The Man who Never was

One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment by Mei Fong My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews Thoughts There was a time, long back, when in high school, I was asked to present an elocution in regards to the population control in India, its benefits vs shortcomings. Coming off the last vestiges of Indira Gandhi’s form of forced sterilization a few decades prior, as well as the renewed government campaign of family planning, the general consensus was that an increase in population is detrimental to the nation’s burgeoning economy.  China’s one child policy, as taught to us in school, through the rose tinted lenses of social studies, was a major achievement implemented by the communist government to control their population. India, with its myriad of religious, cultural and socioeconomic restraints was not a place where a similar system could be implemented.  The fledgling naïve political observer in me, had lamented how India was unable to

The Boxer by jh My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews I never thought that reading a Manhwa about boxing would make me contemplate the meaning of life, and all existence, or what it means for us to be human. Somehow ‘The Boxer’ by JH managed to do just that. The narrative follows a simple but effective format. Our protagonist, who’s the greatest natural talent when it comes to boxing, is an insurmountable mountain, against whom the existing challengers, and even the champions from different weight classes clash against and fall down broken. What makes this premise interesting is how, over the course of the fight, we are made to explore and deconstruct the people who are involved in the fight. Oftentimes appearances can be deceptive. By the end of a bout, we’re made to feel for the challenger, and almost want them to win, instead of our supposed ‘protagonist’. But no matter how much they struggle, how much they want to win, what motivations

Halo: Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews V for Vendetta , by comic book legend Alan Moore, was a rollercoaster ride, even for those who will be familiar with the silver screen adaptation. It is a lot to take in, so here are my thoughts, in no particular order in regards to the book, and the story it tells. Complete Synopsis : (Skip to Page end) 

傘寿まり子 1 [Sanju Mariko 1] by Yuki Ozawa My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews Getting old sucks, not that I've much experience in that department, although at times, I do feel like I'm ancient. But having eyes, you can see a lot of things which happen around you. There is an elderly woman in our neighborhood, part of a big family, children, grand-children, and recently a great grand child. She is 80-ish, and too weak to even get out of her bed. Her family takes good care of her, but for most days, the household just comprises of the younger generations, while she is relegated to her room. Like a piece of furniture, that is brought out only during special occasions. Nothing can be done of it, just how things are. Most people are barely capable to taking care of themselves, let alone a family, or the elderly, who, is we're honest require quite a lot of attention. In many ways, it's have having a 80 year old baby at home, whom

100 Selected Poems by E.E. Cummings My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews I'll be honest, I barely understood around 40 out of the 100 poems which are listed in the book. In fact, it took me a while to figure out that, no, my version of the pdf was not corrupted, and yes, the poems are intentionally written in a broken, hard to decipher manner, sometimes, a single word broken apart into three lines, with a healthy sprinkling of (), which may or may not have been meant to read as companion to the main piece. But when it hit, it hit hard, and hit clear. There were some favorites of course > I had an uncle named Sol > A man who had fallen among thieves > Here’s a little mouse And what does he think about, > I like my body, when it is with your Body > If there are any heavens, my mother will (all by herself) have > The greatest advantage of being alive ------------------------------- The one that takes the care however is

The Other History of the DC Universe by John Ridley My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews In many ways ‘The other history’ feels like a story written by someone who has taken pages from their own life and experience and used it to paint a picture, on the other side of the rose tinted world of superheroes. By exploring several themes and practices, in story and out, to bring to focus an endemic problem which has always plagued comics especially in the western genre. It is largely a white man’s game, and worse it is written for, and by the majority, which over the years has resulted in some very questionable inclusions into the roster, which, in hindsight was not at all tasteful One has to appreciate DC for venturing into such political and socially charged commentary, which, more times than often, points a finger, and tears down the pantheon of some of its most popular characters, when viewed through the eyes of those ‘token’, or supportin

Operation Terror by Murray Leinster My rating: 2 of 5 stars View all my reviews

ഇനി ഞാൻ ഉറങ്ങട്ടെ | Ini Njan Urangatte by P.K. Balakrishnan My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews A deconstruction piece of Mahabharata, much along the lines of ‘Randamoozham’, but this time focusing on the character of Karna, through the eyes of Draupadi. Discussing the right, wrong and morality of actions on both sides. How Karna, while being more than qualified and deserving, was given a shitty hand by fate. Despite being a demigod, and son of the Sun god, he was looked down his whole life, which bred resentment in him. Which caused him to pledge eternal friendship and support to the first person who treated him like a human being, who happened to be Duryodhana. His own rigid, unflinching sense of morality and dharma, made him fight at the Kaurava side, even when Krishna, Kunti and Bheesma all revealed to him his heritage and begged him to advise Suyodhana to coexist. Even when promised the chance to be the supreme king, which being his

