On a Red Roll

A good thing always does its rounds. Like a feline, it will spring into action at the least expected moment. Just when I bought myself a Red handbag (A Marks & Spencers ok, of coz at a sale!) and was gifted a Red wallet to match (A Baggit one which even my Dad likes - Thank You, Devasena!) and matching Red slippers (A Kobler, gift from Shankar - Thank God for friends who indulge my Red fancy like this!) I was also gifted My Name Is Red - as in I picked it up at the all new Odyssey in Adyar but obviously a good soul paid for it! And my Red Roll continues to delight me and how...! Just when I was recommending this book to Priya, she says she's already on the 100th page! It's doing its rounds alright, all the way here in Chennai, when it began up there in Istanbul.

Orhan Pamuk has delighted me in ways more than just common. My Name is Red is one of the best works of historical fiction. With that cliche I have also pasted here Mr. Pamuk's genial photograph for those of us who might think of Orhan Pamuk as some long bearded Arab, who has reproduced a history of his clan for the rest of the world to absorb. Mr. Pamuk, as I was myself pleasantly happy to note, looks like this - and his calm smile on camera translates into some good philosophical humor in his writing as well!

With a Kurosowa-like narrative (meaning, telling the story from the each of the character's perspectives) Orhan Pamuk weaves a tale that puts medieval Istanbul in your face. Literally, this work spins a tale out of a seemingly boring field of art - minature painting. But for this book, I wonder if we would even bother about something so intricate and so intergral to Muslim culture as miniature art, which is to a large part, an important symbol of our Indian culture as well (check out any monument in Agra, not just the Taj & you will see what I mean!).

To call My Name is Read a murder mystery with a whodunnit climax is plain injustice to the extravagant canvas of the plot. To call this book as a high tribute to art, painting & painters along with highlighting the rich Muslim legacy of the Middle East is only one part of it. To call Orhan Pamuk a master story-teller, presenting us with a vivid tapestry of plots designed to accomplish a singular purpose of keeping us glued to its subject is the other part (of the adjectives we can heap on this book). And the last part of course, is that this book is so heavily and rightfully laden with such historical and cultural anecdotes and data, that our 7th standard knowledge of ancient Perisa and the Shah Rulers pale in comparison!

So is this book just a sum total of all of the above? Yes and No. The No is a compliment to Pamuk's phenomenal talent for novel writing, for a narrative that shimmers with craft and detail at every turn. For presenting a vision which even a blind man can see if this book were read out to him! The food for thought and imagination that Pamuk gives a reader; for the grey shades of the lead characters - all vying for survival, their actions motivated by either love or lust and all possible human frailities, yet each of them emerging with strong stand-points that differentiate one from the other. The characters come alive in these pages as and when you finish with their chapters each night - WOW!

The bold and brazen start of the novel itself, with a narrative from the point of view of a dying man and his dead spirit sets the tone, pace and candor of this brilliant master-piece of Middle East writing. To think that Pamuk has written this novel like a screenplay, should make it a most sought after material for the silver screen, more so for Indian filmmakers - maybe someone like Ashutosh Gowarikar, who took so much of care and effort to showcase a story out of nowhere in Jodha-Akbar - maybe he would've/should've done this instead, he still can, you know (quick, someone go and tell him)!

Orhan Pamuk conjures up images that you can smell, feel, taste and carry with you to bed. Yet there is no one place where he gets carried away himself! The elaborate paragraphs of miniature painting or the deep analysis of an artists's life, the Muslim painters and their ilk, is such a revelation of extensive research interestingly told, that the very lofty, kingly art becomes so reachable even for a commoner! And the nonchalance with which Pamuk ends this tale, the last line of the book says so much about Pamuk himself - his panache! Aah! It would be such a joy to see this tale unwind on screen too - to relish the unrequited passionate romance of Black and Shekure in the Hanged Jew's garden, to see the turmoils and travails of Olive, Stork and Butterfly, to delve into the artistic realm of their Sultan-Light of the World...! I stop.

If a translation can bring about so much excitement in me, I wonder how profoundly entertaining the original would be! And above all is the contextual use of the color Red - a subtle yet strong influence in this saga - Red - the color of life, romance, war, flourish, plenty, lust, art and more directly - Blood.

Orhan Pamuk, please take a bow.