A Cursed Man: A documentary by Liam Le Guillou

Liam Le Guillou's documentary "A Cursed Man", available on Kanopy (thanks public library streaming services), follows the documentary filmmaker on his quest to get cursed by practitioners of dark arts. While most sane people actively try to avoid hexes, jinxes, and supernatural misfortune, Le Guillou travels around asking witches, shamans, and voodoo priests to put the whammy on him.

The premise is fascinating in that train-wreck sort of way. Le Guillou genuinely needs to be convinced that magic exists, and apparently the only way his skeptical mind will accept supernatural phenomena is if something genuinely awful happens to him via a curse put on him. He travels the globe looking for a shaman or a witch who would put a curse on him. Many sincere practitioners try to dissuade him, but that is not stopping Le Guillou.

As Voodoo priest Divine Prince Ty Emmecca astutely observes, “The norm is to be cursed. And so [what you’re doing] sounds, without being disrespectful, almost entitled," It's a fair point – here's this guy demanding bad mojo when most people are just trying to get by without additional (evil) cosmic interference.

What saves the documentary from becoming a complete vanity project is the quality of the conversations Le Guillou has with his subjects. The practitioners he meets are invested, honest, and well-intentioned people who take their craft seriously. Their insights into belief systems, spirituality, and the nature of reality make for genuinely thought-provoking viewing. These aren't carnival fortune tellers or charlatans – they're people with deep convictions about forces beyond our current scientific understanding.

Still, there's something oddly self-indulgent about the whole enterprise. Le Guillou reminds me of a male Elizabeth Gilbert, though thankfully without the insufferable privilege tourism of Eat-Pray-Love. Like Gilbert, he's a white person with enough time and resources to go soul-searching across continents, but at least his journey involves potential supernatural consequences rather than just some trite self indulgent and shallow observations we could have come up with, without leaving the confines of our couches. The most puzzling aspect is Le Guillou's insistence on curses rather than blessings. Multiple practitioners suggest that positive magic might be equally convincing proof of supernatural forces, but he's adamant that only bad things will make him a believer. It's an oddly masochistic approach to spiritual exploration. Despite its self-centered premise, *A Cursed Man* succeeds as an exploration of belief, faith, and the human need for meaning beyond the material world. Le Guillou puts his own well-being on the line for his documentary, which takes a certain kind of commitment. The result is an intriguing look at what lies beyond conventional understanding, even if the journey feels unnecessarily focused on inviting trouble.

 

 

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Lists : Podcasts I listen to

Podcasting is twenty year old this year having christened by Ben Hammersely with a broadcast-worthy name in 2004 and gone mainstream with a little help from iPod  & Steve Jobs right after. I never had much of commute more than 10 min to my work (thank you, universe) and due to my preference to visual media for entertainment I had been able to stay clear of podcasts for the first ten years of their existence. Then I realized I could listen to podcasts when I did chores around the house or while stewing in a bath or while on my evening jogs. 

Here below is a list of my favorite podcasts I listen to while I cook or clean or lounge in a bath. I am yet to find any podcasts I can listen to while running, so I have not started my jogging/running routine yet. I do not have much attention span anymore to commit to listening to serialized podcasts like Serial, so those type of famous, serialized podcasts are not in my list. I use podcasts to expand my understanding of the world, for learning new things or to light up my way down the rabbit holes I accidently find myself in every so often.

Philosophy, Economics, History: I do not know whether everyone becomes a philosopher as they grow old, I certainly have become very interested in Philosophy and Economics in the last decade. If I was the kind who cared about framed certificates and laurels I would have gone back to school (online or evening college?) to get a degree or two in these subjects. But I am not, these podcasts are more than enough for me.

Philosophize This: This beginner-friendly podcast by Stephen West is where I started my learning-philosophy journey. I still have many episodes left to listen and I do not listen to it in chronological order. West is a bit of a smart-a3$, and you have to remember he is opinionated too, just like the rest of us, but it is an informative guided tour nevertheless, from the early beginnings of philosophy in Greece, pre-Socrates.

The History of Philosophy without any gaps: I got to this podcast after Philosophize This, which is probably the right progression. Prof. Peter Adamson, is much more detailed and extensive than Philosophize This while presenting the same content. I am slowly chomping away at this podcast as time permits.

History of Philosophy : India, Africa China : Most of the philosophy podcasts only have a few episodes for Eastern philosophy and it is always the Western perspective of Eastern Philosophy. This one bridges that gap.

