This blog is special

This blog is special. This belongs to my colleague Ayan Chakraborty, who happens to be the first cartoonist I know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Check his blog. He is too good.

The Kite Runner - my take

Seldom comes a writer with a novel that touches the hearts of the readers in such a manner that they start to feel a strange kinship with the characters he built. As readers, we start to understand the behaviour and nature of the protagonists such a way as if they are none but our blood relatives. Or at least it seems that we know each other for years....sharing a long cherished bond. The journey taken by the characters don’t merely remain confined in the black printed letters, but we also seem start to take an active part in it.

This is the same feeling I had while reading The Kite Runner by Khalid Hussaini. It is difficult to describe in one word what I felt for this novel. The words fail. The sentences never seem to be complete to describe the completeness. There are some novels that give you some food for your thought and there are some that give you an eye opening exposure to an unseen world. The Kite Runner doesn’t follow any such trend. Kite Runner just lets you feel the warmth of an extraordinary relationship, the sheen of loyalty, the coldness of cowardice, the colour of courage and above all a tale of humanity.

As I was lost in the book for two days of my last weekend, I was wondering what the last time was when I had the similar experience of knowing some unknown people who are still in my heart. Quite surprisingly, the search took me to 1996, when I read Jagori by Satinath Bhaduri. Jagori tells the tale of Nilu, Bilu, Maa and Baba spending days and nights in different cells of a jail in pre-independence era …living every moment a threat...a fright.

Thanks to Saif for lending me the book. Thanks to Tareq for telling me about the novel for the first time.

All are not Brain's call...some are Heart's

Scene1

I am chatting with a friend and abruptly he asks 'Which actor do you find the hottest?'

Denzel Washington...always - was my impromptu answer.

Then came the next obvious question 'which actress......?'

After some thought I had to say 'None'

Scene2

I am talking a friend over phone and over some topic I declare that 'Chtira and Sadhana Sargam are my two most favorite female singers'.

The next very moment I heard the question 'and most favorite male singer?'

After some thought I said 'Hariharan' but honestly he's not my most favorite singer; he is just one of my 'most favorites'.

These two incidents compelled me to think that our likings and adorations don’t always follow any pre-defined rule. They are just bound to follow one rule - the naught-rule of heart, where no logical reasoning is applicable! Just like there is no reason behind why I like Denzel Washington more than anyone, the fact that I don't find any actress that interesting has no reason either. Likewise, why the voices of Chitra and Sadhana Sargam tranquilize my senses but none else has no explanation either.

Pudhiya Mannargal - a beginning

Yesterday I listened to Pudhiya Mannargal after probably 3-4 years. Every time SPB starts Eduda Antha Sooriya, I seem to traverse the time span of 13 years in a carpet ride and within a moment I land on the day – 25th February, 1995.

I remember that day so clearly like it was nothing but yesterday! It was the first day in my life while returning from school, keeping the rickshaw on wait, I and my sister went to Kamal Music Store. It waw the first time I was going to any cassette shop by myself to buy something. I was nervous on my query and with much courage I asked the man on the counter ‘Do you have Tamil cassettes?’

The guy (Kamal, I came to know later) nodded and very coolly went inside coming back with four Tamil cassettes. I was so bewildered seeing so many Tamil cassettes in front of me, not being able to read the tooth breaking unknown names, not being able to find the name of the person I was looking for, that I finally I asked Kamal ‘Which are here by A R Rahman?’

Very coolly (again) he sorts and hands me over two cassettes – Pudhiya Mannargal and Gangmaster (Telugu). I remember, by that time I had almost ceased breathing with excitement!

This was the start. The start of listening to songs in an unknown language, the start of being answerable to all who think why I listen to Tamil songs when there are so many Bengali songs available, the start of a journey which even I was not sure whether I would be able to pursue. I don't know how many times I listened it over just to find out one day that I remember the entire lyrics of almost all the songs without understanding a single word! I can never forget how I used to sit for hours holding the cassette in my hands while trying to read the curved letters and how one day I came up with writing the first tamil word of my life - ra ha ma n.

Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan......

City is turbulent.

Reason?

