Indian Writing

For all of us in Mumbai, November is the month of greatest cheer. Everyone yearns for this calm period at the end of the year, when the business of festivals is done and we can sit back to enjoy the days just as they are. The long grey monsoons are finally done with. The Ramzan fast has been observed and the street food at Mohammed Ali Road sampled at night. The huge clamorous festivals of Ganpati, Navratri and Diwali have been celebrated at length. The Karva Chauth moon has been sighted and dinner consumed. And, blissfully, the hot days of October are gone. November unfurls slowly, week by lovely week, the sunlight becoming gentler, the evenings shorter, and the mornings blessedly cooler. For those living in Kashmir, or even Delhi or Kolkata, Mumbai’s 20-degree night chill may seem laughably warm, and they will smirk at our murmurs about shawls and Jaipur razais. But for Mumbai, 20 degrees (and occasionally, deliciously lower) is what we call winter. Evenings become shorter. Sleeves become longer. Children’s birthday parties, for which the traditional time is 4.30 to 7.30, now move back to winter time: 4 to 7, to make use of a precious half-hour of sunlight; and parties move out from air-conditioned halls to soft, damp green lawns where children can roll about in freedom.

Outside the park, the fragrance of roasted peanuts and bhutta fills the cool air. Brilliant red strawberries from Mahabaleshwar and gnarled green oranges from Nagpur appear in the fruit stalls. At home, our cat, who has been perched on the window sill throughout the month of October, now moves further and further inside the house, first to sit on top of my laptop case, then inside a bookshelf, and finally to retreat to the warmest room in the house, to the top of the kitchen cupboard. The dog, who has slept on the stone floor throughout the summer months, now curls up on her mattress. Five parrots shriek and yell outside the window. Seagulls float above the waves, and every morning we see more fishing boats going past.

Why is November so loved in Mumbai, when temperatures in December and January are going to be even cooler? Because November is the month when the season changes, and the city can look forward to the beginning of a period of good things: gentle breezes, open-air performances, and leisurely evenings in the park. Unlike the long grey months of the monsoon or the hot summers, when all we can do is wait for the days to pass by, we want November to stay, to stretch out before us in all its beautiful promise. During the rest of the year we long for what we do not have; it is November that teaches us to calm down, to be still, to take pleasure in the now.

The recent reports of bullying at the Sainik School in Tilaiya, Jharkhand seem somehow all the more shocking because this time, the incident has been recorded on video. Instead of merely reading the victim’s account and feeling upset about it, we are forced to actually witness the act in its grotesqueness. As a mother sitting here in Mumbai, I was horrified: I cannot even begin to imagine the feelings of parents whose children are being subjected to such treatment. As for the children who left the school unable to bear the physical and psychological torture, who will repair the damage to their self-esteem?

It is time for India to get serious about the practice of bullying or “ragging”. This brutal, sadistic practice has already claimed enough young lives and killed so many other dreams. The legislation and regulations already exist, but they will only acquire force when schools, colleges and universities provide a zero-tolerance environment along with strong resources for help. Even after a complaint mechanism is established and formal complaints are made, it is crucial to protect the privacy of victims and witnesses, especially when students from rich and influential families take the lead in the bullying of less privileged students.

The student community should also help by spreading a strong and unequivocal message on their social media networks. If legislation is insufficient, then social stigma - making it ‘uncool’ to rag new students and juniors - can eventually shame the bullies into civilized behaviour. Besides, there is always the method used by the victim in the Sainik School case, one that other victims and witnesses could make use of - the camera phone. Why not sting the bullies, whenever it
is possible, and expose them?

Swift and visible punitive action is only one element of the solution. It is equally important for institutions to introspect critically about the quality of pastoral care they offer. Families from all over India send their children, with considerable difficulty, to boarding schools and college hostels in the hope of giving them a better life. New students usually have to handle all sorts of adjustment issues, from food to language to the pressures of independent study. Institutions should provide a safety net to students who struggle with such issues by arranging for friendly orientation sessions, mentoring by seniors, and frequent one-to-one meetings by faculty with new students, however brief, just to touch base and ensure that they are thriving. Strong mentoring could even bring about a change in the bullies themselves.

But the fundamental question raised by this incident is about the way in which we bring up our boys. If we want to create a better world for our children, then as Gloria Steinem said, it is not enough to raise our girls to be more like boys; it is also time for us to raise our boys to be more like our girls. As the mother of two boys, I am always conscious of the challenge faced by Indian parents in teaching boys the values of courtesy, decency and level-headedness. This is because as a culture, India encourages brattishness in boys. Their birth is celebrated more than that of girls. Even the hospital helpers expect higher tips if it’s a boy. In their growing years, boys are given innumerable freedoms while their sisters are kept more ‘protected” (read: controlled). “Boys will be boys” is the general refrain, even if it can lead to little monsters or even Manu Sharmas.

That instead of merely learning how to read and write, you may learn to love stories and someday write your own.

That instead of merely learning how to count, you may learn to explore the mysteries of the universe.

That instead of merely learning about history and civics, you may learn to cherish freedom and democratic citizenship.

