Karma by Cathy Ostlere: Impressions

There are good books, there are great books and then there are once-in-a-lifetime books. Cathy Ostlere's 'Karma', which is a novel in verse, falls in the third category for more reasons than one. It hit all the right spots even before I had read the award-winning book. It was as if Karma was meant for me. The title, the cover design, the concept and the style of the book - everything called out to me.

Written in a diary format, the story is told through  Maya and Sandeep's poetic entries. Maya is a Indian-origin Canadian teenager who straddles the two worlds of Indian values and her Canadian life on the one hand and her mother's Hindu beliefs and father's Sikh pride on the other. She also has bestfriend-boyfriend issues like any regular teenager and struggles to stay afloat in a sea of identity crises. But Maya's already fragile world crumbles when she loses her mother to depression and is taken to India by her father to be married off. Maya and her bapu land at the time of modern India's worst political crises - the assassination of  Indira Gandhi. Maya is separated from her father in Delhi's riotous atmosphere and she escapes to Jodhpur leaving behind her life and her voice.

Enter Sandeep. Child of the desert, an orphan adopted, maverick and Maya's unlikely hero. When Maya is rescued by Sandeep's sister, she is no more than a frightened creature, rendered mute by her grief. Sandeep's family take Maya in for a while and through his words, Sandeep must coax back Maya's spirit and words. Several adventures follow and the seeds of friendship and young love are sown. Sandeep helps reunite Maya with her father, but they must pay the price with separation.

You see how the plot is so thick with action and emotion. Now multiply it many times over with Ostlere's poignant poetry. The poet-novelist writes striking free verse, which is laden with powerful imagery. I am hard pressed to pick a favourite (every line in the book is, really), but I don't think I'll ever forget these lines from Sandeep's diary on page 422.

Sandeep's answer

I hear him arguing

We are made of love. Love! Do you hear me, old
man! We are made of the love that finds us. The
love we make. And even the love we are fated to
lose! 

Otslere strikes you down, lifts you up, makes you cry and moves you irrevocably with her poignant poetry. There may be only 15 words on a page, but you are never left wanting, so evocative are the images she paints. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about poetry but thinks they do not have the patience for it.  Let not its 500 plus pages scare you. For once you've dipped your toes in its first few lines, you'll want to swim and drown in it and never come back again.

There was no one at the Bus Stop by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay: Impressions

Thanks to prolific translator, Arunava Sinha, I am learning to be a Bengali all over again. Sinha has translated a number of books by some of the most famous names in contemporary Bengali literature. Thanks to him, 'probashi' (expat) Bengalis like me are getting to savour the wonderful literature Bengal has had to offer in the last few decades. I grew up hearing my mother wax eloquent about writers like Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Sunil Ganguly, Bani Basu, Sankar and others and they were always a world away... until now. Sinha's long list of translations include wildly popular novels, short stories, young adult fiction, and children's stories so far.  I also hear he's also translating some poetry. He has opened many wonderful doors to my mother tongue, one of which is this novella 'There was no one at the Bus Stop' by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay.

In the middle of a fact-heavy sociological book that I'm dragging my feet, I needed to read something light. So I picked up the slimmest volume from my to-be-read pile of books on my flight to Goa. I didn't realise just how much weight the pages of a book can bear. Although I finished the book in less than two hours, 'Bus Stop' was anything but light.

Set in Kolkata the 70s, 'Bus Stop' is a simple enough story of an extra marital affair. However, it is the sea of emotions that the protagonists experience that drowns you with them. Debashish, a impudent man in his middle age is in love with Trina, a woman he knew as a girl. Freshly widowed, Debashish feels little or nothing about his late wife, but his young son, Robi has many of his heartstrings. Trina is ageing gracefully, with two adolescent children and a husband who cares more about his garden than his wife. A chance meeting brings them together and sows the seeds of desire in Debashish's heart. A melancholy Trina, squarely ignored by her family, gets drawn to him too.

The plot unfolds in a single day marked by two momentous decisions taken by the protagonists. Debashish is compelled to leave his son with his sister for a 'better' upbringing, while Trina, spurned by her family, leaves her home and goes to Debashish, hoping to reach some conclusion about her life. However, they are unable to savour their togetherness plagued by guilt and wrongdoing. It's a love that never will be.

 It is in portraying these evocative feelings that Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay's genius lies. The author's language is shorn of frills, yet amazingly lyrical in places. There are clever suggestions and plenty to read between the lines. There is none of the melodrama to express overwhelming emotions, nor explicitness to express intimacy that we see so much of in today's 'literature'. Understated, yet hard-hitting are adjectives that best describe the author's style. All I can say is that I flew through the book with lumps in my throat. Read it for Bangla literature. Read it for an insight on the beautiful and complex nature of human relationships.
   

