The inheritance of loss

Book by Kiran Desai

This book won the Man Booker prize for a reason.

Hard to point to one thing and say this is what the book is about. There isn’t a beginning and end because the story goes back and forth in time. Its hard to say where the book is set because it goes back and forth between places too. But a majority of the story is set in Kalimpong during the India-Nepal insurgency.

The book deals with a myriad of issues, colonial “heritage”, regionalism-nationalism, gender politics and much more. The best part is the author doesn’t try to propagandize or pit one side against the other. There is misery in the book, in the story, in the language that she uses … through and through … but not the kind of misery that photographers get awards for shooting. The kind of misery that is most personal to oneself. The book isn’t drama, its real life.

I think I should add some excerpts from the book to do justice to the book in the review. One has to read Kiran Desai to appreciate what experimenting with language usage is. Reminded me of Anita Desai time and again, she too has a very unique style to her writings.

Nice read. I’d recommend it.

The departed

Watch it!

Awesome fun, guaran-****in’-teed!

Miss my old team :-(

Vish and Raghav relocated to Sunnyvale, Bhasker visiting wife in London, Sameer moved to a different cube and Harish ill … felt really odd at work today!

I am sad.

Guess, change is the way of life.

Arabian Night

Play by SilverBlue Productions.

I guess, one needs to watch a bad play once in a while to be able to appreciate the good ones. This was one of those. It was awful. End of the play, I didn’t even know what the play was about.

It was my first play experience at Alliance Franchaise. I don’t think I will go back there. The stage and the seating, both are very bad. Rangashankara is great.

Para Sailing

I went para-sailing today. Its not too exciting, just alright. You stay in air only for a few seconds, maybe a minute. And you don’t go too high either. I went around 250ft up.

Details, in case anyone is interested …

Location: Some 12kms down NH4 from the suspension bridge in K.R.Puram. You will hit three petrol pumps, first one is Indian Oil, then HP and then Bharat Petroleum. Take the first left after Bharat Petroleum pump. And keep going along that road. That is where it happens.

Group: Nisarga.

Contact: Rajendra.

I heard that they arrange various other kinds of adventure sports too.

The flecked river …

“The flecked river
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing
Through many places, as if it stood still in one.”

“that, in the shadowless atmosphere,
The knowledge of things lay around but unperceived.”

“The vigor of glory, a glittering in the veins,
As things emerged and moved and were dissolved,

Either in distance, change or nothingness,
The visible tranformations of summer night,

An argentine abstraction approaching form
And suddenly denying itself away.”

- Wallace Stevens

ps: There is a reason I am posting this poem under Science.

Numbers

I was wondering how I would perceive this image if I didn’t have the knowledge of numbers. I always seem to arrive at numbers in some way or the other no matter where I start. Any inputs?

Oxford Murders

Book by Gullermo Martinez

Its a mathematical detective novel, so to say. There is nothing hugely mathematical in the story line itself, but because the novel is set in Oxford and the narrator is a mathematician, he ventures into a number of mathematical conjectures, theorems and, sometimes, into their philosophical connotation. It was okay, not too great.

Personally, I am not too fond of detective novels. One is left too much at the mercy of the author. The author is at liberty to hide important facts that are critical to the story line. The author can also send you on a wild goose chase at will. Not much is left open for interpretation, too much is controlled by the author. I am not very fond of such books. I like books where there is room for imagination.

Oxford Murders is surely not one of those.