Book Review: Selection Day by Aravind Adiga

One of the depressing facts that Aravind Adiga’s Selection Day brings up is that some careers, and by an unfortunate extension even lives, are decided at the age of 14 or even less. At 14, I had no idea what life would be at 15 and the brothers Kumar (Manju and Radha) in this book know that they should be the world’s best batsman and the second best, world here translates to Mumbai Cricket, since that is the extent of their career and this book.

Many an Indian student who faced the aspirations and ambitions of the parents thrust upon him would nod his head in ironic approval with the kind of rigorous routine thrust upon the children. The setting here is Cricket, and batting in particular, where the brothers are fighting for 1 or 2 out of the 7 batting spots places the odds insurmountably high, yet Adiga finds humor in the darkest of the places in creating the grim realities of the life of youngsters who have no chance but to aspire, survive and work hard against the odds. Indeed it is surprising how hilarious Selection Day is, as I found myself laughing out loud at the kind of farcical methods of preparation and the justification behind them that Mohan Kumar, the father, sets out for his kids which also include posing with a bat in hand as a 4 year old, a la Sachin Tendulkar.

Aravind Adiga’s research is immaculate, not in the sense that he throws up numbers and anecdotes about Cricket Matches in the way most books about Cricket tend to do, but in the way a cricketer’s journey is traversed right from the familial beginnings, to the rising through the ranks under an able and determined coach, only to reach a destination that doesn’t seem as coveted to the cricketer as much it was for the men around him.

The father Mohan Kumar is an interesting character, my favorite in the book, as he admonishes his children about the vices, girls and shaving, checks on them every night, working on their techniques, temperament and anything that he feels will help making his sons the best cricketers of the world. For all his efforts, Mohan Kumar, is still hated by anyone he ever comes across, including his own kids who swear to kill him when they come of age, yet he never undersells them and steadfastly negotiates their worth, for they are the last straws he is clutching at, their careers the only thing he has in his life as a slum dwelling chutney salesman. The character is a delightfully devastating portrayal of the ultimate tragicomic.

As much as the father borders on being tyrannical, there are other players interested in the brothers, like the coach Tommy Sir, whose sole aim in life to unearth the next Tendulkar from Mumbai Cricket, and Anand Mehta, an NRI who wants to do a few good things and chooses to invest in the the great nastiness that is Cricket, and a rival cricketer Javed, the love interest of Manju the younger brother, thrown in to complete the circle of obstacles. Above them all, Manju has his own brother Radha to overcome who tries to guilt-trip him into believing that Manju has usurped his place in the team. All of these men overwhelm Manju, who does not seem to be quite adequate with dealing with them, his timid nature and his unease with his own homosexuality and the distance from his mother, make him a loner with no place to go and that shows in the kind of choices he makes in the days leading to the Selection Day.

The book starts three years before the Selection Day, and we all know it that it is going to be a doomed affair even before reading any of the events unfold, only because of our knowledge that the Kumars (all three of them) of the world don’t have a chance of surviving the ordeal and coming out in triumph. There is no mention anywhere if the brothers love playing the game, because that is never considered even an option, much like students taking up engineering or medicine, often clueless as to what they mean. In this particular similarity it resonates with a lot more teenagers around the country. In that sense this is an important book for the average Indian Parent who needs a lesson or two.

Strongly Recommended.

Book Review: One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat

There is a scene in One Indian Girl where Radhika Mehta, the protagonist asks her husband-to-be if he knew what Feminism meant, and when the guy Uh-huh’s, she proceeds to tell him the definition of feminism, which may as well be from Wikipedia or Dictionary.com. It is one of the unintentionally hilarious scenes in a book which provides genuine laughs otherwise; still it is an important scene, one that tells the readers to not take its feminism too seriously, coz it is difficult to take the characters seriously when they rote feminism as if it is Newton’s First Law or something. I don’t think anyone would ever get the answer that Radhika gives in this book, when asked what Feminism is. Alright, that’s more about feminism than even the book could offer in its 272 pages, so we should skip it like the good readers we are and dive head long into this.

