Shantaram!

Shantaram! If I were to summarize the book in one word, it would be spectacular or rather unbelievable! There wouldn't be or rather shouldn't be many who like to read and still haven't heard of this masterpiece! It is a scintillating account, part-fact part-fiction of the life of the author Gregory David Roberts and his life in Mumbai, the then Bombay (1980s).

From the moment, the narrator as I would prefer to call him, lands in Bombay to the last page, he brings to life every nook and corner of the city, lifting the curtain that exists between us and the people we see on the street. I couldn't help but notice, how he gives life to the hundreds of people we see on the street, but never bother to think that even they could have a story to tell. He tells the stories of these unknown faces, and with what elan! But this book remains the narrator's story, how he falls in love with everything about the city - the maddening crowd, the taxis, the slums, the mafia, the women. But more importantly how he reclaims himself from his past.

Very few books claim to be thriller and philosophy at the same time, it is one of them. The book takes you to the dark lanes of Bombay, you never knew existed. It talks about everything you already know about Bombay - the mafia, the bollywood, the slums, the muggy weather, the Hajji Ali, the Fort area and above all Leopold's. But then it never stops there. All these come alive and play out their role in the narrative and its a piece of art how they intertwine with each other to give Bombay the flavor it has. Alas, the Thackareys perhaps would never be able to understand what Bombay stands for, not just to the marathi manoos, but to the rest of India as well.

The characters are neatly drawn with most of them having a mysterious streak about them. From the sharp, quick witted Karla to the enigma of mafia don Khader, to the youthful Abdullah, to the sarcastic Didier. The biggest exception is the affable taxi driver and the best friend of the narrator, Prabhaker. It is his simplicity and innocent intelligence that that takes you by the arm and makes you turn page by page. Another of my favorite character was Karla, of course. Most of her lines can easily pass as punchlines and philosophies dipped in sarcasm and brutal honesty. And when she says that being listened to is one the best and dangerous thing in world, I couldn't agree more!

But in the end, the book is about love. Love in all its shapes and forms, for a friend, for a beloved, for a father, for a brother. Unrequited love and the longing, the pain and suffering that it brings. Its about realization of oneself. Its about learning to live on one's conditions and to love unconditionally. If this is what is spirituality, then indeed Shantaram opens the gates to it. The words remain with you long after you have closed the book. Many times in fact you would close the book yourself to grasp what Didier says, what Karla mumbles or what Shantaram realizes throughout the course of the book.

It is indeed one of the best books I have ever read. It creates a different world around you and weaves its magic that bedazzles you and engulfs you. I hope Mira Nair would indeed make the movie with Johny Depp as THE Shantaram Big B as Khader. This story needs to be told. The only grudge I had with this book was its length, it could easily be shorter by about a 100 pages.

The book indeed made me wonder how a foreigner could understand India so well. In fact, at so many times I felt he knew more about us than what we know. He talks about everything good or bad, never being judgemental, or cynical. And when you finally close the book, what remains with you are the author's words and you wonder how true they sound... Sometimes in India, you need to surrender first before you win.

Jai Ho - Be Victorious!

Its going to be a month soon. I have been lazy all this while.. Wanting to write about it, but then not writing it.. Pushing it away.. But suddenly I realized that I am beginning to forget things about it, losing the euphoria around it..

For the uninitiated, I am talking about our book called Titans of Branding and its launch. It was the result of 15 months of some work on our part and a lot of gas on the part of our guide ;) Hehe.. No, but really I am really thankful to Prof Kirsti Lindberg-Repo to have provided this opportunity! I remember our recruitment last year in the MoS class.. How skeptical we were about what to expect from this research project. None had a clue, all we wanted was some quick money, maybe about 100 euros! Little did we expect that it would culminate into an auditorium, fully packed (almost), clapping for us! Not even when we came to know for the first time that its going to be published as a book, did we really understand what it meant!

