Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 292

Browsing Books

It’s the era of Covid19, life is still not back as usual. But a lot of shops have opened their shutters in the city and that includes book stores.

Since March this year, I haven’t stepped beyond the 2 kilometre radius of my house. But two days back I found out that one of the most popular book store in town had opened up.

So this weekend I had one agenda in mind – Must visit the book store!

Most of the books on my little book shelf have been read. The dust had to be shaken off from my Kindle after a really long time.

But all traditional readers know it for a fact, that a Kindle can never replace a traditional book. The smell of the fresh pages. The not having to worry about the battery life. Just that feeling of physically flipping a page to get to the next paragraph. It’s just a sentimental thing.

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Blossoms Book Store was open 9 am – 6 pm this Sunday. Husband drove through near empty roads to get me there. Roads that would be bustling with so much life in the past that it would have taken us at least 40 minutes to get there on any other day. But today, it took us only 20.

What surprised me was the fact that I was the only customer at their vast fiction floor. Piles and piles of books and nobody to go through them and decide if they needed a home. 

“We lived in a different era,” a lady who was ahead of me at the billing line lamented.

She had started to talk about how she used to run a small lending library but nobody came any more.

“I had to spend so much time sorting them all out,” she said, pointing to a little pile of books that she was selling to the book store. They dealt in second-hand books too.

I heard the store owner tell her how some books that used to sell like hot cakes once upon a time just didn’t have any buyers.

“Nobody reads much these days. It’s so sad,” she said.

It was sad. But at that moment I was just extremely excited about all the books that were in my hand, waiting to be taken home.

 

The Perfect Murder

‘The Perfect Murder’ is a collection of short stories compiled by one of India’s most loved writer who elusively lives in the hills of Mussoorie. I am going to keep my review short of this one.

Ruskin Bond has chosen wisely for this collection of short stories. It had one of my favourites by Alan Edgar Poe – The Cask of Amontillado – a story that is intriguing till the last page.

The stories take you back to bygone eras and amuse you with their peculiarities. Bond’s own little short makes you wonder if it’s fact or fiction. There’s a mash of everything in here- murder, mystery, greed, lust, vengeance, betrayal and serial killers on the prowl.

While I am not sure what my expectation with this book were, it made for a fulfilling read. ‘The Perfect Murder’ is perfect for pleasant evenings with a strong cup of tea/coffee on the sides.

Corona & Celebrations

It’s my parents anniversary today. Mom had been excited about it since last December, wondering ‘where should we go to celebrate it?’.

The original plan had been for them to come to down and visit me and then we had a wedding to attend the next day. But ever since a nationwide lockdown was announced, trains/flights were cancelled, all of those plans went for a toss.

I had thought of taking them out for dinner to a fancy place and getting them some nice alcohol. Well, that had been flushed down the toilet too. We live over 1000 kilometres apart.

With all the lockdown madness and me trying to work on multiple books on the sides, their looming anniversary was quietly forgotten. That was until last week, when mom casually mentioned it.

“Shit! Mom & Dad’s anniversary is in 10 days, what do we get them?!” I panicked.

Amazon was still not delivering non-essential items that would fall in the ‘gifting’ category. I had thought of getting a nice commissioned portrait for them, but the artist I contacted said it was not possible. There weren’t too many options. For a second I even considered sending them a bunch of masks and hand-sanitizers as gifts.

In the end, I turned to the only good friend I have in the same city as my parents.

“Do you know anybody who can bake a nice cake for my parent’s anniversary?” I asked her.

“Do you have a specific design in mind?” she asked.

I did.

A cake with a nice champagne bottle, that simply said ‘Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad’.

She spoke to a few bakeries that were still running their operations in the city, and turned out that most of them were not taking orders for customized cakes. Only regular bakes.

She then asked me if it was okay if she got it done via somebody she knew.

“As long as they can make a nice tasting cake. It’s fine.”

Finally we got a guy to make a cake that I wanted and he even agreed to do home delivery. It doesn’t seem too bad –

[image error]Source: Mom’s phone. Yeah, she’s not great at taking pictures.

Dad called me up to ask “Are you sure we can eat this cake? The virus doesn’t spread through cakes?”

“Yes, you can eat the cake. A friend of mine got it baked via a trusted friend,” I assured him.

