Weekend Edition: Contemporary Indian Fiction
Today is the first day of Diwali, or Deepavali, the Indian festival of lights. Although, traditionally a Hindu holiday, it is celebrated widely across India and the rest of the world. It lasts five days, during which time people clean their homes, decorate with clay lamps, create designs on the floor using colored sand and powder called rangoli, and visit with friends and family.
To kick off Diwali 2020, we are highlighting four novels by Indian authors recently added to the OCL collection. To discover more, subject search “Indian fiction” in OBIS.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
"A richly moving new novel--the first since the author's Booker Prize-winning, internationally celebrated debut, The God of Small Things, went on to become a beloved best seller and enduring classic. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a subcontinent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety--in search of meaning, and of love. In a graveyard outside the walls of Old Delhi, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby suddenly appears, just after midnight. In a snowy valley, a bereaved father writes a letter to his five-year-old daughter about the people who came to her funeral. In a second-floor apartment, a lone woman chain-smokes as she reads through her old notebooks. At the Jannat Guest House, two people who have known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around each other, as though they have just met. A braided narrative of astonishing force and originality, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once a love story and a provocation--a novel as inventive as it is emotionally engaging. It is told with a whisper, in a shout, through joyous tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Its heroes, both present and departed, have been broken by the world we live in--and then mended by love. For this reason, they will never surrender. How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything. Humane and sensuous, beautifully told, this extraordinary novel demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy's storytelling gifts"-- Provided by publisher
One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan; translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
"Selling over 100,000 copies in India, where it was published first in the original Tamil and then in this celebrated English translation, One Part Woman has become a cult phenomenon in the subcontinent, jump-starting conversations about caste and female empowerment. Set in rural South India during the British colonial period, it follows a couple, Kali and Ponna, who are unable to conceive. Kali and Ponna try everything to please their parents and have a child, including circumambulating a mountain supposed to cure barren women, but none of the offerings or rituals helps. A more drastic plan is required, so Kali and Ponna's mothers agree that Ponna should go to the annual chariot festival, a celebration of the half-male, half-female god Maadhorubaagan. On the eighteenth night of the festival, there is an immense carnival, during which the rules of marriage are relaxed, and consensual sex between unmarried men and women is overlooked, for all men are considered gods. But rather than bring them together, this scheme threatens to drive the couple apart. Wryly amusing and deeply poignant, One Part Woman is a powerful exploration of a loving marriage strained by the expectations of others"-- Provided by publisher
The Secrets Between Us: A Novel by Thrity Umrigar
"Poor and illiterate, Bhima had faithfully worked for the Dubash family, an upper-middle-class Parsi household, for more than twenty years. Yet after courageously speaking the truth about a heinous crime perpetrated against her own family, the devoted servant was cruelly fired. The sting of that dismissal was made more painful coming from Sera Dubash, the temperamental employer who had long been Bhima's only confidante. A woman who has endured despair and loss with stoicism, Bhima must now find some other way to support herself and her granddaughter, Maya. Bhima's fortunes take an unexpected turn when her path intersects with Parvati, a bitter, taciturn older woman. The two acquaintances soon form a tentative business partnership, selling fruits and vegetables at the local market. As they work together, these two women seemingly bound by fate grow closer, each confessing the truth about their lives and the wounds that haunt them. Discovering her first true friend, Bhima pieces together a new life, and together, the two women learn to stand on their own."--Dust jacket flap
Karimayi by Chandrashekhar Kambar; translated from the Kannada by Krishna Manavalli
Chandrasekhar Kambar is one of the most accomplished Indian writers working today. In each of Kambar's novels, the archetypical Mother, Karimayi, is at the center. The narrative of Karimayi moves through an astounding time span, beginning with the mythopoetic times of Goddess Karimayi's birth and continuing through the historical and cultural shifts in the life of a small rural community called Shivapura during the British colonial era. Karimayi breaks the familiar narrative of an idyllic and traditional village community being destroyed by the incursion of modernity. Instead, the multilayered narrative of Karimayi weaves everything into itself--the story of the village's past, the myth of Karimayi, the disorder that sets in with the invasion of colonial modernity and the lure of the city, and, most importantly, of the disruption of another form of "native" modernity that the village community has already begun to incorporate into its rhythms of life. Cleverly challenging colonial cartography, Kambar's book plays with the idea of an eternal India that exists between myth and reality.
