REVIEWS and INTERVIEWS
Murari’s imagined tale of how a desperate group of Afghans seizes this
opportunity to seek their freedom offers insights into the dangers,
deprivations, passions, and aspirations of everyday Afghan life. NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC
I cannot rate The Taliban Cricket Club,
an intriguing and heart warming story of one woman’s fight against
oppression in modern day Kabul, highly enough. It should be a word-of-mouth
bestseller for both independents and chain stores. BOOKSELLER UK.
…there’s something
admirably bold about daring to mix gentle comedy with violent human rights
abuse…CURIOUS BOOKS UK
A lovely, diverting and moving tale of
contemporary Kabul, about love, courage, passion, tyranny and cricket. Murari
has an uncommon tale to tell, and does so with imagination and empathy.- Shashi
Tharoor,
… a thrilling climax
and atypical story line (one that has roots in real life--the Taliban really
did try to put together a cricket team in 2000) make this well worth a read. PUBLISHERS
WEEKLY US
So what happens
when the Taliban form a propagandist cricket club? It is an intriguing
question, which the author explores in this vivid novel set in a war-torn
Kabul. THE OBSERVER UK.
A thrilling blend of
adventure, romance, and danger, Murari’s novel will have
readers rooting for Rukhsana and the brave team of boys she hopes to
guide to victory and freedom. BOOKLIST, US.
Murari finds flashes
of humor in unexpected places, such as a scene in which Rukhsana and her
grandmother learn to walk in a burka.
Murari has crafted a tense, compelling story. LIBRARY JOURNAL US.
One's attention
is held throughout, with a cross-border love story involving an Indian adding
to the drama, and the possibility of the triumph of true love impelling one to
turn the pages. THE HINDU.
The Taliban Cricket Club is a thrilling tale that keeps you on the edge
of your seat to the last. INDIA TODAY.
A compelling novel about cricket in war-torn
Kabul, narrated by a young woman who refuses to be silenced by the Taliban.
SHELF AWARENESS US
Rukhsana is a female character that refuses to be forgotten, and
"The Taliban Cricket Club" is a book that refuses to be ignored.
SPENSER REPORT
An Opening in
Afghanistan
One country that has long fascinated me is Afghanistan.
While I’ve never been able to travel there—the closest I’ve gotten was a view
of rugged ranges from the Pakistani side of the Khyber Pass—an
engaging new novel, The Taliban Cricket Club has just whisked me
inside. Written by Indian author, filmmaker, and playwright Timeri N. Murari,
the book is set in 2000, a year when the then-ruling Taliban actually did
support the creation of a national cricket team. Murari’s imagined tale of how
a desperate group of Afghans seizes this opportunity to seek their freedom
offers insights into the dangers, deprivations, passions, and aspirations of
everyday Afghan life.
BOOKSELLER UK
I cannot rate The
Taliban Cricket Club, an intriguing and
heart warming story of one woman’s fight against oppression in modern day
Kabul, highly enough. Rukhsana, a courageous young journalist secretly writing
anti-government articles, is horrified to discover that she has been selected
by the terrifying minister, Wahidi, to be his new wife. Her only way to escape
this fate is to get out of the country and such an opportunity arises out of a
cricket tournement (which has to be won) and for her to coach a group of boys
who have never played before. It should be a word-of-mouth bestseller for both
independents and chain stores.
CURIOUS BOOKS
If you lived in a
country which was controlled by a brutal regime which restricted the freedom
and choices of their citizens, you’d understandably dream of finding a way out.
If that regime then decided to try to improve their international image by hosting
a cricket tournament to show the world what jolly good chaps they were,
promising that the winners would go abroad for coaching, then it might well
seem like the answer to your prayers – especially if by good fortune you just
happened to be one of the few people in the country who had ever played the
game; in fact, you’d played for a university team in India and you really do
know your stuff. It would be tempting to see your sporting skills as a great
way to escape oppression. You would teach your brother and cousins and a few of
their friends how to play and do your best to win. It all sounds very easy. The
trouble is that there is of course a twist. This is Afghanistan, the regime is
the murderous and humourless Taliban and you – yes you – the cricketing genius
who holds the family destiny in your hands are a woman. Welcome to Timeri N.
Murari’s novel The
Taliban Cricket Club.
