Book Review: Lamplight - Paranormal Stories from the Hinterlands, by Kankana Basu

There are ghost stories and ghost stories, some fall flat and some make you sit up in fright, hair on end, desperately reaching out for something to hold on to. I think the best ghost novel I have read is Little Stranger by Sarah Waters which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009. I have read Kankana Basu before and when I found out that her latest offering was a collection of ghost stories, I was, to put it mildly, shocked. Both of Basu’s previous offerings, Vinegar Sunday and Cappuccino Dusk, are set in Mumbai and revolve around large Bengali families, their retainers and friends. Even though both these books tackle a number of contemporary issues, there is a definitive feel-good factor about both these books which I was sure would be missing in a collection of ghost stories. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Lamplight consists of eight short stories, all of which, except one, are set in Monghyr, Bihar, in pre-Independence India and revolve around a large extended Bengali clan, their neighbours and servants. The Chattopadhyays are rich and aristocratic, but also friendly and warm. The matriarch of the family has three sons, Srikanth, the eldest, a doctor, affectionately referred to as Boro Jetha, Deep the second son and Balai, the youngest, a novelist. The grandsons outnumber the granddaughters and all the grandchildren evolve and grow as the stories progress. Srikanth has two sons, Tutul who is shown to have become a lawyer as we reach the end of the collection and Nabendu (Benu) who throws off a debilitating ailment and becomes an industrialist, Deep has two daughters Mala and Mini and Balai has three sons, Sutanu (Shontu) and Ronojoy (Ronny) and Manohar (Montu). Balai’s spouse Bonalata has a crucial role in one of the witch-hunts. There is no shortage of friends and neighbours either. Balai’s friend Nirmal Choudhury plays a pivotal part in Séance, the first story in this collection and for me, the best of the lot. Kumkum, the maid and Raghu Kaka the gardener are flesh and blood characters who make their mark despite their lowly stature.

I found all members of the Chattopadhyay clan, their friends and hired help to be lovable, except for maybe Deep in The Séance. The feel-good factor, which I think is Basu’s hallmark, is ever present as we are gradually introduced to various characters. The ghosts dutifully make their appearance in every story and I didn’t particularly find them to be scary, and to be honest. I don’t think they were meant to be. These are stories which a twelve year old could read and not have nightmares. Basu’s ghosts are gentle and sometimes helpful, as in the Terrace, where they help football genius Ronojoy get a job with a manufacturing concern in Bombay.

Basu is extremely good at conveying the atmosphere of 1930s India, without appearing to try very hard. There is no reference to the independence movement or poverty, but there is no doubt that we are in pre-independence India. Basu’s characters are very individualistic and different from each other. For example when describing Chitra pishi, a neighbour, we are told that she of average height, had a stick-like physique, was pigeon chested, sallow skinned and gaunt of countenance. However, she had a fine pair of eyes which nullified every shortcoming in her appearance.

In The Guide, Shontu is dying to ride Montu’s new, red bike and when a need arises for someone to reach faraway Sitamarhi and deliver medicines to Dwarakanath Misra’s daughter. Shontu promptly volunteers and I wondered for a while if I was reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer rather than an Indian collection of ghost stories. However, a ghost eventually made an appearance, followed by a number of rustic Indian characters and my confusion faded away.

One of the stories, Monghyr Fort, revolves around an actual fort and when I googled the name, I realised that Monghyr Fort actually exists. In this story, Basu’s references to the Slave Dynasty and characters like Mir Kasim seem to be authentic.

In Blood Emerald, the final story in the collection, Basu moves away from Monghry and takes her heroine, one Avantika, to faraway Mahabaleshwar where she meets the ghost of a pretty Maharashtrian lady who died in unhappy circumstances. Despite the change of venue, the same old world charm, courtesy and grace of a bye-gone era are kept alive.

