Manto, and Why Indians and Pakistanis need to read him

I’ve been reading the books sent to me by Random House India, but what with life, and my novel and the A to Z Challenge preparations, I haven’t posted reviews. I read Manto about four months ago, so my memory is a little hazy. I stuck in post-it notes though, which are now helping me remember details as I read some of the stories again.

My Declared Bias: I read and write Literary, and love short stories.

——

It is possible to review some books without a mention of the context in which they were written, but it is impossible to do so with the works of Saadat Hasan Manto, a writer born in undivided India, who died in Pakistan.

Had he lived, he would have turned 100 last year, but he drank himself to death at the age of 43, eight years after the Partition that created India and Pakistan, after a series of trials where his writing was charged with obscenity. This was  one of the best periods of his work, but one of the worst in personal and financial terms.

Manto: Selected Short Stories

As such, a lot of history and context is  (rightly, or wrongly) read into his work, and one of the simplest ways to understand this in a short span of time would be to read the introduction by Aatish Taseer, Manto’s grandson, who has translated the stories curated into this book.

Taseer has taken great care to retain the rhythm of the original Urdu in his translation, and no reader can deny the resonance of Manto’s voice that comes through. The originals might, I imagine, have a certain colloquial touch to them, like this example from the story, “My Name is Radha“, one of my favorites from this book:

“The studio owner Harmzji Framji, a fat, red-cheeked bon vivant of sorts, was madly in love with a middle-aged actress who looked like a transvestite. His favourite pastime was sizing up the breasts of every newly-arrived actress. Another Muslim hooker from Calcutta’s Bow Bazaar carried on affairs simultaneously with her director, sound recordist, and scriptwriter. The point of these affairs, of course, was to ensure that all three remained in love with her.”

While this reads clunky in English, I can hear it spoken in Urdu (a language I don’t speak, and understand very little of,  but admire nevertheless) with a sort of cheekiness and a common touch, which is, imho, fairly impossible to translate.

Manto was writing at a time when a preachy morality was important in the entire sub-continent, and frank sexuality was frowned upon. So it is quite obvious why the author’s matter-of-fact emphasis on the body was interpreted by his contemporary society as lewdness.

Of course a few of his stories can strike us as sentimental, especially those playing heavily on the drama of the Partition of India (and Pakistan), because our sensibilities are used to the spareness of modern fiction.

But the irony of a stray dog in “The Dog of Tithwal” that befriends both enemy camps (Indian and Pakistani) at a border post and is subsequently shot, is not lost on the reader, nor is the pathos of a madman’s refusal (and subsequent death) in “Toba Tek Singh” when an attempt is made to ‘return’ him to his native town, which, after the Partition, no longer lay in Pakistan, but instead in India. In stories like these, Manto questions the very definitions of ‘country’, ‘borders’ and ‘sanity.’

Why you could read it: It is an easy read, and if you are interested in the Indian sub-continent and its history, you could do worse than read this book.

Why you could give it a miss: If you like your fiction to be spare and unsentimental, this book is not for you. As with most translated fiction, the beauty of the original does not fully translate into English, despite the sincerity of the translator.

My crib:

The typos strewn through the book bothered me (e.g. Pg 28- ‘smoth’  instead of ‘smooth’). The book has some instances of repeated words ( e.g. Pg. 20 “fed fed up”) and other proofreading howlers. If they come up with another edition, they need a better proofreader who would do justice to such an important writer of the Indian sub-continent.

—–

Saadat Hasan Manto

I enjoyed this book, and if you happen to pick it up, the least you should do is read the introduction, which is a modern piece of extremely educational writing, and no less poignant for it. You would not be disappointed, I promise you that.

After I read up on Manto, I realized that he has been marginalized in India, to the extent that I had never heard of him growing up, or even as an adult, and had not read him before this book.

