Hyderabad Walks

After several planned-and-cancelled visits we finally made it to Bawarchi last week.
Having watched Bawarchi on The Foodie our expectations were, if to say the least, very high. However, Bawarchi was a big letdown: the food as well as the service. Going all the way to RTC crossroads form this part of the city is definitely not worth it.

Interestingly, even Rahul Gandhi gave it a miss.

After Bawarchi, we did a walk around and ended up at the Famous Ice Cream, Mojamjahi Market for it “famous” fresh-fruit ice cream which was indeed very cool “with all puns intended”.

We also walked to the crossroads and had a rushed-peek inside Karachi Bakery which was
choc-a-bloc.

If you are going to that part of the city, I recommend going on a Sunday morning and browsing books in the Sunday book bazaar doubling it up with lunch at the Taj Tristar.

Kitab Festival: An afterthought

Not too long ago when Naipaul had won the Nobel, Times of India had an instant poll on how many had read a Naipaul before his getting the Nobel. Interestingly, more than the majority had responded in the negative. I know these instant polls give weird sporadic results but somehow they do dish out some bitter truth that reflects the whims and fancies of the Indian junta.

The just concluded Hindustan Times Kitab Festival is a case in the same effect. The festival brought together an entir jamboree of authors, writers, journalists, columnists to discuss the “effect of South Asian Diaspora on literature in the subcontinent” and claimed to be for everyone. And to add to the glamour quotient they had Goldie Hawn amidst those literatures’ and intelligentsia to give a talk on here recent spiritual memoir.

“It’s non-bureaucratic and open to public.”

The only good thing about Kitab was the fact that it was not a sarkari festival like the Neemrana fest where even the media was just allowed to press an ear to the keyhole. But still why it didn’t had a U R Ananthamurthy or a Mahasweta Devi who would have connected better with the audience is open to question. And this brings us to the more pertinent question of us having read any book in an Indian language other than English. Are these festivals aimed at
fiction-writers-turned-social-commentators “pandering to the West”?

An article in Business Standard eulogises Kitab as, “Kitab allowed authors and readers to meet outside an invisible cordon sanitaria. It made conversations happen.” Another blog confesses how the best conversations happened outside the discussions rooms.

The idea, it seems, has arrived but is yet to take the shape. Another article in Outlook talks about how a hajjar litfests happen in the UK every year yet the most popular of them is the ticket-ed Hay Festival held in a small town on the Welsh border. Just a cursory visit to the website of the festival speaks volumes of how perfectly is the festival marketed and how big a success it is every year even though it is a ticket-ed event. Selling tickets may not be the best idea to make the litfests popular but it has tasted success and has become a trend in the West. And then there are cities like Bangalore where I have observed there is a culture of paying for entertainment and tickets will sell well.

So, let the ink stain the papers and let conversations happen.

Chennai LANDMARK-ed

Before I had set forth on my sojourn to Andamans, we did a brief stay-over at Chennai and a visit to Landmark was undoubtedly, inevitable. And believe me, I made a visit to all their three stores: Nungambukkam, Spencer Plaza and the latest one at the Victorian Chennai Citi Center (it’s so new that you may even smell fresh paint). And no wonder that I spent a fortune there so much so that it is difficult to describe the expression on my mother’s face when I told her of my book – shopping. I even had plans to visit The Fountainhead but cancelled it after this lat minute crisis.

And what did I buy:

American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville
Levy’s 30th book, he literally speed-writes and writes interestingly which it has to be when a Frenchman travails America coast to coast. And he did that because The Atlantic Monthly invited him to travel around the country during the election year of 2004 and to reflect on what he saw, in the manner of Alexis de Tocqueville's 1835 classic Democracy in America.

He travels in a typical Kerouac-style and like Tocqueville, whose original mission was to study the American prison system. He chats with Americans of all sorts and writes the postscripts on the contemporary America’s failures.

A theatergoer’s guide to SHAKESPEARE
Long been a desire to watch Shakespeare incarnate on stage, the book serves the purpose well. The sketches the author has drawn make the experience of a performance more enjoyable, and increases the appreciation for the breathtaking scale of Shakespeare's achievement.

A year in Provence
Bought this book to know more about the French culture. A pleasant surprise, the book is a tempting depiction of rural France and all its glorious food, festivals and residents. A Year in Provence is written in monthly chapters and tracks the days in the life of the English author, Peter Mayle, and his wife who have purchased a home in a small village in Provence, France.

The Penguin book of Indian Journeys
Travel memoirs are my latest fixation. This one has got everyone from Seth to Dalrymple and Pankaj Mishra to Arundhati Roy. It examines the petty and the large-hearted, the honest and the hypocritical, the smug, the defeated and the insecure . . .

For Reasons of State
This with a foreword from Roy, includes Chomsky’s articles on the war in Vietnam and the "wider war" in Laos and Cambodia, an extensive dissection of the Pentagon Papers, reflections on the role of force in international affairs. Highly recommended for those who want an education on Vietnam and Chomsky’s political work.

Stories from India
A compendium of Kipling’s very interesting tales set in India. Makes a very exhilarating read and transports you to the, then times.

American Notes
Having read almost all of Dickens, this was a must-buy especially when you realize that some things haven't changed about America. Nevertheless, true or not, is a great book by Dickens. Reading it you get a great sense of the author as well as how he observed the world. His humor really shines through, as does his familiarity.

Finnegan’s Wake
This came as a strong recommendation from here.This was an experimental work by James Joyce. The motive idea of the novel, inspired by the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, is that history is cyclic; to demonstrate this the book begins with the end of a sentence left unfinished on the last page. Joyce’s strange polyglot idiom of puns is intended to convey not only the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious but also the interweaving of Irish language and mythology with the languages and mythologies of many other cultures.

The Penguin History of ECONOMICS
A core book. A very clear, reliable and readable history of economic thought from the ancient world to the present day. From Homer to Marx to John Stuart Mill, the author shows how to keep your Keynsians from your post-Keynsians and New Keynsians.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s
This one was long due especially after this.
Who can forget Audrey Hepburn’s immortal portrayal of Holly Golightly! I won't give away the two major twists in the novel, because I want you to read it, cheer for her, and cry with her, without knowing what will happen.