Postcards from another world | Hong Kong

Two simmering tureens were placed in front of me- a devil red broth glistening with Sichuan pepper corns ready to numb my tongue and the other, a white chicken stock with vegetables; a veritable yin-yang on a plate. As I slurped, albeit a little warily- I wondered how something that looked so evil could taste so divine?

Hong Kong is one of the most pedestrian friendly cities in the world, as most of what appeals to tourists is squashed into an area less than the size of the suburb of Bandra with the topography of San Francisco- fantastic to work off those holiday calories. Central, SOHO and Lang Kwai Fong (LKF) are a maze of alleyways, each with its own personality.  Food is omniscient, be it bars on Shelly Street, noodle soup on Wellington or a 10,000 square foot food hall in Causeway Bay. Sticky rice and pork wrapped in lotus leaf or tenderloin at Gaddi’s, this city is treasure house of cuisine. With over 10,000 restaurants, it’s like finding a needle in a heap of noodles.” Read more here! Culinary Walking Tour- Hong Kong

Poem | Willow's Plea

Willow’s Plea 

I look at the sky as it sprinkles itself with shiny dust,

and watch lady moon call in her disciples as she pulls in the tide.

Lady moon, hear your disciple, hear my plight.

I see his face as I see so many others,

and look for something I might never find.
I see the emotion; it works its way up through every vein pulsing red

and the words they ache to come out those lips, but no

further than the tip as they get stuck for want of strength.

Moments they last in a distant memory

and I know they will

fade one day as all things do from black to white and black again.

And all the shades of grey in between remind you of the useless things you say

that lack any reverence or weight.

Scares me, the things you say for effect,

he once said to me, when he told me he loved me.

Yet a part of who we are is so much for effect, is that not true?

Then why laugh, when you want to cry?
Why love when you have to lie?

Tired, tired am I of reading minds and between lines,

Oh, lady moon, pull me in, make me whole again,

as now a deep hole exists where he used to be,

Show me mercy as you pull in the tide.

Reshma Krishnan 

An Anniversary and The Caterpillar Club

The Caterpillar Café collaboration between Afsha and Reshma turns 1 on May the 7^th. Yay for us! In the coming year we’re planning on taking it up a notch with more reviews, recommendations, rants, fiction and since you like them so much--poems.

But content isn’t the only thing on our cards. We’re also initiating The Caterpillar Club for book lovers in Mumbai. The club will read a common book, meet one day a month and share their thoughts in detail. It will also be the perfect opportunity to exchange recommendations and meet fellow readers from across the city.

First meeting: Wednesday, May 16

Book we're reading: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins because it's a seriously good read and it's still fresh on everyone's mind since it got made into a movie. Buy The Hunger Games from Flipkart.com for Rs 221

Membership: FREE (until further notice)
Venue: To be decided.

We sincerely hope you will join us becayse we're quite kicked about meeting fellow readers in the city.

Please register your email id in the comments section if you're interested and we'll put you on our mailing list (don't worry, we won't publish them). Similarly, if you have any queries, please type them down in the comments section or alternately, send us an email here.
Hope to see you soon!

Poetry | I am a freakshow

Theo Altenberg, Angst, 1987 - 92

I am a freak show.

I am a liar.

I see the world as a broken

mirror cased in a golden frame.

Drowning hurt in a multitude of

Glory and fame.

So call me a freak show

Call me a liar.

I slay the perfectly mowed lawn

with black coal tar.

Slash through a black tie convention

like a thousand guitars.

Do an arabesque in a black tutu

My toes sink in quicksand.

I work best when am trampled on,

shot at, mauled by military dogs of the thirteenth band

But mostly when they call me a freak show.

When they call me a liar.

I dare you.

Call me a freakshow

Call me a liar. 

Reshma Krishnan

Postcards from another world | Spilling the beans!

