Olympics and India

“It's not that India lacks competitive spirit, as anyone who has queued there can attest. Nor national pride: the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center's 2003 Global Attitudes survey found India was the most nationalistic place on earth, with 74% of respondents "completely agreeing" that Indian culture is superior. How, then, to explain the nation's supreme and rather refreshing unprofessionalism in sports?”

Read more.

My Pithamagan review

I saw Pithamagan, Bala's much hyped film, yesterday.

Before I talk of this film, it is important to take a look at the kind of films that Bala has done in the past : Sethu and Nanda.

The best description for Sethu would be “morbid”, The film disturbs you at a fundamental level.

God knows enough films with “everything is fine and everyone are happy” endings are dished out every year by our directors. Rarely do characters which are out of the common, stories which haven't been explored and situations out of the ordinary get tackled on the screen. To tell such a story and to tell it in such a way that it is a commercial success and not just appreciated by a few “intellectual” critics shows the director's calibre. Afterall, film making is just the new age revision of the age hold art of storytelling in an engaging manner. To succeed in holding the audience's attention with such a morbid story speaks eons about the director's capabilities.

If you are the kind who looks for a hidden deeper meaning in everything, you will appreciate the way Bala deals, albeit in an exagerrated manner, with madness inherent in every love story, in Sethu.

Nanda's uplifting moment is Raj Kiran's scene where he proclaims “every human who fights evil is God” with a tinge of Bhagavat Gita thrown in for good measure. The exact opposite ideology of Kamal's “Love is God” Anbe Sivam. It was saved from the mediocrity of a thousand similar movies by the out of this world cinematography, Surya's arrival as an exceptional actor, Bala's deft direction and this particular scene.

Now comes Pithamagan. Bala doesn't deviate from his favourite theme : Tragedy coupled with unusual characters.

Porraying a character with well defined mannerisms is an easy job for any actor. More difficult is to portray a “normal” human being which calls for a subtler treatment. Kamal excels in the former while Mohanlal excels in the later. Audiences around the world tend to lap up and appreciate the former a lot more than the latter which is indeed a shame.

Anyways, coming back to the film on hand, Vikram does a good job at living the character of chittan with all the exagerrated mannerisms you would expect in such a character but let us not forget the excellent job done by the others like surya, laila and sangeetha.

A lot of questions remain unanswered, the most important of which is why does Vikram end up behaving as if being caught up in a time warp. Surely, anyone who ekes out a living as a cremator would have had semi-regular human contact ( the relatives of the dead ). To show him as a “normal” person with a dead heart would have lifted the film to a different level. Maybe the down to earth sensibility of a malayalam director would have conjured up such a story. Jayaram in a movie remarks with characteristic humour that everything is a bit exagerrated when it comes to the people of tamil nadu. In doing so, he makes a telling remark on the inherent differences between the two states to be found in everything from day to day behavior to the acting styles of a kamal and mohanlal.

All I know is this. Bala is a brilliant director with I suspect a tinge of madness. Eventually, he will come around and let his hero to be a normal human being. I will wait for that day. Patiently.

Meanwhile, go watch Pithamagan. There is indeed a method in Bala's madness.

PS : I am a big admirer of both Kamal and Mohanlal. My remark about their differences is not intended to be a flamebait for either side.

Nigerians happiest people, Indians 21st

“Money, says a study, may not have much to do with human happiness.

A survey of 65 countries, published by British magazine New Scientist, says that Nigerians are the happiest people on earth, followed by the Mexicans. Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico are close behind.

India has been ranked 21st in the world happiness index.
Nigeria, with an annual per capita gross national product of slightly over $300, ranks among the world's poorest as also the most corrupt countries.”

Read more.

Are you happy ?

Onamashamsakkal !

Happy onam everyone.

I found this excellent article which I think is worth reproducing here.

Onam - The Festival of Exuberance

Kerala is celebrating another New Year- Year 1179, according to the Malayalam calendar, also known as “Kollavarsham”.