It is the most prospectous city of the country.
People from all over the country make their journey to this city with eyes full of dreams.
The city people are happy with the tag of 'cosmopolitan metro' behind the city name.
The city people are happy to be counted as the residents of the 'best' city in the country.

So

There are some people who think that the outsiders are spoiling the city culture.
That the 'outsiders' are making the job market competitive.
That the 'outsiders' are making small piece of land untouchable for the middle class.
The 'outsiders' are causing the miles long traffic jams and brimming the buses.

So someone comes forward and takes the initiative to clean the city from 'outsiders'.......

Crossword Book Store – a saddening experience

Last Sunday I went to the Crossword book store situated in the 1st floor of Shopper’s Stop complex in Andheri West. Though I had not planned to go there, I just happened to drop at Shopper’s Stop and thought to check it out. Generally I buy book after some research on internet and as then I was not properly focused as what to buy, I decided to go for the safe purchase – some Ernest Hemingway stuff. Another reason for going there was that I was running short of my collection and I was reading my last but one book!

No one in the shopping complex seemed to be concerned about the Crossword shop! I had to ask two people to get to the shop. When I finally located it, I was depressed – it was a tiny shop! Anyway, I entered only to discover that the store collection was even more depressing –

The half of the shop collection is dedicated to children with colouring books and some story books.

Among the rest half, the further half is devoted to Bollywood movies with VCDs/DVDs/CDs, film magazines and books on film personalities (You can’t deny the fact that you are in Mumbai!)

Now there remains the residue part which is allocated to general readers. The collection included –

Some Sidney Sheldon
Few John Grisham
A lot of Shobha De (yuckkkkkkk!!!!!!!)
A lot of Robin Sharma (yuckkkkkkk again!!!!!!!)
Some Paulo Coelho
Some Samit Basu
Some Chetan Bhagat
Some famous singular books like Interpreter of Maladies, The Last Mughal, The Kite Runner, Thousand Splendid Suns, Gora (Yes, the one by Tagore!), The Age of Shiva, Chowringee, etc.
And some new releases.

I couldn’t find a single book by Hemingway (the search was easy, as there were not much books in the shelves) and went up to the shopkeeper and asked him to find me some of his novels. When he came up with ‘Old Man and the Sea’ saying this is the only one they have, I moved my attention to somewhere else and fortunately got ‘The Pilgrimage’ by Paulo Coelho and very accidentally came across with ‘A Spot of Bother’ by Mark Haddon (I loved his ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time). I was happy to get these, though I was still looking for ‘The Warriors of Light’ by Coelho.

This was the first time I was visiting any Crossword outlet and I can swear that I’ll never visit it again. In Delhi my favourite book store used to be ‘Book Worm’ situated in the inner circle of CP, near PVR Plaaza. I had been to Galgotia also a number of times. Everytime I used to visit Book Worm or Galgotia, I used to curse myself for my bank balance! But here I was finding it difficult to get books worth of even 1000/-! I guess I will have to keep searching until I get that kind of book store here and till then I'll have to rely on British Library.

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari - my take

Please don’t write something that you don’t believe at all. Still if you try to do that deliberately, then probably you will end up writing a crap like ‘The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari’.

Though the novel-name was a complete no-no for me, I thought of giving it a read only when I came to know that the author is an Indian. But honestly, I shouldn’t have tried it out. Only a person who has absolutely no vision can sketch a character like ‘Julian’. And the fact that he goes ‘somewhere in the Himalayas’ in India and returns back looking ‘half his age’ and that his seventeen year old colleague couldn’t even recognize him was a total shock! Give me a break! This guy has surpassed even the master mind of Ekta Kapoor in imagining things!

Well, after that I didn’t have courage left to proceed with the story, though I turned some more only to find some more shocks. Every page of it was like an episode of any cheesy daily soap – full of surprises at each beginning and ending of it and actually anything and everything was happening there.

The description of the mystery land ‘India’ was even more pathetic. Even the most biased portals of ‘Incredible India’ would be ashamed of those descriptions. And the language? Even more painful. Full of lingos and jargons, the novel looks more like a fictitious report on some nonexistent world.

This is one of the worst novels I have read in the recent times.