> Indian author, orig. published 2006
> Booker Prize winner, and National Book Award Winner
> Book Club Selection, January 2012
> Set in the Himalayas
> Characters: The Judge, Sai (his granddaughter), Biju (son of the judge's cook)
> Sai goes to jungle to live. With her uncle, the judge, when her parents are run over by a bus on Moscow
> Epigraph: "Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and my death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword, the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive"
- Jorge Luis Borges
> Opening line - "All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths."....lovely
> p.4..."They sipped and ate, all of existence passed over by nonexistence,, the gate leading nowhere, and they watched the tea spill copious, ribbony curls of vapor, watched their breath join the mist slowly twisting and turning, twisting and turning."...love the prose
> In India, personal records included caste
> p. 29..."The system might be obsessed with purity, but it excelled in defining the flavor of guilt. There was a titillation to unearthing the forces of guilt and desire, needling and prodding the results." - The Catholic Church
> p.33..."Like other elderly people, he seemed not to have traveled forward in time but far back. Harking to the prehistoric, in attendance upon infinity, he resembled a creature of the Galapagos staring over the ocean."...about the judge
> p.33..."...they were four shadow puppets from a fairytale flickering on the lumpy plaster wall--a lizard man (the judge), the hunchbacked cook, a lush-lashed maiden (Sai) and a long-tailed wolf dog...". The household in the Himalayas."
> Vocabulary:
1)borborygmus: a rumbling sound made by the movement of gas in the intestine
2) pisciculture: fish culture
3) eructation: the act of belching gas from the stomach
4) maund: a hand basket
5) cupules: a small cup-shaped depression
6) gompa:
7) purdah: a practice inaugurated by Muslims and later adopted by various Hindus and found especially in India that involves the seclusion of women from public observation by means of concealing clothing including the veil and by the use of high-walled enclosures, screens, and curtains within the home
8) pangolin: any of several Asiatic and African edentate mammals of Manis or related genera of the order Pholidota having the body covered with large flattened reddish brown imbricated horny scales, feeding chiefly on ants, and somewhat resembling in habit and structure the American anteaters
9) carom:a game played by two or four persons with round wooden counters on a large square board having corner pockets
10) cuprous: of, relating to, or containing copper in the univalent state
11) chitinuous: of a white or colorless amorphous horny substance that forms part of the hard outer integument of insects, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates and occurs also in fungi, being a polysaccharide structurally similar to cellulose except that the repeating unit is derived from acetylglucosamine instead of glucose
> p.39..."He retreated into a solitude that grew in weight day by day. The solitude became a habit, the habit became the man, and it crushed him into a shadow."
> p.49..."...taxi drivers direct from Punjab--a man is not a caged thing, a man is wild wild and he must drive as such, in a bucking yodeling taxi."---In NYC where Buji delivers Chinese food on bicycle
> p.79`..."Saeed, he relished the whole game, the way the country flexed his wits and rewarded him; he charmed it, cajoled it, cheated it, felt great tenderness and loyalty toward it. When it came time, he who had jigged open every back door, he who had, with photocopier, Wite-Out, and paper cutter, spectacularly sabotaged the system (one skilled person at the photocopy machine, he assured Biju, could bring America to its knees), he would pledge emotional allegiance to the flag with tears in his eyes and conviction in his voice. The country recognized something in Saeed, he in it, and it was a mutual love affair. Ups and downs, sometimes more sour than sweet, maybe, but nonetheless, beyond anything the INS could imagine, it was an old-fashioned romance." ---illegal entry to USA
> p.93..."Don't go in for a life where time doesn't pass.....".
> p.99..." the Triumphant After The Green Card Return Home"
> p.102..."This was what happened he had learned by now. You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. Sometimes someone came popping around a corner again, or on the subway, then they vanished again....The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore."
> p.121..."Sweet flake. Heart like a cake. She went to city hall with Saeed--rented tuxedo, flowery dress--said 'I do,' under the red white and blue. Now they were practicing for the INS interview." -- marriage to get a green card
> p.147..."That support for a cow shelter was in case the Hindu version of the afterlife turned out to be true and that, when he died, he was put through the Hindu machinations of the beyond. What, though, if other gods sat upon the throne? He tried to keep onb the right side of power, tried to be loyal to so many things that he himself couldn't tell which one of his selves was the authentic, if any."......Doubts common for many
> p.157..."Then he shouted along with the crowd, and the very mingling of his voice with largeness and lustiness seemed to create a relevancy, an affirmation he'd never felt before, and he was pulled back into the making of history.".....the power of a crowd...
> p.167..."...old hatreds are endlessly retrievable."
> the judge was absolutely horrible to his wife Nimi
> p.175..."He remembered the center of the Buddhist wheel of life clasped in a demon's fangs and talons to indicate the hell that traps us: rooster-snake-pig; lust-anger-foolishness; each chasing, each feeding on each consumed by the other
> p.177..."But so fluid a things was love. It wasn't firm, he was learning it wasn't a scripture; it was a wobbliness that lent itself to betrayal, taking the mold of whatever he poured it into. And in fact, it was difficult to keep from pouring it into numerous vessels. It could be used for all kinds of purposes...He wished it were a constraint. It was truly beginning to frighten him."