I am soo tempted to use the phrases like "It all started with a BIG idea" etc etc.. But I know for sure, that Esha and Apramey would die laughing on it! (We started our launch presentation with this line). Sitting in the lobby of Hotel Qutab, trying to come up with ideas, filling in the occasional silence by pulling each other's legs, or speaking in hindi, so that our guide doesn't have a clue that we are talking about her! Vividha getting really irritated with all the gas floating around, while Apramey providing in suffieciency! ;) To be honest, it was fun, real fun! Despite the graphic designer whom I had to deal with to get the right figures, right look and feel of the book. He was quite a story! I remember looking at him unbelievingly, while he was trying to see which color fits Kone CEO's pic better! He hadn't slept last night and had become totally.... I remember that day, it was perhaps the most demanding of all.. Apramey busy elsewhere ;) , Esha & I unwell.. but all doing 100s of things that were left. The book was to go for printing the next day, and at one time it all looked impossible! But we pulled through! And I must say, we pulled through beautifully!

Eventually it was all worth it.. Standing in the lobby of our publisher, Gummerus, waiting eagerly to see the book. And when Heli put a copy into my hands, I was speechless. Holding the book for the first time, I felt overwhelmed! I knew how it would look n all, but still to touch it, flip the pages, see my name on the cover, my photo at the back.. I really was speechless. I Esha & Apramey were looking at each other, all smiles.. Trying to just grasp in the feeling! To be honest, I was actually feeling choked with emotion... Called up Ma & papa immediately! Couldn't even talk to them! I was so so happy!!!

N then the day came when the world would see our book and

comment upon it. We all were soooo nervous! Though we had practiced quite a lot, but addressing a firang audience, and that too from the boards of companies like Nokia, Kone etc.. I was developing cold feet! When I saw the packed auditorium in the morning, I just asked... "Are all of these people here to listen to us???". That too, after paying quite a high participation fee!!

N suddenly we heard the loudspeaker playing "Jai ho!" Yes guys, thats how we landed on the stage.. with A R Rehman's music welcoming us.. To be honest, I had never liked the idea.. It was

tooooo dramatic and rather funny.. But that day, looking at the audience, I felt that somehow it helped us in catching their attention! Suddenly, I see people smiling and perhaps thinking.. "Ok, so far so good, now lets c what u gotto offer". And then we started speaking.. One by one.. It went flawlessly! I remember when I was speaking, some of the people in the audience actually were listening as if.. haha..let me not get narcissist! But it looked good! N then the applause! Well, it was quite a applause! I felt soooo proud. How I wished my family was there to witness it. How proud they would have been at that time, I could only imagine!

After the seminar, I was then suddenly asked to sign the book (it was given to the audience). All of us were actually mesmerized and flattered by the gesture.. and then one more such request followed.. and then more.. At one time, it looked surreal! All

three just trying to manage the whole scene.. signing our own books! I din't even know what to write! It would have looked so funny to others, while we three discussed as to what would look appropriate! Haha! Some told us that they watched the presentation in disbelief, some said we were brilliant "stage performers" (???). People just coming and telling us that it went great. Some flattering us to the extent by saying that we were the Titans actually!!! Alas, it all ended eventually, and our 5 minutes of stardom got over! :( But I was quite impressed by the humbleness of all present!

So for all the readers, who would be feeling that this post was in fact a narcissist exercise, here's something fyi.. In the Media Mingle party (???) basically a cocktail party to celebrate the successful launch, I kinda goofed up.. While all the coprorate hotshots were buzy in socializing.. I (standing in the center perhaps)... dropped a glass of champagne! Thadaaam! The sound it made!!! Everyone just fell silent and looked at me! How I wish at moments like these that Dinosors were not extinct and one would emerge to swallow me right away!

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

My return to fiction couldn't have been more exciting than this! Having experimenting with a lot of work in non-fiction, I picked up this book on the recommendation of a friend and I know I didn't regret it!