He still made mom put it out in the sun for a while. Then realizing that all the cream would melt and destroy it, he put his paranoia aside and got it placed inside the fridge.

Now I need to start thinking about what to get mom for her birthday, which is in two weeks. Damn.

Morning Nightmare

For the last few days, I’ve been sleeping past 4 am. ‘Morning-mare’ doesn’t sound like an apt made up word to define disruptions to the mind in the early hours of the day.

So today, I went to bed at 4.20 am and was woken up by a blast like sound, followed by loud hissing noises made by water. It was coming from the bathroom.

The bathroom door is less than 2 feet away from my bedside. I open the door, only be greeted by a spray of hot water, leaking furiously from the huge-ass geyser mounted on the wall. I immediately shut it again, rattled by it all, wondering ‘what the hell is happening?!’.

Husband went in to check on the geyser, which seemed to have burst somewhere, continued to spew water like a crazy jet spray on drugs.

“Is the switch on?” he asked me from inside the bathroom. The geyser switch was outside the bathroom and it was clearly off.

“It’s off” I said.

“The switch must have malfunctioned” he said and went out of the room, leaving the bathroom door open.

“What are you doing!!!” I asked, irritated, confused and still dazed.  The warm water splashing over to our room.

He came back with a giant umbrella and went back into the bathroom, where water continued to hiss like angry snakes.

With the umbrella to protect him from the onslaught, he tried to meddle with the knobs attached to the geyser to see if they would stop the water from leaking.

“Is there another switch inside?” I asked him, remembering that our other bathroom geyser had two switches.

When he meddled with the first knob, the hiss like sound increased to a roar, and more water splashed ou of it, like a malfunctioning fountain.

Husband finally managed to stop it. All he had to do was remove the plug. Took us a few minutes to figure out such a basic thing because we were still in a stupor.

The hot steam from all the water had made the temperature in our room oppressive and unbearable. I headed out to the balcony to get some fresh air. Completely upset over the out of turn events.

“Why did it have to happen right when I fell asleep. Now it will take me forever to sleep,” I told myself, my head aching from all the unearthly noise that had rudely jolted us from the comfort of our bed.

“Thank God it happened when Kartik was around though,” I thought next.

Husband explained that a pipe had burst. Possibly from the overheating, since the geyser was on for a long time, despite the switch being off.

“Why is all of this happening to us during the lockdown?  First the fridge. Now this,” he said.

Our fridge had malfunctioned and we couldn’t find anybody to repair it, so we went without it for a month. Silly first world problems eh?

Well, at least now that most essential services are up and running, finding somebody to fix the geyser wouldn’t be a problem.

Finding something to fix my sleep? That’s an irreparable malady.

Such A Fun Age

It’s been ages since I read a book that I didn’t want to put down!

‘Such A Fun Age’ by Kiley Reid transported me back to my high-school days, because that used to be the phase when I would give up a good night’s sleep to read fiction.

In the very first chapter, the author dives into action. Emira, a young black woman, who is at a store with a toddler she is babysitting, is accused of kidnapping. Something that would have never happened if she was white. The book follows what happens after the incident.

Reid’s book deals with race, prejudice and class divides in a manner I have never read before. It’s not too serious, but doesn’t make a mockery of the issues either. Despite being fiction, it reads like a flawless biography written in third person. Nothing feels exaggerated. All of it could have very well happened for real.

Never have I grown to like a character in a book who is just a toddler. For me, three-year-old Briar, the lovely little kid the protagonist babysits, is the hero of the story. Every time Briar was mentioned, it felt like she was child-version of a very good college friend.

“The book I am reading has a three year old. And she sound like what you would have been as a kid. Each time the kiddie appears in the book I am reminded of you,” I texted at 3 am in a WhatsApp group.

The other crucial character, Alix Chamberlain, a privileged white mom who has made a career out of writing letters & product reviews, sounds like all those ‘social media influencers’ out there, who are making big bucks from the comforts of their home, while us lesser beings slog our asses of in normal boring jobs. There are a bunch of other minor characters that serve as contrast to others and help carry the story forward.

Emira has a cute ‘girl squad’ and their outings are relatable. Especially the bit about not making enough and still facing peer pressure to party and pay for drinks you cannot afford when you are out with friends. I guess a lot of people in their early twenties experience that.

