One of the very few people who has ever look good dressed as Princess Leia

Using the force…, originally uploaded by bestgesture.

 

Vikram Chandra’s “Sacred Games”

Hey, Baba,

I finally finished Vikram Chandra’s “Sacred Games” after taking a break from it for a year or so (Really, it was just the sheer weight of the 900 pages of hardcover that made me delay. Reminder to myself: paperbacks!), and finished it last night. It’s missing some of the jaw dropping paragraphs and sentences of his first novel (I remember actually reading lines from it over the phone to a friend during the pre-internet connection at home days.) but I liked it better as a whole. Did you read it? Did you notice when the screenwriter character is explaining how an action movie should be structured that it’s what Chandra’s been doing with the book? He’s always pretty cheeky like that. I think in both his first novel and his collection of short stories, characters and narrators are always issuing challenges that they have a great story to tell and that other characters won’t be able to stop listening. I was a little under whelmed with the plot but I don’t think it was the point, and when I finished the last page and carefully placed the heavy book on the floor next to my bed so I would not wake my downstairs neighbor or squash one of the cats, I was already missing the Mumbai, the universe, he had created in my head.

Sacred Games Glossary with photos