Way through drama of life

Spectrum
The Tribune
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120610/spectrum/book3.htm
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Review by Ravia Gupta


Two Pronouns and a Verb
By Kiran Khalap
Amaryllis. Pages 220. Rs 295
All love is not equal and has many definitions, but one must take the responsibility of their definition of love, they both knew this, but neither of them had the wherewithal to break the deadlock. They walked along, guided by their compass of memories, racial, familial and individual.
This is the tale of Arjun, Dhruv and Eva who dig the past with some urgency to uncover warm laughter. They chance upon an occasional splinter of a heartbreak and their hurriedness was in stark contrast to their current life streams. They were all trapped in a ‘deadly’ triangle of love and anger.

Inspired by the Mahabharata, wherein all the characters were complex human beings, but Arjun was more so, as he was never certain of his superiority of skill and believed Karna was better. He was never certain of Draupadi’s love despite the fact that she told him that he was the most handsome. He was never certain that he must lead in the war. Besides, he was never even certain that Lord Krishna believed in him and he was the chosen one. Two Pronouns and a Verb too is a story romantically perfumed between two childhood friends —Arjun, the doubter and Dhruv, the believer — who were connected to Eva and she was torn between the two but needed their love to survive.

Different people react to the same things differently. Dhruv, on one hand, wished to bend the universe to his beliefs, while Arjun on the other hand wished to interrogate himself till the universe was revealed within himself. Dhruv, who wanted to fight the powerful exploiting the powerless, discovered that he too was guilty of that same sin and with time understood that all villains were not human beings, some villains were grindstones of circumstances. He acted as a verb and lived\ up to his fame as an unshakeable namesake to the mythological character. Arjun wrestled his way to find clarity that embedded within every image was a foreboding of a visitation of mischief and a warning that married life was not an unshakeable bond but a malleable, pliant work-in-progress and Eva a "child of air and space", was angry with herself in the whole affair to use "I love you" for more than one person.

The author is not only bold enough to have taken a chance with the title which is strangely different, but also ensured that his characters, who play a drama of life, "fight it out’ to answer the most difficult existential question "Who am I?" While Dhruv was made to struggle with his anger, Arjun was made to struggle with his self-doubt and free-spirited Eva was made to work towards attaining faith.

Khalap finally is able to explain through this hard-hitting novel that one can’t change the system with muscles and anger. One can’t change it with money and love. One can only change it by ‘tricking’ them at their own game. He agrees that there may be struggle on its path towards truth, which is through experience and not through ideas.







   

Backward journey

Focus, Sam
By Rohit Gore.
Rupa.
Pages 248. Rs 195.

Reviewed by Ravia Gupta (The Tribune)

ACCIDENTS are part of life. While some accidents are serious in nature, there are some that bring a smile on your face each time you remember them. We all do have accidents in life, but there is something unique in case of Sam as he meets with an accident every year. There is something strange about his 28th accident, as he considers it to be the worst ever accident. This time something evil tells him how he will feel on his 29th accident.

Focus, Sam is a journey of Sam or Sameer Sathe to save himself from the next accident, of which a mystic had warned him that it would be his last accident. The only way he can save himself is by reconnecting with all the girls in his life. Now the biggest question buzzing in his head is, whether the seven women on his list will consider saving his life? Do they still feel that it is worth the effort to save his life despite the hurt and broken promises?

Desperate to save his life, Sam decides to go back in time to repair the damage caused. In his attempt to understand their lives and himself better, he finds out that he did fall in love with each one of them, may be not for a long, but there was something special for each one of them in his heart. To his disappointment, he also finds that most of them were not really in love with him.

This reverse journey becomes quite a learning experience for Sam who now understands the real meaning of life to the fullest and his responsibilities towards life become clear to him. Rohit Gore in his debut novel has sketched some of the characters so well that they almost seem real people with real problems. And you can be sure to learn something new from Sam’s backward journey to step ahead in life.

Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110717/spectrum/book4.htm

Breaking free from virtues

Reviewed by Ravia Gupta...published in The Tribune  

Vivek and I
By Mayur Patel. Penguin. Pages 384. Rs 299.

