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Showing posts from February, 2012

Journalist - A Blog Novel by Mr. Hariharan Valady (2/3)

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Now that all autobiography is over, it's time to get started with the actual review of the novel... First, as the first thing in the new year, the author posted an introduction explaining why he was missing in action for sometime (I was one of them who was wondering what he was doing so silently after such a striking start!), and what he was planning to do in the next few months (his plan to write his first novel online) and the structure he had in his mind for that (how many words and how many chapters, etc.). He talked about what he was getting into as well. As he said, blog novel is indeed a not-so-tested idea in Indian context. Not many people have tried it in our part of the world though I am not sure about others. Like all other things, writing in India is way different from that in any other part of the world - including the English writing. Today, we have our own version of Indianized English. For that matter, we have Indianized almost everything western. Others can

Culture Surprises: London - 1/12

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Like 'Culture Shocks', this is 'Culture Surprises'. 'Culture Surprises' is my travelogue and peoplogue. Travelogue to discuss about all my experiences in every new place I visit and peoplogue to discuss about all my experiences with people from different cultures I meet. So, it is not necessary that I talk about only cultures here. It's about everything new that I come across. So, purists... please bear with the coinage of the title! ON YOUR MARK... GET SET... GO... It's one and a half years since I wrote about travelling westwards . My desire to travel and the work towards that started a year before that. It's not that I was particular about going to the west only. I was so desperate to travel that I was okay with any place (If you haven't read all my travelogues please don't jump to a quick conclusion and reduce it to just 'foreign craze'. It's a long story and it has many sub-stories around it. This series of blo

Journalist - A Blog Novel by Mr. Hariharan Valady (1/3)

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Politics has always been an interesting subject for me. It's a love-hate relationship that I have with politics. I almost hate all our politicians but I love reading and discussing anything on politics. I follow politics almost on daily basis. My grandfather was a freedom fighter and politician , who sacrificed a lot of things in life for his country and people. Today, I am little hesitant to even call him a politician because it has got a different meaning now. I just say he was a freedom fighter most times. He was in Congress party during the Indian freedom movement inspired by both Gandhi and Bose and then converted to Communism in prison by another inmate Mr. R Venkatraman, who ironically remained in Congress party till the end and became the president of this 'Mostly Congress' country. I grew up hearing stories about my grandfather, which were filled with only sacrifices. That background made me interested in politics. I remember an uncle of mine teaching me to

College Life - Aditanar College, Tiruchendur (6/6)

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* This is due for too long. Finished writing it more than a month back but couldn't post it because of too much work in last few weeks. So, posting it without proper review. Please bear with any silly mistakes. Hostelers and Day Scholars Generally, in most classes, hostelers and day scholars would be in two different groups. There were only few boys who went beyond these boundaries and mingled with all. It was better in our class because our class was small in size. Some boys who were from nearby places would be hosteler for sometime and day scholar for sometime. When they get bored with day scholar life they would join the hostel and vice versa. Some hostelers would always roam with day scholars. Most of the times they would be in one of the day scholars' houses. They would know almost all local girls that are known to their day scholar friends too. Likewise, there were a lot of day scholars who used to be with us always. Most of the times they would be with us in the ho