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BYOB Reviews: A Horse Walks Into a Bar

Very rarely do you come across a book that not only strips and bares the emotions of the characters, but also the reader. A Horse Walks Into A Bar, written by David Grossman, and translated by Jessica Cohen (Winner of The Man Booker International Prize 2017) is one of those books.

A short read. What it captures, however, is more than one expects. The title may make it seem like a book of funny one-liners but it is far from that.

What initially seems like a story told from from a third person perspective is revealed to be a first-person narration as observed by one of the audience members who really doesn’t know why he’s there. Dovaleh Greenstein is a veteran stand-up comedian and is performing in a small club in Netanya, Israel. It’s a two hour-long performance narrated by Dovaleh’s school friend and retired Supreme Court Judge Avishai  Lazar, who received a phone call by Dovaleh after over forty years of no contact and asked to watch him perform and tell him. “Tell you what?” Avishai had asked. “What you saw.” And that’s the whole premise of the book.

Unlike a stand-up comedy performance, this wasn’t meant to be funny but an attempt to be funny. From each joke to next, you see Dovaleh spiraling down on the stage; with each page his desperation seeps through.

He tells stories from his childhood which had lingered around and disturbed him to this date and he relates them, one by one. He moves from one story to another with its rawness intact. Avishai remembers all of them from school days. These seemed very Dovaleh-like back then to Avishai and never bothered to give them a thought. But now, here was Dovaleh talking about all those parts that he never told.

And the part that broke me down was early in the book and it went like this:

‘More?’ he asks, almost shyly.

‘How ‘bout a joke or two, man?’ someone calls out, and another man grunts: ‘We came to hear jokes!’ A woman shouts back at them: ‘Can’t you see that he’s the joke today?’ She rakes in a whole avalanche of laughs.

Now that he’s at the twilight of his career, all Dovaleh has left is to go deeper into his past and tell these stories and make them entertaining for the audience. But he fails and he falls.

Moreover, the jokes that the audience laugh at reveal more about them than about Dovaleh.

The only drawback of this masterpiece of a book is that it’s a book. Stand-up is an art-form that is meant to be watched rather than read. Although A Horse Walks Into a Bar is gut-wrenching (metaphorically), it would have been more impactful if it was a movie. Solely because you would want to watch the ups and downs in Dovaleh’s voice, his actions, and his desperation, rather than being told that he exclaimed or drew a line with chalk on the stage.

A Horse Walks Into A Bar is painful and sensitive in emotions that it just reaches out to you and even makes you analyse your actions and your own past. It’s more than just a book, and definitely one of the best ones that I’ve ever read.  In fact, I’ll probably give it another read before the end of this year.

Shivam Kalra, New Delhi, writes for his company in the day, then writes for himself in the night.

Buy your copy of the book here: http://amzn.to/2iuDHpj

Originally posted here.

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Four Modern Retellings of Indian Mythology You Must Read!

We’ve all grown up with grandma’s stories about the Ramayan and Mahabharat. We’ve laughed on little Krishna’s exploits with his friends and been aghast on Draupadi being disrobed by Dusshasan. These stories live within us till we narrate it again to our children and their children as well. Now, why don’t we stop a beat and think how it would be if the stories we are so used to hearing, had taken a different route?

Here are four novels that explore our beloved epics and retell them in a, let’s say, a more curious manner. Read them and be sure to ponder.

1.       Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Draupadi, the alpha female of Mahabharat, who through no fault of her own, somehow always ended up with the short end of the stick.

What if the great epic was told entirely from Draupadi’s point of view? What if she in actuality, had loved the wronged Karna, and not the mighty Pandavas all along? This major theme along with many others exploring the intricacy of Draupadi’s personality and her relationships with the other characters forms the basis of this beautifully written novel.

2.    Asura by Anand Neelakantan

Raavan, the big bad wolf of the Ramayan epic was the evil king of the Asuras who has many infamies to his name, including kidnapping Ram’s lovely wife, Sita.

What if Raavan was a misunderstood soul, who only wanted to be a good king to his people? What if Sita was actually Raavan’s daughter? A book which turns everything we believed about the Ramayan upside down, Asura is a dizzying but exciting read.

3.    Kamadeva: The God of Desire by Anuja Chandramouli

Kama, the God of Love is known mostly for his flower tipped arrows, capable of creating love between humans and celestials alike. He is also known for being charred to ashes by Lord Shiva’s third eye for daring to attempt the same on him.

What if Kama had a whole legend of his own? What if after his death, he was reincarnated as Krishna’s grandson Pradyumna? This novel narrates in an entirely original and humorous way, the gentle God of Love’s life, trials, tribulations, duty, ambitions and finally his great romance with his wife Rati, the Goddess of Love.

4.    Yuganta - The end of an Epoch by Irawati Harve

As with all stories which have been passed down over the years, the heroes of the epics are all virtuous yes, but have their flaws in equal amounts. The latter is never dwelled upon as we are continuously fed with only the laurels of these heroes and the misdemeanours of the ‘bad guys’, so as to speak.

What if we concentrate more on the humanity of Indian mythology? If both the good and bad in everyone are laid bare? In Yuganta, the authoress masterfully touches on the humaneness of Mahabharat characters, brushing away the fancy adornments and feats to their names. A must read for Indian mythology sceptics out there!

Swathi is a content writer, who lives and works in the city of Bangalore. Having grown up in both Japan and India, she uses writing as an outlet for her (albeit very Confucian) multiculturalism. She is also a great lover of travel, conversations, and coffee.

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Magic

An extraordinary word But its just another name given to our united souls and your forgiving smile

I’m alive only to see those gorgeous eyes with no grace left old,wrinkles eyes no more shiny Yet sparkling

I find you alive in my dreams While here you seem so dead Lying in that filthy bed Still your presence makes me pretty Old woman, as you sleep between the walls of our library The dark walls seem bright when alone in me At least you reside

Struggling all alone, to open that book So magnificent it looks as you cherish your fav room As I watch,I’m Your very own wall of this dead yet shiny home.

Saras Jaiswal is a 15-year-old bibliophile, who’s obsessed over everything about books. She belongs to the Hogwarts house hufflepuff She is an aspiring poet and a writer, and is planning to get my book of poems published anytime soon!

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An Aesthetic Observation

Sitting at a Coffee shop waiting for her, I had finally lost the track of time. Reading the cafe’s menu I could only think of all those times when she made me wait for her. Not having any other option to pass my time, I maintained the momentum and sipped the coffee. While I was engrossed in my never-ending cluster of thoughts, she silently stood behind me and made a funny noise. Frightened by the peculiar tone, I stood up from my seat and glimpsed the surroundings in haywire; a sigh of relief was felt when I saw her giggling on my expressions. She sweetly smiled and exclaimed, “Mai firse late hogai!” I could not utter a single word but looked at her face, laughing and restless at the same time. She grabbed a seat beside me, glimpsed through the menu and ordered tea. Before I could initiate talk, she laughed again and said, “You looked so frightened.” She could not stop giggling, remembering my confused expressions. I could just try to talk but she interrupted and exclaimed, “First listen to my story.” Like a chirping bird, she starting narrating what all had happened during the week. All I had to do was just to listen to her patiently and smile.

As she narrated in her melodious voice, I sat silently, thinking, making an aesthetic observation about her. She had a girlish charm with an innocent humour. Her gleaming eyes and blushing face were enough to make me forget all my life’s hurdles. Her passionate voice and her way of narrating the story gained my attention and could not have made me utter a single word in front of her. Her blue dress and black ear-rings added to her sassy persona but from inside she was a little girl looking at the world in her own way. She was like a rainbow, exhibiting different colours of persona, with a simple personality. Given her artistic way of presenting, she could narrate those obvious things which could not have normally garnered attention. Beneath her pleasing smile was hidden an untold tale of sorrow, and some unexpressed emotions. Thinking of the mystery element cast by her, my mind travelled in another direction. Noticing me distracted, she clapped to get my attention. With direct eye contact, she asked, “Have you heard what I said or are you busy in your own world?” With a poker face, I responded that I had heard everything. Satisfied with that, she started telling me a new tale of her life where she unfolded a new character within herself and presented it to me. All I did was smile and listen to her melody in silence.

