Blogcritics Author: Sujatha Bagal

Book Review: The Little Man in the Map by E. Andrew Martonyi, Illustrated by Ed Olson

Sujatha Bagal — Tue, 6 Nov 2007 17:27:34 EST

Books like Martonyi's, written for children with an intimate understanding of what captivates their attention, are much-needed agents of change.
My hat, my face, my stylish shirt.Two states that prop my hat.A whispering state, a pack of books.Say "Cheese!" A honking pat.A puppy and a mitten,With a cozy sleeve below.My drinking cup's the final state.You probably have no idea what this verse is all about, but hidden in it are the clues that not only help elementary school...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Book Review: Eats, Shoots & Leaves and The Girl's Like Spaghetti by Lynne Truss; Illustrator Bonnie Timmons

Sujatha Bagal — Wed, 8 Aug 2007 04:09:47 EDT

In the introduction to her best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves (The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation), Lynne Truss describes a "true stickler":For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural word "Book's" with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated.Anyone who has experienced similar distress at the sight of misplaced apostrophes, redundant or missing commas and overused semi-colons, and has felt the urge to fix the errors (on restaurant menus, billboards, brochures, fliers - you name it) is bound to empathize with Truss and delight at the sight of the "Punctuation Repair Kit" so thoughtfully included in Eats, Shoots & Leaves.Now, sticklers (and teachers and parents) have two more reasons to rejoice. Last year, Truss authored a children's edition of Eats, Shoots & Leaves and, recently, its companion book, The Girl's Like Spaghetti.Illustrated by Bonnie Timmons (who drew the cartoons for the popular television series Caroline in the City), the two books are attractive, colorful and entertaining renditions of what happens to sentences when commas are missing or end up in the wrong places, or apostrophes appear where they shouldn't. Truss takes a sentence, punctuates it in two different ways and Timmons draws an image for each of the two variations illustrating the different meanings the sentences consequently take on. For example, in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the sentence, "Look at that huge hot dog!" appears first with no commas (accompanied by an illustration of a huge hot dog on a grill), and in the second instance, a single comma makes an appearance after the word "huge" to read, "Look at that huge, hot dog!" (and is accompanied by a drawing of a very big, white, spotted dog, panting near a kiddie pool).This same example could have been written in prose with the consequences of the placement or omission of the comma explained in purely grammatical terms, but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. What a delight it will be for teachers and parents to have this book, to flip to a page and be able to say to a child, "See what happens if you don't use a comma here?" or "See what happens if you put an apostrophe here instead of here?" The prospect of nipping bad punctuation habits in the bud (while the children are having a good time of it) will surely be welcome.For those parents, teachers, curious youngsters or other readers wanting to know the grammatical explanations for the consequences of misplaced punctuation, there is a handy table at the end of the book that compares the two iterations of each sentence. To continue with the above example, in the version without the comma, "huge" modifies "hot dog", and in the version with the comma, "huge" and "hot" both modify the noun "dog". So, in the former, the sentence describes a hot dog, while in the latter, the sentence describes a dog.The Girl's Like Spaghetti follows a similar pattern. One of the most common punctuation errors involving an apostrophe must be the use of "it's" for "its" and vice versa. As the table at the end of the book explains, "The apostrophe makes a contraction of it and is", while its (without the apostrophe) "is a possessive pronoun..." The illustration accompanying the example, "Look, it's behind" is that of a turtle falling behind in a race and "Look, its behind" is illustrated by a boy pointing to a horse's behind. Point made, and how!As you flip through the pages and look at all the illustrations and examples, you may begin to wonder if children should be the only beneficiaries of these wonderful books, and most likely you will conclude, not. It is not unusual to come across several instances of misplaced, absent, or overused punctuation in the course of a day (even in newspapers, sometimes) where the culprits are mostly us adults. These illustrated books might, in all probability, be more successful in driving home basic punctuation rules than most grammar texts have apparently hitherto achieved, and readers are bound to have more fun in the process (my seven year-old certainly did).Eats, Shoots & Leaves and The Girl's Like Spaghetti are must-have additions not only to elementary school libraries, but to libraries and book shelves everywhere.Then, perhaps, sticklers the world over can give a rest to those Punctuation Repair Kits.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

