A remarkable debut

(Upward bound by Woody Brown, Penguin Random House, N.Y. 2026)

This short novel of 146 pages is about life for a few months in an adult day care centre for differently abled people. Members of the centre have each a different level of competence to deal with the world. They feel, they sense and they perceive but lack the ability to articulate verbally.

The centre is naturally strapped for funds and is under-staffed. Dave, its director, is well- meaning but has limited sensitivity. He is more focused on managing governing body members, fund raising and publicity. The centre has a routine of continuous games and activities including swimming for inmates and a weekly visit to a nearby superstore. A strict adherence to routine is Dave’s way of running the show and he is unaware that members are irritated by the infantile activities which he has designed for them.

Life story of each member unfolds briefly in the novel. Things start looking up for Walter when Anne walks in for her summer internship. Inability to communicate and lack of understanding by others lead to a lot of internal tension for members, particularly Jorge and it unfortunately leads to the shooting of Carlos- the ablest of the staff – by the police.

This deeply felt drama is enacted in a superb narrative that is shorn of literary style but is simple and incisive and articulates each and every nuance of human interaction. The author is himself autistic. Reading the novel is an enriching experience.

He is supposed to be working on his second novel. It will be interesting to read it as the present one is more or less, autobiographical.

A clever, well-researched novel

 (March by Geraldine Brooks, Penguin, 31 January 2006, winner of the Pulitzer prize for literature for the same year)

The novel deconstructs Louisa May Alcott's Little Women by writing about the life of their father March. Marmee and her four daughters live in penury while their father fights in the American civil war in 1862 at the rather advanced age of 39 years. So he is absent in person in Little Women.

The one dimensional goody-goodliness of Little Women is completely offset by 'March'.

March is a trader, chaplain and soldier. He has worked hard throughout his life and his mind is full of noble ideas. He does his best to be fair to the black slaves but is overridden by guilt as his efforts did not yield any positive results. He makes money and gives it away, forcing his daughters to work from a tender age. He loved Grace Clement, a refined black girl whom he meets at the tender age of eighteen and again as he lies in a hospital awaiting death. Marmee knows nothing about Grace as March has not had the courage to tell her. Marmee pieces together the missing part of the puzzle and brings him back to his daughters.

The novel is based on painstaking research and other reviewers have averred the historical authenticity of the background created in the novel. It is enlightening. The only other book which I have read on the north versus south America conflict in the late nineteenth century is of course, Gone with the wind which paints a picture of loss of an old world by the south and does not provide much historical information.

The novel brings the background and the characters to life and is an absorbing read.

A book to treasure

 

(What we can know by Ian McEwan, Jonathan Cape, London, September 2025)

In the first part of this novel, Prof. Thomas Metcalfe, in the year 2119, pores over the past while searching for the Corona or crown of sonnets written by Francis Blundy, the famous poet of 21^st century. His quotidian life and his efforts tell us what has been lost in this century: huge loss of life due to nuclear warfare, inundation of New York, Lagos, Glasgow and many parts of the world, then a big drop in global temperature, untamed viruses, permanent loss of much of flora and fauna, exhaustion of mineral deposits resulting in stoppage of manufacturing making for a very poor quality of life. The digital economy is what propels the world but a few committed intellectuals like Prof. Metcalfe carry on their pursuits.

He eventually finds a time capsule buried in the Barn, Francis Blundy’ cottage, now submerged. However, it contains something other than the sonnet.

Part two of the novel deals with the life of Vivien Blundy, dedicatee of the Corona and her small, promiscuous circle of friends and relatives, just like the Bloomsbury group of early 20^th century. The Corona was read out over dinner in the group and then it vanished. A crime lies behind its disappearance. Its tangles are unpicked slowly but without loss of momentum.

McEwan has described his latest novel as science fiction without science. However, it shows a sure grasp of current science and also of course, of literature and academic life. He moves back and forth over two centuries and his characters leaving no loose ends.

A clever, masterly creation. I read only a few pages at a time – sustained reading is not possible now – but when I left, the novel was alive in my mind and I was waiting to get back to it. Last time it happened was with Emma Donoghue’s ‘Room’, a decade ago. The novel has made a deep impact on my mind.

