A humming word

A collection of seven stories, Men without Women by Haruki Murakami isn’t different from his other books, yet it is! The book revolves around relationships, supernatural phenomenon, love, deceit, but the translation in this book lacks the poetic depth that one yearns for in a Murakami book. Few stories are exceptional—it is a habit now for Murakami (genius dripping out at the top of his hat). But a few stories give a Deja-vu feel. Nevertheless, give it a try. The stories that I enjoyed were: 1.        The Woman Driver which starts with the common sentiment that women are bad drivers, it progresses onto a deep friendship between the two protagonists—a woman driver and her employer. Their camaraderie doesn’t translate to any physical relationship and that’s comforting. 2.        Scheherazade, inspired by a character in the Arabic folklore, is about a kleptomaniac, narrated by her paramour. The intricacies of the theft a...

The word is partition literature in itself. But who was Manto behind those stories? Behind Thanda Ghosht, Toba Tek Singh, who was this bespectacled man who was against partition and believed Bombay (now, Mumbai) was the love of his life? Can he be confined to being a writer who put his flesh and blood to write about he flesh and blood during the 1947 partition? And that what’s the movie does. A writer is a writer even beyond his books—his life are the pages of his life that he writes them. It isn’t a nine-to-five job—even when Manto was a father, husband, brother, he was a writer in motion—his thoughts, his words entered pages through the humdrum of daily life. He never wrote about silver linings or about freedom struggle but wrote about struggle for freedom of ordinary people living in the belly of our cities—things that people wouldn’t talk about. And Nandita Das has molded her cinematic expression like a poet would mold words into a poem and let the actors add assonance...

It took two weeks for India to inject religion into a virus – Daniel Fernandes, Indian Comic artist (source: Instagram) For a country with population bursting at its seams, Social Distancing is an alien concept. But you know what, we, Indians, have been doing it. Yes, we got thrashed and broke few saucepans and spoons, before learning it the hard way but we finally did it. Despite, working from homes, we wake up early in the morning, put on our masks, wash our hands and are off to the market. The shops are open at 5 am and close as early as 6 pm. In India, this concept is new. We are used to having our first cup of tea and coffee at 7 am. But look, what’s the Government’s done to us. We don’t hug each other anymore but say “Namastey” or   “Hi” depending on the time of the day. We wash our legs and hands and then send Whatsapp forwards to each other about our culture. The same culture that we banished and left our homes to work overseas—Australia, USA, Canada—we are everywher...

The Sky is Pink is the story of Niren and Aditi, rather Panda and Moose, told through their daughter, Aisha Chaudhury’s point of view. The couple’s relationship is feisty yet cute. Two independent individuals, with different backgrounds, deal with love and anguish in different ways. The film is humorous and breathes life on a hot summer day. But why the title? In a frantic phone call from London to her son in Delhi, Moose asserts, “Your sky should be the color you choose it to be. If you want it to be pink, so be it.” And, we this kind of independence in their tabiyat throughout. Based on true events (the life of the teenager Aisha Chaudhury who succumbed to Pulmonary Fibrosis and an Immune Deficiency syndrome), the movie is about struggle and more importantly, her family that lived through it. Aisha Chaudhury wasn’t the only one suffering from pain, her father, Panda; her brother, Giraffe; and her mother, Moose, were too. Aisha has such cute names for her family mem...

There are some days when we want to turn to the familiar and ensconce in that familiar song whose lyrics run on our tongue like butter. One such familiar space is Ruskin Bond (atleast for me!). I don’t want to read about plagues or diseases—nor do I want to escape what’s happening around. But what if you could turn into something familiar such as chewing the edge of your grandmother’s saree or just resting your head on that old cot. It just calms you down from this overload of information of Corona! (Yes, Karthik Aryan, we get it! No more outings and eating comfort food or icecream, outside!) If you could bring the outside, inside, then pick this book—The Road to the Bazaar by Ruskin Bond. There are a few familiar stories such as The Tunnel. Ranji’s Bat, The Great Train Journey, The Long Day but re-reading them makes it an enjoyable read. Bond paints a picture of Dehra with oil paints that it sits eternally in the heart and in the head. Mukesh Starts a Zoo was one of my favour...

As summer looms over our head and the prickly heat powder steps out of the cupboards, the yearning for mangoes (best part of summer) begins too. But did you know that Gandhiji planted a mango tree in Abids at Sarojini Devi Naidu's house Golden Threshold on March 9, 1934? (It was a sapling sourced from Yerwada jail!). Hyderabad Trails, on the occasion of Women's Day, hosted a quick walk around the Golden Threshold. We walked in the rooms where Gandhiji and Naidu garu, once walked and looked around the various rooms. Niharika and Assistant Professor Dr. Janardhan Rao filled us on the various details; however, I wish the photographs in the rooms were clear and names of the people in the photographs were mentioned. What surprised me was the turn out! The enthusiastic crowd on a Sunday morning, sharply dressed, to listen to a piece of Sarojini Naidu's story and to listen to poetry (read by a young boy). And, more poetry was read in the Indira Devi Hall, which was opposite...

As February passes like a soft breeze and we enter the simmering heat of March, it makes me wonder about love and Coronavirus. “ Choone se nahi pheltha hai ,” comes read a jocular post. Another reminded us how we, Indians, must not be scared of this virus: we can remove a tennis ball from a gutter, tap it and play with it. We can wash our hands off it yet it will be around much like love that we put on our guard around it and behave like it's coronavirus. Worse is love between people of the same sex. The most recent example for this is the film: Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan,  starring Ayushman Khurana and Jatinder Kumar directed by Aanand L. Rai. Albeit it’s a commercial hit, the film has made gay love a forced agenda. It portrayed how parents react in the most obscene and impractical way: they resort to avoiding the people involved to false attempts in suicide to questioning their own parenting to violent methods. Finally, they emotionally breakdown. The premise of...