Book Review: Sam Kean's The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

The older one, who's now 14, discovered Sam Kean first through The Disappearing Spoon and was hooked. The Violinist's Thumb followed quickly and there was no question about not pre-ordering The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons.

Here is a portion of his review of The Dueling Neurosurgeons:

The fastest and most powerful computers in the whole world cost millions of dollars to build and millions more to maintain, but a lump of tissue enclosed in bone crowning every human being can run a thousand times faster than the best machines in use today. And all it needs to survive is a good burger every now and then.

The entire review is on Blogcritics.org: http://bit.ly/1n1r12H

If you are interested in science and science writing, Sam Kean is a writer to follow. On Twitter he's at @Sam_Kean and his website is http://www.SamKean.com.

Jabberwock's Review of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers

I recently heard an interview with Katherine Boo on radio and want to get her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, about life in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai. This Jabberwock review seals the deal. And here's an interesting profile of the author in The New York Times.

Not Becoming My Mother, Ruth Reichl

A couple of weeks ago we were in the check-out line at the library, standing right next to a shelf of newly released books. As the kids and and I waited our turn we scanned the shelf, picking up books and putting them back. One book - about the size of my extended palm, a black and white photograph on the cover with a middle-aged woman and a young girl, both sitting at a table - caught my eye. The woman's expression drew my attention as much as the title did - her face is resting on her palm and she is looking at the young girl, a gentle smile creasing her cheeks. The title of the book was Not Becoming My Mother, written by Ruth Reichl, the editor of the newly-defunct Gourmet magazine.

I know titles are meant to be provocative and grab the readers' attention, but it still managed to shock me. I added it to our pile of books and read it at the first opportunity I got - that night after the kids were in bed.

The tussle between mothers and daughters, the conflict-ridden relationships that many women have with their mothers, is not new to me. I had a classmate back in college who struggled with her mother's jealousies. That a mother could be jealous of her own daughter's good looks or appearance was unfathomable to me. Didn't all mothers and fathers want their children to be better, to do better, to have better than them? Since then I've listened as numerous friends talked about their daily fights with their mothers over trivial matters, about massive disagreements over deeply-held beliefs, about mothers not showing up at weddings, not even coming to celebrate the birth of grandchildren. And I have read about them. With all those women I could sympathize, but I could not empathize.

I could wax eloquent about my mom and the post would run ten screens long. It's not that I did not have disagreements with her, but even in the midst of my teenage rebellion years, I saw her for what she was. She was a mother looking out for her daughter and her best interests. She was a different human being than me - quite simply her DNA make-up is different than mine - so it was an exercise in futility to expect the both of us to react in the same way to a situation.

For me, in the grand scheme of things, she was and is an awesome human being with a wicked sense of humor that she turns on herself as frequently as she does on us, with a fierce sense of loyalty to her husband and her children (and now her daughter-in-law, son-in-law and the grandkids), a fantastic cook and hostess, practical to a fault ("if something needs to get done, put your head down and do it and quit whining" is her mantra), very strong sense of knowing one's place and doing what is expected, especially when it comes to respecting elders. Being a mother myself now, it is mind-boggling to me that somehow she's managed to impart much of her wisdom to us, without even seeming to try. All in all, she is trying her damnedest to do the best she can. And I love her to bits and respect her all the more for it.

Reichl has had a far different relationship with her mother. She writes that her mother was not good at many things and she was not "if truth be told, a particularly good mother. [M]y mother was a great example of everything I didn't want to be, and to this day I wake up every morning grateful that I'm not her."

The sub-title to her book is 'and other things she taught me along the way'. It gave me an inkling that perhaps the book is not the damning indictment that the title would have you believe, but my initial reaction to the book's title stayed with me until I made my way through a few more pages and it dawned on me what Reich was attempting to do.

At first blush, the memoir is a woman's effort to draw lessons from her mother's life. But it is so much more than that. If a child wrote a letter of love, appreciation, respect and deep gratitude to their mother, it would take the shape and form of Not Becoming My Mother. It is an attempt to peel away the layers and layers of hurt that had enveloped the author over a number of years. It is an attempt to put her mother's actions in context. A mother who was brilliant and wanted to be a doctor, but not that great-looking. In an age where women were expected to be beautiful but not ambitious, it was a double whammy that succeeded in decimating her chances at happiness.

It is so easy to give in to hurt, especially when the one person in the world that is supposed to love you unconditionally does not. Which is why it is all the more heartening that Reichl embarked on the journey to figure out her mother at all, to understand her as a woman. With the help of her mother's writing she finds in shoe boxes, on scraps of paper, on old receipts, Reichl pieces together the portrait of a woman who somehow figured out how to be the kind of role model that her own daughter did not want to emulate. As the sketch fills out and we slowly start to see the flesh and blood and color appearing on canvas, our viewpoint undergoes a change. We are no longer looking at the dark and foreboding image of a bad mother, we are looking at a woman who desperately does not want her daughter to struggle with the demons she did.

Meeting Mom - the real Mom - was even harder than I expected. I never thought her life was easy, but until I read her letters I had not known the enormous burden of pain she carried with her.

There are a few good reasons why it's worth reading Not Becoming My Mother. It is beautifully written, lucid, introspective and thoughtful. It is a personal memoir, but it manages to capture the life of an entire generation of women. It makes its point and moves on.

But the most important reason of all is the fact that Reichl wants to see beyond the veneer that her mother presented to the world. Some of us might undertake the same exercise and come up empty, but Reichl does succeed in seeing her mother for who she was. She places her actions in context, understands her mother's own upbringing, learns of her desires and ambitions, her disappointments and failures. And she sees that her mother tried to do the very best she could, given her experiences and her background and her circumstances. She sees that her mother manged to get her to a place where she could be happy. And she gives her mother credit for it.

The only want I see in this story is that I wish Reichl had reached this understanding when her mother was still alive.

Updated to add the first part of the second sentence in the penultimate paragraph.

Is it worth...

writing a book review or a movie review if it contains spoilers?

Book Review: Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos

There's no better way to say it – I'm a sucker for love stories.

Not the kind in which boy meets girl, fireworks explode and the constant excitement is punctuated by frequent bolts of lightning and thunder. Well, not anymore, anyway. I grew out of those, oh, say about fifteen years ago.

