About a Kindle

A few days ago on the bus to work a woman came and sat next to me. A few seconds later she had pulled out a questionnaire for me to respond to about my reading habits. Now the reason she had managed to lasso me into this little project of hers was because I had a Kindle in my hands. So absorbed was I in the book that it took her a second calling to get my attention.

As she pounded me with questions on my reading and sought my feedback on the device I found myself grappling for the right answers. In the few minutes we spent interacting I surprisingly found it a challenge to surmise what the Kindle has really done for me over the last few months. I did give her a gist of the deal eventually but after much reflection thereafter I knew I had to pen my thoughts properly on the subject.

It was perhaps either happy coincidence or just plain destiny. Earlier this year, around April, I was pondering over whether or not to buy a Tablet PC (this was when iPads and RT Surfaces were plastered everywhere in town trying to seduce you into their lair). The one question that kept bugging me was this – Why do I need one?

The answer, regardless of the rationale, invariably was settling on just one word – to read. But to read what? And how often? If by reading I meant magazine articles, data hurricanes from social networks and the chronic email check syndrome then my android phone was plenty sufficient for that. Then why did I need a Tablet? Well, I would justify, for lengthier reads, long type articles and such (whilst still being able to access the same assortment of online information as I was already doing on my phone). Somehow that still looked precariously insufficient for an investment which would undoubtedly be a bulky one.

It was during such a season of thoughts that I ran into the Kindle Fire HD. As I watched their made-to-please commercials featuring happy people sitting in sun drenched living rooms and cozily reading a book on their device my gut feeling was that it looked great. Along with connectivity to social networks it even had a full blown video streaming app with NetFlix using which entire movies and television shows could be watched. I could surf the net, check my messages, share cool stuff on Twitter and yes, also read books. Yes – this looked and felt like the device I wanted. The plus was obviously that it was cheaper than the other Tablets I had seen (definitely the iPad!). A Tablet but also a cool reader for my long reading purposes. That dilemma resolved I signed on to Amazon, looked up the Kindle Fire HD and hit the “Buy” button.

There were a lot of factors I would come to realize much later but when I went to the next stage of buying the device and having it shipped to me an error message greeted me. Was it that my card was not processing properly? No. Was it that I had accidently selected something else instead of the Fire? Nope. Turned out at the time Amazon could not ship the Fire to Denmark. A deep disappointment fell over me like a silent curtain. In fact, the Amazon page went on to tell me, the only device I could order was the less fancy, basic touch screen type, black and white, non-social media connected model called PaperWhite.

I spent almost a week brooding over this bizarre turn of events. I had the money, I had the will and just when I had thought my decision had been the right one fate was throwing me another curveball with this technicality. I looked at the commercials for the PaperWhite in an effort to rationalize the incident somehow. Yet my initial thoughts were that of grief. It didn’t do anything except allow you to read books! No connection to FB or Twitter, no surfing online (except the Amazon’s store) or no popups to tell me something I had shared was being retweeted by some big names on Twitter. In fact, and the sunshine of the possibility began to ascend in my psyche’s skies, it was a device with absolutely no distractions.

For the longest time whenever posed with the query – Do you read? – I had always answered back “Oh yes! I am an avid reader!” But for the last couple of years the word “avid” had sort of become untrue what with me barely finishing one novel in six months. The only things I would read were the bursts of profundity on Twitter or the regular sites I would visit to get my daily dose of updates in fields of my interest. Was this the same as reading proper literature? Hardly. The effects of such a lifestyle became more evident when my vocabulary was filled with terms like TIL and WTF. What sort of an avid reader was I whose immediate refuge for an argument was an acronym? Something had gone woefully wrong. No – I had to fess up. I was not an avid reader. In fact I was barely a reader at all.

A few weeks later when the PaperWhite showed up I began connecting the dots. Its unassuming down to earth look caught my admiration right away. No fancy 3D buttons with a light halo on their foreheads. No decorative icons to sift through and definitely no familiar symbols of distraction like a W of Wiki, a T of Twitter and an F of Facebook. Not having access to this W-T-F was perhaps the first step to escaping the short term bursts of my knowledge bank.

I spent a day getting familiar with the minimalistic interface. The device was quite light to hold, big enough to read a page but small enough to push inside a jacket pocket and most importantly had a fantastic light setting which made reading text in any type of visibility easy. One of my biggest apprehensions of digital display has been the degree of ease with which black and white text can be read effortlessly on it. The PaperWhite, as it became evident quickly, was brilliant at this.

