Some more books

I started reading 'The Miniaturist' by Kunal Basu after an ad-hoc decision on a Facebook that some of us would start an online book club. It started off as a regular enough discussion thread about something or the other, and then someone said that they were reading so-and-so book. The conversation turned to books then, and someone suggested starting a book club, reading a book a week and talking about it on Facebook, or something on those lines.

I was invited to join in, and I suggested this book. It was an easy find off Flipkart, and enough people seemed to like it. Everyone agreed, and I read it. I didn't visit Facebook for a long time after that, and lost sight of that particular thread. It seemed intrusive to suddenly post something on someone's page about a book that they had probably forgotten about, having read or not read it. Anyway, I did read the book, so I'm going to review it here.

My first introduction to Kunal Basu was 'The Japanase Wife', a collection of short stories that had been lying in my parents' house for almost a year, a gift from my aunt to my mom. A few months ago is when I seem to have decided to let my prejudiced views about Indian writers soften a little, but I wasn't (still am not) willing to commit. I got myself a cheap paperback copy of the book, liked some of the stories, skipped through some, and finished it. I had to admit, though, that this was the first book by a writer of Indian origin that was able to speak to me, albeit rather haltingly. After having a go at Arundhati Roy, V.S.Naipual, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Abraham Verghese, Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri and Rohinton Mistry more than a few times, I had begun to feel that there was something inherently realistic about their writing, that prevented it from meaning much to me. Even their abstraction was practical, their metaphors cautious and correct. With some, it was like they were trying so hard to be poetic, and with some, to be intellectually or artistically prosaic (I know that conventional wisdom would say that it is not my place to pass judgment on these award-winning authors, but mine says it very much is.) The ones that seemed more honest were the ones that just told stories, without subtext, references or metaphysical layers. Even those were often pages out of every day life, life that on an ordinary day would fail to grab my attention, and on paper, hardly ever. I always fell short of courage whenever I approached any book by Shashi Tharoor, or V.S.Naipaul (although my unconfirmed suspicion is that it may be a criminal offense to talk of those two in the same breath.) Suffice to say that I was in a rather bigoted place as far as Indian writing in English was concerned.

Then Kunal Basu came along, with safe but clean writing, and sharp imagery. He had the knack for creating an ambience, and it was an ambience I liked. It had imagination, and colour. 'The Miniaturist' was a re-iteration of that impression - besides the delicately sketched canvas of the narrative, the writing itself was replete with colour, with enough shades of grey to keep me interested. I was ready to give Indian writers another chance. I also realized that I would probably need to start with fairly easy reading in order to start reading anything at all. But easy need not mean mindless or shoddy - Kunal Basu's writing has lived up to that much.

A well-researched and intelligently written novel, it dextrously evokes the splendour and decadence of the Mughal empire during Akbar's reign. It is the backdrop of the narrative that first drew me to it, and the fact that art had a prominent role to play in its development. It was raw material I would have liked to work with. It explores history from a relatively insignificant perspective, and plays with ideas that have generally been considered explosive in any time or place. Akbar and other historically important figures and events appear perfunctorily, more with the objective of providing context than anything else. The protagonist, Bihzad, and a few other critical characters are fleshed out well enough to carry the weight of the story on their shoulders. The novel had clarity of idea, language and purpose - a rare combination.

I already have another book by him lined up - 'The Racists'. While I cannot say if the charm of the Indian writer in English will last for me, I will concede to the potential there. In fact, Basu's writing provided the perfect counterbalance to Murakami at the time, and between them, with their contrasting styles and content, they've got me reading again. Murakami, of course, lights up a startlingly colourful area of my brain that has been dormant for a while - he's got an interminable post all about him coming up.

Also, mental note for the future - musn't get carried away. At least, not with the whole Indian writing thing and waste two more hours of my life on anything even remotely akin to 'Urban Shots'. They may be cheap and quick reading, but they're not worth the self-loathing that follows.