Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 19

On Friendship Day

Monsoons are here. The day is a typical Monsoon day, all fresh, washed clean day, as if ready for proper parting of hairs and to be sent to the school. It is a perfect day. I slept through most of it.
In between, I thought about what the day signifies. It is Friendship day. I am at the age, on the wrong side of forty. There are articles in the newspapers proclaiming that forty is the new twenty. But than those are just pretentious words of solace as the life slides faster than before. I feel pre-historic, ancient on the days like this. It is not like we used to jog with the dinosaurs in our days. But we did not have the days like in our days.
I still remember going to Archies, near Sharda Chowk in Raipur in 1993. It was a new entity and was relegated, me and my Engineering roommate had first encountered Valentine day there. My room-mate, Arvind Gupta from Balaghat, was freshly in love and thought of buying a card. We both looked at each other, clueless of what it meant. That is the time we came from.
Friendship day, as we know it, did not exist then. Not that, without Archies telling us, we did not understand friendship. In those days, friendship was not about coffee at CCD. We were not children of liberalization and weren’t rich enough. But friendship meant many different things for us.
It is fun to look back and think of those friends. There were many who came in the way and touched my life in such fulfilling ways. Dileep Dixit shared my table in Primary school. He would make schematic diagrams to explain the story of movies he had watched. We would watch not more than two movies in an year in those dusty days of Kanpur. He was so neat and fair, I always felt that he was going to be a doctor, before we fell on either side of the rolling juggernaut of time. When we met again, couple of years back, he was still neat and soft as ever, not a doctor, but an engineer and a trained Architect, helping set up the Airport in Delhi which was to be one of the best in the world. We met and reminisced the day when eagles would leap onto our school Tiffin Boxes in Kendriya Vidyalaya No. 1 in Kanpur, leaving us scared, before we grew up and made an entertaining business out of it. We would tie envelopes to pieces of Paratha and watch the eagles carry them high into the sky. We would be immensely amused about it. Then I had Rajesh Tripathi, who lived next door, and I would spend winter evenings, playing marbles outside the N-4 Airforce quarters with him. Against the dreamy, idealistic Dileep, Rajesh was more matter of fact and realist even as a ten year old as we grew between Sanskrit lessons of Pandey Sir and loving Social studies lessons of Chauhan Ma’am. That was before teachers lost interest in us and we in them.
Then, we moved to Hasimara, a small town in West Bengal, touching Bhutan and overlooking KanchanJunga, in the thickets of greenery, where it rained every day. It was like dream and if passed away like dream. Not many friends there except few from Phuntschling in Bhutan- Navrattan Jain who had a hotel there, Kamalkant- who we, I guess wrongly believed to know Kung-fu, and Nagendra Jaisawal, who seemed to be the first amongst us to walk out of adolescence. But then, they were mostly names to me and I don’t think I existed for them. Then Patna, family and bad days of broken dreams. The days passed away, no friends stuck on. That is a casualty of transferrable life of parents. You are always the new boy in the school, falling outside the inner circle of kids who grew up together. Those were unkind days. I was a fauzi kid, inept and awkward in the civilian world. Tenth exams were then test of grit and the move into eleventh was an entry into adolescent. Patna was more of family than of friends.
Then it was Guna, the dusty, sleepy world in MP, right on the edge of the dreaded Bhind, known for dacoits. Well, learnt much later that they were rebels not dacoits as Irrfan would tell us in the Movie- Pan Singh Tomar. The small town where nobody lost sleep over tall, thin men, with big Moustaches walking with their bicycle and a Rifle over their shoulder, embraced me once more with friendships which I had lost in Kanpur.  Rahul Mishra was there. Sanjay Tiwari was the first in the circle who I found to be politically aware. Student politics seeped right up the class XI in the DAV School. Rahul was my guide to that world. I was far away from the protected Airforce colony. I was in the Hindu school, away from the sophistication and stories of Christ Convent. Having studied in English medium, I continued with the same. I would attend classes in Hindi, come back translate notes in English and study. I passed with decent scores, English medium student from Hindi medium school. It really polished both the languages for me. It transformed me in many ways. Rahul was my guide in this new world. It was a sweet world, a small town in which everyone knew everyone. Rahul was my first friend, who was brave, understood politics, wasn’t afraid of Police. The entry to engineering those was a deeply contested fight. I moved into Christ School, a convent in the outskirt of Guna, but I kept on with my friends of DAV. I learnt to let the past coexist with the present, without judgment and prejudice. So while Manish Chawla and Dheeraj Oswal, former being the first friend I found to be really in love with a class-mate, and latter, the wittiest and most irreverent person I have ever known became friends, I continued with the Arya Samaj gang. The days were spread between school, walk in the evening to Rahul’s home right at the highway, Deepak Shukla, the sharpest of the lot from Arya Samaj, Tuesday to Hanuman temple with the tallest guy of the lot, Ravi Mishra, eclectic, Shyam Gurjar and Rajesh Arora, who ran a small-shop, the first among us to be independent.
Then, it was Raipur, which was later to become NIT. I was the guy from Guna. It stuck there. There was two distinct groups in the college, which we called Bhilai and Non-bhilai, latter referring mostly to people from Bhopal, and Gwalior part of the state. Funny thing, Manish and Dheeraj were on two different side of the divide, which left me right in the middle. Which eventually did not turn out to be much of a bad thing. I ended up having friends on both sides. Arvind Gupta, who came from Balaghat, always ready for a good fight became my room partner and we got ragged first together. He now is Indonesia. Then Yogendra Nigam was there, my room partner for the first year, who separated when we moved from four seater to two in the second year. But I would spend many nights there in his room, listening to Kishore kumar, assuaging my broken heart in his room. Arvind will be responsible for collecting my belongings from his room, as I would many times, fall asleep there. Shravan Sharma, our beloved Panditji was the fourth partner. He is the one we have lost track up. Rumours have it that he went for his Masters at IIT Kanpur and then went to the US. Sanjeev Mallik was there, a great singer, from Khariagarh, but maintained to be from Bihar. He loved the masculinity of Bihar and identified with it. Bihar also connected me with him, and he was like a brother. Rajesh Bhargava, the specked, studious room-mate of his was a friend within the electrical branch. Raji George was almost like a child, in the next room. That was before one day when me and Raji walked in Jeans to college one day, protesting against the first year dress code and eventually winning the day for the batch. Then Raji went about in a different direction of the power struggle of student politics. But we stayed friends, and I continued to care about him till ever. Pranay, I would discover later. He was a lanky, smart guy, eternally in search of love. He could not find love for himself, but he did, for me. He was my only connect with the girl’s hostel, me- a sad, brooding man, nursing my fresh wounds through a life of isolation. When during vacations, the whole of class would go home, I would stay back. With mess closed, we struggled for food, and Pranay would arrive. In spite of having home so close, he would stay back in the hostel as we tried figure out a way to get fed. He and Sushil Din, a senior, we called Kenchu sir, we stayed back and shared our hunger. Kenchu sir was bravest of us and most irreverent. Sometime we could get good food, and post that even managed amazing music by Shaibal (Bangali).

During Masters, had some friends but few. I was too much in love by then and most in Masters too focused on a career for friendships to deepen. I still had Rupesh Sengar, the effervescent man from Kanpur and the gyani Anand Menon during the masters. But I was more of an engineer, with my past years still wrapped around me as Ramesh Singh- Mowgli  and Buddhesh Vaidya from Raipur who by then had moved to Indore, were the ones with home I spent most time, including the nights at Sarvate Bus stand.
Those were great days. We would not write soft, lovely cards with touching messages for each other. But when police would baton charge us during student’s protests (and there were many), we would embrace to protect one another. Any student getting admitted to the government hospital, the DK Hospital was a nightmare as it meant at least fifty odd students hanging about through the day and night. A friendship day wish is too embarrassing for people of my age. But I thought, I would rather go back in time and remember friends from those day and what they meant for me. We were not friends, we were brothers, brothers of a lost world. We would guard our friend's dreams and love as if they were our own.We were willing comrades ready to live and die for one another, before life found us and domesticated us.
I have missed out some, not because they mean less, but because the space is much less.  I guess, this is the most narcissistic piece I have written in a while, covering my life and my friends. But then, it is friendship day and I thought about them. Forgive my vanity and accept my wishes for a very happy friendship day, for as a writer, now my readers are also my good friends.

