Strange Men Strange Places by Ruskin Bond

There are two types of histories, one is about the life of nations and people who decide their course and the other is about ordinary people who live their lives under the cross currents of big events (social, political and economic) that are never of their own making but often shape their lives and circumstances.

I am reading a book by Ruskin Bond which visits the lives of people who live in the backwaters of history, and even though some of their lives and achievements may be extraordinary, they never attract the interest of historians and are seldom remembered beyond the span of their time and space. 

To exhume these characters out of obscurity, Bond visits the early years of British rule in India when the British were yet to establish themselves as a national power and parts of India were still ruled by small-time rajas and chieftains who had their own armies and used to employ Europeans in them, much in demand for their ability to coalesce ragtag armies into disciplined fighting units. Apart from soldiers, the book also documents the lives of European marchants, mercenaries, bootleggers, etc.

Many of these Europeans returned home wealthy men and some of them met with their end in India.

It was a time when lot of social intermingling between the ruling English and natives existed; which stopped following the 1857 Sipoy Mutiny that shocked the British and forced them into a social stratosphere, bringing up a separation from Indians that would last until the end of the Raj. There are stories that give the glimpses of pre-1857 society and social trends.

One of the stories tells the tale of the hukkah, a smoking pipe much in use during those days by English men and women who had taken to Indian ways. But with the passage of time as division rose between the English and Indians, the hukkah fell out of favour with the British.

Bond has had to undertake extensive research to write the book as the material on the men he has written about would have been hard to come by. These men lived in different places in India and served different masters, but some of them knew each other and you will find the recurrence of one character in the life/story of another.

Writers are generally a recluse lot, but modern-day writers are hardly so (at least if you go by the visibility they enjoy thanks to TV shows and literary festivals). However, Bond continues to be a throwback to the idea of the writer as a recluse.

I have never heard him make any political statement or seen him involved in a public spat. He continues to stay in Mussoorie, which is a recurrent theme in his writing, and deals with the ordinary. Therefore Strange Men Strange Places may be an oddity as a book of history, but it sits well with Bond’s general body of work, which is neither about nations nor national heroes or villains, but about ordinary people, places and events.

Shrinking Artistic Tolerance in India

Recently the Indian government armtwisted Jaipur Literature Festival organizers to have Salman Rushdie dropped from their invitee list. The government has justified its decision by saying that Rushdie’s visit will hurt Muslim sentiments thanks to his book Satanic Verses which insulted Islam by caricaturing the Prophet Mohamed.

Rushdie has been coming to the festival since it started, but it’s the first time the government wants us to believe his visit will wound religious sentiments. UP elections are near and UP has a sizeable Muslim population. UP is a place the Cong, the leading party of the ruling coalition, can ill afford to lose because being among the largest states in India, UP has a big impact on general elections.

The Rushdie controversy is not an isolated incident. It’s the recent installment of a series of incidents in India where outfits of all political hues or their affiliates have attacked people or work (books, movies , paintings, etc) opposed to their strain of beliefs.

The reasons for the outbursts are varied. Sometimes it’s a political party desperate to retain its political space, sometimes a political newbie trying to make a mark for himself, sometimes a political party making a desperate bid to woo a community (Hindu or Muslim).

Three incidents related to books will help you understand the pattern.

Around seven years ago, Taslima Nasreen (the writer of Lajja) had been forced out of Bengal by the Left government and then out of the country by the central government which refused to renew her visa. Why? Because Taslima had expressed blasphemous views in her book Lajja and mobs had taken to the streets demanding her ouster from Bengal when her visa was due for renewal. The Left government justified its decision saying her stay would have led to communal riots.

About a year ago, a political aspirant from the Thackeray clan (a family that founded and heads a regional political right wing outfit which models itself on Hindu nationalism and chauvinism) got together a mob which burnt the copies of Such A Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry alleging the book to have provocative material (not sure to provoke whom) demanding the removal of the book from English honors syllabus. The authorities obliged (apparently to quell the mob).

And then came this Rushdie controversy.

As the instances above demonstrate, it’s not just parties coming from one strain of political or social belief who demand book bans and persecute writers (or creative people guilty of challenging popular beliefs through their work) for their ends, but parties of all political color (from left to right) partake in them and frame their demand and actions according to their constituency.

