The next book I decided to read in my Agatha Christie adventure was ‘And Then There Were None‘. It is one of my all-time favourite Christies and one of my all-time favourite crime mysteries.
A retired judge gets a letter from one of his old acquaintances to spend a holiday at her place in an island. The judge accepts the request and leaves for the island. This is how the story starts. Soon we discover that seven other people have got similar letters or requests – some to visit the island as a guest, some have been offered short-term employment there. So this group of eight people end up in the island. They are welcomed by a couple who are caretakers of the bungalow there. None of the guests or the caretakers have seen the host. They don’t know who this person is. The host has meanwhile sent a letter to the caretakers that he will arrive the next day. We can guess what happens next. We can imagine that there will be a storm, the island will be cut off from the rest of the world, and strange things, bad things, scary things will happen in that island. And what we imagined would be right.
I’ll stop here though. If you haven’t read this book yet, you should read it soon and experience the pleasures it has to offer, yourself.
I was very surprised when I reached the end of the book. Because the ending was very surprising. This fact in itself is nothing special. Because in an Agatha Christie book, the ending is always surprising and it stumps the reader. But I’ve read this book already. And I knew the ending. But the ending was still surprising! Because this was not the ending I remembered! I wondered why! Then I realized that I’d read the play version of the book before. This is the first time I’m reading the novel version. And the endings in the two were different! To confirm this, and to just check whether my memory wasn’t playing any trick on me, I went and read the ending in the play version again. The endings in the two were definitely different! Both very surprising endings, but also different! I watched a film adaptation of the book once and the film ending was the same as that of the play. I’m not telling you what were the two endings though. Read both the versions and find it out for yourself.
Many crime fiction lovers and Agatha Christie fans have rated ‘And Then There Were None’ as Agatha Christie’s greatest book. The inside flap of the book says – “This book is certainly the greatest story that the Crime Club has ever published. We believe it may come to be considered the greatest crime problem ever devised in fiction.” High praise indeed. And it is true, I think.
‘And Then There Were None’ was published in 1939, more than 86 years back. It is still fascinating, it is still fresh, it still surprises us. Many have tried copying it, there have been many films across the world which have copied this plot. But they are all imitations. None have equalled Christie’s original. It is a true classic, and I hope that a century from now, it continues to be read and enjoyed by a new generation of readers.
Have you read ‘And Then There Were None’? What do you think about it?
I decided to continue on my Agatha Christie reading adventure and picked up ‘Endless Night‘.
Mike is a young man who flits from one job to another. This is how he describes himself.
“I liked knowing about things. I was twenty-two years of age at that time and I had picked up a fair amount of knowledge one way and another. I knew a good deal about cars, was a fair mechanic and a careful driver. Once I’d worked with horses in Ireland. I nearly got entangled with a dope gang but I got wise and quit in time. A job as a chauffeur to a classy car hire firm isn’t bad at all. Good money to be made with tips. And not usually too strenuous. But the work itself was boring.
Once I’d gone fruit picking in summer time. That didn’t pay much, but I enjoyed myself. I’d tried a lot of things. I’d been a waiter in a third class hotel, life guard on a summer beach, I’d sold encyclopaedias and vacuum cleaners and a few other things. I’d once done horticultural work in a botanical garden and had learnt a little about flowers.
I never stuck to anything. Why should I? I’d found nearly everything I did interesting. Some things were harder work than others but I didn’t really mind that. I’m not really lazy. I suppose what I really am is restless. I want to go everywhere, see everything, do everything, I want to find something. Yes, that’s it. I want to find something.
From the time I left school I wanted to find something, but I didn’t yet know what that something was going to be. It was just something I was looking for in a vague, unsatisfied sort of way. It was somewhere. Sooner or later I’d know all about it.”
Once while in the countryside, while walking on the road, Mike accidentally meets a young woman. She is Ellie. They start talking and they like each other. Mike tells her about a place there called Gipsy’s Acre. He feels that it is beautiful and it would be wonderful to build a house and settle down there. But there are a lot of legends floating around about Gipsy’s Acre, all of them dark and scary. On their walk back, they bump into a gipsy woman. She tells them that this place is dangerous for them and asks them to leave immediately.
What happens after that forms the rest of the story.
