Review: Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story

Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story by Mihir Dalal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: The journey of Flipkart from idea to execution

As a documentary on India's first brand name in the internet world - leading the flag for start up ecosytem here a decade before it became a norm, this does a great job at explaining the people and dynamics that played in the ecosystem that Flipkart grew in. Based on conversations, this provides color to the dry facts you'd assume with a documentary of an organisation. It becomes sweeter for me as they talk of hangouts in Koramangala hitting home much closer than I'd have expected hence making for a relatable read. While there is a bias the conversations have in painting individuals involved but you have to take that with a pinch of salt for there is no singular truth when people's memories are jogged down.

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Review: Tamarind City: Where Modern India Began

Tamarind City: Where Modern India Began by Bishwanath Ghosh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: An individual's memoir about their experiences in Chennai along with anecdotaral accounts of historical significance.

With snippets and anecdotes covering a multitude of facets that Chennai have to offer - again purely from his experiences rather than a memoir of the city from it's perspective, this makes for an interesting reading to hear the history behind the daily lives and names of folks from Chennai, places and some of the traditions especially around areas and their pasts.

Without being too boisterous or bashful, the author provides some unique insights into the history of Broadway, Fort George, the famous Ratna cafe, the iyer vs iyengar rivalries and the dravidian influences and the tussles and other sub genres of quintessential Chennai. There is a very informal vibe to his writing, like a journal or a blog which makes it for fun reading along with some fascinating tit bits about Singara Chennai.



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Review: Midnight's Children

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: The parallels between the birth of the protagonist and India and how their lives unfold.

Considered a must read in nouveau classic literature, finally got down to this book with an extremely interesting premise of the journey of kids born right at the gong of midnight when India received freedom and how intertwined their lives are. While Salman has a colorful writing style painting the imagery through the decades and setting up the environment really well, I found myself plodding through the storyline not being invested in too many of the characters that came and went in the melee of Saleem Sinai's life. The magical realism gets a bit contrite, a degree of self centredness fits in where the book feels like it is the author loving to hear his own voice than the audience's reactions. But a great capsule into the backdrop of Indian history. The Brass Monkey was my favourite character till she turns into Jamila . There is a wide assortment of interesting characters who make a cameo performance and move on. Probably the book is too elite for me or I just had higher expectations.



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Review: The Secret Keeper of Jaipur

The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: Second book in the trilogy of the henna artist and her supporting crew 12 years into the future in the 1960s

Still a period drama in an essence, this time it focuses on Malik - the cute boy grown into a fine young man as he deals with the life and coming of age. Alka continues to paint a womderful caricature of all the characters involved across locations and took me a while to get familiar with names of the past and how they had grown up. Whilst there is a move forward in their stories and how they have grown and changed over time as you'd expect humans to, it did get a bit tricky for me to re-evaluate the picture I had created for all the folks from my previous reading. The plot seemed relatively bland compared to the first one and not sure if this is the curse of trilogy that I always see with books and movies - the second one is usually sub consciouly written as a bridge to the third one and just remains that. This book felt the same.

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