The Crow Eaters by Bapsi Sidhwa

I have a little pile of wilting books sitting on my desk that all center around the sub-continent. I'm calling it my Indian summer passive intersubjectivity book fest. I'm hoping that if I ever make it to India I can make endless literary pilgramage and reference based just on these three books. I'll get my picture taken in front of a tower of silence, sit astride the zam-zammah cannon in Lahore, and umm...donate a cow to charity.
2 of them share the characteristic of being over-written, two of them are by native Indians, two of them are from the British Raj, but none of them share all three characteristics.
godan- Premchand
the crow eaters- Bapsi Sidhwa
Kim- Rubyard Kipling
I just finished the crow eaters and I loved excusing how verbose every last page is by thinking of that documentary I watched one time on the influence of English on India and to what fanciful and prepostorous lengths they have carried the language in an effort to out-English the English. The plot was weak, the characters weren't developed but bricollaged from a thesaurus, and the dialogue was fake and dumb. But despite all that it was laugh out loud funny at points, well-written despite itself, and great to read on a service bus. Here are some quotes I liked.

Billy devoured each word. A callow-faced stripling with a straggling five-haired moustache, he believed his father's utterances to be superior even to the wisdom of Zarathustra. The young men loved best of all those occasions when there were no women around to cramp Faredoon's style. At such times Freddy would enchant them with hi candour. One evening when the women were busy preparing dinner, he confided in them.
"Yes, I've been all things to all people in my time. There was that bumptious son-of-a-bitch in Peshawar Colonel Williams. I cooed to him- salaamed so low I got a crick in my balls- buttered and marmaladed him until he was eating out of my hand. Within a year I was handling all of the traffic between Peshawar and Afghanistan.
***

To them England was a land of crowns and thrones; of tall splendidly attired, cool-eyed noblemen and imposing, fair-haired ladies gliding past in gleaming carriages; of elegant lords in tall hats and tails, strolling with languid ladies who swept spotless waterfront promenades with trailing gowns, their gestures gracious and charming, marked with an exquisite reserve. Had someone suggested to them that Englishmen, too, defecate, they may have said "Of course...they have to, I suppose" and their exhalted opinions would have been touched with doubt. But since such suggestions were not ventured, the England of their imaginings was burnished to an antiseptic gloss that had no relation to menial human toil.
***

"Button up your Cardigan!" said Billy in a fierce whisper. Tanya obediently buttoned herself up. The fluffy mohair covering her bosom and waist, if anything, accentuated her voluptuous curves. Billy was getting more and more put off by this concommitment of his wife's beauty. He wished for the tenth time her were a Mohammaden and could cover her up in a burqa. Sensible people, the Muslims, he thought.