25 Lifelong Friends

There are some topics that are so close to my heart that I don’t write about them for fear of going on and on. But I guess some things are just destined to be. Jennifer tagged me to make a list of 25 writers who have influenced me most. Now I’m a person whose life has been about her books. I was reading before I had learnt to walk. The way I think, the way I live, the way I talk, the way I write, the way I dream, the way I love, have all been shaped by the books that I’ve read.
It’s difficult to limit myself to 25, but I’ve tried, and come up with this list of people whose books I find myself going back to again and again. The list is not in any specific order, except for Marquez, who’ll always come first in any list of mine. And oh, though they’ve influenced me in no small way, I’m saving the Bengali writers for another list, another day.
The following list includes the names of 25 of my favorite writers and those books of theirs that I’ve read and loved. But I’m not writing about why I love them. If you’ve read them, you’ll know. If you haven’t, I just hope that some day in your busy lives you'll find the time to do so. And then you'll know.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez – (One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera; Of Love and Other Demons; Chronicles of a Death Foretold; Strange Pilgrims; The General in His Labyrinth)
Milan Kundera – (The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Life is Elsewhere; The Joke; Farewell Waltz)
Ian McEwan – (In Between the Sheets; Amsterdam; Atonement; Saturday)
Arundhati Roy - (The God of Small Things)
Alexander McCall Smith – (The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series)
Jhumpa Lahiri – (The Interpreter of Maladies; Namesake; Unaccustomed Earth)
Joseph Heller – (Catch 22, Closing Time)

Helen Fielding – (Bridget Jones’ Diary; The Edge of Reason)

Hector Hugh Munro (Saki) – (All the short stories)
Melissa Banks – (The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing; The Wonder Spot)
J.R.R. Tolkiens – (The Lord of the Rings)
Pablo Neruda – (all poems)

Amitav Ghosh – (Hungry Tide; The Glass Palace; The Circle of Reason; Sea of Poppies)
J.K. Rowling – (The Harry Potter series)

Harper Lee – (To Kill a Mockingbird)

Ogden Nash – (All poems)
Alex Hailey – (Roots; Queen)
Franz Kafka – (Metamorphosis and other stories)

John Steinbeck - (The Grapes of Wrath; Travels with Charlie)
J.M. Coetze – (Disgrace)
Arthur Golden – (Memoirs of a Geisha)

Yann Martel – (Life of Pi)
Sue Townsend – (The Adrian Mole series)

Vladimir Nabokov – (Lolita)

Roald Dahl – (All the creepy short stories)

Upamanyu Chatterjee - (English, August)

John Updike - (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; Rabbit at Rest)


I tag:-Quaint Murmur, because her writing is so beautiful there is no way she’s not a reader.Happy, because I midwifed his lust for booksChirpy Paro, because she loves to talk booksAniket, because I want to know what inspires a man to write so deliciouslyShubhodip, because I know a bibliophile when I see one


Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

A Walk in the Rain ...( OR, How Mistaken Self-Perception Can Freeze Your Sorry Ass)

It was raining when I stepped out of the office last evening. Not hard, just a windy spray.
My first thought was - the autowallahs will charge double... and then, another tiny voice outshouted the first- you are a writer, a romantic, a born poet, of course you'll walk in the rain, you'll walk to the bus stop and take a bus, and feel the rain invigorating every corner of your tired soul...
So that was that, and the professional-with-a-poet's-heart turned her face heavenward, smiled and the black-blue sky, and began her walk in the rain.

Except, it was windier than I thought, and very soon the gentle hum of the drizzle turned into the roar of a downpour, and i was drenched through my thin summer-y kurta. The roads had water-logged, and walking was replaced by wading. The slush of garbage, usually at home on the sidewalks, had taken the opportunity to discover what the middle of the road might be like. There was no bus at the bus stop, and I had to wait a good quarter hour for one to come along, meanwhile the wind numbed me to my intestines. The bus was very very crowded, everybody was wet, and the smell in general was that of wet underwear and rotting vegetables. The bus belly-crawled through the city, picking up other hapless individuals in drenched throngs, and I was so late that I missed F.R.I.E.N.D.S, and what more, the calling bell gave me such an electric shock that i was thrown backwards.

