Life of Pi - A Book Review

After a bout of non-fiction books finally laid eyes on Fiction. Here's a story about a story about a story. I circled around this book several times contemplating, re-contemplating over and over. Somehow some of the elements of the book did not sound quite compelling to pick up at the first instance. The word (??) Pi was the first distraction. Do I really want to read a book about 22/7?? Of course on reviewing the cover it sounded something else. It was then about a boy stranded in the ocean with a bunch of animals. Not really an animals guy. So it took at least 3 attempts to get to start reading this.

The rest is of course "Pi Story". The story line is simple - a boy gets marooned on a life boat with a bunch of animals in the middle of the pacific ocean. What happens before and after that is what makes the Life of Pi.

This book is unique in many ways. In spite of the fact that this is an out and out fiction with some story line taken from some other Mexican novel, the author gives a feel of almost an autobiography. If I did not read about the author it would've been hard to believe that this was written by a Canadian. It simply reflects a typical South Indian life with a good play of English. The part that impressed me most was the reference to "Arun Ice Cream". It just took me back to the days. Guess that really shows the amount of research the author had put in to understand the culture of the land.

Of course as I proceed further I realize that this book is not for everybody. Especially not for those who are vegetarian at heart (not necessarily by diet). So you are sufficiently warned!! It has a very funny ending. The humour and writing style is just - different. I would rather not reveal the suspense.

2 people I spoke about this have already started reading and 1 has also finished it. Reviews have been quite positive so far.

Happy Reading
C

First Australian Road Trip

Hello,

Hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was fabulous with a fairly quiet ending.

This weekend we celebrated the Labour Day in Australia well...in New South Wales. Labour Day is celebrated on different days in different states in Australia. In NSW it was celebrated this weekend. I am not sure if I should call it a coincidence to have it as the day after the National Rugby League ( NRL) Grand Finals.  Am sure a day off would help who had a beer or 2 to recuperate.

So...being a long weekend some of our friends planned to get on a short road trip to Canberra - the Capital city. We were 13 people (including 3 kids) in 3 cars. This happens to be our first Australian road trip. Road trip considering the fact we drove and stayed in some place. Have done longer drives, but they were more of day trips. Anyways....we set sail from Westmead at around 8 AM. Enroute we stopped at a Macca's (Mc'donald's) for breakfast at a village called Picton. From the freeway we saw signs for "food" and took the exit. Only then did we realize it was a 10 km deviation from the freeway. It seemed like an all Aussie village. I guess they might not have seen so many Indians at the same time.

From Picton our next stop was at Bowral. There was a tulip festival going on with approximately 100k tulips. There were some interesting colour combinations of tulips. The best that caught my eye was a simple light pink tulip. That is were the most dreaded thing happened - our camera battery went out of power and I knew I had left the charger at home. So if you are wondering why you are not seeing any photos here - this is the reason. Our first Aussie road trip sans the camera. It was such a bummer. Guess we will have to repeat the same trip again some other time. Hopefully I will have a good camera as well by then.

The next stop was at a rest / picnic area somewhere along the way. We had taken "kattu saadham" - typical south indian "picnic food" for lunch. Bisi Belebath, Cauliflower and Carrot poriyals (stir fried veggies) & Curd Rice. There was even Mysore Pak imported from India. It was a different experience having a picnic under a 10 deg C weather with decent wind factor as well (hence the bisi). After the re-fuelling session our next stop was at the Australian War Memorial. It was a nice museum I suppose with collections from the various wars that the Aussies participated. As I mentioned in an earlier story,  none of the wars were fought to either safe guard Australia or to avenge someone who hurt the Aussies. It was all to support the Queen Mother or Big Uncle Sam. But they did seem to have gone around the world for others. The view from the memorial was pretty good with the Aussie Parli (ament) at the other end.

After watching the closing down ceremony, we headed towards our cabin. It was more of an urban campsite. It was a cross between a campsite, an RV park and a motel. We had booked 2 cabins for our gang. After a bit of settling down we left for the night show at Floriade. That was the key highlight (supposedly) of the trip. Had a tough time finding a parking spot - was almost about to get my car into the water. The weather was so cold for us to enjoy the time there. We were prepared for the cold but probably not prepared enough. The kids were beginning to get quite uncomfortable and it was almost time to wrap up. Had whatever that was available and edible for dinner.

The next morning started with an in-situ breakfast in the cabins with scrambled eggs (mushrooms for the veggies) and toast.  We started with a visit to the Parliament house. It wasn't a huge structure compared to White House or for that matter our own Parliament. Not even as grand as Vidhana Soudha from the outside. Again, the view back from the Parliament house to the Memorial was nice. Being the first Parliament house I've ever been to not able to compare to anything else on the interiors. After the sights, had our lunch in the cafe there. Pretty good stuff for a parliament canteen. 

From the Parliament house we headed towards the Telstra towers. It have us a nice 360 degree view of Canberra from the viewing tower. We saw the storm coming from afar and before we could get out to our cars we had to get drenched. Time was running short as we had one last stop before we could head home. It was the miniature garden where they had replicas of some of world's monuments. For India, it was the Red Fort. Guess the red colour had washed way in the rain because it looked quite brown. Did a few rounds on the mini train. That's where I learnt "Chuga Chuga choo choo...chuga chuga choo choo Train Coming Through" from Nandhitha.

Headed back to Sydney with a pit stop at Goulburn at some "historic" cafe. This trip was quite memorable. Going on a road trip with 2 young ones can be quite "interesting" just by itself. Thankfully we went with a group of people who lent a helping hand many a times. It had all the expected routines of throwing up and cleaning up. We are now masters of handling those situations. After a long time listened to Tamil songs while driving. Nandhitha was co-ordinating a "dance show" where we had to dance seated in the car. Whenever a female voice sings it her turn to dance and if it is male then it is mine. At times she got confused when there was just music playing. We had a grand finale to the trip with a great dinner at Sri Annapurna - Liverpool.  After a looong time had parotta kurma - South Indian style (the veggie version).  Thanks to our trip "Manager" Gayathri for organizing this. :-)

Have A Great Week

C