Chetan Bhagat may have been blowing hot and cold off late, but in One Indian Girl, he is in fine form and the book is really a breezy read if one can set their prejudices apart. The travails, relationships, frustrations and confusions of Radhika are laced with trademark Bhagat humor, with the character’s inner voice proving to be an able companion, especially when the conversations fizzle out between the leads. I finished the book in a couple of sittings, never bored, grinning to myself as I flipped the pages, and heaving an all-knowing sigh of relief with the girl’s choice in the end.

None of this is to say that we haven’t read or seen the story earlier, or this is an original or different creation, one that made Bhagat do all sorts of weird things like waxing himself to understand a girl’s POV. Sure, we get to know that girls like (fish for) compliments a lot, they tend to lean emotionally on men far more than what they would like, and if they are Punjabi, they want a lavish wedding even if they hate every relative that drinks or dances to celebrate the occasion. These are the things we already have a certain idea about, so Bhagat doesn’t add much or any finer nuances that the book could have benefitted from having a female POV.

Radhika Mehta, the book’s lead girl is a weird character in that she does not have any girlfriends to confide in and her family look curiously disinterested in everything about her except her marriage. All we know about her is through the choice of men she likes to spend time with, so it is difficult for her to be a fully rounded character that the readers can constantly root for. Still, Bhagat infuses charm into her, by giving her a pithy sense of humor and a job that doesn’t allow her to wallow much and move on constantly.

Chetan Bhagat has been spending some time with screenwriters too and it shows in his writing. One Indian Girl moves confident and unhurried through its narrative and rarely meanders (except the feminism one we noted earlier, and a marijuana scene in Goa). When writing about Indians and Weddings, the stereotypes are hard to avoid and Bhagat never challenges or advocates them fully. He pokes gently at them, but lets them be in their own place. This is not a book that overreaches with its ambition. It is a little Rom-Com at its heart, may be aimed at Bollywood, and can even be a winner if it lands in the right hands.

If only it didn't not have to wear and bear the cross of feminism, One Indian Girl is a quick read that has its moments.

Book Review: Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

This year I’ve been reading crime and mystery from Japanese writers and after savoring the brilliance of Keigo Higashino, I decided to buy Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, after reading some glowing reviews it had on Amazon. I was expecting an easy read with a twisty plot, but boy was I wrong.

There are some books that you absolutely love, some that will bore you to death, and some you can’t stop thinking about but only a few books have the ability to overwhelm you and Six Four is definitely one of those. I can’t remember having read anything quite like this. At 656 pages, this is probably the longest book I’ve read in the last 5 years and it wasn’t done quickly as well, but ultimately it turned out to be a rewarding experience. It is like reading the full screenplay of a 20 episode Television Series

This isn’t the kind of detective novel that goes through its plot at a breakneck pace maneuvering through its red herrings with purpose. Instead Yokoyama serves up a vastly detailed police procedural that concentrates majorly on the relationship the Japanese Police have with their Press.

When the Commissioner of Police decides to visit a 14 year old botched up kidnapping case to offer solidarity and support to the victim, the local Media Relations Office had to get the Press to cover the visit. The Press meanwhile were grappling with another issue altogether over anonymous reporting and a major chunk of the novel builds up the tensions raising between the three departments Media Relations, Administrative Affairs and Criminal Investigations, while the Press Club that constitutes representatives from leading Newspapers in Japan, decides to abandon coverage of the commissioner’s visit in order to make the Police kowtow to their demands,

It’s all heady stuff with a lot of key players involved and each one playing their own angle to get their own version of the result. The narrative is further complicated by the similar sounding names that make it a bit difficult through the first 100 pages to make out who are who. There are about 6-7 different people with names starting with M, 5 with A and another 5 with K, so it can get a tad confusing.

To make sense of this level of detailing into the day in the life of the key players, the readers need a hand to hold on to and a sort of pedestal upon which they can look at things and decide where they stand. This is where Yokoyama scores high by giving us a protagonist in Press Director Mikami, who is vulnerable, angry, empathetic and righteous in equal measures so as to create a rounded, ultimately tragic character that the readers would like to travel with. Mikami learns everything as he goes on about his job, even as he goes through the personal tragedy of his daughter missing and his wife going into a shell. He does everything in his capacity to stop the press from holding the Police to ransom, including getting into a physical fight with them, yet when leading his team he gets protective while still being confident of his abilities to deal with the situation.

