Discovering Japan – Part 2

My impressions of the world are formed almost exclusively from the books I read, the music I listen to and the words I write (even the places I actually live in). What with one thing and another, I haven’t read too many books that go to Japan, so the country has just sat in a box at the back of my mind. But things kept being put into the box – a book on traditional Japanese skincare borrowed from a Bangalore library long ago; the creative sophistication dimly perceived in Japanese comic books; sparks of interest set off by movies like Lost in Translation and The Ring; a feature or article seen in passing; anecdotes from an uncle whose entire career has been in Bridgestone; trivia from my brother and sister-in-law who both work with teams there; the occasional brand launch or research document thrown up by my own work – until suddenly the box is full and has somehow moved itself to the front of my mind (much like a simple cardboard carton might behave in a Japanese horror film).

Singapore has a sizable Japanese population and very many Japanophiles, so there’s plenty of opportunity to indulge the new curiosity. Given the war history, it’s understandable that there’s no well-preserved Japantown anywhere, but there are definitely malls that are more Japanese than others. I keep coming across them in the search for low-priced books. (Books are costlier than gold here and the local library does not supply enough variety, so I spend much time and effort hunting down stores that sell second-hand.)

Last week, I had government work which required me to walk through a strange, mall-like place that at first glance looked like a has-been, but on closer acquaintance turned out to be busy and prosperous. My antennae caught a shop selling winter clothes and ski equipment. It’s a sure sign of a Japanophile establishment, and by now I know there will always be a bookshop in one. Sometimes it’s a used-book store, sometimes a specialist boutique selling only graphic novels, anime or fantasy sagas. Whatever it is, there’ll always be something interesting to read in there (and sure enough, a thorough search on my way back did yield a bookstore – big, cut-price, half Japanese and half English).

There’ll also be CDs with horrific covers and vinyls you’ve never heard of. You’ll find Hello Kitty merchandise for all ages, whimsical accessories for grown-ups that even an eight-year-old might hesitate to put on her dolls. Gourmet stores where you do not recognise any of the food. Lifestyle stores that sell minutely useful things, such as pill boxes shaped like beetles. And, as stated in a previous post, totem pole umbrellas and keychains that acknowledge fridge-magnet cousins. Japan must be a singularly fascinating place to live in. Maybe the streets are paved with books. I should go see.

Princesses – the tech specs

My niece's world is currently ruled by the various Disney princesses. My world has consequently been er...enriched?... by new versions of the fairytale princesses I knew when I was a kid (Disney was still in its Mickey-Donald phase then, so I had the Andersen-Grimm non-musical version). The rant about Disney leaching out the uncomfortable life lessons - and therefore the soul - of the stories is another post. This is just about the princesses, the ones in the written fairy tales. The male leads didn’t get much attention; most of them are pretty much one-dimensional (as my niece has subconsciously registered - she mixes them up freely in her games). Which would explain the other important feature of the fairytales: eternal love is usually accomplished in a single look. Here they are, seven of the princesses as I see them, with a handy watchability guide for the movie version:

1. Cinderella wallowed in soot and self-pity and needed a fairy godmother to help her go to the ball. The ugly sisters should have shared the prince, he would have had more fun in the long run.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 2

2. Sleeping Beauty slept through it all. She didn’t seem very upset about being kissed awake by a trespasser. The Disney movie resembles the story in only three points - malevolent witch curse, death by spindle and wakened by kissing. The other 70 minutes are different and not too bad.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 7

3. Snow White was the sort of idiot who took food from strangers and her prince was a necrophiliac who kissed girls in coffins.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 2

4. The nameless one in the Frog Prince was a spoilt and unscrupulous brat who would promise anything just to get her way. Then she came up against something even slimier than herself. Also, this is one story that the Disney version has vastly - and I mean, vastly - improved.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: Probably a lot but have only had to see it once so don't know.

5. The Little Mermaid… no, I can’t be rude about her. Good fairy tales can stand up to the kind of critical appreciation you apply to Shakespeare, and this is one of them. You can see it as a simple parable about not hankering after what you can’t have. But it’s also a complex illustration of poignant darknesses – an Anne-Boleyn style sacrifice of the self to ambition, the fatal attraction of unequal, unrequited love, the fate of the second woman in a certain kind of relationship. It could also be a whole thesis on the inadvisability of giving up that much of your fundamental self for a relationship. Needless to say, the Disney version has none of the above subtext whatsoever.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 2. Be warned that it has spawned sequels involving the mermaid's daughter and mother.

