Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema

I’m trying to take my writing beyond newspaper reports and blog posts. I’m working on a collection of short stories set in my city. The stories are in the making and I’m still playing around with a few ideas one of which includes an Indian version of an American cowboy, a gunslinger or a marshal, on horseback and in full western gear. He’ll carry six-guns and he'll be fast on the draw. I don't know if I can lasso the character, the story, and the setting the way I imagine but there’s no harm in trying. I want each of the stories to be as outlandish as possible. I'm also working on a book on self-help that has a huge market in India. Everyone seems to be writing one these days. The problem with writing self-help is that you tend to get preachy and the last thing I want to produce is another cure for insomnia. I'm rewriting the three chapters I've written so far and I’m fighting to keep my eyes open. I'm thinking of consulting other self-help ...

A German entry for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom this Tuesday. It took me a good ten minutes to trace this little-known film on the internet. When I googled “Out of Order” I got a film by that name but it turned out to be a British comedy I’d never heard of. It had George Baker whom I know from Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), but definitely not from I, Claudius , a BBC adaptation, or Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1987-2000) where he plays Inspector Rex Wexford, or a couple of James Bond films I’d seen. My search also threw up a namesake Rod Stewart album and a 2003 television mini-series that had some fine actors like Eric Stoltz, Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy, Kim Dickens, Peter Bogdanovich, and Lane Smith. I haven't heard or seen either. I then looked for movies about elevators and actually came up with two, called Elevator , made in 2004 and 2011. Their plot—stuck in the lift and something happens—was similar but neither of...

This week’s contribution for Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase . I had almost forgotten, when they came and reopened all the old wounds—the woman who swam naked before my unseeing eyes, and the man who had already killed once… Just over six thousand words, this short story by Evan Hunter (alias Ed McBain) is not as gritty and hardboiled as the blurb hints. Instead, what you get from the legendary crime fiction writer is only a degree of suspense and the atmosphere of a thriller. It’s enough to keep you glued to every word in this cracking story.  Adventure , April 1954 Jeff Toland is a brave young man, a former soldier, and blind. He is angry and frustrated because he is patronised. His older brother, Tom, treats him like a simpleton and his father follows him around lest he trips and kills himself. Jeff rebels. He wants to be left alone. He decides to go up to the cabin in the woods next to a brook and live there all by himself. "I had li...

I’m currently reading a historical fiction about WWII by a writer who has been accused of never having written it. Do I continue to read it? I know I will because the book is so fascinating in a shocking and terrifying way that I can’t stop now. The book is  The Legion of the Damned , 1957, the first of several WWII novels written by Sven Hassel, a controversial Danish-born writer. His novels have been compared to pulp fiction. The accuser is Erik Haaest, an equally controversial Danish journalist who apparently hated Sven Hassel and denounced all his books on several grounds. Both Hassel and Haaest died in 2012. The Legion of the Damned (‘Fordømtes Legion’ in Danish) is the first-person account of a deserter in the German Army narrated over years. It begins with his arrest by the dreaded SS and incarceration in a concentration camp and later transfer to a penal concentration camp where he is trained like an animal to fight on the Russian front. Anyone who is held ca...

In celebration of ‘Crime Fiction of the 1950s’ for Friday’s Forgotten Books (and short stories) over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase . The room was warm, the curtains were closed, the two table lamps were lit. On the cupboard behind her there were two glasses and some drinks. Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work. I’m going to keep this review short as Lamb to the Slaughter , an unexpected crime fiction by Roald Dahl, is only 2,393 words long. Devoted housewife Mary Maloney is beside herself with joy when her husband, police detective Patrick Maloney, returns home after a long and tiring day at the police station. She idolises her husband and looks forward to his company each evening. They sit opposite each other and sip their drinks.  Mary is glowing. She is sewing, probably clothes, for their unborn child. After finishing his second drink, Patrick breaks the news to her, quietly and gently. He tells her that he has thought about it a lot and ...

