An interview with Arnab Ray

 



Arnab Ray, better known as Greatbong, is one of India's most widely read bloggers who blogs at Random Thoughts Of A Demented Mind (http://greatbong.net). His blog was awarded the "Indiblog of the Year" at Indibloggies in 2006 and 2008. He has written for several media outlets like the Washington Post, Outlook magazine and Live Mint. He graduated from Jadavpur University as a Bachelor in Computer Science and Engineering and went on to finish his PhD in Computer Science from State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is presently employed as a research scientist at the University of Maryland and resides in the suburbs of Washington DC.

He recently finished writing his first book "May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss" which was published by Harper Collins.Here he talks to us about his blog and his latest book

1] When you began blogging, did you imagine that this would lead to a book someday? Or was there always a book at the back of your mind?

No I didn't. I am the kind that does things without deliberating much

as to where the "doing" will lead to.

2] How easy or difficult is it to make the transition from blogging  short posts, to writing a full fledged book, what is the shift in mind required?

I don't think there is any specific shift that is needed. My book

resembles very closely the style of a blog and so for me personally it

has been even less of a shift than it has been for others.

Content wise , there is of course a consistent focus away from current

events and "hot" news to themes that are more universally relevant

since books have shelf lives of years. Unlike a blog post.

3] How do you respond to the criticism that most bloggers turned & authors recycle the same stuff from their blogs into their books?

First of all they don't. Speaking specific to my case, while my book

does has certain popular posts rewritten, there is a lot of new

material in the book that has never been covered on the blog. Also I

don't see where the problem is even in "recycling". A blog is an

open-for-all repository of writing whose copyright is owned by the

blogger. It has not been commercially released and every blogger

deserves the right to make money from the content he has produced. If

someone was re-cycling previously published material then yes it

warrants criticism. But what is written on a blog is not "published"

in the accepted sense of the term since nobody has paid to read it.

Blog posts are analogous to draft papers that academics circulate in

research communities to warrant feedback before publishing it at a

research venue. Nobody considers its final publication as a "recycling"

do they? Another analogy is to open-source software. If a company has

their code-base online for public review and offers it as free

software package and then builds a product that takes the

"open-source" code and extends it with custom code implementing

premium features in a "paid" release, nobody criticizes them for

building their commercial product on their own open-source code base.

Right?

4] Who are your favourite authors and which are your favourite books?

Too many to mention. Orhan Pamuk, Vedvyas, J D Salinger, Salman

Rushdie, Rabindranath Tagore, Arun Shourie...and let me not even get

into books !

 5] Any advice you would give bloggers aspiring to be authors?

None at all except write on topics you are passionate about and don't

even have the "What do I need to write so as to get the attention of

publishers?" question at the back of your mind.

 6] What should readers watch out for, are you working on a next book?

Yes I am. Mainstream fiction with a humorous undertone.

Author Interviews!

We have been reviewing books for sometime and thought we should take this blog a step further and increase interaction of authors with book lovers and readers.Since our medium of interaction with book lovers is through blogs we thought its absolutely apt to kick off the series with 'Bloggers turned Authors'

We plan to carry interviews with bloggers who are now published authors.

Kicking off our series with Arnab Ray of greatbong.net who answers some questions for us. He talks about his recently published book,'May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss' published by Harper-Collins India,his blog,his favourite writers etc...

Enjoy!

