Delhi: A Soliloquy - M. Mukundan

Fiction

Verdict: Read it

Delhi is a novel that I pickup up for a few reasons. The cover art is very nice, which always gets me. I also do not like Delhi as a city. It's one of the few places I've ever felt unsafe, even when accompanied by my partner. It's a reputation the city has earned with good reason. Yet people live breathe and move through their lives there because that's where they live for a multitude of reasons.

M. Mukundan brings us through the live on a Malayali man named Sahadevan. He has come fresh off the train to try to "Make his way" in the big city and earn for his family. He is supported by other Malayalis who live in Delhi and have chosen to make it their home. The author doesn't focus too much on Sahadevan in the beginning; he brings the audience into a wider focus of everything going on around him. As with many lives, Sahadevan has people fade in and out of his everyday life due to a variety of reasons. We see this happen through the novel, as well as his own personality changes as he ages. In general he is a responsible soul (though one is clear he would rather not be) and this care extends to anyone he comes across. He simply feels obliged to help. As a result, his own life goes on the back burner until he is too old to change some of his choices, such as his own marriage. 

Mukundan does a wonderful job of capturing the small things about being from Kerala in a northern city without beating it to death nor suggesting the audience wouldn't understand any of it thus overexplaining. He simply points out that a South Indian moving to a northern city and making a living as an outsider can be difficult. Which it definitely is, but people do and life moves on. 

Mukundan has also set his story in a time that was tumultuous for India, not to mention Delhi. . Some of the characters that he has brilliantly woven into the story as side characters help illustrate some of the horrific things that have happened. The story opens with accounts of 2 wars and how it affects the mentality of the citizens His friend's son gets forced sterilized in a Sanjay Gandhi sterilization camp initiative. One Sikh landlord and his wife and elder daughter are murdered when the reprisals came for Indira Gandhi's murder happened. The mindset just never seems to improve - Delhi is a city with a grinding, brutal past. Yet people move on and survive.

It's a dark novel to read, but history is history. As I knew before I started, this novel has just reinforced what I thought of Delhi before. I don't particularly ever want to even visit there again. I can't imagine living there.

Read it!

~Becky~

Boys from Good Families - Usha K.R.

Fiction

Verdict: Meh

I have not read anything previous by Usha K.R. It's been so long since I've been to the bookstore that I honestly can't remember if this was a recommendation or simply had a nice cover. Who knows.

Boys from Good Families follows a privileged young man through his life, first in a house with servants somewhere in a village in Karnataka, then on to the US, then eventually back to that same house after his parents die and the house needs to be dealt with. 

There are so many themes in this book that I have read before that I almost felt that I HAD read this book before. But I know I haven't. The son who goes away to the US to find himself or make money, the love story about falling for one of the servants and how that's completely unacceptable, having property that you don't particularly want in a country you don't want to live in but it's still yours and your responsibility to take care of. Siblings who also want and feel they have a right to share in said property. Marriage that ends in disaster because the person they married to turns out to have no ambition, care, nor morals. I could go on. The themes in this book definitely aren't ground breaking ones. It's simply but well written. 

I didn't not enjoy reading this novel, but I certainly struggled to find anything unique about it that I did enjoy. The characters and experiences need more depth and less stereotyping. 

Not a bad novel, but nothing groundbreaking.

~Becky~