One Hundred Years of Solitude

Title: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Translator: Gregory Rabassa
Publisher: Penguin, 1996 (First published 1967)
ISBN: 9780140157512
Pages: 422

When Gabriel Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982, I was ten years old. Studying in primary school, we children preparing for quiz competitions at school were obliged to remember his name for the coming tests and exams on general knowledge. Though he was given the honour for his ‘novels and short stories’, it was painted by media such that his masterpiece, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ alone had won the award. The title had a soothing feel to it. Every time you uttered it, something moved imperceptibly inside and you never got tired saying it aloud. Of course, even though the novel was praised very much, not many people had actually read it. At least, I could not find one who had gone through it at that time. That’s why around ten years later, when I was attending college and joined a public library to improve my English skills, I took the book off a dusty shelf for the first time. I read it with as eagerness as when you do push ups and found the going tough. My language skills were only developing and I could not enjoy the rich tapestry of vivid imagination that Marquez had spread before me. Naturally, I began forgetting the plot right from the moment the book was put down. Every time I heard its title mentioned by somebody else, I would momentarily feel a light bulk glow inside in the sense that I have read it once which will immediately be followed by guilty darkness that I don’t remember anything from it. Another three decades later, it now felt that the book may be given another try. That’s why a copy was newly bought and read. This is not exactly a review, but a summary of my own adventure of an act resembling climbing the sheer rock of Marquez’ creative genius.

The book tells the saga of the Buendia family in seven generations which founded the town of Macondo in Colombia (the names are certainly fictional). Jose Arcadio Buendia, the patriarch who established the settlement wanted proximity to the sea and instead had to contend with solitude in the middle of nowhere among a wide swamp. The settlers’ ties to the town were tenacious at first as ‘a person does not belong to a place until there is someone dead under the ground’. Buendias’ mansion becomes an icon of Macondo and the patriarch’s son Colonel Aureliano Buendia makes the family’s name a household one in the nation by joining a civil war fighting on the liberal side. Overwhelmed by odds against, he lays down arms and the fall of the family starts at that point. The males of the family adopt only two names – Jose Arcadio and Aureliano. All those who chose the former name exhibit traits of physical strength and rational mind while the Aurelianos were impulsive in nature but with a profound inkling to acquire esoteric knowledge. An Aureliano of the sixth generation finally succeeds in decoding the predictions about the dynasty’s end precisely at the moment at which it was coming true. It is amusing that Marquez alludes the coded prediction to be in Sanskrit. How he stumbled upon India is unknown, but it is suggestive that he had named his daughter ‘Indira’, rather than Amaranta or Ursula, the common names of female Buendias.

As the title implies, solitude is the overarching theme of the book. The town of Macondo founded by the Buendia clan was solitary for most of its existence which was broken by the appearance of railroad that brought in a ruthless American banana company. But the tide turned and the town fell back to desolation as everybody abandoned it. The banana company left on the face of stiff local resistance and the government which shot dead thousands of striking workers of the company lost interest when the town was depopulated. Most of the characters also exhibit the curse of solitude. Dead men come back to haunt their killers as ghosts not out of malice or revenge, but because they could not endure loneliness in the other world. Don’t ask how it’s possible – that’s magical realism for you. Melquiades the gypsy returned from death because he could not bear the solitude. Prudencio Aguilar, whom the first Buendia killed, returns to him because ‘after many years of death, the yearning for the living was so intense, the need for company so pressing, so terrifying the nearness of that other death which exists within death, made him love his worst enemy’. The novelist comments about a senile character that ‘the secret of a good old age is simply an honourable pact with solitude’. The loneliness of some characters is so intense that he is said to have ‘locked himself up inside himself’.

The book is suffused with magical realism that is mesmerizing if you stand back a little from the flow of narrative and pause for a moment to reflect on it. However, just for this extra work, some readers may find it unpalatable. The book has to be slowly masticated and not at all meant for swallowing in one gulp. Then you feel the pleasantly suffocating richness of Marquez’ expressions. Some characters in the novel are alone with only their memories as companions and the memories are said to have ‘materialized through the strength of implacable evocation and walked like human beings through the cloistered rooms’. The novel also mirrors the revolutionary spirit of Latin America to a good degree that glorifies fratricidal warfare as quite normal or even something to be desired. One of the Buendias tries to kill an old friend who was captured in war, saying ‘Remember, old friend, I am not shooting you. It’s the revolution that’s shooting you’. Apart from socialism, dictatorship also flourishes in Macondo where human life is sometimes not worth anything. The autocratic commands are said to be so effective that ‘his orders were being carried out even before they were given, even before he thought of them, and they always went much beyond what he would have dared have them do’.