On the whole, Lamplight left a very pleasant aftertaste in me, it’s the sort of story you could read after a tough day at work. I recommend this book to all those who are interested in ghost stories and all others who, like me, like to read good stories.

Book Review: A Happy Place And Other Stories by Vineetha Mokkil

I just finished reading an excellent collection of short stories by Vineetha Mokkil which goes by the title “A Happy Place And Other Stories”. The strength of a story, any story, whether it be a long novel or a short story, depends largely on the writer’s imagination. A good writer takes the reader to places hitherto unknown, on the wings of beautiful prose. Mokkil does more than that. Mokkil takes her readers to a tall cliff, straps on a pair of wings and forces the reader to take off.

SPOILER WARNING

For example, in “A Quiet Day”, we see Ameena, a suicide bomber leaves her house on a snowy day. We are told that her husband and daughter were killed by the army and Ameena is thirsting for revenge. And then? And then nothing. We do not know if Ameena is ultimately successful in carrying out her mission. All of that is left to the reader’s imagination. Similarly, in “In Case of Fire”, we see Gyan rushing home to his daughter Mia’s birthday party, stopping at a mall to buy return gifts for the kids at the party. The party has already begun and Gyan is really running late. His wife Helen has called many times and she is angry. To make matters worse, Gyan gets locked in inside the mall. What happens after that? Mokkil leaves it to the reader to imagine the consequences. In this quest, Mokkil supplies the reader with sufficient information about Gyan and his family. We know that Gyan’s wife Helen is a rich heiress who led a peaceful and happy life at Ann Arbor, USA, before moving to Delhi with her daughter Mia once Gyan decided to take up a teaching job at Delhi University.

Mokkil is very good not just with cliff top exits, but also in mid-journey breaks. She narrates a situation, places you in the midst of some very smooth activity and then, as is her wont, leaves you. Thus in “Baby Baby” we see Vijay, a man in his fifties, expecting a baby with his second wife. Surprisingly, it all goes off well. We can sense Vijay’s worry and tension in wanting to get it all right, since he is estranged from his son from his first marriage. However, Mokkil is soothing from the beginning and we feel strangely comforted by the writer.

In “The Tenant” a widowed mother is lonely after her daughter Priya leaves her on account of her job with Lufthansa. To keep herself occupied, she takes on a tenant who has the same name as her daughter, but with an extra “a” which is meant to bring good luck. Does she get along with her tenant Priyaa? Mokkil has no intention of ever telling us.

“A Happy Place And Other Stories” isn’t a collection of entirely feel-good stories. Sadness and tragedy are woven into many of the tales. In “Nirvana” Yashodhara’s pain as Siddhartha abandons her and baby Rahul is beautifully captured. In “A Happy Place”, the story after which this collection has been named, we are introduced to Asha, a maid working in the house of an American couple. Mokkil introduces some tension in the beginning as the wife gets mugged. Yes we know that Delhi is dangerous, but for Asha danger lurks inside the house as well. When the wife is away on a cruise, the husband who works for the US consulate tries to paw her in the middle of the night. Asha’s happy place ceases to be so and Asha is forced to run away.

“The Girl Next Door” makes one wonder how quickly one rushes into judgements. In this story, we see some posh people lobby to have a fellow tenant, the girl next door, who possibly works as a commercial sex worker, thrown out of their building. Later on when the narrator Sonia is abducted, the so-called prostitute tips off police and saves Sonia.

For me, the best story of the lot was “Other Lives”. The wife of a well-known Industrialist is arrested for shop-lifting. Since the lady in question is a well-known kleptomaniac, we know that such an incident has occurred before. The detainee has an interesting conversation with female cop as she waits to be released. The cop is respectful since she knows that the lady will be released and released she is. She goes home by foot, back to the same boring life. Does she have a choice to do something for herself? To find out the answer and to read more such stories, please do read this wonderful collection.

Is Shrien Dewani Gay?

And finally Shrien Dewani has been extradited to South Africa to face trial!

