Imagine after a lifetime of reading and loving Shakespeare, you come across something as ill-written as this!
How bad could it be? you ask.
So bad thatImagine after a lifetime of reading and loving Shakespeare, you come across something as ill-written as this!
How bad could it be? you ask.
So bad that for the first time in 13 years that I have spent reading Shakespeare, I needed to read a Charles and Mary Lamb version to understand the entire point of the whole story.
It's like Shakespeare was on a wrong kind of high on some really bad stuff. The soliloquys are pathetically boring. There's no end to how crude this play is and you sort of see why certain people did criticise the low standards of Jacobean comedies when you read this. Even Ariel fails to make you laugh.
In a nutshell, combine As You Like It, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream in a truly bad way and you get this stupid, mindless play that has no redeeming qualities except for the name of the playwright perhaps....more
I felt a little cheated by the average reviews I've had about this anthology but then, I suppose poetry as an art is beyond the comprehension of most I felt a little cheated by the average reviews I've had about this anthology but then, I suppose poetry as an art is beyond the comprehension of most these days, be it people who claim to be literature lovers or the wannabe poets that flood the world today.
One of the most ridiculous arguments I've heard against this anthology, therefore, is "Perhaps because I am not Kashmiri, I didn't understand much of it." Stuff and nonsense of course!
I didn't have to survive a concentration camp or the Blitz to enjoy Anne Frank. I didn't have belong to the génération perdue to relate to their feelings of dismay about having had their past, present and future gambled away by their seniors for a few acres of land. You don't have to walk around the War torn Europe to enjoy Eliot's The Waste Land or go through the horrors of Sarajevo and the aftermath of Bashir's assassination to enjoy movies like Welcome to Sarajevo, Where do we go now? and Waltz with Bashir.
So, I'll be damned if you need to be Kashmiri to understand that this exactly what Agha Shahid Ali is doing here, with this anthology!
The best part about this, much like the aforementioned Eliot poem, is the layers it has. The purpose of these layers is not to say that you're going to understand nothing if you don't know Urdu ghazals or poetry of Bahadur Shah Zafar, but rather to make the same point Eliot also tries to make in The Waste Land with the intermittent peppering of Shakespeare with Greek mythology and words right out of several Upnishads in What the Thunder Said.
And the point is this:The fragments of poetry, of accidental transmissions of Rafi songs on the All India Radio, the dialogues from Shakespearean plays don't mean anything. They are not metaphors for anything at all. At least not all the time. What's significant is all the fragments make sense in the bigger picture. Each fragment may have had an individual voice or story but it is essentially the part of the same tale: the tale of fragmented culture and memory in an insurgency torn erstwhile rich state.
Shahid Ali's poetry reflects the socio-political chaos of Kashmir, the fear, the fragmentation of culture due to the instability and terrorism and AFSPA and the true meaning of art in a place where everything else -history, material memory, culture, even people of different faiths and communities- lies fragmented.
That his allusions and references are clever or unfathomable, that there must be a hidden meaning behind all he says is like separating a single strand of thread from a silk scarf.
So, if you're reading this review and have read this anthology already, time to read it again with a fresh perspective. Ideally, also keep by a copy of The Waste Land and you'll see what a clever thing it was to base it all on similar lines in a similar situation. Agha Shahid Ali is easily the most well read poet of his times and he's one up on Eliot because of just how marvellously lyrical he is in comparison.
As for my wonderful little Brother, who gave this to me, it's now time I gave you the one thing I keep comparing this to. So, wait for it and don't rush and buy it yourself!...more
I must say, after all the weird incest-filled stories, that made me cringe, I had given up on Murakami already. Then, I stumbled upon this very serendI must say, after all the weird incest-filled stories, that made me cringe, I had given up on Murakami already. Then, I stumbled upon this very serendipitously on the very week of my birthday.
Four days before it(today), after feeling that nothing could possibly lift me out of the rotten mood I am in, and the absolute sense of helplessness I feel about getting another year older, I pick this up on a bus ride home and I am pleasantly surprised and believe that this book CHOSE me, much like the wand chooses the wizard.
Half an hour and forty pages later, suddenly I feel like I was the waitress and Murakami was the enigmatic hotel owner and something about that analogy cheers me up instantly.
No, not your subtly moist eyes and tears that could be waved away with the back of a hand. I wept! As a person of history, as someoTwo words: I wept!
