Randomly yours

Usually when I write or think of something, I have a single point of focus. One thing. One subject. But today I'm not going to talk of a single subject. Today I'm just going to go with the flow. Let loose the thoughts jostling in my head. 
Recently, very recently, ;like a few days ago I finished reading two new thrillers- The Woman in The Window By A.J. Finn and Lethal White by Robert Galbraith. I was asked to vote for both books by Goodreads but at that time I couldn't vote for either not having read any of them. But today I can cast my vote though honestly both books are poles apart, their authors having divergent styles. One thing they do have in common. Both books are written by authors who are using pseudonyms. A.J. Finn is the pseudonym for Daniel Mallory who is a book critic (courtesy Google) and Robert Galbraith everyone knows is the pseudonym for J.K. Rowling. And the secondly  both books are thrillers which is my favourite genre.  
So "The Woman In the Window" is a taut racy thriller, the style is terse, sparse, the plot reminiscent faintly of The Girl On The Train. And before you demand: How? Well, in the protagonist who is an alcoholic constantly emptying bottles of merlot to help her deal with her agoraphobia.(fear of open spaces and situations that cause panic). Doused with alcohol and medication she fancies she has witnessed a murder. I finished it in one day- it was that racy. As far as plots go, nothing original because I had guessed the culprit by the second page. Only thing I hadn't guessed was the cause of her agoraphobia.That was a total surprise. The novelty lies in the way Finn uses language- the way he describes a simple umbrella, or Dr. Anna or even the way sun goes down or rises. But he is economical with his words and succeeds in creating suspense in the tradition of thrillers. The references to black and white movies, Gaslight and other Alfred Hitchcock movies may have also tipped the scale in his favour. I'm an Alfred Hitchcock fan too. And black and white movies. I think suspense always looks better in black and white. 
Now "Lethal White" on the other hand is very different: the words are abundant, language classic. It is an enormous descriptive tome with quotations from Ibsen at the beginning of each chapter. Galbraith or Rowling has made every effort to raise the thriller to the level of erudite literature by sprinkling it liberally with French, Latin. She might have thought it would elevate it beyond the 'pop" novels of the riff-raff. The main plot which deals with an investigation into a blackmail of a politician by another has several subplots, one being the relationship between Strike and Robin, among others. Rowling has claimed that she has attempted to write a complex novel but the plot essentially is not complex; again the killer is predictable. But that maybe because I'm a die hard thriller fan and can guess the plot of any novel I read. (Anyway there are only ten possible plots in the world I was taught in my literature class.) Where she excels is in her portraiture- of Strike, Robin, Raphael, Izzy, Charlotte, Billy, Jimmy, Flick and the myriad characters who people her book, but she loses out on the tautness a good thriller should have. I found my attention wandering at times. For instance: The murder takes place only after more than half the novel is over; Robin lays her hands on a letter but doesn't open it till a paragraph later while Rowling takes the reader through a description of Thames. It is an exhaustive novel and I must say I prefer the televised version of her Strike novels. The serials are racier and more interesting than her novels because it does away with a lot of the descriptions which I feel detracts rather than adds. The thriller genre demands a terse delivery, fewer words, tighter suspense. So my vote goes to The Woman In the Window. If you haven't already read it, read it. It's good. 

And on a very very different note: A plea to all those who read this piece. Please start using compost bins at home. Because I pass mounds of biodegradable rubbish heaps every morning while the dumpsters near these piles remain empty. People prefer to fling their rubbish on the road rather than use the dumpsters provided. Instead of providing dumpsters why not dig composting pits in the ground since people do prefer to toss their rubbish on the road? I've bought a bin from Amazon and have successfully used the compost for my plants on two occasions. Just a small and very humble request towards making our environment cleaner and healthier. 
This year is at an end. The new one is around the corner. How about a new You? Read something new, wear something new, do something new. Even if it is just a small thing like buying a compost bin. Baby steps towards saving that gigantic thing we call our earth, our world. 

It happens only in India?

