Past, future, present — we've got it all

The Anarchy; Analog/Virtual; Get A Life, Chloe Brown; and more

Dear Reader,

Last week, I got a call from a number I didn't recognise.

"I have a parcel for you," said the gent on the line. "But the guard won’t let me in."

This is not unusual in our pandemic-struck times, but there have also been many cases of packages getting mixed up. So I suspiciously asked where the package was from and to whom was it addressed.

"Harper Collins. For a long name beginning with D. It has P in it. Also a J," he said. "Surname is Pal."

It's like he was asking me for the answer to a crossword clue. Deepanjana is not THAT hard, guys.

Anyway, I told him to leave the package with the guards and zipped to change out of my nightie, the Indian national dress during lockdown.

While that's not a nightie, it does communicate some of the fizzy joy I felt at the idea of new books. Until that courier had called me, I hadn’t realised just how much I’ve missed new books. You know the Japanese nature therapy forest bathing? I think some of us get a similar sense of calm while going through books at a bookshop (or a library). It’s not about the books being unread. I have enough books I haven’t read at home, but there’s an excitement to holding new and unfamiliar books that’s a very particular kind of joy.

(On the subject of the nightie, if you Google the word, you’ll see images of articles of clothing that are attempting to be sexy. The nightie doesn't give a rat's ass about being sexually alluring. It's proudly shapeless, all about comfort and despite its blobbiness, frequently embellished with detailing like bows and embroidery — reminders that under this tent of fabric, there's a woman who likes pretty things for herself and not because someone else might approve of it. Basically, the nightie is the greatest article of clothing, ever. Also, given a lot of us have grown up with battle-axe mothers who wore them around the house, it’s one of the most evocative symbols of women's empowerment. But I digress.)

Within seconds, the courier called me back.

"The guard says there is no one by this name here," he said.

I bristled with outrage. "Please leave the books with the guard. I'll sort it out later," I said in the chilliest of tones.

"Please hold," he said.

I could hear some garbled arguing.

Returning to the call, the courier told me, "The guard is saying this is not Pocket 40."

"This is not what?"

"Pocket 40."

"I don't think there's a Pocket 40 anywhere in Mumbai."

"Ok."

There was a delicate pause.

"So you'll leave the books?" I asked, because I didn’t really care if he had the wrong address. I just wanted the damned (NEW) books.

"I can only leave the books at Pocket 40." He paused again and then managed to pronounce my long name starting with D with a P and J. "That's your name?"

"Yes."

"Then you should be at this Pocket 40 address."

"Like I told you, I don't think there is a Pocket 40 in Mumbai."

"Maybe. But what does that have to do with me?"

This was when things started clanging in my head. “Sir, could you tell me where you are right now?”

“Chittaranjan Park.”  

The courier was in Delhi, about a kilometre or less from what had been my home three years ago. My heart broke as I told him that while these books were certainly intended for me, he must return them to Harper Collins because I’m in Mumbai.

“Should have said that earlier,” he grumbled as he hung up on me.  

When I shared this tragic tale of how the universe had dangled the carrot of new books before the ass that is yours truly, a friend replied, “Have you checked how books should be sanitised? For how long do you dunk them in disinfectant?” It hadn’t even struck me that books would need to be sanitised, but I have since checked. No, you do not dunk books in disinfectant, but you can wipe them down. Apparently, the failsafe method is to keep books in isolation for 24 hours. Imagine that — receive new books and then do not touch said books for 24 hours. Is there no end to the agonies to which this pandemic will subject us?

So in the absence of new books, I’ve been going through my unread pile and I have to say, it’s been rather rewarding.

Just before statues of racist white men were pulled down in different parts of the world (should have happened decades ago, if you ask me), I finished reading The Anarchy, by William Dalrymple. The adaptation rights for the book have apparently been bought by Siddharth Roy Kapur’s production company, which must be quite a project and I’d be very curious to know how they go about it because the book doesn’t strike me as particularly visual. Like most of Dalrymple’s books, The Anarchy has some great imagery, but it is distinctly wordy. I suspect Dalrymple’s retelling of episodes like the savage revenge that Rohilla chief Ghulam Qadir exacted upon Mughal emperor Shah Alam and his family made people think The Anarchy could be the Indian Game of Thrones. It certainly has enough violence, but this is a book that wears its wordiness with pride, having come out of other written documents (records, journals, letters etc).

