“When Mira Went Forth And Multiplied” by Shinie Antony - Book Review

What happens when "Bridget Jones’s Diary" is written in prose that is comparable to Catch 22’s? A little over three years ago, when I reviewed Antony’s short story collection “Séance on a Sunday Afternoon”, I had found it simple, stark, rapid and at times vulgar. In her latest work When Mira Went Forth And Multiplied, Antony’s prose has matured and mellowed like vintage wine. The sharpness of tongue, the extra-ordinary ability to appreciate minutiae, the quick turn of phrase not unlike an excellent swordsman flicking his wrist to score a direct hit, the astounding ability to mention unmentionables with a deadpan expression, they are all there, but in a much improved form.

When Mira Went Forth And Multiplied is chick-lit. Any doubt on that score is washed away shortly after the novel begins when Mira’s friend tells her ‘You know what’s sadder than saying I do to the wrong guy? Saying I don’t to the right. Bad girls are the new good girls, haven’t you heard?’

Just like Bridget Jones, Mira is also in search of man and suffering as she looks around. We are told in Antony’s inimitable style that, ‘she grew pale and uninteresting, ate poorly and ailed deep in her heart, her hymen alone healthy as a horse.’

When Mira prays, she asks, ‘Give me today my daily man.’ Or nightly. She wasn’t picky about the timing, Antony tells us.

When Mira finally has her affair, or rather a one-night stand, it is with much married Samundar Shah – Sam for short. Sam is henpecked and under pressure from various sides to have a baby with his wife Delta. When we hear Sam’s mother Leela-ben solicitously ask him ‘Is the baby juice going into her baby maker? we are left in no doubt that Leela-ben is worried that Sam and Delta haven’t got certain basics right.

Sam is not only henpecked, but is also a cuckold. His conversations with Delta are usually very entertaining.

‘Did you notice I’ve cut my hair shorter?

He smiled fondly. How could anyone cut their hair longer?

After a pause, she again turned to him with a determinedly zany smile, ‘Remember the first time you kissed me?’

‘Do you mean the first time we kissed or the first time I kissed you?’ Having had to take the lead in matters intimate from time immemorial with her, Sam always made it a point to record levels of participation.

‘What’s the difference?’ she asked losing some of the zany.

‘The first time we kissed, you kissed me,’ he pointed out triumphantly.’

After the one-night stand, Sam disappears and Mira pines for him, until she decides to take revenge. Mira’s actions result in Mira becoming very close to Delta and Leela-ben since they are all interested in Sam’s welfare. I would rather not say anything more and give away the plot, but do please read this fantastic book and find out how it all ends.

12 August, 6:30 p.m., Reliance TimeOut, Bandra West, Please Do Come

My second novel (When The Snow Melts), a spy thriller, will be released in a few months from now. As a prelude to it, I am part of a panel which will discuss 'Nail-Biting Thrillers and High Brow Literature' at Reliance Time Out, Hill Road, Bandra West, Mumbai from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. on 12 August. All are invited. Do come!

Extradite Shrien Dewani

When it was reported that pretty young bride Anni Dewani had been murdered while on honeymoon in South Africa, I was still in the UK, busy winding up to return to India, after having been away for over 8 years. I remember the overwhelming feeling of sympathy I then had for the handsome groom Shrien Dewani, a man I could identify with and feel sorry for. A week or so later, the contrarian shocking reports started coming in. It was alleged by the South African police that the entire car-jacking was ‘fixed’ by Shrien who wanted his bride bumped off. I remember feeling shock and revulsion. How could a man, any man, let someone carry off his wife to be killed? My mind boggled at that very thought. However, once that idea had been floated, I could not dismiss it, though I did still think the chances were that Shrien was innocent. I mean, why would a wealthy Briton want to kill his wife? He could divorce her, if he wanted to, couldn’t he?

Shrien hired publicist Max Clifford to fight some of his battles. This left a very bad taste in the mouth. Why wouldn’t an innocent man boldly face a trial in a court of law? Granted South Africa might not have the same standards as the UK, it was still inconceivable that someone facing such charges wouldn’t want to clear his name at an open trial. Instead Shrien was doing his best to avoid his extradition. South African jails are a nightmare, his lawyers claimed. He would not receive a fair trial, they alleged. Handsome Shrien would be raped as soon as he sets foot inside a South African jail, his publicist trumpeted. The South African government’s case was not helped by its National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele calling Shrien a ‘monkey’.

