Book review

Couple of weeks ago, I re-read Unaccustomed earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. In particular Hema and Kaushik which is a favorite of mine. I cant imagine meeting anyone who wasnt disappointed with the ending. The direction  it took was totally unnecessary. Knowing what to expect, the second time around wasnt disappointing.

But I was surprised at how plain Jhumpa's writing was. Inspite of having read all 3 of her books, I have no memory of her writing style and only associate her work with depth. But the depth comes from how intensely she portrays people's emotions. So within first few pages, I was back into her world completely engrossed. 

What initially attracted me to the story was the whole teenage crush turning into an adult love much later in life that too in a much different form. When I went online in search of reviews, the only one I could find discussed about the usual immigrant blues which can be applied for any of her books. 

Which brings me to the question, how come there are as many movie review sites but not so many book review sites? By review, I mean when you take movie reviews, you can find all kinds - the intellectual, pseud, run of the mill, totally random - every kind.

But for a book, there are hardly two reviews that I can dig out - one of them turns out to be some course notes. The other one discussing it in some vague literary terms. No sites discuss the ones I want to discuss, the way I would discuss it with my friends. The way the ones without literature/history degrees would discuss.

Maximum city by Suketu Mehta

For someone who within in a span of couple of years had met Ajay lal(the cop who solved the bombay blasts'93), bit of bollywood, a cross-dressing dancer, RSS local chief, Chota Shakeel, mumbai bar dancer so on and had detailed discussions with them, Suketu Mehta writes very little in terms of his own inferences or view points. But in the few instances he does, he sounds so juvenile against the mammoth of experiences he has just had, I was glad of all the other times he didnt.

Maximum city is pretty much a transcription(obviously selective) of his interactions with several personalities of Mumbai. Quite truthful, it is almost as if you meet these people. It isnt a well written book but is rich with details that is enough to keep you engrossed. He doesnt give you his conclusions. So you still have the wee bit of uneasiness about Ajay's relatively affluent life style on a government Salary. At the same time, you know Ajay is an efficient cop. It is upto the reader to draw their conclusions or not even draw one.

At the beginning of the book,when Suketu, an NRI talks of this experience as an exercise in finding his roots, I yelled BS in my head. I have always found this roots business quite pretentitious unless one is an Alex Hailey. In any case, this is hardly Suketu's roots. It is more of sure money making exercise. Nothing wrong in it if only he had been candid enough.

But he has done work that is worth the money. While trying to befriend an RSS small unit chief, they ask him along for nature's call. It is also a way for them to check out if he is truly a hindu. Suketu is one but that just describes how fanatical these people are and how close he has gone to the edge.

He was also a close confidante of Vidhu Vinod Chopra for those couple of years. The highlight of that episode was when Vidhu, sitting in Amitabh's house after a short interaction with Big B himself asks Suketu, "Do you think he wears a wig?". That was the same question Dad had asked me few years ago after watching Kaun Banega Crorepathi. Must be a men thing, atleast my Dad has enough hair and going by his family genetics will always have, still he observed the wig. I think Amitabh wears a wig except he doesnt wear the usual goundamani or the tamil actor's generic one. He goes in detail describing the nexus between the underworld and bollywood, the underworld in lot more detail, tracks in particular few people, quite a fascinating read.

I found the whole ending with the Jain Merchant renouncing the world, too cliched.

The parts he explored in the Mumbai are present everywhere from New york to even our own Madras except there is very little chance of us, the middle classy, suburbian people realizing it. Every city has a book like this.

Short story found

I had come across this story sometime in 2005 and lost the link. I accidentally found it again this weekend. A story named "En peyar chitra" that could be described almost as a short story version of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" set in a tamil lower middle class milieu.

I did read the Tamil version after reading the English one yet the tamil one remains my favorite. Now, how many times have we been able to say so about any book or a movie which has had an earlier work as an influence? May be it was because the mileu was familiar, may be the author was able to really bring in the emotional differences better or may be he was able to do so because it was a shorter version. Whatever, if you can read tamil, please do read it and LET me know what you think of it.