So excited because my largest ever piece has been published in the March 2012 of India Today Travel Plus. I do believe that I can now be called a bonafide travel writer. Clap Clap!  It’s all about spilling the beans on your favorite capital cities around the world. Check it out Postcards from another world

Review | Ravanayan

Some of my fondest childhood memories involve my Pati  and her bedtime stories. Each night I would hear about how a child lost his head and was given an elephant head in return or how asuras and devas fought a tug of war on either side of a turtle while a beautiful apsara walked in from the ocean, much like a Bond girl, holding a potful of eternal life. Mythology pervades our everyday Indian life which makes it ironic how little magic there is in our books or movies. I am sure we can debate that for hours.  It's not lack of interest on part of the reading public- The Kingdom of Melua has been a huge success.  Holy Cow is tapping into that same audience with their series of comic books based on the life and journey of the greatest villain in Indian mythology, Ravana. They state in their introduction that : Ravanayan is not the opposite of Ramayana. It is only a different shade.


See the trailer for the series here. The art is very compelling.

And with that they embark on retelling the story of a misunderstood youngster who is caught in a moral abyss right from the very start. We begin with a very hollywood style narrative about men and their need to find out who they are. I can imagine Morgan Freeman or Amitabh Bachchan narrating it. I have to admit it confused me a little. Then comes a flashback which takes us to the beginning. For us comic book lovers, this is the origin issue and Ravana is our super hero. We meet his siblings and witness an event that gives us a peek into the contradictory nature of this twisted mind. I did not know that Ravana was called Dashanan as a child or that he was the son of a sage. Also do not know how many liberties our writer has taken with the storyline. 

It ends abruptly but with you wanting some more. I loved the look of Dashanan, white flowing hair that reminded me of Axl Rose. The art work is of a high quality with nuanced movement and some lovely facial expressions but completely let down by the printing. Much of my first issue was blurred and that is detrimental to a comic. Perhaps the glitch was only in my cop.  I very much hope so. I bought this via Flipkart but the Holy Cow website is offering me subscription to the series for Rs 500 which I will buy right after I finish this review. 

Vijayendra Mohanty and Vivek Goel are the brains behind Holy Cow comic books. The introduction gives us an insight into what inspired the series and almost a justification for why they are dedicating it to such an unlikely hero. As a child I was somewhat fascinated by Ravana and did think he was rather misunderstood as all he did was defend his sister, who I admit was a bit of bunny boiler.

To subscribe to all ten issues in the series visit Holy Cow Entertainment and Vivek Goel will give you the details. It costs  Rs 500 and includes a complimentary copy of a new series.  For just a taster you can buy the first issue from Flipkart like I did. Quite pleased that we have a graphic novel company to call our own now. 

99 Posts In...

We're about to complete two years with this blog in May, though we only partnered up a little less than a year ago. Good thing too because can you imagine how much longer it would have taken a lazy, albeit creative Afsha to touch 100 posts all by herself?

As we enter this week, we're looking forward to Post # 100 which we think you, our readers, will find quite engaging. Won't say no more here. You're just going to have to wait and see. All we can say is make sure you have your iPods handy.

In this, our 99th Post, we'd like to leave with with a little flashback featuring the five most popular posts on The Caterpillar Cafe to date. They have the highest all time hits on our blog. But if you have a personal favourite that isn't featured in this list, do link us to it in the comments section. Do it. Do it!

Anyway, here goes in descending order:

#5: We introduced guest posts last year with this review by Firdaus Variava and we're really proud to announce that it ranked fifth on The Caterpillar Cafe. Thanks for contributing Fido! Our readers love you just as much as we do. Review | The Emperor of all Maladies

#4: This isn't quite related to books or literature per say but our blog does make an exception sometimes to make way for the voices in our heads. At number four we have Afsha Khan's misadventure in Germany with Flight of the SatNav Lady

#3: She surged ahead with shrewd confidence in the cut-throat world of investment banking. But who knew that beneath all those layers of numbers, figures and other stuff these bankers do that us normal folk don't understand, there lay a shy, sensitive poet? The first ever poem published on The Caterpillar Cafe by Reshma Krishnan, who hasn't looked back since, was well received by our readers. A Poem for No one

#2: "This is a honeycomb world. It hides a hollow heart." Need we say more? Author Spotlight | John Connolly

#1: Both Reshma and Afsha attempted this book and couldn't go beyond a certain point because of how disturbing they found the mother-daughter duo in The Piano Teacher. Curse their perfectly sweet, doting mothers, who left them unable to relate to Erika's deep-rooted insecurities, irrational attachments and psychologically manipulative mother! A Soul Burning Read | The Piano Teacher

Finally, before moving forward, we would really like to thank all our readers who have kept us going these past two years with their comments, encouragement and sometimes, by just lurking for a post or two before moving on to other reads. It doesn't hurt to say 'hi' but it's quite all right if you're still too shy. Keep reading.

