2 States

This is going to be a more personal review than usual – mainly because I could so identify with the challenges of cross-state marriages – I had one myself.

And as a matter of fact, most of my friends did too – they chose their own partners, usually from a different community. Infact, I am scheduled to attend one wedding next month. And it doesn’t seem abnormal at all, does it ? Choosing a life partner is hard enough, without having to ensure that she speaks Oriya or Gujarati or whatever your mother tongue is !

Plus, isn’t the arranged marriage crowd a minority now ? You would think so if you went through my friend list :)

Unfortunately, there is a vast part of the country that is still very uncomfortable with the idea – if not horrified by it - as characters in the book are. They still cant wrap their head around the idea of a guy choosing his own girl, let alone happily accepting a daughter/son-in-law from a different part of the country. I don’t have to look further than my own first cousins for it. Its more pronounced in certain communities I think - whose sense of culture is very strong and all-pervasive. And so author couldnt have set his novel in two more apt communities than the Punjabis and Tamils.

The story is a simple (almost made for a movie) story – Punjabi boy meets Tamil girl and they fall in love. They want to get married, but only with their parents blessings. However parents need a bit more convincing than “I love him/her”. And when would-be-in-laws come face to face with each other – sparks inevitable fly – which jeopardizes things even more.

What made the book really enjoyable for me was the setting of the movie and the leads – they fall in love while studying in IIMA – and their courtship has a delightful current of humour throughout. Ofcourse, I am not even remotely hinting to be as funny as leads of the book, but given the backgrounds of me and my wife, it touched a chord somewhere. And again, like the book couple, we had more than our share of disagreements over wedding arrangements (thankfully getting parents to agree for the wedding was easy) – but getting two completely different cultures to appreciate each others rituals and customs is one head-bursting exercise !!

The book is priced at less than a multplex tickets cost (Rs 95). And it’s a good 3-4 hour read (I confess I am a fast reader, so you might take a bit longer). But highly recommended for a happy read all the same

PS – If you like the idea, here is an account of a similar wedding, condensed to a blog post and much more humorously written - http://www.whatay.com/2007/01/14/two-weddings-milk-cake-mustard-fields-and-pallo-latke-part-1/
Read More!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I have been wanting to write a book review for sometime now, since I started reading again after almost an year’s hiatus. No particular reason why I stopped, but I know why I restarted – because my stupid laptop keeps breaking down !! I happened to read 3-4 books in the last month – mostly trashy, but this one was impactful. Don’t know if I will be able to write about all of them ...


The Reluctant Fundamentalist was published in 2007 – so its not a new book. Having read A Case of Exploding Mangoes and finding it not too bad, I wasn’t averse to sampling some more Pakistani authors. And wifey happened to bring it home one day, so I picked it up after she was done with it. It’s a rather slim book – you can easily finish it in a day if you have some free time – I needed just 2.5 hours.

But even in its 134 odd pages, Mohsin Hamid has woven a very engrossing story. It is not pulp fiction, but the story is as captivating and you wouldn’t want to put it down easily. The book is a first-person-narrative by Changez, a bearded Pakistani who randomly approaches a westerner sitting in a café and strikes up a conversation with him. Actually a monologue is the correct term because we can hear only Changez talking – he repeats the westerner’s questions for our benefit – before answering the question and carrying on. The setting is an open air cafe in Old Anarkali in Lahore.

Changez starts reminiscing about his education in American and we come to know that he is actually from a higher middle class family in Lahore, and won a full scholarship to Princeton. After graduation, he gets hired in one of the boutique consulting/investment banking firms Underwood Samson at a $80,000 per annum salary. Landing plum international assignments and finding love in Erica, he is well on his way to become one of America’s elites … till 9/11 happens.

However if you have images from Khuda Kay Liye in your head, banish those thoughts. Nothing dramatic happens. Mohsin Hamid seems to be a master of subtlety and the effect of the WTC events are very grey rather than black and white. The changes Changez undergoes and how do those events of 2001 connect to the conversation today is what the book is really about.

