Monday, August 29, 2011

Norwegian Wood

       There are some authors who bank on meticulous research for their stories. Then there are authors who believe imagination to be their main strength. Murakami is a kind of author who doesn't want to spoil his imagination by going to the places he wants to write about. Haruki Murakami, theatre arts major, suddenly had the inspiration to write his first novel while watching a baseball game. With Norwegian wood, Murakami tasted unprecedented success. Success which shocked him and put him into depression to some extent. To avoid the craziness of his super stardom, he had to flee Japan for a few years.

       Norwegian Wood is a love story, amidst student movement, set in late 1960's. The story has all the elements- tenderness, passion, longing and loss, to make a perfect youthful love story. Quirky humour and casual conversation between the characters about varied topics like books, music, sex and weather makes this book an interesting read.

       Norwegian wood, named against a Beatles song, listening to which the protagonist Toru Watanabe's memories take him back to his student days and his first love Naoko. Naoko is his best friend kizuki's girlfriend. Their relationship is complicated, which Toru himself finds it difficult to explain at times. To make things even more complicated, enters a vibrant girl Midori into Toru's life. Reiko and Nagasawa friends of Naoko and Toru respectively make up other interesting characters. All the characters are different and complex, yet so similar and simple. Rest of the story is about the choice Toru has to make between the two women in his life.

       One can find a lot of symbolism in Murakami's style of writing. One such, which is interesting is, after a steamy eventful night Naoko disappears from Toru's life. Later, one night, Toru sets free a firefly from a bottle, which is a gift from his roommate. As the insect flies, Toru muses, "Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul", a metaphor, which perfectly describes  Toru's longing for Naoko.

       Jay Rubin has done a commendable job of translating it into English. Independent on Sunday rightly puts it as "This book is undeniably hip".

PS :- When I was going through my old files I found this review which I had written some four years back. Norwegian Wood is the second Murakami book I had read then after Wild Sheep Chase.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

My Petty Treasure

Satya sai's wealth was still a national debate and media was speculating the actual numbers. Soon came the news of Padmanabha swamy temple's treasure. Still one chamber is to be opened. This incredible wealth could buy nations or eradicate poverty for a change. Mere seeing the pictures of Padmanabha swamy's wealth in chain mails made me go dizzy. It was so overwhelming that even I wanted to open some treasure desperately. Off I went to open the only treasure I have, some petty coins I have collected since childhood. Not very long ago I had added some coins from my brother's collection. I was not very familiar with the recent additions. So here I was looking at each coin carefully and dreaming how Padmanabha swamy temple officials would chase me to exchange the coins with the temple's  treasures and how I would refuse. Nice dream !!

Most of my collection is made of coins from 80's and 90's. Some of pre-independence era. Few international coins and one or two dating back to 1850's East India Company coins. one coin has Urdu or Arabic all over it and I cannot make head or tail out it.



One particular coin left me clueless. Looking at it gives an ancient feel to it. Date is not there, if it was there it is completely wiped out. Script on it is Devanagari but nothing is readable. Portrayals on it resembled Hindu rulers. So I expected it to be a pre-British era coin. I wanted to know more about it and I couldn't keep it out of my mind. After one or two days when I was discussing coins with my friends this came up. One friend when he saw it next day, suggested it could be a coin from Nepal. Hence my search started with Nepal coins. There were many interesting coins but nothing similar came out. I went back to my original assumption and started looking in pre-British era coins. List was too big to search from. Nothing was remotely matching and it was leading nowhere. I had to change my search strategy. Took a long look at the coin and typed what I was seeing, `person holding trishul`, `Shiva with trishul` and some other combinations. Some of the search combinations lead me back to Nepal coins. But that was not what I was looking for. I flipped the coin where it had four persons. So guessing wildly I typed `coins with Rama and his brothers`. Bingo!! It led me to what I was looking but not exactly the same. It was an Aha moment and I was amazed to see what I was looking for. I would have definitely refused to exchange the coin for world's treasures at that moment.



So what I had with me was a coin or sometimes called temple token known as Rama Tanka. I started to like this name as well. It is Rama and Lakshmana on one side which I had mistook for Shiva and Parvathi looking at what looked like a Trishul. On the other side it is the Rama darbar. I had not at all noticed the Hanuman until I looked at the pictures. Stupid of me to have missed it.

