The White Tiger - A book review

I have always held a perception that the books that win literary awards are probably the boring ones which are only understood by a select pretentious few who like to portray themselves as guardians of literature. It is with the same skepticism that i began to read Aravind Adiga's book, The White Tiger which recently won the Man Booker prize for fiction and to my pleasant surprise, discovered a masterpiece. It is indeed a hard-hitting work sketched on a canvas filled with a liberal dosage of dark humour and sattire. The narration is rather unique as a series of letters to a fictional chinese premier. The darkness that the protagonist battles in his quest to break the shackles of a complex India - which is a seeming potboiler of contradictions and imbalances, has been narrated in a rather humourous and novel way. The Rooster coop - is arguably the most creative way to describe the average Indian mentality - one of the biggest contradictions of the 21st century - a land where the people laugh at the west for lack of culture but find it extremely difficult to maintain even basic cleanliness; a culture where collective good is conveniently sacrificed at the altar of individual prosperity; a nation struggling to bridge the widening gap between the haves and have nots; The transformation of Balram Halwai from a munna(caught in the shackles of a low-trodden north indian family) to an enterprising entrepreneur is to a large extent, a reasonable depiction of India's struggles to come to grips with these contradictions amidst the significant economic developments of the last couple of decades. I have not read any other books which have won a booker but if any of them have characters like Balram, they are definitely going to occupy front places on my book shelf. The White Tiger is worth a read and its stripes are definitely endearing. Of course, i will definitely be keeping an eye on my chauffeur

If God was a Banker - Book Review

The latest book that i devoured was the fast paced book by Ravi Subramanian, a leading Indian Banker and who went to the same business school that i did (though i was almost a decade behind him). The book is highly entertaining and gives a very interesting perspective of how Consumer Banking in India developed over the last couple of decades. It tracks the career of 2 diverse individuals, Swami and Sundeep, both of whom graduate from leading Indian business schools at the same time and who embrace the changes of a modern India. Each of them follow their own recipes to success, with Swami being the more mature, good-old ethical way while Sundeep pursues life on the fast track using every possible trick in the game to achieve his objectives. The book takes a potshot at some of the corrupt practices prevalent in the banking industry including the rampant misuse of the fine print in banking products, illegal liasons with business partners and the sales tactics used to thrust products upon the unsuspecting public by the relationship managers. It has also tried to portray a realistic view of how corporate politics operates and engulfs unsuspecting individuals in its tight grasp. The build up to the climax where Sundeep's sins catch up with him is a fitting tribute to the old management whim 'The opportunity cost of sin, when it catches up with you in the future has an compounded interest variant to it". Overall, an interesting fast paced novel which should pave the way for an interesting movie in the near future for the multiplex goers. Mr. Madhur bhandarkar, Are you listening?

Obama & Dhoni - paving the way for strong and sensible Leadership

The last few weeks have seen a couple of interesting personalities taking over leadership mantle for 2 of the toughest jobs in the world - The President of United States of America and the captaincy of the Indian Cricket Team. Strangely enough, both Barack Obama and Mahendar singh Dhoni bring a lot of common leadership traits to their seemingly diverse and tough roles.

• Both of them have risen from very modest beginings. Nobody in their wildest sense would have imagined an African Amercian from Hawaii rising up to become the president of the most powerful nation in the world. Equally startling is the rise of the boy from Jharkand, an indian state locked up in the heart of the Indian peninsula where dreaming up to play for local club would itself be considered a stupendous achievement. The celebrated writer, Peter Roebuck, who in my opinion is one of the best unbiased cricketing minds in the world today recently had a profile of Dhoni which did highlight the rise of Dhoni as well as the challenges up ahead in a captivating article.


• Both of them bring together a rare calmness and a cool head to the table. Obama's tackling of the Mccain tirade especially on the Bill Ayers issue revealed that he was a mature and confident individual who could articulate his logic clearly without getting unneccessarily emotional. Dhoni's calmness and maturity has recently been seenin a number of terrific Indian victories in different facets of the game over the last couple of years. His leadership has been calm, clinical and to a large extent, well in control of his emotions - clearly not what one would expect from a small-town boy in a nation which is so cricket-crazy that one poor performance by the team can lead to bloody riots.


• Both display an ability to stand up to the system if there is chance of it being a deterrent in their quest towards excellence. Obama's masterstroke of not relying on public financing (the first presidential candidate to ever do so) and rely on his own fund raising campaigns can be quite compared to Dhoni's stand of not going on the Sri Lanka tour citing exhaustion. Not even somebody of the stature of Sachin Tendulkar has had the gall to stand up to the system and mention that they were exhausted and needed rest. While Obama's stand resulted in the owerflowing of the Democrats , Dhoni's self imposed rejunevation resulted in a well charged indian leader who was ready to handle bigger challenges.


