Better than the morning coffee..

Want to read something completely crazy? I mean like utterly, totally, off the charts insane? Then read this. Its so crazy its funny. And after the first few lines, I only skimmed. But it was still totally mental. God. After all these years, she's still entertaining. Who knew.

Recent reading

I just finished reading Aravind Adiga's Booker prize winning novel, The White Tiger. Its fast-paced and engaging. I just couldn't the feeling out of my head that I was reading a novel meant for a Western audience. Much like I felt Slumdog millionaire was made for a Western audience. And it was an engaging movie too. Just didn't appeal to me or touch me in any way. Adiga's novel appealed a little more than SM did. But not too much. It felt a little preachy in parts. Its like he decided to put all his frustration and anger with "the system" in India into his protagonist, Balram Halwai. The black humor sort of felt flat for me. Also, the narrative, a series of letters to the Chinese premier didn't work for me. I felt it was contrived. The whole Darkness vs Light theme was overdone. (the poor are in the darkness, rich are in the light) Where's the nuance? But the story moves quickly, and its an interesting one. No excuses are made for greed and ambition. I see a cinematic version of this happening pretty soon.

Thats just my take on this one. But hey, what do I know? I disliked Slumdog and it won everything at the Golden Globes. Later, I was listening to the sound track. Its a real pity that out of all of Rahman's outstanding work, he wins for a pretty mediocre soundtrack, by his standards. Compare Jai Ho with Taal or Bombay or Roja. Not even close.

Two Men

2 cricket stories have dominated the last few days' news. And they couldn't be more more different from each other. One is Graeme Smith's courageous batting to try and save the 3rd Test against Australia, in what was technically a dead rubber. Says something about the character of the man and his hunger to win, that he would go out to bat with a broken left hand and tennis elbow of the right one. And almost pull it off. We don't have enough of that going around these days. Real. Actual. Courage. Of course, I could play Devil's advocate and say its lot easier to play Hero when you've already won the series and made history. But even so, it requires guts and gritting of teeth. And he did it. Awesome. Almost as awesome as Kumble's heroics in 2002.

The other one, which unfolded with all the drama of a Bollywood potboiler was the more unsavory English cricket crisis. Which culminated in the sacking of the Coach, and the captain being forced to resign. KP's behaviour has been Blago-like just for sheer brazenness. The man has an ego the size of China. And I pity poor Andy Strauss. What a terrible time and reason to be chosen as captain. Because the ex-captain was a self-serving egomaniac who believed HE was KING! On the other hand, expectations will probably be so low that he'd do have fail pretty spectacularly (read behave worse than KP. I don't think the cricket even matters at this point!) to be held accountable. On the other hand, he inherits a team fractured by internal politics, a star player with a chip on his shoulder and extremely dissatisfied backroom staff. Who wants to be king of that world? I was listening to the BBC podcast on this topic. They seem almost amazed that KP could show such poor judgement and believe he had the full backing of his team...when clearly he didn't. Its like his giant, inflated ego just took over the sane part of his brain.

Two very different men.