Review: Sach Kahun Toh: An Autobiography

Sach Kahun Toh: An Autobiography by Neena Gupta
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: An authentic and honest take on her own life journey

Neena Gupta's life has been condensed to the Vivian Richards and Masaba Gupta in popular media and her autobiography spares a couple of pages to that episode and focuses on all the other aspects that make Neena the respected role model that she is for so many Indians. She starts off really well as the Delhi girl , bhenji stereotype to as she moves on to Mumbai after her NSD stint.

Then it does get repetitive and she does highlight the same about her naivety as she is taken advantage of or left gullible in love, career and life. She talks about the struggles, the casting couch and her brush with film festivals in bite sized chapters with a very simple writing style.

The editing could have been way more crisper removing some of the repetitive material littered through the book and the end chapters fall into a timeline of shows and movies she has done - a slightly extended filmography.

It is an easy read with an authentic and honest take that Neena Gupta takes for herself focusing on the challenges any middle class individual would go through in a typical Indian city irrespective of career or industry.

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Review: Buri Nazar

Buri Nazar by Madhuri Shekar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: A little too perfect a potential son in law can also be a cause of concern.

A short story by Madhuri Shekar adapted into Hindi by Noopur Sinha over 6 episodes of about 30 minutes each - I am a big fan of Sayani Gupta and Supriya Pathak with the medium of voice are able to create such a relatable mother-daughter relationship through the light moments to the dark moments. Supriya as the mom is always worried even when things are going too perfect which gets her daughter's goat for all the worrying her mom had done for things not going good. While the dad plays a supporting role without being overbearing, the potential son in law tries real hard to create the goosebumps that his character is supposed to evince in all of us.

The light hearted to dark sinister mode happens very rapidly and that timing felt a bit off for me but just for the chemistry of Sayani and Supriya, The build up to the supernatural thriller that this is supposed to be is good, maybe setting expectations too high worth nevertheless worth a listen.

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Review: My Indian Odyssey

My Indian Odyssey by Vincent Ebrahim
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A Third Culture Kid tries tracing his grandfather's journey experiencing his roots on the way

As a podcast, Vincent does a lovely job of capturing the sounds of India through the 8 episodes as he visits Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Agra, McLeodganj, Darjeeling, Kolkata and experiences different aspects of each of the cities and the multitude of cultures that India offers, all whilst he tries to figure what his grand dad went through back in 1899 when he sailed out to South Africa. Whilst it feels like another standard foreigner visiting India and meeting a very tiny sample set of Indian community and adding broad scopes based on the same, I liked how he did capture some aspects of India purely though an audio podcast. I could relive some of the places based on the descriptions he shared mingled with the background noises whether it is the train journey, walking through Chandni Chowk or dining at some fancy places especially the "dress code" which even colonial Britain no longer follows.

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Review: Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sunderban

Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sunderban by Amitav Ghosh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A mythological folklore in the form of dwipodi-poyer (metering in couplets)

Amitav Ghosh tries the art of writing verse metering in about 24 syllables per couplet or roughly 12 per line. Technically challenging no doubt and you have to appreciate him for that attempt. Getting over the technicalities, this is a spin off from his "Hungry Tide" about the legend of Bon Bibi and Dokkhin Rai - a fable that has a lot of history associated around Sunderbans and is a local legend lasting over centuries and generations through oral history.

With the illustrations and easy flowing language, this easily falls under the genre of children's books considering it's petite size too with a moral to end the fable with.

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Review: The Stationery Shop of Tehran

The Stationery Shop of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hooter: A love story against the backdrop of political turmoil

Reading the hooter, you'd think that sounds like every romance book ever. If you were brought up on a diet of Bollywood movies in the 80s and early 90s to an extent, this story line won't catch you off guard. What does is how beautifully Marjan pours romance into each of her characters from Roya the 17 year old protagonist, Bahram - her love interest, Fakhri the stationery shop owner where the both meet for the first time under the backdrop of Iran in the 1950s trying to find it's feet on the political spectrum. The way politics percolates everyday life, this book could have been set in 2021 and still feel in play. How macro politics impact everyday lives and decisions of common people far removed from the politics is what this book captures whilst peeling off more layers through all the backstories by walking though all the back alleys of 1950s Tehran - the traditions, the food, the clash of cultures around the protagonist's teenage love story. Whilst it isnt a historical romance novel, the history is beautifully intertwined in the story. The book starts with 2013 and ends with 2013 and captures the journey in between.