That instead of learning to compete in the rat race, you may learn to share the planet.

That instead of aspiring to be the 1%, you may learn how to build a just and equitable world.

I took my children to listen to the Indian Navy Band at Mumbai’s Hanging Gardens Bandstand yesterday. How lovely it was. Reaching a few minutes before five-thirty, we got the best seats in the amphitheatre, on the stone steps under the tall trees and with a view of the Arabian Sea. The first pleasant surprise was that the band started punctually at five-thirty (it is many years since I have attended any event that has started on time). They began without fuss, launching into a spirited march that we used to whistle in school. When it ended, the conductor turned to the audience with a small bow.

Drawn from all parts of India, the band members looked fit and smart in their crisp white uniforms. The audience, too, was mixed – excited tourists who come to the Gardens at the end of a day’s sightseeing, for children to play on the swings and slides, and families to rest on the grass; street vendors selling balloons and cheap plastic toys outside the park – and also local Malabar Hill residents drawn out of their tony cloisters for the band’s annual performance. No tickets, no ushers, no air-conditioned foyers, just the fresh November air.

And so, suddenly, there was a sense of community in the amphitheatre: the young girls in shiny dresses, mehendi on their hands, the little children shaking their arms to the rhythm, the smart set clicking photographs on their Iphones. Even the on-duty constables relaxed and smiled. A dry leaf twisted slowly and fell into the lap of one of the musicians. People clapped along, first tentatively and then lustily. A man tossed his toddler up in the air and caught him. An idly curious stray dog watched from his bench. The atmosphere felt festive, even if all we were celebrating was that we were out there in the garden sharing the music. But then, that was the most important thing.

‘Hawa mein udta jaye, mera laal dupatta mull-mull ka ji….’ this lightest and happiest of songs sung by a fresh-voiced Lata in Barsaat was now played with gusto by the band, with the audience humming along. When the band played ‘Saare jahan se achcha’, I had tears in my eyes. Gentle cries of ‘Shabash’ or ‘Superb!’ filled the air – some of the voices were bashful, as if using these words and expressing such appreciation for the first time in their lives – and a mild shiver of surprise and delight passed through the gathering.

I hope my children learn the lesson that the best things in life must continue to be free: the music, the fresh air, the open space, the lovely feel of the onset of winter.

*****

They must be free, and shared by everyone if we are to rebuild this city’s sense of community. After all, it was Mumbai’s apathy which allowed those two young men, Keenan and Reuben, to die. They died because we don’t treat the public street as our space. We live inside our apartments in secure towers, get into our air-conditioned cars, work in secure towers, and meet each other – people like us, that is – only in sanitised air-conditioned spaces like coffeeshops and malls. Even our workouts are in the gym rather than on the pavement. We get dog-walkers to walk our dogs. The maids walk our children to the school bus stop. When is the last time we spent an evening in the public park, or even took a walk on the road? The street is something we avoid.

A recent report says that Mumbai has less than 2 sq m of open space per person. That there are 14 million people sharing the 480 sq km of this city, with only 14 sq km, or 2.5% of the city available as open space for parks and gardens. Surely we must reclaim that space, even if it’s only just 2 sq m for each one of us. We should go out of our gated buildings to sit in the public garden. Share the bench with someone else. Walk to the tender coconut stall. Share peanuts with the children. Make friends with the city.

And listen to the music: this is after all a city of great music, from Hindi movies to Zubin Mehta. If only there could be free winter performances during weekends in this city – at the Gateway of India, Horniman circle, Cooperage grounds, Priyadashini Park – by buskers, traditional performers, street theatre groups – surely it would revive our sense of culture, rebuild the sense of community and make a more inclusive city.

It would also be a way to remember and celebrate Mumbai’s great heritage. The Hanging Gardens, a set of terraced gardens on Malabar Hill laid out in 1881, are themselves a living tradition of Mumbai. They are named after Pherozeshah Mehta, also called Ferocious Mehta, or the Lion of Bombay, the lawyer and political leader who contributed so much to the public life of this city. Mehta was the lawyer who defended Arthur Crawford, the city’s first Municipal Commissioner, from charges of financial mismanagement. Mehta also drafted the Bombay Municipal Act, became Municipal Commissioner and chaired the City Corporation. In 1890, presiding over the Indian National Congress, this great leader spoke about the need to build strong communities that could resist attempts to fragment them: “In speaking of myself as a native of this country, I am not unaware that, incredible as it may seem, Parsis have been both called and invited and allured to call themselves, foreigners.”

Memorably, he added, “To my mind, a Parsi is a better and truer Parsi, as a Mohammedan or a Hindu is a better and truer Mohammedan or Hindu, the more he is attached to the land which gave him birth, the more he is bound in brotherly relations and affection to all the children of the soil, the more he recognises the fraternity of all the native communities of the country and the immutable bond which binds them together in pursuit of common aims and objects under a common government.”

How sad it would be if we have lost that spirit, and the sense of community that brought such leaders together in an inspired freedom struggle.

