Category: Books

  • Johnny Gone Down

    Karan Bajaj

    The good news is that Karan Bajaj moves away from Chetan Bhagat territory (which can’t be said of his earlier work ‘Keep Off the Grass’, though I found it better than Five Point Someone) and he’s not really among the ‘Rakhi Sawants of Indian literature‘ (if it is what I think it is), the bad news is that contrary to what he says, I thought he was more connected with/in KOTG, and therefore the work had more depth, as though he was sure of his footing.

    Having said that, he has made the canvas wider with this work, not just geographically, with a protagonist – Nikhil/Nick, who moves from MIT to Cambodia to Thailand to Rio to Minnesota to Delhi but also with the trades he picks up – from Buddhist monk to drug lord to an internet-boom millionaire, and therefore the experiences and people related to each theme.

    While this works in providing a racy script, it also means that I felt a superficiality in the way each theme was handled. The ‘Second Life’ styled virtual world, for example, while it typified the kind of services that were launched in the boom era, was way too easy. And that’s just it. Everything, from the beginning, whether a positive or negative, just fit in and flowed, too smoothly, just like Karan Bajaj himself describes Nikhil’s state when his life begins to settle back. But I think its still a good read and the pricing really helps. šŸ˜‰

    [Spoiler, relatively] I’d rather have had an unpredictable end in line with Nikhil’s life until then, but instead it turns philosophical. In fact, I thought KOTG’s ‘comfortable in own skin’ was better than the ‘highs-and-lows life better than even keeled, stable existence’. A better thrust on transience would’ve worked better for me.

    But like I said, unless you’ve been a Colombian drug lord, you’ll find the various karmayogi avatars in Nikhil’s life interesting enough for you to not regret picking it up. šŸ™‚

  • Abandon : A Romance

    Pico Iyer

    I’m quite a fan of Pico Iyer’s travelogues, so this was a book that had to be checked out. The protagonist is John Macmillan, an Oxford-educated Englishman, in California to study the work of the Sufi poet, Rumi, and complete his thesis under the guidance of his professor Sefadhi. On a trip to Damascus, he happens to meet a reclusive professor, who requests him to carry a package to California, to be handed over to a Kristina Jensen. While doing that, he happens to meet Camilla, Kristina’s sister, who, despite her flighty and fragile nature, makes inroads into his life. And then starts a journey that’s part a search for an Iranian manuscript, part an inward search for John, much like the sufis – “We are even mysterious to ourselves, they believe: a part of us going through the rituals of our daily life, while another part, a deeper part, cries out for whatever it is that can take us back. The stranger whose voice we recognize as our own.“, “..for the true Sufi, the looking is the key. Even if you don’t know what you’re looking for.“

    The word ‘Abandon’ too can be seen from different perspectives – from the Sufis’ mystical version of abandoning themselves to a higher power, John’s need to let go of his notions and caution, and Camilla’s seemingly unconscious way of living her life in abandon, even as she fears that John might her leave her because of it. To me, the novel by itself was a kind of ‘abandon’, just like John’s thesis in the book – as though the author worked on a structure for some part before, towards the end, he let the work chart its own course.

    I do think the book might have a lot of subtext that deals with Islam, its interpretations, and its relationships with the rest of the world, but I’m not really qualified to explore those aspects. Even otherwise, its a very good read, in which there seem to be layers hidden beneath each statement, waiting to be uncovered, just like the excellent poetry that is shared within.

  • Winter Moon

    Dean Koontz

    I was quite surprised that the book was published in 1994. I expected a much earlier date, judging by the work. Its not really bad, but it doesn’t have that gripping quality of Koontz’ later works, of which I’m a big fan. That’s when I got to know that this was first published as ‘Invasion’ in 1975 under the pseudonym Aaron Wolfe.

    The book initially follows two stories in parallel – Jack McGarvey, a cop, and his family in Los Angeles, and Eduardo Fernandez, Jack’s deceased partner’s father, who lives in a ranch in Montana.

    Jack is recuperating from an incident involving a drug-crazed Hollywood director, who opens fire on innocent people, in a service station. Jack ends up having to kill him, and lands himself in the hospital for several months.

