Thanks to Asia Writes, I came across New Fairy Tales, an online magazine dedicated to publishing (what else!) new fairy tales. Their current issue carries some lovely stuff - especially the first two short stories, Bears, by Jessica Wilson and The Ice Candle, by A.K.Benedict, both of which I really enjoyed. Do read if you like stories a little out of the ordinary.
There are murder mysteries that are all about the murder; tightly knit, with a closed group of suspects and a detective moving the spotlight from one to the other - think Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. And then there are murder mysteries where the murder is just part of the tale; where it really becomes an excuse to look at a larger setting and in the process of solving the mystery, gives us something quite different. Aditya Sudarshan’s A Nice, Quiet Holiday was one such enjoyable work, and this week, I’ve had the pleasure of reading another such work by an Indian author : Madhulika Liddle’s The Englishman’s Cameo.
Set in the opulent, yet fading Mughal court of Emperor Shahjahan, Â The Englishman’s Cameo is part murder mystery and part historical novel, for its charms lie as much in its descriptions of life in the Mughal era. It’s protagonist is Muzaffar Jang, a somewhat atypical Omrah (nobleman) who prefers spending time with his books, pets and lowlife friends rather than indulging himself in wine, women and song, unlike other notables of the era. Thanks to one such disreputable friend, he finds himself involved in a murder mystery that soon turns out to be more complex than imagined.
Liddle excels in descriptions of Mughal era Dilli and its noble citizens - their wealth, decadence and hollowness are beautifully captured and the story itself set against the backdrop of an Empire whose best days are behind it. Against this backdrop, she also gives the characters some very natural dialogue that in English, nevertheless manages to create an image of the formal, beautiful Persian that must have been spoken in court. The Englishman’s Cameo is unlike a tightly knit murder mystery where one knows that the murderer will be chosen from an already introduced cast of characters. Here, instead, the plot keeps widening so that motives and murderers are quite unclear until the end.
I’ve never been a fan of tightly defining genres and elevating some books as literary while considering others mere genre fiction. The Englishman’s Cameo proves that a good genre fiction book can be as well-written and perhaps much more interesting than some books that claim literary merit.
Publisher: Hachette India
Price: Rs. 295
Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power…Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of another person….The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ is one novel I really enjoyed reading last year and at Racialicious is a video of Adichie’s fantastic talk on the harm that literature can do by giving us only ‘a single story.’ It’s so relevant in the context of the endless debates on what is ‘authentic’ Indian writing.
The talk is about 20 mins long, but every single word there earns its place and makes it totally worth your time.
The dictionary definition of a note is ‘a brief record, especially one written down to aid the memory’, ‘a brief informal letter’ or ‘a comment or explanation’. Going by that definition, Notes is an extremely humble, modest, deprecating sort of name for an effort like Atul Gawande’s ‘Better; A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance’. For, this book is no brief record, informal letter, comment or explanation. Rather, it is a highly accomplished work on improving performance in the medical field, the result of much thought, introspection, research, and really what makes it shine through, the result of much heart.
Dr. Gawande is the sort of superstar surgeon who makes lesser mortals feel ridiculous when they complain of the lack of time. A working surgeon and medical professor in the United States, he nevertheless makes the time to write long and incisive works on the medical field, for the New Yorker. Having read and enjoyed many of those, I pounced on Better when I chanced upon it at the Bengaluru Book Festival, and have read it since, in two quick sittings.
In the introduction, Gawande says,
Betterment is a perpetual labor. The world is chaotic, disorganized, and vexing, and medicine is nowhere spared that reality. To complicate matters, we in medicine are only humans ourselves. We are distractible, weak and given to our own concerns. Yet still, to live as a doctor is to live so that one’s life is bound up in others’ and in science and in the messy, complicated connection between the two. It is to live a life of responsibility. The question, then, is not whether one accepts the responsibility. Just by doing this work, one has. The question is, having accepted the responsibility, how one does such work well. (italics mine).
This is the central thought that informs the book, and makes it so enjoyable for the lay reader. For, Dr. Gawande does not focus purely on what many of us may think of as medical marvels - the new discoveries, the excitements in genetic studies, the availability of radical new theories. There is little of these. Instead, he gets down to the basics, which may be applied to hospitals in the US with their cornucopia of equipment, funding and specialized teams as well as to healthcare initiatives in the poorest parts of the world, often managed by a single doctor or surgeon working with a makeshift team. What Dr. Gawande does is to examine improved performance and success in surgery in the context of three essential elements - diligence, medical ethics and ingenuity.
