Short story: A Family Holiday

 As the Innova sped along the airport highway towards the city, Sushsree’s phone vibrated in her bag. Even without looking at the phone, Sushsree knew who it would be. She gingerly fished the phone out of her bag. The screen was lit up and the caller’s name was flashing across the screen. “Milind Shah Everest Pipes”.  An hour earlier, as her flight descended into Bengaluru, she had spent a few minutes debating whether she should keep her mobile switched off or on vibrate mode or fully muted. She knew that one of Chandrakant Shukla’s minions would call her shortly after she landed to find out if the financial statements were acceptable, though she had messaged them in the morning saying she would be able to let them know only by ten in the night, hoping to prevent them from calling until after dinner. 

Nandan turned around to look at his wife. ‘Don’t these people know you are on leave?,’ he asked trying to sound irritated, though his tone was actually a mix of pride and annoyance. ‘She is forever working,’ Sushsree’s mother-in-law commented grimly from behind her, but without any of the pride that her son still had in his wife’s work. How dare she answer her phone?

‘No, the statements won’t be ready till late evening,’ Sushsree told Milind Shah, even as Adhrit snuggled against her.

Could she make sure that her compliance team would accept the statements that the Everest Pipes’ auditors had provided?  ‘Yes, of course, I will. I already promised Chandrakant sir, haven’t I?’

Milind Shah wouldn’t end the conversation and kept talking and Sushsree could sense her in-laws’ annoyance.

‘Milind, I need to go. I’m on leave, you know that, right? I’ll call you when I have an update.’ Sushsree hung up. They would call back in an hour, she knew, though she had won a brief respite. Clients expected their investment bankers to be on call 24/7, even when they were on vacation and the folks at Everest Pipes were no exception.

‘Bangalore has changed,’ her mother-in-law said from behind, a hint of sadness in her voice.

‘We’re coming here after almost five years, right?’ her father-in-law shot back. His voice was much louder than that of his wife and it carried

‘Yes, you came here just before Covid. I came here just last year and even I can see some changes.’ Nandan turned around for a few seconds from his front seat, next to the driver, before turning back. His voice was even stronger than his father’s and it bounced all around the Innova.

‘What about you Sushshree? Do you see any change?’ her mother-in-law challenged her.

‘I keep coming to Bangalore so often that I don’t notice any change,’ Sushsree replied meekly and waited for the inevitable retort.

‘You’ve been visiting Bangalore so often that you don’t notice any change, but you haven’t had the time to visit my brother even once,’ her father-in-law mocked her.

‘Those were work trips Appa. Day trips, mostly’, Nandan defended her half-heartedly.

‘I visited them just after we got married.’

‘Which was six years ago!’ Her father-in-law was itching for a fight. Did the fact that he was on home turf embolden him? Sushsree wondered lazily. He had moved to Mumbai in his twenties to take up a job and had become a Mumbaikar for all practical purposes, but Bangalore was still home for him and her mother-in-law. What about Nandan? Like her, Nandan too was born and brought up in Mumbai. However, unlike her, Nandan could speak Kannada fluently. No, Nandan didn’t think of Bangalore as home, Sushsree decided, though she had never asked him that question and now she would never ask him, just in case he ended up saying yes.

When they reached their destination, a two-storied bungalow surrounded by a compound wall and hedged in by much taller buildings and one particularly tall high-rise, Mahesh and his twins came bounding out of the house, opened the gate and stood aside. The Innova drove into the compound, disgorged its passengers and their luggage, reversed back into the road and sped away.

‘How much did you pay him?’ Mahesh asked Nandan who was looking at the Uber App on his phone, only to gasp on hearing Nandan’s reply. ‘We could have send the car.’

‘Next time.’

‘Padmaja and Pragnya have grown so tall,’ she heard her mother-in-law gush, even as her phone vibrated once more.

Mahesh’s wife Krithika came out and picked up Adhrit. ‘Adhrit is a big boy now. How old are you, Adhrit?’ Her father-in-law’s elder brother stood at the door, looking as frail as the few wisps of white hair on his crown. His wife’s head, covered with lustrous silvery tresses, could be seen behind him.

Adhrit refused to answer Krithika, though he reluctantly stayed in her arms. Sushsree ignored the vibrating phone.

‘Adhrit, tell Kritika how old you are,’ his grandmother prompted him. Adhrit remained silent.

