Cosmic Supertheory I The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow I

The Hypercomputer named Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes up with an answer to "The Ultimate Question Of Life" after nine years of calculations. The answer is 42. In The Grand Design you are warned at the beginning that the answer is a lot more complicated. However, like Stephen Hawking’s other works in popular science, here too the language is simplified for non-specialist readers. You cannot, though, afford to think that neutrons and protons are names of aliens.
The Grand Design has been co-authored by Leonard Mlodinow, who had also co-authored A Briefer History of Time with Hawking. Leonard, a physicist, has also written for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Hawking’s most popular work, The Brief History of Time, was published in 1988. The work explored a range of cosmology subjects like the Big Bang, Black Holes and light cones. It ended on the note that a unified theory of universe would reveal the "mind of God". The Grand Design goes a step ahead and explores M-Theory, a possible candidate for the ultimate theory of everything. With "M" standing for anything ranging from master to mystery, M-theory is a family of varied theories. It solves the problem
that a single formulation or concept for the entire universe may be untenable. It allows different theories for situations, with each having its different versions of reality. The only condition being that the theories must agree in their predictions wherever they overlap. The idea can be understood as a collection of detailed maps used to represent different regions of earth. When assorted to give a complete picture the maps will show the same landscape where they overlap.
M-theory works in 11 space-time dimensions and allows for different apparent laws. "Apparent laws" here refers to the observable laws of universe, creating room for different universes with diverse set of observable laws. The theory allows for 10500 different universes each working within its own scientific sets. The authors use string theory to explain the concept of multiple space-time dimensions. In the language of logic this translates into a straw with a diameter so small that it almost appears one-
dimensional. The idea being that the "invisible" dimensions are so highly curled that they almost appear non-existent.
Like in Hawking’s early work, here also, it is argued that science can provide a God-free explanation of the origin and function of universe. In The Grand Design, however the authors come across as more direct and combative. They take on questions like why the universe exists or why there is something instead of nothing. They believe that because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Gravity, here of course is the same force that makes the apple fall down, but has far wider implications in the cosmological terms of reference. "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue torch paper and set the universe going," they say. They trace the origin of belief in a supernatural being and a parallel growth of science, both as means to explain the forces of nature. The difference being that science not only aimed at explaining, but also predicting the ways of nature.
Some of the provoking concepts in the book include the theory that universe has not just a single history but every possible history, each with its own probability. Feynman’s diagrams, designed as mathematical expressions of electron interaction, are applied to conclude that the universe appeared spontaneously "starting off in every possible way".
While getting to understand Feynman’s diagrams can get tedious, an interesting analogy is provided to relieve the pain. The authors compare the spontaneous creation of universe to formation of bubbles in boiling water. While each bubble is like an alternative universe, not all last long enough to develop. A few survive to become bubbles that we can see equivalent to universes that survive.
One of the basic concepts of the book is that there is no picture-independent or theory-independent concept of reality. This dims the question of real and false and places observations in an established model or a world with set of rules. Just like in Matrix where both the physical and virtual world have their set rules and physical realities. But the concept in the book goes way beyond science fiction with a whole chapter set out to understand the nature of reality. The authors wonder if our view of reality is distorted like that of the goldfish in a curved bowl. That, however, does not mean that the goldfish can
have no understanding of world beyond the bowl. It can still draw scientific laws from its distorted frame of reference and predict and approximate accordingly. Its science would be a lot more complicated than ours, but "simplicity," they say "is a matter of taste."

SWEET DREAMS

I am in mood, for 

indulgence tonight
with vicarious will
and little insight

Come to me, dreams 

that couldn’t be,
naughty fancies
of terrible delight

So many will come tonight

with love, fame and jazz
to lose breath to beauty
judgment to genius

Women and men I couldn’t love
and words couldn’t own
beauty could never sell
and gifts couldn’t keep

Of so much I couldn’t be
Tonight I will dream
Not of the best
but sweetest.

Write Ground For Newcomers

Unpublished authors are a curious lot. Desperate, helpless and often the butt of all jokes. They never know what went wrong with their work. Most publishers respond, if at all, with one-liners rejecting the manuscript for not being upto the required brief. So as few get published, many hundreds sulk at their defeat. While big publishing

houses go nonchalantly about their business, help is at hand from unexpected quarters. Gyaana Writer’s Coracle (GWC), new wing of 15-month-old Gyaana Books, helps aspiring authors in getting their manuscript ready for publication. GWC provides manuscript assessment, feedback and editorial services.
Behind the pragmatic venture is Divya Dubey, the dynamic founder of Gyaana Books. She loves “reading and ’riting” but detests running into rude people. Dubey’s job as a publisher tests her skills and patience, but not the one to be intimidated, she has a sufficient supply of both. Born into a family of doctors, Dubey made her cut in the world of publishing on her own. She launched her Delhi-based publishing venture, Gyaana Books, in July 2009 with the focus on literary novels, popular fiction, chicklit, short stories and young adult fiction. The latest Gyaana book, Pink Sheep, a collection of 18 stories by Mahesh Natarajan on nuances of gay life, was launched last week.
A postgraduate in literature and publishing, Divya says she was no newcomer into publishing when she launched Gyaana. “Having worked in publishing, I had friends in the industry who advised me about the project. People like Thomas Abraham and Urvashi Butalia were always there to help.”
In an industry dominated by big players, a little-known venture like Gyaana had to struggle to make its mark and be taken seriously, she says. The venture has published five books since its launch but Dubey doesn’t sound pleased with herself. “Frankly, I am still to figure out how books go with business and money with manuscripts,” she says.
What she looks for, she says, is a combination of big names and newcomers, a literary script and a good author. A good author being someone “who knows what he is doing with his story, has the required language and storytelling skills and is receptive to the publisher.” A literary script, on the other hand, she says, is serious fiction which essentially involves good writing. “A lot of young writers have come into the scene producing a load of fiction which is easy to read,” Dubey explains.
While she welcomes young writers, diluting the standards is not her style. Talking of her tryst with choosy distributors, she sounds tired. “There are too many writers and books. And a general restraint towards newcomers,” she says, but adds that the publishing industry in India is in a fluid state. Dubey believes that while an increasing number of people are reading, they are picking up books that are easy, quick reads. It is when as a publisher one is expected to meet these commercial interests that there is a challenge, she says.
There has been crticism, Dubey says, as well as some encouragement. What annoys her, however, is being dismissed without being given a chance. “Many times, people jump to conclusions about our work without bothering to find out what we really do. That’s unfair.”
Dubey did not stumble into the publishing world. Early in her life she had her heart set on the industry. She remembers being a part of school publications and coveting the job of an editor. The first list of Gyaana also had a title authored by Dubey herself. But the glamour of being an author does not dominate her thoughts. It does not take her a minute to announce that she is an editor first and author later. “I still have to hone my craft as an author,” she says. Writing and editing are creative activities distinctive of each other, she feels. As a publisher who also writes she may have the advantage of knowing writers better, but little else, she says. What makes a good publisher is nose for a good script and eye for aesthetic presentation.
For a person who loves to train travel, Dubey hates the fact that her job takes away from her the liberty to holiday. “I love my work but it’s a long time since I took a vacation,” she says. What about sitting in the easy chair with a cup of coffee and a book? She laughs off the suggestion dreamily.

