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Ah, America. Land of the free, Home of the brave, etc, etc. Yes, we have all heard it before. Yes, we all know about the wild sixties, with their eclectic mix of peace, war, drugs, sex, rock and roll, and really, really bad fashion. Yes, we all know about the kind of culture shock your everyday, average desi gets when he/she reaches the fabled El Dorado of the capitalistic world, today, yesterday or maybe even in the future.

So what does M.G. Vassanji's new novel, "Amriika" have to offer? Frankly, not much that could be considered very new or unique. Vassanji explores well-charted territory, preferring to stick to the known paths of kitsch rather than break new ground.

The plot is, compared to some other books I've recently read, very straightforward. Indian origin boy in Tanzania moves to America for pursuing higher studies in the sixties. Boy is overwhelmed by the myriad facets he is exposed to. Boy becomes politically conscious, then wham! A dramatic bomb blast on campus, and boy's friend is arrested. Cut to many years later. Boy is now middle-aged man, with an unhappy marriage and twins. Man attends reunion party, meets exotic young woman with mysterious past, and wham! He's divorced and moves to California, where after much radicalism and fanaticism muddling the plot, story ends in the bad, bad world of Los Angeles.

Vassanji manages to hold interest while he describes the sixties. That part of the novel is probably the best portion. His imagery and description is cute, even if it is rather trite. Vassanji's protagonist, a Shamsi Muslim called Ramji, goes through every rite of American passage possible, from losing his virginity to an older woman, facing racial discrimination, to dabbling in Eastern mysticism. The entire section is not exactly what you could call great literature, but at least it is somewhat interesting. A more refined version of that really awful book, "The Inscrutable Americans", if you will.

However, after this very sweet, cute and nostalgic segment (why am I nostalgic? I wasn't even around in the sixties!), you are suddenly shoved into the techno savvy nineties, and Ramji is now married with the national statistic of 2.5 kids and a dog named Spot. Here the novel really begins to drag. Vassanji, I guess, tries to generate our empathy for a man who despite the ravages of time has still managed to retain some idealism. But the character never really manages to hold your curiosity. Someone once told me to not look for Karna and the Mahabharata in every book. Fine, but at least the characters have to be vaguely engrossing, shouldn't they? Or am I asking for too much?

You never really understand why Ramji does some of the things he does. Even Ramji admits that. But the indecisiveness, the ignorance is also never really explored in depth, merely dabbled in along the way.

Maybe if Vassanji had not brought in the fundamentalist angle, perhaps the narrative would have remained more engrossing. Or even if he had made it more interesting. You never really understand the motives of the fanatics.

I guess this is a perfectly tolerable read. "Amriika" is pretty easy going, with no major life truths ensconced deep in the fabric of the writing. As an average book, it works well. But please spare me the literary canons.

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Tivolem - by Victor Rangel-Ribeiro Rasik Shah Rasik Shah was born in the Indian diaspora in colonial apartheid type society of Kenya. Having grown up in a multi-lingual, multi-racial society, he studied law in the London of the early sixties and went back to Kenya, practising as a criminal lawyer. He migrated with his young family to Canada in 1974 and practised law in Vancouver till 1995. He leads trekking tours to the Garwhal region of India and overland jeep safaris to Ladakh years. He writes full time now, leading trekking tours as a hobby. He has published short stories and articles at the following sites: 1. "The Ngong Hills" at www.dorsai.org/~tjhubsc/ngong.htm 2. "At the Dentist's" at www.es.co.nz/~treeves/rasik.htm 3. "The Discreet Charm of Nairobbers" at: www.litnet.mweb.co.za 4. An article on magical realism at: http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu 5. The Display Suite at: http://www.mweb.co.za/litnet

"Sossegado" is part of the Portuguese legacy in their former South Asian possessions, particularly in Goa, Daman, and Diu on India's West Coast. When they were finally forced out of these colonies after four and a half centuries of occupation, the Portuguese did not leave much of a developed infrastructure behind, but they did leave behind traces of the Iberian way of life. Being "sussegado" was one of them.

My Portuguese dictionary defines "sossegado" in several ways, some of which I translate here: "quiet, tranquil, calm, peaceful; without a care. Laid back." Seen from the viewpoint of a world that in 1933 was very much in turmoil, and India especially with Gandhi resisting the British Raj, the fictional Goan village of Tivolem---subject of my novel---indeed seems "sossegado." However, major dissensions do develop, over minor villagey incidents. Tivolem, fortunately, is a middle-class love story, and the course of true love must never run smooth. However, while the outside appearance of Tivolem continues to be "sossegado", Tivolem acquires the marks of an accident waiting to happen."

So wrote Victor Rangel-Ribeiro in a post to Sasialit. Indeed, it is a pleasure to review this novel on a forum of which the novelist is a member.

I say "novelist", but Victor has had a long career as journalist and editor in India, then as teacher in private New York schools, as well as having been a music director of the Beethoven Society of New York and author of several book on music! A varied career indeed, and 'Tivolem' is his debut novel!