A Disobedient Girl

A Disobedient Girl
By Ru Freeman
Reviewed by Kiran Manral

What do you do when you are thrown into a life situation that delegates you to be perenially subordinate? This powerful debut novel by Ru Freeman poses just that question. Set in Sri Lanka, through the era of the LTTE strife, the protagonist is Latha, who is the maid in a genteel Colombo household and the playmate to Thara. The parallel track is that of Biso, who is escaping an alcoholic husband, and has got onto a train to the north of Sri Lanka, to her maternal aunt's home, with her three children. Her husband has killed her lover, and her third child is the product of her illicit dalliance. Latha grows up in the shadow of Thara, who gets all the clothes, the shoes, the attention. The narrative is powerfully written, we see Latha yearn for the luxuries that Thara takes for granted, unable to understand why she must be deprived of what Thara takes as a right. Her anger at being denied a new pair of sandals drives her to seduce Thara's crush, and she consequently gets pregnant. In disgrace, she is sent off to a convent in the mountains where she bears her child who is taken away by the nuns and given up for adoption. And Biso, on the train to the north, in another time, is touched by the kindness of strangers, is kind to a pregnant girl also being sent off to a convent, encounters a bomb blast on the train she is travelling, and tragically is seperated from her two older children who become the prey of foreign paedophiles. Latha comes back from the convent, to manage the household for Thara, who is now married to Gehan, who was Latha's love before she set about seducing Ajith, Thara's crush. Latha gets into a casual relationship with a foreigner, ends up pregnant with Gehan's baby and is banished yet again, in disgrace, going back to the convent, which we now realise, is where she came from, and why her life had destined her to take on the subservient role, which was not in her genes.
At the end of the novel, the two narratives come together and you realise, what you had been suspecting in the course of the novel, is two, and that the lives of Biso and Latha are intertwined, in the cruel, exacting way karma has. Powerfully poignant, the author sketches the character of Latha exactingly, letting us see her in her flaws and her weaknesses, in her refusal to kowtow to the demand that she remain content with her lot, which leads her into further trouble. As an anthropological insight into Sri Lankan Sinhalese society, the novel is rich in detail, which is woven in unobstrusively into the narrative without hindering the flow of the story in anyway or necessitating a translation for the reader. An impressive must read debut.

'Kalila and Dimna'

I got a chance to read this lovely book by Ramsay Wood.It is the Panchatantra retold in a very interesting way.All Indians have grown up listening to the stories of Panchatantra.What I particularly like about these simple and easy to understand stories are the lessons that you learn from them.Panchatantra has lessons/morals not just for kids but also the grown ups, there is a lot to learn from these ancient texts.

There are many versions as to how the Panchatantra came to be written ..the one this book follows is that of King Dabschelim who was a no good ruler who came across a wise and incorruptible sage named Bidpai.So Bidpai helps the king follow the right and judicious path by telling him these animal fables which are simple to understand and carry a lot of valuable learning for the king.

The other popular version is that Kalila and Dimna was originally written in Sanskrit,some time in the fourth century A.D. In Sanskrit it was called the Panchatantra, or "Five Discourses." It was written for three young princes who had driven their tutors to despair and their father to distraction. Afraid to entrust his kingdom to sons unable to master the most elementary lessons, the king turned over the problem to his wise wazir, and the wazir wrote the Panchatantra, which concealed great practical wisdom in the easily digestible form of animal fables. Six months later the princes were on the road to wisdom and later ruled judiciously.

The original Kalila and Dimna has 13 sections which are The Separation of Friends,The winning of friends,War and Peace,The Loss of One's Gains,The rewards of Impatience and so on so forth.What Ramsay Wood has managed to do is made the stories more contemporary,racy and full of zest.

The book successfully manages to introduce us to a global Indian classic through this illustrated book.

If you are a fan of Panchatantra you must read this book!

My review :The Gamechangers

This lovely book has been written by The Fake IPL Player and revolves around his famous or rather infamous blog. For the uninitiated the Fake IPL Player was a blog that started on April 18, 2009, the same time as the 2009 season Indian Premier League matches. It was written by an anonymous blogger who claimed to be a member of the IPL team, Kolkata Knight Riders.The blog had become a huge hit on the internet with a fan following that is numbered in hundreds and thousands. The blog received media coverage across the cricketing world. Every newspaper and TV news channel in India covered the blog and its revelations in detail through out the duration of IPL.I am sure this blog gave a lot of sleepless nights to the people involved in IPL.

I am sure anyone who loves or hates IPL would have heard of the blog or read about it in the newspapers so when I saw his book I bought it as I was sure the identity of the blogger would be revealed.Was it revealed ...well lets not spoil the fun by revealing that.

 So you have Lalu Parekh the CEO of IBL (Indian Bollywood League) and his burning desire to rule the cricketing world with his IBL concept.If that takes using any means good or bad ,moral or immoral he is willing to do it...no prizes for guessing who it is!You have characters such as Sigwald Raees Kahn,Raj Singhania teams like Calcutta Cavalry,Bangalore Bangers you get the drift?The Fake IBL player is managing to ruin the fun and big bucks involved so to catch him Lalu and Sigwald hire super sleuth Parminder Mahipal Singh (aka PMS) to get to the bottom of it and find out who the mole in the KKR...oops Calcutta Cavalry team is.What happens after that is a typical but interesting cat and mouse chase.

