Manil Suri writes well, although my feel is that he's really good at short stories. Death of Vishnu is an interesting book, at the face of it, it revolves around a character named Vishu, his death (obviously) and how it affects the eco-system that he exists in. The story seems to be set in the 80's, although the author doesnt date it - the book develops around Vishu, an odd-job man, who has a space under the staircase of a typical Bombay "building" and makes his living by doing odd-jobs for the folks in the building. Their lives are inevitably linked and as he is slowly dying it affects the players in his eco-system.
While I was reading the book, I didnt think much of it - but now that I look back on it I have to admit that there are several layers that run through this book - characters are introduced, you peek into their lives and invariably there is an element of a sexual escapade, either of the characters or of Vishnu - it felt like the author had a pattern - short story - sex - short story - sex - short story - sex. This might be due to the inordinate amount of time the author initially spends on the Pathak and Asrani households and interleaves with flashbacks of Vishnu's escapades. The story starts with Vishnu dead center, then making way for the side players to the point where you want to skip through the portions of Vishnu and figure out whats going to happen to the other players.
As the story progressed, the story took on a larger meaning, I felt like the character Mr. Jalal, looking for a sign to attribute what I was reading - Vishu was the god Vishnu and each episode was like life and death an episode ended another birthed and on and on went the cycle.
Just when I had settled on this interpretation, I felt rationally, really it wasn't a story about Vishnu at all, he was the common thread through several stories and through his death he brought about an upheaval of some sorts. Each story was different and even then it was the same - about life and how the daily routine takes it toll on aspirations and hopes that people had when they were younger.
Then again it felt like a view into Indian life in the 70's / 80's and you find references into stories that you heard from your parents about how they grew up and got married. Ah - layers.
Like I said eariler, Mani Suri writes well - there is one particular episode that will stay with me always - he uses an episode of eating mangoes as a tribute to a woman - of making love and the metamorphisis of a woman into a mother from a lover. Unlike Mr. Suri, I cant write as well to describe it. Priceless...
This book is a quick read and you'll probably come away with different perspectives, I felt that in more than a few places he was actually thinking in Hindi and translated his thoughts to English and it shows - perhaps for the global audience, but having heard those tunes and knowing the phrases and language - it dilutes the effect of his writing somewhat.
An interesting read overall, a good break while I make my way through Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.
Death Of Vishnu - Manil Suri
Posted by Aki Labels: Aki read..., Bombay, Fiction, Mumbai, South Asian Lit
Tuesdays with Morrie is a small book, but it carries a great many good questions and some profound observations about our way of life. I picked it up with a very cynical bent of mind as I have come to have about books categorized as "life lessons" or "self-help" if you will. I tend to find these very preachy and that bothers me.
Morrie's however is such a different book talking about the same things you hear from most "guru's" - in such a nice little package. The plot is life and the players are us. Morrie is a professor who is suffering from a terminal disease and this book is about his unique perspective on life and how he makes his time count. The author is a beloved student of his who has lost touch and gotten sucked into the grind of life when he hears about his illness and reconnects. The book is about their conversations about topics that affect us all - life, death, relations, marriage children, regrets.
Personally, quite a few items in the book were close to the heart, I'm sure everyone will find something or the other to relate to via their experiences - the book is poignant and Morrie's aphorisms are profound. Through reading the book I really felt attached to Morrie and as you reach the very end you wish that he sticks around longer - like a beloved person's loss at the very inevitable end.
Morrie talks about personal attention to people in your life, there is a beautiful thought about "detaching" yourself from an experience - he says that we try to preserve an experience - instead live through it - experience everything - dont hold back - say it and feel it all - so that when its all said and done - you can detach yourself from the experience hence making it easy to let go of something - I dont completely understand the concept - but its something to experience I guess.
The book is filled with such profound observations, the above is probably one that I felt was the most complex for me to relate to and understand. Tuesdays with Morrie is a recommended read - its like being a fly on the wall of a very interesting converation - and at the end the loss is real - but the lessons remain.
Cryptonomicon is a giant of a book - most people I know,have either abandoned it midway or balk at the prospect of reading such a major small typed book! My recommendation - read it. Cryptonomicon weaves multiple stories flashing back and forward to the present to create a pretty compelling read.
The book starts off in the present time with a set of silicon valley geeks looking to get a slice of the communications pie in Asia, specifically in the Phillipines which serves as the backbone for all communication lines in the area. A secret goal of these people is to recover a stash of hidden German gold lost during the dying days of WW II when the Germans were retreating with whatever they could lay their hands on.The common link is the grandson of a famed code breaker who played a major role in cracking German codes and helping to win the war. Stashed amongst the stuff of his grandfather is information about this big stash of gold.
Starting with this basic premise Neal Stephenson weaves in stories of how WW II was won not only by the personnel on the ground but to a large extent by the mathematicians and scientists who broke German codes and dealt with the delicate cat and mouse game of letting the other party believe that their conversations were still unknown while infact the reverse was true. It was fascinating to be exposed to that side of the war which is so easily hidden, one watches documentaries and hears stories of major battles and victories, but to think that so many of these might have been orchestrated just to hide the fact that the other side might already know how to read your communication, e.g. there is the bit of allowing German U-Boats to sink some vessels to let the Germans continue to think that their codes were safe and at the same time restraining the generals from simply going all out and making it obvious to the Germans that their codes were broken. This, ofcourse, occcurred on both sides - its cool to think about how math was used to distribute events in order but to appear random enough so that the other side wouldnt guess that their codes were broken.
The highlight of the book for me was the characters (The Elder Waterhouse / Enoch Root / Bobby Shaftoe notably) and how their characters shape knowingly or unknowingly a series of events that has repurcussions outside their own lifetimes. If you are not a details junkie, you can avoid this book - for me - the author sets a nice balance on explaining the cryptology concepts involved while at the same time not making it too geeky - then weaving in the birth of computing as a necessity to overcome the Germans, the mathematicians that were once friends and now are on separate sides because of their nationality - the weaving of the code creators personality into the codes which eventually helps the other side to break it.
With Cryptonomicon, its the journey and not the destination, the gold which like a cliched Hindi movie reaches its inevitable climax with multiple parties (Germans/Americans/Japanese) with snippets of data - and only one party with access to information (the disctinction being significant) - which ultimately sets the tone of the book for me. It took me a long time to get through this book, but I always got sucked back into it because the setting of the story in a historical perspective and the ineherent geekiness of the story tract was very compelling. The GEEKS will inherit the world!
