review

This was the first Murakami book that I read and was completely smitten by it. It easily blends in surreal and everyday events in such an intricate web that you are forced to stay glued till the very end.

The story is about a man named Toru Okada whose cat has disappeared, and then one day his wife leaves him even though they didn’t have any fight or any conflict. He begins to search for the reasons behind this and in the way meets many people who help him in their own ways to understand the situation that he finds himself in. Along the way, their own story unravels adding many layers to this unique story. A story filled with surreal situations, perplexing at times, yet it doesn’t seem odd and doesn’t obstruct the smooth flow of the narration.

The characters in this book are perfectly etched, be it Okada’s wife Kumiko who is fighting her own inner demons, or her evil brother Noboru Wataya, or our very own Toru – simple suburban guy whose simple uncomplicated life takes a twist, Malta Kano – a sort of a psychic healer, May – Toru’s no fuss young neighbour, a rich lady oddly called Nutmeg who helps him a lot in the latter part of the story and the ‘wind – up’ Bird ofcourse.

The book has quite a bit of flashbacks and in one of those Toru and his wife goes to visit an old wise man named Mr. Honda. The philosophy that he endorses forms the crux of this story. He tells the:

“When you are supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top, when you are going down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom.When there is no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up.”

Simple yet complex story telling with many layers of situations – a must read.

Author: Haruki Murakami

Translated by: Jay Rubin

Originally written in: Japanese

Pages: 607

ISBN :  0-679-77543-9

Plot:

The book recounts 12 nervous hours in the life fictional airport ‘Lincoln International’ at Chicago and how the lives of about a dozen people collide as a result.

Main Characters:
Mel Bakersfield (Airport General Manager),

Cindy Bakersfield (Mel’s wife),

D O Guerro (a passenger with a terrifying agenda!),

Tanya Livingston (A passenger relations officer; Mel has an affair with her),

Vernon Demerest (Captain and pilot of the flight ‘The Golden Argosy’ to Italy, and Mel’s brother-in-law),

Gwen Meighen (Senior Stewardess on board The Golden Argosy and Vernon’s mistress),

Eliott Freemantle (Lawyer with questionable ethics trying to bilk a local community that has been forever tormented by the literal din created by the airport, as a result of its proximity)

Joe Patroni (head of maintenance at the airport)

Ada Quosnett (A senior citizen and a Stowaway!)

The review:

The book is quite huge and phenomenal in detail and it’s quite a challenge to write a review without writing a book again!

Mel Bakersfield has to deal with the following in twelve long, prickly hours:

Lincoln International has been hammered by the worst snow storm in recorded history with feet of snow banks covering major runways. One such runway is Runway 30 which Joe Patroni, the heavily experienced legendary maintenance chief is trying to clear. Needless to say, air traffic has taken a bad hit!

Ada Quosnett, a senior citizen and a veteran of stowing-away on aircrafts gets herself, surreptitiously onto the ‘Golden Argosy’, a flight to Italy.

Vernon Demerest, who loathes Mel is one of the pilots of the Golden Argosy. He recently found out that his mistress, Gwen Meighen, was a few weeks pregnant with his child. The problem — he is in an emotionless marriage that he wants to break away from but doesn’t want to have a child either!

Tanya Livingston is ‘Trans America Airline’s passenger relations and she has a thing for Mel which is not unrequited! She is also an intelligent, savvy person and can deal with difficult people and difficult situations.

D O Guerrero is a failed building contractor. His family is impecunious. He hatches a plan, a nasty one! He plans on boarding the ‘Golden Argosy’ and blow it to smithereens once it’s in the air. The resulting insurance money (provided that the reason for the explosion goes undetected) would help his penurious family.

As all this is going on, Eliott Freemantle, a scheming lawyer has a demonstration right in the airport.

The book recounts Mel Bakerfield’s reaction to 12 hours of shear suspense which include a philandering wife, feet of snow on an important run way, a mid air explosion gone wrong, picketing by the lawyer, his own brother’s suicidal tendency, a stowaway and not to mention, a pregnancy!

In short: Yes, the bomb does go off.

No, the aircraft doesn’t crash but is close to it!

Yes, Cindy Bakersfield has an affair and Mel and Cindy split by mutual consent.