Book Review: Lulu.com's Self-Published Children's Literature

Sujatha Bagal — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:39:33 EDT

Once upon a time, there was a baby polar bear who was a very picky eater; there were two girls, Orelda and Corelda, who went on a cruise aboard a ship called the S.S. Rottensteamer; there was Orangie the orange, who wanted, more than anything, to be back among his friends on the orange tree in the orange grove; and there was a boy who liked to play and not go to bed at the end of the day because the night monsters were waiting for him.If these sound like stories you might have read to your children or might want to read to your children, you're right. These are children's stories. But what is unique about the books these four stories came out of is that they are all self-published books. The authors decided they had stories to tell and they were good enough to be published and they went ahead and did it themselves.And the stories are good, very good. They are fun to read (even for me), very well told, they have excellent illustrations accompanying them and the books are slickly produced.Potato Soup, written and illustrated by Phil Weinstein, is a heartwarming story about a baby polar bear who is a picky eater and how his parents got him to eat soup with a whole lot of different vegetables. This story reminded me of the time I used to read Green Eggs and Ham to my son and for months afterward we used to repeat the idea that although we think we might not like something at first, if we just tried it we might end up liking it after all:"We're gonna need some corn," the daddy polar bear said. "Corn?! I don't like corn!" the baby polar bear said. "I only like potatoes! Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes!""It's OK, it's OK," said the daddy polar bear. "We need corn to make potato soup." "All right, all right," said the baby polar bear. "I'll get some corn but I'm not gonna like it and I'm not gonna eat it!"In this manner, the baby polar bear adds one vegetable after another into the soup and in the end ends up liking the soup and all the vegetables that went into the making of it.I particularly liked the illustrations in this book. The polar bears look warm and cuddly and the pictorial presentation is appealing. The Book of Monsters by Jamie Melani Marshall is a lovely story of how a young boy gets over his fear of monsters in his room at night. He decides to follow the monsters to their abode one night and discovers that there was nothing to fear after all.The author has illustrated the story herself and the colorful drawings are a major attraction. They are stylized and it's fun to pore over the pictures trying to find small details relating to the story. The text is in simple rhyme and the language is easy on the early reader.Orelda and Corelda's Ocean Voyage by George and Leslie Nazarian is, as the title suggests, a travel adventure book and coloring book in one. Any journey is fascinating and a cruise especially so. Children will love this story as much for the cool stuff the two girls and Oradillo, their friend, get to do on the ship as for the opportunity to color the pictures using their own imagination of how a cruise might feel. It's a great book to carry along on a trip.Orangie, by Tempie Johnson, recounts the journey of Orangie the Orange from his tree in the orchard to the supermarket and back. It's a simple story, simply told, but is a life lesson for little children in kindness and humanity. It has the feel of a story that grandma would make up on the spot by your bedside -- the best kind of story there is -- and for this reason, children will find it attractive.Perhaps because these are self-published books, I get the feeling that we, the readers, are privy to a little bit more of the authors' personalities. We find out, for example, that Tempie Johnson has been telling her story for ages, and that her son Stephens finally got her story published. We read about the origins of Phil Weinstein's story at the back of the book in a personal note from the author that most parents will relate to immediately.In Marshall's book, the usually boring bio and information about the book is replaced by this:The Book of Monsters (a bedtime story) is author Jamie Melanie Marshall's first book. It's not that bad. Really. It's pretty good. You should probably buy it. Unless of course...You have no money with which to buy the book (this is sad. Perhaps if you wrote a letter to the author, she would take pity on you and send you a copy. If you can't write either, a simple handprint or droolmark will do.)There's a long list of such helpful suggestions and I have a feeling young children will love reading something of this nature addressed to them directly by the author.If you are an author interested in publishing your book yourself, given the quality of the books I've described above, Lulu.com appears to be an valuable resource. The FAQ is useful to get you started in case you are interested in exploring their services.They also have a handy catalogue that you can search by genre and popularity if you are interested in buying the books. The books have been rated by customers and the rating appears in the blurb related to each book on the web page.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

