THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

Image Courtesy: Google Image Courtesy: Google Are you a lover of thrillers? Have your senses adapted enough to understand the line where characters and plot become one and where characters trace their trajectories straight into the readers’ hearts? This second question is especially complicated, since even some writers cannot point out where this line is. The best demonstrative strategy is to take you to some of the books as instances that unsettled the world and left it on the mercy of imaginative survival; The Da Vinci Code for example or Hunger Games . We loved their story line, their plot and of course, Robert Langdon or Katniss Everdeen, they are vulnerable and their pain is intimate for us. Image Courtesy: Google The Krishna Key is based on conspiracy theories that suggest that the Vedic civilization is the mother of all civilizations. Aswin Sanghy compares the idea of a supreme and extremely developed civilization to the lost city of Atlantis . By doing thi...

Image Courtesy: Google Cannanore will soon become a big city, but right now, it is a small town, where people still prefer having their tea, coffee and meals from coffee houses that stinks of urine, sweat and smoke. This is not the only reason for naming it small. Every city is like a human being. And like humans, cities have thoughts as well. Cannanore town is small is its thoughts too. Thoughts of a city are its streets. The streets in Cannanore city are quite narrow and thus I deduced my conclusion that it is indeed a small in city, small in size and small in mind. In this small town, one evening, a coffee house was busy as a slaughter house. The slaughter house imagery partially owes its credit to the way people’s faces looked after their sojourn inside the houses for tea or meals and their puffed up pot bellies and partly it owed to the vast number of people flowing in and out. A person in a wrinkled grey shirt walked faster towards the entrance. He placed the b...

Image Courtesy: Google Obituary is too limited a word. One could not find a label if one scrolled down the left column in this blog that reads “Obituary”. There are many articles, poems and anecdotes about people who passed away, but none of those attempts to honour their memories can are called obituaries. This is not just because these pieces of literatures were written not exclusively in a style apt commonly to obituaries that one reads in newspapers. There is one more reason, one undoubtedly unearthly, uncommon reason. It’s the conception of death itself. Yash Chopra, the maker of classics in Indian movie screen, transcended into another dimension today. Death is not a word that one could use for him. He has an upcoming film, which people across the world wait for release; he is known as a franchise in the film industry and is a bearer of many more titles as an individual. How can it be concluded that a so-called ‘dead man’ has an upcoming movie? How can a franchise die?...

Image Courtesy: Google F ractured Legend is Kranthi Askani’s debut novel. The title, Fractured Legend well represents the broken and ill tendered state of the plot. The book incorporates magic realism,  gothic  elements as per the blurb piece. Fractured Legend opens with a statues deliquescing, in the Book 1, “Slave”. The novel is presented in three books. Book 1 is titled “Slave”. Book 2 is called “Manuscript” and Book 3 is “A Very Long Letter”. Book 1, book 2 and book 3 are split into three chapters each. Fractured Legend connects the story of four women in a string of narratives, in which magical realism and  gothic  elements play a disastrous role, leaving the plot murky, uninteresting and impossible to associate with (intellectually or emotionally). Two more artistic techniques remain surprisingly traceable in the work. One is absurdism. Absurdity lurches upon you from the first chapter of the Book 1. The non-presence of action is one of the re...

Coming soon Image Courtesy: Google Caught By: Haralan Coben “Scandal. Suspicion. Murder. It’s child’s play…” Coming soon on The Indian Commentator, a book review of Harlan Coben’s novel Caught. Here is a bird’s eye view on the book, from the author’s website: 17 year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst. Image Courtesy: Google Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate—and nationally televised—sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounte...

Image Courtesy: Google He lurked in the night, Under the moon’s gleaming face. He hid himself not, though, Instead came out in the moonlight. The signifier of unknown terror, Fierce and virile, His chest rising and falling like a drum, Belly flat like drum, Eyes made of amber and ruby serum. His life once was human, Then his blood took offence with nature, In the wild it ran freely, And his body took its turn surely, Fangs, fur and his head too, Grew into a wolf’s. A song rose from his heart, at times, In blood’s significant rhythm, And there was in his eyes, A gleam and a shadow. The gleam was love, The shadow was a woman. Her hairs floated in the night air, Penetrating the chill of solemn despair. The werewolf howled; Jumped in front of her. He neither touched her, Nor his fangs tore her skin. His eyes gleamed more, Shading the full moon in the cold. She looked at him in the eyes. Her eyes too shared the golden g...

The promises of a festive season are always many. We nourish the festival and its myth in hope that it will bring into our lives some of those finest moments that we long so  much to have in the present life, as the many people in the stories from past had. When some events take place that shakes us up from the conscious sleep we conveniently choose for ourselves, we say it’s bad. I thought about saying the same when I was asked to help some of my friends to provide groceries and other goods to a home for the disabled. It was under a charity organization run by one of the Christian sects. There were poor and disabled, physically and mentally. There were kids too. One of them had lost his mother just a month back. This poem, perhaps, was inspired from my visit to that home. I would like to add some value to this poem by dedicating it to those children and homeless adults.    Image Courtesy: Google The Orphan The intimacy of your tears With the loneliness ...

Image Courtesy: Google Sometimes , we find ourselves so aligned with the rhythm of the cosmos that the fluttering wings of a distant butterfly can have its share in helping us experience some of the indelible moments. Woman’s Equality Day is commemorated each year by the people of the United States of America , on August 26 th . I published this poem on Poem Hunter.com without knowing this specific detail. One of my friends in Facebook told me about this. That was the moment I realized I was attuned with the cosmic music and that my thoughts crossed those living on the other side of the planet, unknowingly. I would like to publish the comment of my Facebook friend Sabine Schonwalder from Italy at the end of this post. The poem is here for you all to enjoy. Woman My long sari, An overlapping image with my body, Floats in front of your eyes, In a luring sensation above and below nakedness, As if I belong to the world of mathematics, Always shown for s...

Image Courtesy: Google A woman came out the house that was the biggest and luxurious on the shore of the national Highway 17 that connected Cannanore and Calicut , just at the junction before the suburban bridge. Vinod, her husband might be in his room preparing his speech to be delivered in front of the judge. Their married life would end today. It was the month of rain, but that day the sun was bright and that was good. She stood in the sunlight on the terrace. Smitha worked in the State Bank. Her husband Vinod was a real-estate broker , a term he always disliked to be addressed with. Her only daughter, Priya was in a prestigious school in Mumbai and only son, Prakash was doing his MBA from Harvard. Her husband’s second son though, studied in a much less expensive school in Kerala that taught MBA, the same subject, but included a set of extra curricular activities including student strikes, breaking the glasses of State Buses, and damaging public property. However, He...

R.I.P. Rajesh Khanna (1942-2012) Image Courtesy: Google Dear reader, this is my latest short story. I dedicate this story to the acting phenomenon, late Mr. Rajesh Khanna, the evergreen superstar of Bollywood. “Crimson,” I called the earthworm. It didn’t look up, though. Of course, it might not have learnt it that I had given him a name, yet. “Crimson,” I called it again. This time, he stopped and with what seemed a strained move, raised his long head up. “Me?” he asked. I was not shocked. Of course, I am not lying. Just because I want this story not to be about the astonishment and shock in discovering a talking earthworm, which I named “Crimson”, I wouldn’t lie. Naming him Crimson had other reasons too. His skin colour was the last of them. It was a rainy June day, but that morning, rain clouds came only after the sun rose crimson and thick. It was an off day since it was the Day of the Departed Souls for the Hindus. “Did you call me?” the earthworm asked once again. ...