Book review - 'Chasing the Monsoon' by Alexander Frater

#monsoon

And what a chase it was!

it starts off as a simple story of a British journalist resolving to literally 'chasing the monsoon', that is, physically travelling across India, from Kerala (where the Monsoon hits the Indian mainland) to Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, at that time (around 20 years back) the wettest place in India. It's apparently triggered by Alex's chance meeting with an Indian couple at a UK neuro clinic where he goes to be diagnosed for a neck concussion. But as the author says towards the end: "the seed had been sown not at the National Hospital, in the company of the Baptistas, but a year earlier when I received word of my mother's death in New Zealand. The loss of our second parent fixes us next in the firing line and makes life suddenly finite. It is the moment when we finally grow up".

Such musings of the author continue throughout the book, and lend it a lush, personal touch. The main story is interspersed with tales about the author's early life in a New Hebrides island in South Pacific, before the family shifts to Australia. And while chasing the monsoon across India, the author shares historical tales of the life and times in the places which he passes through - from how trade ships navigated the monsoon waters in 16th century to how Meterologists researched about the reasons and progress of the Monsoon across centuries. In between, the author writes about his travails with the Indian bureaucracy while trying to get a border area permit to visit Cherrapunji (which he gets, finally), his visits to places like a fort in Rajasthan (where the King had had 'artificial rainfall' pavilions constructed!), and interactions with a few friends he makes on the way.

It seems the Monsoon acts as a catharsis for the author, both physically (he's cured of his neck pain) as well as psychologically (he seems to fulfill his father's wish to visit the Indian hill state). As he says towards the end, "I felt younger, stronger, better, curiously at peace... because I... possessed a brief to follow it, I had been rewarded in the way that traditionally it was supposed to reward everyone".

A damn good read on a monsoon day...

Book review - 'A Room With A View' (EM Forster)

#aroomwithaview

This is the first Forster novel I've completed in full (not counting Forster snippets read somewhere or parts of movies watched), so these are my first impressions. (And thanks to the kind soul who gifted this classic to me.)

The first half or so of the novel seems quite slow in taking off (and not only by today's standards). The actual happenings seem to consume less ink than the ruminations of the characters (and, in some cases, of the author), especially while the action is centred in Florence. It's only towards the end of that sojourn that things start happening, bringing into focus not only the slowly developing love story but also the sharp distinctions in mores and behaviour between the English middle class landed gentry and the upcoming citizenry. Overall, the treatment in the first half of the novel seems excessively verbose.

It's when the action (!) shifts to Surrey that Forster seems to come into his own, etching out in sharp detail the internal struggles and frustrations of the lead character (Lucy) who, while seeming to conform to the expected behaviour patterns of the day (including submitting to and supporting the sometimes obnoxious behaviour of her beau), actually has a rebel inside wanting to break free. The entry of George Emerson, with whom she had a brief 'encounter' in Florence, into the scene and his passionate courting of Lucy only provides the trigger for her to break off her engagement. The scene where she explains her reasons to Cecil is almost a cry out by Lucy, notwithstanding his nuanced imputation that she's speaking someone else's words. The few chapters upto this stage bring out the feminist slant of Forster's writing, and could be considered quite bold not only for his times but decades thence.

A modern story might have ended with Lucy sticking to her resolution to go abroad again and thus plowing her lonely furrow (perhaps remaining a spinster a la her cousin Charlotte, as insinuated by her mother). However, in perhaps a doffing of hat to the conventions of the day, she is eventually 'won over' by George, with not a little help from his free and frank father Mr. Emerson, and the novel ends with the married couple coming back to the Florence 'pension' (hotel) where they originally met.

Readers of other classics authors may find this novel a bit more 'ruminating' and with less 'action' than a novel on the same times by, say, Hardy or Tolstoy. But Forster's novel does throw light on the struggles, internal and external, which women of that day faced in the initial days of asserting their individuality, if from the perspective of a privileged class.