Rukhsana is the
heroine of our story. After attending university in New Delhi where her father
was ‘posted’ she returned to Kabul to work as a journalist until the Taliban
made it impossible for women to work. For some unclear reason, she was still on
the list of journalists which was used by the ‘Ministry to Promote Virtue and
Punish Vice’ when they called the press to the Ministry building to announce
their sporting initiative.
Rukhsana is excited
about the idea of teaching the men of her family to play the game she loves.
She dusts off her old pads, finds her old copy of the rule book and prepares to
start training. But how can you demonstrate the finer points of spin bowling
whilst draped head to toe in a burkha with only a small mesh panel to look
through? She has another problem too. The Minister who’s running the tournament
– the violent Zorak Wahidi – wants Rukhsana for his wife and sends his brother
and his sister-in-law to demand her hand in marriage. With a terminally ill
mother at home, she can’t go into hiding so Rukhsana has two big problems and
one classically Shakespearian solution. What would the bard do? Well of course
he’d find a false beard and disguise his heroine as a young man. Rukhsana
becomes Babur, the cousin from the country.
Can she mould her
relatives who’ve never seen a cricket ball or watched a cricket match into a
winning team? Will her cousin Shaheen to whom she’s long been engaged but whom
she doesn’t love send the money so that she can flee the country, or will the
man she really loves rescue her from an arranged marriage? Or in the worst of
all possible outcomes, will she have to become one of the Minister’s wives?
“…there’s something
admirably bold about daring to mix gentle comedy with violent human rights
abuse…”
Sometimes a book comes
along that makes you think it’s going to cause quite a stir and could well be
set to be one that everyone’s talking about in a few months time. That was my
impression when I read The Taliban Cricket Club. It is ‘popular’ fiction rather
than ‘literary’ fiction – if you are looking for the next ‘Kite Runner’ then
look elsewhere because this isn’t it. If this were set anywhere other than
Afghanistan under the Taliban I would classify it as ‘chick lit’ but you just
can’t easily imagine cricket or the summary assassinations of innocent people
quite slipping into your run-of-the-mill romantic comedy. And that – more or
less – is what this book is. It has been described as ‘Bend it Like Beckham in
a Burkha’ but I think that does disservice to both the film and the book. This
reminds me more of films like ‘Escape to Victory’, the football classic in
which prisoners of war in a German camp take on the guards whilst attempting to
escape from the prison. As readers we the odds will be stacked against the
little men (and woman), we know that fair play will be the last thing on the
minds of the authorities, and yet we’ll also get that warm, fuzzy feeling of
knowing that this has to all work out right in the end but we just don’t know
how it’s going to do so.
I’ve read a lot of
books set in Afghanistan and they are almost without exception tales of
oppression, torture and abuse. This really is something very different. Whilst
the plot has plenty of shades of Shakespearean cross-dressing and whilst the
whole thing is deliciously predictable, there’s something admirably bold about
daring to mix gentle comedy with violent human rights abuse, to combine cricket
with killing, and beards with bats. This book will undoubtedly attract readers
who wouldn’t read the more typical misery-lit which characterises books about
Afghanistan and many of those readers will learn something about life for
Afghanis, especially women, under the Taliban. And for me, that’s got to be a
good result in a match of any kind.
Few things can be more exciting than
finding a great new writer and then realising that he’s not new at all and
there are nearly a score of other books for you to track down and read. Timeri
N. Murari is an Indian-born writer who has lived and worked in Canada, USA and
UK as a journalist, novelist, film producer, playwright and stage director.
He’s written for children, young adults, and adults tapping into genres across
the spectrum of fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. So how come most of us have
never heard of him? Read our Q&A to find out more about Murari and his
latest book – The Taliban Cricket Club – then head over to the forum to find
out how you can win a copy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Murari's newest
(after Taj) is set in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2000, and tells the harrowing tale
of an educated young newspaperwoman during the Taliban's rule, when "Women
must be seen only in the home and in the grave." Rukhsana supports her
dying widowed mother and teenaged brother by writing stories secreted outside
the country and published pseudonymously. But Rukhsana fears her journalistic
cover is blown when summoned by Zorak Wahidi, head of the Ministry for the
Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. He wants journalists to
promote a cricket tournament in a misguided bid to win diplomatic accolades for
the Taliban. Though woman are not allowed to compete, Rukhsana played cricket
at college in India, and so disguises herself as a man to coach her brother and
cousins in order to get them out of Afghanistan. But when Wahidi asks for
Rukhsana's hand in marriage, she must navigate dangerous social territory in an
effort to remain free, and stay alive. Murari's storytelling works best when
exploring the daily horrors of Taliban rule, a thrilling climax and atypical
story line (one that has roots in real life--the Taliban really did try to put
together a cricket team in 2000) make this well worth a read. Fans of Khaled
Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns will be especially pleased .
