Banker-turned-novelist Sarita Mandanna‘s debut novel Tiger Hills has been received, reviewed and written about with the kind of unquestioning glee that has erased the difference between journalism and public relations.
The latest issue of Tehelka gingerly broaches Mandanna’s possible source of inspiration, surgeon-cum-writer Kavery Nambisan‘s 1996 novel The Scent of Pepper, without mentioning the P-word.
Chapter 12, Kavery Nambisan: Boju danced “matching his intricate footwork with the other dancers; in ever-decreasing circles, he moved to the beat of drums, striking his cane cluster with its tiny bells… the Pariakali, in which the opponents strike each other with canes, but never above the waist. The sport at times is used to settle feuds between the villages…”
Chapter 17, Sarita Mandanna: Machu danced “moving in intricate, ever-decreasing circles to the steady beat of the drums… the bells at the ends jingled softly as the canes swooped and fell… the paria kali… had been tamed now into a game contested during Puthari and used occasionally by the village elders as a means of settling disputes: each contestant… was allowed to strike his opponent only below the shins.”
Read the full article: Hunting the spoor of tiger hills
Also read: A small step for Robin Utthappa, a giant leap for…
Tags: Churumuri, Kavery Nambisan, Sans Serif, Sarita Mandanna, The Scent of Pepper, Tiger Hills
25 August 2010 at 10:25 am
Wonder why media loves Sarita so much that it overlooks P thing.
25 August 2010 at 4:48 pm
Great, both titles are published by Penquin India/Pearson Group, their asses are saved!
Any way, don’t think Kavery Nambisan would waste time in suing for plagiarism.
Codava National Council had almost declared Ms Mandanna as the Rashtrakavi of their cherished dream of Codavaland! :D
Penguin can also put a mug of Ms Mandanna and her book and get her to endorse their thesauruses.
26 August 2010 at 9:22 am
The India today book review dose not seem to be in good light ..for this Codava book !! factual errors they quote !!
27 August 2010 at 9:56 am
Saritha should be caned! Twenty strokes on the ass for plagiarism–pure and simple!
28 August 2010 at 9:27 am
OOh! this is moving from being interested in SM – Sarita Mandanna to S&M – what with the caning and all! C’mon Doddi, Whip it Babe!! You neeed a cowboy in your life!!!!:-)
5 September 2010 at 7:40 pm
To accuse Sarita Mandanna of plagiarism is to reveal one’s ignorance about literary works. Most of the comments are sadistic, uncharitable and in poor taste. I do not wish to get into any arguments with these self-proclaimed geniuses including the Tehelka reporter who is obsessed with using investigative journalism mode for literary analysis. The fact of the matter is a certain mode of Kodava dance, a ver simple one at that, is described by both the novelists in a very similar fashion. How can they be different? Will the geniuses with “canes and whips” enlighten all of us regarding this? Kaveri Nambisan is much more elaborate in her description of Kodava rituals and festivals unlike Saita Mndanna who is more of a minimalist, given her confidence and self assurance. While the former employs the documentary mode, the later is extremely selective in her representation of Kodava culture.
7 September 2010 at 12:12 pm
I am just half way into Tiger Hills by Sarita Mandanna and can’t just believe how easily she has created an entire world for her character within the pages
13 September 2010 at 8:05 pm
I agree with Nerd. I’m almost through reading Tiger Hills and I found this book really hard to put down. I’ve had a few friends recommend this book as a must read and I agree with them – this book is excellent. I hope there’s more from the author. While ‘googling’ the author I came across this silly post. I’ve also read Kaveri nambisan’s book and I will say that both books are very different.
14 September 2010 at 3:49 pm
Please read the comments in Love of the land published in Business Standard on September 11th by Rrishi Raote. And there are more reviews of this genre in Livemint (Tedious star-crossed love), IBN Live (Tiger Hills: Explore the appeal of the kitsch), Mumbai Boss, Outlook (Up the Ulna) and many more. The problem is not necessarily with Ms Mandanna…the publishers – Penguin ought to take responsibility for what has happened.
