My 'Go-To' Books

I had the most wonderful day today, even though I spent it all by myself.

It's a long weekend. I woke up at 10 in the morning, dawdled over tea, had breakfast and went back to sleep at noon. Woke up at 2, showered, had lunch, went to Barista with my 'Adrian Mole', had a lovely hazelnut mocha and blueberry muffin, ran a couple of errands and am back home doing nothing.

Why can't we have more such days? :(

*******

I have a few "go-to" books and movies. These are books/movies that I turn to when I'm feeling low or have been having rough days.

My "go-to" books include the Bridget Jones Diaries (both) & Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Bridget Jones because...come on...it's Bridget Jones! Here's this girl who's constantly fretting about her weight, very much like me. She keeps landing herself in the most embarassing situations but she also has the courage to laugh at herself. She is being courted by two sex-on-toast men - one the biggest gentelman and the other possibly the biggest jerk in town - and she keeps falling for the jerk just because he is glib enough to talk his way into her heart. Now that's a situation many of us (women) are familiar with, aren't we? But in the end she goes with the nice guy. What's not to like?

Of course, the diary format also works for me. The book is fast-paced and not unnecessarily wordy. And I don't need to read it from start to finish at one go. I can read a few pages when I'm sad, put it down, pick it back up after some time and continue reading from where I left!

I also love Confessions of a Shopaholic. Becky Bloomwood is hilarious! She comes up with ingenious excuses to buy things she doesn't need. She also writes the funniest letters to her bank manager asking him to waive off her credit card bill and increase her credit limit! We could call her stupid and hate her for not having the mental strength to put an end to her shopaholism, but we don't because we know there's a little bit of Becky Bloomwood in all of us.

I've discovered two other books that could become my "go-to" books soon. One is 'Dork' by Sidin Vadukut. The book has workplace humor and it's outrageously funny. If you haven't read it yet, I'd say you MUST. You'll be rolling on your sides laughing.

The other book that I'm currently reading and finding absolutely adorable is 'The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 Years'. Here's this adoloscent obsessed with the spots on his face, which he's convinced is a result of the poor diet his mom feeds him, and the size of his "thing". He's a drama-queen, a chauvinist (he expects his mom to worship the ground he walks on & he'll let his girlfriend work at a cake shop or some place like that but not to have a career), but he also cares for old people & animals and looks out for his father who's having a rough time. The humor is subtle but it's definitely there.

Then there's 'Love Actually', the movie. It's my favorite movie EVER. I think I've watched the movie more than 20 times and it makes me happy every single time. It's got so much love floating around - love between a brother & sister, between a father & his step-son, even between a musician & his manager (!). Love that transcends boundaries of social strata and race. And it's got this Christmas theme running all the way through. And we LOOOOOOOOVE Christmas over here.

Which reminds me, Christmas is right 'round the corner and I haven't bought my decorations yet! I have a little tree from last year but I need to buy the ornaments & mistletoe & streamers. And plum cake! Oh, Christmas is going to be so much fun!! :)

BBC's Top 100 Books

Tagged by Moonshine. This is a list of the top 100 books published by BBC. According to them, an average reader has read 6 of these. I've highlighted the ones I've read. Let's count!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (In school)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

That's 30!!! Wow...I'm impressed with myself.

Which ones have you read?

And I'm tagging Bluestocking and Supernova. And anyone else who wants to take it up. Just let me know when you're done :)

'Dork' and My Upcoming Vacation

'Dork' by Sidin Vadukut is one of those really funny books that are so hard to come by. It's laugh-out-loud funny. It's the story of a guy who has just started working at a management consultancy and the blunders he makes during his first year.

The setting is very familiar - the corporate world. All of us who've held some kind of a corporate job will identify with the story and the things that happen. We all know/have known guys who think they're the best thing to have happened to the corporate world but in reality they're crap. The guy who gets drunk at office parties and makes a fool of himself. The guy who goofs up big time in important client meetings/presentations. Office politics. Colleagues who pretend to be our friends but backstab us at any given opportunity. The book will have you in splits. I would highly recommend it! More so if you're going to be on vacation like I'm soon going to be (BIG smile :D) and are looking for a light, fun read.

Let's now talk about my impending vacation, shall we? :)

I'm going to the hills! Far from the heat, humidity and psychotic weather of Calcutta. To a place I've never been before. Hopefully it'll be misty and cool. And my hotel has a fireplace! A functioning fireplace. How charming is that! Apparently they give you logs at night to keep the fire burning as the temperature dips.

There are two reasons why I'm so excited about this vacation. For one, I'll be spending 5 days with Moonshine & her adorable husband. They are two of my absolutely favorite people in this world. Moonshine is fun, she's very similar to me and I haven't met her in two & a half years now! We've become really good friends during this time, or so I like to believe :P

Besides, we have a lot of gossipping and catching up to do. It's going to be 5 days of unadulterated girly fun.

The second reason I'm really looking forward to this vacation is that I haven't been on one in the last 4 years. Can you imagine? That's an excruciatingly long time to not have taken a vacation (and by vacation I mean more than a couple of days off).

I've always had a reason or another to not take a vacation and it's mostly been work-related. In the past 4 years that is. Before that, it was always a shortage of money. I had just started working and was living in Bandra and paying enormous rent, so I never had the money to go on vacation. And in my first few years of working I didn't mind it so much either.

Over the past 4 years though it's always been an issue of too much work. In my mind at least. So while colleagues trooped off on weeks long vacations, I always felt I had too much work. So how could I have gone on vacations? But one of the many things I've decided to do for myself since turning 30 is that I'll take at least one long vacation every year. Maybe two. Maybe one long & one short. Because...I'm worth it! And because there IS such a thing as 'burn-out'.

The Immortals of Meluha

'The Immortals of Meluha' is an "action-drama" based on Hindu mythology. It's the first book of the Shiva trilogy by Amish.

Frankly, it's not a book I would've picked up under normal circumstances, but the jacket caught my eye. Then I read the blurb at the back, which seemed different and interesting. I was also intrigued by the name of the author. 'Amish' sounded very mystical. It's an entirely different story that he turned out to be some Amish Trivedi!!

