Tit for tat : Shobhaa De on Arvind Adiga

Believe it or not, the diva of Indian pop lit Shobhaa De has written a scathing review of Aravind Adiga's new novel, Last Man in Tower. It appears in the Indian Express, 9 July 2011. 

It's tit for tat, isn't it?  

Lady De compares Adiga's book-venture to a Bollywood movie-project : 

But wait. Mumbai has become a hot destination for expat writers. Mumbai is hot! Just like Bollywood has gone nuts over picturesque Delhi and decided Delhi is hot. These days our lives have been greatly simplified, thanks to the “hot” handle. Everything and everyone is conveniently classified under two categories — Hot and Not Hot.

Lady De comapres Adiga's calculations to those of a daily-soap-maker's :

Adiga’s story is structured like a television soap, with neatly demarcated good guys and bad guys, plus a Hindu, Muslim, Christian “Amar, Akbar, Anthony” thrown in for good measure. 

Lady De concludes the review making almost a literary-critical point  : 

... the biggest villain of the book is Mumbai. And if I am disturbed by its brutal portrayal, it is because I find it a bit too simplistic and naive — the Big Bad City. So wicked, so ruthless, so ugly. That’s a writer’s prerogative. Perhaps that’s how Mumbai does appear to those who don’t call it home.

 The complete review can be found here. Ms De blogs here.

We hope that the De review leads to a spat of reviews which would culminate in the founding of a school of criticism that would do justice to the Adiga brand of Indian Writing in English.

Krishnan Varma's short story 'The Grass-Eaters'

'The Grass-Eaters' by Krishnan Varma is a distinctive short-story. 

It's a simple humanistic tale of a poor couple who live in a pipe. I describe it as 'a simple humanistic tale' because the purpose seems to be provocation of our compassionate understanding. However, it is Varma's technique that intrigued me. The poor man narrates his and his wife's story in an icy way as though he is pleading coolly and rationally for the validity of their lifestyle. That's a chilling experience. This-is-not-a-pipe experience in a fundamentally different, scary sense.

I tried to know more about the author through Google, but couldn't find much. I found the story posted here. I read the story first in a high-school textbook, The International Story by Ruth Spack (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Krishnan Varma, according to the author introduction in the textbook, "was born in Kerala, a southwestern state of India. He writes in English as well as in Malayalam. In many of his stories, Varma shares his observations of the life of the poorest people in his country."

The story is quite unlike most of the recent unimaginative 'Indian Writing in English' that pretends to be about the poor.