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Archive for March, 2025

Book Review – The Sufi Storyteller by Faiqa Mansab

Posted in Book Review, Pakistani Fiction, tagged , , , on March 31, 2025| 2 Comments »

When I discovered that Faiqa Mansab’s new book ‘The Sufi Storyteller‘ was coming out soon, I was very excited. I loved her last book, ‘This House of Clay and Water‘, and so was looking forward to reading this one. Any new Faiqa Mansab book is an event, and this new book was coming out after eight years, and so fans were eagerly waiting for it. I got the book as soon as it came out last week, and finished reading it yesterday.

Layla is a professor at a small American university. She teaches classes on storytelling and the symbolism behind stories and the multiple layers of stories and how to unravel them to reach the truth at the core. Her focus is on Sufi stories. Layla is also on a quest. She is searching for her birth mom. While she is communicating her love for stories to her students and at the same time going on a quest, strange things start happening in her life. As one thing leads to another, the past comes tumbling out of the Pandora’s Box with unexpected surprises and unpredictable consequences. What happens after that forms the rest of the story.

I’ve kept the description of the book suitably vague so that you can experience the pleasures of the story yourself.

‘The Sufi Storyteller’ is a beautiful literary mystery. It is also a book about stories, especially Sufi stories and their layers and depth and their hidden meanings. The analysis of classic fairytales and mythological stories in the book is fascinating. It is an education. It is like attending the class of your favourite professor. The book is also a beautiful love letter to food. The book also offers an insightful commentary on the contemporary world and the human condition, especially on the challenges and hardships that women navigate everyday. This part of the book was very powerful and moving.

I loved all the major characters in the story, and some of the minor characters too. Layla is, of course, a fascinating character, and her mom Hasina is a very beautiful soul. The scenes in which Hasina makes her appearance is filled with beautiful descriptions and conversations on food and they are some of my favourite parts from the book. The mysterious Mira, who gives lectures on stories and their meanings, is a fascinating character. Kamli, the storyteller, is a beautiful soul, and she was one of my favourites too. I also loved Gul, Layla’s student, and Sultan, Layla’s cat. There are other beautiful characters too, but I’ll stop here.

There are three parts in the book. The first part happens in the current time, the second part is narrated by one of the main characters and is set in the past, and the third part continues the story from the first part. I loved all the three parts, but my favourite was the second part. It was the hardest to read, because the story it told was harrowing and heartbreaking, and I cried a lot, but it was also my favourite.

Faiqa Mansab’s writing is very beautiful and my highlighting pen was working overtime highlighting my favourite passages.

I loved ‘The Sufi Storyteller’. Fans like me have been waiting for a long time for Faiqa Mansab’s new book, and it has been worth the wait. Glad I got to read it.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“Mourning and grief were not the same. One could stop mourning, but grief was a hollow darkness that carved its home in the heart. Grief permeated the cells of one’s skin, and bones and teeth. It ate one up, one nibble at a time. Slowly, painfully.”

“At times she could recall the geography of the mountainous wastelands where she’d grown up, and yet she couldn’t recall the topography of her birth mother’s face.”

“The desert wasn’t merely a physical place. You carried it within you. Just like your past. It was who you were. It blew into your eyes and your throat and your mouth. It settled inside the cavities of your nose. It made your blood gritty and your skin rough. It never quite washed out of your pores no matter how damp the city you hid yourself in, the desert stayed with you. People often forgot the cold desert of dry mountain lands. Desert meant the ochre fine grain of hot countries to most people. She knew better.”

“Some stories you walk into, unaware that they are traps. They weave their web of words paralyzing you with wonder; words that seep into your blood and become plasma in your veins. They never let you go. They make you their home.

I walked into a story one day.”

“People who don’t know themselves are the ones who make the best stories because they are in the process of becoming. When we are on the journey of becoming, we are in transition. That means feeding the soul with love, solitude and growth. When we feed the soul, it heals the darkness and the wounds of the hidden self, and each soul requires different ways of healing.”

“My life before this imprisonment had had a veneer of freedom. A difference of opinion, an ability to walk away had implied freedom of thought. Freedom of speech had given the impression of development but had been sanctioned by state, law and normative traditions. The truth was that anything which didn’t fit the already circumscribed notions of acceptability, logic, civilization, already defined by culture and history, those differences, those dissenting voices and choices, were rejected. Words themselves were prisoners. Language itself was enslaved. And although following the rules sometimes meant a sort of freedom, it was only a poor shadow of it. There was no true freedom anywhere, Not even where I had come from.”

