Avatar

I watched Avatar yesterday. Was really impressed by the movie. Awesome animation! After coming home, I read the Wikipedia article on the movie, which quoted its director James Cameron as saying that though he had had the idea since the 90s, he could make the movie only now because the technology needed to catch up!

What appealed to me in this movie is also what makes me go in awe about good science fiction- the writer's imagination. It is a wondrous talent to be able to create a whole world just out of your own brain!

The movie is set on a distant moon Pandora which is inhabited by a humanoid species called the Na'vi. Now, while I admired the imagination of Cameron in thinking of concepts like the avatars, one-mind-in-two-bodies, each Na'vi having his own bird, hanging mountains etc, I also noticed that Pandora and the Na'vi were too much like the Earth and the humans respectively. The Na'vi have the same anatomy as the humans (the only exception being their tails. Someone in the movie calls them 'blue monkeys'), their blood is red too, they too feel the need to cover up their private parts, their females too have breasts and a softer voice, they too are organized into families and villages, in their society too, the chief is succeeded by his own son, and even, their women wear big ear studs! The ecosystem of Pandora also has trees and flowers and mountains and waterfalls and dogs and horses and hippos. The gravity too seems to be similar because the Na'vi do all the things in exactly the same manner as the humans on the earth.

Whereas that need not be the case at all. The life that inhabits a far-away planet or moon may be nothing more than microbes, but who may be so vicious that they make it impossible for humans to survive on their land. And that land itself may be so different that the human technology becomes redundant there.

What I am trying to say is that there is much greater scope for imagination for a story that is set in a faraway moon.

I saw Avatar as an allegory for imperialism and that is how I reacted to it. Because Pandora was so much like Earth, I saw it as Earth itself. And because the Na'vi were so much like humans and were victimised by invaders, I saw them as the indigenous populations of all non-European continents. The men in the movie then became the Imperialists and Colonists of Europe.

When we read history, we just read facts. A few days before, I was reading V S Naipaul's 'The loss of El Dorado', the central theme of which is ruthless colonialism. But when you watch a movie, you feel the pain of what happens.

From the beginning of the movie, our sympathies are with the innocent Na'vi. We fall in love with their idyllic life, their beautiful forests and their trusting hearts. So, when the marauding military planes burn their whole village, and blow up their sacred trees, we feel the horror of the act. I felt it. The Na'vi however do not get dispirited and mobilize support from other clans to fight the humans unitedly. The military commander of the humans reacts to this by launching a pre-emptive strike on them. These are the words he uses to inspire his men, "They are trying to terrorise us. But, we will fight terror with terror!" And all the men nod vigorously in support. How familiar that philosophy is to all of us today!

Because Avatar is a movie, the good-hearted Na'vi win in the end and send the evil humans back to where they came from and live happily ever after. They got so lucky only because it would have been terrible for us to see them getting so unfairly killed. In actual history, Colonialism won in every corner of the world and mercilessly wiped out the indigenous populations.

There's another thing. The ending is too optimistic. Just because the Na'vi have defeated the humans once doesn't mean the humans have given up their quest. The Na'vi have only won a battle. The war may just have begun. There is no reason why the humans would not attack them again. That perhaps is the realm of sequels.

"A language is a living thing. A patois born in soldiers’ camps not so long ago became Urdu, whose beauty ravishes our hearts. To love Urdu for her low origins and her high refinements, for her generous heart and her reckless love, is not to give up Punjabi. What a mean economy of love and belonging it must be, in which one love is always traded in for another, in which a heart is so small that it can only contain one jannat, one heaven. How fearsome must be this empty land where each new connection must inevitably mean the loss of all roots, all family, each song you may have ever sung in the past. Any ghazal-maker, any Mareez, I think, would flee from such a hellish wasteland. But my region, where Kalidas Gupta Raza continues to sing his passion for Urdu, is different. If Hindi is my mother-tongue, then English has been my father-tongue. I write in English, and I have forgotten nothing, and I have given up nothing."

Vikram Chandra, in the article 'The Cult of Authenticity'

The White Tiger

I liked this book. On my own scale of Greatness, I would call it 'Very Good.'

The book was widely talked about after the Booker Prize and so I knew that it was about Balram Halwai, who was a driver once and had murdered his master, writing his life story to the Chinese President. Now, I didn't really believe that somebody, Indian or otherwise, would write letters telling his story to the head of another country. I decided the writer had tried to be over-smart. Plus, I read some reviewer saying that the book was gimmicky. So, I had no desire at all to read it.

