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Cuckold Kiran Nagarkar

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Cuckold

Kiran Nagarkar

Cuckold Kiran Nagarkar The time is early 16th century. The kingdom of Mewar is at the height of its power. It is locked in war with the Sultanates of Delhi, Gujarat and Malwa. But there is another deadly battle being waged within Mewar itself. who will inherit the throne after the death of the Maharana? The course of history, not just of Mewar but of the whole of , is about to be changed forever. At the centre of Cuckold is the narrator, heir apparent of Mewar, who questions the codes, conventions and underlying assumptions of the feudal world of which he is a part, a world in which political and personal conduct are dictated by values of courage, valour and courtesy; and death is preferable to dishonour. A quintessentially Indian story, Cuckold has an immediacy and appeal that are truely universal.

Cuckold Details

Date : Published January 1st 1997 by Harper Collins Publishers ISBN : 9788172232573 Author : Kiran Nagarkar Format : Hardcover 609 pages Genre : Fiction, Cultural, India, Historical, Historical Fiction, Asian Literature, Indian Literature

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From Reader Review Cuckold for online ebook

Maura Finkelstein says

This book is incredible. At times I found the extensive descriptions of medieval Rajput warfare a bit obtuse and exhausting, but that is most likely because I was eager to get back to the sex and scandal. Go figure... Nagarkar created magic out of legend and folklore and brought to life some of the most well know historical figures in Indian history...I have always enjoyed the story of Meerabai for the obvious reasons (tough 16th century feminist and all that), but found my affections completely manipulated by Nagarkar's alternative narrative. I was sad to leave his world and return to mine...

Prajakta Shikarkhane says

What this book is not... 'A refined Mills and boon story'! Nagarkar beautifully weaves the historical context of 16th century Hindustan. Power, war, love, betrayal, morality and nuggets of philosophical debates - all make for a heady read!

Naeem says

While Ravan and Eddie and God's Little Soldier have a frenetic energy -- the former's dominant tone being humor, the latter's serious urgency, but both having both -- the prose and tone in Cuckold is sustained, tempered, and reflective.

Form follows function, or in writing one might say that form follows content. The setting is 16th century India. The book are the memoir of a young first born prince of Mewar. The Portuguese are in the background, but the book focuses on the inner workings of the palace and on the wars with neighboring states. Babur, originator of the Mughal dynasty, and his memoir, Baburnama are central to the consciousness of the young prince and to the book itself.

Its too early for me to formulate a deeper impression of this book. I will come back later in the summer for that. But it is not too early to give a few impressions.

First, and foremost, the book captured me. I was there with Maharaj Kumar: in Mewar, in the palaces, in his family life, in his head, and worried for him. The book transported me to a different time and place -- indeed a crucial time in the history of India. I have never not been interested in the history of South Asia (its "home" after all), but sometimes home is the last thing you want to study. For the first time, I thought: "MUST study this history."

Second, you cannot escape Nagarkar's philosophizing (not that I want to), since I think one of the challenges he sets up for himself in each of his books is the following: how to get at the knottiest problems of life while using simple prose, beautiful language, all contextualized in a deep narrative ("deep groove", I would say if this were music). The reader is invited to think hard with Nagarkar and his characters. The invitation is easy to accept, as is the hard thinking.

Third, three books, three different styles. That I find rather astounding. And all taking risks.

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Finally (for the moment), I want to say that this is truly an important book. I want to spell out the 17 reasons why I think this is so. But I cannot at the moment. Later perhaps. I think this one will stand the test of time as a "great" work. It changes things -- not just about what it means for something to be a novel, or a historical novel. I think it changes things about how we view the significance of Indian history itself. It is one thing to work against what some of us call Eurocentricism. Another to produce the work that makes both Eurocentricism and fighting Eurocentricism seem irrelevant. I think I want to say that this book is a congealed act -- an act of great relevance.

If you want to read a interview with Kiran Nagarkar, you can do so here: http://www.anothersubcontinent.com/kn...

