P.S. I’m not for you

Karma and Other Stories is such an egregious example of advocacy lit, I barely made it through the book (sorry, Jai). It’s the literary equivalent of Gurinder Chadha. At every point, the author subverts any semblance of good writing in favor of educating people about classical Indian culture in the most stilted language possible. Every passage of plot is saddled with three of cultural exposition. While Vikram Chandra rejected infantilizing italics and staved off a glossary until the paperback edition, this author embraced them. The book is a glossary, a warmed-over version of the Wikipedia entry on Hinduism. Here’s the steaming pile of curry you have to wade through to get to the decent couple of stories at the end:

She held his arm and smiled at him, to let him know she was pleased. How strong he looked, like a Hindi cinema hero. Already he had overcome the trauma of his trip to Hyderabad one month ago, where he had set the torch to his father’s funeral pyre. Venu would be a good son and care for her now. He would not disappoint her.

He put down a suitcase filled with Indian sweets, coconut oil for her hair, homemade mango pickle, and white saris. In the old days, white was the only color a window would wear. So it would be with her… Arundhati was relieved that her grand-daughter spoke Telugu so easily; she herself understood only a few English words.

In another story, a woman’s not just rebellious, she has a ‘Sorry I skipped church, I was learning witchcraft and becoming a lesbian’ bumper sticker (not ironically) and purple hair. Every uncle and auntie is written with a thick Indian accent translated from Telugu literally and badly. Every other plot point deals with arranged marriage or arguing with your parents. Save for the last three stories, which finally come up with some surprises, the tales telegraph intentions up front. You know within thirty seconds the rebel is going to end up in an arranged marriage with a pharmacist, so heavy-handed is the writing.

Every exasperating Venkat McStereotype makes you long for the relative subtlety of cool, blue-toned Jhumpa. The book narrow-mindedly focuses on classicism rather than mashup, on cardboard cutouts rather than treating people as people. As a somnolent audio tour through bharatanatyam, it faces a different century than Zadie Smith’s raucous White Teeth. There’s a whiff of desi lit circa ‘88 about this book; kissing a white person (oh no!) qualifies as a major moral crisis.

When this kind of stuff is put out by the NYT, we roll our eyes. But when it’s nicely printed on rough-cut pages between a Hindu-inspired title and a vaguely South Asian cover, we applaud politely and call it genre lit, where good writing goes to die.

The most unfortunate part is that people I respect thought this was a good book. This is not a good book. It is the opposite of a good book. It’s exhibit A at Iowa Writers’ Workshop 101: Hey Dickhead, Don’t Do This. Like Lahiri’s Å“uvre, it’s about a single ethnic community in Boston and more about the author’s parents than herself. That’s what sells. But then you probably gathered that from the title. You figured out the market is suburban soccer moms from the publisher’s slightly desperate, Oprah-ish author interview which clutters up the last sixteen pages like a circular from the dollar store.

In sum, get it free from a friend, check out the last three stories (’Karma,’ ‘Devadasi’ and ‘Lord Krishna’), and let’s pretend the rest of this book never happened.

Related post: Rishi Reddi, Rishi Reddi’s Karma and Other Stories