Mrs. Dalloway, Eragon & Amir

In the last few weeks I’ve read the most amazing books. Without further ado, I’ll just start with the first one: “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham.

Many of you must have heard of this title in connection with the movie staring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman. Nicole Kidman had also won an Oscar for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf. I had seen bits and pieces of the movie before I read the book, and I hate to say this, but I couldn’t quite follow what was going on. The performance by all three actors was really good though, and that’s quite an understatement! But when I read the book I could understand it so much better.

The first time I heard of Virginia Woolf was in connection with the Elizabeth Taylor movie “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I have never seen it and don’t know what it is about. The next time I came across Virginia Woolf was in my third year of BA, when we had to study a poem and an extract from her book “A Room of One’s Own” in English Lit. She was one of the founders of the Bloomsbury publishing firm, the same one that now publishes the “Harry Potter” series!

“The Hours” is about the lives of three women – Virginia Woolf, Clarissa Vaughan/Mrs. Dalloway and Laura Brown, all set in different points of the 20^th century. Cunningham interweaves events that happen in their lives with the events that occur in Woolf’s novel, “Mrs. Dalloway”. It is just brilliant the manner in which the narrative slides back and forth between the lives of these three women. I was totally drawn into their world, and it was like I was standing in the room with them, watching their lives unfold before my very eyes!

Another factor that garnered my interest, as a student of clinical psychology, was that mental illness is present in the lives of all the protagonists. There is this line in the book that I really liked: “…sanity involves a certain measure of impersonation, not simply for the benefit of husband… but for the sake, first and foremost, of one’s own convictions.” Makes you really think doesn’t it?

The other book, rather books, that I’d read are the first two in the “Inheritance” series by Christopher Paolini: “Eragon” and “Eldest”.

And for this I gotta thank Monk, as he was the one to suggest that I give these books a try. These two books belong to the same genre as “Harry Potter”, “LOTR”, “Simoqin Prophecies” etc. I love this genre because it is to do with MAGIC and FANTASY!! I guess it’s to do with my desire to possess magical powers! Who wouldn’t like to possess some kind of power that would elevate them to a position above almost everybody else? But what I really liked about the “Inheritance” series is the concept that the energy it takes to accomplish a task using magic is equal to the energy that would take to do it without the help of magic! This adds a very human twist to magic.

The adventure is set in a land called Alagaësia populated by human beings, dragons and other magical creatures.

Paolini was only 19 years old when he published “Eragon”! I find that incredibly cool! His protagonist, Eragon, is himself only 16 years old. He is working on the third and final book in the series. If any one of you is a fan of magical tales then “Eragon” and “Eldest” are a must read!

The third book that I’d read is “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini.

It is set in Afghanistan and America, and tells the story of two Afghan boys, Amir and Hassan. It is told in first person, in a very matter of fact manner, but the emotions and feelings are very much in evidence in each and every line. The turning point in the novel was so shocking that it knocked the breath out of me. And I’m not being overly dramatic by saying so.

“The Kite Runner” is a story of courage and redemption and finding your place in the world. It has been a while since I have been so moved by a novel. Even though it is not a thriller, it was simply unputdownable. I’ve already added it to my ‘favourite book list’.

So there they are now, the books that I’ve enjoyed reading these past few weeks. Books have seemingly replaced the weekly movie ritual that used to take place when I was in Hyderabad, with my parents dragging me to see the worst movies ever!! They are such movie aficionados that they want to see every single movie that hits the screens, and I have had to sit through horrors such as Pyar, Ishq aur Mohabbat, Baaz – A Bird in Danger, and more recently, Kyun Ki…, Shaadi No.1, and Garam Masala!

Anyway, I think this is gonna be my last post for a while now, because I have to start working on my second file submission, and if I want to avoid getting panic-stricken as I’d gotten last November, then I better start in advance! :D

May be I’ll be able to squeeze in short posts now and then, but I make no promises!

One Night @ the Call Center

I had finished reading ‘One Night @ the Call Center’ a few weeks ago, and had wanted to blog about it as soon as I finished reading it, but I thought I should do Puneet’s tag first.