Fatalism and incest are the two other recurring themes which mark the narrative with significance. In fact, the second is related to the first as if to prove that a prophecy had come true. We see incestual relations developing in at least two generations of the Buendia family. The founding parents – Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula Iguaran – were first cousins and Ursula feared giving birth to a monster child with pig’s tail as was believed to be the fate of offspring arising out of such tabooed unions. In the sixth generation, the match was more on the forbidden scale than the first and the couple was horrified by the birth of a boy with a pig’s tail. The unfortunate child is then carried away by ants which had colonized the mansion in its every nook and cranny. This leads to another prophecy coming true which had earlier predicted the chaining of the insane patriarch to a chestnut tree in the middle of the front garden. Unfortunately for the family, the coded material was decrypted from Sanskrit only at the last moment of existence of the last member. This novel is considered to be the epitome of Spanish creativity and is a geographical indicator of South America in the sense that the physical environment also assumes the nature of a protagonist such as a rain that lashes continuously for many years, warm gusts of wind, ants and termites eating into the innards of furniture or even people, yellow butterflies that signify the vital force of another human being and many similar devices.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

The Runaways

Title: The Runaways

Author: Fatima Bhutto

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9780670088515

Pages: 422

Apart from the religious divide that separated the newly born states of India and Pakistan in 1947, a distinct contrast in the running of both countries was seen right from the beginning. Even though Pakistan professed its adoption of democracy, what they had in effect was a form of feudal aristocracy polished for popular consumption and easy digestibility for the liberals. A few super-rich families controlled the destiny of the country, with their strangulating hold on the all-powerful army and bureaucracy. The Bhuttos were one such family that once controlled almost half the cultivable land of the southern province of Sindh. Fatima Bhutto is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, niece of Benazir Bhutto and granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She is an easily recognizable Pakistani writer and her memoir titled ‘Songs of Blood and Sword’ was reviewed earlier here. In this book, which is a novel, Bhutto presents a tragic sequence of events that drew three impressionable Muslim youths into jihad sponsored by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Bhutto’s selection of the cast is admirably representative. All the three – two boys and a girl – have lost their roots in the society they live and manage to push a forlorn existence just by doing nothing worthwhile. One is a second-generation Indian Muslim boy living in England, who is enraged by the apathy shown by the British people to the immigrants. His father migrated to England early on and was quite content with having received admission into the society. But the second generation wants assimilation, which is not forthcoming. The other boy is the son of a Pakistani aristocrat who lives in Karachi in an artificial bubble, insulated from the scum of the city by posh homes, elite restaurants and luxury cars. Lack of proper guidance leads the boy to fall for shallow relationships which is taken very seriously by him, thereby becoming a puppet of fate in the larger scheme of things. The third character is a Christian girl in the Karachi slums. Being penniless and belonging to a minority community means hell in Pakistan. After recurring abuse and humiliation by her peers, the girl and her brother assume Muslim names at first and then have to convert to that faith, just in order to obtain the status of a human being that is automatically granted to citizens anywhere in the world. All three discontented youths end up in the lure of Islamic terrorism like moths fluttering into the flame. Bhutto has maintained a very relevant and convincing plot in the novel.

The author’s credentials as a secular intellectual is impeccable, yet she has provided considerable leeway to sympathizers of jihadism. All educated Muslims appear to be nostalgic about the Moorish kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula which Islam had won and conquered in the first century after the religion’s birth. But they were defeated and evicted in the fifteenth century by Christian forces. The fact that not a trace of Moorish culture is seen today in Iberia is mourned even by moderate Muslims. They forget that the Islamic invaders had done exactly the same thing in the lands that fell under their horses’ hoofs. Hints that suggest cultural alienation of youths drive them to radicalism look like apology to jihadism. There are Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish migrants living in Europe who are also subjected to the same treatment, but they don’t queue up to join terrorists. The whites are accused of not being able to understand the migrants and their struggles. This may be true, but then again, they didn’t force the migrants to leave their home country in the first place!