All Indian and Pakistani readers deserve to read more of this writer, because the issues that informed Manto’s work continue to be relevant in the society and politics of both these countries.

It is a shame that this author is not better known in India, and kudos to Random House in attempting to change that.

Only, the next time, I wish they would hire a proofreader worth their time.

—

What would you like to see any  changes in the  review format? Was this review helpful? Would you read this book?

 

Desperate in Dubai

Desperate in Dubai by Ameera Al Hakawati

I’ve been reading the books sent to me by Random House India (Desperate in Dubai being one of them), but what with the December hiatus and things that kept me worked up and worked out in January, I haven’t posted reviews.

I read Desperate in Dubai about two months ago, so my memory is a little hazy. I stuck in post-it notes though, which are now helping me remember details. You can read an excerpt here.

My Declared Bias: I read and write Literary, and only occasionally read Chick Lit. Since Desperate in Dubai is a sort of cross between chick lit and women’s contemporary writing, that might influence my view of it a little.

——

This is the story of four women and their somewhat interconnected lives. Lady Luxe, a Dubai heiress; Leila, an opportunistic social climber; Nadia, a betrayed wife, and Sugar, a victim of tragic circumstances.

Of these, the most interesting is definitely Lady Luxe, who leads a double life, one as burkha-clad traditional daughter of the family; and the other as a hedonist, no stranger to alcohol, men, and high jinks. Her voice is also the most powerful.

The slightly grey character of Leila is also well-sketched with the right amount of details:

Fully aware that a designer ensemble compared to an ordinary outfit is like the difference between Nobu and a filet-o-fish burger at McDonald’s, she unconsciously tugs at her Top-Shop leopard print boob tube dress and runs her fingers through her big blonde hair.

Though, imho, the writing could be better. Does the author mean ‘self-consciously’? Do we need that adverb at all? The author is already showing Leila’s state of mind through the action: ‘tugs at her Top-Shop leopard print boob tube dress and runs her fingers through her big blonde hair.’

In the very next para the author moves into Lady Luxe’s head, which leads to a series of head-hopping passages that could be avoided. Either stick to 3rd person, or omniscient point-of-view, can’t have both. It confuses readers and make them dizzy. (Hope it wasn’t just me.)

Sugar and Nadia, despite their tragic situations, failed to elicit any empathy,  perhaps because of their tired story-lines (which the author has tried to enliven through interconnection). It could also be because I’m a major fan of ‘voice’ and both of these ladies lacked luster.

Why you could read it: It is an easy read, and if you’re fascinated by the Middle East and its culture, the nuances of contemporary life, and the status of women, this might be a fascinating read. This may not be representative of the entire Arab world, but it is a good glimpse.

Why you could give it a miss: I imagine women finding this book interesting, but most men I know steer clear of contemporary women’s writing. And Chick lit. Just saying.

My cribs:

1. The head-hopping annoyed me. The whole book could easily have been edited to avoid this.

2. I didn’t like the use of pseudonyms for Lady Luxe and Sugar, seemed like a deliberate ploy to maintain surprises/ twists. Unnecessary.

3. For a book with feminist undertones/ overtones — the ending disappointed me. Without giving any spoilers, all I can say is that the ending for each character’s story is where I found a conflict between a chick-lit and women’s contemporary writing. The genre-blending did not work at this point.

To sum it up, this book is good as an in-flight read, or if you’re in the mood for light reading. I enjoyed the glimpses into Dubai society, and duly hated all the men as I was meant to — excellent portrait of a patriarchal setup. The only truly sympathetic man in the whole book is Lady Luxe’s step-brother.

Overall, this is an auspicious debut, with excellent premise. I only hope the author finds herself a better editor for her next book.

———-

My second review here is just as unvarnished as the first, but I realized I was also reading like a writer, and not merely a reader.  As a result, I’m not sure the review format worked.

What would you like to see changed in the format? Was this review helpful?