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A taut thriller

 The break-in by Katherine Faulkner (Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2025)

Alice, an art gallery director and curator finds that an armed young man is trying to enter her posh house where her young daughter is playing under the supervision of her nanny. The man does not stop when Alice calls him out. She panics and strikes him from behind and he dies.

Newspapers report the next day that he lived in a nearby council home and was a disturbed adolescent. Alice acted in self defense or rather in defense of her daughter and she is let free.

She herself is traumatized and tries to find out more details. One clue leads to another; one action invites another and soon Alice's marriage and her whole world come tumbling down.

Simple writing style, short chapters and a limited cast of characters make for a gripping tale of deception.

I was hooked.

Time pass

 The latest novel, We all live here by JoJo Moyes (JJM), 2025 provides a pleasant reading experience.

JJM, an English novelist and journalist is the queen of romcom and chick lit with a few bestsellers and one successful movie adaptation to her credit.

In her latest novel, she portrays the life of Lila for an eventful year. Lila, a novelist, finds that she has become a single parent unexpectedly. Her ex husband has married a young woman in the neighbourhood who is expecting his child. She and Lila are forced to meet each day at the school compound and tongues wag.

Lila has two daughters, one a sixteen-year old, to look after. Her step father is also living with them. Her mother died recently. Lila is coping and also trying to write her new novel. Things become complicated as

• her real father pays a visit and refuses to leave,
• her ex starts putting up outrageous demands as he cannot afford to look after his daughters.
• her step father's gardener starts taking an interest in her and
• Lila meets a gorgeous widower at the school pick-up.

These people have made blunders in the past and they come to surface. They also continue to make mistakes. The widower turns out to be a champion cheat. Lila needs money badly and so accepts the publisher's request to put salacious details in her novel. Her imagination deserts her and she starts writing about her recent brush with the gardener. The decent fellow is deeply hurt. Lila's step father finds an admirer nearby but has a heart stroke.

In the ensuing chaos, Lila cancels her book contract but finally everything works out!

Women's fiction typically has a rush of characters and all the details of everyday life. It also has, usually, a final uplifting message. Readers can easily relate to these characters and also the complexities of our routines. JJM's style of writing is engaging with mild humour and lots of tea and biscuits thrown in. The writing takes the readers along.

it also makes you think about the modern family. It has few people with blood ties. Acquaintances and friends are easily accommodated. A common kitchen/ hearth and roof maketh the new family. Will this family also disappear over time, leaving just individuals surrounded by robots around?

A good old mystery

 Set in England in the post world war 2 period and on the lines of Agatha Christie but far more cerebral, An English Murder by Cyril Hare is an absorbing book. It uses her favourite plot: characters gather together for a special occasion and then start falling dead one by one. Who is the killer and what is the motive?

The occasion here is Christmas. Relatives and friends, five in all, of Viscount Warbeck gather at his country estate. One of them, Sir Julius Warbeck, Chancellor of the Exchequer comes with a police+ sergeant tasked to keep him safe. There are two ladies and there is a historian, Prof. Bottwink who is a Hungarian and a Jew. He helps to shed light on the mystery. There is no sleuth.

The style of speech and writing is very didactic and much is made of 'Englishness'. The long winded sentences put me to sleep several times because I read it as an audio book. Nonetheless, it is an interesting book.

Its tone is intellectual because its author was an English barrister and judge. He was Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark (1900 - 1958) who used the pseudonym Cyril Hare for his writings. His Tragedy at law, 1937 is better known than the present book published in 1951. Tragedy at Law is often described as the best mystery novel with a legal background and it is also reputed to have never gone out of print so far.

Cyril Hare has created two famous detectives: Inspector Mallett and Francis Pettigrew. He wrote non- detective short stories some of which have been acclaimed and a collection of his detective stories, Best detective stories of Cyril Hare is available.

A Russian film, A very English murder was made in 1974 based on An English Murder.

I know that there are some fans of detective stories and novels among my readers. They could certainly give the book a once over.

