Sundays at Tiffany's -- The Book Review

"I miss you already" .. Or so said Michael and now a few hours after finishing the book, I feel a similar longing in my heart: I am already missing James Patterson's Sundays at Tiffany's (co-written with) Gabriel Charbonnet). Apart from Love story and then Oliver's Story, no other romantic book has been able to capture my attention like this one. And what a splendid write-up this book was!





Now I associate James Patterson normally with novels centered around crime, mystery and serial killers. James Patterson has produced some awesome fictional characters - Alex Cross, The Women's Murder Club and the Maximum Ride series. So, this novel was a bit of a pleasant shocker for me. I mean, the romance genre is as far and as diverse as he could manage. Now, I am no romantic - The only romantic novels I ever read were Erich Segal's Love Story and Oliver's Story. Both of these were great novels, so simply, eloquently and emotionally written. And something told me that this novel might turn out to be just as good, despite romance not being the author's forte (at least, with the number of novels published in the serial killer and mystery genre, no one can question his knack for getting the chill across).

Now getting back to the book, the story trails the life of a young girl whose world is built around an imaginary friend. Actually, saying that it trails the life of Jane is a bit of a misnomer -- The book is only about the aprt where Michael has to leave Jane when she turns 9 and then the second aprt deals with how Michael and Jane are reunited. However, nothing has been mentioned of the interim period when the imaginary friend leaves the young kid and by a quirky twist of fate, is reunited with the now grown-up girl Jane. I am actually thankful to the author for not dragging the book or making it too complicated. Besides Jane and Michael, there are only a handful of characters to deal with and with a crisp writing style, you can't just help but keep turning the pages one after another. Though readers may find the other characters quite sterotyped and atypical, it's the girl and her imaginary friend who grasp the attention of the readers from Page 1.

Most romantic novels have a happy ending yet after going through Eric Segal's Love Story and Oliver's Story, I know that happy endings are not a must. And with the way this book has been composed, it had a surreal feeling about it all throughout! And yet there is always the feleing that this was just the sweetener, somewhere somehow the author will lose the plot and make a mess of this fine love story. But credit to both the authors for maintaining, sustaining and ultimately delivering one of the most suspensefully joyful endings I've stumbled across!

I'll suggest all readers to try this book at least once; if not buy it then just go to the coffee shop somewhere in the bookshop and devote a spare hour to this novel. I am sure you'll be hooked to the novel and ultimately, just like me, you too will start missing the book once it's over!

N.B.: Just a word of caution: Do not go in expecting a lot of complicated stuff or a flood of emotions from the book, it's written very simply and hence it's imperative that you treat it like a simple book too! Try and feel the undercurrents of love flowing through the book. Though the authors could have tried harder and made the other characters feel a bit more real and wanted, I am nonetheless pleased with the book and well... Yes, I've been missing it already! ... sigh ...

The MAA of all Reality Shows!!

Hey readers, I was just going through the posts of a fellow blogger when all of a sudden, a crazy idea manifested itself in my mind. However, before you proceed, a word of caution: I am currently in a crazy, zapped state of mind and I intend being in this bent frame of mind for another 2-3 days or so! Any one hurt by the views expressed below should go and sue the blogger who sowed the seeds of the following idea in my mind! Now, if you are done reading the safety regulations et al, can we proceed?

After going through the post, I thought that why such a useless debate: I mean, dance all you want, it's your life, we are in the world's biggest democracy and man, let's just face it, we do much more crazier things on TV these days than simply watching a few gals dance semi-nudely! And as they say, there is money to be made in every venture -- so why don't we monitize this debate nationally while letting the people, the makers of this democracy, decide whether or not the dancing of the cheerleaders and the ban on the dance bar girls should stay? I mean, relaity TV show's formats are becoming real cliched these days and we desperately need some controversy and new format so why don't we make a three-part reality show out of this entire debate?