The Joy of Reading with My Child (And Necessity of it)

Easier will be steepest of
the paths
if you whisper to them,
to the trees, and the rocks
like a friend. : Me with Sanskriti (Nonu)I finished reading The Book Thief to my seven year old, though in bits and pieces, and then closed it with watching the magnificent movie adaptation today afternoon. The weather was kind, her interest was up, having read the book and it was almost ethereal, in a happy way. I kept on thinking why did I watch this movie with Nonu. I thought about it and wanted to share.
Not that I do not watch movies often with her. I am a movie freak and the weekend with no new releases leaves me uneasy. Between me and my daughter, we keep on watching all the animation movies, much to the chagrin of her mother. But watching The Book Thief was different.
It struck me when I read another “All The Life We cannot See” right after I read “The Book Thief”. These two books are about World War II, these two books are about death. Should I expose a seven year old to the depressing sadness of the war?
But no, war is not only about death. War is also about hope, about survival, about coming out of war. These two stories are glorious stories about love, and hope and innocence of the children in the war-zones. The two books are also about one underlying theme which runs common to two stories, apart from deaths, childhood and war- that is books.
Books make even the wars survivable. Books will not erect a protective shed over your head that will protect you from the death falling from the skies. As Anne Lamott writes in her book Bird by bird: “ It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. ” 
 They create a world of hope even in the most hopeless of the scenario. In words, we understand the world around us. We are able to bear its harshness and forgive it.
When death is around us, intimidating, gnashing its white ominous teeth through the hopeless darkness, words fall like snowflakes, and dance in the stardust, spreading its forgiving silken shelter, giving us a hope for tomorrow. The bombs exploding are suddenly not loud enough. In "All The Light We Cannot See" We find that the days turns into years as Marie-Laurie LeBlanc wades through the pounding of German warships in the sleepy French village, hopelessly waiting for her father, who unfortunately never returns. It is reading Jules Verne and Charles Darwin which saves her sanity.
In The Book Thief, Liesel Meminger spends nights in the basements watching over the Jewish fugitive, Max, struggling with sickness and impending arrest and subsequent possible death and reading stolen books to him. They hold each other through words which float between the two souls, aggrieved, punished and still their inherent kindness intact. Liesel is the book thief. She struggles with words and learns them with difficulty having missed out on initial schooling. But Hans Hubermann, with inherent father characteristics of ‘Thereness’ – of being there whenever the child might need it,  of as the writer says, appearing there mid-scream and not leaving, who is himself poor reader, she learns to read. She discovers words. In words, she finds solace. She is an orphan, she lives with foster parents, the war is looming, intolerance floats in the air with the smell of explosives and.. death. But she makes it, through all that. Her only hope is words. When being poor, she cannot get books in the society in the midst of book-burning frenzy, she is steals them. She terms it borrowing and Death - the narrator, names her -The book thief. Max gives her a Mein Kampf, with pages colored white and transformed into a notebook. Hans teaches her to read and Max teaches her to write and she earns two most important companions for all her life. Liesel finds comfort in words, which protects her from the tragic death of her foster parents, and her only friend, Rudy Steiner, shielding like a mother’s womb. She writes and as death tells us, writes stories for all her ninety three years.
I had to watch this movie with Nonu. She needs to find a father’s embrace and a mother’s womb which will never leave her. She needs to discover the comfort that words offer. Words do not change the reality. They make them bearable. They don’t help you avoid life, they help you smile at life even when the dust of death flows into your eyes. In words, we understand our largeness and our smallness. The libraries are fading, words are shrinking with internet. But we must love words, caress them with tenderness. I hope, long after I am gone, Nonu will be able to survive her loneliest nights without bitterness, in company of words- her eternal companions. I am doing this to get her ready for life. I teach her words so that like Matilda of Roald Dahl, she could go on olden day sailing with Joseph Conrad..to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India, with Rudyard Kipling,  and so that in her loneliest of nights, and there will be some, she, like Matilda, she gets the message: You are not alone.
I feel, we all must do it. Introduce our kids to words, not so that they do well in schools and bring us glory but to equip them to handle life better. Rest will anyways follow. We might think they will not understand these stories. But human mind is very adaptive, it rises up to the challenge we throw at it. It will pick things which it finds good. I was pleasantly surprised with the interest with which my daughter watched this movie and read this book. Could be the impact of this movie, today, she was reminding me to take her to the library. The books will make them dream and also believe in dreams. As Carl Sagan wrote, “ A book is the proof that humans are capable of magic. ”
From my Poem- We, The Word Catcher, from my book Rescued Poems I share an excerpt
Lovely words, brutal words
daring, demanding and casual
Forgiving, kind and killing words
Off-beat, eternal and usual.

Damaging and deadly,
Healing and life-giving.
Kinder and harsh,
Like childhood friend, in truth, unforgiving.

