The three mistakes of my life by Chetan Bhagat

After my last Chetan Bhagat read (2 States – The story of my marriage), I had sworn off his books for sometime. Okay, sworn off buying them inspite of not being as heavily priced as some of the other non-authors. Quite coincidentally, I got an e-copy of the 3 mistakes of my life last week.

A thin plot around the true story of a state coming of age, the trademark masala mix of love, hate, religion, girls, egos, ambitions and Chetan has managed to produce 150 pages of it.Sometimes I wonder if many authors are languishing in us without being published, as we fail to see the obvious in making a best seller.

Post reading this, I am sure this and the next is not the last we will see of him. The business mind in him has realized it is not tough writing half baked storylines, mish mashing it with whatever is the flavour of the season (maybe swine flu or terrorism this time) to have a reasonably good seller of a book in his hands.

No wonder, he “gave up” working to write.

In awe,
Me

Chetan Bhagat’s latest – 2 States(The story of my marriage)

Read this over a 4 hour journey. I have now begun to wonder if he writes books as a teaser to buy himself movie deals. It was a complete Hindi/Tamil movie flick, maybe as the author himself points out, Ek Duje Ke Liye with a different ending. There was too much stereotyping, and as filmmakers do these days, has put a disclaimer that the story is real. It sure adds curiosity value to the book as he is one handsome author(inspite of a receding hairline). He also apologises and conveniently excuses himself if the sensibilities of any community is hurt because of the way he has portrayed them.As a (female)reader I could feel a definite positive tilt towards the male ego and his views. Ananya’s (the female lead in the plot) views are not elaborated as much as that of Krish’s, as it is a narrative from Krish’s point of view. What were the reactions of Ananya’s relatives when the marriage was being arranged, or does he mean to say that they have no views besides academics and on the Hindu.

All said and done, the fact remains that he has survived 4 books, is able to convert each of them to a movie, keep his family life private, and quit a boring desk job. Given the Punjabi generalizations he has made, this is over achievement that should be rightfully honoured by some Government (!), or maybe he will soon become an MP to be able to say no to these awards. (For those of you who missed the last jibe. go read Shashi Tharoor and his tweets)

Family Matters by Rohington Mistry

Read this book a while ago. It is quite an engaging family drama, engaging because the happenings are so pedestrian. The voluminous book captures quite well the varied hues of family emotion, that ever so ethereal family bonding, and the constant cribbing over money. It gets a little too boring somewhere halfway due to the unending misery, and how life revolves around just one character in the plot. But then isn’t real life by itself a glorification of how man overcomes misery. I don’t think I will pick up the book again for a second read, however I liked the ease with which the author has moved from 1 chapter to another, and kept 2 sets of stories interwined, with all the human drama intact. It also introduced me to another set of interesting characters besides the Bengalis..the Parsis. Henceforth, I shall watch out for them.

Archie marries Veronica

There is news everywhere that Archie pops the question to Veronica (at Tate’s ??) instead of the goody gal Betty. There has been a huge outcry in the fan community about this. Are we all jumping the gun?

I would never like to see Archie comics end. Marrying Veronica will do precisely this …put an end to the delightful snobbery and romance here. So has the author a twist in store for us?

1.Like Veronica says no..being the haughty richie rich she can well afford to.
2.Like Archie pops the question and then in his characteristic manner does quite the opposite..of marrying Betty
3.Like Moose murdering Archie when he is made a pawn by Ronnie’s dad and converting the comic into a murder mystery, coz noone will suspect Moose of such cruelty
4.Like Veronica rejecting Archie and confessing that it was Reggie all along.

I can see Archie running behind Nancy Woods already. Please don’t call for Pack up as yet.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee

Quite some time since I came across such a splendid book. It is based on the same old Mahabharatha plot, but what makes it interesting is that it is through the eyes of Panchali. The ease with which the author moves from one plot to another in the epic, at the same time keeping the main character and the reader in synch is mind blowing. The ecstatic, curious, selfish, joyful, thoughtful, devil may care, devoted, philandering Draupadi is all brought out adeptly through various incidents. As much as the story narrated takes a negative tone against the protagonist, I could not help sympathize with her, and appreciate what she did when she did it. The end was so fitting, that I do not know whether all this generous praise should go to Vyasa who originally wrote the epic or this new age author who has effortlessly brought it out. The book is unputdownable until you have reached the last page, and cross checked the facts stated in the book on wikepedia or the elders in the house. Chitra has come out winners yet again. (i.e. after the mistress of spices)

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

I read this book some time ago, though it has been topping the reviewers list for a longer some time.It begins nicely, with the language in which it is written almost like that of a driver from a small town..the simplicity of the language adequately portrays the complexity of thoughts. However, there is no real story here. The Chinese connection seems a little too trite. The turn of events seem to be dealt with very simply,without much ado, that it makes it a little unbelievable. But I must admit I kept turning the pages in a feverish pace. Good one time read. It also gives a newbie some confidence to go and attempt writing a book!

