Swapping stories

Pairing a book with a person is like setting people up. You take into account their personalities, their interests, their sense of humour and even whom they’d rather spend time with. And even if it’s a book, it’s not just any book. It has to be worth their time and keep them engaged.

I was excited to visit the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair last week. The event drew some of the best authors from India, such as Amitav Ghosh, who was as charming and insightful as his books.

But I did not discover his works until much later in life. And like most good books that I’ve read, he did eventually come highly recommended. However, my earliest foray into literature was influenced by my mother, who was partial to Russian literature. She introduced me to the idea of exchanging books with friends. It started with her. I’d loan her one of my comic books and in turn she’d let me read one of her “grown-up” books, such as a collection of Tolstoy’s short stories.

At that time, Indian contemporary fiction did not enjoy the same appeal that it does today. There were dusty classics on the shelves or translated works of Indian authors who wrote in regional languages.

In the early 1990s, the world woke up to Indian literature written in English by Indian authors. Not only were they exquisite pieces of work describing the rich details of life, but they were also written in a form of English that the Indians had developed over centuries – colloquial yet global.

Over the years, I have discovered another realm of Indian literature that I have grown partial to. And in the same way that I swapped books with my mother, now I lend them to friends. They are written by Indian expatriates or first or second-generation Indian authors residing in foreign countries.

For example, I have reserved Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest novel, Unaccustomed Earth, for a British photographer friend of mine. Lahiri (who won a Pulitzer for her first work of fiction) writes brilliant short stories, and here she combines three of them to chart the life of an Indian girl and boy who grow up in the US. He becomes a photographer and they meet and part over and over again. It’s the kind of convoluted tale, filled with intricate cultural references, that I have come to identify with.

But that is not to say that I pair all of my books with my friends. Some I keep for myself. Or in the case of Ghosh’s latest novel, Sea of Poppies, which takes place in Calcutta (where I was born), I’ve put it aside hoping to lure my mother into swapping it with one from her collection: Perhaps Maxim Gorky’s Mother, which deserves a second reading.