Monthly Archives: September 2013

Book Review : Beaten by Bhagath

Image by Self

Image by Self

Blurb View:

“I’m sure you can do a much better job than Bhagath!” When BB hears these inspiring words from his sexy lady boss, his staid life as a successful analyst in an MNC goes into a tailspin.

Bitten by the ego bug and smitten by her, BB sets off on his quest to write a book that’s better than India’s greatest writer Dr. Bhagath’s blockbusters. Nothing unusual about this for BB, who likes a good fight. Except that he and Bhagath had been classmates and friends at college. 

What follows is a roller-coaster voyage of the debutante author and his book, with all its twists and cul-de-sacs. Brushes with publishers, celebrities, retailers, book chains, and competition with the alliances among giants, mark the challengers journey, upping the stakes at every stage. Will BB catch up with his famous friend?What will their encounter be like?Written from inside the ring, Beaten by Bhagath is a gripping tale the first-ever about the unseen side of the wonderland of Indian fiction.

Review:

This one was doing rounds in the virtual book bazaar when I started as a book critic. I had checked the blurb and wondered about ‘reality fiction’ as I didn’t know much about the concept then. The title surely invokes a feeling of recognition about the parody done on somebody. However, I didn’t get a chance to review it in the first edition and then came the pleasant surprise that a second edition has arrived in the market. A book in its second edition in these tumultuous times of Indian Publishing? Well then, it surely has stirred quite a few souls.

The beginning is a tad drab, I must admit. The first few chapters with the introduction of our idol K-10 and the ragging period reminded me of the original Bhagath’s book. The first thing you would notice in the early chapters is the nomenclature of K-10. Like my fellow bloggers, I too wondered whether the author was aware of the existence of Ketan Bhagath, the writer. After the initial jitters, the story picks up its pace when BB completes his manuscript and tries to find publishers. It seemed quite a real account of what happens with debut authors these days.

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CalcuttaScape : Nalini Rajan

Presenting a new section to the readers : CalcuttaScape. It would be a guest column on One and a Half Minutes, in which published authors will write about their experiences on visits to Calcutta. I will be approaching non-resident authors who have visited for a vacation or stayed in Calcutta for a short while.

I know, dear readers, the first question cropping on your mind would be, why Calcutta? I’m not sure if I have a satisfactory answer for this one. It is my city, at times it has been my muse, it has been a companion in my early adult years, it has been a witness to a major part of my life. This is probably my way of paying a tribute to Calcutta, by bringing to you words flown from famous authors, on a city that never ceases to amaze.

The second article in this column is from author Nalini Rajan, her first novel ‘The Pangolin’s Tale’ was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, 2007.

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Calcutta

Howrah Bridge, 1945 (Image Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Howrah Bridge, 1945 (Image Courtesy: Wikipedia)

I have visited Calcutta three times, and I have mere fragments of memories of this city.

The first time I went to Calcutta, I was nine years of age. I was travelling by train from Delhi with my 12-year-old sister and a 20-year-old male cousin, Shekhar. “Girls, there are lots of things you should see in Calcutta”, our father advised us. “This is a city, brimming with history!” He looked somewhat dreamy. “And Howrah Bridge is something you see, anyway, from the train”, he added, as he waved us goodbye at Delhi station.

Right at the beginning of the 20-hour journey my sister and I knew one thing: we loathed our cousin, and he, for his part, simply forgot that we existed. It was lucky that our mother had packed loads of food for the train journey – else her daughters would surely have perished of hunger. For the most part of the trip, Shekhar would hang out with people his age, and usually of the opposite sex. Not once did he ask us, out of cousinly concern, if we needed anything! We were so puffed up with righteous indignation at this benign neglect, that we missed seeing Howrah Bridge altogether, as we approached Calcutta.

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Book Review : Life..Love..Kumbh

Image Courtesy: Google

Image Courtesy: Google

Blurb view:

The story in Life…Love…Kumbh… is told from the perspective of the three main characters- Annant, Agastaya, and Aditi. Their paths cross on January 13, 2010. It is the day before the first of the eleven sacred baths of the Haridwar Maha Kumbh.
The three characters meet each other and exchange their stories. They remember the days gone by and are unsure about what lies ahead.
As the Kumbh Mela draws towards an end, all three of them are thrown into a challenging situation that they have to face. The book then follows their journey as they try and find answers for their personal quests all at the same time – on life, love, and the thirst for knowledge.

