The Ministry of Fear. By Graham Greene

The Ministry of Fear

Graham Greene

Penguin Books. First Published 1943.

The title page has the name 'Pravin Paul' written on it in ink. Obviously, the book belonged to Pravin, and I must have 'borrowed' it from him, probably the time I was sharing a room (B2) with him in IISc. This as good a place and time as any to memorialize him. Pravin Paul completed his MSc (Physics) at MCC about the same time I finished my MSc at Baroda. He joined for an MS in the ECE dept., IISc, (it was possible at that time) at the same time that I joined for a PhD at the Physics dept. MCC was the common factor, and my BSc classmates from MCC, Satish and PKC Paul, had been his tutors and friends at MCC. Now all of us were together at IISc and thus became friendly. Pravin was a happy-go-lucky chap, not a very strong reader, but he had a favourite author in Graham Greene, and introduced me to him. I had read about Graham Greene in the context of his helping R.K. Narayan to get published, but I had not read any of his books. Pravin talked to me about 'Our Man in Havana'. I liked that when I read it later, but at that time, I first bought, I think, 'Travels With My Aunt', and I remember discussing that, and other books by Greene that we read over the next year or so. In my second year at IISc, I moved into B2 with him, and he was a nice, comfortable, trouble-free room mate. We got along well together. He snored, but I got used to that soon, and he never complained, at least to me, about any of my habits. One of things I remember distinctly is that every Saturday afternoon, at about 5.00 pm, he would bathe, shave, neatly comb his hair, freshen himself with talcum powder, put on his best clothes (often a pale pink shirt), and go out to meet one of the girls in whom he was interested - either Baby, the sister of a common friend of ours, or Sandhya, a girl from a local college he met in the company of some friends. As far I know, he never really got to any level of intimacy with either of these, not even taking them out for tea or dinner, very 'properly' limiting himself to visiting them in their homes, in the presence of their respective families. After he got his degree, there was initially the exciting possibility that he would join Schlumberger, India, at a fabulous salary, but that job did not materialize. About 1984 he joined a computer company in Pondicherry.  A couple of years later, when riding to work on his scooter, he was hit by a three-wheeler. He was thrown off and his back hit a stone, breaking his spine. He was taken, in an auto, to JIPMER, but, though alive, he was paralyzed from neck down. He was shifted to Apollo, Chennai, and then to CMC, Vellore, but the doctors could do nothing to return any function to his limbs. Pravin thus found himself in the position of Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of 'The Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka, who woke up one day to find himself changed into a 'monstrous, verminous bug'. The subsequent sequence of events was remarkably like that described by Kafka - initial deep concern from family and friends, changing in a year or two to resignation and then to benign neglect and even active dislike. He passed away in 2004 or so. My relationship with him followed the 'Metamorphosis' pattern. I was in touch with him on and off when we left IISc. He had attended my wedding, but later I had not much contact with him. I was in Chennai, when I learnt of his accident from his colleagues. Pravin was then already in CMC. I visited him there two or three times, and then, at his home in Perambur when he shifted there. Then no contact for about 10 years, before in an idle moment I googled his name and, to my sorrow (and guilt) his obituary turned up. (Strangely, when I tried Google now, I could not get that reference again - in fact I get no mention of this Pravin Paul at all).

I do not recollect talking about 'The Ministry of Fear' to Pravin. Graham Greene calls it 'An Entertainment', his term for his own books over which, I think, he has not spent much time or effort. But it's really not very entertaining. The story is set in wartime London, constantly under threat of German bombardment. Arthur Rowe, a lonely, self-confessed murderer, who has performed euthanasia on his sick wife, gets involved in a German plot to steal some vaguely-described documents. He has one nightmarish experience after another, sequentially meeting sets of ostensible well-wishers, each of whom turn out to be not as benign as he initially supposes. The denouement is not clear, and, perhaps for that reason, not particularly exciting or interesting. Portions of the book remind me of the writing of Kazuo Ishiguro, e.g.  'The Unconsoled' or 'When we were Orphans'. Probably he was influenced by Greene. There is a sense of fear and mystery, of anxiety really, brooding over the book, which, of course is standard for Greene, but is used with greater purpose in his other books. 

