~~Magnetic Nostalgia~~Blog-Week-Athon post # 8

Well, this meme is going around like wildfire in my other blogspace & I just couldn’t sit back waiting for someone to tag me - The meme is to list 5 songs which are your favorite from the world of cassettes, preferably between 1995 to 2005 and some funny incidents or memories about them…

Believe me, restricting to just 5 songs is synonymous to asking a Mom of 10 to choose 5 favorite kids :P :P :P  Its just not possible, but well, I do understand the reason, as back then (no, not very very long ago), we could only to the maximum, record 5 – 6 songs on one side of the cassette & we had to strategize & choose carefully… I still remember I would write down my favorites in a piece of paper, check if the cousins/friends already had the songs, go to the cassette recording shop & just pray pray pray, that he has all the songs that I have listed down to be recorded! There used to be a lot of discussion/planning & eventually sharing of cassettes within cousins/friends for the songs that couldn’t be recorded for self.. Well, gone are those days isn’t it….

Without much ado – here goes my top 5 from the world of cassettes…To make my life easier, I have applied a few filters to able to choose from the thousands (okay, I haven’t counted, but I am sure I was humble when I mentioned just a thousand) of songs that I have loved & still love!

First filter - Median Timeframe – 2000, Second filter – Only Tamil songs , Third Filter - Great lyrics 

Nadhiye Nadhiye Kaadhal Nadhiye from Movie Rhythm – I cannot even start to describe or differentiate about what is best in this whole song.. everything from the dheem tanana dheem tanana, the jil jil jil yendra nadaiyile, that thanneer kudaththil pirakkirom oho, thanneer karaiyil mudikkirom oho, to that thenkaniyil saaraagi pookkalile thenaagi pasuvinile paalaagum neere, thaayaruge seyaagi thalaivanidam paayaagi seyaruge thaayaagum penne… just WOW’ed me…..Such a beautiful comparision of the element “water” to a “lady/girl”. This is one those songs, which made me stop singing mindlessly along with the song & take notice of the beautiful lyrics(well, I still sing along, but not mindlessly :P ).

Kaatre yen vasal vandhai from Movie Rhythm - Okay, I couldn’t resist my urge to include this one. Such a beautiful usage of the universal element “wind” in comparison to the universal feeling of “love”.. There is no memory, in specific, but I love the way the song proceeds in its own slow pace. If I have to pick a favorite line from this song, it would be this – “anbe naan uranga vendum azhagaana idangal vendum, kangalil idam kodupaayaa”

Thaniye thannandhaniye from Movie Rhythm - Well, I believe, you might have guessed this as the next one in line… All songs in this movie are in comparision to one of the five elements (water, wind, sky, earth & fire) & this is supposed to be in comparision with the “Earth”. I was not able to relate the song to “Earth” for a very very long time (however, it still was my favorite), but once I did, I was in absolute admiration for the song.. Another important memory I have of this song is that of my disappointment in the way the song was picturised.. Well, no one to blame here – I had listened to the songs much before I had gotten a chance to watching the movie (or the songs on TV)… I had my own imaginations for each song & while every other song in the movie, surpassed my imagination, the “Thaniye” song failed! I still remember, I felt a sense of betrayal & wished that it could have been presented in a much better way visually :P (yes, that much my favorite)

Pachhai Nirame Pacchai Nirame from Alaipayuthey - I still remember the moment when the cassette played in that silent afternoon in my home when everyone was asleep – the starting note of the song just engulfed the silence making me want to just float with it! The reference to each colour representing many things but finally coming to the point on how it relates to a particular emotion or a trait of the lover, is just simply splendid!! I still remember, when Sathiya (the hindi version) was released, I refused to watch Sathiya as I hadn’t yet watched Alaipayuthey. I watched Alaipayuthey first & then watched Sathiya – just because I loved the tamil version of the songs more :) :P

Enna Solla Pogirai from Kandukondaen, Kandukondaen – Well, the helplessness, the never ending ache of a lover seeking for a reply to his proclaimed love is captured just beautifully!

Well, there you go, am done – now for comments time, nee enna solla pogirai?

