A Brief Book Review - 'The Kept Woman and Other Stories' by Kamala Das

The stories range from mesmerizing to mediocre. Each story is peppered with the inferiority complex of Kamala about her appearance and dark complexion. Most of them sound not like a short story but like an anecdote from her own life. Add to it the annoying depiction of male gender as selfish, lustful and insensitive. Except for some occasional flashes of brilliance, the book is overall a forgettable experience.

Story-teller Kamala is not as thrilling as the poet Kamala.

A comparison between the 'Civilised' ones and the Barbarians!

"Ah! this civilization, what does it all come to? For forty years and more I lived among savages, and studied them and their ways; and now for several years I have lived here in England, and have in my own stupid manner done my best to learn the ways of the children of light; and what have I found? A great gulf fixed? No, only a very little one, that a plain man's thought may spring across. I say that as the savage is, so is the white man, only the latter is more inventive, and possesses the faculty of combination; save and except also that the savage, as I have known him, is to a large extent free from the greed of money, which eats like a cancer into the heart of the white man. It is a depressing conclusion, but in all essentials the savage and the child of civilization are identical. I dare say that the highly civilized lady reading this will smile at an old fool of a hunter's simplicity when she thinks of her black bead-bedecked sister; and so will the superfine cultured idler scientifically eating a dinner at his club, the cost of which would keep a starving family for a week. And yet, my dear young lady, what are those pretty things round your own neck? -- they have a strong family resemblance, especially when you wear that very low dress, to the savage woman's beads. Your habit of turning round and round to the sound of horns and tom-toms, your fondness for pigments and powders, the way in which you love to subjugate yourself to the rich warrior who has captured you in marriage, and the quickness with which your taste in feathered head-dresses varies -- all these things suggest touches of kinship; and you remember that in the fundamental principles of your nature you are quite identical. As for you, sir, who also laugh, let some man come and strike you in the face whilst you are enjoying that marvellous-looking dish, and we shall soon see how much of the savage there is in you."

- an excerpt from the book 'Allan Quatermain' by Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider).

How the British forced the Chinese to open trade links with them in the early 18th Century!

An excerpt from the book 'What On Earth Happened?', by Christopher Lloyd:

Tea, silk and porcelain were highly sought-after commodities in Europe. But there was a problem. Chinese society was built on a philosophy of self-sufficiency. Since the mid-fifteenth century, China had been a civilization independent of overseas fleets and trade with far-flung vassal colonies. Food and luxury goods were all manufactured in the home market. The Chinese Emperor himself explained as much in a letter he wrote to King George III of England in 1793, in response to a British request for trade:

‘You, O King, live far away across the mighty seas… The difference between our customs and moral laws and your own is so profound that our customs and traditions could never grow in your soil… I have no use for your country’s goods. Hence there is no need to bring in the wares of foreign barbarians to exchange for our own products…’
Such self-satisfied sufficiency provoked the most extreme imperialistic reaction. If the Chinese didn’t want Western goods, then something had to be done to make them want them.

Officials in Britain’s Honourable East India Company came up with the rather less honourable solution of drug trafficking. An elaborate system was established whereby British traders would buy Chinese tea at Canton and issue credit notes to Chinese traders, who could then redeem them against opium struggled across the border by Bengalese agents from Calcutta. Between 1750 and 1860 thousands of tonnes of opium grown in the poppy fields of Bengal were smuggled into China in exchange for silk, tea and porcelain. The trade was a masterstroke of ingenuity. Rather than the British paying for goods in valuable silver, locally grown opium could be used as currency instead. And the problem of China’s self-sufficiency was solved by a freshly cultivated dependency on highly addictive drugs.

Book Review – The Great Indian Novel, Shashi Tharoor

Have you ever watched the video of a remixed Indian movie song, especially, those of Hindi movies? A song, which was immortalized by the mellifluous voice of the singers, brilliant music composition of some doyen of the music industry, acted to perfection by some of the greatest faces of Indian film industry and what these producers of such ‘remixes’ do is to pick up songs like those, and tarnish them by adding some lousy noises in the name of pop music, then ‘spice the video up’ with some B-grade actress who wears more skin than clothes and for whom the only major expression possible is to part the lips seductively and keep her face with an obscene, longing look!

‘The Great Indian Novel’ is one such a remix, er, book. Mr.Tharoor has picked up two of the greatest periods of the Indian history, that act as beacons of hope and guidance for the current crop of Indians – The Mahabharata and the Indian Independence Movement, shuffled the pages of these phases like one shuffles a pack of cards and once he is convinced that they have been shuffled enough, has laid them to print. He has picked up the lead personalities of the Indian Independence Movement and sent them on a journey across time, by casting them as the lead characters of the great epic – The Mahabharata. With some pages carrying the characters of the Indian Independence movement in the backdrop of the Hastinapur, while the others have characters of the Mahabharata playing the role of martyrs of Indian freedom struggle, Mr.Shashi Tharoor has displayed an enormous knack of shuffling that can put even a professional shuffler at a casino to shame.

The patriarch of the modern India, Mahatma Gandhi becomes the patriarch of the Hastinapuris, Bhishma, Subhas Chandra Bose becomes Pandu, Nehru becomes Dhritarashtra, Indira Gandhi becomes Priya Duryodhani, Jayaprakash Narain becomes Jayaprakash Drona, Morarji Desai becomes Yudhistra, Indian Army portrays Bhim, Journalism become Arjun, Diplomacy and Aristrocracy become Nakul and Sakadev and so on. Of course, the great Mohamed Ali Jinnah becomes Mohamed Ali Karna. With the greatest events of Indian Independence and post-Independence becoming the plots for these characters to prove their mettle, Mr.Tharoor has proved to be in his elements with some ribald writing and debauched humor.

