Bowled over!

I chanced upon a website by Koldo Barrosso. He is a fantasy story-teller and an illustrator. His characters, protaganists' names, and sketches are so unique, and unlike anything I have ever seen! Writing doesn't do enough justice to him, so attaching links to some of his works:
http://www.koldobarroso.com/portrait-of-lady-zakharova-2/
http://www.koldobarroso.com/lady-pennington-the-tzoo-tzoo-2/
http://www.koldobarroso.com/sketches-for-christmas-card/

Whew! When I see something like this, I realise how little I have really done!

Noise levels - in a book?

Books are like colofully lit magical boxes with beautiful or interesting thoughts floating inside them. Any book is meant to be lovingly held, cherished and opened, so that the one reading the book can bask in these lights and floating thoughts.

The above corny lines are mine, and I believe in them everytime I open a new book. That is why when a book disappoints me, it feels like I have been slapped hard by each floating thought, and blinded by excessive lighting.
The slapping and blinding happens when there is too much of noise in a book. Noise, in this case, is commonly termed as 'wordy'.

Theoretically, ( my theory that is), there can be two types of 'wordy' books:

• Words-wordy:This is when simplicity simmers and whimpers everytime she is ignored. For example,the previous sentence is wordy. I could have said that ignoring simplicity is undesirable. Even if that sounds unappetizing, its simple. With patience and the right frame of mind, words-wordy books can be read and enjoyed. ( We all like Rushdie don't we?)
• Wiki-Wordy:This results in a book full of irrelevant knowledge and facts, a classic symptom of a megalomaniac writer. I don't know what it takes to tolerate a wikipedia-type-wordy book.

Let me know tell you a story:

Once there lived an Indian Woman in a foreign land. She thought and made herself believe that she could write well. She took all the necessary courses and decided to make her debut with a collection of short stories. But she wanted to show how MUCH she knew, how rich her (cross) cultural knowledge is. So she ended up writing stories that could have been summed up in one line, but dragged on for 30-odd pages.

That is how, I ended up reading the story of a woman's survival after divorce. The author decided to take the seldom-used path, and covered the whole plathora of topics ranging from the protaganist's village, her husband's family, his work(which, for all of 5 pages, still remained a mystery), to the typical east-west divide, our cultural values, abortions, divorce and finally, her making out with another woman.

Most of the poets and writers are full of themselves and want to be in the spotlight in every forum and have maximum hits to their name in google. For example, when they are introduced to a person X with a "You know, X has written many short stories and has got herself published in so-and-so", these people go with, "Oh its a pleasure to meet you. You write stories? I understand, I myself have written more than you can even count, got more of my works published than you any-day, and can beat ou up in any contest, should it ever happen".

Beware of these specimen. They argue for the sake of arguing, do a lot of google to make their write-ups seem intelligent, and write stories, which can be easily renamed as "what's on wikipedia" or "Did you know? I do".

PS: I could have made this post shorter, but this post is a tribute to all the editors, who are scared to let the writers know that half of the book is a truckload of .. undigestable stuff. grrrr.

Noise levels - in a book?

Books are like colofully lit magical boxes with beautiful or interesting thoughts floating inside them. Any book is meant to be lovingly held, cherished and opened, so that the one reading the book can bask in these lights and floating thoughts.

The above corny lines are mine, and I believe in them everytime I open a new book. That is why when a book disappoints me, it feels like I have been slapped hard by each floating thought, and blinded by excessive lighting.
The slapping and blinding happens when there is too much of noise in a book. Noise, in this case, is commonly termed as 'wordy'.

Theoretically, ( my theory that is), there can be two types of 'wordy' books:

• Words-wordy:This is when simplicity simmers and whimpers everytime she is ignored. For example,the previous sentence is wordy. I could have said that ignoring simplicity is undesirable. Even if that sounds unappetizing, its simple. With patience and the right frame of mind, words-wordy books can be read and enjoyed. ( We all like Rushdie don't we?)
• Wiki-Wordy:This results in a book full of irrelevant knowledge and facts, a classic symptom of a megalomaniac writer. I don't know what it takes to tolerate a wikipedia-type-wordy book.

Let me know tell you a story:

Once there lived an Indian Woman in a foreign land. She thought and made herself believe that she could write well. She took all the necessary courses and decided to make her debut with a collection of short stories. But she wanted to show how MUCH she knew, how rich her (cross) cultural knowledge is. So she ended up writing stories that could have been summed up in one line, but dragged on for 30-odd pages.

That is how, I ended up reading the story of a woman's survival after divorce. The author decided to take the seldom-used path, and covered the whole plathora of topics ranging from the protaganist's village, her husband's family, his work(which, for all of 5 pages, still remained a mystery), to the typical east-west divide, our cultural values, abortions, divorce and finally, her making out with another woman.

Most of the poets and writers are full of themselves and want to be in the spotlight in every forum and have maximum hits to their name in google. For example, when they are introduced to a person X with a "You know, X has written many short stories and has got herself published in so-and-so", these people go with, "Oh its a pleasure to meet you. You write stories? I understand, I myself have written more than you can even count, got more of my works published than you any-day, and can beat ou up in any contest, should it ever happen".

Beware of these specimen. They argue for the sake of arguing, do a lot of google to make their write-ups seem intelligent, and write stories, which can be easily renamed as "what's on wikipedia" or "Did you know? I do".

PS: I could have made this post shorter, but this post is a tribute to all the editors, who are scared to let the writers know that half of the book is a truckload of .. undigestable stuff. grrrr.

The devil, unfortunately, cares!

Once there was a man called MeekEnLow,

who hated his voice, low, rough and slow.

In a twist of fate, he fell in love with a girl,

and finally married this beauty named ShoutEnHurl.

The girl was loud, where he was not,

it was a disadvantage, especially when they fought.

He grew lazy, surly and paunchy with anger,

which with suppression only grew stronger.

Ultimately his body exploded and he died,

"How embarrassing!", He howled and cried,

He met the devil with his mind made,

no kith or kin will, like him, ever fade.

The devil impatiently heard him out,

then breathing fire, laughed out loud!

He had a brilliant idea in his mind,

he had wanted to try it for long on mankind.

"I have a solution my man" says he,

"to create noise as loud as it can be,

whenever your kith feel they might explode,

they'll use this on women, and have joy manifold."

The devil then pursuaded God to introduce cars,

to provide men a bit of comfort, luxury and class

But, unknown to Lord, gave men evil knowledge,

of making horns to aid in MeekEnSlow's revenge.

There you go, you have it now,

MeekEnLow was avenged and how!

His Kith and kin, no less dumb,

are driving & honking with minds numb.

The devil looks at the noisy mess below,

and gloating at God, takes a deep bow.

I hate the venting honking buttons. At times, it seems men horn because they have nothing better to do, or because they want their front-seat counterparts to stop talking, or stop liking them.