Of books and Bookers. And a film critic.

It's nice when you see good things being appreciated. It sort of makes you feel that not everything's wrong with the world. My favorite Indian film critic - Baradwaj Rangan - won the National Award for Best Film Critic this year. If you haven't read his reviews, go read a few. The link's there in my blogroll. What I like the most about his reviews, apart from the depth of knowledge this man has, encompassing the universe of Hindi, English and South Indian movies, is that in almost all cases he manages to find some redeeming feature in the movie. Critics aren't necessarily supposed to criticise. Very few of them realise that though.

And this book - the only one that has made me think and not speed-read in recent times - called The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid has been long-listed for the Booker. I haven't read any of the other books, so can't make any predictions, but it's a book powerful enough to win. OK, considering that I have liked almost all the books ever short/long listed for Booker, that does not hold much weight. It was selling for a substantial discount at one of the bigger bookstores here. The book-shop owners would be cursing themselves if it happens to get short-listed.

Mohsin Hamid's previous novel - Moth Smoke - was also a nice work. Not in the same league as this one, but special for me nevertheless because I bought it in Lahore. I didn't bring back much from Pakistan, at least not in tangible terms, and I treasure this book a lot.

Pedro!

I just watched All About My Mother by Pedro Almodovar. Loved the movie. I really like movies by Almodovar because the characters in his movies are truly beautiful. They are unusual, even abnormal, characters - not the kind of people one meets regularly - who inhabit the fringes of the society. This one is better than Bad Education.

Laut Ke Buddhu...

I had forgotten how brutal an assault visiting Kolkata after a long break can be, compounded by the fact that's it's the peak of summer here. The mismanagement and chaos is nightmarish. The campus feels like paradise in comparison, though one with a lot more humidity than I would prefer. Coming back to my engineering college campus was never as looked-forward to an experience as this one was.

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I am absolutely in love with David Mitchell's writing right now. After Nabokov and Rushdie, Mitchell is one author whose writing I like simply because the way he plays with words. It's very stylish, fairly original (at least according to my very limited knowledge of literature) and deceptively clever. This is part of a paragraph I found towards the end of Number 9 Dream, which, though not the best specimen, is definitely a decent example. If you don't find anything special here, don't waste your time reading his books:

Rented-by-the-square-meter Tokyo has turned into zones of rice fields, houses, industrial units. The landscape itself looks like its map. "On a fine day," says Ogre, "you can see Mount Fuji over there, you can." Rain stars go nova on the glass, and Ogre speeds up the wipers. They squelch. The radio burbles away. Tires hiss on the wet Tomei Expressway. A minibus of kids from a school for the disabled passes on the inside. A pair in the back row wave. Ogre flashes his headlights and the whole bus goes wild. I wave too. I still cannot say why I feel so at peace with the world. I am suspicious of this feeling - when it leaves you feel hollower than before. Ogre is chuckling. "Who knows what makes kids tick? Not me. Alien species, kids are nowadays, if you ask me." Row upon row of polyethylene hothouses troop past. I feel I should stoke the conversation to pay for my fare, but when I begin a sentence a yawn splits my face in two. So I ask Ogre if he has any kids himself.

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I saw a hoarding with an ad for Tween Times while coming to the campus in the morning. I don't know if this supplement by TOI is limited to Kolkata or available in other cities as well. It is definitely refreshing to see someone identify this huge untapped market, something that I had written about once at my previous blog. I sincerely believe that there is scope for something like Target to do well in India even now, despite what most people might think of the short attention span of young individuals and their greater affinity for films and fashion compared to reading.

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I have realised that I am compulsively non-committal. If I tell a friend that I am going to keep writing to him regularly, even if I actually intended to do that earlier, because I let him know, I start getting this urge to not write to him ever again, or at least for a long time. There are several other instances, many of them in the recent past, which have convinced me. I hate letting any one else be able to predict what I am going to do. That's a good enough excuse to avoid marriage, right?

