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In remarkable scenes, thousands of protesters stormed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s official residence in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, last Saturday. The President was escorted to safety, and has since indicated that he will step down, but it’s clear that the people want an alternative regime to steer the country out of the overwhelming economic crisis. How did Sri Lanka get here? What is the way out? There are no easy answers, though books, both fiction and non-fiction, have tried to explain the complex undercurrents of an extremely diverse country, and perhaps former cricket captain Kumar Sangakarra’s famous words show the way out: “I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan.” Conflict has erupted whenever there have been attempts to polarise and divide. Evelyn Frederick Charles Ludowyk’s The Story of Ceylon (1962) traces the history of Sri Lanka from its part-legendary beginnings and ancient civilisation to its colonial past of Portuguese, Dutch and English reigns and events since Independence. The Sri Lankan-Canadian poet and writer Michael Ondaatje has explored its history and Dutch-Ceylonese past in both his memoir (Running in the Family, 1983) and his novel, Anil’s Ghost (2000). No one has showcased its Burgher past better than Carl Muller. In his Burgher Trilogy (The Jam Fruit Tree, Yakada Yaka and Once Upon a Tender Time), he writes on the loves and losses of the Von Bloss family, descendants of the Dutch, Portuguese, English and locals. The Tamil-Sinhala confrontation and its aftermath have been traced by several writers, including Samanth Subramanian (This Divided Island), Nayomi Munaweera (Island of a Thousand Mirrors), Rohini Mohan (The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War) and Anuk Arudpragasam (A Passage North). The tomes of Romesh Gunesekera (Reef, Noon Tide Toll, Suncatcher), Shyam Selvadurai (Funny Boy, Cinnamon Gardens, The Hungry Ghosts) and Ashok Ferrey (The Unmarriageable Man, Love in the Tsunami, The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons) provide glimpses of all facets of Sri Lankan society. Amidst all this richness, one of the most exciting books to come out of a cricket-crazy country in recent times is surely Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman. It tells the story of a retired sportswriter W.G. Karunasena who is spending his last few months before his death tracking down Pradeep S. Mathew, an elusive spin bowler he thinks is “the greatest cricketer to walk the earth”. As W.G. unravels startling truths about his country, readers join the ride to know more about Sri Lanka, cricket and life.
In reviews, we read a new biography of Akbar, Easterine Kire’s new fiction on Nagaland’s spiritual world, short stories by Ali Rohila, a book on schools with a difference and more. We also interview Deepti Naval on her memoir, A Country Called Childhood, and Radheshyam Jadhav (Trail of the Tiger) profiles Uddhav Thackeray, who resigned as Maharashtra Chief Minister recently.
Books of the week
Parvati Sharma’s Akbar of Hindustan (Juggernaut) juxtaposes two vivid but dramatically contrasting accounts left by Akbar’s contemporaries in her retelling. The histories produced by Abul Fazl and Badauni are principal source materials in all studies on the man, but Sharma, says Manu S. Pillai in his review, skilfully places the excessive adulation of the former alongside acidic disapproval of the latter to reconstruct Akbar in his many shades. “So if Abul Fazl’s Akbar is a divine being, who even as a toddler spouts lessons in wisdom, Badauni tells of a man who could break into expletives of a roadside variety, had a megalomaniacal streak, and was blessed by satanic luck, not god.” Through these two chronicles, Sharma explores how the king as an institution was projected and meant to be remembered, while all at once the man wearing the crown struggled to balance this ideal against his own limitations, as well as the uncertainties of politics. There have been at least two other biographies of Akbar recently (Ira Mukhoty’s Akbar: The Great Mughal and Manimugdha Sharma’s Allahu Akbar: Understanding the Great Mughal in Today’s India; and a work of historical fiction, Shazi Zaman’s Akbar: A Novel of History.
