Indians dominate DSC Prize Longlist

Works of 13 Indian authors, including a writer duo, figure in the longlist of 16 titles for the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature announced today.

Manhad Narula, Ira Pande and Surina Narula at the
announcement of the DSC Prize

The longlist for the USD 50,000 award was chosen from 52 entries which were reviewed by a five-member jury comprising chairperson Ira Pande, Alastair Niven (UK), Fakrul Alam (Bangladesh), Faiza S Khan (Pakistan) and Marie Brenner (US).

The longlisted books include an interesting mix of established as well debut novelists, along with three translated entries, the jury said.

Among the prominent Indian authors longlisted for their works are Manu Joseph (Serious Men), Usha K R (Monkey-man), Tabish Khair (The Thing About Thugs) and Kishwar Desai (Witness the Night).

Commenting on the longlist, Pande said, "This list is an interesting mix of 16 titles chosen after a careful consideration of various styles, languages and subject matter. It reflects the best of the South Asian literary tradition - a wide landscape of rural and urban life, intricate rituals of story-telling and an indication of its evolving form.

"This is the East, seen as it is by some of the most promising novelists of Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, and as it appears to those who live elsewhere."

Full report here Outlook

Money all the way

A family saga, sometimes entertaining, sometimes flagging in energy...

The author of Music Room, Namita Devidayal revisits readers with her second novel Aftertaste, a long engagement of a business family's deep obsession with wealth and abject genuflection in the presence of money and jewellery. The narrative then threads through a saga of resultant folly of greed and the associated toxins that set in with familial relations, where much is compromised ethically.

Themes
The central and recurring leitmotif in the story is money (at times tad overstated). “Money has a mind of its own….like a river it takes its own course. If you try and control it, at some point the bund breaks and the water flows where it wants to.” Aftertaste traces the saga of the Todarmal family's control and flow with the forces of money. Daddyji and Mummyji's lives alternately revel in the scent of wealth or grapple with the vicissitudes of dwindling fortunes. In one dark and down moment Mummyji strikes upon the idea of setting up a Mithai shop as a business venture. Their two sons Rajan Papa (the older, stodgy, feeble- willed) and Sunny (the younger impatient one) join the family trade. The daughters Suman (the beautiful, spoilt one) and Saroj (the younger, reticent one) feed off the family business in more ways than one.

Full report here Hindu

Money and mithai

Namita Devidayal's latest book Aftertaste takes readers into the fascinating world of the Marwari business community, where money is king

It's about food, family, money, mithai and manipulation… Namita Devidayal's second novel, Aftertaste, the deliciously wicked saga of a Baniya family, is very different from her much-acclaimed debut novel “The Music Room”, set in the stately world of Hindustani classical music.

And not everyone is happy about that.

“It's a problem in our country with slotting — either you're a ‘serious writer' writing about classical music, or you're a ‘light writer' in the mould of Chetan Bhagat,” she said at the launch of Aftertaste in Landmark recently. “Now people expect me to write another book on the classical arts, but I just wanted to have fun with this book, and wanted readers to have fun as well.”

Aftertaste takes you into the fascinating world of the Marwari business community, where money is king. “This is a unique world one has no access to, a world where the currency of all emotion and exchange is money,” said Namita, a Mumbai-based journalist. “To me it's as amazing as the world of Indian classical music.”

Full report here Hindu

Food for thought

Enid Blyton has been the founding stone on which several writers have built their careers and it was no different for Namita Dayal. “I think I have always enjoyed creating and exploring different worlds and making up stories in my head,” says Namita, about a habit that was probably supplemented by all the Amar Chitra Kathas and Enid Blytons that dominated a large portion of her staple reading diet.

Namita was in town for the launch of her latest book, Aftertaste in Landmark. . Set in the 60's, this book follows the drama around a dysfunctional joint family on the verge of bankruptcy. The book is fiction with features Namita has stolen from real life.

Namita had an upbringing that balanced her parallel lives with precision; a modern school and western standards of education with a very traditional gurukul world of Hindustani classical music, and it was in this miraculous world of classical music she found her first book, The Music Room, which Pandit Ravi Shankar called a must read for every musician and music lover.

Full report here Hindu

Money, mithai and Mummyji

Mere paas ma, mithai aur money hai – could have been the sub title of Namita Devidayal’s Aftertaste, a riveting tale of a dysfunctional bania family. The Todarmal’s mithai business has been their personal route to salvation and appeasement to the gods of money. Only for the dysfunctional brood, by the second generation, none of this seems to have helped much.

Aftertaste
Namita Devidayal
Random House
Rs 399; Pp 292

Commerce and literature have not really been the best of friends, especially in India. While most Indians worship wealth in some ways, few have taken it to the levels of sophistication that the bania community has. With bahikhatas rather than books as their favoured written content, not many outside bothered to decipher the social mores of this community beyond perceiving them to be sharp traders with a reputation for tightfistedness. Just Neelima Dalmia Adhar's Merchants of Death and Himani Dalmia's Life is Perfect come to mind.

