Out of the woods

Out of the woods -- I particularly liked this expression used by a woman voicing her feelings on one of the many pregnancy sites on the net that I keep browsing. I liked it, because it is especially reflective of my feelings at the moment. Today, I’m a relieved 12-weeks pregnant woman. The don’t-tell-anyone phase is over. The time when one’s foetus could decide to shake itself free from the sack is kinda over. So, I’m out of the woods and free to post a shout out.
Actually I don’t want to. And I’ve been feeling a tad guilty about not jumping for joy. Somehow my ‘maternal pores’ are still clogged. But I did feel all mummy and mushy for a bit today when I saw my little baby sqiggle all over the place in the sonograph and when the doctor put the doppler stetho on speaker for me hear the baby’s rather quick heartbeats. Viren is already more father than I am a mom. Nice. Indicates a lot of nappy responsibility thrust on him in the near future.
Even as I fight the images of my rapidly changing (read fattening) body, rushes of mummadom sneak in sometimes. The cynic in me jumps at every opportunity of crying when I happen to stumble upon some sad story about mothers losing their babies. Can’t bear the thought of losing something that precious. I have made myself too much of a martyr already. Oh, the nausea, dizziness, fatigue was all for real. Three months of pure discomfort.
Meanwhile, Vir has been an ideal husband. And God has been really kind.

More updates, in months to come...

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth: Impressions

An Equal Music. A Suitable Boy. Both books by Vikram Seth. Both took my breath away. An Equal Music did so for its sheer brilliance, A Suitable Boy for its bulk and boredom. What happened Mr Seth?
It was nothing short of laborious to drag myself through its 1300 plus odd pages to get to a climax that wasn’t worth it. So, in the course of the next few paragraphs, if I happen to use the adjective boring more than once, uh, please bear with me.
The populace of the novel are nice enough to be gotten used to and even missed after you’ve finished reading the novel, but I’m sure I’ll not remember a single name off the pages, given its yawn potential. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll remember them precisely because they were oh-so-boring. For a good few months, the novel served as a sleeping pill (or pillow should I say, considering the thickness of that book).
Although Seth has neatly weaved in a huge variety of landscapes and caricatures (very few, if any, characters were for real) into this epic and even captured the colourful images of the great Indian arranged marriage, I consistently felt that it was being marketed for Western readers.
Seth’s research is commendable and he pulls in many a minute behavioural nuances of different people from different regions, but he fails to establish a heart connect
Perhaps I could not identify with the cultural aspects of Northern India, but even when Seth deals with the Chatterjis from Kolkata, it does very little for me by way of recognition. Their eccentricities are laughable, even lovable, but not memorable. Amit, Dipankar, Tapan, Meenakshi, Kakoli -- nobody strikes a chord.
Even the Mehra family is a forgettable lot. Most disappointingly so Lata, the protagonist. She is so painfully ordinary that at the end of the book, one cannot but feel that their time has been wasted in trying to look for a prospect for Lata along with the Mehras . Her siblings Savita, Varun and Arun come in and out of the wings throughout the novel as does her best friend Malati. Malati, in my opinion, has more body than all the Mehras put together. But I’m probably partial because she’s something of a firebrand, a trait I identify with. Mrs Rupa Mehra, the Mehra matriarch, is the most annoying character I’ve ever come across in my real and literary experiences. Share she might her first name with my mother, but I had not an iota of identification with that odious woman.
Another character that might just stay with me for a while is Maan Kapoor of the Kapoor clan. This no-good, maverick son of the revenue minister goes through the novel flitting in and out of a whorehouse, his friends’ house (Firoz and Imtiyaz, sons of the Nawab of Baitar), and his father’s house deferring endlessly his Benaras visit, his supposed fiancée and some godforsaken cloth business. His siblings Pran and Veena are as uninteresting as anyone else. But for Pran, I positively feel contemptuous for his weaknesses .
I did learn a few things from the book though. About the city called Brahmpur in the state for Purva Pradesh -- both of which I’d never heard of before. This was probably the first reason for my disconnect. The place in which the novel is set is as unreal to me as, say, Malgudi. There were more lessons shoved down my throat -- life in a village, rural and urban politics, minority issues, the trappings of a local government, the strife of prices and zamindars post independence, so on and so forth. Each more unpalatable than the other.
Not even the suitors were made to look yummy.
Kabir Durrani -- Muslim, unfocussed, and seemingly loves cricket more than he loves the lady.
Amit Chatterji -- Bengali, poet, and uh...a romantic intellectual !?
Haresh Khanna -- Cobbler (a shoe professional, really), chews paan and writes the most silly sounding letters ever.
Seth must really believe that letters are a window to ones soul, or something like that, for he bombards his readers with letters from one character to another at every given opportunity. So much so that the phrase ‘a man of letters’ has taken an entirely new (and deprecatory) meaning in my head.
The book is over. Thank God. I shall never read it again and advice others to not waste their time.
Need I really say that reams and reams of words do not make for a good novel?
Stick to the crisp, dear Mr Seth. Rambling isn’t really you.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra: Impressions