Yes, Eliott Freemantle, the corrupt lawyer is defeated as a result of Mel’s glib recollection of several proceedings from the court of law.

No, the end isn’t entirely happy. Neither is it tragic. Just complete.

Every time I think of an airport, several details that I was completely oblivious to before I read the book seem obvious to me! This is a delightful foray into the internal workings and those of customs officers, lawyers, maintenance men, police officers, not to mention politically motivated ‘people’ and crisis management teams that goes on in an airport and best known to us, ‘weary travelers’!

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The much awaited and annoyingly very much delayed movie finally hits flies into the movie halls. My eagerness took a beating twice when I could not attend the Thursday preview and when I took the First show of the Friday; I was told the show is cancelled since there was some issue in releasing the movie in Bangalore. Luckily with police security beefed up, I got the tickets for the noon show. With expectations flying high,  did kites fly miles high too ? Well read on further.

J (Hrithik Roshan) is a dance teacher in Las Vegas who also does marriage of convenience with illegal immigrants who wants permanent citizenship and their by makes extra bucks. He aspires big and like many chasing dreams in Las Vegas awaits his lucky charm. The luck comes in the form of Gina (Kangana Ranaut) daughter of powerful, rich Casanova Bob (Kabir Bedi). She falls in love with J and J decides to pretend to love her and marry her all for the huge wealth she inherits. During the engagement ceremony of Gina’s brother Tony with Natasha (Barbara Mori), he falls in love with her. Natasha happens to be the same Linda, a Spanish speaking Mexican illegal immigrant whom he marries once for convenience for her citizenship. From here follows a story of finding true love and the haunting after-effects.

The movie begins with J falling off from a wagon train with bullet injuries and the workers rescuing him. From there the movie oscillates into flashbacks and J’s search for Linda. Kites does not have any extra-ordinary story, the Hindi/English speaking J and the Spanish speaking Linda reminds of Kamal Hasan and Rati Agnihotri of Ek Duje Ke Liye but what makes Kites still fly is the packaging. There is no unwanted glamorization, slapstick cheap comedy but the movie looks rich. The New Mexican locations are carefully selected and captivate us in the screen with some amazing cinematography by Ayananka Bose.

Much has been talked about the chemistry of Hrithik and Barbar Mori and it is there in the screen for you to see. Hrithik is unbelievably handsome with his Greek God like body and green eyes and Barbara looks lovely, sprightly. Together they compliment well each other.

There are some very enjoyable scene like when Hrithik asks Barbara on the night before her marriage day with Tony, if she really loves Tony and the answer she gives in return. Along with this the movie also has some pretty bollywoodish silly scenes like the Casanova and his son giving a gun to J and egging him to kill a man who cheated in their casino and the shootout in an inn between cops and cow-boy styled thieves. Even the climax shoot out in rain la Max Payne style was not befitting the movie.

GingerChai Verdict: The story is ordinary but the way the Roshans and Anurag basu has presented as a whole package is extraordinary and wonderful. When you watch the movie with the massive hype weighing in your mind, you might be slightly disappointed but Hrithik Roshan and Barbara Mori holds the movie soar high helped with a good production quality. I would recommend you to watch but shed the baggage of hype and expectations.

The Hot Zone, is a 1994 New York Times best seller book by Richard Preston. The Book discusses the sudden reappearance of the Ebola virus, which was then limited to Southern Africa, to be discovered in Washington D.C. How America responds to the virus and whether it succeeded in ensuring the safety of its citizens from the Ebola virus outbreak forms the remaining story.

The Book starts off with the first victim of the deadly Ebola virus, back in 1980s. A couple of years later, another young boy falls victim to the virus. With the symptoms of both the victims being highly similar, parallels are drawn between them. United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) is alerted with part of the samples from both the victims. Gene Johnson, one of the USAMRIID’s guys starts investigating into the virus.

Preston discusses the chronology of events that begins in 1984, interspersed with interviews from some of the individuals who were part of the relief team that stopped the outbreak from entering the suburbs of Washington D.C.

Ebola Virus has long been declared a deadly virus with several different strains to its name. Ebola Zaire, Marburg, Ebola Reston are some of the many strains. Ebola Reston was what that broke out in Washington D.C. Thought considered deadly, the virus was declared non fatal towards human tissue. Marburg on the other hand, causes the affected to bleed to his death. The recent case of Marburg was in Southern Africa in 2009. Till today, there hasn’t been a vaccine for any of the Ebola strain.

