The House of Blue Mangoes

and Why it doesn't work for me

1) bowing deeply (pg 67) drank deeply (pg 67) jumped with a huge splash into the deepest part of the pool (68) deep sense of contentment (pg 68)

2) narrow tarred road that stands out like a fresh scar on the red soil (pg 3)

3) Despite his disability, Joshua Dorai was one of those men who walked lightly upon the earth, seemingly without a care. (pg 99)

4) About Summer - dead white eye of the sun.. enamel the sky with heat and glare until they burned - (pg 79)

5) udukkai drum (pg 74) udukai (pg 75)

6) European food... mulligatawny soup (pg 86)

7) as dawn came crowding through the night (pg 96)

8) 'Rather a drastic solution, but that's always been your way,' said Solomon drily. (pg 101)

9) Hitler's Lebensraum paralleled with the idea of the Vedic times' Aswameda yagnam. (pg 280)

10) smeared his face in the dirt (pg 279)

The list is endless, so I'll stop here to save more agony of looking for gaffes. To cap it all, after resisting the temptation for over 45o pages, the author finally gives into the inevitable and in the very last page compares the neelam mango to a woman's breast.

Finally finished it; it was a real struggle to plod on, without giving up. To sum up, The House of Blue Mangoes is a long string of tedious superlatives.

A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth

I'm re-reading it, and its magic is taking hold all over again. Deceptively simple language; the narrative voice seductively takes my hand and leads me through door after door in a maze opening into rooms filled with delectable treasures as acsessible as the touch and handle objects in a children's museum.

Reading his interviews, one learns that Seth spent the better part of a decade labouring on each sentence of his 1349 page saga, refining and refining till it flowed as easily as a merry brook.

He returned to his parents' home to write the book and spent most of his thirties there. Like a baby returning to its mother's womb to begin the process of labour all over again to be born anew. Kinda gross I know, but that's what it feels like. Can't wait to count ten fingers and ten toes and lie back with exhausted relief.