Samskara by U R Ananathamurthy, Oxford Paperbacks

U R Ananthamurthy’s Samskara was written in the 1960s and I am thankful to my friend for suggesting that I should read it. Originally written in Kannada the English translation is a very good read. The story is quite famous and has been made into a film also. The story revolves around the  death of a Brahmin man  and the confusion around the performance of his last rites .The man  is considered a heretic by the village Brahmins and was shunned by his community when he was alive , yet his last rites cannot be performed by  any non-Brahmin  according to social rules. Life in the tradition ridden village society is wonderfully portrayed and  the conflicts amongst castes, the various social taboos have been narrated in great detail.

What I enjoyed reading most was the close analysis of the psychological conflict waging in the mind of the revered Brahmin pundit  . Pranesacharya the central protagonist is faced with a life changing situation which completely destroys his peace of mind but in a way it also liberates him from the fetters of tradition. He tries to escape from his known surroundings initially but later on longs to return to his village and among his fraternity. A celibate who shuns all kind of vices and  weaknesses , who deliberately marries a sick woman and seeks spiritual release by serving her unfailingly, has a chance encounter with a low-caste beautiful woman . The ancient texts which he knew by heart and used to recite everyday suddenly come to life as he experiences reality in the shape of this beautiful woman. He feels he is not a Brahmin anymore but does not repent it.

The social situation might seem dated for urban tastes but anyone who has been brought up in  conservative brahminical traditions cannot fail to notice the striking resemblance to one’s own emotional, cultural and social response to similar situations in life.  Samskara can have a vice like grip on society and sometimes can destroy human lives completely. Pranesacharya reminded me about Tagore’s Gora. Both rediscover themselves  .

Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, Myrmidon books 2012

After ages I have read something so hauntingly beautiful , so mystical, so romantic and yet so sad. I simply raced through the pages of this lovely historical novel only to be left completely mesmerised by the magic of Twan's narrative .
The story is told in flashback. Yun Ling is a retired judge battling the onset of dementia .Before her mind fails her she wants to capture her memories in words.
Below is a quote from http://www.tantwaneng.com/

"On a mountain above the clouds, in the central highlands of Malaya lived the man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan.”

Teoh Yun Ling was seventeen years old when she first heard about him, but a war would come, and a decade would pass before she travels up to the Garden of Evening Mists to see him, in 1951. A survivor of a brutal Japanese camp, she has spent the last few years helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, she asks the gardener, Nakamura Aritomo, to create a memorial garden for her sister who died in the camp. He refuses, but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice ‘until the monsoon’ so she can design a garden herself.

Staying at the home of Magnus Pretorius, the owner of Majuba Tea Estate and a veteran of the Boer War, Yun Ling begins working in the Garden of Evening Mists. But outside in the surrounding jungles another war is raging. The Malayan Emergency is entering its darkest days, the communist-terrorists murdering planters and miners and their families, seeking to take over the country by any means, while the Malayan nationalists are fighting for independence from centuries of British colonial rule."

For Aritomo creating the garden  is almost like being on a spiritual journey. As his disciple and later his lover Yun Ling becomes part of this spiritual quest. There are lot of cultural similarities with India which I could relate to .The descriptions of the workers' lives in the tea gardens, the atrocities carried out inside the camps and the exploitation of women who are treated as commodities and slaves, the lifelong love and friendship of  two adults who could have married yet both chose to remain single, the almost spiritual personal love story of two human beings belonging to enemy camps in the public eye, how an adopted country and its people can mean  so much to someone that you end up by paying with your life  and above all the beautiful descriptions of the Malayan landscape - all contribute towards making this novel intensely likeable.The book has intimate details of the Japanese tattoo art form, which is quite fascinating to read.
Twan's language is beautiful , almost philosophical at times. The language is languid and slow at times and at times open to interpretation because of the philosophy behind the words.This is a must read for all .