Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie - Book Review

We are all familiar with the sad, sad story of Kashmir. In fact, let’s shed a collective tear for this beautiful land, that hasn’t seen a semblance of peace in the past many years. Paradise, it has been, still is, but no longer a haven of peace. There is the rumble of armoured vehicles, bombs, mines and bullets shot from the most modern killing weapons as proof. Death haunts the valley. It takes the power of Salman Rushdie’s pen to script a story of the rape of this land and the disillusionment of its people in the face of unending terror.

Rushdie writes a masterpiece of literary skill and an epic-proportion chronicle of all that has gone wrong with the state in which the spectre of terrorism has arisen. His prose brings the struggle between the protectors and the oppressed with such felicity that one is, truth be told, left dazed and amazed.

But that is not the Kashmir Shalimar the clown was born into. It was the Kashmir where the Muslim Bhand Pather performers and the Hindu wazza were friends and gently ribbed each other in the halcyon days of yore. Shalimar, the clowning member of the Bhand Pathers performing group is in love with Boonyi Kaul, daughter of the village wazza, or, head chef, who can cook up delicious Kashmiri meals, minimum thirty-six finger-licking delicacies.

Tragically Shalimar and Boonyi marry, and thereby begin their trials.

Panchigam, or, village of birds - where Rushdie’s novel is set - is heaven personified before terrorist insurgency and the army turn it into a virtual hell. Bhand Pathers do their acts which include “magic real” acts and tight rope walking by the clown – Shalimar. It is the place where the local Hindu – Pandit Pyarelal Kaul makes excellent cuisines with 36 dishes minimum to feed his friends that include his friend Abdullah Noman, the village chief and Shalimar’s father. All’s well in the small Kashmiri village and its inhabitants.

Into the valley comes a Rajput General Kachchwaha, the tortoise, who as representative of the Indian army is there to protect the inhabitants against militants personified by the Gegroo brothers who, goaded by the extremists across the border, become terrorists.

The army isn’t the bunch of angels they are presumed to be in this once peaceful paradise. That we know. Headed by a ruthless man, who remains a bachelor all his life, it is ruthless when it comes to putting down rebellion. There is no softness or mercy in their training manuals, and once unleashed their passions are immitigable.

General Kachchwaha instead of protecting the villagers turns his men into an evil force and unleashes a reign of terror only matched by the Gegroo brothers’ evil deeds. Who is the protector, who is the purveyor of terror, the line is thin, the division is indistinct.

Rushdie begins with Ambassador Max Ophuls’ death and then weaves a pastoral memory of Kashmir and develops a plot thicker than Swiss cheese. Yes, it has all the hallmark of the Rushdie genius, be it in the description of the French Resistance whence the “Grey Rat” rules the internecine labyrinths, or, the tragic life of the clown whose love life is doomed from the beginning. Yes, revenge is sweet, seems to be the major theme of the novel and it’s played out beautifully in the revenge of Shalimar and that of the shamed inhabitants of Panchigam.

Particularly noteworthy are the passages where the step father and step daughter: one a hardened terrorist and the other an athletic American youngster, are involved in a cat and mouse chase and a telepathic battle of wits across America. Some of the “magic realism” such as the clown walking away into thin air from across the prison, and the situation inside the US prison are well handled. Obviously, as with his previous novels, a lot of research has gone into the writing of this book.

Moreover, the novel is not only about unrequited love but also about the friendship of the Noman and Kaul families that is disrupted by terror. Kashmir even “Kashmiriyat” will never be the same again. Reading the novel one questions the very banality of using terror to bring social justice or even to bring about political settlement. The whole exercise seems futile; the very foundation on which the use of terror is built seems shaky. Hope someone sees sense in this message that the novel sends out.

It’s a sad novel in the sense of utter hopelessness of its characters. While Shalimar is tragedy personified Boonyi, the Kashmiri beauty, is even more so by her exploitation by the prurient US ambassador. Rushdie usually bases his characters and story on true incidents. This reviewer wonders on which story he based Boonyi’s ill-fated affair with a powerful US ambassador. Midnight’s Children was based in part on the famous Nanavati murder case, which occurred in Bombay. Old-timers would recollect how it shook the placid exterior of Bombay society in the fifties.