‘Endless Night’ is very different from the other Christies I’ve read. The writing is more direct, the story is dark, there is menace in the air. It feels like a noir novel by James Cain or Dashiell Hammett. Agatha Christie was 77 years old when she published this novel. She reinvented herself at 77, and wrote this book is a totally different style. It is amazing to think about. Very inspiring!
‘Endless Night’ is a beautiful story, which becomes increasingly dark as the pages progress, and the revelation at the end is stunning. I didn’t see that coming. It made me sad and it made me angry and it broke my heart.
The title of the story is inspired by William Blake’s poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence‘. The lines from the poem go like this –
“Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.”
The same William Blake also wrote one of my favourite lines –
“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
These are also from the exact same poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence’. How can the same poem have two amazing groups of lines like these two? It just gives me goosebumps thinking about it. What an amazing poet William Blake was!
There is a beautiful scene in the story, where the sunny warmth reaches its height. We know then that this is the height of happiness. We also have a lurking suspicion that from here on things are going to go into free fall and it was all going to be darkness going forward. That scene goes like this.
“She looked up and saw me.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Mike?”
“Like what?”
“You’re looking at me as though you loved me…”
“Of course I love you. How else should I be looking at you?”
“But what were you thinking just then?”
I answered slowly and truthfully: “I was thinking of you as I saw you first – standing by a dark fir tree.” Yes, I’d been remembering that first moment of seeing Ellie, the surprise of it and the excitement.
Ellie smiled at me and sang softly.
“Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.”
One doesn’t recognise in one’s life the really important moments – not until it’s too late.
That day when we’d been to lunch with the Phillpots and came back so happily to our home was such a moment. But I didn’t know it then – not until afterwards.”
It is a beautiful scene. It is a heartbreaking scene.
I loved ‘Endless Night’. It is one of my favourite Christies, up there with ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, ‘And Then There Were None’, and ‘Sleeping Murder’. I’m glad I read it.
Have you read ‘Endless Night’? What do you think about it?
I decided to continue with my Christie reading adventure and read the Miss Marple mystery, ‘A Murder is Announced‘. It is my first read of this new year. I started reading it in the last days of the old year and finished reading it today.
In this story, an advertisement comes in the paper that at 6.30pm that day evening a murder is going to happen at a particular place. Many people from that village assemble at that place, which is a kind of an inn. No one is talking about this though. They all say that they’ve come to see the owner of the place and find out how she is doing. At 6.30pm, the electricity goes off and as we can expect, all hell breaks loose. You should read the book to find out what happens next.
I loved the premise of the story. It was very fascinating. The murderer announcing that someone is going to be killed in the evening at an exact time. We want to find out what happens next and we keep turning the page in excitement. This story is vintage Christie, there are subplots, surprises, twists in the end, and an amazing revelation. I enjoyed reading it. And Miss Marple’s insights and wisdom are all a pleasure to read. At one place she even refers to Dashiell Hammett 😊 It goes like this –
“So it really all fits in very well, doesn’t it, on the assumption that <one of the characters’ names> was the – I think, ‘fall guy’ is the expression I mean?”
Rydesdale stared at her in such surprise that she grew pinker still.
“I may have got the term wrong,” she murmured. “I am not very clever about Americanisms – and I understand they change very quickly. I got it from one of Mr. Dashiel Hammett’s stories. (I understand from my nephew Raymond that he is considered at the top of the tree in what is called the ‘tough’ style of literature.) A ‘fall guy,’ if I understand it rightly, means someone who will be blamed for a crime really committed by someone else. This <one of the characters’ names> seems to me exactly the right type for that. Rather stupid really, you know, but full of cupidity and probably extremely credulous.”
A great way to ring off the old year and ring in the new one. By reading a Christie mystery 😊
Have you read ‘A Murder is Announced’? Which is your favourite Miss Marple mystery?
I started my 2025 slowly. I didn’t read for most of January. I was busy with cleaning the house and with other house work. I didn’t even go to the book fair. But towards the end of January I started reading. The first book I read this year was ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven‘ by Mitch Albom. I loved Mitch Albom’s ‘Tuesdays with Morrie‘ when I read it earlier. I loved this one too.
Late in January, I decided to read a book for ‘January In Japan’. I picked up Banana Yoshimoto’s ‘The Premonition‘. Then the Banana Yoshimoto fever caught me and I read one Yoshimoto book after another and nearly read all of her books. I can’t remember much about them now and they all feel same, like one big book. Now I feel that I shouldn’t have read them the way I did and I should have given some space between two Yoshimoto books. Because in the previous 10 years, I had read 3 Yoshimotos and I remember most of the things about them, but now in the space of 7 days, I read 7 Yoshimoto books, and I don’t remember anything. It was like cramming for an exam. I hope to read better and do better in the future.
