My Year in Books 2024!

It's the time of the year..to count my blessings? Nope, to count my books 📚

Ok, blessings too. But mainly books. The books I have read, the adventures they took me on, the thoughts they left me with. Here are a few -

📙 I devised a “reading philosophy” 

This year had a lot going on, work-wise, bandwidth-soaking events that often left me with little space for “high-concept” reading, so I devised a system where I interspersed the heavies with some light escapes.

I stumbled across the famous (fictional) Sicilian Inspector, Montalbano, in the form of a recommendation from a friend. Another dear friend had just moved to Sicily and it seemed like a meant-to-be situation. I had also been enjoying the Japanese detectives Kaga and Galileo, and who could say no to our favourite British octogenarians solving murders every Thursday from peaceful Kent. As a Marvel-esque galaxy of Detectives gathered in my mind, I conceived of an ambitious project – to read Detective fiction from around the world!

Well, it may not be that ambitious, but it certainly was interesting. Thrillers have a way of capturing time and space like few books do, and for the price of a crime I got to read about local cultures, politics and food. So much food 😋

So here I am and my latest pick is Inspector Chen Cao, a poetic crime-solver in a China of the 90s. A China a-straddle lingering Maoism and Deng Xiaoping’s shiny new reforms. A perfect mix of sugar and spice and everything nice. 

📙 I started Audible

This year my “reading” went multi-media, physical books, kindle ones and Audible. From never wanting to read anything but physical, I now actively pick books for each medium. But I have a system, physical books are for keeps – beautifully written fiction or mind-opening non-fiction, kindle is for light-fiction and audible is for experimental non-fiction. 

My first book on Audible was “Kitchen Confidential”, an autobiography by famous chef Anthony Bourdain, narrated by him too. And it was a roller-coaster of a listen, across his early childhood that resulted in a culinary career, to the underbelly of this world, the rough, tough and often-rejected-from-mainstream-society men and women who find their way into kitchens across America, serving food and experiences to oblivious patrons. 

📙 “Where did you come from, where did you go” or I read across Genres 

I read across history, investigative non-fiction, evolutionary science and history, science, parenting, finance and many more genres. A few notables below -

In “Smoke and Ashes” Amitav Ghosh took me on a journey of the poppy plant, the story of Opium in the 19th century, colonial forces using it to exploit a nation (India) and destroy another (China). He ended with the mind-bender: was it humans that used the Poppy plant for their ends or the other way around, the plant using our basest instincts for survival and propagation?

I read about the on-going opioid crisis in America (hello again poppy) in “Empire of Pain”  and in “Cobalt Red”, about the disturbing account of miners in Congo unearthing Cobalt under atrocious conditions to power our technology addiction. 

“A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution” which exactly as the title sounds, explained how we hold the power to edit our genes in our hands today, a prospect more revolutionary than AI and as simple. 

In “Anxious Generation”, a MUST-read for parents with young or teenage children, I learnt how unbridled access to the internet, coupled with a childhood increasingly spent away from the real world, can lead to terrible consequences. 

I learned about the 5 fundamental breakthroughs that have paved the path for human intelligence from single-cellular organisms to modern humanity in “⁠A Brief History of Intelligence”, and in “Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From”, the fascinating 65000-year old history of the homo sapien, our migrations, genealogies, the DNA that divides us and the common origins that unite us. Across a subcontinent as diverse and rich as South Asia and in these polarising times, we would do well to remember what Tony Joseph leaves us with: We are all Indians. We are all migrants.

I read Andre Agassi’s “Open” and Salman Rushdie’s “Knife”, the former a complex testament to the sacrifices demanded by world-class competitive sports, and the latter a deeply touching narrative of the seconds, minutes, hours, days and months of one’s life right after tragedy strikes, such as it did Rushdie on that Chautauqua stage where he was stabbed 15 times. 

📙 I went time-zone hopping

As I collected travel miles this year, from Singapore to Berlin to Dubai, I also did my best to pick local authors and stories. From “Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital” to “Chess Story” by Stefan Zweig, I shuttled across time-zones and timelines. 