Tanuj Solanki says

Dumped after 23 pages.

It wastes 23 pages actually. The setting is 16th century, and Nagarkar writes sentences like

- "I think he got the drift..." - "Must have cost you an arm and a leg." - "He had a point there..."

I mean, Mr. Nagarkar, you can't even hint at slang when you're writing Historical Fiction in a foreign language. Know that.

Akshay Dasgupta says

Okay, this was like the Indian version of 'Game of Thrones' only much shorter and cleaner. I knew from the beginning that I was going to like this book because, firstly, it is a historical fiction and secondly because it is a story of my all time favorite holiday destination - Rajasthan. There is something about Rajasthan (perhaps the rich history and heritage - as reflected in this book) that attracts me towards the place.

This book is good recollection of the splendor and might of the Mewar kingdom. Like most historical fiction books, it has information regarding wars lost and won, kings slain and kingdoms lost and annexed. However, what I most liked about this book is the bitter sweet / love hate relations between the Maharaja Kumar, The Little Saint and the Flautist. The writer has described these relationships in such a delicate and humorous manner, I could re-read the chapters over and over again.

Highly recommended for any historical fiction lover !

Madhulika Liddle says

In the early 16th century, the powerful Rajput kingdom of Mewar was ruled from Chittor, its sovereign lord the one-eyed, one-armed, battle-scarred . His heir apparent, the Maharaj Kumar, was a man history has pretty much forgotten: Bhoj Raj. But Bhoj Raj’s wife was a legend, a woman who even today is celebrated in Indian literature, in popular culture and music and religious tradition: the Bhakti poetess, Meera

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Bai. Meera Bai, so deeply devoted to the deity Krishna, that she considered herself part of him… thus making of her husband a cuckold. To be cuckolded by a god is poor consolation.

Kiran Nagarkar’s engrossing Cuckold, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award for Best Novel in English in 2000, is the story of Bhoj Raj. It is also, of course, the story—to some extent—of Meera Bai, of Rana Sanga, even of Babar, who arrived in India in 1526 and changed the politics of the land forever. But all of these are peripheral characters in Nagarkar’s book; its central character is the Maharaj Kumar, a man pulled in many directions, torn apart by love, frustration, lust, loneliness, and more.

Through chapters that alternate between a first person narrative (from the Maharaj Kumar’s point of view) and a third person narrative, Nagarkar builds up layers of relationships. Between father and sons, one favoured and spoiled, the other trying to help but constantly pushed away because of a manipulative stepmother who has an inexorable hold on the father. Between a man and the wife who tells him, on their wedding night, that she is betrothed to another. Between a man and a woman who has been both his wet nurse as well as the woman to whom he lost his virginity.

Relationships, too, between King and ministers, between rulers of different states. Between Gods and their worshippers. Between a man and his own self.

This is a very impressive book, gripping at different levels. Whether it's political intrigue, personal politics, or a man’s mad desire to somehow make his wife love him, Nagarkar weaves an intricate tale that draws you in. Unforgettable.

If there’s anything that detracts from the experience, it’s the occasional use of jarringly modern language in places. Words like TB or bloke, or idioms like Get him on the double and giving someone the third degree just don't fit in with what is otherwise mostly a rich, somewhat old-fashioned style that’s very suited to the subject. And there are the (admittedly obscure, but still) anachronisms: the frequent mentions of everything from custard apples to red chillies to corn, none of which were known in India at the time.

Despite that, however, a memorable book. Khushwant Singh regarded Cuckold as the best novel written by an Indian. I wouldn't go so far as to label it that, but it's certainly one of the most impressive novels written by an Indian in English that I've read.

Vaidya says

At some points I just wanted to throw the book out, I wanted to rail, rant and scream! Although Nagarkar excuses himself right at the beginning for the language - "an easy colloquial currency of language will make the concerns, dilemmas and predicaments of the Maharaj Kumar, Rana Sanga, and the others as real as anything we ourselves caught in", it seems too forced. It seems at many places that he's talking down to you using that most abominable of phrases "..if you will".

