Chinese Whiskers (Harper Collins) is not a new book.
Dated 2010, it follows Smoke and Mirrors, author Pallavi
Aiyar`s excellent dispatches from China. Chinese Whiskers is a charming tale of two Beijing cats, the
gorgeous Soyabean and his slightly scruffy companion Tofu, who go to live with
two wai guo Ren, foreigners, Mr and Mrs
A.
Despite now living quite in the lap of luxury, both the felines are products
of their early days. Soyabean struts around confidently, certain he is master
of the world. Tofu, who spent her early days in a metal dustbin, has a more
suspicious worldview and positively cringes from human contact.
The story contains a generous
slice of Beijing life as seen through the eyes of these two cats, the people
they meet and warm to or instinctively distrust, how they are affected by the
goings-on around them (an outbreak of a virus suspected to be carried by
animals has people culling both dogs and cats indiscriminately), the frenetic
construction of buildings in time for the Olympic Games, the plight of migrant
labourers, a massive pet food scam which has Soyabean inadvertently at the
centre of it.
It`s not really
a fable, it doesn’t carry a moral. It`s
not really an allegory, what you read is what you get. It`s a story of lives
lived in a Beijing hutong, alley, only told by two cats. And yes, the reader
will find much that is familiar between Indian and China. I will leave it to
the reader to find out how much.