“Shyamji, why don’t you sing classical more often? Why don’t you sing fewer ghazals and sing more at classical concerts?” Shyamji was always impeachably polite. He now turned to study the Managing Director’s son’s face with curiosity, as if he were reminded again of the boy’s naivety. “Baba,” he said (his tone was patient), let me establish myself so that I don’t have to think of money any more. Then I can devote myself completely to art. You can’t sing classical on an empty stomach.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (SEP 23, 2010)

The Immortals is a tale of two families: one luxuriating in a new world of corporate affluence and the other getting by on the old world of musical tradition. Together, they are joined by a “common, day-to-day pursuit of music.”

Music is the thread that ties this book together, and Amit Chaudhuri knows his stuff. He is, himself, a composer and musician and the meticulous detail and grand amount of exposition is clearly written by a man who has inhabited the world he creates.

This is a populous novel; it’s easy for the reader to lose his or her way in the first 50 pages, and indeed, in other places in the book when many characters are introduced and exotic musical terms are freely used. It demands close attention to the text. Those who surrender to the text will be rewarded with lush language and a complex emotional landscape.

The key character, Nirmalya Sengupta, is the teenage scion of a corporate father who enjoys all the trappings of the Indian nouveau riche. Not unlike many teenagers, he is trying to find his own way with the judgmental zeal that only the privileged can exude. With his long hair, grungy goatee, torn kurta and earmarked copy of Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy, Nirmalya is a purist: he dreams of classical music and softly condemns his mother Mallika, an excellent singer, for “selling out” to commerce over art. He is also more than a little naïve and spoiled: “Nirmalya had never known want; and so he couldn’t understand those who said, or implied, they couldn’t do without what they already had.”

His guru Shyamji, is from the Brahmin caste; his father was a famous classical musician, but he has squandered his artistic inheritance by tutoring and enabling the dreams of the wealthy. Nirmalya might claim he “sold his soul” by straddling the two distinct worlds of classical versus popular music. The juxtaposition of Nirmalya and Shyamji sets up an intriguing premise: who should be granted more respect, the “upper born,” artistically-gifted guru or the newly-wealthy who are now, for all intents and purposes, his employers? What is the relationship between commerce and art and how does it “play out” in reality?

Mallika – Nirmalya’s mother — ponders this diachtomy: “Mallika had wanted recognition, that pure woebegone desire for a reward for her gift had accompanied her life from the start but never overwhelmed it; but she hadn’t wanted to dirty her hands in the music world; she’s wanted to preserve the prestige of being, at once, an artist and the wife of a successful executive. She knew, with an uncomplicated honesty, what her worth was; to what extent would she compromise or to which level stoop if others pretended not to.”

There are flaws. The greatest is that at times, the demand for familiarity with Indian music – particularly classical music – can be disconcerting or even downright frustrating to the uninformed reader. A glossary or short introduction would have been immensely helpful. Still, The Immortals is a fascinating look at the Bombay of 30 years ago — a Bombay that existed in pre-boom India. Most of all, it’s a meditation on how – or if – art and commerce interconnect through insightful observations that are both precise and graceful.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage (September 21, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amit Chaudhuri
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More fiction for music lovers : Nocturnes by Kazoa Ishiguro The Rose Variations by Marisha Chamberlain

Bibliography:

• A Strange and Sublime Address (1991) Betty Trask Prize
• Afternoon Raag (1993)
• Freedom Song: Three Novels (1999)
• A New World (2000)
• Real Time: Stories and a Reminiscence (2002)
• The Immortals (2009; September 2010 in US)

Nonfiction:

• D. H. Lawrence and ‘Difference’: Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present (2003)
• Orange Flags (2003)
• Clearing A Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture (2008)

“Puri considered the doctor’s stern warning as he sank his teeth into another hot, crispy pakora and his taste buds thrilled to the tang of salty batter, fiery chili and the tangy red chutney in which he had drowned the illicit snack. He derived a perverse sense of satisfaction from defying Dr. Mohan’s orders.

Still, the fifty-one-year-old detective shuddered to think what his wife would say if she found out he was eating between meals — especially “outside” food that had not been prepared by her own hands (or at least by one of the servants).

Keeping this in mind, he was careful not to get any incriminating grease spots on his clothes. And once he had finished his snack and disposed of the takeout box, he washed the chutney off his hands and checked beneath his manicured nails and between his teeth for any telltale residue. Finally he popped some sonf into his mouth to freshen his breath.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (APR 21, 2010)

Vish Puri, founder of the Most Private Investigators Ltd., and something of an Indian Hercule Poirot, supports his comfortable lifestyle with matrimonial background checks, but every once in a while something more worthy of his talents comes along. Puri is often compared to Sherlock Holmes for the acuity of his observation, but Puri disdains the comparison, preferring to cite 2,000 year-old Indian detecting principles – Holmes’ inspiration.

A decade earlier, Puri and his wife moved to the rural fields outside of Delhi to escape the sprawl and pollution of the city. But the New India has caught up to them. Housing developments, factories and office buildings have gobbled the farmers’ fields and roads criss-cross the land spewing smog. Every morning Puri gives his precious chili plants a bath and the next morning they are coated in grime once again.

In this first appearance, Puri, dressed to the nines, munching mouth-watering hot and crunchy snacks, and bemoaning the breakdown of society, comes to the aid of a lawyer who has just been accused of raping and murdering his servant girl.

The evidence is thin – even proof that the girl is dead is shaky. But the lawyer has angered some powerful people. He’s a crusading type who has taken on corruption in government and refuses to be bribed or silenced. The case gives Hall a chance to explore India’s vast, hilariously, stunningly complex bureaucracy and its attendant miasma of corruption.

Puri has his methods of cutting the tangles of red tape, however, and help from his team of loyal and quick-witted assistants as well as his tenacious and even quicker-witted mother (looking into an attempted shooting of her son) and unflappable wife, keep things moving at home and throughout the city.

Though the plot is entertaining the real fun here is the eccentric Puri; his appreciation of spicy – very spicy – food, his strong opinions, his various eccentricities and his ingenuity and resourcefulness.

Hall, a British journalist, captures the contradictions and hugeness of modern India with its mania for growth and its love of tradition, its new rich and ever poor, its giddy wealth and grinding, shocking poverty.

Charming, witty, clever and atmospheric, Hall’s foray into fiction is a winner.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 155 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (April 20, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tarquin Hall
EXTRAS:	Publisher’s interview with Tarquin Hall Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another detective story set in India: Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

Bibliography:

• The Case of the Missing Servant (2009)
• The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing (2010)
• The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken (2012)
• The Case of the Love Commandos (2013)

Non-fiction:

• To the Elephant Graveyard (2001)
• Salaam Brick Lane: A Year in the New East End (2006)