On hating to love a show

Some five odd years ago, I asked Twitter, that fount of all wisdom, whether I should read the Game of Thrones books, or start watching the show. The show was in its first or second season, and the general consensus at the time was that I should read the books, and so I did.

I often say I have a love-hate relationship with the books. There is SO MUCH that annoys me tremendously about them. There is a ridiculous amount of seemingly unnecessary violence, which is not something I tend to enjoy in literature. There is misogyny and mistreatment of women on practically every page, and anyone who tries to bring up the old argument about how "that's how medieval times were" can just stop now - if the kind of language and curses expressed by people can be updated to reflect the 21st century, so can other things.

And yet, I plodded through all five books, even if the cast of characters had grown so much that I was constantly flipping to the glossary at the end to try and remember who's who. But I plodded through them, whimpering at various stages thanks to GRRM's insistence on killing off practically any character I started growing even slightly fond off. I plodded through, mainly because, dammit, you want to know what happens.

When I finished the fifth book, the next book was expected to release that fall. But it kept getting pushed, and pushed, and pushed, till I'm very sure it's never coming out at all. And meanwhile the show kept going.

I never wanted to watch the show, even though everyone said it was SO GREAT. I can barely read violent stuff in books, why on earth would I want to watch them depicted on the screen? And since this is a show that is talked about pretty constantly, I've pretty much known what the show is doing even without watching. And reading about things the show changed from the books, which more often than not sounded like they had just made things more unnecessarily cruel, did not make me want to watch the show.

But then in the last couple of years, the show has clearly overtaken the books. And while I still held out, thinking maybe the next to books would come out eventually, that just seems stupid at this point. So in the last few weeks, I've been talking to friends who do watch the show, and asking which season I should start from.

Almost without fail, the answer has been, well, why wouldn't you start from the beginning? Because, well, I don't want to. I'm already going to be doing this very grudgingly, my interest in watching TV has gone down dramatically in recent months (which is a topic for another day), there is already SO MUCH TV that one must apparently watch, and I only really wanted to start watching from where the show really starts diverging from the books, and then keep going. And based on that, the consensus seemed to be that Season 4 would be a good starting point, and I figured I'll plan on that.

But then.

I was travelling for work last week, and needed to go through a gazillion decks to prepare for a call the next morning. I was flipping through channels on the television to have something play in the background, and the most recent episode was playing as I came to HBO. And for some reason, I let it stay on that channel.

By the end of that hour, I knew I was going to have to start my binge watch sooner rather than later.

And then.

Last night, I happened to go online soon after the latest episode must have played. And twitter had clearly watched, and gone berserk. So I decided to watch the episode.

And.

I spent the next hour gasping practically every five minutes. And now I can't decide if I just start my binge watch tonight and keep going till I'm up to date, or if I just watch this season as it happens and then do my binge watch, or do a combination of both, or WHAT.

Dammit.

Where I ramble about fairy tales

There was this fairy tale I read as a kid - one of Hans Anderson's, I think? - called The Princess and The Pea. Basically this prince wanted to get married, but obvs, he could only marry a princess. So when a woman showed up at the castle because she was stranded or whatever and claimed to be a princess (which is something that made zero sense on so many levels, you guys), and the prince had the whole love at first sight deal happen, the queen panicked and said we must make sure she's actually a princess. Because naturally this was all before you could just Google someone.

Anyway, so what the queen did was, she had a room prepared for the alleged princess (can alleged be used as an adjective? it feels weird.) and had this bed with a dozen mattresses or something (and which had to be climbed with a ladder, for Pete's sake), and had a pea placed under all those mattresses. Her logic was that if this woman was truly a princess, she would be used to the best of comforts, and wouldn't be able to sleep because she would feel the pea. If she wasn't a princess, she'd be like, say,  me, and be able to sleep anywhere, anytime (including a DTC bus in Delhi once. True story.)

So the next morning, this princess comes down to breakfast, and is asked how she slept. And unlike most people who are put up as unexpected guests in the home of someone you've never met in your life, and therefore are grateful for the hospitality and would lie politely, she went on about how she couldn't sleep a wink because there was something under her mattress.

And so the queen was satisfied, the prince asked the princess to marry him, she apparently said yes, and happily ever after etc. was achieved.

There are SO many problems with this story on SO many levels, you guys.