If you read the books as against the claims that the ban-seekers make, you will know that they don’t read the books they seek ban on. Lajja has nothing against Islam in it; it’s a story about a Hindu Bengali family in Bangladesh; and Such A Long Journey was published in the 70s (and demanded a withdrawal of in 2011) and is loosely about Congress politics in Bombay, in the 70s, a party which the Thackerays are anyway hysterically opposed to. (I have read Lajja, but not Such a Long Journey.)

This hostility on books or any creative output works on a certain belief.

Banning of a book or movie doesn’t hit people’s interest in the way, say, closing of a factory does. So whether you are part of the establishment imposing a ban or forcing out an author or you are part of sloganeering mob demanding a ban or an ouster, the belief on either side is since the common man won’t be hurt beyond, say, the denial of a book or a movie, they will move on and the intelligentsia will stop shouting on TV once the media get another story. Elections are won and lost on more immediate and tangible issues, not on books, after all.

And, of course, there is the additional gain for the political party of ingratiating itself with a group/community (whatever) through the emotive route, which has a long-lasting electoral value, where reason is always a casualty.

What the establishment overlooks is each time you yield to a bullying mob, you concede a space that is hard to retrieve. What they also forget is when application of force becomes an accepted means to silence a contrary voice, you lose the ability to tolerate because you don’t need to stress your endurance to tolerate; an easier option is available – force.

It’s one thing to brag about having great values (in this case, freedom of speech and free thought) as a nation; it’s another to be ready to defend them at whatever cost they demand. Great Britain gave knighthood to Rushdie in the teeth of opposition from the Islamic world. France gave political asylum to Taslima Nasreen after she was hounded out from India.

Ithaca - A Novel on Books, Publishing and Writers

Many years ago, I had read an Arthur Hailey book – Hotel – where the author had beautifully spun a tale around the hotel industry, introducing you to the lives of men and women who run it, taking you beyond the glitter and showing you the hardship, struggle, treachery and politics of the hotel industry. Since then stories set at the heart of an industry have interested me. This explains why I picked up David Davidar’s latest offering Ithaca.

Those of you who are not familiar with the author, David Davidar is a successful publishing professional who rose to become the President of Penguin Canada and had to resign the job following a sex scandal.

After leaving his Penguin job, David returned to India and has recently launched his own publishing house together with Rupa.

Ithaca is about the publishing industry, its existential problems presented by self-publishing and e-books, how talents are spotted, manuscripts pitched by editors, plagiarism, small publishing houses acquired by giants, careers made and destroyed, jobs found and lost.

A mid-sized publishing house based in London is struggling to survive, fighting as it is a recession and the advances of a publishing giant looking to acquire it to enter the UK market. Although it has been able to delay its slide thanks to three best sellers – a trilogy on angels - produced by its best-selling author, Seppi, it requires another blockbuster to remain afloat.

The problem is Seppi is suffering from terminal cancer and can hardly be counted upon to produce one. Seppi dies and Zach, the editor who had spotted Seppi, is tasked by his boss to find if Seppi left behind any unpublished work – unfinished novel or short stories – which they could publish to feed the hunger for Seppi’s work among his fans worldwide. This is their only hope for survival.

Seppi lived in Canada and wrote in Italian and had a translator to translate his work into English. Zach goes to Canada to meet the translator who was close to Seppi and is the only living person expected to know whether the recluse author left any unfinished work behind.

Bingo, Seppi did; and Zach’s publishing house acquires its rights for a hefty sum and Zach goes to Frankfurt book fair to promote the book. The book becomes a roaring hit, but its sucess doesn't help Zach’s publishing house to avoid getting gobbled by the publishing giant looking to acquire it.

David develops the plot well through twists and turns that keep the reader interested. However, he often moves in and out of the plot to accommodate interesting trivia from the publishing world that an aspiring author will give anything to know. For example, Davidar takes the scene to Frankfurt book fair to give his reader a detailed tour of the fair.
This informative approach often blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, but it sustains the interest of the reader, who may be interested to know something beyond the story.