‘Why won’t you answer your aunt?’ Nandan demanded, even as Krithika carried him inside and the rest of the family followed them.

The drawing room was brightly lit, with red curtains and comfortable sofas of the same colour. ‘Adhrit is ….’ All the grown-ups in the drawing room seemed to be speaking in one voice and waiting for his answer. The only sounds that were heard were the soft thuds when Mahesh and Nandan deposited the suitcases on the floor.

 ‘Four,’ Adhrit said gently and was rewarded with shouts of exultation from all around. ‘He’s a big boy now,’ his grandmother added.

 Sushsree’s phone stopped vibrating and then restarted after a three second pause. Sushsree was torn between answering the phone and saying something nice to  Padmaja and Pragnya. She decided to not answer the phone. She could call Milind back, couldn’t she. However, she made the mistake of fishing the phone out of her handbag and looking at the screen. It wasn’t Milind Shah, but Chandrakant Shukla himself. Now, there was no question of ignoring the call.

 ‘Hello Chandrakant Sir.’

 ‘Sushsree, I know that you are on a break and I am sorry to trouble you.’

 ‘It’s no trouble at all sir.’ Behind her, she could sense Nandan and her parents bristling, while Mahesh and Krithika gave her indulgent smiles. Mahesh’s father had a perplexed look on his face until his younger brother muttered an explanation to him and then he too looked annoyed.

 ‘Sushsree, why is it taking so long to confirm that the financial statements that we have given you are kosher.’

 ‘Sir, whenever we are relying on unaudited financial statements, it is necessary for our compliance to review it and ….

 ‘Okay, but why is it taking so long?’

 ‘Sir, it’s a process. I will get it sorted.’

 ‘I know Sushsree. You have always delivered. That’s why I’ve given this deal to your firm.’

 She wanted to ask him why he had called though she had messaged him in the morning to say that she would revert on his issue by late night. Why did clients have go out of their way to be so difficult?

 Is it very pleasant in Bangalore? Chandrakant Shukla wanted to know.

 ‘Yes Sir, it is. The weather is amazing!’

 ‘I so envy you. We are sweating it out here, you know.’

 Of course, you bastard, you are sweating it out! Is there any corner of your house or office or car that is not air-conditioned? ‘Sir, you should come to Bangalore.’ Sushsree's voice couldn't have been more warm or welcoming.  

 All around her, various activities were taking place. Nandan had carried their parent’s suitcase into the room allocated for them. Her mother-in-law had taken off Adhrit’s shoes as well as his jeans and given him a pair of sandals and a pair of comfortable shorts. Kritika was laying out the table, in the centre of which was two piles of freshly fried medu vade and onion kodubale. Nandan’s uncle and aunt were already seated, ready to eat. Soon everyone else took their places around the table. As she too sat down, the smell of fresh filter coffee hit Sushsree, even as she noticed her mother-in-law look at Kritika approvingly.

 Her phone vibrated again. This time it was her own office and Sushree had to explain to a young analyst, over the munching sounds around her, why an EBITDA calculation seemed to be wrong. Nandan looked at his wife with irritation. ‘Whoever it is, tell him you are on leave!’ he asked angrily looking up from his plate for a moment, before turning back his attention to the food. ‘She is forever working,’ Sushsree’s mother-in-law added, addressing her elder sister and her brother-in-law, who both had a grim look on their faces. How dare she take a work call when on leave and having a meal with family?

 ‘This is why we told Kritika that she can’t work after marriage. She wasn’t too happy about it, but its worked out well for all of us. Padmaja and Pragya get her undivided attention.’

 ‘Why isn’t Adhrit eating?’ her father-in-law’s elder brother asked, as if to buttress the statement his wife had just made. ‘Don’t you like vada?’

 ‘He’s a fussy eater,’ Sushsree said quickly, even as all the adults around the table turned their attention towards the four-year old who was treating the medu vada on the plate in front of him more as a toy than as food.

 ‘Maybe he has never seen a medu vada before!’

 ‘Of course not. We take him to Udipi restaurants often, Nandan retorted.

 ‘And, we make idli, dosa, vada at home very often,’ her mother-in-law added.

 ‘The Udipi restaurants in Mumbai are not really authentic, are they?’