A few days ago I spotted it on the shelves of British Library. This time, I thought of giving it a try.

First, the pluses.

1. The book is written very lucidly. It is an engrossing book. My definition of 'engrossing' is that even when my eyes fall shut with sleep, I force them open to read some more. This book is like that.

2. The narrator is a driver. And Aravind Adiga has adapted the narrative language to the level of a driver very well. There is not one difficult word in the whole book, because the driver obviously cannot know such words. The language, the way of speaking, is totally believable.

3. The way the driver tells us his story too is believable. He is speaking into a tape recorder. No, he is chatting with the invisible Chinese Premier and letting the tape recorder record it. Now, it usually happens that while speaking, we leap between topics quite easily. We may have started telling one thing, but in-between, we remembered something else and started talking about that instead, and only after some time do we realize that we have got off the track from our original topic, and so come back to it. But if we were to convey all that information through writing, we would not allow ourselves to digress that way. We would first finish one topic neatly, and only then move on to the next. So, the way a person would tell us something orally is different from the way the same person would tell us the same story in writing.

It is an achievement of Aravind that the driver genuinely seems to be talking. The book seems to be just a (grammatically edited) transcript of the driver's talk.

4. I liked how the driver boasts to us of his smartness and intelligence- he really believes that he is very smart- but reading further down, we can see for ourselves how naive and ordinary he really is. Isn't this true for us too? The others' view of us is often quite different from our own grand misconceptions about ourselves.

5. The story of the driver's poverty is absolutely true. While reading the book, this thought had come to me again and again that, "Yes! This is how it is! He's an honest writer!"

6. The characters too are very well drawn. Though, I cannot believe that the Balram's granny would have been as mercenary as he and her letters to him make her out to be. I particularly liked Balram's master Ashok's characterization. He thinks that he is a very genial and gentle master. His father and brother think the same and admonish him again and again for it. Balram thinks the same and loves him for it. But he, and we, slowly realize that Ashok too is no less cruel than masters usually are with their servants. True, he is very soft-spoken with Balram, never shouts at him, gives him good food to eat, increases his wages regularly. But- and it is only with time that Balram realizes this, and still later, that he begins to resent it- he is indifferent to Balram. His relationship with Balram is purely opportunistic. Balram is easily replaceable. He is no more than a human machine to him.

And that is how most masters are.

7. Balram Halwai never says 'he had sex with her'. He says 'he dipped his beak into her.' I found that euphemism cute.

Now, the minuses. The minus, in fact. It is the same thing that had kept me away from the book in the first place. The whole premise of Balram wanting to write to the Chinese Premier just does not seem believable enough. Balram is an entrepreneur. And not a naive one either. In fact, he has become a rather shrewd man towards the end. I cannot imagine such a man suddenly turn so innocent and ingenuous that he thinks of writing to Wen Jiabo to explain entrepreneurship to him and, in the process, tells his entire life story, even the fact that he is a murderer at large. I cannot imagine a real-life Balram Halwai doing that. The writer has forcibly made him do it.

Could Balram not have recorded his tapes directly for us instead of using the excuse of the Chinese Prez? The entire narration would have remained the same even then. Only it would have been much more believable, for me at least.

Nostalgia

I can never remember this song beyond its first two lines but I just love it. I often sing its two lines in a loop.

A bunch of my classmates, batchmates and seniors had gone to Rendezvous at IIT-D in 2004. Anika, Nandita and I hung out together. We had an exhilarating three days. I revelled in the freedom. We all slept on mattresses in a large, common hall in one of the IIT girls hostels. I love sleeping like that.Sleeping on a mattress on the floor has festive connotations for me. In my childhood, whenever there was a function at home, or at a relative's home, mattresses would be arranged on the floor of a room and we would all lie down, elders and children, talking till late in the night. Anyways, so we really enjoyed our days at Rendezvous. On the last day of the fest, we kept awake the whole night. We walked on the IIT roads, talking, laughing. I loved the idea of walking so freely at 10 in the night, and feeling not the slightest doubt about the safety of it. Then, we saw something wonderful.

