Coromandel: A Personal History of South India, Charles Allen, 2017

Rating: 2/5

I started reading the book with a lot of excitement as I hail from the southern part of India but know precious little about its ancient history. Unfortunately, the book is too dry to really enjoy it!

Coromandel (the south-eastern coast of India and derived from Cholamandalam of the Chola dynasty) is an extremely well researched book, however. Allen starts off by discussing the ancient history of northern India starting with the Harappan civilisation and then proceeds to the “south of the Vindhyas” — the Narmada river neatly divides India into two halves and is flanked by the Vindhya and the Satpura mountain ranges on either side. The book covers the beginning of Tamil culture, the prominence of Jains and Buddhists in southern India which was taken over by Adi Shankara’s Advaita philosophy, the history of the south-western coast (Kerala) and some of the dynasties such as Cholas and the Satavahanas.

The book is as much about (if not more) the discovery of the history of southern India in the past two centuries as much as about the 3,000-4,000 years of history itself. At one point, in a moment of self-realisation, he does point out that he’s risking boring the reader … and then promptly discusses one more Orientalist. All this makes the book a laborious read. It’s a pity because give the amount of research that Allen has conducted, he could have woven an interesting narrative just sticking largely to the actual history. Also, the book seems to take huge time leaps — there’s a fair amount of discussion of the BCE and very early CE years and then of the last three or four centuries and consequently, the mention of many of the important southern dynasties seem superficial. And the writing style is extremely dry!

I often look out for interesting factoids in books such as these. Again unfortunately, these were few and far between. The most interesting one: Mark Shand, author of Travels with my Elephant, noticed that his elephant Tara refused to move as it approached the Kalinga battlefield where hundreds of elephants had died 2000 years ago. He ascribes it to ancestral memory and elephants indeed remember everything!

Allen does dare to touch upon the touchy topics of Hindutva and revisionism of history in his endnotes. He laments the fact that Indian culture never had accurate historians and  makes an interesting contrast between the British (who elevated the historical at the cost of the mythical) and the Indian (the exact opposite) cultures. He celebrates Swami Vivekananda for helping create the perception of a spiritual India based on ancient truths even as he seems somewhat critical of Dayananda Saraswati and Savarkar for their brand of Hindutva. Whether one agrees or disagrees with this view, the book is reasonably balanced overall and Allen’s love for India does stand out.

Pros: Well researched and accompanied by interesting images

Cons: Too much focus on the discovery of the history versus the history itself, dry writing style, superficial discussion of the dynasties 

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles, 2021

Rating: 5/5

This book is clearly among the best fiction ones that I’ve read! I was almost tempted to skip this review because I’m sure it cannot do justice to the beauty of this book.

It covers ten days of a road trip undertaken by four boys — Emmett Watson, Billy Watson, Daniel (Duchess) Hewitt and Wallace (Woolly) Walcott — from Nebraska to New York along the Lincoln Highway. The Watson brother eventually want to end in California on the same highway in search of a new life and a mother who abandoned them. The other two are heading out to retrieve Woolly’s inheritance in New York. Emmett is the serious one with a high sense of integrity but is doomed to cause unintended adverse consequences by his actions. Billy is young, precocious, filled with wonder at each of life’s experiences and mature beyond his eight years. Duchess “loves it when life pulls a rabbit out of a hat” as he puts it. His sense of morality varies as per his convenience but a fractured relationship with his father eventually spirals it downwards . Woolly is a free-spirited but a lost soul, addicted to some form of drugs but possibly the most perceptive of the four. Each character is etched so beautifully that you can’t but help root for them, even for the grey Duchess. For me, my favourite was Woolly!

One of the best features of Towles’ writing is his ability to flesh out even the minor characters and have them play an important part in taking the story forward. We saw this in Towles’ previous book, A Gentleman in Moscow, and this book has even more minor players, complex and nuanced, scattered around the book. For me, one of the best passages in the book was the interaction between Ulysses, a vagabond in search of his family, and Professor Abernathe, the author of a book of adventures that Billy has read 25 times, despite both of them playing fairly minor roles in the book.

Like in his previous book, Towles’ writing is excellent — it’s easy to read but at the same time etches each actor’s thoughts beautifully. And to enable this, he’s chosen a structure where the narration alternates among the points of view of the various characters. He has also numbered his sections in reverse order (one section for each day) to give us a sense of countdown towards the inexorable determination of each of the boy’s futures. The only downside to his writing is perhaps the unnaturally high level of sophistication that he awards to the actors — which eight-year boy (Billy) thinks so maturely or which young adult (Duchess) is able to do the things he does given his messed-up upbringing! It almost makes the reader feel inadequate!!

Fun fact: The Lincoln Highway ends around the same date as A Gentleman in Moscow (summer of 1954 with June 21 playing an important role)

Pros: Superbly written, brilliant characters, an enjoyable re-read

Cons: Overly sophisticated characters perhaps