Banned Books

Banned Books are always a fascinating topic for me. For some of the books , I really wonder why they really banned them. If these books were not banned , we would not even been talking about it now.
The best example for that is "Satanic verses" by Salman Rushdie. I was in India when this book came out and India was the first country to ban this book. So after I came to the US , and started to go the library regularly, I got and started to read this book. This was one of the most stupidest , boring book that I have read till that time. It was dragging so much , that i was not even able to complete it. This was the first book that I was did not complete. There are some parts which we can relate like the Incident where Amitabh Bacchan got injured in the shooting and the entire India was praying for it . Indian Prime minister went and saw him , which was the part where the good stuff dies. I am really surprized that they banned this book , if they had not banned this book, everyday there are hundreds of crappy books which come and this would gone to the bottom shelf. I don't know why he wrote this book. Rushdie once apologized for writing this book and took it back.

Rushdie's earlier book "Midnight's children " was pretty interesting since I can related to lot of stuff and I love history. This was the story about two kids which were born in the dawn of India's independence and they grow along with the country.

The Book about Shivaji
This was another book which had created such a huge hue and cry in India and not even sure if it was published or not. This book had abysmal reviews. But they made it popular by banning this book. Even people were killed for this. In India peoples lives don't have any value, for anything someone will be burnt , killed , stabbed or wounded.

Jewel of Medina
This is another book , after reading the book completely, I came to the conclusion that this was very poorly written with no imagination, Aisha is such an important character and the only thing you read in the book is only her jealousy and all the marriages and the separate huts. If Random house had published this book , it would have gone through some deep shelves in libraries and most of the copies would have returned back to the author. The Author is also planning to write a Sequel for this.

If you really want to know more about Mohammad and Aisha , you can read "Heirs of Mohammad" , which in one chapter covers more information and provides a lot of interesting stuff.

In India , during the release of Rajani's movie Annamalai, I remember there was a rumor that this movie is going to be banned because it said something about Jayalalitha. But now we know that Rajani was just a dumb actor who just repeating what the screenwriter had written and he didn't mean anything.

Rajani's Film 6 to 60

I watched Rajani's film Aaril irunthu Arupathu Varai.(From 6 till 60). One of the 70's films of that time. We have always watched Rajani's latest crappy films(Sivaji !!! , Kuselan ) and when we see a film where we see him really act.
Lot of emotions involved in this movie and how small things make a lot of difference. 1970's are a time in Tamil cinema lot of new things were tried and poverty become a topic to be successful.

This film a favorite of Rajani and his acting abilities started to fail once he became super star, he started to have a thick cover around him and he didn't find the need to come out of it. Obviously he made his money.

The Movie starts with a very happy family and the eldest son is 6 years old. As usual the father dies and the mom also dies after that. The eldest son takes the entire responsibility of handling the family and starts to work at that time. He starts to work for Rs 90 a month and gets to work and reads in his spare time.
His sister marries a rich guy and his brother graduates in first class and then his brothers leave him. His wife dies and then he becomes rich and famous.

When he had a life , he had money , he had money but no life after that. The second half was too much of a drag and wondering how things go from bad to worse and then to awful and then its all rosy.
Later in the career he had "Dharmadurai" which involves 3 brothers, but the second half becomes a typical Super Star film.

I would not even noticed or wrote about this if this was a Kamal movie , since this was Rajani's movie (the guy who says a lot of other things, but make sure his wallet full ) , he is a preacher not a practicer and makes sure to use all the dumb people of Tamil Nadu.
Cho in his movie "Mohd-bin-Tuglaq" has a sentence "Makkal Muttalkal" , People are Idiots and Rajani is the one who understood that and makes all his money.

selling Potato Peeler , rest is history

I heard this story in Talk radio this morning and read about Joe Ades in NYTimes(my Favorite paper).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/nyregion/03ades.html

Such an interesting person having a house in Manhattan, married 4 times and divorced 3 times, kids in a good position. All he did was sell Potato Peelers in Manhattan and he didn't even have permit to sell them.

It really made me stop and look at amazement at this guy. The money he should have made and that too dining in an expensive restaurant, the waiters who were working in that restaurant might have walked by him in his streetside location and would have even bought stuff from him.