The kind of love story that reels me in these days is the one in which the affection is deep, the love is caring and the respect is mutual. You know, the kind that leaves you with that warm, cozy feeling of well-being, comfortable in the knowledge of the myriad, mysterious possibilities of love - long after you've shut the book and consigned it to the bookshelf.

Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos' debut effort, is just that kind of a story.

It is the story of Cornelia, a thirty-something, five-foot tall storehouse of energy and integrity, who, everybody agrees, is wasting her days managing a coffee house in Philadelphia when she could be doing something worthwhile with her talents. Just what they are (other than a love for and obsession with old Hollywood movies – The Philadelphia Story the prime among them) no one can tell yet.

It is also the story of eleven year old Clare, lost in the wilderness of the problems plaguing the adults around her but holding steadfast with all the discipline and grit she can muster.

Through the machinations of fate and destiny and the stars, Cornelia and Clare meet. Above all other relationships and love connections in the novel, the one that is pivotal to the proceedings is the story of how Clare and Cornelia fall head over heels into adoring affection for each other. Nothing binds Cornelia to Clare – neither familial ties, nor professional ties nor ties of friendship – other than those of love and a fierce interest in her well-being.

As the story progresses, I realized, Cornelia's world is one in which many of us would love to inhabit. To have the friend she has; to have the parents she has; to have the brothers she has; to have the motherly, aunt-type confidant and role model she has; to have the kind of childhood she had; to have the emotional wherewithal to take a broken young child under the wing as she does; and to have the beau (oh, yes!), the love of her life, that walks into her world one day.

Cornelia's first person voice – strong and steady for the most part, but doubting as well, of her own ability to carry the burden – guides the reader through this journey. The informality of the language in which Cornelia addresses the reader serves to let him in on Cornelia's innermost workings turning him into a willing participant in the goings on.

Apart from Cornelia's voice, the strongest of the novel's characteristics is the warmth and love cocooning its people, places and events. For a story that puts its characters through various types of wringers - death, divorce, child abandonment, mental illness – that it leaves you happy and content as you turn the last of its 300-odd pages, is quite an achievement.

And you appreciate that achievement even more for the smart, knowledgeable way in which the story is told. Although half the story is told in the voice of Cornelia and the other half from the perspective of eleven year old Clare - who's seen more tragedy and heartache to fill more than one lifetime - de los Santos manages to inhabit both and a panoply of other characters that reside in her book. They are all well-rounded, with just enough of the frailties and failings to give them flesh and blood and make them believable.

Half-way through the story you forget it's a story and you root for the right thing (well, all the things Clare and Cornelia long for), to happen. What more can I say?

Book Review: The Burden of Foreknowledge, Jawahara Saidullah

The river whispers maddening things to me in a slow, sinuous rhythm that wraps itself around me.... Her voice burrows within me, flowing inside me. 'Nadee...' she says, in a fluent, gentle cadence, 'there is only one way out of this trap....' Her words rush into each other, colliding and bursting like bubbles in the air before slithering into my ears, filling my mind until they crowd out every other thought, leaving me at her mercy. Others are oblivious to her insidious, hissing, sibilance and go about their business.

Thus read the initial passages of Chapter Four in The Burden of Foreknowledge. Sensuous writing that transports you from the mundane to a plane where all your senses are on high alert is the hallmark of this fine first novel by Jawahara Saidullah.

Over the past few days, I've read this book in a few different settings - at home on the sofa, in bed, in airport lounges and hotel rooms. But each time I pulled my eyes away from the book, it was mildly shocking to come back to my surroundings and realize where I was.

The story is about a young girl we come to know as Nadee and the tragedies that befall her, starting with the loss of her entire family to a flood in the first chapter of the book. From then on, the novel arcs its way, with Nadee, to Kashi (where the raging Ganga dumps her, the sole survivor), Agra and Fathehpur Sikri where Nadee encounters the final twist of her fateful life. All through the book, glimpses of what is about to come flash on the pages as Nadee recounts the visions of the future that come to her, enticing you to read on. Nadee's suffering and her emotionally deadened state are made all the more poignant and stark by the sensory imagery that pervades the novel.

Set in the late 1500s in the time of Emperor Akbar, Burden is chock full of finely etched characters that the author has somehow acquired intimate, thorough knowledge of. Imagining the goings on in a time five hundred years ago is difficult enough, but to imagine them with the kind of detail that is on exhibit throughout the novel is quite something else.

I particularly liked the descriptions of life in the "house of culture", the "house of passion and longing" in Agra and its cast of characters - Nafasat Bai, Amma Jaan, the multitude of servants, the patrons and the rooms in the cavernous house which seem to have lives of their own. Some characters and events are familiar, from the history books of high school, but the novel casts them in a new light, enabling you to see them through Nadee eyes, feelings and individual circumstances. The assured advances of the plot through the familiar terrains of history are a delight.

If you are up for a great story, warmly told, one that transports you to other worlds and constantly leaves you surprised, breathless, feeling that tiny bit off-center and wanting more, then I highly recommend The Burden of Foreknowledge.

The Burden of Foreknowledge
Pages: 178
Price: Rs 295

Book Review: On The Road to Kandahar Jason Burke

The final chapter of Jason Burke's book, On the Road to Kandahar, Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World is titled "Conclusion: London and Pakistan," and therefore I received fair warning. It was disconcerting, nevertheless, when I came to this sentence and realized that it was absolutely the last one.

The lights came on first in the distance over the city and then closer in the village and then long looping strings of multicolored bulbs flickered into life above the gates of the shrine and very soon it was almost dark and we walked away.

For 281 pages, I had been spoiled by the breakneck pace and the thrill of the next adventure packaged in some great writing. After he walked away from the Bari Imam shrine on the outskirts of Islamabad with his friend and Paksitani journalist, Ershad Mahmud, I fully expected Burke to jump into yet another battered old car with yet another translator, drive once more over bumpy roads through inhospitable terrain to find yet another nook of the 'Islamic world' in which to meet many people - farmers, teachers, children, doctors, pharmacists, militants, freedom fighters, mullahs, writers and journalists, coalition soldiers, the Taliban - and then write all about it in great descriptive detail in his lucid, thoughtful, perceptive, honest style.