I went into the past with Ravindranath Tagore’s “Gora”, a timeless tale of nations and nationalism, religion and its rigidities, mores versus morals. As relevant today as it was in the early 1900s.

📙 I read books about work 

And finally in my year-end "light fiction" mode I realized once again that there no such thing. 

Much like Hermione’s bag of plenty, a book-any book is a bottomless storehouse of goodies. How much we take depends on us, our moods, which way our receptors are facing, our willingness to go deep or not. 

I found myself reading stories of people burnt out, starting again, finding a renewed purpose or lack of, liberating themselves from the conditioning of a lifetime and lifetimes, in the form of these amazing books about books, namely “Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop” and “What you are looking for is in the Library”. 

As somebody working to unravel the new definitions of work, I realized that these books too offered glimpses into the new ways that work was seen today. 

**

This is me. Has all this reading transformed me? I cannot quite say how but I know it has. 

Ending with the happy sight of my beautiful-wonderful-new (now half a year old) bookcase. A life-long dream come to fruition. 

Here’s to all your bookish and non-bookish dreams. May 2025 be the year they come true!

A Womanly nap

Yesterday I took a nap

In the middle of the day

Where I got the audacity

I cannot quite say

My cook tip-toed in

Concerned about the daal

That I had forgotten to order

Sleep had me in its thrall

What to make she fretted

Quite upset you see

Such top-notch decisions

Can only be taken by me

She approached my husband

Who was watching TV

Together they found the courage

To come and awaken me

..from this unseemly nap

Come out of nowhere

Leaving matters helter-skelter

A situation most unfair

The daal got ordered

(by husband after I gave a go-ahead)

the dinner menu was conveyed

before I got out of bed

Then I looked at my phone

And lo and behold!

There was a deluge of calls

I was ashamed and ready to fold!

These honourable creditors

Were beating down my door

I had promised them my time

And instead, I’d been a’snore!

I quickly called them back

Assuaging and contrite

(No naps were mentioned)

And all was soon al-right

I was back in fighting form

Willing to do my best

To atone for the past hour

For daring to - rest

Being Human

I look at my son

And wonder 

What to tell him

When the time ever comes

About what it is to be human

Is it to push ahead 

With an evolutionary logic

Fittest, strongest

other forms of ests

Is it to give in

To the tenets of the tribe 

the wisdom of the collective

Whose only goal is self-preservation

Or is it to venture

To go where none have 

To the moon and beyond

To pay no heed to limitations

That our bodies impose 

Is it to think

Or to feel

To endure

Or to evolve

To stay rooted in a past

That no longer seems nurturing

Or to look to a future

Where we are less of what we have been

But so much more 

Is it to love 

Under the light of a moon

That sees no difference

This side that side

All the same 

Is being human in our dna

Or is it in our imaginations?

Does it live in our primate-primitive selves

In the zero-sum game of survival 

Or in that which makes it all worth it?

We write the rules 

We break them

Which of these is really us?

Ek Villian - a premature review

I am completely hooked on to this song, 'Banjaara', from the film 'Ek villain'.

While I love the song, absolutely soul stirring, I cannot figure out if there is something wrong with Shraddha Kapoor's character.

Meaning, there are moments in the song when she seems a bit mentally challenged - like when she is shrieking with glee at the motor fan-type toy, like when she is dancing in the white dress - first the careful slo-mo movements and then that windmill arm step with the world's widest most daft grin on her face, followed by a cute childlike cutting of the wedding cake with some cute childlike hand clapping, and finally the scene where she falls down, and stays down in that awkward pose for some seconds, but before you can say WTF, starts some hand clapping again and then the raising up of arms happens, all innocent like, indicating to the six men around that she feels the need to be helped up and indicating to the audience that for some, gravity can be a real bitch.

