Minal Hajratwala : Leaving India

Minal left India alright (actually, her great grandparents left) -- but she has most profoundly left its family culture, being the only Khatri whom she knows to come out publicly as a Lesbian, which is a big step beyond marrying outside caste. (not to mention rejecting an arranged marriage).

And yet, of all her 35 first cousins, she probably knows more about family history and traditions than any of them, and this book, assuming it to be as accurate as she claims, will be a valuable document for her family for many generations to come.

It's also interesting to the armchair traveler like myself -- to get these little snippets of history from Gujarat as well as Fiji and Durban, South Africa. I'm even fascinated by the tiniest of anecdotes -- like how one family branch temporarily moved to Hong Kong to establish a trading company to supply electronics and such to South Asia and even Africa. (African buyers are only interested in price -- so that's a place to sell cheap batteries that only last for 15 minutes). But now that branch is moving to Australia because Hong Kong is being eclipsed by Guangzhou.

This book is just packed with that kind of detail -- accompanied as well with immigration statistics and a large bibliography relating to Indians in the many places to which they moved. Which is to say that the author is trying to be a serious scholar (though I'm in no position to judge her success)

The author's personal history is also quite fascinating - and very moving -- as she is dragged around the world by her parents, and ends up with a very lonely, unhappy adolescence in suburban Michigan.

When she confronts her parents with her sexuality, her father calls her "an educated idiot" -- for good reason, since her university experience (at Stanford) had gotten her all wrapped up in the theories of feminism long before she became a practicing Lesbian. She is clearly a very bright, top-of-the class kind of girl, and she picks up trendy ideology very quickly. But what else did her background give her? It was her parents who cut her roots to India -- and a handbook for a boyscout "Hindu merit badge" was no replacement. (yes -- her father actually wrote such thing)

Actually -- I wish we had gotten more about the life of her parents. It seems that her father, a chemist, was not especially cut out for either industry or the university. His education was only a ticket to America - and after his heart surgury (stress related?) he ended up as a financial planner. (no further details are given, but I'm guessing that he became a salesman for an annuity/investment company) Her Mom seems to have been more entrepreneurial - getting a degree in physical therapy and opening a suburban practice that became quite lucrative.

But still - it's amazing that Minal could be as open as she was about her parents (I mean -- they're still alive -- and they still seem to be close enough to travel together and live in the same city)

What does America have to offer us immigrants? (I'm including my family as well, since her great grand parents left Gujarat about the same time that mine left Central Europe)

Economic opportunity and university education -- or as author puts it - "freedom" -- the freedom to do and think what you want.

How does that compare with the richness (as well as restrictions) of a traditional culture, whether Hindu, Christian, or Jewish ?

What modern American culture doesn't especially offer is a good place for children -- and so children have found their own pop culture of anger and alienation.

How will the Khatri caste adapt to a society that invites them to come out of the Indian ghettos in which they lived in Fiji, South Africa, and even London? (for some reason, Indian culture is more tightly knit in London - and many children would never dream of breaking their parents' heart by not consenting to an arranged marriage)

I suppose there will always be some traditionalists -- but mostly, like Minal and myself, we're all thrown together in America, trying to make a brave new world.

How important is sexual orientation? Well -- it's very important for those under 30, and right now, it still seems to be an important focus of Minal's life as a Lesbian activist. But let's see what happens as she gets older.

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Favorite parts:

The rise and fall of the Narsey empire in Fiji - showing the both the benefits and the liabilities of keeping a business within the family. When it begins, family is a good source for loyal, hardworking, underpaid staff. But once it's been established, the family members just take what they want (as loans) , and after the death of the founder, nobody is left to stop them. Another result, in that small island world, is that the family, indeed the entire Fiji Gujarati community, is alienated from the rest of the islanders. (the author shares a quote from James Michener about how unpleasant the Indians seem). So eventually, the native Fijians drive them all out.