Anyway. The reason I thought of this story recently is a skirt I bought some years ago, and which I finally fit into again. Every time I wear it to work, I forget that it has this hook at the back, right in the centre. So when I wear and get in the car to drive to work, it presses against my back and hurts. :(

And then I think of how such an innocuous, tiny little thing can cause such discomfort. Like a stoopid pea.

Thoughts on Neerja, and a gazillion other things

I've liked Sonam Kapoor since her first appearance on Koffee with Karan; that episode, incidentally, is also when I started warming up to Deepika Padukone. I've continued liking what Sonam Kapoor has been up to in the years since. Don't get me wrong - I don't think she can act. I was horrified when I heard she might be playing the lead role in the movie adaptation of one of Anuja Chauhan's books, although on further thinking about, she'll probably do justice to the sheer silliness Chauhan's heroines tend to display.

But I like her because, among other things, she refuses to let her inability to act well limit her options. She continues to do the kind of movies I want to go and see. It's a different matter that I don't see most of them, because I'm very lame when it comes to movie watching, but that's not the point. She does movies that, on the whole, have female characters and story lines I feel I can approve of. Most of the time. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo notwithstanding.

I read an article a year or so ago comparing her with Sonakshi Sinha. The latter did Lootera early in her career, and was lauded for her acting ability, but seems to be quite content being the eye candy in Akshay Kumar or Ajay Devgan movies ever since. And then there's Sonam, who insists on playing characters with agency, even if she can't play them that well. And even if she has to produce them herself to get them made.

What's not to admire about that?

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Which brings me to her latest movie - Neerja. As is happening with most Hindi movies and me these days, I had no clue this movie had released, what it was about, or who was in it, till a friend asked if I wanted to go. I couldn't, that day, but I looked up the music, and fell in love with two songs. Then I looked up reviews, and decided I wanted to see it, even though I usually avoid movies with dismal endings or really anything requiring thought.

But I wound up going to see it anyway. And sat on the edge of my seat throughout. For someone who usually covers her eyes at the slightest scary or gory scene (yes, shoo), I don't think I blinked even once while watching the movie. And of course, towards the end, when Neerja's mother places the birthday gift, I started crying and didn't stop till the end credits started rolling.

The movie was extraordinarily well made, and Sonam Kapoor was surprisingly good in it. As were every other actor and actress in the movie.

On a more personal note, the movie was also utterly terrifying for someone who travels as much as I do, and for the reasons I do. And I'm not at all surprised the mother didn't like the movie - her imagination must be going crazy ever since she saw it.

It also struck me as interesting that having watched the movie in Amreeka, I got subtitles. So when the hijackers spoke among themselves in Arabic (at least, I assume it was Arabic, since they were supposed to be Palestinian?), I knew what they were saying. Folks I've spoken to who watched the movie back in India did not get subtitles, and so had no clue what those conversations were about.

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Since I mentioned Deepika Padukone, I have to say, her movie choices are no less approval worthy - at least the ones I've watched. I've watched Piku and Finding Fanny in the past year or two, and not only were those movies excellent, but she was excellent in them.

Also in both movies she says "mad or what?!" exactly how I say it and it makes me very sad I can't find a gif of her saying this phrase.

The day we went to watch Piku, my friends and I had an intense discussion just before the movie on why she was playing a Bengali woman, and not an actual Bengali woman. (I will point out I did not have a problem with this; my non-Bengali friends were the ones questioning this.) And it struck us that the current generation of actresses in Bollywood has no Bengali women left. I mean, yes, Rani Mukherjee and Konona Sen Sharma are kinda still around, but you know what I mean.

This makes me a bit sad.

I will however say Deepika Padukone made an excellent Bengali woman.

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This post was supposed to be about just Neerja, but as usual, it got me thinking about other things.

Who are the other actresses in Bollywood doing relatively sensible movies? Kangana Ranaut, obvs. Anushka Sharma and Parineeti Chopra to a large extent I think. Alia Bhatt manages to do fairly decent roles too, and is a really good actress. Huma Qureshi, I think, is a name I keep hearing, but I haven't seen enough of her movies. Is that it? Priyanka Chopra seems to have been appearing in fewer movies, and in any case is being lauded by NRIs on Whatsapp for Quantico.

I feel like I don't even know who else are in the current crop of actresses in Bollywood. When did this happen to me?

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When I say characters with agency, I don't necessarily mean serious movies, y'know. One of Sonam's other movies that I quite enjoyed was Khoobsurat. Not as much as the original Khoobsurat, because obviously no one compares to Hrishikesh Mukherjee, but enjoyable nonetheless. But how unabashedly unapologetic was Sonam's character in the movie? Right till the end. I totes approve.