Yash Sampat, though a Lawyer by profession, loves to spend his time clicking photographs, exploring new places and reading. He loves to document every interesting experience through his writing.

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HOLD THE DOOR: BYOB Reviews Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid’s new novel about two refugees in particular, and refugees in general, comes at a very interesting point, because while the city of the refugees remains unnamed in the book, it could be Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or any country in the world today, where it’s citizens are struggling with the consequences of war and militancy. Nadia and Saeed, the two protagonists of the novel, meet in an evening class on Corporate Identity, a usual setting for two unusual people. Saeed works in an ad agency, lives with his parents, prays regularly, while Nadia sells insurance, lives alone, rides a bike, enjoys psychedelic mushrooms, doesn't pray, yet wears black robes so, "men don't fuck with me", as she tells Saeed. They live in a city bursting with refugees, but still not openly at war, but as things worsen, Saeed and Nadia desperately find a way to escape, which leads us to a journey through Mykonos, London, Marin, and back to their home city through doors that open up to other places.

The doors add a touch of magic realism to the book, and also avoid the course that most books about refugees follow. Hamid avoids the journey that they undertake to get from one place to another, instead focuses on what happens, when Saeed and Nadia try to find home in strange new places, which are often better than what they have left behind, but sometimes are not. The doors as a device remind us of CS Lewis’s “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, where the passage to Narnia is through a wardrobe. Exit West focuses on how daily life finds a way in the transient life of a refugee, amidst changing circumstances, check points, and snipers. The cost of physical loss through migration isn’t at the core here, but the cost of leaving behind roots, yet always seeking the same in every new place is intrinsic to the plot. Beautifully written, and very different from Hamid's previous novels, Exit West doesn't look at refugees alone, but their impact on human kind in general, and how the west will also be impacted by migration, concluding that in the end we are all migrants, whether we stay in the same house forever, or if we move from country to country ("We are all migrants through time").

The novel may look like a struggling love story on the outside, but on closer inspection is almost a mirror for society today, but in all of that, Hamid manages to find some hope, there is a kiss between two old men, one Brazilian, and one Dutch, there is an English man who finds happiness in Namibia, which he reaches through a door in his bedroom. Exit West is terrifying, magical, heartbreaking, and hopeful, all at the same time, and will have you reaching out for your pen to underline all the lines in the book.

Jayanti Jha is the co-admin for the Bombay BYOB chapter and library, runs BYOB’s Twitter handle, hounds peeps for books, and looks at every cafe/park as a prospective BYOB venue.

Get your copy of Exit West here!

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BYOB Reviews: The ABC Murders

The stage is set as an anonymous letter establishes our first interaction with the killer. A potential serial killer issues a challenge to Poirot, although, what is the exact challenge is not known. A date and place are indicated but nothing else and while Poirot himself is intrigued by it, his friend Hastings, the narrator, dismisses the letter as the ramblings of a madman.

However, the madman isn’t quite as impotent as Hastings believes him to be, and begins his killing spree - Mrs Ascher in Andover, Betty Barnads in Bexhill and Carmichael Clarke in Churston, leaving an ABC railway guide at each location, thus earning his moniker and infamy in the public’s eye.

It is difficult to write about the novel without giving away the plot, really. But reviewing a crime or a thriller novel is always a risky business, alright.

Agatha Christie’s books are, in every sense of the term, immortal. No matter what era or decade a person might read them in, they will always make sense. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that she capitalises on the unchanging character of human nature. Poirot himself doesn’t resort to the investigative methods involving physical evidence, he doesn’t peer at the evidence through a microscope looking for fingerprints, but studies the people involved instead. He uses deduction and logic to map out the actions and the motivations to solve the crime. His only tools are his ‘little grey cells’, his brain and his knowledge of people and the way they behave. 

It is this very fact that sets this particular novel apart from the others in the Poirot series. Where in other cases his list of suspects was limited to people directly involved with the murder scene or the person murdered, the ABC killer has no personal relation to either of the two and the victims aren’t connected to each other at all. As Poirot himself puts it, it is a ‘public’ murder not a ‘personal’ murder.

The ABC Murders is possibly one of the more polarising books that Agatha Christie has written. On the one hand, a serial killer is not a common occurrence in her thrillers, particularly those in the Poirot series. In many ways, the multitude of victims means that there is a certain disconnect between the readers and the characters involved. Hastings himself is an unreliable narrator, as is established in her previous novels involving him. The reader is often far ahead of him when it comes to observations and while some may find his floundering comical, others may find it grating. 

Stylistically, the book seems a bit lacklustre. ‘Hastings’, the narrator, chooses to add excerpts from the supposed point of view of other characters. A parallel dialogue is created, highlighting the thoughts and actions of a strange man named Alexander Bonaparte Cust. While this dialogue introduces us to a character that we might not have known much of otherwise, it has a contrived air about it that adds but detracts from the narrative at the same time. The connection the reader is supposed to make between Alexander Bonaparte Cust and the ABC killer is obvious, but it is also so overtly obvious that it makes them pause and question it. 

What is particularly enjoyable about the book is Poirot and his psychological expositions, which assume the centre-stage in this book. Given the distance, so to speak, between the crimes and Poirot himself, the connections he makes and the way he extrapolates them from the sparse bits of information coming to him are the highlight of the novel. While there is always a focus on the psychological aspects of crime in Christie’s books, it is showcased beautifully in the novel. 

The crime itself is complex, and the twist is one of Christie’s better ones. But the nature of the crime makes it less intriguing, and the characters lacked the vibrancy that a seasoned reader of Agatha Christie’s books might come to expect. The wait that the reader is subjected to lacks the intrigue and anticipation that characterise her better efforts.

All in all, while the novel doesn’t fall short of expectations from a thriller, it certainly falls short of expectations from the Dame herself. It lacks the satisfaction that is expected, like getting a pie with shortcrust pastry where it should have been puff. Yes, it is burnished golden, rich and buttery, but where are the layers you wanted?

Prachi Gawde is the co-admin for the Mumbai BYOB chapter. She scans for book-thieves, hounds book-nabbers and extorts huge (not really, sigh!) amounts of fine from offenders and strives to jot down all that is important. An obnoxious person, approximately.

DISCLAIMER: A copy of The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie was made available to BYOB Club by the publishers HarperCollins. Thanks, we love free books! 

Get your copy of The ABC Murders here.

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BYOB Reviews: A Crisis of Eligibility

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a review should critique what a book is, not what a book could have been. But where Eligible is concerned, as an update of Pride and Prejudice, it becomes difficult to separate what was, what is and what could have been.  

Eligible is the result of the Austen Project, which pairs six contemporary authors with the six novels written by Jane Austen. Curtis Sittenfeld, assigned to Austen’s most famous work, relocates the action to an erstwhile ‘high society’ family inhabiting the suburbs of Cincinnati. Her characters have also been given an update in ages and professions, with the Bennet sisters all considerably older than their Austenian counterparts.

The novel begins with the arrival of the newest entrant to Cincinnati high society: Chip Bingley, an almost comically sweet fellow who is not only handsome, but also happens to be a doctor and quite wealthy. Feeling the tick of the biological clock, Liz and Jane Bennet have arrived in Cincinnati from New York to care for their ailing father who is convalescing after a heart attack. Kitty and Lydia Bennet are workout obsessed millennial archetypes, and Mary is a recluse working on her third online master’s degree from the comfort of her room. Mrs. Bennet is appropriately hysterical. Darcy is more or less Darcy. Topping it off is a supporting cast of characters easily identifiable in their new avatars. George Wickham is Jasper Wick, journalist and all round sleazeball. Mr. Collins is Cousin Willie, a casual misogynist and a successful software tycoon with no social skills.

