The Vegetarian - novel

It has been raining almost non-stop in Kalyan since last Tuesday. What better way for a retired person, like me, than to read a book, when one is unable to go out, for walks, etc.  

Yesterday I finished reading The Vegetarian by South Korean writer Han Kang. This novel was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. Ms. Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024.

My review of The Vegetarian, in free verse/Japanese Haiku (5-7-5) style 

The Vegetarian 

The reader tends to love

The books which are slim and concise 

The Vegetarian is only 182pp

As such I loved it

I was able to finish reading it

Till the very very end

It is written by a 

South Korean writer lady named Han Kang 

She got Literature Nobel recently 

This novel was awarded with 

Man Booker International Prize 2016 for being

Best translated book that year 

Its story of a women 

Who one fine day announces giving up

Eating meat and animal products 

She said a night dream 

Is the reason for giving up meat

Only vegetables fruits for her 

Her husband and parents are

Bewildered and astonished at her strange decision 

And decides to overturn it

But she is very firm

And refuses to eat meat animal products 

Loses weight but is firm

She attempts suicide when she

Is force feed meat at family gathering 

And is rushed to hospital 

She is declared mentally unstable 

Is divorced and given up by family 

Except by her elder sister 

Mangolian Mark is chapter 2

The above lady now lives all alone

But still only the vegetarian 

Her brother-in-law is an artist

And he exploits the lady physically sexually 

Is found by his wife

Flaming Three is chapter 3

Yeong-hye is the name of suffering lady

Now in a psychiatry hospital 

Her elder sister, In-hye, visits

Hospital regularly to check on her condition 

And is getting sad frustrated 

The novel ends with another

Force feed by doctors nurses and sister 

Makes condition of lady bad

The novel ends abruptly and

The lady is shifted to bigger hospital 

Sister on brink of breakdown 

Complex novel it is obvious 

Unconventional people are often made to suffer 

For being unconventional and different 

Or maybe the author is

Saying something profound and complex which is

Beyond my comprehension and understanding 

Glad was able to finish 

And enjoyed the turning of physical pages

Instead of the Insta Doomscroll

Android rocks

I was pleasantly surprised to see official blogger application for Android. I had almost forgotten that I have a blog, well sort of a blog. Android rocks, and in future may be all mobiles may run on it. I feel happy to be able to send this post from my android mobile, which is a  Sony Ericsson Xperia X8.

Chicken Chilli and RD

I had a great day yesterday. It was a beautiful day, cool wind was breezing the whole day, Sun and rain had taken a day off, as it was a Sunday, and it was Pancham da (R.D. Burman)'s 71st birthday. June 27 is a special day for Pancham fans, like me. I had mentioned this to my children and they promptly said let us celebrate RD's birthday and party on that day. I agreed but on two conditions that we will listen to Pancham songs for the whole day and they have to say Jai Pancham when we party in the evening.

Well, I listened to RD songs for practically whole day and was very very happy. Pancham has left us a treasure trove of songs. One life is too small to listen and enjoy all of them. In the evening my children reminded me about party and we decided to eat at home by bringing takeaway chicken and ice cream so that we can listen to some more RD songs. So I went to a trendy new restaurant in our new neighbourhood and asked for good chicken dishes. The man at the restaurant said their Chicken chili is quite good. On hearing chili I suddenly remembered reading in one of the article that RD was quite fond of chilies and use to grew various varieties in his home garden. I immediately settled for chicken chili, which later turned out to be quite good. Well, my children and wife certainly had a good time eating chicken and listening to RD songs. For starters we had chicken lolly pop and in the background was playing `Yeh din to aata hai ek din jawwani main'. And whene started the main course of chicken chili, children's all time favourite `Ladki ke kathi' was playing. My Children, wife and I really enjoyed the songs and the chicken chili. And when we had Fresh Litchi ice cream for desert, `O mere dil ke chain' was playing in the backgtound. Bliss. Thank you RD for the ageless and timeless songs. You are Great. We will celebrate your birthday every year like this. Jai Pancham!

I was touched by Lataji's this tweet about RD: its pancham's birth anniversary today......i really miss you and your music pancham..., you are matchless........yours didi... And Ashaji's you tube video clip which is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le7dAL2z57w. Watch it.

New Ulhasnagar

Today we completed one month in our new home in Kalyan. Our new home is in a area called Khadak Pada. This area is jokingly called New Ulhasnagar, as many persons, me included, have moved out of Ulhasnagar, to this area. It is basically a residential area, not so far away from Kalyan station and city of Ulhasnagar, and has many upcoming projects, and a 2 screen multiplex.

I was apprehensive that my family may not be able to settled down quickly in our new home. I have been proven wrong. They have settled very nicely and like both the surroundings and our complex. My wife, who always wanted an airy and a bigger home, never lose any opportunity to thank me for new home!

I had always thought of joining a gym, to lose some weight, and some inches around my waist. As our complex's club house has an excellent gym, I am being pestered by my children to visit gym as often as I can. I am beginning to make a visit to gym a habit, but it may take some time.

