Just finished reading this. And want to re-read right away.
An absolute marvel, this book. What a skillfully done bildungsroman!
It’s an extremely, extremely personal account of Iranian politics. Coming from a character who, later as it develops, is at once an outsider and an insider only gives the story more layers. Fabulous work!
There is a word that book reviewers and critics often over-use (and abuse) when writing favourably about what they’ve read - delight. But Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories can actually make you feel that.
Within the first few pages itself, all the geographical, political and literary references had me gasping and drooling for more. My brain, if they scanned it as I read the book, would’ve looked like the night sky on Diwali.
It takes a more than fertile imagination to make up an explanation of where stories come from, inventing “story-waters” and a threat of pollution to them. There is the quiet landof “Chup” where everything is dark and quiet. The Chupwalas even use dark torches to be able to see in the light. And then there is the garrulous land of “Gup”, opposed in every way to Chup. Streams of stories flow abundantly. Their princess Batcheat is a study in ugliness and toneless singing. Young Haroun discovers this world when his father, a storyteller suddenly finds himself unable to tell stories - and he stands to lose his life if he doesn’t. (The Scheherazade reference is not lost here). The story of the stories itself then turns into a greater allegory for what’s happening in the world Haroun and his father inhabit.
Since it’s a short enough book, saying anything more here would inevitably lead to giving away the whole plot.
The book has been adapted into a play (by Tim Supple, no less!) and an opera. Though book to film adaptations often end up disappointing, this one should turn out fabulously given its rich imagery. Only hope is, there shouldn’t be a Jaipur Litfest redux here with the film’s release.
The infamous Tandoor murder case from Delhi and the Godhra riots. Kelvinator refrigerators, inaugurations (even for flagpoles) and professional atrocitologists.
Where? In the city of Gautumpuri in Sweden Pradesh, of course!
Zac O’Yeah (Yes! That’s his pen name!) creates a bizarrely plausible new world in Once Upon A Time in Scandinavistan. The book is a murder mystery set in the future where Europe has been colonised by India. Instead of the E.U., it’s the A.A.R.C./E.U. (Asian Association for Regional Cooperation/ European Union). As O’Yeah explains it in the book himself -
At a time when Europe was becoming poor and de-industrialised, joining Asia was a step up the ladder. The progressive and popularly acceptable counterweight to the U.S./U.K. double act that had become something of a handicap to global development and the protection of natural resources.
The result? Well, there are Nilgiri supermarket chains everywhere. Mahindra SUVs on European roads. Ambassadors for the sarkari types. The Nobel Prize can’t afford itself either. It’s the Reliance Nobel Prize (duh!). Maoists on Mars demand its name be changed to Maors. “Red” planet and all that. Here on Earth, all native Swedish places have all had their names Indianised. Like from Gothenburg to Gautampuri. Which is why our protagonist’s love interest, a postwoman, has a hard time delivering letters.
The protagonist, Herman Barsk, is a bumbling Public Intelligence Department (PID) official trying to prevent “anti-socials” from “committing nuisance” in public places. One really has to understand the way the Indian police functions to realistically create a police department like the one Barsk works in. And O’Yeah does it bloody well. Add to that a touch of realism to his character - the way he fails to connect with people. He wags his non-existent tail when happy. His idea of playing with children is to throw them a ball to fetch. As he solves a gruesome murder mystery and struggles against his affections for Kumkum, the postwoman, he must also defrost his fridge and survive a newspaper-stealing neighbour.
As if the premise of the book wasn’t hilarious enough, the situations the characters find themselves in will have you waiting to catch your breath after a good laugh to turn the page. If you thought deflecting a grenade with a cricket bat is the stuff of Rajinikanth films, think again. Not that it’s all slapstick. No sir! Our man here also quotes from (make-believe) issues of the Economic and Political Weekly when making a point about how things came to be.
The Finn-Swede- and now of course, -Indian author’s website suggests he has written more, but in Swedish (This book, I believe, is also available as “Tandoori Algen”). He has been living in NOIDA for quite some time now, and has travelled through a fair part of India for years - and that shows in his writing. He can be easily mistaken for a native Indian author in a good many parts of the book. You can read an interesting profile here. Can’t wait to read more from him. If and when I do, I’m sure some tandoori chicken and Xatriya beer would make great accompaniments to the book.
Remember how Mommy said spending too much time in front of a screen can harm your eyes? Looks like it can give you a myopic world view as well.
This comes to you from the website of “Digital Storm”. They make gaming laptops, PCs, workstations and the like. And they are doing all their first world customers a favour by giving them American tech-support. To save them the trouble of talking to someone from “a different country”.
So you’re not an American and bought their products and are having trouble understanding what this staff (totally not from “another country”, no sir!) is saying? Well then, fuck you, I guess.
WTF online ad of the day.
No sweetie, you don’t look like a genius currency trader. You look like someone whose hair colour experiment went horribly wrong.
On a side note, what do genius currency traders really look like?