In the initial stages of the novel, there are shades of Austen in its rhythm and flow. The setting is rich and the action is visual and moves at a steady pace. However, this good beginning is somewhat undermined by the middle. The aspect of social satire, which could be considered Jane Austen’s calling card, is markedly absent. As the novel proceeds, Sittenfeld’s prose becomes less and less subtle. Not afraid to use a fart joke or two, and the occasional burst of scatological humour, the novel continues to be quite entertaining, if in a reality television sort of way.

Sittenfeld, like Austen has divided the book into short chapters, of a few pages each, which lends a degree of choppiness to the narrative. But weighing in at around 500 pages, this book is much longer than Pride and Prejudice. Where Pride and Prejudice retains a timelessness that results in it being adapted over and over for screens and stages of all sizes, the same cannot be said for Eligible. The main issue with Eligible lies at its core: Sittenfeld has traded in depth for comedy. While the comedy of Pride and Prejudice is an important aspect of the novel, it is not the only thing.

There is very little to expose in the Cincinnati ‘high society’ of Eligible. Even though there is a whole side plot of a TV show within the novel that stands in for The Bachelor entitled ‘Eligible’, there is not much insight or anything new to add. She is not satirising any behaviour; she is merely describing it. Eligible ends up being twice the size of Austen’s work, but in the end, it seems to have said much less, if anything at all.

It seems if the author - unlike Austen - is unable to decide how she feels about the whole charade of the Bennet sisters’ eligibility. Her tone is a lot less incisive and not at all insightful. She sees the situations and their accompanying ridiculousness, and has truly gone to great lengths to extract comedy from it, but has not gone to the extent to examine the underlying social constructs that have caused those situations to arise in the first place. There are no answers to be found here, but more importantly, there are no questions.

Its sometimes lewd nature is right in line with the advent of writing that does not shy from discussing matters of sex and the body where women are concerned.  In the midst of such writing though, there is a charm underlying Austen that is lost. But perhaps this is Sittenfeld’s way of showcasing that ‘charm’ we have lost in 2016. If her intent is to package a book for a selfie taking, newsfeed scrolling, rapidly tweeting audience, her attempt is successful. However, for those who read and enjoy Austen today, Eligible won’t quite suffice.

Eligible starts out admirably establishing and updating context and providing a more contemporary setting and mores for the plot. But it is ultimately it is subsumed by its own time and context. It is at its best while it is trying to mine reality television, social media and the way we live now for comedy. Where it fails quite thoroughly, is at making readers think about the little absurdities of modern life that scatter its contents.

Nevertheless, considering the universal truth regarding reviews, it is a good idea to consider what this book is. And what is it? It is funny. It is entertaining. It is irreverent, and does a good job of making sure that the situations that the Bennet sisters find themselves in, are suitably up to date. Perhaps the best way to summarise the time spent reading the book is to use a passage from the book itself:

“Time seemed, as it always does in adulthood after a particular stretch has concluded, no matter how ponderous or unpleasant the stretch was to endure, to have passed quickly indeed.”

And therein lies the rub.

Yash Sharma, New Delhi. contributes to brain drain in the daytime, consumes coffee and words the rest of the time.

DISCLAIMER: A copy of Eligible was made available to BYOB Club by the publishers HarperCollins. Thanks, we love free books!

Get your copy of Eligible here!

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#BYOBAsks Kriti Bajaj

Tell us about your love for books and book reading habits. Also, what’s the last book you read?

My foray into reading began at age 9 - late, I know - with the discovery of a huge beautiful bookstore in a new city (Chennai) and the gift of an Enid Blyton novel, Five Go to Smuggler’s Top. There was no looking back. In those early years I had “author phases” - Enid Blyton, and then graduating to Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, the Anne series, etc. I was super into mysteries, but also open to trying different things. I also had a fantasy phase, a genre I still love, though read less of. As a teenager I began to branch out, trying classics and new authors, adoring English class, and becoming a familiar face in the school library, so much so that the librarian would see me and immediately inform me that the book I wanted hadn’t yet been returned. In college, I ended up pursuing a literature degree by a series of strange coincidences, by which I mean it shouldn’t have happened but did - I think it was fate or something like it. The next few years involved a lot of different kinds of reading, though I tried to find time to read ‘for pleasure’ too, and I’ve been doing far more of that in my working life.

The last book I read was Go Set A Watchman for our Harper Lee meet (very glad it was published, in case you’re wondering. I love Scout.) And prior to that, the beautiful novel The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller for our meet on queer literature, which was highly recommended by my Greek friend Sophie because I am fascinated by Greek mythology and history.

What is a bookish quirk that you have?

I don’t open books all the way because I hate when the spine breaks. I used to have a lot more rules but I’m becoming more relaxed now. I can also occasionally be found sniffing an open book with a look of rapture on my face. Oh, and I find it really difficult to read multiple books simultaneously. If I start for some reason, I usually end up getting really anxious and giving up, finishing one before picking up the half-read other.

Do you often lend books to family or friends?

Not often; it used to be just a couple of people, but all that changed with BYOB. It has been nice stepping out of that comfort zone and sharing something with someone you barely know.

Have you ever struck up a conversation with a complete stranger because if the book they/you were holding or reading? Did you end up exchanging notes or recommendations or numbers?

Hmm, not quite. There was one time when I was really bored on a bus to Vienna and I wanted to strike up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me about the book he was reading -- Memoirs of a Geisha, in German at that -- but he was being really antisocial and had headphones on. It’s almost like he didn’t want to talk to random strangers about the book he was reading. I kept looking for an opportunity (I was really bored; buses lose their appeal after a few days) but the only time he put down his book was when he started watching Harry Potter on the screen in front of him, again with the headphones...for obvious reasons. Eventually I gave him up as a bad job and amused myself by making up stories about him (what? Like you’ve never done that.)

I did get talking to a stranger online -- on a fan fiction site -- about a sweet one-shot she had written about Rilla Blythe from the Anne of Green Gables series, also in German (a lot of German here. Coincidence, I promise. My German isn’t even very good.) We began exchanging emails about the books, and other authors and interests we have in common; I then asked if I could translate her story into English, and thus a correspondence began. We write to each other every few months, not too frequently, but the emails are long and full of travel anecdotes and stories from another land.

Why did you want to start BYOB? How did you go about it? Was the process easy?

Nidhi and I had talked about starting a book-something, which would involve exchanging books...initially, something like book-crossing, entitled The Sisterhood of Travelling Books (working title; we didn’t really plan on excluding menfolk. I think.) but it seemed like a logistical nightmare, and most people these days are awful with snail mail. We liked the idea of Little Free Libraries, and then Nidhi came up with something that was like an LFL but with people...and food. It seemed perfect. We met last August with a couple of others to hash out the details, planning and pruning till it seemed pretty foolproof (complete with mild arguments, of course), and I thought even if it didn’t last too long, it would be fun while it lasted. We had our first meet later that month, in which strangers who loved books showed up from all over the city, and we knew it was going to be something special. And now here we are, 20 (and then some) meets later.

What has your experience at the meets been like? Share a memorable incident?

It’s been awesome hanging out with people whose eyes shine when they talk about books; this has been a fairly rare occurrence in my life in the last couple of years. BYOB also introduced me to kindred spirits and we’ve hung out and done sundry things together outside of club meets.

Many of the BYOB meets have been memorable, with lots of laughs and leg-pulling and debate. One of my favourites was our third meet, in which we discussed books that were long- and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. We organised this meet in memory of a friend of ours who passed away last year, and who had taken up the challenge in 2014 of reading all of the shortlisted books in a span of two weeks before the prize was announced (she finished all but one). I ended up reading a book she had recommended, Cloud Atlas (529 pages),  in 1.5 frenzied days for it, which is probably my biggest bookwormy (ooh, strange word) achievement in recent times.  

