Corridor reviewed

The Book: Corridor
Author: Sarnath Banerjee
Publisher:Penguin Books India

Who is the Author? Back in the 90's an awesome magazine called 'Gentleman' was revived. It died mysteriously in 2000. Towards the end of its life, the magazine had introduced a page, which was illustrated by Sarnath Bannerjee & it had an interesting male take, on city life. Well our dude finally got around to doing a graphic novel.

It was marketed as India's first graphic novel. It got a lot of good reviews but I beg to differ on various points. Firstly it isn't India's first graphic novel. What is a graphic novel? Imagine a comic book. Usually each panel has simple depiction of scenes. In a graphic novel each panel goes thru a special treatment at the arists hands. I have read a few in which each panel was painted. Basically a graphic novel is a very artsy fartsy comic book. In India we've had things come close to this genre of art/literature. We've had Mario Miranda's heavily illustrated travelogues. We've got graphical adaptations of epics & histories a la Amar Chitra Katha.

Coming back to 'Corridor'. The book has no particular style. Bits of the book r superbly illustrated & inked exquistely. Some of the panels r over inked though. Some pages look like Mr. Banerjee forgot to ink them & the pencil lines & shades can be seen. Somewhere inbetween the novel a clutch of pages have been coloured (albeit badly). Some pages r a collage of calender art, photos & illustrations. So art wise the book has no consistent style. It feels as though the book was a hurried job & Penguin India offered to colour a few pages for the author if he could deliver earlier. Our chap had an awesome pen & ink style going on in the beginning (which he should've stuck to) but then bad colouring, collages came in & had a vulgar dance.

What is the 'graphic novel' abt? Its abt drab city life; Its highs & lows from the perspective of different characters. The book is as aimless as city life. U have a guy who is trying to figure out how screwed his relationship is & screwing it up even more, u have a chap whose having wet dreams abt an IT job in the US & a chap trying his best to liven up his love life. The last panel in the book gives us the impression that the whole graphic novel exercise was a part of some kind of therapy to get over the author's last lover. Certain bits of it r entertaining, some panels profound. The book adds to what Desmond Morris said abt human beings i.e, We r not animals living in a concrete jungle but animals living in a concrete zoo. While reading this book I was reminded of the movie 'Bombay Boys'( by Kaizad Gustad). The 1st half of the movie was really entertaining. Afterwards it nose-dived & u could smell its corpse.

In conclusion, the book read like a radio being tuned. Amidst a sea of noise & blips one hears a good song & that too briefly. A little funny here & a little existential loneliness there. Artwise this book SUCKS! Don't bother w/ this book. Contact me if u wan't to read it anyways.

List of Gaphic Novel's that I like:
Ronin - Frank Miller
Sin City - Frank Miller
The City - James Herbert
Le Monde d'Edena: Les Réparateurs - Moebius
Call of Cthulu - H.P. Lovecraft, Illustrated by John Coulthart

The Marriage Reception & after

The Marriage Reception:

Had loped of to Cochin on Friday for Anju & Zabil's wedding reception. It was held in a hall saturday, afternoon. Anju was wearing this brownish silk saree. (Did I see a hint of red somwhere? I can't tell) The Zari work was dazzling & not to mention exquisite. U could trace the pattern w/ ur pinky & not bump into other elements of the design. Nice!!
Our man, Zabil was looking sharp in a black, well cut suite that made him look a lot taller. It was a small gathering. Spotted a few familiar faces of which 25% I recognized, the rest where a tangle of names & familiar faces. Met Neck's brother too. Neck is trying for some advanced course in medicine. Its scary to think abt Dr. Neck starting practise. It was nice to see ppl remembering me as that bearded chap & funny uncle.

After the function I had a shit load of time on my hands. Wandered around a 5km radius around M.G. Road. This happens to be my 3rd visit to Cochin. Wished Caviar was around. Had around 5 hrs to kill. Came across a book exhibition & bought 'The Story of Painting -from the Renaissance to the present". A nice book on art history. Thought I'd grab a beer. But the afternoon sky was dark w/ rain threatening to pour. So I decided to get a rum & coke & another rum & coke from a seedy joint where the lighting made cockroaches look like peanuts. Gulped my drinks & got the hell out of that hole. Made it to the hotel room, ate a lot of hot,mucho delecioso vadas & spent my time channel surfing w/ a fuckole remote. The high hit me before I grew tired of channel surfing.