Anyway, Chetan Bhagat’s latest book is damn good! I liked it better than ‘Five-point Someone’. ‘Five-point Someone’ was also good, a fun read; but I couldn’t really relate to the protagonists. It was easier to relate to Shyam, Priyanka, Vroom, Esha, Radhika, and even ‘Military Uncle’, the protagonists of ‘One Night @ the Call Center’. Each is a stereotype, but yet the characters are so well etched.
Bhagat has used quite a bit of Black humour in the book to make you smirk now and then! The manner in which people working in call centers are taught to relate to Americans is just too funny! Now I don’t know if all this is true, or Bhagat has just exaggerated things a bit, but it’s hilarious nonetheless.
The book covers so many wide topics: love, heartbreak, jealousy, mystery, spirituality and the cynicism of the Indian youth. All these elements have been cohesively bound in a book that is hard to put down once you start reading. You just want to, have to know what’s gonna happen to the protagonists next.
The ending (of Shyam’s story) is quite filmy, very Hollywood­ish. But it made me laugh all the same, and not sarcastically at that!
And recently I heard on GO 92.5 FM that Rohan Sippy (director of Bluffmaster) has decided to adapt ‘One Night @ the Call Center’ for the big screen, and Chetan Bhagat is himself working on the screenplay right now. It’s not like Sippy’s gonna take my suggestions, but that’s not gonna stop me from suggesting the actors who I think would be perfect for each role! :D
I think Ritiesh Deshmukh would be perfect as Shyam and Zayed Khan would make a good Vroom. I guess Esha Deol could play her namesake’s role. I can’t think of anyone else but Kajol to play Priyanka’s role, but then she would look older than the character’s age. Maybe Preity Zinta could also suit the part. Hmmm… I can’t decide on Priyanka’s part. Amrish Puri would have been perfect for Military Uncle’s role, but unfortunately he is no more. But I guess Boman Irani could also do this role justice, even if it is quite small. Now who can play Radhika? Rani Mukherjee could I guess.
Now I hope I have inspired at least some of you to go out, grab this book and read it. And those of you who have already read, how about suggesting the names of actors you think would be perfect for each of the characters.

Books, Books and more Books!

The Monk’s latest post (My Heroes) got me all inspired to write about my own fictional heroes. But what I’m going to do is list out novels as a whole, some of which have inspired me and some that have not, but all are my favourites nonetheless. So here goes:

A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE by BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD
I’d read this book when I was studying in the 10th standard. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” Ok, that’s all I can remember from Dickens’ classic ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. But this line is so apt for how things were in the 10th standard.
But, as is my wont, I digress! Emma Harte, the protagonist of ‘A Woman of Substance’ greatly inspired me, she still inspires me. At one level it is just a story of a girl who rises above her means and becomes rich and famous, bur underlying it is the journey she makes from a poor maid to a businesswoman of great repute and the sacrifices she has to make to get where she did. And the best part is that she is not as pure as driven snow, she has many flaws, the yearning for revenge being her greatest; and she can be cold and calculating when she wants to be. But it is her strength, both mental and physical, which greatly awed me. It truly is a fantastic book.

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES AT THE WHISTLE STOP CAFÉ by FANNIE FLAG
This is a great Southern American story about four women – Idgie Threadgoode, Ruth Jamison, Ninny Threadgoode and Evelyn Couch. The women do not do anything extraordinary, except sticking up for each other and being there for each other in times of trouble. But I guess that is quite extraordinary in itself! I’d watched the movie before I’d read the book. The movie was quite a faithful representation of the book, with great performances by Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary Louise Parker, Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates; but I enjoyed reading the book much, much more.

