Time is scarce.
Energy is scarcer.
Pick your battles very carefully.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Bookslut
SatyVrat once told his best friend Nanga Fakir a story about von Neumann (in their S'kal days). According to him, von Neumann died one of the most painful deaths possible. Immediately, this set NF's mind racing to check if the giant had died of starvation or suffocation or some other such horrendous cause; but his thoughts were interrupted by Satyavrat's declaration that von Neumann's death was preceded by a noticeable (according to von Neumann that is) reduction in his powers of thinking which disturbed him no end and he died a miserable death - cursing his slow-wittedness and the emasculation of his superhuman intellect to mere mortal levels.
As all SatyaVrat stories go, the origins and veracity of this story are suspect. (Another one of his von Neumann stories went like this: von Neumann's daughter (who apparently was also some sort of prodigy) once claimed that there was only one person in the whole world who knew more Mathematics than her father - namely she herself. The tragedy was that she was a paranoid schizophrenic. The only true part of this story is that von Neumann had a daughter. She was not a paranoid schizophrenic. Nor was she a mathematician. She is a business school professor at U Mich, alive and a well functioning human female. Her name is Marina and this is her Wikipedia page.) And as all SatyaVrat stories go, the facts of the story somehow don't matter so much because the moral behind them is deep and non trivial - in this particular case the moral being that dying a grisly death is a sufficient but not necessary condition for dying a painful death.
Despite his pretensions to the contrary, Nanga Fakir has always prided himself on being a great reader and, more often than not, on being the most literate (though according to SatyaVrat the least educated), well read person in the room. In '09, he read about 45-50 books (though truth be told, many of them were comic books and therefore, easily readable in a day or two) and in '10 he read about 23-24 books. His reading tastes remained diverse, eclectic and idiosyncratic - ranging from science, technology, mathematics and philosophy to fantasy, science fiction, graphic novels/comics, Indian writing in English and postmodern American literature.
So when during the first six months of 2011, NF managed to read only 3-4 books and confided the distressing new development to Bejin Hakumei (who refused to believe him and expressed her dismay in no uncertain terms); and as NF, to his horror, began empathizing with AK who'd once declared that he just couldn't read anymore, he suddenly remembered the von Neumann story and prepared for the onslaught of the bout of depression that was sure to hit him hard. The fact that he'd been stuck on Gravity's Rainbow for the past many months; and had been plodding through the notoriously hard to read magnum opus (though truth be told, the book's uproariously funny in places) for the past many, many months (three? four? five?) added to his sense of loss.
So he got himself a big truckload of new books - hoping that their sense of newness will kill the ennui induced by the ferociously hard Pynchon tome.
It so worked!
Among new additions to his bookshelf are The Windup Girl, River of Gods, The Pale King (DFW's last unfinished book), Our Band Could be Your Life, The Big Short, Conversations with Economists and Roberto Bolaño's 2666.
To add, he got hold of The Dispossessed and The Best Short Stories of J G Ballard from the Science Fiction Forum. Within two weeks, NF read The Big Short and Our Band could be Your Life; and is three hundred pages into the thousand page 2666.
He's feeling so much better now. If he manages to read up the final three hundred pages of Gravity's Rainbow anytime soon, he'd wind up throwing a party.
As all SatyaVrat stories go, the origins and veracity of this story are suspect. (Another one of his von Neumann stories went like this: von Neumann's daughter (who apparently was also some sort of prodigy) once claimed that there was only one person in the whole world who knew more Mathematics than her father - namely she herself. The tragedy was that she was a paranoid schizophrenic. The only true part of this story is that von Neumann had a daughter. She was not a paranoid schizophrenic. Nor was she a mathematician. She is a business school professor at U Mich, alive and a well functioning human female. Her name is Marina and this is her Wikipedia page.) And as all SatyaVrat stories go, the facts of the story somehow don't matter so much because the moral behind them is deep and non trivial - in this particular case the moral being that dying a grisly death is a sufficient but not necessary condition for dying a painful death.
Despite his pretensions to the contrary, Nanga Fakir has always prided himself on being a great reader and, more often than not, on being the most literate (though according to SatyaVrat the least educated), well read person in the room. In '09, he read about 45-50 books (though truth be told, many of them were comic books and therefore, easily readable in a day or two) and in '10 he read about 23-24 books. His reading tastes remained diverse, eclectic and idiosyncratic - ranging from science, technology, mathematics and philosophy to fantasy, science fiction, graphic novels/comics, Indian writing in English and postmodern American literature.
