The Enigma of Arrival - V.S. Naipaul

Fiction
Verdict: God speed young man

There are very few books that I read that I do not finish. I will stubbornly persist until my eyes bleed on occasion because there may be some redeeming value to a book at some point. That's not what we're going to discuss today. I just couldn't.

This isn't my first run in with V.S. Naipaul, and due to all the hullabaloo about how brilliant he is, I thought that I might give him another go as an author. I just couldn't find my stride or anything interesting about the first third of this book. 

Naipaul wanders around and around in the English countryside without a purpose. Unfortunately, I don't find the English Countryside all that fascinating. It gets slightly more interesting when he starts on his journey, but not much. 

Maybe there is a grand point to this novel, and perhaps it does pick up half way through. I will leave that to the heartier souls who are brave enough to get that far without fear that the novel will be one big long description of what's going on around the narrator. I'll have to sit this one out.

Let's see if I have the fortitude to pursue Naipaul in the future.


~Becky~

Baumgartner's Bombay - Anita Desai

Fiction
Verdict: Read it

Anita Desai is a favourite of mine, so when Justbooks offered me a selection of her books because they aren't shipping what I want, I picked one I hadn't read yet. 

I have to tell you internet, the forward was intimidating. Pulling together Germany, WW2, an internment camp, and India and it's a mess of confusion. Definitely an angle I've never even remotely thought of. It took me a while to get into, partly because of the reason I just said, and partly because Desai's main character is, so.....bland. He's not wildly loveable, hateable, or even notable. But he's had one hell of a life. 

However I did get into it. And had a hard time putting it down. Desai gets into being a long term foreigner who tries to fit in, mixed families, people without a solid direction in life, and what it means when you no longer belong somewhere you thought was home. Right up my alley if I do say so myself.

Underneath it all, Baumgartner is a good man. It unfortunately costs him in the end, but he's a harmless character. He has a spate of run ins with decent people also, making his life nothing fancy, but comfortable and not traumatic.  I guess what's so striking about him is how ordinary and uninteresting him. He's truly the ordinary man. If you didn't know his history and his life, you'd just assume he was a plain doughnut.

Not that I'm an expert or anything like that, but there are very few things that take me by surprise about India anymore. The internment camp, however, really threw me sideways. It was such a logical but surprising occurrence.  No one ever talks about India in relation to WW2 so I assumed it was a typical isolationist country, totally neglecting that Britain's rule in India would have had consequences for Germans, Jewish or not. I definitely will read up on this more.

It's rare to find an Indian author who incorporates anything but mildly British references, and Anita Desai does a masterful job of it. I truly believe she understands the cultural references she includes. It's an amazing thing to watch.

My only complaint is the German poetry - in German - that persists through the book. As a non-German speaker, I wish I could have understood these snipets. Languages leave clues that help us understand context and I definitely felt it when I couldn't appreciate those as well.

Do read it for a different perspective on Indian literature.

~Becky~ 

Em and the big Hoom - Jerry Pinto

Fiction
Verdict: Read it

I'm not a big believer in reading the back of the book too carefully to see what a novel is about. I'm more of an "Oooh shiny" about the cover type book picker. Meh. I like to take my chances and revel in amazing finds. And the occasional disappointment. Ahem.

I haven't read anything from Jerry Pinto as yet and so new authors (for me) are always exciting. I don't know what I was drawn to on the cover, but it wasn't what I expected it to be, and not in a bad way. 

India has been opening up (at least in pop culture mediums) about many issues, mental health being one of them.  I find this to be a fantastic thing - the more it's in the open, the less....judged it will become. 

Em and the big Hoom is about a Goan Catholic family. A mom, a dad, a son, and a daughter. Only the mom is manic depressive and suicidal occasionally. There's no candy coating, no pretending everything is fine, no glossing over events. Just a family doing it's best to care for and support someone whose brain is not allowing her to function as most people do. It's a powerhouse of a novel. 

Jerry Pinto explores family dynamics, the fine line between disease and personality, genetics, living with a parent who has these issues, and the burden any long term disease places on a family.

This definitely isn't a light, quick read. For someone who generally reads pretty fast, this one took me a a while as I felt I needed to digest the many themes in small chunks as to not get overwhelmed. While I was doing that, I really considered the privilege of the "peek in the window" and what it must be like to actually be in such a situation. 

It's definitely a must read. 

~Becky~

Do you Remember Kunan Poshpora - Essar et.al

Non-Fiction
Verdict: Read it

I couldn't remember why I chose this book when I picked it up recently from my to-read pile. I know, I know, you must be thinking this silly woman doesn't remember why she picks ANY book. You are partly right. The problem is that it's been a very very long time since I went to buy books at my favorite store and my to-read pile is epic. I promise you, I am very selective in what I read, and I do not chose books at random.

I thought perhaps Kunan Poshpora was a person, hence the book was a biography, when I picked up this book to read it. Unfortunately that was incorrect. Kunan and Poshpora are small villages in Kashmir that went through an atrocity when the army came in and beat the men and gang raped quite a few women. This tragedy occurred in 1991. The authors of this book are a group of women who have come together to lodge a public complaint against the army and the judiciary for non action on their behalf over what happened.

As with other books on atrocities that have happened, this is a difficult read. The words are simple to understand, but the cruelty of the act and inaction afterwards really stick with you. I personally feel it is important to read about terrible things that have happened, if for no other reason than validating that they did happen and should not happen again.

Rape is a horrendous crime no matter what the circumstances are. The authors' assertion that the Indian army uses rape as a tool to subjugate and demoralize Kashmir is truly disturbing, especially when you consider that Kashmir is a very unstable, unhappy place due to many other factors.

I also was very unsettled reading about how the army has the ASPA act protecting them from ever being held accountable for acts such as these. This is unacceptable; there is never a case where rape is sanctioned as a tool of the armed forces for any reason. As with other countries, the army in India enjoys a massive amount of support, and very little accountability. The army's snide answers to the accusations and efforts to delay the case and stonewall justice were disheartening when holding the culprits accountable could have prevented this from happening again. People, even army men, learn quickly what they can get away with.

I was also horrified by the uninterested response of the police and government. I live in India and I understand how things work here, but a judge being on vacation when many court hearings were supposed to take place just made me angry. The sheer lack of interest in anyone but the victims made me lean toward justice squads, rather than this farce of a court system.

Overall it's a tough read, especially because the reader knows that this won't be resolved any time soon and could very easily happen again. Changing India is like changing the direction of a continent rolling down a hill. It very often feels impossible.

~Becky~

Left from the Nameless Shop - Adithi Rao

Fiction
Verdict: Read it

Left from the nameless shop is a novel that has short stories from a village woven together. Reminiscent of R.K. Narayan's Malgudi days, these stories are easy to read and make you feel nice. I've often said that authors from different places have their own particular flavor (Indians, Bengalis, Europeans, etc) and while every author has his or her own style, Adithi Rao definitely is reminiscent of the other Kannadiga writers I have had the pleasure of reading. 

While I didn't grow up in a small Indian village, I did grow up in a small town in the US. Some of the stories that the author included were very identifiable for me and reminded me of some of my own experiences growing up. Lacking the pathos of other Indian authors, you feel happy reading these and trust the author that even if things don't work out perfectly, the sky won't fall. 

The only complaint that I have for this book is that there are quite a few Kannada phrases included that aren't followed by translation. While I can guess through context what they mean, as a reluctant non Kannada speaker, this was frustrating for me as language adds depth to writing. Phrases can also be learned this way.

This is not a long or difficult novel to read and a great way to spend a weekend camped out on the couch in quarantine. 

Read it!

~Becky~