The moral implications of anonymous reporting, the rights of the media to publish the names of victims of rape or kidnap, the differences in the three offices and their score and jurisdiction, are all the issues that are gently touched upon, but at it’s heart this book is still about the trauma of the father whose child has been killed by a kidnapper and his quest to find out the kidnapper even when the entire Police department of Japan were unable to do so for fourteen years.

I didn’t see the twist coming at the end of the book, but this isn’t about it at all since there are still some lose ends and subplots awaiting closure at the end of the book.  In Mikami, Yokoyama has given us a memorable character, one that the readers would root for and one they want to see through the ordeal and how he faces it, and he doesn’t disappoint.

A quick note on, and a definite nod, to the translation as well. Jonathan Lloyd Davies, credited as the translator does a fine job of the material presented to him. One can imagine the task ahead of him when he started to go about it. It could be challenging, overwhelming and a tad frightening too, but the language was easy to read, the differences in characters and their thought processes clearly distinguished, never confounding the readers. Damn good stuff Sir.

I’d recommend Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama to anyone who has the patience to give into an ambitious and richly detailed work on the Japanese Police Procedurals. Just don’t expect a Higashino.

I

Book Review: Patang by Bhaskar Chattopadhyay

Indian crime fiction scene is a mess littered with works, which at their best can be generic and predictable and at worst lazily written and poorly edited “thrillers”, written with the broadest of the strokes. I don’t think I ever read an ingenious crime fiction written by an Indian set in our milieu, our best crime stories come from Bollywood, or the news channels. Bhaskar Chattopadhyay’s Patang has a glowing review from Sriram Raghavan, the best genre filmmaker we have, and it is definitely a cut above the rest, Silence of the Lambs meets Shutter Island if you will, but ironically suffers both from predictability and improbability.  

A serial killer strikes Mumbai in the monsoon season, writing to the media and the Police that he would be killing 4 people. A massive manhunt ensues, the modus operandi of the killer is explored, and he was even given a nickname by the media based on a theme he kills with and a clue he leaves at the scene of the crime. The Patang Killer, since he kills people at dizzying heights. Not particularly ingenious, I told you.  

Mumbai Commissioner seeks help from Private Eye Chandrakant Rathod and I’m not sure what he is. He seems like a journalist turned private detective, but he seems to know who’s who of the entire Police Department, most of them fan-boys of his work and willing to put their jobs on stake for Rathod. Everyone calls him a genius and he in turn calls the killer a genius. We know each of them is a genius because the writer keeps telling us in every chapter, lest we forget that we are dealing with a couple of geniuses here. He nabs the connection between the murders, as is any detective’s wont, but the story isn’t strong enough and there are no red herrings, making it all easy for the genius detective. 

There are some stray references to Mumbai monsoon, but the detailing is not as meticulous to consider the book to be atmospheric. The book scores some brownies in the way Bhaskar explores Chandrakant Rathod’s psyche and towards the end of the book, Rathod, seems to be overwhelmed and defeated by the task in hand and shows ominous signs of spiraling out of control. These parts were dealt well and the reader can sense Rathod’s desperation in solving the puzzle, but the ending spoils them all. Still as a character study, Rathod’s journey towards the end seems complete and the book redeems itself to become slightly better than the sum of its parts, in retrospect.

Bhaskar infuses the narrative with a sense of urgency and the pages fly through at a breakneck pace. It is difficult to put it away for a long time, which is an achievement in itself, and the writing shows up a lot of efforts that went in towards the later part of the book. As a genre piece, it checks all the boxes, right up to the twist ending, but all of it is a tad underwhelming for the genre fans. As I said earlier, it is better than a lot of Indian crime fiction we routinely find on book shelves across the country, but that is not saying much about the book. 

PS: I decided to read only crime and noir fiction this year, so please suggest any great works by Indians or setup in India, in the comments that you have come across.

