Apu’s World

For the last year or so now, I have been avidly pursuing murder mysteries by an Indian author or with an Indian connection - some have turned out very good (The Englishman’s Cameo, A Nice, Quiet Holiday) and some tolerable (Piggies on the Railway, The Case of the Missing Servant).

The latest in this genre to fall in my way is The Monochrome Madonna by Kalpana Swaminathan (of Kalpish Ratna fame). I approached the book very positively, having read much praise of their work, but I have to confess, The Monochrome Madonna left me feeling let down.

First, a quick outline. The Monochrome Madonna is a ‘Lalli mystery’, Lalli being an ageing detective who has retired from the Bombay police. For much of the novel, however, she is away and it is her niece Sita (Sita, not Seeta, she reminds you, though I still can’t tell the difference) who is stuck with the corpse and the sleuthing. Sita is all at ends and the involvement of Ramona, a friend’s suicidal teenaged daughter doesn’t help. The couple in whose flat the corpse is found, are an odd pair, and for much of the novel, it is not clear what any of the characters are thinking. It is only upon Lalli’s return that things start falling into place - slowly.

Part of the reason the book didn’t appeal to me much is the somewhat florid language. Especially in the first half of the book, everything is simile, and rather outlandish ones at that.

Festive in a hot pink and purple chaniya-choli, she looked like a designer candle, solid, waxy, sequined. Besides I didn’t like her voice. It rang like a coin at the end of every sentence, metallic, definite, with an exact sense of its value.

The scalp had unfurled like a scarlet hibiscus, trailing sticky pistils of bloof all over his matted hair.

There was a light bulb up there. It made the maw of that low space smoulder like a sulking volcano.

All this within 10 pages, by which time, I was wishing that the book had a ruthless editor who would’ve chopped off the verbiage. This is part of the reason why at 250 pages, the book feels too long.

The other (and perhaps larger) issue with the book is that the plot itself is too slow for a mystery. For long stretches, nothing much happens. Even when Lalli returns and things start ‘happening’, we are not given much insight into the motivations of any of the characters. There are interesting digressions and Sita is the one character that comes out strongly etched, but it isn’t enough to make up for the somewhat vaguely written and numerous other characters.

At the end of a mystery novel, I like to be able to plot together a logical outline and trace how the author has led up to a certain ending. It is no fun to feel that character A could as well have been the murderer as B, and the only thing preventing that was the author’s whim. I guess what I’m saying is that the reader needs to be able to work with the detective and at the end feel that the culprit had the best possible motive/opportunity.

With The Monochrone Madonna, this doesn’t happen - the end feels quite arbitrary, which to me, is the worst sort of thing one could say about a murder mystery.

Publisher: Penguin Books India

Price: Rs. 250

apu The Literary life

Being a voracious sort of reader, and having been one ever since I was 8 or so, it’s difficult for me to talk about a single female character that I really like.

But - we have a contest up at Women’s Web, the My Favourite Female Contest, where we’re asking readers to talk about their favourite fictional female character and - win prizes for it! So, that got me thinking about my own favourites (no - this post is not eligible for the contest, just a chance for me to talk on the subject :))

I’ve liked so many of the girls and women in all the books I’ve read over the years - Heidi (of the eponymous novel), Jo of Little Women, many of the Jane Austen heroines and from more modern writing - Offred of The Handmaid’s Tale, Kinsey Millhone from the Sue Grafton alphabetical mystery series, Mma Ramotswe from The No. 1 Ladies detective agency series, Kathy H from Never let me go, Briony Tallis from Atonement…and many, many more.

Among all these women though, I guess I’d have to choose Offred from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, if I had to choose just one. I read this novel when I was about 15, and it was my first introduction to dystopian fiction. The warped world it presents is the very anti-thesis of feminism; here, women are subjugated and their role tied up with their ‘duty’ to procreate. Yet, the novel is feminist since this world is clearly dystopia.

