Rider On The Web

And she knows I love Kung-Fu Hustle.
:)

Heh. Wordle is *fun* :)

You know what? This one is essential reading. I kid you not.

It was the summer of 2003, and a younger, sillier, blue-haired version of me was studying for my Masters at Warwick U. One afternoon I noticed that a bestselling novelist was giving a talk on creating fantasy universes and while I hadn't read him at all at the time, I had enough friends who were completely geeked out on his prolific output and I thought I'd give the talk a whirl.

Terry Pratchett was a fascinating speaker -- warm, funny, self-deprecatory and most insightful -- and after the talk, I went up to him, he made a pleasant blue-hair jibe (which I won't repeat, don't bother asking) and I asked if I could buy him a beer and chat a bit. He was most amiable, so we trotted off to the Graduate bar and talked about writing and fantasy.

It was a fun chat, highlighted, I feel in hindsight, by his recommending Good Omens as a good starting point for his work "because I'm sure at least Neil's bits won't be completely dreadful." For the record, he also called the first half-dozen Discworld books absolute rubbish -- but that could have been because he was, at the time, telling me to go ahead and write a few bad books to find my stride as a writer.

Anyway, so I picked up the tab and, later, a few of his books, and it became my brag-story to Pratchett-fanatics over the years, and that was that. (By the way, those of you well infatuated by the man's staggering body of work are likely to hate me even more now. Heh)

Cut to now, when a justifiably crazed phone call from the ever-excitable wildpixie cued me in to a Discworld novel published by Terry in 2005, called Thud!

Great read, and recommended heavily, but for now let's just let the book speak:

Lady Sybil's eyes focused. 'Give him to me,' she ordered. 'And you take Raja!'

Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humour blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault.

Vimes picked him up carefully. 'Coal him up,' Sybil commanded.

It's in the bloodline, Vimes told himself as he fed anthracite into Raja's eager gullet. Sybil's female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

Vimes flinched as Raja burped.

The only dragon mentioned by name, ladies and germs. It's only a few words, but it isTerry Pratchett, and if swallowing coal is what it takes, so be it. I think it counts as a bonafide second or two of immortality. God bless ya, Terry.

Full-throatedly egging on Shoaib Akhtar and celebrating his wickets?

Wow.

Is that the first horseman I see?
Or is the IPL truly shattering boundaries with such force?

Wow, again.

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You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 90% The Flash 80% Superman 70% Hulk 70% Supergirl 65% Iron Man 55% Wonder Woman 50% Batman 45% Robin 45% Green Lantern 40% Catwoman 40%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

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Writers, in a way, are like cooks.

The best ones have their own signature style, and these wordchefs leave their unmistakable signature on the way they alchemise the language, the way they take basic ingredients and turn them into magical repasts we lovingly gorge on.

Jonathan Swift, for example, with his brutal brilliance, makes one helluva bloody steak, meaty and guaranteed to fill you right up. Joe Heller simplistically makes it work really well, a serving of perfectly mashed potatoes. Julian Barnes attacks with delicate force, apt word selections blended precisely to make his swordfish a la siciliana. Neil Gaiman -- like good ol' Jorge Luis before him -- meshes a bit of literally everything together in a marvellously judicious mix, coming up with a thick broth heady enough to warrant Getafix comparisons. Anthony Burgess laces his bizarrely exotic fricassée -- complete with diced dodo and pterodactyl meat -- with a mugful of country hooch that takes over the skull. Nobody quite knows just how Nabakov spices and soaks his meat, but the thing about his phenomenal leg of lamb is that every bite is an absolute sensation.

Poets are the great dessert chefs, but that's fodder for another post -- if you're interested.

And then there's another wordsmith who crafts, with excellent and irreverent genius, the finest biryani in the land. His words coat the meat thickly enough to bring it to mouthmelty texture, and he tosses in unconventional ad hoc ingredients with mad scientist flair, letting words and grammar flow into a zany, rulefree raita. Sprinkled with a dash of saffron that seems to act as both aphrodisiac and hallucinogenic, it's the stuff of emperors and egomaniacs, despots and dreamers.

And tonight I feast on just that. Ah, bliss.

( smell what the man is cookin... )

... is having Rolfe Kent's title track from Dexter as the ringtone on my phone.

And it always rings while I'm shaving.

Heh.

There are times when you reluctantly rise from your comfortably cocooning Sunday afternoon bed, the sun streaming on your face as you keep turning (both yourself and your persistent phone, onto 'silent') and tossing, burying your face in a pillow -- but as said, irked or not, you're up now. And really not in the mood for the usual.

So you go for a horseback ride.