I have had it now since early May 2013 and just as a self-check exercise I made a list of all the books I have managed to read on it thus far.

The Home and the World
The Great Gatsby
Love in the time of cholera
The Canterville Ghost
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Americanah
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Murder as a Fine Art
Straw Men
We Are Here
The Shining
Misery
The Prophet
Psycho
Fight Club
Gods, Sages and Kings
The Man Who Knew Infinity

And currently “A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate”.

So that means 17 books and 18^th in progress. I also did read an offline book – For The Love Of a Son – on a long haul flight to India which I did not include. But the idea that reading as a habit has kicked in big time needs no further proof. So seven months and 18 books – averaging between two to three books a month. That to me comes closer to being an “avid reader” than the one book per six months ritual I had going on for the past couple of years.

Not being able to order the Fire HD version of this device quickly seems like a divine act of providence now. Somehow, knowing myself, I suspect I would have succumbed to the familiar allure of dings and popups once more despite being in the middle of a really good book. This short attention span habit I have developed has been a big reason behind me reducing the amount of books I was reading in the pre-Kindle era. The android would constantly remind me of an alert that had to be attended right away thus making the whole act of having to carry a book everywhere that much less of a priority. I cringe to think of the times I spent an entire year on a 400 odd page novel without even getting past page 50. Why? Too many distractions. Too many sources of quick validation.

Now, does this mean I am never going to buy a book ever? Of course not. Nothing can replace the look and feel of a really good book. So yes, I will continue to invest in books but only after they have passed the “Kindle test”. If I read it first on the Kindle and it happens to be one of those classics that are impossible not to own a hard copy of then yes – my feet will find their way to the nearest book store. But until that happens I look forward to completing more books each month in a consistent effort to get back to the sane habit of reading.

And for this I thank Amazon for not shipping the Fire to Denmark at the right time in my reading life.

..ShaKri..

"Nanna Tamma Shankara" : A summary

In July last year I came across a Kannada book called 'Nanna tamma Shankara' (My brother Shankara) written by Anant Nag, brother of the late film maker and actor Shankar Nag. I grew up on a strong diet of Shankar's 'Malgudi Days' and was witness to the Nag brothers in the 80s via their many Kannada and Hindi movies. It was only over the last few years that I have had the chance to properly process the impact of Shankar's untimely demise not only on Kannada cinema but also on Karnataka. Over this time period I have read a lot about Shankar's off screen life, his passionate associations with theater, his immersion in literature of Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Marquez among others and his highly ambitious visions for both Bengaluru and the rest of the state. In all of this his elder brother Anant Nag's thoughts on Shankar's life and demise somehow never seemed to surface. Given how low profile that family remains to this day 'Nanna tamma Shankara' seemed like a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the man behind the actor/filmmaker/celebrity.

Hence, here are some of the highlights of what I gathered from the book.

Bonds of brotherhood

I always knew how close the brothers were but it wasn't until I began reading the book that I was able to understand the true nature of the bond they shared. I also got a sense of the painful pinch of irreplaceable loss Anant Nag must be (is) going through with each passing day. My perspective on him as a talented performer amplified some more after recalling that he did some amazing comedies like 'Ganeshana maduve', 'Gauri Ganesha', 'HendatigelbeDi' and 'Yaarigu Helabedi' after Shankar's death. I cannot comprehend how this man was able to overcome such a horrific loss and yet manage to pull himself together for these performances. I came across a book called 'Off the record' written by veteran cinema journalist Ganesh Kasargod recently where he mentions that Anant Nag in fact had traveled to Hyderabad in grave depression after Shankar's death to end his own life. It was after long and hard conversations with his wife Gayatri that he eventually decided not to go through with it.

The book essentially begins with Shankar's birth in Honnavara, North Canara. Anant Nag, six years his senior, talks about the immense pampering Shankar received for being the youngest in the family. He also writes how his father would never miss an opportunity to smack him behind the head but always ensured Shankar was left unharmed. I also learnt that Anant Nag has a elder sister who, not surprisingly, also did her best to pamper little Shankar. He goes on to speak of how unafraid the boy was without forgetting to mention how extremely close he was to Anant. Being six years younger it was no surprise to learn that Shankar looked up to Anant as a father figure in many ways. Right up to the point where the two began formal education shuttling between Honnavara and Mumbai, due to their parents' circumstances, Shankar is shown to have been Anant's shadow in almost everything.

