Dead trees
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I felt a strange sort of dissonance while reading Devi Yesodharan’s Empire. The story is told from the point of view of two major characters, and while the inner monologues and the descriptive sentences feel exquisite, the dialogue itself feels stilted. Does the fact that Thamizh is my mother-tongue have a part to play in how…
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I recently finished reading Rahul Pandita’s Our Moon Has Blood Clots. Together with Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night, it makes for traumatic – and dare I say necessary – reading about a beautiful region mutilated by gunfire. Peer’s is the older book, and in some sense the better written of the two. (Not that the quality of…
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I always love the bit where Bond meets Q and gets a bunch of toys, all of which, would you know it, get used in critical situations. Which leads me to wonder about the dramatic possibilities of an action sequence where 007 desperately needs an exploding pen and finds himself stuck with a portable defibrillator…
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For those of you who wondered about the radio silence: I have a daughter who is old enough to acknowledge me as something more significant than Random Tall Creature With Facial Hair, but not yet old enough to want to watch Citizen Kane with me and argue whether it’s the greatest film ever made. (Her…
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When someone asks me what genre Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels fall under, my usual response is ‘comic fantasy’. But the truth is, I don’t read Pratchett for the laughs anymore, although I will readily vouch for the quality of his humor. No, these days I read his novels for their humanism. This might explain why…
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At this point, I suppose, I should define “we”. I refer to peole like me, born in Madras in the nineteen-seventies and ripening into cinematic awareness in the decade that followed, in Mani Ratnam’s decade. We are possibly the most qualified to write about Mani Ratnam. We might also be the least qualified. — Conversations…
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How the fuheck does The Merchant of Venice get labeled a comedy? Sure, it gets a bit farcical at times, and mercy (apparently) triumphs over revenge in the end and what not, but seriously? Didn’t Shylock deserve the right to kick Antonio’s butt seven ways to Tuesday? The key moment, for me, is his wonderful…
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I watched the movie a few weeks ago and just finished reading the Michael Lewis book it was based on, and as it happens, what works in the movie and what doesn’t are the same as with the book. Both stood out as interesting examples of a certain type of storytelling — dense, jargon-heavy dialogue…
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Okay, so here’s what I want you to do: Get yourself to Bangalore. If you live here, it’s a relatively short commute in non-peak hours. Look up Jagriti Theatre in Whitefield and get tickets to Lysistrata. Try not to laugh too loudly. Be warned, though: The original play was pretty damn raunchy to begin with,…
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So it all ends. And I am left with the feeling that maybe, just maybe, it could’ve ended a little bit better. The fault lies, I think, with Voldemort. As much as the focus of the series is Harry growing up to face his destiny and defeat one of the greatest wizards of his time,…
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