I continued the Japanese reading adventure and read a couple of Yoko Ogawa books (one of them was good, the other was underwhelming), read a couple of Kyoko Nakajima books (both very good), and I discovered the books of Uno Chiyo, one of the great Japanese writers from yesteryears. I found Uno Chiyo’s life very fascinating and inspiring.
This was the year when Faiqa Mansab’s second book ‘The Sufi Storyteller‘ came out. Any new Faiqa Mansab book is an event, and this new book was coming out after eight years, and so fans like me were eagerly waiting for it. I got the book as soon as it came out, and finished reading it in one breath. Faiqa Mansab’s writing was exquisite as always and I loved the book. One part of the book was heartbreaking, but the writing was even more beautiful there. I keep reading my favourite passages from the book again and again.
I also discovered N.N.Jehangir’s ‘Sektor 47‘ this year. Science fiction from South Asia is like a rare bird and is not easy to find. And this was science fiction and it was the debut work by the author. It was gripping and beautiful and it felt like watching Star Wars or Blade Runner. Glad to have discovered a wonderful, new science fiction writer from the region.
I read Terence Rattigan’s play ‘The Winslow Boy‘ when I was a student. I loved it at that time and have always wanted to read it again. This year I read it and loved it all over again. Then I got a Terence Rattigan fever and read four more of his plays. I loved most of them, (one of them was underwhelming), but ‘The Winslow Boy’ is his best, I think. Terence Rattigan was one of the great playwrights during his time. He was one of the last British playwrights who wrote a proper plot based play before the experimentalists took over and started writing plays which no one could understand. It is a shame that he is virtually unknown now. I don’t know of any of my bookish friends who has read ‘The Winslow Boy’. It is sad. Terence Rattigan deserves better.
I also read another play this year, ‘The Holiday Game‘ by Mihail Sebastian which was translated by my friend Marina Sofia. This play was originally written in Romanian. It is a beautiful play and it has some wonderful conversations and it asks some important questions. I hope the English translation of this play gets published by a mainstream publisher and reaches a wider audience. It deserves to be more well known. I was extremely fortunate to have read it.
I also read a couple of Indian classics this year, ‘Pinjar‘ by Amrita Pritam and ‘Divya‘ by Yashpal. I loved both. Hoping to read more by these two writers in the coming year. Amrita Pritam is a legend of Punjabi literature and she’s still popular, but Yashpal seems to have been forgotten now. I didn’t even know about him before. Now I have a few of his books lined up on my shelf including a near-1000-page chunkster, which I hope to tackle soon.
I read two graphic novels this year, ‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou‘ by Hitoshi Ashinano, and the graphic novel adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road‘ by Manu Larcenet. Both were very beautiful. The story told in ‘Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou’ was very fascinating, and Manu Larcenet’s artwork in the second book was exquisite.
This was the ‘Year of Chunksters’ for me. I saw the film adaptation of ‘The Hobbit‘ and then decided to read the book again. After reading the book, I told myself that I should tackle ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ too. I’d tried reading it multiple times before, when it was fashionable to read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ because the movies were coming out, but it was too huge and challenging for me. But this time I avoided all distractions and managed to get through it. Then the chunkster fever caught me and I went and read Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials‘, a 1300-page comic adaptation of ‘The Mahabharata‘. Then I picked the biggest of them all, ‘The Thousand Nights and One Night‘. The edition I have came in four volumes and it was around 2400 pages long. I managed to read the first volume and got halfway through the second volume, when I got burnt out. It was too much for me, reading one chunkster after another. I took off for nearly a couple of months and watched K-Dramas.
During this time I also managed to watch a movie called ‘Mogha Mull’ (‘Thorn of Desire’) which was a film adaptation of a Tamil novel by T.Janakiraman. I liked the movie so much that I decided to read the novel. The novel was very beautiful. Then I got into a T.Janakiraman reading spree and read four more of his books. Then I got burnt out and got into another reading slump and couldn’t read for a month.
