What shampoo does she use? | Tangled vs Rapunzel

I was on a plane to Germany when I watched Tangled for the first time. I promptly watched it again on the journey back and then ordered it off the movies on demand last week. Oh and did I mention that I’ve also got hold of the DVD this weekend? Yeah, I’ve watched it every night before going to bed.

If you know me, then you know that’s normal. If you don’t then I promise I’m not normal at all. The story of Rapunzel is just my favourite fairy tale ever. Some people liked Snow White, others like Sleeping Beauty. But how can you not adore the tale of a girl with locks so long she can use it much like a rope and lift people into her tower or in the case of Tangled’s beauty – tie them up and put them through 3^rd degree? You should really read the original story by the Brother’s Grimm. But it’s obviously not what Disney chose to go with for obvious reasons.

For one, Grimm's Rapunzel isn’t originally a princess. Her parents, far cry from royalty, are actually really stupid, greedy people who make a pact with the enchantress, Dame Gothel – their firstborn in exchange for rampion (like seriously?). The prince, replaced by a thief, actually kind of works in our day and age when bad boys gone goo-goo-gaa-gaa are all the rage. And then there’s the premise of the tale which in its original format is quite simple – prince wants to carry Rapunzel off, Rapunzel says okay “bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it...” because she has no other way of getting down otherwise. Our Disney heroine on the other hand, doesn't mind flinging herself out the window if it means a glimpse of the floating lanterns that appear on her birthday every year. The chance arrival of Flynn Ryder gives her that very opportunity. What follows is an adventure with starring a clumsy heroine and a goofy hero who befriend singing thugs, a horse who thinks he’s a dog and a cute little chameleon who may or may not exert mind control on everyone around him.

All in all, it's a whole lot of fun but starkly different from the original save for the characters of Gothel and Rapunzel. It's a good thing I'm not a purist anymore, haven't been since I read the original Little Mermaid story and found out that... well, see for yourself. Anyway, what's your favourite fairy tale?

Nuggets of Genius | The poetry of A K Ramanujan

Come lightly, love, let us wait – to be found, to be

lost

A.K Ramanujan came to me as a gift, literally. His Book of collected poems was the first birthday gift from my boyfriend, along with a book on Thai cooking. I got the hint! I had never read Ramanujan before and all of a sudden it was as if I had found a poetic mentor. He wrote in staccato and yet it was like a melody. Every word alternated between a punch in my face and a balm to sooth my bloody nose. You can tell why I did so terribly at literary criticism at my A Levels. I struggled with Allegory and Alliteration or to tell the Meter from the Cadence. When asked for what the The Flea by John Donne meant to me, I answered: “ Madame, it reminds me of that movie, Demolition man!” Rest assured, I did terribly. You couldn’t ask me to explain e e cummings- I carry you in my heart to save my life, but the following lines:

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

-are to me, like a prayer. The perfect love letter that encompasses everything I want to say. And sometimes I read it because my mind wants to be entertained and poetry is by far the most momentary of all reading pleasures. Which is why I have never understood why so few people partake in it.

A K Ramanuja’s poems can be compared to e e cummings in that they are little nuggets of genius. (Comparative literature PhD's are creating voodoo dolls of me as I write this) Like a box of Nehaus chocolates, tiny and decadent, each bite bursts in your mouth and coats it with concentrated pleasure that stays with you a lot longer than a mediocre bar of milk chocolate. Take for instance this:

The Striders

And search

For certain thin-

Stemmed, bubble-eyed water bugs.

See them perch

On dry capillary legs

Weightless

On the ripple skin

Of a stream.

No, not only prophets

Walk on water. This bug sits

On a landslide of lights

And drowns eye-

Deep

Into its tiny strip

Of sky.

Reading this always makes me smile. I envision a little bug on a lotus leaf looking up at its sky as if from a disney novel. The reference to Christ is something I am yet to decipher. As I mentioned earlier- terrible at literary criticism.

Another from the same collection “The Striders” perfect for reading aloud. It is called Self Portrait.

I resemble everyone

But myself, and sometimes see

in shop-windows,

despite the well-known laws

of optics,

the portrait of a stranger,

date unknown,

often signed in a corner

by my father.

I think it captures so succinctly how we change ourselves to fit the people we meet, not unlike sympathetic hearing. Until we do it so much that we forget what we are really about and have to go back home to where it all started so find the little bits of the original personality.

