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5 Heartwarming Instances from Artist Namboodiri’s Life

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Black, white, lines, colours: Namboodiri has mastery over all of them. He can create sculptures in stone, wood and cement. He is the proprietor of multifaceted accomplishments. This work proves to us that he has the power to transform words that —devoid of pomp or adornment—into beautiful writing.

This piece lists 5 heartwarming instances from the artist’s life.

“Attu was an extremely intelligent man…..However, he was always interested in helping people. It was he who took me to Veembur to study Sanskrit.”

~

“In the days when I used to visit Varikkasserry, I used to make figures out of clay—but not to show them to anyone, I never did. One day, Poonthottam Namboodiri, the artist, found out about them and congratulated me: ‘Your efforts aren’t bad at all!’”

~

“Whenever he visited Varikkasserry, he would speak to me about what he was doing and I would listen attentively. A year went by in this way. One day, Kavu Namboodiri said to me: ‘Come with me to Madras, you can stay with me.’….. The next I knew, I had a letter from him. ‘You have to come here, Karuvadu.’ It was a turning point in my life.”

~

“I used to call K.C.S. ‘Master’. I began to meet him quite often….One day, Master said to me: ‘Vassevan, attend the painting class as well.’ And so a rare opportunity came my way: to be able to paint with the fi nal-year students in the advanced course in painting.”

~

“Time went by and one day, I heard a piece of news that saddened me deeply. That Master had a cancer of the stomach. …When we arrived at the hospital, Master, his wife and his son were just coming out after he had been examined.‘So, Vassevan?’ he asked….I had nothing to say. My face fell, I knew I was going to break down. I had to accept the situation. Master patted my shoulder and said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It had to happen sometime, Vassevan.’ I cannot think of anyone who faced death so fearlessly.”

In Sketches, Namboodiri has sketched certain people and events that linger in his memory. They are not in chronological order. Nor is this an autobiography that follows a given arrangement. These are glimpses that touched an artist’s heart and because of this, its composition is unique.

What the British Taught Us About ‘Charity’- An Excerpt from ‘Bombay Before Mumbai’

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‘City of Gold’, ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’, ‘Maximum City’: no Indian metropolis has captivated the public imagination quite like Mumbai. Bombay Before Mumbai, featuring new essays by its finest historians, presents a rich sample of Bombay’s palimpsestic pasts.

 

Here’s an excerpt from Preeti Chopra’s essay from the book:

 

The British colonial regime brought to Bombay the English term and ideal of ‘charity’, complete with religious, institutional and social connotations. Following the literary scholar and novelist Raymond Williams’s untangling of the word, ‘a charity as an institution’ was established in the seventeenth century, replacing the older meaning of the notion as ‘Christian love between man and God, and between men and their neighbours’. From the eighteenth century onwards, the institutionalization of charity resulted in a sense of revulsion to the term itself that came from ‘feelings of wounded self-respect and dignity, which belong, historically, to the interaction of charity and class-feelings, on both sides of the act’. This later led to the ‘specialization of charity to the deserving poor’ (a reward for approved social conduct) and to upholding the bourgeois political economy so that charity did not interfere with the need to toil for wage-labour.

 

British notions of charity and philanthropy intersected with, and influenced, Indian forms of gift giving. Douglas Haynes has underscored ‘the importance of gift giving in Indian ethical traditions’. Native businessmen in western India actively participated in this arena, which included the construction of wells, rest houses, support of festivals and Sanskrit learning or other arenas that were valued by their community. These were religious acts in the service of deities, through which the devotees hoped to earn merit. But gifting activities were also tied to the world of business. Writing of the merchants of Surat, Haynes emphasises the importance of a abru u (reputation), which required careful nurturing and maintenance, adherence to community norms and support of community religious and social life. A Abru u also denoted ‘economic “credit”’. It was essential for businessmen to establish a reputation of reliability in order to participate in vast commercial networks that were based on trust rather than enforceable legal contracts and modern financial institutions. Gifting was also used to exert political influence over rulers who came from outside the city and distinguished themselves from the culture and norms of the merchants. Here, the gifts made by merchants accorded to the norms of the rulers. According to Haynes, under British rule in the nineteenth century, this form of gift shifted ‘from tribute to philanthropy’, as merchants started to contribute towards secular institutions such as schools, colleges, or hospitals. Gifting for secular philanthropic works of ‘humanitarian service’, Haynes argues, diffused ‘an entirely novel ethic from Victorian England among the commercial communities of India’. Thus, even as merchants continued to uphold their reputations by gifting practices that maintained community religious norms and social life, they adjusted other practices to the norms of the ruling group. Building on and moving beyond Haynes, I underscore in this chapter how native elites also donated to charities that supported the European poor and, occasionally, Christian religious institutions primarily geared towards Europeans.