This reviewer wishes to draw here some parallels between Kashmir and Kalimpong as portrayed in the novels of Rushdie and Kiran Desai. These are places that are going through the same genre of problems. On the one hand there are ill-informed young cadres of terrorists trained by their harsh masters and on the other the mighty arm of the law that is sent to control them or to wipe them out using the force of guns.

The people, such as you and me, caught in the middle of this tussle bears the brunt of this tug of war, as is ably described by Rushdie in this novel, and by Desai in The Inheritance of Loss. This is the stuff we have heard happening in banana republics of less developed countries. Is this where we are headed? Is this the reality behind the empty rhetoric our leaders have foisted on us in the name of democracy?

Would definitely recommend the novel if only to know the reality of Kashmir, the customs of its people, and its myriad problems. After all the truth of Kashmir concerns us all, however insulated we may be.

Review of "An Iron Harvest" by CP Surendran

Poet and columnist CP Surendran's debut novel "An Iron Harvest" is a living chronicle of how an industrially backward state took a leap into radical ideology of the industrial era (communism) to find itself slowly enmeshed in a seemingly unending class struggle.

Communism has been a by-product of the industrial age of systematic production, streamlined marketing and shrewed people management and its failure is in most parts because of the eclipsing of the industrial age by the information age. The information age is another deal. Here people work as if no clocks exists. But still, communism continues to thrive and prosper in an industrially backward state, Kerala, and has fanatical adherents there who believe that revolution is possible and that workers of the world can rule countries. CP Surendran's novel depicts such a group of people who is bent on carrying on with the idea of revolution.

Kerala is the first state in the world to elect a communist government by a democratic voting process in 1959. Almost half a century later, it is today (in 2007) ruled by a communist government though all over the world communist governments have failed. Communist Russia and China have embraced market realities and its communal ideologies have been washed away by capitalism. But Kerala still adheres to Marx and his teachings of dialectic materialism. The exploited labour force still believe that only a communist revolution can redeem  their plight, and have a stranglehold over industrial enterprises across the state.

It is in such a revolution that John, ersatz Che Guevera, protagonist of Surendran's novel fights for his ideology, and believes he can achieve with this associates. He along with his band of men are killing evil landlords, attacking police stations, terrorizing the ruling class to bring about a revolution (remember Crasto and Che Guevara took over Cuba with just eighty men, they had the backing of the people).

They call themselves "Red Earth" and this breakaway group of leftists is led by Varkeychayan, who is an erstwhile communist leader. John's comrades are a motley group who use sickles, matchets, and crude country-made rifles to achieve revolution. But in what sense? Could a revolution in one state of India transform into a mass movement to take over a country such as India which has world's second largest army to protect it? They achieve in some measure to spread terror among the landed classes and the ruling elite.

Ironically the epoch is the emergency days of Indira Gandhi and Kerala's home minister Marar has deputed commissioner Raman to hunt down the radical revolutionaries. Raman is a bachelor given to lascivious thoughts, masturbates copiously, presumably because sex is unavailable in conservative Kerala. But he is shown by the author as ruthless and powerful, despite his puny appearance.

Abey, an innocent student in John's college is picked up by the police for questioning.  He dies in the police lock up at Raman's behest as a result of the police's highhanded interrogation methods. His father Sebanstian makes it life's mission to get justice for his dead son. He is helped in this mission by Nambiar, the Inspector General of police - a theatre aficionado, therefore an artist - who is at loggerheads with the ambitious Raman.

Surendran is at ease with his narration of the beautiful Kerala conuntryside, and its customs. What this author liked best about the book is that to a great extend Surendran has succeeded in capturing the Malayalis' aspirations, behavior and "mentality" with his words. All through the book a Malayali's innate cynicism, humour and wit is amply depicted.

The author's prose has poetic inclination right from the start. Examples: "The sky paled in slivers over the paddy fields and rivers and, in between them, the railway tracks bared themselves in the first light like bones of distance. A necklace of white birds flew past in the East." Who but a poet can write such elevating prose?