My cleaning lady often walks in on me sitting on my sofa reading his poetry aloud. She smiles and scowls simultaneously, possibly getting ready to ask for her wages and get the hell away from this mad woman who speaks to herself.

I know very little about the man, apart from the fact he was a native of Mysore and wrote in both English and Kanada. He won the Padma Shri and at the time of his death was the Professor at Linguistics at the University of Chicago. He left behind one hundred and forty eight poems on three computer disks, some of which were published posthumously, along with this book of Collected Poems. He joked that his poems were like his babies, they dirtied themselves and he had to clean them up. He took ten years to complete a collection.

I struggled to choose my favorite for today since there are so many I love. Very little is available online and I have had to type them out and have tried my best to place words correctly. It is a shame that no one has catalogued his entire collection, as it is a fantastic example of contemporary Indian poetry that straddles eastern and westerns views with no apologies. The following site lists about ten, along with his most critically famous-The River, that takes him back to Mysore.

http://allpoetry.com/poems/by/A.K.%20Ramanujan

For now , I leave you with the last two paragraphs of Two Styles of Love

Love is no hurry, love is no burning;

It is no fairytale of bitter and sweet.

Moons may turn at the full; we return without turning.

And no mouth shall have shadow for meat.

No, no love is sudden.

Coupling hands take time to kill the frost.

Even leaping Beast shall wait to be bidden

By Beauty. Come lightly, love, let us wait – to be found, to be

Lost

Sigh…had I paid more attention in literary criticism class, I would have been able to do this exquisite poetry so much more justice.

Buy Collected Poems: A. K. Ramanujan from Flipkart.com

RecommendedReads | Rainy Day Reads

Can you hear that? It's the wind and it's whistling like a banshee on helium. Reshma expects a coconut tree to come through her french windows soon. So we don't suppose there's much for you to do except curl up in your blanket, hot tea close at hand, for some comfort reading. Unless of course, you much prefer the images of Gandhians and hurricanes flashing across your television screen....

AFSHA SELECTS
Calvin and Hobbes It's a Magical World 
"1..2...3... SNOW!" The thing I love about Calvin is that he'd give anything for snow. And most of the time it isn't only because of the possibility of a day off from school. I sort of know how he feels, especially when summer's about to end and I start praying for rain every day. This year, I even offered the rain gods a coconut! And then the rains arrived. This pleased people immensely until they forgot about the sweltering heat and humid sheets. Calvin, on the other hand, is never seen dissing the snow, no matter how cold it gets which is why I've decided that this year, I won't dis the rain no matter how wet it gets. So grab a copy of It's A Magical World and loose yourself in the life and mind of a seemingly cynical little boy on a quest to find joy in everything around him, whether he likes it or not.  

RESHMA SELECTS

PD James : The Lighthouse

She is undoubtedly the reigning queen of British crime fiction and what better way to toast to perfect English weather. A working peer, 85 year old James never betrays her age as her tone and diction seem as contemporary as a thirty year old crime writer. Besides her Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, the stoic poet that makes your heart flutter, has been made for every age. This is the perfect rainy day novel. As the wind howls outside your window, you will be transported to a spooky island off Cornwall in England, where a private estate taken over by a charitable trust is in the throes of, MURDER. A world renowned writer is found hanging from the top most railings of a lighthouse and so begins a convoluted hunt for the killer. As always, James is never predictable or disrespectful of death. The island takes the atmosphere of a snowed in house. As the Inspector and his team are holed up in this little fictional island, painstakingly drawn characters- an editor, a subjugated daughter and other eccentrics , plot around them. You know know you are not about to get off this ride until the last page. For those of you who are P D James devotees, this is the one where the Inspector struggles with love and his philosophies and finds himself lost for answers. For first timers, it is the beginning of your love affair with the queen of british crime. If you have an IPAD or a Kindle, download it now and settle in with a hot cuppa tea. The blistering rain is only getting started.

  

RecommendedReads | Of Google + Machines

Thought I'd start today's RR with a song I quintessentially associate with all the days starting Friday 5pm to noon on Sunday. Don't ask. Just listen. Also, since Florence + The Machine are all set to come out with a new album on November 7 (see video of their first single below) so it's quite timely to be revisiting an old favourite.