But on the other side of such histrionics are the words of wisdom she spouts - Andhere ko andhera nahin, sirf roshni mita sakti hai, nafrat ko nafrat nahin, sirf pyaar mita sakta hai, and the noble deeds she does - I am guessing (given my vast experience with Hindi cinema) that the elderly wedding she is shown organizing, dancing and cutting cake in, has been solely nurtured on the milk of human kindness flowing out of her saintly person. There are also some kids involved, they are probably homeless, who have undoubtedly been adopted by Ms Mother-Teresa-come-to-life-again. And there are also some romantic scenes with Mr Villain/Gangster. All of these indicate that she is not, in fact, mentally challenged.

They also indicate that I have a special kind of expertise at killing time.

Anyway, so what is the answer to this quandary? How do you explain this diverse character? Is she simply a beautiful girl, pumped up on sugar, channeling the spirit of Mother Teresa? Or is there more?

There is more. Shraddha Kapoor is portraying the character of a girl, who is simply soul. A beautiful soul, who is touched (pun not intended) by everything she encounters - a dance step, a motor fan-type toy, a falling down - she lets it all sink in and enjoys all of these feelings to bits. Javed Akhtar (if he is associated with the film) will describe it more beautifully - Her joyous presence was like the rustle of grass in the meadows, like the pearlescence of the morning dew drop, like the laughter of trees as they swayed in the breeze, like the warmth of the morning sun as it warmed the back of your neck - he will compose it in Hindi of course, and then some Baritone will narrate it as the film introduces its heroine to us - this joyous creature with a heart of gold. She does only two things - experiences the joys of life and performs good deeds for the children, the elderly and some gangsters as well.

So Shraddha Kapoor will be playing this role, which is SO different from how Hindi film heroines are usually portrayed.

NOT.

Hindi films have mostly only portrayed two kinds of women - serious types with hearts of gold, joyous types with hearts of gold. The latter category is what they have latched onto recently, their idea of women's liberation being that a woman is now allowed to laugh, enjoy nature, the wind, the sun, motor fan-type toys etc without being labelled easy or slutty. Think Geet from Jab We Met, a joyous specimen if ever there was one, or Akira from Jab Takk Hai Jaan, whose joy quotient resulted in an earthquake in Japan. Great.

Well, I find this overdose of joy and noble intentions annoying. I am not like this and don't know many women who are. I am NOT cheerful all the time (and never as cheerful as these cinematic women), and unfortunately, I rarely do anything which can be classified as noble. I am too busy being involved in my own life and those of my loved ones to have the bandwidth to make a difference to the children, the elderly and the gangsters. I have regrets about things I didn't do right and didn't do well. I don't chatter away ad infinitum, I don't spew holy diktats on 'how to live your life and love your neighbor' to all and sundry.

I am complicated, struggling, conflicted and flawed. And I would like to see more women like me in Hindi cinema.

To be fair there have been a few: Tabu in Astitva, Rani M in No One Killed Jessica, Alia Bhatt in Highway, Parineeti C in Hasee toh Phasee, Kangana R in Queen and yes, even Sonam K in Ranjhanaa.

These movies are certainly not perfect but best of all, these characters are not perfect. They aren't uni-dimensional, they have/portray real world problems like infidelity, women's rights, coming-of-age and discovery of self, social awkwardness, even selfishness. The triumph of Ranjhanaa, Hasee toh Phasee and Highway is that these films are not 'women-oriented' but have equally meaty roles for the men as well. The choice isn't between making a film only about a woman's perspective or giving her the depth of an amoeba.

Well, going by the above, definitely does seem like things are changing - from a handful of Shabana Azmi movies a few decades ago to many more now.

But till the time that portraying a real person who also happens to be a woman and the heroine becomes imperative, we have these stereotypes and worse, the decoration pieces to deal with. These heart of gold types, for whom the hero feels absolutely compelled to change his evil ways, and horror of horrors, even become a human umbrella. Ankit has never shown any inclination ever to shield me from the sun with his person, that's a bummer. But on the other hand, he has never shown any inclination to choose a gangster's life as his profession, so overall, I think I might have lucked out.

Jab Takk Hai Jaan - movie review

Ok. Since none of the reviews I have read so far have been able to suitably convey the ridiculousness that is 'Jab Takk Hai Jaan', I have decided to pick up the gauntlet. Considering I have not been bribed or threatened by any member of the expansive Chopra or Khan fraternity, I still retain the prerogative to think and question, a privilege which few have these days.