 ‘Not really. Now some of them even serve Chinese food. In any event, that cannot compare with this food!’ Nandan sounded suitably sad as he spoke.  Nandan’s uncle and aunt appreciated his humility with a beaming smile.

 ‘Why don’t you feed him?’ Sushsree’s mother-in-law asked her.

 ‘He can eat on his own,’ Sushsree countered.

 ‘He’s only four,’ Sushsree’s mother-in-law’s sister said.

 If I feed him when we are on holiday, he will insist of me feeding him after we go back home, Sushsree wanted to say, but she desisted. ‘Let him eat a bit more on his own, after that I will feed him.

 Should she switch off the phone? Chandrakant Shukla would go mad if her phone was off. So would her boss. It was one thing to not answer a call and another if the phone was switched off. There were so many excuses that could be made if the phone rang, but went unanswered.

 The phone vibrated once more and Nandan frowned. Sushsree didn’t dare look at the phone, thought she had sensed its pulsating energy even before it started vibrating. Sushsree’s mother-in-law immediately caught on and the other three oldies at the table followed suit. It was as if the vibrating phone was an evil object which radiated so much anti-family energy that was a menace to everyone in its vicinity.

 'Is it the same person calling?', her mother-in-law asked. Sushsree was forced to look at her phone. It was “Milind Shah Everest Pipes”.

 ‘Everest Pipes is going to have its IPO. We are handling it,’ Sushsree told the table at large.

 Fantastic! I’m so happy for Everest Pipes. Please take the call Sushsree,’ her father-in-law said, his tone dripping with sarcasm and making eye contact with his elder brother, who quickly adopted his younger brother's stern look and attitude. Sushsree totally ignored the sarcasm and answered the phone, even as she said ‘thank you appa’, with full sincerity.

 ‘This is not about the financial statements,’ Milind told her.

 ‘Please tell me, Milind,’ Sushsree said as sweetly as she could.

 ‘One of our executive directors, you know Mr. Goel, well, Mr. Goel has been offered an independent director’s role on the board of Jayjit Paints and he wants to take it up. Will this have to be disclosed in the offer document?’

‘Yes, but I don’t see an issue. There is no conflict here.’

 ‘Do you know that Jayjit Paints will be starting a new division to manufacture PVC pipes?’

 ‘Oh dear, then why is Mr. Goel taking this up?’

 ‘Mr. Chandrakant Shukla is fine with it.’

 ‘Really?’

 ‘Yes.’

 ‘Hold on, doesn’t Shukla sir’s family hold a minority stake in Jayjit Paints?’

 ‘Would Adhrit like a glass of milk?’ Sushree could hear Krithika ask, even as Adhrit pushed his head against her side, leaning from his chair.

 ‘Yes, give him a glass of milk,’ Adhrit’s grandmother agreed. ‘At least, let him drink some milk.

 ‘With chocolate powder in it?’ Krithika asked Adhrit who nodded.

 ‘When we were young, we had Boost and Bournvita,’ Mahesh said with a chuckle. ‘Nowadays, I don’t see kids having Boost or Bournvita.’

 ‘Nandan liked Horlicks,’ his mother said.

 ‘Mahesh liked Boost and Bournvita,’ his mother added.

 ‘I remember.’ Nandan’s mother had her eyes half-closed, as if she was trying hard to remember those days.

 Sushsree continued talking on the phone, even as she moved the food around on her plate with her index finger. She wanted to ask for a fork, so that she could eat with her left hand, instead of holding her phone with it. Should she whip out her Bluetooth earphones from her handbag, which was on her lap, and plug them into her ears? That would free both her hands, but her inlaws wouldn’t like that one bit. It would look as if she was in proper work mode.

 The sound of the stainless steel glass falling to the floor and clattering forced her to stop paying attention to what Milind Shah was saying.

 ‘Adhrit!’ Nandan shouted loudly.

 ‘Adhrit!’ her father-in-law said in a horse voice.

 ‘Adhrit!’ her mother-in-law squeaked in a high-pitched voice. ‘The entire glass, he spilt it all! He had hardly taken a sip,’ she added after a pause.

 Some of the milk had splashed on her bare feet and churidhar. The wetness on her skin was almost as cold as the sudden chill she felt in her heart.

 ‘We shouldn’t have let him hold his glass,’ her father-in-law said.

 ‘I wish we had someone who took better care of my only grandson,’ her mother-in-law exploded.