Aged four and a half, and three and a half respectively – and at that age, the halves do matter – my children were starting ‘big school’. At the parents’ orientation the previous evening, anxiety levels had decreased palpably across the auditorium when the school head announced that parents could accompany the child in the school bus for the next three days. That is, one parent could go along, on one leg of the journey, either to school or back. From Monday, the children would go on their own. And yes, the school bus was compulsory for all those residing outside the school’s pin code.

My husband A was much happier with the notion of the school bus than I was. I thought my babies were still… babies. I worried that they would fall off the seat, bump their heads, stick their arms out of the window. I even considered a move into the pin code – with all those high-rises, right next to the school, maybe? – until A pointed out, reasonably enough, that we had just bought a house in the opposite direction – and that it was getting done up for us to move into – and that, therefore, we had no more money to invest in one of South Bombay’s (and India’s, and Asia’s) most expensive real estate neighbourhoods.

A’s view was that the bus ride would make the boys more independent, that they would have a great time, that the school bus was a part of the school experience, and so on. I had heard all this before and was even ready to believe it in principle, but in practice? The thought of letting go of a three-year old’s little hand, helping him adjust his backpack on his small shoulders and watching him disappear into the interiors of the long yellow school bus seemed so final.

Our appointed time was 7:57 am outside the gate of the hospital next door, but we reached ten minutes before. An older boy and girl were already seated by the side of the road, dressed in the t-shirt and shorts that were the school uniform for older children. And they were friendly! I have to admit that their presence gave me a reassuring sense of continuity: my children would wear this yellow t-shirt some day, they would advise other parents on where to wait with their children, they would be part of the school.

I climbed into the bus with my two little boys. I had prepared a mental checklist. Window grills – check. Seat grips – check. Doors that close – check. Kind woman attendant – check. Friendly driver and conductor – they were already teasing the older children good-naturedly – check check!

I looked carefully, but couldn’t find anything to object to. With mixed feelings, I settled back. My kids, who adore bus rides, were already loving it. Behind us, there was the comforting noise of children doing what children are best at: MASTI.

It was a forty-five minute journey to the southern tip of the city. Beginning at Breach Candy, the bus proceeded through Kemps Corner and Nana Chowk, past the August Kranti Maidan and into Girgaum. On a less stressed morning I would have told my children about these locations on Bombay’s freedom trail and the independence movement against the British colonisers; now I was merely watchful. Then through the New Marine Lines and past Churchgate, past the bright green stretch that is Oval Maidan (which my children recognised instantly, for we have often taken our dog there for her evening run), acquiring more and more children along the way, and finally reaching the stretch of reclaimed land by the seashore where the school was located – an oasis of green in the midst of tall buildings.

We emerged from the bus into the bright Bombay sunshine, a rare sunny morning in the midst of the monsoon. My boys excitedly shrugged their backpacks into place and set off, one on each side of me. And then, suddenly, we were in the midst of children and balls. There seemed to be as many balls as children everywhere, being bounced and dodged and tossed to each other. Meanwhile, as anxious mothers stepped reluctantly back from the melee, teachers whisked the younger ones into lines, and the bus staff settled down to have their morning chai. There was something so familiar about all this – I had been here before. It felt like a place I knew well.

It felt like….. school.

The next morning, I did the ride once again; the third morning, I travelled out of town on work, almost forgetting about the bus ride until I got a text message from A. ‘It’s so great,’ he messaged from Girgaum. ‘The boys want to do this on weekends too.”

So now the bus journey has become the highlight of our mornings. The boys wake up early to the sound of Peter, Paul and Mary singing Puff the Magic Dragon. Getting dressed, breakfast over, they are off to meet their newly-acquired “bus stop friends” – not only the other children who get on to the bus from the same stop, their parents and their Didis (nannies), but also the maintenance staff, the “newspaper uncle” and the “security uncle” .Teachers walking up to the nearby international school smile as they walk past.

And then there are the dogs – oh, the dogs! Breach Candy is full of dogs, and they are all, all being walked at a quarter to eight in the morning. It takes my children entire minutes to pet one dog. Now their bus stop friends include a large golden retriever named Joey who promptly settles down to be worshipped; a handsome husky named Ralph who barks indignantly at his handler when he tries to hurry him; and an excitable beagle pup named Snoopy whose only obsession is to jump up and try to snap off the school ID-cards hanging around my children’s necks. The dog’s handlers have also become friends – “Aaj chota baba nahin aaya ?” (Hasn’t the little one come today?) one handler will ask if my younger one isn’t with me, while the other handler will cheerfully offer my older son the husky’s leash.

And so it turns out that we are often fifteen, twenty minutes early for the bus. For me, this time standing on the roadside is a tranquil beginning to the day. I realise how little time we spend on the road: most times, we get in and out of the car in the driveway itself; at other times, even if we walk to the grocery store down the road, it is a purposeful walk to run an errand.

But these few minutes in the morning give us a fresh view of our street. Morning walkers, joggers, milk vans, newspaper boys, coconut-water vendors, dog-walkers, hospital staff, and yes, the other mothers holding juice bottles or practising multiplication tables with their children while waiting to put them into the school bus – for a few minutes, we are all a small morning community. We notice the things that people do outside their usual roles – the security guard reading a newspaper, the dog walker talking on his phone, the traffic policeman bending to pat a dog.