And then after some time, you start noticing less and less of it, not that it's not there - there is even a cricketing metaphor thrown in - just the tale he weaves is so enticing and sucks you in completely. There are points when he forgets his language and loses himself and so do you.

There is something about the way Nagarkar talks about music, about how it moves him. The seeming effortlessness of the alaap while also propounding on the difficulty of finding the soul of the Raaga, after all how difficult can it be to create your own music within a set of rules? Ah, the deceit of language. I wanted to pull out my neglected flute and play, and he almost had me convinced that it would produce only the truest

PDF File: Cuckold... 5 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... melody. One of these days, that long-neglected instrument might find its deliverance after all.

There's something about the love the Prince feels for his wife, who can only love the Blue God and the hatred he feels for the God - an all-consuming hatred, that eventually claims him completely. The more you read, the more you realise how he's one with the Blue God himself, the way they think, the way they want to conduct warfare in an era where bravery is placed at a higher premium than victory and war is sought over peace. And most importantly, the way they love one woman whom neither 'gets'.

There is something about the way he describes war, which eschews the main event, reducing it to a mere inevitability which leaves you with no illusions as to the eventual winner. It is almost like watching the Rocky movies - when the boxing comes, you know what's at stake and who's going to win. And it is in the setting up that he scores. The dilemmas, the codes, the things at stake - the things that matter, the loss of lives is always inconsequential, no?

Moushumi Ghosh says

Nagarkar stuns with this historical novel. For a long time, I did not read it being overwhelmed by the sheer size of the volume but I had been depriving myself. It is definitely Nagarkar's masterpiece. In spite of the novel being narrated from a man's perspective, the voice is still of the marginalized, something that Nagarkar excels in. The story of a man who tries to win the heart of a woman who is obsessed with a god. How does one compete with a god? While the focus may appear romantic, the novel's forays into court intrigue, statesmanship, government, and war makes the novel read partly like a thriller and partly a thesis on 15th century Rajasthan. Must read. Must read. Must read.

Abhyudaya Shrivastava says cuckold It is a 608 pages long book of historical fiction but it reads like a fast thriller. Kiran Nagarkar has no qualms about the fact that he has fictionalized the life of Bhoj Raj Singh. A guy who is very little known to history. History remembers him as the poor husband of Meera bai- the Little Saint. His marital life is far from a bliss. He falls in love with multiple women including his own wet nurse. Yes, there is incest in the history of Mewar but that is the least scandalous scandal of the book.

The cuckold is helpless only because his adversary is The Blue God- Lord Krishna himself. Then there is the war side of the novel. There are moats being dug and cannons being fired. It is all very gripping. The Battle of Khanua is the climax of the book. But in no way is it the highest peak of the novel. The battles fought at Idar, Mandu and Panipat were equally gripping.

The book is coloured in the colours of Mewar. Chittor is the center of all action for the most part. The vamps like Karmawati, the politicians like Lakshman Simhaji, the warriors like Rana Sanga complete the motley crew. The characters do seem to be a bit cardboard with Vikramaditya taking the cake as the monotonously

PDF File: Cuckold... 6 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... evil guy but that is because the canvas of the novel is too vast to focus on individual voices.

One criticism I read about the book was that it has a language that does not suit a period drama. Admittedly, it is written in simple, postmodernist prose but, I do not why that would be a problem. The purists who want to read the book in classical language might as well insist on reading it in Mewari- the language prevalent in Rajasthan.

Yes, the prose in modern English is impossible to fathom as the expressions are also anglicized but it is an interesting take. I would prefer it over a book written in English yet carrying the load of Mewari, using the local idioms and then explaining them in English. This was a much easier approach.

The book is also a political treatise. How Babur made his wars in Jihads while the secular Mewaris tried to resist the temptation of colouring the war with religion-- forms an interesting reading.

5 stars all the way.