Life in Mumbai and entering cinema

It isn't until Shankar moves to Mumbai that he gets a chance to finally start doing things his own way. His love for stage takes him to the Marathi theater scene and thus begin his associations with the fine arts. Anant documents in good detail the way Shankar immersed himself into the various activities there and came in close contact with likes of Amol Palekar, Smita Patil, Girish Karnad among many others. It is also during this time that Shankar started acting in movies, his first feature being a Karnad directed venture called 'Ondanondu Kaaladalli' which went on to win various awards when it was released. The book then talks of the way the two brothers got together and started to think of starting their own production house. It was here that the movie 'Janmajanumada Anubandha' was released with Shankar donning the director's cap for the first time with Anant and himself in the lead roles. The film, Anant says, was a pretty bad disappointment probably because of the often used reincarnation theme in the plot. The book at this stage includes various conversations between the two about everything from personal life to political scenarios in the country. Anant also documents the successes of the later films they made like 'Minchina Ota' and 'Accident' that continued to register Shankar as a better film maker than an actor. In one particular sequence Anant writes about how the climax for the movie 'Accident' was changed at the last moment. A climax scene that shows the protagonist kill the minister in frustration had to be changed to a non violent one since, coincidentally, it was the same time that the then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi had been gunned down. The censors clearly raised objections about it because of which Shankar is said to have screamed at Anant and asked him to sit down when he got up to pay respect during the television forecast of her funeral. 'Shankar' he writes 'had taken his first political decision.' Anant also reflects, with slight melancholy, that for a long time Shankar wasn't accepted as a local Kannadiga due to his roots predominantly coming from the Marathi scene. But he also acknowledges the effort Shankar put into ensuring that his name became synonymous with Kannada.

Malgudi Days

This part of the book was perhaps the most interesting one for me. Having been a major aficionado of both the RK Narayan book and the television series, it was refreshing to learn the beginnings of it. Anant writes of his associations with the series producer TN Narsimhan who had expressed interest in bringing Malgudi to life. It was with much reluctance that Shankar is said to have accepted the project primarily due to his commitments to both cinema and the theater. In fact it was Anant Nag who recommended to Shankar that Agumbe in Karnataka was perhaps the ideal spot to recreate Malgudi. It was then that Shankar spent months reading and re-reading Malgudi Days to ensure that he did complete justice to the adaptation. Anant speaks of how, once the project got underway, their lives became all about Malgudi Days for a good three to four years. Every conversation they had at the time would invariably be about thinking of the best possible way to shoot the mini series by hiring the most suitable actors to play the role. Anant writes of how their extended circle of friends came forward to help Shankar launch himself on the national scene by volunteering to play many of the roles. This list included great names like Girish Karnad, Vishnuvardhan, various people from the Marathi and Hindi cinema and of course Shankar's constant friend-philosopher-guide Anant Nag. All of Agumbe had become a shooting set with literally every home in the area used at some point to cook food for the cast and crew members. In fact, I heard Kashinath (one of Shankar's closest friends) speak in an interview recently that as one of the assistant directors he would always keep a guy handy during the shoot of Malgudi Days to ensure the walls of homes Shankar had broken to get the camera angles just right would be constructed back. Shankar wanted no compromise to the vision of Malgudi he wanted to portray. An attribute becoming quite rare in the field of cinema today. Anant then documents the way in which the two brothers traveled to Canada to market their product and to get people overseas also invested in spreading the word. As I read these stories in the book I also looked up interviews of Arundati Nag (Shankar's wife) and others who spoke on similar lines of just how energetic Shankar was during the shoot of Malgudi Days. Despite the non stop stress of working with a limited budget Shankar went to extreme lengths in ensuring that RK Narayan's work did not get jeopardized on screen after the debacle called 'Guide' by Dev Anand many years before that. History, as we have seen, is proof that Malgudi Days did in fact find the best maker in Shankar Nag.

