justbooks connect - february 2011 newsletter

Should I do the unthinkable? Startwith ChetanBhagat, that is.

Who could ignorehim as bestsellerstatus, overflowingprint runs and(Three) Idiot-basedcontroversy doggedhis unweary pen.So is he a genius ora scambag, a sign ofdwindling IQ or our hope for a new kindof reader? The jury's still out but nobodycan deny that where there is literary dis-cussion, there is Bhagat's name poppingup either in admiration or bewilderment.Other talked-about writers includedRana Dasgupta, whose Solo won theCommonwealth Writers Prize. An epictale told by a centenarian in Bulgaria,Solo has all the key ingredients for liter-ary frolic-blindness, music, talking par-rots and the making of a nation. ManuJoseph's Serious Men made waves andbagged the Hindu Literary Award whilein non-fiction Raghuram Rajan's FaultLines got the Goldman Sachs Award forBest Book.

Fiction Genre

Genre fiction lookedup with two excit-ing novels pub-

lished towards the end ofthe year. Samit Basu'sTurbulence and Bangalorewriter Zac O'Yeah's Once

Upon A Time inS c a n d i n i v i s t a n .Turbulence is a rollercoaster ride throughsuperhuman country withcrime-fighting and realityTV thrown in whileO'Yeah's book is a clever,funny crime novel set in aSweden colonised byAsians. A little further afield, ChinaMiéville's Kraken had a scary squid try-ing to crush London in its tentacles.Miéville also came to town to do a read-ing of his work and engaged in a livelydiscussion with young writers from thecity.

eBooks

Elsewhere in the world, ebooksbecame big.A m a z o n ' s

Kindle was followedby others includingthe Apple iPadwhich seems gearedfor cult status.Clicking replacedflipping. Some peo-ple forgot that onceupon a time, book-marks were made of paper.

On its peak day this holiday sea-son, Amazon's worldwide fulfil-ment network shipped over ninemillion units across all product cate-gories, roughly 158 items per sec-ond.(Reviewsofelectronics.comDecember 2010). But India refusedto bite.

High prices and lack of savvywere cited as reasons. People are

optimistic that this will change. Me? I'mgetting new bookshelves made.

Book Fairs

As of now, the printed book powerson. Book Fairs continued to spellhope even as a bookshop like

Crossword dismayingly marketed itselfas 'beyond books'. (A temple of com-merce clearly needs ...

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Volume 1 Issue 12www.justbooksclc.comblog.justbooksclc.com

February 2011 For limited circulation

A Justbooks Publication

contd on pg 2...

Anindita Sengupta

2 JustBooks Connect - February 2011

From the Editor’s Desk

2011 is here, and so are the pub-lisher's list giving us a peek intowhose book will be out when.

Here are some of the fiction books tolook forward to this year mainlybecause of their authors: River ofSmoke by Amitav Ghosh,Embassytown by China Mieville,Collected Short Fiction by V.SNaipaul, The Summer without Menby Siri Hustvedt, Last Man In Towerby Aravind Adiga, Narcopolis by JeetThayil, The Widow's Story by JoyceCarol Oates, Point of Return bySiddartha Deb, Ithaca by DavidDavidar, The Mountain Shadow byGregory David Roberts. Idea Man byPaul Allen, The TCS Story AndBeyond by Ramadorai and PaulTaylor, To a Mountain in Tibet byColin Thubron, Redesigning YourLife by Porus Munshi, Hunger InIndia by Harsh Mander, The TellTale Brain by V S Ramachandran,Training the Mind by Dalai Lama aresome non-fictional works that mightinterest our members.JustBooks will have these titles avail-able in all its branches as soon as theyhit the market in India. So do markthese titles in your reading queue andlook out for the reviews fromJustBooks Literary team.

Coming to the literary happenings,last month we had two important lit-erary festivals of South Asia. First, itwas "greatest literary show on earth"-our own Jaipur lit. Fest, which had themovers and shakers of the literaryworld [220 writers in total] descend-ing on Diggi palace for five days of lit-erary and cultural events.

New writers and books wereunveiled; Bhasha writers shared thelimelight with the known and famousfrom the English world and interna-tional writers were the taste of the fes-tival. As soon as the curtain fell onJaipur Lit Fest, it was time for Galle,Sri Lanka to welcome many of theseliterary figures and start the Galle lit-erary festival.

Lastly we lost one of our greatestHindustani vocalists in PanditBhimsen Joshi. His life and his strug-gles to attain the perfection wereinspirational. To know more abouthim and his life check out: BhimsenJoshi: A Passion For Music by AbhikMajumdar and Bhimsen Joshi: ABiography by Mohan Nadkarni.

We look forward to your commentsand feedback at [email protected]

Happy reading !

idols more lasting.) Speaking of worship,the Bangalore Book Fair drew heavycrowds and spiritual books were much indemand-and supply. Islamic publicationsvied with ISKCON and all things consid-ered, it was God's day out. The 16th DelhiBook Fair, on the other hand, got gung-hoabout children's literature with a 100 of 260publishers setting up stalls with children'sbooks.

Poetry Festivals

The other bit of good news is thatdespite frequent death knells, poetrysurvived. India now has not one, but

two poetry festivals dedicated to poetry.The Hyderabad Literary Festival debutedin November with close to a hundred poetsreading over three days. Organised byonline literary journal Muse India, the fes-tival had the support of the government.There are keen hopes for it. 'Poetry WithPrakriti' which takes place in Chennaievery December, continued to take poetryinto cafes, schools, book shops and cloth-ing stores.

