No Man's Land

Secrets And Lies

David Baldacci knows how to spin a thriller, so even if his latest, No Man’s Land is a quite far-fetched, it is still a gripping read.

It is the fourth John Puller novel, in which he learns that the father he idolised all his life, may have killed his mother thirty years ago, when she disappeared, from the army township of Fort Monroe, never to be found. John, who is a military investigator, and his older brother Robert grieved for their mother for years, and lived with the anguish of not knowing what really happened. John Sr. who was a much admired military man, now languishes in a hospital, suffering an advanced stage of dementia.  It is a neighbour from the past, now on her deathbed, who accuses him of killing his wife.

Puller learns that his father who was supposed to be overseas when his wife disappeared had returned a day earlier, and that enough to cause suspicion of his guilt. Much to Puller’s surprise the CID closes the case files as abruptly as they had opened it.  But he needs closure now, and defies his seniors to conduct his own investigation. When he is ordered off the case, he resigns in the pursuit of the truth. His buddy and on-off lover, Agent Victoria Knox turns up to help him, and seems to know more than she lets on, causing trust issues between them.

Puller’s story runs parallel to that of Paul Rogers, who jumps parole after spending ten years in jail for murder.  He leaves behind a trail of corpses as he make his way to Fort Monroe, on a mission of revenge. Till the various strands of the story start converging, all the reader knows is the Rogers possesses superhuman strength, some kind of brain implant, a hideously scarred body and no impulse control. His unlikely comrade-in-arms is a mysterious and sexy young woman with a dodgy past, whom he meets in a nightclub, where is gets a no-questions-asked job as a bouncer.

When Puller and Rogers meet, they discover a common enemy and mission. Just what that is concerns the highest echelons of the military, business and science and the many powerful people involved, do not want their secrets to come out.

It is a John Puller book, but the real protagonist is Paul Rogers, whose tragedy makes him a character to admire and sympathise with, no matter what he does. No Man’s Land is fast-paced and readable—Baldacci fans will be pleased.

No Man’s Land

By David Baldacci

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 417

Khullam Khulla Rishi Kapoor Uncensored

Movie Memories

Rishi Kapoor belongs to the generation of actors whose lives were well documented by the film magazines that were very popular in the Seventies and Eighties before the tabloid and then internet boom. So his life was a lot in the public eye, not as much as stars today, but still with a certain lack of privacy.  That’s why it would probably come as a surprise to the reader that a star as successful and universally admired as Rishi Kapoor went through a period of depression when a few films failed, and even Karz, did not do as well as expected. 

His autobiography, Khullam Khulla Rishi Kapoor Uncensored (co-written by Meena Iyer) has a lot of anecdotes about his life and work, and is as candid as can be—which means it reveals as much as the reader needs to know, without letting it all hang out. It is not so much uncensored as self-censored—which is not necessarily a bad thing; hardly any Indian celebrity would lay his or her life totally bare. And the fact also is, that the Indian reader does not really want to be a voyeur, or of some the scandal-mongering books about stars would have been bestsellers.

Rishi Kapoor is known to be outspoken (he often sets Twitter on fire), witty and articulate—all these traits are displayed in the book. He is also proud of his lineage, good looks and talent, so there is no false modesty. It is also a gentle book in many ways, in that his frankness is not hurtful to anyone. And almost everything is wrapped in a sense of warmth and humour—like a fireside chat with friends over a drink; there is no reason for even the closest friends to know everything.  

He gives a glimpse of his relationship with his father, Raj Kapoor, so wrapped up in his work, that he became a figure to be respected and admired from a distance. He writes quite honestly about the heavy drinking—a Kapoor trait—and his father’s stable but rocky marriage to his mother; rocky because of the affairs everyone knew about.

Because of his father’s brilliance and power, Rishi got his break easily in Mera Naam Joker at 16 (for which he won a National Award and didn’t think it was a big deal then) and then Bobby  at 21, which made him a major star.

