One more time - for the books

For those who watched and loved Slumdog Millionaire, they would also love the book from which this movie was based on. The book is Q&A, written by Vikas Swarup and all I can say that it is a gem!I was hooked from page one to the last -- almost forgetting that I had to be in the predeparture area 15 minutes before the flight.

I found myself enjoying a lot of asian authors recently. I think I have finished all the books by Haruki Murakami and had started to discover Indian authors and their amazing talents.

Whilst in India, I have devoured novels by Anita Desai (who have written novels about family tensions and the alienation of lower and middle class women -- some of these were even made into films), Jhumpa Lahiri (who wrote the Namesake and other short stories), Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things, Kiran Desai, Salman Rushdie,Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy) and my latest favorite Aravind Adiga who wrote The White Tiger (which won the Booker prize).

I believe there are a lot of talented asians and what they have written touch me because of the commonality of experiences. Not basically because of our location, but it is easier to empathize and sympathize with the characters and the situations.

In this day of movies and videos readily available for anyone at anytime, I still find solace, adventure, love, experience, fantasy, escape, and a whole lot of things from books. I am lucky to have some friends who share with me the same passion for reading.

and you can print me on that....

Biblioprostitution

I have just finished reading “Best of Best Women’s Erotica”. Now before you jump off your seats and say where the hell did I get this book, I found it in the airport bookstore of (where else, but) Amsterdam. It is a fairly legitimate book, a compilation of “sexy novelettes” by some of today’s famous women authors. Stories by Isabel Allende, Cecilia Tan, Isabelle Caruthers and Elspeth Potter, etal are entertaining, romantic, lustful and imaginative. So I dished out 12 euros for this promising book which I thought I would save for the cold, lonely season in Manipur.

After being here for over three months, I realized that I have been a voracious reader. In fact, I was able to finish Jeffrey Archer’s A Prisoner of Birth in 4 ½ hours! I completed any (I mean any) of Agatha Christie’s novels in two to three hours before sleeping. So when reading materials ran low in our library, I decided to open my treasure trove (yes I do keep somethings saved for rainy days: chocolates, whisky in my bottom drawer, underwear for special occasions) and took out the Erotica book.

The stories were not bad. Sure there are sexy bits, but not in the genre of Anais Nin or Lady Chatterly’s. Among the 30 stories, there were three which stood out for me. One is Infidelities by G.L. Morrison, second is Mail Order Bride by Saira Ramasastry and Thought So by Cecilia Tan.

Infidelities talk about a woman’s insecurity because she thinks that her husband is having an affair. So she visits this woman, got to know her and (hold your seat, Aiai) develop an affair with her! She managed to tap her homo-erotic tendencies and began to love it! I liked this story because it is different from the many love stories I have read. It sounded fresh and vivid.

Mail Order Bride is of course about getting someone from a third world country, through the wonders of the internet, chat and take all the chances that it might be the love of the lifetime. One thing that comes to mind is that despite the closing in of our space due to the internet, there are a whole lot of lonely and desperate people out there. Anyway, the story gives you a different light on internet dating, finding someone and accepting realities.

Thought So is about a pick up, starting as a successful look then a conversation in a bookshop. Then after a brief moment of “getting to know each other”, with loads of sexual language on the side, it ended up sour and unrequisited.

Lovely. I think this is a book Norie will like. Not because of the juicy bits, but because I think it is hilarious and silly in some; and downright vulgar in most. My kind of literature. The book really gives you a different views of the modern woman and her struggle to keep both sensual and sexual in a society ran by norms, career, family and expectations.

Well, to sum this up, I share with you a quote from my one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami from the story: "Family Affair" a short story from the book "The Elephant Vanishes." He said: " Women are like salmon: In the end, they all swim back to the same place."

Something for you to think over, although I wonder which same place he means....