Meanwhile, poetry slams proliferated-the 'Open Mic' night at Kyra in Indiranagarand 'Tuesdays with the Bard' at UrbanSolace Cafe in Ulsoor are open to anyonewho wants to get poetic in public. Thesevenues encourage openness about poetryand a diversity of styles. They're crucial tothe growth of performance poetry, some-thing that has so far been ignored in thecountry. Among interesting poetry booksreleased this year were Collected Poems ofArun Kolatkar edited by Arvind KrishnaMehrotra, Keki Daruwalla's CollectedWorks, and Eunice D'Souza's Necklace ofSkulls. Younger poets also published theirworks including Sampurna Chattarjee, CPSurendran and Meena Kandasamy. Now ifonly it was easier to find poetry books instores.

Literary Blogs

Reading poetry-and other literature-became easier to do online with liter-ary blogs of all manner, size and

shape causing much excitement. Ranging

from established blogs like writerChandrahas Choudhury's Middle Stage tonew journals like Pyrtajournal.com andOutofprintmagazine.co.in to all-out bilin-gual bonhomie on Pratilipi.in-the lit blog-ger was in the news. So much so that lastmonth's Jaipur Lit Fest is dedicating ses-sions to literary blogging. And they aregoing to have two seminars on Hindiblogs.

Vernacular

Because, yes, the other star of theJaipur Lit Fest was the vernacular.Indian languages are intensely in the

limelight and there's a pretty spread ofthem at the fest including Hindi, Urdu,Sanskrit, Tamil, Bangla, Asomiya(Assamese), Oriya, Gujarati, Malayalam,Kashmiri, Punjabi, Nepali, Bhojpuri andRajasthani.

This is because in the past six years, thefestival has seen more and more indige-nous writing from India, in vernacular lan-guages and through translations. Withpublishers waking up to the potential oftranslated works, languages are crisscross-

ing territory and readership. URAnanthamurthy's Bharatipura (translatedby Susheela Punitha), which looks at preju-dice and change, was released last year aswere new translations of three novellas byRabindranath Tagore, and veteran Tamilwriter Asokamitran's Manasarovar.

In related news, UR Anathamurthy wasalso appointed Tagore Professor byIGNOU and he is head of the new TagoreCentre in Bangalore. One hopes to seesome exciting literary activity there thisyear.

contd from pg 1...

Afourteen-year-old girl, Durga, is the solesurvivor of the landed and well-respect-ed Atwal Jat family. Thirteen family

members are found poisoned and stabbed todeath. Although Durga is found raped, brutal-ized and chained to a chair, as the sole survivorshe is the only suspect. The earlier mysteriousdisappearance of Durga's elder sister Shardahas already cast a shadow over the family.

Simran, a Delhi-based NGO worker believes that Durga is thevictim of the crime rather than its perpetrator. She combsprovincial Jullundar, questioning its inhabitants to try andsolve the mystery.

Witness the NightKishwar DesaiHarper Collins

Geetanjali Singh Chanda

Unheard Voices - Stories of Forgotten LivesHarsh ManderPenguin

Unheard Voices is a collection of twentytrue stories of misery and apathy onone hand and of courage and fortitude

on the other. Harsh Mander started document-ing these when he worked in the IndianAdministrative Service in the predominantlytribal states of Madhya Pradesh andChattisgarh. He says it as he sees it. There is

neither any interpretation nor any judging. Any conclusion tobe drawn is left to the reader. And do not assume that it is abook for people in the 'social' or 'development' sector. This is abook about the real India in the 21st century. It is far from thehigh rise buildings, the latest electronic gizmos, the high-endcars and the never-ending rat race of the corporate world.

Aradhana Janga

The Beauty MythNaomi WolfVintage Books

In her compelling book, The Beauty Myth,writer, gender rights activist and Rhodesscholar, Naomi Wolf lays bare some startling

facts about how women are driven to an obses-sion with having an attractive and if possible,arresting physical appearance and looking pret-ty.

The Beauty Myth is a remarkable book inwhere Naomi Wolf reveals many unknown truths regarding themanner in which women are coerced into possessing and main-taining a stunning physique and being beautiful externally.

Quoting historical narratives, she traces the different ways inwhich women have been suppressed and discriminated againstthroughout ancient and modern times.

Pushpa Achanta

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on PerformanceAtul GawandePenguin

Surgeon Atul Gawande in his bookpoints out that paying detailed attentionto simple things, thinking creatively to

solve complex problems, and willingness torecognize and reflect on failures can helprefine and improve performance amidstunending variety of obstacles.

The author has traveled the world in searchof excellence. He says most aspiring achievers strive to performbetter. He reveals that there is room for improvement if there isthe willingness to measure outcomes as well as the discipline tochange. Merely grasping the concepts alone does not lead toperformance. It is about applying the concept at the right timewith the specific resources.

Manjula Sundharam

Bazaars, Conversations And Freedom: For AMarket Culture Beyond Greed And FearRajni BakshiPenguin

This book deservedly won two VodafoneCrossword awards in 2009- one in non-fiction and another in popular category.

Bazaars evoke in our minds places, stories, gos-sip and conversations in direct face to faceexchanges of goods and services.In contrast, the 'free market' is an abstract ideawhich separates exchange from other aspects of

life. Price is its only measure of value. The author's quest is triggered by the question of why strugglesfor economic and ecological justice often seem to fail when con-fronted with the 'market'.

Dr. Rajagopalan

Tiger HillsSarita MandannaPenguin

Sarita Mandanna's Tiger Hills apparentlygot the largest advance ever paid byPenguin India for a debut novel which

created quite a hype around it in publishingcircles and otherwise. Set in Coorg, TigerHills is the story of three characters, Devi,Machu and Devanna, whose lives and lovesclash and connect in different ways. It is alsothe story of Coorg, a land of breathtakingbeauty and unique customs told through the

passage of different generations. What makes the book work isMandanna's vivid description of Coorg, its land and social cus-toms and the way she tells the story.