GONE WITH THE WIND by MARGARET MITCHELL
In Greek plays the hero is the most honest bravest, strongest, smartest, kindest person around, but possesses one terrible flaw that leads to his undoing. Scarlett O’Hara is the antithesis of the above. Here is a heroine who is selfish, greedy, vain, crafty, and would stop at nothing to get what she wants; and she is also a procrastinator like yours truly, as is evidenced by her famous words, “Tomorrow is another day”! Hehe! Just kidding! Those words show just how self-possessed she is, as despite all of her flaws she does have great confidence in herself and in her abilities. And it is mostly due to her efforts that her family survives during the Civil War. Here again I saw the movie before I’d read the book, and I think the movie is not a patch on the book, though the performance by the cast is very good. I guess it was not possible to encapsulate all the events that occur in the book into the movie. The sequel, ‘Scarlett’ by Alexandra Ripley turns Scarlett O’Hara’s character topsy-turvy. It is like Ripley created a totally different character! But I won’t go into all that now. Suffice to say that Scarlett O’Hara is one of the most dazzling fictional characters of all time.

LIFE OF PI by YANN MARTEL
‘Life of Pi’ is one of the most imaginative books I have ever read. It tells the story of Pi, short for Piscine Molitor Patel, a young boy whose father owned the Pondicherry zoo. He gets stuck in a lifeboat with the most unlikely companions for 227 days. And how he survives makes up most of the story. Aristotle had said that the audience should be willing to suspend their disbelief in the duration of a play. You will have no difficulty in suspending your disbelief while reading this novel! Martel narrates the events with such lucidity that you cannot help but be entranced by it all! This book is all about survival; it even weaves in a bit on ‘survival of the fittest’.

THE LAST SONG OF DUSK by SIDDHARTH DHANVANT SHANGHVI
This novel is quite… magical. I cannot think of any other adjective to describe it. It just transports you to a different world. The characters are quite extraordinary, yet their motives not all that difficult to understand. It is the story of Anuradha Gandharva, her husband Vardhmaan, their son Shloka and Anuradha’s cousin Nandini. I won’t presume to understand everything that occurs in the novel, some parts are steeped in mystery, and I did not get the philosophical overtones at some points. But the time during which I read this book I would just be cut me off from the world around me, the feeling was almost surreal.

SPOUSE by SHOBHA DÉ
I have just finished reading Shobha Dé’s ‘Spouse’, and whoever saw me reading it gave me knowing looks and passed comments like, “Oh! Are we going to hear some kind of good news from you soon?” or “Preparing already for the future huh?” Followed by a lot of ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge’. I was quite amused for the most part. No, there is no “good news” to be expected and I did not buy the book with the intention of “preparing for the future”. I actually bought it because I was bored and pissed! And I must say it was one of my best buys (*pats own shoulder*) yet! I started reading it expecting the tone to be kind of condescending and ‘talking down-like’, but boy was I in for a surprise! It is a very common sensical book. Dé says it as she sees it, without mincing any words, which is of course her usual style, but I enjoyed reading this book much more than I did any of her works of fiction. It not only gives an insight into her own marriage but also into the married lives of Indians ranging from the ‘elite’ class to the lower middle class. I think it should be made compulsory reading for all couples that are planning on getting married. It will surely bring them down from Cloud no. 9 and face reality. Already married couples will also benefit from it. And one thing I found out is that from all accounts my parents do seem to have quite a great marriage on their hands! They are openly affectionate to each other (sometimes disgustingly so! :D) and they just somehow seem to make it work! Dé would be so proud of them! :)) And the best thing is that her advice can be applied not only within a marriage, but to other relationships too.

There are soooooo many other books that I absolutely love, like the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, ‘The Simoqin Prophecies’ by Samit Basu, ‘Five Point Someone’ by Chetan Bhagat, ‘The da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown etc., etc. But I’m just going to leave it at these six above.