“All of life is ritual. The rituals we practice daily without thought, without attaching any value to them, influence our lives deeply and make us who we are. They have an intangible power that seeps within us so gradually we don’t ever get a sense of it. We become what our rituals have prepared us to be.

Showering in the morning prepares us to face what the day might bring. It is quick and hurried because the energy is reserved for the day ahead. Bathing at night is a longer, slower ritual. It is about cleansing, washing away the impurities of negativity and toxic encounters. Lighting a candle is an invocation and a luxury of fragrance and of time and overt meditation. Cooking is therapeutic and for healing, bonding. Helping someone, friend or stranger, is an offering. Denying yourself, even if it is as small and insignificant a thing as a coffee, is sacrifice and sacrifice is pure energy, pure power.

Rituals are most powerful when there is clear intention behind them. We can change our lives if we prepare with clear intention. But even without intention rituals have some power. I had to find a balance between what was outside of me and what was within me, what was overt and what covert.”

Have you read ‘The Sufi Storyteller’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Divya by Yashpal (Translated by Anand)

Posted in Book Review, Hindi Literature, Historical Novels, Indian Literature, tagged , , on March 25, 2025| 7 Comments »

I discovered Yashpal last year and got this book, ‘Divya‘, and another book by him. ‘Divya’ was the shorter of the two, and so I decided to read it now.

The story is set in the India of first century BCE. Divya is the great grand daughter of the Chief Justice. She  learns dance from the renowned dancer Devi Mallika, who is the official Art Laureate at the court. Divya is her best student. Three young men are in love with Divya, and they all want to marry her. Divya falls in love with one of them. But then the war intervenes when a neighbouring king invades this country, the lovers get separated because Divya’s lover has to go and serve in the army. One thing leads to another and Divya’s life turns upside down in unexpected ways. What happens to her and the other characters forms the rest of the story.

When I started reading the book, I thought that the story was set in the 19th century or the early 20th century. I didn’t know that it would go all the way back in time to the 1st century BCE. That ancient time is beautifully depicted in the book. I don’t know how much of it is based on facts and how much of it is Yashpal’s imagination. The lives of Hindus and Buddhists and Greeks, all living together, was interestingly depicted. The popular belief today is that Hindus and Buddhists coexisted peacefully during ancient times, and some Hindus today even believe that Buddhism is a branch of Hinduism. When I was a kid, that was what I was told. Buddha was even regarded as one of the ten avatars of Vishnu. But this book depicts a totally different reality. It shows that Hindus and Buddhists were in frequent conflict atleast in terms of philosophy and ideas, though they all lived together. Sometimes they also fought wars against each other. Some of the Greeks seemed to be still practising the Ancient Greek religion, praying at the temple of Zeus. Other Greeks seemed to have converted to Buddhism. All this was news to me. Of course, we can never tell for sure what happened in ancient times as evidence is scanty, and this is, after all, a work of fiction, and so some of these might be a product of the author’s imagination. But one thing we can be sure about is this. The general assumption that during ancient times, people lived peacefully and everything was beautiful, this is definitely not sure. The ancient times were filled with as much rich political intrigue and social complexity as any other time.

The kind of tough times Divya goes through because she is a woman was hard to read. In one scene, things become so hard that Divya escapes and knocks at the door of the Buddhist monastery and tells the monk there that she wants to become a nun. The monk asks her whether she has got the permission of her husband or son or master to become a nun. When she says that she hasn’t, the monk says that she can’t become a nun without the approval of her guardian. When Divya tells the monk that the Buddha granted shelter to Ambapali, the prostitute, the monk replies that a prostitute is a free woman. That is when Divya discovers that all doors are closed to her and she can’t even become a nun. It is a heartbreaking scene. Nothing much had changed since those ancient times till probably the beginning of the 20th century. Things are better now, I think, but still a lot needs to change.

I loved the way the character of Divya is depicted, gentle and strong. The way she stands her ground when things were going tough was very inspiring.

One of my favourite parts of the book was when Divya, her friend and protector, Ratnaprabha, and their friend Marish, one of the young men who is in love with Divya, have a long conversation about the meaning of life, about the importance of the here and the now, and whether one should enjoy life now or postpone it to a future life. It was a very pleasurable conversation. Another of my favourite parts of the book was when the monk Cheebuk and Prithusen, another young man who was in love with Divya, have a long conversation about fear, hate, power, and the meaning of life. It is very beautiful.