He then takes of each of these elements and with the help of examples from live projects and cases around the world, illustrates how sometimes, simple solutions such as medical professionals washing their hands can make a big difference to infection rates, and at other times, how there are no easy answers at all. In the chapter The Mop-Up, on the drive to eradicate polio in India, he says,
People underestimate the importance of diligence as a virtue. No doubt this has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems… Understood, however, as the prerequisite of great accomplishment, diligence stands as one of the most difficult challenges facing any group of people who take on tasks of risk and consequence.
Part of what makes Better such a good read is that, at every step, he shows us how doctors and surgeons are only human. Even in a developed country like the US, they must not only focus on their individual effort, but constantly keep in mind other things such as hospital logistics and issues with insurance providers. Above all, being human, there is always the possibility that, even if rarely, they will make mistakes. And since their work is to do with people’s lives, doctors’ mistakes are costlier than any other mistakes. Dr. Gawande addresses this issue with much honesty and clarity in the chapter What Doctors Owe.
Overall, it is this sense of I don’t have all the answers, but I’m working to find them that makes Better such a heartening read. In a general climate of cynicism, where medicine is no longer seen as such a saintly and esteemed profession, Better offers lay readers the hope that around the world, there are indeed good people working to make things better. For doctors and surgeons who may feel disheartened by the magnitude of the challenges they face, it offers no easy answers but provides reinforcement that being a positive deviant is a worthwhile thing.
Publisher: Penguin Books
Price: Rs. 250
The Bangalore Book Festival is around at the Palace Grounds, just as it was last November, and the hubby and I went around to it on Saturday, despite the wind and rain that makes you want to just huddle in bed. Seriously, I cannot remember Bangalore winters being this rainy even 10 years ago. Global warming, I suppose. Still, the book fair is an unmissable at least as far as I’m concerned. And was it totally worth it!
This year’s haul consisted of:
‘Lives in the Wilderness‘ - a collection of 3 autobiographies, that of Jim Corbett, Salim Ali and Verrier Elwin; the last of the trio, I am not familiar with, but I’ve been in the mood for some good autobiographies, so this promises well.
A Jim Corbett Omnibus -Â The Man-Eaters of Kumaon, The Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of Kumaon and The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag. I read these when I was about 10 or 12, during a long, aimless vacation spent in Dehradun, constantly looking over my shoulder and expecting to see tiger or at least, a leopard. I imagine these will all be fun to revisit.
Bill Bryson’s ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ - I’ve read this one before, and while it’s not my favourite Bill Bryson book (that would be Notes from a Small Island), its still pretty worth keeping.
Atul Gawande’s ‘Better: A surgeon’s notes on performance‘; I’ve much enjoyed Gawande’s writing in the New Yorker, usually incisive work on the American Healthcare system, so - thought this should be interesting.
‘All is Burning’, a collection of short stories by Sri Lankan writer, Jean Arasanayagam. I’ve just finished reading ‘Sri Lanka, Voices from a war zone’ by Nirupama Subramanian, a political correspondent with The Hindu, so that’s prompted me to read a Sri Lankan writer; I actually haven’t read a single one before, I think. Besides, I had to have some short stories!
‘The Pregnant King’, by Devdutt Patnaik - first read about this book at the Jabberwock blog, and thought the idea of a gender-blurring work based on a story from the Mahabharata was something!
Yaamam - a Tamizh novel by S. Ramakrishnan, whose Urupasi I had read and enjoyed earlier. No idea what this one is about,  but thecover looks very attractive! (Good enough reason to buy?) and finally,
A collection of short stories by Ambai, whose work I have always read in English. Somehow the Tamizh original never seemed to be available, but managed to get it this year.
I set myself a budget of Rs. 2000 and managed to get away with exceeding that only by about Rs.700. Not bad, wasn’t it?
Bangaloreans, if you haven’t visited the book fair yet, please make space for it right away. It’s on till Nov 15th, and if the range of books isn’t enough to tempt you, there are great discounts too!
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