So when during the first six months of 2011, NF managed to read only 3-4 books and confided the distressing new development to Bejin Hakumei (who refused to believe him and expressed her dismay in no uncertain terms); and as NF, to his horror, began empathizing with AK who'd once declared that he just couldn't read anymore, he suddenly remembered the von Neumann story and prepared for the onslaught of the bout of depression that was sure to hit him hard. The fact that he'd been stuck on Gravity's Rainbow for the past many months; and had been plodding through the notoriously hard to read magnum opus (though truth be told, the book's uproariously funny in places) for the past many, many months (three? four? five?) added to his sense of loss.
So he got himself a big truckload of new books - hoping that their sense of newness will kill the ennui induced by the ferociously hard Pynchon tome.
It so worked!
Among new additions to his bookshelf are The Windup Girl, River of Gods, The Pale King (DFW's last unfinished book), Our Band Could be Your Life, The Big Short, Conversations with Economists and Roberto Bolaño's 2666.
To add, he got hold of The Dispossessed and The Best Short Stories of J G Ballard from the Science Fiction Forum. Within two weeks, NF read The Big Short and Our Band could be Your Life; and is three hundred pages into the thousand page 2666.
He's feeling so much better now. If he manages to read up the final three hundred pages of Gravity's Rainbow anytime soon, he'd wind up throwing a party.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
बेजिन हाकुमेई के लिए !
ओजारुमारू मेरा नाऽऽम,
करूँ मैं बऽड़े - बऽड़े काऽऽम
ज़्यादा नहीं सोचता हूँ मैं
मस्त रहता हूँ सुबह-ओ-शाम
नए, एडवेंचर्स पे मैं जाऊं,
ये ही तो शौक है मेरा, चलो हम साथ में चलें!
ओजारूमाऽऽऽरू!
करूँ मैं बऽड़े - बऽड़े काऽऽम
ज़्यादा नहीं सोचता हूँ मैं
मस्त रहता हूँ सुबह-ओ-शाम
नए, एडवेंचर्स पे मैं जाऊं,
ये ही तो शौक है मेरा, चलो हम साथ में चलें!
ओजारूमाऽऽऽरू!
...
मज़े की बात ये है की जिस बंदी ने ये सिरीज़ बनाई (रिन इनिमारू), उसकी मौत आत्महत्या से हुई! किसी ने ठीक ही कहा है : अति सर्वत्र वर्जयेत (लम्पटगीरी में भी !)
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Quicksands of make believe
The Stockholm Syndrome Theory of Long Novels - a terrific piece on why you'd ever want to finish reading that million page tome. A long time sufferer who's currently held prisoner by Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow - after nearly a year of efforts - on now, off again), NF connected to this clever observation on a rather fundamental level.
Fellow sufferer, understand thy ailment!
Fellow sufferer, understand thy ailment!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Shut the door
I burn a fire to stay cool
I burn myself,
I am the fuel
I never meant... to be cruel
...
Have you ever been cruel?
I burn myself,
I am the fuel
I never meant... to be cruel
...
Have you ever been cruel?
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Homecoming
He will have you believe that if you haven't discovered cinema coming out of South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong in recent years, in particular the extreme cinema movement overseen by the likes of Takashi Miike (Japan), Park Chan Wook and Kim Ki Duk (South Korea), you don't take your cinema seriously. He will also tell you that the story doesn't sort of end there, that extreme cinema is not the entire body of astoundingly original work that's pouring out uncontrollably from these nations, that focusing wrongly on just the works of the few mentioned above will leave you with a blinkered vision of what actual, current Asian cinema has in store for us. He will take the name of the old master Takeshi Kitano (Japan), the (somewhat) new sensations Kim Ji Woon and Bong Joon Ho, Lee Chang Dong and Hong Sang Soo (South Korea) and Fruit Chan (Hong Kong) to convince you that there's much, much more than meets the eye. Lest you think that it's an Asian women fetish masquerading as Asian cinema fetish, he'll swear to you that the characteristics of these great filmmakers (particularly the more extreme ones) and their forays into taboo territories are not all that uniquely Asian and will supply you with the names of Michael Haneke (Germany), Lars von Trier (Denmark) and Harmony Korine (USA) whose works are equally unsettling and subversive.
But don't you pay attention to what Nanga Fakir has to say.