Somehow, the intial pages reminded me a lot of Roy's God of Small Things.. No, it doesn't depict siblings craving for each other. What I mean to imply is it leaves u with a smell of fresh air, the scent of river with you, the way Roy's book left you with the taste of pickles. The descriptions of the Sunderbans are vivid to say the least. Never for a moment I felt I had gone out of Sunderbans. N having completed teh book now, I long to goto Sunderbans. Even the way "Lucibari", the place in the Tidal Coasts of West bengal, leaves you yearning. The charms of a small town, couldn't have looked better than Ghosh's description. The entire landscape comes to life in front of you eyes. The animate descriptions of dialy cycles of tides - Jowar, the Bhata, with the big cat making its presence felt at regular intervals create a world that kept me hooked to the book.

For the story, it is about Piya, a woman of Indian origin and troubled past who finds her way into the labirynths of Bengal whiel researching the enigmatic river dolphins. On her way she meets Kanai, a middle aged who is tracing his roots back to the same place to read the notebook left by his now dead uncle. While a fisherman Fokir helps Piya in her quest, Kanai discovers through his uncle's notebook the history of the circustances in which he died and how the lives of everyone around Kanai were connected and entangled.

Surprisingly, the book asked a few questions that got lost in the narrative. For e.g. one of female characters Kusum, after starving for days together wonders on the existence of the people who value animals' lives more than people's; about people who would kill men to save trees. Or about the fate of refugees. More philosophically what Kanai's old aunt asks him in end.. Why is it that poets have everyone to speak for them, while no one sees any poetry in the strong, the ones who try to build things!

The beauty of the book is really not the story, but the words that the author has chosen. If you are looking for some edge of seat kind of suspense or fast pace, this may not be the best of the books to read. But for someone who wants to experience a place he never has been to, for someone who likes nature, for someone who is as relaxed as I am these days, there could have been nothing better!

By the way, as the story reaches its climax, there is a lot of mention about the name of this blog! :) Never knew how it actually felt to be in the eye of storm! Quite literally that is..

For now I think i'll continue my affair with fiction :)

Aye mere pyaare watan...

I wanted to write a review of The Last Mughal. Finished it a few days back. But then I could hardly remember the starting as I read it about 6 months back. A special gift as it was, I started reading it in Malaysia and as luck would have it, completed it when I am in Helsinki. SO basically I read it never in the country it talks about, in the city I love as much as its Scottish writer does, but understand so little.

The book starts with how the last of the Great Mughal, Bahadur Shah II became the emperor of Delhi in his sixties. The once great Timurs' influence was now reduced to a small yet captivating city of Shahjahanabad that Shahajahan had built with so much of love. The old king with the pen-name of Zafar, was a marvelous gardener and an articulate poet. William Dalrymple vividly desribes how King only in name, Zafar could barely manage to exert his will inside the palace which had become full of cheating cocumbines and unruly illegitimate princes. The control of Delhi was more or less passed onto the British like in the rest of the India. But this did not stop Zafar from taking Delhi to its cultural zenith. It was an era of Ghalib, the times of Zauq. When courtesans doubled as tutors to children of the nobility teaching them the courtesies (adab). Zafar himself had a few as his disciples. Delhi was a city that hosted the Mushaiyaras every evening with fresh mangoes being served and the most refined Urdu being spoken. The words that Dalrymple uses immediately recreate that lost grandeur in front of your eyes.

As I read the initial few pages, the whole Chandni Chowk started to crowd my imagination. The streets I grew up in started to lose their shabbiness and regain their grandeur - such is the effect of William Dalrymple's words. The Havelis, the bazaars, the lanes, The Red Fort, the Jama Masjid were all transported to the Mughal era and I could see the streets hosting the poetry competitions between Zauq and Ghalib, with wine being served and songs by the courtesans. This was Delhi of 1857.

