A truly fine novel: Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, by Cyrus Mistry

9788192328058
Aleph, 2012
247 pp

hardcover

"We are all alive -- every single one of us -- in one form or other..."

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer won the 2014 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, competing against the following novels:

 Book of Destruction, by Anand
Goat Days, by Benyamin
Island of a Thousand Mirrors, by Nayomi Munaweera,
The Blind Man's Garden, by Nadeem Aslam
 and 

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, by Mohsin Hamid, which is the only other book on the list I've read although I also own Blind Man's Garden.   

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer did not exactly start out as a novel in the author's head, but rather, as he says in the author's note at the end, it was based on a story the author had read while researching a documentary on corpse bearers in Bombay's Parsi community.  While the documentary was a no go, one of the stories heard by  Mr. Mistry left an impact on him, so much so that the author notes his wish for this book to be "an offering to the memory" of the subject of that story, a man he'd never met. Like the main character in Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, this man gave up his former life to marry a khandhia - corpse bearer -  "the lowest caste of the Parsi community, who are seen as 'sources of contamination who are forbidden from normal interactions with others,' according to the author in this Wall Street Journal blog piece.  They are a marginalized group; while they are important for religious ritual, they must live their lives away from the rest of society.  This book joins only a few others that rank high on this year's favorites list for the author's excellent writing, for the story itself, and mostly because of the glimpse into a subculture that frankly I never even knew existed.  Anyone who enjoys fiction from India and is looking for something entirely different really ought to pick up this novel.

At the age of eighty, Phiroze Elchidana, aka Elchi, sets down his life story  The son of  the head priest of a Zoroastrian fire temple,  Elchi lived with his parents and his brother Vispy. Vispy is the scholar of the family, while Elchi knows he's not the studious type. When final matriculation exams come around, he flunks; while supposedly studying for the retake, he takes to wandering all over the city of Bombay instead, recalling his solo outings as "the best moments of my youth."   One of the places he discovers during his walks is the beautiful gardens in a place called the Towers of Silence, a Parsi religious establishment where, after certain rituals,  the dead are placed on the towers for the vultures and the hot sun to do their work  "in a final act of charity."  

Old photo of the Towers of Silence, Malabar Hill, from http://ru-towers.livejournal.com/119833.html

One day, at the age of 17, accompanying his mother to a funeral there, Phiroze happens to notice a young girl who then disappears; upon returning the next day, she finds him. As he notes, "it only took that first physical touch," and they knew they were destined to be together. The girl is Seppideh (Seppy), whom, unknown to Phiroze, is an estranged first cousin as well as the daughter of one of the khandias, or Parsi corpse bearers, who bring the corpses to the Towers of Silence and prepare them for mourners and their ultimate fate.  Her father demands that if the two are to go on seeing each other, Phiroze must marry her, work and live out his life at Doongerwaadi as a corpse bearer, a situation that will make Phiroze a veritable pariah to his family and all outside of this small community due to his close association with the dead.   Despite his father's wishes, Phiroze gladly accepts the terms.  The remainder of the novel focuses on his life in this very traditional and secluded community, which in time, slowly begins to undergo change, while on the outside, India is changing rapidly, moving  from the end of  its colonial period into independence and partition, and later, on into the modern era.
  
Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer has so much between its covers. It is  a love story, a story of Phiroze's relationship with his father,  and it reflects largely on love and loss, life and death. It also offers a look at this very insular community of khandhias.   But all of that is just for starters.  It also examines the marginalization of this group in the bigger context of society -- including how their work affects the lives of their children when they're ready to enter the wider world --, the  working conditions that these people were forced to endure, and how many of the people chose this life to escape the horrific poverty that would otherwise be their fate.  There's  much, much more -- I'm only scratching the surface here.  I also love how he writes, combining dark humor, honest human emotion and some genuinely moving moments,  all sprinkled throughout with ironic touches to create a wonderful and extremely readable story.

I have to say that I loved this book -- absolutely, and wholeheartedly recommend it. It's one I definitely will not soon forget. It is a beautiful and moving tale that totally captivated me.

Narcopolis, by Jeet Thayil

9781594203305
Penguin, 2012 (USA)
9781594203305
288 pp
(hardcover)

“This is the story the pipe told me. All I did was write it down, one word after the other, beginning and ending with the same one, Bombay.”

My  sincere thanks to TLC Blog Tours and to Penguin for sending me a copy of this book.

*******

 Halfway through the novel at a point where my brain demanded sleep, before putting the book down  I wrote a brief note to myself on a piece of paper used as a bookmark: " Midway -- loving the book. Yes."  And after reading the last word (which also happens to be the first word) of the story, my mind hadn't changed one bit.  Although Narcopolis is a unique novel in its own right, it definitely belongs with the wave of incredible fiction that has recently been coming from India and other areas of South Asia. It is Jeet Thayil's first novel, filled with passion and poetic prose; it's a very good, one-of-a-kind read that captured me right away.