Now the rumours say that Shrien is gay and was forced into this marriage. There are other stories that Shrien had paid sex with male prostitutes. His family forced him to marry Anni and would not have allowed him to divorce her. If true, it might show a motive for wanting to have his young bride killed.

Shrien is said to be suffering from acute stress and depression. He certainly looks like he is. But then, anyone in his position would be depressed and stressed, wouldn’t they?

The extradition hearings are still going on. Tomorrow, 10 August 2011, yet another hearing will take place. A decision on whether to extradite him to South Africa could be given tomorrow. However, it is likely that the extradition hearings could go on for many more weeks or even months.

I hope that Shrien is extradited to South Africa and given a fair trial. Anything short of that would be a travesty of justice. I mean, the British government has signed an extradition treaty with South Africa. If conditions in South African jails are so bad and no one gets a fair trial out there, would such a treaty have been signed? To say that Shrien should not even be extradited and put on trial in South Africa would be to question the UK-SA extradition treaty itself.

In light of the publicity this case has generated, I also hope that Shrien is not harmed while he is an under-trial in South Africa.

“The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” by Siddhartha Mukherjee – A Review

The first sentence of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, makes you wonder for a moment if you are reading a detective novel or a crime thriller.

'In a damp fourteen-by-twenty foot laboratory in Boston on a December morning in 1947, a man named Sidney Farber waited impatiently for the arrival of a parcel from New York.'

No, Farber is not waiting for the delivery of a pistol fitted with a silencer. The parcel turns out hold a few vials of yellow crystalline chemical named aminopterin, shipped to Farber’s laboratory in the slim hope that it might halt the growth of leukemia in children. No wonder, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2011. Authored by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born doctor based in the United States, The Emperor of All Maladies tells the story of cancer from the time of the ancient Egyptians and Persians till the present, a gripping tale which makes the reader want someone somewhere in this world to find a cure for this malady which has befuddled physicians since time immemorial.

Mukherjee writes well. Very well. What could have been a boring narrative of banal events is transformed by Mukherjee into a series of exciting events that hold the reader’s attention. There are numerous stories of cancer patients and doctors who fight the good fight against this so-far-unconquered disease, each of which is interesting on its own. If the prologue starts with Carla Reed, a thirty-year old Kindergarten teacher from Ipswich, a mother of three who woke up with a headache, the book ends with Germaine who was hit with a rare type of gastrointestinal cancer, made a brilliant recovery and then suffered a relapse. Mukherjee does not tell us if Carla or Germaine made it, just as he does not tell us when he expects a cure to be discovered.

Cancer is not something new or modern. Our ancients knew of it. Atossa the Persian queen suffered from what was most probably breast cancer and had a slave excise her tumour. No, don’t worry, when Mukherjee describes the excision, it sounds a lot better than when you read it here.

Mukherjee’s book is descriptive. When Mukherjee is not describing an experiment or a victim’s pain, he is still describing something else. For example, when telling us about the commencement of a set of trials in a Swedish town, Mukherjee tell us:

‘Perched almost on the southern tip of the Swedish peninsula, Malmö is a bland, gray-blue industrial town set amid a featureless gray-blue landscape. The bare sprawling flatlands of Skane stretch out to its north and the waters of the Øresund strait roll to the south. Battered by a steep recession in the mid-1970s, the region had economically and demographically frozen for nearly two decades. Migration into and out of the city had shrunk to an astonishingly low 2 percent for nearly twenty years. Malmö had been in limbo with a captive cohort of men and women. It was the ideal place to run a difficult trial.’

The only flip side to this brilliant book which uses American spelling is that it is a bit too long. I mean, Mukherjee writes well and there isn’t a single anecdote which isn’t interesting, but after 300 pages, I realised that I still had 172 pages to go and almost buckled. I did carry on though and I am glad I did, but future readers should remember that they are signing up for a marathon when they start this book. A long and exciting marathon, which at times looks as if it will never end - just like the fight against cancer.

Getting Off A Virar Fast At Borivali

A few months ago, I had written a short story called “Getting Off A Virar Fast At Borivali” and submitted it to the Urban Stories Competition 11 jointly run by Landmark and Grey Oak.

In early July, I found that my story had made it to a long list. Now I find that it has made it to the final short-list and will appear in an anthology (called Urban Shots Crossroads) in December 2011. Click on this link and see row 16 in the US Crossroads section for my name and the title.