 Nandan was more direct. ‘You shouldn’t have been on the phone. You should have held the glass. You know that he can’t hold his glass properly.’

 Mahesh and his parents also looked at Sushsree with accusing eyes even as she quickly hung up and put the phone on the table. Pragnya looked a bit scared, but her elder sister Padmaja had a sly smile on her face as she looked on an adult’s discomfiture. Krithika seemed to be the only one in that room who didn’t display any emotion.

 ‘Let me mop it up,’ Sushsree said shakily, even as she stood up, her breath coming up in short, shallow gasps, expecting Krithika to offer some help. Instead, Krithika pointed to the kitchen and said, ‘you will find some rags behind the gas stove’, her expression deadpan.

 As she walked into the kitchen, her phone beeped twice, to signal a new WhatsApp message. She realised that she was had unknowingly grabbed her phone as she went to the kitchen and was clutching it as if it was her oxygen tube while on a deep sea dive. ‘The financial statements have a problem,’ Ananth from Compliance was telling her.

 ‘What’s the issue?’ she messaged back. Chandrakant Shukla would scream blue murder if they weren’t approved by ten in the night.

 ‘Client acquisition costs have been treated as capex and amortised.’

 Shit! A company making pipes doing that!

 ‘What’s the amount involved?’ she asked Anant, typing fast, even as her brain considered various solutions.

 ‘Two lakhs.’

 ‘What? That’s it? I’ll ask them to change it as opex. Is that all?’ Some over-smart CA in the finance department was trying to behave like he was working for an Edutech company.  Sushsree almost laughed, until she remembered what she was in the kitchen.

 ‘Why have you treated client acquisition costs as capex in your financials? Amount involved in 2 lakhs. Please change this to opex and resend the statement. Else, there will be delays,’ she messaged Milind Shah.

 She then looked behind the gas stove and found two pieces of cloth just as Krithika had said. She grabbed one of them with her left hand and quickly walked back to the dining room to find the entire family waiting for her re-entry. There was total silence. She ignored everyone, quickly mopped up the milk on the chair and the floor walked back to the kitchen to put the rags back. Adhrit jumped off his chair to follow her.

 ‘Stay there, amma will be back in two seconds,’ she ordered Adhrit, who ignored her and followed her nevertheless.

 ‘Adhrit, come to Ajji,’ her mother-in-law said. Adhrit ignored her. Once she was in the kitchen, she dumped the rag behind the stove and looked at her phone quickly. Milind was typing a reply.

‘Will do,’ Milind told her.

 ‘Email the modified statement to anant.sharma@calmcapital.com, with a copy to me.’ She picked up Adhrit and carried him back.

 ‘He’s not eaten anything,’ her mother-in-law said.

 ‘I’ll feed him.’ Her phone started to vibrate again, but Sushree resolutely ignored the vibrating phone and everyone else around the table, as she focussed on feeding Adhrit.

 

THE END

 

 

 

Book Review: “565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India” by Mallika Ravikumar

When the British decided to partition their Indian colony and exit the sub-continent, the fate of five hundred odd Princely States hung in the balance. Many of the Kingdoms were powerful, with standing armies and did not like the idea of joining either India or Pakistan. From the point of view of Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru, allowing a bunch of independent principalities to fester inside the Indian Union was not an option at all. So, Home Minister Sardar Patel and a small, but very competent team rolled up their sleeves and got down to the mammoth task at hand. When Patel asked Lord Mountbatten to help him win over the various Indian prices and convince them to join the Indian Union, Mountbatten agreed to help, provided Patel agreed to his conditions. Patel agreed, provided he got a basket of apples. A basket of 565 apples to be precise.

The story of how Sardar Patel and his team convinced a motley bunch of egoistic and truculent princes to give up their independence and join the Indian Union has been described in a few history books in summary fashion, but, now, for the first time, a well-known Indian fiction writer has brought to life the story of how “more than 500 princely kingdoms were threaded together into a union – in record time and against all odds – to create the India we now have”. Mallika Ravikumar calls her book a “work of creative non-fiction, inspired by real events in history and rooted in research.” I don’t think there can be a better description of 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India. Ravikumar acknowledges that she has taken creative liberties in the writing and presentation of her book, all in good faith. At the end of every chapter, a “Did It Really Happen This Way?” section details Ravikumar’s sources and delineates a boundary between what definitely happened and what probably happened.