Keep the aspidistra flying, part two

 It was the first English novel I read, fifty five years ago. Well, I had struggled with E.M. Forster's A passage to India before that, without success. I understood and was mesmerized by Aspidistra. It gave a peek into an alien world, alien because I had presumed it to have endless prosperity for everybody. That it had poverty and that people struggled with it, was a powerful revelation.

The strong, honest writing caught me by my throat. Words, phrases in the book became etched in my mind. It also set the bar high.

There are gradations among artists. Only a few are as honest in their writing as is Orwell. His life is clearly reflected in the novel. Because he showed promise at an early age, his father, a policeman in British India sent him to a reputed public school in England. It was difficult to adjust to its world. He worked hard but acutely felt the difference in background as compared to other students.

He decided to be a writer and lack of money was a big problem. He went back to Burma - part of British India. He was in Paris for two years and then he came to England and worked as a private tutor, school teacher and bookshop assistant, all the while contributing articles and reviews to periodicals.

He published Down and out in Paris and London, a reportage in 1933. He passionately believed in socialism - an alternative society where an even, need-based distribution of resources would remove the indignities of poverty. He fought in the Spanish war in 1937.

Later of course, he became disillusioned with the totalitarianism associated with socialism in Russia and that brought out The animal farm and 1984 - his best-known novels. He was a great essayist too, throughout his life.

To me however, Burmese days and Aspidistra (Orwell himself was not too fond of them and had ridiculed the plot twists he had designed in the former) remain abiding favourites and they are my answer to why Orwell was one of the greater writers of 20th century.

Keep the aspidistra flying, George Orwell, 1936, part one

 Orwell published his first novel, Burmese days in 1934. In this second novel (title above) the aspidistra, a common house decor plant becomes the symbol of middle class conformity and obeisance to Money God.

Gordon Comstock, a classics scholar and poet in his late twenties finds that the lack of money and the need to earn it, hamper his desire to write poetry. He has to work as a copy writer in an ad agency but he loathes his work of whipping up desires and making people buy the sponsored products.

He starts his private rebellion of saying no to money. He chucks his job and becomes a salesman in a bookshop. The job is even more loathsome to him and the pay is barely adequate for his food and board.

He works on his writing in the spare time: London Pleasures, a collection of poems. With inadequate money, writing becomes more and more difficult. Most of his poems are returned by publishers.

His public school education (which meant privation to his parents and sister) has given him a code of honour. He knows the rules: never let other people buy your drink for you, for one. He walks miles and goes hungry but does not let his girl friend buy things for him. He is very careful not to be seen as sponging off his rich friend, the only one he has.

The girl friend is an honest soul and dearly loves Gordon. She does not understand his rebellion and the bitterness that enters his soul. Gordon is sure that money vitiates everything, creeps into and spoils every relationship. His despair leads him to descend further into poverty. The girl friend wants to marry but is afraid to say so as he cannot support them both. She becomes pregnant but says heroically that she would not force him to marry but raise the baby on her own.

That and the grudging realization that the lower classes comprise decent people who do their best to keep their values and raise families while struggling for money, that they are not senseless, witless morons thrust hither and thither by Money God finally convince Gordon that his embrace of poverty for two years has been a fruitless journey. He realizes that there is nothing positive or redeeming about poverty; it deadens the body, mind and spirit.

He goes back to his first job, sets up home and marries the girl friend. He chucks out London Pleasures and decides to grow an aspidistra plant. His rebellion is over.

Chronicle of a working life

It is an omnibus publication, 672 pages, of 3 of our favourite books in young age.

The 3 books are: A pair of hands, A pair of feet and My turn to make the tea.

Monica Dickens (1915 - 1992) was a prolific writer who has written more than 80 novels and autobiographical accounts.

In my college days, a trip to the British library invariably yielded a thick novel of hers. My father's personal collection boasted of two of her titles:

Thursday afternoons and

A pair of hands.

