Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 272

‘Bad Town Kids’ A ‘Bestseller’?

Amazon updates its bestsellers list for fiction books every hour and my debut novel ‘Bad Town Kids’ managed to stay in the top 10 list under ‘Literature and Fiction’ for two days (the weekend). So technically, my book is a bestseller, even if it was temporary glory.

‘Bad Town Kids’ tracks the lives of four friends and how their lives changes over the course of a decade. While their childhood was about spending idyllic evenings by a pond and swapping silly tales, adulthood wasn’t as simple. A death pushes them all to unwittingly make decisions about their future, even as they try to reconcile with the unexpected loss – both of a friend and their innocence.

If the novel sounds like something you would like to read get a copy now. And reviews will be appreciated wholeheartedly, it means a LOT to independent writers like me. Dropping a few country-wise links (it’s also available on Kindle Unlimited) –

Amazon US

Amazon India

Amazon UK

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia

AK vs AK Netflix Film Review – Pretentious AF

I took two days to watch the 2020 Anil Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap-starrer ‘AK VS AK’.

The first attempt ended within 20 minutes for my husband and me, thanks to an exciting start which petered out just as fast. It was slow and pretentious as fuck (AF) and if “fuck” made you take a pause, then this movie is definitely not for you.

I forced myself to give a chance to the movie – hope always reigns supreme. Surprisingly, it did get more interesting but story and pace swung wildly between entertaining and extreme depths of boredom. Disclaimer: We fast-forwarded. A LOT.

The plot is pretty simple, even if far-fetched – Anil Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap play themselves in the movie and are supposed to hate each other. The film opens with the two of them having a public spat that’s hilariously blown up by the media. Anurag Kashyap then decides on getting back at the older actor. So he kidnaps his daughter Sonam Kapoor and decides to shoot a movie in real-time and blackmails Anil Kapoor into finding his daughter while the cameras keep rolling.

While the idea might have sounded great on paper, it gets choppy on screen. Far from being ‘raw’/’real’, a lot of scenes come off as insincere. The makers try too hard to be cool. There is an almost 20 minute long chase sequence of Anil Kapoor running around Mumbai, which was just so unnecessary. Anurag Kashyap should perhaps stick to directing, because his acting is sloppy; he just comes across as a smug schmuck. Although Anil really gets into the role and is the saving grace of this film. But putting the burden of carrying an entire film on just one actor is sort of unfair. It’s like asking two people to move a heavy corpse, but only one of them does it, while the other one smokes circles in a corner. Anurag Kashyap is the smoker. Sonam Kapoor had some three minute screen-time and she managed to be hammy even in those few seconds.

Anil Kapoor deserves better.

The Handmaid’s Tale – Graphic Novel Review

Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ in the Graphic Novel format was the last book I read in 2020. While I haven’t read the original long-form, yet, as a reader I could feel that a lot of the story was missing from the graphic novel. Some of the initial pages were slightly confusing as to what is happening. However, the art by Renee Nault is stunning through and through.

Honestly, I didn’t like the story much. Written in the 1980s, it’s set in a futuristic America, where democracy has been replaced by a totalitarian regime and women are treated like properties. They are just birthing/pleasuring machines. The narrative flits between the protagonist’s depressing current life as a handmaid & her former/happier life when democracy still existed. As the story unfolds, the readers are explained that ‘handmaids’ are government properties and are used as birthing bodies for high-ranking men whose wives can’t get pregnant.

When the book started, I thought that the scenes were from some concentration camp, but it was actually a training centre for handmaids, where there are trained to be slaves and birthing machines. I know the tale supposed to be a cautionary tale against patriarchy, but I just couldn’t enjoy it much. The lead character is pitiable and doesn’t do much to remedy her plight. Maybe I’ll have to read the full novel to appreciate it better.

Visit To Bekal Fort

Spread over a beautifully maintained 40 acres, the fortified walls of Bekal form the remains of the largest standing fort in the state of Kerala, India. Since we were visiting Mangalore, a trip to this historical site, which is just a two hour drive from there was a given.

The roads are fantastic and the green cover and backwaters on the Kerala side are a treat for the eyes. Before we reached the fort, I was already exclaiming “I don’t know how the fort is going to be, but this trip is already worth it because of the drive”. Maintained by the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India), the fort is open to the public from 8 am to 5.30 pm. Due to the Covid19 pandemic, the entry tickets have to be booked virtually and can be done on the spot. There were very few visitors inside and there wasn’t much to see except for walking around the fort walls and it’s several strategic check-posts that offered stunning views of the sea below. Yes, it’s right by the sea.

