Crushes on wrong people: LGBT and a questioning Q I IN ONE PERSON by John Irving I

In a town called Little Sister in Vermont a 13-year-old boy is taken to the town library by his soon-to-be stepfather. The young boy Bill, who has a secret crush on his mother’s boyfriend, asks the librarian for a book on crushes on wrong people.

This is year 1955. The visit to the library is a moment of awakening for Bill and Miss Frost, the librarian, becomes the centre of his awakening for the next seven years.
Spoiler alert: It is impossible to write about this book without giving away the best, early surprises. After all, the story hinges on a process of discovery and acceptance of sexual choices. John Irving is not the writer for those who blush at the word sex. Draped in Irving’s words, sex and desire are powerful, unapologetic and unrestrained. So watch your step!
In One Person is Irving’s 13th novel. The story, as narrated by a bisexual male, is as much about sexual differences and tolerance as it is about his personal life and experiences. From being the story of a boy and a transgender the novel takes the whole town and several boys and girls who are “different” in its wake. It grows further, crossing cities and continents, attempting to become the voice of a period and of a silent battle for recognition.
As a young boy Bill has crushes on several people: his stepfather Richard, his school senior Kittredge, his best friend’s mother Martha Headley and not to forget the librarian Miss Frost. Bill hasn’t seen his father and is dolled out conflicting stories about his birth. His mother, he learns in due course of time, is somewhat sexually naïve. His aunt Muriel and grandmother Victoria are prudes who feel everyone else is below them. (Aunt Muriel keeps fainting at every mention of the word sex). Bill’s grandfather, who is a lumberman, competes with his daughter Muriel for female roles in the town theatre productions. Surprisingly, he is often preferred over Muriel. Cross-dressing grandpa Harry’s performances are loved by many but also equally reviled.
The Favourite River Academy, is a boys’ boarding school with its typical homo-hating culture. School psychiatrist Dr Grau tells the boys they are in “a polumorphous-perverse phase” and that they were experiencing “pregenital libidinal fixations”. The much-hated Dr Harlow, on the other hand speaks to them about “treatable afflictions” including “an unwelcome sexual attraction to other boys and men.”
While Bill’s life at the boarding school is occupied by his conflicting crushes, it is also occupied, in equal measure by theatre. Bill is cast in the role of “sexually mutable” Aerial while his nemesis Kittredge is Ferdinand and grandfather Harry is a female Caliban.
Bill has a speech difficulty. While The Tempest is being played, he is unable to say “Thou liest” or later the word “shadow” in King Lear. Miss Frost helps him with these two effectively but his difficulty with the word penis stays till the end. Kittredge, the seemingly alpha male, is the cause of much distress to Bill. He is a great wrestler and an equally good actor but he is also a bully. He calls Bill “Nymph” and is effortlessly mean to both Billy and his friend Elaine.
Bill is forced to come out with his sexual differences after a scandal that follows Bill’s discovery of the one-time unbeaten wrestling champion Big El. Soon after, Bill also cracks the puzzle about his missing father Franny Dean. Bill is barred from meeting Miss Frost who is suspended from the library and forced to relocate. Miss Frost leaves, but not before teaching Bill a wrestler’s “duck under”, preparing him for the fight he was yet to face. In 1961, Bill’s school life ends after a brief Europe tour with Tom Atkins who constantly yearns for Bill’s attention. Bill never sees Miss Frost again. But Kitteredge and Atkins resurge later, both with their pack of secrets and tragedy.
The story branches out into Bill and Elaine’s numerous experiences. In the 80s, “the plague” strikes. Bill loses several friends to AIDS. While Larry, once his professor-lover, toils to help the ailing, Bill watches from a distance. It is only when Larry falls ill that Bill takes charge and owns up responsibility to those like him.
Irving gives it the perfect ending with Bill resolving the most crucial and yet unexplored aspect of his life. The story is told in a tragi-comic light. While it is not what one would call a “simple story”, the humour brings in the sense of simplicity in a complex world. The cliché-encumbered grandmother, the aunt who doesn’t want to be stared at, the Norwegian lumberman who has a passion for drama or the “damaged” mother who is easily seduced, provide the essential breathing spaces.
In the novel, sex is crucial and bold. While it is kept between two people; man-man, man-woman, man-transsexual; sex here is more about individuals and their specific requirements and responses. Irving is not short of words while writing about sex, but in each case his purpose is clear. Far from being either comic or gagging, the sex scenes make you sit up and savour, irrespective of who is involved.
The ending sees a somewhat heroic return of Bill. He does for a “work-in-progress” girl what Miss Frost had done for him. A revolution comes of age as the girl introduces herself “Gee will do for now… but I’m going to be Georgia someday.” Moreover, its not just LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), but also a Q for questioning.

