Per·sep·o·lis ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-sp-ls)

An ancient city of Persia northeast of modern Shiraz in southwest Iran. It was the ceremonial capital of Darius I and his successors. Its ruins include the palaces of Darius and Xerxes and a citadel that contained the treasury looted by Alexander the Great.

But the Persepolis I am talking about now is an autobiography, written by an Iranian lady named Marjane Satrapi, and needless to say, the medium she chooses to recount the story of her life is the Comic Book. It worked well, the original French publication earning quite a lot of accolades, and Pantheon Books brought out the English version of the book last year, as a beautifully designed hardcover. I learnt about it from Tom Arnold’s review in time.com, and after noticing it in the stores, bought it. Loved it immensely – the combination of the honest childs-eye-view of the proceedings in Iran and Ms Satrapi’s deceptively simple artwork gave me goosepimples, an aching heart and a smile on my face all at the same time.  So did a lot of other people I lent the book to.

I was lucky enough to find the book at Walden a couple of days ago, a single copy, when I was searching for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and yesterday I bought it. I finished reading it just now.

Truth be told, I want to read it again. With a slightly more detailed look at the artwork – it is both sparse and striking at the same time, the depth of emotion this lady can bring to a face with a couple of black-and-white lines is just incredible. The cover design is the same as that of the first time ( see below), except for the colour, and the fact that the woman we see in the picture is an adult. My only complaint with the book lies in the fact that some of the ink seems to be smudged at certain pages. Whether this is a problem with my copy or whether Random House goofed up during the printing process I shan’t know.

The story continues from ‘Memoirs of a Childhood’, from where the teenaged Marjane leaves her parents behind in Iran and comes to Vienna to study. It’s tough going for her, as she faces resentful relatives, sullen nuns, unhelpful classmates and worst of all, a language barrier. “Every morning, I was rudely awakened by the sound of Lucia’s hair dryer”, she says, Lucia being her roommate, “Woken by a hair dryer to return to a school where I had no friends. ” But slowly, she accustoms herself to the new life, earns quite a few friends, reads Simone de Beauvoir and tries to pee standing up and then proceeds to get herself thrown out of boarding school.

Her life changes again, as she begins to stay with a friend. A hilarious introduction to the wild partying scene follows ( “..the party was not exactly what I imagined. In Iran, at parties, everyone would smoke and eat. In Vienna, people preferred to lie around and smoke. And then, I was turned off by all these public displays of affection. What do you expect, I came from a traditional country.”) Her mental transformation by all those cultural differences is followed by her physical growth – “between the age of fifteen and sixteen, I grew seven inches. It was impressive.” At the same time, Marjane is slipping away from her own cultural background, at times even denying her Iranian origin to her peers.

The book is hilarious and serious by turns, like the way Marjane’s mother( who she meets after nineteen months) takes to her eight gay roommates, and how the two women bond again. The story continues at a perfect pace, not skimming over the details of Marjane’s first love and heartbreak, and her near-fatal encounters with dope, after which she decides to come back to Iran.

The second half of the book is all the more fascinating, because the eyes of the child-Marjane are now replaced by those of the woman, and we receive an adult’s point of view of Iranian society. Her rebonding ( reluctant!) with her relatives, the cultural clashes that her Western years have brought her, and the price she has to pay for being outspoken and fearless ( which, sometimes, did hold her in good stead, even in Iran)

The book ends the same way as the first did, with a tearful farewell between Marjane and her parents and her grandmother, as she leaves Iran again, leaving behind a broken marriage and a life of strict laws. “The laws of Iran are not for you.”, her mother tells her, “I forbid you to come back.” But freedom has a price, as Marjane tells us, because she saw her grandmother only once again in her lifetime, a year later – and she died after two years.

All in all, Persepolis 2 is an honest book, a book I would love to reread from time to time on lonely afternoons. It might not have broken my heart the way the first book did, but it did bring quite a few smiles on my face. It is easy to think you know Marjane Satrapi after you’ve read Persepolis, but to know and understand how a couple of years can change a human being, any human being, for that matter, read Persepolis 2. It’smore personal that the first one was – I wonder how the actual people in the book must feel when they see themselves in it, and Ms Satrapi does not flatter anyone, including herself.

I only hope there will be more books forthcoming from the lady.

