Brooklyn

By Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin is an Irish writer I came across in the best of the year lists. And he proved to be a nice little find. Someone I can pick up if I am looking for a quietly fulfilling read.

Brooklyn is a novel about the Irish immigrant experience in 1950’s America. Eilis Lacey is from Enniscorthy (what quaint Irish names!), a little town in Ireland. She works part time in a local store and studies bookkeeping. She lives with her mother and her older sister Rose, who is the bread winner of the family. Ireland is economically stagnant, there are no jobs for the locals and Eilis’ three brothers are working in England because of it. Rose figures that Eilis is better off in America where she will have a chance to utilize her bright mind; and she finds her a passage to America through an Irish priest there.

And so begins Eilis’ journey into America. She is not particularly excited by it – she would rather have stayed in her familiar home with her mother. But she realizes that Rose, her more adventurous sister has made some kind of sacrifice for her – staying behind to look after her mother while her younger sister goes off to make her fortune in the new world.

Eilis is not awed by Brooklyn. Her life there takes on a very mundane existence. In the daytime, she is a saleswoman in a department store, selling nylons. And at night she attends bookkeeping classes in college. She stays as a lodger with other Irish women and you realize how insular an immigrant community could be. The Irish women dislike the Italians and the Jews and the blacks; Irishmen are the only ones worth going out with; and local customs and traditions still have strangeness associated with them. Yet it is a support system in the new land for Eilis. In spite of this support system, Eilis goes through crippling home sickness. Until she finds some kind of love with an Italian man Tony. Tony is kind and loves her deeply. And as she gets closer to him, she cannot but help agree to his offer of marriage.

Then tragedy strikes in Ireland and she goes back. But not before marrying Tony who fears (and rightly so) that she might not be back. Eilis returns to Ireland, smarter and hipper than when she left. She is sucked back happily into her familiar life there, with her old friends and neighbours…and even finds a possible new love.

Eilis is now forced to choose. Which is her home? It is a classic immigrant dilemma and forms the crux of Toibin’s novel. There are loyalties on both sides of the Atlantic and her choice would mean the betrayal of one or the other.

Brooklyn is an intimate story, simply told. There are no big flourishes of language or imagery. Toibin keeps it real and genuine and the unaffectedness of the telling has its own charm. I will be exploring more of Colm Toibin.

Wolf Hall

By Hilary Mantel

It’s the winner of the 2009 Booker Prize. It is historical fiction. It is British. I went into Wolf Hall with great expectations but it took me a whole month and a lot of pushing myself to get through it. Blame it on the mammoth 650 pages, on my less than deep knowledge of British history, on the disconcerting present tense of the narrative. But finish it I did, coming away more familiar and more than a little fascinated with a quite incredible part of British history.

Wolf Hall is set between 1527 and 1535…or thereabouts. For some kind of perspective, 1530 was the year Babur died leaving Humayun a tentative hold on his Indian territories. The Vijayanagar kingdom is in its last throes in the South. The reformist movement against the Church is in full swing in Europe and Shakespeare’s birth is still a quarter of a century away.

England is under the Tudor king Henry VIII. Whom we all know had innumerable wives and proved to be the reason for England’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. The hero is a Thomas Cromwell (not the Oliver Cromwell of the civil war fame, but a distant ancestor), advisor to Henry and the chief architect of the break with the Catholic Church. Apparently, Thomas Cromwell is a villainous figure in British history, a ruthless conniving man who amassed wealth and quite immense power through dubious means. Hilary Mantel has a different take.

Mantel writes this novel from Thomas Cromwell’s perspective. We see 16th century England in all its flux, its cruelty, its opportunities… through his eyes. A commoner who rises to one of the most powerful positions in England, Mantel’s Cromwell is a man of varied abilities. He speaks a dozen languages, knows the New Testament by heart, is well versed in the law, economics and even poetry. A self-made man, he epitomizes meritocracy in an age when blood is everything.

In the first part of the book, we see him as the right hand man of Cardinal Wolsey, a position he has got to after spending years in Italy and Belgium in various trades. Wolsey is of course Henry’s Cardinal, his conduit to Rome. We see Henry trying to get out of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon (quite a fascinating portrait of a tough, proud queen) and when the Cardinal cannot convince Rome of Henry’s right to marry again, he falls out of favour with the king, dying a lonely death. It sets the stage for Cromwell’s ascendancy with Henry.