THE OBSERVER
There is no place
for any act of violence on the field of play," states preamble No 6 in the
Laws of Cricket – an epigraph to this topical novel. So what happens when the
Taliban form a propagandist cricket club? It is an intriguing question, which
the author explores in this vivid novel set in a war-torn Kabul, where citizens
are brutally assassinated and a woman has her finger chopped off for wearing
nail varnish. The reader is less bowled over by comedy-drama than stumped by
harrowing tragedy.
There is, though,
a feisty female protagonist who finds a sense of freedom in sport. in
journalist Rukshana, who has written about Taliban abuses and so fears the
worst when she is summoned to the "Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue
and Prevention of Vice". But the minister in charge has other plans – a
cricket tournament, and his intention to marry her. Through her knowledge of
cricket, learnt in Delhi, Rukshana sees a means of escape, for the winner will
travel internationally. The plot is far-fetched, but the cinematic descriptions
of war, and the joy of cricket, score highly.
BOOKLIST US
Set in 2000 in
Taliban-controlled Kabul, the latest novel by acclaimed writer and filmmaker
Murari (Taj, 2005) follows a group of Afghan boys determined to win a
cricket championship and change their lives. The boys have an unusual coach in
their cousin, Rukhsana, who studied abroad in Delhi and played on a cricket
team. A former journalist now confined to her house by the Taliban, Rukhsana
sees the Talibansponsored cricket tournament as a chance for her brother,
Jahan, and their cousins to escape Kabul, provided they can win the tournament.
Rukhsana herself is waiting for her fiancé, Shaheen, to send money for her to
join him in America, even though her heart lies with Veer, a man she met while
studying in Delhi. When a sinister Taliban minister decides he wants Rukhsana
for his wife, her family puts their lives on the line to protect her. A
thrilling blend of adventure, romance, and danger, Murari’s novel will have
readers rooting for
Rukhsana and the brave team of boys she hopes to guide to victory and freedom. —
Kristine Huntley
Library Journal
When the Taliban's
Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice announces
that they are sponsoring a cricket tournament, with the winning team receiving
training in Pakistan, the brother and cousins of Rukhsana, a female journalist
living in Kabul, Afghanistan, see it as their means of escape from the
oppressive regime. Disguised as a man, Rukhsana, who learned cricket while at
college in India, trains her male relatives. Meanwhile, she plans her own
escape via her fiancé in America, a man she doesn't love. VERDICT Fans of
Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner will here find a similarly uplifting story
about good people surviving their horrific circumstances. Murari finds flashes
of humor in unexpected places, such as a scene in which Rukhsana and her
grandmother learn to walk in a burka.
Murari has crafted a tense, compelling story.—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman,
Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis
THE HINDU
“The laws of
cricket tell of the English love of compromise between a particular freedom and
a general orderliness, or legality” wrote Neville Cardus. The Taliban, not
known for any great love of freedom nor of legality, decided in a moment of
aberration to promote cricket in Afghanistan and this provides the take-off
point for Timeri Murari's latest work of fiction,The Taliban Cricket Club.
Feisty, reckless
journalist Rukhsana is under a terrible threat. A powerful Talib leader Wahidi
intends to marry her; her wishes in the matter do not count. When the Taliban
announces that there will be a cricket tournament and the winners sent to
Pakistan for further training, Rukhsana, as one of the few Afghans familiar
with the game, decides it is perhaps the only way to escape Wahidi, and get out
of the country.
Wearing aburqa,
she begins coaching her team of cousins. “Through the mesh, I could barely
focus on a bowler, let alone the ball… When I tried to bowl, my right hand
became entangled in the flapping garment, I lost sight of Parwaaze, the ball
flew over his head.” The reader is treated to a description of the rudiments of
cricket, played on a makeshift pitch in war-torn Kabul. It is here that
Murari's skills as a writer are evident, because he does not yield to the
temptation of waxing lyrical about a graceful ballet of sportsmen on emerald
fields nor of displaying his intimate knowledge of the game (his grandfather
and father were legendary players in the annals of pre-independence cricket).
