Mark Haddon, RK Narayan and Lavanya Sankaran...

These are the authors whose books I had dipped into recently and had a taste of their wares. Mark Haddon's "The curious nightime incident of the dog" was written from the perspective of an autistic child. As a story telling method, it was very striking, effective and poignant due to the detailed (miss the forest for the trees), non-emotional (almost like tunnel vision) nature of a typical autistic child. The actual narrative was sometimes tedious trudging along very slowly. I had to keep at it over a length of time, but, the end result was touching.

A fellow booklover friend of mine dropped it in my lap...I am referring to the "The Story of Nagaraj" by RK Narayan. In his typical style, RKN weaves a contemporary story of one Mr. Nagaraj who has all the qualities that a typical hero is not expected to have (lack of a sense of purpose, weak willed, diffident, low self esteem etc.) and this story is about how he deals (or actually does not) with certain emergencies of having to take care of his brother's wayward son etc. In the end, he remains as what he started out with...with a displacement of ZERO after 250+ pages of narrative.

Lavanya Sankaran's "The Red Carpet" is a series of 8 stories resulting from the confluence (or perhaps, collision) of old and the new generations. Though the story telling is quite good, I am not too keen on modern contemporary fiction. I feel as if I can see these stories all around me. These don't have the sense of surprise or newness for me.

Cheers till later.
Krishnaprasad

The 3 mistakes of my Life..

Well...not my life...it is Chetan Bhagat's! The namesake book that I had read (and tossed recently) is the third book (or mistake?) he has written. I have nothing against him. I picked up his books as I just wanted to finish those off my list. They are what I call "Throw-away fiction"...you just read and throw ..totally guilt free!

In fact, it is probably the best of his trilogy. Better plot and some ponderous real world themes like religion in politics, cricket mixed in with themes that perhaps grab the eyeballs of people one-third my age. It starts with a lot of promise, but, it fizzles out by the end perhaps due to sheer fatigue or due to a publisher breathing down his neck.

Language has gotten slightly better along with some traces of humour and some interesting turns of phrase.

I would rate it "A Good Attempt"
- Krishnaprasad

Which call do you want to take?

I was at a temple yesterday. It was amusing (and slightly unsettling) to see the forms templegoers take these days. There was one in jogging attire (if I may call it that!); there was another with ears plugged with ear buds of his cell phone and doing a circumabmulation (you never know when the call might come! or is he listening to the music of his soul?); there was another with a talking T shirt shouting "I might puke at anytime" (hence keep the distance!). There was another talking on the cell phone while praying in the front row (Lo! A new variant of Multi-tasking!).

It seems that the worshippers at the temple were not sure which call they wanted to take - a call from their favourite telemarketer or a call from God! It is their calling...They need to make the call on that one.

If only we could all learnt to do one thing at a time and do it well, the world will be an easier place to live in.

- Krishna Prasad

Words carry history in their bowels and colour our life

....and finally, we have a word for that 'wierd feeling' we have been feeling all along and could not pin it down let alone articulate!!

I could not agree more with Mr. Ammon Shea and Mr. W H Auden. Rifling through dictionaries, pausing often at interesting words, can be a pastime.

If you don't believe it, then, just read on...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7654511.stm

- Krishna Prasad

To Cross or Not to Cross?

It all depends on the mood I am in. I am either amused or exasperated watching people making the crossing of the busy road into a sport! I am talking about India and Bangalore specifically. My nephew refers to the city of Bangalore as the 51st state of USA. But, I am sure that he leaves out the roads from the scope of his definition.

There are three kinds of people among the pedestrians that Bangalore teems with.

There is one kind who cross the road in stages by crossing one vehicle at a time. The number of rows of vehicles is at least twice the designated number of lanes, if any. A good dose of negotiation and influencing skills are demonstrated by this lot who look pleadingly at the bus drivers for a quick pass while assuming the role of self-policing cops by showing the stop sign with their up turned hands when dealing with 4 wheelers. Understandably enough, when dealing with the lowly 2 wheelers, they just let a bit more of their animal instinct pierce through their docile exteriors by locking horns with the mopeds and their ilk while successfully keeping them in suspended animation.

The second kind are those that are in some kind of race with themselves. They seem to be in a sort of misplaced olympian spirit and seem bent on breaking their own records. Come what may, whatever the speed of the vehicles be, even if it means that they are crossing a highway meant for cars, all they are keen on is making that 80 or 100 feet dash and breaking into all gold medal grins in case they make it to the other side. These specimens come in all shapes and sizes and in singles or groups. In order to fully focus on the event at hand, they tend not to fritter away their time by looking at the left side or the right. Every second counts, you know. When these come in groups, the ones that make it (Gold medalers) look at those that are left behind (the Silver/broze medealers) in unstinted glee. Ah..The taste of success in any culture is the same to the lettered or the unlettered. These are some kind of mavericks and intrepid folks thirsting for adventure. "Who cares about life, there is rebirth anyway" seems to be the line of thinking they are wedded to!

And then, there are those that wait on one side of the road having fertile dreams of making it to the other side, but falling short in the gallantry department to do so.

A lot can be gleaned about a person and his personality style by merely watching him cross the road. Next time, you are looking for a candidate to fill a role in your home or business, just come out and watch how they cross the road.

Scarlet Letter and 5.someone

I had read two very contrasting books recently. Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and 5.someone by Chetan Bhagat. I knew Scarlet Letter was a classic. I had read somewhere recently that Classics are those that every one talks about but no one reads! Well, I have been into classics for the last 1 year. On a whim, I picked up Scarlet Letter.

