Chak de, India!

I have to record this before the excitement wears off. I just watched the match, the finals between India and Pakistan in the Twenty20 World Championship Tournament. Boy, What a match!

 

I have not been actively following Cricket for quite some time. I watched only a couple of matches of this twenty20, The Indo-Aus Semifinals and Indo-Pak finals. Awesome matches, in terms of thrill, energy and suspense. The best part is that I watched the finals match at office on big screen and with some 200 colleagues. So much fun, it was. I always thought watching cricket matches with my mom was the best fun, for all the extemporaneous comments my mom make. This was no less. Too much verve and witty comments, most of my friends got nostalgic about their college hostel days. Apparently the scene resembled that. But I have never been in hostel before, during my studies. So it was new to me.

 

The fun we had was topped by India's spectacular victory. Even if India had lost, it would still have been a memorable match.

God of Small Things

The next book I read was 'God of Small Things' by Arundhathi Roy.

 

I think of myself as a Goddess of small things, Ok ok, not a Goddess, may be a demiurge, I mean, I am kind of obsessed with small things in life. Small, nevertheless gratifying things. one of my favorite quotes is, "Small things make perfection, but perfection is not a small thing". Well, I am kind of obsessed with perfection too, even though there is no such thing as perfection in reality.

 

Coming back to the book, it had a slight framework of gloom woven over the entire book. The real human emotions about even the most insignificant things of life have been rendered. Roy strikes the truth about human values right on the face, no deception, no closed pages.

 

The book goes back and forth in time, which was a little irritating at times, even though the author connects the seemingly anachronic incidents pretty well and to the minutest of the details.

 

The characters were like, they remind you of someone you have seen somewhere, sometime. If you have been brought up in South India, it is more so. I was brought up in Coimbatore, which has strong Keralite connections. So it was all very realistic for me.

 

The strange mystique around Estha, and Rahel's girly chirpiness, the bonding the twins share are all so very well written.

 

A lot of times, I think words are superfluous in explaining emotions in real situations, emotions should talk for themselves. In explaining the situations so meticulously, the emotions are clearly depicted in this book, that explaining the emotions become unnecessary.

 

This book won the booker prize too. A good one.