Not Before You- Lata Gwalani

How does a parent fight Death when death threatens to take her away before it takes away her child? Wait. What kind of a selfish parent is she, you wonder. Why does she want her child to die before she does?

Lata Gwalani’s hauntingly beautiful novel is about a mother’s lonely battle against Death and her constant battle with Life and everything that the Fates have thrown at her over the years : Nikhil, the special child, her 32 year old son who has been lying in bed wasting his years away staring at the ceiling. Divya, the younger daughter, bitter and resentful towards her mother whom she feels has neglected her. And Suraj, the husband who has taken the easy way out, and is hiding in the mountains under the garb of spirituality. Now, as Jaya faces her next battle, the most challenging one so far, she confronts her own mortality that looms ahead filling her with the sinking fear that she will die before her son. She realises that has to take a decision soon. A very, very difficult decision.

‘The only answers to the why are the lies we tell ourselves.‘

The writing is simple and beautiful, it leaves the reader with a lump in the throat and tears that flow unbidden as you turn the pages of Jaya’s life. A life that she began as a happy young bride soon transforms into one where her entire existence begins to revolve around Nikhil. Jaya single handedly fights judgmental relatives, insensitive society and even her own helpless husband who is unable to cope with the enormity of being a caregiver to a special needs child and a dealing wife who is so fiercely protective of the child that she is blind to anything else.

The narration moves from the present to the past and goes back and forth from the point of view of Suraj, Divya and Jaya. Another narrator is the black-cloaked Death who holds a file with Jaya’s name on it as he watches her life unfold, reluctantly waiting to strike.

As the story progresses, it gets heavier and heavier and opens up a floodgate of emotions. And then as the emotions slowly settle down, you begin to question everything right from God to the government.

Surprisingly, I did not feel any anger against Suraj, the husband who shirked his responsibilities, or Divya, the daughter who could have been more supportive but didn’t. These characters have been handled with so much sensitivity and they are so real that you tend to empathise with them too. Each one copes in their own way, and like Jaya, I too didn’t feel any kind of anger towards them; just a sense of disappointment. Jaya also has her own shades of grey and frustrates the reader at times with her stubbornness. And Divya too is a victim in this cruel game of fate. She deserved a better life and perhaps a mother who was there for her too.

While this book addresses the worst fears of a parent with a special child, it might need to come with a trigger warning for such parents since it covers some very pertinent points, asks some very relevant questions and touches upon some highly sensitive and controversial topics such as non-voluntary euthanasia.

Spoiler: The book ends on a relatively happy note, but it continues to haunt me with the what ifs and the ground reality of thousands of such real life stories which may not have such solutions.

It is a short book with small chapters. A book that keeps you glued to the pages and can even finish in one sitting. Get the book here

The Armour of Light- Ken Follet

The weakest of the series so far

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was yet another book out in the Kingsbridge series. I did not expect another book after The Evening and the Morning and so this one was like finding money in the pocket of an old pair of jeans. Unfortunately, the money that I found turned out to be one of those demonetised notes.

There was nothing Kingsbridgey about this book and it followed a done-to-death template. The other books too had that template: the poor, the rich, the working class, the gentry, the clergy, religion and wars. But the template had solid meat in it. Right from Jack Builder to Merthin and Caris or Ned, they are names that the hardcore Kingsbridge reader remembers fondly. Their stories kept me awake all night as I lay in bed engrossed in my Kindle till the wee hours of the morning. Each of those books also got me obsessively Googling the historical background against which the stories were set. In fact, I went down the whole Tudor rabbithole after The Column of Fire and devoured a series of Alison Weir books. (I still don’t know if I am on the side of Elizabeth I or Queen Mary.)