There's nothing, nothing in the world of cinema that warms the cockles of his heart more than a good, just good, not necessarily great, Hindi film. The average state of affairs somewhat saddens him, more so because every now and then he'll come across an Anjana Anjani which will have our titular young hero clench his tiny little fists, grind his teeth to powder and take deep breaths to rein in his violent side. This makes him worship anyone who shows the slightest promise whatsoever (insert names of Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Bannerjee and Vishal Bharadwaj) and elevate them to pedestals no human should have a right to. Then comes the big crash in which the aforementioned deity fails to perform (insert names of Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Bannerjee and (sadly) Vishal Bharadwaj) and NF switches sides in favor of more young, upcoming dark horses (like Amit Dutta, whose FTII thesis film Kramashah, is Om dar Ba dar, done right).
Where have the Basu Chatterjees and Hrishikesh Mukherjees gone? Does it have to be true that there is only the Shyam Benegal way and the Anees Bazmi way with nothing, absolutely nothing in between?
What about Shakti Samanta, Manmohan Desai, Chetan Anand, Raj Khosla? Were they actually any good? How about Raj Kapoor, V Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Kamal Amrohi? Were these good? And what do we mean by good? Should it be a nostalgic eulogy that'll be sung over the graves of these giants of the past or should they be hauled over coals too? Those suffering from Somnath syndrome (named after the notoriously-heard-to-please Somnath who will not deign to see a film if it's not an Emir Kusturica level production at least) show the middle finger to all such filmmakers of the past. Nanga Fakir is not so sure however.
Such thoughts led to our protagonist's return to the world of films (he'd seen almost no films for the past year and a half or so) where for the past few months he's been assiduously collecting films of Shyam Benegal, Raj Kapoor, the old and obscure stuff of Hrishikesh Mukherjee (who still remains NF's all time favorite director - in all languages, across all time periods - not necessarily for the 'art' in his movies (Somnath scoffs silently) but more for his warm, life affirming, taking-the-Buddha-like-middle-path, simple films), Raj Khosla and other commercial Hindi filmmakers of the past.
It's possible that he writes about his impressions as he sees such old Hindi films, not with the eyes of an entranced ten year old (which sadly, he's not anymore) but with those of an old hardened, jaded movie cynic (sigh, sigh, sigh). It's also possible that he won't find them worth commenting upon, or that he'll concede the argument to the Somnath camp and not have the heart to say anything anymore about it.
Anyway, let's start the commotion.
But don't you pay attention to what Nanga Fakir has to say.
There's nothing, nothing in the world of cinema that warms the cockles of his heart more than a good, just good, not necessarily great, Hindi film. The average state of affairs somewhat saddens him, more so because every now and then he'll come across an Anjana Anjani which will have our titular young hero clench his tiny little fists, grind his teeth to powder and take deep breaths to rein in his violent side. This makes him worship anyone who shows the slightest promise whatsoever (insert names of Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Bannerjee and Vishal Bharadwaj) and elevate them to pedestals no human should have a right to. Then comes the big crash in which the aforementioned deity fails to perform (insert names of Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Bannerjee and (sadly) Vishal Bharadwaj) and NF switches sides in favor of more young, upcoming dark horses (like Amit Dutta, whose FTII thesis film Kramashah, is Om dar Ba dar, done right).
Where have the Basu Chatterjees and Hrishikesh Mukherjees gone? Does it have to be true that there is only the Shyam Benegal way and the Anees Bazmi way with nothing, absolutely nothing in between?
What about Shakti Samanta, Manmohan Desai, Chetan Anand, Raj Khosla? Were they actually any good? How about Raj Kapoor, V Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Kamal Amrohi? Were these good? And what do we mean by good? Should it be a nostalgic eulogy that'll be sung over the graves of these giants of the past or should they be hauled over coals too? Those suffering from Somnath syndrome (named after the notoriously-heard-to-please Somnath who will not deign to see a film if it's not an Emir Kusturica level production at least) show the middle finger to all such filmmakers of the past. Nanga Fakir is not so sure however.
Such thoughts led to our protagonist's return to the world of films (he'd seen almost no films for the past year and a half or so) where for the past few months he's been assiduously collecting films of Shyam Benegal, Raj Kapoor, the old and obscure stuff of Hrishikesh Mukherjee (who still remains NF's all time favorite director - in all languages, across all time periods - not necessarily for the 'art' in his movies (Somnath scoffs silently) but more for his warm, life affirming, taking-the-Buddha-like-middle-path, simple films), Raj Khosla and other commercial Hindi filmmakers of the past.
It's possible that he writes about his impressions as he sees such old Hindi films, not with the eyes of an entranced ten year old (which sadly, he's not anymore) but with those of an old hardened, jaded movie cynic (sigh, sigh, sigh). It's also possible that he won't find them worth commenting upon, or that he'll concede the argument to the Somnath camp and not have the heart to say anything anymore about it.
