Two Fates - a book review

I read about Blog Adda's book reviewing program on Binary's blog. Immediately, lots of bulbs went off in my head. Wheeeeeeeeeee - I can get free books to read! Signing up was the work of a moment. Within a week, I had received my first book: Two Fates by Judy Balan. Keeping my end of the deal, here is the review:

Two Fates follows the lives of Deepika Sundar, a Tamilian, and Rishab Khanna, a Punjabi, who, after a long courtship and two years marriage are now fed up with each other and want to get a divorce. However, their respective families, who were at hammer and tongs before their wedding have now become one happy family and Deepika and Rishab dread telling them about their separation plans. How they try to do it is what Two Fates is about.

In the first few chapters of the book, Deepika and Rishab are portrayed as two annoying individuals with few likeable qualities. Thus, it seemed like it made sense that they annoyed each other as well and wanted to divorce. But a few chapters on, I was not sure (like most of the other characters in the book), as to why exactly these two people wanted to get a divorce. They had been courting for five years prior to marriage and all of their current divorce-contributing factors would have been present back then too, in which case they probably would not have even agreed to get married in the first place. Or perhaps familiarity breeded contempt and all. Anyway, I decided the story needed some premise and this was it and I should leave it at that.

The story is generously populated with caricatures of Punjabi (and to some extent, Tamil) families. I have Punjabi friends and they do have other aspects to their characters than being a ultra-happy bunch of boisterous and loud people fond of eating. I guess this was for comedic relief but beyond a point, it got repetitive and I skipped a few pages with descriptions of how these Punjabis on Prozac manage to irritate Deepika and Rishab.

About a third of the way in, I began to think that perhaps this reviewing for free books was not such a great deal after all if I was going to be forced to complete reading books I rather would not have. However, the book picked up from then on. The characters had grown on me a bit  Though I could see the end from chapter 1 itself, I had become mildly interested in knowing how it got there.

In spite of the flimsy story line, the writing is pretty decent. Though I thought the prose was a little too wordy in the beginning, it sorted itself out in subsequent chapters. The language flowed smoothly making it an easy and quick (the book is only 200 pages long) read.

When I finally closed the book, it was with the feeling of contentment that comes from having done decent timepass. That would be my verdict for the book as well: decent timepass when you do not have anything better on hand to read.
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This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Going under

When I was told that I would need to undergo a minor medical procedure under the influence of general anesthesia, I almost started hyperventilating. As much as I hate doctor/hospital visits, I usually follow the resultant treatments without much fuss. But, this time round, I started panicking with a capital P.

I was not worried too much about the actual procedure. Instead, the alarm bells in my head had started clanging loudly the moment the words "general anesthesia" were mentioned. Years and years ago, I had heard a story of a neighbor who was administered general anasthesia for a very minor and common place operation and wound up never coming out of it. Since then, the words general anesthesia have always conjured horrific images in my head.

Yeah, so, I was less than enthused to hear I had to go under general anesthesia (GA). I tried wangling out of it by suggesting other options but finally had to recoincile myself to GA. On the bright side, if anything happened to me I would be too gone to be aware of it. On the other hand, I felt profoundly sorry for my family if anything did happen to me  (I can be morbid like that).

Two nights before the procedure saw me wide awake. For some reason I kept envisioning a scenario where I would be unable to move my body or open my eyes on the operating table but where I could hear all the people around me and had to fight the panic that image brought in. That lack of control over myself had me scared out of my wits.

It did not help that S casually mentioned that he was one of those people who did not take easily to GA. In fact, once he had counted all the way up to 35 before the anesthetist decided that the dosage was probably too less for him and decided to increase it (usually anesthetists ask you to start counting while they wait for the drug to take effect and people are usually out before they reach 10). What if something similar happened to me?

Anyhow, the day of the surgery arrived. After prep and waiting, I was wheeled into the operation theatre (OT). Darn, the OT was frigging cold! I wished I had several more layers of blankets on me. But before I could mentally start whining about that, the moment of anesthesia arrived.

I guess I had a frightened deer caught in the OT lights look on my face for the anesthetist kindly look at me through her mask and asked "Is this your first time with anesthesia?" When I dumbly nodded, she said, "Don't worry ma. You will simply start sleeping in a bit." Then, some drug was injected and she asked, "Are your teeth loose?". What a weird question, I thought, mentally bookmarking that I should later google the relationship between general anesthesia and teeth (my inner geek shalt never be quelled).

