'The Ex-Daughters Of Tolstoy House' Shows The Horror We Carry Within

 [First published in YouthKiAwaaz]

On the face of it the Sehgals are a perfect family. Living in a sprawling mansion in Lutyens’ Delhi, Ambarish (the brilliant doctor), Meera (his beautiful wife) and Sujatha, Kavita and Naina (their three devoted daughters) could be the object of envy. They go on frequent holidays, move in the right social circles and present the picture of a closely knit family. But beneath the polished exterior lurks a gruesome secret- the daughters have been taught to soak up human blood from the floor and hold it in their bodies till it is ejected out during their periods!

The book begins with Naina, the youngest daughter now in her forties, being summoned by her father to clean up the blood pooled around the dead body of her mother. Though Naina was clearly warned not to lift the pallu covering her mother’s face, she couldn’t resist taking a peek and saw that a neat circle of skin had been cut away from her cheek. After this dramatic beginning, the book settles into the story of a fairly regular family. There is almost a cinematographic quality to the narrative, with small and seemingly insignificant details building up the scene.

This is a family seeped in patriarchy- Ambarish controls how the family dresses, eats, behaves and even thinks. When he insists that his wife wears the exquisite saree he got for her, the control seems almost benign, but there is no escaping the fact that the house is run according to his rules. Meera is constantly cross-guessing herself in an attempt to anticipate his wishes and please him, and it is clear that she will prioritise winning his approval over what is actually good for her daughters and herself.

Gradually the macabre makes an appearance, but though those incidents are gruesome, true horror remains in the soul of the people. While you are repulsed by many of the incidents of pure evil, when you reflect on the book, you realise that what is truly revolting is the choices that human beings make.

The book is narrated through the alternating viewpoints of Meera and Naina. Since the story begins with Meera’s death, Naina’s story follows a conventional timeline, while Meera’s is a series of flashbacks. Naina is the classic victim who wants to escape her emotionally abusive father, yet finds herself repeatedly drawn back to him whenever she has an act of kindness done to her.

Meera struggles with the anxiety of thinking she is inadequate for her talented husband, and her life is one of finding ways to bind him to her, and drawing her daughters into the pool of his “protection”. The book is a exploration of emotional abuse within families and of how easily generational trauma gets passed on.

The writing is so assured that is hard to believe that ”The Ex-Daughters of Tolstoy House” is Arunima Tenzin Tara’s debut novel. While reading the book, my mind kept skipping back to that other great debut novel, Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein”. If one invented the genre of Gothic novels, the other carries the tradition forward with pride.

This is one of the most disturbing books I read this year. By using the backdrop of an affluent household to tell a chilling story of abuse and violence, the author has proved yet again that the true horror is the horror within us. While this may not be a genre that is appealing to most people, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves to read books that expose the human soul.

I received a review copy from Speaking Tiger, and this is an unbiased review.

Understanding The Self Proclaimed Decedents Of 'The House Of Awadh'

 [First published in YouthKiAwaaz]

A family, headed by Wilayat Mahal, claiming to be the descendants (and rightful claimants) to the Kingdom of Awadh made headlines in the mid-1970s, when they ensconced themselves in the first class waiting room at New Delhi Railway station, and threatened to remain there till the properties of the erstwhile royal family were given back to them.

While the legitimacy of the family was questioned, the nature of the demand and the bizarreness of the mode of protest caught the attention of the public, and the story was often picked up by the media. The family continued to be the subject of an occasional story even after they were finally settled in a ruined hunting lodge in the Ridge Forest in Delhi.

Each of those stories focussed on the eccentricity of Wilayat Mahal and her family, and on the contrast between their tall claims and the penurious conditions in which they lived, and off the odd juxtaposition of their luxurious furnishings against the grand ruins. Though the family made interesting copy, none of the reporters made an effort to verify their claim of royalty or tried to understand what made them tick.

What stands out in Aletta André and Abhimanyu Kumar’s “The House of Awadh: A Hidden Tragedy” is the empathy with which they approach the subject. Unlike others who projected the family as an extreme example of the exotic and eccentric Indian Royals, André and Kumar have, through reportage, interviews and scanning archival material, not only attempted to verify Wilayat’s claims but also tried to understand what motivated her to seek the kind of life they sought.