Reshmi Chakraborty

JustBooks Connect - February 2011 3

For detailed reviews check out justbooksclc.com


Of Romance and Loss in the CityBook Review

The plot is always fairly pre-dictable for the romance,chic-lit genre - girl finds

and falls in love with seductivebut entirely un-suitable boy.Many thrills and heartaches laterhe is shown up for the cad he is.

Meanwhile the often intimidat-ing and silent hero who has beenwaiting in the wings, steps up andtrue love is revealed. Keep TheChange is no different and thedenouement of the plot holds no sur-prises. The choice of title is not alwaysthe prerogative of the author but thistitle seems particularly inexplicable andirrelevant to the story.

Nirupama Subramanian transforms amundane narrative by her wicked wit,effortless writing style and wonderfulimages.

At one point Damayanthi teases heranxious mother about having to sharebeds as part of the cost cutting measuresin the new job and describes her motherspluttering "like mustard seeds in hot oil".The narrative is peppered with such local,domestic images that immediately res-onate. She nicely captures her mother'scontinuing anxiety about finding a suit-able "tam brahm" (Tamilian Brahmin) boyand her equally adamant resistance tosuch a match. She, however, cannotentirely escape being subject to a coupleof arranged meetings and is duly shownoff at social occasions but manages toescape entrapment by match-making'Maami's.

The narrative consists of a series of sup-posed "letters" or diary-style entriesaddressed to "Vic". One assumes that Vicor Victoria is a sort of pen-pal who livesabroad. But we are not told who this Vicis till almost the end of the novel.Damyanthi "explains" various aspects ofIndian life, such as the obsession withmarriage in these epistles to Vic in some

detail. And sometimes compares theirvery different lives - not a very convinc-ing ploy but it works well enough, till wediscover who Vic is. And that is a bit of alet down. A little more psychologicalinsight into why that particular personawas chosen would have been interestingbut leaving the deeper meanings of thatchoice to reader's imagination might haveits merits.

The "asides" are one of themost charming anda m u s i n g

parts of thenarrative.

Damyanthi recounts her conversationswith various people like her mother, orher boss, or the seductive Rahul but oftenthere are two simultaneous conversa-tions going on. One what she actuallysays and the other the "Little Voice",which is not quite the angel over theshoulder providing good counsel but awicked voice that articulates the sharpand sarcastic responses that Damayanthiwould like to give. The humour keeps thenovel bubbling and fun as well as funny.

Damayanthi notes the enormity of hermove from Chennai to "sin city" Mumbai.She aptly says, "I think India is the onlycountry in the world where you can get cul-ture shock after traveling 100 km from wher-ever you are."

And the move to Mumbai does forceDamayanthi to rethink and modify herpreviously held notions. Her mother'sparting advice to her is to be good butwhat does being "good" really mean in achanged environment? Damayanthiwants to be good but more than that shealso wants to have a good time and livelife to the fullest. That, in Mumbai,involves alcohol and sex - taboo for a"good girl". Can a woman with a tra-ditional and uncool name likeDamayanthi transcend the confinesof a strict upbringing and, moreimportantly, does she want to? Asher wardrobe changes from saristo mini-skirts do her moral stan-dards also change?

Although the American tele-vision serial "Sex and the City"is the common meetingground for Damayanthi andSonya, she gradually real-izes that not only can shenot be Sonya but also thatshe does not really wantto be Sonya.

Her awakening is toself-acceptance and tothe realization that the

man she finally chooses isnot necessarily Rahul who made her

feel attractive and wanted but CG who,like her, is more conservative and who isinterested in her as a person.

There are no immediate passionate fire-works with CG but there is an ease ofbeing, a real conversation and laughter.The light banter and sharing that markstheir relationship feels much more every-day and normal.

The real attraction of Keep the Changeis its very local flavour even in the men-tion of details like Damayanthi's diet oftamarind rice. The protagonist, thoughgiven to rapturous flights of fancy, iscompletely ironic and humorously self-aware even while she narrates her fan-tasies. Her traditional, middle classupbringing firmly grounds her and thepractical streak of her character ensuresthat she finds the right balance of what itmeans to be good in any circumstance.

Geetanjali Singh Chanda

Keep The Change

Nirupama SubramanianHarper Collins

“The real attraction of Keepthe Change is its very localflavour even in the mention ofdetails like Damayanthi'sdiet of tamarind rice.”


Book Review

Medium Raw is meant to be asequel to Kitchen Confidential,the book that made a star out of

Anthony Bourdain. So while he was thebad boy chef in Kitchen Confidentialspilling out the dirty secrets of the foodand beverage industry to the other side,Medium Raw is best described as midlife score settlement and several candidconfessions in his inimitable style.

It's also about food and the industrythat revolves around it. Bourdain is at hisbest when describing spectacular epi-curean experiences, especially anythingbordering on the exotic and slightly sick-ening.

He starts off with an amazing prologueon eating Ortolan, a rare bird that's actu-ally illegal to eat in France, where it'sfound. Whether you find the experienceof eating the bird (served in its entirety,beaks intact) gross or fascinating dependson your culinary inclinations but whatmakes it worth reading is the wayBourdain describes it. The details arephotogenic and enthralling and he showsus again why he's the master of sensualfood writing.

The rest of the chapters are somewhatrandom but what they all share is thewriter's cutting edge honesty andhumour, starting with Selling Out wherehe candidly admits that he would have"given Oprah a back rub and a bikini wax,had she asked me when her people called.

Fifty-five thousand copies a minute-everyminute Oprah's talking about your book. Iknow few authors who wouldn't."

As with all his writing, Bourdain is aman who gets personal. He talks of livingthe reckless life in the Caribbean after thebreakup of his first marriage, staring evilin the face and feeling the need thatsomething had to change.

