These songs do not die

Could a region as varied as Southasia expect anything other than today’s dizzying cornucopia of literary creations?

Southasian literature, in its many voices, languages and avatars, retains an underlying warp and woof of cultural connectivity. Each country of the Subcontinent has its own political and emotive narrative and its own unique stories to share. Linguistic histories, colonial experiences (or resistance to them), and traumas such as Partition and conflict have fermented and matured the writing of each of our countries and societies. The Empire left – but left its language, literature and genres behind. The phrase, ‘A language is a dialect with an army and a navy’ first came into use via the linguist Max Weinrich. In a linguistically diverse set of cultures, the Queen’s English asserted a hegemonic sway.

While Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) was a watershed that impacted how the world viewed Southasian writing, the author’s magical prose also transformed the way this writing looked at itself. Although some critics categorised it as a valorisation of the ‘post-colonial exotic’, Pico Iyer’s famous essay ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ described it as ‘a call to free spirits everywhere to remake the world with imagination’, opening up ‘a new universe by changing the way we tell stories and see the world around us.’ The voice of Saleem Sinai, Rushdie’s main character, reclaimed the spoken sounds of the Bombay streets into English literary usage. The sinuous stylistic flow also reflected the texture and grain of Urdu, which is an important part of Rushdie’s literary inheritance.

Full report here Himal

Mystique of Mumbai

In her book City of Gold: The Biography of Bombay, Gillian Tindal evoked an image of a nascent city, a tangle of masonry, bazaar and tram lines forging into the swamp. In books set in more recent times (India: A Million Mutinies Now, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, Shantaram, Bombay and Mumbai: The City In Transition), we see a proud metropolis hollowed out by desperation, violent self assertion and crime. For a sense of how ordinary people, rich, poor and middle class, negotiate this turbulent landscape, we have the writings of Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Chandra, Anita Desai, Amit Chaudhuri, Manil Suri and a host of less widely celebrated but much beloved local authors and poets. This treasure trove notwithstanding, one feels, there is still much to be said, much more to be understood about this great and complex city. And it is with pleasant anticipation that one greets Gyan Prakash’s Mumbai Fables.

Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton professor of history at Princeton University whose previous books include weighty titles such as Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (1990) and Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (1999). But with Mumbai Fables, a subject he says has preoccupied him for much of the last decade, he seems to have tapped into a less theoretical and more personal register. Explaining his motivation early on in the book, he describes Mumbai, or Bombay, as it then was, as an object of immense fascination and longing for him as a young boy growing up in Patna.

Full report here Indian Express

Satire to savour

Humorous, subtle, wicked… a combination that makes the book a good read.

Serious Men; Manu Joseph;
Fourth Estate; Rs.499

After Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger we have yet another novel on Indian satire, Manu Joseph's debut Serious Men. With its provocative wit, realistic portrayal of characters and humour, the book is a sure winner. Manu Joseph's novel hammers in the hopelessness, boredom and desperate ambitions of suburban Dalit community in Bombay, and he weaves an interesting and funny satire on the academia of science, love and revenge. Relationships form an important part of the novel and Manu provides a stark insight into the workings of the human mind. He strings together the powerful, comic and pungency of eccentric people who are blind instruments of a dominant passion for quick money, fame and social aggrandisement.

Storyline
The devious Ayyan Mani is stuck in a boring job as personal assistant to the head astronomer named Arvind Acharya, at the Institute of Theory and Research, Bombay. Acharya is powerful, conceited and intelligent but too engrossed in his own scientific world. Although Mani belongs to the Dalit community, he is not subdued but one who stands out in a world moved by self interest and political design. Wanting to associate himself with the heightened sense of life and fulfillment he draws up a concoction of events and surreptitiously achieves his goals. Mani spins an outrageous fiction around his partially deaf, ten- year- old son Adi, forcing him to say things like, “Prime numbers are unpredictable, D-e-c-i-m-a-l s-y-s-t-e-m and Fee bon a chi” Into this kind of plot, however another dubious character Oparna , the attractive young astrobiologer is introduced. Acharya is enamoured by her and soon his fiefdom and Mani's politics begin to surface. Acharya's career is shattered by an office scandal and he is accused of forging scientific data. It is here that the suspense builds up and one marvels at the author's treatment and superb flexibility in the psychological development of the dramatic situation.

