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The Way Things Were
Skanda's father, Toby, has died, estranged from Toby's mother and from the India he loved. Skanda is tasked with fulfilling Toby's final wish and returning his ashes to his birthplace. It is a journey that takes him from Manhattan to Delhi, and deep into the story of his family: in particular, to a night three decades earlier, when an act of shocking violence forced his parents' fragile marriage apart. Set at flashpoints in 1975, 1984, 1992 and the present day, The Way Things Were shows how our most deeply personal stories are shaped by ancient history and volatile politics; how the life of a country and the life of an individual are irrevocably entwined. Spanning three generations, it is at once intimate and panoramic, with a thrilling ambition that places it alongside such masterpieces as A Suitable Boy and A Fine Balance.
560 pages, Paperback
First published December 4, 2014
79 people are currently reading
2000 people want to read
About the author
Aatish Taseer
11 books164 followersAatish Taseer has worked as a reporter for Time Magazine and has written for the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial Times, Prospect, TAR Magazine and Esquire. He is the author of Stranger to History: a Son's Journey through Islamic Lands (2009) and a highly acclaimed translation Manto: Selected Stories (2008). His novel, The Temple-Goers (2010) was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa First Novel Award. A second novel, Noon, is now available published by Picador (UK) and Faber & Faber (USA). His work has been translated into over ten languages. He lives between London and Delhi.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
September 13, 2024
This is really powerful. The dialogue is more reflective, with more emotional, cultural, and linguistic nuance than anything else I’ve read. It’s hard to imagine a better set of characters for quietly expressing the social impact of modern India’s most epoch-changing events: the emergency rule of 1975-77, the crushing of Punjab’s independence movement, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and ensuing massacre of Sikhs in 1984, and the Hindu nationalist demolition of Ayodhya’s Babri Mosque in 1992. In this complex story, the depth and sophistication of India’s heritage stands alongside the ego-starved popular demand for ethnic supremacy.
February 4, 2015
The past is a foreign country...
When Skanda's father dies, it falls to Skanda to accompany his body back to India for the funeral rites. Though at first reluctant to go, once there, Skanda decides to stay on for a while, living in his parents long-empty flat in Delhi. The death of his father and the experience of meeting up with many of the people he knew in childhood leads him to remember and re-assess the recent history of his family, from the period of the Emergency in the mid-70s until the present day. Like his father, Skanda is a Sanskrit scholar, with a penchant for finding linguistic cognates – seeking out the shared roots of words across languages ancient and modern.
And this book is about roots, or about what happens to a person, and by extension a society, when it becomes culturally detached from its roots. Skanda's family comes from the rich English-speaking society of Lutyen's Delhi, those who became such an integral part of colonial India that decades after Independence they still educate their children in English and look to Dickens and Shakespeare as their cultural classics. But through Skanda and his father Toby, Taseer suggests that this disconnect with Indian culture and heritage pre-dates Empire, that already India had forgotten or distorted its history and that this has fed into the divides within modern society. The fascination that Toby and Skanda have with Sanskrit and the ancient writings of India are openly symbolic of what seems like a cry for India to look past the turmoil of the last couple of centuries and to reclaim her pride in her own heritage as one of the great and influential cultures of the early world. The point is made that Skanda pursues his research into Sanskrit, not in India, where it is looked on as a kind of curiosity, but in America. (As someone who has banged on a good deal about the loss of national culture and heritage in my own country, Scotland, I found this whole aspect of the book eerily familiar, especially the tendency, which I share, of blaming external sources, namely the British Empire, for the loss, when in fact it tends to be as much the aspirations of the educated of the society itself that allow this to happen.)
But the book isn't just about India's past. It also looks at the politics of the present from the time of Mrs Gandhi to today. When reading Mistry's A Fine Balance, I complained that the book concentrated so much on the poverty and misery of the underclasses that it failed to offer any answers or hope for the future. Taseer's novel is in no way overly optimistic, but because it concentrates on a class that wields power and influence, the message is much more that India must and can choose its own future, not by rejection of its past, recent and ancient, but by understanding it and building on it. Taseer shows the rise of the new industrial class and, while they're not necessarily shown in the most attractive light, they are a vivid contrast to the rather effete upperclass shown as clinging to the habits and values of the colonial period.
That might all make the book sound unbearably dull, but in amongst all the politics and philosophising are a group of exceptionally well drawn and believable characters, whose story is interesting not just for what it tells us about India, but in itself. Skanda is to a large degree merely there to tell the story of his parents, Toby and Uma. Uma is without exception the most intriguing female character I have come across in Indian fiction and, for me, she is the heart of the book; and is in many ways the personification of this post-colonial class that Taseer is portraying. When I read Taseer's earlier book, Noon, one of my reservations about it was that the women in the book were almost entirely background figures, so I was particularly pleased to see such a strong female figure front and centre in this one. Very much a flawed human, Uma is nevertheless the product of her society, and she has an independence of character that I found very refreshing. To some degree, she is still defined by the marriages that she makes, but she makes those choices for herself. The difficulties for women in what is still a male-dominated and very unequal society are not minimised, but through Uma we see the glimmerings of change.
