tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91291065106967379052024-03-10T23:16:49.595+05:30Devika RajeevDRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.comBlogger260125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-59878275560883695812018-12-31T18:04:00.001+05:302018-12-31T18:45:12.771+05:30Book Review: Bookworm by Lucy Mangan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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One of the joys of visiting the parental home is the opportunity to raid the parental bookshelf. Usually I either come away with four-five books in my arms or just give up after an hour of browsing. Too many books, too little time during the visit. </div>
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But this time around, I had barely started digging when I found what I immediately knew to be treasure. I hadn’t even heard about the book before, but its gorgeous cover would have drawn me in anywhere. <i>Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading</i> by Lucy Mangan, it said. I decided to forgive the rather pedestrian title and read on.</div>
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Reader, it really WAS treasure I had discovered. Lucy Mangan writes about a bunch of books she read and enjoyed as a child in England in the seventies and eighties. That sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it? Why would anybody want to read about books that somebody else read thirty years ago, especially when they haven’t even heard of many of the said books?</div>
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But <i>Bookworm</i> wasn’t boring at all. Initially, I thought I was enjoying the book so much because of Mangan’s chatty tone and bookish insights. She places the books in context, with stories about the authors and how they came to write that particular book. She is quite funny too - I laughed out aloud several times while reading (startling my family in the process).<br />
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But it is much more than that. The book was enjoyable because, as a fellow bookworm who also spent most of her childhood with her nose in books, I completely understood where she was coming from. The actual names of the books don’t matter at all. She’s writing less about the books themselves and more about the pleasure she found in them, the worlds they took her to, the myriad ways they opened her mind. </div>
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“Do we ever manage again to commit ourselves as wholeheartedly and unselfconsciously as we do to the books we read when young? I doubt it,” she says.</div>
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Along the way, she also detours into associated areas such as the history of picture books (not even two centuries old, did you know?) and why re-reading is so important for children. </div>
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I admit that, as a reader, I was probably a better fit than usual for this book. The first chapter is an evocative mix of the author’s early memories of being read to by her father, and her own recent experience of reading to her five-year-old son. Since I’m in a similar stage myself right now (my son is almost four and LOVES being read to), I couldn't have NOT enjoyed it. </div>
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Of course, we Indians have a slight advantage in reading this book; thanks to our colonial hangover, many of us have grown up reading books that an Irish girl in London read in the seventies (most notably Enid Blyton books). And of course she mentions many books that have been considered classics for decades now (<i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, <i>The Railway Children</i>, <i>Anne of Green Gables</i>, etc). All of this doesn’t make for much racial diversity, of course - a charge she herself freely admits.</div>
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If I have one quibble, it is that she doesn’t write at all about the new books and authors that she and her son must surely be discovering together now. What about Julia Donaldson, I ask. Or Oliver Jeffers? Surely they deserved at least a mention? But no, she sticks firmly to her own childhood. </div>
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I can’t think of a book that I’ve read with so much enjoyment in the recent past. My enjoyment partly had to do with the fact that I knew nothing about the book before reading it, which is rare in the age of Goodreads and Amazon reviews. It felt strange, as if I was heading off on one of the adventures that Mangan's childhood heroes and heroines go on. I didn’t want to ruin the experience, so I deliberately decided not to visit Goodreads to read reviews or even see its rating. I peeked after finishing the book, and I’m glad to note that its rating is currently 4.12. I’m planning to bump it up a bit with my five-star review. :)</div>
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DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-67926627259028255022018-12-21T17:53:00.001+05:302018-12-21T17:53:21.591+05:30The Great Smog of India by Siddharth Singh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><b>Disclaimer:</b> I received a review copy of this book in return for an honest review. </i><br />
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Siddharth Singh's <i>The Great Smog of India</i> manages to both scare the hell out of the reader and give hope where none used to exist.<br />
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We all read the newspaper reports about the pollution levels in Delhi of course, but the consequences of those pollution levels on individual health (and therefore on India's health systems and its productivity as an economy) aren't quite so evident on a day-to-day basis.<br />
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This is what TGSoI does well. It begins by summarizing the impact of the pollution levels. Then it delves deep into each of the causes of the rise in pollution each winter, whether it's industrial pollution or vehicular emissions or the burning of agricultural residue or Delhi's geographical situation or the unique administrative hassles of Delhi as a city, state and capital.<br />
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The chapter on crop burning is done particularly well; it makes it crystal clear why the farmers of Punjab and Haryana have no option but to burn the crop residue every year, and why it's a comparatively recent phenomenon. I was surprised to learn that solutions to the crop burning issue do actually exist. The reason they are not being implemented is lack of finances, combined of course with lack of political focus.<br />
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The book makes for grim reading. The problem seems insurmountable, its causes so numerous and varied and its consequences impacting so many people. Most importantly, the solution would require many widely different sections of people, not necessarily in political alignment with each other, to act in concert.<br />
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Despite this, the author manages to end on a hopeful note. If London can escape the pollution-linked smog caused by coal, and if China can reduce its deadly pollution levels by switching from coal to cleaner fuels, surely there's no reason we can't either.<br />
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This book is essential reading for anybody living in Delhi or its surrounding areas. The only problem is that you'll want to run away from home after reading the very first chapter!</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-73735852455295193912018-07-21T19:52:00.001+05:302018-07-21T19:56:57.164+05:30Book Review: Shyam by Devdutt Pattanaik<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i><b>Disclaimer:</b> I read a free review copy of this book, but the review is honest. :)</i><br />
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My first introduction to mythology was in Malayalam. Long before I started reading Amar Chitra Katha comics, my mother had introduced me to Mali Bhagavatham and Mali Ramayanam. Mali was a great children's writer, who made mythology readily accessible to children in Malayalam.<br />
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Devdutt Pattanaik appears to be doing the same for adults in an era where people don't have the time or the focus required to read accurate translations of mythological texts. Pattanaik helps them out by doing the "hard" reading for them, and distilling the essence down to accessible text.<br />
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<i><b>Shyam</b></i> is the latest in a long series of such books, though it's the first one I've read. If you know your Sanskrit, you would know that Shyam means dark, and Shyam is another name for Sreekrishna, that most enigmatic of the avatars of Vishnu. Born to royals Devaki and Vasudeva, but raised by cowherd Nanda and his wife Yashoda (because his uncle Kamsa wants to kill him), Shyam grows up in a village but spends most of his adult life advising kings and (almost) ruling his own city.<br />
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The book is divided into sixteen chapters, each containing stories from the various roles Krishna played in his life. Starting with Avatar (which tells us the reason Vishnu had to take the Krishna avatar), the book goes all the way to Elder, moving through roles such as Infant, Cowherd (during his adolescence), Lover (of the gopikas), Husband (to his sixteen thousand wives), and Charioteer (to Arjuna during the Kaurava-Pandava war).<br />
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<b><i>Shyam</i></b> follows what I've read is the typical formula for Pattanaik's books - brief stories, followed by even briefer boxes of text explaining the significance of the story, its evolution over the years in different ancient texts, and how the story has been adapted in different parts of India. Most of the stories are also accompanied by simple line illustrations. (Somehow, the illustrations manage to be cheerful even when showing the most horrific violence. See below.)<br />
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The book is clearly based on a lot of research, presumably cross-referencing a variety ancient manuscripts, and also learning about the cultural significance of each story in different parts of India. Pattanaik doesn't shy away from talking about aspects of Krishna that modern day macho Hindus would rather hide - his comfort with his feminine side and cross-dressing, for example, or the fact that his skin is actually coal-black and not the Ujala-blue depicted in comics.<br />
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But in trying to make the book accessible to the lay reader, the author has had to sacrifice a lot, too. Mythological stories contain a lot of nuance and drama that don't translate well into Pattanaik's workman-like blocks of text. Stories that could have been truly horrific in the hands of a decent writer are laid out for the reader sans emotion (and sometimes even sans context, it feels like). I also wish the stories had been strung together better, showing the chain of causality so that we can understand WHY people behaved the way they did.<br />
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A lot of people read Devdutt Pattanaik's books for spiritual understanding, but I have to admit that the spiritual lessons were underwhelming for me, especially near the end, where Krishna advises Arjuna (the base for the Bhagavat Gita). But then I'm not particularly spiritual, so that may just be me.<br />
