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Clouds
Farhad Billimoria is so looking forward to being a departed soul!
On the cusp of his forty-second birthday and his relocation to San Francisco, this suave Bombay psychotherapist makes a farewell parade around his city in the company of Zelda, his beloved vintage car. Recently divorced, Farhad has realized that he will never find love again in Bombay and must trade in his Indian life for that on another west coast on another continent. As he roves, Farhad's mind crackles with bittersweet memories, giddy dreams, dreadful puns – even a new form of therapy modeled on clouds. But is love about to bloom for Farhad in Bombay just as he has given up on the city? And if it does, will he bring to it the man that he is, or the one he wants to become?
Elsewhere in Bombay, the tribal youth Rabi finds himself cooped up as caretaker to two ailing and cranky old Brahmins, Eeja and Ooi. Rabi comes from the remote Cloud people of eastern India, a sky-watching tribe who thrill to the play of Cloudmaker, the mercurial God who drifts and muses in the skies all day long, and who have been dragged into the modern world by the takeover of their sacred mountain by a mining company. Rabi's mentor Bhagaban, a film-maker and gadfly, has taken it upon himself to lead their resistance using the tools and strategies of democracy – a project for which his parents Eeja and Ooi have little empathy. As Bhagaban directs the forward march of time and Eeja and Ooi reassert a golden Indian past, will Rabi have to relinquish the delicate self bequeathed to him by the Cloud people? Or will the two hidebound old people begin to be drawn up into the clouds instead?
The new novel by one of India’s most celebrated young writers, Clouds is a story about earth and sky, love and friendship, language and power. At its simplest, it illuminates the inner lives of half-a-dozen characters forging their own paths in India's greatest metropolis. Yet peel away the surface layers and what emerges is a vast, prismatic portrait of modern India in all its tumult and glory.
On the cusp of his forty-second birthday and his relocation to San Francisco, this suave Bombay psychotherapist makes a farewell parade around his city in the company of Zelda, his beloved vintage car. Recently divorced, Farhad has realized that he will never find love again in Bombay and must trade in his Indian life for that on another west coast on another continent. As he roves, Farhad's mind crackles with bittersweet memories, giddy dreams, dreadful puns – even a new form of therapy modeled on clouds. But is love about to bloom for Farhad in Bombay just as he has given up on the city? And if it does, will he bring to it the man that he is, or the one he wants to become?
Elsewhere in Bombay, the tribal youth Rabi finds himself cooped up as caretaker to two ailing and cranky old Brahmins, Eeja and Ooi. Rabi comes from the remote Cloud people of eastern India, a sky-watching tribe who thrill to the play of Cloudmaker, the mercurial God who drifts and muses in the skies all day long, and who have been dragged into the modern world by the takeover of their sacred mountain by a mining company. Rabi's mentor Bhagaban, a film-maker and gadfly, has taken it upon himself to lead their resistance using the tools and strategies of democracy – a project for which his parents Eeja and Ooi have little empathy. As Bhagaban directs the forward march of time and Eeja and Ooi reassert a golden Indian past, will Rabi have to relinquish the delicate self bequeathed to him by the Cloud people? Or will the two hidebound old people begin to be drawn up into the clouds instead?
The new novel by one of India’s most celebrated young writers, Clouds is a story about earth and sky, love and friendship, language and power. At its simplest, it illuminates the inner lives of half-a-dozen characters forging their own paths in India's greatest metropolis. Yet peel away the surface layers and what emerges is a vast, prismatic portrait of modern India in all its tumult and glory.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 9, 2018
12 people are currently reading
186 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 16 reviews
December 26, 2018
Mumbai is vast, with more people sailing into it than out. Chances are that two people, in separate corners of this near 3-hour wide city, have similar views, a common thread that could bind them together. Now, a mutual friend thinks that this connection can lead to a lasting bond and introduces them to each other, only to realise that the said connection was too weak to build upon.
The two stories in author Chandrahas Choudhury’s Clouds are something like these two strangers, and try as the author might, he fails to make them work. But the journey is enjoyable nonetheless.