During Diwali time, I watched the film adaptation of Kalki’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan‘. I’d read the book when I was in school and I’d loved it. I’d always wanted to read it again, but it was too big (2100+ pages). But after watching the movie, I decided to try it again. I avoided all distractions and temptations and stuck to the book. It took me one-and-a-half months, but I was able to finish it. Then I got Kalki’s biography which is a 900-page tome and read that too.
So that is five chunksters this year. I’ve never read so many chunksters in one year. Normally I read one chunkster, once in a few years. But this year was different. It was special, it was weird, it was crazy. Very proud of what I accomplished as a reader this year.
This year, I also read a lot of Tamil books. I read 12 Tamil books, which is a lot for me. Glad to know that my Tamil is intact and I can still read fluently.
During this festive season, one of my friends recommended Agatha Christie’s ‘Peril at End House‘. I read it and loved it and suddenly caught the Agatha Christie fever and read two more of her books. ‘Sleeping Murder‘ is my favourite till now. Reading my fourth consecutive Christie now, ‘A Murder is Announced‘. Hoping to finish reading it tomorrow, before the year is out.
So, this was my reading year. I read 53 books I think (not sure about the exact number, because some of the books I read are not listed in Goodreads, and I didn’t review some of the books I read, and so the actual number might be a few more than that). It is hard to pick my favourite books, because I loved most of what I read. (Martin Scorsese was once asked to pick his 10 favourite movies, and he picked 125 😄 I’m also like that 🙈) It was a strange year for me, because I read a lot of Japanese books, Tamil books, many plays, and many chunksters. But it was a great reading year and I Ioved it.
How was your reading year?
Hope you are enjoying the holidays and the festive spirit. Happy New Year 2026! Hope it is filled with love, joy, beauty, and light.
After reading two Agatha Christies, I decided to continue on that path and read a third one. One of my friends who is one of the biggest Christie fans I know, recommended ‘Sleeping Murder‘. As I’ve read only a few Miss Marples (probably one or two), I decided to read this one.
Gwenda is a young woman who is recently married. She is from New Zealand. She and her husband decide to move permanently to England. Gwenda comes first and finds a house and sets things up. She loves her new house and everything there. One day she feels that there is a door in the wall and nearly walks into the wall. She attributes that to forgetfulness and carelessness. Later she calls the construction guys to actually put up a door there because it would be convenient. But when they try doing that, they discover that there was a door there before, and now it has been bricked up and painted. Gwenda is surprised at this but assumes that it is just a coincidence. Later Gwenda feels that she’ll put a wallpaper of one particular design in her room. When she opens the cupboard in her room later, she is surprised to see the exact wall paper inside. She is puzzled by these things and to make herself feel better, she goes out to watch a play with friends. But when the climax scene comes, Gwenda screams and runs away from the theatre. Because when she sees that climax scene, she sees in her mind a woman strangled to death in her own house and someone mentioning that woman’s name, and quoting the exact lines as those from the climax scene in the play. Later after she has calmed down, Gwenda thinks about things. She feels that she is either going mad, or she is clairvoyant and is able to see things from the past or the future. But a third intriguing possibility presents itself. What if whatever Gwenda sees is true? What if she had already been in that house and she has seen a door in that wall, and the same kind of wallpaper that she thought about? Does it mean that she also saw a woman murdered in that house? How is this possible? Because Gwenda has never been to England before.
What happens after that and how the mystery is resolved forms the rest of the story.
I loved ‘Sleeping Murder’. It is one of my favourite Christie stories now, up there with ‘And Then There Were None’, and ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’. Out of the two great Christie detectives, I’ve always been drawn more towards Hercule Poirot rather than Miss Marple, and that is why I’ve read many Hercule Poirot stories, and very less Miss Marples. But now I realize that I’ve been unfair to Miss Marple. She has her own style of detection and the way she does it is very unobtrusive. No one suspects that she is getting information out of them. She is just a harmless old Victorian lady who enjoys a good gossip. But her style is very effective and she’s able to see things much before others do. In one place in the story, she reveals her philosophy and it is a masterclass in the art of detection. That part goes like this –
Giles : “But don’t you see, Gwenda, that the way we must look at it now, we can’t depend on anything anyone says.”
Miss Marple : “Now I’m so glad to hear you say that. Because I’ve been a little worried, you know, by the way you two have seemed willing to accept, as actual fact, all the things that people have told you. I’m afraid I have a sadly distrustful nature, but, especially in a matter of murder, I make it a rule to take nothing that is told to me as true, unless it is checked.”
