“I only wanted to be a holy man”
- Vijay Amritraj in What a Country!, American take on Mind your Language

Having said that, I think I also want Chicken biryani from Shiraz (famous Cal restaurant for the uninitiated – claim to fame being a unique combination of great food and absolutely no service) and mango shake with vanilla ice cream, in that chronological order. I also want to review something good (for a change) – and that being the only actionable point so far, I think I’ll go right ahead and do it.

Favourable review: Bartimaeus trilogy .. but not strictly that …

Credit for this one must go to Gogi and Seedie (Footage aside: Gogi is close friend from the H-mezz fraternity with potential for immense global as is amply evidenced in his blog which he last updated some years back, it was also his birthday a couple of days back :D, so you can be nice to him and check out his blog sometime; Seedie is the first female member to enter the hallowed portals of H-mezz, calls YV Reddy ‘Venu Uncle’ and likes Pirates III, Himesh and Mallika Sherawat (lowest common denom of human entertainment, basically)); they introduced me to the book. And I loved it. The style most of all. Irreverent, tongue in cheek and yet non pretentiously well researched.

So you have the Umberto Eco style of well-researched book – case in point being The Name of the Rose – proper hard core stuff, bordering dangerously close to literary treatise. All very well for JU English grads with recreational interest in Renaissance Greek Literature but somewhat trying for the hardened consultant (its all Greek to me types) trained to ask for ‘so-what’s and ‘money value’ for most things in life.

The Bartimaeus series is completely different and presents an adequately researched, if funny, panorama spanning across hashashins, djinns, afrits and magicians. For example, sample this note explaining the assassins sent forth by the old man of the mountains ..
“
.. And they had never failed. Aside from this, they wore only black, avoided meat, wine, women and the playing of wind instruments, and curiously ate no cheese save that made from the milk of goats bred on their distant desert mountain. Before each job they fasted for a day, meditated by staring unblinking at the ground, then ate small cakes of hashish and cumin seed, without water, until their throats glowed yellow. It’s a wonder they ever killed anyone.
“

Also, sample this

“
The door was
flung open and a tall wild-eyed man wearing a skullcap rushed out[6], shouting furiously.

[6] He didn't just have a skullcap on; he wore other clothes as well. Just in case you
were getting excited. Look, I'll get to the details later; it's a narrative momentum thing.
“

Oh, and did I mention that the footnotes, mostly and consistently, rock. Of the trilogy, the second book is the only one which tends to drag just a wee bit. The first is thoroughly hilarious and the last has one of the best written endgame scenes I have ever read. The literary advisory service therefore, gives this one a very strong thumbs up. Jhakaas[1] stuff!

[1] NB (for the uninitiated) – Jhakaas = Kickass in Mumbaiya lingo; note the uncanny phonetic resemblance. Also, not to be confused with jackass, a totally different titular tool: which just goes to show that phonetic similarity, though strongly indicative, isn’t everything

Disconnected PS: The rains have started in Mumbai; that’s the thing about Mumbai rains – that they only start; never stop (have you heard any Mumbaikar ever say ‘the rains have stopped’? – so there). I suppose they do fade away surreptitiously into the background somewhere between the central and harbour lines come October, but then again, that is pure speculation.