Manish’s post on Tokyo Cancelled a few weeks ago reminded me that I needed to finally pull the book down off the shelf, where it has been resting since S. brought it back for me from a brief visit to Bombay some months ago. I read it and was well-pleased (though perhaps not overwhelmed) by the imagination at work.

After a visit to Rana Dasgupta’s interesting homepage, I was intrigued to discover he’s signed off the filming rights for one of the stories in Tokyo Cancelled to a young Australian filmmaker named Robert Hutchinson. Hutchinson spent six weeks in India this past spring doing research on it for the screenplay he’s writing, and kept an interesting blog about it here. Aside from the fact that he misspells “Hindutva” at one point, Hutchinson has some interesting observations to make, both on India and on the script in progress. Here is how Hutchinson summarizes the plot for the film version of “The Billionaire’s Sleep,” which follows Dasgupta’s story quite closely:

Rajiv Malhotra is a billionaire who inherited an Indian steel empire and turned it into a trans-national concern with a focus on India’s ability to provide outsourcing services to the rest of the world. For him every moment of every day in every timezone is an opportunity to provide efficient services. His obsession with utilising every second of the day means he has never been able to sleep. This inability to sleep has also meant he is infertile and has not been able to produce an heir to his empire. His decision to have a ‘perfect son’ made for him through the use of genetic technologies is the inciting moment of the story. From that moment powers beyond his control come into play. (link)

That’s just part one. Note that it’s Dasgupta who uses the name “Rajiv Malhotra” (there is also a real person by that name, you may have heard of him; hard to know if any connection is intended).

Part two is where it really starts to get interesting: Continue reading →

An excerpt of an excerpt:

Sartaj walked stiffly to the window. Beyond the fizzing yellow lamps in the compound of the neighbouring building, there was the darkness of the sea, and far ahead, a sprinkling of bright blue and orange that was Bandra. With a good pair of binoculars, you could even see Nariman Point, not so far across the sea but at least an hour away on empty night-time roads, and very far from Zone 13. Sartaj felt a sudden ache in his chest. It was as if two blunt stones were grinding against each other, creating not fire but a dull, steady grow, a persistent and unquiet desire. It rose into his throat and his decision was made.

Twelve minutes of fast driving took him through the underpass and on to the highway. The open stretches of road and the wheel slipping easily through his fingers were exhilarating, and he laughed at the speed. But in Tardeo the traffic was backed up between the brightly-lit shops, and Sartaj was suddenly angry at himself, and wanted to turn around and go back.

And with that, Sartaj Singh is back. He is the police inspector whom you might remember from “Kama,” one of the five novellas that make up Vikram Chandra’s superb second book Love and Longing in Bombay. Chandra’s new tome Sacred Games, a Big Bombay Novel about cops, the underworld, and the meaning of life, was released in India earlier this month. From the excerpt at Rediff.com, which is taken from the first two chapters, it seems Chandra is back in full form: the tone, the pace of the writing feel very much like those of Love and Longing. The big question will be how it all plays out over nearly 1,000 pages. I found Chandra’s first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, too long: the stories within stories within stories, the jumps back and forth from medieval to modern times, from Mughal battlefields to American college campuses, got overwhelming and messy. Love and Longing, by contrast, had a formal structure that disciplined the plot lines and helped the writing soar. It’s my favorite of all the post-Midnight’s Children wave of Indian writing in English.

There are not many reviews out yet: Apparently everyone is still digesting the book. Here’s the bottom line according to Suchitra Behal in The Hindu: Continue reading →

The funeral has taken place in Dhaka of the country’s most famous poet, Shamsur Rahman, who died on Thursday of kidney failure after several days in a coma. A large number of Bangladeshi government ministers, politicians of both major parties (BNP and Awami), and cultural figures attended the funeral, although there were also questions why Rahman was not given official state honors.

Described in today’s New York Times obituary as the “unofficial poet laureate” of Bangladesh, Shamsur Rahman was the author of sixty collections of poetry in Bangla, of which only a small fractions appears to have been translated in English. I barely speak any Bangla, let alone read it, and I imagine many Sepia readers have like me only heard of Rahman without ever reading him. It would be great to hear commentary and criticism from anyone versed in Bangla poetry or who has some of this work in translation that they might share with us.

Rahman was the victim of an extremist attack in 1999:

An outspoken opponent of religious fundamentalism, Mr. Rahman was attacked in January 1999 by a group of young men who talked their way into his house and tried to behead him with an ax. Mr. Rahman was unharmed, but his wife, who came to his aid, was seriously wounded.

Hearing screams, neighbors rushed in and caught the attackers, who were members of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, a militant Islamic group. The attack led to the arrest of 44 members of the group.

