What do I like to read?

Recently whenever the subject of reading came up, different people have asked me what kind of books I read. My current answer to them is "Well, I do not do science-fiction or fantasy, nor thrillers and investigative novels, no romance, no chick-lit, absolutely no-horror, not complete autobiographies, but books that are somewhat close to real lives". The answer is getting quite long as I am unable to coin a phrase to describe the kind of books I like to read.

Like I said in this post, I love to get a peek into people's lives of may be a certain locality or time. But that is not all about it. Occasionally, I have picked booker winners, although I hate to say that I chose only the authors who are award winners. I am sure there are unrecognized brilliant authors too. So, can someone please help me ? These are the last 10 books I have enjoyed:

The Kite Runner
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Shantaram
The Inheritance of Loss
Catch-22
Memoirs of Geisha
Angela's Ashes
The Clockwork Orange
Family Matters
Life of Pi

Taare Zameen Par : Movie Review

I had caught glimpses of this movie on the TV and heard about it from a few friends. Found a website and were all set to watch it online, but the print was not easy on our eyes. So, my better half promised we would watch it in the theatre. Few weekends ago, we DID and it was totally worth it. Although it is a little late in the day, I cannot stop myself from writing about this movie.

Before I saw Taare Zameen Par, I thought it is about a special kid. Only after watching the movie, I understood the real meaning of its by-line "Every child is special". If you have not seen this movie and are under the assumption that it is a kids’ movie, beat it. It is a movie featured on kids and an 8-year-old plays the lead role, but Taare Zameen Par is a must watch for all the educators, parents and parents-to-be.

The protagonist, Ishaan Avasti(played by Darsheel Safary) is the younger child in a middle class family based in Mumbai. Other than Ishaan, his family consists of a loving mother, a pedantic father and an overachiever elder brother. Ishaan is a different kid, he has trouble reading and writing but he understands colours and animals very well. He is also an excellent painter. After several mishaps and bad feedback from his school, Ishaan's parents decide to put him in a boarding school, even if it is a bit over their budget. Ishaan is unhappy with the decision; his mother and elder brother sympathise with him but father seems unaffected. The boarding school doesn't bring any life changing difference in Ishaan's performance and rather drives him to go into a shell. When everything seems very bleak, a new temporary art teacher, Ram Shanker Nikumbh (played by Aamir Khan) enters the scene in the second half of the movie. This new art teacher has a different perception of educating children because of his own experiences and a genuine sensitivity towards every child's different needs & interests.

Ishaan's daily encounters with his parents & teachers, who are extremely unhappy with his performance in the class and exams, make us all sympathetic towards him while watching him on the screen. But when it comes to real life, how many people can act differently and notice what is actually going wrong? Something like what Nikumbh does in the second half! The movie is more than a lesson to the viewers on how to understand and tend to a dyslexic child.
Taare Zameen Par has done enough justice to match reality of an average middle class family in India. I was relieved that this masterpiece gives a different treatment to the stereotypical characters we come across in the real life. I was also relieved the movie was not "yet another depiction of", how a poor child suffers due to the ill-treatment of the society and negligence of his parents.

This movie is also a teaser for the whole education system of India. It does not take a genius to see that the Indian education system is not the most practical system in this world. Nikumbh challenges the school principal and Ishaan's parents with some intriguing (but totally right) questions. He does provide some solutions but, I like the way, he left these quite open-ended. No single movie can single-handedly address all such issues.

Many scenes were brilliantly composed. These scenes had a rare, but right, blend of creativity and poignance, which moved me intensely. For instance:

• The first scene where Ishaan captures a fish from the dirty gutter and gives it a home in his Aquarium.
• The scene, which aptly portrays how the everyday rat-race takes over our lives. In contrast, Ishaan bunks school for a day and becomes an onlooker on 'the road'. When he confesses to his elder brother on the same night, the later rightly admonishes Ishaan for his guts. I agree, it is dangerous, but how many of us get such an experience at all. It’s a boon to have a protective parent, I totally agree, but we should not oversee the fact that an open mind to provide children with an extent of 'freedom of choice' is equally important.
• The breathtaking views from the Panchgani boarding school left me awestruck.
• Not much words are used in the scene where a simple action of showing the flip book to Ishaan reveals that his new art teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh cared enough about him to visit the former's house.
• The last few scenes left me completely teary eyed. You have to watch it to experience it.