Parvati Sharma’s Akbar of Hindustan review: Akbar in different shades
Easterine Kire’s Spirit Nights (Simon & Schuster) is set in a village of animists, agriculturists and hunters in the hills of Nagaland. It begins with the warm bonding between a woman, Tola, and her grandson, Namu. Spiritual beliefs regulate the everyday living of the villagers, who recall and respect taboos at every juncture which guide the actions of the Nagas and also bind them as a community. In her review, Radhika Santhanam writes that Kire effortlessly weaves bite-sized fables and age-old folklores into a well-paced work of fiction. “In Spirit Nights, she pulls us into their [Naga] world of spiritual struggles through wisdom, imagination, magic and adventure. She gives a fresh lease of life to ancient wisdom, to truths that we preach but don’t practice through a powerful female protagonist in a patriarchal set-up.”
A story of darkness: Review of Easterine Kire’s Spirit Nights
In The Whispering Chinar (Vintage), Ali Rohila writes a set of interconnected stories linked to the fictional village of Charbagh in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Some are set in the village and others in Rawalpindi and even Muscat. In her review, Ranjana Sengupta says that Rohila tackles themes of power, family dynamics, lust, bigotry and the unfathomable ways of love. The stories are “plausible portraits of life among Pakistan’s urban and rural elite.”
Tears under a tree: Review of Ali Rohila’s book The Whispering Chinar
Ashwin Prabhu’s Classroom with a View (Tara Books) explores the educational tropes in a group of schools in India that seek to practice what the philosopher J. Krishnamurti talked of in his transformative vision of education. Widely respected and yet dismissed as “alternate schools” and “bubbles”, these schools tend to be seen as elitist. Prabhu, according to the reviewer R. Ramanujam, offers glimpses of everyday practices in these schools – like nature walks, culture class, question hour – that have relevance for the system at large.
Classroom with a View review: Nature walks, culture class, question hour — schools with a difference
Spotlight
Why was Uddhav Thackeray forced to resign as Maharashtra Chief Minister? What is his politics? Was he out of touch with the grassroots? In his piece, Radheshyam Jadhav, who had traced Uddhav Thackeray’s journey in his book, Trail of the Tiger (Bloomsbury), writes that Uddhav’s style of leadership dismayed many who believe in his father Bal Thackeray’s way of functioning. “Not surprisingly, the BJP is wooing Shiv Sena cadres saying that Uddhav has compromised on Bal Thackeray’s principles. It would be interesting to see if Uddhav returns to his father’s brand of politics to save the party or continues to build the new Shiv Sena according to his vision.”
The reluctant Sainik: The rise and fall of Uddhav Thackeray
Deepti Naval’s new book, A Country called Childhood (Aleph), is an autobiography and an essay on Amritsar, and an Indian society that was. In an interview to Ziya Us Salam, the noted actor says the book is a “tribute to the city of the Golden Temple. In a way, I acknowledge the city and whatever it gave me, which formed who I would become later on. I think those 19 years had a lot to contribute to it.” With Partition weighing heavy on the people of the city, for a time, she even thought Muslims were “cruel people” till someone corrected her that there were mass killings and atrocities on both sides, and that “nobody spared each other, it was a bad time.” In the interview, she talks about how she ended up in the movies despite being told that “girls from good families don’t go to the cinema.”
With Amritsar in her heart: Deepti Naval on her book, A Country Called Childhood
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- In a manifesto for our troubled times, Undermining the Idea of India (Seagull Books) by Gautam Patel sketches the ‘constitutional’ idea of India, arguing that the devolution of power is necessary for the survival of any liberal democracy, and pointing out that the “right to choose one’s own government is the right to dissent.”
- With photographs and text, Migrant Lives (Penguin), edited by Radhika Chopra, turns the spotlight on the migrant workers of India and their precarious everyday lives. Shot during the aftermath of the 2020 lockdown due to COVID-19, the book captures their utter helplessness as they lost jobs, food and shelter.
- In Debarati Mukhopadhyay’s Chronicles of the Lost Daughters (Harper), translated by Arunava Sinha, tragedy befalls a widow while a young rebel is swept up by the new ideals of an organisation. With historical characters making an appearance too, it follows a family torn apart by treachery.
- Lisa Taddeo’s Ghost Lover (Bloomsbury) is a collection of nine fearless short stories centred on how women deal with obsession, love and grief. As Esquire puts it, Taddeo captures “the heterosexual female psyche at its best and its gruelling, unspeakable worst.”