It's always a pleasure when one marks an author as 'one to watch', as I did with Taseer after reading Noon, and then finds that promise fulfilled. This huge and ambitious book is full of profound insight, brilliant characterisation and beautiful language. It's not unflawed – sometimes Taseer's voice comes through too strongly, making his point rather than leaving the reader to find it, and the device of Skanda telling the story of his family's past to his new girlfriend is clunky in places. But the quality of the prose and the depth of insight outweigh any weaknesses in the structure and make this an enlightening and deeply thought-provoking read. And though Taseer avoids giving any easy answers, I came away from the book with a sense of optimism; a feeling that perhaps the intellectual direction of India might be moving somewhat away from contemplation of its failures towards consideration of how to achieve a better, and inherently Indian, future. An exceptional book from an author who is emerging as a major voice in literature.
NB This book was provided for review by Amazon Vine UK.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
When Skanda's father dies, it falls to Skanda to accompany his body back to India for the funeral rites. Though at first reluctant to go, once there, Skanda decides to stay on for a while, living in his parents long-empty flat in Delhi. The death of his father and the experience of meeting up with many of the people he knew in childhood leads him to remember and re-assess the recent history of his family, from the period of the Emergency in the mid-70s until the present day. Like his father, Skanda is a Sanskrit scholar, with a penchant for finding linguistic cognates – seeking out the shared roots of words across languages ancient and modern.
And yet – strange as it must seem – they had a corresponding desire to make a great show of their Indianness, to talk of classical dance recitals, of concerts, of textiles, and spirituality. To throw in the odd precious word or phrase of Hindustani, to upstage their social rivals with a little bit of exotica so obscure that no one could be expected to know it. India was their supreme affectation! They wore it to dinner, as it were; and, of course, the ways in which they were truly Indian – their blindness to dirt and poverty, their easy acceptance of cruelty – they concealed very well.
And this book is about roots, or about what happens to a person, and by extension a society, when it becomes culturally detached from its roots. Skanda's family comes from the rich English-speaking society of Lutyen's Delhi, those who became such an integral part of colonial India that decades after Independence they still educate their children in English and look to Dickens and Shakespeare as their cultural classics. But through Skanda and his father Toby, Taseer suggests that this disconnect with Indian culture and heritage pre-dates Empire, that already India had forgotten or distorted its history and that this has fed into the divides within modern society. The fascination that Toby and Skanda have with Sanskrit and the ancient writings of India are openly symbolic of what seems like a cry for India to look past the turmoil of the last couple of centuries and to reclaim her pride in her own heritage as one of the great and influential cultures of the early world. The point is made that Skanda pursues his research into Sanskrit, not in India, where it is looked on as a kind of curiosity, but in America. (As someone who has banged on a good deal about the loss of national culture and heritage in my own country, Scotland, I found this whole aspect of the book eerily familiar, especially the tendency, which I share, of blaming external sources, namely the British Empire, for the loss, when in fact it tends to be as much the aspirations of the educated of the society itself that allow this to happen.)
But the book isn't just about India's past. It also looks at the politics of the present from the time of Mrs Gandhi to today. When reading Mistry's A Fine Balance, I complained that the book concentrated so much on the poverty and misery of the underclasses that it failed to offer any answers or hope for the future. Taseer's novel is in no way overly optimistic, but because it concentrates on a class that wields power and influence, the message is much more that India must and can choose its own future, not by rejection of its past, recent and ancient, but by understanding it and building on it. Taseer shows the rise of the new industrial class and, while they're not necessarily shown in the most attractive light, they are a vivid contrast to the rather effete upperclass shown as clinging to the habits and values of the colonial period.
Here the murk has sunk deepest. Tonight, the British city, with its low domes and bungalows, is like a submerged necropolis. The rickshaws glide along its streets, with that stealthy sense of purpose with which single-beam submersibles in documentary films explore the ocean floor; the yellow streetlights, buried in the canopies of trees, have the nested glow, at once inviting and dangerous, of marine wonders behind screens of sharp coral; and, everywhere, the dense cold air, sulphurous and full of particles, closes over old wounds. Even where the scar tissue runs deepest, the line between the British city and the Muslim town to its north, where the escapees of one upheaval came to populate the abandoned places of another, the fog, easy and billowing, brings a feeling of continuity, at once even-handed and insensitive, like the blanketing hush of a first snow, like curfew in Srinagar.
That might all make the book sound unbearably dull, but in amongst all the politics and philosophising are a group of exceptionally well drawn and believable characters, whose story is interesting not just for what it tells us about India, but in itself. Skanda is to a large degree merely there to tell the story of his parents, Toby and Uma. Uma is without exception the most intriguing female character I have come across in Indian fiction and, for me, she is the heart of the book; and is in many ways the personification of this post-colonial class that Taseer is portraying. When I read Taseer's earlier book, Noon, one of my reservations about it was that the women in the book were almost entirely background figures, so I was particularly pleased to see such a strong female figure front and centre in this one. Very much a flawed human, Uma is nevertheless the product of her society, and she has an independence of character that I found very refreshing. To some degree, she is still defined by the marriages that she makes, but she makes those choices for herself. The difficulties for women in what is still a male-dominated and very unequal society are not minimised, but through Uma we see the glimmerings of change.
