Books I recently enjoyed

In the chapter titled On Books in To My Daughter, I expressed the fervent hope that my daughter would grow up into a good reader. That prayer has been richly answered, and as I have mentioned before, Pupu has of late turned into my main supplier of highly interesting books from many different genres, not excluding books on cookery! 

This time round, we went shopping to Pupu's new favourite haunt, The Book Shop on Lodi Road, inside the Embassy of Georgia complex. Tiny, yet very enticingly stocked. It was a delight to pore over all kinds of new titles, many by authors I hadn't read before, and to see a place where people of different ages came solely to explore and talk about books - made me feel intensely for the umpteenth time that I, sadly, live for the most part in a village, where reading is anathema to highly 'educated' people.

Within a span of about ten days, I have hugely enjoyed reading four books in quick succession. One was a Bengali volume, Goyendapeeth Lalbazar, by serving IPS officer Supratim Sarkar, from Ananda Publishers. A compilation of twelve bizarre criminal cases solved by the detective department of the Calcutta Police, once proudly called a close second only to Scotland Yard. Well written - even a bureaucrat can sometimes write well! - and a valuable contribution, maybe the first ever, to the history of crime detection in our country. Mr. Sarkar deserves the kudos and thanks of many.

Two more detective books - fiction this time round, but based on a lot of hard historical facts, and both very interestingly set in India, during the late years of the British Raj. One, The Last Kashmiri Rose, based in south Bengal 1922, at an imaginary military outpost called Panikhat: quite a gripping page-turner with a most unexpected and rather sinister twist in the tale, very expertly written with excellent and accurate historic details woven in, though I have no idea where the writer found hilly country fifty miles from Calcutta, and the biggest mistake was not making one mention of the biggest thing that had happened over the previous year, namely Gandhi's Non Cooperation movement which had nearly brought the whole administration to a grinding halt. The other was The Rising Man, written by Abir Mukherjee, who grew up in Scotland, whose protagonist is Captain Sam Wyndham, survivor of the trenches during the First World War, now employed by Calcutta Police on the express recommendation of the legendary commissioner Charles Tegart, though the writer has got some details wrong or confused: the name was Tegart, not Taggart, and he was only a 'Sir', not a 'Lord' at least in those days (look him up on wikipedia), and who unravels a deadly mystery against all sorts of odds, in the process exposing the dark underbelly of the Raj. I have some issues with the writer's English: no Englishman in those days would have used the expression 'called out' to mean 'criticised', simply because it did not exist then, nor written 'he was likely sent to jail' (the word used to be 'probably'), nor 'he looked like he wanted to say something' when he meant 'it seemed as if he wanted to say something': these are all Americanisms from the social media age, four generations after a 1919 detective. And writing 'he was sat' when one means 'he sat' is downright wrong and silly. Also, a Bengali brahmin from a rich old Calcutta family with a first class law degree from Cambridge and a cut-glass English accent who passed the IPS entrance exam got his first posting as a mere sergeant in shorts, not allowed to sit down before his British superiors? when Satyendranath Tagore, the first Indian ICS officer, had become a deputy magistrate half a century ago?! But at least this writer took into account Jallianwala Bag, and the story is well told. I shall look forward to the next three in the Sam Wyndham series. The one book was written by an Englishwoman, the other by an expatriate Indian: I can only marvel at the dedicated amount of research both  must have done to get 99% of the period details right.

Finally, a book from a very different genre: Quest for Kim, by Richard Hopkirk. Those who have not read Rudyard Kipling's Kim and adored it lifelong as the finest book about India ever written in English will be left cold; so will all those who hate everything about Kipling without knowing much more than zero about him, but I am one of the lifelong diehard aficionados, and for like-minded people, I'd say, re-read Kim at once, then go and read Hopkirk's earnest, arduous and years-long labour of love to retrace Kim's steps across the length and breadth of India, and find out all he can about the Great Game and all the outstanding characters, old Teshoo Lama, Kim himself, Field Marshall Roberts of Kandahar the Jang i laat sahib, Mahbub Ali, Lurgan Sahib and Babu Hurree Chunder Mukherjee. You will be regaled and rewarded beyond your expectations.

I can't thank you enough, Pupu ma. Looking hungrily forward to what you will ask me to read next. Meanwhile, I am eagerly into Bending over backwards, by Carlo Pizzati, a very different kind of book again, and hoping to be much educated and entertained. Then a history of the British Indian army is waiting, along with a newly published collection of essays on the cimema by Satyajit Ray that Swarnava has kindly gifted me. What a feast! May God have pity on those who don't read books.

P.S.: I have linked some photos in the previous (travel-) post.