Book Review : Uday Mane's Fables from India

I'm sparing all comments on the design
 or it'll be another post 

I'm firmly of the opinion that if you have nothing nice to say it is better not to say anything at all ( especially to strangers; friends, well, they knew what was coming when they signed up) . In fact when I got this book to review I was torn between the guilt of not writing as I had promised to and painful process of finding some glimmer of good in it. But finally, being compelled to write, I put forth my opinion as honestly as possible.

Pros :
It has only one. It has fully restored my faith in myself to be a published writer because clearly anyone can be.

Cons:
Where do I start. The title? The completely misleading title? Though it says Fables from India, the author has generously "borrowed" from all cultures and I even suspect least a couple of them are from his own imaginations( not that it's a bad thing, but why pretend it's anything other than your own short stories is beyond me). Some of them are so blatantly"borrowed" from classics without even the faintest attempt at placing it in the Indian context that you wonder if we are to ignore that content or just blindly accept that it is Indian because Mane says so.

Of the 22 stories ( I giving the poetry a free pass) that Mane covers in the book, there were in total 3 that was free of any mistakes. The rest was riddled with weird clunky sentences( Can a king be a demagogue?! Mane thinks so), spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, misused similes and metaphors ( simpleton's food instead of simple food). And this after the first read. I did not have the courage to go through it again for the fear of what I will find and corresponding mounting irritation of seeing this language mangled. Honestly, I don't hold Mane accountable for these mistakes but his editor and the publisher who were clearly in such a hurry to publish that they could not manage the most basic proofreading. Or least I hope that is the case because the alternative would be that they are horribly incompetent and I hope their English teachers never have the shame of seeing their work.

This is apart from the occasionally disturbing morals that I hope no child will imbibe like the one in the Jungle Laws story which does not clarify what the jungle law is and could be easily misinterpreted as case for racism.

To be fair there were 2 stories which was bitter sweet and touching (The Joker and Nadir's Little Lamb) in this mess, but it is simply not worth it to drudge through this swamp of words to get to them. This is just one of the prime example why Indian authors/publishers are seen so poorly by the literati and I would sincerely hope no one buys this for their child with the hope of improving the said child's English.