The World Jones Made by Philip K Dick

Nice book. Easy read. Gripping start to finish. Dick's 1956 book is full of the neuroses of the Cold War, the references to the Communists and the War, but like all good books, there's an element of general truth in what he writes. In the book the Relativists overthrow the fanatics and the fanatics overthrow them back and I guess that sums up human civilisation, the swinging back and forth between opposite poles. Humans it seems have trouble dealing with duality. They like names and labels to be fixed, unchanging, easy. They like to believe fairy stories. They categorise themselves and the categorisation somehow becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Be it microsoft vs. open source or capitalism vs. well, anti-capitalism, nobody wants to look any deeper than the most generalised principles, and then they want to stick their loyalties to that one cause, however badly it might fit their world view. And of course, loyalty to more than one idea is anathema. Dick writes well, and he generalises enough about the future that his books don't date easily. And really, this isn't a sci-fi book is it? It's a novel about humans which happens to be set in some distant future. 1997. Buy it here Fabmall rocks by the way. I got the Book of Illusions from them a few days ago and like everything else that I've ordered from them, it arrives with stunning efficiency. Remarkable.

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

I still have goosebumps from this one, and as I write the title above, they're coming back with renewed force. This man writes and when you're done reading him you can't quite explain what he said, but the feeling lingers on like somewhere deep inside you he's changed the way you think. Somewhere inside, you've understood. Many days later perhaps you find yourself in a contemplative mood thinking about David Zimmer and his life, about Hector Mann and his life and I suppose about yourself and your life. The writing itself disappointed me to start with. I started drawing analogies to a bored Stephen King but now that I think about it, why draw attention to the style when what you have to say can be said so simply. I guess after the enormous success that Paul Auster has enjoyed it's going to be a bit hard for him to write with the same grit as he did the New York Trilogy, but that's okay I guess. He still manages to walk a bizarre line between philosophy and potboiler, seemingly at home in both environments. Don't read further unless you've read the book (available here) as they're called spoilers for a good reason. The book itself deals with Zimmer's efforts to write about Hector Mann, a silent-era comedian now presumed dead. Auster tells the story from many angles, one from Zimmer's point-of-view and many from the totally unreliable points of view of gossip columnists from the 1920s. An interesting way to tell a story. Hector Mann himself is a screen name with a fictitious past and after he leaves Hollywood he retroactively visits all the places he was alleged to have been from, reliving a bizarre time-warped history, bumping into people connected to his past, walking the knife-edge of chance, turning the fiction into reality. And then when Zimmer goes to visit him he's confronted with the most heartbreakingly beautiful work of art, the destruction of Hector Mann's unreleased films. The theme of "if a tree falls in a forest" is repeated in many motifs in this part of the book. Is art art if no one ever sees it? The only person who gets the girl is Martin Frost, and he typed her out of thin her, turning illusion into flesh and blood. Auster meditates on the fragility of "reality" and whether everything is just an illusion in the end. The revelation that Zimmer died without ever knowing whether Alma managed to save the films is probably the finest line to ever end a book. "I live with that hope", it says. The themes of random chance, loss, hope and the fragility of things are beautifully wound together in a very aptly titled book. If things don't make sense, are they real? This is one guy who when I read I get the impression that he sat down and wrote the first words knowing exactly what he wanted to say, and he says it without meandering subplots or halfbaked characters.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

What happened? How did this book manage to go from being Fight Club to Five Point Someone via The Old Man and the Sea? The start of the book is taut and stark and evil but a little past halfway through the book Kesey totally loses the plot and the book meanders to the end. I found myself skipping entire pages and was feeling guilty about it till I figured that ol' Ken'd probably had enough of this goddamn book by then anyways. I was going to see the movie as well, but now suddenly I'm not so keen.

Further Reading

So I did a lot of reading on the bike trip, far too many to post in detail, so here's a short summary: The Gabriel Club by Joydeep Roy Bhattacharya. Strange and intriguing book. I loved it. The story is nonexistent but the feeling is tremendous. Reminded me of Smell, but far more bizarre. You can read an excellent review here (A Stunning Debut) or even better, buy it here. Initially I was surprised that the book didn't do well but then I figure a public that thinks Dan Brown is "Umberto Eco on steroids" will probably not go for this stuff. I fell bad for the author that he didn't hit it big with this one, but if anything that is a confirmation of the high standard of art in this lovely work. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. What a revelation this book has been. Auster's style is very dry, and yet his stories are full of feelings. He writes about his characters in short, simple sentences but proceeds to make them into incredibly complex human beings. Bizarre things happen in his stories, but nothing that could be deemed impossible. It's a wonderful twilight zone between realism and surrealism. Smell by Radhika Jha. I got this book on my trip to Kerala last year. Simply superb. Towards the end one can almost feel reality crumbling around the protagonist. The scene with the puppet show on the metro totally blew me away. Radhika writes with a real intensity of feeling and even though one knows that this is a work of fiction, she certainly writes as though all these things actually happened to her. Although the styles are totally different, the smell motif reminded me of another excellent book, Perfume, another must read. Fooled by Randomness by Nassem Nicholas Taleb This book is aimed at financial market participants, traders, etc, who think they can predict the market. Taleb demolishes many theories about market movements, especially technical analysis, etc. He expounds beautifully on the role of chance, the brain's calculation of probabilites and the many misconceptions people have about stochastic processes like market prices. A wonderful book, almost epiphanic. Having worked in banking for many years, I can safely say that Taleb is a very rare specimen, the renaissance man with a deeply philosophical bent of mind engaged in one of the most cut-throat professions in the world, and his book is a rare glimpse into the mind of this man. Malcolm Gladwell has a nice piece on him at his website.