A group of boys, all obviously IITians, were walking on the road as one horizontal line, the arms of each wrapped around his neighbours, dancing together and singing happy, happy songs in loud unison. The song that they were singing at that moment was 'Shirdi waale Saai baba'. Since then, I've loved this song. It is associated with those anonymous guys celebrating the success of Rendezvous. A desire was born in me, to sing like that some day, to sing in wild abandon, in the middle of the night, not caring for the world, just singing and dancing to vent out the exuberance in my heart. I am smiling even as I write this. Really, that is an image I cherish.

Nostalgia- it's such a funny thing, isn't it? It means nothing. It is not real at all. Yet, it is so real. Since yesterday, the theme of nostalgia has been coming up again and again.

Simran's house is at a 10-minute walk from mine. She is one of my best friends from college. Someone who, I say, reflects me. There is a market right behind her street. During college, I've made innumerable to-and-fro trips from her house to the market. She was the topper of our class. I always kept running about for the Magboard, and was quite careless with my notes etc. When the sessionals or the semester exams stared right into my face, I would run to Simran with my half-baked notes and get all the deficient notes photocopied. With time, I realized how foolish that was. So many times, I would find that in the bulk of the material-to-be-photocopied, I had got those notes xeroxed which I had already. So, I told my friends to not get any notes photocopied for me henceforth during the session. It was easier to get them all in one go from Simran in the end.

Whenever I go to that market, I usually take the road in front of her house, 'her' road. Yesterday too I did and saw her Kinetic standing outside her house. For a moment, I could have imagined that I was still in college and I only had to ring her bell and she would come out. "Aslam!" I smiled. We had named her Kinetic 'Aslam', Kaminee's Activa was 'Zeenat', Kanchan's I don't remember and mine, I think wasn't named. I stopped there, gazed at 'Aslam' for a moment, clicked a pic of it, and called up Simran in Australia. "Guess where I am standing right now?" I laughed.

I had thought then, of writing this post on Nostalgia. Silly sentimentality, isn't it?




Later, I tried to remember about how the vehicle had become 'Aslam' but drew a blank. Soon after I returned from the market I went to Jassu's house. Jassu and I met Swedha at Stu C. We had a leisurely time under the white or the orange lights of the Stu C, the roads, the University market and then, the UIET parking. The old UIET, I mean. In the last semester of my engineering, our college had shifted to a grander building. But, for me, UIET remains the beautiful building I spent seven semesters in. We were all feeling so good. The silly sentimentality was at play again.

It was with their group that I had realized my 'Shirdi waale Sai Baba' dream. In early 2006, our college fest Goonj was going on. I was with my seniors' group, of which Jassu and Swedha are a part. We were late for the rock show. So, we stopped at the Stu C, bifurcated ourselves and played Dumb Charades for hours, till the last light went out. I vaguely remembered yesterday that Kaila had stood on a bench and had tried to flap imaginary wings, desperately trying to make us guess his movie but we were all helpless with laughter. Swedha vaguely remembered VJ's turn when he pointed frantically at the Stu C and tried to enact houses made of bricks. After shuffling out of the Stu C, all of us had walked down a footpath, I had suggested that we play Antakshri aloud and the others had readily agreed. That night, I had walked on the roads of PU, singing songs with my friends, caring not a bit about the world.

I go to the University every now and then. I do not feel sentimental about it. But sometimes, I do. Especially, if I am with a friend who is a part of fond memories.

Today morning, I was back to UIET again. It was the center for the TISS entrance exam. My seat was in the hall which used to be our Biotech lab. I was happy to be there, I liked looking out of the window, onto the PU stadium looking lush green in the bright sunlight. After the paper, I walked for sometime on the terrace. This was where we all used to stand, I thought about a spot. That was where we used to sit studying before the sessionals and the vivas, I thought about another. I was happy to be there. Yet, this was a subtle happiness. 'Happiness' is probably too strong a word; it would be more apt to say that I was pleased to be there. Pleased, that's all. All the while, I was fully conscious that the building was mine no longer. I did not regret that the least bit. I smiled as my imagination conjured a scene- I am being offered the chance to relive my college life, and my eyes pop out in shock and I say, "No! Thank you! I do not have the energy to do it all again!"

The past is the past. Firmly behind. Nothing more than vague memories that bring pleasure.

