Caste and Country

'There is an exception to the caste divide in Shahabpur, which many Muslim and Hindu men enjoy. For a few rupees or handfuls of rice, they are said to demand and get sex with dalit women, typically just after sundown, when the villagers troop out to the fields to ablute. At an informal gathering of Muslim men outside the house of Anwar Ali—an upstanding clerk, who also housed your correspondent—it was estimated that perhaps 40% of the village’s non-dalit men upheld this ancient tradition. According to Sarju, until Sushila lost her youthful good looks, he suffered near-nightly terrors from drunken patel youths, who came clamouring for her outside his hut.

This practice recalls a famous condemnation of village India by one of the country’s founding fathers, B.R. Ambedkar. The architect of the country’s 1949 constitution and a dalit, Ambedkar asked: “What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?” (Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, considered the villages to be India’s ideal social units.)'

A thoughtful, beautifully written piece in The Economist. 

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Books of the Year, 2010

The Books of the Year lists are pouring in, and I'm happy to share that Beautiful Thing is a 'Best Of' in several publications including  The Observer, Outlook, Business Standard, and Deccan Herald. It's also Time Out's Subcontinental Book of the Year, as well as CNN's Mumbai Book of the Year.

And now, here's my list of the books I enjoyed most this year, in The Indian Express.

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Christmas Jeer

Yes, our airport bathrooms often stink and it's near impossible to leave Bombay airport without getting into a scuffle ('this is my cart grandma! Mine!'), but let's give credit where it's due, and acknowledge that few Indian airport experiences equal the horribleness of Heathrow. 

It isn't just the queues, or the immigration officials ('officer, I really, really don't want to live here. Trust me, I will be leaving, nay, running home, asap') whose cheeriness is only equalled by that of people getting into or out of London. A British friend's recent Heathrow experience involved hearing a guy being frisked by an Asian officer scream, 'I won't be touched by a ******* Paki'. It's also Heathrow's inability to come to terms with the fact of its location in London, a city where it snows every winter. Yes, it snows. Every winter. 

Despite this common knowledge, every winter (when it snows), Heathrow officials behave like they've been flung, without warning and in their jammies just as they were getting into bed with a good book and a hot cuppa, into an Arthur C Clarke novel. ('Snow? SNOW!' BUT, BUT, WHAT IS THIS SNOW ... UH ... THING?')

Every year at Christmas passengers flying to or from Heathrow are delayed or worse stranded or re routed. A friend travelling from the States to London last week was inexplicably re-rerouted from Heathrow to Edinburgh (which is nicer than London, so good for her), and when she was finally allowed to fly to her original destination the airline left behind her bags. Somewhere. Because of the snow. In winter. In London.

I thought this quote in today's NYT on the annual bunglefest says it all: 'We’ve lasted two world wars, and we can’t even deal with some snow.'

Other than snow, Heathrow officials also have a thing for mangoes. Have you noticed that come Alphonso season they all smell of fruit? ('Yes officer, I'm carrying a box of mangoes, no officer I didn't know that mangoes caused the Plague, yes officer of course you can have them all, all five dozen of them with my most sincere apologies, hey, wait a minute, why are you putting the box in your backpack?!')

Photo: NYT.
'Europe's Bad Weather Adds to Heathrow's Woes.'

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Beautiful Thing, Latest Videos

On Bloomberg/UTV: 'A pulsating combination of journalistic urgency, ethnographic sweep, and novelistic flourish.'

William Dalrymple, Shobhaa De, and Namita Devidayal talk about Beautiful Thing.

Beautiful Thing on Just Books with Sunil Sethi.

Reading an excerpt from the book at the Bombay launch with Shobhaa De.

Beautiful Thing at the Hay Festival, Kerala, introduced by William Dalrymple.

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Tuesday Morning Fabulousness

Sitting at my kitchen-work table here in windy, rainy San Francisco pretending to work, while actually listening to Raghu Dixit on Jules Holland. I'm embarrassed to say that this is the first time I've heard him. If you're familiar with his (fabulous) music, and can recommend any of his singles or albums, please do.

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Does Getting Ahead Mean Getting Out?

Among the reasons why Parth Vaishnav, a Bombay university undergraduate, can't wait to leave India for the United States? In the past three years he says, he's 'learnt nothing.' Next year Vaishnav may become one of more than 200,000 students leaving India in search of 'oportunities and exposure.' Read the rest of this interesting NYT story, here.

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Newsweek, as inspired by God Shiva and Goddess Roy.
Hat tip: Manish Vij
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When You Can't Decide Between a Dhoti and Pants

Wear jeans.

