No Full Stops in India by Mark Tully

I have read this book twice over the last few years..

I found it first in my cousin’s bookshelf many years ago and upon reading it I was quite amazed. Mark Tully’s perspective is surprisingly fresh as he wrote about the still nascent India in its 80’s. He wrote about topics that we all know about, have discussed them to death and topics that we just didn’t even think were worthy of any discussion anymore. Reading the book made me wonder how come I never thought like this. The India that Tully speaks about in this book is the true warrior that has survived carcass creating caste systems, regressive political riots, terrorism and television melodrama like no other country has. These are the same stories that we may have experienced before while living in this country or may have heard from our parents or grandparents as their interpretation of matters that roused public interest but absolutely devoid of any biases that taint our opinions.

Mark Tully was born into a wealthy English family in Calcutta and went on to work for 30 years in BBC. During his career he traveled throughout the country as a journalist and as a person who soaked in every incredible wisp of life that made India the unusual yet extraordinary country that it is. With the spirit of the country in his veins, he wrote 10 chapters about most major issues that gripped the pre-satellite TV era of our land. Some of those chapters include insights about the educated elite class of Indians edging away from the local traditions, about the Kumbh mela in Allahabad, the Operation Blue Star in Amritsar and even Ramayana, the epic TV series that took over the whole country.

These chapters bring out the true essence of India that the travel brochures or coffee table books about India fail to highlight. It is not a caricature of who we are as Indians and neither does it include any razzmatazz about Bollywood that is so synonymous with our lifestyle today. It is about who we are, what made us who we are and where is it that we’re heading as a young country without inhibitions or full stops in India.

I will surely read this book yet again as I have realized that it adds on to my perspective as I grow and understand yet some more from the vast pool of comprehension that this book provides of the social composition of my ever so dynamic country.

Read this book if there is a desi in your heart and even more so if you are a skeptic.. 

The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett

I read this book recently over a few days time while I was home alone in the evenings. That I might add may not be such a good idea, considering the fact that I did get a wee bit spooked out. Not that it is a book of ghost stories but it is a murder mystery that will definitely make you think ‘is here someone outside that door? Is it the gentle humming of the refrigerator in the dead of the night or just maybe little more than that..” I did lock up and checked many times over before my mind could rest in peace and continue reading.
 
The book is about a forensics expert David who thinks he has buried his past and started life afresh as a doctor in a small and quaint obscure Norfolk village. The past that reminds him of the loss of his wife and daughter creeps back to stare right at his face when women begin to get abducted and murdered in the most gory way as described in the book by the author Simon Beckett. The mystery ensues engulfing all the inhabitants of the village into a thick cloud of suspicion as the murderer had to be one amongst themselves. Would more women have to face death in the most horrid ways imaginable before they find out who is the deranged albeit conniving mind behind the series of murders that are unearthed shockingly, shaking the village out of its slumber? Find out more as I did towards the end of the book with an ending that I could have possibly not guessed.

Do "and" Die

We weren’t unfortunately born in the times of great historical unrest. We haven’t seen great battles being fought and won. No revolutions have made us think and no live performances by Bach or Mozart have enriched our ears and got us riveted. We haven’t experienced slavery and neither have we crossed deserts on foot just to see a glimpse of that forbidden face. We don’t die for love and don’t live for it either. So are we indeed as shallow as we seem? Perhaps!

We might not live in the times of great social and political unrest but ‘technological unrest’ for sure. Before we swipe our cards for the latest gadget, it is already outdated. Our struggles mount when we strive to make it on time to work every Monday morning and then throughout the week. We think and someone somewhere has done it already. Originality is rare and Google is what we turn to for guidance. Fine art, like a bottle of wine is just a commodity now. How could we possibly be profound when time is in fact money?

The era of great thinkers, artists, the men of valor and women of innate strength has passed us by to give way to us ‘Doers’. We don’t think. We do and quite a lot actually. We do work – multiple jobs at times. We do live mostly in the almost mechanical patterns already set for us. We do a lot of networking and we do win favors. We do rush almost always. For most of us, even love is not true. It is again something that we do. We are not the temple builders for they died ages ago. We are mere brick layers and that is what we do.