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Switching gears just a little, if the Marvel Cinematic Universe could just get it into its head that we don't need to constantly see a story arc where a woman finds out she can never have babies, I would be totally approving of Agent Carter's second season.  Because it gave me the almost all the things I've been wanting from a show - it had kickass women, it had men who didn't have a problem with kickass women, it even had one man who starts out being a chauvinistic idiot, and then grows as a character. It had women being friends, and it had one of the most beautiful platonic friendships between a man and a woman I can remember seeing portrayed. Also it helps that the pair I was shipping seems to have ended up together. Bring it back for a third season, I say to TPTB.

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This post has been in the works for a week or so, so it really wasn't planned as a Women's Day thing - especially since the construct of Women's Day does nothing more than infuriate me these days, because all it does is remind me how things just don't change. So the timing of this post finally being ready is purely coincidental. But as I glanced through other posts in the labels applied to this one, apparently I have been prone to writing in a similar vein around this time of year. What is there.

Where we ramble about Anuja Chauhan's books

Much as I have loved Anuja Chauhan's books ever since I first read The Zoya Factor seven years ago, I have always hated them a little bit too.

There, I said it. At least two readers of this blog can now gasp in outrage. The rest of you probably couldn't care less.

This post has been festering for a while now, to be honest. I started and deleted versions of it every time a new book of hers released, and after the last one, the festering began again. And then of course, procrastination happened. But then this morning, I read this summary/discussion/critique/what-d'you-call-it, which prompted this post.

Here's the thing - my favourite thing about all of her books have always been just how Delhi they are. The conversations - full of Hinglish, the descriptions, the throwaway lines that make you giggle endlessly, like this one from Battle for Bittora (possibly my least favourite of all her books):

I knew my face was wearing the smug expression you see on the face of a Sarojini Nagar market  t-shirt seller when you don't buy a tee, claiming its too expensive and then come back, red-faced and perspiring, after two hours of rootling through a gazillion stalls and say sheepishly, 'woh t-shirt phir se dikhana, bhaiya.' 

When you've gone to a Delhi college, and spent hours rolling your eyes at friends who insist on shopping in Sarojini Nagar, that line is everything. And it's lines like that make me go back to her books, and make me have the parents buy them as soon as they release and send through whatever relatives are visiting whatever city I'm in.

But because her books are so rooted in Delhi, and in a certain part of Delhi, a lot of what the Ladies Finger post says is true. There's classism, and racism, and social boundaries are very clearly drawn, never to be crossed, except when absolutely necessary, and in the most ridiculous ways.

From what I can tell from the acknowledgements in each book, all of Anuja Chauhan's books have been from worlds she knows. The Zoya Factor was from her time in advertising, Battle for Bittora was from her mother-in-law's life in politics, and Those Pricey Thakur Girls, I suppose, was from growing up in Delhi in the 80s. She writes about worlds she knows. She writes about the Delhi she knows. And the Delhi she knows is a little like the Delhi I know, and a lot like the Delhi in her books - classist, racist, and very, very conscious of status.

I'm not good at parsing books and movies for every piece of social injustice, though. Also I'm frivolous. So I ignore those pieces of her books. Also, I mean, it's chick lit. Why read chick lit - even by an author whose best pages definitely come from interactions with friends and family rather the lead romantic couple in her books - if you're going to complain about the "find a guy and all will be well" theme in them?

But. There is something about Anuja Chauhan's books that annoy me tremendously. And it is the fact that she writes her lead female characters as utter twits and ninnies. Zoya wasn't a complete idiot, but was remarkably naive and susceptible to the Great Misunderstanding that is a compulsory part of every romance novel. Jinni, while showing the occasional flashes of brilliance like when she was offered money to drop out of the race, was completely clueless most of the time and definitely written as someone who would always need Zain's wise counsel to see the right way forward. And then there was Debjani Thakur, who made me want to tear my hair out. Yes, you're a molly coddled pricey Thakur girl from Hailey Road, but for Pete's sake, apply yourself a little, wouldja? And read the news a bit if you're trying to be a newsreader?