Almost three years ago when I blogged about Shrien Dewani, extradition proceedings were going on and it was felt that they could go on for many more weeks or even months. Well, they went on for almost three years!

The core question seems to be whether Dewani is gay. This is because unless Dewani is gay, the prosecution will be hard-pressed to find a motive for the handsome, rich Dewani to hire killers to bump off his pretty and young bride.

The allegations about Dewani’s orientation have been swirling around ever since Anni’s murder. Dewani is supposed to have been a regular visitor at a gay fetish club called The Hoist, at Vauxhall. A German male prostitute named Leopold Leisser, who goes by the work name The Master, claimed that Dewani paid him GBP1,100 for three sex ¬sessions in London and the West Midlands.

Just after Dewani arrived in South Africa to face trial, it was reported that Anni Dewani had sent a honeymoon message to her cousin revealing that she had sex with 33-year-old Shrien “five times” in one night. The Police were said to have been left reeling by the text that experts have retrieved from 28-year-old Anni’s stolen BlackBerry. Naturally, if the Dewanis “did” it five times in a single night, it is unlikely that Dewani is gay. I however had my doubts about the genuineness of this report which was attributed to “sources”. Look at it this way: Anni’s text message was reportedly sent to her cousin. If Anni’s cousin had actually received such a text, Anni’s family, the Hindochas, wouldn’t be so hostile to Dewani. The Hindochas have all along been wanting Dewani to voluntarily face trial in South Africa. If the Hindochas thought that the Dewanis were having a normal married life, then they wouldn’t be fighting hard for Dewani to face justice.

Surely enough, a couple of days later, it was clarified that Anni had not sent any such sms. Rather it was stated that Anni had sent her cousin a text message to the effect that sex with her husband wasn’t to her satisfaction.

I wish we had some clarity on how the first report (which made the 5 times in a night claim) came about. The “source” had obviously not considered that if such a claim was made, the cousin who is supposed to have received the text would deny it. Also, how come no one knew that Anni had complained to a cousin about the state of her conjugal relationship with her husband? Of course it is possible that the Hindochas had passed on this information to the Prosecution and this was kept under wraps for use at the trial once Dewani arrived in South Africa. The Hindochas may have been forced to leak this information to counter the earlier insinuation. I just wonder though, when the extradition proceedings were going on, if this information had been made available, wouldn’t it have eased Dewani’s passage to South Africa?

When this trial is over, I hope the authorities in the UK and South Africa carry out a joint investigation to find out the extent of influence exerted over this trial by publicist Max Clifford and if any laws were broken as a result.

Book Review: The Gypsy Goddess, by Meena Kandasamy

If you are one of those Indians who were brought up on a diet of Soviet literature, readily available in India till the early nineties, you would be forgiven for assuming that Meena Kandasamy’s debut novel The Gypsy Goddess was written by a winner of the USSR State Prize in Literature and Arts and published sometime in the late 1970s or maybe even earlier. The subject matter – the massacre of forty odd Dalit labourers and their families by henchmen employed by upper caste landlords - is definitely a topic that would have fitted in within the milieu of Soviet literature. Since Kandasamy is known to be a poet, I had expected something lyrical, but no, Kandasamy adopts the tone (and even authority) of a Soviet era prose writer as she builds a novel around the massacre that took place at a place named Kilvenmani in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur (earlier known as Tanjore) district in 1968. If Kandasamy’s English was anything less than blemishless and beautiful, such an affected pitch/style would have fallen flat, but no, Kandasamy carries it off and one ends up doffing one’s hat in admiration at the end of the novel, which I assume must be a slim volume, since I got through it pretty quickly on my Kindle.

