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Deepanjana Pal In the 18th century, nostalgia meant acute homesickness and the word in its old-fashioned sense seems apt for Manu Joseph’s second novel, The Illicit Happiness Of Other People. It’s set in pre-1991 Madras, when India wasn’t shining and Chennai was the name of a 17th-century town rather than a modern metropolis. Joseph says in his acknowledgements, “It is where I spent the first 20 years of my life. I am grateful it was not a paradise.” Curi- ously, though, his protagonist Ousep Chacko’s unflinching conviction that there is more to his eldest son’s un- mentionable act than meets the eye is reminiscent of these lines from John Milton’s Paradise Lost: “...What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield. And what is else not to be over- come?” These lines are spoken by Satan’s chief cheerleader, Beelzebub, when Sa- tan’s legion is wallowing in hellfire after being thrown out of heaven. Come to think of it, Joseph’s description of Ousep sleeping after a drunken night is vaguely reminiscent of Satan in hell (Milton says the divine arch enemy looks like a whale). Also, like Satan, Ousep was once mighty, bringing light through his writing, until arrogance led to his descent to the plane of an impov- erished, alcoholic journalist. However, while Ousep is the lead of The Illicit Happiness, his fall is only a sub-plot. There’s another fall that lies at the heart of this superb novel and it is, as far as the Chackos are concerned, more cataclysmic than Satan’s. Ousep is a journalist by day and neighbourhood menace by night. His wife, Mariamma, has a postgraduate degree in economics, nurses fantasies about killing her husband, and regu- larly talks to the walls. They have two sons — Unni and Thoma. Unni, the elder, is the one whom everyone loves. It seems there is nothing he can’t handle, from his classmates to his mother’s de- lusions, his father’s drunken antics to his brother’s anxieties. A gifted car- toonist, he’s the one person in the nov- el who isn’t burdened by the mania for academic excellence. Unni is the last person anyone expects would go the Humpty Dumpty way, but one day, inexplicably, he does. For the next three years, Unni becomes Ousep’s study and the father’s project of un- conquerable Will is to figure out why Unni did that Terrible Thing. Set in 1990, in a lane that has four residential buildings named A, B, C and D, starring a family that is peculiar despite efforts to be normal, The Illicit Happiness is a wit- ty, unforgiving but deeply affectionate look at life in pre-liberalised India. There is none of the acidic contempt or curious politics that crippled Joseph’s first novel, Serious Men. The Illicit Hap- piness is fun, despite all the unhappi- ness that riddles the novel, and Joseph avoids the curse of the second novel with panache. His characters are pecu- liar, but not precious. Their stories are told with an empathy that is intelligent enough to note absurdities without re- ducing anyone or anything to a carica- ture. The author has no sympathy for the blinkers that old India clapped on itself, but even as his scathing critique stings painfully, Joseph’s sense of hu- mour makes it impossible for a reader to not grin while reading the novel. For example, how can you not nod in agree- ment to this: “What is this world, exactly? Thoma wonders. A man slaps a girl’s arse, she walks on as if nothing has happened. Then the man gets hit by a coconut thrown by a weird woman, and he walks away without even turning back.” The charm of The Illicit Happiness lies in the fabulous Chacko family and the love that makes them an improb- able team against the pathetic, desper- ate world they inhabit. Mariamma joins Em of Em and the Big Hoom in the league of endearingly lunatic mothers. Ousep’s drunken fits are ee- rily reminiscent of Salman Rushdie’s description of his father Anis in Joseph Anton. For this reader, the most en- dearing Chacko is the continually-per- plexed Thoma. But chances are, you’ll find your own favourite Chacko and they’ll make you want to return to Balaji Lane again and again. [email protected] The Illicit Happiness Of Other People Manu Joseph l Fourth Estate l343 pages l`499 THE CURIOS CASE OF UNNI CHACKO POETIC INJUSTICE Sharanya Manivannan There must be poets all over the world whose work thrives only in their native tongues. But the truly exasperating travesty is when a poet whose work has undeniable eminence is in- sulted not by being ignored, but worse, through poor translations. Subramania Bharati, twentieth century’s pre- eminent Tamil writer, is one such poet. Born in 1882, he pioneered a renaissance in Tamil po- etry and fought against colonialism, caste and the oppression of women. He died when he was only 38. To date, no significant English transla- tion of his poetry has done justice to either his persona — romantic, radical, and a genius — or his writing. Usha Rajagopalan’s new collection of translations makes only slight inroads to im- provement. While the volume is fortunately not cringe-worthy like some prior efforts, Selected