Chingam or Bhadrapada, the first month of the calendar ushers in ONAM, the national fiesta of Kerala. After the rain drenched Karkidakam with its privations, Chingam is a welcome month of plenty. The sky becomes blue, the deep forest becomes greener and it is time to reap the harvest, time to celebrate and to rejoice along with the Nature. And Onam epitomizes the newfound vigour and enthusiasm about everything around. It is celebrated with traditional Malayalee fervour with visit to temples, family get-togethers, gifting each other clothes called Ona-kkodi and lots of merry making.

This picturesque ten-day harvest festival has been part of Malayalee psyche for centuries now. There are records of Onam being celebrated during the Sangam Age. Onam festivities have been recorded during the time of Kulasekhara Perumals around A.D 800. It is believed that during those days the whole of Chingam was celebrated as Onam season.

There is no place on earth like india

“
India is not just a country. It is our identity.

India enthrals, elevates and captivates. It can be infuriating, but those who know it love it unflinchingly.

There is no country like India. There are no people like Indians.

Every day, men and women from different parts of this vast nation rise above religion, class and language to create a country that is unique and beautiful. Together they form the true wealth of this country.

In its 56th year of Independence, rediff.com celebrates the Indian spirit through the lives of 56 Indians. Individuals, diverse as only this country can be, yet bound together by the wonder that is India.”

Read more

Rediff manages to come up with gems like these every once in a while. Great stuff.

Silence

The reason behind the lack of updates on this site can be summed up in two words : world cup. When all you do is to track the scorecard during the day and rush home in the evenings to catch whatever little action is left, you dont have much time left to do anything else least of all blog.

It feels great when sachin is in such fine form, isnt it ? I read a while back a stock broker proclaiming that the BSE sensex shoots up whenever sachin scores a century. Just the other day, I was reading an article saying the viewership on setmax goes down by 20 percent when sachin gets out. It is amazing how much power one man holds over the collective psyche of a nation. Is he the most popular man to have walked on the surface of the earth since Jesus ? If you go by just the sheer numbers of his fan following, I would say yes :-)

Masala gets a new url : netlife.tamizhan.com. From my referrer logs, I can see that people tend to make the mistake of thinking that the name masala implies content, the sort of which is found on sites like these ;-).

Last week, something interesting happenned on my site which even I failed to notice till yesterday. For some time now, I have given the option to advertise on my site. Never thought somebody would actually do so. So imagine my surprise when I found out that somebody has done just that. There is indeed an advertisement there now. So if you are not doing anything in particular, do go there and click on the ad. Since it is a CPC ad, I need to get another 25 odd clicks before I get money from my advertiser.

Thanks goes to my sponsor. I hope, you got something out of this and even better, keep doing this again and again :-)

Before I wrap up this entry, there is one surprise news. We had an impromptu indian blogger's meet yesterday at koramangala, bangalore :-). Shyam was in town. So was nilesh. Vignesh is always around. So we decided to meet up and the conversation went on expected lines atleast for me :-)

Shyam was the observer. He is a lot similar to apna vignesh, though to be fair to him, a lot quieter :-) Nilesh was the thinker and he reminds me of sreekanth. Both have a serious air to them though the smile is never far away. Suresh as always kept all of us smiling.

A major portion of the conversation was around my still to be released article titled Thrill Vs Peace. I have been teasing vignesh about this for a while now since he plays the main role of the thrill seeker. I get the author backed role of Peace Lover. This article is going to unleash the flame war to end all wars ;-) The moment I decide how to end this article, I will be publishing it. So stay tuned.

Mamallapuram / Mahabalipuram.

