Susan Abraham - Malaysia

The Storyteller's Tale by Omair Ahmad

by Susan Abraham

Captions: Portrait of book jacket (The Storyteller's Tale) & Ahmad Shah Abdali. Also Shaheed Baba Deep Singh, a revered warrior in Sikh history who served under the forces of Taruna Dal and who sacrificed his life avenging the destruction of Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar by the forces of Ahmad Shah Abdali. (Inset) Author Omair Ahmad

A thrilling rejoinder surely to a pleasant afternoon a day ago, browsing at Hodges Figgis, most popularly known as Ireland's oldest and finest bookstore. Without a doubt, the voluminous displays and affable customer service both live up to their stellar reputation.  In fact, this is the perfect venue to peruse the majority of elegant, eclectic titles as soon as they make a London showing.

Feeling  serene after a fascinating time of the usual fiddling about on the display shelves, I was drawn to a peach-coloured philosophical novella, called The Storyteller's Tale and authored by international politics expert, Omair Ahmad in New Delhi. The slim book published by Penguin India still featured its price tag in rupees.

Why, that caught me in my tracks and I was enthralled to find an Indian publication in an Irish bookshop.

A unique flavour bound my interest to the layout and typeface.  To top it all, blurbs on the back jacket read something exotic...words of praise by Outlook India, the Indian Express and Hindustan Times among a small list of notable reviewers, lined up together in a neat symmetry of understanding.  This, having been wistfully slotted in like nobel visitors from a distant shore. 

Two sketches on the front cover, one, an austere Qasbah and the other,  a tiny  figure of the protagonist leading  his solitary possession comprising a lone horse;  would straightaway summon the  imagination to magnificent scenes of  heavily-turbaned merchants, galloping horses, august palaces and exotic perfumes.

Here surely was a new author to  be discovered and I read Ahmad enthusiastically, at one sitting this morning after my wake-up glance at a sunny morning, a cooked hot breakfast and the silent guarantee to a  brilliant start for the day. I was far from disappointed.

Wrapped in an extraordinary moment of history and drama,  the tale opens in the 1700s in North India with a plot that signals an urgent bustle.  Ahmad Shah Abdali the Amir of Khorasan and reputed also, to be the founder of Afghanistan had gathered his Pashtun troops and with a vengence for Delhi, stormed into its peaceful capital Shahjahanabad. Ahmad paints the picture of a well-imagined horror that engulfs townspeople as everything in the mob's sight is  looted and destroyed.

Our protagonist who is known simply as The Storyteller, is caught unawares. Here is a raconteur bent only on  the wiles of wisdom and a simple fortune. He cares for no bribery nor gems in his turbans. He cannot be lured so as to be held possessed by the seduction of another.  He cares nothing for a lawlessness that leads to a decline in civilisation. He is interested only in thoughtful measures and meditative prospects with which to weave stories, pandering his art to themes of social and political conjectures. 

We learn eventually, that for an industrious raconteur willing himself a serious audience, his stories become his portfolio, ready to command its intruiguing bite and where failing in this mission; the said raconteur may be further sentenced to an uneasy and silent moral judgement based on the  controversial power of his own entertainment.

The reader is led to believe that while the brooding gentleman may be held by his public with firm respect, he lacks a depth of congeniality that may earn him the merry, warm company of friends. Neither has he family; his simple daily wants being looked after by a pair of devoted servants.

Now he must escape with his small bundle of clothes, badly tied onto the horse.  He may send for his servants later, once he finds a new roof on his head. But for now, he must escape and fast.

On riding his horse into the forest, the Storyteller happens upon the haveli of  a strong-willed Begum who unable to keep still, takes to gregarious sports like horse-riding while her Master  busies himself ransacking Delhi. This despite the feeble warnings of her servants, that she may be so unlucky herself, as to invite danger. The Begum brushes off fear with a reckless daring. We are led to believe that while she is born with a surge of  of restless energy and may appear thoughtful and kind at the best of times; is prone to her arrogant bearing, to impatience and fickleness.

Both characters meet and stare at each other with a mix of fascination and dread. The Begum, ever so slightly prying, invites the Storyteller to stay the night although he will stay two. Over the rituals of tea, dinner and polite conversation, both exchange tales.

The storyteller appears to have met his match.  He tells a tale of  a baby wolf brought up by a widow and her son in a forest. The tale ends tragically with false assumptions, betrayal,  destruction and blood. The Begum's stories are in turn a little more whimsical and lighter.  She tells the stories of  adopted brothers Aresh with his noble blood and Bharab, a commoner. She laces her tale with romanticism and her  beguiling plot is themed with the idea of  a do-and-die loyalty and a figurative exploration of the truth. 