Everything was aimed at satisfying the whims of women. The popular clichés, the pretty romances, the catchwords of advertising became realities; and the compound kept the men enslaved. George knew what he had to do... If it hadn't been for the cover, which looked like a picture from a vintage issue of  Ladies Home Journal , and the catchy blurb, I would not have read this short story by sf writer Irving E. Cox. Science fiction is riddled with possibilities, such as the uneven matriarchal society in this story where women rule the world and treat men like slaves. Their weapon is a mysterious compound, an addictive love potion, that makes the men amorous and lust after women, all in the name of love. The compound,  “ a mixture of aphrodisiacs and a habit-forming drug, ”  forces the men to wait on women and do as their wives say. The potion, stored in a capsule, is secretly brewed at the all-female Directorate Building in Hollywood. However, not all men all...

Another deviation for Tuesday's Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom . Don’t miss out on some real vintage action over there.  Not long ago, we were watching The Fugitive when a member of the family remarked that Tommy Lee Jones was a very good actor and that he looked pleasant on screen. I thought about it and agreed he was pleasing but also brooding at the same time, which far from diminishing his screen presence actually enhances it.  Tommy Lee Jones is one of those unassuming actors whom you don't tire of watching and have a certain comfort level with; someone who puts you at ease in your seat; someone like Morgan Freeman, who provides good entertainment and good value. His characters, at least the ones I've seen, are easy going, laconic, frequently bemused, often flustered, and never really in a hurry chasing good or bad guys, and he has been chasing a fair number of them. His cinematic appeal pr...

Review & Interview “Dusty found a body in my yard this morning. We’re trying to figure out who he is, when he died and who was responsible.” When Myrtle Clover’s insufferable yardman stumbles upon a dead body in her backyard, you can’t help feeling that the amateur sleuth in her late eighties is secretly pleased as it gives her a chance to investigate a crime in the sleepy town of Bradley, North Carolina. Red, her son, neighbour, and chief of police, goes as far as suspecting his mother of flipping out and killing somebody just so that she can play detective again.  Red is wary of his mother’s intentions. When Myrtle observes that she is getting too old to clean floors and lift heavy things, Red says, in a gently mocking tone, “But not too old to chase criminals down.” In this particular case, Myrtle thinks she has an obligation to the corpse. The initial banter between mother and son sets the tone for this lighthearted and delightful mystery that revolves around th...

Do you think the nineties was the best decade for action movies in recent years? While I’m not sure about my own answer, I can confidently say that Speed tops my list and worms its way into Tuesday’s Overlooked Films at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom . I missed forgotten books last Friday. My proposed review of a short vintage mystery, announced with fanfare in the previous post, will have to wait. I read the ebook but I have not had the time to write about it. Before I do, however, I'll have to once again go through the book, to sift through the various characters and figure out who is who, make sense of the subplots, and see how I can refer to a particular dialect. Was the book confusing or was it my lack of understanding? The latter, no doubt. In the past, mystery novels have left me baffled. I've had to reread certain portions to clear my doubts. It is easy to go back in a book, not so in an ebook, especially if you're reading on a tablet where you tap page after...

Today is May 1, a public holiday, in celebration of May Day, Labour Day or International Workers’ Day. It has a special significance for India and especially for the western state of Maharashtra of which Mumbai (then Bombay) is the capital. On this day, in 1960, a little over a hundred people sacrificed their lives during protests for the formation of a separate Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra with Mumbai as its capital. Marathi is the official language of the state and one of the twenty-three official languages of India. For this reason May 1 is also celebrated as Maharashtra Day. “Maha” means great, “Rashtra” means “nation” or “land,” hence great nation. The formation of the state was part of the reorganisation of states under Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister after the British left. Maharashtra is the second most populous and third largest state as well as the richest, a distinction it owes to Mumbai which is the financial, industrial, commercial, and entertainm...