F.I.R

There was a
storm last night,
the one they had
been predicting
for years,
and in the
misty, moist rain
the survivor
draws a list
of valuables
blown away:
broken phrases,
unfinished stories,
an ordinary name.
But they tell her
its not done yet,
the storm will

sure return.

Girls: Good, Bad and Lost I The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas I

Once there was a girl called Lilly who never lied to her mother but her best friend Irene could never tell the truth. Margaret Mascarenhas’ second novel The Disappearance Of Irene Dos Santos sails through a plot which seems deceptively simple at first. Irene teaches Lilly how to French-kiss but when Lilly is caught kissing a boy in the lift her parents change her school. The girls conspire to keep in touch and with Irene’s help Lilly forays into the world of boys, beer and bikinis. To ward-off her parent’s suspicion, Lilly takes Luz with her on Irene adventures. Luz is the daughter of Marta who works for Lilly’s parents. The two girls are raised almost like sisters. As a child Luz,
feels Lilly is always given the head of the banana and as an adult her quite married motherhood burns Luz with envy. She grudges the fact that years ago Lilly chose Irene for the trip to the jungles of Maquiritare; the fateful day on which Irene went missing. While the general consensus is that Irene drowned that day, Lilly refuses to believe. Her memory of the trip planned by her parents is fudged. She vaguely remembers a swim, a fight over stolen red shoes and later Irene telling her that she was going to elope with her boyfriend and that Lilly must not tell anyone. Even though Irene is gone, Lilly is unable to forget her. The episode leaves something amiss in Lilly and Irene becomes a barred topic in the family. But years later when a pregnant Lilly suffers a dangerous fall she begs her father to find out about Irene.
The story, which is neither sequential nor linear, moves through an array of characters. The eight chapters into which the novel is divided are named after the people whose tales is told. When Lilly slips it is decided to hold a novena where the family prays to local deity Maria Lionza, and everyone has to tell a story to the unborn baby. The six chapters that follow are sprung around the stories of love, birth, sex, revolution and death. The stories are engaging and at times reach back several generations. The stories are familiar yet mesmerising, each getting its due share of the author's care.
The final chapter "Irene" is, however, an antithesis to all that precedes. One does not realise that very little has been revealed about Irene till the last chapter turns up. While it answers the questions about Irene’s "disappearance" it does so with a flourish of surprise. The reversal could seem an unnecessary culmination to, an otherwise, a brilliantly told story. Over the years, A Beautiful Mind-twists have become so common that they end up appearing excuses for the writer’s inability to conjure a good climax.
While some writers paint with words, some can make them sing and some others can even make them breathe, but very few can make them tell a story. Mascarenhas has the unique ability to tell the story on her own terms. The author who is a US citizen of Goan-origin locates her novel in Venezuela, where she herself grew up. Lilly’s father Ismael is a dashing musician of the revolution; a hard man to catch for any woman till he met Lilly’s mother, Consuelo. They marry on the seventh day of their courtship and Ismael never set his eye on another woman. Their household help and Luz’s mother Martha, is a Cuban who migrated to Venezuela to escape the brutal revolution and crushing economic conditions. Her own mother Maria fled from Spain at the age of sixteen. Maria was taken in by a brothel-runner who takes pity on the girl when in a bid to protect her virginity Maria insisted that "her speciality was hand work". Martha is born out of a moment of indiscretion when Maria is serving a client. Mascarenhas draws on a
range of social-political issues from political revolutions to tribal rights and bares the verdant, violent history of a continent.
Like on the cover of the book, the face of the protagonist is turned away from us. From the time Irene eggs on Lilly to "study" herself ("pointing to her vagina"), it is established that Irene is the bad girl. Nothing about Lilly is wicked or opaque, but Irene is kept a mystery. We are told little about what she thought or how she felt. Even when you’ve lapped up the book you can't be too sure about her true character which makes the book a compelling read. After all, "bad girls" come with a certified fan following given their rarity and the dazzling reach of their imagination.

THE WILDERNESS AND US I VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS, Contemporary Wildlife Writings I

Monkeys are curious animals. Stories about their antics amused me as a child. But I never had a chance to see one in its  "element", until recently. After a few "mysterious" disappearances from the refrigerator, I came face-to-face with the thief. A monkey perched on top of my fridge. Right foot on the door, left balancing her weight, left hand supporting her little one and the right rummaging through the booty. I tried to scare her away. She looked me in the eye, body taut, teeth bare. I couldn’t get her to leave while she was successful in scaring wits out of me. So I stayed frozen in my place for half-an-hour while she went on with her business. This incident turned me into quite an animal hater. A monkey had made me feel, literally, what it was to be pushed up against the wall.  I was mortally scared of "them" and felt their presence was an intrusion. Perhaps not the perfect state-of-mind to read a book on wildlife, but the wilderness  has its surprises for everyone.
Voices in the Wilderness  opens with Five Encounters excerpted from Nature’s  spokesman: M. Krishnan and Indian Wildlife. Of the brief encounters that follow one deals with photographing cheetals from a hidden spot. The author wears a herb camouflage only to have it eaten up by the grazing cheetals. The writer also describe his close shave with death as he runs into wild elephants once and a sloth bear at another time. The final encounter is about his being caught in the middle of whirling dolphins.  The stories are remarkable, not only for their brief and pointed narration but also for the panoramic view.
The pattern of variety is maintained throughout the book. The narratives that follow deal with birds, tigers, sea cows, snakes, turtles etc as seen or encountered by the writers. The range of the animals is equally matched with a variety of places and experiences.
"Curiosity in Animals" excerpted from The Jungle in Sunlight and Shadow by F.W. Champion is my favourite in the book. Quick stories about encounters with sambar hinds, tigers, elephants and monkeys reveal the inquisitiveness in animals. The author narrates how a mirror placed amidst a horde of monkeys produces amusing behaviour. Having seen themselves in the mirror, the monkeys go behind the mirror in search of the reflection and finding nothing circle back again clawing and making faces at it.
Each article is preceded by a brief about the writer. Stepping beyond the usual awards and qualifications, the introductions bring out the devotion of the writers to various aspects of the wilderness. Valmik Thapar, for example,  is described as tiger’s best known supporter who at one point put his pen down as he lost heart but later found faith at Ranathambore. The extract from Thapar’s Ranthambore: 10 days in the Tiger Fortress describes how he rediscovered his lost hope at Ranthambore.
Unlike a lot of nature works these writings are not alarmist. There is no attempt to tell you how your daily meal will affect the food-chain and ecology. They do dot beg for compassion. Instead they make you feel what you are missing. The stories wake you up to the world to which you have stayed blind so far.  On one hand they point to animal-human coexistence, on the other they bring out how unfair the deal is for animals.
Meanwhile, I have made my peace with the visiting mammal. I realise now, it is the mother-monkey who’s back is against the wall, not mine.