Even the walk up to the bus stop is an adventure. D spots a tiny snail making its way across the driveway, and stops to shift it to the lawn before it gets squashed. M wants to look at the red worms left over from the rains as they slither across the grooves of the interlocking tiles. D wants to know how the pigeons can strut on the tubelight, flapping their feathers, without getting electrocuted. Both the boys stop to check on the beetroot they planted in a pot after gardening class last week.

I still hold my children’s hands while crossing the road. I am watchful when they pat new dogs. On the day of the Book Parade at school, when D is dressed up as Peter Pan and M as Elmer the Patchwork Elephant, and their friend K is dressed up as Krishna the flute-playing – we moms help the children to hold their props in place.

But when the long yellow school bus comes lumbering to a halt in front of us, the conductor jumps down to help the children up, and the smiling woman attendant gets ready to help them to their seats – that’s when I let go of my child’s moist little hand, and let him enter the bus.

Yes, it is final – it is the end of one phase. But it is also the beginning of another phase, for the children who will take the bus for the next twelve years – and for us, the parents who are learning to let go.

It was the last day of June. It was also the last day that D and M would attend nursery school. In August this year, aged a little over four and three years respectively, they moved on to ‘big school’. Incredibly, one phase in their little lives has already drawn to a close.

That day their nursery school sent us an email with two messages. One had the picture of D with his friends at the Kala Ghoda Festival. They had gone there this year on a school trip, and Desh had made a volcano out of clay. ‘We will miss you D…’, reads the message from school. Excursions were a big part of life at playschool. In the three and a half years that he spent there, D has been on a yacht ride, visited a fire station, gone to the Nehru Science Centre, visited the Kala Ghoda Festival, visited the kitchen and laundry rooms at a hotel, patted horses at the Amateur Riders’ Club, gone on numerous nature walks, and done many more things that we parents have realised.

The other picture is of M, hugging our Labrador Glitter. ‘We will miss you, M…’ reads the message. The picture was taken on Pet Day at school. Pet Day is an important part of life at their nursery school. It’s usually held on a bright morning in early March, when the weather is still nice enough for an entire spell out in the garden. The school wears a colourful and festive look as it welcomes its little ones along with their varied pets: sundry terrapins, turtles, goldfish, kittens, budgerigars, even a grey African parrot, and of course numerous dogs. Our previous Labrador Whisky has played a big part in life at the nursery school, letting the toddlers shake paws with him, pat him, check out his tail and even sit on him! Pet Day involves several Labradors, including our one-year old frisky Glitter and the Principal Mrs T’s Lab; another happy dog named Twix; a grand German Shepherd named Rufo; a Basset hound named Max; and more.

I heard one of the teachers, an alumna of the playschool herself and now the well-loved Babies’ Class teacher here, introducing her toddlers’ class to a large friendly Labrador named Anzo, explaining that he eats not only dog food but also ‘rasgullas and what not’! That’s a pretty accurate description of a Labrador. They will eat everything, and they’re eager for more. Children at this nursery school have a similar attitude to life: they are bright, sunshiny, will absorb every experience and are always eager for more.

At playschool, excursions and pet days were all an integral part of learning. Learning meant exploring the world, often literally; it also meant learning about those with whom we share the planet. One morning as I was dropping off my boys I saw a cow being brought to the gate of the school. That morning the children would learn all about the cow, feed her with grass and pat her.

Swimming, ball play, climbing, cooking, gardening, recorder classes, library day, song and dance and P.E. sessions with ‘R Sir’ – were all part of the normal school week. Parents were enlisted to participate in the experience. I have planted philodendrons with the children, examined a snail, made elephant masks, mixed up a ‘healthy bhel’ and poured clotted cream over dozens of little bowls of Mahabaleshwar strawberries. Whenever we went on holiday, we came to playschool to share our pictures and our experiences: instead of us talking, it has been our children who have excitedly shared with their classes the details of their trip.

One of the highlights of our three and a half year interaction with the playschool was the Ramayana performance. To get over a hundred toddlers and preschoolers into costumes, onto a stage and to make them perform – and to do all this with grace, meticulousness, and above all a sense of fun – was nothing short of a miracle.

But then, every day was filled with tiny little miracles at playschool. Somewhere, while patting clay Ganpatis, singing Baby Beluga, wearing firemen’s helmets, and decorating the huge Christmas tree at playschool - somewhere in the midst of this all, the biggest miracle has taken place – our babies have become little boys.

Lisa Catherine Harper on reading banned books to our children.

A mother and her adolescent son came in, and he made a beeline straight for The Invention of Hugo Cabret. She grabbed it from him, thumbed through it, and looked at him sternly. “Why do you want to read this book with all these pages?”

“I heard it was really good.”

She drew a breath and he sat down on an ottoman, already defeated. She went on. “Let me tell you what’s wrong with this book. It’s all pictures. It’s like that other book you were just reading, that whaddyacallit graphic novel, the one with all those pictures, about the mouse?”

