Author: manuscrypts

  • Deaf Heaven

    Pinki Virani

    I’m quite a fan of Pinki Virani’s earlier work – Once was Bombay, so there might be a bit of a bias here. 🙂

    ‘Deaf heaven’ is billed as her first work of fiction, but is perhaps as close to non-fiction as it can get. The characters are clearly based on the contemporary personalities – from movie stars to politicians, and the descriptions are such that a little knowledge can easily help you identify them – the ‘caterpillar -eyebrows’ actress to the leader of the saffron army, to the famous film star and his wannabe famous son and the lesbian maker of daily soaps. See? 🙂

    The narrator is the cleft lipped and recently dead Saraswati, librarian by profession and collector of facts. Over a weekend, with an eclipse that serves as a climax for the multiple narratives, she traces the lives of the characters, a mixture of the famous and the ordinary, connected to each other by varying degrees of separation.

    The book is a commentary on modern India and its mixture of contradictions, with representatives from different geographies, strata in life, age, and religion. Though primarily a woman’s perspective, the author manages to tackle the paradoxes of the emerging superpower – from female infanticide (and an ingenious way of communicating the unborn child’s gender – an illegal act), and tribal exploitation, to the mechanics of religion-politics, the effect of chemicals on vultures and the ‘death by railway track’ on Mumbai’s famed local trains, all interconnected, just like the characters.

    Though a preachy tone does dominate the last part of the book, it is definitely a must read, not just for the pertinent and fundamental questions the author makes us think about, but also for her razor sharp wit.

  • Glimpse into the future.. and the present

    Fans of Star Trek : The Next Generation would easily remember Geordi La Forge and his VISOR. For those not familiar, the VISOR is “a device used by the blind to artificially provide them with a sense of sight.” It does so by scanning a scene and transmitting it directly to the brain via optic nerves. Science fiction? Yes.

    But when I read about Google’s Augmented Reality glasses and the potential – from the glasses that could act as a guide for tourists at popular destinations to the more complex “consensual imaging among belief circles” for sharing ideas and to “overlay a trusted source’s view of a given scene on mine”, I wonder how far we really are from what would have been, until recently, tagged science fiction. In response to another related post shared on Google+, I commented, “I have this thought of the glasses capturing information even when the eyes are closed and the brain processing it by the time we’re awake.” I wonder if it is not far off when the ability of our natural sense organs will be negligible compared to the technology we create. No, we’re not getting into the augmented human debate or an eye vs camera one. 🙂

    I tweeted that I had expected Google to give me a view of parallel universes. (my alternate reality) 🙂 That’s probably still science fiction, until we really master time. But I did see something (awesome) on those lines too – The Quantum Parallelograph, a device that allows you to get a glimpse of your life in parallel universes.  Maybe there will indeed be a time, when a human species can make choices with all the data of not just its current reality, but alternate realities too. Would you really want it? Would the whimsical concept of an alternate reality make sense at all then?

    until next time, sight vs vision

  • 1, 2….34

    One of the characters in Preeta Samarasan’s “Evening is the whole day” asks, during a conversation, “Everyone is always so tired nowadays. I wish we could all be young forever, or whatever age we ourselves choose. What age would you be if you could choose..?“

    It made me think of what my answer would be. At first, I wondered if I would like to be older than what I am today – to sit back comfortably with the perspectives I have gained.  As the years pass by, and the memories accumulate, I seem to be viewing most phases of my life so far through a happy prism. Despite remembering a few specific instances that made me unhappy, and (paradoxically) being certain that I was probably frustrated/terrified/bitter on many occasions and would never want them to be repeated, I can now look back and smile at the overall scheme of things. Perhaps I am lucky or perhaps, this is the way it works for most of us.

    And yet, even happy memories, I have noticed, can evoke contrasting sentiments within me. When melancholy strikes, and I remember happy times, it’s a bit like what Alfred Tennyson wrote (in a context I have no idea of)

    “Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
    Tears from the depths of some devine despair 
    Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
    In looking on the happy autumn fields, 
    And thinking of the days that are no more.” 

    until next time, “I’ll spend my future living the past“

  • Marathon Baba

    Disclosure: Fingerprint! Publishing sent me the book for review.