Anyway, the story is set in 1900 B.C. in what is now known as the Indus Valley Civilization (called Meluha by the people living in that period). Meluha is an utopian empire created many centuries earlier by Lord Ram and inhabited by the Suryavanshis. However, they face annihilation as their life-giving river - the Saraswati - is gradually dying. At the same time, they face terrorist attacks from the Chandravanshis, who are corrupt, immoral and unethical - basically the anti-thesis of the Suryavanshis. To make matters worse, the Chandravanshis have allied with the Nagas - a sinister race of deformed humans with astonishing martial skills. The only hope for the Suryavanshis is an ancient legend which says that ‘when evil reaches epic proportions, when all seems lost, when it appears that your enemies have triumphed, a hero will emerge’.

I really liked the book. It seems to be vey well researched. The story is fantastic. It's based on the premise that all Gods, including Shiva, started out as regular human beings. It was their deeds - their karma - due to which they came to be considered Gods.

Even though the story is based really back in time and there's a certain amount of awe and reverence attached to gods among Indians, the characterization of Shiva, the protagonist, is such that you really connect with him. Also, the author has woven certain incidents - such as why Shiva came to be called the 'Neelkanth', how the slogan of 'har har mahadev' came about, how the 'trishul' came into existence etc. - very beautifully into the narrative. There's even a cute love story in there, with just the right amount of mush!

My only issue was with the language, especially during conversations between the characters. The language is very American. It feels really out of place considering we're talking ancient India (1900 B.C.) and sort of takes away from the book. "What's wrong with you, woman?", "Oh come on, man!" and "It's a deal!" don't quite sit well on the lips of Gods & Goddesses, do they?

However, inspite of the language the book is very engaging. It'll have you hooked. A word of caution though : this book is part of a trilogy, so obviously it ends at a point that will make you buy the next book in the series as well. Now, we all know how sequels go, so we can only hope the subsequent books are not a let down.

My Favorite Literary Characters of All Time

There’s a tag floating around that I would love to do. Unfortunately, no one’s tagged me for it yet so I decided to pick it up anyway, and can imagine all book lovers grabbing at it with both hands. Here's a post on 10 of my favorite literary (male) characters of all time, in no particular order.

1) Mr Darcy - He is one half of one of the most memorable and romantic love stories ever, the other half being Elizabeth Bennett, of course. A man who continuously struggles against his innate feeling of superiority (come to think of it, I quite identify with him in that sense :) He dislikes Elizabeth at the outset but then begins to love and respect her, to the extent he becomes one of the most devoted lovers ever (move over Edward Cullen).

In his love for Elizabeth, he also does one of the most difficult things for a man to do - he tames his pride.

On top of it all, we have Mr Colin Firth playing Mr Darcy twice over. Do we really need any other reason to like - sorry love - Mr Darcy?

2) Heathcliff - Surprised? But you shouldn’t be! He’s the archetypical tortured, romantic Byronic hero who is so filled with love and hatred at the same time that it threatens to destroy him as well as those around him. He grows up mistreated and abused which leaves him abusive and bitter in return. Yet, he shares a passionate love affair with Catherine. He yearns for her when she's gone. Heathcliff's character is complicated and bizarre but captivating. He's the hero as well as the anti-hero.

3) Howard Roarke - He’s possibly the most principled character in English literature that I have come across. He stands by his ideals and his vision even if that means ending up in penury. That is the most defining quality of Howard Roarke.

4) Atticus Finch - ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ was one of the first books I read but Atticus Finch stays with me to this day. He was devoid of any racial prejudice afflicting a large number of Whites in 1930s America. He teaches his children the importance of being open-minded and judicious. The novel revolves around his struggle to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman, even if that means his family will have to face insults and physical violence at the hands of the townspeople who are against him.

5) E.R.Braithwaite - 'To Sir With Love' was the first novel I read completely. Before that my attempts at reading included multiple aborted attempts at reading Enid Blyton. Braithwaite is a black teacher at a predominantly white school filled with unruly, misbehaved children from rough homes. They resist his authority, are malicious towards him and revel in hooliganism. The story is about how he manages to make responsible, well-behaved "adults" out of savages, at the same time winning their respect for himself as an individual.

6) Harry Potter - How can my list of favorite fictional character be complete without a mention of ‘the boy that lived’? I’m one of the millions of Pottermaniacs in this world and do you know why I like Harry so much?

Because he’s a real character in an imaginary world. Like any boy his age, he too is afraid in the face of adversity, but he faces it with courage. He stands by his friends. His orphan status and his mistreatment at the hands of his uncle & aunt whose home he grew up in endear him as much to people of all ages as his personality.

7) Hercule Poirot - The short, fat, funny Belgian who despises dust, is obsessed with perfection, order & tidiness, and can’t stop singing praises of his intelligence and capabilities (he repeatedly declares that he is supremely gifted as far as his “grey cells” are concerned). There is only one thing he can’t handle - the sea! It makes him sick.

Poirot is a man of method - according to him, even the most complex of crimes can be solved by placing the pieces of the puzzle in the right order. He looks down on methods such as examining footprints, taking fingerprints and searching for clues with a magnifying glass, all of which according to him are methods adopted by less gifted detectives. He can solve all mysteries by sitting still for hours and thinking. And then of course there’s his funny English. He refers to inanimate objects as ‘he’ and keeps apologizing to people for ‘deranging’ them when he actually means 'disturbing' them.

8) Sherlock Holmes - He’s the anti-thesis of Poirot. He’s eccentric, untidy, messy and thrives amidst chaos. But he is also similar to Poirot in that he too relies on deductive reasoning to solve his cases.

The next two entries are going to surprise you, as they did me. Consider yourselves warned!

9) Edward Cullen - Yes, yes we are shallow like that. Stephanie Meyer knew exactly what she was creating when she wrote the character of 'Edward Cullen'. She knew she would have women the world over eating out of his palms, for the simple reason that such perfect, gorgeous, devoted men don't exist in real life!