He talks of becoming 'uncool' after thebirth of his daughter, as he takes her fordance lessons, of cunning plotting thatonly parents do to keep her away fromRonald McDonald. The getting personalbit stretches to his contemporaries in thefood business as well and Bourdain's penis suitably acidic when it comes to peoplehe may have some grudging respect forbut doesn't particularly like.

These range from Alice Waters of ChezPanisse for whom Bourdain seems toshare a spectacular grudge to a chapterdedicated to his Heroes and Villains fromthe food industry to food critic AlanRichman who gets a memorably titledchapter called Alan Richman is aDouchebag.

Now here's where Bourdain lost me.

Even if you are up to your neck withknowledge about the restaurant industryin US and its top stars, which many of ushere are not, all that juvenile name callingdoes get tiresome after a while. It's truethat his Kitchen Confidential too was abehind the scenes memoir of New Yorkrestaurants, but the reason it struck achord with global readers was its noholds barred, absolutely entertainingdescription of the drama that went onbehind the kitchen doors. The grit, gripe,grime, all of it out on display and writtenin a style that held you in and didn't letyou go until finish.

Reading Medium Raw makes youwonder if Bourdain wrote this book forthe average international reader or foodindustry insiders. The saving grace is thathe's as hard on himself as he is with oth-ers, never taking his fame too seriously.However, except for a few chapters thatshine through (like Lust where hedescribes his extraordinary food experi-ences across the world or Meat, a plea forthe original, ammonia-free hamburger)Medium Raw feels like a raw woundoften, needing a bit of dressing.

Reshmi Chakraborty

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentineto the World of Food and thePeople Who Cook

Anthony BourdainBloomsbury

Mixed flavours and candid tales

Adaptation of books into movieshave almost always resulted incontroversies. The writer, fuelled

by his imagination, uses all his dexterityand ingenuity to weave a plot, buildcharacters, chooses a particular style ofnarrative and finally takes the story to itslogical conclusion. However, during theadaptation, the cineworld known for itsconceitedness, ends up taking cinematicliberties with the content, resulting inego clashes.

Of late, the produc-ers, directors havestarted insisting thatthe writer be involvedin the creative aspectof the movie so thatany changes in theadaptation are donewith the consent of thewriter. Whether thewriter has the freedomto voice his opinion ispurely a matter of con-jecture. In the contro-versy surrounding themovie "Three Idiots",based on ChetanBhagat's Five Point Someone , one gotthe impression that Chetan was almostreduced to a pariah. Luckily for him, heis a columnist in the Times of India andso he used that clout to his advantage.The controversy also resulted in a surgein the sales of Five Point Someone.Despite the star quotient, the movie OneNight @ The Call Centre (based onChetan's second novel) tanked at the boxoffice.

Sometimes when the movie becomes astupendous success, the writer feelsshort changed with the compensationawarded to him. R K Narayan was notonly furious about the cinematic libertiestaken with his novel The Guide (theEnglish version of the movie had somesteamy bedroom scenes involvingWaheeda Rehman and Dev Anand; thiswas thanks to the involvement of the cel-ebrated writer Pearl S Buck who wrotethe screenplay for the English version).But, Narayan also fumed at the paltrysums the debonair Dev Anand gave him.J. Jayalalitha's novel Uravin Kaidhigal(The Prisoners of Relationship), seri-alised in the Tamil magazine Kalki in the80's, seemed to have taken inspirationfrom the 1975 Bollywood movie “Prem

Shastra” (featuringDev Anand andZeenat Aman).Sivasankari andIndumathi, the cel-ebrated Tamil nov-elists, wrote the

controversial novelErandu Per (TwoPeople) which wasbased on the sexualfantasies of a house-wife with an amateurphotographer. Shades

of Aparna Sen's“Paroma”? Tamilwriter Sujata hastime and againlamented the wayhis stories (Gayatri,Priya, KaraiyellamSenbagapoo) werebutchered by direc-tors. AnuradhaRamanan caused afurore among theorthodox TamilBrahmin communi-ty for her storiesKootu Puzhukkal( C l o i s t e r e d

Worms) and Chirai (Jail), both of whichwere adapted into successful movies.

Then there are the classic movies basedon the story ideas from RabindranathTagore (Kabuliwallah, Choker Bali),Sarat Chandra Chatterjee (Devdas,Parineeta), Premchand (Godan, BirajBahu). Maverick film maker VishalBharadwaj made a wonderful moviecalled The Blue Umbrella based onRuskin Bond's story. Amrita Pritam'sKadambari starring Shabana Azmi wasanother classic. The 70's Bollywoodsuperhit "Do Raste" starring RajeshKhanna and Mumtaz was based onChandrakant Kakodkar's Marathi novelNeelambari.

There have been court cases involvingwriters and producers where the latterhave denied the writers credit for the sto-ryline or suitable compensation. Writersare known to be fastidious and eccentric.So, this also exacerbates the issue.


Reader’s Contribution

Young book lover Ashish Victor shareshis thoughts on JustBooks, FrazerTown.

JustBooks is the most innovative andcustomer-friendly library in mylocality.

I'm sure noother l ibraryw o u l d h a v ethought of get-ting a touchscreen comput-er for issuingand returningbooks.

I've been amember at theFrazer Townbranch since last April and I have thor-oughly enjoyed the reading experiencethat JustBooks has provided me. I find awide range of books for kids of all ages.The books are neatly covered and thebook marks inserted for our use is veryhelpful. I would however like to see a few moreadditions to the comic section. LuckyLuke is one such comic that I really liketo read and which is missing in thelibrary. I do hope to see the collection inthe near future; lest my mom continuesto grumble each time I buy them frombook stores!

On that cheerful note I wish JustBooksgood luck and hope to see many moreexciting additions to their shelves!