Anyway, let's start the commotion.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Unforgiven
Saat Khoon Maaf (Seven Murders Forgiven) is a stupid, third rate film that is so bad that you're almost embarrassed for Vishal Bharadwaj. The story is uneven, the plot nonsensical with no motivation for things turning out the way they do. The acting, on the whole, is uniformly bad and hammy. The so called twist ending is so absurd that it's actually supremely comical - a fitting, disastrous end to an egregious film.
So what if Ruskin Bond has a cameo of sorts at the end? So what if the film is peppered with big names all through? So what if the story movements in the film are (with the filmmakers trying too hard to be clever) juxtaposed with interesting little tidbits from contemporary Indian history? So what if it's a Vishal fucking Bharadwaj production?
The only saving grace of the film is Annu Kapoor - absolutely brilliant in his ten minute cameo as the lecherous police officer Keematlaal - head over heels in love with Suzanna (Sunaina). Him and the technical aspects of the movie - excellent cinematography, photography, special effects and shot composition all through.
It's not enough though. What's up with you VB - the genius behind Makdee, Maqbool, The Blue Umbrella and Omkara? Have you gone the way Anurag Kashyap seems to be going - all style and no substance? Will you break my heart too?
Will you?
So what if Ruskin Bond has a cameo of sorts at the end? So what if the film is peppered with big names all through? So what if the story movements in the film are (with the filmmakers trying too hard to be clever) juxtaposed with interesting little tidbits from contemporary Indian history? So what if it's a Vishal fucking Bharadwaj production?
The only saving grace of the film is Annu Kapoor - absolutely brilliant in his ten minute cameo as the lecherous police officer Keematlaal - head over heels in love with Suzanna (Sunaina). Him and the technical aspects of the movie - excellent cinematography, photography, special effects and shot composition all through.
It's not enough though. What's up with you VB - the genius behind Makdee, Maqbool, The Blue Umbrella and Omkara? Have you gone the way Anurag Kashyap seems to be going - all style and no substance? Will you break my heart too?
Will you?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Miniscule Musings
- Nanga Fakir has joined the ranks of those who consider The Wire to be a masterpiece of unimaginable proportions. As he watched the sixty odd, one hour long episodes over a period of ten days, he was totally taken in by the tight story-arcs, efficient, compact and unwasted movements in direction and screenplay; and the overarching theme of institutionalized dysfunction and disillusionment. As befitting a series focusing on the macro level, societal behavior of public institutions, character development takes a back seat to story progression and to the charting of the course of the lumbering bureaucratic behemoths' trajectories. Yet, there are gems of fascinating character sketches in the form of Omar Little and Bubbles - the Robin Hood stick up man and drug addicted informant - that make the series not just intensely edifying (which it so is) but thoroughly enjoyable as well. As someone coming from a cocooned, obscenely well educated, privileged background, NF cannot comment on the realism of the tales of drug trade, institutional corruption or the Baltimore slang - things for which the series is famous for - but the understated, subtle, very believable and extremely plausible characters and stories that slowly populate the five seasons (with the minor omission of the character Brother Mouzone and the irritating Greek background music whenever The Greek and his team are featured - a very overlookable-on-the-whole, minor annoyance) seem to resonate oddly long after the watching experience is over.
- After the very funny initial forty minutes, Love Exposure degenerates into a very uneven, not-very-well made film that dies a simpering, lame Bollywoodish ending.
However there are some things that do save the movie from being a total waste of four hours (yes! four) - the kung-fuish art of tosatsu (up skirt photography - which although done in a very over-the-top and funny manner, should come across to most women as extremely offensive); its savagely funny attack on Christianity that even Richard Dawkins cannot top; and the delectable, absolutely adorable Hikari Mitsushima (pictured here) as Yoko chan. On the whole, a disappointment, however. - In Dogville, Lars von Trier takes the idea of minimalism to a whole different level altogether. Not only does he do away with most conventions of movie making, he also does away with the idea that you need to have sets, props or other such bourgeois artefacts. Instead of houses, we have chalk linings delineating the boundaries of such aforementioned houses with labels "X's house" written on it. Instead of shrubberies, we have vague chalk markings indicating the boundaries of the same. There are no doors, but the actors walk, talk, behave, open, close and enter through them as if they were there. Anything not absolutely essential to the story (a door's just a door, a shrubbery just so - mere ideas in human minds - not essential at all. Apparently.) is erased and left for the viewer's imagination. It's actually more a play than a film. But whatever it is, is beside the point since the end product is wonderfully deep and absolutely brilliant. Bravo Lars! Bravo!