What’s the future of BYOB for you?

BYOB has come further than I could ever have imagined. Its current four chapters are going strong, and I hope there will be more clubs in more places. Long live literature! I’m also excited about the themed meets we’ve now started doing, as they nudge me into reading books I may not otherwise have thought of, and help confront the “blind spots” in our reading habits. Some interesting upcoming themes include Japanese literature, African literature, and (probably) books about sports/sportspersons that’ll coincide with the 2016 Olympics.

What’s on your reading list in 2016?

I hope to make progress on the books that have been victims of my habit of tsundoku, which include authors like Maya Angelou, Neil Gaiman, Susan Sontag, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Vladimir Nabokov and Azar Nafisi.  

How is your progress on the BYOB Book Challenge?

Bloody awful. I should be chucked out an’ made ter live as a muggle.

Kriti Bajaj is the Chief Advisor to the Fuhrer (ie begs her to lower costs, address snail mail and reorganise her notes on napkins), yeller of 'silence' in meetings, beverage hunter, Instagram ninja.

Top image and Murakami image: Kriti Bajaj

Subsequent images: Nidhi Srivastava

Learn how to start a BYOB Chapter in your city here.

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#BYOBReviews Disgrace by JM Coetzee

Disgrace and its author, JM Coetzee, come with a lot of tags. To mention just a few: Winner of the Booker Prize (1999); A Masterpiece; One of the Best Novelists Alive. Coetzee novels are known for their precise, spare, yet strangely piercing language, as well as integration of the political setting with the characters of his work.

Disgrace is no exception. A middle-aged professor is trying to come to terms with his waning powers amidst the upheaval and change in his country.

“If he looked at a woman a certain way, with a certain intent, she would return his look, he could rely on that. …Then one day it all ended. Without warning, his powers fled. …If he wanted a woman, he had to learn to pursue her; often, in one way or another, to buy her.”

He indulges in the seduction of a student and when reprimanded by his university, prefers to plead guilty rather than cooperate with the university and write a public apology. His defence, “Repentance is neither here nor there.”

“Disgraced” by his actions, he leaves for the farm where his daughter, Lucy, is eking out an existence by selling farm products and providing shelters and kennels for dogs. He tries to help out at a local clinic where dogs are brought in to be put down. Yet, he insists, “I am not prepared to be reformed. I want to go on being myself.”

While he is yet to adjust to the rhythms of rural life, a brutal attack on the farm leads him to realize that the balance of power has changed in the country. After trying to persuade his daughter to bring the attackers to justice, he returns to his city house, only to realize that even there he is helpless. The rest of the book delineates his attempts to make sense of his life, and the gradual understanding of what little he can do to change the harsh realities of life, and accept that.

Disgrace can be read at many levels. As a story of a man coming to terms with his mortality and fading powers. As a story of a country dealing with the inequities of its past. Yet, at the core of it, Disgrace is a story of a human being, who realizes his flaws and comes to term with them and himself.

Jona studied Computer Science and Chemistry, and then decided to return to her first love, English. She works as an editor, writes fiction and poetry, and spends almost all her spare time (and money) on books! She dreams of writing her first novel soon, but in the meantime, is happy that some of her work has been published in various national and international literary magazines and newspapers. While she is in general peace-loving and friendly, she is known to lose it if you ask her if her full name, Jonaki, is the Bengali version of Janaki!

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#BYOBAsks Prachi Gawde

Tell us about your love for books and book reading habits. Also, what’s the last book you read? 

I started reading thanks to my father who is a voracious reader. Growing up, there were always books scattered all around the house. So it was only a matter of time before I picked my first book up and started to read. I am glad that the love for books never abandoned me! 

The last book I read is ‘Zinky Boys’ by Svetlana Alexievich. It has excerpts from actual interviews of the Russian soldiers who served in the Russian army during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

What is a bookish quirk that you have? 

I am guilty of being a promiscuous reader. I can never read a single book at any given time, and I am totally capable of abandoning a book I’m reading at the moment for the sake of an exciting book I’ve just come across. Which is why I do not have a favourite book - which is so putting-off, because when people discuss their favourite books, I sit and sulk like a person incapable of loving a single book! However, I absolutely love Oscar Wilde, and discreetly, I compare every writer to him, immaterial of the literary genres, trends, and categories. There are basically only two types of writers for me: Oscar Wilde and other writers. 

Do you often lend books to family or friends? 

NO. I rarely lend books, and when I do, my soul bleeds a little everyday until my books are back with me.

Have you ever struck up a conversation with a complete stranger because if the book they/you were holding or reading (pre-BYOB days)? Did you end up exchanging notes or recommendations or numbers?

Honestly, I am not the kind of a person who starts conversations with strangers over books. I find that idea slightly daunting! Which is why, being a part of this club is exciting because I get to overcome this fear finally! The club is an amazing platform to come across people who have read a thousand books more than I have! So there is so much to learn from each one of them! There are times during meets when I sit quietly and simply listen to other readers discuss their books with such passion! It is overwhelming! I totally love being a part of BYOB Bombay!

“Palestine is only my second graphic novel, and I'm already head over heels in love with the format of graphic novels. The nightmarish story of Palestine - as it unfolds in the novel - is hard-hitting. The narrative is very intimate because of the illustrations, every voice has a face fixed onto it, which makes it impossible to escape the ideas being tossed around. The novel is inundated with powerful illustrations that contribute to keeping the tension alive in the book!”

How did you start a BYOB chapter in your city? Was the process easy? 

The process was fairly easy because co-admin Jayanti Jha is a godsend. 

What has your experience at the meets been like? Share a memorable incident? 

Like I previously mentioned, each meet has been such a learning experience! I went in for the first meet thinking I have read a decent number of books, only to discover what a silly little reader I am! Every meet opens you up to new books, new dimensions, new universes and new people. This may sound over-the-top, but in my mind, I jump every time someone introduces me to an amazing new book during a meet.

What’s your advice to new chapters?

My advice to new chapters would be - prepare to be surprised! Traditionally, we have certain preset notions regarding the scope of a book-club. However, nothing of what we may know about traditional book-clubs holds true for BYOB since BYOB has been conceived differently. Every person walks in with a book they like (and how!), so throw twenty or thirty such people in one room and what you get is one big thunderstorm of discussions! There is so much to gain intellectually and aesthetically! If you are in the process of initializing a new chapter, you are about to stumble upon a brilliant opportunity of opening yourself up to books and minds of all kinds!

What’s on your reading list in 2016?

I have approximately twenty unread books calling out to me! However, the book I shall be reading next is ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’ by Simon Sebag Montefiore. 

How is your progress on the BYOB Book Challenge? 

Honestly speaking, it has been disappointing thanks to a work-schedule that leaves me dead by the end of each day.

Prachi Gawde is the co-admin for the Mumbai BYOB chapter. She scans for book-thieves, hounds book-nabbers and extorts huge (not really, sigh!) amounts of fine from offenders and strives to jot down all that is important. An obnoxious person, approximately.

Photo credits: Pankaj Girkar, Prachi Gawde, Samiulla Peerzade and Prabha Sanil.

Learn how to start a BYOB Chapter in your city here.

[blogbyob]

Scout-heart

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

Harper Lee died this year in February. I should have felt something – the last breath of my childhood hero, one of those whose books were epochs in my life, and yet I was okay. Obviously I didn’t know her, but then I don’t know Rahul Dravid and yet I cried buckets when he got married. Or when news floated of the Dalai Lama being sick some years back, I felt a cold spear go right through me. Or when the Acropolis and Olympia burnt during the ’07 forest fires, and the Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed in ’11, I cried along with every history and art-lover out there. Or when…. I could go on. I think I’m a pretty empathetic person in life, but with Lee’s death I was numb. And am still, and I’ve finally (I think) realized why. It’s not about her; it’s about Atticus.

