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Showing posts from May, 2011

Shiva, The Mahadev

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I cannot express ever how much I truly adore the Hindu God Shiva . For his almighty power, his emotions, his great dance, his attitude towards his woman, his simplicity and simple ways of living and everything else that he represents. He seemed different to me, from the rest of the gods. He is raw and close to the nature. I also strongly believe that many of our Hindu gods were actually men who were glorified to Godliness after great deeds for the common good. I also believe that the " asuras " and other lowly non-Aryans weren't evil and just that they were not Aryans and were very different from them. And somehow more or less all these interpretations are not my own and I believe there are many like that. Amish Tripathi is too. And so is his wonderful book a reflection of that. No wonder I loved the book The Immortals of Meluha . To beautiful writing and to a great idea, I bow to the author. It does not seem like a debut. He struggled very hard to raise publici

Innocence!!!

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Fusun, I like the name! I read The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk . I love it. And I hate it. May be that's why Orhan wins a prize!! For the love-hate relationship he inspires. I can't believe I actually read it. Really! It's long, boring and is pages filled with bad writing. Writing so bad that it amazes me that this man could win an Nobel. But then, the concepts are beautifully presented. His passion, love and obsession (in that very order) comes out so well. Probably the translation was pathetic. And apparently they are actually going to build a museum . Waste of resources, I would say. It really is difficult to read the book. Unless you are a hard core enthusiast for the knowledge of the days of Turkey in the backdrop of a pathetic tale of obsession you wouldn't want to read it. Actually their society is so much like India. In fact, it being written for the western audience was sort of painful for me that the author tries to explain each hypoc

Short Stories: Iran and Women

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I just completed reading a book called Afsaneh: Short Stories by Iranian Women . I picked it up from the library (my mom got a membership at the Hyderabad City Grandhalay Samstha ie Government Public Library) in the hope of getting to know the life of Iranian women through a collection of short stories. But I must say, I‘m disappointed. The compiler Kaveh Basmenji did not do a good job at compiling. I almost found a repetitive fashion. There were a couple of stories that had young women being married off to older men, or old widowed women having no place to go since none of their children could have them in their house, or of little girls not liking the way their loved ones not being able to be there for them, or of having to sell a house, or of having to live a lonely life, or of having to deal with the cold with their poverty. Yes, the compiler did not do a good job because each of the stories has its own essence and its own life. There were some good and some bad becaus

Gibson's War Movies

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Having seen Braveheart , somehow every time I saw an advertisement for The Patriot , I assumed I had watched it until one day my mom said something about it and I had no idea. So the next time it was on TV, I watched it. And now, I do not remember Braveheart either so I cannot compare. As is, The Patriot was a nicely made movie. It was supposed to be a really touching movie. But I cried (yes I cried) only once through the movie. The scene when his youngest daughter (who refused to talk to him) calls out to him when he is leaving and says she will talk as much as he wants and whatever he wants if that means he would stay and not leave for battle. That scene was beautifully captured all the emotions of a family sending away their men to war across the world. Apart from that I have nothing else to write about it.

Sometimes, Some Stories

For some reason I landed up with a book of short stories by Amrita Pritam . Their Signature, Exiled and one more that I do not remember. I swear to God I shall never read another story by her. Don't get me wrong. She wrote things that are relevant, just not for this decade and just not for me.

Foreign Lands and Langs

This post is long overdue. Written on my iPod during my short vacation this May, I haven’t had a chance to post it yet. Once when a friend tried to (jokingly) impose on everyone the language Hindi saying that we must all respect our culture and refrain from speaking in English, I replied to him that I was a native English speaker and to me Hindi is a foreign language. My mother tongue being Telugu have having lived by first 18 years in the same state (and the same city), I speak Telugu fluently and naturally speak only Telugu when I speak to strangers in my state. When I speak to people who do not belong to my state (either because I am out of it or because they are in it) I tend to speak in English in order to communicate. When I went to Jamshedpur in 2008, for that first time I had to speak Hindi. It was weird. Not because I didn’t speak very well (in my defense, the gender concept of inanimate objects is very confusing) but because I have never been to a place where I had to an

Son of Odin!

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It was the usual story. Out of the world God(dess) falls to the earth and meets the adorable(brave) lady(warrior) thus, falling in love. Oh did I forget the “save the day” part? Yeah, they save the world together. In most stories the immortal one leaves that gift to stay on earth and live together. There can be versions where the mortal one attains immortality and if a producer is looking for a sequel, they stay separated, but just for now (wait for part two). All you gults will remember the legendary movie we grew up watching, Jagadeeka Veerudu - Atiloka Sundari. Thor (if you remember the guy that Thursday was named after, the one who plays with thunder) falls out of the sky in front of our lady (literally in front of her SUV). Betrayed by his brother Loki (some god who is sometimes good and sometimes bad) he goes out to save his father and his kingdom and even the people of the enemy kingdom having gained the power of soul thanks to the undying love from his lady on earth. (And peo