The Cruel Month

If T S Eliot were alive today, he wouldn’t be writing the Wasteland and other such modernist works, which drove many a literature lover to depression and gloom. T S Eliot was a very successful Banking Professional in those days; A successful Banker today would be busy buying homes, cars, paying mortgages at concessional rates of interest and buying natty clothes. I am told Eliot reserved the gloom for reading public. “ April is the cruelest month….’ He said. I would like to postpone it to July. For one, I have no relief from my staid existence: no sabbatical, no training, back to office drudgery.
I must have gloated too much about my father’s health. (You can read about it elsewhere in this blog at “ confessions…”). He was perfectly fine when I visited him in June. He had two falls in July and has ended up with fractures in his hand and hip. Just the kind of thing that an 87 year old man ought to avoid. With none of his children around, it has been difficult. My sister, brothers have been taking turns at looking after him. He refuses to move from his village. His home, his past, everything is rooted in the soil and the river that flows nearby. Old age can be a curse, a time for introspection & soul searching; it is also a time for visits to dull, staid hospitals.
I thought I’d write about books I have read recently. My discovery is Indra Sinha. I can hardly say that about a man who got very close to winning the Booker prize last year. I read his “Animal’s People” last year. The book influenced me profoundly. An insight into the brutalized existence in the midst of the Bhopal Gas tragedy with the strand of a poignant love story weaved into it. I recently read his earlier book. “The Death of Mr. Love”. Loosely based on the Nanavati murder case, a crime of passion that shook Bombay in the 60s. This story runs parallely with it. It is about a bunch of kids and their life shaken by the uncertainties of life. It is also about a reunion, which tries to ignite forgotten passions of adolescence.
I loved the endings in both books. There is a river of grief straining to breach its banks and overflow…. Deepest sorrow tinged with eternal love... I always believed women write Crime fiction best and men write great romantic novels. My favourite crime fiction writers are mostly women. P.D.James, Minnette Walters, Ruth Rendell, Sue Grafton etc. There are a few honourable exceptions of course. Men like Lawrence Sanders and Colin Dexter have also written great crime fiction: John Lecarre’s spy fiction continues to enthrall. His mastery over language is total. If Le Carre had chosen to change his genre, he would have certainly won the Nobel Prize for literature. When it comes to romance, I find the romance stuff written by women very mushy, soppy and unreadable. Even Georgette Heyer whom the Missus loves. I can name several great romances written by men. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the time of Cholera, an all time classic), Hemingway (Farewell to Arms), Orhan Pamuk (Snow), Nevil Shute (I know, he is an unlikely candidate. I read “A town like Alice” when I was in 6th std and still believe it is a great book. I remember every line of Jean Paget’s journey and romance), Vikram Seth (An equal music) and several others. I add Indra Sinha to that list. I know the list looks eclectic. So are my tastes. Old age is catching up and my memory isn’t good. I am sure I have omitted several great writers from this list.
Orhan Pamuk is one writer I have been reading in the last 2-3 years. I liked “ My name is Red”. “The New Life” and the “Black Book” are in a different class. I loved Snow. I bought his writings called “Other Colours” recently. It gives a good insight into the man, the times he lived in and the places he frequented. I read the “Thunder Bolt Kid” by Bill Bryson. I have always been a great admirer of his works. But he outdid himself with this. A quote from the book- “ Our ancestors built civilizations; we build malls”. That says everything without saying much.
I also read the “Red Sun” by Sudeep Chakravarti. A St.Stephenian look at the Naxal movement (The Missus sniggers at that- a proud Stephenian herself). As I waded through the book I realized my initial prejudices were misplaced. It opens eyes of city types to the discontent brewing in large swathes of the countryside. The author uses an easy conversational style. Thankfully, he doesn’t take recourse to ideological jargon to explain the Naxal Movement. The extreme scenario that the author paints is quite gloomy. India might be reduced to walled city-states with the vast countryside run by warlords and revolutionaries. Good time for politicians to get cracking. I also read the “Prattler’s tale”, autobiography of Ashok Mitra- the erstwhile W.Bengal Finance Minister and academician. I had attended his classes on Growth Economics in Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum.