Beautiful Thing: The Reviews

So, most of the reviews are in and you can read them below. But what do you think? If you read Beautiful Thing and enjoyed it (and by enjoyed I also mean if it moved you or made you think or disturbed you), do spread the word: Tell your friends about it, FB it, tweet it, review it on your blog (yes, please! And send me the link!), or review in on GoodReads. The best publicity for a book is word of mouth, and a book like this, a work of researched, narrative non fiction that deals with a subject that hasn't been dealt with before, will benefit most from being talked up by those who believe in it.
And for those of you who haven't got around to buying it, you can do so online (easy peasy!) and at a discount (whoo hoo!) on Flipkart (readers in India) or NBC India (readers abroad).

Now here we go:

'Best Books of the Year: 2010'
(The Observer).

'Beautiful Thing is what we’ve been waiting for in contemporary India — a non-fiction debut of astonishing integrity and sensitivity, where Faleiro tells a story that is beguiling, incredibly funny in parts, and absolutely heart-breaking. This is without question a brilliant, unforgettable book by a writer who is one of the best of her generation. Beautiful Thing is one of the best books of the year; and is one of the most intimate and gripping books written about Bombay in a very long while.'

Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard

'When Salman Rushdie wrote Midnight’s Children, it influenced a generation of young writers; since then the only book that has had such impact is Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City. We had, till its publication, mainly been a nation of novelists—Mehta proved that it was also possible to write gripping reportage. In answer to his call, the last few years have seen exciting new non-fiction by a crop of young writers—work that to my mind has surpassed much of new fiction. ... Now we have Sonia Faleiro’s Beautiful Thing.

Chiki Sarkar, Outlook

'When you have your own book of narrative non-fiction coming out soon, it can be demoralising to encounter something as good as Sonia Faleiro’s Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars and so, as I read the first few pages of this illuminating book about the life and struggles of a spirited young bar dancer, my admiration was tempered by a sinking feeling of envy. But a couple of chapters in, the admiration had won out. This book is everything one might have expected after reading Sonia’s outstanding (journalism).

Jai Arjun Singh

'Joseph Conrad once famously wrote of his fiction, "My task, which I am trying to achieve, is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel -- it is, before all, to make you see." That task is exactly what Sonia Faleiro has admirably executed.'

Sanjay Sipahimalani

'Well-paced, sharply-observed and full of respectful curiosity, Beautiful Thing is difficult to put down.'

Deepanjana Pal

'In India, despite the staggering number of fabulous stories that are waiting to be told, we have been mostly deprived of good literary nonfiction - a genre which Edward Hume describes as one that combines "the immediacy of journalism and the power of true accounts with the texture, read, drama, emotional punch, point of view and broad themes of a novel". This is what Faleiro has achieved in her riveting story-telling, as she draws out the relationship between 19-year-old Leela and the dance bar, Night Lovers, with its golden pillars and Medusa heads.

Namita Devidayal, Times of India

'Remarkable.'
Sunil Sethi

'Beautiful Thing is an important piece of journalism. ... A must read.'

Rahul Pandita, OPEN magazine (The link will take you to an interview I did with OPEN. The review is available in print and in the e-mag).

'To ignore Beautiful Thing would be an act of supreme ego.'

The Hindu

'Irrefutably heartbreaking.'
The Asian Age

'Detailed, disturbing, admirable. A big achievement.'
The Indian Express

'Astonishing, gripping, immersive.'
Time Out

'Read Beautiful Thing for the sheer bravado of Leela and her friends, unafraid of being judged. But read it also for Faleiro, who has captured a world many refuse to acknowledge and shown it in a delicate, non-judgemental and touching way. Beautiful Thing is one of the most compelling works of non-fiction from India in recent years.'

GQ

'Mesmeric.'
India Today (available to subscribers).

'Rivetting. ... Beautiful Thing is great non-fiction, because it does not attempt a definitive version of the truth; it is instead, an account of the inconclusiveness of experience. Far from stone-casting a dance bar girl’s life in opinion, it lets it throb and pulse within the covers of a book. And within the walls of your memory.'

First City (December issue, on stands now. Two page interview + review).

'Faleiro’s position as friend and observer whose intentions are never suspect, opens out the narrative in directions other than the nature of relationships between writers of non-fiction and their subjects, with extraordinary results.'
Sridala Swami, The New Indian Express

The reviews will keep rolling in, from the mainstream media, but also, I hope, from you. I'm going to be updating this post continuously, so do let me know if you write a review, and hey did I mention where you could buy a copy of the book if you haven't already? (Yes, I did. But what the heck!) Please visit Flipkart (readers in India) or NBC India (readers abroad).