“There is no
place for any act of violence on the field of play” rules the MCC and the
Spirit of the Game is juxtaposed against the wanton brutality of the Taliban
regime. “Cricket is theater, it's dance, it's an opera. It's dramatic. It's
about individual conflict that takes place on a huge stage. But the two
warriors also represent the ten other players; it's a relationship between the
one and the many. The individual and the social, the leader and the follower,
the individual and the universal.” Cricket becomes a metaphor for everything
the Taliban is not.
Murari introduces
a third element in the novel, the Shakespearean motif of cross-dressing,
flagged by a reference to Shylock. While in his earlier workThe Square
Circle(Daayra) both sexual and gender identities were explored through the
means of disguise, Murari uses clothing here in a more ironical way for all
women under theburqaare interchangeable and unrecognisable.
Rukhsana, chaste
and determinedly feminine, becomes Babur and disguise affords her a greater
invisibility than that beneath theburqa. Cross-dressing, by men who
played women who then played men in Shakespeare's romantic comedies, becomes a
means of personal safety and the expression of great courage by Rukhsana who is
certain to be summarily shot if discovered.
I must admit to a
great resistance, on first seeing the evocative cover photograph by Mustafa
Quraishi, to being taken back to the days of capricious violence inflicted on
women by the Taliban. Why return there, I wondered, to distress that was
unbearable even when felt the first time, say at the execution of Zarmina.
However, Murari deftly portrays a heroine who fights against unbeatable odds,
in the midst of a totalitarian regime, and wins. By making Rukhsana the
personal target of Wahidi, Murari brings us frighteningly close to the Taliban
and allows us to participate in the attempt to outwit him.
One's attention
is held throughout, with a cross-border love story involving an Indian adding
to the drama, and the possibility of the triumph of true love impelling one to
turn the pages. Even if there are some coincidences that seem staged, one goes
along quite willingly suspending disbelief. In the end, it is love that is
celebrated: Romantic, familial and fraternal. Tulsi Badrinath
MSN TODAY
When the Afghan national side played its first
ever ODI against a Test-playing country this February, the Taliban joined
President Hamid Karzai in sending messages of support for the team. The whole
nation was said to be glued to the television, and even though Pakistan won by
seven wickets, the Afghan Tigers, as they're known, acquitted themselves more
than respectably.
The story of the rise of Afghan cricket merits
not one but many novels. In five years, with poor facilities, they climbed from
the fifth to the first division of the World Cricket League and were ranked
ninth in International Twenty20. In a three-day match in April, they defeated
the Netherlands with an unbeaten 84 scored by 18-year-old Afsar Zalzal,
clinching the match. Later this year, their Under-19s will take on India's in
Brisbane.
Historically, the story of Afghan cricket
begins in the refugee camps in Pakistan after the Russian invasion of 1979,
where boys joined local kids playing the game. Here one young man, Taj Malik,
the father of Afghan cricket, was dreaming of an Afghan team.
In The Taliban Cricket Club, Timeri N. Murari
has taken inspiration not from Malik but from Soviet-period sporting news, and the
Taliban's strange decision to give limited approval to cricket. Murari then
leaps into pure fiction by making his central character, an Afghan cricket
guru, a woman journalist who learned her sport during her college days in
Delhi. There is a touch of Elizabeth from Lagaan (woman teaching
cricket-ignorant men, with a lot at stake), and Rani Mukherjee from Dil Bole
Hadippa! (false beard and male impersonation) about Ruksana.
Still Murari knows how to pace his tale and
create credible characters. Ruksana with her courage and liveliness is
attractive, and her terror of the Taliban is convincing. Brought up in liberal
times before the Taliban conquered Kabul, through her experience the author
paints a stark picture of the Taliban takeover with its violence, oppression
and toll on human values. The Taliban are portrayed as monsters rather than
men, until their unexpected approval of cricket gives the glimmer of hope that
forms the core of the suspense and the high drama of this novel.
Murari also leaves space for human warmth,
loyalty and romance, but above all, The Taliban Cricket Club is a thrilling
tale that keeps you on the edge of your seat to the last. GILLIAN WRIGHT.
SHELF AWARENESS
Although the Taliban are well known for
violence and intimidation, few people are aware of their brief flirtation with
cricket. Many Afghans were baffled when the regime lifted its own ban on sports
in 2000, promoting cricket in a bid for international political acceptance.
