Book: First Proof – The Penguin Book of New Writing from India

Author: Multiple authors
Publisher:

The first thing that strikes you about this book is that it opens from both ends – one half contains the fiction pieces, the other half non-fiction. Not very novel, but it tends to push up one’s expectations. Which, like the book, end up half-and-half!

The fiction section is extremely disappointing. A mixture of known and unknown names – their attempts at making up stories leave the reader unimpressed. The only stories I liked were “The Road to Barabar” by Alban Couto, which reads more like a non-fiction piece – an account of how the road to the Barabar Caves near Gaya came to be laid, and Renuka Narayanan’s “Vaak”, an unusual rendering of the mythological story of Saraswati – an excerpt from her book on Brahma. Rana Dasgupta’s “The Prophet” and Mita Ghose’s “Red White Yellow” do hold one’s attention to some extent. The rest of the stories are most unmemorable.

Yet all of them are well written. All the writers have expressed themselves beautifully – the imagery is striking, especially in Navtej Sarna’s “Winter Evenings” and in Indrajit Hazra’s “Post Mortem”. But lovely prose alone is not enough to be a good storyteller. This section is proof enough of how all good writers cannot go on to become great novelists.

The non-fiction part, on the other hand, is very readable. In fact, I would say that it is worth buying the book just for the non-fiction pieces. There are lovely essays on topics as varied as a peep into the activities of an RSS shakha to the American war on terror. The least readable of the essays is, disappointingly enough, the famous sociologist Andre’ Beteille’s “Boarding School”, which is fussy and interminable and in need of a lot of editing. But that’s the only one.

Jerry Pinto’s “The Woman Who Could Not Care” is an exquisite analysis of the role of the vamp in Hindi cinema, and by extension, the role of Hindi cinema itself, in creating a post-independence pop culture in India. Manmohan Malhoutra’s memoir “Living Dangerously with V.S.Naipaul” brings out some fascinating aspects of the great writer. Mishi Saran deserves salutations not only for her gripping account of her journey, but also for her raw courage in making the difficult trip to the Bedel Pass at the Kyrgyz – China border and facing drunken Russian soldiers alone at night. There are biographical sketches, rich in insight, of Mohammad Shahabuddin (Saba Naqvi Bhoumick’s “The Saheb of Siwan”) and V. Prabhakaran (Nirupama Subramanian’s “The Tiger in his Cage”). The changing circumstances of Indian women over the years are illustrated in Arpita Das’ “The Colonial Bibi” (a footnoted, yet engaging, academic study) and in Smita Gupta’s “The Daughters of Yasin Painter”, an empowering account of five highly educated daughters of a muezzin in Aligarh.

Truth may or may not be stranger than fiction, but it is definitely more interesting, at least in First Proof. Hopefully, Second Proof will be more balanced.