I loved reading ‘Divya’. I was expecting a 19th century novel and I got an ancient historical novel in return. Yashpal’s style is simple and spare (atleast in translation, don’t know how the original Hindi is) and his research brings back those ancient times vividly. The lives of Hindus, Buddhists, and Greeks during those ancient times when they lived together was fascinating to read. I just have one complaint. After defying convention till nearly the end, in the last page Yashpal bows to pressure, and slips, and gives a predictable ending to the story. I won’t tell you what it is. You need to read the book to find out. It was a bit disappointing for me. Till the last page, the book was amazing. Even that ending was not bad. It was just a little bit disappointing for me.

Happy to have read my first Yashpal book. Hoping to read more.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“The drumming of rain was so incessant that it dulled all other sounds of the night. Anshu thought, ‘Every drop of rain makes its own little sound as it falls to the earth but taken together, they become just a dull monotone. Even so, each sorrow produces its own pain, but innumerable sorrows, all coming together, incapacitate a person from feeling anything, from experiencing pain.”

“The tiny flame of hope which she had carried with such care, sheltering it from the winds that blew on all sides, had been extinguished by a mere puff of wind.”

Marish : “Devi, would it give you greater satisfaction if you touched your nose, not directly, but circuitously by stretching your arm round the back of your neck?”

Ratnaprabha : “What a curious question! Why do you ask?”

Marish : “Because abstinence in this world, in the hope of getting greater opportunities of enjoyment in the next one, is no abstinence at all. According to your way of thinking, abstinence is the price you are paying for the pleasures of your next birth. If you wish to indulge yourself in the pleasures of life, then do so while you still have the means. There is nothing to be gained by depriving yourself. The next world is only a figment of the imagination. No one has ever seen it. The person who assures you about its existence is only repeating what others have told him, and those others too have been doing the same. No one has given evidence of its existence after seeing it with his own eyes. In everyday life, we do not accept such evidence. Is it wise, therefore, to sacrifice the tangible for a figment of our imagination?”

Have you read ‘Divya’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Pinjar by Amrita Pritam (Translated by Khushwant Singh)

Posted in Book Review, Indian Literature, Punjabi Literature, tagged , , , on March 21, 2025| 4 Comments »

I’ve wanted to read Amrita Pritam’s ‘Pinjar‘ (‘Skeleton’) for a while now. Today I finally picked it up.

Puro lives in her village with her parents and siblings. She is engaged to get married to a young man from the next village. Then one day when she has gone out to pick some vegetables, she is abducted by a man on horseback. His name is Rashida and his family has a long-standing feud with Puro’s family. He keeps her locked inside a cottage for a couple of weeks. He provides her food but otherwise doesn’t do anything to her. He tells her that he wants to marry her. One day Puro escapes from the cottage and finds her way home. Her parents are initially happy to see her, but then they don’t let her inside the house. For them religion and caste rules are more important than love and family and so they reject her and ask her to leave. Puro is shocked because she hasn’t done anything wrong, and now she has no place to go back to. Rashida comes in search of her and Puro goes back with him to his house. Puro and Rashida get married and Puro changes her name to Hamida. What happens to Puro after this, the twists and turns her life takes, and how historical events impact simple people in a small village, and what happens in the aftermath is depicted in the rest of the story.

I loved reading ‘Pinjar’. Amrita Pritam’s style is very spare and simple, and so the impact of the emotional scenes in the story is high. I loved most of the characters in the story. The most beautiful, of course, were Puro and Rashida, and the way their relationship evolves and changes is so beautifully depicted in the story.

Writing a novel set during the time of Partition is a challenging task, and writers tend to lean one way or the other. But Amrita Pritam, like an accomplished trapeze artist, walks on the wire perfectly without swaying, and manages to pull it off brilliantly. Just shows how accomplished a storyteller she is. ‘Pinjar’ is popular and acclaimed in both India and Pakistan and readers love Amrita Pritam on both sides.

There is one more novella in the book called ‘That Man’. I decided to read it later, because I wanted to shine the spotlight on ‘Pinjar’ today.

The picture on the cover of this edition I read is a self portrait by acclaimed actress and director Deepti Naval.

Sharing some of my favourite parts from the book.

“The boy tugged at his mother’s breast. Hamida felt as if the boy was drawing the milk from her veins and was sucking it out with force, just as his father had used force to take her. All said and done, he was his father’s son, this father’s flesh and blood and shaped like him. He had been planted inside her by force, nourished inside her womb against her will – and was now sucking the milk from her breasts, whether she liked it or not.

