Review: Stanley ka Dabba

Mindblowing is not a word I use, but that's the only word to describe "Stanley ka Dabba".
A very short movie by Bollywood standards, you couldn't help falling in love with Stanley and all his friends. Every situation was one we could relate to- the portrait of life in a typical Indian school was perfect. There was nothing not to love.
And five minutes from the end, the reality of Stanley's life was revealed- an orphan, he earns his keep working for his "uncle". We meet boys like him everyday, but never look at the person beyond. Now, we will.

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

A Victory, but still not enough...

Today I placed an order at a fast-food outlet, and when after 25 minutes the order hadn't been filled, investigated and found my tray being given to someone else. I protested, and was rudely told to wait. "I've been waiting 25 minutes", I said, "and you give my tray to someone who just came."

Had he apologised, I would have dropped it, but with a smirk, he told me I would just have to wait. I just lost it, and created a scene. Ultimately, I got a full refund and a complimentary meal, but the victory wasn't one I savoured.
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

The Wisdom of Whores

Sometimes you come across a voice that cuts through the nonsense and tells it as it is. A voice that is not afraid to tell you that the UN spent $ 250 million on AIDS prevention in 1995, and private users spent $ 2 billion on botox injections ten years later. A voice that questions a much admired public figure for declaring that he intends wiping out polio in less time that it took his company to wipe out its nearest competitor. A voice that challenges with humour.


I just started reading Elizabeth Pisani's "The Wisdom of Whores", and I am already addicted.
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Who Really Won?

Compulsive Communication!

India played Sri Lanka in the Finals of the Cricket World Cup yesterday. Even before the match started, the facebook updates began.

"India Wins the Toss"
"Dhoni elects to Bat"
"Retoss :-("
"Already started cheating"
"Sri Lanka go home"
Once the match began, it was virtually a ball-by-ball commentary. Facts stated with an economy of words. No opinions, no analysis. Unless you call, "God must be Indian", after a close call an opinion.

To what purpose, I do not know. Would anyone be following a match on Facebook? They did, because they could.

India won. As did the telecom companies.
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Half the Sky

Most books of fiction are easy to read. Some like Rohiton Mistry's "A Fine Balance" carry you along at your chosen pace, but stay with you for months. Some like Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" make you pause, rewind and re-play even as you read.

Well written academic tomes make you pause and ponder after every paragraph, but you cannot put them down because of the insights they contain.

And then there is Nick Kristoff's "Half the Sky". Short stories of oppression and courage.  Stories that chill your spine. I challenge you to read more than a chapter a day.

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

I am also over at Burrowers, Books and Balderdash blogging about some of my favourite and not so favourite Indian books.

Book Review: B-Very Flat

I was thrilled when I won a personally autographed copy of Margot Kinberg's book B-Very Flat in a contest. Her blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novellist, has reintroduced me to the pleasure of reading well written crime fiction, and the only reason I hadn't read either of her books was because even the online bookstores in India didn't stock them. When I finally held the book in my hands, I wanted to drop everything and dive into it, but managed to resist the temptation till I finished the book I had then been reading.

The wait was worth it. Within moments of opening the book, I was drawn into the story of music student, Serena Brinkworth. Beautiful, rich and talented, she could have been someone you admired from far, but didn't really want to get close to. Instead, she turned out to be a very nice person, who genuinely cared for others and often went out of her way to help them. You knew she was going to die, but kept hoping she would not, and when she actually did midway through the book, all you wanted to do was to find the murderer and see that justice was done.

Margot knows more about crime fiction than anyone else I know. She is also a mistress of crafting a mystery story in the tradition of Dame Agatha Christie. There was a range of very diverse suspects, each with a unique and very plausible motive to murder. Which of them actually did it was the question. The story followed Dr Joel Williams, a professor of Criminal Justice (and teacher of Serena's lover) as he sifted through the evidence to find out which of them actually also had the means to commit the crime.

Since you know that Margot is too much of a student of the classic whodunit to cheat the reader by withholding clues, it was relatively easy to sniff out the red herrings, and nab the culprit pages before the investigators. But that only added to the allure of the book.

The book is written in an easy to read style that draws you in, and keeps you floating along with current. Each of the characters is well deliniated and multi-dimensional- whether you like them or not, you feel you known them. Best of all, through Serena, her lover and one other character, Margot tackles a topic that most writers tend to keep away from, and does it with great sensitivity.