In addition to what has been mentioned by Tehelka and the descriptions of the landscape and more from the gazetteer (Business Standard) in both books, there are central characters who cut up their wedding sarees for sons who have the role of a prince/king in a fancy dress competition/school play. Both books deal with the same time period in Coorg, the westernisation of the local society, the nationalist movement, a white woman falling in love with a Coorg. Here are more specific examples:
Subbu in Scent of Pepper (SoP) leads in Kabaddi, hockey,is the best football player and goes to watch a cockfight. Appu in Tiger Hills (TH) is best at Tennis, centre forward in hockey, etc,etc and arranges an illicit cockfight for his schoolmates. Clara Fox in SoP is enchanted by a description of Coorg given to her by an elderly woman, Lady Feodara, she nurses in England. She marries her grandson and comes to Coorg, only to become quickly disenchanted. She falls in love with a coorg vet. Cathereine Burnett in TH is enchanted by Edward, her fiance’s description of Coorg, but is quickly bored when she goes to live there and has an affair with Appu. Subbu joins the army and resents polishing buttons and being a batman to a senior officer. Machu does the same!! Now – that’s a very “receptive imagination” or dare I say the collective consciousness of Kavery Nambisan and Sarita Mandanna are remarkably similar – possibly because both are Coorgs.
While I agree with Witty Nick that Kavery Nambisan need not waste time in suing for plagiarism, what on earth were the editors doing in Penguin. It sends a very WRONG message to young writers at large that people can get away with this behaviour. Or, is Penguin exerting pressure because a new Nambisan novel alongwith a new edition of SoP (see Tehelka’s review) will be released soon. Witty Nick is probably right again – “Great, both titles are published by Penquin India/Pearson Group, their asses are saved!”
Finally, a word of unsolicited advice for Belliappa – Tehelka is noted for their journalism and actually have a great reputation in supporting the cause of Arts and Literature. The comments on confidence and self assurance are completely out of place – for someone who keeps reiterating that the community is small and one ought to be sensitive – what on earth is the reference on Page 420…” At least that KCIO fellow, that Kipper Cariappa chappie was not here this evening. He was in Coorg for a month’s holiday, and Appu kept running into him at the Club, him and his blasted Staff-College-graduate, army-man, KCIO stuffed-shirtedness”. Any Coorg would know who Kipper Cariappa was.
As for the quality of the book in terms of being a literary work – the reviewers have done a good job perhaps best captured in the livemint title – Tedious star-crossed love or for that matter in IBNlive.com’s Explore the appeal of kitsch.
The onus really rests on Penguin to preserve the integrity of what gets published. Their comments published in Business Standard are shocking and are studiously silent as regards the similarity with Scent of Pepper. David Godwin and Kirsty Dunseath of Weidenfeld and Nicolson will surely be upset with these “co-incidences of collective consciousness”.
16 September 2010 at 7:40 am
We have one more response to the already long drawn controversy regarding the influenceof TSOP on TH and it is time we got down to the bottom of it and learn some home truths about this. First things, first. Why do ‘Andy,’ ‘Not a witty Nick,’ ‘wineeye,’ ‘Oddi Buddi,’ ‘angadboy,’ ‘The Nerd,’ ‘Kush,’ ‘Bangada Fry’ use pseudonyms and that too very pretentious ones? Why can’t they reveal their identity? No one takes cognizance of anonymous letters and we should not care for these opinions which, incidentally are, nonsensical statements that could well have been written without even reading the novel. I call this a sign of intellectual pussilanimity and cowardice. BF, true to his pseudonym, has fried TH and in doing so has burnt it so badly that it is not palatable. He quotes extensively from various reviews to strengthen his dismissal of TH. He relishes the dismisive phrases so much that he quotes them at the beginning and the end–”Tedious star-crossed love” and “Explore the appeal of the kitsch.” Truly mouth watering! Such is the relish of BF. May I ask him to take a second look at a good English Dictionary and to give another reading to the novel (he needs to and I am serious). He will then be enlightened to find that the love story is not tedious and the novel is not garish, tasteless or sentimental. TH isa saga of four generations and is epic inits scope and execution.
