Ces Mots

Am going to let you in on a secret. It’s almost like a dirty little secret. Once it’s out, some of you would go doing this

WHAT???

and then some of you would just plain laugh at me.

It’s okay. Ive braced myself. I shall not hold it against you. Here it is. For all the circus I do on how much of a bookworm I am like here,

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I had read Anita Rau’s Tamarind Woman a few years ago. A friend at the college allowed me to borrow it. All I remember of the book was how true it rang to me, and the fact that I finished it within a week and returned it to her the next class. So while on a recent trip to the library, I saw the book lying in the returned pile, I grabbed it, just out of recognition, and couldn’t place it back.

I have always enjoyed re-reading books. During the days of good old times as a child, and when books were scarce in availability or access, I imagine I started this habit of re-visiting the words, story and the characters, for familiarity and especially the surprises that I missed the first time around. Words and phrases formed newer meanings, ones that may have been there all along, but now jumped up and showed a different view, a hidden emotion and even a twist to the imagination.

This book ranks as one of those that clearly is “un-put-downable”. If you had the luxury of cozy-ing into a chair next to a window cocooned in a silence around you, and allow yourself to be transported into the journal, the experience is complete in all ways. Then of course there are the others, like me, who are forced to go at snail’s pace not out of choice, but the distraction around is so heavy that it would surely be a crime to read such a beauty half-heartedly.

For the most part, I imagine, readers love, hate, or are indifferent to a particular book or literature (fiction especially) purely on how much they can relate to it. Are the characters one can relate to in real life, can one imagine the words, do they ring true, believable. Do they appeal to one’s inner muse? Is the story believable? Even in fantasy? Is it identifiable?

Tamarind Woman does just that. With just a handful of characters and spanning two generations of strong women, each from their own childhood, youth and then as adults, the book sways you in and out of time. The initial two-thirds of the book is all about the daughter. The daughter’s autobiographical journey as she tells us in flashback of the events that twined her life with her mother. The details, the small yet important facts, memories, the conversations, and the yearning. The story shifts again in first person but this time the mother – the tamarind woman – racontes teh verys ame events from her perspective. The present is now a journey on a train as the mother spins her life’s weaves into occasionally shocking but spell-binding and interesting tales for an audience.

What I especially liked about Anita Rau’s storytelling was that she made it all seem very real. This isn’t a feel good, loving story of a happy traveling family, but mostly very common placed for an average Indian household of the 80’s. The customs, traditions, though not elaborately told and described, all form an intricate pattern into the larger picture. The conversations, the words the author uses throughout, are quite Indianised in may ways, but that is besides the point. Considering the numerous dialects and languages we all come from, one can easily translate the words into any local language and it would ring true. It would be hard not to have met someone who fits the bill, or to close one’s eyes and almost hear a voice from the past who would speak those very same words.

The Mother – Saroja – in many instances reminded me of my mother, a few times of me, the relationship between the two reminded me of how I would talk with my mother. It’s all a big time-space-relation warp. For folks who’ve lived in “colonies” back home, this book would be a trip down memory lane. By colonies I mean, by virtue of being a Central Govt employee or a bank employee, the living quarters are all within a scheduled area called a campus. A place where there is a heirarchy designated by the rank of the husband/dad’s role at work. The luxuries, the issues and the challenges that come out of sharing space and to be on a constant vigil of one’s own behavior as the repercussions are stronger than just a ripple in the  lake.

So yes, read it if you can. You will laugh, smile, wince, marvel, gasp, admire and be surprised, but you have to watch out, as things are not clearly laid out for you all the while. Reading between the lines brings the essence of the fine visible words one actually reads.

Truly wish the author would write again. She seems to have stopped after Hero’s Walk and Tamarind Mem.

Just about the time when I was wondering what I would write on, not that I lack on ideas or stuff to work on, but more so on the mood of the post, A Muser tagged me moments ago.

So with all acknowledgments in place, and since this is a tag that encourages folks to pick up another book and read and not to mention the fact that am reading a fine book, I figured, no time like the present to work on the post. Also, I’ve eaten 1/2 sleeve of crackers with spinach dip and hunger pangs are at bay and what with dinner on the stove, I have a few moments before I go running off to the daughter’s chamber Concert.

The rules:

Pick up the nearest book.
Open to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the next three sentences.
Tag five people, and acknowledge the person who tagged you

Well, nearest book is a floor upstairs but anything for a good book, so here is the book.

“Tamarind Woman” By Anita Rau Badami (yes, the very same book you see at the top). Ive read this before – a few years before and all I remembered was that it was fascinating, so here I am reading it again. This time enjoying the nuances too..

As we grew older, I stopped trying to show Roopa the hidden worlds that seethed beneath the surface of the ordinary, for it seemed that she had , in her mind, closed the doors that opened into imagination. If she could not see a purple rose on a bush or a peacock on the front lawn, she declared, it couldn’t possibly be there.

“I have rubbed the peel of a ripe Nagpur orange on this card” wrote Ma. “Right now it smells as fresh and tangy as the fruit itself. I hope the smell has not faded by the time the card reaches you. And if it has, all you have to do is imagine.”

I obviously don’t know how to count as I managed to type more than the tag asked me to, but hey, a little insight and some amount of marketing for the book didn’t hurt anyone. It’s a fine book folks, read it if you can.

This time, deviating from the norm of not tagging folks, I shall OD on tagging and here are my 5, of each!

1. Gradwolf

2. Baphomet

3. Anantha

4. Psyriac

5. Naren

6. Sush

7. A-Kay

8. Neha

9. Laksh

10. Mystic Margarita

There, feeling very smug. Now who’s gonna beat me in the turnover rate of doing a tag? *grin

When I picked up this book, I had no idea that the whole entire story would be told to us through notes left between the daughter and mother. I’d imagined it to be something along the lines of “Letters to a young poet” by Rilke, but no, this is what the title says. Little sticky notes and snippets of conversation that the reader threads along to make sense of the characters and the lives they lead.

That to me is as brilliantly creative as they come!

Someone was returning the book at the library and I picked it up off the pile. I wanted something light and it looked like it would be easy on the mind. I came home and searched for a review [I am so bad with being patient in books!] and found a couple. It was interesting, though one claimed it was a dumb book and one said it was sensitive and reflective. With an opinion so split, I had to find out find out for myself what it was all about.

It is 240 pages long, and each page has no more than a couple of lines. Imagine little notes you’d leave for each other, at work, at home, they aren’t long letters per se, but just small condensed messages we write to send the message across. That’s how the story is told to us. The conversations between mom and daughter, through the mundane chores, through breakups and relationships, through sadness, through parenting, respect, of comfort, and love and finally through strength as they face a crisis together.

This book can be read in two different ways. You can either finish it in one sitting, if you have an hour or two and are a fairly good reader, you’d be done with it. The second is the sensitive way. Where you read the pages and look through the lines, between the words, the feelings that seeps out through them and better yet try to identify yourself with either, or of the characters. Alice does a good job of keeping the language and style consistent. 16 year olds do talk the way she writes, in fact some of lines I could imagine them in my own tween’s voice.

There was a part that was personal. Well, it’s actually the whole basis of the book, but when it is first introduced, it was raw. To me. The discovery and the process of losing it. Goosebumps while reliving the cold metal plates.

But yes, it’s a nice book. As simple or as intense as you want it to be.