Hold the eulogies.

"Hitler did very cruel and ugly things. But he was an artist, I love him (for that). He had the power to carry the whole nation, the mob with him. You have to think what magic he had. He was a miracle.... The killing of Jews was wrong. But the good part about Hitler was that he was an artist. He was a daredevil. He had good qualities and bad. I may also have good qualities and bad ones."
- Balasaheb Thackeray

To thaw and decay and

Death’s seasons are dreary

For the dying and for those who keep vigil

They make the pulse slow, erratic

Like a pinion twitching in tar

Death’s seasons are always with us

We only see them

When it’s too late

Like the wandering Gaul

Chancing on an old washerwoman

Scrubbing out his shroud

Like the woman who understands

Why the ashen ones

Are singing outside her window

Death’s seasons are welcome

A monsoon washing away

The faded remains of last year’s harvest

A summer melting away the long frost

Freeing the frozen survivals

To thaw and decay and be free.

The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald

This is the second novel by Ross Macdonald I've read and I'm not really impressed. He can write - there are some great descriptions, some witty observations and quips, even a few similes that aspire to Chandlerian heights. But the plot is all over the place and I'm not sure the prose makes up for it as it does in Chandler's best novels. There's a lot of woman-hating dressed up as condescending chivalry and Macdonald's depiction of a pair of crypto-gays (he never comes right out and says that's what they are) is cliched and shallow, especially weighed against Archer recalling his father's friend's scent of 'clean masculine sweat' (what the fuck is clean sweat?) and other bits of manly-man romanticism like the final bout of fisticuffs with a local police chief. On the other hand, there are some stunning moments like Archer's escape from a hydrotherapy clinic lock-up and the masterfully conjured squalid atmosphere conjured in his examination of a murder suspect's boarding-house room. But the more I think of it, the more objections and niggles I find to pile up against the good points so I'm going to just say that I found it readable and reasonably diverting and leave it at that.

The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell

The story gets off to a good start as we see a small British town fall under the spell of a charismatic preacher - and then under the more ancient spell of the creature that takes him over. Campbell weaves together cosmic horror, paganism and our fear of deep dark places to create a breathtaking underlying concept. The character sketches of the various small-town people involved in the story are sharp and vivid, and the claustrophobic sense of being trapped in a world where human bloodiness and eldritch evil are aiding and abetting each other is built up skilfully.

However, the resolution seems almost too fortuitous, with a pivotal character singing the moon-thing into submission. It seems out of place, even though this character has been built up as the heroine all along, because there's simply no previous allusion to this business of singing. It comes out of nowhere and feels like just any old device to make sure the story ends with the world safe, if not entirely sound. The nuclear paranoia angle also feels tacked-on and doesn't really go anywhere.

Still, a marvellously paced, insidiously creepy novel with a great weird concept at the heart of it.

My mind is magic it punctuates everything

With shimmering semicolons and glistening commas

My mind is alchemy it transforms everything

Person and tense, passive to active

My mind is sorcery it is an arcane spell

My mind’s a grimoire I’ve counted the words

And highlighted the mistakes

I’m sending this back to you

Sending this back to you

Back to you

For a total rewrite

I’m sending this back to you

Sprinkled with wizard dust and necromancer’s tears

And then there's this:

On the Creation of Niggers  (1912)

by H. P. Lovecraft

When, long ago, the gods created Earth

In Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth.

The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;

Yet were they too remote from humankind.

To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,

Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan.

A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,

Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.

Via Nnedi Okorafor's blog.
 

Another review of Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities has some very flattering things to say about my story:

 Urban Cthulhu opens very strong with the fantastic tale “Dancer of the Dying” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy. This is the other of the two best stories I’ve read all year. And what makes it even more exciting is that I’d never heard of this author before. He literally came out of nowhere (at least as far as I was concerned) and blew me away with a haunting story that is by turns frightening, melancholy, beautiful, and even somewhat enlightening. Satyamurthy struck a chord in me with this tale of ancient Gods and those who are compelled to their service. Engaging prose and that feeling in the back of my head that this story could very well be true made this one of the scariest in the whole book, not for the “jump” factor so prevalent in modern horror, but for the psychological and cosmic elements so dear to fans of Lovecraft’s (and his circle’s) particular brand of horror.

