Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph

On Sale: 10/08/2010; Format: Trade paperback;  Publishers:  Harper Collins;  Fiction (South-Asian)

Mumbai with its chaos, complexities, concrete blocks housing hundreds of people, cosmopolitan population and where the  richest of the rich and poorest of the poor live side by side, continues to be a very popular city to write about.  Infact, in the last decade or so, there's been a spate of books about the city, "Maximum City" by Suketu Mehta,  "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts, "Sacred Games" and "Love and Longing in Bombay" by Vikram Chandra...the more recent one to join the list is Anjali Joseph's "Saraswati Park".

Just the title was enough to draw me to this book.  Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge and the Arts in Hindu mythology and she has always been my favourite deity.  In the book, "Saraswati Park" is the name of a housing complex in a suburb somewhere deep in the heart of Bombay.  The story revolves around  empty-nesters, Mohan and Laxmi Karekar, whose lives are pretty humdrum and unremarkable.  Mohan is a letter writer ( one of those quaint jobs which is almost non-existant today) and from his seat under some tarpaulin near the main Post Office he sits and writes letters for those who are illiterate - anything from heartfelt letters to the completion of bureaucratic forms, while Laxmi is a homemaker. 

When we first meet Mohan and Laxmi their days are mundane with set routines and nothing much happens to alter it.  Both seem frustrated by this mundane existance.  An avid reader, Mohan wishes he could do more than just write letters....his secret desire is to write stories worthy of publication and Laxmi, frustrated by how his dreams make him distant from her turns to the television for company. 

I love how Joseph details Laxmi's frustration with their emotional detachment in this nicely-written excerpt:

"Four of Mohan's shirts, collected this morning from the ironing boys, lay on the bed. She looked at them in exasperation. It was still there, the mild ring of dirt inside his collars, like a smudged pencil line. It wasn't his fault; nothing could be done. She had scrubbed at some of them to remove the mark, but it had been the collar, not the stain, that had begun to despair and fray. It was in these things, which didn't talk or, strictly speaking, have lives, that her days played out: her relationship with the shirts, neatly ironed and folded, was so much more direct that any other interaction these days."

One day the couple receive a call from Mohan's sister lamenting the fact that her son Ashish failed his college exams (due to poor attendance) and would have to retake them (unknown to the family, the poor attendance was due to Ashish's dalliance with a fellow classmate called Sundar).  Since they (Ashish's parents) were being transferred to a city to the north of India, would it be possible for Ashish to stay with Mohan and Laxmi for the year?  Mohan and Laxmi readily agree and soon the focus of the story moves to 19-year old Ashish - his life, his friends, his fears, his relationships, his secrets.   Despite there being "secrets" in this novel it has a very calm tone with a quietness and melancholy that emanates like faint perfume from every page, making it linger on with the reader long after the last page has been read and the book closed.

For those of you who grew up in Bombay (mid '80's)  this novel will be especially precious because of the author's wonderful observations and descriptions of this wonderful city I call home.  The strength of this novel is its everyday observations of a couple approaching their twilight years; of a youngster just starting to find his feet in this world and discovering his sexuality and last, but not least, of a city that is home to atleast 14 million people and who expands (like a rubberband) to accommodate thousands more everyday.

It is also a book about family love and obligations; growing old together, about love and loss and goodbyes.  All these may seem like heavy topics but they are handled deftly and delicately by Ms. Joseph and there is none of that masala or twists and turns that we have come to associate with other Bombay novels - just an initmate journey into the lives of everyday people who happen to live rather quietly in this bustling metropolis.   As much as I liked the other Bombay novels mentioned above, none of those plots seemed real to me.  My Bombay was like the Bombay one finds in Saraswati Park...of trees and birds; ordinary  people, school, college, the market, weddings, neighbours, old books, corner shops and so on.  This novel is a celebration of everyday life and seeing some beauty in it.

I'd like to close with a beautifully written passage found on page 253.  This is when Ashish is getting ready to leave for California for his future studies.  This passage resonated so much with me because, I, too, had to bid Bombay farewell around the same age Ashish did and it hurt so much:

"...he felt melancholic;  finally he understood what life was like, the meetings and partings it entailed.  It was a thought that only made him more attached to his life and the people in it.

From his window seat he looked with hungry eyes at the dirty worlds next to the tracks:  the brigtly painted shacks, the grubby faced children, the ugly concrete tower blocks, the smells...