Amarjit Sahay says

I felt depressed when (only) the last few pages in the book were left to read.I wanted the book to go on forever. I found the construction of the Maharaj kumar's personality, character and thought processes fascinating.

Similar to the Princess of Maerta, I have come across Saints who are self absorbed, create enormous disturbances in other peoples lives, are possessive and jealous, and yet leave behind an everlasting message for those whose hearts and minds are open to understanding our oneness with Nature and and the significance of the Divine in our lives.

My one question to the author is - what was the significance of the Bhootani Mata episode in this book?

This book is a masterpiece but the reader must understand the context - History of the period, Indian Spirituality, Psychology, Warfare at its best and worst, Human relationships both giving and unforgiving and their complexities as prevalent in 16th century Rajasthan.

Warwick says

We were that rarest of couples. Even after years of marriage we were madly in love. I with her and she with somebody else.

Cuckold is set in early sixteenth-century Mewar, one of the many smallish kingdoms occupying the area of what's now Rajasthan state, in northwest India. Frankly you could tell me anything about sixteenth-century Mewar and I would have no reason to disbelieve you; my complete ignorance of the period and place is one of the things that made reading this book such a fascinating experience for me. Nevertheless, within India the story being told here is familiar – it fictionalises the circumstances of Meerabai, a princess-bhakta who, after

PDF File: Cuckold... 7 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... marrying into the royal family, ignored her husband and claimed to be married to Krishna; she is still much- loved and her devotional songs and poetry much enjoyed today.

So you can think of Cuckold as a kind of Indian Wolf Hall, which is, from a narrative point of view, its contemporary. (Hey, HarperCollins, feel free to use that if you ever deign to publish the thing outside India.)

Shri Krishna Meerabai by Vishnu108 Meera playing the ektara (I think) and preparing to snog ‘The Flautist’ or ‘The Blue One’ (just two of Krishna's innumerable epithets)

Our narrator is Meera's earthly husband, the Maharaj Kumar (i.e. crown prince). He is intelligent and witty, amused, thoughtful, more sinned against than sinning – overall a very charming person to spend time with, which is of no small importance in a book of more than six hundred pages.

He is also tearing his hair out with desire for his wife, who refused him marital relations on their wedding night and has continued to do so ever since. Despite our narrative point of view, Nagarkar allows us to sympathise with The Princess, who after all has been dragged from her home and married off to someone she's never met. The final visit she makes to her maika, or maternal village, before leaving forever, is described very movingly (something that also struck me, in a completely different context, when I read The Kalevala – someone should do an anthology of this stuff):

…?he sound of the school bell and the sound of a sandstorm and of rain hissing into the sand, her aunt beating the water out of her hair with a thin towel, the bucket at the well hitting the water some hundred feet below. And the smell of the sun burning the sand, of dry kachra frying in oil and spices, the powdery, bleached smell of her father's armpit when he came back from a long day of surveying their lands, the fierce smell of the kevda leaves in their garden. All these she must etch on her memory.

Still, it's hard not to feel for our poor narrator, too, who is placed at the centre of a series of studies in sexual desire and sexual frustration running throughout the book. The passages later in the novel, where he dyes his body blue with indigo and sidles into her room playing the flute in an attempt to seduce her, manage to be sexy, funny, and unsettling all at the same time.

Cuckold interleaves these sultry scenes of palace intrigue with a parallel political narrative. Mewar is a kingdom of – that is, Hindus, with a few Jains – but they are surrounded by Muslim states, namely the kingdoms of Gujarat and Malwa and the sultanate of Delhi. Political tensions become identified with interfaith tensions, in a process that has clear parallels with later Indian history down to the present. The Maharaj Kumar worries about this a lot, and puzzles over the links between violence and religion:

Why did Mahavir, who founded Jainism, and Buddha find Hinduism inadequate and look to other ways for moksha or nirvana as Buddha would call it? Why did they reject violence so totally? Did it not amount to denying one of our deepest human impulses? Was that one of the reasons why Hinduism has reasserted itself in our land and squeezed Buddhism till there's only one drop of it left in Sri Lanka? Jainism, it is true, survives but only in a marginal way…

