Monday, 23 October 2017

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) 

Sunday, 22 October 2017

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) 

Thursday, 19 October 2017

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

Monday, 16 October 2017

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 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) 

Monday, 9 October 2017

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) 

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Poetry Reads: Fragrance and other poems by Snehith Kumbla

The second edition front cover This is convey , with much joy, that I have published a selection of my poems on Amazon Kindle and paperback....