The Pregnant King - Dr Devadutt Patanaik

Today.. when section 377 causes so much of an uproar...where political parties feel threatened by gender equality, homosexuality and quota for women...where female infanticide is as much a reality as child marriage...its interesting to find something like the pregnant kind hardly being discussed in the media or otherwise.. not that the book is extraordinary..but considering the fact that "The white tiger" wins awards..this one atleast deserves a good mention.. Apart from Jai.. I have hardly come across any references ..

The story is set around the Mahabharata and its merges both the fiction and mythological parts...although too many references of gender confusion tends to make it a bit too forceful.

We tend to summarize the Mahabharata solely on the Kurukshetra and the war that these short stories build around it which probably are much more interesting and relevant are missed out..And these are exactly the kind of stories that reflect the hypocrisy of the society that we have landed ourself in...also evident from the fact that we have converted both the Ramayana and Mahabharata into a preachy textbook rather than just a documentation of the civilization that we lived in.

A case of exploding mangoes

There is always something interesting when one reads books from across the border..a lot of revelations.. some misconceptions cleared..although one finds it strange that one had them to begin with ..considering the fact that one never actually gave it too much of a thought..probably just as a reference to Kargil (they were the proverbial villains) or when Benazir got assassinated..of course n the cricket ground ..they were the guys you had to always defeat..even if we lost all other matches..
But these books (well..alteast the three I have read so far...the earlier ones were partition based or from authors who have had to move from here to there..so at some levels they don't invoke the same feelings or rather thoughts).. they provide some sort of an insight.. not much is different from people out there as they are here... although Hamid's book more so as compared to Hanif's.. Hanif's is more black humor (if I understand the definition right)..and would make a brilliant movie.. with someone like Kundan shah or better still Vishal B at the helm..
The Zia in this and the caricature they created in Charlie Wilson's war are quite strangely similar and dissimilar at the same time..
Anyhoo..this is one brilliant book and is totally worth a read.

Blind Faith - Sagarika Ghosh

Well... Why did I pick this book? Mainly because it was written by Sagarika Ghosh of the IBN fame and she does have some decent posts up her blog.
So... was I disappointed.. not entirely. It didn't start off well.. it jerked between a novel and a news report.. but it did pick itself up somewhere in between.. but then again the end was a bit of a damper.
Although the characters are pretty intruiging, there are a lot of unnecessary explanations given to certain events whereas certain interesting ones just breeze through. It comes out more like a first time novel.. although I think she has already published atleast one that I know of.
But I must add that the Indi is one of the best character sketches I have read so far.
A decent one...but could have been a lot better.

Home Products - Amitava Kumar

So what did I like about the book...umm..
-The title
-The cover
-The minor details that show keen observation on part of the author...like the one about the relationship between Bua and Parshuram where he describes Parshuram wiping his glasses with Bua's saree pallu.

Although the book is pretty engrossing... its pretty ordinary in the sense that it does not have you thinking about it later. The narration is pretty smooth and make a for a leisure read.

Links for follow-up:
Jabberwock in conversation with Amitava
Reviews of the book
Amitava's Blog

Side note: A lot of recent writers have well-read blogs which kind of make them more real as compared to say a Naipaul or Rushdie..and it not helps in marketing the book to a certain extent but also brings in a lot of healthy discussion about the book which adds that little extra to the whole experience of the book.

Pic courtesy: Author's homepage