GHOSTS

It was something I saw,
don't remember what.
Something shamefully
trivial, my heart
was set after.

And though I tried, and
tried for an eternity, that
something, of all others,
I couldn't have.

So when eternity ended,
I took a deep breath,
bowed out, heaved
ahead my quiet life.

Rebuilt what had been
washed away, a world away
from where the dead lay
Till  a happy life came
to live next doors
and I knew it was,
that hearth that dance,
my lost dream.

NOT BAILING OUT

9...8...7...6
falling free
effortlessly
nearing end
in ecstasy

5...4...3
clouds rushing
into my face
pressing wet
out at corners
so hard to breathe
their tight embrace

2...1...0
loved life but
loved living more
i fall to feel,
live the void,
what fills it
or doesn't.

DUFFER'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF FAIRIES

If you thought fairies were harmless cousins of angels you are in for some shock.

Fairy beliefs are riddling folklore material. Begining with appearance, they mostly look like humans, subject to minor variations (e.g insect-style frail wings, ability to transform into animals or plants). Stories about their origins range from fallen spirits to dead beings, ancient Gods or "elementals" the mythological beings. The last comes closest to the Indian parallel of Yaksha who are also believed to nature-spirits, not always human friendly.

Traditionally, fairies were known to be mischievous and malicious. Mysterious illnesses and kitchen fiascos were written off as fairy work. The Scottish folklore classifies fairy-world into two courts. The Seelie Court being more benevolent (still dangerous) while the Unseelie Court comprising the wicked lot. Melissa Marr expanded on this division in her Wicked Lovely series (2007). She creates three fairy courts that live in the mortal world: The Summer Court, the Winter Court, and the Dark Court. The fourth court, the High Court, is in Faerie. The High Court is the top court with rulers who keep themselves away from emotions and appear steely. The Dark Court is ofcourse, the evil one, opposite to the High Court. It is the court of darker emotions and temptation. Dark Court fairies feed off emotions in other fairies. As such, the Dark Court thrives during periods of turmoil.

On the other hand, Aprilynne Pike in her Spells series makes fairies more elemental. They are given half-human half-plant form and are classified by the type of flower they bloom into. The division gets more hierarchical as the series unfold.

Fairies had an early appearance in literature, though not a consistent one. The fact that they were not bound by religion yet possess magical powers, gave writers greater leverage.

Since the early tales of legendary monarchs (Arthurian legends or a much later Spencer’s Faerie Queen) to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books or J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, the fairy feature has prevailed.

In last decade however, the occasional appearance of fairies in literature was transformed into a robust genre with a range of fairy characters: From simple ones like the evil Fairy Godmother in Shrek to more complex ones in Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (2001). 12-year-old Artemis Fowl II, the title character in the novel, is the son of an Irish crime lord. He believes fairies exist and decides to kidnap one with the help of his butler for a huge gold ransom. Captain Holly Short, the other main character, is the first female member of Lower Elements Police squad. A compassionate elf, she even helps Artemis and butler, despite their plans to hold her hostage.

The same year also saw The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. Popularly known as the The Sookie Stackhouse Novels or The True Blood Series, it sees supernatural beings as real. Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters exist and go public in the course of the novel. The central character Sookie herself is a part-fairy. The fairy-world trend thus set early in the decade hit a home run with the readers. As series after series of the novels were churned out they were parallely turned into televised versions.

 There are seven novels so far in the Artemis series with a film on way, while Sookie ran into its 10th novel and third TV season in 2010. Melissa Marr and Aprilynne Pike brought out later versions of the trend in their novels which are now running into second and third sequels.

A good time to be young

Gone are the days of Briget Jone's Diary or Sex and the City. The impossible world of Young-Adult (YA) literature has taken over the chick-lit sphere. The YA books target all in the age group of 14-25 while chick-lit was meant mainly for young women. Though YA fiction too treads the chick-lit line (teen romance, popular culture) but places it in a complex world of vampires, fairies, or wizards. Given its simple narration, complex and multiple climaxes, considerable love factor and magic, the genre has developed a considerable adult cult following too. Here is a list of YA paperbacks ready to burst on the Indian scene and those not of the "happening generation" remember one is never too old to become younger.

NEARLY DEPARTED by ROOK HASTINGS
If you like your dose of creeps unmorphed by vampires or witches, then here is a ghost tale complete with flickering lights and eerie woods. The story that mainly targets young-adults is set in a British town Woodsville, also locally known as Wierdsville for its quirk-factor.

A set of unmatched youngsters are thrown together for a school assignment. The much-bullied and "invisible" Emily has a problem. She thinks her house is haunted, so the others: Betham, Jay, Hashim and Kelly, decide to give it a ghost-check and dispel her fears. But that’s not the simple story. The gang finds that Emily’s mother is missing and strangely, no one knows of it.As the story unfolds the five keep running into things that go bump in the night. The woods seem to be the centre of all the unexplained in the town. To top it all Jay’s grandfather Albert is the only grown-up who is ready to believe the young gang and help them.Each of the gang-member has a distinct, identifiable trait which makes the characterization engrossing, though straight. The story is swift and language is just what would roll-off the tongue of a British teenager. The ghost seekers won’t be disappointed with this book as the group practically fights off a horde of light-emanating ghosts. As the Scooby-style group solves the Emily-puzzle what emerges is a thrilling plot, if not necessarily a hair-raising one.