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Overall, it was an interesting introduction to a genre of Indian writing I've happily ignored so far (even when friends and colleagues raved about it). But will I be picking up another Pattanaik book based on this one? Probably not.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-86388183065529283332018-05-22T15:45:00.002+05:302018-05-22T15:45:25.360+05:30Pseudo-Secularism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Last week, I did something which made me question my own self-proclaimed secularism.<br />
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(No, I didn't vote for BJP in the Karnataka elections - doing THAT would make me question my own sanity, never mind my secularism.)<br />
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Here's what happened.<br />
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My three-year-old son is going to a summer camp sort of thing, where he has music and dance classes. At his age, it's less about formally learning anything, and more about just having fun. Every day, he comes home singing snatches of songs that he learnt in class that day.<br />
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For the past week or so, he has been singing a particular song all the time. Initially, he was singing only the first verse, and he mangled it up so much that I couldn't even understand what he was singing. But then he managed to learn the second line in another couple of days, and I understood what the song was. It's a religious song, and the line he was singing was, "<a href="http://childbiblesongs.com/song-08-give-me-oil-in-my-lamp.shtml" target="_blank">Sing hosanna sing hosanna to the king of kings</a>."<br />
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I was fine with it in the beginning. He was singing this song and a couple of other non-religious songs as well, and it was okay.<br />
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But after a couple of days, he stopped singing the other songs and started singing just this song. And that's when it started getting on my nerves. I told him several times to stop, but I would catch him singing it again later.<br />
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I tried to analyze my own reaction. Why on earth did I have a problem with this? After all, I've often found myself absent-mindedly humming an earworm. I couldn't blame a three-year-old for doing the same thing!<br />
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But was my problem just that he was singing it all the time? Or was it that since I wasn't religious myself, I didn't want him to sing religious songs? Or was it more problematic still - that I didn't want him to sing a CHRISTIAN religious song?<br />
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I had to admit to myself that it was a combination of the first and the third. I wouldn't have had a problem with him singing Hindu religious songs, even though I'm not a believer myself. (Last year he learnt <i>Asato Ma Sadgamaya</i> and I was okay with it.)<br />
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Well, so much for my own self-professed secularism. I might say that I hated the BJP and all it stood for, I might claim that I didn't care about religion, I might proclaim my love for beef everywhere. But at the end of the day, all of those beliefs seemed to be shallow. If somebody tried to "evangelize" my son (because clearly that's what I saw the teaching of this song as), my inner repressed Hindu would come out, sword flashing.<br />
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Now the question remained - did I want to do something about this, or let it be? After all, the summer camp would be over in another couple of weeks, and I would be rid of the music teacher (he had been hired specifically for the camp).<br />
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I decided not to do anything. I confess - more than anything, it was the thought of having to actually say something to the school, and reveal what a bigot I really am, that horrified me.<br />
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But then the weekend came.<br />
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And I had to listen to the song for two continuous days.<br />
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On Monday, I went and spoke to the school authorities.<br />
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Of course, I had to retain some cover of secularism for myself. I was careful to phrase it right. I said, "Please don't teach my son religious music. I'm not religious, and I don't particularly want my son to be religious either."<br />
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But of course, the lady who is in charge of the place is sharp, and she got it immediately. "The new teacher is teaching Christian religious music, right? I don't like it either, ma'am. I'll tell him today itself."<br />
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And so that was that. My fake secular fig leaf thrown back in my face.<br />
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I'm still struggling to come to terms with my reaction, and I'm not proud of it at all.<br />
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But then, I do know that if I'd had to listen to that song for two more weeks, I would have gone mad. Seriously -- he was singing it ALL. THE. FREAKIN'. TIME. I couldn't figure out why, because it doesn't even have a particularly catchy tune. And of course, that made me even more suspicious.<br />
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Anyway, I'm happy to announce that my speaking to the school has partly had the desired effect. His frequency of singing it has come down and I hope to soon be hosanna-free.<br />
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Now if only I could go back to being able to believe in my own secularism.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-37135248983513832732018-05-10T12:48:00.001+05:302018-05-10T15:33:07.863+05:30On Re-discovering Yoga<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I did most of my schooling in a government school, where I had mandatory yoga classes as part of my syllabus for a few years.<br />
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Looking back now, it seems quaint. Who thought that kids would find yoga interesting? How did it get into the syllabus? Were there no left-liberals back then to protest its inclusion? Or was yoga seen as secular back then? I have no idea.<br />
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In my school, all non-academic subjects (Art, SUPW, Yoga) had classrooms of their room. The yoga teacher had a large and airy room to himself in what was called the Science block. We had yoga classes twice a week, and we would form our lines and go to the yoga room in crocodile fashion. The yoga room had a wooden desk and a wooden chair for the teacher, and coarse and ratty red carpets for the students to sit on in long lines. We had to leave our shoes outside the room, and of course the boys had to sit on one side and the girls on the other.<br />
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Our yoga teacher was quite a specimen. He was tall and thin and pale yellow and almost bald. He had a voice that was one notch above Mute, and an air of otherworldliness, as if most of him lived on some spiritual plane from where he could scarcely be bothered visiting us mere mortals. He was timid, and sometimes blinked furiously when trying to explain things. None of this, of course, helped him control a room full of noisy tweens and teens.<br />
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His name was Something-or-the-Other Potti, which should have made his nickname obvious. But give us government school kids some credit - we didn't go for obvious nicknames. We named him Kokk (stork), in honour of his elongated neck. Over the years, many generations of kids must have called him that, and he must certainly have been aware of the nickname. Some daring kid had even scrawled the name (KOK) on the dusty window panes in his class room. That scrawl remained remained there for many years - it may still be there for all I know.<br />
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Mr Potti (I will call him that at least now, twenty years later) had, at some point or the other in his long career, given up on ever passing on any of his knowledge to his students. And I think that was a very good call on his part. Not only was he temperamentally unsuited to the task, his chosen subject was one that held very little interest for a bunch of kids.<br />
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You see, twenty years ago, yoga didn't have the glamour that it has now. Today, yoga can come clad in lycra and spandex if you want it to. But back then -- well, if it was clad in anything at all, it was probably boring saffron. Mr Potti didn't help matters by sometimes trying to read spiritual stuff aloud to us from his books. I say "trying to", because his breathy voice didn't carry far, and unless you were in the front row, it was unlikely that you would hear anything at all.<br />
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The class would become silent each time he started reading aloud. Gradually it would become clear that there was no point in listening because you could hear nothing anyway. And then one by one, the kids would start talking, until gradually the room would become so deafeningly loud that Mr Potti would break off from his reading and bang his arm on his wooden desk in ineffectual anger, and then we would become silent again. And on it would go. Yoga, in effect, was a free class for us, with very little actual practice.<br />
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I used to feel sorry for Mr Potti back then, I remember (even while calling him Kokk behind his back). But looking back now, I realize that it's probably because of those classes that I've always had an aversion to yoga. Even after it became fashionable, and everybody I knew was signing up for it, I stayed away, because I associated yoga with boredom and with being just a little bit pathetic.<br />
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But now, at long last, twenty years later, that curse has been broken. Thanks to an awesome app*, I've started doing yoga again, and it has been amazing. Yoga, I've discovered, need not be about spirituality. It can just be something you enjoy doing, something that challenges you, something that helps you understand your body better. Yoga can be accessible, it can be whatever you need it to be.<br />
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As for Mr Potti, I suppose he must have retired long ago. I hope more of his ex-students rediscover yoga and its life-changing benefits.<br />
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*The app is called Down Dog and it's available both on Google Play and App Store. I've been promoting it among all my friends like I'm being paid to do it, but unfortunately I'm not. :|</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-31797233800576344412018-04-22T11:53:00.001+05:302018-04-22T11:53:56.421+05:30Book Review: Anjum Hasan's A Day in the Life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I read somewhere recently that reviewing a book is all about giving it an identity. If that is so, how do you review a book of short stories? Each story has its own identity. The easiest way to do so is to write one-line reviews of each short story. I have done it before, and it's the coward's way out. The other way is to look for common themes in each of the stories - what ties them together?<br />
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Anjum Hasan's <i>A Day in the Life</i> is about the common man and woman, the ones who seem to be doing nothing spectacular with their days, and yet the very fact of their life is fascinating in itself, if seen through the right lens.<br />
