Posted in Blog on Apr 29th, 2005
If you haven’t yet discovered Asian cinema, I urge you, do.
Not only because the culture of countries like Thailand, Malayasia, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Japan, etc, is so much more like our own desi culture than the western world, but because Asian cinema has truly come of age now.
Take even the most reviled genre, […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 28th, 2005
Way back in another lifetime, in a galaxy far far away, before I began writing my Ramayana retelling, and my Mahabharata retelling, and even my Devi stories, I used to write contemporary fiction.
I still do.
Realistic, contemporary stories about life in (mainly) Mumbai, and almost always in urban India, which is what I know best, apart […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 28th, 2005
Interesting development resulting from yesterday’s post It’s a Crime.
I had a call from Thomas Abraham, CEO of Penguin Books India.
Incidentally, he happens to be my publisher, but we haven’t had the pleasure of actually meeting.
Which is not as uncommon as you’d think, since authors very rarely meet the people who bring out […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 27th, 2005
This book review first appeared in India Today some years ago.
Now, for those of you who don’t know this, I began my career as a published author with three crime thrillers.
They were billed as “India’s first crime novels in English” and I was lauded by the media for apparently pioneering a genre.
(At […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 25th, 2005
Sudhir Mishra outdoes himself with Hazaaron Khwaishon Aisi.
I suspect the reason is that, for once, he has a producer with no financial limitation, and who has the sense to know where to spend the money and where not to.
From the very first frame, the film is the product of a cinematically mature mind, an Indian […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 20th, 2005
This is another story from my ‘Devi’ series.
It’s quite different from the other one I posted here some weeks ago, In the Shadow of Her Wings.
But as you’ll see, they both share a similar obsession: avatars of the ‘Devi’, which, for those of you firangs who happen to be surfing through our desi […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 19th, 2005
I didn’t really know what to expect from Mumbai Xpress.
I mean, Kamal Haasan has seen better days.
He’s always been one of India’s finest actors, and I was watching his films since way back since my advertising days, when a bunch of us used to rent Tamil/Telegu/Kannada/Malayalam movies on VHS and watch them.
They were un-subtitled, but […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 14th, 2005
For those of you who asked, here’s a list of the nine books in my Mahabharata series.
1. the seeds of war
2. as the blind king watched
3. the forest of stories
4. while warlords speak of peace
5. when the blue god awakens
6. tear this mighty land asunder
7. bathed in the blood of brothers
8. bid the dead return
9. […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 14th, 2005
An exclusive excerpt from The Seeds of War: Book 1 of The Mahabharata by Ashok K. Banker. (c) Ashok K. Banker 2005. All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce, copy, email, or quote any or all of the following text, unless you have written permission from the author.
//om ganesha namaha//
invoking the power of the infinite […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 11th, 2005
Movie-packed weekend. Making the most of a little downtime I had before getting back to another bout of hard writing.
There’s also something happening on the movie front in my own career that I can’t talk about in detail right here and now, but which has kindled the film flame in me again - not that […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 10th, 2005
(This story originally appeared in Interzone in 2000; it was later reprinted in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn S. Cramer, in the prestigious French anthology L’Atalante, and online on Infinity Plus. Is it science fiction, fantasy, political fiction, socio-sexual fiction, or…just a short story? I’ll leave that to you […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 8th, 2005
My no. 1 fave track right now is Blower’s Daughter by Damien Rice. My other no. 1 (ha, get it? two no. 1’s!) is Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley. And my third no. 1 (whew! I must have flunked math for sure) is Dark Escape by Midival Punditz.
I’d play these three songs back to back all […]
Posted in Blog on Apr 4th, 2005
So the movie binge continues.
After the Sunset, on DVD, turned out to be a fun caper flick. Pierce Brosnan keeps a stubble (more grey than black, which is reassuring for us over-40’s) throughout the film but still manages to look cool and act sharp - or is it the other way around?
Don’t confuse it with […]
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