It's always a pleasure when one marks an author as 'one to watch', as I did with Taseer after reading Noon, and then finds that promise fulfilled. This huge and ambitious book is full of profound insight, brilliant characterisation and beautiful language. It's not unflawed – sometimes Taseer's voice comes through too strongly, making his point rather than leaving the reader to find it, and the device of Skanda telling the story of his family's past to his new girlfriend is clunky in places. But the quality of the prose and the depth of insight outweigh any weaknesses in the structure and make this an enlightening and deeply thought-provoking read. And though Taseer avoids giving any easy answers, I came away from the book with a sense of optimism; a feeling that perhaps the intellectual direction of India might be moving somewhat away from contemplation of its failures towards consideration of how to achieve a better, and inherently Indian, future. An exceptional book from an author who is emerging as a major voice in literature.
NB This book was provided for review by Amazon Vine UK.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
February 26, 2021
With Aatish Taseer we encounter a writer whose intellectual power and scope - he knows a breadth of the world, from New York to Kerachi, as intimately as most of us know only our own small lives. And no one, no one conveys setting - seasons of settings - with Taseer's precision and beauty. The Way Things Were, plotted on circular time, seasonal time, so that readers might move from the book's end to its beginnings without too much narrative break, in structure is comparable in its success only to something we might find in Cormac McCarthy. Taseer's plot also is modeled, by analogy, on a large segment from the Ramayana, The Birth, which concerns Prince Rama's childhood and marriage, and his finding, like many mythic sons, a way to taking his father's place in the landscape. The plot works on the convention of tale-within-a-tale. There is the frame story of Skanda, a son unable to move forward with the deposition of his late father's ashes, and within it the narrative of Skanda's parents' marriage - a Dickensian bit that brings David Copperfield to mind: 'In the beginning, I was born.' It's not clear to me whether the limit of this view is more revelatory of Skanda's youth, Taseer's, or new India's - false, self-chosen, disingenuous.
Taseer's theme is the decay of the subcontinent's cultural history in the popular imagination, the product of deracination, and of assimilation with Western values and pursuits. In that way the novel is a somewhat lengthy lachrymosa. Embedded in this sorrow is an appeal to the reader - to Indians primarily, but it is applicable to almost anyone: know your history; tell the truth about it; consult it for understanding the present - but without trying to return to it - a bogus effort that can only end in disaster, as we have seen in the efforts of living Muslims to invoke Islam's lost empire. This universal applicability works especially well for American readers and is why, I think, Americans have tremendous ease in accessing Indian cultural values: middle-class Indians these days, like Americans, have pretensions to education, but what they/we want most is to live well and buy things. Neither of us is much interested in the the real past or the effort it would take to acquaint ourselves with it in any depth. Instead, we are satisfied to mouth unconsidered, inaccurate slogans: 'Sanskrit is the mother of all languages' or 'Railroads opened up the West.' Further, the novel is suffused, bursting, with delightful details - cognates of Sanskrit with modern languages, epigrammatic statements the reader aches to share via social media, insights to character like Skanda's realization that his father, Toby, a magnificent scholar, is nevertheless 'only a teacher.' Toby's work, in the end, has done nothing to bring about the change he longs for - in a sense it is a change that amounts to stasis, which is impossible - the novel's obsession with language is the best metaphor for that impossibility - for India to become a museum to itself -although Toby maligns the idea. This museum, in fact, presents itself in a plot element, the building of an Indian Holocaust Museum, a wrong-headed effort at once distasteful and tasteless, laughable and sad. There is also Skanda's mother Uma's inability to shed Toby's world, despite their divorce. She has become the thing she scorned - a psychological phenomenon people who have been married and divorced recognize. Finally we revel in Taseer's humor - 'she's slept with half the Punjab' - a saying no matter how frequently invoked collapses us with laughter.
However, I hate to say this - I dislike drawing away from so much that is instructive, memorably articulated in this novel - but I don't think The Way Things Were is finished work. The events are connected with one another by a seemingly endless string of parties - plastic beads on a chain - parties that inevitably grow ugly from voiced and simmering hostilities. Some of these anecdotes add little and could be cut, or summarized. Also some transition scenes in the frame story seem to be there so we won't forget who we are talking about - but they contribute to an unevenness in tone the reader finds disturbing. There is a conversation between Skanda and his lover, for example - intended to reveal the characters' normality and playfulness - this scene in particular feels deliberately constructed and rings false. Counter to this criticism is the fact that there are episodes that are actually underdeveloped. There is an encounter, early in the novel, between Uma and an abusive passenger on a plane. Their conflict is key. Its insult to Uma's pride is the motive for her eventual connection with Toby. She wants to undo a vision of herself as ignorant and powerless. Yet, I went back and re-read it I don't know how many times. Uma is relating the story about the plane to her sister in the way human beings frequently do - to uncover the meaning of an event in the telling - and the conversation is unfinished, inconclusive. People make extraordinary decisions because of pride, and are often unable to unpack the source. It should not have been so difficult for the reader to make out what is happening. It's familiar. But Uma never does quite get to the bottom of it, even much later when she feels plagued by all she's learned, and it takes untoward effort for the reader to do so, which tells me something is missing. And there are sentences, not too many but a few, that somehow got through the editing, but need revision. It's understandable when you are drafting 500-plus pages - you've read the thing so many times you can't see it anymore, you hope to never see it again. I resisted the temptation to mark some of these passages, not wanting to feel like I am being mean, but there they are there.