Scarlet Letter is full of amazing prose that flows like a river in spate. It vividly depicts the two contrasting protagonists whose hearts are so entwined but are in writhing pain and unable to express. It was really a great reading surprise. Pearl (Hester's daughter) is literally a gleam of hope and cheer while Hester is as resolute as a rock!

OTOH, I picked up 5.someone from the neighbourhood library for easy travel reading. It is a pretty adventurous choice considering that I had thrown away 'One night @ call center' by the same author not wanting anyone else to suffer it in future! I must say that 5.someone is marginally better and reads like one of those orange tinged pot boilers you find on the sidewalks or in railway stations. To be fair, its fiction is reasonably well narrated holding the reader and the book in good grip. But, the language is lacklustre with little subtlety and everything too explicit leaving nothing to imagination. It feels as uncomfortable as being caught off-guard in rain on a cold day leaving readers/characters in complete discomfort. It is not as bad as his first book, but, it is not that great either. By Time magazine's book review benchmark, it is a mere 'SKIM'.

More on "Through the Looking Glass", "Tipping Point", "Huckleberry Finn" etc. later in a future post. Cheers!

Reflections - At our recent 25 year Reunion meeting at REC Trichy

August 2, 2008

I was not clued into the RECT 78-83 yahoo group forum until a few months ago. I just kept in touch (mostly, infrequent) with a handful of friends from those days. T Suresh, S. Muralidharan, Dinakaran, A.S. Ravishankar, R Krishnan, Toughie (AN Ravikumar), Gandhi (Subbu Vempati), Nipun, Blacks (Sridhar Ananthachari) to name a few.

When I got myself into the yahoo group, I was besieged with a flurry of emails with people talking profusely with each other and making a lot of connections with their long lost friends. The number of pairs of connections with 200 people in the batch quickly stacks up.

I was very enthusiastic about making it there and actually made it there for a day. Most of the morning was spent by wandering around the hotel and meeting and recognizing old faces. It was a lot of fun!

I met a few more friends over breakfast and travelled by bus (much like old times) to the campus. Though it seemed to have changed a lot due to our faded memories, perhaps, nothing much has changed at all. Bhelec, Amutham restaurant, dry and derelict roadside and the good old clock tower. We were greeted by a liveried band!

I offered to make a trip down the memory lane and speak a few thoughts that were busily buzzing in my mind since I started making preparations to attend the reunion. After the old Princi and the new Princi had their time on the stage and cooled down on amicable terms after their debate regarding REC's education philosophy and uniqueness, I was called upon the stage to speak on behalf of the batch.

What follows is a rough transcription from my memory:

"Friends, Families and Sirs,

I was not on Yahoo group of our batch till 3-4 months ago. Once I had signed up to it and caught up with the flurry of emails among many classmates, the names and faces of several people kept popping up in my head. I have been able to recognize about 60% of the people so far and I am still working on the rest of them!

As I look around this hall, there are a number of people wiser and greyer, bigger, better and richer. I am sure that we have all come to this stage over the last 25 years mostly due to our efforts and some luck of being at the right place at the right time.

But, if we look back at the eventful 5 years that we spent at REC before the 25 years which seemed to have quickly passed by, we accomplished success because of not only what we did in the 25 years but also what we learnt in those 5 years between 1978 - 1983. The 5 years were eventful and formative at a very critical juncture of our lives. I am not just referring to the Engineering education alone and the degree that readily gave us some status in life.

I thought I would talk about the things I had learned and what these 5 years meant to my life. I am sure that several of you will be able to relate to some of these and perhaps, have some more of your own.

I vividly remember many vigorous vocabulary sessions with friends exploring the histories of the words we had come across that day. I met here some of the most brilliant people who had come from interior parts of TN and the rest of India. To this day, several words come to me with very vivid stories.

If it were not for REC, I would not have been bitten by the reading bug. I came from nameless, brandless schools across A.P. I was not very exposed to reading. When I came to REC, I remember loving the big, well-stocked and peaceful library and spending many an evening there.

If it were not for REC, I would not have sensed my first taste of independence and being in charge, of myself. At the time, my family was about 36 hours and 3 trains/1 bus away from Trichy. Planning and doing that arduous journey was a lesson in itself. Making a home away from home, living with friends, for 5 long years and taking care of day-to-day life along with studies was a great lesson.

If it were not for REC, I would not have visited Tiruvayyaru situated on the musically fertile Cauvery belt. I still remember very clearly. A friend, KB Balachander, who is not present here at the moment, literally dragged me to Tiruvayyaru in January 1983. I was not very intersted in Carnatic music at all. I went there, partook the festivities, visited Tyagaraja's house and the shrine before which he composed numerous Kritis. It so happened, later, that I became a very passionate student of Carnatic Music. In retrospect, I knew that my visit to Tiruvayyaru was momentous. I never was able to go to Tiruvayyaru again for one reason or the other.

If it were not for REC, I would not have learnt Tamil. I don't know why, but, I fell in love with the language. I did not know a trace of Tamil before I came to Trichy. When I expressed a little interest, several friends of mine, Sankar (EEE), Kandasamy (Mech), Balasubramaniam (Chem) to name a few, were too eager to drill Tirukkural, Tiruppugal into me! Now, when I make my annual pilgrimage to Chennai for the music season in December, I mix in completely and act, feel like a local!

These are just a few of my recollections. I am sure you have several of your own. We are what we are due to our experiences. Every experience - small or big - has a lesson. Every mini lesson has a micro learning! We surely had our share over the last 30 years.

On behalf of all of you and myself, I would like to say 'Thanks' to the institution that has brought us this far."