I am not ininterested in driving home the clichaic point that there are lot of similarities between TSOP and TH. The fact of the matter is that they are set in Kodagu around the same period and have some comon themes. There is nothing to be horrified about this as BF pretends, because themes as different as adultery, industrialization, urbanization,alienation, colonization and many others have produced novels which are strikingly similar, yet very different. I would like to cite just one example chosen by BF to demonstrate the “receptive imagination” of the two writers with reference to the common disappointment shared by Subbu and Machu while in the army. Did it ever strike BF that this is exactly the experience of a soldier who joins the army to show his valour but ends up doing the job of a batman?
BF tries to be ironical about my reference to the confidence and self assurance in SM but it is completely lost on him since he gives a most inappropriate example of Kipper Cariappa. Actually, this is revealed in SM skipping the mandatory Ganga Puja and the Chopping of banana stems that are found in TSOP.
And now to his unsolicited advice. I enjoyed his authoritarian tone, but what followed was pathetic. His praise for Tehelka is toatally misplaced. He implies that Tehelka is the final word in Journalism. I am afraid no magazine is, including Tehelka. I know of an incident wherein goons beat up the Vice Chancellor of a Central University in the North East early this year. After the initial queries, the lady reporter finally told the VC that she has been asked by her senior not to file the story. So much for Tehelka’s ‘fearless’ journalism.
My final point is that a coterie is trying to discredit and defame SM for no reason except the fact that she got unprecedented prior publicity for receiving a huge advance for her novel.
By the way, BF, who are you and what are your credentials to take such a high mioral ground in assessing and comparing the two novels? Speaking for myself, I was an English teacher for 35 years.
22 September 2010 at 6:02 am
A search for reviews of Tiger Hills brought me here, and I felt compelled to add my two cents. I have read the book, and enjoyed it immensely. The author deserves plenty of credit for an excellent debut novel. On a related note, the Times of India, Hindustan Times and The Hindu seem to share my opinion.
I am frankly disappointed and appalled by the vitriolic tone of several comments on this page, and hope that subsequent posters will adopt a more civilized tone even if they have a bone to pick with the author.
Take a chill pill, people. :)
23 September 2010 at 5:07 pm
Refer M. A Devaiah on Amazon:
By M. A. Deviah “Silverfish” (Bangalore, India) – See all my reviews
This review is from: Tiger Hills (Kindle Edition)
Just finished reading the book,and am left with mixed feelings. The first third sets a gentle pace, this is a love triangle, we most certainly can guess the final outcome, the question is how will it be resolved? This is where Mandanna showcases her exquisite descriptive skills. You are transported to another world, another era and you will love the experience.
Somewhere around page 100, the narrative takes off like a rocket. The story grabs you and takes you on a roller coaster ride of emotions.
The final third is about the next generation. The narrative slows down, the author’s ability to paint a rich background tapestry all but disappears.
My thinking is that the five years she took to write this novel was used mostly for parts 1 and 2. Part 3 was probably written in a couple of weeks. Or, so it seems.
So,is this chick lit? Not really. Men would love to read it just as much as they loved to read GWTW. But this book is about suffering as only a woman could probably experience or understand it. My empathy with the heroine began to wane when she went into a forced marriage, it disappeared completely by the time she called someone very close to her a curse. I am sure I reacted like most men at this point: What the heck is she doing???!!!
Being from Coorg I loved that the novel was set there, but a couple of things surprised me. Coorgs don’t say dosa and meesa; they say dosae and meesae. Men do not tonsure before a funeral, it is done after. Mandanna describes the fields as being lushly green during the sowing. Every Coorg knows that, during transplanting, the fields are grey and muddy.
A couple of other things: Tukra the Poleya seems to have the run of the house. No way that would happen in the period in which this novel is set. Even today, most Coorg housesholds are out of bounds for Poleyas. Also, at one point in the story, the workmen who paint the heroine’s house call her “akka” or elder sister. Given her age and standing in society, they would have almost certainly called he “avva” or mother.