    Meanwhile, at the ranch, Eduardo notices bizarre phenomena among the animals around, and realises that there is a mysterious alien force involved.

    Though the book does feature the Koontz trademarks – dog, single kid, quotes from the (then) non existent ‘The Book of Counted Sorrows’, it semmed to be more a Stephen King approach than the later works of Dean Koontz.

    Not really a bad read, but there are definitely better Koontz creations out there.

  • Chasing the Monk’s Shadow

    Mishi Saran

    There are some books that one wishes went on forever, for the vicarious experience offered is incredible. This is one of those. Long after the pages have been completed, the journey promises to stay in my mind.

    It is now exactly a decade since Mishi Saran started on her journey – to follow a monk who had himself made a journey of over 10000 miles, 14 centuries before her time. Xuanzang, who I last met in my history text from school, the monk with the neat backpack.

    The book hooked me right from the time the author described how she found a purpose – ā€œan Indian woman with a Chinese craze, a Chinese monk with an Indian obsession, we had the same schizophrenia, the monk and I. It seemed logical to take the same road.”

    The best journeys are those which traverse time and space in one stroke, and thatā€™s exactly what this book does. Though in many ways, it could be described as a travelogue too, that would be utterly unfair. It is very much a personal journey for the author, a search for her roots, and identity.

    As Mishi Saran travels across China and Central Asia, following Xuanzangā€™s path, her vivid prose blurs the boundaries that have been created in the modern era, and its easy to see the influence of ancient civilisations and regimes influence art, architecture, language, customs and thus life itself. And at the edges, where its not just cultures that collide, but religions too, as they are reshaped or recast in different moulds – Islam, Buddhism, Sufismā€¦

    The writing style forces one to make the journey with her, and I could see that there were actually three journeys unraveling simultaneously – the author, the monk, and the Buddha himself. All of them journeys with a purpose.

    And amidst all the eloquence, it has obviously been a journey that required grit and courage.. And luck, which many a time failed the author. From places where children going to school needed visas and permits, to the posturing of a few contemporary students of Buddhism, to the origins of words that are still used in common parlance, and characters which seem to leap out of history pages – Ashoka, Kanishka, Chandragupta, the pages hold in them, tangential journeys for the reader.

    The last part of the book, where the author gets to (almost) finally visit the territories crossed by Xuanzang in Afghanistan, is written a month before 9/11, and gives us a gripping account of Afghanistan under the Taliban, with glimpses of people who have perhaps yet to find peace. ā€œI believed him. It was hard not to believe a man when you were standing in front of his blown-up home and staring at the ruins of his life. Whatever the story was, this was his truth.ā€ Unlike fiction, one cannot console the self that the person and his story are imaginary. The last part of the journey does not add a lot with respect to the purpose of the book, but itā€™s a part that Iā€™m glad the author chose to add here.

    As a reader, I could relate to the authorā€™s words in the last page ā€œā€¦I understood less, not moreā€¦. I had acquired this sadnessā€, and that is what makes this book one of the best Iā€™ve read.

  • The Immortals of Meluha

    Amish

    The first of the Shiva trilogy. The book takes a historical view of Hindu mythology and looks at the Hindu God Shiva as a human who through this actions got elevated to the pedestal of Mahadev – the God of Gods. Set from 1900 BC onwards, it tracks Shiva’s journey from Mount Kailash in Tibet to the land of the Sapt Sindhu inhabited by the Meluhans, who see him as ‘Neelkanth’, the incarnation that will help them triumph over evil. ‘Evil’ to them are their neighbours, the people of ‘Swadeep’.

    The book is very fast paced and tells a good story. It also has a sprinkling of philosophy, especially towards the end that lends it some (relative) gravitas. Though the book shows no dearth of imagination in bringing a reality perspective to a lot of things we consider myth, what I felt it lacked was a certain finesse of prose, a factor that made it seem corny at regular intervals. But that won’t stop me from picking up the other two books, and that sense of intrigue is what makes the book a good read.