Rama Tanka is supposed to be worshipped  in Hindu households to celebrate the legend of Rama and passed on to next generations. There are genuine ancient coins and modern reproductions. Mine looks like a modern reproduction, but I am not sure. I had never seen a Rama Tanka or heard about it before. When I searched for Rama Tanka I could find a very similar coin to that of mine. I am still clueless about the exact date when this was minted and I have no idea how to figure it out also. On the whole, Searching wildly without knowing what I had with me and discovering it as Rama Tanka was a liberating experience.

Referred links:
http://www.coinquest.com/cgi-bin/cq/coins?main_coin=521&main_ct_id=54
http://psrraju1953.blogspot.com/2010/09/rama-tanka-coins-hstory.html

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Jai Ho Doordarshan

Those were the days when TV watching was celebrated. I can reminisce about those times very fondly. I stumbled upon this website which took me back in time and even after coming back the sweet memories are still lingering. For all those DD fans out there this one is sure to bring back the memories. You'll find everything
about DD here commercials, serials and what not. Thanks a ton for those of you, who are maintaining the site.  http://ddnational.blogspot.com/

I still remember vividly. My first brush with TV happened on an unfortunate day of 30th Oct 1984. Mrs Indira Gandhi was shot and children were let off from schools. I didn't know who Indira Gandhi was and I must say I was happy. There was excitement in the air about the live telecast of the proceedings. My brother
who is 10 years elder to me and his friends were planning to go 3 colonies away to watch television in a doctors house who was treating my mother. I happily and silently tagged along. There was already huge crowd, all unknown faces. With my brother's lobbying we could get in after Maneuvering through the crowd. My expectation was to see Mrs Gandhi being shot but all I could see was only people and glimpse of demised PM. I was disappointed.

Within a years time we bought a brand new TV. We were the first in our locality to buy a TV. Dynora black and white. Initially it took some time to get a hang of what’s going on. We would gather before the telecast time and watch from the National DD signature

http://ddnational.blogspot.com/search/label/DD%20National%20Signature

Most of the times we ended up watching all the boring programmes. News was the first thing we were hooked on to, then we caught up with 9PM serials. From then on the pattern of TV watching kept changing based on the programmes aired, nevertheless we were hooked.

Sunday’s were truly exciting times and lived upto the expectation of a  holiday. Now it’s cliche to say but still it is Ramayan which caught the imagination of the masses. Started witnessing the crowds that I mentioned earlier in our house itself . The hall which could accommodate 20 people would be filled by 40 people and
we kids used to sit lap on lap in a window opposite to the TV. That was our balcony seat. More than Ramayan it was the anticipation of watching and the congregation that excited me. The scene would be similar for Vikram-bethal followed by  Sunday evening Hindi movie.

After Ramayan our kid gang was eager to watch He-man, Mickey mouse, Duck tales, Ek do teen char, spiderman, Indradhanush. No other program series has brought out the feeling of patriotism in me than Param vir chakra till now. We kids were amazed by the valour and sacrifice shown by these great soldiers. After watching we kids used go out and enact the war and shooting stuff. Used to be such fun. Thanks to Chetan and Ketan Anand for this brilliant one. Don’t want to say anything about the theme song. Just listen..

http://ddnational.blogspot.com/search/label/Param%20Vir%20Chakra

Watching news for hearing impaired was fun and we used imitate the lady. I also liked the stone boy theme. Not to mention Mahabharat, Malgudi days, Dada dadi ki kahaniyan , Nukkad, Yeh jo hai Zindagi and many many more...

Commercials were a huge hit with us. Cinkara, Dabur chaywanprash, Dinesh suitings, Digjam Rasna, Vicco, Vicks, Vimal  and many more. Kapil was a national favorite and palmolive ka jawab nahin is my personal favorite.  Repeating the catch lines was a favorite pass time.

Unlike todays glamourous and biased news presenters we had Salma sultana with only one expression for any news. Personalities like Narrotham Puri, Siddhartha Basu, Anuradha podwal, Shekhar Kapur, Arun Govil, Deepika, Dara Singh, Gavaskar, Puneet Issar, Master Manjunath were all household names

My grandmother was a true TV buff, she always tried to duplicate the cinema environment in our house. She used to fry sunflower seeds and salt them. For all prime time programs these were shared with any body who had patience to munch them while watching TV. In summers it was Musk melon and Water melon seeds. One
should see with how much patience she used to collect, clean and  dry them. Always house almost looked like a theatre after the crowd left. Occasionally it used be groundnuts. Rarely we used to serve rasna which in itself was a daunting task.

to be continued....