I found this book scary. Bleeding to one’s death, liver turning into jelly just doesn’t sound very fun. To express how creep- inducing Ebola can be, allow me to quote the author:

“What AIDS Virus can do in ten years, Ebola does that in 7 days”.

If that is not freaky, I don’t know what else is.

Compared to AIDS, which was also known to have passed on from monkeys, Ebola is a hot agent that adapts itself to the environment of the host it inhibits. It works as an anti-coagulant, thus preventing the blood from clotting causing the victim to bleed from any available orifice in his body.

The fear of the victims, the doctors, the research unit, miracle survivor who lived to share his story, all of their interactions has been intricately woven into the account of the outbreak. The account follows that of a diary to give the reader an informal feel to the novel and not be overwhelmed by the jargon.

A movie based on this novel, or more specifically Ebola was released in 1995 titled Outbreak.

Overall, it was an enlightening read to the many hidden secrets of the living species.

Plot:
A scientific research deep sea drilling team drills into an underwater volcano except that it isn’t a volcano at all!

Main Protagonists:
Perry Bergman (President of Benthic marine), Suzanne (Oceanographer), Donald (ex-navy), Michael (ex-naval diver who was thrown out the Navy as a result of more than a few transgressions), Richard (same story as Michael!)

The review:

Benthic marine is an exploration and drilling vessel which sends a team down to investigate an underwater oceanographic anomaly. They expect to find an underwater volcano but when the team approaches the said anomaly, they get sucked into a seemingly bottomless pit into a dystopian world where there are ‘people’ living. Really beautiful people, physically and mentally -A utopia. They call their land ‘interterra‘.

The interterrans are supposedly the ‘first’ race of humans ever who moved underground and underwater to escape a predicament that awaited the dinosaurs and such. So, having a leg up on the ‘second generation humans’, the interterran’s technology far exceeds the wildest imagination of the drilling team.

The interterrans welcome the unexpected guests and bestow on them all the pleasures of life that could be imaginable. They come to realize the very many fascinating advances in science that the interterrans have made. For instance, they’ve somehow perfected the human body to sustain several centuries without severe debilitation. And if the human body were to wither away, the ‘essence’ of the body would be captured and injected into another body, a next life.

However, what dawns on our team of intrepid scientists and ex-navy soldiers that they are prisoners in a gilded cage. The interterrans have no intention of letting them go back to the surface as that would give away this secret and given the belligerent nature of us, the second generation humans, it would only bring war, terror and despair to interterra.

The unwilling participants, except Suzanne (who decides to remain in Interterra), somehow contrive an escape by taking a few of the interterrans hostage. This leads to the interterran government eventually realizing that they couldn’t stop the escaping second generation humans and hence ‘send them back’.

But where exactly do they ‘send them back’? Little do Perry Bergman, Donald, Michael and Richard know that although they’ve escaped the underwater gilded prison, they are in for a humongous surprise when they do figure out what they’ve swapped interterra for!

A must read for fans of Robin Cook. This is the first time the american author has deviated from medical mysteries and has done a good job at that!

Robin Cook does an amazing job with creating the dystopian utopia, Interterra and the trials, tribulations and psychological effect it has on all characters.

Well, I liked the movie title Paathshaala and the opening screen showing the newspaper clippings of student abuse, student pressure etc made me sit straight in anticipation of a movie on the lines of Tarre Zameen Par.

Shahid Kapoor joins Saraswati Vidya Mandir as an english teacher and later doubles as music teacher too. Nana Patekar is the head master of the school. The first half of the movie is breezy with school romances, short skirts, dances with no seriousness of the subject of education. Then the movie gets further depromoted with the advent of the trustees who want to make the school a money spinning venture. The children are discriminated on the basis of “best payers”. We have a young student made to stand under sun the whole day since he did not pay fee. The whole school watches him almost fainting. Except our hero Shahid, who appears cooly much much later offering his months salary for paying the fee.  The management hire some PR people to do school branding. So the children are forced to participte in reality shows, made extras in TV programmes. Oh wait , even they are made to act in movies when shooting happens in their school premise and ya in one scene when red chilly powder falls ino the eyes of a child a director of the TV cookery programem insist on shooting the scene for better TRPs instead of first aid ! Over exaggarated? Yes and the second half is damn boring too. I lost count of my yawns. After having enough of this exaggarated attrocities,  the students lead by teacher Shahid starts a strike! Finally, we have Nana Patekar justifying his monster tactics all to save the school from the clutches of the commercial minded trustees! And all is well that ends well.

