Book Excerpt: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer is no stranger to most bookworms, the epitome of mischief and loafing as he is, Sawyer's enduring evergreen appeal that has lasted over a century can be attributed to his indomitable spirit. In the following lines from the first few pages of the book, Mark Twain kind of sums up the essential Tom Sawyer character for us:

He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though — and loathed him.

Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time — just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises.


(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Fiction Reads: A Tiger for Malgudi by RK Narayan

RK Narayan (1906 - 2001)

Most of RK Narayan's novels and short stories are set in the fictional, sleepy town of Malgudi, somewhere in south India. A Tiger for Malgudi is no exception. Even as an aging zoo tiger narrates its life history, the story's climatic moments inevitably occur in the small town. Instead of its usual full-fledged role, Malgudi makes a guest appearance here. But more of that later, sample an excerpt from the first chapter: 

You are not likely to understand that I am different from the tiger next door, that I possess a soul within this forbidding exterior. I can think, analyse, judge, remember and do everything that you do, perhaps with greater subtlety and sense. I lack only the faculty of speech. 

But if you could read my thoughts, you would be welcome to come in and listen to the story of my life. At least, you could slip your arm through the bars and touch me and I will hold out my forepaw to greet you, after retracting my claws, of course.      

A common thread runs through most of Narayan's works, the flow persists here. The storytelling is simple, the characters well-defined, there are no complexities in the plot. Time is an invisible character in all Malgudi tales, it is as if time lingers on a park bench, or stands still as a statue while passing Malgudi. 

Many times I have found this lingering pace a bother in Narayan's novels. This despite the fact that none of Narayan's novels extend beyond 300 pages. But A Tiger for Malgudi is one Narayan novel I love returning to. The 176-page length works for the book. It has the charm of a fable, old world wisdom, incidental humour and at its best moments, a leisurely, enjoyable aroma of a much-repeated (and thus polished) grandmother's tale.


(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Poetry Reads: Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar

  

Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004) was reclusive (didn't own a telephone: ever), bilingual poet with rare gifts.  A clear demarcation of style and substance is evident in his Marathi and English works.

Apart from wit, satire, and humour, Kolatkar's English poetry has its unique punchlines, dream-scraping, and exaggerated comic imagery. A Sir J.J School of Art pass out who went on to be a professional graphic designer - the copyrighting sprinkle certainly shows in the English poems. Keen observation is another noticeable endowment.    

Barely Published 

The degree of reluctance in publishing his work was such that for years, Jejuri was the only English poetry collection available. Two English poetry collections Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpasatra were released on July 14, 2004, at an event in Mumbai. Terminally ill with stomach cancer, Arun Kolatkar was in the audience as poets read from the two books.

Posthumously, came the beautifully compiled The Boatride and other Poems, edited by his close friend and fellow poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. The latter's introduction duly documents Kolatkar's last days, under the title - Death of a Poet. Kolatkar passed away on September 25, 2004 in Pune.

Thus was Kolatkar - of leonine hair, razor-blade eyes, and drooping moustache. We now delve into Jejuri, first published in 1974.

Destinations, Inspirations

Jejuri is an hour's drive from Pune. Much has changed since the poet visited this small-town nearly four decades ago. This was no pilgrimage that Kolatkar undertook, that much is clear. A leisurely trip with no particular purpose seems more like it.  The first of the 31 poems swings in the surrealism of a bus ride. Another walks into the world of an eager priest. An excerpt:

The bus goes round in a circle. 

Stops inside the bus station and stands 

purring softly in front of the priest. 

A catgrin on its face

and a live, ready to eat pilgrim   

held between its teeth.                                           

We also get a striking description of a temple's ruined state and an unlikely epitaph in another. The extract follows:

No more a place of worship this place

is nothing less than the house of god.    

Kolatkar misses little - be it the haphazard zigzag journey of a conduit pipe, a medieval door or temple legends:

these five hills 

are the five demons 

that khandoba killed 

says the priest's son 

a young boy 

who comes along as your guide 

as the schools have vacations 

do you really believe that story

you ask him 

he doesn't reply 

but merely looks uncomfortable

shrugs and looks away               

The collection flows chronologically. For instance, the priest's son chances his eyes upon a:

look

there's a butterfly 

there   

The Butterfly is the poem that follows. (Click the following link to read The Butterfly in its entirety.)