RADIANT SHADOWS by MELISSA MARR

Radiant Shadows is the fourth book in the Wicked Lovely series and for those who have been following the chain, there is nothing about Aislinn and Seth (on whom the first book was based) in this story. Those who haven’t been following will find this book tedious as the story deals with the complex workings and squabbles of various faery courts. A quick view of Marr’s faery world for the benefit of all: Faeries live alongside the human world, though invisible. The faery world is divided into courts that have their own typical traits and are ruled by immortal faery kings and queens. Faeries like to stay invisible to humans and can be evil.The present book focuses on Devlin, assassin-cum-adviser to Scorcha, Queen of Faerie, and Ani who is   a half-mortal half-faery. Something about Ani’s blood is different as she strangely feeds on both humans and faeries and has an appetite for both emotions and touch. As she grows, young Ani finds it harder to control and satisfy her appetites. Emotion-denying Devlin, (styled like Dr Spock of Star Treck) who has been ever loyal to his queen, had years ago spared Ani when the Queen had ordered him to kill her.Now, decades later he realizes his fate is somehow intricately tied to hers and he must protect her from Bananach (war) who also wants Ani for her unusual powers.

Marr gives us a complex but engaging world of magic where steeds change into cars, dreams can be woven together and reality keeps changing. A rewarding read only if you have an imagination to cope with the brisk narrative and patience for the unexplained.

SPELLS by APRILYNNE PIKE

Another weave from the faery-land, Spells is a sequel to Aprilynne Pike’s debut Wings. It has nothing of the complex world of Radiant Shadows, and the atmosphere is brighter as faeries flower like plants and carry blossoms on their backs. Those uninitiated to the first volume can easily begin with the second, but other than the faery-life tid-bits there is little original here.The story is more or less a Harry Potter redo as a young Laurel is in a Hogwarts-style academy to learn the faery arts she missed on while growing up with a human family. In the first volume Laurel had saved the gateway to faeryland Avalon. The threat from "trolls" lead by Jeremiah Barnes still exists and she must be ready for it. Everything is not fine on the personal front too.Laurel finds her mother getting increasingly distant with the revelation that she is faery. Also, while  Laurel has her human boyfriend David, she is unable to deny the connection she feels to faery guard Tamani.

Laurel herself is a fall fairy and the more she learns about the winter, summer and spring faeries the more she finds herself at odds with their system. Hormones run high in the novel as kissing and snogging appear frequently even at the expense of the plot. 

Freshness comes only in kicks and starts as Tamani shows Laurel around Avalon and explains to her the faery discipline of classes. Towards the end Laurel has successfully vanquished the threat to her two worlds and resolved the complexity of her love life for the time. The end leaves room for another sequel but with little promise.

THE POISON DIARIES by MARYROSEWOOD

Young and mysterious Weed is dropped at the doorstep of an apothecary Luxton who takes him in for his curious talent with plants. Luxton has a 16-year-old daughter Jessamine, who finds a rare, young friend in Weed as opposed to her distant and cold father. But Weed, much like her father, is riveted to the gardens where Luxton stocks rare plants. As Jessamine tenders to Weed, the couple begins to fall in love. However, there is something strangely inhuman about Weed’s compassion for plants. While he seems to be able to feel plant pain he is numb to humans. Jessamine is appalled with Weed’s behaviour and he is forced to confesses his secret: He can hear plants. He tells Jessamine that her father’s poison garden is a dangerous place as malevolent plants have stuck allegiances and wanted to control all. He promises her he will never go back in again. On the night Luxton announces their betrothal, Jessamine falls sick. 

Weed must go back to the poison garden and release her from the delusion of dream where she is with Oleander, the prince of poisons. As Weed undertakes the heartless tasks assigned to him by the plants of poison garden in exchange of cure, he must also unveil the real villain and sacrifice his love.

The ending is heartbreaking, perhaps in its bid to leave room for a sequel, but the adventure holds its fort well. The story transforms from a brooding Jessamine (first 30 pages), to a coy love and finally breaks into a dark mystery.   A refreshing read, The Poison Diaries is just the sort of book one wants on a rainy Sunday afternoon with a warm cup of coffee.

The death of a slice of history I The Dollmaker's Island by Anuradha Kumar I

They are on the government records but no one has seen them for ages. Their craft seems to travel places but no one remembers hearing them. Yet, everyone has heard about the Dollmakers, or at least some version of their tale. Anuradha Kumar gives us an island that moves with the river and carries with it a drifting story. On the Dollmakers’ Island a voice, a ladder and some boats are missing. What is also silently lost is the history and identity of the dollmakers. Kumar says she sees the dollmakers as symbolising the neglected and the faceless of the society. They could, however, also be seen to symbolise the fringe that doesn’t want to be institutionalised.
The Dollmaker’s Island is Anuradha Kumar’s fifth work. Books for children have been among Kumar’s earlier works. In her latest, she gives us a curious mix of genres, a novel that could perhaps be called a fairytale for adults. The novel moves like a puzzle through a maze of history which is familiar yet has an Alice-like feel. What Kumar does with time is both intriguing and amazing. In her hands, time seems to lose its properties. It is neither linear nor perpetual, neither persistent nor final. She audaciously sidesteps it at one time and dresses it up in her story at another. In a span of 240 pages, her novel resurrects the great kings from Ashoka to Aurangzeb, and the mighty British from Clive to Curzon. She compresses time and trivialises what is known in the adult world as facts and physics. Her story places all the three — the kings, the British and the government —
on the same pedestal, i.e. the ruler, and projects their continuity against the losses of the ruled, Dollmakers.
The Dollmakers are a notorious pack. They have stayed away from the government and caused it pin-pricks for ages. Leela, the protagonist, has lived timelessly and now moves into the era of emails and Internet as she acquires a computer. But Leela’s voice is lost on the day the government finalises the fate of the island. Government representative Ronen Ghito swings into action and is determined to solve the mystery.
While the story, at one level, works as a strong social and political satire, it also, on the other hand, has a love theme as Leela awaits the return of Shyam, a playwright, imprisoned for writing an “ambiguous” play. The story opens in the partition-era with Lord Mountabatten, Radcliffe and others attempting to draw a line through the Dollmakers’ Island. At the island, years later, Leela has lost her voice while the Headman and the Mouldi play out their years-old rivalry. They both have their credentials: the Mouldi, a letter from Curzon while the headman, Gandhi’s glasses. In an Orwellian style, the government is on the island and Leela must cooperate with them in the probe. The plot deepens while Leela looks for Shyam on the Internet as she is also suspected of hiding secrets in her tightly-bound braids.
The climax sees a computer virus annihilate history, turning the island and Leela “ahistoric”. The progress of the story alternates with the history of the island. In a parable-like set-up, the novel simplifies and attempts to understand conflict on one hand and ridicules its history on the other.
Kumar’s prose has a flavour of poetic ambiguity. Each character and event serves as an independent symbol yet mingles smoothly into the story. Kumar doesn’t weigh down the symbols with meanings, she allows them a life of their own. As the symbols remain open to the readers’ interpretation, a distinct style emerges.
In this state of free meanings, Kumar brings in the discipline of consistency and pattern that makes her work truly remarkable. The book compels second and third readings as symbols stay fecund. Her brand of poetic ambiguity is not that of an abyss of dark meanings, but that of multiple analogies and the reader enjoys the unravelling of the puzzle prose that is almost solved yet isn’t.