10.2.08

What more appropriately titled book could there be for me to be writing about this morning? Vik Chandra's (that's what I've decided to call him) Sacred Games kept me up reading late into the night till I finished the last of its nine hundred pages. Yet I was up with the first sounds this morning and have been awake ever since. Like Vir aptly put in his 'Good Morning' message : Sleep does not come to the anxious.
But it's more anger than anxiety that's been keeping me awake - or perhaps both. The anger is about an 'ongoing' wound - one that I can't dress, only scathe with. The anxiety is about not feeling anything in particular. Today is my last day as a Miss anyone. Tomorrow I shall have to cross the threshold to become a 'Mrs.' and stick to it for the rest of my days. Perhaps it is a big deal or perhaps it is just another day. I can't decide what to feel. Pretty much like the protagonists of Chandra's epic novel; pretty much like the humanness of Ganesh Gaitonde and Sartaj Singh.
In the backdrop of the city of Mumbai - the city that is a representation of all possibilities of the human situation - the novel ebbs and flows and with it, so do the descriptions of lives - each big and small in its own right. This is the city of filth and squalor, hopes and dreams and of course - a million sacred games.
A racy crime thriller with the usual mix of emotions thrown in, in the right places for the right effects, it keeps you hooked and wanting. Through violence, sex, murder, mayhem, and love, betrayal, friendships and estrangements, profound truths about life, Vik Chandra keeps his promise of sacred games.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: Impressions

6.3.08

That I've summoned my pen for the third consecutive review of a read book bears testimony enough to the greatness of Khaled Hosseini's work of art. It also pleases me that I'm keeping to my resolve to never let another book be lost to time or memory.
The first day of reading the book was a 'weighing down' experience. Literally so. The pages drained me - the emotions asphyxiating me so much that even a small band-aid strip on my finger felt like it was choking me. So I shut the book, took a walk and came back with such defences that the rest of the book couldn't reach my heart. I quickly donned the - as I call it - 'scientist' mantle. Took to the objective standpoint and locked up the 'artist' in the farthest corner of my mind where Amir and Hassan couldn't wreak havoc on my heart.
But even with my defence of distance, the Kite Runner will be an unforgettable book for me, as it is for a countless others.
Hosseini's story-telling is masterful (a word I've picked up from one of the critics' acclamations on the book cover) but there wasn't much meat in it for me to identify with. Neither are my relationships with my parents so spun with tragedy nor have I had anyone I can truly call a best friend. The other relationships remain on the periphery and hence tug no strings.
But what endears the book to me is the style of writing. Oh, I relate so much with the author's cut-the-crap-and-talk-business style of writing. Kudos to a writer from another one (at least a wannabe). Hosseini's descriptions of the setting blend in so fast and so seamlessly with the plot that one has no time to start wondering when the colour of the sky and the bottle in the trashcan will be gotten over with. The language is refreshingly light, the sentences thankfully short (a skill I woefully acquire). And hats off to the way the book sucks the reader right in, whichever page you are on after a break. I also admire the way meanings of the Afghan (Pashtu?) words have been placed. Simply. Unapologetically. For this lovely read, Tashakor Mr. Hosseini. Thank you.

