BOOKWORM
LIGHTS! CAMERA! PROOFREADERS!
Lessons Life Taught Me, Unknowingly by Anupam Kher, Hay House, $33.99. Anupam Kher starts with a quote from Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
He displays a keen memory that delivers people, places and incidents in sharp detail. It is particularly nice that one gets to meet his family members – his father kept a trunk full of press clippings on his actor son’s progress – his old friends and neighbours, many of whom he is still in regular touch with. This is not a man who discarded people as he climbed the ladder of success. He takes readers through days of early struggles, when he slept on a railway platform in Mumbai for weeks because he didn’t have the money to rent even a tiny room.
For those looking for movie industry gossip, there’s that, too. Tales of his falling out and patching up with his mentor Mahesh Bhatt, his Twitter war with Aamir Khan, his friendship with Anil Kapoor, and his even the cringeworthy encounters with Woody Allen and Robert de Niro (who, with time, becomes one of Kher’s close friends).
But who describes himself as “destiny’s special child”? Or as someone who was so thin that he could “see through a keyhole with both my eyes”?
Anupam Kher says he thinks in Hindi, not in English. And then he goes and writes a book in English. I so wish he had written it in Hindi and had it translated by a competent person instead of presenting a book riddled with typos, grammatical errors and words used in the wrong context.
Starting with the title. Catchy as it may appear at first glance, it is obviously a literal translation of the Hindi phrase, anjane mein, or something that happens unbeknownst to one. Because life didn’t teach him anything unknowingly, he absorbed the lessons unknowingly. The irony is that he says so in so many words towards the end of the book.
My training and the lessons I had unknowingly absorbed along the way came to the fore.
But by then, all the other errors have gotten in the way of a good story.
He immerses his father’s “last remains”.
He shuffles across “gawkily”.
He describes Feroz Abbas Khan as “one of the finest theatre director”.
Naseeruddin Shah is someone who “fell between the two stools of alternate and commercial cinema”.
And Madhuri Dixit was “very adjustable”.
On his relationship with Mahesh Bhatt, “suddenly, we drifted apart”.
On his success, “I had hundreds of films to my credits”. And yet, he does not “display any airs and had no whims and fancy”.
He is struck by the “idealisation” of the Kashmiri Pandit community.
And then there are typos with Kher suffering “frm” hidden depression.
His is a phenomenal career graph, one that should make for a fascinating read.
But Anupam Kher is the wrong person to write his story.
FINDING HAPPINESS
Happiness Found in Translation by Tom Lomas, Tarcher Perigee, $24. “Happy” comes in many glorious forms and ways writes Tom Lomas. Seeing your parents smile and knowing you have done them proud. Watching your child graduate after years of toil. Switching on your out-of-office e-mail and disappearing from view on holiday. Savouring a perfectly delicious butterscotch ice cream.
But if all of the above make you happy, what exactly does the word mean and does it attempt to encompass too much? Research into emotional “granularity” reveals “our ability to appraise subjective experience with greater or lesser degrees of specificity”.
Because “the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the limits of our language define the boundaries of our world,” Lomas set out to “augment our vocabulary of happiness and even to enrich life itself”.
He searched the far corners of the earth for words and expressions that best define experiences for which there is no equivalent word or expression in English.
Some are now fashionable and increasingly familiar. Such as saudade (Portuguese) for dreamy, wistful nostalgia or ubuntu (Zulu) for universal kindness and benevolence, an understanding that I am because you are. And wabi sabi (Japanese), which means imperfect, weathered, rustic beauty.
Others are old words that some of us may be aware of but not necessarily in the context of happiness. Such as Sati (Pali) which means mindful awareness of the present. Attentiveness that is uninvested yet kindly and curious.
And then there ones that are just so much fun that one feels they must be adopted ASAP! Such as Wu Wei (Chinese. Though, side note, isn’t Chinese like saying Indian? Shouldn’t that have been Cantonese or Mandarin or another specific language?) which means Doing through non-doing. Natural, spontaneous, effortless action. Or Uitbuiken (Dutch) which would come in mighty handy when one is “outbellying” or relaxed and satiated between courses or after a meal.