Headline: How Google Dominates Us

Publication: The New York Review of Books
Afsha says: Yes, I'm obsessed with the effects of "Google" on the human mind as you might have gathered from the blog's first ever RR two weeks ago. I'm not against change. Nor am I complaining about the Google people who just want to make my life easier. I just don't believe in blindly accepting this change without understanding where the world will stand after it progresses into being a chip in my brain, feeding me information on the go. Hmm... feeling the waves of inspiration that led to my vegan phase...
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Headline: Florence and the Machine – What the Water Gave Me

Publication: Guardian.co.uk
Reshma Says: Warning... This song is moorish! Of all the new music out there, Florence and the Machine are my favorite. She reminds me of Patti Smith and I am sick to death of dance music that is ruling the charts this past year. Lungs, their debut album, reeks of literary references and this single from their sophomore album is no different. What the water gave me, talks about both the eccentric brilliant artist Frieda Khalo as well as the suicidal Virginia Woolf. The Woolf reference is easy to spot - Lay me down/ Let the only sound/Be the overflow/ Pockets full of stones. She walked into the river filling her pocket with large stones that took her to the bottom. A beautiful cinematic moment for Nicole Kidman in the movie, The Hours. Literature has influenced so much popular music. Remember Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush? Florence Welch is Kate Bush re-incarnated I think. Sting loved throwing literary references into his music, he was, after all, an English teacher. My other favorite literature in music moments are all the Tolkien references which can be seen in Led Zeppelin's music -Battle of Evermore and The stairway to heaven. (They say its not there but I can see it, I can! )

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Headline: 10 ways not to be a travel writer
Publication: Lonely Planet
Afsha says: If I had a penny for every time a newbie drooled on about how they aspired to be a travel writer because of such-and-such a lifestyle... Well, you get the drift. Equipped with jealously (can you blame me?) and a a keen awareness of the chances of "living a dream", there's not much I can contribute except cynicism. "Travel writing is not easy to break into..."; "You have to make the initial investments yourself before you're established enough to be sent travelling..."; "Me too. But I've descended from LaLa Land, you see?" Not anymore. Want to write and travel or travel and write? Here are some tips on how you shouldn't be going about with it.
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A Magic Realist | Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Sorry for going MIA last week. I'm grateful to Reshma for holding the fort around here while I was off reading press releases on tiny-ass stools I had to share with three big bums (mine included). But since I'm back to the grind now, I can't put this off any longer lest my blogging buddy devours my liver for dinner tonight. So here goes...

I didn't discover Carlos Ruiz Zafon. He was sort of bestowed upon me one cold snowy Christmas a few years ago. Little did I know, after reading the synopsis of The Shadow of the Wind, that this Spanish Magic Realist in translation would become one of my favourite authors of all time.

Set in Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War, The Shadow of the Wind is a book within the book written by one Julián Carax. The story captivates the imagination of a young man named Daniel Sempere making him want to find more titles by the author. But this quest turns to dust almost instantly when he finds out that all the titles written by Carax were bought and burned by a mysterious man calling himself Lain Coubert, a character in Carax's novel who is the devil. Not one to give up easily, he uses the priviledge of having a lot of spare time and solves the mystery of Carax's missing books, his untimely death and a sinister secret buried deep in the darkest crevices of Barcelona.

The Shadow of the Wind is Zafon's best novel yet. With great story-telling and plot lines that make it impossible to put down, I recall finishing the book and then starting it again almost instantly. A great first sign. But not for long.

The thing is all of Zafon's books follow a similar pattern - the protagonists are young men, neither too rich nor poor, who come across a cloaked stranger giving them the heebie-jeebies. Throw in some strong and appealing female characters and a mystery that keeps you hooked until the end only because no one is willing to tell the whole truth without resorting to lying, and you have a plot that's not predictable, but not entirely original either.

The Angel's Game, a book I swept through shelves to find, disappointed me beyond belief. The Prince of Mist, managed to give me a sleepless night of watching the cupboard, but riddled itself with flaws in the end (in it's defense, it is a "horror young adult" novel). A preview of The Midnight Palace, another young adult novel most recently translated, was delivered to me via a Kindle. The monotony, quite like his previous works, almost killed me.