Strangers walking together
One of the friends is the middle-aged, divorced, very Parsi, very townie, highly flawed yet immensely entertaining psychoanalyst Farhad (or Had-fur) Billimoria, just a few days short of saying goodbye to the island city to start over in San Francisco. Just as he is about to leave his past behind, he stumbles into his possible futures – Zahra Irani, who runs a yoga class in SF and Hemlata of the middle-class Borivli cliche, literature professor by profession, feminist by action and over-all the bad cop (or good, depending on whose side you are on), to Farhad’s good.
On the other hand, my brothers and sisters, is cloudperson Rabi, the ‘tribal’ of Tininadi of Orissa (a fictional town), taking care of Eeja and Ooi, Bhagaban’s (a name neatly connected to Banpur) parents, quietly listening to their casteist banter and feeling the brunt of it since Bhagaban, the filmmaker turned political crusader is fighting for the rights of his tribe the Cloud people, whose sacred mountain, like Olympus but less imaginatively christened as the Cloud Mountain, the Company is out to destroy to mine for bauxite.
By itself, each story has a right on the bookshelf. In the Romance section, you can slip Billimoria and his two women (three if you count his car, Zelda), and the class and gender roles that each embody and reject. It is twice as insightful if you have lived in Mumbai long-enough. The town versus suburbs battle plays out delightfully as Farhad’s confident, Billimoric, sometimes delusional self meets a valid opponent in Hemlata. His “superior-grade Billimorism” realises it is not so superior after all. His character lives in a bubble, and both Zahra and Hemlata break it, so that by the end, he learns to take a step back and look at himself in new light, giving Bombay the same chance.
In the Fantasy/Social Fiction/Literary Fiction sections is the story of the Cloud people, a beautifully constructed mythology of a tribe through which Choudhury explores what it means to be a tribal and carry the responsibility of that identity. It is the most original thing I have read in a while. Intertwined with Rabi’s own journey to Mumbai, his fraternal relationship with Bhagaban, his servility towards the ‘upper-caste’ Eeja and Ooi, the whole track shines through.
Farhad’s Cloud Theory, in comparison, comes across as a simplistic understanding of a larger, more ancient truth of the Cloud people.
Style and substance
The writing is delightful, full of wordplay and individual voices, even though they are not always consistent. Like when Rabi says that Bhagaban uses words like cunt very frequently, whereas it actually appears in Bhai’s speech just once – right after Rabi makes that comment, as if to prove the point.
It’s a dialogue-dependent narrative style, and even Choudhury doesn’t get all the urban lingo right. Like when Zahra tells Farhad, “I saw your birthday on your profile page on Facebook.” Who talks like that?
However, he does get the casual awkwardness of first dates and the pseudo-philosophical tone strangers take with each other on point.
Because it takes so many themes and tries to put them in 300 pages, the book has to use stereotypes, and does not always get a chance to look beyond them, even though there are some wonderful socio-political points it makes, all of which needed a slightly deeper looking-into. Take this one for example:
It is not enough to call you tribals and stop there, as the government in the capital is doing. Indeed, the very word tribal is a government and a state word! After a point, the word does not reveal the kind of people you are but masks it.
And that loose connection between the two stories never stops becoming a problem. If you look hard, you will find that besides the focus on clouds, there are two ways the stories connect. One, in the names of Bhagaban’s films, titled The Betrayal of Jagannath, The Sounds of Family Life, My Husband is a Stranger to Me, which could very well be the story of Eeja and Ooi, Rabi’s life with the two and Hemlata’s autobiography. Second is in Rabi and Farhad, as characters that in their coming into and going out of the city of Bombay best represent the transience, or cloud-ness of city souls.
At the end, this disconnectedness can be forgiven. If nothing, I will tear up the individual chapters and re-bind them as two separate books!