Ashish Victor, Age 11

Reader’sVoice

G Venkatesh

G Venkatesh lives in HAL stage III andworks for a private firm in IndiraNagar. He is a voracious reader and anamateur writer. Essentially aMumbaikar, he has shifted toBangalore a year ago. Music, Gardeningand Reading are his hobbies.

Illustrator of Tinkle magazine's Butterfingers and DefectiveDetectives,tall and talented, Abhijeet Kini was the guest at thevery first children's workshop conducted by JustBooks Nerul,

Navi Mumbai on January 15th.Abhijeet shared his experience of

having to illustrate the Butterfingersseries for Tinkle magazine. He hadinitially visualized the character ofKiran in the comic series as a girl. Itwas only when the editor of the mag-azine pointed out that the characterwas not a girl, did the illustratorremove the two ponytails of Kiranand turned him into a boy. Children were encouraged to drawtheir interpretation of happy faces onthe whiteboard. Since it was a comiccreation workshop, kids were askedto choose from funny super heroes or school as their theme. Theschool theme was chosen by a majority of the kids and some ofthem shared their funny classroom experiences. A particular storywas chosen among them to be converted into a comic. It was the

story of a girl who aimed apaper ball at her schoolteacher in the classroom.The teacher ended upyelling at the kid who wasseated on the first bench.Abhijeet made the session alively, interactive one.Laughter ruled in the roomas children gleefully dis-cussed all the yucky storyideas for comics-sewage,

potty and smelly socks. Resisting the lure of the music played in thenext room and disturbance created by pigeons flying overheadthreatening to drop their missiles on their notepads, the participantssuccessfully completed their task -a 'One page comic.'


1. This writer left instruc-tions not to publish hisautobiography until 100years after his death:Mark TwainSidney SheldonWilliam Wordsworth

2. Keshav Shankar Pillai foundedwhich publishing house:Karadi TalesKathaChildren's Book Trust

3. India: A Portrait is the latest book from:Patrick FrenchRamachandra GuhaJawahar Lal Nehru

4. Who is not a director of the DSC JaipurLiterature Festival:William DalrympleNamita GokhaleDavid Davidar

5. To The Point is an autobiogra-phy of:Hanse CronjeHerschelle GibbsJacques Kallis

JUSTBOOKSJUSTBOOKSTOP 5TOP 5

NNEWEW AARRIVALSRRIVALS1. The Lost Hero by RickRiordan2. Way to Go by UpamanyuChatterjee 3. Highway On My Plate byRocky Singh, Mayur Sharma4. Women & The Weight LossTamasha by Rujuta Diwekar5. Unbound: Indian Women @Work by Geeta Aravamudan

RRECOMMENDEDECOMMENDED1. The Imperfectionists byTom Rachman2. The Point of Return bySiddhartha Deb3. White Noise by Don Delillo 4. Bazaars, Conversations &Freedom by Rajni Bakshi5. The Edge of Reason by AnilAnanthaswamy

RRENTALSENTALS1. And TherebyHangs A Tale byJeffery Archer2. 2 States: The StoryOf My Marriage byChetan Bhagat3. Women & TheWeight Loss Tamasha by RujutaDiwekar 4. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown5. The Confession: A Novel by John Grisham

1. Mark Twain 2. Children's Book Trust 3. PatrickFrench 4.David Davidar 5. Herschelle Gibbs

JJUUSSTTBBOOOOKKSS EEVVEENNTTSSChildren's workshop at Nerul, Navi

Mumbai

The fracas over Rohinton Mistry'sBooker-nominated Such A LongJourney caused great upset in the

literary world. As many will know bynow, the book was part of the SYBA syl-labus for Mumbai University students.Aditya Thackeray, who is the youngestand latest member of the Shiv Sena,declared that the book was unaccept-able as course material because it con-tains offensive criticism of the ShivSena. Copies of the book were burned atcollege gates. The Vice-Chancellor ofMumbai University dropped the bookalmost overnight. Political leaders werequick to jump onto the finger-waggingbandwagon and Chief Minister ofMaharashtra Ashok Chavan called thebook "objectionable". Need I mention thathe had not read the book, only select bitsof it?

Set in Mumbai in the early seventies,the novel revolves around Gustad Noble,a Parsi bank clerk and his daily grind, hisneighbours and neighbourhood.

Published in 1991, it won the GovernorGeneral's Award, the CommonwealthWriters Prize for Best Book, and wasshortlisted for the Booker Prize and forthe Trillium Award. It has been translatedinto several languages.

The book is set against the politicalbackdrop of the time and includes refer-ences to the Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray.Since the speech of some characters ispeppered with expletives, theseinevitably find their way into such refer-ences.

Thackeray's protest hangs itself on the'abusive language' argument since in ourastoundingly prudish society we react to'bad language' with more virulence thanwe react to people dying of hunger. Thefact is that people of many communitiesdo use expletives while talking. Take alook at many Indian languages. Choiceabuses are part of daily slang. However,for a writer to make this part of his char-acter's language is 'objectionable'.Because, of course, it would be preferableto have them use only the Queen'sEnglish, always polite, always tasteful,never offensive. Never mind realism.

Thackaray helpfully points out that hehas not asked for the book to be banned,merely to be removed from syllabus. Thismeans nothing. To do a good book justice,

it must be read, studied and examined.Such A Long Journey definitely deservesthis sort of attention. To not allow this is adenial of the book's value.

Civil society has protested strongly tothe book bring dropped from syl-

labus. In a thoughtful response, Mistrypoints out that it is sad that the universityhas upheld such censorship. We knowthat right-wing parties ride on suchhooplah but what is troubling is thathigher education facilities seem to lackany procedural integrity.

It is easy for a book to give offence. In acountry as huge and-that cliché again-diverse as ours, throw a stone and you'llhit somebody's raw nerve. Better still,string a sentence.

