Book Review: Bombay Rains Bombay Girls

This post has been written as part of the Write Tribe Festival Of Words 

Book Title: Bombay Rains Bombay Girls

Author: Anirban Bose

Publisher: Harper Collins

Price: Rs 199

I mainly depend on the library system of Singapore for my reading. Every locality has one with a vast collection of fiction and non-fiction. The best part is you can borrow at any location and return at any. But when it comes to works by Indian authors, the choices are limited. I really like reading them because it feels close to home and its very easy to relate. Flipkart also does not do any overseas delivery if I am not wrong. If any of you know means by which we can get Indian books overseas at affordable prices do let me know in the comments section.

A friend recently lent me this book and it was quite a good read.

The story is set in a medical college milieu. The protagonist Adityaman Bhatt alias Adi, travels all the way from his hometown Ranchi to Bombay in order to pursue his studies in medicine.The rest of the story is about his experiences there with his coterie of friends ranging from ragging to politics to the tragic death of a close pal. Love blossoms between him and one of his classmates and a significant part of the story deals with that too.

Anirban has dealt with myriad of issues in the book and some sections are really thought provoking.
There is one instance where Adi simply removes a safety pin from a patients bed that has been pricking her foot and the chief doctor tells him that this act would be more remembered by the woman than any other treatment she received.
"Today what I want you to learn is what wearing that white coat and carrying that sthethoscope around your neck means. It means you provide relief. Soon you'll realize how little we can actually do to cure diseases in patients, but we can always bring relief by simply listening to them." he says.
Anirban also touches upon how the poor in the country are at the mercy of the doctors in the government hospitals and how no body's permission is sought when using them as objects of observation for the medical students.
One of the characters Toshi is from Nagaland and some light is thrown on the issues faced by the people in the North East . The problems they face in getting accepted in the rest of the country and the tension that prevails in the region are mentioned in the narrative.

I could not find any major shortcomings in the book. The narrative style and the language are quite good.  I would not say its a not-to-be-missed book but i liked it - not too heavy, funny in parts with a fair dose of sentiment and romance.

Rains to Genie to Backwaters to Bikes

This post has been written as part of Write Tribe Festival of Words-Day 3 where we had to do a 'Free Write' exercise i.e write whatever comes to mind for a stipulated time.

The sky is downcast. There has been no rains in Singapore for the past so many days. This is quite unusual here. Normally there would be a downpour every alternate day. I hope it rains today.

It seems suddenly very quiet all around. A huge apartment complex is coming up in the neighboring site and the non stop clink-clank-whirr fills our house all the time. They work even on Saturdays and Sunday is the only day our ears get some solace. Now the machines seem to have stopped all of a sudden. Maybe the workers are also looking at the sky wondering if the rain-God will shower some of his blessings around. I stay within the house but their state is worse. They are out in the sun all day surrounded by all the dust and noise.

 That reminds me of my ex-boss who had served in the army for some time. He would say that when he goes to sleep he still hears a buzzing noise in his ears like the insects in the thick vegetation during his days of service. Now thats quite a big sentence, did I get it grammatically correct?

That reminds me of my first standard teacher Joan. Unable to finish the biriyani that my dad got for lunch, i started crying. When asked why, I replied amidst sobs "My father got me many biriyani".She replied "Hmm, you must say lot of biriyani and not many biriyani". That brings the picture of hot steaming biriyani hovering in front of my eyes. I can almost touch the soft basmati rice and the bay leaf peeping out at the corner of the plate. Well enough, i tell myself and the plate disappears.

There is this movie 'Pattanathil Bhootham' in Tamil where a couple of guys end up finding a genie and the first thing they ask him to test his authenticity is a ladoo from Tirupathi. If only I had a genie what would I ask him? My mobile sends out a beep announcing the arrival of some message on Whatsapp. Oh yeah ! i would have immediately texted my group " i have a genie. What should i ask?".We live in crazy times.

The whirring starts again in the construction site and I can also hear the piercing noise of a jet in the sky. I really wish for some quietness around.

That brings me the images from our trip to Aleppey and its backwaters. The tranquility was amazing.The greenery and the pleasant weather! Wow!! Of course anything can be relished only for a day or two. I am not sure if I would enjoy staying in a place like that forever. We human beings keep looking for a change don't we? Yet when life gives us some unexpected challenging changes we find it so tough to accept or digest. I keep staring at the last sentence waiting for my mind to think of something. Strange, it decides to get into this meditative state when I am supposed to be doing 'Free Write'. I seem to be observing every single sound around, the rotation of the fan blades and the pages of the book fluttering before it and the motorcycle on the road.

Motorcycles! My husband had a bike when we got married and I enjoyed those bike rides so much. Especially when going on a bridge, I used to get a soaring feeling. When we moved out of India, there were no bikes anymore. Sigh!

There the time I set for myself is over. Free Write does seem to be an interesting exercise.

Write Tribe Festival Day 2 - Blogs that I enjoy

This post has been written as part of Write Tribe Festival of Words - Day 2

As part of Day Two, we need to showcase some blog/blogs that we enjoy.

I am a person who tends to brood over almost everything under the sky and because of the same I love blogs that spread some laughter around with their amazing humor content. The following are quite popular blogs and they truly deserve all that adulation.Whenever I step into one of them, there is a guarantee that I can have a good laugh and that my mood will be pepped up. Thanks to all of them for making my days brighter :D

 Purba Ray's A-Musing

Suresh Chandrasekar's Life is Like This

Rickie Khosla's Who Cares What I Think

Debajyoti Ghosh's Some Facts Some Nonsense

Corrinne did mention to try and not to include fellow participants in the Write Tribe Festival. But there is one I would like to mention here. A wonderful lady who has seen a lot in life, an ex school principal and a cancer survivor. I love her posts be it simple anecdotes, memoirs or fiction but additionally her zeal for life and attitude continue to leave me spell bound.

