The Illicit Happiness of Other People - Manu Joseph

This is a book that I started reading upon being introduced it by another reading group I am in. By now I have a lot of respect for authors of Indian origin, writing in English - from Salman Rushdie, to Arundathy Roy, to Aravind Adiga. The tile of the book itself, made me notice the book, and reading reviews made me realise that it is a different kind of book.

The Book - Meet Unni Chako, the main character - oops, you can't meet him. He's already dead by page one itself.  Why did he commit suicide ?  That is the only question that matters, and that carries the whole weight of the book. Note, am stating all this, and still stating quite honestly that am not spoiling the book for you. Why ? This is just the base of the story. What we have is a drunkard father, a troubled mother and an insecure brother all trying to figure out why he committed suicide.  His father has made this his sole occupation, three years after his son's death, for the circumstances warranted that he find out the truth. The dysfunctional family is bound by their grief for their lost family member. During , Ousep Chako's (the father), escapades to get to the root of this issue, us, the reader is taken on a thought provoking journey in 1990s Madras. We see protests (in passing ) against Sri Lanka stating that the Government is hunting down Thamils; we see the late actor turned chief minister and his mistress turned politician, Amma; we see Madras' obsession with Mathematics, Engineering Colleges and finding a job in America; we see proselytizing as happened in South India ; we see abuse of women and shame-faced homo-sexuality . All these decorate the  way  as Joseph paints a politically conscious, critical review of 90s Madras.

But that commentary, however much vivid it is, is  not our author's main intent. We see the author's intent through Ousep Chako. He discovers his son's traits,  of philosophical inquiry, social experiments and  dispensing  justice - Unni style. At another level it is a wonderful portrayal of adolescent doubt, overconfidence and psyche. What can be the result when one has some notion about the existential crisis at a relatively young age ?

I will leave with a few, witty, insightful extracts from the book as tempters, with the hope that some of you will enjoy the exhilaration that this book brought me.

Extract 1:

"It is true anywhere in the world, but the fear of the adolescent boys on Balaji Lane is exceptional. They are terrified of everything, of life, of their future, of friends doing better than them, of falling off their cycles, of big trucks and large men, and of beautiful women. The only thing that does not scare them is calculus."
Manu Joseph. The Illicit Happiness Of Other People (Kindle Location 102-04). Kindle Edition.

Extract 2:

All this will go one day, this animal poverty, it will vanish. And future generations will not know, will not even guess, the true nature of poverty, which is the longest heritage of man. Shouldn’t this be preserved somehow, like old colonial buildings, shouldn’t abject poverty be preserved as historical evidence? That is what socialists are trying to do in this country. Everybody misunderstands their intentions. They are noble conservationists, working hard to preserve a way of the world.

Manu Joseph. The Illicit Happiness Of Other People (Kindle Locations 927-930). Kindle Edition.

 Extract 3:

 The happiest men in the world are the men who swore that they would never become their fathers. That is how the alpha males became endangered. Their sons decided that they would not become their fathers, they would be decent men, they would not sleep with strangers through the night, they would instead wipe baby shit, they would know at all times the ages of their children and the names of their teachers, they would buy curtains, they would transfer food from large bowls into smaller bowls and put them in the fridge, they would not be their fathers. In a world full of new men who did not want to be their fathers, what chance did the alpha males have?

Manu Joseph. The Illicit Happiness Of Other People (Kindle Locations 1410-1414). Kindle Edition. 

Extract 4:

The society of neuroscientists does not recognize mass delusion as a psychiatric condition. What does this mean? This means, the society of neuroscientists would admit that all evidence points to the fact that God is a figment of man’s delusion, yet believers in God, who form most of humanity, cannot be considered delusional. This is a ridiculous position. From the point of view of neuroscience, sanity is a majority condition, and a mass delusion is not a delusion but merely human nature.

Manu Joseph. The Illicit Happiness Of Other People (Kindle Locations 3780-3783). Kindle Edition.

 Extract 5:

         He finds it funny, and strangely satisfying, that the pursuit of truth is in all likelihood a path left behind by ancient schizophrenics.

Manu Joseph. The Illicit Happiness Of Other People (Kindle Locations 3843-3844). Kindle Edition. 