And that's why I liked The House that BJ Built. Because Bonu Singh may be doing things out of misplaced loyalty to not-so-nice parents, etc., but she wasn't a complete twit, y'know? Okay, yes, a lot of how ballsy she is may have been more told to us rather than actually shown, but she's probably the only Chauhan lead girl who wasn't written like a complete pushover who's easily manipulated. I mean, alright, Ashok Chacha tried and all, but she said no in the end, didn't she? There were logical explanations for every action she took, even if some of those explanations were rooted in Great Misunderstandings.

There's a lot to roll your eyes at in this book. The time gap, for example, did not add up. And the Trings were not living in the Annexe thirty years ago, because Chacha and Chachi moved in there while Hailey Court was being built. The Asharfi storyline made me want to rub my eyes, reread certain pages because I wasn't sure if what I thought had just happened had actually happened, and then made me want to punch someone. Also what is with Bonu not having any friends other than the Trings? Zoya had Monita, Jinni had Rumi, but all the Thakur girls, come to think of it, seem to be largely friendless.

But if you're picking your battles, and ranking her books simply by the intelligence levels demonstrated by the lead female character, this book does well. Now please excuse me while I go text a friend and ask her to return my copy of The Zoya Factor so I can reread it and decide if Nikhil Khoda still trumps a more intelligent female lead, and therefore if that book still trumps The House that BJ Built. Although first-book nostalgia tends to play a strong factor for me - it's why Arabella is still one of my favourite Heyers. Okbye.

Of books and their readers

I don't often post comments on other blogs (which is no reason for you not to. ahem.), but a twitter friend (is that the correct term?) recently wrote this lovely piece, and I was prompted to. And I did, and while writing it I thought I wanted to come back to what I was writing and do a longer piece of my own on this topic at some point, but the comment seems to have disappeared altogether and I'm not quite sure what happened, so I suppose the longer piece about this is coming sooner than expected.

I'm not much of a reader, truth be told. I used to be. When I was 16, I had a lovely three months of nothing to do and spent them reading all the more traditional classics that my library had. Soon after, however, I discovered Mills & Boons and how they didn't require any thinking. And that was the end of that. While I have now moved on from them to a select few romance authors I like to think are better, the number of really good books in any other genre I've read in the years since is a pitifully short list. And then of course, the internetz happened, and so much of my reading is just online these days - blogs, articles, and whatnot.

However, even though I don't read that much, I love books. I always have, so even though I have the Kindle app on my phone full of a whole bunch of nonsensical no-thinking-required type of books, there are times when you really do want to just curl up with a book in your hands. But more than that, it's old books, books owned by others before me, books handed down to me by others, books that have a history behind them that I love most.

Which is probably why most of the books I own are from Daryaganj, or College Street, or lending libraries that were selling off their stock, from the second-hand bookshop in the airport I flew in and out of for the two years of business school, or now from Half-Price Books. Very often they've been books I'd already read, bought simply because they're favourites I like to go back to frequently.

And all of this brings me to the point I had in mind when I started this post, of reading old books, and the notes in them. I'm not one to make notes in books while reading them. Well, except for textbooks, and they don't count as far as I'm concerned anyway. The only times I have made a note in a book if there was a line that jumped out me, but that's been rare too - I was, in my teens, far more likely to carefully copy it down in a notebook full of quotes I used to maintain; these days, though, I'm more likely to post it on tumblr or goodreads!

But the notes I love, and my favourite part of owning or even browsing through pre-owned books, is the inscriptions in them. Who owned them, where and when they were bought, who gifted them to whom, and why - I love glancing into books and seeing those notes that give these books a history. Running my fingers over those names or notes always makes me wonder, and smile.

Whenever I buy a book - new or old - the first thing I do is scribble my name, the date, and where I bought it on the first page. When someone gifts me a book - new or old - I hound them till they scribble a little note inside. It's how I've got the best letters from my family, truth be told. And I do the same if I'm gifting a book to someone.

Who knows, twenty or fifty years down the line, someone will pick up a Chalet School or Georgette Heyer book somewhere, and see my name scribbled in there, and wonder. And maybe smile?

Bein' home

In the last 26 days, I have...

...read:

• The Mine, by Arnab Ray
• The Hunger Games trilogy
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo

For someone who has read practically nothing in the last two-three years, this is quite impressive.