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And so we have a man who has taken a step back from corporate life and settled in a village. Or a woman who is sick and stuck in her high-rise apartment. A newly married woman trying to settle into married life. There are two little girls in search of that elusive thing called style. A mother struggling to get back to her thesis writing while looking after her young daughter. A bedridden old woman, waiting for death in her nephew's house. A young man who wants to buy his bride-to-be a sari of expensive Banarasi silk, in the Banaras of the nineteenth century.<br />
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They are all very real people; surely there must be hundreds or even thousands such everywhere. Anjum Hasan's talent lies in bringing them to life in her precise and laid-back style, and making them interesting and relatable. Her stories have a very "material" quality to them, as if you can hold them in your hands and examine them, pick them apart if you wish to.<br />
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As always with her, it is the Bangalore stories that stand out (or maybe those were the ones I related to the most). In the story "I Am Very Angry", an old man tries to get used to his new neighbours, who fight too loudly for his liking (his new neighbours seem to be a metaphor for the changes in the city around him). In "Nur", a young Muslim girl tries to find out where her no-good husband has gotten to. In "Sisters", a sick rich woman who is stuck in a high-rise builds a sisterly bond with her forthright maid, who nurses her back to health. Each story showcases a different aspect of this varied city.<br />
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Overall, this is a book of stories that will stay with you. Days or weeks or months after reading it, you will suddenly recall something from it, maybe a line or a smell or an incident, and try to recall from where, because it will feel as real as if you had experienced it yourself, and then remember that it was, in fact, a story you read in a book long long ago. </div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-22970228972332364782018-03-19T16:20:00.001+05:302018-03-19T16:20:53.375+05:30Book Review - A Girl Like That<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Going almost blind into a book, not having read reviews at all, and not knowing what to expect, is something I haven't done in a while.<br />
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The cover of A Girl Like That didn't promise much - I thought it would be your typical YA book, with a teenage heroine besieged by challenges on all sides and finally emerging triumphant, having conquered all.<br />
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I was partly right, because it IS a book peopled mostly by teenagers. But BOY, was I wrong in every other sense.<br />
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For one thing, AGLT begins with the death of its chief protagonist, Zarin Wadia. We see her looking down at the sight of the car crash that killed her. And instead of feeling sorry for herself and wondering why things have turned out the way they have, she can't wait to get away from her life; she feels glad that she has died. What, we wonder, can have been so bad in her life that she is glad that she is dead?<br />
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Well, quite a lot, as it turns out. Her parents died when she was little, her aunt beats her, she has no friends at school. To top it all off, she is living in a repressive society where girls aren't allowed to even meet boys they are not related to. She has just one friend in the middle of all this - but the problem is that he is in love with her, and she doesn't feel the same about him.<br />
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A Girl Like That is about everything that is most essential to us as human beings - the security that comes from knowing you are loved, the knowledge of where you fit into society, the safety of having a place to call home.<br />
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No, let me be more accurate - it's about what happens when you DON'T have all these things. How self-destructive you become, how defensive, how confused.<br />
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And yet, AGLT isn't a depressing book at all, somehow. It sparkles with life, with Zarin's little rebellions, her continuous attempts to get away from everything that she hates in her life. She manages to get herself little freedoms, despite shuttling between a prison-like school and a depressing home.<br />
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The knowledge that a particular character is going to die soon doesn't usually result in much emotional investment, but in this case I was almost rooting for Zarin, even as she makes mistake after mistake, even after she rejects the one guy who could have helped her out.<br />
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All in all, I think I will definitely be looking out for more from Tanaz Bhathena. What an accomplishment of a first novel!</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-27290051533590987512018-01-07T09:46:00.001+05:302018-01-07T10:07:06.159+05:30Book Review - Janice Pariat's The Nine-Chambered Heart<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The cover of Janice Pariat's <b><i>The Nine-Chambered Heart</i></b> is one of the most beautiful I have seen in recent times. Nine translucent pink ovals adorn its white cover - are they rose petals? Or are they the nine chambers the title refers to?<br />
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The book itself (her third, but the first that I'm reading) is experimental. What is the true identity of a person? Each of us views others through our own lens, our own values and stereotypes. But can a person be understood completely if we have enough lenses to view them through?<br />
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In this book, we get different people's perspectives on the same woman - how they got to know her, how their relationship developed, and, ultimately, how it ended.<br />
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The writing is beautiful - as tender and fragile and simple as the pink petals on the cover. It doesn't take long to guess that the book is at least partly autobiographical - perhaps the real-ness of the details and the simplicity of the incidents.<br />
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Unfortunately, the people who write about the woman are very similar and their perspectives are pretty similar too. Of the eight people who write about her (one person has two entries because he was in a relationship with her twice), six are lovers (including a husband), one is a female flatmate who had a crush on her and one is her art teacher from school. (Leading me to question if that teacher was more than a teacher, of course.)<br />
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The most authentic and different perspective is that of the husband. From being completely in love with the woman (and seeming slightly dazed that somebody like her would agree to be with him) to plaintively complaining about how her lifestyle doesn't quite match his income to finally just being exhausted of the entire relationship, the husband is the only one who dares to write negatively about her.<br />
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Apart from the husband, the lovers all seem pretty much alike. Okay, let me count them without looking at the book - the first boyfriend (who returns later), the older married man, the poet-publisher married man, the older married man who sees her as a stopgap, the Italian four-night-stand and - wow, I got them all!<br />
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Why am I talking more about the people who provided the perspectives, rather than the woman the book is supposedly about? Well, frankly, because we get to know so little of the woman herself. What do we know about her at the end of the book? We know she loves cats. We know she's good in bed (more than one lover vouches for this). We know she likes older married men. We know she's not a "leaver" - she is usually the one who is "left" in relationships. (We are told this multiple times, and not very subtly).<br />
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Ultimately, we end the book without a clear idea about the woman herself. The book somehow feels self-indulgent. If the author had chosen to get a more diverse set of people to talk about the woman, and if more of them had provided a realistic narrative, this book would have been a more substantial read.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-49717708658147793862017-11-04T09:36:00.001+05:302017-11-04T09:46:13.810+05:30Book Review - A Column of Fire by Ken Follett<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I read Ken Follett's <i>Pillars of the Earth</i> when I was fourteen, and it was like being hit on the chest with something heavy (maybe the book itself - it was one of the longest and heaviest I had read till then). I loved it absolutely - the descriptions of the cathedral being built in Kingsbridge, the beautiful women and their drama-filled lives, the rich imagery and narrative. Years later, visiting an actual medieval cathedral for the first time, many of the terms the audio guide used were familiar, because I had already "lived" through the building of a cathedral.<br />
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<i>A Column of Fire</i> is the third book in the Kingsbridge series. Strictly speaking, it's not a sequel - it's set many centuries after the first one, and the only thing that connects the books is the setting of Kingsbridge. I'm not sure how <i>World Without End</i> (the second in the series) is, but <i>A Column of Fire</i> isn't set only in Kingsbridge. A lot of the action takes place in other places - Paris and London being the main ones.<br />
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One of the main threads in the book is the love story of Ned Willard and Margery Fitzgerald. The two are a young Kingsbridge couple in love, but Margery's family is against their union. A rich Catholic merchant family, they want her to marry into nobility and raise their social status.<br />
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The Ned-Margery love story plays out against the backdrop of almost fifty years of Protestant-Catholic conflict in France and Britain in the sixteenth century. The ebb and flow of these two opposing views on Christianity makes for fascinating reading - how something as simple as a change in monarch can change the religious tendencies of an entire country. There were killings aplenty on both sides in the name of religion.<br />
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Ken Follett takes actual historical events and adds to them some great characters to show us how these events impacted ordinary lives - Ned Willard of the Secret Service (a tolerant Protestant), Margery Fitgerald (a Catholic), a French villain by the name of Pierre de Aumand (a Catholic who instigates Protestant killings to further his own ends), a Protestant book-seller named Sylvie Palot.<br />
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Personally, I didn't know much of the history of this period before this book. But that didn't prevent <i>ACoF</i> from being an engrossing read. It's a great introduction to famous personalities like Queen Elizabeth the first (she of the white face and red hair), Queen Mary Tudor of the Scots (imprisoned for decades by Elizabeth) and Duke Scarface of France. And you also get a ring-side view on historical events such as Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, Queen Mary's wedding to the French king, the failure of the attempted Spanish invasion of Britain, and the St Bartholomew's Day masscare in Paris in 1572.<br />