So here's a list, in no specific order. Yes, I am too riled up to fashion these fallacies into beautiful prose. That is the forte of the Chopra khandan.

1. Anushka Sharma's look seems to have been designed with the intention of making her look like a 15 year old..boy. Although considering her unnatural skinniness, maybe it wasn't the designer's fault. Perhaps they just couldn't make/find clothes of that aspect ratio.

2. While on the subject of Anushka Sharma, her performance has drawn mixed reviews. I think she has potential and hence my heartfelt plea to her is as follows: Dear Anushka, please run like the Milkha whenever anyone mentions the following words in your half-presence - spunky, vivacious, punjabi, dilli-wali, lively, bubby and assorted other words and phrases meant to portray the same personality type that you have played (successfully) in your last few films. In case you have no option and have to grin your way through such roles, please try to remember the last time you met somebody (not pumped up on coke) who was THIS peppy all the time, everywhere. The constant joie de vivre of your character, Akira Rai, can be likened to the buzzing of a persistent mosquito.

3. The writing. Wait, what writing you say? Well, on the basis of recent ventures namely SOTY, Aiyya, the eponymous JTHJ and many others, you would be forgiven for thinking this word doesn't exist in Bollywood. But I have it from reliable sources that an attempt is certainly made to put head to paper and come up with a story, screenplay and script, if not before, then organically during the making of a movie. And here is my question - what was the writer (Aditya Chopra, I am told) smoking?

To demonstrate the point, here are few of the major plot devices -

- Conversations with God. What a simple world it is, seen through the eyes of Chopra junior, where a promise broken to God incurs His immediate wrath. Or he actually believes there are people who think so. Or he actually thinks there are people who believe there are people who think so.

- Road accidents. The characters are pretty Shakespearean in behavior in that they seem to think that the whole world is their playground. What is a road, if not more space for them to jump, wheelie, dance around on?

- Amnesia. What our protagonist gets when two accidents happen at different points in time, and the second one causes his brain to rewind its clock to the first one, so that when he comes to, he has forgotten everything that occurred between the first and the second accident.

- Doctor's counsel. When your patient has forgotten everything that has happened to him for the last ten years, instead of taking him to familiar environs, take him to a fabricated, make-believe set-up. That will help him remember. After all, reality is the biggest illusion.

4. While one shouldn't speak ill of the deceased, and Yash Chopra has given us some wonderfully directed movies, I can't help but mention that the direction in this one is lacking. Apart from actor performances, it is direction which can turn a mere story into flesh - creating bonds between characters, between characters and the audience - none of that seems to be in play here.

When Raj in DDLJ decides to pursue Simran to the end of the world, without even knowing whether she likes him or not, we root for him. When he employs one of the silliest (and oft-used in Bollywood) ways of determining whether she likes him – her turning around to look at him for one last time - we all want her to 'palat'. There is tenderness in Kabhi-Kabhi, unarticulated emotions, poignancy, grace. Shashi Kapoor doesn’t need to tell us in so many words that he has figured out the thing between Rakhee and Amitabh Bachhan; we see it in his expressions, his body language, and our gullible hearts go out to him.

I could not detect even one-tenth of that chemistry between the lead actors here. Even when they shout out their love. The interaction between SRK and Katrina is cold. That between him and Anushka, forced. One minute the intense Major and the ambitious journalist are diffusing bombs, the other they are high-fiving each other on how great a girl-friend the journalist will make for the reclusive, death-wish-ridden Major.

5. This last example is also an example of bad screenplay. Many of the scenes on their own are ludicrous.

Sample this (not quite verbatim) -

Journalist - “Where has the Major gone?”

Bomb Diffusion Squad Team Member – “Sir likes to have some quiet time after diffusing a bomb.”

Next thing we know, Journalist sneaks up on ‘Sir’, sitting on a river bank, singing lustily.