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Resigned Epicureanism
An excellent, excellent piece in Slate on Woody Allen and his oeuvre. Essential reading for all his die hard fans.
How's this for an incentive? An excerpt.
How's this for an incentive? An excerpt.
...Felix (I'll use his surname to avoid confusion) says he's attracted to "emotionally disturbed women," and that's not an exaggeration. The depth of his perverse inclination becomes clear when he approaches a woman looking at a Jackson Pollock drip-painting, and asks what it means to her. She answers: "It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous, lonely, emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos." She's just the kind of woman Felix has been looking for, and he asks her what's she's doing Saturday night. "Committing suicide," she responds. Unfazed, he counters: "What about Friday night?"
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Because a picture is worth a thousand words redux
...
Australia. Pakistan. Sri Lanka.
...
Ah revenge! Thy taste is so sweet!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
GY!BE - 03/14/11
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (henceforth referred to as GY!BE) start from where Echoes left off. That, however, is not to deny them originality or to comment on some supposed derivativeness or undue Pink Floyd influences. Their long, unending, grandly ambitious instrumental sagas with somewhat minimalistic, vaguely relevant found footage films running on projectors in the background (see picture) to which their music seems to provide a narrative of sorts; resemble Floyd only in the most superficial way.
Almost classical in scope (Shekhar used the word 'meditative'), with none of their songs-with-no-vocals clocking in less than ten minutes, they can seem to be an acquired taste - especially their meandering, experimental, purposeless-on-the-surface initial phase jamming which will then suddenly gel together to form an intricate harmony in which the projectionist's footages of panoramic views from trains/arbitrary industrial landscapes suddenly seem to acquire a meaning of their own.Although musically the band they might resemble most is Mogwai, it is easy to see that they transcend their predecessors by focusing not just on creating "serious guitar music" but by also incorporating sounds from instruments not generally associated with rock music (the eight person band (?) has members playing violins, cellos, two sets of drum kits and at least three guitars).
When the venue's Terminal 5, a good vantage point is of paramount importance. With the ever-resourceful Shekhar at his side, NF was lucky to have found that and a set of very comfy ass-rests. The mild state of buzz - courtesy the beers - and the background GY!BE footage viewed through the partially filled mug, added to the ambience and sprinkled a dash of good weirdness (in the form of inebriation) to the already very heavily atmospheric music.
And GY!BE? They didn't speak a word. No hi, no bye, no sorry, no thank you.
They arrived, they played, they fucking destroyed!
They arrived, they played, they fucking destroyed!
Friday, March 18, 2011
Goddo supiido yuu! Burakku emparaa !!!
Nanga Fakir (and I am sure fellow Japanophile Bejin Hakumei is with him in this) awaits Japan's coming back to life - the land of gojiras, samurais, anime, manga, seppuku, gomi, harakiri, the insane J-pop culture, kamikaze, Takeshi Kitano, Takeshi Miike, robots, ninjas, cosplay, otakus, hikkikomoris, an army of kawaii gyaru chans, gore films, Boris, Mono and everything that is awesome about our shitty, shitty world right now.
Zetsuboushita! Serious, hardcore zetsuboushita!
...
Nippon Banzai !
Zetsuboushita! Serious, hardcore zetsuboushita!
...
Nippon Banzai !
Thursday, March 10, 2011
बकैती !
Those who've known Nanga Fakir are well aware of his almost obsessive, bordering-on-the-creepy, hero worship of SatyaVrat.
Now the august company of The Hindu joins him. (Link: Join the rationalists online or over chai.)
The link above is The Hindu's profile of that mysterious master belletrist, gonzo-street-fighting-philosopher-on-the-loose, who's vowed to hound the dark forces of ignorance and irrationality, corner them, capture them and then bijli dance them to death.
...
Too bad he doesn't blog more often - despite promises to himself of maintaining a one-post-a-fortnight schedule.
Perhaps this is his way of telling us that he is also human. What a relief! And yet, what a disappointment.
Now the august company of The Hindu joins him. (Link: Join the rationalists online or over chai.)
The link above is The Hindu's profile of that mysterious master belletrist, gonzo-street-fighting-philosopher-on-the-loose, who's vowed to hound the dark forces of ignorance and irrationality, corner them, capture them and then bijli dance them to death.
...
Too bad he doesn't blog more often - despite promises to himself of maintaining a one-post-a-fortnight schedule.