Postcards from another world | Letter to Em

Dear Em,

My first thought was that I didn’t remember anything. The roads are a haze and my eyes grasp for anything that looks even slightly familiar. Amit refuses to believe I ever went to Oxford. To refresh my memory and show him around, we join a free walking tourwhere the guide was a gangly excitable english lit student, only recently graduated. I suppose we were like that when we left....

To read more please visit Postcards from Another world

Poem | Poets and Rocket Scientists

Poets and Rocket Scientists

They call it the crossing over through the mist

Of a poet like me into a rocket scientist

A philosopher into a lover of detail

Abstract thought into numerical Braille

They tell me that my intuition is not enough

That the sustainability of my 

core-competency is much too rough

That it will not suffice to know how the CAPM goes

You need to derive the risk-premium and what else, who knows?

Why don’t they get it, 

that there is more to Blackscholes than just an equation.

That there is more to a sample than a standard deviation

That numbers can fairly be described in words,

See 33 is still always thirty-third.

Anyway I don’t think there needs to be a war.

Complementary alliances are what are called for

Economies of scope that push

 the imagination to its brink

Imagine the world when a poet and a rocket scientist get together and think.

Reshma Krishnan

Postcards from Another World | A tale of two cities

Just off Xizang road, there is a crisscross of two blocks that will cover your gifting obligations for at least a year. From a stall that boasts teapots from 1940 to a splattering of Cultural Revolution memorabilia that includes the infamous Little Red book- a compilation of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary quotations. The street is also a kaleidoscope of images of every day Shanghainese life away from the glittering towers, visible over the houses in the horizon. You will get a glimpse into the Shikumenhomes- row houses where community of families’ share common living areas. It brings Shanghai’s contradictions into jarring focus.

Even a nosy photographer cannot distract
them from a game of Mahjong

A tale of two cities - Shanghai

For more postcards please visit Postcards from Another World 

For guidebooks on Shanghai check out out post Travel guides in disguise | Red Mandarin Dress by Qiu Xiaolong

Poetry | Chicken Shit Triangles

Love Triangles Gone Bad
-Ben Walker

She watches you from the corner of her

eye as you look at me 
and as I watch this three way

Glance of love and hate.

As we sit at the table,
the electricity is undeniable

And so are the silent accusations of late.

We are playing risk games with the most fragile of all men,

We go round and round this same circle and then we all fall down again.

But never do we learn, I think to my self

As a slow sip of water I go to take.

And as a slow roasted chicken comes from her end to mine

If she had her way that chicken would blind

If I had mine, that chicken would weep

And if you had yours, two chickens you would keep.

To feed your ego the way you want them to

Narcissus you are, as much as I love you.

This whole scene in slow motion would be cruel

To mostly her,
as she doesn’t know the rules

Of the games we now play.

To me it’s sad, pathetic, one might say

To think that you will live your life like this,

Always wanting what you will always miss.

To you its frustration, that you cannot really have

This constant situation, one for your heart

And another for your bed.

To others at this table it’s just a story of thrill

Of three people having dinner,

never having their fill.

To life and big picture, 
it’s just as significant as about the profundity of chicken shit.

- Reshma Krishnan


More Poetry from Caterpillar Cafe'

The Honeycomb World
The Blind Watchmaker
A Poem for No One

Review | A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

What happens when Anne Rice meets Nora Roberts meets Dan Brown. You get a star crossed love story, some neck biting in dusty libraries and a premise that everyone is going to die. I found the book at the Phuket airport and tried to resist the cheesy forbidden love plotline but succumbed to the witches and vampires context. Hey, am a sucker for the supernatural.