No, not your subtly moist eyes and tears that could be waved away with the back of a hand. I wept! As a person of history, as someone who knows what follows this and as someone who can almost see India today as a butterfly effect of this one terrible tragedy in the past, I wept so hard, that it's something I have only felt once before while reading Oedipus Rex and I fear that even then, it wasn't this strong!
Things in this play hold true even today, especially with respect to the last Prime Minister and this one and much like someone on the streets of Delhi, when Dara was paraded through as a prisoner, I have paused every two seconds to just let the grief flood out.
Must read! This is beautiful. You even learn to forgive the excess of verse....more
**spoiler alert** Don't get me wrong: I loved this book! To pieces! And I've never wanted to give something I liked so much 5 stars but more than all **spoiler alert** Don't get me wrong: I loved this book! To pieces! And I've never wanted to give something I liked so much 5 stars but more than all else, I wanted it to break my heart-and it didn't!
Yes, tragedy strikes. Yes, a main character you grow up with dies but it isn't as heartbreaking as it should have been. Honestly, I expected to pause, shut the book and bury my face into a pillow to weep if either Marie-Laure or Werner died. One does and I still didn't quite feel it. Maybe it will grow on me because this happens only towards the end of the book but so far, I haven't felt the urge to so, maybe four stars for now and five only if the death haunts me.
Now my favourite part of the book: I have read SO many books on Holocaust. I had a complete "Holocaust" phase as a 20 year old. And yet despite all the Nazi bashing, the sorrow and grief of those who suffered the war, the eventual German guilt and what-not, not a single one I read so far quite talked about how the erstwhile Nazi soldiers felt when they did something that they were told was "right" when every cell in their body screamed "wrong." Nazi soldiers are always described as steel-hearted, robotic, mechanical beings with an emotional range smaller than a teaspoon. And yet, they were humans just like the rest of us. Not all of them went willingly to the war. Not everyone approved of the entropy. Not everyone felt Germany was doing a "glorious" job of bringing order to the chaos in civilisation. That's a balanced perspective that others quite forgot to include in their desperation to show how horrible the Nazis were.
I think every book has a hero and his nemesis but only very few books show that the lines between the two are very blurred. It isn't always black or white. Heroes have splotches of black and villians have streaks of white, too, sometimes. That's how the world is, too. And maybe if books are more likely to show this, that would minimise a little more bitterness at least within some of us towards others....more
Talk about tolerance: There are quite a few things you'll have to tolerate about this book if you follow Shashi Tharoor as avidly as I do, reading almTalk about tolerance: There are quite a few things you'll have to tolerate about this book if you follow Shashi Tharoor as avidly as I do, reading almost every column he writes, hanging on to every word he utters in speeches and debates even in the Lok Sabha and not just Lit Fests and Oxford Union:
1. He repeats himself. Quite a lot really. There are thoughts, words and entire passages out of editorials and his previous books.
2. He might get a few facts on Hinduism, more specifically Indus Valley and their religion mixed up.
3. Despite the remarkable lucidity of his prose, there are places in the book where you'll be unable to move further without taking days on an end to reflect on things you've read and then other ones where you'd be unable to keep it down despite your eyelids, your cornea, your retina and even your very last lash aching in protest.
In Dr Tharoor's Defence Though: 1. Agreed repetition can get on your nerves but if the repetition in question is making a point, even as a much heard anecdote, an Upnishadic story or an age old wisdom you probably were born knowing, it is not just forgivable, it is actually welcome. The best books in social sciences and in archaeology and social anthropology were written with some amount of repetition involved even if it was done so with the aim of propounding an anti thesis.
2. The book is on Hinduism so, it becomes necessary to quote points made by other (not so accurate) archaeologists even if they are wrong. Tharoor might have belonged to their school of thought and like many others, including some eminent Indian historians, may have never bothered with updating himself on the latest research finds on the topic.
3. Isn't it the mark of a good book to make you stop and reflect on things? Doesn't that mean the book was food for the brain instead of something meant solely for entertaining? Isn't that the precise kind of thing that distinguishes a good book from say a Katrina Kaif Item Number?
That's why 4 stars because the merits of this book exceed its really-not-so-significant points of criticism. I think the one thing that makes Tharoor's books an absolute delight for me is that reading him reforms you as a reader. It wakes you up like the first cup of coffee in the morning and it makes you more sensitive to what's going on and around you beyond what any newspaper editorial or TED talk would.
Reading Tharoor is like getting educated and entertaining in perfect portions. His non fictional books don't compare at all with any other non fiction writer and really only compete with his own previous or subsequent books.
