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BOOKS
Some Insecticide, Please
Debutant novelist as stylish entomologist forgets
the human spirit
By Manjula Padmanabhan
Some books carry
the reader away on wild adventures and others park them by the side of
a deserted highway while the author wanders off into a thicket of words.
This book, sadly, falls into the latter category. Sadly, because it's
a book I wanted to like. It had the right qualifications: it's set in
Pakistan, a country that has my automatic sympathy because I spent three
happy years there as a child. The author is just 33 and this is his first
book: one is inclined to be indulgent with first-timers. And though I
prefer ants to termites in the way of social insects, I was willing to
let the book show me otherwise: after all, termites have a sort of passion
in their uninhibited hungers, in the rapture of their feeding habits which
can cause the ruin of human homes, lives and ambitions.
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Passion In The Time
Of Termites
By Musharraf Farooqi
HarperCollins
Price: Rs 395
Pages: 310
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Set in the small town of Purana Shahr, the story
steps right into the many-winged life cycle of the termite queens even
as it sets out the primary characters of the story, who include Mirzban
Yunani, the "absent-minded genius, researching the evolution of eternity",
Salar Jung, "an eccentric, rich old man in his seventies, shopping
around for a bride", and Kotwal, a "notorious tomcat".
These characters are presented in a list at the beginning of the book,
to afford easy access to their intertwined lives.
Even as the termite infestation enters the walls
and floors of the story, the characters move about the space created for
them in the ill-conceived housing complex for non-gazetted officers known
as Topee Mohalla. In the course of the book, we will see one major and
one illusory romance and several deceits. We will see one genius uncover
a termite-flavoured interpretation of the Divine Plan while the wiles
of a municipal sweeper wreak minor havoc in the drains of a community.
There are traditional pehlwans, a gorgeously-attired Makrani cinema usher,
an oily lawyer, a group of mysterious qalandars who bring in a pangolin
to help with the termites and even a louse-removing chimpanzee.
 For
all the details and delicacies which suggest the author's familiarity
with the world he describes, there is also a curious sterility. I felt
like a tourist visiting a site that had been carefully constructed to
look like something authentic which turned out to be nothing more than
a series of well-executed holograms. The author is certainly gifted and
erudite: he writes with the carefully fussy language of a Victorian stylist
and his characters do his bidding with remarkable consistency. But he
seems to regard them with the curiosity of an entomologist, not a student
of the human spirit. Perhaps it was only chance that brought associations
of I. Alan Sealy's Trotter Nama to the quaintness of the lives being described
and a touch of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast to the army of cats, yet the
effect is less of paying literary tribute than to borrowing colours from
well-established palettes.
By constantly drawing our attention to the termites
which eat their way into the story, the author cannot help but suggest
that in his view, humans are merely termites of a different order. The
insects bore their tunnels through the woodwork of our homes; we bore
our homes through the woodwork of the universe, confounded by the occasional
pesticides and pangolins which may be brought to oppress us, but ultimately,
as unheedful of our humble position in the cosmos as the termites, no
doubt, are of theirs.
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Proof of Vedic Culture's Global Existence
By Stephen Knapp
(World Relief Network, $14.95)
Origins, sources and influence of the Vedas.
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As the River Joins the Ocean
By G. Narayan
(Penguin, Rs 200)
A portrait of J. Krishnamurti by his nephew.
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Legal and Constitutional History of India
By M. Rama Jois
(Universal Law Publishing, Rs 176)
A classical interpretation of law.
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Common Indian Wild Flowers
By Isaac Kehimkar
(Oxford, Rs 375)
Illustrations and descriptions of 240 floral species.
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Jinnah and Gandhi
By S.K. Majumdar
(Minerva Associates, Rs 354)
The role they played in India's quest for freedom.
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