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If I have one quibble, it is that it feels like Follett is breezing through history at too fast a pace. Fifty years is a long time to cover even for a history book. But there were certain threads in the book that could have been excluded (Ned's brother's, for example).<br />
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Also did it meet the expectations I had from reading <i>Pillars of the Earth</i> almost two decades ago? No, it didn't. But I'm not sure I can blame Follett for that. Maybe I was more wide-eyed and open to such immersive reads then? Growing up can sometimes be a pain. </div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-1140563954607533472017-09-24T12:26:00.002+05:302017-09-24T13:43:27.713+05:30Forest Dark - Nicole Krauss (Book Review)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What happens when the foundations of your life no longer make sense to you? When you realize that the things you always enjoyed, the goals you always worked towards, the very beliefs you built your life on, no longer make sense? It's as if you've suddenly woken up on an unmoored boat in the middle of a strange sea, no land in sight, unfamiliar stars above.<br />
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This is what has happened to Jules Epstein, wealthy Jew, patron of arts, a man who fought his way up the ladder of life and has always ensured that he had the best of everything. At the age of 68, after losing both his parents in quick succession, he retires from his law firm, divorces his wife, and gives away most of his possessions. All in quest of a "lightening", as if giving away all his life's accumulations will help him discover himself again.<br />
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This is also what has happened to Nicole (no last name), famous author, unloved wife, mother to two needy children. She is unable to sleep, unable to write, unable to walk out of a long-dead marriage. One day, she comes into her own house and suddenly has the feeling that there is another Nicole inside the house, walking around, tidying up, talking to the children. As if years of living for somebody else has split her into two, the other half doing all the duties and chores that she has trained herself to do. Nicole dreams of the Tel Aviv Hilton, a blocky monstrosity, where she spent many childhood vacations. She feels the need to go back there, as if going back will help her get back to her normal self.<br />
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In Tel Aviv, Nicole falls into what seems like an absurd but exciting conspiracy tale. She meets somebody who claims that he can prove that Kafka did not die in Prague at the age of 40 - that he traveled to Tel Aviv and lived a long and quiet life there as a gardener. The man wants her to write the story of the "actual" ending of Kafka's life. Epstein also meets a succession of people who try to get him to contribute his wealth towards their objectives.<br />
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What do Epstein and Nicole have in common? Both are Jews, both are lost, both travel to Tel Aviv to find themselves again. But the stories somehow never synchronize. They feel like individual novellas, blended together just for showmanship. Despite some insightful passages and delicious writing, the book feels disjointed and leaves the reader feeling unfulfilled at the end.<br />
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A strong thread of Jewish history and culture runs throughout book. Perhaps I would have liked the book better had I had a better understanding of the origin stories of the Jews, and the beliefs that hold them together. As it was, I kept trying to figure out if a particular detail was relevant to the story, whether it had a hidden meaning quite beyond my comprehension.<br />
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The ending leaves the reader at a bit of a loose end. What really happened to Epstein and why? (The book starts with his disappearance in Tel Aviv.) Did Nicole's Kafka enthusiast even exist or was he just a figment of her imagination? Where do the Epstein and Nicole stories overlap except that they both stayed in the Tel Aviv Hilton? The reader is left to figure out all this herself.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-72818662525548757392017-08-09T08:05:00.000+05:302017-08-09T08:11:35.413+05:30Book Review: The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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(Yes, I chose to read this book despite that cover.*)</div>
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The whole yakshi trope is very common in mallu horror. What is a yakshi, you ask? </div>
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Well, a yakshi is a sort of mallu ghost. </div>
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No, seriously.</div>
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In mallu horror movies, a yakshi is usually shown as a beautiful woman clad in a white sari who has had an unnatural death. She comes back to take revenge on the man (it's always a man) who killed her. After she avenges herself, she figures she might as well have some more fun, and stays on to kill random other men who cross her path.<br />
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She usually lurks near roads and lures lonely travellers with her beauty. The travellers enter what they think is her house, only to realize that it's the top of a pala tree. Once they are in the yakshi's pala tree, they are hers to devour.</div>
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Seriously, it's quite a stereotype in mallu horror movies.</div>
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I was reminded of yakshis and mallu horror movies because a yakshi is the main demon in <i>The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara.</i><br />
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Chottanikkara is a village that is, for some reason, terrorized by demons. The demons live in a patch of land near the village, and whenever they get bored of the food in their own land, they come to the village to drink the blood of the villagers' animals or children. Fortunately, Chottanikkara has a powerful demon hunter, Devi, who has sworn to protect the villagers from the demons.<br />
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Questions I had with this setting - why is it that only this village is infested with demons? If other villages also face the same trouble, what do they do when a demon descends upon them?<br />
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But if you can accept this basic premise, then the book is a rollicking read with a crisp plot and a writing style that's quite visual. A couple of scenes in particular were absolutely heart-in-the-mouth for me. Unfortunately, I could foresee the "twist" at the end at about the half-way point, but still.<br />
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The author uses the yakshi trope (white sari, pala maram, etc) but brings in a twist by getting us to empathize with the yakshi a bit. Since I'm so familiar with yakshis, I was surprised to see that Devi hadn't even heard of a yakshi before one actually attacked her village.</div>
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Reading the book, I was trying to remember other "horror" fiction in Indian writing recently, and couldn't think of a single one. Has this genre been unexplored so far in the recent book explosion in India?</div>
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*I do have to wonder though - what on earth were the publishers thinking? Was it a ploy to get people's attention? A "so bad it's good" kind of thing? Because you can't exactly forget the terrible cover once you've laid eyes on it.</div>
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DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-91839826090632085422017-07-14T06:16:00.002+05:302017-07-14T06:33:14.150+05:30A Life of Adventure and Delight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Four stories into this collection of short stories, I was wondering why Akhil Sharma had decided to call it 'A Life of Adventure and Delight'*. Because none of the protagonists of the first four stories seem to find their lives either adventurous or delightful. On the contrary, they are all stuck in situations they don't want to be in. </div>
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The first story ("Cosmopolitan") is a gentle one, it floats along like a boat in a slow-moving river. Gopal, intensely lonely after his wife leaves him, starts a relationship with his neighbour, Mrs Shaw. He doesn't know much about her apart from that she's a divorcee and a guidance counselor. His motives for the relationship seem clear, but what are hers? Why is she interested in this obviously pathetic man? </div>
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From questioning HER motives, the reader moves on to questioning anybody's motives for entering into a relationship. What loneliness or need drives anybody into being emotionally dependent on somebody else? </div>
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By the end of the story, all doubts are laid to rest. Or maybe that's my positive spin on the ending.</div>
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This is who we are, he thought--dusty, corroded, and dented from our voyages, with our unflagging hearts rattling on inside. We are made who we are by the dust and corrosion and dents and unflagging hearts. Why should we need anything else to fall in love?</blockquote>
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The second story ("Surrounded by Sleep"), on the other hand, is a breathless one. It starts by knocking the reader's breath out:</div>
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One August afternoon, when Ajay was ten years old, his elder brother, Birju, dove into a pool and struck his head on the cement bottom. For three minutes, he lay there unconscious. Two boys continued to swim, kicking and splashing, until finally Birju was spotted below them. Water had entered through his nose and moth. It had filled his stomach. His lungs had collapsed. By the time he was pulled out, he could no longer think, talk, chew, or roll over in his sleep.</blockquote>
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And throughout the story both you and Ajay are haunted by those three minutes. What if they had found Birju a little earlier? What if he just woke up from his coma and returned to normal? What if Ajay could pray harder and tell God to make Birju normal again? What if what if what if? </div>
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It's a heart-breaking story, but less for Birju's mishap and more for its effect on Ajay. His mother starts emotionally distancing herself from him, he feels that somehow what happened to Ajay was his fault, he thinks his mother sometimes wishes it was Ajay who lay for three minutes at the bottom of the pool, and not Birju. </div>
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The fourth story ("If You Sing Like That For Me") was the highlight of the collection for me. It starts with a woman waking up after an afternoon nap, seven months after her wedding day, suddenly in love with her husband. </div>
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Her marriage is like any other arranged marriage. She met her husband once before she got married, and she only got to know him afterwards. The first couple of days, she dreams of going back to her parents.</div>