As is characteristic of this era, we do think a lot just for ourselves and for that exact reason I begin to wonder what my role is in this whole scheme of things. I will but unfortunately do and die too at the end. It is the ‘what will I do’ that I must figure out now and once it is all chartered out, I must do it with as much profoundness as I can afford and I must do it all. Am I too late in this realization when more than a quarter of my life has slipped away? Maybe so but maybe I am just coming of true age now. Not the golden age as I wish but the one where we do ‘and’ we die. So what do you do?

The Phantom Rickshaw & Other Eerie tales by Rudyard Kipling..

A lot of us have always liked reading, watching movies and listening to the endless tales that grandmothers still sometimes tell us at bedtime. People like us wait for the morning’s paper, chat endlessly with our friends, gossip all day long and hear patiently the tales our co-workers tell us from their experiences. This thread that binds us and keeps us going is a common love for a good story and how it is told.

I particularly cherish all Indian tales. Coming from our land, these stories are rich with mystical drama, vibrant with color and as diverse and intriguing as stories can ever be.
The legendary tales of majestic kings, queens and magicians from history and ghostly accounts that friends tell when they get back from Himachal or Coorg, make it to my list of favorite tales that I can hear at any time. I love hearing about the fantastic setting of historical palaces, the grand words spoken and kept and how, the struggle of a million people in the Indian history and how they yielded their character at crucial moments and most of all the chronicles of paranormal activities at strange and frosty places in the countryside. A combination of all these would be my dream come true and I would any day let myself be consumed in the incredible aroma of this incantation.

Now the thing about ghost stories is that they are best told and not read. Told either by someone you know or through a movie with all its Dolby Digital sound track making the experience more marvelous and exciting. This is the reason why ghost storybooks don’t really appeal to me. Most such books I have read haven’t managed to tickle my senses except for “Omnibus” by Ruskin Bond. Its an adorable collection of fables and why I use the word ‘adorable’ here for a book of ghost stories is because, it has stories that I am sure you have heard before. They will bring back the memories of your childhood time when you heard the stories first. Reminding you of all the beautiful times spent with nanis and daadis and best buddies from childhood. These are the stories that I am sure we will pass on to our nieces, nephews and who knows even our grand children!

Book Review: The Phantom Rickshaw & Other Eerie Tales
A few days ago, as I browsed through a range of best selling classics on the shelf in my friend’s house, a thin paperback peered out at me and hit the chord in my mind that was in the mood for some wraithlike adventure.

Rudyard Kipling’s “The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Eerie Tales”, roused all the curiosity in me and soon I found myself enrapt in the loony, spooky and wondrous world of the vaporous beasts that might have been at large some great many decades ago.

It’s an amazing collection of parables from the times of the Raj that transport you effortlessly to an epoch of game hunting, hand punkha and rickshaw rides across the beautiful slopes of Simla. Rudyard Kipling is indeed one of the greatest story writers and especially in this compilation he has spun yarns that are truly eerie without the necessary presence of a ghost character and yet they leave the reader with an uncanny feeling that it’s not quite forgettable.

As the words right in its beginning of the book say “May no ill dreams disturb my rest, Nor powers of darkness me molest”, do read and enjoy this book!

Its available in India for Rs. 199. I for one will not forget to return this book to the friend who I borrowed it from! 

Whimsical trivia it is..

I should have written this a long time ago..
Before I heard the silent blow,
When senses were heightened and vision clear,
Before hope swept out and I cried o dear..

Entwined with the twilight the darkest hour,
That envelops within its core, the sour..
It's hard to see and numbness prevails,
The hardest part, memories remain..

From Here to what, from what to where,
Feels like looking for night in a wild dark fare..
Veracity has hit the whims in my veins,
And soon the mind will develop melancholic drains..