I like the way Mandanna pokes fun at some of the so called “royal” Coorg families. Not sure about Titty, but I swear I knew people called Pussy, Timmy, Teddy, Billy, Jack, Cookie and Mickey from these honourable families. Mandanna also gets it spot on when she talks about how Tippu Sultan forcibly circumcised and converted Coorgs to Islam. A far cry from the benevolent freedom fighter that today’s politicians make him out to be.
I’m not going to talk about the epilogue which I felt was a cheat. Let me say just this: In just two pages (in which Mandanna once again shows her descriptive prowess) the author reverses a key plot development that occurs a few chapters earlier. Authors are entitled to spin a tale as they would like, but what Mandanna does is like God saying one day, ok let’s go back a few years and start all over again!
And refer to Business Standard:
Love of the land
Rrishi Raote / New Delhi September 11, 2010, 0:04 IST
A historical romance set in colonial Coorg wins its NRI author Sarita Mandanna lavish praise but, asks Rrishi Raote, has she acknowledged all her sources?
Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills was born with a silver spoon in its mouth. Not only was it championed by David Davidar, until recently a big wheel at Penguin, it also won the attention of David Godwin, a top literary agent. UK rights were quickly picked up by Kirsty Dunseath of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, who compared Tiger Hills with Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds and Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. (Early reviewers said its heroine Devi recalled Gone with the Wind’s immortal Scarlett O’Hara.) And in April 2009 Penguin paid a huge sum to acquire India rights to this debut novel. Trade rumour says the sum was around Rs 35 lakh.
What’s more, Mandanna is a young Manhattanite who works in private equity. She comes from a landed family with thousand-year-old roots in Coorg (now Kodagu). The chief characters in her novel are also privileged, from aristocratic families with coffee estates and paddy acres — all of which boosts the story’s “lushness”.
Unusual advantages like these impose a burden of expectation. This burden would weigh on even a very good book; a mediocre one might never get off the ground.
Tiger Hills is not a very good book. But it’s not a bad one either, so it tugs the reader along. The story is easily summarised. In late 19th-century Coorg, a girl is born to a landowning family. Devi grows up a rare beauty, indulged and carefree. While she is still a child, a motherless boy joins the household. Devanna is a Kambeymada, from a much richer clan. The two become best friends. Eventually Devanna falls in love with Devi; but Devi is in love with Machaiah, an older Kambeymada famous for having singlehandedly killed a tiger.
Devanna is more cerebral. He loves plants. He studies with the local missionary, Hermann Gundert, and then goes to medical school in Bangalore (in the 1890s?). There he is ragged and tortured unrelentingly (it all sounds very modern), but does not complain. Effortfully the author sets things up so a brutalised and disappointed Devanna can be brought to perform the violent act upon which the story turns. He and Devi are married — but Machaiah isn’t out of the picture. The ugly love triangle continues to poison lives, into the next generation.
If you are a patient reader with a taste for romantic tragedy and lush prose, then this book is for you. A sample: “The river was luminescent. Its waters rippling, reflecting the molten roil of the skies overhead, until she was bathing in fiery, liquid ore. The mist too alchemized, varnished by this new sun, sparkling, shimmering all around her. Devi stood still, dazed by the beauty.”
Devi, you see, is about to meet Machaiah and win his heart. It’s pretty, yes, and the narrative moment genuinely memorable, but this is not quality writing. And here, as at every other important point in the heroine’s story, starting with her birth, the herons show up: “They gazed directly at her, the tracing of light over their breasts and wings like the finest gold filigree.” What this mystical heron motif actually means one never learns.
Like herons, much is made of a rare bamboo flower — Gundert wants it, Devanna looks for it, but Machaiah’s son Appu finds it. But Appu, boy and man, is a spoilt brat. The moment is a letdown. What does the flower stand for? It is possible there’s some inkling of meaning here, but to look for it is to credit that the writing has a depth that it just doesn’t.
However: Coorg. Halfway through the book, the main characters leave behind the traditional clan environment of their youth and move onto a coffee estate and into a planter lifestyle. Even so, the love of Coorgs for their land remains visible. It’s almost the only sensibly real thing on these pages.