Witches have been given a rough time in the supernatural world. They are often portrayed as ugly, warts on face, unfashionable or comedic. Even Harry Potter, a series completely focused on Hocus Pocus, made little of witches preferring to focus on wizardry. So it is indeed refreshing to see a more 'Charmed' less 'Hermione' attitude towards these misunderstood creatures. But lets save a feminist dialogue on Harry Potter for another day and focus on Deborah Harkness's aptly titled book- A Discovery of Witches, not to be confused with the seminal work on the same subject by Matthew Hopkins even though the word play is I am sure completely intentional given Harkness's background.

Deborah wastes no time getting her teeth in as she introduces both the witch- next- door protagonist, her beguiling manuscript and her vampire lover right in chapter one.  Diana Bishop comes from a long line of witches of the Bishop family, the witchy equivalent of belonging to the Vanderbilts. She is in denial of her magical abilities when she comes across a manuscript that will answer that 64 million dollar question, "Why are we here?". The problem is everyone else wants to know this answer as well and more over they believe that this confused adrenalin junkie is the key to unlocking the secrets  of the manuscript. After that we get into familiar Twilight territory that involves falling in love with a cold hearted beast, meeting his family and professing love for an eternity while being kidnapped by naughty people, and finally discovering some chutzpha. Sound familiar? At one point Deborah veers so close to plotline imitation that I wonder if Ms Myer is out there somewhere sharpening her lawyers. But soon differences emerge primarily because of the literary bend to this novel as well as a tough as nails protagonist. No clumsy Bella here thank the Lord.

Harkness clearly knows her subject of alchemy and history and weaves some beautiful mythology and poetry that would bore teenagers but is music to adults.  This lovely literary banter would have been perfect if not steeped in Nora Roberts predictable cheesiness. At the crux of it Ms Harkness is a history professor but not a writer of fiction. She has a commendable grasp on her subject but not on pacing. I had to often skip pages to get to the point. And yes, there is a reference to the Templars. Gasp!

The scariest witch I knew growing up.
Snow White's Step Mom

As all supernatural books, this is a three part series and the next one is due in 2012. I am curious as the plotline has indeed taken an interesting jump (pun intended) and the next book should be a fascinating history lesson on the 15th century. At the moment though I find myself reaching for Harry Potter' The Sorcerers stone, as I am yet to find someone who makes magic as fun as JK Rowling. So verdict? A must read if you are a history fan and especially one that loves the moody supernatural feel of Oxford. There is some serious mythology and poetry here to sink your teeth into and its much easier to read than Anne Rice.

Caveat : It's hard to beat Anne Rice when it comes to Vampires.

Buy A Discovery Of Witches from Flipkart.com

Buy Interview With The Vampire from Flipkart.com

Review | The Japanese Lover by Rani Manicka

I love sagas. There is nothing better than watching a young pretty girl blossom into an obnoxious teenager, mature into a confused single twenty-year-old and age gracefully into a corporate tycoon all in the space of a weekend. You guessed it - every Daniel Steele heroine ever written. This particular tale starts off in a promising albeit strange manner. We meet an old woman living in the storeroom of her daughters house in Kuala Lumpur when someone asks her to record her life story and so Parvati is born into a poor Sri Lankan family. On eve of her birth a grim prophesy is told of a doomed marriage to an extremely wealthy man. To avert this fate she bathes a golden serpent in milk every day and is locked in the shed behind her house by her father until the wealthy man from the country of Malaya comes knocking at her door.

Here the story takes a more predictable turn as she travels to the distant land and embarks on a difficult journey to fit into Kasu Marimuthu's life, my favorite character in the novel, and play with the strange cards she has been dealt. Namely a witch doctor cook and an altogether depressing disposition. You have to give it to Rani Manicka in that it takes guts to create a character this lacking in well, character. There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about her. She is tone deaf, has no interest in art and comes across as any ordinary village girl should. The essence of the story from then on out is her entry into Malaya social scene- a Princess Diaries meets My Fair lady meets Beauty and the Beast that is really quite enjoyable until you find the story lacking any direction after the predictable transformation takes place. You can sense the author's conundrum as she  as she begins to throw in a possible love affair, mysticism and family drama into the mix unable to fuse each story thread together in a believable manner. At one end she is cursed with a utterly terrible children and on the other has to deal with a  constant undercurrent of superstition that somehow never comes together. Once the Japanese general enters, he brings with him a much needed outlet for releasing tension that Manicka builds up quite nicely but is unable to execute. While Parvati's sudden sexual awakening could have been more fully explored, I do love Manicka's lovely way with erotica. A particular scene with Parvati in the ocean was almost orgasmic as are her surreal moments as a Geisha. The book flap talks about a how Parvati had to choose the man who was her sworn enemy as her lover, something I thought should have taken more than the one paragraph that it happened in. The mysticism and supernatural elements continue to linger until it culminates in some sort of serpent frenzy that completely goes over my head and over Parvati's as well.

