Leave of Absence..

This blog will be silent for a few weeks now. I'm a long-awaited yet unexpected trip to India. I'm super excited!! I hope to post something from there; if not, there will certainly be a lot to say once I am back.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!!
See you next year!

Orbis Terrarum-Book 9-A Prisoner of Birth

Jeffrey Archer has been an all-time favorite author of mine. I still remember the first time I picked up a book by him, Kane and Abel, and read through the night, non-stop! I consider it a classic. So when I heard of Archer's new book, A Prisoner of Birth, I read it as part of the Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge.

A Prisoner of Birth is the story of Danny Cartwright, a simple, lower-middleclass young man who has dreams no grander than of marrying his childhood sweetheart and running a motor-repair garage. However, events that unfold over a single night change everything and Danny is accused of murder, tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Danny's fiancee and his lawyer are among the very few who believe in his innocence but they are unable to do anything for him.

In prison, Danny befriends his cell-mates, one of whom is a Scottish aristocrat, Sir Nicholas Moncrief, who sees promise in Danny and teaches him to read and write and familiarises him with the ways of the wealthy. Coincidentally, Danny and Sir Nicholas (Nick) have an uncanny resemblance to each other and thus, when Nick dies, with the help of his other cell-mate, Al, Danny impersonates Nick and is released from prison soon after. Everyone thinks that Danny is the one who died.

Once out of prison, Danny takes over Nick's family's estate etc. and simultaneously finds ways to bring to justice the four socially prominent men who framed him for the murder that he was convicted for.

It is a narrative that's classic Jeffrey Archer. The good old 'good ultimately triumphing over evil' story that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy.

With this book, I hereby finish the Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge under which I read 9 books in 9 months - from April'08 to Dec'08, by 9 authors from 9 different countries. Here is the list of all the books read by me as part of this project.

1) The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery - France
2) Talkative Man - R K Narayan - India
3) The Map of Love - Ahdaf Souief - Egypt
4) No Longer at Ease - Chinua Achebe - Nigeria
5) Brick Lane - Monica Ali - Bangladesh
6) Funny Boy - Shyam Selvadurai - Sri Lanka
7) The Runoff - Mark Coggins - USA
8) A Case of Exploding Mangoes - Mohammed Hanif - Pakistan
9) A Prisoner of Birth - Jeffrey Archer - UK

Orbis Terrarum-Book 8- A Case of Exploding Mangoes

My eighth book for the Orbis Terrarum reading challenge was from Pakistan, A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. It is a semi-fictional tale about the events leading to the assassination of Pakistani President Zia ul Haq.

Once again I'm going to take a short-cut here and point you to a wonderful review by Jai Arjun Singh. Here it is: Jabberwock/Case of Exploding Mangoes

Orbis Terrarum-Book 7-The Runoff

A few months ago, I read about a particular area of San Francisco that we'd never been to but sounded very interesting. It is called 24th Street. We decided to visit the place one weekend. Why am I mentioning this in a post about the book challenge? Because 24th Street is where I discovered this wonderful little bookstore called the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore. It has new and used mystery books by various authors from all over the world. I found an autographed copy of "The Runoff" by Mark Coggins, a San Francisco native. I grabbed it and that's how it became Book No. 7 for my Orbis Terrarum reading challenge.

'The Runoff' is a mystery involving rigged elections, powerful Chinese-American San Francisco politicians and murders, all told in a very irreverent, witty and gripping first person narrative by detective August Riordan. The only problem in writing a review of the book is that it's been months since I read the book and the brain cells are kind of sluggish with respect to the details. Well, I can tell you that it was a thoroughly enjoyable novel, the protagonist somehow managing to elicit sympathy for his misfortunes as well as admiration for his guts!

So I'll do the next best thing. Here's a link to the book/author. (Interestingly, it also has a link to the Google map showing all the spots mentioned in the novel). Check it out. The Runoff

Good old Ragi Malt!

Of the five senses that a human being is said to have, most of us consider sight, hearing and speech the most valuable. We wonder how we would get by if we were to lose one or all of them (ok, at least I do wonder, at times, when I'm feeling morbid). And then I remember the poor cousins, touch and smell. How many of us ever think what it would be like to have these two senses taken from us? (No, I don't know anyone who has lost these senses nor is this a post about 'feeling' disabilities.) I think the sense of smell is particularly important because I relate a lot of smells to memories. Even after years, I remember the smell of brand new school textbooks, of crisp new uniforms fresh from the tailor....and so many more.

One of my friends recently moved away and as they were taking only select items of the household to their new home, she gave away a lot of things to friends and neighbors. Since I was both, I too got my share of kitchen utensils, food items, books, toys etc. In one of the jars was a mysterious pinkish powder. Since my friend was in a hurry to finish packing she somehow forgot to mention its name. Curious, I opened the lid and took a sniff.....And two words floated into my head like a long-forgotten scrap of memory - Ragi Malt!