Sadly, The Armour of Light did none of this for me. The cathedral seemed to be plugged in just to establish the Kingsbridge connection. (All that hard work in Pillars of The Earth for nothing!) While it does play a role in a plot twist towards the end, I did not feel its imposing presence in the book. The bad guy Hornbeam wasn’t bad enough for me, his wins were too predictable and his losses weren’t sweet revengy enough. And the good guys didn’t get any of my emotions because they were too vanilla. Sal who filled the strong working class woman part of the template, might have been the strongest character in the book but she disappointed me towards the end. Spoiler: She gave in too easily, I would have wanted her to extract a pound of moral flesh from Hornbeam rather than the sad little material gift she claimed. Arabella, the adulterous wife of the bishop (again, the template: weak, semi-villanous clergyman) was another character I liked, but I won’t call her kickass or anything. Elsie, the daughter was painfully boring. Well, what else can one expect from a Sunday School teacher. Amos and Spade were meh. The template goody goody men. Yes, goody goody and boring inspite of their adulterous twinning sinning. Even the adultery didn’t seem scandalous enough. And the Anglo-French wars, the historical backdrop against which this book is set isn’t something I will obsessively read about. The Combination Law, maybe. That was new and interesting for me

And then.

Spoiler and Disclaimer: It is not homophobia, but I cant shake off the feeling that there was something so so so not right about Kit and Roger. The whole gay couple thing seemed to have been added to tick off some diversity checkbox that had to be included in the template. There is no chemistry between the two, rather it was a relationship which was problematic in many ways.

Kit was hardly seven years old when Roger let him sleep in the guest room after his accident as a child. And it struck hard and creeped me out so much when that scene was referenced in the end. Had Roger been nice to the child because he had, well, designs on him even then? Shudder! I absolutely cannot get over that thought. The relationship was not balanced, and Kit gave in and indulged Roger too much. Why? It wasn’t love. I won’t call that love.

It also seemed quite strange that a gay couple, one from the gentry and another from the working class, living together openly, was written in such a matter of fact way, as though it was totally normal during that era and no one even batted an eyelid about it. Even Sal seemed to take it too easily, she could have at least expressed some concern about what people would say. There was no scandalous gossip or social or moral or legal policing. Of course, it was probably something that happened a lot back then in secret, but I’m sure no one was as accepting of such things back in the 1800s. People aren’t that accepting even in 2024!

But well, I finished the book. Took me longer than usual and left me disappointed. I will probably go back and read my favourites, Pillars of the Earth and World Without End again to get the taste of this one out of me. But also, I hope there will be another one in the Kingsbridge series. And I hope it is better that The Armour of Light.

Death on the Doorstep- Alisha Kay

A paranormal comedy crime thriller. With a dash of romance.

I have read a couple of the author’s earlier romance novels which were fun, easy reads. After my last book, the one with the Ouija board that disappointed me, I was still in the mood for something paranormal. So when this popped up as a recommendation on Kindle Unlimited I picked it up immediately. Of course, this is certainly not horror or ‘truly’ paranormal but it was such a delightful and fun read.

Sitara Singhal is fiercely independent and refuses any support from her ex husband Blake (except for keeping all the designer gifts he gave her and selling them for rent money), but she is also the typical desi girl who has not yet told her parents about her divorce. So when her mother suddenly decide to pay her and her husband a visit she panics and does the unthinkable. She swallows her ego and requests her ex husband and his new girlfriend to help her keep up the pretense and continue to be Blake’s wife until her parents leave. The new fiancé Shazia reacts as expected, but then she also ends up murdered that day. Of course, Sitara is the main suspect and the dishy police officer who is investigating the murder has a history with Sitara. Just when the book has fit in all the elements of a fun romcom the author adds in a dash of the paranormal as a bonus. A magic spell from an ancient book goes terribly wrong and turns Sitara into a psychic. Or whatever you call a person who can see and talk to dead people. She sees Shazia, the murdered fiancé of her ex and gets into a pots and pans throwing fight with her. And in the churchyard, Sitara unwillingly befriends three more ghosts, a teenage girl ghost and a delightful old couple who help her with the murder investigation. But not without a lot of mad drama in the process.