I saw a movie of the book in Paris in the company of Youri Timsit in 1999. Youri very kindly 'invited' me to the movie, which means that he simply refused to allow me to pay. It was one of the few English language movies to which we had easy access, and Youri allowed himself to watch the movie only because I had vague recollections of the book being  a sophisticated read. (This means of course that I have read the book at least once earlier, probably as soon as I got it from Pravin in about 1984.) It turned out to be a bad choice. The movie had nothing of the sense of gloom and fear in the book. And the story, the acting, and the direction seemed downright silly. Reading the book again now, makes me see how it would have well nigh impossible to translate the book faithfully on to the screen. 

Pigs Have Wings. By P.G. Wodehouse

Pigs Have Wings

P.G. Wodehouse

Penguin. First Published 1952.

I re-read another Wodehouse, mainly because I have not bought any new books in a while. This is from his brilliant period. It is a Blandings Castle story, with a much loved and much expected cast - impostors, pigs, pigmen, Galahad, Beach, Lord Emsworth, a pretty, spirited 'heroine', an impecunious, pleasant 'hero', and the 'villain' of the piece, Lady Constance. Some of the action I most eagerly looked forward to unfortunately takes place off stage - e.g. Galahad talking to Connie like a 'Dutch Uncle' (in response to which she is stated to have come right back at him talking like a 'Dutch Aunt'!). But despite this sign of the declining powers of Wodehouse, it is a lovely book, and set me laughing out aloud several times. The characters are all shown to be essentially good-natured, even if sometimes a bit silly - like 95% of Wodehouse characters. Thus Gloria Salt, a girl who looks like a 'snake with hips', is introduced to us as a strong, imperious woman who is engaged to the hero, and then breaks up with him. But she turns out to be quite a nice girl, helping the hero in his love affair. Vera Upshaw, in 'The Girl in Blue' has a similar strong character, except that she is shown till the end as a gold-digger who very properly gets her comeuppance. A truly bad character. There are no similar truly bad characters in the books of PGW's golden period (except maybe one or two - Percy Pilbeam comes to the mind), including Pigs Have Wings. There are so many nifties, and on every page, that it's difficult to pick any to quote here. I bought the book in 1983, I must have read it about 5 times. And even though the pages are falling apart, I shall probably be able to read it a few times more. A total of about 50 hours of good fun. Not bad for a book that cost me Rs 30/-. 

Some of PGW's books, including this one, and particularly the Code of the Woosters, are associated in my mind with the taste of Peanut Butter - probably because I read them first (in Bombay, about 1965) at the same time as I was introduced to Peanut Butter sandwiches, and used to gorge myself on them in the afternoons in Deonar, after I got back from school.     

The Girl in Blue. By P.G. Wodehouse

The Girl in Blue

P. G. Wodehouse

Penguin Books. First published in 1970.

Among the last few books of Wodehouse, and it shows. It is a romantic comedy, with many of the his usual types – the poor hero engaged to a girl he does not like, the poor heroine who he falls in love with and eventually marries after coming into money, and so on and so on. Wodehouse recycles characters and plot ideas, and also quite a lot of the language. The broker's man, Chippendale is the most interesting of the lot, and provides the largest amount of amusement. But criticism of Wodehouse always sounds stupid. He's so good that this book appears bad only in comparison with the books of his 'golden age'. Without such comparisons it's a pleasant way of spending a few hours. I first got this book in 1988, as a 'Present from Giridhar Krishna', as it says on the front page. This must be the 5^th or 6^th time I have read it.   

The Last Theorem. By Arthur C. Clarke and Fredrik Pohl

The Last Theorem

Arthur C. Clarke and Fredrik Pohl

HarperVoyager. First published 2008.