Much like the smoke that pervades Rashid's Bombay opium den on Shuklaji Street, Narcopolis has a somewhat swirly, surreal lingering effect, one that begins with its one-sentence prologue carried out over several pages, continues as it moves through the lives of the people who can be found on the street, and doesn't end even long past the time the last page has been turned. In this book, "the hero or heroin of the story" is the intoxicating city of Bombay, which over a span of about thirty years has had its share of  upheavals felt by all who live there.  In this novel, the people on the margins --  the whores, the addicts, the drug dealers, and other people who frequent the city's underbelly, the slums with  "roads mined with garbage, with human and animal debris, and the poor, everywhere the poor and the deranged..." are at the   heart of this story, in which  the author offers these people a chance to say things which might otherwise not be heard.  Indeed, the novel is very much character driven, and the stories of Bombay over the last three decades and those of  people filling  her streets are relayed through the very odd set of people who inhabit the book.  Their combined lives serve as a map through recent history, and through them the author introduces his readers to different facets of life on Shuklaji Street: drug addiction, poverty,  increasing violence, corruption, the ebb and flow of life in Bombay's back alleys, and to a way of a life in which "a man could smoke a pipe or two a day and live a long and productive life" which ultimately vanishes in the face of newer, more lethal forms of escape.

As noted in the prologue, a single, sentence spanning just about six pages, there are two " I machines" telling the story:

"maybe the O is the I and I is unreliable, my memory like blotting paper, my full-of-holes, porous, shreddable non-memory, remembering details from thirty years ago but this morning a blank, and if memory = pain = being human, I'm not human, I'm a pipe of O telling this story over the course of a single night, and all I'm doing, the other I that is, I'm writing it down straight from the pipe's mouth..."


The novel is broken into four parts, the first part narrated for a while by the very human narrator, Dom Ullis, whose firsthand narration doesn't pick up again until much later, leaving the "pipe's mouth" to get on with the story.  Ullis leaves Bombay for some time, returning in 2004, when the city he knew as a younger man has undergone a great deal of change.   At the heart of the novel is Rashid's opium den on Shuklaji Street, an area known for its red-light district, a slum with a “fever grid of rooms, boom-boom rooms, family rooms, god rooms, secret rooms that contracted in the daytime and expanded at night." Rashid's  is a popular place for opium smoking, "the best on the street," visited by tourists who stretch out on the cushions and fill their pipes with the freshly-cooked opium, or  sit around, drink tea and take photos. Then there are Rashid's regulars who go there to leave life behind for a while in a place where "we are all smokers here," despite their differences outside the hazy opium shop. 

This strange assortment of people whose stories comprise this novel  include Ramesh, called Rumi,  a Brahmin business man who hates everyone and wears cowboy boots; Rumi has a penchant not only for opium and later garad heroin, but also for violence, including regularly beating his wife.   Then there's Rashid himself, who became a hippie, got into drugs, and opened his own shop in the late 1970s after watching a movie called "Hare Krishna, Hare Ram."   Helping Rashid  in his chandu khana is Dimple, a prostitute who was given away by her mother at a young age, castrated and given opium to help deal with the pain, and who serves clients at the local brothel specializing in eunuchs.  She brings Rashid opium pipes from her surrogate father Mr. Lee, whom she first met as a child.  Lee had left China during the Cultural Revolution, then died in Bombay where he had settled because of the sea. [As a brief aside, Lee's story is one of the best parts of this novel -- it is set in China during Mao's Cultural Revolution. His story also  closes a circle:  his revered opium pipes  come back to India, where the opium flow to China began with the British East India Company.] Lee  teaches Dimple how to use the pipes properly, tells her stories, and after he dies, the pipes are part of her inheritance.  They also become part of a deal -- Dimple wants to eventually leave the brothel and offers the pipes in trade for staying with Rashid.  Dimple also wants to figure out and become who she really is; along the way she dons the burkha, is saved from a mob by being a Christian, obtains different first names, and it is she who drives a great deal of this narrative. Dimple is trying to put the past aside in order to find a measure of peace and beauty in the world for her future.  Other people found in the area include Bengali, who deals with Rashid's money and keeps his ear to the streets, the gangster street boss Lala, and many other colorful people the author has created.

Thirty years pass quickly in this novel as it follows this generation of Rashid's customers and others  through their less than happy lives.  Bombay is rocked with floods, riots, corruption, etc;   it also experiences the switch in preference from opium to garad heroin,  "the unrefined shit they throw away when they make good quality maal for junkies in rich countries."  Garad comes from Pakistan; in Urdu its name means waste.  Rashid refuses to sell it, but that doesn't prevent its spread among his customers.  With the introduction of "Chemical," where strychnine is added to the heroin to  "give it a kick," it becomes more lethal, but is  more readily available than food, because the sales of heroin are "protected" by politicians and crooks.   As one character notes, "today the street belongs to whoever takes it. Today it's ours, tomorrow someone else will take our place."