Favourite Quote:
One cries so that the thread of compassion that binds man to the living beings around him never breaks. Because when man loses that invisible thread, he becomes less, and not more, of a man. In my village, when older people see the crier crying, they are stirred to tears themselves, or they remember a time when they would have been moved and cry- sometimes for the loss of their compassion. And in this way, their hearts can never be hardened for good.
Recommended Reading For: Anyone above 14, looking for a light read or looking for a good original mythology. Get a reading partner, read alternate chapters and maybe you won’t mind this packaging too much.
Final Verdict: 3.5/5. It’s a good book to spend money on but only one half is worth keeping on your bookshelf. Half a point for the book cover, a truly fun, imaginative work of art. You can buy the book here.
The two stories in author Chandrahas Choudhury’s Clouds are something like these two strangers, and try as the author might, he fails to make them work. But the journey is enjoyable nonetheless.
Strangers walking together
One of the friends is the middle-aged, divorced, very Parsi, very townie, highly flawed yet immensely entertaining psychoanalyst Farhad (or Had-fur) Billimoria, just a few days short of saying goodbye to the island city to start over in San Francisco. Just as he is about to leave his past behind, he stumbles into his possible futures – Zahra Irani, who runs a yoga class in SF and Hemlata of the middle-class Borivli cliche, literature professor by profession, feminist by action and over-all the bad cop (or good, depending on whose side you are on), to Farhad’s good.
On the other hand, my brothers and sisters, is cloudperson Rabi, the ‘tribal’ of Tininadi of Orissa (a fictional town), taking care of Eeja and Ooi, Bhagaban’s (a name neatly connected to Banpur) parents, quietly listening to their casteist banter and feeling the brunt of it since Bhagaban, the filmmaker turned political crusader is fighting for the rights of his tribe the Cloud people, whose sacred mountain, like Olympus but less imaginatively christened as the Cloud Mountain, the Company is out to destroy to mine for bauxite.
By itself, each story has a right on the bookshelf. In the Romance section, you can slip Billimoria and his two women (three if you count his car, Zelda), and the class and gender roles that each embody and reject. It is twice as insightful if you have lived in Mumbai long-enough. The town versus suburbs battle plays out delightfully as Farhad’s confident, Billimoric, sometimes delusional self meets a valid opponent in Hemlata. His “superior-grade Billimorism” realises it is not so superior after all. His character lives in a bubble, and both Zahra and Hemlata break it, so that by the end, he learns to take a step back and look at himself in new light, giving Bombay the same chance.
In the Fantasy/Social Fiction/Literary Fiction sections is the story of the Cloud people, a beautifully constructed mythology of a tribe through which Choudhury explores what it means to be a tribal and carry the responsibility of that identity. It is the most original thing I have read in a while. Intertwined with Rabi’s own journey to Mumbai, his fraternal relationship with Bhagaban, his servility towards the ‘upper-caste’ Eeja and Ooi, the whole track shines through.
Farhad’s Cloud Theory, in comparison, comes across as a simplistic understanding of a larger, more ancient truth of the Cloud people.
Style and substance
The writing is delightful, full of wordplay and individual voices, even though they are not always consistent. Like when Rabi says that Bhagaban uses words like cunt very frequently, whereas it actually appears in Bhai’s speech just once – right after Rabi makes that comment, as if to prove the point.
It’s a dialogue-dependent narrative style, and even Choudhury doesn’t get all the urban lingo right. Like when Zahra tells Farhad, “I saw your birthday on your profile page on Facebook.” Who talks like that?
However, he does get the casual awkwardness of first dates and the pseudo-philosophical tone strangers take with each other on point.
Because it takes so many themes and tries to put them in 300 pages, the book has to use stereotypes, and does not always get a chance to look beyond them, even though there are some wonderful socio-political points it makes, all of which needed a slightly deeper looking-into. Take this one for example:
It is not enough to call you tribals and stop there, as the government in the capital is doing. Indeed, the very word tribal is a government and a state word! After a point, the word does not reveal the kind of people you are but masks it.
