Currently Reading: 10.04.21

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The madman of freedom Square- I bought this on a whim. I had no idea what I was getting into when I purchased this. Written during western occupation of Iraq, the stories range from human trafficking to refugee experience. Brutal in writing and despair in experience.

The unquiet woods – chipko movement and the after effects of the protest. This is a pretty old book but my memory of this movement is pretty hazy.

The coolies great War – about 500k of the Indian militia dispatched across the world during WW1 and 2 were solely Indian laborers who constructed roads, cleaned, cooked and maintained infrastructure. Treated worse than their white counterparts, this book is a giant essay on how shitty even the “right” side of the war was in the name of “colonization”.

His father’s desire – I do t know anything here going in blind. I was looking for Assamese literature and saw this on kindle unlimited. That’s pretty much the motivation I have.

How I became a tree – my third book by Sumana Roy. I am going on blind, recommended by a GR reviewers whose recommendation I trust implicitly.

The impudent ones – first novel written by incredibly talented Duras, finally translated to English. Received this ARC from Netgalley couple of weeks ago and am already 45% done.

The space between us – I started reading this in morning, 4 AM and am already half way done. It’s OK.

Victory colony 1950 – I am not looking to read the whole thing. This is a difficult read. This is story of a refugee from east Pakistan, after she lands in Calcutta.

Now for some audible listening (continuing, mostly)

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Old drift – I love the voice artist Adoja Andoh and I first listened to her in stay with me. After that, a huge fan. I never got around to reading this book and had been meaning to and when I saw the narrator voice, I got it immediately. This is an odd combination of historical and science fiction which is pretty fantastic.

Midnight library – I saw meeras glowing review and bought it. I will ask her to give me my money back. I am not enjoying this crapola

So that’s my reading plan for this weekend and might also spill over for the week. What about you guys?

Currently reading: 02.04.21

After almost two months I feel like myself. Almost. I have set up my workspace like a semi professional, finally, and my workspace is now clutter free.

This is my currently reading stack. I plan to finish them tonight, hopefully.

1. Angaaray is pretty awesome. It was quite controversial when it came out back in 1932, and took Urdu literature hy storm. It’s a must read modern classic.

2. Ayako is…weird. in the most bizarre fashion, in Japanese, the word Ayako itself is written with the root character for “odd”. It’s a Japanese comic and this isn’t Manga, that came out in 1972. Highly political, a satire of post WW2 Japan through the happenstance of an agrocentric family thats lost farm lands been in their family for 4 centuries dude to Japan’s agricultural reforms. Amidst this, the family patriarch blackmails his eldest son: lands in exchange for sex with his young wife. The son, the bastard that he is, agrees. And so Ayako is born.

3. A dream of red mansions is one of the four greatest Chinese literary classics. It’s a pretty fast read cause it’s like reading a political soap opera. Also the characters are incredibly dramatic.

Well, that’s been my day. What’s up with yours.

List of classics books – some recommendation

These are in no particular order some of the classics I like. Making this list for a friend who wants some of the non-Indian classics I like.