Hi there! Writing again after a long gap. Thoughts came; thoughts went. I didn't find anything worth writing about. Today is Janmashthami. Independence Day passed by weeks earlier. I've been thinking and thinking very seriously about being Indian and what it means. To me. Because I belong to a generation that is neither here nor there. I speak a language that belongs to another country, I wear clothes that are pretty much worn by the rest of the world. So what is it that makes me quintessentially Indian? I never anticipated that it would be so difficult. Not only do I speak in English most of the time interspersed with Bengali, I also think in the language like my mother observed. I've to keep searching for words in my mother tongue whereas it is so much easier to write and read in English. It ought to have been my second language but like many people of my generation and the succeeding generations it is not the case. I'm a bit of a mongrel as one of the characters in my stories observed. Rootlessness is typical of our generation irrespective of the country we belong to, but India itself has been subject to myriad influences -ruled by so many different invaders that to isolate anything purely Indian might not be possible anymore. There's the Mughal influence, the British, the Portugese(Goa), the French (Pondicherry)- the list is endless. So then let's just get down to it. What do I understand by being Indian?

1. Religion. We are a very religious country. Or we used to be. Lately, religion seems to be losing much of its hold unless it is to riot in the name of religion and fling mud at each other using it as an excuse. A roadside tree hacked to death sprouted new leaves along with a number of small shrines nestling at its base with red threads tied around its trunk and a horde of devotees flocking to it every week on Saturday near my house. India is probably the only place in the world where a stone can be worshipped with fervor- such is the power of belief here. Recently though it seems much in abeyance and the rape incidents have increased. From being the mecca of travellers all over world as a spiritual destination India has earned the honor of being the rape country( not only capital) in the world. A reason I find myself hanging my head in shame and finding it difficult to call myself an Indian. Children? Babies? No one it seems is exempt from predators. It is no longer the "golden India"(Jahan dal dal par sone ki chidiya karti hai basera) of my youth. No longer a country where women children,boys or anyone for that matter, is safe. 

2. Food. We are a very very food-centric nation. All our festivals and celebrations revolve around food. It might be true of other cultures and countries but India cannot be rivaled in the sheer diversity of our festivals and celebrations and the many dishes these celebrations merit. 

3. Mother. Yes. We Indians venerate our mothers. Make no mistake. Women are exploited here, much more than other countries. But the mother occupies a position of power in the household. It is a strange metamorphosis that happens and very interesting to watch. More so if she has spawned the male child. Then she speaks from a position of absolute power. The kitchen and the hearth is most often the center of the house. The mother may or may not be vocal, may or may not be an active decision maker but from behind the pallu the most illiterate mother wields an enormous influence.

4. Getting old is easier here. The enormous emphasis that other cultures have on sex and appearance is absent here. Now things are changing. Mummies are becoming yummier. But by and large you can blissfully slide into your "aunty-ness' and live happily with those tires around your waist once you advance in age. Sometimes even before. It is only in the pre- marriage stage that appearance plays an important part. Post marriage and  solid years into marriage you are free to expand. Not only your horizons but your waistline. But like I said things are changing and Indian women too are balking at their slide into aunty-ness. As for me I think this obsessive emphasis on appearance can be daunting at times. It is good to be comfortable with your wrinkles and paunch and incipient baldness. Only in India can an actor like Sanjeev Kumar be revered as a hero, paunch and all. 

5. Take it slow. This I think is the most irritating thing about being Indian. Punctuality is not our national character and nothing gets done on time. Dheere- Dheere (Slowly) everything happens. Oh so slowly. Shops open late. Work takes time. Court cases drag on for centuries. If you wish for speed you might as well be dead or on the way to it. Being Indian means having oodles and oodles of patience. Wait. Just wait. Then wait some more. If you are not dead or buried by then. ASAP has no meaning here.

6. Public conveniences and public property are always defaced, torn apart, vandalized. We go to DLF mall in Noida, a very posh mall by all accounts, and you can find seats missing back rests within a few months. Then escalators don't work. I strongly think we as public don't deserve the best facilities because we don't take care of the ones provided to us. 