India-centric Trivia: The English translation of The Story of a Return is by a lady named Anjali Singh.

Is not anywhere near.

But prices of Universal CDs have come down, and how! CDs originally priced at 525, 475 and 395 rupees each are now on sale at Music World for 95 and 195 rupees each. Double CDs for 295 rupees.

Universal owns the rights to the music of Metallica, U2, Nirvana, Bjork, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Guns ‘n Roses, among others. Though I saw only some Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and U2 albums in the pile on sale right now, I think the others will come up for the same prices soon.

Personal buys: Khaled’s N’ssi N’ssi for 195, The Best of Bill Haley and The Comets and The Cranberries’ Bury The Hatchet for 95 each.

With prices like these, I think I will stop downloading albums, and buy up all those stuff that I own as mp3s, to show my appreciation for Universal music and their nice gesture. Viva Legitimacy! Viva Fair Price!

Surreal experience of the weekend: Sitting outside the Systems Administrator’s office and eavesdropping on a group of five girls and three guys who were practising their American accents. Practising, as in, the girls recited phrases from a sheet of paper, fumbling over pronounciation, and the guys ( who seemed to be the resident experts) correcting them from time to time. The girls weren’t too bad, I realised, after one of the guys took the piece of paper and gave a live demonstration of How to Speak Americanised English Properly.

Second-most surreal experience of the weekend: Gatecrashing Jay’s farewell party and being offered a bouquet.

I was in Bombay the last four days, working on a client issue, sitting in front of endless rows of 21″ flatscreen monitors and clicking on various instances of Web Application Performance Test. We needed 500 users to run a benchmark, and the evaluation copy of WAPT provides for only 20 users per instance, so we installed 25 instances of WAPT on 25 machines, and whenever a test was fired, we would have to start all of them one by one. Which, you will agree, gives a slightly different twist to the expression “running tests”.

It was raining on Monday morning, so I could not go to Flora Fountain and hunt for books. I was not supposed to buy any books for the next two months, but the Strand Book Fair got a little too much. Found a nice collection of short stories by Kim Newman, he of the Anno Dracula series, a couple of movie-books, and an interesting-looking book on songwriters of the 60’s and 70’s ( Dylan, Cohen, Baez, Carole King and all) They were also selling The Beatles Anthology for 1500 rupees, and because I have sworn not to buy it for more than 1000, and because I was short of cash, and because the weight would have been prodigiously high, I ditched it.

In a bookstall inside the Bombay airport, I found a copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susannah Clarke’s fantasy novel, ten years in the making, and much lauded by Gaiman and the NY Times and Salon.com. 950 rupees, the cover said, and I dropped it. For now.

Walden has a copy of Persepolis 2, and I plan to get it today, before anyone else does.

That’s the byline for Swades, , Ashutosh Gowariker’s next venture after you-know-which-movie. Somebody gifted me the much-awaited album today. Resisted much temptation while in the office, did not want to be distracted during the first listen, and all that jazz. Went for King of Bollywood in the evening, and finally back, and listening with much eagerness. First impressions follow.

It’s definitely one of the better packaged albums brought out lately. None of that crappy single-inlay-card packaging that HMV excels in – the extremely long fold-out cover includes all the lyrics (in the Devanagari script), and the photographs show Shah Rukh sitting rather morosely in a General Class compartment, in a crowded public bus, in an aeroplane, in a boat and on the back of a rather ramshackle motorbike, where he’s looking not-quite morose. The cd is priced at 125 Rs, which is surprising when you notice that the company is T-Series, which had once publicly declared that it won’t price any cd above 100 Rs. Ah, well, market forces catching up, I suppose, with Sony, HMV, Tips and the rest of the corporate buggers setting a price limit of 150 on their recent releases ( Though, to be fair, Tips has been packaging titles excellently, and has had a limited promotional offer of “buy a cd, take an older Tips cd free”)

Nine songs in all, pretty surprising, because I can’t think of any recent Rahman albums with more than 6 songs. A closer look reveals that two of the tracks are instrumental versions. Even so, not bad value for the money.

