Made in India by Biddu

A biography written by Biddu, I was told. Why would anyone want to read it, I wondered politely, and thankfully silently. The ‘Thankfully silently” part comes post my reading of the book. Or I would have been eating crow right now. Titled Made in India, the book talks of his journey from a boy in Bangalore obsessed with all things Western, including Western music, to a best selling music composer in the UK.




The book is written in a droll, languid tone, which when you meet Biddu, you realise is exactly the way he is. With sudden sharp stabs of humour which have you clutching your stomach and rolling on the ground. And it is an interesting story. That of a young Coorgi boy in Bangalore, who was obsessed with Western music and wanted to reach the Mecca of Music, the west aka UK in any which way he could. This resulted in two failed attempts to run away from home, and the third which succeeded saw him go off to perform in Hyderabad and never return. Along the way he formed a band, played in Kolkata, came to Mumbai, played with a band in the Ambassador and then played solo at The Astoria Hotel, under the moniker, The Lone Trojan. And one fine day, he got himself a passport and struck out for the land of the Beatles. Albeit on a cargo ship to Basra. He then hitchhiked his way from Basra to the UK. As fantastic as that sounds, he definitely had luck and youth on his side. “I dont think when one is young one thinks of discomforts or what ifs, one just gets things done.” His entire experience saw him spend no more than five days in the open, he sang his way to food and shelter and was lucky enough to get rides with kindly souls. Of course, that was a much more innocent age than today. “I was so different from everyone in the Middle East that people were curious about me and kind to me. And the thought that I would never make it to London never ever entered my mind.”



He reached London, with the help of kind souls along the way and friends, and got day jobs to keep body and soul together, and Lady Luck helped him by putting him in touch with promising musicians. Tina Charles for one. The music happened. Charles Douglas. Kung Fu Fighting. Aap Jaisa Koi. And of course, Made in India. Details of everything in the book. The name of the book does come from the best selling album he composed for Alisha Chinai, but he wanted to call it The Boy with Gold in his Hair, something an Eastern mystic had told him he had. But Made in India does come through in the last chapter where he talks about how, no matter where in the world he goes, he will always be Indian at heart, because he is, after all, Made in India.



His music making days are behind him now, he states. His passion now is writing. He spends time in Southern Spain where he now lives and writes for six to seven hours every single day. He has one book ready for release, and another that he is currently writing. “I’ve been a professional musician since I was 13. I thought it was high time I tried something else.” But he is here in India to do a series of performances after a long long while. “But,” he shrugs, “writing is where my heart is right now.”



(Reviewed by Kiran Manral. Cross posted at themagmag.wordpress.com)

My Review : A Fine Balance

Author: Rohinton Mistry

There are very few books that move you, emotionally drain you and make you feel, rather selfishly, that thank god you were not in the same situation as the characters in the book. ’A Fine Balance’ makes you go through all these emotions and more. It is a very hard hitting novel, it is a book about the human spirit, I would rather say the oft repeated ‘Spirit of Mumbai’. I was born and raised in this city and have seen lots of things around me that are part of this book. I have seen the slums, I have heard of the tough struggles people have gone through to make it big in this city. I have travelled in the overcrowded local trains, I have seen the filth, the dirt, the stink but there’s just something so vibrant and energetic about this city that such things do not affect you after a point. You see the slums but you also see the positive attitude of the people living in these slums. Many a times I have been bombarded by questions such as ‘How can you live in this city? It stinks, it’s filthy, poor quality of living, traffic jams etc ’ I don’t have answers to these questions but all I know is that this city is an example of a human being’s indomitable spirit, a spirit to survive all odds , a positive energy that binds us all. It is a city of hope. It might be hard for people who are not from Mumbai to understand or comprehend this but this is an answer you will get from every Mumbaikar! 

The book is set in the mid-70 ‘s in the city of Bombay,India at a time when the Government has declared a state of Emergency. The book describes the circumstances that prevailed in the country and the civil liberties that the erstwhile government took during that period. It gives you a glimpse of a time when the country was in turmoil. After reading about the atrocities perpetuated in that period I only ended up saying a feeble prayer for the people who suffered. It is so unimaginable in today's day and age the press was gagged, the opponents were jailed, the voice of the poor suppressed. It also speaks about how the men in power used and abused their stature. Like I mentioned earlier this book drains you emotionally and makes you feel the pain the people suffered during that period.

It is the story of Dina Dalal , a widow  whose refusal to marry has left her struggling to earn a living as a seamstress; two tailors Om and Ishwar who are initially from a chamaar (untouchables) family but learn the tailoring trade to escape casteism in their village and a life of drudgery because of their untouchable status, who come to the city searching for employment and join Dina’s tailoring unit; and a student Maneck from a small hamlet in the Himalayan foothills, whose father has sent him to attend college and lives at Dina’s house as a PG. 