This could have been an amazing book if Manicka had made it longer and given it that space to develop as it deserved. I would have loved to know more about the history of the time and the broader Malay landscape. I really did want to like Parvati but felt like I was never given the chance between the magic realism and Japanese invasion. The writing is always fluid and you get a lovely sense of this beautiful house by the beach and the jungles near by. The humour of the mami's afforded me the occasional laugh and her matter of fact third person view point keeps us involved even us story threads confuse us. Perhaps the most interesting parts were the authors take on India and Indians. Manicka when asked about this said; "For me, this is a message to Indians in this country because they really do have a self-esteem problems and they deny it whenever I speak about it. It is so ingrained in them. With this book, I am saying it is okay if you are dark skinned."

I am never a fan of novels that are overtly preachy but part of me does like the fact that a main theme of this book is that dramatic lives can happen to even the most ordinary people.

Verdict: Worth a read on a rainy afternoon. Pass it around your girlfriends, especially the ones that live with mami's.
Buy The Japanese Lover from Flipkart.com

Serendipitous Finds | Sita's Ramayana

"Rama and Lakshmana were restless. They were born to a life of action. A life of palaces and wars, chariots and weapons.
The peace of the forest was not for them.
And one day, danger came in the form of Surpanaka, Princess of Lanka..."


And so begins the tale that put me to sleep on countless nights as a child - Valmiki's Ramayana. My paati would tap me gently on my head while reciting the story in an almost song like fashion. A humming fan for accompaniment, the journey of two brothers and a lady deep into a forest filled with the most exotic creatures, was the highlight of my hot summer day. Valin, Kumbakaran, Hanuman and sage after sage would teach me about right and wrong as well as honour. 


Written by Samhita Arni and beautifully illustrated by Moyna Chitrakar, this latest rendition from Tara Books will bring much joy to the grandmothers of today. Told from the perspective of Sita, it caters to the young ones but often winks at us from beneath the myth to expose how women were perceived at the time. My grandmother never lingered on Ram's killing of Vali or on Hanuman's clever acquisition of the arrow that killed the invincible Ravana. While she narrated the rejection of Sita, it never occurred to me at the time that the consequences of honor and duty are often cruel, and how so much of the way women are treated in sections of society today can be traced back to how even the best of men acted in similar situations. 


Arni's narration, while grammatically incorrect at times, is short, sweet and bursting with childish enthusiasm. The book is the first graphic novel to use Patua art and the muted colours seem perfect to recite a story where nature plays such a critical role. The Patuas of Bengal come from a long line of painter-singers who illustrate a story frame by frame to form a scroll which is then displayed when they perform a narrative. I think this is perfect starter Ramayana for children and even teenagers. 

I read the book out loud to my sister-in-law to kill time on the way back from South Bombay to Juhu and the journey went by in a flash. We laughed as familiar names brought back childhood memories and her eyes widened in indignation as Rama rejected Sita for the second time. I still had some of the book left and I read aloud even as we entered the house as the story just had to be concluded. 


Only yesterday the book sparked arguments in my religious Brahmin household where Rama is revered and his final action is considered righteous. Only as you read the Ramayana do you realize how many of its separate elements are so embedded in our psyche. 


The Mahabharata might be the more literary of the two, but I do think for children this remains the perfect bed time story.

Buy Sita's Ramayana from Flipkart.com

Poem | Bollywood lust

Mid summer,

the heat rises off dust as rain falls.

It rises off his eyes as they tangle

and strangle  words,

that conjure images in the mind

unspeakable.

Tut tut tut

your mother warned you.