The thought went round and round in her head with insidious insistence: This boy … this boy’s father… all mankind … all men … men who gnaw a woman’s body like a dog gnawing a bone and like a dog consuming it.

The boy continued to suck at his mother’s breasts, while Hamida’s mind continued to fill and empty like the buckets of a Persian wheel.

Out of this conflict of hate and love, love and hate, were born Hamida’s son and Hamida’s love for her husband, Rashida.”

“Hamida had suffered much; the suffering had aged her. She was only twenty years old, but these twenty years had taught her more than she could ever have learnt in an age. She had become as serious and as thoughtful as an old philosopher. Only she could not put her many thoughts into words. Her emotions rose like foam on the crest of a wave, were battered against the rocks of experience and subsided once more into the water.”

Have you read ‘Pinjar’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Posted in Astrophysics, Book Review, Science, tagged , , , on March 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I wanted to read something on physics recently and so started reading The Feynman Lectures on Physics. After around a 100 pages it became too much for me. So I decided to take a pause and read something more accessible. I decided to pick up Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’.

‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’ has 12 chapters. They read like a collection of interrelated essays. They cover all the important themes in astrophysics which are exciting to the general reader – like the Big Bang and the formation of the universe, how stars and planets are formed, our own solar system, and our sun, and our favourite planet Earth, the scientists who discovered many of the important things, Einstein’s theory of Relativity, quantum mechanics and fundamental particles, dark matter and dark energy, how we use different kinds of telescopes to see the universe, how the Earth might look to aliens. These and other interesting topics are covered in the book.

I enjoyed reading ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’. The only complaint I have about it is that it is too short. The pages just flew and before I knew, I’d finished reading the book, with the heart yearning for more. Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the great communicators and explainers of science today, and it shows in every page of the book. His style is conversational and his sense of humour is wonderful. It was a pleasure to read.

So now the test, the important question. Where does ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’ stand in the pantheon of great science books? Or where does it stand in comparison to my favourite science books? This is a difficult question to answer. While reading a science book, the most important thing that I look for is that it should be easy to understand. A person of normal intelligence who has natural curiosity and understands English and simple logic and reads the newspaper or reads articles on the internet should be able to read the book and understand most of it. It may not be possible to understand 100%, but it should be possible for the reader to understand 90%. Not 50% or 60% but 90%. From that perspective, ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’ passes the test with flying colours.

Does this mean that ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’ is my favourite science book? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I think in my little heart, the title of ‘Favourite Science Book’, belongs to two books, ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ by Bill Bryson and ‘The Universe in a Nutshell‘ by Christophe Galfard. If you haven’t read these two, I’d highly recommend them. Having said that, I’d also say that Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book is up there with the best. Recommended.

Sharing one of my favourite passages from the book.

“Long before anyone knew that the universe had a beginning, before we knew that the nearest large galaxy lies two million light-years from Earth, before we knew how stars work or whether atoms exist, James Ferguson’s enthusiastic introduction to his favorite science rang true. Yet his words, apart from their eighteenth-century flourish, could have been written yesterday.

But who gets to think that way? Who gets to celebrate this cosmic view of life? Not the migrant farmworker. Not the sweatshop worker. Certainly not the homeless person rummaging through the trash for food. You need the luxury of time not spent on mere survival. You need to live in a nation whose government values the search to understand humanity’s place in the universe. You need a society in which intellectual pursuit can take you to the frontiers of discovery, and in which news of your discoveries can be routinely disseminated. By those measures, most citizens of industrialized nations do quite well.

Yet the cosmic view comes with a hidden cost. When I travel thousands of miles to spend a few moments in the fast-moving shadow of the Moon during a total solar eclipse, sometimes I lose sight of Earth.

When I pause and reflect on our expanding universe, with its galaxies hurtling away from one another, embedded within the ever-stretching, four-dimensional fabric of space and time, sometimes I forget that uncounted people walk this Earth without food or shelter, and that children are disproportionately represented among them.

When I pore over the data that establish the mysterious presence of dark matter and dark energy throughout the universe, sometimes I forget that every day—every twenty-four-hour rotation of Earth—people kill and get killed in the name of someone else’s conception of God, and that some people who do not kill in the name of God, kill in the name of needs or wants of political dogma.

When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, sometimes I forget that too many people act in wanton disregard for the delicate interplay of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land, with consequences that our children and our children’s children will witness and pay for with their health and well-being.

And sometimes I forget that powerful people rarely do all they can to help those who cannot help themselves.

I occasionally forget those things because, however big the world is—in our hearts, our minds, and our outsized digital maps—the universe is even bigger. A depressing thought to some, but a liberating thought to me.