Cromwell with his powers of persuasion, his practical ruthlessness, his nuanced reading of people, is able to do what the Cardinal could not… find a way for Henry to marry Anne Boleyn. It takes an irreparable break with the Church, passing laws that are not the most popular, hanging a number of Bishops and Cardinals, including Thomas More and making the king supersede the Church in England. In the process, he gets Anne, a woman he does not particularly like, the position of Queen. Anne’s portrait is a powerful one – a strong woman who uses sex (or the withholding of it) to get what she wants, a lowly noblewoman who stands up to a queen, cruel to her sister, kind to those she thinks would be useful, manipulative, willful, vindictive.

The rivalry with Thomas More is quite a riveting part of the book. Apparently, popular history has More as the wronged hero and Cromwell as the villain who is responsible for hanging him. Mantel shows More in a very poor light – as a cold zealot, cruel in his idealism, prescribing harsh punishment to people who do not believe as he does. He runs a brutal house, is mean to his wife and even at his death, prefers the utopia of martyrdom to giving up on his ideals.

In contrast, his arch rival Cromwell is all practicality, leaning towards the reformist influence in the Church, yet never zealously so. He tends to the way of compromise, of meeting people mid way, to make things work. More sneers at Cromwell’s practicality, his almost centrist approach… and pays the price with his head.

The book ends with Anne as queen, with a daughter, with a 2nd miscarried pregnancy and an almost imperceptible fading of the honeymoon days. Mantel chooses to end the book at this point, making the More- Cromwell and Anne-Katherine clashes the centerpieces of the story. We as readers know that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Anne does not get to be queen for long, Wolf Hall (the residence of the Seymours, one of whom gets to be the next queen) is the next port of call…and Cromwell himself will one day fall out with the king and be left to die. But that is left to another book, perhaps.

Mantel makes the turmoil in 16th century England real in a way only good historical novels can. There is very little description, the language is today’s, the period piece is lightly told, never overwhelming character or plot…yet we can acutely sense the cruelty in the burnings, the fright of the plague, the deadly intrigue at court. The bigger issues of church vs state, of religion as bigger than nation, of the centre of power shifting to global traders who control the money, they all form the backdrop to this interesting story.

The present tense and the third person narrative that is almost first person can prove challenging at times. So too does the sometimes non-chronological jumps in story. But there is a power in Mantel’s language that is difficult to ignore. It was 650 pages, it was a history I did not completely know (and a lot of nuances I missed therefore, I am sure), and I had to plough through it at times…but I am glad I read it. History can be spellbinding, especially when told as a story as interesting as this.

The Palace of Illusions

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Can there ever be a boring telling of the Mahabharata? Rajaji’s version was my introduction to the epic. I have spent innumerable childhood hours reading and re-reading it and then you grow up with these images in your head – the heroic Arjuna, the doomed Karna, the wicked Duryodhana, the wise and righteous Bheeshma, the sly Sakuni, the beautiful and proud Draupadi, the playful and wily Krishna… You have arguments in your head whether Arjuna deserved to kill Karna, whether the Pandavas deserved the kingdom, whether Krishna’s partiality was justified…

It is not a clean story, not a classic case of the good winning over evil. There are far too many ambiguities, too many heroes on the losing side, too many lies and half-truths on the winning one. Victory at the end is not an unalloyed triumph and revenge does have more than a taste of the bitter. Which is what makes it such a fabulous source for re-telling.

Chitra Banerjee attempts one such re-telling. From Draupadi’s perspective. Draupadi or Paanchali is a woman as much embedded in the Indian collective imagination as a Sita, a Rani of Jhansi, a Mira. She is strong, beautiful, with an ability to turn the course of a story on her own strength. Isn’t it strange then that we never name our daughters Draupadi or Paanchali? Her praises are not sung nor is she revered in the way the other heroines are. Strong willed women with a streak of individualism have a way of being uncomfortable. So it is interesting that Banerjee takes her up as the protagonist and weaves the stories of the Mahabharata with her as the centre.