Offred is not heroic. Chosen to be a ‘handmaid’, i.e. one who’s sole duty is to bear a child for a childless couple, she naturally has no liking for the new republic. But she is not an active member of the Resistance and mostly, focused on her own life rather than directly with the politics around her. At the same time, she manages to display resistance to the new ideology with the few tools available to her, such as using butter to moisturise her skin (women are not allowed cosmetics) or playing scrabble (women are not allowed intellectual pursuits), and later, having a potentially ruinous affair with the handyman.

Perhaps one of the reasons I liked Offred so much is that she is not a symbol. She is a person with all the ambiguities, doubts and many dimensions that it involves. For those of you who haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, do give it a try - it is among my favourite novels.

And - if you haven’t yet seen the My Favourite Female contest, go have a look! And participate - we’re giving away Flipkart vouchers, and who doesn’t want those!

apu The Literary life, Women & Feminism

Obesity and the health issues that accompany it have long been a subject of intense discussion in the Western world, where the abundance of super-cheap and highly processed foods has been linked to many health disorders. David Kessler’s, The End of Overeating is an important addition to the books written on the subject - why, we shall come to a little later.

Kessler has the background to take on this complex subject having served as commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration. He is also a man who has grappled with weight issues, giving him a more personal interest in the subject.

One of the biggest strengths of The End of Overeating (and the reason why I called it an important book) is that Kessler articulates convincingly a position on obesity that moves it away from the issue of individual control and choices (’if you’re fat, you have no willpower, and you really ought to control yourself’). He acknowledges that while for a large part of America, calorie intake is outpacing calorie absorption, it’s not as simple as ‘having the willpower to say no’. (Kessler also acknowledges that a small percentage of obese people are obese due to other medical reasons and that ‘hypereating’ is not restricted to obese people.)

Kessler advances his position by taking a close look at the food and restaurant business, and how it gets consumers to eat larger portions, eat more often, eat at any place, eat at more locations, eat more indulging foods and eat mind-blowing combinations of fat-sugar-salt that make us want to - well, eat some more. He also goes to some length to explain how overeating can become a habit, by conditioning and by altering the stimulus-reward circuits in the brain. By indulging in high calorie foods, which offer a temporary but pleasurable sensation, we are primed to remember those sensations the next time we come across the same stimulus.

If all this sounds esoteric, think of a food experience that you particularly crave - perhaps a burger at a particular fast-food joint, perhaps a particular brand of chocolate and think about how hard it is to turn away from the treat it promises. That is what Kessler is talking about, and this book helps us to understand why we don’t just ’say no’. The first 3 sections, ‘Sugar, Fat, Salt’, ‘The Food Industry’ and ‘Conditioned Hypereating Emerges’ are all about dissecting the problem, and are the strongest parts of the book.

One quibble is that Kessler sometimes stops short of covering an individual’s story in sufficient detail, preferring to move on to the next of numerous chapters. For instance, in one chapter, he interviews Jerilyn Brusseau, the creator of Cinnabon, a cinnamon roll bakery that started off as a small store offering a ‘treat’, but is now part of the pandemic of chain stores rushing to pad your waist (and line your heart).

He goes on to end the chapter with, ‘Balance was something Brusseau once lacked in her own life. In her twenties, thirties and forties, she battled bulimia and anorexia. A chef and restaurant operator who lived her days surrounded by tempting indulgences, there had been a time when Brusseau lost all sense of when she was hungry and when she was full.’ Now, what is one to make of an ending like that? A gourmet bakery owner’s complicated relationship with food - yes, interesting, but why tell us about it if you are only going to throw in stray tidbits? Kessler does this when talking about people, but when he gets to the science, he is painstaking.

One suspects that Kessler would have done well to stop with this thorough analysis of the problem rather than extend the book to offering solutions as well. The next 3 sections, ‘The Theory of Treatment’, ‘Food Rehab’ and ‘The End of Overeating’ are somewhat disappointing in their generality when compared with the rigorousness of the first half. While there are a few useful suggestions, they don’t go beyond what commonsense suggests, nor are they buttressed with any studies or other information on their efficacy. They veer dangerously close to the ‘you can stop eating if only you try’ approach that Kessler disses in the first half.