After reading this story, I’ve become a big fan of Miss Marple. Hoping to read more of her mysteries now.
One of the things I loved in the story was a minor character called Inspector Primer. Inspector Primer comes in just a few scenes but he leaves an impact. He is described as “a man with a deceptively mild manner and a gentle apologetic voice.” But our gentle Inspector shows how a good police detective does his job.
Our heroine Gwenda tells the Inspector what happened, and her husband Giles interrupts her like this –
“We think that –” Giles began, but Inspector Primer, with unexpected authority, held up a restraining hand.
“Please let Mrs Reed tell me in her own words.”
Soon, Giles interrupts his wife again, and this time our Inspector says,
“Please, Mr Reed.”
Soon after, when Giles interrupts his wife a third time, this is what happens.
“Gwenda,” said Giles. “We can’t really –”
“I wonder, Mr Reed,” said the Inspector, “if you would mind going out into the garden and seeing how my men are getting on. Tell them I sent you.”
He closed the French windows after Giles and latched them and came back to Gwenda.
“Now just tell me all your ideas, Mrs Reed. Never mind if they are rather incoherent.”
I loved Inspector Primer 😊 Giles was a good husband and he loved his wife and treated her like his friend. But he also did things like this. Agatha Christie must have remembered all the times she was interrupted by men when she was trying to say something, and the way they were trying to shut her down. And that must have inspired her to put this scene here. It was a beautiful scene. It was not important for the story. Agatha Christie could have written it differently. But she wrote this. I’m glad she did that. Because now I have one of my favourite characters in an Agatha Christie story, Inspector Primer 😊
‘Sleeping Murder’ was the last Agatha Christie story to be published. It came out in 1976, many months after Agatha Christie had passed. Before Dame Christie left this world, she left behind this treasure for us. I’m glad I got to read it.
Have you read ‘Sleeping Murder’? What do you think about it?
After reading one Agatha Christie, I was inspired to read another. I picked this one, ‘Five Little Pigs‘.
In this story, a young woman comes to see Poirot. She tells him that recently she read a letter by her mother. Many years back, her mother was convicted of murdering her father and she died in prison. But in this letter, her mother says that she is innocent. So this young woman asks Poirot to investigate the case and find the truth. But this case is sixteen years old. All the trails have run cold. But Poirot, is Poirot. As he says himself, he is the best detective in the world. So he talks to the people related to the case who are still around and things get interesting with every conversation after that. Whether Poirot is able to find the truth forms the rest of the story.
‘Five Little Pigs’ is vintage Christie. It is a little bit different from the other Christies I’ve read, because here the case is old and the trails have run cold. But there is a list of suspects, and things lean towards one person and we are almost convinced on who the murderer is, but we are shocked when we discover the truth.
One of my favourite passages in the book was a description of a character who used to be a governess. It goes like this.
“Clear, incisive and insistent, the voice of Miss Williams repeated its demand.
“You want my recollections of the Crale case? May I ask why?”
It had been said of Hercule Poirot by some of his friends and associates, at moments when he has maddened them most, that he prefers lies to truth and will go out of his way to gain his ends by means of elaborate false statements, rather than trust to the simple truth.
But in this case his decision was quickly made. Hercule Poirot did not come of that class of Belgian or French children who have had an English governess, but he reacted as simply and inevitably as various small boys who had been asked in their time : “Did you brush your teeth this morning, Harold (or Richard or Anthony)?” They considered fleetingly the possibility of a lie and instantly rejected it, replying miserably, “No, Miss Williams.”
For Miss Williams had what every successful child educator must have, that mysterious quality – authority! When Miss Williams said “Go up and wash your hands, Joan,” or “I expect you to read this chapter on the Elizabethan poets and be able to answer my questions on it,” she was invariably obeyed. It had never entered Miss Williams’ head that she would not be obeyed.”
I loved the description of Miss Williams 😄 It made me remember my own schooldays when my school teachers had absolute authority and I was scared of them.
I loved reading ‘Five Little Pigs’. Enjoying reading Christie and Poirot during this festive season.
Have you read ‘Five Little Pigs’? What do you think about it?
After reading some chunksters recently, I decided to read a mystery. Recently when I was discussing favourite Agatha Christie books with one of my favourite friends who is one of the biggest Agatha Christie fans I know, she recommended Christie’s ‘Peril at End House‘. So I decided to pick it up and read it over the past few days.