Banerjee stays true to the original most of the time and there are few surprises. But there are some new perspectives that have the ability to startle. Draupadi’s lifelong rivalry with Kunti, Kunti as the stern mother with little tenderness, Bheeshma as the righteous patriarch whose adherence to his code of conduct makes him less than human, Draupadi’s own secret love and longing for Karna that lasts throughout her lifetime, her inability to feel anything half as passionate for her own husbands, her special relationship with Krishna that is hard to qualify, her irrational love for her palace, the description of her father as a vengeance-obsessed autocrat, Karna’s ascetic loneliness…

Coupled with a rather melodramatic telling, Banerjee’s tale of Draupadi is interesting, racy and sometimes surprising. It could have been so much more though… a more unique point of view, with more revelations, more straying from the original, more perspectives that shocked, more imagination that astonished. But overall, The Palace of Illusions is a good solid story that has the ability to grip you. But then, that is the power of the Mahabharata itself.

Cathedral

By Raymond Carver

My first Carver is a set of short stories. Immaculate cameos, not traditional stories with beginnings, middles and twisty ends, these are almost still life pictures in word form. Scenes assembled in front of you carefully and meticulously, almost poetically. Carver is after all, also a poet.

There are a lot of drunks fighting addiction, in rehab and out of it, the women who love them and the women in whom there is no love left; there is looking for love, love dying, love dead; there is ‘a small, good thing in a time like this’ – freshly baked bread in a time of grief; stories of hope and slow revival, stories of moving on and help for moving on; stories of hopeless despair where ‘dreams are what you wake up from’. And then there is ‘Cathedral’, a wonderful beautiful story of a man describing a cathedral to a blind man by guiding his hand as he draws it out for him – an act that offers as much to the sighted person as it does to the blind man. Sheer poetry.

These are truly stories of the human condition, with all its warts and and all its glory. Love, longing, despair, hope – all is encompassed, in a style that is minimalistic, spare, intense. I will be re-visiting Carver again.

In the meantime, here is a poem he had inscribed on his gravestone:

Gravy
No other word will do. For that's what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. "Don't weep for me,"
he said to his friends. "I'm a lucky man.
I've had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure Gravy. And don't forget it."

RAYMOND CARVER (1938-1988)

I am a lucky woman.

Sea of Poppies

Amitav Ghosh

The time is the first half of the 19^th century in colonial India; the first opium war is closing in on the horizon and the opium trade from India to China is under serious threat; slavery has just been abolished and Indian indentured labourers are being shipped out to sugar plantations in Mauritius. With this scenario as historical background, Ghosh brings together a cast of characters, diverse in race, language, religion, each with his or her own compulsions to travel across the Kala Pani, from Calcutta to Mareech (Mauritius) on the Ibis.

Deeti, wife of an opium addict, tiller of an opium field, mother to her brother-in-law’s baby, painter of deities in her shrine, sees the Ibis in her dream…and recognizes it as her destiny. When her husband dies, she flees the sati pyre with a sympathetic lower caste Kalua to her destiny as a girmitiya on the Ibis.

Zachary Reid, an American, the son of a white man and a freed slave, passing off as white (and so forever condemned to have something to hide), becoming the second mate on the Ibis by sheer dint of enterprise, perseverance and good luck, taken under the wing of the lascar Serang Ali, is in love with a French woman Paulette Lambert; and is arguably the hero of the book.

Paulette, French, brought up by a liberal father, almost like a native, more comfortable in a sari than the restrictive corsets of European ladies of the time, friend to Jodu the boatman-become-lascar, who is as close to her as a brother, is forced to adopt the ways of the white mem when her father dies and abandons her to the vagaries of fate and the Christian Church. She finds her way to the Ibis too, impersonating a coolie, running away from the horrors of a regulated life and marriage in search of adventure and the love of her life, Zachary.

Neel Raskhali, is a bankrupt raja, duped of his estates by a charge of forgery. He finds his way to the Ibis as a convict because he is forced to travel across the Kala Pani to Mauritius to serve his sentence.

These and many more form the colourful cast that populates the Ibis on her voyage. Most are forging new identities, having given up their old. All are joined together on a horrific and yet exhilarating voyage to a possible fresh start, unmarked beginnings.

Through this cast, the history of the period unfolds. 19^th century Bihar and Bengal – the food, clothes, caste systems, religions – come alive like in a Dickens novel. It is everyday life framed against great historical tides. The research is glaringly obvious…yet there is nothing thesis-like about it. Ghosh writes a historical novel like the best in the business.

The detailing is meticulous – the opium factory Deeti is overawed by, the jail conditions Neel suffers, the ship and its structure Jodu and the laskars learn like the back of their hands. The language is a patois of lascarese, Bhojpuri, Bengali, Anglo-Indian (did people really speak like this, this mingling of Indian and English?) and American. It forms an uneven cadence that gets some getting used to in the beginning. But once you do, it turns out to be pretty delightful. I especially found myself looking forward to Deeti’s Bhojpuri – it has a certain intensity well beyond the capability of good old English.