The book begins in Kurdistan around the time of the First Gulf War in the summer of 1991, with a 21-year old Burke crossing the border into northern Iraq from Turkey and ends, 15 years later in that tiny shrine outside Islamabad, in the immediate aftermath of the July 2005 London bombings. The journey that begins as a "post-adolescent adventure" with pre-conceived notions of Islam and of what Muslims look like, with religion as a hazy backdrop and not necessarily the focus, ends on the thought that there is "no general theory that could explain 'the Islamic world' and that to search for one was not only futile but in fact counter-productive."

In the intervening period, Burke's travels take him to Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Britain, Thailand, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Uzbekistan and back to Kurdistan and Pakistan. They take him to tired old villages bombed out of existence in the wars of the past decade and a half, their people, homes and lives spilling out on to the streets and fields along with the rubble; to the funeral of a 13 year old Palestinian child, a casualty of the Israeli response to the intifada; into the toilets of the Bagram airbase north of Kabul on whose walls are scrawled words of fear and wisdom of American soldiers; into the front lines of the second Iraq War, at the wrong end of shells bombarding a convoy of vehicles; into prisons housing ex-torturers under the Saddam Hussein regime and failed suicide bombers; into many hotels, mosques, schools and homes to meet members of the various groups fighting and killing for their various ideologies.

This travel memoir is a thinking man's account of his journeys. There is one particular passage in the book about the ubiquitousness of Saddam Hussein's portraits in Iraq which goes on to analyze the pictures in their various forms (at one point, Burke even attends an "exhibition of 'work by new young artists' in which every single painting was a portrait of the leader").

... soon themes began to emerge and I realized that you could chart the whole of the recent history of Iraq, and the recent political history of the Middle East, through the daubs that defaced half the country's walls.

The pictures could be split into six main categories, each of which had been most favoured at a different period and each of which represented a key constituency in Iraq for Saddam. Thus they revealed both the image the dictator was promoting at the time they were made and the ideology that was then more broadly dominant in the region.

The account of the interplay of religion and political ideology as reflected in these portraits through nearly three decades of Saddam's rule is fascinating and is illustrative of the thoughtful treatment various ideas and themes receive at the hands of Burke in the rest of the book.

Equally fascinating and uplifting, and for me the most attractive part of the book, are Burke's accounts of his meeting with many people over the years and the detailed observations of their lives and their condition. When you have peeled off all the layers - the conflicts, the ideologies, the war and its justifications, the terror, the insurgency - what you are left with are people. People who just want to "get on with their lives." Burke describes the condition of the Iraqis on his return to the country in 2003 and says simply, "They were just trying to get by, to put dinner on the table ... or simply gather the confidence to walk the streets without fear."

Particularly memorable are his portraits of a group of refugee families in a ruined school sixty miles outside of Kabul, of Zara and her mother who he meets in Qala Diza in Kurdistan, first in 1991 and then again in 2003, and that of Omran, who had been a soldier in the Iraqi army in 1991, his body ravaged by a cancer he developed five years later. Nothing we know of any about these places and their citizens, or the terrorism and insurgency that seem to pervade mainstream media coverage of these places, none of these matter when you read about these people and their need for the most basic of human necessities - food, a home, medicines, their families, the well-being of their children - and their yearning for peace.

Given this elemental level at which he connects with the people in the countries in which he travels, Burke is, by turns, frustrated, angry and disillusioned with the war on terror and the intelligence gathering and policy making that provided the momentum for launching that war. While Burke welcomes the attempts to free the Iraqis from dictatorship, he is quite categorical in his indictment of British and American policy making (he calls the efforts of the British and American governments to rally support for the second Iraq War "one of the biggest ever deceptions of democratic populations in recent history") and faults the governments' "failure to comprehend the true nature of the threat" of modern Islamic militancy.

At the end of the day, Islamic militancy, according to Burke, had not won over "the ordinary people of the Islamic world" and Osama Bin Laden had been wrong when he believed he had their support in the wake of the 2001 attacks. It's hard not to get carried away by Burke's faith in the fundamental goodness of human nature and equally hard not to be rattled when that faith is shaken and there is confusion in the face of the attacks in London in July 2005. Burke is quick to acknowledge, honestly, that the views of people he had met with in the years earlier "had been repellent but had not seemed a personal threat" to him, but that his reactions to those very same people had changed when the terror attacks hit too close to home.

The book does not, in the end, tie up all loose ends neatly or provide categorical solutions to the problems of terrorism. What it does do is to take that giant important first step toward understanding the people, the issues and the ideas at play. If you've ever wondered about all these countries of the "Islamic world" you read about everyday in the newspapers and watch images of on television; if you've ever wondered about the lives of ordinary people in these countries; if you've ever wanted to know about the inner workings of a suicide-bomber or a terrorist; if you've ever wanted to know what it is like to be a journalist on the road in some of the most beautiful and brutal parts of the world; then On the Road to Kandahar is a must-read.

Book Review: Not On The Level, Michael V. Maddaloni

About two-thirds of the way into Not On The Level, one of the characters explodes in frustration,

Another example of our tax dollars hard at work. The fucking U.S. attorney wanted the publicity, so he spent about a million bucks trying this case twice. The guy's not on the level and neither is the whole fucking U.S. attorney's office.

These eloquent words illustrate the central message of Michael Maddaloni's second book - institutions function within the framework of rules which individuals seek to bend for personal profit at the expense of the larger good.

Not On The Level is an engrossing coming of age story of a first-generation Italian American who goes on to build a successful career in the US Secret Service and subsequently in the private sector. The story begins at the beginning, as it were, in Philadelphia, with the birth of Joe De Falco, whose father has just died in less than admirable circumstances in World War II. Joe grows up in an extended family with his mother, sister, grand-parents, aunts and uncles.

The first few chapters describe, in some detail, Joe's Catholic upbringing at home and at school. Much of the narrative is given over to documenting the rules and traditions that govern life at home, school and church. Under the veneer of order, normalcy and regularity that elders, teachers and priests dictate, Joe encounters aspects of people's character that don't quite live up to the standards imposed by these institutions - a school official who's a pedophile, a sextant who steals from the church, a boy scout official who molests children, a grand-father who carries on an affair with his second cousin, and an uncle whose actions, while achieving their objectives (well, most of the time), are not exactly illustrations of moral, upstanding behavior.