Overall, a book I enjoyed reading, as much as I do her daily blog posts.

I am sure most of you have already read the book, but if you haven't, do yourself a favour and get hold of the book at the earliest.
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Disclaimer: Margot sent me the book, but it was not in anticipation of a review. I reviewed the book, because I loved it, and I want more people to enjoy it as much as I did.

If I have done it right, the book trailer should show up here -

Borrowing from future generations

[Every once in awhile, I get into a despondent mood, and rant. This is one of them.]

A city of twenty million, all the water we use is transported from lakes hundreds of kilometers away. The lucky few get water in their taps, the rest have to buy it from tankers. With water getting scarce, you would think people would converse, but they don't. Rainwater is allowed to drain away, taps leak (including the ones in my house), and fountains are the latest status-symbol.


Taps are running dry, even in cities. We are borrowing water from future generations, with no intention of paying back. When the world runs dry, would we have anyone to blame but ourselves?
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

"Veiled in Shadows"

I do not offer to do book reviews unless I am almost certain to like the book. I do not know enough about the craft of book writing to critique a book, so any review of mine is bound to be more about how I feel about a book than about where that book ranks in that absolute scale that some people employ with such ease.

But one book I did not hesitate to offer to review was Allan Russell's 'Veiled in Shadows'. My decision had nothing to do with the fact that I have known and liked Al for nearly a year, and with having been with him in the last months leading upto publication. The main reason why I offered to review the book was because of the cover. Yes, you heard it right. I decided that I was going to like the book because of it's cover.

I am one of those people who does judge books by their covers- if nothing else, the cover gives me the genre, and in a country where books are not categorised by genre and synopsises can be misleading, that is a useful thing to know. But in case of 'Veiled in Shadows', it was more than just that. Al designed the cover himself, so I was sure that the cover would be an accurate representation of what the author hoped to achieve from the book.

And I was not disappointed!

'Veiled in Shadows' is the story of a half-English half-German 'Princess' who calls herself "Katharina..... My second name, it seems less pompous and more German than Victoria. My daddy calls me Victoria Chesterfield, but I prefer Katharina von Brunnenstadt." Bold, beautiful and intellegent, we first meet her through the eyes of a young Nazi officer who thinks he is saving her from a wild boar, but ends up having his head chewed off for destroying a breeding boar.


She proceeds to fall in love with the Nazi officer remarkably quickly, but just before the outbreak of World War II abruptly breaks off their engagement and moves to England. In England, she meets a young fighter pilot, and despite loving him, turns down his proposal because she loves another.  She follows her cousin into the English Secret Service, and defects to Nazi Germany under very mysterious circumstances. To say much more would be to give the plot away, but her ambivalent actions keeps you guessing till the very end.
 
Allan Russel knows a thing or two about creating and maintaining suspense. Who is Katharina/ Victoria? What does she stand for? What is she fighting for? Who is she fighting against? You get conflicting pieces of evidence and despite the prologue seemingly having told you everything, nothing falls into place till the last chapters.

What made the book even more engaging was the fact that the story emerges through multiple points of view, none of them Katharina/ Victoria. She is 'Katharina' to her German lover, and 'Victoria' to her English lover. Her subjects in Baravia call her 'Princess', and her cousin calls her 'Vikki'. She is different things to different people, but all of them love her.

I am not a fan of war fiction, but I am glad I read this book, and I would without hesitation recommend it to anyone.

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Disclaimer - Al sent me a copy of the book expecting a review, but the fact that he sent me the book is not the reason for my rating it as high as I do. Had I not liked the book, I would have either declined to review it, or made do with a summary and some general observations.


Veiled in Shadows is available on Amazon.

Book Review: The Counsel of Strangers

It is hard to be objective when you are reading a book written by someone you know. There you are immersed in the story, and suddenly something triggers off a sense of déjà vous, and you recognise an incident that you know is autobiographical. It happened to me so often while reading Gouri Dange’s ‘The Counsel of Strangers’ that I had to re-read the book after a gap of a week before I could look at it dispassionately.

The premise of ‘The Counsel of Strangers’ is simple- six strangers are thrown together for a night, and under the shadow of anonymity share their stories, and help each other come to terms with the events that have been troubling them. The Hows and Whys of six diverse people finding themselves together is immaterial- they could have met at an airport longue, they could have been held hostage in a five-star hotel by terrorists, or they could (as happened) have found themselves as reluctant guests at a boisterous Indian wedding. The point is that six people ranging in age from 14 to 70 were thrown together for a night, and they each chose to share their stories, and offer support to the others. And there the author excels.

