book review – prisoner of birth

there are very writers who can bring together mystery, suspense and a bit of dry humour and craft it all together into a novel. jeffrey archer, as the world has already long known, is one of them.

although i have heard a great deal about archer, and have read some of his books including a collection of short stories. the distinguishing features of his work are: 1. the careful observation of human behaviour and dialect; 2. the ability to blend together description, dialogue and narrative into a coherent and fluid flow of words; 3. the ability to spring surprises on the reader at the tail end of the chapter/story – using a peg planted previously in a manner that subtly jogs the reader’s memory but does not require the person to flip back several pages to find out what exactly the hint was.

and the one feature i admire most about archer is his ability to phrase it in language that is at once engaging and understandable. legal jargon is broken down to a level that can be absorbed, all the while keeping the finger on pulse of the plot.

prisoner of birth meets all of the above criterion. it follows the basic plot of the count of monte cristo, with an innocent man being framed and the process of his getting revenge on those who had wronged him. and just in case you couldnt put your finger on it, the main character even makes a direct reference to the parallels between both stories. to outline the story or the plot is not my prerogative, and i would recommend that anyone who likes a good page-turner should pick this up, and start reading it when they are sure the next couple of evenings are free. the first part of the book tends to move along a bit too fast, leaving the reader with proabably few doubts as to what the next event might be. the twists start appearing after about one-third to a half of the the book. and from then on, it is a guessing game as to just how all the events will come together. if any one segment of the book be named as my favourite, it would have to be the second round of trials towards the end of the book.

however, once the story is read through and the cover closed, certain small gaps seem to come to fore. for one, the part about the central character’s time in prison and his escape seem to conclude a tad easily. the final few pages of the book, which wrap up the story seem to have a cookie-cutter style of romantic-ending to them. and finally, there are some parts where a character hitherto portrayed as a professional thug seems to slip up a bit too much. but these are just the minor rebuttals the cynical side of me has to come up with against my former paragraphs.

this book is a must-read. and yes, archer does remain on my list of (select) favourite writers.

living out of boxes

just about a month back, i moved between appartments. and since then, i have been living for the large part out of boxes. first it was the movers’ boxes that i packed most of my things into – now it is my own plastic bins that i keep for storage, with a large part of the things spilling over. it is messy, inconvenient and unsightly – but its taking me ages to get it all in order. hey, i am a single person here handling an entire house.

moving is an experience – one i would rather not have to go through. and given that i have been through it over and over again, i am more than happy to settle in one city, in one house for the rest of my life. which, at the moment, is hard cos i dont have enough to pay for an appartment.

but every experience holds a lesson within, doesnt it? if i have learned anything, it is this – being organised has its benefits. but really, it doesnt work any magic for me. i begin with a marker, notebook and pen in hand, ready to number my boxes and list out all the items that go into each box. that way, i can find out exactly which is where in an instant. except that it doesnt work that way. for example, once i pack my shoes and bags into one box and seal it, i suddenly come across more of them hidden away in some corner of my closet or room. i resist the urge to rip open the box and instead search for another box to put them into. the same process repeats itself for different things – books, cds, clothes, kitchen stuff, etc. after a while, my patience wears thin and i start dumping whatever is in hand into the nearest box, scribble a number and shove it aside. the initial desire to keep an organised sense of what’s going on is replaced by frustration at the number of things i seem to have accumulated. (*it was not helped very much when one of the movers pointedly said that he had never seen a single person own so many things.)

which always brings me to the harrowing decision of what-to-keep/what-to-throw – it is the worst decision i have ever had to deal with. and it usually presents itself in three different ways:

1.  there are things i really really like but rarely use. i should ideally toss them out without a care, but i also know that i will be looking for that one skirt /shoe/bag i havent used in 3 years just one day after i move – and i will curse myself for throwing it away. case in point: i threw away a pair of silver heels that i quite liked but rarely used. just about a week or so after i moved, i had to attend a wedding. and when i did decide on the outfit for the wedding, i realised it needed silver-coloured heels to gow with it. yep, that feeling again. an even worse case in point was that of large numbers of clothes in decent condition which no longer fit me – i discarded a fair number of them. just a couple of weeks later, a storm hit the philippines. a call for donations of clothes went around, and while the others rummaged their closets, i was left wishing i had kept those bags rather than just leaving them outside my appartment.

2. there are gifts that don’t quite suit my tastes/lifestyle/uses – but i am often racked by fear that the person who gave it to me might ask me one day where the gift is. what would i do then? i havent been able to answer this question yet.