And that loose connection between the two stories never stops becoming a problem. If you look hard, you will find that besides the focus on clouds, there are two ways the stories connect. One, in the names of Bhagaban’s films, titled The Betrayal of Jagannath, The Sounds of Family Life, My Husband is a Stranger to Me, which could very well be the story of Eeja and Ooi, Rabi’s life with the two and Hemlata’s autobiography. Second is in Rabi and Farhad, as characters that in their coming into and going out of the city of Bombay best represent the transience, or cloud-ness of city souls.
At the end, this disconnectedness can be forgiven. If nothing, I will tear up the individual chapters and re-bind them as two separate books!
Favourite Quote:
One cries so that the thread of compassion that binds man to the living beings around him never breaks. Because when man loses that invisible thread, he becomes less, and not more, of a man. In my village, when older people see the crier crying, they are stirred to tears themselves, or they remember a time when they would have been moved and cry- sometimes for the loss of their compassion. And in this way, their hearts can never be hardened for good.
Recommended Reading For: Anyone above 14, looking for a light read or looking for a good original mythology. Get a reading partner, read alternate chapters and maybe you won’t mind this packaging too much.
Final Verdict: 3.5/5. It’s a good book to spend money on but only one half is worth keeping on your bookshelf. Half a point for the book cover, a truly fun, imaginative work of art. You can buy the book here.
February 15, 2018
CLOUDS, Chandrahas Choudhury’s second fiction, has come out a good nine years after his first novel, ARZEE THE DWARF. Why such a long gap, especially, when the earlier one won so much accolade and awards? Well, you can’t question an author’s moods. But I know one thing, he has been at it ever since I came across him – 2013. It appeared he had completed it then, and I even read a chapter of the book. (That chapter has now gone to the back seat, much transformed.) It takes that long to come out with a literary masterpiece. I must dare to predict here, that CLOUDS is well on its way to grab the Man Booker. I would be surprised if it doesn’t get into the shortlist, at least.
See full review on my Blog:
cdrsnmohanty.wixsite.com/surendra-nat...
See full review on my Blog:
cdrsnmohanty.wixsite.com/surendra-nat...
February 13, 2018
It's great to discover a writer in whom one can get lost. Sometimes whimsical, sometimes with thought-provoking lines, Clouds by Chandrahas Choudhury is fun and quirky and philosophical.
March 22, 2024
In his characteristically witty and descriptive writing, the author tells two parallel stories set in Bombay. The thoughts and people that weave in and out of their lives reveal dimensions of a rapidly changing India, and yet one that is very much still set in its own ways.
November 13, 2018
Mumbai is vast, with more people sailing into it than out. Chances are that two people, in separate corners of this near 3-hour wide city, have similar views, a common thread that could bind them together. Now, a mutual friend thinks that this connection can lead to a lasting bond and introduces them to each other, only to realise that the said connection was too weak to build upon.
The two stories in author Chandrahas Choudhury’s Clouds are something like these two strangers, and try as the author might, he fails to make them work. But the journey is enjoyable nonetheless.
Strangers walking together
One of the friends is the middle-aged, divorced, very Parsi, very townie, highly flawed yet immensely entertaining psychoanalyst Farhad (or Had-fur) Billimoria, just a few days short of saying goodbye to the island city to start over in San Francisco. Just as he is about to leave his past behind, he stumbles into his possible futures – Zahra Irani, who runs a yoga class in SF and Hemlata of the middle-class Borivli cliche, literature professor by profession, feminist by action and over-all the bad cop (or good, depending on whose side you are on), to Farhad’s good.
On the other hand, my brothers and sisters, is cloudperson Rabi, the ‘tribal’ of Tininadi of Orissa (a fictional town), taking care of Eeja and Ooi, Bhagaban’s (a name neatly connected to Banpur) parents, quietly listening to their casteist banter and feeling the brunt of it since Bhagaban, the filmmaker turned political crusader is fighting for the rights of his tribe the Cloud people, whose sacred mountain, like Olympus but less imaginatively christened as the Cloud Mountain, the Company is out to destroy to mine for bauxite.