Finally, I must point out: the most interesting character in this book is the narrator - an omniscient but unidentified voice - Taseer's own voice, his perspective, his view, his observations, his language that engages us - we want to return to it again and again - a voice I will go back to for as long as he is working.
Taseer's theme is the decay of the subcontinent's cultural history in the popular imagination, the product of deracination, and of assimilation with Western values and pursuits. In that way the novel is a somewhat lengthy lachrymosa. Embedded in this sorrow is an appeal to the reader - to Indians primarily, but it is applicable to almost anyone: know your history; tell the truth about it; consult it for understanding the present - but without trying to return to it - a bogus effort that can only end in disaster, as we have seen in the efforts of living Muslims to invoke Islam's lost empire. This universal applicability works especially well for American readers and is why, I think, Americans have tremendous ease in accessing Indian cultural values: middle-class Indians these days, like Americans, have pretensions to education, but what they/we want most is to live well and buy things. Neither of us is much interested in the the real past or the effort it would take to acquaint ourselves with it in any depth. Instead, we are satisfied to mouth unconsidered, inaccurate slogans: 'Sanskrit is the mother of all languages' or 'Railroads opened up the West.' Further, the novel is suffused, bursting, with delightful details - cognates of Sanskrit with modern languages, epigrammatic statements the reader aches to share via social media, insights to character like Skanda's realization that his father, Toby, a magnificent scholar, is nevertheless 'only a teacher.' Toby's work, in the end, has done nothing to bring about the change he longs for - in a sense it is a change that amounts to stasis, which is impossible - the novel's obsession with language is the best metaphor for that impossibility - for India to become a museum to itself -although Toby maligns the idea. This museum, in fact, presents itself in a plot element, the building of an Indian Holocaust Museum, a wrong-headed effort at once distasteful and tasteless, laughable and sad. There is also Skanda's mother Uma's inability to shed Toby's world, despite their divorce. She has become the thing she scorned - a psychological phenomenon people who have been married and divorced recognize. Finally we revel in Taseer's humor - 'she's slept with half the Punjab' - a saying no matter how frequently invoked collapses us with laughter.
However, I hate to say this - I dislike drawing away from so much that is instructive, memorably articulated in this novel - but I don't think The Way Things Were is finished work. The events are connected with one another by a seemingly endless string of parties - plastic beads on a chain - parties that inevitably grow ugly from voiced and simmering hostilities. Some of these anecdotes add little and could be cut, or summarized. Also some transition scenes in the frame story seem to be there so we won't forget who we are talking about - but they contribute to an unevenness in tone the reader finds disturbing. There is a conversation between Skanda and his lover, for example - intended to reveal the characters' normality and playfulness - this scene in particular feels deliberately constructed and rings false. Counter to this criticism is the fact that there are episodes that are actually underdeveloped. There is an encounter, early in the novel, between Uma and an abusive passenger on a plane. Their conflict is key. Its insult to Uma's pride is the motive for her eventual connection with Toby. She wants to undo a vision of herself as ignorant and powerless. Yet, I went back and re-read it I don't know how many times. Uma is relating the story about the plane to her sister in the way human beings frequently do - to uncover the meaning of an event in the telling - and the conversation is unfinished, inconclusive. People make extraordinary decisions because of pride, and are often unable to unpack the source. It should not have been so difficult for the reader to make out what is happening. It's familiar. But Uma never does quite get to the bottom of it, even much later when she feels plagued by all she's learned, and it takes untoward effort for the reader to do so, which tells me something is missing. And there are sentences, not too many but a few, that somehow got through the editing, but need revision. It's understandable when you are drafting 500-plus pages - you've read the thing so many times you can't see it anymore, you hope to never see it again. I resisted the temptation to mark some of these passages, not wanting to feel like I am being mean, but there they are there.
Finally, I must point out: the most interesting character in this book is the narrator - an omniscient but unidentified voice - Taseer's own voice, his perspective, his view, his observations, his language that engages us - we want to return to it again and again - a voice I will go back to for as long as he is working.
April 29, 2015
A vicious narrative of the historic events that have shaped India or rather Delhi through the eyes of the drawing room set of the Gandhi dynasty and especially through the puzzled eyes of a kid growing up in that time. Swept up with the chaos of theological agenda and dotted with the unknown beauty of a lost language.
A pleasure to read with memorable characters and an especially colourful description of the Delhi of the 70 and 80s.
Lovely read.
A pleasure to read with memorable characters and an especially colourful description of the Delhi of the 70 and 80s.
Lovely read.
May 21, 2015
A story transcending the contemporaric notion of time. A story of past to discover and understand who you are while going through the present, facing its dystopic ugliness. A story of a family of elites, of mixed race royals to the political luminaries. A semantic journey through Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, idiosyncratically connected to the 1984 and 1992 riots.
A vivid portrait of love, marriage, parenting and divorce with the chronicles of Independent India running in parallel.
