Skip to main content

Pig In Mud

I have as little knowledge of cricket as I do of pig slaughtering - the themes that two books I am reading now open with. The former is The Match by Romesh Guneskera and the later is The Konkans by Tony D'Souza. Guneskera is overwhelming me with minutiae of locale and theme to the point I am losing sight of his story. The characters are disappearing on me like random people do in crowded bazaars. I am not sure which one I am supposed to keep in sight so I get to the end. He has my poor head spinning already and I'm likley to drop out mid-book.

D'Souza starts with this fantastic account about two men, the narrators uncles who arrive in Chicago from Konkan in India and decide they need to slaughter a pig to celebrate the feast of St. Francis Xavier the family's patron saint. The characters are sketched in bold colors as the story unfolds at a bracing pace. The smell of dukrajemas (a Konkani pork curry) and all too frequent flash backs to Chikmaglur do not distract or parochialize. Instead they form an authentic backdrop in which D'Souza spins his yarn masterfully.

When it comes to using exotic locales in storytelling there are tinkers like Guneskera and others and the real mechanics like D'Souza who know to use it a tell a story that transcends its setting. I am struggling for the right cricketing idiom for Guneskera’s book but it would be along the lines of leaving a movie at intermission to find something else to do. For anyone who likes being told a good story D’Souza’s will make them as happy as a pig in mud.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...