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11月2日 Book Review - 'Almost Single"Almost Single. - The book almost takes off...
Great title
A sari clad leg swinging with a sneaker...hmmn interesting cover.
Theme - A single woman in urban India. Thought provoking.
Reviews - 'The mantra of all single women in India.'
'She is a craze'.
I picked up the book, thinking it would be a good read. Two chapters later, I sighed. An old-fashioned Mills & Boon, the book just refused to take off. When one is forced to read about a grown up woman dealing with issues about men in a teenage fashion- well...let's just say that I might as well watcha soap on the Disney channel. A superficial level of gut reaction with the supposedly pretty heroine going for a binge party, another single to listen to all her stupid pranks, and her sad about to be divorcee friend who just messed up her life. A reflection on how our urbane lives lack any depth and revolve around the social to-dos and parties. No need to think much. Cattiness personified, it reads like the diary of a socialite, who by the way, has to work for a living. Sigh! Halfway through, she bores us with all the details of how she waited on the royalty and served as a personal maid minus the western style uniform. The book resorts to cheap tricks at times, when she attempts crass humor about the fat boss's extra-marital acitivities. One small joke which sort of covers twenty odd pages. It gets worse, when she keeps trying to target the men. But she still couldn't marry him till she appears in a towel - in front of his boss and practically talks him into taking up the older proposal. The boss in the meantime stands through the specatacle before he finally excuses himself. Another tale of how to trap the eligible and rich bachelor? This by the way, reminds me of another lady I knew in the hostel business. She too is rumored to roam around in towels. Guests, beware! I just hope its not a part of their job description. Worse, the book was badly edited, with spelling errors, punctuation & goof-ups. Hey, did the publisher want to publish it? Or was she or he just another one of those contacts who owed her a favor?
Hmmn!
To be fair, the book almost takes off...she touches on some risque issues, but does not explore them. She almost there and then poof - nothing! 1月23日 Profanity or vulagarity or literature, is it?Have you read any literature, esp. of the Indian English genre or of the modern fiction genre, in recent time?And if you have, how often have you come across the 'f' word.Sprinkled liberally in most fiction, even that which is non- erotic, is the word ordained to offend our sensitivity.
Wasn't the 'f' word once slang, only used by the downtown louts! Wasn't this word a profanity, never to be uttered-nay never to be thought of-by the educated and the 'refined' or atleast the 'reading' public?
However, now it seems that most publishers have deemed this word to be particularly inoffensive and completely acceptable, not only to be published, but published in books which are palatable for all strata, particularly to those who are fond of literature.
I shudder to even call this literature - literature - which could be prescribed for intellectual pursuit or study.
As if profanity in the streets and other public places, is not enough, the publishers have now decided to make the reading public pay for it!
Sigh! Are there no writers who do not use sizzle and sensationalism to sell their books? Are there no publishers who do not ask the writer to 'spice' up the book, even compromising the plot and characters at times? Are there no editors who object to profanity at all?
Are there none?
Stand up for this.
 12月20日 On Reading.Have you read anything recently? By reading, I do not mean skimming through. I mean reading each and every word of the written piece before you. It means reading the pauses, the phrases, the sentences, the nuances and thus, the meaning of the piece.
It is a lot like reading a piece of verse. To appreciate poetry,you have to read it. Savour it. Digest it. Understand it. And maybe, live it for the brief while that you are reading it.
Read the beauty in a poem and you will know what I mean.
Today morning, I read one of Thomas Hardy's poems. After a decade perhaps. Thomas Hardy is not exactly known for his poetry,but he wrote some. And wrote them beautifully.
The poem I read today is called 'On Sturminster Foot-Bridge'. It's an 'onomatopeoic' piece with a beautiful combination of words.
Descriptive phrases like the 'slack stream's face' or the 'wind skims irritably'. The 'current clucks' and 'midnight moans'. So vivid and unusual, they are woven together to describe the weaving of a river past the house of his lady love perhaps.
As is obvious in the last two lines,and I quote,
"And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows
As a lattice gleam when midnight moans."
Read a poem today. Start with Wordsworth, if you have never read poetry before.
Most of literature is written by poets who could not write verse and wrote prose instead.The rest of literature is pure poetry.
Just like our life, which is nothing but poetry in motion.
12月18日 Eats, shoots and leaves makes sense too.Eats,shoots and leaves. Eats shoots and leaves. Both make sense. There really was no need for LynneTruss to delete the comma here. Had she looked at it from an environmental perspective,then the pandas might just do that. Except that the panda might use stones,pellets or spit perhaps. Infact, by itself, this could even apply to photographers. Eats, shoots and leaves. That is what most photograpers do, esp. on a shoot. But,yes, grammer has a context. You cannot restrucure at will,without understanding the context. And it is only when Lynne put this in a context, that her comma deletion made sense. Random restructuring just to prove that she knew her grammer would not have helped. The guru said,"Keep an open mind." Unless you listen actively, you will not grow. Listening can also be passive. Take it all in-like a sponge, except that the sponge is full of holes. Take it in like a sieve and you can retain the finer points and throw out the chaff.
5月22日 Harry Potter v/s Reality Fiction.Harry potter. No more Enid Blyton or Carolyn Keene or Alfred Hitchcock. This child wants the excitement of video games woven into words and in a form which his adults seem to approve of. Harry Potter opens for him a world so fantastic that he wished he belonged there instead. A world which sets his heart racing, his adrenalin pumping, satisfies his thirst for unbridled adventure and thrill. For once the geek is the hero and the nerd his apperentice. For once the fat boy and the smart girl wins. For once it's books over brawn. For once the street smart and the powerful are defeated. For once connections don't count. (Or perhaps they do. Harry Potter too had a connection. He had connections.) For once, he'd rather be the adventurous nerd than the bullying evil idiot. Perhaps the value system is on track again for him. Or is it all escapism? Does it just paint the picture of an utopia - Samuel Butler's erewhon - rather than the rough and tough playgrounds of the school and the pushes and joves of the football field? Something to be said about reality fiction for children here. Should they read about the poor kid sitting next to him in the class because he got there due to reservations? Or should they meet the street kids who work in zari factories and jewellery workshops? Or should he learn about the kid of divorced parents who tore the child into two as he had to judge on who was his better parent when he wanted both? Or should he be told about the kid who took to drinking beer at the age of 7 because his single parent father was a pervert and would spend on beer rather than on milk? Is reality fiction for children correct in this day and age rather than expensive Potter's fantasy which some kids can read only in the school library (if the school allows it and affords to keep it) while he can book it even before the release? Should kids learn about how the less privileged children live? Or should there be a healthy mixture of both? Surely, both children have a right to fantasy, to enjoy their childhood while they can. Surely, the school textbooks are full of reality fiction rather then Harry Potters - which really is the essence of why Harry potter is a succes. On the other hand the text books need to have reality fiction as well as Uncle Tom's Cabin which brings tears to every child's eye. Followed by the story of Nelson Mandela perhaps? A decision that one would hate to make. If the only purpose is to get the child to read and read some more, Harry Potter is the answer. However, if school books were a mixture of both, perhaps Harry Potter would not become so addictive. And finally is there anything which can be termed as 'reality fiction' or is it just a term that writers came up with to justify why they ventilated their frustrations into a children's story book. Because reality is not fiction. It is reality. |
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