jayantiblogshere

The brown Sahebs, much as it is a work on fiction, follows a close account of not –so fictitious characters that we know from the Indian independence era. Gandhi is possibly the only one who appears as Gandhi while the rest have their names and characters ever so slightly changed. It is an account of the how the British colonial legacy was deliberately preserved when the reins of power changed from the British – the white Sahebs to the Indians – the Brown Sahebs on 15 th  August 1947. The origin of the ostentatious show of power exhibited by the British was copied by the elite Oxbridge educated Indian politicians in stark contrast the the very ideals of simplicity and austerity that formed the fundamentals of the freedom struggle under Gandhi.  The story revolves around the power brokers in Lutyen's Delhi. When the British left, India's elite helped themselves to the ministerial berths and the perquisites that accompany them. Right from the British built bung...

All that is white is not pure and pristine... White is the colour of  the pristine snow…  But in Bangalore you never really know .. Here white is the colour of the Toxic waste Untreated sewage discharged into the lake. This pristine white foam  that greets  the residents of lake view apartments during their morning walk hides a darker truth--it is the toxic waste . The  foam frothing from the  outlets of the streams that join the Vartur lake in Whitefield, Bangalore  is a result of the water in the lake having high content of ammonia and phosphate and very low dissolved oxygen. Sewage from many parts of the city is released into the lake, leaving it extremely polluted.     The man from Bangalore Municipal Corporation is seen spraying something possibly to quell the foam so that it does not froth and pour over into the bridge. There is only so much he could do .   With Builders encroaching land near t...

Here is a video that is probably gone viral on Facebook and youtube. There is very little you feel like writing  after you see this and reflect ... Sounds rather familiar is'nt it ...

The incessant rains lashing the city of Chennai and its suburbs has left the city paralyzed. And the rains do not seem to abate. With fresh rains predicted in the next 48 hours on the bay of Bengal owing to the formation of another depression one wonders if there is a bigger message hidden within natures fury. Yesterdays  earthquake that measured 7.1 on the Richter scale off the Indian ocean only served to deepen the anxiety. Some say it is the global warming and others say it is the el nino effect. There are others who now claim they predicted this days months even centuries ago. Who knows. The blueprint of how the universe will function has already been laid out and there is nothing human beings can do to change this. It is in times like these that we realize how fragile a foundation our lives are built upon. How much we are dependent on the certainty of a calm predictable ecosystem to cooperate with us to help us achieve our petty achievements an...

A dear friend lost her mother today.  She had been care worn for a couple of months now tending to her ailing mother.  Her mother suffered from brain tumour which had relapsed and had affected her neuro motor abilities in many ways.   For the last few weeks my friend had been oscillating with feelings of pity, anxiety, irritability, guilt  and helplessness at her mother’s condition.   Death, especially of a loved one, someone you have known all your life can be a cathartic experience.    A mother is someone  you grow up seeing as a young person , strong and powerful and then over time as you move on to embrace adulthood and middle age, time catches up and then you watch them slowly grow hunched,  senile,  helpless and old. My friend and I talked.  We were talking after a long time. She told me it had been an emotionally and physically draining phase for her.  But as she spoke, she said she had realized the ...

About a week ago when I started off with this book, there was a cyclonic depression that developed in the Bay of Bengal.  The city of Chennai, about 300 miles from where we live has had an  unprecedented downpour and the city is flooded. The city’s lakes have overflown,  storm water drains have choked and the sewage drains are overflowing, causing the otherwise drought ridden city’s urban infrastructure to crumble down.   The Indian Air force has been summoned to ensure that the casualties are reduced and the city survives the deluge. Relatively speaking Bangalore, experiences its seasons very mildly.  Situated, probably equidistant, from the bay of Bengal and the Arabian sea and elevated at about 360 feet from sea level, the weather here is just beautiful.  We are a country blessed with abundant sunlight and we do not appreciate a sunny day like many other ‘English’ speaking countries do.  The sun, for us, is always scorching hot and makes...

