On Hobbies - Reading

Well, it is that time of the year when the aspirants to the Services start brushing up on their ‘hobbies’, in the hopeful anticipation of getting a shot at the interview of a lifetime. As the venerable panel of high and mighties go down one’s history sheet, the entries under ‘hobbies’ provide a very vast and game changing field. More often than not, a few probing questions tear through the veneers of a hastily conjured up hobby, much to the detriment of a very uncomfortable guy sitting on the hot seat. However, if one has an expertise in one’s professed hobby, and that hobby interests the panel, chances are there that most of the interview would revolve around it, on one’s home turf, which will lead to those astronomical scores of 200 plus, which can get one the top jobs, or resuscitate those with borderline written scores. What was supposed to be a recreational pastime is indeed a very serious business.

In my two encounters with the Almighty ‘panels’, I was asked about my recent reading, and it usually was stuff like Freakonomics, False Economy, Superfreakonomics, the God Delusion, the Selfish Gene, etc. In my first interview, it got a simple response – ‘You must be good at economics’. And then nothing. In my second interview, the panel again stressed – ‘Have you read anything other than your textbooks!’ (Economics being one of my optionals) In both the interviews, I felt that they wanted to hear about the fiction I had read. However, I was not very comfortable going there. I mean, I am the biggest expert on all things Harry Potter, after Almighty JKR herself! But still, when the venerable panel asks about your reading habits, they expect you to be connoisseur of a whole genre, and not just a particular book, or author. Going with the HP line would have led to the fantasy genre, and the next biggest thing, LoTR, was totally off my radar. I mean, I could not even stand the movie 1, so I could never read those books anyway. Plus I had to have a balance between reading of foreign and Indian authors – that is the politically correct thing to do in the interview. So this February, to set the things right, I stepped to Bandra East on one of my commutes back home and purchased two books – ‘Revolution 2020’ by Chetan Bhagat, and ‘The Immortals of Meluha’ by Amish Tripathi. The reasons for the choices were very clear. R2020 (no, that’s not the name of a refrigerant, but an acronym used by Bhagat in his book) was a book that would complete my reading of CB’s books. I mean, I’m no high brow reader. In school I enjoyed Hardy Boys and Sidney Sheldon in my pre and post pubescent days. Hence, reading Chetan Bhagat was no big decline for me. In fact, I really enjoyed ‘Five Point Someone’, and ‘2 States’ and ‘3 mistakes’ were also good. ‘One night at a call centre’ may have been a true dud. So there was a 3 to 1 odd that I was in for some enjoyable reading. May be somewhat less than 3 is to 1 – lately Bhagat had taken to writing in the editorial pages of the Times of India (what else!), and his ideas, though loveable in the Bollywood potboiler novels, seemed very jarring in the holy columns of newspaper editorials. I mean, come on, we do like Singham’s and Chulbul Pandey’s on screen, but I would not like them in my actual neighbourhood, blowing away civilization to bits. I mean, Bhagat’s columns were one reason why I stopped reading ToI. Still, there is some thing about having read ‘all the novels of the author’ especially if you are claiming that reading is your hobby. I’ve done that for JKR. CB would have been the Indian counterweight. On the other hand, ‘Immortals of Meluha’ was a work of fantasy based loosely on the characters of Indian mythology, so it would have broadened my claim on the fantasy genre and would have brought in the much needed Indian touch. So, it was not without apprehension that I brought these books home – it was a conscious ‘career decision’, not a mere source of entertainment.

In the hindsight, I need not have worried. Both the books were enjoyable. Let’s begin with ‘Meluha’, since I read it first. Set in what is known to us as the Indus Valley Civilization, it is essentially a story about love and heroism, with good stretches of suspense. ‘Meluha’ was a name by which the Mesopotamians described some really advanced civilization that they were trading with. In all probability, it referred to the Harappa culture, and that seems to be the inspiration for the author. It is the story of Shiva – the Lord Shiva, Mahadev, Neelkanth, Shivshankar himself. It assumes that the destroyer arm of the holy trinity was actually a man, a Tibetan migrant, who, through his sheer bravery and heroism, came to be venerated as a God. The thing which is likeable about this novel is the broad way the story is moving – the portrayal of ‘the other’ as despicable at first, and simply different at the end, the whole rank and order of a fantasy world, with its own rules and stuff. However, the writing style is not so good. It’s, in places, like, in the immortal words of Berta the maid in the series ‘Two and a Half men’, boning Evelyn (like riding a bicycle over a railway track). Too many ‘damns’ and schoolboy curses. I think the book would have been better in a chaste language, perhaps in the Sanskritized Hindi. Also, some places where the author pauses to describe the cities, buildings and battle formations read like a Wikipedia entry. However, despite these very serious flaws, this was a good book, and I am definitely reading the whole trilogy now.

R2020 had no such glitches – it was finished in one straight night and day – the day being over a Vapi to Mumbai train journey. It read like the Bollywood drama it is supposed to be, with a grey hero – something I’ve like about this novel. A story of “dost dost na raha, payar pyar na raha”, variety, about falls and redemptions, somewhat like the movie ‘The State of play’. This one is highly recommended if you are not the nose in the sky types who would not touch anything that does not take a day to read a page.

The real twist and irony, however, came outside of the books. When I finally located my ‘personal summary’, I found that I had not written ‘Reading’ among my hobbies!! It was “blogging, online debating, trainspotting”. Take a guess why I am online!