• The challenges ahead for these 2 personalities, although extremely diverse are indeed tough. While Obama has the challenge of tackling the worst ever economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, Dhoni will have the prying eyes of a billion Indians watching over his every move as he strives to make India the leading Cricketing giant. (considering the absudity of the average indian's reaction to cricket, one might even call Dhoni's job, a tougher one than Obama's)


• Just as Obama is getting ready to tackle the excesses left behind by an arrogant bush Administration that has left the world in a far worse state than what it was a decade ago, Dhoni needs to find alternatives to the stalwarts who are in the sunset of their careers in the current team


• While Obama tackles a economy that is woefully short of liquidity and weakening markets, Dhoni needs to sharpen his skills to match up to the politics of the BCCI, the most wealthy cricket body in the world today which is changing the dynamics of the gentleman's game.


• While Obama has Putin/Osama/Zardari et al to deal with, Dhoni has BCCI/IPL/Bollywood to handle.


• Both these leaders avoid making knee-jerk reactions. They are well planned which in turns opens up opportunities for their maverick oponents to make fools of themselves, thereby locking them up in a vicious cycle of stress from where redemption is anything but difficult. Mccain's ridiculous acts including the choice of Sarah Palin, the publicizing of Joe the Plumber and the drama during the passing of the Finance bill were clear indications of the crumbling of his knee jerk campaign against the well organized smart tactics of Obama. An equally comparable situation would be what swept away Ricky Ponting, the flamboyant Australian skipper during the recently concluded test series. Ponting, considered one of the shrewdest minds in cricket with a captaincy record that even Dhoni would kill to have, found it extremely difficult to keep his act together. The slow bowling rates as well as an overall defensive mindset (which is so uncharacteristic of the Aussies) were all part of a well thought out trap that Dhoni put together.
  

As roebuck puts it, both these personalities do not bring hope but expectations. They have demonstrated the uncanny ability to balance their immense pressures while keeping their senses fairly stable and human. To a curious watcher like me, this represents strong and sensible leadership. All i hope is that this is sustainable and not a flash in the pan. Kudos to the underdogs. maybe their flock grow

Fashion - Is Madhur Bhandarkar becoming stereotypical?

My wife and i burnt some midnight oil yesterday catching up on the latest "Fashion" in town. For a night show at the Inox in Chennai, it was houseful revealing that Madhur Bhandarkar has built up quite a strong brand loyalty among the multiplex goers. I have been impressed with his Page-3, Corporate as well as Traffic signal (i havent seen Chandni Bar yet) and was eagerly looking forward to Fashion - his latest biopic on cracking open the insides/travails/gliterrati of this industry. At the end of 3 hours (peperred with some bad nachos at the counter and some moderate popcorn), i could not relate to Madhur's creation as much as the earlier ones. It is quite possible that this is a world little understood by the likes of myself with middle-class upbringing and whose ambitions/dreams still fall within the realms of having a normal, non-glamorous existence.

There is also a strong possibility that we have got used to madhur's story-telling technique which seems to falling into a pattern - Giving an initial sneak preview of the industry, the protoganist with either dreams or idealistic views who quickly understands that all that glitters is not gold and who initially finds caring gay/straight friends (she does indulge in a romance with one of them which breaks as she catapults into stardom) and the gradual sucking of the protoganist into the muck (at least of one of whose adventures will shock us) and finally nirvana. To a large extent, all the 3 of his earlier movies seem to follow this pattern and Fashion seems to follow the trend. Meghna Mathur (potrayed by Priyanka Chopra), the starry eyed, spunky middle-class lass from Chandigarh whose journey into the Fashionable circles of mumbai is the protagonist and the movie diligently follows this journey. A standout performance by Kangana Ranaut as the hotshot model Shonali Gujral who gets sucked into the muck of the industry is the highlight of the movie. This resonates strongly with the recent discovery of a model who was found begging in the streets of Delhi.

Overall, all the ingredients were around but somehow the overall dish did not taste as well not because it was not well made but because we have got used to the taste. I can see a clear pattern emerging between characters of Meghna Mathur, Madhavi Sharma (Page 3), Silsila (Traffic Signal) and Nishigandha Dasgupta (Corporate). I am still a big fan of madhur who can be assured that i will definitely buy tickets for his next movie but i would like him to re-invent himself as he strives to be the most intelligent director that bollywood has seen for a long time.