6. Rapunzel, I like! Apart from anything else, there’s something very cool about your fate being decided by a cabbage. This Pantene princess had spirit. She let a man into her room secretly and provided the means herself. And after the wicked witch blinded the guy, she said screw you wicked witch and went after him anyway. Disney's fairly recent interpretation of Rapunzel, Tangled, is a great version, too.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 7

7. My favourite is Beauty. This is the only one that is a true romance and necessarily has a more detailed male lead. Beauty had work to do – she was not strictly a princess. She had chores, a job and human affection for people other than her prince. She found herself put on a difficult path and stuck to it, being brave when she had to be. She gave the beast a chance, unlovely though he was in face and character and unashamedly so. And before you could say Stockholm Syndrome, the beast let her go with no conditions attached. She returned of her own free will. They lived happily ever after.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 7

Lost in a dangling conversation

Cast:
1. 22-year-old colleague in Dubai, highly conscious of her above-average IQ, and Lebanese from AUB (I add this because it speaks volumes to those who know). Ostentatiously scruffy in head-to-toe Diesel.
2. Me, much less decrepit and sociopathic than now, but well on my way up the hill. In high heels, make-up and bling.

Me: Sitting at table in food court reading while eating lunch. Absorbed in book.
She: Interrupting. “You’re always reading crime fiction.”
Me: “Yeah, I like crime fiction”. Polite smile, one eye on book, hoping to convey through body language that I don’t want company.
She: “It’s great that you read, though. I can recommend some good books”.
Me: “Ian Rankin is a good book”. Ponder the implications of the “though”.
She: “Most people who read waste their time because they’re reading the wrong things. You should read some classics to really get an idea of what books are about.”
Me: Speechless.
Then, weakly, “I’ve read them”.
She: “Reading this shit, you might as well be watching TV”.
Me: Speechless.
Struggle with impulse to brain her with said shit. Think that watching some TV would improve her greatly.
She: “If you find the classics too heavy, start with the modern classics. Midnight’s Children. It’s about India, it’s by Salman Rushdie.” She pronounces it like the fish.
Me: “I’ve read it”.
Heft the Rankin a little to see if it’s heavy enough to kill. Count the number of classics I can think of that are far lighter than any of Mr. Rushdie’s extravaganzas. Lose count in a flurry of dismay when she sits down. She produces pen and paper from her bag, and starts writing names.
She: “Zadie Smith is good too”.
Me: “I’ve read it”.
She: “Vikram Seth, Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon…”
Me: “I’ve read them”
Admit to myself that I’m done with them, though. Though. I never finished the third Martin Amis. Might read Vikram Seth again, though. Though. Try to remember how Suitable Boy ended but can’t, which is weird because I did finish that one. Renew my silent vow to never, ever go near the Pynchon again, even to save my life.
She: “…Terry Pratchet…”
Me: “Terry Pratchet?”
She: “Yeah it’s Sci-Fi. That’s Science Fiction.”
Me: Speechless.
Wonder why one would pick Terry Pratchet over Arthur C Clarke if introducing someone to sci-fi. Think deep thoughts about the teaching philosophy at AUB.
She:”… John Steinbeck, Rainer Maria Rilke…”
Me: “I’ve read them.”
Realize with a shock that a proud little quotation I just used in a presentation attributed to "Anon" is my own creation, combining Khalil Gibran and Rainer Maria Rilke. Try to work out which bit belongs to whom, and how widely the presentation is likely to be distributed.
She: “I suppose you’ve read Harry Potter?”
Me: “Yes”.
Feel like I’ve won a prize in Wheel of Fortune.
She: “Then you should read Lord of the Rings – the movie was based on a book you know”. Hands me the paper and stands up. “You’re welcome”.
Me: Too relieved at her absence to register the last part of her speech until she’s out of reach. Stare dumbly at the list for a while. Reach for the pen she’s left behind and correct the spelling of Tolkien.

Yoga School Dropout by Lucy Edge

In a nutshell: Go ahead and read it, but without expectations. I had lots and was disappointed, but was also intermittently entertained.

It could have been called Bridget Jones Goes to India – that’s obvious from the blurb and is mostly why I bought it – except it’s not nearly as well-written. And the author has the most irritating habit of asking questions and not listening to the answers. Much of Yoga School Dropout is like being stuck on a long holiday with a tiresome companion.

