Literary Safari

When you’re visibly pregnant and riding the NYC subway with a book titled “Family Planning” in hand, you’re bound to draw stares and curious gazes. Such was my experience earlier this month as I traveled on the downtown 1 with 25 year old Karan Mahajan’s laughter-inducing yet tender first novel in hand. In this Brooklyn-based, New Delhi-born author’s debut work (HarperPerennial, 2008) set in contemporary New Delhi, family life, politics, adolescent love, and prime time soap operas intertwine in entertaining and unexpectedly moving ways.

At the heart of this story is the chaotic household of Rakesh Ahuja, a hard of hearing, America returned engineer who holds a prestigious position as New Delhi’s Minister of Urban Development. Apart from the bureaucratic and political challenges that face him at work (he’s in charge of a laborious flyover construction project and part of a political party that sponsors “intolerable bills such as the Diversity of the Motherland Act which calls for the compulsory resignation of all Muslims “for reasons of diversity and national security”), Rakesh is beset by his own personal dramas at home.

The father of 13 children (and one more en route), he must deal with the trauma of having had his teenage son Arjun walk in on him having sex with his wife in the baby nursery. Understandably, Arjun asks, “Papa, I don’t understand—why do you and Mama keep having babies?”

While he has to figure out a way to explain himself to his son (“Obviously, Mr. Ahuja couldn’t tell his son that he was only attracted to Mrs. Ahuja when she was pregnant” reads the first line of the novel), this is not the only secret Mr. Ahuja has been keeping from his son, master babysitter and eldest of 12 younger siblings and darling of his mother, Mrs. Ahuja, an unattractive woman whose days are spent changing diapers, managing her vast household, knitting, and recovering from the loss of her favorite TV character Mohan Bedi from Zee-TV soap opera, “The Vengeful Daughter-in-Law.” There’s also the bit of information about Rakesh’s first wife, Arjun’s mother, who suffered a tragic death and who continues to haunt his unhappy existence. Meanwhile there’s Arjun, an awkward teen so madly in love with Aarti, a Catholic school beauty who rides the morning bus with him that he’ll do anything to get her attention—even start a rock band with a bunch of classmates.

Yes, there’s a great deal happening in Mahajan’s novel; many competing heartbreaks and dramas. And yet, as a reader, I was pulled in just as much by Mahajan’s observant and sensitive eye as I was by his ability to create satirical scenarios that reflect some of the complexities and paradoxes of social and political life in today’s India.

Read the rest of this review and a Q&A with Mahajan, whose sense of humor is as refreshing in the interview format as it is in his prose, below the fold. (more…)

Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: indulge in a proper afternoon tea for two, complete with pretty little teapots, finger sandwiches, sweets, and great company. I finally did it, last night–for dinner!

My friend Maria and I found ourselves at Tea and Sympathy, a proper British tea room (their motto is “If you’re looking for anything British, you’re in the right place) in the West Village around supper time, and though I started out eyeing plates such as welsh rarebit and shepherd’s pie, my focus quickly shifted when the two ladies near us received their tea service for two. There’s something about the silver tower piled with sweet and savory tidbits …. it makes me feel like a prim and proper lady and a little kid all at once.

My teapot was short and stout, an olde world map laid out lovingly on her, a little panda in sunglasses sitting atop her lid. Steeping inside were white tea leaves and rose petals. And, on our tea tower were vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam, and an array of bite-sized sandwiches. We got the vegetarian tea platter which came with cream cheese and cucumber, cheese and branston pickle sandwiches, egg salad with watercress, and tomato and cream cheese sandwiches, all on some type of amazing whole grain bread, except for the egg salad ones.

I’m not sure how delicious everything actually was or whether my imagination’s so enamored with the idea of this combination that anything served up on a dainty tower would taste just as wonderful.  Like many Indian children, I grew up on a steady diet of children’s books and adventures by Enid Blyton, all of which were replete with midnight feasts and picnic lunches that spoke of foods that were unfamiliar to my palate. My mouth would water as I read about ginger beer, bangers, smoked trout, scones, macaroons, cucumber sandwiches, crumpets, deviled eggs, and treacle pudding; all culinary possibilities that were far away from my reality (with the exception of cucumber sandwiches and deviled eggs!).

Last night, I was not only reminded of my love affair with the food in my favorite childhood stories, but also of a special little book I received not too long ago from one of my favorite food bloggers, The Gourmet Cartographer. The book, Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, by British author Jane Brocket, is a treasury of memories and recipes of “foodstuffs and food occasions in children’s literature.” (A mini-review follows below the fold.) (more…)