Revisting and retelling history

Amitav Ghosh has a talent for description. He describes in a way that makes me feel like I was right there, looking, watching, hearing. It's the quality I loved about Hungry Tide - I could use that book as a tour guide when I do make it to the Sundarbans. In an Antique Land also has that power. It makes me want to get up, go explore, see a new city beyond what tourists see.

It moves between the 1980s and the 1100s, smoothly; the Egypt of the Jews interwoven with the Egypt of Muslims.It encompasses two countries - India and Egypt - and examines the layers of their relationship with each other - the demands of politics and economics bringing them together, the differences in culture setting them apart. The discourse of three religions that have been in constant conflict in modern times - Islam, Judaism and Hinduism - throws up a synthesis that the modern mind would not imagine.

Through the story of a Jewish merchant and his slave and the Author's quest to decipher their lives, Ghosh shows how history is constructed and how we ourselves never examine the stories that build our interactions and notions of other communities. It is a fascinating journey of discovering little told or remembered stories, the kind that make you think that you too will be a part of history someday. It is a story that makes you realize that most of history is outside the textbooks, hidden in memories and tales

The book is slow, and there are no heroes - much like real life. It is a slow re examination of ingrained notions and its pace is as determined by the reader as by the author.

Stuck in our own wallowing pit

I must confess... I am disappointed with Indian writing in English. I recently finished reading Aravind Adiga's "White Tiger" and now I wonder whether the booker is only given to those Indians who write expressly with the foreigner in mind. Now, I am not xenophobic and I don't have a problem if authors want to explain a particular culture to alien audiences. However, the whole manner in which a majority of Indian authors seem to do it puts me off mildly.

Let me approach the topic from another angle. I also recently read two delightful books - The Purple Hibiscus and Girls of Riyadh. The former is set in the Nigerian civil war and the latter in Saudi Arabia. Third world societies both, parochial, patriarchal and anything but modern. But the authors wrote about their countries with a rare sensitivity. Describing culture but never judging it; introducing me to people and situations different from my own but never assuming that I did not have the sensibility to identify with human emotion without their having to dissect it threadbare.

In this sense, I think we still suffer from a colonial hangover. I see authors addressing Non-Indians, taking it upon themselves to educate others about Indian culture. And I find that demeaning to say the least. They could describe and leave the labelling of the culture to those of us who read; they could talk about an individual's like or dislike for the society and leave the reader to chose his/her side.

Why are Indian authors, or should I say the majority that I have read so cynical, so bereft of hope, so full of criticism? Why can they not look at the contradictions that characterise this society as a sign of its diversity, its acceptability and its resilience? I see a million things that make me smile and I think it is a pity that I hardly see them reflected in the stories I read about India.

Before I sign off, I am sure there are Indian authors who differ from the afore mentioned ones and I have been suggested a few. So shall get down to reading them in a while and hope that I am pleasantly contradicted.