I compared this earlier to Wolf Hall, but it's worth saying that the approach is very different. I happen to

PDF File: Cuckold... 8 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... dislike Hilary Mantel's slavish adherence to historical fact, and so I was happy to see that Nagarkar is more concerned with his novel as fiction than as history. ‘The last thing I wanted to do was write a book of historical veracity,’ he says in his Afterword. ‘I was willing to invent geography and climate, rework the pedigrees and origins of gods and goddesses, start revolts and epidemics, improvise anecdotes and economic conditions and fiddle with dates.’ Hear, hear! Similarly, he does not try to reproduce sixteenth-century language, and happily adopts a modern idiom for the novel, which I can see has annoyed some other reviewers. Personally I thought it worked well (though one reference to ‘the time-space continuum’ did jump out).

Of more interest to me was how very Indian the narrative voice felt. It was not just the different usages I was already familiar with, like ‘quantum’ for ‘quantity’, which is so common in the papers here but hasn't been current in English English since the days of Fielding and Sterne. It was also the general garrulousness of the sentence structure, a willingness to mix metaphors, to choose exuberance over concision, to take the first half of a phrase from one source and the second half from another. (Nagarkar talks, for instance, of ‘advantages and demerits’.) This sense of changing horses in midstream extends even to tenses, sometimes with jarring effect: ‘We are face to face finally. He embraced me…’.

But most of all, my sense of pleasant dépaysement came from the huge – really huge – number of words that were completely new to me. This is something that doesn't happen to me much any more and I loved it. On page 44 alone, I had to look up ‘bajot’, ‘mandap’, ‘saat phere’, ‘odhani’, ‘siropa’ and ‘mogra’, only one of which was in the OED; and these terms are not italicised as foreign borrowings but unmarked and natural elements of Nagarkar's Indian English. To me (and I realise this is a naïve response) it was fantastically exhilarating.

This sense that there's a shared pool of insider references is also reflected in the plot. Meera herself is never referred to by name in the book, so without prior knowledge or some research you have no chance. Similarly Babur, who emerges as a major antagonist towards the end of the novel, was unknown to me, but if you have a better grasp of subcontinental history you will recognise this very famous figure as the founder of the whole Mughal dynasty. A lot of foreshadowing and dramatic irony sailed over my head.

The result was that this felt more Indian than any other Indian novel I've ever read; it seemed not to be aimed at me, and this is a feeling I enjoy and respect. Perhaps that's why it hasn't, as far as I can tell, been published outside India yet, despite how popular it was in its home market. It's a shame, because it really deserves a wider audience; everyone can enjoy the skewed love story, the politics is desperately relevant, and although Nagarkar is relating a tragedy he does it with such admirable wit and humour that it's impossible not to get behind his narrator's central, world-weary philosophical conclusion:

Pain may be the only reality but if mankind had any sense it would pursue the delusion called happiness. All the philosophers and poets who tell us that pain and suffering have a place and purpose in the cosmic order of things are welcome to them. They are frauds. We justify pain because we do not know what to make of it, nor do we have any choice but to bear it. Happiness alone can make us momentarily larger than ourselves.

Gorab Jain says

4.5/5 This review is slightly biased for I'm very much in love with the vibrant and colorful Mewar, and the premise

PDF File: Cuckold... 9 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... for this book is the story of Rajput clans of Mewar around 15th century. Brilliant composition and a compulsive page turner. Told as an autobiography of Maharaj Kumar, the eldest son of Maharana Sangram Sinha (more popularly known as Rana Sanga), this book unfolds the state of mind of the king, his way of leading and the formulation of unorthodox war strategies. While fending off the enemy forces of neighboring kingdoms of Gujarat, Malwa and Delhi, he also has to be cautious of the enemies inside having an eye on the throne. Pivoted around the fort of Chittore, there are other monumental references like Kumbhal Garh, Ranakpurji and Eklingji, and I immensely enjoyed traversing through them along the story. Touches upon the shrewd financial tactics of the Mewari Jains and Mehtas, the nature of which holds true till date. (Being a Mewari Jain, I can vouch for that!)

