The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

by Deborah Moggach

This book was originally published in 2004 under the title "These Foolish Things". It was adapted into a movie titled "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" in 2011. The book that I read was published by Vintage Books in 2012. I haven't seen the movie so I shouldn't really compare the two. However, from what little I have glimpsed in the trailers and IMDB, I understand that the movie does not really follow the book entirely. So I don't understand why should the title (and the cover page) be according to the movie. Personally I liked the original title better.

   

A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground's painted swings
These foolish things remind me of you

A group of old people are bundled together by fate to journey to a place that was once ruled by their forefathers. You might think there is little to write in the lives of a bunch of ignored, forgotten, unwanted, inconvenient people who are waiting to get past their twilight years, but Deborah Moggach does not think so. In fact throughout the book, she goes on to find so many interesting stories for each of these characters that one might start finding his or her life quite uninteresting in comparison.

The first chapter introduces us to the predicament of an old girl in her seventies - Muriel Donnely and the collapse of the British Health System. We are also introduced to Dr. Ravi Kumar who will later inspire the foundation of the The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. We move on to know more about the aging Britishers. While Muriel's situation solicits regret and compassion, Ravi's obnoxious father-in-law, Norman Purse exacts nothing less than dislike and disgust. It is the hope to get rid of Norman in a country that boasts of respect for elders, that inspires the idea of a pensioner's home in a little corner of Bangalore that will forever remain England.

In the first few chapters, we come across the elderly crew - Evelyn who thought the idea of moving to India as preposterous; Muriel who wouldn't let any 'darkies' treat or touch her; Dorothy, a retired BBC executive, Douglas and Jean, the happily married, traveling couple. And so the story begins. The first batch of the residents, united only by their similarity in age start a new life in the Pensioner's Paradise of India. A life that held promises of a charming city, pleasant climate, timeless beauty, a handsome doctor to care for you and a comfortable stay with people who always wait on you. But in India, such promises seemed to evaporate. At least some of them, if not all.

As the story progresses, we come across the secrets that define each character. Why did Evelyn share a complicated relationship with Theresa, her daughter? What was secret behind Jean and Douggie's 'happy' married life. What was the reason behind Dorothy's senility? Why would Muriel who so religiously hates the 'darkies' mold herself into the Indian mysticism. Why had Keith abandoned his loved mother? What did Theresa search among the swamis of India? How little they knew of each other. By the time we reach the end we have celebrated love and friendship and commiserated death and separation as well. Of course, I would have wanted the book to have ended a few pages before so that it retained realistic charm and not moved to fairytale-ish end.

And yet, I cannot deny that this poignant book raised some very important questions that we tend to overlook - be it the abandonment of the old or soul-searching of the youth. I particularly liked that India was not seen in the typical romanticized view that we find so often in books by foreign writers. While the poverty and mysticism of India was not entirely denied, the different side of a modern and ordinary India was also touched. A pleasant read throughout, "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" brings to us many thought-provoking issues limited neither by age nor nationality. It is not one but several thoughtful, realistic and vibrant stories weaved into a witty and humane tale of ordinary people with ordinary lives and told in an extraordinary way.  Still, I would have wanted to read the original title and without the movie cover.

[Book Review by Ankita Mukherjee]

The Last Song of Dusk

by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

An unusual story that starts as a modern fairytale and ends with the grimness of this world, 'The Last Song of Dusk' takes the readers through a roller coaster ride of love, loss, fate and acceptance of life as it comes. The novel opens as Anuradha leaves Udaipur to meet her prospective husband Vardhaman. The story then continues to tell us about her tryst with 'kismet' When she enters Dwarika house, the house at their first encounter had told about the Mischief it could unravel with unpassioned deviousness - the death of her first son, Mohan. After the arrival of Divi-bai, a eyelash-less had who made a 'malicious fitting' to the Gandharva family, Anuradha learns that love and loathing, joy and distress, quietness and noise, all eventually blur and one is left wondering where one started and the other ended. Things drastically change after the death of Mohan when Anuradha found that contrary to what others said, Death was not deadening at all; rather it was a dynamic creature whose black fragrance, whose concrete stillness seeped into the wood of the furniture, the linen of the bed, the flowers in the vases; it was everywhere as omnipresent as its only sibling, Life. On the other hand, quietness found its way into Vardhaman: not merely as a baffling reticence but the species of heavy silence one finds in the folded white wings of Death's seraphim. And all these do not change even after arrival of their second son Shloka who at an age of four could be described as an ascetic with an amazing genius for melancholy.

The readers are then introduced to Nandini - a-walk-on-water, soul painting, beedi-smoking girl who saw people for who they were and who, at the age of seven had wisely concluded, 'Life is pathetic'. The fate of all these characters unravel in an old villa of 1920s' - Dariya Mahal, a monstrous house who licked up all its inmates with its deep, morbid sorrow that was too sacred for it to lose.

The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

Set in a village in the south-western Indian province of Kerala, the novel opens with the arrival of Rahel to her home at Ayenemen to meet Esthappen. It centres about the life of the fraternal twins, Rahel and her brother Esthappen, their mother Ammu and other members of the family.

The work is lyrical and poetic, uses unusual imagery and metaphors and appeals equally to the intellect as well as the sentiments of the reader. We find some of the singular figurative expressions as in the line : The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabed roof pulled over its ears like a low hat. Or when the river's decription is given as Once it had the power to evoke fear. To change lives. But now its teeth were drawn, its spirit spent. It was just a slow sludging green ribbon lawn that furried fetid garbage to the sea.

It is an intricate writing that explores the depths of human nature, their passions, yearnings, quarrels with fate and the acceptance of inevitability.

Amu

by Shonali Bose

Amu, is the story of a twenty one year old girl, Kajori (Kaju) Roy, Indian by birth but brought up in Los Angeles by her adoptive mother Keya Roy, an activist. The story takes place in a span of around 5 months – October 2001 to February 2002 and during which Kaju’s life traverses a roller coaster ride.

It all starts with Kaju’s decision and determination to go to her land of birth and discover her roots. Keya at first vehemently expressed her unwillingness to the idea but had to finally give in before Kaju’s resolve. Kaju, thus finally finds herself amidst the unsettled layers of history and legend of Delhi where the past and present were hopelessly mixed up.

An Area Of Darkness

by V. S. Naipaul

Born and brought up in an Indian colony of Trinidad, V.S. Naipaul always thought India to be the country from which his grandfather came, a country never physically described and therefore never real, a country out in the void beyond the dot of Trinidad… a country suspended in time… So in 1962 he set out to discover this country of his imagination. But during his journey, as the physique of Europe melted away and he found himself into the Aryan Asia, his feelings are described as “Hysteria had been my first reaction, and a brutality dictated by a new awareness of myself as a whole human being and a determination, touched with fear, to remain what I was.” His first journey to India was of “Superficial impressions, intemperate reactions”.

Mother Night

by Kurt Vonnegut

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" - This is the moral of the story that the author states in the introduction.Mother Night is an account of the confessions of Howard. W. Campbell Jr. from a prison in old Jerusalem in the year 1961 where he awaits a fair trial for his war crimes.

The story starts when he introduces himself as an American by birth, a Nazi by reputation and a nationless person by inclination. What he missed, however was that he was also secretly a US spy. His secret unknown not just to the world but his parents and even his wife. The reader delves into the life of Howard through his own account where he sketches his biography from his birth in 1912 to his coming to the jail of Israel and more.