Ever the bloke with the clever ideas, Uncle Sal is the purveyor of all things street smart. He encourages Joe to play with non-Catholics against the wishes of his mother (Joe's grand-mother) "because there were a lot more of them in the world than there were Catholics, and most of them were decent people"; he tells Joe to mumble pig Latin under his breath if he forgot the Latin responses on his very first day as altar boy; he coaches Joe to learn the answers to the questions on the exams from previous years (rather than preparing from scratch) because the teachers always reused old test papers.

Following high school, Joe decides to join the Marine Corps (when one of Uncle Sal's plans to help Joe make a quick buck and pay for college backfires). One would expect that the Marine Corps, given all the good, clean values it stands for, would be devoid of the kinds of ethical conflicts that are prevalent in, say, politics, but no. Drill Instructors at the Marine Corps, under pressure to perform and focused on their own career advancement, resort to cheating to improve their success rates.

The story is not much different in the US Secret Service where Joe begins a long career, in the US Attorney's Office with whom Joe works closely on his cases, or at the multi-national pharmaceutical company that he later joins as vice-president of security. If the stories of the underhanded, shady goings-on at all these institutions come as a surprise to the reader, then it serves to drive home the author's point - things are not what they seem or how they should be; things are not on the level.

There are a couple of different varieties of conflict that are at play in the story. At one level is the conflict between the interests of the individual and the institution; at another level, it is the tussle between Joe's two paternal uncles, Sal and Tony (an upstanding citizen who strives to keep Joe on the straight and narrow), for influence over the direction in which Joe's life is heading.

The book is most attractive for the endearing portrayal of a large, bustling Italian family and for the fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the Marine Corps and the US Secret Service. Having worked in both the Marine Corps and the Secret Service, Mr. Maddaloni succeeds in painting a realistic, absorbing picture of daily life in these institutions.

Perhaps for the same reason, however, the narrative reads, on occasion, like a report of some activity the author was involved in some time ago. This drawback is magnified because the story is told in first person. Apart from this and a couple of irksome errors (when Sal is referred to as Tony, the protagonist's other uncle, in a few instances), Not On The Level makes for a pleasurable read. This is served, in large part, by well crafted conversations, be it between family members or in the work place, and the warmth and sense of humor with which Mr. Maddaloni sketches his plot and characters.

If you're even the slightest bit curious as to what goes into the making of those people in the dark shades you see hovering around the President, Not On The Level is for you.

T + L launches T + L South Asia

Travel + Leisure, one of my favorite magazines, launched its South Asia edition this month.

According to the Editor's Note, "Sophisticated and experienced travellers from Karachi to Kathmandu and Colombo to Chennai now have their very own edition to bring them the best new destinations, travel trends and up-to-date news.... You can look forward to seeing fresh and unexpected itineraries in the region and abroad, a selection of luxurious and unique travel experiences and the most user-friendly information to help you plan your adventures."

The glossy travel magazine filled with exquisite photographs is a sight for sore eyes, but I wonder, Why launch an issue with a South Asia focus? Is the focus on South Asian destinations or is the focus a South Asia clientele?

The first issue contains a cover story on Goa, "Exploring Goa, Its Heart, Soul and History", by blogger, novelist and journalist, Sonia Faleiro, a story on Kochi, "Jewel of India", by Tad Friend, a story on the latest "designer dens in Delhi", by Monalika Namchoom, a story on fashion accessories available in India, and Anindita Ghosh's piece on The Imperial in New Delhi. Other than these, small items in the Reports section on Paparazzi, a new restaurant in Bangalore, a Salvatore Ferragamo store in Mumbai, a heritage hotel in Kathmandu, a luxury yacht in Male and accessories from Mauritius, a roundup of four spas (in Uttaranchal, Chennai, Mumbai and Udaipur) round out the first issue's coverage of South Asia.

The rest of the magazine is given over to other international destinations such as Africa, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Armenia, Paris, London, Orlando, Rome, Middle East markets, etc. that you might find in a Travel + Leisure magazine if you picked one up in the US.

I'm sure the American or Australian readership of T+L magazine will be as or perhaps more interested in Faleiro's nicely done story on Goa accompanied by warm and loving photographs by Prabuddha Das Gupta and will equally enjoy Friend's wonderful commentary and Overgaard's scintillating photography (check out the one of coconuts laid out to dry to be crushed for coconut oil) in the Kochi article.

At Rs. 150 per copy, the South Asia version is as expensive as its American counterpart (in terms of exchange rates), but a tad more exclusive in that it is a tiny part of the vast and populous South Asian market that can afford the price. If there is even a little doubt as to the magazine's intended audience, it is banished the moment you turn to the page on the fashion accessories - there is a Louis Vuitton scarf for Rs. 12,500, Louis Vuitton sandals for Rs. 34,000, a straw hat for Rs. 1,790. You get my drift.

The magazine's initial print order is apparently 80,000 strong and judging by the ads in the magazine (around a quarter of the 160 page magazine is filled with ads for high end products, including quite a few pages advertising T+L magazine itself), many advertisers have reposed faith in the reach of the magazine.

As you make your way through the issue, you conclude that the intended reader is a South Asian resident, the one with a lot of disposable income and an appetite for high-end consumables. And such a reader will not rest satisfied with traipsing around his own backyard, now, will he? Hence the alluring descriptions of a Byron Bay in Australia and that tiny vineyard in Provence.

One hopes, however, that having the luxury of producing an entire magazine focused on South Asia will prompt the publishers to look beyond the clichéd South Asian destinations and overrun hotspots. It would be a great pleasure indeed to open the magazine, flip through the pages and never have to read about Bali.

You Really Should Not Read Bill Bryson in Public Places

I had ignored the warning on the cover of Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island. "Not a book that should be read in public, for fear of emitting loud snorts", said a blurb from the The Times' review.

I was reading it not in any ol' public place, but in one of the very busy lounges at the Frankfurt international airport. There was not a chair to spare as far as the eye could see. Passengers were milling about, the chairs, stacked closed to each other, did not even lose their warmth as one passenger left and another took his place, there was a steady buzz in the area from many conversations - in short, it was as public as a public place could get.