Her reading covers a narrow field, leading to the yoga bits being two parts hokum. She didn’t seem to look around her much, either. One example is the fact that she spent two weeks in Kerala and never seemed to make the connection between yoga and Ayurveda. Her overriding need for calm and “flow” might have been met very early in the book if she’d stopped off at any of the Ayurvedic spas there. But if she had, I wouldn’t have got all the details about the visit to Kerala’s favourite Hugging Mother, so I should be grateful to her short attention span.

This last and others like it are the most interesting parts of the book. It goes to several unsuspected places in India, and some famous ones shrouded in suspicion (Osho’s ashram in Pune, for instance), all of which is deeply absorbing for an Indian. It also provides a fascinating inside view of the motivations and journey of the spiritual seekers who are such a regular and mysterious feature of the country. We used to notice them as teenagers, huddled on railway platforms around piles of backpacks, or flapping along pavements in dusty Indian flip-flops. They were invariably white, mostly pilgrims from the West. In the manner of teenagers, we referred to them dispassionately by a very politically incorrect term. Based on the cast and characters of this book, the kid who coined it showed a penetrating insight into the phenomenon.

Two important questions remain unanswered though:

1. Why do they brave the considerable inconvenience of India just to shut themselves into ashrams with fellow “Westerners”? (That’s the term she uses. It includes Australians. You would fetch up in Australia if you went far enough West, but then you’d also eventually reach India. Perhaps it denotes the yogic circularity of all things.) Someone she meets actually asks her this and her answer is that perhaps the Indian yoga schools don’t offer familiarity, which continues to beg the question, really.

2. Why do they seem to leave common sense behind when they enter upon this transformational quest? The “real Indian” is not a simple, yogic soul, full of enriching goodness. He or she is generally looking for a chance to jump the queue and pick your pocket on the way.

She’s wasted good material on formulae – she does herself and her friends in a Bridget-Jones-by-numbers style, and India in imitation-Paul-Scott, though I don’t think the latter is consciously done. The research is sloppy and the dialect rather painfully stereotypical (Indians have wondrous subject-verb-object combinations, the French in Auroville speak as if they’re on the sets of Allo Allo, and so on). The fact that sambar is referred to as “samba” throughout, I’m inclined to attribute to an accident with an automated spell-checker, but you never know.

The book started out very promisingly and deteriorated only mid-way, so the problem might well lie in the advice she got from her writing mentors. Judging by the acknowledgements, there seem to have been a lot of these; we all know what committee decisions lead to. There are frustrating glimpses of the real book – here-and-gone characters, and almost-there insights cropped out of the cutesy frame – which make my inner editor rage a bit.

Writing for pleasure?

Some days words don't come easy. Other days they don't come at all. Now and then I feel – as everyone does – that I'd like to go back and try the road not taken. Then again, I feel like that's the road I'm on, and wish I'd taken the other, well-travelled one. Noise is alternatively comforting and oppressive. Silence does that too. Rules are hard to follow, and difficult to renounce. Fear follows hard on hope. Faith is the hardest thing to do. Some days it's half-full. On others, half-empty. Sometimes the glass isn't even there.

"Writing, particularly fiction writing, is an act of quiet terror. You are alone all at once with your genius and your ineptitude, and your errors are as public as possible," as Gene Weingarten says in "The Hardy Boys: The Final Chapter", an old article in the Washington Post (it's a great read for those of us who grew up with the Hardy Boys. Or Nancy Drew, for that matter).

Writing a book is ridiculously hard work. The reckless number of debut novels unleashed every month baffles me - who are all these people and how are they doing it?

Thoughts in a bookstore

Looking through the “Indian Writers” part of a bookstore (a section that seems to grow larger every month), I stopped muttering to myself long enough to register something I hadn't quite noticed before - there is a lot of Indian pulp fiction out there and that is a very good thing. It’s a sign of the market coming of age that there are different kinds of Indian writing in English and they are all of them prolific. It's several worlds removed from having the one Vikram Seth or Arundati Roy who had to be all things to all people.

The problem that lingers, I think, is that the rest of the world has yet to catch up. All Indian writers that are marketed right are treated with the same tone by the same kind of reviewers. Sacred Games is a case in point. Chetan Bhagat got the write-up in the New York Times that Vikram Chandra deserved. I believe that the increasingly hysterical Mann Booker Prize has a lot to answer for, too.

Often, good Indian writing - the books that are Indian only incidentally, or those that are so fundamentally Indian that they need no decoration with henna or scenting with sandalwood – these, like the independent Indian movies, cross borders quietly and make their mark among those who know. In the big picture, the whole publicity thing probably doesn’t matter.