But Zafon is still my favourite writer. You have to admit - he has style and he has imagination, two very important traits of any good story-teller. What's more is that of all the authors of magic realism, he's the easiest to breeze through.

His prose is lyrical, almost poetic with something fatalistic about it. "He would always remember..." "... the first sparks of an electric storm crackled across the sky like a string of bright lights."

Unlike Gabriel Garcia Marquez, his stories don't ride into numerous decades, introducing a wide variety of characters you have trouble remembering. Unlike Rushdie, he uses shorter sentences. And unlike Murakami, his stories don't sound like adventures on acid. Zafon keeps it simple by limiting the number of primary characters and exploring a form of magic that's as familiar, yet unnerving as a carnival of characters.

He isn't the best in the genre though, considering he's dabbling in a form of story-telling where imagination is the limit. But he's my go-to guy. A sort of comforter I revisit every time I'm ill or sad. His prose makes for good friend to turn to when you want to forget, if only for just a minute.

I lost The Shadow of the Wind (my greatest regret to date). The Angel's Game and The Prince of Mist are up for grabs though, so feel free to get in touch.

RecommendedReads | For slugs and parents alike

"Run, Run, As fast as you can. You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread man."

Good Morning, We hope you had a fantastic weekend! Ours was filled with fashion week and George R R Martin's A Dance with Dragons. Flipkart was nice enough to deliver The Divine Comedy along with Blood, Bones and Butter which will keep me thoroughly entertained that I will find no time to work! Oh well...

Headline: Final Larsson Novel 70% complete
Publication: The Guardian
Reshma says: So most of us have read the Millennium series and the rest of us left it half way as George R R Martin took over. As good as Larsson is, he cannot compete with nerds who have waited five years for Martin's books and have to start reading all four of them again in order to get ready for the fifth. But these books have spawned a great deal of interest in the Nordic detective novel. My first was The Savage Alter by Asa Larrson and then of course the incredible Snowman by Jo Nesbo, every bit as good as the Millennium series. Back to the article in question, diehard fans would be well aware of the controversy surrounding Larrson's estate and consequently this novel. Most posthumously published books are disastrous, Robert Jordan's work being a good example. Until that is published, Larrson lovers can secure sustenance by reading Stieg Larrson, my friend by Kurdo Baksi For all those lovers of Nordic crime we will do a wrap up soon. But until then, tuck into the two above.
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Headline: Smithsonian's 2010 Notable books for children
Publication: Smithsonian Magazine
Reshma says: Ever since a little boy came into my life, I hunt for children's books. I hunt in small book stores when I travel, I hunt in art galleries and I hunt in second hand book shops that pave the roads in cities I travel. They are a thrill to buy. I,more than not, always read them before I give them to the delightful child and marvel at the colour of the illustrations and rhyme of the lyrical poetry. Some of the best feedback came from the Gruffalo series that I wished I had had as a child. My favorites growing up were the Gingerbread Man and Noddy. Strange how I now hate ginger:)
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RecommendedReads | Happy Apostrophe Day!

Photo/moreintelligentlife.com

Well it was yesterday, and so was Navroze! So it was a an exciting day for Parsi's, lovers of salli ghost and apostrophe's alike. We come bearing articles on publishing, an iconic journalist and a cartoon from Oatmeal to celebrate yesterday's key global holiday.

Headline: Come One, Come All
Publication: Open Magazine
Afsha says: I've always wondered how publishers go about selecting what to publish. Over the years I've taken a few hints based on the covers I've seen in the Mumbai local but this article puts a few of my theories to play in addition to lending some factual perspective. It doesn't matter if you're an aspiring author, voracious reader or a highly bored person looking for temporary escape. This essay is an interesting read for everyone.
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Headline: Notes on a Voice - Joan Didion
Publication: The Intelligent Life, The Economist
Reshma says: Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking' was the first non-fiction book I ever read. A memoir, built upon the year after her writer, collaborator and life partner died, did things to my insides. I remember sitting at Flavours, a well known Italian eatery in Delhi, and holding back the tears so as to not draw the undue attention of Arjun Rampal (seriously), who was sitting nonchalantly right in front of me enjoying a solitary Sunday lunch. She is an iconic journalist and this article is a lovely insight into her explosive prose. It talks of a trick that I learnt from her, which is to give some mundane detail right before a gut wrenching moment. Also check out An excerpt from her NY times article, Why I write.
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Headline: International Apostrophe Day
Publication: The Oatmeal
Reshma says: Yesterday was International Apostrophe Day. To celebrate the special occasion, my favorite Oatmeal has gifted us a poster on how to use apostrophe's. While, for some this may come naturally, I am the first to admit to scratching my head sometimes on whether its a pianist's heaven or a pianists' heaven. Oh well! Hope this helps!
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Reviews | Return of the Chick-Lit