The Storyteller tries to outmatch her wit and style by spinning her own tale and characters with an interplay of new images that go on to feature a demon-possessed warrior, the ugliest of wars and ghosts.

The same stories and characters thread their way back to the reader with a manifold of complex  dream-like structures,  interpretations and myths and fables and too, idealogies of human behaviour, relationships and subsequent decisions, nestled together in a tight net for personal reflection.

The several philosophies that lie in The Storyteller's Tale are based on rhetorical common sense that belie clever logic or the theories of science. The note of a high optimism  founded in the Storyteller's studious morality is clear even in the face of a storm. In losing everything, he discovers a new freedom. His old home behind him may have lain devastated but in front of his destiny now lay the appeal of a wide open road. Thus, the silver lining to every dark cloud paints the book with its clear personality on the outset  while fables like stage players, perform their roles on the inside.  Then there are the harder truths that may occasionally graze a thought. For instance, when one accepts something of someone, one allows oneself to be caught in their power no matter how subtle. 

Neither could the creeping up of emotions be more painful. In journeying alone, the storyteller is aware of his own vulnerability and immediately lends himself to a long slow sadness.

This is a book that challenges a dare to meet with fear and where survival in a restrained encounter provided it triumphs, may turn out to be the master of kings. Each fable in part could  be welcomed for meditations...for study groups on lighter philosophy lessons and for serious introspections of an indvidualism lived but not yet owned.

Chef by Jaspreet Singh

by Susan Abraham

Last night while armed with a curious palate for exquisite prose, I devoured and closed the last word to Chef, an enthralling  248-page novel (Bloomsbury Publishing), by  Jaspreet Singh, a former research scientist who now lives in the Canadian Rockies. 

My soul was held totally enraptured in the intricate allure of an unassuming Kashmiri life, shadowed by unfair politics but otherwise nursed to good health in equal proportions, by spoonfuls of scrumptious cuisine.  Delicious comparisons to Indian and Pakistani dishes showed up in the plot's menu as sizzling rivals in of all places; a military frontline but nothing that a delicate Kashmiri dish like Mughlai Mutton, slow-cooked nahari or curd-flavoured meatballs of gushtaba couldn't challenge  with aplomb!

Thus, I fell hopelessly in love with the charming comic prose coated with its delicious dry irony and  not without the usual semi-tragic elements, but all the while, eager to court my senses to a high sensuality.  Besotted,  I bowed in submissive meditation  to the book's culinary seduction of my mind and heart.

This stayed one of the few times in my life when I was reminded of the sole pleasures of delving  wholeheartedly into the joys of fiction; when plunging into a story would instead rocket me above the measure of myself to a strange displacement of the unknown... a little if you must, like a skydiver bent on  adventure and daring -  much admired but not yet lived.

In this case, the meticulous theme  turned the subject of cuisine into a polished craft featuring storybook art  and in so doing, appeared to entrap a ghostly figurative beauty that stood apart from the novel itself. That was surely no ordinary thing.

I felt ethereally drawn to each character, held back sobs without a second thought when death reared its ugly head and as a now devout reader was prepared to follow Chef Kirpal - Kip for short - the protagonist anywhere he chose to trail his weary footsteps; from the grimness of erratic  railway journeys to dangerous isolated glaciers in the Kashmir mountains. In those few absorbing hours, I would have as reader, readily lived or died with the book's misguided hero in tow.

Dear Readers, it is for this very reason I dare not attempt a technical review. Not when I have already been spiritually summoned to embrace the fastidious elegance of the novel and worship its masterful persuasion that lures me into the parlour of a mysterious kitchen without caution.

Kirpal is barely 20 years old when he trains in apprenticeship as a chef under General Kumar's watchful eye, in a Kashmir military camp that lies nestled in the shadows of the Sachien Glacier.  It is when Kirpal's father a high-ranking heroic officer is killed in an air crash in the glacier, that Kirpal feels spiritually called to his mission as chef.  For years, he would fail to see his aged mother in India but embark on an unforgettable friendship with a worldly-wise chef, learn the eccentric  ways of his general sahib and observe the different methods of thwarting assasination attempts, grow sexually inclined towards women in general and try to figure out the meaning of life as a whole.

