Book Review - An Atlas Of Impossible Longing

How many times have we stretched our hands towards our friends asking them to read our palm in jest and how much of it do we really believe it?

“Want, want, hope, hope…this is what your palm says too, moshai, your palm is nothing but an atlas of impossible longings…Nothing but longing.” (pg. 199).

And that is exactly what can be true for everyone of us who seek the astrologer’s predictions, it’s what we hope and want, a better future with security, wealth and health, all in perfect balance-an impossible longings.

I read the blurb at Simon and Schuster, was impressed and bought immediately, it read:

On the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, a family lives in solitude in their vast new house. Here, lives intertwine and unravel. A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost—and he knows that he must return…….. 

The book is in three parts and carries the story across three generations.

The characters are well sketched out and the scenes of Calcutta, Songrah and a house at Manoharpur come alive with her vivid descriptions

“We went from room to room, Bakul providing explanation for each, with apologies for all-pervading dust. She spoke in the same passionate descriptive way, not pausing to let us respond. I recognized the mildewed portraits on the ground floor from my visits with Aangti Baba, and the chandelier he had been eying still hung from the ceiling, too grey with dust and cobwebs, surely, to make light. We passed through enormous wood-paneled billiards room, with table piled high with legless chairs, broken boxes and pictures in frames. I wondered who had used it in the past- it was certainly never going to be usable in the future".(pg.291)

Staying in an isolated place can wreck the nerves of a normal person and this character is clearly etched out in the first section ‘The drowned house’ where Kunanbala suffers from a strange disease of hurling random abuses, and has to be locked away in a room to save the family from embarrassment.

As the relationship between Bakul (a motherless child) and Mukunda (an orphan) grows, you begin to wonder if the caste and social status will come in their way.

Good story, very riveting, read it during the weekly 3 hours-bus journeys to school, during which I often read books to divert my mind from crazy traffic of Mumbai. This is the book I would recommend that people with a librarian degree buy for their libraries, a book that I enjoyed a lot, especially the third section “The Water’s Edge’ that got me so interested that I finished it all in one go, at home, under warm covers. 

'The F Word' by Mita Kapur. (book review)

The

'The F-Word' by Mita Kapur is the book I am reading during my weekly bus trips from Bandra to CBD, Belapur (at home I am too obsessed with twitter n facebook, visiting links and blogs which hardly leaves me any time to read the printed hard bound book, Alas!) and Mita takes us through her food journey with memoirs that are delightful to read.

Excerpt

*"You are greying at the temples. Shouldn't you color your hair?"

"No. I want my age to show. It's about growing old gracefully"

I looked at him. "that quite an bulge in your middle" I saw the picture in his eyes- a girl in a floral white skirt and a flimsy blouse, waiting on the steps of her house. He would arrive the moment Ma left for the hospital.*

Memoirs like these and those of her trips through Lucknow/Jaipur streets savoring the kababs or her trips to Amsterdam, talking about her experience during her travels and their signature cuisine is what makes this book interesting.

*A warm aroma of cocoa beckoned to us from the cocoa-making factory, along with sink-into-the-mouth cream puffs at the charming local bakery. We saw different types of cheeses with their odours and overpowering tastes, and a live show on how wooden clogs are made. We tried them all, the cheese and the shoes. The cheese won, obviously.*

There are many recipes that I have book marked for future use and am planning to try some day, when I have some guests, or maybe when I am invited for 'Share a plate' party.

One another blogger, Monika Manchanda, who is now my friend after our Lavasa trip, also wrote a review at her blog, saying that she heard about this book from her friend Kiran, she quotes

“The first time I heard of this book was from Kiran who said that this book got her into kitchen she was all praises of the book and being a foodie having cooking as one of the hobbies it promptly went into my must reading list…”

But Kiran responded on twitter by saying “I was very upset because I mailed mita kapur a gushy gushy letter about how it had inspired me to try cooking & got no reply”

I had met Mita Kapur during the Jaipur lit fest and knew that she is quite busy woman and she must have recieved lots of fan mails after her book was launched but not replying to her fan mail is quite rude. I think so too.

Anyways, everybody have their own reasons for not replying to fan mails. *Pinching myself to reality*

Where was I?

Ah..this book on cuisine…I was impressed....

Just few more pages to go and then I shall be in the kitchen trying some of those recipes…..come over if you wanna try..I intend to follow the recipe and cook those Mita’s words that skip out from her book into the hot pot….of tasty meals

Book Launch’“Marwari Vegetarian Cooking’ by Sanjeev Kapoor

Serving the snacks and drink at the book launch is quite rare but not so rare if the launch is for a cookery book. Yes, that is what is so special about attending just that. I was delighted to eat 'Mawa Gujiya' and 'kanji 'drink and the recipes were right there in the book, although while we sipped the drink, the recipes was also read out. The ingredients that made this drink so tasty were crushed musturd powder, red chillie powder, salt and water, yummy....so very delicious, I am drooling yet again.

Attended the book launch of’ Marwari Vegetarian Cooking’ by Sanjeev Kapoor at Crossword at Linking road.

When asked what had inspired him to write such a book, he said that even if five people enquired him about the recipe of a particular region of cooking, he is inspired enough to write, since he is then sure that there is demand for such recipes. Being a graduate in a culinary art, difficult dishes, he said, come easy to him, it was the simple dishes that are difficult to cook and he is known to try every dish before he writes the recipe, tasting each dish and writing in a very simple language so that even a beginner can try their hands on cooking and be successful in this art. In this book he has a punch line after every recipe and that is what makes it so interesting.

At the end of the session I bought 2 copies autographed by him hoping (secretedly) that some day, I will be signing my own published book on cookery perhaps…..