The book is divided into three sections- in the first part, they recount the story told in the voices of the family and their trusted retainers, in the second part, they trace the history of the Awadh dynasty and the many claimants to the title of “rightful heir”, and in the third section, they try to unravel the history of Wilayat Khan before she turned up at the railway station claiming to be the rightful heir. They have meticulously traced down people who knew Wilayat in the many stages of her life, and have not only documented the stories, but analysed them deeply to try and pierce together how and why their attitude, beliefs and actions might have changed over the years.

Though the book is the story of Wilayat Mahal, it is also a story of displacement, loss and changing loyalties. Her story encompasses the trauma of Partition, the attempts at building Pakistan and the search for a new life and identity in India. Wilayat Mahal had deep ties to Kashmir, and the book goes deep into narrating various stages of the Kashmir issue through the lived experiences of people.

The book is meticulously researched, yet at no point does it come across either as drab reportage or as sensationalism. The authors have put personal narratives in the proper historical context to tell a story that is compelling and non-judgemental. Where Wilayat Mahal and her family frauds, or were they merely victims of trauma- we will never know for sure, but this book will certainly lead us to certain conclusions.

I received a review copy from Harper Collins India, and this is my unbiased review.

How ‘The Identity Project’ Exposes The Quiet Violence Of Exclusion

 Which of us has not lost friends because of a difference in political ideology? Which of us has not known people who claim to be politically neutral, yet endorse an ideology of hate? Which of us hasn’t been shocked to find that people we thought we knew well believe the propaganda that is fed to them? Which of us doesn’t know otherwise intelligent people who parrot a distorted version of facts and who when you try to reason with them accuse you of being brainwashed by your political inclination.

If you are one of those people, Rahul Bhatia’s “The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy” is written for you.

The book starts and ends with how the politics of exclusion is projected as an inclusive and compassionate one. The book starts with describing the anti-CAA NRC Protests and the subsequent Delhi riots, and shows how over time the story that persists in public memory is very different from what people who were active participants remember it as. He shows how by repeating the same sequence of events again and again, it almost became the only truth!

The book would have been extremely powerful and timely, even if the author had left it just this, but he uses that as a springboard to dive into the history of the Hindutva movement- how it began, how it spread and the almost inevitability of it becoming the dominant ideology that it is today. By the end of this section, you would be forgiven for believing that the word “identity” in the title of the book refers to how the identity of the nation was rewritten from that of the secular nation dreamt of by the founding fathers and mothers, to what it has become today.

The author, however, is not down. He then dives into another issue- the Aadhaar project. He traces the project from its genesis to the many twists and turns it took before becoming this behemoth which can now potentially be used to target people in a way few other databases can. This was a project that was virtually thrust down on the nation, and today, far from helping the marginalized, it ends up being used to oppress them in ways that were not possible earlier.

The Identity Project is a book that you want to read in a hurry because you cannot bring yourself to put it down. But it is also a book that keeps you awake at night even weeks after you finish it. After reading this book, you end up relating every new article you read to something or the other that has been discussed in the book.

What, to me, makes the book extra special are the people who at great personal cost chose to stand on what they consider the right side of his street. There is the academician was brought up in a home seeped in the RSS philosophy, but who, after working for the RSS for many years, chose to move away and then write an expose on it. There is the victim of the Delhi riots who filed a legal case, and refuses to withdraw the case despite the pressured put on him to do so- he continues, hoping that someday he will get justice. You feel for these people, you understand what motivates them and you admire the courage that empowers them to do what they do.

The problem with books like this one is that they are mostly read by those who are already convinced. Books like this should ideally be read by those who are sitting on the fence, but they tend to dismiss such books as mere propaganda, while continuing to fall prey to everything they see on social media. This makes it even more imperative for us to read books like this, because it helps you marshal your arguments to counter the false interpretations which are passed off as ‘the truth’.

The book was released internationally under the title, “New India”. One hopes that the India being described is a blimp and not the real India. One does doubt it though.

History Is Written by the Survivors—But Han Kang Writes for the Dead

 “Sometimes, with some dreams, you awake and sense that the dream is ongoing elsewhere.”

‘We Do Not Part’ begins with a dream. A dream where the narrator is stumbling through a treacherous snow-covered landscape with stumps of trees as tall as humans. She has been having this recurrent nightmare ever since she published her last book, the research of which took too much out of her. Estranged from her family, with her mental health threatening to consume her everyday, eating barely enough to survive, the narrator is not sure she wants to continue living. She is wrenched from this nightmare when her friend who’s had a gruesome accident calls her to the hospital and tasks her with travelling to the island where she lives to take care of her bird who will otherwise die of starvation. The narrator is taken aback because she never thought she was the first person her friend would call upon, and against her better senses, she proceeds to catch a flight and fly into a ferocious snowstorm to attempt to save a bird which may or may not still be alive. Once she reaches her friend’s house after a harrowing journey, she stumbles upon the research that her friend had been doing about the Jeju massacre.

