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~

The Slim Punjabi - Harmeet

Non-Fiction

Read it for a deeper look into Punjab

I was expecting this to be a story. It wasn't. The author has woven together recipes with history, dance, folk lore, and festivals to give the reader a peak into Punjabi culture. I greatly enjoy Punjabi movies and culture, so this was delightful. I even found things I didn't expect to not have known - like some dance forms and even history. 

I guess my favorite part was the love stories that the author included. There are a few and they are of the Romeo and Juliet variety of romantic tragedy. I feel that stories of this type reflect a great deal on culture and history, so reading these was very interesting for me. The recipes, to be quite honest didn't interest me that much as finding any recipe is just a matter of consulting the google gods, but they gave a mental refresher after the weightier material. 

Read it if you're interested in Punjabi culture overall or just looking to broaden your horizons. 

~Becky~

Two Lives - Vikram Seth

 Non Fiction

Verdict: Read it

I picked up this book because I had fought my way all through A Suitable Boy (happily I might add, but it's a huge book) and An Equal Music and wanted to read more from him. I wasn't quite prepared for a non-fiction biography type of (also long!) adventure, but that is what I ended up with.

Seth takes people into the lives of his Uncle and Aunt, whom he spent time with as a young man. Both people had extraordinary lives and Seth does an excellent job examining them, both from an independent perspective as well as a family one. After reading A Suitable Boy, Two Lives was illuminating about Seth as an author, and the family that spawned the ideas for A Suitable Boy. 

I enjoy family sagas in general, and there were old photos - also + points for me. Seth wanders into so many topics that it's quite the mindful to consider. It's quite something how people's lives twist and turn and wander in the most random of directions. Seth's uncle went to dental school in Germany. He happened to be living with his future wife's family as a boarder right before WW2. He leaves and goes to England to begin his career. He has his own stint in the military which results in him losing a part of one arm. His wife, a Jewish German is given the opportunity to leave Germany when things start to get difficult for Jewish people. She takes it and survives, unlike most of her family. The two wander into mid life, and eventually settle into a companionable marriage that doesn't produce any children. 

Seth does a brilliant job of exploring many different themes through the book. Not the least of which is how WW2, views of Jewish people in Germany at the time, and how it affected his aunt's entire life. He also gets into how we may not know people we love when they are alive, and only get a small window is we happen to run into letters or memories from others into other sides of people after they pass. He explores cultural ideas of families, an interracial marriage at a time when it was not common.

Vikram Seth's life paralleled his Uncle's in many strange and wonderful ways. It's quite interesting to watch this as it unfolds. One cannot avoid the thoughts that patterns within families determine many things.  

The most interesting thing for me, was the author's dismay at the end of the book over how his uncle had changed into someone he didn't know due to age and mental decline. How someone walked into their lives and took the property from under their noses. The property itself was less hurful than comments that were made about life long loving relationships - both due to age related confusion and unmet expectations. I found this fascinating because it's not a subject often discussed in such brutal honesty. We don't like to think that others may change because they are old and uncomfortable, or slightly confused. We don't like to talk about that people respond bitterly when they feel their expectations aren't met. 

As I mentioned, Seth is a prolific writer and his books are not short. But they are well worth the investement. Read it.

~Becky~

The Moor's Last Sigh - Salman Rushdie

Fiction

Novel

Salman Rushdie has long been one of my favorite authors. He challenges my brain in ways that are subtle, but rigorous. I love it. 

This novel is a generational family epic of ridiculous proportions. Just about everything about this family is exceptional - some in good ways, some in terrible ones. 

True to Indian form, there's no happy ending, and it's not always clear who is right and wrong. You can't help but root for Rushdie's characters though. They're deep and very interesting, even though they are all realistically flawed. 

As I mentioned, Rushdie is never easy to read. He simply operates at a level that most of us never see. As such, his stories are very simple to read, but never are the simple story he has on the surface. There is always an under story that is happening in parallel. If you don't know how to look for it, you would never see it.  I know that I definitely need to looks through a few cliff notes to make sure I understand what happened.

Rushdie is one of those authors that you must read during your life time, if not for the enjoyment then for the experience.

Read it!

~Becky~ 

Three Merchants of Bombay - Lakshmi Subramanian

NonFiction
Verdict: It depends

I picked this book up from my favorite bookstore long before we all came under house arrest for Covid.  These were supposed to be short stories, and I love short stories that  are about people. Set in the British Colonial times in India, the book follows three prominent money lenders and merchants during that time. 

I started reading. The intro was a very heavy, in depth account of the situation and situation at the time. Cool. I love extra information that helps me understand the context. Only it went on, and on.  I really had a hard time separating the intro from the actual start of the "stories."  When the author did get going, the focus of the book was more on the British than the actual merchants that the book was about! 

This is definitely an academic piece, and the scope that the author is trying to cover is quite large. Unfortunately, I couldn't ever identify with or understand the characters she is trying to explain. And eventually I got bored of the repetitive sentences about the British. 

I guess If I would have had a better idea about what the book was about then perhaps my expectations would have been different. So whether or not you read it depends on if this is something that interests you. It didn't hold mine and I didn't finish it. 

~Becky~

History of Modern India - Bipin Chandra

NonFiction
Verdict: Read it!

The title is pretty self explanatory for this one. However, this is one of the better explanations of Indian History that I've read. It will leave you pretty angry at the British if you have any sense at all. But still a fascinating read - not too long or heavy.


Becky