jayantiblogshere

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.

This is a submission for the Photo theme for Thursday where the theme for this week is NIGHT" (Dark, Low Light, Twilight, Evening, Shadows, Long Exposure, City Lights,...)

Basavanagudi  walk Starting at the foot steps at the famous big bull temple in Basavanagudi the Basavanagudi Darshan Walk was a walk into the almost 500 year old history of the city that has now burst and expanded way beyond it seams for what was conceived by its then Cheftain Kempe Gowda. Ancient Clock tower built around 1537  With four clock towers connected by a mud wall that ran across marking the city boundaries legend had it that if the city expanded beyond the boundaries great misfortune will fall upon the settlement. Bangalore city - dubbed the silicon valley of the east ironically seems to have been blessed with fortune much to the disdain of the ancient legend. But Mansoor Ali our Tour guide conducting the walk thinks otherwise. Perhaps the city's mounting garbage problems, nearly  poisoned water bodies the maddening urban chaos are warning signals for the misfortune that awaits the city in the no so distant future, he says....

Catch ‘em young At the stroke of ten my door bell rings. I am not even half awake .  After all it was a Sunday. Alas !!! Vedant, James, Jessy and Shreya are at the door letting me know they are ready for the day.  That is when I remember and  hurriedly gulp my Sunday breakfast, slurp my tea conscious of the fact that I am keeping my  eco-warriors waiting. We have been a team for a few months now.  We pick up plastic, water the plants, plant seeds  and do whatever else that needs to be done to enrich the soil around the little patches of land left in our apartment.   The gardener appointed by the apartment management considered our company a  nuisance. We  persuaded him to stop growing the typical ornamental crotons  that are mindlessly grown in all apartment landscapes so that we could plants trees, shrubs, herbs and vegetables. He is still not a convert but our pester power has won him over and he lets us have o...

The Sambrani Man     The smell of the Sambrani incense wafts through the dingy dungeons of the nearby corner shop as the oppressing heat of the mid-afternoon blazing sun darts the eyes.  At the end of the row ahead in the shop the Sambrani Man  is collecting his ‘dakshina’ ( donation) after  having spread the lingering fragrance of his Sambrani incense through the interiors of the pan shop.  He will stop at the tea shop next before he heads to the Xerox and stationery shop.  This is the Sambrani man's routine everyday except on Fridays when he takes his weekly off.  His customers are the shopkeepers who donate a few rupees into this bowl as a matter of routine. Sambrani in English is called the benzoin Resin which is obtained from the bark of a tree. It is then dried, powdered and sold either in powder form or as blocks.   When powdered and put into charcoal fire it gives out a dense smoke that wafts through with a s...

WHAT WOMEN WANT... Where the streets and homes are free from harassment and humiliation, Where the woman’s body is not the punching pad for repressed frustration, Where access to equal opportunity is her birth right,    Where she does not have to strive twice as hard just to prove her might Where she is not killed even before she is born, Where she does not go on living wishing she was gone, Where her identity is more than being a daughter, sister, mother or a wife, Where in true spirit exists the freedom of choice,    Where she is free to decide what she wears and what she does not, Where she can choose to marry or not, Where she is not judged when she wants to opt out, Where she can be fearless when she needs to steps out, Where she is not treated differently based on whether her skin is fair or black, Where she does not care if she is called a skinny jack or a potato sack. Where she does not have to hang her head i...

In the modern world where environment conscious urban dwellers are trying to do their bit to invest in sustainable and eco friendly products, the Mudha weavers from Mandi Mirza khan find a high-demand and high margin market to sell their wares. Kanaiyalal is one such craftsman from Mandi Mirza Khan who makes mudha chairs and displays his finished products on the pavement and sells them to the urban customers. On the wide pavement near government high school on Vartur road in whitefield,  kanaiyalal spreads out his wares every single day of the week and is engaged in weaving a mudha chair until the next customer who comes looking ewinces some interest in buying his wares.    Mudha chairs unlike many other hand made products from India do not find an export market. The rustic raw material made of untreated Sarkanda grass has still not passed the stringent test of export quality and may be perceived as a threat to biodiversity of many nations. Thanks ...

Dum Lagake Haisha  ( Give it all your energy )  !!! The screeching wakeup call of the birds pierce into my ears while the rising sun’s light floods right through my closed eyelids creating myriad forms in various shades of orange and grey.    I have closed my eyes to focus and enjoy the moment. That moment, I do not know how long it has been. It might have been a few seconds or may be a few minutes. I am not counting time today.  Just enjoying and prolonging the moment for as long as I can. I am supposed to empty my mind. Empty my mind of all thoughts from the past and present, bitter or pleasant.  The harder I try, the more it oscillates. So I just let go. My memories take me to those days, and I relive the heartache and the struggle.  My struggle to hold myself up (actually down), my fears about falling flat on my face and my belief that at my age, I was too old to learn. As I look back my heart is filled with gratitude and awe for...