Mumbai Fables - Gyan Prakash

 Non-Fiction

Read it

It's been quite some time since I read a non-fiction book. I picked this up from the library thinking it would be stories of or from Mumbai. I was a bit wrong on that count, but was quite satisfied with the book.

Mumbai, or Bombay as I still call it, is a fascinating city. It's history and cast of famous characters are no less fascinating. Gyan Prakash has done a lovely job of drawing us into the magic of Bombay. Architecure, movies, papers, characters, legends. It's quite the read. The city that never should have been - a series of islands and land reclaimed. 

I won't go too far into all of the historical timeline, but I will say that a general knowledge of India and Mumbai is helpful.  I was hoping that Gyan Prakash would get into some of the more recent developments in Mumbai, but as many historical books do, it doesn't get into anything all that recent. 

Read it!

~Becky~

Godaan - Anurag Yadav

 Fiction

Read it if you like Village Life Novels

I picked up this novel because it proclaimed "Masterpiece of Hindi Literature" on the cover. I figured that I would check it out. While a little slow in places and extremely fatalistic, it's a good read.

The story takes place in a small village somewhere in northern India outside of Lucknow. Anurag Yadav has a field day pointing out the differences in class and mentality between villagers, the village head leader, and a group of cosmopolitan friends who occasionally run into the villagers. It's all done in a very matter of fact way without excuses for anyone. 

Hori, our main character, is a farmer. He has a wife and 3 children who are almost grown. Hori struggles to improve his situation throughout the book with no success, dragged down by circumstance, malice, and taking loans, a common plight of farmers who end up paying interest long after the loan should have been done. He fights tooth and nail - usually with only his pride left - to hold on to his land and his status as farmer, only to be trample on until all he can claim is that he is a laborer. The village head makes all his excuses about how difficult it is for Zamindars and how he should be excused from any responsibility at all for collecting taxes and fines. The cosmopolitan friends soar above it all, neither worried about money nor how their actions affect anyone.

Spoiler alert - Hori dies in the end from being over worked, a condition that I'm sure many farmers and laborers can understand well. There's absolutely no happy ending for any of the characters, so typical of Indian authors, nor is there any feel good about Hori or his circumstances and how people remain in poverty. Since not many of the people reading this book will be from a village or living in such poverty, it's an interesting exercise in awareness. 

Read it.

~Becky~

The Far Field - Madhuri Vijay

Fiction

Read it!

I initially picked up this book because the art work on the cover is beautiful, and I am very glad I did.  Madhuri Vijay has created something very special with this novel. This is my first exposure to her as an author, and I can't wait to see what else she has written/will write.

This novel is about Shalini. She is from Bangalore who has a very ordinary, yet troubled childhood. Her mother's mental issues are never spelled out, but it's clear she has something wrong. The mother is amused by a wandering Kashmiri clothing seller who comes many times to visit her in her home.  As a child, Shalini can feel that something is wrong, but can't quite put her finger on it. After her mother commits suicide, Shalini decides to find the carpet seller and get her questions answered. Only she doesn't really have a solid location for him, just an old story that he told that helps her in a starting direction. She stays with his extended family for a while and then his son when they agree to help her find him. She exists in a vacuum and passes her time there, wondering if she should stay permanently. Stumbling into a falsely peaceful looking area, she affects the lives of everyone she stays with trying to get her questions answered. Ultimately, her family finds her and a colonel brings her back, then sleeps with her. Her report on the events that she saw in Kashmir are misconstrued to assist the army and the Kashmiri's son is arrested. Shalini is left to live with the fact that inspite of her neutral intentions, her decisions have left a permanent, horrifying mark on people she grew to care about. 

The author unwinds and untangles one thread at a time for us as she goes on an epic trip to uncover some unresolved questions from Shalini's childhood. I know it sounds like a huge trope, but it's very well done. Vijay addresses mental health, infidelity, Kashmir, and how sometimes our actions have unintended, irreversible consequences. It's not a difficult read (though like most of the novels I read, it's quite long), but it does leave you feeling desperately like you wish there was a different outcome. It disturbed me for a few days after I read it.

This isn't my first exposure to the atrocities that continue to happen in Kashmir, but I was very much hoping that the ending would have been at least neutral. It definitely wasn't. I also very much enjoyed (in the literary sense, not seeing a character suffer) how the author focused not only on mental illness and how it can be difficult for an individual, but the long, ongoing consequences that the rest of the family may face. I felt a distinct concern for Shalini the entire novel as it is so obvious that she is wandering lost and trying to make sense of things that were never even spoke of, not to mention explained.

Take your time and wander through this. Its a hell of a book.

~Becky~