Chances are you'll be stepping on some-one's religious, linguistic, economic, gen-der or caste sensitivities. Political partieshave added themselves to the list of eas-ily offendables.

It is a wonder that writers end up writ-ing anything at all, let alone anythinghonest, brave or valuable.

So the question of what constitutes'offence' is an important one. Is criti-

cism offensive? Is bad language offen-sive? What about when the bad lan-guage is utterly realistic, the way peo-ple would actually speak?

Secondly, one must ask whether abook can be worth studying even if itcauses offence to some party. Even if abook contains controversial opinions ormorals, should young people not betaught to engage with these issues inde-pendently? Should they not be encour-aged to debate and form their ownopinions? It is the job of literature class-rooms to teach people to think about abook.

If there were concerns about thepolitical opinions expressed in Such ALong Journey these could have beenencountered in the classroom, dis-cussed and debated. This would have

been in the spirit of freedom and honesty.What has happened instead is politicalbullying, rich kid tantrums and thought-less censorship.

Thirdly, what are the procedures ofresponse when someone protests againsta book as offensive? Who formulatesthese? Is it sufficient for bureaucrats orgovernment officials to be making choic-es about the artistic development of ouryouth? How are they trained or equippedto make decisions on finer points aboutart, ethics and the points where theyintersect?

Father Frazier, principal of St Xavier'sCollege where Thackeray studies,

wrote a strong response critiquing thisevent. The college itself is one thatencourages a great deal of freedom ofthought. But what is the point of individ-ual institutions doing their best to raiselevels when the authorities are intent ondumbing things down?

None of this is clear. Because the gov-ernment of India, like God, moves in mys-terious ways.


They move in mysterious waysAnindita Sengupta

Musings

This monograph on the EarlyChalukyan temples of Pattadakkalhas been authored by George

Michell, who did his doctoral disserta-tion on the Development of EarlyChalukya Art. One mustcommend the author, for anexcellent historical introduc-tion which he keeps short,simple and clear, while pack-ing it with useful and inter-esting information.

Having placed the monu-ments of Pattadakkal in theirgeographical and historicalcontext, the author describesthe relationship between theChalukyas and their neigh-bours to the east and thenorth viz. the Pallavas andthe rulers of the Deccan.

The Early Chalukyas wereinfluenced by the art of thePallavas and they in turninfluenced the art of theRashtrakutas, whilst borrow-ing from the earlier pre-Rashtrakuta artists from the Deccan.While political relations with thePallavas were confrontational and thereseems to have been a period of thirteenyears (642-55) in which the Pallavas, notonly killed the reigning monarch butalso occupied their then capital Vatapi(modern Badami), this ironically acceler-ated the flow of cultural and aestheticstimuli between the two regions.

Thus it is interesting to see the influ-ences of the Kailashanatha temple at

Kanchipuram, a Pallava structure of theearly 8th century on the ChalukyanVirupaksha temple at Pattadakkal, of aslightly later date, which in turn provid-ed the model for the gigantic monolith atEllora the Cave 16, also called theKailashanatha, initiated by theRashtrakuta King Krishna I (756-773).

Both Aihole and Pattadakkal are dis-tinctive sites in as much as we find the

architects experimenting with two sepa-rate styles of temple building, namelythe Nagara and the Dravida. As far asthe Dravida style is concerned, one findsearly examples of this kind of tower inthe monoliths of the Pallavas inMahabalipuram. Thus a Pallava influ-ence can be deduced on the Chalukyantemples. However, it is in Chalukya ter-ritory that the first structural temple isbuilt in the Dravida style. In that sensethe engineering part of making aDravida temple, calculating load bearingwalls etc could well have been aChalukyan contribution.

The author raises this interesting pointand points out to occasional idiosyn-

crasies where one feature from one style

is superimposed on the other leading tosome syncretistic features. Besides suchhybrids, there is a conscious mixture ofNagara and Dravida features in thePapanatha temple.

The author deals with the monumentsof Pattadakkal in the order in which atraveler visiting the site will see them.Hence Nagara and Dravida style tem-ples, which are often built next to eachother, are discussed in the order inwhich they can now be approached andnot with an eye to stylistic categoriza-tion. This makes it difficult to digest thevariations in the theme. In order tounderstand clearly the features of theNagara and Dravida styles and identifythe monuments and place them underone or the other category the reader isobliged to go back and forth flicking thepages. The style of describing the monu-

ments is often dry and pedantic. Whilethe author brings in monuments fromother related sights into his discussionand points out to several interesting fea-tures, the cross referencing is done inad-equately for the lay reader. A specialistno doubt can easily fill in the gaps.

Furthermore, he almost ignores anydiscussion on sculptural styles. He

refers in fair details to the iconographicprogramming of each temple. TheChalukyan sculptures are very differentfrom the Pallava sculptures. They aremore rounded, more dynamic, moreornamented and much more sensuousthan the Pallava sculptures which aresimple, elegant, restrainedly ornamentedand somehow somber and distant.

It is very rarely in the historyof Indian art that one gets thename of the architect or thesculptor. In this rare monu-ment several sculptors toohave engraved their names.Michell also analyses theKirtivarma inscription, whichprovides the clues to thechronology of the temples andwhile studying the list of royaldonors, one comes across thenames of several queens andladies of the court. He discuss-es in fair details ten templesfrom Pattadakkal, which is nomean achievement consideringthat the booklet is a mere nine-ty five pages including theglossary and the select bibliog-raphy.

Michell draws much of hismaterial from his disser-

tation. This probably accounts for thefact that it is hard to classify this slimbooklet either as an academic work onthe Early art history of the Chalukyas ora Guide Book for the lay traveler. Whilethe portable size, the light weight of thebook, the maps of the sites and diagramsof temples make it an ideal guide book,the writing style in places is too dry andacademic and presumes that the readerhas considerable knowledge of the sub-ject. Hence, the readership at whom thisis aimed seems a little ambivalent. Thisis particularly regrettable since there is apaucity of good guide books, not only onthe Pattadakkal temples but on EarlyChalukyan art in general, written withlay readership in mind. In spite of thisminor criticism it is well worth takingthis book on a trip to Pattadakkal.