Then she again said, "You will sleep in a bit". I lay staring at the bright overhead lights. I did not appear to be any closer to sleeping at all. Did they really inject anything into me? Oh, wait a minute, I feel lightly dizzy, maybe I would feel a bit more dizzy in a bit. But wait, I can still see the lights.

Someone was prodding me, "The procedure is over, are you fine?" I had been in the middle of some pleasant dream (I have no clue about what) and was mildly annoyed at being so unceremoniously woken up. But then, realization dawned: Wait a minute, I had gone under and come out of GA successfully. With absolutely no recollection of what had happened in between.Yaay!

Then I looked around and thought I was still in the OT. It took me several minutes before I processed that the overhead lights were missing and a bunch of cupboards had sprung up next to me, thus making it highly unlikely that I was still in the OT. Oh, I was probably in the recovery room then.

I was quite lucid post-GA and was even able to walk around on my own in a short while. Contrary to expectations of nausea,a common GA side-effect, I was ravenously hungry in a couple of hours and was demanding food (ha, who can separate Archana and her food!), having been foodless for close to 14 hours.

The next 24 hours saw my head spin lightly whenever I changed positions between sitting/standing and lying down. But otherwise, I was not very much worse for the wear and was completely back to normal the next day.

So yeah, as a in case of emergency nugget of info, I now know that I do not have adverse effects to GA. Yaay.

Our national pasttime

Officially, it might be said that cricket-watching is our national past time. But I think that our true national past-time is people watching.

Of course, everyone does people watching. Being curious is simply human nature. However, desis take people watching to the level of an art. Where people from other nations* may look embarrassed and turn away if caught in the act by the object of their watching, a true desi would hardly acknowledge that s/he has been spotted. Instead, s/he would watch with greater confidence now that there is no need for even the token pretence that they are not watching the object.

Which is how, many a time I have caught starers in the act of watching, turned away and turned back after some time only to realize that I was *still* being watched by the same starer. It is as though once you are in public, you become a part of the landscape and hence can be gawked at.

This could also be the reason that whenever it looks like more than one person is watching something, those persons are immediately joined by more people. No one wants to miss out on any fun. Often times, it turns out that an entire crowd of people are watching *nothing* (I am desi too, so, if circumstances permit, I will go and check out what's happening too - that's how I know) but why miss out in case it is some thing genuinely interesting?

Once we were driving around Ooty with some other relatives. A non-designated tourist spot, consisting of rows of pretty trees, looked interesting. So, we made a turn into the mud pathway leading to that mini-forest. Our relatives' jeep followed us. We had hardly gotten off our Jeeps when we realized that about six other random vehicles had followed us into the mini-forest. Evidently, the people in those vehicles thought that if this spot was of interest to *two* vehicles, there must be something to it and had decided to check it out for themselves!

Recently, I had a surreal conversation with my mom. We both were enjoying a cup of tea at my parents' place. We were sitting in a room which opened out into a balcony which faced a tree. Mom remarked on how much the tree had grown since the time they had moved in.

She added, "The other day, the lady from the flat across the street said that she was feeling kind of bad that she could no longer look into our house. The tree has become too tall and shields our house from her eyes."

My jaw dropped. I looked at mom and gaped, "Really? So not only was she she spying on us, but she also admitted it to you without any embarrassment?"

Mom shrugged and said, "Yes. Apparently she used to watch us all from her flat. In fact, I think she must have been happy when I invited her over for last year's Golu so that she could finally place the rest of the rooms in the house as well instead of having to imagine where we go when we move from this room!" Both of us burst out laughing. To think that her flat was a little too far away from ours to even give a proper view. True blue desi that neighbor lady was!

I love watching other folks at the airport, train-station and bus-station. I notice what they are doing and what they are wearing. And these places usually provide such a high turnover of people that there is never a shortage of entertainment. However, I have never done it blatantly (unless of course, I am wearing sun-glasses and cannot be spotted :-P) - I probably couldn't stand the attention that being caught in the act would bestow! And I also draw the line at deliberately looking into other people's homes - that just seems a tad indecent to me.