Full review here Hindu

Green books

The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) is using books to bring children and youth closer to nature

Rare and valuable wildlife books are being distributed in schools, colleges and social service organisations, under Project Wildlife Book Donation for Institutions.BNHS last week distributed its first collection worth Rs 96,650 among students of 10 municipal and government-aided schools. The books were sponsored by BNHS life member Dr Mrudula Thakkar. The aim is to create environmental awareness among the city’s youth.

“We launched the project on September 14, and our Conservation Education Centre (CEC) in Goregaon donated 10 sets of 13 books each to schools that can’t afford them. In our next step in October first week, we will cover 30 schools, colleges and NGOs and Dr Thakkar will donate nearly Rs 3 lakh,” said Sachin Chorge, education officer, CEC.

Full report here Indian Express

Love in Mumbai and London

Two quests for the right partner--north of Mumbai and in north London

If there is one good thing about a job that involves reading piles of bad books, it is that once in a while comes a story that is so exquisitely plotted, researched and written that it blots out the bad memory of all the trash you have read. Anosh Irani’s Dahanu Road is that book. Set in Dahanu, the chikoo-growing suburb of Mumbai, Irani tells a tale of three generations of Iranis—Shahpur, Aspi and Zairos. It is a story of intertwined destinies and uncomfortable class divisions crafted in an unapologetic voice.

In 1920, Shahpur Irani, a 10-year-old boy, escapes Muslim persecution and flees to India with his father. Eighty years later, at the turn of the millennium, he is a grand old seth, the owner of acres of chikoo farms that employ the local Warli tribals. Dahanu Road begins with the suicide of Ganpat, a worker on the farm. Zairos, Shahpur’s 20-something grandson who discovers the body, is left to deal with the family of the deceased. He meets Ganpat’s daughter Kusum, who’s married to an abusive drunk, and finds himself irresistibly attracted to her. Zairos breaks the century-old class rules and upsets the delicate balance of the fair-skinned Iranis and the sun-hardened Warlis not because he pursues his passion for Kusum, but because he cares for her.

Full review here Mint

Dahanu Road is an epic love story

Dahanu Road by Anosh Irani is an irreverent, epic love story about three generations of the Irani clan, Zoroastrians who fled persecution from Iran to Bombay.

Published by HarperCollins, the book will be released by Shiamak Davar in New Delhi today. The plotline is engrossing - Zairos is a dissolute young landowner’s son living in the town of Dahanu, just outside Bombay, when his life of careless luxury is brought up short by a mysterious death: the sudden suicide of Ganpat, a tribal worker on his family’s estate. Soon he has fallen in love with Ganpat’s daughter, Kusum, and finds himself defying taboos with their relationship. At the same time, his grandfather, Shapur, reveals to him the story of their family and of the land that Zairos stands to inherit.

Dahanu Road brilliantly reveals the history of the relationship between the landowning Irani clan and the Warlis, local tribal people like Ganpat and Kusum who work the land for the Iranis. As Zairos’ connection with Kusum deepens, he is drawn further into the mystery of Shapur’s relationship with Ganpat and the other Warlis. Violence and hatred echo through history, and Zairos learns the terrible truth his grandfather has spent a lifetime hiding.