Our current obsession with The Piano Teacher and catholic literature might have lead you to believe that we are ponsy stuck up readers who roll our eyes at Meg Cabot and hit our beautiful heads against a brick wall when we hear the word “Shopaholic”. You don’t? We obviously need to work on our cloak of erudition. Who am I trying to kid? When I am not tucking into fantasy or crime, I always turn to that vague genre - Women’s literature or Fiction. It’s a strange one that. It encompasses everything from Jane Smiley to Nora Roberts and this one glove fits all works fine until the glove starts to tear in bitter winter. This umbrella term branches out so many ways and each one has its own place in our reading time. Smiley works for that long weekend in the hills while you listen to Chopin in the background and Nora Roberts works for when you are stuck mid air circling around Mumbai like a vulture and her “Blue Daisy” or “Pink Dahlia” is perfect titbit to scavenge on. As I speak there are readers who are making voodoo dolls of me because I dared to mention Jane Smiley and Nora Roberts in the same breath. Get over it, have you written a book or even 147 of them? I am in fact planning an entire post dedicated to Ms Roberts soon.

But today is not that day. This weekend I decided to read one of those sub-divisions, ‘Chicklit. This poor genre is getting a bad rap these days what with the huge row over the book This is NOT Chick-lit and the consequent response, This is Chick-lit. Then of course came Edward and Bella who pulled the rug from under Chicklit. What is Twilight if not supernatural chicklit? Bella is about the most annoying protagonist in recent history but she is still a confused, clumsy girl who falls in love with a boy, and another boy and (Gasp!), has to choose. CHICKLIT! So this weekend I decided to put away those so called ‘posh’ books and settle down to a little bit of Shiela O’ Flanagan and Lucy Cavendish, both queens of their respective genres. Ms Cavendish is a low profile chicklit author who focuses on ‘yummy mummy’ literature whereas Ms Sheila O Flanagan is a prolific Irish writer with over fifteen books to her name.

Stand By Me - Sheila O' Flanagan

I finished her latest - Stand By Me, in about three hours. For a change the protagonist was neither stunning nor frightfully funny. Dominique is in fact a most lackluster girl living with her fervently catholic parents who are ideally suited to star in a sequel to the Exorcist. She decides to spice up her life by falling in lust with a local ambitious builder and in turn finds herself snagging the glass slipper as she finds herself the belle of the social ball. The cast includes a criminally handsome, self-righteous brother, the prom queen best friend who is using Dominique to fulfill her own ‘Thorn Birds’ agenda and a host of family that are given character traits to help us distinguish between them. This is a typical Irish soap opera where the fall from grace is as predictable as the grand entrance made by infidelity. But what did get my goat was that despite a predictable story line and an annoying cast, I began to root for Dominique. I wanted to her to overcome her obstacles, fight fire with fire and be the Scarlett O Hara that we all want for our protagonists. Was it fantastic fiction? No, but it was an entertaining three hours that you are welcome to borrow.

Verdict: Don't buy and only read in lieu of a Nora Roberts. Feel free to borrow.