 

In the nineteenth century, colonial legal interventions transformed native practices of charitable gifting by making them transparent and bringing them under government control. As Ritu Birla shows, the Charitable Endowments Act of 1890 and the Charitable and Religious Trusts Act of 1920 introduced the criteria of ‘general public utility’ for determining charitable purpose. Yet, religious institutions were excluded from the category of charitable trusts until the Act of 1920 ‘established that religious trusts deemed of public import would also be eligible for classification as charitable trusts, and thus be classified as tax exempt’. An example of a religious trust of public import were dharamshalas, or travellers’ rest houses, which offered free room and board Primarily used by merchants, they were open to religious mendicants and those of ‘pure caste status’. Yet, in most cases, entry was denied to those of lower castes and untouchables.

 

From the 1890s onwards, as courts increasingly began to consider cases involving the ‘public nature of indigenous endowments … the question of public benefit came to rest less on equal access to all potential beneficiaries and became instead one of serving more than just the family or trustees.’ In the 1890s, the British saw dharamshalas as ‘valid religious but not public charitable trusts’. By 1908, however, they clearly considered them as institutions of public benefit. The 1920 statute allowed the Government of India to give local government and courts greater regulatory controls over public religious and charitable trusts, at the same time as it forced trusts to publicise their finances and accounts.

 

Thus, to summarise, in colonial India, charity retained a religious basis, serving specific communities, and excluding others. It remained distinguished from philanthropy, which had secular humanitarian goals, and served the public at large. While the institutionalisation of charity in Britain encouraged popular feelings of social revulsion and channeled aid towards the deserving poor, nothing suggests that all Indian communities felt the same way, at least in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bombay Before Mumbai is a fitting tribute to Masselos’ enduring contribution to South Asian urban history.The book is available now!

 

Dear reader: A letter from Jojo Moyes

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Bestselling author Jojo Moyes’ new book The Giver of Stars is a mesmerising tale of female friendship, romance, and the wonder of books and reading, inspired by a remarkable true story.

Here’s a special letter from the author in which she gives insight into the inspiration behind her novel:

 

Dear Reader,

 

Fifteen months ago I read an article in the Smithsonian magazine about the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky — a group of young women employed by the US Government’s WPA scheme to go into the mountains after the Great Depression and take books and magazines to families who might not otherwise read a word.

 

Enduring harsh conditions and braving all kinds of dangers — snakes, dangerous mountains, moonshiners and criminals — they would saddle up and ride hundreds of miles a week to read to the sick, teach children, encourage the spread of facts in a time where religion and snake oil salesmen were able to battle for people’s minds. They often faced fierce resistance, both for their sex and from families who were suspicious of any reading materials other than The Bible, but worked together in a system that lasted seven years across several states, bringing everything from recipes to comic books biological texts to these remote families. Many of them became beloved to the people they served.

 

The photographic images of these young women were extraordinary, and their relevance to today hit me hard. I travelled to this remote area of East Kentucky on two separate research trips, rode the trails that the librarians would have ridden and stayed a week in a remote log cabin so that I could experience nature as they would have done (I got told off for moving a snake with a stick). I fell in love with the landscape and the storytelling people who inhabit it.

 

The Giver of Stars is the result — a story of five such women from very different backgrounds, brought together in a tiny community in the mountains of Kentucky. The story is fictional, but I have rested it on a skeleton of facts. I can honestly say I have never loved writing a book more, or been more inspired by my subject matter. I really hope everyone else enjoys it as much as I have.

 

Jojo Moyes

Intrigued? The Giver of Stars is available now.

Even True Love Has a Dangerous Side- The Prologue from Novoneel Chakraborty’s New Book

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‘I’ll gift you a love story that every girl desires, but few get to live.’

He’d told me once. And boy, did he stick to his words! Vanav Thakur is the perfect boyfriend that any girl can have. Sometimes, I wonder if I really deserve him.

I’m Aarisha Shergill and my life is about to get ripped apart because I should have known some things should be left alone.