In ‘Peril at End House’, Hercule Poirot and Hastings are holidaying, when they bump into a young woman. Someone tries to kill this young woman in front of them, and she survives because of pure luck. Then she tells them of near escapes she has had in the previous few days. Poirot takes it very seriously and decides to investigate and find the person who is behind this.
‘Peril at End House’ is vintage Christie. There is a surprise start, strange scary happenings, a list of suspects, the narrowing down of the suspects into a much shorter list, and a surprising revelation at the end which we don’t see coming. The twist at the end that Christie delivers is still making me reel with shock. There is beautiful, charming banter between Poirot and Hastings which is pleasurable to read. In one scene, it goes like this –
“Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.”
“An admirable exercise, my friend. Continue it.”
I couldn’t stop laughing when I read that 😄
I enjoyed reading ‘Peril at End House’. I haven’t read an Agatha Christie book in a long time, and I am so happy to read this one. A great book to enjoy in this cool December weather with a hot cup of spiced tea 😊
Have you read ‘Peril at End House’? What do you think about it?
After reading ‘Ponniyin Selvan‘ by Kalki, I wanted to read Kalki’s biography. His biography, ‘Ponniyin Pudhalvar‘ by Sundha (M.R.M.Sundaram), has been out of print for years. When I called the publisher, they said that it has come back in print. So I was very excited. I got it and read it for the past two weeks, and finished reading it yesterday.
Sometime back, Kalki’s biography was translated into English by his granddaughter Gowri Ramnarayan. It is called ‘Kalki Krishnamurthy : His Life and Times‘. It is a beautifully produced edition in two volumes and the paper is thick and it looks even better than the original Tamil edition. I got that too when it came out, but I wanted to read the original Tamil version first.
Kalki’s biography was very fascinating. The first thing I want to talk about is the research. It seems Kalki’s son Kalki Rajendran wanted to write his dad’s biography himself. But then he decided against it as he felt that he might be biased. So he requested Sundha to write it. First, Sundha did research on the structure and formats of different famous biographies. Then he went and read all of Kalki’s books and articles. Then he talked to most of the people who were a part of Kalki’s life. This work took a few years. He then went and wrote this biography. The research shows in every page of the book. This kind of work is very rare in a biography written in Tamil. I don’t know of any biography in Tamil before this one, where the biographer has put in this kind of hardwork to understand his subject. This is not like writing a biography of Dickens. To write a biography of Dickens, the biographer would read a few previous biographies of Dickens, go to a Dickens study centre at the university and read Dickens’ papers and letters. This is all mostly secondary research. Then the biographer is set. But Sundha didn’t do just that. He had to find out who were all the people who touched Kalki’s life in ways big and small, and then he had to go and talk to them. Some of these people probably didn’t want to talk to him because they wanted to keep things private or they were probably critics of Kalki or didn’t like his politics or his literature. But Sundha still went ahead and tried to make them share their thoughts. This is primary research. This is hard. I don’t think any biographer in Tamil had done this before. I don’t think anyone has done this since. So full marks to the biographer for that.
What of the biography itself? How is it?
I think the biography is good. It is quite detailed. Sundha quotes from many places and shares his sources in the footnotes, and it gives the anecdotes a lot of authenticity. The book is big – it is around 900 pages long. (The English translation is around 1070 pages long.) So, as it happens in big books, some chapters move fast, and some move slow. Depending on what areas of Kalki’s life we find interesting, we might like some chapters more than others. Kalki spent a lot of time engaged in political affairs, first during the Freedom movement, and then later as a journalist. It is interesting that the Kalki magazine was very political under his stewardship, and Kalki’s editorials and articles had strong political views. (It was very different from today, when Kalki magazine is politically neutral.) So because of that Kalki picked fights with many people, politicians and journalists. Sometimes Kalki mocked them in print. People got offended. Some of them wrote articles in print, mocking him back. It looks like they were exciting times. In the middle of all this he managed to have a wonderful literary career, wrote three famous historical novels, some social novels, and many novellas and short stories. He was also deeply engaged in literary happenings and helped in organizing many literary events and sometimes chaired them. One of the important things he did was in helping to build a memorial for the great Tamil poet Subramania Bharathi in his hometown and provide financial help for Bharathi’s family. Another thing that Kalki did which I liked very much was this. When the writer Pudumaipithan died, he left his family penniless. Pudumaipithan’s wife came to Kalki for help. Pudumaipithan was Kalki’s fiercest critic. He mocked Kalki’s stories and tried to find flaws in them and suggested that most of his stories weren’t original. But after he passed, Kalki let all that slide, and organized a funding campaign for his family. Readers sent their contributions and Kalki collected them and gave it to Pudumaipithan’s wife. She bought a house with that money and started a library there to provide her and her family a regular income. I loved that anecdote.