An Economic History of the World since 1400s: This is technically not a podcast, but a college course or a book by Prof. Donald J. Harreld or a TV documentary series, I watched (listened) it as the latter, using my public library account, on Kanopy. For someone who developed an interest in economics after living for decades in a world created and controlled by economics, this was a great intro to 600 years of human economic history presented by the writer himself. Unless you cared about the occasional illustration, photographs and drawing, the whole series can be consumed just through audio,

The History of India podcast : A very in-depth podcast about the history of India from 6th century BC onwards, hosted by Kit Patrick. I am yet to find another podcast that covers the range of time this podcast covers, from 600 BCE to 700 CE, about India's history.

Fall of Civilizations :  Learning from failures is always a wise idea. Even though I am not in charge of an empire, I seem to be living in a failing one. This podcast looks at the collapse of a different civilization in each episode.

Arts, Architecture, Design .....  including things peripherally related to architecture like urban planning. 

99% Invisible: From one of the best podcast hosts/producers in the US, Roman Mars, this design podcast examines our every day environment and objects from a design angle. A top design, architecture and art podcast featured in many best-of lists.

Memory Palace: Nate DiMeo's voice is mesmerizing and soothing as he tells the stories of long forgotten people, places, things. Memory Palace is Podcast Americana at its finest and Nate DiMeo is how every podcaster should sound like if you ask me.

Articles of Interest: A podcast about what we wear. It is a "sub"-podcast of 99% Invisible.

Thinking Transportation: A podcast from Texas A & M Transportation Institute about transportation and planning. As a public transport enthusiast with some urban planning connections, I listen to keep it up with the world of transportation.

The Daily Poem : A poem a day is a podcast from the Academy of American Poets which present a previously unpublished poems from contemporary American poets, followed by a description of the poem and a re-read of the poem. A short and a calming podcast.

Science: All things under the wide umbrella of science.

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: While Carroll's own expertise is in physics, quantum mechanics, philosophy and cosmology, Mindscape dabbles in a wide variety of subjects talking to experts in pretty much every subject under the sun.

Redefining CyberSecurity: Working in technology, it is hard to escape the talk about cybersecurity and AI. This Sean Martin podcast covers the cyber security piece for me.

Stuff You Should Know : The title. I am not usually a fan of podcasts where there is more than one host with distracting banter and chuckles. This is one podcast I will excuse, even if it has two hosts, Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant and Josh Clark.

Brain Lenses : Hosted by Colin Wright, it is a podcast about how we see the world, ourselves and each other.

There are more podcasts to list like Reply All or Darknet Diaries. Maybe another day.

 I listen to podcasts on TuneIn Radio or AntennaPod, an open source podcast app. I don't really care for the podcasts that are only available on Apple podcasts(not an iPhone person) or Spotify. All these I've listed above are available in the two apps I use.

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Leonard Cohen: Songs and Films

Twenty years ago in 2004 was my first summer with Leonard Cohen. I discovered him for the first time during those days of midnight sun in Alaska. He played while I was on the road in my red Chevy S10, and his baritone ‘golden’ voice sang about sixties girls like Marianne and Suzanne while I was at home.

a young Leonard Cohen, writing poems in his bathtub

While romance was/is not exactly my cuppa, there was some kind of philosophical gravitas and mysticism to this poet/writer turned-poet-singer, who climbed a whole mountain side, to wash his eyelids in the rain (ref. So long, Marianne), while he was singing about his lady loves.

Over the years in addition to dipping into the deep well of Cohen’s soulful lyrics delivered in his slow drag voice, I have had the opportunity to watch some Leonard Cohen documentaries too. The first one “Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen: An Intimate Look into a Poet's Life (1965)” showcasing Cohen as a young poet is (IMHO) better than Netflix’s 1922 documentary “Hallelujah:Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song” taking its title from Cohen’s famous song of the same name. To me, Cohen is more that Hallelujah which has been done to dust, with so many covers.

Fata Morgana(1971), Werner Hertzog’s art-house psychedelic film features Cohen songs like Suzanne, Avalanche against the stark sands of Sahara desert.

I leave you with one of his best lyrics, from his poem/song Anthem - “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in”

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We Didn't Start the Fire in 2022

We didn't start the fire in 2022 either, but a few winds of change blew into my life. Adjusting my sails to the changing patterns of currents and events kept me away from updating this blog. The thoughts and reviews I would have otherwise gathered were thrown to the wind in favor of my efforts in keeping the bow straight on the boat of life. Here are some titles of movies, shows, books, events and places I crossed paths in 2022 captured using the timeless template provided by the master fire marshal, Billy Joel. See you in 2023.