A Storm in a Teacup - Lucy Cavendish

Deciding that I wanted some more female angst, I immediately picked up Cavendish's ‘A Storm in a Teacup’ and fell in love with Samantha Smythe and her four children. Samantha is every mother I know who has more than one child- overworked, underappreciated and generally invisible. Buried in poo and dirty laundry, she not only has to find time to deal with a troublesome little boy who has a penchant for wearing little girls clothes but also a teenager trying to find his way through a relationship with a girl who likes too much glue and a husband that seems more interested in muppets than he is making out with the real thing. Predictable again? Maybe the context, but the story in itself is told with such sincerity that you can’t help but join in this madness of Jamie’s antics and his invisible best friend, Sophie. When he says, “Twinkle, twinkle little willy, Baby sparkle is silly. Baby Sparkle is a bum-bum” and takes his shorts off in front of the child psychologist, you can’t help but feel for the mother and giggle away. So to fix this dastardly situation, the entire family, dog included, take a small trip to a seaside village in Devon. Suddenly, Samantha suddenly finds herself embroiled in local politics and spearheading a fund raising campaign to help save an eccentric old lady’s roof while her teenage son starts disappearing into the night to checkout G-strings. The book is Chocó block full of characters including a mysterious old man who is obsessed with moths, but romance is not one of them which consequently allows the book to be about so many other wonderful things that are much less predictable, namely children and old men. Besides any story where a character is called Baby sparkle has to be read. Is this one for the bookshelf, I think yes. Buy and then lend it out to your girlfriends who will then lend it out to someone else who needs an afternoon off and a good laugh.

Verdict : Fun read. Buy it, better yet borrow it from me and lend it to someone else after you finish. It's a treat.

Favorite Chick-lits: The Domestic Godess - Sophie Kinsella, Bridget Jones (But of-course), The Nanny Diaries, Devil wears Prada and the cracker of a novel, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination.

Poem | A Red fairytale

Maybe we tell stories, we hurt our own.

Fabrications of lives yet to be born

Maybe the truth is just too plain to see

So tell me a story, and a story we will be.

So there was this glass palace and there lived so true

A king and a queen, a courtier or two.

They spent their hours playing peaceful croquet

Their nights they spent dancing, romancing till day.

Their kingdom outside the glass palace was dark

while they sipped their wine surrounded by sky tinted glass.

Looking in from the outside all you ever saw

Was a reflection of blue all over palace walls.

Till one day a man he came plodding by

Famished, fatigued, what with the kingdom so

He saw the glass palace, himself in it too

and wondered why,

Then realized it was a reflection he saw.

That all was not as clear as one would have thought

He took a rock and shattered the glass,

Small pieces flew at him

that shattered his dream,

For in there he saw not the greyness outside

Felt not the blistering sun,

but a cool summer breeze.

Is that now what we see happening to us?

One day a man will walk in and shatter our glass

And then he will see that his world is unfair

And want what is his, a bloody rightful share.

He will take up his arms and what will we do

We will act as the victims, our courtiers will too

There will be red running all over the floor

And screams will pierce like arrows through palace doors

And there are those who will start to think

That had we been fair, we would have not reached the brink

That had we been kind we would have not seen red

That had we been wise, would we have been spared?

And from this the passion of justice arises

They orate from their hearts of goodness and change

They reve up the movement, and take hold of the masses

And then build another glass palace all over again.

Reshma Krishnan

RecommendedReads | Homage to the book

Suffice to say my co-blogger and I conveniently slacked off during the long weekend for which we apologise. We're back in full swing now - books, clubs, posts and all - so stay tuned because we've got some exciting stuff coming up this week. Ciao for now.

Headline: Long Live the Book
Publication: Abe Books
Reshma says: Admit it. Every-time somebody says they hate reading books you want to shake them. These days it's often followed by, "I only read Magazines". I know it is wrong to judge. But most of us do and in the least. we feel sorry for them. Sorry that they are missing out on hanging out with a Mumbai dancebar girl or chasing after a golden snitch or even just sitting back and watching a detective catch his hundredth criminal while he puts a glass of cognac to bed. Abe Books has created the most lovely homage to the Book.
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Headline: Overrated
Publication: Slate.com
Afsha says: When I finish a book, I walk over to my bookshelf almost instantly to see what's still on offer. And if you're a hoarder like me, chances are there will be a lot to pick from. "I ought to have read Three Men in a Boat, after all these years..." "Maybe I'll get cracking on Poe short stories that aren't The Tell-Tale Heart..." "Someday, I will read The Iliad... in Greek!" Maybe it's time we stop trying to be seem impressive to our fellow readers and just stick to books, authors and genres we enjoy.

Reshma's two paisa: Found two other people who refused to be bowled over by "Catcher in the Rye". Filled me with glee.
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Poem | The Honeycomb World

Look down; it’s a honeycomb world.

Peel off the earth and there you will see

A layer of hexagons three by three

Squishy yellow cells a thousand feet deep

Glittering like molten gold.

But peer with more minuteness

To where the creatures lie, their teeth snapping at the darkness

Snap, snap, snap,

Beneath that glistening first prize.

