Tnahsin Garg's Blog, page 4

On Becoming an Author

There’s something surreal in the moment when a writer sees his first book fresh out of the printer for the first time - the glare from the cover holds his attention, the dead typed text becomes a living entity, and the whole object itself in his trembling hands becomes a reassuring lifeline. How thrilling it can be for him to know that there are people who in days to come will hold his work, his years of hard work, beneath their reading lamps and live through those lines and paragraphs he had constructed in several nights. 

If events unfold in his favor, the writer soon realizes that the transition towards becoming an author is a process that soon spirals out of control. There’s the attention from friends, family, and strangers that garners around him, swirling in like an unexpected gust of wind and bringing both a cool freshness of joy and a looming danger of leaving him alone too soon. 

I made the transition from a writer to an author today. So did my co-authors, Srivatsan and Pulkit, without whom The Prophecy of Trivine wasn’t possible. At the official book launch event in Bangalore today, our book sold a total of 31 copies. That was our first wind of success. All of it was achieved by the tremendous support of our friends and families. They can’t be thanked enough.

As we anxiously wait for the first reviews to pour in, we’re praying that such winds may forge a tornado. 

The Intellectual Bollywood

As I grew up in India, fortunately, I was one of those kids who were somehow exposed to an education dipped and wrapped in a superior level of the English language. This neat education coupled with my own inability to be social, naturally, allowed me to acquire a habit of reading novels.

While I did watch a lot of Bollywood growing up, I, like many others, began leaning more and more towards Hollywood and its standard TV shows when I wasn’t reading books. Yes, I came all the way from Friends to Game of Thrones, and Family Guy/Southpark to Breaking Bad. 

At my former college, there was often a rift between the Bollywood and Hollywood watchers, where the latter had a tendency to look down upon Indian or desi works as desi or brainless, crappy, and lowly. And I was part of that condescending group. I had an increased aversion from Bollywood and anything artistic that came out of India - especially once I stepped out and came abroad for studies. Ofcourse, this was natural, I wasn’t the first Indian to act such. 

But then, recently, I’ve been having this strange attraction towards India and everything that comes out of it - be it books or movies - that I’ve begun to reevaluate my immature judgement. Not all of the Bollywood is bad, some of it is good. Similarly for Hollywood - not all of it is awesome, there is a lot of ‘superhero and world is ending shit’ that is now unbearable (phrase taken from my fav. director). I guess it boils down to mainstream vs independent art, if you love one of of them, it’s hard to appreciate the other. It’s ignorant to say that all contemporary Indian literature is bad, and only full of juicy love stories and mythological rants. There are good writers like Naipul and Ghosh, but I wouldn’t talk about them because this post is not about them. It’s about filmmakers and films. 

Well, to put it simply, I’ve been recently smitten with works of Anurag Kashyap and the people collaborating with him. Vikramaditya Motwane - maker of lyrical Udaan and Lootera - is a genius. Ritesh Batra, Vishal Bhardwaj, Dibakar Banerjee are great directors who focus on detail. I could go on and on about these guys, so I would shut up and say what I intend to say. I jot down now a list of intellectual Bollywood movies in the past decade, so that anyone who wishes to find them or doesn’t believe in their existence can be benefited.

Movies that I’ve watched and I know are good:

No Smoking, The Lunchbox, Gangs of Wasseypur I, II, Black Friday, Udaan, Lootera, B.A. Pass, Blue Umbrella, Bombay Talkies, Khosla ka Ghosla, Taarey Zameen Par

Movies that I plan to watch and I’ve heard are good:

Hazaron Khawahishain Aise, Amir, Ship of Theseus, Shahid, Lucia, That Girl in Yellow Boots, Gulaal, Kai Po Che

If you have suggestions for the list, don’t be shy to inform me!

The Gravity of PhD Qualifiers

"They ask if I’m happy and elated by its [Gravity’s] success and all of this. For me, it’s like the fox who has been chased by hounds for four and a half years, and then the fox gets away. Is the fox happy? The fox is happy when he is frolicking with another fox, playing with the cubs in the meadow, mating, but when he escapes it’s just relief. That’s not happiness." 

