Baljit > Recent Status Updates

A story that reflects issues of our time, with civil war and violence causing mass emigration and communities of illegals set up in the West. But it touches on an alien future pebbled with uncertainty.

Grim... but am totally absorbed

A difficult start, as I muddled through the first chapter, and wondered where was this heading. Now that I'm starting chapter 3, I'm getting stuck into this novel. But I can see it's a deep heavy read

This is an amazingly clever book, the entire story is from the perspective of the unborn child. It is a twisted sinister tale, put in such poetic language, even ironic at some bits.

Absorbing

This book was a pleasant surprise as I've read one of her previous books and found it rather dry. I found the characters amusing and realistic. She describes the city and surroundings well, and does not romanticize India.

Everything about the landscape was familiar and strange at the same time; that odd disjunction of coming home to a place that was not home anymore.

Everything about the landscape was familiar and strange at the same time; that odd disjunction of coming home to a place that was not home anymore.

I've read this book about 5 years ago, and was blown away. I'm rereading it as its my book club's choice for next month

Love isn't just a feeling; its an art. And like any art, it takes not only inspiration, but also a lot of work.

Waste is the fuel of contradiction, and contradiction activates the economy, and an active economy creates more waste.

It struck him again, with vivid force, that all this talk of 'the outside world' turned round one thing only: what the outside world made of your own life. You were forever at the centre of things, the subject of the sentence; it was not the outside world you were thinking of, but where you stood in the regard of the world.

what could be more interesting than other people's lives?

Anupam said-This is not life that we have. This is a kind of death. If we die fighting so that our children can have better lives, we will die fighting.

Did they all become their own persons, these creatures you gave birth too, these children whom you thought were an extension of your own self, endowed with your features, with aspects of your own personality and character, but who in the end came asunder and floated away, no longer like your arm or your leg, doing what you willed them to do, but puppets that suddenly became animated, only to rebel and set off on thie

All families start with a marriage, and all marriages start with a family.

And still, in this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak of only two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. in reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second.

What is terrorism? What is self-defense? What of the slow invasion of life in the northern part of the island?

Some marriages do that- they go on even when they should not.

The notion of following your heart's desire, of going wherever you chose, did not exist here, and I did not see any way to let them know what it felt like, especially after so little time in their system, I had lost my own sense of freedom

Horribly superficial, too painful to complete!