No Onions No Garlic
| No Onions Nor Garlic is a comedy/romance set amidst the caste politics of Chennai University. The title derives from a line in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (though it also refers to a “strictly vegetarian-no onions, no garlic” stipulation in a matrimonial advertisement) and the book begins with a bizarre interpretation of the Bard’s comedy, conceived and directed by the megalomaniac Professor Ram. |
| This is a man whose chief aim in life is to restore the Traditional Order of Hinduism, which may help explain why the young changeling who Titania and Oberon quarrel over in the play is eventually revealed to be Lord Krishna (complete with a soliloquy about descending in times of Adharma to protect the righteous). |
| Prof Ram strongly disapproves of the university’s Reservations Policy, which in his view “had swung too far in the pro-low-caste direction… it was snatching the curd rice and mango pickles from the mouths of twice-born Brahmin boys”. |
| A president of the Tamil Brahmin Association (or TamBrahmAss), he subscribes to the theory of reverse troddenness or “trodditude”, which states that “the so-called scheduled castes stomp with an upward motion and grind the upper castes into the stratosphere with an unprecedented gravity-defying aggression…” |
From Jai Arjun Singh’s review of Srividya Natarajan’s novel No Onions No Garlic, which appears to be a satirical mashup of Shakesperan comedy and the politics of the Tamil caste system. Sometimes, the only way to deal with the hidebound orthodox among us is to poke a little fun at them. 
Speaking of books, the big Indo-diasporic release on these shores this summer seems to have been Londonistani, by the English journalist Gautham Malkani. I read three pages of the novel, written in the patois of Sikh street toughs, and put the dang thing down. Odious, I tell you.
I have no patience for Londonistani-type novels: I could never read beyond page five of the highly-dialected cult classic Trainspotting, which many compare to Malkani’s book. Going more high-brow, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway rendered me befuddled and twisted up, and even the canonized Joyce confounded me to pieces - Finnegan’s Wake? wtf? - though his early short fiction, I will admit, is superb.