P.S:- If this is side A of the cassette, then side B would be Kaadhal sadugudu (Alaipayuthey), Evano oruvan (Alaipayuthey), Yenge enadhu kavithai (Kandukondaen, Kandukondaen), Konjum mainakkale (Kandukondaen, Kandukondaen)

~~Weary moods with Wuthering Heights~~Blog-Week-Athon Post # 7

So – “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte is what I chose for the next category of the book reading challenge - 19th Century Fiction! It was on my to-read list for quite some time & is also considered one of the best classics of English literature! An important aspect that increased my interest in the book was a Zero rating in one of the reviews posted by a fellow blogger! Led by the curiosity of difference in the way a top English literary classic was rated by a fellow blogger, and the announcement of book reading challenge on the same day, I JUST couldn’t resist choosing it for this category!

 

Wuthering Heights is about a passionate, yet a very very tragic love saga between the two significant characters Heathcliff and Catherine. They share a love so supreme, yet which makes life so miserable (for them and for others involved), that they can only find peace together after death! Heathcliff is found as an orphan by Catherine’s father & thus brought into the household; He is treated as THE favorite, by her father compared to the 2 children of his own. Though, Catherine is more accepting of this fact after initial hesitation and becomes gradually friendly with Heathcliff, it’s not the same for Hindley, her brother & this in itself, forms the basis for the first flicker of the hatred that would last for the coming generation as well! 

 

There are few excerpts that will probably remain etched forever in my thoughts!

 

Catherine’s justification of accepting another proposal (that of Edgar’s whom she marries), when in actual, she truly loves Heathcliff! 

 

“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

 

Only the first liner of the justification is heard by Heathcliff where she mentions about “degradation” & he heartbroken, leaves Wuthering Heights only to return later, as a much more bitter, manipulative & vengeful person (well, than he already was) !

 

You would want to hate Heathcliff for his brutality, but then you cannot, because the extent of Heathcliff’s love is very much soul stirring when he tries to explain his action of excavating Catherine’s grave!!

 

“That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination is actually the least, for what is not connected with her to me? And what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day, I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”

 

It’s quite disturbing that this same person who can love so very supremely has not an iota of guilt or pricking conscience when it comes to destroying someone else’s love by constant manipulations (which he does when his own child from a different marriage falls in love with his beloved Catherine’s child from her marriage to Edgar)!

 

I am not going to get into further details on the book or introduce you to any more characters in the book as I can’t do it without explaining the entire plot, and I don’t intend to do so for the simple reason that though I found the book very gloomy & depressing, it still is an excellent piece of commendable imagination by an author who hardly ever was exposed to the outside world for most part of her life!! The way in which few intrinsic thoughts of the significant characters are put across, is really strong & definitely praiseworthy.

 

Having read most of the books by Jane Austen, which are almost from the same era, this book came across to be very startlingly different & at the same time, I must agree, interesting enough to not stop, but go on reading till the end! Personally, I felt very much drained by the time I completed the book and this is something I have never felt with any book (believe me, I have read my share of not-so-happily-ever-after endings)… I also had mixed feelings about each character as I couldn’t relate to anyone & I couldn’t feel entirely happy, sad or bad for anyone! I just had this one constant lingering thought for some time, that if Catherine’s father had not gotten Heathcliff to his home, all the pain & suffering for generations to come, could have been avoided!!

 

For those of you who are looking for a fairy tale saga and a seemingly hopeful plot with a happily-ever-after ending – this book is definitely not meant for you! However, if you are one of those, who do not mind a different kind of a read (just once in a blue moon) and you have the perseverance to stick to reading a massive masterpiece, through to the end, even if it’s not what you had expected in the beginning, then, yes, you can give this a try. To be true to the book, there is a happy ending after all, but the portrayal of the extreme emotions of possessive love, the individual sufferings due to that extreme passion, the hatred & revenge that it gives birth to, the hostility that it inflicts on self and others throughout the course of the book is so upsetting & saddening, that the happily ever after ending just doesn’t seem to matter anymore at the end..

~~ I am Time ~~Main Samay Hoon~~ Blog-Week-Athon # Post 6

Disclaimer - Before you start, one small clarification - This is just a book review, nothing more, nothing less :)

So, what are your earliest memories of the great Indian Epic, The Mahabharata?  For me, it is that of watching it on Doordarshan every Sunday – without a finer understanding of what exactly was happening (I was a small kid then)- yet loving that mysterious voice who started the episode with “Main Samay Hoon” (I am Time), loving & singing along with the title  song, being awestruck at the splendor, being scared for the Pandavas during the wars, waiting with bated breath to see how the opposition would deal the arrows shot towards them which eventually turned into vile serpents, fire balls & various other creative things when it reached the skies etc. etc. – basically loving the entire show as it was one of its kind those days.  It was such a dreadful empty feeling for many of us, when the show finally ended!  