I very much liked the way this movie relays some great messages through the art teacher, Nikumbh. In the first part you see a child doing certain things, which are not considered normal. It is shown that the child is well cared for and given special attention by his family. The boy, however, poses a big problem to his parents by not being able to 'perform' to the right standards. In the second part of the movie, you come to know why Ishaan actually does what he does and what the people concerned (parents, teachers, siblings & friends) fail to see beyond the symptoms of the 'said' under-performance.

Darsheel Safary did a tremendous job at bringing us the character of Ishaan Avasti. Hope this genius child actor gets more such opportunities and treats us with more of his talent. Amole Gupte & his wife Deepa Bhatia should be acclaimed for coming up with such a great story, doing all the research and groundwork. It looks like their contributions in the form of creative direction, editing, etc were substantial for this film to be well-received by the audience. Writer-Producer clashes or whatever, Aamir Khan deserves more than a remarkable award as the debut director of this movie. He definitely deserves brownie points for bringing us 'the artistic work of Amole and Deepa', in full colours by donning three different caps at a single time - producer, director and actor.

Whispers: Short fiction contest at Jason's

Story tellers! Go over to Jason's site, if you are interested in dabbling with fiction. It was fun participating in his previous contests. Last day for submission is 11:00 p.m., Wednesday, February 27th (Eastern Time, United States).

New Gadget to 'kindle' your reading hobby

I stumbled upon this newsweek article today through the del.icio.us popular list. Amazing! The moment you feel that you have seen the most cutting-edge technology, something new springs up. An e-Reader. Now that I have read about "the future of reading", somehow it seems like this was inevitable. How could I not see it coming ? The newsweek article was lengthy but, I had all my eyes/ears up for it.From the article I quote,

"Technology," computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, "is anything that was invented after you were born." So it's not surprising, when making mental lists of the most whiz-bangy technological creations in our lives, that we may overlook an object that is superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than any gadget in a Best Buy: the book. It is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. (No instruction manual or "For Dummies" guide needed.) And, it is instant-on and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can't be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to the contrary.

Yes - "the book", we take it for granted, don't we ? Also all the zillion number of other objects which evolved with each and every tiny step of mankind. Recently, we have been keenly watching the TV show "Dragon's Den". It makes me aware that so many people come up with so many ideas and only a few click with the right match of creativity, market research, sales perception, everyday user-friendliness and the luck factor. Those are the umpteen number of things we see/use in our daily lives. And here we are - the rest of us- who just use them and carry on with our mundane lives as though we have had a hard day. Going back to the topic of reading, I had mused a few blog posts ago, that the paper and pen we are using today might be extinct soon. Turned out that even before I conceived that idea in my brain someone had already put that on their agenda.

Whatever it is, an e-Reader seems like the next generation's BOOK. For a moment I thought it wouldn't work but, when I see the synonymous effect of email with respect to snail mail, it is inevitable that such gadgets (if not Kindle) will someday, surely replace our traditional books.The future generation will never know the experience of our paper & print culture, the same way we cannot imagine how it was to dip a feather in the ink and write on a scroll. Hmm, it will take a few life times to understand and enjoy the depths and lengths of the evolution of each object in its creation.

Restless Dawn - Short fiction contest

Jason is organising another short fiction contest, this time the theme is Restless Dawn. My entry to the contest can be found here..

Email etiquette

I am sure many of us follow some unwritten etiquette while using email at work. I am also sure that there are many people who are very unprofessional and awkward at their emails -even at work. However, you might be relieved to hear that I am not going to dwell on that. This etiquette is just limited to personal emails. Every now and then, I receive certain emails that are quite annoying; sometimes they are from very close friends. So close that if they were anywhere nearby, I could have twisted their ears and set them straight :oP If you want to stop annoying me or start annoying me, read the following and make necessary amends. That's about it.

The first rule of emailing: start by addressing the receiver properly. You can write "Hi," or "Hello," without personating the receiver if and only if you are writing to someone without a name, e.g. an organisation's helpdesk email account. Even in that case you can say 'Dear Sir/Madam' or whatever appropriate locale specifics. But, if you know you are emailing 'Joe Bloggs' start with 'Hello Joe' or 'Dear Joe', am sure that might make Joe's day :) am not kidding.