Raman's life and actions provide comic relief throughout the novel. His deviationist look at women and sex is told hilariously, especially his encounter with his subordinate Vijayan's wife. "Mrs. Vijayan spoke very fast, as if she had only one breath to speak and a great deal to tell," a very apt description of some fast-talking Malayalis I have seen and met. Raman is ruthlessly caricatured throughtout the novel. His discription of the excesses of the emergency as seen through Sebastian's eyes brings home the terror of those dark days.

I would have loved it if John's relationship with his love Janaki was explored a little more in detail and intimacy. All in all, a well-crafted, intricately woven novel that looks not only at the radicalisation of  God's chosen state, but also provides a window through which to view Kerala and its people.

Surendran's novel is dark but with a purpose. He takes the reader on a new high with sharp observations and pointed irony. He tells the tale of a people caught in a time warp trying to exorcise the ghost of an ideology that has failed, and like obsessive love, compounds it by going even further in an unproductive attempt to revive the lost magic.

Review of "The Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss springs at you with the many-splendored colours of life in the North-Eastern part of India, Kalimpong to be exact. It is tragic, comic and a dark reminder of how insurgency, extremism is threatening to wreck this once-peaceful region of India. In fact, the threat of violence looms large throughout the novel, in the very words of characters that seem to have something lacking in them, just the feeling that their lives aren’t fulfilled.

Picturesque, but crumbling Chuo Oyu is the abode where young Sai is sent to after her parents’ death to live with her grandfather, the retired judge Bomanbhai Patel, who is living out the last phase of a life of a taciturn man who during his training in Civil Service in England didn’t speak to anyone for years and has painful memories of how he mistreated his wife to death, which he is trying to atone. He had sent his wife back home where his daughter was born. This daughter, a scientist, who never met her father lived all her life in hostels married Sai’s father, an orphan, who was also a scientist. The couple then go to work in Russia where Sai was born and both her parents die leaving her grandfather as the only caretaker and relation Sai has in the world.

Sai is being tutored by Gyan, in Chuo Oyu, who being a Ghurkha is sympathetic to the Ghurkha national Liberation Front (GNLF) which is violently demanding a separate homeland in this North-Eastern region. Gyan reports to his friends that the judge has two rifles in his house and one night they come and rob the house and humiliates him and his cook. The judge and the cook have a common bond that runs back to the days when the former was a district collector in a remote area where he went hunting for patridges and would write fake entries in his diary about the number of patridges he killed, whereas the truth was that he was a poor shot and killed none.

The situation in Kalimpong is shown to be getting worse as the militancy gains ground and the sisters Noni and Lola are coerced into harbouring terrorists in their house and they even come and poach on their property, building hutments over it. There are demonstrations where Khukri knives are brandished as the GNLF men demand a separate homeland. The irony of how they masquerade for what is according to them “a noble” cause, using insurgency and murder of innocents is brought out very well by the author.

Perhaps the most potent message that the novel conveys is of how a band of youth recruited by goons can threaten peace in a sleepy and peaceful haven and is only waking up to the new realities of life. These youth are inspired by re-runs of karate movies of Jackie Chan and the violent movies of Rambo. It’s a sad reflection of modern life. The novel’s principal comment, made lucidly clear, according to this writer, is how media can corrupt the youth and sow in them the ideals of violence and mayhem, manipulated by a few misguided individuals.

The cook’s son Biju is away in the US as an illegal immigrant, working in hotels run by shady Indian characters, being paid low, working all days of the month to chase his dream. But he finds that he hasn’t made any friends, and his relations are away in India. The idea of migration is well portrayed in these sections. Biju’s and Sai’s life become the leit motif of the novel with Sai being shielded from the childhood she hasn’t had neither in the convent nor in Chuo Oyu where she is a virtual prisoner and pines away for the love of the elusive Gyan, immersed in his poverty and ideals. There is a poignant section in the book when she goes in search of her absent lover and sees the depravity in which he lives.

Biju’s life is even more of that of a prisoner of his own conscience. Though he lives in New York he hasn’t the time to see the country, lives in poverty where he has to sleep in shifts, or on the floor of the hotel he works, and even has to serve beef which he detests. His friend the philandering Saeed Saeed is a colourful character from Zanzibar who is tormented by friends referred to him from his home country, as is Biju by his father the cook from India, who recommends to him stray wastrels who want to immigrate to the US from India. These “tribes” come to US for the first time and are desperate to make a living and like Biju is willing to undergo any torment to make ends meet. The novel truly depicts their sad lives.

