Rajat Narula's Blog, page 8
August 2, 2020
Cutting mangoes for my daughter
My daughter is 19 and still asks me to cut fruit for her. Should I be glad she needs me or worried that she doesn’t know how to use a knife? 
July 4, 2020
Home: Toni Morrison
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“Home” starts with a promise, following an uncharted path, but ends in a disappointment. Frank Money, haunted by war memories, returns to a racist country and saves his sister. The book is beautifully written but lacks solid content. Thirty pages to the end, it seems Morrison is tired and just wants to end the book, if you please. The surprise she saves for the end is not really one as somewhere along the way, she hints at it.
Read, if you want to appreciate the craft of storytelling.
Azaleas in the Neighborhood
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Our neighborhood really comes to life in the spring. A site that I await each year is when the Azaleas bloom – sudden splashes of bright colors everywhere. This year, while the spring wasn’t particularly joyful because of the situation we are all in, the Azaleas didn’t cower from COVID-19 and came out as lovely as ever. A beautiful, positive, colorful message from nature amidst all the negativity around us.
June 14, 2020
The Overstory: Richard Powers
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‘The Overstory” starts as a book with stories about people and trees – the connection between people and trees. The first section aptly titled ‘Roots’ is sublime. The stories are complete in themselves. But then in ‘Trunk’, the characters meet, and the story becomes more activist than literary and then in ‘Crown’, the literature gets tossed out and it becomes a passionate cause for environment. While the book scores big on making a case for preserving forests (I was dazzled by so many interesting, amazing facts about trees and forests), it falls short on storytelling. The progress of the characters is unidimensional, the pace slows down and the reading becomes a bit of drag.
Read.
June 12, 2020
It happens only in India!
In India, we take pride in innovative solutions to everyday problems. It’s an art of survival in conditions of scarce resources and tough competition. The word, ‘Jugaad’ in Hindi probably described it the best. What it means is that it is not an elegant answer, but will do the trick. ‘Jugaad’ is not just a word, it’s the spirit of the nation. It captures a ‘can do’ attitude at most difficult of times. So, if an ordinary citizen can’t afford a Tesla or a BMW, no reason why he can’t have the pleasure of a car whose doors go up like them.
June 3, 2020
Why did she grow up?
When my daughter was four, she used to bang a spoon on a bottle of water, “making water”. We told her she was the best ‘water-maker’ there ever
May 30, 2020
Ants Among Elephants: Sujatha Gidla
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Sujatha Gidla talks about her experience of growing up as an untouchable in India. Despite having lived there for most of my life, the extent and intensity of segregation and discrimination against the ‘lower’ castes is like a punch in the gut. I am not naïve that I didn’t know about it but perhaps never paid much thought to it. The impact of the story is a little diluted because Gidla doesn’t follow a single thread – untouchability, communism or a family saga. In the end, it comes out a little like a chronology of events. While the writing maintains interest, the lack of cohesiveness is an issue. Nonetheless, clearly a story that needs to be told. Again and again.
Read.
May 28, 2020
Accountability for the loss of 100,000 lives
COVID-19 didn’t start in the US. Why does the country have over 1.7 M cases, which is over 30% of the worldwide number? Why have over 100,000 lives been lost? Is there no accountability for the gross mismanagement of the pandemic in the country?
April 24, 2020
Black Flags: Joby Warrick
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‘Black Flags’ recounts the story of the rise of ISIS, from the chance entry of Abu Musab Zarqawi into a remote part of Iraq, to the American invasion, and how the two unrelated events came together to become a combustible combination that exploded into ISIS 1.0. It took another ten years, Arab spring revolution, and destabilization of Syria to establish ISIS 2.0 under Baghdadi’s leadership that, at one time, controlled two thirds of Iraq and had enormous resources at its disposal including oil wells and banks. Warrick tells the story in a really engaging way that it seems you are reading a page-turner thriller than a historical account. Two problems. One, the book focuses too much on Zarqawi and too little on Baghdadi; ISIS 2.0 was the real deal after all. Two, it is a little too partial to the Jordanian monarchy and establishment.
A must read.
April 17, 2020
After Paradise: Robley Wilson
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‘After Paradise’ is an inappropriately named tale of a small town in Maine where a carnival event triggers an interaction between two teenagers and an exotic dancer. Not sure what the author was going for, but nothing much happens really. David and Kate break up and then David is killed in a car accident that had nothing to do with the carnival. There are a number of stereotypical characters: the angry priest, his suffering wife, the exotic dancer with a troubled past, her savior and so on. Most of the time when a book doesn’t work, it’s the writing that lets it down. In case of ‘After Paradise’, the writing is fine. Not special, but fine, but it’s the meaninglessness of the plot that lets it down.
Don’t bother.
