FANCY DRESS

Now there's so much
that I could be
Super-man
Magic-man
Satan
Time-traveler
Jinni
Alien
Mutant
God
And what am I?
A mere man.

KHUL JA SIM SIM I The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud I

When was the last time you heard the story of the jinni who came out of Aladdin's wonderful lamp? Bartimaeus is that kind of demon. He runs errands for his masters, yet keeps an eye for ways to outwit him; is punished repeatedly for his audacious behaviour and finds himself time and again in the midst of trouble.
The Ring of Solomon is a prequel to the Bartimaeus trilogy published between 2003 to 2005. But this novel is different from the trilogy which is, quite in the Harry Potter fashion, centered in a fairly recent London. The Ring of Solomon, however, takes you back to the land of Arabian Nights. The Jerusalem of 950 BC is a kingdom full of magic. It is ruled by Solomon who's sovereign control lies in the power of a ring on his finger. A ring by merely touching which the king can summon thousands of spirits. The king has an array of powerful magicians at his beck and call. Sharp-tongued and free-spirited Bartimaeus is the slave of one of the magicians of the king. Desperate to be set free Bartimaeus devours his master. When the king hears of this he orders Khaba the cruel, to bring back Bartimaeus and punish him. Far away in the kingdom of Sheba, Queen Balkis, is visited by a demon messenger of king Solomon. The spirit threatens the Queen into paying a regular tribute of Sheba's riches to the king and gives her 15 days to make up her mind. The queen sends out one of her royal guards, lovely Asmira, on a secret rescue mission to Jerusalem.
Bartimaeus, who has been sent by his new master, saves Asmira as her caravan is ambushed by robbers. Asmira gains attentions of Khaba and steals Bartimaeus from him. She summons the jinni to help her kill king Solomon and gain his ring. Bartimaeus has little option but to obey, but that's not the only reason for him to help Asmira as he begins to respect her abilities.
This is a racy book, hard to put down and easy to recall, unlike other novels of this expanse where you might have to turn back pages to find out who was who. Only once in 400-pages of the book you may find the narrative loosing grip but it makes a quick comeback and proceeds thereon to a grand finale. You may not have heard of the trilogy, but you will understand the world of spirits into which Stroud takes you. The novel is sprayed with interesting and humorous asides regarding nitty-gritty of the way spirits function.
The story assumes a picaresque character as Asmira who in the course of her adventures comes to see her own beliefs shattered. Bartimaeus and Asmira both begin to seem similar at a point as they both carry out orders. A naive Asmira must get over her absolute trust of her mistress and find her own happiness while the 2,000-year-old Bartimaeus struggles for his freedom and peace.
Bartimaus' story is enthralling the way fantasy and magic holds on to the mind. Taking it off the mundane and "impossible" aspects of life, leaving you with a twinkle in the eye similar to that of the child who talks to winged, horned friends in the air.

OF A TELL-TALE WORLD BY THE BOSPHORUS I The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak I