After finishing the book, I got the feeling that the book was intended for the westerners - to show them the point of view of the muslim (or atleast the Pakistani) world. And I think here the author falters a little. The reason provided by the author just didn’t cut it I thought … I would be interested to know if you feel the same way. I didn’t agree with the title of the book too – if anything, confused would be have been a more appropriate adjective than reluctant.

The ending of the book was a little abrupt and though you can conjecture what the most probable ending would be, there are quite a few other possibilities. For instance, if you change the name of the book to The Conversation or something, the ending of the story suddenly becomes very vague. However, that nitpick aside, it’s a wonderful short novel to immerse yourself in on an afternoon or in a flight …
Read More!

The Polyester Prince

This book, while officially banned in India, is freely available at Bombay roadside book vendors – who will charge you a Rs. 50 premium over other books as they whisper “book banned hai”.


After finishing the book, I can understand why the Ambanis wanted it banned – but don’t think the government was right in banning it. The book is a regular biography – it has some very interesting nuggets about Dhirubhai Ambani and Reliance - but the readability of the book deteriorates markedly towards the end. It has quite a few allegations – direct as well as implicated – but as everyone knows, nobody could get any of the charges to stick against Reliance.

Ofcourse, having seen the movie Guru before reading the book, I was quite curious to see how much of the movie was real (i.e. matched with the book) and well, quite a lot did. Ofcourse the moviemakers took cinematic liberties and created the Vidya Balan character as well as made Kokilaben’s character (Aishwarya Rai) more glamorous and outspoken - well there are a lot of other deviations as well. But I will highlight a few similarities

• The scene where Mithun confronts Gurubhai and Gurubhai claims he has a golden chappal and a silver chappal for everyone – according to the book, the scene actually happened between Dhirubhai and Ramnath Goenka, publisher of The Indian Express where these words were spoken verbatim (there was no ‘khadi’ chappal though :) ) That conversation reportedly sparked off the Indian Express' battle with Reliance and Dhirubhai


• Madhavan’s character was based on the Indian Express reporter S. Gurumurthy – a tamil accountant with no reporting experience - who Ramnath Goenka hired to investigate Reliance accounts and foreign dealings. There was no expose of sand filled cartons (like the movie) but Gurumurthy did uncover the extra spinning lines in Reliance’s Patalganga plant – which caused a huge furore over excise evasion in importing of the equipment. What the movie also missed out was that Ambani managed to get Gurumurthy arrested and charged with Official Secrets Act, when he investigated Reliance’s overseas benaami investors


• The scene where Gurubhai talks to a young minister and tells him that his father had parked some funds with him and coerces the young minister into okaying the licence for the new plant. Well according to the book – Dhirubhai ACTUALLY pulled the trick on Rajiv Gandhi himself !!! And it worked !!

There are many more – and it makes reading the book after the movie more enjoyable.

But as the book progresses, even though it tries to be neutral in cataloging exactly what trick Dhirubhai pulled to make the government maneuver according to his requirements, you cant help but marvel at the audacity of this man. Agreed the laws of the land were less than perfect – and he showed enterprise in his creative interpretation. But more often than not, he was just a routine law breaker who should have spent time behind bars for what he did. I mean if some more people started playing with government like he did, we would be a complete banana republic.

People also say that he did what he did with a greater vision in mind – maybe he did have a bigger picture view – but some of the things he did had nothing to do with any lofty aims, and were just pure cheating. He trampled over business competitors because he got the government to skew the playing field in his behalf. And Reliance continues to uphold that tradition till date. You only have to look at the creation of the telecom USL (Unified Service License) to see how they still cheat and then get the law to be changed, so that their way of playing the game becomes legal.

And as for Dhirubhai's professed love for small investors – well he had love only for his company – and the shareholders just got lucky that they were holding some part of it.

The book is a must read for everyone I think – just to get some perspective on Dhirubhai Ambani – who is now projected as the visionary businessman. And Reliance – as the greatest Indian company.

As for ratings, well I think books like these are impossible to rate, compared to movies. What do you compare it against ?
Read More!