Sleeping With The Enemy

If you hear of me getting married, slap me. - Elizabeth Taylor

Today, husband dear came home early, and immediately proceeded to make his presence felt as lord and master of the domain by plonking himself in front of the TV, switching channels without so much as a by-your-leave and demanding immediate sustenance.

I began my role-playing of the ideal, devoted wife.

Serving up two large, hot samosas, I asked if  he’d like an apple. The general rule of thumb is: If I offer an apple, he’d want a banana. And if I offer a banana, he’d want an apple. Since I was fresh out of apples, I offered an apple.

Swift came the recoil, “I’d rather have a banana!” Ooh! These small victories taste so sweet. You see, they’re few and far between.

*****

Then I attempted my hand at chirpy chit-chat. “Do you like the samosas? I baked them instead of deep-frying. And I added some mint in the stuffing for extra flavour.”

I hung back like a puppy, tail wagging, tongue hanging out, trawling for that pat on the back. Forehead puckered in ferocious concentration, he picked up a limp and forgotten potato crisp from the table, folded it meticulously into four to form a perfect triangle and clamped his chompers on it with evident anticipation.

Five whole minutes passed before he answered, “Any mail for me?”

Some people never learn. I’m one of  them. Forever a glutton for punishment. After all these years, I still hope to merit a word of praise. Even a left-handed one would do nicely.

Actually, today wasn’t too bad. He’d at least thought for a good five minutes before erasing me out…because his normal response to my queries is to turn the pages of  the book/newspaper he’s reading and pretend I’m the Invisible Woman.

I’m like the cat from Alice in Wonderland, dematerialized, but for that cheesy, half-arsed grin on my face.

*****

Confabulations with The Great Communicator being what it is, I’ve become a pastmaster at playing dumb charade. That is, I carry on the charade of  being dumb while having the real dialogue in my head.

As when:

He: (Expression like he’s encountered something fetid) “What’s this? Sambaar* or

rasam*? I can’t tell by the consistency.”

Me: (Submissively) “It’s vatta kulambu*.” (In my head) ‘If you sink your beak any

deeper into the bowl, you’ll find out soon enough!’

Or

He: (Loudly, showing off his superior knowledge in front of our mainly foreign guests) “I said, GET THE COINTREAU! Not the Tia Maria. It’s the square shaped bottle to the left.”

Me: (Silently, through gritted teeth) ‘Stop being a phoney gora, you pi-dog! I know as much about liqueurs as you.’

*****

Every wife should play this incredibly gratifying game of splenetic rant in her head. Since it’s tacit, you don’t have to face the aftermath of broken spirits and broken hearts. But you get your money’s worth.

It’s been like that, from the first night we spent together.

Conversation: Nil. 

Action: One sided.

When he clambered aboard with that do-or-die expression, holding his hose in his hand with the dedication of  a gardener trying to water his prize roses. Then he remembered that he first had to turn me on. So he grabbed my right breast and twisted it clockwise four times. Ditto, anti-clockwise. A reprise with the other boob.

Convinced that I was now writhing in ecstasy after this splendid execution of foreplay, he dipped his wick into me with the precision of a dive bomber.

Mission impossible: Accomplished. 

Achievement: Penetration.

Loss: Making love.

(Excerpts shared with permission from the publisher, Leadstart Publishing.)

Bonsai Kitten is available on uRead.com for Rs 154 only (21% OFF). Free shipping, cash-on-delivery available in India. Low cost shipping fees worldwide. To buy the book, click here.

By Anubhav Mehta

Pia Heikkila’s Operation Lipstick: Mission For Mr Right brings good ole’ chick-lit in a new setting - war ravaged Afghanistan, courtesy its main protagonist, Anna Sanderson who is a thirty-something, single, horny foreign correspondent for UK-based television network. After a series of run-ins with her dream man, Mark (Mr Delectable, she calls him), she is convinced she has fallen for him (and so has he, we’re told) until an incident involving her friend Kelly and her ex-boyfriend opens up the pandora’s box about a major arms embezzlement deal involving the Taliban.