Longing

There is a drop of longing everyday
that falls from the sky of your being
Small and sharp and brilliant
It catches the light and shines
defiantly, brightly,
searing the grey of every-dreary-day
shamelessly calling attention to itself.

There is a drop of longing everyday
that I must hide in a jar
in a cool-dark place (like forbidden candy)
There is a drop of longing everyday
that no one must see.

The jar in the cool-dark place
is almost full
It blinds my eyes each time I look
within.
A million little drops of brilliance
that have morphed into a sea of desire.
Viscous, iridescent, proud.

There is a drop of longing everyday
that I must furtively add to the jar
Fuel to fire
And close a hurried lid, afraid
my home will go down in flames.

There is a drop of longing everyday
that refuses to be quietened, diffused.
Small and sharp and brilliant.
Unchanged, since I felt it first,
A drop from the sky of your being
Right into my barren heart.
'Plop', it fell, I remember
Catching me, drenching me, unawares.
I stepped away from my body,
To stare at that brazen drop.
Catching light, so much light,
shamelessly calling attention to itself.
Scared, fascinated, I hid it in a jar
in a cool-dark place.

Since then, every day,
there falls a drop of longing
from the sky of your being
small and sharp and brilliant.
Diamonds from a heaven
where you are.

I'm running out of space,
I'm running out of time.
The jar won't hold much longer
There are cracks, and light shines through
even in that cool-dark place.

There is a drop of longing everyday
Bigger than the drop of yesterday
Drowning me, drowning all.

I will need you soon,
and your mouth and your hands,
to swallow this luminous sea
so the game can start over.

Nude 5

I started this Nude series a while ago, intending to do 10. Here's the fifth one of the series and I hope I get around to finishing all.

Celluloid Flesh

Euphoria

I haven't painted in a long time and few things seem to inspire me these days. But a colleague introduced me to this song a few days ago and it became more than a earworm. Sanam Puri's voice made my heart leap with pure ecstasy and I wanted to dance with joy - or paint it. I made this quick watercolor work in not more than an hour and was quite pleased with it. My long-standing fear of watercolour seems to have gone, at least some of it. I thought it came out quite okay. And you?

My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose: Impressions

Some books grab you by the throat, some lie next to you under shady trees on summer afternoons in companionable silences, and some, you must coax and cajole into a friendship. My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose started out being the third kind, but by the time I finished, it had become the second. My relationship with this book was one of old school romance - just what the book is about.

In the 'literary' age where more people know of E L James than say, Jane Austen, where consummation comes before courtship, My Kind of Girl is a 'difficult' book. It is a book that forces you to slow down, a book that will take you back in time to an inhibited world, where the only way of loving was longing.

My Kind of Girl, a translation of the Bengali 'Moner Moto Maye' is really a collection of four short 'love' stories held together by a looser, larger plot. Four stranded travellers - a doctor, a writer, a bureaucrat and a contractor - find themselves in the waiting room of a railway station and must spend a night together. They seek the warmth of each other's love stories to fend off the cold in their air and their hardened hearts.

Stories of young, and mostly unrequited love are narrated, transporting the reader to a time of innocence, a time purity, a time where a brush of the beloved's hand was enough to last one a lifetime. There is the thick-headed Makhanlal's story of  love for his neighbour that never comes to pass; Gagan Baran, the bureaucrat's story of Pakhi, who loved him as a 16-year-old and forever after; Dr. Abani's story of how he met his wife through a friend who broke her heart; and the writer's story of 'Mona Lisa', who he and his two best friends loved and lost together.

Every story is told with a tenderness we, as a people, as readers, have forgotten. To those who've grown on the fodder of Mills & Boons and Sidney Sheldons, Buddhadeva Bose's book will seem painfully primitive in the beginning. But one must give it time; one must open their hearts to the kind of love that is not about easy, sweaty sex and porn-perfect characters. One must slowly dance to the plaintive flute that a lovelorn heart plays. One must partake of the pain of longing, a pain that has no recourse or end. There are no happy endings, just twinges of sorrow to take back from these elegiac love stories. These are stories about 'Your kind of person', but one you can never have. Through its stories and its style, My Kind of Girl harks back to the romantic in you, the romantic you thought was gone forever.

Kudos to Arunava Sinha for translating not just the words but the delicate sentiments bound within the pages of this book. But this book is only for those who know how to take it slow.

Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino: Impressions

WHAT A DRAG!

I would begin and end my review with those three words had this not been a review copy. 'Salvation of a Saint' by Keigo Higashino landed in my kitty as a book reviewer as a result of fierce PR activity that this writer/publisher is wont to do. I remember the massive noise Higashino's first book - The Devotion of Suspect X - made in India's blogging circles.