I was staying at the Udupi Ajantha Home. Its an old building gone through a series of renovations. The bathroom had green brass taps one for hot & another for cold, a gleaming white sink & black ceramic tiles. gr8t. I like the colour of verdigris.
I could have stayed in there for days.

The Ride Back Home:

All the luxury buses out of Cochin were booked solid for 2 days. So I decided to catch a KSRTC bus back home. I got seat number 2. I recommend it coz u can stretch ur legs out. And u have a nice view of the road up ahead. Only fuckup was when the bus stopped, u had to draw ur legs back in lest they get trampled to pulp & oncoming vehicles w/ headlights on high beam. Man can those things tattoo ur retina.

On the journey I realized that there existed only 4 kinds of animals on the road:
1> Roadkill - those animals hit by ur vehicle.
2> Potential Roadkill - those animals asking for it.
3> Roadkilled - the ones the vehicles before us, beat us to.
4> Roadhogs - human bastards that wanted to outrun u for no apparent reason.

Reached Calicut in 5 & 1/2 hours! Passed Mysore, The roads over there r gr8t & the road to Bangalore had a lot of jackfruit vendors. Those things where the size of Mysore durbar bolsters. Reached B'lore at 12pm. EOF

Realized

Just...

...Realized how neck deep I'm in work. Good thing I can swim. I'd like to swim in Beer right now. Beer....mmmmmmmmm...

...Realized how much of a visionary Alphonse Mucha was (Check out the links in the (DUH!)links section on the right side of this post).

...Realized how important French curves are to me.

...Rrealized how much mediocre my work is.

...Realized how fucking lazy ppl r getting at Planet Moon Studios. Their latest offering lacks the freshness of 'Giants: Citizen Kabuto'. Their animated interludes make me want to wretch. But the gameplay & humour r top-notch as always. Nick Bruty I salute u w/ my middle finger.

...Realized I'd rather spend my life as a collector & that too w/ another collector.

...Realized Gen-X sport sims rock.

Song for the day - Magic Moments (by Perry Como)
Song at the moment - She's a Lady (by Tom Jones)

Blog Alert!!

Stumbled on a blog Intelligent Artifice. Its abt the video game industry...game design .....anything related to gaming.

OSusk

Back from the Dead. Feeling like a mouldy, dank tapestry i.e, lots more mysterious layers to go thru to get to the big picture.

Susk is thinking of designing & implementing an OS. It looks daunting to me. So does climbing the Everest, but a crap load of Sherpas seem to be scampering abt that one. This post is dedicated to 'THE ENIGMATIC SUSK'

First of all I believe we should clear the slate. Think of empty space. Fill it w/ mobile phones - a Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Seimens & a sadha (normal) telephone. Which of these is the easiest to use. Well....the good Ol' telephone ofcourse. But u can't lug it & the address book around. So enter the mobile phones.Of all the mobile phones available the easiest to pick up & use is the Nokia. I know owners of other brands would beg to differ but I have had 'hands on' experience using the other mentioned phones. Most hand sets required me to get used to a system of operating. Yes Nokia too has a system but u don't notice it. Nokia UI(user interface) is intuitive.

Next...THE TRADE OFF:
I've been using Microsoft Paint,Corel Photo-Paint & Photoshop for some time. I still love MS Paint coz even a kid can use it. Its easy as drawing on real paper! But the other 2 packages r far more powerful because they pack in more tools & effects. In other words they r more complex. With levels of complexity these softwares r harder to pick up & use. Corel Photo-paint beats photoshop in the UI dept. But I still tend to use Macromedia Fireworks to tweak & optimize image dimesions & formats.

Then there is Maya & 3ds MAX. Both of them r awesomely powerful programs that let u make cinema quality stuff. Both r not as user friendly as the Nokia UI or MS Paint. Then there is Bryce 3d that is a powerfull program w/ an intuitive AI. BUT...
here r 2 supremely intuitive programs created by Takeo Igarashi that is similar to MS paint-

Teddy
Smooth Teddy
Use it & u'll know how things ought to be.
Should complexity mar the ease of a programs use? (Read as- don't be cheap get a designer to design the GUI!)

Susk man, I don't know how these things r going to help ur OS. But a few things r certain:
1>I don't wan't to learn to use the OS,I know where my penis goes!
2>Troubleshooting is like visiting the govt. office.Go to this dept that dept. & finally download the latest service pack or drivers from the company that made ur cards. I feel that if the Indian government actually patented the way they ran their offices, they could sue Microsoft.I don't wan't help files that r like windows help files.
3>Linux is for the programmer types. Give the common man a tool.