"Brave child," Hanuman said. "Fearless." When I told Saira that he had said this, she had a question for him."
"Ask him why there are hypocrites in this world."
"Because it is hard to bear the happiness of others."
"When are we happy?"
"When we desire nothing and realize that possession is only momentary, and so are forever playing."
"What is regret?"
"To realize that one has spent one's life worrying about the future."
"What is sorrow?"
"To long for the past."
"What is the highest pleasure?"
"To hear a good story."
"Good answers, Hanuman," Saira said, and tossed up an apple which disappeared somewhere between her hand and the rafters.
That's from pages 419/420 of Vikram Chandra's first book "Red Earth and pouring rain", published by Faber and Faber (Britain) in 1995. It's really quite a - what can I say? Good? Stupendous? Unusual? Undescribable? Mixed-up? Describable-but-not-with-words? It's really quite a book. For me, an Christian Indian with an infinitisemal knowledge of my culture, it was a voyage of discovery. But it will take me a long time to come up with an adequate opinion for the last 100 pages.
It's about a monkey who's actually a reincarnation of a poet and has to, by way of a specially negotiated agreement between the Lord of Death (Yama) and the Son of the Wind (the monkey Hanuman), tell stories to stay alive. 65% of the book goes to stories of 19th century India, 33% to stories of an Indian (not Red, original) studying in the States and 2% to hilaserious (half hilarious, half serious) stories of real life. Except that real life includes discussions between three extremely holy gods about which videos to watch!
I'll certainly have to hunt for more books like this.