Since the current design of tamizhan.com revolves around a photograph of arjuna's penance from Mamallapuram, I thought I would share some information I collected on it during the process.

from the indiamart pages,

Name.
The proper name of the site is “Mamallapuram”, after Mamalla, an honorific of the Pallava king, Narasimha Varman I (630-668), who created the earliest of its monuments. But it is popularly called “Mahabalipuram”, or “The city of Bali”, whom Lord Vishnu chastised for his pride and of whom there is a relief in one of the excavated temples here.

About Mahabalipuram
The history of Mahabalipuram dates back to two thousand years, it contains nearly forty monuments of different types including an “open air bas relief” which is the largest in the world, for centuries it has been a centre of pilgrimage, it figures in the early annals of the British search for the picturesque in India in the 18th century, today it attracts shoals of foreigners in search of relaxation and sea bathing, and most strange of all, it has an atomic power plant for neighbour. A small library has been written on it.

Over its history and that of its monuments a number of scholarly controversies rage. Mahabalipuram was already a centre of pilgrimage when, in the 7th century Mamalla made it a seaport and began to make temples fashioned of rock. It was through Mahabalipuram that many Indian colonists, who included sages and artists, migrated to Southeast Asia. Sri Lanka's national chronicle, the “Mahavamsa” testifies to this fact.


from the TTDC site,
This skilfully carved rock is the largest bas - relief sculpture in the world. It gets its name from the figure of an ascetic who is believed to be Arjuna, the hero of Mahabharata, doing penance to obtain a boon from Lord Siva. However, there are others who think that the figure is actually Bhagiratha who entreated Siva to let the river Ganges flow over the earth.

Among the other carvings on the rock are animals and heavenly beings witnessing the descent of the Ganges from the Himalayas and some episodes from the Panchatantra tales.


from the roamin-aboout site,

One of the most spectacular carvings is the “Descent of the Ganges”also known as 'Arjuna's Penance'. The carving tells the story of pious Arjuna who persuades Shiva to use his hair to break the fall of the River Ganga. The large cleft between the boulders is the where the Ganges descends.
Around him is a crowd of animals, gods, and ascetics watching the saving of the world as the river descends.


from the jetairtours site,

TOURIST SPOTS IN AND AROUND MAMALLAPURAM :
Caves : There are nine rock-cut temples. The Mahishasuramardhini cave, depicting the goddess fighting a demon on one side and Lord Vishnu's cosmic sleep on the other, is a particularly remarkable one.

Krishna Mandapam : A bas relief, notable for its realistic representation. The panel relates to one of the stories of Lord Krishna.

Arjuna's Penance : This is the world's largest bas relief measuring 27m X 9m. This huge whale-backed rock contains figures of gods, demigods, men, beasts, birds and almost all of the entire creation. And, this is easily the pride of Mamallapuram.

The Five Rathas : There are the five monolithic temples, each created in a different style. They are also known as the Pancha Pandava Rathas - and four out of the five rathas are supposed to have been carved out of a single rock.

The Shore Temple : This is one of the oldest temples. Unique about this temple is the fact that it houses shrines for both Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu. This belongs to the early 8th century AD and it is a classic example of the first phase of structural temples constructed in pure Dravidian style.

The Government College of Architecture and Sculpture: Here training is imparted in the various branches of temple art and architecture, according to Silpa Sastra.

Crocodile Bank : Is situated about 14 kms. away from Mamallapuram. Over 5000 crocodiles representing 6 different species are maintained here. There are also numerous other types of rare reptiles.

Covelong : The remains of the fort have now been converted into a luxury beach resort which offers facilities for windsurfing and swimming, an ancient Catholic Church, a mosque and the  ruins of the fort make interesting viewing from this 5 Star hotel.

Tirukalukundram : This tourist spot has a small Shiva temple situated on the top of the Vedagiri
hill which is 160m high. Just before noon everyday, two White kites stop at the temple and are fed by the temple priests. Legend has it that these two birds are actually saints who daily make a stop to rest at the temple on their flight between Varanasi and Rameswaram.

