If you've known me long enough I might have at some point talked about my biggest dream of making a movie. A movie that moves anyone who sees it. A sequence of visuals, dreamscapes, sounds and stories melded into artistic perfection. I come across many such movies and am awed by the vision and perfection of each... Continue Reading →
Pre-Independent Bombay – Saadat Hasan Manto
If Manto was a photographer, his pictures would be high contrast, gritty and harshly lit. No staged lights with careful lighting and high heeled muses. His lens would always be trained towards the shadows and blurs that bring vitality to a picture. Pixelated freezes that don't run after definition, but moments, slurring vignettes of human emotions. Manto's life is as colorful... Continue Reading →
Aavarana: How To Read Propaganda
Motion Sick on Terra Firma I have acute motion sickness. An unfortunate condition but a good reminder of one of my many fallibilities every time I travel on bouncy vehicles. It starts innocuously enough. I would be checking messages on my phone and a slight feeling of queasiness would rise from the back of my throat. Nausea spreads... Continue Reading →
The Inheritance of Loss
On any day if you happen to pass by the Chennai US Consulate road, you will see a human centipede whole made of file clutching expectant human parts. Choose a cool day lest you fry in this endeavor to appreciate the travails faced by Indians to visit the holy land of the USA. This is the... Continue Reading →
Malgudi Days – R K Narayan
"I do not know who R K Narayan is" said no Indian worth her salt. He evokes a distinct feeling of nostalgia among anyone who reads him. The fictional town of Malgudi with its tigers, dogs, lanes, the river Sarayu amidst rolling hills is a setting that is simple, vague and perennially caught in time. The... Continue Reading →
The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
After a really tedious read of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, I admit I was a little hesitant to pick up Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize winner (Roy's book dimmed my view of the Booker Prize's standard) The White Tiger. I was blown away. Breezed away? Because I breezed through the book in just... Continue Reading →
The God of Small Things – A Second Review
In my first review of The God of Small Things, I dismissed the book as unworthy of a Booker Prize. I was harsh in the review because I felt the book was not good. While I still stick to it, I wanted to address the content of the book, which while done to death, and is... Continue Reading →
The God of Small Things – Arundati Roy
Ayemenam, Kerala and the Booker Prize Roy's book The God of Small Things (TGOST) catapulted her to international fame. A book that won her the Booker prize and which had everyone raving, one which drew comparisons with Salman Rushdie's Mighnight's Children. It was an expose on the Malayali Syrian Christian family and of the oppressive happenings of a family,... Continue Reading →
Do Knowledge and Power Rest Easy
"When I look back I saw my mother, a hunch backed figure in tattered clothes, hugging my ugly sister. She was the most beautiful baby for us, but when I saw her with the sense of fairness my mother instilled in us, I had to reluctantly agree with my father's belief that my sister was... Continue Reading →