Book Review: The Seeker by Karan Bajaj

Interest on Yoga seems to be on an all time high if the 6 Yoga Mats delivered by Flipkart on International Yoga Day at the courier desk at my office were any indication. Karan Bajaj's latest novel, The Seeker could not have come at a time more apt than this. 

I have very fond memories of reading Karan Bajaj's two earlier books Keep Off the Grass and Johnny Gone Down, both of them I was able to finish in a single sitting, something that hasn't happened again since. So when I heard of this book, I ordered it immediately though it took more than two weeks to arrive and I read it only a week after getting it. I didn't finish it in a single sitting either, it took me longer than I thought it would.

His two earlier books have shown glimpses of the author's leaning towards the spiritual, his propensity to leave everything and travel around the world seeking answers to existential questions, but they were interwoven into relatable settings, and had interesting characters all along the narrative. With The Seeker, however, Bajaj takes a complete plunge into the spiritual, abandoning any subplots or characterizations that let him deviate from his quest. To that effect, as the author also claims, the book seems autobiographical, and far less interesting than his previous works.

Max, unlike Bajaj's earlier protagonists, isn't a person of Indian origin, but when a personal tragedy strikes him in the form of his mother's death, a chance encounter with an Indian Vendor in New York leads him on to the path of becoming a Yogi, and seeking answers to pain and suffering in the world. Though he is traumatized by his tumultuous past, Max's single minded focus on Yoga makes him transcend everything in becoming a true Yogi and being one with the universe.

Max travels from Haridwar to Gangotri and beyond to Bhojbasa, seeking spiritual enlightenment from a Brazilian doctor he read about online. These were easily the best parts in the book as they make for a fascinating read with the people Max meets enroute to his travails in finding his way and getting lost in snow after Gangotri. The pages rush through with action but when he is redirected towards a Yogic Ashram in Pavur near Madurai where he starts his learning in Asanas, Bandhas and Yoga, the pace drops considerably and the book becomes a long eulogy to Yoga.

The second half of the book provides lengthy passages explaining different asanas, how they are to be held and how they help the human brain to remain clear amidst chaos. For people who are already into Yoga, these may prove to be the reassurance they might be seeking in their path, but I feel there isn't enough in them to convince the skeptics. I'm not in any way questioning the veracity of the author's feelings and experiences, it's just that walking on water, and knowing people's thoughts seem implausible to me.  Does the book provide any answers to the seeker towards the end? May be, may be not, but I could not relate to the answers at all. May be I wasn't a true seeker after all.

I skipped through a lot of pages towards the end when I couldn't find anything of interest, and when I reached the last page, I heaved a sigh of relief, thankful that this is not a trilogy. 

Book Review: Breach by Amrita Chowdhury

The modern thriller novel is becoming an increasingly chaotic space ever since the advent of Dan Brown’s hugely popular Robert Langdon books. Amrita Chowdhury adds a lot to this chaos in her second novel Breach, a fast paced cybercrime thriller set across various locations amidst the growing concerns over online intelligence thefts, ethical hacking and associated frauds. 

Pharma-giant Acel Corporation is working on applying for the patent of a wonder drug Colare as a cure to Cancer, when they find out that the data has gone corrupt making their plans go for a toss. With the patent filing six weeks away, the blame game starts and the obvious culprit seems to be Vir Dhingra and his team in India, which the Acel US team was always skeptical about. Vir has to handle this issue, even as his personal life is shattered with Acel and Colare data taking up all his physical and emotional reserves.  The plot also involves nerdy teenagers getting their hands unknowingly dirty by venturing into the world of hacking, seduced by its power and the voyeuristic obscurity it offers.  Despite being a fiction, the issues tackled in this book are real and perceptible, and may also sit up uneasily on our conscience if we choose to ignore them. 

The book takes quite a long while setting up the characters, behavioral quirks and their motives behind their actions, but once these are out of the way, the narration assumes a manic pace consuming the reader along the way in its chase of the culprits. The action and the narrative are quite similar to Ravi Subramanian’s God is a Gamer, with short chapters occurring across the globe. The action however happens almost entirely in Mumbai, with the Chinese and the American counterparts playing supporting roles, or bystanders. Another curious coincidence between the two books is the references to TOR (The Onion Ring) and bit coins. 