Bestselling author Novoneel Chakraborty is back with Roses Are Blood Red. Read the prologue from the book below:

—

TOSH, HIMACHAL PRADESH Sometime Ago

It was an important day for her. Very important. He was coming down to meet her after . . . in fact, she had been counting: three months, fifteen days, eleven hours and—as she left her house—exactly nine minutes. She had told her parents that she would stay with her bestie from college— Pragya—that night. Pragya, obviously, had no idea about her subterfuge.

He had selected the venue for their clandestine meet. It was only two blocks from her house to the small tea shop that would have closed for the day by then.

Despite the several layers she had on, Aarisha’s teeth chattered as she cycled towards the tea shop. The shiver was partially due to the unseasonal cold wave that had gripped the Himalayan town; she trembled more in anticipation of the impending rendezvous. Should I launch into his arms as soon as we meet? Or should I stand back and simply admire him for a bit? With an avalanche of thoughts crashing through her mind, she finally reached the location for their tryst. She stopped nineteen-to-the-dozen. Only the rarest find their harmony in silence. They were rare, she knew.

She cupped his jaw in her long-fingered hands and caressed his three-day-old stubble with her thumbs. He stretched out an arm to flick the switch on the car stereo. Ariana Grande’s husky voice softly permeated the interior of the car with one of her favourite tracks: ‘God is a Woman’. Aarisha leaned in, but before their lips could touch, he gripped her waist and stopped her descent.

‘Not so quick, Ranisa,’ he whispered.

She loved it when he called her by that name. ‘Ranisa’ meant queen—his queen.

If there was one thing she absolutely loved and couldn’t quite define, it was his enormous respect for her. It was so deep-seated that she often wondered whether she deserved to be placed on such a high pedestal.

‘You always say this,’ she whispered petulantly. ‘Don’t you want to kiss me?’

He stared at her beauty, her dark hair cascading like a cloud around her shoulders. Her eyes didn’t reflect pain, they carried a complaint.

‘D’you honestly believe that I don’t want to kiss you?’ he asked.

‘Then why don’t you?’ she sulked. ‘Also,’ she dismounted from him and scrambled back into her seat, ‘I hate it when you leave me and go away.’ He sensed the flood of tears about to burst through the dam at any moment.

‘Why?’ he asked softly.‘I feel insecure about you, about us,’ Aarisha choked.

An ironical smile touched his face. ‘You know this thing we call love, it’s like a dense forest. As you enter, you hear the growl of several wild beasts. At times, you may even encounter them. Insecurity is the most ferocious beast in this jungle. Whether to fall victim to it or vanquish it to continue one’s quest to unearth the greatest treasure ever, which is also hidden in this very forest, is the lover’s call. I’ve taken mine. What’s your call, Ranisa?’

She stared at him, amazed at the total conviction in his eyes. How could someone’s eyes always reflect such confidence? It was the kind of assurance one developed after scrutinizing life so closely that its tricks became only too predictable. She leaned over and kissed his closed eyelids.

‘I’ll fight. I promise I’ll fight all the beasts that come our way,’ she whispered.

There was a faint smile on his face as he said, ‘Don’t worry about the distance between us.’ He raised her downcast face and kissed her forehead, ‘The body is only what is. The soul is what is, what was and what will be. The scope of all the urges stemming from the body is a mere molecule compared to the intense longing that arises from the soul. And for the soul, distance is an alien concept. Distance only restricts the body.’

‘But the body is also important in its own way, isn’t it?’

‘As much as a house of bricks and mortar, because it houses the vulnerable and the fragile within. But we all know that the shelter is temporary and, as all temporary things, too transient to worry about.’

‘What’s permanent then?’ Aarisha asked.

He placed his right hand flat against her left hand, palm to palm, their fingertips splayed until they found the gaps through which the fingers slipped, and the hands clasped each other.

‘This,’ he said, tightening the clasp, ‘this is permanent.’

I wish I could tell you the number of wars I’ve fought to make this permanent, he thought.

‘D’you know, there are times in your absence when I get the feeling that I hardly know you at all. Is that good?’ she asked, resting her head on his shoulder.

‘You’ll know. You’ll know very soon. It’s just a matter of one more year.’

‘One more year?’ she asked, frowning.

‘Yes. In one more year I’ll gift you a love story that every girl desires, but few, if any, get to live,’ he whispered.

‘What do you mean?’ she drew back to look at his face. There was no response. She raised her head—and suddenly she felt a tug on her hair.