3. and of course, there are those little things i picked up in sales that are cute. maybe not very useful, but cute.  and its a wrench parting with them. of course the risk of wanting it just after throwing it also lurks with any decision. maybe its a girl thing, but i do find it hard to toss out things that are pretty – suddenly a zillion uses pop up in my head and i wonder why i kept that specific ‘thing’ in my closet for so long. the uncut fabric could become a cushion cover i could embellish and gift to someone; i could actually give someone a gift in that gift box; that pretty notebook could become scrapbook or address book (i really have been wanting a physical address book for a while now. really); and that small mirror could come in handy in a little nook in my toilet! 

seized with new zeal, i sift through and mentally mark out which things have the most potential and set them aside – with a stern note to self about having to ‘use’ them once i get to my new place.

but when the whole regime of unpacking begins, i realise that i am putting those things not required for daily life into a box and relegating it to a corner. days go by, and as work and life take over, the box gets hidden under other things, with my plans for all things within buried under the avalance of daily activities.

there they will lie, until the next time i move.

going down the oldie-goldie road

like many others who were born in india, or to indian parents who grew up in india in the 1960s++,  i have had to listen to nostalgic recollections on almost every subject. mum and dad, uncles and aunts – they all like to comment on new-fangled trends in fashion, new courses in education, the friends we make and company we keep, and so on.

but one that sticks out in my memory is their recollections of the movies from the olden days – the older family members like to compare the ‘new’, upcoming movies to the ones they remember fondly – from the black-and-white wonders to the socially provocative creations of k. balachander. when i was a teen, i had seen very very few of those movies and often wondered as to how they could hold a candle to the latest movies that were coming out in the present. older movies back then represented less-than-stellar sets and effects, not-so-great makeup and uninteresting costumes. and did i mention the lack of good looking men on screen?

how wrong i was.

recently, vasantham central – the offical indian channel in the local singapore tv network (no people, i dont have cable. i know im missing out, but well, life is such!) – has started to play black-and-white tamil movies on friday nights and movies from the 1980s on sunday nights. i watched one of the black-and-white ones for sheer lack of other interesting activity one night – and i was hooked!

and i have tried to watch them as regularly as i can since then. and one of those nights, as i sat with popcorn and a drink – waiting for the ad break to get past – it hit me that the movie industry seemed to have regressed over the decades. lack of technological advances back then probably meant longer takes, which in turn necessitated the need for men and women who could render dialogues convincingly, dance gracefully and display emotions needed for the part – without subsitutes or clever camera tricks to make up for it. in the much older movies (im not sure of which decade it was made), the stories are usually set in some kingdom with the story revolving around kings and queens, but the plot is varied and events are tied together neatly without a hitch. despite the lack of colour, the elaborate efforts taken to construct the sets and the detailed costuming leave little room for dissatisfaction. the dances are beautifully choreographed and worth watching (not some vague chases down switzerland). but  if i were to single out one thing that impressed me the most, it was the acting and dialogue delivery – not just of the lead actor/actress, but of the supporting cast as well. the acting is natural, with no exaggeration, and convincing beyond doubt. 

the magic of these movies lay in the fact that they took the story-telling part very seriously. songs and dances were integrated into the scenes in a way that was natural and complementary. special effects were used in the right doses to create impact and lend weight to the story, scenes flowed in  a beautiful rythm, and the editing brilliantly captured the story segments into a complete whole. i can only imagine how charmed the audiences of yore must have been.

now i am not saying that only the old movies were good (there are some boring ones as well), and the stuff coming out today is all bad (i personally love mani rathnam movies). what i do feel is that the talent and passion evidently present in those productions seems to have declined over the years. 

i wonder why.

dodging murphy’s ghost

when i first heard about murphy’s law, i was a bit surprised. i wondered, very briefly, if the man had indeed suffered that much in life as to make a generalised statement about how the cosmos would get in the way of the tiniest of things just to annoy us. and well, my thoughts might have been heard by dear old murphy, and he decided the experience was the best proof of theory. i felt it at work one night in the last week.

the reason i talk about the ghost of murphy, rather than his famous law, is because singapore is currently in the throes of observing the “7th month”. it is a tradition observed by the Chinese, but everyone shares the belief that during this month, ghosts come out from the other regions to our own. elaborate altars are built at food courts, large amounts of food and other offerings are made to appease the appetite of these ghosts, and loads of wordly goods (money, cars, houses, clothes, etc) made of paper are burnt every day. the belief is that these paper products will be carried through as smoke, and then rematerialise as the real thing in heaven.

while all the aunties and uncles were busy burning away piles of paper money, murphy must have felt particularly left out. and looking around for some distraction, he descended on my case.

those who work with words will know how important the lack of mistakes on a printed text is. and on the D-day, when even one mistake meant a severe loss of time and effort, a few thousand emerged. my colleagues and i were frantically tried to finish all we could, but mistakes just kept surfacing. and at a time when i desperately wanted to multi-task, my computer became exceedingly slow, coming to a complete halt at every other instance. i was left fuming. as the night progressed, anger was replaced with tiredness and sheer frustration. we kept our fingers crossed, prayed and called out loud to the Lord above, but to little avail. i hopped between three different terminals trying to work faster, but of little use. oh, and did i mention that files fell down and scattered papers all over, files were misplaced, and servers between offices stalled.  

let’s just say it was one harrowing night. when i declared that the “ghost of murphy was on us” everyone seemed to silently concur.

the clock ticked away, and finally, at 6.10 am, we decided to to go home. i was ready to drop dead, and looked out with bleary eyes at people heading out to work. as i sank into bed, i apologised to murphy for doubting his pronouncement on the way the universe works at time, i said i was sorry he had to go through whatever he did that made him come up with the law, and asked him to please spare me the company next time round.