Book Review: The Book Thief
Book Review:  All The Light We Cannot See

The Guardians of A Terrorist

Blasts Which Killed 256 People (Courtesy: Huffpost)It has been a longish week. Every week is the same, seven days, but some weeks have more than a fair share of events which demands your attention. This week was such. These are the weeks which decide what we will emerge as on the other end of the time.
This week, we learned much about Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, brother of fugitive, Tiger Memon- Key operative behind the 1993 Mumbai Serial Bomb Blasts. The media went into tizzy with the announcement of Maharashtra Government’s Announcement of death sentence to Yakub Memon, scheduled for 30thof July, 2015, at 700 hours, post dismissal of his curative petition on June, 21st.  As the channels planned for a walk towards gallows kind of programming, to much of their satisfaction, suddenly they had something better to debate and discuss.
Nobody would have expected support to pore in from places of eminence, like retired jurists and artists for the man convicted of planning the murder of 257 fellow citizens. Surprising and disgusting. We learned courtesy Main stream media that burgundy is the favorite color of Mr. Yakub Memon (Indian Express Report). We also know that he is a handsome man (same report). Death makes a good news report. That it needs heart, escapes most journalists. Also, the overwhelming number of deaths makes it difficult to even consider the life, or shortening of it in an individual perspective, let alone their favorite colors.
Internet is a great platform. User Generated Content, as we call in technical jargon is a great equalizer. So now everyone can be a journalist, including yours truly. It makes it very difficult for the overwhelming population of the country to hide stupidity. What began with trying to find an equivalence between other terrorists in the prison with verdict pending and Yakub Menon, slowly became blatant in protest. They in a way of sophisticated intellectual camouflage attacked the highest judiciary as the media oscillated between the term accused and convict.
An old report was unearthed, whereby Intelligence operative of RAW, B Raman was quoted as there was some understanding was reached, wherein Yakub Memon agreed to spill the beans on his brother, Tiger Memon. He did tell the story, how in a well-structured terrorist operator, the whole family fled away to Pakistan, where they were housed in a 20-bedroom posh house. B Raman’s words were cited to free Yakub, as if those words were binding over the highest court in the country. Yakub, it was proven in the court, ran the finances and logistics for the ghastly attack to happen which took away more than two hundred fifty unsuspecting lives. His role in the attack was well established by the prosecution.
The clemency brigade still decided to take a contrarian view. They said why hang Yakub when Tiger has escaped? It essentially meant, if there is a crime which has happened, in which multiple people are involved, unless all of them are held and punished at the same time, none should be. So their story is till the time we get Tiger, Dawood and other perpetrators and additionally, get terrorists arrested and convicted in other terrorist acts march in a unison towards the gallows, no one should be punished. Salman Khan, happy in an erroneous commercial story of Bajrangi Bhaijan came with the same plea- If Tiger cannot be punished, why punish Yakoob? The absurdity of script of Bajrangi Bhaijan, touted, to my dismay as great piece of art is another story. When we righteously claim that India and Pakistan are essentially same people, we ignore the basic facts, for instance, why is it totally impossible to geographically reverse the script of Bajrangi Bhaijan. A Pakistani Muslim girl, mistakenly left behind in India could go back to Pakistan as her Identity can be established by indication like the little girl walking into the mosque, looking for non-vegetarian food; the same would have been impossible for a Hindu, Indian girl who might have lost her way into Pakistan, where she would have found no Temples, no vegetarian food, no sign of Hinduism to establish her identity. That the movie is naïve and ignores that people who moved to Pakistan were those who did not believe in secularism, is another debate.  That said, the actor, previously convicted for running his vehicle over poor pedestrians and hitting physically a famed actress, took the mantle of policy-maker and thought leader of international relations, appealing to Pak PM to send Tiger Memon so that justice can be served as if Tiger Memon were Munni of his movie and Nawaz Sharif were Bajrangi Bhaijan.
AIMIM Chief, as usual raised the voice, together with other political people like NCP and JDU, looking at Muslim Votes in Bihar election, citing religion as the reason behind Supreme Court decision. I am still trying to guess that in a PIL loving nation, where charges are filed for a sitting CM (which is another absurdity of the week) calling Policemen Thulla and seeking control over them on the premise which is as week as story line of any Salman Khan movie, why no contempt of court has been filed. Mr. Owaisi, whose brother, once famously claimed to wipe out one religion from the face of the nation, if only given free hand by the Police, cites Religion as the key consideration of the court in rejecting mercy for Yakub Memon and for obvious reasons ignores that out of 150 plus hangings in independent India only 15 thus far are of people from minority community, notwithstanding the fact, that the said minority community is not numerically minor in India. Owaisi reiterates and links the blasts itself with Babri demolition almost justifying the killings of 250 plus people, asks us to go back to the time of Babri demolition. He for reasons, stops some twenty years back in the history and refuses to go back to the time when the Mosque was made by an invader and the time when it was abandoned as a place of worship by the faithful. I would refer to Jaipur metro for which 200 odd temples where demolished, how many deaths would that justify, even if we do not go to the time of Mughal and Tughlaqi invasions? This man is a law-maker that we have elected.
Advocate KTS Tulsi, who appears on Television channel, masquerading as a neutral political commentator, without mentioning his official position as Congress’ MP for the Upper House, and without mentioning his own House in Lutyen’s Delhi which he got in hurriedly released orders of UD ministry right before the change of regime, goes further. He says that the nation should be grateful to Mr. Memon for having disclosed to the nation, the secrets of the crime to which he was party. This on the day that nation was expressing gratitude to the soldiers who protected the country’s honor from an enemy country. If he had a way, he would have added the name of Yakub Memon to the list of Martyrs as a grateful nation expressed its gratitude on Vijay Diwas. Media has long been in the habit of vociferously asking explanation from the PM for any utterances of right-wing organizations even if they might not be directly associated with the PM or his party.  I am yet to see anyone reaching out to Rahul Gandhi, the New and improved one, after introspection in Bangkok, seeking his explanation to the views of his MP. Two hours back, Retd. Justice Katju came out with a write-up calling the SC decision a travesty of Justice. We cannot take that seriously, after his emotional support for Sanjay Dutt in the same case, the eternal kid for the film fraternity, on the ground that he has been making good movies. However, mercifully, he doesn’t say that Mr. Memon should be granted clemency since he is a damn good CA, and he should be allowed to file the returns for the honorable Judge. But then, he questions the judgment and joins the forty others, who did not find time to sign the petition for Captt. Saurabh Kalia ( In a enlightened society of India, with Billion plus people, his father’s petition to take the case to international court of justice is barely shade over two hundred thousand citizens ( The Petitionfor justice to Martyr Captain Saurabh Kalia ), After all why go to the courts at all, when you one, don't trust them to do justice, and two, are ambiguous about idea of justice and penalty.
Regarding an independent view on the validity of Capital Punishment, I am not very clear about my own mooring. As long as the gruesomeness of crime, the loss of lives it inflicted justifies it, I am in favor of it. I would go with Immanuel Kant’s thought when he says that, “ A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.” John Stuart Mills (1806-1873) who is oft-quoted by the leftists on liberty, states the restraining influence of capital punishment, on the beginning of a thought which if indulged, will become a temptation;  the check which it (capital punishment) exerts over graded declension towards the state- never suddenly attained- in which crime no longer revolts, and punishment no longer terrifies. Strong arguments are placed by those opposing Capital punishment, mostly academics and rarely an affected party, citing it as an act of brutal vengeance for an act committed in the past. Plato answers it very clearly when he contends, “ No, punishment is not inflicted by a rational man for the sake of the crime that has been committed….but for the sake of the future, to prevent either the same man or, by the spectacle of his punishment someone else, from doing wrong again. This is a debatable matter and debate will continue forever, I should however, close here with Rousseau (Jeneva, 1712)- “ Again, every rogue who criminously attacks social rights becomes, by his wrong, a rebel and a traitor to his fatherland. By contravening its laws, he ceases to be one of its citizens: he even wages war against it. In such circumstances, the State and he cannot both be saved: one or the other must perish. In killing the criminal, we destroy not so much a citizen as an enemy. The trial and judgements are proofs that he has broken the Social Contract, and so is no longer

Wars and Death of Childhood- the Unsuspecting Casualties- Book Review- All The Light We Cannot See – By Anthony Doerr.

The Unsuspecting Casualties of War- Courtesy: Getty Images All the Light We Cannot See- Amazon Link Author: Anthony DoerrPublisher: Fourth EstatePublished: 20142015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction





It is a matter of sheer coincidence that I found two books written by authors from 21st century about the worst wars in the last century. The first one was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (My review of The Book Thief- Click Here to read). I was worried if it was too much of similarity for the book to be able to hold my interest, after one has read the beautiful account of the second world-war in The Book Thief.
But then perspective is what any author worth his salt can bring to his version of the story. The writer sits perched on a vantage point from where he watches the events of history and interprets them for us, the readers. The place from where he looks at the events makes the book or breaks it. While Markus Zusak and Anthony Doerr both speak about the war, its ugliness, how it irreversibly impacts the lives of kids in the war-zone, the tone, style and scope of the two books vastly vary.
While the prose of The Book Thief is more elegant, more elaborate, more definite in voice; All the Light We Cannot See is softer in approach. It is a story wrapped in silk. The book tells the story in almost whispering tone- short, crisp and urgent. Carmen Callil in his review in The Guardian   calls this style echoing the static of radios at another, calls it high-pitched, operatic, relentless.  He laments that the writing is interspersed with more than right dosage of adjectives and metaphors. But to my taste, this is perfectly told story with great gentility and appropriate delicateness. Even with his metaphors, Doerr never loses the story in long, winding sentences. In that sense, he is closer to Scott Fitzgerald than to Joseph Conrad. I loved it.
I understand, most reviews are written by journalists. A good journalist always loves the story which is closer to the facts and which doesn’t wander about. I, on the other hand, love when the writer, delicately steers us to the facts of the story. He, rather than thrusting truth on us, conditions our souls to bear it, and indulges us with truth. Truth in any case is never unambiguous and never definite. It carries many shades within. A war is many things and is never one-dimensional. It brings out the best and worst of us- a clichéd proposition, nevertheless, true. 
The story is broad and extensive, in direction and spread. It must have been hard for the editors to shorten it for the sake of meeting the standards of brevity often equated with modern literature. It is a great story of hope lingering through the melancholy of the scars of war, with the myth of a pearl built into it.
The Plot- The story is based in two sides of warring nations, France and Germany. It is a great story of hope lingering through the melancholy of the scars of war, with the myth of a cursed pearl sewn into it. Although in the beginning of the story itself the main protagonist, the blind French girl is assured by her father, the museum-keeper, that there is luck, maybe, bad or good. A slight inclination of each day towards success or failure. But no curses  a myth silently lies dormant in the story- the myth of the pearl containing the sea of flames . He is a good father. His daughter in the beginning of the story suffers slow degradation of eye-sight and he a widower, a single father bravely teaches her how to deal with blindness, with so much of love and patience, counting steps, walking to places. He has the thereness of Hans Hubermann of The Book Thief, of any father as he tells her that he will never leave her, not in a million years.  The war doesn’t care about a father’s commitments or a child’s broken heart.
The story opens in France in the year 1944 as the war is dying, Germans are ceding the grounds and Marie-Laurie LeBlanc is 18 years old and she accidentally discovers the pearl, of the shape of an eye-drop in the model of the city her Papa had built before he left back for Paris and never came back.  It was the model of the city of Saint Malo, the city which was a refuge for Marie-Laurie LeBlanc during the war, as her grand uncle becomes, Etiene who becomes her protector and friend, reading to her Jules Verne and Charles Darwin. She reads in Braille, and then with her uncle reads on the radio. The words flow across the boundaries.
Then, we go the beginning of the war, 1934, in Paris, when the madness began. Marie-Laurie LeBlanc, 6 years old, is fast losing her eyesight, and the war is looming over the nation. She escapes Paris in time with her father, who carries with him the stone, the accursed, magnificent jewel, which, as per myths, will keep the owner alive forever, but will curse him with a lot of sadness and ill-luck. We do not know why her father comes out of Saint Malo on the ports of Brittany, having escaped from Paris and goes back to Paris, never to return, leaving his little, blind girl with her Grand uncle as every second Etienne’s house grows colder; every second it feels as if her father slips away.  We also do not know if he gets arrested and later fades into probable death because he parted with the stone or whether the stone protected Marie Laure through the worst of the war.
On the other side of the war is a 7 year old Werner Pfennig, an orphan who is an exceptional electronic genius, with soft white hairs who loves hearing the broadcasts of the Frenchman, Etienne on science, with his sister Jutta. They have a sanctuary in small German town where the childhood thrives for a very small time amid the cries of Heil Hitler when Werner’s genius becomes his curse. Werner’s childhood is not only annexed by the state, which is already at war, he is soon sent out to the fronts with fake age certificate. He has already lost his close friend in the military school. Frederic who suffers with poor eyesight, and hides three things, his eyesight, his hatred for war and his love for birds, to be in the Hitler's military school. He was the only friend Werner had as his childhood was acquired by the state and he spends rest of his life in vegetative state. 
The story toggles between France and Germany across the chapters. In the end, Werner could trace the little girl on radio, but keeps quiet about it to save her. Once her reaches the Saint-Malo, he again saves her from the desperate German officer looking for the accursed pearl. The girl gets rescued by the liberation forces and Werner is taken as prisoner of war. A tiny delicate thread ties the white haired young soldier to the blind girl, Love or friendship, we do not know and it does not matter. What we know is that Werner would think about the the girl with a cane, girl in a gray dress, girl made of mist and when Werner, lost in the thoughts about the outcome of the war, walks into the landmines, built earlier by his own army, he had in his possession the miniature town model which Marie-Laurie’s father had built for her and in which he had hid the stone before it was taken out by Marie. Jutta travels to Paris to return that model to Marie-Laurie. The two women reminisce the inherent goodness of the German boy with white hair, the boy who made such a faint presence. It was like being in the room with a feather. But his soul glowed with some fundamental kindness, didn’t it?
The story folds up in sadness lingering and strangely mixed in hope as we find Marie-Laurie growing up to be a grandmother. Life goes on. It is with sadness who could not walk along. It is also a lesson to those who reads the news of young boys being used as terrorists and then leave it half read with disinterest. There is a lesson when the writer writes of those who survived the war, “ Even those who have returned, she can tell, have returned different, older than they should be, as though they have been on another planet where years pass more quickly.” Wars are created by older men and younger men die in them. Marie-Laurie hears Madame Manec: You must never stop believing.  Neither should we, neither should we.

Reviewer’s recommendation: Must, must read . 

Truth and Deaths - The Disturbing facts of Vyapam

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer the problems of spirit. There is only one question- when will I be blown up ?" Said Faulkner in his Nobel prize acceptance speech. 
As the news of deads in now infamous Vyapam scam float over the unfeeling television screen, the pronouncements made by the famed author seems truer than ever. The number of deads vary between 27 and 45. Some channels have even started counting hapless people who where selected through the process of Professional Examination Board of the state of Madhya Pradesh as casualties of the scam. There, of course is no logic to it. But then sensationalism overwhelms the logic. Deads make a good story, and more the number the better the story is. 
27 however is in no way less ghastly than 45, especially when most died soon after getting linked to the scam, either as a witness or victim. What is most tragic is the disinterest with which media treated the story till one reporter from audio- visual media died couple of days back. The guardians of social conscience suddenly woke up with new found righteousness. Those who were found much wanting in the case of a journalist who was burnt alive in UP a fortnight, found the lost camaraderie and a meaning in their profession. 
Even the political vultures who where silent and invisible in the UP case descended around the dead body, searching relevance in the death. Candles are lit and outrage weighs heavy on the humid weather. The cynicism is back and the helplessness of a non-newsworthy citizen is more pronounced than ever. 
At moments like this, it is easy for everyone to polish the intellect and pretend to be a detective. What should the media do at the moment? It is at times as such that the society must rise as a unit to reject the false sympathies and show the failure of media in upholding the truth to their face. If is also the time that one should rise above party lines and seek to put an end to this chilling horror story. It was a scam which ran for around twenty years since 1995, as fake candidates sat for exams and must be by now practicing medicine or engineering or such professions. It is a dirty river which ran through many shores and it must be investigated in entirety. 
But then, soon another flight will get delayed and the media will forget the dead and start screaming about it. Or maybe a tweet will come linking the erstwhile aristocracy and the story will become too hot to handle. “ The job of a journalist is to amplify the voices of the marginalized. To do that, you have to hear those voices in the first place. ” - Allison Kilkenny wrote. But how many of our journalists running prime time entertainment channels can hear those voices and even if they do, as Faulkner said, it is no longer the problem of spirit. 