Usha Menon at Kuch Khatta Kuch Meetha

Cooking is one of the things I enjoy and there are a couple of blogs that I always turn to when looking out for some Indian recipe.

http://www.rakskitchen.net/

http://www.padhuskitchen.com/

That Night

The lights from the bungalow seeped through the flora in the surrounding garden and cast strange shadows on the compound walls.

The building occupied half the length of the street, now deserted, as the clock struck ten pm.

A man dressed in a black jumpsuit, with a cap pulled low over his face, leaned against the wall, closely monitoring the happenings inside.

In his carefully chosen spot, he was not at all visible when seen from the bungalow.

Half an hour later, a man of around fifty years of age, came to the porch and sat down to read a book.

A bullet from the silent gun, pierced his book and then his forehead and he slumped forward, dead.

The man in the jumpsuit inconspicuously started moving away and called up his boss from his cellphone.

"The Mr has been killed as requested by the Mrs, boss"

"NO! The Mr had paid for the Mrs to be brought down, you idiot" the boss screamed in fury.

Sibling Wonders!

This is my first post in 2014, nearly two whole months after the new year dawned.

It was a very unique and special new year this time.When the clock struck twelve on 31st Dec night, I was in a hospital room, with  my one day old daughter. My family stepped into 2014 with a brand new member and that explains my absence from the blogosphere as well.

Now the chaos is a bit lesser and I felt the urge to jot something here.

It has been interesting and sometimes funny to observe my older one's reaction to the change in the family.

When I first announced to V, then four, that mummy has a kutti papa(small baby) in her tummy, he retorted
"No Amma, you cannot eat kutti papas. Kutti papas are yucky!" Hmm, after all we have been telling him that whatever he eats gets into his tummy.

Midway through my pregnancy one day he announced
"When the kutti papa is ready, he will climb up , up, up and come out through your mouth" . Hmm!! Not a bad logical conclusion for his age!

I had a planned csec and we told him that Amma would go to the hospital the next day and that the doctor will help get the baby out. He exclaimed " The baby will jump out and the doctor will catch her with a baby net."

Now my new born daughter is two months old. Yesterday I took them both downstairs to the common area in the apartment. A couple of his friends crowded around her and kept saying 'This is our baby. We will take her home.' He quickly snapped back 'NO. This is my baby. Your baby is in your mummy's tummy!' :D

Show some concern, road users

There was something that really irked me during a recent visit to Chennai.

The state of the road traffic in the country and the strong foundation of make-your-own-rules upon which all the motorized vehicles move is a well-known fact.

• We won’t stop at a traffic signal if it’s the wee hours of the day or whenever we simply believe that it’s not required.

• We would never care to indicate before we swerve to change lanes. After all, the driver behind is playing a video game and needs to be alert. Speaking of lanes, the number in most of our roads tends to infinity and they always overlap one another. We would have three cars, two bikes, one bicycle and a cow or a goat all marking their own lanes with millimetre spaces in between.

• We would blare our horns as loud as possible even when the vehicle in front has stopped because the signal is red. We find it disgusting when others follow rules. Noise did you say! We love that, it gives us a sense of power.

• Speed limits? What on earth are they? Our speed depends on the number of obstacles, a.k.a the vehicles on our way. Residential areas, school zones, whatever be the locality! We will drive as fast as we like. We hate waiting and loathe queues. We will drive with the sole intention of overtaking all vehicles ahead and reaching our destination in the shortest possible time span. Its like we are representing Ferrari on some international circuit.  

• No matter how much we are preached about it, we can't wear helmets. We have specially designed heads made of unbreakable material.

These are some things we have to learn to live with for now and no, getting annoyed with it is a useless exercise.

The sight that got on my nerves was that of an ambulance, its sirens screaming out loud, stuck in traffic at a junction. No vehicle was prepared to move and give way. No one seemed to care for the life already struggling for existence inside it or the one fighting against odds while waiting for help to reach it. Ambulances do not need to halt when the signal is red but only if the vehicles in front move, can it proceed right? The autos, two wheelers and cars were involved in their usual hustle-bustle of getting away first and were totally oblivious to the medical vehicle struggling to get out of the chaos.

Many a time I have seen an ambulance fighting its way out even in ongoing traffic. No one would do the simple act of moving aside and letting it pass. I think the traffic police personnel have their own limitations in controlling the public behavior in this regard. It's simply a moral responsibility that every road user should have and exercise.On the other hand, it was heartening to see quite a lot of public message displays the city traffic police had put up in this regard. 

When we step out of the country we would all follow every single rule like stopping yards before ambulances or school buses. We won't have this humanitarian concern when on our own land? What if it had been our kin or for that matter our own self-centred selves inside that white and red vehicle?

Please give way to ambulances. It's definitely a matter of life and death.

Some acts just need a forerunner. Others will soon follow suit.

Scenes unfolded - 100 words on Saturday

I was panting and perspiring in the torturous heat of the prison kitchens as the smoke angrily sped into my lungs. Yet the exuberant chillness I felt inside was unperturbed. I knew it was my last day there. Suddenly I heard screams. It was the recent arrival Kapil; another innocent yet misfortunate soul! That horrendous monster Ranga was crushing him under his bulk and sniggering.

Scenes from the past unfolded. On the floor, I saw my quivering Reshma and the brute who had destroyed her years ago; the man I murdered. Furiously I brought the ladle crashing on Ranga’s head.

Linking this to 100 Words on Saturday at Write Tribe prompt of "I knew it was my last day here".