The killer was quite predictable, I knew who it was the moment the character was introduced. Kind of a no brainer. The motive and the MO was also nothing great, but that made no difference. The whole investigation and the ghosts made the book a crazy fun read than an edge of the seat thriller type, so the weak murder and motive part didn’t matter much.

I love the fact that this is a series and I am looking forward to the next one, which again is on KU and in my library already. But after almost four books that were borderline paranormal reads, I need to give this genre a break before I pick it up.

That Night- Nidhi Upadhyay

A long, tiring night

The book started off with so much intrigue and promise but unfortunately, it got scattered all over the place and I was totally lost by the time it finally ended.

I have still not read The Exorcist because the fear of the Ouija board was hammered into me right from childhood. I mumble a prayer even as I type the word. When this book started off on a dark freezing night with an O board and four friends, it seemed to be a the perfect cozy horror thriller that I was looking for. But as the story progressed, the horror aspect vanished and it began to show signs of a cyber thriller. Even better, I thought. How is it that four women in different corners of the world have their phones and laptops hacked? Was it her or her or her or her? Or one of the husbands?

But then it got painfully tedious after that. The twists weren’t twisty enough, they meandered lazily and aimlessly. The shocks weren’t shocking enough and the ending which seemed like some 80s Bollywood movie climax with abandoned buildings, kidnappings and some ghostbuster was hilariously ridiculous.

It is a week since I finished the book and I hardly remember the names of the four women now. That is how memorable they were. Even the dead girl Sania was so poorly written that you don’t feel anything for what happened to her. I literally did not care.

Spoilers ahead, but then I think giving out spoilers is the merciful thing to do for such books.

There are so many loopholes in the plot that it seems the author wrote the story over a long period of time and forgot what was written initially. My mind screamed as to why the hostel didn’t do this. Or the police didn’t do that. There could have been reasons, but they should have been explained better. The aftermath of the incident was not described the way it could have been.

Introducing Mathew as a character more than halfway into the book and justifying the whole high tech hacking saying they used some military intelligence to hack phones and laptops and literally everything else made me roll my eyes. The ghost of Sania doing it would have been more believable.

Of course, hostel life has its fair share of LGBT romances, and it was probably more taboo and scandalous in the 90s. This was a solid base that could have worked better if the author had not decided to pack in too many other confusing romances and relationships towards the end. The most unforgivable thing was to make Sid the bad guy and the also give him the benefit of doubt by questioning the mindset of the the poor dead girl. The author was probably going for some open ended thingy, but it was unfair to Sania and brought absolutely no closure to what the book was supposed to be all about.

No, I don’t think I will be reading this author’s other book. Or yeah, maybe I will.

Borders Bridges Belonging : A Journey of Hope across Lands and Generations

The year is 1947 and the borders that would divide the subcontinent are still unclear. Hazari packs his family and whatever belongings he can into bullock carts and begins his journey, the journey that would make him cross that first bridge and settle down in a village just ten kilometers across what would become the border of the newly independent nation, India. Little did Hazari know back then, that many decades later, a young girl, his great-granddaughter, one who would journey across other bridges and other borders, would return to this very village to give back to the people there and to make a difference in the lives of so many little girls.

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant

A barely educated but literate Mesar, a child bride becomes part of Hazari’s family at the age of ten. This child bride grows into a woman who emerges stronger and more resilient with each tragedy that life throws at her, and she plants that very first seed. The book is dedicated to her, the author’s grandmother, Maate. She is the rock, the pillar who holds the family together, and throughout the book, she provides both inspiring moments and moments of hilarity with her sharp tongue and snark. With every obstacle that life throws at her she turns them into stepping stones, to ensure that her children and their children get to live a better life than she did.

One of my favourite incidents in this book was the story of how the author got her name, a name that was given to her on the spot by her grandmother while getting her admitted in school. It struck me on several levels and made me ponder about all the things we take for granted. Such simple things like a woman who wears sarees, speaks Hindi and does not cover her head was seen as aspirational to a woman like Maate who had lived her whole life in that small village where none of these was even imaginable.