BEGINNING OF THE END

The shadows are becoming stronger, darker, angrier. So quickly the day is lived, from the time you gleefully stamp it under your foot till it expands and dwarfs you. It’s one of those mundane events that you never notice but you always know about. But there are other shadows that dwell in the mind. Malicious, vengeful, ugly shadows. Lurking behind every dream, every joy and every thought. You can see them but you will not know them. 
You can’t crush them, can’t tear them and you definitely can’t kill them.   
I can see the future. Not yours but mine. Most clairvoyants will tell you they can see 
your future, not me. I can’t see your future because I can’t see the shadows in your mind but I can see mine. I hate calling them "my" shadows. After all I didn’t build them or invite them or rear them. They’ve just been there encroaching into my space. But then they decide my future so they aren’t anything but mine.


I am watching the deserted shore. The water has receded several kilometers. The seabed lies naked, still warm from the night’s affairs. Someone’s scared voice is calling out to me to run away. Am I not scared of the end? Don’t I want to live? Of course I am. 
I watch the giant wave crease the skyline.  I want to see what the sea looks on the underside. I think the view would be worth my life. 

Singapore’s Inspector Singh lands in Mumbai I INSPECTOR SINGH INVESTIGATES: A CURIOUS INDIAN CADAVER by Shamini Flint I

A Sikh cop in Singapore police is bullied into coming to Mumbai by his Indian wife. Inspector Singh is a murder specialist and the minute he reaches the flat of his wife’s cousin he knows something is afoot.
Shamini Flint, a Singapore-based author of the well-known series Inspector Singh Investigates, brings Singh’s investigation to India in her latest book. Singh is a turbaned Sikh whose father had left the country years ago. Mumbai, with all its tell-tale squalor and con-men, is a shock to him. His Google-savvy wife is more at ease though. The Singhs, who have come to attend a wedding in the family, soon realise that they have stepped into the middle of a crisis: the bride is missing. Instantly, Singh, who had
resigned himself to Indian hospitality, is back in his elements. He says what everyone suspects, "Perhaps she ran away". The grandfather of the girl is furious with Singh as are her two brothers. But their prime concern is to keep the cops at bay, so Singh is assigned the task of finding the girl. Ashu Kaur, the missing bride, is the favourite grandchild of Tara Baba, a reputed industrialist.
While Singh investigates, the cops report a charred female cadaver. Ashu’s elder brother Tanvir identifies the body by its ruby earrings. The family breaks into mourning. As Singh investigates, several skeletons pop out: a Muslim boyfriend, Ashu’s work at a slum near the factory where she was employed and a mysterious ailment, a money trail.
The final blow comes with the post-mortem report that says Ashu was pregnant. By now everyone seems to have a stake in Ashu’s death and Tara Baba trusts Singh with the task of bringing out the truth.
Singh finds that on the D-day Ashu had secretly met her boyfriend Sameer, visited her boss about the factory and was picked up by her younger brother who was out looking for her. As the mystery deepens Tara Baba himself is killed on the day of Ashu’s funeral and Tanvir swears to boot out the meddling Singh.
Flint weaves an exciting story with its fair share of twists, turns and drama. Singh makes an interesting investigative officer with his wife as his self-appointed assistant. The husband and wife, identified only as Mr and Mrs Singh, also bring in the essential comic relief. Singh fails to understand why anyone will ask for a washing machine in dowry as his wife explains the tradition to him. He is also at a loss why a girl may be killed for marrying outside her religion. Despite his pot-belly Singh is smart and agile. He picks up clues and hits it off with the local policemen. Flint’s novel is a quick and entertaining read and for the romantics at heart, it has a happy ending too.