Kirpal's years have been imbued by food. He lives, breathes, laughs, cries, pauses, thinks and reflects on psychological discourses through the solitary subject of  either a modest or luxurious cuisine. Or as perhaps he would himself argue, a foreign or Kashmiri meal and furthermore, a Kashmir Hindu or Kashmir Muslim dish.  His memories of loved ones and strangers are all threaded into imaginary skeins by the mix of thrilling and subdued encounters with food. Spices, meats and breads are knotted into the only science that makes sense to him.

For instance, the Sanchien glacier appears as a 'big white onion' and as the snow has melted upon it for hundreds of years, so does 'the onion peel layer by layer.'  In a train with passengers who ask nosy questions of Kirpal, samosas and thermos teas are offered as a pleasant diversion to prevent  the latter's annoyance.  A mole on the left side of a nurse's nose reminds him of a 'seed of black cardamom' and he wants to finger it.

Naturally, I adored the refreshing comedy...

And so said the older chef to Kirpal,  

"Before cutting a tomato, give it the reference it deserves and ask:  Tomato, what would you like to become? Do you want to be alone?  Or do you prefer company? Apricot, what would you like to become? Would you like to become more than yourself in the company of saffron?  Saffron, who are you?"

or

"Fish, what would you like to become? Basil, where did you lose your heart?  Lemon:  It is not who you touch but how you touch.  Learn from big elaichi. There, there.  Karayla, meri jaan, why are you so prudish?  Cinnamon was 'hot', cumin 'cold', nutmeg caused good erections... "

and then too, the bungling effort at social skills:

'If you want something, my mother had told when I was a boy, you say no and then say no again and the third time, you say, Okay, a little. She was talking about food when it is offered at some other person's house. Our guests had offered us the betel leaf cone, and I said no, then no again, and I was ready to say, Okay, a little but the hosts didn't offer the paan the third time.   At home I screamed at the top of my voice. I want that betel nut thing now, right now. Neighbours gathered around our house, probed my parents why they were torturing me.  Next time you want something, said my father, grab it.'

This is a story told in a brazen masculine tone.

Many readers would definitely pick this novel for its rich political connotations of insurgents and terrorists and of the great cultural divide between Pakistan and India, essayed with splendid wit.  In this vein, Singh also treated the reader to a lavish glacial landscape in the mind's eye with scientific and geographical explanations so carefully 'shown' instead of 'told', in that old tried-and-tested trick, that such descriptions only added to the charisma of the story.  Subtly, now and then...like a whispered secret,  Singh would highlight with intriguing design, the differences between Kashmiri Hindus and Kashmiri Muslims.

The study of characterisation would lie long and hard in Kirpal's sad friendship with an older beloved chef and the eventual  hoarding of the latter's journal; the death of Kirpal's father that led to the unravelling of bewildering if not odd romantic secrets and Kirpal's own love story with a suspected Pakistani terrorist. The novels opens with Kirpal returning to Kashmir from Delhi at the sudden invitation of General Kumar after 14 years. He has been told by  a doctor that with a tumour resembling a 'pea' in his brain, he has at the most, a year to live.

A huge chunk of the chapters that follow  are exposition scenes, as Kirpal recalls his life's journey on a slow train ride. The last section brings us back to the present time as Kirpal finally meets his nemesis in Kashmir and receives answers to his now rusty questions formed from a colourful past.

In this respect, I felt the novel's moral lessons to be a bit tame although I consider them interesting. There is a suggestion that literature, love and compassion would thrive over wars and violence in the journey for peace. I felt the moral righteousness of these observations to have been slightly contrived.   I also noticed in passing that the messengers for lovers of literature and compassion were female characters...the softer kinder version of the domineering louder men.  I wonder if this was meant to be deliberate or simply coincidental. As a neat structure, with everything in place, the story was still ironed to a near perfection despite my few misgivings.

Singh is genius at linking sub-plots and character eccentricities with the flawless polish of a finished puzzle using food and its valuable essence, as the watchful guardian angels of his tale.

The Journey of Om by Chandru Bhojwani

by Susan Abraham

Reading the Lagos-based Sindhi novelist Chandru Bhojwani may be held akin to the sobering indulgence of a chilled wine.

His debut novel, The Journey of Om nurtured with daring philosophical ambitions stays ready to cushion a reader's heart with a warm tireless acceptance chorusing a melody of tears and rejoicing as twinned instruments to a tender symphony of thought.

This, as the 286-page novel progresses  fitfully in its sometimes erratic but altogether neat skillful manner, escaping an unsteady initial introduction of clammy hands and cold feet in the markedly intense early chapters.