Timeri N. Murari (Taj, My Temporary Son)
spins a compelling fictional narrative around this odd fact, telling the story
through the eyes of Rukhsana, an outspoken journalist who fell in love both
with cricket and an Indian man in Delhi. Furious at the Taliban's growing
oppression of journalists and worried about her mother's declining health,
Rukhsana disguises herself as a young man to teach her brother and cousins to
play cricket. If they win the national tournament, they can escape to Pakistan,
and Rukhsana can avoid a forced marriage to a Taliban official.
Murari endows Rukhsana with his own love of
the game, explaining that it represents freedom, individual responsibility, the
ability to be creative--all principles the Taliban longs to crush. He tenderly
portrays the bonds between an ill mother and her children, and the tightly knit
team of cousins who rally around Rukhsana. While most of the book takes place
in Rukhsana's home and on the cricket fields, the Taliban and their reign of
terror lurk in the background--a constant, menacing shadow.
A love letter to cricket and to Kabul,The
Taliban Cricket Club dares to imagine a different Afghanistan, where a
simple game could bring about fair play, peace and a measure of freedom for
all. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger atCakes,Teaand
Dreams
Discover: A compelling novel about cricket in war-torn
Kabul, narrated by a young woman who refuses to be silenced by the Taliban.
Spencer Daily Reporter US
In 2000, the Taliban decided to adopt cricket as a national sport.
Until this time, athletics of any sort were illegal, as they promoted
celebration and rebellion. But appealing to the international cricket
community, they hoped, would help them to gain acceptance from the rest of the
world.
This story is the basis for Timeri Murari's latest novel, "The
Taliban Cricket Club." Rukhsana is a fiery young journalist who has been
forced into the shadows because she is a woman. So, she writes under a
pseudonym, and faxes them a trusted contact.
And yet, even though she has taken every precaution to keep her
identity under wraps, she is still summoned by Zorak Wahidi, the Minister for
the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, to appear before the
Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. She is not
told why her presence is requested.
Rukhsana lives in Kabul, a once-beautiful city that, like its
occupants, has wasted away under the rule of the Taliban:
The city, as fragile as any human, was gaunt with sickness; its
blackened ribs jutted out at odd angles, craters of sores pitted its skin, and
girders lay twisted like broken bones in the streets. Its gangrenous breath
smelled of explosives, smoke, and despair. Even mosques were not spared the
savagery, their skulls explosively opened to the sky.
Once she is gathered with the other area journalists, Minister Wahidi
makes his proclamation: Afghanistan has applied to the International Cricket
Council for membership, to show themselves as a fair and just people:
"Cricket will show all those against us that we too can be
sportsmen. As our young men have much time to spare, we wish to occupy them to
prevent any vices."
Because cricket, and all sports, have been banned for so long, none of
the local men know how to play. A woman certainly would not be allowed to play
regardless. But Rukhsana knows how to play and her cousins do not. So she must
teach them, and she must do so without being caught.
"The Taliban Cricket Club" takes a few pages to get into, but
before long Rukhsana shines through and the story takes over. What's most
captivating is to think that, even though the book is a work of fiction, the
over-arching plot line did truly exist.
Rukhsana is rebellious and gutsy. She will not be one to cave into
submission just because of her sex. Her game of cricket is one of elegance and
individuality, a game that she herself embodies.
As the story progresses, we see into her memory and into the experiences
that have shaped her. She is her own woman, one who exemplifies the strength in
quiet protest.
Rukhsana is a female character that refuses to be forgotten, and
"The Taliban Cricket Club" is a book that refuses to be ignored.
INTERVIEWS.
THE TELEGRAPH, KOLKOTA
|
Though I have
come home, it is not quite home’
|
|
|
Novelist, filmmaker
and journalist Timeri Murari has been writing for four decades. But the
Chennai-based author, who returned to India after years abroad, tells Kavita
Shanmugam that you need to read to be able to write
|
|
Consider this. He’s
an acclaimed Indian English author and an illustrious journalist. He has been
writing for 40 years and has penned 18 fiction and non-fiction books,
including a period bestseller Taj. He has directed a play in England
with Bend It Like Beckham actress Parminder Nagra. A documentary
filmmaker, he also wrote and produced an internationally hailed film The
Square Circle, made in Hindi by Amol Palekar as Daayra.
