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Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter.
In her column, Women of Letters, K. Srilata profiles the feisty and whimsical but confident Urdu writer Ismat Chugtai. Her strength, says Srilata, lay in knowing with razor-sharp precision just what to she was up against – the overwhelmingly gendered structure of society. “And she possessed the badass courage to fight it both strategically as well as overtly. It was either a gun held straight to the temple or an arrow shot from behind a bush. Whether or not Ismat thought of herself as feminist is beside the point. She instinctively operated as one… and told her stories with empathy, humour and subversive wit.” Srilata writes about Ismat’s memoirs, Kaghazi Hai Pairahan (A Life in Words: Memoirs), and says that her writings are lessons in how to occupy space as a woman.
In reviews, we read Aanchal Malhotra’s second book on Partition, Laura T. Murphy’s story about a revolt by bonded labourers, the new novel by Jokha Alharthi, a Man Booker International Prize-winner, Keki N. Daruwalla’s stories of kinship and more. We also interview the Man Booker International Prize winner this year, Geetanjali Shree for her novel Tomb of Sand, and her translator Daisy Rockwell.
Books of the week
In her widely acclaimed debut book Remnants of a Separation, Aanchal Malhotra told the ‘story’ of Partition through the objects that migrants brought to their new homes across the border. There were the tangible, material objects – jewellery, utensils, clothes, books, diaries, certificates – and there were the intangibles such as language, habits, ways of living, and, yes memories, all minutely recorded through a series of detailed, leisurely conversations with Partition survivors conducted by Malhotra. In her second book, In the Language of Remembering: The Inheritance of Partition (HarperCollins), Malhotra carries the Partition narrative forward by speaking with the third, sometimes even fourth-generation of survivors about conversation within families: about the ‘relevance’ of the events of 1947, its lingering after-effect and how, and to what extent, it defines those whose grandparents, or even great-grandparents, lived through it. The underlying impulse behind this book, as also Remnants…, is a deeply humane one, says the reviewer Rakhshanda Jalil. “If people were to listen to each other’s stories, there is possibility of peace and reconciliation.”
In Azadnagar: The Story of a 21st Century Slave Revolt (HarperCollins), Laura T. Murphy, an expert in modern slavery, retells the story of a group of bonded labourers, the Kols of Uttar Pradesh, who broke out of inter-generational slavery and set up their own micro-village, christened Azad Nagar. But in this ‘free’ zone, life gets progressively worse for several reasons. For one, their erstwhile masters, the Patel landlords, retaliate against the Kols’ new-found autonomy. The Kols push back, organise a protest meeting where a landlord dies. Several Kols are jailed on charges of murder. In his review, G. Sampath writes that when Murphy travels to India to meet the Kol protagonists, in the course of her conversations, she is stunned to hear a Kol woman speak with pride about killing a landlord. “Murphy questions the reflexive redaction of violent acts of resistance from emancipation narratives put out for mainstream consumption. The contrast with how the emancipated – in this case, the Kol tribals – view their own struggle is stark, leading Murphy to meditate on the politics of non-violence.”
Jokha Alharthi’s Bitter Orange Tree (Simon & Schuster), translated by Marilyn Booth, is a compact narrative that encompasses an amazing number of vividly etched characters, each with a compelling story. In her review, Latha Anantharaman says in that sense it is much more than a novel about a young woman leaving Oman to study in Britain as labels may suggest. Zuhour, the narrator and central character of the novel, now living in Britain gets wrapped in the world of others – like her friend Suroor and her sister Kuhl, married to Imran who carries the burdensome memories of his humble past into his marriage. But in all this, Zuhour does not forget where she came from and behind “all her memories and dreams stand Bint Aamir, her virgin grandmother”, and thereby hangs another tale. Anantharaman finds the translation “seamless without flattening the prose.” There are no awkward phrasings or intrusive explanations, she says, as readers are swept along with Zuhour’s story and her memories of Oman.
Acclaimed poet Keki N. Daruwalla has written 10 volumes of poetry and several short story collections. His latest collection of short fiction, Going: Stories of Kinship (Speaking Tiger), explores the nuances of familial ties and their discontents. Poetry seeps into Daruwalla’s prose as naturally as rain seeps into the parched earth, says the reviewer Vineetha Mokkil. “The lyrical stories of Going are rooted as much to the changed terrain of the human heart as to the physical place and culture they are set in.” In the title story, ‘Going’, a granddaughter comes face to face with death while staying with her grandmother. It is hard to let go of a loved one, but she must learn to make peace with loss.
Spotlight
Geetanjali Shree | Photo Credit: R Rajesh
Geetanjali Shree considers the International Booker win for Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi) as a “special moment” for literature from South Asia and believes that the world is now “more likely to appreciate literature in South Asian languages.” Speaking to Ziya Us Salam, she points out that it is a major moment for all Indian languages simply because “our sensibilities, culture and traditions are so different and diverse. If you see Indian kritis [works of art] in different languages, each has a scent of its own.” She is also all praise for her translator, Daisy Rockwell, who not only understood the nuances of the Hindi novel, but was also able to present it to a larger international audience keeping in mind the sensibilities of the readers of another language. Rockwell, who is translating Krishna Sobti’s first novel now among other projects, says she hopes the win will open the eyes of publishers in global markets to the “richness of Indian literature in translation.”
Browser
- In conventional narratives of Partition, the role of the Dalit or the Scheduled Castes is either completely ignored or mentioned in passing. In Caste and Partition in Bengal: The Story of Dalit Refugees, 1946-1961, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhuri address this absence and argue that in Bengal the Dalits were the worst victims of Partition politics and violence.
- At Harvard Business Review’s 100th anniversary, a commemorative volume, HBR at 100, brings together the most influential management ideas since its inception. With an introduction written by editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius, it features voices on innovative topics, including Michael E. Porter on competitive strategy, C.K. Prahalad on strategic intent and others.
- Kasturi and Lakshmi, both born into the devadasi clan, are very different from each other. While Kasturi finds joy in dancing before the deity, Lakshmi becomes a doctor. Set in the days leading to Independence, Breaking Free (HarperCollins) by Vaasanthi, translated by N. Kalyan Raman, is a thought-provoking novel by a renowned Tamil writer.
- Most Indian children have come across the stories of Hitopadesha, where birds and animals behave like humans and illustrate human frailties. Pandit Narayana’s classic text is presented in a new translation, Hitopadesha by Narayana: A New English Translation (Aleph Book Company) by historian and Sanskritist Shonaleeka Kaul.