Edward Cullen is every woman's fantasy and no one's reality. He will love you till the edge of the world; you just need to have a good - correction gargantuan - appetite for risk (for you might become his next meal!) But that's a small price to pay to gaze into honey-gold eyes every single day, don't you think?

10) Bond - James Bond. Okay, I admit I don’t know how many people would’ve actually
read any of Ian Fleming’s books but Bond IS a literary character, so he qualifies for this list. Call me sexist if you will but I love James Bond for the pure unadulterated adrenalin he brings to the table. The women that he brings along...ah, I leave that for the guys.

Whoever wants to pick this tag up, consider yourself tagged! Alternatively, tell me who are your's!

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I loved Khaled Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner'. The line "For you, a thousand times over" followed by the image of a boy walking with drops of blood trailing behind him will stay with me my entire life. I get goose bumps thinking about that scene from the movie adaptation of the book.

Still, I was a little hesitant to read Hosseini's second book, "A Thousand Splendid Suns". It's been out for a while but I never bought it because of two reasons - a) The premise of a mother-daughter story did not interest me much, and b) Everyone I knew who'd read the book said it wasn't as good as 'The Kite Runner'. Still, there was a little part of me that wanted to read it, and a very dear friend of mine gifted it to be on my birthday. And so I read the book.

'A Thousand Splendid Suns' is the story of a middle-aged woman and a teenager in war-ravaged Afghanistan who are forcibly thrown together by circumstances and develop a mother-daughter bond over time that culminates in immense sacrifices on both their parts. It's the story of the hardships, the brutality, and the deprivation they endure under the Taliban rule. Mostly the brutality at the hands of men. And they don't even have a way out.

The book will not touch your heart or move you...it will wrench your heart. It's made me eternally grateful for the part of world, the religion, the family I've been born into. I really truly lucked out. We've heard stories of injustices towards women under Taliban rule, but if the book is anything to go by, very few other communities would have faced the kind of atrocities that Afghan women have.

Most of you would have read the book, and for those who haven't I'm not going to put any spoilers in here. Because I think it's a beautiful book, one you should experience for yourself. Maybe not as haunting as 'The Kite Runner', but it's beautifully written. And it's very very depressing. Just when you think you've read the worst, it makes you plunge further into depression.

I finished the book a couple of days ago but I'm still not ready to read another one. Don't think I will be for a while. I tried - I picked up another seemingly mellow book thinking I might as well read it while I was in that state of mine. Couldn't. Picked up a funny book, couldn't read that either. I need to let 'A Thousand Splended Suns' seep out of my system before I can let another in. Just that I don't know how long it'll take!

Dumbledore's Secret

In a March 9, 2008 interview JK Rowling admitted that Dumbledore is gay and was in love with a wizard named Grindelwald whom he later defeated in a duel.

She said and I quote, "I had always seen Dumbledore as gay, but in a sense that’s not a big deal. The book wasn’t about Dumbledore being gay. It was just that from the outset obviously I knew that he had this big, hidden secret and that he flirted with the idea of exactly what Voldemort goes on to do, he flirted with the idea of racial domination, that he was going to subjugate Muggles. So that was Dumbledore’s big secret.

He’s an innately good man, what would make him do that? I didn’t even think it through that way, it just seemed to come to me, I thought, ‘I know why he did it. He fell in love.’

And whether they physically consummated this infatuation or not is not the issue. The issue is love. It’s not about sex. So that’s what I knew about Dumbledore. And it’s relevant only in so much as he fell in love and was made an utter fool of by love. He lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently became very mistrusting of his own judgement in those matters so became quite asexual. He led a celibate and a bookish life."

Reactions?

The 4th Idiot

Really, I don’t have an opinion on the 3 Idiots controversy. I don’t care whether Chetan Bhagat gets his credit or his money. Therefore, I don’t have an opinion. The man is rich enough to be living in South Bombay; I don’t care if he earns a few more lacs.

But the controversy has me in splits - Chetan Bhagat’s statements & reactions to be specific. He claims he’s been grappling with the issue for 2 years but kept silent about it. Why? Pray tell. Was he waiting for Fairy Godmother to come and sort out his issues before the release of the movie?

His reasons for finally speaking up on the issue (when he must've realized he's no Cinderella & no Fairy Godmother is coming to his rescue!) are hilarious. It starts with his mom having cried because his name came so late in the rolling credits and scrolled by so fast that she missed it!!

Now, didn’t mom teach him not to trust strangers when he was little? Or was someone not paying attention growing up?

If he wanted credit upfront, he should’ve ensured that part was mentioned in the contract he signed - so the producers would be bound by law to give him credit as due, or bear the consequences. I honestly didn’t expect an IIT-IIM graduate who worked as an Investment Banker before he became a writer to be so daft.

It’s clear what Chetan Bhagat is really after are the film awards for Best Story, as he keeps repeating in every interview that Abhijat Joshi & Rajkumar Hirani will go around collecting all the awards while he’ll be forced to watch from the sidelines. And his getting upset over not getting the main credit for the story makes sense given that he’s made his intentions of turning into a screenplay writer quite clear.

And then came this - “They have an army of people to promote their side of the story, crores of media budgets and are sparing no efforts to bring me down. The only thing I have is my fans, and the truth. But then, the truth is Krishna, and the Pandavas had only that while there was an army on the other side. Remember who won that battle?”

Oh please! We don’t need a refresher course in Bhagavada Geeta 101! Leave that for the saas-bahu serials on TV!

And then came the clincher! Bhagat said that he’s a Krishna bhakt (devotee of Lord Krishna) and he’ll happily join ISKCON & dedicate his life to Krishna!!

Really? And who’ll pay the EMI/rent for the South Bombay apartment while he spends his life serving Lord Krishna? Poor wifey who continues to hold a corporate job so hubby dearest can realize his dreams of becoming an author, and cry like a cry baby when he feels he's duped when what he really should've been doing was to pay attention to the goddamn contract he was signing?

Sorry for getting personal Chetan, but I still haven’t forgiven you the 100 rupees that I spent on ‘One Night @ the Call Center”. (That book is right up there with Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan's 'You Are Here' on my list of the The Shittiest Books Written Ever!!)