*sighs* Director Milink Ukey had started the script in an earnest and right intention but lost it in its execution. The first half is non-serious like a campus entertainer with even a gal having a crush for Shahid. In second half, he tries to shift gear to his actual intended subject but over exaggarates it and goofs it up.  Shahid as music teacher reminds of his role in Chance pe Dance movie.

GingerChai Verdict: A potential good subject badly treated. Boreshaala.

What happens when a gorgeous woman from Venus lands up in your arms that too when you are ignored by all other women in this world! Well that out of the world jackpot happens to Ritesh Deshmukh in this movie. And the woman from the Venus is Jacqueline Fernandez.

The rom-com starts well with intro by Ritesh who is a third camera assistant to director Farah Khan. Ya, Farah khan play a cameo as her real self. We have comical guest appearances by Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, Karan Johar talking about Desh (the bollywood super star character played by Ruslaan Mumtaz) Ritesh falls in love with Desh’s sister who joins as a camera assistant to Farah Khan. When he proposes to her, she tells him that he just considered him as a best friend. Rejected and dejected, Ritesh stands alone in a Drive-in when Jacqueline lands up in his arm. He takes her to his house but hides her from her parents. Ritesh and his friend (Vishal Malhotra) names her Tara after failing to get a name from her mouth. Soon, they realize Tara is infact from Venus who has come to earth to understand the meaning of Love that has been long forgotten in their planet. She says she has got 2 days in Earth to understand love. So Ritesh suggest her to understand love by wooing Desh. Desh falls for her too. What follows is reel of romantic-comedy that makes you enjoy for most part of the movie.

 Ritesh carries a boy-next-door image that is quiet heartening in this age of superstar screen presence. Jacqueline Fernandez comes throughout sporting a “toothpaste advertisement” smile. The super star character played by Desh by Ruslaan is a bad casting. Vishal Malhotra comes good as Ritesh’s friend. He is out of sync with the superstar character he plays. Though the story has no logics (but then who cares, if the movie is entertaining) the movie is enjoyable almost throughout barring some 20 minutes before climax. 20 minutes of typical Bollywood sentiments, emotions and love dialogues. Ofcourse, the movie script could have been better woven as a fantasy. It lacks creative fantasy, sequences and treads an anticipated path. But still, you can enjoy ¾ th of the movie. The designers could have thought of a better Venetian dress. As someone comments in the movie, it looked straight out of a fancy dress competition. Music by Sajid-Wajid is hummable.

GingerChai Verdict: The movie could have been made a better fantasy but still watchable, if you forgive the last 20 minutes.

The Smile

There is a Smile of Love

And there is a Smile of Deceit

And there is a Smile of Smiles

In which these two Smiles meet

 - An Extract of the Poem The Smile, By William Blake

These were the lines in the first page of the book that attracted my attention. I was surfing my book shelf when I found this beautiful book that I even forgot that I had. I suddenly remembered that my brother brought it in one of his vacations  and I used a poem from the collection to impress a lady at that time. Other than that I did not remember anything else about it. I decided to give a look at this book.Romantic Poetry was a kind of statement at one time, rejecting the formality of style and subject of Augustan Poets, the Romantics gave voice to sentiments, desires and unconscious feelings. Poets like Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley were trying to create a new style of poetry and were very active in the Romantic revolution.

I always hated literature as a subject when I was student and mostly bunked the classes, so it was a new experience for me reading these poems. And I would say that I definitely liked it. A must have in one’s collection if you are a poetry lover. A good companion in solitude… There are about 110 poems in the compilation. The poets who feature in it are William Blake, Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, JL Hunt, William Wordsworth, Robert Southney, Lord Byron, PB Shelley, Anon, John Keats, Walter Savage Landor, John Clare, and George Darley. The collection has wide variety of themes like human spirit, time, love, art and beauty. My personal favorites are To a Butterfly By Wordsworth, To a Skylark by Shelley and Infant Sorrow by William Blake. If you however ask who my favorite poet is, I would say John Clare.  So, I would end with one of his verse.