In the first part, our esteemed judges (one of them has to be Rakhi Sawant --- hee hee hee) will conduct a nation-wide hunt to procure the best of the best dancing bar girls in the country (we may even go international -- cool, huh??) post which we shall publicize the whole thing and like all reality TV shows go, get 3 final girls who will parade their stuff (i.e. their skimpy outfit-clad dance moves) country-wide.. The audience poll would then decide the ultimate winner among these Indian dance bar girls while the judges will try their level best to ensure that the best dancers stay on the show and are not eliminated because of some misconceived or conceited public voting.

The second leg of this show will see the foreign cheerleaders (currently here for the IPL) who will then fight to come out trumps as the Miss World Cheerleader and in the final part, the top 3 participants from the earlier two parts will go head-to-head to determine which of these breeds or genres of dancers -- the bar girls or the foreign cheerleaders -- shall be allowed to dance wherever they want -- be it in dance bars, on national TV or at public parties!!

Now wouldn't this be a great, money-minting idea?? I mean, just think about the TRPs -- they are going to go through the roofs! Sponsors will flock and fight over a 10-second ad slot on this show -- mark my words, my dear readers, this show will be the BAAP, errr... sorry for the gender error, the MAA of all shows!! Move aside IPL, SRK's kya aap paasvi paas se tez ho, Indian Idol, saas-bahu serials -- it's the season of the Dance shows and the MAA of all reality shows is here and how!!

N.B.: The blogger who sowed the seeds of this visionary, revolutionary idea has a private blog. So, I am taking the liberty to copy-paste, i.e., plagiarize her post without seeking due permission from the concerned Blogger!! Ho sake to mujhe maaf kar dena --

Yesterday there was this debate on television against the presence of
cheerleaders in the IPL matches. There was some old politician talking about
culture and censorship on one side and Prahlad Kakkar on the other side-
laughing at him :D I also thought that a mountain is being created out of a
molehill. If this is what people want to watch- well, let them! Don't make moral
judgements against anyone. Just chill...!

Then came the head of the Mumbai Bar Girls' Association. I was totally
expecting some wierdly dressed middle aged women screeching into the camera (a
la Rakhi Sawant)... but was pleasantly surprised to find an elderly, soft-spoken
lady who just made a very small and valid point.She says that 2 years back these
dance bars were closed down in Mumbai on the pretext that these girls are
scantily dressed and watching them dance like this in public is "wrong".

Now the same government is allowing American females to be scantily dressed
and dance in public and that too on national television. This is a clear case of
being double-faced and the very grounds on which they had closed the bars, now
stand violated.

I mean why fight when you can dance and cordially sort the issue?? I hope all parties concerned adopt my suggested idea and I get a hefty royalty payment from it. And hey, with food crisis being such a hot issue, here is my second take (errr.. not mine) on the food crisis where the author defends the biofuels that are being targeted as the culprits for the current crisis! Enjoy reading!

Official doldrums!

Hey readers, have you ever felt victimized? Ever felt that you were being dealt with unfairly, harshly? That you and you alone were being discriminated against while the rest of the world went about doing anything they wished and got away with it too!!

Yes, you are (sic) right -- such is a fate is being dealt out to this writer! the writer feels victimized by the office policies and the harsh treatment which was meted out to yours truly a few months back -- a punishment so severe that it tainted his perception of the world, of the people around him. And before you feminists gear up and stage a drama, take a chill-pill ladies! This time the tables have been tuned on us unfortunate guys.

Okay okay, so maybe by now you are wondering why I am being so hypersensitive and acting so weird and all so pumped up! trying my best to vent out my frustration yet falling short of words!!

We all know how we Indians love to have a lovely lunch and what is a beautiful lunch without a small teeny-toony nap?? Tell me tell me --- haven't our elders preached all along that "khaane ke baad thoda aaram farmaana chahiye"?? So what's wrong with taking a nap after lunch in office? I mean, hell, we spend more of our time in office than at home with our family! Doing household chore seems more like a task than doing even the most mundane of office jobs! So aren't we even entitled to a small nap in the entirety that we spend at office, our home-away-from-home?