It wasn’t entirely her decision per se, but she must have had something to do with it – the publishing of ‘Go Set A Watchman’. This sequel apparently spoiled Atticus, and every book review had only one word for him – racist. I think that’s where the anger started. For almost a year now, I have been reading up on ‘Watchman’. Every shred of past interviews (of which Lee had very few), every blog post, every ‘why we all knew Atticus was a wolf talking in a sheep-ly southern drawl’ piece. Everything. Finally, I read Lee’s first again. I had to know if the Atticus I fell in love with over that long summer holiday, reading a dog-eared book borrowed from the school library, was a myth. And a man full of hate. It took me a night to devour the book the second time, and it was worth all the bleary-eyed-ness and unending yawns the next day in office.

Reading Mockingbird this time around, I noticed all the things I had forgotten or thought inconsequential back then. How Maudie Atkinson tells Jem and Scout that Tom Robinson’s case being given to the senior Finch was no accident. How Judge Taylor puts Ewell back in his place when he tries to dandy around at court, and lets Atticus question Mayella his own way despite questioning eyebrows; coming just this close to getting the truth out of her. How Atticus holds Scout at night and asks her to read to him even though her teacher says not to, how he stops her from fighting kids not because it’s unbecoming of a girl to do so but because he knows that only the weak at heart use their fists to prove what their convictions can’t. He who tells Scout to mind her brother only when Jem can ‘make her do so’. He who lets his daughter run around in pants and cares more about what she is speaking and learning than what she wears. When he didn’t shout at Dill for running away from home, I respected him anew. When he let his kids come to the trial and see the end of it, even though he knew he would lose, I prayed for him. Mr. One-Shot-Finch, who won’t keep a gun at home but isn’t afraid to stand up to a mob. Atticus, who understands fragility in the likes of Boo Radley and Mrs. Dubose and sees through their masks better than most. Atticus; the lawyer, the father, the man stuck in a small town who knows there is a storm coming and wishes to delay it, who knows that the ones he calls kin are wrong and yet cannot hate them. He sees their racial bigotry as a flaw in their making, not as a reason for vitriol ville.

I think Atticus is just innately good. He doesn’t have Maudie’s quick-fire tongue. He doesn’t snigger or speak foul. In his own way, he grins and bears it because he knows times will change; that in fact they already are changing. And, of course, he isn’t perfect. He has Calpurnia for a house help. He never tells Scout or Jem to walk away from the people of Maycomb County, but to tolerate and understand them – which can get irritating but isn’t Machiavellian at all. Many critics question why Atticus never asked for the Robinson case on his own, but I think that just isn’t him. To grab opportunities, to sidestep the young lawyer he knows needs experience. Yes, he probably wouldn’t have taken on the case had not Judge Taylor asked him to, but when he was given it he didn’t try to shirk it off. He did all he could while keeping his empathy and his optimism about the inherent good in people and the law of the land. Mockingbird may not be the best book to teach young kids, I agree, and the lack of black agency and the frequent use of the 'N' word in the book is Lee’s shortsightedness (let’s not forget she wrote this book in the ‘50s about a town in the ‘30s) and we may never forgive her for it, but to call Atticus an evil racist might be taking literary interpretation to wrong heights.

Atticus Finch is a product of his time, just like we all belong to the age and the society we live in. Mockingbird’s Atticus, not the one in Watchman mind you. I have no idea who he is and I don’t plan to find out. It has been a year since the release of the sequel, and I have finally decided that it will not find a place on my bookshelf. Lee’s estate can make money and the reviewers can cry hoarse, but I staunchly refuse to acknowledge this new Atticus.

So I tell myself - It’s not time to worry yet, Scout-heart. Atticus is.

And for me, he’ll always stay the same.

Kumari Trishya, Bangalore. Poet, reader, vintage lover, and a copywriter by profession. She blogs at 'Sonnet Tales'.

To Kill A Mockingbird was first published in 1960. Harper Lee’s second book, the sequel Go Set A Watchman was published just about a year ago on 14th July 2015. Image is a screenshot from the award-winning 1962 movie adaptation directed by Robert Mulligan.

You can discuss Harper Lee with us at our goodreads group. 

[blogbyob]

What’s on your queer literature list?

I have been struggling to write this post as can’t decide where to begin, and mostly because I don’t know where to begin. Queer literature - like the word queer itself - can be considered an umbrella term under which a lot of things can be gathered. I am not going to attempt to define what queer literature is or what can be qualified at queer literature.  I will, however, share books that are on my to-read list, lists made by others and some other authors that caught my attention but aren’t on my list (yet).

Just a disclaimer – this in no way at all whatsoever a comprehensive list of must read queer books or the best queer books or must read authors. This is just a place to start in case you are like me and still haven’t taken the plunge into queer literature.

My list: 1. Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal have been recommended to me time and again, and have been on my list for quite some time now.  Oranges is Winterson’s autobiographical debut novel about living and coming out in an extremely religious household. Why Be Happy is a memoir in which Winterson details her life as a 16-year-old girl living in small town in England with a very religious adoptive mother, coming out as a lesbian and her life after a quarter of a century since then.

2. Sarah Waters Sarah Waters is a contemporary Welsh author who is well known in mainstream literature. She has a written a number of historical novels set in Victorian times and later involving lesbian protagonists and their love affairs, which have been hugely popular. Her novels Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith were made into TV series.

3. Neel Mukherjee Lives of Others was highly acclaimed and was nominated for the Man Booker prize in 2014. The novel is based in West Bengal and revolves around three generations of a family living in the same house, and the social disparities in Bengal. In contrast, his first novel A Life Apart is about an orphan called Ritwik Ghosh, who grows up in the by-lanes of south Kolkata amid a crowd of suspicious and nosy relatives. He escapes to Oxford on a scholarship, but grows up suddenly as he discovers his true self and chooses to be a gay wanderer on the streets of London and in its public toilets.

4. James Baldwin James Baldwin was an African-American author whose most well known novel is Giovanni’s Room (published in 1956), which tells the story of a man who moves to Paris and his relationship with another man named Giovanni. His fiction explored black, gay, and/or bisexual men, and Giovanni's Room deals with the complications of the gay/bi dichotomy.

So this is my very short queer to read list right now. But, I am feeling very list-y so here’s a list of authors that you should check out. You’ve probably already read a lot of them but I haven’t so here they are:

1. Patrick McCabe (Breakfast on Pluto is supposed to be amazing) 2. Rita Mae Brown 3. Alice Walker 4. Alice Bechdel 5. Vikram Seth 6. Truman Capote 7. Patricia Highsmith 8. Sapphire 9. Audre Lorde 10. AM Homes 11. Michael Cunnigham 12. Farzana Doctor 13. Chuck Palahniuk 14. Jackie Kay

Oh, and here’s a list of lists recommending queer authors and books. Yay for lists!

1. 25 Queer authors you should absolutely be reading if you’re not already 2. More than 50 books by Queer People of Color 3. 50 Essential Works of LGBT fiction   4. Gay literature is firmly out of the closet in India 5. 16 LGBT books that will actually change your life (Buzzfeed, of course)

I apologise if I have missed someone seminal or any essential reading or if I have not been inclusive enough. I am aware I’ve not mentioned Trans literature, except Breakfast on Pluto, or queer YA Literature. And yes, there isn’t a lot of queer Indian literature either. But I hope that this helps you pick up a book by a queer author or one that has a queer story, and perhaps even recommend some from the categories I have missed.

Happy reading!

Tanya Singh, New Delhi. Tanya is a perpetual intern who is trying to become a better reader. Binge watches Netflix. Most definitely a millennial but without the coffee addiction.

Edit: Here’s a list of queer writing from India.The list is quite revelatory!  

[blogbyob]

#BYOBPanel - Is readership diminishing and the relevance of book clubs

Sometime in September last year, when BYOB was just one chapter and two meets old, we sat down together (over a shared google doc) for a session of self-introspection. We imagined we were invited to a panel discussion and were being asked highbrow and pertinent questions. Here are our “highbrow” answers, the somewhat hilarious quips, some rude jibes, and the ton of ideation that ensued. Nothing makes the laughter and creative juices flow, as being put in the spotlight. Disclaimer: no resemblance to any journalist is denied.

