The Immortals of Meluha - Book Review

Just as remakes of classic movies and remixes of old songs continue to find new audiences, this is a refreshingly engaging book that is a different take on the back story of familiar mythological characters of Shiva and Sati.

The second in this trilogy written by Amish is already in bookstores so a review of a page turner, bestseller seems a little dated. However I was captivated by the story and the story-telling. Here is another writer from IIM who writes from the heart and reaches the reader (and not from the head who aims for his bank balance). The story of tribal leader Shiva who moves his tribe from the harsh environs of their village situated near Lake Mansarovar to the wondrous land of Meluha is a fast-paced tale set in 1900 BC but very much resonant of the times we live in. Amidst order and wealth and good governance, the people of Meluha, immortal as a result of their access to the technology of making somras, the elixir of immortality, suffer from the uncertainty of terrorist attacks that strike unannounced. In a society where science is amazingly advanced, the people still believe in the legend of the Neelkanth, the person whose neck will turn blue upon consumption of somras, the savior who will restore peace.

Shiva's arrival in Meluha and his consequent discovery as being the Neelkanth puts him in the difficult predicament of fulfilling a destiny that is unknown to him. It is refreshing to see his ambivalence at being received as a savior, a title that is uncomfortable at best. His love for Sati, the daughter of the king of Meluha, Daksha, is described with great sensitivity and restraint. The war scenes are vividly narrated. In fact, the whole book is an easy read due to the short chapters and even shorter scenes. It almost reads like a play.

In short, a wonderful book, that I highly recommend to readers of all ages.

Aleph - Book Review

Imagine an autobiography of a person who lived 500 years ago. A love story with a violent end. A narrative that stopped abruptly. A tale left resolved. Then imagine, completing that story today. Bringing a logical climax to what began centuries ago. When the story is Paulo Coelho's own journey, the book that he writes becomes "Aleph".

It is difficult to review autobiographies in general. When such books hold reader interest, it is usually because the author has lived an interesting life. No amount of salvaging by clever writing can cover a boring story. In Paulo Coelho's case, he is a man who has earned his fame by writing a particular genre of books that have been phenomenally successful all over the world, through translations. The strong spiritual bent of his words come from his own experiences in this lifetime. But here he goes into new territory. He tells the story of his journey to resolve something from a past life. He embarks on a travel across Russia by train, 9288 kilometers on the Trans-Siberian railroad. He is compelled to travel in order to renew himself and progress on his spiritual path. He encounters the fascinating Yao, a seventy year old man of Chinese origin but with exposure to Brazil and Japan, all of which makes him a perfect companion and translator for Paulo. But it is Hilal, the young Russian girl of Turkish descent who is the long-lost love from 500 years ago that Paulo must not only bear but also learn from, the one that will give him an opportunity to redeem himself.

The story is long and complex but written in Paulo Coelho's easy style. Even the esoteric concept of the "Aleph" - the point in the Universe that contains all other points, present and past, large and small, is explained in simple terms though one can only imagine the experience of being in the Aleph that brings the faraway past into current consciousness. There are exquisite insights offered by various people including Yao, the shaman and Hilal. I kept going back to passages that held me under the sway of not just the words but of the essence captured in them.

The Aleph is a heavy book to read. But for it to work on you, you need to be in the right frame of mind, just as Paulo Coelho needed to be in order to experience the Aleph.

The Last Lecture - some thoughts

There are books that you buy, books that are gifted to you, books borrowed from the library and books passed on through generations. Then there are books that mysteriously appear in your life. "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch was one such book that appeared in my bookshelf. I was dusting the books one morning and I found this "The No.1 Bestseller" on the second shelf. I have no memory of buying it or receiving it (or stealing it!). So I figured that it was in my hands for a reason - for me to read it NOW.

Normally authors write books and then go on a promotional tour. In this case, the author, Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, gave his "Last Lecture" at the University. It was a fun and poignant lecture since Pausch had been told he had only 3-6 months to live after detection of pancreatic cancer. He was 47 years old. The lecture became a huge hit with millions of viewers seeing it on the internet which then became a reason to put his inspiring words into a book with the help of Jeffrey Zaslow. The book is now a major bestseller and continues to influence people 3 years after the death of the author.

The book begins with Pausch making an unlikely statement "I won the parent lottery" referring to his good luck at being born to parents who brought him up with the right values and support to help him move ahead in life while keeping him firmly grounded. The speech was about achieving your childhood dreams. For Pausch it included experiencing zero gravity, playing football and being a Disney imagineer among others. In a self-deprecating humorous narration, Pausch tells us the stories of how achieved (or did not achieve) all the dreams but shares the lessons he learned while pursuing them. He tells stories of his teachers, mentors and students who he has enabled to achieve their own dreams. In a non-preachy manner we get nuggets of wisdom which were either passed on him, or are cliches that work or gems that he has gleaned from his experiences.