Waiting,

In bated breath for you to slip through a fissure

Waiting,

For you to crawl through your dreams and slip into

theirs.

Falling through, no, no, no,

they won’t catch you.

But they will circle

round and round as you hit the ground with a thud, thud, thud

that echoes in the darkness of limitless caverns.

Deep in the corners, that’s where they lurk,

Under boundaries where all worlds collide

With not a bang but a whisper

And one little push is all you need to stray away from the light

Into the honeycomb world.

Where thing’s don’t go bump in the night

No, no, no, they just slither in and out.

Shhh…Listen.

Put your ear to the ground,

and I am sure you will agree.

Can you not hear the buzzing of a little honeybee?

Reshma Krishnan

Inspired by The Killing Kind, a book by John Connolly.

RecommendedReads | Elementary, my dear Watson

Good morning,

Caterpillar's RR for the day includes a continuation of a much discussed topic, the bastardization of English, hope for slow writers like myself and for those who couldn't care less about the future of English or my future as a faster writer, a most exciting read, a Top Ten list of the best crime novels of all time.

As for what we are reading, I am hammering away at the brick that is George R R Martin's Dance with a Dragon and the caterpillar favorite, The Piano Teacher. Afsha is still reeling from the book and cooling down her soul with some of her mother's to die for nimbu panni or/and beer. Enjoy the reads!

P.s : The above quotation is a misquote and was never uttered by Holmes.

Headline: The family tree of a mongrel language
Source: Economist.com
Reshma says: There has been much back and forth on this of late in the Mumbai Boss and WSJ India. So where does the Caterpillar Stand? We are confused just like the rest of you. Should pre-pone be a legitimate word, hell I have used it myself a few times. Isn't language a means of communication? So when I say pre-pone in a gathering in Mumbai, my audience understands it. I could also say 'bring it forward', but isn't the world all about minimalism these days? We do not however condone the small 'i' as a substitute for the pronoun or 'c' for 'see'. That's just laziness. Yes, it's a fine line. I told you we were confused.
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Headline: Slowpoke: How to be a faster writer
Source: Slate
Reshma says: Do you ever wish you purge out a thousand words an hour when you find yourself looking at ten words on your page after a half hour of staring. And inevitably you are left with '...'. The secret is ...wait for it...practice. Ten thousand hours of writing will get you there.
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Headline: Top Ten Crime Books you have to read before you die
Source: Writing.ie
Reshma says: As a self professed expert of the crime novel, I am ashamed to say I have only read a handful in this list. Then again I disagree with it. The list has been handpicked by one of my favorite authors, John Connolly (Author of the Killing Kind and The White Road). It does not have P D James, the greatest of all crime novelists and that is a blasphemous act. I therefore take this list with a pinch of salt. But anything that gives us a reason to buy books is welcome don't you think? I am off to have a few words with Mr Connolly.
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A soul burning read | The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

I will always associate this painting
with the feelings stirred within me
by The Piano Teacher.
Anne Wischin's The Cat Kiss
Adapted from Gustav Klimt's The Kiss

Some literature just isn’t human. It’s depraved, disgusting and leaves you screaming your lungs out until you realise that you're trapped in a nightmare and no one can hear you.

Three pages into The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelink, my co-blogger, Reshma Krishnan claimed to be reaching for an oxygen mask.

Writers and their drama, I thought, glad to have her writing and drama on board. “Let’s read it together,” she exclaimed some time later, prompting me to order the book off Flipkart. As fate would have it, the book arrived less than 24 hours later. A sign. Maybe I'll use my Anne Wischin bookmark from Vienna!

Erika, a 30-something piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory is a prisoner to her loving mother. She is allowed to share her musical genius with the world, but not her life and most definitely not her body. Even Erika doesn’t have access to those parts of herself. Mother guards her jealously from anything that might corrupt her, stopping at nothing – shame, mental torture, emotional blackmail – to keep her daughter pure, “a well-nourished fish in her mother’s amniotic fluid.”

I, of course, thoroughly enjoyed the first 50 pages of the book. Having lived, breathed and devoured a range of Freudian classics, this one seemed like coming home after a long time. But as I approached the end of Part I, I realised that this isn’t the type of book you read alone, just like The Exorcist isn’t the kind of move you watch by yourself.