Bisnu, her son waters that seed she planted so that it grows into a thriving sapling. He takes risks that no one in his village even thought of, and with all the sacrifices he makes, all those kilometers he pedals on his cycle back and forth, he ensures that his children get the education they deserve, an education that does not see a gender divide.

And then there is the author, Prem who benefited from the fruit of that tree that grew from the seed that Maate planted. She now shares the fruit from that tree with hundreds of other girls who grew up like her. I cannot help but gush about Prem and the role model that she is, to not just every little girl in her village and villages across the country, but also to everyone like me who grew up taking their privilege for granted. She forces us to think of what we have and what we should give back to society. Her starkly honest and raw observations have been eye openers throughout the book.

As a child, she questions the practice of untouchability in her family. And as an adult who has crossed the borders of her village, her city, and her country, she sits at the banks of the Potomac River and questions what independence truly means to the black population of her adopted nation. And on a lighter note, she even questions why Americans put ice into everything.

The narration is unpretentious and flows freely, it feels like a friend sitting across the table with a cup of coffee, talking to you, telling you the story of her life.

The journey of this family also reflects the journey of India, the country that was born just when Hazari crossed that bridge. A country that struggled, stumbled, got back on its feet, grew, and now thrives. An inspiring lesson on what a huge difference education and a scientific temper does to both individuals and a nation.

The story is personal, but it touches upon so many social issues. Education of the girl child is the constant underlying theme, but just education alone cannot solve everything. The author talks about so many social ills that plague not just India but the US as well. What was casteism in her village is racism in another country. Restrictions across religions, some that force women to cover up their bodies, some that restrict women from exercising medical autonomy over their own bodies. Attitudes, mindsets, biases, bigotry. She talks about it all, makes the reader think about it all.

It is overwhelming for me to even imagine someone giving up the Great American Dream to get back to her roots, that small village ten kilometers across the India Pakistan border, to give young girls there the education that women in the generations before them were denied.

Borders Bridges and Belonging is an incredible book that will inspire and ignite, a book that gives hope and courage. It will open your eyes to different Indias, different Americas. It will make you question many things that you have turned a convenient blind eye to, and seek answers. It will make you count your blessings and make you want to share those blessings with those who may not have been as privileged or lucky as you have been.

This is a book that should be in every library, a book that should be read by both adults and children, across borders.

All proceeds from the sale of this book go to the Hamari Laado foundation that the author has started that works towards empowering the girl child.

Buy the book here on Amazon

The Fire Ant’s Sting- Kamalini Natesan

Like The Seven Deadly Sins, if The Twelve Deadly Desires was a thing, this is an anthology that addresses them. Each story delves into the base and the not-so-base desires that consume us humans. Desires that none of us are immune to.

Almost none of the protagonists can be considered likeable as human beings. Most of them are what one would call losers. They are petty, they are vain, they are greedy, they are selfish, they are sleazy. But that is what makes them so real. And at the cost of revealing my own not-so-likeable side, I have to confess that most of them seemed so relatable.

The title story, The Fire Ant’s Sting was all about the desire to make money, and at any cost. The build up was slow and steady, with the expat couple and their move to India. Bob with his smooth talk that hid all his obvious insecurities and greed, was such a a well written character. At first I felt bad for Eva, anticipating the worst. But I needn’t have. The end was deliciously smug.

Let’s Play was a game where each one vies for the attention of the other. The narrative makes the reader switch loyalties back and forth as the story progresses. An unlikely trio, the relationships and the equations took on interesting twists. But the end disappointed me a bit because I was expecting the opposite.

I held my breath in anticipation as Mohan desperately searched for Bhumi in Checkmate! I cheered him on throughout his journey, I too wanted to savour sweet revenge along with him. But here too I was disappointed, though I shouldn’t have been.

