On Reading Jeet Thayil's Novel "Narcopolis"

After a long time spent in prevaricating, I have gotten down to reading Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis. No, this isn't a case of hero-worship (Jeet is actually younger than me) for a person from my community, but a frank appreciation of a novel which is set in my urbs prima, Bombay. I know Jeet Thayil as an essayer of fine prose and poetry, and even our native places in Kerala aren't far from each other.

Narcopolis is a many-layered piece about a man castrated to be a eunuch. I guess this is a system that is prevalent in India, only in India, that is. Here we have the eunuchs come to our home and if the child is born with inadequate sexual organs he is castrated to be an eunuch. A eunuch thus castrated can only become a beggar or a sex slave. Nothing could be sadder than a story of an eunuch (nowadays called transgender) in the class- and community-conscious Indian society. The transgender Dimple also works in an opium den set in the seventies when Thayil came of age and what is interesting is his re-creation of those days.

Through his exquisitely crafted prose – having the ring of poetry – Thayil recreates an era that has been forgotten. Those days in Bombay opium was easily available. There was marijuana in every street corner; there were the dons of Dongri who managed the narcotics business with diligence. Today the dons are on the run and drugs aren't easily available. The opium dens of those days have closed down; the curtains have come down on an era of hedonistic excesses. Commissioner JRF Ribeiro the supercop and his brave men have seen to that.

The author moves easily across boundaries and time lines as is seen from Lee's – a top-ranking Chinese official – story. Lee is marking his days in Bombay and is Dimple's customer. Dimple is employed by Rashid in his opium den and Thayil reels out a stream of slang terms which stands for the use and abuse of the narcotic. Rashid is a man damaged by the profession and indulges in excesses of sex and gluttony. He seems like a man beyond redemption.

And, of course, there is the six-page opening sentence which as Thayil says "is a good sentence." I find nothing wrong in that since Joyce has a page full of outdated degrees and qualifications in Ulysses.

The famous Malayalam writer MT Vasudevan Nair has said that every novel puts across a novel concept, a novel idea, something for the society to ruminate on. I can't fish out the original Malayalam words, but he said as much. True Thayil has presented the unrecorded past of Bombay as a novel idea of which we may be unaware, but in which surely have played a part.

My only complaint with Narcopolis is that it ends too soon. I would have liked to see some more resolution and closures. I would have liked to read more about Dimple's life and about Ramesh, Rumi, as he is called. He has some interesting quotes ascribed to him: "This chooth country, this cunt country, how the fuck are you supposed to live here without drugs?" But then a novel has to end somewhere doesn't it?

Rant: Why Indian Writing in English Has Failed to Evolve

In this Video I expound (rather pompously, rantingly, I might add) on why I think Indian Writing in English has failed to evolve. Do have a look and please, please, comment.

A Fight in Train, Mollywood Styleu!

It's strange how I meet these types in trains. While I have written about some of these types who - I thought - existed only in movies and stale comedy shows, this time it was downright hilarious. On my recent trip to Kerala, I mean. It was something out of a Mollywood movie.

There was this army office who got into the Durondo to Ernakulam with a quarter of whisky, or more, in him. And next to him there was this officerly man with his wife and daughter. After dinner wifey - mine - and I lay down to sleep, as did the others. The inebriated officer was supposedly sleeping on the lower berth opposite mine. There is a passage and next to that are the two seats of the officerly man, now occupied by his dowdy-looking wife. Her husband lay down on the berth opposite mine, which was above the army officer's. 

This officer, being sloshed, was writhing a lot, the whisky churning inside him. In the night the woman sat up and alleged that he had touched her. The husband came down, caught the army officer and slapped him. They were tight slaps administered dexterously, as if by the police. Then, I still don't believe it, nor would you, he unbuckled his belt to beat his adversary who was threatening to call the police.

The coach attendant came hearing the commotion and offered to call the ticket checker. This rather authoritarian man checked tickets and asked for identification. The army officer turned to be a captain and the officerly man turned out to be an officer, a big shot, in the Intelligence Bureau (IB). The ticket checker didn't know what to do with two government officers and said that they would have to get down at the next station if he complained to the control room.

The IB officer then sensed the situation would get ugly if he and family were stranded in some godforsaken station in the Konkan and said he was sorry. The army officer, too, sensing that the situation had gotten out of hand, offered to move to another berth. The man sleeping in the berth above mine offered to take the vacated berth below. 

Now both government officers were in opposite bunkers near the roof. I thought again a war of words would ensue with fistcuffs being the final resort. I steeled myself for this assault.

Hm, nothing like that happened. Apparently both realised they were employees of the state and started exchanging hesitant pleasantries, which then escalated to a camaraderie which I have not even seen in childhood friends. 

Happy ending? No, there is an unsettling ending to this saga. The newly made friendship resulted in chatter throughout the night while the rest of us - including wifey - spent a restless night turning hither and thither on our narrow beds. 