The trouble is the research required to recreate colonial-era Coorg. Some of it, Mandanna has said in interviews, involved talking to elderly Coorgs and looking up folk songs. But for the nitty-gritty she turned to 19th-century memoirs and gazetteers — naming only one, a journal by a Sir Erskine Perry (misspelt Eskine in the book).
One of the unnamed sources is the Reverend G Richter’s Gazetteer of Coorg: Natural Features of the Country and the Social and Political Condition of Its Inhabitants of 1870 (a 1995 reprint is available). A well-read Coorg of my acquaintance pointed out instances where phrases and descriptive patterns in Tiger Hills echo those in Richter.
Now, any historical novelist needs primary sources for facts and background. Description and imagery, however, ought to be the author’s own. Compare the following instances, in which Mandanna’s words are not always the same as Richter’s, but her imagery and argument echo the older text.
Richter, pp 1-2: “The present shape of Coorg, as represented on a map, is not unlike a baby’s sock…”
Mandanna, p 4: “It was a tiny principality, shaped not unlike the knitted bootie of an infant…”
I wrote to her publisher to ask about this and other similarities. Mandanna responded that “To this day, were one to look at an image of Coorg, the image it brings to mind is a bootie or a small sock!” Possible, but…
Richter, p 117: “The Coorgs… are the principal tribe of the country, and from time immemorial the lords of the soil. For the last two centuries they are known as a compact body of mountaineers who resemble more a Scotch clan than a Hindu caste…”
And Mandanna, p 25: “They constitute a highland clan, free from the trammels of caste, with the manly bearing and independent spirit natural in those who have been, from time immemorial, true lords of the soil.”
Again, Richter, p 119: [On Coorg women] “They are remarkably fair, of goodly stature, well shaped and many are really handsome before the betel-chewing, which generally begins after their marriage, disfigures their regular features, and blackens their otherwise brilliant teeth.”
And Mandanna, p 26: “The women might be deemed attractive, were it not for the unfortunate habit of chewing betel, especially amongst the older matrons, which renders their teeth and lips a vivid shade of crimson.”
The anthropological tone, Mandanna explained, is because these passages are meant “to be the transcribed notes of Hermann Gundert [the missionary who taught Devanna]… [T]he language used here is deliberately formal and styled in the manner of the texts that the character would be reading during that period.”
These are some results of a comparison with one source. We stopped comparing at page 27 of Mandanna’s book. (Other reviewers have pointed out similarities between Tiger Hills and The Scent of Pepper, a 1996 novel by fellow Coorg author Kavery Nambisan.)
Penguin replied to my list: “There really is no problem in an author using old, out-of-copyright texts as primary sources for research… [It] is only natural that Mandanna should refer to historical texts specific to the time and the area, for ideas. She has not lifted directly from the texts, nor has she replicated actual passages.” But even if a source is out of copyright, it should be credited. Why not simply insert a “Note on Sources”, as historical novelists often do?
Mandanna added that “Wherever the novel quotes directly from a source, every attempt has been made to acknowledge that source.” She identified two: Erskine Perry, and Pattolé Palamé: Kodava Culture — Folksongs and Traditions, a recent book by her aunt and uncle. In general, she says, “I am thankful to have had access to these texts — without them, it would have been difficult to paint a picture of Coorg that tallied, in spirit, with the original of that time.”
Coorgs of a certain background even today are well-read and locally knowledgeable, so word has begun to circulate about these and other resemblances. I heard about the Richter echoes from two different sources, both Coorgs. Neither was willing to be quoted. “We Coorgs are like Asterix and the Gauls,” said one — they stick together.
WHERE IS THE EXTENSIVE RESEARCH? Whole chunks from Richter’s Gazeteer….Place the relevant passages side-by-side – she has COPIED.Why has Sarita Mandanna not issued a statement about the Scent of Pepper by which she claims to have been “inspired”?
