Books: Very Very Brief Takes

Luscious. Lovely. Lalbagh.  Suresh Jayaram’s history of Bangalore’s Lalbagh is a treasure trove. Enough said. #lalbagh #bangalore #gorgeousgardens #storiedgardens

My Wednesday review is less review, more a take of George Orwell`s essays, sharp, on-point, with a timeless relevance. It`s a Penguin Modern Classics book that was first published in 1968.

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I came late to this party and I so wish I hadn`t. I read GO SET A WATCHMAN,  the work that was meant to precede the iconic To Kill a Mockingbird for work purposes, and it`s left me feeling absolutely wretched.

Quite apart from taking a gutting knife to the sterling character of the world`s favourite father Atticus Finch, Harper Lee`s book is basically a long-form discussion on segregation, race relations, discrimination in America`s south,  back in the early Fifties. Oh, it`s most readable, that I will say, given Lee`s skill as a wordsmith.

But when you have Atticus,  that moral beacon in that other wonderful book, actually asking Scout, `Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?` it leaves readers  with a broken heart, I tell you.

So this was Lee`s first book featuring the Finch family; then, on the advice of her editor, she changed focus to her heroine`s childhood days, and thus was Mockingbird born.

I won`t ask whywhywhy she wrote Go Set A Watchman, that`s a writer`s privilege. But I would ask whywhywhy it was ever released. Only, millions of readers have asked just that question before me.

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Beloved Delhi by Saif Mahmood, Speaking Tiger Books, 2018 release.

This book, truly a paean to the city of old, intermixes poetry, prose and b/w photographs of Delhi, and offers up a selection of poetry from 18^th and 19^th century Urdu poets —  Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir,  Sauda, Momin Khan Momin, Mir Dard, Ustad Ibrahim Zauq, Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor and Daagh — with brief capsules of commentary on the poets and their work.

Here is the English translation of a verse I keep going back to, again and again:

You ask about my origins, O people of the East,

Mocking my poverty and laughing at me?

Delhi, which was the favoured city of the world

Where dwelt only the chosen from every walk of life

Now plundered by fate and reduced to a wilderness,

I am a resident of that ruined place.

MIR TAQI MIR

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Yuganta by Irawati Karve. Orient Black Swan Books.

Do read Irawati Karve`s YUGANTA, first published in 1969 but more relevant than ever today, for the most interesting, incisive critical analyses of some of the characters from the Mahabharata, like Kunti, Karna, Draupadi, Yudhishtira and Vidhura (a rather intriguing connect there), and the best of the essays, on Krishna Vasudeva before he became the Blue Lord. This is Krishna as master strategist, deliverer of adept life lessons and without doubt, the greatest influencer of his time.

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I’m not reviewing this one. Because there’s a train story of mine inside there.

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No! I Don`t Need Reading Glasses! by Virginia Ironside Quercus Books.

She`s Marie Sharp, and she`s simply wonderful. And oh- so- familiar to a whole lot of us.

She has a caustic tongue (very Brit) but a heart of gold. She`s older than us but young enough to dance wildly to (olden golden alert!) music from the Seventies and Eighties when she needs cheering up; to feel the sharp tug of sexual attraction for a younger man; to go climb a tree as a mark of protest against unscrupulous developers. To walk to the grocer`s, then spend half an hour frantically searching for her car which she was sure she parked somewhere on that lane. To feel dizzy all day and ask her BFF to drive her to the doc, only to discover en route that it was coz she had on her reading glasses instead of her seeing ones.

She`s not fighting age — well not too much, except she does go in for a facelift; she goes pale and sweaty when technicians ask her piercing qs about her washing machine, mixer or computer; she intensely dislikes Skype; she is addicted to the pulpiest of pulp tabloids (NO MORE FISH IN OCEAN! MORE RATS THAN PEOPLE IN LONDON!) ; she hangs out with the strangest people: Jimmy a gay friend who snaffles a cutie called Ned from under Marie`s nose, her lodger who speaks the strangest English, assorted drug dealers and their slavering dogs… and she has a `worrying space` in her brain that is fast expanding.

Gals, guys, folks, read Virginia Ironside`s No! I Don`t Need Reading Glasses! It`s what happened to Bridget Jones when she grew…up. It`s a riot.

