It's been a while, I have given up reading books by Indian authors bcos they were all about women falling in love with MCPs and Men betraying women, sex, child abuse, domestic violence.. blah. I swore to my self that I won’t be reading them again but I couldn't resist reading 'The God of Small Things' by Arundathi Roy, being a Booker Prize winner in 1997.

At first I had second thoughts whether to continue with this or find another Sydney Sheldon book bcos this book is the most depressing book I’ve ever read. It is a story about the childhood experiences of a pair of fraternal twins who become victims of circumstance.

Chapter 1 - I had no feeling (y the heck am I reading this anyway). Chapter 2 - what a crap. Chapter 3 & 4 - Nausea and struggling to put back my past. Chapter 5 - I'm gonna read this book.

It's about how the small things in life build up, translate into people's behavior and affect their lives. For the moment Ammu (the twins' mother and a divorcee) is my favorite character. She was strong enough to fly away from her alcoholic, chauvinist man who was her so called husband.

" This highly stylized novel tells the story of one very fractured family from the southernmost tip of India. Here is an unhappy family unhappy in its own way, and through flashbacks and flashforwards The God of Small Things unfolds the secrets of these characters' unhappiness. First-time novelist Arundhati Roy twists and reshapes language to create an arresting, startling sort of precision. The average reader of mainstream fiction may have a tough time working through Roy's prose, but those with a more literary bent to their usual fiction inclinations should find the initial struggle through the dense prose a worthy price for this lushly tragic tale.

Rahel and Estha are fraternal twins whose emotional connection to one another is stronger than that of most siblings:
Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually as We or Us. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities.

Now, these years later, Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha's funny dream.

She has other memories too that she has no right to have.

Their childhood household hums with hidden antagonisms and pains that only family members can give one another.
Blind Mammachi, the twins' grandmother and founder of Paradise Pickles & Preserves, is a violin-playing widow who suffered years of abuse at the hands of her highly respected husband, and who has a fierce one-sided Oedipal connection with her son, Chacko. Baby Kochamma, Rahel and Estha's grandaunt, nurses deep-seated bitterness for a lifetime of unrequited love, a bitterness that plays out slyly against everyone in the family; in her youth she fell in love with an Irish Roman-Catholic priest and converted to his faith to win him, while he eventually converted to Hinduism. Chacko, divorced from his English wife and separated from his daughter since her infancy, runs the pickle factory with a capitalist's hand, self-deluding himself all the while that he is a Communist at heart even as he flirts with and beds his female employees. Ammu, the twins' mother, is a divorcee who fled her husband's alcoholism and impossible demands, a woman with a streak of wildness that the children sense and dread and that will be her and her family's undoing.

The family's tragedy revolves around the visit of Chacko's ex-wife, widowed by her second husband, and his daughter, Sophie Mol. It is within the context of their visit that Estha will experience the one horrible thing that should never happen to a child, during their visit that Ammu will come to love by night the man the children love by day, and during their visit that Sophie Mol will die. Her death, and the fate of the twins' beloved Untouchable Velutha, will forever alter the course of the lives of all the members of the family, sending them each off on spinning trajectories of regret and pain. The story reveals itself not in traditional narrative order, but in jumps through time, wending its way through Rahel's memories and attempts at understanding the hand fate dealt her family.

The God of Small Things has been favorable reviewed all over the place, generating a lot of excitement in the current literary establishment. What you think of it will depend heavily on your opinion of Roy's prose style -- is it ostentatious, or is it brilliant? Whether or not you fall in love with her style, the truth of the heartbreaking story she tells and the lovable/hate-able characters who people it make this novel an experience not to be missed."

Above quoted, is a review of the book which I found in http://www.curledup.com/godsmall.htm

For those who are already having bad times, I recommend not to read this :D

This blog post will be a small tribute to terry clothed primate and to my fiance! (who swallowed everything with no complains)
Tx to monkey i was able to prove my BF that I'm some what good in cooking ;) Last Friday i got printouts of few recipes found in Hi Monkey and early Saturday morning started the battle. My plan was to make cutlets, queso dips (i'll tell u what it is later) and toasted bread for breakfast and tomato soup with latkes (most prob i'll giv a detailed description in my next blog entry). But i changed plans n decided to cook rice for lunch.

Preparing Queso dip was d easiest thing. I got d recipe from Hi Monkey but i modified it a bit cos i wanted to use home made tomato pure. This is how i made the Queso dip.

Ingredients (serves 2):
cheese (slices, wedges or bars) - I'm a cheese lover so i used 5 wedges
Tomato pure (peel off few boiled tomatoes and smash it and get the liquid - seeds removed)
Small amount of butter or margarine
red chili powder
pinch of salt
a clean pan
a good spoon

Method:
First cut the cheese into blocks
Keep d pan on medium heat
Add butter n let it melt
Add d cheese chunks
Continue stirring constantly
Add the tomato pure n continue stirring
Mean while add chili powder and salt n stir
Do not boil the mixture
U'll get a thick beautiful cream
Put it to a nice bowl n serve with Chips (in my case cutlets)

well that's that. We all enjoyed the sauce ;) Next time I'm gonna make tomato soup with latkes (yum yum). Till then chao..

Some body please giv me some work !!!! :D
I'm out of work these days and before i get fired thought of adding a new post ;-)
I jus cant remember how i came across this site but it's cool and dat cute web site was chosen as a yahoo's site of the week too.

As the site states "Himonkey.net is a wee peek at the life and adventures of the only terry cloth primate we know of who runs his own web site. "


It's full of small small things including lil recipes n I'm gonna try some of those this weekend (Yipes i better inform my PM that i mite put a leave on Monday ;))

dats enuf for today! Jus giv a lil visit to Terry cloth primate.
Zzzzzzzzzz

Wow after a long time gotta a chance to peep into my blog. I had to ask a friend to send d url of ma blog n couldnt even remember d password to login. Oh n a new blogger version too...still didnt get a chance to c d diff though. errrrrrrr smtimes i really hate bloggin. had lots to write but now memory blank.
OK i'm still workin in d same place, had work, did 'em, project holded, no work, browsing net, chat with friends, watched bleach, started watchin Lil Ninja, e-learning, Britney now bald headed, I'm abt 2 get busted fromPM blah blah..ahemm that's all in a nutshell :-D
Yesterday while reading Boing Boing found a cool website calle Hi Monkey.net.
Gotta finish for today. I have to obey company rules. Working hours are 8 to 5 ;)

On September 4th I started my work at IFS (Industrial and Financial Systems) R & D Private Limited (Sri Lanka). There are 4 other batch mates and it's good to have Sumudinie (one of the CS_Girls) with me. The first one n half months will be a training period for us. We have already finished SQL, PL-SQL, Centura (IFS specific language for windows application development) and Rational Rose Modelling. The place is cool and the food is great :) Having a very busy schedule and it's hard to find a free time to update the blog.

Couldnt update the blog for months for various reasons and now i've no net conection tx to Isuru (he had changed all the switches and connections). Since Gayan went home today I got a chance to add a new post from his machine. These days we r again back to projct work and hope to add some post in d near future. Till then Chao!