BOOKWORM

WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING LATELY

India in the Persianate Age by Richard M Eaton, Allen Lane, $63.95. History, they say, is written by the victors. It is also, as we know, often rewritten or written over by victors. By those who glorify small victories (or even imagine them) or those who explain (or hide) humiliating defeat.

Richard M Eaton is someone who can “distinguish the rhetoric of conquest from the practices of conquerors and rulers”. In India in the Persianate Age,  he provides several illustration of this.

In 1022, Chola king Rajendra’s general marched 1600 kilometres north through Orissa. After defeating kings along the way, they defeated Mahipal of Bengal, and carried off a bronze image of Siva as well as several other images of Bhairava and Kali. Three years later, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni marched south from Afghanistan with 30,000 soldiers towards the wealthy temple of Somnath, subduing kingdoms along the way. He ordered the Siva image to be broken up and its pieces taken back to his capital.

Here is where it gets interesting. While Persian chroniclers hailed him as an iconoclast, Sanskrit texts from the same period make no mention of the raid, and convey “a sense of undisturbed business as usual”. Did they view it as just another unfortunate attack and hence unremarkable? Was something else at play?

The demonization of Mahmud began in the early 1840, reveals Eaton, after the British suffered defeat at the hands of the Afghan army when they contrived what he describes as a piece of self-serving fiction. While the intent was to distract from their catastrophic defeat and also win the gratitude of Hindus, “this bit of colonial mischief has stoked Hindus’ ill-feeling toward Muslims ever since”.

Eaton, who has published several books on India, covering the social role of Sufis, slavery, the growth of Muslim societies along Bengal’s eastern frontiers and the place of Islam in the subcontinent’s history, draws on a lifetime of research to reveal how this ancient land experienced prolonged and intense interaction with the peoples and cultures of East and Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and specially Central Asia and the Iranian plateau between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries. It was during this period that “India witnessed, among other things, the disappearance of Buddhism, the appearance of the Sikh religion, the growth of the world’s largest Muslim society... and the integration of tribal clans into the Hindu social order as castes”.

He shows the influences of the Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Mughals... and how Persian culture, which spread in the country in the thirteenth century and influenced architecture, dress, music, cuisine and vocabulary cannot be written over in twenty-first century India. He quotes an art historian who observes that “the country, originally possessed by the invaders, now possessed them”. We tend to think of India as a self-contained world, unaffected by outside influence, but this book gives readers a lot to mull over on the cultural confluence the Indian identity encompasses.

A Kitchen in the Corner of the House by Ambai, Archipelago Books, $27. Lakshmi Holmstrom translates these stories by feminist Tamil writer Ambai that stretch the concept of home, marriage and the world.

The women in these stories knead mountains of chapati dough, take offerings across town to a local deity or pack four deities in a plastic box and fly them to America.

Each story describes an oh-so familiar world.

... a few pillows encased in pillow-cases with stubborn hair-oil stains.

In A Kitchen in the Corner of the House, the story that the book takes its title from, they bring to life a world that women continue to inhabit – some as rulers of their domain and others who are allowed entry on sufferance. They also present unfamiliar instances from epics like the Ramayana, weaving them into the present context of a woman’s life.

Holmstrom is pitch-perfect, not once giving readers the impression that anything was lost in translation.

Quichote by Salman Rushdie, Knopf, $34.95. What happens when a man called Ismail Smile, who watches so much television that the lines between what is real and what is not blur, falls in love?

He embarks on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. The book comes with a “quixotic note on pronunciation”. Too clever by half, the narrative will no doubt appeal to Rushdie’s fans.

Our Symphony With Animals by Aysha Akhtar, Pegasus, $36.95. A leader in the field of animal ethics and neurology, Aysha Akhtar, MD, examines the rich human-animal connection and how interspecies empathy enriches our well-being.

People with pets may ask, so what’s new? But combining medicine, social history, and personal experience, Our Symphony With Animals is the first book by a physician to show how deeply humans and animals are intertwined.

In child abuse cases, animals are recruited to help children candidly discuss their trauma.

Animals living in prisons throughout the US are helping inmates get a second chance.

A sentence stops one short: A strong link exists between violence towards animals and violence towards humans.

Filled with beautiful images of animals and their people, this book reveals the science behind all that those who love animals instinctively know.

Professor Chandra Finds His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Vintage, $34. Professor Chandra is an expert at complex problems. There’s just one he can’t crack: the secret of happiness.

In the moments after the bicycle accident, he doesn’t see his life flash before his eyes, but his life’s work.

He’s just narrowly missed out on the Nobel Prize (again) and even though he knows he should get straight back to his pie charts, the doctor has other ideas.

All this work, all this success, all this stress, it’s killing him.

He needs to take break, start enjoying himself. In short, says the doctor (who is from California), Professor Chandra should just follow his bliss.

The Immeasurable World by William Atkins, McClelland & Stewart, $34.95. A rich account of travels across eight deserts on four continents that evokes the timeless allure of these remote and forbidding places.

You can come to dread the sun, even when shelter and water are at hand: its heat, but also its light. No sooner has it risen than I long for it to set.

William Atkins gathers together natural history, historical background, and present-day issues into a compelling tapestry.

Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam, Penguin, $18. Ella travels from Bangladesh to Brooklyn to live with her uncle Anwar, aunt Hashi and cousin Charu.

Orphaned as a child after her parents’ murder, and afflicted with hallucinations at dusk, she has always felt more at ease in nature than with people.

Anwar, the owner of a popular botanical apothecary, has his own secrets that threaten his 30-year marriage.

When tragedy strikes, he takes his family back to Bangladesh to reckon with the past, their extended family and each other.

Arithmechicks Add Up by Anne Marie Stephens, illustrated by Jia Liu, Boyds Mills Press, $23.99. Ten happy chicks head out to the park to play, climb, jump, slide, hide...and make a new friend.

Count the many ways they have fun!

Adrienne Whitaker’s Teen Viewpoint of Sometime After Midnight by L. Philips, Viking, $12.99. Sometime After Midnight by L. Philips is a ‘Cinderfella’ story following guitar prodigies Nate and Cam.

The boys hit it off on their first meeting,  not knowing who the other is. When Cam is revealed to be the heir of Paradise Entertainment, one of the largest recording companies in the music business, it drives a wedge in their relationship romantically and business-wise, as Nate blames Paradise Entertainment for the death of his father.

In the beginning, it was really slow and boring. It picked up in the middle but slowed down again and I found it hard to get into the book.

I enjoyed how the book brought awareness to suicide, mental illness and gay relationships.

A lot of books involving gay characters, such as Simon vs The Homo-sapiens Agenda, deal with the process of coming out.

In this book both characters were already accepted as being gay from the beginning. I think the author could have shown more of the fact that Nate’s father had schizophrenia – I think it is both very cool and significant to have mental illness shown in media.

I recommend the book to those who enjoy romances, coming of age stories, and music related fiction.

• Adrienne Whitaker is a grade 10 student and a member of Brampton Library’s Teen Library Council.