You will have to be extremely obstinate like the proverbial toad (that finds a mention in this book) who believes his pond is the whole world, to not take in the facts from this book and be focussing only on its few shortcomings. That, or you'd have to be egotistically foolish to not take from it and focus more on saying negative things without seeing the whole point the man is trying to make.
Sorry pseudo-fans, who call themselves something crass like "Tharoorians" but I've been reading him since he was at the UN and from before he was being read to be thought of as "cool." Tharoor has always been cool and you don't read him to learn a few phrases that you can quote over coffee to have people fawn over you. You read him to understand things that have either been glossed over by political correctness or just never spoken of because "taking offence is the new game." You read him to open your mind. You read him to form your opinion about the Truth and then decide whether you'll describe her as an ugly, old, malodorous woman or someone who's young and beautiful.
Regardless of your personal hate or love for the writer and his views though, read this book if you identify yourself as a Hindu. Read this book to understand Hinduism beyond the purview of Hindu fundamentalism. Read this if you're a student of history and archaeology, politics and society or simply because you want to clear your Civil Services exams. Read it intelligently for whether you spend hours, days or nearly half a month like me, you'll come out a more sensible person....more
I've come to a point in life where I don't know with JK Rowling anymore. I grew up as a kid addicted to the Harry Potter world and then came the disasI've come to a point in life where I don't know with JK Rowling anymore. I grew up as a kid addicted to the Harry Potter world and then came the disastrous thing that most serious Potterheads cringe to mention: The Cursed Child, which was little better than fanfiction.
I must admit when Fantastic Beasts Part I was released, I breathed a sigh of relief. Just when everyone was accusing Rowling of being that writer who had released her magnum opus and then realised nothing else she ever wrote was ever going to match it, the woman shut everyone up with the screenplay. And then came this: something that made me think all the critics were right!
She is an author who knows she can't get better than Harry Potter and now she's banking upon it for more stories, prequels that will put Ekta Kapoor to shame and is-he-dead-is-he-alive sequences that surpass even the Indian daily soaps.
3 stars because I finished this in 2 hours at the most even though I was originally just planning to flip through it casually and sleep. Only 3 stars however because I was so excited about Nagini and Dumbledore appearing here but it didn't meet any of my expectations....more
This Review contains: 1. A book loving archaeologist 2. An Anthropologist-in-making 3. A Medieval Historian 4. An Anthropologist-turned-writer
Year 2009This Review contains: 1. A book loving archaeologist 2. An Anthropologist-in-making 3. A Medieval Historian 4. An Anthropologist-turned-writer
Year 2009, Solan, Himachal Pradesh A girl, enamoured with books, finds herself on a second hand book stall at a trade fair and picks up a slightly mouldy, rain drenched book by a famous author, known for his travelogues and novels.
Year 2018, also in Solan The same girl, now an archaeologist, is trying to teach Object Analysis to a rather disinterested young anthropologist-in-making, who is casually glancing through the various traditional objects she is showing him, until she says the magic word: Trade Route between India and Egypt
Thus begins a project (still ongoing after months of research) despite the hindrances of conferences and classes, visa applications and university applications and the two of them find themselves unnaturally observant of people's wrists.
Year 2018, Cambridge, England On her last evening in town, after a long tiring archaeological conference, our archaeologist finds herself on the dinner table with the family she has been staying with. They are to have another guest tonight. A Harvard historian who is working on some manuscripts from Egypt. She isn't very interested because her mind is still racing upstairs about what all she needs to finish packing, how will she head to the train station in the morning and whether or not she'd get to see Platform 9 and 3/4 (of all the things) on Kings Cross Station the following day. All this until the historian actually turns up and joins them on the dinner table.
Question: What are the odds that you're an archaeologist, researching trade routes between Egypt and India and just randomly you find yourself on a dinner table with an Egyptian, who just happens to be a historian, and who is in Cambridge, of all the Godforsaken places in the world, because she's looking at Cairo Genizah manuscripts? And while you casually mention your own project back home, she points out that, well, it's exactly what she's here for. That there are letters in the collection she's going to work with that deal with exactly what you're looking for. And it doesn't end here: that book you rescued in 2009? That's actually what got her started, too because you know what? That author was actually an anthropologist to begin with, and not only did his doctoral thesis talk about Cairo Genizah, that mouldy old book you bought for 10 rupees back home is actually all about it, too!
*Insert appropriate sound for comprehension suddenly dawning on the poor archaeologist !!!!!*
I feel now that my entire life was leading upto reading this one book I always had in my bookshelf. It's like my life is a product of the Butterfly Effect that picking up this book produced.