“We Do Not Part” was published in Korean in 2021 and translated into French two years later. It is the first book to be published in English after Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2025. The book was much anticipated, and despite the hype, it does not disappoint. It is an extremely ambitious work, which talks of the Jeju massacre where close to 30,000 people were killed in mass exterminations on the suspicion of being communist sympathisers or of harbouring communist sympathisers in their family. This is not a tragedy that people even want to acknowledge because too many people were complicit. The book is meticulously researched, and while discussing the details of the tragedy, the tone is almost academic. However, the story of the massacre is closely linked to the fate of individuals, which gives the account an urgency that it might have otherwise lacked. Human psychology is such that we do not relate to large numbers the way we do to individual stories- 30,000 killed doesn’t hit us as hard as the fate of the specific people linked to the tragedy.

Throughout the book, Han Kang uses the personal to draw attention to the larger tragedy. While the narrator battles the treacherous snowstorm to reach her friend’s home, it is also metaphorical. The narrator is also fighting her own mental health issues, which while insignificant in the larger scheme of things is of prime importance to her.

Snow, in its many forms, is a recurrent motif throughout the book. A perfectly formed snowflake that falls on her jacket, running out of a heated room to catch the first snowfall, the blanket of snow which smothers the entire landscape yet also throws it into relief. Snow is used to link the past and the present-

“A thought comes to me. Doesn’t water circulate endlessly and never disappear? If that’s true, then the snowflakes Inseon grew up seeing could be the same ones falling on my face at this moment. I am reminded of the Inseon’s mother described, the ones in the schoolyard,[…] Who’s to say the snow dusting my hands now isn’t the same snow that had gathered on their faces.”

At the core of the book is the art installation that the narrator wanted to collaborate with her friend on- the installation which first revealed itself to her in a dream, but which actually lies at the heart of her friend’s obsessive research into her family history! The book does not directly describe the events of the Jeju massacre but tells the story of the quest of the families of the victims to know what happened. In many ways, this indirect storytelling conveys the horror much more powerfully than a direct narrative might have.

Like her other works, this book by Han Kang also draws you deep inside yourself and forces you to confront issues that you may not want to acknowledge. It is a highly unsettling book, which is where the power of the book really lies.

“Snow falls. On my forehead and cheeks. On my upper lip, the groove above it. It is not cold. It is only as heavy as feathers, as the finest tip of a paintbrush. Has my skin frozen over? Is my face covered in snow as it would be if I were dead? But my eyelids must not have grown cold. Only the snowflakes clinging to them are. They melt into cold droplets of water and seep into my eyes.”

[I received a review copy from Penguin India. The views are my own.]

A Decade Later Adichie’s Dream Count is a Mixed Experience

 The year 2014 was, in a lot of ways, a landmark year in the history of modern India. It was the year of the General Elections fought on the promise of removing corruption and promising development. It was a time when everybody was talking about the demographic dividend and of how, with the correct policies, India could potentially capitalize on it and become a global economic superpower. 2014 was a year when people were bullish about the future and voted for change. It was also a time when some people feared that the old way of living in communal harmony was in danger.

In Quarterlife, Devika Rege takes on the ambitious task of chronicling how different people looked at the changing politics in 2014. Everybody expected things to change, but depending on who they were and what their aspirations were, they looked at the future very differently. It was a year when cracks that you never noticed became virtually unsurmountable fissures.

The book traces the life of three protagonist – Naren Agashe, who at the same time when he received a green card also finally accepted that in the US, regardless of his brilliance, he will always remain an outsider. He returned to India, where he capitalized on his surname, his Brahminical good looks and his allure as a former Wall Street insider to launch himself into an orbit which he could never aspire to in the US.

His college flat mate, Amanda, is a white woman from a privileged background who, quite predictably, comes to India to discover herself. She is overwhelmed by the extremes that she witnesses and by the divisions that she never existed. Naren’s brother, Rohit, is a filmmaker who gets by through good networking, and by having pliable views. When he sets out on a mission to rediscover his roots, he comes under the influence of a Hindu fundamentalist which leads to his friends cutting off ties with him.