...watched:

• All four seasons of Coupling
• Both seasons of Sherlock
• Both seasons of Downton Abbey, though some episodes seem to be missing from what I have procured, and also I only realised halfway through the show that it is Downton and not Downtown.
• The season finales of Community, Castle and Once Upon a Time
• Ishaqzaade
• The Avengers
• The IPL final

...eaten:

• Gol gappas and samosas at the neighborhood shop
• Genuine Indian Chinese food at a dingy street stall
• Calamari at HRC, Delhi
• Mughlai paratha at Kingdom of Dreams - could've been better, could've been worse.
• Aloo ke parathas at Jhilmil Dhaba, Karnal - with dollops of Amul butter and dahi
• Mushroom achaar and apple juice from the NAFED (now called HPMC, I think) stall at Jabli 
• Butter Chicken at Giani da Dhaba, en route to Kasauli
• Thukpa and momos in a dingy little shop in Lower Mall, Kasauli
• Chai at Ross Common, Kasauli - a charming little hotel where we've stayed when I was a kid
• Chicken rolls at Badshaah, New Market
• Breakfast at Flury's
• Pretty awesome vegetarian sizzlers in Patna's only mall
• My favorite dishes at The Monk, Gurgaon
• The mother's aloo posto, luchi-mangsho, shepherd's pie, and dosas
• The father's salami sandwiches

...visited:

• Jabli, Kasauli, and Chandigarh. With the princess in tow, because the hotel we were staying in let us bring her along, and gave us a lovely little "studio cottage" which came with a tiny kitchen where we could make her khana too
• Kolkata, to meet the grandmother
• Patna, to visit the brother

I did NOT get to:

• have Bhutta
• visit the Inayat Khan dargah in Nizammuddin for Friday evening qawwalis, followed by a meal at Karim's
• go to Kake da Hotel
• have Shorshe-bata or any of mum's fish dishes
• eat at Big Chill
• go into Delhi as much as I would've liked, or visited CP, or Khan Market, or Dilli Haat
• go swimming

It's been a good month. Short, though.

From hibernation to the Half-Blood Prince

Well, at least Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince achieved something... it got me out of hibernation mode.

PVR was running "paid preview" shows of the movie tonight, a day before it officially releases in India. So of course, I went.

In a nutshell? Disappointing.

As people who have been following this blog since the beginning of time would know, I get all excited about the HP movies, but I also tend to go in for them with zero expectations. Now, the last two movies - Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix - managed to impress me somewhat, primarily thanks to their climax scenes, which were fairly well made.

The sixth movie, however, failed in two major areas: a, way too much importance and screen time given to the silly teen love angles, and it was done really stupidly, which meant that all through the movie, I was groaning in exasperation at regular intervals. (I mean, Ginny tying Harry's shoelaces? What the hell was that?) B, the climax scene was really, really, really lame. And the ending was plain dumb.

Of the two added scenes, the first one, which became the opening to the movie, was fairly cool, and you could see why it was added. I had an impact. The second one, however, was poorly done, pointless, and added nothing to the story.

The characters: Emma Watson continues to annoy me, and is really too pretty to be playing Hermione. Her hair's not even bushy! Ron's role was reduced dramatically for some odd reason, which was a pity I thought, and totally unnecessary. Yet again, not enough of the Weasley twins. Lupin's and Tonks' romance was mentioned rather dismissively. And Michael Gambon just doesn't work as Dumbledore. And I didn't see the point of showing Fenrir Greyback if they weren't going to build on it - almost all the incidents talking about him were cut out.

Voldemort's backstory was cut short ruthlessly - only the two critical scenes were shown. Dumbledore tells Harry nothing about what the horcruxes are likely to be, so God alone knows what they'll do in the next two movies.

I'm currently rereading the series - backwards. On the fifth book right now; four more to go!

Peekaboo

There was a girl I used to go to school with who I used to occasionally speak to because we were at the time both applying for colleges in the US. We weren't friends per se, and moved in very different circles, but our applications were grounds for conversation at the very least. She once mentioned to me she wanted to major in mathematics, and then become a professor in a university. She was quite bemused when I thought this was a very cool idea, because most apparently didn't think so.

Right after school, when I took the momentous decision to take up psychology, and follow the career path of becoming a psychologist/counsellor, I was advised against this by everyone. Literally. Family, friends, pretty much everyone who knew me told me I wasn't cut out for it and that I shouldn't do this.

Which is probably the reason I decided I will do this.

She, on the other hand, was the only person who didn’t say any such thing – mainly, I suspect, because she didn’t really know all that well. At the time, however, we had both laughed and talked about how we’ll both go down these paths and show the world we’re right.

However, as we all know, while studying for my counselling paper month before my final year exams, going through characteristics of a good counsellor made me realize that I really wasn’t cut out for it. It took me another two years to get convinced I should enter the field I am in right now, and I’m still not entirely show I know exactly what I do want in life.

