Neel Mukherjee

This book will be hard to forget. Five loosely linked tales. A bit-part-player in one tale is the subject of another. Everyone here has left the familiar in quest of something different, something better. The raw poverty and scraping by existence of many of the characters is quite hard to bear. I'll remember most I think Lakshman, who comes upon a beer cub, and with astonishing ignorance, cruelty and lack of empathy teaches the creature to 'dance', to provide him with an income. He lurches from crisis to crisis, and we know it won't end well. Village girl Milly is sent away aged eight to become a maid to provide an income for her family. She rarely sees her family again, but this is a success story of sorts.

It's about brutal social divisions, grinding poverty and inequality, but this compassionate book is a rewarding read.… (mehr)

I'm going to have to find a print copy to improve this review. I didn't realize at first that these were separate stories, or how different sections related to each other. It took longer than I expected to get used to the accent of the reader, but once I did I felt it strongly supported the sense of a different culture.
I did visit India for 2 weeks in my early 20's, and was completely unprepared for the Delhi streets. Reading this book made me look back on my experience and wonder how much of the ceremony I was there for was another attempt to bilk the white visitors, as profit to an upper caste man.
The first story, about a father's sense of dissociation when he has brought his young son to tour his homeland of India, was not that interesting, but as the book progressed and presented more stories about the impoverished people of India, I began to wonder if there was some meaning in presenting this experience of an emigrant Indian first. Definitely need the print book to study this, as I also wonder how much of this story is autobiographical.
The story of a man who trains a bear did not engender much sympathy for the man, but as I heard another story of a man trapped in paying off debt, I began to understand the motivation for the bear story.
The story about Indian cooking, and the descriptions of food in some of the other stories, had me longing to eat them.
What seemed to be a long story (or maybe it was 2 related stories) about a tribal girl who is raped and beaten by the local police and later joins guerillas connected in my mind with the treatment the native persons in my country also receive. There is no way we can stand as 'holier than thou' and condemn practices in another country if we can't take care of our own.
Shortly after reading this, I picked up a missionary's book which was essentially describing life in modern India to induce guilt and donations from Euro/American readers. It made a big deal about the caste system limiting people. The book did not inspire me, but did cause me to ponder how much the caste system is still active in India. Mukherjee barely mentioned any sense of caste by the people in his stories; one just picks up on a vague impression of the Indian emigrant likely being and upperclass educated person, versus the barely literate forest dwellers. Based on our American culture it was easy to see the difference as economic classes (which play a major role here) as a religio-oppressive caste belief.… (mehr)