> p.182..."You have to swear at a creature to be able to destroy it."
> p.184..."In this room it was a fact accepted by all that Indians were willing to undergo any kind of humiliation to get into the States. You could heap rubbish on their heads and yet they would e begging to come crawling in...".
> p.199..."The Indian gentleman, with all self-respect to himself, should not enter into a compartment reserved for Europeans, any more than he should enter a carriage set apart for ladies. Although you may have acquired the habits and manners of the European, have the courage to show that you are not ashamed of being an Indian and in all such cases, identify yourself with the race to which you belong." - H.Hardless, "The Indian Gentleman's Guide to Etiquette
> p.205..."But profit could only be harvested in the gap between nations working one against the other. They were damning the third world to being the third world."
> p.208..."All those pathetic Indians who glorified a friendship that was later proclaimed by the other [white] party to be nonexistent"
>p.209..."Why is the Chinaman yellow? He pees against the wind, HA HA. Why is the Indian brown? He shits upside down, HA HA HA." childhood taunts
> p.220..."He knew he was a foreigner but had lost the notion that he was anything but an 'Indian' foreigner."
> p.222..."...God was just wilderness and space, said the husky voice, careless with the loss of love. It took you to the edge of all you could ber the--it let go, let go...". song lyrics
> p.244..."He knew the way to coax strength was to pretend it existed, so that it might grow to fit its reputation."
> p.250..."But she smiled, he saw, only out of politeness, and he felt a flash of jealousy as do friends when they lose another to love, especially those who have understood that friendship is enough, steadier, healthier, easier on the heart."....perhaps the moral of the entire book
> p.252..."There was grace in forgetting and giving up, she reminded it; it was childish not to--everyone had to accept imperfection and lss in life."......another moral of the story
> p.254..."The missionaries always left in dangerous times to enjoy chocolate chip cookies and increase funds at home, until it was peaceful enough to venture forth again, that they might launch attack, renewed and fortified, against a weakened and desperate populace."....commentary on usefuness of religion
> p.256..."Every singe thing his family had was going into him and it took ten of them to live like this to produce a boy, combed, educated, their best bet in the big world. Sisters' marriages, younger brother's studies, grandmother's teeth--all on hold, silenced, until he left, strove, sent something back."....the pressure of the immigrant
> p.267..."How many lived in the fake versions of their countries, in fake versions of other people's countries? Did their lives feel as unreal to them as his own did to him?" Biju thinking to himself before returning home
> p.268..."Year by year, his life wasn't amounting to anything at all; in a space that should have included family, friends, he was the only one displacing air. .......Shouldn't he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquich this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest of all luxury of not noticing himself at all"
> p.269..."You are maaking a big mistake. Still a world, my friend, where one side traves to be a servant, and the other side travels to be treated like a king. You want your son to be on this side or that."
> p.292..."A man wasn't equl to an animal, not one particle of him. Human life was stinking, corrupt, and meanwhile there were beautiful creatures who lived with delicacy on the earth without doing anyone harm."...the judge, whose precius dog, Mutt, was missing
> p. 295..."There they were, the most commonplace of them, those quite mismatched with the larger-than-life questions, caught up in the mythic battles of past vs. present, justice vs. injustice--the most ordinary swept up in extraordinary hatred, because extraordinary hatred was, after all, a commonplace event."
> p.299..."He knew what his father thought: that immigration, so often presentd as a heroic act, could just as easily be the opposite; that it was cowardice that ld many to America fear marked the journey, not bravery; a cockroachy desire to scuttle to where you never saw poverty, not really, never had to suffer a tug to your conscience: where you never heard the demands of servnts, beggars, bankrupt relatives, and where your generosity would never be openly claimed; where by merely lookinh after your own wife-child-dog-yard you could feel virtuous. Experience the relief of being an unknown transplant to the locals and hide the perspective granted by journey."
> p.300..."Sweet drabness of home---slowly shrink back to size, the enormous anxiety of being a foreigner ebbing--that unbearable arrogance and shame of the immigrant."
> p.306..."He had been recruited to bring his countrymen into the modern age, but he could only make it himself by cutting them off entirely, or they would show up reproachful, pointing out to him the lie he had become.".....the judge's experience.....the judgement?
> LibraryThing Review: Fantastic writing, memorable characters, and a gripping combination of plots! It is no wonder that Desai won multiple awards for this novel The story is set in the Indian Himalayas and in New York City. It is the tale of the battle for identity in a new culture, in an old culture, and in a culture containing both. It is about the simplicity of life and love and its complexity. This is the story, as noted on the flyleaf, of big and small. Identity of self and country, love of a dog, betrayal to a lover, betrayer of a culture, hiding from truths and lies, and disillusionment everywhere. I know, sounds depressing, and thank goodness the author injects a wonderful wit to break it up. However, I will remember Sai, the Judge, Biju, Lola and Noni, Father Booty and many others for a long time. This is the type of powerful novel I thoroughly enjoy reading because it challenges my life assumptions about meaning.
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