Gouri Dange is the undisputed Master of the Short Story- each story was beautifully written, and drew the reader in. The characters were etched with firm strokes, with just a suggestion of colour- the reader could choose to fill in the shapes, or leave them minimalistic. The situations were believable, even if they were situations we normally tend to avoid thinking about. And each of the characters held all the pieces of the future in their hands, and needed only a little help in putting together the jigsaw puzzle of their lives. At no point did you wonder how each of them was able to offer sensible advice to the other people, but struggle to bring their own life in order, because you know that it is the way things actually work in life.

If there was a flaw, it was in the narrative technique adopted. Each of the characters told their story, at the end of which the others helped point the character in the right direction. The book ended with an epilogue where each of the six strangers sent an e-mail to the others telling them how they managed to resolve their own particular dilemmas. The weakest point of the narrative was when each of the stories were interrupted by celebratory fireworks, or by a sortie to scrounge for food. It was necessary to contextualizing the location, but I wonder if it could not have been done in a way that integrated better. But that was a minor point- one which I was more than happy to overlook in an otherwise excellent story.

Could something like this actually happen in real life? Would anyone confide their deepest secrets in a total stranger? Would a stranger be able to offer meaningful counsel? I personally believe that the answer to all three questions is a resounding ‘Yes’. There are people with whom I have clicked at the very first meeting, and at least one person has confided in me the very first time we met (that we later became good friends is a totally different story). More and more, in my life, I find that the most unexpected people end up offering the best advice and support- where once you may have relied on family and friends, today you cannot predict who it is that will help you and when.

Overall, a must read for anyone who wants a slice of modern urban and NRI India.

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[This is an unsolicited review. I do know the author, but she did not ask me to do the review, or influence it in any way. I bought the book myself.]

Why do some books get written?

I was at the bookstore the other day, and found a book which could not have been anything but a slightly fictionalized account of the protagonist’s stay at one of the nation’s premier education institutes. Though the book was labeled ‘fiction’, there were enough parallels between the resumes of the protagonist and the author for anyone to know one was based on the other. To make it even more clear, the author took pains to thank, by name, the various classmates who ‘helped take her down memory lane’, and the standard disclaimer of ‘the characters and situations in the book are purely fictional’ was conspicuous by its absence. The author wanted the reader to believe she was the protagonist, and that was clearly the USP of the book.

This particular book caught my eye, and catalysed this rant, but it is actually just one more in a gloriously long line of similar books brought out by the same publisher. The formula for publication by that particular publisher is standard – graduate from any of the premier educational institutes in the country, write a self-congratulatory account of your stay there, get published. Whether or not the person can write, and whether or not the person has a story to tell, doesn’t seem to be the point. All that seems to matter is that the person have cleared the entrance exams to make it to that particular institute.

I can understand why books of that kind are popular. When a nation of a billion people has less than a dozen institutes that qualify for the tag “premier”, and when over a thousand candidates apply for every available seat at those institutes, people want to know what “actually” happens in those picture perfect campuses. When there is a market for such books, any publisher would want to publish the books, regardless of quality.

But what I cannot understand is why those books get written in the first place. All of them are in high paying high stress jobs – they are not doing it for the money, or because they have too much time on their hands. Why then are they doing it? Is the need to see their name in print so great they do not care what it is associated with? Are they living out their own personal ‘What ifs’ by writing those books? Or, do they genuinely believe the books are good and that they are great authors? And more than anything else, why can't the authors take the trouble to make up decent characters instead of borrowing rather boring people from life and dressing them up a bit?

Personally, I would love to read a well written book set in any of those campuses, as long as the campus doesn’t become the main character, and the author the protagonist. A cozy mystery, or a paranormal fantasy, or even an out an out memoir I would welcome. It is those books where the author is too lazy to make up characters that I object to.

Open

I'll come clean. When Andre Agassi first burst into the scene, it was Stefan Edberg I had a crush on, and Stefan Edberg I cheered for during every tournament. Agassi with his denim shorts, long hair and don't care attitude was the antithesis of everything Edberg stood for, and I never cared for him too much. I developed a grudging admiration for him, after he won the Wimbledon Championship in 1992, which turned into a more generous admiration after he kept crawling back to the # 1 position after being knocked off the top 100 time and again.