Devidayal upholds the stereotype – the Todarmals are migrants – from Punjab to Bombay of the early 1960s, they are innovative in their business, they follow business practices not taught at MBA courses, and business, family and honour are intermingled in a tangled web – and none can be disturbed without impacting the others. Money is a character in itself. “Money has a mind of its own, which is what a clever businessman should realize, though most do not… Above all money despises arrogance. And that was the price Daddyji was paying for his vanity.” Daddyji’s standing in as a guarantor for cousin Phoolchand provides the catalyst for the family’s fortunes to dip, and till Mummyji comes up with the idea of selling mithai, there is little for Daddyji to do in their world of honour-driven enterprise.

Along with the parents and the four siblings – Rajan Papa, heir to the throne, ineffectual and forever in need of Mummyji; Sunny, brash, unwilling to settle for a settled business, and with a complicated personal life; fair Suman, the arrogant princess and forever-in-the-shadows younger daughter Saroj – there are a host of minor characters who bring alive this fairly insular world. “One day slipped into another but nothing changed for the family. Newspapers carried monumental news about China accusing India of supporting Tibet and the city of Bombay being split into two states, Maharashtra and Gujarat. But for most people, there was very little interest in such distant issues. The only thing that mattered for families such as the Todarmals was the ebb and flow of money.”

Devidayal seems to have been drawn to the quirkiness – it is money that determines that Saroj should no longer stay with her husband, out of favour in his own family, and therefore unlikely to inherit anything substantial. It is again money that ensures that Mummyji takes no stand even when Bhatija keeps her supplied with money but not Rajan Papa, putting his life in considerable turmoil. Suman’s overt spiritual meetings to overcome material needs is amusingly contrasted with her covert greed for Mummyi’s legendary diamonds. The Todarmals may not be lovable, their life story certainly makes for an entertaining read. The author brings alive facets of how the family dynamics works, complete with insecurities and jealousies – when Daddyji decides to name their shop in Kalbadevi ‘Bimmo di barfi’, Mummyji’s first thought is one of pleasure as the move would undoubtedly annoy her mother in law. The mother fixation, common to Indian males well beyond the community under spotlight here, finds ample play.

Equally noteworthy are the detailed period descriptions of Bombay of the 1960s and 70s. Descriptions of Kalbadevi, where “most of the business was conducted on gaddis...” to the shadowy lives of clubs, hash, discos. “The conservative party bleated relentlessly about propriety, sobriety, fidelity, and modesty, but Bombay winked back and did exactly the opposite. It was bad and it was really good.” The novel begins with Mummyji in hospital, and is in flashback. All the lead characters get enough space for their back stories.

A delightful blend of lyrical prose and gossip, strategies and insecurities, ambitions and limitations, desires coupled with frustrations, of families doing business by the old codes hesitantly under question.

Devidayal’s love for music seems to have spilled over from the first book, the part biographical The Music Room. So their uncle Phoolchand, actually Mummyji’s distant cousin and Daddyji’s close friend, sought out the young Ameer Khan, while “Geeta Dutt’s chirpy songs would forever remind them of those miserable days” cooped up in their home, the optimistically named Cozy Villa. Songs from Aradhana play in the backdrop, while Lata Mangeshkar sang at Birla Matoshri at a fund raiser for Bangladesh war veterans. It is food however that becomes the theme and the metaphor for the dysfunctional lives. Hot jalebis, crisp phaphda, pitthi puris with rasse wale aloo, kachoris, fresh barfis, Bimmo di barfi and later avatar, Bimz had it all and more when Mummyji had the idea of customizing – from Bournvita barfis to sweets shaped as company logos, her ideas kept taking their reputation, and wealth, forward. Almost every domestic situation has food, if not as its central focus, at least on the peripheries. Weight watchers, beware. For readers who have inadvertently picked up this book – there is no way you are going to be able to not accompany the reading with some of the delectable Bimz mithai, or its equivalent nearest mithaiwala around the corner.

BLURB
“Their families belonged to the trader community–the banias–known for their formidable business acumen, where the boys were taught their multiplication tables in quarters. At some point, they may or may not have come from Marwar in Rajasthan but, over the years, they had dispersed all over the country, following the smell of money. The Todarmals had long adopted the language, food, and dress of their adopted home in Punjab. Yet, their identity was bania first and they continued to intermarry within this diasporic business community.”
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Full review in Business India

Savouring the ordinary

As anyone interested in books and reading would know, the past decade and a half has seen a plethora of books by young Indian authors writing in English. And if they're not writing about the mind-numbing details of what goes on in that peculiarly twenty-first century phenomenon; the call centre, they're writing about the Great Indian Family with all its hierarchies, idiosyncrasies and traditions. With a few exceptions, these families are almost exclusively north Indian - and by that I mean Punjabi, confined to the socio-geographical space of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana. Namita Devidayal's Aftertaste is no exception.