The good father Booty who lives with Uncle Potty is found to be an illegal alien, though he has lived all his life in Kalimpong, trying to make it into the dairy capital of India. But he is thwarted by the ever present Amul brand of the original dairy capital of India – Anand. Father Booty is sent back to Switzerland for overstaying, and Kalimpong descends into mayhem with no food available, not even bread, and is overrun by terrorists and the military.

Much speculation has gone on in the media about the portrayal of Kalimpong, of how the denizen of the town hasn’t taken kindly to its portrayal by the author. But this writer feels that the novel has a valid point to make, of how an author can use artistic licence to make his/her point though it may be somewhat in the extreme. The author is primarily writing a work of fiction and not a factual account. It is a story of imaginary characters, though the settings may be real and the world he/she creates is unreal, and hints at his/her view of the truth.

She encapsulates the essence of Indian thought and thinking in this oeuvre of vivid colours of the literary spectrum. For example when the judge loses his dog and goes around asking if anyone has seen it, and the men whisper behind his back, “Sala, he is bothered about a dog, when people are dying here.” How typical.

A definite must read, even if only for Kiran Desai’s devastating wit, charming style, and the way she keeps the pace going. Desai is an author of the new breed who use multiple question marks “???” and multiple exclamation marks, “!!!” throughout the text. I think it jars and should have been avoided. The need is for subtlety and not overt exaggeration. What I also found jarring was the intimate description of the characters including some of the disconcertingly intimate habits of the judge and that of Gyan. Was the author following a stereotype here? Don’t now. However, given the Booker Award and all the salient points the novel makes, a not to be missed novel by a true artisan of the word.

Book Review - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner-Khaled Hosseini

In his debut novel, Khaled Hosseini takes us to Afghanistan. An Afghanistan untouched by the Taliban, where we weave through crowded streets, climb poplar trees, nibble on dried mulberries and walnuts and spend lazy holidays readings books with 12 year old Amir and his servant boy and best friend Hassan.

Amir is desperate to win a local kite-flying tournament to gain the approval of his silently critical father. Hassan loyally promises to help his friend, little knowing how this one day would change the course of their entire lives.

‘The Kite Runner’ is about friendship and brotherhood and fathers and sons. Of relationships that strain against the boundaries of trust.Of circumstances and personal devils. Of the mistakes we make and the mistakes that make us. Of redemption and guilt and the power of freedom and forgiveness. Of unconditional love and unsullied trust.

The simplest writing that you can come across, which reminds you how difficult it is to write in simple words, once again. A credible story that comes full circle across continents, from an unblemished Afghanistan to modern America and back to a war-torn Taliban ruled Afghanistan. A story that reminds you how one moment can change your entire life.

There are books that punch you violently and you are left reeling from the blow for a long, long time (The Fight Club-Chuck Palahniuk)
Books which impress you with exquisite language and minute detailing (Shantaram-Gregory David Roberts)
Classics that can be quoted by generation after generation (Gone with the wind-Margaret Mitchell)
A ‘bible’ like ‘The Godfather’ which is treasured a like family heirloom.

And sometimes comes a book which quietly seeps into your entire being and stays there forever. A book that is so simply written that it can only be felt. That book is ‘The Kite Runner’.

Mayuri!

Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist"

Recently I read what I thought was a highly over-rated book, Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist.” I didn’t realize what it would do to me as I waded through the monotonous dialogue and seemingly dreary tale of a shepherd boy who goes in search of his destiny and love.

I won’t reveal what he found out. But on the way he meets the Alchemist whose words of wisdom inspire him and egg him towards his goal.

Following are a few gleanings from the Alchemist’s repository of wisdom:

“When a man pursues his destiny, everything in the world conspires to make it possible.”

Maktub: “It is written” (Means your destiny is already written.)

“It is not what enters men’s mouth that is evil, it is what comes out of their mouth that is.”

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. You’ve got to find the treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense.”