Pattadakkal: MonumentalLegacy

George MichellOxford India

Hidden treasures of Indian art

Dr. Rajeshwari Ghose

Book Review


Bowled over at the stadium

Watching live cricket in India canbe easy and difficult. Easy,because you always have

options and you will most definitelykeep getting opportu-nities to watch a livegame and difficult,because you have tobrave the crowd andelements to actuallywatch it.

My first experiencewas relatively "easier"because I managed tobuy tickets on anonline portal. Mybelief that I had cir-cumvented the mostdifficult part simplyevaporated when Ilanded up at the stadi-um on D-Day morn-ing.

Adventure startswith parking yourvehicle. An army ofpolicemen and trafficcops around the stadi-um remind you of a riot-hit area. Afteryou have somehow "squeezed" yourvehicle in a small gap-in a ground oftwo football stadiums size-you have towalk a mile to reach the entry gates.

When I did reach the entrance, I wassurprised to see two different queues;One to get physical tickets against myonline booking and other for actualentry. Entry queue was running as fardown the road as one could see. Afterspending some moments gawking at themilling crowds, I sulkily joined a queue.

There were all kinds of people includ-ing children below three years andBurqa-clad women, waiting, jostling,trampling, pushing and pulling to get in.

Everyone there was united by cricket.Passion and patriotism ran through thecrowd like a wave. When I was waitingfor my turn, a silent man walking pastus to the back of the queue, suddenlyshouted "Bolo Bharat Matha Ki". Andthe whole queue erupted in unison,shouting "Jai".

The vendors at the venue and items

they are trying to sell were simplyamazing. It varied from groundnutsellers, tea shops, cigarette ven-dors, to Indian flags, head gear,hooters, t-shirts, to face painters,black-ticket sellers! Everybodyseemed to have landed up at thevenue at 6 am in the morningsensing the opportunity to make a

killing in profit.At the entry gate you have to deal

with intense security. You are frisked as"thoroughly" as possible before you areput through two different scanners. Youare not allowed to carry liquids into thevenue and ladies handbags are literallystripped bare —to their embarrassment— before they are let in.

Unlike theaters or plays where yourseat numbers are allocated upfront,

a cricket stadium is open for all. Seatswith best views tend to be taken up bypeople entering first. We had to contendwith a seat which had a good centralpitch view, but with pillars on eitherside blocking side boundary views. Notthat you would miss the view whencrowd generally give you a clear pictureon what's happening on the field. Theirboos, aaahs and groans generally indi-cates what the result was.

The crowd's reaction to cricketersthemselves was just unbelievable. Everytime Sehwag or Tendulkar or Bhajji or

even new-comers like Vijay and Ojhaturn toward the stands (mind you,turn, not walk), people sitting in thefront rows just erupt. People wave,jump and cry out names, just to getnoticed. But the congregation can beequally punishing. Ricky Pontingreceived a huge boo from the crowdas soon as he walked in. Crowds arequite merciless when it comes to put-ting cricketers in their place.

The experience was not like watch-ing a match on TV, where you are

peppered with replays, statistics andlively commentary. If you take your eyesoff the field for a moment, you willprobably miss a catch or a fall of a wick-et permanently. Partly because the bigscreen replays the moment only oncebut mostly because everybody sitting infront of you jump to their feet, shoutingtheir mouths off. Out there in the mid-dle, it's simply difficult to make out whois who. You can only identify players bytheir walking or throwing styles. Eventhen, you end up wondering who a cou-ple of players are.

Watching a cricket match is not justabout entertainment or passion or eventime-pass. It's an experience, which canbe felt only by being in the middle ofthousands of strangers, chanting thesame tune, performing Mexican wavesand going crazy on 11 people standingaround in a field.

As I left the stadium, I felt been there,done that and will do it again!

Cricket mania

Subhash Bhushan

Venue: 2nd Test Match – Ind vs. Aus - 9thOct, 2010 – Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore

The first ever robot was producedsometime in 1928. To that effect,people have always believed

robots to be a modern-day feature andnot of the old times. Actually, this iscompletely wrong - the history ofRobotics goes back to as far as the 17thcentury.

The robots during those times werecomposed of clockwork animations.When thinking of this term, clockworktoys, such as wind-up mice and clockscome to mind. Indeed, these thingsmade up the majority of medieval robot-ics. But there were complete machinestoo, which could do various tasks, suchas playing chess and serving tea. Thesemachines, in fact were much moreimpressive than our modern-daymachines, which rely on computer tech-nology. However, they were generallyless appreciated in that era; several weredumped into dark storage rooms or justthrown away into garbage. This formsthe basis of the story, when a clockmak-er - the story's protagonist, Hugo'sfather finds one such machine in amuseum attic and decides to fix it upand find what it does.

Hugo's father is making good processwith the machine and has just about fin-ished with it, when a terrible accidentoccurs and the museum is set ablaze in afire which started mysteriously in thenight. Hugo is taken in by the station'stimekeeper, who is his uncle. Life isn'tpleasant in the timekeeper's quarters;Hugo is forced by his uncle to stealthings to make a living and his uncledumps the job of caring for the station'sclocks on him as he vanishes in the

morning and returns late in the night,heavily drunk. After about a month ofthis, his uncle does not return at all andHugo is left on his own.