I should have written this a long time ago,
When words would have made a pure and pretty prose

Keep Off The Grass by Karan Bajaj

I had read many serious books lately and thought I could take a break. That’s when Keep Off The Grass by Karan Bajaj came into the picture.
Brought for me again by a friend who had this time read it himself and recommended the book as a great fun read. So I decided to give it a shot.
(Even though I thought I was done for life with the books written by the IIT/IIM types. Nothing wrong with the books though, in fact I really liked some of them specially Earning The Laundry Stripes by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar. But the decision was just that - a decision based on wanting to read a book that came out of a mind that doesn’t produce twirling tales of action that resulted due to suffocation by the trivialities of the rigorous IIT/IIM routines or because they just weren’t doing well at the course and had lots of time to smoke up, get wasted and write books. I mean, of course they all know what they are in for before taking admission there but still they enter and then they whine and struggle and whine more about it through their books. And publishers line up at their doorsteps and then people like us have to read those melodramatic almost the same sounding accounts of the ultra competitive rat race in their books just because some IIM graduate has written it.. oh c’mon! I thought I was done with that)

Book Review: Keep Off The Grass

A refreshing account of the escapades of an 'ABCD' Wall Street investment banker who quits his job, leaves his country and comes back to India to join the IIM in search of his roots and who he is within. Sure enough life as he finds it is not only very different but also difficult at IIM along with being a complete contrast from his high achieving spell at Yale. Throughout the process of breaking through within himself the protagonist makes friends and brushes past various incidents with aghorees at the ghats of Banares, auto rickshaw drivers doubling up as pimps and drug peddlers, the predictably corrupt cops and earnest promoters of Vipaasana in the Himalayas to being locked in a prison cell, knocking on Ruskin Bond’s door and anecdotes about many other lesser lives trudging along towards the grades glory at the IIMB. The incidents are witty, surreal and in a funny and strange way all credible.
The fast paced nature of the book takes you through a humorous joyride with a hint of mellow excitement as the author delves deeper into contact with his real self.
Keep Off The Grass by debutant novelist Karan Bajaj is available at leading bookstores for Rs 195/-

Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer

Bashrat Peer who is currently based in New York after a series of reporting stints with Rediff and Tehelka and after having written for various publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman and Foreign Affairs, recently released Curfewed Night.

It was gifted to me by a dear friend who thought I love reading depressing and sad non fiction books (which might actually be true).

I truely enjoyed reading the book and would reccomend it to all the people who appreciate reading a book that is a result of the author's honest and heartfelt rendition of the stories from his much beloved native village in the troubled Kashmir valley.

In the book, being the author's first, he writes beautifully yet matter of factly about the troubles that besiege the valley and how every man there lives in fear. He certainly has avoided any kind of melodrama or self pity in the narrative while rendering the lived experiences and deeply touching stories of the many unknown mothers, sons, poets and millitants from Kashmir.

Without presenting a political picture of Muslims versus Hindus, or Islamic fundamentalists versus secularists he has brought to light the situation of an agonised people whose lives have been torn asunder by factors beyond their control.

A wonderful and insightful read, Curfewed Night is available at all leading bookstores at Rs 395/-

Many thanks to my friend who picked it up for me :)

The spring has finally arrived..

I am a person of abounding big plans, ideas and musings and can easily be described as lazy. To tell the truth I am extemely happy with myself today for atleast initiating what I had been comtemplating ever since i.e. blogging!

Writing has always proved to be therapeutic specially for people like me who are very expressive and have almost always atleast something to say about anything and everything. Like I said before, lazy as I am, typing is what I found more convenient than writing and therefore here I am.

At this point it is difficult to predict the future of this blog and what literature it might dish out. It will atleast be full of trivial things that I fancy from time to time. The blog will mainly chronicle reviews on any new and interesting books I read, any new places I visit, reviews on restaurants, clubs, pubs and stores & salons and anything else that perks up my attention.

Wishing you a happy diversion from your hectic/sad/dull worklife and hoping any information provided was atleast entertaining if not helpful!