If you look around, you will always be able to find one couple paying more attention to each other as compared to the text they are reading. They will be the hot spot of the library reading lounge when it comes to passing smiles and talking at incredibly low decibels. Then there will always be one girl who is immersed in her smart phone. Her fingers will be tapping the screen at breathtaking speeds. You could potentially find a middle aged sophisticated lady with spectacles on her nose, holding her book in her raised hand and reading it with perfect composure. If you still are looking around, you will find some dude swinging on his chair, with a pen in his mouth with half an eye on his book, and other half looking aimlessly around on other people (:P)

I remember being taught about the concept of comic relief  in my literature course while studying Shakespeare. I used to find that trivial and somewhat unnecessary. Part of the reason was that I was never able to see the tragedy in those epics. People used to get what they deserved,  there was an underlying logic in all those stories ranging from a dying Macbeth, a lunatic Lear or even a delusional Willy Loman . ‘A Fine Balance’ on the other hand is a tragedy with a capital t. It may not confirm to the Aristotle’s Poetics, but that is hardly relevant to the times we live in. A sense of despair, worthlessness and your inability to do anything looms large over this story. There were times when I wanted some character to blurt out a joke, I wanted Mistry to bring a Fool from somewhere and slow down the things, I wanted all the good moments to come at once. It is at that point I understood why we need something like a comic relief. It would have been maddening to read ~640 pages of gist of ‘A Fine Balance’.

‘A Fine Balance’ is probably among the the best written books I have read so far. It is a story detailing the intermingling of the lives of 4 diverse characters. Dina Dalal is a strong, likes-to-be independent woman who is not ready to live on the alms thrown by her brother. Maneck is a 17 year old boy, who moves to city for a diploma and stays with Dina as a paying guest. Om and Ishvar are two tailors, who after shunning their caste profession of chamaar, have come to city for some work. Throughout their lives, they meet various small characters who enrich their lives with symbols. “The lives of the poor were rich in symbols” as Mistry points out.

The book is set up in the post-independence emergency time in India. People are forced to undergo birth-control measures, the rules are twisted to favor certain sections of the society, the atrocities committed by  the higher castes on the lower castes hardly ever get noticed, beggars and homeless are swept off the streets in the name of beautification program, family planning commission are being run by a bunch of mafia guys and there is rampant corruption in every government office. Mistry has described the caste prejudices of those times in such a gruesome fashion that you wonder how could humans fall to such extents of depravity. “Molten lead being poured into the ears of those who happened to hear the temple shlokas, burning coals placed on the tongues of those who wanted to vote in elections, people made to eat someone’s feces for being late at work”

Do not read ‘A Fine Balance’ if you are planning to go on a nice relaxing weekend, you will end up in depression for many days. Read ‘A Fine Balance’ because there are stories in it which need to be heard, and which hold the potential to change you as a person.

PS: I am not very sure whether people who are not familiar with Indian settings of those days would appreciate some of the vernacular remarks used in the book.

Anyway, there are all kinds of people who will visit Subway on a particular day. There will be always be one person who is infinitely particular about his/her sub. He would be concerned about the placement of capsicums in his sub, the right proportion of the sauces, telling how much amount of vegetable to be put and in what ratios, how to first clean the bacon and then put it along with the cheese and then roast it for this many seconds. It is as if he/she has taken ‘Make your own sub’ infi literally. His sub will take a good 7-8 mins for completion. Then there would be a newbie amazed by so many options and will tentatively chose the safest probably Veggie Delight or Egg Mayo or if he is among the adventurous ones, B.M.T.  He will be amazed by the choice of bread, and will take the most flashy looking bread probably Honey Oat. Then there will be not-so-new and not-so-old customer  who will try to show as if he knows everything about the sub [remember the difference from the first one, he TELLS infi things] but will always order the same sub. And then there is a completely different class of my omnipresent Indian bhai-behen who will make exaggerated loud noises to put more and more vegetables and will lament how they are paying so much for sukki sabzian and that too cold vegetables.

Very nice way to pass time.

Anyway, I just completed ‘The girl who played with Fire’ by Stieg Larsson, the second book in Millennium Series. I liked the book. Unlike the first one, this book did spring up a surprise in terms of Alexander (Zala)chenko, was very good in patches and there were times when I was clicking my ‘Next Page’ button at really fast speed. While the first book’s sole USP was Lisbeth Salander, she continues to dazzle (3 bullets in the body with one of them though brain, buried deep under the earth and she is still going for the kill! amazing) even in this one. I like Blomkvist more than Salander but then he is not the focus of this novel.  Niedermann’s congenital disease, Lisbeth’s expression (“nice!”) on seeing Harley Davidson, media’s hue and cry publishing “Salander – a psychopath involved in Satanic Lesbian activies” and various other events will definitely make a very good movie.

I did not absolutely love it, the chief reason being it did not have a proper timeline. It did not have a clock ticking at the top of detective’s head and there is no sense of anxiety anywhere in the book. Things are all pretty cool and seem to be superfluous. There is no real effort by anyone to make things happen around them. It is in this regard that I consider Angels and Demons as a brilliant novel. It has a proper trail around Rome with bomb clock ticking. I was shuffling the pages at terrific speeds and did not drop it even once. This was something I sorely missed in Millennium Series. Larsson does employ concurrent plots idea, but not very effectively.

Anyway, going to read ‘The Girl who kicked Hornet’s Nest’ next.

