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| March 6, 2000 | ||
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| Risque Business Corporate life is feeding ground for erotica. And you wonder if a writer's out of ideas. By Suhel Seth
The book, set in Delhi (which Mathur seems to be very familiar with), is replete with incidents that would almost suggest that the three basic tenets of existing (and thriving) in the corporate world are: a bored wife who sought excitement outside her marriage; an office environment that smacked of petty politics; and a subordinate who would ignite the fire of the crotch. It is with these mantras that Mathur chooses to write this latest book. Coming as it does after Travails, his last work, it does seem to suggest a writer's block in terms of themes he should tackle. Gambhir Kumar is this ambitious corporate executive who is more worried about the house that he and his wife live in thanks to some company bonanza. The fear of being thrown out seems to drive him to do things that make him the envy of his colleagues. Bored of his wife, who incidentally has her own fair share of one-day stands with her out-of-town clients, makes him veer towards other women and ostensibly other passions. It is precisely against this background that Kapila, a brand manager, enters Gambhir Kumar's life. The reader must then, at every step, encounter lust and devotion: a curious blend of performance in the bedroom and in the boardroom; a typical Hindi film version of an executive's life in a third-grade company manufacturing toothpicks and tissues. Scenes from an Executive Life would have done better to pursue one thematic string rather than grapple with so many. It seems the author has chosen to market the book both to the voyeur and to the reader. nIt's almost as if all of Anurag Mathur's vignettes in Scenes from an Executive Life have been woven with passion rather than a studied insight into the corporate world; and that alone is redeeming. Because if there is one thing the book is it's a slice of erotica using the corporate world as its feeding ground. The book, set in Delhi (which Mathur seems to be very familiar with), is replete with incidents that would almost suggest that the three basic tenets of existing (and thriving) in the corporate world are: a bored wife who sought excitement outside her marriage; an office environment that smacked of petty politics; and a subordinate who would ignite the fire of the crotch. It is with these mantras that Mathur chooses to write this latest book. Coming as it does after Travails, his last work, it does seem to suggest a writer's block in terms of themes he should tackle. Gambhir Kumar is this ambitious corporate executive who is more worried about the house that he and his wife live in thanks to some company bonanza. The fear of being thrown out seems to drive him to do things that make him the envy of his colleagues. Bored of his wife, who incidentally has her own fair share of one-day stands with her out-of-town clients, makes him veer towards other women and ostensibly other passions. It is precisely against this background that Kapila, a brand manager, enters Gambhir Kumar's life. The reader must then, at every step, encounter lust and devotion: a curious blend of performance in the bedroom and in the boardroom; a typical Hindi film version of an executive's life in a third-grade company manufacturing toothpicks and tissues. Scenes from an Executive Life would have done better to pursue one thematic string rather than grapple with so many. It seems the author has chosen to market the book both to the voyeur and to the reader. Postcards From Paradise A quarter century ago, accompanied by my wife and infant daughter, I made my first foray into the Dangs. The monsoon had set in, "painting" the little hill station in south Gujarat "in brilliant shades of green, struck through by brown rivers and silver streams bursting over the edge of rocks into waterfalls. And the light, yes the light, had a dream-like glow to it". Amen, I say, for that was precisely as we saw it then. Densely forested and underpopulated by a gentle, content people whose brow the traumas of the 20th century had not yet creased. Over six years and a similar number of trips into the Dangs, Randhir Khare has penned a diary of his encounters in that unique patch of God's little acre. The result is a remarkably readable tome of the experiences of a closet anthropologist, unabashed sympathiser of lost causes and a scathing critic of the worthless, the sham and the effete. Born into a family that once practised blood sport with considerable verve, Khare turns his gaming skills with deadly marksmanship on the three district collectors he encounters, portraying with devastating humour the pompous peccadilloes of Che, Nappy and Caesar as they rule the tiny district. It is, however, in his interaction with the soothsayer, Janubhai Thakre, and the gutsy Jankiben that Khare triumphs. The powers of the spirits bestowed on a select few are brought to light in unnerving detail as his relationship with Janubhai develops. A night spent under Jankiben's roof reveals the grit of the tribal woman in the face of adversity as also her disregard for conventional mores in sexual relationships. Sex is but an act that reinforces a bond marking permanency in human relationships. The final chapter recollects the happenings in the Dangs over the past two years, happenings that the press has flashed ad nauseam across the globe. Innocence, as in the Genesis, seems forever lost in Khare's Dangs. |
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It's almost as if all of Anurag Mathur's vignettes
in Scenes from an Executive Life have been woven with passion rather than
a studied insight into the corporate world; and that alone is redeeming.
Because if there is one thing the book is it's a slice of erotica using
the corporate world as its feeding ground.