Monthly Archives: December 2012

Blogging – Year in Review

Posted in Blogging & Social Networking by

So, it’s that time of the year when WordPress sends you a little report about how your blog fared. Here’s what they sent…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 130,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

To me, it doesn’t say very much at all. Honestly, I blogged a lot less this year. But, I am a bit startled to find that my most popular posts were those written two years back. This was the case last year as well, and it feels a bit weird to me that people are reading such old posts, when I have moved on so much from my old blogging style (or at least I think I have). I mean one of my most popular posts is about a coffee shop I went to in 2010, the coffee shop doesn’t even exist any more!! So strange.

Apart from that, the report is a nice little pat on the back for all WordPress bloggers and I love that WordPress does this each year to remind us about blogging milestones.

About 2013 blogging goals…well, I have one, but so far it seems so out there, so out of my league, that I am not even going to talk about it in this post. It’s something I have been thinking about for a while, but if and when I eventually get around to accomplishing it, I will definitely point to this post and say, hey…I achieved my goal after all.

So what are you planning for your blog in 2013? Or for your life? I have made tons of resolutions but those need an entirely new post.

And hey, here’s wishing you a very happy and joyful 2013.

Wish you a very happy 2013

Wish you a very happy 2013

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Teaser Tuesdays – Cutting for Stone

Posted in Books, Literary Fiction, Quotes, Tags by

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese


With the colon swollen to Hindenburg proportions it would be all too easy to nick the bowel and spill feces into the abdominal cavity. He made a middle incision, then deepened it carefully, like a sapper defusing a bomb.

Just when panic was setting in because he felt he was going nowhere, the glistening surface of the peritoneum—that delicate membrane that lined the abdominal cavity—came into view. When he opened the peritoneum, straw-colored fluid came out. Inserting his finger into the hole and using it as a backstop, he cut the peritoneum along the length of the incision.

~ Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Don’t get me wrong. So far, I am really loving this book. Good old-fashioned compelling story-telling, but really, I could do without some of these medical details :(

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

First Reading Challenge Sign-up for 2013

Posted in Asian Fiction, Books by

Indian Quills Reading Challenge

Indian Quills Reading Challenge

I know, I know, I have time and again joined and failed reading challenges. Why do I even keep bothering?

But, I like this one – the Indian Quills Reading (IQR) challenge hosted by The Tales Pensieve. I am planning to read a lot of Indian-origin fiction in the next year, and what better way to do it than join an online Indian fiction reading group? I also love that this challenge is restricted to Indian authors, which keeps the group smaller and a little more focused. I’ve joined Asian authors reading challenges in the past, but the pool of authors was just too large and the reading group so diverse that I kind of spaced out after a while.

I am also keeping the reading challenge relatively light – only 6 books, but I am going to make them count :)

What are the reading challenges you are planning to join in 2013?

Happy Birthday to the Piglet

Posted in Hemanshu, Jahnavi by

December 14th was the Piglet’s birthday. We never planned anything major (have yet to even get him a present, poor thing)…I was (still am) drowning in work and just could not summon up enough enthusiasm to throw a big shindig.

I did want to do something for him though, so I called a handful of tiny tots from our apartment complex who know him and served up some cake and snacks. At the last minute, I decided to do some decorations and play some music, and voila it was a party!

We all had such a great time – including the piglet. I mean most babies cry at their first birthday parties right? It’s pretty much de rigeur. Well, there was not so much as a wah from the piglet. He didn’t understand what was going on, and why there was this whole tamasha with strangers kissing him, and so much noise, and balloons, and cake, and everything…but he didn’t let it throw him one little bit. That’s my little piglet for you – cool and composed.

Here are some pics from the party:

Last minute decorations
New buddies
With his aunt
Yummy fruit gateau from Spoonful of Sugar
Cake cutting
Feast!!!
Dancing Girls
Shaking a leg
Exploring the balloons
Opening his presents or at least trying to
Tired after the party

It turned out to be such a lovely time…thanks to the snubnose’s enthusiasm (I swear she is totally growing to be a total party girl), and the piglet’s quiet cheerfulness. I love such impromptu fun times.