She, I recently discovered, did major in math, but is now working in an investment firm somewhere.

Have you read the book Aparajito by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee?

No, you probably wouldn't have heard of this book. It's the sequel to Pather Panchali by the same author. I only know of these books because I love Satyajit Ray's Feluda stories, and while reading his biography I discovered how he had made a trilogy of movies based on these two books.

I read the book two years ago, and quite liked the book. It's a simple story, about a time none of us can probably relate to; after all, a scholarship of two rupees is, well, laughable these days.

But there are parts of it which I think I related to a great deal; particularly since these are things I've been wondering about some time now. When we're in school and college, many of us are full of dreams - to make it big in life, to change the world, to make a difference. Yet, how many of us actually see those dreams come true? We fall into the monotony of juggling our personal and professional lives, and that's all life becomes. Those dreams get buried somewhere, to be thoughts of rather wistfully on occasion, but buried away for the most part.

Apu, the protagonist of Aparajito, on the other hand, never gave up on these dreams. He never attained them, but the idealism of his adolescence never left him either.

How many of us can say that?

The Big Read: Another meme

And so we have another meme.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list on your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

WATCHING MOVIES DOES NOT COUNT!!!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (my first Austen. And my second favourite)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (it took me three years to finish this. Mainly because I took a 2 years and 10 months break in the middle)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (ugh. I have no idea why I did this to myself)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (well, duh.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Technically, I haven’t read the whole thing. I think I gave up halfway through the last chapter and watched the ending on Star Movies.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I didn’t like this one much. Loved the protagonist’s character though.)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Hated this one.)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (Well I started it. By the second chapter, I had no idea which princess was being referred to and therefore gave up. Hey, I was 16)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this separate from #33? And I have seen the movie though.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (the only Dickens I have ever been able to sit through)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (it’s still a favourite! :D)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (I can’t place this one. I haven’t read it, but why does it sound so familiar?)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (A complete and all-time favourite. Read it if you haven’t!)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Well, 29 out of 100 isn't bad. Well above the average really.

Anyone who reads this blog and has a blog, you're tagged. And if I don't know you read this blog, then tell me so we can compare our lists! :)

Only The Heart

I was going through some old emails, and came across this gem of a poem I had read and fallen in love with eight years ago.

Note from the person who had sent me this poem: This poem is from Only The Heart by a writer called Brian Caswell. It is about Vietnamese refugees during that war and the troubles that they had and their search for freedom. This poem is in the Prologue and it was written by a poet called Thahn Tran.

Only the river knows
How it feels to flow
How it feels
To roll and boil and tumble over falls.
And go
Where no man tells you
Where to walk
Where to stand
How to feel.
Only the river knows these things...
And only the prisoner knows
The dream of freedom on his tongue.
Sweet foretaste of the summer wind
That blows
Across the waving green of the young rice,
Across the unchained current of the distant stream
Between the singing strands
Of taut stretched barrier-wire,
To speak the future freely
In guarded whispers.
Only the prisoner knows these things...
But only the heart knows
The song that has no words
To limit harmony.
The song that scorns despair, and blends for melodies.
The crash of rolling breakers dying,
And the silence of sap,
Rising in the trunks of ancient trees,
And the laughter of the children,
And the crying,
And the savour/fear of unexploded dreams.
Only the heart knows these things.
Only the heart sings...

One Book Meme

One book you’re currently reading: The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

One book that changed your life: Princess by Jean P Sasson

One book you’d want on a deserted island: The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

One book you’ve read more than once: Prisoner of Zenda by Anhtony Hope

One book you’ve never been able to finish: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

One book that made you laugh: The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

One book that made you cry: Love Story by Erich Segal

One book you keep rereading: The Feluda series by Satyajit Ray

One book you’ve been meaning to read: The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini

One book you believe everyone should read: The Harry Potter series by J K Rowling!!!

Finally,

Grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the fifth sentence:

"Mr Markam's reply was lost to Prudence, but she had seen the scowl on his face when he had first perceived her." From The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer.

Ziggy, The Seeker, while i was idle..., antiglam superstar!, shrutanne, Absolutely Normal Chaos, aanchal, Vesper Lynd, and Runjoo: you are tagged. Thank you. 

Success

I came across this while looking for something else.

Success

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, it is an adaptation of a poem published in 1905 by Bessie Stanley.