There is also a larger Shiva Temple in the town below. At the South-East end of the town is a spacious tank whose waters are said to have curative powers. Once every 12 years, a conch is discovered in this tank and thousands of devotees flock to bathe in the tank at this auspicious time. A collection of the conches is displayed in the larger Shiva Temple.

Muttukkadu : This is an ideal picnic spot. T.T.D.C, runs a Boat House, where facilities for boating and wind surfing are available.


Sounds like a good place to visit ?

Sleeping On A Bench.

Yesterday, 6:45 PM.

The old school bus, doubling up as the AT&T shuttle bus in these difficult days, pulled into the parking lot of the usually deserted train station. The sole occupant of the bus, on his way out, exchanges a few pleasantries with the bored driver. He slowly makes his way to the Track no 2 to catch the New York bound train. It will be atleast 45 minutes before the train arrives.

In his hand, the young guy ( the sole occupant will be now onwards referred to as the young guy ) carried a plastic bag with a few sheets of paper in it. Extended waiting times at the train station had taught him to come prepared. It is his habit to print out a short story or two from the gutenburg site to read while waiting. However having exhausted most of the titles from the short story section, he had printed out a translation of the Bhagavad Gita on that particular day.

Having spend most of the day conducting training sessions for new developers taking over his project, the young guy was not in a mood to read. The wooden bench on the platform beckoned him to lay down his tired body in its lap and enjoy a few minutes of rest. Without a moment's hesitation, he streched his long lean body on the bench, using his bag as the pillow and closed his eyes for a small nap.

Unknown to him, on the opposite platform, a middle aged american picked a cellphone and made a call.

A couple of minutes later, a police car pulled into the train station. The young guy was woken up ( he was not really asleep in any case ) by the flashing lights of the car. He watched as a young clean shaved policeman came out of the car and looked around. The moment the policeman's eyes met that of the young guy, he started walking towards his direction. Not thinking much of it, the young guy continued in his horizontal position. When the policeman came and stopped in front of his bench, it dawned upon the young guy that the police man had indeed come to meet him.

This is what followed.

Policeman : “whats going on ?”.
Youngguy ( with a shrug ) : “Well, I am waiting for the train”.
Policeman : “I figured that”, with a cold stare.
Youngguy : “Well, why the question then ?”, with an attempt at a smile :).

The Policeman showed with an expression on his face that he was not in the least bit amused.

Policeman then asks, “whats your name ?”.
Youngguy : “anand”.

The Policeman's eyes drift towards the young guy's AT&T badge, pinned on his shirt, and find a different ( and in no way related ) name there.

Policeman : “Well, your badge here says something else”.

I ( now onwards the young guy will be referred to as I since as you would have guessed by now, he is me ) : “Well, Thats my real name. But since it is so long and difficult to pronounce, I use my nickname which is anand”.

The Policeman is not satisfied but still buys my argument.

Policeman ( now pulling out his notebook ) : “What is your home address ?”.

( I had recently moved from one apartment to a basement sharing arrangement with a friend. I only knew how to walk to my new place from my station and had no idea of the *actual* home address. )

I try to explain my above predicament.

Policeman ( getting annoyed now ) : “What is your home phone number ?”.

I did not have a phone for my personal use and had no idea about the owner's number.

Policeman : “Show me another id, Please”.

I did not have any other.

Policeman ( getting a bit frustrated here ) : “What is your Social Security Number ?”.

Me : “I dont remember :(”.

Policeman ( now getting really irritated ) takes a look at my plastic cover : “What is in there ?”.

I say,“Just a few printouts” and hand it over to him.

Policeman opens it casually to find the title on the first page saying Bhagavad Gita. Now getting increasingly interested in me, he says “Do you always carry the Gita with you?”

I say defensively, “I just printed it out to read while waiting for the train.”

Policeman asks me many more questions during the course of which I blurt out ( quite honestly, I must add ) that I am flying from JFK next week.

