South East Asia - Year End Nostalgia 2

 For my 25th B'day this year, I travelled to Singapore, Bali and Cambodia. I travelled alone (well almost. My sister came with me to Bali and I was plonked at her place in Singapore... Okay Okay... I only really went to Cambodia alone), I planned a trip entirely by myself from scratch and had a blast! What better celebration could I ask for really!

From cutting my b'day cake in Bali and wandering around it's lush rice terraces and beautiful, elegant temples to sunning ourselves on the beach and going jet skiing, I loved every bit of my three days in Bali with my sister. I definitely plan to go back to that island and this time for longer. I'd love to live in a small house/apartment somewhere near the rice terraces and walk around at leisure in the midst of the greenery, taking my time to soak in the peace of a slow life lived in harmony with nature.

The highlight of my stay in Singapore (apart from getting to spend time with my darling sister and eating some yummy food) was a visit to the National Orchid Garden at the Botanical gardens in Singapore. Orchids are my favourite flowers and I don't think I really have to say anymore about why I was so happy to be where I was! I must also say here that the Botanical gardens are perhaps the most serene part of Singapore and an early morning sunrise visit to these gardens was a completely awesome beginning to a wonderful day!



I also managed to click a picture inspired by a photo in the very first issue of National Geographic that I subscribed to (it had a cover story on Angkor and I had been planning this trip in my head since I read that article in 2009). The article had a beautiful night time photo of Phnom Bakheng, the highest temple in the area. When I reached Phnom Bakheng at dusk, it was milling with a gazillion tourists. Climbing the last of the steep steps up to the temple, I pretty much gave up hope of getting a shot of it without people in the frame - something that would replicate the serenity of the picture I had seen to some measure. I wandered around, clicking randomly and looking like a forlorn kitten, when to my luck, I got a window of a few seconds when there was no one between me and the front facade of the temple. In those few seconds my brain and my hands and my camera seemed to work pretty much on auto pilot. In fact, I didn't even realise that I had gotten a clear shot till after I clicked it. It doesn't come close to the Nat Geo photo and there's lots that could be better with it, but clicking it made me really really happy.

This trip was one new year resolution that I did complete (there were others too and so this year has been productive on that account!)!!!


PS: I plan to make more resolutions like this one :D

Abhi Nahin Aana - Year end nostalgia 1

2011 draws to a close. And cliched as it may sound, year ends always bring on reflection of hits, misses and might have beens. So I am starting a series of posts of things that made 2011 for me, in absolutely random order!

The first thing I want to post, is a song that I am hearing as I write this post. It was a song released in 2006. I discovered it in 2011 and as I hear it, it resonates with much of what this year has been about.

PS: My blog is beginning to look like a review blog - something it was never intended to be. Time to get back to things more personal.

Technology abuse

In 2009 a movie released that bought, what was then expensive, rarely used technology to mainstream cinema - Enter Avatar and the era of 3D. The stupendous success of James Cameroon's saga in 3D made it the buzz word. Suddenly everything is in 3D - films, newspaper ads, outdoor hoardings, television sets. It's the new money spinner - I mean just look at the 20K price difference between a regular plasma television with HD etc etc. and one with 3D.

James Cameroon, when he wrote (and made) Avatar, wrote it to ensure that the film maximised the impact that 3D technology can have and produced scenes that were stunning to say the least. Before Avatar, few short animation films as well as some NASA documentaries (please correct me if I am wrong here) used 3D - wowing us with images that were larger than life. Post Avatar, I can still name a few mainstream films that used 3D well (How to train your dragon, Alice in wonderland)... thankfully! So I won't write off the technology entirely but I do have a problem with how it is being used currently.

Today every film that is anything but a romance or a family drama is in 3D. I've gotten to a point where I go scouting for 2D shows of films because I do not want to see them in 3D; because 3D destroys what might have been a good film; because technology is being used for the heck of it, without rhyme or reason. This latest rant is stemming out of my experience of watching Don 2 yesterday in 3D (There were no 2D shows in the multiplexes I frequent here in Chennai... such a pity really!). 3D, with it's extended depth of field, made the film smaller than life. What should have been larger than life, thrilling action sequences became small, distant events. Heroes and villains instead of towering over the audience were dwarfed by it. And this perhaps, is the film's biggest failing. I daresay audiences who watched it in 2D would have enjoyed it more especially the chase and action sequences - so much more suited to the flatness of two dimensions. I daresay I will enjoy in more on TV at home... in 2D! I hope film makers realize, and soon, that they can do more harm to their craft than good by using technology for the heck of it. Till then I hope to stay away from pointless 3D as much as I can and save myself many a headache.

By, Of and For Book Lovers

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

-- The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

Book love can be obsessive and to a degree far greater than one might think possible for  something so benign as a few pieces of paper with some ink on them. But for those who know the power that a good author can wield with words, it is not a strange thing to imagine oneself completely lost. Reading a book about book lovers then, is almost like introspection. At so many points does one pause to say "Oh! I totally know where that feeling is coming from!" And so it has been with me. Over the last couple of months, I have completed two books based on a central character who runs or rather helps run a book shop. These books have engaged me far more, to the extent that I have forgotten meals (after a very long time) or other pursuits in order to finish them as soon as I possibly can.

