Read 15 of 2023. Hospital by Sanya Rushdi. Translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha

I read “Hospital” with trepidation. I was apprehensive about getting triggered regarding my mental health issues, but if anything, I am glad I read it, because while it may seem that the book is about descent into madness and maybe to some extent it is, but it is also about so much more. It is primarily about language, and Arunava Sinha being the translator par excellence that he is uses it sometimes playfully, sometimes using melancholia, mostly matter-of-fact, and sometimes as a means of self-exploration for the protagonist Sanya (yeah, it is a metanovel inspired by real-life events). He is in absolute sync with the mindset of the writer, the protagonist, and more than anything else with where the story unfolds – that in a hospital in Australia.

The story is told from the perspective of a patient – all in first person – of Sanya’s feelings, of what is unravelling slowly yet surely, of what is hidden behind a wall of caution when it comes to giving away too much, of safeguarding oneself and seeing the world as an enemy by and large, Hospital asks big questions: What is sanity? Who is sane? What is the societal parameter of someone being sane or not? And all of this is questionable a little more than ever, because you as a reader are made aware from the first page that the narration could be unreliable, but you cannot help it – you have to read it, you have to know how is it going to be for Sanya – what her life is going to turn out like – how her world is constantly shifting and changing.

Arunava’s translations are always a delight to read. He gets into the skin of language, and what emerges is something extraordinarily unique only to what he has translated from the source. Hospital cuts like a knife and makes you so uncomfortable as a reader, which I think should be one of the objectives of literature – to shake the reader, to get us to spaces that are suffocating, and make us see things – whether we trust them or not, rely on them or not, that is secondary – in fact should not even be considered, given how the story propels us further.

Hospital by Sanya Rushdi quietly takes you by the hand, and then leaves you to your own device in the mind of the protagonist. We live with her, and see the world through her, the places we know, and the places we are made aware of. The titular place then becomes most ordinary, turns extraordinary, lets us in, and makes us see all the failings and sometimes joy of living.

Read 13 of 2023. Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

It has been about a week since I read “Wandering Souls” and there are times in a day that I keep going back to the novel – in my thoughts, in my subconscious and scenes from it keep playing back. Scenes of kindness in times of unimaginable pain, trauma, and hurt. Scenes of what it means to be family – of creating family after its loss, of living life in a new country and yet while there is racism, alienation, and isolation, there is also unimaginable kindness, and kinship from unexpected quarters.

“Wandering Souls” is a book about the unsaid and the unknown feelings – feelings that are bottled, that you choose not to encounter, because it is best to move on, it is best to think about a hopeful future, it is best to dream of a better life. It is a book about atrocities that one country inflicts on another in the name of liberation, in the name of a conspiracy theory, because a nation was afraid it waged a war and ruined the lives of families. It is about closures, about finding peace and joy, about reconciliation of emotions, of a family torn apart and how they heal themselves.

Cecile Pin’s writing about three siblings (and a fourth) and their journey to a foreign land, to try and come to terms with how life has changed so quickly, and how to make sense of the world around them is heartbreaking, uplifting, and presents trauma in the sense of being most empathetic, catharsis-inducing for the reader, and for all of us to see and consider questions of humanity, kindness, and the role it plays in the world we live in.

Read 6 of 2023. The Possession by Annie Ernaux. Translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis

Jealousy. The rawness of this emotion perhaps cannot be compared to any other. It slices you open, and you lay bleeding – for all to see, because it is visible – that’s what this emotion ensures – to come in plain view. It is as though you are different person under its spell, and hence you are possessed – as Ernaux was when jealous of an ex-lover’s current partner.

There is no timeline in this very slim work about this emotion. And like all Ernaux’s books, this memoir feels as though it belongs to the reader – it is always that close to home (at least for me). “The Possession” made me see myself as that person in love – the one that is obsessed with the other – the one that will not let go, the one that seeks closure but is unable to find it, the one that seethes in his own agony and suffering, day after day, wanting the same for the lover that once was.

She wants him back (is it because someone else has him now?). She years. She longs. She wants. “I want to fuck you and make you forget the other woman”, she says, and you know that everything before and after doesn’t matter. Ernaux’s writing is not only lucid but also it is the story of writing this book – how she wants to pour her emotions on paper, how that is perhaps the only way she will find some comfort – she may have given up everything else in the name of love or desire, but not her writing.

Anna Moschovakis’ translation is stunning, and you can tell by every sentence and every word used in all its glory, and brevity. Ernaux’s emotions I think may not have been easy to put on paper even in the original, and for Moschovakis to translate it the way she has is commendable.

The Possession entered me through its pages, and I have a very strong feeling that it will not let go for a while now. And I also feel the same way. I also want to be the other. The one who has him. The several others who are now with my several hims.

Read 3 of 2023. Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

Age of Vice is a book that doesn’t cut corners. It doesn’t hold back from saying what it wants to about the vast difference between the haves and the have-nots in the Indian society, and what happens because of that. At the same time, it is heartfelt in the way the story unfolds sometimes. Mind you, those times are very rare in the book, so when you find them, you are overwhelmed, broken, and realise your failings as a person, in comparison to that of the well-nuanced, messy, struggling-with-life, and fractured characters that inhabit these five-hundred-and-forty pages.