The three letters, JFK, had an electric effect on the Policeman.

He walked a few steps away, pulled out his walkie talkie and called ( presumably ) his superiors.

I ( watching this scene from a distance ) was getting a wee bit worried. My position definetely looked bad.

A couple of minutes later, a bigger police car made its way into the now slightly crowded parking lot. A big fat guy and an old wise ( the reason for him being called a wise guy will become clear in a few lines from now ) guy got out.

A few more questions later, We still dont reach anywhere. There is nothing on me to prove who I am and nobody nearby to tell them I really am what I claim I am.

The three men start an internal discussion at a small distance from me.

The young policeman says “We must detain him until we can verify his id.”.

The old wise guy takes a look at me and says, “He doesnt look suspicious”.

All three look at my direction. I put on my best smile and try to bring an expression onto my face which says that I am the nicest guy on planet earth :-) The three men realising that I have overheard their conversation walk away a bit further with a sheepish grin on their faces.

An even longer discussion ensues with a lot of shaking heads and gestaculating hands. I watch in rapt attention while three men discuss about who I really am.

Finally, the three men walk towards me with the old guy leading the way.

He asks me a strange question. “Where you sleeping on the bench ?”.

I reply in the positive.

He replies with a weak attempt at humour. “People dont do that in these places.”

I raise an eyebrow and say nothing.

It seems a gentleman ( the middle aged american on the other platform ? ) had called in to report a suspicious character. With a friendly warning to carry an id with me whenever I go out, he wished me good night and walked away with the other two.

and I turn back and walk, in the land of free, unable to sleep on a bench.

Punar Janmam.

Lately, I have been reading MY blog. Strange as it sounds that is exactly what I have been doing for the last three days. Before you guys put me in a straightjacket and pack me off to the nearest asylum, let me clarify myself :)

As you all know, I have this terminally ill and close to dying site called Tamizhan.com. After briefly entertaining notions of building a community site built around it, I have dropped the plan for lack of time, energy and motivation. But I cannot sit idly watching that site die :( So I decided to approach the problem seriously and do a complete re-organisation of that site and along with that, this site. So I have been reading my blog to solve the question of how to re-organize my sites.

Here is what I found out ( Nothing earth shattering really :-) )

Three things happen here :

1. Every once in a while, I manage to write something reasonably long and worth reading. This is a rare occurance and happens mostly once or twice in a month :-)

2. I post a lot of links to other sites/stories. This happens frequently.

3. Rarely, Very rarely I write about myself. The archives show me that this has happenned maybe less than 10 times in the last six months.

Now I have two sites and three types of articles.

For the first type of articles, I have re-designed Tamizhan and am re-opening it. ( PS : I am not the kid in the photograph there :) ).

For the second type of posts, I have started a new chota blog at masala.tamizhan.com under the name masala : netLife. This should be the most frequently updated of the three.

And the third type of posts, the ones which talk about my own life, will remain in this site. I hope to write a lot more of what happens in my life in an effort to create an archive of my own life so that at a later point in life, I can look back and laugh at myself :-).

So thats it folks.

Hop over to Tamizhan and Masala to see the newly opened sites. Not much of a design there actually. Something barely enough to hold the content. A more complete design will be put up shortly.

Do tell me your views on all three :-).

The Brahma Hypothesis

It is time now for the Brahma hypothesis.

I am going to use the usual method that people adopt when writing a hypothesis. Collect a few known facts, add a couple of leaps of imagination and present in a whole new style, claiming the idea as my own.

The brahma hypothesis is the expanded name given to the BHM hypothesis which in turn stands for the Brain, Heart and the Memory hypothesis.

All forms of sensory input create a new memory.

The Brain uses memory to create thoughts.

The Heart uses memory to create emotions.

The Brain and Heart battle for our mental space and what we currently feel is a direct outcome of who is in charge.

We all want to be happy, agreed ?

Now we must take a look at the cross-section of humans who are generally considered the happiest among us. Kids.

