Book review: “River of Smoke” – Amitav Ghosh

Why do we call sugar “chinee” in Hindi? How did we ever land up with “post-cards” and ketchup? Did you know that we Desis were called “Achhas”? Achha, so the origin of the word chinee is because in the late 1700 and early 1800 the Dominion of India imported sugar exclusively from China. Ketchup, brace for this, is apparently a Chinese export from the 1800’s. At least the concept of Ketchup. And well, post cards were more or less a manifestation of Europe’s questionable obsession with “authentic” Chinese porcelain. Mr. Ghosh peppers his vivid description of the events in Canton (now Guangzhou, China) leading to the opium war in China with these pearls of “wisdom”. Speaking of pearls, do you want to know why the murky and definitely pearl-less river flowing through Guangzhou is called Pearl river? Haha, I won’t tell.

Mr. Ghosh starts his narration on the islands of Mauritius, which, if you’ve read the Sea of Poppies will recall was the final destination of the Ibis. The scene rapidly shifts to the South China sea where the script erupts into apparently disconnected, yet gripping threads of parallel narration. Very Pulp-fictionsque. The vivid narration effortlessly transports the impressionable reader back in time to Canton of 1838 and lets him experience the unraveling of the story as an active participant.

One thread features Neel, disguised as a Munshi of an Indian Tai-pan. One takes the form of the colourful correspondence of a gifted and seemingly gay Anglo-Indian artist looking to step out of the shadow of his famous father. Yet another takes the form the Indian Tai-pan stumbling in an opium laced haze of his own creation, or perhaps he attempts to navigate through his own river of smoke. The threads converge towards an event which sows the seeds of the opium war, and in this convergence I suspect Mr. Ghosh has planted the seeds of the next volume. Perhaps cricket and theater. Perhaps.

Mr. Ghosh makes a statement which could as well reflect today’s state of the economy:

That is correct, Your Majesty. Since the middle years of the last century, the demand for Chinese tea has grown at such a pace in Britain and America that it is now the principal source of profit for the East India Company. The taxes on it account for fully one tenth of Britain’s revenues. If one adds to this such goods as silk, porcelain and lacquerware it becomes clear that the European demand for Chinese products is insatiable. In China on the other hand, there is little interest in European exports – the Chinese are a people who believe that their own products, like their food and their own customs, are superior to all others.

Except that these days the Chinese people have an insatiable appetite for all that is remotely European.

If you have read James Clavell’s Tai-Pan, then I must urge you to read the River of Smoke. As an impressionable teenager I read Tai-Pan, and fell instantly in love with Hong Kong. And the two times I’ve been to Hong Kong, those feelings clouded my judgment and yours truly could not help but warming up to the place. (Forget that it is humid and hot like my other beloved city – Bombay) I confess, I don’t remember the story anymore, but this book reminded me why I was fascinated by Hong Kong. Tai-Pan narrated the story of the south china sea territories post the opium wars, and the river of smoke the story before.

I have never waited so eagerly for a book as I have for this one, that I was surprised by my own behaviour when I was presented with the opportunity of picking up a copy in Hong Kong earlier this year. I must admit, I was caught unawares of its publication, until I accidentally saw it on the book shelf. Having seen it on the bookshelf, I resisted temptation with the logic that I could pick up a copy as easily on my return to Bangalore. It was at best misplaced prudence, for on returning to Bangalore, I discovered to my utter dismay that the book was yet to be released in India and that the bookshops were very cleverly allowing eager readers to “pre-order” the novel. What is with that? huh? Anyways, I got lucky, and could finally lay my hands on the much awaited book a couple of weeks ago. The other book I was reading was unceremoniously retired to my ever increasing backlog of “to-read” books and this book received my undivided attention. I swear, I didn’t keep it down unless I absolutely had to. My one regret, is that now in hind sight I wished I had picked up this book in Hong Kong. It would have been a little bit more special than it it is now. However, now I eagerly await the last of the trilogy, whenever it is published – my bet sometime in 2014 or late 2013.

Book review: “River of Smoke” – Amitav Ghosh

Book Review: From Heaven Lake – Vikram Seth

Twenty nine years ago is long time back. A whole life time ago. The world was divided into two major camps – The Capitalistic West and the Communist East. It was a crime to be communist in a capitalist world, and enterprising free markets were smothered in the communistic world. It was the last few heady years of the Cold War, when countries were recklessly boycotting Olympic games; shooting down each others passenger planes; training and arming people who would come back and haunt us twenty years later; and generally being spectacularly infantile.