So I’m left with one burning question and giant peeve – do Indian publishers not believe in editors or proof readers? Especially in a time when anyone with a keyboard can and does write, why isn’t this considered essential? I’m finding basic grammatical and structural errors in more and more books. A delightful read like The Zoya Factor was spoilt by weird grammar glitches that an average sub-editor with a hangover could have corrected. It drives me crazy. People have argued with me about preserving the integrity of “Indian English”. Bollocks. RK Narayan is the quintessential Indian English, and I have yet to see bad grammar or wrongly used words in his books.

I just finished reading a singularly execrable book. “What Would You Do To Save The World?” is essentially the story of a real beauty contestant, told through the thin fictional veil of a “Miss Indian Beauty” contest. With so much good material to work with, it could have been a Devil Wears Prada (the designer of the cover may have believed that, too, from the blurb). All that emotion, manipulation, the discomfort of a doctoral student making herself jump through frilly hoops for a tiara, frustrated at not understanding her need for it, the fact that the accolade is inevitably tawdry even with the real diamonds, a faded institution struggling to mean something to somebody against the backdrop of a country already torn by too many ideological paradoxes and a world that prefers to get that sort of fix from reality TV. Hell, in the hands of Rushdie, it could have won a Nobel! Instead, the book can’t be bothered to go higher than the level of a mediocre newspaper feature.

I’d decided not to trash any more books on my blog because of not wanting to give the universe ammunition for when it comes to payback time, but this one is wantonly bad. It makes me feel homicidal, not just the waste of good material (which after all, is just opinion), but also the fact that it's almost semi-literate in places.

Talking of payback, at the other end of the bookshop (and spectrum) is a terrifyingly eloquent Zadie Smith, to name just one, who makes me want to simultaneously stop writing and write more, the hit of pure joy and fear at the edge of a cliff with a glorious view. There’s a difference between talent and gift, and I may have the wrong one, but I’ll never know until I know, and at that point it will be too late. Someone may read my book and say “In the hands of PD James or Ian Rankin or Donna Leon or Ruth Rendell....” but just as I write that, I realize that none of them would produce this book. So it seems not to be derivative, then. At least that’s something.

The best thing I've read this week

Approach people w/
happy curiosity, it will
disarm them.

This was written on two Post-it notes left inside a book. On "Forgotten Bookmarks".

The princess rants, continued

I’ve been having a running argument with a friend on Facebook, all because of this one article that she posted. She liked it, I didn’t. She has good points but I hold stubbornly to mine that constantly being on the defensive implies guilt and uncertainty, both uncalled for.

The author’s stand seems to me to be highly coloured by certain (probably involuntary) fascist aspects of the “women’s movement”, for want of a better phrase:
1. Women worthy of respect have to conform to specific non-“girly” rules, which is as appearance-obsessed as the point of view it affects to despise.
2. The professions most worth aspiring to are those that were historically male bastions: lawyer, doctor, entrepreneur
3. Women have to try harder just because they are women just to impress other women
4. Everything, but everything is judged in comparison, not as it is.

It's a tyranny of discrimination nearly as bad as the other one. I agree there was a time when it was necessary to go too far, but the pendulum wasn’t quite allowed to continue swinging until it found equilibrium. I have three nieces below the age of six and I resent much of the article on their behalf and for their sakes.

If anything, girls should be taught that being female is merely a fact of birth, like your family or the colour of your eyes. It's not your only identity. Your achievements shouldn’t be judged by it ("woman president", "woman CEO"), nor should you be strung up for having failed the “sisterhood” if you're an underachiever. You can be girly or feminine or boyish or butch, or whatever the current media label, or none of them. What type of woman you are doesn’t matter, what counts is what kind of person you are.

I hope my nieces will know that they are free to respond to the world as people. To ignore the media, both for and against, and think for themselves. To not argue with fools who start stupid discussions that begin with "all women" or "all men". To laugh at a sexist joke if they find it funny without it in any way affecting their power of perception. I hope they understand that the world will chatter incessantly but they are free to let go of all expectations but their own. To be women or ladies or girls without feeling a driving need for aggression or apology.

Only one important thing is wrong with the pink princess franchise – her inherent helplessness. The princess does not do for herself. Fate, fairy godmother, prince or a singing teapot always has to intervene for her. The other things – obsession with beauty, for example – are only secondary to this very dangerous message. For the rest of it, they’re just fantasies, no more cause for socio-cultural angst than Superman or Tarzan.