‘Ouch!’ she yelled. Before she realized what was happening, she felt a punch on her face that broke her nose and lacerated her lips. The second punch that buried itself in her gut almost made her throw up. Aarisha fell unconscious, her face a bloodied mess. Three more punches followed: one to her jaw, another landed in her ribs and the third, in the stomach again. He shoved her away from him with force. The side of her head slammed against the window. He yanked down her jeans, slipped them off her legs and tossed them out of the window. He tugged her panties down to her knees and from his pocket he extracted a vial of semen. He smeared

some of the semen on her panties, on her dress and emptied the rest on her bare abdomen. He made sure nobody would ever track down whose semen it was. For a doctor, it wasn’t even a task. He dressed her back in a hasty manner.

As soon as he was done, he used his cell phone to call the local police station. Emotionlessly, he relayed the information, ‘A girl has been raped and abandoned on the road.’ He gave them the approximate location before hanging up. He glanced at Aarisha’s unconscious battered face and muttered, ‘The first thing you should know about me is: I…Don’t…Let…Go…’

He turned on the ignition, opened the passenger side door and pushed the girl’s insensate body out. He put the car into gear, gunned the engine and sped away into the night. After half an hour of driving, he stopped. He alighted from the car and stood at the edge of the abyss, gazing into the darkness. He dialled the police again. They informed him that the girl had been rescued and countered with their own questions about his identity. In reply, he flung the phone into the abyss as far as it would go. He looked up at the night sky— at the constellations of stars—they had mocked him enough. They thought she would never be his. And now, he would win her from everything—and everyone.

He extended both his middle fingers skywards and bellowed a bloodcurdling war-cry against destiny.

Vanav Thakur was no ordinary man. He was soul-deep in love with a girl. And he was a man with a plan.

Curious to know what happens next?  Mysteriously thrilling in its essence, Novoneel Chakraborty’s Roses Are Blood Red is a haunting story of a passionate and eternal love.

 

An Exclusive Excerpt from Harinder Sikka’s Newest Book!

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Bestselling author of Calling Sehmat, Harinder Sikka is back! His new book Vichhoda, narrates the experiences of another powerful woman, Bibi Amrit Kaur.

Bibi’s life is torn apart in the 1947 riots. She’s now living in a different country with a different identity, a fate she eventually accepts gracefully. She gets married and has two children. Life, however, has something else in store for her. It breaks her and her children apart. And this time the pain is unbearable.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

 

In the meantime, Bibi reached home to find a large group of women assembled in front of her home. They were surprised to see her without her burqa. As the tonga stopped, she stepped down, and, without saying a word to the women, rushed into her home and bolted the door from inside. But like jungle fire, stories about her act of bravery reached every ear in no time. It generated praise and fear in equal measure. Even though Sakhiullah was respected by the villagers, most women feared police retaliation. They were all aware of the brutality with which cops often operated, especially in rural areas where they were treated like demigods. When Sakhiullah arrived that evening, he was shocked to learn about the turn of events. He rushed to the army camp situated near his house and narrated the story to the deputy camp commander, a young army captain named Ishtiaq, who was also his first cousin. ‘I need urgent help, Ishtiaq. We have no time to waste. It won’t be long before the police come banging at our doors. And that could mean serious trouble; not only for Bibi, but for the entire family!’

 

The young captain nodded and called his most senior and experienced jawan at the camp, Subedar Major Mushtaq Khan, for advice. A deep furrow appeared between his brows as Sakhiullah related the story. He mused for a moment and then said, ‘Sir, the camp commandant will have to intervene immediately as this is a case of attack on a serving police officer. But he’s in Islamabad for the entire week. I know the SHO well. He’s politically connected, highly corrupt and most brutal. If he survives, he will take revenge in every possible manner. But even if he doesn’t, his colleagues won’t spare your family. I suggest that you move out with your family immediately. Also, Bibi will have to be sent to India right away if we are to save her.’

 

Captain Ishtiaq looked at Sakhiullah and said, ‘Bhaijaan, if what Mushtaq Sahib is saying is right, then we don’t have much time. Please decide. I don’t even have the authority to do what we are planning, but I shall not spare any effort.’ A helpless and confused Sakhiullah nodded in affirmation and the subedar swung into action.

 

An hour later, two military jeeps arrived at Sakhiullah’s residence. Four army jawans in battle rig and armed with rifles stepped out, followed by a subedar and a young lieutenant. The lieutenant took Bibi into custody while Sakhiullah watched from a distance as a mute spectator. The military officer whispered in her ear that her life and that of her entire family was in danger. He explained to her that the arrest was being made only to evade a counter-attack as the police would not interfere with the military forces.