Bombay's changes continue over the years, and when Ullis returns to his homeland, he finds that parts of the Shuklaji street neighborhood have received  a face lift and have become more modern, trying to keep up with twenty-first century trends. Everything is shiny and new, with splashes of color everywhere.  Rashid's son Jamal is now in charge of the family business, which has extended itself to making deals with the Russians. He and his wife Farheen go out clubbing in crowded spots bursting with the beat,  where she drops the burkha in favor of more trendy clothes. But despite the glitz and the glamour of this new, modern life, some things remain the same: the demand for escape in the city is still high, as are the suppliers'  twin drives for money and power. "Dance or we die," Farheen notes to Jamal, whose deals involve  newer drugs of choice, including cocaine and ecstasy.

I realize I've  barely skimmed the surface here, but it's because this book is very multi-faceted, with so much to capture one's attention and little time and space here to go through it all.  There are  exiles and eunuchs, poets and painters, ghosts and spirits, and dreams that leak from one person to another --  only a few examples of what you'll find  in this incredible book.   Narcopolis is a very human story, and although there's a bit of a surrealistic quality surrounding the characters' lives and experiences, it is grounded in the truth of Thayil's own experiences as a drug addict who left Bombay for a while, came to the US, and returned later to his homeland.

 Toward page 55 of this novel, I wrote in  my notebook that "it's hard to tell the drug-induced dreams and hallucinations from the reality,"  and I think that's not an unfair description of the way the author writes.   His background as a poet is quite obvious in the way he writes his prose. Dreams and hallucinations meld into reality and it's often difficult to separate them, Shuklaji street comes alive with even the smallest of details, and while you may feel little but disdain for many of the characters, some of them, like Dimple, become people with whom you can't help but sympathize.  There is a great deal of irony scattered throughout, and even a few moments of humor.  Thayil also blends different types of texts (magazine articles, books, an imaginary book set in the future also written with opium pipe in hand, movies, lectures, etc.) into his own narrative, creating a multi-layered effect that heightens the reading experience to the point where I never would have guessed that the book is his first novel.  I'm not an English major nor am I good enough at more in-depth liteary analysis to provide one here, and some of the symbolism more than likely escaped me.   I'll leave that side of things  to others far more qualified.  However, as a reader who enjoys international fiction, constantly on the lookout for something fresh and different, this novel blew me away.  I've never read anything like it, and I probably never will again. It's unique, a one of a kind book filled with passion; it's gritty and tough, real and surreal all at the same time. 

There are a few things about this novel that may concern potential readers:  summarized briefly,  the novel sort of rambles so if you're into linear, clear-cut plot development and a story that moves quickly from point a to point b, has a climax and then ends on a high note, well, this book might not be for you.  Also, throughout the novel there is a great deal of sex, graphic language, graphic violence and a rape scene here and there, not to mention the drug use.  While these are all things that might actually happen given the environment, some people may be not quite ready to deal with the author's descriptions or subject matter.   Frankly, Narcopolis is probably not going to be everyone's cup of tea; if, however, you can get past the usual and are attracted to something very different,  then you might want to give it a try.

Although I was going to read this book on my own anyway, I jumped at the opportunity to read it as part of a series of TLC blog tours.  The remaining stops for this book are listed here if you're interested. 

*Rebirth, by Jahnavi Barua

9780143414551
Penguin India, 2010
203 pp
(trade paper ed. - India)

Rebirth is Jahnavi Barua's first novel, although in 2008 she also authored a book of short stories entitled Next Door.  It is narrated by the main character Kaberi, and the narrative is addressed to her unborn baby, the type of thing I normally shy away from in my reading choices. No wait. I normally RUN from this type of thing. However,  to be perfectly honest, and much to my own surprise, there are several features that elevate this novel from being just another book of women's fiction or chicklit.  It has a vividly-evoked sense of place and time,  quality prose that does not fall prey to overdone cliches, and the reader catches a glimpse into  issues facing not only modern Indian women, but a bit of India's ongoing regional, political strife that affects people in all walks of life.   There is also a nice, reflective symmetry at work that is well constructed:  the story takes place over the few months between Kaberi's discovery that she is pregnant and the first pangs of labor contractions, and as Kaberi is patiently awaiting the baby's emergence, she is also on a path toward her own.