The first was The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - a recommendation and gift from a dear friend. It is a mystery novel of sorts where a boy, whose father owns a antiquarian bookshop, traces the anguished history of author Julian Carax and tries to discover who is destroying Carax's little known works. Along the way, the boy discovers love and friendship in unlikely quarters. While the plot of the mystery became predictable after a while, the book kept me bound by virtue of the protagonist's fierce desire to protect the last known copy of The shadow of the wind, the last novel by Julian Carax. As someone who fears the demise of physical books in the face of the advent of ebooks (there are many points for and against that debate an I am not getting into it here. Suffice to say that I love my paper books to the ends of this earth and have no qualms carting them around with me no matter where I go), I can empathise with the boy's anguish as he fears an author lost to the world.

Zafon's prose is beautiful as he paints Barcelona in shades of antiquity. It seems a world far far removed, untouched by technology, where friends meet everyday and lovers write letters (a lost art!). He manages to transfer the moods of his protagonist on to his reader (or was that just me) and so compels one to finish the journey so normalcy in life may be restored.

The second book was The Thirteenth Tale, an excerpt from which appears at the start of this post. I picked up this book from a list on "Best book cover art" on Goodreads. I fell in love with the rich cover and then the plot summary intrigued me. For once, I went in search of an edition with exactly that cover and though I found other editions with different covers more easily, I wouldn't buy them. The Thirteenth Tale, is about books and stories on almost all levels. It is the story of a famous but reclusive author who decides to tell her true story before she dies. Vida Winter has invented many histories for herself while she was alive but as illness eats away at her, she decides finally to tell the truth about her past to Margaret Lea. Margaret Lea is an equally reclusive biographer and prefers to write biographies of authors already long dead. Margaret's father owns an antiquarian bookshop where Margaret has spent all her childhood. At the time of Vida's invitation to be her biographer, Margaret lives in an apartment above the bookshop and spends most of her time with the old books and almanacs there. Vida's story eventually also helps Margaret deal with events of her own past that she has not yet been able to come to terms with.

As author and biographer talk, they reminiscence about their favourite books. Jane Eyre makes a repeated appearance as do Sherlock Holmes and Wuthering Heights. Books become expressive of personalities and behaviour as Vida's doctor recommends that Margaret read Sherlock Holmes in a bid to snap out of her winter induced depression. Setterfield explores how story telling is central to human life, how stories can be more powerful than the truth and most importantly how the telling and receiving of stories is cathartic. When Vida talks about the stories we weave around our birth, it takes me back to conversations with my parents as they described my birth and early childhood - moments that are not a part of my conscious memory but at the same time stories that I can now tell as if they were. The Thirteenth Tale hooks you in the dreamy manner of a book that promises to transport you to a different world. It makes you lose yourself in its folds by describing exactly that feeling of being lost in a book and completely cut off from the rest of the world. For any bibliophile, making the journey with Margaret and Vida, is at many points an introspection with the luxury of some outsider actually naming in words the way you feel inside when you read those words.

For that introspectiveness, I have enjoyed reading books about fellow book lovers. A genre that I intend to explore not for its plots but for the insight that it brings to me.

Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the first book of a trilogy. The story is set in an uncertain time in the future in what is now North America and in the book, the country of Panem.

Panem consists of a Capitol surrounded by 12 districts. Each year, to remind the districts of the consequences of rebellion against the Capitol, the Capitol holds the hunger games. Each district is required to send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate in the games. To win the Hunger games the participants must eliminate each other within an artificially created environment known as "The Arena" till only one of them is alive. The Games are televised and broadcast across the country as a show of the Capitol's power over the districts. In its setting and premise the book is highly reminiscent of  Battle Royale, the Japanese movie. There too rebellious adolescents are kept in place by a fight to the death.

The Hunger Games begins in district 12, the poorest of the districts with Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take her 12 year old sister's place in the Hunger Games. As a thriller Hunger Games scores full points. There are enough moments, nicely interspersed to keep you flipping the pages, enough to make me want to complete the trilogy.

As an exploration of war and its effects on freedom and morality it falls short. I would have liked to see Katniss make a few more tough choices. The book circumvents tough choices in fairytale fashion with the Capitol relenting almost too easily. Personal conflict is almost absent as Katniss hardly faces a dilemma that calls for her morals, actions or choices into question. What would she have done if it came to her survival vs. that of a friend? Would she value her life more than a past kindness? Would she consciously rebel against the Capitol and the powers that be? There is no choice that Katniss is called on to make that compels the reader to evaluate the ethics of war, dictatorship and rebellion; choices whose consequences are unpalatable for Katniss and the reader.

While there is promise of retaliation by the Capitol in the other two books of the series, I do wish this one had examined the personal choices that people make in situations of extreme stress with a little more depth.

A P.S to the Post: After reading the other two books, I think the only key character who represents the personal crisis that is created by war, dictatorship and rebellion is Gale. At the very end of the tale, it is his choices that are worth thinking about. I wonder if he would have played the Hunger Games differently as opposed to Katniss or Peeta. Sure would have made for an even more engrossing read.

In a P.S that is longer than it should be, I should also say that I think the ancillary characters add much more meat to the story than do the protagonists. They represent the entire spectrum of choices that people must make in situations where Peace is not an option.