Krazy Kochi

Book Review The End of Innocence By Moni Mohsin Almost immediately you will hurtle into a love story- one that is hectored by adult wisdom and succumbs to the inevitable consequences. This Bildungsroman nostalgically takes a peek into the affluent world of a curious eight- year -old Laila and her best friend Rani, the dreamy granddaughter of a maid. Rani is busy cavorting in her love story that gets briefly elevated to the cinematic kind by nothing else but the vehicle of her imaginati on. A child herself, fifteen- year -old Rani plans her marriage and gets her dowry ready: “six glasses and a jug and four sets of new clothes. Oh, and shoes, golden and shiny, with heels-like brides wear-and maybe even some lipstick.” It is a secret that Laila promises to never reveal to the adult world further cemented by the fact that Laila and Rani are partners of a game called “Terrific Two”. Laila swears to never betray her partner. But in that innocence there lurks the hint of betrayal that is prop...

My Corner: Transports me to wordy realms: Just me, a book and my imagination. Book Review King Of Ayodhya By Ashok K Banker The complicated art of epic telling and retelling makes it an entangled mesh of imaginations. And the protagonists- their foresight has to be accommodated too. The protagonist of the epic, Rama, the future King of Ayodhya, hardly knows whether to smile or sigh as he crosses the living bridge of leviathans into the realm of rakshasa, “ he was resigned to the knowledge that virtually everything they did would be turned into lore and legend, with all the accompanying flights of imagination and exaggeration that poetic licence allowed .” As Rama, traverses the making of his own legend he seems almost amused by what story -tellers would make of his feats as the defender of Dharma. Thousands of years later, Ashok K Banker’s retelling of the epic in the modern idiom only underscores what Rama had already envisaged. Even if you have grown up listening to the Ramayana, e...

Saturday last was a dull and soggy day and Kochi had still to awake from the Onam hangover. A reporter’s mare –dearth of ads and large empty spaces to fill. When someone said there was a Magic Show I volunteered to go- for the reason I would not have twiddle my thumb for the next few hours. The show had me spell bound. The art of illusion illumed that dull and soggy day: the sleight of hand, the ventriloquist’s act and the yarns that embellished the spells captivated me. And even as I was transported to the world of make believe, travelling through the illusionary maze of deception, incredulous at what magician’s can do to one’s mind, an illuminati interrupted the colourful magical forays with an interlude grounded in reality. He introduced the element of skepticism. It was his lesson to us that magic is nothing but an art or entertainment and should not be mistaken for the sacred. He unravelled the mystery of the purportedly arcane relationship between the Gods and Godmen that enables...