The former had a well meaning but muddled lady, Cybil as the protagonist and the latter was highly recommended by Baba and so was sacrosanct in our eyes. It is a highly entertaining account by MD of her experiences when she worked in different houses as a cook. After her finishing school, she desperately wanted to work but was not trained for anything. So, on the basis of very limited experience - there was an old cook in her house who did not allow anybody in the kitchen - she embarked on her working journey with many hilarious experiences on the way. She learnt cooking by trial and error on the job and she worked also as a house manager.

MD belonged to a well heeled family and her mother had accounts with the big departmental stores in London. By working as a cook, MD broke the class barrier and joined the ranks of the plebian. This led to many funny encounters. For example, in one of the houses she worked, the man of the house would talk to his wife in German whenever MD was around. He took it for granted that she would not understand a word. On another occasion, two guests in the house party fumbled at the name of a railway station near Paddington and unwittingly, MD provided it. "They were taken aback but being perfect gentlemen, thanked her."

MD has a witty style and her tongue in cheek humour is refreshing.

A pair of feet is about her days as a nurse in a few big hospitals in war time Britain. My turn to make the tea is about her career as a journalist in one small, provincial newspaper.

She writes with verve and gives us an inside account of what happens in these jobs. When she wrote these books, better jobs were simply out of the reach of most women. However, even now, I cannot think of any similar accounts by women. Women have been teachers and governesses for a century or more but they did not write about their working life as MD does here.

Sutton Publishing, UK brought out the omnibus in 2004. A pair of hands can be opened at any page and can be read with relish. The other two do not quite attain the same level of excellence but the collection can be safely recommended for your library.

Feminism goes mainstream Part 2

 1. How to say Babylon gives an account of the life Safiya Sinclair has led till now. She was born to Rastafarian parents in Jamaica. Her father was a reggae singer. After emperor Haile Selassie (of Ethiopia) visited Jamaica in 1966, he embraced Rastafarian ways totally. This is an outlawed fundamentalist cult which was later banned in Jamaica. Its members grow their hair long and do not comb them, like the devadasis in Karnataka.

Safiya's mother was bright but got no opportunities in life. Safiya and her 3 siblings were abused and oppressed by the father. All are very bright. Safiya is a poet and after school she became an international model. On the basis of the exposure to American society, she managed to enroll herself in colleges and helped her siblings too. One of them is a Rastafarian.

Safiya gives a moving account of her and her family's ordeal. Her writing is concise. In Rastafarian lingo, Babylon stands for everything in the 'corrupt' Western culture. Her account convinces us that patriarchy and fundamentalism are two sides of the same coin.

2. Prize women is based on an actual event in Toronto in 1926. In that year, an eccentric lawyer leaves a part of his large fortune, not having any direct descendants, to that woman in Toronto who produced the most children in the decade following his death. The court stepped in to find out such a woman and its efforts are known as the Great Stork Derby in Toronto from 1926 to 1936. 

This was the time of the Great Depression also. Therefore the derby attracted a lot of attention. The court held that the award would exclude stillborn babies and children born out of wedlock. Eleven families competed in the race and 7 were disqualified. The remaining 4 received $ 110000 each or $ 2.23 million at 2023 prices. Three of the 4 families had to pay back the relief money that had been granted to them by the City of Toronto earlier.

On the basis of this event, Caroline Lea has written her novel. It features 2 women, Lily and Mae. It begins very well, describing the daily torture Lily and her son are subjected to by her husband. Mae is a poor typist but manages to marry her rich employer. He loses everything in the depression. Both women compete in the race but Lily does not make it due to male prejudices against Italian immigrants and women in general. Mae shares her booty with Lily and lesbian love between them is hinted at. It is clear that the author is looking back at past times with the lenses of the present.

A compelling read which however, loses its mojo in the middle.

3. Lessons in chemistry  shows the life of Elizabeth Zot in the decade following 1950s in USA. Elizabeth is a brilliant, self-taught and self-made scientist who has encountered discrimination from the very start of her life. She loses her research job and funding and manages to survive by running a cookery show on TV. In this show, she treats the ingredients and their combinations like a great ongoing chemical process and manages to elevate the status of cooking in the eyes of her audience.

Elizabeth has encountered only difficulties in her life but for all that, her approach to life is upbeat and positive. That is the redeeming feature of this humourous, well-written novel.