After Warlight, this is easily the best book of fiction book I've read so far this year. Joseph has written a book,  rich with pain, existentialism, sarcasm, neuroscience and contemporary politics. The irony of our times are, that under all the bleakness that these bring us, there is an undeniable humour in how these characters go about their lives.

Please Read this ! I implore !

“Intelligence work has one moral law - it is justified by results.”

“What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists, and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs?"

Graham Greene had called this the best espionage novel, ever! Words to take notice of, given that he has written a few excellent read on that subject himself.  But before I came across  Greene's words I was surprised to see this ranked among the  Top 100  novels that Times Magazine had recognized. These  trivialities tend to stay in one's mind, and one fine day they reap their rewards - in this case, resulting in listening/reading  to this fine novel, through the medium of an audio book.

Of the novel; It's rich with plots and layers of deception as the narration keeps the reader guessing in spite of the rather dated somewhat omniscient style. Duplicity is the name of the game. While The British on their side, ideologically barren, justified whatever the means they took to justify their ends, The Socialist state of German Democratic Republic, was ideology driven - until it wasn't. Yes, there were exceptions to both sides. While the Brits maintained that their efforts were to safeguard the unsuspecting average citizen, they didn't  hesitate to sacrifice one here, and another there to achieve its ends. The Socialist garb in the meantime, slips to show the German's anti-Semite traits when the occasion demands. Reading it today, in a climate where the novel is considered  firstly a work of art, the political intent of the author is apparent, over whatever aesthetic the author may have had in mind. I feel that suspense, and the traits of the trade ( duplicity, betrayal, twists) were in fact the only tools that Le Carré had, and he knew how best to use them.

Personally, I loved the character of  ideology drive Jospeh Fiedler. The manner in which he questions the rather ideologically shallow Alec Leamas on what drives the Brits, to me was an highlight of the book. Note the following conversation between Fiedler and Leamas.

"If they do not know what they want, how can they be so certain they are
right?"
"Who the hell said they were?" Leamas replied irritably.
"But what is the justification then? What is it? For us it is easy, as I said to you last night. The Abteilung and organizations like it are the natural extension of the Party's arm. They are in the vanguard of the fight for Peace and Progress. They are to the Party what the Party is to socialism: they are the vanguard.

Yet,  Le Carré's mastery is, he hints quite clearly, as to who passes for "the party" towards the conclusion of the novel. This is one duplicity that the typical socialist political party chooses not to identify and accept ( and I have one, more closer at home in mind ).



Le Carré's attempt to show the "human factor" ( a title of one Green's books, incidentally), when it comes to an emotional attachment, despite the low value that those involved in espionage regards human life with,  isn't lost on the reader too.

I read this book 56 years after its publication. And the images of "The Bridge of Spies" shifted across my mind. I learn that there is a movie adaptation of this book, starring Richard Burton, and it is likely to be one of the rare movies that I will be watching.

Highly recommended for lovers of thrillers and and espionage novels. Even the lover of literature has much to appreciate here. 

Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum

"Now it looks like this
And you can swallow
Or you can spit
You can throw it up
Or choke on it
And you can dream
So dream out loud
You know that your time is coming 'round
So don't let the bastards grind you down"

I've been listening to this song (i.e. U2's "The Acrobat"), at least since 1999 ( since I got the album to my hands). And the phase "Don't let the Bastards grind you down", had always stuck with me. For, the lyrics otherwise are abstract, to finish several verses with that angry rant. So, when I learned of the English translation of  Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum, when reading The Hand Maid's Tale, I couldn't help but connect it to that song - and sure enough, U2's influence had been this dystopian novel of 1985, by the famed Canadian authoress. Once the book has been read, it is easy to read the once abstract lyrics, between the lines and draw parallels.

We read excerpts of Gilead, a nation that once was, post-cold war and when the world was hardly a healthy place, from the eyes, and mind of Offred. From the manner of how the hand maids receive their temporary patronymic names, to the more gory practices mentioned throughout the narration, Atwood supposedly has picked the practices from some stage - some dark, some not so, but darkened in its now, dystopian adaptation period - in human civilization. There are subtle political observations which make the book worth its salt, as a political and sociological fiction. Note this;

"no empire imposed by force or otherwise has ever been without this feature:control of the indigenous by members of their group"

This, is a  maxim of sorts, true from our own local history,  to the dark days of African slavery, all the way to the modern era.