Yet Timeri Murari —
the Chennai-based writer who lived for 30 years in England and the US — is
seldom to be seen in India’s literary circles or festivals. In a fast
developing publishing world where every pretty young thing or geeky graduate
is writing a book, Murari — an R.K. Narayan award winner (given by the
Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India) — is a name that only
the cognoscenti seem to be acquainted with.
“It’s simple really
why I am not spotted on the national literary scene. I am not invited,” says
the spiffily-attired, 70-year-old scribe, clearly not unduly fussed about his
isolation. “What can I say? It is all Delhi and Mumbai centric,” he says in
his clipped, British accent.
It is the festivals’
loss, for the writer with his inimitable and flawless style has notched up a
rich oeuvre. Starting off on a novel set amidst Punjabi immigrants in the UK,
he whisked up a mystery novel and then went on to make his mark with his
historical fiction, Taj.
From doffing a
gentleman’s hat at Emperor Shah Jahan’s deep love for his wife, he portrayed
the poignant, slow disintegration of a south Indian joint family in one of
his best books, his semi-autobiographical Four Steps to Paradise. Or
take his travelogue, Limping to the Centre of the Earth, on an “atheist’s”
pilgrimage to Mount Kailash for the sake of an orphan. His latest fiction Taliban
Cricket Club, which recently hit the bookstores, traces the daring escape
of a spirited Afghan woman journalist from intolerant Talibans.
Murari is happy with
the enthusiastic response that the book has evoked in the US. Seated in a
visitors’ room surrounded by paintings, artefacts and a long, walled
bookshelf in his one-storey ancestral home, he talks about the feedback.
“My editor in New
York says this is the first time any of her books has been reviewed by National
Geographic,” he says. The irrepressible author, who sticks to his
discipline of writing every day from 7.30am to 1pm, has also moved on to his
next novel — set in Afghanistan once again.
What is his fascination
for Afghanistan? “Afghanistan is our neighbour. Whatever happens there is
bound to reverberate on us. In the last few years, the Taliban’s importance
is growing. If Afghanistan goes to the Taliban, the al Qaeda will be at our
doors,” points out this former journalist who has written for The Guardian
and The Sunday Times, London. “The Afghanis are extremely courteous
and friendly people. How can one help them? The country is a powder keg,” he
says, spreading his hands helplessly.
Murari, who covered the
Indian elections during the Rajiv Gandhi era for a prominent political
magazine, has always straddled journalism and fiction writing.
It was while writing
a piece for the The Sunday Times on union problems among Indian
immigrant textile mill workers in Coventry that his first novel was born.
“The article got stuck because of legal problems and I had all this research
material. So I decided to fictionalise it,” he recounts. This immigrant tale
titled The Marriage revolved around an Indian girl falling in love
with a British boy.
Murari has had no
formal training in writing. He was studying engineering in London when he
decided to move to McGill University in Canada to study political science and
history. While studying there he wrote a piece for a Canadian newspaper on a
summer logging experience. That was the beginning of his career in
journalism, though he moved soon to England where he joined The Guardian.
“Writers are born,”
says Murari, citing his example of not having gone to creative writing school.
However, he emphasises the importance of reading. “You have to read many,
many writers before you work out your own style.”
He laughs when I ask
him about the “mini-explosion” of Indian English writers on the publishing
landscape. “It is like my editor says, every person has a short story inside
them, not a novel. What we are seeing today is short stories being stretched
into novels.” The constant “churning” in the publishing world with new
technological developments such as e-books and Kindle makes it difficult to
predict the future of this field, he says.
“Everyone thinks
they can write. But it is hard. What most people don’t do is read the great
writers. You can only learn from reading the best writers out there,” he
says, reeling off names from his list of the best — Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow and so on.
Murari, who was born
in an illustrious Telugu Naidu family in Chennai (his grandfather’s friends
included powerful politicians such as K. Kamaraj), was circled by books as a
child. Parts of his childhood figure in Four Steps to Paradise — a
novel that he is particularly fond of, as is his Australian wife Maureen.
It tells the story
from the eyes of a young boy, Krishna, of how an outsider, a European woman,
breaks up a family. “It is biographical in parts,” admits Murari, whose
father — a civil servant in the Madras Presidency — married a foreigner after
his mother’s death. “This novel is full of depth and strength probably since
it is set in my own past,” he reflects.
“Did not Hemingway
say that writers should stick to writing what they know? It might be good
advice but writers also need to write about things they don’t know and should
learn from,” he adds.