But yeah, I love people watching too.

* I do know that people from other countries (Asian, mostly) do unabashed people watching too. Maybe it has something to do with a country's culture.

Ponniyin Selvan

As I had said in the post, my interest to read the Ponniyin Selvan series was kindled after my trip to Swamimalai which included visiting the great Chola temples, Gangai Konda Cholapuram and Darasuram. I had said then that I will try to read the series in Tamil. Well, if my wishes were horses, the galloping sounds they would have made would have caused world-wide noise pollution. Given that, my wish largely remained a wish (my abominable Tamil reading skills ensured that)  and I eventually wound up reading the entire series in English.

The verdict? Definitely worth reading. There are five volumes with the fifth part being split into two books. The story is fact woven with fiction. All the principal characters are real flesh and blood people who lived in the 9th century AD. If you are familiar with the towns and cities in the Kumbakonam-Thanjavur region, you will surely get goosebumps when you read some of the place-names in the book - those towns have been in existence for more than a thousand years now!

The series has several passages which describe the beauty of the Chola country. You can see the lush green fields, the beautiful river Cauvery and its tributaries, the abundant stone mandapams and grand Siva temples with ardent devotees come to life before your eyes. Those were the places where I sorely missed reading the  book in Tamil. The passages have been translated decently enough in English but quite understandably, they lack the beauty that Tamil would have given them.

The story by itself is quite gripping. Book five especially has a significant event happening in almost every chapter. It was when reading part 5 that I was pretty much deaf to the world and could be spotted carrying my book everywhere. I can imagine how readers would have waited with bated breath for every edition of Kalki magazine back in the 1950s when the story was first published in it as a series! No wonder the circulation of the magazine shot up then.

My favorite character in the entire series is the boat-girl Poonguzhali. What a fiesty and spirited character! She manages to outshine even the "heroes" when featured along side them. What a woman!

Now I have re-embarked on my "read Ponniyin Selvan in Tamil" project. I really think reading the series in Tamil would be totally worth it. Let's see how that plan goes!

Plastic and steel

The other day, as I threw out yet another plastic water bottle, I thought back to my school days. That time, my lunch was always packed in stainless steel tiffin dabbas. It was one big sadness(!) in my young life back then that my mom wouldn't give me lunch in a box like one of those colorful plastic dabbas that some of my other school-mates brought. Plastic boxes just seemed way cooler.

Somehow, mom never listened to my pleadings and whining and I did carry stainless steel tiffin boxes for the entire time I brought lunch from home.

It was only when I went to grad school and got to pack my own lunch that I realized that most plastic boxes (and yeah, in grad school, these were the cheap ones) had the annoying tendency to hang on to the odors of the food last packed in it. Thus, food never tasted fresh after spending a few hours in the dabba no matter how recently the food had been made prior to transferring residence to the box. Finally, the bulb began to glow - stainless steel did have its plus points!

And then, of course, came the whole influx of articles about how most plastics are so terrible for your health. And thus I began my slow transition to avoid all things plastic, at least in utensils which could come in contact with heat. First, the plastic water bottles were changed to stainless steel. Then the plastic tiffin boxes changed to ceramic and glass.

That was when it struck me: not for nothing do they say that Mother always knows best. My mom knew even before the scientific community did that there was something iffy about plastic and thus withstood all the incessant whining from her nagging child and refused to pack her lunch in plastic tiffin boxes :-).

10 years later

Ten years ago, the beginning of September saw my last few days in Chennai before I headed off to Davis, USA, to study. The last flurry of shopping was getting wrapped up. All important documents were collected and ready to  be placed in the hand baggage. The suitcases were brimming with clothes, shoes, utensils, books, groceries and were getting readied for the final weighing. Lists of people to whom I wanted to bid farewell before leaving were prepared.

And, all the excitement of going off to a new part of the world was slowly being replaced by a tight knot of dread at having to face the unknown soon. Yes, the first time of heading off to a country where I had no family to speak of was quite frightening even while being exhilarating.

Fast forward to today. In a quirk of fate, I got to visit the US again 10 years almost to the exact day of my first departure to the US. This time though, on work. And this time, with not much fear of the unknown. After all, this was my USA I was heading back to!