565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India has thirteen chapters, each dealing with a significant or interesting integration, ranging from Travancore to Hyderabad and Kashmir. Each of these chapters can be read independently as a separate story. Every chapter is full of twists and turns that keeps the reader engrossed. More importantly,  565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India is set in an era when, in every princely state, the ruler was considered divine and the will of the people was unimportant, something unthinkable today. Many Princes did not want to give up their rights and privileges, though some did do so willingly.

Ravikumar writes in elegant, but simple prose that is an excellent conductor for the electric thread that runs through 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India. Each of the thirteen chapters is a treasure trove of historical anecdotes, thrillers that can put the best of Hollywood or Bollywood in the shade and sagas of courage and sacrifice, all of which combine to make the book unputdownable. One just gallops from one chapter to another and before one realizes, this book comes to an end, making one want for more. At the end of the twelfth chapter (The integration of Jammu and Kashmir) when an Indian air force  Dakota piloted by Wing Commander Bhatia hovered over Srinagar, verified that the crowds surging towards the dusty and unkempt airstrip at Budgam airport were locals waiting to welcome Indian troops and not Pakistani raiders looking to ambush, and disgorged Lieutenant Colonel Rai and his men amidst delighted shrieks of ‘Khushamdeed!’, I thought Ravikumar’s story telling couldn’t get any better, but it actually did.

I used to think I knew everything significant about the happenings in 1946/47, but I didn’t know that the Nizam of Hyderabad tried to purchase Goa from the Portuguese so that Hyderabad could have a seaport or that three young members of the Arya Samaj (Narayan Rao Pawar, Gandaiah Arya and Jagdish Arya) made an abortive attempt to assassinate Sir Mir Osman Ali Khan Siddiqui Asaf Jah. I knew nothing at all about Tripura and it was a revelation to find out how selfish Prince Durjoy Kishore and Diwan Mukherjee took the support of the Muslim League to try and wrest Tripura for Pakistan. However, Maharani Kanchan Prava stood firm and ensured that her late husband Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Debbarma Bahadur’s wish for Tripura to join India was implemented.

In addition to big stories, one also gets to know a lot of trivia about that era. Did you know that the head of a province of British India too was referred to as “Prime Minister”? Thus, Balasaheb Gangadhar Kher, Prime Minister of Bombay until 1950, when the Constitution of India was adopted. I don’t want to divulge too much info here and ruin the book for you. Go on, do read 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India and find out how Sardar Patel bagged a basket of 565 apples for India.

A few takeaways from William Dalrymple’s “The Golden Road”

 

This isn’t a review of William Dalrymple’s latest offering “The Golden Road”. Rather, the notes below are merely jotting from a jumble of thoughts (in no particular order) in my head after I finished reading yet another magnificent tome from a person who is probably the finest modern-day historian, with an India focus.

1. Between 250 BCE and 1200 CE, India was the world leader in knowledge, ideas and soft power and people in South-east and Central Asia and even China, admired India. India offered to the world its religion, art, music, dance, textiles, technology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine and the world lapped it up.

2. After Rome captured Egypt, for 300 years after that, a Golden Road of the open oceans caused Indian exports to flow to Rome and resulted in a drain of Roman gold/wealth into India. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, this Indo-Roman trade ceased and Indian businessmen began to focus on South East Asia. Across South-east Asia, Sanskrit became the lingua franca for the elites, who also adopted the worship of Hindu gods.

3. Buddhism became a pan-Indian religion under Emperor Ashoka and then spread into Sri Lanka, Tibet, China and Korea. Buddhism became popular, first with the merchant class, then with the ordinary people of South-east Asia. Theravada Buddhism remains the dominant religion today in much of that region. China has the largest number of practicing Buddhists in the world.

4. During the Indian era, there was a steady trickle of Indian preachers, artists and even doctors to China, which came increasingly under India’s spell. Wu Zetian, founder of the Wu Zhou dynasty, who ruled China for 45 years, was an admired of many things Indian. She officially elevated Buddhism above Taoism

5. Xuanzang (Huen Tsang) the Chinese traveler came to India for a 17-year, 6,000-mile journey, mainly to the great Indian centres of learning. Of this, he spent 5 years in Nalanda.