And it is interesting to note that other than robberies and children being beaten by their parents, there is no violence in this story, which stretches through 5 generations. That's quite a record for any family living through the entire 20th Century. They were completely outside all the wars and revolutions. None of them served in any armies, one spent some time in prison for political activism against the Raj.

What's missing:

What's missing is a broader, deeper picture of human life (beyond a record of business and marriage). Of course, this would be problematic, given that that all of the characters are relatives of the author, and she probably is going as far as she can. (she also notes, in an interview, that she didn't discuss the people whom she didn't like).

There don't seem to be any crash'n'burns among her extended family - i.e. lifelong dependents, but there are a few very unhappy mothers (who take it out on children or daughters-in-law), and I'm guessing that many of the men would be diagnosed as alcoholics.

There also don't seem to be any over-achievers - except in small-scale business. No politicians, artists, writers (except for the author), scientists (if her father had accomplished something, I think we would have heard about it)

There's also nothing about religious/spiritual life - other than family ritual. From what I've read about Indian temples in America, their histories are rather colorful, with a special place for charismatic leaders (just as in Pentacostal Christianity). The author herself has apparently joined a Zen organization - but there's nothing about that in her book.

BTW - what about those mothers-in-law? They are the great villains of Chinese family drama, but this book only records one ferocious example. And I'm not quite sure what happens to widows in the Khatri family. Do they rule their children the way that aging Chinese widows do?

BTW II: Just to note the role of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" in her father's life (it changed his attitude towards prospective employers, and enabled his success) The author also gives a copy as a gift to a cousin -- and the book is even mentioned in Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy". This wise approach to human relations is 180 degrees away from the attitude I picked up from my father - but there's no point in me changing now: I've gotten comfortable with being thoroughly disliked.

Thrity Umrigar : First Darling of the Morning

Very hard to keep a dry eye with this one - from beginning to end -- it's one long sob.

But I don't feel especially exploited because it seems so real, locked into an inward-looking family within the inward looking community of Parsis, one of the world's smallest urban minorities.

Can it be that there's only a hundred thousand of them on the entire planet?

Well, there certainly won't be any more thanks to her.

The author never broaches the subject, but apparently she never marries (and there must have been proposals from other Parsi families) She badly needs to leave home, but rather than taking a husband, she takes an airplane to Columbus, Ohio (which fascinates me - since I did the university there myself, about 10 years before her - and now can picture her in my familiar haunts - especially the stacks in the library)

Or -- maybe I do feel a little exploited -- because this girl, like her father, is such a smooth salesman - and the job of a salesman is to tell customers what they want to hear - so we get just the right amount of guilt-tinged self reflection. Her book is overwhelmed by "like me - like me - please like me".

Her story makes a nice comparison with that of my Chinese friend -- who also ended up standing in front of a U.S. immigration officer -- desperate for a new life -- and confidently turning the situation to her advantage to come away with a visa.

But whatever happened to the idealistic girl who cut classes to protest social injustice? It looks like "mommie dearest" (her cruel, unhappy mother) drove her away. And whatever happened to that poor woman, anyway? There's a postscript about the author visiting her sick father a few decades later, but what about Mom? Did that miserable couple stay together until the bitter end?

There's something so self-centered (self protective ?) about the author, I'm not very interested in reading her novels. But as a story about herself, this one feels so true and compelling. (and she knows how to build one climax on top of another)

As a reader, I felt like I was sitting next to her in the airplane carrying her away from her family - and she took the 12 hours of that international flight to tell me her story.

The images of her sweet, suffering dad and his sister -- who can forget them? Or the car trips they took through Bombay -- the interactions with the street people -- the patient nuns who worked at her grade school - taking her beloved, dead uncle to a "tower of silence", and the gentle oppression of the Indira Ghandi 'Emergency' (gentle compared with China's revolutions)

It's all quite memorable and intense.