POCKETS FULL OF POETRY I Indian Poetry Festival organised by Sahitya Akademi I

The human world is styled in words. While nature provides the style, it is the poets who provide the words. A vibrant cosmos of words emerged in Delhi last week at the Indian Poetry Festival "The World within the Word". Shaping of words was the first act of poetry, said vice-president of Sahitya Akademi, Vishwanath Tiwari, who opened the festival. Poets, he said, are creatures who thrive on words, "Poets like Tukaram eat, wear and live on words." Having said this he paused, "This is the day of poetry, so we will keep prose at bay," and briskly drawing out his papers, he presented two of his
poems in Hindi: Jagah (Place) and Aatma (Soul).
Nearly 25 poets from different languages and different parts of the country followed and a master symphony of ideas and emotions emerged. Poets presented at least one poem their native language and the rest in translation.
Eminent Hindi poet Kedarnath Singh drew attention to the poetry of international expats in India. He said it was a genre which had not received enough attention. Citing the example of Tibetan poetry, he read out lines from a piece by a young Tibetan on exile in India: I am a Tibetan-Indian/ I live in India/ I dream of dying in Tibet. With the constant struggle for identity at its core, the poet, a young man, narrates in simple words how he must carry his certificates to prove his identity and how easily he is mistaken for someone from India’s east or north. On the power and life of words, he presented a poem
Shabd (Word). "Words don’t die in cold / it’s the lack of courage/ that kills them." Kedarnath said that considerable growth is taking place in poetry but on the fringes. New voices that challenge and break the centre are emerging. "These voices must be heard if one has to understand the reality of the 21st century India," he added.
In the vein of Romantic poets, well-known Dogri poet Padma Sachdeva emphasised that only that which emerges from the heart qualifies as poetry. Her verses carried an acute awareness of nature and projected its forces as alive and communicative. In one of her poems titled, Air, she says the villagers had "packed’ some of it for her as they had bid her farewell. She carries the village air around with her and uses it whenever she missed home. The pristine village air with its unique aroma of incense in the morning, crops in the afternoon and wet soil in the evening is a part of the heritage that she has received and wishes to pass on to her daughter. In another poem, she is the sky that says: I am not the king without an heir/ My lap is filled with children/ I am India’s sky.
Another poet who brought the inanimate to life through her verses was Varsha Das. Two of her poems were titled Mitti and Daraaj. While in Mitti (Soil) she spoke of a dead soil made fertile by a person’s dreams, in Daraaj (Drawer) she gives a beating heart to a piece of furniture. In Daraaj she is an old woman who keeps misplacing her things. To solve this problem her daughter gets a cupboard with several drawers. The drawers are labelled alphabetically so that: the job is just to set/ specs in S/ watch in W/ and pen in P. But things get complicated as the watch lands up in another drawer that has a throbbing, loving heart.
Tamil poet Salma came up with poems on women issues and sensibilities. In a moving piece she drew upon the life of Somalian women who suffered the terrible tradition of sewing up of the vagina to prevent their "pollution". The subject of each recital was unique and as a result the poems ranged from the Berlin Wall to Irome Sharmila, from a key to a wall, and a stammer to a secret. While one poet
like Subodh Sarkar (Bengali) came up with politically charged free verses another one like Nisar Rahi (Urdu) broke the pattern with witty and insightful couplets. Each poet took you to a different journey into a different world lighting the way with his words. The event, organised by Sahitya Akademi, was thin on audience. However, those present were serious fans, shedding an occasional tear or breaking into a frequent "wah wah".
Looking at the audience Padma Sachdev recounted her young days when iconic poet Ramdhari Singh "Dinkar" would moan that perhaps the era poetry had ended. But he was wrong, she said, we still write poetry and there are people who can’t have enough of it.

A SIMPLE TALE OF BASEBALL, TOLD IN STYLE I Calico Joe by John Grisham I

The basics of baseball are simple but the game is complicated. There is a pitcher, a  hitter and in this case there is an 11-year-old boy too in a crowd of 55,000 at the stands.  But this is no ordinary match. It is the last match that the two will play and the last that  the third will watch. It is also the match that will haunt the 11-year-old Paul Tracey years  later when he is a happily married man.

John Grisham, known for his best-selling legal thrillers has another passion: baseball.  The first book in which he infused the verve of the game was A Painted House. Calico  Joe is the latest work of fiction from Grisham in which you can "watch" the game.  Grisham knows his curveballs from fastballs but doesn’t expect you to know the same. He doesn’t assume that you will know or should know or will find out about the game.  Infact, he provides an engaging introduction to baseball. This is an introduction unlike any other and must not be skipped. He puts you on the home plate, gives you the bat  and makes you face the pitch. You find yourself hitting home runs, throwing a drag bunt and cutting a ground ball. By the end of these pages you are singing baseball. From this happy start, Grisham takes you to the middle of a family tragedy: A father on the death bead with pancreatic cancer. The father here is Warren Tracey, who once played for the Mets. The news of Warren’s impending death causes no stir in the lives of those around him. His daughter and first wife want nothing to do with him but his son Paul has a score to settle. While it seems to us that he has set out to meet his dying father, he has a different plan up his sleeve. He is in Calico Rock, Arakansas, where he must go with an alias. The town hates his father Warren Tracey who had "beaned" Joe Castle. As a result of the throw, Joe is maimed for life as are all hopes in Calico Rock. Paul decides he must coax, compel and even blackmail his dying father to come to Calico Rock and say sorry.

