The Oath Of Vayuputra

I could not go for the launch of this book at Peddar road, but had watched it on U-tube and was surprised to see the crowd that waited to enter the store. Never in my life have I seen a book launch of such magnitude. Amish said that during book launch of his first book, there were only his family members and few friends had been forced to attend the event, his wife had distributed the questions to be thrown at author during the book reading, but popularity of those two books had changed his status and now he was known as one of the most sought out writers.

I, like thousands others, was waiting eagerly for the third and final episode of Shiva Trilogy.

I had liked the first two parts too. I had written the review of ‘Immortals of Mehula’ and ‘Secrets of Nagas’ on my blog

At the end of part two of Shiva Trilogy, I was left with questions such as:

What evil is he talking about? How can we destroy evil when it does not exist by itself? Good and evil, two sides of the coin, he must visit Panchavati, the city of Nagas to know the secret.

Shiva did reach Panchavati, I had eagerly waited for evil to emerge, making wild guesses of putting face to the evil, was it really Nagas? If it was not Naga then who was evil?, Then suddenly it is revealed that Somras, the powerful magic potion, which was good at first, had turn to evil and it had to be destroyed. Then the journey to seek the help of Vayuputra began to put an end to evil by destroying people who would not stop using Somras.

The third part, however, did not excite me as much as the other two parts did. Maybe my expectations were too high.

However, I did like the narration of the last fight of Sati. This excerpt made me sit at the edge as I read through the pages of her final fight:

“Swuth didn’t approach Sati with both his curved swords. That would have been unfair according to the rules of Aten, since Sati had one sword hand. He held the sword forward in his hand. As he neared Sati, he started swinging the sword around, building it into a stunning circle of death just ahead of him, moving inexorably towards her. Even as Swuth’s sword whirred closer, Sati began to step back slowly. She suddenly thrust her sword forward quickly, deep into the ring of the circling blade of Swuth, inflicting a serious cut on the Egyptian’s shoulder. She pulled her sword back as rapidly, before Swuth’s circling blade could come back to deflect her sword. He’d never met anyone with the ability to penetrate his sword’s circle of death.”

The book title says ‘Oath of Vayuputra’ but what oath? And Vayuputra (isn’t that supposed to be Lord Hanuman) has less than 100 pages of fame.

The read is easy flow, so even though I had put away after reading 200 pages of more brutal war and long sea travelling, I did return back to finish the book. 

The book did have the elements of surprise, joy and pain.

Blast from the Past – Happy Times in Kuwait

The best trip I have ever had in my life is the trip to Kuwait. This was before the Iran-Iraq war. One of my close cousins had moved to Kuwait after marriage, she invited me to visit her. There were no moments of silence during my trip because laughter filled all hours of the day.

We were young and silly.

My trip coincided with my cousin’s brother-in-law. He was a good company but much irritated with our non-stop silly laughter. At home we played computer games (Bomber man and Mario) or watched Bollywood films. I hated fighting scenes and songs in Bollywood films, I fast forwarded such scenes as the result three hours movie lasted for an hour that irritated people in the house and more giggles from us meant more annoyance from BIL’s brother.

Going out was fun too.

The hoardings in the city were in Urdu script, which sounded funny when we would try reading it unintelligently.

We wondered what women wore under their burqua, we followed the women in the shopping mall to understand their taste in their clothing. What did it matter what they wore under burqa? We argued, much to the amusement of the men, but it was amazing to see their dressing sense in the visible parts of their body. A well manicured fingers and toes, lots of gold jewelry on their hands and ears, and beautiful stylish shoes.

We loved eating out. ‘Jarjeer’, a form of watercress (rocket) was included in salads, and in most of the meals. ‘Logaymat were Kuwait-style donut holes, crisp on the outside, lightly seasoned with saffron, coated in a sugar paste, with a hint of lime. ‘Machboos’ a dish cooked with either lamb or chicken (sometimes with camel) was browned then baked and served on bed of yellow rice. ‘Margooga, a pasta dish in sauce with cilantro, ‘Mutabag’, a tomato-based stew, ‘Qabot, a Kuwaiti style dumpling, stuffed with ground meat and raisins and served with tomato broth were the other dishes that I loved eating. Tashreeb (lasagna type) was the ultimate comfort food in Kuwait. ‘Torshi’ a homemade pickle that accompanied most dishes.

We were amused by the English spellings of the translated names. There were funny spellings on menu like ‘lamp’ for lamb. ‘Duqoos was the tomato sauce that accompanied rice dishes. ‘Jarish’ was pronounced as ‘yareesh’. In Kuwait dialect, they turned ‘J’ sounds to ‘Y’ and ‘P’ to ‘B’ and we had to ‘Bay’ and ‘Bark’ the cars. Kuwait was the place where I acquired a new name, people called me ‘Boosba’ which some of my cousins call me by this name even today.          

No outing is complete without picture. We clicked many pictures but always had three of us in the picture.

This is the photograph that brings beautiful memories in which four of us were able to get a pretty shot.

How did we manage that?

We had gone to the market to have the street food.

Fully satiated, we decided to walk down the seashore and we saw this large glass building in front of us. Three of us sat down immediately for a picture. That’s when my BIL saw his reflection in the mirror too.

“Finally we will get a picture with four of us” said my BIL. It seemed a good idea; my cousin quickly got up and stood behind her spouse.

Click! Finally we had one picture that had all four of us in one picture.

Lovely shot! Isn’t it?

But wait a minute; do you find anything funny in this picture? No?

But we laughed when we saw the picture

Why?

 Like I told you, sometimes we had no reason to laugh.

ps; Sharing these 'short few moments of blast from the past' with friends at Marathon bloggers

The brief was – Pick any photo from the past and write about the memory associated with it, it could be a picture taken during a trip, could be about a meal you can never forget, a dish that you are proud of, an event that is embed in your memory