Kaberi is married to Ranjit (Ron) and lives a very middle-class existence in a nice flat in Bangalore. She has been working on a children's book for about a year, unbeknownst to her husband, and the book is now ready for her to begin the editing process.  But despite her environment, upscale life and her happiness about being pregnant, things are not so great for Kaberi: Ron is having an affair and living with another woman, and has moved many of his things out of the flat.  Ron's behavior toward Kaberi fluctuates erratically; often when Ron wants something from Kaberi, she usually acquiesces with little protest, but he is not above using physical violence on her from time to time. Kaberi hasn't mentioned the pregnancy to her husband; she wants him to return to her not because of the baby, but because he still loves Kaberi.  Actually, Kaberi hasn't mentioned the pregnancy or Ron's absence from their home  to anyone; the one friend in whom she may have confided early on was killed in a bus explosion  during an insurgency in Assam, and Kaberi just lets on that Ron's company frequently sends him away on business.  When Ron comes to her to ask for a divorce, he expects that she will give in to his request, but Kaberi realizes  that now she is in a position of strength, one that is only bolstered by a trip home to Assam when an unforeseen event occurs. Obviously there's a great deal more to the story, but to say any more would be unfair.

Yes, yes, yes, I know it sounds like the standard women's fiction/chicklit kind of story, but there is an unusual amount of depth at work in this novel which lifts the premise of this story from what it could have been to something on an elevated level. The sense of place moves the reader from modern city -- where even in the midst of the city's hustle-bustle an open  verandah attached to a flat can be an isolating experience --  to muddy roads to the lush jungle near Bangalore and then to the scenic river views in Assam where people float on barges for parties, each with its accompanying wonders and vivid colors in terms of flora and fauna. Moving along, the author never feels compelled to document incidents of domestic violence in graphic detail, nor does her main character wring her hands, bemoan her fate in a "poor, poor, pitiful me" kind of way, take revenge or take a lover to spite her unfaithful husband. The spotlight is always on Kaberi, her sense of isolation and the slow realization of her empowerment that comes about as a result of her inner strength, and the prose moves steadily and is, if anything,  quietly understated.  Finally, the author manages to weave in some of the political and social issues of the agitation in Assam, where people took to the streets to make their voices and agendas heard, only to be betrayed in the long run.

Rebirth is a very fast read but a good one, and if this is Jahnavi Barua's very first novel, then she's off to a running start in her writing career.   I did get a bit tired of reading through longish descriptions of different outfits the women wore in this book, and the colors and styles various people used in decorating their homes -- it was just too extraneous for me to really care about and added little to the overall story. But really, if that's the worst I have to say about this book, then that's a good thing! I'll look forward to more from this author in the future.

 *****

A note to publishers or to anyone else who cares: as an extremely avid consumer of the written word and buyer of hundreds of books per year,  I think it would be very nice if books listed for international prizes were available on an international scale, but I do understand that there are rights restrictions and whatever.  Personally, I don't get this phenomenon of  limiting award-nominated books to only one country or one region when the publishing business isn't doing so well these days and international releases might boost sales.  After looking around my usual online haunts to find this book, I had the choice of going to Penguin India or paying about $60 US for a 200-page paperback. I went with Penguin India and was happy to do so, but I can't speak for everyone else who might want to read this book here in the US.

*River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh

9780719568985
John Murray, 2011 (UK)
517 pp
(Hard cover edition)

"Look there, he said, pointing upriver. You'll see a big fort, down by the water, right at the river's mouth. The lascars call it 'Sher-ka-mooh,' the Tiger's Mouth; the Angrez call it the Bogue. It was built just a few years ago, to defend the river, and to look at it you would think no one could ever get into such a stronghold. But at night you or I or anyone else could walk in, without anyone stopping us. The soldiers are all lost in smoke, and their officers too. This is a plague from which no one can escape."

 ****

River of Smoke is book two of Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, so named for the ship introduced in book one, Sea of Poppies.  In book one, set in 1836, the British colonial powers had changed the rich fields of Indian farmland into a veritable "sea of poppies," and had economically hogtied the people who used to raise their own food crops to the opium industry. Opium often forced farmers into debt and into leaving their homes, causing many of them to make voyage to plantations in Mauritius and other places where the abolition of slavery left a great demand for indentured workers. Now two years later, River of Smoke follows the opium from its origins in India to its final destination in China, where in thirty years the amount of the "black mud" penetrating throughout the country has increased "tenfold," and where

"...thousands, maybe millions of people ... have become slaves to it -- monks, generals, housewives, soldiers, mandarins, students,"

and now, in 1838, the Emperor has had enough, and he's sent an emissary to Canton to force the issue.