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Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

An excerpt from a book I found compelling but difficult to read, given Kazantzakis` overblown style.
We are little grubs, Zorba, minute grubs on the small leaf of a tremendous tree. This small leaf is the earth. The other leaves are the stars that you see moving at night.
We make our way on this leaf examining it anxiously and carefully.
Some men— the more intrepid ones — reach the edge of the leaf. From there we stretch out, gazing into chaos. We tremble. We guess what a frightening abyss lies beneath us. From that moment begins the great danger, Zorba. Some grow dizzy and delirious, others are afraid; they try to find an answer to strengthen their hearts and they say `God!` Others again, from the edge of the leaf, look over the precipice calmly and bravely and say `I like it.`

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This delightful little book Love Among The Bookshelves (Penguin/Viking) where Ruskin Bond talks of his abiding love for books, has numerous mentions of P G Wodehouse, and an extract from Love Among the Chickens (an Ukridge story), too.

Oh, Bond mentions other favourites like Somerset Maugham, C Dickens, Richard Jefferies, Emily Bronte, J M Barrie, Evelyn Waugh too but the way he keeps harking back to Plum? That is as good as one of Jeeves` morning-after-a-binge concoctions (hair of the dog, what), to set a PGW fan`s little heart beating harder with delight.

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An extract from Peter Matthiessen`s wonderful The Snow Leopard. 

Finally I got down to reading Everybody Loves A Good Draught, P Sainath‘s incisive denounciation of the lack of governmental focus or initiative when it comes to the abjectly destitute of the country. A collation of reports Sainath had written mainly for The Times of India, it shines a light so relentlessly on the preternaturally poor that the reader needs to take an occasional break before she drowns. Poverty, starvation deaths, illiteracry, infant mortality, abysmal health care, the burden of debt, the lack of drinking water, nutrition, sanitation or a modicum of respect…the stories are alas, not new. The years pass but the situation remains the same, the marginalised continue to occupy just the same spot.

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Came late to Alice Munro`s Too Much Happiness but so happy I did come to it.

Ten short stories told with the author`s characteristic touch of restraint but balanced by warmth and compassion. These tales encompass life as it is lived among the slightly privileged, the not- so-lucky and the downright desperate souls among us. Women trapped in terrifying marriages, women who lose their husbands to the most unlikely women, trusting women, conniving women, women who contrive to stay happy, to stay safe, to stay alive. Women who come face-to-face with their past, women who watch their grown-up sons go to seed, women who recall their dreadful childhood regressions with a shudder… and women who can and do suffer from yes, too much happiness.

The Nobel prize winner is really in her element here.

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Amit Chaudhuri`s Odysseus Abroad was a slow languid read. I picked it up intrigued by the well, intriguing cover pic.

It is difficult not to be impressed by the author`s sweep of vision.

Sample this: * Upstairs they`d sleep till midday….the noise they made wasn`t intentional– it was incidental. It wasnt directed against others because it bore no awareness of others. It was pure phyiscal expression, made by those whose heads didn`t carry too many thoughts.
* The English outside the Grafton Arms had taken off their shirts…If only they`d had more sun! This is what they`d have ben like — semi-naked, sedantary, congregated in pairs or threes. They wouldn`t have needed Empire — because their souls would have been full.

* There was a beautiful tall girl in a black dress who looked absorbed in everything but where she was. She denied the tube entirely.

My only beef? The hero Ananda and his Rangamama are such tedious bores. Enough said.

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Katmandu by Thomas Bell

What a striking cover. The book itself, though, tends to be a dense collation of facts: historical, political, economical.

If the reader plods on, as did this reader, the real treasure appears in the last one-third of the tome.

Bell peels back the covers shrouding Operation Mustang, a clandestine intelligence op in which MI6 plays an uncomfortably large part.

The picture of Nepal Bell draws is not a happy one but then some places have their mandalas cast well before they come into being. And then, they must live out their fate.

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Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl. Arrow Books.

Finally read a book I have long heard about. It lived up to its solid reputation, every page of it.

Talk of having a fun time at your job…this famous restaurant critic donned disguises to eat in the restaurants she was reviewing!

Ruth Reichl`s Garlic and Sapphires (Arrow Books) is a look-back at the five years that she was arguably the woman with the last word regarding restaurants in NYC. As restaurant critic for the New York Times, Reichl made or ruined many an eatery, fledgling and seasoned alike. She also donned many related hats: chef, food writer, co-producer of PBS’s Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, culinary editor for the Modern Library, host of PBS’s Gourmet’s Adventures With Ruth, and the last editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine.

