Reading again..

I've gotten through two books post Georgia Tech.. and I'm lucky they were both damn good, or I'd have given up again.

The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini was an often-twisting tale about friendship, guilt and circumstance in a war-torn country. I finally understood what the term 'jaw-dropping' actually meant. The movie, though impressive, wasn't quite as good as the book. However, you know a movie has touched the audience when there are those very quiet 15 seconds at the end of the movie when nobody's moving.. mostly out of shock. I guess the mostly-American crowd had for the first time seen a world that they never believed could exist, and hence the shock. It was not just the story of a man.. it represented the story of a whole country.

The first thing that comes to mymind when I think of the book/movie... "A thousand times for you Sohrab."

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta talks a bit about the Mumbai we know.. and then it talks a lot about the Mumbai we don't know, the 'Sone ki chidiya'. Everything about it was mesmerizing.. the underworld, bar dancers, bollywood, vada-pav, the local trains, and the people. Its a pity that the book was written prior to the train blasts... I would be interested in reading how Suketu would have told that story, only because the scenes on TV are still so fresh in everyone's mind.

My favourite part of this book was the story of Babanji, the young hopeful Bihari poet.