Despite what may be expected of the second novel of this trilogy, River of Smoke does not actually pick up where Sea of Poppies left off.  Although some answers as to the respective fates of the characters from Sea of Poppies are partially revealed, and although some familiar characters continue on in River of Smoke, Ghosh sets the action in Canton and brings in new faces, most notably that of Bahram Naurozji Modi, a wealthy Parsi merchant from Bombay.  He had married into a family of famous shipbuilders who had made their fortunes after being awarded a contract from the East India Company;  he decided that he would like to get into the export business. At age 21, he made his first trip to Canton, where he was "stripped of the multiple wrappings of home, family, community, obligation and decorum," and became a different person altogether, even taking on a mistress who gave him a son.  Known there as Barry Moddie, he has returned after a three-year absence, sailing in his beloved ship Anahita, with a hold full of opium, "possibly the single most valuable cargo that had ever been carried out of the Indian Subcontinent." He is banking on making enough money to satisfy his investors, make a fortune for himself and prove something to his wife's family.   Now that he is in Canton just as the Emperor has decided to crack down and start enforcing the longstanding ban on opium imports, his ability to sell his cargo is on hold; in the meantime he is appointed to "the Committee," which runs the Canton Chamber of Commerce, "the foreign enclave's unofficial Cabinet." Bahram has his appointment because he is the longest-standing merchant from India, not because of any feelings of equity from the other members of the Committee. It is there that the merchants' battles over the opium trade will be fought, and where Bahram, as the member from India, will be caught in the middle of the debate between free trade as a God-given right of imperialistic nations and the morality of the opium trade as well.   With this role comes great responsibility, as his friend Zadig reminds him:

 "You will have to ask yourself: what of the future? How do we safeguard our interests in the event of war?...And if the Chinese manage to hold off the Europeans, what will become of us, and our relations with them? We too will be suspect in their eyes. We who have traded here for generations, will find ourselves banned from coming again."

But it is not just the future of trade that Bahram must contemplate: first, he must acknowledge his own role in the opium trade currently devastating China, since


"almost all the 'black mud' that came to Canton was shipped from your own shores; and you knew also that even though your share of the riches that grew upon that mud was minuscule, that did not prevent the stench of it from clinging more closely to you than to any other kind of Alien."

and this truth will have ultimately have devastating implications for Bahram as a human being. 


There is a great deal of use of the term "civilized nation," and it is ultimately up to the reader to decide what this means.  River of Smoke also presents the flip side of relations with China, in which cultural exchange has benefits for all nations: in art and poetry as represented by the character of Robin Chinnery and in the exchange of plants, carried out by Mr. Penrose, a wealthy man whose nurseries in Britain were famous for their wide variation in imported plants, and Paulette Lambert,  one of the original passengers of the Ibis from Sea of Poppies. While Paulette sort of sits on the sidelines of all the politics since as a woman she cannot enter the foreign enclave in Canton, she and her patron work to collect and trade plants with the Chinese, but even their work is interrupted by politics.

If you read Sea of Poppies, you will remember the fast-paced action of that story; don't expect the same here. I have to admit to being skeptical of this novel at first because the action in River of Smoke is slow to build, but once the story got to Singapore, the pace picked up and I found myself  in the role of observer of events leading to a critical moment in China's history.  I often use the phrase "I couldn't put the book down," meaning I was absorbed in the pages in front of me, but this time I literally did not stop reading until I had come to the very end and I have the dark circles under my eyes to prove it. This book put me in the skins of the main characters and I was caught up in the all of the political and  moral debates, felt the tensions rising in the foreign enclaves, and then became ultimately saddened by knowing what's in store for the Chinese within the next year or so and where it's all going to lead.  And in today's global geopoliticking, the same old songs are being heard again and as in the past, the big powers aren't listening. 

Although tempered by humor, especially in terms of language misunderstandings, River of Smoke is an intense novel that rises above the ordinary to tell an incredibly devastating story while offering a glimpse of what could have been if greed and nationalistic pride hadn't interfered. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it is an excellent book, and I recommend it very highly.

fiction from India

The Sly Company of People Who Care, by Rahul Bhattacharya

9780374265854
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011
278 pp
(hardcover ed)

The Sly Company of People Who Care is Rahul Bhattacharya's first novel,currently  shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and winner of the Hindu Literary Prize for Best Fiction in 2011.   It is structured in three parts, told via first-person narrative and set in the country of Guyana. It's also a  hell of a good book that will leave you thinking long after you've set it down. 

The story is told from the point of view of the narrator, who has left his home in India for Guyana to escape the "deadness" of his life.   His plan is to stay for a year, to become a "slow ramblin' stranger." He'd been in Guyana before for a week reporting on a cricket match, and during that time he sensed "moods and images, names and rhythms, contours of a mystery world one could perceive but not grasp."   This time around,  he  finds this place  to have the "feel of an accidental place," a place of "epic indolence," with a multitude of voices to be heard: "chinee, putagee, buck, coolie, and the combinations emanating from these, a separate and larger lexicon."   While  traveling into the interior with a local huckster and "porknocker" (diamond miner) named Baby, he soaks up local life along the way,  and becomes enthralled with Guyana's natural beauty. There he discovers that while he's in awe at Baby's freedom and ability to live off little more than his wits, he also finds witnesses an act of betrayal and something worse that leaves him wondering.  On his return to Georgetown, after recovering from a case of dengue fever, he realizes that

"One escapes one's life for however long, seeking adventure - I think of the Hindi word dheel. That is what kite-flyers in Bombay shouted when they wanted the spooler to let loose the thread...So one escapes one's life seeking adventure, and with enough dheel and some luck, that happens.  But the thread is anchored. You can only go so far. The impulse must change. Instead of adventure one seeks understanding."