    Girish Kohli hasn’t passed out of the IITs or IIMs, does not have a day job and cannot be found on Facebook or Twitter. He is also the author of the only book in the world based on a pair of unused running shoes. Just as the author has broken the template of the typical Indian author, his book also manages to be completely out of the regular trajectory of Indian fiction.

    There are indeed characters that one might encounter in other works, in fact, the author has pretty much used all the stereotypes that have been abused in Indian popular culture – the strict dad, the mother waiting for her son to return home, the first love who remains evergreen in memories, the corrupt cop, the spirituality cult, and so on, but it’s the sheer verve and trippy narration that makes this book totally unique. It even includes poetry, or at least rhyme.

    The tale puts a twist to the perspective people have towards running away from problems. The story is about a man who runs across the country for seven years, turns red (no, literally), starts an ashram and gets stuck in a plot (literally and figuratively) of his own making. The author takes routine mundane occurrences and objects and converts them into surreal text or throws them against bizarre yet believable props. (the shoes, the Naxalite kidnapping) The humour that lends sanity and insanity to the proceedings is also not on a single track – it moves from wordplay to satire (the City of Slums, Suryakant the Mega Star) to even campy on a couple of occasions. In fact the entire theme of the book seems to be irreverence. Just as you begin to wonder if you’re going to completely lose it, the author injects a dose of real explanation to the happenings. IMO, the best part of the book are the character descriptions. Characters include the shoes too.

    My advice would be to read the book at a single go. At 255 pages, it’s not really a marathon, but you have to keep running to be on the same page as the author. There is always a feeling that some subtext is slyly watching you turn the page. Not a run of the mill offering, this one will give your brains a run for their money. 😉

  • Curry Meen

    Curry Meen has been on our radar for quite a while, but considering that we live in Keramangala, with multiple Mallu food options, we had been ignoring it. Thanks to a sale at Bangalore Central and my excitement towards checking out the Bangalore Metro, we zoomed in on Curry Meen, which is close to the Indiranagar Metro stop. The restaurant is located on the Double Road between CMH Road and BDA complex, Indiranagar. A not-so-accurate map here. It’s actually after that 5th Main junction when going from CMH Road.

    Parking wouldn’t be very difficult. There’s space inside the compound, as well as options on the road outside. We saw an inactive Dosa Counter downstairs and some minimal seating on the ground floor, and proceeded to the first floor, which offered a decent view of the relatively uncrowded Double Road. On the way back, we also noticed that they had another room upstairs, where seating was available, but whose lights were switched off. 🙂 They’d probably open it only if required.

    The menu can be found here, and is a bit of a Malabar-Chinese collaboration. We were here for the Kerala food, so we focused solely on that. The Mussels were not available, so we marked our protest by ordering a Hot & Sour Chicken soup and then started the actual meal with a Jinsi Chicken Kebab (half) and a Malabar Fish Fry. The soup was a homage to the pepper trade from Malabar, and our eyes watered at this historical hat tip, and for other reasons. The Jinsi Chicken was an attempt at Pakodas, it seemed, and a failed one at that. Avoid! The (seer) fish was quite good with a spicy masala coating.

    For the main course, we asked for a plate of appam, a Malabar Paratha, a Fish Moilee and a Kozhi (chicken) curry. I’ve tasted several poor versions of the Fish Moilee, but this one was an outright disaster. The appams didn’t help either. The chicken curry was thankfully quite tasty, spicy and seemed like a relative of the varutharacha curry, but without the coconut. Figure that. The Chicken Biriyani was served with an egg (extra points for that) and was reasonably good.

    The staff didn’t seem to be from Kerala, but that didn’t hamper the experience much. They were quite prompt. All of the above cost us just over Rs.850. I think I’ll stick to our Koramangala favourites.

    CurryMeen, No:218, Double Road, 1st Stage, Indiranagar,  Ph:42283999