Khauf-pur

I have not blogged much about cricket recently, though there has been an overload of cricket in the last 2 months and the next 3 months looks the same, but many of my friends have received multiple mails a day as cricket matches play out around the globe.

But today there are no matches and is a day away from cricket. So, today is literature day for me. Typically, saturday mornings are good for literature but tomorrow there is the humiliation of the T20 match against Australia to enjoy..er...endure :)

And so what better place to start this morning than at Kitabkhana (instead of my usual morning visit to India Uncut --- people go do prabhu-darshan when they wake up; though this nastik is not in the habit of deifying things, my early morning darshans are of IU, e-mail, and Cricinfo, not in any particular order - more or less all at the same time; thanks to Firefox tabs :))

And though there are many gems at the blog, the Kitabkhana post I want to highlight to you is the aforementioned Booker shortlisted..er..long-listed... Animal’s People by Indra Sinha.

Khaufpur, a fictionalized version of Bhopal is where Indra Sinha sets his novel, Animal's People. (Do visit that link...they've created a whole website for this "c ity of approaching a million souls situated at the absolute centre of India," including government, matrimonials, horoscopes, and classifieds. Marketing of a book taken to a whole new level!

Here's more through a review in the Statesman.

Nearly 20 years ago, Khaufpur was devastated by a chemical leak at a factory owned by an American firm, referred to by Khaufpuris as "the Kampani". Thousands died during what has come to be known as "That Night", including Animal's parents. Two decades on, women still carry the toxins in their milk, and Animal is condemned to walk on all fours after the poisons attacked his body and froze his spine. Physically deformed he may be, and the butt of much peer contempt, but he is still human - a sentiment he strenuously denies until the book's close. The tracing of Animal's emotional growth provides much of the novel's poignancy.

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Also, two new books about the Raj.

The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain by Nicholas B. Dirks

The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj by David Gilmour

(No...not that David Gilmour :))

William Darymple reviews them in the New York Review of Books:

Two new books on the British in India, both of them sophisticated works by established scholars, demonstrate how polarized the debate has now become. For Nicholas Dirks, who concentrates on the India of the East India Company, the British Empire is a terrible blot on world history comparable to slavery and fascism; to be neutral or even balanced on the issue is to tolerate the intolerable, and even to become complicit in oppressive violence and tyranny. For David Gilmour, however, working on the later period of the high Raj, the Victorian administrators of the Indian Civil Service could certainly be eccentric and fallible, but far from being oppressive exploiters they in fact "represented the British Empire at its best and most altruistic." It is difficult to imagine two books, on similar subjects, which have less common ground.

But it appears that the colonial hangover doesn't go away easily even in the "new India". I don't care much for books and movies about the "Raj"... but still do want to read William Darymple's well-researched and well-received book, The Last Mughal some day!

Maybe its just me... British India is not as much fascinating as the intrigues of the Mughals ;) Or Churchill put it best... "The further backward you look......the further forward you can see."

And with that quote, I end this post. I could go on and on as there are lots of other good posts at the very delectable and literary blogs - Kitabkhana and Indian Writing... do visit.