The Dystopian Uncertainty Principle

An insight into Chapter 4 of the book The Discovery of India authored by the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru when he was lodged at the Ahmadnagar Fort Prison Camp from 9 August 1942 to 28 March 1945. Incidentally, the concerned Chapter is titled, The Discovery of India. It is more than twenty months since we were brought here, more than twenty months of my ninth term of imprisonment. The new moon, a shimmering crescent in the darkening sky, greeted us on our arrival here.  The moon, ever a companion to me in prison, has grown more friendly with a closer acquaintance, a reminder of the loveliness of this world, of the waxing and waning of life, of light following darkness, of death and resurrection following each other in interminable succession.  ~Jawaharlal Nehru, Ahmadnagar Fort, 13th April 1944 The main context of the chapter is that it seeks to discover Indian history from the beginning of civilization in the subcontinent area, i.e. the Indus V...

7.2/10 IMDb 86% Rotten Tomatoes If you liked Leila, you will love this. Just don't watch it alone at night, will give you the creeps. ******************************************************************************************************* 12:59 am 27/8/18 Is Netflix’s next big Indian drama ‘Ghoul’ just a supernatural thriller or an extension of the sectarian/divided/dystopian view of India? In a drama with ghouls and cults and other supernatural elements, Is the background of a future unsecular, terrified dystopian India (the collective nightmare of India’s liberals), the actual fear this Orwell meets horror feature tv show trying to showcase. Very Orwellian from the beginning, the TV series plays not on fear of ghosts (at least in the beginning) but the fear of an India where, in the name of security and protection, it has lost its roots and is a full-blown totalitarian regime. Phrases like “beloved nation”, “national security” are being thrown in the dozen w...

The Shades of Dickens I got Painted Over I was introduced to ‘The Sparkler of Albion’ as Charles Dickens jokingly referred to himself by David Copperfield. No, I didn’t know the great illusionist, nor did both of us exist in this pulchritudinous world when Dickens was breathing. I am merely referring to his classic, ‘David Copperfield’ which was gifted to me when I was 9, as a substitute for the book I’d actually asked for, ‘101 Magic Tricks’. *Sensing a pattern here*. Well, moving on from what I was reading before that happened, ‘ Shikhari Sambhu ’^, ‘ Suppandi’^ and 101 Fairy Tales (*ewww*) , I was surprised that this whole book contained only one story and realized that the short/children story-reading time was over for me. I remember setting out to read it, in bits and pieces but right from the beginning. Obviously, it didn’t make sense as a complete story back then, but nothing better to do just kept me on it. I have always had that book, and Yes! It did make sense and t...

Very American. Very much New Yorky. Classic Salinger humour yet incredibly tedious and unending. Even though, the principle characters are young adults or are in their late teens, much of the book and story didn't feel relatable. Increasingly snobbish like Salinger's stories,  even more so than 'The Catcher in the Rye", the book feels like it is trying hard to sound intellectual and elite, with an out of the world air of superiority but fails to even scratch the surface. This struggle is quite evident to the reader. To cut short, a very boring read thankfully interjected by classic wit in between although sparsely, which made me laugh out loud in between the pages. This small book also took me around 60-70 odd days to complete and left me exhausted but finally with a sign of relief on completion. For comparison, I recently read Mohsin Hamid's brilliant 2nd Person narrative Novel with the facade of a self-help book, "How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia...

An excerpt-y, opinionated, reflective and other synonym-y book post. (Published in the Indian sub-continent as Riot- A Novel) Disclaimer: This is also a breakaway from the typical or not so typical book reviews or reading guides or the groups of words strung together that you’d find in this blog. This post is written in a bulleted-list kind-of-way, and you can jump to any part. The parts in italics and quotes are directly taken from the book and are © Arcade Publishing , Penguin India and the author . Paperback Cover; Source: Flipkart   // The first time I saw him I didn’t really like him. And I was soon happy I was stuck. There was something about his voice that reached out and drew me in, something that was both inviting and reassuring. I heard his voice, and the only thing I could care about was hearing that voice again.   // “I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that usefulness the last refuge of the unappealing. But even a man of...

Image Source: Facebook Page of 'An Insignificant Man' First things first, Why is a book blog talking about a documentary that was shown as a feature film all over India. Well, this was an experience, as riveting and as stimulating as any thriller/real story/biography or any Book that I've ever read. The documentary or film begins with the incumbent Chief Minister of Delhi, then a political Novice, travelling to meet the family and gather some documentary proof, of a person who had been working as a land officer helping farmers claim their stolen land back from the political mafia, and had been killed as they (Some unknown people, who always seem to escape the law in India) ran the jeep over him again and again, crushing him into little pieces. And, there you have it, was it face-value or was it justice for the unheard, the unknown and the right and honest people that this Ramon Magsaysay award winner wanted?. Well, it was Justice alright, and this is what makes ...

The first and the last time I saw my dinosaur, it was already a convulsive time. I was stranded for the past two months, for most of the time inside a cuboid type room with some colossal number of books, notebooks, rough copies, sample papers and what not. You see, I was preparing for and not in anticipation of that life defining Higher Secondary Board examinations. And in one such day, tired of having sat at the same spot for hours (precisely 3 hours), as I went and stood beside the uncovered windows of that cuboid, I saw it in its two hind legs, moving in an haste and quickly disappearing into a sewage pipe of the Apartment Complex on just the other side of the lane. For about the 1.5 seconds that I saw my Dinosaur, I could vouch that it was Magnificent! A long and thick tail from its posterior and two useless hands just by what I could say was its chest and the entire body resting on two thick hind legs, one could easily say that My Dino looked just like a rabbit sized T-Rex. ...