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Review: The Code Breaker

The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A biography of CRISPR and the field of gene editing along with the players involved.

This is a part biography, part biochemistry deep dive, part philosophy on scientific thinking and ethics and part rest of it all. Whilst it starts off with Jennifer Doudna, the book evolves into all the major players involved around CRISPR, the competitive races in the scientific publishing community, discussion around passion and goals, the eccentricities of the very smart , a lot of heavy biochemistry deep dive and how it all ties into current affairs with the race to first identify corona virus and then the work towards the vaccine. I liked how "history" is in a timeline I have lived through around the 90s and 2000s. Walter does justice to bring in a gender perspective to field of Science giving Rosalind Franklin her time in the sun along with focusing on Jennifer and her former co worker and fellow Nobel Prize winner Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier having to fight sexism to get their due. Science may be objective, the pursuit of it and the accolades are very subjective as highlighted in this and many other books on science and it's history.

Whilst you do get a sense of the world of sciences, compared to other books , this gets too in depth with the science and maybe repetitive to an extent for a non doctorate like me unless Walter was trying to structure his book similar to CRISPR and the repeating structures. The world of gene editing, bio hackers, importance of scientific rigour, ethical dilemma, possibilities of the future if we can edit our own genes and the recent battles against covid provide a mix of a lot and clearly an attempt at something different. Though I do wonder if Walter wasn't treating this subject, would the book have been even worse and it is his sheer talent that I could stay hooked even to the extent that I did.

In summary, I guess the book could have been CRISPR.

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Review: Murder at the Mushaira

Murder at the Mushaira by Raza Mir
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A period drama masquerading as a murder mystery

The biggest highlight of the book is the protagonist - the poet laureate Mirza Ghalib double hatting himself as a detective. A beautiful period drama in the world of mehfils and mushairas, a Delhi of a different era as Bahadur Shah Zafar now considered a titular head in hindsight but doubts being raised in present tense and how these foreign traders had brought in military might and seemed to be taking over the country. Playing around that macro narrative, the book captures the back stories of the main characters and how convoluted their relationships are. The author adds couplets at the start of every chapter that make for an interesting read though not necessarily related to the chapter ahead. So Kirorimal - the newly appointed Chandni Chowk kotwal has a murder at a mushaira where a poet is murdered , the British seemed very flustered about it and want him to solve it quick. He enlists the help of Mirza who goes about his wits and ego to unearth something much bigger than a murder over a petty issue but could resonate across a nation. This is where the entire premise of the murder mystery gets thrown out of the window for the grander scheme of things. But the grander scheme of things come too late in the game to etch memories for you. It becomes the buffet meal where you walk away with a fully tummy but none of the dishes leave a mark in your memory. But remembering my own walk to Mirza Ghalib's house in Delhi and the way the author has painted that era, I feel he does truly manage to transport you to that era but lurches you back to reality before any of your other senses can take in that era.

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Review: Think Like a Spy

Think Like a Spy by LaRae Qua
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hooter: A ex Military, ex CIA and ex FBI agent share tips for the real world

The entire set up was extremely promising with individuals from 3 different spheres sharing their experiences and learning to bring back into the civilian world but either due to the nature of declassification or keeping it generic, turns into a regular self help session which is very robotic and rehearsed. The key takeaways are things you probably already knew like self discipline, confidence, digital footprint can easily be tracked. Some of the stories felt retrofitted for the use case. Like when they want to flip a foreign asset and party super hard to win him over whilst telling him we dont want to party hard with you because you dont want to flip or the case where a random sighting of a seemingly lost asset in a newspaper clipping became a story of perseverance and not losing hope. Felt very trite.

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