23 September 2010 at 8:25 pm
Asha Sharma does us all a disservice by selectively quoting one reader’s review on Amazon. I hope other readers will not be swayed by this, and will read all the reviews on Amazon.com as well as Amazon.co.uk; when I last checked, the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, averaging close to five stars on both sites.
I am sure most readers recognize the challenges of recreating the distant past from multiple sources of information. In my opinion, the response from Penguin in the Business Standard article “There really is no problem in an author using old, out-of-copyright texts as primary sources for research… [It] is only natural that Mandanna should refer to historical texts specific to the time and the area, for ideas. She has not lifted directly from the texts, nor has she replicated actual passages” provides sufficient clarification. In addtion, the novel is a work of fiction, so any perceived or actual deviations from the actual Coorg of yesteryears should be no cause for concern.
Regarding similarities with “The Scent of Pepper”, Mr. Belliappa sums up rather nicely in his comments “The fact of the matter is that they are set in Kodagu around the same period and have some comon themes. There is nothing to be horrified about this as BF pretends, because themes as different as adultery, industrialization, urbanization,alienation, colonization and many others have produced novels which are strikingly similar, yet very different.” I believe there are more differences than similarities between the two novels – perhaps one should actually read both of them before carelessly cutting and pasting the libelous statements of a select few who seem intent on deliberately discerditing Ms.Mandanna.
Methinks Ms.Sharma’s and a couple of earlier posts smack of Salem, Massachusetts, 1692.
25 September 2010 at 9:15 pm
Sarita Mandanna’s book is creating a cult amongst us book worms. It is simply superb. I and all my friends just found it unputdownable. We had read Kaveri’s book some time back, so just to analyse whether there is any similarity I and two friends of mine read it once again. There is absolutely no semblance of similarity between the two works and they are as different from each other as chalk and cheese.
I love Sarita’s prose and we all felt terrible about some of the comments posted here. Unanimously we feel that Doddi Buddi and Angadboy ( sound like Gay cover names ) need to be subjected to the same treatment as Devanna in Sarita’s novel. For all you know that may be their private S&M fantasy. Alternatively they should be guided to their ‘mentally sick ‘compatible websites.
Our forum is eagerly looking forward to Sarita’s next ( she is a literary giant in the making )and maybe Kaveri will also take us from the scent of pepper to the fragrance of coffee…. Kodava culture is so exciting….
25 September 2010 at 9:24 pm
Sarita is an amazing writer. All these adverse comments are plain mischief mongering. I have read Kaveri’s book twice. They are completely different in every possible way.
SARITA PLEASE REMEMBER….DOGS MAY BARK BUT THE ELEPHANT PASSES ON…We are all looking forward to a lot of books from your pen….
26 September 2010 at 7:39 am
^^^^
Nice try Sarita.
2 October 2010 at 6:10 am
Tanya siddappa/Deepak Jayakumar–
Which one is the real one in this geminated name?
There are too many dogs barking out the truth here; cannot be ignored. I don’t think Churumuri intends this blog as a platform for name calling. You and K.C. Belliappa both (or three) eloquently condemn anonymity. Calm down. All this will be forgotten in a few days.
Nobody can hope to provide a detailed analysis of the novel in this space, and asking for one is pure humbug. What do you have to say about the passages cited above in addition to saying that the locale and the times are responsible for the similarities?
I wish everyone had the grace of Nambisan who says she is too busy to go beyond the first fifty papes of Mandanna’s work.
31 March 2011 at 11:12 am
First the son-in-law! Then the father-in-law! And I missed both their comments when they were fresh! Please leave my pretentious nick alone, and it is not anonymous!
Free market to the rescue! Sarita Mandanna’s title is being sold for half its price for both the Hard Back and Paper Back editions(and Hard Back being sold cheaper than the Paper Back, for whatever reason).
Thank God, Professor! You are not in charge of any text book selection committee, if you were one right now, Tiger Hills would have been a Non-Detailed Text for Undergraduate Courses!
14 May 2012 at 1:52 pm
HAHAHA. Don’t you’ve a name, you niwit? Why are you commenting now? where were you all these days hahaha???!!!