This got me thinking. There is often such a gap between what we like to think of ourselves, and what we really are. Sometimes we fall through the gap, sometimes we leap over it, but its there and very often we don't even notice.

I, allegedly an agent of chaos, like to think of myself as someone who is neat and organized, and so I bought myself a really groovy planner (the first 28 pages of which I've already filled with equally groovy sketches).

A very dear friend of mine, a gentle Rabindrasangeet person whose only exposure to music in the English language till last year was, for some reason, Seal's Kiss From A Rose, suddenly saw himself as a hard rock addict, and took it upon himself to progressively listen to all ... err.. music? under the hard/metal/death genre. I suspect its for the same reason that at the age of 28, he has begun experimenting with cannabis and woodstock like concerts (free booze dope & sex, folks).
But even as he head-bangs wildly, something inside nags him constantly- what would ma-baba think if they knew?

Another very close buddy, a self-proclaimed misogynist, went through a heart-ache and suddenly began to think of himself as a suave lady-killer. He began socializing, turned into quite a party animal, and was thronged by women of all ages who promptly fell in love with him (women love misogynists). Unfortunately, he is still women-shy at heart, and would probably have be shunted to an asylum somewhere if I weren't there to save his neck.

Another friend, who was very much a Saas-Bahu lover, suddenly began to believe herself a cultured intellectual, and made a project of going to see all the famous plays that were going around in her city. Sadly, a conversation with her made it very clear that she couldn't make head or tail of what the plays meant, and was for most parts bored. But she still goes. It's how she sees herself, see.

An inflated self-perception can take you higher than you were ever destined to go (I cleared CS, didn't I?). A deflated one might hold you back your whole life. A wrong one, however, just keeps you miserable, directionless, and continuously at odds with your real self.

Or, in my case, very very wet.


PS- my apologies to the aforementioned friends , who I know will recognize themselves and be vehement in their disagreement of my analysis. You guys are probably right. It's time I stopped seeing myself as a scholar of the human nature.


Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

One Afternoon at the Seminar

To escape the monster's black jamun mood , I rushed into joining a 15 day seminar, but this was truly a case of running out of the frying pan and into the fire. Its a miracle I managed to come out with my sanity intact, (ok, whatever little i had in the first place). There were 42 sessions, and each was a serious contender for the most boring two hours of my life. Boring as in desk-crashingly, fist-eatingly, murder-inducingly BORING!

But it had its moments too...

One sleepy post lunch session, the faculty, who was a very learned man in his owned field (please don't ask what, I dozed through all the introductions), a young balding, unsmiling goat, literally shot into the hall and without any opening words, any greetings, any acknowledgment that the 34 of us were there, he began to bark out of his notes. We stared at him in mute horror, his focused energy so completely at odds with our state of stupor, Finally after a quarter hour of this horror, someone's prayers must have payed off, because the faculty, Mr. Sipani, suddenly shot out his seat (he tended to move like a ricocheting bullet) and shot towards the white-board.

The white-board happened to hidden by the projector screen, the roller being just above the board. So, in a blast of energy Mr. Sipani released the projector screen, which rolled up so fast that the roller was knocked out of its fixing at one end. The unfixed end happily oscillated a full 180 degrees and hit the switchboard on the wall, next to the white board. A blinding flash of sparks,and off went all the tube-lights in the hall.


We held our breaths in stunned semi-darkness, but the roller wasn't done in its path of destruction. It pendulummed right back and hit the white board this time, smashing its frame and blowing it off fixture at one end.