Quarterlife traces the growth of each of these characters, but it also looks at the diverse set of people they come in contact with. Ifra, for instance, is a woman born to privilege, who after studying abroad, chooses to return to India to work in the social sector. She is constantly profiled in magazines because of the work she does, but does she really understand the caste dynamics of the slum community where she works?

She has a fancy degree, but is she the best person to lead a grassroots organization and provide direction to people with far more experience than her? Will her class privilege protect her the communally charged atmosphere? Is there a future for her in the interfaith relationship with a Hindu? Will her family, broadminded though they are, accept her boyfriend as a potential partner? Does she want to stay with him, or leave the country?

There are so many characters like Ifra scattered throughout the book. Each of them is defined by a certain set of demographic details, but each of them is much more than the sum of their religion, their wealth, their sexuality, and even the background they grew up in. These characters collide and clash, they reexamine who they are and change accordingly, their relationship with each other changes. The book is a snapshot of India in the years where the book is set. Some of the characters behave in a manner which I believe is inconsistent with who they are, but people are unpredictable, and who am I to impose my expectations on them?

One part that particular stood out for me was when Amanda finds out that the penthouse where Naren’s parents stay is a home which he himself has never lived in. She is further surprised to learn that even the house Naren grew up in had been in his family only since his father’s generation. She compares it to the fact that her parents are living in a house which has been in the family for generations. One considers India to be country with a long and glorious history, and we consider India superior to upstarts like the United States. Yet, in reality, India is a country that keeps reinventing itself and there are no long traditions here. The book is sprinkled with little insights like this, which make it a treat to read.

The book has a deep cinematographic quality which immensely appealed to me. One section is about the Ganpati Visarjan in Bombay, which is told entirely through a montage of snippets from many participants and observers. A family living in a penthouse in West Bandra which does the visarjan in a bucket on the balcony. A Parsi socialite looking down on the processions and reminising about how things have change.

A Muslim lower middle class family shutting the doors and retreating into the inner rooms because they fear the crowds. The Christian domestic help from Chhattisgarh, who sees the procession as a way to engage with the city. The politicians belonging to different parties who all want to be seen as a part of the procession. The white female filmmaker who unfortunately gets caught in the frenzy. The city of Mumbai comes alive in this section, as it does throughout the book. The city too is a character and it undergoes as much change as the other characters do.

I found the last section extremely interesting because it was told from a slightly unexpected perspective. But, if you think about it, that perspective was always there, though hidden in plain sight.

The author put in extensive research before writing the book, and her attention to detail and her empathy for the characters comes out in every page. The book could have taken the form of a non-fiction narrative, yet she chose to write it as a work of fiction, which actually makes the book even more powerful. Quarterlife is a book that will not just help us to relive and understand where we were as a country a decade back, but also use that knowledge to better understand where we are today.

A Retelling Of The Nigerian-Biafran Civil War

 Many of us would struggle to locate Nigeria on a map. Almost none of us have heard about the Nigeria- Biafran Civil War that nearly tore apart the newly independent country in the late 1960s. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you will be told that the anti-Igbo pogroms and the subsequent exodus of Igbo people led to them the eastern part of Nigeria seceding from the state and declaring itself the Republic of Biafran. In the 2½ years of war, Wikipedia will tell you, there were about 100,000 military casualties and between 500,000 and 2 million Biafran civilians died of starvation.

These are the facts, but what lies behind the facts. What was Nigerian society like in the giddy days after independence? What were the dreams and aspirations of the newly independent society? How were they affected by the pogroms against the Igbo people? How was it to have to leave everything behind and flee to escape being killed by the advancing troops? How did people survive in the refugee camps? What was it like to live on the verge of starvation and worry about whether or not you will survive? When you were close to dying, did you still dream of a Biafran victory, or did you merely want the war to end?

These are the questions that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tries to answer in “Half of a Yellow Sun”. She takes three narrators- Ugwa, who is the houseboy for a university teacher, Olanna, the beautiful and accomplished woman in the relationship with the university teacher and Richard Churchill, an Englishman who is equally fascinated by local art and Olanna’s twin- and uses their different perspectives to tell the story of life in the first decade of independence in Nigeria.