Then there’s this genius who wrote 1000 plus words in the New York Times, no less, about women bullying women in the workplace. Apparently the gentler sex is usually the kind, caring custodian of the careers of all other women in the world, so any deviation from this is an aberration worth reporting. What is this - a Bene Gesserit breeding program?

Magic beans

Article published in Little India ("Largest Indian publication in USA") in May this year under the title of "My Paper Google", and yet to be paid for.

I rushed to my laptop in a panic while cooking something complicated, to look up "blanching". And ended up very annoyed because I got onion peel on my precious keyboard. Much later, I remembered that I've had a sort of paper Google for years which tells me all I could possibly want to know. And it's survived worse disasters than onion peel.

My mother got this battered blue book when it was new, a present from her cousin in the early years of her marriage. When I left home to set up a kitchen of my own, she gave it to me.

It's a combination of old-fashioned recipe book and surprisingly modern how-to manual on setting up a new life. In the section called Basic Kitchen Aids" – which I read six months after I needed it – I recognised my mother's organised kitchen and therefore the things I had unconsciously bought anyway.

There is also crucial cooking-for-dummies information. The ounce to teaspoon conversion rate, for example. And how to tell a "moderate oven" from the other kinds. Descriptions of different cooking methods, alphabetically listed. What to do if you've over-salted a curry. How to rescue something that got burnt at the bottom. Fascinating tit-bits (of purely academic interest until very recently) such as: citrus fruits dipped in warm water are easier to juice, an egg-shell added to boiling bones helps produce clear stock without skimming, a wet knife slices hard-boiled eggs neater.

There is even a brief but illuminating bit on throwing parties. The advice ranges in tone from the understanding but implacable tenets of my great-aunts: "No matter how shy you are do not forget that they are your guests and you are the hostess" to the eminently practical voice of my mother's sister: "Serve a dish you are confident about so you can enjoy your own party".

The recipes are interesting (now and then I recognise something that has been the staple in our home all my life), but being an indifferent cook – if at all – they have spent more time on my bookshelf than in my kitchen. I've read the book cover to cover of course, but only because I read everything, compulsively.

"The accumulated experience of many a home-maker has gone into the contents of this book" says Rachel Alexander in the preface. She used the current word for housewife 34 years ahead of its time and seems to wear confidently her title of chairman. Possibly she was too busy being one to bother with the mere semantics of chairperson. She belonged to a magnificent generation.

The names in the acknowledgements belong to strangers, but they call up reminiscences like photographs. I spent many childhood summers with one great-aunt or the other and – as the most easily persuaded of the grandchildren – have accompanied those energetic old divas on a million duty visits, tea parties, ladies' lunches, fundraisers and the like. In my early teens I was even occasionally despatched alone as the representative. (I wonder how I could have turned out so socially recalcitrant, but perhaps my rabid introversion is because I've finished my quota of niceties).

It is called "A Guide to Efficient Housekeeping and Good Cooking" and was published in 1973 (a month before I was born) by the YWCA-Chennai as a fundraiser.

The cover shows age, but the book is neat and poised, the papers never askew or unkempt. After a lifetime of wear and tear, the spine is still straight and the spirit, indomitable. Whenever I open it, the pages susurrate like starched cotton sarees rustling around tea-trays on verandahs.

To the great dinosaur park in the sky

I break my inexplicable silence to say a sad goodbye to Michael Crichton. He wrote many, many books and I've read most of them with relish. Only two were about dinosaurs but that's who he is to me – the dinosaur guy to a dinosaur fan. In memorium, I will lift the equally inexplicable book embargo in my life and re-read Jurassic Park this weekend. And it will still be the gripping, thrashing chase it has been all the other 50 times.

I'd always hoped that another book in the series would come out at some point. But now I'm left with the same hollowness I felt when I came to the abrupt, premature end of The Salmon of Doubt and Sunset at Blandings, the recognition that the only minds that could satisfactorily complete them are irreversibly gone.

Maybe it's actually the great publisher's party in the sky. How horrible.

Expelliarmus!

I just finished re-reading the last Harry Potter to decide what I thought of it as a book (in the first reading you just want to know how it ends.) Well, I've lost count of the number of times I've read The Chamber of Secrets, The Goblet of Fire and The Sorcerer's Stone (and I know I will read them again) but I have never opened The Order of the Phoenix after the first time. The Deathly Hallows joins it in the outer darkness of the back row of my bookshelf.

