Of books and such

Mom got me a few select books this time. Chetan Bhagat has become a house hold phenomenon in India and I knew nothing of him. So I hastened to fix the lapse.
Over the past two days I have read two of his three books, Five point something and One night at the call center. There is a third book, not by him, but I have had enough; I am not going to read the third book.
He writes coming of age books for middle class Indians. One is focused on IIT, a dream that every for every middle class parent dreams for his child. And the second about a call center, a place where the highly educated, perfectly accented 20 something’s work thru the night helping the ‘dumb Americans’, making as much as a burger flipper in MickeyDs.
the books
He writes in first person present. The book feels like an enlargement of a very low res picture. He skips any in descriptions of surroundings, state of mind anything that would be passive voice. No delving into whys-- just a description of what, sometimes how.These are plays. To be specific a screen plays for a bollywood movies. I could compare it with DCH and fine them comaprable.however DCH brough nuances and depth to charecters by association and suroundings and the actors. The book does nto have this option. You don’t love characters and are only mildly moved by them. The entire 270 page story could have been told in 30 odd pages.
the characters
It might be because I did not go to an IIT or work at call center, but the treatment to me seems very cursory. He wants you to believe that Alok and Ryan and Hari are real. They might have been based on real life people, but they are either based on a single myopic aspect of a person or many people. Allusions to Ryan’s errant sexuality are interesting as is abuse in Hari’s past but Alok's whinny parents take over. The dialog inside the guys head is funny and fairly appropriate, but the female charecters are stereotypical, perhaps that is how women appear to men. The set of values these guys use to judge each other are black and white. Ryan's hidden hatered of Hari and Hari's love for Ryan or all that Ryan represents... interesting angle, but it goes no where.
the language
American idioms with a generous sprinkling of crap, damn and fuck thrown in. No hindi words in English, some of the comments are a complete translation. Some of the constructs are very indian, but no trnaslated words. Wonder why he did that, does it make the book more readable for non -indians? but it does not carry enough descriptive material to be something that a non -indian eng would read to, say findout more about IITs or life in delhi or IITs. Most people would read this for nostalgia, college ke woh din, and what a strange time it was when friends were closer and we lived without the wand of parents for the first time, they would miss the hinglish, No? Or is it IITians and call center folk do not speak hinglish ?
The narrative is inconsistent. Hari starts with ‘acknowledgement’ that indicates that though this is the story of the three of them (and what of Neha?) he had to have his way because the other two could not ( or would not) write …. And yet includes a chapter by each of them. In the second book, he starts of in narration mode… yet he starts at the beginning of the evening and somehow never ties up the thread of narration at the end. And the epilogue is depressing cliché.
I am a little surprised at the 50th reprint. The books are dismal. When I compare it to Interpreter of maladies or Incantations or Arranged marriage, Chetan Bhagat’s books are a sad comparison. The other three are short story collections written by people of Indian origin about their view of the Indian experience. I compare each of these short story collections with CB’s three books because to my mind each of his novels is really a bloated short story.
The question that comes to mind is why is each of these short story collections not ubiquitous as the five point something book?
The snob in me says that is because it is easy to read, no need to think or concentrate and you have read a book. The realistic part of me says that it is an approachable book, with images and characters we know and identify with, evil bosses and professors and parents whose expectations we cannot meet. and familiar is good. it highlights the good in each charecter with a naive optimism. It is tangible and has no lofty aspirations. The credentials Chetan Bhagat possesses, lend him an air of authenticity, he went to an IIT, even if it was not IIT - D. And then he made it to an IIM, IIM - A no less. In the post-independence area, meritocracy is the new royalty. Even the snob in me relents, it takes a lot of mugging to get there :)
All in all a pretty decent effort, but it will be forgotten.

opt out?