Full report here Spicezee

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.”
Page 28 


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

A halo on the hazier ideas of India

Where symbolism & mystery take precedence over matters of strategy

“It was …18 February 1946 ... An English officer in a sparkling white naval uniform arrived...at the Commissariat building [on the Bazaar Gate Street of then Bombay]...'Where are the stairs to the terrace?' he bellowed...someone pointed to the rear of the office...the curious crowd swelled, their eyes on the officer as he clattered up the stairs. Suddenly, there was a crashing sound followed by silence...The English officer lay sprawled at an ungainly angle, his arms and legs still flailing in their final throes...”

The officer's death, says the author of the book under review, “symbolised a new beginning for an old nation.” Or, as he puts it more explicitly, “As the significant events of 18 February 1946 unfolded, [Vinayak Damodar] Savarkar's primary goal of liberating the country was achieved...”

The preface opens with the assertion: “History is always written with an agenda.” The proposition is true. Even if the word “agenda” is avoided for its objectionable associations, history is certainly written from a certain viewpoint and Operation Red Lotus itself provides an example. It is a viewpoint that runs counter to the vision of India's freedom struggle, from 1857 to its fruition, however flawed, on August 15, 1947. Parag Topé makes no secret of the fact that he shares V.D. (or ‘Veer') Savarkar's viewpoint or “agenda:” The Maharashtrian founder of the Hindutva ideology was surely the first to present a non-colonial account of 1857 and his The History of the War of Independence (published in Marathi in 1909) did serve to question the simplified and/or motivated view of the revolt as a Sepoy Mutiny.

Full report here Hindu

A city’s consciousness

Sharply etched portraits of Mumbai and its people trapped in a plot of contrived ends

On almost every page of Saraswati Park, Anjali Joseph’s debut novel, named for the block of flats in which the three central characters live, the calmness of the narrative appears to be a build-up to an explosive finale. Detailing with meticulous attention what each of the three does as they go about their daily lives, the storyline is so front-loaded with possibilities that a crisis, even a catastrophe, seems inevitable.

This is reinforced all the more by the choice of Mumbai as a setting. The placid prose—not as ultra slo-mo or as up close to the subject as Amit Chaudhuri’s, but definitely a reminder—is almost a set-up for the seemingly mundane lives of Mohan, his wife Lakshmi and his nephew Ashish to intersect with one of the many violent events to have befallen the city. So it is both a relief and a disappointment that nothing of the sort happens—despite the (unintentional?) red herrings in the form of Ashish wandering past Leopold Café and the Gateway of India late one evening.

Full report here Mint

Reliving extraordinary tales of ordinary lives

On March 19, 1935, Munshi Premchand, from his temporary home at Hindu Colony in Dadar, wrote to his friend Hashamuddin: " Mumbai is a very commercial city and the climate here doesn't suit me. I am leaving it soon.'' After spending just nine months in the city where he wrote a film called Mazdoor, Premchand returned to his hometown Varanasi, dejected and disappointed. He died there the very next year.

Ironically, the city which failed to fascinate the legendary writer is outperforming even his hometown Varanasi and his nearby ancestral village, Lamahi, to commemorate his 130th birth anniversary, which fell on July 31. Director Mujeeb Khan is set to stage ‘Prem Utsav' from August 1 to August 10, which features 54 shows based on as many stories from Premchand's rich oeuvre-304 short stories, 14 novels and three plays.

The father of modern Hindi-Urdu literature, Premchand became the common man's writer simply because he had his finger on his pulse. "Before Premchand, Hindi-Urdu writers either depicted escapist fantasies or wrote about the elite. Premchand talked about the poor peasantry, the exploitative, decadent feudal system of early 20th-century India,'' says the 50-year-old, bearded Khan who, for the last five years, has virtually lived with Premchand's stories.

Full report here Times of India 

Tolerance level has gone down, High Court rues

 The tolerance level of the people has gone down, the Bombay High Court  on April 20 remarked while dealing with a petition filed by an author who is facing criminal case for using the term 'Ghati'.