Sky Castle, Hail Caesar, Forrest Gump, Candy Jar
Delhi Crime Season Three, Devil in Ohio,
Twenty Five Twenty One, Oceans Eleven n Twelve
The Lincoln Lawyer, Rush Hour 1, 2 & 3

Surviving Death, Russian Doll, ‘83, Moxie
Borrego, Shards of Her, and Ozark Season Four
Inventing Anna, The Seven Lives of Lea
The Tinder Swindler, and Archive 81

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it 

 

Prime Video, here comes Disconnect and Rushmore

Outer Range, Patriot, Reacher Season One

Gehraiyaan, Marrowbone, Jo & Jo, The Joneses

The House of Gucci, The Virgin Suicides

Tesla, Prometheus, Modern Love Hyderabad
The Wolf of Wall Street, Dead Again, Richland
Stanford, TriCities, Goliath, Three Pines
Paper Girls, Thirteen Lives, Leaving Las Vegas

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

Lionel Messi, World Cup, Stand By Me, Startup
Bad Vegan, Katla, and Minnal Murali
Manifest Season Four, Never Have I Ever
Young Wallander, Anatomy of a Scandal

Hasan Minhaj, Trevor Noah, FIFA got Uncovered
The Man from Toronto, Boeing is in Downfall
Darlings, Take your Pills and The Vanishing
I am Mother, Requiem, and The Fame Game

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Read away Hoffman, calls to Steal this Book
How To Raise a Feminist Son
Rage Against the Minivan, once again Walden
Stranger Things Season Four, Pieces of Her

Hold Tight, How to Change Your Mind
1899, blown away, what else do I have to say?

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

 

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Churuli : A properly prejudiced analysis

Lijo Jose Pellissery(LJP) is the messiah Pooh Bear of the new new-wave Malayalam cinema with his growing ranks of proselytizing followers of the male kind. He had started amassing this cult following since he had Fr. Vincent Vattoli perform miracles in his 2013 film, Amen. In my books, Amen was the last amazing film Pellissery directed. 

Amen painted a Gabriel Garcia Marquez-esque story on the vibrant and verdant canvas of Kuttanad. If the audience had missed his previous film - the raw and experimental City of Joy (had a lot of Amores Perros in it) Amen established LJP with a bang. He almost missed the mark with his audience in the next one, Double Barrel, although I had liked it. But I am not his audience. Then came Angamaly Diaries, Ee.Ma.Yau, Jallikattu and this latest film I watched a few days ago – Churuli.  

Every one of these later films are darker and progressively masculine. I must have made half-way through Angamaly Diaries, got quarter way in to Ee.Ma.Yau before giving up and didn’t attempt Jallikattu at all – India’s official entry for Oscars (Feb 2021.)  

Churuli is his 2021 release, the first movie in Malayalam that explores the possibilities of watching a movie using a VR headset. The interpretation of Churuli is best left to film critics who name drop Kurasawa to Kubrick and Tarantino to Tarkovsky to Truffaut with a side of Lijo over a cup of coffee and not someone like me, who has a biased view of LJP films. These eminent film critics might have already reviewed Churuli on hundreds of review sites and reaction videos. LJP fans, please head on over there, there is nothing for you here. But if you are here for a properly prejudiced and completely kosher (unlike the film Churuli, my review will be 100% expletive free) review, continue reading. 

Churuli means a spiral or a circular maze in Malayalam. According to Maze Building 101, some mazes have bridges, obstacles and other interesting features like boot-leg liquor stores, fire-balls and surreal characters which add to the character and mystery of the maze. Our neighborhood Halloween corn maze has Freddy Krugers and other similar boogeymen jumping out with torches or fake chainsaws. It is pretty impressive on a dark Fall night, even when you know it is all fake. Churuli also has that dark atmospheric effect (better viewed on VR headsets than wide screen TV), reinforced by its story, dialogs and cinematography, taunting the audience to discern between the real and the unreal or just enjoy the ride.

It also has an ominous bridge. Yes, the same bridge we all put off crossing till we come to it. The two main characters in Churuli are afforded no such choice - they have to cross the bridge after which the mood of the movie changes abruptly. These two undercover cops cross the bridge to reach the high range settlement called Churuli. They are in pursuit of a criminal named 'Joy' who is supposedly hiding in this settlement.

In addition to the bridge, the maze @ Churuli has a liquor store turned makeshift church and a handful of frontier roughnecks - an authentic wild West setting. The lingua franca of this mountainous labyrinth is Malayalam laden with un-adulterated 100% pure profanity, most referring to female genitalia. The film is also notable in the absence of any significant female characters. A couple who are there could have been the products of hallucinatory maze, if you ask me. 