I like.

A piece of history

A story I read in Chicken Soup for the College Soul has stayed with me over the years, and has been coming to mind fairly often in recent times.

A college professor asks his class how many of them knew/know their grandparents. Almost the entire class raised their hands. On being asked how many know anything about their great-grandparents, about half raised their hands. On being asked how many know anything about their great-great-grandparents, barely one or two raised their hands. The prof's point was about making something of your life; to leave a mark that will make people remember you when you're gone.

When I think of this story, I don't think about making your mark in life or anything like that. I think about my parents, and their parents, and all our ancestors before them. My life, my family, my friends... all the memories I share with them are so precious to me. Do you realise no one will ever know about them a hundred years down the lane?

My father occasionally tells me stories from his childhood; Mamma used to tell me about hers when I was a kid. When I hear them, I always feel like I'm hearing about some stranger I've never met.

One of my biggest regrets is I never got to meet my maternal grandfather; by all accounts, he was a wonderful person. I recently discovered my ancestors on my father's side of the family were village priests somewhere in Bengal, and that a distant branch of the family is still there.

There are so many aspects to our family, so many anecdotes, so many pieces of history that we never hear about, never get to know. What a pity.

The Queen's Necklace

Many years ago, I read the following passage in Mary Higgins Clark's book Moonlight Becomes You, and the lines have stayed with me ever since for some reason:

Manhattan stretched before him, ablaze with lights. He looked at the East River bridges and remembered that when he had told Maggie his office was on the forty-second floor of the World Trade Center, she had told him about the first time she had gone for a cocktail at Windows on the World atop the center. “It was just becoming dusk. The lights of the bridges went on, and then all the building and streetlights started glowing. It was like watching a highborn Victorian lady put on her jewelry—necklace, bracelets, rings, even a tiara.”

We were driving along Marine Drive in Mumbai today evening, and the lights both on the road we were approaching and across the harbour were absolutely brilliant to watch. My father mentioned how the road used to be called a "Queen's Necklace" because of the lights lining the road, which immediately brought back this passage to mind.

Meme #2: Page 123, Line 5

Meant to put this up weeks ago, but didn't quite get round to it. I can't believe I haven't blogged in nearly a month! It's like I'm going the Zig's way! ;)

Another meme doing the rounds of the blogosphere these days is this:

Open the nearest book to page 123, go down to the 5th sentence and type up the 3 following sentences. Then, pass the message along to other people you want to invite to contribute to the game.

So the only book around me right now is Udai Pareek's Training Instruments in HRD and OD (dear Lord, I sound like a nerd). The chapter is Relevant Conceptual Frameworks of Personal and Interpersonal Orientation, and the section is on Coercive Bases [of Power]. So here goes:

"For the same reason, charisma is included in coercive power, because a charismatic leader arouses strong emotions, and get things done. The leader does not treat his or her followers as mature people who are competent to make their own choices. Referent power is different, as we shall see in the next section."

Everyone who reads this and has a blog, you are tagged.

Meme #1: The GHM

Google Reader's blog search function helped me come across two posts with Georgette Heyer mentioned in them, and with a nice little meme.

Anyone who has ever fallen in love with her version of the GHM, I tag you. Write a post, it doesn't have to be very big, about that person – literary character, comic book hero, some guy in a movie, a random person you'll never meet – we’ll start a list that will probably never end.

The meme's interesting, but I honestly can't think of any one GHM who made me go weak at the knees. Books just never did that for me. I love Heyer's romances, yes, and I've been reading Mills & Boons for year now, but my issue with all the men in all these books has always been that they are just too... overbearing. And omniscient. Especially the Heyer-oes. Beaumaris, Alverstoke, Sylvester, Avon - you pick any of them, you'll see it. They just know everything. And I don't quite like that. By that logic though, my favourite Heyero would probably be Freddy Standen, who just stumbles through the whole book, finding unexpected depths to himself by sheer luck, and is just about the most endearing guy from any book. But know, he's not the GHM for me either.

But anyway, whoever you are, if you have or have had a GHM in your life, you are hereby tagged.

PS: After some more thought, I have realised that Jonathan Trager from Serendipity, followed very closely by Aditya Kashyap of Jab We Met, come extremely close to being my GHM. And Oliver Barrett IV from the only book which has ever made me cry (while every other movie makes me howl invariably) comes a very close third.

PS2: Dissertation due in just about a week; stress levels running high; no time whatsoever. You can therefore safely assume there will be frequent updates in the days to come.