Once rumors that Vidhu Vinod Chopra & Co. are planning to sue Chetan Bhagat started doing the rounds, Chetan Bhagat promptly decided to “close” the controversy by saying that he & his fans want to move on, and they have. Would he have made such a big issue out of the whole thing if the movie had tanked like the one that was based on ‘One Night @ the Call Center’?

Honestly, I don't care who wins this battle of the credits but I wonder if Pritish Nandy hit the nail on the head when he Tweeted that given Aamir Khan’s penchant for unusual promotional strategies, it could be possible that the fight with Chetan Bhagat is aimed at pumping up sales of both Five Point Someone and 3 Idiots?

Now, that’s a thought. Five Point Someone IS flying off the shelves after all.

2 States : Pedestrian Writing at it's Best from the Best-Selling Indian Author of All Times (Apparently)

I’m a big fan of language that’s simple and flows but the stories that Chetan Bhagat tells aren’t out of this world, and even a high-school kid can write the way he does.

He started out well with Five Point Someone (I genuinely enjoyed the book), then he lost the plot completely with One Night @ the Call Center. His latest offering - 2 States - is his attempt at redemption but the end product is a confluence of his two earlier books – ‘A’ Class b-school (IIMA) setting, followed by the unnecessary (and irrelevant) introduction of a spiritual Guru into the story.

2 States is the story of Chetan Bhagat’s courtship & marriage – how he, a Punjabi, and his girlfriend, a Tamilian Brahmin convinced their parents to let them marry each other. He plays on all the stereotypes of the Punjabi & Tamilian communities that exist, exaggerating them to the nth power. Punjabis love food, love all material things, are lured by money, huge houses & glitzy cars, are loud & over-the-top in everything they do, and are extremely racist, hung up on fair skin & hate South Indians. Tamilians on the other hand are quiet, not very gregarious people, have an understated lifestyle, eat on banana leaves & hate North Indians! The book is mainly about these stereotypes – which he has used to bring in the humor element – and not so much about the love story between the protagonists Krish & Ananya. The romance between them hardly exists!

The book reads like a script for a Bollywood potboiler that’s just waiting to be made into a movie! And I’m not surprised given that I recently read an interview with Chetan Bhagat where he says he’s gradually moving towards script-writing since that’s where the demand (read $$$$) is. So Mr Bhagat, why waste time writing books and waste Rs 95 of our hard-earned money? You might as well write scripts directly, and that way we will save our money because no one will waste money watching your movie! Remember ‘Hello’? Did anyone watch it apart from you, your wife & your twin boys?

Anyway, moving on….the first part of 2 States where Krish tries to win over Ananya’s parents is long drawn out, and the latter part (where Ananya tries to convince Krish’s parents) gets over in a jiffy!

In spite of all cultural differences there are no fights between the couple, only minor arguments. Common sense says that when you’re trying to straddle wide cultural chasms – along with the added pressure of having to convince two sets of non-cooperative parents – fights are bound to happen between the couple. Or when the wedding preparations are being done where the boy and girl belong to two different cultures - there are fights between the families (and consequentially between the couple) on issues such as the style of wedding, the rituals to be followed etc. But Mr Bhagat is in a hurry to finish his book and has no time to dwell on these.

The book is also very sexist. Just to convince his mother – who is way too hung up on the “hum ladke wale hain (we are the boy’s side)” bit – Krish asks Ananya & her family to be almost servile towards his family – buy expensive gifts for every member of the boy’s side, ask your parents to always talk to them with folded hands, pander to every demand of theirs etc. Ananya’s family obliges without a word. He also tells his mother that once the wedding is over he’ll show Ananya her place in the family - that of a daughter-in-law who dare not argue with her mother-in-law - and make her toe the line!! As a female reader, I take offense to such sexist attitude.

Chetan Bhagat has shown Punjabis as extremely avaricious, petty and racist – definitely immensely exaggerated. Ananya is shown to be an independent career woman and quite sexually liberated but she still panders to the demands of the boy’s side without a word of protest.

Overall, the book is good for a light read. It has plenty of humor though at the expense of certain communities. But otherwise it’s quite pedestrian.

Should I?

The question is whether I should start reading P G Wodehouse?

The thing is I don't enjoy British humor. I don't find it the least bit funny. I'm more the 'Friends' rather than the 'Yes Minister' types, so I'm really not sure I'll appreciate P G Wodehouse.

Do you think I will? Votes in please!

Twilight

Today is a working day for me thanks to the Bandh called by the Congress yesterday because one of their MLAs got beaten up by supporters of the Communist party.

I really believe there is a reason, apart from its historical dominance by the Communist party and the policies of the State government, why Kolkata lags behind other metros in terms of development & growth, and that has to do with the attitude of the people in this city. Since I don’t offend people on weekends, I will abstain from elaborating on this further ;)

After all, every city has its pros & cons, and Kolkata is no exception.

Since it’s a Saturday I’m obviously not getting any work done. So I thought of making the day somewhat productive and writing about the book I have just finished reading – 'Twilight'.

'Twilight' is the first book of the Twilight Saga (consisting of a series of 4 books) by Stephenie Meyer. I was dead against reading the book at first – it was about teenage romance & a vampire!!

Teenage romance, for God’s sake!!

Moonshine was pretty insistent I read the book and then I saw people (women) all around me at work reading the book. Needless to say they were all gushing about it and that got my curiosity peaking. I bought the book, thinking I probably won’t be buying the series.

When I started reading the book I couldn’t believe myself…I was like, “Oh great, I’m reading a book on high school romance & vampires!! Why did I let people convince me into this again??”

I’ve never read a romance novel in my life, vampires are not my idea of people to spend my free time with, and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ was not my favorite TV show. But whadyaknow – 2 days into the book I was so hooked, I went back and bought the entire series!!

I’ve already drooled all over my computer screen and this blog about Edward Cullen (see post below), the hero of the book who is also a vampire, so let me not extol his gorgeousness even further, and get started about the book.

