7 Secrets of the Goddess [Book Review]

Title: 7 Secrets of the Goddess
Author: Devdutt Pattanaik
Reach the author at
Website: http://devdutt.com/
Twitter: @devduttmyth 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DevduttPattanaik

Buy this book from Flipkart here.

There is always a sense of fulfilment when you read a book by Devdutt Pattanaik.  He delivers what is promised. Be it Jaya, The Pregnant King or Sita (for the most part), there is a lot of research that has gone into getting the material for the book and it is presented in a way that is easily consumed. While the author’s thoughts and comments on various social practices come as a part of what is presented, it is mostly logical and not forcibly fit into the premise.

Devdutt’s latest book ‘7 Secrets of the Goddess’ is no different either, from what I mention above. Part four of a series called the 7 Secrets, this book is the first one I read in the series.

The book, in typical Devdutt style, has a lot of illustrations. However, the illustrations are artwork and photographs from various sources including temple sculptures and calendar art, in lieu of a hand drawn sketches like in Jaya or Sita. Every page of text is accompanied by a page of artwork with sufficient captions. This artwork serves as a good precursor to what may be coming in text that follows it.

The book talks about the secrets of Gaia, Kali, Gauri, Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswathi, and Vitthai. It is interesting to see how Devdutt starts off with the Goddess Gaia from the Greek mythology and weaves in the tales of corresponding Indian counterparts into the chapter. In almost every chapter, particularly the first, there is a mention of the gender ‘inequality’ and the co-existence of male Gods and female Goddesses. This is exactly where Devdutt brings up a lot of the logical reasoning based arguments on certain practices.

The book has significant borrowings, in terms of characters, from his earlier works including Jaya, Sita, Shikhandi and other stories they don’t tell you and the Pregnant King. The mythological value addition in terms of stories/anecdotes is limited compared to these earlier works, since this is more of a book that describes the existence of various goddesses, the practices related to them and the way we perceive them has changed over the centuries.

Following the first chapter, the chapters on Kali, Gauri, Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswathi were particularly very strong, while the last chapter on Vitthai did leave a lot to be desired. For some reason, it did seem forcefully fit into the scheme of things.

My favourite part of the book, all along the book, is how Devdutt visits every practice that were not favourable to women and mostly says it out aloud. One of my favourite lines from the book is on human ego and how it originated from ‘Aham’ and how we have modified to suit our requirements just to appear superior. Another noteworthy thing in the book is that Devdutt does talk about the misdoings of Brahmanas with respect to preserving the vedic wisdom and the superiority shown by that sect. And he does that without the cliched brahmin-bashing.

Overall, Devdutt Pattanaik’s 7 Secrets of the Goddess is a wonderfully educative read as his earlier books, but from a different perspective.

PS: One thing that bothered me initially about the book was the size of the book and the font sizing/spacing. It seemed like a workbook that we had in school, and a little difficult to hold. But once I saw how the artwork on the pages effectively added to the reading, I realised why the book was designed that way. 

Love Lasts Forever… [Book Review]

A mild curiosity crept in seeing the title of the book when BlogAdda first posted about this book being available for review. Having done some heavy reading including ‘A Fine Balance’, ‘The Glass Palace’ and ‘And The Mountains Echoed’ in the last few weeks, I was in mood for some light reading and requested for the book, assuming it was going to be one seeing the title.

The cheesiness in the title, unfortunately, does not stop there. Vikrant Khanna, the author of the book who is also in the merchant navy, has a mention on his website that, ‘the author has his finger strongly on the Indian youth's pulse.’ If this is what the pulse of the Indian youth is, I am beginning to worry. A little more.

The premise of the book is fairly simple. Two parallel stories with some love, rant-filled love one must say, the usual misunderstandings, a tragic moment, and some lighter moments (which in this book seem slightly gross); all of this coupled with a pirate drama in the background, you have your Love Lasts Forever.  I could go on about how cliched a lot of the premise and the romance seems, but since this seems to be the flavour of the ‘youth’, I suppose Vikrant may have a winner in his hands.