When his autobiography, Open, was released, all anyone could speak of were his revelations about snorting crystal meth and lying about it to the ATP - I did not want to waste precious time reading what I was sure would be the self indulgent story of a former tennis brat. Then a friend told me that it was one of the most honest accounts of a man's life that she had read, and I decided to give the book a try.

And I am glad I did.

The books is ghost-written by a genuinely good writer, who knows exactly how to play with the emotions of the reader. With a mix of candour and humour, the book makes you relive the memories of the flawed genius. You are forced to acknowledge the drive that made him repeatedly bounce back after being written off, and you cannot help nodding at many of the observations, even as you wonder how it is that the man has good things to say about so few people.

Fundamentally, I just cannot understand his repeated declaration that he absolutely hates the game. How can anyone put in such supreme effort into something they hate? And why? Is it worth defining your life by something you are not passionate about?

But at the same time, you have to admire the man for the choices he makes. Written off more often than practically any other tennis player, he could have retired, gracefully or otherwise, dozens of times - yet, each time he was written off, he came back a stronger and better player than he was before. That the man won more Grand Slams after the age of 29 than he did before tells its own story. That most of his later matches were played against opponents who were still in their diapers when he turned pro only underlines the fact that whether you love him or hate him, you have to admire him.

There is a lot about the man that I do not like after reading the book. There is a lot more of the man that I just do not understand. But I am glad I read the book, because there is a lot that you have to admire the man for, and I would not have known about any of it had I not picked the book up.

And of course, I have to admire any man who puts in as much effort into bringing into existance a school for disadvantaged children in his home town. That the apparent rebel that was Andre Agassi insists on school uniforms for his kids shows how far the man has come.

Love the man or hate him, the book is definitely worth a read.

What makes a book good?

To say I was disappointed with Chetan Bhagat's "Two States- the story of my marriage" is to put it mildly. The book had the potential to be really good, but Bhagat, I felt, had squandered the opportunity and had produced something very pedestrian. Most of the people I interacted with agreed with my assessment.

But everyone else seems to disagree. On the train, the other day, I counted six women reading - four of them were reading 'the' book. And they were a mixed bunch - a fifty-ish lady in a stark cotton saree, a girl either in, or fresh out of college, a thirty something professional in an Indian outfit, a thirty something professional in a Western outfit. They pretty much covered the entire gamut of 'types' of people on the train, and they were all reading the same book!

The same thing repeated itself the next day, and the next. In an entire week of observation, I did not ever find at least one lady on the train reading the book- often there were several. If that is not fame, what is?

People like me who are fastidious about what they read; who want a good story well told; who want believable characters and not cardboard cut outs; who want situations they can relate to and not steriotypes - people like me feel let down by the book. But the people who do not normally read, seem to love the book.

Which leads me to question what makes a good author. Is it someone who writes a book that book lovers cherish, or is it someone who gets people reading. Chetan Bhagat does have a management degree in marketing - perhaps he deliberately writes the kind of cliche ridden books that he does write, because the mass market is his target market.

Does popularity excuse a book not being 'good'?

I too had a Dream

The story of the White Revolution is rather well known in India. The story about how a nation which was dependent on imports for the bulk of its dairy requirement attained self-sufficiency in milk and milk production. When you talk of the co-operative movement in the country, the story invariably begins with the story of Amul- a co-operative of milk producers from one tiny district in Western India organizing themselves not just to produce, but to procure, market and distribute their products.

I have always admired Dr. Verghese Kurien, the brain, heart and body behind the movement, because he is one of those rare individuals who is at the same time a visionary, a leader and a professional manager. And yet, I always hesitated to pick up his authorized biography “I too have a Dream”, because of my natural distrust of authorized biographies and autobiographies. These books often tend to be self congratulatory, and this one was no different.

Dr. Kurien has achieved a lot in his professional life, he has surmounted obstacles that most people would have hesitated to even take on. He is one person who combines the best qualities of a visionary, a leader and a professional manager. He has changed the paradigm of how the diary industry operates in the country, has been responsible for ensuring an alternate/ supplementary source of livelihood to millions of farmers and has set up several institutions that continue to serve a vital role in the country.