6. Nalanda was the best University in existence at that point in time. According to Xuanzang, lectures at Nalanda were given in a hundred different halls each day. The students studied diligently without wasting a single moment. They studied the texts of the different schools of Buddhism, as well as the sacred Vedas, logic, Sanskrit grammar, philosophy, medicine, metaphysics, divination, mathematics, astronomy, literature and magic. Nalanda’s library was nine storeys high and contained three divisions: the Ratnadadhi, the ‘Sea of Jewels’, the Ratnasagara, the ‘Ocean of Jewels’, and the Ratnaranjaka, the ‘Jewel-Adorned’. Any manuscript could be borrowed, though Nalanda regulations held that it must be stored in the niche in the monks’ cells next to the square central courtyard.

7. The great Khmer King Jayavarman II who united Cambodia, set the foundation of the Angkor period. Suryavarman II built the Angkor Wat, the largest Hindu temple in the world, dedicated to Lord Vishnu. The Khmers were allies of the Cholas and Jayavarman, Suryavarman et al were largely influenced by Indic values.

8. The rulers of Srivijaya (based in modern-day Indonesia) tried to double-cross the Cholas and Rajendra Chola retaliated by sending a Chola armada all the way to Sumatra, possibly in a joint operation with the ships of the Tamil merchant guilds.

9. The powerful Chief Vizier of Baghdad, Khalid ibn Barmak, was a Buddhist convert to Islam. The the Barmakids were an important Buddhist family from Balkh, which converted to Islam and became prominent members of the Abbasid court in the second half of the 8th century.

10. Genghis Khan’s campaign in Central Asia caused tens of thousands of Persian-speaking refugees to flee from to the plains around Delhi. As a result, Delhi became one of the world’s biggest cities and the centre of a cosmopolitan, culturally Persianate sultanate, full of learned madrasas staffed by refugee scholars, sheikhs, artisans and poets who had fled from Central Asia. Sanskrit and its vernacular derivatives Khari Boli, old Punjabi and Braj Bhasha, continued in use, but Persian became the court language as well as the language and diplomacy.

11. Invasions by Turks and Afghans did result in the destruction of many Hindu temples and Buddhist monastries, some of which were repurposed as mosques. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Indian school textbooks and most academic histories were written by left-leaning historians who underplayed the violence and iconoclasm that came with the Turkish invasions, partially in the interests of what they saw as ‘nation building’ following the terrible inter-religious violence that had taken place during partition.

12. It is unclear if Nalanda was burned or destroyed by Islamic invaders. However, it is a fact that Nalanda’s near neighbour, the great monastery of Odantapura, was destroyed by Bakhtyar Khalji’s Turkish troops. A similar fate was visited upon the monastery of Vikramashila.

These notes are not meant to be a summary of The Golden Road and do not even capture the essence of this wonderful book which runs to a little over 600 pages, of which, endnotes take up around half the space. Please do read The Golden Road yourself to appreciate it properly. The Golden Road is available on Amazon.

Book review: For Pepper and Christ, by Keki Daruwalla

 

Keki Daruwalla, a prominent Indian author, passed away on September 26, 2024. To my shame, though I had known of Daruwalla and his writings, I hadn’t read any of his works. When I heard of his sad demise. I hastily scanned through the list of his books, purchased For Pepper and Christ and read it as fast as I could, which, thanks to my other commitments, took me two months. 

“In the fifteen century, Portugal was a poor country of just about a million, but it had ambitions- the poor need to have more ambitions than the rich. Why not? They wanted gold and slaves and spices; and they wanted to cut out Venice and Genoa who bought pepper, ginger and cinnamon from the Ottomans and Mamluks at excessive prices and sold them to Europe at even more exorbitant rates. What a ducat could buy in Calicut, cost over sixty in Venice.”

 The Portuguese desperately wanted to find a way to India so that they could load their ships with spices and sell them in Europe where Indian spices fetched a fortune. The spice trade was controlled by the Arabs and they did not really want to give up their monopoly. This was an era when none knew for sure how the oceans ended and continents began, when maps were rare and involved more of guesswork and less of cartography. The Portuguese believed that the paradise kingdom of Prester John existed and looked for him everywhere, from Africa to Asia. The Arabs (whom the Portuguese called the Moors) were good fighters on land, but were totally outmatched by the Portuguese at sea, especially since the Portuguese had guns mounted on their ships.