Some writers burn a part of your soul which heals soon enough, but not without scars. Elfriede Jelinek is totally going to do that to me. If I were smart, I’d keep it beyond reach on the highest shelf of the tallest book case. But I just can’t. I've crossed the threshold with so much difficulty and giving up now, when the plot's about to reach it's peak, would be plain stupidity.

It’s like I’m itching to see how Erika makes a break for it. Will she, like Rapunsel, get rescued by a handsome stranger? Or will poetic injustice lead her to self-destruction like Nina Sayers, from The Black Swan, never knowing anything outside the tower in which her mother stashes her away?

RecommendedReads | An introduction

Welcome back to our lair. We're proud to announce that that from today, The Caterpillar Cafe will be updated on a daily basis. 
Our RecommendedReads section will appear at 10am every morning and will feature our selection of the coolest articles, websites and books we've read in the last 24 hours. We hope you enjoy this section and in turn, contribute with recommendations of your own.

Photo/justfuckinggoogleit.com

Headline: Is Google making us stupid?

Source: TheAtlantic.com

Afsha says: I don't know if you feel it yet, but I do. Google is making me stupid. It's bad enough that I can't do math, let alone get to the bottom of this long article I recommend everyone should read. But I will. Today. I hope. Unless I Instapaper it! Regardless, it is a long, but well researched story. So do have a go and let us know what you think.

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Headline: Jo Bell’s Poetry Workshop

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Reshma says: I look around what I treasure and find a note book that I doubt will survive and a mug with a head of a daschund as its handle. A thousand years from now, someone will look at it and say, "This person loved dogs" and assume that I had one. Goes to show how much we assume in Archaeology.

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Headline: The heady thrill of having nothing to do

Source: WSJ.com

Afsha's says: Can boredom make you more creative? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, concurs with the “experts” proposing this theory, and credits his creativity to the “soul-crushing boredom of (his) childhood”. I loved it. Reading this piece in the Wall Street Journal is definitely going to be one of the high points of your day.

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It’s all in the climax: Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen

 Detective fiction isn’t for everybody… to write that is. Agatha Christie had the ability to make her readers feel trapped, gasping for air while fighting to reason out the identity of the culprit. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, well not so much. But he’s a rare exception where the period between crime committed and crime solved tends to be more exciting than the first and last chapters put together.

Christie and Conan Doyle are my favourite authors from the genre. But having devoured their tales long ago, I haven’t read any good detective fiction in quite some time. I thus decided to give Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen a chance because the synopses were so damn intriguing.

Merete Lynggaard, a charismatic politician is kidnapped and tortured like a prisoner of war in a mysterious room. Her only task: to answer why her perpetrators are doing this to her. Five years later, Carl Mørck, a police detective no one wants to work with, is made head of the “elite” Department Q. With a pile of old, unsolved crimes to work on, Lynggaard’s is the first cold case he picks up. Being the “best detective on the force”, he soon chances upon some blaring inconsistencies left behind by the original detective who worked on the case. Armed with his vast experience on the force, disdain for his fellow human beings and a dubious, but sharp middle-eastern assistant, he must uncover the truth before it’s too late.

The appeal of detective fiction lies in the climax. A spine chilling beginning and a heart racing middle amount to nothing if the end doesn’t leave the little hairs on the back of your neck tingling for days to come. Mercy comes close, more so because we uncover the truth 100 pages before it ends. What’s left is thus a riveting chase to catch the bad guys before they get away with it.

Mystery stories these days need to go beyond detectives with attitudes and sidekicks they love and hate in equal measure. What works for Mercy is that once you step over the threshold it’s impossible to put it down. The plots, sub-plots and the various characters we’re introduced to, not to mention Mørck’s investigative cunning, are completely fascinating.

But at the end of it, Jussi Adler-Olsen is just, erm, all right. This isn’t to criticise the author’s storytelling ability. I just believe that we have actually read and watched that many detective novels and movies.

You might buy this one, having chanced upon it the minute you walk into a store… that is, after all, where all the Bestsellers are handsomely stacked. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t leave you thrilled enough to track the author’s bibliography with as much interest as you might others.

Verdict: Best borrowed

Afsha’s Message: Ping me if you want to borrow my copy. We can talk in more detail then. Cheerio.