Lest for a moments heat,

you find your future set in cold stone

that lie beneath waters that run over

never to find a level of their own.

A tragedy insurmountable

as conflict rises

to meet the moon a size of a pea

and a heart a size of 

a mountain that aches to move

but burdened with weight.

A compass that never strays,

to a leaf not knowing
which way the wind would next blow.

Always the options,

always the road

As open as it is, gets narrower

with distant horizons and

and suddenly there is only one way:

Succumb to the heat.

Reshma Krishnan 

Travel guides in disguise | Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence

This is a continuation of our series Travel guides in disguise - alternative guides for those who want a bit more than that very effective yawn - The Lonely Planet. Something that doubles up as airport reading as well as a guide. 

You'd never believe this but I struggled to find a novel based in Florence. Before you stamp your feet, I did check out E M Forster's  A Room with a View and the many Micheal Didbin mysteries, all of which give me a "Oh, how lovely!" perspective. There are hoards of books involving serial killers and temperamental detectives but I wanted something that would give me an insight into the Medicis and renaissance Florence much like The Agony and The Ecstasy- see below. 

I finally settled on Sarah Dunant's The Birth of Venus, a renaissance coming of age novel of a young girl far too emaciated and gifted for her time. 

In a sense it is a very Italian novel; full of the drama of the time and her own fertile mind. The prologue is like the opening shot of a movie and sweeps you off your feet as a nun is found having lied about her illness and bearing a snake tatoo that winds over her body and ends in places no nun should ever peek. A new morning wakes and you see young Alessandra Checci as the precocious daughter of a wily trader who is swiftly moving up the ranks of Florentine society. Dressing Florence's elite has it's upside and part of it transfers onto the daughters, whose value in the marriage market place has considerably increased. That renaissance Florence's attitudes to marriage would strike a cord in most Indian cities today is a distressing fact that we can ignore for another day. In accordance with his rising stature the trader decides to bring in a bewildered painter to glorify their family chapel. And so Dunant paints the perfect landscape for a meeting of star crossed lovers. But before you write this plot out as a predictable love story, wait, because this is not all about them but about a young girl's choices during a time of one Florence's greatest tests. 

On one hand there is Girolamo Savonarola, the prior who brought Florence to its knees and waged war on its beauty and on the other hand there is Charles VIII who is marching through Tuscany and battling not just fiery Sienese but also a rumor of having six toes. Caught between the two, Alessandra- a budding artist in her own right, is forced to follow the path of least resistance which turns out to me something else quite entirely. Through her we see the futility of being a gifted woman in an age where the female sex is seen through the eyes of Eve, that witch who got Adam kicked out of Eden. In lieu of preparing for the next party,  she would lick at the wind for one whisper of the work of Botticelli or one glimpse of the workshops of Ghirlandaio all a stones-throw from her house yet locked to her. What I liked about the novel was the humor and the depth of the relationships that the girl has with her slave as well as her handsome brother. 

Dunant is definitely a master of her matter as she deftly invokes the period to life with an artists palette. Paintings come alive as she discusses drapery techniques and lights in flowing material.  It is her story not theirs and in that sense it is a true woman's novel. But  how does serve as a guide to Florence? While it is not The Agony and the Ecstasy, it is still  a good supplement and chronicles a key moment in the city's antiquity and an insight into the man that almost destroyed Florence and everything it represents today. 

Mandatory reading for a trip to Florence

The Agony & the Ecstasy by Irving Stone is more than just a biography of Michelangelo. It is a journey into the heart of Italian art and a glimpse into the history of Pope's egos. Perfect to start reading on the plane ride there and plan to finish it within the first couple of days of your stay. By then you have enough time to have the story coursing through your veins and feel completely overwhelmed as you stand in front of The Deposition (The Florence Pieta), knowing everything he went through to create it. And if you are like me, you will run to Rome and visit the Sistine chapel and his Pieta at St Peter's Basilica and reach for a large handkerchief. Yes, am a sop but I cry in style! 