"Love pains. Love kills. Love heals.
For some it’s an addiction and for many it’s rubbish. Who are we to decide, it’s for those who fall in love each time to brave the ache next time."

BEING ambitious may not be the purpose of everyone’s life, but adding a "meaning to their lives" is certainly everyone’s aim. This is a story of a man whose aims in life were limited. Having a large bank balance and owning luxurious things had never been his idea of a successful life. Family, friends and love mattered to him the most.

Kaushik, while watching himself in a mirror, was proud to be a handsome man. Fair, tall, slim, sharp features, he almost had everything needed to be a "Lady Killer". But like they say the world would have been a perfect place if we all were happy with what we had. Kaushik, too, was not very happy to be a "lady killer" and was in search of a different meaning to his life.

The past is a history and history repeats itself are often confusing to understand. Brokenhearted Kaushik when arrives in a small, sleepy town of Valai, leaving his past behind, he had no idea that he would ever fall in love again. But life gives him another chance and the rush of love that he feels the second time is, however, not without its dilemmas. Kaushik finds himself in a fix between the "right" and the "wrong" in society. He is just not sure if his "love" would be "man enough" to face the truth.

Girls had always been crazy about Kaushik, but he was never interested in them. Oblivious to the devastation, he was interested in men and the latest one he was crazy about was Vivek, a 16-year-old boy, from the school where he was a teacher.

Vivek, an arts student, was not a topper, but he was above average. He was good at maths and so-so in English, the subject which Kaushik used to teach. Kaushik firmly believed that love had nothing to do with age. This notion perhaps unshackled him from the guilt of falling in love with his student. He believed that love for Vivek stabilised his unsteady boat of life. His life had found its meaning. The faint hope of getting Vivek’s love had brought new zest to his life.

Life taught Kaushik a lot after his separation from Krishna. Though he was not ready to face the suffering again, he was helpless and was on the same track of love and hope with Vivek once again.

Despite being on the "wrong path" as his so-called modern family considered homosexuality to be a sin, Kaushik just didn’t want to mend his ways. Falling in love with Vivek was one such error which he didn’t want to correct. Kaushik was neck deep in love with Vivek and was ready for whatever destiny the Master above had in store for him.

Vivek and I is a powerful novel about sexuality, falling in love, and then learning to let go. With more authors choosing homosexual themes for their work, a same-sex story no longer remains a taboo for Indian writers. Mayur Patel’s Vivek and I is yet another novel trying to break-free from all the "sanity".

Change and consequences

IT's for sure that you may not have heard or even read about such a makeover ever before. Extreme American Makeover is a story of a 16-year-old short, spunky and just a regular girl, Sameera, also known as ‘Sparrow’ among her friends.

It’s a journey of a Pakistan-born teenager from being Sameera Righton to Sammy Righton, the adopted daughter of America’s Republican presidential candidate, James Righton.

The story is a beautiful narration of how the life of this teenage girl changes once she gets to the centrestage of the exhausting presidential election campaign. She gets a makeover done and suddenly finds herself getting everything except privacy. She has quite a few very good friends, but soon she starts meeting new people and realises that she needs to expand her circle and welcome new people in her life.

As the election day heats up, Sameera believes that her dad will be the best President America can ever get simply because he is loyal and smart to the core. With this belief, she joins her social activist mother Elizabeth Campbell to campaign for her father.

And now, it’s time for that "Extreme American Makeover"; time to open that make-up case and extra suitcase as campaign enthusiast Tara Colby steps in. Soon Sameera understands that campaigning is like coxing. The more it is done, the more confident one becomes. And now, when reporters surround her parents and hustle them out of the loud, dimly ballroom, Sameera’s self-appointed teen girl flanks her and before she understands what is happening, she is at the centre of a singing pulsating solidarity of ‘dancing daughters’.

With nationwide grassroots promotion and the help that she gets from her circle of 29 friends to hone her posts, the word spreads about Righton’s daughter’s real blog, sparrowblog.com, which starts getting several hits and comments galore mostly from the young people.

