What a mixed bag of emotions!Pegasus was wonderfully imagined. I loved the ideas of feather-tip fingers, strong human hands and flexible wrists, being bound to the pegasi of the sweet green land... Beautiful! There was a kind of raw beauty that reached out and touched me, page after page. The beauty of the Caves - the Caves that are so full - I want to see them too! I feel shivers at the thought of beauty that is so profound that you cannot see it. Rather, you feel it, if you distance yourself from space and time. It was an experience of bliss, reading Pegasus.There has to be a 'but', though. It was long, a little too long, I thought. Maybe not too long, actually. Long in ways that it should not have been long, but not long enough when it came to knowing what happened. I want to know more. It ended all wrong for me.The biggest enemy of beauty is not ugliness. It is … [Read more...]
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club fits so perfectly under the heading 'unusual'. It's unusual in every way. The language is unusual. The structure is unusual. The name is unusual.I love the idea of stories of motherhood, and I love stories that do not have a simplistic conclusion. Each story in this collection is the story of a mother and her daughter against a Chinese-American socio-cultural backdrop. Mother and daughter struggle to fit in, while retaining a Chinese identity. Mother and daughter speak a foreign tongue. Mother tries to curl her tongue around ideas that do not have their equivalent in the new language. Daughter tries to achieve, tries to over-achieve, tries to find a place. Mother wants the best for her daughter and tries to find the balance between two nations separated by an ocean.Going back home to China means travelling westwards to reach the east. Of course the novel … [Read more...]
On Two Feet and Wings
I'm a slow reader. Despite the fact that I love reading, I take my time over books. Sometimes, I take weeks to finish a book, even one I enjoy.On Two Feet and Wings was not like that. I would never have expected a book based on a true story to have transported me into a world I do not know at all. Powerful, moving, pacy - what cliched words these are! But each of them is apt.I started reading Abbas Kazerooni's story only because someone gave me On Two Feet and Wings for my birthday. When I started reading it, I didn't know what to expect.But I loved every moment and every page - I'm tempted to say that I loved every word.The innocence and pathos in the story reached out to me - I haven't been touched like that in a long time.I saw the dirty alleys of Istanbul, smelled the dank sheets, drank the tea and cringed at the cockroaches in the bathroom. I saw a precocious nine-year-old … [Read more...]
Indian Summer
As I read Indian Summer by Pratima Mitchell, I kept oscillating between approval and disgust.There were parts that were so real that they reached out to me and made me think, "That's exactly, perfectly captured!" And there were parts that were so real that they made me curl my lip and think, "Why do people write about things that are so mundane?"I rolled my eyes at parts of the book because I found them utterly inane. I found myself enjoying parts of the story and its telling so much that I wondered to whom I could recommend it because it was so good.It's a strange experience reading a novel like Indian Summer. When you finish it, all you feel is, "Hmm. Okay. But it's not perfect." … [Read more...]
A Cup of Coffee
I was relishing a cup of coffee this morning and thinking about its history, both a personal history and the history of coffee itself. Personally, I disliked coffee. I did not like the smell or taste. Now, having become a good south Indian, I love a cup of good, strong, hot filter coffee.At a more general level, I often wonder how tea, coffee and tobacco entered human lives. What strange human being imagined the result of the complicated process that goes into the making of these things?In a book I read some time ago, The Moneylender's Daughter, there was one amusing section about coffee. In 17th century Holland, one merchant attempted to convince another to invest in coffee. "Coffee? What good is coffee?" the second merchant replied. (I'm paraphrasing, of course.) The first merchant stumbled, trying to explain how it was a drink that was sure to catch the world's fancy. "Rubbish!" … [Read more...]
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is the kind of book that I could read over and over again.It was written in just a few months and it's less than a hundred pages long.I was revolted and fascinated by it the first time I read it and I'm revolted and fascinated even now as I teach it. What a fabulous book it has to be to evoke a response time and time again! How rich it is, and yet, how simple!When the pigs begin the gentle takeover, I squirm within, but believe how it could happen. I am enthralled (more than a little guiltily) by the very idea of their power. It's frightening how easy it is to manipulate the truth by abusing the language of power. It makes me shiver and shake my head. Succinct and complete - this one is most certainly a classic. … [Read more...]
Chalkline
I recently read Neil Gaiman's views on escapism: I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in. If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control ...And that's the way I feel when I leave a book like Jane Mitchell's Chalkline unfinished. I have nothing against the way it's written. It's powerful, hugely moving and terribly disturbing.And that's just why I could … [Read more...]
Writing in the Genes
Never thought a business magazine would have a picture of me! All thanks to my father, and to the fact that I have writing in my genes! … [Read more...]
The All-New Media Page!
I'm delighted to have a brand new page on my website - the media page!From Let's Play! onwards, there have been several articles about my writing and about me. Finally, they come together on the media page of my website!Sakal Times, DNA, The Times of India, Mid-Day ... And hopefully many more to come! … [Read more...]
Bookaroo Festival of Children’s Literature, Pune – 2013
Twenty-two speakers from five countries and 11 cities are going to be interacting with children, bringing children and books together. It's happening in Pune!Dates: 3oth November and 1st DecemberVenue: Sambhaji Park, Jangali Maharaj Road, PuneI'm looking forward to it! … [Read more...]