The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

John LeCarre meets Roger Waters meets Graham Greene. Quintessentially English, tinged-with-existentialism writing dealing with England during the First World War. Stark characters and settings, hints of madness, despair and gloom. Very well written if you enjoy this kind of stuff. Pat Barker is a girl by the way.

Phantom of the Paradise - Movie Review

I first saw Phantom of the Paradise on Star Movies about half a century ago. I remember nothing of that now save for the fact that the film was deliciously bizarre. When Muthu said that he'd seen it and loved it, I said fuck! Muthu liked Magnolia, so there's no telling what he likes. Luckily for me though, my video library has a poor selection of good films and so having exhausted all other possibilities save for "Mujhse Shaadi Karogi", Phantom suddenly seemed liked a great choice. And my word, what a great choice it was. Brian de Palma's weird and dark look at the music business and his reworking of Faust/Phantom of the Opera is one that will definitely appeal to those who look for something out of the ordinary in cinema. This is another movie filled with fantastic storytelling and bizarre sequences. The prison escape, the disfigurement, Beef and his death are all sequences of intense weirdness. The Phantom is brilliant, funny and likeable and then immediately afterwards totally pathetic. Swan is brilliantly played by Paul Williams, who also wrote all the songs in the movie. Phoenix is simply beautiful. When she sings that song at the audition where she finally gets to sing she looks so heart-stoppingly lovely, vulnerable yet strong. This is a no-holds-barred plotline which gladly accepts and even celebrates the bizarre and unusual, leaving you constantly wonderstruck at the director's vision. Two thumbs simply aren't enough for this movie.