I think the book was written mainly by Pohl, with Clarke doing some editing and contributing many of the ideas. It is set in Sri Lanka and, though the Sinhala-Tamil conflict appears vaguely in the background, there is very little sense of geography or current history in the story. The hero is a Tamil from Triconamalee, the son of a priest. A brilliant student of mathematics, he is facinated by Fermat's Last Theorem – and proves it! This happens along with kidnappings by Somalian pirates, torture in a Pakistani prison, a barely-averted attack of earth by alien super races, travels in space and a final race in space using solar sails. Despite so much happening, the book moves slowly and is a bore for most part. It is just a regurgitation of various thoughts and ideas Clarke has had from time to time (including at least one idea from Robin Cook), loosely tied together by the sory of Ranjit Subramaniam. Clarke has described some of the ideas in other books – e.g. Skyhook, an elevator running on tracks built of carbon fibre (nanotubes in this book, diamond 'fibre' in an earlier version) which carries spaceships into near-earth orbit; the idea of a benign organisation with a super-powerful weapon that does not harm humans, but neutralizes the weapons of the bad guys and brings about world peace; insubstantial beings that rule the galaxy; and spaceships powered by solar wind. The book is probably an attempt to cash in on Clarke's name, though Pohl is well known sci-fi writer himself. (However, I don't think I have read anything by him.)  

The House of Blue Mangoes. By David Davidar

The House of Blue Mangoes

David Davidar

Penguin Books. First published 2002.

David Davidar attempts a South Indian epic, narrating the story of the Dorai family over three generations, from the late 19^th century to the the middle of the 20^th. The family has its roots in the upper-class, rural (or quasi-urban/moffusil), recently-converted Christian milieu in the imaginary seaside village of Chevathar, in Kanyakumari district. The story is divided into three parts, one for each generation. The first is set in Chevathar, where the chief protagonist is the village headman, Dorai, who tries to maintain peace between the two major castes, which are in a perpetual state of antagonism that frequently breaks out into open and violent quarrels. Dorai, though, is not above being casteist and fiercely feudal himself, and, when he thinks it necessary, he fights to assert the superiority of his caste over the other. Davidar comments, in passing, on the irony of a Christian community being divided by caste, but seems to accept this as an essentially Indian phenomenon. Davidar himself hails from this milieu, and probably, though perhaps unconsciously, intends Dorai to represent his own caste – which, I guess, is Nadar. The antagonist caste may be Thevars, though they are not so well known to be converts to Christianity. In fact, in current day South Indian politics, the Thevar caste largely supports Hindu right-wing fundamentalist ideologies, and political parties that espouse such policies. Historically, in the late 19^th century, the southern regions of Sivakasi and Tenkasi, among others, witnessed large scale clashes between Nadars and Thevars (or Devars), both Hindu castes, as a result of which the Nadars, who were considered low caste, converted to Christianity and Islam. This fact is mentioned by Davidar, but the Dorai family are involved in a caste conflict of their own, with another Christian, not Hindu, community. It is also possible that the Vedhars in the book actually are an amalgam of Thevars, Vellalas and the 'untouchable' castes like Pariahs, among the last two of whom there were large scale conversions. But these questions of caste are only a part of the large range of personal and community interactions in that milieu described by Davidar, I think authentically. He also describes the interactions within the family, and between the family and other members of the community. It happened that I spent a day in Nagercoil even as I was reading the book. I tried to get a sense of the background atmosphere to the book, but I could gather not much more that what I knew from previous visits to Tirunelveli, Tiruchendur, Tenkasi, etc. What I found surprisingly missing in the book are descriptions of the scenic beauty of the place, with rocky mountains, dappled with large, green, forest patches, running down almost to the seashore. Portions of the district are now thickly covered with windmills, generating in a good season, more than half of the total electricity consumed in the state.