I also loved reading and learning about Kalki’s relationship with S.S.Vasan, how they were besties for a long time, when Kalki worked in Ananda Vikatan, and how they later fell out. The book’s description of Kalki’s friendship with Sadasivam, M.S.Subbulakshmi, Rasigamani TKC, and Rajaji were also beautifully depicted. Kalki was a blind devotee of Rajaji and I didn’t know that.
The book spine depicting a scene from Ponniyin Selvan
I discovered a lot of new Tamil writers through the book, writers who were prolific during the middle of the 20th century, but who are virtually unknown today. By pure luck, I discovered an old indie press here, which had kept some of these forgotten writers in print. Just ordered lots of books from them 😄🙈
I enjoyed reading Kalki’s biography. The effort taken to write this biography is admirable, and the things I learnt from it were fascinating. Glad I got to read it. The English translation has some extras. There is a translator’s note in which Gowri Ramnarayan describes how she came to translate her grandfather’s biography. There is also a chapter at the end in which Gowri Ramnarayan writes about her grandmother and Kalki’s wife, Rukmini Krishnamurthy. That chapter is beautiful.
Back Cover of the book depicting a scene from Kalki’s book, ‘Alai Osai’ (= ‘The Sound of the Waves’). Kalki once said that if he is told that only one of his books will survive in print and which one he’d choose to be that, he said that he’d like ‘Alai Osai’ to be that one, because according to him, that was his greatest work. He didn’t say ‘Ponniyin Selvan’, which is his magnum opus. He picked this. It makes me want to read this book soon.
Kalki died when he was just 55. That is a young age for a writer, I think. In that short time, he accomplished great things. It is so hard to believe. He came from a simple family in a village. His family were not rich. They were middle-class by village standards and poor by city standards. His early education was at the village school. His family couldn’t afford to send him to a bigger school in a bigger town. One of his aunts took him with her and put him in a school in a bigger town. But before he could graduate from high school, he decided to adopt Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent protest and left school to participate in the Freedom movement. So Kalki was not even a high school graduate. All the knowledge he had acquired was by self learning and self reading. It is amazing how someone with so less formal education accomplished so much in literature. It gives me goosebumps.
Have you read Kalki’s biography? What do you think about it?
I finished reading the fifth and final part of ‘Ponniyin Selvan‘ today. The fifth volume is twice the size of the other volumes. So in the latest English translation, they’ve split it into two parts, as ‘A Comet Falls‘ and ‘Crowning Sacrifice‘. So the latest English translation has six volumes rather than five.
‘Ponniyin Selvan’ is inspired by two ancient events in Tamil history. One is the murder of the Chola crown prince Aditha Karikalan. This continues to be an unresolved mystery till this day, and historians are still grappling with this, on who did it and why. The second event is this one. After Aditha Karikalan dies, his younger brother Arulmozhivarman is expected to become the crown prince and later the king. But Arulmozhivarman gives up the kingdom in favour of his uncle. In ancient times, when brothers and cousins killed each other in a war of succession, this kind of act was rare, almost never seen. Kalki took these two events, took other historical characters from that era, expanded the story with his own imagination, and wrote ‘Ponniyin Selvan’. Both these important historical events are covered in this fifth part.
I thought that Kalki would reveal who was the murderer of Aditha Karikalan, but Kalki being the smart guy he is, leans this way and that, makes us think one thing and then another, but finally refuses to take a stand, and backs off delicately from the question 😊
There are many beautiful scenes in the story. One of my favourites was when Princess Vanathi remembers the time when she screams in fear and a young man comes to help her and he turns out to be a mahout and he brings his elephant later to help her. But as she discovers later, he is no ordinary mahout. It was such a beautiful scene. Another of my favourite scenes was one in which there are sparks between Poonguzhali and Vanathi and they seem to hate each other and there is tension in the air, but very soon Poonguzhali is in deep danger and Vanathi puts her life at risk and saves her, and this act transforms their relationship. Another of my favourite scenes was when all our young heroes and heroines are sitting together and one of the princes’ mother sits with them and explains to them the metaphors and interpretation of some of the stories and images from mythology. That is also a very beautiful scene.