 I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes -

They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host,

Like shadows in love-frenzied stifled throes;

And yet I am, and live – like vapours tost.

-  An Extract of “I am” by John Clare

Compiled by Paul Driver

Publish date: 1995

Publisher: Penguine books

Paperback, 112 pages

ISBN 0140622020    (ISBN: 13: 9780140622027)

Book review written by Pramathesh Borkotoky

Cast:

Payton: Played by Dennis Quaid. Lieutenant on board the sleeper ship Elysium who awakens from hyper sleep in an obfuscated state.

Bower: Played magnificently by Ben Foster. Corporal and ship engineer who awakens from hyper sleep equally confused as Payton. Plus, he escapes being devoured many a time along the way!

Director: Christian Alvart (First ever movie in English)

Release Date: 25 Sep 2009

Running Time: 108 min (R for strong horror violence and language)

Being a fan of the science fiction horror genre and particularly those that employ the least amount of on-screen personnel, I found ‘Pandorum’ to be absolutely fantastic!

The movie chronicles a few tense (presumably) hours after two astronauts, Foster and Payton, awaken from long suspended animation to find that they are the part of a handful of survivors from an otherwise full complement of 60,000 of crew members.

They are on the sleeper ship Elysium that had been launched into outer (real outer!) space to land on, terra-form and populate the earth-like planet, Tannis as a result of earth having an over-burgeoning population of over 23 billion which caused severe scarcity of resources, in the latter part of the 22nd century.

But where have all the crew members disappeared? How many centuries have they been stranded for, in the far outer reaches of space?

It transpires through convoluted flashbacks and exchanges between the only 6 crew members that they were to be the first team to land on the planet Tannis – The first team of Earthlings that would set up a colony for others to follow. There was no return. They had with them the entire species of a planet in test tubes, quite literally. But then why hasn’t their mission control tried to contact them? Why they were not revived from hyper sleep?

The devastating truth that dawns on them is that they are the ONLY team of earthlings alive and awake after prolonged hyper sleep that has left them with classic symptoms of ‘Pandorum’ which include severe paranoia, vivid hallucinations and homicidal tendencies.

Several questions are answered along the way: their identities, their mission, the fate of earth, the fact that most of the crew was devoured by eerie, cannibalistic, creatures. The actual and startling identity of these murderous, blood thirsty creatures….

….And that there are not 6 people awake. Only 5. So who is the sixth person?

….And that they had spent well over a century in hyper sleep….

…..And that the Earth had long ceased to exist….

…..And that they aren’t where they thought they are after all….

Shyam Benegal has a distinctive style of film making which was evident in his previous outings. His USP is simple, clean stories with a wonderful scripting. Like his previous movie Welcome to Sarjapur, Well done Abba follows the similar terrain – a story set up in a rustic village, a simple story but a brilliant script. Unlike the usual bollywood movies loaded with slapstick, loud comedies, glam and item numbers, Well Done Abba is a healthy diet of a movie without unnecessary masalas and junks.

Armaan Ali (Boman Irani), a car driver working in Mumbai, returns to his job after 3 months. His boss fires him coz he had originally went on a leave of one month. Armaan pleads his boss to listen to his story. The boss agrees and asks him to narrate the story when they travel from Mumbai to Pune in car. So starts the movie and Benegal takes us to Armaan Ali’s rustic village near Hyderabad and the reason for his delayed return.

When Armaan visits his village he is disappointed by the acute shortage of water there and decides to dig a well. So he runs pillar to post, bribing various government servants to get sanctioned a government scheme for providing well. Finally after all the circus yielding no result, he decides to counter the same officials in a curious, humorous way. I am not letting out the entire plot and be a spoiler.

Benegal in his inimitable style has highlighted the issues of corruption in a humorous way. It was very refreshing to enjoy a sensible comedy. Bomman Irani as usual does a commendable job as Abba and even has a twin brother who is a petty thief. Minisha Lamba as daughter of Bomman Irani is adorable and fits well into the role. Peppered with many interesting characters, all the supporting characters have etched their small roles very well.

GingerChai Verdict: Well done Benegal! I wish audience support such good movies.