The ISIS terrorists shocked the world through their explicit video clips of beheadings, shootings and burnings alive. They have proved themselves to be inhuman monsters who don’t deserve an iota of mercy or empathy from the civilized world. However, this book portrays them as excitable teenagers who anguish over the low speed of their data connection on their mobile phones in the middle of the desert. All of them are addicts of social media, which again makes them identifiable with the other youth.

The author’s observation that the ‘only way to look at powerful societies is through the people they excluded’ is prescient and original. So is the wry comment that the youths’ life was marked only by its unremarkability. The book contains such nice references readers can carry in their minds. The author also paints a colourful picture of liberated Pakistani women in England and the moral wreck caused by Birmingham grooming gangs in which gangs of Pakistani men and boys sexually abused British women in a systematically organized manner.

Bhutto makes a dig at India when she says that ‘the bacterial disease of trachoma, spread by flies was eradicated in most of the world, even India, but was still knocking around in Turkey’ (p.158). This is mild and pardonable, coming from a person whose grandfather was supposedly willing to eat grass to have a nuclear bomb to match India and to fight it for a thousand years. However, the irony of his judicial murder committed by his own countrymen within a decade of this speech is profound, which displays the insignificance of Pakistan’s politicians when the army is poised against them. This novel is structured in a descriptive style, with the author’s presence felt in every page. This makes the story unfold in a rather forced way as the author never recedes into the background. This plan leaves the plot with too few conversations between characters. A strong argument against this work is the humanization of inhuman terrorists. She paints them in so casual a tone that a comparison is unwittingly made by readers to William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’. It tells the story of a group of children who get trapped in an island by shipwreck. At first, they form a disciplined organisation to arrange efforts to get the attention of passing ships. But as time goes on, hope fades and despair sets in, making their descent into the abyss of barbarism. Reading about the radicalization of two innocent youths as they walk on a mission to cross the Iraqi desert reminds one of Golding’s masterpiece.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Dictator

Title: Dictator (Cicero Trilogy No. 3)

Author: Robert Harris

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9780091799502

Pages: 449

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, orator, politician, lawyer and political theorist, who stayed on the side of the republic when it was threatened by the powerful ambitions of Julius and Augustus Caesars and Mark Antony. Being a shrewd politician himself, with a powerful oratory at his command, Cicero’s fiery speeches energized the people and the senate, but at the cost of deeply antagonizing would-be dictators and their cohorts. This book tells the story of Cicero from his first exile in 58 BCE to his assassination at the hands of Mark Antony’s soldiers in 43 BCE. This is the third and final volume in the Cicero trilogy. Robert Dennis Harris is an English novelist, a former journalist and BBC television reporter. He began his career in non-fiction, but obtained fame upon his works of historical fiction. His most recent works centre on contemporary history.

We get a glimpse of what life in Rome was about, with its specter of violence overshadowing the lives of the people at every turn of the road. When the curtain goes up in the story, the republic had outlived its utility. The law had silently taken the backstage, and those who had the power of arms at their disposal could enforce their will on the people. Rome’s republic or perceived democracy is not to be confused with their modern counterparts. The patricians controlled the state and decided the fate of the republic while the ordinary citizens made up the ranks of the legionaries that served the officials. Beneath these stood the multitude of slaves, both male and female, who didn’t possess any rights at all. Tiro, Cicero’s secretary who is supposed to be telling the story, was himself a slave. In view of the outstanding service done to him Cicero manumitted him. Such freed slaves could gain citizenship and own property. Rome’s brutal military victories over the barbarian tribes meant a constant inflow of slaves.