The book is understandably autobiographical and it also leaves you feeling that the author is forcing his views on you. Many a time Davidar argues in favour of conventional publishing houses as against online publishing and is somewhat reluctant to admit that their future might be in danger. Perhaps Davidar should have tried to maintain a detachment with his subject while writing on it.

Davidar’s writing style is simple and his main emphasis is on plot. His language avoids unnecessary clever turn of phrases or words you use more to intimidate your readers than to endear them. His grip on story-telling is not surprising given that he has been actively involved in the editing and polishing of many manuscripts that topped best seller charts. The author is certainly well-read and here and there mentions the names of his favorite writers to support his points.

A Visit to Flurries in Calcutta

My habit to try out European food joints led me to Flurries when I was in Calcutta this time. During my stay outside Calcutta, many people I know have asked me whether I have been to Flurries in Calcutta after their visit to the city. I said I’m familiar with the restaurant but I have never been there. Probably it’s like staying in Bangalore and not visiting Koshys even once, in Delhi without a visit to Nirulas etc.

But even though I never visited Flurries, a mention of the name by my friends was enough for me to recall what they were talking about. I don’t know whether there are more than one Flurries in Calcutta, but even if there are, when one mentions Flurries in Calcutta and expects you to spot (unless he is totally unfamiliar with the city), the one he refers to is the Flurries in Park Street.

When I stepped into the restaurant, I was quite impressed with its sprawl and grandeur. It reeks of old-world class and exclusivity. I sat at a table and ordered for a chocolate pastry. The waiter asked me to go to the counter and take it from there. Even though they serve pastry at tables going to the counter and getting it myself would make it faster for me, the waiter informed. He told it earnestly and I didn’t feel offended.

I went to the counter and asked for a chocolate cake. The counter guy told me to go to a table and order it there. By that time, I had spent considerable time in the restaurant and didn’t want to walk out without trying out something – not to please them but to use my time well. Nor did I want to sour up my mood and start my Calcutta trip on a grim note. (It was the second day of my trip.) So I went back to the table where I was sitting and called a waiter. After hearing I would only eat a solitary pastry, he asked why didn’t I go to the counter and buy it.

This time I solemnly told him to get me the pastry. After some time he returned with a brown pastry. It was accompanied by a fork and knife. When I tried to cut my way through the damn thing, it refused to yield easily. I was scared of the knife suddenly rushing through the pastry and hitting the crockery with a nasty sound. The place looked too snob to let go such a plebian goof up without a frown.

When I discussed the place with one of my friends (its grandeur but unfriendly atmosphere), he said the joint is probably a remnant of colonial Calcutta where British officials used to visit to drink their tea with cream. I didn’t disagree with him, because Flurries stank of upper-stiff-lip club snobbery where respectability comes from your membership of a certain clique and not from your self-acquired social standing.

I can understand where this comes from. Mostly its patrons are rich (and burly) Marwaris who come and spend hours reading newspapers over a cup of coffee and pastry. Unlike other places, they are not approached by waiters reminding them that they have overstayed their time in the restaurant. This stay-as-long-as-you-want culture is dying in India because restaurants are mostly space-starved nowadays and a customer overstaying his time at the table means another has to wait.

This old-world style probably puts Flurries out of step with today’s no nonsense Euro joints where the staff behaves with you with a ‘tailor-made hotel-management-taught’ courtesy and leaves you feeling that here the luxury (or time) available to you will not outsize the bill you will pay. But Flurries isn’t complaining because in Calcutta there aren’t too many Euro joints to compete with.

It’s difficult to hold anything strongly against Flurries: because it’s such a nice place to be in. It’s located at a prominent turn-of-the road of Park Street and occupies a lot of the pavement where it stands. The front part of Flurries is wrapped by a tinted glass which leaves the inside looking mildly and pleasantly cloudy. Through the glass pane, you can see the world go by as you eat.

There are enough people on the waiting staff to ensure no table (and there are many) goes unattended for too long. And the behavior of the staff is generally nice, although it may sometimes leave you with a ‘new comer’ complex.

So although I left the pastry half way through, paid my bill (Rs. 75) and decided to leave in disappointment, I will return to Flurries again when I am in Calcutta next time.

Wish you a happy new year.