Karuna Khandakavyam  by  Kumaran Asan My rating:  5 of 5 stars View all my reviews

ഒരു തെരുവിന്റെ കഥ | Oru Theruvinte Kadha by S.K. Pottekkatt My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews Oru theruvinte kadha (The story of a street), as the name implies is the tale of a street, located in real life as Mittayi theruvu (Sweetmeat Street), in the Kasaragod district in Kerala. Malayalam writers, like their counterparts in India, as well as around the world, have a penchant of falling in love with a particular place or local where they were born or spent a lot of their life in. Be it the fabled land of Khasak in O.V. Vijayan’s ‘Khasankinte Ithihasam ഖസാക്കിന്റെ ഇതിഹാസം Khasakkinte Ithihasam (The Legends of Khasak)’, or current day Mahe, immortalized by M. Mukundan in ‘ മയ്യഴിപ്പുഴയുടെ തീരങ്ങളിൽ Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil ’ (On the banks of the River Mayyazhi). Add to that another, from Malayalam’s beloved globetrotting travel writer S.K. Pottekkatt. Strangely I’m reminded of a phrase from the 2012 cult classic ‘D

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews Sometimes there are comics, which, instead of taking you on a power fantasy, or journey of cosmic proportions, or being a contemplation of good and evil, allow you to come to terms with the harsh realities of life. It allows you to, through the medium of storytelling gain empathy and understanding of the human condition. 'I kill giants' by Joe Kelly and artist Ken Niimura is just right at this, at what it does. It doesn't need to be anything more, because it is perfect, comfortable in its own skin. Barbara is a girl who has been dealt a bad hand by fate. And, in trying to deny the reality of her situation, she withdraws into her own impressive imagination. Turning intangible problems, to tangible adversaries, she tries to combat and get rid of them, in the vain hope that things will return to a time, when everything was well in life. But in time, wit

രണ്ടിടങ്ങഴി | Randidangazhi by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews കുട്ടനാടിന്റെ ഫലഭൂയിഷ്ഠമായ ഭൂമി കിളയ്ക്കുന്നതും വിതയ്ക്കുന്നതും കൊയ്യുന്നതും മണ്ണിന്റെ മക്കളായ പുലയരും പറയരുമായ കർഷകർ. അതിന്റെ സിംഹഭാഗവും കൊള്ളുന്നതോ, സ്വയം കർഷകൻ എന്ന് വിളിപ്പേരുള്ള മുതലാളികളും ജന്മികളും. നമ്മൾ ഇന്ന് സർവ്വവ്യാപിയായ അംഗീകരിക്കുന്ന പൗരാവകാശങ്ങളും വേധനങ്ങളും അന്യമായ ഒരു കാലഘട്ടത്തിലേക്കാണ് തകഴി അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ കൃതിയിലൂടെ നമ്മെ കൊണ്ട് ചെല്ലുന്നത്. തലമുറകൾക്കപ്പുറത്തെ ഊഴിയവും സുപരിചിതമായ നാട്ടു നടപ്പുകൾക്കും അധീനരായി ഒരു പറ്റം മനുഷ്യർ, കരഷകർ ദയനീയമായ ഒരു ജീവിതം നടത്തിക്കൊണ്ടു വന്നു. പതിനായിരം പറ നെല്ല് കൊയ്ത പാടത്തിന്റെ കർഷകൻ വയറു നിറക്കാൻ ഒരു പിടി നാഴിയരി കിട്ടുവാൻ പാടുപെട്ടു. അവന്റെ നെല്ലെന്നല്ലാം മുതലാളിമാർ കള്ളവിലയ്ക്കു വിറ്റു പൊന്നു. കര്ഷകന് പട്ടിണിയും പ്രാരാബ്ധവും ബാക്കി. ഒരു കണക്കിന് നോക്കിയാൽ ഇന്നും കർഷകന്റെ അവസ്ഥ വ്യത്യസ്‌തമല്ല. ചൂഷിതരും ചൂഷകരും മാറി, ചൂഷണം മാത്രം നിലകൊണ്ടു. ഗദ്യം ഇന്ന് കേരളത്തിൽ വിരളമായി കൊണ്ടിരിക്കുന്ന, അ

The Filth by Grant Morrison My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Bacchae by Euripides My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Slaughterhouse 5: The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance With Death by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. My rating: 5 of 5 stars Billy Pilgrim is someone unstuck from time, and experiences it non-linearly, all the same time, travelling back and forth to his past and future, and is aware of all that has been and will be. He is indifferent to his actual life, with a successful career and family, and chooses to instead sleepwalk through it in daze of his past trauma. Billy was a soldier who fought in the second world war. But he and many of his compatriots were essentially infants playing at a ‘children’s crusade’. That war, much like those before, was planned and orchestrated by the whims of old men, who sent out inexperienced young men to die. Much like the 12th century monks who gathered impressionable orphans off the street, trained them to be soldiers, and sold them for wars to be fought far away in Africa. Or in the current day, a generic African warlord, who t

Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher My rating: 4 of 5 stars It had be only a couple of years, since I'd reconnected with the pursuit of recreational reading, as well as reading as a means of self improvement. But recently there was a disturbing realization. While my Goodreads reading challenge showed that I had finished a few hundred books, the amount that I was able to retain and remember was very less. It was almost as if, despite all the time and effort I put into it, the stuff just didn't stuck. So I began searching means of better reading and retention, and quite serendipitously came across Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher As esoteric as it may sound, reading a book about reading, I was up for new horizons. I was mostly not disappointed. For the most part the book focuses on reading, in context of the US educational system. O

An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India by Shashi Tharoor My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews The Calcutta Chromosome; Detailed Review Review In most Colonial era fiction which I’ve read, Indians are usually portrayed as belonging to one of two categories. Either the heroic freedom fighters who engage the British in a symbolic but futile struggle, and martyr themselves. Or, the subservient serfs, who excel in cronyism and would sell their own mother for praise from their White masters. Sort of pigeon holed both. Hence it was a breath of fresh air to see a tale, where the snooty, bigoted overlords are being led by the nose by those whom they consider virtually nonexistent. The Calcutta Chromosome follows a narrative across multiple time periods and characters; all of whom have brushes with a mysterious secretive cult centered around a seemingly immortal demigod Mangala didi. A tale bordering on convoluted, science fiction mystery, with a pervasive colonial presence and smudges

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear My rating: 4 of 5 stars Things which I appreciate about the book: 1. Atomic habits have useful, practical and implementable methods for habit formation, with anecdotes which keep you interested. 2. The author tries and keeps his methods simple, so that there is little friction when trying to implement them. At the end of each section, method or process, it is summarized in one line or process flow. Which I found easy to follow. 3. It explains why many people start with new habits, but aren’t always able to achieve success in implementing and internalizing them. 4. Methods which touch upon related concepts in behavior, cognition and learning (e.g. Willpower is a limited resource, which can run out during the day) 5. The author tries to cover all possible scenarios when it comes to the positives and negatives of habit formation. The book goes one step further, in

ദൈവത്തിന്റെ വികൃതികള്‍ | Daivathinte Vikruthikal by M. Mukundan My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews Choosing the third seat on the row adjacent to the side road, overlooking the beach, I opened the book currently in my reading list. It was Mukundan’s book, ദൈവത്തിന്റെ വികൃതികള്‍ (God’s mischief). Like his masterpiece മയ്യഴിപ്പുഴയുടെ തീരങ്ങളിൽ Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil (On the Banks of the river mayyazhi) the man has a keen ability to get into the nitty gritty (निजी ) lives of the people of his land. In other words, the story of mayyazhi is the story of her people. And in this novel, Mayyazhi’s own writer explores his favorite muse in further detail. A sequel to the previous mentioned books, in many ways Mukundan’s work is not centered on a few characters, rather, it is the retelling of the collective memory of the land through the ages, through revolution, through socio-economic change. He also has that whole ‘existence is suffering’ vibe coming from many of the PO

The Defenders by Philip K. Dick My rating: 3 of 5 stars View all my reviews

The Tempest by William Shakespeare My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’m among that minority who is not a fan of Shakespeare’s particular school of writing...Now there be some fighting words! This is not a disparagement of his works, nor am I calling them overrated. After all, if multitudes across generations were entertained and inspired by his works, who am I to argue? Yet the fact remains, the Shakespearean school of ‘not’ calling a Rose a rose doesn’t gel with me. I’m however intrigued by the characters that he conceived, as well as the worlds & setting he constructed. In them, where often the supernatural, surreal and authentic go hand in hand. Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Taming of a screw, these are all works I enjoy in prose, rather than screenplay. Perhaps it might be because that was how I was first introduced to them, in school. There is no argument of how influential these works are. The reason I decided to revisit the tempest after the last t

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima My rating: 4 of 5 stars Cliff Notes (Placeholder) : A young boy and his posse of psychopaths in training act out their chunibyo delusions and need for inflicting violence on the boy's step-dad; the eponymous sailor who fell from grace with the sea. View all my reviews Summary One night Noboru Kuroda finds a hole behind the dress drawer in his room, which allows him to peek into the room of his widowed mother, Fusako. Every night he intrudes on her, as she touches her flesh. Later, he spectates as she makes love to her lover, the Sailor Ryuji Tsukazaki. This filles him in wonderment, as he feels a hero worship towards the man he considered to be some hero from Mythic. He discusses this all with his ‘Gang’, a posse of six led by the ‘Chief’. They are all docile and excellent students to the society. Who hold Chuunibyou delusions about being geniuses above the Plebeians of the common world, burdened with glorio