Pune-Varkala Bike Trip

The prudent man would begin a 1000 mile bike trip with detailed preparations, bike inspections and lists of things to take. The truth is, I've never been a prudent man. And so it was that shortly after having woken up one Monday morning (28th March), I decided that I too was going with Anoop and his brother Amit on their bike ride all the way to Kanyakumari. Toss some clothes in a bag, tie the bag to the bike and you're off. One of the pleasures of owning a Karizma. I'd like to take some time here to talk about the bike here. The Karizma is not renowned for it's touring ability. For starters it doesn't even look like a tourer. It looks quite fragile and more like a city bike for people with more money than sense. However, as it turns out, she is simply superb as a tourer. Superb performance, superb safety, superb reliability. What more could a reasonable man want? Superb comfort? Okay, got that too. When we started out I wondered whether my bike would keep up with the chugging locomotive and by all apperances omnipotent Enfield that Anoop was riding. I needn't have worried. The Karizma easily outperformed the Enfield, and totally crushed it on hills although I believe the latter is more due to the specicities of Anoop's bike than a general observation about Enfields. At any rate the superb silent Karizma engine performed like a dream. Overtaking was safe due to the power the Karizma delivers even in fifth gear. Just a little twist of the accelerator and the truck that was blowing great big diesel fumes in your face is quickly consigned to history. The braking is equally magnificent. A quick trip down the gears and a bit of brake and you're at a standstill. Wonderful. All this of course makes for a much safer ride on highways. And the best part - at the end of a days riding you're still limber. People say that the Karizma's riding position puts too much weight on the wrists. I can safely pronounce this as a myth. We did an average of 250 kms a day and at no point was there any sort of discomfort in the hands. The only thing I'd like to change about the riding position is the footrests which are a bit too far back. Even so, after a while one gets used to even that and there's nary a long-distance biker who doesn't need to stretch his legs at the end of the day. All in all, the Karizma is a comfortable bike. So comfortable infact that even someone with as little long distance biking experience as I could do 7 days of 6 hours on the bike with no apparent trouble. The route that we took was quite straightforward. Started off on NH-4 which becomes quite pleasant once it gets out of Poona. This is the same route I've often taken to Panchgani and there is slow but steady progress on the four-laning dream project Golden Quadrilateral. Up till Shirwal the highway is in stages of patchy completion but then it's fully ready up until a little before Karad. We turned off just after Karad towards Amba where we planned to spend the night. It was getting dark and freezing cold, making me thank the little voice in my head that said "It may be April. This may be India. Even so, pack a jacket. Always pack a jacket." Reached Amba at 11pm and ended up staying at the Pavankhind Resort, a lovely, luxurious yet homely place owned by a charming gentleman called Mr. Shirgaonkar. The next day we made our way down the ghats to NH-17, the Bombay-Goa highway. The drive down was stunning. This was where Anoop's bullet blew two fuses in quick succesion and then proceeded to have a flat tire. I got seperated from them in the confusion and did the 280 kms to Madgaon all by myself, which was wonderful fun. This bit of NH-17 is the kind of highway that makes biking a pleasure. You set your cruising speed at 60 and then sit back and relax. The road is good, the traffic light, the scenery acceptably pretty. Sometimes you round a corned and see a great big river. This can be stunning. It was really hot during the day but as the sun got low in the western sky it turned beautifully pleasant and it was a nice experience to bike through a countryside that was slowly switching on lights. I love this time of day. Stayed an extra day at Benaulim trying to figure out scuba for the Kumar brothers. This didn't work out so we set off southwards again. Goa was also a pleasure to bike through, but things started getting worse as we got into Karnataka. The villages didn't have the same neat, clean look as those we'd passed in Maharashtra or Goa. Karnataka highways seem to have been forgotten by the tourist industry. Some places are truly stunning (driving into Karwar, for example) but there is a real shortage of decent places to eat and spend a few hours avoiding the afternoon sun. Even so, there were enough stretches of clear highway to keep things pleasant. That evening we stopped at the awesome Turtle Bay Beach Resort. They have a huge, empty beach and great food, though they're a bit pricey. This was probably the last day of good biking as the road deteriorated pretty rapidly after that. A better idea for a bike trip would be to bike down to here, stay three days and then bike back. The rest of the trip is not recommended except as an endurance test. The next day we stopped to try and get Anoop's bike to climb a bit faster, which took a fair amount of searching for an Enfield mechanic. Then we had to go to Udipi station to book our return tickets from Trivandrum. The railways have certainly improved and this whole deal was completed with a minimum of fuss. Onwards through Kerela where NH17 is continuously flanked on both sides with houses. Sometimes it narrows down to one traffic clogged lane in some godforsaken hellhole like Thellasery where it's hot, sweaty and nothing is moving. This is my third trip to Kerela and I've decided that I don't like it for the most part. The famed backwaters are a huge anticlimax, the Periyar sanctuary likewise and even Munnar etc. can be given a wide berth without getting the feeling that one is missing something. Only Varkala redeems Kerela in my eyes and soon that will be gone too. One strange thing about Kerela that strikes even the most unobservant of travellers (i.e. me) is that women seem to be stuck in a different age here. All the female centric hoardings were either for jewellery or saris, nothing else. One hardly sees any women on the streets and all in all there's this hugely conservative vibe coming off every thing. Burqas are common. I even saw a hoarding for Parvin Pardah and Hijab featuring a pleasant looking woman in a hijab. Imagine that. Next night in Nileshwar. The Nileshwar resort had the world's best chef and the world's worst service. All this wonderful food would come to the table in the wrong order. It was sacreligious. Sometimes we'd eat in tiny restaurants. When you ask for a menu, there is none, so you ask - what do you have? The answer is rice, chapati. And? And nothing else. Okay, daal? Yes, we have daal. Vegetables? Tomato sabzi, aloo gobi, capsicum. Alright, non-veg? Beef curry, chicken curry. Now we're getting somewhere. No matter how hard you try, waiters in these places have trouble telling you what they have and it's almost a challenge to coax the list out of them. Evolutionary dead-end. Anyways, by now NH17 had become quite terrible, passing through big towns was taking ages and everyone was getting impatient. The Karizma had a little hiccup as she overheated in Cochin possibly due to her being overdue for a servicing, but even so ten minutes later she was fine again and the big broad NH47 between Cochin and Trivandrum came as a pleasant relief, and along with it came the rain. It started pissing down about 40 kms from Varkala, so we spent the night in some unknown place. The next morning we reached Varkala. Carrying on to Kanyakumari seems like an unnecessary act given the state of the highways outside, so I'm just going to go have a beer and look at the sea. I'm reading "The Eye in the Door" by Pat Barker. It's amazing. Review later. To conclude, I'd just like to say that biking long distances is a superb actuivity. The highways are only as dangerous as you make them, and the pleasures of seeing the country from so close are indescribable. When you finish a trip where you have been intimately connected to every inch of progress that you have made, there is an extra edge to the thrill of arrival. Like trekking on bikes. I'm looking forward to the next one already. Update: I calculated the fuel efficiency of the Karizma twice during the trip. Once it gave me 609kms for 11.85 litres (51 kmpl) and the other time it gave me 637 kms for 13 litres (49 kmpl). Staggering. Unbelievable. But true. At the time of loading it onto the train it still had 7 litres in the tank. The boys who put it on the train there really liked the Karizma :-)

The Ones I Didn't Like

Just in case you're wondering how I manage to say nice things almost always about the books I read, I just wanted to clarify that I don't write reviews about books I hated. Even so, here's a short list: The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass - too dense. The English Teacher by RK Narayan - terribly slow and boring Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein - just generally shit. bad writing. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway - style out of date and no fun anymore.