Books

Red Carpet and making sense of new India

By Brij ⋅ January 25, 2006 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Fiction writers are a different breed. They view world in a different way and lot of their training is precisely in fine tuning their ears and eyes. Which helps in interesting interpretation of the events and stories around us.

That’s why it helps to hunt for new writers and their work if objective is to understand new place or new trends in a familiar place.

That’s what I ended up doing and picked up few titles. Collection of stories title “Red Carpet” by Bangalore based writer Lavanya Sankaran, One night at the call center by Chetan Bhagat, Bougainvilla House by Kavita Swaminathan, Shashi Tharoor’s Riot (though chronologically this is slightly old title) and picked up few non-fictions like FC Kohli’s collection of speeches related to the formation of TCS and Gita Piramal’s business historical - Business Maharajas.

Picking in no particular order I found Lavanya Sankaran’s work very close to what I see in Bangalore. Full of collection of thoughts, pot smoking California-dreaming serial entrepreuners, suicidal spreadsheet guru and lot of life’s tough navigational balances in the modern Bangalore setting. Full of subtle commentary on the new Bangalore, it’s a good work considering this is author’s first full novel.

If I have to pin down one paragraph which clearly puts things in perspective the global nature of the happenings in Bangalore. Then it has to be this one where two tech-entrepreuners Swamy and Murthy found themselves back at home in Banglore while chasing better production efficiencies:

For several years in America, they had controlled their overwhelming homesickness; battening it down, beating it down, tying it into knots and leaving it unexpressed, except occasionally, when eating Indian food, or meeting with fellow Indian expats and talking about Indian politics and movies, or attending a sitar concert, or; best of all, on that rare greedy holiday home. There was simply no other choice but to live and work in America- until, suddenly, it appeared, there was.

About the remaining titles I think they are going to gather dust till I figure out when to read them.