Warren Tracey is a hardened man with a failed career in baseball; a philanderer, given to drinking and violent behaviour. Meeting his son is another of the life’s formalities that he is forced to go through. But the moment Paul reveals his real purpose, he throws off all garbs of civility and digs his heels in. Going to Calico Rock is a big no. The book is named after its third and most important character, Joe Castle. In his early twenties, Joe is the best thing that has happened to baseball in a long time. He is a hitter and an extraordinary one. On his first day of a league match, he thrashes half-a-dozen records. With him the Chicago Cubs look formidable, almost invincible. But one unfortunate game watched by Paul and pitched by Warren changes it all. Joe is also my only serious problem with the book. He gets to say the least and as a result hardly looks real. While the story actually revolves around him, it hardly attempts to looks inside him.

Grisham is not the most insightful of the writers but he knows how to tell a story. He has a simple tale but tells it in style. Baseball is the heart and soul of the narrative. One can feel the rush of a packed stadium, the focus of the pitcher, crush of the ball against the skull. He doesn’t delve into the recesses of human mind but makes his story authentic and gives all actions an arguable reason. Given Grisham’s brisk style, Calico Joe makes an interesting read. It puts the thrill of a game on the larger canvas of life. The argument that baseball is a game for children spoiled by adults holds true for this book. Followers of the game will of course find a lot meat and the faithless will be dreaming home runs before the last page is reached.

DRIFTER, CHARMER, ACTOR, CHEAT I The Flying Man by Roopa Farooki I

Some battle for a normal life, others fight against it. The "flying man" in Roopa Farooki’s novel belongs to the latter.
Sunny, alias Maqil, alias MSK, alias Mikhail Lee, is a freak genius and an anti-hero. For him, what is normal is redundant and hence repulsive. He goes through his life like a play act and dares to change the script mid-way. He will not suffer boredom and throws away both fortune and love in his persistent bid to escape lichés.
Born in Punjab of 1931 he is Sunny for his parents and Maqil for the family in which all first-born sons bear the same name. At 16, Sunny is dashing, glamorous and street-smart; the star of the family. A train of fans from urchins, servants to his own parents follows him everywhere. He is the Pied Piper and everyone is happy to step up to his tune. He is already blackmailing his school seniors into loaning their father’s Bentley and is advising the bookstore owner to sell tea and coffee along with books.
This is the only section where Maqil’s character sounds forced and stalk-type. Hereon, Ms Farooki builds with force and remarkable consistency. Maqil emerges as someone who’s foremost motive is to surprise his audience, whatever the cost.
In America, where he goes to study, he is MSK, a mystery, a phenomenon of sorts. No one knows where he is from and when asked he says, "Everyone knows who I am and if they don’t , they should."
In 1965 he is Mehmet, married and settled with a job in Egypt. He leaves for work one day and never returns to his wife, never writes or calls for the simple reason of being bored. Maqil’s arguments are unnerving for their cold, murderous simplicity. Ms Farooki handles this complex character with great craftsmanship. One can’t resist liking him despite his almost criminal egotism.
In 1969 he is at the blackjack table at a casino in France. From a few thousand francs he swells to a hundred thousand. Wining is too easy for him but he loses too just to get that symphony of oohs and aah from onlookers. He loses till he is left with a sparse scattering of chips and celebrates with champagne his narrow escape from fame and fortune.
In 1970, he is back in Lahore where he meets Samira. She is a Bengali Christian; skinny, espresso-skinned and very glamorous. Love strikes Maqil. Samira is an unusual woman, hence, a perfect match for him. In another three years the  two are married and have moved to London.
One of the best achievements of Ms Farooqi in this book is her characters. They are all unique, almost eccentric yet convincing and endearing. Samira is no sweet-talking, innocent chick with haunting eyes. She is the "modern" woman with cosmetics in her drawer, brands in her wardrobe and wits that can outsmart Maqil. Samira is perpetually on diet and has trained herself to throw up food after plush
parties.
Maqil and Samira are made-for-each-other but that’s too simple a script for Maqil to play. So he decides it is time for him to be a father. Samira is of course too smart and knows him too well to let that happen, so he cheats her, switches her pills and soon she is pregnant. With the twins between them Maqil soon has to move ahead but not before attempting to trick Samira out of her money. But Samira is never a damsel in distress and can see through the act he puts up for the world.
From London he goes to Madrid, then to Marbella-Spain, Hong Kong, Paris and finally Biarritz. He swindles people out of their money, dabbles in forgery of art and passports and crosses continents till too many people are on lookout for him. He marries a third time to a matronly Bernadette in Hong Kong but Samira is always the only love of his life. His twins grow up angry and estranged.
The vibrant milieu of this novel ensures there is never a dull moment. Ms Farooki is an expert at getting inside the characters and making them speak. From Samira to the twins to Bernadette and even the minor characters are intriguing but not elusive. The story is written as a letter by Maqil at the end of his life. He is old and broke and has refused persistent efforts by his children to take him home as that would be too simple an end.
He sticks to his fight for a life lived unusually, till the very end. The letter writing though gets forgotten in the tide of the story. The initial few pages are quickly forgotten and seem to be somewhat disconnected from the rest of the novel that is remarkably well-knit.
After you finish the novel the lines on the book cover also begin to sound strange: "I was once a son, a husband, a father. And now I am a storyteller."Maqil never played the role of son, husband and father with conviction. He is always a storyteller.
The Flying Man may strike some as a story of a highly-selfish man. Maqil has little regard for others in his life. He seems almost Camusian in his disrespect for all that is established and acceptable. A man who sticks to his flawed vision of life till the end causing immense pain to all he knows.
He comes across as almost heartless. But that’s not entirely true. In his life filled with depravity, Maqil has just one acute regret. Quite like her creation, Ms Farooki’s surprises the audience, and gives a story unlike any other.