I appreciate the presence of a director like Lijo Jose Pellissery in Malayalam cinema, the one who bravely explores different story telling configurations in his films. From the hyperlinked format (City of God, 2011) to magical realism (Amen, 2013) to alternate world building while exploring the animalistic tendencies in humans (Churuli, 2021) LJP has presented engagingly unusual cinematic compositions to Malayalam audience. 

But somewhere during that journey, LJP lost me and I stopped putting any effort to appreciate or understand the innovation he has been putting forth. Totally my loss, I guess.

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Godless : A Netflix Original (Review)

 I am a fan of movies and TV shows based in the American West. Not all of them have to be Westerns. In fact I have not seen any movies of John Wayne, the classic Western icon. Maybe I will, one day. The message of the glorified cowboy who wins the West and its pioneer trailblazer construct does not appeal to me much.

It was Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy that introduced me to the westerns. These spaghetti Westerns were not classic Hollywood fare at the time. They didn't have just one good cowboy, what they had was a mixture of good, bad and ugly in the same people, fighting each other against a fantastic background score. And these Leone westerns were not even shot in the U.S! 

Places and things interest me more than people. The starkly beautiful, hostile wide-screen landscape is appealing to my eyeballs. The history of the westward expansion was another aspect, how it affected the conqueror and conquered and it all happened so close to the present. I have documented my love for the stories of the West a few times in this blog - here, here, here.

 

Godless is a Netflix mini-series that dropped in 2017. Yes, I am late to the party. But better late than never, right? It is written and directed by Scott Frank (director of Minority Report, Get Shorty) and the executive producer is Steven Soderbergh. The heroes in Godless are ordinary folks fighting their own personal battles and more than half of them are women. Although not exactly the feminist Western the series was marketed as, a frontier town without able-bodied men is a new take. 

The powerful performances by the women actors do justice to the story. Sam Waterson, Jeff Daniels, Jack O'Connell, Michelle Dockery, Merrit Weaver, Scott McNairy play some of the important characters in the series. It seems funny to me that for an American western TV show more than half of the lead cast is from U.K.

The Hollywood cliche trap that even Godless couldn't escape is when there is a powerful female character in a leadership role, she inevitably has to be a lesbian. Have they not seen hetero-sexual leaders like Angela Merkels, Golda Meirs or Maggie Thatchers of the world or our home-grown Kamala Harris ? Or is it done as a symbol of political correctness and inclusivity to make sure they don't leave any minority groups out? I am looking at you Mindhunter (Wendy Carr), Xena and Batwoman. It is almost as if a hetero-sexual woman won't have the balls to take on the leadership role intended for the said character. 

Godless captures the epic scale, wall to wall geography of the West faithfully making even trigger-happy TV remote user like me soak it in and keep my fingers off the fast forward button. As expected from the title, there are no Gods in Godless. It is set in a territory of lawlessness and struggle. Yeah, the struggle is real in 19th century New Mexico. 

 

Edifices dedicated to a higher power are conspicuously absent. The story is mostly centered around the silver mining town of La Belle, NM where a church building is seen to be in perpetual construction state and is never seen finished. All the men of the town perished in a mining disaster, except the grocer, the saloon owner and the sheriff and a few other old men.

 

The series is written as a journey through the lives of the people in La Belle as they advance towards the ultimate showdown (which will happen in La Belle) between two outlaws - Roy Goode and his adapted 'Pappy', Frank Griffin, both gun-slingers and outlaws of the finest kind. Roy being a Goode, the makers of the series are trying to tell us that there is some good in him. Guns play an important part in the show, but the lead character Roy Goode, while he is an ace shooter, sometimes belts out dialogs like he is a spokesperson of a gun control advocacy group, which is okay be me. Goes to show that even among gun-toting outlaws the voice of reason and reality was not always a lost cause.

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The Tale of Four Pegs & Other Poems : A poetry review

The Tale of Four Pegs & Other Poems is the debut poetry compilation from Anand Haridas, a journalist turned writer based in Kochi, India. The poet is a friend of a friend. Two degrees of separation, not distant enough to divert incoming friendly fire after a scathing review that I had in mind.

The book is available on Amazon. You can buy it here and I won't get any commission from the sales.

I do not have any idea how to do a poetry book review. I ended up going through each poem and composing my own new poem stringing together my take on each - few words or a line per poem. It seemed to be the only way to do justice to a versified creation. Although if you have not read the book the review below would not make any sense to you.

