Sneha Jaiswal's Blog, page 296

Locked Up

I have been struggling to finish a collection of short stories since March this year.

“Do you lock yourself in a room the whole day to write?” asked a friend of mine excitedly on the phone.

I laughed and said “that’s not how it works for me”.

Sure, there are writers who write for hours and hours endlessly, but this whole business of ‘locking yourself up’ to write as much as you can, has never appealed to me. Only yesterday I read an article about a writer who challenged himself to write a book in a month and publish it by the end of it.

“It felt like I was working eight days a week,” he claims. All his days were spent inside his room, writing away. Perhaps that’s an admirable way of doing it. But as far as I am concerned, I don’t think I can write continuously for more than three hours. I need food break, music break, balcony break, coffee break, nap break, reading break, blog break, texting break, video calling break… well you get the gist? All sorts of breaks. Multi-tasking is not my thing. I need to have my coffee in peace, with some music in the background and me doing nothing.

Until a few years back, even I sort of had this blind belief that you need ‘the right kind of ambiance’ to be able to write in peace. Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘A Room of One’s Own’ strengthened that belief. The essay argues that in order for women to produce great pieces of literature, they need to have a room of their own and be free of domestic chores like male writers. She also goes on to say that the woman also needs to be free of financial worries to devote that kind of time into writing. Which did make sense.

But then you have a Stephen King, who was living in a trailer, barely making ends meet when he published his first bestseller – Carrie. King was so short on cash that he had to get his telephone line cut to save money. He is on the other end of the spectrum. He wasn’t like the men Woolf talked about in her essay, the kinds that didn’t have any financial woes and were gaining rich experiences through travelling to exotic locations to write interesting books.

If I’ve understood one thing about writing fiction, it’s this – it all boils down to personal discipline. It doesn’t matter what your financial situation is, or if your room has a sea-side view to fuel your imagination. All of that is pure bullshit. Every writer is unique and their motivations are unique too.

Bizarre Romance – Review

It took me about two days to finish ‘Bizarre Romance’, a short story collection by Audrey Niffenegger & Eddie Campbell. 

The problem with this book is that it doesn’t really live up to its name. Out of the thirteen stories in the book, only 3-4 of them were weird enough. The others bordered on boring, not bizarre.

Picked up this book because I really like odd stuff and am absolutely fine with stories that don’t make too much sense. We have enough practicalities bogging us down in the real world. Fiction should be allowed to be unreasonable. But Niffenegger’s tales are pretty mundane and quiet digestible.

What was even more disappointing was that Eddie Campbell’s illustrations were mediocre. Some of them just seemed like real photographs edited by some phone app. Others looked like quick scrawls by a kid on paint.

This is neither a graphic novel nor a regular text heavy novel. Some stories have no illustrations at all. And a lot of them have already been published somewhere else. So I felt like the blurb on this book was a little misleading –

‘Once upon a time, a writer and an artist got married. ‘Let’s collaborate,’ said the writer. ‘Ugh, no thanks, darling,’ said the artist. But lo and behold, they collaborated and here’s the result: thirteen stories about oddballs in love, infestations of angels, nefarious fairies, cats, spies, monsters, more cats…’ 

I was under the impression that these stories would have been fresh and that each one of them would be illustrated. Most of the plots are pretty forgettable. There was one with a cat lady that I liked best.

Over-all, ‘Bizarre Romance’ is not a bad pick. I would give it a 3 on 5. And I loved the hardback, it’s a nice looking addition to the book shelf.

The Cat Returns…

‘The Cat Returns’ is a 2002 film by Studio Ghibli and is just pure joy. It’s a fun, zany film about school-girl Haru who saves a cat’s life, only to learn that the feline was no ordinary animal, but the prince of the ‘cat kingdom’.

The king of the cat kingdom wants to thank Haru by getting her married to his son. How Haru tries to get herself out of the bizarre situation forms rest of the plot. As I watched the film in the comfort of my couch, I felt like a happy kid, feeling all warm and fuzzy due to the cuteness of the film. Almost all the cats in this 75 minute film are so damn adorable.

Haru makes friends with a fat cat Muta and the suited-up Baron who was first introduced to the Ghibli audience in the 1995 film ‘Whisper of the Heart’, another gem. The three of them find themselves on a crazy adventure in the Cat Kingdom, which is shaped like a paw.

‘The Cat Returns’ infuses magic, fantasy & fun, while at the same time it subtly deals with themes like existentialism, despotism & romanticism. The animation is rich in little details and there are lots of easter-eggs to remind you of other Ghibli films.