In the midst of this mayhem, an Indian student travelled from Delhi (in India, a Non-Aligned Movement nation) to Stanford (in Capitalistic America) to study economics, and then rather incongruously chose to spend 2 years at Nanjing University (in Communistic China). If the China of then was a closed nation, then Tibet was an impregnable fortress. Fortified by the high walls of Chinese bureaucracy on one side and the dizzying Himalayan mountain range  one the other side. That this Indian student hitch hiked and scaled his way through this treacherous terrain; stayed alive, took photographs and kept notes; and a couple of years later went on to write a book about this improbable journey; a book which won the “Thomas Cook Travel Book award”  is an incredulous plot worthy of a Bollywood movie.

The first novel by Vikram Seth, which I read, was “An equal music”. A book so riveting, that I read it in the middle of my final year Engineering Examinations. It was my escape from reality. It touched on human emotions at a very raw and basic level. I loved the book. I could, for some unfathomable reason, connect with the characters. I wanted to feel their pain. They were to me more real than the equations and circuit diagrams flying around me. Surely a man who wrote such a book had to be a cocktail sipping pansy psychoanalyst.

Really. That is how I thought of him. That is, until I read “From heaven lake”. The characters are real. So is the story. For it is a narrative of what really transpired. Vikarm Seth transformed from that silk scarf wearing, pince-nez totting, cold psychoanalyst into a free spirited wild adventurer. My judgmental eyes pleaded guilty and begged for forgiveness.

The book in parts took me back to my days in China – I could relate again to the character. But I tell you, I was not brave enough to eat dog meat. His journey from Liuyan to Lhasa, in the driver’s cabin of a rickety old truck with a chain smoking driver, his nephew and a Tibetian hitch hiker for company, is regularly interrupted by floods, unplanned stopovers, stolen luggage picked up by unscrupulous truck drivers, altitude sickness, and passersby who stop and laugh at you, but not help, when you are hopelessly trying to fix your broken vehicle.  This too reminded me of a rather strange holiday I had a few years ago. On which involved doing almost the same things, but on motorcycles, with a bunch of colleagues from University, on the Indian side of Tibet – in Leh. And of course that omnipresent Tibetian chant, “Om mani padme hun”.

How lucky he was, that he had a chance to see Tibet. At a time when it was still more of less forbidden for any foreigner to be there. How lucky we are that he was (and still is) also a gifted writer - we get to share his experience. In the grand scheme of things, a lot remains the same after 29 years in the Himalayas.

On a personal level, to learn about another great culture is to enrich one's life, to understand one's own country better, to feel more at home in the world, and indirectly to add to that reservoir of individual goodwill that may, generations from now, temper the cynical use of national power.

Amen to that Mr. Seth. Amen.

Book Review: From Heaven Lake – Vikram Seth

Book review: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

It stinks, yet everybody wants to be there. It is a place where one can arrive with nothing but the clothes on ones back, and within a lifetime amass enough wealth to last several generations. It is also a city which can shatter a runaway’s dream in a heartbeat. It is the city of glitz and glamour, of filth and grime. It is also a city which I remember mostly as the place where I learned to write and read, to fly kites, to play hockey, to ride bus, to cross streets, to walk so fast that it feels like running but isn’t, to catch tadpoles in the deluge that monsoon was sure to bring, and learned quite early on that men can and will kill in the name of religion.

So, when an opportunity comes up to read about my first “hometown” I don’t let it go by. A couple of years ago, an Australian by the pen name Gergory Roberts captured the minds (and hearts too?) of us Indians with his largely fictional, yet loosely-based-on-my-experiences-as-a-mafia-“money-runner” account of the Bombay of the 1980’s. The book left us thirsty for more. We were hungry for more stories about the horrid slums. Yes sir, poverty sells. A sequel was planned but never materialized. Or did it? Anyhoo, the next book that I read about Bombay, is completely non-fictional, i.e. 99.99% true, and is set in the early 1990’s. In my mind this is as good a sequel to Shantaram as can get.

Suketu Mehta, what is the right word…, embeds, no, not really, but almost embeds himself in the Mumbai underworld scene. He interviews a top cop – Ajay Sharma. And the cop tells him about the brutal methods the Mumbai cops use to extract confessions from dangerous men. Methods, which as you read, screams human rights abuse.

He interviews men who killed their neighours in the madness of 1992. Men who drenched men in gasoline, lit cigarettes and then casually threw those cigarettes on the gasoline drenched men, and let them burn. Not in some movie. In real life. Men who show no remorse in killing other human beings.