Butter and Mashed Banana

Last Sunday I went to watch a play with my brother, D; rather I’d dragged him along with me, without even knowing what it actually was about! All I wanted to do was watch a play, rather than sit at home and get bored on yet another Sunday evening. I anyway looove to go for plays, though I haven’t gotten the opportunity do so very often.
The play was entitled Butter and Mashed Banana enacted by three guys from Banglore (or should I say ‘Bangaluru??!), Nakul Krishna, supported by Arjun Shankar and Ajay Krishnan. It was written and directed by Ajay Krishnan. The day after I had watched the play I got to know that butter and mashed banana were used to grease the hangman’s noose!
This play was a part of the Thespo theatre youth festival, started by Quasar Thakore Padamsee and other 20 some things six years ago.
The evening began first with a platform performance that took place in the parking lot of the NCPA experimental theatre. It was entitled The Dissonant and is described as this, “An individual trapped within the flux of life as an unwilling participant in the struggle. Knowledge renders the ultimate truth within grasp, and then – what then?” Needless to say, I did not get what the playwright was trying to convey. I was thoroughly confused with the goings on, as was D. And when this performance got over we heard several people murmuring, wondering, “what the hell was that all about?” Our puny minds could not grasp what these people were trying to portray.
D gave me a dirty look and asked, “Were you ever bored at any performance that I took you to? How about making inquiries about what we will be watching next time?” And when he read the summary of Butter and Mashed Banana and found out that it was about the battle between the Left and the Right, he looked positively resigned to a boring evening!
Now let me tell you what Nakul Krishna, the actor who plays the protagonist had to say about the play: Consider an alternate universe populated by dour hangmen, radical Hindutva types, Marxist feminists and joyless conformists who live by the Cinematograph Act of 1952. All of whom are all too willing to jump up with a ‘Don’t you dare say that!’ Or maybe this universe isn’t that alternative after all… Butter and Mashed Banana is about getting high on the constitutional freedom of speech that allows us the right to choose irreverence as our drug of choice. And might offend a few along the way. Hopefully.
The play was simply brilliant! It was hilarious and at the same time made sure the point was brought across clearly. It is basically about this boy who is born out of one passionate night shared by his parents, his mother being a feminist, while his father is just the opposite, and how he tries to create his own identity.
The interesting thing about the play was that the actors hardly wore any clothes, and by that I mean that they were dressed only in a ganji/vest and pajamas. And the set design was very minimalist too. It consisted of a bed sheet and a pink tub. The actors broke into song in between to propel the story forward, with Ajay Krishnan strumming on the guitar. The supporting actors also wore ghungroos around their ankles.
One of the funniest sequences had Krishna singing the most controversial song of the late 1990s, ‘Sexy, sexy, sexy mujhe log bole’ (People call me sexy) performed by poor Karisma Kapoor, who was crucified after this song was aired! Krishna sang it in this high-pitched voice, which was just too funny! Another funny sequence was one in which the protagonist writes a best seller (which by the way, never gets released in India, because of its ‘controversial’ subject) and is being interviewed by some journalists. One of the journalists actually asks him much to his bemusement about which brand of shampoo he uses!
Yet another good sequence is where the protagonist receives a call from a guy threatening to kill him because of his book to which he asks, “Didn’t you call yesterday?” And the caller is like, “No! That wasn’t me!” And the protagonist says, “Strange! Someone called up yesterday and said exactly the same thing!” Then the caller says that his book is very offending in nature to which the protagonist replies, “Did you actually read my book?” only to be answered by the engaged tone!

And the scenes where the party in power and the opposition party clamour to get the protagonist to join their respective parties after he announces that he would like to "become a politician" are very humourous. And then when he repudiates both their offers and tries to float his own party, the parties join hands to bring him down! All of this was performed with such humour, not exaggerated humour, but very satirical for sure!
Each and every person sitting in the auditorium enjoyed this play immensely, including D! People were rolling in the aisles listening to the very tongue-in-cheek dialogues!
The very same evening there was as awards ceremony before which a local rock band called 'Helga and the Fun Castle' performed. I don’t care much for hard rock music and this experience has just reinforced my view!
Then the awards ceremony started. And which play swept the awards in almost all categories that it was nominated in? Butter and Mashed Banana of course! It received the awards for best supporting actor, best actor, best director and best story. And to think the first 2-3 ideas of the director, Ajay Krishnan were rejected! And most of the girls/women present fell in love with Nakul Krishna, ‘cause he’s so damn cute! ;) (Ok, he does not look all that great in the pic below!)

There are talks to bring back this play next year when the Kala Ghoda festival will take place (I don’t know exactly when). So those of you, who are in Bombay, should definitely go and watch this play, and take as many people as you can with you!