BOOKWORM

STOCKING STUFFERS FOR ALL AGES

The Puffin Book of Christmas Stories, compiled by Wendy Cooling, Puffin, $16.99.  Marley’s Ghost from A Christmas Carol, makes an appearance, but you won’t find other Christmas staples like stories from Little Women.

This collection is a treasury of sweet and unusual tales from different parts of the world about the meaning and the joy of Christmas. A Christmas horse gathers up the naughtiness of children before Santa’s arrival. The bells ring out in a church in a faraway country to celebrate the gift a little child brings when they remain silent at all the riches the wealthy offer. A magical shop helps Peter stop his parents’ bickering. There’s a Scandinavian legend and a Russian folktale. My personal favourite, perhaps, though admittedly it is hard to pick just one, is Not Just For Christmas in which an eight-year-old gets a pet that will become a seeing eye dog.

The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories, edited by Jessica Harrison, Penguin Classics, $34. The magical, moving, but also surprising and chilling tales take us from frozen Nordic woods to glittering Paris, from midnight mass in Rio to outer space. Some, like The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Andersen, are downright dark. But then many of his stories in the original were dark, and only later “sanitized” for mass consumption. There are stories from Truman Capote and Chekov and little-known takes on consumerism and festive ingenuity. Saki describes a woman who “takes her pleasures sadly”. Her husband gardens in all weather. When a man goes out in the pouring rain to brush caterpillars off rose trees, I generally imagine his life indoors leaves something to be desired.

This one is for the grownups on your list.

PICO IYER’S JAPAN

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan by Pico Iyer, Vintage Departures, $21.95. “I’ve been living in western Japan for more than thirty-two years, and, to my delight, I know far less than when I arrived.”

Thus begins Pico Iyer’s “guide” to a country that remains an enigma even to its long-term residents.

In Japan, he says, even the word for “I” is different for a man and a woman, “and in any case Japan has taught me how deeply the truest things lie beyond the reach of any language”.

I have enjoyed reading Iyer’s travelogues and other writings and in this, as in the others, he economises on words but is evocative in the ideas he conveys. His Japan isn’t so much exotic as it is impenetrable.

To wit:

I hear a woman’s voice in the street and honestly don’t know if it’s the wife I’ve known for more than thirty years or a stranger – so perfectly are my neighbours taught to speak in a single voice, with the same cadences.

And:

There are eleven arrows on the sign above you as you disembark in Kyoto Station. They point left, right, straight ahead and backwards. In the middle is a question mark.

In Japan, makeup is a girl’s best friend. “My colleague spends two hours a day making herself up,” my wife says on her way to the department store where she works. Iyer has been married to Hiroko for over 30 years.

“She wants everyone to look at her?”

“No. She wants everyone not to.”

He marvels at how strangers “routinely sleep with their heads on strangers’ shoulders on Japanese trains”, and rely on the implicit social agreement not to flinch. In a culture where exhibitionism is frowned upon and collective responsibilities are valued more than individualism, he quotes Zen master Shunriu Suzuki: “If you think, ‘I breathe,’ the ‘I’ is extra.”

Iyer draws on his years of experience – travels, conversations, readings and reflections – to offer a glimpse into the profundity of all things Japanese.

A STORY OF RESILIENCE

Victory Colony by Bhaswati Ghosh, Yoda Press, Kindle (Canada version), $7.27, Paperback (India), 499 rupees. When she lands in Calcutta’s Sealdah railway station on a humid day in 1949, Amala Manna has managed to flee from the communal violence in her village, but not from all her trials.

Within moments of crossing over to India as a refugee from East Pakistan, she loses Kartik, her younger brother. Thanks to a group of young volunteers, Amala finds her way to a refugee camp in Gariahata. Manas Dutta, the leader of the volunteer group, falls in love with the beautiful, strong and yet very vulnerable Amala, but it is, perhaps, a doomed relationship – the socioeconomic and cultural differences between them too vast for his family to accept.

Despite the sordid camp life, Amala finds sustenance in her search for Kartik and the new familial bonds the camp allows her to forge with complete strangers. With dwindling official support, the situation in the camp deteriorates, and the refugees take things into their own hands. They establish Bijoy Nagar – Victory Colony in Bangla – by occupying a zamindar’s vacant plot of land. This dramatic event is a harbinger of radical shifts in Amala’s personal life.