Poems, beginning with its title, lacks inspiration and imagination — keywords that the very men- tion of Bharati ordinarily summons among those familiar with the poet. Rajagopalan’s translations suffer most of all from a sense of restraint. Bharati was the quin- tessential fiery artist, prone to being overcome by fits of grandiosity and tormented by per- sonal demons. Selected Poems, while rarely clumsy, often lacks inventiveness. Words like “Alas!” are used; there is no attempt to contem- porarise the sentiment. But the worst offense would be the reduction of the culminating line of in ‘A Baby Fire’ — thath tharikitta thath tharikitta thith thom — which has a stunning onomatopoeic flourish and captures both a spitting fire and the visceral rhythm heard in classical dance and music. Rajagopalan’s trans- lation: “Whoosh, crackle, snap, sizzle.” Else- where in the volume, these flourishes are re- tained in translation — an inconsistence that isn’t justified. This happens frequently. In ‘Aspirations’ which also takes Bharati’s “Om Om Om Om!” and turns it into a decidedly meeker “Om… Om… Om… Om…”), the word viduthalai, which can be interpreted as “liberation”, is instead ren- dered as “unfettered” — imagery that sabotages the original word’s (and consequently, poem’s) spirit. ‘In Search of Answers’, a modernist hymn in which he addresses the deity Sivashakti, has Bharati using the demand, sol- ladi. The nuanced Tamil conver- sational suffix “di” indicates an entitlement complicit in the relationship with the female other being spoken to. It is an entitlement that is both inti- mate and insolent; Rajagopa- lan’s explanation of solladi as “pray tell me” is stripped entirely of these subtleties. A volume of se- lected writings cannot possibly include every- thing unless the writer in ques- tion is one of limited prolifica- cy. Still, that Bharati’s most iconic poem, “Suttum Vizhi- chudadar”, (“That Which Encir- cles”) is not represented in this collection is baffling. Once again, the idea of the translator as an executor comes into play: To what extent are they obli- gated to the author’s estate, which includes facets of character and legacy, at large? Absences, sometimes more than inclusions, raise questions. A handsome bilingual edition, this book would serve beginners and those interested in Bharati’s translations. But for a reader seeking the sheer beauty of poetry, it falls short. For the next translator, one suggests greater license with syntax, less liberal usage of exclamation points (which have fallen out of favour in the language of translation), an academically sound set of footnotes and a more variegated vocabulary. [email protected] Subramania Bharati, translated by Usha Rajagopalan l Hachette India l151 pages l`350 Selected Poems by Subramania Bharati Selected Poems, beginning with its title, lacks inspiration and imagination — keywords that the very mention of Subramania Bharati ordinarily summons among those familiar with the poet Shutterstock agent DOUBLE Ian McEwan’s newest novel about espionage and literature leads to a face-off in reviews Deepanjana Pal One look at Sweet Tooth and you’d be forgiven for expecting a varia- tion of George Smiley in a red dress. However, for all those expecting McEwan’s take on the seventies’ Britain and the circus of MI5, the biggest red herring in Sweet Tooth might be that cover. Serena Frome has a mundane job in the MI5 when, unexpectedly, she’s co-opted into an operation titled Sweet Tooth. Her task is to tap a young author named Tom Haley so that he writes fiction that attacks Soviet ideology. Serena promptly falls in love with him. He thinks she works for a foundation that has awarded him a stipend to write his novel. Eventually and inevitably, Tom finds out he’s been had, and then the real twist in the tale is re- vealed. Without giving too much away, let’s just say the star of Sweet Tooth is not Serena, but Tom. McEwan has clarified that he was too much of a “Bolshie” to be approached by the Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but aside from that detail, Tom is McEwan. Both are alumni of the University of Sussex, both are be- friended by Martin Amis. No won- der the author said in an interview that Sweet Tooth is “a mutated ver- sion of a memoir”. Most important- ly, Tom’s stories are taken from McEwan’s early work and the plot of Tom’s novel is the same as McE- wan’s abandoned first novel. The novel is about a writer hon- ing his craft, rather than the realis- tic details of McEwan’s youth. He constructs a distorted mirror image and this Lacanian writerly ego is Tom. It’s effectively like buying a good novel and getting a clutch of excellent short stories for free. Usually McEwan’s novels have a skilful layering of politics and plot. For example, despite not ever utter- ing the name “Thatcher”, A Child In Time contained unmistakable criti- cism of Thatcherism and its poli- cies. In contrast, the only function of contemporary politics in Sweet Tooth is to create a laboratory for Serena’s heartbreaks. A few characters, like Tony Canning and Max Greatorex, suggest the possibility of political