The Book Thief: Book Review

Book: The Book ThiefAuthor: Markus ZusakPublished in 2005Awards: Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Publisher's Weekly Award

Some voices have color, a distinct hay. If death were to have a voice, I presume it would be blue, with a tinge of gray on the borders. When death speaks in his solemn voice, we ought to heed well to it. That is the truest voice we hear in all our life. It is true, absolute and unmoved by those who hear it. Death is the narrator of this story. It is not a cruel voice, not even furious. If anything, it is a voice of infinite calm, almost serene, although tired at times. Death for Markus Zusak is Conrad’s Marlow. It is the story –teller, and also a participant in the story.
The Book Thief is a story written in the backdrop of second-world war, in Nazi Germany. It goes exceptional talent of Markus Zusak that he so delicately creates the world of a small German Town, in the throes of the volatile, history defining times. It was a time of sadness and violence, of dying men and women, of hope in the testing times. Such are the times when the goodness and evil, both reach their loftiest and the most grotesque proportions.  It is almost unbelievable that Markus Zusak is an Australian writer who was born in 1975. It is pretty common for authors with MBA to write stories on the backdrop of their colleges and from Bengal to write one heavy with Bengali nuances. To be raised in Australia, four decades after the World war, having written such a lovely book, speaks well of the enormous talent of the writer. Even a rare possibility of author’s mother, Lisa being Liesel Meminger, doesn’t take the credit away.
This is not a political novel, this is not the story of war, and this is not even a story about death. This is a story in world of decrepit desperation. This is a story about hope, about life, about the power of written words. This is the story of Liesel Meminger, orphaned. It is written in, well, a different style than all that I have ever read. The language is poetic, even though sentences are not long-winding. The style looks like a journal. It opens in the year 1930 in a train. This is where she loses her little brother and meets death for the first time- a girl of nine. She doesn’t speak good German, doesn’t read. She is a little girl with sketchy schooling. She is on her way to join her foster parents, in the middle of a brutal European winters. The war is looming, Hitler’s armies, official and unofficial are everywhere.
She reaches Himmel Street with a book- The Gravedigger’s Handbook in his hand. She meets the kindest man she has ever know, kind and righteous. Hans Hubermann, her foster father is as the writer tells us, an un-special person who had the ability to appear in the background, even if he was standing at the front of the queue. He was always just there. For an adult this could mean nothing, for as we know, for a child, this is one very important thing- the quiet certitude of the presence of the parents. Hans Hubermann had eyes that were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. And Liesel Meminger understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot. We discover in later pages the kindness, the righteousness, the humanness of the man which makes him so likeable, so special, in spite of ordinariness with which he is introduced in the story. For Liesel, in the throes of grief of losing her family, reeling under sudden shock of profanities she has just encountered in the person of her Foster mother, Rosa Hubermann, foul-mouthed woman, she knew as Hans Hubermann winks at her, that she would have no trouble calling him Papa. Isn’t that what fathers are, silent, benevolent presence, with a sense of quiet about them? This is what Markus calls his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that he’d always appear mid-scream, and he would not leave. Liesel, the orphaned girl troubled with the nightmares about her brother’s death needed that.
Liesel turns ten holding that little book which connected her to the world she had left behind. As was the convention, she becomes Hiter Youth, and joins the junior division of BDM. The book doesn’t make political statement, it is not shrill in the voice. It tells the facts as they must have been and leaves it to the reader to judge. It tells us about the ten year olds being taught to get their Heil Hitler..working properly. ..taught to march straight, roll bandages and sew up clothes. Liesel by this time has settled into childhood in her new foster home, helping Rosa with her laundry, collecting and delivering the clothes in the town.
This is when she meets the affable and naughty friend of hers, Rudy Steiner, the next door boy obsessed with Americal athlete, Jesse Owens. They meet the way most kids who later become best friends meet- not liking each other. A snowball in the face is perfect beginning to a lasting friendship. Children are children and even worst of the wars, the crassest of the cruelty cannot take away the little joys of the childhood. Rudy keeps on pestering Liesel for a kiss, and amid pulling her leg, playing football, facing the Nazi directives and a ruthless war, they grow friends.
Her book is then discovered by her Papa, Hans Hubermann. They both decide to read it together. Hans Hubermann as the author tells in the beginning is an ordinary painter and better than ordinary accordion player. He is not a reader. But then, he starts reading with his foster daughter. The find solace in words. He becomes the first comrade of the girl who will soon be called by Death as The Book Thief.  Himself not much educated, he teaches her words, on the walls of the basement. In words they find solace. In a world where lies are abound, minds are not free, words are the only salvation. The best way to kill free thought is the maim and kill literature. Germans of the time, write Markus, loved to burn thing. Shops, synagogues, Reichstags. Houses, personal items, slain people and of course, books. They enjoyed a good book burning all right. In times as such, the father –daughter duo set on the journey to search hope in words. The father sells his much loved cigarettes to buy her books. Then Liesel takes to steal books from the Mayor’s library as she goes there to deliver the laundry, Rudy Steiner- her partner in crime.
In a world floating between innocence and crime, enter Max Vandenberg, the son of Hans Hubermann’s army friend and his accordion teacher- A jew. Max was a fist-fighter before the absolutism of Nazism clouded the whole nation. The brave fist fighter, whose courage, the narrator, death calls stupid gallantry, melts away in time of unimaginable state sanctioned hostility as in the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vanderburg could feel the fists of an entire nation.
Hans takes him in and puts him in his basement. A sacred friendship grows between the father, the daughter and the fugitive. As they say crisis brings out the best and worst of the people as death would say later, “I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugliness and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. We discover the dormant kindness of Rosa Hubermann who takes care of Max, serving her infamous dull soup, through Max’s sickness. Once Max wakes up from his sickness, she rushes to Liesel’s school to tell her, in her voice like needle and thread. ‘He woke up, Liesel. He’s awake. It is in such moments we get closest to our parents when we find that their old, tired cynical eyes can share our dreams. Liesel starts writing for him.

In the end, as Death says about humans, they have a good sense to die. They all die, except for the book thief. Well, she does eventually, but not then. She is literally saved by words, as she sat in the basement reading her book. Rudy Steiner, Mama and Papa, Tommy Muller. All Sleeping. All dying. The innocence of Rudy Steiner, the little boy with hair the color of lemons doesn’t only pulls our heart’s strings in his death. He shakes death itself. Death says about him He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.  He misses his beautiful neighbor’s kiss and will not be able to call again, “How about a kiss, Saumensch?”. This constant phrase from the little boy, with independent, rebellious soul lies hanging for readers to hold on to their hearts, much like the famed, Jay Gatsby’s Old sport. Hans Hubermann’s soul whispers once, as Death would tell us, Liesel  and my heart breaks as a father and as a reader and as a writer, as Liesel bends over her Papa’s dead body and says, “Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you.”  What her father left for her, we discover towards the end, when Liesel died many years later in Sidney. Death says, ‘The skue was the best blue of the afternoon. Like her papa, her soul was sitting up”. Isn’t this the best that we can leave for our kids, an upright soul which even in death, death finds sitting up? 
This is not a book which ends in sadness. It ends in hope as Max meets Liesel and they survive the disgusting turmoil of the history and years later die, having lived a fulfilling life, sitting up. 
Reviewer's Recommendation:I am glad I came across this book. You too would be. Must Read. 
Amazon Page of The Book Thief