Buy Birth Of Venus from Flipkart.com
Buy The Agony And The Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel Of Michelangelo from Flipkart.com

Friday Book Quiz | Results

The gate at The Perch where Lewis Carrol
gave the first reading of Through the Looking Glass

The Eagle & Child at St. Giles-
famous Tolkien watering hole

Some of my most memorable moments from my university days, apart from the binge drinking foam parties at Park End (the shadiest club in Oxford), was when I found out the both C S Lewis and J R Tolkien had not only written their books at Oxford and were close friends during that time but that I could actually sit where they got piss drunk and had metaphysical conversations so many years ago while I did the same thing.  Perhaps not the most erudite reaction but hey I was 18!

The first thing I did when I went back recently was to retrace my steps. Oxford is cupboard filled with literary curiosities that would make any caterpillar rock but the most fun ones certainly belong to the hoards of  pubs that claim to be the watering hole of Tolkien and Lewis. If true, then Tolkien and Lewis really did knock back a few during their years there. Tolkien was at Exeter College, Oxford and Lewis was at University College and both came back to teach at Merton and Magdalen respectively.Lewis Carrol went to Christ Church and Aldous Huxley went to Balliol and there you have it.

Congrats to Firdaus Variava for getting it right. In the event you are in Oxford and you happen to be a fan, go to the Eagle and Child, sit in that corner and sip away. If you are a nerd like me, then I promise a small chill up your spine.

Author Spotlight | John Connolly

“This is a honeycomb world. It hides a hollow heart.
The truth of nature, wrote the philosopher Democritus, lies in deep mines and caves. The stability of what is seen and felt beneath our feet is an illusion, for this life is not as it seems. Below the surface, there are cracks and fissures and pockets of stale, trapped air; stalagmites and helactites and unmapped dark rivers that flow ever downward. It is a place of caverns and stone waterfalls, a labyrinth of crystal tumors and frozen columns where history becomes future, then becomes now.
For in total blackness, time has no meaning.” - John Connolly, The Killing Kind

One read of this opening paragraph in The Killing Kind and I fell in love. This Irish crime author was a serendipitous find at my favorite bookshop, the little one at Coimbatore airport. Every line read like something from an Edgar Allen Poe poem and I realized I had finally found an writer who refused to treat me like an idiot just because I enjoyed stories from another realm.

Connolly’s hero and my favorite fictitious crush, Charlie Parker, straddles the delicate boundary between the real world and a darker one Connolly refers to as the Honeycomb world; a place where things go bump in the night. His plotting is like a Micheal Nyman composition, it takes a while to build up, but when it does you can't gulp it down fast enough. I found myself devouring his long richly drawn character sketches that did not interfere with the most tightly woven plot I had read in a long time. I also hadn't met a sexier detective, Agent Pendergast is too strange to count.

I spent a good part of the next three weeks catching up on every Charlie Parker book he had ever written. When we meet Charlie in The Killing Kind, he has gone through the worst possible thing any man can endure which has left him with wounds raw, gaping and easy to pick at by those creatures that lurk in the Honeycomb world, who are drawn to him like moth to a fire. We also meet his two close friends Louis and Angel, who aid and abet him in a cowboy pursuit of his nemesis. To read a Charlie Parker novel is to descend into the depths of human depravity so much so that you start to suffocate until he brings you up for a little air, nicely provided by Charlie Parker’s dry wit and the ongoing banter between Louis and Angel.

Over the next few installments, Charlie is pulled deeper into this labyrinth as he solves one crime after another and the ensuing web that Connolly weaves suggests that our hero is something of a deliverer of justice for all those in purgatory, no surprises there. Many parts of the concept remind me of Constantine, that most favorite comic character of mine.

Charlie does find happiness albeit momentarily only to lose it again. The supernatural element, ever present, seemed to only linger in the background until the The Black Angel, my favorite, where the Honeycomb world blasts into your reality and you know that Connolly has decided not to hold back anymore.

The Burning Soul, released on 6th September 2011, begins with an abduction of a child in a small town called Pastors Bay in Maine. All the novels are based in the state of Maine, a character in itself as it provides much of the evocative atmosphere. There are the odd trips to New York, but Charlie is a countryman at heart. He is pulled in not to find the missing girl, but to save the face of one who could be potentially framed for it; a man with a secret so close to Charlie’s haunted past that it seems darkly ironic that he chooses to even help him. Redemption: As always the book deals with it, others and his own, against the backdrop of this small town being picked apart by a vicious Italian gang war. Any more and I will spoil it for you but the usual characters Louis, Angel and the hilarious Fulcis make an appearance. The otherworldliness is kept at the fringes like a watchful cat, waiting to pounce and it does for one small scary moment involving Parker and a television. This subtle use of the supernatural is what makes it so potent and almost believable.