Every time I visit Kerala I pick up a few books in Malayalam. Many of them are left unread. I am no more comfortable with my mother tongue. With the Missus and son constantly talking in English with Hindi words thrown in. I read two books, which deserve mention.
“Barsa” written by Khadeeja Mumtaz is the first one. A doctor by profession, she worked in Saudi Arabia. The novel is based on the life of a Muslim lady doctor (neo convert) and her life in Mecca, the Holy city along with her doctor husband. I bought the book over the net after being impressed with an interview with her. She says with rare candour that my creator (Padachavan in Malayalam, a beautiful word to describe god) isn’t one who insists on covering the skin of a woman, nor is he one to exhort men to treat women as their playing fields. She says that after her Saudi Arabian stint, she is glad to be born an Indian Muslim. Barsa means, one who doesn’t cover her face. Barsa is also a person in Islamic History. The prophet’s relative who is said to be extremely vocal and could defeat many a scholar in debates. I had earlier read “Caged Virgin” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken former Dutch Parliamentarian/ feminist writer. Her views are radical and controversial. She lives under heavy protection fearing attacks by fundamentalists. I was impressed with “Barsa”. The author is not possessed of a great gift for writing. She tells a simple story straight from the heart. The book, I understand has sparked off a debate in the Muslim community in Kerala. Understandably the majority is siding with her. A few loonies of course are ranged against her
The second book is ahem… a bit controversial and I am afraid I will be walking a thin line between my conduct as a bureaucrat and the appreciation of political discourse as a concerned citizen. Apparently the author “Azad”,studied in Kerala University for a doctorate in Malayalam. His age indicates that he must have been around in the Vayassan (old man) hostel for Phd students in Karyavattom Campus, around the same time or after I was there. But the name Azad does not ring any bell. Must be a pseudonym. He is a Professor in a College in Manjeri, North Kerala. (Don’t these guys have conduct rules??) The book is called “Fantasy Park and Karl Marx”. It is a critique of “Fourth World” or “Post Marxists” or “Neo Marxists” represented by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Thomas Isaac (Kerala’s Finance Minister), MA Baby (Kerala’s Education Minister) and other “progressive communists” (an oxymoron?). His theories can be summarized as under
1. Identity Politics of the Mayavati/ BJP/ SP kind dilutes the essence of class struggle
2. The Neo Marxists who advocate local self-governance, industrialization and decentralized planning are unwittingly falling into the trap of Imperialism and its’ crony institutions like World Bank etc. In other words by talking of development first and class struggle later, the Neo Marxists are doing disservice to the masses.
3. He stops short of accusing the Neo Marxists of being CIA agents.
4. The Multilateral Financial Institutions, Think tanks, NGOs, development agencies that channel money into micro credit, grass roots level development, self-help agencies etc are part of the Capitalist conspiracy. The Neo Marxists are putty in their hands.
I was reminded of the Book “Wild Swans: Three daughters of China” by Jung Chang. It is about life under Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution. In the sixties China, an apparatchik and ideological purist like Azad would have been banished to the villages to make pig iron in agricultural land- A grand effort at industrialization during the Great Leap forward as exhorted by the Great Leader to industrialize using crude methods. Most of the iron thus produced, polluted the countryside and was unusable. Many ideological purists were banished to ignominy during those years. Or, he would have hung chappals around the Neo Marxists/ academicians and called condemnation meetings. Those were the smart ones- who sided with the Great Leader. Removal of poverty can wait. Do nothing that would postpone the revolution…. Very romantic notion, I must say. I thought I was living in the seventies when I read this. Great stuff for the erudite village Mallu living in his make believe world. Till that visa to Gulf comes through, of course.