Reading habits

Methinks the man speaketh sense.

I've never read Fear Street. I was into Sweet Valley at one point though - only Twins; tried one High, but by then I was already moving into my "Dear Lord, what's wrong with the world" mode anyway. I also read the Animorphs series; my brother and I made every effort to get as many of the 60-70 books there were in that damn series to understand what the devil was happening.

I was more into L.M. Alcott and L.M. Montgomery in my early teens; late teens brought Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer into my life. Then I came across M&Bs and my reading habits have gone for a six ever since. Sheesh.

This is my quickest and unplanned-est entry ever.

At last...

...an entry of decent length.

If you've taken a look at my profile, you'll have noticed in the Favourite Books section, there's a book called The Tenant of Wildfell hall mentioned. This book isn't a particularly magnificent book, but I do like this book.

When I was 16, I went through a phase where I read all those books I could lay my hands on which traditionally proclaimed as "classics". I would also like to point out at this time that this was probably the last time I ever read anything which could not be described as tripe, Harry Potter notwithstanding.

But I digress. So the books I devoured during this period particularly included almost every book by Jane Austen and L M Alcott. I also tried extremely hard to give the Bronte sisters a chance. I read Jane Eyre and found it utterly ridiculous. I also tried really really hard to read Wuthering Heights, especially since I had been hearing since God knows when what a simply brilliant romance this was and how Heathcliff was one of the greatest romantic heroes of all times. Hogwash I say. He was an idiot who didn't get what he wanted the way he wanted so decided to ruin not just his own life but the life of every other fool who had the misfortune who cross his path. And the other characters in the book were no better. I tried really really hard to get through this book, and managed it till the last chapter, when I finally gave up and saw the ending of the movie on Star Movies which happened to be showing it that day. The movie seemed equally ridiculous to me.

I never can remember which Bronte sister wrote which book, barring one. And that is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte. I admire this book simply because I think that for its time, this book was extremely brave. To talk about a woman who went against her family and married the man she loved, realized that she had made a mistake, tried hard to save her marriage, and then decided to leave her husband when she realized that her immoral husband was even trying to corrupt her young son must have shocked many people when it was first published in 1848.

Since time immemorial women have been putting up with bad marriages because they have no place to go, or their family wouldn't accept their decision, or because they think it's best for their children for the parents to stay together. (Personally, I've always felt that it could sometimes be worse for a child to have his/her parents separated or divorced rather than be exposed to that kind of constant animosity between them.) Even today, you hear of women putting up with their abusive or unfaithful husbands simply because "log kya kahenge?"

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an honest and brave book, in my extremely humble opinion. The protagonist, Helen Huntingdon was a very real person, one who made a mistake, owned up to it, and tried to put her life back together after things went wrong. Every character in that book was someone you could probably recognize in members of society even today.

Unfortunately, for that time, it was probably a bit too radical. Not surprising then, that Anne Bronte was the least popular author of the Bronte sisters. A little research tells me even Charlotte Bronte criticized Anne's choice of subject for her novel. Well of course she would, since psychotic fools were the kind of men she liked having as the heroes of her novel.

Incidentally, in case any hardcore fans of the other Bronte sisters ever come across this piece and faint with horror at the way I've referred to their novels, I have two things to say. One, I was 16 when I read them. Two, I hated Gone with the Wind too. There's more sacrilege for you. Hah.

PS: Ooh it's 7/7/7 today! :)

A cure for Hypochondriasis

According to Roald Dahl in his book Boy, to check if you have appendicitis, when experiencing acute pains, you need to press the left side of your abdomen where the appendix is located. If it's soft, all's well. If it's hard, however, it probably means you're in for a tough time.

The other day, however, a friend, getting increasingly exasperated with my moans and groans, showed me another trick. When experiencing the aforementioned acute pains, try lifting your right leg. If you can, all's well! Because if you really do have appendicitis, the pain would be so bad that you wouldn't be able to lift your leg!

Didja know that now?!?

Of course, for actual diagnosis, you could probably use one of these methods...!

Oh my!

As a Harry Potter fan (what, you didn't know?!?), it was but obvious that I wouldn't take kindly to this article. I'd say more, but the 197 comments already there seem to have to said it all.

I wonder if there were people who did agree with Ms. Reid but didn't dare say so considering the kind of reactions she's got?

PS: In case you're wondering, I'm working up to a couple of rants. Thank you.