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The meetings always take place at the Connemara Hotel. Another speciality of the club is that it has no office bearers, though S Muthiah of Madras Musings, Mrs Kumar, wife of the late Mr Kumar of the British Council, and K S Padmanabhan of East West Publishers have been among its livewires, who have made it possible for readers to meet their authors and listen to readings from their books. The question-answer sessions at the tailend of the proceedings often turn into lively, animated discussions, even a court martial of the poor author, but it is all taken in excellent spirit.
Last week's event at the Book Club featured Gurpur M Prabhu, author of 'Anita's Legacy, an Inquiry into First Cause', a most unusual novel. It is actually a serious philosophical work, raising fundamental questions about the origins of life and what happens after death, written in a fictional narrative to sustain reader interest. It deals with "physics, metaphysics, philosophy and spirituality." The author Gurpur M Prabhu who teaches computer science at Iowa University, is an alumnus of IIT Madras and a post graduate scholar from IIT Kanpur, who thereafter pursued higher studies in the US and has been teaching there for over 15 years. The son of an army officer, Major G K Prabhu, he also has a rare spiritual pedigree in that his granduncle was the head of the Ramakrishna Mission. Both father and granduncle are featured in the book, his father in the guise of a major character, while Swami Vireswarananda's translation of the Bhagavad Gita provides the inspiration for Norman Kay, who pursues the line of inquiry into the nature of the universe begun by Anita Avis, a girl with a brilliant mind beyond her years. Only after her death from leukemia at the age of sixteen does he figure out that she was a reincarnation of Hypatia of Alexandria who studied all the religions of the world and had a passionate interest in finding answers to the unknown.
I had the pleasure of reading the book afterwards. It is "a spiritual page turner", as described in a reader comment published in the book, though I find the conversations between youngsters and old people in the book a bit unreal, even admitting that the characters are unusually highly evolved. There are references in the book to Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. With a little bit of luck, 'Anita's Legacy' can become a cult book in the same tradition. V Ramnarayan
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Copyright
2008, Chennai Interactive
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The Madras Book Club is a rare association of book lovers who have been meeting regularly for many years to discuss books and related matters. For many years, it remained an extremely informal body, with an annual subscription that was not only reasonable but also optional. In effect, it meant that if you wanted to attend the monthly meetings and enjoy the hospitality of coffee and snacks without paying for the pleasure, you were free to do so. It is only recently that the club started collecting an annual subscription of Rs. 300 from all its members.
Prabhu, who describes the book as an inquiry into the question: "Why is there something and not nothing?" has an amazing gift of memory. Instead of the usual book reading, the audience was treated to a recitation of a longish passage of the book. His father, Major Prabhu was also present at the function, and both of them autographed copies for those who bought them at a special price that
evening.