It is one of those rare movies where the actors enact their own life story (in most parts) and as themselves. In real life Geoffrey Kendal playing Tony Cunningham in the movie arrived in India in 1944 along with his wife Laura Liddell, playing Clara Cunningham, and was the Actor – manager of the theatre troupe Shakespearana that toured the length and breadth of India playing mostly Shakespeare plays at palaces of Maharajas, Boarding schools, in local town auditoriums and even in street corners or wherever else they could put together an interested audience who could cover up the costs.  Theatre as a performing art, at all times has never been a very lucrative profession. Some of today’s talented and successful actors try and manage that delicate balance between theatre their first love and its cash rich cousin the movies in order to pay the bills and yet continue to pursue their passion. Struggling with the onslaught of Bollywood allure as well as the...

This is a submission for Thursday photo challenge where the theme for the week is "TREATS" (Candy, Chocolate Bar, Cake, Pie, Ice Cream, Comfort Food,...)

It is the day of Ayudha Pooja. I take my car to the temple for the annual worship of my vehicle that enables me to drive to work and make my living. A coconut, four lemons, a flower garland and two hundred rupee notes is what it takes for me to broker with goddesses of wealth, knowledge and power ( Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga ) to express my gratitude and also throw in my wishes for the future through the priest who has been doing this for my car for five years now. As the priest goes through this ritual children from the nearby huts where construction workers live swarm up around my car. The tractors, that,  later in the day pick up garbage from the streets do their early morning rounds when they arrive to pick up the workers to take them to building construction sites for work.  In the afternoons when their parents are at work the children loiter around the temple. Some of them go to the government school run by the municipality more often than not for the free after...

Tucked away in the second floor at the KR market is the marigold wholesale market. On an ordinary day where tons and tons of marigold and woven over long threads for fresh flower decorations across temples, marraige halls and funeral procession across the city.   This is a post for the Thursday photo challenge where the theme this week is    ORANGE (Fruit, Vegetables, Flowers, Signs, Clothing, Vehicles,...)

The Year of the Runaways - Sunjeev Sahota  ‘ Unputdownable’ could be the apt word to describe the book. It is no thriller. Sunjeev Sahota’s ‘The Year of the Runaways’ is a neatly crafted work on the struggles of migrants desperate to earn a living in the hope of making it big someday in an economically struggling England.  The narrative is so well researched, intricately described and honestly portrayed that it gets difficult to find a fault with the novel. The main reason behind it is simply that it is probably so close to the near truth that it does not read like a fiction. You meander through the heart wrenching poverty of Bihar, the caste politics of small town Punjab, the desperations of families struggling to make a living, the promise of the west as a one stop solution solve all the financial woes and most of all the heart wrenching exploitation of the immigrants, illegal or otherwise who throng Europe, particularly England in search of a bette...

Satin Island - by Tom McCarthy McCarthy’s Satin Island is’nt a book with any kind  of format and structure. It breaks all conventions of what structure a novel would generally follow and probably questions the necessity of a format. To be fair it follows a strict format that reads like a corporate dossier. By the time you are through into a couple of chapters you wonder if this structure is meant to be satirical or if this is a deliberate attempt at conveying something.   Brutally honest, unashamedly ambiguous and written like a bullet point corporate power point presentation, it is the ramblings of a consultant employed by a corporate consulting firm. U – the main protagonist of the novel if you may call him so is an ethnographer -anthropologist  employed by his boss Peymann to help bring in an ethnographers perspective for a massive project they have just won. Throughout the novel U is rambling about perhaps tyring to tell the reader and assembly of his ...

On my book shelf for October are : A Spool of Blue Thread By Anne Tyler The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara A Brief History of Seven killings by  Marlon James The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota Satin Island by  Tom McCarthy    Reviews will follow soon ... Meanwhile  the Man Booker prize itself will be announced on Tuesday the 13th of October. P.S : I happily drive two and a half hours ( both ways) through maddening traffic every weekday , spend hours in my kitchen garden over weekends, dust, clean, dishwash and look forward to doing every bit of monotonous work without complaining. Thank you Audible.