Maria’s Room by Shreekumar Varma

Give me a dream and make it come true...


Shreekumar Varma’s latest work circles around dreams in different stages: Nurtured, pursued, shattered. The story hinges on the impact of dreams on life, both imaginary and real. The protagonist, Raja Prasad, is a writer. Haunted by an agonising past, he clings tenously to the present through his writings. As he embarks on his newnovel his peresent gets inextricably tied to the story he weaves in his mind. The book's 300 pages come together gradually, like pieces in a puzzle. The puzzle here is both the life of the protagonist, who is a writer, and the novel he aims to produce. In the process we are handed a writer’s enthralling pursuit of his manuscript.

"A novelist looking at life is like a child playing with his numbered drawing book. It is upto him to connect the dots and make the picture;"

In the first 150 pages, the protagonist arrives in Goa and begins to focus on real people as characters for his novel. Raja is a recluse and his vision of the world is like that of an overexposed camera. We are given glimpses into his traumatized mind but the character seems incomplete and weak. It takes an effort to wad through this section of the book. However, brilliant flashes of Varma's creativity make the journey a little less tedious. He imparts an ethereal radiance to his descriptions. Conceits like, "A black Tata Estatedrove up and paused like an animal at a waterhole," provide the much needed succor in this section which could have been compressed to 50 pages. It is like watching a flower blossom, an experience few would sit through, though a satisfying outcome is assured.

There is no turning back once you are past the 150 mark. It is after this point that the novel-within-the-novel format begins to take a clearer shape. Raja Prasad, the protagonist, begins his novel titled Maria’s Guesthouse. Varma however, turns this format upside down. The developments in Maria’s Guesthouse now begin to affect life of Raja and of those around him.

Shreekumar Varma is a Chennai-based writer, poet and teacher. Amonghis other works are Lament of Mohini and Devil’s Garden. Shreekumar is the grandson of the last ruling maharani of Travancore. In Lament of Mohini he dealt with the story of a royal family and its escapades. His debut work, like his latest fiction, used novel-within-novel format. Both the works have at their core a writer’s engagement with his work. Pre-occupation with the past and struggle to free oneself of it, is also a common thread that runs through both the books. In Maria’s Room past is mysterious. It beckons from across the border of memory where it has been banished. Its attempt to cross over into present through the ministrations of mind forms an engrossing plot. Curse is another recurring motif in Varma’s work. Lament of Mohini brings up a family curse wherein women are left behind to suffer. In Maria’s Room too, Raja believes there is a family curse where men are left alone.

The fact that Varma is a descendant of reknown painter Raja Ravi Varma speaks through the heightened visual quality of his work. His vision brings out distinct moods of episodes, much like a painting.

Varma picks on universal subjects of love, loss and death. He adds to this generous scoops of mystery and delectable strokes of word-masonry. Dialogues flow in and out of the narrative inconspicuously. He plays around with words easily and is able to mould the language to his ends. Speech of each character is uniquely and distinctly sculptured. So, on one hand a little boy’s call is transcribed as "Oos there" the female protagonist’s speech is given a pleasing desi twang, "I don’t like phones only". The writer’s pen is free of inhibitionsand complexes. He brings out the neurosis of his protagonist with a poetic flourish.

The reader is not given the benefit of many voices as the narrative runs in first person. An acute sense mystery is evoked as everything is seen and told through the eyes of the protagonist. It becomes difficult to put down the book as a reclusive Raja pieces together the disturbing past. While mystery has an instinctive appeal for readers Varma balances it with insight and creativity. His own words go on to best describe what he has attempted with this novel:

"What wouldn’t we do
To uncoil the coiled
And then coil it up again."

Demand and Supply

CHORUS: Tough and long

                Is our life, but we live

               For moments of joy

                Spells of glee

                Happiness is all we need.

Person 1: what Happiness?

Person 2: which Happiness?

Person 3:  a meaningless word!

CHORUS: Meaningless?

                The truth of our life…

                Focus of our being…

                Meaningless?

P1: Qualify!

P2: Qualify!

P3: Qualify!

TOGETHER: Qualify Happiness!

CHORUS: Pleasure needs

no qualification

you feel it bone to bone

like love,

like energy,

like life!

P1: Romantic hopes!

P2: You’ll never know!

P3: Never know what you want!

CHORUS: But some happiness

                is all we want!

P1: Qualify!

P2: Qualify!

P3: Qualify

CHORUS: Qualify how?

P1: What joy?

P2: Fat or slim?

P3: Tall or short?

P1: Black or white or…….maybe?

P2: 17^th floor or ground floor?

P3: American stocks or Indian?

P1: Management or sports?

P2: Spiritual or physical?

ONE VOICE FROM CHORUS: Let me think…

                                                       Management I think

                                                        Management I want

P1: For 30 yrs ?

                Only that?

                No sports? Sure?

                No spiritual, physical?

                No American Indian?

                No slim or fat?

                No cheese or macroni?

CHORUS : No I want that…

P: What? Which?