And then there is an interesting twist that foreshadows all the complications that come up in the book. Something I won’t talk about, since it will be a spoiler. The strongest point of this book is that it perfectly illustrates how well-meaning people can be absolute assholes without realizing it.

Long review short – ‘THIS IS SUCH A FUN BOOK’.

Fundamentals Of Caring

Not sure if my mild crush on actor Paul Rudd has anything to do with it – but I absolutely loved the 2016 film ‘The Fundamentals of Caring’.

The film would always throw up on my Netflix suggestions and would remind me of the last Rudd film I saw – the 2014 romantic comedy ‘They Came Together’ which was mind-numbingly bad. So maybe the crush has nothing to do with it.

Rudd plays Ben Benjamin, a middle-aged man who is going through a personal crisis and decides to become a caregiver. His first job involves looking after an angst-y, sarcastic teen called Trevor, who suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and is confined to a wheelchair. So be mentally prepared for a lot of brief scenes that involve Ben helping Trevor pee. Yup. 

Craig Roberts plays the weirdly cute Trevor, who is sexually frustrated due to his health condition and is constantly cranky, passing crude remarks & pulling mean pranks on his caregivers. All the while, sticking to a boring routine that largely limits him to the four walls of his house.

Things shake up a little in both Benjamin and Trevor’s life when they decide to do a week-long road trip to see ‘the world’s deepest’ pit. Trevor’s mom grudgingly agrees. And an interesting adventure begins, bringing a few new interesting humans into their life.

The casting directors have cherry-picked just the right people to fit into every small character that appears in this lovely little film. There is Selena Gomez, who at the time of this film was probably at least 23, but looks just right for the role of a young adult on the run from home. “I am 21,” she declares at some point in the film, while she doesn’t look a day over 16. Megan Ferguson, who has very little screen time, is endearing as Peaches, a pregnant woman, whose car goes bust on the road and is given a ride by Benjamin and Trevor.

The road trip bit in the plot allows the makers to give us viewers some amazing shots of the lush American countryside. The fields, bridges over streams, clear blue skies, all making you smile, reminding you of how the world was, before the COVID-19 pandemic pushed us all indoors.

Even the little pauses and lingering shots, still scenes that just try to show you the feelings of the protagonists, they are all worth staring at. In some review, I had mentioned how they are two kinds of slow films – 1. That makes you savour the slow moments 2. That makes you hit the ‘forward button’. ‘The Fundamentals of Caring’ falls into the first category.

Director Rob Burnett, who has also written the script which is based on a novel, has made a fun, sweet movie. And I hope there is a sequel.

The Half of It…

If you do a lot of reading and are into Greek mythology, you probably already know what the myth surrounding the whole ‘soulmates’ business is.

Plato in Symposium said –

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

The 2020 Netflix film ‘The Half Of It’, starts off with the protagonist Ellie Chu narrating this Greek belief for a school essay. She had written it for some other student. Chu lives alone with her dad in a small town called Squahamish and makes money on the sides off her fellow college students by writing their papers.

One day, a shy jock called Paul Munsky asks her to refine a love letter he has written for a pretty girl called Aster. And that’s how an innocent deceptive wooing of the pretty girl begins; who by the way – already has a hunky boyfriend.

The Netflix description pretty much sums up the entire film –

She’s a gifted introvert. He’s a sweet jock. Both are smitten with the same girl. Friendships — and first loves — can be complicated.

There is actually nothing too original about this film, except for the fact that the lead is not your usual white girl stereotype. The plot reminded me of “Sierra Burges Is A Loser”, a pretty bad Netflix film, where the lead pretends to be somebody else and texts the pretty boy. Here, the texting is done by a girl, to a girl.

[image error]Alexxis Lemire who plays Aster is absolutely gorgeous in the Film. (YouTube Screenshot)

So Ellie Choo sends letters and texts to woo Aster, pretending to be Paul. Eventually, Paul and Aster go on an awkward first date. And things begin to get complicated from there.

All the actors are really good at their parts. Daniel Diemer who plays Paul, comes across as a lost cute puppy and has the potential to be the next teen heart-throb. We are talking Noah Centineo kind of fame, after he appeared in ‘Too All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’.