Soon after starting her job at the NYT, Reichl realised that once she was recognized, she was given the kind of royal treatment that the average diner was not likely to be accorded. So, she started to don guises. One thing led to another and soon, she was creating different personas, accents, mannerisms, the whole shebang, to fit the different aliases she would eat out under: frumpy, fun-loving Molly; fiery red-head Brenda; Betty, one step away from being a Bag Lady; Miriam, and here Reichl channelled her own mother, one formidable opinionated lady; Chloe, the soignee interior decorator with no luck in love; and Emily, who was one nasty piece of work.

Don`t be misled by all the guise gimmickry, though; in the end, this book is about food and whether a place is cooking, presenting, serving it the right way. Reichl knows her food and what`s more, does not review a place unless she has eaten there at least three times.

Interspersed with a set of very followable recipes, Garlic and Sapphires is an absolutely delicious read. Forgive me but I just couldn`t resist that last line.

 

The Prospect of Miracles  by Cyrus Mistry, Aleph Books, made for a curious read.

The story is rich with potential, and the thin stole of foreboding that hangs over it gives it heft. The narrator is a Malayali Syrian Christian woman of a certain age, recently widowed, and through that act of bereavement, rid of the menacing presence of her Pentecostal pastor husband.

Mary Agnes is understandably low on self-esteem, missing her estranged son Mark, and ridden with conflicted feelings about how her husband met his end.

But. Sometimes the woman`s tone is decidedly off, as when she used terms like `babe,` `corny,` `how the hell,` etc. She is described as wearing a shirt more than once, and that garment sits oddly on a conservative demure woman such as she is.

Oddest though, was the fact that all through the book, the male writer`s voice overrides that of the female narrator.

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Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz Books, UK/Hachette India) was a delightful surprise. Starting off as a routine police procedural, witty from the word go, it suddenly and without a word of warning, veers off into paranormal territory, and before you know it, the hero, PC Peter Grant of the London Metropolitan Police, is hobnobbing with all sorts: ghosts, wizards, vampires, Mother Thames, Father Thames, many Thames siblings, the whole pronouncedly diverse shebang.

And oh, he`s also trying to track down the human/being behind a series of utterly ghastly murders. This involves the reader being taken on a thorough junket of London town, its outskirts, London of the 18th century, a London not generally known to most people, a familiar London. A real treat for history buffs.

The hero and his `is-he-human` mentor are most engaging characters; the humour is droll, the action swift-paced, and the supernatural beings make for a fun read.

Rivers of London released in 2011 and is the first of the Peter Grant crime series. Gotta go pick up the others now. Aaronovitch has probably ironed out the debutant glitches that crop up in this book. And I`m hooked.

Oh, the US edition is titled Midnight Riot for some reason. Just so you know.

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10 MINUTES 38 SECONDS IN THIS STRANGE WORLD by Elif Shafak, Penguin Random House Books.

I rarely if ever pick up a book because I like the colour of its cover (mint green, in this case), the author’s first name (India) or its title (Mutton). Having done so, I chortled my way through the book…it transcends chick-lit, gal-lit and is great funny-bone lit. All the more for Women of a Certain Age. Gal pals, read Mutton by India Knight, it’s a riot.

Like someone excitedly relating a story only to find the words petering out, the path gets narrower the further I go….`

Kafka on the Shore. Haruki Murakami.

This was my first Murakami. Much struck if not exactly blown away. Can friends who are Murakami fans tell me which book is an absolute must-read?

In all my Blossom bookstore-skimming years, I have never struck gold at the bookstore the way I did a week ago. Behold, A Book of Wit and Humour, PAN Books, circa 1949. The funniest stories on all things English: cricket matches, loony aunts, the Modern Man, greasy bounders, places like Cudlingham, with words like `curmudgeonly` and `brilliantine` appearing with a flourish. One rich fat chuckle all the way through. Missed the Master greatly, though (PG Wodehouse, that is) and suspect an editor’s note preceding the A A Milne piece was a sly dig at ole Plum. Still, gold.

Note for non-Bangaloreans: Blossom is an incredible bookstore where we seek … and find… old books, new books, all kinds of books.

Going back to old books. There’s nothing to equal that euphoria.

`Something else an academic education will do for you. …it will begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and what it won’t. …it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that won`t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly. `

Advice Holden Caulfield gets just before his meltdown. From Catcher In The Rye, that cult classic from JD Salinger.

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Hitherto (no, not a Tejpalism, I assure you!) have not been a fan of Jhumpa Lahiri. The Lowland changed that. A deep and absorbing story told in a low key, quite the triumph of narration over dialogue. Sample this: Like a spare packet of tea she doesn’t need at the moment, she stores away the information, and turns her mind to other things.