The story is told in two separate timelines- the early 1960s, which were the years immediately after independence, and the late 1960s, which were the years immediately before, during and after the Civil War. These timelines are not sequential, and it is interesting seeing how tension is built up because the timelines alternate. The early 1960s were a time of idealism and optimism, but they were also a time when corruption was getting institutionalised. People took pride in their identity, but they also looked at others with deep suspicion. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, as with every other newly independent country, this was actually a period of lost opportunities for the nation. The late 1960s were marked with violence- physical and sexual violence inflicted on people, and the violence of starvation and disease. Adiche doesn’t’ mince words while describing some very gruesome scenes and they will stay with you forever, reminding you of how war strips humans of their humanity.

The biggest strength of the book (as of all Adiche’s writings) are the characters. There are about half a dozen main characters, each of which is fully etched out- if you try to fit them into convenient stereotypes, they surprise you by exercising their individuality. For me the three most important characters were Olanna’s mother in law, Olanna’s twin and Olanna herself.

Her mother in law represents the traditional values of the Igbo people- she wants her son to marry a woman of her choice who will bear her strong grandsons. To this end, she plots and schemes and even when things do not go as she planned, she remains standing with her head held high.

Olanna’s twin is a hard headed businesswoman- intelligent, ambitious, cynical, and determined to make things happen. Olanna is midway between the two- beautiful, intelligent and empathetic, she retains the moral courage to carry on even when she loses almost everything that matters to her. All three women are powerful characters, yet in different ways, each is held down by patriarchal expectations.

Adiche is best known for her TED talk on the “Danger of a Single Story” where she argues that most of us subconsciously operate from the perspective of a single story, which ends up oversimplifying narratives and reinforcing stereotypes. “Half of a Yellow Sun” is a stunning example of how novelists can and must overcome the pressure to succumb to a single story narrative.

[I received a review copy from Harper Collins. The views are my own.]

A Story Of Friendship And Betrayal Set In The Theatre World

 [First published in YouthKiAwaaz]

Annie Zaidi’s “The Comeback” is the story of two young men from a small town in North India who share a common love for the theatre. Though both are extremely talented and passionate, they choose very different paths.

Asghar Abbasi took up a job at a bank, got married, had children and embraced a typical middle-class existence. John K, on the other hand, dreamt of making it as an actor- he spent many years at the fringes of the acting profession, often taking up lighting jobs in order to sustain himself while he kept knocking at doors for his big break as an actor.

The lives of both these friends change drastically when “after the success of his first major film, actor John K. lets his ego get the better of him and says too much in a fateful interview. The fallout shatters the life of his college friend. Disgraced, unemployed, his marriage in jeopardy, Asghar’s stable middle-class life is thrust into crisis. Broken but unbowed, Asghar retreats to his hometown, Baansa, where he rediscovers his true calling — the stage.

Devastated by the betrayal, he is determined to cut John out of his life; John, while remorseful, is equally determined to claw his way back in. As Asghar’s grassroots small-town theatre takes off, John’s star begins to dim, leaving him stuck in a career that pays the bills but is artistically stultifying. On the outside and desperate to be part of Asghar’s theatre comeback, John is forced to discover the limits of his self-centredness, and confront his ego, the shallow allure of fame, and the false hierarchies of the arts.”

The author’s own training in theatre is evident in how the novel is structured. She sketches the backdrop with an enviable economy of words, then allows the characters to take over. The dialogue is crisp, the characters (including the supporting characters) are well-developed, and the plot moves forward at just the right pace. The story is essentially told from the perspective of the actor, John K. He is selfish, self-serving, and deeply flawed, yet you find yourself hoping things will work out for him.

I particularly loved the affection with which each of the three main female characters was developed. In a story which is essentially about the rivalry between two college friends, they could very easily have devolved into caricatures, yet each was well sketched out, and in their own way, they had the same kind of growth and development as the main characters.

The entire novel is built on the perceived hierarchy of the performing arts, and the author subtly makes a point about how many of the attempts at decolonisation end up magnifying the same systems they were supposed to overthrow. Through Asghar’s stubborn decision to insist on centring his theatre in his hometown, Baansa, the author pays homage to the theatre, which could flourish in smaller towns but is subsumed in an attempt to reach a wider audience. At least in this novel, Asghar is able to resist the temptation to do so!

The blurb promises that The Comeback “is a story of the price of betrayal, friendship and forgiveness, second chances, and the transformative power of art,” and the book certainly lives up to that promise. In this book, Annie Zaidi demonstrates yet again why she is considered one of the finest Indian novelists writing in English today.

[I thank Aleph Book Company for a review copy. The views are my own.]