The other day, at a traditional Christmas cake mixing, a devilish thought stole upon me. Emptying bottles of alcohol into troughs of neatly chopped apricots, almond flakes, figs, ginger peels and glazed cherries, I asked the Chef: ‘Won’t too many peels make a cake lumpy?’ A withering look said it all: ‘Who invited you here?’
The same dumb question came back to haunt me after reading Suresh Menon’s latest book Why Don’t You Write Something I Might Read? The author admits that it’s not easy reading books simultaneously, for some must remain unfinished. Perhaps it’s our way of cheating death. How can you die with so many books lying around waiting to be read? Unfinished stories kept the grand vizier’s daughter alive in the Arabian Nights.
Menon’s love for cricket comes through as he dwells on the connection between sports, literature and Covid-19. Who except, perhaps the aficionado, remembers who won the Wimbledon championship in 2002? Though what stays with you is that the great tennis tournament provided some semblance of normality. We live in times when pandemic figures change by the hour, while sports statistics remain fixed like the pole star. They are the equivalent of Dutch wives and continue to provide comfort when all else seems lost.
Or take the Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who while in prison, chose to write in his mother-tongue Gikuyu. It scared the government so much that President Daniel arap Moi ordered the arrest of Matigari, one of Ngugi’s fictional characters, who had a habit of asking too many awkward questions.
To me, as a reviewer, it was my Kilroy moment when I read ‘Premier blossom of a bookworm’ for the simple reason that ‘I had been there.’ It was at Bengaluru’s Select bookshop that I met the affable owner KKS Murthy, whose talent for fishing out the odd book you wanted was legendary. Years later, his postcards continued to come in the mail. They always brought good news of what had become available.
“I was born on the dining table in the director’s home in Dehradun’s Forest Research Institute!’ chuckled historian Ramachandra Guha as I saw him rummaging through a pile of books.
Menon takes us to meet up with what he feels is the finest contemporary writer in the English language, the Pakistani-born Nadeem Aslam.
When all of 14 years old, he fled to England escaping General Zia-ul-Haq’s authoritarian regime at home.
Like Joseph Conrad, he too knew no English, yet chose to become a writer in the language.
After 11 long years came Maps for Lost Lovers for which he taped his eyes to get a feel of what a blind man cut off from visual sensations felt like. He even tapped his fingers to feel what a man with fingers chopped off might feel. If you’re looking for an occasional dip, here’s a good read.
Why Don’t You Write Something I Might Read?