 

The first jeep left, taking Bibi to an unknown destination. Shortly, Sakhiullah too departed under escort. He was accompanied by his two minor sons and his cousin, Captain Ishtiaq. After travelling for about twenty kilometres, the first vehicle turned left from the narrow highway towards the Indian border while the second one turned right towards the main city. Bibi instinctively realized the plan. She cried and begged for an opportunity to meet her husband and children one last time. But her wails fell on deaf ears. Despite being aware of Sakhiullah’s clout, the young army lieutenant displayed no mercy. He could not have; he was under strict instructions. The jeep reached the border half an hour later. The officer stepped down and went across the border, exchanged pleasantries with his counterpart from India and swiftly handed Bibi over to the Indian armed forces.

What happens to Bibi next? Order your copy of Vichhoda to find out!

4 Things that Distinguish “Dharma” from “Religion”

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Chaturvedi Badrinath’s Dharma, edited by his daughter Tulsi Badrinath, is a comprehensive study on the concept of dharma. In this book, Badrinath actively dwells on the questions of Indian civilization, components of dharma and the contentious origin of the words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’. Central to the perception of what substantiates dharma is the differentiation between ‘dharma’ and ‘religion’. The author iterates the error in the identification of the two terms that has come about over a span of time and emphasises that the two concepts have no point of intersection.

Here are a few pointers that illuminate how the question of religion is entirely different from that of dharma, in order to give you a head start into the book:

 

The author defines religion as a central belief system, where God is understood to be the creator of the universe and where there are scriptures and commandments illuminating the teachings of God. Dharma on the other hand, is unique in its understanding. It is the Indian understanding of Man and the way of the civilization that existed around him.

~

The terms ‘religion’ and ‘dharma’ are untranslatable as they both belong to different cultures. The concept of religion came with the Catholic missionaries of the sixteenth century whose minds were ingrained with the understanding that religion is a unified system of beliefs of a community. However, dharma carries with it, a comparatively freer flowing concept which is central to the Indian thought of exploring the identity of Man. The concept of a ‘Hindu’ religion and ‘Hinduism’ itself is a false one constructed by the western thought in an attempt to quantify the Indian way of life.

~

In the Atharva Veda, dharma is described as the “oldest customary order”. Unlike the concept of religion, dharma does not relate to a divine revelation or faith, it concerns itself with the questions of human life and the reality possessing it.

~

The concept of transcendence is quite central to the understanding of dharma as opposed to the understanding of religion. Following this principle, it is derived that dharma does not encourage the binaries of good and evil, natural and unnatural or even human or inhuman, as in the case of religion. All the binaries are transcended into the realisation that these are merely just experiences in the wholesome comprehension of human life.

Thought provoking, perceptive and challenging many long-held notions, Dharma is a must-read for anyone who is interested in India, the interaction of different religions over centuries in this land, and the underlying unity of all life.

How Do You Say That Again? Sy-ky-uh-tree! A Timeline of Mental Health from ‘ From Leeches to Slug Glue’

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Although mental illness has been around just as long as humans, it has been understood very differently through the ages. The stigma attached to mental illness left people to suffer through half-baked theories and unscientific treatments. In an uphill climb from the darkness it was kept shrouded in to the 20th century when mental health is a cause championed by media and celebrities, the world has come a long way. How did we claw our way out of the sludge of misplaced beliefs and superstitions?

In From Leeches to Slug Glue, Roopa Rai investigates how the perception of mental conditions, especially psychosis and depression, changed through the years to finally take its place as a valid medical concern in the 20th century.

 2nd Century BC

The first description of mental illness occurred in Charaka Samhita, a seminal work in Ayurveda in the second century CE, which emphasised an inextricable connection between body, mind and spirit and consequently, deemed it necessary to treat the body in order to heal the mind. A change in diet and lifestyle was prescribed to include good sleep patterns, less mental stimulation and reduced stress. It was in 3rd century BCE that the first hospitals for the mentally ill came into existence in India.

3rd– 4th Century BC

The Greek Hippocrates suggested that the proportion of four humours, or vital bodily fluids —yellow bile, blood, black bile and phlegm—was responsible for  people being choleric (ambitious and irritable), sanguine (charismatic and optimistic), melancholic (introverted and perceptive) or phlegmatic (relaxed and peaceful). Any imbalance in these fluids could affect the temperament of the person, hence indicating mental illness.