Every page of the book oozed sincerity. The man is genuinely concerned with social and economic upliftment in rural India. For someone like me who continues to focus her energy on urban poverty and industry led development, reading about rural India was an eye-opener. The book had huge insights for anyone who wanted to read between the lines.While urban poverty is more visible, the real solution to urban poverty is to keep people from having to migrate to the cities. Rural poverty alleviation is what would lead to overall poverty alleviation. Dr. Kurien made me think along lines I have never been challenged to think before, and I loved the intellectual stimulation of having to do that.

But, there were too many moments in the book where ‘so-and-so threatened to do such-and-such to the movement’, and Dr. Kurien called up ‘so-and-so and had the threat removed’. Too many of his battles seem to have been won by making a call to the Prime Minister’s office, or by one Minister intervening when another was causing trouble. Nothing wrong with that – in cases such as this, the ends definitely justify the means – but is that all there is to the man? Couldn’t the story have been as strong without his having to pull so many strings? If he was willing to go to any extent to achieve what he thought had to be achieved, were all his quests as noble as the ones he highlights?

The reality of modern India, unfortunately, is one where you need to know someone to get something done. I would have liked that Dr. Kurien’s story have been slightly different. But a book I would definitely recommend, because it does challenge you to think of issues you may otherwise just avoid.

Two States - not the story of my marriage

I bought the first book that Chetan Bhagat published mainly because I wanted to see what the guy I vaguely knew in b-school came up with. I loved the book. ‘Five Point Somebody’ was at the same time funny and serious. You identified with the characters and chuckled at the undertone of wit. It spawned a whole generation of ‘campus novels’, each worse than the other. It remained a class apart.

Bhagat’s second book started off well, but lost the plot completely long before the end. The climax was ridiculous even by the standards of a Bollywood movie, but enough people loved the book for there to be a third. After the third, I swore never to read another of Bhagat’s books. But when I read the teaser of ‘Two States – the story of my marriage’, I knew I had to give the book a try.

The blurb promised much -

Love marriages around the world are simple:
Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy.
They get married.

In India, there are a few more steps:
Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl’s family has to love boy. Boy’s family has to love girl.
Girl’s Family has to love Boy’s Family. Boy’s family has to love girl’s family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.

Welcome to 2 States, a story about Krish and Ananya. They are from two different states of India, deeply in love and want to get married. Of course, their parents don’t agree. To convert their love story into a love marriage, the couple have a tough battle in front of them. For it is easy to fight and rebel, but it is much harder to convince. Will they make it?

Chetan Bhagat is a Punjabi, married to a Tamilian, Anusha Suryanarayan, they have two sons. My family exactly mirrors his - I am a Tamilian, the hubby is a Punjabi and we have two sons. How could I not read a book that promised to affectionately poke fun at both communities and on how they interact when they know they have to be joined in the bounds of holy matrimony?

The storyline was simplistic to say the least - boy and girl meet at b-school, fall in love, and live together for two years. Girl gets a job in Chennai, boy asks for a posting in the same city. Boy goes all out to convince girl's family that he would make a suitable husband for their only son. Mission accomplished, boy and girl together try to get his family to accept her. Uneasy truce, mis-understandings, break-ups, unexplained patch-up, Big Fat (South) Indian wedding. But the very simplicity of the story had potential€, which unfortunately never materialised.

The book started with clichés. Girls who got admission in the Indian Institute of Management- Ahmedabad, according to the author, were selected for their ability to solve mathematical problems than the rest of the population, they were not selected for their looks, or their attitudes towards clothes and accessorizing. The girls on campus were individually and collectively some of the smartest girls I have ever met, but many of them were also extremely pretty, and almost everyone knew how to dress to kill on days when they were going out. That people didn’t bother to dress up on campus was because of the prevailing sartorial culture than because of a personal disinclination to do so.

Once the protagonists graduated from b-school, the stereotyping only became worse. Sure individual members of certain communities dress, talk and behave in a certain way, but to imply that everyone is created from the same mould is to ask people to stretch their imaginations beyond credible limits.

Any Indian, regardless of which part of the country they come from, knows that traditional meals in South India are served on banana leaves. They may not know the rituals associated with it, but nobody, however dumb, would make a statement like “are we supposed to eat these?”, except in jest. And yet, Bhagat has one of his characters say just that.

