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Literary Review
The Taj of the Raj
A SKINNY man in a packed Calcutta bus squeezing past three large, pot-bellied men, urged them to move a little. "Can't you see there is no room even for a fly?" the potbellied trio retorted. "Please brothers", pleaded the man, "shuffle yourself a bit. You can always slip a thin card between three volumes of fat dictionaries."
Krishna Dutta has many such emblematic incidents to narrate, but her history of Calcutta (she defiantly continues to spell the name as she has always known it) is not merely anecdotal. It blends history and analysis with incident, personal experience, and tips on where to buy the best sandesh.
It takes gumption, or foolhardiness, to rush in where eminence grise(s) from Satyajit Ray to Nirad Chaudhuri, Gunter Grass to Dominic Lapierre, have already treaded. Dutta analyses their responses to Calcutta perceptively. Her depiction of Calcutta's desperation, anarchy and creativity in the 1950s and 1960s, is especially fascinating. While she does not add much new information, her fluent — sometimes provocative — narrative gives this book its punch, as when she analyses Mother Teresa: "Like Mother Kali's garland of human heads... Mother Teresa too acquired a respectable head count of dying souls saved for her faith by conversion in her home's small, gloomy hall lined with washable plastic mattresses." It is a relief that in Dutta's passion for the city, sarcasm triumphs over sentimentality.
Calcutta: A Cultural and Literary History, Roli, Rs. 295.
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The great kebab factory
OF the many ways in which you can know a city, one of the most satisfying is its food. Charmaine O'Brien loves eating and Delhi, both of which blend in her culinary history of the city. This book, contradicting its petite appearance, is potted history, recipes, and restaurant, tourism and shopping guide all in one, rather like The Calcutta Cookbook by Bunny Gupta et al.
O'Brien looks at the food life of city from Babur's kitchens to Barista. Some errors I spotted made me wary of taking her history, either culinary or otherwise, too seriously, but the bare bones at least give an idea of how rich Delhi's culinary heritage is, and how it survives in odd bylanes even as the city is ruled by the omnipotent chikkun tikka.
It can be infuriating however. There is no index, even to the recipes. Basic editorial attention is distinguished here by its absence. But the writer's enthusiasm for wandering and eating sweeps you along. O'Brien is an Australian chef who came to India and was more adventurous about food than most locals. She says she never fell ill, despite nimbupani from street vendors. Her recommendations range blithely from the momo at street stalls in Majnu ka Tilla to the Bukhara at the Maurya Sheraton. She provides recipes with which to transport yourself to particular eras. To imagine yourself in Sultanate Delhi, you can make yourself O'Brien's version of Sharbat e'Gulab this summer ("To each 500 gm of rose petal add 2 kg sugar"). Or buy Rose Cordial.
Flavours of Delhi: A Food Lover's Guide, Charmaine O'Brien, Penguin, Rs 295.
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Dickens returns
"MY name, in those days, was Susan Trinder... I believe I am an orphan." Lurking in Susan's opening words are crucial clues to the coils which will unravel in this 630-page novel's breathtakingly serpentine plot. You think novels of Victorian length and language are just for Eng Lit boffins, and pass this one by? Big mistake. Nominated for both the Booker and the Orange prize, Fingersmith is literary fiction alright, but an absolute thriller too.
Sue grows up in Dickensian squalor, comfily ensconced in a rag-tag family of thieves and fences. She knows better than most how to pick a pocket or dose a baby with gin to quieten it. Regular work, to her, is "another name for...dying of boredom." Bored is one thing neither Sue nor her readers are going to be. Some miles away in a great, grim house, lives Maud, whom Sue and her fellow thieves plot to put in a madhouse and rob of her inheritance. But intrigues aren't always as straightforward as they seem.
Sarah Waters is one of those storytellers — gifted and true — who make you wonder why the mediocre even try. She piles it in by the spadeful: there is fraud, love, deception, insanity, murder, pornography, rape. Not a masala is missing in this ultimate Victorian curry. Surprisingly though, it remains a sophisticated curry in which every ingredient draws out the others. Understated literary allusions and layers of irony give Victorian attitudes a sly contemporary look. And most of all it is a book that draws you in from the first paragraph and makes you turn the pages slower as you near the last, for fear it will finish.
Fingersmith, Virago, £4.50.
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`Are you going?'
NOVELS by three Indian-English writers are being launched with the usual cocktail of readings, drinks and chatter in Delhi through a packed week in February-March. Githa Hariharan's In Times of Siege will jostle for attention with two others, both by Dehradun-based writers — Allan Sealy's The Brainfever Bird, and Nayantara Sahgal's Lesser Breeds. Such book-related events now crowd Delhi's calendar, jading the most voracious literary palates, and by the time you've been to them all you're feeling like a Besieged Bird of Lesser Breed in Times of Brainfever. The usual suspects in their cocktail togs turn up to hear the author do her piece, a few books are signed. The Chic Lit crowd, with banter-cloaked single-mindedness, nudge each other aside to reach for the wine. But though it's all a tired routine, there still is a buzz that you can sense, emanating from the audience: for each writer launched there are literary dreamers gazing on the floodlit stage secretly murmuring (after Maid Marianne in "Robin Hood: Men in Tights"), "If t'were me, t'would be `twewwific!"
ANURADHA ROY
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