Marzban Shroff, the author of story-collection Breathless In Bombay, is facing a criminal case for using
the word 'Ghati' in one of the stories in the book. The word is used in Mumbai for referring to Maharashtrians, in a slightly derogatory sense.However, Shroff, who is seeking quashing of the criminal
complaint, maintains that he never meant to insult any community, and the word has been used in the fictional
dialogue.

Justice V M Kanade, himself a Maharashtrian, seemed to agree with the author. "Ghati is common slang word. For every community there are such words," the judge observed."There are many such words for Parsis, but they don't mind it. The unfortunate part is that our tolerance level has gone down," Justice Kanade said.

Criminal complaint against Shroff was filed by one Vijay Murdas, an activist. Earlier, police had informed the High Court that they had closed the case.

Full report here PTI

Welcome to Bombay, circa 1850!

Meet Deepak Dalal and allow him to take you on a tour of the Sahyadri mountains and Bombay in the mid 19th century.

If you are one of those who loves to travel and also to read, you must have read the novels by Deepak Dalal.

From his first book, Lakshadweep Adventure, (1997), Dalal has taken his readers to a different part of India with every story — a wildlife sanctuary in Ranthambore Adventure; the snow-capped heights of Ladakh in Ladakh Adventure and its sequel, Snow Leopard Adventure; and to the heart of a tribal way of life in Andaman Adventure.

As the names suggest, at the heart of each story is an intriguing adventure surrounding two teenagers, Vikram and Aditya. Hence, the series is also called the Vikramaditya Series.

In May, Dalal will come out with his next story after seven years. It is called Sahyadri Adventure and is set in the Sahyadri mountain range in Maharashtra. The first book is called Anirudh's Dream, while the second is Koleshwar's Secret.

Full report here Hindu

Mumbai meri jaan

In her introduction to Theatre of Conflict, City of Hope, Mariam Dossal writes, “Few cities have been blessed with more by Nature”. She points to its location between mountains and sea, the annual monsoon, the natural port and other pleasures like Bombay Duck and Alphonso mangoes.

Well, I like my Hapus as much as the next Mumbaikar, but this strikes me as well-meaning hype. Mumbai’s location has advantages, like the port, but it also has real drawbacks: those mountains, for example, have historically cut the city off from its hinterland. But above all, there’s the absurd way in which this megapolis is squeezed onto scraps of land, a basic reason behind Mumbai’s incessant battles over land which are the real subject of Dossal’s book.

Anyone familiar with Mumbai knows how almost any city issue — entertainment options, school facilities, sports prowess — comes down to real estate problems in the end. This book shows how such disputes stretch back to its founding, right from the gift that the Portuguese made of it to the British. The local Portuguese, who were not consulted, were appalled and did their best to stymie matters by insisting the gift was restricted to the main island called Bombay, and not the full seven islands.

Full report here TOI Crest

What Indians can’t write–and why

There are three kinds of fiction that Indian writers can’t write: good crime thrillers, good romance (adult kind, in which sex is not “lofty breasts” and “stars in the sky”) and fiction for young adults. So that leaves us readers with literary fiction, pulp fiction and of course, the ubiquitous campus novel. By the way, a really cool crime title which Hachette India is publishing is by Lounge columnist, the more Bangalorean-and-less-Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah. His book ‘Scandanavistan’ is a spy thriller set in a futuristic Europe colonized by India!

When  I last visited my favourite bookstore Landmark (finally, Landmark opens this side of town, in Lower Parel), Martin Amis, Susan Sontag and Vikram Seth sat alongside each other in the literary fiction shelves. The new releases section had a dizzying variety of books. There was no separate section for cime, but in popular fiction, there was Swedish fiction, Raymond Chandler and John Le Carre. The only Indian authors here was Kalpish Ratna—they never got to me although their crime stories are soaked in very local Bombay flavours.

There was no category for young adults. In the children’s books section, there was the phenomenally successful ‘Twilight’ series and the usual sci-fi and fantasy titles. What do teenagers and young adults who don’t like sci-fi or fantasy or love stories revolving handsome vampires, read?