Solution: Use the following innocuous python script to convert your Playlist.pls  into list of songs in a folder. [Tweak it a little according to your system]

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
file = open(‘Playlist.pls’, ‘r’);
line = file.readline();
while (line != ”):
if (line.startswith(‘File’)):
file_name = line.split(‘=’)[1];
file_name = file_name.replace(‘%20′ , ‘\ ‘ );
file_name = file_name.replace(‘(‘   , ‘\(‘ );
file_name = file_name.replace(‘)’   , ‘\)’ );
file_name = file_name.replace(‘%5B’ , ‘\[' );
file_name = file_name.replace('%5D' , '\]‘ );
file_name = file_name.replace(“‘”   , “\\’” );
temp = ‘cp ‘ + file_name[7:-1] + ‘ folder’;
os.system(temp);
line = file.readline();

Wake up your neighbors now!

PS: If anyone knows how to convert ‘html tags encoded file name’ directly into normal bash name, please make this script exhaustive and less cumbersome.

He often rejects other opinions insultingly/ridiculously. Now someone who has not received much criticism in his life and who gets pissed off when someone says that I have asked him a stupid question, I would have hated House like anything. What would have compounded things for me is that most often House would be right, and that would further agonize me. Like most people, I am not used to take criticism positively and I, to an extent, do not like people better than me in my own profession. [that reminds me of a quote from Dagny in Atlas and one other thing about local interactions, but anyway] I am someone who goes by reciprocation (I think most people do). If I am rejected once, I start to think that everything said/done by that person is wrong and often start to find faults in his/her methods of analysis, If other person is angry/ not talking to me, then instead of doing the right thing i.e. go and talk with him/her to sort out the problem, I often go into recluse and start to avoid that person.

Anyway, long story short, I am sure I would not have liked him. It surprises me that I find him infi awesome as a third part observer.

The book starts with the eponymous character Lindsay arriving in Bombay and immediately settling into the hum drum of this large city. Moving forward, we are told that back in Australia, he was born in a respectable society but fell into drug addiction and local mafia. To fulfill his heroin needs, he started armed robberies for which he was sentenced to 19 years of imprisonment in Victoria’s highly secure state prison. That he escaped from it after 2 years, and on his way to Europe landed in Bombay is remarkable. There is a chapter in the book that contains the details of how he escaped from the prison with one of his inmate.

Lin immediately fells in love with the city and is introduced to a host of characters leading of which are ‘broad smiling’ Prabhakar, his guide in the city and with whom he spends 6 months in his village. It is there that he is named ‘Shantaram’ by Prabhakar’s mother which means ‘Man of God’. His love interest Karla is a beautiful ‘green eyed’  enigmatic women who is extremely proficient with quick retorts. He sees Khader, the local don of Bombay as his fatherly figure and is ready “to die for him”. One of the unique features of the book is the way it describes characters. Each character is associated with one particular quality like ‘broad smile’ for Prabhakar, ‘green color’ to Karla and so on. There are constant instances in the novel that keep highlighting these instances. Prabhakar, even in the worst of times, is shown with his effervescent smile and Karla is often associated with green clothes and her green eyes.

Lin works as a slum doctor for a considerable time owing to his ‘more than first aid knowledge’, weaving a magic around the people he meets through his generosity and kind heartedness. Through a series of events, he goes about working for local mafia dealing with passport forging and black market exchange currency, ends up again in a jail in India, goes with Khader to Afghanistan to deliver arms for fighting against Russians. The book is like a revolving window which is always focused on the main character Lin but keeps showing the people and extraordinary events that occur around him.

The things which stand out in this novel are his descriptions of the events and places around him. Bombay has been described as a city with ‘punishing heat’ and where smell of sweat is a constant part of life. The trauma, inhumane conditions endured by inmates at Arthur jail, where Lin was imprisoned in India, is the most horrifying and ghastly account of the tyrannous rules by which human beings can be dominated. He portrays corrupt policemen, fires, cholera outbreaks in slum yet you cannot help yourself falling in love with the city. It is ironic that despite all this, you still want to go and taste the life in this city. According to Roberts, the city has a pulse of its own and its magnificent larger than life characters keep bringing you closer to them. I think it is the bonds one make with these people even when there are so many complexities around that keep attracting you to be in this city. Also there are so many opportunities shown, that it seems there is something for everyone in this city.

There is always something new that is constantly thrown at the reader either in the form of a new twist in the story or by the introduction of new characters. However at certain points, you get confused whether it is a fiction or a philosophical book? Apparently, many authors have tried this approach where they want their characters to be embodiments of their philosophy. Shantaram has two flavors, one of the life of Linbaba and other of his philosophical discussions with Khader, Karla, going on parallely and this is a problem with the book since very rarely there is an intersection of these two streams. So at times, there is a sudden halt in the excitement that is built up by the story and one is presented a lengthy philosophical discussion which has no relation with the overall plot of the book. It is at this point you feel like leaving the book for good because there is so much that is still left and its sheer volume and thoughts start to look like a burden. Also, there is little logical flow to a climax in the book. Even in the last few pages, new faces are introduced at length and a reader, who is focusing on the story more than the philosophy, is left with a sour taste.

Despite the few glitches, you would not regret reading this complex and multitude interleaving of characters and events. Roberts wrote a detailed essay on this novel where he detailed his philosophy behind writing novels and explaining the deepness in Shantaram and the various layers in which it is built. (The essay can be downloaded from his site) There are also claims that Shantaram is actually a trilogy of novels and this edition was second in the list. For those who want to immerse themselves in a world of larger than life characters, Shantaram is a treat.