9th- 10th Century

Islamic psychology prescribed ’ilaj al-nafs’ (‘the treatment of the soul’) to the mentally ill. Baths, music and occupational therapy (sewing, farming, cooking) were the prescribed treatments. Ninth century Persian physician and philosopher Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, chief of the Baghdad bimaristan (hospital) and the tenth-century Avicenna provided descriptions and treatments for conditions like insomnia, mania and depression.

1246

London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital (founded in 1246) reigned as the oldest asylum for the mentally ill with its approach to mental illness evident in its monstrous viewing gallery where, for a fee, the public could stare and jeer at the inmates, who were usually chained or restrained in some way.

18th Century

A wave of intellectualism in the latter half of 17th century changed the way Europe looked at mental illness. Even though the idea of ‘moral treatment’ of the mentally ill received severe opposition, the work of English physician William Battie changed the way mental conditions were perceived. Appointed the chief physician at St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics (established in 1751) in London, Battie took on the cause of the insane.

1758

In 1758, the world was introduced to William Battie’s Treatise on Madness, the first modern text on mental illness. In a scathing attack on Bethlem’s methods and its viewing gallery, Battie made a case for the humane treatment of the mentally ill with emphasis on cleanliness, good food, fresh air and enough distractions for the inmates along with access to friends and family.

1796

The untimely death of a young widow suffering from ‘melancholy’ in an asylum led to the establishment of The York Retreat (in 1796) by philanthropist William Tuke and his son Henry. Founded on a compassionate, non-profit approach, it countered the idea of imprisonment of the mentally ill and instead, encouraged its patients to walk freely around the gardens and take up jobs like sewing, knitting and farm labour. Physical punishments, chaining and handcuffing were completely banned!

In 1813, William Tuke’s grandson Samuel Tuke wrote the famous Description of the Retreat near York, and with this, physicians across the world began to adopt William Tuke’s methods to restore self-esteem and self-control in the mentally ill.

1793

Haunted by a personal tragedy, Frenchman Philippe Pinel was determined to study madness and its treatments. In 1793, Pinel began his research on 200 of the 4000 inmates locked up at the Bicêtre Hospital in Paris. The detailed insights and empathy of Jean-Baptiste Pussin, the superintendent of the mental ward inspired Pinel to begin expounding the theory that conversing at length with patients could bring them out of their delusions whereas adopting a cheerful manner in everyday activities could relieve their melancholy.

For facilitating this leap and bringing the mentally ill out of the shadowy margins of society, Philippe Pinel was credited with being the glorious ‘unchainer’ of the insane’ and the founding father of the discipline called psychiatry.

1845

The Lunacy Act passed by Britain in changed the status of the mentally ill to ‘patients’, taking them from prisons to hospitals!

Fascinated with how science and medicine evolved over time? Read Roopa Pai’s From Leeches to Slug Glue to know more!

All the Tumble and Bumble in Trotter-land!

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In the eighteenth century, Justin Aloysius Trotter, or the Great Trotter, tumbles earthward to his death while surveying his vast lands and admiring his wealth from a hot air balloon. Two centuries later, the Seventh Trotter, Eugene Aloysius, narrates the epic story of a family at the fraying ends of its past glory.

The Trotter-Nama, Allan Sealy’s comedy of manners about Britain and India’s motley offspring is presented on an extravagant canvas where the chronicle of the Trotter family is generously scattered with unabashedly entertaining moments.

Here are 6 delightful instances from this mesmerizing narrative-

  1. The buoyant Salamandre carrying the ageing Trotter is buffeted by the strong winds of his hubris. As he proudly surveys his demesne and indulges in a feverish ecstasy of imagined power, Mr. Great Trotter loses his balance and is launched into an anti-climactic tumble. On his way down, Trotter yearns for roasted meat and dessert-

‘Justin was hungry. Might the Salamandre have sent down the tandoori partridge? He looked about him: it had not. The bird was wasted, his lunch floating away. But it was not a tandoori partridge he craved, nor was it the curried doves. It was nothing savoury; rather, a taste he had almost forgotten thanks to a hasty vow….’

  1. From the gossamer hammock of riches and power, the Great Trotter billows down into the dense, corrugated waste of his neighbourhood. The final resting place of the doyen, the gutter, is described by the frenzied narrator in a hyperbolic verbal diarrhoea –

  

‘…of cretins, the discharge of pimps, the lavings of lepers, the spewings of drunkards, …the moultings of reptiles, the crackling of corpses—

 

Narrator, do you hear me? Your eyes are rolling!

 

— the bedding of incontinents, the bile of oil painters, the gall of historians, the swaddling of infants,…the betel-juice of bicyclists, the chewing-gum of motorcyclists….’