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I would think of myself with his smallness forever, bearing his children, going where he went, having to open always to his touch, and whatever I was looking at would begin to waver, and I would want to run. Run down the curving dark stairs, fast, fast, through the colony's narrow streets, with my sandals loud and alone ... and finally I would climb the wooden steps to my parents' flat and the door would be open and no one would have noticed that I had gone with some small man.</blockquote>
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The evening of the day she realizes she is in love with her husband, her husband comes home carrying a plastic bag of mangoes. It is just another day as far as he is concerned. But for Anita and for the reader, the evening builds up like a time bomb. Will she tell him of her love, will she won't? How will she tell him? How can she ensure the love stays? </div>
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The other stories, all shorter than these, didn't make much of an impression on me. In fact, I had to go back and refer the book to remember what they were about. </div>
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But the three main stories more than make this collection worth it. All the stories are in the spare distilled prose that Akhil Sharma is famous for. Five out of the eight stories are set in the US, but most of the characters are thoroughly Indian.<br />
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(Though sometimes they do strike a jarring note with American usage. Here's an example from Anita's story, set in India - "I made rotis and lentils on a kerosene stove." #Okay)</div>
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*It turned out that the collection is named after one of the later short stories.</div>
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DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-21946970555186254972017-07-04T07:26:00.001+05:302017-07-04T07:28:52.280+05:30Ruskin Bond - Looking for the Rainbow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Reading Ruskin Bond for the first time as an adult turned out to be all about nostalgia. The book reminded me of all those Bond stories in English textbooks back in school (was there at least one every year, or does it just feel like that?)<br />
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In "Looking for the Rainbow", Bond indulges in an exercise in nostalgia himself, revisiting a golden year he spent with his father. The year was 1942, and the young Ruskin's parents had just split up. His mother takes him out of the "fun-less convent" where he had been "serving a two-year sentence" and sends him to Delhi to spend some time with his father.<br />
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His father, it turns out, isn't like normal fathers at all. He has a stamp collection, for one. And he is perfectly okay to let Ruskin spend time on his own at home.<br />
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Ruskin Bond brings to life a simpler time, pre-Independence India, a time when it was okay for a young boy to take a year off from school and stay at home with his father, playing with the local boys and watching movies and reading books and arranging the stamp collection.<br />
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But a year later, it's time for Bond to go back to school; his father is getting transferred and can't take him with him. Thankfully, the new school turns out to be much more fun than the old one, with eccentric teachers and nice kids he soon makes friends with.</div>
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More than the text, the illustrations are what make this book such a collectible. I don't know who Mihir Joglekar is, but I love what he has done for this book. <br />
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Bond lets the readers know at the beginning that he lost his father when he was a child. This knowledge makes "Looking for the Rainbow" a bittersweet book, the usual childhood carefreeness shadowed as it is by the thought of what is to come.</div>
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Overall, a short beautifully packaged book that would make a perfect gift for a young kid. </div>
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DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-40425550595026077082017-05-30T23:37:00.000+05:302017-05-30T23:59:04.154+05:30Baaz by Anuja Chauhan - Book Review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I think I was always going to like this book. After all, I loved Anuja Chauhan's first book (<i>The Zoya Factor</i>) - it is one of the few books I've read twice. Her books are well-written stories for people wanting an escapist romance, a page-turner for a few hours. <i>Baaz</i> follows almost the same formula, though its setting and ending make it a leeettil bit different.<br />
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<i>Baaz</i> is the story of Ishaan 'Baaz' Fauzdaar, a boy from a small village in Haryana, who joins the Air Force and becomes a famous pilot during the 1971 war. It's also the story of Tehmina 'Tinka' Daddyseth - a photographer and a pacifist. The two meet and fall pretty much instantly in love - but how does their love story work out against the backdrop of a war?<br />
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For me, the Ishaan-Tehmina story was less important than the background against which it all plays out. We get a sneak peek into the lives of Air Force personnel and the planes they fly. Since the story is set against the 1971 war, we see a lot of the action live (though from the aerial perspective, of course :D). The book's cover says it's Anuja Chauhan's 'homage' to India's armed forces, and that definitely shows.<br />
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Despite a rather somber setting, Anuja Chauhan's wit and voice sparkle throughout the book. (The fact that the book is written in present tense is a bit jarring though.) Her writing is so vivid that you feel like she's drawing a picture with words right in front of you - I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the aerial battles.<br />
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How do I compare <i>The Zoya Factor</i> with this one? TZF, I felt was funnier, and had the most outrageously awesome plot (a woman who can ensure a cricket team's victory just by having breakfast with them? I mean, wow.). But it could have been about a third shorter than it was.<br />
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<i>Baaz</i>, on the other hand, is less funny, but more tightly written. The action pretty much never falters. Those who don't like the lovey dovey stuff can wait for the fighting. (Though I do know somebody who stopped reading the book because she didn't like all the descriptions of planes and fighting.)<br />
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Overall, a bitter-sweet read, but lovely nonetheless.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-50469890977409164832016-10-18T05:36:00.001+05:302016-10-18T05:46:07.815+05:30(Book Review) Yashodhara Lal's When Love Finds You<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yashodhara Lal's last book, <i>There's Something About You</i>, was the first book that I read as part of a book reviewing program I signed up for last year. I loved it and it really changed my perspective on Indian chick-lit. So when I was offered the chance to read and review her latest, I signed up quickly.<br />
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It was a ten-day wait to receive the book, presumably due to all the festivals we've been having lately. But once I received the book (thankfully on a Friday night), it took me just a few hours to read it, despite having a very demanding toddler at home. (The fact that it was the weekend helped.)<br />
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Before I begin, let me just get this off my chest quickly - I didn't enjoy this book as much as the last one. Sure, it's a good read and unputdownable and all that, but it doesn't have the wit and sparkle of the last book.<br />
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Lal presents us with a really dislikable protagonist - Natasha Patnaik is a 35-year-old Vice-President of Sales at an HR software company. She's extremely ambitious and a tough boss, very sure that she has to be doubly hard on her team to overcome their resistance to having a female boss. She's single, and not sure if she wants to mingle. She clearly has health and body image issues (though she doesn't seem to realize it).<br />
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Unfortunately for her, all the sacrifices she has made for her career don't seem to be enough. Her boss feels that she needs to develop her "people skills" and brings in an extra layer between him and her - a business head who seems to be all style and show, but who is supposed to mentor her.<br />
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Throw in a hot new colleague at work, a crochety old neighbour and a sexy gym instructor, and you've got everything you need for a riveting few hours.<br />
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You'll enjoy the book if you don't expect much more than your usual romantic potboiler. Personally, I had high expectations thanks to her last book, but this one doesn't quite match up.<br />
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All of Natasha's troubles are over by the end of the book. But there's no clear reason why.<br />
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<b><i>(Possible spoilers begin)</i></b><br />
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Yes, she finally decides to deal with her past, but why? Yes, she suddenly becomes a manager the team loves performing for, but why? Yes, the guy she likes falls in love with her too, but why?<br />
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<b><i>(Possible spoilers end)</i></b><br />
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Other peeves, while we're on the subject. Natasha introduces herself to her new boss in the first half of the book as an IIMC alum. In the second half of the book, she says she did her MBA from FMS. WTF.<br />
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And my major peeve from the last book holds true for this one as well - the cover. Dayamn, that is one terrible cover. And let's not even talk about the title, which is so generic it must have come from some Random Romantic Title Generating Machine. </div>
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Overall, general timepass read that your brain cells can sleep through.</div>
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DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-73046495857920699102015-10-31T11:12:00.001+05:302015-10-31T11:12:06.297+05:30Big Magic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Elizabeth Gilbert says in <i>Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear</i>, "The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them."<br />
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This belief in the Universe and its connection with creativity is a recurring theme in this book on creativity and inspiration. Indeed, that's what she refers to as Big Magic.<br />
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She believes that "creativity is a force of enchantment--not entirely human in its origins." Also, "Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life form. ... And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner." She even provides "proof" for this belief - an idea that supposedly jumped from her to another writer because she didn't give it enough time.<br />
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A bit hard to take in? Same here. But who are we to judge what helps her write?<br />