The songs:

“Yeh Taara Woh Taara”: Udit Narayan in form. Towards the end, two kids ( Master Vignesh and Baby Pooja, ugh, why are all movie-related kids called “Baby” or “Master”? In this day and age too….) join in, Vignesh’s voice kind of resembling the cute voice with the Bihari accent in the theme song of Jungle Book, and he also goes out of tune – I think it was intended to be that way, though. Pooja’s voice sounds like the kid in the “Ek aur Anek Ekta” ad thingie they used to air on Doordarshan once upon a time. Pretty good inspirational lyrics, the song is built on a phased synth-bass line which sticks in my head, and makes me want to go experiment with Fruity Loops.

“Saanwariya” is a solo song by Alka Yagnik, with shades of her earlier work with ARR ( it resembles Mahive and Jogiya Re from Legend of Bhagat Singh, probably due to the sole reason that Alka Yagnik sings with a dholak-bass-tabla-other-assorted-indian-percussion in the background ) Beautiful tune, loved the stylish use of the harp at parts.

“Yun Hi Chala Chal” would sound like a Colonial Cousins song ( you were right, Mons), except for the fact that Kailash Kher sings in it. Love that guy’s voice. The opening beat has shades of Udhaya‘s Pookum Malarae . Udit Narayan and Hariharan alternate on vocals, and Kailash Kher provides the vocal embellishments ( Herr Kher’s voice aptly picturised on Makarand Deshpande, as I have been told). The acoustic guitar backing, and a couple of rock guitar riffs ( which begin at about 5:01 mins into the song) give the song a peppy finish. Towards the end, a couple of trumpets blast through, and I suspect it’s the same sample ( two notes, actually) that was used in Roja,when Arvind Swamy is kidnapped.

“Ahista Ahista” is a slow ballad, with minimal percussion, a couple of notes played on the harp, and Udit and Sadhana Sargam’s voice.  It’s a good song, unsurprisingly the least interesting one for me. Slow songs just don’t hit me the first time, thank you.

“Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera” –  The mandatory (or so it seems) Rahman song in the album. Dunno why, but the Man ends up singing at least one song on every album of his. Pressure from the director? Self-indulgence? The song rocks, though. Has a very interesting rhythm pattern made up of voices ( filtered and compressed ) saying “hoy hoy hoy” at regular intervals, a deep Bass drum, and a shehnai phrase (by Madhu, according to credits). This is the only song in the album that uses a chorus, highly surprising because none of the familiar names(Febi, Feji, Kanchana, Rehana et al)  feature – it’s just identified as the Chennai Chorale Group in the credits. Towards the end, the shehnai and the tabla take over, and bring the song to a beautiful conclusion.

“Pal Pal Hai Bhaari” is a bhajan, and the Lagaan hangover hits the song badly. It not only sounds like a faster version of O Paalanhaare, but also at a point, Navin’s flute sounds like he’s playing “Tumhri Bin Humra Koi Nahin” from that song. A very short time, though. Madhushree sings the song, and Vijay Prakash and interestingly, Ashutosh Gowariker himself have been creditted with vocals – they sing/recite phrases declaiming Rama and praising Ravana ( the bhajan turns out to be one sung at a Ramleela, as the inlay photos prove)  Towards the end, a gubgubi is heard – the usage, as with His Hallowed Orchestration, is near-flawless.

“Dekho Na” brought a smile to my face as soon as the opening bars started. This happens to be a reorchestrated version of “Baba Kichu Tha” from ARR’s Baba, a song that’s been high on the list of under-rated Gems, and deserved a second chance. Sure, all the rest of the rabble-rousers can scream ‘copycat!’ from the rooftops, but “Dekho Na” becomes a different song in this version – the original version was dancey, and well, flirty ( Reena Bharadwaj’s voice deserves that word), while this is more sedate – Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan bring their individual quirks to the composition. I had to listen to this twice, smiling all the while, and then brought out my Baba cd to listen to the original. Listen to the tabla and the tabla-tarang that starts at about 4:00, and the alternating chords that play on the acoustic guitar when they sing ‘Dekho Na, Zara Dekho Na’.

The two instrumental versions of Pal Pal Hai Bhaari and Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera are good, but I suspect I need to listen to the original ones first to get into the alternate versions.

Overall thoughts: Definitely a melody-oriented album, with minimalist Indian instrumentation ( yes, Madhav, none of that trance-techno mishmash ), though with a North Indian tinge. Lagaan-Bhagat Singh hangover persists. Acoustic guitar shines. Amazing non-use of chorus.