Both the roller and the board had finished oscillating by the time we figured out what had happened, and once we did, most of us fell to the floor laughing, tears streaming down our faces... Mr. Sipani was taken aback for an instant, but he springed back and barked at us "ENOUGH!". Then, to our unanimous surprise, he began writing on the ruinied and hanging whiteboard. But that aura of seriousness and terror had fled the class. Mr. Sipani had lost his audience.

He had his revenge though... At the end of the class, the big freak asked to see the attendance sheet that had been passed around for our signatures, read out all our names, and promised to block the certificates of the 9 people who had taken proxy, and all those who had helped them with it.

Do tell me if you liked the diagrams.

Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

Benjy Button- Curiously Deja Vu

Ofcourse it was a beautiful movie. And of course Brad Pitt was stunningly nuanced in his portrayal of a man whose body ages in reverse. But throughout The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the one name that kept flashing in my mind like a siren was - FORREST GUMP- FORREST GUMP-FORREST GUMP...

The similarities are obvious. Benjamin, like Forrest, grows up ( or is it down?) in a transient environment, an inn in one case and an old age home in the other. Both have mothers (adopted in BB's case) who love them fiercely. Both go to a war and both look death in the eye and survive. Both fall in love with a childhood friend, and both have to wait a lifetime for that love to be fulfilled. Death is a familiar and friendly presence in both movies, and both movies use a motif (a hummingbird in one movie, a floating feather in another) to tell the story.

The comparison is natural. And its also a bit sad, because Benjamin per se is a lovely movie. But if you want to make a movie in the Forrest Gump genre Mr. Fincher, it had better be as good as Forrest Gump. And cute as he is, Brad Pitt is NOT Tom Hanks

The good part? Cate Blanchett's very graceful body-work, and the fact that Pitt actually gets hotter as the movie progresses.

Ps.. People, if you wanted a real review, it might be a good idea to visit Shubhojit..

Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

A Spot of Self-indulgence

I’ve been Tagged!!! Till recently I had no idea what that meant, but I know now. It means I have to write 25 things about myself because some veilla bloke wants me to. Now I’m not about to pass up this chance to inflict a meaninglessly self-indulgent, boring, and uninspired post on the rest of you, so here are 25 things that I am… (this style of giving myself bizarre titles was shamelessly stolen from Quaint Murmur, who does a much better job of them in her very lovely blog)

Addicted freezer wall ice scraper & eater

Weird people cultivator

Bedroom wall mural artist

Baby observer

Useless stuff shopper

Parties & weddings dreader

Almirah & study table agent of chaos

Dog fearer

Tattoo & Body Art aficionado

Non-fiction literature avoider

Irreligious. Heathenish, even

Blog readership poacher

A closet nudist

A drinks-to-be-cool person who secretly abhors the taste of alcohol

Homo-philiac

Firebrand anti-male chauvinist

Hard rock- phobic

Tone-deaf sing-alonger

Bus-drama spectator

Teddy bear lover

Falling hair counter

Funny dancer

Food adorer

Procrastinator who never finishes her assignments. Ever.

Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

One Sure Way

…to ruin a breezy sun-kissed spring morning is to open the local section of your morning paper, and come upon a report about a man who killed his two daughters, hacked their bodies into small pieces, and went on to stew them. This is when suspicious neighbours set the police on him, thus preventing him from proceeding with what I assume was his dinner.
Sheeesh! I can’t believe I pay to read this stuff!

On a happier note, after spending the first half of my birthday in a nervous fever, I finally got my result (ICSI final), and boy did I kick SOME BUTT!!! At last I am a Company Secretary.
Such glad tidings, however, have completely miffed my boss, the Monster, who seems to have been waiting to gloat at my failure, and to affirm his conviction that of course girls have less brains than his pet dog. Having been robbed of this opportunity, he wears a face as black and as sour as jamun, and tells anyone who would listen- “The exams were really much tougher in my time, only the very best got through. These days anybody can make it through CS. Anybody.”
Yeah, well, you can’t have everything…





Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there! 