The Broken Dream of AAP

See I Fooled You Source: MSNIn a time of universal deceit- telling the truth is a revolutionary act.- George Orwell.  A dream rose from desperation. Hassled by blatant corruption, Indians rose in protest against a thoroughly corrupt government which largely laughed off those protest.
Those in power were not concerned, worried. They were amused, they laughed it off, they asked the people who questioned corruption in embarrassed, scared voices- “Are you nuts?”
Then, suddenly it was Y2k or Java or Cloud to use a technology equivalent. Everyone was doing it and no one knew what it meant. Technology democratized the media and the Social media split into two. It did do something good. It churned the politics and challenged the status quo. It broke the collaboration of convenience among the top two national parties. Narendra Modi was brought in as change of guard for BJP. Many called it attempt to polarize. I do not look at it that way. It was an attempt to offer what people wanted, a fresh face away from the conniving coterie of Delhi Darbar, where power and opposition was charade.
On the sidelines, many people joined in the anti-corruption crusade. They did not in real sense lead the movement. They waited for the bubble to bloat and then stepped in the front and claimed the leadership. Many had at one time or other tried their luck in the grand old party, Congress, and failed to rise through the ranks. There were no ranks, only the kings and the courtiers. Without right surnames, there wasn’t much hope. The other option was BJP. Not family driven, but cadre driven. If you are not RSS backed, tough call. AAP was the new startup taking lateral entries. Junior officers in old industry joined the startup. Stuck with mid-career crisis, they found new horizons. Suddenly they were all at the top, calling the shots, driving the frenzy.
The political party birthed by the media, became the landing station for the media. Just as congress is a party of rich lawyers, AAP became a party of rich journalists. Also Just as Congress as we have it, has nothing to do with Indian National Congress which worked against the British, AAP has nothing to do with India Against Corruption, which worked against the corrupt in the government.
Quickly AAP’s character and features changed. It sacked the founders, foul mouthed the opposition, rewarded and bribed the supporters. Illegal colonies were quickly regularized, political bribes were offered to those who supported the party during the election. An impressive mandate, made Arvind Kejriwal chief minister of a privileged municipality of Delhi. Buoyed by the mandate, the party tried to run beyond its brief. Its eyes were set on absolute rule, mobocracy replacing democracy. That actually brings us to the question – what is the difference between Mobocracy and Democracy? Aren’t both the game of numbers? Well, it is morality which is the thin thread which upholds democracy. Once that thread is gone, it is brute strength of number. That number devoid of moral force can be any grouping of people- a band of thieves or a bunch of thugs. 
The Cookie started crumbling immediately after the elections. The promises were suddenly the commercial commitments on the insurance brochures. The list of conditions which applied was longer than the list of freebies promise. That list and that grievance will be too commonplace for a citizen who has seen politics taking shape out of broken promises for a large part of independent India’s existence.
It is broad, blatant lies which I write this about. It is not about the stupid fight of Arvind Kejriwal with the LG, Najeeb Jung. This is also not about carefully crafted carelessness of Arvind Kejriwal, his ill-fitting shirts. This is about the lying Law Minister of AAP, about Jitender Singh Tomar. The man has been allegedly claiming not only to be well-qualified but also being a lawyer falsely. It is a matter of sheer logic.
Ah, latest news, Kejriwal is now very upset with Jitender Singh Tomar. He claims he was misled. An sharp strategist, ex-IRS, IIT alumnus was misled. He really believed that in the 90s, in the thick of Laloo’s jungle raj, people would travel from Lucknow in UP to Munger in Bihar to get an LLB degree. He really thought that the minister went counter to the usual direction of human migration. From the capital of UP, he went to Faizabad to get graduation degree.
It is hard to believe that Kejriwal was fooled. That he was in party to fool the nation. It was a fooling party, of the fools, by the fools, for the fools. It is hard to believe that he believed like a kid what the law minister told him. On hearsay, he went forward to claim it was conspiracy to defame the minister.This was followed by erstwhile Law Minister, whose wife went public on charges of domestic violence. Before his wife came on camera, Kejriwal, the benefactor of the loyal, the Yug-Purush for twitter-army of AAP, who would blame polity, police and jury for any blame on AAP, as usual blamed media and of course, the central government.
Mr. Kejriwal must realize that he out of protected environment of National Advisory Council of Ms. Sonia Gandhi. He is watched. When you are corrupt, and conventional, one can blame convention. Not when you came with the claim of unorthodox, clean politics. The layers go lifting when the winds of lies blow wild. Then one notices that there is no Lokpal in Delhi, that for most promises, the CM has not found time to even hold one meeting. When business as usual is brutal and dishonest, one learns to live with it, but not when you pretend to be a change-maker. Once you slip and once we notice that the slip was well-intended and well- planned, even if well-covered, something snaps. You are not then, disliked, you are doomed. A near majority in a pseudo-city is nothing. Ceaser had that in much larger republic, and had much more proven patriotism in him. But the Romans did not forgive him the broken promises. Remember that O false pretender.

Post-script: The News of another AAP MLA with fake degree has surfaced today. The MLA says he had people with me and need not answer anyone.

Infinite Loneliness of an Only Child

I have been a child. I have been an only child. I have been through a major part of my life believing, it doesn’t matter. Loneliness is not a function of number of people in your life. It is a matter of attitude. So I have been telling myself all those years.
I would sleep through the summer afternoons as a child, waiting for the evening to descend. I would read magazines and little Pocket-books much to annoyance of parents through the days, haunted by loneliness. I would tell myself, brotherhood or brotherly love is something that can be won over by kindness, charm and what not. I would learn later that you cannot argue with nature. I, in later life, took to writing. Sometimes I wonder why?
When my health suffered, I was to take to some physical exercise. I tried gyms, but with absence higher than the attendance, gave up. Then I took up long distance running and it stayed. Why? What is the common theme between writing and running and why it links to my own solitary existence as a child?
Solitude seeps into your soul as if you were a poorly constructed wall open in incessant rains. You resist, but the water, the humidity seeps in and disfigures the paint inside. A solitary childhood reflects that humid, fungi-infected wall in many ways. The answer is in solitary exercise. To me writing and running is one of them, both being a solitary exercise. They stuck because they did not pretend to have people in them. They are solitary activity of a solitary person.
I look at my kid, riding her little bicycle on the terrace, talking to herself. She says it is a play, a game. She pretends she has friends that she speaks to. My wife, second in a family of four children, shrugs off. She says every child does it. But I can see it. I have been through it. It is a solitary silence that howls through the sad afternoons. You try to be kind. At times, you are there, in moments of support, moments of need before those of the same blood could turn up, and push you away. They will arrive when they have time, turning up with a sense of entitlement. I don’t find it wrong. It is very appropriate. Their sense of entitlement is well-deserved. It is this lack of entitlement which comes the way of only child which is so unjust.
You, being only child, will love those around you as your own. But when it counts, where do you stand? You stand as a stand-by, as a substitute. I have been a little child, and I have been an only child. I know, that child in me, still looks out the windows in the first rains. He still turns around charmed by the beauty of the first monsoons, leaving behind a droplet, slowly travelling the steel window bar. He still looks around to share those moments of tranquil happiness and also he reaches out, lunging towards shadows of feigned relationships to share the moments of sudden sadness. He still believes there is an older brother somewhere in a boarding school- hopelessly and childishly. He finds no one and then he writes.
I wanted to write the review of The Book Thief, a story narrated by Death. What a lovely book that is. It has a little girl, Liesel living with her foster parents, with her papa reading to her, teaching her new words and playing accordion to her in Nazi Germany. But I could not write that. Not this week, not today.
I had my cousin brother visit us for couple of days. On his leaving, I found my seven years old suddenly in tears. I know, my wife, or anybody who has siblings for that matter, will call it a drama of a child. She says, she will miss talking to him and weeps. But I could smell it. The lonely, single child in me can smell it in that fleeting moment of emotional breakdown. She is not the first seven year old to cry. Kids cry all the time. And then another moment, they find something interesting and smile again. She also smiled, suddenly as she always does. What breaks something so badly inside that it'd still creak if I were to laugh one of my phony laughs even today is that she said for the first time that so often she has no one to talk to. With her parents, trying to win a battle of survival with the world and her grandparents trying to win a battle with her parents on behalf of a society which largely doesn't care, what options can the kid have? The honesty- the brutal, sharp honesty in that sentence washed in tears plunged deep in my breast.
It is the same story of a wall weakening against incessant rain, of seeping waters. I can smell the pungent smell of rain falling on the arid summer soil. Even when the summer is far to go. I can smell it, I can smell the infinite sadness of a solitary child. I know she will try to fool herself, with friends, cousins.  She will even be best friends to strangers she meets in her life. Single child is always best friend. They compensate for lack of siblings with friends. I know she will realize as people around go away, get busy with their life. I hope she understands this truth quicker than I did and then start reading, writing, or running. Then you will not have to pretend that your father is your elder brother. Suddenly, I understand much better why Liesel turned into book thief, in The Book Thief. Books are only relation that orphaned girl finds which will survive the transient nature of time. That's why she read books through the world war, and why she eventually became a writer. I know, she will also smile and have a life of her own someday. She will look at me and tell me that she is alright. But I will know, and we will get sadder together in conspiracy, conspiracy of two only child. I know that smile will hide the infinite sadness of being an only child. I can only tell you, I know. I will never try to fool you into believing that you aren’t alone. You are, sadly, but you will learn faster than me how to handle it. Yours is my life twice-lived. And you are much loved.