For all its  world building through Offred's sparse, at times disconnected narration - intentional given the plot - it doesn't make an exercise in easy sailing when it comes to reading it. Although I had other responsibilities which affected my pleasure reading, when I did read it, often I took the pleasure part of it in another book, while exerting an effort to plod through this book, as is my wont. Hence, it wasn't the most easiest of books to read, as I dragged it over a month, flirting with several other books. Yet, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to any other able reader. In my case, I want to read the Man Booker winner sequel, so I simply had to read this.

As a parting note, I couldn't help but noticing the reference to Underground Femaleroad or Underground Frailroad, as it were. While the historical reference comes from the days of slavery, the book of that name post dates, and refers to the escape mechanism for slaves.

Rating: ****

The Waiting

( Saw this dilapidated house near Ranala, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, as I drove past it  with the missus to buy some flower pots for us. The house looked striking with its despair. I captured it for further mulling... here's how )

The shiny tar road

contrasts the view

of despair, rot and collapse!

Waiting,

for the monsters,

Brightest yellow,

Ruthless limbs,

Forceful buckets,

To bring you down

Rid  the eye sore

For a  bright  ‘morrow

With wider roads

Did you house back then ?

A  flirty tease ?

A  sensual moan?

A baby’s cry ?

A  toddler’s giggle?

The youth’s mirth ?

Or a mother’s sobs,

Of a past dark era ?

Or a young man’s grief,

for his old man,

gone too soon,

with no regard?

Do you still ache,

for those  cherished voices,

within your musty walls,

from a time gone by,

of joy and cry ?

As you wait,

for your own end,

any day now...

Fury - Salman Rushdie

While this is the  fifth book I "read"  of the author, it is the first time I've tried an audio book medium with him. Read by the author himself in his somewhat hoarse voice, I had to go through the book twice, to get a reasonable comprehension of the book, due to a couple of reasons.

This is his first American novel. Written in 2000/2001, and published weeks before 9/11. It has many a reading of the American way of life, as well as some auto-biographical inferences of the author's own life at that point of time. The main character, Malik Solanka,  a Cambridge man, a multi-millionaire in his second career, escapes to the U.S., leaving his wife and child in London. America brings Solanka its rich life, cult murders and its music - there is reference to Bruce Springsteen concerts and at least two tracks - 41 shots which was only a live version at the time the book was written ( it later appeared in "High Hopes" - 2014 ), and the much older, stellar, I'm on fire. Done with dolls, the success of which he cannot come to terms with, he starts off on a second career with cyber puppets - the new characters go off on a tangent of its own, and later the two coincide. Rushdie attempts to show that a masked reality, a copy of you, is possibly better at dealing with the American life in the year 2000. New York ! The City is boiled with money !

"limited-edition olive oils, three-hundred-dollar corkscrews, customized Humvees, the latest anti-virus software, escort services featuring contortionists and twins, video installations, outsider art, featherlight shawls made from the chin-fluff of extinct mountain goats."

As I found out from the previous work I read of him, a Rushdie novel is many layered work, with the fabric inter-woven. There are several stories  running almost in parallel, a cultural reading, a cultural criticism and in this case, a virtual world of puppets which has more than a semblance of Solanka, and his friends - and foes. All this makes for a challenging read, and honestly not as rewarding as in the previous instances ( i.e. The Satanic Verses, The Moor's Last Sigh and Midnight's Children ). One can't help but awe at Rushdie when one realises how updated he was back then. He was talking of replication, mirroring  and spawning back in 2001 in web space. Yet, as a whole am not convinced that this novel came up a winner. Rushdie may have bitten off  too much here for a single mouthful - a first American novel, I suspect. after a while the reader cannot help but wonder, why does he have to go to that length to stress the debacles of the new century, and money rich but ailing US. Plus, the book mayn't have received the critical attention it would've received, due to the soon to follow 09/11 incidents - a sobering effect if ever there was one. And Springsteen wrote a whole album of songs on "Rising" from the ashes.

As far as am aware there are at least two more Rushdie novels based on America  - The Golden House ( which is likely to receive the audio book treatment from me ) and this year's Booker short listed ( fingers crossed ) Quichotte. I really do hope that Mr. Rushdie will be at least as good as he was in the books mentioned previously, in either of these two books. For now, I can only say, this book only deserves a patient audio book listen if you have some spare time.