A combo

Reading takes you places, but sometimes just to break away, you need another story before reality hits. I was reading Gao Xingjian's extremely unputdownable One Man's Bible and had to intersperse it with another wonderful book Penelope Lively's Making it Up. The first is powerful but it needed a dose of well-written make belive or I would have been besieged by harrowing dreams:(

One Man's Bible moves between the past and the present and recounts a life lived under suppression. It's powerful and at times disturbing plot takes the form of memories that relive a harrowing Communist past. The book describes how freedom got lost during the Cultural revolution in China. The horrifying incidents of how carelessly spoken words , long-forgotten actions by family members earned one the malodorous title of "having capitalistic tendencies;" punishments ranged from public humiliation, flogging and transported "reform-through-labor" camps. Thus, the search for freedom and the joy in the ordinary is the primary theme of the novel. A heavy read but something you will not wish to miss.
During the Cultural Revolution, people were "rebelling" whereas before that people were "making revolution." However, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, people avoided talking about rebelling, or simply forgot that part of history. Everyone has become a victim of that great catastrophe known as the Cultural Revolution and has forgotten that before disaster fell upon their own heads, they, too, were to some extent asssailants. The history of the Cultural Revolution is thus being continually revised.....

So you can understand why I needed a breather, and Making It Up provided just that. The book is based on an excellent premise- in the author's own words it is an 'anti-memoir'; it goes one step further in unravelling what-if. Penelope Lively has homed in upon the rocks, the rapids, the whirlpools (of her life) and has wriiten the alternative stories. It makes interesting reading, especially as the stories do not rely on her as the main voice. In the first story 'The Mozambique channel', the protagonist is a half-remembered nanny, Shirley and in another, she presents herself with a half-sister(Penelope was an only child). The writing is beautiful and soothing. The stories are delightful in themselves and get you thinking what-if? Plus, I found a beautiful one-liner that I would like to appropriate for myself:

I read myself into one preoccupation to another:)

The Empires of the Indus

Adventures are adrenalin driven quests that are best accomplished curled up on a comfortable chair in climate controlled environments. ....

While reading the Empires of the Indus, you will climb lofty terrains, discover amazing history, travel with smugglers and live beyond your imagination. Her book details the histories and present predicaments of such diverse bands of people like the Sheedis, the boat people of the Indus, the Kalash tribes of the mountains, Pashtun villagers- each a different entity yet bound by the same river.

Alice’s forays into the land of the Indus, reminded me of those beautifully informative travel documentaries by Michael Palin on the BBC which told of rich pasts, historical upheavals, distinctive tribal societies and present disasters. The 300 odd pages of the book cover a 2,000-mile journey and 5,000 years of history.

Alice Alibinia travelled unaccompanied, armed with only her knowledge of Urdu..... an amazing feat in a land which is largely driven by misplaced male maschismo and especially when the traveller doesn't look like a doughty, travel-hardened adventurer.

She forayed into territories where women need to be inconspicuous and burqa clad and even illegally crossed the borders to Afghanistan. Alice, re-trod the path of Alexander, walked through the valley of the destroyed Bamiyan buddhas, trusted natives who took her deep in territories and places where even locals refused to wander -- all in her quest for a river's history. But beyond great empire conquering histories what emerges is the plight of the river. The Indus, which was once mighty and turbulent and for whom hymns were written in the Rig Veda to placate its divine wrath has now been reduced to a tiny stream in many places. The rampant damming of the Indus has reduced the livelihood of many who relied on its bounties. The book reads like a ballad and a dirge, declaiming past glories and fearing future disasters, when the once mighty Indus will no longer be powerful and desert and doom will follow.

Her last paragraph sums her fears for the land that was once watered by this powerful river. She says:
…..The Atharva Veda calls the Indus saraansh: flowing for ever. One day, when there is nothing but dry river beds and dust, when this ancient name has been rendered obsolete, when the songs humans sing will be dirges of bitterness and regret. They will tell of how the Indus- which once ‘encircled Paradise’, bringing forth civilizations and species, languages and religions- was through mankind’s folly, entirely spent.

(hmmm...shades of Ozymandias)