There are several from Indian languages including abhisar (Bengali), apramada (Sanskrit) and even karma (Sanskrit).
Some words just sound exactly like the feeling they describe. Take Solarfri (Icelandic) for sun holiday, when workers are granted unexpected time off to enjoy a particularly warm and sunny day!
CLASSIC GRISHAM
Camino Winds by John Grisham, Doubleday, $38.95. In Camino Island, John Grisham took us inside the world of publishers and collectors of rare books.
Camino Winds goes further along that road, as Hurricane Leo and a contract killer both make landfall on the island. Protagonist Bruce Cable and his Bay Books are back in this fast-moving tale of many twists that will keep the reader engaged until the last page. Classic Grisham.
ROMANCE IN A FANTASY WORLD
Hunted By the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena, Penguin, $21.99. In the kingdom of Ambar, girls with star-shaped birthmarks are disappearing.
Tyrant king Lohar has been arresting the Star Warriors who are prophesized to bring about his downfall and usher in a new era of justice.
Gul, born with a star birthmark lives in hiding with her parents until they are found.
Her parents are killed but she escapes. She’s skeptical about the prophecy but vows to revenge the deaths of her parents. Cavas, born without the power, struggles to look after his ailing father.
The two discover a power together that neither of them possess alone.
A tale of forbidden romance and idealism set in a fantasy world.
AN INDIAN ADVENTURE
Let’s Go Adventuring by Supriya Sehgal, Hachette India, USD 9.99. Misty mountains and secret trails, roadside dentists with terrible teeth, deities with permission to bunk school, chutneys made from red ants and battles fought in the sky... there’s an adventure waiting at every corner of India if you know where to look for it.
And Supriya Sehgal sure knows her India, taking readers on a wild ride, discovering new attractions in places you might have thought you knew and have visited. For instance, even dyed-in-the wool Bombayites who are familiar with Sassoon Docks and Flora Fountain may not know of the existence of Mani Bhavan, a library and museum dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi in South Bombay. Or the shrine to a motorbike on the highway going south from Jodhpur. And temples where prayers for a US visa are speedily granted.
SECRETS OF FLOWERS
Flower Power by Olaf Hajek, Prestel, $25.95. Can irises dance? Which seed case inspired the design of a salt shaker? Which plant helps fight against seasickness? Can a flower make you rich? Discover the secrets of some common flowers and plants through captivating illustrations.
TEEN REVIEW
By JASMINE KAUR GREWAL
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, Penguin Random House, $11.99. When an experiment to form the perfect society – a paradise – for criminals within a closed environment goes awry, this so-called heaven turns into a living hell.
Incarceron is a vast and futuristic prison that none can enter nor exit. However, there has been a man that has escaped to the Outside before, and there are many others that dream of it.
Finn, a prisoner with no memory of before the day he woke up in one of Incarceron’s cells, is sure that he is from the Outside. Other inmates doubt him, for Incarceron has been sealed for centuries. So where, then, did he come from and who is he?
Trapped on the Outside is Claudia, the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron. She is stuck in an arranged marriage with the prince (a man she despises) in a world where time is forbidden, and everyone lives in a recreation of the seventeenth century. Claudia believes that the real heir to the throne is within the confines of Incarceron, the location of which is only known to her father. But will she find the answers that she’s looking for, or will she just become more entangled in a web of lies?
Catherine Fisher portrays the pros and cons of human intellect versus artificial intelligence. And shows that there is no such thing as ‘perfection’, merely perseverance, especially as nothing is impossible.
The biggest theme in the novel though, is freedom. By letting fear control the decisions, the monarchy has limited people’s freedom of speech, thought, and action, thus leading to rebellious plots.
Through the prisoners of Incarceron who have never known freedom as anything but a faraway dream, you realize what an important gift freedom truly is.
I would recommend Incarceron to any science fiction, mystery, and fantasy reader out there.
• Jasmine Kaur Grewal is an alumna, Brampton Library’s Teen Library Council