After she was quiet, he pulled out a handheld device and began playing games.

Via Huffington Post, from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s commencement address at Barnard College:

[T]he promise of equality is not equality. As we sit here looking at this magnificent blue-robed class, we have to admit something that’s sad but true: men run the world. Of 190 heads of state, nine are women. Of all the parliaments around the world, 13% of those seats are held by women. Corporate America top jobs, 15% are women; numbers which have not moved at all in the past nine years. Nine years. Of full professors around the United States, only 24% are women.

Consider this. A hugely successful film star at the prime of his career is accused of domestic violence. After his wife can endure no more, she files a police complaint. Reports speak of a black eye, cigarette burns and more.

Immediately, the star’s producers, colleagues and fans swing into action. And this is what they do: through the Karnataka Film Producers’ Association (KFPA), the producers decide to target a third person — a female actor from outside the region — for an alleged affair with their highly bankable hero. They issue a “ban” prohibiting her from acting in any Kannada film for three years. Members of the film community sanctimoniously advise a compromise in the family. The fans threaten violence in the city. Meanwhile, the hero, who is denied bail, requires medical treatment and is taken to hospital.

This is the sordid story of Darshan Toogudeep, one of Kannada cinema’s biggest stars. But the story does not end there. After public outrage against the KFPA’s moral policing, the sexist ban on actor Nikitha Thukral is withdrawn. Darshan is discharged from the hospital and returned to custody. And although Darshan’s wife Vijayalakshmi seeks to withdraw her FIR, the case continues and Darshan is denied bail.

Yet the film industry has been curiously reluctant to speak out about domestic violence. This despite allegations that Darshan had been violent with his wife even during her pregnancy; that she needed medical treatment for injuries on a previous occasion; that he has threatened violence against their three-year-old child; and that most recently, he threatened his wife with a loaded gun.

The full thing here.

The winners of the Crossword Vodafone Book Awards 2008 have been announced.

This was the shortlist.

****

The 2009 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize has issued a call for nominations.

Last year’s winner was Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

• Entries may be in any genre: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography, and narrative journalism), and drama.
• All authors from the subcontinent are eligible but their books must be published in India.
• The books must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language.
• Books that have been published elsewhere and have already won prizes are eligible, though less likely to win.
• Vanity press publications are ineligible.

A 3-member advisory board will shortlist 6 books published between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. This year, the board includes writers Anjum Hasan, Zac O’Yeah and poet Jeet Thayil. The shortlisted books will be sent to the 2009 panel of judges: novelist Rana Dasgupta, editor Mukund Padmanabhan and Professor Meenakshi Mukherji.

The winner will be announced in the second half of November and the prize presentation will take place in December 2009. The winner will receive a cash award of Rs One Lakh and a trophy.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust set up by the late writer/editor’s family to keep her memory alive. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages.

For further information, contact shaktibhattprize@gmail.com.

*****

The Inaugural Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
2009

Call for Entries

Entries are invited from young poets in India writing in English for the inaugural

Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize.

The Prize was instituted by the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English and is being administered jointly by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. The prize consisting of a cash award of Rs.10, 000 and a citation will be presented annually at a literary event in Hyderabad in the month of October. The entries will be judged by a distinguished jury of poets and literary personalities.

Entries are invited from all Indian citizens between 20-40 years old and writing poetry in English.

Entries must include:

1. Five (5) different poems written by the applicant;
2. Evidence of age
3. Complete contact information (including phone numbers and email addresses)

Note: Please do not put your name on the poems to be submitted to the jury members.

Entries must reach:

Dr. Aparna Rayaprol
Convener, Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize
c/o Study in India Program
University of Hyderabad
Hyderabad 500046
rayaproltrust@gmail.com

Deadline: September 1, 2009

The winner will be announced latest by the first week of October and arrangements for the travel and accommodation for the person chosen for the award will be made by the Trust and the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.

The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust was started in the year 2000 to perpetuate the memory of the poet and also promote Indian writing in English. Srinivas Rayaprol (1925-1998), the son of the famous Telugu poet Rayaprolu Subba Rao, is considered one of the significant personalities of the early Indian English Poetry in India. His three major volumes of poetry are Bones and Distances, Married Love and Other Poems, and Selected Poems, all published by Writers’ Workshop in Calcutta.

Woke up in the morning to her voice. “Unniye, don’t go on sleeping covered up like that. It’s Monday.” She was calling the eldest son. She then moved to the kitchen, her white sari crumpled. Brought me a big glass of coffee. Then? What happened then? Did she say anything that should not be forgotten? However much he tried, he could not remember. “Don’t go on sleeping covered up like that. It’s Monday.” Only that line lingered. He chanted it to himself, as if it was a prayer. If he forgot it, the loss would be unbearable.

The whole thing here.

Bedtimes are later these days, with the boys picking out different books every night - though it’s D who chooses, and M kind of gurgles along happily. Goodnight Moon is one of the favourites. Then there’s Tiger on a Tree; one of the Clifford books about the dogs making leaf piles. A recent favourite is a Children’s Book Trust book of illustrations by Badri Narayan. And all kinds of other books.