In an attempt to connect to her readers, Sparrow explains them about her new ‘avatar’. She explains them how worried the members of her father’s campaign team were about her not being an ‘American’ enough.

They were worried that her Pakistan origin may damage her dad’s campaign and that’s how Sammy Righton is born. But she thanks her readers and says that they proved the campaign team wrong and accepted the real her. She apologises for letting someone else steal her voice, and the Americans do forgive her.

The site though receives only a few insulting or unrelated comments and critics were quickly torn apart by other commentators leaping to Sameera’s defense. The New York Times even describes the site as "The ultimate teen town hall", "moderated by a young woman who seems wise beyond her years".

All in all the story has a simple and funny narration, written from a teenager’s point of view who believes in possibilities.

It’s never too late for love

"When life offers a dream beyond expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end."

BUSY years in service keep unhappiness at bay. With every upward step in service, there comes a rise in power and perks—power to order people, to be waited upon, to be listened to—but after this golden phase comes retirement and this time, it’s author Mohinder Singh’s turn.

The 75-year-old retired bureaucrat now has to come to terms with the loss of power and position. Time has come for him, too, to sit in a corner and analyse how life has gone so far. Beginnings, ends, and mid-points of decades now have become even more significant as times to sum-up, in case time runs out soon for him?

The Twilight Years, as the name suggests, is the story of a retired IAS officer who has enjoyed all the good things in life, and now fears retirement.

Spared of a life-threatening illness, financial disaster and other major calamities, Mohinder’s life is an aggregate of good luck as well as bad luck—satisfactory 35 years of government service, rapid promotions, no setbacks and comfortable living quarters in pleasing surroundings. An enviable garden, good health, a stable marriage—something that every couple has to save for, anticipating their old age. Both sons successfully launched into the world, understanding daughters-in-law and likeable grandchildren.

And post-retirement, he has this feeling of a failed life, 75-year-old and not accomplished one single act of consequence. His plans of opening a bookshop or doing consultancy work seem unpromising, so he decides to write autobiographical fiction. But what Mohinder wants at this time the most is the company of his wife, the one who stood by him for 50 years through the thick and no little thin.

Like, as they, say life is not fair most of the times, it comes as a rude shock to Mohinder when three days before his golden wedding anniversary, his 67-year-old wife, otherwise meticulous about her health, suffers a stroke in sleep and part her ways leaving him to his destiny.

Time, the greatest healer, seems to work less in this age and the ability to deal with the loss is perhaps no less significant than the loss itself. Journeys, as they say, are the midwives of thought. A few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane or train.

The unexpected death of his wife gives him no time to be prepared. Mohinder experiences numbness and refuses to cry. He grieves loneliness more than the death.

But with time, just like his younger son, Jogindar, for whom it was not easy to understand how it feels to be old and unwanted, had predicted at the time of his mother’s death: "Who knows, he may fall in love again. Acquire a mate. Give him a second chance to find lost love. He’s young at heart and fond of female company. Has money and property."

And Mohinder’s life takes another turn when he is expecting the least, as he falls in love with Gyan, a teacher at his wife’s school. Who says retirement is just an end, a closing, it can also be a new beginning for someone who finds new love at 77!

Dark history

WHEN the rain becomes just a beady fringe around the trees, the sun explodes in the sky, turning Missamari cantonment in Assam into a bright crayon drawing, and the children tumble out of homes to reclaim their front-yards, Reema sees her Ma looking at them, with a sad, half-finished smile. As if they have something that she has either lost or misplaced somewhere. She never sees her smile too much. Life for her is a puzzle halved into life and death, and she has never been able to decide which piece she wants.

Reema learns from her Ma to "smell grief before it struck". Just a day before, when the school sky littered with balloons and silver stars, she announces to Ma, "It will all go waste. It will rain tomorrow." Monsoon is officially over, but it rains and even though Reema knows it beforehand, she can not bear to see the limp festoons or the gauzy triangles and furling red, paper snakes dying prematurely in mud. She knows that they have to die, because everything dies, beautiful things and loved things. For her it is risky to love anything too much and it is too silly to take anything for granted. Even the officers’ mess, with its equanimity of luxury, good manners and fearless happiness, can’t lull her into contentment.

