NOVEL
Campus blues
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`The Cambridge Curry Club gives you a glimpse of a Cambridge that exists beyond scholars and celestial choirs.'
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SAUMYA BALSARI'S book The Cambridge Curry Club gives you a glimpse of a Cambridge that exists beyond scholars and celestial choirs. She takes you down to Mill Road and a charity shop called Indianeed. Rightly named, the proceeds of the shop benefit "deserving villagers in a desert region of Rajasthan in Western India". The Director on the Board of the charity is Diana Wellington-Symthe, mockingly called Lady Di by the volunteer staff Heera, Durga, Swarnakumari and Eileen. Every Thursday they work at the shop and today seems like any other day, but it does turn out calamitous from the beginning.
Coping in an alien land
Very early in the day, things go awry when the sorting bags are opened. Swarnakumari's eager fingers dipping into the bag reveal a teddy (which she assumes is a swimsuit), a blond wig, a whip and ever so tiny knickers with "Punish Me" embroidered on it. From then on the day is frantically on the downslide with odd customers, Swarna's husband dropping in, Heera's old time boyfriend, Durga's chance meeting with an attractive man, boys in disguise hiding in the shop and finally at the end of the day the death of an elderly customer and the capturing, or almost, of the Thursday thief. All the while the story keeps flitting into the personal lives of Swarna, Heera and Durga and briefly Eileen too. Three Indians and an Irish woman trying desperately to make a life for themselves in an alien land, coping with the changes and differences in culture and upbringing.
Balsari's introduction begins with the sly October wind tearing through Cambridge, "lifting the prim skirt of the Junior Bursar", scattering papers, and then through the College Backs, King's College, King's Parade, Christ College, Gonville and Caius College, Parker's Piece to ultimately seek the "homely pleasures of Mill Road". Having used the wind to introduce the reader to Mill Road, Balsari, like the wind, skims over the lives of her heroines barely ruffling the surface leaving you wanting to know more.
Balsari's writing is smooth and light rather like a freshly cooled wine. The story is interspersed with snippets and information about the University. She talks momentarily about the Formal Hall Dinners, the history of the University and the much-touted "town and gown" relationship.
Surprise end
Mill Road, where the story is set, is far from the research and learning that goes on way beyond. The reader gets a quick look at the difficulties of Indians who try to blend in with the fen countryside and also the difficulties of those who do not. She has captured well the dry English witticisms often laced with sarcasm, giving an added edge to an otherwise polite remark or statement.
The end comes upon you unsuspectingly with the thief being caught red-handed, an old lady dying on the manager's chair and the roof falling on their heads and thus forever changing the lives of the four volunteers.
This is Saumya Balsari's first book and she currently lives in Cambridge. She is a humour columnist and freelance journalist in London and is working on her second novel.
The Cambridge Curry Club, Saumya Balsari, BlackAmber Books, 2004, p.244, price not stated.
NIMI KURIAN
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