Sure the book had its moments. There were times when the author provided quirky insights of the kind only a benevolent insider can provide. But those moments, rare though they were, only made the experience of reading the book more torturous. Because they reminded you of the wonderful story that could have been woven, had the author been serious about writing a book rather than stringing together a set of stereotypical moments.

That the book was written with one eye on movie rights is apparent- I can almost predict which pretty Tamilian actress, and cute half-Punjabi actor will play the roles of the main protagonists. That there are people who would enjoy the book is a fact. I am just not one of them.

And after this experience, I am definitely not reading any more books written by Chetan Bhagat.

The Double Helix

I’ve been wanting to read John Watson’s “The Double Helix” for a very long time, but have never been able to get my hands on a copy. The few bookstores that had heard about it, never seemed to have it in stock, and all efforts to get them to order the book for me proved equally futile. And then, I found the book online and immediately ordered myself a copy.

I could barely wait to tear the packaging off before digging into the book. And then, I was almost immediately disappointed – disappointed enough to throw the book aside for over a week. To me, “Surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman” sets the bar for popular autobiographical works by a scientist, and “The Double Helix” did not even come close either in terms of description of science, or personality of the author.

When I returned to the book with diminished expectations, it was not so bad. But even after making allowances for the self-depreciating style employed by Watson, their approach seemed almost cavalier. Crick and Watson seemed more concerned about beating others to the discovery than making the discovery themselves, and to achieve that end they were willing to grab data from anywhere with or without the other person’s knowledge. Worse, they did not even seem to do that well, with Watson not even being sure about the order of magnitude of a particular result when reporting back on it.

It was only in the final stages that they seemed to be doing something that sounded like ‘real science’, and even then, one could never find out if they used the less popular tautomeric structure of the ketones because they were convinced those were better representations, or if they did so only because they better suited the results.

Overall, a book that left me feeling quite disappointed, which may or may not have something to do with my expectations from the book.

But it was wonderful to get reacquainted with the structure of the DNA molecule, and to experience anew the thrill of seeing something so beautiful and elegant. And for that alone, I will cheerfully re-read the book selectively.

Imagining India

‘Imagining India’ is a book I would never have picked up in the normal course of events. Not that I have anything against Nanadan Nilekeni himself. Just that, I am extremely wary of inflicting on myself a book that is likely to turn out to be a self-congratulatory account of events as interpreted by the ‘great man’. And a book that has as its cover a mug-shot of the man who describes himself as a ‘commentator’ appears to be just that.

Two random events conspired to make me buy the book. It was highly recommended by a colleague who mentioned how ‘awesome’ the book was at least twice every day. And I fell ill bang in the middle of a month when I had imposed a ‘no fiction unless interspaced by non-fiction’ ban on myself. If the book did speak about Pratham and Akshay Patra, two non-profits that I know do very good work, how bad could it be?

The book went with me to hospital, and by the time I finished the Preface, I knew that the only thing that would make me put the book down was sleep. What I liked most about the book was the undercurrent of cautious optimism. While most commentators tend to go overboard in either their praise or their censure, he admitted our shortcomings, and somehow managed to convert them into opportunities.

After reading the book, I found myself sliding back into the solutions mode that I thought I had left behind many years back. Yes, there is a lot wrong with and in India, but not all of it defies solutions. I know that I too am going to spend a lot of time ‘Imagining India’ in the next few weeks.

Who is an Indian author

Amitav Ghosh. Jhumpa Lahiri. Salman Rushdie. They may be of Indian descent, but can you really call them Indian authors?
Preeta Samarasan in her Wikipedia entry is defined as a Malaysian English author. Neel Mukherjee has been living abroad for more than a decade.
Which leaves Manjula Padmanabhan and Anuradha Roy as the only authors I would classify as truly ‘Indian’ in the shortlist for the Vodafone Crossword Popular Book Award 2008.

I don’t have anything against any of the authors. Some of them I even like quite a bit. And some of the books on the short list I have read and enjoyed. But when an award is instituted supposedly to “recognise and reward the best of Indian writing and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience”, I would personally like the awards to honour books that are truly ‘Indian’.

Ms. Lahiri’s snapshots of the Indian diaspora, though accurate, are the musings of people who define themselves as no longer Indian. Ms. Samarasan’s debut novel is supposed to be about Malay-Indians – again, people no longer Indian.