Aha! As I wrote '...that bring pleasure,' I remembered another thought that I had recorded a few days back. The thought was that memory is so malleable. We can see what we want to see and forget that other things, which do not fit the story we want, ever happened. I, as I am today, am the end-product of all the experiences of my life so far. But, do I remember those experiences? No, not many, and even those that I do remember, I remember them the way I want to, not the way they really were. I know the end-product, I know the broad things that happened, and I can script the story the way I want. "I turned out this way because this thing happened to me." "This characteristic of mine is because of that thing," so on and so forth. In the beginning of this post, when I had written about 'Shirdi waale Saai Baba', I had asked myself whether the IIT Rendezvous was indeed the first time I had heard that song. I thought for a moment but could not remember any previous memory. So, I decided that yes, it was the first time I had heard of the song. You see my point? Such a definite statement made on the basis of such an arbitrary memory. The fact that I cannot remember something is no guarantee that it did not actually happen. And equally, the fact that I can remember something is no guarantee that it actually happened.

Ever since childhood, I have had this notion that my life is a novel in progress and one day, when I am at the end of the life, I will compile all the chapters and a book will be ready. A narrative voice always keeps talking in my mind. It is as if a writer is writing down every moment of my life on the book of my brain and he speaks out each word that he writes. What I am realizing is that the words written on the brain are evanescent. The brain can simply forget.

That is why, I think no autobiographical tale is truly autobiographical. Mine certainly won't be, if I set to write it today. I will try to be fully honest but my memory will limit my honesty. I won't remember everything, and my imagination will quietly fill in the gaps. I will not even realize that it is not my memory, but my imagination, that is speaking.

This is also why, I think, that Nostalgia always seems so golden. The present is a hard fact, a reality. It is unalterable. The past is a fiction. We can take the events that make the past, throw spotlight on some, leave out others and weave any story about ourselves that we like. The only condition is that that story should offer a plausible link to the person that we are today. But, on second thoughts, even that is not necessary. Because, it is only the people who were there with me in my past and are still with me who will be able to object that what I say about my past is not what actually happened. But, I think, that if I insisted that the story was true, they would get doubtful about their memories and finally shrug their shoulders and accept my version. "After all, she would remember about herself better than we do," they would think. The truth is that I do not remember much about myself. My friends don't remember much about me. I don't remember much about my friends. We vaguely remember a few of the countless things that we did together or talked about. We vaguely remember the overall story. The fine details are for the imagination to conjure and fill up. And, nobody will be able to dispute anybody's version of those fine details.

Nostalgia is really a funny, stupid thing. It is my constant companion. I am always getting nostalgic about one thing or the other and feeling good about it. When I was in Bangalore, I had written a poem titled 'Nostalgia.' The road between the Infosys main campus and my office building used to remind me of the road behind UIET and that lingering image had inspired that poem. A month back, I imagined that I was back in Bangalore, travelling in a Volvo over the Silkboard bridge, then passing the Singasandra bus stop on the Hosur Road and finally getting off at the E-City bus stop. I find that the crowds on the stop are still the same. I walk down to my office, past it, on that road, feeling so good to be back again, then I walk back to the green building of my office, and call my friends. I watch them come down the stairs, get their bags checked...etc. When I was actually in Bangalore, yes, I enjoyed it, but at the back of the mind, a reel of restless thoughts would always keep droning about which I've already blogged enough. My mind was certainly not as unclouded as it appeared to be in that nostalgic vision which left me, predictably, feeling good and missing Bangalore.

Really, I have the bad habit of telling 'once upon a time...' fairy tales about my life.

Physical feats!

I was randomly searching for ways to make walking more fun or to set for some higher goal in my walking routine. My current best is 13.33 minutes per mile, that is, 9000 steps per hour.

I came upon Racewalking. The current Olympic record in racewalking for women is 20 km in 1 hr 25 min. That is about 17,650 steps per minute! My eyes just popped out at that figure.

There was more to come.

I came across 'Centurions.' These are the guys who have done a 100 miles in less than 24 hours. 100 miles means about 200,000 steps in 24 hours. My usual fast walking speed is 8500 steps per hour. If I were to attempt the 100 miler today, I would have to keep walking at my fast speed for 24 hours non-stop! The people who do that are racewalkers. They walk at speeds much higher than mine.

These mind-boggling statistics told me how much farther I can go with my body. I am inspired.

Piano Stairs

Why taaya and chaacha?

Mother's sister is maasi. Mother's brother, maama. Father's sister is bua. But father's brother? He could be chaacha or taaya. I found it interesting to note that father's brother is the only relationship in which the age-based heirarchy matters. This becomes even more curious when we consider that the father himself uses only one word- bhaai- for all his brothers. He has to use the adjective vadda/bada and chhota in order to tell whether a particular brother is elder to or younger than him. Why then do his children use the distinct words for his elder and younger brothers?