Some of the most profound lines in the book can be found in the poem, A Scratch. Another excerpt:

what is god 

and what is stone 

the dividing line 

if it exists 

is very thin 

at jejuri    

and every other stone 

is god or his cousin

Kolatkar finishes it with a signature:

scratch a rock 

and a legend springs

Apart from this dry comment on idol worship, Kolatkar cites his indifference to rituals in a quiet smoky rebellion in another. Here's Makarand - the whole poem :

Take my shirt off 

and go in there to do pooja? 

No thanks. 

Not me. 

But you go right ahead

if that's what you want to do. 

Give me the matchbox

before you go

will you? 

I will be out on the courtyard

where no one will mind 

if I smoke. 

A timeless frozen aura of words, spacing, and arrangement, Jejuri is a poetry travelogue worth lingering in. I would go on and call it a classic, not a popular, accepted work yet, but the sheen is unmistakable. As for you poetry lovers, the Wolf suggests you experience it for yourself, devoid of any fixed notion.


(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Arun Kolatkar

Poetry Reads: When I Dance by James Berry

The second-hand book market in Pune has its share of hidden treasures. All one needs to do is linger in such surroundings, engage in some scouring, back-bending, explore untouched stacks and dusty corners, and who knows what you may come across?

It was on one such lingering expedition that I happened to grab a copy of the (now puzzlingly out of print) James Berry poetry collection - When I Dance. 

Swinging in Caribbean rhythms of endearing broken, accented English and emanating in addictive visions of Britain's city interiors, the poems are a celebration of the exuberance, vitality, energy, bruises, dates, bicycle rides, love, toothless grannies and the impossible, innocent fantasies that childhood conjures.

 

In its congregation of illustrations, meter, rhyme and celebration these are poems that cheerfully exude everything that youth is in its follies and grandeur. Extracts will tell you more, here are scraps from the title poem: 

When I dance it isn't merely

That music absorbs my shyness 

My laughter settles in my eyes, 

My swings of arms convert my frills 

As timing tunes my feet with floor 

As if I never just looked on 

It is that when I dance 

O music expands my hearing 

And it wants no mathematics, 

It wants no thinking, no speaking, 

It only wants all my feeling

In with animation of place. 

Bear-hug cosiness is apparent in poems such as Seeing Granny. The extract follows: 

Toothless, she kisses

with fleshy lips 

rounded, like mouth

of a bottle, all wet. 

She bruises your face

almost, with two

loving tree-root hands.

Sample this perspective of a father, the criticism is not biting, it is more like a family reaction to overheard adult dialogue. The extract is from the poem Girls Can We Educate We Dads?: 

Listn the male chauvinist in mi dad ---

a girl walkin night street mus be bad. 

He dohn sey, the world's a free place

for a girl to keep her unmolested space.

Instead he sey --- a girl is a girl. 

Finally I conclude with a paragraph that tells of a bubble-making childhood of soap lather dreams from What We Said Sitting Making Fantasies:

I 

I want a talking dog wearing a cap

who can put on gloves 

and go to my mum when I'm playing 

and she wants a job done. 

A winner of the 1989 Signal Poetry Award, When I Dance is a 59-poem gem that is begging for a reissue. Are the people at Puffin Books listening?   


(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Murder Mysteries: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

The first time I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, to be more precise, reached a pivotal point, I couldn't, and this is no exaggeration, believe my eyes. 

Down with fever that pre-teen December in Ahmedabad, and confined to the bed, I was convinced that the fever had gone to my head. 

How on the earth could it all be true? 

Then Hercule Poirot took over and disbelief turned to awe.

Plot

Roger Ackroyd is a resident of King's Abbott village in England, a widower and he knows a bit too much. 

Ackroyd knows who had been blackmailing the recently deceased Mrs. Ferrars, a widow he was to marry. Pretty soon Ackroyd is found murdered and the suspects are many. 

Belgian detective Hercule Poirot happens to be at the village. 

Quietly, with his customary neatness and keen understanding of human nature, he unravels the crime in its ingenuity and simplicity. 

A seemingly simple crime is elevated by its narration, and when the truth comes spurting out, crime fiction is turned upside down. 

A must read masterpiece for murder mystery lovers.  

  

Afterword

As the legend goes, Agatha Christie wrote her first novel on the catharsis of her sister's statement that she couldn't write a damn good murder mystery. Christie responded with her first The Mysterious Affairs at Styles, finally published in 1920.