I had started reading the book a couple of days earlier and was now almost at the end, trying desperately to subdue a snort that had started at the pit of my heaving stomach from exploding out of my nose.

I really should have heeded the warning because I am, very famously, given to snorting when laughing.

I had valiantly suppressed a rather long stretch of giggles until then, only the gentle shaking of my body, the swishing noises coming out of my mouth and tears running down my face betraying my helpless condition. In the end, it was no use. The snort exploded any way. Before I could recover from that one, another one followed and then another.

I put my head down, resting my forehead in my palms. That was no help at all. I stole a quick glance around my immediate vicinity. There was a Scottish woman talking in earnest to my husband about her trip, her lilting Scottish accent only slightly eroded by years of living in Canada. That was it. I couldn't take it any more. I slapped the book shut and rushed to the bathroom to compose myself. Five minutes and repeated washing of my face later, I made my way back to my seat and picked up the book. I wasn't done yet.

I picked up where I left off, with some trepidation, but I could not stop myself.

Bryson's trip around Britain is coming to a close in Glasgow, Scotland. As he is wont to do in all of his trips at the end of a long day traipsing around town and wandering in museums, Bryson fancies himself a drink and a sitdown at a pub. What follows is entirely to blame for the snort fest.

He enters the bar, which he describes as dark and battered and spies two "larcenous" looking men sitting together and drinking in silence. He waits at the other end of the bar to be served but no one comes out for a long time. He does all the things people do when they're trying to express impatience - he puffs his cheeks, drums his fingers on the bar, and "makes assorted puckery shapes" with his lips. Then follows some brilliant-as-usual introspection on why we do the things we do when we're waiting for someone. He adds cleaning-of-nails-with-thumb-nail to his routine, but still no one comes.

Eventually I noticed one of the men at the bar eyeing me.
"Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?" he said.
"I'm sorry?" I replied.
"He'll nay be doon a mooning." He hoiked his head in the direction of a back room.
"Oh, ah," I said and nodded sagely, as if that explained it.
I noticed that they were both still looking at me.
"D'ye hae a hoo and a poo?" said the first man to me.
"I'm sorry?" I said.
"D'ye hae a hoo and a poo?" he repeated. It appeared that he was a trifle intoxicated.
I gave a small apologetic smile and explained that I came from the English-speaking world.
"D'ye nae hae in May?" the man went on. "If ye dinna dock ma donny."
"Doon in Troon they croon in June," said his mate then added: "Wi' a spoon."
"Oh, ah." I nodded thoughtfully again, pushing my lower lip out slightly, was if it was all very nearly clear to me now.

Then the bar man comes out and he's in a foul mood.

"Fucking muckle fucket in the gucking muckle," he said to the two men, and then to me in a weary voice: "Ah hae the noo." I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement.
"A pint of Tennent's please," I said hopefully.
He made an impatient noise, as if I were avoiding his question. "Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Ah hae the noo," said the first customer, who apparently saw himself as my interpreter.

"Interpreter" was where I had sunk my forehead into my palms.

You might say that this passage is the written version of slapstick, and I might agree, but it is also a sterling illustration of why Bryson's books exist in that rarefied atmosphere reserved for wildly successful and popular writers of travel memoirs. I am certain that this is not a faithful rendition of what transpired in that bar, but, as he says, his writings are faithful to his memory and perceptions of that day, and give the reader a wonderful sense of a place - which is what I'm looking for when I crack open a travel memoir. If I want straight facts and a report of what a city is all about, I'd reach for a travel guide.

Bryson's books are a heady combination of many factors, each one of which, on its own, is praise-worthy.

He conveys facts in terms that help you grasp them instantly (for example, in Down Under (also published as In a Sunburned Country), while rendering facts to illustrate how scantily populated Australia is with its population of 19 million, he compares it to the fact that China grows by more than that amount each year). He approaches all the things he sets out to see with an endearing sense of wonder - he might end up being disappointed in them, but he will hardly hesitate to tell you that.

He leaves himself wide open to all experiences, pleasant or unpleasant. His enthusiasm and appetite for travel - which after a while can approximate the daily grind - are nothing short of infectious. His books are filled with passages resulting from insight into and introspection about the human condition, a virtue we could all do with a little bit more of. To top it all, all this is conveyed with a remarkable sense of humor and comic timing.

I'll leave you with this passage from Down Under. Bryson is listening to cricket commentary on his car radio on a lonely drive from Canberra to Adelaide on Sturt Highway. Ironically, you will need to understand cricket to enjoy the point of view of a man who was born and grew up in a non-playing country.

After two whole pages of some rather insightful thoughts on cricket ("there's nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry", "I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way", "It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distration" and many such gems), including a passage in which he compares cricket to baseball for all his American readers, he carries on.

Neasden, it appeared, was turning in a solid performance at square bowel, while Packet had been a stalwart in the dribbles, though even these exemplary performances paled when set beside the outstanding play of young Hugh Twain-Buttocks at middle nipple. The commentators were in calm agreement that they had not seen anyone caught behind with such panache since Tandoori took Rogan Josh for a stiffy at Vindaloo in '61. [A sentence which conveys Bryson's perception that the bowling run up is long.] This was repeated four times more over the next two hours and then one of the commentators pronounced: 'So as we break for second luncheon, and with 11,200 balls remaining, Australia are 962 for two not half and England are four for a duck and hoping for rain.'

I may not have all the terminology exactly right, but I believe I have caught the flavor of it.

Indeed.

Book Review: Hitchhiker, Vinod George Joseph

Most people cherish three things in their lives - family, friends and career. Ebenezer, the protagonist in Vinod George Joseph's debut novel, Hitchhiker, is no different. He loves his family the way most of us do - he grumbles at them, he complains about them, but he wouldn't know what to do without them. He prepares himself meticulously for a career in engineering, doing all the things one must to in India to get into a good college, and looks forward to the day he can become and engineer and lift his parents and sister out of the financial dire straits they are in. He falls in love with a smart, educated, independent young woman, the kind he had always dreamed of marrying. He and his friends plot and plan their way through high school, teasing each other about their dreams for their future lives, wives and careers.

In other words, Ebenezer is a normal kid with normal dreams.

