It is the 1980s in Sripuram, Tamizh Nadu. When Janaki, talented in playing the Veena, walks away from her overbearing father and maternal aunt, she leaves behind not only a hard-earned, spotless Brahminical reputation but also her beloved younger sister, Mallika.
Ten years later, Janaki, now Janaki Asgar lives in Mumbai. She receives an unsigned but hardly anonymous letter from her maternal aunt informing her of her father’s failing mental faculties and Mallika’s financial struggles. Janaki writes to Mallika requesting to meet her in Chennai.
Both letters stir strong emotions for the sisters as each sister braces herself to meet the other. It is through their eyes and alternating narratives, that we piece together the story of their childhood.
We meet the mother, dead but still a silent observer in the form of a garlanded portrait. We meet the bank manager father, Venkatakrishnan, a man who is melodramatic even in his silences. He lives life on his terms, but ensures his daughters are brought up traditionally. Then there are Janaki’s friends, Kamala and Revathi, who are as different socially as they are in temparament, but unanimous in their love for music and unconditional affection for Janaki.
We also meet Gayatri, the girls’ widowed maternal aunt, who exerts authority over the goings-on in the household. Through Janaki’s eyes, we come to realise the motives behind Gayatri’s visits. Through Mallika’s younger eyes, we see Janaki’s gradual assertion of independence. When Janaki leaves Sripuram, we also sense Mallika’s fear of having her own wings clipped.
When the sisters finally meet ten years later it is not the misgivings of the past that take centre stage, but the strong bond they share despite a difficult childhood in a dysfunctional family.
Silent Raga captures the social intricacies of Tamizh Brahmin life in an Agraharam (traditional living quarters for the Brahmin community serving the local temple) in small-town Tamizh Nadu. It conveys the conservatism, the thrift, the social mores imposed on young girls of marriageable age as well as the paradoxes that are not spoken about.
The vocabulary is authentic, the detailing is intricate and the protagonists are so well nuanced, that this evocative debut novel reads like a translation from the Tamizh language.
Nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2008 in the best first book category.
(An edited version appeared in Culturama’s February 2011 Issue)

Price – Rs. 99
Over twenty years and 324 taut pages, Nick Arya goes from being a young MIT graduate with a promising NASA career in hand, to a player in a game of chance unhesitant to put a gun to his own head.
Nick’s journey begins on the day of his graduation when, on a whim, his friend Sameer picks Cambodia as a holiday destination little knowing that the country was at that very moment, being taken over by the Khmer Rouge. Nick helps Sameer escape, but he himself is captured. When he does escape Phnom Penh, it is into a life that reboots itself every few years with a different alias in a new location.
Nick discovers a quiet resilience that becomes invaluable in the years to come as he loses an arm to gangrene, falls in love, becomes a Buddhist monk, becomes an accountant to a drug empire, fathers a child and loses everything many times over.
Nick’s character arc is intertwined with those of many others – Dechen the Buddhist monk in Thailand, Lara the supermodel from Brazil, Marco the druglord, Philip North a struggling entrepreneur in Minnesota and Dayaram, his opponent in the game of death in India – and Nick is transformed by these intertwinings even as he radically changes their lives in the brief period he knows them.
At every step, the book challenges the reader’s tendency to stereotype people, places and situations, but most of all, the mindset of a Non Resident Indian protagonist. Nick has an all-encompassing world view, yet, he also draws into his life the very events that break and make him over and over again. Nick makes sacrifices but is human enough to acknowledge the regret of having made them. He steadfastly refuses to own anything and is most content owning only the clothes on his person as he charts his rocky destiny through Cambodia, Thailand, Brazil, USA and finally, India. 
An edited version appeared in Culturama’s September 2010 Issue

CREEPERS
David Morrell
Headline Book Publishing

312 pages 

It’s an eye-opener to read David Morrell’s bibliography, and realize that he also wrote First Blood, Rambo (First Blood Part II) and Rambo III. A casual interaction with someone who’s an avid reader, reveals that Morrell writes primarily thrillers and is considered the King of Intrigue. Morrell’s latest, Creepers is both a bizarre adventure and a horror story of the non-supernatural kind, rolled into one. 

A bunch of intrepid urban explorers decide to ‘infiltrate’ The Paragon, an abandoned hotel at Asbury Park, New Jersey. The hotel’s past and its creator are as much a source of intrigue as the ahead-of-its-time art deco styling and its temple-like architecture that tapers upwards to a pent house. The protagonist of the story is James Ballenger, who joins this group of urban explorers under the pretext of writing an article about the expedition. However, his story and the undercurrents between the individual characters are revealed layer by layer as the chapters progress. The network of storm drains under the hotel, the immense lobby, the rooms and the unusual items abandoned in some of them – all add to the deepening mystery surrounding The Paragon. At almost every step of the way, the urban explorers find themselves confronted by situations where they would be better off abandoning the expedition. However, they press on, initially out of curiosity, and later out of no other option.

The book is laid out chapters of varying lengths and to Morrell’s benefit, every one of them is a link in the chain. Just when you think you know what’s going on, a new element is introduced to add a twist to the story. Having said that, it must be mentioned that the author keeps a tight leash on the story and doesn’t let the parts and components assume larger identities than the whole. The nucleus of the story remains the Paragon Hotel.

The book is perfect fodder for those who demand more from their average thriller-read. Morrell’s impeccable research comes to the fore once again. Urban Exploration as a concept, has been explained in great detail in this book. The concept is of people who enter and explore abandoned properties. At best, they take pictures, but never break-in, damage or take away any object from the building. However, Urban Exploration is considered equal to trespassing if done without the permission of the owner of the property.

Quite a few nuggets of general trivia are also woven effortlessly into the storyline to ensure you know a little more about random things by the end of the book. 