Cicero is thought to be one of the greatest orators of all time, and the book contains some nice samples of his powerful speeches that made his listeners dance to his tune. Ironically, this spelled his doom. Incensed at his earlier attacks on him, Mark Antony had Cicero’s head cut off from his body and severed the hands that once compiled polemics against him, which were displayed on the Roman forum. One of his defence speeches as a lawyer of an indefensible case prove how good presentation of forceful arguments can sway a jury away from truth and make them acquit a guilty person. This practice has definitely survived the ages and continues to this day in our law courts. Julius Caesar’s meteoric rise to dictatorship exhibits the vulnerability of any democracy – particularly, one in which republican institutions have never taken root among the masses – to the whims of an adventurer. The Roman republic was steeped in corruption to make matters worse. Fortune seekers aligned with Caesar in his far reaching campaigns to the outer reaches of the empire – Gaul, Germany and even Britain. Vast hordes of wealth collected from these provinces were for their keeping. Sadists among them could vent all their perversions on the captured prisoners of war. Caesar once cut off the arms of twenty thousand enemy soldiers for their alleged temerity to take up arms against him. People on the republican side were also venal. They could be bought and sold on the lure of plum postings and sinecure titles. Pompey once tries his luck in getting himself appointed as the commissioner of grain with deputies in every province. They had the liberty to indulge freely in corruption.

Another notable factor is the amount of political calculations that went into matchmaking in Roman aristocratic circles. Passion was totally subservient to position in society, with scant regard paid to physical suitability. Aged statesmen married girls who had barely put their teenage years behind. Daughters and nieces of the who’s who were destined to end up as wives of other prominent people of the empire. Dowry was dominant, and we read of many people, including the protagonist, marrying for the money involved. The Romans cremated their dead, collected their ashes and interred it later. Some of the customs seem to have had a close parallel to similar Indian customs, but of course, the resemblance must have to be purely coincidental.

Historical fiction of this genre will be generally devoid of scenes provoking intense emotion or passion. The author has a long story to tell in so few pages, that finer details like these have to be pruned away. The language is simple yet elegant and the book is quite a page turner. We are not sure of the historical authenticity of the author’s arguments, even though he has indicated some books as acknowledgement. A fine glossary and notes on dramatis personae are given at the end of the book, which should be noted by the readers beforehand. I stumbled on to it after completing the book, though by that time it had become irrelevant. The book, however, was thoroughly enjoyable even with this handicap. This volume is the concluding part of the Cicero trilogy, but the book contains no reference to the existence of such a series or about its predecessors. The subject matter is self-contained as not to warrant reading any other book in the series.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Complete Yes Prime Minister

Title: The Complete Yes Prime Minister

Author: Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay

Publisher: BBC Books, 2001 (First published 1986)

ISBN: 0-563-20773-6

Pages: 488

‘Yes Prime Minister’ was a very popular political satire aired by the BBC between 1986 and 1988. Written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, it was a sequel to the program ‘Yes Minister’ transmitted between 1980 and 1984. Set in the Cabinet office of Jim Hacker, the ‘Prime Minister’ in the story, it humorously relates his struggles to formulate legislation which were poised to help the country get over difficult times and equally defiant struggle by the Civil Service to block anything which has the potential to change the status-quo. Jim Hacker, played by Paul Eddington is assisted by his Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne), his Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (played by Derek Fowlds) and several lesser characters. This sitcom which was an out and out critic of the British administrative system has won several awards and was voted sixth in the Britain’s Best Sitcom poll. It is said that it was the favourite television programme of the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Jim Hacker is quite unexpectedly elevated to Number Ten, when the present incumbent decides to quit in order to pave the way for his successor. The political struggle which ensued saw two men fighting for the top post, but who had very unfavourable remarks about them with the Intelligence Bureau, which, if exposed would have led to serious embarrassment for the party and the government. Hacker is selected as the consensus candidate. Right from the beginning, his assistants, Sir Humphrey and Woolley try to block any move which would seem threatening, even in the mildest way, to the Civil Service. Having no experience with the intricacies of the internal working of Civil Service, Hacker often falls prey to the machinations of the bureaucrats. The encounters and meetings between the principal characters of the play offer hilarious moments for the reader. Sir Humphrey, who is an expert in getting what he intended even against the wishes of his boss, the Prime Minister is a quintessential Civil Servant. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the channels of communication between various departments, he often plays one against the other to get at what he wanted. Having no compunction or dedication to what is good or moral, he rides like a juggernaut with full control of what Hacker is up to.