While Vikrant seems to have a reasonable grasp over English, he doesn’t resort to using bombastic words and uses a colloquial lingo for most of the book. Perhaps, his way of catering to The pulse. Some more attention could have been paid towards the grammatical correctness since there are quite a few instances where the book could have used more proofreading. Additionally, what ticked me big time was the use of the word ‘marriage’ in almost every situation that demanded the usage of the word ‘wedding.’ Agreed that the two words have unfortunately become interchangeable (not just in India), but I guess someone has to point it out and I guess I will do that here. The book has a statement ‘We had a long last night and we reached our home way past midnight after our marriage.’ While the intent of the statement was something, but it definitely reads in a different way.

Coming back to the premise, I seem to have severe dislike on how the fairer sex is portrayed in the book. While the older character Shikha had her own reasons to act the way she had to, as a reader I felt bad for how poorly Aisha’s character was developed, in addition to it being shown in such poor light. I will not dwell too much on the gender-biasedness that the book has to offer, since many ‘contemporary’ Indian writers who cater to the same youth population tend to do so as well and the aspiring writers seem to draw inspiration from that.

Love Last Forever, overall, was a quick read on a lazy afternoon which did not involve too much of thinking while reading it. But it did serve as some food for thought on how we perceive love and relationships. The book succeeds on that front. If only the current generation which includes me saw love in a different way, the world would be a much better place to live in.

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

Under Delhi [Book Review]

Buy Under Delhi by Sorabh Pant on Flipkart here.

Reach the author at:
Twitter: @hankypanty
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SorabhPant

Under Delhi. It is always interesting to see popular bloggers and stand-up comedians become authors. One, it shows if a good blogger than hold a reader's attention through an entire book as opposed to a blog post. Two, it shows if the stand-up comedian can work his way around a book the way he does with a show of his own. Sorabh Pant mainly succeeds in the second category by ensuring that is a enough hilarity in his narrative of a very average premise.

The premise is simple. The protagonist Tanya Bisht is a person who takes revenge of acts of rape by men and she is led by a Soniaji (no kidding!) Throw in a few characters including a rich land-grabber, a pervert for a boss, an attention-seeking colleague and a spineless boyfriend, you have your narrative there.

What works best to Sorabh's benefit is the fact that he uses a lot of material, which is stand-up comedy material, in the premise and those are genuinely laugh-worthy moments. I couldn't help myself from smiling or laughing when I read a few of those wordsplay, including the one on IIPM. This man is definitely someone I'd love to watch on stage sometime soon.

What also works for Sorabh is the fact that his language here is definitely appreciable and the writing doesn't read like a screenplay. There is some sincerity in the writing, and it shows. The characters, for the most part, are well-etched, except for a few of them that appear suddenly in the narrative.

What did not work for me in the book was a beaten-to-death premise. The concept of a woman who leads a dual life, over and under Delhi, trying to have her way with rapists is not completely novel. There is also an emphasis on her relationship, which seems cliched than ever. Why is it that most 'independent' women these days settle for spineless guys, at least in books?  Secondly, the book seemed to lose its steam by the time it entered the third part and it definitely appeared as though the author did not do too much thinking to write the last part. It just drags on forever. With some editing, the book could have been come well under 200 pages with a crisper narrative.

With a generous seasoning of some witty one-liners and some decent writing, Under Delhi is a book that could have been much more.

God is a Gamer [Book Review]

Buy this book on Flipkart at: http://www.flipkart.com/god-gamer-english/p/itmdy8bjkyuqrjfd?pid=9780143421399

When a book is advertised as the 'First Bitcoin Thriller' or the author of the book is referred to as 'India's No. 1 Thriller Writer,' there is definitely a sense of expectation arising from those claim. Whether Ravi Subramanian manages to satisfy those expectations in 'God is a Gamer' is subjective, but one must give it to the man for having been able to weave out a story with a mostly decent premise incorporating money, online gaming, bitcoins, 'love' and politics.

Having seen the author's books adorn the best-seller shelves in Crossword, Landmark and elsewhere, I was keen to know whether this author was one of those 'new-age Indian writers' capitalizing on the success of Chetan Bhagat. But my impression about this author has significantly changed post reading the book. This is mainly attributed to the fact that the author, as mentioned earlier, has a decent premise in hand and does a good job of executing it with words. The language, as with many of the books these days, is mostly simple and mostly conversational and is sure to draw the average Indian reader who may want to move away from C-Bag.