What do you see ?
Not so developed brains. Heart completely in charge. More emotional than a kamal trying for a national award. Generally seen to be happy for the smallest and the silliest of reasons.

As we grow older, what happens ? Brains start to develop ( well, in most cases :) ) and the more we get older, the more we think. What does your brain do ? It comes and stands in the way of you and your happiness. Now the brain doesnt allow you to laugh easily. It needs a strong reason to laugh. Gone are the days you could giggle without feeling embarassed. Now you will start displaying controlled emotion. Watch a govinda movie and your brain will step in and stop you from laughing telling you that it is a third rate joke not worthy of your laughter. At the end of the movie, the simpleton from the village would have laughed his guts out while you come out shaking your head mutterring about a complete waste of time. Who is the loser ?

An abundance of thought has generally led to sorrow and depression more times than it has led to hapiness. The person who feels hapiness as the end result of series of thoughts over time is rare. But I can show you a number of people who think a lot, get worked up and generally feel unhappy.

Ever looked forward to something, expecting a truckload of hapiness and when the moment finally came felt a sense of disatisfaction ? The brain imagined a hapiness which was not there, in the meantime forsaking the gift of the moment and the opportunity for hapiness in it.

We now take a look at literature and the movies in an attempt to see what they say. We find that almost always the simple folk are shown to be happy while the city dwelling, cultured and the “intelligent” person is often found to be irritated, frustrated, lost in his thoughts and generally unhappy.

Now we will take a look at that noble attempt to understand the human psyche and the meaning of life : Philosophy. Prominent figures like krishnamurthi have written about the need to eliminate the thought.“See without judging. Observe without analyzing”. The exotic religions like tao and tantra talk about living for the moment. That ( in my current prejudiced state of mind :) ) translates to doing away with the brain. Jesus in his famous sermon has said, “The meek shall inherit the earth”. What does this mean ? The meek not in a physical sense but in regards to your brain. Do away with your brain. Do not doubt. Do not think. Live without thinking, Believe without doubting and this world will be yours.

So what do we conclude ?

Do away with the brain. kill the thought. let the heart be the sole contender for your mental space and be happy.

Problems ?
When you live in the moment and let your heart rule, your happiness will be a function of your environment and the people around you, in short you will be vulnerable. You have nice people around ? you will be happy.

The Brahma hypothesis is the brain concluding that it is useless. It is the suicide call of the brain.

Kill the brain and be happy.
Believe in Brahma.

meek

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.”

Jesus Christ said those words in the famous sermon on the Mount, 2000 years ago.

I have always wondered about that one ever since I read it. According to a certain Mr.Darwin, “Its a jungle out there and it is the Survival of the fittest”. If you look at it, the two more or less contradict one another. Darwin paints this world as a jungle where you fight for your surivival with all you have got. Jesus asks us not to fight, give yourselves up in love and says the world will be ours.

I have always wondered which one is right.

Anyone who is cognizant of the real world knows what it is to be out there. A normal day of work is a game of oneupmanship played by you and your colleagues with a biased manager monitoring and pushing his own strategy. Niceness is a required quality in the other guy ( not in you ). Nobody returns a favour anymore. Aggressive, confident people are the winners here. And all this seem to point that Darwin indeed is the right one.

But wait. Ever had a fight and not felt bad afterwards ? Ever worked/fought hard for something and not felt hollow afterwards ?? I am a passionate debater : one who rarely gives up. Lately, I am beginning to hate all that. I wonder why I fight hard to establish a point I myself am not sure about in the first place. I wonder why I work late nights ( and on weekends ) just to earn a higher appraisal rating enroute to a higher salary. I have acheived a lot and yet I want more. I am worried about a future when I should be happy about the present. It is this feeling that you are in a rat race that makes me do all that. It is as if I stop for a moment's rest, I might be left behind.

Something tells me Jesus is right.