Read Benyamin’s Goat Days with a nameless feeling of dread. A simply told horror story that hits hard. 1.5 million Malayali blue collar workers in the Gulf. How many lead even semi-decent lives out there? And yet, the Gulf Dream retains its allure. Sigh.

What a lark Shovon Chowdhury’s The Competent Authority is. Check out the logic in this strategy:
“I want you to insult the Chinese,“ said the CA.
“We must show them that we are not afraid of them by insulting them. We must cause them to lose face..once they see we are fearless, they will be too scared to attack. “

The rest of the book contains characters like the giggling guru Dharti Pakhar who takes care not to mesmerise himself when gazing into the mirror; Muthu and Venu Chopra, thevars from TN who decide a Punjabi surname will serve them better in New New Delhi, which is where the action is set; Hourly Status Reports which take over an hour to type, and the many places Bob Marley- on- a- T-shirt travels to.

My only beef was that the story picks up flab as it progresses, and the perceptive bits at the heart of this satire gets lost in the slack.

Katherine Boo’s `Behind the Beautiful Forevers` is Shantaram with a heart. A compelling read.
This sentence shone through: For the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained.

Durbar is a characteristically incisive account of disillusionment and disenchantment; people of my generation come across all the old familiar names from the Rogues Gallery of the 80s and 90s…the Demolisher, the Sinister Son, the Oily Aide, the Swami to beat `em all.
But. And this is a big but. Tavleen Singh said the book was about more than Rajiv and Sonia. Well, wherever the story goes, in the end it all comes back and down to Rajiv and Sonia.

Despite the absolutely sumptuous jacket, Mayank Austen Soofi’s `Nobody can Love You More` was a good read but stopped short of tipping over into the really evocative and small pile of this genre of book, stuff like Maximum City and Beautiful Thing. His moniker intrigues me more than his book on Delhi’s red light area did.

David Winner’s `Al Dente` is quite the strangest book. Slowly, steadily it draws you into the Rome that was…cardinals, popes, the Trevi fountain, food, and huge bits of Italian cinema. A profitable read about Roma, if you can get past the rambling tone. One of those books you just can’t judge by its cover.

All the while I’m reading `Dongri to Dubai,` my personal jury is out, still undecided about whether the gripping account of Dawood Ibrahim rises above clumsy sentence construction and little to no editing. Then I come upon the chapter where Hussain Zaidi describes Dubai back in the day, and all doubts are at rest. A good story always rises above its limitations. Always.

Some gems from The Tao of Travel by Paul Theroux.

*Literature is made out of the misfortunes of others. A large number of travel books fail simply because of the monotonous good luck of their authors.

* I can write better about places I have never seen.

Edgar Rice Burroughs.

* I wouldn’t mind seeing China if I could come back home the same day.

Philip Larkin.

(Theroux then adds this priceless comment: Needless to say Larkin lived for most of his life with his mother .)

*`…goodbye to shit and sweepers, to people who tolerate everything, to the refusal to act, to the absence of dignity, to that curious pettiness that permeates that vast country. Probably it all has to change. Not only must caste go but all those sloppy Indian garments, all those saris and lungis, all that squatting on the floor to eat, to write, to serve in a shop, to piss. `

VS Naipaul.

Travelogue readers` alert. `Tso and La` by Vikramjit Ram is a very good account of travels down that well-trod path, Ladakh. It is spare, austere writing, he has an excellent command over the language and the bookis oneengrossing read.

Some books begin so promisingly, a slow coil of delight uncurls inside the reader. `Peaches for M. le Cure,` Joanne Harris` latest, is a celebration of — dark — chocolate all over again. Set that celebration in a silk-lined basket of lush prose and you have a winner. Again.

Two much needed books on the Indian fashion industry. Reader alert: both contain nothing remotely salacious.

While Wendell Rodrick’s Green Room is an entertaining read, Shefalee Vasudev’s Powder Room is both entertaining and informative.

The Green Room has at its core the simple creed that,when talent is underpinned by hard work and meticulous planning, the sky really is the limit.

Powder Room is a little more distant in tone, taking the readerdown the interlinked side alleys of top-end fashion.Both books deal with the good life, good couture, and are good reads.

Anyone read Nadeem Aslam’s latest: The Blind Man’s Garden? His weakest work yet, I thought, with more contrivances of plot than one expects from him.

However, some passages are so so so lyrical, they float right up…yes, to the aforementioned stratosphere.