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth: Impressions

Today there are no more pages of Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music to curl up in bed with. So, as one clutches at the last straw, I write about the book to savour my last bit of association with the book. And it amuses me to no end, as it doubtlessly will others, how I chose my favourite Parker fountain pen to write about it (yea, yea, before I typed it here). I think it really is a reflection of the high regard I now have for the book.
Seth’s An Equal Music can be summed in a no less a word than ‘delectable’. I don’t know how this word occurs to me as the most appropriate adjective; but I suppose it has to do with the way I have savoured every nuance of the book, found every bit of the experience delicious. The delightfully sensuous feel of the story may very well have been the inspiration. Odd, though, that Seth’s offering of auditory delights should translate into a distinctively gustatory one for me.
Every day I would look forward most eagerly to my time with the book. As one would save his favourite piece on the plate for the best aftertaste, I saved pages of the book. I didn’t read for more than an hour a day for fear that it would get over. But like all good things, the book came to an end yesterday and it has left one of the most lasting impressions ever. Yessir! This one’s going into my ‘favourite books’ list.
Vikram Seth’s rendition of the story in the first person narrative as the protagonist Michael is mind-blowing. Never has a fictional character appeared to me as so ‘real’. After a long, long time, I cried when the hero did and laughed loudly at his wisecracks. Michaels’s relationships with his quartet friends - Piers, Billy and Helen, with his Tononi violin, with Julia - the love of his life, as even with himself is so brutally honest in it portrayal. Through pages and pages that spoke about B majors and F minors - musical jargon that I have NO clue about - Seth kept me rooted firmly. Not once did I wish to cheat, skim or skip thought the pages. I was a compelled partaker in the world of Michael and his friends even as they discussed Western Classical music!
Another fascinating world that Seth so confidently led me into was the world of the deaf. The pathos of Julia’s condition is truly soul touching, yet one may not feel sympathy for her. So wonderful is the author’s exposition of ‘to each his own’, that one only emerges with a solemn respect from situations even whence the characters have suffered their worst defeats. Though vastly different from Ayn Rand’s style, like her, Seth’s book reminded me the undying spirit of the human who likes to love and who likes to live.

The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru: Impressions

"The Impressionist in a good book with a bad ending."
If I had like, really less time and lesser still space to comment about the book, that is probably how I’d have summed it. But Hari Kunzru’s 300-something page novel deserves more reflection.
For one, this book - after at least the last three - had me coming back to it, and fast. That implies that the story is racy, the writing ‘light enough’ and the font size big enough!! Kidding...but seriously, I hate reading books where the whole bloody page is in fineprint. But, beyond font sizes, the style of the book is ‘if-you-know-what-I-mean-by-my-style-of-writing’.
From Pran to Ruksana to Robert/Chandra to Pretty Bobby to the various versions of Jonathan, the protagonist’s story souns quite real - quite ‘happenable’. But all the while I kept thinking what Kunzru’s reason might have been to have chosen such a string of impersonations. I believe that everything a writer touches carries forth a serious piece of him in the written word. Wonder if Kunzru’s ‘mixed’ upbringing with Indian-English parentage and an identity crisis that often is a problem with children as these, is partly the basis for the plot.
Kunzru’s rendition of Indore, Fatehpur and Mumbai in India and of all the said places in the UK are great, but Africa didn’t go down with me at all. It was probably my zilch knowledge about the continent or my non-interest in it. But isn’t an author supposed to convince you of his version, draw you in? Fotseland remained as foreign to me at the end of the novel as it did when the name was first used. But what completely grossed me out was the cannibal ending. The jump from believable to bizzare is so abrupt, it completely cuts off your relationship wid the book. Perhaps it is a little too extreme on my part, but the conclusion left me feeling sick in the stomach, with a bad taste in my mouth. If all Kunzru wanted to do is push the protagonist into a life of oblivion at the end of the world, I’m sure there could have been other ways to do it.
So there, what Kunzru had built up through his masterful use of language and storytelling was brutally cut off in the end. I love him and hate him.

Jesus Lived In India by Holger Kersten: Impressions

This one I couldn’t finish in decent time either and I took the usual solace in the usual ‘busy schedule’ bahana. But the thought provoking ideas of Holger Kersten were worthy of every stretched minute.

The bold note which the book begins with is nothing like it when it ends. The end result was that I couldn't care less if Kersten’s hypothesis seems to me proven or not. But what the book did for me was an entirely different deal. What was in it for me was this wonderful way in which parallels were drawn between the major religions of the world. Also the painstaking research that has been put in by the author to trace the common etymological origins of similar religious terminology is a treat.