“You will spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn’t pursue your destiny, and that now it is too late.”

“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love... the love that speaks the Language of the World.”

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

“To show you one of life’s simple lessons, when you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”

“If a person is living out his destiny he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

“When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you, and even men can turn themselves into the wind. As long as the wind helps, of course.”

“Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.”

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

“It is true. Life really is generous to those who pursue their destiny.”

BOOK REVIEW: The English Patient

‘If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn’t you?’

But this is one book you wouldn’t drop in a hurry, if ever. Ondaatje’s tale of love, life and wandering, is revealed through the memories of a burnt, faceless man who is believed to be English despite his tarred skin.

Set in post-war Italy, The English Patient focuses on four survivors coming to terms with the devastating effects of war, with each other, and with themselves – Hana, a nurse, whose love for the charred ‘Englishman’ in her care shifts to a more fulfilling kind with a brown-skinned Sikh sapper; Carravagio, a small-time thief and intelligence agent who ‘lost his nerve’ when his thumbs become a casualty of the war; Kirpal Singh (Kip), a Sikh fighting for his Imperial masters; and the blackened remnant of the English Patient, kept alive by his thoughts of Katharine, a love others call adulterous.

The book meanders through images of the monochrome desert, interspersed with memories of a love found and lost, of the futility of borders between people and nations, and of betrayals. ‘…cul-de-sacs within the sweep of history – how people betray each other for the sake of nations, how people fall in love…’ One gets caught in the plot as the true identity of the patient is revealed in a series of morphine-induced wanderings of his words,a tale of passion that led to a plane crash resulting in the loss of his beloved… and himself… ‘from this moment we will either find or lose our souls…’

Each character is finely drawn and we are offered more than a glimpse into their personalities through past events, their thoughts, and from each other. The patient thinks himself to be ‘at a cynical stage of life’ and mistrusts words because they ‘bend emotions like sticks in water’; he whose life was governed by words spoken and rumoured, by histories written and unwritten, by chartered maps, he who did not enjoy poetry until a woman recited it to him. This is in contrast with his present state as he hides behind his words and effectively withholds his identity till the end. As for Carravagio, we see a man who feels safest in silence, when revealing nothing; a man who always sank into love, and now drowning in darkness. Hana and Kip – youths not yet mortal, one who stopped looking at mirrors, and the other who does not need mirrors. And Katharine, whose absence is ever present in the patient’s mind, like the desert; a woman whose ‘terrible conscience’ and hatred of lies created walls in their love. The English Patient is a remarkable study of contrasts, of colour and attitudes towards life.

What is amazing is the lyrical quality and narrative impact that is heightened when one reads it aloud. The desert as a metaphor of life, quest, loss and promise is beautifully portrayed. Much can be learnt from this book, about the usage of words, how it sounds, and how that can be translated into a masterpiece that is visually breathtaking. The brushstrokes of a writer… or a poet you will wonder once you have read this book.

‘Words, they do have a power…’

Book Review: The Life of Pi

" ...this is a story that will make you believe in God."

Yann Martel's much acclaimed book "The Life of Pi", which won him the Man Booker prize in 2002, is the story of a small Indian boy trapped on board a lifeboat with a Royal Bengal Tiger, a Hyena, a zebra and an Orangutan.

But hold on. This is not another adventure story. This is not a 21st century rendering of Rudyard Kipling or George Orwell. It is a book in a genre of its own. A book where the fantasy of ideas meet the conviction of facts, where simplicity of narration meets the complexity of underlying philosophies and where the fast pace of the story meets the traditional slowness of the novel. Yann Martel's book is all about contrasts and contradictions, and how all that can be balanced in a book and also in life.

The first thing that will impress you about the book is its narration - or rather the absence of it. From the word go, Martel manages to pull the magic trick of making the whole book come alive in your mind’s eye. Some would say that Martel's narration is strong and vivid. I refuse to accept. A strong narration makes the reader notice the sentences, words and punctuations. In Life of Pi you notice nothing of that. Martel has metamorphosed images into words and put them inside the book. The moment you open the book, these words spring out as images and the whole story plays like a movie in front of you.

