First and foremost, if you do not know Cyrus Broacha and his brand of comedy, you may not enjoy the book as much as I did.
Anybody who grew up in the 90's in Mumbai (no this is not the beginning of one of those chain mails and facebook notes) will relate to the first few pages of the book. It describes the childhood and college hood of the protagonists/best friends Karl and Kunal. The characters or rather caricatures are spot on, although they seem to be written by an attention deficit 10 year old and the story keeps jumping around and about and through some weird ramblings. But if you read with Cyrus in mind, all of it suddenly seems to make enough nonsense to be termed as hilarious. There were some paragraphs where i wanted to laugh out loud but had to do the 'jerking silent holding in laugh' (I was at Colombo airport and coming from Tamil Nadu, i didn't want to give them an excuse) with tears streaming down my face. I annoyed a whole lot of people and scared a lot more. The meanderings of Karl and Kunal through life and the changes in fortune and fame they go through are interspersed with real life characters and places with a comic twist, so we have Pearl Padamsee who 'discovers' the two. We have Prahlad Kakkar too. Some incidents, me thinks follows Cyrus's own life. Bollywood, politics and even the pleasure of digging noses is delved into :) There is a bit of Mumbai snobbishness and a whole lot of tongue in cheek - a little too much, come to think of it. The acknowledgments and the preface all fall under this category.
All in all for those who like "mokkai" jokes or pj's and 'groan out loud' jokes will enjoy the book. All the rest - stay away!
8/10
Monday, July 19, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
The Silent Raga -Ameen Merchant (2008)
Janaki Asgar, the name says it all. This story of an orthodox Tamil Brahmin, agraharam girl from Sripuram, marrying a Muslim Bollywood hero (yes, you read it right!) reads like the name of the book. A slow drawn tune carried through one of my favourite cities (chennai, in case your wondering). The novel follows a non linear narrative, going back and forth between the early life and the current one of our heroine.
Explanations are few and far between, the journey from Janaki - the housebound brahmin girl to Janaki Asgar, wife of bollywood actor and Veena exponent is drawn out, played with, tuned carefully and often left to the imagination. Each character is so well thought out, their lives so well plotted and revealed in tiny nuggets at a time, that you empathise even with the lowliest of them. From the lascivious Gayathri Chitti as the stepmotherly aunt to the grudge holding sister Mallika and even the gossip mongering neighbour, everyone is painted in tiny revealing strokes that ultimately leave you with a believable, whole and very human picture. And to make a very sexist comment, I had a hard time believing that a man had written this, and a non brahmin to boot. The smell, taste and atmosphere of an agraharam are so beautifully brought out, that at times I could catch a whiff of the fried potatoes and the crunch of dried vathals. For that itself, Ameen Merchant has been placed on my list of beautiful writers. This apart from the fact that he describes Chennai in a manner I wish, I had - Not with too much emotion, but with a fond familiarity and a feeling of home.
Now for the little flies in the pure Brahmin ointment. The non linear style sometimes seemed to hiccup along. Most of the actions of the current Janaki Asgar seemed rushed, not like the slow but interesting untangling of the young one. The novel is on the longer side, but a bit more could have been done at the end. The reader is left a little breathless and flustered, like a slow melody suddenly ending in a clash of cymbals and then silence.
6/10
Explanations are few and far between, the journey from Janaki - the housebound brahmin girl to Janaki Asgar, wife of bollywood actor and Veena exponent is drawn out, played with, tuned carefully and often left to the imagination. Each character is so well thought out, their lives so well plotted and revealed in tiny nuggets at a time, that you empathise even with the lowliest of them. From the lascivious Gayathri Chitti as the stepmotherly aunt to the grudge holding sister Mallika and even the gossip mongering neighbour, everyone is painted in tiny revealing strokes that ultimately leave you with a believable, whole and very human picture. And to make a very sexist comment, I had a hard time believing that a man had written this, and a non brahmin to boot. The smell, taste and atmosphere of an agraharam are so beautifully brought out, that at times I could catch a whiff of the fried potatoes and the crunch of dried vathals. For that itself, Ameen Merchant has been placed on my list of beautiful writers. This apart from the fact that he describes Chennai in a manner I wish, I had - Not with too much emotion, but with a fond familiarity and a feeling of home.
Now for the little flies in the pure Brahmin ointment. The non linear style sometimes seemed to hiccup along. Most of the actions of the current Janaki Asgar seemed rushed, not like the slow but interesting untangling of the young one. The novel is on the longer side, but a bit more could have been done at the end. The reader is left a little breathless and flustered, like a slow melody suddenly ending in a clash of cymbals and then silence.
6/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)