All the humor comes with an underlying tone of sadness but at no point do we feel "you poor thing" for Pausch. All that comes through is his earnest wish to pass on a part of what he feels are lessons for his 3 young children who will not have a father as they grow up, to the larger audience that he is ostensibly addressing in his last speech. So the speech is really about "how to live your life".

I went on to watch the Youtube speech after finishing the book and it is easy to see why the speech has been so phenomenally successful. Pausch is handsome, persuasive and completely in control. The amazing optimism and sense of awe and gratitude for his life is clearly evident in his narration as well as the tremendous passion for life and family.

Should you read "The Last Lecture"? Absolutely yes. If you are not a reader, watch the video.

Last Man in Tower - Book Review

Vishram Society located in Vakola is the ideal target for ambitious developer Dharmen Shah - a crumbling society with two towers, close enough to the Mumbai domestic airport to be a desirable location with jaded occupants eager to lap up the offer of a lifetime. Thus begins the saga of the residents of Tower A as each apartment owner begins salivating at the unbelievable amount of money, upto Rs. 20,000 per dilapidated square foot that holds the promise of transporting their lives into realms that were beyond their imagination. Adiga introduces us to the characters who have lived in communal harmony, sharing meals and tears over the years of living in close proximity to each other.

Mrs. Rego (Batteleship), the Saldanhas, and the Pintos represent the dominant local Christian community of Vakola while Ibrahim Kudwa and his happy family lends the diversity touch. Mrs. Puri, a friend of the late Purnima, wife of retired Masterji, Yogesh Murthy is the key character who drives the residents towards freedom from Vishram, as she aspires for a better life with the money from the sale which can go towards paying for the care of her eighteen year old mentally challenged son. The central character of Masterji, who joins the Pintos in their dissent is etched beautifully by Adiga. The outdated idealogy with his rigid views about people, sharply contrasts with his sentimental memories of his wife and emphasizes the divide with his son. There is a point early on in the novel where Masterji remembers his wife's words "A man is like a goat tied to a pole. You may have free will but only so much." Those words ring true when the momentum builds up as the deadline provided by the builder for residents to accept the generous offer approaches.

All the characters are portrayed as flawed individuals, each responding to their own circumstances, including the characters of the apparently ruthless but physically sick developer Shah and his "left-hand man" Shanmugham. The evolution of the idealists in Vishram from nay-sayers to eager aides as they deviously plan to get Masterji to agree happens gradually and in the process some unexpected surprises are thrown from the stereotypical secretary Kothari and the wily broker Advani. As Masterji faces one challenge after another in his solitary battle once the Pintos succumb to threats of physical violence, the callous nature of the law, the silence of the media and the connivance of his son, you feel terribly for the lone crusader. You almost wish he would turn pragmatic and choose to live even if the money was inconsequential to him. The end is almost pre-decided but still catches you by surprise. After baring the heart of maximum city, Adiga shows how heartless it can be. As a Mumbaikar I may wish otherwise but the taste of betrayal lingers long after the book it put down.

Potpourri - Book Review

I am glad that the first Ruskin Bond book I read is actually a collection of "choicest stories from the treasure trove of the indisputable master story teller." The book features all the styles of writing that Bond is known for - ghost stories, memoir pieces, short stories - filled with love or comedy, poems and traditional tales. And what great fun it is to discover a wonderful new writer, new to me, but one who has stuck to his craft for decades, before finally finding recognition.

The ghost stories, are really short but filled with minimal detail, leaving the rest to the imagination of the reader while igniting that sinking, scared feeling in the pit of your stomach. I particularly enjoyed "Gone Fishing" and "The Overcoat". The love stories "Binya Passes By" and "Love and Cricket" are tenderly narrated. The very short story "Girl on the train" has a twist you just don't see coming while "Eyes of the cat" and "A Face in the Dark" are chilling tales.

The memoir pieces "Escape from Java" and "Our Great Escape" are lovely, told lovingly without pretension. The comedy pieces are real treats, "The Zigzag Walk" and "At Sea with Uncle Ken" being my favorite stories.

This book features the now well-known "Susanna's Seven Husbands", the story that gave the idea for "Saat Khoon Maaf" starring Priyanka Chopra as Susanna. Its not the best story in the book and I can't tell you how the movie compares.

The real gems are the poems and I leave you with one to think about. But not before I insist that you read this book, whether you have read Ruskin Bond before this or not.

"Do You Believe in Ghosts?"

