Dialect-schmialect, or, more words, words, words

Two weeks ago, I noted the odd speech patterns H.R.F. Keating gives the characters in his stories about Bombay police inspector Ganesh Ghote. At the same time, I noted a comment from a blogger in India that "This comic device, one of the most-admired qualities of the series abroad, has not aged well."

I am now about 270 pages into Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, and I note with interest that his characters use precisely the speech patterns by which Keating distinguishes his characters. Two of the most noticeable are a dismissive rhyming when a character is annoyed or impatient, and frequent use of the word only after the word it modifies.

Thus, a Bombay (Mumbai) constable, asked what he has found in a murder victim's purse, replies, "Lipstick-shipstick, that's all." Or a newly abstemious political candidate says: "No time now for drinking-shinking." A gangster explains his origins this: "I was born here in Mumbai, in GTB Nagar only, saab."

True, the British Keating used these linguistic devices far more frequently than the New Delhi-born, Mumbai- and Berkeley-residing Chandra. Therein, perhaps, lies the difference: For Chandra, speech patterns are one among a variety of ways to mark characters. For Keating, their frequent use can appear something like a mark of caricature. In fact, I don't think that was Keating's intention. But they do lend the stories a quaint, if not dated, touch.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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India crime fiction
Vikram Chandra
Sacred Games

Words, words, (dirty) words

I am fortunate; my edition of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games lacks the glossary that American editions of the novel are said to include. That means I have the delicious pleasure of trying to figure out the meanings of its rich vocabulary of slang and swear words from context or by resemblance to words in other languages. You'll find discussions of two of those words here and here.

I'm swearing off the unusual volume of critical discussion generated by Sacred Games, a volume that perhaps reflects the novel's 900-page bulk or the size of Chandra's advance. Before I do, though, Jerome Weeks of book/daddy, in a comment here, cites a reviewer's comment that Sacred Games is limited by "genre thinking."

My vow of critical abstinence will prevent me from reading the review until I've finished the novel. For now, though, I will say that in the person of Police Inspector Sartaj Singh, Chandra seems to be creating a richer than usual version of that genre figure, the tired, divorced, middle-aged investigator.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Crime fiction, India
Vikram Chandra
Sacred Games

Vikram Chandra

Today's mail brought my copy of Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, and today's blogging brought a raft of news about book and author, thanks to Sarah Weinman at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. I have only 898 pages to go before I finish this tale of Mumbai (Bombay) and its underworld, but I was a fan of the author before I read a word of the novel, based on his essay "The Cult of Authenticity", whose heading declares that "India’s cultural commissars worship `Indianness' instead of art."

Reviewers have noted the novel's use of slang and untranslated terms. I find that prospect highly attractive. Such use of language brings a novel alive for me, the vividness more than making up for an occasional term I might not understand. And context almost always makes the meaning clear, anyhow.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:
India crime fiction
Vikram Chandra
Sacred Games