Who knew that Amitav Ghosh, my mother and grandmother's beloved writer of The Glass Palace , whose travelogues I had to read for my second Master's Degree in Literature, was actually an Anthropologist? Who knew that he went to Oxford, much like me, way before I did? Who knew that an Oxon from India would reach out to another Oxon from India across time to aid her with her project!
Who knew? Who could have ever known?
Now all that serendipity aside, about the book:
Should you, random-reader-who-came-here-for-a-review, read it even if you're not an archaeologist, an anthropologist or a historian? My answer is yes! If not for the history, the etymology of so many words we use today, or for the fascinating story of Ben Yiju, read it just to get a sneak peek into the head of a researcher. Read it to find out what it's like being a foreigner in a country that you have a shared past with. Or just read it to find out how where there's nothing today, there were close cultural and social ties for 4500 years, that were eventually severed by colonialism.
There's so much to take from this book: Anecdotes, stories but above all, the essence of what binds humans with each other regardless of how far away they are from you in time and space. This book is a true delight, whose occasionally slow pace does nothing to the powerful impact it will have on you when you're done. Read it intelligently. Read it because you want to experience so much more than history. Read it well but read it. You won't be disappointed!...more
A psychological roller coaster ride like Robert Browning's pA Victorian version of Crime and Punishment.
Wilde's love letter to art à l' Aristotle.
A psychological roller coaster ride like Robert Browning's poems.
The witty words that Wildean charm is made of.
Honestly, you can take what appeals to you the most from this incredible little book. There are no morals it preaches except the ones that you already believe in and no warnings it issues except that the excess of anything is bad.
For me it was quite like the conversation I had in January with a young student of mine, where I advised him to aim to be a man of substance in an age where people obsess over physical beauty.
In a sentence, therefore, "It is the spectator, and not life that [this book] really mirrors."...more
A Word of Caution: If you have a brother you love, or are generally close to your siblings, don't read this when they are away from you because there'A Word of Caution: If you have a brother you love, or are generally close to your siblings, don't read this when they are away from you because there's a soliloquy here that will make you weep- literally pebble sized tears- as you read it!
Antigone, who becomes a favourite in Oedipus at Colonus as the lovely, dutiful daughter, here chooses to forego a second chance at life, a future with luxuries after all the hardships she's faced and the prospect of marriage to the love of her life : all because she is " A Fool! And a better sister."
To love your brother like Antigone loves hers and to give up your life just for the sake of giving him a decent burial: it's heart-breaking and yet heart-warming all at once.
I think I'll forever be haunted by the words which go somewhat on the lines of: "I'd never have done this for a husband or a child of mine. For after a husband's death, I would have married another and after a child's, I'd have borne another from a man. But never could I have another brother in the place of the one I lost."
Okay, that's it! I will stop reviewing and curl up in bed missing my own brother, now, trying not to cry....more
Let's get one thing straight: Nothing after Oedipus Rex is half as heart-breaking. If at all, it's a little heart warming, especially this play which Let's get one thing straight: Nothing after Oedipus Rex is half as heart-breaking. If at all, it's a little heart warming, especially this play which makes one believe that even ill fated people come to a peaceful end at long last. It's not exactly the kind of play that tugs at your emotional heartstrings like its prequel. It just makes you feel better, the perfect balm to the heart-breaking mess that Oedipus Rex leaves you with and so, suddenly after a year, I feel better because poor Oedipus found comfort at long last....more
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Why quoting Keats, you ask me? Here's why:
You know that book you always knew of but never read? Not because you didn't want to or didn't find it, no, but because you just simply forgot about it every time you went book shopping or ordered books on Amazon? And then, along comes someone who not just asks you whether you've read it but actually puts it into your hands, gently, quietly, in the middle of work, without anybody noticing that's what you swapped?
That book, for me, is The Blue Umbrella. Much like Binya, it came to me gently, in a picnic place of sorts (except we were there for the love of archaeology) and in exchange of Rumi. And never has a book made me happier the same way!
It is so simple, so sweet, much like a periwinkle flower you find while walking in the woods, something so wholly unassuming but so winsome you can't help love it. Hence, nothing but Keats' wonderfully appropriate words come to my mind. This book is a thing of beauty. Having read it in just 20 odd minutes on the morning before Christmas, is a joy forever. And the simple beauty of the story will never ever pass into nothingness.
So, go pick it up. Read it to know why I am just talking in fluffy enigmas here. You can never know what I mean if you don't.
Oh and one more thing: Pass it on so that it becomes everyone's umbrella!...more
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