Aatish Taseer has done a commendable job in woving up this complex tale which runs through three generations of a family. Though the 'difficult to understand' prose may prove to be a setback, it's an arresting read nevertheless.
A vivid portrait of love, marriage, parenting and divorce with the chronicles of Independent India running in parallel.
Aatish Taseer has done a commendable job in woving up this complex tale which runs through three generations of a family. Though the 'difficult to understand' prose may prove to be a setback, it's an arresting read nevertheless.
September 26, 2015
It's exceedingly rare that I don't finish a book.... but got almost 100 pages into this... and really didn't care to go any further. it wasn't that is was TERRIBLE...just boring and uninteresting.
November 18, 2017
“This is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong”. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
As I finished reading this book, and at so many points while reading it, this is the quote that came to my mind, again and again. I am at a loss of words right now, and so full of emotions – I feel like I wanna go to a corner and burst into tears. What this book has narrated to me, seems like a part of my own thoughts that were still undeveloped. It fills me with immense joy to think that someone of our times, someone living in modern India and seeing it change everyday, could be capable of constructing such a splendid story about the loss of culture and language. It fills me with hope for my fellow Indians, and myself. The thoughts so beautifully expressed in this book have often made me think, but they never gave me answers. Because the questions were still not formed, thus the answers were impossible to find. But Aatish Taseer has given voice to thoughts that haunt (and now I’m sure) many Indians of our generation. Maybe its difficult to understand exactly what is happening to the place where you belong, when it has been changing so rapidly. Aatish Taseer’s book, in such a scenario, is a breath of fresh air, and hope.
The book is about a man, Toby, a Sanskritist, (of half Indian and half foreign origin), who sees India through the lenses of the language of ancient Indian texts. Living in India, post-Independence, during a time when change is the only constant in a newly independent country, Toby finds it difficult to keep his hopes up about the people recognizing their loss of language and culture. The story is narrated mostly by his son, who is now back in India from America after his father’s death and he is narrating the story of his parent’s life to Gauri, a woman in whom he finds solace in the city where he grew up. The story of Toby and his wife Uma is closely affected by the major events that happened in India post-Independence. Indira Gandhi’s death, 1984, and 1992 with the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Toby, Uma and everyone around them are affected indirectly by these events, and thus the change is felt almost too strongly by Toby, whose vision of India is a passion too strong to change.
This book is not just about India and its events post-independence, but about so much more all at once. Everything that is so real, so obvious and so clear, but it makes you think why you didn’t notice it before. In so many ways, this is an eye-opener. The author has excelled in creating a fictional story out of the harsh reality of a nation that has been moving towards a change which is so hard to resist for its current generation. But even though the grief has been expressed, the author also sprinkles hope for India, much like Toby himself. It would be impossible to list out the number of phrases and whole pragaraphs that have left me awestruck throught this book, and which I have marked for future reference. There are some points made in this book that are a big question mark on our lives, and the future of our country. And which we must think about. As Tripathi says in the last part, “There is a small chance that they (the young generation of Indians) will feel its loss. And when they’re ready – when they want their culture back – it’ll be there, waiting for them in the West, like so much else.” Yes, this book does make you feel loss, and emptiness as you turn the pages and near its end. I don’t really know if it has had or would have such a strong impact on others, but for me this book means so much. SO much. And I think, as I recommend this book, I would be so glad when someone tells me that they loved it – that they wanna discuss about it. Because it is books like these that deserve to be a modern Indian classic – it is books like these that should become the voice of the nation; that should do the rounds, rather than some random One Night at the call center and three mistakes of someone’s life. It is books like these that can bring a change and trigger thoughts obscured by so much happening around us, so much we are disappearing into.
As I finished reading this book, and at so many points while reading it, this is the quote that came to my mind, again and again. I am at a loss of words right now, and so full of emotions – I feel like I wanna go to a corner and burst into tears. What this book has narrated to me, seems like a part of my own thoughts that were still undeveloped. It fills me with immense joy to think that someone of our times, someone living in modern India and seeing it change everyday, could be capable of constructing such a splendid story about the loss of culture and language. It fills me with hope for my fellow Indians, and myself. The thoughts so beautifully expressed in this book have often made me think, but they never gave me answers. Because the questions were still not formed, thus the answers were impossible to find. But Aatish Taseer has given voice to thoughts that haunt (and now I’m sure) many Indians of our generation. Maybe its difficult to understand exactly what is happening to the place where you belong, when it has been changing so rapidly. Aatish Taseer’s book, in such a scenario, is a breath of fresh air, and hope.
The book is about a man, Toby, a Sanskritist, (of half Indian and half foreign origin), who sees India through the lenses of the language of ancient Indian texts. Living in India, post-Independence, during a time when change is the only constant in a newly independent country, Toby finds it difficult to keep his hopes up about the people recognizing their loss of language and culture. The story is narrated mostly by his son, who is now back in India from America after his father’s death and he is narrating the story of his parent’s life to Gauri, a woman in whom he finds solace in the city where he grew up. The story of Toby and his wife Uma is closely affected by the major events that happened in India post-Independence. Indira Gandhi’s death, 1984, and 1992 with the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. Toby, Uma and everyone around them are affected indirectly by these events, and thus the change is felt almost too strongly by Toby, whose vision of India is a passion too strong to change.