A previous review, by Julia Morgan identified two of my sources of inspiration most accurately:

 "Dancer of the Dying" by   Jayaprakash  Satyamurthy, is set in India and makes me long for more stories of the same kind. Jayprakash has a style that is reminiscent both of Ramsey Campbell and Peter Ackroyd. Add this to a haunting story, and you have magic. 

This Horror World review was also most gratifying:

 And as I expressed my joy at discovering great new things, let me tell you about Jayaprakash Satyamurthy. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by him before, but after reading his wonderful “Dancer of the Dying”, I will have to fix that. Editor Harksen chose to start this book off with this tale, and it was a wise decision. I love stories set in foreign (to me, at least) settings, but only if the author can pull off the unique feel. Mr. Satyamurthy does that wonderfully here and once again reaffirms that the global approach to this book was a very bright idea.

And here's the thing: 'Dancer Of The Dying' isn't even the best story in this collection. Far from it, in fact. Find out for yourself; buy a copy ! (It's also available on Flipkart). 

simpering for whitey

If you watch a lot of old Hollywood movies, the kind of things TCM shows, you'll notice that whenever a black character shows up there's suddenly a lot of teeth. Those old Hollywood chiefs sure made their occasional African-American employees grin and guffaw and speak in the most exaggerated accents to earn their pay.

I kind of get why those actors subjected themselves to it. They had chosen a profession and, well, those were the roles they were offered. While there has been a black cinema scene in the US longer than most people would imagine, the real money was usually in cliched walk-in parts in something like D.W. Griffiths' 'The Birth Of A Nation'.

And maybe that's why a lot of Indian writers and journalists, when they get the chance to write for a western audience, ham it up and exoticise themselves - they know or think that's what the western audience wants. In the process, they sure do come out with some Grade-A bullshit.

Look at this crap Booker-winner Aravind Adiga spewed after the terrible November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai:

One of the differences between India and other countries is that a lot of our civic space is contained within the five-star hotels.

They have a different function here for us, they are places where marriages happen, where people of all economic backgrounds go for a coffee. For the Taj Mahal to be attacked is somewhat like the town hall being attacked in some other place, it is really something that is quite extraordinary.

 The only real remark this deserves is WTF, but let me expand. I don't know what bizarre subculture Adiga exists within (actually he's a middle class Mangalorean boy who should know better) but this is pure hocus-pocus, creating a race of naive, joyous Indians who flock to the local 5-star hotel for coffee, no matter how poor they are. No sorry, Adiga, that's crap. Only a very select, elite slice of Indian society would be able to afford coffee in a 5-star, let alone be granted admission. We get that the attack on the Taj hotel was a terrible thing - but do you need to  paint a quaint, false picture of Indian life to make that point?

Or did you just think no one would ever call you on your bullshit?

Second case in point: this article by journalist Manu Joseph on Salman Rushdie. Attempting to quantify Rushdie's legacy, he launches into this remarkable observation about my hometown:

In Madras, now Chennai, where boys were preordained to become engineers and literature was considered the refuge of the handicapped or the effeminate, the news of a rock star "Indian" writer made literature suddenly look respectable.

 To begin with, he's oversimplifying: Madras boys can also become lawyers and doctors. Literature, like music and art is respected in a slightly condescending way; as a vocation it is Fine For Others but if your own son or daughter wants to become a writer, you remind him or her to Be Practical (and quite rightly; writers are paid peanuts). This attitude hasn't changed either, whether or not Rushdie is considered a rock star. Joseph has, like Adiga, mixed a few cliches and stereotypes together with total nonsense randomly pulled out of his ass to come out with an amusing, yet fake, slice of life for his western readers.

It's possible to be responsible and accurate, to use the opportunity you've been given to paint a more accurate picture of your country for a foreign audience. But time and again we choose to deck ourselves out in saffron and sandalwood paste and simper for whitey. That's the power of a stereotype; even the people it misrepresents start trying to live up to it.