Grown up on diet of Enid Blytons, Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys with an occasional Chandamama and Twinkle thrown in, I am not exactly proud of my awareness regarding Indian literature contemprory or otherwise. Yeah I have read Rushdie and Ms Roy but then somehow have the feeling that it does not count.
So these days I am on a mission, if u can call it that to read Indian authors. I bought two books by Vikram Chandra; his novel "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" (reviewed in the previous post) and a collection of short stories titled "Love and longing in Bombay".As the name implies, all the stories are set in Bombay. I was not too impressed with the collection somehow except the story "Kama".The protaganist in this story is a gay who is working for a two-member software company that has just sold its first product and is facing a critical issue on it. The characters are realistic and the story touches upon a lot of issues. It is about gay love, about the longings for one's own house in mumbai, communalism in mumbai(can Indian writers' ever escape the hindu-muslim aspect in any of their writings) and about the shadow of the underworld. I liked the way the realtionship between the protaganist and his boss is handled. His boss is a workaholic, smart, beautiful, divorced mother of a child who has let out one room in her house to a bohemian painter.Though her relationship with the painter is not the focus of the story but the writer gives us enuf glimpses into it and makes it seem very real. The protaganist makes fun of the artsy world of painters but is also aware of the strange hold "beauty" has on all of us.Though the writer does not dwell too much into the communalism and the underworld theme but just makes you aware about these two hovering over the story and impacting it in an important way. There was another story I found interesting in parts. It was about a inspector in mumbai(of course) who is trying to solve a murder case. The other stories did not impress much. So, in case you find this book lying somewhere, read the story "kama". Thatz my reco for the day!
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4 comments:
ssm, thanks a lot for the link and the comment. I went through the link; both the books sound great. Will look out for them.
Hi vb; Welcome to My Space and thanks a lot for the comment. I really did not agree with MM. Of course, I have not read her but I think the chapterization of "Love and..." is very apt for the stories and I see no harm in using these "Indian" ideas if it goes with the theme of the book.
Just my two cents. And hey I visited both your sites; Thanks for the link.
Fizoo!!! I have been trying to mail you for a long time. But somehow, I have never been able to. Thanks for visiting this space. And this is not on DSS as this is just experimental stuff :-)
Take care
Have you read The Strange Case of Billy Biswas? By Arun Joshi. I read it when i was 17 and it helped me a lot in making some very important decisions of my life.
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