Kilvenmani is a village where the poor refer to a car as “pleasure”, something poor people in Tamil Nadu did even in the 80s, if my memory serves me right. Gopalakrishna Naidu is the main tyrant in the novel. A father-figure for the landlords of Nagapattinam, this balding, middle-aged man runs the Paddy Producers’ Association and seeks to address the interests of his own class in a manner which reminded me of several characters from a collection of Soviet Armenian Short Stories I read ages ago and which I have reviewed here. As Gopalakrishna Naidu schemes and plots and fights to replace the red communist flags with the yellow flags of the Paddy Producers Association, we the readers gain a ring-side view to the bloody tussle between the proletariat and the exploitative landlords.

In chapter 5 of her novel, Kandasamy publishes a Marxist Party Pamphlet which takes stock of the situation of those times, even as it calls on the workers to unite and fight for their rights. It is an unequal fight, the DMK Party in power has done precious little for the downtrodden and the landless poor suffer extreme hardship and oppression as they seek to obtain basic living wages from the landowning class. The policemen are tools in the hands of the landlords. Kandasamy singles out stalwarts of the Dravidian movement such as Karunanidhi and even Periyar EV Ramasamy for special treatment. We are told that after coming to power with the help of the Communist parties, Karunanidhi boldly proclaimed that the Communists would be crushed with an iron fist. As for the great Periyar, Kandasamy would have us know that “he was angry (about the massacre) and he showed it. There was little else that could be done when the government was actually run by his protégé.” Finally when the Landlords are tried on the scales of Justice, the High Court judges do a better job defending the landlords than even the defence lawyers and acquit them all.

Since The Gypsy Goddess is part story, part communist commentary, one is treated to quotations from individuals like Gramsci and post-modernists such as Derrida. Most of the commentary is a Kandasamy’s monologue, but as I said earlier, she does it well and I have no complaints.

Is Kandasamy a dyed-in-the-wool-communist or is she an open-minded writer willing to consider different points of view? The character Maayi suggests that she belongs to the latter class. Maayi, we are told, is the widow of the village’s witch doctor who once tamed evil ghosts and vampires and chased away devils and demons. When I first encountered Maayi, I assumed that she would be placed under the guillotine by the brave workmen of Kilvenmani. But no, they do nothing of that sort and one sees Maayi comfort the survivors of the massacre.

There were a few things I wishes Kandasamy had done differently. I would have liked to get to know atleast one of the victims much better, at least as well as I got to know Gopalakrishna Naidu. At times, I did wish Kandasamy would get on with the story and stop pontificating, but then, the story of the massacre could have been written in two pages and the pithy annotations make this novel what it is.

Once again, let me reiterate that Kandasamy writes exceedingly well. When describing the fire that wiped out so many innocent lives trapped in an enclosed space, Kandasamy says that “Born without eyes, the fire had used its feet to move. Lacking the forgiveness of water, it had burnt them with blindness and bitterness. So, that morning, the cheri did not carry the roses-and-marigolds smell of death. Only the coppery sick- sweet smell of charred flesh: a smell like nothing else, a smell that was almost a taste, a smell that was meant to be smuggled to the grave. Through the smoke clouds that hung heavier than mist, the police van returned to Kilvenmani to fetch the dead.” Since the official death toll was forty two, the two small babies who were charred to death were “habeas corpses”, Kandasamy proposes. As for the survivors of the massacre, “the police, in love with variety, generously give everyone multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code.”

Why the title The Gypsy Goddess? No, I am not going to play spoilsport and give that one away. When you have this book in your hands, you’ll find the answer in Kandasamy’s second chapter.

How does it all end? Does Kandasamy offer the victims even a semblance of justice or does she leave them waiting for a Communist dawn to receive reparations? Remember, this is ultimately a work of fiction and the author does have some freedom in this regard. Go on all of you, whether you are champagne socialists like me or genuine communists or someone just trying to make sense of the extreme poverty one sees in India, rush out and buy this book and read it to find out if the Kilvenmani massacre victims receive some form of closure from Kandasamy.