Last Man In Tower - Aravind Adiga

Underneath every old building that’s brought down and replaced by a new one, there remain dissenting voices that are either coerced into submission or forced into silence. Aravind Adiga’s new book Last Man In Tower deals with this theme and shows how, in matters of real estate, when big money is offered to you to part with your property, either you accept it or be forced into accepting it. You don’t have the choice to say no.

The theme of Adiga’s book is not new. There have been films made on it and probably books written (although I haven’t read one). But you can’t question the relevance of the topic in big towns of today’s India where often foreign or illegal money is pumped into big real estate projects, and obstructing laws and people subverted and silenced with the help of palms in positions of power (from police to politicians) that are forever willing to be greased.

In fact, big real estate projects are mostly made possible by the nexus of police, politicians and mercenaries. Without the collective might of whom, it’s not possible for a big project to fructify given that there is no limit to how many people’s lives and livelihoods (slum dwellers, middle class residents etc) a project affects, bringing sudden prosperity for some and forcible displacement for others depending on which side of the divide you are on.

Aravind Adiga’s Last Man In Tower covers the entire gamut of lives that are affected in various ways by these projects. Dharmen Shah, a big builder, makes a generous offer to the inhabitants of Visharm, an old building in Mumbai’s middle class neighbourhood, to leave the building so that it can be demolished to make way for a new glitzy tower, Shah’s dream project. Most accept the offer and some refuse. But as time goes by, the dissenters drop their opposition. One person, however, refuses to change his mind: Masterji, a retired school teacher who has fond memories of his wife and daughter in the building who passed away in not so distant a past.

Masterji’s refusal is not only a roadblock for Dharmen Shah to realize his dream project but also something that separates the other residents of Vishram from a cheque – that will toss them into the lap of prosperity, helping them out of their current-middle-class problems. Being well-meaning and somebody who gives the children of the building free tuitions, Masterji is the most respected person in Vishram , but because of his opposition to the offer, he slowly falls out of favour with all his neighbours, one after another. How the neighbours start conspiring against Masterji shows the middle class in poor light, exposing how they can sacrifice everything on the altar of ambition.

Before the book was released, Adiga had told in an interview that he would not like his reader to think Masterji is the hero and Dharmen Shah, villain. If there is any hero in the book, he had told, it’s Bombay. After reading the book I agree with him. He has shown how crushing poverty resides side by side with wealth. You only have to turn a street corner or move your sight slightly to go from a wealthy neighborhood to a slum. Bombay, Agida says in the book, puts a price on everyone. He who doesn’t put a price on himself in Bombay finds it difficult to survive.

While reading the book many questions sprang to my mind. Why doesn’t Masterji accept the offer? Does he not see if the offer is accepted by him, it will change the lives of his neighbours forever? What’s wrong with saying yes if it helps you get a better life? Shah is making a generous offer, after all. If every person in Masterji’s position says yes, in India, will not the discord between development and its opponents get over for good?

At the end of the story, a character tells another character, “I have learnt something about life, Mrs. Rego. Then he points his finger in the distance. And “Behind these overlapping wires, she saw (Mrs. Rego) banyan trees; all of which were hemmed in by fencing; except for one graying ancient, whose aerial roots, squirming through barbed wire and broken glass, dripped down the wall like primordial ooze until their growing tips, nearly touching the pavement, brushed against a homeless family cooking rice in the shade; and with each root-tip that had beaten the barbed wire the old banyan tree said: “Nothing can stop a living thing that wants to be free.”

Last Man In Tower is so close to reality that it sometimes reads like a work of nonfiction and leaves you in a grim mood and the mood grows on you. I think it’s because the world Adiga creates is very small for most part – just a building and the lives of people in and around it – with very occasional detours. The book also leaves you with a poignant aftertaste being built around only one idea: The irrelevance of ideals in today’s consumerist world. But later I felt the fact that Masterji refused to accept the offer to the last is a triumph of ideals; that he paid a price for it is another matter.

Like his White Tiger, Adiga again tells a gripping story and leaves you with many questions.