Not literally, of course. That's just posterior-cruelty (and not particularly nice to the steed either, who'd probably like a siesta himself.. it just is that kind of weather.)

No, you mount the stallion -- hell, the word really would be literally after all, won't it? When you lie back, let that harsh sun-glare pour onto pages and light up words, glorious words about an Emperor and his self-devised immortal Queen, and his struggles with individuality, personality, peace and plurality.

The magazine you read, to get to this particular afternoon's marvellous galloping sojourn, is The New Yorker, and the wordsmith in question, writing about Akbar and Jodha -- in a sharply incisive, everfunny- narrative that spans 8 pages, not 3.35 hours -- is the one man in the world who can describe air as quivering, "like a frightened blackbuck."

His name is Salman Rushdie, and his The Shelter Of The World (Jahanpanah) is available here, to read online.

Anytime, buddies. Read on, into the sunset.

I bought it on absolute impulse.

In a Delhi bookshop for an indulgent three minutes before rushing out for a road trip to Patiala (where I found the bizarrest, most wonderfully B-movie hotel room ever, but more on that later, perhaps), I had to pick up something fun, something to offset the glorious Murakami book (again, later?) I already had in hand for the long car-ride ahead.

Enter this mad book by Austin Grossman, something I'd never heard of.  The back blurb said the protagonists were the vile Doctor Impossible who wanted to, via titular manner, take over the world, and Fatale, a cyborg-superchick trying to cope with her surprising induction into the Champions, the top-level superhero squad in the world. I gave it the quick Page One Test, smirked constantly, and so the book was bought.

Niice, by the way.

The writing is sharp and constant, the voices are realistic and both characters -- stock comic book characters -- are written deeply enough to give them life. There is much DC-referencing throughout, in terms of characters and story arcs, but why Grossman's book works is because, unlike the men and women in capes that populate it, it brings a depth to its two protagonists: people with inadvertent powers making very different choices -- simply to get by.

While in ideal territory for spoofing comic convention -- and I don't claim the book eschews it entirely -- Grossman manages to build a few awesomely compelling characters and genuinely tell their story without trying for one-liners. Sure, the situations, costume descriptions and plotpoints may often be ludicrous, but when the characters themselves are playing it straight, you concentrate more on their neuroses and their, well, feelings.

It isn't Watchmen, but I have a feeling it'd amuse Alan Moore quite a bit.

Comicheads, buy it now. I also think all you non-graphic novel type log might love it and want to pick up something with panels soon. Either way, recommended reading.

PS -- Last week again I bought some stuff I hadn't really read about purely on the strength of their covers -- but then it isn't quite the same when the covers feature the words Neil Gaiman or Julian Barnes.

Set to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.
Featuring Vaspar Dandiwala, Diksha Basu, Matthew Schneeberger, Krishnakumar.

Comment, everyone.

And you lot, forward!

Ask me what I did yesterday.

Go on, just ask.

( Click, in case you're asking... )

Now, what did ya do, punk? No, seriously, am asking.

Tags: friends, ifilm, music, narcissism, writetoself

I want to rob a bank. Sometime this week.
Who's with me?

His name is William Connors Jebasingh.

Congratulations, Andrews and Emily.

AJ is a friend closer than any brother can be, and William's birth is way too overwhelming for me to articulate.

Suffice it to say that the adorable Will fills me with exhilaration, and the realisation that we are indeed crossing over the threshold of our own kidhood. Things don't get bigger or better than this, AJ. Godspeed.

AJ casually sent me an IM yesterday, saying 'my son's sleeping in my arms as I type.' Whoa. This is so much more major than my need to legitimately do a Don Vito impersonation.

Hi, Will.

Million obvious reasons, of c. In this particular context, however, we talk of recommendations.

The point naturally being stuff you wouldn't normally have picked up.

So it was that diffdrummer gushingly recommended the soundtrack of The Train, something that came as pleasant respite from standasd Bollywood-y music. I've always been inclined towards melancholic verse riding over anachronistically uptempo sound, and the album worked for me -- despite the million remixes that came with the 4/5 basic songs. I reviewed it too, but was too late to snag the free album. Sigh. Still, worth the buy, for sure.

And while I follow thechasingiamb's writing with relative frequence, it was purely by chance at a time of complete eljay-irregularity that I happened upon this post, delightfully scornful of all readers not appreciating Srividya Natarajan's No Onions, Nor Garlic, decidedly the most ha-ha enjoyable Penguin India publication in a long while. The buzz surrounding this book kept painting Natarajan as a wannabe-Wodehouse, the kind of tragic, impossible tag that is an automatic turn-off. The influence is clear, but she doesn't overdo it. I like her characters, her cheek -- and by the time I wrapped it up, I was thinking more Tom Sharpe than PGW. A fun, breezy read.