Set in the Bombay of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Aftertaste focuses on the Todarmal family - Daddyji, the family patriarch, Mummyji, the matriarch who reigns supreme and runs the family, ordering her children and husband's lives around like pawns on a chessboard and their children - Rajan Papa, the eldest, forced to grow up early and shoulder familial and business responsibilities, Suman, spoilt, eternally discontented, beautiful and greedy, Saroj, dark, shy and a bundle of insecurities and finally Sunny, the youngest, who never quite grew up. The family fortunes are centred on the thriving sweet shop they own in Kalbadevi, Bimmo di Barfi (later shortened to the more modern 'Bimz' by Sunny) - named after Mummyji as a tribute to her position in the family as well as the fact that without her brainwave and enterprise, the shop would never have seen the light of day.

Full report here Businessworld

Sweet and sour family feuds

Some novels are worth reading simply because you learn so much from them. About a city, or a community, or a group of people, or a certain kind of business. About the food, the clothes, the social practices, even the sexual urges of that group. Namita Devidayal's Aftertaste is one of those novels.

That's not to say the story doesn't take you along on its own strength. Despite some early buzz about its being modelled on the relationships and faultlines between the three Ambanis - Dhirubhai, Mukesh and Anil - its canvas is far more modest: the lives of a business family of mithaiwallahs. Sure, there are a few superficial coincidences - in Devidayal's book, too, there are feuding brothers and the death of the person who controlled the business. But superficial is the operative word.

The story, on the face of it, is about how Mummyji, the matriarch of the family, built up a sizeable business - first inspiring and goading her husband and, then, taking over the reins herself after his death; and about how both her sons - and daughters, and everyone whose lives revolved around her in one way or another - prove weak and, in their own respective ways, avaricious. Using an innovative structure that starts with the matriarch’s collapse and then recounts the events leading up to it - going far back into personal histories - Devidayal tells an absorbing story that sucks you in just like the oversweet syrups coating the sweets she describes in loving detail.

full report here IBNLive

Ties that gag and bind

A member of a traditional business family writes her second novel, about a dysfunctional family in the mithai business. Gita Piramal is no stranger to this milieu, and she explores its unique dynamics

A novel deserves to be read only if it helps us discover a facet of ourselves or reminds us of a universal truth.

In the airport action thriller genre, Jeffrey Archer’s latest book, A Prisoner of Birth, traces the journey of an underprivileged football-mad lad who overcomes his enemies. He gains the upper hand by investing in himself. He finds a fellow jailbird who teaches him to read. This kickstarts a programme of self-education.
The stupendous global success of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series lies in the exploration of our deepest and most secret fears. Children and adults alike find comfort in reading that others too are prey to similar anxieties.

Before I come to the exploration within Aftertaste, Namita Devidayal’s second novel, let me tell you its outline. The novel opens in the mid-1970s and ends in 1984, the year Indira Gandhi was assassinated after the assault on the Golden Temple. In Bombay (as the city was then called), a Punjabi family of two parents and four children is struggling with bankruptcy. Mummyji steps in to save the day with her cooking. A mithai empire is born.

The father dies. Mummyji holds her family together with bribes of money, endless food and adoration. Her eldest son, Rajan Papa, is weak and ineffectual, and short of cash. Sunny, the dynamic head of the business, has an ugly marriage, with a hysterical wife and a demanding mistress. Suman, the spoilt beauty of the family who whiles her time away giving religious discourses and leading prayer meetings, is hypocritically determined to get her hands on Mummyji’s pair of seven-carat diamond ear studs. Saroj is the unlucky sister, dark where Suman is fair, and unable to stand up for herself. Each one of them wants Mummyji to die.

Full report here Business Standard

Chronicler of memory

The seeds of Aftertaste lie in the community she belongs to and a way of life that has almost disappeared, says author Namita Devidayal. Excerpts from an exclusive interview…

Having entered the literary arena with a semi-biographical offering, The Music Room, journalist-author Namita Devidayal now woos her readers with Aftertaste, a work of fiction about a trader family ruled by an iron-fisted matriarch. All is well till geriatric debilitation sets in but the hidden agendas, malice, and unfulfilled expectations (along with, hitherto unexposed shades of love and care) that get exposed give the reader an interesting glimpse into themoorings of a joint family. Namita Devidayal talks about how this book came about and her experience writing it…

How easy or difficult was the transition to fiction?
One of the many gems I got from being inside the ‘music room' was what the legendary singer Kesarbai once reportedly told my guru Dhondutai while teaching her: “You should develop different facets of your personality, girl. Sometimes, one part of you should not be able to tolerate the other. That's what makes a woman mysterious, unpredictable, and even bizarre.” This is the imperative that perhaps explains how I was able to seamlessly move from the magical, lyrical space of a musical memoir into a slightly dark narrative about a dysfunctional Indian business family. It wasn't difficult at all. Both books flowed quite naturally for me.

I think there is a tendency for both writers, and readers, to pigeon-hole themselves in genres. I have strong views that we must have the confidence to explore all parts of our writing — and reading personality — and be able to enjoy a work of ‘high literature' (whatever that means) as much as a light flip story, without judgment or precondition.

Full interview here Hindu