FROM BEHIND THE BOOKMARK
A birthday Present...read on!!!
Why is it that the most amazing reads are that of the NRI perspective? Let me elaborate on this. I was about a year back quite averse to reading Indian Authors, simply because i felt there wasn't sufficient drive for the imagination and I was able to easily relate to it. Hence the lack of excitement.
Then one day I came across a book called "A 100 Shades of White" by Preeti Duggal in The British Council Library (BCL). THe story quite sweet really was of this keralite woman who is the Indian version of Penelope Cruise in the move "Woman on Top". For the illiterate, amazing cooking skills and almost a sixth sense in food and its therapeutic properties. However after moving to England she becomse estranged from her family, and her husband leaves her for another woman, eventually after scraping at the ground (metaphorically ofcourse) she survives the drugery moves onto better things and fights for her children, raises them and stuff, eventually finds her way back to Kerela to where her mother was rumored to have lived and finds her grave and cottage which has been abandoned and eventually thus discovers something , something being herself. But she needed that whole journey to the west to find her origins.
U.R Ananthamurthy in his Essay "being a writer in India" points to this journey to the West to find ones roots and origins. Its many a Indian author who takes this trip, both methaphorically, in their books or literally. The counter to this is obviously very recently Shantaram, but then thats a foreigner in India if i'm not wrong. This journey I found sets some very similar patterns in a lot of novels and i wouldn;t list them out here but if you are an avid reader you will come across many such examples.
Now to cut to the point. I've just finished reading "The Kite Runner" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" what is a clear contrast is while in the former the author/ protagonist is based in USA while the novel is a journey back to Afghanistan after a childhood there to make up a p
ast shortcoming the latter is foreign author writing about a tradition in Japan. What ofcourse is missing is the Middle Path so to speak......the citizen writing of his own country, now I know there is plenty of that around, no case in point here. The thing is Some how this would have the least appeal to me, and others like me, once again because I can easily relate to this. While I do maintain that a realistic story written by an author about and in his own country (being different from mine ) will elicit some interest but this would eventually become a drab.
What appeals after Fantasy Fiction is the interaction of cultures so to speak. SO nextime you need to know what to get me for a birthday present.....here you go!!!
Why is it that the most amazing reads are that of the NRI perspective? Let me elaborate on this. I was about a year back quite averse to reading Indian Authors, simply because i felt there wasn't sufficient drive for the imagination and I was able to easily relate to it. Hence the lack of excitement.
Then one day I came across a book called "A 100 Shades of White" by Preeti Duggal in The British Council Library (BCL). THe story quite sweet really was of this keralite woman who is the Indian version of Penelope Cruise in the move "Woman on Top". For the illiterate, amazing cooking skills and almost a sixth sense in food and its therapeutic properties. However after moving to England she becomse estranged from her family, and her husband leaves her for another woman, eventually after scraping at the ground (metaphorically ofcourse) she survives the drugery moves onto better things and fights for her children, raises them and stuff, eventually finds her way back to Kerela to where her mother was rumored to have lived and finds her grave and cottage which has been abandoned and eventually thus discovers something , something being herself. But she needed that whole journey to the west to find her origins.
U.R Ananthamurthy in his Essay "being a writer in India" points to this journey to the West to find ones roots and origins. Its many a Indian author who takes this trip, both methaphorically, in their books or literally. The counter to this is obviously very recently Shantaram, but then thats a foreigner in India if i'm not wrong. This journey I found sets some very similar patterns in a lot of novels and i wouldn;t list them out here but if you are an avid reader you will come across many such examples.Now to cut to the point. I've just finished reading "The Kite Runner" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" what is a clear contrast is while in the former the author/ protagonist is based in USA while the novel is a journey back to Afghanistan after a childhood there to make up a p
ast shortcoming the latter is foreign author writing about a tradition in Japan. What ofcourse is missing is the Middle Path so to speak......the citizen writing of his own country, now I know there is plenty of that around, no case in point here. The thing is Some how this would have the least appeal to me, and others like me, once again because I can easily relate to this. While I do maintain that a realistic story written by an author about and in his own country (being different from mine ) will elicit some interest but this would eventually become a drab.What appeals after Fantasy Fiction is the interaction of cultures so to speak. SO nextime you need to know what to get me for a birthday present.....here you go!!!
1 comment:
100 shades of white is by Preethi Nair! :)
Cheers.
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