Kkrrib

Am back in India. Departing from Singapore at the mind-blowing Changi Airport for a week's stay in one of India's least developed regions, with a pit-stop at Delhi that has probably one of the worst international airports in the world, is a substantial come-down. Of course, what is 2 months in comparison to almost 25 years? But the first night, travelling by road in Gurgaon, which people seem to compare too often with Singapore, was a disconcerting mixture of despair, disappointment and outright depression. I actually prefer the climate in Delhi to Singapore's though.

Thankfully the stay at home is short, and just about right to enjoy 'no work' without getting too bored. If my disdain for watching movies on my comp, which started a few weeks into my internship, continues for one more term, it'll help me quite a bit in getting my GPA up.

Am really happy that my long-dormant hunger for books has reared its head again. David Mitchell - have read Ghostwritten and am half-way through Number 9 Dream - is a really great author. Not that I have been in touch, but I am not sure I have seen someone as adept at playing with words, styles and situations as he is in recent times.

I am so fed up with TV journalists that I am sure I am going to shoot, or at the very least spit on, any member of that ilk I come across in the near future. I hope neither of the ER Secys from my college reads this. These guys are so utterly dumb and so full of themselves. The journalists, not the ER Secys.

I saw the last KSBKBT episode that had Smriti Irani as Tulsi Virani. How do people not get confused between these two surnames? I managed to watch the entire episode, despite the close-ups with jarring background music. These serials are so much funnier than the Great Indian Comedy Challenge or whatever it is called.

I am enjoying the Indian Idol 1.5 hour shows though. But we do need our own Simon Cowell and no, Anu Malik is not good enough. Some of these singers are pathetic. Of course some others like Chang, Prashant, Pooja and Emon (is that the right spelling?) are really good too. Udit Narayan is making such a fool of himself. One expects Alisha Chinai to root for the most good looking contestants, which she faithfully does. Javed Akhtar is a lot more observant and knowledgable than the other two chumps, but I'd still prefer a singer or a music-director.

My thoughts on baking.

I heard someone say recently that he is afraid of failure. And he made it sound like one of those answers we prepare for 'State three weaknesses' type questions for HR interviews - something that might be a negative on the surface, but might actually be a positive in spirit and substance.

From my own experience, and from lots of other persons' I have known, and one does come across a disproportionately high number if one studies/has studied at the 'premier' institutions of the country, I have come to believe that anyone who truly believes this is blinded by narcissism. There is an inherent assumption in the statement that you have been really successful in most of the things in your life, whatever success means, or at least have failed less than your lesser peers. Or that everyone else enjoys failure and looks forward to it. What it truly means, whatever truth means, is that you are just too hung up on living up to the commonly held notions of success; in fact, scared of not living up to people's expectations. And the higher you move up on this invisible ladder propped up by your eagerness to fulfill everyone's expectations, the more difficult it gets to let go. You have managed to convince yourself that living your life, doing things that you might actually want to do, and enjoying your work, is a set completely exclusive to the set that defines success. That not 'putting fight' is the same thing as stagnation or failure. That you are too much of a coward to even accept that you can't bear the idea of people not fawning over your superficial 'success'.

I don't exactly feel very confident about discussing what one should do with his work and how much fight one needs to put to 'succeed', and would probably never feel confident doing that for a long time with people who have been in touch with me over the last two-three years, but my faith in the notion of anything not being worth it if one has to force oneself to do it, whatever 'it' means, has, surprisingly enough, only got strengthened over these last few years.

Giving up is not as evil a thing as we make it out to be. Even giving up on life. And fighting, over and over again, is probably not as virtuous as we have been brought up to believe.

But even when you don't give up, and honestly this world would be so much worse if it weren't for the fighters amongst us, and even the worst of us give-up-ers do fight at some level, it is, frankly, very funny if you cite excuses like fear of failure to hide a much bigger issue. ‘Success’ and ‘failure’ are ascribed to certain things, almost always, based on what the majority believes. The majority, let’s accept it, isn’t exactly very intelligent. And if you, despite your supposed infinite brilliance, have been forced to kowtow to the majority’s notions, even when you yourself do not subscribe to them, I am not sure how successful you actually are.