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And to do her credit, the rest of the book is a bit more realistic. The book apparently grew out of her famous TED talk on creativity, and it's a compilation of her thoughts and research on the subject. It's divided into six parts, each dealing with one of the six ingredients she thinks essential to creative living - Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence, Trust and Divinity.<br />
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Gilbert's idea of creative living goes beyond the usual "artistic pursuits" such as writing or painting. Do something, she says, ANYTHING that takes you out of the mundane and the ordinary. "By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, [creativity] can relieve us temporarily from the dreadful burden of being who we are."<br />
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Despite her belief that ideas have a life of their own, she places great importance on hard work. Creativity is a fickle partner, she says. If you keep waiting for creativity to show up before you do your thing, then you will end up waiting for ever. You need to work steadily, day after day, even when you would rather be doing anything else. In her own words, "I sit at my desk, and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done."<br />
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In fact, for her, the outcome is less important than the process itself.<br />
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What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it's sacred. What <i>is</i> sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.</blockquote>
Her language is, as usual, conversational and free-flowing. Each part of the book is divided into short chapters, and she includes plenty of inspirational stories to illustrate her point.<br />
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I think different parts will appeal to different people. The parts on Courage and Persistence, for example, appealed to me. The one on Enchantment (in which she talks about the whole Ideas as Disembodied Beings concept) - not so much.<br />
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But perhaps different parts will appeal to the same person at different points in the creative process as well. If you're feeling stuck, for example, and the ol' Muse just isn't making an appearance, you could probably go back and read some of the chapters in Persistence. But if you're stuck at the beginning, aware that you want to do something beyond your daily routine, but not sure what, then the chapter on Trust will help you out.<br />
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Overall, a short accessible how-to guide to creativity, and a good behind-the-scenes peek into the thoughts of a writer.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-64492290598387095672015-09-17T06:11:00.000+05:302015-09-17T06:13:28.901+05:30Sriram Karri's Autobiography of a Mad Nation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Disclaimer: I read a free preview copy of this book.<br /><br /> A good idea, badly executed. That about sums up this book for me. <br /><br />Sriram Karri clearly has a lot of anger bottled up inside him. He's angry at the system - the politicians, the bureaucrats, the media, the corrupt, the greedy, the silent majority - and he has let all his anger spew out in this book. It reads less like a novel and more like a criticism of the functioning of the Indian democratic system.<br /><br />But to begin at the beginning. The President of India has received a strange letter from a convicted murderer awaiting execution - a challenging letter, a letter that demands justice and not mercy in the form of a pardon. Intrigued by the letter, the President asks his old friend Vidyasagar, the retired former head of the CBI, to investigate. Did Vikrant actually commit the murder he has been convicted of? Vidyasagar digs into the crime, only to find that things are murkier than they appear. The trail of one crime leads to another, and yet another. <br /><br />The book is divided into three parts. The first part flows quickly - Vidyasagar's investigations, combined with what appear to be Vikrant's diary entries. I was actually enjoying the book at this point, despite the sometimes amateurish writing and the irritatingly self-righteous diary entries. <br /><br />Unfortunately, the book starts to fall apart in the second part. Ideology-filled monologues dot the text, especially in the latter half of this section. The author seems to be making the characters speak for him, expressing his anger at all the ills affecting the nation.<br /><br />The third part does a good job of tying up the whole. The threads of the mystery are satisfactorily untangled, and what appeared to be an insoluble mystery does end up having a logical, clear and satisfactory ending.<br /><br />Unfortunately, it isn't enough to save the book. What could have been a unique novel ends up being a trite obvious diatribe.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-23967711218844281752015-07-10T22:37:00.001+05:302015-07-10T22:42:08.351+05:30Yashodhara Lal's There's Something About You<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been on a non-fiction streak lately. History, travel, what not. But there's only so much non-fiction I can handle at a time. After a point, I need a quick light read to relieve a bit of the seriousness. So when a mail popped into my inbox offering me a preview copy of Yashodhara Lal's <i>There's Something About You</i>, I clicked through to <a href="http://www1.yashodharalal.com/some-thing-about-you/" target="_blank">the free three-chapter preview</a> with interest.</div>
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Before I continue, I should confess something. I don't generally read such books. And by "such books", I mean the ones that directly or indirectly trace their lineage back to Chetan Bhagat's <i>Five Point Someone</i> (the book that kicked off a whole industry of Indian "commercial" fiction). I've tried a few of these books and been turned off by the shoddy sentence construction, the deluge of typos, and the way they talk down to the reader.</div>
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So when I see books packaged (yes, that IS the best word) in bright colours, with long titles that give away the plot line of the book, my brain generally tends to hit Skip. </div>
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Which is why, when I started to read the preview chapters, I didn't expect Yashodhara Lal's book to be much better. But I was surprised - pleasantly. It was so nice to read an Indian "light read" written by somebody who can put a sentence together properly. I binge-read the three chapters in the preview (and then her blog for good measure) and realized that I would have to read the rest of the book somehow (she really knows how to throw in a cliffhanger). </div>
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The book isn't releasing until July 20th, so I responded to the mail and asked for a preview copy. The book popped into my mailbox (the real life physical one) three-four days later. And I finished it before the day ended. When the mother of a five-month-old says that about a book, you better believe that that's one unputdownable book. (Or maybe I have a bad binge-reading disease. Possible.)</div>
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So what's the book all about? Though it's been billed as the Romance of the Year, it's actually much more than that. It's about Trishna Saxena (Trish), an overweight 28-year-old who uses sarcasm as a defence mechanism. She feels the need to protect herself and her family (a father with Alzheimer's and a mother who tries to dominate her life) from any intruders. Her nice comfy life is disrupted when she loses her job. To add to the confusion, there's a seven-year-old who behaves like a teenager, an agony aunt column, a tragic accident, and of course our male protagonist, Sahil. </div>
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Yashodhara Lal writes well - she's funny (in a sarcastic way). There are some interesting non-cardboardy characters, a decent plot that is predictably feel-good, and yet has some surprising elements (does that even make sense?), and a love story that is kept subtle and low-key. </div>
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The best part of the book was that it didn't talk down to me, the reader. It expected me to be intelligent and yet want to have a good time - something other writers in the genre don't seem to have understood yet. </div>
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And - hell - I might as well confess it. I LIKED Trish. I identified with her, I liked her sarcasm, I liked her flaws, I liked how she didn't have everything together in her life (at the beginning of the book anyway).</div>
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I do have a few things to crib about, of course. By the end of the book, there are just too many plotlines. Those who read the book will understand what I mean - the final plot element is a bit too dramatic and hard to take in.</div>
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The second crib I have is the cover. I mean - would you look at that cover? Is that supposed to be Trish? That looks more like a fashion-conscious teenager than a 28-year-old overweight writer. But I guess this cover will sell better.</div>
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Overall - a well-written, light, feel-good read that has ensured that I won't discount all commercial fiction out of hand in the future.</div>
</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-78432472855947299882014-12-04T20:11:00.002+05:302014-12-04T20:11:54.766+05:30Monica Ali's Alentejo Blue - Review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLDrhmf3x7A6j4OyYSVhAEL465q0Vj7tZ8HqFWKV4hahG8uU9ULBjP9TDrf6r7i9TL_RKZ9IPwaISVBtNYmF9I5WpsQ-nPwh8TG_4pNMz-4VnFHkmw9eK20VCg3OIDX82o6lcTZne_GjQ/s1600/Alentejo+Blue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLDrhmf3x7A6j4OyYSVhAEL465q0Vj7tZ8HqFWKV4hahG8uU9ULBjP9TDrf6r7i9TL_RKZ9IPwaISVBtNYmF9I5WpsQ-nPwh8TG_4pNMz-4VnFHkmw9eK20VCg3OIDX82o6lcTZne_GjQ/s1600/Alentejo+Blue.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
Monica Ali's <i>Alentejo Blue</i> was a random buy from Blossom's many years ago. I had heard of Monica Ali thanks to her acclaimed debut novel, <i>Brick Lane</i>. I hadn't read <i>Brick Lane</i>, but this book, her second, promised me the story of a town told through the stories of many of its residents and visitors. I bought it for the princely sum of 130 rupees (the price tag is still on the back cover).<br />
<br />
After I got home, I discovered that I couldn't read beyond the first two pages of the book. The beginning, a man named Joao coming out of his house early one morning to discover a friend's body hanging from a branch, somehow didn't make me want to read on.<br />
<br />
The book's jewel-pink cover has been glaring at me from the bookshelf since then. I used to finger it guiltily once in a while, but I never actually opened it. You know how it is - if you start a book and then don't finish it, you develop a mental block about it and you can somehow never get yourself to get back into it again.<br />
<br />
But a couple of weeks ago, I decided that it was Time. I would finally Read the Book and Put the Ghost to Rest. To encourage myself, I opened the book randomly somewhere in the middle, and what I read was reasonably interesting - the narrator was not a morbid old man, but a harmless English female tourist.<br />
<br />
"Fine," I thought, "I'll somehow get through the first few pages with the old man and the body, and then I'll see if I like it or not."<br />
<br />