And now, back to work!!!

The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken – A Book Review

Posted in Asian Fiction, Books, Humor, Mystery/Thriller/Horror by
The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken by Tarquin Hall

The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken by Tarquin Hall

Vish Puri is as fond of butter chicken as the next Punjabi. So when it’s served at the Delhi Durbar hotel at an India Premier League cricket match dinner, he’s the first to tuck in. Faheem Khan, father of Pakistani star cricketer Kamran Khan, can’t resist either. But the creamy dish proves his undoing. After a few mouthfuls, he collapses on the floor, dead…

~Synopsis taken from Good Reads

My Review: This is a nice book – very light and a fun, frothy read. I liked it very much, but I don’t think I loved it as much as I loved the first two books in the series (read my reviews here and here).

The third time around the writing just seems a bit too much, a little less subtle. Maybe it’s me, but I found the overdose of Indian English in the book a little jarring. There was just too much repetition of some slang Indian terms.

One annoying example…

I’ll be joining you shortly, na…or

We were all doing suffering, na

Imagine that almost every single conversation in the book runs along these lines…

It’s a known fact that a lot of Indians end their sentences, with the word na, and that a few use the present or past continuous tense (I can’t even make out what the tense in that second example is) in English when they ideally should be using past or present tense. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to include such lingo in a book. But here, it was almost like as if a copy writer had run amok and changed every single conversation to follow the same format of present/past continuous + super annoying na…probably for consistency purposes, LOL.

I am not a grammar nazi (far from it), but I found these dialogues hampered my enjoyment of this book. Maybe this issue was something that was also in the first 2 books, but I don’t remember getting irritated by it. Now, I definitely was.

The plot also seems a little overblown. Two big issues are combined into one book – sports gambling and Hindu-Muslim violence during the partition in 1947. In between, the book began to drag with the weight of these 2 big plot lines. The trademark humor is also a bit subdued, although there are some gems scattered here and there.

The partition issue was captured pretty sensitively though and I liked how it showed a different personal side of Vish Puri and his mummyji. There is also a minor mystery weaved in about a man robbed of his moustache, which I enjoyed thoroughly.

So, overall, this was a good book. It was probably not for me. I think that this series is starting to lose its fizz for me.

The book has excellent reviews though, so I think it’s probably just me not enjoying it as fully as I expected to.

Thanks to Random House for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Oh, and by the way, it appears that Vish Puri may soon be landing on the big screens, if you go by this Hindustan Times article, and he may be played by the actor Anil Kapoor. For those who don’t know who he is, he’s the guy who played the host of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? show in Slumdog Millionaire.

Anil Kapoor used to be an excellent actor before he went on to play starring roles in Bollywood. Don’t believe what I’m saying? catch Woh Saat Din where he showed a lot of promise. Anyway, he is a good actor, but I just can’t visualize this man as short, tubby, Vish Puri who tops the scales at 90 kilos. I’m not saying he can’t do it, he could try to transform himself physically, put on some weight etc. to look the part, I just can’t visualize it though. Do you?

Did anyone else feel that this book didn’t live up to the first two books in the series?

The Handmaid’s Tale – My Thoughts

Posted in Classics, Dystopian fiction by
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read.

She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining fertility, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.

Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now…

~Synopsis from Good Reads

This is an extremely popular book that has been well-reviewed and discussed throughout the book blogosphere and I don’t really have anything new to add, but I will try anyway.

First off, I should mention that dystopia or science fiction is really not my scene, unless it is extremely well-written. Books like The Hunger Games don’t interest me all that much unless there is one particular aspect that clicks with me. Here, the click is its strong feminist point of view.

