Angst In My Pangst

I seem to be humming the song Aadat, the version by Jal quite often. Especially when I am in the office. I don’t know the words but the tune is comforting, in a way. It takes you places.

Have you heard the original version of the song Brazil? I had always assumed it was a Vengaboys tune, until I heard the Kate Bush vocal version, with arrangements by Michael Kamen, from the Terry Gilliam movie. And then Chandru gave me the Xavier Cugat version, which seems to be one of the most “local” versions, the one that sticks very closely to traditional orchestration of this patriotic song. Then today, I was listening to Joabim’s Stone Flower album (courtesy Chandru, again, he had given me the other two Joabim albums, Wave and Tide – and a couple of Eumir Deodato albums last week), and it has a 9 minute version of the song, with a Jazzy feel that throws all other versions in the dust. Now that song is playing continuously as I type this. Blissful!

A trip to MR last week gave me extremely strange things – the first three issues of Transmetropolitan, a couple of manga issues by Rumiko Takahashi, couple of issues of Concrete, some Simpsons trades, the last four issues of Animal Man AND – three books by Nick Hornby. High Fidelity, yes, yes, YES – I had read this on a train journey to Kanpur last year, thanks to Samrat, and had been lusting to buy it ever since, About a Boy – which I own already, and have read, and was not really impressed by – bought this because a friend wanted it, and How To be Good – one that I’ve to read, and soon. Also picked up a Philip Jose Farmer two-in-one novel, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin, which made me really happy ‘cos I had been looking for these ever since reading A Feast Unknown. All these books are a pulp fiction fan’s dream-come-true, they detail the real memoirs of an English nobleman named Lord Grandrith, a man who was raised by apes, and who has been given the gift of immortality by a shadowy group called The Nine, along with his half-brother, a man called Doc Caliban, who was raised as an embodiment of physical and mental excellence. In case you haven’t realised already, these are Farmer’s tributes to Tarzan and Doc Savage, respectively, and the gusto with which he narrates these adventures – making fun of the pulp traditions of Burroughs and Dent and yet, accounting for them, deconstructing them flawlessly – is awesome. Picked up the novels for fifty rupees each.

I read Shantaram – which began to get tiresome somewhere in the middle – I somehow could not relate to Gregory Roberts talking about love and the wonder that is India and how much Indians love one another and how much we sing and dance and how resilient Indians are. They made sense the first time he says them, the second time and even the third time, but by the time we are at the eleventy-ninth such comment , I have given up. Weird coincidence of the month: About to board a Spicejet flight to Delhi at 2 AM in the morning, I find myself unable to sleep while waiting in the heat of the airport lounge ( is that what they call it here? Somehow the word lounge seems rather inappropriate when there isn’t any Buddha Bar music playing in the background) and began reading Shantaram. After a while I look around, standard practice while reading a book, resting my eyes and all, and with a shock, realise that the Punjabi fellow in front of me is reading Shantaram, the lady two rows away is engrossed in Shantaram! And as we make our way towards the security gate, I find out that in all, there are four people in the airport, about to board the same flight, reading Shantaram.

For a second, I wondered if I was fast asleep and dreaming and ergo, about to miss the plane, which put me in a fine panic, lemme tell you. I even walked around and discreetly pinched myself, just to get rid of the feeling.

But yeah , the book grabs you right from the beginning. And there isn’t any amount of screaming your brain does that can stop you from plunging ahead. I landed at Delhi sometime around four AM, at page two hundred and fifty. The flight to Kanpur was three hours away, and after much self-debate, decided to plop off to sleep at the airport, instead of continuing with the book.