7. Children. We don't push our young ones out of the nest when they turn eighteen. Living at home even when you are twenty five or thirty or beyond, is acceptable and not an oddity. Mothers may treat their children as babies even after their hair has turned grey. Fathers may freely offer advice and exert control over their children even when they are beyond the adult age. This is very Indian. 

Off hand these are the things I think are unique to being Indian. At least what makes me Indian. What about you? What do you think?   

Woe-man or Wo-Man?

Women can be roughly divided into two categories( pigeon-holing again) - Woe-men ie. those who love to suffer or live to suffer (god knows which) and wo-Men those who decide that the only way to outwit men is being being men and doing what they do. Right from the time of Mother India(movie) or much before that women believed firmly that their lot in life was to shed tears, "To Suffer". That was the only" ring" they had the right to wear. Suffering in silence was supposed to be the sign of strength. To provide them the moral compass required to steer their lives. A woman incapable of suffering was no woman at all.

 Tears was their weapon- to cajole, manipulate and swing things in their favor. Then came a time when women decided to change the scenario. If men could do it, so could they. Anything men did they did better. Climb mountains, fly planes, smoke, swear, cuss, drink, have indiscriminate sex. These are the wo-Men out to prove that they are in no way less than their male counterparts. The 2018 woman? She's an amalgamation of the two. Sometimes veering one way; sometimes another. Sometimes the victim who gets raped and brutalised. Sometimes the force that topples governments. But has she changed so much from what she was in the past? I was reading One Indian girl by Chetan Bhagat. Yes. I'm always late to the circus. And I was shocked by the so- called successful heroine. A Goldman Sachs VP with crippling self esteem issues she gets drawn into two affairs with two men, both equally unsuitable and her only worry is whether they want to marry her or not. Whether she is attractive enough or not. Her emotional dependency on them is pathetic. She cries buckets when her first boyfriend discards her. She is hurt because her  older boyfriend doesn't see her as a successful mother. For a super successful career woman she ticks all the boxes of the stereotypical woe- man. And though in the end she sends both men packing deciding to take off on a world tour she continues to look for approval of her third man- her arranged boyfriend/ ex-husband. Is that who the modern woman is? Is that who we are inside that so- called sophisticated successful exterior? Then all the education and empowerment has not wrought any change. We are right where we started. 

The right frame

Hi! I would start by wishing you all a Happy New Year except that the new year has come and gone, its tinsel brightness already dulling. But still here it is, Happy New Year! 

So I was on Linked In yesterday scrolling through idly when I chanced upon a post by someone( I'm sorry. Blame my failing memory for not remembering the name) in which he said (I think it was a he) how he had gone to great lengths and expense to procure a book but having read a few pages/ chapters he had abandoned it for another. He exhorted the others not to feel guilty if they did the same. That started a train of thought in my mind and led me to write this. 

Take a beautiful painting for instance. How much of its beauty is subtracted if it is not framed right? The painting in itself might be flawless but the wrong frame can make it hideous diminishing much of its beauty. Then it becomes ordinary. Just another piece of art. All of us speak right? All of us write. But how is it some sentences can mean so much that you quote  that speaker while others disappear into the vast cavern of "just words"? 

So many times I've opened a book, a fantastic book, a book that has garnered rave reviews and then abandoned it halfway because it just didn't strike the right note? Or to be blunt, was plain boring. That is not to say the book or writer is less for it. Sometimes I've read a book that no one has taken any note of and it has spoken to me in ways that books speak to readers.It is just that at that particular moment I wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate that book. Maybe I was too hassled and was looking for light relief. Or that book was all light relief, and I needed spiritual counselling. Or at least something that would add value to my life instead of being just a pot boiler. It is the frame that makes all the difference. ( Even if it's a person you're scrutinizing.)And the right frame can make and break every work of art - whether it is books, movies, or painting, or even music. 

So next time you abandon a book or think it's not good enough maybe you should grant the author some leeway. Perhaps you weren't in the right frame of mind when you read it. 

Perhaps going back to it in years months or days you might be able to appreciate it more. Then again you might not think it's worth it. That's for you to decide. 

I think if framed correctly, seen from the right perspective, everything has a beauty of its own. Even a common potboiler.