Preethi Venugopala says

Cuckold is a historical tome that bewitches and teleports the reader into sixteenth century Mewar, a powerful Rajput kingdom in the present day state of Rajasthan. It paints the life of Maharaj Kumar, the then heir apparent of Mewar, married and in love with his wife, the Saint Meera.

Maharaj Kumar, the narrator of the story, is the quintessential cuckold. Both his wives have lovers. One is the flautist, the omnipresent God and the other, his step-brother.

Kiran Nagarkar has done a brilliant job portraying the life of a person about whom history tells us very little. After all. history is written by the victors, and Maharaj Kumar was a failure everywhere. Even though he wins many wars, all the glory is taken away by others. His father, under the influence of his favorite wife Queen Karmavati, favors Vikramaditya, her son, to become the heir apparent of Mewar whereas it is Maharaj Kumar who deserves the throne by virtue of age, efficiency, and intelligence. Vikramaditya is spoilt, heartless and idiotic while Maharaj Kumar is portrayed as benevolent, hardworking and intelligent. He is loving, brave, more sinned against than sinning. Nagarkar portrays him as a very interesting person through the various incidents narrated in the book.

Read the detailed review here.http://www.preethivenugopala.com/2016/10/book-review-cuckold-by-kiran-nagarkar.html

Sonia Gomes says

How strange it must have been to the Crown Prince of Mewar - or to any man for that matter, when your beautiful bride, the one with the green eyes as he calls her- refuses to sleep with him on his wedding night. He is confused, sad and lonely. Things have never too easy for the Rajkumar. The Rajput Kingdom of Mewar is locked in battles with the Sultanates of Mewar, Malwa and Gujerat. Then there are the scheming wives of the Maharana, who want to oust the Rajkumar from power so that their own son can be the future Maharana. Add to this the beautiful wife, who now has a lover, he finds poems, sonnets couplets dedicated to this “lover” hidden under the low altar where she keeps her idol of Lord Krishna. Strangely, the beautiful wife with the green eyes is the much cherished daughter in law of the old Maharana. She beats him at chess, sulks when she loses, arranges parties at the palace, picnics for the benefit of the Royal House of Mewar but draws the line at conjugal relations with her husband. In fact the Rajkumar and his wife get on beautifully….but for the conjugal relations. In this book the sadness, loneliness and the bewilderment of the Rajkumar is palpable, he does realise that she is in love with Lord Krishna, but cannot reconcile to the fact. In fact he hates Lord Krishna for he is the

PDF File: Cuckold... 10 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... rival to the affections of his wife, the Rajkumar does try to take Lord Krihna's place but who can compete with a God ! This is the story of Mirabhai a saint of Lord Krishna, she has composed a lot of devotional songs called bhajans and played a one stringed instrument called the ekthara

Ashish Iyer says

This is the first historical fiction book I have read on Rajasthan. A fictionalised biography of Maharaj Kumar of whom little is known except that he was the son of the famous Rana Sangha of Mewar and the husband of Meerabai . Nagarkar has carried out a lot of research into Rajput history of those times and he sets his story against the backdrop of real events. The descriptions bring you to India in 1600. The writing is smart, fun and captivating. The author has chosen such a topic for his novel that is not very common in the history of fiction. To know the historical characters we do have to rely upon the history books or documents preserved in the libraries. That too sometimes seems boring. But Nagarkar has taken the boring and tough job and made his way to that bygone era. The novel is a work of fiction but sometimes he has taken literal liberties but that are too to suit his purpose of writing.

