Empty, empty, emptiness

Keep Vigil of Rudra: The Vachanas (Penguin, Rs 299) is a collection of medieval Kannada lyrics translated and introduced by H.S. Shivaprakash. Rendered in free verse, these poems deplore the futility of worldly education, the vanity of wealth and of rank. Instead, the vachana poets ask their readers to surrender their souls to Shiva in order to attain salvation. But spirituality apart, these little gems are playfully wise and profoundly haunting. Sample these lines by Bonthadevi: “The emptiness in the body/ The emptiness in the monastery/ Empty, empty, emptiness.../ Emptiness, the whole of one’s self/ O Emptiness, carefree!”

Saris and the City (Little Black Dress, Rs 250) by Rekha Waheed rehashes the familiar clichés about women, jilted in their quest for marital bliss, turning into firebrand corporate climbers. A bad marriage unleashes the go-getter in Yasmin Yusuf, as she falls out with her conservative family and makes enemies at work — a failing lingerie business she is desperately trying to resurrect. Of course, her careergraph must be crossed by a tall, dark and handsome stranger, throwing “love, lingerie and loyalties” into a heady confusion. Each chapter is headed by a “lesson” that even seasoned rom-com writers would think twice before putting in print. Example: “Lesson Ten: It’s about being brave, doing the unexpected, trying things that no one else has the courage to do.” The author should have heeded her own advice and written a different book.

Tomorrow Is One More Day (Penguin, Rs 199) by G. Nagarajan has been expertly rendered into English from the Tamil by Abbie Ziffren with A. Julie. Described as the “Tamil Camus,” Nagarajan recounts in this novella a day in the life of an odd-jobs man, Kandan, holding up a mirror to the seedy underbelly of society in the process. Desire and despair come together in these pages to capture the spirit of a small town on the fringes of Tamil Nadu. The book has been edited by David Shulman, who provides a fine introduction, along with S. Ramakrishnan.

Riddle of the Seventh Stone (Young Zubaan, Rs 195) by Monideepa Sahu is a delightful tale where Rishabh the rat and Shashee the spider are transformed into human children. Their trials recall the adventures of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet who, too, becomes a real boy at the end of Carlo Collodi’s story. The twists and turns in this story, however, are suitably Indianized — so are the dramatis personae. There is a wicked moneylender and real-estate dealer called Shark, who must be defeated with every wile to get to King Kempe Gowda’s treasure trove. The fun and the excitement are enhanced by the spirited participation of an army of children, “friendly cockroaches”, “cheeky mosquitoes”, a Big Bandicoot and a troop of rodents. Together, they set out to solve the riddle of the seventh stone. The illustrations by Pooja Pottenkulam complement Sahu’s limpid prose.

Bottom of the Heap (HarperCollins, Rs 250) by Reeti Gadekar promises to be a sleazy potboiler in which corrupt politicians, rapist policemen, gay couples and grisly deaths jostle for the reader’s attention. Nikhil Juneja, battling midlife crisis and a myriad professional challenges, is an unlikely police officer. One day, he learns that in the oddly named village of Arse, his colleagues have unleashed their brutality on the local women. In the meantime, government officials get inflamed over a road scam in the Mirat-Pankot area. Saddled with two sensitive cases, Juneja engages in intense soul-searching before emerging, quite predictably, as the redeemer of the wronged. And the path to justice is expectedly paved with murky dealings.