P: Qualify! Qualify!

An open market

You can buy

But a smart buyer

You must be

That’s why qualify

What product

Is your Happiness?

168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam I Ever Had A ‘Good Tuesday’? I

Caught in the middle of a monsoon viral and visiting relatives, I was way behind my schedule for reviewing Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours. My deadline was looming large. I was stressed.

But by the time I finished reading the book I had not only recovered from the viral and made peace with a grumbling kin, but also managed to overcome a creative block, caught up on my French lessons and was still left with sufficient time to write this piece. I was quite happy.
The first thing Vanderkam, also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues, says in 168 Hours is that we have more time than we think.
To be honest, for a long time I was scared to open 168 Hours. It was probably another one of those self-improvement books that insist on a strict time-table, something I have been averse to since school days. But Vanderkam doesn’t take the conventional line, though she does insist on keeping a log book on how you spend your day.
Vanderkam begins 168 Hours with the description of a “good Tuesday” — a day when she practically runs around the city of New York without upsetting a single strand of hair — and says that it is possible to make every day of the week satisfying. She presents a new world indeed, one in which we don’t have a frugal 24-hour budget but a luxuriant 168-hour account. Vanderkam made me look at life not in compartments of 24-hour-long days, but as a week of 168 hours. By changing the cramped scenery she had grabbed my attention.
And that’s when she lured me into keeping a log of my days while insisting that the concept of time-crunch is a cultural narrative, a myth. She projects paucity of time as a culural psychosis.
I kept the log but was, of course, still unconvinced with her other argument. In two days my logs were telling a strange tale. Vanderkam was right. We are not busier than our ancestors but were reading, and internalising, W.H. Davies’ Leisure — “What is this life if, full of care/ We have no time to stand and stare?” — in school when we had all the time in the world. Cultural narrative? A myth? Hmmm.
My logs told me that there were some things I was doing much more than I thought: Internet surfing, sleeping, watching TV; while there were other things I was devoting very little time to: exercising, managing money, eating. But this time Vanderkam didn’t make me feel happy at all. While she was saying everything needs time, she also wanted me to believe that I had all the time in the world to do what I wanted. I felt there were a lot of things she wasn’t taking into account, like stress and motivation.
To make her point, perhaps, Vanderkam introduces Theresa Daytner who owns a large revenue company and is a mother of six. Ms Daytner goes trekking, spends time with her children, arranges a surprise party for her husband and meets US President Barack Obama. The key is not that she does so much but that she does it all with such ease. I found myself wanting the Daytner formula but Vanderkam gave me none.
Instead, Vanderkam asked me to look deeper. Defining work as “activities advancing you towards your career”, one of the things she spurs her reader to do is to find the “perfect job”: “Expecting someone else to have conceived of your perfect job is roughly similar to expecting someone else to read your mind”. Then she asks a series of questions and with each one you inch towards clarity: What are your core competencies, what job would exactly match your competencies, how could you create that job for yourself?
All this probing brought me close to the unaccountable aspects of my confusing logs. Like Sid Savara, whose story she narrates, I was spending too much time in household chores. Much like Sid, I liked cooking and keeping my house nice and pretty, but it seemed to be a drain on my time and energy. So I “outsourced” the “non-work” and committed that time to a much-needed exercise schedule. I also found time to dig up some folk music to satiate my parched creativity.
168 Hours is very communicative and Vanderkam’s voice is both convincing and assertive. But, she uses too many words and is often repetitive.
Nevertheless, Vanderkam has a lot to say and her book is not meant to be read in a hurry. For example, a chapter which deals with achieving a breakthrough requires you to visualise the next level in your career and figure out the people who will take you there. She clearly demands time and introspection. Fortunately, Vanderkam doesn’t look at readers as corporate prototypes but understands that her readers may include super-moms juggling house, kids and demanding jobs, couples facing mid-life ennui, and the young and ambitious. As she takes a fresh look at time, Vanderkam makes life look less burdensome, and the “want-to-do” list easy and achievable.
I had been pushing my French lessons for the-day-when-I-would-have-time. But now it’s back on my weekly calendar. Every French word I learn turns my day into a “good Tuesday”.

Where the Serpent Lives BY Ruth Padel I Beauty, beasts & betrayal I

A serpent lives in the heart of the jungle and the abyss of the mind; that is also where author Ruth Padel rears her story. The novel Where the Serpent Lives (Little Brown Books, Rs 595) by the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin progresses by creating reflections of the human emotions in nature. It is a tricky formula that works for Padel in some places but leaves her exposed in most others.

Where the Serpent Lives opens in the nest of a King Cobra as field zoologist Richard observes a snake secure its eggs. From this rainforest in Karnataka, the story makes a fine leap to a house on Primrose Hill, London, where Rosamund, who could once make heads turn like sunflowers, is trying to deal with the jungle in her mind. She is in a state of emotional paralysis, caught as she is between a profligate husband, Tyler, and an increasingly reclusive teenaged son, Russel. Even though she knows Tyler would “romance a rhinoceros if there was nothing else on offer”, Rosamund is unable to get herself to do anything about it. Killburn in London is another frequented address in the story. Here an aspiring singer and unwed mother, Anka, leads a tenuous life shuffling between her young daughter and an unreliable boyfriend.
The death of Rosamund’s dog pushes Russel towards an emotional crash and estranges the couple. Rosamund’s long-time friend Irene, who is married to Richard, advises her to visit India. Richard, though true to his wife, has
been in love with Rosamund and struggles to rid himself of the obsession. The story reaches its climax when bombs go off at London tube stations while Rosamund is still in India — she must find love, make peace with her father
and reclaim her son.
Padel has an undeniable eye for detail, particularly colours, but she fails to trim her story. She mediates beautifully between man and animals but gets distracted and doesn’t pursue her ideas till the end. For instance, she describes local foxes keeping a watch on Rosamund’s family, but pulls at this thread only in jerks and abandons it too soon. In the human realm too, Padel is constantly distracted as she uses precious words to trace the complex story of each of her characters. She makes an effort to season the connection between Rosamund and Anka with suspense, but with early clues like same endearments repeated to the two women by a man, renders herself predictable and weak.
Since a significant part of the action takes place in India, the author tries to draw on Indian symbols and folklore relating to snakes. But she seems to have picked the first pantheist chord that came her way: Shiva and the folk tale Nagamadala, made immortal by Girish Karnad. Padel is at her imaginative best when she sees glimpses of the wild in humans and their emotions: the morals of a black mamba, “Tyler’s jaw, wide like a bull frog’s, gobbling Daisy’s lips”... She is also terrific at writing love scenes, but they get repetitive and boring.
Padel explores the far recesses of the human mind with a creative yet scientific flourish. Characters have a parallel animal alter ego indicative of their state of mind. Rosamund associates herself with a Rusty Spotted Cat “which slips through the undergrowth, trying not to be seen by larger predators”. Her son Russel, on the other hand, is Kaa, an Indian Rock Python. Tyler is associated with a tiger though that fails to account for the strong streak of deceit in him. Betrayal is a constant subject in Padel’s novel — it reappears in Rosamund’s relationship with her father and Anka’s with her mother.
Most of the characters in the book are tied to nature by profession or by instinct and time and again they are set off to explore the jungles where the narrative adopts a Discovery channel-like tone, describing the habits and habitat of snakes, badgers and owls. Padel is known for her nature poetry and the mastery with which she creates the sounds and music of the rainforest cannot be denied. But the melody turns into a cacophony as her characters clamour to “detoxify” their lives of betrayal.
Padel engages nature to give her ordinary story a unique colour. In that, she succeeds. She fails, however, to use that colour to her advantage. Nature remains a mere appendage to the story and rarely enjoys the writer’s full commitment as she flits from one subject to the other. Perhaps, in line with the theme of the novel, Padel herself betrays nature she so dearly loves.