On Activism

"We're so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fuckin' planet? . . . And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin' great. It's been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn't goin' anywhere, folks. We are! We're goin' away. Pack your shit, we're goin' away. And we won't leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we'll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake."
— George Carlin

A Mag full of stories

I grew up on a regular diet of children's magazines- Champak, Chandamama, Nandan, Nanhe Samrat, Pankhariyaan etc. After eighth or so, I read 'Suman Saurabh' religiously. When I grew up further, the magazines dried up. The only youth mag that I knew of in my college was JAM. And, it was not available in Chandigarh.

The previous generations of Indian writers had 'The Illustrated Weekly of India.' This magazine published Indian fiction in English. Now, there is no such magazine of repute! Except, The Little Magazine. This is how this magazine is described in its website:

"TLM is South Asia's only professionally produced independent print magazine devoted to essays, fiction, poetry, art and criticism. It is also the only publication to offer full-length novellas and film and drama scripts, complete with camera and stage directions."

Our family has subscribed to Punjabi Tribune since decades. This newspaper, like all all Punjabi newspapers, publishes stories and short stories once a week, usually on Sundays. But, English newspapers never publish fiction.

The Hindi women's magazines like Sarita, Vanita etc. carry stories but English magazines do not.

England has had a tradition of family magazines and literary magazines which serialized novels and published short stories. Most of the most famous writers of Europe started their careers from these publications.Charles Dickens published many of his novels in his own magazine-'Household Words', which was a weekly 'magazine for the whole family.' It contained fiction and discussions on family-related matters and also on the outside world. This is how Dickens described his goal:

“ We aspire to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among the Household thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring to innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time. ”
—-Charles Dickens

I am curious to know if any one of you too have observed the lack of fiction in English magazines and newspapers. And, if you have ever wished there was some place which was dedicated to presenting English fiction for the masses in India, an adult-version of 'Champak', so to say.

Pavittar Paapi

Nanak Singh is one of the most famous and respected names of Punjabi literature. His novels were bestsellers when he wrote them (from the 40s to his death in 1971) and they are bestsellers still. Since childhood, I had been aware that his Pavitar Paapi and Chitta Lahu were remarkable novels. So,now when I decided to read him, I first picked up Pavittar Paapi.

I finished the book in 1 day. It is a short novel of 168 pages and is written very tightly. No superfluous words or ramblings, just the story. While you are reading it, you are totally in its grip.

The protagonist of the novel is Kedar. He is twenty-one year old and has just passed his B.A. (a big thing in those days) when his mother passes away. His father died long ago. In his grief, he leaves his home and just wanders off. He is near Rawalpindi (this tale is set in the pre-independence, undivided Punjab) when his last penny is exhausted.

He tries to find work the whole day but cannot and so has to sleep on the pavement with hunger clawing his stomach. The next morning, he again searches the market for a job. He goes to a watchmaker and asks him if he has any use for a B.A. or a watchmaker. He is both. The shop owner, a heavy sardar, gives him watches to repair. He does them excellently. Impressed, the sardar hires him on the spot. Kedar asks him for some advance to buy his food. The sardar tells him to wait till the man he replaces, comes to the shop and hands him all the important documents.

Panna Lal comes in a little while. He is a middle aged father of four, who once used to be very rich, but is now forced to feed his family with this job of a mere thirty-five rupees a month. Sardar tells him that he need not report to work again. Panna Lal is stupefied. He does as directed, bows before the sardar and comes out.

After some hours, a little boy hands over a letter to Kedar. It is from Panna Lal. In it, Panna Lal has cursed him for stealing his job. "You have done a paap. Now, you will be responsible for my family's starvation. You will be responsible for my death." Kedar is stunned. (So was I. I found it remarkable that Panna Lal did not bear any grudges to the master whom he had served so loyally and who had still thrown him out so unceremoniously. Is this the conditioning of a capitalist system?)

Kedar runs out on his hungry stomach, searches for Panna Lal everywhere but cannot find him. After hours, he returns to the shop.

