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A new edition of Perumal Murugan’s Pyre, translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, has been published by Pushkin Press this month. It has a new cover; Vasudevan had originally translated it from the Tamil Pookkuzhi in 2016 for Penguin. The novel tells the story of two young people in love, Saroja and Kumaresan. After a hasty wedding, they return to Kumaresan’s village to build a new life together. But this inter-caste marriage runs into problems from the beginning. Saroja is faced with venom from her mother-in-law and questions from her neighbours. We unfortunately know how these stories turn out in real life. Will their love keep them safe in a hostile world? In his translator’s note, Vasudevan writes that “there is a taut simplicity to the premise and the plot of this novel. It speaks of love in the face of difference and societal violence. This is a novel about caste and the resilient force that it is, but it is also about how strangely vulnerable caste and its guardians seem to feel in the face of love, and how it often seems to assert itself both in everyday acts of discrimination as well as in moments of unimaginable violence.” He marvels at the way Perumal Murugan slips into the “emotional space of his women characters in an incredibly tender way.” The male protagonist, Kumaresan, is loving and kind, a man of his time but also a man who rages against his times.
In reviews, we read the astounding diary of Kasturba and her unimaginable sacrifice during the freedom struggle; a book on whether ever-changing technology can be mastered, Anil Menon’s genre-defying new whimsical collection and more.
Books of the week
The Lost Diary of Kastur, My Ba (HarperCollins) was found in an old trunk a few years ago, according to her great grandson and translator Tushar Gandhi, by the staff at the Gandhi Research Foundation while going through old materials at the Kasturba Ashram, Indore. The diary spans nine momentous months. In her review, Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta writes, “Contained in the simple entries from January to September 1933, of not more than three or four lines each, we discover a story of prison sentences casually borne; an unwavering commitment to freedom and justice; and unimaginable personal sacrifice. Shining out of the simple sentences is a narrative of deep personal faith and determination to do what is right.” Perhaps the most poignant entry in the diary is that of 18 August 1933, when Kasturba is worried about Gandhi’s new fast. She reads the updates about the fast in the newspaper. “Paper arrived, learned from it that Bapuji’s fast continues…Then I sent a telegram to Bapuji on Friday morning saying, ‘I came to know from the newspaper that today is your third day of fasting. So let me know how your health is.’” In the next day’s entry: “Received no reply.” For the reviewer, this is the story, in her own words, of an extraordinary woman -- a wife, a mother, a friend, a dedicated khadi spinner, a mentor, and a powerful and inspiring figure in the struggle for Indian independence.
In his new book Techproof Me (Penguin), Siddharth Pai shares an approach to understand the changing world of technology, and tells the reader to play the roles of a soldier, an originator, a leader, and an empath (collectively called SOLE) to make the most of technological change within their business or organisation. Each of those roles plays a specific part in helping to get a hang of technology, according to Pai. For instance, a soldier has to understand the inner workings of an organisation; an originator must work on bridging real-world problems with concepts and ideas in technology; a leader has to get an intimate understanding of her organisation; and an empath must be in a position to adapt in a rapidly changing world of technology. But the reviewer, John Xavier, writes that the problem with these roles is that they overlap. “The spill-over is evident in the latter part of the book where Pai muses on each of these roles. Instead of dealing with one idea at a time, and providing details, he meanders from one idea to another without offering a clear picture of where things are headed.”
Superhero couple or futuristic soldier or police couple watching over futuristic city. | Photo Credit: Malchev
Anil Menon’s The Inconceivable Idea of the Sun (Hachette) defies genre classification. It resists tropes altogether, in it the stories are anchored within a plausible near-future which is not a very appealing one but, says the reviewer Gautam Bhatia, they are altogether whimsical and closer to the fabulist tradition. For Bhatia, the eponymous story is his favourite. “In part whimsical, in part hilarious, in part tragic, and in part moving, it perhaps brings together all that Menon is trying to do in this collection: articulate that ‘expanded sense of reality’ to the reader and simulate that seamless movement between dimensions, between reality and unreality, while blurring the lines between the two.”
Spotlight
In January 2020, David Damrosch, professor of comparative literature at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was all set to take off for a book project on a journey whose structure was inspired by Jules Verne’s classic novel, Around the World in 80 Days. But COVID-19 put a lid on his travel plans. Instead of abandoning his plans altogether, Damrosch took his itinerary to the Internet, and over the course of 16 weeks in that summer he discussed with readers “a worldly locale through five books each week”. In her column, Word Count, Mini Kapoor writes about Damrosch’s Around the World in 80 Books (Penguin Press). “We will never really know if Damrosch’s book became better on account of him being grounded — but the armchair nature of his travels serves as a valuable nudge to the reader to structure their favourite books, or the books that shape their character and outlook, around their preoccupations and concerns.” As Damrosch writes, “We… need literature as a refuge in troubled times. When our external activities are curtailed, reading fiction and poetry offers a special opportunity — free from the carbon footprint of long-haul flights — both for pure pleasure and for deep reflection on our lives and the social and political struggles that surround us, as we navigate our world’s turbulent waters with the aid of literature’s map of imaginary times and places.”
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- In Seeking History Through Her Source: South of the Vindhyas (Orient BlackSwan), edited by Aloka Parasher Sen, authors seek historical realities south of the Vindhyas, and contextualise oft-neglected sources in their respective local niches. They highlight literary, art-historical and archaeological sources—such as the Jātakas, Cankam literature, Kāvya narratives and coins—while also highlighting fragmentary sources.
- Post-COVID 19, the world has to be studied in terms of what it is, not what it should have been. India’s foreign policy framework needs resilience and flexibility to overcome geopolitical storms. Taking note of realities, Madhav Das Nalapat spells out how India can take advantage of opportunities in 75 Years of Indian Foreign Policy: War, Peace and a World Realigned (Rupa).
- Characters navigate the depths of life by questioning its very existence in Manu Bhattahiri’s The Greatest Enemy of Rain (Aleph). In 14 short stories, oddballs grapple with matters of life and death, examine newfound freedoms, love, longing and memories of days gone by.
- Namrata Poddar deconstructs boundaries in her debut novel, Borderless (Harper). The protagonist, Dia, feels like she does not belong in the U.S., but she also cannot connect with her roots in India. With the American Dream in the background, she attempts to figure out her life while negotiating with intergenerational voices.