As we’re almost about to hit the 1000-member mark, we thought now would be as good a time as any to revisit this document from when we were still mired in uncertainty and doubt, with a healthy dose of enthusiasm and silliness. We’re still as silly (or possibly MORE silly, ever since our Bombay chapter introduced us to Bobby’s World) but we are a bit more confident about which way we are heading.

1. When and how did the BYOB Club begin?

Nidhi: Delhi BYOB was conceptualized in July 2015 and the first meeting was held on 16th August. How is a really difficult question.. There was a deep literary void in our lives which needed to be urgently filled.

2. How many members do you have and how often are the meetings held?

Nidhi: Cumulatively around 30 people have showed up at meetings which are held monthly. We are planning to hold them more frequently due to popular demand.

Kriti: We’re currently discussing ideas for future meetings based around themes or genres and we’re hoping to also, at some point, host screenings of film adaptations, informal gatherings at book cafes or other bookish places, and other literary-inspired events like walks and trips to literature festivals/book launches/fairs.

Edit: We did this “panel discussion” in September, and it is absolutely heartwarming to see what the numbers (of members and newspaper appearances) were then and now. The cumulative number now stands at 100+ in Delhi alone. Our frequency is now fortnightly, and sometimes weekly.

3. In the backdrop of a diminishing trend of book reading, especially when it comes to the sales of hard copies, how do you see the book reading scene in Delhi?

Nidhi: With multiple book fairs and bookish events, there’s no doubt that Delhiites love reading. When it comes to the medium, hard copies still win with the older generation… Obviously it’s dying, unless our club can help it not to sound obnoxious or anything.

Arcopol: Also, the World Book Fair, now held annually in February, is the biggest book fair in India - both in terms of footfalls and sales. Clearly, this is a city which loves buying books.

Shashank: Firstly, books in physical form aren’t really decreasing (not significantly anyway for us to call it a trend) . Just because bookstores are being shut down that doesn’t mean that reading is decreasing or that people are buying e-books. People are buying plenty of books online, physical copies. E-books have hardly been a threat.

Yash: What we seem to be getting at here, is that print is doing fine. Don’t be such a Luddite.

Kriti: Not sure this is a trend, actually (as everyone above says). Sure, we read a lot online, and on eBook readers. But diminishing sales at bookstores are also due to online retailers - so people still buy print copies, but via Amazon or Flipkart. I don’t really know many people who’ve made a complete shift to e-readers; I think the two (still) co-exist. Personally I dislike reading on a screen, but will do so, for example, for academic texts/when I need things to do lots of marking/easily searchable/books that are too expensive or not readily available/an urgent need for a sequel at midnight etc etc. Don’t tell anyone, but my ulterior motive for BYOB was to also encourage the exchange of physical books - and also for many of us to be able to let go of our own books and pass them on (a legitimate concern, as it turned out). At our meetings, however, there has been no dearth of books in all their bound-and-printed glory. Though we’ve given people the option of turning up with a tablet or Kindle to talk about their chosen book, only a couple have done that. The book piles are satisfyingly high, helping us to maintain a ‘surplus library’ too. EDIT- oh eh I just realised I repeated much of what Shashank said oh well just ignore me

Varsha: As an aside - did you know studies say that you can concentrate better and retain more when you read print, as opposed to e-readers and other devices? Also, the act to writing and learning to write has been shown to develop intelligence much more than simply typing things out (as kids are doing more and more now)

4. What have been your efforts (personal and that of the club) to keep the tradition of reading alive?

Nidhi: I EAT BOOKS ALIVE (AND KICKING?).

Yash: Why does it matter to keep reading books in their physical forms? Isn’t E-ink a valid physical form? Insert witticism about confusing food from the plate here.

Witticism about confusing the plate for the food: “Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.” ― Douglas Adams

Shashank: I think a lot of people when they talk about the supposed decline of physical books, they somehow conclude it with the decline of reading, which obviously is not rational.

Plus, physical books aren’t even declining that much. And even if they are, reading will still continue. If in the future physical books are not printed, then it would be clear that enough people have *decided* not to purchase physical copies, have chosen the electronic medium instead.    

Kriti: I just throw them at people, they make a nice ‘thwump’ sound KIDDING I WOULD NEVER DO THAT

Varsha: It’s not about putting in “effort” to keep a “tradition” “alive”... It’s more about like-minded (or not-so-like-minded) people coming together and sharing thoughts and ideas about books they like, in whatever form. Books are books. How you choose to read them is a personal preference.

5. How does the book club work?

Nidhi: We stare at each other for really long then go home.

Yash: Our supreme leader has probably answered this several times, so she should have something ready in response to this.

Kriti: Members bring a book (or two) that they’ve read to the club and sing their praises (except Nidhi who talks about books she doesn’t like and then other people end up defending them), and we have tangential discussions and arguments and ramblings and then we take a food break and no one cares about the ones who’re left (lol jk). The brought books are then auctioned up for grabs and we fight over them. 

Varsha: Also, once we’re done reading our borrowed book before the next meeting, we invade Nidhi’s house (or wherever the temporary home of our travelling library is) and demand that we be given more books from the existing reservoir. Bad things happen if our demands are not met with.

6. Is there an increase in the number of members? What has triggered the increase or decrease?

Nidhi: Yes, The Hindu and HT articles ftw!

Arcopol: Despite all the book launches happening all over the city, there was still a void for a reader-centric discussion forum and a well-oiled (and well fed, haha) book-recommendation system.  

Kriti: Yes. Hundredfold (hehe). Who are all these people? #help [our Facebook group has grown to 100, triggered by us being featured in several newspaper articles, as well as word of mouth and social media.]

Edit: Thousandfold now. :’)

7. Have you introduced any new concepts to make book reading more fun?

Nidhi: We throw chocolate at each other.

Yash: Have I been attending the wrong meetings^^?

Arcopol: Unlike the typical format of a book club (where readers read ONE book over a few weeks and come back to discuss it), Delhi BYOB lets readers bring their own picks, a book or an author’s work they highly recommend. So in the course of one meetup, you’re exposed to a variety of books, authors and genres.

Kriti: We also tempt people with free food, a ‘concept’ that has never failed in any scenario anywhere in the world.

Varsha: We’re encouraging people to develop a sense of humor? Also to end world book-club-member hunger by bringing us cupcakes? We’re noble like that.

8. What is the age group of readers in your club?

Average - 27. Median - 26. Max - 57. Min - 18.

Edit: Average - 26. Median - 24. Max - 68. Min - 14.

9. What type of books are circulated and read?

Yash: All kinds, literary fiction, non fiction, spirituality, self help, historical fiction, graphic novels, crime, anything that people have a passion for. Due to the variety of tastes that everyone brings to the group, we are constantly exposed to a similarly wide variety of genres.

Kriti: basically the club is designed to make you feel useless and thereby push yourself to read more...it’s genius.

10. How are book clubs as a meeting point for the like-minded? Are people willing to take out time for it?

Yash: I don’t know if there is any point to this. I mean, just by existing, do we not answer this question?

Nidhi: The response to our Club speaks for itself. If you reach out, you’ll be surprised to find many closet booklovers. Currently the overall demand is to have the meetings MORE frequently, so time does not seem to be an issue.

Shashank: Just like any other group or community, people come together *because* they have similar interests or common goals. Here we come together because we all love books (physical and otherwise) and we like meeting others who do. And most people take time out for things they like doing. (Unlike you. Who seem to be stuck in the wrong job, asking us stupid questions)  

Kriti: 42   Kriti (after reconsidering): I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of people who’ve shown up - it was way beyond our expectations and friend circles. Social media ftw. We’ve only had 2 meetings so far and many people returned, so I guess we don’t suck. Also it’s been awesome hanging out with people whose eyes shine when they talk about books, seriously, this is a fairly rare occurrence in my life right now.

