Back from Kolkata

Yes, that's absolutely correct, I am just back after a nice little tour of Kolkata. Enjoyed quite a lot in those 4 days. Hung out with my college friends and old school friends alike. Went to Victoria Memorial after many many years (really liked the cannon with Bengali inscription upon it). Got drenched in rain on Park Street. Chilled out in City Centre. Got lost in Chandni Chowk. Discovered that the metro has no air conditioning system. And finally drank incredibly ordinary coffee costing Rs. 100! It was quite a tour, I must say.

There were some things which I did not like so much such as - the widespread dirtiness and the seemingly invincible aura of overall shabbiness, narrow roads, decadent attitude of the government, lack of any evident development and the low number of public buses and autos.

Now you are going to ask me what I really liked about Kolkata? Well then I have an honest answer - the bookstores, the ready availability of obsolete things (vinyl disc for instance) and the hot and fair girls of Kolkata.

Oxford, Starmarks, Crossword - all are so wonderful that I could easily spend a whole day in any of those. Its really bad that nothing like this exists in Durgapur. Bought some books from Starmarks and Crossword, namely Omerta, The Sicilian, and The Last Mughal.

Also bought some vinyl discs at dirt cheap prices right on the Chandni Chowk sidewalks.

And finally the girls. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours. And they are quite different too from the other big city girls. Not as flashy as Delhi girls, nor as decadent as the Mumbai girls. No sir, not yet.   

Absolute Friends

On my recent trip to Bangalore (on which I propose to write soon), I came across a bookshop on M.G. Road which was selling some books at a discount. Lucky me, and couldn't stop myself from picking up three books, much to the chagrin of my father ("Have you come to Bangalore to buy books???!!!"). One of the books was Absolute Friends by John le Carre of The Constant Gardener fame. And I don't think I will ever regret it.

The timeline of this novel is quite vast, and the story writing unlike any spy novel I have read so far. Its a tale of loyalty, betrayal, and international espionage that spans the lives of two friends from the riot-torn West Berlin of the 1960's to the grimy Cold War Europe to the present day of terrorism. There's even an sprinkling of India-Pakistan Partition in the beginning, as the main protagonist Ted Mundy was born in Lahore (where his father was an officer in the British Indian Army) and left Pakistan only in 1956.

This is le Carre is his finest form. The anger, the disappointments run cold and clear. The pacing of the story is sharp, with an irresistible snap, the wry social observation is bite and the background knife-play deadly. But I think the greatest thing in this novel is that he shows us without sentimentality or self-righteousness that a deeply moving, deeply personal story can be alloyed with a powerful political argument and that a single novel can express both an immediate sense of grievance and the melancholy perspective of an old man looking back on a long life lived in a tragic, tumultuous century.

The few tears at the ending are a fitting tribute to the memory of Ted Mundy and his absolute friend Sasha.