The Music Room: A Memoir - Namita Devidayal

Rating: 7/10

Review:

Allow me to lapse into a little bit of nostalgia before I review this book. Like many Indian girls, it was customary for me too to learn Indian classical music right from a very young age. Though I love music, the rigid, packed schedule of school, music and home work meant that I was always reluctant to go to music class. But that wouldn't matter, since it was almost blasphemous to mention anything close to 'I hate music class'! Anyway, my Music teacher was always kind, lovely and patient with me, having seen many such reluctant learners.

Music is such an intrinsic part of most Indian families, that it is common to name their children after ragas (Don't we all know our Kalyanis, Ragamalikas and Sahanas?) Music here could be a refuge, a spiritual recourse or  something that people love to talk, discuss and even debate, showing off their musical knowledge. If there is a girl learning music in the family, you can be assured that everyone who meets her will ask about the new Kriti she learnt, whether she's waking up early in the morning for voice culture exercises and if she made it to the recent Bombay Jayashri concert. Music, the great leveler of sorts, is a part of each and everyone I know here and this debut book of Namita Devidayal pays tribute to that universal language of music.

Devidayal uses her personal experiences with her Music Guru Dhondutai Kulkarni to trace the history of two of India's greatest singers: the legendary Alladiya Khan and his disciple Kesarbai Kerkar and their legacies and the kind of environment they lived in. The language is simple, engrossing and filled with small stories and anecdotes about these three great musicians and their lives, even as the concepts that are vital to Indian music, and indeed music as a whole, are explained. 

The narrative, however, is not as simply structured as the language. It jumps into flashback mode quite a lot and often, abruptly. But that is no great fault, as the book is a page-turner that will appeal to just about anyone who loves music or likes to read about India. Devidayal deals with concepts surrounding music and its religious and social repercussions. Sometimes the book might read like a chapter from Theory of Indian Music or the like, but it only adds on to the reader experience, by helping them understand the concepts referred to in the book.

The final parts of the book were a bit of a dampener and it became a rather predictable ending, which is what stops this book from being more than just a good book, in my opinion. However, the good things far outweigh the negative points in this book. The relationship between little Namita and her teacher Dhondutai is so beautifully and realistically portrayed and it is hard not to care for them both. 

Pandit Ravishankar is quoted in the gorgeous book cover, saying that this book is 'A must for every musician and music lover!'. That just about sums it up. Settle down comfortably and prepare for a trip down memory lane and a peek into the wonderful world of Indian music that has long enthralled people across the world, no matter what country, religion, gender or race they belong to. 

Curfewed Night - Basharat Peer

Rating: 10/10

Review:

If a book’s greatness is measured by the impact it has on its reader, then Curfewed Night is indeed a great book. This part-autobiographical tale of Kashmir written by journalist/writer Basharat Peer is a must-read for every Indian, for the simple reason that this is, finally, the story of Kashmir as told by a Kashmiri.

In the feverish discussions and deliberations about conflicts, most analysts, ‘experts’ and even the common man talk only in terms of the ‘issue’. Kashmir is discussed in several angles; as a political, economic, ethnic, religious and strategic issue. In all such intellectual discussions, we often miss out on the angle that matters the most; the emotional, human side to the problem.

Curfewed Night is a harsh reminder of the troubles and travails borne by the common man of Kashmir. It is an uncomfortable, hurtful, unforgettable, even embarrassing read and Peer writes with such clarity and indeed calm, even while recounting many a personal tragedy or loss. What strikes me most about this book is the fact that nowhere does Peer make judgements, nowhere does he unleash hatred, and nowhere does he take sides politically. It is precisely this that makes the book so powerful; the fact that it is written from the heart and the fact that because it talks of events and issues from a personal angle, it seems so much more real and striking to us.

Indeed Curfewed Night was for me a journey into the ravaged valley with the author, while understanding his life, his convictions, his family, friends and his Kashmir. Peer’s writing is beautifully simple, innately evocative and sometimes almost poetic, conjuring images of his time in the valley and the people who form a part of his journey. This is one of those books by the end of which you feel you know the author very well and begin to care for them and hope there is a ‘happy ending’ in sight.

Peer talks about his initial fascination for militancy, the journey to study outside Kashmir, becoming a journalist and coming back home. Alongside personal accounts, he talks of the scheme of things in Kashmir at that point, be it the aftermath of the Parliament attack or the Indo-Pak bus service.

The narrative might seem disjoint at times, but it never hampered my reading of the book because in my mind, Curfewed Night wasn’t as much about Kashmir alone as it was about Kashmiris. This book moved me to tears more than once and was an emotional journey for the reader too, not just the writer. I’m very glad that I read this unforgettable account written with such passion that is hard to dismiss.

Peer is a writer to watch out for and I’m looking forward to whatever he writes in future. Curfewed Night has been long listed for the Guardian first book Award and here’s wishing Peer all the very best. I’m thankful to him for giving us a book that must have taken a lot of grit and determination to write.

Needless to say, I’m adding this book to my list of India-related book recommendations.

City of Djinns - William Dalrymple

Rating: 8/10

Review:

Some books have the ability to transport the reader into its world and William Dalrymple's City of Djinns does exactly that. This travel memoir chronicles the one year that Dalrymple and his wife Olivia spent in the great city of Delhi.

Perhaps because we Indians pride on our variety, you find that Dalrymple talks about just too many things. I wouldn't call it information overload, but though written in an easy, very readable style, there is a lot, from Sadhus to Sufis to the Mahabharata to Partition to the Sikh riots to Yunani, that Dalrymple presents in the book which will take some time for the reader to process and savour.