Age of Vice is set in Delhi – the book opens with a crime – and Kapoor doesn’t shy from showing us how it was done – getting into the gory details, and the intended result of that crime that takes place in 2004, but the story begins in 1991 with Ajay – a boy of eight – a boy from a lower caste – a Dalit, and what happens to him till and after he starts working for Sunny Wadia, the heir to the Wadia empire and its nefarious dealings. Basically, a crime syndicate, and how inextricably the stories of Ajay and Sunny will be linked for years to come. And in all of this, there is Neda, the headstrong journalist, whose gumption is tested to the point of it not being there, whose moral compass is uprooted, and how she becomes a part of the world inhabited by Sunny.

There is opulence, decadence, wealth that one cannot imagine – brands being dropped constantly on every other page, and while initially I thought what was happening, I realised very soon that it was much-needed. To show the farmhouse culture of Delhi, to understand the poor, we must understand the wealthy. Kapoor has this insider-outsider perspective – there is biting satire that unravels itself slowly and quite deliciously. As a reader, you must wait, you must go through the finer details of living – and losing, and the sheer heartbreak of the story – of Sunny and Neda’s love, of how as humans we will go to any stretch sometimes to ensure we have the one elusive characteristic that places us on the top of it all – POWER.

Power to claim people, to make them see where they belong in the larger scheme of things, to rule them all (Bunty Wadia and his brother, Vicky Wadia’s constant pursuit), to understand who must be manipulated and controlled to what extent, the plot of Age of Vice races on full-throttle mode. Incidents happen swiftly – people die at the drop of a hat, injustices take place and no one dare utter a word because of the “crime family” at the helm, and Kapoor’s Delhi seethes, and spectates, and we move from place to place with guilt, the idea of freedom in the minds of the characters, never letting go of privilege, of understanding its worth, of being punched in the face with self-awareness, and to then bear the burden of living.

Deepti Kapoor takes us through Goa, the hills of Himachal, Nepal, back to Delhi, to Italy even, to the center of it all – Uttar Pradesh, and all the places to make us understand the futility of living – there is no higher purpose anyway. There are truths and lies, and in-between the ones – the living who tell them daily, to live after all.

Age of Vice is about decaying – the rotting that takes place spectacularly, on such a grand level that the ones involved, the ones watching from the sidelines, and the ones encouraging it also perhaps – know it all – they are aware of what is going on and yet cannot take their gaze away, they cannot walk away – they must endure. Deepti’s writing is sharp, incisive, and makes no bones about how it is. “It is what it is” – this phrase came to my mind so many times as I turned the pages, and it sticks – the indifference of the phrase lingers throughout the book, and in this indifference stems the need to seek validation, to make something of your life, to make it worth it, to make it count – whether for Ajay it is the idea of family, or for Sunny it is about validation – the strong sense of urgency to do good or the idea of it, and ultimately for Neda – to try so hard to be right and yet constantly failing to her own lofty ideas about living.

The back and forth between the sacred, the profane, the good, the bad, the moralistic, the amoral makes Age of Vice what it is – a reflection of our times, of the Kalyug that Deepti mentions at the beginning of the book, the dark times, of the doomsday cometh, of pain and pleasure – both unbearable – the complexity of living, and the simple ways of death – Kapoor’s writing astounded me, made me want to get up and slap a few characters, to show them the way, to play God even, only to quickly realize that as a reader I had been given no power at all – so I enjoyed the read, lapped it all up, thought about the book for days to come, and cannot wait for the next two instalments of this fantastic trilogy.

Read 2 of 2023. Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith

For the longest time, I avoided “pandemic” literature. I did not want to read about the lockdown, about the Corona virus, about Covid-19, about lack of vaccines, of how people had to migrate, what difficulties we faced as a community, and what did the pandemic signify for decades to come. I just did not want to read about it, till I did when I read some fantastic books last year such as “How High We Go in the Dark” and “Sea of Tranquility”, each of them just telling me more about the human connection, and how we can only survive through empathy.

Zadie Smith’s most profound and striking piece of writing is this collection of six essays about how we live – then and now, if we change as humans, if we have learned anything at all from the situation that was, and what it is now – only of course she speaks of 2020 through these essays that are about people she knows, people she doesn’t know all that much, of life as a writer before and during the pandemic, of how we all learned to live, and some had to learn to survive.

The art of the essay is a unique one – to separate the personal from the public and political, and to merge them when you want to suffuse intimacy with tenderness, which she does most marvellously through these short six pieces. My most favourite piece has to be, “Contempt as a Virus” where she speaks of race, of class, and how there is nothing different between it and the fast-spreading virus.

“Intimations” is a collection of non-combative, meditative, and hits you directly from the author’s subconscious and what we all experienced – that collective experience is not only recognisable or relatable, but also brings to fore a lot of empathy, as the pages turn.

Books and Authors mentioned in Intimations: 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Ottessa Moshfegh
Kafka
Toni Cade Bambara
Yukio Mishima
Édouard Levé
Berger
Tanizaki
The Road
Fran Lebowitz
Sontag
James Baldwin
Lorraine Hansberry
Zora Neale Hurston
Virginia Woolf
Lives of the Artists by Vasari
Milton
Keats
Twelfth Night
Oscar Wilde
Vita Sackville-West
George Eliot