Consider an adult who tends to the traumas of a child: spilled milk, a broken toy, a scraped knee. As adults we know that kids have no clue of what constitutes a genuine problem, because inexperience greatly limits their childhood perspective. Children do not yet know that the world doesn’t revolve around them.

As grown-ups, dare we admit to ourselves that we, too, have a collective immaturity of view? Dare we admit that our thoughts and behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Apparently not. Yet evidence abounds. Part the curtains of society’s racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers.

Now imagine a world in which everyone, but especially people with power and influence, holds an expanded view of our place in the cosmos. With that perspective, our problems would shrink—or never arise at all—and we could celebrate our earthly differences while shunning the behavior of our predecessors who slaughtered one another because of them.”

Have you read ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite science book?

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Book Review – Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (Volume 1) by Hitoshi Ashinano

Posted in Book Review, Comics, Manga, tagged , , , on March 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I discovered ‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou‘ by Hitoshi Ashinano through a friend’s recommendation. It sounded wonderful and so I decided to read it today.

The story is set in Japan, sometime in the future. There has been some kind of environmental catastrophe, and the sea water level has risen and whole towns and parts of towns are now immersed in the sea. The sea level appears to be still rising. The story happens in a small seaside town. Our main character, our heroine, is a robot called Alpha. She runs a cafe in the town. Alpha is a robot, but she is sentient, she looks like a human being, she thinks like a human being, she has feelings like a human being, she even eats and drinks (though she has a restriction on that), and unlike Arnie’s character in ‘Terminator 2 : Judgement Day’, she can cry when she feels emotional. What happens to Alpha and her friends in this little town is described in the rest of the story.

I loved ‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou’. The edition I read was around 450 pages long, but the pages just flew like a breeze! I finished reading it in a few hours. One of the things I loved in the book was this. In a typical futuristic dystopian book, things will be dark, the government will be totalitarian and bad, and there will be a resistance fighting against that. None of that is here. People are just living their normal lives, though they are on the other side of environmental devastation. The human spirit is resilient after all. The environmental devastation itself doesn’t seem to have happened on one day, when everything exploded, but it seems to have happened slowly across time, the way it happens in the real world. It is realistic and beautifully depicted. Alpha is a charming character, and an old man who is like her uncle, a young boy who is like her kid brother, and a young woman who is like her sister, and a doctor who helps Alpha, are all beautifully depicted. There are other fascinating characters in the story, but I won’t say much about them. I’ll let you read the book and enjoy the pleasure of making their acquaintance.

‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou’ was first serialized in a magazine in 1994, and it continued for the next 12 years. It is only recently that it has been translated into English. There are still four more volumes of this story. I can’t wait to read them.

Have you read ‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – Kadalil Marmam (The Sea Mystery) by Tamilvanan

Posted in Book Review, Crime Fiction, Tamil Crime Fiction, tagged , , on March 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I was in the mood for some light reading, and so I picked this one, ‘Kadalil Marmam‘. This was one of my favourite books when I was a kid. I’ve read it just once, and I have fond memories of it. I remember it being like a Hollywood action + spy movie.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is this. There is mystery, action, planes, ships, explosions, sunken ship, buried treasure. It has all the ingredients of an action thriller. The bad news is this. It didn’t work for me. It was badly written, some of the descriptions and things that the main character does are laughable and defy logic (for example, the main character who is a mysterious person, who looks like a spy, wears a white shirt, white pants, green tie, red shoes, and goes out to have dinner 😄 Come on, man! A spy who wants to look inconspicuous and blend in, will he wear something like this? Who wears a green tie and red shoes, man?🤦🏽)

I just feel sad. There is an old saying that we should just let sleeping dogs lie. Books we read and loved when we were kids, we should just let them be, and wallow in the happy memory. We pick them up again and read them, we never know what will happen after that. Reading old favourites is like stepping on a landmine. Two other Tamilvanan books that I read recently, I liked them. One of them was actually excellent. But this one just bombed. I’m wondering now whether I’ve grown out of Tamilvanan mysteries. Maybe, I’m too old for them now. Things which I found wonderful and entertaining when I was a kid, I might find them laughable now. Maybe I’ll read one or two of his mysteries for old times’ sake and see how it goes. After that it is time to retire Tamilvanan, I think.