Here goes,

We get a peek into your think pad, it is honest and clear, though at certain places

metaphors are muddled or similes reckless, you could have taken out the traces

of construction equipment – conjunctions, explanations crowd your unpretentious core

diluting the profound and the mindful down to just another garden-variety heart-sore.

We partake in your pegs¹, the fourth as you had predicted shows a sapient promise

traveling from you to you, we stop at the traffic light caught in the night rain’s fuss²

run over by a wagon train of your thoughts, in a deluge of imagery laden droplets

a few-thousands-more-than-needed hoofed histories, albeit all well framed surrogates.

You give us a lift on your bike,³ your glasses accidentally misplaced,⁶ no worries, forgettable

is the scenery if not for the mongrel and the shawl wrapped figure.³ The bonsai is noble⁴ 

for a tree stunted, lonely and lost, finding its way through the symbolism of your words

nonetheless we lose our bearings on a bridge to nowhere⁵ where a fog of memories girds

your night. Fatigued we take the last flight on the wings of your migratory books,⁷ the ride

up, unexpectedly unusual,⁹ wormholes into Che’s OBE hovering over your death side⁹

where surreal verses sideswipe with singular views,³ you’re reborn in a tearful glass of wine¹⁰

we meet your muse and the sailor’s mermaid at the ship wrecking yard,¹¹ as if by design

the sailor is at sea (still) stateless¹¹, short on memories the forgetful lighthouse beacon

beams a glassy-eyed calm,¹¹ unsure whether we can handle another reincarnation season

we get shimmered in your monsoon pale, sunny raindrops pelt glitter - dramatic¹²

not so the scantily scaffolded summer splintering flecks of winter,¹² they’re radio static.

Smoke rings taunting death pass us by incognito,¹³ on their way to meet your demons¹⁴

we recede silent to make room for your vapory journey, yellow meteorites even wee ones¹⁵

can’t beguile us back, we team up to enumerate the foliage, with your pied piper traveler,¹⁶

to be preserved for after, much after the ambulances are done collecting fare from the maker¹⁷

on the home stretch, the gutted nest is mournfully moving,¹⁸ the blue god’s ominous dance

paints anticipation,¹⁹ broken reeds and spoken Nos²⁰ leave us without any redeemable chance

at a befuddled bank where grounded boats wait for ferries²¹ to take them to light (for real?)

let the unease gush, wounds scale healing word wines, do a twice-over, heart the unheal.

Notes:

• the part of the poems I liked are italicized; 
• reference to the poems are denoted by numbers,^superscript their order as in the table of content;

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Rehashing old blog posts: My favorite poet, once upon a time when I used to read poetry - Rod McKuen

This is rehashed blog post, (not much of a rehash other than changing tenses to match the changed lives and times,) first posted fourteen years ago in my now deleted LiveJournal.

The only readers of poetry are angsty teens, wannabe poets or desperate lovers sniffing around to make off with a verse or two. In the early nineties I gained entry into the first category and started to write...poems! Thereby getting admitted to the second category as well.

I must have just crossed in to my teens. I could be often seen thumping through the pages of yellow moth eaten slim volumes of contemporary poetry, before deciding which one to take home, at our city's public library. Some of these were as recently published as in the summer of '69, which more or less marked the end of the period called contemporary at this historic place of books and learning. That was as current as I could get in 1990s without straining my pocket.

And then I met him….. in a lonesome city, listening to the warm – Rod McKuen. Here was a man after my own heart. A poet singing of love, loneliness, angst and all things in between. Reading McKuen was the closest I came to reading paperback romances, but it does not undermine the value of his works nor do I regret reading them, I enjoyed every secret bite I took of his poems. He was my first girlish crush in the world of words and had a permanent seat in my altar before T.S.Eliot unseated him some years later.

This former rodeo cowboy, lumberjack, cookie cutter, railroad worker, surveyor and US Army infantryman in Korea (wonder whether they still make such renaissance men?) had sold 75 million copies of his books, translated into 28 languages world-wide. A poetic mouthpiece of the sixties flower children, McKuen had recorded 215 albums of original music, 67 went platinum and 115 gold. McKuen’s songs have been recorded by hundreds of artists from Frank Sinatra to Madonna and from Barbra Streisand and the Boston Pops to The Kingston Trio.(Thanks, Wikipedia)

Rod McKuen at Stanyan St., SFO.  Photo by Ralph Crane

Critics said he had no rhyme or rhythm, it was prose faking as poetry, cheap kitsch for the unrefined masses. Who cared, back then I enjoyed it. I hate the maze of metaphors, or in the present day, the overuse of thesaurus. Poetry should be simple, understandable and from the heart. If someone blamed McKuen of being self centered, for pimping his life, I pity him/her – isn’t a person an agglomeration of his experiences and some scattered leaves of memory in someone else’s scrapbook when s/he is dead?