He tells us the truth behind encounter killings, the power of money, the power of the gun, the power that the cops had to do what the pleased, and of that none of these so called “sharp-shooters” were really that effective if the target was running or if the target was more than an arm’s length away. State sanctioned cold blooded murder.

He speaks to the certifiable nut case who called himself the supremo a.k.a. remote control. I need not say more about that lunatic pussy cat in the guise of a tiger. The author covers all the angles of the deranged, dysfunctional world of the Mumbai underworld, and he does so without prejudice, and without passing judgment.

He collaborates on movies, speaks to Sanjay Dutt who in turn speaks quite freely of his troubles with the law, and how he feels justified that his “drug fuelled” desire to protect his family resulted in keeping a couple of assault rifles handy.

The author also chronicles the life cycle of a dance bar girl (or is it a boy) and finds that where ever he goes he finds a magical Gujrathi connection. He chronicles the short stay of dreamy young poet from Bihar, and the bizarre journey of a family to attain spiritual enlightenment.

To sum up, it is a great book to read. I had no expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. I seem to pick the right books to read ;) Although, I admit, the book did not make me nostalgic or homesick. But, it drove home the point that, home is a place where you can go again, and you can also leave again. Thank you sir.

Book review: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

Book Review: The diary of an unreasonable man - “Madhav Mathur”

Ever wondered, “Now what the fuck am I going to do?” while staring blankly at your work station?

Did your boss ever tell you, “… I somehow get the impression that you’re not… happy”, and you wanted to flip him the middle finger? (Hey, that happened to me a few years back!)

Have you written shit loads of “intelligent stories” which never made it to the printing press*?

How many times has someone told you, “.. maybe you’ve done something that would lend a greater degree of credibility to your theories and ideas.” and you’ve wondered, “What the fuck?”

And this one was the freaky statement - “You hit the ultimate stage of this cycle after a few years of work, when you’re a few years away from thirty. That’s when you become a cynic, a pseudo-pacifist, not easily moved, not affected by anyone but yourself, looking out for no one else but yourself”. Freaky!

Doesn’t that sound a lot like you? Hehe! It is as if Madhav Mathur has drilled a hole to the very bottom of our soul, painstakingly searched for that mostly elusive inner core, extracted it with the clarity of a gypsy reading from a crystal ball, and then with carefully used words painted a picture more vivid than reality itself.

The book has too many deja-vu moments, to be not true. It takes effort to convince yourself that this is a work of fiction. Pure fiction. Nothing more. A lot of effort. And no, how much ever you think he is talking about you, he is still not talking about you, because hey, you are not an unreasonable man. You only wished you could do what Mr. Anarchist does ;) Only wish.

And the Ayn Rand references, yappa, can't believe that so many people actually swallow that bull crap written by this demented woman so deep that it actually effects their inner soul**. This book makes references to Ms Rand, and after that one does get a feeling that it is quite Foutainheadish, but I am willing to overlook that discrepancy. I loved his Idea of the Anarchists of Mumbai! I hope the man does not stop writing. Ever. The ending is a bit filmy, but hey, it IS fiction.

* Most of what I write borders on unconnected, and occasionally, caustic drivel and I wouldn't expect anyone to read what I write anyway. So, this doesn't apply to me.

**Unconnected caustic drivel warning. Was making a generic observation, not finger pointing or anything.

Book Review: The diary of an unreasonable man - “Madhav Mathur”

One life to Ride: Book review

Have you ever ridden a RE motorcycle from Manali to Leh? Are looking for a quick trip down memory lane? Have you not ridden in a while? Then “One life to ride” by Ajit Harisinghani will compel you to look at your old photographs or even better - clean the dust off your bike, top up the engine oil and hit the road again.

The book itself is void of any photographs, yet as one reads, the characters and the landscape jump out of the book with remarkable clarity. One is magically transported to the hills, and old memories of that one kickass ride flood the mind...

This book is not just about an old guy riding a bullet to the hills. You've probably heard those stories a large number of times. This book is also about what goes on in the author's head as he rides across India. It is a cheerful collection of short stories, a few not related to the cross Indian ride, but all well within context.

I made the mistake of reading this book on a flight taking me away from India. Why did I ever have to leave, when I could have rather been in Ladakh? The hills, the friendly people, the Indus river, the crazy nallahs, the glaciers, the ever present threat of High Altitude Mountain Sickness, the feeling of peace, utter peace. Why? Sallaaa paapi pet #$%^&*@

Statutory warning: If you are not a motorcycle travel enthusiast as the author is, or as I fancy myself to be, then this book may just about make you one :)

http://www.onelifetoride.com/index.html

One life to Ride: Book review