An Afghan’s odyssey I In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio GedaI

At the age of 10, Enaiatollah Akbari sets out with his mother from his village Nava, in Afghanistan. After a perilous journey, they arrive in Quetta, Pakistan. She makes him swear three things: Never to use drugs; never to use weapons; never to cheat or steal.
This advice is all he has when his mother leaves in the quiet of the night to return to her other children back in Nava.

With most of the odds against him, chances of Enaitollah’s survival in a new, hostile country are bleak. But he survives to tell his poignant tale. The story is told by Fabio Geda as a series of conversations with Enaitollah. These conversations between the author and the protagonist are spread through the narrative. Written in Italian, the book has been translated into English by Howard Curtis.

Abandoned in Quetta, Enait picks up odd manual jobs. Even when he is reduced to a mere street urchin, he misses his days at school and Buzul Bazi, a dice game played a bone taken from a sheep’s foot after it’s been boiled. He listens to the children playing during school recess, longing to join them but is forced to go out into a world where a simple request for water elicits a scathing reply: First tell who are you? Are you a Shia or a Muslim. By now Eniat has learnt his lessons as he shoots back, "First I am a Shia, then I am a Muslim. Or rather, first I am a Hazara, then Shia then a Muslim." Hazara, inhabitants of Ghazni province, are identified by their almond eyes and flatter noses. While some claim to be descendants of Genghis Khan’s army others claim to have come down from Koshans, the legendary builders of the Bamiyan Buddhas. "Some others say we’re saves and treat us like slaves," says Enaitollah. Fed up of being treated badly, he decides to go to Iran, where he had heard "things were much better". Here begins  Eniat’s association with people traffickers, cramped trucks and the constant fear of Telisia and Sang Safid, the immigrant detention centres. At the Iranian city of Isfahan, he picks up the job at a construction site, which is where most of the illegal migrants worked. But with the constant police raids and the sword of deportation hanging on his head, Eniat decides to move again; this time to Turkey. This journey is far more challenging than anything he had been through. From Salmas, the last city in Iran and
closest to the mountains, begins a 27-day trek across snow-capped mountains.

On arriving in Istanbul, it becomes clear that there was no work to be found there. A journey further ahead to Greece is imminent. Here ensues a voyage in a dinghy which ends in his landing at a Greek port town without any clothes. The journey to Mytilene and thereon to Rome is largely aided by kind-hearted people. Enaitollah’s tale is a real-life account not a fictionalised narrative. His journey, that spans from Nava to Turin, may bring to mind the century-old adventures of Kipling’s Kim. This is however a much more realistic account pared of all the romance of adventure and powered by the sole grit to survive. Enaitollah refuses to name most of the people and places. "Facts are important," he tells Fabio, "The story is important. It’s what happens to you that change your life, not where or who with." While debating if they should take the journey to Greece in a dinghy, a fellow Afghan mentions the threat of crocodiles in the sea. The only answer available at that time to the group of young boys in desperate search of a better life is that there are no crocodiles in the sea. A postscript to the novel notes that Eniat, who is now 22 years old, and has received asylum in Italy, has discovered that there really are crocodiles in the sea.