This book is less violent and more deductive in its plot line than its predecessors. The author admits that having children has made it harder for him to delve into the darkness anymore. One review went as far to say Connolly is steering Parker towards the mainstream detective reading public who read Lee Child and Eric Larsson. I was happy to find that to be untrue as the macabre still hovers in the air:


“But the ravens had come to it, for the ravens liked dying things.”

The Burning Soul also humbles our usually razor sharp detective, making us wonder what more Connolly can throw at him before he breaks altogether. I just wish him some luck, love and hope that the author cuts him some slack soon.

The Killing Kind and its sequel, The White Road, are not for the faint hearted. My mother winced as she read and kept the light on as she went to sleep. His darkness is disturbing but there is always light in the horizon and we are more grateful for it once we immerse ourselves in his luscious writing.

The Burning Soul works as a stand alone novel but if you want to really get into the thick of things start at the beginning with Every Dead Thing or The Killing Kind and work your way up. You lucky lucky thing.

Read this if you love: Stephen King, Peter Straub, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe, John Donne poetry and P D James.

Avoid: If you are squeamish and don't enjoy the macabre. Even then try it if you like beautiful writing.

For more John Connolly check out The Caterpillar Cafe's poem inspired by the author's honeycomb world.

Buy The Burning Soul; Buy The Killing Kind; Buy Every Dead Thing

Travel guides in disguise | Red Mandarin Dress by Qiu Xiaolong

Photo/The Hobbit

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

-Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring

When I started traveling I used to pick up the appropriate Lonely Planet a day before my journey, quickly surf the Condenast website and I was on my way. I still use the Condenast Traveller to guide me on hotels but other guidebooks have fallen off the wayside as I started to focus on memoirs and novels. For instance in Venice,  I walked the steps of Commissario (Detective) Guido Brunetti as he chased murderers down the Rialto in Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon and was privy to the most lyrical prose as I used Valeri’s A Sentimental Guide to Venice, even more special since I managed to find an 1955 edition printed in Italy in a small bookshop that set me back a thumping 25 Euros. No surprise then that I keep this one close to my heart and NEVER lend it. In this series I will talk about some of the books that have been invaluable guides to me as I navigate foreign roads that go ever on and on…

My guide to Shanghai

Red Mandarin Dress by Qiu Xiaolong

I picked this book up at the Shanghai Museum in People’s square when I felt that the my Lonely Planet was falling short in introducing me to the magnificent city. Inspector Chen is Inspector Dalgliesh’s (see The Lighthouse) brother from another mother in that he is an erudite workaholic who spews poetry at the drop of a magnifying glass and draws no line between his personal and professional life. No surprises there. When he finally decides to take a sabbatical to write a dissertation on a strange concept called Thirsty Illness (because that's how these detectives relax), he is cajoled by the powers-that-be to drop everything and chase down a perplexing murder that is ruffling many a communist feather. The book is part of an acclaimed series featuring the insightful inspector and his sincere sidekick as they try deal with a society struggling to reconcile its newfound power with its old turbulent past. He often refers to his plight as, "One country, two systems.” Here you will get a primer on the Cultural Revolution that is everywhere and yet hidden behind crimson curtains, a glimpse into the eccentric food habits of eating twitching shrimp dipped in broth, a fantastic walking tour through the old city and the bund and the introduction to the man commonly known as ‘Mr Big Bucks’; All while you chase down the killer of a beautiful woman who wore a red mandarin dress. Mystifying sexual innuendos aside, it is a deftly woven novel that uses all the elements of criminal profiling that delves deep into the psychoses of this country's enigmatic social structure. Despite being driven to buy myself a cheongsam, I doubt I will ever be able to look at one or a monkey in the same way again.

Please write to us in the comments box below and tell us about your favorite travel reads. 


Buy Red Mandarin Dress 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.