No sleep was had by anyone of us in the coupe. More of these travel anecdotes later, friends, keep reading....

Kerala pictures

Away in Kerala

Sorry folks.  Am away in Kerala. For those of you who think about my writing as awesome here are some pics that are like balm on sore eyes. Kidding!

A New Government; a New Dispensation

So the democratic process electing a new parliament has ground to a halt. The process of determining the next government will soon begin. But have you thought of how distanced we, the people, are from the governing process? True, right to information has unearthed a lot of things. On the whole, looking at it from an academic distance, what do we see? The politicians need us only for electing them. After that, it's pretty much their own turf, they can decide what they want to do. 

A government run by proxy is the worst form of government. I hear the congress was run by it's president than the prime minister. Also, there is talk of the cabinet of the potential future prime minister being decided by the RSS. Do we need such governments run by proxies? Such governments have their risks: decisions are not made at appropriate time, often wrong decisions are meted out. There is also the monster of some favourite influencing the decision. 

Ah, ahem, now comes the question of diplomacy and projecting our leader to the world. How will Modi - a small-time businessman - appear in the company of Obama and Cameroon? Can he speak English with sophistication? Whatever I have heard him speak appears shallow, uninspiring. What will be his sartorial preferences? How will be conduct himself in world fora? 

You need all that to be a leader of a nation, and much more. Empty rhetoric will not compensate for realpolitik. 

Hm, all we can do is wait and watch.

The Jackfruit Tree I Planted... and Why Jackfruits Are So Important to Mallus!

Sometime in my childhood, I wanted to be a farmer and would go around our property in Kerala with a hoe and plant trees and look after a cow that was gifted to me by my mother. And then I had planted this jackfruit (it's also called breadfruit in some cultures) tree in our property. Actually, I took a plant that had germinated from under a jackfruit tree and re-planted it, and then watered it. The tree did very well and grew. Today that tree has sprouted many branches and my brother Joseph John sent me this photo, which shows, well, a lot of fruits. 

Erm, what I am waffling, eh, proceeding to announce here is the joy of seeing something bear fruit. This does warm the cockles because other endeavours of mine are forever languishing: a novel, a collection of short stories, a book on Kerala. Well, they are taking their time, while the jackfruit tree has spread its wings in many directions. Secretly, in my heart, what I am wishing is: why hasn't my other projects taken off? Where am I going wrong? Of course, health issues and medical system have taken a toll, but do I give up so soon, without closure? I don't know. 

I need to... need to.... Okay I will leave it at that.

In Kerala a jackfruit is put to different uses (as every Malayali knows), as I said to Facebook friend and guitarist Lindsay Legane:

We eat it as a fruit

We make a sauted delicacy of its seeds

We fry it in coconut oil

We steam it 

We make a curry out of it

We eat it raw

So on and so forth....

Well, so many We's in the above for my liking. I will let it stand. That's because we Mallus are an egotistic people when it comes to our fruits and our eats. He... he...!

So, people, never ask a Mallu if he misses jackfruit. He may well double up his lungi into an improvised short pant and prepare to climb a jackfruit tree. And sure as hell he won't come down for hours until he finishes his "chakka" on the "plavu."

Here's the Wikipedia article on Jackfruit, if it interests you.

About Employers and Suchlike...

Absence can make the heart grow fonder. So, dear reader, I am assuming my absence would have made you fonder about this space. Or, am I dreaming, or something? Well, be that as it may

​,​

I have kept aside (rather, swept aside

​)​

other concerns to pen a few words here today.

Sonny's leaving for the U.S.A. was a shock for both me and wifey. Didn't expect it to happen so soon. We miss him. We thought the company would give him some more time for the rona dhona (crying and wringing) and packing. No. Corporations are very demanding these days, which says something about the job market. Don't ask me what. So the actual rona dhona is happening now: on a little application called Whatsapp. Our first question to him is Have you eaten? If yes, what? It seems he has met some good people in the U.S. and are staying at their house, a beautiful bungalow with two garages and a drive. These are only things we can imagine here, but there it is common, or, so I guess.

And, then there are health issues. I think the whole concept of western medicine - as it exists in India - is a sham.

​Seriously.​

Yesterday I went to get some tests done and the girl there couldn't spell my name.

She kept writing my name wrongly and I had to correct her.​

Now, suppose, she mixes my name for someone else's? Such things do happen in laboratories, don't they? That makes me a believer more and more of Indian medicine. Oh, why couldn't I do Yoga, meditation, and walking a few years ago - as I do now - and stayed clear of my health issues. But then I was too much in awe of life and wanted to live as if each day counted. I was a sucker for the promises of my employers, wanting to do great things in the corporate world. Did I succeed?