While it often looks back, the focus of The Anarchy is East India Company’s rise to ascendancy in the subcontinent between 1756 and 1803. It took less than half a century for the bulk of India to be ruled from a boardroom in London, filled with (mostly) unscrupulous men. Maybe one day in the future, if the records are ever made public, we’ll read about certain Chinese corporations with the same sense of horrified wonder. For now, we can just marvel at the East India Company for pulling off this feat.  

 The 47 years that Dalrymple has picked were eventful. There were wars, politicking, diplomatic negotiations, torture, famine, poetry and art — all of which Dalrymple gives space to, lingering over the stories of some characters and restoring the reputations of others. From the vast cast of The Anarchy, perhaps the one closest to being a hero is the tragic figure of Shah Alam, the helpless Mughal emperor who suffered both indignities and cruelties, but somehow did not lose either his mind or his will to survive. A few of the East India Company’s employees, like Warren Hastings, get some love from Dalrymple while others, like Robert Clive (who was once known as “Lord Vulture”), are torn down.

While writing The Anarchy, Dalrymple ensured Indian accounts and voices were heard alongside those of the British, which should be the norm but isn’t. Traditionally, British records and historians have been privileged over native accounts, leading to widely-held belief that the culture of documentation and archiving was introduced to the subcontinent by the British. The Anarchy challenges this notion, placing the accounts of 18th-century Indian chroniclers alongside those gleaned from the records of the East India Company. Among the more interesting Indian documents that Dalrymple quotes is Tipu Sultan’s dream journal — take that millennials and Gen Z — and the writings of medieval historian Ghulam Husain Salim.

If you like the sound of The Anarchy, I’d highly recommend also reading Manu Pillai’s Rebel Sultans, which offers a crash course in the history of the Deccan, and Katie Hickman’s She-Merchants, Buccaneers & Gentlewomen: British Women in India 1600-1900. Hickman’s book, in particular, works as an excellent companion piece to The Anarchy, which is very male-dominated. There are some fantastic characters in She-Merchants …and you get a much better sense of the British presence in India when you keep in mind the women who were ‘imported’ to this prized colony. For instance, there seem to have been a fair number of men running off to India to build lives with women who wouldn’t have made the social cut back home in England. I’m not sure if there’s a similar volume with notable women of colour (like Begum Samru, for example), but if you know of one, let me know? Thanks in advance.  

From the past to the future: Analog/Virtual, a collection of interwoven stories by Lavanya Lakshminarayan. Short stories always remind me of Goldilocks with the three bears’ porridge. Like baby bear’s porridge, a short story has to be just right to qualify as good. Most of the stories in Analog/Virtual felt to me like Mamma Bear or Papa Bear’s porridge, but if you like sci-fi or are familiar with Bengaluru, I’d recommend picking up this book. It may not be entirely satisfying, but it is richly-imagined and like all good sci-fi, it’s actually about our present rather than the future.

Analog/Virtual is set in a post-apocalyptic Bengaluru, which is privately owned by a tech company and has been rechristened Apex City. It is divided into two by the Carnatic Meridian, a crackling blue electric shield that keeps the haves safely separated from the have-nots. On one side are domes of privilege, full of air-conditioning, shiny gadgets and smart tech. On the other side of the Carnatic Meridian is the analogue world, exposed to unforgiving heat, deprived of most amenities and roiling with rage. Through the 20 stories in Analog/Virtual, Lakshminarayan shows how “merit” is used to keep old hierarchies in place while chronicling a do-or-die rebellion that threatens the existence of Apex City. There are some wonderful characters in here, like the Ten Percent Thief — the Robin Hood of her time — CinderElle and the Fernandes sisters who live on either side of the Carnatic Meridian. Unfortunately, none of them feel fully realised. 

It’s an uneven volume, with some good stories set in a world that’s built with care and elegance, but the effective stories are outnumbered by ones that are either fragmentary or laboured. For example, in one story, we’re introduced to a device known as the Opinion Homogenization Limitation and Alignment Unit, aka Op.He.Li.aA (it basically sucks out inappropriate thoughts and makes the subject more docile). In another, there’s M.I.M.E.S.I.S. or a Meta-Interactive Mental and Emotional Sentient Intelligence System. Evidently, the point of these is the acronym — except it makes no sense that a culture that doesn’t know Shakespeare or the ancient Greek philosophers will take the trouble to call a device Ophelia or mimesis.