Then there is the breadth of issues that Martel touches upon - from the swimming pools of Paris to the religious pools of India and from the philosophy behind zoos to the philosophy of religions. Martel paints a clear picture in each case, with strokes that speak of a masterly hand and a picture that leaves everlasting impressions on the reader's mind. As you follow the first person account of Pi, from his childhood in a zoo in Pondicherry, to the voyage over the pacific and finally to Toronto, you begin to envy his life.

The description of a zoo leaves you wishing you were born in one. I quote from the book for evidence - "...To me, it was a paradise on earth. I have nothing but the fondest memories of growing up in a zoo. I lived the life of a prince...My alarm clock during childhood was a pride of lions...Breakfast was punctuated by the shrieks and cries of howler monkeys, hill mynahs and moluccan cockatoos...pink flamingoes or black swans or one-wattled cassowaries, or peach faced lovebirds, Nanday conures, orange-fronted parakeets..." You cannot resist a smile at Pi's simple, yet convincing argument in favor of zoos. If you ever subscribed to the "anti-zoo" school, you can no longer do that now. As you grow up with Pi and discover afresh the rationale behind Hinduism, the philosophy of love behind Christianity or the simple teaching of universal brotherhood behind Islam, your mind reaches new levels of understanding for the three religions.

The book reaches a climax with the dramatic entry of Richard Parker. From here this gripping tale becomes "unputdownable", and you find yourself turning page after page as Pi, Richard Parker and others face the odds of the Pacific Ocean. The excitement and tension in the pages rises like a wave and fills your mind.

“…Richard Parker, is that you? It’s so hard to see. Oh, that this rain would stop! …Jesus, Mary, Mohammed and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker! Don’t give up, please. Come to the life boat…” You read these words eagerly, thanking that the small boy is not alone on the boat. And then you turn the page to find out who Richard Parker is – and a chill runs down your spine.

When you finally put the book down, a strange happiness and optimism invades you. You are compelled to draw parallels from the life of Pi to your own life, and suddenly the realization dawns on you that through patience and devotion we can conquer even the most seemingly insurmountable odds. You realize that this is what Martel has been trying to tell you all through the book – to keep an open mind, have faith in god and be patient till your turn comes.

Yann Martel says in the beginning that this book was born because he was hungry. We wish Mr. Martel an eternal hunger of this type, so that he may continue to produce more such books in the future – and enrich our hearts and minds.

Book Review: The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

Some writers are spinners of tales, some paint large canvases in myriad hues and yet others put select ingredients to cook up a sumptuous meal. But Amitav Ghosh in his The Hungry Tide weaves realities together to create magic in moments. In could have been a story or a piece of history or biographies of a few people who share very different histories and realities, but it becomes none of these. It unfolds at a point where histories and myths, dreams and realities, the personal and the political come together. The Hungry tide becomes the exact place where it is situated, a "mohana" in the tide country, the Sunderbans.

The tide country itself is the central character here. It almost playfully brings together Piya, the Bengali American cytologist, Kanai the businessman translator and language expert, and Fokir the uneducated silent fisherman, in close proximity of each other. Around them are shadows of Kanai’s uncle Nirmal’s diary, Kanai’s aunt Nilima’s faith in making small changes in the lives of people around her and Fokir’s wife Moyna’s ambition to rise above her own.

Here is where histories are repeated. The story of Kanai-Piya-Fokir unmistakably mirrors that of Horen-Kusum-Nirmal. Memories and realities of cyclones merge with each other. The son of the man who was once saved in a terrible cyclone is hoped to survive another. The altar of Bon Bibi visited by the father and then his daughter is also visited by the grand son and his son. It is almost as if there is a wheel of things that keep churning themselves coming back to the same point with unmistaken certainty.

The incident of the evacuation of the ‘illegal’ settlers of Morichjhapi almost becomes the strongest icon standing for the spirit of the people of the tide country and their zeal and vigour to live, fighting constantly against the odds of nature and whims of kings. Its relevance is almost of mythical proportions, where it today stands, like a story heard so many times that one does not know whether it really happened or it is collective imagination. But somewhere its effect lingers on just like the point where even after Nirmal’s diary containing his impressions on the Morichjhapi incident disappears in the river, it retains itself in Kanai’s mind.