Unbridled, the desire for sex, was dark and depressing. It had the feel of a slow 80s award winning movie where you don’t judge the protagonist for wanting what she wants. Maybe that’s all she can get in life, so let her. Maybe it wasn’t the desire for sex, it was the desire to be liberated from the life she was destined to live in.

My favourite was Cloistered Spectrum. An ageing beauty who lives in a haveli, still thinking about her first love who died too young, but also flitting from man to man in her desperation to make time stand still, not take a toll on her beauty. The writing was poetic and so was the setting. Something like love hit my gut, says Myra as she finally surrenders to being who she really should be. (But wonder if there was any reason why all the characters in this story had their names starting with the letter M)

There is a whole range of human behaviour from voyeurism to innocence. The stories are set in places that range from dry dusty villages and small towns in India to nondescript condos in California. But they all talk about the same emotion : Human Desire.

Each story starts with a quote that lays the tone of the theme. The language is free flowing and it vividly brings alive the characters and the emotions. Every single one of the stories stays with the reader long after you finish reading them. It makes you want to revisit a tiny bit of the narration again to savour the scene and the writing again. Some of them haunt you and make you ponder over what that kind of desire means to you, and what you will do when such a feeling consumes you.

Lost Edges – Salini Vineeth

I got this book as a recommendation in the For You tab on Twitter. The cover and the concept of Lost Edges in paintings seemed interesting. Given the theme of the plot that goes beyond a mere love slash bad marriage story, and this being the author’s debut novel. it turned out to be a good read.

Ravi and Geetanjali, a couple who to the reader seem obviously headed for disaster right from their college romance days, try their hand at marriage counselling as a last ditch effort to save their marriage. And in this process they discover several truths about themselves and each other, mostly uncomfortable. The book handles topics like mental health, childhood trauma and unequal equations in a marriage with sensitivity and seemed well researched.

Both Ravi and Geetanjali are products of an overly ambitious parent and they seem to live with the underlying guilt of having disappointed that parent. However, both of them handle their sense of guilt and the pressure in different ways which leads to their own relationship crashing. Ravi’s character is well defined. His deep insecurity, lack of ambition, underlying need for a strong support system to lean on and his denial of childhood trauma was detailed and handled sensitively. But Geetanjali’s character somehow seemed very superficial. She came across as more of a supporting character who was distracted and flitted in and out of Ravi’s life (and the story itself) rather than being the other half of the couple. Or maybe I just didn’t like her. There was no solid justification for why she marries Ravi, or even why and how she fell in love with him. Geetanjali’s father however was a lovely character who stays with the reader, but again the ‘bad guy’, her mother who controls those invisible strings which make Geetanjali who she is, did not have the impact as desired.

The Arnav and Ravi friendship arc seemed more deep and better defined than the Ravi and Geetanjali love story. But even that, when the tragedy struck, seemed so bland and sudden and somehow it did not evoke any strong emotions that such a tragedy should have. I literally had to read the sentences again to see whether what had happened had actually happened. The college parts didn’t work for me for most of it, but maybe that was because there were too many specific references like BH2 or SAC or whatever, and none of them did much to evoke any nostalgia, but again maybe that too was only for a reader like me who has no clue about life in BITS or engineering for that matter.

The outcome of the therapy sessions later in the story are more hardhitting but it is strange that the therapist’s name is never mentioned and he is only referred to as ‘my therapist’ whereas the marriage counsellor from the first half of the book is named. And how he is referred to reflects the imbalance of power in the marriage : He is ‘Amit’ to Geetanjali who knew him from earlier, but is always ‘Dr Amit’ to Ravi.

The narration moves back and forth from the current to the couple’s days at their engineering college and their courtship period. While Geetanjali’s narration was in the present tense when talking about the current, Ravi’s sections were entirely written in the past tense. Wonder if it was intentional for some reason, but it made no sense to have it that way.

