The Adventures of Rusty: Book Review

This is a lovely book written by Ruskin Bond, an author who is mostly famous as a writer of several books for young readers but has an equally big fan following amongst the grown-ups (take my example as a point). Published by NBT, this book is an interesting read and is sure to transport the readers to their own childhood memories. The book is divided into two sections namely Uncle Ken and Running Away. Both the sections give a vivid account of Rusty's adventures. The first part deals with Rusty's eccentric uncle Ken who struggles to find a job for himself and turns at Rusty's granny's home in Dehradun every now and then. The second part deals with Rusty's plans to run away from the school-boarding at Pahargunj to meet uncle Jim (who was a sailor and whose ship was expected to put anchor at Jamnagar). The only problem was that Rusty and his friend Daljit had to cover at least eight hundred miles to pull off this feat, that too without enough money for the trip and a vague notion about the exact road map. What happens finally is for the readers to find out as I dare not spill the beans here and rob you of an interesting and enjoyable read.

So, try to grab a copy of this pocket friendly book (Rs. 25 only) with nice illustrations and take a trip back to those days of entire bliss when you were a child of Rusty's age.

Just Shut up Mr. Bush

The idiot president of the US has again given fodder to the world to laugh at him and irked Indians by saying that the increasing affluence of the Indian middle class has given rise to more food consumption which in turn has triggered the escalating food prices all over the world. Need I say that the crackbrained idioit has done it all over again. Thanks a lot Mr. President for giving us a few moments of laughter amidst the fast paced life (Of course not before fuming over your comment and cursing you a lot, though!!!)

Artist Ray, the forgotten genius.

Come May the 2nd, and all the Bengalis are reminded of the cine-genius Satyajit Ray, the ray of hope for the Bengali cinema in the international arena.
In fact, any genius generally becomes famous for his most prominent trait like Rabindranath Tagore for his poems, Arthur Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holmes, etc. Likewise, Satyajit Ray also became famous for his film making and Feluda, the Bengali Sherlock Holmes.
Generally, normal people do not bear more than a single characteristic trait. So, it is quite normal for them to handle a single trait of the genius, the most famous one. How many of us know that Arthur Conan Doyle was a professional Rugby player or Rabindranath Tagore was an excellent administrator? And similarly how many of us are aware of the other geniuses of Satyajit Ray?
Did you know (before reading this post, of course) that the great film maker, whose birthday we are celebrating today, was a great ad-designer, and that he designed advertisements for immensely popular brands such as Paludrine?He worked in an Ad agency for 65/- a month in the year 1943 and designed ads for brands like Jabakusum, CK Sen, etc.
Well, the charms do not end here. Satyajit Ray was obsessed with arts, and when he stopped working in the ad-agency, the obsession did not leave him. He designed each and every poster for his films. Along with it, he drew for Sandesh, his favorite magazine. He created headpieces and tailpieces with inline graphics for all important stories in the magazine. And he drew it with great care and perfection. All the pictures were different in moods and aptly complemented the storyline.

Ray did not limit himself with this either!
He developed fonts, his own prototype fonts. Not one, not two- four of it in total!!! Ray Roman, Ray Bizzare, Daphnis and Holiday Script, each unique in its own style.






What more could you ask from a person? Does watching a few films on the DVD do proper justice to the genius? Or reading a few Feluda novels? I think it's time to reinvent the character of Ray and do a proper on the multifaceted personality. Or else, overbanging on the film making and literary side will make the artist Ray sink without a trace.

Celebration of books

This evening I went to the Nandan premises where a boi-bajar is in full swing these days (Celebration of World Book Week, would be on till 4th May, timings: 2pm-8pm). I didn’t expect so many publications though. All the big names like ABP, Mitra and Ghosh, Dey’s, Tuli-Kolom, NBT and Oxford have their stalls here. Sadly, I didn’t have enough time to visit all the stalls. Though I bought my share of books from the fair, I would love to revisit the site once again, to complete my systematic carpet-bombing (a friend has nicknamed my combing of book-stalls by this name).

NCERT books and nostalgia

I came across a news some days back that students of many classes, especially those in classes X and XII of CBSE schools were experiencing difficulties as many textbooks were not available in Kolkata markets though the new session has already begun from the first week of April in most of the schools. This news made me realize that nothing has changed from the time when I was a student. I became somewhat nostalgic while flipping through the pages of memory. I still vividly remember how excited I used to be on the day when results were scheduled to be declared as that meant to be in the possession of the book-list and pestering my parents to get me my new books at the earliest. The bookstall that sold books of NCERT and CBSE, close to my home, was Boipotro. It had a famous (and more notorious) cousin those days (perhaps even today, too) called Eureka. However, we preferred Boipotro, not only because the kakus (yes, that’s how we called those manning the store) were very well behaved, but also because they charged fair prices. Eureka, on the other hand, often pasted stickers over the printed prices, forcing people to pay more (people had to buy the books as this was mostly done for books that were scarce in the market). A few other things that I hated about this book stall was that it forced us to buy some guide books along with the text, not to mention some binded books (original copies were like paperbacks) for which we had to shell an extra amount. It so happened that when I was in class X, some books were not available in the market. However, thanks to my father’s contacts in Delhi, I was able to get the books right from the capital and my studies didn’t get hampered. This act of getting capital-copies of my textbooks was a feature even when I was in class XI. I thought that all those plights of students were over but the news made me realize that history repeats itself, only to the agony of students this time……

Some interesting sites that I stumbled upon

Some useful insight about a few in-things of the blogosphere: http://www.website-design-network.com/video.php

A map showing some old Empires (period-wise) finally ending in the formation of independent nations: http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf

Some historical audio files: http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=460&phpMyAdmin=af0f6b4465fe3f904426eaeb3dc0e3fa

Feel free to post your comments about the aforesaid, irrespective of whether they are brickbats or garlands.

Bengal braces for another Bandh

Tomorrow (21 April), Kolkata would again come to a standstill owing to the 12 hour Bandh called by Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Supremo against rising prices of the daily commodities. I saw a poster yesterday saying "Feley rekhe bhater haanri, chortey chaina motor gaari" (loosely translated as:I don't want to ride a car when I can't have enough to eat). The agenda is a burning issue today as the past few months have seen a steep rise in day-to-day commodities so much that it's an uphill task to manage your budgets, what with the government's inefficiency to do anything meaningful to curb the rising prices. However, how crippling the state for 12 hours would be a solution to this problem is beyond my understanding. Sadly, the political leaders don't consider our plight when they mask their dubious intentions behind a politically correct subject like the present rising price index. So, the common man has nothing to do but to suffer.