His more recent
book, Limping to the Centre of the Earth, was one such adventure. The
book emerged out of a story. Murari’s wife was caring for an abandoned sick
baby who needed an operation which was very risky. “People told me that if I
went to Mount Kailash and made a wish, it would come true and I wanted to do
it for the child,” says Murari, who made the journey despite a weak knee.
Though not
superstitious, he adds that the little baby survived. Now adopted, his
photograph adorns a table in the room.
Murari loved his
journey to Mount Kailash in Tibet. “It is special; it’s not just an unusual
looking mountain. You feel awed standing before it because of its history and
age. It dates back to mythology, to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. I loved
the solitude and getting up to 18,000 feet and coming back alive,” he says
with a laugh.
If you probe his
lack of belief in God, he says, “I prefer to think nature is God.” He scoffs
at the Large Hadron Collider’s claim of being closer to locating God’s
particle. “The closer they get to it the farther it will move away. The
mystery of the universe is such that nobody can solve it.”
Cricket, which plays
a huge role in Taliban Cricket club, is a big passion. Having learnt
cricket in what was Chennai from his grandfather and father, Murari later
played with the likes of British playwrights Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard
and American writer James Baldwin when he lived in New York.
Baldwin, in fact,
once advised him against taking up the onerous task of becoming a full-time
writer. But Murari wrote, even while he focused on making documentaries. It
was while shooting a documentary on detectives in South Bronx in New York
(“cops are wonderful storytellers”) that he got the grist for a mystery
novel, Shooters.
New York was also
where he married Maureen. You can tell that Murari was a handsome man in his
younger days. Even now, tall and distinguished looking with a receding
hairline, dark bushy eyebrows and lively black eyes, he is quite a force to
reckon with.
But Murari stressed
that he got “tired” of the US. Along with Maureen, he returned to India in
1988 to become a part of “changing” India. “I wanted to write about India
with authority by living here rather than as a tourist,” Murari says, adding
that his father’s failing health also prompted him to return.
Murari admits that
it has not been an easy transition to live in “exciting but exacerbating
India” after living away for 30 years. “I don’t regret it. Sometimes, I feel
restless, dislocated. Though I have come home, it is not quite home,” he says
quoting Tom Wolfe: “You can never return, you can never go home.”
CURIOUS BOOKS INTERVIEW
|
CB. How did you learn
about the Taliban’s interest in using cricket for propaganda purpose and could
you tell us about how the seed of an idea grew into The Taliban Cricket Club?
TNM. Way back in 2000,
I read a very brief report in the newspaper that the Taliban announced they
would promote cricket in Afghanistan and the regime, backed by the Pakistan
Cricket Board, would apply for associate membership to the International
Cricket Council. I thought the item surreal – Taliban? Cricket? They were
contradictory, an oxymoron. The regime
had banned everything – including chess – and this was a diplomatic way for
acceptance in a world that condemned their brutal rule. The idea nagged at me
and I made a few notes on how I could use this for a story. I thought I’d throw
in a tournament and that the winning team would be sent out of the country –
all expenses paid – and never return. Great! But as no one knew how to play
cricket back then in Afghanistan who’s going to teach my team of young men? A
pro from England/India/Pakistan – it didn’t have any dimensions. I set the idea
aside and went back to my other work when the Taliban were driven out by ISAF.
When they ‘returned’ to fight ISAF, I pulled out my notes to re-think. I grew
up playing cricket with my sisters and female cousins in our garden and even
had a niece who played for India. So, why not a young Afghan woman who learned
her cricket in India, returns to Kabul when the Taliban announce this and have
her teach her cousins how to play this game? Through her I could explore the
plight of women under the Taliban rule and have my cricket team as well.
CB. Do you have any
personal experience of life in Afghanistan under the Taliban and if not, how
did you research your characters? Did you have a friend or relative in mind as
your mental ‘model’ for Rukhsana?
TNM. No, thankfully I
didn’t have any personal experience living under the Taliban. I wouldn’t have
lasted long as I’m not Muslim and most non-Muslims fled the country back then.
First, I read all I could, books and website, on stories of life under the
Taliban. In Delhi, I met a few Afghan refugees who told me their stories too.
