2 states: typical Chetan Bhagat

2 states is another typical Chetan Bhagat. I know that is a meaningless statement. PG Wodehouse was always PG Wodehouse, so why cant Bhagat be Bhagat. But I don’t know, I get the feeling I am reading the same novel for the fourth time.

You can hand it to the guy, he makes book reading an easy process. Page 1 to page last is like a not-boring movie you watch. You don’t need breaks in between, you are eager to watch the next scene.

This time, he knocked me off my chair a few times too. No I didn’t faint. I meant the humour. He better get more of that into the book, a lot more and I will add him to my favourite list.

And I don’t like his heroines. 5 point someone was too long ago so I cant remember how bad the lady in it was. But in the other 3, the heroines come with bad attitude. Before this, I read the call centre one and I hated the girl so much! I hated the ending too! Here, Ananya was almost coming up as a decent one and he spoiled her towards the last half. Hmph. Always the guys are nice! I think he does it on purpose.

And I would be happy if he made the heroine ugly for a change. Ok at least not so beautiful. Maybe I am not fair. Most authors have this habit of turning out tall and pretty ladies in their books. They may come poor, they may come dumb, but they are all gifted with tons of beauty.

There was a bit of drama too. I will just point out one instance – 4 rings! For the sake of future readers, I am not elaborating.

One bit of ahem – personal connection – I was wearing a blue n white salwar as I started reading and the heroine appears in the same outfit. Plus she has a mole below her lower lip. Not sure if my black spot at the same position is quite a mole but well it was fun reading it. Lost all fun when the girl turned out to be in IIM-A. Sheesh. Now, that is definitely not my idea of fun. Quit a job, walk around jobless, curse the whole world for losing job – thats fun. But IIM-A, naa.

Hmm I thought I had more to write, but cant remember now. Anyway I don’t intend to put down Chetan too much. After all, I too wanted to grab his book as soon as I heard about it (Thanks Sribro for lending it :-)). And I will possibly rush to get my hands on his fifth too.

Nice people

Every now and then I have to revise my views about the goodness of people.
Today I am of the opinion that it is all good people. But you might catch me saying another day, it is all bad people. And then I would have no memories of whatever I am going to say now about the goodness.
You see, I don’t like the word consistency. I think it is a burden on the whole dictionary keeping it there.

Interestingly, all the goodness I found recently was in bus stops. So if you feel the world is nasty, I would advise to go catch a bus. You are not to blink your eyes or offer to take me home. It happens to be a sound advice!

First instance was when I had to go to this new place. I went to a random bus stop which had the looks of taking me to my new place. Now people may say books and covers are not related to each other, but I say – uhh err – bus stops and buses are! A lady there said yes I came to the right bus stop, and she went out of her way to help me. She found the right bus for me, sent me off and even told the conductor where I wanted to go. Wow! All that for a strange specimen like me, who looked like she just got out of bed because she just got out of bed.

Second instance was today. I was again at a bus stop and the sun was showing no mercy. It decided to shine brightly and whats worse it decided to do so right on my cheeks! Ouch the burns. I was not quiet about it. “Darn… grr… argh… hmph… bow” – some of the samples from my sun-protests. I was smartly doing the protests standing next to a girl with an umbrella. She took the clue, smiled at me and offered to share her umbrella. I smiled gleefully, and entered.

So you see, the world is full of nice people, good people, wonderful people, lovely people and well, you know it is all just… hmm it is all just nice.

Hail sleeping

Fancy pal Jim and I at one of our idle hours. Yea, we got plenty of them.

Me: Hey Jim
Jim: Yea
Me: I made a discovery
Jim: Mm?
Me: You know about sleeping
Jim: Yea I happen to know a thing or two
Me: Ahh then you should know too
Jim: What?
Me: It is a very nice thing
Jim: Oh that. Yea I knew that
Me: Really?
Jim: Oh yea, knew it even as a child
Me: Good for you! Took me so many years
Jim: It is the sun
Me: The sun you say?
Jim: The sun I say
Me: What did he do?
Jim: He rose
Me: He shouldn’t have, bad thing to do that
Jim: Very
Me: But sleeping, that’s a nice thing
Jim: Very very nice
Me: Angelic
Jim: Most wonderful thing on earth
Me: Not like the sun?
Jim: Not at all like the sun. It rises
Me: Wakes people?
Jim: Exactly those who don’t want to wake up
Me: Very nasty
Jim: Very very
Me: Wish we could hide it somewhere?
Jim: The sun?
Me: Yea
Jim: Should be a little difficult
Me: Well you know for the sake of sleep-loving nice innocent humans
Jim: Worth a shot
Me: May be some day
Jim: Yea some day
Me: Cause now is of course sleep time
Jim: When is it not?
Me: Ah that’s the beauty of sleep. No fuss. It comes any time
Jim: No siree no thing like sleep
Me: Hail sleep
Jim: Hail hail sleep
Me: Hail sleee.. uhh…zzzzzzzzz
Jim: Hail hai…. Snoreeeeeeee