  Inspired by the fascinating lives of the women who dominated the glamorous city, Ameera Al Hakawati put pen to paper and created Desperate in Dubai, a blog that soon became an internet sensation among the expatriate community in Dubai. Desperate in Dubai is Ameera’s first novel published by Random House India. You can buy the book here.

Lion and Panther in London

Aerogrammes by Tania James
Source: Random House India

In recent weeks, I’ve been talking about books sent to me by Random House India, for review on Daily (w)rite.

Today, I’ll talk about  Aerogrammes and Other Stories, by Tania James. As I said in my earlier posts, this would be my entirely subjective take.

My Declared Bias: I read and write Literary, and I love short stories.

——

Right off the bat, I’ll tell you I didn’t read this collection at a go. Not because I couldn’t make the time, but because of two things:

1. The stories are all set in different (real) worlds, and each so transports you to its setting, you don’t immediately feel like entering another one.

2. The stories are rather sad (poignantly so), and I could only take so much of it each time.

The first story, a retelling of the history of India’s Gama pehelwan was so steeped in a kind of honor and strength and courage that we don’t see any more, that it made me tear up at times. The second one, a story set in Sierra Leone and the US, of how a chimpanzee completes a human family, had me thinking about Bruno Littlemore. I wish this one were a book of its own, because it felt like a novel cramped in the body of a short story.

My absolute favorite was “The Gulf”, told from the point-of-view of a little girl, not just for subtext between a child and adult world (something James does very well in the other stories like “Ethnic Ken”, a story of a girl’s love for the Ken from Barbie dolls, and how she outgrows it) but also because of the writing:

“After my mother leaves, my father puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward, his eyes closed. I wonder if he is dozing off. The song in the radio softens and slows, at which point my father takes an imaginary violin in his left arm, pointing it downward, and tilts his chin against it. He draws his invisible bow along with the single, smooth note from the radio’s violin, his face perfectly still, as if listening for his own pulse. The slipper with the exposed toe begins to tap against the orange carpet. The melody gathers force, and he dives into his performance, elbowing the air, rocking back and forth as he inscribes the space between us with song. The music climbs inside his body, takes possession of him like a long charge of electricity.”

James, like Jhumpa Lahiri, talks of the immigrant experience, but her assessment is less clinical, more given to emotion, in stories like “Light and Luminous” where a talented, middle-aged Indian dance teacher falls prey to the very thing she’s fought all her life, the temptation to bleach her dark skin, or a delusional old man who thinks his grand-daughter is his wife reincarnated, and wonders “Why am I here?”

I smiled at James’ tart commentary on contemporary life (in America):

“The most popular magazines at Foodfest are the ones that offer help. The experts grin from every corner, beaming with the relief that anyone can drop fifty pounds or build their own patio or achieve a positive outlook.”

Why you could read it: If you like literary stories, by the likes of Jhumpa Lahiri or Yiyun Li, you’ll love it. If you read more genre than literary, this book could be a good bridge: some of the stories have an other-worldly quality to them, and unlike most literary stories, satisfy the reader who wants to know ‘what happened in the end’.

Why you might avoid it: This isn’t light reading, so pick it up if you want to be entertained, but be prepared to be moved to sadness at the same time.

My cribs: My only crib was the the juxtaposition of the stories: “Girl Marries Ghost” felt like the weakest , added in as an afterthought at the end. It did not come across as subtle and spare as the rest of them. Personally, I liked “Lion and Panther in London” better than “Aerogrammes”, for its combination of humor, irony and pathos, and thought it might have made a better title story.

Over all, I enjoyed the book, and though I took my time reading this collection, it felt like time well-spent.

———-

I played this first review by ear, giving you my unvarnished thoughts as a reader, and letting the format emerge on its own . What would you like to see changed in the format? Was this review helpful?

What sort of book reviews do You like?

Which book of the 14 is missing in the picture?