Hooking up with a local character named Ramotar Seven Curry, a professional wedding guest, the narrator is at one such event, "where everyone is welcome," regardless of social class, but as it turns out, that blanket doesn't exactly include Africans.  Here the narrator begins to grasp what really lies beneath Guyana's beautiful exterior.  The tone of the novel begins to shift, as the author explores "the wounds left behind," and where the narrator makes a critical discovery about the country he at first thought so "accidental." While discussing India's hierarchical class rigidity and the fact that Indian nationals do not see their fellow Indians in Guyana as Indian at all, in a mix of both fiction and nonfiction, the narrator also relates how Guyana became a nation divided along the lines of race beginning with its European colonization. The narrative  goes back into Guyana's troubled past to make some sense of its troubled present. It is a story of the forced migration of slaves, the end of slavery and the introduction of indentured servants largely from India, and the social, political and economic displacement of one set of people over another via policies set by the Europeans. What's left now is a  "competition of suffering" between the two groups," with  the Afro-Guyanese seeing things from one point of view and the Indo-Guyanese having an altogther different take on the situation.   What Europeans started before leaving the country has left long-standing wounds that continue to inform most aspects of life in this country, and not just the economic and political aspects. And the pattern of movement and displacement continues today, as "there are more Guyanese living outside Guyana than in it."

In another shift of tone, the narrator's story picks up with him becoming a bit bored and restless, ready for yet another journey.   He meets a local girl named Jan, and they're off to Venezuela.  He falls head over heels; she's looking for an escape.   They're attracted to each other by the sex, but otherwise he comes to realize that they have very little in common, and the excitement begins to wear thin.  As his visa is about to expire, the two head back to Guyana, and it is then that he runs into a moral dilemma or two over "wounds left behind" for which he might be responsible.

There's a great deal more to this book, but there's too much to encapsulate in a few paragraphs.  Suffice it to say that the narrator ultimately comes to realize that in Guyana, everything is not so accidental after all -- that everything has been created, seeds have been sown that have taken  root deep within the very souls of the Guyanese people, and they all stem back to the European colonizers.

At first I wasn't so sure about this book, but after finishing it and giving it some thought, I grew to really like it as I considered all of the ironies within.  I'll leave you to figure them out for yourself. The prose is lush and  descriptive, especially in detailing the beauties of the Guyanese landscape.   Some people have criticized the book for having no real resolution, but perhaps the lack of an ending tied up neatly in a little bow is reflective of the content of the novel.  Definitely and highly recommended.  There is a lot of really good fiction coming out of South Asia right now, and this book is no exception.

*The Thing About Thugs, by Tabish Khair

9788172239787
Fourth Estate/Harper Collins India, 2010
244 pp.
(will be published in the US by Houghton Mifflin, July 2012)

 "...since history has devoted
Just a few lines to you, I had more freedom

To fashion you in my mind's eye..."

 -- C. P. Cavafy (epigram)

The Thing About Thugs is a difficult book to pigeonhole into a single category, and I'm not even going to try. It is part thriller, part examination of London's Victorian invisible underclasses, a look at the flaws in "superior" Western rationalism and the attitudes behind British imperialism, and it is a novel which turns  the familiar colonial narrative on its head.

In Bihar, India, a young man is sitting in the library of his grandfather's house, which was once filled with shelves brimming with books.  In one of these he has come upon a book of handwritten notes in Farsi, which belonged to one Amir Ali, along with a newspaper clipping reporting the death of a British lord and "scholar of phrenological science" on board a ship headed for Africa.  His grandfather's library was filled with books by Dickens, Mayhew, William T. Meadows and Jane Austen among others; later libraries he would visit would also help him to imagine the story connecting the notebook and the report of the British lord's death.  This is the frame on which the story of Amir Ali is told, and during the course of the story the author  returns to reflect on writing,  his life and other things of interest. 

 Amir Ali has come to London with the help of Captain William Meadows, who is writing a book on the Thug Cult of India. It is 1837; the book will eventually be published in 1840, but for now, Meadows is finishing up a series of interviews with Amir Ali, who for reasons of personal safety had to leave India, found out about Meadows, and told him a  story of his life in the Thug Cult.  It was, of course, made up, but Meadows didn't know that.   Meadows is also a member of the London Society of Phrenology, the most current "scientific" fad, one that laid out a person's destiny depending on the shape of his skull.   Lord Batterstone, another phrenologist,  is  building a "Theatre of Phrenological Specimen." He hopes his collection of the most exotic  skulls will put the lid on the currently-popular theories of George Combe and put Meadows "who had, since his return from India with his reprieved thug, Amir Ali, taken society by such storm."  Batterstone is also toying with the idea of a trip to the Congo in hopes of more specimens.  While Meadows is tending to his narrative based on Ali's fictitious account of being a Thug, Ali, in the meantime, is writing down the real story of his life in Farsi, which he hopes will be read someday by the object of his affections, a part-time maid named Jenny in Meadows' household.  Jenny also  happens to be the niece of the first victim of an extraordinary series of crimes.