The contrasting ideals of the characters are noteworthy. Being a politician, or despite of, Hacker often comes up with innovative solutions to the nation’s problems, whereas the civil servants genuinely believe that they only know what is best for the country and the others are not trained or qualified to govern it. For them, democracy is only an evil they have to live with – an occupational hazard at the worst! Most of Sir Humphrey’s actions are motivated by his wish to maintain the prestige, power and authority he enjoys.

The book is full of thoroughly entertaining comments, repartee and asides between the protagonists. Sir Humphrey and Woolley are the masters of word play, though it often ends in Hacker being utterly confused about the meaning of what his subordinates had just said. Some witty remarks found in the text are,

a)      So long as there is anything to be gained by saying nothing, it is always better to say nothing than anything.

b)      Never believe anything until it is officially denied.

c)      We have a system of government with the engine of a lawn-mower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce.

d)      (In a discussion) facts complicate things

e)      The history of the world is the triumph of the heartless over the mindless

f)        He (Jim Hacker) raised the average age of the Cabinet, but lowered the average IQ

g)      If you want to get into the Cabinet, learn how to speak. If you want to stay in the Cabinet, learn how to keep your mouth shut

h)      Never speak when you are angry. If you do, you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret

In their never-ending pursuit of self-serving methods, the bureaucracy holds nothing sacred and we find them forever willing to change the official minutes (records of meeting) if it suits them. Sir Humphrey justifies it as, “While it is true that the minutes are indeed an authoritative record of the Committee’s deliberations, it is nevertheless undeniable that a deliberate attempt at comprehensive delineation of every contribution and interpolation would necessitate an unjustifiable elaboration and wearisome extension of the documentation” (p.288). Jim Hacker finally acknowledges that there is nothing much he could do against the established prejudice that is the civil service. Hacker says, “Suddenly I saw, with a real clarity that I’d never enjoyed before, that although I might win occasional policy victory, or make some reforms, or be indulged with a few scraps from the table, nothing fundamental was ever ever going to change” (p.488).

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Cure

Title: Cure

Author: Robin Cook

Publisher:  Pan Books, 2010 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-330-52382-0

Pages: 459

Robin Cook’s mastery over medical thrillers is an acknowledged fact as evidenced by numerous books originated from his experienced pen. They don’t disappoint the reader and provides for good infotainment channeled in through easy, flowing language and neatly paraphrased concepts. Indeed, simply by looking at the theme of Cook’s books, readers get a clear sense of the direction in which the healthcare industry is moving forward. Just spell out the recent developments in medicine, and Robin Cook is sure to have produced a best-seller on the topic, whether it is genetic tinkering, manipulations of the brain or as in the present issue, induced pluripotent stem cells.

Stem cells are the next big thing in biology. These are special cells which can grow to become any of the 300-odd types of cells in human body. Skin cells, nerve cells, heart tissue, muscles, whatever it may, stem cell can be induced to grow into it. This is definitely impressive, being the cure of many degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or Type 2 diabetes. If we can artificially produce brain cells or pancreatic cells in the above cases, the treatment is simple as to replace the damaged part. However, getting stem cells for culture is the most tricky part. The simplest route is to do an abortion on a growing embryo which is full of stem cells and take it out for research. Quite understandably, the unethical nature of the process has attracted widespread criticism and opposition from pro-life groups. The U.S. has effectively banned or very severely restricted access to this route. This has forced academicians and industrial researchers to turn to adult stem cells, found in every human, to bring about the necessary treatment regimen. The field is chaotic with huge number of patents filed for universities and companies active in the field. Any one good enough to produce an easy to manufacture solution is to end up one of the richest men in the world.

Cook’s present book details one such company, iPS USA, illegally acquiring rights for patents which is due to a Japanese university. The Japanese government wants to get its rights back and employs Yakuza (mafia in Japan) for forcibly obtaining a pair of critical lab books from the American company. In the typical scenario involving organized crime and big money, several murders take place, some of them cleverly designed to look like natural ones. Laurie Montgomery, the medical examiner in New York who is returning to work after prolonged absence on family reasons suspect foul play and tries to bring out the truth and the perpetrators. The New York mafia, which bankrolled the company kicks into action, kidnapping Laurie’s only child. The medical examiner employs a kidnapping consultant firm, which is a euphemism for activities which are criminal to snatch the child back from the thugs. Like other works before this one, everything ends in a pleasant note.