Visions of a better tomorrow

One of the prominent portions of the second half of the book documents Shankar's affection to new and exciting ideas. The way he observed things in foreign countries and then asked himself 'Why can't we have that in India?' In that long list of projects that Shankar wanted to implement are – the much talked about metro train service in Bengaluru (which is now a reality after more than two decades and more than two hundred crores), the Nandi hills ropeway project, house building scheme for the poor using German construction mechanism, looking at alternatives to health care for the middle and lower middle class and of course, the country club – a project that involved creating an exclusive place for people to come and relax. Today we look around and find such places on every street but for a man to see this vision for a sleepy city like Bengaluru back in the 80s is nothing less than a marvel. Apart from these projects Shankar's love for the theater is consistently documented as his 'Nagamandala' based on Karnad's play by the same name went on to run to packed houses for several weeks. It was to realize this dream of his that Arundati Nag, after his untimely demise, went to hell and back to build 'Ranga Shankara' in Bengaluru. After reading all this it occurred to me that what Karnataka really lost wasn't just a brilliant film maker with an eye for detail but also a much needed visionary who would have perhaps created magic with the technology now available. A 'what if' scenario that will haunt his admirers forever.

Untimely death and final statements

The last few pages of the book are full of anticipation. That agonizing wait for the inevitable to occur. It was during the shooting of a film Shankar had managed to get sponsorship for called 'Jokumara Swamy' that his car met with a gruesome accident in the wee hours of September 30, 1990. His wife Arundati and daughter Kavya were with him at the time. Anant writes of the unimaginable waves of shock that passed through him when a stranger called him up that fateful morning and delivered the awful news to him. When he broke the news to his mother she is reported to have said – 'He was supposed to die many years ago as a child in Mumbai when he almost got hit by the truck. The time he got until now since then was his gift. A second birth.'

Anant documents the support he and his family members got from the huge gathering of friends and innumerable fans of Shankar after that. The nonstop incoming of well wishers from the most unexpected corners of the globe. He writes that it was then that he truly realized just how beloved his brother Shankara had been. He ends the book with the lines...

'Shankara is unforgettable to me. Not just as a brother but as an individual – as a complete individual. It is impossible to document the millions of memories I have of him. I don't think it suffices to say 'I think of him a lot'. He is in my thoughts every day, every passing moment, tormenting me.'

Some photographs from the book

Anant Nag, Shankar Nag with their father

During the shooting of Malgudi Days in Agumbe

During the shooting of 'The Green Jacket' episode

During the shooting of 'The vendor of sweets' with brother Anant Nag

A 1000 splendid suns : a review

A thousand splendid moments!

It isn’t easy for a novel to make the reader’s conscience move. And not just in a way that the final few lines of the book moisten the eyes and cause a mild, albeit real, choke in the throat. It has to be a fabric of words that has gone beyond the need to convincingly narrate a tale and brought the fictional characters to life in such a way, that the reader feels – really feels – what they feel. When they are hurt, s/he feels the pain; when they rejoice, s/he joins in unconditionally. Their triumphs and failure are mirrored in the most natural of ways in the kind of life the reader is leading. On days when they are blue, the reader finds solace in that shade of a morose emotion too. On days when they struggle to keep their sanity alive, the reader applauds them, cajoles them and eggs them on with that unique channel of loud silences only a good book can establish between these two pristine entities. Such a book – dear reader, is Khalid Hosseini’s second offering after his first masterpiece ‘The Kite Runner’ – ‘A thousand splendid suns’ (ATSS).

When I bagged the book at Frankfurt airport last summer I was never in doubt of the kind of quality I could expect from Hosseini. Having read his debut novel and having blinked away the moisture in my eyes at the end of it whilst embroidering it with a genuine smile, I was sure that ATSS would certainly do the same – if not in the same hue – but in a way quite similar. And boy was I right! As I read the final few lines of ATSS yesterday, I couldn’t help blurt out ‘Goddamn man!’ and find myself feeling hurt, happy, content and frustrated – all at the same time. If a book can stir up these kinds of emotions, then I think the author has succeeded.

The story and summary of ATSS can be found anywhere on the net. Hence, going into those details again would be rather futile. What I do want to emphasize on, however, is how the book exposes the deeply scarred lives of women in Afghanistan. The paradigm shift that takes place in Kabul, from women holding important positions in government offices, to being beaten mercilessly with a broken antenna by a Kalashnikov wielding Talib official for straying out of the house without a male companion, is truly gut-wrenching. It is in these shocking contrasts, that ATSS finds success as both a story and a journey of ordinary humans caught in extraordinary circumstances.