As an overview, Bhojwani's is a cleverly crafted story, elaborately and chivalrously told . The plot to The Journey of Om published by Cedar Books India, spins a cautious pattern enveloped by measured drops of bliss and grief. It winds its way steadily alongside the subtle rivulets of heartbreak and frank friendships held precious among a group of young Indians living in the Big Apple.

The Journey of Om narrates the everyday life of an Indian bloke Om in New York who prides his literary leanings on essaying freelance columns for a magazine. One day and very early on in the book, much to Om's devastation, he accidentally discovers his sweetheart Preeti in an awkward intmate scene with a mutual acquaintance, Ravi. Preeti is his whole life at the present time. Naturally, to describe our lovesick hero as grief-stricken would be putting things mildly. Om is shattered as his idealistic love story and near-perfect insular world crashes all about him with painful splinters afoot.

This episode dutifully shapes the rest of the chapters that herald both careful introspection and alas, the odd far-fetched twist. In this way, Bhojwani observed a visionary idea that would clearly work in his favour.

Om will turn to his closest friends, Jim, Mona, and a young couple Arun and Rakhi for hardy shoulders to cry on. Unfortunately, the comfort is feeble as Om discovers with reluctant exploration; each friend's emotional problems and good intentions relating to intimate relationships that may actually be ridden with angst and unseen holes. Perhaps after all, happiness is a thinner disguised layer of superficiality than what its darker truths would readily confirm. Om sets about with adamant soul-searching to discover the truth often sidelined in all  of its dreary grimness.

In this respect, I observed a real problem with a few encounters. I think that Bhojwani may have bitten off more than he could chew with theoretical reasonings on logical actual models that mould trusty relationships. I also feel the writer to be far more talented writing in the second and third person rather than hingeing hopes for the the first. With the latter, solitary thoughts drag on from chapter to chapter, sorely lacking in clarity and a clear structural discourse. This may run the risk of leaving a reader bored as I was liable myself to clearly lose interest now and then.

It doesn't help that a flat emotional platitude, from start to finish as regards to the location and everyday settings stay tolerant companions to the somewhat painful lengthy meandering. Thus no matter a reader's anticipation, there was nothing much exciting or unexpected even when Hong Kong finally loomed in the near horizon.

I think that a similar plot in future could be solidly strengthened into an enthralling atmosphere if Bhojwani adopted an exclusive spot in New York with a distinct personality, still rarely if at all written about, with which to place his set of endearing characters and in this way, he would make that exclusive spot his own.

Splendid questions were thrown about, duly caught and lamented over like the mesmerised clasp of a ball in court but the results were sometimes contrived and self-righteous. The outcome could also be easily predicted by a reader like myself.

It was I fear a slight failing that Bhojwani had chosen Om's wandering reflections only around a specific age group for questions that would have served a broader range of readers already far more matured and experienced in the woes of love and yet... the dangerous aspect here being that relationships either legitimiate or forbidden, can take place at any hour in an individual's life and the dynamics will be the same. The heartbreak is not any less intense nor a friend's insecurites likely to change in later years.

If a novel is to ask hard questions, impress readers and challenge perceptions, than through the workings of a novelist, Bhojwani must prepare himself to widen his scope for research and think outside the box. Otherwise, the plot will surely betray the author's youthful candour and with this, an obvious limitation to a life not yet lived.

I was also confused by past and present narrations.

The visual outlook to both the past and present were the same and could not be distinguished as set apart, each from the other. Had a location, time frame, an era, historical or social event been allowed to make its calendar mark, then it would have been easy to prey on the difference between Om's time with Preeti in the past and Om's time in the present. However, this was not the case and Preeti having had hardly anything to say, remained one-dimensional - slightly cardboardish in that fashion - when compared to other stronger characters who easily won over as the major players.

My other problem was the conclusion. The end appeared slightly outlandish with its sudden idealistic framework and fantastical structure. I say fantastical because the theme of the novel banked on a highly philosophical questioning and reasoning. Such an attempt has its plausible analysis worked into realism and so with this mission netted well in place throughout the novel, the conclusion hung on, disjointed.  It held the furious, passionate end of a light chick-lit tale for me personally, however hard I tried to shrug off the inclination.

Yet Bhojwani's high talent as an author is obvious. He depicts a smooth mastery with sparkling and witty dialogue... the conversations are so fluid, they spell sophistication and grace.

