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BOOKS London Calling Syal scripts an Asian drama beyond tandoori takeaways. By Sudeep Chakravarti LIFE'S ISN'T ALL HA HA HEE HEE Pick a weekend, tea, or gentle wine, a nice chair and settle in for a story about three childhood friends. Give it some time; this tale travels well from London's East End, a ghetto of immigrant India. It's easy to smile, smirk, snort and sigh during this engaging romp through youth that never quite grows up and when it does, it hits -- slap, bang. Many of us have been there, and it isn't always pleasant but Meera Syal, actress, writer and one of Britain's emerging high priestesses of multi-cultural black humour, does well to take us back. Chila, Sunita and Tania are three totally ordinary people. Chila is the warm, slow -- and dark -- girl who was paired off with a man with a withered hand but snags the eligible Punjabi bachelor. Sunita has left Sunny, her younger self with a future, to settle into mid-'30s, plump comfortable domesticity. And Tania is Tans, a media wallah on the make, breaking away to a life away from the ethnic trap of East End to yuppie Soho. And as these three childhood friends confront one another through a documentary that Tans makes -- pressured by her English boss who wants the "real" story of Asian women who stay home and arranged marriages, not tandoori takeaways -- they open their mind and soul in an expression of self-determination in a way far more intimate than the bodies they save for their husbands. Ultimately, Chila confronts a truth, she doesn't really love Deepak, he is part of an image. Sunny rewrites her marriage. And Tans, determinedly single, half-way between yearning for her roots -- and Deepak, a former lover -- and the Great White Ticket is torn in two. This relatively simple line is enlivened by telling it like it is and telling it well. It's why this story about London travels to anywhere in urban India that faces the meeting of cultures, growing up, confusion, middle-class hopes and the jazz of yuppiedom. You don't need to be in London to hear the rustle of over-embroidered salwar suits, to be put on at ceremonies then dumped for a lycra sheath for an evening of vodka and beer chasers. Or sensing a background where the "old rules still applied; coming from a place where starvation was a reality than a fashion statement, fat meant wealth and contentment". There's no lyrical anger of My Beautiful Laundrette here, more a carryover from Bhaji on the Beach, a film Syal scripted. As in Bhaji, Syal typically etches her female characters deeper than the male, even the men's stories are told better when seen through the sentimental yet prismatic eyes of the women. But it's a little jangly sometimes as a read. Ha Ha Hee Hee has "screenplay" written all over it, and the book often moves in editing cuts, close-ups and wide-angles as if playing to a camera. That toasty weekend feeling comes in handy. The movie will come later, so might as well settle for the next best thing. A house with a phantom who's not a menace. By Sonali Singh THE BOOK OF SHADOWS ... a man in a cassock climbing uphill. When he turned to face me I confronted the deep empty sockets of his skeletal face ... the grim contortions of his smile, of calcium and bared cartilage. A scene from the archetypal "ghost story", right? Wrong. If you're expecting scene after morbid scene from this book, you're bound to be disappointed, for Namita Gokhale's book is far from the typical. When Rachita Tiwari's well-regulated life turns topsy-turvy, she retreats to the comfort of the Himalayas, to a colonial house built by a missionary over a century ago. It is here that the story unfolds. With its idyllic settings and intriguing history, the house and its nostalgic link to her childhood prove to be therapeutic. The narrative belongs as much to the benign spirit of the house. Meet a ghost with a conscience. One who befriends crows, has an eternal empathy for butterflies and even falls in love. He guides you through the complex chronological events that the house (and he) have witnessed. Compelled to speak after a century of silence he tells you of his esteemed friend, the devout Father Benedictus, who exorcised the house from the evil legacy of the infamous Munro and his perverse coterie. Rid of their diabolism and esoteric indulgences, the house then plays host to the exquisite Dona Rosa and her vain lover, Captain Wolcott. There is also the missionary James Cockerell, whose diary portrays the genesis of the house. If you overlook the tendency to use invectives and understand the inclination towards philosophy and the metaphysical, take in your stride concepts such as "Synesthesia", "Appropriation" and "Synchronicity" and sift through seemingly trivial details, what you will be left with is the fine line between the substance and the shadows that this book is all about.
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