By itself, each story has a right on the bookshelf. In the Romance section, you can slip Billimoria and his two women (three if you count his car, Zelda), and the class and gender roles that each embody and reject. It is twice as insightful if you have lived in Mumbai long-enough. The town versus suburbs battle plays out delightfully as Farhad’s confident, Billimoric, sometimes delusional self meets a valid opponent in Hemlata. His “superior-grade Billimorism” realises it is not so superior after all. His character lives in a bubble, and both Zahra and Hemlata break it, so that by the end, he learns to take a step back and look at himself in new light, giving Bombay the same chance.
In the Fantasy/Social Fiction/Literary Fiction sections is the story of the Cloud people, a beautifully constructed mythology of a tribe through which Choudhury explores what it means to be a tribal and carry the responsibility of that identity. It is the most original thing I have read in a while. Intertwined with Rabi’s own journey to Mumbai, his fraternal relationship with Bhagaban, his servility towards the ‘upper-caste’ Eeja and Ooi, the whole track shines through.
Farhad’s Cloud Theory, in comparison, comes across as a simplistic understanding of a larger, more ancient truth of the Cloud people.
Style and substance
The writing is delightful, full of wordplay and individual voices, even though they are not always consistent. Like when Rabi says that Bhagaban uses words like cunt very frequently, whereas it actually appears in Bhai’s speech just once – right after Rabi makes that comment, as if to prove the point.
It’s a dialogue-dependent narrative style, and even Choudhury doesn’t get all the urban lingo right. Like when Zahra tells Farhad, “I saw your birthday on your profile page on Facebook.” Who talks like that?
However, he does get the casual awkwardness of first dates and the pseudo-philosophical tone strangers take with each other on point.
Because it takes so many themes and tries to put them in 300 pages, the book has to use stereotypes, and does not always get a chance to look beyond them, even though there are some wonderful socio-political points it makes, all of which needed a slightly deeper looking-into. Take this one for example:
It is not enough to call you tribals and stop there, as the government in the capital is doing. Indeed, the very word tribal is a government and a state word! After a point, the word does not reveal the kind of people you are but masks it.
And that loose connection between the two stories never stops becoming a problem. If you look hard, you will find that besides the focus on clouds, there are two ways the stories connect. One, in the names of Bhagaban’s films, titled The Betrayal of Jagannath, The Sounds of Family Life, My Husband is a Stranger to Me, which could very well be the story of Eeja and Ooi, Rabi’s life with the two and Hemlata’s autobiography. Second is in Rabi and Farhad, as characters that in their coming into and going out of the city of Bombay best represent the transience, or cloud-ness of city souls.
At the end, this disconnectedness can be forgiven. If nothing, I will tear up the individual chapters and re-bind them as two separate books!
The two stories in author Chandrahas Choudhury’s Clouds are something like these two strangers, and try as the author might, he fails to make them work. But the journey is enjoyable nonetheless.
Strangers walking together
One of the friends is the middle-aged, divorced, very Parsi, very townie, highly flawed yet immensely entertaining psychoanalyst Farhad (or Had-fur) Billimoria, just a few days short of saying goodbye to the island city to start over in San Francisco. Just as he is about to leave his past behind, he stumbles into his possible futures – Zahra Irani, who runs a yoga class in SF and Hemlata of the middle-class Borivli cliche, literature professor by profession, feminist by action and over-all the bad cop (or good, depending on whose side you are on), to Farhad’s good.
On the other hand, my brothers and sisters, is cloudperson Rabi, the ‘tribal’ of Tininadi of Orissa (a fictional town), taking care of Eeja and Ooi, Bhagaban’s (a name neatly connected to Banpur) parents, quietly listening to their casteist banter and feeling the brunt of it since Bhagaban, the filmmaker turned political crusader is fighting for the rights of his tribe the Cloud people, whose sacred mountain, like Olympus but less imaginatively christened as the Cloud Mountain, the Company is out to destroy to mine for bauxite.