For this two things are largely responsible.
One: Unwisely returning to The Lord of the Rings immediately after, a terribly damaging comparison was automatic and inevitable.
Two: The unavoidable media hype that turns authors into celebrities apparently contaminates fiction with fact.

I was surprised at how hard it was for me to get past Rowling's inexplicable bloody-mindedness about The Tales of Beedle The Bard. If it were genuinely about being just for six important people in her life, why make a such a big deal of it in public? It doesn't make sense. A million paperbacks would hardly have affected the value of the ones handwritten, hand-tooled and personally illustrated by the author. They would still have brought in the millions for charity. They would still have been private and personal gifts.

As it stands "five wizarding fairy tales referenced in the last book of the Harry Potter series" are out of reach of the kids who would give away their lunch money to read them. Of course they could always take part in the singularly unimaginative Amazon contest that is going to allow one of them near one copy, under supervision. Whether close enough to actually read the damn thing is not specified.

Stealing the Ambassador

What a waste of a brilliant title.

When I commandeered it unceremoniously from my brother's bookshelf, it was in the irrational hope of either a rollicking read with the unapologetic exuberance of Sacred Games or a multilayered, multicoloured production like Midnight's Children. Or maybe even a tale of deep, chronic decay in the style of Rohinton Mistry or Sarathchandra Chattopadyaya. Or something else entirely, a new and wonderful type of book.

Even the ominous blurb – "Twenty-three year old Rajiv Kothari is lost in a nation he has always called home and beckoned by the one his father left long ago" – could not dim the promise in the title.

Well, you already guessed it. All it is, is yet another tourism brochure. I've only read half and maybe it'll turn into a technicolor dreamcoat in the second half. But I think I'm too depressed to slog it out to the end.

If Sameer Parekh's grammar wasn't just a little bit questionable, he might even have won the Booker. And, as it stands today, I can't think of a worse indictment (though I have to admit I wouldn't exactly kick it out of bed if it was ever offered to me...).

Land of the Kamasutra, home of the Taj Mahal

A certain time-honoured purveyor of sex and love is starting an Indian version soon. The only surprise is that it took this long to happen. With at least four wildly successful film industries that deal almost exclusively in romance, and a history that is concerned with very little else, India is the perfect market for Mills and Boon.

M&B readers in other parts of the world have indicated that they prefer exotic locales and "foreign" men, and Indian ones won't be exceptions – except that the description could well apply to the guy from the neighbouring state. A Bengali may be very exotic to a Haryanvi. A Punjabi secretary might find a Goan with a guitar dangerously seductive. A Malayali scientist could bring unfamiliar chemistry into the life of a computer programmer in Orissa, and so on.

Indianising M&B will increase its readership without in any way changing the fundamental nature of the books. Harlequin should fire its business development department for not having thought of this earlier.

M&Bs were my introduction to the romance genre at a very impressionable age because all the women in two generations of my family read them and left them lying around. (Well actually, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women and What Katy Did Next came first, but you can't speak of them in the same breath.)

I loved the old, gentle M&Bs – by certain authors – and have even started collecting them now as a sort of tribute to my grandmothers. But I stopped reading them entirely about 15 years ago. The forced steaminess got on my nerves, the macho men started to annoy as well, but mostly the writing became so very bad.

I’d rather read a finely spun Georgette Heyer, written like perfect soufflé (great expertise, effort and knowledge harnessed to make it light and easy). Or "modern chick lit", which is a sort of unabashed written TV. Also, the pivotal factor of romance is the guy. I find an urbane hero with the wit for real banter a hell of a lot more attractive than the brooding desert prince who barks and flings people across his saddle bow on the slightest provocation.

Incidentally, a cousin who recently stopped over for a day wanted a book to read on the plane and I discovered there are definite sub-genres to this category. In all my large library of mush, there wasn't one book that she wanted to read. We read completely different types and each had decided views on "my type".

Anyway for all those who would like to write a bestselling M&B, I am offering a guaranteed formula absolutely free in the post below.

How to write a successful Mills and Boon

Just follow the EASY, four-part guide that has been PROVEN and provided RESULTS to HUNDREDS of authors worldwide and you can be a romance novelist too!