For a religion and language buff like me, the delight at each discovery was twice as much. Reading the book opened up the grand vista to the evolution of world religions as it did to the minds of men who wield religion for power; a topic that has always fascinated me. My intellectual interests apart, the book transfused in me a lasting sense of unity on a ‘personal’ front. The challenges of an inter-religion marriage are many and minute. Its difficult to say which grazes what and from where stems trouble. For a Hindu woman with a Catholic husband, the idea of the possibility of a culmination of the two religions is ‘relieving’, albeit a far-fetched idea.
I’ve experienced smug seconds though when I almost believed that Christ was ‘inspired’ (Bollywood music director-style) by Buddhism via Hinduism; felt that undeserving sense of superiority over the other- like the naive ‘My God is greater than yours’ kind of a thing. But the bottom line was this pervading sense of unity, knowing that he and I are fundamentally the same, no matter how different our religious garbs look. Not that I hadn’t known it all along, but to see it reiterated in print seemed to bolster my conviction.

All in all, I’m too bothered with my relationship to be bothered with who lived where.

New Beginnings...yay...WTF!?

God knows (and I do now) that new beginnings are overrated. I hate new beginnings. The warming up period, almost always, exceeds my limit of enduring idleness. I reiterate. I hate it. Since I last posted on this blog, there's been as many new things in my life as a person can be excited about. And with my 'non-enthusiasm' for the new, little wonder that I've not written anything about it. The 'New' list goes like this...
a. I got married
b. I got my dream job
YAY!! yea..yea.. that's what I'm supposed to do. I mean, hey, its nice and everything, but the acclimatisation takes soooooooooooooooooo-freaaaaaaaaking-loooooooooong!!! And I write today, not out of excitement, but because I am bored out of my wits.
When the 'fun' part of the wedding propah was over with, my self-imposed work exile needed me to spend hours and hours alone at home doing this glorified deed of waiting for my husband...sheesh!! Three weeks of 'housewivery!?' and I was dead-bored or rather bored-dead...and I grabbed the first job that came my way (needless to say, I wasn't really keen about it). So, the first week of that job was all about sitting around and waiting to get grafted in. So I warmed the chair eight hours a day surfing the net, staring out of the window, smoking, surfing the net and surfing the net some more, while my New colleagues walked past with surreptitious looks (being the only woman at work isn't half as much fun as I thought it would be).
Another week passed and I went about with my fake smile plastered all over my face trying to be one of them. Each time I was bored and tempted to never come back, I reminded myself that being an idle employed being was better than being an idle housewifey thing. The end of the second week got me an offer from this 'dream job' I mentioned earlier. I'm at the desk (or on the bench as the IT guys refer it to) of this dream job - my third day - and I'm (no prizes for guessing) warming up all over again. Aaaargh!!
So I sit here all day...tada....warming the chair eight hours a day, blah, blah, blah, blah...
And oh... I finally gave up on The Lord of the Rings yesterday after the first two books.. Why?...of course...it's BORING!!!

The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple: Impressions

19.01.08

After months of grappling with William Dalrymple's THE LAST MUGHAL, I finally put to rest the life and times of Bahadur Shah Zafar in my head and the near 500-'strong' page book.

Nearly four months ago, the book was bought by me to combat boredom at the airport due to an obviously delayed flight; and was largely a result of forgetfulness. The White Mughals by the same author was what I had been intending to buy for a while. But in the airport chaos, what remained with me was 'something' Mughal and instead of a fair maiden on the cover, the old frail Mughal of an emperor came home with me.

Since then, evening after evening- preceded by long days at office - I took one tired step after another through the palaces and bylanes of the Delhi of 1857 as Mr. Dalrymple guided me slowly, throwing often unnecessary references along the way. The learning and earnestness of research of the author though, is commendable.

With my patience, or rather lack of it, the journey seemed quite cumbersome more often than not, as the narrative moved back and forth from the confines of Zafar's palace to the cubicles of the different British officials' offices. Shattering the heroic credits attributed singularly to the 'Pandy' Mangal Pandey for the 1857 Uprising, Dalrymple etches with clarity, the confusion and the causes of the rebellion. But the pace of the book was like the slow sizzle of moist firewood - never warm enough for comfort, never cold enough for frustration. The book neither allows you to abandon it nor read it on with full gusto.

I often contemplated putting away the book for good and very often used irritating excuses of lack of time and tiredness...the bottom line being - I WAS BORED! But as I said, the book never let off the gnawing and I kept returning to it to find out the grim details of the falling someone's fortune.