My wife is very religious and she used to feed meethi boondi (sweet boondi) everyday to crows in our old home in Ulhasnagar. It seems same crows have also migrated with us to Kalyan. Every day at six in the morning my wife is woken up by ka ka ka of crows which does not stop until she feeds them meethi boondi. She believes that it is crows who brought us to our new home. Interestingly the name of our building is `Pashupatinath', named after famous Lord Shiva temple. I am beginning to believe that maybe she is right. Thank you crows and Lord Shiva for our new home!

Beautiful

Read today, while commuting to work, among the endless chatter of my fellow commuters, a beautiful story `Home' by Anton Chekhov. An advocate comes home in the evening and is informed by the governess of his 7 year old son that she has noticed his son smoking. The rest of the story deals with how a father is unable to convince his son that smoking is bad. Until in the end it is bedtime for his son and as usual he tell him a story, which he usually improvises, like most fathers. In that story the emperor's son, who was just twenty, was a good boy, but had a bad fault of smoking, dies because of smoking. The advocate son shudders on hearing this and vows that he will never smoke again. These lines from the story are really good: Medicine should be sweet, truth beautiful, and man has had this foolish habit since the days of Adam . . . though, indeed, perhaps it is all natural, and ought to be so. . . . There are many deceptions and delusions in nature that serve a purpose." Very true. You can read this story, which is on-line.

Helpless

I feel helpless every evening. Read on if you are interested to know why.

Every evening, after leaving office, after an honest day's work, my only wish, like any good husband and father, is to reach home as soon as I can, and be with my family. And my immediate aim after alighting from the office bus is to catch my beloved 5:59 p.m. Titwala local train. Well, I am able to catch it on some lucky days and on most of the days I am unable and feel helpless. The reason behind my helplessness are the numerous hawkers who now occupy almost all the available space in the CST subway, which I must pass in order to catch my beloved local train. Take today, it was 5:55 p.m. when the office bus reached, I alighted the steps to the subway and found, as usual, there were just numerous people and some of them were curiously standing in the middle and on the sides of the subway and if you are regular user of the subway, then you know these are the illegal hawkers, occupying precious spaces meant for ordinary walkers like me. These hawkers hamper the smooth movement of commuters. Sigh, as on most of the days, I reached the platform half a minute late and saw my beloved train leaving the platform. Exasperation, wrath and indignation were the emotions which filled my mind, which is subsequently filled in by the feeling of helplessness. And the next train to my destination is in 20 minutes. More feeling of helplessness.

The subway was constructed with a twin aim : to smooth the traffic on the busy CST junction and to enable faster and efficient conveyance of thousands of commuters who must use it to catch train of their destination. While the traffic on the road above subway seems to be smooth, people like me just feel helplessness as it take more and more time every day to cross the subway. Will the higher authorities, Municipal corporation of Mumbai city and the Central Railway take the steps to remove the unauthorized hawkers and enable people like me to catch our favourite trains. Hope they will do. But hope has no relation to reason. Feeling helpless again.

Another good read

After finishing The Perplexity of Hariya Hercules by Manohar Shyam Joshi, I felt hungry for more books written by Joshiji. I search and found that one of his book T’ta Professor has been published by Pengiun. Feeling little impatient I looked if I could purchased it from an online bookstore. I was pleasantly surprised to come across Flipkart.com, and purchased it immediately. T'Ta Professor made for some good reading over last weekend. It is comic-tragic-erotic-sad in turn and the first few pages are really hilarious. The translation, by Ira Pandey, is excellent. I would recommend this book. You can read the full-fledged review of this book here and here.

I would also recommend Flipkart, which seems to have excellent stock of books, both in English and Hindi. If one buy books worth more than Rs. 100/-, there is no shipping charges, within India. And they give discount on most of the books. It is India's answer to Amazon.com.

Just out of curiosity I searched Flipkart two days ago to see if they have T'Ta Professor as written in Hindi by Joshiji. It was indeed available with them, but was currently out of stock. I clicked on the notify me button. I was pleasantly surprised to receive email from them that this book has become available. Needless to say I ordered it immediately and am waiting eagerly for it arrive. The Hindi version is priced at, believe it or not, just Rs. 30/-, while the English translation version is at Rs. 199/-. Curious.

Good read

Yesterday I finished reading `The perplexity of Hariya Hercules' by Manohar Shyam Joshi. It has been translated from Hindi. It made for a good reading and since this was slim book I was able to finish it in a few days. Though something is lost in translation (for exmaple `.... something wasn't right, there was something black in the lentils', which would have read in Hindi as `Dal main kuch kaala hai'), the translation was quite fluent.

The book tells about adventures or rather mis-adventures of Hariya, who is a clerk in the home department in Delhi, and Hercules in his name refers to the brand of cycle he used to ride. He selflessly attains to all the needs of his invalid father. After his father dies, he is left with a trunk, the contains of which which leads to perplexity of Hariya and to his misadventures and sudden disappearance. This leads to various tales about his disappearance based on hearsay and half-truths and various accounts are recorded in this book.

I particularly liked this part which appears towards the end of the book `The more we investigated and theorized the more facts and theories piled up, making it all the more difficult to determine what was true and what false. Was something false that seemed true or what it a truth that looked false?' Is'nt this true of people around us or what we read in the newspapers. Truth seldom comes out and we have draw our own theories.

Book is highly recommended.