For D, reading is practically the same as singing. “Please, Amma, sing this book…”

Bedtime music is mostly Rahman or one of the Worldspace channels. M likes the Dill 6 soundtrack, especially the Genda Phool song.

On the New Yorker’s books blog, Ligaya Mishan has a post about bedtime reading here.

My grand-uncle T.S.Satyan’s photographs are on display at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Rampart Row, Kala Ghoda. The exhibition came to Mumbai from Tasveer.

Satyan is now 86. He is based in Mysore, but was here for two days for the show opening.

Read this 2002 article by Theodore Bhaskaran about Satyan’s work over here.

And here is something Satyan wrote in 1950.

T.N.Shanbhag, who passed away on February 27 this year, aged 85, was one of India’s great bookmen. He had a simple but clear understanding of the business of books: that there would always be people who wanted to buy them, and that they would buy them as long as they were able to afford them. This was how the legendary Strand discount was born.

It was a simple formula: a flat twenty per cent off on any book in the shop, unless the book was already being sold at a special price. The formula has remained the bookshop’s fundamental principle for over six decades.

Whether you’re a shop regular or a one-time visitor, you never have to remember to insist on the discount or even to ask for it; the person making up the bill will simply include it at the end, neither reluctantly nor with a flourish as if he is doing you a favour, but most matter-of-factly, because it is not just part of the store’s business policy but part of its ethic. They will never try to get away with not giving you the discount.

Shanbhag began his bookshop in 1948, inside the premises of the old Strand Cinema in Colaba from where the shop got its name. He used to call it a “hole in the wall”, but in its location off Pherozeshah Mehta Road in the Fort area, the Strand Book Stall today has the space for several thousand books from all over the world, packed into shelves all the way to the top as well as on the mezzanine floor at the end of a narrow staircase, along with assorted delights from all over India - the latest issue of Biblio, a couple of new arrivals from the Seagull in Kolkata, several slim delights for children from the Chennai-based Tara Books - and, not least of all, several salespersons who arrange themselves unobtrusively alongside the shelves.

Unbelievably, there is even space for a few chairs in case you want to browse. And you’ll never have the salespersons hovering over your shoulder asking if they can help you. They know that if you’re looking for something in particular, you’ll ask them. The rest of the time, you’re left alone.

At any time during the day, one of the salespersons is always on the phone, taking orders for books from the thousands of regular customers: from The Joy of Sex (which must surely be one of their most popular orders) to the new memoir by Azar Nafisi, chances are they’ll already have it tucked away somewhere; if not, they can get it for you, and always at twenty per cent off. Strand regulars also know that the most interesting books are always the ones kept in small piles near the phone with slips of paper tucked into the pages: those are the books that people have specially ordered, and there are almost always some interesting finds there. If you want one of those very badly, then they might just decide to give you the only copy they have and quietly order another one for the other customer.

One of the highlights of every new year, along with the classical music Janfest at St.Xavier’s and later the Kala Ghoda Festival, is the Strand Book Sale. All roads lead to the festive atmosphere of Sunderbai Hall in the New Marine Lines for the two week duration of the display. Inside the great hall is a great hunger for books. Mumbai is not a demonstrative city, and it is careful about getting as much as it can for its money; but inside the Strand sale, you will find ordinary citizens thrilling in the extraordinary experience of walking through a vast hall full of books.

Mumbai is used to crowds, and this one leaves the book-buyers unfazed. Their hands will ache from holding the steel handles of the plastic shopping baskets, but they will move along with the mass of people, criss-crossing the hall like a temple crowd, loading their baskets with books. Moms and dads will alternately babysit their children in the play area outside while the other parent battles through the crowds inside to emerge with their arms laden down with Strand’s well-known plastic bags.

The Strand sale is an inducement to excess, an orgy of book-buying. Nothing seems too expensive, not even when it’s finally your turn in the billing queue and the billing assistant tots up your total in an untidy scrawl over two or three pages of their little white and blue billing books. Then you cross over to the payment counter to get your card swiped, the charge-slip is impaled at the top of a small mountain of charge-slips, and you get the brief, efficient flash of a smile from the normally impassive counter assistant who hands you your bags when you show them your copy of the bill stamped “Paid”.

Did you really buy so many books? Where on earth will you keep them? The questions fleetingly cross your mind. But once a book has gone into one of those orange, blue or red baskets, it will come out only to be paid for, packed into the Strand bags, and opened and read on the long train ride or drive home.

At the launch of the Nano, “a voice-over comparing the car’s introduction to the scaling of Mount Everest, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb.”

Er, the Tiananmen square protests?

…”An Atlas of Impossible Longing” by Anuradha Roy. It’s the story of three generations of a Bengali family in the first half of the twentieth century. There are some lovely things in the book, such as this excerpt.

I admired many things about the film, including the fact that it was made at all. It was uncompromising in what it set out to do.