There is also a crucial fact, however, that rules over Ebenezer's fate with a ruthless hand - he is born a Verumar, an untouchable. There is nothing he or his family can do to escape this unfortunate happenstance. Moving away from their ancestral village does no good because the necessary visits back to the village bring home to Ebenezer exactly who he is and what his place is in society; converting to Christianity proves to be a double-edged sword - on the one hand there is the suspicious eye with which society looks upon them (did they convert for money?), and on the other hand, Ebenezer loses the advantage of the quotas for scheduled castes in colleges because he is now a Christian and therefore no longer eligible for reservations.

This one fact, the fact that he was born the son of scheduled caste parents, lifts Ebenerzer out of the world he is so desperately trying to create for himself, spins him around and hurls him back to the ground, shattering in the process every single dream he has for himself and his family.

Ebenezer's mother and sister are hacked to death by the "higher" caste Edayars on a visit to his village; his family finds out that his aunt had been raped when she was a young girl by the son of her Edayar landlord, and subsequently drives her to commit suicide; his father loses his job because he joins a union demanding reservations for backward classes in the Christian institution run by his employer; his girlfriend's parents refuse to accept him because he's a Verumar although he converted to Christianity; a chain of events starting with the murders of his mother and sister ensures that he fails in the crucial exams leading up to admissions into engineering college, and culminates in Ebenezer never finding the engineering career he dreamt of.

Hitchhiker is a gut-wrenching story. As you read about young Ebenezer, you are hopeful for him and his sister Gwendolyn, two smart kids who seem to have spurned all that their history holds for them; two kids successful in their school, hardworking, extremely capable of achieving their dreams. You feel affection for Esther and Peterraj, Ebenezer's parents, who did what they thought they had to do to give their children the best possible start in life - they converted to Christianity, sought jobs and financial help from their church, obtained education for their children in the church's school and lived life quietly in their corner of the school compound. You secretly applaud when Ebenezer and Gayathri, his girlfriend, decide to marry.

It is almost too much to bear when the threads of Ebenezer's life start unraveling in such rapid succession as to leave you breathless.

Hitchhiker has all the ingredients that make for a great read.

The plot is very well thought out, researched and executed. The events leading up to Ebenezer's aunt, Karuppamma's suicide are set up brilliantly and the section ends chillingly,

Bhadrakaali [Ebenezer's grandmother, Karupamma's mother-in-law, who goads Karupamma into committing suicide] hugged Karuppamma by her feet and burst into loud sobbing. The tears were for real. Bhadrakaali had really liked Karuppamma. She knew that if she were in Karuppamma's position she would have acted exactly as Karuppamma had done. But, she had no choice. Her duty to Alagiri [her son and Karuppamma's husband] and his children came first. Matters had taken the only course they could and the world was now a better place.

Each character (and there are many, many, characters) is fleshed out and the attention to detail is welcome and refreshing in many places. In this passage, for instance, the author takes the time to paint a picture of Esther's workplace, the nursery section in the school run by her church,

There were three-year-olds all around her and most of them were crying out aloud. Deserted by their parents, they were making their fear and anger known in the only way they could. Many of the parents liked to hang out in the school after leaving their children in the nursery. But, Victoria Miss who had been handling the LKG class for the last twenty-five years, insisted that all parents clear off after depositing their children. A few parents, however, could just not be chased away.

The language is simple, and there is ample background information to round out the situations and events in the book. The life of each character is examined under the microscope of religion and its various aspects such as caste, conversion, reconversion, the politics behind reservations for scheduled castes in educational and governmental institutions and untouchability.

And therein lies one of a couple of minor drawbacks - every character in the book is somehow affected by some issue related to religion to the point where the reader feels the message is being pounded home relentlessly. The other is the sheer number of characters which the author spends considerable space fleshing out in such detail that the reader is left wondering where the story is going.

These drawbacks, however, are mitigated to a large extent by the author's simple and evocative writing style and the plot's ability to draw the reader into the lives of the characters.

At the bottom of it all, Hitchhiker is a simple story of unrequited love, of carefully laid plans going haywire, of circumstances beyond your control taking over your life, and it is well told. Reason enough to want to read the book.

Hitchhiker, Books for Change, 395 pp, Rs. 350 (India), USD 19.00 (outside India).

The Indian American

The arrival of our mail package from the US is an eagerly awaited event in our house. Among other goodies, Big N gets his National Geographics and V and I get our Time magazines and Business 2.0s.

Of course, there's also a load of mail we'd rather not get, but that's another story.

In the last two packages we received, we found issues of a new magazine, The Indian American, the premier issue of which was launched in May. Published by Universal Health Care Inc. out of New York, the bimonthly magazine,

... seeks to be a window into Indian American life and times, ... [and] also serve as mainstream America's bridge to understanding its new compatriots.

Even as it celebrates the intellectual, professional and material successes of Indian Americans, as it profiles the rich and famous, as it gossips about celebrioties and scoops their lifestyles, the magazine will not hesitate to investigate and examine the darker side of life - the pride and prejudices, the struggles and failures, the crimes and misdemeanors - to which Indian Americans are not entirely immune.

Publisher's Note, The Indian American, May-June 2006.

The premier issue features a beaming Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the cover with the tag, "CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Doctoring America". Other cover article titles include a hodge-podge of topics spanning politics, culture, gender issues, etc.: "Different Strokes: White Girls who Love Classical Indian Dances", "Embracing India: A New Axis Between New Delhi and Washington", "Abe's India, 'Czar' of the New York Times Remembers", "White House 2008: Politicos Discuss Their Choices", "Men! Single Women on What's Wrong With Dating Indian Men".

In addition to the Mail section, the contents include Speakeasy (a collection of gossipy tid-bits from showbiz, politics, fashion, etc. with commentary by Sunil Adam, the magazine's Editor and Art Director) Books, Movies, Music and Columns. The July-August edition has added Saree Sense, Beauty Tips and Quiz.

The magazine features the usual suspects among Desi Americans in its first two editions - Deepak Chopra, Dinesh D'Souza, Naveen Andrews, Zubin Mehta, all of the Desi anchors on CNN (Sumi Das, Aneesh Raman, Monita Rajpal, Zain Verjee), Ashok Bajaj (the Bombay Club in DC), Srinija Srinivasan (Yahoo!, Inc.), Jhumpa Lahiri, Thrity Umrigar, Indu Sundaresan, even the recently famous (or notorious, depending on how you want to look at it) Kaavya Viswanathan.