This book is not just about India and its events post-independence, but about so much more all at once. Everything that is so real, so obvious and so clear, but it makes you think why you didn’t notice it before. In so many ways, this is an eye-opener. The author has excelled in creating a fictional story out of the harsh reality of a nation that has been moving towards a change which is so hard to resist for its current generation. But even though the grief has been expressed, the author also sprinkles hope for India, much like Toby himself. It would be impossible to list out the number of phrases and whole pragaraphs that have left me awestruck throught this book, and which I have marked for future reference. There are some points made in this book that are a big question mark on our lives, and the future of our country. And which we must think about. As Tripathi says in the last part, “There is a small chance that they (the young generation of Indians) will feel its loss. And when they’re ready – when they want their culture back – it’ll be there, waiting for them in the West, like so much else.” Yes, this book does make you feel loss, and emptiness as you turn the pages and near its end. I don’t really know if it has had or would have such a strong impact on others, but for me this book means so much. SO much. And I think, as I recommend this book, I would be so glad when someone tells me that they loved it – that they wanna discuss about it. Because it is books like these that deserve to be a modern Indian classic – it is books like these that should become the voice of the nation; that should do the rounds, rather than some random One Night at the call center and three mistakes of someone’s life. It is books like these that can bring a change and trigger thoughts obscured by so much happening around us, so much we are disappearing into.
December 25, 2016
Awful Page 3 style tattle of socialites who stoically face the ups and downs of their privileged lives with a drink in one hand and a smart repartee on the other hand . All this while 2 Sanskrit scholars (father and Son) struggle to reconcile modern India with Kalidasa's India. They find that what is left of Kalidasa's India has been appropriated by right wing nutters. No really ? And all this over 600 pages!
I must be a sucker for a few Sanskrit phrases strewn around the book.
I must be a sucker for a few Sanskrit phrases strewn around the book.
November 27, 2017
It's rare for me to not finish a book, but this is two in a row. After about 60 pages, this novel, set mostly in India about a father & son, both Sanskrit scholars, has failed to capture my interest, so I'm setting it aside.
October 12, 2015
Torture. I pushed through hoping it would improve, but it did not
September 10, 2015
t tried. I really tried. It was unbearable.
June 25, 2020
In a lot of ways, I've been reading this book for two full years. Taseer perfectly captures so much of India's natural and historic beauty, and also grapples with troubling politics from the Emergency, the Babri Masjid, to the Modi administration. I gained such an appreciation for the Sanskrit language and ancient Hindu poetry.
And it's an intimate dissection of relationships, divorce, and what it means to move on. The plot unravels satisfyingly, spanning 40 years, and culminating in the emotional drama of the story (which isn't what you might expect). As a small nitpick, I found the cast of minor characters a bit confusing to manage.
And it's an intimate dissection of relationships, divorce, and what it means to move on. The plot unravels satisfyingly, spanning 40 years, and culminating in the emotional drama of the story (which isn't what you might expect). As a small nitpick, I found the cast of minor characters a bit confusing to manage.
June 17, 2018
Ranging from 1975 to today, this book centres on two generations of a wealthy Indian family and how their lives are buffeted by the huge political and social changes that occur over those years. At the personal level, it captures the powerful influence that parents - no matter how physically or emotionally distant - exert on their children. It’s also a story of language itself (Sanskrit). How it can enrich us by capturing and carrying forward the past, and how it can be co-opted by sloganeering and religious hatred. As one character puts it: ‘The past has to be seen as dead or the past will kill’. A hugely ambitious, highly readable book. I loved it.
March 25, 2017
A noble failure. Found Taseer juggling too many balls: the rot within the political class, present linguistic anaemia, cultural amnesia, colonial hangover ie almost all of his woes with contemporary Indian State of Affairs hamfisted into monologues by characters who are not given any room to grow other than their yawn-inducing earnestness to enlighten willing characters and (un)willing readers. After a while, the way politically-loaded conservations are contrived into situations and happenstances, made me wish the editor had told Tasseer to rework and rethink. I admire the sentiment through and through, but as a work of fiction, there has to be more traction from the characterisation and the plot if you wouldn't want your work labelled as a thinly veiled propaganda piece (I say this despite agreeing to many of Taseer's political views and sociological insights). On the upside, his capture of colloquial North Indian Punj-lish is perfect and some of the initial scenes capture the ambience and conversation of a typical Delhi house-party really well. The initial 100 pages, when he kept the cards folded, have a scent of something special brewing but then he, and his magnum opus, unravels. Plus there is the burden of having one's attention uprooted by the unnecessary jumble of multiple timelines. I have full faith in Taseer's talent and expect a calmer, more considered next outing.