The past two weeks were probably my busiest two weeks ever in the US. Besides work, there was the shopping and catching up with people to do. Though I seemed to be out of the hotel at all times except bed-time, I still managed to not visit all the places I wanted to visit, not meet all the people I wanted to meet and not eat at all the restaurants I wanted to eat at. In short, I did not get to do all the things I wanted to do. Oh well!

But the trip was a great lot of fun. I got to drive again (yeah, turns out for all my viewing of driving as a utilitarian activity, I do *like* driving and had been missing it), got to meet several people face to face after a whole year (or longer) and got to see oh-so-familiar places again. Who would have though I would get all nostalgic upon entering a CVS of all places! I even drove by our old apartment (yeah, it's still there).

After two US weeks, I am now back in Chennai with the worst case of jet lag in the history of mankind - at least, it feels that way. Whatta souvenir, I say!

I had a lovely time in the US and enjoyed practically every minute of my stay. However, when it was time to head back, I did not feel a sense of loss. I guess, now that I have seen both the worlds, I know the good points of each and so have much to look forward to in both!

Here's to more such straddling between worlds!

Rowthiram

Last weekend we went to see the tamil movie Rowthiram. Now, I am not a Jiva fan but parents had watched Jiva in Ko and had been suitably impressed. Thus, his standing had been upgraded from masa-masa (rough translation: not quite hero-material) to watchable. So, hoping that Rowthiram would be entertaining along the lines of Ko, we set off.

Morning of the movie, I read in the paper that the movie was not worth writing home about. Ouch. This is what happens when you book tickets without reading reviews.

Still, after thinking through, my eyes brightened considerably. We were going to watch the movie at Satyam theatre. The last time we had been there, I had totally fallen in love with their popcorn. S had added a wee bit of extra butter flavoring and then sprinked jalapeno seasoning over the fresh, hot and crispy popcorn. The end result was YUMMY. We had finished the entire medium sized bag of popcorn even before the movie had begun.

So, salivating, I thought, so what if the movie is bad, I still can eat the popcorn. Finding silver linings in unlikely places, that's me

At the theatre, in spite of his protests, I convinced S to buy the large bag of popcorn to share. And, being the, whatever happiness I get, the world should get it too, type of person, I convinced mom that she would be able to eat a medium sized bagful of yummy popcorn by herself (mom is the quintessential pop-corn lover. With popcorn, she looks as gleeful as a little kid with a bag of candy. Still, she always gets only the regular size).

So, armed with our popcorn, we entered the theatre and started munching on the it long before the movie started. Movie started. Movie story was like this: a whole series of fights threaded together with a few romantic scenes and songs.

Even considering that the fights were pretty frequent, I was still surprised to see that, by the time fight #5 rolled around on the screen, I still had more than half a bag of popcorn to finish. S had stopped munching on the pop-corn and refused my offer to have more. I sneaked a glance at mom and saw her bravely chomping through her supply.

By fight #10, I was seriously getting tired of the pop-corn. Man, was that bag bottomless or what? Another sneak peek showed mom was still bravely chomping through her popcorn supply. I whispered to her "Lots of popcorn, huh?". She grinned weakly and said, "Yes da. It tastes good but my mouth is beginning to ache with all this chewing."

That's when I realized that MY mouth was aching as well. Then, I casually pushed over the bag to S and said, "Here, you finish the rest." S said, "Ha, you are not able to finish it right? I told you it would be too much." Oh well, now I KNOW, right?

Anyway, like they say, all things happen for a reason. Turns out Rowthiram was competing for the record of the world's longest movie. Thus, it was way past lunch-time when we emerged bleary-eyed from the theatre. But hungry kya? No way! With all that popcorn in our tummies we (other than dad) were set to watch one more hour of the movie. Of course, that would have meant exacerbating my headache but at least the stomach wasn't complaining. I *knew* eating all the popcorn would have some good effect!

Oh, you thought this post was a review for the movie? Well, here is the short review: don't watch. The long review? It should have been shorter by at least 45 minutes. The actors (other than the main villain, who dad said looked like a oona (chameleon) and who was about as menacing) were pretty good - but the story was non-existent. You can easily remake Rowthiram by stringing together the fight sequences from some 15 movies or so. So yeah, buy your pop-corn and go for 15 other movies instead.

One year and counting...

With today, S and I complete 1 year of moving back to India. Yaay!