He quite rightly says that he did his romantic hits (many with then girlfriend, now wife Neetu Singh) at the height of Amitabh Bachchan’s angry man action roles. He also takes a small swipe at Bachchan for never acknowledging the part of his co-stars in his success. Interestingly, he confesses that he paid to get the Filmfare Award for Bobby, the year Bachchan’s milestone film Zanjeer was released and undoubtedly was more deserving of the trophy. It caused a chill between them, which thawed only with Amar Akbar Anthony.

Amusing too is his encounter with Dawood Ibrahim, and his spats with his friends Jeetendra and Rakesh Roshan. What Rishi does remarkably well, is describe how films used to be made back then, and how the industry was a tightly knit fraternity, where filmmakers cared about their actors and vice versa. Show business has always been an uncertain and competitive business, but is a star was indisposed, the filmmakers and co-stars would wait for him and adjust their dates to accommodate him. Today, a star is surrounded by a phalanx of managers and this air of camaraderie has faded.

Rishi Kapoor is understandably proud of the second phase of his career, when he is getting really challenging roles, after a long innings as romantic star opposite a record-breaking number of new leading ladies. (Perhaps this time, a well-deserved National Award would be a big deal.)

In an afterword Neetu Singh paints an affectionate word picture of the man she lived with for over three decades, in spite of his moods, possessiveness (not just towards his wife but also his daughter Riddhima; he would not be able to bear it if she chose a career in films) and, amusingly, his miserliness. The problems behind them, they are now Bollywood’s most-loved couple and parents to chip-of-the-old-block Ranbir.

There is still a lot of the Rishi Kapoor story still untold—maybe there will be a sequel a few years down the line.

Khullam Khulla Rishi Kapoor Uncensored
By Rishi Kapoor with Meena Iyer
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 280

City Of Friends

The Glass Ceiling

Joanna Trollope’s twentieth novel, City Of Friends, has a few interesting elements—the four women friends in the book are in their late forties and all successful working professionals. They take their work seriously and enjoy their success without guilt about neglecting family or personal life. They are always there for one another, and this kind of friendship is rare.

Stacey, Beth, Gaby and Melissa became friends in college, where they were the only four females studying economics. The book seems to say that women can’t have it all—at least not forever. The first life to unravel is Stacey’s, who is unceremoniously fired from her high-level finance job because she asks for flexi-time.  Her mother, who has always been supportive of her education and independence, suffers from dementia and Stacey decides on home care, and her husband Steve agrees to turn their lives upside down so that she can care for her mother, who is reduced to a sad shell of her former vibrant self.

The loss of her job is traumatic for Stacey, not so much for financial reasons but because she cannot imagine not working at a career at which she has excelled. At the same time, her husband gets a promotion and there is some tension between them because of that.

Beth, who is an author and expert on business psychology, is in a relationship with a younger woman, Claire, who takes advantage of her wealth and influence, but walks out on her nonetheless. Gaby is an investment banker with three children and a husband going through a mid-life crisis. The most heartbreaking story is that of Melissa, who has a son, Tim, from brief relationship. The boy’s father casually walks back into his life and Tim is enamoured of a ‘real’ family with his new American partner, two young sons and a daughter from an earlier relationship, leaving his doting mother bereft.

 The men in the book are relatively stress free and not all that disturbed by domestic upheavals. Gaby’s husband, for instance, is not too bothered about the romance of his thirteen-year-old daughter with Tim, but Gaby, is worried about her daughter’s wellbeing. Teen flings rarely last and what if her child is hurt by rejection? There is also a bit of complication about Gaby not offering Stacey a job when she well could, because she has hidden something from her friend, and Melissa’s role in getting Stacey’s husband a job. 

Everything does turn out well as can be for the friends—through Trollope’s does leave some strands loose—but there is the lingering sadness for what they went through—Stacey and Melissa in particular, because their small tragedies are not of their own making.