AR Rahman is The Man.

And yeah, thanks, Mons, for the gift.

I am afraid the new Internet connection at home (it’s been a month now) is taking its toll on my reading. Reading, as in real, true-to-life, turn-the-page-and-run-eyes-over-the-printed word kind of reading. There’s another kind of reading that’s thriving, I will get to that soon enough.

So, for almost a month now, I haven’t read any book. The Secret History of The Oscars lies on my bed, with a bookmark that moves forward at the rate of, oh, say four pages a week. There’s also Movie-Made America by Robert Sklar, something I began just before Madhav’s quiz, and I haven’t moved ahead of Chapter 3. Oh, and the unread five hundred odd books in the cupboard and the unopened cupboard.

Come to think of it, I also haven’t played any computer games. The virus attack on the second day of the connection caused me to reformat a major section of my hard drive, in particular the E: drive, that had all the games installed on it. My saved-games (the levels to which I had played whatever games I had installed) are all backed up in some cd, and I have to go look for it sometime. But (sigh) who wants to sit through another game installation, when you can …..uh….download comics?

Download, and read comics, of course.

Recent downloads: Complete runs of The Crow (Kitchen Sink Press, Image), Powers (Image), Tom Strong ( America’s Best Comics), Hellboy ( Dark Horse), Bite Club(Vertigo), Vamps (Vertigo), Battle Royale (Tokyopop), The Legend of Kamui (Viz), Nausicaa of the Valley of The Wind (Viz), American Flagg(First), Dicks(Avatar), District X(Marvel Max), Punisher(Marvel Max), Ichi The Killer:The Manga, Daredevil: The Bendis. Of course, loads of other assorted bits and ends.

Ancient Beatzoian history department: The first two manga titles I read in my life were an issue of Mai The Psychic Girl by Ryoichi Ikegami and Xenon: Heavy Metal Warrior by Masaomi Kanzaki. Towards the end of the Xenon comic, there was a beautiful ad of comicbook in which a guy with a sword was upside down in the air, and busy cleaving some unlucky bugger’s head into two pieces. The Legend of Kamui, the book read, by Sanpei Shiroto. I remember writing down the name of the writer in one of those personal diaries I had ( I had quite a few, most of them outdated diaries that were gifted to my father and were later fished out for use by me ). Eight years later, I finally got to read The Legend of Kamui thanks to Bit-torrent.

I read the original Crow series by James O’ Barr with Graeme Revell’s background score from the movie playing in the background.

Bendis and Maleev’s Daredevil, although a little overrated, was a real space-bar hitter ( somehow, “page-turner” doesn’t seem to fit).

Obligatory disclaimer: To those concerned about my ripping off creators of their much-deserved rewards for their work, I can vouch for the fact that I am buying all the stuff that I read in digital format and loved ( and some stuff I didn’t entirely love, but got for cheap). The Authority series is one such example – I read 29 issues in one night, drove vrikodhara up the wall until he read the twelve issues the same night, and the next day, placed my bid on Richard’s lot on eBay. Most of the mainstream comics (Hush, The Ultimates and the rest of the Ultimate line are being reprinted in India anyways, though very slowly ), and I will be buying the other stuff by and by, as and when I have the money or (highly unlikely) find them in Indian stores.

Didn’t I tell you about the other kind of reading? This is it. The CBR format is going to be the savior of the Third World, as far as comics are concerned.

This wednesday, I got a a package from adgy, with the complete run of The Authority I had bought from him on eBay –  29 issues, and 5 issues of the Jenny Sparks miniseries, and the first five issues of The Monarchy. Four cds – a PJ Harvey mix cd to get me hooked onto the lady’s music (mission accomplished, Richard), a cd of Bill Hicks’ live comedy performances, and (hold your breath) two cds by Alan Moore, David J and Tim Perkins – Angel Passage and the grandly named The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theater of Marvels. While I admit this is not as droolworthy as the UN-sanctioned airdrop of comics he promised me sometime back, it still made my week. Thanks, mate. (In case you haven’t realised yet, I am highly underplaying my jubilation, and hence the non-mention of the obligatory War Dance in The Room.)

But now I am back to reading a normal book. Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale. I watched the movie last Sunday, and after I am done with the book, I shall go read the manga.