When 300 mutinous Hindu soldiers entered Red Fort in the middle of the night to seek the blessings of a Muslim king, he saw a chance to regain the pride his dynasty had lost in the past century. Dalrymple shows how the rebellion was not only a mutiny of some soldiers against their senior officers, it was at the same time a social, economic, political and military in nature. Scared and angered by the inroads that Christian missionaries were making in the Hindu and Muslim cultures, the whole of north India rose up against the mightiest Empire in the world. Today it is hard to imagine how the whole Hindu heartland rallied to Delhi proclaiming a Muslim king as its true ruler. But it was Zafar's hard-work over the years that gained him this respect. Extremely tolerant, he even banned cow-slaughter and didn't let the Rebellion turn against Hindus ever.

Meanwhile little did Zafar know how his nod of consent to the 300 sepoys would change the course of his beloved city and his famous dynasty. After killing the British in Delhi and thus capturing Delhi, the sepoys started looting the city for and wealth and soon enough the Dilliwallahs start despising whom they called Tilanganas. Dalrymple quotes various complaints to the emperor by common people against such plundering. He then shifts the focus to the British. How British try to regain the lost ground inch by inch. At this time Dalrymple cleverly reminds the reader of the situation that the world is seeing today in Palestine-Israel conflict. The book then gets into a trap of how the situation was worsening in the city and gets rather boring as Dalrymple keeps quoting various letters which are now preserved in National Archives of India. The ending is rather abrupt when the sepoys give in.

Dalrymple then describes how cruelly the British massacered the Delhi residents and how very muslim inhabitant was either killed or thrown out of the city they always lived in. The author gives a moving account of the public hanging of people, the destruction of Havelis and the Red Fort. Dalrymple then goes on to describe the last year of Zafar in exile till he dies.

The most interesting thing about the book is the way the author has dealt with the title character, that of Zafar. At one time he would be critical of him, at another - sympathetic. The reader is given a lot of space to decide on him. As for me, I found him to a weak man, a weaker husband and even a weaker king. But can anyone expect a man is his eighties to be as pragmatic? A ruler who became the king in his sixties when the whole of India had already given in to the British? How could he have behaved otherwise?

Perhaps the book is a lesson to the politicians of today to give way to the younger generation. N also for the world, on how can Islam be actually integrated with other religions and how atrocities lead to nothing but revenge. Overall, a must read for anyone who loves Delhi!

50 years on, Atlas still hasn't Shrugged.....

50 years back, Ayn Rand asked all the Atlas of the world to shrug. She asked the movers of the world to stop working for the unproductive people. She wanted to protect our blood from the parasites. But 50 years on, Atlas is still undecided. He still carries the world that hurts him, kicks him, abuses him and still feeds on his blood. He still bleeds.....

So why doesn't he shrug? Why doesn't he say - Thts it, I give up!!! When Atlas Shrugged came out, many predicted the death of Communism. It symbolized what is now ridiculed as the Great American dream. But people hated it too coz it advocated the fulfillment of the desires of man. It valued money. But a lot of time has passed since then and the question is was the title of this masterpiece just a title or was it a metaphor, urging us to give up the unyielding struggle against the evil.

Why don't people actually say enough is enough? What stops them? Is the that omni present initial hesitation or that fear of the unknown? Maybe its complacency. I guess its the same feeling that a caged bird would be having... A bird that does not like to be caged but still is wary of freedom. Coz freedom gives it the choice. Choice, if we go by Ayn Rand, should not lead to any dilemna. Thts coz right is always right and wrong is always wrong. There is no middle path. Middle paths emerge when you are not sure, when you are afraid of taking a stand.

I read Atlas Shrugged just when i started my career against the advice of many. I didn't seem to agree with some parts of the book. I always sided with Dagny Taggart and could not understand why Hank Reardon and others gave up. I believed in being a doer. I wanted to drive the engine of the world. 2 years later am not so sure. I can now understand the reasons why Dagny eventually stopped providing her blood to the parasites. But can I stop? Or rather do I want to?

One of my frnds today told me that maybe Atlas has shrugged. But I don't think so. When atlas shrugs, the engine of the world would stop. Since tht hasn't happened, since my senior still forwards my work as his own, since i still do work which doesn't really excite me without complain, Since I still put others' demands over my needs, Atlas hasn't shrugged coz i haven't shrugged!!!!!