And that's what I did. For a while, it looked like I had done the right thing. The old man turned out to have an interesting past, so I didn't struggle too much to read the first chapter. Then the second chapter introduced me to an English writer chap who was spending some time writing in the town (which is called Mamarossa, by the way). The writer was actually more boring than the old man, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.<br />
<br />
But then, just as I got invested in the writer, the chapter abruptly ended, and I was suddenly reading about the owner of the local cafe. And then, a few pages on, about an English boy whose family had somehow landed up in Mamarossa. And so on... You get the picture.<br />
<br />
Yes, yes, I know - that's exactly what the back cover of the book promised, and I shouldn't be complaining. But the thing is - I got a sense of neither the town nor the people. None of the chapters (I can't call them stories) really end satisfactorily. Most are vignettes, and most feel like the last few pages are missing. I kept wondering what the point of all this was.<br />
<br />
Sure, there are a couple of themes that you can see if you look closely enough. Many of the residents of Mamarossa just want to leave and settle abroad, while many others (the writer, the English family, one of the tourists) want to just settle here. We all want to get away from the everyday reality of our existence, move to some far-away fairy tale land that we believe will be better, where we believe we will be happier.<br />
<br />
The other theme is about the difference between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. The writer, for example. He thinks he's pretty sexy, but here's how one of the visiting English tourists sees him, "He was the kind of person you felt sorry for but went out of your way to avoid. He was patronizing and probably misogynist and his mouth was unnaturally moist."<br />
<br />
And it's also about how relationships can sometimes look totally different from the perspectives of the two people in the relationship. In many of the relationships portrayed in the book, one person is unhappy, while the other person is happy and blissfully unaware of the other person's feelings.<br />
<br />
The last chapter reads like a belated attempt to get things together. All the characters finally come together, and things happen, small-towny things. But again, there's no "closure" (I hate that word, but how apt it is in some cases).<br />
<br />
When you've had as phenomenally successful a first book as Monica Ali did, you might react in two ways. You might suddenly find yourself under so much performance pressure that you develop Writer's Block. Or you might go in the opposite direction and think that everything you write is awesome - pure gold that people are just waiting to lap up.<br />
<br />
Well, the latter seems to have happened with Monica Ali. Either that, or she was just indulging herself - publishing some material she wrote for practice. And don't get me wrong - the woman can write. I just wish she had put her talents to better use to give us a more fulfilling book. </div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-24742794466430347812014-11-21T14:23:00.000+05:302014-11-21T14:39:38.663+05:30Our Moon Has Blood Clots<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The best in me are memories. Many people will come to life in them, people who gave their blood while they lived, and who will now give their example." </blockquote>
<br />
- Anton Donchev, <i>Time of Parting</i><br />
<br />
How do you write about the past - about emotions and memories? How do you know if you are being objective? How do you know if your memories are even real, much less accurate?<br />
<br />
Rahul Pandita's <i>Our Moon Has Blood Clots</i> is about the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley in 1990. The book is necessarily full of his memories - memories that are more than two decades old, and which have probably been stained, for good or bad, by nostalgia and longing.<br />
<br />
As a journalist used to sticking to facts and data (though he has written some great opinion pieces as well), it must have been difficult for Pandita to write a book filled with so much pain. He deals with the problem by sticking to the facts - as he remembers them. His language is cold, clinical, unemotional. In fact, the first three parts of the five-part book read like a bald robotic description of what happened.<br />
<br />
It reminded me of something Akhil Sharma said in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/26/akhil-sharma-family-life-books-interview" target="_blank">this Guardian interview</a>, published after he wrote his intensely personal book <i>Family Life</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
he decided to eliminate elements of what he calls "the sensorium" resulting in minimal description of sound, smell, or feel in the novel</blockquote>
Pandita seems to have attempted something very similar. He talks about how the Valley was when he was growing up (he had many Muslim friends, despite the fact that the Pandits and the Muslims supported opposing sides during Indo-Pak cricket matches). How the atmosphere slowly changed in the eighties, how the killings started, and how the Pandits started worrying for their lives. And then, the exodus - the terrible choice between leaving their home, and losing their lives. And how life is as stateless refugees who have lost everything they had.<br />
<br />
The tragedy is that this isn't even the first time that they had to move. Part 4 of the book, narrated by his maternal uncle, describes the earlier exodus. The family had earlier lived in Baramulla - their home was destroyed during the Pakistan-supported Pathan invasion of 1947, and they had to shift to Srinagar. And barely a few decades after they had picked up their lives, they lost everything again.<br />
<br />
It's in the final part of the book that the dam bursts. All the emotions that Pandita has held in check in so far erupt in a flood - the pain of homelessness, the longing for home, the helplessness he feels in being unable to take his parents back home. It's this part of the book that puts everything else in perspective.<br />
<br />
Though the book's sub-title says it's a memoir, I do wish that he had let his journalistic side out a bit more - he could have done some analysis on what caused the sudden outburst of militant activity in the eighties. Maybe it's tough to bring that level of objectivity to something that's so close to your heart, but it would have added a deeper layer to the book.<br />
<br />
Pandita ends on a positive note. "I will come again," he says, "I promise there will come a time when I will return permanently." This seems quite optimistic, given the current situation - but we can only hope.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-8944249690852272202014-10-24T07:20:00.004+05:302014-10-24T18:21:45.131+05:30Stories<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Neil Gaiman says in his introduction to <i>Stories</i>, the short-story anthology he and Al Sarrantonia have edited, "What we missed, what we wanted to read, were stories that made us care, stories that forced us to turn the page. ... We wanted to read stories that used a lightning flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we have never seen it before."<br />
<br />
That's a pretty tall order for any anthology. In my experience, no such collection is perfect - even a good one will have only a handful of good stories, the rest being mere page-fillers.<br />
<br />
<i>Stories</i> is no different, despite Neil Gaiman's promises. Out of the twenty-eight stories it contains, about ten are actually good; another two or three are readable. I couldn't really find any reason for the addition of the others in this anthology - maybe the hope that the famous authors would attract more readers.<br />
<br />
Some of the stories are mere sketches (Michael Moorcock's <i>Stories</i>, for example), others peter out halfway, leaving you feeling cheated (Roddy Doyle's <i>Blood</i>). Many are good ideas, half-heartedly executed (Kat Howard's <i>A Life in Fictions</i>). I got the feeling that they had been hurriedly written in order to meet an obligation or a tight deadline. At any rate, the editors don't seem to have done much filtering.<br />
<br />
The story I enjoyed most was Joe R. Landsdale's <i>The Stars Are Falling </i>- a dreamy tale set in Texas that begins, "Before Deel Arrowsmith came back from the dead, he was crossing a field by late moonlight in search of his home." It's a twist on the typical zombie tale - one that involves lost hopes and mislaid lives.<br />
<br />
Overall - you'll enjoy this anthology only if you don't let the famous names on the cover fool you. In fact, the stories written by the authors I recognized were generally disappointing (Neil Gaiman's <i>The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains</i> being the sole exception). Set your expectations low before reading this anthology.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-6159689429234327692014-10-22T17:33:00.001+05:302014-10-22T17:44:12.234+05:30Food Habits and Productivity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rageforst/163323638/in/photolist-6L2Mza-4EVJYD-e7Rwwb-67T63-6HQt8r-7gn8Gw-6HQro6-4Vk4Xk-6kQGj-i2vApr-4EK5Q7-822QYt-6Poehx-9KHkvG-fr5qN-7kjpky-dM3sMj-4uuZPZ-3VRGe-6WNPqe-97Xa8-4EK5C9-64JvQS-ojJcpe-58BYkb-npyJe-9zPHvt-5rxZqA-op9E6g-gSDdut-nHNzSh-6chTSz-i5wNWa-LtKvu-64Eehg-oFAYa9-64Ee1H-eMPs-t8KKD-d9rtm9-6B2DW9-eHgaib-dbvGCh-aKohm-dcnACt-855Dge-8M64Sp-8qEtHk-auWiwX-nmFeaC" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPUgkq5gRicJ6y5zMRVGsGXQSDOj-MXG7IuEqlh8tTRYxP0tFSP9ivUygwvCde_VPUg8q6E2aHNVHEgOJHhHk4xumAXUADnc5tgkJtcLVmxGYfW1PzpHYR1dHsO1RTehGhIb57q0jx_lc/s1600/163323638_a23ed6d0a6_z.jpg" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rageforst/163323638/in/photolist-6L2Mza-4EVJYD-e7Rwwb-67T63-6HQt8r-7gn8Gw-6HQro6-4Vk4Xk-6kQGj-i2vApr-4EK5Q7-822QYt-6Poehx-9KHkvG-fr5qN-7kjpky-dM3sMj-4uuZPZ-3VRGe-6WNPqe-97Xa8-4EK5C9-64JvQS-ojJcpe-58BYkb-npyJe-9zPHvt-5rxZqA-op9E6g-gSDdut-nHNzSh-6chTSz-i5wNWa-LtKvu-64Eehg-oFAYa9-64Ee1H-eMPs-t8KKD-d9rtm9-6B2DW9-eHgaib-dbvGCh-aKohm-dcnACt-855Dge-8M64Sp-8qEtHk-auWiwX-nmFeaC" target="_blank">Image Courtesy: rageforst æsthir</a></td></tr>
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<br />
Just came across <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/10/what-you-eat-affects-your-productivity/" target="_blank">this interesting article on how the food we eat affects our productivity</a>. Many of the points are quite obvious:<br />
<blockquote>
Some foods, like pasta, bread, cereal and soda, release their glucose quickly, leading to a burst of energy followed by a slump. Others, like high fat meals (think cheeseburgers and BLTs) provide more sustained energy, but require our digestive system to work harder, reducing oxygen levels in the brain and making us groggy.</blockquote>
In the Indian context, I've noticed that people who have lunches heavy on rice and curd (I'm looking at you, fellow South Indians!) tend to be drowsier in the afternoons.<br />
<br />
The article does serve as a good reminder about some healthy eating habits. For example, it's better to "graze throughout the day" rather than wait till you're famished before lunch. This sounds very similar to the weight loss advice usually given by doctors - "small frequent meals".<br />
<br />
The author cites research that suggests that:<br />
<blockquote>
The more fruits and vegetables people consumed (up to 7 portions), the happier, more engaged, and more creative they tended to be.</blockquote>
Why?<br />
<blockquote>
Fruits and vegetables contain vital nutrients that foster the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in the experience of curiosity, motivation, and engagement. They also provide antioxidants that minimize bodily inflammation, improve memory, and enhance mood.</blockquote>
