Glob: Library

Screenplay of a Bollywood Blockbuster

What would be the essential ingredients of a modern day screenplay of a Bollywood blockbuster? A murder mystery with recursive double-crossing twists-and-turns set in the maximum city. A powerful and corrupt government officer with the split personality (aka chemical locha) of Gandhi enacting the scenes of Munnabhai part 2 version 2. A leading Bollywood actress in double role satiating your need for voyeurism into more than a pound of flesh of Mumbai high society (ala Madhur Bhandarkar). A tribal from the forgotten India navigating the class biases of a shallow and racist society. A rags-to-riches story of an average slumdweller with high aspirations and less-than-ethical, yet justifiable actions (ala Manmohan Desai). A rich-girl-poor-boy love affair between Mr. Rangeela and an innocent girl trying to free herself from the clutches and ironies of her affluent family. A criminal politician whose blind ambition justifies all means to the end, even if that means the murder of his bratty son engaged in a re-enactment of multiple high-profile cases that the media has over-covered in the last decade. A mid-Western American with a southern drawl caught in the chaos of a country where call centers, terrorism, xeno-sychophancy and underdeveloped infrastructure are an obvious reality. A fast-paced action-packed sequence leaving ample scope for songs in rains with a wet saree, in a disco with an entry requirement of low necklines, around trees with euphemistic flowers with euphemistic bees on it, with angry close-ups and high-bass anthem humming, with intense sarod and sarangi crescendos forcing a tear by brute force, and a secular all-inclusive dance number at the end when everyone lives happily ever after and karmic justice prevails. A story with vendetta, violence, variety, vainglory, venality and finally the big V, victory that a Bollywood story must have at the end. A resounding thunderous clap would buzz in your ears as you walk out of the cinema hall after consuming 1,000 deep-fried calories purchased at one rupee per calorie.

The only thing worse than anarchy is government

Review of the book Seducing Pain by Sumit Mullick (Image not available)

Sumit Mullick and George Orwell have many things in common, both were born in Bengal, both have fatalistic views of the establishment of their times, both served in the administrative and civil services before discovering themselves as writer. Orwell started his writing career as a reviewer, and his 1940 essay of Charles Dickens reflects his own personality within the review. "When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer." He goes on to say "...He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all  the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls." I cannot use better words to describe Sumit Mullick and therefore I plagiarize, with some discretion.

Metaphors and Metamorphoses

Story of a perennially happy damsel with magical charm transformed into a chronically depressed woman in an immobile state. Story of a hopelessly lovestruck husband transformed into an abjectly indifferent house mate. Story of Utopian arranged marriage charged with sensual exchanges transformed to twisted and sombre erotica featuring children, threesomes, animals and lesbians. This is a story of the metamorphoses of happy sweet-nothings to melodramatic tragedy.

Never judge a book by its cover. Judge it by its metaphors. The metaphors in the last song of dusk (the title itself) are original and inventive. They range from snappy wit to profound wisdom, yet never contrived. The character of Nandini is the richest source of humor and savoir faire.

Story of Stories

In this debut, Chandra seems to have bared all from his bag of tricks of creative writing, as if to put his stake in the ground and claim territory. This also reflects the many years spent by the young author in creating this novel. Although brilliantly original, it is hard not to notice the similarities with Borges and Rushdie. The basic structure of the book positions it as heresy and has international characters within a local context, ala Borges. The basic content of the book positions it as magic realism and is interwoven with characters and stories of India in the 17-19th century, ala Rushdie. However, in a direct comparison, the book lacks the brevity and lucidity of Borges' and the believability and intensity of Rushdie.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain is the story of an 18th century hero (Sanjay), now in the body of a typewriter-friendly monkey, narrating stories of several characters in his life. The story of Sanjay is knit together as heresy by these characters within the overarching story being told by the monkey. If you follow what's going on so far, you are just about prepared to pick up this book, because there are up to 4 levels of insets within the novel, versus a 2-level inset described above.

A Stream of (Enlightened) Consciousness

Much has been written about the unique writing style of Salman Rushdie and Midnight's Children. It is hip to like it and thus call oneself a literary, and not unusual to dislike it as an uninitiated reader who cannot possibly know what to expect a priori. For what it's worth, here is my attempt to characterize the style. The book is written as a "stream of consciousness", long long long sentences, side-by-side repetition of adjectives for emphasis (hint hint hint!), use of synonyms similes parellels without punctuation or separators (again for emphasis), revealing the plot's end-game in advance yet (or thus) engaging the reader in the path to getting there, repeated summaries each to make an overarching point than to simply recollect the story so far, admitted insecurity and intermittent defense of the story's believability, and did I mention rechristening of events and characters with metaphoric names. If you could read and follow the last sentence in one shot, you are ready to read and enjoy Midnight's Children. The story-telling is hallucinatory on the surface, but enlightened underneath; deliriously exaggerated on the surface, but scrupulously balanced underneath; grossly fatalistic on the surface, but hopelessly optimistic underneath; carelessly raw on the surface, but meticulous genius underneath.

Impressionism in prose

The eerieness and macabre of Dharma and Shanti (first and last stories in the book) are reminiscent of Saki, the great Hector Hugh Munro. The personality of the protagonist & narrator and how it reveals itself in the end are reminiscent of Yann Martel's classic Life of Pi. The subtle connection between all short stories and yet their aloofness from the theme are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. However, well before this review sounds like a ploy to put Vikram Chandra amongst the greats and this work amongst classics, I must resign that his casual and careless writing style sets it apart from any other. Who says you have to be out of the box to think out of the box. For someone who has formal training in creative writing and teaches it as a professor, Vikram Chandra's style is surprisingly original and open-ended.

A life-changing read!

Rohinton Mistry will pluck your heart out, then crush it till it stops dripping, then wring it dry, then stomp on it till it goes numb, and then put it right back where it came from. After all this, what will surprise you most is that it is still beating. If Shantaram was a book where survival, happiness and freedom prevailed after every adversity, A Fine Balance is its nemesis where pain, suffering and injustice prevail every step of the way, thus illustrating the infinite human capacity to endure them.

If you like to study people, read this book...

Gregory David Roberts' strongest characteristic is that he loves people. This book may be read as a 'true' story of the adventurous life of an international fugitive, of crime, of life in the slums, of real-life action/adventure, of the city of Bombay. This book may be read as a philosophy about war & violence, about love, about survival, about crime. This book may be read as a compilation of invaluable street wisdom. However, I think this book is best read as a story of people.

If you read the 900+ pages of this book with any other expectation, there would be sections where the book might lose you. However, as the story of human nature, it is immensely rewarding at every step of the way.

Catharsis for an NRI Bombayite

This book was tailor made for me and I took it very personally. As a teenager brought up with Hindu middle-class values in a business family of the Bombay sub-culture, and then an NRI ever since I woke up to find out I grew a brain; I still have an intimate connection with the city in my personal and professional lives. The book was exceptionally cathartic for me and it was easy to identify with its stories. I share much the same frustrations and longing for my Bombay (now Mumbai) as the author, and empathize with the author's passion about the subject.