In For Pepper and Christ, Daruwalla uses three narrators. The first voice is that of Brother Figueiro, a member of Captain-Major Vasco da Gama’s fleet on the 1497-98 voyage, as also the one in 1502. The second speaker is young pilot Taufiq, who hails from Oman and ended up showing Vasco da Gama the way to Calicut. Taufiq has lived in Gujarat as a boy, while accompanying his father on the latter’s sailing trips. He has sailed under the guidance of the legendary Ibn Majid and his feeling his way around the world. When Daruwalla starts his narration, Taufiq has been sent to Cairo for his studies at al Azhar and has made friends with Ehtesham, the painter and Murad, an eccentric, but street smart lad. Then, there’s also a neutral narrator, to fill in all the gaps. 

In Daruwalla’s own words, a historical novel is neither history nor fiction. Or perhaps, it is both. Daruwalla does not grudge spending pages on history. There are frequent references to the crusades of the past, as bitter memories spill out from the mouths of Cairenes, even as the Mamulks who defeated the Mongols control Cairo. Daruwalla’s history writing does distract the reader from the story, but then, there is no real story, since when one reads  For Pepper and Christ, one reads the history one already knows, the history of Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the trade route to India, but that’s not true, I tell you. Daruwalls is a good story-teller, as he tells us the story of Taufiq and his friends Ehtesham and Murad and of Muhtasib, who torments all three of them in various ways. The famous navigator Ibn Majid (under whom Taufiq trained) gets a look in.

Muhtasib, the feared inspector of weights and measures, lords it over the people of Cairo and I found his character to be just as fascinating as that of the Vasco da Gama. Muhtasib thinks painting is akin to creation, an action reserved for Allah, and hence, blasphemy. So, he is not too fond of Ehtesham the painter, who has taken on a contract to paint his pictures inside a Coptic church in Cairo. ‘Doesn’t a potter make his urns, doesn’t a farmer create his wheat, or a weaver his cloth? Are they committing a crime against Allah?’ Ehtesham asks Mutasib and this argument we know, continues even now in the 21^st century.

Daruwalla’s narration is placid most of the time, even when he tells us of the Portuguese pouring boiling oil on abducted pilots as they are forced to reveal the sea route to India. The Portuguese suffer a lot as they journey around the Cape. “Scurvy had already taken a toll of our men before we reached Mozambique. Their hands and feet had bloated, the gums turning purple and swelling to an extent that they draped the teeth.” Daruwalla’s language is like that of the ocean, with many dangerous currents underneath.

Are the Portuguese the most cruel folk in the entire saga? The Portuguese are best at organised violence, but the Arabs and even the Zamorin are no laggards when in comes to cruelty. Interestingly, the King of Cochin, a rival of the Calicut Zamorin, is keen to have ties with the Portuguese and Daruwalla has a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka try and fix deals for the King of Cochin.

Vasco da Gama and the rest of the Portguguese have only hatred and distrust for the Moors. On landing in Calicut, they mistake the hindus for Christians and looks for ways to persuade them to evict all moors. The gifts that they Portuguese have carried with them are very inadequate, but they persist and survive. Vasco da Gama never takes goodwill on face value, never brings his ship too close to the shore (lest it be captured) and does not hesitate to take hostages  whenever he has a demand.

Daruwalla describes in gory detail how the Portuguese under Pedro Álvares Cabral bombarded Calicut in 1500–01, when they returned for the second time and caused a lot of death and destruction in Calicut.  The incident of the pilgrim ship Mirim is also described in detail. On returning to India in October 1502, at Madayi in Kannur, da Gama's fleet intercepted Mirim, a ship of Muslim pilgrims travelling from Kozhikode to Mecca. Da Gama looted the ship and killed all its passengers, including a number of women and children, by burning the ship. Those who jumped into the sea were speared and killed.

Taufiq had shown the Portuguese the route to Calicut without suffering any tortures, but he later repents (as he finds out how cruel the Portuguese can be) and punishes himself. Please read this excellent novel to find out how Daruwalla provides for Taufiq’s punishment.

 On the whole, I found For Pepper and Christ to be an excellent read, one which any history buff would enjoy.  Highly recommended. I do wish I had been lucky enough to have 'discovered' Daruwalla earlier and hope I manage to find time to read at least some of his other books in the near future.