By itself, each story has a right on the bookshelf. In the Romance section, you can slip Billimoria and his two women (three if you count his car, Zelda), and the class and gender roles that each embody and reject. It is twice as insightful if you have lived in Mumbai long-enough. The town versus suburbs battle plays out delightfully as Farhad’s confident, Billimoric, sometimes delusional self meets a valid opponent in Hemlata. His “superior-grade Billimorism” realises it is not so superior after all. His character lives in a bubble, and both Zahra and Hemlata break it, so that by the end, he learns to take a step back and look at himself in new light, giving Bombay the same chance.
In the Fantasy/Social Fiction/Literary Fiction sections is the story of the Cloud people, a beautifully constructed mythology of a tribe through which Choudhury explores what it means to be a tribal and carry the responsibility of that identity. It is the most original thing I have read in a while. Intertwined with Rabi’s own journey to Mumbai, his fraternal relationship with Bhagaban, his servility towards the ‘upper-caste’ Eeja and Ooi, the whole track shines through.
Farhad’s Cloud Theory, in comparison, comes across as a simplistic understanding of a larger, more ancient truth of the Cloud people.
Style and substance
The writing is delightful, full of wordplay and individual voices, even though they are not always consistent. Like when Rabi says that Bhagaban uses words like cunt very frequently, whereas it actually appears in Bhai’s speech just once – right after Rabi makes that comment, as if to prove the point.
It’s a dialogue-dependent narrative style, and even Choudhury doesn’t get all the urban lingo right. Like when Zahra tells Farhad, “I saw your birthday on your profile page on Facebook.” Who talks like that?
However, he does get the casual awkwardness of first dates and the pseudo-philosophical tone strangers take with each other on point.
Because it takes so many themes and tries to put them in 300 pages, the book has to use stereotypes, and does not always get a chance to look beyond them, even though there are some wonderful socio-political points it makes, all of which needed a slightly deeper looking-into. Take this one for example:
It is not enough to call you tribals and stop there, as the government in the capital is doing. Indeed, the very word tribal is a government and a state word! After a point, the word does not reveal the kind of people you are but masks it.
And that loose connection between the two stories never stops becoming a problem. If you look hard, you will find that besides the focus on clouds, there are two ways the stories connect. One, in the names of Bhagaban’s films, titled The Betrayal of Jagannath, The Sounds of Family Life, My Husband is a Stranger to Me, which could very well be the story of Eeja and Ooi, Rabi’s life with the two and Hemlata’s autobiography. Second is in Rabi and Farhad, as characters that in their coming into and going out of the city of Bombay best represent the transience, or cloud-ness of city souls.
At the end, this disconnectedness can be forgiven. If nothing, I will tear up the individual chapters and re-bind them as two separate books!
August 15, 2020
It is rare that I rate a book at one star, mainly as I try to select those books which will appeal to me based upon plot summary or literary reviews. However Clouds, by Chandrahaas Choudhury, with its two story lines which never intersect, while promising an innovative approach delivers a rather dull smug and rambling pair of narratives which are neither lyrical nor compelling. The somewhat smug and pedantic style is patronizing towards tribal communities, women, and a variety of Indian communities while purporting to do the opposite. Sprinkled with real life personalities from Amitav Ghosh to Narendra Modi, it morally relativistic perspective offers nothing new. While Choudhury may have real talent he would benefit from more focus and sketching characters with depth to avoid the cartoonish caricatures he has created in this insipid book.
July 27, 2018
Clouds is two parallel stories woven into one novel. The first is Dr. Farhad Billmoria: a Parsi psychotherapist who discovers new love and a fresh lease on life days before he is to part from San Francisco. The second is about an Odia tribal youth named Rabi who has traveled to Mumbai with his friend’s parents Eeja and Ooi to look after them while Eeja is unwell and his friend Bhagaban fights a local election in Odisha.
The tribe Rabi comes from worships a God called the Cloudmaker - the one who creates the clouds. Farhan contemplates that clouds are like thoughts and thinks of how the Mumbai clouds will compare to those in California.