Over the next few months, I’m going to talk about a few books on this blog, sent to me by Random House, India. I guess I’ll call them book reviews, for want of a better term, but I’m not totally convinced I would be ‘reviewing’ them, just giving out my very honest, and very subjective, opinion.

I’m two things, a reader and a writer. More and more, I find myself being kinder to writers because I know the back-breaking work involved in writing a book. That sometimes affects my judgment as a reader, because if I find a book insufferable, I still plod on for a few pages before dumping it — poor author has worked so hard, let me give the book a few more pages to prove itself.

So, I’ll be a one hell of a conflicted  ‘reviewer’. These are the books I’m currently reading for review:

1. -          Aerogrammes by Tania James
2. -          Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto 
3. -          Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
4. -          Life of Pi by Yann Martel
5. -          Quarantine by Rahul Mehta
6. -          Wanted by Lee Child
7. -          Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch
8. -          Desperate in Dubai by Ameera Al Hakawati
9. -          Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup
10. -          Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
11. -          Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
12. -          Cutting for Stone by Abraham Varghese
13. -          Tell All by Chuck Palahniuk
14. -          The Sirens of Baghdad by Yasmina Khadra

As usual, I’m reading 4 books at the same time, which means I’ll possibly come up with reviews randomly as I finish the books and the mood takes me. I haven’t decided on a schedule yet (I hate schedules) but I aim to read a book a week on average, and then post a review.

The 14 books are a mixed bag, from a Pakistani writer who wrote in undivided India and got tried several times for obscenity, to a writer of transgressive fiction, more than one Booker prize winner and shortlister,  a Dubai-based blogger whose book was banned for a while this year, a Pulitzer and Frank O’Connor prize winner, an Indian American novelist who has won some acclaim, as well as several New York Times bestsellers.

With the current controversy on book bloggers which I highlighted in one of my recent posts, I ought to be a little wary, but I think I’ve blogged long enough not to care. I may have damaged the reading world beyond repair already so no point in acting shy now.

I know I’m going to be honest, and pretty much personal in my opinions. And if I can’t finish a book despite trying, I’m going to say it. For me, I read reviews, but seldom base my book purchases on them — so I don’t expect anyone to be influenced by my opinions either.

But before I begin on my review series, I’m curious: what sort of book reviews do You like?

 

Should a Book Stab You, Or Make You Happy?

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

— Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka and Books that Stab you

I read this quote today on Goodreads, and began discussing it with a few friends on Facebook. Opinions veered on one side or the other.

Personally, I think there will always be those who read to be provoked into thought, and those who read to escape. Both are equally valid reasons for reading, in my opinion, and I alternate between the two.

When it comes to my own writing, however, I aspire to Kafka’s recommended genre. I would die happy if  I could write books “that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

What sort of book would You rather read? Why? And if you’re a writer, what sort of book would you rather write?

What has Your Reading Journey Been Like?

Reading is a part of my everyday routine, I couldn’t live without it. Last year I wrote a post on Amlokiblogs where we discussed my reading and I asked other bloggers about theirs. Posting it again today, because I’m bound to the wheelchair and my e-reader these days, and would like to discuss reading and get a few reading suggestions.

————————–

The reading journey

I read my first book at two (or three, but not older, I don’t think): a picture book of course, but one that was meant for much older kids, able to read. My parents did not have access to the sort of books geared towards toward toddlers these days, so they bought me what they could—a comic book with a storyline and characters far beyond the reach of a two-year old.

I remember sitting on my grandmother’s lap in the afternoons when she would read out loud the dialogues in the book, and explain what was going on. With the sort of whim that can be expected of a toddler, I decided that was the only book I liked, and there soon came a time when I could narrate the story by myself when the book was put before me, pointing at each scene in its individual square and babbling the story, much to the amusement of my family and our visitors.