Looking back, most of the McKuen stuff I had once liked with their recurring love-loneliness-sex themes seems cheesy for my now evolved, refined senses(ROFL, who am I kidding), but once upon a time they served my girly teen spirit just right.

Turned out that the first city which became my home in the US was also a favorite muse of McKuen and his place of birth (Oakland technically.)

Here’s a McKuen poem about a familiar street (to me,) at the corner of the hippydom’s Mecca in San Francisco's Haight - Ashbury dist., there’s Stanyan Street and other sorrows….

And now unable to sleep
because the day is finally coming home
because your sleep has locked me out
I watch you and wonder at you.
I know your face by touch when it’s dark
I know the profile of your sleeping face
the sound of you sleeping.
… I have total recall of you
and Stanyan Street
because I know it will be important later.
It’s quiet now.
Only the clock
moving toward rejection tomorrow
breaks the stillness.

-Rod McKuen, from Stanyan Street and other Sorrows 

Not earth shattering, not even poetry by many people’s standards, but somehow those lines got me started on writing and have led to this day that you’ve to endure my blog.

McKuen was still hale and hearty when I had made the original post in 2006. I had assumed he was still alive. Today while checking upon him on the internet after ages, I found that he had passed away four years ago, this month at the age of 81.

Rest in peace, my dear poet and thank you for your songs.

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Three Book Reviews

Reading fiction makes me strongly aware of passing time, sand grains traveling faster than ever down the constricted throat of an hour glass. Most often I find myself questioning, why am I wasting my time reading some one else's version of 'non-reality' when there is so much of reality or real world left to explore. Even if I succeed in reading a truly genius work of 'non-reality', there is a strong tendency for these stories to disengage, tumbleweed like and blow away, fast fading across my prairies of forgetfulness. I simply cannot seem to hold on to these superbly crafted non-realities by any of the master wordsmiths of our times.

Non-fiction on the other hand gets hungrily ingested and cataloged for future reference, adding on to an accretion of wondrous snippets of information about the universe and everything in it. There is so much to learn and non-fiction writing is one of my most primary, go-to learning aids.

Being a lifer in the digital era - searching on Google or taking the endless elevator down the Wikipedia rabbit hole is usually my first nature as it might be for any urban human of my vintage. But there are times when you feel the spiritual need to disconnect from all technology, start on a diet of eating fruits and berries, stop shaving, plant your organic cotton, pick it and weave your own clothes and chirp with the crickets at sundown. Knowing my own limits, I have so far only attempted the first step of this yogic regimen - disconnect from all technology.

During the few hours of my technology abstinence, in the absence of search engines and other crowd sourced enlightenment, I revert back to reading scrolls - books, if you insist on using the correct modern terminology. Whether it is to tackle existential questions or to figure out a past President's horticultural habits, there is a usually book out there somewhere documenting just that.

Every other month I become fascinated with aging, death, growing old and the old age's titillating promise (or the only silver lining?) of making a person wiser. In search of this wisdom or you could say as a part of prepping early for the final act, I attempt reading realistic accounts of people who have been there and done that or books about old age written by people who have worked and lived close with old people like physicians and care-givers. I have chanced upon some very illuminating reads this way - like Sherwin Nuland's The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal : Medicine and What Matters in the End.

Most recently I landed upon The Lioness in Winter: Writing an Old Woman's Life by Ann Burack-Weiss, that belongs to the preparing for old age genre. Unlike Nuland and Gawande who (were) are physicians, Burack-Weiss is a social worker and her book reads a little bit more like an academic work than a non-fiction best seller (which the other two were.) 

That said, her focus on the writing and thoughts of notable women on old age and death and curating these into a cohesive account, is unique and as a woman, interesting to me. There were places I skimmed through the pages when it started reminding me of protracted thesis documents and the hours spent in musty libraries jotting down references to beef up the appendices. Yes,that's how we did it in the dark pre-digital era, right around the time when I was young and the wheel had just been invented.

The Lioness in Winter is interesting if you are curious about the winter of life and are familiar with some older women authors like Maya Angelou, Anais Nin, Joyce Carol Oates, Simone de Beauvoir and a bunch of others and might care to know what they thought about growing old. Or if you are a woman with some free time to read (that's a rare animal, the free time factor eliminates all the probables), it might be worth a try.