So if you weren't already eating fruits and vegetables because they're healthy, you have another reason to do so - they'll make you more productive at work.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/10/what-you-eat-affects-your-productivity/" target="_blank">Go read the entire article.</a></div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-17473858223077051382014-10-21T13:43:00.000+05:302014-10-21T13:50:04.961+05:30Time and Tide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lukepeterson/5539695590/in/photolist-6TKdmE-hMpWRy-3XnWhq-oVUXAY-asNEZE-7wsjd-iRDEwj-6BAbfr-dYtX9S-8Wcx6g-4XiF5Q-9rwouW-9Uk1V-bpjEQm-Bt2z2-pkvCXj-7hyJFU-p8fEGz-eU5Ybm-4wgVAW-9KinaX-nhPFYV-4LApJD-jG1C3b-8AkkBQ-kYqFcf-KUM9U-brXNUz-oq4eAW-5ZWhDN-9XtXtM-jzHdrH-dh4vWJ-8zzTod-8pDVpz-iVgni-xaxxn-mMosz-9RJyQy-ePN284-7JNB2P-o3ECDe-ecyh7q-jvHZbX-arBJ7T-jrUEud-e8sF2L-b1B3CH-9vQDw-jdfzHn" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO-MDzj5vxy7WOedwBi-O2MIBPTMYVoNoVdJt03hmpdim9i8mtThKSIJgLEZbuByB7be5QPdIVfY_rhniZ3oCNTiBLrhXgYaKPLgv6AfoGfO4LLB-HD2bg70gN6pAuUJMf2C0lSmPb0hY/s1600/5539695590_a21234788d_z.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lukepeterson/" target="_blank">Luke Peterson </a></td></tr>
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As a young man he'd never considered time as anything other than a current to bear him aloft, propel him into his future, now he understood that time is a rising tide, implacable inexorable unstoppable rising tide, now at the ankles, now the knees, rising to the thighs, to the groin and the torso and to the chin, ever rising, a dark water of utter mystery propelling us forward not into the future, but into infinity, which is oblivion. </blockquote>
<br />
- Joyce Carol Oates (extracted from the short story <i>Fossil-Figures</i>)</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-39472725767675274082014-10-09T18:49:00.002+05:302014-10-09T18:49:53.125+05:30Contagious<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Whether you're a marketer trying to sell your product or an HR professional trying to get people to do their appraisals on time, have you, at some point, tried to get a large number of people to talk about something and change their behaviour even for a short while?<br />
<br />
If you have, then this book is for you.<br />
<br />
Jonah Berger's <i>Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age</i> manages to attain the Holy Trifecta rare in so-called "management" books - it's readable, it's backed by research, and it inspires ideas.<br />
<br />
Not just that, it also makes it sound like it's very easy to build word of mouth. Just follow the six steps and you'll have a viral phenomenon on your hands! <br />
<br />
Frankly, I'm still not convinced that it's possible to build word of mouth using a "by the book" approach. But for what it's worth, Berger creates a very convincing framework of six S.T.E.P.P.S for the aspiring viral-er to follow. Here are the six steps.<br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><b style="font-weight: bold;">Social Currency: </b>People care about how they look to others. For example, if you make a club exclusive or secret, people will tend to brag that they've been there - thus spreading word-of-mouth.</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;"><b>Triggers:</b> T</span>op-of-mind means tip-of-tongue. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0" target="_blank">Rebecca Black's horrible Friday song</a> went viral because - you guessed it - people were reminded of it on Fridays! </li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;"><b>Emotion:</b> </span>When we care, we share. That <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk" target="_blank">Susan Boyle 'Britain's Got Talent' video</a>? It inspired <u>awe</u> - and that's why we shared it. (I just watched it again, and it's still as awesome as before. Go watch it. NOW.)</li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;"><b>Public:</b> </span>Built to show, built to grow. To use the simplest example, this is why brands have their own signature carry-bags. </li>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;"><b>Practical Value:</b> </span>News you can use. Did you know that articles about education and health are the ones that people share the most? Because they're so practical you'll WANT to share them with somebody else. </li>
<li><b style="font-weight: bold;">Stories: </b>Information travels under the guise of idle chatter. If you tell me Flipkart has great customer service - meh. But if you tell me you ordered a product at 5 PM yesterday and got it at your doorstep at 10 AM today - THAT'S interesting.</li>
</ol>
<br />
Berger illustrates each of the S.T.E.P.P.S with an interesting set of examples, and cites enough research to make you believe he's got a point. All the S.T.E.P.P.S seem quite obvious at first sight (OBVIOUSLY emotion would cause more sharing), but he digs in and shows us the nuances (low-arousal emotions such as sadness or contentment don't result in sharing).<br />
<br />
Despite my belief that it can't be that easy to create something viral, I have a feeling I'm going to come back to this book again and again. If nothing else, Berger's framework provides an interesting way of looking at the viral phenomenon, and his examples are sure to inspire some ideas.<br />
<br />
Want to know more without buying the book? <a href="http://theviralmedialab.org/6664/2013/10/book-talk-contagious-by-jonah-berger/" target="_blank">This might help.</a> </div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9129106510696737905.post-36712244941469509012014-07-06T08:23:00.001+05:302014-07-06T08:30:01.053+05:30I Read Neil Gaiman's American Gods (And You Won't Believe What Happened Next!)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivzZJC4giP0yw5nUHqz-rEiazhMB7JwhNWORzRY9tkkmvpKrgvSrR1sGPS7gmbKDog30NiHedA97iJxg76FRl7zn6dDK97xMiPYKjHf6BJcG7xseaUTO4oz3fc8RCSl682Mo7xUWBX0y8/s1600/americangods.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivzZJC4giP0yw5nUHqz-rEiazhMB7JwhNWORzRY9tkkmvpKrgvSrR1sGPS7gmbKDog30NiHedA97iJxg76FRl7zn6dDK97xMiPYKjHf6BJcG7xseaUTO4oz3fc8RCSl682Mo7xUWBX0y8/s1600/americangods.jpg" /></a></div>
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I came up with this post - what else?<br />
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I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's <i>American Gods</i> again and have been (once again) blown away. Instead of writing a long post about how awesome it is, I decided to have some fun by writing it Buzzfeed style - click-bait title and lists and breathless writing and all (I'm not great at finding animated GIFs, so you'll have to do without those).<br />
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Here are eight reasons you should drop everything and read Neil Gaiman's <i>American Gods</i> NOW.<br />
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<b>1. For the concept alone.</b> The book is based on what is certainly one of the best ideas in the world of SF / Fantasy in a long time. The idea is simple (and obvious when you think about it). All the migrants who ever came to America brought their Gods along with them - African Gods and Irish Gods, Indian Gods and Chinese Gods. They worshiped these Gods, fed them with their prayers and sacrifices. But today, these Old Gods are slowly becoming powerless, as Americans become less religious, and start worshiping new Gods - Technology, Money, Drugs, Media. And now there's a war brewing between the New Gods and the Old Gods.<br />
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<b>2. For the characters.</b> The lead character is Shadow, an ex-con whose sense of loyalty and justice makes you fall in love with him. But he's one of the few humans in the book. <i>American Gods</i> is like a Who's Who of Gods from across the world. There's Odin and Anansi, Anubis and Bast, Kali and Ganesh. And many more that I didn't even recognize. And there are other creatures too - there are jinns and leprechauns, dwarves and thunderbirds.<br />
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<b>3. Because nobody can quite figure out what the book IS.</b> In Gaiman's own words, "... it was given a number of awards including the Nebula and the Hugo awards (for, primarily, SF), the Bram Stoker award (for horror), the Locus award (for fantasy), demonstrating that it may have been a fairly odd novel and that even if it was popular nobody was quite certain which box it belonged in." Is it a travelogue, is it a thriller, is it a romance? Who knows, and - frankly - who cares?<br />
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<b>4. Because it's on pretty much every 'Best Fantasy Books' list out there. </b>Maybe you don't care much about such lists, but here's <a href="http://bestfantasybooks.com/best-stand-alone-fantasy-books.html" target="_blank">one</a>. And <a href="http://bestfantasybooks.com/blog/8-awesome-stand-alone-books/" target="_blank">another one</a>. Oh, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/24961.Best_Stand_Alone_Fantasy_Book" target="_blank">one more</a>. And <a href="http://bookrevels.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/25-standalone-books-to-read-after-series-burnout/" target="_blank">another one</a>. These are just the first few from a Google search, by the way. But I guess you get the picture.<br />
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<b>5. Because they're making a TV series out of it.</b> I don't know about you, but I like to read the book before I watch an adaptation. But don't worry - <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/01/american-gods-series-starz-hbo-neil-gaiman" target="_blank">they've just announced the series</a>, so you have some time to read the book before the series comes out. I just hope it's better than <i>Neverwhere, </i>which was I thought was quite bad (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB0N01U0XR4" target="_blank">here's a sample</a>). <i>Neverwhere</i> is strange because the TV series came first and then the book, but the book is still better - which just proves that books are always better than their screen versions, no matter which one comes first.<br />
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<b>6. Because of how obsessed people have become about it.</b> In Gaiman's words again, "... you create something like American Gods, which attracts fans and obsessives and people who tattoo quotes from it on themselves or each other, and who all, tattooed or not, just care about it deeply ..." <a href="http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/21985862639/i-met-the-owner-of-this-tattoo-last-night-at" target="_blank">Here's the tattoo bit he was probably talking about.</a><br />
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<b>7. Because it's so awesome you don't want it to end. And it almost doesn't.</b> It doesn't matter whether you're looking for a quality read or a quantity read. <i>American Gods </i>scores on both counts. The copy I just finished reading (the author's preferred version) is 600-plus pages. And even with that, you really don't want it to end. You want it to keep going on for ever and ever, because you love Shadow, and you don't want to leave him.<br />
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<b>8. Because it's Neil Gaiman.</b> I put this reason last, but really - do you NEED any other reason? Gaiman is the brain behind <i>Sandman</i>, <i>Neverwhere</i> and <i>The Ocean at the End of the Lane</i>. He describes himself as a "messy-haired white male author trapped in the body of an identical white male author with perhaps even less-tidy hair". I also like his Twitter bio, "will eventually grow up and get a real job. Until then, will keep making things up and writing them down."<br />
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<i>American Gods</i> is probably the best of Gaiman's novels. READ.</div>
DRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13788359298040148878noreply@blogger.com1