Thumkas at Dusk

My friend Happy has recently had a close encounter of the third kind. At a wedding, he found a eunuch being ostracized by everyone, and being the wonderful human being that he is, Appy not only stood up for the person, but also danced with him on the dance floor. I read about this in his blog, where he refers to the person not as a eunuch but as a transgender (Happy is nothing if not politically correct, although he is not as observant in regard to biological accuracy.)

Albeit on a much more mundane plane, I too had an interesting encounter on my way home from office last Saturday, when a group of four young prostitutes got on my bus. How do I know they were prostitutes? Well, for one thing, that’s exactly what they were calling each other (rand, not prostitute).For another, one of them kept grabbing & lunging at another one’s breasts, amidst raucous laughter and unrepeatable obscenities from the other two, Then there were these glittery bindi-like things they were wearing all over their faces…

In all of my two and a half decades, I’ve never really seen a prostitute up close. I had imagined them, from various literary sources, to look old and weary, half-eaten by diseases and by the wickedness of their world. But these girls were young, quite healthy, and if I ignored the horribly gaudy make-up, two of them were rather pretty. And here I was, sitting in the same bus as them. Boy was I thrilled! My age-old wish had finally come true.

Once I got used to all the noise they were making, I began to notice the reactions of all the other passengers. Two middle aged ladies sat with faces so frosty that I involuntarily drew my jacket up close. The gentlemen too kept their eyes averted, but sneaked a glance or two occasionally. A young office-going girl next to me shrank physically in her seat, trying her best not to attract their attention. The bus driver kept up a lively flirtation with them, smacking them with the back of his hand, and getting thumkas in return. The conductor, however, was not so indulgent. He kept grinding his teeth and threatening to have them thrown off the bus. The offending party, however, was not a bit intimidated. When the conductor demanded they pay their fare, they sang back at him “raat ko ghar aake kiraya le jaaiyo” (Come get your fare from us tonight)
As the bus approached my stop, I got up to go to the door. The girls, standing very near me, obviously thought I was vacating my seat for them. This brought on a volley of loud and happy approvals, “Thanku! Thanku! Thanku!!”, and one of the girls gave me a thumka on the hip, while the others blew kisses at me. I beamed back at them, but I don’t think they could tell (my face was covered and I was wearing shades).

As I walked towards the connecting bus, my head was still whirling. I had been thumka-ed and air-kissed by a bunch of sex workers. Not bad for one day!

Ps- Anik claims they were probably not prostitutes, as prostitutes rarely drew so much attention to themselves in public places. I say that’s exactly what they were, young prostitutes going out to a movie on a Saturday afternoon, showing the world a finger for what it thought of them. You decide and tell me what you think.


Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

A Silent Explosion

This is what Didi and Soumik-da have been up to all winter. I thought I'd share the joyeous fruits of their labour with you.

Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

A Weekend Full of Cinema

What can be more tedious than to have to come to office after a long looong holiday? The answer to that is- Having to go to gym after a long looong holiday. Anyway the l.l.h. is finally over and Anik is gone and I'm back at my desk, doing the most tedious job of all... answering 15 different variations of the question "What did you guys do?" (We joined the Ram Sene and beat up other couples, especially if they were irritatingly dressed and insisited on speaking bad 'cool' english).

Apart from that, we watched a lot of movies, some of which had been on my wishlist for a long time. The movies were (in the order we watched them in) :

1. Doshor (Rituporno Ghosh) - We couldn't figure out what the director was trying to say, what his message was, and why indeed he made the movie in the first place.The only saving grace was Ritu-di's presentation, which is soothing to the eye, and Konkona's intelligent acting. Otherwise an irritating movie.

