(G)rumblings and Ramblings

  Title: Never Let Me Go Author: Kazuo Ishiguru     Pretty much the only novel that brought me to tears. I loved it. Having said that, it is still not a patch on the work of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley that, I believe, rule(s) the domain of modern dystopian literature. Post Orwell’s Animal Farm  (1945) and Nineteen Eighty Four  (1949) and Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), I find most dystopian scenarios - both in novels and onscreen - to be regurgitations under some guise or the other. Aside from Ishiguru’s work, the only other novel that somewhat stood out was Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaiden’s Tale (1985). Rather than tackling the entire civilizational structure (which was already masterfully handled by both Huxley and Orwell), both Atwood and Ishiguru mostly tweak a particular aspect of society. For Atwood, it was the role of women in society being streamlined along titillating lines. In his work, Ishiguru tackles the notion of humanness, by focusi...

Title: The Profane Poet: Satyajit Sarna   The Profane: An Intriguing Hand Imagine that you are at a Taash scene(1) i.e., Teen-Patti (a type of 3-card-poker), and The Profane by Satyajit Sarna is the hand that can both tackle, and, if need be, assimilate the joker in the variation. It begins innocuously enough: the cards/poems are dealt. As you begin to go through them, one realizes that this hand can meet anything dealt across the table. The final outcome of course depends on the skill and the discretion of the player.           The Waterfall: a type of variation in taash known for its flipping jokers. This collection of poems appear to revolve around the perceptions of the millennial. Sarna's observations are, at points, soothingly savage and delightfully vicious.  The common theme cutting across each poem is that Sarna says the things that are considered taboo by many and are, well, usually artfully ignored for the “greater good” of “society”, ...

 Title: White Tiger Author: Aravind Adiga White Tiger: Adiga's Doom Star Rickshaw Ride I usually avoid writing largely negative reviews about books for primarily two reasons: First, I would rather write about that which I love or like immensely, and second, I tend to be a bit sharp with my criticism and I prefer to confine aforementioned sharpness to an exception rather than the rule.  But given how strongly I dislike this bit of work – a close second being the recent obnoxious and oft tautological swill that’s been pouring out of Rupi Kaur’s mouth in the guise of “poetry” – I’ve made an exception.     At best, this book was salaciously amusing to the point of fantastical hilarity. It reads as an aspiring-cinematic experience, into which it has – unsurprisingly - fructified . Adiga’s view of India is pretty bleak.   Adults are bad, children are bad, villages are considered the ‘darkness’, cities are rife with corrupt ambition... the street mithaiwalla’s l...