I’ll always be grateful for the pleasurable hours I spent during my childhood reading Tamilvanan’s mysteries. We didn’t have a TV at home and no other modes of entertainment, I was a shy and introverted kid and I didn’t have many friends, and so this was what I did, curled up in a corner with a book, and spent whole Sunday afternoons and whole summer holidays reading books, especially Tamilvanan’s mysteries. I’ll never forget those days and I’ll look back at them fondly. But it is time to move on now, I think. It is sad that all good things have to come to an end.

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Book Review – Iron Butterflies (Irumbu Pattaam Poochigal) by Rajesh Kumar

Posted in Book Review, Crime Fiction, Tamil Crime Fiction, tagged , , on March 10, 2025| 1 Comment »

I went to the library a few days back. I was in the mood for reading a popular fiction book in Tamil. So I borrowed this one, ‘Iron Butterflies‘ by Rajesh Kumar.

Rajesh Kumar is one of the popular crime fiction writers in Tamil. In Tamil, crime fiction during the old days was mostly of the light, humorous kind. Then a writer called Tamilvanan emerged in the ’50s, and he started writing a different kind of crime fiction which feels contemporary when we read it now. He also wrote noir fiction, where sometimes there were no good characters. Noir fiction was new in Tamil those days. Other crime fiction authors joined him later, like Sujatha, Rajesh Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Pushpa Thangadurai, Pattukkottai Prabhakar, Subha, Kalaadhar. During the heyday of crime fiction in the ’80s, even writers who wrote literary fiction and social fiction like Sivasankari, Indhumathi, Ambai, experimented with crime fiction. Everyone wanted to give it the try.

So we can say that Tamilvanan was the founder of modern Tamil crime fiction. But Rajesh Kumar has been its biggest practitioner. Rajesh Kumar has been writing crime fiction in Tamil for nearly 50 years now. He used to be a teacher in school and he left his job to become a full-time writer. It was quite an unusual thing to do those days. It required a lot of courage. No one quit a government job like that. Rajesh Kumar started by writing novels for monthly magazines which were dedicated to novels, and by writing novels in serial form in weekly magazines. Then one of the publishers started a monthly magazine dedicated to just Rajesh Kumar novels. This was unusual those days and it was a huge risk taken by the publisher. Rajesh Kumar says in his memoir that he was not sure about it initially, because he was not confident of being able to write one novel every month. But he agreed to it, and as they say, the rest is history. Fans welcomed it and flocked to buy that magazine every month and it was a superhit. I don’t think that particular magazine is there today, but Rajesh Kumar continues writing novels for monthly magazines and novels in serial form for weekly magazines. No one knows how many books he has written. A conservative estimate is that it must be around 1000+.

‘Iron Butterflies’ has two novels. The title novel, ‘Iron Butterflies’, and another novel called ‘Closed Doors’. First about ‘Iron Butterflies’.

‘Iron Butterflies’ at around 320 pages, is quite big when compared to a typical Rajesh Kumar novel. It is the longest novel of his that I’ve ever read. In this story, a young female journalist is trying to get an interview of the CEO of a pharmaceutical company. This man is young and is a high achiever but he refuses to give interviews. Finally she catches him during his morning run at the park. After some reluctance he agrees to be interviewed. He drives back to his home and she interviews him during the drive. When they reach his home, he invites her in and asks her to wait while he goes inside to get changed. While she is waiting, she sees something that she is not supposed to see, and she realizes that she is in great danger, and she tries to escape. The cat-and-mouse game starts and what happens after that forms the rest of the story.

‘Iron Butterflies’ is vintage Rajesh Kumar. As he wrote this story in serial form for a weekly magazine, at the end of every chapter there is a cliffhanger or a twist and we want to turn the page to find out what happens next. It must have been very exciting for the original readers of the story as they’d have had to wait a week, before finding out what happened. Putting in a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter must have been lots of hardwork, and sometimes we feel that the author has written himself into a corner and we wonder how he is going to wriggle out of it. But Rajesh Kumar is a master and everytime we feel that he has written himself into a corner or the story has reached a dead end, he brings the story out of it seamlessly and effortlessly and makes us yearn for more. It was like watching a master at work. It was an education in the art of crime fiction writing.

The second story, ‘Closed Doors’, starts spectacularly. The cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter is dark but spectacular. In that chapter, there are just three characters who make an appearance, and things look nice and peaceful, and we wonder how the story is going to go, but towards the end of the chapter, things take an unexpected turn, and Rajesh Kumar punches us in the stomach and the story roars and takes off into the stratosphere! After that, in each chapter, we just cling on to dear life!