                              I grew up devouring books: those suitable for my age, and not. I read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary at 12, and rapidly followed it up with the collected works of Bernard Shaw, all the Russian masters, Shakespeare—in short, anything I could steal from my father’s collection. When I turned 18, I went for an Honors in English literature, where I mostly read books outside the syllabus in my spare time, because I now had access to the British Council and the American Center libraries, in a bigger city.

                                   But in studying for the exams I lost some of the love I had for books. I was expected to dissect poems instead of merely enjoying them, analyze novels instead of getting carried away by the stories and characters—it turned me off reading for a good five years before I turned to my old love, and second-hand bookshops became my second home again. From then onwards, I’ve taken to reading with a renewed vigor…I read as a break from life, as an exercise in thought, as a supplement to my writing—because sometimes I also have to read like a writer. It is nearly as big a part of my life as my writing, and sometimes I struggle between the two—because there is not enough time for me to read, write and do everything else we call ‘living life’.

                                        To me, I live the most when I’m reading, especially certain books that have made me fall in love with them. But more about that in another post, because I think it would need another post to talk about what reading means to me today.

How about you? What has your reading journey been like? What books would you recommend?

When Was the Last Time You Spent a Day at the Library?

At the Library

Some of the best times in my life have been spent at a library. It was the one place I could find silence, the freedom to take out umpteen books, and leave them on the table after skimming through a few pages, forget about the world outside and the state of my life in it.

I still run to libraries when I need my space—and yesterday I did just that. After a work-related meeting I decided to spend the entire afternoon and evening at the Singapore National library, at its big central division, which is home to one of the most diverse collections I’ve seen in a library so far.

I felt a little guilty, sitting at the reference section (I needed to look through one book, but nothing serious), working on my fiction while intermittently browsing through random books—maybe I was taking up the space that someone doing genuine research needed. I sat there long enough–till the time I realized all other seats were taken up, and then vacated mine—hoping an eager research scholar would take it up!

I walked out for a meal, came back, and headed to the lending section…deciding that some of the blocks in the story I was writing came from a lack of research. I needed to know a few facts before I could get on with my narration. I love the that this library lets you search its catalog on your phone—the catalog is on a free library wi-fi network. Having picked up the books I needed I went in search of a chair and found one at the far end, surrounded by about 20 other chairs in different clusters.

To say that the first book I picked up was an absorbing read would be to insult it–it talks about a hugely successful individual coping with multiple personality disorder–each of the 13 individual personalities inside him has a chapter in his/her voice. I finished it in the 8 hours I sat at the library, without much movement, and only the occasional glance around me.

It is this morning, when I look back on the evening that I remember what I saw in those glances, but did not register at the time: an old man sleeping, open-mouthed, behind a newspaper, a middle-aged-gap-toothed woman in a cheong-sam sitting with a book on feng-shui while fitting her small body cross-legged on a chair—apparently meditating,  a young man in office attire with a laptop bag and headphones, dozing behind a book titled Sex after Fifty, a pair of schoolkids snogging behind one of the bookshelves (I thought the library had cameras and frowned on such activity, but apparently not), a woman of indeterminate age in heavy make-up sitting with a shoe magazine, periodically receiving low-beeping calls and repeating/ writing down dates and times in a breathy falsetto, while a hearing impaired young couple to my right kept up a sprightly conversation full of excited gesturing.

With all those images returning to me, I feel less guilty about hogging a seat I didn’t really need. Not because other people did it too, with lot less serious preoccupations than mine—but because watching this pantomime of unabashed humanity in a country known for its lifestyle governed by rules, that too at a strait-laced place like a library, was not only a treat for a writer like me, but could also be safely termed ‘research’.

When was the last time you spent a day at the library? How much of that time did you spend people-watching?

 

 

Writing About my Love Affair: Looking Back Three Years

E-books and Book Nostalgia

Three years ago, when I first started this blog, the post below was one of the many I wrote about reading. (Here’s the original post and the comments it received.)