The story revolves around Maharaj Kumar. Married to a wife who loves someone else, he struggles to rescue Chittor from hostile elements - both internal and external. Maharaj Kumar is a brave warrior and a forward thinker who plans many grand and innovative schemes like a water and sewage system for the fort, a brilliant tactician who prefers to watch his enemy in action and then plan an attack as opposed to the straight on confrontation preferred by Rajputs of those times, who ultimately becomes a victim of his circumstances. Politics, scheming, spies, romance, affairs, eunuchs, concubines, cheating wives – everything is there in this novel. I felt transported to Kumbhalgarh and Chittorgarh and it was as if I had been there, the colours of Chittorgarh all coming alive in front of my eyes. It is an absolute page turner and is a must for people who are in love with Rajasthan and its splendour. There is a lot of research that has gone into this book and it is evident in the manner in which he describes the war strategies and the mechanism of gathering intelligence about enemy position etc. of those times. There is ample attention to detail and one feels as if one has known the characters personally for a long time.

I wish we could have more of such books which talk about the grandeur as well as the history of Rajasthan. To be honest I was looking for more of Ranga Sanga and Meera bai. And i felt drag in parts.

Interesting Read.

Poornima says

It took me about 10 days to finish a 607 pages book,which is an inordinately long time for me. I have always liked historical fiction and this book is no exception. The historical figures of Rana Sangha,Maharaj Kumar(the protagonist),Princess or Little saint more popularly known to us as ,Queen Karmavati,Babur and more are brought alive and close to us. One knows it is going to end in tragedy and that might have been one reason why I was prolonging the agony. The lives of royalty and courtiers who are forever engaged in machinations,statecraft,wars,plotting murders/poisonings makes you thankful for a normal life.

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This is one book which will be with me for a long,long time.

Arvind says

4.5/5 This book is a wonderful mix of 'Bambaiyaa' smartness, historical fiction, nihilism and philosophies, and some brilliant set-pieces. And i guess the mix is distinctly Nagarkar. The author has been bold in the manner in which he has written such a long book. There is a single thread of narration that follows the Maharaj Kumar and I could have easily been bored in the long 600+ pages, but I was not. . Secondly, The language was modern but it somehow didnt feel awkward. The lucidity meant that once it held your interest it was a pacy read. God's Little Soldier, another 600+ pages, was the first book I read by Nagarkar, and thought it had great potential but it became painfully dreary after the first 200 pages or so. Even in this book I was apprehensive that it would go the same way, but Cuckold ended up being good enough to compensate the money/time I paid for both the books. Following up Ravan & Eddie

Manu says

There are two things that troubled me when I read this book:

1) Why does Nagarkar's ability to demonstrate music's ability to transport us into an 'interstitial' space leave me cold? Let me clarify: Music transports me as well, but it is usually to a foot-stomping place (a la, pop music); I am left cold because though I yearn for the experience, I only understand it as theory. Try as I may, Indian classical music puts me to sleep - something I am ashamed of. Nagarkar's gift to me, despite my earlier denunciation of his work, is to needle me with this absence in my life - the absence of music that can move. Not with the peg of lyrics (that is how, I think, he describes lyrics - a peg to hang music on), but through itself.

2) Why is my own inner life not as voluble as that of the characters in nearly all his novels? Is it that I move through the motions of life without thinking? In my earlier reviews, I noted that Nagarkar invades the space of his own novel in a very ungainly fashion. That may still hold true (even though the forays of his own voice in this novel were a lot more structured - and consequently, mellifluous). Nevertheless, in denouncing his anti-aesthetics perhaps I was subverting my own accusations against myself; what I took to be ungainly forays might have been evidence that others think a lot more deeply than I ever can.

In any event, I do not get a sense of everyday life in his novels. The depth of thought is so great that I feel that the philosophical ground covered by his characters might have taken a few minutes or a few days at most. The reason I think so is because no one can sustain such an engagement with life over a life-time, let alone remember its lessons. For which reason time seems to remain a problem for me when I read his novels. That is not say that he fails - instead, like his needling on music, it is a call to deeper reflection.

