Magnum Opus

One of the drawbacks of the internet age is the inability to walk into a bookstore, rummage and walk out with a book and the anticipation of not knowing how it will turn out. It was a good experience, then, to stumble into a Reliance book-store at Korum in Thane. And on a whim, I picked up what ultimately was one of the better reads in recent times. Let's face it, I have had just too many MBA turned authors strutting their stuff on my bookshelf. So it felt good to put my fate in the hands of a writer, someone who's actually studied the art and not decided to follow his whim after friends praised the blog posts! So yes - Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games succeeded in blindsiding me like no other book in recent memory.

I bought it thinking "What the heck - it's about the Mumbai underworld, how bad can it be ?!". Just a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation meant that I'd be occupied for days, in return for just Rs 300/-. Seemed like a good deal to an business grad and so I plonked for it over Nagarkar's Cuckold. And I was pleasantly surprised. The book is about everything, but at its core, it's about Mumbai - the city and its people. It takes the antipodean approach to the city when compared to Shantaram, which sometimes felt detached, as if you knew an outsider was writing about it.

Chandra, on the other hand, writes as if he knows it intimately and is familiar with every mote of dust and every drop of sweat. The characters are real, their problems are real and one can feel the research and work that must have gone into the book's writing. I get the feeling, strongly resonant, that the characters love Mumbai not because of its inherent goodness, but because of its frailties. He succeeds in capturing the city's language perfectly, its curious mix of Marathi, Hindi and English, simultaneously giving us a glimpse of its life-force - what it means to live in this city. So even though this book happens through the eyes of a sardar-ji cop, you never feel as if he's an outsider in this world. This is his city and he belongs here. The opening scene alone should rivet you to close attention. Yes, it's opus-sized at 900+ pages. And yes, it does tend to drag a bit, especially during the insets. But the writing is never dull and this book will definitely occupy good shelf space in the Indian author's section. It's disappointing that the book was not a runaway success, though it will be difficult for the author to match the scale and scope of this work.

It's interesting to note a bit of trivia on Chandra. He co-wrote Mission Kashmir with Suketu Mehta, who has himself written a largely documentary-style book about Mumbai - Maximum City (not a big fan). Chandra's sister, Tanuja, makes (or rather used to make) quite half-decent films. Mom Kamna wrote classics like 1942: A Love Story and Chandini while other sister Anupama is Vidhu Vinod Chopra's wife and a Bollywood historian/author herself in addition to being a consulting editor with NDTV. That is a family with some achievers !

This lack of cable TV has really been a blessing in disguise. Have had some good reads in this time. Finally completed Asimov's two remaining novels (End of Eternity and The Gods, Themselves - typical Asimov), Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card's masterpiece) plus Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Brilliant) and will start exploring the Gabriel Garcia Marquez books soon. Interesting times ahead !

I leave you with an elegant quote I came across:

 Life happened because I turned the pages ~ Alberto Manguel