Should the awards be open to all authors of Indian descent, or should it be restricted to people who define themselves as Indian? Isn’t there enough fiction set in India, or written by resident Indians that can be honoured? Does giving an award to a Vikram Seth or a Salman Rushdie promote the reading habit in India?

How much better it would be if the Award sought out genuine Indian gems and introduced them to the reading public. Pirated copies of ‘The Enchantress of Florence’ and ‘Sea of Poppies’ have been available at the Haji Ali signal for months. I would love to see Gouri Dange’s ‘3, Zaika Mansion’ being hawked there.


[The results are out. Neel Mukherjee is the joint winner. Is now the time to say that we were in University together?]

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The Sealink

We finally did the touristy thing and went for a drive on the Banda-Worli Sealink this weekend. The bridge has been a part of my life for so many years - from evaluating financial models in the bidding stage, to living in a house that overlooked the bay where the link was to come up, to seeing the reclaimation activity at the Reclamation - it was almost like coming home.

The drive did not disappoint. Though there was sufficient traffic to deter the speeds that many people boast about, it was still a smooth ride. And with the windows down, and the high tide beneath, it was an experience of the kind the city offers very little of.

But the moment we hit Worli Seaface, the traffic-planner in me kicked in. Even a child could have said the alignment just would not work. The only purpose served by blocking off all possible U-turns is to ensure that cars stay on the road for five times the distance they intented to. Would not a simple clover-leaf junction have taken care of most of the congestion without compromising on aesthetics?

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the reason the bridge has the beautiful harp shaped structure only at the Bandra end, is because the planners intended that it be balanced by a similar structure reaching up to Nariman Point. Without that bridge, all that the Bandra-Worli Sealink would do is to shift the bottleneck from Mahim Causeway to Annie Besant Road. And I am sure, nobody wants that.

Somethings are fit only for the garbage dump

When was the last time you read a book so disappointing you had to physically suppress the urge to chuck it into a dumpster partially read? If you had asked me this question this weekend, my answer would have been– ‘NEVER!’

When a book fails to engage me, I normally just leave it unread, and perhaps give it another try a few months (or a few years) later.

Sometimes, I know I am never going to want to finish the book, in which case, I either dump it in a corner of my book cupboard, or try to pass it on to someone who I feel may be more receptive to what the author is trying to say.

But this week, I finally found a book that should never have been written, much less published. The cover of the book was attractive, the tagline which spoke about kurtas falling in love with jeans was intriguing - I picked up the book, because I did not think anyone could mess up a tongue-in-cheek take on life in JNU.

I should have been warned by the author’s status as a doctoral student at JNU – the book never made up its mind if it was a thesis, a story, or pure tripe. The brief flashes of mediocrity never lived up to the expectation they created – within a couple of paragraphs, they degenerated into a meaningless string of words. If ever a book should not have been written, it is this one.

Yesterday, when the noxious fumes of partially decomposed garbage assaulted my senses, I stared deep into the jaws of the dumpster- it seemed the perfect home for the book I had in my hands. That I did not calculate trajectories had more to do with a sprained wrist than to self control.

The Color Purple

Though I have never been really been tempted to read the book, I have almost always been aware of Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’, mainly because Woopie Goldberg’s first starring role was in the movie based on the book. Browsing at my favourite bookstore the other day, I chanced upon a recent reprint of the book, and bought it mainly because the cover was so attractive.

On the face of it, I should not have liked the book. Rape, incest, poverty, gender and racial discrimination – the book promised to be rather morbid. And though I keep trying to make myself read ‘good’ books on human suffering, I will not pretend I enjoy them.

But ‘The Color Purple’ was a happy exception to the rule. Celie suffers, but accepts her suffering to such an extent, she doesn’t go into the gory details. Her first letter to God talks about how he put his thing in her, and when she cried told her to, “better shut up and get used to it.” By the end she writes the second letter to God, the child is born, taken away, and her mother dead. No long morbid descriptions of her plight. Just an almost clinical letter to God, all the more effective because she seems almost detached while describing her predicament.

The entire book proceeds in the same manner. Jumps of a few months, or even a few years, accomplished effectively from one letter to the next. Celie’s silent acquisition to whatever is meted out to her morphing into a realisation that she is a person in her own right.

Gender roles gradually bend, everyone becomes a better person than (s)he started out as, almost everyone is victorious on their terms, reality is not compromised – The Color Purple is very much my kind of book. I am glad I picked it up. Judging a book by its covers is not always a bad thing.