There are several things I liked about this book. As someone who is half Odia I relished the opportunity to read about Odisha and it’s tribal population, and the cultural gulf between East and West of the country and even between Hindu and Adivasi.
The theme of home, belonging and identity is very prominent in these stories. Farhad is done with Mumbai, with Parsi community, though he briefly explores it again. Eeja, Rabi and Ooi find Mumbai to be a strange place and yearn for their homelands in Bhubaneswar and Tininadi. But ultimately all find peace in the places they are and the concept of being present is key to this.
Choudhury’s writing is funny, witty and light, yet possesses a charm that makes you what to drone in his language. I enjoy the quality of his prose. However though all the elements are there: compelling characters, intelligent and skilful writing and beautiful metaphors and messages of Home and belonging, somehow the whole thing was too fragmented to hold together in my mind. I enjoyed the book but felt there was something missing, something I cannot articulate.
That said Clouds is a light read and worth experiencing Choudhury’s prose. I know I will definitely be reading more of this author in the near future. Happy reading!
The tribe Rabi comes from worships a God called the Cloudmaker - the one who creates the clouds. Farhan contemplates that clouds are like thoughts and thinks of how the Mumbai clouds will compare to those in California.
There are several things I liked about this book. As someone who is half Odia I relished the opportunity to read about Odisha and it’s tribal population, and the cultural gulf between East and West of the country and even between Hindu and Adivasi.
The theme of home, belonging and identity is very prominent in these stories. Farhad is done with Mumbai, with Parsi community, though he briefly explores it again. Eeja, Rabi and Ooi find Mumbai to be a strange place and yearn for their homelands in Bhubaneswar and Tininadi. But ultimately all find peace in the places they are and the concept of being present is key to this.
Choudhury’s writing is funny, witty and light, yet possesses a charm that makes you what to drone in his language. I enjoy the quality of his prose. However though all the elements are there: compelling characters, intelligent and skilful writing and beautiful metaphors and messages of Home and belonging, somehow the whole thing was too fragmented to hold together in my mind. I enjoyed the book but felt there was something missing, something I cannot articulate.
That said Clouds is a light read and worth experiencing Choudhury’s prose. I know I will definitely be reading more of this author in the near future. Happy reading!
July 8, 2024
This book was pressed upon me by someone I both like and respect. I thought that he had read it and liked it, and so I persevered with this book till the end, thinking I would like it at some point.
Alas, Dear Reader, I must report that I still did not like the book. (And the fact that I have still given it three stars should tell you never to take my ratings seriously, for I am clearly too generous with my stars.) When I finally returned the book to the lender and shamefully confessed that I had not liked the book (for my esteem for this person is so high that I thought that the blame must be with me rather than the book), he told me that he had not read the book, but had still thought I would like it! So much for that.
Why did I not like the book? It's quite simple - Clouds feels like two different novellas combined to make one book.
The first novella, which somehow feels more concrete and real compared to the second one, features Dr Farhad Billimoria, divorced psychiatrist, skeptical Parsi, soon to be ex-Mumbaikar. We meet him a few days before he is to 'escape' Mumbai and move to San Francisco. It feels like fate to him when he meets Zahra Irani, a fellow Parsi of the right age who is also based in San Francisco, and who seems interested in him! Coincidentally he also runs into another lady, Hemlata, who is very interesting, though he has his eyes firmly set on Zahra and SF.
The second novella is about Rabi, a 'tribal' boy from Orissa who is in Mumbai to take care of an elderly couple, parents of his close friend, Baghaban. Rabi is one of the Cloud People, who worship the Cloud Mountain. The Cloud Mountain is under threat from mining companies, and Baghaban is fighting the assembly elections to help the Cloud People protect their deity.
The two different storylines come at the reader in alternate chapters, and it's a jolt each time the chapter changes, because you have to context switch. I kept expecting the characters to meet each other at some point, because Dr Billimoria keeps roaming (and romancing) all over Mumbai, but Rabi never steps out of his apartment and so the twain never meet (neither the characters nor the plotlines).