Perhaps this is his way of telling us that he is also human. What a relief! And yet, what a disappointment.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Vignettes
मिस्राजी अपनी धुन के पक्के थे. उनके समूचे व्यक्तित्व से हमेशा एक वीभत्स-सा आत्मविश्वास टपकता रहता था - ठीक उसी प्रकार का, जैसा एक उज्जड, अनपढ़, अल्हड़, बेतकल्लुफ कूपमंडूकता से उत्पन्न हो सकता है.
और फिर मिस्राजी वो काम करते हुए पाए गए जिसकी पूरे गाँव में किसी को उम्मीद न थी...
और फिर मिस्राजी वो काम करते हुए पाए गए जिसकी पूरे गाँव में किसी को उम्मीद न थी...
Friday, March 04, 2011
Debug this bitches!
/* The अटरिया.c program */
#include(stdio.h)
void main()
{
do
{
गुटर गुटर ... [टूँग तादुंदुंग!];
गुटर गुटर ... [टूँग तादुंदुंग!];
गुटर गुटर ... [टूँग तादुंदुंग!];
गुटर गुटर ... ;
} while ('sanity lasts') ;
printf("Bappi Lahiri is the latest avatar of Vishnu\n");
}
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
From Sweden Pradesh, With Love
The great Jabberwock reviews it here.
The humble Nanga Fakir reposts.
Do yourself a favor and click on the image for a larger size.
Then read carefully.
...
Sounds so fucking awesome!
The humble Nanga Fakir reposts.
Do yourself a favor and click on the image for a larger size.
Then read carefully.
...
Sounds so fucking awesome!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
All About Bombay
(Warning: Very long post.)
Sacred Games is a big, fat, bloated, monster of a book. Subject matters include stuff about Bombay, more stuff about Bombay; and then some more stuff about Bombay.
Indian writing in English has mostly been about grand family sagas (cf. Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy), political allegories (Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children), political allegories with a healthy dose of family saga (Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things), deeply felt, sensitive-human-angle pieces (Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance), stuff about Bombay (Rohinton Mistry's ouevre); and of course the ones about ordinary Indian people going about their everyday business written in a language they don't speak (the ordinary Indians that is; the extraordinary ones long ago switched to the master race's preferred mode of communication) (R K Narayan's and Mulk Raj Anand's ouevre). (The savagely funny and biting English, August is the oddball in this sense. All hail Upamanyu Chatterjee!)
It is in this sense that Vikram Chandra's book is so thoroughly, so refreshingly brilliant.
Lest the irreverent tone of the last paragraph suggest that Nanga Fakir has a low opinion of the aforementioned books and its authors, be assured that he totally hearts most of these works and these books form the backbone of the heavy reading NF did in his initial phases of addiction. But he now thinks them more like the mildly addictive semi-gateway drugs that marked the beginning of his lifelong addiction to reading - hence the smug, self satisfied, dismissive tone.
Sacred Games is more crime fiction with literary ambitions. It's about gangwars in Bombay, the business of being criminals (bhaigiri), the police in their roles more as anti-criminals - criminals fighting on the good side - as disorganized as their counterparts, as skilled as their counterparts, as poor as their counterparts, as ordinary as their counterparts; as extraordinary as their counterparts. It's also the only (yes!) book NF has ever read that has people from RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) among its characters. The near absence of any mention of this shadowy Indian organization in contemporary discourse of any kind leads NF to suspect that they must be awfully good at their jobs. (But time and again, experts aver that it's the most lame and incompetent of intelligence agencies in the world and NF has on more than one occasion, detected a secret jealousy in such experts' pieces when they (unfavorably) compare RAW to the (mighty) Pakistani ISI.)1
It also features 'insets' - a look into the past of the more minor characters - and uses these as an excuse to write about the partition, the Naxalite movement and espionage - both national and international. In particular, towards the end of the book (the final 150 pages or so) these insets tie all the not-so-tight ends together and give a supremely satisfying, complete reading experience. The great thing about the book is that the sheer, awesome power of storytelling wins the jaded reader over - no literary gimmicks needed at all!
And yes, how can one forget the use of language in the book! For long now, Indian writing in English has resorted to chutneyfication - peppering their otherwise impeccably crafted sentences with Hindi (mostly) words, thereby giving the impression of telling stories about foreign, exotic locales (nod to Salman Rushdie who championed this trend taking cues from (perhaps) R K Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand). Vikram Chandra does so with a vengeance! And one is tempted to conclude that this is done with a very specific agenda in mind - the very same 'take that' agenda that led Anurag Kashyap to make Dev D as a riposte to the soppy, melodramatic Devdas of Sanjay Leela; and Govind Nihalani to make Ardha Satya - a dark, brutal reply to the gritty, but ultimately very commercial Amitabh Bachchan launcher Zanjeer.