Just who committed these outrages is a matter taken up by the local news reporter, who notes that  "no Christian" could have done this -- that this sort of crime is associated with  "other, hotter climes, with people reared on suspicions and barbarities, and not on the milk of human mercy that flows through Christian veins in the lands of civilization" and " some heathen, recently imported into our parts, who either practices a devilish or esoteric rite or consumes human flesh."

But despite all of their enlightened scientific reasoning, the London police are unable to solve these crimes, and as they increase in number, the same newspaper reporter stirs up the pot regarding  immigrants coming to London:

"There are officers to inspect and certify the goods that are downloaded at West India and East India docks at the Isle of Dogs and the London Dock Company's docks at Wapping.  But only if the goods are dead and inanimate.  Every day hundreds of living goods are downloaded at those very docks, and they slip into the great city of London with hardly any inspection.  There is no one to test if these living goods are of sufficiently high quality or not, to certify if they are undamaged and not rotted."

With  the public fanning of the flames pointing to a "heathen" perpetrator, it's time to settle things once and for all.  A group of the invisible underclasses, "lascars, ayahs, beggars, some impossible-to-place oddities..., and riff-raff, mostly but not entirely from the lands of Hindoostan" decide it's time to take matters into their own hands.   

If this was all there was to this book, it might make for an interesting Victorian-style crime novel, but there's a great deal more in here.  The story is really the frame holding together for "novelized history," as the writer puts it, done in a most tongue-in-cheek kind of style.  Victorian London, as the seat of the British Empire, has its "ghosts" to be dealt with -- colonialism; the justification of racist attitudes via pseudosciences based on western rationalism and its fear of the outsider; society's treatment of the underclasses -- as well as the caste system  among the middle and upper classes along with their servants.    But at its heart, The Thing About Thugs is a story about stories and the people who tell them: the narrator back in Bihar acknowledges that there are things missing in Amir Ali's notes, so he has to "fill in the gaps."  In his story, he turns the colonial narrative around to the point where Amir Ali and the ragtag group of  lascars and the rest of the people one normally considers as marginalized are the heroes of the day,  while the enlightened Londoners are either easily duped, led astray by their dependence on enlightened reason, or at their very worst, savage murderers, or filled with the potential to become the future Kurtz, a la Heart of Darkness.


I get the sense that Khair had a great time writing this book, and I had an equally great time reading it.  I realize that not everyone is going to agree with me, largely because many readers may have trouble with the multiple narrative strands and the switching between time and place. And many people may be put off with the subject matter -- I mean, beheadings are never a fun topic, and not everyone will like the Victorian murder story format. I must admit to a bit of confusion at the start of the novel, and had to stop and take stock of what I actually thought was happening here in terms of structure -- you should see my little notebook full of question marks. But once I figured it out, I was off and never stopped.   There is an excellent book underneath all of the potentially problematic issues, and if people can get underneath the surface of this novel, they will be richly rewarded.  I actually am in awe when I find a book this good. 

fiction from India

*Jimmy the Terrorist, by Omair Ahmad

9780670083640
Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Books India, 2010
185 pp

"Nothing teaches a person the rules of power better than being excluded from it..."

 Although events in Jimmy the Terrorist happen in Northern India and deal largely  with the tensions between Muslims and Hindus, the story is applicable in any place where the communal interests of any privileged or powerful groups edge out the interests of others, pushing the latter to the margins of power or influence.  Whether these interests are political, religious or based on other economic, cultural or social factors does not matter as long as the majority maintains its status quo and sets its own interests above those of  a society as a whole.  In this sense, Jimmy the Terrorist is a very human and very global story, one that has always and probably will always continue to play out throughout the world.


The novel actually begins with its ending.  In the town of  Moazzamabad, an 18-year-old young man emerges from a movie theater, and comes across two policeman, one of them beating and threatening to rape a prostitute, while the other, an Inspector, watches from the side urging on. his colleague.  They hadn't heard him leave the theater, and decide to harass him just for being there. Although he is generally a quiet person who never seeks out trouble, "the Fates rode him at that moment," and he sticks a knife into the Inspector's belly. As the knife reaches its target, he yells “I am Jimmy the terrorist.”  The police then beat him to death. The act results in a media frenzy, but while the reporters are off chasing down the story, the narrator decides to tell the real story to one person -- but makes the point that the story of Jimmy the Terrorist can only be understood if one understands the story of his parents.  After all, "there was nobody named Jimmy in Moazzamabad, just a young man named Jamaal Ansari, son of Rafiq Ansari and Shaista Shabbir, who prepared the long road their child would one day take." And, the narrator notes, "because their story played out in Rasoolpur, he was also the story of this mohalla. And of Shabbir Manzil."