Full report here Mint

Hype city: How many books does Mumbai merit?

In his book review for the Sunday Times of India, Vikram Doctor makes an interesting point. While comparing the last two books about the city to be published he stops to wonder, like we sometimes do, at this "incessant output" of books and diaries on or about Bombay/Mumbai over the years."Why does this city, of all cities in India, feel the endless need to market and mythologise itself?" he asks.

Especially when, "anyone familiar with Mumbai knows how almost any city issue - entertainment options, school facilities, sports prowess - comes down to real estate problems in the end. This book shows how such disputes stretch back to its founding, right from the gift that the Portuguese made of it to the British. The local Portuguese, who were not consulted, were appalled and did their best to stymie matters by insisting the gift was restricted to the main island called Bombay, and not the full seven islands."

"Perhaps it is the secret feeling," Doctor proffers, "that far from being naturally ordained...[Mumbai's projection as a superior city] has always been something of a confidence trick, a realtor’s prospectus, and hence the hype must never stop."

Full report here CNNGo

Under construction - The great Delhi novel

Drawing a literary map of Bombay, or Calcutta, is a relatively straightforward exercise: writers fall into neat categories, and time periods, and claim their neighbourhoods easily.

But as a recent collection of writings on Delhi indicates, this is the original Trickster City. In most of its centuries, Delhi has hosted more writers than it has nurtured them: the Capital has been the resting place, the halt between stages of a writer’s career rather than the inspiration for great writing. Foreign correspondents and old Asia hands pass through Dilli on their way to Ayodhya or Kashmir or Maoist Chattisgarh.

After the last mushaira in Bahadur Shah Zafar’s time, Delhi has housed poets, but there has been no great outpouring of Delhi poetry — nothing to match Bombay’s line-up of Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawala and Jeet Thayil.

Full report here Business Standard

Mumbai court orders probe into Shroff’s book

Despite an order from the Bombay High Court in his favour, trouble for Murzban Shroff, author of Breathless in Bombay, is far from over as a local court in Mumbai has now directed the city police’s crime branch to investigate if the book promotes communal disharmony.

The city police had lodged a case against Shroff for allegedly inciting communal disharmony by addressing Maharashtrians as ‘Ghaati’ (lowly) in his book.

Shroff had approached the High Court seeking to quash the FIR lodged against him. Justice S. C. Dharmadhikari had observed that Mr. Shroff was just an author and not a trouble maker.

The N. M. Joshi Marg police station had informed the High Court that “they did not find any reason to prosecute the author and there is nothing offensive in the said book.”

Full report here Hindu

REVIEW: The Quarantine Papers

REVIEW

The Quarantine Papers
Kalpish Ratna
HarperCollins India
Rs. 499
Pp 340
ISBN: 9788172239145
Hardback

Blurb
As the Babri Masjid is razed in Ayodhya, brick by ancient brick, Ratan Oak stumbles upon a corpse at the Kipling House in Bombay. It is the beginning of an unraveling for him, of the submerged identity he has sought to suppress all his life: that of his great-grandfather, Ramratan Oak.

Grappling with this tandem existence, Ratan realizes that the communal violence which consumes his city mirrors the turbulence it experienced in Ramratan's times. For, concealed in the scientific discoveries of the plague epidemic of 1897 is the terrifying truth about the dead woman of Kipling House. A novel that perfectly balances character and pace, The Quarantine Papers dissects the compulsions of a hate that corrupts, as it trails a doomed love story from nineteenth century Bombay into our own day.

Reviews
Said A Pustule Outlook
That rare thing: a literary thriller, with the quality of producing a sensation of vulnerability. 