Alfonso Cuarón

When I first read this quote a few days ago, I couldn’t get it completely. I mean the movie has earned him almost half a billion dollars (as a producer) and brilliant critical ratings (as a director) - all of which he rightly deserves. But then I explained myself that, well he’s a great artist and he can go about saying whatever he likes to say.

I had savored two other works of Cuarón (HP3, and Children of Men) earlier, so I had a good deal of expectations from him before I entered the movie theater today. And, amazingly he did live up to the hype; he’s proved once again that he’s one of the few brilliant directors in Hollywood. Especially, considering that he achieved this with a sci-fi plot, a category which Hollywood exploits and sells ridiculously now and then (read Ender’s Game). And I guess I shouldn’t get started on the all the fantasy/superhero Hollywood crap always floating around (read Thor: The Dark World). Oh wait, but that’s just what people like - mindless action - don’t they? Bollywood too follows closely here. Krrish 3, which couldn’t get worse, made, what, 500 crores?

So yes, overall, I’m stunned with Gravity. To go into a theater with a hell lot of expectations and to come out in agreeable humor is a sign that the movie was indeed brilliant. Hat’s off to Cuarón for pulling it off. A few hours before the movie, I finished my qualifying exam which branded me officially capable of working towards getting a PhD. It was near the end, when the committee congratulated me for passing the exam and discussed a bit about my future research work, that Cuarón’s quote above started making sense. I realized then, instantaneously, and I realize now, passively. That’s it’s not always happiness which is the end product of success.

I’m not happy that I passed. I’m simply relieved. My breaths are deep and long. But I know that the hounds are still out there. I’ll have to keep fighting, no matter what. The relief is just temporary, and the thrill will resume soon.  

Book Review: Middlemarch by George Eliot

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.”

Middlemarch by Eliot is a gripping story of a provincial town of old England, which is kind of a big clockwork where every character, every life is some kind of delicate machinery working slowly and steadily towards hold everything together. It’s common to see writers creating characters that are shadows of their own selves, but Eliot? No. She created every possibility! I can’t imagine how she was able to bring to life so many different people, both of extreme and mediocre nature.

While I read this novel, it felt like a reality happening next door. It never really seemed fiction. And when it ended, a puff of sadness shrouded my mind which reminded me time and again, that the story had ended, and it was a thing of past. It’s almost akin to having lived a great, thrilling life and only appreciating how good it was when you’re closing your eyes in the grave.

""When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive..."

“"When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."”

- Virginia Woolf

"When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive..."

“"When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."”

- Virginia Woolf

A Morning Beauty

It was seven in the morning as I stood alone at the bus stop, stifling a yawn and looking at my cold breath diffusing into the thick mist. And there she came. Like a shadow across my vision. 

We stepped on to the roaring bus as if it was irrelevant. We ended up across each other through a strange combination of luck and intention. Our eyes, were yet, virgin. But our thoughts began to run astray. Then she crossed her legs, allowing her left sandal to dangle, leading my glance to her bespectacled eyes - those small, round eyes behind the black, bold, rectangular frame. Her lips carried no lipstick but only a secret. Her grave attire of a black dress and a grey overcoat housing the orange stocking on her legs appeared to me as if desire had been captivated unjustly by learning and propriety. 

Soon after she checked my glance, and caught me in my sin. I tried to recover, falter and fake that it was the window and the dreary, dark world beyond it that drew me. In contempt, she pulled out a book, a book of about 500 pages or more and pretended to dive into it as if she was resuming a hunt after a brief respite. 

Which book is that? An obsession gripped me. It is seldom that one comes across intellect wrapped into a becoming flesh. Curiosity grew like a flame fueled by every moment that passed without the knowledge of the title of the book she was reading. I must know what is it that she reads! Only if I could know that, I would know more about her. Perhaps, all about her. 

I had to get off the bus at some point and a last effort to read the title of her book went in vain as my squinted eyes failed to guess the smallish and blurry font on the top of the page her finger held. Once outside of the bus I felt defeated for there was still abundant yearning inside my heart to know her book, her genre, her nature, and her mind. Nevertheless, the close encounter left a sweet scent on my faculties which was akin to having heard a holy prayer, where one feels the divine in such a fleeting manner that it can be appreciated only in retrospect. 