But once that plane has landed -- I don't especially want to see this "Mad Parsi" again, who sadly, at least for Parsis, has really no particular attachment to Parsi tradition. In a sharp reversal of the Philip Roth novel, her life is "Goodbye world, Hello Columbus"

Note: it's also interesting to find her review of the John Keay history of India that I recently read.. We came away with very different ideas about Keay's response to the two major issues of Indian history - i.e the Muslim and British occupations.

Maitreyi Devi : It Does Not Die

A wonder full book.

No -- it's more like a raga -- i.e. it builds slowly (and perhaps a bit tediously) over the 137 pages of its first chapter -- to the thrilling, climactic 9 pages of the last.

And its special joy is honesty -- because who would ever admit to having been so prissy and pretentious as a precocious little teenage girl, growing up in a high-powered intellectual home in Calcutta.

The set-up is so simple: the professor's daughter falls in love with his brilliant foreign house-guest/student. Upon discovery, the student is sent packing, and a few years later, he writes a novel based on the experience. The book seems to be autobiographical (it gives the real name of his girl friend) - but it also fantasizes a sexual relationship between them. And since the book becomes a best seller, it will haunt/disturb/embarrass the girl for the rest of her life.

I.e. --- "It does not Die" -- especially because the author has a crystal clear memory that transports her back 40 years and makes the past present. (sometimes, my memory can do the same thing -- and it's quite a thrill - although her memory seems to be sharper)

And it also "does not die" because, as the Bhagavad Gita tells us, "Unborn, eternal, everlasting, premeval, it does not die when the body dies".

I.e. -- the author is making a spiritual journey -- becoming aware of her soul, as she realizes that she has a soul mate.

BTW - Maitreyi's world is rather special. Her father was a distinguished Sanskrit scholar - and her family were Brahmos -- a Bengali Hindu version of a Reformed Jew or a Unitarian Christian -- as they attempt to preserve the spiritual and ethical components of their religious tradition, while throwing out the old fashioned customs, prejudices, idolatries, etc. So they're very liberal -- but they're still quite upper-upper class -- and just a bit snobbish.

Meanwhile, her personal guru is the 20th C. poet-saint of Bengali: Rabindranath Tagore. Their connection is very close -- the great poet visits the author's remote estate many times, becoming the subject for another one of her books. ("Tagore Memoir")

And her novelist soul mate is rather special also -- he's Mircea Eliade, a renowned scholar of comparative religion (with possibly the longest Wikipedia entry ever written)

Living in such an intellectual world, Maitreyi has some rather sharp words for both of the religious scholars in her life, her father and Mircea - i.e. she thinks they've missed the point of it all -- and she shares a neat symmetry with her father, who also found a soul mate (a student assistant) who was not his spouse (Maitreyi's long suffering mother)

Yes, this story was a very nice trip -- and yet another nice contrast to the stories about living in China during the same time period. How nice to be living a world that is peaceful enough to pursue spiritual growth instead of just personal survival.

My favorite lines ? They would have to come from the climactic ending -- when, after 255 pages of painful reminiscence, the author finally confronts the man who wrote that he had ravished her 40 years earlier. At first, he turns to the wall (of his office at the University of Chicago) and refuses to face her. (how can Dante ever actually meet his beloved Beatrice?) Then.. finally..when does turn to face her: "His eyes were glazed. Oh no, my worst fears are true - his eyes have turned into stone"

The Music Room by Namita Devidayal

This is the first book that I've read along with Google -- i.e. using the search engine to look up pictures and other details regarding the people and places that are mentioned.

It's so exciting to get a satellite view of the neighborhood where the author grew up (Cumballa Hill) and then move east across Mumbai to Kennedy Bridge, the run-down neighborhood, where her teacher, Dhondutai Kulkarni, shared a two room apartment with her mother and the retired nurse who owned it, and then later follow the teacher to her own subsidized apartment in Shivaji Park.

