Mostly I don’t address these directly, or try not to, because recommending books is a nerve-wracking experience and always leaves me flustered. It’s not only because there are SO MANY good books out there, but also because reading preferences can vary so widely across the board. I’ve loved books that other people have strenuously hated, and hated books that others have fawned over. Sometimes, very rarely, I’ve even read something that I didn’t particular care for but can understand why people do, or I love something but can see why others aren’t enamoured. This is why I always feel trapped whenever someone asks me to recommend a book to read, because what if they hate what I love? It doesn’t even just depend upon an affinity for a particular genre, but also what your mood is like when reading a book, or your personal preference when it comes to the amount of romance you are willing to tolerate, or any other millions of opinions and biases that can come into play in the reading of a book.
All of this is just a very roundabout way of saying that I’m not really sure whom I would recommend this book too. At all.
That’s not to say that it isn’t a fun reading experience. In fact, it was more entertaining than I expected it to be, which is always a plus point. The two stories, about 50 pages each, have that sense of self-assurance that comes with an author committed to his tale. And given that I went into the book with no clear understanding of what genre I was jumping into, the very unexpected twists that the narrative kept taking was a pleasant surprise. There was no one point where I was thought, ‘Oh, okay, so this is supposed to be a mystery/romance/thriller’. That sense of baffled confusion continued throughout the reading, which mostly contributes to my wariness in terms of exactly whom I would recommend this to.
He knew I wanted my life back, yet expressing such was unmanly. Call it brainwashing or whatever, but patriotism and manhood were synonymous in Naya Chooran.
The first story, about a poor boy living in a place called Naya Chooran, was a very bizarre mix of fantasy and religion and I think there might have been some magical realism? The protagonist is young and penniless and goes about getting caught up in some of the most peculiar adventures ever. From getting involved in a fight with the local gang to being arrested for being involved with a troublemaker, the action moves forward quickly enough for you to miss the biting, almost bitter version of humour that is threaded throughout the narrative.
His kind could make me disappear without a trace. Such disappearances happened daily in this town, even if news channels never reported them. Well, what of it? Poverty had always kept me invisible.
In fact, given how strongly the vibe of the story feels like it belongs to the fantasy genre, the mostly mundane setting of a town struck by destitution and hopelessness feels alarmingly close to any other Pakistani town in the rural areas of the country. I don’t know how much of my big city biases are coming into play here, but the rampant poverty and sycophantic idiots in positions of power feels very close to every other version of a Pakistani town I’ve read in any book ever. Which might just mean that I’ve been reading really stereotypical versions of these settings, or that there is a grain of truth to all these tales that the author uses to create a sense of familiarity with the known.
Pistols drawn in this town always meant accidental deaths and zero culpability.
In fact, most of the story moves from one horrible incident to another as our hero, hot-headed and impatient, stumbles from one problem to another, getting caught up in the internal politics of the town’s ruling. Overall, the story veers very close to creating a character who is whiny and grating on the nerves but manages to swerve away from the self-pity by inches, instead giving us a protagonist who says the most horrible things in the most matter-of-fact tone.
Maybe mother was right. She believed humans were horrid creatures, especially her husband. If only I’d paid more attention between the beatings and not merely wished we were galaxies apart.
As with any other story set in Pakistan, we eventually had to bump into religion, with regular mentions of Allah and his casual disregard for those living in Naya Chooran referred to multiple times. In fact, the slightly dismissive, jokey tone in which god is referred to is actually pretty interesting, given how close it comes to being blasphemous, in a country so very, very obsessed with blasphemy and its consequences. Pakistan as a country lacks tolerance to an almost alarming degree, and the blasphemy rule of law, one of the most misused parts of our constitution, plays a huge role in urging on that intolerance, given how frequently its used to persecute minorities and level false accusations.
In Allah I trusted and surely he’d deliver me. It’s not as if the big guy was busy changing lives or bettering the world, at least not in Naya Chooran.
Even the plot itself finds its threads in religion, with the hero supposedly being a descendant of the prophet Zulkarnain, and the evil characters being Yajuj and Majuj? I put a question mark here because even until the very end I wasn’t quite sure what the hell was happening. There was a demon in there somewhere, or maybe it was the devil himself, or maybe it was an angel, and at one point I think there was a wizard. Perhaps. At this point in time, I can no longer if the story itself was too muddled to make out, or if my abysmal memory is to blame for the fact that I can’t faithfully recall the beginning, middle, or the end of that particular story.
Even if I’d been Zulkarnain in a past life, or was his progeny, my sole superpower was picking pockets in public buses.
Probably the reason I kept on reading was the humour, a sort of dark, morbid type of comedy that made me snort a fair few times. Mostly this is because the hero (whose name I can’t remember, or was it never mentioned in the first place?) leans into his feelings completely, whether they be self-pitying or murderous, and never tries to coat his abject misery or overpowering rage with a softer touch. The moody and often absurd hilarity of a lot of scenes kept catching me unawares, and then charming me enough to keep me flipping the pages.