Subject: It is there for a purpose. If you are emailing for a specific reason like sharing your contact information put "Contact Details" in the subject. Won't hurt, really! In fact, imagine the receiver decides to send you a birthday gift and starts searching his/her emails for your contact information. The subject might come to help you receive the birthday gift in time.

When you are replying to an email please read it patiently and take into account what the sender has written; the information they are trying to convey to you and those that are in the form of questions. When they mention "I have switched jobs, now I am a circus clown, enjoying it very much" , acknowledge with a "Hearty Congratulations" or whatever is appropriate. When they ask you questions like "What are your plans for this Easter vacation" reply back saying ,"We are going to have a house full of guests" or whatever. I mean these are the basics of any email conversation, even a primary school kid probably knows that.

I am not saying one-liners are not OK. Especially, if you are having a chat kind of conversation with a friend, you would want to leave out all the nitty-gritty stuff which, can be assumed - like the addressing and signing off part. Also, I prefer one-liners to "no-replies".

When you are replying to an email make sure whether you want to 'Reply All' or Reply just to the sender. This happens a lot in the case of e-groups, the reply goes to everyone in the group.

When sending an email to large number of people it is prudent to bcc (blind copy) every one's name especially if it is not a specific group of people who know each other.

Never ever send an email to everyone in your contacts list without checking all the addressees. One of my acquaintances used to send irrelevant forwards to everyone on her contact list including some 'ContactUs' email ids for jobsites (e.g info@naukri.com).

The SMS or telegraphic language - please keep it to a minimal usage. It might shower you the gift of convenience and give you a nerdy reputation. However, no email service charges you for the number of letters you are using. Some of the shortcuts like 'u' instead of 'you' and 'r' instead of 'are' are quite common and known to many, but, if you have a spare minute, use the expanded word instead.

Spell check, please.

A forwarded email is a monster. Sometimes, I dread the thought of opening it, esp. when it is from a particular sender who is quite adept at wrecking my nerves especially when sending forwards. Wait a minute, I have never ever received a personal email from them, it has always been nasty forwarded emails with hardly one or two good ones.

In the case of those so-called entertaining forwards, kindly delete all the trailing email ids and junk like header/footer information before you forward on to other people. If you do not do so, the purpose is beaten. There are very less people who will have the right mind and time to search out the actual content. Take a moment to delete all the unnecessary information, keep only the relevant content and send it on. If you do not have the time to do so, why forward ?

Those chain emails, ignore them. Especially the ones which shower you with ill-luck if you do not forward it to 100 other people within the next 5 minutes. Silly they are, don't you think ? I do respect peoples' right to believe in things quite blindly, but why do it by troubling others with our own spam ?

Email attachments: Use them selectively. If you would like to share something you found on the internet do not copy-paste the whole thing into an email. If the sender has the facility to just follow a link and see it on the internet just as you did, send only the permalink. Similarly, if you want to send pictures to multiple people, upload them to a photo sharing website(cannot vouch for how secure they are) and send a link to everyone instead of cramping every one's mailboxes.

After reading through whatever I have just written, I feel, I sound like Miss.Truss of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. . Never mind, hope I got my point across. Happy Emailing..

A trip to the neck of woods: Little Ness

A few months ago, while we were planning our easter vacation, we talked about how nice it would be to visit the country side rather than a touristy city/town (as we usually do). A little bit of research on the internet, few phone calls later, I found the perfect place. Since, I was limited in the driving department, did not want to hassle R with driving too far. The place was, literally, in the neck of the woods - a quiet country side farm house, at least that is what the pictures and the listing on the internet said.

We started off sevenish in the evening, the rain still fighting like an undettered soldier. Just minutes away from our destination, at a road fork, we went off in the wrong direction . Guess, I just grabbed a few words, from our host's directions (like 'white', 'pigeon', 'pub' 'cottage'). So, we ended up in front of a white cottage, a really old dubious looking house. The house was facing the road, no drive way, and looked eerily vacant. As my nerves were chilling, I stepped on to the porch and rang the bell, spotting the cobwebs all over the roof. After a couple of minutes, I phoned our host, desperately hoping that this is not the place we booked . To my great relief, she confirmed that we were, infact, at the wrong place and directed us to our destination. She even came out and stood in front of the entrance, in spite of the irritating rain (sweet gesture).That very moment, I felt re-assured our choice was not wrong, even if we had to shake ourselves a bit to squeeze the car inside the tiny driveway.