And so we're introduced to the geography of Mumbai, as well as the private lives of the leading performers of the Jaipur Gharana, a lineage of Hindustani musicians, including the notorious diva, Kesarbai Kerkar, and the founding master, Alladiya Khan.

But something is missing: the music itself -- the powerful force that pulls these lives together and gives them purpose -- and I can't find any recordings currently on disc. (even though Dhondutai Kulkarni was still performing into the 1990's. Elsewhere, the author addresses this issue here )

And what's also missing is the life of the author, Namita Devidayal. We can find her here in her role as journalist for the Times of India - but a looming, unresolved issue remains: will she carry on the tradition in a serious, productive way ?

Like her teacher, Dhondutai, she had a supportive parent who loved Classical music and wanted her daughter to take lessons. But unlike Dhondatai, she had no parent obsessed by it, who would devote his life to chaperoning his precious Brahmin daughter through a demi-monde populated with Muslims, courtesans, and popular entertainers. Namita was destined to get married, go to university, and have a modern, respectable career in journalism, in which, this book plays an important role - especially as it advances her political concern with inter-community harmony. The world of Hindustani music has been both Muslim and Hindu since the time of Akbar - and indeed, Alladiya Khan seems, incredibly enough, to have been both - keeping the women of his family in purdah, but also wearing the Yajñopavītam and singing to the Goddess in the great Mahalaxmi temple.

Will Namita ever concertize and take students herself ? Perhaps she will teach her daughter who laughs in perfect pitch ?Does her husband oppose it ? (she's not very forthcoming about that relationship -- it does appear to be problematic. I don't think he's listed in the acknowledgments., and I suspect that, like her teacher, she will spend her old age by herself)

It's interesting to compare her world of female musicians with that of the "Singsong girls of Shanghai" . Her Chinese counterparts seem to lack the religious/devotional aspect of Hindustani music, although they share a courtesan tradition. Even the divas of Chinese opera (as related in this novel ) seem to be expected to perform more than music. Does the courtesan trade have a future in a world where attractive, talented women have many more options? (I'm sure there will always be a market for it)

Things I remember most:

*The importance of establishing the quality of a single note, the sa - which would seem to correspond to establishing a single form in the figurative arts.

*The moment, near the end of the book, where an old man (in white pajamas and a Gandhi cap) walks up to the singers and remembers hearing Dhondutai when she was a young girl, and then admonishes the author to "learn to commit" and "work on your sa"

*The idea that in order to become a great singer, one must either be very rich, or a poor fakir to whom material things have no value.

*The loving care that Dhondatai gives to her religious figurines - eventually throwing them in the ocean so that they may return from whence they came.

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Taking a brief respite from foreign novels, I listened to this book while driving down to Cincinnati last weekend on melancholy family business. From one Ohio boy to another -- it seemed like it would be a good novel for this trip. And -- it's supposed to be a classic of 20th C. American literature.

But I was not impressed.

Because it's not really about Winesburg, Ohio --- but only about the sad, lonely, dreamers of that satellite of Cleveland -- the ones who just can't get connected to their lives.

All the characters just seem to be variations on the author himself - who abandoned wife and children to become a great writer. They're all angry, frustrated, shabby -- and always on the brink of some violent act.

I suppose it's been celebrated because it offers the downside of American spiritual life - where religion is phony and individualism means solipsism. None of his characters are devoted to anything other than their own blurry fantasies of self.

But who knows -- perhaps a non-American reader would find it a fascinating window into our world.

And, there is something about northern Ohio that I've never really liked.

Moon Opera by Bi Feiyu

Ouch! This is the first Chinese novel that I couldn't finish (even if it is barely a hundred pages)

Chinese novels are often about miserable characters in bad situations -- but, until I read this one, they've always been redeemed by the sensitivity of that most important character of all, the person who tells the story.

But this author is just so heavy handed.