6. Katrina Kaif is not an actress. Undoubtedly she is one of the hardest-working women around. One look at her toned body and you know that. But she CANNOT carry-off such nuanced roles. A big part of the reason why we don't care about/believe what happens between the lead pair, apart from the direction, is she. The ad-wallahs have it right – give her a script where she needs to look drop-remote-dead gorgeous and NOT SPEAK A SINGLE WORD.

Phew. I am exhausted. And there are things I haven’t mentioned like SRK’s journey from a 25 year old waiter in London to the super-specialist bomb-squad-chief for the Indian Army, like the length of the film, like AR Rehman’s mostly lack-luster music, like Anushka Sharma’s random and inexplicable love for the Major.

Well, after watching what could be alternately branded as an extended docu-drama on the adverse effects of irresponsible road-behavior, I wish I had retrograde amnesia and could forget the last three plus hours.

Women, ah!

Last weekend I went and watched The Vagina Monologues and I must say it felt weird. I will also say at some point in this post that it was brave and new age (it has been around since the past eight years too) but the first thing that struck me about it was that it felt - weird.

Note that I do not say it was weird, but that it felt weird. Hearing the word being said out loud, so many times, like it was a perfectly legitimate word, insinuating that the utterer of such a word was neither deranged nor an incorrigible pervert. What a notion!

On a serious note, it was a series of monologues, dialogues - all stories depicting a certain theme. An exasperated housewife, an elderly lady, a young girl, a sex-worker, a victim of rape. And needless to say all these themes had something to do with sex and the V-word.

The acting was immense. It was unconscious and funny, the imitations were awesome - the dialects, tones, accents - Parsi, Marathi, Punjabi, Brooklyn - all perfect.

I do recommend it to you ladies and yes, to you too, boys.

On a different note, Marilyn Monroe once famously said - I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it. 

As a working woman, I find myself trying to be a man sometimes. Not a lot, but it's there - the consciousness of the corporate world being a man's playground and of me - being a spade among clubs. Some people would put a different spin on it - in this age of everybody wanting to play the diversity card, a woman has a better and brighter chance of climbing the ladder etc. I am thinking it all boils down to celebrating the differences - I may not be able to joke with my boys, my team, with the same rambunctiousness and raunchiness as the average guy, but there are ways in which my unique womanly touch does manifest itself. I guess it is about recognizing that and being comfortable with it.

Some good news though. The CEO of a consulting company just recently commented on a study that his firm has done on the strength of the female economy and its influencing power on major purchasing decisions, saying that companies that are ignoring the woman consumer are digging their own graves.

That's right, Mister. You don't put an online payment option for the electricity bill, being Neanderthal enough to think that women nowadays have the time to ferret out post boxes and drop boxes and such like to deposit payments, then I will not purchase electricity from you ever.

Play - One on One

Today I went to watch a play called - One on One at the Tata Experimental Theater, Nariman Point.

This experimental theater is a smallish one with maximum seating of around a hundred people. Which is probably enough. The ticket prices are reasonable, the crowd is well-behaved and the plays vary from being serious bringers-on of Why-did-I-subject-myself-to-this to This-is-exquisite-and-I-want-to-marry-it.

The play today was one of the later variety. The concept itself was delicious - a collage of ten minute acts written by Mumbai's best playwrights on topics which intrigue/annoy/delight them about the India we live in today. To top that, the acting and no doubt - direction was superb, in some cases rising above the material.

Some of the notable performances were by Anand Tiwari, who is the guy from the Tata Tea Jaago Re commercial and some motley roles in various movies, Rajit Kapur aka Byomkesh Bakshi, who has come a long way since his cycle-riding-dhoti-wearing days and Amit Mistry, who plays a timorous terrorist-batchmate of Kasab's going through a crisis of identity.

The transitions between the pieces were made swiftly and silently and the actors seemed to know the audience well, successfully manipulating it into laughing and clapping at all the right places.

I highly recommend it, not only for its obvious artistic brilliance but also the high entertainment value. Who says artsy stuff, that too the very niche experimental kind, cannot be paisa-vasool? Who, really, needs a Dabangg?