The book begins with narratives from multiple cities including Mumbai, New York, and Washington DC, with multiple characters and parallel stories running through almost two-thirds of the book. These are the book’s best pages, when you try to understand how all of these parallel story threads will fall into place in the premise. While there’s the story of Malvika, Aditya, Swami, Sundeep, Varun, and Tanya on one side, there’s Gillian, Nikki, Gloria, Adrian, Dan, and Mike on the another side with pieces of Josh, the finance minister and others thrown into the premise when required. In the large scheme of things, what was impressive was the fact that it is hard to lose track of the characters for the most part, mainly thanks to the short chapters (4-5 pages each at the maximum). That is, each character felt important to the premise and was never ignored or left out across multiple chapters.

Having said that, the main peeve I have with the book is with the same aspect of having the shorter chapters, which sort of doesn’t help in forging a long bond with the character in that chapter. However the biggest disappointment from this book is the fact that you can smell the ending from a long distance (almost at the 200^th page mark), though I must confess that I almost fell for the ‘almost-ending’ before the epilogue. Another fact that I did not completely relish was alienating women characters from most of the narrative using them mostly as props. Though there is Tanya and Malvika, who are presently through a major part of the narrative, they hardly seem to make an impact. The fact that the reason for the actions in the premise mainly stem out of the lust of two main characters makes for a pretty lame reasoning and seems rushed. Fortunately, this doesn’t affect the premise of the book for the most part, since it comes up at the very end.

Overall, God is a Gamer makes for a mostly decent lazy afternoon read (like the one I read it on), or as a read for person who would like to observe how Indian writing continues to evolve, for the better. Mostly.

Flipkart link to buy the book: http://www.flipkart.com/god-gamer-english/p/itmdy8bjkyuqrjfd?pid=9780143421399

Reach the author Ravi Subramanian at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Authorravisubramanian

Twitter: https://twitter.com/subramanianravi

www.MarryAGhost.com [Book Review]

(A book review for BlogAdda)

If the first few pages of a book has quotes by Rumi, I am usually sold. Though it doesn’t take too much on the author’s creativity to reproduce the lines of Rumi, the selection of the quotes from hundreds of very relevant quotes is no easy task. Abhimanyu Jha, the author of www.MarryAGhost.com won my attention right there. Whether he managed to hold it on or not is a different story in itself, but still 10 points to the selection of the Rumi quote and 5 more points to each of the other quotes in the preface.

MarryAGhost – One would wonder what sort of a title that is. While the back cover the book has a synopsis of the book (with spoilers), it was both a cheesy title, and a title that piqued my interest, at the same time. Having never heard of this author before, I cautiously proceeded to read this book and man, I was drawn. Call it guilty indulgence or the craving for a break with a lighter book (having read A Fine Balance and This Divided Island prior to this – both heavy book), I must say I quite enjoyed reading most part of the book.

The likeability of the book comes mainly with respect to the fact that the language is free-flowing and one need not invest too much time in trying to understand what is happening. There is also an advantage in that regard that there are just 4 main characters, with a couple more showing up at times. This minimal character count is perhaps easy on the light reader, and also you are drawn towards the main two characters greatly. The conversations between Maahi and Veeru are mostly not forced, as simple and realistic as what a couple would have (except that they are not a couple). I am almost tempted to use the spontaneous with respect to the premise, except for the fact that this spontaneity comes with a price.

What could the book have done better or what could Mr. Jha do with the second part of the book? Oh yes! There is a ‘To be continued!’ on the last page, and it is indeed a pity that the book doesn’t have a mention of whether it is a multi-part series. Well, I am going to definitely want to read the next part, and I hope it is the only other part. Coming back to what the author could have done better, the first thing that any new author is guilty of is the repetitive nature of the conversations. It is indeed understandable that the two main characters have (sort of) fallen for each other and are insecure about the others’ feelings. But bringing this up every now and then can get a little annoying. Second, the book requires a total suspension of belief, which is to be understood seeing the title, but it would have helped if there was a logical flow to a few things like how the characters landed in Goa (there is a logic, but a flawed one!)Thirdly, the language is pretty light on the brain especially because is mostly conversational. But I fail to understand why the author uses the F-word with hyphens at a few places and uses it in entirety elsewhere. And why even use it in the first place?

While the story in this first book ends at a pretty interesting point, what happens to Maahi, Veeru and the others involved at the end of the 14 days is something that I can’t, but will need to wait to check.