Well, how can you succeed when you have to meet the following foolish demands:

The MD wants a new website of the company in just four days
The in-house magazine should read like a combination of Penthouse and Playboy
Each advertisement should have five, yes five, different concept for the MD to choose from
Everything should be approved by the chairman or the MD
You have to sit beside the office copier and do your best thinking
All they - the VP and above -

​do ​

is drink tea, hold meetings and go home, you have to sit and do the poop scooping
An office of a 100 people has two toilets and 4 urinals. Sometimes even these facilities have to be shared with the neighbour's office staff.

(The MD and Chairman have their own.)​ 

If you want to crap the best option is the nearby star hotel, into which you walk with all the dignity you can muster, given the situation.
et cetera, et cetera.

Enough bitching about employers. The liberties they take

​ ​

in India​

are undocumented.

​More of this to come.​

The Nest is Suddenly Empty

Not been here for a long time. Not that I am lazy, but that something drastic was going on in our lives, meaning wifey's and mine. Sonny was told to pack bags and be in the Yoonited States within a week. And the desperation started: for luggage, for suits, for warm clothing, for jackets, for foreign exchange, for sundry other toiletries. And, of course, masalas and pickles. These days travelling to a foreign country involves all these.

Then his flight was cancelled and he was given accommodation in a city five-star hotel. This hotel even has a bathrobe for residents, I discovered. I have never worn a bathrobe in my life and none of the five-star hotels I lived in provided one. From the hotel room I could look straight into a slum and see life at its worst before me. Naked children running around, mothers sitting on doorways, the roofs cluttered with plastic sheets, the open gutters thick with sewage. Oh God! What would those firangs who stay at the hotel think? Do they sit in their bathrobes watching the naked children being bathed in the open? The staff at the hotel were suitably obsequious and "namaste-ed" us everywhere we went, and I didn't disappoint them, meaning, to say, I responded with a regal wave of acknowledgement. Do they know about the poverty that I saw from their window? I don't know.

And then sonny flew away and we were devastated. The nest is empty. It's as if our lives had become barren and decrepit. The house sounded strangely hollow, the buzz had ceased, his bike lay derelict, it's thrum and boom - announcing his arrival - replaced by silence. The soft patter of feet up and down the stairs was gone and we didn't know what had laid our lives bare. Wifey felt it more as he was very close to her, and she indulged her only son's every wish: his clothes immaculately washed and ironed, his food peppered with the right amount of masalas, his requests for sweets fulfilled. 

I didn't know it could be this damaging. So, I tried to make it a bit bearable for wifey, telling her a few jokes to make her laugh, and explaining what I read in the papers, now that I am nearly unemployed. We know we have to depend on each other now, for vast periods of time. So, now I realise what it would have been for my own parents. But, for my parents there was a different kind of engagement; they fought a lot. 

Now though we chat on Whatsapp quite a lot, I don't know what's going on in my son's life. He says the streets are empty in the small town in which he is based. There are no people and no animal life around. Hehe. He would have been more at home if there were a few stray dogs and cows on the roads and feverishly rushing people. I said, yes, there people live in their houses and when they go out they drive themselves. When they need something they go to a mall and pick up food and pack their refrigerators with them. No wonder all of them are so fat. But they are an ethical and industrious people. Over here men stand outside their homes in their drawstring chuddies quite a lot, to catch the wind, as they say. Over there if they want to catch the wind they go to the beach. Hm. Life's a beach. Or, so they think. 

We have to content with silent mornings, nights, and our own attempts at survival. Wifey has her school - where she is principal - and, she has mountains of work to be done there. As for me I have nothing, except this blog, perhaps, which nobody reads. 

Life goes on. Doesn't it? 

A Missing Aeroplane in the Indian Ocean and Other Musings....

Some things just upset me. Like this one: a jet plane from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing veers away and is not seen again for more than two weeks. Information comes very slowly over the media: much tom-tomed (yes, that's the word) as on-the-spot reportage and live coverage. I think of the relatives of people on board, their desperation, their stoicism, their occasional outbursts. Is this the modern world we live in? Is this the technological advancement we have made - making soldiers, most likely to be soldiers, looking out of windows to spot some tell-tale sign of the jet. Has the suicide/terror angle been investigated? Is this some kind of modern Hara-kiri?

Well, no one knows.

India said it will join the search and quite forgot about it. Well, um, it happened in our back yard, the Indian Ocean and we forgot about it. How else do you explain the virtual blanking out of India from the references by the experts. "!@#$%^&* unka plane gaya hai, hamara kya jata hai," they must have said in hushed voices. But there were Indians on board and Indian planes should have been sent for the search in the Indian Ocean. Of course, a great public relations opportunity of making use of a much international aeronautical disaster to display our advancements and achievements was lost. An Indian plane should have reported that it has spotted debris. We owed it to the world and the families of the compatriots on board. Largely situational albeit a significant positioning as a power of consequence in the Indian Ocean. On the other hand China offered to snoop around in our territorial waters (the ingenious Chinese know their diplomacy and war tactics much better).

Well, we wait, we wait for what? For Godot? For some news from Australia, China, Malaysia, even Thailand. No, not India.