thoughts despite the harrowing circumstances surrounding her.

She imagines that words remain with her even in her darkest moments, saying that inside of herself, she can “hide an army of whispering syllables, rhythms, and sounds. All you may see,” she says, “is a black cavity that fills a tiny girl, but trust me, the words are there, alive and fine.”

James Levine’s debut novel does a fantastic job of getting us into the head of Batuk. Though she has grown up amongst family and has had to face the betrayal of those closest to her, she tries to make the best of it by always seeing beauty in the bleakness around her. She deftly weaves a world of exquisite stories out of every day tragedies, in order to trick herself to retain some semblance of sanity. The narrative is so beautiful and so unbelievably sad at the same time, that readers may find it unputdownable.

Note: This review first appeared in The Tribune.

Get over it, and get on with it, urges Asif Jalal, author of some of the most inspirational contemporary writings. An earnest endeavour to address Muslim teenagers plagued with complexes, his book attempts to assist impressionable minds in dropping anchor towards the pursuit of a more meaningful life. As a student, the author himself dealt with many puzzling, often demoralising issues ranging from religion to career options. More recently, while serving out his posting as Superintendent of Police, Lahaul Spiti, he found himself with a lot of time to introspect. He sought to resolve disturbing thoughts: What makes the Muslim youth so angry and hopeless at the same time? Why do they feel marginalised and alienated from the system? When, and why, did they begin to believe that the system is conspiring against them; that other communities are their enemies?

Reasons and answers for all of the above, and more, manifested themselves in a collection of informative essays called Thoughts for the Young Minds. He believes that much of the convictions and perceptions that shape their destiny and guide their actions are distorted. Drawing from his own experiences as a middle-class youth of modest means, he stands apart in his determination to work hard towards achieving his goals, shrugging off the widespread and deeply ingrained self-defeating attitude he feels afflicts Muslim youth in Indian society. Following the completion of his Master’s from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), he worked as a research aid with Professor Paul of the University of Washington, before joining the Indian Police Service.

An insightful exchange with him recently revealed a remarkable objectivity towards his subject: “The popular conception about Islam, its philosophy, the question of destiny and place of rationality in life among Muslims prevent them from succeeding in the existing system. In fact, the kind of values imparted to them in the name of religion is regressive. They receive a narrow and distorted version of Islam. They are told that listening to music is un-Islamic, pursuit of worldly success is a worthless activity, watching television is a sin; modernity is vile. All the time their hearts should be given to God’s prayer and devotion, and not to their professional goals. But they find the world operates in a very different way from what their supposed religious scholars preach. They find themselves caught in a bind”.

He elaborates further, “If they follow modern values, they lose the grace of Allah; and if they follow the so-called religious values, they lose this world. Thus, a profound sense of guilt builds within their psychology and sits deep within. Their life becomes a trip of endless hypocrisy. We believe one thing to be right but practice other thing in our self-interest. We start believing that practicing Islam in the present environment is like walking on a line of fire. Much of their time and energy is drained in a struggle to get rid of the contradiction. And many times people are never able to sort it out throughout their lives”.

The contents of the book are categorised under seven sub-headings: Mind and Faith; Study and Growth; Sex and Life; Society and Culture; Strategy and Techniques; Experience and Encounter; and Personalities. Through these honest, sincere and thoughtful essays, the author seeks not just to inform, but also advise Muslim youth to cleanse their thinking and rid themselves of a minority’s psychology: the feelings of alienation, marginality, weakness, discrimination, insecurity and victim-hood. Such a thinking and belief, writes Asif, is poisonous and detrimental to a successful and peaceful coexistence.

Note: This review has first appeared in The Tribune.

The  first thought that came to mind after I finished reading Palash Krishna Mehrotra’s collection of short stories was: Does man choose his environment or does environment choose the man? Having acquainted with the author, not very long ago, at his way-past-sell-by-date digs in a tony south Delhi locality, I would have imagined it was the former. A wiry, bespectacled frame, given to restless pacing while sharing witticisms, he had observed with some conviction that the grimy, run down warren of rooms he shares with sundry housemates was, in fact, brimming with character. Unwilling to endorse his view even as I took a closer look at the peeling paint, the shoddy woodwork and the fading upholstery, I was quick to dismiss it as a flippant remark.

But that was before I read Eunuch Park: Fifteen Stories of Love and Destruction. In retrospect, it could have been the perfect backdrop for any one of his characters to realise the darkest fantasies haunting their tortured souls. For, tortured souls, nay, tortured male souls, cynical and irreverent, are the author’s metier. Evidenced clearly from the ennui-engulfed protagonist of Dancing with Men, the resentful cross-dresser of In The Nick of Time and the lovelorn teenager-turned-go-between of The Farewell.

Take the matter-of-fact murderers in Fit of Rage: Chotu, the hired help, and Sadiq, the rickshaw-puller who remorselessly plot the end of the former’s employer, an old lady, albeit a hard taskmaster. While Manik, a young tenant, already on the run for knifing to death his girlfriend in a moment of uncontrolled anger, looks on at the happenings through a ganja-induced stupor.

Eunuch Park, the title story, underscores the angst of a young couple desperate for some intimate privacy. Believing the park to be a safe haven from prying eyes, they are proved otherwise as greedy, territorial eunuchs hound them out. Okhla Basti, The Teacher’s Daughter and Freshers’ Welcome are all insightful accounts about the shunned, as the author delves deep into the minds of outcasts living on societal peripheries. Palash Mehrotra’s heroes usually inhabit seedy, ugly environs, from boys’ hostels to train bogeys, to dingy bars. Yet, even as they display a certain air of abject aimlessness, they appear not to resist any opportunity to experiment, when it comes to their own sexuality. Or drugs. Or violence.

Through his earlier attempt, as editor of Recess: The Penguin Book of Schooldays, an anthology of absorbing essays, stories and poems, he had forged a nostalgic connect between the reader, and the essential ingredients that make up school life: tyrannical teachers, budding sexuality, parental conflict, growing up blues.

While in Eunuch Park, written in a slick, urban style, the author has consciously chosen the short story format to hold up a grainy, monochromatic mirror to the disturbing realities of a multi-cultural India. An India, that drew him like a magnet. An India, he was not afraid to embrace. An India, he refuses to be judgmental about. Here, finally, is a riveting encounter with the male psyche, revealed through the eyes of a brutally honest writer. The experience is up, close and personal. Don’t miss it.

Note: This review has first appeared in The Tribune.