The book is about a girl (Bella) who moves to a tiny wet, dreary town outside Seattle where everyone knows everyone else. She meets and falls in love with a vampire (Edward). Now that doesn’t happen too often, does it? But there’s a small problem there…vampires drink blood and there are six other vampires in Edward's family. The rest of the story is about the dangers Bella faces because she’s in love with a vampire.

I think I’m sounding like I’m making fun of the book. It’s hard not to if you think about it rationally. But I loved the book!!

It’s very well written though the story is childish, cheesy, corny…it IS a high-school romance after all, with a healthy dose of flipping hearts, knotting stomachs, sexual tension etc. And oh, vampires. Lots of them.

The author is American, and her language reflects that – it’s flowy and easy to read. And she’ll keep you turning pages without wanting to put the book down. I was so addicted to the book, I was reading it even during lunch breaks at work!!

A warning though : this book is NOT meant for men.

I just got my hands on the movie and I can’t tell you how badly I’m dying to watch it! So that’s the POA for tonite – watch a cheesy movie about high-school kids in love and vampires. The only problem is that A wants to watch it with me. He thinks I’ve completely lost it because I’ve been walking around in a daze (it’s the Edward Cullen effect I assure you, I’m sure I’ll snap out of it sooner or later) and can’t stop talking about how gorgeous and charming the vampire is!

I’m trying to talk him out of it but he’s simply not relenting. This is a movie I need to watch alone or with a girlfriend….definitely not with a boy! He is never going to get the movie!

Besides, I’d like to watch it with someone who would think it’s perfectly normal to squeal and drool all over the place over a hot guy. A guy is never going to get that either.

Edward Cullen

SO…I am in love with Edward Cullen. He is the sort of guy that will give any teenage girl jelly knees. I long ceased to be a teenager but I’m in love with him nevertheless.

He’s taken me back to the time when we had full-throttle lustful crushes in school. Not the "first love", mind you – that was always "pure & innocent". I’m talking about crushes where even the slightest physical contact with the person could get your blood rushing to your head, make your stomach flip with a mixture of excitement and nervousness, and make the hair on the back of your hand stand (assuming you didn’t wax at that age, of course).

Edward has honey-gold eyes and a smile that kills, is drop dead gorgeous, graceful, lithe, muscular, powerful, dazzling! He is sex-on-toast!

Sadly, he is also a vampire that doesn’t exist except in the imagination of Stephenie Meyer. Sigh!

Moonshine, I’m going to kill you for this.

PS: The character of Edward Cullen in the movie version of the book was essayed by the very British Robert Pattison. For the uninitiated, this is the same guy who played Cedric Diggory in Happy Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Delicious, isn't he? ;-)

Needless to say I’m dying to read the rest of the series and get my hands on the movie.

PPS: To those (men reading this I guess) who don't really "dig" hot men, I'm sorry for being such a girl :)

The Hungry Tide

'The Hungry Tide' is the story of two young people - a Delhi based businessman and a female cetologist (a biologist who studies marine mammals such as dolphins etc.) - who visit the Sunderbans for personal and professional reasons respectively, and how their lives become intertwined with those of a poor, illiterate fisherman and his ambitious wife.

There is a parallel story running throughout the book, of an idealist & a revolutionary who gave up his life for the idea of revolution, or possibly for love, you may argue.

I was never too keen on reading Amitav Ghosh for the simple reason that the synopsis of his books printed on the back cover never enticed me into buying the books. After reading ‘The Hungry Tide’ I am convinced that he is a seriously over-rated writer.

Well, to be fair to him the book isn’t all that bad. It just failed to interest me. It’s not a page turner either.

The only reason I persisted with it is because I’ve been to the ‘tide country’ and therefore, I could imagine the settings. Someone who hasn’t been to the Sunderbans, and does not know what the mangroves, rivers/creeks & villages there look like may not be able to enjoy the book at all.

Amitav Ghosh’s style of writing is very conventional and staid, for me at least. He writes well but there is nothing exciting about his style of writing.

'The Hungry Tide' is an old book so I’m sure many of you would have read it already. As for me, I don’t regret not having picked up ‘The Sea of Poppies’.

Angeli et Demoni

Much better than 'The Da Vinci Code' though by the same director, Ron Howard.

The movie takes you on a mad chase across Rome, at break-neck speed. It stays fairly true to the book and chances are that people who haven't read the book will not be able to grasp the movie completely. An example was a friend of mine who went..."It was OK. I didn't like it too much. The story isn't very interesting...something about religion & science." She obviously hasn't read the book!

I loved the arial shots of Rome. Just LOVED them! The shots of St. Peters Square, the Duomo, the Colosseum, the scenes inside the chapels. Makes my desire to visit Italy (and Europe) even stronger. Such history the city has!

Anyway, coming back to the movie...this one was much better directed & edited than 'The Da Vinci Code'. It was crisp & thrilling, ensuring that the audience doesn't lose attention for even a minute.

As far as the acting was concerned, all the main characters stepped on the gas pretty hard. One doesn't need to mention Tom Hanks. Ewan McGregor played the Camerlengo very well. Even the Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer did a good job of being the "exotic element" in the movie. This movie...or the book...was never about Vittoria Vettra anyway.

The hero of the movie was of course, the book. Dan Brown is probably the only author apart from JK Rowling whose imagination I think is truly out of this world. It's not something they could have acquired, it's something they are totally blessed with. It would've taken an insane amount of research on Catholicism, The Illuminati, The Knights Templar etc. to put the story together, no doubt, but a mindblowing imagination to even have thought of something like this

If you haven't watched the movie yet, I highly recommend doing so. But it would be better if you've read the book first. I think I'm going to go back and read the two books all over again. You go race across Rome!!

Almost Single

I’ve been going through a major chick lit phase that has lasted longer than I thought it would! Just finished reading ‘Almost Single’ by Advaita Kala. It’s a very witty book. You know the ‘smart’ funny kinds?