It was his city, his world; it might be imperfect but it was home.  Yet he knew that only his imminent departure nurtured this sudden passion for Bombay which sometimes was a neutral environment in which he existed, and at other moments felt like a trap he'd never escape."

The Man Who Forgot How To Read Howard Engel

Publisher: Harper Collins Canada (Aug 9 2007)

Format: Hardcover; pages: 157

Price: $29.95

Genre: Memoir/Non-Fiction

Afterword by Oliver Sacks

Click HERE to view how print looked to Howard Engel's eyes

I was at the book store browsing the other evening, when a book with this title "Man Who Forgot How to Read" caught my eye. It got my attention because when my father had a stroke and lost his ability to read we would jokingly tell people that he had declared a moratorium on reading (he was embarrassed to admit he could no longer read). So naturally I was curious to know what the book was about.

From the jacket sleeve:

One hot mid-summer morning in Toronto, bestselling crime novelist Howard Engel got up to fetch his morning paper and discovered he could no longer read it. The letters had mysteriously jumbled themselves into something that looked like Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next. “Was this a Serbo-Croatian version of The Globe?” he wondered.

I stood riveted to the spot because this was similar to how my father discovered he had lost the ability to decipher print. I knew then I just had to get the book and I am so glad I did!

After Howard Engel (author of 12 best-selling mystery novels featuring his beloved detective, Benny Cooperman) realized that he couldn't make out the printed word that summer morning in 2001, he took himself off to the Emergency Room of his local hospital where the doctors diagnosed his condition as "alexia sine agraphia" (which came about owing to a stroke that he had suffered). A person with alexia can write without difficulty but will no longer be able to read what he writes. This was almost impossible for Engels to accept, after all, he had always been a reader, his brain was hard-wired to read "...I could no more stop reading than I could stop my heart. Reading was bone and marrow, lymph and blood to me", besides, he made his living writing, if he couldn't read what he wrote, how would he make his living?

There were other symptoms too, a lack of clarity for instance. He couldn't tell what day of the week or month it was; familiar objects like apples and oranges suddenly started to look strange and unfamiliar, "...My confusions were ingenious: they ranged from not recognizing the names of familiar streets or the well-known titles of books by certain authors to not knowing whether I lived on College Street with my first wife or my second"

Yet through all of that, Engel didn't allow himself to panic. Once he was admitted to Rehab, with help from his therapists he slowly learned to decipher the street names in his neighborhood, the grocery aisles and headlines of his beloved newspapers. Anyone who has ever suffered from this condition and who has had to learn to read again will tell you that it's a very frustrating, very laborious exercise, yet, Engel stuck with it and with grit and determination taught himself how to read again.

The reason for Engel's success, I believe, is that he didn't allow himself any self pity. He accepted the condition, learned all he could about it and then went all out to overcome it.

There are several reasons to be grateful for Engel's memoir:

It is inspiring, informative, insightful and will encourage you to take a similar attitude when faced with an uphill battle. Oliver Sacks, (eminent neurologist and author of some fascinating books, "The Island of the ColorBlind","Awakenings", etc.) who wrote the afterword, says of Howard Engel, "this is not only a story as fascinating as one of his own detective novels but a testament to the resilience and creative adaptation of one man and his brain.” Also, when articulate people like Engel put their experiences down on paper it helps scientists decode the mystery of the literate brain, thereby doing all of us a great service.

For me, personally, I enjoyed the memoir because Engel's wonderful descriptions of what he felt and saw through it all, helped me realize what my own father went through. Sadly, when my father had his stroke, along with developing alexia, he also lost his speech and was never able to explain to us the confusion he was feeling or seeing.

Finally, Engel's memoir is a great testament to the success of the Canadian health services. The pages where Engel describes all the therapy and rehabilitation the therapists put him through make you believe we have a system that works and we have good reason to be proud of it.

Today Engel can read but with extreme difficulty. Where he used to whiz through six books a week, it now takes him a month or more to finish one. But he reads and that is the most important thing, isn't it?