So thanks, you two: purchases I would have completely ignored on the shelves, and I feel obligated to pass on the recs.

As for the rest of you lot, here's what's been taking up my time:

30 Rock; Glitz, by Elmore Leonard; The Ladies Of Grace Adieu, by the increasingly awesome Susanna Clarke, Icky Thump, by The White Stripes; and Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch -- God how that lady can lift the spirits.

Alright folks, recommend a book/movie/album -- and I promise to respond in kind.

Doesn't sound as grand as twenty, admittedly. Still, I've been in Bombay since today 2004, and it's just another day. Nothing spectacular lined up, am at office wishing I was outside -- Bowie's looping persisently inside my head as I look at grey, overcast lethargicromantic weather outside the windowpanes. Longwalk, bookshop weather -- and me chained at the desk, waiting for images. *Uber-wistful sigh*

Three years. It is a while, really. Maybe it should feel momentous. Maybe I should feel driven or self-congratulatory or disappointed. Maybe I should shrug. Just did. (Am I the only one who shrugs every time I type the word?)

Went to a blah movie with a friend last night, an old Bombay friend (as opposed to all the rest of the world friends who now live in Bombay) and we were doing candyfloss (the ultimate movie theatre food, by the by) as I mentioned how the time's flown by. She was all nice and indulgent and myyou'vedonesowell-y about it, but I'm not sure.

It has been an unpredictable ride, to be certain.

The job's fun, crazy, keeps me on my toes, oscillating between restlessness, self-loathing, condescension and merriment -- what more can one ask for? I love my shoebox-sized, ridiculously expensive flat. My social life leaves me with perplexingly little time to read. Have started developing wanderlust. Became alarmingly tolerant of people at large. I fell in and (mercifully) out of love, even as a million exes tied their respective knots -- and I danced at their weddings. Occasionally took myself seriously. Rediscovered old friends; deeply dug some new ones. The Spidey happened. Learned to negotiate money. Met absolutely the bizarrest bunch of people. Gave up the alc; restarted bartending. Finally crossed over, bought a gaming console, and am ridiculously hooked. I may be writing a quick book soon (not the eventual novel, this is breezy stuff). A film I wrote ought head into production even sooner.

Didn't see any of it coming. I've stayed afloat, I guess.

I believe, truly.

They did good.

I had completely written off Bono and the lads, their music increasingly banal and the rockstar-monkey's constant preening to the lens coupled with his blueshades-wearing-Teresa complex possibly the most obnoxious act in current pop culture, but in the immortal words from that bad volume 3, just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in.

The video for their latest, Windows In The Skies, caught me entirely by surprise. It's a wonderfully crafted celebration of their influences and musical icons far bigger than they can ever hope to be, and while the basic idea is standard-issue music channel mashup, it's done with warm nostalgia. It's a pretty average song, but the video rocks.

And major props to Bono for kicking off a mainstream video with a Frank Zappa clip. Niiice.



Which of the artists in the video were you most pleasantly surprised to see there? Or which clip do you like best?

Which quirky actor should play the lead in the Raja Sen biopic?
	Robert Downey Jr
	Bill Murray
	Steve Buscemi
	Ranvir Sheorey
	Johnny Depp
	Michael Keaton
	Dweezil Zappa
	Steve Carell
pollcode.com free polls

Heya.

Sires, I live.

As rishydishy 's second nudge reminded me, it has been 24 weeks since I posted. That's long.

By this time, I'm guessing half my friendslist has passed on. Sorry, o deceased lot, and if some of the undead are kind enough to tell me who-croaked-when, you'll be in my prayers.

Anyway, <knocks coconuts together> clippety, clippety clop, girls and boys and sorry for vanishing. My last post was about heading to China, and I never updated since because I kept procrastinating writing The Shanghai Story. Interesting stuff, but that'll have to be for later. Right now, this is a Hi post, a Whassup yell to all you guys.

And indeed, there is an agenda. If I'm not extremely mistaken, a fair several of you live in Bengaluru, and I'm headed there Friday night. Will see Eddie on Saturday evening, and crashing in some dive on MG Road till I leave Monday morning.

So which of you Banga-kids am I likely to encounter? Come on, raise your hand -- you know you wanna.

And all the rest of you, Almighty Friendslist, prepare to embrace. It's RotK time :)

Also: there will indeed be a life-update soon. As of now, much has happened, all is eventful and topsy-turvy and atleast in motion, which is good. this oughta be a helluva post, resulting in much backslapping. Coming soon to a blog still near you.