HOME I TONI MORRISON I

On Sunday afternoon, June 25, 1950, broadcasters in the US interrupted regular radio programmes to report the first fragmentary dispatches disclosing that the Communists had  invaded South Korea.  President Truman, enjoying a quiet weekend in Independence, Missouri, rushed back to Washington and committed American troops to combat in Korea. Over 36,000 US troops were killed in the Korean War. This number was however much less compared to the 58,000 who were killed in Vietnam over the next two decades. The Fifties is indentified today as the decade of Marlyn Monroe,   Elvis Presley, launch of Sputnik, and the civil rights movement. It is associated more with the exhilaration of a new era than the return of war-scarred soldiers. Toni Morrison goes back to her memories of the decade in her latest novel Home and her impression of it is neither nostalgic nor euphoric.

The protagonist, Frank ‘Smart’ Money is a black man who has returned shell shocked from the Korean battlefield. It is his journey home to Lotus, in Georgia, and a subsequent discovery of it that forms the slim yet very visual story. Home engages readers at several levels and in varying degrees of complexity through a richly variegated narrative. Frank wakes up tied in a “nuthouse” and makes a quick escape. His journey, marred by his frail mental condition, is aided largely by the kindness of strangers. It is the memory of his sister Ycidra (Cee) that keeps him going despite painful black-and-white flashes and “visitations” from a zoot-suited man.  He must reach Cee soon or as the note threatened him “She be dead if you tarry.”

Morrison’s works are characterized by her attempts to tap the inner dissonance and demons. When Morrison was very young her parents fell behind with the rent and the landlord set fire to the house in which they lived. Writing her 10^th novel at 81, Morrison continues to draws heavily on her experiences of loss, uprooting and love.

Morrison, wrote her first novel, the Bluest Eye at the age of 39. This was the story of an 11-year-old black girl wishing for her eyes to be blue that highlighted sense of self-loathing induced by the prevailing concepts of beauty.  With the Bluest Eye Morrison touched a new aspect of black writing. She wrote as an insider, not one standing with the white audience but essentially sticking to her experience. Over the years she disagreed with Ralph Ellison’s positioning of the race in Invisible Man, “Invisible to who? Not to me,” she maintained.

Her 1973 novel Sula and 1987 novel Beloved, received much critical acclaim. While The Bluest Eye drew upon the memory of days when black was not beautiful, Sula and Beloved focused on the experiences of black women. In Beloved a mother prefers to kill her daughter than see her become a slave and in Sula the story traces the bond of friendship between two women. In 1993 Morrison was awarded the literature Nobel for “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”  She was the first black woman to receive the award.

Home is Morrison’s 10th novel and her first book after the death of her 45-year-old son Slade, from pancreatic cancer.

Morrison’s novels work at multiple levels simultaneously. At one step you will find her characters living out a complex black existence. At another you find them struggling with their roles as women or men. Take a step ahead and you find them denizens of the American nation and at another they are but humans complete with common emotions and an uncommon sense of honour. 

While it’s hard to focus on any one of these aspects, it’s nearly impossible to read her novels without the sense of history with which she writes. So if you are not on your guard you might miss the fact that Frank has to find his way at the back of the bus partitioned away from the “white folks”; a sign at the public lavatory dissuades him from using it and he is forced to relieve himself behind the bushes; a stranger helps him with a list of right type of lodging from where he won’t be turned away. A kind pastor warns him: “Listen here, you from Georgia and you been in a desegregated army and maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don’t believe it and don’t count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as dangerous.”

While Frank makes his way to Cee, we journey backward and relive the troubled times with the family that is driven out by the landlord. Cee is born in a church basement and as Frank takes charge of her the first word she learns to speak turns out to be “Fawnk”. Over the years it is the elder brother who protects her from a vicious step-grandmother and deceitful boys. But as Frank and his friends enlist for war Cee is left on her own. She runs off and marries a “rat” named Prince who leaves her soon after. She gets a job at Dr Scott’s clinic and as we find her looking at books on eugenics in the doctor’s library we know that she’s going to get into trouble. 

Frank finds and carries Cee, who is bleeding to death, back to Lotus. While the story is about finding a home on one hand it is also about redemption on the other. While Cee has to move out of her scared, scarred past, Frank has to make peace with the terrible war memories. Both incur irreparable losses and yet they struggle to make peace with their lives.  There are two voices in the story, one of a narrator and the other of Frank who time and again corrects and converses with the narrator. It is almost as if the character was speaking to Morrison and taking it upon himself to add to or correct her rendition of his story.  

Tale Spin -1

Its hard for me to say when she started telling me all these stories. They have been just lying in my brain like the first words I must have heard. For a long time I thought they were my stories. They would materialise out of nowhere striking upon my memory like some lost songs.
Often they annoyed me as they were not simple tales of gods-goddesses, animals or king . They annoyed me more since they sounded like they were my stories. They were stories of a girl, not sad or happy or motivating, but just incidents that hung there in time, sounding like stories because she told them like that.
She had away of telling those "no-stories". Sleep-time made her garrulous. She would yawn, grind her eyes, pick her nose, rub some cream on her hands, and talk on with or without an audience. Her skin was clear but I could always see the pores. There was a slight pink on her cheeks that was missing on mine. I was pale, almost green with veins running down naked along my chin and over the eyebrows. She would stretch her arms  and blow an " Oh Hho" through her teeth and rattle off... 

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.