The story brings together these four unlikely people from different parts of the country to live in one house in Mumbai!How the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.


A bit about the book :It has won the second annual Giller Prize in 1995, and in 1996, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. It was selected for Oprah's Book Club in November 2001 and sold hundreds of thousands of additional copies throughout North America as a result. It won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker prize

I highly recommend this book and it is a must read!

Committed. A Skeptic makes peace with marriage

Committed
A Skeptic makes peace with marriage
By Elizabeth Gilbert

When an author has a previous best selling book like Eat. Love. Pray. which goes on to break best selling lists, and be made into a motion picture movie starring Julia Roberts in the lead role, which is based on the author herself, any book that follows up is bound to be under great pressure. Something that the author herself acknowleges right at the start of the novel.
And right off the bat, I would like to say, Elizabeth Gilbert would have been better off had she left it at Eat Pray Love. Committed is the kind of book that shows the effort put into it. At the best of times, it drags. Is patchy. Needed a good editor to go through it with a finetoothed comb to unravel the tangential skeins that the author seems to be weaving a tapestry of tales of marriage the institution across continents and cultures, as she and her Brazilian beau travel all over in their bid to be together. The narrative jumps between her efforts to stay in a relationship that is precious to her, while confronting the demon of marriage, which they must go through if they are to be together, because the US immigration views Felipe's constant trips to the US with suspicion.
What seemed like an ideal relationship with no marriage (both Elizabeth and Felipe being divorce survivors and therefore terrified of the institution of marriage) must now morph into marriage, and Committed, as the subtitle goes is all about Gilbert's attempts to examine the institution of marriage across eras and cultures. And a very patchy thesis does she do on it.
Sadly, the voice of Eat. Pray. Love., the quirky self deprecating, fun voice of a woman recovering from a painful divorce and her trip around the world to heal herself, ending with meeting Felipe in Bali, the voice that captivated every woman reader who saw herself in Gilbert is not the same in Committed. It is a different voice. But then, Gilbert is now a different person. And while it stays in the realm of charming, easy reading, it lacks the straight from the heart quality that set Eat Pray Love apart.
What does redeem Committed is that it does make a strong case for marriage, despite the author's own painful divorce and the statistics for divorce going around. And yes, she does have the wedding at the end of the book, a wedding, where aptly the groom spends most of his wedding day in the kitchen with the apron on, cooking for the guests. (I'd like one of these please!). After all, arent we all suckers for a happy ending.

Reviewed by Kiran Manral

March 2010 Events

March 2010 Events

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5 days 5 books a review by Anaggh Desai

Those who are active on twitter in India would definitely know @anaggh.Most of us from twitter world have re-tweeted his humorous and many a times his philosophical tweets.He has made me laugh whenever I am feeling low with his tweets.

With due permission from him I have taken this from his blog since it makes an interesting read.Read and Enjoy! Thanks Anaggh...hope to see more reviews from you with regards to book which I can share on this blog as well!

Indian Authors need to be IIT or IIM?

Posted in Reviews; Recommendations; Appreciation |

A dedicated fiction reader, who once upon a time used to complete a 400 page book during a Bombay - Delhi - Bombay flight including the waiting time at the airports; over the past year or so found my reading habits breaking away completely, more maybe from the fact that I do not travel at all these days, a little less from the fact that have been watching more movies, tweeting?

Having said that had decided to rectify the situation this year. Flipping thru Flipkartsometime a fortnight ago, saw some Indian authors, whose books sounded simple, in terms of story & price both. Ended up ordering the following:

Love, A rather Bad Idea….All it gives is a lousy hangover by Anirban Mukherjee
Zero Percentile..Missed IIT Kissed Russia by Neeraj Chhibba
Nothing can be as crazy by Ajay Mohan Jain &
The Dork by Sidin Vadukut (heavily tweeted on twitter by his well wishers)

Whilst this was in transit, I made a trip to Malvan and picked up a book at the Goa airport - Devil in Pinstripes by Ravi Subramanian having read his earlier ‘If God was a Banker’

Then overcome with work, did not even glance at those till, last week, when glancing through them, saw that most of them were 200 pages easy to read font & decided to go for them & so began:

Devil in Pinstripes - A good book taking a look at the Banking & financial segment, boss, mentor, couple relationship etc. nudging & offering some insight of what it is all about in a superficial way.

Dork - A good enough book, that gives an insight into Management placement, Consulting industry, taking a swipe at the perception & hype created vs how actually it works.

