Books: Income Poverty and Beyond

Replete with humour and irony, this is a remarkably well-plotted novel. The action takes place in the small town of Narasimhapuram near Bangalore. The protagonist is cast as the anti-hero who fans the latent forces of rioting and political unrest. The Narasimhapuram Post, an English newspaper, comes into existence in order to placate the local official and adapts itself to the oral tradition of the town in being heard more than being read.

The novel looks at our own colonial hangover in our reverence of the English language, more so in terms of the "uneven bilingualism" in the formerly colonised countries. Being a journalist, the author brings into sharp focus the nexus between the media, knowledge and the construction of facts. The editor of the newspaper, with an office of two dingy rooms, understands the havoc that careful juxtaposition of words and sentences can cause.

At the same time the private versus public divide (read: female versus male) is so operative that the female deity of the town cannot be moved out of her sanctum without widespread outrage and protest. However it is only some of the women who are the voices of sanity and compassion in the public arena.

The novel, however, seems monotonous and repetitive in the two or three scenes of public confrontation. At times the humor is clich d. But on the whole it's entertaining, treating human behaviour and ideologies with complete irreverence and cynicism. The author is unremitting in his criticism of the theory of "Marks and Angles". The story is a veritable appeal for quality journalism and also sensitive and critical readership. It looks with Naranaynian humour at the superstitions and orthodoxy of the small town and presents in the microcosm of the small town the macrocosm of our country's affairs.

Authorspeak
JUSTINE HARDY

Dateline Bharat
Outsider with her ringside view

Chelliah: poverty as food for thought During the British Raj it was called "going native". Justine Hardy, as the title of her new book suggests, has gone native with a vengeance. For nearly two years she worked as a freelance for The Indian Express, churning out articles on public toilets in Delhi (or the lack of them), on the aids epidemic that is silently stalking India, and on tea estates in Assam. The result is Scoop-wallah: Life on a Delhi Daily (John Murray), the culmination of a love affair with India spread over 20 years. Says Hardy, "I have an incredible affection for India. There is an amazing emotional honesty."Falling in love with the country is one thing but why did she go to work for an Indian newspaper? In the book she produces a Kashmiri greengrocer in Kensington who pauses as he is slicing vegetables and sends her off to the subcontinent: "You should be writing on one of our great Indian papers, then you will really be starting to understand us."

Hardy is now back in London for radio shows and book signings. But she won't be away from India for long. She is working on three documentaries and a book centred on her adopted home. One documentary is about satellite television and how it has changed rural life. Another is about food: "It is not about cooking. Indian food is so much a part of the culture." The subcontinental love affair began when Hardy was nine and a cousin married into an Indian family. Some years later she was working for an Australian newspaper that suddenly found it had a vacancy in Delhi. Hardy was in her early 20s and found herself thrown into the deep end. "It was a frightening experience," she recalls.

Is this another book trying to capture the flavour of an India that has all but vanished? "India has become more Americanised in recent years," says Hardy, a self-confessed "romantic idealist". While describing the thundering onslaught of sponsorship onto the polo field she laments the passing of an era: "Oh for Jodhpur, Jaipur and the captains of the 61st Cavalry." The book is marred by sloppy errors though. An old India hand should know you don't catch an Indian Airlines flight at Heathrow and that most national dailies are not printed on hot-metal presses. After all this is Hardy's second book on India. Her first, The Ochre Border, was about the re-opening of the Inner Line regions around Spiti.

Paran Balakrishnan