January 23, 2015
Once you've read a book cover to cover, there's a sense of loss; but also a sense of learning.. learning something new or maybe looking at something age old with new eyes. This book is all about India & people who see it in their own unique way. The India of Toby is vastly different from that of Maniraja. Uma's pragmatism is wildly different from her son's sense of aloofness. Different characters.. so many different perspectives. But, the most interesting of all is the narrative oscillating between Toby's India & Skanda's perspective of the same. No Indian reading the book wouldn't identify the events being talked about in the book, & also perhaps the ramifications of these. The book's journey can be particularly personal & close to that of someone who's ever pondered upon the effects of all these events on the fabric of a diverse nation such as India. It's confusing, depressing & illuminating, all at the same time.. this journey. The book is captivating & makes you think. Little things like the way different religions think of each other, their insecurities in context to the time.. they make the book especially insightful. It's a beautiful journey full of memories, some good others bad, & of lessons learnt from surviving India through challenging times.
August 20, 2017
Utterly disappointed. 53% in and I don't think I can be more patient. Characters almost always seem to launch into long winded monologues about life, it's purpose and all that shit. The story seems to be going nowhere. The plot seemed so interesting from the description but by now I'm convinced there's probably no real development ahead. All that Sanskrit is interesting in bits but after a while gets too redundant. It almost always used as fillers for every scene - every party, every conversation, and even courtship -.- Heck, even the son takes off after the father. Perhaps I had some expectations from this book and none of them were met and hence the sour review.
October 28, 2018
This is another book in the 'seeking to belong' genre. It held promise because the protagonist(s) seek(s) to reconcile today's India with the civilisation they find in their perusal of Sanskrit works. The references to Kumarasambhavam and Bhavabhuti seem to be in earnest. The game of cognates, a theme that the author has tried to weave into the narrative, also offers a refreshing respite when the prose grows weary. But the tapestry gives way when the author tries to hold it together with the flimsy threads of biased notions and uncountered, thinly veiled propaganda.
November 1, 2015
As I'm possibly a little too familiar with the lightly fictionalized characters in this book, it felt a bit like a busybody aunty who's over for tea with the latest family gossip. I'm not smart, well-read or sensitive enough to really grasp the philosophic-linguistic bits of the book, but I assume they're pretty good.
January 29, 2020
There are two bizarre things about Independent India: one, right after a grassroots-based nationalist movement, the elite more or less set us all to become an Angelical society with a Hindu past in the name of scientific temper (not unlike Greece or Italy where their ancient culture is a novelty); two, the grassroots that were left dangling in space engaged with this attempt at erosion of their identity with useful and distorted appropriation of their own culture. While for the former Romila Thapar types, past is a fantasy world not unlike Middle-Earth or Westeros, for the latter Rajiv Malhotra types, past is a commodity whose only use-value is to make one not seem rootless barbarians trying to fit-in when encountered with another culture. This post-truth tension is what the Umas and the Manirajas of the country live in, constantly trying to fight an unwinnable battle of pretense. And stuck in this mess are fools like Toby, for whom past in itself is a source of identity and a place of solace whenever the civilization seeks it. What Aatish failed to capture is that most of the Tobys of the world eventually pick a side lest they degenerate into lunacy. Unless, of course, if they are practicing Brahmins (which I hope to see more of in Twice Born).
November 8, 2022
Toby is of Royal lineage, but more than that he is a scholar of Sanskrit. He is immersed in the analysis of this ancient language, and with it all elements of classical India. His marriage with Uma is fraught with difficulty; they seem to exist in different planes.
Years later their son, Skanda, brings his father’s body home to rest. It is during this time that much of the family dramas, political changes and relationships with family and friends are revealed. This novel reveals one family’s perspective of the Emergency rule of Indhira Gandhi, the riots after her assasination, the destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and the emergence of the free economy in India leading to the rise of a moneyed middle class.
It’s a rich layered story with much analysis of language, race, religion, caste and politics in India.
Years later their son, Skanda, brings his father’s body home to rest. It is during this time that much of the family dramas, political changes and relationships with family and friends are revealed. This novel reveals one family’s perspective of the Emergency rule of Indhira Gandhi, the riots after her assasination, the destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and the emergence of the free economy in India leading to the rise of a moneyed middle class.
It’s a rich layered story with much analysis of language, race, religion, caste and politics in India.
May 15, 2017
'The Way Things Were' is an ode to Sanskrit and a reminder of what it actually means to be a rational Indian... This book tells a beautiful bittersweet story of a family against the backdrop of changing phases of Indian politics...
Aatish Taseer places history in the center and explores the different approaches towards the recorded past and how these approaches affect psyches of people and thus the future of a nation... And in all this how we lose the very essence of history which is to learn from our mistakes in the past... Instead we lose our future by using history to recreate those mistakes in the name of securing our religions.
'The Way Things Were' has a lot of important things to say... A Must Read...
Aatish Taseer places history in the center and explores the different approaches towards the recorded past and how these approaches affect psyches of people and thus the future of a nation... And in all this how we lose the very essence of history which is to learn from our mistakes in the past... Instead we lose our future by using history to recreate those mistakes in the name of securing our religions.
'The Way Things Were' has a lot of important things to say... A Must Read...
July 17, 2015
Wow. The experience of reading this book was like getting familiarised with one's past. Of knowing about human nature and its implications on the world around us. Of discovering nothing and everything. To the lay man it will look like a world of shallow, intellectual snobs for whom the reality is limited to drawing room discussions with imported scotch in hand. It was a sense of deja vu, of vacation times when granny would tell us pre partition stories. This book also gave me a glimpse into a side of the story of people close to my heart - of a side of the Sikh story. There is so much of the language and history woven into each line, word and the characters that nothing shocked or surprised me. It felt comforting knowing the characters, the love of language the protagonist had even the irritation some of the characters felt towards it.