Small things bugged me a lot. Like the overuse of how colours are described. Agree, Ravi is a painter and he looks at things with #orteyes. But it is one thing describing sunsets and the ocean in vivid shades but constantly describing every damn thing from walls to staircases to business cards as Naples-green, titanium-white, whatever red seemed a tad bit contrived. The unnecessary and inconsistent italicisation of words annoyed the hell out of me. Like why on earth should words like Malayalam or Kannadiga be in italics? (yeah, maybe there could be some readers who think that people from Keral speak Keralese and everyone in Karnataka is a Kannad, but still. Stop exotisising Indian words!) Also, there were a couple of glaring typos that should have been caught. But given that the author says that she worked on the book for nine years and did the end to end publishing herself, this is no mean achievement, so I will let those minor things that bugged me go by.

The Housemaid’s Secret- Freida Mc Fadden

I don’t know why I continue to put myself through these books. Maybe it is a condition, a psychological condition that Freida Mc Fadden will someday use for one of the characters in her ‘gripping psychological thrillers.’

But I picked up this book because I read the first one in the series, The Housemaid. Which I picked up because I read The Inmate which I picked up because I read The Wife Upstairs because… ok, so you get the condition that I am talking about. There is no cure in sight.

It is a formula that the author has perfected. Obviously obvious things that happen to loser type female protagonists and then an obviously unpredictable (but oh, so contrived or oh, so ridiculous) twist at the end. I don’t know what to make of my addiction to read such drivel.

So in this book, Millie the housemaid is back. And she again gets a job in a fancy penthouse where she cleans and cooks and does the laundry for the two mysterious people who live there. And as per the formula the two people are a rich handsome man and a wife behind closed doors.

I forgot who Enzo was in Book 1, I didn’t bother to refresh my memory. But I assume that he was the gardener who didn’t speak English who is part of the big twist in the end. He makes an appearance in this book as Millie’s guardian angel and other things. A boyfriend exists for the sole purpose of making the reader feel more annoyed with Millie. Just move in with him, woman. Say the I love yous and become a normal girlfriend and live happily ever after!

These authors of ‘psychological thrillers’ really need to stop trying to write different versions of Gone Girl. It gets so tiring. The moment Douglas Garrick walks in, you know that he is the bad guy. The moment Wendy Garrick peeps out through the door, you know that she is not the battered woman she appears to be. So why on earth does Millie not see it!

Whatever

The author’s style of writing also annoys me. So much unnecessary blah and dumbing down of things. What on earth is ‘programmed his number into my phone’ like it needs some javascript to save an ex boyfriend’s number?

And then the book ends with the question ‘Were you totally shocked by…?’ And I want to roll my eyes and say, No author, everything was so bloody obvious. I only kept reading to see which template of yours the plot of this book would follow.

But like I said, I have a condition. So I have picked up another book by this same author now. Another ‘Gripping psychological thriller’. Let the hatereading begin.

A Dalliance with Destiny – Aman Singh Maharaj

Review originally published in The Hindu Businessline

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/books/reviews/book-review-a-dalliance-with-destiny/article65869958.ece

A Dalliance with Destiny is an ambitious book that goes wide, but unfortunately, not deep enough. It meanders aimlessly, much like the protagonist, making it a slow and laborious read.

Milan Gansham is a fourth-generation South African of Indian origin who is ‘angst-ridden about his roots’. Having experienced racism, bigotry and heartbreak in his home country and disillusioned with life there, he embarks on a trip to India to find answers. Answers to questions that he does not have yet.

The book “spans a century across South Africa and India” as per the blurb and it starts in 1910 with a poverty-stricken Jagat Thakur being forced to leave his village and immigrate to South Africa as an enlisted labourer. However, his story ends quite abruptly, and not much is said about the following two generations, leaving the reader with some unanswered questions.

Later in the novel, when Milan searches for his ancestral villages in India, one would have expected a poignant moment connecting his past and present. Instead, all you get is a highly implausible sequence of events that only serves to reinforce Milan’s saviour complex.