The middle and advancing chapters were marvellous to read for pace and drama alone; and Bhojwani can with real ease, puppet a motley  assortment of characters all at once, without losing the plot. Surely, this is a rare feat. His characters especially the comic one in Monica stayed true to their personalities...Mona was a great favourite...her strength holding the entire plot together and Bhojwani was right to wisely pepper her dialogue with oodles of wisdom.

I also stayed entranced at the fictional character Om's personal enrichment, as the novel grew by leaps and bounds. His wicked sense of humour with the ouja board, his affectionate playful nature and  skilled essays for the magazine, his showdown with Ravi, a woebegone attitude at a rude, frustrated and angry editor, often his surprise, shock or startling moments over a friend's revelation were such a wondrous joy to behold. Pardon the cliche!

In revealing Om's comic vulnerabilities in everyday life, whenever the character's self-pity  failed to triumph, is when Bhojwani's talent became near genius.

If grief and bliss can link hands, then let me confess with amusing rejoinder that I was once more  aggrieved  when Chapter 46 revealed a startling flashback to Preeti and especially so when the novel in its present time had busied itself unfolding at a feverish rhythm and wonderfully minding its own affairs. Yet that flashback with Preeti - Om taking her to Disneyworld - stayed strangely compelling . The chapter hovered with ghostly allure. It was plainly lucid and brilliant  what with its sharp poignancy latched onto a capsuled pain.

As Om poured his  heart out to Rakhi, Chapter 46 also proved the platform the protagonist would finally contemplate the perfect tragic match with his lost heroine. Think the flawless ease of a hand  slipping effortlessly into a glove.

Chandru Bhojwani would be exemplary at manouvering an operatic cast of characters - he could pull such a talent off with his eyes closed. A screenplay or television script, an espionage/thriller series or comic crime fiction wearing razor-sharp dialogue and no dullness to muster..these are genres the author would thrive at and excel.

Chandru Bhojwani is definitely a literary author I would read again in the near future.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Muenuddin

by Susan Abraham

(Written in a hotel room during my travels sometime in February)

This morning, I woke a little too early and decided I would start on a new book of short stories. Although I owned a small stack of novels in my suitcase, I had made up my mind to read the scholarly Daniyal Mueenuddin's much-talked about and currently 'regularly nominated' book of 8 short stories - strange in a way as all the different tales link to a primary character in a setting - called In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

I wrote on my Facebook wall today that this book felt densely aromatic and in true seductive fashion, possessed this desirable calming influence on my morning even as the dawn broke and the early sounds of traffic started to roar.

So soothing was the escapade that I caught something of a swift sensory whiff. I likened my spontaneous affair to the short luxury of a woman dabbing a touch of cinnamon scent to a secret place.

Or what I meant to say was that the very act of reading can prove intimate without any sign of a conscious realization.Mueenuddin stayed by intuition, an excellent choice. I am now halfway through and hope to finish the book tonight.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am a naturally fast reader, his tales revolving around servant and peasant life of a large landowning family is so picturesque that you catch the motley haphazard crowd of characters everywhere...you may likely smell an aftershave or better still some pungent cow dung, catch the sound of running footsteps, breathe in tantalizing kitchen smells and so on.

His stories make for a black comedy. They're semi-tragic. Vulnerabilities rule and for some reason, the rich, corrupt and cunning always win. Women are portrayed as powerless but shrewd, grabbing whatever they dare at the earliest opportunity. Men escape the painful consequences of weaknesses and flaws through the throes of insensitivity, duty and commitment. Mismatched love stories mingle with the comic foible of human behaviour patterns and suggest subtly of how dark shadows are perhaps more powerful than light.

For instance, when someone requests a favour, he gets it from a person starting with an individual who may be related to a niece or nephew who goes on to marry someone else who once loaned someone something and who promised the onset of a favour....if you see where I'm getting at. This is so true of real life no matter all the ethical principles we memorise for the glory of a civic consciousness.

Of course, this isn't a review at all. They are just rushed thoughts but how blessed I feel that Daniyal Mueenuddin gave me a glorious start to the day with all the intriguing secrets that jump out at the reader from In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

Feb 25, 2010 Note: I finished reading the joyous In Other Rooms, Other Wonders last night. What was immediately apparent was of how the later stories which featured socialities accompanied by their vague romances carried the sharply poignant air of Lahiri's own stories. The narrations that were all deeply profound possessed a similar crystal-clear feel, so translucent were the fast-paced plots and introspections. I was startled finally to read at the back of the book that the novelist Nadeem Aslam had felt the same. In his praise, he compared Mueenuddin to Lahiri. I was naturally pleased as it showed that despite a long gap, I was still thankfully attuned to South Asian fiction.