Amrita Chowdhury, also brings up a lot of hacking, internet protocols and pharmaceutical concepts in the narrative, and offers little by the way of explanation, as the pace of the novel does not allow her to deviate towards these. In that sense, it asks the reader also to step up and inform himself/herself of the things she brought up, which can also mean that these terms can be rendered, in effect, to jargon for the uninformed reader. 

However, the book’s major fallacy is that it does not do total justice to the whodunit genre. A classic whodunit, throws red herrings all along the narrative, and builds up scenarios pointing towards various suspects, only to pull the rug from under the feet of its reader with the revelation of the real culprit’s identity. In this way, it amuses the reader, who might have missed the clues that were staring at his face all along, seemingly engulfed in the narrative, or pursuing the red herrings on offer. Breach, on the other hand, picks up a classic red herring, and builds the narrative to work towards revealing the red herring to be the main culprit. Purists of the genre may shake their heads in disapproval. 

Amrita Chowdhury’s writing is functional and thankfully devoid of the grandiose, so it can be devoured in a couple of sittings. Some grammatical errors also seemed to have cropped up, and the book in general also could do with another editing session to trim it to fewer than 300 pages. 

***

PS: This book has been sent by Vivek Tejuja, who, coincidentally, is also the person who sent me Ravi Subramanian's God is a Gamer

Buy Breach from Flipkart:

Book Review: Fairy Tales at Fifty by Upamanyu Chattejee

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s latest book is a tale of brothers separated at birth, and his spin on the overused plot point. Anyone familiar with Chatterjee’s work would agree that his books are not the sort of easy-read varieties made for journeys, but they require the readers to spend a lot of time thinking about the words they read, as much as he spent writing them. Fairy Tales at Fifty is no different, but it is ultimately less rewarding than any of his other works, partly due to the choice of his protagonist, but mostly due to the lack of exploring the plot to its potential. 

Nirip, on the verge of his fiftieth birthday, realizes that his parents are not his actual biological ones, and he ponders on the alternative life he could have had. Anguli, or Jhabua, the separated twin leads a vagrant life wandering across cities, killing people for fun and games. They meet at the start of the book and open up to each other, mostly coz no one else was interested in them. The first 43 pages, where Anguli narrates his tale, are a breeze, aided by Chatterjee’s macabre wit and detailed observation of the grotesque, which also lets the anticipation grow higher going ahead. 

When it comes to Nirip’s turn the tale loses its steam, and instead indulges in intensely labored rumination of his life and the things he has surrounded himself with. The best parts of Nirip’s tale are the curious family ties that he unravels, and how much of them he misunderstood over his fifty years. In fact, the family tree of Pashupati (the patriarch) is one of the most intriguing and weird ones I have come across.  

There are important plot points in his tale like the staging of his own kidnap to get back at his father, the violent cricket match where the players get killed according to the whims of its organizers, his father’s blood and flesh trade, and his relationship with his half-male, half-female sister Magnum (getting the rawest deal of them all), but they are discarded as quickly as they are brought into the story. Once Nirip gets kidnapped, the narration gets even more tedious detailing of the surroundings he finds himself in and the quirks of the men who kidnap him. It doesn’t help that every one of his kidnappers is called Scruffy with different second names, making it difficult to identify them or tell them for the other. 

The underlying philosophy seems to be, also spelt out in the book, as we grow old, we become ourselves and life becomes as pointless as it has always been, but we chose to grind it out, since death seems a worse alternative. The nothingness and tedium of old age has been explored earlier by the author in his previous books on Shyamanand and Barfi (The Last Burden and Way to Go), and he does not add much to it, thankfully, since this is supposed to be a fairy tale. The scatological observations are also toned down, but Chatterjee’s prose is as impeccable as ever, commas and hyphens intact. 

I was waiting for a new book by him ever since I read Way to Go, yet I came across this book only by accident, and was surprised not to find any publicity about its release. I’m glad I read it and will keep it in my collection for a future re-read, once I think I’m equipped enough to handle his works, but I don’t think I would recommend this book to many.