Sea of Poppies is a rollicking read. I love historical fiction and Ghosh never fails to disappoint. It is a wild mixture of Dickensian grit and Scottian romance. Some characters are wooden (especially the colonial Brit), the sailing terminology and descriptions could interest no one but a hard-core sailing addict, at times you wish the research did not show as much, and in the simplicity of the language, you miss the gripping prose-poetry of a Roy or a Rushdie.

But these are holes one tries very hard to pick. Ghosh has created a masterpiece anyone with a modicum of interest in books would find enthralling. One can only shudder at the sensibility that chose White Tiger (a really good book, nevertheless) over this magnificence for the Booker. At least, there is hope – this is just the first in three instalments.

Trivia

Loves

The feel of my skin after an oil bath. The never-wanting-it-to-end feeling while reading a book. Bucket lists. The quiet of an empty house on a lazy morning. The spunky women in Mani Ratnam movies. The half hour of staring out the window at the city lights before falling asleep. Kerala temples. Tales of impossible longing. Standing under a hot shower after a sweaty workout. TamBram Tamil. That lopsided George Clooney smile. Old albums. Poetry when I am in the mood for poetry. The smell of agarbattis and camphor in my puja room. Aftershave. The lightness of being, after a drink. Love stories. Re-runs of Friends. Re-runs of Julia Roberts movies. Exquisite handloom sarees. The smell of freshly washed clothes. Cats. Madras Café set dosas. Museums and galleries. School girls in uniforms with ribbons on their plaited hair. The smell of roasting garlic. The heavenliness of Daniel Craig’s body.

Pet Peeves

Feelings of inadequacy. My pot belly. Visitors on a lazy Sunday. Money talk. Unwashed dishes in my kitchen sink. Plastic covers on magazines. ‘Hindi-fication’. Crossword bookstores. The sambhar in Udipi restaurants. Unwaxed limbs. Dragging myself to the gym. Smoking in my car. Books am forced to abandon midway because of boredom. Body odour. Colin Farrel movies. Right wing Hindu ideologues. Crying babies on airplanes. Inattentive men. Responsibility of any kind. Irresponsible colleagues. Chiffon/ georgette sarees with bling. Really late nights and very early mornings. White stone idols in north Indian temples. The salwar kurta. My inadequacy in any Indian tongue. Morning breath. Flies. Ants. Cockroaches. Tears at work. Nicholas Cage movies. Men who don’t read.

Kafka On The Shore

Haruki Murakami
A teenage boy Kafka Tamura, runs away from home and his father, possibly in search of his mother who ran away with his sister when he was four. In his mind, there is a chilling oedipal prophecy that his father made – that he would one day kill his father and sleep with his mother. The reader travels with Kafka on his journey where he encounters a girl who could probably be his sister, a woman who could probably be his mother and a cross-dressing librarian who becomes his friend and ally. Kafka’s story is interspersed with that of an old man, Nakata, who in his childhood had a possible extra-terrestrial experience that left him retarded, but with an ability to speak to cats. Nakata too has set out on a journey, after he kills a cat killer, Kafka’s father. Nakata and Kafka’s journeys converge, of course. The prophecy seemingly comes true with the strange connection between Nakata and Kafka. There is a possible spirit world that Kafka visits and Nakata is possibly some sort of a spirit conduit for the Kafka story to come to a conclusion.
Murakami writes a strange yarn. There is something eerie and ominous about the whole tale and he has you enthralled in his story telling. Talking cats, raining leeches, extra-terrestrial experiences, dreams as real as reality, an in-between world, between death and life… all of these form part of this gripping story. It is Pullman, Tolkein and Dahl rolled into one.
I continue to be fascinated by this Japanese writer who so effortlessly can make the most unreal experiences read so normal and casual and every day. Kafka on the Shore is in some ways, a straight-forward tale of evil and an ordinary world’s fight against it. There are unlikely heroes and supernatural allies. It is a fable, there are elements that are allegorical in nature, yet it all holds together quite mesmerizingly.
This is not my favourite Murakami… but it comes close. It definitely seems the most ambitious novel I have read of his. In his strange blend of fantasy, quirkiness and everyday mundane-ness, Murakami sure has a winning formula. One that I have not tired of, as yet.