Nature and Science come so close to one another in similarities and contrasts. The river dolphins that Piya hunts out for her research becomes the messengers of Bon Bibi in tide country legend. The same dolphins change their patterns of movement at the onset of the storm becoming both scientific indicators as well as Bon Bibi’s warning. Fokir, the man who is tuned to the ways of the natural world, becomes the guide to a scientist’s quest. Kanai, the language expert comes to understand how words are like the wind that blows over the river as the river flows on underneath.

The intensity of the written word and the visual imagery that it creates is exhilarating. The words move like the river in jowar, the high tide, and bhata, the ebb, with the gentleness and calm of the tranquil waters and then picking up the speed and gusto of the cyclone. The beauty of this dangerous mistress of the river, the Sunderbans could not be better experienced.

Book Review: Lady Chatterly’s Lover According to Spike Milligan

A Case for Annotation

Ours is essentially a tragic age, therefore we refuse to live it tragically – thus begins, arguably the most notorious novel of the twentieth century. Notorious for the times it was written in, notorious because it used the forbidden ‘f word’ copiously in the text, notorious because it cocked a snook at English class distinctions – the eponymous lover was a gamekeeper on the Chatterley estate.

Notorious also because D H Lawrence’s novel enjoyed the iconic status of a forbidden ‘dirty book’ – it was, in fact, the dirty book to end all dirty books, spoken of in whispers, and only by its initials LCL. And naturally, proscribed and banned. Until, in 1960, the famous cause celebre Regina vs. Penguin Books finally drew aside the veil of mystery and it was available in its dubious unexpurgated glory on the bookstands.

Today one could be forgiven for wondering what the fuss was all about. Sex is no longer dirty, and it’s permanently, almost boringly out of the closet. What’s more, there is even an award given each year for bad sex writing – and in retrospect, one can’t help believing that DHL would have probably romped home with the mitten for LCL.

D H Lawrence wasn’t ever in my first ten where my reading list was concerned. And long before the word spoof entered the language I decided that he was one writer who, if he had to be read at all, had to be read in glorious, merciless spoof. Fortunately, there was at least one fertile, level-headed mind who had roughly the same idea: in fact, he went one better and wrote the thing himself.

Where the original brought (supposedly) the steam of sex out into the open, without the waft of deodorant, Spike Milligan’s little masterpiece* clears that unhealthy sauna with a blast of wholesomely rude laughter. Dip anywhere into its 164-page riot and you could be forgiven for unseemly mirth in solemn places – as a matter of fact, this book has no business in solemn places. That includes bedrooms. Particularly bedrooms, because you can’t possibly get down to serious stuff with your pink negligee-ed partner if you’ve just read, This woman Lady Chatterley had cost him that bitter privacy of a man who had been a perfectly happy onanist. Or,

‘In a way,’ he said, ‘I’d thought I’d done with it all. Now I’ve begun again.’
‘Begun what?’
‘Fucking,’ he said.
‘Fucking?’ she said with a queer thrill.
‘Fucking,’ he said. ‘There’s no keeping clear of it.’
‘It’s just love,’ she said.
‘No it isn’t, it’s fucking!’
‘You don’t hate me do you?’
‘Nay, nay, you’re a good fuck, it was a good fuck. How was it for you?’
‘Yes, for me too,’ she answered untruthfully because she had not been conscious of much, even at eight thrusts a second. That was true aristocracy.

Understandably, the temptation to reproduce the whole book is irresistible, and the only deterrent is the copyright business – but here’s another snatch:

With both hands Mellors pushed her breasts up from underneath, up to underneath her chin, with a cry of ‘Wheeee’, and let them fall down and bounce to a halt. ‘Wheeee’ he said and did it again.
‘Look,’ said Constance. ‘That’s enough of that, I’m not a bloody fairground.’

It is uniquely a phenomenon of the twilight years of the century past that the door was all but firmly shut on sexual hypocrisy, its place being grabbed by a rollicking, insouciant – and vastly healthier – irreverence. But Spike Milligan anticipated it even in his earlier, better known works.

The delectable mincing of Lady Chatterley was merely an inevitable step in his breezy, boisterous progress.