Madras Literary Society- A historical monument, and also, a library

I was not sure where I was, so I asked the person at the counter for directions to the MLS, when she caught me by surprise saying that I was already standing in its premises. It is the first block one comes across in the DPI campus off College road, Chennai. Could this have been the place so strongly recommended by Deepan?, I mused. It was a library, no doubt, what with racks after racks of books, but it was just so… so old and almost dilapidated.

Slowly, collecting myself, I went through the New Release section. Pride and Prejudice? Emma! Finding it amusingly ironical, and comforting myself with the thought that they were probably misplaced, I moved on… This was a big library indeed; large bookshelves in neat rows stood up till the ceiling. I was quite lost as to where to head. No directions whatsoever, none author-wise, alphabet-wise or category-wise… nothing that I could spot. A peek at one of the bookshelves concluded that it was useless to go around this library, without any clue; with most of the books so old, and book covers so decayed, one has to open the first page of every book to know which one it is.

I got impatient. Just when I was about to reconsider the whole idea of getting a membership, and was hurriedly dialing my friend’s number to yell at him for making me waste my time, I saw a stack of books on the table. Books returned by readers, which have not yet been replaced in the shelves. Miraculously, the covers of these books have managed to retain their purpose to some extent, and I could read the names. Nirad C Chaudhari, Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy caught my attention. I remembered what my friend was talking about, if not anything else, the library could end your search of what you were looking for: IWEs you could read without having to buy them from Landmark. I was thrilled; why, this could be a one-stop spot for all fans of Indian English books in Chennai who have suffered from having hardly any library that provides a good, updated collection of Indian authors.

Back home, I started reading more about what this bibliographical monument was all about. It has a very interesting history spanning way back in and is not as celebrated as it probably deserves to be. But for those who care more about the present than the past, here is a list of what-is-what about the library:

Location: DPI Complex, College road, Chennai
Annual admission fee: Rs.500+50
Door delivery option: Additional Rs.200 odd
Book limit: Six at a time
Lending period: Two weeks
Phone: 28279666

Following my friend’s example, I recommend the library, thumbs-up, for one, you could get a good supply of IWEs, and two, more than anything else, you could contribute towards the maintenance of an old library so badly neglected. Who knows what you might find one day in the midst of the cobwebs, probably a long lost literature treasure or something!!

Kaavya- A Cinderella story with an anti-climax

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life

Ludicrous, pathetic and confounding, all at the same time… ludicrous because, it all sounds too dramatic, the whole ‘rags to riches and back to rags within an incredible span of time’ Rajinikanthish story; pathetic considering the tender age of the author compared to the hype created around the issue; confounding as I am not quite able to come to terms with the fact that a "sensible" Harvard-stud should go around lifting apparently 40 paragraphs from two different books of the same author, which though not quite easy to identify, would still be a cause of severe panic.

I was probably late in catching up with the new Cinderella novelist Kaavya Vishwanathan around the corner, with only the article in The Hindu last week enlightening me. Lo and behold, the very next day, comes the news that there might be a few paragraphs in the book which are not original. And the issue has only been seemingly growing in proportions since then. As I have been following the issue quite decently, I only have developed a feeling that something is very fishy, and I have hence put forth a set of my arguments. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong anywhere.

1. Would an author of a 400 page book really put in those 40 paragraphs, hardly constituting 20 pages in the whole book, to just make it more "interesting"?
2. Isn’t the real life story of Kaavya [a geek trying to desparately get into Harvard, while losing out in personal life] too much in similarity with the book to claim that the whole idea has been lifted from elsewhere?
3. If there are really those many passages copied, why has no “complete” proof [ as in, all the passages in question have not been released] been shown by McCafferty’s lawyers when asked by Kaavya’s publishers?
4. If those few strikingly comparable passages are enough proofs against Kaavya, why is her publishing house, Little Brown standing by her side instead of suing her for all the trouble?
5. C’mon guys, a 10th standard kid who submits a copied assignment, feeds it in MS Word, changes all the words into their respective synonyms using the thesaurus option, and gets away with it easily in a class of 30. Kaavya is a girl on whom half a million dollars have been placed, half a dozen camera lights have been directed, and half a billion people are focused. Has she really imagined she could get away with practically anything?

Believe it or not, as I was writing this blog, and was searching for more articles to throw light on Kaavya’s stand, I came across this editorial, which carried by the Yahoo banner can easily make my article sound plagiarized!! Anyway, if Kaavya is really found guilty in this case, and if it appears that she has, in fact, neatly copy-pasted most of her work from other books, I would just believe that she is the dumbest any real-life Cinderella could get… a climax in which the fairy-tale princess not only drops her slipper but also smashes it into pieces in the hope of not leaving behind any proof of crime!!!

Pather Panchali [Song of the road] - Bibhutibhushan Banerjee

Pather Panchali

Genre: Classic
Story line: An account of childhood of two deprived yet happy children
Sum up: Masterpiece
Target readers: Serious/Mature
Number of pages: 360

Though it has been a long time since I had actually read this book, I felt like starting this blog with a "punch". Those who have read this book would know what I mean. I might be stoned at by fans of the great Ray [for those who don’t know what I am talking about, the book was made into a movie by Satyajit Ray, and arguably, considered to be his best work till date], but when I saw the movie after reading the book, the latter left me with little impact. The slow seduction of a book against the racing pace of a movie can always be quarreled about. To be clichéd, I would say that the whole build-up of characters in a book is left to the imagination of the readers, giving more scope for something close to an emotional attachment.

This was not the first time I had felt, if only I knew Bengali… With due respect to the translators [Thomas Welbourne Clark and Tarapada Mukhopadhyaya] it could have been a more enchanting experience to read the book in its original tongue. I would really appreciate it if someone who has read the book in Bengali would share his/her experience with me. In fact, it is said that the translators were struck translating the title itself, and could not decide whether the English version of the book should be called Story of the road, Bend of the road, or Song of the road! I believe this is the reason why the book covers flaunt the original name more than the translated one. But having said that, I should also add that in regional writing it is easier to bring out the land’s own rustic feel, as opposed to narrating a local tale in a foreign language. Hats off to the translators for that “extra” effort, which has been successful in retaining the crudeness of a local language to a large extent.

Being a school teacher himself, Bibhuthibhushan must have been apparently inspired by the variety of kids he taught. Also, a clear warning would be that this book is not anyway close to R.K.Narayan’s Malgudi days, which unfortunately, was the initial impression given to me by my friend. Though both the books deal with the childhood of kids in small villages in India, the similarity ends there. Pather Panchali is definitely not a “happy read” if I am allowed to say so. Even the silliest plight of the children searching for anything that passes as edible in the forest does not exactly tickle your funny bones.

Still, it is one of the very few books you not only laugh and cry with while reading, but also something which you live with in your memory forever.