What does not work for the book is the 'holier than thou' captain of Bangalore Bangers Rocky and his love story which tends to drag by the end.Also the author has delved a lot into the semis and final match between the teams which could have been avoided.But that does not take anything away from the book!
A good book and a fun read.

What is interesting to see is how a lot of bloggers are now being taken seriously as writers and are finding ready publishers.I am now starting 'May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss' by Arnab Ray who is again a very famous blogger...will post review soon!

Kama Kahani :The Indian Romance Series

Many times when I used to read Mills and Boon as a teenager I could never relate with the protagonist and I wished that there would come a day when romance novels would get more local and desi .Mills and Boon, Harlequin was a part of growing up. I have devoured hundreds of M&B’s and whenever I got a chance would even re-read some of my favourites. But there was always the Indian tall dark and handsome I longed to read romancing an Indian woman.

Looks like years down the line my prayers have been answered! Random House India has published a series ‘Kama Kahani’ .The romance series are historical romances rather than contemporary love stories. So you have a rich backdrop of palaces, historical places and colorful characters such as Maharajas, Thakurs, Britishers. Think Heer-Ranjha, Soni-Mahiwal …the book tries to re-capture the essence of all these and more.
The books, however, don't score much on the authenticity of the period details. I also felt the writers have a severe M&B hangover. The plot is almost the same –

·        Boy meets girl

·        The girl hates him at first

·        Then a few chance encounters make her fall in love with the handsome man

·        She is unsure of his reciprocation

·        By the end they manage to clear the misunderstanding and live happily ever after!

Apart from a few drawbacks I feel it’s a good attempt by the publishing house to initiate an Indian Romance Series. India is the country of Kama Sutra and we very well deserve our very own desi romance!
What I’d really like to read though would be a few contemporary romance novels from them.
Some of the Titles available in the series:
Mistress to the Yuvraj –Sanyogita Rathore

Passion in the Punjab- Kiran Kohl

The Zamindar’s Forbidden Love-Jasmine Saigal

Ghazal in the Moonlight-Alessandra Shahbaz

The Thief of Poompuhar-Nila Iyer

My Feudal Lord

 

 

 

 

Thank you so much Smitha for your review of this book!

 My Feudal Lord

Tehmina Durrani

Publisher: Corgi Books

Reading an autobiographical account of a woman battered to pulp by her husband may become tiresome, but My Feudal Lord won’t bore you, as one can’t stop admiring the courage of the victim.

Tehmina Durrani, a Pakistani writer, in her autobiography My Feudal Lord describes her traumatic marital life with Gulam Mustafa Khar, an important politician in the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto government, who later went on to become the Chief Minister of Punjab (in Pakistan). The book explores the dark shades of marital life in a chauvinistic male-dominated Pakistani society.

Tehmina born into an influential Pakistani family grows up to be an introvert child who is often chided for her dark looks by her mother. Fighting all parental oppositions she marries her sweetheart but soon falls for the charm of Mustafa Khar. Leaving beside her husband and daughter, Tehmina walks into Mustafa’s life as his fourth wife and thereby starts her journey of trials and tribulations. Mustafa, a charismatic champion of democracy, on the personal front turns out to be an inveterate wife abuser. In between of all the torture that Tehmina suffers, she learns about her husband’s extra-marital affair with her younger sister. Having zilch support from her mother or sister, Tehmina endures pain only to become stronger to deal with the misfortunes in her life.

My Feudal Lord is divided into three parts, aptly entitled, ‘Lion of Punjab’, ‘Law of Jungle’, and ‘Lioness’. Throughout these sections one can map the progress of Tehmina from a meek housewife to a fierce social crusader fighting for her husband’s release from prison and later for her own freedom from the clutches of her husband.

The book tends to get a bit sketchy in parts especially when it echoes endlessly the pathos of the protagonist. Though the book is no literary genius, yet it explores subtly the nuances of an ordinary elitist housewife walking out of a marriage to discover herself as an emancipated human being contesting for equal rights and women’s empowerment.

Books from women like Tehmina Durrani and Betty Mahmoody (Not Without My Daughter) may not be in any must read list, but they are to be read to get a clearer insight on the plight of educated elitist women. 

Guest Review :Smitha Verma