Foreigners writing about India sometimes write to fit the default image of an exotic, poor India with all its history, corruption and superstition. Dalrymple is different because of his obvious love for the people that he meets. His hilarious landlady Mrs.Puri and driver Balwinder Singh are characters that you can never forget and though Dalrymple pokes fun at them and teases them, you know it's never vicious and always done with affection. 

Dalrymple's writing is brilliantly descriptive. Which is a pleasure when it comes to describing the people he meets,  from the last surviving descendants of the Mughal Dynasty to Ahmed Ali, the wonderfully cynical, tragic author of Twilight in Delhi, who was displaced from the land he loved due to partition. But when Dalrymple describes the architecture of Delhi too closely, it does get repetitive and indeed boring at times. 

The political incorrectness of the people he meets, is gloriously refreshing though at times shocking. Dalrymple writes with great self-deprecating humour and is a very quotable writer indeed. Sample this:

'Recently, when a 93-episode adaptation (of the Mahabharata) was shown on Indian television, viewing figures never sank beneath 75 percent and rose to a peak of 95 percent, an audience of some 600 million people. In villages across India, simple Hindu peasants prostrated themselves in front of their village television screens for two hours every Sunday morning. In the towns the streets were deserted; even the beggars seemed to disappear. In Delhi, government meetings had to be rescheduled after one memorable Sunday morning when almost the entire cabinet failed to turn up to an urgent briefing.'

There is always a sense of adventure, as Dalrymple goes about finding so much history in every nook and corner of the city. His wife, the artist Olivia Fraser's wonderful illustrations add to conjuring the charm of Delhi. There are some great anecdotes and colourful, delightful characters in the book and this is as good as non-fiction can get. 

Delhi is a city that has seen several empires rise and crumble and has been the home to people of many nationalities and religions. Dalrymple's account does justice to the mystique, grandeur and contradictions of Delhi. His affinity towards writing about the religious side of the city gives excellent results and seems to be the precursor to his latest book Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.

This book is a wonderful read for anyone interested in India and qualifies as a great book because of its writer's obvious love for not just the city and its history, but also the people who inhabit it. 

Prison and Chocolate Cake by Nayantara Sahgal

Rating: 10/10

Review: 

The delightfully-titled book Prison and Chocolate Cake is proof that truth is sometimes more fascinating and gripping than fiction. India and her struggle for independence are seen like never before, from the point of view of a young woman, Nehru’s niece Nayantara Sahgal.

Being part of the ‘first family’ of Indian politics is no easy task and this book is an intimate, innocent, almost naïve portrayal of the men and women who Nayantara called Mummie, Mamu and India calls its first women cabinet minister, its first Prime Minister. But it is because of this naivety that this book is refreshing, a far-flung cry from the usual non-fiction books littered with metaphors and complicated words.

Written in 1952-53 recalling the revolutionary 1940s, the book moves from scenario to incident seamlessly and never at one point is there confusion or complication. Being a young Indian in British India came with a whole load of quirks and in Sahgal’s book, you find intimate little stories about these. The fact that it was intended only for a small audience perhaps explains the very personal feel of the book, making it an immediate treasure.

Sahgal talks with ease about her travels and education in the U.S, her association with ‘Bapu’( Gandhiji), her angst about the fact that people abroad couldn’t even point out where India was in a map and the pride and the responsibility that came with being ‘Nehru’s niece’. Her relationship with sisters Rita and Chandralekha and the playful teasing and wit that comes with it is a beautiful part of the book.

The book is as much about the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty as it is about India and quite understandably so. One gets a ringside view of the family jokes ( Nehru( India's first Prime Minister) calling a Mrs. Hopewell Mrs. Hopeless is priceless), the unwritten rules ( Never cry in front of a policemen when any member of the family is arrested for the cause of independence), the good-natured banter ( Cousin ‘Indi’( Another PM) was called a ‘celery stalk’. Hard to imagine the iron-fisted woman of the emergency being equated to celery), emotional moments ( Sahgal meets her cousin Indi’s 3 year-old son Rajiv ( Yes, he would also go on to be PM) and wonders how time has passed by ) and little details of what it meant to be part of this dynasty.

Sahgal considers three people as her parents- father Ranjit Sitaram, mother Vijayalakshmi Pandit and uncle Jawaharlal Nehru and this book is a tribute to all three. Several invaluable, adoring anecdotes about these people find place in the book, leading way to the only possible criticism, that of the book being too obviously partial having been written by an insider. 

Sahgal and her sisters asks Nehru questions that anyone who has read his Discovery of India would want to – ‘Do you believe in God?’ ‘Don’t you get sick and tired of traveling so much?’ Nehru’s answers, his flair for life, his witticisms are quite certainly the greatest treasures unearthed from the book.

The book ends on the tragic note of Gandhiji’s assassination and recalls the reaction of the public and several famous personalities. As Sahgal points out how struck by grief, Nehru bent down to Gandhiji’s body and forgot himself for about a minute, it is a single but powerful expression of the relationship between these two great men. Sarojini Naidu’s reaction to the assassination ‘What is all the sniveling about? Would you rather he had died of decrepit old age or indigestion? This was the only death great enough for him’ is delightfully typical, as Sahgal points out.

There are a dozen wondrous and uniquely Indian instances and emotions in the book- admiration, pride, love, angst, grief, bravery and conveyed in Sahgal’s simple yet effective style, the book stays with you long after you’re done reading it. A must-read for every Indian and a treasure for anyone who aspires to know more about India, in all her manifold forms.