We follow the trails of the harami child from Herat – Mariam – whose illegitimate father Jalil sacrifices her life for his ‘social status’. We are led into the wild and nauseating world of a quintessential male chauvinist of a demon called Rashid – who despite being almost thrice as old as Mariam, marries her and gifts her a lifetime of physical and mental abuse. We are hand held into the warmth of young Laila and Tariq’s world of friendship and love. A blossoming couple who, despite being the future of Afghanistan, become symbols of man made cruelty and inhumane bestiality. We watch, speechless, as Laila’s and Mariam’s paths cross in the most unexpected of ways, as they both end up taking a journey from being spiteful and angry women put together by fate, to becoming soul mates to each other when confronted by a common, rather lethal, adversary. Every kick, slap, shove and smack they receive, feels like a blow on the reader who absorbs their grief with the helplessness of Laila’s daughter Aziza and the despair of Mariam’s vacant eyes. It is in these excruciatingly gory episodes of human suffering it is that we are witness to human glory as well. Whilst we are the silent audience of a once graceful and gorgeous Afghanistan turn into a sorcerer’s den at the hands of Koran thumping arrogant Mullahs, we are rudely introduced to a life most of us know probably nothing about. ATSS is a story that highlights that one fundamental fact that human cruelty has no limits. But then – human love too has no borders. If humans can seem unconquerable with their vile ways, there exist humane pockets too who are able to live a life of cowards, but die like heroes. True and valid heroes.

In Hosseini’s ATSS, every woman suffers at the hands of an ignorant and violent man. As Nana, Mariam’s bitter and abandoned mother tells her…

“Learn this now, and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

While ‘The Kite Runner’ explored the depths of honest friendship and the true value of it in a war torn nation, ATSS celebrates the wonder that is being a woman in the darkest depths of tragedy. I found myself feeling disgusted on several occasions for being a man as I was shown the ugliness that hides behind the veils of fake morality and miscued ethical compasses we men,we arrogant self appointed masters of all that is holy and decent, carry around as our guiding lights. In a world where a large section of the educated society sits oblivious to the grief of those who are a hundred times less fortunate than themselves, ATSS comes to us as a stinging slap in the face. And it is in such moments – such splendid moments – that I fell in love with the book. Each time I got smacked, the more I wanted to read that sentence again. Nothing like an ounce of truth in a world hell bent on giving us fiction, isn't it?

The message ATSS delivers is timeless. If I had to summarize it, it would be that any land that does not respect women has no future, no hope and deserves no mercy. A message that gets more relevant with each passing day. A message, as I bask in the masterpiece that ATSS is, I hope will be heralded to millions of splendid readers.

"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls. "

Thank you, Mr. Hosseini. I share your pain and I sincerely applaud your effort in sharing it with folks like me. ATSS now officially is in my all time favorites!

PS: A few more quotes from the book I thought worth plugging in here.

"And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last… This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings."

"And the past held only this wisdom; that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion."

"She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed. "

"Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us."

"She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below."

"Mariam always held her breath as she watched him go. She held her breath and, in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second that she didn't breathe God would grant her another day with Jalil."

"Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone."

More book reviews at : http://shakreads.blogspot.com/

A book about 'Sharam'

The controversy surrounding the reign and relationship of late Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his Commander-In-Chief at the time, Zia-Ul Haq has captured the imagination of the world for a long long time. I had heard vague stories about this conflict as a boy but had never really understood what had ensued before and after the successful coup that Zia undertook, overthrowing Bhutto and becoming the President of Pakistan himself. This was one of the primary points of attraction that led me to read Salman Rushdie’s book, aptly titled, ‘Shame’.

Released in 1983, ‘Shame’ revolves around the lives of similar characters with very identical stories with a good amount of ‘RR’ – Rusdhie Realism – thrown in. The book opens with the life of Omar Khayyam, a boy borne to three sisters who live in a fortress like mansion in Nishapur (interestingly the same place the actual poet Umar Khayyam was born) somewhere on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The sisters have locked themselves away from the world and use a contraption known as ‘The Dumb Waiter’ to correspond with the planet outside for their daily needs – rice, vegetables et al. Growing up in a sequestered wall-fort like this one, Omar is fed with the strong sense of void and a bizarre sense of issues (including vertigo and lack of self confidence) by the 3 sisters – Chunni, Munni and Bunny – out of which no one knows who the real mother is. Despite the boundaries that confine this Mowgli of a fellow, he continues feeding himself all the literature, arts and science he can find in books lying around the dusty closets. He masters several languages and becomes a self-taught scholar but he knows, he just knows, that he will become an anthill if he continues to stay with his mothers. With great effort he finally retaliates and tells them he needs to get out, much to their shock and surprise.