How many times have we relived with Holocaust ensconced in the warmth of our couches? I know my answer, far too many to count. The list of non-fiction books on Holocaust I have read is shorter compared to Holocaust movies. There was Night by Elie Weizel and Diary of Anne Frank - that's about it.

Last week I added one more to the list - Man's Search for Meaning by  Viktor Frankl. Again like The Lioness in Winter, Man's Search... also verges on being an academic dissection of life in concentration camps through the eyes of Frankl who was a psychiatrist imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, almost through out the entire war. He was imprisoned in four concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The author intended his writing to be a honest description of every man's life in those dreaded camps and wanted it to serve as inspiration to never give up on life even when it gets as tough as it got for those Jewish prisoners.

Frankl's work to me seems like a treatise on hope penned in the most hopeless of situations. A first-hand account of the most wretched people on Earth (at one time) and written matter-of-factly by a person of scientific and logical temperance - which I am pretty sure Frankl was. Are you like that? Then you might like Man's Search for Meaning.

Mohsin Hamid is a notable novelist of our age, the kind you keep watch on especially if you have roots in the Indian subcontinent. Why did I pick Exit West? It is fiction, but it is one of the very few fictional takes on a very contemporary crisis and I was curious how the 'non-realistic' version of contemporary reality looked like. Also, I have read a few of Hamid's earlier works like The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, that I found interesting. Since the current truth of the Middle East refugee crisis is too hard to bear, I thought maybe fiction might present a more tolerable picture. I was not mistaken.

Exit West names no names, geographies of conflict are deliberately obscured by the author. Although that didn't stop me from imagining it all playing out in Syria. We get to see the yin and yang of human nature responding to wars and displacement through the two protagonists - one female and one male. Unlike the refugees of the present day crisis, in this work of fiction, magical realism makes sure there are no heart-wrenching, lifeless supplicated forms of little children washed up on Europe's beaches.

It is a quick read. Despite the place and the time where the story is set, the narrative does not delve into the miseries of people fleeing their native lands in the wake of wars but rather focuses on exploring the psychology of human nature and relationships in a dystopian but seemingly (new) normal future.

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Book Review: Born A Crime by Trevor Noah

Comedy Central must have really done its research and as a member of its audience I thank them for introducing us to Trevor Noah. To get a comedian all the way from South Africa, an unknown face to most of the American public, as the presenter of a headlining show is a gamble they took. I hope it will pan out for the both Noah and the network. With two years under his belt The Daily Show hosted by Trevor Noah is slowly inching up in the ratings chart and holding it steady after an initial slow year.

Reading his memoir, Born a Crime, I am all for team Noah and want him to be successful. The man has come a long way from his humble South African beginnings. The book was an eye-opening introduction to what is like to grow up straddled on the race fence in South Africa during apartheid (albeit it was in its final descent.)

As a child of a forbidden union, a secret child who needed to be kept invisible and then later on as a young man who defied categorization and racial profiles, Noah's a staggeringly mind-blowing journey. From the teen hustler churning out copied CDs in the slums of Soweto to the interesting new face chosen to replaced the legendary Jon Stewart, it almost seems like an impossible hop.

Noah dedicates his memoir to his mother, "For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man." An extraordinary woman in an extraordinary time, she chose to have Noah because she wanted a child, her child, who will have everything she didn't have. She did not have Noah to consummate her marriage. For there was none between her - a South African Xhosa woman and his Swiss-German father who was twenty years her senior. In a way, Trevor Noah and the way she brought him up was her raising the middle finger against apartheid and boy, I am sure he has made her proud!

Born a crime is a powerful account of coming of age in a historically important time and place, lived through and written by one of the astute commentators on society and culture of our times. Definitely worth a read.

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Re'kindle' Your Reading : Best books of 2010

People are rediscovering reading, thanks to Kindle™ and Nook™. Those who used to get books for Christmas as gifts now get e-readers. And if you want to go beyond reading there is always IPad. I do not have any experience with any of these e-readers to do a review. The title and opening lines were to bait Google's spider and naive reading enthusiasts into reading/crawling the rest of this post.

What I really like to do is to showcase some books I read (or heard, audio books) in 2010. In short, these are some of the best books I read in 2010. They are not necessarily those published in this year I just happened to read them sometime during the last 12 months. If you think you'll like these books you can buy those to read in your e-reader. Maybe I'll pull out my charitable keyboard and type out 5 reviews. BTW this reviews are not really in the order of preference, they are according to my memory time line, those I read earlier in the year come in the first spots and vice versa.