Tricks like these feel juvenile not only because they distract attention from the actual point of the story, but also because Apex City is actually very well imagined (even if it does feel a bit like the setting of a video game, especially towards the end). Within a few stories, Lakshminarayan is able to convey a lot about this new world, where trees are rare and humanity is even rarer. The privileged life is bland and its sterility is disguised using technology like filters and virtual assistants, which layer reality with pixel-perfect fantasies. The two features of Apex City that stayed with me are the Carnatic Meridian and the fabulous trees that the Analogs make out of scrap in their scorched-earth world, determined to create beauty. From that beauty, they draw power and the trees become a game-changer in the fight against the elite of Apex City. It’s an ode to public art that the art critic in me appreciated greatly.

Thoroughly satisfying was Talia Hibbert’s Get A Life, Chloe Brown. It’s a romance, starring a redheaded hero with many tattoos (including “MUM” on his fingers, which he regrets and covers up with rings) and a Black woman who doesn’t let the chronic pain of fibromyalgia get in the way of her orgasms. Chloe Brown is accomplished, gorgeous, a bit of a geek and chronically ill. After a car almost crashes into her, she decides it’s time to step out of her family mansion and gain some life experiences. How convenient that the superintendent of the building she finds a flat in just happens to be gorgeous, likes riding a bike and has a penchant for standing around his living room with no shirt on? (Chloe knows this because she can see his flat from his and yes, she might be a bit of a voyeur.)

As it turns out Red — yup. That is indeed his name — isn’t preening at his window, showing off his tattooed torso. He’s an artist. (Do I know any artist who feels the need to take off their shirts when faced with a blank canvas? Nope. But why should that really be a concern if the torso is worth an ogle?) He’s also come out of a relationship that was psychologically abusive. Can these two bumbling, pain-wracked people find happiness together? Yes, and three cheers for Hibbert who can talk fold humour into a story that explores insecurity and chronic pain.

I have said it before and I will say it again — when the world goes to hell, the need of the hour for me is not brilliant literary fiction or earth-shattering non-fiction, or even beautiful poetry. It’s a romance that has just the right balance of escapism, fluff and reality. (And if not that, then a thoroughly, shamelessly unrealistic plunge into the nonsensical deep end. Like Chloe Cox’s series set in a BDSM club called Volare. It’s meant to be sexy and I suppose is occasionally, but mostly, it’s hilarious because it’s so ridiculous. Yet for all its ridiculousness, it doesn’t ever lose sight of the importance of consent. Good girl.)

Because we’re in a constant state of fight-or-flight these days and it’s become more important than ever to relax so that you can restore yourself. Many friends of mine have found that comforting space in Korean dramas (Netflix has a few, in case you’re interested) and the only reason I’ve stayed away from those is that I spend way too long in front of the computer anyway. Some friends tell me they’re going back to films that they remember from their childhood — action movies, in particular. These actually work much the same way as romance novels. Take a bunch of clichés, unleash them upon an almost-real world, and make sure there’s a happy ending ultimately. Each to their own.

Me, I’m sticking to reading material — like 1/16th, a romance set in Mumbai, in the early 2000s, between an heiress who wants a family and a struggling restaurateur. In the first four chapters, we’ve gone from the glossy interiors of the Taj hotel to Willingdon Club, the squelchy markets of Byculla and Colaba Causeway. Plus, in addition to the hero and heroine, we have a Parsi uncle who’s eyeing the hero’s legs. What’s not to love?   

1/16th written by Primrose Gandhy (a GREAT pseudonym for a romance writer) and will land in your inbox if you sign up for her newsletter. Primrose knows a lot about Mumbai (I know this because she’s a friend) and she weaves her love for this grubby town into the love story of 1/16th. So far, she’s put up four chapters. For those of you who enjoyed Blame it On the Hormones, this is definitely up your alley (and unlike BIOH, doesn’t have typos).

Also on the romantic writers with pseudonyms bandwagon is Anna C, whose books I haven’t read, but Andaleeb Wajid promises they’re hot. Aside from writing books faster than Rajinikanth’s Robot, Andaleeb also writes articles. She wrote this essay about the “guilty pleasure” romance novels, in which she has a couple of quotes from me, pontificating on why we dismiss this genre. I could give a proper TED talk on the subject of romance novels and society, especially having just finished watching the new Emma., but I will restrain myself. For now. Because aside from everything else, I have to make lunch.   

Thank you for reading. Dear Reader will be back soon. Take care.