Feminism goes mainstream

 I hear that there is a backlash on Tik Tok and a regressive view that women should go back to baby rearing and keeping the house is increasingly popular.

In literature however, the spurned, oppressed female has caught the attention of writers and readers alike.

I allude to 3 recent books.

1. How to say Babylon, a memoir by Safiya Sinclair, 37 INK, Simon & Schuster, N.Y. 2023 (book in 4 parts, 29 chapters, 352 pages)

2. Prize women by Caroline Lea, Penguin Random House, U.K. 2023 (book in 3 parts, 45 chapters, 322 pages)

3. Lessons in chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Penguin 2022 (45 chapters, 400 words)

The last one is wildly popular today and has been converted into a popular TV series along with translations in 42 languages. The other two have been critically acclaimed.

All have suppression of women as their leit motif. Their popularity means that the audience is into the message of different shades of this suppression.

Read my next post for a short description of each book. Do read them.

Old and current crime stories

 I have started translating The wheel spins by Ethel Lina White in Marathi. It is a project for myself and it is turning out to be enjoyable.

The novel was first published in 1939 as a crime club publication. It was adapted for the big screen 3 times and for radio several times. Alfred Hitchcock's The lady vanishes came out in 1938, a year before the book was published. Later screen adaptations were in 1979 and in 2013!

The plot revolves around Iris Carr who finds that a lady she spoke to on the train, a Miss Froy has just vanished. The novel spans over the train journey and ends in London. Just a little before that, Ms. Froy is found as a sedated, totally bandaged patient who is meant to languish in a mental hospital.

A single, young woman who battles all sorts of difficulties during this brief period of time is a subject which seems to lure movie makers in nearly a century.

What strikes me however, as my translation begins, is that the novel is a work of literature. It has a literary style and it draws out its characters with deft literary touches. Sometimes the effort goes overboard but it is an absorbing read.

What a contrast with the contemporary thrillers - not crime books but thrillers! A derogatory category name actually. What is aimed at is titillation and not covering any depth.

Arguably, thrillers came to the fore with Fredrick Forsyth's books. Others that followed in this genre are fast-paced, have continuous action and they employ a very basic style of writing. Character building makes way for a whole lot of information about geography, secret service agencies and the police force, the weaponry, government plans, coups etc. Their narrative always stays on the surface as no effort is made to explore any depth. It is a money-making business and the front running authors employ a research staff to ensure that they get their details right.

Millions of copies are sold and the authors are rich people.

What they churn out is action which keeps you hooked as long as you are reading. Once done, you shake yourself  and promptly forget most of what you read.

Not so with literature. Tiny details in it remain buried in your mind and come to the fore unexpectedly. Its characters are truly your companions.

We had an old Penguin copy of The wheel spins. The cover had a green border and my father always kept it with him for Bombay- Poona train travel of 4 hours, a fraction of the Trieste - London journey in the novel. The well-thumbed book was in tatters and its pages came loose. It had to be discarded, much to my dismay.

I mentioned this to my brother some years ago. He remembered it well and gave me the site of some Australian publisher. I actually downloaded and printed the book free from this website, courtesy my college room printer!!

J B Priestley's 'Bright Day'

 Priestley (1894 -1984) was a prolific English author who was very popular and well-known in the post- world war II period. He could write on anything and turn anything into writing with literary worth - that was his reputation.

Bright Day is his famous novel.

Plot: Gregory Dawson, an orphaned young man comes to stay with uncle and aunt in Bruddersford (an imaginary town fashioned after Bradford in northern England by Priestley). He takes up a job as a junior assistant in a wool factory there but his passion is writing.

Mr. Alington is the chief of the wool factory and his large family, particularly his three daughters, cast a spell on young Dawson. He is invited to their house and the acquaintance grows. There are parties, music, conversation and outings.

War clouds are gathering on the horizon and soon that idyllic world is to be shattered. But even before that, misfortune strikes and the most beautiful Alington daughter is killed.

