HT Picks; New Reads
On the reading list this week is a collection of short fiction shot through with wry humour, leaves from a writer’s journal, and a look at the state of Myanmar where the army and anti-coup groups are at loggerheads
A genius for the absurd
An adolescent set adrift in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, surrounded by an immensity of empty sea and sky, seagulls waiting patiently to peck at his flesh, remembers a couplet his mother sang at bedtime, and finds himself murmuring it, with an unexpected gurgle of pleasure: To thank you, God, to you I pray / For the gift of this horrible day.
A man, for long on the brink of hunger, is deranged by the rich smell of meat and kills a family of six and their dog. Another man, a magistrate who will not contemplate breakfast without eggs, sausages and liver, vows to turn vegetarian until justice has been done.
A young could-have-been-engineer returns from America at the start of 1961, wanting to become, of all things, a private detective. No one gives him a chance, until he solves his first case — a kidnapping in, of all places, sleepy Patiala — and sets up India’s first detective agency.
An Indian prince hatches a plot to blow up the British Resident, together with his old headmaster and bullying schoolmates when they get off the ship from England. But one incredibly obese fellow among them messes up his plans by becoming, first, a curiosity and then a minor god for the women of the kingdom.
Upamanyu Chatterjee combines his legendary wry humour and genius for the absurd with perfectly-pitched storytelling to deliver a humdinger of a collection.*
A way of looking at life
Ruskin Bond is most at home in his cosy room in Landour, a room with a window – from which he looks out on the world. A room where he writes his daily journal.
In these leaves from his journal, written over the past two years, Ruskin describes his days in his unique way: from the joy of seeing a new flower bloom to the pain of a toothache that just can’t be ignored. Outside, the seasons change. In his room, for Ruskin, every morning brings new thoughts, new observations.
Another Day in Landour is an absolute delight for anyone who enjoys Ruskin’s warm, gentle, witty prose, and his wonderful way of looking at nature, at people, at life itself.*
The state of Myanmar
Myanmar’s generals didn’t expect the nation to rise up against the coup they staged in February 2021. But after decades of stifling, direct military rule, the Burmese people had become used to another way of life during the relative openness of 2011-21. The army has been unable to suppress anti-coup protests as it did in 1962 and 1988; and, three years after sending tanks into Yangon, Naypyitaw and other cities, the army has yet to establish a functioning administration.
For the first time since the 1970s, armed resistance is not confined to traditionally strife-torn frontier areas, where ethnic insurgents like the Karen National Union and Kachin Independence Army have been active for decades -- it has spread to the majority-Burmese heartland, in the shape of the People’s Defence Forces. But the anti-junta forces are insufficiently well-equipped to defeat the much more heavily armed Myanmar army, which itself is stretched too thin, on several fronts, to crush the resistance. And, despite foreign observers’ assurances, there is no unity, common command or synchronized strategy among the various ethnic-minority and ethnic-Burmese resistance groups.
This is a war that neither side can win. Caught in the middle, and bound to suffer most, are civilians.*
*All copy from book flap.