The animators have taken a lot of effort into each character that features in the story, making them look literal representatives of their personality traits. For example, the king of the cat kingdom is obese, wears bold gold jewelry, has crazy hair – just like his greedy, autocratic, irrational self.

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Baron, the soft-spoken & intelligent cat on the other hand is well-dressed, just like his polished self. There is Yuki, a darling feline, who is the first to come to Haru’s rescue and looks just as demure & sweet as her character is. It’s hard not to go ‘aww’ when some of these cats come on screen.

Despite being a lot shorter than most animated films from the same studio, ‘The Cat Returns’ is a sparkling little wonder from their kitty. Pun intended.

P.S – The film is available on Netflix.

Whisper of the Heart

It’s been a while since I saw ‘Whisper of the Heart’, a Studio Ghibli film from 1995. So why write about it now? Because I just saw a spin-off film called ‘The Cat Returns’ and it just felt wrong to write about it without having said anything about its predecessor.

Well, it doesn’t matter how long ago I saw the film, because it’s hard to forget how it started – wistfully, with a beautiful rendition of John Denver’s ‘Country Roads’, while the screen showed dazzling city lights and beaming cars zooming through bridges and busy concrete roads. A pretty paradox.

The main protagonist, a teen called Shizuku, lives in a crammed flat with her parents and an elder sister who is in college. The teen is a voracious reader and realizes that all the books she has been borrowing from the library have already been read by the same guy. This makes her curious to find out the other reader’s identity.

Shizuku then meets an enigmatic cat on the metro that leads her to a new street and an odd little antique shop filled with little wonders, including Baron – a suited up cat statue with alluring eyes. The shop is also a key connection to the mystery readers she is chasing after.

[image error]This little cat statue has its own interesting back story dating back to World War II

‘Whisper of The Heart’ is a classic Studio Ghibli film, which charmingly mixes the mundane with the magical. It has the innocence of a teen romance, the maturity of an adult drama with a dash of the mystical. Some might find the slightly dramatic turn of event towards the final leg of the film a little weird and out of place. But I usually savor the bizarre, and this film has the right kind of eccentricity to it, at least to my liking.

Visually, like most Ghibli films, it gives a you nice slice of the Japanese way of life. The musical scores are uplifting and the over-all tone of the narration is optimistic and uplifting.

The movie might take you back to your first love, that rush of restlessness, the desperation of wanting to have a happy ever after, of wanting to go to any lengths to see if you can make it work. It’s all too adorable. A leisurely paced film that’s perfect for a lazy summer afternoon.

M(a)Y Book Haul

Six new books are going to join my book-shelf. Two of them are hardbacks. I love hardbacks and wish they were a little more affordable.

The last two times I paid a visit to a book-store, I returned empty-handed, because everything I liked was very expensive. This time, I had birthday money from my grandfather. It just doesn’t feel too bad too splurge gift money on nice new hardbacks. And Graphic Novels.

So here’s what I got –

Manga Messiah by no idea who. Because the writer’s name is written in Japanese. The blurb was interesting, it said “From the biggest-selling book in the history of the world… comes the greatest story ever told… about the most controversial man who ever lived… presented in the most popular graphic novel format on earth…” Why the hell not? It’s got Manga Jesus. That’s exciting enough. (The writer is called Hidenori Kumai – found the name inside the book)
Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel. She is the author of Fun Home, an absolutely amazing & honest memoir in graphic novel format. Unlike Manga Messiah, this was not an impulsive buy. I already knew about the book, so I just picked it up.
Bizarre Romance by Audrey Niffenegger & Eddie Campbell. Another impulse buy, because I had never heard of it but the back said it’s by the author who wrote The Time Traveller’s Wife. I haven’t read it, but the movie was interesting. How bad can it be? The blurb was cute – ‘Once upon a time, a writer and an artist got married. ‘Let’s collaborate,’ said the writer. ‘Ugh, no thanks, darling,’ said the artist. But lo and behold, they collaborated and here’s the result: thirteen stories about oddballs in love, infestations of angels, nefarious fairies, cats, spies, monsters, more cats…’ 
Half The Night Is Gone by Amitabha Baghchi. This one had a pretty book design and had favourable reviews from leading Indian newspapers. So just rolled with it.
East into Upper East by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. ‘Plain tales from New York and New Delhi’. Never heard of the author, but he is a booker winner and short stories are always appealing.
Vietnamese Legends & Folk Tales – this little book caught my attention on my way out and was very cheap, so I thought ‘why not?’. I loved my Vietnam trip last year and want to go back to that country some time later again. So a book that would give me glimpse into their culture sounded appealing.

 

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’.