Review: Will

Will by Will Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: Why did Will Smith do what he did at the Oscars? The answer lies in this book.

What drives Will? An autobiographical account provides you a background of the rough childhood to rough stardom that awaits him from his perspective. When you are unhappy that you are not rich, not famous or not wanted by the other sex, you still have hope that getting one of them will get the others. When you have them all and are unhappy - what do you do? Will deals with that dilemma too of having it all. I am a big fan of books but this is one book you have to go for the audiobook narrated by Will Smith himself because as a rap artist - that elemnt comes across authentic in this form.

Hard work, opportunities and luck in equal measure but he makes the most of it and indeed iterates the same when he would have dumped a script of himself thinking it was too Hollywood with a ice bagger kid going to win a grammy to being a top grosser Hollywood / International star.

No doubt he is a great performer and he continues that performance with the narration of his story along with painting his vulneribilities to make sure he doesn't come across as a boastful self centred egoist. Going back to what happened at the oscars, I think his fear of being painted a coward in the eyes of the women he loves thanks to childhood trauma could explain those inexplicible actions.


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Review: How the BJP Wins: Inside India s Greatest Election Machine

How the BJP Wins: Inside India s Greatest Election Machine by Prashant Jha
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A journalist's POV on the ground specifically around 2017 UP elections

Prashant Jha was on the ground reporting on the 2017 UP elections which set the baseline for 2019 especially after the losses of Bihar and Delhi after high decibel campaigns. Irrespective of their idealogies, the book provides an insight on what is making it work. Professionalism in dealing with politics is probably the summary here - going to the grass roots and creating a scalable and replicatable framework that could be leveraged across the country rejuvenated the grassroots which are the true powerhorses of democracy and not the airconditioned hallways of the power capitals that most media like to pick their soundbytes from. Whilst the ideology warfare ensured middle class and upwards swayed to the tunes of the political parties and broke friendships on, the true power centres of democracy irrespective of religion were getting houses, gas and other last mile government services that made all the high decibel debates purely what they were - all noise no sound. If cinema is the silver screen, politics is the golden screen and BJP has figured how to play it out at the moment. This book doesn't come out with any secret formulae but substantiates the ground realities and introduces a lot of players who define the next generation of this party- folks who are slogging it out in the field today and rising through the ranks like Ram Madhav who ran the entire North East expansion strategy. This book provides an academic insight into the electoral process and the mathematics that goes in defining victory using the BJP rise as its case study focussing on the duality of Modi and Shah who are playing their roles to perfection.

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Review: Unfinished

Unfinished by Priyanka Chopra Jonas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A memoir of her life so far - marrying Nick Jonas as the major life event to wrap things up.

Priyanka Chopra is unabashedly honest about being bold and being the centre of attention focused on highlighting her uniqueness in the crowds or circles she is in. The dusky Miss World to Indian artist in Hollywood, female centric roles in Bollywood and so many more achievements she has carved out through her career so far.

I hadn't really known of how privileged a background she came from but irrespective of that, she worked hard to achieve what she has. An extremely supportive family and extended family that allowed her to push for her dreams without having to worry too much of the consequences allowed her to push harder and harder than most folks who didn't have that safety net.

Whilst the book primarily focuses on her happy moments through her life with the life defining challenges in hindsight, the memoirs do feel airbrushed to paint a generic inspirational memoir - it does provide some unique insights to the life she has grown into and how she handled fame that literally didn't knock at the door and arrived unannounced - a big push being her teenage brother simply wanting his own room in the house.

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Review: Masala Lab : The Science of Indian Cooking

Masala Lab : The Science of Indian Cooking by Krish Ashok
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A chemistry lesson on the Indian kitchen

Just as the author suggests - adding science to the art of cooking. The premise is wonderful for a country full of engineers trying to figure out the art of "you'll know how much water you need to knead the atta" and other feel good factors when the ingredients are right. A beginner's perspective to cooking and the scientific reasons behind some of the customs and tricks and hacks that can help improve the taste and/or efficiency of cooking. A geeky approach to cooking with all the chemical and physical reactions at play.

For regular cooks, a lot of the info shared would seem common sense or redundant. For experimental cooks with a nerdy bent of mind - this makes for good reading. Like a pinch of salt to enhance sweetneess and a pinch of salt in a sweet dish to mute overly sweetness, how to fast track pressure cooking though compromising on taste and what needs to be heated how so that the color and nutrients aren't missed out.

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Review: Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence

Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India's Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence by Shrayana Bhattacharya
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: A conversation on gender disparity in India across all spectrums

Using Shah Rukh Khan's fandom as a common thread and "clickbaity" version of a title, this is a culmination of fifteen years of research on something as simple as being a woman in India. She cuts across economic strata, age demographics, lifestyles across women who profess their fandom for SRK and how they relate to his persona on screen and off screen along with the movies he has acted in.

Understanding a woman may be a quest a lot of men are supposedly on, this book tries to capture thei aspirations blocked by patriarchy and other social constructs. She does get down to economics of unpaid labour but mixes it up with SRK and Bollywood to make it a lot more palatable to the average reader.

She weaves along the themes of finding love in this country as the aspirations and expectations of newer generations of women change, even if ever so slowly compared to how the world has been changing on the screen and off it. From an airhostess being the first female bread earner in her family to a freelance gig economy worker in the back lanes of India to a government officer - the various cross sections have different challenges and different outlooks but united by the fact that they are gender specific in a lot of cases and the double standards they have to deal with all the time.

The book doesnt try to provide solutions but just shares a story of many a woman and am sure in some form of the other - one character or the other - every Indian woman relates to this journey. A good book to acknowledge the reality. Obviously being a SRK Fan herself, you see a lot of retro fitting of concepts back to SRK movies which can feel jarring but you can give her a free pass there because that is what fandom is all about - more from the heart than the mind.

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