Man-Eaters of Kumaon: Jim Corbett. Oxford India (1944)

To tell the truth, I feel I should have started on Jim Corbett a long time back. Not because I feel I have missed out on him for so long; but it is a little difficult to appreciate and enjoy him now. I have friends who are absolute fans of Jim. He is a role model to those guys – like people from the WW II comics – a super-human character; a hero.
What strikes me in his book is the style of story telling. It is natural and fluid; and flow from one point to the next like a smooth flowing river or something. He starts off by explaining the reasons why tigers and other wild cats become man-eaters, and this is mostly a man-made condition. So, nature is not to be blamed here. Jim is a born naturalist. A nature lover who is in the profession of protecting human life and cattle when things go wrong in the fine balance between man and animal.
His Book is not just about hunting man-eaters; it’s the story of the jungle. It is the story of what happens when the jungle and its inhabitants come into contact with humans and their civilization. It is also a detailed manual of the sights and sounds of the jungle, its occupants, both large and small, the seasons, the sun, the moon and the starts. He says, these things are absolutely necessary for a hunter (in his words ‘sportsman’) to stay alive.
What I find difficult to acknowledge, is the abundance of flora and fauna during that period. That (the 1920s and 30s) was a time when there was no endangered species, no conservationists groups, no green peace and no ‘save the trees’ organizations. Even at that time Jim was constantly worried about the dwindling tiger population in the area. I just want to say that I did not feel comfortable reading about so many tigers, leopards and other animals being killed, and all in one book. Of course, I understand the conditions, the circumstances and the need for those acts at that time; but I just cannot bring my conscience to accept it, and that’s it.
I know Jim Corbett will not be a very happy man in his ‘Happy Hunting Grounds’, when he sees the state of his forests and the tigers in them today.

Scenes from a writer’s life: Ruskin Bond. Penguin books (1997)

Ruskin Bond has been an enigmatic writer, at least for me personally. Maybe it’s because of my introduction to Ruskin Bond long back with the story about the faceless school boy. That was one of the first stories about the supernatural or unexplainable or to put it simply, ‘ghost stories’ in my life. A chubby cheerful man (from the photographs I have seen of him), he gives me the impression of being someone who is stuck in India. There is always this concern that he does not actually belong here, but is so comfortable in his surroundings that we could actually accept him as one of ‘us’. I don’t have such impressions about all the authors I read, but Ruskin Bond is certainly someone special in that respect. There is always the longing to see a few of his photographs in his books. I have even planned to meet him when I go to mussoorie. (yeah. Some day I will find time to make that trip)
I also absolutely like the relaxed pace at which life moves around him and his characters. His work is an enjoyable mix of laid back life, taking things as they come, observing life from different angles and not missing out on the various characters around you. Every time I read one of his books, it brings in me the fantasy about being a writer, to indulge in life, chronicle it and make a career and a decent living out of it. The mussoorie setting also brings about the romance of the hills, the colonial backdrop, the chill in the cold wind and little things to enjoy in life like a bright sunny day.
This book is about the initial years. It is about the circumstances that made Ruskin Bond the person he is. With a troubled childhood and a very deep emotional bonding with his lonely father, I think the seeds of his loneliness were sown pretty early in life. Learning to fight these bouts of being left alone at home when his father went to work and waiting for those few hours his father could spend time with him, Ruskin had learnt the secret of being lonely in the world and, enjoying it. His descriptions of life in the various schools and about his friends look half hearted. It is like he did not have true friends in school. His friends, I guess came from outside school, among people who lived around him. I guess he was able to relate better to people who expected noting more of him than unconditional love.The book ends with him going to Jersy and London and then making that decision that his heart is in India and he cannot take it away from here, comes back to India. This is the time, when his first book ‘the room on the roof is published’. I have read that one before, but I think I will go through it again with a brand new perspective.

Butter chicken in Ludhiana: Pankaj Mishra , Penguin books (1995)

Travels in small town India. Considering that the book was written more than 10 years back, when the whole country was swinging to ‘choli ke peeche’ and babri masjid was still a fresh incident, the characters and incidents in this book will take you back to moments in your life during that period. The author has projected himself as a 20 something year old, flirting between being a ‘student’ a ‘journalist’ and a ‘writer’.

The book starts off in the Delhi bus depot, with Pankaj waiting for a bus to Muzaffarnagar. Here he introduces us to the first character in the book, a short, stoutish, balding middle aged man; who narrates his family history in detail in that reeking bus depot infested with rats and insects, and then goes to sleep with the authour’s bag as a pillow and suddenly disappears into the night. But then, thankfully the book moves on to many more such characters and situations.

Detailed chronicles about the functioning of state run transport buses, attitudes of travelers, government staff, officials and fellow travelers, subtle insights into cast and cultural ideologies and hangovers in the mid 1990s are a plenty in this book. Pankaj sketches a very vague, even if correct picture about life in small town northern India. Pankaj’s characters are definitely people one would meet on one’s travel: The noisy and brash groups of young pot bellied people who have ‘businesses’ (read shops), the middle level government officials, the aspiring politicians, the modern wife, still in her sari, a modern woman, but still traditional at heart, and definitely that group of Bengali tourists. This is definitely a book you can carry during one of your long travels from one town to another, and can pick off real life characters from around you and fit them into characters from the book.

Some of the predictions made by pankaj have gone totally wrong. But, that is all right, since we are all taken by surprises. And if he could make exact predictions about the future, he should have been a businessman and not writing books. To me, this book was a good entertainer, bringing back the sounds and the smells of my own travels through small town India. The book is true to the point where I sometimes think that it could have been the same group of Bengali tourists I met on the bus on my way to karkal. But analyzing the socio – economic conditions prevailing in those areas at that particular place at that time and drawing inferences about the life styles and cultural beliefs of the people should best have been left to scholars and sociologists.

Somewhere deep down, after reading the book, I felt that pankaj has ignored the positive side of life in small town India. He has seen chaos, disorderliness, and the race to keep up with the joneses. What I find lacking in this book is that strong ‘never say die’ spirit of India