This might sound like the much abused quote by some management guru (Shiv Khera, is it?) but one doesn’t necessarily need to do different things - leave everything and become an ascetic or choose a completely unconventional career - but one can at least try and do things differently from an average rich or professionally successful idiot who rues at the end of his 35-40 year stellar career that he didn’t enjoy life’s little pleasures when he could.

One can, most definitely, have the cake and eat it too.

If Books Could Kill

Gradual wrapping up of the internship has begun. After the first couple of weeks, time flew by really fast. There are a few, albeit not particularly interesting, places left to visit, which will remain unvisited, unless we don't sleep at all next weekend. The trips to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand didn't materialise. So lots of stuff to do when I return again, in better company.

We had a one-day training session last week. The stuff taught was fairly pointless, but was a good break from work, and the highlight of the day was working in groups for a session on consulting (don't ask why a bank did a session on consulting, especially when it lost all its IIM interns from last year to consulting firms). There are several interns from other countries too - both MBA and undergrad - and working in mixed groups, making fun of the instructor, cracking jokes, or generally flirting (with the female interns), was great fun. This was pretty much my first interaction here, and, in fact, one of the few in my life, with people my age from other countries in a non-office environment. Over the slightly difficult-to-understand accents and brief conversations in native tongues with interns from one's own country, we realised that we are amazingly similar, bred on the same pop culture elements, with similar interests and aspirations. And similar weird sense of humor too. We'll meet over lunch again this week.

I think I have been to at least one branch of all major bookstore-chains in Singapore now. Have forbidden myself from going into a book or a DVD shop any more. At last count, I had bought 11 books here. I intended to buy books as gifts for some of my friends and cousins, but I really don't think I am going to part with any of these. I also found the book I had been looking for a long time - Great Movies by Roger Ebert. And considering the speed with which I have been reading books over the last year, I am sure it'll take me more than a year to finish these off. The more immediate worry is how I am going to carry this extra load back home.

Bought a couple of DVD sets as well. And am feeling really stupid now, because I would have easily found something like that, at a much cheaper price in Delhi. But my single biggest extravagance so far, and one I am definitely not feeling stupid for, has been the 5th generation model of an electronic device. It's a fantastic thing, saw a movie on it yesterday. But, to use a quote from a recent (boring) ad (for some other product) - it's not one thing, it's MANY!

My worst moments of splurging are still better than what my co-intern did this weekend. He bought a Mont Blanc wallet and a Mont Blanc pen for a total of SGD 1100. That's Rs 33,000 on a damn wallet and a stupid pen. I didn't smirk then because I didn't want to ruin his enthusiasm, and the wallet does look really nice, but it's still way too much money on such stuff. I don't think I'll ever spend so much money on over-priced designer labels. At least not for myself.

But things change. If you had told me a year back I would be spending my khoon-paseene ki kamaai on first-hand books, I would have taken you for crazy.

Some more of the old stuff

I stopped posting (I wrote several drafts but didn't publish them) because I was getting bored with my own writing. It's become a series of sentences filled with adjectives, describing every minute detail of what I am doing here. I have stopped thinking. Which is not a bad thing actually for an incurable, compulsive, thinker (not in the same sense as great thinkers like, say, Vivekanand or Mayawati) like me, but absolute blankness and just hurtling down life's alleys is not good either.

Though I am not sure I am going to write anything profound, or even worth two cents of thought, even now.

Since my last post I have visited the Singapore zoo (alone, in sweltering heat, but it was still worth it) and Snow City (with friends, sliding down icy slopes at tempertaures of -8deg C), rode on the DHL balloon (10 min in the air at a height of over 40-storeys to convince oneself how astonishingly small this city is), attended a cocktail party given by the Singapore governement for all IIM interns (great food, free alcohol, inane conversation, the government trying to convince us to settle down here, which is not all that bad an idea), partied at pubs (including a great evening at Hard Rock Cafe), partied at friends' places, bought some stuff, and worked a bit.

