Read 72 of 2022. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

Title: The Final Solution
Author: Michael Chabon
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 978-0060777104
Genre: Historical Mystery
Pages: 131
Source: Personal Copy
Rating: 5/5

Chabon’s writing takes time to grow on you. I have understood this after reading several of his books. Whether it is The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or The Wonder Boys, or even a short book like this one. The Final Solution, though short is full of sentences that are magnificent, take time to unravel, written in the true-blue Chabonesque style, often one inside the other, like a puzzle waiting to be solved.

The Final Solution is about Sherlock Holmes solving a mystery in the year 1943, at the height of WWII. He is 89 years old and his faculties are all there. A murder and the disappearance of an African Grey parrot is what Holmes has to solve.

I absolutely enjoyed this short book. It was well-paced, sketches out Holmes in the most unique manner at an age – where you see him falter, and those flaws are apparent, but you find yourself cheering for him, nonetheless.

Michael Chabon blends too many things but somehow, they work – whether it is the war, or a child refugee, or the depiction of migrants in the UK, and the subdued racism that is faced by them. The Final Solution is a book that has you on the edge with Holmes, without mentioning the great detective. It is a book about childhood lost, life on the edge of the past and the future, and what it means to not know where you belong.

Read 5 of 2022. Legal Fiction by Chandan Pandey. Translated from the Hindi by Bharatbhooshan Tiwari.

Title: Legal Fiction
Author: Chandan Pandey
Translated from the Hindi by Bharatbhooshan Tiwari
Publisher: HarperCollins India
ISBN: 978-9354227509
Genre: Translated Fiction, Literary Fiction Pages: 168
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Legal Fiction was one of the best reads for me last year. I reread it again this month because I was in conversation with Chandan and Bharatbhooshan and enjoyed every minute of it.

Legal Fiction is unlike anything I read and kept thinking about it a lot. The themes of disappearance of a Muslim man, love jihad – a term coined by the right wing of the country to bring to task Muslim men who love Hindu women, the struggle of people in a small town who are constantly under surveillance whether they like it or not (in one way or the other), the idea of democracy just being on paper, and ultimately that of rule of land being followed over rule of law.

Silences play a major role. Silences that force people to look within, to understand their spaces, look at the role of caste and religion that draw invisible boundaries, silences that reflect lack of agency of women, and how vocabulary defeats what we feel most of the time.

Legal Fiction put simply is about the disappearance of a man – a man who lives in a small town with his wife and is from a minority religion in Modi’s India. It is about the agency of an urban middle-class man, Arjun, who travels to Noma – the fictional village – to locate the man, Rafique. It is about what Arjun unearths in Noma, and what goes on behind closed doors, and sometimes right in the open, only because it can.

Chandan Pandey makes no bones about what he has to say. The writing is sparse, calls out the hypocrisy of the system, where things have gone wrong and continue to do so, and above all packs in a punch and more on almost every single page.

Bharatbhooshan’s translation reads like the original (I also read the book in Hindi). It is fast-paced, reads like a thriller but is so much more, mesmerizing, like a sort of fever dream, and above anything else a mirror for us to see ourselves in and understand what we have become vis-à-vis what we were.

When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me by Ananda Devi. Translated from the French by Kazim Ali.

Title: When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me
Author: Ananda Devi
Translated from the French by Kazim Ali Publisher: Harper Perennial India
ISBN: 9789390351930
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 120
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Poetry and I share a tumultuous relationship. There are times I love it with all my heart, even though I fleetingly remember lines. There are times I hate it so much, that I don’t want to read the genre again. But it is always extreme. This love or the hate. Nothing in- between. Off late, it is veering toward more love, and for that I am grateful. We all evolve. Thank God for that.

Ananda Devi’s poetry takes a while to get used to, like any collection of poems. Just that this isn’t any other collection. Her tone, her structure, the subtle hints of expression – the saying and not saying – the exquisite way in which language lends itself – even though it’s a translation, is just stunning. There are poems and then there are three prose poems, which go on quite beautifully.

Her poems do take some time to get into. The themes are evident: sometimes a little bit of longing, a burst of emotions, surpassing all norms of gender (all these poems to my mind were gender-neutral and that was absolutely fantastic), speaking of the body, of sleeplessness, of desire that isn’t accentuated, and about aging and the body not in control as it moves through time.

The translation by Kazim Ali is what Ananda Devi intended. The translations were read by her, they went through a process – back and forth and reached the version we read. As Kazim Ali says the task of translation was “less karaoke and more full-blown drag”. There is an interview with Ananda Devi at the end of the book, and a note by Mohit Chandna (an Assistant Professor in French and Francophone Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad, India) that sum up the book beautifully – the poems from head to toe, from start to finish, from insomnia to deep sleep.