(edited version of this article was published on February 26, 2006 in dna.sunday)

The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova – 642 pages – Little, Brown and Company

The novel opens with a 16-year old girl who discovers in her father’s library, a cache of letters and a book with a dragon woodcut in its center. This is a story about her, her father and his mentor – all on a quest to learn more about a dark power, at the heart of which, is Vlad the Impaler, the source of the legend of Dracula. Although there are fleeting references to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this novel stands apart for its dash of realism and much history to make you wonder if the entire story is, after all, true.

Vlad III (Tepes) of Wallachia (now part of Romania), lived between 1431 and 1476, unleashing much terror among his people with his bizarre torture techniques, which bestowed on him the title attached to his name – The Impaler. His primary enmity was with the Ottoman empire, in particular, Sultan Mehmed II. The novel at one level, outlines the life, death and the supposed after-life exploits of Vlad. At another level, it’s a mission is to bring to an end, Vlad’s reign of vampirism.

This book is as much a voyage for the reader as it is for the protagonist, her father, Paul and his mentor, Bartolomeo Rossi. In the midst of all the action, linked to the three main characters, is Helen who plays more than a small part in the shaping of the story. A host of other characters pepper the pages, to move the story forward – from vampire librarians to secret agents to monks to a slew of academics from Istanbul, Bulgaria and Oxford. Where there are academics, needless to say, there are crumbling documents, cryptic maps and many, many yellowing letters.

Kostova writes straight, with just that touch of description of places and things that goes to move this novel a notch above popular fiction. There are disappearances, coincidences, monasteries with secret crypts, stories within stories, paths that criss-cross across decades. There are shifts in timeline, perspective and setting right through the book. The story sweeps across Amsterdam, Oxford, Istanbul, then Romania, Bulgaria and France. The story begins in 1972 and ends in 1476. However, it all ties in rather well, to make one good, albeit weighty, read.

If you were ever curious about the Dracula legend or love your historical fiction, this may prove to be an excellent choice. At 642 pages, The Historian is over twice the size of an average read, but may prove scintillating company for long journeys, afternoons of leisure and weekend marathon reads.

(edited version published on December 18, 2005 in dna.sunday, Mumbai)

“I’ve always been a small town person. I lived in Anand, Gujarat, and now, at Manipal, Karnataka. Chennai is a big city for me in contrast, and I visit my mother and other relatives here once in a while. My daughter who studied here, became quite the Chennai girl at the end of her course!”says Usha Rajagopalan, author of the novel, ‘Amrita’. 

Usha was in town to speak to students of the Women’s Christian College, as well as to participate in a reading and panel discussion on her debut novel, at the British Council.

Usha’s relationship with writing began in her childhood. “I was always into reading and writing, and assumed that it was a part of every child’s life. My grandfather would insist I write a review on every book I read, and would later go through the reviews, marking out phrases or words that he thought were well used in the context, as well as those that could be improved upon or expressed differently.”

Much later, Usha worked as Executive Assistant to Dr. V. Kurien, Chairman, National Dairy Development Board, at Anand, Gujarat. She recalls it being an intensely punishing job, and she worked from 9.30 a.m. to 8 p.m., 7 days a week, with only a half-hour lunch break. This half-hour lunch break was the time when she did most of her writing.

“I wrote many pieces for newspapers that got published almost instantly. Many readers wrote in to share their opinions about my pieces and mentioned looking forward to reading more of my work.” Says Usha. Ever since, her articles, travelogues, short stories, poems and features, more than 80 in all, have appeared in almost all the leading Indian English newspapers and magazines.

After she left her job at NDDB, she turned to full-time writing. Usha won the Commonwealth Short Story prize for three successive years: 2001, 2002 and 2003 and also won prizes for her poetry.

How did ‘Amrita’ happen? “I wrote the first draft of ‘Amrita’ during my stint as the Andrew Fellow in Fiction at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver in 1999. This was a period, when I could focus wholly on my writing. Since that first draft, the story has undergone much editing and revision and it’s a relief, to finally see it in print!” she says.

“The inspiration for ‘Amrita’, came from a visual I saw on television, of a girl leading another. I wanted to write about siblings, about a girl whose elder sister is dependent on her. The reason for the dependence, in the final story, is mental disability. ‘Amrita’ is the story of the deep bond between the mentally disabled Amrita and her mercurial younger sister Maya. Their parents, Raghu and Kamala, are resigned to their fate but Maya is determined to bring her sister within the fold of the family and society.”says Usha.

Having researched the subject of mental disability in great detail, Usha, however, believes that the book is not for those with a mentally disabled child in the family. “It’s especially for those who have non-disabled children, for them to appreciate how fortunate they are not to encounter the kind of challenges that families with mentally disabled children face on a daily basis.”

“I have tried to portray the challenges that the rest of the family faces, especially the siblings. And the biggest issue in a family such as the one in ‘Amrita’, is one of breakdown of communication. Although many people who have read the book have told me that they know families exactly like the one in the book, the portrayal itself is a composite of many people I met, places I had visited and stories I had heard from those working with mentally disabled children. In fact, the antics of Amrita’s non-disabled sister Maya, in the book, is modelled after all the naughty things my son used to do as a child!”

So, where to, from here? Usha says, “Many people have told me that the book is incomplete without more on Maya. They’ve wanted to know if I will write a sequel. I have no idea what I will write next. But one thing I know for sure, is that having spent about five years writing my first novel and understanding the process, it will take me a lot less time to write my next!”

(edited version published on February 24, 2005 in Madras Plus, the city features supplement of The Economic Times, Chennai. Pic courtesy Third Eye, as published in Madras Plus. Book cover courtesy Rupa Publications)