Reading is such a big part of any writer’s life…today, from my Kindle-d  and Kindle-published self, I look back on the reader who knew nothing about e-books and wrote poems about the nostalgia of used books and the stories they tell us not just through the printed word.

——–

I’ve been writing about books every now and then, books I am reading, books I wish to read.

Back when I was a student, and sometimes did not know where the next meal would come from, I would still buy books. Books sold by weight on Indian pavements, because in those days in India they wasted nothing, and I could not afford shiny new books.

But now, when I can afford to buy any book I might possibly want, used books still call to me.

I tried to write about this love affair (in prose, mind you!) but I can’t help it, I think each books speaks to me in verse, in words which are garbled prayer and temptation,  so here goes (sigh, again, “a poem”!!!! Rick, you are laughing, aren’t you?)

Thumbed, dog-eared,
cover torn in places
names written, forgotten
crossed out, passed on.

I come with a tang
of lazy afternoons,
of mildewed bookshelves
falling apart,
of cheap colognes
on a young man
looking for a start,
of pungent desires
shakily denied,
salted airs in a
pickle factory where
I almost died,
of this dusty pavement
where I am to be sold
made into packets, bags,
my story untold.

Come pick me up
take me with you
and you shall know
of whispered confessions,
innuendos, half-written
poems, and shattered
dreams, as I talk
to you and you listen
with your eyes closed and
an open heart.

For my best secrets
were not printed
on my body
but written
into my soul
by all these years
I spent waiting,
waiting for you,
my love.

In which I navel-gaze and read, then repeat

Books, books!

The last few days, I’ve been reading. A lot. Which means, besides writing, which I consider my only daily intellectual activity that can’t be skipped, I don’t have time for much else.

So, I haven’t been blogging much. Here’s a list of stuff I’m doing —not that I expect you to be interested, but I like to navel-gaze sometimes, and this is,  after all, My blog –

1. I’m reading “Sun After Dark” by Pico Iyer. It is the single most spellbinding travel book I’ve read this year, and it is making me restless. I want to go places, and I don’t mean figuratively.

2. I’m reading 7 other books too, and I have to return them to the library by 31st July.

3. Just as if I wasn’t doing enough reading, I’ve begun The Girl with the Pearl Ear ring in Italian.

4. I’m not cooking, happy instead to heat up stuff I cooked last week. (Don’t worry–it is all healthy and unspoilt–so far.)

5. I’m ignoring my pets, and forgot to feed my angelfish and Lalwant Singh yesterday.

6. I’m trying to draft a story and revise several, as well as finish the edits of A to Z stories of Life and Death, all without much success, because I keep going back to reading.

7. I’ve tried to go blog browsing, but for once find myself getting distracted From the internet. You guessed it. Books, again.

8. A friend asked me if I’ve been getting enough sleep. She’s right, I’m not. Yup, reading.

So, apologies all around if I haven’t visiting you guys often enough. It is so rare that I get this kind of focus (and time on my hands) to read, that I’m going all out. Every dictionary should have my pic under the word “crazy”, I know that, but folks, this is so much FUN!

See you on the other side (of my books), and in the meanwhile, Happy Blogging!

And for those who commented on my Angelfish post, here’s a slideshow of the parents with the babies. Unfortunately, none survived, but their short life kept my nose glued to the aquarium.

Angelfish Family!

Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Just read this in Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, and couldn’t help sharing it:

“He bent over his son and kissed the air above his forehead and then walked in tiptoe in that slightly exaggerated and silly way that men like Theophilus, normally gruff and bustling about their business adopt as a sort of dance to celebrate their most tender feelings.”

This kind of brief, but intensely effective characterisation belongs in a short story,  but I’m not complaining Peter Carey put it in a novel. I love Peter Carey, and can see why he won the Booker.

On with the reading. But first, dinner.

See you on the other side, world, once I’ve finished with Oscar and Lucinda!