The second part of the book describes the establishment of Doraipuram, by the patriarch Dorai's second son, Daniel. Daniel trains as a Siddha doctor, and, in a passage underlain with comment on present-day social practices, Davidar describes him inventing a fairness cream that makes him very rich. His wealth allows him to try and artificially recreate his father's naturally developed community. He buys vast acres of land, which he then resells to members of his greater family, creating a kind of fiefdom with its own set of rules and traditions. This story plays out in the background of the freedom struggle, and there are descriptions of protests, assasinations, prisons, police brutality and so on. Though Daniel is not directly involved in any of these, his elder brother Aaron is, and the latter eventually dies in jail. There are a few set pieces here, including a description of the different types of mangoes found all over India. There are many descriptions of the interactions of the main characters with Englishmen, mostly antagonistic. We are also introduced to Kannan, Daniel's son, who figures largely in the third part of the story.

Kannan obtains an undergraduate degree from Madras Christian College, in surroundings personally familiar to me, though from a time a few decades earlier than when I was there. Kannan falls in love with an Anglo-Indian girl from the railway colony, and marries her. He gets a job as a very junior officer in a tea estate in a place that's probably Munnar (called Pulimed in the book). Now the story takes of in a different direction, all about life on the tea estate, with the English lords – and especially ladies – and masters slowly coming to terms with having to give up their privileged positions at the top of the heap, as India moves towards freedom. These tensions are well described, though only Kannan and his wife represent the Indians in the interactions. There is also a somewhat boring, but probably realistic description of the tiger hunt. Eventually the tensions get too much. Kannan's wife divorces him and gets back to Madras. Kannan himself sticks around for some more time, before he returns to Doraipuram to try and revive his father's ambitious project of establishing the community.

Davidar writes well, and the book is very readable. It however falls far short of the breathless hyperbole on the blurb, comparing it with 'Midnight's Children'. It does not even compare well with most of Amitav Ghosh. I think the reason I am dissatisfied with it is that it has no real story or message to give. It follows, probably, all the rules of good writing, as taught in 'creative writing' courses, and has also obviously involved a great deal of research, if only in libraries. Futhermore, Davidar apparently knows what he's writing about from personal experience. But the problem is that there are too many threads, too many storylines, none of them explored in depth. None of the characters stand out, and even someone like Helen, Kannan's Anglo-Indian wife, who should have been an clearly etched out creation, turns dull and drab after an exciting introduction. Again my expectations of an exploration of the interface between Christians and other communities, or intra-Christian politics are belied. In a word, the writing is too shallow to be compared favourably with the best of modern Indian writing which I have read – Vikram Chandra or Arundathi Roy, for example. Certainly it is nowhere near books with similar themes such as 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' or even 'The Galsworthy Saga'. But if we do not make such comparisons, the book is good, and worth reading once.

The Palace of Illusions. By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The Palace of Illusions

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Picador. First published 2008.

    This is relatively brief retelling of the Mahabaratha, from Draupadi's point of view. It is interesting to read, but rather light. The author relies almost solely on the fresh viewpoint for any novelty. Thus it can be only called a retelling - it neither a new interpretation, nor an attempt at 'feminist' literature using the epic as peg to hang modernist views. So the emotions are about the same as in the various versions of the epic I have read, and the almost the same set of events are emphasized. It remains faithful to the original in all essential aspects.

   It would probably be unfair to really expect anything else. It would difficult, if not impossible, to impose 21st century sensitivities on literature of about 3000 years ago. However, despite this seeming difficulty, rather surprisingly, some of the cultural values are not really so different, and some interpretations could actually bring at least some of the values of those times closer to recent ones than to those of say a couple of centuries ago. Divakaruni does not try such interpretations and remains largely faithful to the 'standard model' handed down largely by right-leaning scholars.   

Bleak House. By Charles Dickens

Bleak House

Charles Dickens

Wordsworth Classics. First published (serialized) between March 1852 to September 1853

I bought this book as soon as I read on the Internet that Time magazine's critic Radhika Jones rated it the best Dickens novel. 'Can it be really better than David Copperfield (DC)?', I wondered. But no. When I went through all 760 pages of it, I found it good, even great, but not really as good as DC. There are no thrilling passages which one can read again and again, and no characters to match Micawber or Heep or Betsy Trotwood. The story line is a little confused, and there is no properly established motivation for many of the important actions. For example, there is a murder which occupies a good 200 pages of the book, but the solution, when it comes, is unsatisfactory. This book is probably a more 'serious' book than DC, and therefore, perhaps, more beloved of the critics, but is not the better for it.