Last night I tasted some sushi, some caviar and some octopus. It was a damp affair (quite literally so) because I had hoped to do it with friends, but I realised there are very few people as foolishly adventurous as I am, and none of them is interning here from my college. I don't think I'll have a sushi again. I can imagine people liking it (unlike a durian), but I am so sick of the smell of fish (I almost puked when an Indonesian senior at work took me to have Korean food that was drenched with the flavor of fish) that I am afraid I'll not eat it back home either. The caviar was nice, but a very cheap variety and I would like to taste slightly better ones sometime later. The octopus was garnished with lots of spicy stuff, so I didn't even feel the rawness. Though I am really not interested in having it again.

I also tried some sake (pronounced 'saa-kay', give or take a few vowels, for those who aren't pseud enough to know). Have got three-fourths of the bottle still left in my room. It's got almost no taste at all but gives a nice high (13% alcohol only). But I think I'll stick to Tiger Beer.

I could see so much more of Singapore and the neighboring places if my co-interns weren't so damn lazy and so damn gay. They spent the entire weekend shopping!

M'aidez m'aidez

I had never known I would care for Labor Day so much. A non-weekend break is heavenly. We are celebrating the day by watching a first-day show of Spiderman 3.

Last night was spent having a nice dinner at one of the restaurants adjoining Boat Quay and then spending time drinking and listening to some good music at one of those posh pubs at Clarke Quay. The crowd's amazing, but also one that I would always feel like an outsider in. Drinking beer, talking on the phone, walking along the river, at 1:00am, in an area teeming with some very beautiful people - one can get used to this place.

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The result of buying all those books last weekend has been that I have got back to the habit of reading. I finally managed to finish Manticore's Secret. The book gets really tiresome at times and feels as if Samit Basu is only trying to increase the number of pages. Characters indulging in inane conversations is not funny if done too often. Ditto for killing off characters all of a sudden. But it's still one of the more enjoyable books to come out of India in a long long time.

Have moved on to a very interesting read called Out, by Natsuo Kirino. Am one-third into it, and the pace is building up, moving towards, what feels like, an interesting climax. The book is a winner of Japan's Grand Prix for Crime Fiction. Honestly speaking, I have no idea how prestigious that is, but it sounds grand. And had read some great reviews on the net. She's just come out with a new novel and I might buy it with my next month's salary if this book delivers what it has promised so far.

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After staring at a computer screen for long hours everyday, watching a movie when I am back in my room is not a very exciting proposition. So I haven't really been watching movies with the frequency I am used to. The last movie I saw on my laptop was more than two weeks back. I finally saw a movie, chosen quite at random, Sunday afternoon.

The movie was slightly scary for me because it resonates with the kind of thoughts I have been having once I started off on this internship. I don't want to end up like Warren Schmidt. I want to find my Ndugu(s) without having to wait for retirement.

Turistas. And some bad experiences with food.

The long-planned and much-awaited trip to Sentosa finally materialised this Saturday. There were seven of us, including one guy from WIMWI. I had heard many conflicting opinions about the place, but I liked the island more than the best review I had heard. I am probably easy to please.

There's lots of stuff to see. And being first-timers, and being one of those groups where everyone expresses his viewpoint without bothering to listen to others, after spending the entire day there we ended up missing out on quite a few nice places. For the same reasons, we also ended up wasting a few dollars on bad planning. The place is fairly expensive if you don't plan things out properly.