1. Don Quixote – Miguel De Cervantes: When I read Quixote the first time, I didn’t like it. It is a book that can be very easily dismissed. A man who is a knight want to fight for honor of others though however lame the reasons are. The point is, the lameness of the reason isn’t the question here. Its Quixote and his willingness to fight for causes that are clearly lost causes. There is a lot of humor. There is willful seriousness. But underneath it all, its about doing the right thing. Being a greater fool.
2. Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein: I grew up with this. I watch movies of this all the time. Its comforting.
3. Middlemarch – George Elliot: I know most people don’t get why many people like this. A good reader friend of mine asks this as she is surprised always that I rank this higher than Austen and all the Bronte sisters. Simply put, the complexity of a story is not always in extraordinary circumstances, but making simple circumstances – extraordinary. Middlemarch does that in spades.
4. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen: This is my favorite Austen primarily because she addresses that the wealthy men she has been writing about is because their monies is coming from slave trade.
5. Meditations – Marcus Aurelias: The quintessential book on stoicism. Had a great impact on me.
6. Henry V – My favorite Shakespeare. We get to Hank in Henry IV but his transformation from previous play to this is absolutely remarkable. The dialogues are stunning and I go back to this play all the time. Now that hollow crown is out, Tom Hiddleston plays Henry V and this adaptation plays out one of my favorites dialogs as a voice over. And its stellar.
7. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy: Bananas. 1500 pages of awesomeness.
8. Sapho poetry – Sappho – Plato called her 10th muse. Everyone was a fanboy/fangirl of hers.
9. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov: It got banned in multiple countries, still gets brought up all the time. An entire sub-genre derived the name from this. A book written from the view of a pedo.
10. Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov: I love Russian literature. This is one of my favorites. A clever satire, politics clearly masked as fantasy, and a sure winner for the characters.
11. Crime and Punishment -Dostoevsky: If you want to write endless essays on moral conflicts, read this.
12. Pillow book – Sei Shonagon: A courtesan from 10th century Japan maintained a diary that survived…a lot, lets say.
13. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas: Old fashioned murder mystery. Pretty fun.
14. Essays – George Orwell: This might not go well with many, with the man critiquing the people of sub-continent, but for what its worth, he was also fighting wars that were pointless and the crown was fucking over itself with the government to be relevant.
15. Faust – Goethe: A man makes a wager with the Devil. Its one of the earliest stories that had a definitive moral and this is pretty good. One of my favorite classic German literature.
16. Bleakhouse – Dickens: Super depressing but super well written. Favorite and only Dickens I can tolerate.
17. Little Women – Alcott: Pretty good story
18. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell: Its lovely. Critique of working class British vs, aristocracy, southern and northern British, self made and gentile folks, ah, its lovely.

What are your favorites non-Indian classics?

favorite books of 2020 #1

There are very few times a book stays with you for so long that someone says something banal and an entire paragraph from the book you read weeks ago springs into life, all in your head. And this is one of those books. I dont think I can say that I enjoyed this book. It was more like I felt along with it. I felt along Manjiri. She talks about mental health, sexual assault, depression, the tabooness of it in indian middleclass and especially with young women. How the word “crazy” gets tagged to people who struggle with trauma from childhood that they carry well into adulthood. How we are told it’s all in your head. My review is under.

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i think Manjiri purposefully begins her memoir at a junction in her life that starts with an emergency hospital visit that results in a surprise diagnosis. she quickly narrates the set up of her life which is pretty normal for a twenty something year old girl living in Delhi with her boyfriend. but once she is discharged from the hospital, the aftermath of it really sets in. it is then she realizes the nature of her problems – the deep rooted trauma from her childhood has slowly poisoned her system to the point where it has currently burst her health in the present. what follows after is the narration of the birth of the said trauma, the sexual abuse she undergoes as a mere six year old child in the hands of a charming young man.

home becomes unsafe to her with multiple experiences of trauma being associated to it; what would one do in such a situation? say that its all in your head? don’t be sad, just get over it? or “oh come on, we are all sad, do we cry and throw tantrum like this?” in a country where mental health is still not talked about in open and victims of sexual abuse are treated with contempt than compassion, my heart goes out to child-Manjiri, who must have been confused and unable to understand why it was her fault.

all the time she holes herself in her room and shuts away from the world, i can hear the world around her whisper. it is as if we in this part of the world belong to a different species. especially if you are middle class. we can’t afford to be depressed. we can’t afford to have mental health issues. the taboo is too strong. the rejection is too immediate. I am very happy Manjiri had a decent support system in her friends (to a good extent) who were there on the other side of the phone. she talks about being lonely too and with all that’s going on in her life, it must have been awful; to be trapped in anxious nightmare of ones own making with fear of mortality of parents nagging on the side and eventual collapse of life as we know it – seems familiar?

Manjiri’s way of narration is like talking to a friend. memoir being anecdotal but the story telling doesn’t sound embellished or smoothed around the edges, and this is where her writing strength is.