11. Anything else that you would like to share about BYOB?

Yash: Maybe something about philosophy of the group. About what makes the group what it is. “Heil Nidhi” perhaps.

Nidhi: WE HAVE OUR BOMBAY CHAPTER STARTING IN OCTOBER!!!! We would love to have other cities have chapters of the BYOB Club. It will be like having a bookish family no matter where you go. Write to us at start@bringyourownbook.org

Kriti: We have pretty bookmark things. Nidhi: And QR codes. :) Nidhi (after reconsidering): Hindu beats TOI.

[blogbyob]

#BYOBAsks Jayanti Jha

Tell us about your love for books and book reading habits. Also, what’s the last book you read?

I started reading primarily because of my mother and Enid Blyton. My mother introduced me to Enid Blyton when I was very young and with my first book (The Children of Cherry Tree Farm), I realised what books could do. It opened a world of magic to me and there has been no looking back since.

I try and read 2 to 3 books at the same time. I reserve the Kindle for my daily work commute, and two books to read over the week. I try and read one book from start to finish over the weekend because then I have no excuses.

My best reading habit, though, is a library card. When I was younger, we moved around a lot, so the first thing my mother ever did in a new city (and still does) is get a library card; probably the reason we don’t have an enviable book collection at home. But I have the best memories from libraries in the smallest of towns (and biggest of cities), so please get a library card. Think of the money you’ll save and the books that you will have access to.

Again, when I was younger, my favourite genre would be fantasy and as I have been told, a fascination for Indian authors, but all that’s changed now, I have absolutely no specifications as long as it’s a good book (including non fiction, non fiction is amazing, you fiction purists!). Some of my favourites though are Gone With the Wind, Shantaram, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Suitable Boy, Harry Potter, the Millennium Trilogy, Corrections, Namesake, Half a Yellow Sun, all of Amitav Ghosh, all of Enid Blyton, Hunger Games, India After Gandhi, okay this list will never end.

The last book that I read was In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri and while it’s different from everything she has ever written, it made me want to move to Rome and sit on a park bench and read and take in the beauty of the city. The best part though is how she talks about her relationship with all the 3 languages that she speaks, Bengali, English, and now Italian.

What is a bookish quirk that you have?

I have to finish a book even if takes 2673392 number of days. And I want to read the entire Guardian list of 100 best novels (However problematic the list may be). And I always carry more books than I will ever read on vacation.

Do you often lend books to family or friends?

All the damn time, though I find it very hard to say no to people who I know will not return them.

Have you ever struck up a conversation with a complete stranger because if the book they/you were holding or reading (pre-BYOB days mostly)? Did you end up exchanging notes or recommendations or numbers?

I have a problem, I do this all the damn time. I know none of you will get this reference but in a scene in Gossip Girl, Serena goes up to this random person reading ‘The Beautiful and the Damned’, and starts talking, that is what I do, except in pyjamas and chappals, looking nothing like Serena.

Why did you want to start a chapter in your city?

Because I get ridiculously excited about things, especially if books are involved, and I love the name. Also, what Nidhi told my mother once about BYOB, “it’ll be like another library for you.”

How did you go about it? Was the process easy?

Nidhi put Prachi and me in touch and after a very awkward meeting, we decided to go ahead with the first meet. I was certain no one was going to show up but after meet 1, I didn’t care how many people showed up, because we always end up having a good time at the meets. And yes, the process was easy but that is at Bombay, we don’t have too many rules (hides face and runs away).

What has your experience at the meets been like? Share a memorable incident?

My favourite thing about BYOB is that when you hear talk about books that you would never pick up at bookstores yourself, you want to read those exact books then. Plus, you meet an interesting, eclectic bunch of people who are there because they love books and that’s amazing. Too many memorable incidents from the meets but Bobby’s World is my favourite. Plus, when I see people reading in cafes/trains I enthusiastically bombard them with information about BYOB and when they actually turn up at a meet, it feels like a small success!

What’s your advice to new chapters?

Please start BYOB chapters in your cities, it will be the best thing that you would have done in a while.

What’s on your reading list in 2016?

Tolstoy, Ulysses, Rohinton Mistry, VS Naipaul, Manju Kapoor, Middlemarch; I made the list last year but I haven’t got around to reading any of these books/authors.

How is your progress on the BYOB Book Challenge?

4/12 for now, but that will change.

I love love Khan Market but what I really love about the place is when I would walk home from the station, I would cross so many bookstores and had to stop myself from entering one every day. Faqirchand is the best though, it has an incredible collection of books stacked along the wall distinguishing it from the fancy bookstores with too many computers, magazines, and attendants. There is that bit in Norwegian Wood where Midori tells Watananbe how everyone glamourises her life because her family runs a bookshop but in truth, the bookshop has more magazines and stationery than actual books. This is happening to bookstores across and yet Faqirchand has managed to save itself from that. For now.

Jayanti Jha is the co-admin for the Bombay BYOB chapter and library, runs BYOB’s Twitter handle, hounds peeps for books, and looks at every cafe/park as a prospective BYOB venue.

Top image: Jayanti and Frodo Jha by Nidhi Srivastava. Frodo Jha is the world’s cutest labrador. Subsequent images, except “JJ with a book”, by Nidhi. Screenshot of [Gossip Girl] The Wrong Goodbye (s.4 ep.22) is from the internet.

Learn how to start a BYOB Chapter in your city here.

[blogbyob]

Looking for Daryaganj

Every Sunday morning in Delhi, bibliophiles from all over the city flock to a bustling part of Old Delhi. Lying along one side of the thoroughfare of Daryaganj, the Sunday book bazaar is responsible for this magnetic pull. A long time ago, Yamuna flowed right past this lane. The river has since shifted its course but left Daryaganj its name: ‘darya’ meaning river and ‘ganj’ meaning market or trading post. Today Daryaganj serves as a sort of buffer between New Delhi and Old Delhi. On Sundays, the crowd it attracts is of a particularly distinct flavour, while retaining the inherently transactional nature that underpins its origins.

Since the 1960s, book vendors have been setting up shop in this busy street, as the regular market remains closed in the daytime. The unofficial beginning of the book-bazaar is marked by Delite Cinema which is still standing after all these years; still home to an audience that cheers raucously at each twist in the tale and whistles at each saucy thumka of the item girl. As you cross Delite and proceed onto the footpath, you are slowly introduced to the chaos of Daryaganj, lying at the periphery of the new and the old. Next to the booksellers plying their wares, stray dogs loll about, waiting for scraps of food thrown their way by a generous vendor or sympathetic customer. In the bylanes are paan shops and chaat shops, populated by the denizens of Daryaganj snacking, idling, simply passing the time.

Here, the remnants of the past constantly bump into the possibilities of the future. The construction of the metro, rearing up from the ground in a jangle of cables and cranes, does its utmost to discourage any vehicular traffic. Passage through the thoroughfare is further impeded by the horde of bibliophiles. And yet, despite the madness of the prospect of getting through Daryaganj on a Sunday morning, cars continue to enter and shuffle along at a snail’s pace towards the Red Fort, competing with DTC buses, cycle rickshaws and reckless bikers.

The booksellers are arrayed one after the other, right on the pavement, their mats spread out and books laid out atop one another in varying degrees of disorder. In a culture that worships Saraswati and the books and paper she embodies, this is the one place where you find sellers nonchalantly treading on the volumes barefoot, while patrons point eagerly at the books they want a closer look at. It is an irony, a compromise, an adjustment; it is an attitude you become familiar with sooner or later, as you spend time in Delhi.