Not a moment after, a cold wind slapped me back into reality and I realized my folly. I was back at the bus stop where I started. My conscience then reminded me of the naked truth. There was no such creature who was both beautiful and a bibliophile. There was no girl, no bus, no stops in this sea of loneliness. That figure on the bus seat did not exist, the seat was empty, the bus was imaginary, if anything was there it was only my elusive muse. It was only me and my rendering of reality.

Fighting the slumber, I rubbed my eyes, checked my watch again, and made a mental note to catch up on sleep in the coming weekend. 

Book Review: Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray

“Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?”

Yes, that’s the kind of powerful sentences that forms Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The whole novel is a sort of an epic portrait of multitude of faces, trapped in the customs of 19th century English society, scorning and pitying at each other in vain. In short, it’s an 800 hundred page mammoth of elegant prose dedicated to depict human psychology in the midst of pleasure and sorrow. A strict no-no for the fans of Bhagat and Meyer, it is a delight for those who delve into all things that are literary. In a nutshell it is a good intellectual nutrition for readers that are slightly vain in their own right.  

Initially titled as ‘A Novel without a Hero’ it traces the life of two vastly different women: Amelia and Rebecca. While Amelia is the shy and kind sheep of innocent beauty whose prospects and fortune are governed by the tyrannies of fate and individuals she comes across, Rebecca, on the other hand, is the exact opposite in being a sly, manipulative vixen, who, through her amoral, conscienceless choices bends every opportunity to her benefit. Surrounding these two young ladies are dozens of proud men of varying ranks in the English military engaged in the Napoleonic wars. Ranging from courtships to marriages, births to deaths of heirs and successors, Thackeray justly unveils the true nature of every possible character that may exist in a society. And this true nature demands nothing more than fulfillment of prime desires, the success or failure of which results in perturbation of one’s vanity.

Read this exquisite work if you’ve an inclination for works with strong characterization and great analysis of human nature. But be prepared to listen to the strong presence of the narrative voice which would often grow bigger than the plot itself. I must admit, as I read this, it was more than once that I reflected upon my own nature and doings in the past where vanity possessed my faculties so strongly that it encouraged me to think lowly of my fellow men. Alas! How can one get totally rid of vanity! This world is a Vanity Fair, and we’re all but puppets in it.

Nevertheless, now I often re-read the following quote from the book that I’ve penned in my ‘diary’ and then immediately a warm puff of humility checks the growing cold mist of vanity.

“Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor’s accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.”

The Lonely Star

The more you want people to be around you,

The more you will find yourself alone.

The tighter you clasp the sand,

Faster it will be gone.

 

Why not, then, oh dear soul, become a shining Star

of a smiling visage and a happy heart!

Then all beings will surround you from near and far,

knowing little that you’re burning within and withering apart.

 

But with this fake charm, you’ll attract happiness and joy,

Like the Sun does from its countless, attentive flowers.

 

A trip to nowhere

Whenever an idea or occasion of travelling comes across me, I’m not as much elated as one may expect me to be. Perhaps that is because of my introvert nature or maybe it’s due to the preoccupied conviction that there are few sights in the world that can thrill me to an extent that is worth investing the precious little time and money I’m endowed with. 

But having said that, if there’s a dream trip that I would like to take, it would be that of a long journey leading particularly nowhere. For e.g. A rail trip in Europe irrespective of where it leads as long as I get to snuggle beside a huge window, comforted on a plush leather clad seat, while musing with my pen on a long sheet of paper. Another example could be to go sailing across a sea, to hear the ruffling songs of waves while sitting on the edge of the moving vessel, and bask in the meager rays of the twilight sun drowning behind the horizon. How picturesque! 

For some reason, it’s the act of motion that thrills me more than the sense of relocation. Is it the changing scenery that accompanies motion or is it some strange inertia which tends to my brain and excites it, am not sure. Perhaps, trips induce interesting simulations led by multiple sensory organs, which maybe hard to achieve by the mere act of reading something wonderful or meditative imagination. Well, I shall succumb to the fact that I like moving.

If not anything else, it certainly encourages me to write. Because one can always find stories to write from the new experiences, and such anecdotes make a trip memorable. 

This post is an entry for an indiblogger contest organized by www.yatra.com