I enjoyed reading both the stories. They were gripping fast-paced thrillers and are a treat to crime fiction fans. Unfortunately, Rajesh Kumar’s works haven’t been translated much into English. I remember seeing one or two short stories of his or excerpts from his novels featured in ‘The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction‘. But outside of that, I haven’t seen much. It is sad. But I’m glad I discovered him when I was younger, and I’m glad he continues to entertain fans with his gripping crime thrillers.

Have you read Rajesh Kumar’s crime fiction? Have you read this book? Which of his books are your favourites?

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Book Review – French without Tears by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , on March 4, 2025| 6 Comments »

Continuing with the Terence Rattigan reading adventures. Today, I decided to read ‘French without Tears‘.

The story is set in the 1930s. A few young men live in a house in France, where they are learning French. They all want to become diplomats and passing a French exam is important for that, and that is why they’re learning French. There is a young woman who also lives there and more than one young man is in love with her. What happens between these young people during a few days in the summer is told in the story.

On paper, the play looks beautiful. Setting is in France, young people are in love, there is humour, fun, romance, what can be better? But unfortunately, the play didn’t work for me. I understood that it was a comedy, and I could recognize the comic scenes when they came, but they didn’t really make me laugh. It was sad.

‘French without Tears’ was Terence Rattigan’s first big hit. It was first performed when he was twenty-five, and the play’s director couldn’t believe that the playwright was so young. The play ran for a long time and the audience and critics loved it. But for this particular fan, reading it after many years, it didn’t work. It wasn’t bad like ‘Harlequinade’, but it wasn’t great either. Maybe I’m getting old to enjoy a good comedy. I think though that Rattigan is better at serious plots which have deep conversations rather than at comedy. I don’t think comedy is his thing.

So that is seven Terence Rattigan plays, five excellent or very good, two underwhelming. That is still a 71% hit rate, so still very good.

Have you read ‘French without Tears’? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Rattigan play?

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Book Review – Separate Tables by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , on March 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Continuing the Terence Rattigan reading adventures 😊 Today I decided to read his play ‘Separate Tables‘.

‘Separate Tables’ is a collection of two one-act plays, ‘Table by the Window‘ and ‘Table Number Seven‘. The setting is a residential hotel, a hotel with mostly long-time residents, many of them retired. Occasionally a new guest arrives who stays for a short period of time. Both the stories happen in this residential hotel. Most of the characters in the two plays are the same, but the focus is different in the two stories. This can probably be considered as two episodes happening in the same hotel. In the first play, ‘Table by the Window’, a new woman arrives to stay in the hotel. But after a while, it appears that she knows one of the men who is already there, and they seem to know each other in an intimate way. What happened in their past, and how this story evolves in the future is told in the rest of the play. In the second play, ‘Table Number Seven’, a news comes in the paper with surprising revelations about one of the hotel residents. The earthquake this causes and what happens after that forms rest of the story.

I enjoyed reading ‘Separate Tables’. I didn’t love it as much as my three favourite Rattigans, but I did like it. It made me think of Elizabeth Taylor’s novel, ‘Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont‘, where the story happens in a residential hotel. The stories are very different, of course. The lady who manages the residential hotel, Miss Cooper, comes in both the plays, and she is one of my favourite characters in the book. She speaks one of my favourite lines too. We can call ‘Table by the Window’ a kind of a love story, but a complicated one though. There is even a love triangle there. ‘Table Number Seven’ is very different. Will come back to it in a moment. The ending of ‘Table Number Seven’ was fascinating. In the last scene there was pindrop silence, and tension in the air, and the way the gentle people dismantle the bully was beautiful. Spectacular ending.

Now, more about ‘Table Number Seven’. Terence Rattigan was gay. During his time though, it was not possible to put a gay character in a play. The government wouldn’t allow the play to be staged, if someone did that. So there was always speculation that he tried to sneak in scenes in a play which would make sense to a gay person, but which would be heavily masked so that it can pass the censor’s test.  Sometimes people analyzed his plays to find those scenes. We don’t know whether this is true or not. But with respect to ‘Table Number Seven’, a draft of the script was discovered later, in which the main character is gay and that is the central theme of the story. Rattigan appears to have made a second version of the play with this change, but no one knew about this version for many years. This edition has that second version too. With the main character becoming gay, the play becomes more powerful and the hostility of the other characters towards this main character makes more sense. It actually made the play better. It was like the difference between the play and movie versions of Tennessee Williams‘ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof‘. In the play, the main character is gay, while in the movie he is straight. I watched the movie first, and I couldn’t understand why there is a problem between the husband and the wife, when they love each other. Then I read the play and I realized why. There is something similar in Rattigan’s play.