Review:

What would you expect from a book about Life..Love and Kumbh? Philosophy, for one. Spirituality, the next, perhaps. The author himself had cautioned that it is a difficult read, which was the main reason I didn’t want to rush through the book. Not having read adequate number of books on Kumbh, and having read arguably one of the best among them (Amrito Kumbher Sandhane, Bangla, by Kaalkut), I had my own expectations. A fellow blogger had joked a few days back about Bengalis reading on all possible topics in Bangla and finding everything else predictable. I wouldn’t argue much. My apologies, if I have rated another book on the same topic higher.

First and foremost, this is one book where I have no complaint with the content, but I was put off by the form. There are typographical and grammatical errors in the first few pages and it continues well beyond. I don’t know if the editors hadn’t touched the manuscript at all. The punctuation is clumsy, too many short sentences are clustered to form a huge one and the reader is bound to get lost at the end of each sentence. I am not fond of such style of writing, it strains my eyes as well as my psyche. Something I didn’t like – an obvious mistake “Ekla Chalo be..”, which would surely irk a lot of people, Bengalis aside. It is also purposefully quite incoherent to extract the essence of chaos. I particularly loved the chapter ‘Morning Snaps’ for its sheer detailing and flavour of the Kumbh. It made me yearn for more chapters of its like, thus reflecting the author’s competence in this genre.

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Book Review : Chakra (Bangla)

Image Courtesy: Google

Image Courtesy: Google

Chakra is a common word in many Indian languages, derived from Sanskrit. It has myriad meanings, the ones among them relevant to this book are: ‘Circle'(of seasons, of life), ‘Wheel'(of time).

Blurb View (Translated):

The story of Chakra consists of love, introspection and breaking free from traditional ideas and practices. It also constitutes a gradual and trustworthy presentation of urban habits invading the simple rural lifestyle. Chakra has narrated the immeasurable properties of life with great care and tenderness.

Review:

Chakra is a Bangla novel by eminent author Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay. I wonder why I hadn’t come across this one in so many years. I have read the best of Shirshendu in Durbeen, Parthibo and Manabjamin, but missed this one. All of them including Chakra have a very vast milieu as their setting. There are a plethora of characters introduced gradually to the readers, linking them to each other in a complex web of a plot. I’d say Chakra is comparatively less complex in characterization than the other novels but the incidents around each of them are woven very carefully here. As a Shirshendu staple, you will encounter innumerable sub plots arrayed in various strata, none too unworthy for the main plot.

The story revolves around two main protagonists, Amal and Parul. Inspite of being childhood lovers, their marriage does not happen due to a single incident which keeps affecting their lives even two decades later. Shirshendu touches a sensitive issue here, a blur between forced sex in lovers and rape. Parul rejects Amal for forcing sex on her at a tender age of seventeen, and when they meet again after many years, she meets a different Amal. A successful man, married with two kids, returns to their native village and faces the most intriguing question of his life. Does he still love her? Amal’s daughter Sohag shares an unusual relation with Parul, she worships her. Amal’s wife Mona is proud of Parul for rejecting a brilliant man, something that most women don’t have the courage to. He dallies on the verge of insanity, his daughter treads the same path, his father builds a tender relation with both of them.

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CalcuttaScape : Timothy Jay Smith

Presenting a new section to the readers : CalcuttaScape. It would be a guest column on One and a Half Minutes, in which published authors will write about their experiences on visits to Calcutta. I will be approaching non-resident authors who have visited for a vacation or stayed in Calcutta for a short while.

I know, dear readers, the first question cropping on your mind would be, why Calcutta? I’m not sure if I have a satisfactory answer for this one. It is my city, at times it has been my muse, it has been a companion in my early adult years, it has been a witness to a major part of my life. This is probably my way of paying a tribute to Calcutta, by bringing to you words flown from famous authors, on a city that never ceases to amaze.

The first one in this column is from an American author, Timothy Jay Smith (winner of the Paris Prize for Fiction 2008) reminiscing two of his visits to Calcutta in 1978 and 1990s.

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Enduring Calcutta

I boarded the train at a way station north of Madras; and it was still called Madras then, not Chennai. I had managed to avoid buying anything resembling a Madras shirt—those myriad colors swirling in soft fabric worn so ubiquitously by the Sixties flower children. Perhaps now they are called Chennai shirts, but I hope they’ve retained the name Madras. The word defines an era well beyond a fashion statement.

Traveling third class, I stepped over dozens of feet—in sandals, sneakers, one foot bloated with Elephantitis—and found a spot on the wooden bench. I stowed my backpack under it and sat down. Across from me was the strangest man I had ever seen: stick skinny, smeared with green paint, naked except for a revealing loincloth, and fingernails so long that they had looped back on themselves. By contrast, I could not have been more ‘normal-looking’ in my jeans and button-down blue Oxford shirt.

And everybody on the train was looking at me.

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