She Reads, She Writes

In the last few years, my reading habit has picked up considerably. No sooner do I devour one book that I pick up the next.

I am at my happiest when I am immersed in a book living the lives of the characters in them.

Thanks to goodreads, not only have I been reading a lot more, but also writing reviews for the books I have been reading.

Once long ago, I used to write a lot. On random topics. On things that affected me.

There was once a time, when I thought I would become a writer when I grew up. That was before I realized that I lacked sufficient talent, hard work and imagination to be one.

These days my writing ability has taken a deep dive down south. I seem to have lost my little imagination, the passion and the desire to write.

The only thing beyond the emails or PPTs at work that I write are these reviews of the books that I read.

Ergo, this blog.

What I talk about when I talk about running

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow !

I have never read a Murakami before. I have heard people rave about him, adore him, adorn their shelves with his books and wondered why.

There are three reasons why a person could pick this book up.

1. Love running and would like to read a book on it - The ones who know what you are talking about when you talk about Ra Ra muri.

2. Love reading Murakami

3. Love reading Raymond Chandler and ergo

The reason why I have never picked up a Murakami earlier is because every single person I have met who raves about Murakami has been one of those intellectual types who make me want to avoid one.

The reasons why I did pick it up was because in the last couple of years I have learnt to love to run, my secret desires to read a Murakami, the lovely title of the book and that it numbered not more than 170 pages.

Maybe a non fiction is not the best introduction to a Murakami,but, for me it was for all the reasons mentioned.

I love this book. It spoke to me at so many levels. Murakami is the person I am in small ways. Murakami is the person whom I have always longed to be - The runner, the writer, the confident, the dreamer.

Some of the gems or things that resounded with me that I found in the book on being

1. I am the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two everyday running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring.

2. Mick Jagger once boasted that "I'd rather be dead than still singing satisfaction as 45" But now he's 60 and still singing satisfaction. Can I laugh at Mick Jagger? No way. I just happen not to be a young rock singer. Nobody remembers what stupid things I might have said back then, so they're not able to wrote them back at me. That's the only difference

Some of the gems or things that resounded with me that I found in the book on running

1. "Does a runner at your level ever feel like you'd rather not run today, like you don't want to run and would rather just sleep in?"
He stared at me and in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, "Of course. All the time!"

2. On injuring a knee: Still I felt a bit uneasy. Had the dark shadow really disappeared? Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear?

3. Someday, if I have a gravestone and I'm and pick what's carved on it, I'd like it to say this: Writer (and runner)

At least he never walked.

The Complete Persepolis

We can only appreciate the power and beauty of freedom when we do not have it.

I read this book around 5 years ago and picked it up again last week and loved it a lot more than I did the first time around.

The repression, oppression, loss of dignity, the suffering that people are made to endure in the name of politics and religion is terrible. I hate to make such a statement, but I am glad I am not a Muslim woman or a man living in an Islamic Middle East country. A terribly racist statement.

The entire bit about how the intellectuals who actually revolted against the Shah being executed so that they could not be the real guardians of the revolution was disheartening...as was so much more. Satrapi was lucky to have liberal well off parents who brought her up to be free and had the economic freedom to give her a better life.

The part that reached out to me the most -

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself:

Are my trousers long enough?
Is my veil in place?
Can my makeup be seen?
Are they going to whip me?

No longer asks herself:

Where is my freedom of thought?
Where is my freedom of speech?
My life, is it livable?
What's going on in the political prisons?

behind the beautiful forevers

If there was ever a book that I could rate 10 stars of 5, this would be it.
I did not want to read it at first, because I thought it would be yet another foreigner with their western understanding of India or their lack of it offering a tale set in the Mumbai slums.

Instead I find this horrifying, heart breaking, non fiction set in the Annawadi slums teaching me a lot more than I ever did of heart or the lack of it behind poverty in India.

My father was a Tamil migrant himself to Mumbai in the 1970s given the lack of economic opportunities in the South back then. He had the fortune of education thankfully and brought us up in a lap of comfort, not luxury. He used to tell me stories of the harassment in Mumbai as the Marathis decried loss of jobs to the migrants. He spoke of needing to be circumspect back then.

When I read this book I understood it better and hurt at the apathy, corruption. abject poverty and disillusioning hope of living in a slum in Mumbai - the very slums I would look at every time I landed at Mumbai airport and thought - God! How dirty and cramped these are!

Researching this book and writing it from 2007 to 2011, Katherine Boo has done a brilliant job. She has written the unflinching truth of poverty, corruption, and the apathy towards human lives. To everyone who derides India for it - most countries face problems similar yet different as well. Maybe its the hopelessness of poverty, maybe its civil wars that tear at human lives in the name of religion, oil or diamonds. Maybe its in policemen gunning down civilians because of their colour. The truth is there is lot of injustice and hopelessness in every bit of the world. We need to discover our own humanity in it.

I loved this book. I could read it a million times. What I don't love is that it makes me question if there really is a god. How can there be?

The Siege: The Attack on the Taj

** spoiler alert ** This book is a horrifying true tale of what happened in Mumbai on that dreadful 26th of November,2008. The book told me what I already knew. The corruption, the bumbling bureaucracy, the ineptitude that besieges politics and governance. What this book does tell me what I did not know was in graphic detail of how it paralyzed Mumbai that night. Reading of how long it took for the Black Cats to reach and rescue the day, how the hotels ignored advice given, how India ignored the warnings of the naval attack, how US allowed a terrorist double agent to continue operating because of the information he passed in return,how politicians choose to wash over the entire episode was horrible. The simple acts of courage of the chefs of Taj,the marine guest, a doctor guest, the waiters at Taj and of the police force trapped inside are heartening. Disheartening is how media's soundbites and peoples' live updates to their friends and family on twitter/facebook/ photos/calls lead to not just the handlers' knowing what was happening and giving the feedback and further action plans to the terrorists but also the terrorists inside hearing where people were to gun them down. Terrible ...terrible.. terrible.. how cheap to us human life is.

While I praise the book for the detail it gets into, the book also appears quite biased. It sullies the characters of people who are too dead to defend it. It joins the bandwagon of blame and quotes people who may project the instances that happened the way they would like the world to see it.

On the whole, well written, reasonably well investigated account.

The Little World of Don Camillo

How many times will I re-read this without tiring of it? If I were stuck in a deserted island and allowed only a single book with me this would be it. The most beautiful collection of short stories with three principal characters; Don Camillo the priest, Peppone the communist mayor and God.

Last year, I found this book at Blossoms - A 1955 omnibus which had this along with Don Camillo's dilemma and
Don Camillo and the prodigal son. I was delighted as I had been hunting for Don Camillo for a year. Out of print, Out of editions, this book is the rarest of finds.

I had first read this in my school days - a tattered, yellowed with age book of my friend's grandfather. Reading this always also brings back the best of memories of the books she and I would share across her window sill. :) Childhood.... The best years and the loveliest reads...