The three sections of the book, though part of the same story seem disconnected from each other. He explores Bombay’s red-light district, travels to the Osho ashram in Pune expecting unrestricted sex there, and attends drug-fueled parties on Goa’s beaches before starting his journey to the Ganga’s source. This is as though he wants to be done with his vices before embarking on the spiritual part of the trip which takes him to Varanasi and later to Kashmir and Rishikesh, but his vices continue to follow him.

In Calcutta, he finds himself in the unlikely company of academics where he meets Dr Aparna John. He immediately moves in with her for a whirlwind affair because she ‘satisfies his intellect’. Later he meets the ‘chaste’ Maya, who hesitates to even kiss him. She, being the opposite of the sexually available Aparna and the other ‘goris’ and the ‘desperate desi girls who were afraid after hitting thirty’ that he was used to so long, he finally falls in love.

While Milan himself is a victim of racism and bigotry in his country, he exhibits the same tendencies himself with a huge dose of misogyny to boot. He has major insecurities about his caste and despite how self-deprecating they may appear to be, his casteist comments range from repulsive to shockingly offensive.

Milan’s trip to India is set in 2010, but even for that period, the narration seems to be dated and full of stereotypes and cliches. There are taxi drivers with ‘ghetto moustaches’ who play Dum maaro dum in their taxis and a tiresome running joke throughout the book about how all taxi drivers are named Raju.

Even the movie references seem to be from another era. Milan visits Jalsa, the house of ‘the angry young man’ hoping to meet him, but is informed that the star ‘has gone to Madras for a shoot’.

He also is extremely patronising about ‘Indian English’ and there is an incident where he uses a crude Hindi euphemism assuming that the pharmacist will not understand the word ‘condom’. There is an overdose of crass sexual references that pepper the entire book which could have been toned down.

Even the supposedly intelligent discussions where he talks about Pythagoras stealing his theorem from Baudhanya or the Taj Mahal being built on top of a temple seem to be inspired by old Internet forwards that have done several rounds over the years. He even mentions how he does not want India to be controlled by “an ex-barmaid” or that it will be “taken over by Italians.” Such done-to-death political comebacks that flooded social media during the period of the story seem quite out of place when reading the book in the present.

There is a bit too much detail when it comes to describing anything Indian since the book appears to have been written keeping non-Indian readers in mind. A reader familiar with such events tends to skip or skim through those portions. However, several incidents also give you the impression that the author is unfamiliar with life in India. For example, while travelling in a second-class AC train compartment, Milan and his friend share a berth in order to save money. Or when he pays a driver for a tour company a bribe of one lakh rupees and assumes that this is the driver’s monthly salary. There are also several incidents where people immediately identify and treat Milan as a firang which seems quite far-fetched, given that he is of ‘pure’ Indian descent.

The book is neither an easy read nor a page-turner. It is a work that may be read over several weeks or months because there is no overarching plot or even characters that you become invested in. There are certain passages that will interest those with a spiritual or philosophical bent, particularly Milan’s interactions with the Swami in Varanasi. The vocabulary is rich and does not seem pretentious, but the book could have done with more editing to make it crisper and more relatable.

About the Book

Title: A Dalliance with Destiny

Author: Aman Singh Maharaj

Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers

Price: ₹663 (398 pages)

Adam – S Hareesh, Jayasree Kalathil (Translator)

Originally published here

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/books/stories-that-delve-into-baser-emotions/article65230564.ece

An everyday bus rider finds himself alone for the first time in his life when he gets off at an unknown stop. Wandering in the darkness, he encounters an old, probably abandoned reading room in the middle of nowhere. He peers inside, curious to see if anyone seems to be there, reading a pile of books with a ‘great sense of urgency because he is worried about his advancing age and depleting eyesight.’ It is this same sense of urgency, the fear of missing out, that suddenly drives him to catch up on everything that he had missed out on in life so far because he was never truly alone.  ‘Alone’, with its Murakamiesqe touch, might be the only story in this collection that does not have a dark or morbid twist to it. Or maybe it does. 