Criminals are referred to as apradhis, Bollywood songs are quoted at length without any attempt to explain their meaning/context in which they are relevant, people burn agarbattis (incense sticks), meet up in akhadas (Indian gymns), feel jealous over the presence of arabpatis (billionaires) in their midsts, stay away from badmash people (bad people). Ass, cunt, dick, sex etc. are unapologetically referred to by their Hindi appellations. And although generally NF is somewhat of a purist when it comes to language, he was totally won over by the savage agenda, raunchy jokes and the brilliant effect such language managed to produce. In fact, such was the frequency and pivotal-ness of this conscious use of Indian languages in the book that Nanga Fakir wonders if the others will not feel totally turned off/miss critical points while wading through the sea of prose. (A glossary of all Hindi/Marathi/other words used in the book is on the writer's website and runs over twenty pages!)
And to those snobbish lit-crit theory gurus who believe that great novels cannot emerge from the dirty hovels of crime fiction - take that and shove it up your gaand (ass)!
Vikram Chandra has made a lifelong fan out of Nanga Fakir. And you'd be one too if you give him a try.
BACK TO POST
1.
The following is a somewhat obscure joke NF came across many years ago and cannot resist throwing in at the first mention of ISI. As far as he remembers, it was first stated by a Pakistani journalist in one of the English dailies in Pakistan.
In the joke, the journalist goes on to aver that real intelligence agencies are almost invisible to all people - even to the public of their own countries. He then cites RAW and Mossad as the prime examples of such efficient organizations. Building on this theme, he suggests that the popular and very well known intelligence organizations, thus, are either very incompetent or merely decoys. Then comes the punchline - since ISI is so well known, it can't be a real intelligence agency at all. It must be a front put up by the Pakistani government. The real intelligence agency must be well hidden from all political discourse - even from the general public. Hence, he concludes with impeccable logic and a sudden, sharp force of clarity, that the real Pakistani intelligence agency must the Pakistani Agriculture Ministry!
Sacred Games is a big, fat, bloated, monster of a book. Subject matters include stuff about Bombay, more stuff about Bombay; and then some more stuff about Bombay.
Indian writing in English has mostly been about grand family sagas (cf. Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy), political allegories (Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children), political allegories with a healthy dose of family saga (Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things), deeply felt, sensitive-human-angle pieces (Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance), stuff about Bombay (Rohinton Mistry's ouevre); and of course the ones about ordinary Indian people going about their everyday business written in a language they don't speak (the ordinary Indians that is; the extraordinary ones long ago switched to the master race's preferred mode of communication) (R K Narayan's and Mulk Raj Anand's ouevre). (The savagely funny and biting English, August is the oddball in this sense. All hail Upamanyu Chatterjee!)
It is in this sense that Vikram Chandra's book is so thoroughly, so refreshingly brilliant.
Lest the irreverent tone of the last paragraph suggest that Nanga Fakir has a low opinion of the aforementioned books and its authors, be assured that he totally hearts most of these works and these books form the backbone of the heavy reading NF did in his initial phases of addiction. But he now thinks them more like the mildly addictive semi-gateway drugs that marked the beginning of his lifelong addiction to reading - hence the smug, self satisfied, dismissive tone.
Sacred Games is more crime fiction with literary ambitions. It's about gangwars in Bombay, the business of being criminals (bhaigiri), the police in their roles more as anti-criminals - criminals fighting on the good side - as disorganized as their counterparts, as skilled as their counterparts, as poor as their counterparts, as ordinary as their counterparts; as extraordinary as their counterparts. It's also the only (yes!) book NF has ever read that has people from RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) among its characters. The near absence of any mention of this shadowy Indian organization in contemporary discourse of any kind leads NF to suspect that they must be awfully good at their jobs. (But time and again, experts aver that it's the most lame and incompetent of intelligence agencies in the world and NF has on more than one occasion, detected a secret jealousy in such experts' pieces when they (unfavorably) compare RAW to the (mighty) Pakistani ISI.)1
It also features 'insets' - a look into the past of the more minor characters - and uses these as an excuse to write about the partition, the Naxalite movement and espionage - both national and international. In particular, towards the end of the book (the final 150 pages or so) these insets tie all the not-so-tight ends together and give a supremely satisfying, complete reading experience. The great thing about the book is that the sheer, awesome power of storytelling wins the jaded reader over - no literary gimmicks needed at all!