Every time I read Nadeem Aslam, I am taken to a word-lit place. At the end of the story or the book, coming back becomes that much harder.

To misquote lines from the Killers` song: Is he poet? Or is he word-magicker?

It’s all about that deft turn of phrase. Ian Jack’s Mofussil Junction is chock- full of them. Mean and unrewarding towns are mentioned; a train is described as festooned with peasantry; we are introduced to Mr Thomas who had wayward English.

My paisa vasool bits were :`…endearingly, he once pushed a family servant into the garden pool,` a vignette from Sanjay Gandhi’s early life.

And `Only after visiting this hotel I realized what the poet meant when he wrote that thing of beauty is joy forever,` an entry in the hotel’s appreciation book by a railway minister.

`The money from Dubai was in four figures to start with, then five, then topped by one with as many zeroes as it takes to complete the price for an apartment with a view. `

This from Basu Chatterji’s contribution to Faction, an anthology of short stories by film personalities edited by Khalid Mohammed. Good story. The book? A laudable effort but a possibly overawed editor gets all the stars and auteurs to sound the same, from Arjun Rampal to Bobby Deol (yes, you read it right) to Akshay Kumar (yes, again) to Juhi Chawla and Sonam Kapoor.

Most of the tales are a tad precious but a couple of them do turn out to be engaging. Farah Khan’s unsentimental recall of her eccentric grandmother, was a good read.

I knew the good run was too good to last. Midway through Eleanor Catton’s Booker winner The Luminaries, I just gave up and closed the book. Beautifully and intricately plotted, one heck of a tale, strong characters, the right doses of mystery, romance, skullduggery. But a dry as dust story. You realise you just don’t give a damn what happens to all the luminaries. At least, I didn’t.

`The few signs that pointed to Pakistan as their homeland had been shorn and they had been turned into faceless martyrs in a conscious process of attenuation that saw their willpower and self-image whittled away, until they felt grateful for being sent to their own deaths.`

Started the new reading year so well. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark’s The Siege is, in the best tradition of thrillers, a book you will read with a hammering heart. As also a sinking heart, because it is an account of the 26/11 attack on the Taj Mumbai, a story we can’t help but take personally. Before long, `epic intel failure` and `sinisterly inexplicable inaction` are terms that fall like boulders into the reader’s head and stay there till the last page is turned. An impeccably and unsentimentally told story, skillfully edited, with masterly use of language.

Everyone emerges with warts on them. Everyone except the real heroes, the National Security Guard commandoes who rush in where most feared to tread and take the gunmen out.

Just finished an extremely rewarding read, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. It’s all about a missing piece of priceless art, it’s a beautiful coming of age story and it is also all about the art of mourning. Imagine Holden Caulfield now in his late twenties, just that wee bit corrupted yet golden at the core, seeking redemption even as he slowly sinks into the morass of everyday life. NYC plays a vital role, adding major heft to the way the storyline progresses. And that rising inflection to the sentences spoken by virtually everyone in the book? Very NYC. Very catching. (Am tempted to put question marks at the end of both those statements. ) Truly a work of substance.

Reading W. Dalrymple’s Nine Lives and marvelling at how he always manages to teach us desis a thing or four about our own land…good read, as always. These essays shine a light on places and practices of the lesser India, the India that falls below the general radar.

Anyone here remember that celluloid masterpiece on a bad marriage, `War of the Roses`? Well, Gillian Flynn’s book `Gone Girl` makes that couple look juvenile. Here, Nick and Amy Dunne are trapped in one helluva twilight zone of a marriage and playing the most dangerous games with each other. Read it, guys.

Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Words of Mercury.

Paddy Leigh Fermor en route to Malana. `Creepers looped the boughs and ended in tumbling mops, there was falling water and moss and maidenhair ferns in the clefts, and grey, curdled, orange and sulphur-coloured lichens crusted tall buttresses of stone….bamboos soared and spread in green fireworks among rhododendrons the height and thickness of ancient oaks; their branches were heavy with leaves,… ragged with Spanish moss and festooned with a score of parasites…. all at once the ravine filled with noise as the river rushed through the polished troughs, separating around boulders, rising in fans of spray and then joining again to rotate in in deep slow pools.`

That kind of  leaves the rest of us travel writers falling back on this descriptive phrase: I went to a pretty place.

Happy days are here again! Hachette has brought back the `Sudden` series by Oliver Strange, huzzah, huzzah. Somewhat expensive at Rs 320 per book but now fans can once more go off to towns called Lawless, where enigmatic cowpunchers pull the fastest draw in the wild west on ornery critters, where pretty women are forever looking out for knight errants, and where literary stereotypes rule the roost!