It’s a story about a 29 year old girl (or is she over 30? I forget) who works in the hospitality industry & her two other friends – a girl from Bhatinda who is desperate to find an NRI to marry & registers on matrimonial websites to increase her chances of getting picked up by some NRI, and another who is about to get divorced from her husband of 5 years. The book is about how the first two girls find love, while the third begins a new life - not with another man but with a brand new career!

Advaita Kala often gives amazing insight on some home truths of singledom & the dating world. Of course, there is the quintessential hot man in this book too like in all other books 'by a chick & for chicks', but this book is as much about issues faced by single working women living in cities away from their hometowns, tyrannical bosses, bitchy/psycophant colleagues, philandering husbands & the constant battle against weight by women who aren’t genetically blessed with wafer-thin bodies! Totally hits home :)

The book isn’t laugh-out funny, unlike, say ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ or 'Bridget Jones' Diary', but there is this one scene that had me in splits. The protagonist, sick of being referred to as "a girl with a rather large frame" or "a girl of generous proportions", decides to take her life in her own hands & goes back to gym after a gap of 2-3 months. The instructor gives her a hard time for having missed gym (from personal experience, I can tell you that most gym instructors are evil). At the gym, she runs into the guy she has a crush on. She’s on the treadmill, and in order to prove to him that she too can run, she jacks up the speed. And just then the instructor yells “Stop pehelwan! If you run like this today, you won’t come to gym for the next 6 months!!” The guy she has a crush on is on the treadmill next to her!

Read the book if you want a light funny read. I promise you it doesn’t get mushy, emotional or overly romantic at any point of time :)

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Honestly, I’ve read such a hilarious book after ages! This is probably the most funny book I’ve read after Bridget Jones, and when I say funny I don’t mean it will make you smile or giggle. This book will make you laugh aloud.

The book is about a girl, Becky Bloomwood, who is an obsessive compulsive shopper. She has maxed out all her credit cards and is neck deep in debt, yet she cannot – just cannot – control her shopping urges. She always finds a reason why she needs something (that she wants to buy), however bizarre it might be! She’ll go to any lengths to buy things, even if that involves borrowing money from people or hiding merchandise from customers at a store.

Which brings me to my absolute favorite sequence in the entire book.....

So, Becky is looking for a weekend job which will help her pay off her debt as her regular weekday job does not pay her enough to support her outrageous shopping habits. She lands herself a job as an assistant at a clothes store, which she thinks would be a glamorous job where she’ll be required to help customers select their outfits, give them styling tips etc.

On the first day of the job, she turns up dressed her stylish best (of course, if she’s going to give styling tips to her customers, she's got to look the part herself!) but is made to change into the store uniform that has nothing stylish about it. And instead of being asked to give styling tips to customers, she’s made to fold clothes that customers discard after trying on!

On the first day itself, she spots a pair of zebra-print jeans that she loves and plans to buy during her lunch break. However, a customer picks them up for trying on, along with 3 other outfits. So she lies to the customer that they are allowerd only 3 outfits at a time inside the fitting room (though they're allowed 4) & insists on holding the zebra print jeans back. And then....she hides them!!!

And pretends she doesn’t know where they went!!!

So obviously she’s fired on the spot....but she asks her manager if she can quickly do some shopping on her employee discount card before leaving the store! This incident had me in splits.

There are more such funny incidents in the book. The excuses she gives to her bank for not paying up (including that she's finally found her savior in Jesus Christ), her accidental run-in into her bank manager & his assistant who have been trying to track her down for ages & whose communications she has been repeatedly ignoring, are outrageously funny.

The last 30-40 pages of the book were a let down though. Unable to take all the sh*t in her life, she escapes to her parents’ house where she tries to help people & to set things right in her life. Suddenly, she’s not herself anymore! She sorts out her finances, pays off all the debt & also ceases to be funny. So does the book. That’s not how you want to end a really funny book.

They’re apparently making a movie based on the book. I hope they don’t make a dumbed-down high school version of it! This is a smartly written, witty book & and they should make a smart, crisp movie out of it.

Some people warned me not to read this book as they found it to be depressing. I wonder how?? There’s only one way you can find this book depressing, i.e., if you think you have a “shopping problem” yourself.

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

Did Arvind Adiga deserve the Booker for ‘The White Tiger’? I’m not quite sure.

I haven’t read ‘The Sea of Poppies’ which was the book that was expected to win the Booker, but considering ‘The White Tiger’ independent of other books, I think it might have been over-estimated.

It is an interesting book no doubt. The letter format, short-chapters & style of writing all keep the reader engaged. I have this bad habit of dropping a book midway if it fails to hold my attention. I was racing through ‘The White Tiger’, but maybe in terms of story it isn’t as superlative as it’s supposed to be. As in, I’m sure there were other books written by other authors in 2008 that deserved the Booker more.

Anyway, everyone already knows the story of ‘The White Tiger’ so I will not go into it.

Adiga highlights the differences between the Darkness & the Light very well – metaphors for the cities & villages of India respectively. The differences in their attitude, mindsets, lifestyles, cultures, and most importantly the grip that the caste system still has over those living in the Darkness in India…how it still dictates what people can & cannot do…how it curbs their ambitions & achievements…how it keeps them bound to the fate they were born into & prevents them from reaching out to a life they want to build for themselves.

Adiga offers some brilliant insights on China & India, the two behemoths of the 21st century, and why he thinks India can never equal China in terms of development. For instance, he says that China is far ahead of India in every respect, except that it doesn’t have entrepreneurs. India, on the other hand, does not have basic amenities such as drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transport, hygiene, discipline, courtesy, punctuality etc., but it has thousands & thousands of entrepreneurs! Sadly, entrepreneurs in India need to be two things at the same time: straight & crooked, mocking & believing, sly & sincere, because India per se does not reward entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs have to pay their way through to success - they have to pay the Government, the politicians who are not part of the Government etc. to clear the numerous hurdles they face, and things can still backfire at them.