Other conditions that can occur when the wiring of the brain goes awry: (courtesy Kurt Kleiner of the Globe and Mail)

• Agraphia : The mirror image of Alexia, this condition results in the inability to write while leaving reading fluency intact.
• Associative Aphasia : People with this condition speak fluently and understand what is being said to them, but can repeat back a sentence without making errors such as mixing up sounds or substituting incorrect words.
• Visual Agnosia: As described in Oliver Sack's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat", people with this condition can see and describe an object in detail, but are unable to recognize what it is.
• Korsakoff's Syndrome : This syndrome affects the capacity to form new memories. Although intelligence and old memories are unaffected, the sufferer is unable to lay down new memories - remembering things that happened 20 years ago, but not 20 mins ago.
• Prosopagnosia: This condition leaves people unable to recognize faces, even those of family members and long-time friends. It is usually caused by damage to a brain area called the fusiform gyrus.
• Capgras Delusion : People with this syndrome recognize the face of loved ones, but are convinced they have been replaced by imposters. reports suggest that actor and comic Tony Rosato - charged with criminally harassing his wife - may suffer from this condition,

**UPDATE** This post was named "Post of the Day" by David McMahon of Authorblog, thank you David, I am so happy this post touched so many people!

Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket, by Trevor Carson

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Popular Culture/Food/Japan/narrative non-fiction

Price: $29.95 (CAD)

On Sale: 5/29/2007

Formats: E-Book | Hardcover

The Zen of Fish on NPR










Lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...Sushi as the world knows it today probably had its origins in the 1600's on the streets of Kyoto. It was made by spreading vinegared rice in a box, laying whole fillets of fish on the top and compressing it with heavy stones for a few days. It was then cut into pieces like a cake.

When a terrible fire destroyed most of Edo (today's Tokyo), workers from outside the city swarmed into Edo to rebuild it. These men needed something to eat so stalls sprang up all over Edo serving "hot noodle soup", but in 1686 to prevent another fire, authorities outlawed the noodle soup and as a result vendors switched to making the Kyoto "quick sushi" which didn't require any heat in the preparation. As Edo grew and became one of Japan's major cities, so did the Sushi stalls. As time went on, the technique was modified to allow for quick preparation and by 1818, some Sushi chefs started making hand-squeezed Sushi called "nigeri" (from the Japanese for "nigiru" meaning to squeeze).

In this way, Trevor Corson, in his book "Zen of Fish" traces the social and cultural history, evolution, preparation and development of the humble Sushi from Tokyo to the US, using a California sushi academy (that trains would-be American Sushi chefs) as a backdrop. It's a clever narrative strategy because Corson uses each lesson as a jumping-off point for a discussion on sushi and fun little digressions about the ecology, biology and behavior of some of the fish used in sushi.

Truly, this book is a treasure-trove for foodies or anyone interested in Japan or Japanese food, and Corson's easy and conversational writing style makes this a hugely entertaining and informative read. I swear after you read this book you will enter into a Sushi bar with a confident swagger. I would also urge you visit Corson's blog, it is packed with fun information which you won't want to miss.

I just want to leave you with a few tasty morsels that I picked up from this feast of a book:

1. First off, the word "Sushi" doesn't refer to the raw fish, instead it refers to the vinegar-seasoned rice.

2.The California roll is an American invention which is just getting popular in Japan. Corson writes that when a Japanese chef working in the US couldn't get toro (fatty tuna belly) for his Japanese customers, he combined avocado and crab meat to re-create its appealing oiliness and thus was born the much-loved California Roll.

3. We are all under the impression that sushi is healthy and low in fat compared with other fast foods but a sushi takeout box at a supermarket could easily contain as many calories as two slices of pizza! pg 27

4.Sushi should be picked up with the fingers (preferably)- and eaten in one bite. The fish should touch the tongue before the rice does and shouldn't be slathered with soy sauce and wasabi. (this point has been edited since publishing this post...I had said chopsticks should not be used, but turns out chopsticks are OK, too) pg 321

5. In real-life Japan, sushi is a man's world. The most common argument against women sushi chefs is that a woman's hands being warmer than a man's will cook the raw fish simply by handling it. Sushi is a man's world on the customer side of the bar too..a Japanese woman who walks in to eat by herself will be made to feel most unwelcome pg 53

6. Sushi bars are almost passe on the West Coast where they first started out, but have become almost as ubiquitous as hot dogs in the Midwest...even Wal-Mart seems to have got into the act with sushi counters installed in some of their Texas stores pg 133

For more surprising Sushi Facts go here

I would love to know how you feel about Sushi..do you love it or hate it? ( I can't imagine anyone being indifferent to Sushi). If you love it what is your favorite sushi to eat? I love the one with freshwater eel (picture above) it is absolutely delicious! When you go to a Sushi restaurant, do you sit at the bar or do you prefer to hide out in a booth like I do? :) And finally, if you went to a restaurant where the sushi chef was not Japanese, would you still be tempted to order the sushi, or do you, like many other people, think Sushi must be prepared by a Japanese chef? And do you have any surprising sushi facts to contribute? Or any sushi stories to share?