‘Separate Tables’ seems to have been one of Rattigan’s most successful plays. It ran in West End for two years, and it was made into a movie with a star cast (Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Rita Hayworth – Wow!) which received multiple Oscar nominations and won two Oscars. I’d love to watch that movie.

Sharing one of my favourite parts from the second play ‘Table Number Seven’.

SIBYL. I’m a freak, aren’t I?

MISS COOPER (in matter-of-fact tones). I never know what that word means. If you mean you’re different from other people, then, I suppose, you are a freak. But all human beings are a bit different from each other, aren’t they? What a dull world it would be if they weren’t.

SIBYL. I’d like to be ordinary.

MISS COOPER. I wouldn’t know about that, dear. You see, I’ve never met an ordinary person. To me all people are extraordinary. I meet all sorts here, you know, in my job, and the one thing I’ve learnt in five years is that the word normal, applied to any human being, is utterly meaningless. In a sort of a way it’s an insult to our Maker, don’t you think, to suppose that He could possibly work to any set pattern.

Have you read ‘Separate Tables’? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Terence Rattigan play?

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Book Review – The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , on March 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Continuing the Terence Rattigan reading adventures 😊 I decided to read his play ‘The Deep Blue Sea‘ today.

There is a building with many apartments. One day in the morning, there is the smell of gas leaking. The caretaker and one of the tenants try to find out where it is coming from and they find the apartment from where the smell is coming. Inside they find the woman who lives in the apartment unconscious. It appears that she has tried to commit suicide. Why she tried doing that, what is her back story, what happens after that, forms the rest of the story.

I loved ‘The Deep Blue Sea’. The first act is spectacular and gripping and grabs your attention and never lets you go. It was like watching a Hitchcock movie. There is a bit of a slack in the second act, but the third act picks up. Towards the end there are fascinating conversations, and some deep lines spoken. I loved the complexity of the main character, Hester, the woman who tries to commit suicide. Another of my favourite characters was Sir William, the judge. A third favourite character was Mr Miller, the doctor.

I think out of the four Terence Rattigan plays I’ve read till now, my favourite is still ‘The Winslow Boy’. But ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ was so good at the beginning that I thought it would upstage ‘The Winslow Boy’. But it didn’t. I’d give it second place alongwith ‘The Browning Version’. Many critics rate ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ as his finest play. Terence Rattigan’s own favourite was ‘The Browning Version’, I think. My favourite is, of course, ‘The Winslow Boy’ 😊

I also think that watching the performance of ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ on stage would be a more powerful experience than reading the play. I normally read plays, because opportunities for watching performances is quite limited in my place, and most good plays are great even if we treat them as a book and read them. But sometimes we forget that plays are written to be performed and there is a huge difference between what is there on the page and what we see on the stage. In some cases, the performance takes the play to a different level. Peggy Ashcroft played the role of Hester when ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ was originally performed on stage, and her performance was acclaimed and praised by everyone. When the play had a revival in the ’90s, Penelope Wilton’s performance as Hester was regarded as brilliant and it was widely praised. (Penelope Wilton played the role of Matthew Crawley’s mother, Isobel Crawley, in ‘Downton Abbey‘). I’d have loved to watch these two performances. But, unfortunately, beggars cannot be choosers, and so I should take what I can get, and so I’m happy that I got to read the play.

Sharing one of my favourite parts from the book.

HESTER (wildly). I know. I know. That’s what I can’t face.

MILLER (with brutal force). Yes, you can. That word ‘never’. Face that and you can face life. Get beyond hope. It’s your only chance.

HESTER. What is there beyond hope?

MILLER. Life. You must believe that. It’s true – I know.

HESTER (at length). You can still find some purpose in living.

MILLER. What purpose?

HESTER. You have your work at the hospital.

MILLER. For me the only purpose in life is to live it. My work at the hospital is a help to me in that. That is all. If you looked perhaps you might also find some help for yourself.

HESTER. What help?

MILLER. Haven’t you got your work too? (He makes a gesture towards the paintings.)

HESTER. Oh that. (Wearily.) There’s no escape for me through that.

MILLER. Not through that, or that. (With a wide gesture he indicates the later paintings.) But perhaps through that. (He points to the early painting.) I’m not an art expert, but I believe there was talent here. Just a spark, that’s all, which with a little feeding, might have become a little flame. Not a great fire, which could have illumined the world – oh no – I’m not saying that. But the world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.

Have you read ‘The Deep Blue Sea’? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Terence Rattigan play?

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