Coming back to the plot – the makers conveniently don’t give any thought to the cheating bit at all. Aster goes on dates with Paul, even kisses him, while she is still in a very serious relationship with another guy. ‘Marriage is on the cards & family agrees’ kind of serious. Which is weird, considering they are just college seniors.

The film is slow in parts, owing to the fact that a lot of conversation is indirect – via texts. There are no high humor points, I mean if I had to recall a very funny scene right now, I can’t think of anything. And I finished the film just half an hour back. However, there are parts that do manage to tug the heart-strings. The accidental friendship that develops between Ellie & Paul is adorable.

[image error]Ellie & Paul watching a film at her home. (YouTube Screenshot)

The film also has an interesting Bollywood reference that only Indians will probably get. Ellie Chu & Paul watch the film ‘Ek Villain’ (a terrible film, just saying), which foreshadows the ending scene for their film.

Ellie’s homosexuality is a matter that is not given a lot of space or thought. We don’t know if she is gay, or bisexual, or pan-sexual, or asexual or any other sexual binary that is out there. Maybe the positive way to look at it is – it shouldn’t be a big deal either. It was nice to see close to zero negativity surrounding homosexuality, in a film where the lead is seemingly gay. There are no crude jokes, no condemnation.

In the first few minutes of the film, I noticed that the cinematographers used a lot of symmetry in the background to make the sets look pleasing to the eye. So visually, the movie is pretty good.

The lesbian plot twist, which is given away in the trailer and in the description, is probably the only thing that saves ‘The Half of It’ from being a completely forgettable ‘coming of age’ teen romance. Although it does serve as a breath of fresh air from the other teen films where everything is over-exaggerated. In this film, everything is subtle, smooth, sweet and slow.

Keywords & Copy Cats

If you type the words ‘hoka fruit’ in Google, chances are high that the first result would be a travel blog post by me from 2016. Even before the Wikipedia result.

How do I even know this random piece of weird information?

Well, a couple of months back, I noticed that the 4 year old post showed up in my ‘top posts’ section. And that was just weird. Since it was such an old entry. Usually, my top posts comprise of recently published stuff.

Out of curiosity, I just googled a relevant keyword and found out that someone in the Trip Advisor community had copy-pasted my post and passed it off as his own. The post had some 800+ likes. My own blog post – a measly 17 likes I guess.

I was amused and irritated. Not only did I report the post to the Trip Adviser community, I also sent a message to the dude. Told him it was not cool to steal content. I mean, except for changing pictures, he hadn’t even rehashed my post.

Never really followed up after that, but I think the dude deleted the content. This incident came flooding back to me yesterday, after someone who follows me on twitter plagiarized my tweet.

“Should I be offended or flattered?” I asked my friend.

“Imitation is the best form of flattery,” my friend said. And both of us laughed.

Has something like this ever happened to you?

Extraction Review- Extra Action

While I was watching Chris Hemsworth’s new Netflix film Extraction this Saturday morning, I was interrupted by a video call.

“What were you doing?” Mom asked.

“Watching a film called Extraction,” I said.

“Watch and tell us how it is,” Dad said in the background.

“It’s good so far, lot of action, Dad will like it, you will probably fall asleep,” I told mom.

And that’s the problem with Extraction, while it has damn good action sequences, shot to look like it’s one take (yes, slightly reminiscent of the film 1917), at one point, it gets a little boring.

The plot is pretty simple- Chris Hemsworth plays ex-army guy Tyler Rake, who is out on a paid mission to Dhaka, to extract an Indian drug lord’s son Ovi Mahajan (played convincingly by 16-year-old Rudhraksh Jaiswal) from the clutches of his Bangladeshi rival.

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Director Sam Hangrave and team need to be applauded for the tight, violent but gripping combat scenes. Just one indoor action sequence failed to compare with the others that were more racy and intriguing.

The biggest problem with Exraction is that the exaggerations in the plot begin to bother you eventually. Joe Russo has written the script and seems to have forgotten that this is not comic-book/fantasy territory. For the uninitiated – Russo has directed some of the Captain America and Avengers films.

While on one hand, the makers seem to take exceptional effort to make all the gun fights and car chases real, on the other hand, the very scale of the entire operation seems too far-fetched to be palatable. The Bangladesh Drug Lord seems to have the entire police force and army force at his feet, with hundreds losing their lives trying to get their hands on one boy.