What is troublesome with the presentation is the casual way in which criminality is acknowledged as a normal and unalienable part of modern life, be it in Japan or the U.S. The Japanese government is portrayed as quite incompetent to get what they wanted legally from America, with a minister running discussions with a local mafia don to do it for them. Things are not bright on the other side of the ocean too. A New York detective captain is shown urging the unfortunate parents of the abducted child to hire a ‘consultant’ who is nothing but another criminal organisation. The reason for admitting the unconventional elements is described as the legal wrangles which bind the police and law enforcement agencies in performing such delicate work. In the end, the readers end up with the notion that both these advanced industrialized countries are run by criminal societies cooperating across borders.

The book is also not as appealing as Cook’s other titles boasting medical thrillers. This book is mostly thriller and nothing fundamentally medical in it.  After a cursory introduction to pluripotent stem cells, the storyline goes forever detached to action packed sequences, with no reference to the topic of attraction. Though there is no denying that it is very handsomely organized, we end up with a sense of disillusionment at the end.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Empire of the Moghul

Title: Empire of the Moghul – Raiders from the North

Author: Alex Rutherford

Publisher:  Headline Review, 2010 (First published 2009)

ISBN: 978-0-7553-5654-6

Pages: 493

Another novel on the most romantic of India’s dynasties – the Moghuls. This is the first book among a quintet that covers the entire dynasty. Alex Rutherford has strived much for this work, particularly doing good research and personally visiting the more important vistas where the events unfurled. With a judicious sense of selecting proper characters for the lead roles of the novel, she has displayed impressive workmanship. Poetic license grants authors immense freedom, but Rutherford prefers to lean more on the solid rock of history rather than the floating log of imagination. On the bedrock of historical fact, she paints a colourful saga of Babur, a small-time ruler of Ferghana and claiming blood links to Timur the Lame and Genghis Khan. Though the reader may want to differ on assigning on the young prince unquestionable greatness – as the author has indeed done – we may have to pardon her for embellishing the protagonist a bit too much.

Babur ascended the throne of Ferghana at the age of thirteen, upon the unexpected death of his father. Ferghana, Samarkand and Kabul were at that time ruled by princes of the House of Timur, Babur’s uncles and cousins. Internecine fratricidal warfare was a feature of the times. The lack of unity among the brothers helped their arch enemy, the Uzbek warlord Shaibani Khan forage into Samarkand and kill its ruler. The city was later given to Babur who was unable to retain it for long. Court intrigue denied him the throne of the magnificent city of Timur. Upon returning to Ferghana, he found that it was usurped by his half-brother. Having lost all he had, Babur lived as a brigand, skirmishing the outlying countryside and giving the rulers much discomfort. Return of Shaibani Khan at this stage succeeded in forging unity among the brothers and Babur was able to regain Samarkand for a short while. When Shaibani Khan returned with a greater force, Babur fleed, even surrendering his only sister to the conqueror’s lust. Luck was following him, as he neared Kabul, the local ruler died and the royal council invited him to take up the post. Uzbeks were not inclined to allow him to reign in peace, however. Shaibani Khan took Herat and marched ominously to Babur. Nevetheless, the Uzbeks were beaten by Persian Shah’s army who handed over the conquered kingdoms to Babur, on the condition that he and his subjects covert to Shiism, the official religion of Persia. Babur tactfully went on with the scheme, but his subjects at Samarkand threw the Shiite mullah out of the city and chased Babur through the streets. He fleed for a third time back to Kabul.

While licking his wounds among Afghans, and weary of warring against strong rulers to the North and West, he heard about the immense wealth of Hindustan and its weak rulers. He was made doubly fortunate in acquiring gun powder, cannon and matchlocks from the Ottoman Turks. Siege became a cake walk with the new weaponry. Babur moved south and met the Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi on the battlefield at Panipat, handing a summary defeat and death to Lodi. With Delhi and Agra under him, his forces subdued the irreconcilable Rana Sanga of Mewar and paved the way for establishing his kingdom in India. On his death, his son, Humayun ascends the throne and the novel comes to end, with a strong hint of fratricidal jelousy which would soon consume the empire out of the land.