Outlaw by Roy Moxham I Life & times of a bandit queen I

It wasn’t the best or the worst of times, but it must have been the strangest when a British archive restorer chose to write to a bandit languishing in an Indian jail. The letter, written in June 1991, fetched an instant response. Phoolan Devi, who had just stood and lost in elections, wrote back to Roy Moxham asking him for financial help.
Nine years after her assassination, Moxham attempts to resurrect the association which spanned several letters and visits to India. However, his book Outlaw is as much about Moxham himself and his India adventure as it is about the bandit who became a lawmaker.
Much has been said and written about Phoolan Devi for the vengeance she sought against injustice. Born into the bramble of caste and gender, Phoolan had a fairly unfair share of reversals. But neither stoicism nor silence suited her style. Armed with a double-barrel gun and an acerbic tongue, she chose to fight back. Years later, she gave up the gun before the pictures of goddess Durga and Mahatma Gandhi, but retained her tongue. This is the point where most accounts about her draw to a conclusion, but Outlaw takes off from here.
Moxham describes her as small and thin when he met her for the first time in February 1994 after her release from prison; nothing like the fighting-fit woman in fatigues who had surrendered in 1983. He meets the inevitable question of the nature of his relationship with Phoolan headlong. He confesses of being tempted to propose a marriage of convenience to Phoolan when she confided of being under pressure to remarry. He clarifies at the cost of appearing rude to the memory of his dead friend, “… had she been more beautiful, I might perhaps have had second thoughts about our future relationship.”
The Phoolan Devi Moxham befriends is not the gun-wielding outlaw one would imagine. She comes across as a cheerful, plain-speaking woman who spent little on show even during her halcyon days. The book works much like a photo album. The pictures the writer presents are interesting, be it Phoolan bargaining with a vegetable vendor, blessing a shy Dimple, the daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, or Moxham talking to Ravi Shastri. The language is simple and bare, the flip side being that it doesn’t cover up where the writer descends into banality.
During most of his India visits, Moxham stayed with Phoolan or her immediate family. He describes her house as frugally furnished, without any servants and full of near and distant relatives at all times. On his first visit, Phoolan’s brother tricks Moxham into sending him a camera. This is the first in a series of incidents where those around Phoolan come out as coveting her legacy. After her death the relatives bickered in public while the case against those accused of her assassination lingered. Moxham uses the milieu around Phoolan to understand and explore India. Not all his shots are close-ups of Phoolan. More frequently he zooms out and indulges himself with brow-beaten briefs on the great Indian railways crush, the differences between North and South Indian cultures or the political picture. He is, however, more engaging when he observes in the vein of a sahib in India: Roses stay wrapped in cellophane, beds shared by those of the same sex, blasting fan like sleeping under a draught or the girl not going to her own engagement. Phoolan Devi’s political career had kept her in the news years after she gave up arms. Shekhar Kapur’s film Bandit Queen, much to Phoolan’s dismay, carried her story to an international audience. In an appended note, Moxham says he could not get himself to see the film till 2009.
He documents his own fruitless fight against its release in London while in India Arundhati Roy fought fiercely against the film. The book also suggests the possibility of Phoolan’s husband being covertly paid to get her consent to the film.
A circus of feuding relatives, funeral and politics followed Phoolan’s assassination in 2001. Moxham says it robbed Phoolan of the dignity she deserved in death. Outlaw attempts to redeem what was so lost. It reconstructs Phoolan as a brave woman who lives the burden of a traumatic past and an endangered future. Yet it shows, ironically, how susceptible the once bandit queen was to harm. Moxham neither indicts nor condones, but he is a crucial witness to the legend of Phoolan Devi, the woman who not only survived but also prevailed.

King Asoka: A Love Story by Harish Singhal I The blood, intrigue that made an emperor I