Pleasantaries later, the lady showed us to our room and answered our queries on where to go to eat, etc. It was not just a room, we also had a cosy sitting area with a few steps leading to even cosier ensuite bed room. Freshly plucked flowers, antique furniture and my most favorite figurines from 'The Leonardo Collection' gave us a very beautiful feeling. The portable 11 inch tv looked so out-of-place. Instead of routinely switching it on, we opened the windows to get a view of farm animals grazing near by. Our next predicament was to find a place to eat. Even if the landlady had given us the directions, we had to reverse the car out and drive through the country road. We fared well though, ending up in the Sky hotel of Nescliffe, which turned into none other than a Chinese place(R's favorite). I was happy too, because I could custom order my favorite - Thai veg green curry. An absolutely delicious meal later, we were waiting for the bill and quite unexpectedly, our attendant brought us a fresh fruit platter. Freshly sliced melons with some grapes, it was an absolute delight after such a sumptuous meal and totally unpaid for :) Aww.. the joys of being in a countryside!

Next day was another dream come true.. waking up to the sounds of cock-a-doodle-doo, literally. Just about six hours of sleep, but still we felt fully recharged. It was amazing to be up and ready by 8am on a Saturday. Some appetising English breakfast with the usual stuff like eggs, toast, baked beans and bacon (for R), we also discovered this delicious cereal made of oats, barley and hazelnut. After breakfast our landlady quickly showed us the farm and we clicked these pics..




Paid for the stay in cash and started off to vist the Adcote School for girls (once a stately home) and then headed to the food festival of Oswestry. Pics from the food festival!

It would have been nice if it were not raining on the Friday, but hey, we got to experience a typical Shropshire countryside in a typical English weather.

-I did freak out just a little when we had to drive on the narrow country road, which was hardly enough for one car, kept praying that we will not encounter any oncoming vehicles.

-Getting back to the farm house after our dinner at the village hotel/restaurant. It was pitch dark, raining and the road seemed to be leading into deep and deeper woods. Having the GPS didn't help much, the only thing that did was R's direction sense and accidental memory of spotting a white car near our destination.

Recycling: Doing our bit

-First major achievement for us is: minimising the number of plastic bags. We usually buy our groceries from Tesco, so, I had bought a reusable bag from them for 48p. I make it a point to keep this bag in the car and take it everytime we go grocery shopping. On top of the reusable bag we tend to take one/two plastic bags for the frozen stuff ('coz that makes the bag wet n' messy) However, I make sure that I recycle most of these bags. This saves me the trouble of storing/discarding all these difficult-to-manage plastic bags and guess helps the environment a little bit. Other than this, when I go on an odd & unplanned shopping trip - I tell 'No' for a shopping bag, if I already have one that can accomodate what I purchased.

- We have been religiously separating all the rubbish and filling the kerbside box with all paper, cans, cardboard, glass bottles, etc.

- Growing some vegetables - We have started growing some tomatoes and herbs. More on this in a different post. We have not yet reaped the fruit yet, but, I am hoping our carbon footprint has definitely reduced with this..

I am now a member of the local freecycler's group through which, we recently got some top soil and bricks for the garden . There are lot of things at home that we no longer use and I am planning to post these off to someone who can benefit from them. Also, when our green bin was overflowing, we had made use of the community recycling centre to dispose off the wood and garden waste a few weeks ago.

We have been getting to work fairly early these days, so I do not have the overwhelming guilt to rush to my seat. I now take the three flights of stairs as opposed to the elevator/lift..

I have tried to spread the awareness of recycling to my group of friends ..

I still have to work on :
- Carrying a reusable bag at all times and getting the carry bag count to a minimal.
- Minimising food waste & Utilising leftovers
- Minimising the use of paper towels in kitchen - I just cannot resist using them
- Spend less time in front of the computer and tv (yeah right!)

I wish supermarkets like ASDA and TESCO start giving the option of 'paper bags' as many stores do in the States
I wish someone introduces/exports the Jute bags we use in India for shopping, they are just amazing, I am planning to bring one when I go back home this time.
I wish store managers and people who work in a store don't give strange looks when I tell them, "I do not need a bag" .

With all things to be considered house keeping is getting more and more complex. I bow down to all those efficient home makers who keep their family happy, healthy, hygenic, economical and still work good to their conscious..My public apologies if I ever under-estimated the planning and intellegince required to manage a household.