Book review: The Shadow Princess

Shadow Princess

Some time back I wrote about the first two books in The Taj Trilogy by Indu Sundaresan: The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses. Shadow Princess is the culmination of the saga. Indu portrays the story of Mughal India after the death of it's beloved begum, Mumtaz Mahal a.k.a Arjumand Banu.

The narration starts with the fourteenth child delivery by Arjumand Banu and her death during the process. She deserts this world leaving behind two daughters, Jahanara and Roshanara along with four sons. On the death of her mother, Jahanara becomes the Padshah begum sahiba of the imperial harem leaving behind Shah Jahan's other two wives in the run for the title. In the time of his beloved wife's death, emperor Shah Jahan depends dearly on his daughter for emotional support and matters of governance. Jahanara looks after her father and kingdom so well that the emperor grows extremely attached to his eldest child and refuses to give her away in marriage to anybody. Jahanara thus looses the chance to marry her love interest, a capable noble in her father's kingdom - Nazabat Khan. Thus sets the mood of longing and desperation in the book.

Jahanara supports her father's will in establishing Dara Shikoh on the throne of Hindustan while her sister Roshanara whose importance is whittled away in Jahanara's brilliance supports another brother Aurangzeb's accession to throne. The haughty pious prince, Aurangzeb longs and fails to attain his sister's Jahanara's affection. Jahanara on failing to receive the natural right to marry, took to immoral and unconventional ways of seeking love. She starts to smuggle in a man into the imperial harem to satisfy her. On discovering that Nazabat too loves her, she meets him secretly under the very nose of the emperor. Aurangzeb's struggle for gaining power is paralleled with his sister's attempts at gaining love. The book entails to describe the construction of Taj Mahal in painful details and there is an information overload.

While this third and last edition in the trilogy holds strong in expressing the author's brilliance in narration, it lacks in holding the readers's interest. Primarily the protagonist of the book, Jahanara Begum is not as impressive and authoritative as the protagonist of two other books, Mehrunnisa. Although the character building has come out substantially, the character in itself lacks any charisma. Secondly, the detail with which the author has described the construction of Taj Mahal is unappealing to a reader lacking architectural background. The story is a drag with nothing new to offer and the important historical incidents in the life of Aurangzeb have received lesser importance than they were actually entitled to. The perfidy and fratricide on Aurangzeb's part is chalked out much too feebly and the grandeur of Mughal rule is all repetitive.

All in all the climax of this trilogy is a disappointment and to be read only for curiosity. I read the book in sections-once starting from the last few chapters, once in the middle section, skipping many a few pages out of sheer boredom!! At last I finished the book and here I am recommending this to only those who have read the first two wonderful books in this trilogy.

Book review: Memoirs of a geisha

“He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.”

Having read such a romantically intense quote one would expect this book  to be a deep love story. The book is all but a love story. The highest honor and happiness the protagonist Nitta Sayuri receives is to be the mistress of a man she loved. To quote Sayuri "You cannot say to the sun, "More sun." Or to the rain, "Less rain." To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind." These are memoirs of a geisha.

The 448 pages of emotional upheaval is a narration of her past life from the protagonist Nitta Sayuri. The mood of the book is not melancholy but hopeful. Readers are introduced to Sakamoto Chiyo in her impoverished childhood in a small fishing town of Japan. After her mother's deathbed, much to little Chiyo's shock, she as well as her sister is sold off to a stranger by her father. Little Chiyo's scary journey to become a Geisha thereafter hold's the reader's breath. A geisha is not a prostitute but an artist in her own way.The most literal translation of geisha into English would be "performing artist". While Japan's tradition expected women to be confined only to the walls of her kitchen, geisha were the women who accompanied men in social gatherings and entertained them with their dance, music and games. It was traditional in the past for established geisha to take a danna, or patron. A danna was typically a wealthy man, sometimes married, who had the means to support the very large expenses related to a geisha's traditional training and other costs. The geisha who worked within pleasure quarters were essentially imprisoned and strictly forbidden to sell sex in order to protect the business of the okiya (traditional geisha house).

Chiyo much desired for her loving face with the tender and piercing blue green eyes, missed her chance of getting art training to become a geisha when she bears the angst of mistress of okiya while fruitlessly trying to escape. On a chance meeting with a man she calls chairman throughout, young Chiyo's life is changed forever. She is awarded the generous apprenticeship with a magnanimous tutor Mameha and learns dance, singing and many other art forms as a Maiko (a geisha in training). Rechristened as Sayuri she is made to sell her virginity to the highest bid of 15000 yen. 

On her journey to becoming the most successful Geisha in the pleasure town of Gion, Sayuri earns a lot of friends and also a ruthless enemy Harsumomo. Every step she takes after that meeting with chairman is to get closer to him. But fate holds other plans for her. Chairman expects her to reserve her attention and care to Nobu, chairman's friend. The world war 2 pushes Japan into a fearful state and leaves Sayuri to sweat it out hard in a Kimono maker's home. After 2 years of gruesome work, Sayuri comes back home only to see her it having lost all the grandeur and to witness geisha culture severely challenged among American soldier troops. How Sayuri brings back the traditional standards of a geisha, how she keeps alive the geisha manners among lustful American soldiers and how she ever gets closer to chairman is best appreciated when one reads the book himself/herself.

