Tuesday 24 March 2015

Book Review: And We Remained


And We Remained 
by 
Asad Ali Junaid


The Blurb


It is Bangalore in the late 1990’s. There are tremendous socio-economic and cultural transformations taking place as a result of liberalization. How would these changes impact a group of friends in their late teens? How would they cope, find opportunities and what of their original identities would they be left with, after western ideologies are brought in and bombarded into their awareness by cable TV and new media? 

Told through emails and first person account of events, And We Remained is a light and entertaining read of these friends as they experience love, heartbreak, prison, politics, drunken binges, strip clubs, sexcapades, US and Europe during their journey into adulthood


My take on it:

Junaid brings here a breezy and honest-as is where is account of life of an engineering student. This is such a sincere portrayal of a set of students and also their families coming from the middle class; their struggles and boys being boys come what may! It is a story told in a very simple and forthcoming manner.....yeah a no-holds barred definitely as you go through the untraversed territory of the male psyche and habits. :)
Five friends Sahir, Gopal, David, Sandeep and Anand give us a peep into the life in an engineering college where they share the back benches, pretty teacher's classes, a villain of a principal and even a girlfriend in a girl called Wardha, that forms a gamut of collective experiences throughout their seven semesters. This inspires quite some funny, light hearted moments in the narration like the time when due to paucity of money, Sahir and Sandeep end up giving a valentine's day card jointly to the same girl!
The various ups and downs therein form the basis of how they fare in the outside world which is not too great as they find out eventually. The tough life of the youth abroad while the families back home remain blissfully unaware of the hardships they face in the land of opportunity is also highlighted seamlessly into the story.
Since it showcases the lives of these students in the 1990s the emails emergence as the new tool of communication has been put to good use here as a means to relate the story from the various character's point of views.
All in all a light read to be enjoyed by all and also an enlightening one especially for the parents of budding engineering students to get a perspective! 

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Meet the Author







Asad Ali Junaid is a design professional in Bangalore working in the area of Human-Machine Interaction. He aims to resolve problems to enable humans interact and use technology efficiently.
Junaid writes whenever there is a compelling story inside him bursting to get out.  Junaid’s first fiction novel –And We Remained – started as a story which needed to be told… and one which needed to be told differently. He joined a three week in residence ‘Just Write’ fiction writing workshop where he got a chance to learn the nuances of and hone his story telling skills from authors Anil Menon, Anjum Hasan and Rimi Chatterjee. And We Remained then turned into a 52,000 word novel with an absorbing storyline and a unique narration style – the story is set in the 1990’s India and is told through emails and first person accounts of events.  Junaid is getting great feedback for the story depicting the mindset of engineering students in that era and the unique narration style it follows.
Junaid is married and his wife is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore working in the area of Molecular Biophysics. Their toddler completes their home while keeping them on their toes.


You can stalk him @

                          

         


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Monday 16 March 2015

Book Review: The Rozabal Line

Republished from wordpress blog with the same title:



Book Review: The Rozabal Line

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Well! This is the Indian version of the famous Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. The discerning point here is that what Mr Dan Brown indicates not very emphatically, Mr Ashwin Sanghi bases this book on that very premise namely that Jesus  came to India after the crucifixion and lived as a messenger of God among the local people and in fact died here too. Mr Sanghi’s book begins by detailing a crypt in the depths of Kashmir mountains that is believed to be the grave of Jesus and is known by the name Yuz Asaf locally.
In fact the whole book is a continuation of factual details mixed with some fiction and simultaneously concluding how all religions are actually a derivation or have been linked to each other in some form or other. The prophecies at various times of the world coming to an end, the bloodshed, murders and all good or bad things are a consequence of one’s karma, is all interconnected with all the peoples of the world– is what Mr Sanghi tells us in this very descriptive and interesting book.
There is no single hero or heroine but the various characters whether a murderer or a priest in distant parts of the world, find themselves coming face to face as a natural process of their karma and actually a one and only one shared history that we have with each other although some links have become blurred with time.
I found the book quite engaging, well paced, and well researched work of historical fiction, one that will make you like history if you’d never liked the subject in the past.