The Windows in our House are Little Doors by Vinod Kumar Shukla. Translated from the Hindi by Satti Khanna.

Title: The Windows in our House are Little Doors
Author: Vinod Kumar Shukla
Translated from the Hindi by Satti Khanna
Publisher: Harper Perennial India 
ISBN: 978-9353574819
Genre: Literary Fiction, Translations 
Pages: 224
Source: Publisher 
Rating: 5/5 

It isn’t just magic realism that makes this book what it is. There is magic, yes. There is a lot of it, some which is mostly unseen or even unread on the pages. There is adventure, and a sense of listlessness as well. Vinod Kumar Shukla captures it all on the page. It seems as though his childhood years are encompassed in this book.

“The Windows in our House are Little Doors” is an English translation of Yasi, Rasa, and Ta from the Hindi by Satti Khanna. Vinod Kumar Shukla’s story takes place in an unnamed city, could even be an unnamed small town, a village even, or just somewhere in your vicinity. The time isn’t mentioned either. There is fluidity to it all. Yasi and Rasa are siblings. Their parents are Niya and Vendra. Ta is their cousin. Their uncle Bhoona loves to sleep and doesn’t want to do anything else. Ta is Bhoona’s daughter. But all of this doesn’t matter. Nothing matters since there is no plot as such to the book, but you continue reading it. The writing pulls you in. it intrigues and teases and doesn’t let go.

Vinod Kumar Shukla’s world is unique in that sense. Bicycles understand that they have been stolen and return to their owner. A single melon starts growing on its own, and adds to the weight of the cart, till slices are cut and sold. Houses make way for people. There is no concept of home, and yet there is. Home is at the heart of this book, told through twenty-six storeys (as it is said). Everything makes sense, and nothing does.

“Time bakes the present into the past. Sometimes, much later, shards show up in digs, buried under mounds of dirt. The shards are fragments of time. The ambulant present moves on; history keeps hiding behind it.”

See what he’s done here? I mean the writing is about time and yet he separates all of it – the past, the present, and the future, and again somehow gathers them together. The writing then isn’t just metaphorical. It takes on the shape of something else.

Shukla’s writing makes you believe like you are in a dream. Anything and everything are made possible. Sandals have a mind of their own and get lost. People get lost and are found in an instant. Bicycles smile and remind people to buy towels. Yes, anything happens. There is a jalebi store that is never shut, and the fire is always burning under the jalebi pan. I mean, I just gave in to what Vinod Kumar Shukla had to offer. I entered the world created by him and was happy being there.

The translation by Satti Khanna is magnificent. I say this with confidence, since at some points, I had the Hindi edition also in front of me and read from it a little to contrast and compare. Every sentence has been dealt with kindness and care, and perhaps that’s why the essence remains.

Worlds collide in Shukla’s writing. Day and night cannot be differentiated from. He writes, “A person wishes to become a tourist in the place he has lived for decades” and you relate hard and strong because you also have looked at your city that way. When he says, “We make our homes into prisons. Let us live in a house as if we could pack up and leave for another habitation any time” you nod your head with great affirmation because you have thought about it as well.

“The Windows in our House are Little Doors” has to be experienced and felt. It cannot just be read. But read it going blindfold. Do not read the synopsis. It is nothing after all. You won’t know till you read it.

 

A letter to Gabo on his birthday.

Dearest Gabo,

It’s your birth anniversary and I’m grateful that you were born. I’m overjoyed that you lived, experienced what you experienced, loved the way you loved, made your mistakes, and took them all and wrote your books. Your books people say are rooted in magic. I think they are rooted in harsh reality, which you sugar-coated for us. So, thank you for that as well. There won’t be more books from you. I’m aware. It’s been a while now. But I am happy that I get to reread all that you wrote. No one else could write like you Gabo. No one else can. They try. But you are you, and you know that. One hundred years of solitude made me dream in technicolor, Márquezda and you should know that. Of love and other demons brought me closer to my ex-boyfriend and he left me when your autobiography was released. It’s been a long time since then. I remember not liking love in the time of cholera. Sorry for that. I still don’t. But I read it. Your stories have a life of their own, and you know that. I write to you because I love you. I write to you to let you know that you made a fifteen year-old boy dream when he was lost and confused. You made me see my Macondo. You made me live my reality and taught me how to face it. I remember reading Leaf Storm at 15 and being fascinated by it. I wanted to write you a letter. I always did. Never thought it would be when you were in a Macondo of your own. I hope the siestas are long. I hope you are still writing. I hope you are dreaming for all of us. I hope you’re happy. I also want to gift you something if it means something. I will read a book of yours every month. Reread most of them. Till I’m done. And perhaps start all over again. Gabo, you made a generation hopeful of love. You made them see magic. You made them escape. You made them live. Thank you. A thousand times.

Love,
A reader.