So yours truly was very rightly exercising his right to take a nap when he was asked to visit the manager! There he was asked a few questions and to rid him of his sleep, the manager handed him a quiz -- yes sirrie, a quiz of all the rotten things in the world! Imagine my plight, what trauma engulfed me then and there! Anyways, what happened after that is another story, to be discussed some other time altogether!

Anyways, why I feel discriminated against is because the ladies in this office (and there are plenty of them and they easily outnumber the guys -- did someone mutter lucky dude??) are allowed to indulge in this napping practice for as long as they want! HEIGHTS of discrimination?? Is any one listening? Where are all the male chauvanists when you need them? I mean, look at these females, on one hand, they demand to be treated as equals while on the other hand, they go ahead asking for reservations, higher tax exemptions, preferential treatment et cetera et cetera!!

Anyways, enough blabbering for the moment, I got to go do some work but before I take your leave, here is one article on the current food shortage which I feel is worth your time.. Click here to view the same and enjoy reading!

The Outsourcing Conundrum

Let me begin this post by sharing this joke with you that I received at work from one of my seniors (yes, again).. Read the joke carefully, it highlights the emotions of the people residing in the greatest (self-proclaimed) nation of the world, the United States of America (USA).

An Israeli doctor says "Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can
take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work
in six weeks."

A German doctor says "That is nothing; we can take a lung out of one
person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.


A Russian doctor says "In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can
take half a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both
looking for work in two weeks."

The Texas doctor, not to be outdone, says "You guys are way behind, we
recently took a man with no brains out of Texas, put him in the White House for
eight years, and now half the country is looking for work.

I sure hope you liked the joke for I simply loved the sarcastic dig taken at the Americans at the end of it. The ending epitomises so many things which are uniquely American: Their advancements in technology that are bettered by no one else (okay, okay, I can hear a few protests already); their President who is renowned for making public goof-ups at the drop of a hat and yet he gets elected for a second term as the President and finally, the outsourcing of jobs which has disgruntled many Americans and left even more without a job. However, I wonder why they are disgruntled now for weren't they the ones who pushed the envelope towards cheaper, better goods? What ever led to the origination of the sweat shops in China and other cheap labour-intensive countries where Lee and Nike manufactured their lines of clothes and shoes in the early '90s? [Please correct me if I am quoting the wrong names here; I recall having read these in the book "NO LOGO" by Naomi Klein about 3-4 years back.]

The American consumers and the then-shareholders of these companies were not complaining then and as for the sweat shop workers -- well, let's just say that neither the companies nor their own governments were much concerned about their well beings. Even the workers did not make much of a noise as holding on to a job was much more important than good working conditions. Thanks to the strength of the dollar, especially against the weaker currencies of the developing nations, the workers were paid pittance compared to the average wages of a job of a similar nature in the U.S. The Americans -- from the consumer to the shareholders -- enjoyed this cost effective way of manufacturing foods which made quite a few of these brands competitive and highly profitable ventures. Companies which did not set up such shops had to work extremely hard to make ends meet -- forget about matching the impressive margins posted by the companies indulging in the trade-off of manual labour known as "outsourcing".

2 decades later, the same people want the jobs returned to their country, the USA .. they have had enough of the outsourcing bit and now with joblessness on the rise and the economy into a recession, people have woken up from a deep slumber to realise that while they had initially only outsourced manual labour, over the course of time, these small, weaker developing nations have taken the art of outsourcing and delivering work to the next level -- so much so that there is a lack of jobs for the people back home!

Sounds funny?? Or does it seem reasonable? I believe in life being a give and take sort of a relationship and int h adage "what goes round comes around" -- The USA took a lot out of the world, now the world is taking its due out of the USA. It's a symbiotic relationship -- neither can survive without the other. Turmoil will ensue but balance too will be restored -- hopefully sooner than later. I sure dream of the day when we can outsource our work to USA -- though the upbringing we have had, I believe we may end up treating them fairer and better than what we were subjected to!

N.B.: I may sound like a hypocrite to some of you for I [and others like me] are helping these companies outsource most of the work from USA to India but but .. .. .. I shall defend my honour some other day! 'Til then, play hard and keep cheering Knight Riders (hee hee hee)..