Hot Water - P.G. Wodehouse

Ex-flames, murder, blackmail, break-ins, imposters… you might associate the adjectives better with a Sidney Sheldon novel. But when you mix all that with light hearted humour, you know it could only be Wodehouse.
Hot Water is an exceptional novel amongst all Wodehouse novels. Firstly, it’s more international than a normal Wodehouse novel which centers either in England or U.S.A. This one has France as the land of the crimes.
So there is a Wellington Gedge, an oppressed husband of a domineering wife who insists on him becoming an Ambassador of America to France. And with a phobia of all that is genteel and diplomatic, Mr. Gedge’s pining for his homeland America increases all the more. He breathes with relief as he finds out that his wife is planning to travel to England, which would give him the opportunity to participate in the merriment of the local carnival. And he is determined to do so despite being saddled with uncharitable guests like anti-alcohol senator Opal and his daughter Jane Opal, along with the proprietor of his rented Chateau Blissac, (his home for the non-French speaking audiences) Vicomte De Blissac.
A Packy Franklyn, the millionaire American football star, engaged to a Lady Beatrice Bracken, a sublime but scathing beauty, both get dragged into the plot when Lady Bracken asks his beau to befriend an intellectual novelist and a part time sound impressionist, Blair Eggleston, who in turn, is engaged to Jane Opal, the daughter of Senator Opal. Packy Franklyn finds himself increasingly drawn to Jane Opal, ever since he takes up the assignment of cutting Senator Opal’s hair. And as an additional favour to her, he agrees to withdraw a damning letter from the safe of Mrs. Gedge, who is using it as a device to blackmail the Senator into granting ambassadorship to her husband. And since Vicomte De Blissac is a friend of Packy, the footballer manages to get an admission when apparently Mr. Gedge murders the Vicomte.
That’s just the tip of the confusion, really. See, the problem is that Senator Opal thinks that his daughter is really engaged to Packy, and ends up hiring Eggleston as his valet. And then there are other people like a safe blower and a stick-up man and a con-man, Soup Slattery and Oily Carlisle, with their own twisted and sad love stories, who are after some jewels in the safe. Add a cook and her lover, a menacing secretary who could potentially be a detective, a butler who pronounces ‘Madam’ as ‘Modom’, and Lady Bracken and a boat, it certainly is an eventful book. And boundlessly funny I might add. You really ought to read up to find out who gets to the safe and which guy ends up with which girl. It’s a guaranteed stress buster.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

The title is absolutely eye-catching. Doesn’t give anything about the book away, while letting you form your opinion on what the unturned pages might contain. I had the notion that it would probably be about a Muslim individual who, at the mercy of the situation and the harsh opinions of some of the pseudo-secular countries on Islam, had developed a fundamentalist ideology, perhaps bordering on extremism which leads to human-bombing and 9/11 like incidents.

But the book was surprisingly different. On the inside on the front cover, the book carries a summary that the book is about the turn of events that lead to a conversation between a certain Pakistani named Changez and an American tourist in a Lahore eatery. And I had my doubts if I would like the book.

As promised, it was about the life of Changez, his stay in US and an account of his academic, professional and romantic life in US. Then came 9/11 and how things changed post that for him. Again, if I had known that the book was about what I wrote about in that last two sentences, it would have failed to excite me. But then the narration is absolutely beautiful! It is a monologue between Changez and the American tourist. And interspersed with the story of his life, Changez talks about the scenes and sounds around the dhaba as the day progresses. The author keeps the love story of Changez uncharacteristically un-sappy. His internal struggles are extremely well brought out without giving the impression that “The idiot is thinking too much”. And lastly the one-way dialogue is not just a rant of I-me-mine… as Changez tries to ensure that the American is being entertained, not just by his story, but the delightful food, and the pleasant hustling and bustling atmosphere of a Pakistani city.
Again, the life of this whole book is in the narration. It renders tremendous beauty to what otherwise could have been a slightly depressing and even a boring book. In the end, it is not only captivating, but poignant as well. And it is just as long as it should have been. At 180 pages, it makes an excellent read for that bus ride of yours to the neighboring state.