Right Response

Today there happened one of those things when you feel really angry and want to do something about it, but you end up cluttering teeth.

My friend and I were coming in an auto rickshaw. It was a short distance that we could have walked and so would cost us the minimum charge – 10 bucks, or in some cases 12. My friend gave this 10 rupee note and the driver demanded 20. That was ridiculous, my friend said, he traveled this route every other day. He gave another 2 rupee coin and said that’s all. The driver demanded 5 more bucks and he said no. The driver then threw the 2 rupee coin away on the road and said “edtho ente oudaaryamaayitu (Pick it up, its my generosity)”.
My friend picked it up and told him “You will one day beg for this 2 rupee coin.”

All this time, I was just standing there, every cell in me wanting to burst out and respond. But there, no response and the auto gets new “clients” and he rides away, lavishly showering curses on my friend.

I admire my friend for his presence of mind, not losing temper but reacting calmly. Telling what he wanted to and picking up the coin and then joking to me “Saved 2 bucks today.”

I wish I could do that. React in the way I really mean to, not under-do it or over-do it. I end up doing either. When I under-do, I feel frustrated – shucks I should have done this or that kinda feeling. And when I over-do I regret it. Both are bad cause the moment is long gone and you can do nothing about it anymore. All the same, you badly want to just go back to that moment and talk or act till you feel you have done yourself justice.

Sigh, guess it is just another one of those gifts I wasn’t blessed with.

Miss Peggy – by John Strange Winter

I will do a fast account of Miss Peggy, the story of a very modern girl, a novel by John Strange Winter.
And before you start wondering whichever male could possibly write a “modern girl’s” story, no fear, it’s a lady.0020002000200020030030 0020

If you are wondering what those digits mean, I was wondering it myself till I discovered it was done when I pressed Alt+X. It doesn’t work on starting a paragraph. But put it next to any other character and you get the – err Unicode equivalent? Well its probably a long known fact and we are not talking about keyboard shortcuts here.

So back to Peggy. One term you will need to know if you are reading Peggy is “flapper”. I will admit I was hearing it for the first time and so was my dictionary. Wikipedia says it was a term used for a new breed of young women in 1920s who did all those funny things people called characteristic of “modern women”.

Anyway little Peggy here is a teenager and a flapper or so she calls herself on every other page of the book. She justifies all her behaviours and mood changes and mad ideas, saying but she was only a flapper and I understood a flapper means a dumbo who has a license to be dumb.

No no, Peggy is not an idiot whom we won’t like. In fact it is no difficult to remember your Peggy-days in case you are a woman. Or maybe women don’t stop being flappers – err I don’t mean dumb here. I mean the kind of things Peggy does – thinking the way she does – finding reasons to like or not like someone when in fact you may not like that person at all or the other way around. A sort of make-believe thing which happens when we really cant understand what we really have in mind. Yeah yeah men said all the while women were too complicated to understand. Now women are saying the same too. Its not our fault the mind decides to take strange routes not familiar to the brain.

And well Peggy has a lot of “her boys” to jump between. But then this was early 20th century so we could watch the restrictions that ruled women about going out alone etc etc which I guess is not so difficult to observe in Kerala even today 🙂

And the story goes on and on in this way. It’s a first person narrative which I am a sucker for. Girl narrators are always the best. Even if they lived a century ago.
The book moves on, and its not entirely a waste of time unless of course you are expecting anything intellectual.

And oh boy the book I took was so worn out and old I simply loved it! I have this crazy adoration for really old books. Sigh!

One last thing before I wind up. Seems Peggy was Winter girl’s last novel and the book was published posthumously one year after her death. Sigh again!