History may be about the dead, but it is never dead. A young fact grows into a youthful story over time. It gradually matures into a belief, then turns into a doubt-ridden narrative to end as a fiction. A writer intervenes and recreates history during any of these stages. The facts about the Maurya empire are over 2,100 years old as Harish Singhal works on them to churn out his debut novel, King Asoka: A Love Story.
A great deal has been said and written about the Mauryas, much of it sheer theory based on fragments of evidence spared by time. In social memory Mauryan emperor Ashoka was one of the greatest Indian kings of all time who journeyed from being Chanda, or the terrible, to Dhamma, the righteous. While much information about Ashoka’s rule is drawn from the pillars erected by him and from Buddhist texts, few reliable facts are known about his personal life. So what happened during the Kalinga war that transformed the king’s heart? The most accepted answer, and one supported by the inscriptions on Ashokan pillars, points to the massive bloodshed during the war. However, storytellers over the ages have tried to add to the motive. In this novel, Singhal allows history its due place yet weaves a fine mesh of fiction around it.
The novel opens with a dramatic episode of the eleven-year-old Ashoka’s brush with death in Kalinga. With that we step into a marvellous recreation of ancient India. There is no dearth of action here with palace intrigues, princes scrambling for the throne and queens fighting for their sons while King Bindusar struggles to keep together the vast empire he inherited from his father, Chandragupta Maurya. This is also an India still under the influence of Greek and Persian conquests. In fact, with the western border of the Mauryan empire reaching Kandahar, Greek-Persian empires are now India’s neighbours. The signs of Alexander’s visit are alive in the queens bartered at war.
Ashoka is an unfavoured prince to begin with. His mother Suba is a simple woman, uncomfortable with the role she must play to project her son as a prospective successor of the king. In the fierce palace environment she herself falls prey to an ambitious Livia, a Greek queen of the now dead Chandragupta Maurya, who takes Ashoka under her aegis. Ashoka is a thinking youth, an upright prince whose relationship with women always lands him in trouble. Ashoka beats the crown price at a horse race, thus presenting his claim to the crown, but that is not enough. Crown Prince Sasima flees Taxila at the first sign of revolt. Ashoka, who is sent in his place, decapitates the rebel and presents the head to his father. However, Sasima’s mother, the Queen, manipulates the King to forgive her son. As the King inches towards death Ashoka must fight for his crown. The struggle culminates in carnage at the palace with the queens drawing the daggers. Ashoka becomes the King and though he has a wife and two children, Mahendra and Sanghmitra, he has not yet found the woman who will share his throne. He finds that woman in Anga, grand-daughter of a former Taxila governor, and marries her after a long pursuit. The Kalinga war looms after a period of marital bliss.
The cause of the battle has not yet been clearly established by historians. Singhal picks an interesting lead as he leads us to a battle to the death for the statue of Jina, the Jain god. The predictable bloodshed follows but a unique turn in Ashoka’s life leads him to adopt Buddhism.
Singhal sticks to realistic descriptions and relies on imagination. The result is admirable. He has a powerful story to tell and it works well till he decides to explain what is much known. That Ganga was worshipped or the horse was a sign of majesty aren’t facts that need re-telling, particularly when there is a remarkable story at hand. His characters are well-etched and consistent, but as war approaches he tries to throw a few commoners into the arena to evoke the pathos of war. The story is unable to digest these last-minute creations and the effect is lost.
The narrative loses steam after the war but the writer is in no mood to sign off. He details what is inscribed on the pillars and ends only after Ashoka’s death, not realising that for the reader the novel ended 20 pages back.
Bollywood’s big-budget 2001 movie Asoka also traced a similar story of the king. Despite a power-packed performance by Shah Rukh Khan, Ashoka emerges as a ruthless murderer who gives a kill-all order to his soldiers when he thinks his beloved is dead. In Singhal’s story, however, Ashoka is set for greatness: he is brave but not ruthless, a much more complex character. Contrary to the biopic he doesn’t kill for love, instead he renounces violence for it. Both stories have their own version of how Chandagupta Maurya’s sword passed on to Ashoka and of the love angle. Singhal’s rendition of the intimate is bold and exquisite while the the song-and-dance element in the film falls flat.
From the Greek princesses to the tribals of Kalinga, the sheer expanse of the novel is exhilarating. Singhal churns together fact and fiction to produce a magical story of love. When Ashoka attacks Taxila to claim his throne, Livia tells her story as she waits for the first sign of his victory: the story of the Greek princess who was brought to India as a war bride of Chandrgupta Maurya. In the words of author genius, anyone can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

A Break in the Circle by Sharmila Kantha I Devoid of humour, full of mistakes I

In the heart of “small town” India is an unexplored world of stories. Sharmila Kantha at best reminds us of that treasure in the backyard. It’s a pity however that she stands in the midst of a ready field that she is unable to harvest.

Based in Patna, the story of A Break in the Circle focuses on the life of a middle-class family. Anuradha is a housewife whose days revolve around her children, husband and parents. House maid, visiting relatives, weddings and TV serials are the other elements that claim her. The news of a visit by a professor who had left the town years ago sends ripples across her placid life. She is strangely worried about the “requirements” of one who has lived in America for 20 years, and establishes an online contact with him. The professor’s past, a topic of common discussion in the town, is spiced with stories of an affair with a student, Manvi Prasad. Close on the heels of the professor’s visit, Kallu Chacha comes visiting with his family. His groom-hunting mission disrupts Anuradha’s plans to shop and prepare for the professor’s visit, as does the arrival of a troubled couple from Delhi. The couple is in Patna to find a solution to their problems and it falls on Anuradha and her husband to help them out too. In the midst of this, Anuradha must also dissuade a cousin from pursuing a modeling career in Delhi as it will bring bad name to the family. The different strains of the story begin to climax as the date of the professors arrival draws close. So while Kallu Chacha must find a suitable son-in-law, the Delhi couple a solution to its childlessness and the maid must marry off her daughter. A dramatic end takes shape as Anuradha and her husband are going to pick the professor from the airport. Veil falls off the face of an arrogant Manvi Prasad and the truth behind the professor’s past is revealed.
Wife of an Indian diplomat, Kantha has her roots in Patna. Clearly here she bites off much more than she can chew in 195 pages of A Break in the Circle. Her earlier works include a novel, Just the Facts, and two picture books for children. Even as the author struggles to place the characters in their social settings, time remains blurred. While the story attempts to be contemporary, the characters lack the ambition of today’s middle-class, particularly in small towns. They resemble more the frugal and inhibited class of 70s and 80s. The author hops from one character to the other attempting to grab it all in one sweep. As the story ends Anuradha see all of her life’s episode winding up like one of her TV serials. For the reader, on the other hand the climax is a shrill screech, just the way they do it in the soaps: “Nahiiiii”! To make matters worse, the text is rant with errors which the editors should have seen and fixed. There is excessive use of qualifiers: “Then she poured out drinking water from the large earthenware pot with a long stainless-steel ladle into oversized stainless-steel glasses and set them in front of the men sitting at the pockmarked table”; and rather banal insights: “Sadly there is no incentive in our system for such people to stay if there are better opportunities”.
Television appears as a node around which the family gathers. The story itself is deeply inspired by the spate of small town soaps. However, Kantha is unable to spark similar humour or debate. The story of the average family life is never simple to tell and Kantha under-evaluates her subject. She gives in to the first temptation to tell-it-all. While the writer commits the most probable mistakes it is even more surprising that the reputed publisher chose to put its stamp on the book in its present form.