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SMELL Nose Her Stuff Newcomer Jha's impressive tale of surviving Paris By Madhu Jain SMELL Cyrano de Bergerac's nose was, well, upfront. It's unusual length visibly disorienting, isolating. In the case of Leela Patel, the young and sexy Indo-African protagonist with the breasts of an Indian goddess (pointed and diagonal?) who cruises through Paris in Radhika Jha's picaresque debut novel, it is internalised. Metaphorised. Patel's acute sense of smell becomes a passport for her to enter chic and secret Parisian worlds. A Merlin in the kitchen she can cook up extraordinary dishes by letting her nose do the dictating: how about olives, roasted red pepper and pine nuts in chicken curry? We are not talking simple fusion here. She can weave tales round smells, like a latter day Scheherazade whose fabulist abilities save her life. This talent colours her emotions and relationships -- from food to sex. But it soon also becomes a passport to her private hells: she is tortured by a "dark feral smell" that seems to emanate from her and clings to her, setting her apart from the rest of humanity. Jha's use of the language is impressive, especially her prose about the virtues of onions: "To begin with, onions fight back. They hold on to their water, afraid to die. They sing a song, they shout at you and curse you and they give a terrible smell. Then the fire and the oil have their way and the onions give up. The smell leaves the onions like a dying breath leaves the body, and enters the rest of the food. The onion's smell is the smell of dying." This amazing first novel with philosophical titbits strewn about like those coins in Christmas puddings could have been an Indian take on Orwell's Down and Out in Paris. Dumped in Paris by her mother after her shopkeeper father is burnt alive in Kenya, Patel begins like a babe in the Paris woods but soon learns the language and ways of the city and of all flesh -- the hard way. She doesn't quite become a Paris clochard haunting metros. But she does befriend a rat in a metro station, looking at it almost as if it were a totem representing herself. The metro becomes a womb or shelter for both. And she does go through men and disastrous relationships with a rapacious hunger and speed that could make a call girl feel tired. This is a dark and fiercely intense novel that also -- tangentially but imaginatively -- touches upon larger issues like French racism, multiculturalism, consumerism, social hypocrisy and snobbery. And it's rare to read such an insightful critique of contemporary French society and its malaises by an Indian pen. But above all, Smell is a perceptive account of the painful odyssey of a young and innocent Gujarati woman thrown into an alien world. Whether it is the claustrophobic world in which her aunt and uncle live, sealed off from the rest of France as it were. Or her life as an au pair in a French family or with several of her cynical lovers. Unlooped from the binds of tradition, Patel, unlike many young women of the Indian diaspora, can dump memories and identities because they have been brutally snatched from her. She can reinvent herself continuously. Ultimately, this is also a book about redemption, about coming home, finally to the self, rid of all the smells of borrowed identities. Ship Shape The Navy's official history is a wealth of detail on 1971 By Rahul Roy-Chaudhury TRANSITION TO
TRIUMPH: HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY, 1965-1975 The Indian Navy's proac-tive role during the Kargil conflict has its origins in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war, when it went on the offensive to achieve maritime dominance. This took place through the use of ship-launched missiles against warships off Karachi, and sustained aircraft carrier operations against ports and hostile shipping in Bangladesh. Not surprisingly the third volume of the navy's official history, covering the '60s and '70s, focuses largely on this triumphant military campaign, its first real war since Independence. It also examines the transition of the service into a multi-dimensional fighting force, through the acquisition of Russian submarines and missiles and the construction of frigates in India. This is an honest book. Written by a former vice-chief who helped plan the missile attacks against Karachi, it does not hesitate to bring out failures in command during the war nor shortcomings in men and material. These tragic failures include the loss of the Indian frigate Khukri, the botched amphibious landing at Ukhia and "friendly fire" from Indian aircraft. Inexplicably, it does not emphasise the elevation of the naval chief to the rank of a four-star admiral -- equivalent to the other two services -- in March 1968. This reflected a notable shift from strictly landward-oriented threats. Nor does the book examine the nuclear weapon dimensions of the approach of the US aircraft carrier Enterprise. Even so, this book is a welcome addition to the scarce literature on the armed forces. After all, the official histories of the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars are yet to be published. Painstaking research by the author has resulted in a must read for Indian naval officers and those interested in India's rich maritime and naval history. NEW RELEASES First Steps Towards Career Success The Transformed Mind Echoes of the Himalayas Fighting Corruption and Restructuring
Government Shuka Saptati Translated |
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