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It’s hard to imagine the kind of hard-work it would have taken to build this fort in the 1650 AD. It was commissioned by the deccan ruler Shivappa Nayaka of the Keladi Nayaka kingdom, which used to be under the more famous Vijayanagar empire until it’s fall in 1565 AD. Years later, the Nayakas were defeated by Mysore rulers and Tipu Sultan came into its possession. It played a crucial role in the Sultan’s endeavors to conquer the Malabar coast. In the end, like most strategic places in India, the fort finally fell into the hands of the notorious British East India Company and eventually lost its importance, both as a port and as a military base for defence.

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This is a picture of a well that was built inside the fort during Tipu Sultan’s rule.

We spent a good hour exploring all the parts of the fort and would’ve probably spent more time if hadn’t been very hot. There is a descending flight of stairs at one corner of the fort that overlooks the sea and is an amazing view-point. We were there on December 27th and despite being a winter month, it was quite warm. Easy to imagine that it must be quite an experience to go there when it rains!

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If you plan to visit the place, do it either in the winter months or monsoon and carry some water, it could get a little exhausting, Oh and some sunscreen and sun-glasses wouldn’t hurt.

New Year Free New Book Giveaway

My debut contemporary fiction novel ‘Bad Town Kids’ is FREE for 48 hours (Jan 1st & 2nd) across all kindle stores, so grab a copy. And just in case you were wondering – it is available for free for everybody and not just Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

The novel released on December 26, 2020. Here’s an excerpt from the first Amazon review of the book, the reader had given it a five star –

Where do I start?

Wow

*whew*

I don’t read a lot of non-fantasy-genre books. I like my books to be neatly packaged with a couple of quests, the good and bad guys clearly identified, witty repartee galore and rounded off with all the nice folks getting their happy endings.

Bad Town Kids was NONE.OF.THAT.

Anita, Saira, Maadesh and Mokshit’s coming-of-age journey starts off soft — like ambling along a lazy, idyllic river — an innocent childhood, childish pranks, tall stories and scary-but-exciting discoveries. The author does not romanticize the Indian small-town setting with some Enid Blyton-esque picturization — Jaiswal firmly disabuses the reader of any such notions from the first sentence itself.

Then, my dear reader, the idyllic river of childhood crashes down as a wild and uncontrollable waterfall. The pace builds rapidly — scattered incidents that interlock in the end. The reality of Indian society — its patriarchy, toxicity, abuse — is conveyed in blunt, honest prose.

Amazon Reviewer

Full disclosure – the reviewer is a friend, but they had given my last book a 4 star rating, so even if there was some bias in their review, it doesn’t change the fact that they read the novel in one go and loved it.

If ‘Bad Town Kids’ sounds like something you would like to read get the free copy now. And reviews will be appreciated wholeheartedly, it means a LOT to independent writers like me. Dropping a few country-wise links –

Amazon US

Amazon India

Amazon UK

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia

Happy reading and hope you have a good new year.

Death To 2020 Netflix Mockumentary Review

‘Death to 2020’ the Netflix mockumentary by Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones is only 1 hour 10 minutes long, so I’ll keep my review short too – it’s 60 per cent ‘l-o-l, ha ha ha’, and 40 per cent ‘eh, not funny’. For me, that’s a pretty good entertainment ratio!

What really works for this creation is the fact that the makers use super famous faces that are already audience favorites – so doesn’t matter what they say, some viewers will like it for the sheer fact that it is them spouting those lines. Hugh Grant plays a historian that cannot differentiate between Star Wars & reality; Samuel L. Jackson plays a journalist with a few wisecracks to why 2020 sucked; Leslie Jones of SNL fame is a therapist who hates people (l-o-l); Lisa Kudrow is hilarious as the ‘conservative’ White House spokesperson/Trump supporter who claims ‘Ukraine’ doesn’t exist, etc…..

‘Death To 2020’ is just a surface recap of the year, highlighting some of the most momentous (even if monstrous) events that nobody really needs reminding of. The makers intersperse the narrative with real news footage and ‘fake’ experts, but never go beyond obvious insights and stand-up comedy sort of material. The focus of the film was a bit of a muddle, while it’s mostly U.S-centric, they also go into UK politics and barely dwell into it, except for constantly dissing Boris Johnson’s hair. A lot of screen-time is eaten up by the U.S elections and Trump’s stupidity, which frankly, the whole world has already had enough of.

Unless you switched off from news/world events to go on an ‘information detox’ mode during the covid19 pandemic year, you won’t learn anything new from the ‘mockumentary’. It makes for a fun watch if you sit with a bunch of friends to pass time. You would either have a laugh riot or wonder why you wasted so many minutes of your life – kind of like Samuel Jackson the journalist at the beginning of this film.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asks the cameraman in the first few minutes.

“We are reliving the events of 2020” he is told.

“Why the fuck would you wanna do that?” Jackson asks with a frown.

The best question in ‘Death to 2020’.

Apostle – Horror Film Review

Let’s be nice and save horror film fans some time – skip the 2018 movie ‘Apostle’ if you are not a patient viewer and have low tolerance for gore and brutal bloody scenes.