An afternote: The new Sudden imprints by Hachette India are dreadfully marred by errors galore..or should that be errata galore, I wonder. The same name is spelt in three different ways, typos run all over the place, grammar and syntax take a long leave of absence. Really, unforgivable disservice to the Fastest Draw in the West.

And every book in this re-issued series now carries an apology disguised as a Publisher’s Note, stating that the `real message` was anti-racism. Given that the books are equal and impartial offenders to Mexicans, Reservation Indians, Blacks and a host of others, all I can say is: go pull the other one, pardner.

Good Book Alert. Zac O`Yeah’s Mr Majestic, The Tout of Bengaluru.

The hero is utterly irresistible with his well- oiled hair, a startling addiction to chicory, and his heart of gold. Everyone greets everyone else with `oota aytha` (had food?), there are people rejoicing in names like AC Gaadi (an auto driver, of course), A A Sura (tier-2 villain), there’s a school named New Saint Oxbridge English Medium Sacred Convent School. Oh, there are a couple of stiffs, many bad men and a missing Maddy, too.

This is namma Beantown’s very own `A Confederacy of Dunces.` Wotte fun, I say.

`The air thick with river.` `Everyone big up their eye.` This from the amazing book `The sly company of people who care` by Rahul Bhattacharya. Those who compare him to Naipaul are doing Rahul B a disservice. He` s heaps better, imo.

I knew there was a reason I so adore Georgette Heyer…apart from loving her books.

Sample this sentiment:
I so hate domesticity. Neither by training nor by temperament am I suited to it.

2014 addition: I was between books and picked up an old Heyer, Pistols for Two. Delightful. Made a note of the following Heyerisms:
Cork-brained.
Gapeseed.
Confused pea-goose.
Gudgeon.
A Bath quizz.
Paper-skulled.
Hoydenish.
Quite done up.
Havey-cavey.
High fidgets.
Ninnyhammer.
Cant phrases.
A Pink of the Fancy.
Outran the constable.
Do you take me for a flat?
Don’t be a goosecap.
He must be bamming you.
Doxy.
A cake of himself.
Above her touch.
As drunk as a wheelbarrow.
And my favourite: He had the general air of one about to engage in a Forlorn Hope.

The usual exciting mix of plotting, conspiracies, treachery, swordfights, statecraft and homilies. And a prince who feels entrapped by privilege and entitlement. This is the first of a trilogy on what the blurb calls ancient Indias greatest ruler.` Can`t wait for Book Two and Three.

At 10.20 pm last night, I was reading a grim book about the grim (and grimy) lives of grim people which looked set to end in a very grim catastrophe. No, it`s not the book you think it is.

smile emoticon

Errata

It`s so hard being a Meticulous Meenakshi. Or a Prim Parameshwari. 
But you know you are one of that brigade …
* when you read `she lived- in with him` and your hands shake. You live with someone, you don`t live-in with them. Unless you are some kind of kooky recluse, never venturing outside your door. 
* when you hear someone say `he is based out of Mumbai` and you have to suppress a steely glare. If he is in Mumbai, he is based there. If he is based out of Mumbai, well…you get the idea.
* when people use `chat up` for `chat with` and you come over faint. As in, the cop chatted up the suspect. The journalist chatted up Amitabh Bachchan. The drunk chatted up the bouncer. The last scenario, though, is a plausible one.
Okay, rant of the day over.

`Why are our houses whitewashed clean after every monsoon? Not because Rajasthan is so warm or because white reflectes the sun away. Because it is the guest who must bring in the colour.`
Homes with too much colour and art are spaces that residents design …to show off their variegated lives. They are not necessarily aware that if a guest wore fuchsia to their home, it may clash with the red.
From Aman Nath`s Beauty in India, in the otherwise uneven Travelling In Travelling Out edited by Namita Ghokale.

A book, Kafka is said to have written to a friend, must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

On William Shakespeare‘s 450th birth anniversary.

No snaps, snapped the curmudgeonly Keeper of the Grave at Avon. Then he saw my crestfallen face and murmured, oh alright. Make it discreet, make it quick.


Happy 450th, Master Wordsmythe.

Your mind is the ocean of life
It can throw up an angry tide
of fire-harpoons that stick in the flesh
But weight them, and they weigh nothing.

Lal Ded, Kashmiri poetess/mystic. 
(From the collection of her poems titled `I, Lalla`)