The three stars I did give are largely for the lovely writing. Mr Choudhury keeps you enchanted with his prose, even though at least on the Rabi side the plot does not move. I also liked the lovely mythology he has created for the Cloud People. And the last chapter features some scintillating verbal dueling between Dr Billimoria and Hemlata, so the book ends on a high note.
Now if only the author had decided to just stick to one novel.
Alas, Dear Reader, I must report that I still did not like the book. (And the fact that I have still given it three stars should tell you never to take my ratings seriously, for I am clearly too generous with my stars.) When I finally returned the book to the lender and shamefully confessed that I had not liked the book (for my esteem for this person is so high that I thought that the blame must be with me rather than the book), he told me that he had not read the book, but had still thought I would like it! So much for that.
Why did I not like the book? It's quite simple - Clouds feels like two different novellas combined to make one book.
The first novella, which somehow feels more concrete and real compared to the second one, features Dr Farhad Billimoria, divorced psychiatrist, skeptical Parsi, soon to be ex-Mumbaikar. We meet him a few days before he is to 'escape' Mumbai and move to San Francisco. It feels like fate to him when he meets Zahra Irani, a fellow Parsi of the right age who is also based in San Francisco, and who seems interested in him! Coincidentally he also runs into another lady, Hemlata, who is very interesting, though he has his eyes firmly set on Zahra and SF.
The second novella is about Rabi, a 'tribal' boy from Orissa who is in Mumbai to take care of an elderly couple, parents of his close friend, Baghaban. Rabi is one of the Cloud People, who worship the Cloud Mountain. The Cloud Mountain is under threat from mining companies, and Baghaban is fighting the assembly elections to help the Cloud People protect their deity.
The two different storylines come at the reader in alternate chapters, and it's a jolt each time the chapter changes, because you have to context switch. I kept expecting the characters to meet each other at some point, because Dr Billimoria keeps roaming (and romancing) all over Mumbai, but Rabi never steps out of his apartment and so the twain never meet (neither the characters nor the plotlines).
The three stars I did give are largely for the lovely writing. Mr Choudhury keeps you enchanted with his prose, even though at least on the Rabi side the plot does not move. I also liked the lovely mythology he has created for the Cloud People. And the last chapter features some scintillating verbal dueling between Dr Billimoria and Hemlata, so the book ends on a high note.
Now if only the author had decided to just stick to one novel.
September 25, 2019
Bursting with the most delightful wordgames, bad puns and jokes, the opening pages of this book were a cracker of a read. The novel slows down a bit in the middle. But the ending is so thematically beautifully, with so many motifs and images tying up in a perfect little intellectual knot, that I left with stars in my eyes, and clouds on my mind. For example, trace the word "man" in the last chapter.
July 2, 2018
One of the best reads of 2018. To say that the chemistry between Dr. Farhad Billimoria and Hemlata is sparkling is an understatement! And the second narrative - of the people who worship the cloudmaker is an enlightening read. However, would have loved it if there were two different books instead of one, thus doing justice to each of the narratives in the book.
June 16, 2018
No way am I forgetting this one anytime soon. And a short few paragraphs here will not do the book justice. Take a look at my blog for a full review.
http://urbiblogs.blogspot.com/2018/06...
http://urbiblogs.blogspot.com/2018/06...
January 6, 2019
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. 2 independent but parallel stories. And after a long time have I come across such a strong female character in Indian literature.
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September 26, 2019Certainly not an effortless read but it does get better/easier.
December 16, 2022
Loved the way the stories of Farhad and Rabi unfold.
February 26, 2020
More like a 4.5. This book is incredibly well written. It consists of two parallel plots which weirdly don't have much in common. There are some incredibly provocative ideas about acceptance and tolerance (or lack thereof) of cultures different from your own, about feminism through an Indian lens and about religion. The use of real places in Mumbai (sometimes real people) gives this fictional book an air of reality and relatability.
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