On a Wing and a Prayer - Arun Sarma

Fiction

Verdict: Read it

This is the first novel I've read by Arun Sarma. It kept coming up on Pinterest, so I decided to give it a go. I enjoyed the cover art.

The novel is set in Assam as India moved towards Independence. The north east, especially the rural parts, have their own flavour of life and writing. It turns into a generational story, which I enjoy greatly. 

It took me a while to get into the storyline. The author writes simply, matter-of-factly, and doesn't linger on unnecessary details. The book does get into some communal commentary closer to the end, but it doesn't leave you with any verdict on it. 

Honestly, while the story was well written, it didn't catch my emotions like many other partition books have. It feels intentionally set back from the realities a bit, perhaps due to the rural setting. There are better books on this subject.

~Becky~

Tomb of Sand: Geetanjali Shree

Fiction

Verdict: Read it

This is one of those large books. The ones that take forever to read. At least it took me quite a while relatively. I was about a third of the way through before my interest was well and truely hooked too.I believe this was a bookstore find and the first I have read by Geetanjali Shree.

Long, but worth it. It's a 2022 Booker Prize winner, which usually means worth reading. This is another flavor of the partition literature that ranges from amazing to awful in India. I enjoyed the novel. It's also a bit of a soft-peddaled manifesto. The mother is done listening to other people and is going to do what she would like. Not in a hurtful way, but in an "I Need to do this" way. It examines intergenerational assumptions and turns some of them upside down.

I enjoyed the protagonist a lot. I enjoyed cheering for me and while she wasn't perfect, she was human, relateable, and I wanted her to achieve what she set out to do. That's a pretty brilliant win for an author. I feel that selling the main character is half the battle of getting someone to read your book. Take it on vacation, take the time to read some daily, but do read this - well worth it.

Read it!

~Becky~

Blood Brothers - MJ Akbar

Fiction

Verdict: Read It (3/5)

Overview:

Brief Note: Ironically, I read this before and didn't even realize it until I was making my entry into my list of books read and checking if I read anything from MJ Akbar before. This is what happens when you read too much. I'm going to review it anyway because I don't think I did before.

Blood Brothers is yet another novel that I picked up from Bookworm. I'm not sure what made me pick it up. This is the first book I've read by MJ Akbar

The time just prior to and during partition is well-tread ground for good reason. This book is a multigenerational novel about a family that has moved to Bengal outside one of the famous Jute Mills and how the events unfolded around them during and after partition. They are decently well off thanks to a smart grandfather. The family has influence in the community and helps to avert the community tensions that plagued many other places in Calcutta during partition. 

What I Enjoyed:

The novel is well-written and easy to understand. MJ Akbar does a masterful job of splitting his attention between character development and historical events. While a little out of the ordinary, Akbar managed to find a balance between hope and being believable in terms of avoiding community bloodshed. 

What I Disliked:

I would have liked a little more detail on the family relationships. While the importance of the historical events is undeniable, the effects on families and their relationships can't be ignored either. I felt the father's character development could have gone into more depth. There were a few slightly slow sections.

Summary:

It took me quite some time to finish this novel for the 2nd time. There are very few novels I will voluntarily read twice. I would not read this a third time. That being said, this is a suitable contender for a reader who is not familiar with Calcutta and partition. Read it!

 

~Becky~

  

The Anatomy of Hate - Revati Laul

NonFiction

Read it

Revati Laul takes us through the riots in Gujarat in the form of shoft stories about people who were involved. It's less about the events and more about the sentiment and mentality behind them. To be sure, the Gujarat riots were a horrific occurence and one that left a big scar. The author's ability to make it personal for some of those involved can help to explain why mentalities and actions occured as they did.

Reading this made me deeply angry at how easy it is to manipulate simple people and how India was manipulated and fooled into the communal violence routine it readily embraces to this day. It's unnecesary and a shame. Like anywhere with uneducatied masses, creating enmity and communal identities results in mindsets that are difficult to change. As someone who grew up in the United states, watching the changes in socially accepted behaviors and mindsets from a mainly uneducated mass of people is hard to swallow. It's hard to swallow knowing that news media and politicians engineered this mindset - the same as India. 

The stories in this book aren't shocking or outrageous, they're just about ordinary people driven by their upbringing and mindset. They're not necessarily bad people, but they did bad things. It makes one wonder what we ourselves would do in such a situation  or even our neighbors should they be different from us. It's anathema - individualist thoughts in such a deeply community minded country. This is a definite read - it personalizes and gives accountability for the tragedy that happened.

Read it.

~Becky~