This madly in love ghost could use some of your love with a suspension of belief.

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

This Divided Island [Book Review]

Buy 'This Divided Island: Stories from the Srilankan War' on Flipkart at: http://www.flipkart.com/divided-island-stories-sri-lankan-war-english/p/itmdxcc7wgcrurma

There is a line in This Divided Island that reads ‘In the new Sri Lanka, demolition was a vital tool of nation-building.’ The author Samanth Subramanian could not have summarized the country and his experiences in the country better.

I was in Sri Lanka in 2013 during the Christmas and New Year time. While I had a whale of a time relishing the way the monuments in Sigiriya and Kandy were protected, I really had an urge to see how the war-striven areas were doing. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance back then since I decided to stay back in Colombo and interact with the locals there to get a perspective of their life there. This book by Samanth Subramanian definitely helped fill the void that I had carried with me following the trip.

The division of the book into its four parts, called The Terror, The North, The Faith and Endgames, is a masterstroke in itself and one can witness the amount of research (and interviewing) that has gone into the writing of the book to ensure that it is a coherent read. What makes this book fascinating is the fact that Samanth has numerous first-hand accounts of the pre-war life (assuming there is something like that), the duration of the ‘prachanai’ (the problems/troubles), and the post-war ‘recuperation’. It is difficult to draw strict lines differentiating these three parts, considering one has a long lasting influence on the other, but Samanth ensures that there is good emphasis on the lives of each of the people featured in the book.

Be it Raghavan (a close aide of Prabhakaran) who was based out of London after a brief stint in the Tigers’ camp, or the fitness conscious doctor Thurairaja, or the Canada settled Ravi, who feature in the Terror part of the book, the perspective of the minds that operated for the Tamils was indeed fascinating to get into.

The North, which is perhaps the most engaging and also the important part of the book, features people working on automobile repairs, a very mysterious yet outgoing character M (one whose identity is cleverly hidden), and the Muslim community. The Muslim community are sort of neither favored by the Sinhalese nor the Tamil, but face damaging consequences in the conflict. This reminds me of the Parsi community that faced similar troubles during the India-Pakistan partition.

The Faith part could very well be the Sri Lankan counterpart of the William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives. Be it the Buddhist Monks who take up violence and turn against the Tamils, or the monks that get involved in politics, or the history of the Buddhist influence in Sri Lanka’s growth, this part gets into something that many authors may shy away from. The fact that the current president Mahinda Rajapakse is perhaps be placed on the same pedestal or even higher than that of the historical king Dutugemunu in Sri Lanka owing to his ‘illustrious’ victory and wiping out the ‘demelas’ is interesting.

The most moving part of the book for me was the one called the Endgames, which featured instances of the Tamil families who had at least one family member missing post the conflict. The missing here corresponds to them being ‘made to disappear’ by the army. The stories of the frequent relocation of the families, thanks to the war and its aftermath, is indeed heart-wrenching. In addition, this part presents a variety of discomforting truths including how the families had their kids recruited into the Tiger army and how there is no ‘youth’ in the current generation of the Tamil population. No one type of family is spared. Not a journalist. Nor a tea shop owner. The hope with which a lot of these families await the return of their (possibly dead) loved ones is beautifully presented.

To summarize, this book is a book about Sri Lankan people: people affected by the war; people who took part in the war; people who believed the Sinhala Buddhists were the only real Sri Lankans; people who just followed the Tiger leader blindly or otherwise, despite knowing that they were on the losing side; people who are leaders and refuse to acknowledge their inebriated state being drunk with power.

This Divided Island is completely worth undivided attention!

60 Minutes [Book Review]

(A review for the Blogadda Book Reviews program)

At times while watching a (not-so-good) movie, we continue watching it, sometimes till the very end, to see if the plot gets better. 60 Minutes is one such book.

There are movies with plots that begin slowly, but pick up momentum and then leave a lasting impression on you. There are few other plots which start with a bang and end with the same bang maintaining the thrill throughout. While the book 60 Minutes is advertised as ‘A One-of-a-kind Corporate Drama Where All Action Will Unfold In Sixty Racing Minutes,’ the book fails to fall under either type of the movies/plots mentioned above.