One of the saddest moments: an elderly musician, Khan Saheb (Naseeruddin Shah) recollects the first time he saw the tomb of Wali Gujarati, and when for a few moments Khan Saheb, Panditji and a little mouse sat together in the hush of the tomb. The question that Khan Saheb seems to be asking is: when Wali’s tomb disappeared during the riots, how much else - graciousness, tolerance - vanished along with it?

Picture above: a young boy returns to the Shah Alam refugee camp after a fruitless search for his father.

Here is a short story by Asghar Wajahat, The Spirits of Shah Alam Camp.

Oh, this little film is such a delight.

Directed by scriptwriter extraordinaire Sooni Taraporevala, with her two lovely kids playing two of the main roles in the film along with Sohrab Ardeshir, Boman Irani, Imaad Shah, and all sorts of dear Bombay faces including Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, Cyrus Broacha, and Kunal Vijaykar.

I read this P.D.James novel for a book club meeting this month. Pity that I ended up not being able to attend the meeting (which was to happen at the newly redone Tea Centre) because I was stuck near the airport, in traffic, after seeing off my father and brother. Sometimes I wonder what we’re doing living in a city where you can’t even predict how long it will take to get from one place to another.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It’s an Adam Dalgleish novel, 14th in the series (and likely to be the last, as Dalgleish occasionally reflects within the novel), and I’ve generally liked reading about this Jaguar-driving detective who is also a published poet. I enjoy reading P.D.James: especially the geography, the rich, detailed landscapes, the intricate descriptions of houses and living spaces (in this case, not only a sprawling Tudor manor in Dorset, but also a cottage on the manor estate, and a narrow London house, in the wonderfully-named Absolution Alley, which has one room on each floor, beginning with mullioned windows on the ground floor and opening out to the sky on the top floor).

Rhoda Gradwyn is an investigative journalist who checks in at an exclusive private clinic in a Dorset country manor for plastic surgery to remove a scar on her cheek. It’s no spoiler when I tell you that she is murdered soon after, because that information is provided to us in the first line of the novel. It looks like the work of an insider, and James provides a variety of suspects, endowing each of them with a detailed back story and, of course, a possible motive. These include the surgeon, George Chandler-Powell (but would he really murder his patient after putting in so much work on reconstructing her cheek?); his assistant Marcus Westhall who is just going off to Africa; Marcus’s sister Candace, who assists at the clinic office, and who was never really very happy with the idea of an investigative journalist coming to Cheverell Manor; and Flavia Holland, the attractive nurse in charge at the clinic. Then there is Helena Haverland, nee Cressett, whose family once owned the manor but who now works here as a general administrator; her old governess, Lettie Frensham, who assists with the bookkeeping at the clinic; Kimberley Bostock, the assistant cook and her very competent husband Dean, who dreams of opening their own restaurant; Sharon Bateman, the girl who helps with the cleaning and who is obsessed with the macabre story of a with-burning at the nearby Cheverell Stones; and Mox, the gardener. Oh, and there’s Robin Boyton, the Westhalls’ cousin and a close friend of Rhoda Gradwyn, who has come to stay in one of the estate cottages during Rhoda’s recovery.

A number of delectable red herrings are strewn along the way, including the fictional plot of another detective novel. The police procedural part of the novel is nicely done, beginning with the phone call that pulls Dalgleish out of his meeting with fiancee Emma Lavenham’s Oscar Wilde-spouting professor father. He is assisted by the intelligent and competent Kate Miskin (though there’s a crying scene that I wish James hadn’t thrust on her) and the very good-looking Benton-Smith.

While the main action is restricted to the manor, the estate and a nearby cottage that becomes the incident room for Dalgleish’s team, I also like the way in which James manages to bring into the novel a number of telling observations about class, race, same-sex relationships, urban violence, and contemporary life. Even characters who appear over just a page or two are vividly sketched: an intelligent priest, a dedicated educator, a bright and professional literary agent.

Quite an achievement for the 88-year old crime writer.

Though our short break in Kodaikanal was anything but quiet, with the two boys making a racket through most of the day and well into the night. Highlights of the trip:

- the children’s delight at seeing the mountains for the first time. D, on seeing a pine tree in the cottage garden: “Very long tree… very nice!” And he loved collecting the pine cones, which he initially thought were a kind of pineapple. M, with his more limited vocabulary: “There! There! There!” pointing to the lake and the boats.
- the peace and calm. Kodaikanal is one of the quiet secrets of the south. Of our five days, we spent one day getting there and another getting back: it’s a two-hour flight to Coimbatore and then a four-hour drive to Kodai. The drive up from Coimbatore is flat and uneventful, except for a series of lazily turning windmills, until we cross Palani. After that, it’s about two gorgeous hours and 14 hairpin bends up the mountains, through some lovely tall green-brown forests.
- the weather, which was completely different on each day that we spent there: actually hot the first day, cool and cloudy the next, then wet and grey, and finally, on the day of our return drive down the hills, clouded with mist.
- the very child-friendly Carlton Hotel, our two adjoining cottages, the spacious grounds, the lovely lake view; the boating, and most importantly, the children’s play area;
- the quick and painless round of sightseeing (Coaker’s Walk, in bright sunshine; the 500-year old tree in the forest; the pine forest; the Suicide Point; the Pillar Rock; the Guna Caves; and, one misty afternoon, the Kurinji Andavar Kovil);
- the slow, winding drives to nearby villages, the superb views, the colours of the forest, the deep valley filling up with mist;
- the home-made chocolates (at Fays); the fried momos (at Tibetan Brothers); the cheese (from Cinnabar, at the Potter’s Shed); the filter coffee and idli-sambar (at the very down-to-earth Astoria, don’t be fooled by the posh-sounding name);
- the bright cheery stuffed toys and stuff, at Kopedeg (especially a large green toy parrot on a wooden perch) and Re’s (little toy animals in Kalamkari fabric);
- hand-knitted sweaters, lavishly embroidered sarees, and handmade jewellery at Corsocks. I even found a little something, embroidered all over with flowers, that was apparently meant to be a dinner roll holder. The saleswoman told me it’s a favourite among their visitors.