Arthur Golden, the author has entwined the delicate controversial story of a geisha in powerful words. A reader is not disgusted when she reads that Sayuri's mizuage (virginity loss) is sold; instead one cannot help but pray that Sayuri gets the highest bid so that she can repay the amount to okiya for which she was sold and liberate herself to become independent geisha. The author compels you to shed tears when Sayuri finally gets her first kiss from chairman. Though the form of narration is prose I felt it is no lesser than a wonderful poem. Sayuri is pictured as a strong woman fighting against many odds; yet she is that delicate vulnerable girl whom anybody would love to protect. At once Sayuri looks like she is the unfortunate girl who deserves better, but the very next moment she is a happy soul to get the best out of her world. 


I wanted to put down the book after reading the first few pages but once the book got into my skin I felt pulled towards the characters. Though it is about a culture I was not aware of, people whom I could not relate to, hardships I never had or  will endure; I could still feel the pain of Sayuri's journey, the purity of Mameha's secret love to her patron,the intensity of Hatsumomo's genuine jealousy and the kindness of Chairman. 

“Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that isn't it” 

Yes Sayuri. Life is all that unpredictable yet promising. This character of Sayuri is one which will continue to remain in my heart for a long time. While there are many trivial things to complain about in life, women like Sayuri show to the world that an unflinching desire in heart is all that's required to get to the destination what come may. Kudos to the lion heart in a geisha body confined by many chains of oppression, social norms and restrictions. Hats off to the kindness, hope and faith life never fails to provide even after many blows. 

To treat yourself with beautiful quotes from the book:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/614.Arthur_Golden?page=1

Book review : Aavarana

There are two kinds of history - one which collects, analyses and presents the truth about events and the other which masks the truth in opaque veils and presents it in a form deemed suitable for the existing socio-political sentiments. I now write about the book standing under first category of the two types of history mentioned. It is a work which created quite a stir in the world of intellectuals and which proved to be one of the biggest controversies of it's time, Aavarana by S.L.Bhyrappa. Aavarana saw 10 prints in the first 5 months of release, a big proof for its relevance and popularity.

I am fortunate enough to have read two of Bhyrappa's works. He is a no nonsense scholar with a brilliant grasp on the writing and the research he does.  Aavarana is based on the most sensitive topic of medieval Muslim influence on India; a topic all secular individuals love to hate but cannot ignore. Bhyrappa has taken the courage to speak out truth in a politically charged country which denounces anything secular that tries to demand proof. Being used to read only about the architectural or administrative influences of Mughals, I was gripped by this book which so intrepidly chided the wrong doings of Muslim rulers on the Hindu culture. Bhyrappa substantiated the naked truth of Islamic intolerance towards Hindus with accurate proofs and references. Any sensible unbiased Indian (irrespective of whether a Hindu or a Muslim) burns with rage on reading about the atrocity committed on humanity during the reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707).

Bhyrappa has given heart wrenching description of Aurangzeb's inhuman attitude towards anything that is non-Islamic. A land where there are crores of Gods and where people give excess importance to the artistic expression of the forms of God had to naturally see the wrath of a Muslim ruler who simply couldn't comprehend the concept of more than one supreme God. Bhyrappa has adopted a play-within-play technique. The protagonist of the novel is a converted Muslim, Razia. The story begins when Razia goes along with her husband, Ameer to Hampi. Razia has to write a script to the documentary film her husband is directing signifying Hampi as the place of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood . But her intuition and  research doesn't let her to commit that folly. Husband and wife get into altercations because of this difference in opinion. When Razia is constantly compelled by her husband to write a script as he wishes, she learns that her father with whom she had broken all ties after the wedding had passed away. When she goes to visit her home near Hassan she comes across a treasure of books and research her father owned. There begins the second plot of Aavarana.

Razia aka Lakshmi's father Narasimha Gowda had left behind intensive notes in every book of the library on Muslim influence in medieval India. Lakshmi immerses herself in the study and starts living away from her problematic marriage. Thus takes the birth of her novel and it's hero Khwaja Jahan. The hero is a proud Rajput prince happily married and the heir for his father's throne but the one who looses all dignity when his kingdom gets defeated and crushed under Aurangzeb's army. The valiant prince falls prey to the homosexual army general's lust, slave trade and later castration. The story goes on to describe prince turned eunuch's journey thereafter, Aurangzeb's temple-destruction scheme, Khwaja Jahan's ironical privilege of watching Kashi Vishwanath temple destruction and his efforts to escape the ill fate.

I was angry when Lakshmi was intelligently made to convert her religion though her husband pretended his love is beyond caste, religion and tradition. I was disgusted when Razia was made to eat beef much against her birth religion beliefs. My heart went out to her when she had to prove her dedication to Islam time and again. A woman can bare only so much victimization. But my spirits sored high when she continued her intellectual pursuits, when she strived to maintain her dignity and choices. I couldn't help but show pity to the prince when he was used by different men for their pleasure. My heart cried for his pain when he got castrated. I earnestly hoped he would get a chance to run away with his wife (also subjected to trade and conversion) when he found her mothering children of some other Muslim powerful man. The roller coaster of emotions could only be felt by reading the novel.

The four figure count of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb, the fate of war torn men and women, the rigidity to which Muslim converts are subjected, the various other heart wrenching facts substantiated with evidence from Quran, Hadiths (reports of statements or actions of Muhammad) and Sira (traditional name for biographies of Mohammad) can be found in this brilliant piece of historical fiction. To quote Bhyrappa "the deceptive act of hiding the truth is Aavarana". Read this much cussed and discussed novel to find out the distorted and hidden truths.

I write here a plain analysis of a novel without holding ill feelings for any religion. I am just against the horrible immoral deeds which the author has described in the book.

Further reads :