Vacation in Calcutta: Changing Landscape

I returned from Calcutta to Bangalore this week. Each time I visit Calcutta I feel the old Calcutta I grew up in has moved a few more inches back to make way for a new Calcutta. Most old buildings have made way for new apartments. The ones that have not received the interest of promoters are begging for repair to resist the effect of time. Their owners don’t repair them - either because they are not financially sound enough or because the buildings are let out, in parts, to multiple tenants who have not revised their rents for decades.


These buildings are generally sprawling with large verandas. They present risk to pedestrians walking under them. Some buildings have cautionary boards on them and the rest leave the pedestrians to their fate.

A little away from my area a ruin drew my attention. It is a heap of debris, remnants of an old structure under demolition now. At the middle of the ruin stands a grocery shop which has somehow escaped the demolition drive.

I asked how. The building belonged to a widow whose children are settled in the US. The widow owned several buildings which she willed away to charity organizations some time back. One of them she donated to the healthcare wing of an organization which is supposed to take care of her in return until she is alive.

The building with the shop within was also her property. It will be replaced by an ashram. The building, like other old buildings, had lot of tanents. While the other tenants accepted the financial compensation the promoter offered them to leave the building, the grocery shop owners (four brothers) refused to accept the payment and demanded a shop in the same position of the  ashram instead. The promoter refused and the grocer brothers went to court, halting the demolition drive. This is the story of any changing landscape.

FDI in Retail: As I see it

No sooner than the noise over foreign direct investment (FDI) in airlines sank, India is talking about FDI again.  This time it’s in retail. This time, however, the political noise is of higher decibel than that of FDI in airlines. And it’s not surprising because FDI in retail affects a larger base of people than FDI in airlines.

The issue has already united opposition parties cutting across political beliefs.   

And in this ideologically untenable coalition of opposition parties, there is enough to laugh over for someone looking for it. The Left parties are congratulating the Right for putting up a stout opposition to the government introducing FDI.However, the FDI decision has found endorsement from various business leaders and some major English dailies. 

But what the opponents of FDI in retail really have to say?  They say it will bring in foreign giants who will wipe out the middle man engaged in taking goods and food from the producer to the consumer. (The middle man can be a neighborhood grocer or somebody (or a group) who takes produce from the farmer to the shopkeeper.)

The anti-FDI guys also allege that the multinationals will lower their prices so much that small shopkeepers, unable to meet the price onslaught due to poor cost and infrastructure capabilities, will be eventually driven out from the retail ecosystem. 

Telegraph cited a case study to address various concerns regarding FDI in retail. The study said that a sizable group of farmers in Bengal is producing potatoes for Pepsi (Pepsi Lays) potato chips. The potatoes they grow reach Pepsi via a network of middle men. Pepsi also uses these middle men as a conduit to pay the farmers. 

And it’s working. Some farmers interviewed by the paper said the rates paid to them are much more than the usual market rates and the payments are also made in a timely manner.  

So this addresses two concerns (a) the middle man, instead of getting wiped out, is a well-established part of the business cycle; (b) the farmers are not only getting better rates than they would through the conventional supply-chain model, but they are also getting their payments in a timely manner.   

Now comes the shopkeeper. I will share my personal experience in this regard. I am currently holidaying in Calcutta. And yesterday my mother handed me a list of goods to be bought from the market. I went to a shop and did my purchase. 

But just when I was walking out, it struck me that on the other side of the road lay big departmental stores where I could have gone. But I didn’t. Not because I owe anything to the shopkeeper but because it’s a habit to visit neighborhood shops to make such purchases. And this common habit has survived the entry of big players like Reliance and Mahindra into the Indian retail space.  

And anyone who is familiar with these shopkeepers knows that they are not particularly having a great time in the current scenario: in the absence of global retail giants. 

These shopkeepers cater to two kinds of customers; those who just walk in once in a while and those who make bulk purchases from them on a weekly or monthly basis. While their business can’t subsist on the casual walk-ins, the shopkeepers retain the bulk-buying customer base by employing soft-old-world customer-retention measures like social courtesies instead of better service or pricing. Because even among small shopkeepers there is enough competition and the quality of their goods hardly varies leaving the customer almost nothing to choose from.

But as I make my case for FDI in retail, I hear the government has put the decision to introduce FDI in retail in suspension due to political opposition.