The book makes the reader care for the problems the women are facing, because they are so relatable. Which careerwoman has not felt guilty about not giving her family enough time, and which stay-at-home woman has not craved the excitement and glamour of a career.  And which woman approaching her fifties has not panicked about aging.

Beth tells one of her students: “When I went to a reunion of all the women I’d done my own MBA with, there wasn’t a single one who had managed to succeed in combining a career, motherhood and marriage. Lots of them had two out of the three, and it was invariably marriage that was the casualty.” Sadly, even today, most men do not face the same problems.  So even though women’s home-profession dilemma is a bit overdone, it can still power a well-plotted, bestseller.

City Of Friends

By Joanna Trollope

Publisher PanMacmillan

Pages: 336

The German Girl

Bond Of Tragedy

The German Girl, Armando Lucas Correa’s debut novel (translated from Spanish by Nick Caistor) is based on a true story. It is set during World War II, but is particularly relevant in the Trump era that advocates hatred of the ‘other.’

In 1939, the German ship St. Louis sailed from Hamburg for Havana carrying more than 900 passengers, most of them German Jewish refugees, escaping from the Nazi regime. In spite of buying the right papers for a fortune and being forced to buy exorbitantly priced return tickets, the refugees were refused permission to disembark in Cuba. Their ship sailed from on country to another, being refused asylum everywhere. Finally some countries took in some Jews but in the whole traumatic process, people died, some committed suicide, families were destroyed and lives marked with tragedy forever.

Correa’s novel is divided into the stories of 12-year-old Hannah Rosenthal who was on that ill-fated ship and eleven-year-old Anna Rosen in present-day New York, whose life was shattered when her father was killed in 9/11 incident. The two are connected—Anna’s father was Hannah’s nephew, though both did not know of each other’s existence for many years, because Anna was born after her father’s death.

Hannah belonged to a wealthy and influential family in Berlin, but this did not save them from Nazi brutality.  She and her best friend Leo stick together, because their schoolmates and neighbor consider the Jews ‘impure.’  Hannah and Leo watch with shock and horror as the Ogres (Nazis) systematically isolate and persecute the Jews. The horrors of the Holocaust could not even been imagined then.

The Rosenthals have to leave their home and belongings behind and board the St. Louis. The few days they spend there turn out to be the happiest of their lives, with the ship’s kindly captain Gustav Schroeder promising to protect them. Hannah and her mother Alma manage to disembark in Cuba, but her father and Leo have to stay on the ship, hoping to get asylum in some sympathetic country, but the power of Nazi propaganda was such that nobody wanted the Jews on their soil—even though they were highly educated, sophisticated and civilized people.

For want of an option Alma has to make Havana her home with Hannah and her newly born son Gustavo, but she cannot bring herself to assimilate into the society. As a result Hannah also remains detached and missing Leo deeply, even though she does fall in love with a fellow student from the university. On the other hand Gustavo considers himself Cuba and gets involved in the political upheaval that sets Cuba on fire.

Seventy years later, Hannah’s grandniece, Anna, still grieving the death of her father Louis, years later, receives a package from Cuba. It has faded photos and a glimpse of the family’s history. With the hope of getting to know Louis better, Anna and her mother (who had taken to her bed after her husband’s death) decide to go to Havana to meet Hannah.

The book tries to fit in too much and link tragedies in three countries and different time zones; as a result does not do any justice to the social turmoil in Cuba and even less to the  aftermath of 9/11 in New York. The sections set in Berlin and on board the St. Louis are the most detailed, and the most emotionally affecting too.

Correa’s note at the end of the book, giving the facts of what happened with the passengers on the St. Louis, followed by actual photographs and signatures of the real passenger on board is jolting. Predictably, the shameful role of Cuba in repudiating the refugees, was sought to be wiped out by the disappearance of the files concerning the episode.

The German Girl

By:  Armando Lucas Correa

(Translated by Nick Caistor)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 384