And yes, how can one forget the use of language in the book! For long now, Indian writing in English has resorted to chutneyfication - peppering their otherwise impeccably crafted sentences with Hindi (mostly) words, thereby giving the impression of telling stories about foreign, exotic locales (nod to Salman Rushdie who championed this trend taking cues from (perhaps) R K Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand). Vikram Chandra does so with a vengeance! And one is tempted to conclude that this is done with a very specific agenda in mind - the very same 'take that' agenda that led Anurag Kashyap to make Dev D as a riposte to the soppy, melodramatic Devdas of Sanjay Leela; and Govind Nihalani to make Ardha Satya - a dark, brutal reply to the gritty, but ultimately very commercial Amitabh Bachchan launcher Zanjeer.
Criminals are referred to as apradhis, Bollywood songs are quoted at length without any attempt to explain their meaning/context in which they are relevant, people burn agarbattis (incense sticks), meet up in akhadas (Indian gymns), feel jealous over the presence of arabpatis (billionaires) in their midsts, stay away from badmash people (bad people). Ass, cunt, dick, sex etc. are unapologetically referred to by their Hindi appellations. And although generally NF is somewhat of a purist when it comes to language, he was totally won over by the savage agenda, raunchy jokes and the brilliant effect such language managed to produce. In fact, such was the frequency and pivotal-ness of this conscious use of Indian languages in the book that Nanga Fakir wonders if the others will not feel totally turned off/miss critical points while wading through the sea of prose. (A glossary of all Hindi/Marathi/other words used in the book is on the writer's website and runs over twenty pages!)
And to those snobbish lit-crit theory gurus who believe that great novels cannot emerge from the dirty hovels of crime fiction - take that and shove it up your gaand (ass)!
Vikram Chandra has made a lifelong fan out of Nanga Fakir. And you'd be one too if you give him a try.
BACK TO POST
1.
The following is a somewhat obscure joke NF came across many years ago and cannot resist throwing in at the first mention of ISI. As far as he remembers, it was first stated by a Pakistani journalist in one of the English dailies in Pakistan.
In the joke, the journalist goes on to aver that real intelligence agencies are almost invisible to all people - even to the public of their own countries. He then cites RAW and Mossad as the prime examples of such efficient organizations. Building on this theme, he suggests that the popular and very well known intelligence organizations, thus, are either very incompetent or merely decoys. Then comes the punchline - since ISI is so well known, it can't be a real intelligence agency at all. It must be a front put up by the Pakistani government. The real intelligence agency must be well hidden from all political discourse - even from the general public. Hence, he concludes with impeccable logic and a sudden, sharp force of clarity, that the real Pakistani intelligence agency must the Pakistani Agriculture Ministry!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Take That Series Continues
On the rock scene in the Northeast; Shillong and on Bob Dylan jayanti - essential reading. (Link.)
All hail the Northeast - that last bastion of genuine yo-ness in our increasingly phony world of hipsters.
Take that you wannabe Bangies! Take that!
All hail the Northeast - that last bastion of genuine yo-ness in our increasingly phony world of hipsters.
Take that you wannabe Bangies! Take that!
Monday, January 31, 2011
For Bejin Hakumei
Books read in the past year (Jan '10 - Jan '11):
1) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
2) Kyaap - Manohar Shyam Joshi
3) Neuromancer - William Gibson (reread)
4) The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
5) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig (reread)
6) The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant
7) The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
8) Logicomix - Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou
9) Broom of the System - David Foster Wallace
10) Love Creeps - Amanda Fillipachi
11) Girl With Curious Hair - David Foster Wallace
12) The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
13) The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
14) Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace (reread)
15) Anathem - Neal Stephenson
16) Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
17) Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
18) The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño
19) Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
20) White Noise - Don DeLillo
21) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
22) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reread)
23) Maximum City - Suketu Mehta
Currently on the playlist:
1) Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra
2) The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
1) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
2) Kyaap - Manohar Shyam Joshi
3) Neuromancer - William Gibson (reread)
4) The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
5) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig (reread)
6) The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant
7) The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
8) Logicomix - Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou
9) Broom of the System - David Foster Wallace
10) Love Creeps - Amanda Fillipachi
11) Girl With Curious Hair - David Foster Wallace
12) The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
13) The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
14) Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace (reread)
15) Anathem - Neal Stephenson
16) Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
17) Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
18) The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño
19) Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
20) White Noise - Don DeLillo
21) Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
22) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reread)
23) Maximum City - Suketu Mehta
Currently on the playlist:
1) Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra
2) The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)