There are two chief story lines. One deals with Lady Dedlock, her 'dark' secret (i.e. an illegitimate child) and her trials and tribulations due to that. This part of the book has most of the personal stories, and not a great deal of social comment, except for some sarcasm about doings in 'high' society. The other  line is the socially relevant story about a civil law suit, Jarndyce v/s Jarndyce, regarding the terms of a will, which drags on for years and years in the Chancery, which, at that time, was the place where civil suits, mostly regarding wills and the division of property, were decided, or rather, not decided. Dickens heaps abuse upon the entire institution of the Chancery, holding it a rotten, corrupt, self-perpetuating system, responsible for decades of deliberate delay, during which the lawyers, judges and the other officers enriched themselves at the cost of the helpless suitors, who were often seduced by hope to continue with the suits, and ended up losing their all. (Coincidentally, the same week I completed the book, I received a letter from the High Court, Hyderabad, summoning my father, who's been dead 21 years now, as a witness in some civil case! I guess we are 150 years behind UK in this respect). The two story lines intersect mainly in the person of Esther Summerson, who writes some of the book in the first person. She appears a rather exaggerated version of Agnes of DC. But while Agnes was saintly, Esther appears a parody of a saint, if we take her writings about her thoughts and feelings seriously. But if we take, as apparently the critics I mentioned above do, whatever she writes as a study by Dickens into the psychology of an illegitimate child, then the overpowering emotion apparent in the writing is one of guilt, and expatiation of this guilt in trying to be overly servile to all around her, and responding to the slightest kindness with unnatural gratitude. Looked at this way, she comes across not as a very nice girl. However, then that portion of the book can be considered a powerful characterization by Dickens of a complex personality - though I still I prefer his characterization of Heep!

The book of course is filled with all the intricate details and grotesque cartoon characters, some of them nice, some silly and some evil, that we expect in Dickens. There is also a great deal of anger when he describes the inequity of the Chancery and its doings. He is especially hard on the efficient and emotionless lawyers, as also on the insensitive judges, who, according to him, run the courts not to serve justice, but their own interests. He describes the case of a farmer, who, in a dispute with his brother about a sum of 300 pounds, ends up losing his entire estate of 12,000 pounds as 'costs' to the Chancery and the lawyers. I found this however more of an indictment of the farmer - could he not just withdraw the case and hand over the sum at some point when his losses were mounting up? Likewise the suit that forms the core of one of the story lines - Jarndyce v/s Jarndyce. We are never told what the dispute is, but just that it had been going on for a long time and that both parties to the suit well-meaning, even innocent people. But one of them, Mr. John Jarndyce, is shown as a rich man who is willing to do virtually anything to lessen the sufferings of the people he knows. In fact he initially acts as guardian to the other party in the suit, the very young Richard. But though John finds Richard getting more and more obsessed with the suit, he never offers to end it by simply offering Richard whatever he wants, maybe even more than his fair share of the property at issue. But of course, if he had done that the book would not have been written. [If Rama had sensibly not gone to the forest to satisfy a silly whim on part of his stepmother, there would have been no Ramayana!]. The most (re)readable part of the book is the description, over about 50 pages, of a chase, over the deep winter country and town landscape of Lady Dedlock, by Esther and a detective, Mr. Bucket.  

Among the Dickens I have read, Bleak House ranks below DC, of course, but also below Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities and perhaps even The Pickwick papers. These are books I would like to read, and have read, again and again. Not Bleak House.     

There are few quotable quotes.

"...a shameful testimony to future ages, how civilisation and barbarism walked  this boastful island together."

"Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man, to have so inexhaustible a subject."