Something tells me, I must change myself. I must remove all forms of aggression from my behavior. I must learn to be meek : to give up. I must learn to be satisfied with what I have. I must stop dreaming and keep my feet firmly grounded. I must learn to see the beauty of what is there before me rather than dreaming about a beauty that never will be.

Life is an illusion : Maya. This is something I keep saying but never have realised its true meaning. Slowly I am getting it. I am learning to lose and more importantly, slowly learning to enjoy it.

Not for me the turbulent mind of a chaser of dreams. I long for the peace and calm of a mind which has only love, gentleness and kindness inside it. Not for me the turbulent waves of the sea. I long for the gentle stillness of the stream.

I want only love to live inside my heart. nothing else.

and for that, I must be meek.

Something tells me the contradiction in the above line ( “must” and “meek”) ensures that I may not acheive this. But I am going to try.

mindless

God's biggest mistake was giving us humans a mind.

Without a mind, a human would be just another animal. An animal kills another when it is hungry. We are now animals, directed by a mind. And that mind tells us to kill another human just because he does not believe in something we believe in.

Without a mind, there would not be a good human or a bad human : only a human. Without a mind, there would not be a Christian, Hindu or a Muslim. Without a mind, there would not be an indian or a pakistani. Without a mind, there will not be money in this world. All humans will be equal : nameless bodies wandering in search of food.

Without a mind, there would not be a knife to stab another, a bomb to blast others. Without a mind, there would not be a war on earth. Yes, fights will be still be there. It will be minor disagreements ( like a dogfight ). Nobody gets killed by another human.

God, Please take away our mind. We have struggled to master it. Tonight, We give up. The mind you gave us : the mind which if used sensibily would have brought peace and harmony on earth is now an instrument used to kill. The mind has done more harm than good. If We dont return it tonight, there would not be anything left of us humans.

Mind is meant for the Gods not for animals like us.

Magic Realism.

Words Fascinate me.

I am starting a series of blogs wherein I will be talking about the books that I haved loved the most.

Let me start off with one of my all time favourite books, One hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, one of the masters of the Magic Realism genre. To define what Magic Realism is indeed difficult but let me make a try. Magic Realism is seeing life with a new set of eyes : combining magic with the mundane, coupling the ordinary with the fantastic, seamlessly blended so much so that you are left wondering what is real and what is unreal. You cannot survive from the hands of a master of magical realism like Garcia, without doubting your own sanity. You will learn to laugh when you should be crying and cry when you should be laughing. In short, at times reading a book like this can be a life altering experiance :)

One hundred years of Solitude is easily his best book : a story about the island of Maconda depicted on an epic level ending with its ultimate disappearance. An extract from the book :

. . . for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. (422 ).


read an interesting lecture on this book here.

Learn more of Julio Cortazar, the argentine master of the fantastic short story -here

An extract,

"'It's like a waiting room, life is,' said the bald gentleman, carefully grinding out his cigarette with his shoe and examining his hands as if he didn't know what to do with them now; the elderly lady sighed a yes born of long years of agreeing, and put away her little bottle just as the door at the end of the corridor opened and the other lady came out with that look all the others envied, and an almost sympathetic goodbye when she got to the exit.' (from 'Second Time Around')


Read an excerpt from German Master of Magical Realism, Gunter Grass here

A couple of extracts,

Often after airing he finds time to sit by my bed for a while, disentangling his strings, and spreading silence until I call the silence Bruno and Bruno silence.

I shall begin far away from me; for no one ought to tell the story of his life who hasn't the patience to say a word or two about at least half of his grandparents before plunging into his own existence.


and how can I forget our own Salman Rushdie and his Midnight's Children, that fantastic interpretation of Midnight, August 15, 1947.

An extract,

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually moving up, row by row, until your nose is almost pressed against the screen. Gradually the stars' faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves - or rather, it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality.

read more of him here.

Have fun.