2. Dil Kabaddi( Anil Sharma)- This movie has its moments. But the trouble is, if you try to mix a sex comedy with aantlami, the result is generally acidity. Hackneyed plot. Well-worn treatment, sad acting, low grade comedy.
3. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)- Appy told me this was one of the scariest movies he has seen( and coming from a gore connoisseur, that’s something) , AND HE IS RIGHT! All its scariness comes from the sheer evilness of the Joker. Hats off to Heath Ledger. Villainy doesn’t get better than this.

4.Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)-This is the most beautiful movie of the lot. It’s sparkling in beauty and intelligence and laughter. The story is as heartwarming as the cinematography is stunning. A very adorable movie (in Bokom’s words – nongra rokom-er bhalo- dirty good). Thank you Appy for this one.

5.There's Something About Mary-This is a funny movie, but most of the humour is of the toilet variety, loud and crass.The story too is inane. The one thing that stays with you is Cameron Diaz, very young, very fresh, very beautiful. It’s good timepass as long as you don’t try to involve your brain too much.

6.A Wednesday( Neeraj Pandey)- Another let-down. While the story is very un-hackneyed and is told in quite a wrinkle-less manner, the movie as a whole is full of tired clichés. The same honest cop brutal cop inefficient cop routine, the very unreal conversations, and the Commissioner’s conference room which seems to have been taken straight out of a Hollywood movie. As a thriller, it falls way short of brilliant. The only saving grace is Naseer’s and Kher’s acting.
I’m currently reading Maximum City – Bombay Lost and Found, by Suketu Mehta. Hope to post you on that very soon. Till then, take care.


Amritorupa Kanjilal also writes at Rivers I Have Known: Books, Reviews, and More. Please visit her there!  

The Silver Lining

Here in Jaipur, the Divine Army goons have announced their intention to force unmarried couples who are seen together on Valentine's Day to marry on the spot, then and there.

So, to save an ocean of expenses, planning, harassment, anxiety and time, Anik and I have decided to walk hand in hand all over the city on that day, and if we see any ram/shiv/vishnu/ bramha sainiks, we are going to lock lips more violently than dry pigs who suddenly discover mud pies.

I was going to write about Dev D which I loved so completely, but Shubhajit has beaten me to it,and I can't say it better than he can, so please take a look at his review.

Have a safe Valentine people (remember when the only festival which was dangerous enough for people to be wished safety was Diwali?) See you on Tuesday.

How To Sleep With Someone Else's Wife And Get Away With It.

My friend Sid has an interesting pursuit these days. He is trying to lasso a married acquaintance. The lady in question is thirty, has a six year old child, and her husband lives in Belgium. She became friends with Sid through a professional contact, and gradually it became obvious that she was open to the idea of something a little more than friendship. Man, Sid thought he had really hit the jackpot, but sadly, even after months of going out for dinner and outings together, my buddy has gotten as close to his boudi’s bedroom as Jennifer Aniston has gotten to become Angelina Jolie’s best f.r.i.e.n.d.

What is he doing wrong, Sid asked me, and what can he do to get some action before she hits menopause? So here is my advice to him, and to anyone else who is secretly interested in sleeping with a married lady and not getting in trouble:-

1. Be young and have a good body.

2. Be funny and intelligent. Be good company.

3. Show her that you care for her and are interested in her for who she is, rather than the sex that she might have with you eventually.

4. On the other hand, don’t make her think you are madly in love. This will frighten her because she’ll think you might do anything, even confront her husband.

5. So if she asks “Will you forget me after my husband is back and I can’t see you anymore?” , say “ How can I ever forget you sweetheart? Life will be difficult without you, but I’ll have to go on. I’ll bear even this torture for you.”

6. Don’t boast about any achievements to anybody. I know this is tempting, but remember, your safety and hers lies in total secrecy. Moreover, she’ll trust you better if she knows you won’t tell anybody.