The Quarantine Papers is a masterful narrative: a thriller, a love story, a pathological view of history, a scrambled puzzle, a deeply disturbing morality tale, an account of the Bombay plague of 1896-98, the forgotten epidemic that marked India’s first direct collision between modern science and an epidemic.The story begins on the day of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and moves menacingly through the backwash of sectarian rhetoric and violence that followed. It focuses on the life and encounters of Ratan Oak, a Maharashtrian Brahmin and freelancing microbiologist, who is given to hallucinations. A second narrative emerges with Ratan Oak’s—a plague chronicle from Bombay of the late 19th century, when fear of death by disease settled over the city like a frozen blanket, and a small, lonesome squad of pathologists investigated the pestilence.

Terror And The Minibus Tehelka
On December 6, 1992, Ratan Oak is forced out of the apathy caused in part by his father’s illness and the defection of his wife. He is also propelled into the embrace of another mind he shares his body with. A mind that he realises, in this violent, concussed week, is the mind of his great-grandfather Ramratan Oak, a brilliant young doctor who married outrageously a young widow and even more outrageously, chose to love her. A bloody cross-section of the city emerges in this twin narrative, its capillaries strumming with cruelty and impossible love. Star-crossed lovers and idealists emerge in every generation that Ratan uncovers through his fragmented alter-memories. Unfortunately for the reader, the cast is a little too populated to keep track of easily and after a while you give up trying to keep track. You like Ratan and Ramratan so you are there for the ride. This is the first of the Ratan/Ramratan books so there are definitely many more intriguing history lessons to be had. And perhaps in the next book, the prose will not jar as it switches (almost from page to page) from lush, knowing passages to bare, journeyman competence.

Mumbai teri jaan Hindustan Times 
If The Quarantine Papers by Kalpish Ratna has a major flaw, it’s this: it turns you into an antisocial element. I foolishly began reading it on a Thursday evening. The next day, I deeply resented the need to go to the office, deeply resented having to go out for a drink, deeply resented everyone who phoned me, deeply resented everything that kept me away from the book.

Naturally, this made my work and relationships hell for a while, but it did bring some sunshine into a couple of people’s lives. Namely Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed, surgeons, writers and the two halves of the duo that comprise the pseudonymous writer, Kalpish Ratna. “It vindicates us as the authors of the book,” says Syed.

Why The Quarantine Papers should require vindication is beyond me. It is a gripping, highly textured, very solid novel that had drawn me wholesale into its world(s) and even now, three weeks since I finished the book, I hate being away from it.

Timeout Mumbai 
For much of The Quarantine Papers, the new novel by authors Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed, the reader hovers around hospitals and dead bodies. If there’s one emotion that surfaces repeatedly, it is hatred. However, Swaminathan and Syed, who write together under the pen name Kalpish Ratna, see the book a little differently. “It is, at heart, a love story on many levels – we have counted seven,” they wrote in an email interview with Time Out. “At its simplest, it is the story of our love affair with the city of Mumbai.” At its most complicated, The Quarantine Papers is a labyrinthine descent into plague. The bubonic epidemic that ravaged Mumbai in the nineteenth century acts as a parallel to the communal variety that scarred the city in 1992. Trapped in a limbo between the two is Ratan, the book’s main character.

If people want me to perform, I will: Biddu

Biddu has been on a break from music for quite some time now. Busy writing a couple of books, out of which his first book — an autobiography aptly titled Made In India releases this week. But now, Biddu has just recieved a lifetime achievement award at the Annual India Rock Awards.

On a high: BidduThis will be Biddu’s first performance in the city in eight years. Biddu jokes, “I guess the last time I performed here was when the British were still ruling us!” He adds, “I am really relieved that I got this award before I hit the bucket.


He feels that these awards weren’t there during the 80s and it’s a good sign for the rock bands. “We are no longer that old country, we are a young India. We have so many musicians in this country who need a boost. Bollywood I think has atleast nine awards every year. We should have more awards and even awards for pop singers,” says Biddu.

Full report here DNA