The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day is a hauntingly beautiful account of life between the two world wars as told from the point of view of an ageing butler named Stevens. After over fifty years of faithful service, Stevens decides to go on a road trip across England in his master’s Ford. Stevens’ ruminations and perspectives, as he travels the roads of England, offer extraordinarily unique insights to several facets of life.

For an anglophile like me, the British backdrop and tone of the book was quite delightful to say the very least. The Remains of the Day slowly grows on you, and once you allow yourself to be immersed in Stevens’ world, it takes you places where you long to remain for eternity. It is a story of unrequited love told in the most subtly beautiful way. It is also a story of acceptance, and making peace with one’s past. Certain parts in the latter half of the book are so overwhelming that one feels fortunate have been able to come across something so beautiful.

It is not a book for everybody as it unravels very slowly, but if your tastes are anything like mine, you’re up for a journey like no other.

The Stand – Stephen King

For someone who has been a much ardent follower of western cinema, there has always been a certain charm about Stephen King stories. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, Pet Sematary, Carrie, It, and so on. The list is endless. Some of the most legendary stories that have graced the silver screen have borne Stephen King’s imprint on them. And hence it was with little hesitation and much expectation that I picked up ‘The Stand’.

Toba Tek Singh Aur Anya Kahaniyaan – Saadat Hasan Manto

It seems like Manto is a name that has been increasingly propelled to the forefront of contemporary debate in the last couple of years. The most notable of which is the upcoming eponymous movie directed by Nandita Das, and starring Nawazuddin. However, after reading this book, I realized there is something so powerful about Manto and his ideas that he has already been dominating a sizeable chunk of our social sphere ever since he started writing the stories he is so notorious for. It’s only that we have noticed it very late.

Toba Tek Singh Aur Anya Kahaniyaan is a brilliant collection of short stories by Saadat Hasan Manto. The nuance in his writing, the intricate caricatures of his characters both psychological and physical, and depth of his themes are a truly mesmerising. Though I fairly liked almost every story in the book, my favorites were Toba Tek Singh, Khol Do and Kali Salwaar. His stories are usually punctuated by a disturbing degree violence and sex, and hence he is not a casual read by any measure. Nor are his stories meant to be read in a single go, because they demand strong empathy from their reader and need time to sink in. What makes his stories particularly poignant and unsettling is not that his themes are gory, but that they are true. It is guilt more than fear than drives the impact that his stories have on its readers. I have never seen truth been laid bare in such a brutal fashion ever before.

Brick by Red Brick – T.T. Ram Mohan

This review may have certain biases ingrained in it because I have been a student of Prof. T.T. Ram Mohan. I attended his much famous Macroeconomics class in my first year at IIM Ahmedabad and probably attended almost all the talks or sessions he may have given to the institute in the two years I was there. Thus, when I read this book, I read it with context. I read it in his staccato baritone the way he conducted his classes. I also had some inkling of his reasoning, and I had much context of the setting of the book for he had anecdotally talked about it a couple of times. Needless to say, all of this made my reading of this book much richer.

Brick by Red Brick is the story of the making of IIM Ahmedabad and a caricature of the great Ravi Mathai through the eyes and research of Prof Ram Mohan. It is a beautiful tale of institution building with a primary emphasis on culture. More so, it is a extraordinary insight into the life of Ravi Mathai, to whom the institute owes much of what it is today. The greatest strength of the book lies in the balanced commentary and a matter-of-fact tone Prof. Ram Mohan does not engage in unnecessary chest-thumping or sugar-coating and is not afraid to call a spade a spade when needed to. This is particularly evident in the chapter Light and Shadow where he strongly reflects upon the decadence of the system, and what could be done to remedy it.

The Fry Chronicles – Stephen Fry

As I opened this book I was really impressed by the fact that every chapter, sub-chapter and section header in this book starts with a ‘C’. Considering there are close to 50 of these, all three categories included, and none of them seem to be force-fitted, this in itself an apparent testimony of the creative genius that is Stephen Fry. I had had only moderate exposure to Fry including a sneak peek of Blackadder, Q.I., some of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, his special appearances in a couple of movies, and probably that’s it. However, his two brilliant lectures at the Jaipur Literature Festival – one autobiographical and the other one on Oscar Wilde truly swept me off my feet and I decided to take a plunge into his world.