Then I went to Afghanistan and met men and women (working in offices beside
men) who had lived under the Taliban and they told me what daily life was like
in those years. I incorporated many of their stories and incidents into the
novel. Surprisingly, the women had more
sympathy for the men as the men had to grow beards and pray five times a day,
otherwise they were beaten. The women told me life under the burka was hard,
restricting their lives but they learned to survive. What worries them today is
the fear that the Taliban will return and send the women back into those dark
ages. I had sketched out the inner life of Rukhsana before I went to
Afghanistan but didn’t have a complete image of her. Then when I was in Kabul
airport going to through immigration I saw my Rukhsana – a woman in her 20s, lively,
animated, talking to her friends, laughing easily. Now and then she’d frown and
listen before reacting. And she had a ‘C’ curl of hair that fell across her
forehead. She was also quite beautiful but unaware of her beauty. I watched her
for ten minutes and then she was gone.
CB. Books set in
Afghanistan are almost all unremittingly miserable. How does it feel to have
perhaps written the first book about the life under the Taliban that doesn’t
need to be sold with a large box of Kleenex?
TNM. I am delighted
that Kleenex has lost a possible market. I wanted to show that under every
tyranny, people did fight against the tyrants in many ways, some violently,
others more cleverly. At the same time they have to lead ‘normal’ lives. We try
to snatch joy and love under the most cruel circumstances in our need to
survive and keep our sanity. The Afghans are, without doubt, the most
hospitable, courteous people I’ve met. Despite the tragedies in their lives,
they still retain a sense of humour and a joy for life which I’ve tried to
capture in my novel.
CB. Your average
British woman has a pretty low level of interest in cricket – your average
American or Canadian even less so (Cricket? That’s like a grasshopper, right?)
Was your book written with the Indian market in mind? Did you make any changes
to the text to appeal more to readers who aren’t so cricket-savvy?
TNM. I didn’t write it
with anyone in mind. Since, I enjoyed writing it, I thought there’ll be a few
people out there who could enjoy reading it too. I was very surprised that my
New York agent first loved the book, without saying ‘cricket! No one will read
this?’ She sent it out New York publishers and the bigger surprise was that
five responded, wanting to buy the novel. Ecco bought it and the editor, Lee,
called me and we talked for an hour and she barely mentioned the word
‘cricket’. But yes, I had to cut back on
the technical terms – leg slips, silly point, leg breaks - I used in the first
draft as she didn’t understand their meanings. As I’ve played cricket nearly
all my life, mostly in England for the Guardian newspaper team, the hardest
work was simplifying the game for readers who had never seen a cricket match
and thought cricket was an insect. India bought the novel only after the
French, Dutch and Norwegian publishers, none of whom, I suspect, have ever seen
a game of cricket!
CB. I suspect many
readers will assume you are a woman, probably 20-30 years younger than you
actually are – yes, I checked you out on Facebook! Is that stereotyping a good
thing or a bad thing and are you amused or insulted by the inevitable mistakes?
I’m more amused.
Writers are slotted into comfortable genres – thriller, crime, romance,
historical, literary (whatever that means) and are expected, like prisoners, to
remain in their allotted cells. The first question I’ve been asked is ‘how
could you write this as a first person woman narrator?’ I had written a
previous novel, ‘Lovers Are not People’ with a first person woman narrator and
that did extremely well, with no questions asked. On this one, I had a mail
from a woman in Texas who saw the book in Barnes & Nobel, was intrigued by
the title and the story line but said she hesitated to buy it when she saw it
was written by a man. Her letter was very flattering as she completely believed
Rukhsana’s voice.
CB. Is there any
future for Rukhsana and her friends and family once the book ends? Where do you
see them today, a decade after the events are set?
TNM. For Rukhsana,
yes, there is a more stable future – a married life, happily I believe – and
she returns to spend time in Afghanistan to write about it for a newspaper. By
now, she has a couple of kids and is settled in New Delhi. Her brother Jahan,
after his degree from Delhi University, is now in America, probably working on
his masters or even working for NASA as that was his ambition. The cousins’
future could be darker. They were trying to get to Australia by paying a
smuggler to get them there. The journey was hard and dangerous but they make
it, are imprisoned by Australian immigration, appeal to the courts and, after a
year, are finally allowed to settle in the country. They worked and studied in
the evenings for their degrees, remaining close knit and supporting each other
and now are happily settled down in their careers. They are the lucky ones –
today hundreds of young Afghan men, more boys, walk all the way to Europe
looking for work.