If Anna is able to get to the root of the story and catch the guilty red-handed for her cameras, she could end up with the greatest scoop of her lifetime.

It isn’t a bad setting for a racy action-packed adventure involving a female protagonist. The first half of the book is a bit of a drag and the socialite parties, the clinking of the glasses tend to feel a bit repetitive, but the narration does strike a chord in the second half, involving some major action scenes and a far closer look, and a more sensitive look at Afghan people and the armed forces. Also, we’re not told much about Mark at all, except that he’s got killer looks and that he works for in the security business. That, and his ability to surface wherever our damsel-in-distress is seen (or stuck and needs rescuing) is what works for Anna. 

Pia’s writing is fluid, punctuated with good doses of guffaw generating humour and a-la Fifty Shades there’s also cringe inducing fantasy about an orgy with soldiers at the gymnasium. A major weakness, I felt, is the book’s tendency to give us the impression that Anna as a journalist who uses her sexuality far too prominently in order to get the information she wants from her sources. A roll-in-the-hay seems to be in order, if she wants to unearth classified information from sex-starved white men in uniform. It seems too easy and too obvious a way out for a journalist, re-affirming some misplaced and infamous cliches about people working in the media.

This book’s good for a quick-read over the weekend, or on the flight.

Rating: 2.5 / 5 (Not Bad)

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Published by Ebury Press | Random House India

by Arcopol Chaudhuri

I’m a sucker for books about Parsis. They’ve got some mad stories about them. Dysfunctional families, property disputes, affairs with first cousins, renting out apartments to suspicious tenants, unhappy marriages, colonial bungalows and what have you – murder, betrayal, divorce, illicit affairs – all ingredients for very gripping plots. 

Being a close-knit community, their proximity produces interesting equations. But what about those Parsis who are kept at bay? They’re the khandhias (corpse bearers) whose job involves carrying bodies of deceased Parsis to their final resting place at the Towers of Silence in Doongerwadi in Mumbai. Ostracized and marginalized in every possible manner, Chronicle of Corpse Bearer is a book about them.

Written by Cyrus Mistry, the story for the book was concieved in 1991 at a time when the author was working on a Channel 4 documentary on corpse bearers in Bombay’s Parsi community. The film was never made, but one story he heard in the course of his research stayed with him. That story was about a middle-class Parsi dock worker in the pre-independence era who married the daughter of a khandhia. The person who narrated the story was the son to this improbable marriage. 

The book essentially is an inspiration from that tale. Except, there isn’t a dock worker here. There’s Elchi (Phiroze Elchidana), son of a revered Parsi priest, narrating the story of his life – growing up in deeply religious Parsi household, being a non-achiever at school, falling in love with Seppy (Sepideh), the daughter of a khandhia, giving up his family to marry her, losing her soon after their daughter is born, and eventually his complete dignity amongst the Parsi community. 

Being a group of a humiliated outcasts who have no rights, unreasonable working hours and very little money, the book also places an equally arresting story of a revolt by Elchi and his co-workers against the Parsi Panchayat demanding more humane treatment. This narrative runs parallel to events unfolding in the run up to India’s independence. The metaphor is well-placed, and Mistry’s storytelling blends a well-measured dose of black humour, irony and tragedy.

The second half of the book weaves in an even more amusing and heartbreaking incident concerning the funeral of a cancer patient Joseph, born to a Parsi father and a Christian mother, who upon realizing that his end is near, seeks release through a Zoroastrian funeral. The ensuing turbulence that this creates amongst the Parsi community, the Panchayat, press and the khandhias is the highlight of the book, and it’s eventual outcome finds neoralistic resonance even in today’s times.

Mistry shows a very mature and empathetic approach in telling the story, developing conflict, a sense of longing and loss, and brings a fair closure to each relationship in Phiroze’s life. The characters stay with the reader beyond the pages of the book and personally, it created a sense of urge in me to go visit Doongerwadi and live the story once more. 

Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer is an important book. Not only does it mourn the rift created amongst individuals thanks to society’s desire to cling on to tradition, it also tells an unsettling story of those on the fringes of an alarmingly shrinking community. 

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Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, published by Aleph Book Company, is available on uRead.com at 31% discount for Rs 342 / $6.16. Click here to buy / gift a copy. Free shipping, cash on delivery in India. Low cost shipping fees worldwide.

You may want to read Cyrus Mistry’s previous work, The Radiance of the Ashes. Available on uRead.com for Rs 220. Click here to buy.

Author Mainak Dhar

The Cubicle Manifesto is the story of Mayukh, a young and harried manager whose computer gets taken over by a virus bent on starting a revolution. A revolution, where Mayukh is gradually freed from the entrapment of his cubicle and reconnected him with his true self and family.

Targeted at cubicle dwellers urging them to go get a life, The Cubicle Manifesto is a compact, easy-to-read self-help book that compels you to think. I spoke to him in this e-mail interview:

Mainak, tell us a bit about yourself and what made you write The Cubicle Manifesto. Was it after you’d set a similar manifesto for yourself and implemented it too?

I’m a self confessed cubicle dweller by day and writer by night. I’ve been working in the corporate world for sixteen years, and have been lucky enough to be able to live the dream of being a writer I first had when I stapled together some poems in Grade 7 and sold them to my classmates. The Cubicle Manifesto really brings together those two parts of my life. Unlike the main character in the book, I did not have a sudden epiphany or indeed a virus to help me out. My thinking on the matter has crystallized over the years as I understood more of what made me tick, and how I tried to reconcile a challenging day job with all the other commitments in my life, including my family and my writing.

I like the fact that it’s a thin book and a quick read, unlike other books in this genre which are hardbound, much thicker and take themselves too seriously. Tell us about the writing process – how long did it take you, and how you made time for it.

The idea for The Cubicle Manifesto actually first came to me some five years ago, and I had drafted out about a quarter of the book before I moved on to some fiction projects. It was resurrected when Milee, my Editor at Random House, called me to ask if I had any ideas for a `soft business’ book. I thought of The Cubicle Manifesto, dusted it off, and got down to writing. The writing took about four months and then of course a few more for editing. In general, I balance my writing with all my other commitments by keeping aside 30-45 minutes each night when I do nothing but write or plan my writing. My day job also involves some travel, and you’ll be amazed how much writing can be done in a three/four hour flight or sitting in airports. 

Is The Cubicle Manifesto easy to implement in smaller organizations, than large MNCs? How can the latter take a leaf out of your book?

I personally feel it can be implemented in any organization, irrespective of size. That’s because the learnings of The Cubicle Manifesto are not things that rely on an organization design or mandate to implement. They start with each individual recognizing what his/her stakeholders and priorities are and understanding what balance works best for them.

For most of the 20th century, it were the worker unions in America who convinced their business leaders to implement a 40-hour work week. Do you think the formation of unions can bring that back in today’s organisations?

Actually, my belief is that The Cubicle Manifesto and achieving a better balance has to be an individual choice, not something that can be mandated as a blanket solution. For example, a young manager just starting out in his/her career without a family may enjoy hanging out with colleagues at work and staying late and think they have a great balance. On the other hand, someone with a family and children would perhaps make different choices. The name of the game is not to have one solution for everyone but to empower each employee to understand what their choices and priorities are and to act on them to achieve the balance that works for their individual context.

The Blackberry is becoming an aspirational device for teenagers. Is ‘the blinking red light’ becoming a leash much too soon than we’d want it to? (Vodafone’s ‘Blackberry Boys’ TV commercials aren’t helping either.)

Absolutely. Being `always connected’ is not always a good thing since it becomes only too tempting to keep checking on mails. In The Cubicle Manifesto, I use a simple analogy- if it is not appropriate for you to watch a movie in your office cubicle, why is it appropriate to keep checking your office mail when you are in a movie hall with your family or having a family dinner? The core of The Cubicle Manifesto is recognizing that your primary allegiance is not to whatever organization you are employed by, but to a company called You Corp- ie. You and your life in its totality. In that corporation called You Corp, your office demands and colleagues may be important stakeholders, but there are other stakeholders- your family, your friends, your hobbies. Learning to acknowledge and balance them in a way that works for you is the key.