Reema is certain that Missamari’s air, pulsing with soft, mellow miracles, is not for her or for her Ma. She often wishes to tell people around that nothing is permanent and that happiness is something which they will always leave behind and go somewhere else.

Perfect Eight, an autobiographical fiction written by journalist Reema Moudgil, has a dark and depressing, contemporary history and romance that find its way here along with separation. It’s a tale of travel, discovery, twists and turns. The writer begins her journey from Lahore during Partition. She witnesses her mother’s life torn apart by hate and bears it like a burden.

The writer lives out her own destiny in the seclusion of a tea estate at Annaville that belonged to her aunt and her childhood love, Samir, who only understands passion.

Travelling from Lahore to Kanpur to an Assamese cantonment to Patiala to Ambrosa to Bangalore, through floods and fires and communal riots, Reema’s Ma repeated a lesson to her, which she had taught herself as a little girl: "It did not matter one way or the other, life never asked for one’s opinions. It did not recognise a woman’s desperate love for a house with sun-lit, flower-filled balconies. It would mercilessly go in a direction it had preconceived for itself." She sits this time in a train with acceptance and the few belongings she had brought from Missamari, and remembers another departure from happiness, many years ago, but this time she is relieved, as she thinks she is not travelling with "strangers".

A sense of displacement and its accompanying baggage is what goes around throughout. Nursing the scars of Partition is what Perfect Eight, two halves running into each other, is all about, an emotional insight into a woman’s life.

Life in a metro

THE title Neti, Neti has its roots in Hinduism, and in particular Jnana Yoga and Advaita Vedanta, which refers to a chant or mantra, meaning "not this, not this", or "neither this, nor that".

Neti, Neti is perhaps the most-fitting title to a story of a 25-year-old Sophie Das, who like many others, gives into the urban pressure and migrates from Shillong to Bangalore in search of work, freedom, fun, and much more.

She is in Bangalore for a year when the novel opens, working for a US-based company that outsources subtitling of DVDs (dialogue-transcribing, background sounds for the hearing-impaired) to India.

Life in Bangalore is faster-paced than Sophie’s life in Shillong was. Her boyfriend Swami, to whom she tries to introduce one of her favourite books, R. K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends, works in a call centre and keeps American time.

When people talk about hill towns, they imagine them as holiday destinations; they imagine them as places that offer a brief respite from reality and that’s why adorable. They imagine them as a collection of views and things to do. But, that was not the case with Sophie when she confides to herself about the things she missed most about Shillong. The Elephant Waterffalls or the green Umiam Lake were nothing to her compared to waking up early on a winter morning when in love with someone who hadn’t noticed.

Bangalore to her possessed a great zest for ‘ugliness’, too much seems to be going on at once here. She often felt that every one just wanted to obscure the view, bolt out the sky and erase the gaps. The city, according to her, not just proliferated but kept reproducing itself and thus, felt that no one could ever reach anywhere here.

Sophie has learnt to content herself with the minor things, including the smell of flowers coming from pushcarts late in the evening, the view of a palm tree from an open window, the corners of certain pubs and pleasure of seeing one’s things neatly arranged in a room. She also comes to term with why several people create islands of their homes and find it to be the life’s greatest pleasure simply because they need a place they can fashion in their own image as the city is not the place.

She now understands why everyone who lives in high-up, magical places must come down into the "real world" and mingle, but now she knows for sure how difficult it is to experience this, as there is something that is calling her back all the time.

Leaving all that was so wonderfully fixed in its place for her free-spirited friends from office, call centres, pubs, night streets, shopping malls, rock concerts, etc, and yet not feel affectionate to either of the two places was confusing her.

Neti, Neti is a journey of a grown-up girl, who wants to experience every thing in life, but life’s blind curves keep defining an outer limit of her world.