intrigue and end up being red her- ring-shaped anti-climaxes. Espionage is a literary affair in Sweet Tooth, which is a novel, not about spies and politics, but about storytelling. It explores the power dynamic between character and creator, and fiction and reality. McEwan teases the reader like a hustler doing a card trick. Serena appears to be the storyteller and we think she’s the one controlling our un- derstanding of char- acters and events. In fact, she actually shapes the fiction in more ways than one. Near the end, however, it seems she was a puppet who was both watched and ma- nipulated. Then comes the last line of the book, which tips the balance and reveals she was in control after all. Without her, there is no novel; and without a novel, there is no novelist. Whether or not you’re won over by meta-narratives or mirror stage theory, Sweet Tooth has something that is as rare as a unicorn in the world of literary fiction: a happy ending. Yes, the device of the tell-all letter is trite, but the romantic sort will forgive McEwan because with the last sentence of the novel, so many little details fall into place — Serena’s naivete and self-absorbed sentimentality; Tom’s charisma; the details that make Serena impa- tient but upon which the novel lin- gers. This novel may not the best example of McEwan’s craft, but it is fittingly, charmingly sweet. [email protected] Aditya Sinha Disappointing is the only word for Ian McEwan’s latest, Sweet Tooth. That’s how his novels have been lately: well- crafted, well-planned, but a waste of time. I didn’t even bother with Solar, such was the dampening experience of On Chesil Beach (even though it fetched him his sixth Booker Prize nomination). It’s been downhill since Atonement; Saturday seemed like an aberration and I was sure the next novel would bring a return to form. So why pick up Sweet Tooth at all? First, there was the extract in the New Yorker. McEwan begins, as always, masterfully. “The end is already there in the beginning,” as promising writer Tom Haley tells narrator Serena Frome, his lover and sa- tanic muse in the guise of guardian angel, near the climax. In the extract Frome recalls her prepara- tion, by a much older lover during her Cambridge days, for a career in Brit- ain’s domestic secret ser- vice, MI5. But plot sum- mary tells you nothing about McEwan’s mastery: his econo- my of expression, the perfect pitch- tone-rhythm, and the forward propul- sion of back-story. Assessing the craft of one of Eng- lish’s best living writers is blasphe- mous, not just because of the acclaim but because his canon is the kind that motivates others to write. Just the memory of his early work’s wicked- ness or the haunting inquiry of my personal favourite, The Child In Time, is enough to get me at my keyboard and go off into the unknown; few oth- ers inspire you into the darkness that lurks beyond what we ordinarily write about. Try The Cement Garden or In Between The Sheets for the reading equivalent of plunging on a roller- coaster. Even The Daydreamer, his seven interlinked stories for children, beats Salman Rushdie’s sea of fiction for children. Then there’s the lure of a spy novel. McEwan’s The Innocent, a Cold War novel published at the end of the Cold War, was John le Carré taken up an- other literary level. The promise of a tale from a female agent of MI5 in the early 1970s could not be ignored. Perhaps it should have been. Sweet Tooth is an operation to promote — in the midst of a cultural Cold War — a non-communist writer. The operation goes awry; but the novel is a medita- tion on how writers are no less than spies. It is also a yarn that teasingly suggests how McEwan got his break. Within it are alternate takes on McE- wan’s early stories, presented as works that Haley has written or is writing, including Sweet Tooth itself. (The fleet- ing synopses of fiction-within-fiction in Kurt Vonnegut’s early novels, by al- ter-ego and pulp-writer Kilgore Trout, were more playful.) Yes, all jolly well, but Sweet Tooth doesn’t quite satisfy the en- thusiast’s literary sweet tooth. One won- ders: should these British writers — McE- wan, Martin Amis, le Carré, Rushdie — just stop writing, for Heaven’s sake? All started with a bang, but they now seem to me- chanically crank out cold literary procedurals (though I haven’t read Rushdie’s memoir yet). The only one of this group who got better with age, Christopher Hitchens, is now dead. Is it that creative writing reaches its zenith in one’s youth? Not if you go by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (pub- lished One Hundred Years Of Solitude at 40) or Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes at 66). Had I not been a journal- ist, would I have written some wick- ed novels in my youth? Why did Hunter S Thompson shoot himself in the head? If I had been a writer in my youth, would I have produced my own Sweet Tooth, a pale reminder of what I had once been, but now just a waste of your time? [email protected] Sweet Tooth Ian McEwan l Jonathan Cape l323 pages l`550 Sweet Toooth is a meditation on how writers are no less than spies