In the evening, a young girl of sixteen, Veena and a younger boy, Basant, come to the shop, looking for Panna Lal, their father. Kedar is lying on a cot outside the shop. He gives them whatever explanation comes to his mind. He tells them that the sardar had to send their father to Bombay on an urgent business and that he will work in their father's stead till then. He asks them where they live and promises to visit their mother in the morning. The relieved children go back.

He goes to Maaya, Panna Lal's wife the next morning. She believes his story. She is much impressed by his gentle manner and education and offers to find a room for him in the same street. He readily agrees.

From then on, he becomes the son of the family. Maaya actually starts calling him her son, and he too calls her Beji like her own children. The children too become very fond of him.

Months pass by. He keeps inventing justifications for Panna Lal's failure to come back. His pay is much higher than Panna Lal's. He however keeps only a very small portion of it to himself and gives the rest to Maaya, telling her that it was Panna Lal's salary.

Kedar doesn't realize when he falls in love with Veena, who is very naughty and frank with him and calls him 'Bhraa ji' (elder brother) all the time. At one level, he recognizes that letting himself feel those feelings will be a betrayal of Maaya's trust. At another, he can see nothing, feel nothing, but Veena. His inner torment starts showing on his health. Veena is very concerned and tries to look after him. He avoids her. When she persists, he even shouts very rudely at her. With tears in her eyes, she retreats.

Later, Kedar is so overcome by remorse, and by his passion, that he can hold himself no longer. He walks over from his terrace to Veena's where she lies sleeping on a cot. He wakes her up, takes her to a quiet place and very awkwardly, tells her the truth.

Veena is flustered. She has been betrothed to someone since her childhood. She has never seen her fiance, has only heard about him, but still loves the idea of him and is looking forward to her marriage. She has never seen Kedar as anyone but a brother. She hates Kedar now, for poisoning the sweet, innocent affection that there was between them. Her whole being is repulsed by even the idea of marrying Kedar. Yet, she also worries that Kedar may die if she doesn't say 'yes.' She doesn't want her dearest Bhraa ji to die!

After a few days, they come face to face. Kedar notices that she was much worried by his absence and that now, she is talking to him without the word Bhraa ji. Veena notices that Kedar is not meeting her eye. Finally, Kedar insists on her calling him Bhraa ji. He apologises for his confession, cutting Veena in mid-sentence just as she starts talking about their marriage.

Kedar now avoids Veena totally, busies himself in helping Maaya make the arrangements for Veena's wedding and even sells his ancestral house to meet the expenses. Veena grows more and more anxious about him, even suggests that they run away but he declines.

Veena gets married. Kedar leaves the street soon after. He come to a new city, establishes his own watchmaking business, and regularly remits most of his earnings to Maaya. He no longer bothers about himself, about his looks or his health. He works maniacally the whole day, surviving on just cigarettes and black tea, which keeps getting stronger with time.

One day, a middle-aged man comes looking for him. He is Panna Lal. After sending Kedar the letter which accused him of being a paapi, he had tried to commit suicide but could not. He had then gone off to Haridwar but even two years of meditation could not pacify his mind, so he had returned, expecting to find his house in ruins and his children dead from hunger, but had been astounded to see them doing so well. He apologises to Kedar for the letter and insists that he go back with him.

Kedar is reluctant but feels the pull of Maaya's motherly love. Then, Panna Lal breaks the news. Veena is dead. She never could be happy at her in-laws, she loved only Kedar and fell ill and returned to her parents, and in the delirium of fever, told her mother everything. "How Maaya repented!" Panna Lal says. "If she had got even a hint, she would have gladly married you two. What could have been better! Now, she wants you to marry Vaani's younger sister."

Kedar is stunned. He refuses to go. He dies that night.

In this novel, I was disgusted by Panna Lal's character. What a weak man!

Kedar on the other hand is portrayed as an ideal man. Someone cast in the mould of maryada purshottam Ram.

The complex love story is handled well. One new technique that I learned through this novel was that of 'The other side Updates.' The narrator first tells us the story from one character's point of view. He shows us his or her reaction and what he did following that scene etc. Then, he goes back in time, and replays the same event from the other character's point of view.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. Plus, it made me feel proud to see the words of my mother tongue come together to make something so good.


P.S.: I hope that with practice, I learn to write succinct reviews. My apologies for the way-too-long post :-).

On the Subject

Write only about that which is absolutely essential to your soul. Life is short, so live by your own lights. Vikram Seth

A good forward

Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio

"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written.
My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.

8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.

12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.

35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

42. The best is yet to come...

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.

45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."