Review of Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie's ardent fans may not find Shalimar the clown his best work, but nevertheless it's a must read for all. It marks the return of Rushdie to his homeland, Kashmir after a long time. A compelling story that moves from LA to Kashmir to France n then back, it tells the tale of a Paradise, not as much lost as much destroyed! Kashmir is not just a backdrop; it is a character in the story. The book is about the journey of Shalimar the Clown as well as that of the Paradise!

The story opens in LA, where Max Ophuls is stabbed to death at the door of his only, but illegitimate child India by his own driver who calls himself Shalimar the Clown. A French Resistance hero, Max was once an American Ambassador to India whose carrier ended with a controversy that changed the course of many a life. But what looks like a political murder at first turns out to be rather an intense personal revenge story.

Rushdie then goes into flashback and returns to Pachigam, a village in Kashmir, where the love story between Boonyi Kaul, the famous dancer & Sher Nauman, the equilibrist aka Shalimar the Clown is blossoming. A Hindu girl, a Muslim boy. But in the Valley of 1960s these were not divisions but mere descriptions. What follows is a tale of betrayal, a tragedy that unfolds slowly and leaves you griefstricken. While the lead characters play their part, a paradise transforms into a battlefield between the Indian Army & its own children trained by iron mullahs from Pakistan and thousands of Kashmiri pandits flee from their homes in the middle of night in the hope of returning some day!

While reading about the 'exile' of the female protagonist, one wonders if Rushdie gets autobiographical, reflecting his own miseries of running away from home when the threat of a fatwa was looming large on his own head. This part of the story is the most beautifully worded as Boonyi awaits the return of her husband which does not happen for many years and her return to her true home which does not happen at all.

The ending is rather violent without being violent, just as Shalimar loved Boonyi without loving her and Boonyi deserted him without actually deserting him.

The book may not be the best work of Magic Realism, but there is an inherent charm to this story of love, betrayal & revenge that leaves you spellbound. The telepathic conversations between Boonyi & Shalimar are so beautifully written that you gasp in awe of the marvel that Rushdie is famous for. Rushdie plays the rage & revenge of Shalimar, the agony &\nrepentance of Boonyi so intelligently that it becomes impossible to put down the book. Rushdie also uses local mythology to convey many things. You can't help being impressed by his use of Rahu & Ketu, using the struggle between the shadow planets, to depict the moral dilemma that we all face. He has brilliantly unraveled the path that the youth takes in becoming terrorists & their reasons: some fight for 'faith', while some for personal vendetta!

But despite all this, the book lacks that sparkle that his fans worldwide are so much accustomed to! The main problem is that the narrative is not in the first person, unlike his other books & this greatly undermines the effect. Surprisingly, the plot becomes boring when he describes Max as the character is written very shabbily and looks completely out of sync with the story. Also the backdrop is so overbearing that at places, it completely overshadows the main plot. Besides you have your own interpretations of the whole situation that get challenged quite often! But nevertheless it's a book that'll add value to your bookshelf and deserves to be placed alongside his other works like Midnight's Children. I'll end this note with a text from the book by this great master of metaphors and am sure you'll find yourself rushing to the bookshop next door to lay your hands on Shalimar the Clown!


" A woman left at home would close her eyes and the power of her need would enable her to see her man on his ocean ship battling pirates with pistol, her man in the battle's fray with his sword and shield, standing victorious among corpses, her man in a desert whose sands were on fire, amid mountain peaks, drinking the driven snow. So long as he lived she would follow his journey, would feel his elation and his grief, and if he died a spear of love would fly back across the world to pierce her waiting omniscient heart. It would be the same for him. In the midst of desert's fire he would feel her cool hand on his cheek and in the heat of battle she would murmur the words of love into his ear : live, live. That was what the stories said about love. That was what human beings knew love to be."