I suppose my reaction to "Cuckold" is structured by two anti-theses, which I explain shortly. But before I do, I need to provide a short background. Whenever I come across a new book (academic or not), I make it a point to find a picture of the author (this technique, as you will see, does not work well with those whose portraits are all we have). So the anti-theses:

1) Thesis: The picture reminds me that this person, whoever s/he is, shits, pisses, loves, hates, cries, fears, etc as everyone else. For which reason, nothing this person says is inviolable - I should not be seduced into

PDF File: Cuckold... 12 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... thinking that because this is a book ("and since it is in a book it must be true") it has truth embedded in its very structure

2)Anti-thesis: Precisely because this is written by a person, whoever s/he is, who shits, pisses, loves, hates, cries, fears, etc as everyone else, I must pay heed to what is being said. It would be not the sanctity of the book that would encourage my consideration of it; the sanctity of life itself demands my engagement with it.

The problem I have with "Cuckold" - or to put it more directly, the book's greatest strength - is that it makes me acutely aware of these anti-theses.

(Neither "God's Little Solder", nor "Ravan and Eddie" manage to do this in a sustained manner... less so the latter than the former).

Manny says

I generally judge Indian authors differently from Western authors and give them more leeway. This book shook my perceptions on Indian writing and my biggest joy was that this was written by an Indian with literary flair.

This is one of the best books I have read in the recent past and like some earlier reviewers mentioned, I found it sad towards the end as I didn't want it to end.

The book was an extremely well-written historical novel portraying the memoirs of the Prince of Chittor and the husband of one of India's most favourite saints, Meera Bai. I had visited all the places mentioned 2 years ago and could literally feel as walking through the times and turmoils of the prince as he described the story.

The plot shifts from his internal issues with Meera as well as very vividly portrays the scheming political situation of the Mewar Kingdom. Historically accurate about the cultures at that time, what blew my mind was the writing. I had read other Indian novels about our history including the Moghuls one but everyone else concentrated only on a few aspects and the language structure was very modern like reading a Chetan Bhagat book.However this book felt like a modern translation of the prince's memoirs.

The book also had many symbollic moments and many philosophical discussions which represented the Prince's thoughts. These parts also made for very interesting reading since they provided a context and then hit you with very hard ideas so that it was easier to relate to them.

Do yourself a favour and read this book as soon as you can grab your hands on it.

Rhymee says

Nagarkar picks up the legend of Meera, and turns it into an analysis of a wide spectrum of complex characters, political upheaval, Rajput patriotism, Mughal ambitions and finally the huge ramifications it has on the course of a country’s history. The story told from the viewpoint of the cuckold breaks all conventions of the stereotypical hero. It allows us to explore the possibility of having a God, none other than the Flautist as a competitor.

Nagarkar takes the liberty of drawing a hero who is sensible, progressive despite facing unrequited love. Yet

PDF File: Cuckold... 13 Read and Download Ebook Cuckold... he too is a Maharaj Kumar, and his definition of love does not necessarily mean a monogamous affair. He has no qualms of have an incestuous relation with his Dai who breast fed him, and also seducing the woman who is under trial for adultery and he the presiding judge of the trial to boot.

Maharaj Kumar, despite his accurate intuitions failed to curb the power of his brother and secure the thrown for himself. One may also doubt the actual role played by him in the wars against Gujrat and Malwa. And yet Maharaj Kumar is no Othello, there are many redeemable qualities in his character. The fact that he shunned second marriage till the time it was possible for him, and even donned on the garbs of the Flautist to meet Meera on an equal footing are some of the endearing facets of his persona. The story of Maharaj Kumar raises the question of many possibilities had he succeeded to the thrown after his father. Would he have successfully conquered Delhi from Babur? Would he be a cruel heartless murderer as the wars he fought against Gujrat suggest? Wondering these possibilities one may very often forget that the character of the Maharaj Kumar one knows, is actually nothing but a figment of the writer’s imagination.

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