Turns out, we are still lovin' it :-D.

Oh, the minuses are still there: the insanely hot summer, the no-rules-is-the-only-rule traffic, the number of hoops one sometimes needs to jump through to get basic services done, day-to-day living sometimes taking annoyingly more effort than what could be considered reasonable, very low understanding of the concept of privacy, lack of decent public libraries etc. etc.

But the pluses continue to outweigh them: being close to family and having the pleasure of being able to visit them as and when the mood strikes, the awesome food (Chennai has new restaurants sprouting every week and there are nice places offering delicious non-Indian food too), being able to afford household help, other friends making the decision to return to India too, celebrating Indian festivals and functions with gay abandon, being pleasantly surprised to find many of the products and services available abroad are either already here or are slowly making their way here and of course, the indescribably nice feeling of finally feeling "settled" and being at "home".

Considering I always wanted to eventually return to India since the time I set foot in the US, it is not surprising that my experience on my return has been overwhelmingly positive. I mean, if you see everything with rose-tinted glasses, everything will look good, right?

Still, even with a non-prejudiced view, I can honestly say that in spite of being highly frustrated at times, I still have not found minuses that cannot be worked around. And that the pluses still have not begun to lose their sheen.

Overall, I still think that moving back was a great decision.

Adieu Harry Potter!

After not getting tickets for last weekend, we went to watch the final installment of the Harry Potter series on Saturday. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At the end though, when the screen read the words, "The End", mom and I looked at each other misty-eyed and simultaneously said, "J.K Rowling really ought to write more Harry Potter books". It really felt like the end of an era.

I started reading Harry Potter sometime in 2000. My sister was the one who provided the first book. After that, I raced through books 3,2 and then 4 (I got hold of book #3 before book #2 and read it in that order 'coz I couldn't wait). Then began the long wait for book #5. I got that as a bribe.

I pre-ordered books #6 and #7. I was awake through the night to finish the humongous book #7 on the day I received it. Well worth it! By this time, Harry Potter & co were like friends. I also took strange joy in the fact that according to the book, Harry, Hermione and Ron were born in the same year that I was (the cheap thrills of life).

In between waiting for the next book in the series to show up, I refreshed my memory by reading the existing books all over again. With each reading I found more pieces of seemingly irrelevant information which later tied in perfectly with the plot lines of future books. Nice!


Then there were the HP movies. Initially, I mostly watched them so that I could complain about how they were not a patch on the books (movies #1 and #2 were such snore-fests - I slept through movie #1), but the main reason was, as a devout Harry Potter fan, it would be sacrilege to miss out on anything HP related. But slowly, I started looking forward to the movies as well.

I have HP to thank for tiding me through times when I was sick enough to be forced to stay in bed. Once I started reading HP, I got so immersed in its world that I pretty much forgot any other discomfort. I usually never cry while reading books. But when Dumbledore died (what, you did not know that??) in book #6, I shed copious tears: about Dumbledore dying but mostly for Harry - he was now an orphan in every sense of the word. But the amusing part was, when I re-read the book, I cried *all over again*. Like one of my friends asked, did I really think Dumbledore would not die when I read the book a second time around? The power of books!

This post is simply a rambling but fond farewell to one of favorite works of fiction. Seriously, even though I smirk when bands/authors make a grand declaration of some tour or book being THE FINAL ONE only to change their minds about a year later, I would be the first one to hand Ms. Rowling a paper and pen if she decides to change her mind about not penning any more HP-related works. Thank you Ms. Rowling for creating such a marvelous world for readers to enjoy!

Globe trotter and all

I haven't been exactly trotting the globe. But I had been trotting around two of my must-see destinations - Switzerland and Paris. Yaay!

I saw plenty of beautiful sights and heard plenty of French sounds. However, the first time I thought "I really ought to blog about this" was when I saw the following souvenir at a gift-shop in Lucerne.

Yup, not making this up at all. In case you are wondering, the tin was *empty*. I even shook it to make sure. I laughed for about five minutes and then clicked the picture just so that I could spread the joy further :-D. I only hope the tin was not manufactured in China - heh.

Watch this space for more stories and photographs. Right now I am recovering from the effects of an unwanted souvenir I brought back - a raging cold with cough and fever. Achhooooooooo!