PART I
Woman and man meet in one or all of the following ways:
a) Dramatically. Eg: he runs her over/they get hijacked on the same plane/he saves her from a mugger/he mugs her/he shares an umbrella in the rain…
b) At a gathering. Eg: party of a friend and he's with another girl (preferably 10 feet tall, thin, blondish and very expensively dressed)/she invites his cousin on the night he's in town…
c) Over a misunderstanding. Eg: she goes to a wedding, thinks he's the bridegroom, but it turns out he's the best man…
d) Under a shadow from the past. Eg: they used to work together and one of them got the other fired/they used to be childhood sweethearts/she broke the aforementioned umbrella/ he actually was the bridegroom but pretended to be the best man…

PART II
Matters proceed in any manner of your choice, including an important plot point revolving around any or all of the Three Ps®:
a) Precipitation: Situation that provides lab conditions to speed up normal processes. Eg: Unavoidable road trip/holiday house party/combined babysitting of friends' dogs/kids
b) Proximity: Physical, of course. Eg: Enforced sharing of a room because of storm/riot/breakdown/dental conference in town
c) Peacocking: Dress-up occasion to provide silk, jewellery, glittering backdrop, alcohol, music, dancing. Eg: Black-tie gala/Christmas party/clients' annual party/theatre/wedding reception

PART III
There will be a complication…
a) Another woman
b) Another man
c) A revelation. Eg: He's actually the crown prince of some country/She's the daughter of the person who put his father out of business/Either of them have a disease, a prison term or children hidden away somewhere (the other man/woman could be this secret child)

PART IV
Essentially: Explanation, declaration, kiss, curtain.
Methodically clear up each complication, shadow from past etc in the most dramatic way you can think of. Introduce as many new characters as you need to do so. (In fact, there can be a point where an audience will applaud in the "all the world loves a lover" tradition.) The denouement itself will occur in highly charged circumstances, such as:
a) An explosive fight across a public square
b) A final chase to catch the train/plane/bus/boat/bicycle on which he/she is leaving forever
c) A rescue from sinking boat/falling tree/jungle/mountain/desert/wild nightclub
d) An unexpected return
d) Tears and rain

Note: Throw in some species of steamy scene every 15 pages or so. It doesn't matter if they've been lost in the Sahara for a week and are nearly dead – celebrate life.

Characters: The girls are pretty, the guys are good-looking, the kids are cute, the friends are married. Landladies/lords are either parently and sympathetic to the cause or nasty and dragonlike to provide rescue opportunities. The same applies to bosses, relatives in authority, siblings, bankers, lawyers, waitresses and public transport officials. Nobody enters that world for any purpose other than to further or hinder the great love. The stunningly beautiful woman is the Other One. The handsome man is the gay friend.

SECRET TIP: Just translate every Hindi movie ever made, and you already have enough titles to keep you in luxury for the rest of your life.

The Godstone

The most important thing about it right now is that it's written by a Dubai-based author, Stuart Land, and was launched four days ago at our very own Magrudy's. I've just finished it in one sitting.

Alex Haley meets Wilkie Collins meets Dan Brown, but it manages to be unique for all that. The plot is interesting, the twists in it are genuinely surprising and over-all you definitely want to know how it ends. Unfortunately the writing is not yet able to handle it. Not yet, because it is a first novel – as is betrayed by some gaucherie and hesitancy – so indictment is not warranted.

There are some irritants. The occasional descriptions of Dubai sound like tourism plugs (which is frankly suspicious). Now and then, there seems to be a touch of the Great White Hope school of thought (which may well come easily to a Caucasian male who's been knocking around the Middle East for a while). But, most irritating to me, there were explanations - as in, a thobe is such and such worn by so and so, in a place where the translation is irrelevant and inconvenient. I can't see Marquez, for example, allowing the explanation imperative get in his way.

But read it, I enjoyed the story as much as Da Vinci Code. And I'd like to say to Stuart Land - write the next one, but don't be so concerned with not offending anyone. When half your friends disown you and your book is banned, you sleep the sleep of fulfilment. Ask Rushdie.

Also maybe use another publisher, one that has proofreaders.

No more reruns

I’ve finally got around to reading Hemingway. “The Sun Also Rises”, of course (what would you expect of someone with a closet preference for compilation CDs?). I would have done this earlier, except that I haven’t lately been able to rouse myself to more than the merest pulp fiction and re-reading of the books I already know too well. New authors have been a difficult leap to make - as the great man said, people are strange when you’re a stranger.

Now that I’ve self-diagnosed softening of the brain, I’ve taken on the books that I have continued to buy even if not read, as if the mere act of browsing in a bookshop were enough.