The Hungry Tide by Amitava Ghosh

This was a beautiful read. Such books are rare these days and I was pleased with myself for picking up this one inspite of the prejudice I usually have against Bengali writers of the country. For I feel, they glorify nothing but their nothings of Bengal. Well, they might argue that Bengal is indeed great. Such matters in another post.

But this one, though revolved around the royal Bengal tiger of the Sunderbans, I liked the fiction woven into it. It was rich in the description of nature while at the same time displayed brevity without boring the common place reader too much and took the story forward at a reasonable pace. The plot is hardly anything worth writing about, yet I closed the last page of the book feeling really good about the read. The language, flow of plot and the simple uncluttered few characters in the book are its wins for me.

Books – A nice compilation

Found the following on a blog. I was amazed at how many I have read, so I thought I shall post it here. For the rest in the list, 2009 has just begun!!

Ones in bold are the ones I have read already.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
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
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
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 Never Let me go – Kazuo Ishiguro
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
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
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
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
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
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

1 Re. less

One evening, as I was returning home from work, I bought this book for a pittance. It all started with a little game I was playing to beat the traffic stress. I was stuck up in this jam for over 15 mins, and the dull FM channels regurgitating the same ‘latest’ songs interspersed with tidbits of radio jockey’s life stories which I was hell bent on knowing, motivated me to try my luck with the vendors on the road.
First it was the channawala..5 bucks…for a cone..I counted 28 pieces of chana there..I will leave it to you to do the rest of the math. “As a math atheist, I should be excused from this”.
Then I checked out the flower bunches that was being sold…
100Rs for a bunch of red roses…
No, keep 20…
What madam, you wont get even a couple of roses for that price…
Ok, 25Rs…
Ok madam, for you, 60Rs for the bunch. ..
25Rs..take it or leave it…
Madam, please give me 50Rs, will be a blessing, the whole day I have not made any money..
30Rs is my last price…(at this point I realized I do not know what to do with a bunch, that too of red roses..yeah, yeah I am only used to receiving them )
Madam, 40…
No, 30 ,now don’t block the traffic, time to leave..
Madam, don’t see 10 bucks, take it for 40…
I said 30, now no further arguments (quick I want the green signal, I don’t want the roses)..
Ok Madam, last price 35Rs..
I don’t want it…
what Madam, you will not get it anywhere in the world for less than that..
I told u, I don’t want it..
Madam, I would rather not sell it to you at all (Me cursing the green light)…
then I move a 3 m ahead in the traffic, thanks to a bullock cart (the cart’s driver decided it was quicker to unharness the bullocks and take them one by one to the other end of the road than to let the bullocks haul the empty cart) which cleared an area of 10sq feet ahead of me(pssst… square feet prices in Mumbai are sky rocketing)
Another vendor effortlessly weaving himself in between the cars while balancing a 3 m high set of stacked books in his hand.
show me the last book that u have in your hand..he he..
Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen…
how much..
395Rs…
yeah, I know that is the price in Crosswords, what’s your price…
250Rs…
what’s your best price…
ok Madam, give me 175Rs…
how many pages does this book have…
What Madam, it is as good as the original…
75Rs (cursing myself as soon as I had uttered it, should have asked for a 50)..
ok, madam, give me 100…
and wait, I cant believe it, I bought it!!
It was another hour in the midst of mindless traffic, honking cabbies, rain-friendly potholes, and under bridges forever under construction, before I had a chance to lay my hands on the book.
The first page of dedications was alright. The second page was even better, I like the book already (more on that later)
And here comes the blow..the third page is missing..the fourth page has milder print…
Stop! I have had a long day already.

If God was a Banker

I am an avid reader of books/articles/insane stuff. The frequency is normally a good 200 pages every night before sleep. Of late, have become a real sloth even at this. But then, here are my two penny worth of comments. Promise more on this soon.

If God was a Banker by Ravi Subramaniam
I read this book. Period.