The next passage is filled with spoilers, and so please be forewarned.
After reading this fifth part, I realized that there were huge differences between the book and the second part of the movie. The first part of the movie is close to the book. But with respect to the second part of the movie, things are very different. To say that the movie makers took liberties with the plot is an understatement 😄 For example, the person who is coronated as the king in the movie is totally different from the person who becomes the king in the book! In the movie, Nandini kills herself in the end by drowning in the river. But the book gives her a more complex ending. She jumps on a horse and rides away, while her husband and her foes are watching. That scene is beautifully described by Kalki, and it was one of my favourite scenes in the book. Also the movie describes clearly how Aditha Karikalan died, but in the book the mystery stays unresolved till the end. In the book, the transformation that Poonguzhali undergoes and where she ends up in the end is unexpected, surprising and amazing. In the movie, no such thing happens. Also, the movie doesn’t have Manimekalai. She was one of my favourite characters from the book. The story in the book ends with a beautiful, heartbreaking scene involving her.
One big difference between the book and the movie was this. In the movie towards the end, there is a huge war, and some of the good guys go to the opposite side and fight against their erstwhile friends, and like in any war there is a lot of killing. I was very surprised when I discovered that there is no such war in the book! Nothing! The film scriptwriters have just imagined a full-fledged war and pulled those scenes out of thin air and tacked it at the end of the story for dramatic effect! Come on, man! Are you adapting a novel into a movie or are you writing your own story? The author Kalki would have turned in his grave if he saw this 🙈 Kalki’s family (his kids and grandkids) saw the movie and they praised it. I’m wondering whether they had any problems with such wholesale changes in the plot.
So to sum up, if you haven’t read the book, the movie is good. It is actually excellent. But if you’ve read the book, I think you’ll like the first part of the movie, but you’ll have serious problems with the second part of the movie.
I loved reading ‘Ponniyin Selvan’. The last time I read it, I was in school. I read it in a magazine at that time, where it appeared in serial form, and we used to wait eagerly every week for the next magazine issue to read the next chapter. My reading experience this time was very different, as I didn’t have to wait. But it was also intimidating and challenging, because the book was too big. The edition I read was 2123 pages long, and it is the longest book I’ve ever read. It took me nearly one-and-a-half months to read, and I had to resist many temptations to stick with it and get through it. I’m glad I finished reading it. I feel proud and accomplished. In these days of diminishing attention spans, I’m happy and glad that mine is still intact. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick the book up once more when I get older and read it again, before my time in this beautiful Earth gets over.
Have you read ‘Ponniyin Selvan’? What do you think about it? Who are your favourite characters from the book?
Have shared some of my favourite pictures from the book with a brief description of them.
Book CoversManimekalai and VandhiyadevanNandini rides awaySendhan Amuthan and PoonguzhaliVandhiyadevan, Arulmozhivarman, and VanathiVandhiyadevan saves Manimekalai from drowning
Just finished reading the fourth part of Kalki’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan‘. Kalki introduces a new character in this part, called Manimekalai. She makes a fleeting appearance in the first part, but here she has a considerable presence. There are some beautiful scenes in which she and Nandini have a wonderful conversation. The crown prince Aditha Karikalan also comes in a considerable part of the story. We also learn that the mysterious woman who lives in an island and makes sudden appearances in the story, her name is Mandakini Devi. There is also some fascinating history in this part about two kings, Valvil Ori and Adhiyaman Nedumananji. Adhiyaman Nedumananji is a famous king from ancient times. He is famous because he is mentioned in many classical Tamil poems. It was nice to read about his history.
Well, four parts done now. I’m on the home stretch now 😊 Hoping to start the last part tomorrow. It is double the size of the other parts, and so it will take some time, I think. But very excited, and looking forward to getting started.
Have shared some of my favourite pictures from the book.
ManimekalaiPoonguzhaliMandakini DeviMandakini Devi and PoonguzhaliNandini and Aditha KarikalanManimekalai plays beautiful music while Nandini, Aditha Karikalan, and Vandhiyadevan listen
Have you read ‘Ponniyin Selvan’? What do you think about it? Who are your favourite characters from the story?
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