Christie averaged a novel a year from then on, and then came the year 1926. 

Harper Collins loves to print it repeatedly in its foreword for every Christie novel and here are the exact words, among others - ...Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship which lasted for 50 years and well over 70 books. 

In other words, you might safely say in modern terminology, that Collins had their Bloomsbury-Harry Potter moment that year.


(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Poetry Reads: Celia Celia by Adrian Mitchell

It was on a visit to the city British Library that I came upon on a wonderful anthology called Poems on the Underground. That was when I chanced upon a particular Adrian Mitchell poem, among many other beautiful, varied reads. Poems on the Underground is pretty much a poetry-lover's collector's item. 

The London Metro train service is popularly and officially known as the 'Underground'. In 1986, the Underground people started a unique program that continues to this date. In over 3000 advertising spaces across train passenger cars, poems of every kind are put up and replaced three times a year.

The following poem is but meager proof of the poet Mitchell (1932-2008) was. The British poet opposed war, racism and prisons vehemently in his works. The lines need no literal explanation, as you will see. A factual tit bit though - High Holborn is a road in central London.    

Celia Celia

by Adrian Mitchell

When I am sad and weary

When I think all hope has gone

When I walk along High Holborn

I think of you with nothing on.

#

(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Non-Fiction Reads: The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara

This isn't a tale of derring-do, nor is it merely some kind of 'cynical account'; it isn't meant to be, at least. It's a chunk of two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams. In nine months a man can think a lot of thoughts, from the height of philosophical conjecture to the most abject longing for a bowl of soup – in perfect harmony with the state of his stomach. And if, at the same time, he's a bit of an adventurer, he could have experiences which might interest other people and his random account would read something like this diary.
- The Motorcycle Diaries, Introduction 

Who was Che Guevara? For starters, he was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary; the leader of Cuban and international guerrillas.

What Guevara became and how much the journey described in the book contributed to it, is another story. We may not approve of the violent path that Guevara walked later on. But here, he is one of us, more recognizable, more accessible, yet apart.

It was only in 1993 that The Motorcycle Diaries was first published, more than 40 years after it was written.Translated from the Spanish, the book was also made into a movie by the same name.The present edition that I possess, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey was released in 2003. 

In 1950, a young Guevara had already done a 4500-km trip across Argentina on a bicycle with a small motor attached to it. In January 1952, 23-year-old Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, 29, took a one-year break from their medical studies and embarked on a road trip they had been planning for a long time. Granado's 1939 500cc Norton motorbike, nicknamed La Poderasa (the mighty one) was to be their riding companion. This was to be an epic road trip covering South America in its entirety.

The book is a collection of notes Guevara wrote during the journey. The narration is full of surprises, of the joys, difficulties and the unexpected humorous situations that arise during the journey. Overloaded with luggage, 'the mighty one' suffers many crashes until finally becoming obsolete, halfway through the journey.

The change in Guevara from a carefree young man to the person he finally became can be witnessed in these writings. The duo spends nights at strangers' abodes, get visited by a Puma and are almost done in by possible murderers. On the road, there is the extreme cold to contend with. New experiences greet the travelers at every bend. At the journey's end, Guevara and Granado are bound to travel their separate roads.

A distinct gem of a travelogue, fragrant of youth, enthusiasm and daring.


(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Poetry Reads: On A Mythical Mumbai Weekend by Snehith Kumbla

On A Mythical Mumbai Weekend

by Snehith Kumbla 

On a mythical Mumbai weekend, 

of no serene start or dubious end, 

with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,

I stepped out of a puffing train, 

my long unkempt hair a lion's mane, 

getting used to my twitching tail,

Posing on the Gateway of India, 

the extraordinary explorer pose, 

took a boat to Elephanta (sans the hose),

and when my shivering co-passengers

had finished feverishly taking pictures

and started screaming holy mothers and sisters, 

I took off from the starboard end, 

and became the first man-lion to 

cross the polluted Indian channel, 

surviving to make the news channels,

my scientific name listed as a brand new mammal, 

my mating call recognized as a gushing gargle, 

On a mythical Mumbai weekend, 

of no serene start or dubious end, 

with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,

I devoured deep-kissing lovers for lunch 

at Bandstand's low-tide on a hunch,

to the delicious sound of munch! munch!

even as Shah Rukh Khan watched disgusted 

from his big big bungalow by the sea, 

and as the city sharpshooters came after me,    

and later when they brought me down, 

from Nariman Point building, like KING KONG,

I tuned a dusty guitar and sang a melancholy song,

on the death of adventure, love and reality, 

dangers of delusions, lethargy and self-pity,

repression, horniness and too much TV,

down in a shower of bullets when I went, 

sky like the coming of rain, godspeed, godsend, 

in a mythical city, where nothing is really meant, 

On a mythical Mumbai weekend, 

of no serene start or dubious end, 

with imaginary beauties, invisible friends...