*****

As for the title of this post. I managed to catch up with some reading, and one of the books I read was “A Nice Quiet Holiday”, a debut mystery novel by Aditya Sudarshan. The narrator, Anant, is a young law clerk on a hill break with his boss and mentor, a Sessions Judge. But their holiday in the fictional town of Bhairavgarh, in Uttarakhand, is anything but nice or quiet: with a murder, much blood, a court scene, and the town simmering with resentment about an AIDS report published by an NGO. Not sure why the novel is being described as a literary thriller though. It’s a nice quick read at 224 pages. Well structured, with short crisp chapters, an intelligent narrator, and lots of house guests sitting about in a large house on the hillside. I look forward to reading about the Judge and his law clerk again.

Everyone should see this film.

Went to the Strand Book Stall this evening, partly just to make sure it was still there. Silly, I know, and I hadn’t seen the Shanbhags at the shop for months now - but still. I picked up a copy of Roberto Bolano’s 2666, which The Complete Review calls “nearly perfect”; a collection of post-Independence Indian poetry in English edited by Eunice de Souza for the National Book Trust; and a copy of M.C.Chagla’s autobiography, Roses in December, as a 73rd birthday gift for my father. It was a book that my mother had admired greatly. The title comes from a J.M.Barrie quote: “God gave us memory that we might have roses in December.”

Orhan Pamuk will make an appearance in Mumbai this week, reading from his work. Here is the opening of Snow:

The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow.

He’d boarded the bus from Erzurum to Kars with only seconds to spare. He’d just come into the station on a bus from Istanbul—a snowy, stormy, two-day journey—and was rushing up and down the dirty wet corridors with his bag in tow, looking for his connection, when someone told him the bus for Kars was leaving immediately.

He’d managed to find it, an ancient Magirus, but the conductor had just shut the luggage compartment and, being “in a hurry,” refused to open it again. That’s why our traveler had taken his bag on board with him; the big dark-red Bally valise was now wedged between his legs. He was sitting next to the window and wearing a thick charcoal coat he’d bought at a Frankfurt Kaufhof five years earlier. We should note straightaway that this soft, downy beauty of a coat would cause him shame and disquiet during the days he was to spend in Kars, while also furnishing a sense of security.

As soon as the bus set off, our traveler glued his eyes to the window next to him; perhaps hoping to see something new, he peered into the wretched little shops and bakeries and broken-down coffeehouses that lined the streets of Erzurum’s outlying suburbs, and as he did it began to snow. It was heavier and thicker than the snow he’d seen between Istanbul and Erzurum. If he hadn’t been so tired, if he’d paid a bit more attention to the snowflakes swirling out of the sky like feathers, he might have realized that he was traveling straight into a blizzard; he might have seen at the start that he was setting out on a journey that would change his life forever and chosen to turn back.

But the thought didn’t even cross his mind. As evening fell, he lost himself in the light still lingering in the sky above; in the snowflakes whirling ever more wildly in the wind he saw nothing of the impending blizzard but rather a promise, a sign pointing the way back to the happiness and purity he had known, once, as a child. Our traveler had spent his years of happiness and childhood in Istanbul; he’d returned a week ago, for the first time in twelve years, to attend his mother’s funeral, and having stayed there four days he decided to take this trip to Kars. Years later, he would still recall the extraordinary beauty of the snow that night; the happiness it brought him was far greater than any he’d known in Istanbul. He was a poet and, as he himself had written—in an early poem still largely unknown to Turkish readers—it snows only once in our dreams.

Our movie-going has become more regular.

The first film we saw at the new PVR Phoenix was Margazhi Raagam, which had Bombay Jayashri and T.N.Krishna in concert. Pity there was just one other person in the hall.

We also saw Milk, Sean Penn’s best performance.

And The Changeling, quite a disappointment.

And Slumdog Millionaire, about which I have mixed feelings. I found the first half of the film very hard to watch.

Delhi 6, which could have been so good, but was… disastrous.

And the superb Dev D, ab out which I wrote here.

Haruki Murakami’s Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech.

Please do allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “the System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others — coldly, efficiently, systematically.