There was enough hype around this film to make me walk into the theatre with high expectations. They were, however, met only halfway. For a long time, I couldn’t make up my mind about the film and kept oscillating between “Meh” and “Whoa!”.
A strong subject, a gutsy business move (making a female the central character in a mainstream masala film in a disgustingly patriarchal Hindi film industry) and decent production design (the way Vidya’s bra strap shows through her blouse pre-transformation was one of the many production #wins) got it a thumbs up. Vidya performed particularly well in the part of the film where she starts descending into alcoholism. Her make up in the late second half, with all that weight on her face was fairly convincing as well.
But the film remained full of could-have-beens. For starters, there was the stainless steel box that young Silk escapes the village with. You see it around more than twice in the first 45 minutes or so of the film. It had great “blankie” potential. It could have served as a symbol of the past she left behind, something to seek security in after the make up and the lights were off. But it just vanishes. Later in the film it is revealed that she ran away the night before her wedding. Wouldn’t it have been a lot more powerful had this been established right in the beginning? A case of bad editing?
Also, the woman who moves in with Silk in her new palatial home is conveniently dispensed with, without explanation, when she is to be shown struggling with loneliness. Why?
For the most part, Silk is shown as a victim of lecherous men and a misogynistic industry that wants to use her. Her relationship with Keedamal, however, is much more complex. He is the only one who is depicted as someone who sees her as nothing more than a professional. She shares a comfort and camaraderie with him that she shares with no other man in the film. Could that not have been explored a little more?
In the award ceremony sequence, it appears that Nyla (Anju Mahendroo is getting horribly typecast playing the rich bitch), despite not liking Silk’s aesthetic and her kind of cinema, admires her courage - and tells her as much. She later even calls her the only “hero” in the industry. Why then, is Silk shown to be so hostile to her? The scene where Silk literally stops traffic outside Nyla’s house with her mere presence (reminiscent of this real life episode) - though well directed, was somewhat unjustifiable.
After the good and the ugly, now the bad.
Tushar Kapoor has to be the biggest mistake in the film. The stainless steel container from the initial scenes of the film would’ve done a better job playing Ramakanth. And no sweetie, dropping the “Kapoor” from your name won’t help.
Emraan Hashmi did marginally better in the acting department. Though in the scene where he beats up his assistant director, the way he says “You horny bastard!” made yours truly squirm in her seat and demand her money back. The otherwise fast-paced film began crawling after Abraham (Emraan) begins to think favuorably of Silk. There is a romantic song - complete with background dancers and the works that randomly pops out of nowhere. I thought we stopped doing that after 2005. I just told myself they were trying to be meta about “having to” use trade tricks like these to make a film sell - like they did in the films in the film.
The scene where Silk realises that Abraham has begun liking her, she says to herself -yes, to herself - “Ab to tere dushman bhi tujhse khafa nahin hain”. A huge aberration in the otherwise normal behaviour of her character. It wouldn’t have been so cringeworthy had she not been given any lines whatsoever for this scene.
So should you watch The Dirty Picture at all? Yes. Watch it for Vidya and Naseeruddin. It’s actually pretty entertaining. And Vidya, as she puts it in the film, is entertainment herself.
Note: Since I know very little of Silk Smitha and her life, I will refrain from commenting on how faithfully it represented her. Both images used here are stolen off the interwebz and I claim no ownership of them.
Can’t wait to read it!
Source: jayparkinsonmdTwo weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.
He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”
I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.
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I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.
A few ways to help:
- If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.
- If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.
- If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above.
*UPDATE 1* Organize a donor drive near you (the most helpful thing you could possibly do!) email 100kcheeks@gmail.com. They’ll send you kits, flyers, tell you what to say, and make the whole process easy cheesy.
*UPDATE 2* Want to get a free test, but not in the US. Here’s a list of international donor registries that are globally searchable.
My friend Amit Gupta founded my favorite photography site Photojojo. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Amit is one of the nicest, most genuine, most creative people you could ever meet. Prior to founding the awesome Photojojo, he also co-founded Jelly in 2006 in NYC, a coworking community, that’s now spread to 60 cities across the world and helped spark the coworking revolution. It looks like Amit will need a bone marrow transplant quite soon. We can help him with that.
Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.
This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.
How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.
Tests are easy– a simple swab of the cheek. If you’re a match, the donation involves an outpatient procedure. It’s not fun, but it’s not dangerous either. And doing it could save a life.
We are encouraging anyone of South Asian descent to take a test to see if you’re a match.
You can get a free test by mail, or, if you’re in New York, you can join us Friday, October 14th for a special party to rally support.
We’ll have test kits on hand at the party, as well as music, booze, and maybe even a photo booth. It will, for the first time, combine a House 2.0-style party with a New Work City-style party, and if you’ve ever been to either, you know they are always something special.
Please spread the word and please do everything you can to help Amit beat leukemia. He’s a superstar.
Much thanks to Tony and pals for organizing this event, and EVERYONE who’s been tweeting and reblogging.
Please help get the word out any way you can. My life quite literally depends on it.