Directed and written by Gareth Evans, the film is set in 1905 and focuses on a man’s mission to rescue his sister who has been kidnapped by a crazy/creepy cult that inhabits an isolated island. Actor Dan Stevens of ‘Beauty & the Beast’ fame plays Thomas Richardson, the protagonist, who attempts to blend in with the sinister cult to find out where his sister is.

Cinematography wise the movie is great to look at, the island where the story unfolds is beautiful and scenic to look at. But a dark, somber atmosphere pervades throughout the runtime, with crazy zealots doing weird shit around the place. All the actors are pretty great, but the pace is snail-paced. It’s slow, with an unnecessary romantic sub-lot involving two young inhabitants of the island that ends in tragedy. The director goes all out to make you sit at the edge of your seat and scream over the pain of the victims, but this comes at the cost of several boring scenes in between that are snooze-worthy.

At the heart of it, the movie is all about the anatomy of cults – how they start, how they function, how they survive and how they eventually degenerate. But even this theme is not dwelt too deeply upon. If I had to sum the story in a sentence, I would say – evil men kidnap a girl for money, get screwed over by her brother.

The good thing about ‘Apostle’ is that there are no jump-scares or those cliched slow build-ups to something scary. The viewer is made to know what’s coming next and they know it’s not going to be pleasant to watch. What really doesn’t work in the film’s favor is the extra 40 minutes of drama and sub-plots that could’ve been chopped off to make it more edgy and exciting to watch.

The climax wasn’t all too bad and overall – ‘Apostle’ is an interesting mix of horror, cult, mystery, magic & ancient lore. But TOO DAMN LONG. It’s a 5/10 from me.

Padubidri – The Blue Flag Beach

Eight beaches in India won the coveted “Blue Flag” tag in October 2020. It’s a certification that’s awarded by a jury that includes members of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) & United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), among others.

While I’ve been to four of them much before 2020, I got an opportunity to tick off another name – Padubidri beach in Karnataka. It’s very close to Mangalore and is situated close to a very pretty fishing village.

We were pretty much the only visitors and it felt like being in a private beach. It was serene, calm, clean and beautiful and the pictures I took do no justice to the place.

Except for a small shop selling refreshments, there was nothing around the beach.

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To those interested in visiting the beach, it’s best combined with a visit to Mangalore & a few other destinations. There are buses that ply between Mangalore city and Padubidri regularly. We however went by a car from Mangalore and it was a 40 minute drive, the roads are great.

I would suggest that one visit it in either end December or start of January, because it’s quite hot in this part of India throughout the year. Or perhaps when it’s raining, if you are a monsoon fan.

‘Bad Town Kids’ Is OUT

“Bad Town Kids” is out and it’s hard to believe it’s my THIRD book, even though it’s actually my debut novel.

I am traveling as I type this, with a super fierce sun piercing through the window grills of my train window and burning my face and legs. A lot of fields and streams keep passing by and it reminds me a lot about the setting of my book.

‘Bad Town Kids’ is about four friends, growing up in a small town and spending idyllic evenings together. Things however change as they grow up and beging to face stifling rules of living in a place that’s yet to catch up with the modern complexities of city life.

The obscure little town of Dakhinpur is home to Anita, a sprightly young girl who doesn’t have much to look forward to except long conversations with her close friends – a reserved cousin, a steadfast best friend, and a neighbour who is somewhat of a rebel.

The four friends have a shared dream – to be inseparable, and to live on their own terms. But age, distance, and having to deal with regressive mindsets could tear that dream apart. And some of them carry secrets so startling, it might just challenge everything they’ve known about each other.

‘Bad Town Kids’ will take you back in time to a simpler era, where social media didn’t complicate lives, but growing up was still as hard.

BAD TOWN KIDS BY SNEHA JAISWAL

That’s the blurb. If it sounds like something you would like to read, PLEASE get a copy now. And reviews will be appreciated. Dropping a few country-wise links –

Amazon US

Amazon India

Amazon UK

Amazon Canada

Amazon Australia

Going Away

New places scare me

Travel steals my sleep

Little can be comforting

Dreams make me weep

Water filling up coaches

Aircraft going up in fumes

Us fighting for each breath

Even as sure doom looms

“Journey matters” they say

I await them with dread

It never eases or goes away

Some of us just want to stay

Whatever we call home

With familiar smelling sheets

All the ‘travelers’ can roam

Leave us to our streets

Note: It’s been months since I travelled due to Covid19 and one day before our December trip, for the first time, I felt a sense of unease and didn’t really look forward to travelling. While I experienced only mild feelings of discomfort at the thought of leaving home for a few days, it reminded me of a conversation with somebody in the family, who revealed how they experience high anxiety and sometime even panic attacks before they have to travel somewhere. It’s that conversation that inspired me to write this poem.