I also have to admit here that in spite of reading these two stories and several other websites, I still don't have a good gasp of what autism is. I have met couple of kids(one a colleague and another occasional passer by), both the kids 5 year of age. May be both these kids were in the far end of spectrum of autism, I am not sure, but I couldn't really spot anything abnormal in these kid's behavior.

This is from someone who has read a wee bit about it. There are people who are not even aware of it. When my friend's niece was diagnosed with autism, another friend told me that this was the first time he had even heard of the term.

I am not sure but may be by knowing about it better, we might be able to help the parents involved and kids when we bump into them.

Writer Sujatha

I haven't read much in Tamil, but Sujatha and Kalki are the only two authors I cherish in Tamil, whose books would go into my dream library, so that I can revisit them from time to time.

He was only 72. that doesn't look too old for me. Consider this, he wrote dialogues for a teenage movie like Boys just a few years ago, surely, several more years of writing was left in him.

To me, his death looks like a mistake to be corrected.
*******

Why is every one talking about his Cinema works? His Pen work for the paper medium even from the very few I have read was so much superior to the celluloid ones. I don't know if they were Master literary pieces(from language point of view) but they were interesting slices from real life. Here is from the few I have read...

Srirangathu Devathaigal
Srirangathu devathaigal or an adolescent Swami's account. Srirangam of 50's didn't seem very different from the small town I lived in the late 80's and early 90's. I bet quite a few people have such stories to tell. If only they could do it as well as Sujatha did..

Katrathum Petrathum
- Sujatha's blog in the print media much before blogs came into Vogue. He was a man of varied interests & the series reflected that. The only reason I subscribed to Vikatan on the web and eagerly waited for the magazine every thursday. The series stopped abruptly couple of months ago. At that time, I remember wondering about his health, the inevitable..sigh.

Vanathu pochi vettai
Completely written from the Protoganist view. I mean what she saw was what we saw. We had only as much information to evaluate or peek into characters as she could. And she was not somebody who was very intuitive about life & its vagaries.

As somebody with not much aspirations in life, she would tell you how she had no qualms in carrying on upper middle class regular housewife activities - "Verumane nail polish kondu, shopping poi varavathil, enaku ondrum Pirachanai ellai. Those descriptions, the dialogues - you know with slight wit, slight irreverence yet simple- did it for me. I know I don't do even a wee bit of justice to his writing.

Arjun, on the other hand, was the husband whose motto was to get 36 lakhs before he was 36. A financial wizard without much of moral scruples, he manages the 36 lakhs by 28. In the preface of the book, Sujatha mentions quite a lot of people wrote in saying Arjun disturbed them a lot. We never get to see what drove to do the things he did. Probably Sujspan met someone like Arjun(there are quite a few of them, right?) and decided to see what an innocent soul like the heroine would do in his world. Marital treachery is not something I can take, so I left the book @ home in India.

I must have read quite a few others. Pookkutty( a children's book in tamil - probably a rarity), a Q & A series on science/technology in Junior Vikatan(the magazine was taboo in my house, still is!) and even a story about a man working undercover for RAW. Thank god, finally, a spy from RAW! I kept reading about CIA and KGB in english fiction and couldn't help wonder why I never read about my country's equivalent to them. I mean, in reality RAW might/might not be doing anything as adventurous as CIA but who cares.

That's another thing about Sujatha, the various genres he covered. Sci fi, relationships, technology, crime, religion...

En eniya eyinthra - a futuristic sci-fi made into a T.V serial. The T.V serial was well made. I never got to read the book. If I had read the book, I probably wouldn't enjoyed the T.V series. You know, the cardinal rule, Books on celluloid conversion lose 75% of their original essence. Sujatha himself mentions in his writings that seeing his books being destroyed in films was the reason he took to screenplay.

But if you have enjoyed his Film work, may be a peek into writersujatha would be good. He won't scary with jumbo word works for sure. May be I should take this opportunity to read more of his work too.


Ps: That website is a good one. Even if you are not able to download after the paying the money, you can send an email and they will send the pdf version. The only problem is, it offers very little of his works.