But whatever we did see was full paisa-vasool for me. Probably because I saw many things that I had seen only on TV before this. The magnificent Underwater Kingdom, where apart from seeing some brilliant creatures from up close like sharks, dugongs, eels and many others, I also got to touch baby stingrays and baby sharks. The insect kingdom, where the intial few moments moving around in an enclosure filled with butterflies that are available dime a million in India felt like a damp squib but where I also got to see some huge and beautiful insects later. The dolphin lagoon, where I saw three really cute pink dolphins enthrall the audience with their antics. The luge, the sky-ride, the (juvenile) 4-D show, the southernmost tip of continental Asia. The tame beach, having beer on the beach, the music by the beach, the lighting across the beach, THE BEACH! And of course the cable car ride to and from the island. I missed not having my family here again, because these places would probably be more enjoyable (except the beach part maybe) with one's family.

I finally tasted durian (not at Sentosa). Spent SGD 5 (that's Rs 150!) on something that's nightmarishly bad. No human being should eat something that disgusting. It smells bad. It tastes even worse. Actually, I can't decide. The pulp inside the shell feels like touching a dead reptile. The taste is the worst mixture you can imagine when you mix asafoetida, a rotten onion, a rotten melon and a potato. I might have got the combination wrong because I took two small bites, and the discomfort was too strong for me to ponder over the intricacies of its unique taste. And now that I know for sure how it smells, I'll be able to figure out it's presence in my vicinity very easily in the future. Which will bring back the bad memories of tasting it all over again.

I also tasted sea-weed in the morning before leaving. I can't believe I am saying this, but I'll choose a sea-weed anyday over a durian. Sea-weeds are sold under different flavors packed in bags similar to Kurkure in India here. I decided to try out one flavor. I could manage to consume a few strips (they feel like strips of paper) but then the feeling that I was eating spoilt fish was too overpowering and I had to cook myself some tomato-flavored noodles to mask the smell. The packet's still kept in my room if you are interested in trying it out too.

Random observation: Singapore's tourism industry is supported to a great extent by auntyjis (and their broods) from India.

My Own Kitab Festival

So I visited this place Sunday afternoon, after reading a post here. It's the largest bookstore I have ever been to. I spent close to 4 hours there, and was still quite far from covering everything I wanted to. And this when more than half of the bookstore was not even in my itinerary. Bought a few books, even though I had decided in my first week here that I won't buy books here as they are terribly expensive compared to India. But in my defence, most of these books are difficult to find in India. Also in my defence, IT'S MY MONEY.

The reason I got to spend such a long time at a bookstore was because my neighbour was at a staging of Phantom of the Opera. My employers have sponsored the opera going on right now in the city, and the desk that this guy is working on has organized a seminar for its clients coinciding with it. Part of the recreational plan for the clients was a visit to the opera, followed by a cocktail party. Being an intern, my friend was responsible for a lot of mindless work like filing papers, checking name-tags, stapling documents, carrying boxes, and more. He apparently did a decent job of it as he was finally given a SGD200 ticket to the opera with the rest of the desk, along with an invitation to the party. The chap had no idea what this opera is all about, and was happy mainly because of the worth of the ticket. I, on the other hand, who knows all about the opera, didn't get a ticket because my desk is one of the larger desks at my firm and, thanks to some bureaucratic oversight, the same number of tickets were allotted to all desks, because of which there was a shortage at mine.

So, I was all set to get bored for the evening, when I thought of visiting the bookstore. And I am not sure I would have had more fun at the opera.

After the bookstore, I went to another mall here to wait for a friend, who was returning from work, to have dinner together. While moving about there I came across this store called the Comics Mart, a shop dedicated completely to comics. Now I might not be as great a fan of comics as this guy is, but I do get goosebumps when I see a whole store filled with rare comic-books and graphic novels. Add to this salesmen who know their comics well, and it's almost as good as it gets. I would have spent more time there had it not been for the dinner, but I did buy this, at a price that I believe is a lot less compared to what I might have had to pay in India.

So my pocket was fairly lighter by the time I got back to my room. But I sure was a lot happier than I had been at the start of the weekend. And I have got lots of interesting work at office for the time-being.