more updates -- on current favorites

website:
Cannelle et Vanille (Cinnamon & Vanilla): food blog, stunning photos that makes you moan, to die for.

song:
Ridan - Demain
very moving.

Je vendrai mon âme à qui la veut pour que demain tu vives si vieux,
Je ferai ce que je peux pour faire barrage pour que ta vie ne soit plus une cible,
Je prendrai leur flèches à bras le corps je prierai le ciel de faire un effort.

He has another song, L'agriculteur, which i also like a lot.

book:
I'd say Duras' La Douleur but i haven't finished it yet, so the pick is Maximum City - Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta. I switched to it after my huge disappointment with Shantaram, really don't understand why it got so big. I was gonna read Shantaram to prepare myself for Bombay, but couldn't stand all the pretentiousness so i gave up after getting through the first half, i.e. 400 pages. Maximum City was well-researched, honest, and impassionate - journalism at its best. I finished it while in Pune watching the battle in Mumbai. It was so strange to be able to recognize, among other things, all the different groups that they identified including the dons and the D Company.

Just Read

One night @ the call center: mediocre, but still learn some cultural happenings among the urban Indian youth. Don't know why the author could have said that the story represented Indian youth.

The kite runner: gripping and moving, no, heart-breaking. Pretty much finished it off in one day, in 2 seatings (had to put it down to go out to dinner). Stayed up late and skipped yoga this morning. Cried for at least half of the novel. Beautifully written. Again, a story with a background of upheaval, revolution, and immigration. Fear. The worst thing that you could do to any one. That permeating fear. Don't even know if you can trust a single soul. And then another fear, the implied one. When fear has been inculcated into a culture, when kids learn violence and suspicion the moment they are born, grow up knowing only the sounds of bombs and shootings, how could they envision and aspire to something else more humane? How could they escape or kill that haunting ghost?

Interestingly, the author of one night also asks what readers fear?

And i also fear at this moment: 1 month away from the american election. Who would win? i'm even not american. But sometimes fear signals a good thing. Elections in VN, you don't even have the privilege to have fear.

Just Read: The First Promise

The rural life in West Bengal in the tide of colonialism. Descriptions of customs, traditions (child marriage, puja, etc.) the women and their roles, how they change and are changed. the transition, the uncertainty and the inevitable. the fundamental part of identity that is challenged and that is bound to change (caste, e.g.)

Women are oppressed (and this goes for many other groups) certainly not only because men are sexist. A sexist society nurtures a sexist mentality in both men and women, so women can certainly be oppressive to themselves. They have to find the empowerment to break through. Liberation doesn't lie in the hands or at the mercy of the sexists.

Just Read: The Hungry Tide

I don't like the two foreground protagonists (if such a notion exists), but the book offers a beautiful, rich, and humane depiction (or documentation?) of Sunderban, where the relationship between human and nature reaches both extremes: symbiosis and enemy. Meticulously researched like a comprehensive anthropological work that covers everything related to the locale: environment, folk tradition, history.

just read - a bend in the river

sounds like a stupid thing to say, but no book has given me such a clear insight into the history of Africa, the ambivalent legacy that new independent states inherit from colonialism.

Just read: The Inheritance of Loss

a novel exploring extremely complex and intertwined issues: interethnic relationship, nationalism, immigration, uprising, globalization, the making of history, etc. in a series of everyday stories. It seems straightforward enough, but the perspicacity could hardly come from someone who hasn't spent time in another part of the world, seeing another angle of the apple. Immigrants, or just people who move in general, do have that opportunity of stringing together the pieces.

In light of the ongoing Jammu-Kashmir upheaval and the Georgia-South Ossetia controversial break, it brought back the questions that I've stuck with for a long time: How can you know that your acts are of your true desire and not of a mob mentality? That they are a dedication to the cause and not an abuse of the cause? When you've already been part of the whirlwind, how can you cut yourself off, take a step aside to see which way it's going? What's the difference between a personal revenge and a public punishment? Can either be justified?

currently reading and listening

currently reading: Catch-22
Brilliant, hilarious, perceptive, ridiculous. I've laughed and cried so much. Full of absurd truths and truthful absurdities. Impossible to summarize all my thoughts.
most recent favorite quote: "anything [any country?] worth dying for is certainly worth living for."

currently listening: la chambre renversée. First saw it on TV5, just after a few seconds, i was like OMG this is so cute. Not sure if i'd have loved the song if i hadn't seen the clip. The images just fit so well with the music and the words. I'm not talking about the lyrics, but about the way the words sound. Together, they look like a children's story, a lot of imaginations, uninhibited with innocence and simplicity. Makes me feel like floating all day long while listening to the song.