Movie Review- Tanu Weds Manu Returns

Kangana Ranawat as Datto and As Tanu Released: 22nd May, 2015Director: Anand L. RaiWriter: Himanshu SharmaCast: Kangana Ranawat, R. Madhavan, Swara Bhaskar
Rating: 4/5 (Enjoyable Watch, one point lost on unnecessary love angle of Puppy and needless kidnapping plot) In a very famous TED talk, Elizabeth Gilbert , famed author of 'Eat, Pray, Love' speaks about the artists often crashing under the heavy load of their own earlier success. While the talk is on a different subject regarding how an artist who gets an early success of such stupendous proportion should handle the enormous stress such a success puts on the artist by expecting further greatness from him, by considering Talent as some outside force, beyond the Artist's mortal persona, I bring it up here for a totally different reason. I was trying to understand the phenomenon which Tanu Weds Manu Returns seems to be on the way to make and contrary to the general fate of any follow up work, how it has managed to do the difficult task of exceeding its earlier version. 
Sequels, more often than not, are commercial decisions. Sequels are rarely made because the story grows beyond the point where it was earlier closed. Rather, often sequels are produced when there is a certain degree of sloth, there is no story, an urgent desire to make money and a movie needs to be made. Most stories like most lives run through a common theme and it is not for nothing that someone once wrote that life is nothing but a tale twice told to already vexed ears. What makes a story stand out is its characters. The peculiarity, the uniqueness, the commonness of the characters is what adorns the story which are well written and like precious jewels make them shine in the ordinary dullness of the usual commonplace world. A lazy writer often picks up much loved characters from earlier edition and makes a story.  For this very reason, sequels fails.  For this very reason, Tanu Weds Manu Returns succeeds. The story is an old theme made famous is something plainly stated by Somerset Maugham when he wrote that In every relation there is one person who loves and other who allows the other to be loved. While it does begin with the characters, well-carved Tanuja Tripathi, the strange, ever-Young, and refusing to grown up wife of silent, subtle and unglamorous in looks- Manu Sharma, who after four years of what can be termed as impulsive marriage, is blamed by his colorful, wife for growing like, a ginger. Tanu is desi Madam Bovary of Gustave Flaubert. It is a strange choice of word to describe someone's physicality, but then, it's not for nothing that we call Tanu, unconventional. Hinterlands of UP and Bihar are known for use of unorthodox smilies and proverbs which the director, who had used it in the earlier edition, uses adroitly here. That and his clear knowledge of small nuances the eastern cowbelt, the characters, the smell of the society in eastern UP, early masterly used in his other movie Ranjhana as well, further blooms as the confidence in the canvass that he creates for himself is palpable.  
Madhavan, the ever accommodating Sharmaji, ends up in a mental asylum, on account of the usual marital conflict between ambitious, unyielding force of nature that his wife Tanu is and his own subdued, compromised self which decides it was way too much for him after four years of marriage. The initial charm of wayward behaviour of Tanu of Birhana road of Kanpur fades away. Audacity of youth, however enamoring at an age, becomes obnoxious with the passage of time. The story, in spite of dramatic turns which are oftentimes unbelievable walks on long legs of very, very strong characters and a formidable theme. Tanu leaves Manu in an asylum in London. Feeling emancipated, she reaches back to Kanpur to find that the world has moved on. Raja Awasthy, the lovable gangster, (Jimmy Shergill) who she finds again with an attempt to cling back to her past with the help of entertaining new character, Chintu, is on his way to get married. Tanu is a story of female emancipation gone wrong. She turns up in a towel when her sister's wedding is getting arranged messing the whole thing horribly. She is a kanpuria in London and a Londoner in Kanpur. She flirts shamelessly with both Raja and her new neighbor,  secure in the knowledge that she has a husband, all docile and accommodating, ducked far away in London who she can always go back to. She drinks intermittently, dances in unknown baraats. Tanu epitomises everything which will bring instant condemnation to a man, if only she were a man. She is a woman who simply refuses to grow up.
Sharmaji on the other hand spends larger part of the first half melancholy, lost in the memories of a happy family which ended up unbelievably in an asylum. In between,his old friend, Puppyji (Deepak Dobriyal) whose purpose in life is to assist someone he calls a friend- an adorable, loyal, innocent and yet, maybe Because of it, a failed soul, keeps pushing him to come out of the sadness in which he as an abandoned husband falls. Manu eventually comes out of the squalor of sadness and leaps into love.  Tanu's look-alike, Ms. kusum Sangwan enters the screen and with her innocent charm melts away Manu's frigid sadness. I must say, that it isn't only Manu Sharma who is charmed by Kusum, the Haryanvi Jat, who studies in Delhi university under sports quota, is a national level athlete, from Jhajjar in Haryana,  and who, well, gives out the pin code but never the phone number to anybody (Phone number main deti koni). Every man in the Theater is besotted by the purity of soul portrayed by Ms Sangwan. Ever since Basanti, the Tonga driver introduced herself in Ramgarh, this is the first time I saw a female character introducing herself in such a memorable fashion. Kusum or Datto as she is affectionately called as we later learn, presumably on account of her frontal teeth which are as pronounced as her child-like honesty and her pride in being an independent, self made young woman is a complex mix of strength and vulnerability, which one falls in love with, admire for strength and want to protect, all at once.
Manu sharma falls in love with the girl, much younger, girl who is Tanu's look alike, much plain looking and muck straight thinking. The charming belle has her own moments of innocent humour. For instance when she sings " I am sentimental' with pronounced Haryanvi accent and asks Manu, "are you getting American accent in my singing."  She, the little child of morrow, doesn't wait for an answer and we go laughing, basking in the beauty of a soul uncorrupted and not yet overwhelmed by the global phenomenon of urbanization. Even the ever-loyal Puppy (Deepak Dobriyal) is vary of middle-aged Sharmaji's Lolita-esque love for much-younger, Datto. He is further propelled to discourage Manu from pursuing this affair once he comes to know that Kusum is betrothed to Raja Awasthy, as audience reels with laughter at the absolute impossible angle coming up. So, Raja, the endearing, small-time gangster and part time contractor finds himself once again against Manu Sharma.   The insane turns also include a surprising acceptance of the relationship of Manu and Datto by latter's elder brother, living in a small DDA flat and supporting his sister through her education and her choices. 
Manu's wedding is all but organised in Jhajjar with Datto, facilitated by well-argued position of her brother about female infanticide and caste issues in the country-side infamous for both. The beauty of the story is that the message is not built into story or vice-versa. It is spoken through the character with the true importance and urgency which the character represents. Tanu goes there, to regain what she still believes she deserves, and no one but she deserves. Every relation needs constant work and many a relations fade away simply because we throw ourselves in self-destructive complacency. Nothing is given in this world and sense of entitlement is nothing but foolishness. We earn a relation through hard work, love, commitment and some luck and we need to keep earning it. There is a Tanu in everyone of us who keeps on faltering and then we find reasons of failure in the other person. Tanu's sense of entitlement makes her mock Manu even at this point when she says, "hum Zara bewafa kya hue, Sharmaji, Aap to badchalan ho Gaye ". Her delusion, her sense of entitlement persists till the very end, when Manu finds himself at that very edge where past breaks free from the present. What Sharmaji eventually does is for audience to go and watch. But for most of us, it is Datto that we root for. She is an absolute show stealer as she brilliantly retorts to Tanu, with all her British accents and haughtiness of a foreign-return fashionista, a 'MyChoice' signature girl with a rebuke that while in spite of all her pretense of emancipation and being a forward looking woman, Tanu can't even buy her on clothes on her own, forget raising and supporting, or even having her kids, so lost she is in her own ambitions and desires. Sharmaji may decide whatever Sharmaji may desire, but Datto wins the day for most audience. Never has earlier a girl in unglamorous sports pants and loose fitting Reebok Tees looked so downright lovable and vulnerable in a movie and yet so strong. It goes entirely to the credit of Kangana Ranawat  to display such a complex mix of strength and vulnerability, of a realist and dreamer, in Datto. It hardly matters that Tanu refers to her as Rebuke against original Reebok. The movies is great watch with a story full of unbelievable incidents, even if thoroughly enjoyable, made upextraordinarily believable characters. You have time-tested Swara Bhaskar with her charming Bihari tilt of language as she tells Tanu, "Paglaa gayi ho kya." It is an eclectic mix of absolutely watchable and brilliantly-played, believable characters which adds significantly to the value of the movie. I came back happier watching the movie, muttering all power to Datto and hopefully so will you. I guess, going back to from where I began this review, it is this newly introduced character of Datto which saves the Sequel from the usual fate of sequels, and the fond affection with which not only this character is created, but it is developed and played. Datto has made the unfashionable dresses and unconventional thoughts, not to mention, a hairstyle which we cannot call anything but boycut (well, that is the term I know, being myself much fashionably-challenged) hair, an object to be cheered for, loved and affectionately protected.