In the last one week, since I came home, I took to the book and the book took to me too - especially the poor dear, Zafar. One cannot help but feel pity for the eighty-two year old man who is as helpless against his falling teeth as he is against his falling dynasty. Stuck between being the symbol of power for the rebel armies of Hindoostan and a dependent-on-British-pension; between the royal habits of luxury and the glaring reality of poverty; between his favourite queen - the manipulative Zinal Mahal & her son Mirza Jawan Bakht and his eldest children, Zafar is ground into pathetic grain throughout.

Dalrymple successfully makes one oscillate between feeling joy when the rebels have an upper hand and victory seems close and agony when the Brits bounce back and drive 'us' out. The narrative tugs at the most sensitive humanitarian strings and one cringes with equal disgust as the Pandies ravage the properties and modesties of the British and later the British inflict with twice the vengeance the same wounds. The brutal murders, cuttings, hackings, shootings and hangings make your stomach churn even as the stink of heaped and rotting corpses waft up to evoke nauseous feelings. The tales of courage on the one hand and murder and treachery on the other makes one love and hate humans at the same time.

Dalrymple beautifully sums up the book pointing to and co-relating the fundamental problems of the Hindu-Muslim divide and the Islamic fundamentalist-Western imperialist strife, making clear in the simplest way the most complicated situations of contemporary world politics...

Definitely worth the effort!

Thought spill

18.12.07

It is one of my ‘must-write’ days again – one of the rarer instances when my need to write takes priority even over my need to sleep. I’ve started alright, but there is nothing I have to particularly write about; yet so many thoughts/ideas are swarming in my head. So I’ve decided to follow my train of thoughts…

Right now my first thoughts are about V who is sitting here, right next to me, checking his mails (an 800 something backlog!!) The guy’s fantasy of birds is fascinating. His eyes seem to be completely drinking up those bird images on the monitor.

We are precisely only a month away from being man and wife - lawfully. We got our pre-nuptial enquiry at church and application for marriage registration at court done yesterday. In exactly a month from today, i.e. the 18^th Jan ’08, we will be civilly marriage – having finished just one of the several weddings that we’ll undergo. A reaffirmation of certain vows will have to be made again (in the Hindu way) and yet again (in the Catholic way) over the week after. Having to confirm in the eyes of the various societies we’re part of, what we have already affirmed to each other.

I was reminded yet again of the number-game that destiny has been playing in the constant with us. 18^th January – a day of the month that I’ve always strongly associated with A. That was supposedly the date of my first meeting with him. Now when I marry V on the very same date, each of my previous associations will be erased – completely. Thereafter, every 18^th will belong to V. Sorry A, looks like even my future doesn’t want you in it, even as memories. And of the dates of our weddings, 17^th will be the last one- a date on which V confessed his “love” for me – the final seal. Wow! This is really uncanny – down to the last detail. If these aren’t signs from up above, I ask, what else are? There could be no better example of a ‘meant-to-be’!!

Life in the last month with V has given me a preview of what I’m getting into – a preview I quite like. Sure we have had our share of disagreements and near fights, but it looks real nice from where I stand today. I hope I am living up as much / more or less to the visions of V as he is to mine. Doing it all together – cooking, eating, sleeping, washing dishes, watching movies – oh yes, it has been good.

Part of the reason for picking up this journal today was to write my review/reflections for the movie 15 Park Avenue – a movie that V and I watched together and one that made for a lot of soul searching stuff. Also, we’d promised each other that we would write reviews of movies that we see together which would be part of our creative learning process. Yes, the movie has a lot to write about, but procrastination has led to a fainted memory and I’m afraid the review will have to wait till I’ve watched it again and refreshed my remembrance.

Yet another thought that’s competing for the number one spot as I’m nearing tomorrow is about meeting Aj. Aj will be in town tomorrow and I’m supposed to be meeting him. This will be my first interface with him – months after I got to know him. From where it started to where it has reached now makes for very unsettling sentiments. They bother me. V knows, for the greater part, what Aj is all about and thus justifiably uncomfortable.

I know what I want, where I stand and where I’m headed – very sure – for the first time in my life. There still is some anxiety though. Is it because first times cause fear? In this case, the pertinent first is my surety of myself. I am tough to trust in my own eyes…or am I?