  1. Expertly crafting a fresh batch of jalebis- a wildly popular sweetmeat- Mansoor Halvai expresses comical disbelief at a refusal of his precious offering. His exaltation of the silver leaf covered, syrup coated crisp coils of deliciousness is as amusing as his absurd attempts at enticing Yakub – 

 

‘He handed the jalebis to Yakub on a leaf, and laughed out loud as he did. ‘Sorry, Yakub! I misheard you. For a moment I thought you said no!’ His eyes bulged. ‘You did? Yakub, bhai, what are you saying! Surely you mean yes, yes? No? Yakub, reconsider, I beg you—the offer is free, no strings attached. Shun this foolery. Look, here’s gold beneath the silver—see the precious liquid running in these veins? You’re not well, that’s it; the sun’s gone to your head.’

  1. The crippled artist Marazzi pricks the grandiose bubble that the Great Trotter floats on by painting Sans Souci is all its flawed and skewed incompleteness. The ruins of the ambitious project are no deterrent to either Monsieur Trotter’s flamboyance or Marazzi’s reproof-

 

‘Do you know,’ he offered, his good humour returning, ‘I mean to call my seat Sans Souci.’

Marazzi’s eyes disappeared in a smile. ‘Monsieur Trotter is doubtless aware that every house built in Europe since the peace is called Sans Souci. There are six in my district alone.’

  1. E Trotter hoodwinks airlines to manipulate their determination to appease their customer and gets himself a fun, relaxing experience out of all the chaos he single-handedly generates-

‘The last call for Mr E. Trotter. You sit out ten minutes. Will Mr E. Trotter please report immediately to Gate 6. Stay put for another ten. Mr E. Trotter, you are wanted immediately at Gate 6. Then you count, slowly, to a hundred, and rush out. And after a little storm and stress they slap a First Class boarding pass into your hands because the stand-by crowd have filled up Economy. Then a whole bus, all to yourself, racing past the hangars…..’

 

  1. Sunya, a poulterer, indulges in rhapsodic rapture at his choice of profession and places the fruit of his labour, the humble egg, in a halo of purity bolstered on the authority of scriptures and old codes-

‘No, an egg is a noble thing. Consider its shape: there is the sunya, the zero from which all things spring, to which all things tend. Consider its colour: there is the whiteness of the sun, of cows, of milk, of pure ghi, of goddesses, of all good things. An egg is blameless. An egg is smooth, hairless and un-begotten. It is firm, it is fragile, it is flawless, it is just fine.’        

       

Allan Sealy, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the Padma Shri, proves once again his ability to elevate the mundane, add sparkle to the dreary and to create unforgettable characters out of his wickedly masterful humour.

For more of his magic, read The Trotter-Nama!

Meet the Trotters from Irvin Sealy’s ‘The Trotter-Nama’

Posted on by Penguin India

“The nama is a medieval court history, a chronicle. My nama would chronicle a colonial encounter, the overlap of Europe and India, across seven generations of the Trotter family. The Trotters would embody that history, the history of the Anglo Indians, down to Independence and after.” writes Irwin Sealy about his dazzling epic.

The Trotter-Nama meanders around Sans Souci, the Trotter estate near Lucknow, and teems with multi-faceted characters that are looped into the orbit of  the Trotter family as they struggle to hold on to their shifting identities.

Here are 5 unforgettable characters from The Trotter-Nama –

  1. The Great Trotter

Justin Aloysius Trotter- the octogenarian with a brown and a blue eye- lords over Sans Souci from the west tower with wives stashed away in the other three towers that form the silhouette of his estate. The Great Trotter straddles two worlds- his wig draws attention to his western roots while his choice of clothes makes him a part of the landscape of Lucknow. Perched above his beloved estate in his prized balloon Salamandre, Justin Trotter gives wings to his ambition-

‘But now—here—in the air above Nakhlau what swept over him was the original lust, that suzerain impulse which once shook to his vitals a younger man. Take this city, then all Tirnab, and who was to say what else might follow? Install the Nawab in some petty principality. Drive the British down….’

 

  1. Eugene Trotter

Writer by profession and narrator of the Nama, Eugene Trotter- the 7th of the line- is ubiquitous in the numerous asides and interpolations that fill the nooks and crannies of this chronicle. His gaze encompasses the length and breadth of this vast saga as he navigates between space and time and offers a glimpse of the world outside Sans Souci through the slips-

‘The Late Mr Trotter,’ my favourite dentist used to call me. His daughter was less charitable. ‘Lenten Trotter’ was her choice, and when I asked her why, she said: Well, corpu-lent, flatu-lent, indo-lent. She thought the indolent was especially apt even though I said: I’m half Anglo, you know. So. The Late Mr Trotter, Seventh Trotter, pleased to meet you.’