If a candidate turned up at a job interview and stated that he will under no circumstances buy/use a Blackberry (or a phone with e-mail access), because he doesn’t want to be ‘connected’ to work all the time, do you think he is unlikely to be hired?

Short answer- he would probably not get the job. Long answer- a Blackberry is a tool- and you know what they say about the workman who blames his tools.

There’s this feeling that the cubicle manifesto becomes easy to implement if leaders at the top believe in encouraging employees to have a life beyond work. Which organisations are putting this into practice?

Having someone senior role-model better balance will always help, because it is a visible symbol to younger employees that success at work and a good balance need not be mutually exclusive. Having said that, there are simple tips in The Cubicle Manifesto that any employee, no matter how junior in an organization they are, can start acting on. Things like using their calendars to mark in times for personal errands and tasks, like taking the time out to connect with those who knew them before they became cubicle dwellers and so on. If you look at the revolutions sweeping many countries in the world- they are driven not by some larger than life leader spouting inspirational philosophy, but by individuals wanting a change and getting together to make it happen. In producing changes of the sort The Cubicle Manifesto talks about, the other powerful tool is social networking. If one person starts making positive changes, it becomes easy to transmit and communicate that to others, often under the radar screen of `official company policy’. 

Major firms now provide facilities like a gaming zone, gymnasium, creche and what-not, to make their employees ‘feel at home’. Are you supportive of this approach?

I am very supportive to the extent that they make the workplace an environment that is less stressful and sterile and is more conducive for creative thinking. In the kind of office my protagonist in The Cubicle Manifesto works in, he realizes that the only way to really think out of the box is to literally take himself out of the box and get away from the sterile rows of cubes to get fresh ideas. In an office of the sort you describe, employees may not need to do that. Having said that, I’m not sure I agree with making employees feel `at home’ – in other words, making office more comfortable so employees work even longer hours. As I said before, balance has to be an individual choice, and what is good balance for one person may not work for another. So one employee may want to use the gym and then work late, while another may want an earlier start and leave for home earlier. Respecting that is what will make an organization and manager truly walk the talk in respecting employee balance more than any props put up in office.

A former boss had once told me that ‘Work-life balance is a myth. There is no balance. It’s either this, or that.’ I concur with him. Your thoughts?

I hate the term `work-life balance’. It seems like it’s the product of some conspiracy hatched by some sadistic managers in a stuffy conference room to make us cubicle dwellers keep running in the rat race, serving their purpose. I say that because the phrase `work-life balance’ implies that one’s work is somehow an equal to everything else one has in one’s life- and that is elevating employment to a far higher pedestal than it deserves to be. Work is part of life- certainly an important part, but by no means the only part, and honestly not even the most important part. I’m sure you would rather lose a job than lose a loved one forever. I’m making an extreme comparison, but it does bring out the fact that our ‘life’ is a complex network of relationships, obligations, hobbies, passions, and yes, what we do to earn a living. Happiness, in my book, lies in finding what one’s balance is between all those balls one has to juggle, not simplistic talk of `work-life balance’. That balance will differ from one person to another and indeed changes as a person moves from one life stage to another. The whole idea behind The Cubicle Manifesto is not to provide a facile answer or formula but to provoke readers to ask those questions of themselves and discover for themselves what their own manifesto is.

Could you tell us something about your forthcoming book? What are you working on?

I’m very excited about where my writing is today and with what I have coming up. Vimana, a science fiction novel is going to be released in India by Penguin in April. I think the blend of sci-fi and mythology it provides should make for fun reading. The movie deal for Herogiri, a novel I had published with Random House has just been announced, so that’s been really exciting. I have also been having a lot of fun with really embracing and leveraging the changes the Internet and ebooks imply for readers. I uploaded by first ebooks on Amazon last March, and in a year have sold well over 100,000 copies. My biggest success has been Alice in Deadland, with more than 60,000 copies sold. The sequel, Through The Killing Glass, was just uploaded onto Amazon and I am currently in discussions with some publishers on how we could bring Alice in Deadland to Indian bookstores.