Victory Colony, 1950, is the story of the resilience of refugees from East Pakistan, who found themselves largely unwanted on either side of the border following the partition of India in 1947. In the face of government apathy and public disdain, the refugees built their lives from the bottom up with sheer hard work and persistence, changing, in the process, the sociocultural landscape of Calcutta – the city they claimed as home – forever.

There’s a generous sprinkling of Bangla, both the kind spoken in Calcutta and the kind Amala spoke in East Pakistan. It adds a flavour, but occasionally, gets in the way of the narrative. How many non-speakers of the language would follow what “Arrey, bhawlentyaar Babu je” means, for instance?

And then there are descriptions such as “petrichor-laden breeze” that have me reaching for the dictionary. I learn that it means the distinctive fragrance of wet earth after the first rain.

But I set those small quibbles aside as I settle into a thoroughly engrossing read that in a different context, in a different century, could be describing the lives of millions of people around the world today.

A soldier is condemned to live a war, and a refugee, its aftermath, notes Manas in his diary.

Unprepared for the sheer numbers of refugees pouring in, some people set out to help in any way they can, while others resent the strain it is putting on the civic services. There are rumblings about how the “lethargic” refugees with their “lack of industry” are a burden on the system. And yet, as Manas notes, they are the same people who take charge of their future. Lives that were torn apart during the partition of Bengal are rebuilt, piece by piece.

With a keen eye for small details that make people, places and events unique, Bhaswati Ghosh weaves together a rich tapestry, describing a chapter in the aftermath of the formation of two nations – one that is often overlooked in the turbulent history of the subcontinent. 

Victory Colony, 1950, is available on Amazon Kindle worldwide and in paperback in India through a few independent booksellers. Efforts are underway to make it available on other global platforms, but this process is moving slower than usual because of the current pandemic. The paperback edition of Victory Colony, 1950 is now available in paperback on Amazon India.

Click here for more on the author.

THE HEALING POWER OF WORDS

The Rumi Prescription by Melody Moezzi, Tarcher Perigee, $36. With the help of her father, a lifelong fan of Rumi’s poetry, writer and activist Melody Moezzi immerses herself in the deceptively simple poems of the thirteenth-century mystic to find her way out of a creative and spiritual block.

Addressing isolation, distraction, depression, fear and other everyday modern challenges many of us face, she shares poems that offer a road map for living with intention and ease.

She shares her own challenges of living with bipolar disorder in a no-holds barred account that leaves you breathless as she hurtles from describing a crisis in which “a wicked case of undiagnosed and untreated manic depression that led to a suicide attempt”  to one that gives you the warm fuzzies as she enjoys breakfast with her father.

When she comes down with  a severe case of writer’s block, she turns to him for help.

For as long as I can remember, my father has been scribbling poems on his old prescription pads, signing them as though they were for any ordinary pharmaceutical. My entire life, he has been writing me these prescriptions, leaving them like pearls at my feet.

Disease: Wanting

Prescription: Go to the source

All those severed from their source

Yearn to return as a matter of course

The lines are simple, yet full of profound wisdom. They invite thoughtful study.

And yet, the translations start to get a little trite.

Forget your plans and embrace uncertainty.

Only then will you find stability.

Rumi wrote in rhyme, and having the translations in rhyme makes them easier to remember. But then they also start to appear like clues to a child’s Monopoly. If you continue to flail, you will go to jail!

I think of the opening lines of her book, her translation of ham-deli as ham-zabani behtar ast – Better to be of the same heart than of the same tongue – and conclude that I like that so much more. 

TEEN REVIEW

By AVNEET KAUR SAINI

Animal Farm by George Orwell, Penguin UK, $11.99. Animal Farm by George Orwell is a major allusion novel to the Russian Revolution.

The animals get fed up with their owner, Farmer Jones, so they revolutionize to kick him out. The pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, compete to take lead. The novel ends with the pigs behaving like the humans the animals first tried to get rid of.

The themes were powerful and allowed me to make connections to the world, like the theme of the importance of education. You can easily relate to many of the animals’ problems.

Orwell changed some of the characters and events, but still showed the problems with the government. However, I felt the story’s overall effect could have been improved without there being a surfeit of additional characteristics.

He wanted to create a story that depicted the world around him in the way he viewed it. He wanted to educate  people on  how power can become negative and be used for manipulation.

After reading it, I had a completely new view on issues regarding power and politics.

I’ve found that you have to honour and treat people and animals fairly and to stand by your decision. I was fascinated by the message and the many layers that were waiting to unravel; it is a book that anyone could and should read.

 • Avneet Kaur Saini is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.