Did I say debauched? Yes, indeed it is. When it comes to ribald writing and dull, dry and debauched humor, Mr.ST manages to remind me of another such book I got to read a long while back - ‘Catch-22’ by Joseph Heller. While Joseph Heller had shown some respect to the world war veterans by mocking only the fictional characters, Mr.ST has performed a sacrilegious ritual with this book, tarnishing and taunting every other big name known to Indians in the political arena. In fact, after going through just a bunch of pages, I couldn’t resist the temptation to throw away the book and throw up. Such a pathetic writing and shallow substance, with frequent and abundant instances of what I’d like to decently put as ‘between-neck-and-knees’ humor. Loins, groins and other such obscene references to the female anatomy are found in abundance in this book.

Throughout the book, Mr.Tharoor displays a holier-than-thou attitude with so much of preaching over current state of Indian politics and civil life. Also, the condescending arrogance that has become the primary trait of many of the eminent NRIs is equally evident in his style when it comes to talking about the Indian lifestyle. But, Mr.Tharoor, why do I sense a glaring division between – what one of my sweet friends recently put as – the writer ST and the politician ST? Is it the guilt of the failed politician ST that made you postulate some great ethics to be followed by the Indian politicians? Or, is it that the writer and politician are your split personalities, one being completely oblivious to the presence of the other within you? When you speak so highly about being against corruption, immorality, polyandry and polygamy, I couldn’t avoid but recalling some of the fiascoes involving you and your better-half with regard to corruption in sports, shooting mouth and landing in trouble and other such incidents.

Of course, the book is not all crap. It has a fluid writing style, some amazing creativity and some occasional highpoints too. He makes amends for reviling the leaders and characters throughout, by writing some ambivalent praises for them in the end – I mean the end of the characters in the book. But Indira Gandhi is one person who could receive no such ‘benevolence’. Throughout the book, she has been portrayed as evil-personified. Of course, having been cast as ‘Duryodhan’ (Priya Duryodhani, a play in the name of Indira Priyadharshini), she can expect no leniency, but is it justified? I am not sure. The book may please a few but disappoint many. There is something magnetic about the book and something charming about the way how he has handled two distinctly different phases of the Indian history, fusing them as one. When it ends, you end up being confused as to which event took place when. That is the success of this book. But the irreverent attitude taken towards many of the greatest personalities of Indian history – both past and present – is sheer sacrilege and that, is the downfall of this book!

Ashok Krishna

Humor - A Real Bicyclist

A man decided that he was going to ride a 10-speed bike (bicycle) on a cross-country ride. He got as far as possible and after some distance the fatigue just became too much and he could go no farther.

He stuck his thumb out but after 3 hours, hadn't gotten a single person to stop. Finally a guy in a Ferrari pulled over and offered him a ride. Of course, the bike wouldn't fit in the car. The owner of the Ferrari found a piece of rope lying by the highway and tied it to his bumper. He tied the other end to the bike and told the man that if he got to going too fast, to honk the horn on his bike and that he would slow down.

Everything went fine for the first 30 miles. Suddenly, another Ferrari blew past them. Not to be outdone, the first Ferrari, pulling the bike, took off after the other. A short distance down the road, the Ferraris, both going well over 120 mph, blew through a speed trap. The police officer noted the speeds from his radar gun and radioed to the other officer that he had 2 Ferraris headed his way at over 120 mph.

He then relayed, "...and you're not going to believe this, but there's a guy on a 10-speed bike honking to pass!!!"

Elections - The Great Indian Tamasha (an excerpt from the book 'The Great Indian Novel', by Shashi Tharoor)

‘Elections, as you well know, Ganapathi, are a great Indian tamasha, conducted at irregular intervals and various levels amid much fanfare. It takes the felling of a sizeable forest to furnish enough paper for 320 million ballots, and every election has at least one story of returning officers battling through snow or jungle to ensure that the democratic wishes of remote constituents are duly recorded. No election coverage is complete, either, without at least one picture of a female voter whose enthusiasm for the suffrage is undimmed by the fact that she is old, blind, unlettered, toothless or purdah-clad, or any combination of the above. Ballot-boxes are stuffed, booths are ‘captured’, the occasional election worker/candidate/voter is assaulted/kidnapped/shot, but nothing stops the franchise. And for all its flaws, universal suffrage has worked in India, providing an invaluable instrument for the expression of the public will. India’s voters, scorned by cynics as illiterate and ignorant, have adapted superbly to the election system, unseating candidates and governments, drawing distinctions between local and national elections. Sure, at every election some distinguished voter claims his name is missing from the rolls, or that someone has already cast his vote (but usually not both). At every election some ingenious accountant produces a set of figures to show that only a tenth of what was actually spent was spent; somebody makes a speech urging that the legal limit for expenditure be raised, so that less ingenuity might be required to cook the books; and everyone goes home happy.’

- some lines that I loved from the book 'The Great Indian Novel', by Shashi Tharoor.

Some rankling questions - excerpt from the book 'The Great Indian Novel', by Shashi Tharoor

‘…even I could not understand, what makes a man strike with a cleaver at the head of someone he has never seen, a son and husband and father whose sole crime is that he worships a different God. What makes a man set fire to the homes and the animals and sometimes the babies of people by whose side he has lived for generations?

What makes a man tear open the modesty of a girl he has never noticed, spread her legs apart with a knife to her throat, and thrust his hatred and contempt and fear and desire into her in a spewing bloody mess of possession? What madness leads men to seek to deprive others of their lives for the cut of their beards or the cuts on their foreskins? Where it is written that only he who bears an Arabic name may live in peace on this part of the soil in India, or that raising one’s hand to God five times a day disqualifies one from tilling another part of the same soil?’

- The Great Indian Novel, by Shashi Tharoor.