Zero Percentile - Halfway decent writing, that takes a look at lower middle class home, destiny mish mash. A book that can be missed without missing anything

Nothing can be as Crazy A decent book on the Banking Industry with neither a complete coverage on banking or institutional politics. There but cannot be there.

Love, A rather Bad Idea - A breezy book trying to convey that IIT has everything that the world can show and friendship, love, loyalty overcomes everything.

Having said that, some common factors which are not so surprising:)

Out of the 5 authors 2 are from IIT & 2 are from IIM or combination of both.
All the books can be called “ILIT” that has sex, loyalty, destiny, family & happy ending with of course IIT or IIM as background.
A bit of superiority “we were there, we are better, and now besides we can write” comes through.
The cost of the book is sub 200/- something like ‘chiclit’ take it on the flight & throw it.

As the DNA & Sunday Midday of 22nd February says that 1000 copies is enough to break even all of them have broken even, if nothing else but through their network, loyalty, friends & relatives.

What is painful is that such intelligent (obviously with IIT & IIM tags) people have chosen extremely mediocre, flat subjects to write their novels on, truly hope that they come out of their comfort zone & contribute more.

The Question this raises now is - “Do Indian Authors need to be IIT or IIM”

BUT in the end Hey they have written, published & people read, whilst I have not, so whilst this may sound, it is NOT sour grapes.

Review : Dork The Incredible Adventures of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese

Parul  reviews the book:

Way back in 2004, when Sidin Vadukut first wrote his Travails I was not a blog reader or writer. Still, this post did the rounds as an e-mail forward and was cause for many giggles, guffaws and sniggers across cubicles. In the tradition of self-effacing humour, it clearly pulled out all stops. A few years later when I started writing a blog of my own, I discovered the phenomenon called Domain Maximus, a blog that never fails to tickle the funny bone and often draws the complaint that it is not updated frequently enough. Readers are not willing to accept that Sidin Vadukut may be busy in his day job as the managing editor of Livemint.com, his nearly-obsessive but consistently funny Twitter updates or writing his next book.

The first of the Dork trilogy arrived at my doorstep via Flipkart. The first and eminently pleasant surprise was the price of the book. At INR 149 (Rs 50 off, don't you just love Flipkart?), it doesn't hurt to pick up the book, even if one is just mildly curious about it. I read it in two days and that can only happen if the book engages at a personal level, at least when one is in the lifestage that I am in (child/ren running riot in the background), it is. Most bloggers turned authors will tell you that it is reasonably difficult to maintain one's voice as one makes the transition from hitting publish to will you publish me. It is almost as if the moment one decides that the time has come to pen the masterpiece that has been sitting in the old noggin, the creative juices all decide to dry up in a single, impressive flash. Sidin evades that admirably, managing to retain his trademark humour as he reveals the diaries of one Robert 'Einstein' Verghese - the dork, the hero.

If you have had the opportunity to meet a low on social skills - high on naivete MBA student, Einstein (an ironical dorm name bestowed on him by seniors) will come across as familiar. Ranked 41st in his batch at a WIMWI, Einstein manages to delude himself that Goldman Sachs and McKinsey and Co. all want him on Day Zero of placement day and the much-coveted foreign posting with a fat bonus waits just around the corner. Instead he finds himself at Dufresne, a mediocre, mid-level consulting firm where he bumbles along in his own inimitable style. Perhaps the MBA jokes are too contextual and the consulting satire too specific but the book still manages to hold one's attention and more importantly create some laugh-aloud moments. It would be interesting to know the reactions of readers who do not have any experience with products of the Engineering Graduate - MBA from premier institute - Consulting/Banking/PE Job cycle.

Back to Einstein - the desire to find love and sex (possibly in reverse order of importance) is also raging strong and he regards all the female characters in the book with the same lustful eye, without getting too much action. Basis some well-timed confusion and deception, he manages to go steady with the girl of his campus dreams, only to hanker after someone else.

All in all, a very good first effort and it would be interesting to see what else Sidin has in store for the readers in the remaining parts. We can never have enough funny writers, I say.   

So we have a guest review!

Woohoo we have a first guest review for Sidin Vadukut's book!The book is reviewed by Parul Sharma.Parul is a well known blogger in the blogosphere and a published author.Her book 'Bringing Up Vasu: That First Year' was published last year and I highly recommend the book to all mothers and wannabe mothers.

Thank you very much Parul for the review.It is an honor to have you writing for our blog as a guest writer!So the next blog post is the Review of Dork:The Incredible Adventures of Robin 'Einstein' Varghese.

Remember I had invited all you people who love to read books and review them?Do send  us your review posts  at bookwelove[at]gmail[dot]com and we'd publish it here!