"Horrified maternal gasps. Six hands fly to three heads and take up hear-no-see-no-speak-no-evil positions."

They reluctantly let him go out and attend school from where he moves on to pursue medicine and becomes an immunologist. It is when he reaches Karachi, that he befriends the playboy millionaire Iskander Harappa (Isky – Bhutto) who is married to Rani Humayun. Also in this mix is General ‘Old Razor Guts’ – Raja Hyder (Zia) is an army hero who is married to Bilquis Kemal. After a shocking stillbirth (where the baby is strangulated by the umbilical cord), Bilquis bears two daughters – Sufia Zinobia Hyder (also called ‘Shame’) and Naveed Hyder (also called ‘Good News’)

The theme of shame continues as Sufia suffers a brain fever as a child and is clinically labeled as mentally challenged. She, as it turns out, thus becomes the receiving pot of all the shamefulness and shamelessness that the family has to offer, absorbing all of it within her until that sleeping subconscious of Sufia becomes an uncontrollable beast that rips off heads of turkeys and attacks Naveed’s groom on her wedding day. To keep a check on her behavior, Raza takes Omar’s help who ends up falling in love with this woman with a child’s brain.

Elsewhere, an awakening is taking place. On his 40th birthday Isky decides to put past him the flamboyancy of his money throwing years and follows his call for the nation. He forms the ‘Popular Front’ (as in PPP) and is idolized by his daughter Arjumound Harappa (also called ‘Virgin Ironpants’ given her obstinate will to reject men forever).

The story then follows a similar pattern based on actual events. Isky becomes the Prime Minister of the nation and does everything possible to ensure that the diplomats, the ambassadors, the other attaches are kept under his strong thumb. An approach some see as being down right dictatorial. It is in such headiness that Isky promotes Raza as the CIC despite the fact that Raza has several seniors above him. Given Raza’s non-political demeanor, Isky’s calculation is that he will have nothing to worry about. And this is where, as we have seen, Isky goes horribly wrong. Plagued with the fathering of ‘Shame’ in his own house, Raza starts getting annoyed at the way Isky goes about handling the system. Isky’s rude obnoxious attitude and a mouth that can spew out several foul creatures at once soon starts getting on Raza’s army honed nerves. It is then, that he decides to impose Martial Law in the country by leading a coup against Isky. Isky is arrested on the charges of murdering his brother’s son (Little Mir) and is thrown into the most hideous prison cells in the world and tortured in ways unimaginable. After 2 years of this, Isky is sentenced to death by hanging although as it turns out, Rani Humayun and Arjumound do not see rope marks on his neck when they examine the body. It is revealed that one of the army generals had shot Isky in the heart thanks to Isky’s belligerent and never-say-die mind-set. A move that then heralds the beginning of a Pakistan that is headed by the base mantra of faith as Sufia prepares to finally be taken over by the Beast completely.

‘Shame’ documents a lot of facts with Rushdie’s usual tonic of magic realism. Everything from Sufia’s drastic transformation from being the blushing child-in-a-woman to the ghastly beast with yellow fire in the eyes is portrayed with chilling descriptions. At one point I actually thought of Sufia herself as being a representation of the country. Born normal – attacked by an infliction – left with an adult body but an immature brain – now looked at with suspicion and fear. A beast within a child’s soul. It was in this metaphorical tribute that I found ‘Shame’ most successful at.

What this also did, for my own sake of historical know-how, is forced me to read up whatever there is to know about the Bhutt0-Zia reign. It was interesting to see the palpating synergy Bhutto had in his speeches (videos on YouTube) and the calm composed almost regressive approach that Zia shows in footage. I sometimes found myself wondering, what indeed would have happened had Bhutto not promoted Zia up the order? Would Pakistan become a very different country from what it is now? Or was Bhutto’s approach to things so predictably askew that his downfall was only a matter of time to which Zia became a reason? I guess we will never know.

‘Shame’ is a must read for those who want to know about that critical phase which proved to be the maker/breaker of the country’s future.

..ShaKri..

'Moor' than required?