I was about seven years old. It was my very first visit to my paternal grandmother's house. We lived in a far-off state and so I had never been able to visit that side of my family, till now. Anyway, so here I was with my dad in a new city where, to my enormous surprise, my cousins didn't speak Hindi!

My aunts must have somehow sensed my discomfort that first day. After I had had my bath etc. they gently led me to an inner room right next to the kitchen. In one corner was an elaborate shrine with little idols and framed pictures of a myriad Gods, each one of them adorned with garlands of jasmine flowers. So this was the family shrine or temple. But that was not why they had brought me there. This room was not just a temple, it was also kind of a store-room or pantry.

My elder aunt pointed higher up the walls. Up there, about 2-3 feet below the ceiling was a wooden ledge running along two or three walls of the room. And on this ledge were cans and tins of all kinds of health drinks; Horlicks, Maltova, Bournvita, Viva, Boost and more... "Choose any of these for your drink, whichever you like", said my aunt. I was flabbergasted! I had never before seen such an array of drink powders except maybe in a shop! But even in this state of confusion, I caught an unfamiliar name - Ragi Malt. I guess my tendency to want to try new and different things was present from an early age, because I declared to my aunts that I wanted to have Ragi Malt! That I had no idea whatsoever what it tasted like didn't bother me much.

And was I glad I chose it!! The taste was so divine. Nothing like the other chocolaty drinks I had had before. This was.....different. After that I must have had Ragi Malt many more times whenever I visited Madras but somehow this first taste has stayed with me. I can't describe the taste even now because I don't think there is another taste like it.

So as the aroma of the mystery pink powder wafted into my nostrils, it was like numerous bells went off in my brain, waking up a lot of tiny voices chanting, "Ragi Malt, Ragi Malt..."

And I give thanks to my sense of smell!

Mumbaihelps

Came across this website/blog today. I think it's wonderful. I'm posting it here to spread the word.

http://www.mumbaihelps.blogspot.com/

And from this one, I got one more...kbpm Very interesting..

Read...

What does one say?

So much has happened in the last one week. Mumbai was attacked by terrorists. We sat glued to our televisions feeling a lot of things...shock, fear, humiliation, anger, disgust, disbelief, grief, faith, prayers.... I wanted to voice all of them but could not. What could I say that was not already being said? So instead of writing, I read and read.....lots of news articles and even more blogs. People pouring out from the depths of their hearts - their anguish at the horrible deaths of innocents, their praise and adulation for the rescuers, their utter contempt for the politicians.

I felt as if I had my finger on the pulse of the country as I read these numerous write-ups. Usha, Kavi, Ashok, Suranga, we are like this only, Lekhni, Vivek, One True Thing, HiphopGmom, Ulaar, Juxtaposition, Snippets and so many many more expressed their feelings and mirrored those of millions of others. It was heartening to see that it was no longer the "Chalta Hai" attitude and that people cared.

My own two cents on the issue is not so much about the attack itself - which are the same as everyone else's, that it was a terrible terrible thing to happen - but about the media circus accompanying it. We didn't get to see a whole lot of Indian TV channels, just CNN for most part. But we went to the Indian Grocery store and saw Sahara Samay or some other Hindi TV Channel in which they were showing the ongoing happenings at the Taj hotel. I stared at the screen in disbelief and horror at first, but in a couple of minutes the news anchor's voice became so grating to my ears that I wanted to scream. He was mouthing such ridiculous 'filmi' lines like, "Hotel ko chaaron taraf se gher liya gaya hai", "Aatankvadiyon ke chhakke chudane ke liye...", "bachke nikalna namumkin hai..." and more such nonsense. The anchor also kept on repeating his "punch" lines 3 times in a row like in a Hindi TV serial. It was irritating and annoying to say the least - was he reporting on an unfolding tragedy or acting out a part in a Bollywood blockbuster?

And then there were the numerous "correspondents" - boys and girls, really - who seemed to have been dispatched hurriedly to the site just to have their TV channels' presence in the area. How many of those had anything really new or relevant to "report"? Special mention must be made of this frantic young man who actually ran this way and that pointing in various directions, apparently trying to tell us something about shots/terrorists/blasts, but making absolutely no sense with his high-pitched, panic-stricken babble.

I know that the gaffes that the media and media persons committed are far less serious than the terrorists and the politicians and that I've chosen the (probably) least guilty party to bash. But I was upset about the way they sensationalised the whole incident.

And, after all, no amount of words could ever convey how I feel about the actual perpetrators of this crime.

However, another thing that filled me with sadness was that some people I know gave in to angry, retaliatory statements against a particular community. That educated, 'modern' and otherwise sensible individuals could be filled with so much rage against a whole group of people due to the evil deeds of a few of them was really depressing.

Let's hope that not only do we not forget the dead, the injured, the survivors but also remember to use our heads and hearts so as to not spread the poison of hate.

Ishwar Allah tere naam, sabko sanmati de Bhagwan