Book Reviews for Bookworms

One of the most brutal episodes in the planet’s history, in which a million men, women, and children were killed and ten million were displaced from their homes and belongings, is now over half a century old.

Partition, a euphemism for the bloody violence that preceded the birth of India and Pakistan as the British hurriedly handed over power in 1947, is becoming a fading word in the history books. Khushwant Singh, who was over thirty at the time, later wrote Train to Pakistan and got it published in 1956. Reprinted since then, reissued in hardcover, and translated into many languages, the novel is now known as a classic, one of the finest and best-known treatments of the subject.

Khushwant Singh sketches a tiny village, Mano Majra, on the railway line near where it crosses the swelling Sutlej. Set in the backdrop of Partition, he narrates the story of changing loyalties of simple peasants of a village bordering Pakistan when a trainload of dead sikhs stops at the village railway station. Each of the characters drawn make a lucid picture in front of our eyes. The powerful district magistrate cum deputy commissioner Hukum Chand, a piteous pragmatist; the village hooligan Juggut Singh “Jugga”, a giant Sikh always in and out of prison, who has fallen in love with the daughter of the Mullah of the village; an educated visitor to the village who is a worker for the Communist party, with the ambiguous name of Iqbal (He does not reveal his religion)… every character makes an impact of its own.

As the post-Partition exodus across the border erupts into violent rioting, the sikhs and Muslims in Mano Majra continue to live peacefully, their lives regulated by the trains that rattle across the river bridge, untill a train comes to an unscheduled stop, and the villagers discover it is full of dead Sikhs. It creates a terbulance and wave of disbelief amongst the villagers. In the stirring climax, it is left to Jugga, the village ganster, to redeem himself by saving many Muslim lives. The government makes the decision to transport all the Muslim families from Mano Majra to Pakistan. The dumbstruck villagers are overtaken by events.

The most memorable passages in the book, as I found, was in the end when Iqbal decides his stance in the matter. He starts thinking…it reads:

“The point of sacrifice, he thought, is the purpose. For the purpose it is not enough that a thing is intrensically good, it must  be known to be good. It is not enough only to know within one’s self  that one is in the right, the satisfaction should be posthumous…….

…… If you really believe that things are so rotten that your first duty is to destroy–to wipe the slate clean–then you should not turn green at small acts of destruction. Your duty is to connive with those who make the configuration, not to turn a moral hose-pipe on them –to create such a mighty chaos that all that is rotten like selfishness, intolerance, greed, falsehood is drowned.”

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Filed by SunniestGnome at 4:32 pm under Fiction
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Harper Lee has quite lucidly permeated into the nebulous sphere of adult psychology. When I begun reading this book, it almost seemed like an Enid Blyton, with nothing more to it than children’s perception of the flowers, birds, trees and pot pourri of routine activities. This was only until Atticus Finch, the children’s father chanced upon a legal case that he decided to fight in favour of a black man accused of raping a white girl. Finch is a man of character, an anomaly to the irrational, capricious society he lived in. Most of all, he was a father who wanted his children to remain free from all the prejudices around them.
Fighting this case would expose him and his family to a lot of opprobrium. He went ahead doing what he believed in trying his best to shield his children from the onslaught of criticism that would follow. A black man’s word against that of a white… the black man didn’t stand a chance even in the tumult of strong evidence in his favour. It was quite clear that the woman forced the man into an embarrasing situation, no sexual intercourse took place, the man was completely innocent. However it was not as simple as this in the minds of these children. Why did the black man lose? Why was he treated that way? Why are all blacks treated that way? These were just some of the questions that stormed through the young minds through the end of the case.
Throughout this book, i got the message that humans are most pure in intellect and spirit through childhood. Circumstances bend them, make them compromise on their individual values and adhere to the mentality of the mob. Why? Because it’s less painful living that way.
Few humans carry the debris of society with their strength and integrity. But, these men are more like scapegoats. The society needs them for their survival but will also pressurize them until they break. Most do, few don’t.
A simple phenomenon like racial discrimination. Full grown adults swore by this absurd hierarchy based on skin colour and lineage. Yet, little children could not understand or even agree to this. Most children are made to conform, true. That’s how we seem to be getting our never-ending dose of irrational adults. However, it makes one think children have the key to sensibility. Why? Because, their minds have not yet been corrupted by conventions and their being still holds a healthy thirst for knowledge.
I know this sounds cliched. But, in the end it boils down to awakening the child within!

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Filed by michael at 10:32 pm under Fiction
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