As for the books themselves, you are confronted with a smorgasbord of delights. The textbooks are what you see first: stacks of thick books on Java, electromagnetism and botany. Interspersed amongst the secondhand guides for competitive exams, you find offerings from Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri and Amitav Ghosh. Your eyes travel across numerous back issues of National Geographic and Reader's Digest. The Collected Works of Henry James lies under a mint-condition hardcover of The Casual Vacancy. If you can unearth them, sprinkled over the mile-long stretch are books by Paul Auster, Ian McEwan and JM Coetzee.

There are coffee table books with only minor wear and tear. There are pristine hardcovers available for less than Rs 100.  There  are an unreasonable number of copies of Stephen King, Lee Child and John Grisham. There is a lifetime’s worth of ‘airport thrillers’ in passable condition for prices less than the auto-rickshaw that you took to get here. There are piles of books brought to you from the Mills and Boons family, with their lurid covers showing chiseled heroes and strategically unclad heroines. There are tomes bound in regal brown hardback and there are yellowed books barely held together by tape and glue. Sometimes you spot books by authors that are barely present in the Indian market, enjoying a second life amidst the dust. Sometimes you look and look, but find nothing to your liking.

There are pockets of order amidst the chaos and chaos within the pockets of order. It is a complex system of interactions that you step into when you start navigating the wares of the booksellers: some selling by kilo, others selling by condition; some willing to negotiate, others not so much. One stall has a digital scale to measure the weight to the hundredths of a gram. Another has the sign ‘no bargain, Rs 30 only’ next to a pile. Yet another has its vendor shouting, “Bees rupay, bees rupay, sirf bees rupay!”. As you browse, you want to seem disinterested while bargaining but these booksellers are veterans of the trade and they are quick to spot the eagerness betrayed by your body language. They are waiting for the telltale glint in your eye as you spot that Raghu Rai photography book you’ve been lusting for since you went to his exhibition.

Your fellow book-hungry patrons come in a variety of flavours. Engineering students jostle for space with collectors, foreigners carrying cloth backpacks shop alongside women clad in burqas and niqabs. There are families who just want stationery, children petulantly pointing at colouring books. There are Delhi University girls wearing the mandatory black plastic spectacles, carrying lists from which books have to be ticked off. There are young bearded kurta-clad men discussing the merits of procuring yet another Chomsky that will sit unread on their shelves. The patrons are always on the move, and stopping to look is a tricky endeavour. There is just enough room for two lines of people to walk in opposite directions; sometimes there is less room than that. And in the middle of all this you stand, trying to make up your mind, craning your neck to read the lettering on the dusty covers, periodically checking to see if you still have your wallet and phone.

Despite the blaring horns, the air of madness and the crowd, the pushes, the shoves and the nudges, this bustle has a somewhat different nature. You might think it has its own charm. Being surrounded by these many books has that effect on you. You are perhaps less indifferent, more understanding, as you hope that everyone who has made their way here has perhaps done so with that same sense of exploration that has brought you, the intrepid reader, to this maelstrom of people and paper. You are here to seek, to possibly make a dent in the ever present wishlist of books at the back of your mind.

Daryaganj is a juxtaposition of the old and the new. Across the road, on the opposite side of the sidewalk of books, there is a McDonald’s, a Domino’s and a Vodafone store. Behind the book stalls are food stalls, pharmacies and ‘English Wine and Beer shops’. The Delhi gate and the incomplete Delhi Metro are located on either side of the bazaar, bookending the past and the future, enclosing an evolving, ever-changing present. It makes you think about what kind of grasp you have on the present and how much of what you see now is yours to keep. And how much of it will become stories that you narrate to others who will find it difficult to summon interest in this place and this time. With time, everything changes.

After a day at Daryaganj, you find yourself carrying bags and bags of books, with only a vague inkling of how they found themselves in your possession. Or you find yourself empty-handed, with aching feet, helping yourself to peanuts and nursing a beer in Thugs - the cosy bar nestled inside Hotel Broadway. But what is in your bag seems less important, because the joy of Daryaganj lies not in the discovery, but in the search.

Yash Sharma, New Delhi. contributes to brain drain in the daytime, consumes coffee and words the rest of the time.

Photos by Nidhi Srivastava. See the full set of photos of BYOB’s Daryaganj meet here. 

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What’s your Poison?

If you missed the Crime Writers Festival 2016 in New Delhi, you better have an alibi.

Chemist and writer Kathryn Harkup, on the occasion of Agatha Christie’s 125th anniversary, spoke about her research into the accurate and detailed use of poisons in the author’s work.

In her book A is for Arsenic, Harkup looks at 14 poisons in 14 books, admiring Christie’s deep knowledge of chemistry and drugs that she often planted in her stories even when they were unessential to the plot. The trick with poisoning, she said, was to “avoid the autopsy.” But after some mildly sinister questions from members of the audience, she was quick to talk about the responsibility of a writer, joking that people read crime fiction because they “want to know how to kill people.”

The audience was diverse and engaged, with both Pulixi and Spanish crime writer Clara Peñalver commenting on the unexpected level of interest and interaction they witnessed. While Swati Babbar, a PhD student of Spanish detective fiction, felt that the festival lacked a bit of the seriousness compared to last year, Manjiri Dahanukar, a student of French translation and interpretation at JNU thought the sessions were timed well and long enough to hold interest. The quiz organised by Quizcraft Global was also immensely popular.

The festival, in general, left most impressed and intrigued. Nothing — not even crime — is perfect, but the Crime Writers Festival has, as Jerry Pinto said, “the makings of a fine festival”.

This piece is an excerpt from an article which originally appeared in The Hindu. Read the full article here. Photos also by Kriti Bajaj.

Kriti Bajaj, New Delhi. Polices spine-breakers (because books feel it too). |Website|

[blogbyob]

Pragati Maidan - A bibliophile journeys into the past

The New Delhi World Book Fair is an annual event held at the Pragati Maidan - a location that always brings back many and varied memories of earlier times. Well before it became the official exhibition  complex, in the late 50s and early 60s, a kind of bi-annual Industries Fair was held at this site. This was before the Supreme Court was built and only the National Stadium and Purana Qila existed around the area. This was also at a time when Nehruvian ‘temples of modern India’ were just getting constructed and the little overgrown village that Delhi was got excited by any event. Everyone flocked to these events, and as a schoolgirl, I remember trudging through the stalls, seeing replicas of dams and factories and other similar exhibits.

The formal Maidan complex was opened in 1972, I now learn!! During my 5 and half years stay at MAMC hostel at Delhi Gate, between 66 and 72, the construction of the present complex must have been on going on. Between 1973 and 1982, I distinctly remember that on every vacation trip southbound, the Raj Rewal "Hall of Nations" structure was always the indication that the Yamuna had been crossed and that New Delhi Station was approaching!!

My first distinct memory of a visit to the site, was not to the complex itself, but to Apu Ghar which was located at the Tilak Bridge end of the complex and during the 80s and early 90s, I must have visited the India International Trade Fair on a couple of occasions. An annual winter event, it was a 'must do' outing for all Delhiites.

Although not much has changed in Pragati Maidan, the buildings look just the same and the gardens are shabbily unkempt, it has acquired an internal shuttle service and is on the metro route! It is now home to a series of events through the year; Car, Home decor and other shows. But for me the highlight is the Annual Book Fair, which is usually held in the second week of February each year. Even in the Lucknow days, I used to stay over an extra day if I happened to be in Delhi around that time to take in an afternoon of books. And since moving to the NCR, I have made it most years, with Udai for company last and this year. Even though the eBooks have advantage of cost and convenience, just the smell and feel of the books is an irreplaceable attraction. And most of all, it is reassuring to be among so many book lovers, and see that the obituary to the printed book is still some ways off!

This is an abridged version of an article that originally appeared on Sita Naik’s eponymous blog. Read the full version here. 

Sita Naik, New Delhi.  Retired Doctor, now full time reader. Writes a blog in which among random things she writes a weekly feature title 'The week in reading' - which is a recap of the books she has read that week.

Photos of the recently concluded New Delhi World Book Fair by Nidhi Srivastava.