Books
Indian
Postcolonial Writers
Sanyat
Sattar
In
Custody
Anita Desai
Penguin USA; March 1994
Touching
and wonderfully funny, In Custody is woven around
the yearnings and calamities of a small town scholar in the
north of India. An impoverished college lecturer, Deven, sees
a way to escape from the meanness of his daily life when he
is asked to interview India's greatest Urdu poet, Nur--a project
that can only end in disaster.
The
Tree Bride
Bharati Mukherjee
Hyperion; August 2003
Tara
Lata became known as "the Tree Bride" because after
her child groom died, her quick-thinking Hindu father married
her to a tree to spare her the misery of lifelong widowhood.
Mukherjee introduced the Tree Bride in her last spellbinding
novel, Desirable Daughters (2002), along with Tara
Lata's descendent, Tara Chatterjee, who left Calcutta for
San Francisco, where her husband became a world-famous cyber-communications
magnate. Tara was researching the Tree Bride's life when a
bomb blast threw her own life into turmoil. Now, as Mukherjee
picks up the pieces, as it were, Tara, scarred and pregnant,
seeks an Indian woman doctor, but, fooled by a name, ends
up with a white woman whose British family history also connects
her to the Tree Bride. So begins the unfurling of an endlessly
intriguing web of unforeseen connections and coincidences
as smart and resilient Tara continues her revelatory investigation,
and Mukherjee imagines the warped psychology of colonial India
with both pathos and wicked humour.
The
Painter of Signs
R. K. Narayan
Penguin Books; May 1993(Reprint edition)
This bittersweet
novel is as fresh and charming today as it was when originally
published in 1976. Telling the story of Raman, a conscientious
sign-painter, who is trying to lead a rational life, the novel
is filled with busy neighbourhood life and gossip, the alternating
rhythms and sounds of the city from morning till night, and
the pungent smells and tantalising flavours of home cooking,
as Narayan portrays everyday life in Malgudi. The city is
growing and changing, as its inhabitants try to carve out
some individual successes within the juggernaut of "progress".
Raman, a college graduate, brings a sense of professionalism
to his sign-painting, taking pride in his calligraphy and
trying to create exactly the right sign, artistically, for
each client. Living with his aged aunt, a devout, traditional
woman whose days are spent running the house and tending to
her nephew's needs and whose evenings are spent at the temple
listening to the old stories and praying, Raman prefers a
rational approach to life. Though he is presented as a unique,
individualised character, Raman, the painter of signs, is,
in a sense, Everyman, facing his coming-of-age as all men
before him have done in cultures around the world. Only the
details (and the sights, and sounds, and smells) are different.
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thedailystar.net 2004
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