>>>

(As published on https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1672207/on-a-mythical-mumbai-weekend/)

Mingling fantasy, boredom (epic ennui), love for the movies and alleged diary entries, On a Mythical Mumbai Weekend, is also my call out to meeting childhood, college, journalism and travel friends, visiting Elephanta Caves, browsing books at Flora Fountain, walking down Marine Drive, discovering Prithvi Theatre and many other South Mumbai memories.  

(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Fiction Reads: Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh

In the summer of 1947, a gruesome, violent bloodbath ensues during the turbulent India-Pakistan partition, killing millions in its wake. 

Menwhile at the border village of Mano Majra, life goes on as usual. 

The residents time their daily routine of chores, meals, work, prayers and sleep to the sound of trains arriving-departing at the railway station. 

This fragile peace is soon smashed to bits. The local moneylender's murder ruffles up the denizens. Then, a train arrives at Mano Majra, ominously quiet, bearing ghostly tidings.

First published in 1956, Train to Pakistan is up there among Singh's best novels, notably Delhi (1990). Instead of the latter's epic sweep, Singh slashes at the jugular here. 

He fleshes out life-mirroring characters, rough, raw and hapless to the circumstances. 

From the giant-like Sikh rogue Juggat Singh, the well-intending, yet conniving, district magistrate Hukum Chand, city-dwelling communist Iqbal, Sikh priest Meet Singh to Nooran, the vulnerable Muslim girl, Singh is in his element here.

Symbolisms and insights
Trains running haywire and disrupting tranquil lives makes for strong symbolism here, as does the reading out of Guru Nanak's teachings, a downplayed, pivotal moment in the story.

As the Sutlej river swells with the monsoon's advent, dead bloated bodies come floating by. A madness tardily, surely grips the village. It only takes a young mob-rouser to light the flame and the stage is set for mayhem and murder. 

Singh masterfully dissects the times, emotions and short-sightedness of the general public. No individual, independent thoughts prevail here. In a snatch, a crowd transforms into a killing mob.

Nightmarish, brutal descriptions follow. The unsettling analogy to Nehru's Tryst with destiny speech is haunting. 

An abrupt stunning climax winds up this powerful gritty tale. 

Unsentimental, effectively dry and humane, this is a surprisingly redeeming partition novel. 

A definitive classic, a necessary cautionary tale of our times. Sadly, still contemporary and immediate in the 70th year of India's independence.



(Article by Snehith Kumbla)    

A partition photograph by Margaret Bourke-White for LIFE magazine.
(Courtesy: time.com)

Fiction Reads: Turbulence by Samit Basu

All passengers on a London-Delhi flight mysteriously end up with superpowers. Soon, the new, uncertain beings take sides. The meek are done away with and only a few remain of the lot. A battle for survival and domination ensues. Meanwhile, film, comic book, music and other popular culture references populate the plot, keeping it light and downright silly.

A deliberate hyper-imaginative spoofy take on every other superhero story, Turbulence is Samit Basu at the height of his powers in mockery. Basu's humour is the stuff of parody films, bordering on the juvenile, but always entertaining.

Don't look for depth, truth and literature here. Latch on to vivid, comic-book, 'too much TV'-fueled imagery instead. From a flying man, a sleepwalking scientist, weather-maker, mind-bender, manga animation-transforming warrior, notorious strongman, body multiplier to the Internet manipulator, this is super-nerdy, teenage-dreamy stuff.

Turbulence cries out for a graphic novel version, it's superficial, damn funny, lampooned narrative is best suited for that format. A mad celebration of superhero plots and all things Marvel, DC and beyond, you have to be a comic book/manga/anime fan for this one. Roll it up like a 3D sandwich over multiple reading sessions and let your mind go low, groovy and loose in suspended disbelief.



(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

A collage of various Turbulence front covers.