Often, I fantasized of offing Chacha in the most gruesome ways. Murder didn’t come naturally to me, but the geezer made a compelling case. I’d rethink my opinion if he soon came to my rescue, but failing that, I’d fast-forward his trip to the coffin.
Of course, there are very few Pakistani books that manage to achieve the level of perfection that I desire. As with most desi books, my vague irritation with the author providing helpful little explanations for the South Asian words used was ever-present. The within-text definitions of every non-English phrase definitely show that the story is very much meant for a non-Urdu speaking audience. But then the words Naya Chooran never got explained, which is very weird since the words leave a very specific impression on any Urdu-speaking reader. Even the usage of the term owl-spawn as an insult feels weird, since while it’s on oft-used insult in Urdu, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use it in English. Is the direct translation from Urdu supposed to be a substitute? At any rate, a more consistent editorial hand in terms of knowing whether to translate and/or define everything or nothing at all would have been helpful in this case.
While he wore the same salwar kameez, he wasn’t the scrawny kid I remembered: now at least a foot taller and barrel-chested as a pehalwan—a traditional wrestler.
There were also a few very personal irritants that were possibly affected more by my mood than by the story itself. These included the liberal usage of ‘argh’ within the text as a way of expressing frustration every two paragraphs, or the really random references which popped in here and there, such as to Chicken Little, or a mention of Strum and Drang, which felt jarring given the very localized narrative. There was also a clear desire to overuse really hard words where easier ones would suffice, sort of exemplifying the vibe of a student who has recently passed their SATS and wishes to use all the new vocabulary they have recently amassed.
Mostly though, these were minor aggravations and could be ignored easily. In fact, given how much of the plot I didn’t manage to properly understand, I still had a fun time reading it, with the wrapping up of the loose ends (that I could identify) done in a neat manner. If the novella had started and ending with that one 50-page tale, I could definitely have recommended the whole thing.
We each have days we wished we were dead, but Allah’s wrath, I’d never lived through this many together.
As it was though, there were two tales within the book, and I didn’t care for the second one at all. Most of it was a personal preference thing because I, for one, don’t really care for episodic tales. I like stories that go somewhere, with a proper beginning, middle, and ending, preferably in a longer narrative arc that stretches from the first page till the very last. This might be the reason why the first story managed to retain my interest much more than the second one, which sort of did come full circle by the end but was boring enough in the middle for me to start counting the pages until it would end.
It wasn’t just the fact that each chapter felt disjointed and as if it were part of a separate tale, but also because Holiday, the protagonist, was constantly wallowing in self-pity. The amount of misery he exhibited got repetitive after a while, and while I understand that his whole woe-is-me spiel was probably done very purposefully on the author’s part, I didn’t feel any interest in his tired, grumpy old man routine at all. The overall sense of helplessness and frustration that Holiday felt permeated the whole story, so that I in turn felt bored and annoyed as well.
Shouldn’t you accept things as they are, how they must be? That you’re a scrawny black sheep in a family of prize-winning rams. Why wrestle with this reality every day?
Just like the first tale, I couldn’t really tell you what the second story was about. Thinking back, I’m now forced to question the haze through which I read this book, and wonder whether it was just a me problem rather than the book itself, because how did I manage to retain so little of it? I do remember that there was some mention of god, but I don’t really think religion was that big a part of the narrative. Holiday, just like the first protagonist, seems to consider his relationship with god in a sort of writer—figment of imagination manner, where god is just making things up for Holiday, who is forced to suffer the consequences.
The big guy upstairs lolling in his heavenly throne owes me big-time for his untold gags at my expense.
I suppose the only good thing was that the second story was occasionally funny as well. In fact, pretty much the only take-away I had from the whole reading experience was that I would read this author’s books again because they did make me laugh here and there. And because books so very rarely manage to make me laugh, that’s always a plus.
Twenty years a crossing guard. Twenty, for the love of God. Before long, the security agency will donate me a graveyard plot and a shovel branded with the company logo.
In another similarity to the first tale though, the language usage felt a bit off in some places. Sometimes there were some really weird expressions that I had never heard of, and even more strangely, neither had google? Words that aren’t commonly used to depict things, such as soughing instead of sighing, also regularly occurred, in situations where they wouldn’t really fit. I’m all for creative license though, so I managed to not find this as big an issue as other people might. After all, an artistic use of language in different forms is what makes me love writing in the first place.
Overall, an extra star for the first story, and for the fact that some parts were genuinely funny. This book also clearly went through the most rigorous copy-editing I have ever seen in a self-published title, because I barely spotted any grammatical or spelling mistakes, which is always rare when an expert editor’s eye hasn’t gone over the text at least once. However, that doesn’t discount the fact that by the last fifty pages, I was counting down to when it would eventually end, which is never a good sign. To answer the question I started this review with, I think I would tell people to read this depending upon how they felt after reading the blurb. They might or might not like it; honestly, it could go either way.
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Disclaimer: I got a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.