7. Don’t frequent her house. You don’t want the neighbors to get suspicious and talk to her family.

8. Don’t underestimate the kid. Don’t display any affections in front of her. You don’t want her to tell her Daddy over the phone “ Sid uncle kissed me today and he also kissed Mommy” or “ Sid uncle and Mommy played carrom all night and the door was closed”

9. Do NOT fall in love with her no matter what happens. If you fall in love, man you are screwed worse than a highway whore.

10. And last, be prepared for nemesis. One day, you are going to be middle aged and married and your wife is going to run off with a younger man (and maybe with all your savings too). You can’t escape your Karma dude.

Road Rage

This morning Soni ji gives me his phone and asks me if I can make out why it isn't working. The keypad is locked. I unlock it and give it back to him.

Soni ji swerves the auto to a dangerous standstill. " You can fix this in a minute??! And it doesn't cost money?!!!!"

It turns out that every time his keypad gets locked accidentally, Soni ji has to take it to a cellphone mechanic, who keeps it for three hours, makes a show of fiddling on his computer, and bills Soni ji for 300 bucks. Apperantly, this has happened thrice.

Soni ji, moustache quivering with rage, yells in my face, "Uss marammat wale ki to mai marammat karta hun!! Saala mujhe ch*****a banata hai! MUJHE!!"
Long gap, then "Sorry Beta, thanks"

I'm sorry too, Soni ji. It takes a lot of thugs to make up a world. Don't let it get to you.

Anikdotes- Pink Hearts, Red Faces

My boyfriend is coming to Jaipur on the 13th of February to spend a couple of days with me. Now, our recent experience tells me that if you are an average person, your reaction to this would be “Oh my god! He’s coming all this way to spend Valentine’s Day with you!! That is so romantic!!!”

Knowing that several of our common and individual friends look into my blog now and then, I’d like to use this space to make a declaration – Anik is NOT visiting me because it is Valentine’s Day. The reason he is coming on that particular day could mean anything- it’s a second Saturday (meaning no office for me); he got a cheap air-ticket on that day (Friday the 13th you see); the week after is my birthday; the week before is our anniversary; its been three months since we’ve met- anything, anything but Valentines Day.

Why is it so important for you to know this? Because ever since he unwittingly booked a flight on that fateful day, Anik’s life has turned into a mortification. You see, Valentine’s Day is totally out of his scheme of things and he would rather turn celibate and abstinent than have it thought of him that he is shallow, silly, nyaka, sissy, materialistic, moronic, and wannabe enough to believe in something as meaningless as Valentine. Anik is NOT a Valentine- believer any more than he is an adulterer or a wife-beater.

(My apologies to all the romantic gooey eyed readers who adore the concept of Valentine’s Day. The above rant is entirely our personal opinion that had to be made public in order to preserve our reputation as mean grumpy cynics)

And while we are at it, happy first, buddy.

Ps- Hasi, please do not post reminiscences of what Anik used to do on Valentine’s days before he met me.

Auto Wisdom

Soni ji's pearl of wisdom to me this morning- " Beta dekh, jo light teri kismat me likha hai uspe to tujhe rukna hi parega. Kya light ko kosegi kya khud ko kosegi"

( If a red traffic signal is written in your destiny, you'll have to stop at it, no matter what. You can't blame the signal, and you cant blame yourself)

A Word of Warning

I know this is a bit late in the day to tell you this, but here's another reason you might not want to watch Slumdog Millionaire. There is one scene in which the little kid protagonist jumps from a hole into a pool of liquified human shit because he has been locked in the toilet. Then he clambers out covered head to toe in shit and runs through a crowd, smearing everybody with glory. (I would have put up a picture, but mustard yellow is clashing awfully with fuschia.)

The above scene is guaranteed to make you retch at all subsequent meals for a week. However this does not apply to you if you are Pasha, in which case it is probably the most beautiful cinematograpic experience of your life.

On the bright side, this is possibly the first time that third world excrement is going to be worshipped by the US of A (at the Oscars i mean). It's usually the other way around, no?