For most readers in India, Turkey is synonymous with Orhan Pamuk which makes writers like Elif Shafak somewhat of a delayed discovery. Shafak is one of Turkey’s most acclaimed, and outspoken novelists. The 39-year-old is the author of nine books, seven of which are novels. The Saint of Incipient Inanities, The Gaze and The Flea Palace are among her recent works.
While she writes both in English and Turkish, the translation of her novel The Flea Palace was brought out by Penguin Books last year.
Among the themes of motherhood, feminist issues and Sufism, Istanbul is central to her body of work. Shafak is known depict the Istanbul as a “She-city” and likening it to an old woman with a young heart eternally hungry for new stories and loves. The Flea Palace is also constructed around the motley inhabitants of an apartment building, Bonbon Palace. The building brings together the contrarieties of modern Istanbul: the East and West; the ancient and modern; Orthodox Christianity on one hand and secularism and Islam on the other. If truth is a horizontal line, deception becomes a vertical one and nonsense, thereby, becomes a circle, says the opening of the novel. Though dissociated from the narrative that follows, a mesmerising beginning prepares you for what is to follow.
In the belly of the run-down bug-infested Bonbon Palace many stories are churning. The story of its making, to begin with. Pavel Antipov, an aristocratic Russian migrant, who built the place for his distraught wife, Agripina. The story of how Agripina, at the edge of her sanity, eating bonbons and looking at the world through the wrapping papers came to name the place Bonbon Palace. The tale of the neighbourhood, built at the site of ancient cemeteries, Muslim and Armenian; and that of the now lost grave of a saint “Hewhopackedupandleft”.
Its almost as if a real-life Rashid Khalifa is spinning you through the world of Kahani.
There are 10 apartments in Bonbon Palace. The rest of the novel unfolds through chapters based on their lives:
Flat 1; Musa, Meryem and Muhammet: Musa is the son of Meryem and Muhammet. Meryem is pregnant with her second child and has developed a “bizarre” disposition.
Flat 2; Sidar and Gaba: Sidar, a lonely man is obsessed with two things: Death and his dog Gaba.
Flat 3; Hairdressers Cemal and Celala: Identical twins Cemal and Celal, who were separated in childhood, are temperamentally dissimilar yet their lives are sewn in together with intuitive and surreal threads.
Flat 4; The FireNaturedSons: A family fraught with misfortunes ranging from smashed-up nose to volatile natures, they keep themselves insulated from other inhabitants of the building.
Flat 5; Hadj Hadj, his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren: Hadj a devout old man narrates stories to his grandchildren, (not always out of love) as the parents are out to work.
Flat 6; Metin Chetinceviz and HisWife Nadia: Metin’s wife Nadia is a Russian migrant. While the couple doesn’t get along well and Metin stays away, Nadia develops obsession for bugs and a dubbed soap opera The Oleander of Passion.
Flat 7; Me: The narrator, a divorced university professor, in a state of reverie.
Flat 8; The Blue Mistress: The young and beautiful Bue Mistress spends most of her time waiting for an olive -merchant who has kept her.
Flat 9; Hygiene Tyijen and Su: Hygiene is a cleanliness freak while much to her disdain, her daughter Su has lice.
Flat 10; Madam Auntie: Eccentric old lady who’s story unfold itself only towards the end.
Much of what Shafak writes is “slice of life” but what distinguishes it from other such narratives is the finish with which she delivers it. Her manner is reminiscent of the old tradition of storytelling where one character leads to the other and the listener or the reader is carried along the tide.
Picture her style like a tiny plant sprouting into a full tree. The growth is speedy, mesmerising and symmetrical at the same time. The stories of the 10 apartments of The Flea Palace are not organised numerically but organically. One story leads to other as dwellers run into each other, merging into the thick canopy of life.
Hadji’s youngest grandchild is learning speech and “picks up” words at her whim attributing meaning to them. Musa, son of Meryem, dislikes going to school as it taught him how to read. That was when he figured out that the letter’s bakers daughter sent along with the bread and which his mother read to him everyday, were actually labels and so, “To learn to read was to lose forever the mystery of writing.”
Shafak, who is known to has suffered a long-drawn period of postpartum depression, also writes about motherhood frequently in her works. In The Flea Palace too the theme surfaces in Agripina, the wife of Pavel Antipov. Agripina is pregnant when she lands in Istanbul. Unlike a “normal” expecting mother she feels great “injustice” as her belly begins to swell, “Impossible as it may sound to those who believe that every woman is by nature maternal and that motherhood is as scared and pure as the rivers in heaven, Agripina did not love ‘the thing’ she had given birth to.”
From the plight of an out-of-job military general to that of a blond-hair woman, Shafak is the weaver of all stories in the heart of Istanbul. The symbolic stench plaguing the apartment works as parallel to the decay in the society and provides a perfect acme to the story that comes with the revelation of the Blue Mistress.
The Flea Palace leaves one wanting for more of Shefak and her mystic world of untiring stories.