Some of the suggestions don’t take the social context into account adequately; what of the fact that healthy eating in Western societies (especially the US) takes more money than eating junk food? What of the loss of cooking skills in many families and young people? Kessler doesn’t address these issues when he advocates healthier eating.

Nor is there a special focus on women and food, which is surprising, given the greater social expectations from women to maintain a desirable weight, and the pressure it creates amidst the constant food cues in the environment.

Despite these drawbacks, The End of Overeating is an interesting read for anyone who has struggled with weight or with the expectations of desirability in an increasingly appearance-conscious world. Those of us living in India can already see the wholesale import of Western brands and lifestyles into what was a slower and more wholesome way of eating. For us, it may be the Beginning of Overeating, but that is no reason we shouldn’t be better prepared.

Publisher: Penguin Books/Penguin India

Price: Rs. 399

apu The Literary life

For a long time, it seemed to me as if all Indian writers in English wrote “serious” things - complicated stories, language that needed some getting through, “big” themes, weighty tomes. And then came Chetan Bhagat and the many followers in his footsteps, who unleashed upon us a spate of poorly-written novels, mostly to do with engineering institutes and adolescent angst. It seemed as if one could either have 5-star hotel caviar or roadside vada pav; if you weren’t in the mood for the first and couldn’t stomach the second, poor you!

Luckily, times are changing. In the last couple of years, Indian writers in English are attempting every possible genre, including murder mysteries and graphic novels. There is a growing market for well-written, yet easy-to-read fiction, which is probably why Penguin has brought out a new series, Metro Reads, dubbing them “fun, feisty, fast reads.”

One of this series, Paritosh Uttam’s Dreams in Prussian Blue, would probably not qualify for the ‘fun’ bit, given its somewhat serious story, but it fulfils the rest of the criteria. Dreams in Prussian Blue is the unconventional love story of art college dropouts, Naina and Michael. The novel sticks to a small group of characters and does that well - while Michael is the anti-hero, Uttam takes the reader to the darkness behind seemingly ‘nice’ and bland characters as well.

The bonus is that while the story is novel and the characters real, the language is simple enough for the average reader. A live-in relationship, a selfish artist, a naive young woman who realizes that love and fresh air may not be enough, the Indian art world, nosy neighbours and traditional parents who can no longer hold on to their children -  the plot moves forward quickly, and kept me engrossed wanting to know what happens (and plenty does!) The dialogue works too, with the lingo of the 20-something crowd captured well.

It so happened that the last few weeks, I’ve been snowed under work and reluctant to take on anything too complicated. Dreams in Prussian Blue fits perfectly into that sort of mood - when all you want is a good story.

Publisher: Penguin India

Price: Rs. 150

apu The Literary life

A week or so ago, through a Facebook group, Amazing Passages from Favourite Books (totally worth checking out, btw), I revisited Tonight I can write the saddest lines, one of Chilean writer Pablo Neruda’s best known poems.

In the Youtube video above, it is being read beautifully by actor Andy Garcia. (Isn’t it amazing how sometimes, less is more when it comes to a performance?)

From the poem, these lines stayed with me, Love is so short, Forgetting is so long. Indeed, in that one line, it can be said that Neruda has summed up all of human existence, or at least a big part of it.

Love is short. Many things break it up, and I’m not just talking of romantic love. Blood relationships break less easily, but even there, there is plenty of scope for complexity. While we like to eulogise the unconditional love between parent and child, even there, there is and can be jealousy, anger, sometimes even apathy. (We need to talk about Kevin is a book that looks at one very dark parent-child relationship - it’s a book that sent shivers down my spine when I read it).

So yes, love is short - people change, things change and worst of all, death happens. Inspite of this, we invest of ourselves in many relationships. Sometimes, I feel as though our love and passion for certain people makes us impervious to the fact that there is no such thing as forever.

Logically speaking, we know that heartache will find us, sooner or later, but we prefer not to think about it. Is this bravery or foolishness, I am unable to say. All I can say is that forgetting is so hard.

apu In General, The Literary life