And what a story it is -- As a young man, Rafiq Ansari's parents sent him to St. Jude's, where the greatest lesson he learned is that  while "success was a small thing, social standing was the greater goal."  Rafiq's one goal in life is  to enter the Shabbir Manzil, the gathering place for intellectuals and home of what was once the most prominent Muslim family of the area.  Eventually and by accident, Rafiq's goal is met, and it just so happens that Ahmed Saeed Shabbir is on the management committee of a college with a vacancy. Coincidentally, his cousin's unmarried sister will also be joining the staff, and needs a husband. This is Shaista, who dreamed of great of academic success, but whose aspirations were ended by this same brother.  Rafiq is married into the family and into Shabbir Manzil, with a conscious understanding that he "had not really existed before the marriage..." and that he is definitely still beneath them. He is also expected to ignore the parts of his life that came before, including his own family.  When his son Jamaal is born (nicknamed Jimmy by Ahmed Saeed Shabbir),  the women of the house become the main force in Jamaal's life,  leading Rafiq to  attend prayers and commune with the other men at the local mosque.  But when eventually, Rafiq and Jamaal are separated from the Shabbir Manzil and Rafiq from his livelihood, he wants to use the space to find the "sense of honor that he had never had." 

Rafiq is always afraid of what others will think or what others will say about him, and even later when he realizes that what he must do is to show anger and "miss no opportunity to raise your voice against the suffering of the Muslims,"  tends to remain in the background in the presence of others in the mosque.  Slowly, however, he begins to understand that his ticket to regaining some of the power he'd lost after Shabbir Manzil could be found in "well-articulated anger," the product of which gave him the "kind of respect that none of his social climbing had."  Jamaal, in the meantime, grows up and watches as his father and other Muslims, descendants of the great Mughals, become increasingly marginalized in the face of the competing political, economic and social/cultural interests of the area.   Jamaal attends St. Jude's like his father, and learns the same lessons -- he is consistently tormented and bullied, even wrongly accused of theft because he is poor and because of his religion.   After finishing school, he he has plans for himself that will empower him to take control of his life, but the realities of the situation are made very clear in one brief moment that encapsulates and brings to the surface everything Jamaal has witnessed and has learned throughout his life.  It will move him from the Jamaal who was a "bit of a dreamer" to becoming Jimmy the Terrorist. 

What's important in this novel is not just the politics, not just the religious issues, but the question of what leads people to do what they do in any given circumstance.  While their actions may not make much sense to others, there is always some driving force behind decisions people make and actions that they take.  At some point in the story,  Rafiq notes that "The British are gone ... we're all free men now," not quite understanding that for the Muslims in his town, the perception was not quite the reality. It is  Muslim homes that were dynamited, Muslim businesses and livelihoods that were destroyed during the riots of the 1960s, and it was Muslims and the poor who, during the Emergency of 1975-77 became part of the target of a forced sterilization campaign. Rafiq has trouble getting a job, as employers are increasingly reluctant to hire people with Muslim names in a "bad time for the economy" when it was "stupid to be a visible minority of any sort." But it's not just Hindu/Muslim politics at work here: Jamaal witnesses his father's powerlessness -- first at Shabbir Manzil then afterward; he watches as his father changes from a rational and intellectual man to one who gains respect from saying things he doesn't really believe and perpetuating the flames of other people's anger. And as Jamaal begins to face his own issues at St. Jude's and seeks help from his trusted imam, his  concerns are lost in a discussion of politics couched in a discussion of religion, going so far as to debate the rightness of the actions of the man responsible for the Mumbai bombings.  If anything, Jamaal learns that religion isn't applicable to secular or political issues. And to be very fair, the author also notes through his characters that not all Muslims are incited to violence by religious rhetoric.   When all is said and done, this is a story of marginalization of a certain group of people by a majority ("the inheritors of the Raj") who were once marginalized themselves under the rule of another.   I read it like this: as Jamaal becomes Jimmy, he becomes the spokesman for the oppressed and the marginalized, and as such, unlike his father, is able to find a real sense of honor and meaning in his existence.  I could be wrong; like all good novels, this is a book each person needs to experience individually and define it through his or her own experiences.

I very highly recommend this novel -- it is powerful, very moving, and especially appropriate in today's world.  It is also a very thought-provoking story, so much so that now, a week after finishing it, I'm still thinking about it.  If you're expecting a novel on the inner workings of an al-Queda type person, you're not going to find it here.  But if you want something intelligent and well written, you're going to love it.

fiction from India