The Cubicle Manifesto, published by Random House India is available on uRead.com at 26% discount (Rs 111 only). Free shipping in India. Worldwide shipping available. Click here to buy / gift the book.

Flip open The Butterfly Generation to read the blurb and there’s this feeling: Where have I read this kind of social commentary before? Why does this feel like deja knew? How do you put an entire book about something as obvious as this?

However, a few pages into the first chapter, as you read about author Palash Krishna Mehrotra wriggling his way out of a petty squabble with his landlord over a rat, you see that his approach is different.

Who qualifies to be part of the butterfly generation? A blurb on the jacket copy describes it as thus: “Old enough to remember the steam train, but young enough to appreciate broadband, free to flirt with the West and dream…(someone who) flits back and forth between Hindi and English, the little black dress and the six-yard sari.”

Composed of essays, this book paints a realistic portrait of young urban Indians today - a doomed call centre worker, a drug dealer on the make, an airline pilot dreaming of a French Riviera, Versova’s scriptwriters, birds ‘loving jihad’ on Valentine’s Day, those with ‘McJobs’, singletons, the music renaissance - TBG magnifies a picture that is worrying and eccentric, yet hopeful at the same time.

Mehrotra’s voice is original, poetic and his passion for documenting his interviewees is faintly reminiscent of Suketu Mehta (Maximum City). He also covers a fair amount of ground in documenting Indian women’s magazines, the increasingly dynamic music scene (Gurus of Growl) and the history of Doordarshan. In a chapter about Versova’s Scriptwriters, Mehrotra observes them sitting in a restaurant, watching a TV channel that airs the latest grapevine from Bollywood:

“There is a natural link between these people and the channels. For them, this is not gossip from the world of song and dance; this is their professional life. Watching E24 inside Pop Tates with the struggling hunks is like watching a never ending soccer-match from the bench. Anybody can be called upon to play any time. You better be on your toes.”

A reader might feel depressed half-way into the book, because the author always ends up finding young Indians who are weed-infested, most of the time. But just when you think Mehrotra’s typecasting is getting awry, he writes about the a rickshaw driver, Nandu.

Thankfully, he doesn’t generalise TBG by their financial muscle. He says, that they’re in fact “far less conscious than the middle class which is terribly aware of its rise in the modern world”.

“When the urban middle class sits down to eat sushi, they are thinking: look, Delhi is finally becoming a ‘world’ city; we can eat what the middle class elsewhere eats. We are in with international trends. When Nandu eats a strawberry, he just eats a new fruit. If he finds the taste too foreign or strange, he calls it horseshit.”

Part memoir, part travelogue, the book also convinces - rather subtly - that the current financial and social ecosystem that the butterfly generation is born into, is actually a product of enormous change, a result of choices made by someone else, for us.

In totality, The Butterfly Generation is not really an ‘India’ book, a league in which you’d classify books in the recent past, such as Katherine Boo’s Behind The Beautiful Forevers, Siddhartha Deb’s The Beautiful and the Damned, Patrick French’s India: A Portrait.

Mehrotra has no qualms about dissolving the observer-observed divide: to best understand the generation he is writing about, he immerses himself amongst his subjects at will. It’s a strategy that works to his advantage. He unwraps the bubble wrap of his characters without a prejudiced foreign lens, thus making a portrait that is intimate, stunning and authentic. It’s a bit like watching a documentary, where the chronicler is at a enviable state of detachment from his subjects, yet close enough to capture the essential details unsparingly.

Recommended reading.

Order it now from uRead.com at 30% discount (Rs 315). Pay online / cash-on-delivery. Free shipping across India. Worldwide shipping available. Click here.

You may want to read Palash Krishna Mehrotra’s first book, Eunuch Park. Order it now on uRead.com at 21% discount (Rs 198). Click here.