I was again introduced to it a few years later when my brother, on the day of his sacred thread ceremony, was gifted 2 books by one thoughtful relative  – The Ramayana & The Mahabharata, by R.K Narayan (Though it was a gift for my brother, I don’t think he ever got to read it :P ).. ….These books were/are supposed to be a shortened version of the Epics & yet having read it multiple times, I can safely claim, that both the books did full justice in capturing the entire essence of both the works! The fact that I still have these books should say it all!

After that, I again re-lived my childhood experience of watching this great Epic on TV, this year!  Though I couldn't follow it on a daily basis, I still loved every aspect of whatever I could watch.

So, why this post, you may ask! Well, I had accepted to take up a Book Reading Challenge at the start of this year! Per the challenge, we were supposed to read at minimum 1 book & maximum of 2 books in particular categories. One of the category was to read something from the historical genre & My pick was Bhima: Lone Warrior by M.T. Vasudevan Nair (originally Randamoozham in Malayalam translated into English by Gita Krishnankutty) for the first category. I was inspired to pick this book as the original blog post which initiated this challenge mentioned it & to add to it, I figured that reading it along with the daily telecast of the Epic would make it more interesting (though I started reading it in parallel to the TV series, I completed this book before the TV series concluded).

So, without much ado, here goes my short humble effort of reviewing a great book on THE GREAT EPIC! Well, I am not going to delve into every chapter and review for pros and cons – but just let my thoughts out on the experience of reading the book!!

As the name signifies, this is an attempt at re-telling Mahabharata, from Bhīma’s perspective.  Bhima was the second of the five Pandavas – the mighty powerful one amongst the brothers with a huge physique & an insatiable appetite for food – This is pretty much the impression we all have, don’t we? This book changed that impression for me & in actual answered a lot of curious questions that I had on few assumed considerations in the earlier versions that I had read/watched!  (Well, but on a side note, I do also remember that the answers that I got was entirely Bhima’s (author’s) perspective & there might be a different set of answers if the same is read from another’s viewpoint :) )..

The book starts with the chapter on the final journey of Pandavas to reach Heaven. Though the path requires you not to stop or retrace your steps, Bhima disregards it for his beloved wife Draupadi when she is breathing her last & rushes back to be on her side! However, all he can see in her eyes, even in those last few moments, is the disappointment that only Bhima turned up to comfort her!! She was expecting Arjuna, her beloved!  This sets the stage on what is about to come & then the flashback begins narrating Bhima’s journey throughout the Epic!  

What impressed me the most was that the book did not attempt at twisting the original Epic into entirely something else – actually there’s nothing new or modified in the entire structure of the Epic.  It’s like you always open the windows on the right side of your house & you absolutely enjoy the view. One fine day, you take your kid to the window for the first time and ask her to describe the view after she takes a look! She loves it too, She enjoys it too, but she points at a few things that you never noticed & it makes you enjoy the view even more!!! You see, same view, just different eyes!!! :)

As we read on, we find that everyone in the book is represented as normal beings with their own set of positives, anxieties & difficulties.  It helps because we can very well feel the love, the pain, the hurt, the anger, the passion, the insult, the helplessness of each without having to keep them on a pedestal…

We are taken along the journey to savor Bhima’s childhood, his love for food, his education & training, his first war victory, his archery skills, his perseverance to defeat his enemy at any cost, his first love in Hidimbi which he has to let go, his helplessness when he has conflicting thoughts on his mothers or his elder brother’s decisions etc. etc.

We also get introduced to the other side of him, a soft-hearted & helplessly-in-love Bhima who keeps pining for his unrequited love for Draupadi, till the end. The lengths that he goes to procure whatever Draupadi requests, the way he stands up first for protecting her honor at every possible instance etc. etc. just makes us (women readers) feel that our life partner should follow Bhima in this aspect atleast :) :)

We get a glimpse of the various strategies employed by several people throughout the Epic & how everywhere the consequences of these on Bhima’s life are not even given a considerable thought!  We experience Bhima’s unexpressed trauma of losing his own sons in the battle!! The whole Kurukshethra war is highlighted in Bhima’s point of view & forms a very interesting read in itself!

Well, I think I can go on and on; Most of the times, a book, if it doesn’t have a sequel, might not stimulate any curiosity to go research further! However, this one made me very much curious to actually go look out for other attempts from various perspectives. It also made me add R.K Narayan’s version again to my to-read list so I can read it afresh!