Throughout the book, I was reminded of the battle for women’s rights that took place earlier by women in the past, and how the protagonist Offred took these rights for granted until they were taken away from her. Today, I meet a lot of people who like to badmouth feminism and women’s rights, and quite so often these people happen to be women who are uncomfortable with some aspect of feminism (mostly to do with sexual freedoms, gay/lesbian rights, deterioration of family as a unit, and so on), and to them I want to say…you have your comfortable jobs, some measure of independence and equality only because people fought for it. Reading this book reinforced the idea that it is important, hugely important to be aware of how easily these rights can be lost if women don’t stay watchful, we may just lose our heard-earned freedom.

Some parts of the book made me quite sceptical:

  • The dystopian/science-fiction aspect was a bit meh though. I love the premise, it’s believable, but the issue with reading dystopia almost 30 years after it’s written is that some of the impact is lost, and some parts of the book seem very outdated. For example, it’s hard to even visualize Offred’s level of isolation in a world where we seem to be more connected than ever. It didn’t take away my love for the book but I think the impact is a little less than if I had read the book when it was published.
  • The timelines in the book are also hard to accept. I couldn’t visualize that thousands of modern young women and educated men would tolerate the complete eradication of their rights and freedoms. I am talking about women pretending that they can’t read, wives allowing handmaids to have sex with their husbands without a murmur, women giving up their biological children to others to rear…that kind of stuff, but then I remembered Nazi Germany and the power of one man to wreak havoc over an entire nation in a very short span of time.

Maybe these things are possible after all…

What I can confidently say is that I love the book, it’s a unique and very well-written story, with deep meaning. Probably the best book I read this year.

I read this book as part of The Classics Club reading challenge.

Comedy Improv at the Opus

Posted in Others by

The Invite

The Invite

On Friday, I attended my first comedy improv show. This is a performance staged by Centerstage – a media movement company that is based out of Bangalore. Centerstage seems like an awesome platform for media artists to get a break. Currently, the situation is that if you are interested in films and theatre, you need to move to Mumbai to get a decent chance. Well, Centerstage seems to be making some efforts to change that.

Anyway, back to the main topic, the improv show. This was my first experience and so I don’t have anything to compare it to. All I can say is that I think I saw an amazing performance by a really talented bunch of actors.

As you can guess, a lot of the comedy is improvised on the spot. Members of the audience yell out some comic situations, and the actors on stage enact it out. My favorite comedy shtick was one about the 18 again gel – the new controversial gel that is supposed to make women feel 18 again. Two actors had to enact a situation where a girl goes to a chemist to buy this gel for her mother. This was probably the most hilarious act and had everyone rolling in stitches. Definitely, it was my favorite and was well worth the long trek to Opus (almost the other end of the city in hellish traffic).

I didn’t take too many photos, I was too busy laughing. I was also seated right in the front of the stage, and while the seating was great, I was hesitant to distract the actors by taking photos.

So, here’s the only photo I took at the end of the show when the actors were taking their bow.

Awesome comedy improv show... Hilarious

After a long and stressful day, this was the perfect Friday night for me, chilling back with a beer in a relaxed atmosphere, and laughing at all the jokes and one-liners.

These improv performances happen on a regular basis in Bangalore, and a few other select cities, so if you are looking for a different (and more interactive) live entertainment, check out Centerstage India, you may just end up having a very lively and enjoyable evening.

Edited to add: This event was presented and sponsored by Black Dog Easy Evenings. They are presenting one more such event in Hyderabad on Dec 11th, and if you are interested, click on over to their Facebook page for more information.

Teaser Tuesdays – More Teasers from The Handmaid’s Tale

Posted in Books, Dystopian fiction, Quotes, Short stories, Tags by
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I’ve finished this book. It’s awesome and probably the best book I have read this year, and I am just not ready to let go of it yet :( . I’ve gone back to pages I bookmarked to read again.

Here are a couple of awesome quotes from this book…

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’ve been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil.

And here’s the most famous one…

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

~ The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

In fact, this book is full of the most powerful writing. Hop on over to Good Reads for three whole pages of excellent writing.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!