Hugo decides to run away, and as hepasses the burnt down museum, he dis-covers the machine which his dad wastrying so hard to fix. Hugo then makes aresolution and decides to return back to

the station and works to fix it. Using oneof his father's notebooks and with someclockwork which he steals from a toyshop, Hugo manages to get started onthe machine. However, things go awrywhen the toy shopkeeper finally catchesHugo and confiscates the notebook, set-ting the tone for a rather exciting adven-ture involving the shopkeeper's daugh-ter, the vile station-master and morepeculiarly, the moon itself.

This book was published in March2007 and is one of a new generationbooks. With 284 pictures between its 533pages, the story depends on the use ofpictures, as well as the use of words.This is the first novel to win theCaldecott medal (given for illustrations).

The author, Brian Selznick has illus-trated several other books for children,such as Frindle by Andrew Clements,The Doll People by Ann Martin and haswritten another book for children titledThe Boy of a Thousand Faces. But, TheInvention of Hugo Cabret has been thebook in which he put the most time andeffort.

There are some technical uncertaintiesover the working of the clockworkmachine that can count as minor defectin this book. Otherwise, this is a brilliantspecimen of the latest type of books,which incorporate both words and pic-tures to convey meanings to the reader.The story is also easy to understand andwill become a favorite with young chil-dren and teenagers alike. The pictures inthe novel are in graphite colours, i.e.black and white, much more realisticthan the ordinary pictures one findsinside other novels, making it a realread for youngsters looking for achange.

Just KidsJustBooks Connect - February 2011 11

The Invention Of HugoCabretBrian Selznick

Age group: 11-15 yrsPages: 533Scholastic

JustBooks Picks for Young ReadersDinaben and the Lions of Gir by MeeraSriram

There's a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr.Seuss

Gadagada Gudugudu by JeevaRaghunath

Sister, Sister, Why don't things fall Up?By Roopa Pai

Phani's Funny Chappals by SridalaSwamy

Rusty The Boy From The Hills byRuskin Bond

Letters From Father Christmas byJ.R.R.Tolkien

The Fang of Summoning by GitiChandra

Singing for Mrs.Pettigrew by MichealMorpurgo

Jayanthi Harsha

When one talks aboutEnglish writing inIndia, there are few

names that come up as often asAmitav Ghosh. A rarity in theliterary world, Ghosh is lovedby critics and readers. He'sbeen nominated for the BookerPrize--and his books are best-sellers. Even people who don'tread other serious fiction haveusually read at least one bookof his, The Shadow Lines per-haps, or his phenomenon Seaof Poppies.

Born in Kolkata in 1956,Ghosh was educated at TheDoon School, St Stephen'sCollege, Delhi and St EdmundHall, Oxford.

Ghosh tasted success earlyin his career. His first book TheCircle of Reason (1986) won thePrix Medicis Etranger, one ofFrance's top literary awards.The Shadow Lines (1990) wonthe Sahitya Akademi Award &the Ananda Puraskar. Later nov-els like The CalcuttaChromosome (1995), The GlassPalace (2000) and The HungryTide (2004) have won awardsincluding the Arthur C. ClarkeAward and the HutchCrossword Book Prize. In 2007Amitav Ghosh was awarded theGrinzane Cavour Prize in Turin,Italy.

It was perhaps expected thatSea of Poppies would be short-listed for the 2008 Man BookerPrize. The book won a numberof Indian awards including theCrossword Book Prize and theGoldenquill Award. His nextbook River of Smoke is expect-ed later this year.

In 1999, Ghosh joined the fac-ulty at Queens College, CityUniversity of New York asDistinguished Professor inComparative Literature and hehas been a visiting professor at

Harvard University since 2005.He has also been a Fellow at theCentre for Studies in SocialSciences, Calcutta. He divideshis time between Kolkata, Goa

and New York where he liveswith his wife, Deborah Baker,who is a writer and senior edi-tor. They have two children.

As a person, Ghosh is a pleas-ing blend of sophistication andhumility. He is friendly withfans and other writers, muchloved in the circuit, and at par-ties comes across as if he reallycares about people's opinions.His famed research skills mayhave much to do with this abili-ty to listen, to be interested. Heis carefully understated abouthis success, turning up in amodest kurta to collect twoawards at a function (TheGoldenquill Awards, 2009).

Amitabh Ghosh's prose stylecan be a bit too simple, some-what lacking in poetic beauty.Unlike predecessors like RKNarayan, he believes in usingIndian words and culturallyspecific terms in his books. Heoften supplies the English expla-nation alongside which isunderstandable because he alsowants it to be accessible. But thishas the effect of seeming repeti-tive. Still, his experiments with

different dialects are interestingand the ship pidgin he has usedin Sea of Poppies has beenwidely praised.

But the real delight in Ghosh'sbooks lies not in thelanguage but in fol-lowing him inthrough the doors tonew worlds. As asocial anthropolo-gist, his understand-ing of how largechanges and move-ments affect cul-tures-but also indi-vidual people-isimpressive and hischaracters oftengrapple with issuesof identity, memoryand destiny as theyare besieged byforces beyond theircontrol such as war,

trade or exile. His story-telling islargely engaging, even ifweighed down by the infusionof extra facts in places.

Ghosh seems less interested inthe interior monologues of hischaracters and more in whathappens to them, and aroundthem. They often lack intensityor emotional depth and, as aresult, some of his books have afaintly unsatisfying ring tothem. Still, for conjuring grandlocations, sagas of historicalimportance, political landscapesspanning decades-there are fewwriters who can better him. Hisearly novels have an emotionaledge to them that may havebeen dulled somewhat with allthe factual layering in his laterones. Things happen quickly inhis characters' lives. Their per-sonal histories are overtaken bylarger ones and the tensionbetween these two factors isinterestingly played out. Alongthe way, Ghosh conjures up theworlds around them in exquisitedetail. It is this detail that isoften held up as the most strik-ing quality of his work.


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AMITAV GHOSHAnindita Sengupta

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