Overall, it was an interesting read. I would recommend this to anyone who has a curious mind and a passion for reading :)

~~ Hate to Read, Try this ~~ Blog-week-athon post # 5

Okay - So we have a blogging challenge doing rounds in my other blog space with a 14 day deadline! I received lot of interesting challenges & one of that was to “Write a post, to convince someone who has never read fiction/books, typically those people who go “Eewww Books! Yuck!!” to read one of your favorite books” 

I knew from the beginning, that the persuasion part was going to be difficult, but what I had not anticipated was the task of choosing ONE favorite book!!!  I scanned through my “Done Reading” list thrice and I just couldn’t choose ONE. I thought at first that I could write a small review about each of those books in a post!! Imagine if I had done such a thing! Poor someone who was yet-to-develop an interest in reading would have just gone into I-am-better-off-without-reading mode!! Phew! I didn’t want to take that risk!

I tried to recall how I had developed the interest in reading so I can illustrate the same and get someone interested in developing a reading habit… But when I looked back, I just couldn’t remember THE exact moment which started it all and inspired me to read. I checked with my parents, with my brother, with my friends – No one knew!! Phew, this wasn’t working!! 

I then tried to remember the first lengthy story book I ever read! And, as you can probably guess by now, I couldn’t remember that as well! My earliest memories are of reading Amar Chithra Katha, Tinkle, Gokulam, Chandamama (Kannada) etc., but I couldn’t exactly remember when I transitioned into reading big stories/novels….I used to read everything that I could get hold of – sometimes even the newspapers which came as packaging for groceries!.. (No, dont roll your eyes yet! You will have your chance)..there were times when I would even read the subsequent year’s detail/non-detail books (English/Hindi etc.) as soon we got them from the school during the summer vacation! (Yeah, see, you have the chance now to roll your eyes !)

And then, I slowly realized, that the first time I ever marked a book as my favorite when we shared scrap books in school was one of the English non-detail book “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Emma Orczy…Though I always buy my own personal copy with the intention that I can re-read them anytime I want, I have re-read only a few books/novels multiple times (no, not because I didn't understand it the first time, but because I just absolutely loved reading them) and this is definitely one of those few books!

So now if you are one of those who hate reading and yet have survived the above few paragraphs – give me a high five and read on! Well, why? Because you were READING & you still are READING and hence you are on the right track!!

Ok – Ok – without further ado – here goes my tiny attempt at inspiring you to read one of my favorite book!!

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emma Orczy – is a novel set in the years of French Revolution! It is a period marked by mass guillotine executions of people who are against the revolution. The plot revolves around how the “League of the Scarlet Pimpernel” which is a group of 1 leader, the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel & his 19 followers, seek to rescue as many as possible from these guillotine executions without getting caught! Every time a rescue operation is successful, the leader leaves behind a card with a symbol of a red flower (he derives the name of Scarlet Pimpernel because of the flower).

In order to maintain secrecy & hide his identity, Sir Percy (Scarlet Pimpernel) maintains a social presence which gives an impression of him being a very dull & foolish man. He is married to a beautiful actress who he adores, Marguerite, but then, distances himself from her, when he learns that she played an influential role in sending one of the families to the guillotine! However, he is not aware that his wife wanted only harmless revenge, which later led to an inadvertent result of guillotine execution for the family!

While there are people being saved from guillotine executions by this 20 member league, Marguerite learns from a French representative, Chauvelin, that her own brother is linked to this league!  Chauvelin strikes a deal with Marguerite to spy & provide any information she can gather on the Pimpernel so she can save her brother! Poor Marguerite is quite unaware of the fact that her seemingly foolish husband is the most sought after Scarlet Pimpernel & so keeps leading Chauvelin to him in an attempt to save her brother!

Here’s when it becomes interesting!!

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Will Chauvelin be able to reveal Scarlet Pimpernel’s Identity?

Will Marguerite be able to find his identity before Chauvelin?

If yes, who will she save, the brave husband who is seemingly not in love with her, or her brother?

Will Marguerite die trying to save one of them?

Will the Scarlet Pimpernel ever realize that his wife had, in actual, no role to play in the death of a family?

Will he be able to forgive Marguerite and reveal his real emotions for her?

Will they ever live happily ever after?

Go read and find out for yourself :)  :)  

What? You thought I was gonna summarize the whole story for you! Aha! Dream on!