 

  1. Yakub Khan

The hazel-eyed baker and balloon master flits around the Great Trotter minding the ladder that he stealthily aims to climb. His unchecked advancement and increasing authority indicate the ambition that he nurtures and shapes as vigilantly as his wick-moustache that he trims twice a day. Sunya, the poulterer, observes-

 

‘…the young Yakub, the apprenticed baker of fifteen years ago. What was the Muslim up to now? He had watched the wiry youth advance from post to post, improve the ovens, outclass the chief baker, perfect past recipes, introduce new ones, oust the chef, trespass on the cooks’ duties, encroach on the bearers’, perfect a new and sensational bread, create offices where none existed before, appoint cronies… and fill every void with his mercurial presence.’

  1. Jarman Begam

Justin Trotter’s consort, ensconced in the south tower, aches for her fatherland Germany as she watches her husband- whom she affectionately calls Trot- take his final and fatal flight in the Salamandre. Unaware of the admiring glances directed at her, she harbours a passion for the barber Fonseca who claims loyalty to the Great Trotter.

‘It was not her own face, though she stood directly before the glass: through a forest of red she made out the face of Fonseca himself. The face hovered just beneath the surface of the glass, caught in a kind of vapour, the dyed black curls crowned with a gold wig; in place of the habitual ironic mask was a look of earnest entreaty. Before she knew what she was doing, Elise bent and kissed the glass once, twice, then repeatedly, without restraint.’

 

  1. Munshi Nishan Chand

Librarian of Sans Souci and master of fourteen languages, Munshi Nishan Chand sits meditating on the injustice of the glory of the decimal, owed to Indian scholars, having been bestowed upon the Arabs. His soul burns at the ravages his beloved nation has had to suffer at the hand of invaders. The rage at  being reduced from esteemed writer to an administrator propels him toward his mission –

‘At every step recall your mission. Study the circumcised foreigner, barbarian though he be; learn his roughcast languages, school yourself in his childish arts, trace out his tactics, duplicate his strategy, mirror his guile, best his success…Then overwhelm him, and with him his house. And after he is gone, restore once more the bright ancestral home, sweep clean the hearth, rekindle the pure flame. Avenge the violate zero.’

 

About trotter-nama Irvin Sealy observes, ‘Today I realize it’s a book of hyperlinks, only the term had not yet been invented.’ The characters he creates become the links that are threaded through the narrative to bolster the weighty epic.

There are more trotters sauntering inside the pages of The Trotter-Nama waiting to tell their story. Get your copy to meet them!

A Guide To the Use of Colours and Their Symbolism- An Excerpt from ‘The Hidden Rainbow’

Posted on by Penguin India

Kelly Dorji takes you on a spiritual journey through Buddhist symbolism to help find your inner peace. In our busy lives, The Hidden Rainbow is the perfect oasis.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

 

A GUIDE TO THE USE OF COLOURS AND THEIR SYMBOLISM IN BUDDHISM:

The main colours used in Buddhist art are blue, black, white,

red, green and yellow. With black as the exception, the other

five colours are representative of a specific Buddha in the

depiction of the five Wisdom Buddhas of the Vajrayana or

Tantric Tradition of Buddhism.

 

The colour B L U E is used to represent the Healing Buddha,

signifying calm, purity and healing.

 

W H I T E signifies purity and is the colour of knowledge

and longevity. The primordial Buddha ‘Vairocana’ is depicted

in white.

 

The Buddha Amitabha is shown in R E D, which symbolizes

life and holiness.

 

The Amoghasiddhi Buddha in G R E E N signifies

accomplishment and the elimination of envy.

 

Y E L L OW is the colour chosen to depict Ratnasambhava,

who is a symbol of balance and humility.

 

Through meditation, these colours may contribute to the

restorative process of the human condition by transforming human

delusions to original qualities as follows:

– Meditating on the colour blue can pacify aggression.

– White can transform ignorance into wisdom.

– Red turns attachment into selflessness and realization.

– Concentrating on green can eliminate jealousy.

– Meditation on the colour yellow can enrich the sense of self and

eliminate pride.

 

Keep calm and find your inner peace with The Hidden Rainbow.

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