A time-bound premise with a non-linear narrative traversing back into flashbacks every five minutes had such promise. When I first looked at the contents, I was both excited and skeptical at the same time. The former because I am huge fan of the TV series '24' and perhaps this was going to be a racy ride. The latter because I was not too sure how a non-linear narrative would fit into a premise that was time critical. My fears, unfortunately, came true.

Firstly, to focus the positives, I was quite impressed with the simplicity in the style of writing. It sure did not use bombastic words and it is very well evident that the author wanted to use a limited vocabulary. This is a plus because words could have distracted and I was in no mood to keep a dictionary by my side while I read this book. Next, the characters had enough depth, at times more detailed than necessary. There was sufficient background to each of the characters and this helped the characters appear slightly more human, especially with their gray shades. The characters Maithili and Sailesh, especially the latter, definitely seem to invoke some sympathy from the reader and come across as real ones.

While focusing on what could have been better in the book, the first thing that comes to mind is the business lingo especially with respect to the stock markets. While the premise of the character Agastya (the main protagonist) being hooked to stock markets is understandable, it got way too distracting and definitely got in the way of the ‘thriller’ that this could have been. Secondly, there were way too many characters, all not of importance, and the author could have easily done away with 4 to 6 of them. The background for those characters in the flashbacks did not prove to be beneficial either.

My main peeve with the book is the non-linear style of narration. While a well-crafted movie running in real time can do with those short flashbacks every now and then, a book surely needs to be able to hold the reader’s attention with a crisper narrative. This book definitely lacked that. What would have helped the book was just 12 chapters (for each of those 5 minutes in the 60 minutes), with narrations from the BCL side and the Stark side alternatively, with the details from the flashbacks woven into these chapters in a much briefer fashion. The author could have taken a cue from '24' for this.

To sum it up, 60 Minutes is a decent lazy weekend read which doesn’t fully realize the potential it had.

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

Private India [Book Review]

I should begin this review with a disclaimer that this is the first book of Ashwin Sanghi that I have read and I was not aware (until this review opportunity happened) that James Patterson is one popular and widely published author. I do have Sanghi’s Chanakya’s Chant lying on my bookshelf for over a year, but did not get a chance to read it yet.

The Private series by James Patterson is now set in India and there is a string of murders occurring in the nation’s financial capital Mumbai. The task that the Private team comprising of Santosh, Nisha, Mubeen, and Hari have in hand is to see if the murders are linked and identify the killer(s) and the motive(s) behind the killing. Apart from this, a terrorism angle is thrown in and a few elements that were essential to a Bollywood potboiler of the 80s and 90s are incorporated as well.

With simple language, good characterization and most importantly, shorter chapter length (there are over hundred chapters ranging from 4 to 6 pages long), the authors ensure that the flow of the premise is pretty easy. For a first time (after long) mystery reader like me, this was a very very easy read and I did not have to spend a lot of time trying to remember characters’ names or what was happening in the book even if a character popped up in the narrative after 200 pages. In addition, there is a linear yet non-linear first person narrative occurring every few chapters which I felt was very well done. This brought me closer to that particular character without knowing who he/she was and that is something commendable.

One thing I definitely admire about the book is the way in which a few of the locales from Mumbai are presented, including the very important Parsi location. For a person like me who has not seen much of the city lately, an author basing the story in Mumbai and not taking the cliched depiction route was refreshing.

I do not want to dwell into the premise of the novel completely, since that would mean posting spoilers in this blogpost. But I need to mention a few things about the book and the narrative that did not quite work for me.

• The way the mystery of the sequence of killings that occur is deciphered by Santosh leaves a lot to be desired. It appears as though the author did not want to spend too much space in the narrative to help him arrive at that conclusion.
• A whodunit mystery always has a few unfortunate good souls who are suspected of the crime, and this book is no different either. That got bland a tad too quickly and perhaps lessens the impact. 
• In trying to explain the premise completely to, perhaps, an average reader, the book definitely goes deeper into the details of the resolution of the crimes. It would have worked better for me if a lot of the simple assumptions/conclusions were left to the reader to make, and also if a couple of the ‘twists’ were just introduced and left to the reader’s imagination to interpolate. 

To conclude, Private India in no way is a terrible book, but it is definitely not the best book you will read this year either. It is an easy read that you can use while waiting for a flight at the airport. It may turn out to be a popular book and perhaps soon have a Bollywood adaptation. But Mr. Sanghi, I definitely expected a lot more from this book.

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!