Dawson migrates to USA and eventually becomes a successful script writer in Hollywood. After a long time he decides to visit Bruddersford. Its influence on his subconscious is so great that he has not been able to marry, to settle down. At Bruddersford, he meets some old acquaintances, pieces together what transpired on that fateful day (Eva Alington's death is no accident but a murder) and gets, in today's parlance, a closure.

Novel: The plot unfolds in an unhurried, leisurely fashion over 350 odd pages with detailed descriptions of various characters and places. Many a time, the sketching of characters feels like a flight of fancy. The descriptions are not too great either. There is backward, forward movement as Dawson's memories are awakened. Real action comes towards the end of the novel.

Readers not familiar with the period of 1950s are apt to find the novel boring.

I read its Marathi translation recently. A big book priced at Rs. 400. It does not do justice to the novel as the translator has not worked hard enough to re-create that era for Marathi readers. Many local details, food items and drinks etc. are just written in Devanagari script. Marathi words are used in the place of English words but many a time, the meaning of sentences is lost. There is no introduction to Priestley's world, the era save two sentences in the blurb. Evidently no editing has taken place.

I bought this Marathi book because I had translated a small extract from this novel a few months ago. However, I did not know the plot of the novel. I have a tattered copy of Priestley companion which has his own selection of extracts from his varied writings.

My enthusiasm however, turned to dismay.

I naturally compared my translation of the extract with this book's and must say, with humility, that mine, barring two mistakes, is better.

Letting go!

 

Subtracting

·       Unending flow of people in our cities, roads full, more roads, asphalting and widening of roads, footpaths, traffic signals and policemen, flyovers – two/three storey high! – train and metro service, hyperloop, public and private transport jostling together,

·       Traffic signals on main roads driving traffic in by lanes,

·       Serene hill stations and picnic spots ruined by overcrowding,

·       New luxury homes resembling museums because they are so full of beautiful objects.

There is ever more of everything. 

Add! Add! Add! Make things more complicated! Addition is rampant, mindless. This is the modern life style.

Dr. Laurence Peter of Peter principle fame gave an example of this trend taken to its extreme. He wrote of a hydraulic butter box inside a huge refrigerator for keeping butter warm, hailed as a major improvement when all that is required is to take out the butter first thing in the morning. At room temperature, it easily spreads on toast and bread.

We all of us have a basic instinct to add and to hoard. It is easy to visualize additions. Plus, there is our tendency for loss aversion. Losing what we have affects us much more than gaining something new. So, we keep merrily increasing our pile of worldly goods.

How about moving in the reverse direction? Deduct. Delete. Edit. Parse. Simplify. Minimize. Declutter. Forget. Withdraw. Disengage.

Difficult to visualize and takes the same effort as addition. May be more. But it is a way of thinking which yields beautiful results: space, emptiness, freedom and spiritual awakening. Less is indeed more.

Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947) has talked of driving and restraining forces leading to an equilibrium or ‘freeze’ in his field theory of human behaviour. Loss of equilibrium leads to tension till refreezing takes place. The obvious way is to add to the driving forces for this purpose but reducing restraining forces works even better.

A lady was visiting her parental house. She saw that both her brother and his wife were continuously exhorting their teenage son who was due to appear for the 12 standard and competitive examinations to work harder. The lady remembered her own Physics textbook when she had appeared for the examination decades ago. It was her favourite book because it had very good examples, explanation, a witty style and a logical flow of ideas. She searched for it, found it and offered it to the boy. He did not want to look at it at first as he did not have time. Soon however, he was hooked. She could feel an almost visual lessening of the tension he was labouring under. He applied himself to his studies with renewed zeal and went on to crack, not the board but JEE Main examination.What had happened here was that a restraining force of a dull textbook was taken away. An interesting book was given to the student. Instead of adding to the driving force, a restraint was taken away, a new equilibrium was created and it did the trick.

Everyone has heard the adage: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is attributed to Kurt Koffka (1886 – 1941), a psychologist who also, like Lewin, belonged to the Gestalt school of psychology. What Koffka had actually said was that the whole was something else than the sum of its parts. He clarified repeatedly that he was not talking of a principle of addition as the whole could be less than the sum of its parts. But our common fondness for addition has resulted into the misinterpretation passing into received wisdom today.

