Book Review: Yatrik by Arnab Roy

Indian writing in English is in a curious quandary. Sales are up, as is reach and acceptance. However the kind of books that sell, and have got the reach and acceptance are usually so bad in terms of both plot and language, that one despairs instead of being happy. In this cesspool of Chetan Bhagats and Ravinder Singhs, it is so rare to find someone actually writing something good - paying attention to both language and plot - that it's a refreshing revelation. Arnab Ray's Yatrik is one such book. It's not perfect, and I have some quibbles with the tone used in parts of the book, but those are minor ones. The important thing is that Yatrik is pretty radical in nature. Radical because it dares to take regular themes - love, college politics, heartbreak, family, and weave them together into something very unexpected, surprising the reader with the deft handling. 

I am not really going to talk about the plot - the book blurbs gives it away anyway. Suffice it to say that the 'story' is told in multiple flashbacks. However even the flashbacks are of two types - the expository ones where Anustup talks about his life in conversation with his companion in the afterlife, and the three plot driven ones where he gets to see the "other side". This makes it a tricky motif to sustain and to his credit Arnab does a good job of delineating the flashbacks. 

[As an aside: In terms of atmosphere and themes, while I hesitate to examine a text based on the author's life (blame it on my lit-crit background), a couple of things do stand out that seem to illustrate the author's personal beliefs, especially for us who have followed his writing for long. One, his deep abiding affection for Kolkata's Durga Puja, especially at Maddox Square. I just knew there would be a scene set there somehow and I was not disappointed. Secondly his abiding contempt of mercenary 'intellectuals' who are routinely bought over by the blandishments of power and fame - these are represented here in the character of Atulya-da. One cannot help but equate Atulya with real life mercenaries like Suvaprasanna in Bengal today.]

In the use of language, Arnab is definitely head and shoulders above many of the 'writers' being published today. No question about that. The issue I have is with the fact that the characters, while differentiated clearly by their personalities, don't always speak very differently. Sometimes they do, like the pimp extorting money from Anustup's mother, but that was clearly crafted to be so. All too often the register is similar, almost as if Arnab forgot that they are different people. Maybe this is deliberate, almost like the author wants to make it clear that he is in a 'meta' way, translating all the words for us readers from the Bengali the characters must actually have spoken, but it still jars somewhat, at least for me. Also suddenly you have words being used that break even this illusion of authorial translation ("douchebaggery" stood out as a example) because they simply don't have a Bangla equivalent. Also even if we take the 'meta' translation explanation out, a student leader in 80s or 90s Kolkata simply would never use that word - it was not in circulation then.

However these are quibbles. Overall Yatrik is a bold experiment that needs to be lauded, and yes, read by more people. It takes guts to write something that is so "uncategorizable" to coin a phrase. It's smooth, fast paced, yet makes you think. How many Indian books nowadays have that as a package? According to me - the better of Arnab's two novels so far. Definitely recommended.

[This review was posted originally on Amazon.com]

Book Review: The Yellow Emperor's Cure by Kunal Basu

This is a remarkable book in many ways - ambitious, layered, dense with characters, and obviously the product of a lot of research. It spans two countries in terms of geography, but references a dozen others. It has a singular plot, but a plurality of digressions, lending it the air of a putative epic novel. Kunal Basu has been writing for some time with a fair amount of success and it is fair to say that he has a pretty sure grip over the language and the milieu he writes about. He knows a lot about the orient and his best success previously has been a story based in far East - The Japanese Wife, later made into a eponymous arthouse movie.

The Yellow Emperor's Cure is set primarily in China in the era between the Opium wars and the Boxer rebellion. The protagonist, Antonio, is a brilliant Portuguese libertine and surgeon, whose charmed, and charming, life is rudely jolted by the news that his famous, hugely admired father has contracted a deadly form of syphilis. That one fact changes him completely, starting him on an obsessive quest for finding a cure for the deadly disease and save his beloved father. He soon realizes that there is no cure in Europe or America - just a few hints and rumors of a almost magical cure in China guarded by their inscrutable doctors and medicine men. This is based on anecdotal information that the Chinese seemed not to be as affected by syphilis as the Europeans. The European sailors came back racked by the disease after visiting the fleshpots of the Far East regularly, while the Chinese seemed to fare better overall.

In his desperate quest for the "Yellow Emperor's Cure", Antonio leaves his both his best friend and betrothed behind and sets sail for China. Luckily for him, his father's fame, and his own stature and connections ensure that he's welcomed and given royal treatment wherever he travels. Even in Peking, he is provided bed and food at the Dowager Empress' palace with the empress' personal doctor Xu teaching him the Chinese systems of medicine. His native European arrogance frequently causes him to dismiss the esoteric methods the Chinese use, while his desperation to cure his father makes him an impatient student. 

That is, till the doctor's beautiful assistant, Fumi, arrives as a replacement teacher. 

The mysterious Fumi turns his world upside down, acting as both teacher and lover, friend and maddeningly exotic adversary. Her dark past and incomplete back story consumes Antonio, who now wants to know everything about her and her earlier, murdered paramour. In fact the book now takes a turn towards a mystery novel where Antonio now wants to know more about Xu, Fumi and the Empress, but his quest gets more and more dangerous, because the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion has started. Whose side are the Chinese on? Are they friend, or foe? What will happen to Antonio and hs quest for the cure? These answers take up the last third of the book.

In the middle of all this there are a host of characters, mostly European, some with important and many others with bit parts to play - most of them representing various nationalities who stay in closed walled communities, gotten rich because of the opium trade, but now scared for their livelihoods (and lives) because of the incipient and inevitable Boxers' "spirit army" revolution. Add to these eunuchs, prostitutes, soldiers, beggars, thieves, and you have a cornucopia of characters that should make for a rollickingly colourful and exciting book.

The puzzle then for me was - and there is no way to put it delicately - with all these elements mixed in, why is so much of the book such a crashing bore?

There were stages in the book where I could barely will myself to turn the next page, so somnolent were the words, so static the story. Of course some parts are interesting and informative, but nowhere while reading the book could I ever use the word "excited" to describe my experience. Now, I am perfectly willing to believe that it's my failing. My tastes might have been corrupted by reading too many Steig Larssons and not enough "literary novels". But the truth is, as I reread my comments above, they seem to promise a book more interesting than the one I actually read. 

This is not to say it's a bad book. It is obviously is the product of an enormous amount of research. I just wish Mr. Basu had resisted the impulse to put it all in this one book - the number of characters is immense - at least 5-10 could have easily been cut out. Some details are redundant - used only to prove Mr. Basu's research rather than contribute to the book in any tangible way. I get the feeling there is a more interesting book hidden within this one - one that is only 250 pages long instead of the current 350 odd pages.

For people who like arcana and milieu-based novels, this book might yet be a good read. I suggest they go for it. People who prefer shorter, snappier, faster reads should probably skip this one.

This review originally appeared on the Book Lovers Review Blog on May 21, 2012.