Hemsworth fits into his role perfectly, he seems straight out of a ‘Call of Duty’ kind of a game, mercilessly shooting down cop after cop, goon after goon. Randeep Hooda is also laudable as Saju, an ex-army guy, who is Ovi’s bodyguard.

The main villain however, is not convincing enough. Priyanshu Painyuli who plays Amir Asif, the ruthless Dhaka drug-lord, seems more like a bratty party boy tripping in the wrong room.

[image error]The Actor who plays the Dhaka Don

‘Extraction’ could have been an amazing action thriller, but is pulled down to being mediocre by some unnecessary emotional back-stories and over-dramatic sentimental pauses.

If you don’t know what to watch on the weekend and have a thing for action flicks, this is definitely worth a watch. It’s a 6.5/10 for me.

 

My Dark Vanessa – A Review

I learnt about the book ‘My Dark Vanessa’ by Kate Elizabeth Russell by accident. It was after I had stumbled across an online article about how there was a debate raging in literary circles over a book that hadn’t even hit the stands yet. The release date was March 2020.

Kate Elizabeth Russell, who apparently started working on her debut novel as far back as 2009, was accused of plagiarism by another author Wendy Oritz. The latter claimed that Russell’s novel was just the fictional version of a reality she lived as a teen; her experiences chronicled in the 2015 book called ‘Excavation’.

So what is ‘My Dark Vanessa’ about? The story is about how a vulnerable 15-year-old girl is emotionally manipulated into a physical relationship with her teacher. Jacob Strane, a 40-something English teacher, singles out Vanessa, who has no friends and is struggling at boarding school to be his ‘Lolita’. The book, by the author’s own admission is heavily inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial classic about a middle-aged man’s obsession with a 12-year-old.

Just the mere thought of a 40-plus man physically abusing a 15-year-old in a methodical manner is repulsive. And when you read the story from the point of view of the teen, who was brainwashed into believing that she was in a ‘consensual’ loving relationship with someone probably older than her dad, it’s uncomfortable, to say the least. But despite the unpalatable premise, the book is interesting.

Russell has written this book in what seems like an effortless flow. The language is neither too colloquial, nor too formal/heavy. The plot flits between 2001 & 2017. The story is a slow but smooth ping-pong match between the past and the present.

While like a lot of books, this one too has a slow start.  After a first few chapters, the next 150 pages are gripping and binge-worthy. And then comes a point where as a reader you think that the book is heading to a climax, when you rudely realize the fact that you are only half-way through. (I was reading the e-book)

‘My Dark Vanessa’ soon gets tedious and irritating and I found myself skipping a lot of paragraphs in the second half. Russell could have perhaps slashed the book by at least 50 pages, if not more. Too much of the text is spent on Vanessa trying to justify her abusive relationship with Strane, even when she is an adult woman of 30.

Strane finds himself accused of abusing several of his students, the allegations coming in the midst of ‘Me Too’ movement. And as other victims hope for her to step up and implicate him to bolster their fight, she never does. On the contrary, Vanessa refuses to even believe the victims, adamant on living in her own delusional bubble.

There are some inconsistencies with the protagonist’s characterization, while for most part, she is portrayed as an asocial, mature girl, a literary genius in the making; yet there are plenty of times when she acts like nothing but a 10-year-old brat.  These inconsistencies are irritating.

None of the characters in the book are likable. It’s probably because none of them get enough space in the book, they are just weak shadows on the sides. What I really didn’t like about the book is how there is absolutely no background story to Strane. His life before Vanessa is an absolute blank. Instead there are boring mundane details of Vanessa’s college life that can be skipped. Like I said, it’s 50 pages too long.

The book is thought provoking, making you question institutions, like schools and even families. Who is to blame for the ruin of a 15-year-old girl’s life? It seems like everybody had a little role to play.

‘My Dark Vanessa’ gives the reader an eerie peek into the mind of a young girl, who was ‘groomed’ by a pedophile into a repulsive relationship. The girl is made to believe she is a ‘nymphet’ who is in power of what happens, when really its the odious older man who is in charge of the story.

If that subject is something you are not interested in, you are perhaps better off without reading this book. It could turn into a frustrating experience.