To get back to Hemingway... well, I can’t review yet because I haven’t finished the book. But for me, Hemingway is one of the few authors whose name alone conjures an entire, romantic world. Kipling is another. Hats and g-and-ts on a patio, bougainvillea on white walls looking out to sea. It also reminds me of how redolent life in the Middle East can be of the old-fashioned expatriate luxuries. And the megrims.... not even a quarter of the book through, and I’m already using that word.

I hate Barney

I’ve just finished reading Jurassic Park and Lost World back to back for about the seventeeth time. They have the same timeless joy for me as the Asterix and Tintin comics that never grow old.

But as I grow older, as my own thought processes advance and regress with experience, in a continuous loop, what I see in the books changes. Different bits of it catch and hold my attention. Now it’s not always about tyrannosaurs hunting hadrosaurs by the river and the pack behaviour of the raptors.

Briefly, it was fascination with the chaos theory. It moved on to the stupidity of the human race. Then the stupidity divided itself into sub-categories: arrogance, ignorance, commercialisation, urbanisation, the romanticising of animals. The world needs more dinosaur museums, not vapid purple talking toys and a franchise called t-rex.

Now, the books seem to be about the futility of the human race. As my favourite Gulf News columnist says, “It's both a sad and a comforting thought that the earth will probably remember us as nothing more than a brief illness.”

Of course – who am I kidding – it’s also always about the tyrannosaurs hunting hadrosaurs by the river, raptor packs and other prehistoric imaginings.

Reluctant though I am to say anything so utterly predictable, the movie is not as good as the book. Though the dinosaurs were pretty cool. I saw the movie before I knew it was a book and if anyone knows of other dinosaur books, I will be grateful for a list.

Magic Bus

Rory Maclean’s book reads very well.

Each chapter has a well-rounded beginning and ending. One paragraph segues into another flawlessly. The chapter headings have a theme that’s just strong enough to add a bit of interest without overpowering the main text. And the metaphor is meticulously maintained from cover to cover.

The subject matter is highly fascinating in itself - “On the hippy trail from Istanbul to India”. It’s also well researched and perfectly presented. A bit of human interest here in the form of anecdote and quotation, a touch of humour there, a word portrait now and again. The emotional flourishes are added at precise intervals, with the lightest of touches.

Not once does the writing interfere with the reading – copywriting at its finest. The Magic Bus is the world’s best brochure.

Timid Frieda, who will lead her?

The writer’s going for 50,000 words at least, the copywriter is programmed to autoedit after 100. The writer wants to tell a story, the copywriter wants to know about marketability, feasibility, liability and who the target audience is. The writer knows that it takes as long as it takes, the copywriter sets impossible deadlines and worries about them. The writer wants to write a novel, the copywriter wants to write the blurb.

Between them, they’re ruining my book. And as if they were not bad enough, I now have the horrible fate of Kavya Viswanathan knocking on my window at night.

I had a momentous flash of insight yesterday, almost an epiphany – one of the reasons my book reads like shit is that I’m “channelling” whatever I’m reading. So, not only does the style drift from chapter to chapter like a homeless person, so does the plot. Worse, I can’t tell if I’m just borrowing styles or whole sentences.

John Grisham has nothing in common with Wodehouse, Sophie Kinsella is not exactly Georgette Heyer and Naipaul is emphatically different from Rushdie, but they mingle freely in my work, with the indiscriminate camaraderie exhibited on the shelves of Dubai’s bookshops.

If I have to finish my damned book, I will have to stop reading for a year. Or, at least, it will have to be restricted to certain kinds of non-fiction. I especially have to ditch my oldest and dearest friends – authors that I have read and re-read for years. I hope it’s only for a while.

Timid Frieda, Jacques Brel

Holy Cow

Just finished reading Holy Cow by Sarah Something or the other. There’s much to be caustic about, but I won’t, for the following reasons:
1. I’ve decided to dial down the causticity generally for fear of turning into a malevolent old bat, instead of a sweet old lady
2. On the whole, I enjoyed the book
3. It’s the first India book I’ve read that actually goes to my very own Whitefield, and that forgives it much
4. It is – in my limited field of erudition – the most entertaining catalogue of India’s religions

So I would say: read it – after all, it is about one person’s opinions based on one person’s experiences, so you can’t really argue or judge, just absorb.

Though you’d think an ex-journalist would think twice before going the old caricature route to – oops, caustic comment nearly got through. Out, damned bat!