True. I have read quite a bit of Rushdie. In fact from everything he has written I have probably read more than 50% of it. And yes. I have immensely enjoyed the whimsical liberties he takes with his audience – be it in prose or in the stitching together of a scene that – and this has to be said: sometimes turns out less surprising than what you’d have probably expected from him. True: I know I am not reading a spy novel, but still. A dash of tangy twist never hurt anyone, Sir. Also true: Rushdie isn’t the greatest when it comes to unexpected turns like some of the other authors (well, the classics being O Henry and the like) I have come across. But if ever there was an author who could pen down words you’d have never heard of – Rushdie is your man. If not for nothing else, I sincerely urge you to pick up a Rushdie just for the sheer headiness with which he makes one entire paragraph get to print without using a single full stop. A habit I find myself getting used to these days. A dangerous habit, I must confess.

With that little bit about SR, we come to his work ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. This book was originally released in ’95 and took me over a decade to get around to reading it because well, it just did. One of the reasons I am currently catching up with the backlog of Rushdie’s work may have been a result of the exuberant egging on that ‘The Enchantress of Florence’ gave me with its unique combination of simple to understand Moguls and impossible to remember Italiano references!. Since then, I have not only re-read ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ but also I am currently reading his take on Pak and its historical journey post-Independence - ‘Shame’, which I must admit is good reading. You can expect a review on that shortly too. I also intend to re-read ‘Midnight’s Children’ since well, I need the rush of high voltage vocabulary from the mouth of Sinai once more!

‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’ is segmented into 4 parts – ‘A house divided’, ‘Malabar Masala’, ‘Bombay Central’ and, like having a song with the title track in a music album, ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. The plot follows the family line of one Moraes Zogoiby also known as ‘Moor’. He is the fourth and final child of Abraham Zogoiby and Aurora da Gama, whose roots are seeded in the Christian/Jew existent region of good old coconut oiled fish-curry laced Cochin in God’s own country. They are basically a spicy family – literally, since they deal with all sorts of condiments. From cardamom to clove. From whole pepper to cumin. They’ve got it all. And the spice that runs in their blood – O brother. One look at every woman in their family and you will know who runs the ship! Right from white haired Epifania (Moor’s Gread Grand Mummy!), through to her daughter Isabella Souza and then to her tough nut of a daughter Aurora da Gama. Each of these women contain a specific din of confidence and power that, it sometimes seems, is embedded by their hereditary allegiance to all the spices!

Moor is a man with a bizarre disability – he is aging twice as fast as he should. Meaning, if he is 5 years old, his body resembles that of a 10 year old boy. So by the time he is 20, he looks like he is 40…and so on. Or as SR puts it his age is ‘2x’ – you get the point. Needless to say this leads to several interesting subplots with his anatomy and the fact that at some point he looks as old as his own mother. The base for the title comes from the tale of Boabdil (I had to look this fellow up after reading this book), who was apparently the last king of Granada. Aurora, Moor’s mother, is a gifted painter and a very serious influence in the way Moor grows up in a house with 3 elder sisters – Ini, Meeni, Myna…well, of course, and then Moor. Each of the girls meet a fate that, to put it blandly, isn’t the most ideal. Each one of them is a victim of the choices they make, much like the rest of us I suppose.

The book, through its 4 major chapters, traces the origins of the Zogoibys right from the shores of Cochin all the way to the hedonistic cocaine hub called Bombay (this is a story set in the 60s – 80s Bombay so the word ‘Mumbai’ hadn’t quite stuck yet) and then ends in a quiet little pocket of Spain called Benengeli, where Moor eventually meets his fate and takes stock of his life thus far. Moor’s journey is peppered (pun intended!) with some very strong female influences – his mother Aurora, his sisters, his first love and sex partner (his tutor Dilly Hormuz), and the maniacal crazed she ‘thing’ called Uma who seeds, successfully, the fruit of mistrust in Moor which essentially tears the family apart. Hmm…where have I heard that before? As I said, if Rushdie’s books were stripped off of all the verbal gloss, you’d find a pretty straight forward tale almost every time. That’s the one thing I’ve always felt was Rushdie’s most painful Achilles Heel.

The one thing I noticed right away about Moor’s narrator-like approach to the tale was how similar it was to ‘Midnight’s Children’ where Saleem Sinai does the same by recalling his grandparents from Kashmir and then on towards himself. But unlike Saleem’s tale, there is no major progressive connection to the nation’s story in ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’. Rushdie is famous for this ‘magic realism’ approach which very easily blends magical contexts into a realistic scenario. Even here, that takes place almost in every page. As the reader follows the roots of Moor and how he came about to exist, we start noticing patterns of the divine, the supernatural, the inexplicable and the prophetic, all stitched into the same fabric that Moor’s reality is shown as being set against. What with his fast slipping age-disability factor (actually I never saw that aspect as a disability at all!) and the constant feminine shadows under whom Moor continues to discover his past, present and future, SR very daftly combines the themes of an India still yawning from its Independence and the dizziness with which Bombay was finally getting the unique definition we all are so proud of today. Right from its ‘Ganapati bappa maurya’ to its reverence to Bollywood with strong inclusions of Nargis (yes! From Mother India!) and her, the then beau, Dutt Sr., SR captures it all in his unique flair.

