Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Of this and that...

Read "The Lowland".

Very competently written but utterly without a soul.  And it gets tiresome this immigrant experience.  Why must the fall hues be  "cayenne" and "turmeric"? However, it's so obvious that when Lahiri strays off her typical immigrant experience style she's lost.  "The Interpreter of Maladies" was fantastic, moving onto "The Namesake" you can feel the tinge of unease when she writes about the second generation.  "Unaccustomed Earth" sure lived up to its name - the stories seemed so forced and disjointed - and now we have here "The Lowland".


Read "The Twentieth Wife" by Indu Sunderasan. I'll give it a marginal pass but must say that I was educated about Mughal history.  For instance, I remember blindly memorizing, "The book "Ain I Akabari" was written by Abdul Fazal," waaay back in School at least now I know what it is about and who Fazal was.  Also got the lineage starting from Babar to Aurangazeb (my History teacher's chin would be glued to the floor at that) and never knew that Mumtaz Mahal's real name was Arjumand or that she was niece of Nur Jahan.


Sooooo glad the Oscar did not go to "Gravity" (I have not seen the movie).  Let me explain "Gravity" is a total fantasy and I would say 85% of the movie comprises special effects.  Given the Oscar committee would not consider giving "ET" an Oscar it would have been a slap in the face if "Gravity" had got it.


Notice on a broken door, "This door is out of service.  Please do not use until further notice".  Excuse me - what's wrong in saying, "This door is broken, please do not use until it gets fixed?"...


And this long and cooooold winter has me thinking "Where is the spring and the summer..."


This in turn reminds me of:


And that leads to another classic:














4 comments:

  1. I liked The Namesake, but I haven't read The Lowland. The Namesake was a pretty good movie, mainly because I'm a diehard Irrfan Khan fan :) I haven't read any Indu Sundaresan yet. Any recommendations, Anu?

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  2. I read The Namesake, and felt that Gogol was such a dull character Anu. I mean, his was a pretty privileged life, but he just could not get himself up there. Interpreter of Maladies was pretty good, but I still rate Malgudi Days much better in terms of writing.

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    1. Agree. Now that you mention "Malgudi Days" "Interpreter" can be interpreted to have been inspired by the former!

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