Considerable space is also devoted to the decidedly lesser known among us, which is a welcome aspect of the magazine. There are all the politicos, most we've never heard of, but are apparently very successful in the corridors of power. There are actors and actresses with parts in prime time sitcomes and cable shows. Then there are the "man on the street" variety of Desi Americans - women discussing their idea of an ideal relationship, young girls giving us the low down on their relationship with their parents, those who've chosen a career in the arts (considered a non-conventional choice among Desi Americans and therefore deserving of an article in a magazine).

The magazine is certainly an eye-opener. I read about people I'd never heard of before. It showcases the talents of this considerably influential and successful group (many of which are not immediately apparent) and discusses issues that affect us uniquely as immigrants.

Depending on how the vision for the magazine pans out over the coming months, I would even go so far as to say that it could serve as forum that brings together the diaspora. Given our uniqueness as an immigrant group (various languages, religions, areas of expertise), The Indian American could be a useful platform on which we can all gather.

It is precisely this aspect that could also box us into a corner and end up identifying us to ourselves and to the rest of the country as nothing more than "Indian Americans". I do hope that this will not be the case.

Book Review: Hippo Eats Dwarf, A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S., Alex Boese

The best part of any non-fiction book is the index. In a reference manual, such as a baby care guide, the value of an index is obvious - it quickly helps you navigate the contents of the book to help you find what you are looking for. In other kinds of non-fiction books, the index, much more than the table of contents, is a very good indicator of the sorts of goodies that are on offer within the pages of the book.

And in this aspect, Hippo Eats Dwarf does not disappoint. How could it, with index entries such as "male pregnancy", "animals, condoms for", "supermodel eggs for sale", "hysterical pregnancy", "chewing gum, breast enhancing", and "frequent liar miles"?

Now, if these entries suspiciously sound like hoaxes to you, you would be right. Alex Boese's Hippo Eats Dwarf is all about hoaxes and how to survive them "... in an insane world in which the line between truth and fiction has completely blurred."

To say that we live in a fake or hoaxy age, or that "we live in fictitious times" (as the director Michael Moore put it), doesn't do justice to the full-blown weirdness of the pervasive phoniness that surrounds us. Our world isn't just fake or phony. Any society that produces Michael Jackson's nose, breast-enlarging mobile-phone ring tones, and human-flavored tofu has gone well beyond that. Our world is hippo-eats-dwarf.

The title comes from a news clipping that has apparently made the rounds regularly over the past decade about a dwarf in a circus act who was swallowed by a yawning hippo as the dwarf flew off sideways from a trampoline. This hippo-eats-dwarf story (because it's "bizarre, almost certainly fake and masquerading as real") serves as a metaphor for the kind of hoaxes, urban legends, "and other forms of b.s. that lurk in the modern world."

The book and the hoaxes it describes are organized category-wise into sixteen chapters covering various topics including birth, photography, war, romance, advertising, news, politics, and business. Each chapter provides general descriptions of scams in its respective category that have pervaded popular culture, and contains specific real-life examples of such scams.

For example, in the first chapter entitled "Birth", there are descriptions of scams related to fake pregnancies, male pregnancies, phony clones, miracle births, and reborn dolls. There are also real-life stories of a high-school girl faking her pregnancy for a school project and of a woman who gave birth to a frog (and whose story the BBC duly published on its website, complete with "a picture of a surprised-looking frog"!).

Each chapter is interspered with extremely handy "Reality Rules", just in case you are taken in by all the hoaxes. Rules such as "Just because a woman looks pregnant, doesn't mean she is", "Women give birth to children. Men don't. This rule is subject to future revision", "Just because someone bids doesn't mean they intend to pay", "Should a suitably dramatic picture of an event not exist, one will be created", "The world as it appears on the nightly news should not be confused with the world as it is in reality" and the disarmingly simple "Real food rots" all serve to ensure that you don't lose your sense of direction as you are reading the book.

Also working to preserve your sense of reality are the equally handy "Reality Checks" to "test your ability to distinguish the authentic from the bogus". Have researchers genetically engineered fruit trees that can grow meat? Can men really produce milk from their breasts by stimulating their nipples? Have surgeons in Holland really implanted small pieces of jewellery into people's eyeballs? These are fun to read, decide whether they are real or not and then go on to read the accompanying explanatory paragraphs to see how skewed your sense of reality is.

For anyone who is a news junkie or an avid internet surfer, many of the hoaxes explored in this book will seem familiar, whether or not it was appropriately recognized as a hoax at the time of reading it in the original source (the "Nigerian Bank Scam", anyone?). The sparks of recognition, however, will almost always be accompanied by a jaw drop or a shake of the head as you read the explanations behind those stories.

One such story is the famous surprise Thanksgiving visit that Bush paid to the American troops in Iraq in 2003. Newspapers splashed front-page photographs of a grinning President Bush carrying a plate laden with a juicy turkey with all the trimmings. Well, whaddya know? According to Hippo Eats Dwarf,

... the turkey wasn't real. It was a plastic prop known in the food service industry as a "trophy turkey." The food the soldiers actually got was served from cafeteria-style steam trays.

Another such story is that of the voice-over translation of Saddam Hussein's responses to Dan Rather's questions in the days preceding the start of the second Iraq war.

... although the translation was perfectly accurate, the voice-over's thick Arabic accent was not. The voice didn't belong to an Arabic speaker at all, but to Steve Winfield, an American actor who specializes in faking accents.... Apparently the network thought U.S. audiences would get confused if Hussein (as well as the person speaking his words) didn't sound foreign enough.

That certainly deserves a shake of the head.

Hippo Eats Dwarf is a well-researched book, written in a simple, easy to read style with a sense of humor and obvious love for the subject. It is the perfect companion on a long plane or train ride. Flip open any page in the book and you are sure to stumble upon something that tickles your brain or your funny bone. It is not the kind of book, however, that you would read at one sitting from end to end. It is the kind you savor over a long period, reading bits at a time, spreading the fun.