The Adivasi Will Not Dance – Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

Had this book not been handed to me as a part of our PGP curriculum during the fag end of our first year in MBA, I would have probably not have chanced upon it. This was a supplementary reading to a course called ‘Socio-Cultural Environment of Business’ or SCEB as we more commonly referred it through its acronym. Although the hard-bound book in all its glory and the shiny blue cover had aroused my curiosity every now and then, the B-school curriculum hardly ever allowed time enough for the core readings. The supplementary ones would had to undoubtedly wait.

And so this one waited. Until yesterday, when I once again picked it up and unlike other times, started reading. I am not sure if it were because the stories are short and incredibly easy to read or their strong social and political themes, that really drew me into the book. Story after story, page after page, I found myself wanting for more.

Heart of Darkness and Other Tales – Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad’s writing has been one of the most difficult I have read to date. Though the imagery is beautiful, the language coupled with the intricacies of thought become a little too difficult to hold on to for a duration long enough that you can start relishing the tale. Most of his stories are a little too descriptive, with sparks of of brilliance at sporadic intervals, in so far what I was able to comprehend.

‘An Outpost of Progress’ is a beautiful tale and contained in it all characteristic elements of Conrad’s writings. In my opinion, it is a fitting welcome to Conrad’s world. ‘Karain – A Memory’ , though slightly long and initially slow, was quite a thriller in the second half. I did not enjoy ‘Youth’ as much and found it quite a drab tale. Most importantly, I was tempted to read Conrad because I had read that ‘Apocalypse Now’ was adapted from ‘the Heart of Darkness’, which, though a decent read, did not live up to the high expectations I had of the story.

There is not a shred of doubt that Conrad writes brilliantly, but I did not find his stories a gripping read. Not sure whether the fault lies in the writer narration or the reader’s comprehension.

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

Though frequently dwarfed by the more popular ‘Kite Runner’, I found this book, if not more, no less beautiful. The description of Kabul is so fascinating that at one point, where he talks about the Buddhas of Bamiyan, I desperately yearned to see them. For the first time it hit me how beautiful a thing we had lost and felt pity at the impossibility of the situation.

I was in awe of the courage displayed by the protagonists of the plot – Laila & Mariam (what a pretty, pretty name). The gruesome, hard-hitting portrayal of how innocent civilian lives are turned upside down in war-torn territories, how dangerous and inhumane an unequal (in this case highly patriarchal and religion-oriented) society can be and how the little joys of life are hidden in the relationships that we take for granted the most were the most enthralling parts of the book. Finally, some breathtaking lines from the book that will remain etched in my memory forever are the English translation of the two lines from the Farsi poet Saib-e-Tabrizi’s poem – Kabul :

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls”

Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

There are good short stories, there are excellent short stories and then there are short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

The elderly lady in front of me looked pale and haggard. She must have been barely 5 feet tall. Staring down at the blades of grass that grew on the edge of the Front Lawns, she held onto a copy of “The Lowlands” pressed onto her chest with her arms wrapped around it. We were somewhere in the middle of an extremely long queue around the periphery of the 500 meter-square garden, patiently waiting to get our recently-bought books signed. Frankly speaking, I did not like the session too much but had been looking forward to exploring some of her works for quite some time. It was another twenty minutes before I got my turn.

What Money Can’t Buy : The Morality of Free Markets – Michael J. Sandel

Interesting, is what comes to my mind as I look back upon, “What Money Can’t Buy”. Having been a fan of Michael Sandel for far too long, this was my first book authored by him (I had already seen a part of Justice – the Online Series). Like his usual stimulating talks, Sandel invokes a fascinating question in this book – “Is the increasing influence of market values corroding our lives?” And through innumerable, examples, assertions and reasons he takes us through an exciting tour extremely strange invasions of the free market in spheres of life that we deem too sacrosanct to even remotely consider the possibility.

What I feel stands out in Michael Sandel’s works is his impartiality towards the issue being discussed and thus enabling the reader to form ideas and opinions of their own. He establishes ground enough for the pro-market economists and then takes their case with sound philosophic arguments.