Adiga also says that despite its triumph in drinking water, sewage & Olympic gold medals, China still doesn’t have democracy. India might not be able to provide basic amenities to its citizens, but its billion plus citizens have the right to vote and to choose their own future. However, is the process credible? Are the elections free & fair? What about the politicians that stand for the elections? They are mostly criminals…do they work for the development of this country & its citizens? So even if we have democracy & the right to vote, are they of any use to us? Shouldn’t a country work at providing basic amenities to its citizens before it tom-toms it’s (false, dysfunctional) democratic set-up?

Adiga also shares some interesting anecdotes on India. For instance, he says that India is two countries at the same time: an India of Light & an India of Darkness. The ocean brings Light to India where as the river (Ganga in this case) brings Darkness. All places situated near the ocean are in the Light where as places situated along the Ganga (UP, Bihar, Bengal) though extremely fertile, are still plunged into Darkness. Secondly, there is such discrepancy in the social status of the master & the servant in India (inclusive of house help, drivers, peons etc.) that in order to get a job in the Light, a man from the Darkness can even be forced to hide his religion from his masters & worship Gods of another faith!

There are two things I didn’t like about the book. First of all, it shows India in a very poor light. I tend to have problems with this attitude of most post-colonial Indian writers. Their favorite topics are either those related to the Raj, or expounding on the miseries & misfortunes of India. I can't help but get the feeling that they pick these topics with their eyes on the Booker & other such awards. But then, one might argue that that’s the reality once you look beyond the gloss of the malls, multiplexes & glass & concrete buildings of India.

Second of all, it is an exaggerated account. Not everyone who manages to become an entrepreneur has to commit murder on his way. Agreed they have to face numerous hurdles, but being forced to commit murder is an extreme scenario.

However, I would definitely recommend reading ‘The White Tiger’. It’s humorous – humor that’s subtle, black yet hits bulls eye! And it makes one think…are we really such a great nation as we are made to believe by those in positions of influence, such as the Government, the school textbooks etc? Or is it all a myth, a great story based on fallacies created to attract the attention & investment of Western nations?

You decide.

Many Lives, Many Masters

Do you believe in reincarnation? Spirits? Do you believe that the soul survives after death and takes the form of another body?

Well if you don’t, read ‘Many Lives, Many Masters’ by Dr Brian Weiss, a practicing psychotherapist who graduated from Columbia University & Yale Medical School.

‘Many Lives, Many Masters’ is the true story of one of his patients, Catherine, who suffers from depression, various phobia & anxiety disorders. Months of conventional psychotherapy fail to bring about any improvement in her condition. That is when Dr Weiss decides to try ‘past-life therapy’ on her, where the patient is hypnotized & regressed into his/her past life. Not only does it emerge that her phobias and anxieties are rooted in the way she died during her 86 past lives, the patient, in the state of hypnosis, even starts conveying messages to him from ‘Masters’ (or highly evolved souls not presently in a body) that exist in the “space between lives”.

The Masters make some startling revelations about life after death and also disclose secrets about Dr Weiss’ past & present that Catherine definitely had no means of knowing, thereby adding a sense of authenticity to their existence.

The messages from the Masters are myriad. The soul is immortal. Reincarnation does take place. The soul leaves the body after death & houses itself in another body after a resting period in which it floats in darkness before coming into contact with a bright light that rejuvenates & re-energizes it. During this waiting-to-be-reborn state, the soul apparently also acquires wisdom or transcendental knowledge from the Masters. Souls then await instructions and guidance from the Master Spirits.

Our fate in our next life and the quality of the life itself depend on our actions in the previous life. Or ‘karma’.

We are meant to learn certain pre-ordained lessons in each lifetime, and if we die without learning those lessons, we must go back. This is apparently what happens to people who’ve had near-death experiences where they have admitted to floating out of their bodies towards a bright white light before returning to their bodies once again because they are asked to go back. People in commas can decide whether or not to return, depending on how much learning they have yet to accomplish in their present lifetime. If they feel they have nothing further to learn, they can crossover to the spiritual state.

In the ‘in-between state’, souls have a chance to reflect on the lessons learnt during the previous lifetime and can choose to be re-born, what they need to accomplish and what karmic debts need repaying. If we do not overcome our vices before dying, we carry them over with ourselves to our next life.Groups of souls tend to reincarnate together again and again, working out their karma over the span of many lifetimes.

All human beings are given intuitive powers. Some of us possess powers greater than others because they have been accrued from other lifetimes. Therefore, people are not all created equal but eventually we will reach a point where we will all be equal because eventually there has to be balance & harmony in the universe.

The Masters also tell us about the existence of many subconscious ‘planes’ or dimensions, each being a level of higher consciousness. What level we go to depends on how far our souls have evolved in the ‘physical state’. According to the Masters there are seven planes of which only 3 are revealed in the book as Catherine gets completely healed before the Masters have a chance to reveal the remaining four.

The first plane is the plane of Recollection where you are allowed to see the life that has just passed. Souls that are highly evolved, i.e., Masters are allowed to see history with the help of which they can share lessons of past lives with us (essentially what happens in this book). The second plane is the plane of Awareness where we become aware of the lessons we have learnt in our previous lives and those we still need to learn. The third plane is the plane of Transition where it is determined what dominant trait we must overcome in our next life.

The Masters also tell us that there is a God who we try to approach by going through each lifetime. Once we’ve learnt all the lessons we were meant to learn, accumulated enough knowledge (not intellectual, but what they call ‘emotional’ or ‘subconscious’ knowledge) & have cleared all our karmic debts, we can finally get close to God and rest forever.

A chilling message given by the Masters is that humans will eventually destroy themselves because they are full of greed, ambition & fear. But nature will survive.

I did not take the book very seriously while I was reading it because like millions of other people in this world, my brain too believes in the ‘logic’ of things. Spiritual talk seems abstract at best, to me. Stuff about souls, spirits, life after death, reincarnation etc. are not things that tickle my fancy. I’m one of those people who believe that once life is over, it’s over. End of story. One lifetime is enough to deal with, who wants life after death and another life after that!!

I started thinking about the book a couple of days after I was out of it. One might be tempted to dismiss the book as crap, psychological babble etc. Except that it might not be psychological babble after all. This is because the ‘Masters’ do disclose some secrets about Dr Weiss’ past & present life through Catherine, which are unknown to anyone except Dr Weiss himself and Catherine has no recollection of those things once she’s out of the hypnotic state.

