Hi there everyone..welcome to my blog. In the maze of people who write about their everyday lives in this world, I don't know how or when I'll stand out...but thats not really the point. The point is to just write out whatever you feel strongly about..or maybe not, as evinced by that awesome blog I saw the other day which proclaimed itslef as " The most boring in the world" which consisted entirely of "Took pen out day. Did not write" and the like.
The inaugural post on this blog which will shortly rock the foundations of society as we know it is written on a day when Mumbai, the city I've been calling home for the last two months, is inundated by rains. And when I say inundated, I don't mean some piffling drizzle that I used to consider a downpour when I used to live in Delhi.I mean the sort of rain when you're staying in office till 10.30 pm just because the roads are flooded and the trains are blocked and you can't even swim back home in neck-deep water because you never know when an open manhole cover welcomes you aand thats the last people hear of you until twelve months later when the drains are desilted and they fish out a skeleton, promptly to be filed away in city records as "John Doe #179876" or whatever the Indian equivalent is.
Anyway, after this meandering ( and on reading the first draft, highly morbid) introduction, a short description of what this blog is going to be about. Mostly about music, movies, books and occasionally plays and art. I'm a closet musician ( the kind who would be
really famous if only they'd leave their comfortable jobs and practice-at least that's what I tell myself) and am looking to put together a band here in the next couple of months. But more on that in later blogs ( if people actually start reading this). Today's post is about fantasy writing, a topic I am by no means an expert on. I've skimmed the surface, yes-the usual suspects: Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, the inescapable (at least these days) J. K. Rowling, Jonathan Stroud et al, but never really delved beneath the surface. By an odd coincidence, the last two books I've read have both been fantasy works, namely Jonathan Stroud's
The Amulet of Samarkand and J. K Rowling's
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I won't bore you with another review of the latter; beyond mentioning that it's the most over-written, half-baked, plotless, trying-to-keep-on-tenterhooks-but-failing-to-do-so of the series so far. I never really understood why the series became so popular; perhaps becuase it appealed to parent's desire to make their children read something that approximated the Enid Blyton of their youth and get them away from the
Sweet Valley High and
Goosebumps that they seemed to be reading (those of them that actually read these days, that is). I'm aware of how much that is an oversimplification, but really-haven't you noticed that parents in particular and adults in general seem to be more excited about the book?
I remember an Isaac Asimov story I read back in school called (I think)
Kid's Stuff about a fantasy story writer who gets invaded by an imp. The imp successfully controls him, but fails to control the writer's child who simply doesn't believe that there are imps! I think the premise of that story is undoubtedly ture, fantasy writing is much more an adult pursuit than the preserve of children; at least new fantasy fiction certainly is.
There is so much allegory in fantasy that adults notice and relate to; the new Harry Potter, for instance carries strong overtones of an act of preemption causing the action it was meant to preempt, a close parallel to 9/11 and, even more so, 7/7.
That's all for this blog, I guess..reviews of the new Dream Theater album and the travails of tying to buy a left-handed guitar in this world in the next post.
P.S. Does anyone have tickets to tomorrow's screening of
Filth at Prithvi? I've read the book and would heartily recommend it.It's by Irvine Welsh of
Trainspotting fame.