PIKU-Review of the Movie

  Piku:Released: 8th of May, 2015Script and Screenplay: Juhi ChaturvediDirector: Shoojit SircarActors: Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika, Irrfan, Maushumi Chatterjee All great works of art bring out strong emotions. You cannot stay lukewarm about them. They will either be loved greatly or hated thoroughly. I watched Piku yesterday. Shoojit Sircar comes out with a winner. Well, he crafts and weaves a world of Bengali mind and paints masterly how a Bengali views the world. Every state has its own nuances and Shoojit captures the Bengali perspective masterly. But that is not a credit. What would a Bengali do, if not capture a Bengali character well? Kolkata has largely stayed stuck in the time-warp with its old world charm intact, if you leave Salt Lake part out of it. Even in the New Kolkata part, the character of old Kolkata lingers on as at the first hint of cold monkey caps come out. This makes it easier to invent older time Kolkata on the screen, especially if the director is a Bong.
The movie gets most of its credit for the subject it touches. It looks at the older people and at the risk of going against public idea of morality, is also sympathetic to the young who bear the brunt of the moodiness of the old. But then, the story follows a delicate balance. It tells what it wants to tell. It doesn’t largely take sides. It narrates, without judging which is to the credit of story writer. It is full credit to Juhi Chaturvedi, who wrote the story and screenplay of the film. It is always very possible for a writer to take a position and fall into the trap of becoming a judge instead of being a neutral narrator or story-teller. Juhi has always been a great watcher of people, looking at patterns. We watched it first in Vicky Donor she brought out Lajpat Nagar so vividly in her words and pictures. She touches those caricatures, those cultural ethos of CR Park here in Piku with rare softness.
Bhaskor Bannerjee (not Bhaskar) lives in CR Park, the mini-Bengal in Delhi with his Architect daughter, Piku. He is a forward-thinking man and a man who speaks his mind. He believes marriage is something which ‘Low- IQ’ women do, even in the context of his own, now-dead wife, who he blames for having put her own needs, wants, dreams and choices subservient to Bhaskor. He lives with his thirty year old daughter, Piku, Deepika Padukone. Bhaskor a hard-headed, even if forward looking man, is not much liked by those around him. Bhaskor, in his seventies is a hypochondriac and is not much liked by people in his household, due to his plain-speaking and hard-headedness. Piku, his daughter is an independent minded, but duty conscious daughter of his. Old age is a continuous effort to remain relevant; and the fact remains, that the less the effort, the more graceful the aging. However, Amitabh from the very beginning is not in a bit obnoxious, except for in very rare patches. Mostly he comes across as affable man with naughty tinkle in his eyes. He is true reflection of Terry Pratchett's words, “..inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened”  and even his hypochondriac nature finds resonance in Hemingways, “No, that is a great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”  Well, Irrfan as the owner (rather the son of the owner)- phlegmatic, prudent and troubled by tempestuous tempers of beautiful Piku, who agrees to drive the father-daughter duo from Delhi to Kolkata is Hemingway here, who fearlessly, though with some nervousness, points out Bhaskor’s own old-aged selfishness to him.
As the old oftentimes falls into the trap of crediting themselves with something which they did much as a part of life, as they forget their own ruthlessness with the kids when they were young and kids were truly the kids and believe that the world, or at least their children exist merely to please and entertain them, to bring them glory from the world, in which they are no longer strong and fit enough to compete. I, while writing this, came upon a very wise quote from JK Rowling in this regard where she writes, “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.” It weighs heavy on the shoulders of righteous kids aware of their duty towards their parents. Deepika portrays this heavy stress, this anguish wonderfully. She is too talented to be dismissed as another beautiful actress. The trio reaches Kolkata and urged by Irrfan, Bhaskor lets himself go, eats without fear, cycles through the city and then dies a happy man, with relieved emotions and good motion. I could almost hear Dylan Thomas, whispering lightly, “Do not go gentle, into the night.”  
The film doesn’t fall into the usual traps. It treads treacherously close to becoming an Irrfan-Deepika love story, but no, the story escapes the usual narrowly. A plain, charming story of a father – daughter duo, this movie remains just that, full of wit. If wit means Oscar Wilde or Sharad Joshi and you cannot be easily pleased with fat man slipping over a banana peel on the road, this is movie you will love. Timing is an important element of the wit, otherwise what is humorous about the wry retort by ‘Non-Bengali Chowdhury’ Irrfan to Bhaskor’s translation of a bangla song ‘Ei Poth Jodi Na Sheh hoi’ translating to “What if this road doesn’t ends” that “Aisa gana gao jiska koi kaayde ka meaning ho (Sing something sensible rather) ” and points to the silliness of intellectual narcissism. He laments as to why parents at time feel it is alright to emotionally blackmail their kids who on their own are trying best to take care of them, offering possibly the first emotional release to all the pent up anger of the righteous daughter. Death can mean many things. It depends on how you look at it. One can be scared of it, enchanted of it, or one can be matter-of-factly about it. It also obliquely tells that most of the difficulty, self-centeredness of the old arise from their own fear of old age and death and at times, they are haunted by their own ways when young. If their strength in youth gave them the confidence to turn away their olds and their young, being unkind to them; they fear the same may come about to them when they are weaker. Their own past haunts their future as debilitating old age is around the corner. Death is inevitable and it will not be traumatic if one approaches it without fear, with a degree of dispassionate acceptance. If you always had trouble embracing life unless it conforms to your desires and plans, you will have trouble embracing death as well, inevitable as it might be. Death and  life after all, are interlaced to one another, as Bhaskor discovers cycling down the lanes of his city, a day before he dies happy. He is able to discover happiness inside, not wanting his daughter to establish happiness for him, learning to be grateful with what he had, his loving, even if busy daughter, his brother, and his beloved, Champakunj. The movie has amazing message, brilliantly written and amazing actors lifts it up further to the point where high literature touches public minds.
My Rating: Not to be missed at all.
Disclaimer: Being father to a seven year old only daughter might have biased me in favor of the movie.