Book Review – Mahashweta, Sudha Murty

OK. Let me confess. I have this bitter prejudice towards ‘celebrity’ authors. But you will understand my prejudice if you look around the current literary scenario. These days any celebrity can lend their initials – literally – to the brainchild of somebody else and smugly enjoy all the accolades and royalties for someone else’s efforts. How else can you explain it, when a fast-bowler, known more for off-field antics than on-field heroics, one who cannot even write a proper tweet without making himself a butt of jokes, suddenly writes a ‘memoir’ (!) and rakes in the moolah?!

Sudha Murty was one author whose works I had shunned for so long due to this same prejudice. I thought of her as someone who was making hay as the sun shined – hogging limelight more for her being the spouse of Narayanamurty, the legendary founder of Infosys, than for her own literary prowess. This book proved me wrong completely. This book is a flowing tale of a female protagonist, who gets shunned by all and sundry, including the man who ‘loved’ and married her, for the only reason that she has started developing white patches on her skin.

Anupama is your quintessential Indian heroine, her beauty sans pareil, her intelligence of highest order, everything about her good and lovely. The only defect about her is her poverty. Anand is an equally charming, equally brilliant, but abundantly rich hero, who falls in love at first sight with our heroine. Then come the typical step-mother and the equally typically incapable father of Anupama. On Anand’s side are his mother, who is bent on flaunting her social status, and an arrogant sister. When Anand from high-society falls in love with Anupama, they get married without any trouble. While everything seems to be going in Anupama’s favor, she develops ‘leukoderma’, which results in her developing white patches on skin. As could be expected, she gets shunned by her in-laws, with her husband proving to be utterly uncaring. Returning to her maternal home, she gets ill-treated by her step-mother as could be expected. While on the verge of killing herself, she has her epiphany and decides to take charge of her life. Was she able to rebuild her life? Did she find the overcome the ‘stigma’ of skin deformity in a society obsessed with mere external beauty? The book answers these questions.

The tale is written in a simple, flowing, interesting manner. But nothing about the book feels original. The events all remind you of those sad Indian movies of 1950s and 60s. The end is, again, not much convincing or, as modern-day ‘feminists’ might say, ‘ground-breaking’. Also the claim that there is a similar novel with the same name, written by Marathi author Sumati Kshetramade, leaves a not-so-pleasant taste in the mouth.

This book is a nice read, but nothing much can be taken from this.

Mahashweta – mixed emotions!

Book Review – Anthem, Ayn Rand

Birth and Death are both topics that have always fascinated the human mind. So are the desires for noble birth and dignified death, namely eugenics and euthanasia. Eugenics is a slightly perverted form of Evolution, the process by which Nature nurtures and culls, letting the ‘fittest survive’ and the weaklings perish. We humans have always wanted healthy children of excellent pedigree, no matter how often we are taught that we humans are and will remain imperfect and in such imperfection lies our beauty. This inability to understand made even great minds like Plato talk in glowing terms about eugenics. This inability to understand made lesser minds like Hitler and Churchill treat their fellow humans with cruelty and contempt. But luckily, this book from Ayn is not the product of such misunderstanding.

‘Anthem’ is a novella by Ayn Rand, so brief a book that you can finish reading it in a single sitting. In this dystopian work set in future, a man named Equality 7-2521, born in one of the breeding halls, instead of as a normal child to normal parents, is assigned the vocation of a street sweeper. But his heart wills otherwise, pushing him to become a scholar, seeking all that there is to learn and explore. But in the world where humans have all lost their individualities and treated as one single mass organism, his desire matters nothing to the Council, the all-powerful governing body that determines the fate of each and every human born.

Soon, our protagonist discovers two things that change his perceptions and push him on a different path – Love and an equally ‘enlightening’ discovery. But will the Council, which allows interaction between genders only as a controlled exercise for the sole purpose of breeding more humans, permit his heart’s desire to marry his ‘Golden One’? Will the World Council of Scholars accept him as one of their own when they become aware of his unapproved quests of knowledge? Will humanity ever regain its individuality, instead of behaving like one amorphous mass? Read the book and find for yourself.

This is the first work of Ayn that I am reading and I am impressed. Written in simple language and flowing style, the book is a pleasant read. In an age where people are increasingly being misled by opportunistic politicians, media magnates and corporate houses, to unquestionably believe in everything they are told, to accept lies as truths and fanaticism as normalcy, this book is a gentle nudge to any thinker worth his salt to start using the mind more and take pride in one’s individuality.

Anthem – an ever-relevant clarion call!