"Do you believe in ghosts?"
Asked the passenger
On platform number three
"I'm a rational man," said I,
"I believe in what I can see-
Your hands, your feet, your beard!"
"Then look again," said he,
And promptly disappeared!

Custody - Book Review

Manju Kapur has been described on the book cover as "the great chronicler of the modern Indian family". I know that she has done that in her previous books, Difficult Daughters and Home. Those books were family sagas, in fact "Home" reminded me of the long-drawn TV serial "Buniyaad" from a couple of decades ago. Custody is her take on contemporary urban Indian life and the shaking of the great institution of the traditional Indian family.

The book is about the disintegration of the marriage of the upwardly mobile Raman Kaushik, rising executive in a global beverage company. His stunningly beautiful wife, Shagun falls for his dynamic boss, Ashok Khanna, ex-pat extraordinaire, sent to rescue the company bottomline in India. The narrative cursorily describes the comfortable marital life of the Kaushiks, blessed with two gorgeous children, 8-year old Arjun and 2-year old Roohi, with extended family of grandparents living within reach but without the suffocating joint-family situation more commonly described in such family tales.

Most of the book is devoted to the years after the discovery of Shagun's infidelity by Raman using a detective agency for proof and the impact of Shagun's leaving, with her kids, to her lover's home. The chaos of the altered domestic scenario is captured realistically through the eyes of young Arjun; the disapproving but silent suffering of Mrs. Sabharwal, Shagun's helpless mother and the vicious comments of Raman's angry mother. Shagun takes the kids away one day and while all she wants is a divorce, Raman refuses to give in, filing for custody instead, with the help of his obliging lawyer cousin who leads a perfectly peaceful family life in comparison. When Shagun realizes that the only way to secure her freedom from Raman is to give him custody of the kids, she calmly gives them away, retaining visitation rights during holidays. In the meantime, the smart Arjun starts avoiding school in order to gain his mother's attention but ends up in an all-boys, elite boarding school in Dehradun, a spot he secures due to the fact that Ashok Khanna, the new man in her mother's life is an alumnus of the prestigious institution.

Somewhere midway through the book enters Ishita, a wronged bahu of a family that sends her back to her maternal home when they find out that she is unable to conceive due to a childhood illness which was not disclosed at the time of the arranged marriage. Initially Ishita is shown as a weak woman who finally finds a purpose in her life when she begins assisting a neighbor with her school for street children. Just as you start rooting for Ishita's independent streak, a bitter Raman struggling with the full-time care of two-year old Roohi enters Ishita's life. Conveniently for the story, the senior Mrs. Kaushik and Ishita's mother are neighbors and friends, bemoaning their respective fates that has brought divorce into the lives of their precious children.

And as Shagun builds her life as the glamorous trophy-wife of a business tycoon, Raman marries Ishita, assured that she will provide the motherly love and attention that his daughter needs. As the days pass, Arjun, an occasional visitor during holidays, en route to New York, causes unhappiness to Ishita as he seeks to poison his sister's mind by reminding her of her "real Mom". And therein starts the new equation in Raman's life, as the couple make up excuse after excuse to not send Roohi to New York at the court appointed visitation times. Arjun makes the trips alone and a vengeful Shagun ensures that Arjun does not get to see Raman, tit for tat, for keeping her daughter away. Between the two women in his life, Raman is torn between doing the right thing for his children versus doing the right thing for Ishita. He ultimately pays a price for keeping the semblance of a functional family at least for Roohi, a resolution that Ishita is only too pleased with and one that Shagun has to bear, as a punishment for her choice.

The book's strength lies in the strong story line and an unsentimental approach to the telling of it. But the main characters, Shagun, Raman and Ashok seem to be one-dimensional creatures with no nuances to mark their individuality. Shagun is a beauty, Ashok is the brilliant boss and Raman is a hard-working regular guy trying to rise through the ranks through his sincerity and hard work. Ishita for while seemed interesting as she came into her own following her divorce but quickly becomes a caricature wife, this time clinging to her only hope of motherhood, as the mother to Roohi. All the women fall into typical stereotypes, the anguished Mrs. Sabharwal, an accessory to her daughter's crimes, one who loses a good son in Raman, her daughter to Ashok and the grandchildren in the battle. Shagun appears the superficial gold-digger, looking for an excitement that matches her beauty, gratifying herself even as she is aware of its consequences. Other than the physical/financial aspects, it is not quite clear what forms the basis of her attraction and subsequent marriage to Ashok. Ishita is only too happy to ditch her new-found independence as a teacher of the slum children, once Raman proposes marriage. It is as if any other aspect of a woman's personality is of no consequence once defined by marriage and motherhood, in spite of previous trauma in that department.