Re-Reading Amitav Ghosh’s Shadow Lines

Recently I re-read Amitav Ghosh’s Shadow Lines and was once again reminded why this book is one of my favourites and the best work of fiction till date by Ghosh. This note isn’t meant to be a review of Shadow Lines, but just a bunch of jottings based on my most recent reading.

• Is there any Indian who had a middle-class upbringing who did not listen wide-eyed to tales narrated by ‘phoren’ relatives? One listened to every word they spoke, remembered the street or lane or boulevard they lived in, the names of their ‘phoren’ friends and greedily asked for even more details. This is essentially what the unnamed narrator does as he gets us started on the story of Tridib and the rest of the Datta Chaudhuris and the Prices.
• This time, I was for some reason reminded of David Copperfield’s opening scene when I re-read the opening lines of Shadow Lines.

Thirteen years before I was born, my father’s aunt, Mayadebi, went to England with her husband and her son, Tridib.

 

I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

• Set in England and Bengal from the 1930s to the late 1960s, Shadow Lines depicts a bye-gone era that we've seen only in black & white movies. I think I enjoyed Ghosh’s description of a post-World War II England a lot more this time than in my previous reading. I think it is England which has changed a lot more than Calcutta.
• Neither the narrator nor Tridib nor any of the Datta Chaudhuris seem to have experienced any serious racism in England, save for Ila’s doll Magda’s traumatic experiences at the hands of Denise. I guess racism reared its ugly head in the UK only in the early 70s.
• The narrator’s grandmother, who is Tridib’s aunt, reminded me of David Copperfield’s aunt. Her attitude to Tridib who she considers to be a loafer and a wastrel, is on the same lines as David Copperfield’s aunt’s attitude to various characters in Dickens tome. These ladies form their opinions fast and stick with them
• In this reading, Nick Price came across as two-dimensional. I distinctly remember being impressed and awed by Nick Price and later hating him and feeling sorry for Ila when I read Shadow Lines long time ago. This time, I didn’t particularly feel sorry for Ila or hate Nick. A sign of age or maturity or cynicism?
• The grandmother’s omelette - a leathery little squiggle studded with green chillies. The omelettes I ate as a child were very different - they were soft and fluffy. Many years after I read Shadow Lines, I actually ate such an omelette at a wayside Dabha. Is the leathery nature of the omelette a reflection on the grandmother’s character?
• I found myself looking at the narrator with contempt this time. The narrator is in awe of Ila, possibly has a huge crush on her, though she is his second cousin. Towards the end, the narrator has a scene with May, his deceased uncle Tridib’s lover and partner. Why isn’t there a single mention of a relationship with someone outside the Datta Chaudhuri and the Price families? We know that the narrator is doing a Ph.D. on the textile trade between India and England in the nineteenth century and that he received a year’s research grant to go to England to collect material from the India Office Library for his thesis. Towards the end of the novel, there is a stray reference to a ‘thesis’, implying that it is incomplete and the Ph.D not yet in the narrator’s bag. Definitely a loser!
• [SPOILER ALERT] Finally, the billion dollar question. Is May responsible for Tridib’s death? I know, May made her peace with Tridib, but I never did and re-reading Shadow Lines did not help me sort out this pending issue one bit. I was back to where I started. For years, May used to think she had killed him. She thought she was the reason Tridib got out of the car. However, later she worked out that there was no reason for Tridib to have plunged into the mob to save her. She was always safe, she was a white woman, the mob wouldn’t have harmed her and Tridib should have known that. So when Tridib jumped in to save her, he was actually just making a sacrifice.
• I still struggle to buy May’s argument. I think May should have known that Tridib would have tried to protect her from the mob, even if he thought that it was highly likely that the mob wouldn’t have harmed her. There was no way Tridib could have stayed in the car when May was fighting the mob. Knowing Tridib as well as she did, there was no way May could have assumed that Tridib would have stayed in that car when she was battling the mob. No way May, I can’t bring myself to absolve you from responsibility for Tridib's murder.
• Also, when May says Tridib was actually just making a “sacrifice”, is she implying that he was committing suicide? I just don’t see why Tridib would want to commit suicide at that juncture. Were things so bad for him then? No, definitely not. So, is May saying Tridib needlessly sacrificed himself for her? Maybe.