I am a single mom, who works fulltime to pay for her child’s private school education and the suburban house mortgage. I have been working my entire adult life, having been brought up with the notion ‘women in no way are inferior to men as far as intellect is concerned’, it was a brutal blow when I was told at the highly coveted job at campus recruiting, even though you are the most qualified for this job we cannot hire you because you are a woman.
That was the beginning. Since, I have seen a lot of subtle and not so subtle ways in which I have had to work hard in a market place that is almost entirely comprised of men. It has been harder since I had a child. I have known days when I felt like I was living surrounded by Neanderthals, what happened to the so called post-feministic era? And I have often wondered, enviously I might add, about those lucky women who 'opted out' to be moms.

And apparently I am not the only one who wonders.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2007/2/Graff.asp
Do they really opt out? Or are they getting a little help from the system?

Still, if they were pushed out, why would smart, professional women
insist that they chose to stay home? Because that’s the most emotionally healthy
course: wanting what you’ve got. “That’s really one of the agreed-upon
principles of human nature. People want their attitudes and behavior to be in
sync,”

The article has many interesting ideas, like, what propels the moms-go-home campaign ? The usual suspects are lowered opportunity for women who are moms, high barriers to re-entry and a family hostile workplace. But there is another, interesting though very intuitive co-relation-

the all-or-nothing workplace. At every income level, Americans work
longer hours today than fifty years ago. Mandatory overtime for blue- and
pink-collar workers, and eighty-hour expectations for full-time professional
workers, deprive everyone of a reasonable family life.

A recent snarky book about French women I read mentioned the oh – so unbelievable work ethic of the French; with 6 weeks of paid vacation and so forth, but what we often forget is how hard and how much we have to work here in the good ol’ land of opportunity with the most family-hostile public policy in the Western world.
Out of 168 countries surveyed by Jody Heymann, who teaches at both the Harvard School of Public Health and McGill University, the U.S. is one of only five without mandatory paid maternity leave—along with Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.
Good company I would say!
So, while I write my treatise on ‘ Zen and the art of work life balance’ which helps me work without tuning out or burning out, and not being trampled penniless by the charging herds of corporate America, I take hope in knowing I am not alone pondering the way out of this madness.

It must ha' been ...

There is a curious lull in life right now, last couple weeks were crazy and I was sick which made it worse and suddenly when this week dawned, the frenzy went away...
And as I do with most of my un-frenzied moments I pick up a book that I have wanted to read for a long time, but didn't because the time was not right. Last such lull got me thru Swann's Way. This time is it good ol' DHL.
He (or his characters) talk at length about love, most despise it. The book is of a time when the industrial revolution was new, and romanticism had been replaced by world weary cynicism. Idealists and puritans fought over what is the crux of the relationship between man and women was ...
In a conversation one of Clifford's high brow friends exclaims

"I like talking to women, and when I know a woman thru a
conversation the desire vanishes. I cannot have sex with a woman I have a conversation with."

It baffled me as it baffled Connie, she has a very holistic view of love and sex .... a view which drives her to and contradictorily, also away from the gamekeeper. All encompassing view of a person, and of love, someone without boundaries, within and without.

It is idealistic and a little naive, or is it wise? To know that one cannot compartmentalize one's angelic and animalistic urges, and it is possible to love someone with all of you, or maybe until all of you loves someone something, it is not really love?

And what is love anyway? Like Auden says, is it a selfish exposition of the way it makes 'you' feel? is it what you want? is it what you give? is it desire? tenderness? passion? or all of them together? how much of it is you and how much of it is the one you love? or it is the connection between the two people, a connection that transcends explanation, understanding? It is as Joesph Campbell says, a way to experience something greater than you and your loved one, it is knowing that the whole is much much more than sum of parts?

I am not thru yet, thru the book I mean, it evokes in me a faint understanding of what it is like to be in love. Though that love is no more and I see clearly the faults, I know that it was love.

And perhaps for the first time in my life truly understand what they mean when they say 'don't cry because it is over, be glad it happened.'