Book Review: Residue, by Nitasha Kaul

In a world riven with prejudice, hatred and sectarianism, Nitasha Kaul, through her first novel Residue, gives us a host of characters who do not wallow in such muck. Leon Ali, the main protagonist, is a Kashmiri who grew up in Delhi. Despite an Islamic heritage, Leon is an atheist who doesn’t take sides easily. There’s a scene in London where Leon meets a number of Kashmiris from “Azad” Kashmir. Spurning their invitation to join them, Leon thinks, ‘honestly, you are not Kashmiri.’ Then there’s Keya Raina, a co-protagonist and a Kashmiri Pandit, who too grew up in Delhi and later moved to Bristol, in the UK, to become a liberal arts Professor. Agni, born Agnes, a Christian from Orissa, is a dancer who has broken through a number of barriers and is equally at ease with the world. Shula Farid who plays a very vital role in the story and its plot, lived a generation before Leon and Keya, but is equally secular and nice. Born to an atheist Muslim father who teaches mathematics at Shantiniketan and an East European mother with a Jewish heritage, Shula made the mistake of falling in love with and marrying Abhilash, a clever and successful civil servant, the odd man out amongst the various characters in this debut work, standing out on account of his orthodoxy and inflexibility.

Leon’s father Mir, an engineer and a communist, had deserted his mother and left for Berlin even before Leon was born, when the couple lived in the UK. Leon’s mother returns to India and brings up Leon single-handedly, the only contribution from her family being the occasional taunt or other unhelpful comment. Life in Delhi is tough for a single woman bringing up a son on her own. It gets even tougher if the mother and son are Muslims. From bullying and name-calling at school, to trouble finding decent accommodation, Leon and his mother see it all, but they persevere and survive.

Leon is inclined towards the liberal arts and he makes it to St. Stephens, where for a brief period he is part of the posh crowd, eats hot sams and g-jams with friends from the Rez and watches the ShakeSoc fellas do their rehearsals in the open. At Stephens, Kashmir is but a Led Zeppelin song. But the honeymoon period at Stephens doesn’t last for long. Leon’s lack of money and social status forces him to seek the company of his equals. Post graduate studies follow, but Leon is no longer motivated. Since Leon was born in the UK, he is British or rather, he is entitled to a British passport. Leon moves to the UK.

Just as at Stephens, Leon has a good time in the UK initially, until shit happens in the form of 9/11. Leon is forced to avoid certain areas and roads. Once in a night bus, he is called an Arab Pig and a Paki Terrorist. The internet chat rooms are full of hatred for Muslims, Islam and the infidels. The anti-Islam wave is contagious. Back home, Gujarat boils overs post-Godra. Leon needs to re-discover himself. He decides to go to Berlin to trace his father and in Berlin, he runs into Keya.

Kaul writes in simple Indian English which works well for her characters. There were a few times in the beginning of this 324 page book when I felt Kaul was digressing or dwelling too long on something instead of moving on, but on the whole, Kaul does get on with the job of telling a story and a very good story it turns out to be. Teaming up with Keya in Berlin, Leon manages to find traces of his communist father Mir Ali and his relationship with Shula Farid, then unhappily married to Indian diplomat Abhilash. Mir and Shula had found each other and plotted to get away from their respective worlds. It wasn’t an easy task since Mir was a communist, living and working underground, always on the run. We see Mir and Shula communicate with difficulty, at times leaving messages on the Berlin Wall! Kaul doesn’t tell us till we nearly reach the end whether Mir and Shula succeeded in breaking free. Also, in a way, the relationship between Leon and Keya mirrors that of Mir’s and Shula’s, with the further complication that Leon constantly worries that he might turn out to be a deserter like his father. You need to wait till the very last page to find out where that relationship is headed to.

On the whole, Residue left a very pleasant aftertaste in me and I recommend this book to all those who want to see this world become a better place, free of sectarian prejudices and all those who like to read a good story.