The blurb of S Hareesh’s Adam describes the stories as those ‘that explore the more difficult of human emotions- lust, anger, jealousy, vengeance, and greed’. But the constant in almost all the stories is the emotion that surfaces as a result of lust, anger, jealousy, vengeance, and greed: human pettiness.

The title story  Adam is the tale of Candy, Jordan, Arthur, and Victor, four offspring from the same mother. Arthur becomes the innocent victim of someone else’s past sins and is condemned to lead a wretched life, Victor becomes a national hero who meets a gory end and Jordan breaks free. But it is Candy whose story is the most heartbreaking. How easily humans discard their objects of affection, or are forced to, when replaced by what they perceive as a better version.

Death Notice is perhaps the darkest and most mind-blowing story of the lot. It begins on a disturbing note with a mongrel wailing for her newborn litter that has just been buried alive and the cries of a pregnant cow in the throes of death. But the story moves further to take on a more morbid turn as Peter sir, Joppan, and the narrator gamble using death notices cut out from newspapers while waiting for the turtle meat to cook. 

Lord of the Hunt is a story of an assistant bank manager’s obsession with wild game that makes him take on a dual personality. He transforms into a man possessed when his supplier gets him wild game meat and he walks around in bloodstained clothes, dodging the law and distributing it to his secret customers.  ‘Eating wild game is like the doctor having an affair with one of the nurses. It is forbidden, so you don’t want anyone knowing about it, but really you want the whole world to find out.’ He takes it as a personal insult when the authenticity of his deer meat is questioned and refuses to acknowledge the fact that he was once an animal lover who cried when a rabbit was killed. As he gets drawn deeper and deeper into this strange obsession, he finds himself alienated from his normal life. The raw base instinct of the hunter in him is awakened each time he is near a forest. But while he imagines himself to be Jim Corbett, he actually transforms himself into a caricature, a Shikari Shambu.

Kavyamela is a disturbing story that showcases the ugliest side of men. Not humans, but men; men who play a dirty trick on their blind friend and his lover. It leaves the reader angry and disgusted.

Political and social messages

Magic Tail is perhaps the most poignant story of the lot. A single woman requests her childhood friend to help her transport her dead father in a Maruti Omni from Bangalore to Kerala. ‘I did kill Papa. I forced him to move here’ she says while they prepare the body for transport. The practical and matter-of-fact way in which every step of the journey plays out, where basic human needs of hunger, thirst, and other requirements are addressed with the dead body in the backseat makes the story the most hard-hitting of the lot. 

Night Watch is the perfect story to end the collection with; it leaves you laughing. This is a story of death and an age-old enmity between the two men, but there are entire paragraphs dedicated to describing the various obscenities that the two men throw at each other during a fight including what was considered the perfect response that ‘was so imaginative that it put epic poets to shame’ leaving the reader’s imagination go wild.

The subtle and not-so-subtle political and social messages that are neatly packaged into all the stories do not go unnoticed, especially in  Maoist. ‘This is a land that worships the buffalo-slayer as God’, says the man as he prepares to go in search of the buffaloes that had escaped from the butcher. The movie Jallikattu was based on this story, but for those who haven’t watched the movie, this story is a refreshing treat in itself.

Jayasree Kalathil’s translation is brilliant and it has maintained the richness of the original with all the local references and context, while at the same time not alienating a reader who is unfamiliar with the environment.

Some of the stories have such a dark twist that it makes you almost feel guilty for enjoying them. The setting of the stories ranges from everyday relatable to borderline bizarre, but every character leaves the reader wanting more. Each character, whether human, animal, or beyond, has multiple layers that unravel with each reading. These nine stories deserve more than one read to truly experience the nuances in the narration and the many shades and layers of the characters.

About the Book

Adam

S. Hareesh

Translated by Jayasree Kalathil

Vintage Books (Penguin)

Rs 388 ; 192 pages (Hardcover)