Many of the concepts that this book talks about, such as the immortality & indestructibility of the soul, reincarnation, karma etc. are things one knows as being major tenets of Hinduism. Quite a few of us, especially those who are not very religious, usually dismiss such concepts as religious bullshit. At least I know I did…until I read this book. I’m not saying the book has altered by belief completely but it has definitely made me think if these things could actually be true. That Hinduism might not have been so misguided after all. And the thought is spooky!

Read the book if you’re open to questioning your beliefs. Yourself.

Of The Great Debacle & Other Things

I had always lived with roommates before moving to Calcutta. Through college and my stint in Bombay. And both times I was lucky to have roommates who were from neighboring towns so they would go back home every weekend or at least every other weekend, so I could have the place to myself for at least two days every fortnight. It worked wonderfully well…I would get my space at regular intervals, and would be ready for company again by the time Monday rolled by & it was time for them to return.

At times, I used to think how nice it would be to live alone! To have the entire house to myself all the time, to not have to co-ordinate my shower time with that of my roommate in the mornings (which you can’t avoid in Bombay where you pay a bomb to live in shoebox apartments with one tiny bathroom), to be able to watch whatever program I wished to watch on television, to be able to sleep whenever I wanted to etc.

So when I moved to Calcutta I was all excited about living on my own. I got myself a pretty house with mind-blowingly well ventilated rooms, plenty of sunlight, quiet surroundings, a nice balcony & lots of trees outside my bedroom window!! It helps that the building is new and the house was freshly painted in a happy shade of pink before I moved in!!

However, five months of living alone and I’ve already had enough of it. I’ve realized that I’m not made of stuff that can handle - leave alone enjoy - living alone. I need people around me. I need people to talk to. I need someone home in the evenings.

I have come to believe that people who enjoy living alone and those who don't are inherently very different. They have a totally different set of characteristics. I just can’t fathom how some people can live alone, out of choice. And they seem to have a blast doing it too!!

****

On another note, I’m reading Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s book ‘You Are Here’. For the uninitiated, she’s the author of the “popular” blog ‘The Compulsive Confessor’, and also writes a column in Mumbai Mirror called ‘Ms Adventures’. Sadly, her adventures are limited to drunken org*s at Zenzi, mishaps with her bra straps, being single, dating a guy, being dumped and being single again.

(Disclaimer : If there are any fans of her blog/column reading this blog, I’m sorry if I am hurting your sentiments, but I’m invoking my Fundamental Right of 'Freedom of Speech' granted to me by the Constitution of India)

Anyway, back to the book…IT IS UTTER CRAP. The material is no different from her blog - s*x, bra straps, being boy crazy, being cheated on, being dumped etc. The language is immature and straight out of high-school! The book is in first person, and though the protagonist is supposed to be a twenty-five year old, she talks like a ten-year old!! Now, I’m not a sucker for ornate, fancy-schmancy language and I’m all for authors who write in a colloquial manner, but I do expect a certain level of maturity in the writing, which is acutely missing in her book.

Which brings me to Ms Reddy Madhavan herself. I think she needs to simply take a break from trying so hard to be perceived as cool & modern. That’s the problem with her – she tries too hard. There are plenty of liberated, emancipated women in India today. One doesn’t need to be talking about one’s s*x life & dusfunctional bra straps on a public forum to be liberated. Being cool, modern & liberated is an attitude, not something brought about through words. Someone needs to tell her that. To me she comes across as someone who is trying desperately to prove a point where there is none to prove, to people who really don’t care!!

The latest update on her blog is that she's single again. Surprise, surprise...I wonder why!! Afterall, don't guys just love it when their girlfriends splash the details of their love lives & stories of how psychotic they were before they met the guy, on the web for the whole world to read!!

Anyway, on to other things…

*****

Winter is finally approaching in Calcutta! YAY!! All of a sudden, the weather changed yesterday. There was just that slight bit of nip in the air the night before, the morning was cooler than usual, and on my way to work - at around 10am - I noticed that the sun had to make an effort to shine!!

Can’t tell you how excited I am!! I love winters!! Not that I get all excited about sub-zero temperature & all, but I can handle cold much better than I can handle heat. Besides I love the feeling of being warm & fuzzy inside my home when it’s freezing outside! I love the winter sun! And I love wearing sweaters and socks and gloves and woollen caps and scarves and all that jazz when it's cold….what fun!!

Post-Colonial Indian Writing

I don’t like reading Indian authors who write in English. Most of them that is.

They have not been able to shake-off their colonial hangover yet. Every book they write has linkages to the freedom struggle or the events immediately preceding or following independence. They can’t think beyond.

The books are written with the single-minded aim of winning awards, who cares whether they are readable or not!! The plot is as vague as can be...there is only a semblance of a story. The language is unnecessarily ornate, laborious & doesn’t flow easily. The general consensus seems to be that the more difficult your book is to understand, the higher your chances of winning a literary award. Sadly, this is true as well.

As a result, good writing takes a backseat and what we get over & over again are rehashed versions of India before independence & India immediately after independence.

Good writing is not about overwhelming the reader. It need not always be about the way Hindus & Muslims were hacked to death during the partition or the atrocities committed on the common people during the Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency of 1975.

Writing is about creating a world that the reader can identify with and enjoy, if not feel a part of. In this context, Indian authors have a lot of maturing to do. They might have an exalted vocabulary but they do not know how to use language to make the maximum impact. A book like ‘The Kite Runner’ is as sad as any book on the events leading up to the partition of India but it makes a stronger impact and lingers in the mind of the reader for much longer because of the optimum use of language in the book.

Sadly, even most of us as readers praise the books that we probably understood only half of, to the sky while we know that we enjoyed reading Anurag Mathur’s ‘The Inscrutable Americans’, Chetan Bhagat’s ‘Five Point Someone’, Karan Bajaj’s ‘Keep Off the Grass’ & Abhijit Bhaduri’s ‘Mediocre But Arrogant’ much more!