I feel like I've been taken to a carnival side show (instead of a Chinese opera), where the viewer is expected to gawk, rather than be introduced to the inner dynamics of a person or social setting.

Even Mian Mian's miserable autobiographic story was better - because at least it felt real.

This one felt like a cardboard puppet show.

India: A History - by John Keay

Following the path of Monkey and his friends, I've finally journeyed west into the land of Buddha, and selected this general history as an introduction. (it was easy to find - even the Forest Park Library had a copy)

Overall, it was a pleasant read -- but still a disappointment since Keay didn't venture beyond the details of political history - and that seems to be the least interesting aspect of this civilization. (which is probably why history wasn't written there until the Islamic invasions)

What's needed, is a writer who's more immersed in the cultural life of the area, but since it's so diverse, perhaps an overall survey will always be disappointing.

Being British (Scottish, actually), perhaps the author has favored the Raj, but it does seem that there was something like a Pax Brittanica, and everyone would have been better off if the Brits were still stuck with administering that area of the world. Does anyone argue that the Raj wasn't far less sectarian than either the modern states of Pakistan or India ? (note: this is my observation, not the author's)

Considering the three great centers of world civilization, India seems to have weathered the transition into the modern world much easier than either Europe or China --( and who knows how the Islamic world will ever handle it, unless, like Turkey, it becomes militantly secular)

Xiaolu Guo : Twenty Fragments of a RavenousYouth

I'd already begun reading a history of India -but China keeps calling me back - especially this story of a ravenous young woman.

Ravenous for what ? Most obviously, for food -- an underlying theme in most Chinese novels - this heroine, Fenfang, has a prodigious appetite -though it seems to be quantity rather than quality that interests her -i.e. she's a peasant -- a peasant hungry for a new life outside the boring routine of a small village.

There's that same brusque, flippant, smart, hard edge I've found elsewhere in the young Chinese women of a certain generation -- of both fiction and personal acquaintance.

I don't know that this novella takes us anywhere beneath that sometimes grating edge (how many times did I really need to hear her swear "Heavenly bastard in the sky") - but I guess one needs that edge to survive alone and poor in a great city.

And yes, she does survive -- the abusive boyfriend, the career disappointments, the roach infested hovels. She gets the education she needs and eventually she can sell her dreams (as a script writer). It's an Horatio Alger story -- where hard work, determination, and a relentless ambition to succeed on her own is eventually rewarded.

But we do wonder -- just where she's going to go --once she has gotten the career that can take her anywhere. What will she dream when she can dream whatever she wants ? Will she then become disillusioned - like one of her fictional characters -- now that she can smell the South China Sea ? She is so totally alone - more so than ever at the end of the story - as, for one reason or another, she breaks from the three men in her life (and she doesn't have any women friends)

Hao An, the hero she created for the screenplay that gives her a big break to begin her career, has a rather empty life. He's a relentless, small-time entrepreneur - who becomes attached to no one --other than a cheap whore who dies before he ever touches her.



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Small details I'll remember:

*not being able to find any place with clean floors and good air-conditioning in Beijing -besides the McDonalds

*Being so poor that the only contents of her sugar bowl are the two cockroaches who have starved to death.

*Her American boyfriend who is too self-sufficient. (most of the women in the Chinese stories I've been following, fiction or non fiction, end up with an American (or English) boyfriend.)

*The 3rd-rate film director -- who is both thoroughly repulsive, morally and physically - and completely understandable.

*The sadness of the body --not just the heart - for the lost lover --and how those feelings remain, despite the tough, cynical attitudes.

*The importance, in China, of knowing a person's age -- and thereby knowing the kind of life they've had (as the world changes so much from generation to generation). But this is also true of Americans -- which leads to another idea expressed by one of the characters, that Beijing is more American than America.

*How thoughtful the reviews on Amazon were. Careful readers really liked this book -and I liked how one of them wrote : "a story in containing, under its brief, chatty surface, an enormous world"