I pre ordered the book without even looking what the story line was. Every book of the author, who is my number one favorite, is a must buy for me. I was surprised and happy as I enjoyed The way things were thoroughly. Initially reading a few reviews I wondered how much of the Sanskrit references would I be able to understand and cope with. Will it be full of past references or will I get a crash course in Sanskrit. All my fears were dispelled and questions ceased once I started reading. Like all his previous works, Aatish Taseer makes sure the reader is comfortable with the characters and I too was interested in knowing their stories right from the start.
Who will enjoy this book? Well anyone and everyone who keeps an open mind and is not prejudiced to past. Keeping an open mind and accepting the fact that there are all kind of people with their own thought processes will make this an enjoyable read for you.
This book gives you an idea, even if just in the background, of how the Indian scene changed politically, socially since the emergency of 70's to the liberalisation and the latest emergence of IT market. Its a book about being in the present and seeing iti- hasa through the eyes of the characters.
Hope you enjoy it too.
I pre ordered the book without even looking what the story line was. Every book of the author, who is my number one favorite, is a must buy for me. I was surprised and happy as I enjoyed The way things were thoroughly. Initially reading a few reviews I wondered how much of the Sanskrit references would I be able to understand and cope with. Will it be full of past references or will I get a crash course in Sanskrit. All my fears were dispelled and questions ceased once I started reading. Like all his previous works, Aatish Taseer makes sure the reader is comfortable with the characters and I too was interested in knowing their stories right from the start.
Who will enjoy this book? Well anyone and everyone who keeps an open mind and is not prejudiced to past. Keeping an open mind and accepting the fact that there are all kind of people with their own thought processes will make this an enjoyable read for you.
This book gives you an idea, even if just in the background, of how the Indian scene changed politically, socially since the emergency of 70's to the liberalisation and the latest emergence of IT market. Its a book about being in the present and seeing iti- hasa through the eyes of the characters.
Hope you enjoy it too.
July 24, 2015
It took me a long time to get through this because it required a LOT of supplemental reading. I realized I know NOTHING about 20th Century Indian history, so I had no context for many of the events mentioned in the book. It was some very, very interesting reading and I learned a lot. I also loved the parts about how Sanskrit is the mother of all languages and how many Sanskrit words are still in use today in one form or another.
My only beef is that the family in the story is rather boring. With all the tragedies and political upheavals going on all around them, I just didn't care about their petty jealousies and personal problems.
Also, many Hindi phrases went untranslated and I couldn't pick up their meaning from context.
My only beef is that the family in the story is rather boring. With all the tragedies and political upheavals going on all around them, I just didn't care about their petty jealousies and personal problems.
Also, many Hindi phrases went untranslated and I couldn't pick up their meaning from context.
February 4, 2020
2020 Book 1 - start of the year was riding on the momentum of last year but choosing better books. Running in parallel to Kuldeep Salil’s rendition on Galib , I picked up Aatish Taseer’s “the way things were”. From the brief on the cover it looked like a promise tale of a family set up in Delhi and parts of India. This book was 2018 book fair product and kept lying untouched for 2 years. Also this was before the author became famous for his tirade against modi and famous article. This book is a big NO and shouldn’t be read at all if you are looking for a fictional story but with an aim. Author has mindlessly wandered across ages of characters with absolute no coherence. With sore memories of this book moving onto the next one.
April 5, 2015
A highly addictive book which emphasizes about Sanskrit and Indian culture. The story goes parallel with the contemporary Indian history and the lives of the characters in the novel. The novel is mainly divided into four parts which is related to the Indian history. Beautifully written and the story connects with the historical background of India.
July 14, 2015
This book reminded me of many things - its unhurried, leisurely pace reminded of a ghazal concert, the movement to-and-fro in time and the personal/national history mixture reminded a bit of Rushdie. Yet it never became boring or too difficult. And some passages are memorable. The book grows on u.
Recommended reading.
Recommended reading.
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July 8, 2015A son is tasked with returning the body of his father, the Maharaja of Kalasuryaketu, to India. The journey will take him halfway around the world, and bring him back in touch with his family. A beautiful look at familial obligation, culture, and facing the past.
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August 22, 2016I have read quite a few novels of India so i was looking forward to this one. I got lost after about 5 pages, but plodded on. I lost who was speaking, who was who, where they were (whoever they were)
and i lost the plot. I have read Kafka without this much trouble. I must be missing something because many reviewers found it really good.
and i lost the plot. I have read Kafka without this much trouble. I must be missing something because many reviewers found it really good.
June 2, 2015
Too much prose, too many words.
A great subject but the writer got carried away with his own vocabulary.
I really wanted him to go somewhere with the book. I was disappointed.
A great subject but the writer got carried away with his own vocabulary.
I really wanted him to go somewhere with the book. I was disappointed.
May 22, 2020
Long, and perhaps unnecessarily long-winded...
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