Thus, subtraction does not come naturally to us. Whenever it has been done consciously, it yields great results. Urban planners and architects, political scientists  (NOTA option in voting) and self-help gurus like Marie Kondo will all agree.

(Musings based on the reading of Subtract, the untapped science of less by Leidy Klotz, Flatiron Books, N.Y. 2021)

Missionary life

I am reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver right now. (Harper Perennial, 1998, E Pub edition April 2007, ISBN 9780061804816)
It is a long novel of some 470 pages and I am just half way through but it has caught me by the scruff of my neck and I am forced to think.

The plot involves Reverend Price who one day just leaves his parish in Georgia, USA and comes to a remote spot in Congo to spread the message of Jesus Christ. He brings his wife and four daughters along. The oldest daughter is sixteen years old and then there are twins - one of them with a deformed leg.

The priest's wife and daughters are doing their best to adapt to the new situation. The Reverend has promised them that after one year they would return. The narrative is by each of the daughters and slowly it reveals what a cruel man their father is. He was a soldier who fought in Indonesia and suffered brain damage. After coming back home he becomes a preacher who is fond of quoting the Bible - chapter and verse. He has lost the capacity to think and reflect. He does not understand his family's needs. He habitually strikes them and his wife and the daughters are punished by being made to copy portions of Bible for every wrong they commit.

The place in Congo where they land is a village and the previous preacher has left in disgrace. The natives are absolutely stoic about the preaching. They have a very flexible approach to religion. When an epidemic spreads during the rainy season and some infants are killed, they turn to Christianity and those who became Christian earlier, abandon it. The natives keep quiet in front of the Reverend who does not understand anything. His wife and daughter piece together what is happening around always after the event.
There is a plot by CIA to murder Patrice Lumumba and the Prices are advised to leave Congo. The Reverend would not listen although his wife and one daughter have fallen ill and must be brought back to America if they are to be saved. A calamity strikes. And so on.

Reverend Price is a mad man but missionaries have worked hard all over the world and met with little success. They have had to put up with immense hostility. Now of course, in the 21st century, they cannot do much but in the 20th, they tried hard. Those were innocent times. How frustrated they must have been. And how courageous to undertake something like this!

Communists tried the same thing with less conviction and for a shorter time. I remember my aunt who used to talk to everybody about the importance of bringing workers together. She had the cheek to ask the children of one acquaintance to switch off TV and listen to her! However, that experience made her admit that people resented her preaching.
Imagine going to remote rural places all over Maharashtra and talking about workers' unity! Farmers with their love for land were reactionary forces in Marxian scheme of things. So she addressed them and ignored their problems. Farmers are cunning people. They listen to everybody, pretend to be very foolish and finally do what they want to.
Later NGOs started mobilizing people. My aunt dismissed them. They offered money to people to attend their programmes while she and other party functionaries simply 'enlightened' people and influence them for mass action when their reading of the situation and the goal were all wrong. 
All that has faded now but in the process of nation building all such work was zealously carried out once upon a time.

An engaging book

Just finished reading Prof. Chandra follows his bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam.
Prof. Chandrasekhar is a renowned economist of the Chicago School. He has missed the Nobel Prize again and is forced to look at his family, his three children in particular. He attends a meditation session with his youngest daughter. He realizes that he had concentrated only on his work so far and neglected his family.
Very witty writing and the book has an easy flow which carries the reader along. Very enjoyable.
The author grew up in UK. Both his parents are high achievers. Rajeev chose to be an author to get over the intense trauma caused by racial tension as he was growing up.
This made me pause. The whole Western world is engulfed by anti-racial protests right now.
Its cost in terms of human suffering is incalculable.

Got Brick by red brick by T T Ram Mohan. It is about Ravi Mathai's direction of IIM Ahmedabad. I had read the review first and IIMA senior faculty member V L Mote had raised objections to some points. I knew nothing about Mathai except the few mentions by V. Kurien in his autobiography. IIMA is also above my league totally. So I only intend to get information and possibly learn something about leading academic institutions from this book.  A quick browse yesterday gave the impression of a good writing style and racy narrative.