I finally managed to finish the book today after lugging it around for a while. And I call it lugging not for its weight or volume but for its sheer bore factor. Higashino is a genius with his basic plots but boy, does he drag his feet. If I was disappointed with Suspect X, I've downright disliked Salvation. Like the previous book, I have a problem with this one's title too. 'Salvation of a Saint' makes no sense right to the end. I'm beginning to wonder if these are translation problems. Perhaps the Japanese title has nuances that are lost to English readers.

The plot revolves around the principal characters of Ayane Mashiba, wife of a young and wealthy Yoshitaka Mashiba, Hiromi Wakayama, her young apprentice and a bunch of detectives. Ayane and Hiromi are prime suspects when Yoshitaka is found dead from poisoning. In true Higashino style, a case is built up with iron clad alibis, investigative dead ends, scientific solutions, and with even a romantic angle thrown in for good measure. But for the longest time - almost two thirds of the book - the plot goes round and round in the same place exploring the same angle. You can almost picture the author laboring to fill pages to match the commissioning editor's page count. I was tempted to abandon the book very often at this point. It must be super hard being a thriller writer, weaving in dead ends and sub plots in a story, staving off the end the way Higashino does. Yawn.

The book picks up pace only in the last 50 pages, when the real story and the real suspect are brought to the fore. There has been no evolution of style from the last book, and Higashino still writes in his crisp, visual manner, and with an evident love of science and forensics. If I make the mistake of reading a third book by the same author, I'll perhaps be able to tell that it is a Higashino book even without looking at the book cover. Familiar characters from the Metropolitan Police Department hold the plot, including detectives Kusanagi and Kishitani and chief Mamiya. A new addition to the characters, in the form of Utsumi, a junior female detective, is welcome. We also meet eccentric physicist Professor Yukawa from the Imperial University, who is instrumental in cracking the case.

When the mystery is finally revealed to the reader, it is nothing short of amazing, but it was definitely not worth my time and patience. Don't think I'm going down a Higashino lane again.

Neera pays back

Neera. Where can she go?
She is but a line that curves and stretches and dances
to the tunes of your pen
Neera will go where your nib drags her.

Neera is the colour that is your colour,
Neera is what you see in the mirror.
Neera does nothing. Neera does all.
Like a heart that must beat, without being asked.

Neera is a work of art,
made good or bad by the way your fingers move.
Neera is your food and your hunger.
Neera is the fine line between the real and the imagined.

Yes Neera is a moment arrested,
a breath held (within your lungs)
Neera is that stretched sunset you wish for,
an evening that never ends.

It's time Neera paid back in ink.
Passion with passion, worship with worship hundredfold,
Neera now burns (the midnight oil)
the way you burnt for her.

The Other Side of the Table by Madhumita Mukherjee: Impressions

There are some books where you are part of a respectful audience and then there are some when you are a voyeur. I felt like the latter when reading 'The Other Side of the Table', written uniquely as it is in the form of letters. Letters, those wonderful things from a bygone era few from this time will know of. Those blue-brown things that smelt of sweat and perfume and musty mailboxes. Those things that made you to learn to wait and be  happy with one little piece of love at a time.

In her debut novel, Madhumita Mukherjee assumes the voices of Abhi, a budding neurosurgeon based in London, and Uma, a young medical student from Kolkata and charts their friendship through many, many letters exchanged over the years. There is no real beginning and no real end to this story, no one tells you how Abhi and Uma came to be friends, and what their friendship culminated into. When you open the book, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of their lives, secretly reading through their private, prized stash of letters.

The quintessential bachelor Abhi, and the nubile Uma talk earnestly to each other through these letters, sharing details - big and small - about their lives. They talk about love, they talk about friends and family, and they talk the talk of doctors. Abhi is ever the light-hearted and well meaning older friend, while Uma is feisty in her blooming youth. There is warm affection some times, and sweet reprimands at others. Some  faux anger here, and real appeasement there. When a crisis befalls one, there is firm handholding by another. Sometimes, Abhi is the guardian, and sometimes, Uma the caregiver. Roles switch easily in this beautiful Platonic relationship, where they seek little else from each other but honest words on a piece of paper.

Mukherjee writes as efficiently as Abhi as she does Uma, and the reader never finds a gender bias in her voice - at least I, as a woman reader, didn't think so. Her style is easy and her words, relate-able. A doctor herself, she offers some interesting insights into the lives of doctors. She also balances perfectly the distance and dynamics of this fictional relationship, with neither Uma nor Abhi ever stepping into the sexual zone a man-woman are so wont to do. But one sees the foundations of their relationships growing stronger, an invisible yet undeniable proprietorship building over each other over the years. When Abhi is faced with a life-threatening illness, Uma takes the final leap of faith and seals their bond by joining him in person, their distances bridged forever.

'The Other Side of the Table' is a part light-part poignant read and it has its memorable bits. However, neither Abhi nor Uma are people who you will count among your favourite characters. That's because you are never really part of the plot, but a mere reader of letters they've written immersed in each other.