Alright: things I didn’t find too exciting – the routine deaths. There came a time when I wasn’t sure if I was reading Rushdie or G.D.Roberts’ ‘Shantaram’! What with the, almost, intense underlining of the mafia world in Bombay and its role in Moor’s life, I somehow felt at one point that the story was definitely inspired by a lot of Bollywood masala. Also, the generous injection of sex that always seems to find its way in Rushdie’s books (well maybe with the exception of ‘Haroun…’, I think…) and leaves you feeling a tad surprised at its occurance. Moor, despite his age related disability and a seriously deformed hand (of course which he uses to knock down tough blokes in rings once, and then makes a career of it) seems to be getting regular bedroom action with what one can only imagine are ‘too easy’ girls! Somewhere there, right there, I felt a tad shortchanged with Moor’s characterization given its shockingly ironic reality.

Ah well: ‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’, despite everything else, still makes for complex reading just like any other SR book. If you are looking for an appetite that needs catering in the form of Herculean metaphorical references dished out with a mélange of word soups and whimsically placed scenes, then this book is a good one. Some of his sentences, seriously, just go on and on! For a humble and ‘A-B-A-C’ reader like me it becomes a tad too hard to grasp what it was I just read. But then, as I always say, with SR, the struggle is the glory.

So here is to another struggle and another glory. A little less ‘Bollywood action’ next time, Sir? Maybe, just maybe, a few shorter sentences? And something genuinely subtle and thought provoking, albeit, with your usual dash of ‘magic realism’? Yes? Please? Pretty please? OK then. Thanks.

..ShaKri..

Click here to read more of my book reviews!

Book review blog

Dear reader,

I began a blog a few years ago to document my reflections of the books (mostly novels) I read each year. Somehow with time that kind of took a backseat. After posting a book review for 'The enchantress of Florence' recently, I decided to revive that blog too. Given the fact that a lot of you guys are readers too, I thought it would be interesting to maybe share thoughts about some of the common stuff we might have read? Just a way to keep writing, I suppose. :)

So feel free to check it out and let me know your thoughts about the same.

http://shakreads.blogspot.com/

Cheers,

SK

'A Raw Score' - another milestone

I self published my first book - what seems like an embaressingly amateur attempt at writing a book now - 'Existing in pieces' in December 2006. After that life kind of caught on but the itch to write something a little more cohesive and hopefully more interesting was still there. So, after much procrastination I now have my second release - 'A Raw Score'. Just for the record, the title was suggested by my fiancee Jaya. So a big thank you to her!

'A Raw Score' is a book that has come a long way since its inception. In fact it was 'Untitled' for almost a year before Jaya suggested the title a couple of months ago. The theme I always wanted to write about was the subtle nature in which the common man in India goes about the daily humdrum of an ordinary life. Despite the stereotypical assumptions about a setting like this I was convinced that there still existed possibilities to find some exciting and interesting episodes. Spots of incidents that would bring to light the celebrated heroes, the unknown perverts, the hopeless romantics, the hopeful patriots, the helplessly superstitious and of course, the unsung martyrs.

To bring this search of mine to reality, I decided to focus on some of the major issues that one might find in India - corruption, religion, politics, poverty, illiteracy, sexual abuse, communal disharmony, the 'urban' middle class and its many related issues among other things. These seemed like fragments that could possibly be stitched together to make one cohesive pattern that might give the reader a better insight into the lives of working class Indians who ordinarily are thought of as ... well just that, ordinary. Hence, 'A Raw Score' is another ambitious attempt to capture some of those bizarre, whacky and unusual instances of working class Indians in their many complex emotional roller coaster rides.

The artwork for the book was done by a dear friend and ex-colleague Helen Gil. Given below is a snapshot of the cover and also the link where a few preview pages of the book are available for your viewing.

Thank you.

..ShaKri..

Click here to view a preview/buy 'A Raw Score'

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