Perhaps Manju Kapur has honestly chronicled the lives to today's Indian woman. But it does not give much hope for the masses.

One Amazing Thing - Book review

Nine people are trapped in the basement of a building in an unnamed American city. This group of strangers are bound together for an unspecified period of time due to the earthquake that traps them in an unlikely place - the Indian consulate office. With this interesting premise, Chitra Banerjee brings together people of various races, religion, age and economic backgrounds to rally around their shared fate of being forced to stay together while they await rescue or death. The strange situation of spending time in a dark gloomy about-to-collapse building, makes the usually reticent strangers divulge their secret stories to a willing audience that amicably suspends judgement as it listens intently to each of them in turn.

Chitra Banerjee has woven together a reasonably plausible plot to explain the reasons for the stereotypical characters to want to visit India in spite of their apparent lack of connection to the country or their reluctance to do so, as the case may be. So we have Cameron, the African American ex-military man, a well-heeled Caucasian couple, the Pritchetts, a Chinese grandmother (Jiang) with a surly teenager granddaughter Lily, Tariq an angry Muslim boy, Uma a young single woman, and the two Indians from India - the consulate employees Malathi and Mangalam, taking turns to spill their stories into a room where a leaking water source starts flooding the floor, parts of the ceiling collapse and their hopes of rescue decline with each tale that is told.

I have read many of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's books and I am impressed with her writing style. The prose is poetic and her metaphors are unique, underlining the beauty of each observation. But her strength has been in writing for a predominantly American audience and her stories border on a magic realism underpinning to narratives that superficially appear to be about contemporary issues. This hybrid genre unique to Indian writers writing about India from their location based in Western societies has spawned many authors and Banerjee is at the forefront among them. While she has been prolific in creating diverse narratives, this book is different from her usual formula. With the key ingredient of "exotic" India missing from the stories within the larger story, the book is at best a half-baked attempt to link what might have been better presented as a collection of short stories instead of a homogenous novel.

The individual characters don't seem like real people and the disjointed tales serve no larger purpose of moving the story forward. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the ending which really is neither an ending nor a reasonable denouement for a novel. Although an attempt to explain the title is made in the last few pages, it fails to register. The book is not in the same realm as any of Banerjee's previous writings and appears to a half-hearted and shoddy attempt at publishing within a deadline.

Marrying Anita - Book Review

As the title suggests, this is a memoir of the time period spent by author Anita Jain in India. In her early thirties, Anita takes up a job in New Delhi and returns to the land her father left, coincidentally at the same age to seek their fortune in America. But Anita. a Harvard-educated, well-traveled, independent woman, comes to India for a different reason - to find a husband.

Anita's journalist background is displayed both in her writing skills and her analysis of the India of the new millennium in the chapters that describe her on-off relationship with India in the years of growing up in USA. Her self-proclaimed " A quest for love in the New India", as the byline reads on the cover page of book that shows a pair of hands covered with mehendi leads Anita towards several young people. While she finds many kindred souls, particularly when it comes to consuming copious amounts of alcohol and cigarettes, even hashish, in the racy bars of Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida, they all seem to fall short of her requirements for a spouse.

Along the way we meet many characters including the couple who host her during her first days in the capital, Nandini, a small town girl gone wild in the freedom provided by the metropolis, Anita's parents and their relatives, her outspoken maid Chandra and some other unique characters like the members of a band and members of the gay fraternity. In terms of prospective grooms, she comes close to a couple of guys but for some reason things don't materialize to the much-awaited four words "Will you marry me?"

Anita candidly shares considerable details of the lives and motivations of her parents immigrant experience as well as her own life as a single woman who gets tired of her dating fiascos in New York city. There are way too many details of her interactions with men of many nationalities and the complicated rituals of the dating scene which only fosters greater emptiness in Anita. While we feel sorry for her unfortunate dalliances, Anita comes across as a bold woman not afraid to share her growing desperation at her loneliness.

The book reminded me of a work of fiction "Sharmila's Book" by Bharti Kirchner where a woman comes to Delhi to marry a suitable boy but ends up marrying someone else instead. I did not much like the novel for its superficial treatment and point of view which was written for a Western audience. At times, I thought of "Eat Pray Love" one of my favorite books in the memoir genre about a woman's year of soul-searching with the specific intent of not being with a guy. Though not of the same caliber as Eat Pray Love, this book certainly is an honest investigation and analysis of the reality of finding a mate in these days of internet matrimonial portals and global range of choices.

At the end, Anita is not looking for a bigger pool to choose from, but like everyone else, she is looking for one soul mate. And I wish her well as her quest continues.