The first thing I want to say about the novel is that it is a crowded canvas, depicting the whole world of the village of Tivolem, set in the early nineteen-thirties. The pace is slow, that of a nineteenth century novel. One does not expect this kind of leisurely writing in the age of the idiot box and the mini-second switching of pages on the internet. Indeed it is permeated with the quality of sussegado, as Victor himself has confirmed in the quote above.

The other comparison that comes to mind is to the Latin American novels of Garcia Gabriel Marquez - the story is about a whole town or community. Individuals play out their destinies against the larger backdrop of the community and its mores.

In these sussegado days of summer sasialit, I might as well take my time talking about this story, since hardly any other book has been discussed on this forum for a long time, or is being discussed. For those about to take a summer holiday, I advise they pick up a copy of this novel and curl up on a deck chair for a couple of days. The novel is fairly short, but it gives the impression of being long, because it slowly unfolds a whole world.

To begin with, colour and atmosphere are established with the first paragraph::

As the big ship that sails down the coast from Bombay steams past the fortress of Aguada on Tuesday mornings, that ancient stronghold greets her rival with a one-gun salute---a single shot fired from an antique cannon.

Three centuries earlier, from atop that same stark promontory in Goa, that venerable muzzle-loader, guarding the jewel of Portugal's Indian empire, twice kept an entire Dutch fleet at bay, but to the villagers of Tivolem, nestled in a valley six miles to the north, its noble greeting---puff! thud!---is lost in the raucous cawing of crows and the soughing of bamboo clumps swaying in the wind. What they listen for instead is the deep vroooom-ooomm-mmmmm with which the Lilavati announces she has rounded the fort and safely slid past the broad sandbar at the mouth of the Mandovi River; that lingering sound, skipping over hills and bouncing its echoes around valley walls, seems to say, "Rejoice! A son, a daughter, someone you love and are waiting for, is coming home today."

A page or two later, the focus has sharpened:

"The Lilavati cut her speed, and Marie-Santana felt her stomach heave as, turning due east, the ship began breasting the breakers that fought their way into the river's narrow mouth. Beyond the last great foaming crest lay the broad and sometimes ill-tempered Mandovi itself, its banks lush with vegetation, the waterway alive with launches and dinghies and multioared river craft, and sleek Arab dhows still furling their sails. The hubbub on deck increased as the deep blast of the ship's siren scattered the circling gulls. Around her Marie-Santana heard the familiar sounds of English and Portuguese interspersed with the babble of more ancient tongues---Konkani, Marathi, even the elegant Hindi of the north. Already the dock and customs shed, gaily festooned with welcoming red, green, and yellow bunting, were drawing closer. Gathering up her rolled-up bedding, and keeping her one large steamer trunk in view, she prepared to debark."

As Victor himself pointed out in a post, the scene here is set with the babble of many tongues; the geographic location established.

The central character in the novel is Marie-Santana, who is returning to her ancestral village after a life of a few decades in Mozambique, to which she had migrated as a small child with her parents. Her granny still lives in the ancestral home in Tivolem. Other Characters also return from distant shores, like Kuala Lumpur or the Gulf, having been born in Tivolem or being children of parents who came from Tivolem. Simon Fernandes is from Kuala Lumpur, from where his half-brother had deserted the family after the death of their mother. Simon's love for music and playing the violin on the balcao (the novel retains some charming Portuguese words)of his newly built house plays quite a part in his courting of Marie-Santana and their long-drawn affair.

The pace of the novel picks up after we are given an insider's view of the mischief that precedes accusations of witchcraft against Marie-Santana. Indeed, this part of the novel, and the way in which Marie-Santana fights back, reveals the vagaries of the socio-political games that are rampant, the mischief that is set afoot by wagging tongues. Marie-Santana is able to survive and fight back with whatever resources are at hand, the local clergy figure, her grandmother, and other sympathetic individuals. Indeed, the rituals of the Catholic Church play a large role in the lives of the people of Tivolem. The machinations that play on superstition and witchcraft are depicted in a realistic fashion. There is the odd magical realist scene depicting strange events and ghostly disappearances of things; a lot of comic relief comes in with the introduction of characters like Lazarinh, who, true to his name, seem survive near-fatal encounters after indulging in larcenous larks.

By the time one gets to the novel's happy denouement, the suspense and the pace have picked enough that there is a sigh of relief, with a sense of realization that Marie-Santana has grown on us so that we have begun to love her.

This novel employs no orientalist tricks to please any particular readership. Its strength is in its slow-moving depiction of village life in the Goa of the thirties, a microcosm of a whole universe in one village. Glimpses of the outside world are gleaned through, and break in, through the eyes of the small group that meets on the bridge on the nullah, from where the road leads to the larger town of Mapusa. There is not a hint of caste or communal tensions here; only a dim awareness of the doings of Gandhi against the British raj in India and the larger world conflict that is about to flair up in Europe, and the looming presence of an Asiatic power further north threatening distant America.

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