First in the list is Open: An Autobiography :- I am not an authority on sports autobiographies unless you consider Kite Runner an essential guide to running kites. I love films based on sports stories(Escape to Victory, Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Breaking Away, Chariots of Fire, Field of Dreams etc)  though this is my first time with a book on any kind of sports. Despite my naivete in the subject matter I will still take a bet on Andre Agassi's autobiography, 'Open', to be one of the best of the lot. It is frank, down to earth and exuberantly American - in short very much Agassi, the real man behind the facade of pink lava compression pants and acid wash denim shorts, tennis's original rebel without a cause. More about Open, if you are interested.

Next comes, Mike Leonard's ride across America with his eighty plus year old parents and his grown-up kids called The Ride of our Lives. Mike Leonard is a feature correspondent of Today Show on NBC, his garage(which might probably looks like yours or mine) won't qualify him as a celebrity on Today Show. It is an interesting journey into life, through life and across life with Mr.Leonard, his parents and his children, something I'd love to emulate if I could get them all together in one place and in one time zone.


How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely comes next.  Every aspiring writer at some point in time has read a must-read book for aspiring writers. The one I can remember reading,... oh, you think I cannot aspire? Everyone can aspire, respire and perspire, it was too fundamental to be included in any constitution or Bill of Rights. Anyway the one book on writing I read, was Stephen King's On Writing. I don't remember much of it, I did what I do with books, read and forgot. But Steve Hely I like. If you want to write popular sale-able fiction this is one book you shouldn't miss. I have a strong feeling that Dan Brown stole the manuscript of How I Became a Famous Novelist to figure out the right way to write all those trashy best sellers. (I shouldn't be trashing Brown, I cannot even come up with a 100 word story, but then reviewers are people who can't write to save their pens/typewriters/IPads, right?) Hely is an insider in this book business and he knows what he (or rather his hero, one book wonder Pete Tarslaw) is talking about. How come I read two books in a year written by correspondents/writers for late night shows? Steve Hely is one of the writers for The Late Show with David Letterman.

I got to read one of the controversial books that came out in Malayalam in the recent past Njan LaingikaThozhilaali: Nalini Jamilayude Aatmakatha (Translated into English as Autobiography of a Sex Worker, by Nalini Jamila) this year, five years after it took Kerala and Malayalam literary circles by storm. I am glad I am one of the Malayalis who can actually read Malayalam and speak Malayalam differentiating between the different bha, ba, ta,tta, da, ddas unlike the present day Malayalam TV anchors. When some one like Nalini Jamila, who is not a literary scion by far, writes in her native language it should be read in the same, no amount of honest translation can give it the right kind of honesty it deserves. Jamila's book is an interesting insight, a cart load of information for most of us who don't know what goes on in the red-light areas of life. I'd not call it a literary masterpiece, it is a memoir told in simple straightforward everyday language, about a life 99% of us have no clue about, but are secretly interested in knowing, that is what sells(sold) it.

The other fiction book in my list of five is this last one by Assaf Gavron called Almost Dead, English translation of the Hebrew original. When we get up in the morning aren't we plagued by the same old question getting up from the bed along with us, the way it always did ever since we could think - "what is really going on between Palestine and Israel?" Oh, a different question wakes up with you? No way! Well I have always wanted to know about house prices, high school syllabus and real house-wives of Gaza Strip. This book looked like it had the answers to some of my burning questions, the added incentive was the metaphysical/paranormal aspect of the story - the hero escapes suicide bombings not once but thrice. I swoon at stories that offers a view into the mysterious other side of life - you know where time machines are what you drive to work, coincidences are commonplace, well you get the drift, the cover of this book promised something similar and the cover-art is pretty cool too, isn't it? The book doesn't disappoint but it is not a thriller either. It is the writer who interests me, it kindles(kindle strikes again)in me an interest to read his other books, namely Hydromania.

There are more books that I'd like to review, like Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner which had been incalculably influential in my life that I am thinking of replacing Gideon's Bible with a copy of Freakonomics in every hotel room I ever stay in. I do not remember whether I read it in 2009 or 2010. Then there is the very feminist The Women's Room by Marilyn French, first published in 1977 which eventually reached my hands after a long journey of 33 years, losing none of its impact in the transit. I read(listened to audio books) Obama's two memoirs - Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope this year, both  testaments to the incredible writer, statesman and the Grammy award winner that he is. Reviewing all these will require patience and time and my anti-procrastination pill is already wearing thin. If I finish everything now, what will I do in 2011, that is one whole year before the world ends and all will be well. Later.

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