There is an homage by Syed Manzoorul Islam in the Bangladesh Daily Star: Continue reading →

Khushwant Singh was someone I naturally gravitated towards as a young literature scholar, as he was one of the very few modern, secular Sikh writers with an international profile. (Now we have Brit-Asians like Nirpal Dhaliwal — though judging from this, I’m not really sure that represents progress.) But while I did read everything I could find by Khushwant Singh early in graduate school, I ended up not writing about him, barring one seminar paper that my professor at the time didn’t particularly like.

The truth is, from a literary perspective Khushwant Singh’s novels really aren’t that great. They aren’t as adventurous as G.V. Desani’s All About H. Hatterr, and not quite as carefully controlled as the novels written by his contemporaries in the 1950s — i.e., R.K. Narayan. Train to Pakistan (1956) sold very well in the west, and was in print for years and years. It isn’t bad — it’s actually a well-plotted, suspenseful partition novel — but it’s just somewhat unremarkable. I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale and Delhi, by contrast, aren’t very readable at all.

After the 1950s, Khushwant Singh focused less on creative writing and more on journalism, which is where, I think, he’s made his greatest contribution. Between 1969 and 1978 he was the head editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, an ancient institution that lasted for more than 100 years, and was, until the 1980s, the biggest English-language news-magazine in India (perhaps in all of Asia). Under the British, it was effectively a colonial society magazine, and it didn’t change much under its first two Indian editors. Khushwant Singh was the third Indian editor, and he turned the ethos of the magazine on its head. Continue reading →

I grew up in Paris. Many years later, this experience continues to earn me oohs and ahs: It must have been so… exotic! Cool! Parisian! I never know what to say in response. I mean, all I did was grow up. I rode the Metro and went to the movies a lot. I had long school days and lots of homework. After high school I came to the US, and for better or for worse have stayed here ever since.

It seems that by leaving so soon I missed all the fun:

IN “Weekend in Paris” Molly Clearwater, a 21-year-old British secretary with long blond hair and gorgeous breasts, impulsively sheds her dull life in London and heads to Paris, where she finds “a dizzying carousel ride of passion, excitement and self-discovery.”

In “Paris Hangover” Lauren Klein, a 34-year-old New Yorker with long blond hair and gorgeous breasts, abandons her glamorous job as a fashion consultant, gives up her TriBeCa triplex and plunges “into the mysterious world of Gallic men.”

And in “Salaam, Paris,” a Bollywood version of the story, Tayana Shah, a sheltered 19-year-old Indian Muslim with long legs and gorgeous breasts, arrives in Paris to meet the man to whom she is betrothed, becomes a supermodel and finds true love.

Since all these stories are clearly based on common real-life experiences, I am left to conclude that had I stayed in Paris, I too could have become a mysterious Gallic man, my life’s work devoted to the emotional liberation of perfect-chested beauties from multiple continents. I suppose it would have made a worthy career, but hey, so is blogging. Life is about choices.

Still, I wanted to learn more about Miss Shah. Who is the literary mastermind who brought this creature to life? Why, it’s old friend Kavita Daswani, whose prior oeuvre includes The Village Bride of Beverly Hills and For Matrimonial Purposes, of which one SM regular’s concise review follows:

I’ve read For Matrimonial Purposes. (don’t ask)…vomit!

Now I don’t mind a little chick-lit. I unabashedly enjoyed the original Bridget Jones. Salaam, Paris intrigues me, if only to see the treatment of the city of my youth, even if it bears as much relation to the actual Paris as my current ghetto surroundings do to Carrie and Miranda’s New York City.

Desi reviewer Reeta Sinha gives Salaam, Paris the business, however:

Kavita Daswani seems to know a bit about stereotypes. Her first book, For Matrimonial Purposes, was full of them and things havenÂ’t changed much with this, her third and most recent work. If anything, the storyline provides room to expand, adding stereotypes about Muslim women to the usual desi chick-lit mix of arranged marriages, overbearing parents and the promise of glitz, glamour and happiness as soon as you leave India. …

ItÂ’s hard being a virgin, teetotaler supermodel, flitting between New York, the Caribbean and Paris, pretending to be hooked up with a rock star and being mauled by her handlers. ItÂ’s even worse when in between raking in fame and money, all you want to do is see your grandfather. … AllÂ’s well that ends well, of course. A fairy godmother in the form of an aunt helps Tanaya reconcile with her dying (of course), grandfather and Prince Charming does finally show up and they live happily ever after, in Paris (of course). …

Every imaginable cliché about Muslims and western perceptions has been thrown in, sadly, quite casually. So, you have references to RushdieÂ’s fatwa, four wives (Tanaya clarifies that sheÂ’s an Indian Muslim, not an Arab), she explains sheÂ’s not the “terrorist kind” when asked if sheÂ’s Muslim…

In conclusion, Sinha says:

But, then this is a beach-read. A fantasy. No bearing to the real world or real people whatsoever.

Or, as Entertainment Weekly puts it (via Amazon):

The culture-clash dilemmas ring heartbreakingly true.

Continue reading →