Book Review: Sleeping on Potatoes, Carl Nomura

Sleeping on Potatoes is an intensely personal account of the life of Carl Nomura, a second generation American of Japanese origin. The memoir takes the reader through the various phases of his life, from the time he was born through his life after retirement, with a little bit of family history thrown in. On the face of it, it is an entirely ordinary story, probably the story of millions of immigrant families who try to build a life in America.

Framed within the bounds of ordinariness, however, is a gem of a tale, a tale that is poignant, heart-wrenching, and, on many levels, quite extraordinary.

Nomura came into this world in a boxcar as the son of two railroad workers in Deer Lodge, Montana, into a life of abject poverty and into what, under the best of circumstances, could be described as a dysfunctional family. Kazuichi, Nomura's father, an incredibly cruel man, ruled the family with an iron hand, drinking, gambling and taking expensive vacations while his wife, Mizuko, slaved away on their vegetable farm, and did the housecleaning, shopping and cooking.

Kazuichi even went so far as to refuse to arrange for a doctor or midwife to be with her when it was time to deliver her first child.... But somehow, she managed to deliver her first son all by herself. Years later, she told us, 'When I started pulling out the placenta, I wondered if it was attached to me inside'.

Mizuko ended up delivering five of her six children by herself.

Kazuichi's cruelty also extended to his children. He sent his first four children (two from a previous marriage) to live with relatives in Japan because they "cramped his style". He beat them regularly and for no reason.

All this against the backdrop of a nagging poverty that refused to shed its shackles no matter where the family moved or what they did for a living. When the entire family moved to California, while the parents and the older kids worked at the local cannery, Yosh, Normura's eight year old sister, "washed our clothes, cleaned the house, supervised us, and cooked. On payday, she went to the market for some vegetables and the short ribs, which cost eight cents a pound, From this she made the stock for our week long main dish: soup."

By the time the Great Depression rolled around, although nothing happened to improve their life of poverty, something did happen to improve the quality of their lives. Kazuichi died. "No member of his family wept at the funeral.... Suddenly, the quality of my mother's life improved, for there was no one around to batter her."

The lowest point of Nomura's life, though, was yet to come. World War II followed the Great Depression, and along with it came the toughest test of his resilience - the internment of the Japanese at camps built on barren land dotted across the mid-western and western United States. The family lost its home and whatever possessions it had accumulated by that time and was herded into Manzanar, one of the "Relocation Centers" in California.

The ignominy of being confined to the camps and labeled an enemy of the United States although he was an American citizen and the physical pain that accompanied back-breaking work as a farm laborer on beet farms and potato farms (internees could opt to work as farm laborers which afforded a little bit more freedom than being locked up in the camps) were compounded by the emotional scars of seeing German and Italian prisoners of war receiving better treatment.

This, as Nomura describes, was the turning point.

I must...prepare myself to oppose people in powerful positions or influence from disenfranchising innocent American citizens. This required two things: an education to show me what to do, and enough achievements so that people would respond to me.

Even from the wretched experiences at the internment camps, Nomura managed to take away a few lessons: "I learned about the miserable lives of the migratory workers; that we can endure great pain by sheer will; and the effectiveness of teamwork." Not to forget poker strategies.

Following the end of the war, the narrative moves on to college life (interrupted by a brief stint in the army when the United States decides they want him on their side, after all), marriage and children. In a section entitled "Marriage", Nomura provides endearing descriptions of his wife and each of his children. His relationship with his children stands in stark contrast to his experiences with his own father - Nomura takes intense pride in his children (saying, quite simply, "She is great" to describe one of his daughters or "It's hard for a proud parent to be modest about him" to describe one of his sons) and both he and his wife develop an enviable, easygoing rapport with them.

Nomura credits his wife, Lou (herself the much-loved daughter of kind, thoughtful parents) for their success in raising happy, well-adjusted children. Part of the equation, is also, surely, Mizuko's love for her children and her incredible force of will and determination to do what was necessary and with stoicism for her family. She, who tolerated her husband's cruelty, ran a farm and household by herself, gave birth to her children by herself, disguised herself as a man while breastfeeding her child just to she could find a job on the railroad, passed on a legacy to Nomura that triumphed over any debilitating ones that Kazuichi may have passed on.

And that legacy comes shining through in this passage that Nomura recounts of Mizuko writing off the debt owed to them by their customers (they ran a "cash and carry" store at that time),

My mother...wrote off his debt. Then she gave him two bags of groceries to sustain them for the long drive. The toothless man wept and thanked my mother for the only kindness he had seen since coming to California.

The book harkens back to this idea of kindness almost 90 pages later as Nomura and Lou try to work on their shaky marriage and he hits upon the idea, "From kindness comes love."

This, for me, is the central idea of this book. For without that redeeming factor, it is mighty difficult to see how someone with the background that Nomura was handed could make anything of their lives, let alone become highly educated, have a long-lasting, successful marriage and a loving family, build an incredibly successful career rising to top management in a multinational company, and nurture deep, satisfying friendships wherever they went.

The first half of the book - dealing with family history, the growing up years, the years in the Japanese concentration camps, the years in the army and the portions dealing with Nomura's family life as a husband, father and grandfather - proceeds in a largely chronological manner and makes for compelling, unputdownable reading.

The rest of the book is devoted to descriptions of friends, career, health, retirement and to life after Lou's death in an accident. The major drawback in this second half is that it hop scotches its way through, weaving back and forth between the years. According to the preface, the author's original idea was to write a series of short stories which were later sewn together as a book. Unfortunately, the original structure leaves its imprint, particularly in the latter half. There is also the sense that Nomura attempts to include every last detail of his experiences, particularly in the chapter dealing with his health, which slows down the reading.

Once you get past this organizational glitch, the book is well worth your time. While the events that are recounted in Sleeping on Potatoes (a reference to the piles of potatoes that served as beds on the potato farm where Nomura worked during the internment) are filled with pathos, Nomura paints the pictures lucidly, in simple, evocative language and in a matter-of-fact tone infused with warmth and humor, sparing time to dwell on plenty of endearing anecdotes involving his family, neighbors and friends (and a few animals thrown in for good measure).

It is a story you should read not because it is a first-hand, eye witness account of a life lived in the most adverse of circumstances, but because it is the story of determination, perseverance, kindness, love and good humor getting the better of those adversities.

Crossposted on Desicritics.