Being a work of fiction, there is no point in nitpicking historical accuracies in the plot. It is highly exaggerated, particularly the portions on Babur’s ‘tolerance’ to the Hindu belief system. A stout and fanatic believer of Islam, Babur was in fact, instrumental in destroying the peaceful cultural fabric of India. Seeds of discord and hate sown by him are still being reaped in the land. Obviously, it is unfair to judge a ruler with the enlightenment of a future age, but that is no excuse for portraying the medieval ruler with a petty mindset as a tolerant one! Any way, Babur was undoubtedly the most literate among his successors, probably with Aurangzeb exempted. He kept a diary of proceedings, which is reckoned as the first autobiography in history. Rutherford had relied heavily on it, for sure. The portrayal of Baburi, a handsome market boy referred as such in Baburnama as a larger than life figure and intimate friend of Babur is a case in point. Nonetheless, the name and circumstances make many historians attribute meaner motives – some even suggesting a hint of homosexuality which was practised by Turkish and Afghan noblemen.

The book lacks the imaginative spirit. What the readers feel is a mechanical narrative, pulled out from the leaves of a book on history. The author has miserably failed to carry the reader inside the minds of the protagonists and to marvel at the struggle going on inside the psyche of the celebrities. Even the narration of incidents is drool, unappealing and often feeling repetitive. The language is easy, which is expected from a book without much substance. Only those who want to have another view on Moghul history would like to pursue the remaining books in the quintet.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got A Life

Title: How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got A Life

Author: Kaavya Viswanathan

Publisher: Time Warner 2006 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-7515-3742-0

Pages: 314

A notable work from a young Indian student at Harvard, published when the author was just eighteen years old! This young adult novel portrays the travails of an Indian girl named Opal Mehta whose ambition was to secure to get in to Harvard, but was rejected on the first attempt because she was not having a social life. The book presumably contains biographical perspectives, as the similarities between the author and the lead character is unmistakeable. Both are of Indian origin, have doctor-parents with the mother abandoning her practice for mentoring the child and so on. Written in an easy going style and effortless narrative, the work is thoroughly enjoyable. Beyond revealing the life and ambitions of a typical girl which are tightly controlled by her parents, it also sheds light on the stereotypical identities some students have to assume, to be known as ‘cool’ to their school mates. Opal Mehta’s social life is also planned in detail by her parents, with flow charts, to-do lists and check lists and she is only allowed to execute the details like an automaton.

The Mehtas’ plans at socialization go awry because of some inevitable bunglings in its performance. Instead of becoming the star attraction of the school, Opal turns into the laughing stock as her plans and check lists are mailed to every student by a jealous friend. She withdraws into her shell and through selfless sacrifice of own interests, wins the heart of some of her friends back. In the end, all is well as she is admitted to Harvard and solves the Fermeculi formula, which was said to puzzling the physics community for several decades.

Though the novel is good to read and neatly structured, it met a tragic death in the U.S. at the first publishing itself. Critics observed too many similarities between her work and those of Megan McCafferty, Salman Rushdie, Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot and Tanuja Desai Hidier. Her book was pulled from publication after the plagiarism was revealed. Her book and movie deals were dropped. Only because the novel was not part of her academic work, Harvard took no action against their student. Kaavya apologized and said any similarities were ‘completely unintentional and unconscious’. She accepted the accusations and justified that she was having a photographic memory which might have prompted her unknowingly to copy parts of the works. From comparisons produced in Wikipedia, it is obvious that her work was heavily indebted to Megan McCafferty, whereas the other comparisons are weak and somewhat stretching the imagination a bit too much.

The work also gives out a peep into the social life of the American Indian community. Having no roots on the soil, they try to imitate the festivities and celebrations at home in their adopted homeland, by throwing extravagant parties and superficial merrymaking. The author portrays a community which is rich and socially accepted by their white neighbours. No incidents of discrimination or sub-par treatment is given, while at the same time omitting all mention of African-Americans. It is curious to note that Opal Mehta doesn’t come across any black person in her life, as if they don’t simply exist! The book comes from an author hailing from an upper middle class community who doesn’t find the need to look past her comfortable social background. In that sense, it may be said to be a hyped-up portrayal of an expatriate family with designs to project it as a life worth emulating.

As an aside, the death of both of the author’s parents in a plane crash in June 2011 would have been heartbreaking for her.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star