Software Review: Knowledge Adventure Books by You For Children

Sujatha Bagal — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:03:36 EDT

I'm not a big fan of computer programs for little children. I have visions of children turning into zombies, staring at the computer monitor for hours at a time trying to keep up with jumping frogs, crashing cars and other mind-numbing images.So when I came across a Knowledge Adventure program called Books by You for children to craft a novel on their own, I was torn between my fear and the excitement of having found something that seemed to marry technology with creativity and reading. I decided to give it a try - or, rather, let my soon-to-be seven year-old son give it a try. He is a voracious reader and I had a feeling he would love the idea of making a book on his own.The software arrived, we slid it into the CD drive and suffice to say both my son and I are thrilled.The program has four plots that the children can choose from, two alien stories and two mysteries involving monkeys. With John Lithgow, the wonderfully talented actor as the "muse", the program draws you into the process of writing with age-appropriate instructions. Books by You is fashioned in such a way that the broad outlines of the story are fixed, but the children get to craft all the details - the names of the characters, the mannerisms (what would a character do if he or she got upset, for instance), the mental make-up and appearance of the characters and so on.It is fascinating to watch your child go through this process because you get to see how his experiences educate his choice of characterization. When it was time to pick a name for the hero of his novel, The Mystery of the Monkey Palace, my son gravitated towards the names of his favorite cricket players. He was saying them out aloud - Ricky Ponting, Kevin Pietersen, Graeme Smith, Rahul Dravid.... He stopped at Rahul Dravid (the captain of the Indian cricket team) and said he didn't want to pick his name for the main character. Why not, I asked. I was curious. "Because I don't feel Indian in this story, mom!"The novel my son picked is divided into four chapters and each chapter contains about 30 questions that round out the characters and flesh out the details of the plot. According to Knowledge Adventure, this program is designed for children eight years and above. For children at the lower end of the range, I'd imagine it would take at least two or three sittings before the novel is completed. The first time around, my son sat for a solid hour and a half, engrossed in the story, racking his brains for names and expressions, trying to put himself in the shoes of his characters and imagine what they might do in the situations presented in the plot. Once he finished the first chapter, he eagerly read it, delighting in how his work shaped the story. In the process he added many new words to his vocabulary.John Lithgow's animated and pitch-perfect presence is a great asset to this program, imparting excitement and enthusiasm to the process. Each question asked of the children comes with helpful hints at the bottom of the screen so the younger novelists are on track. Even I was the beneficiary of one of those hints, "Warning: If you like grammar, don't use a name that ends with the letter 's'."Once the novel is complete, the program guides the children through the finishing touches - a bio page, a dedication page, customizations to include the children's choice of photographs, images, cover design, and a poster for publicizing their work. At the end of it all, children have the option of even having their novel printed, bound and shipped and have in their hands the product of their imagination and creativity - definitely something to show off to family and friends.If your child is into reading and has even the slightest hint of a creative urge, Knowledge Adventure Books by You is a wonderful way to nurture that love of reading and perhaps even spark a desire to write. Even if your child shows no inclination to read, I have a feeling Books by You is a great tool to kick start a reading habit. Knowledge Adventure's website also provides some helpful hints for parents to help children become "better readers."Books by You is compatible with Windows and Mac and is priced at $19.99.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

Book Review: On The Road to Kandahar - Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World by Jason Burke

Sujatha Bagal — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:03:06 EDT

The final chapter of Jason Burke's book, On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World is titled "Conclusion: London and Pakistan," and therefore I received fair warning. It was disconcerting, nevertheless, when I came to this sentence and realized that it was absolutely the last one. The lights came on first in the distance over the city and then closer in the village and then long looping strings of multicolored bulbs flickered into life above the gates of the shrine and very soon it was almost dark and we walked away.For 281 pages, I had been spoiled by the breakneck pace and the thrill of the next adventure packaged in some great writing. After he walked away from the Bari Imam shrine on the outskirts of Islamabad with his friend and Pakistani journalist, Ershad Mahmud, I fully expected Burke to jump into yet another battered old car with yet another translator, drive once more over bumpy roads through inhospitable terrain to find yet another nook of the 'Islamic world' in which to meet many people -- farmers, teachers, children, doctors, pharmacists, militants, freedom fighters, mullahs, writers and journalists, coalition soldiers, the Taliban -- and then write all about it in great descriptive detail in his lucid, thoughtful, perceptive, honest style.The book begins in Kurdistan around the time of the First Gulf War in the summer of 1991, with a 21-year old Burke crossing the border into northern Iraq from Turkey and ends, 15 years later in that tiny shrine outside Islamabad, in the immediate aftermath of the July 2005 London bombings. The journey that begins as a "post-adolescent adventure" with pre-conceived notions of Islam and of what Muslims look like, with religion as a hazy backdrop and not necessarily the focus, ends on the thought that there is "no general theory that could explain 'the Islamic world' and that to search for one was not only futile but in fact counter-productive."In the intervening period, Burke's travels take him to Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Britain, Thailand, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Uzbekistan and back to Kurdistan and Pakistan. They take him to tired old villages bombed out of existence in the wars of the past decade and a half, their people, homes and lives spilling out on to the streets and fields along with the rubble; to the funeral of a 13 year old Palestinian child, a casualty of the Israeli response to the intifada; into the toilets of the Bagram airbase north of Kabul on whose walls are scrawled words of fear and wisdom of American soldiers; into the front lines of the second Iraq War, at the wrong end of shells bombarding a convoy of vehicles; into prisons housing ex-torturers under the Saddam Hussein regime and failed suicide bombers; into many hotels, mosques, schools and homes to meet members of the various groups fighting and killing for their various ideologies.This travel memoir is a thinking man's account of his journeys. There is one particular passage in the book about the ubiquitousness of Saddam Hussein's portraits in Iraq which goes on to analyze the pictures in their various forms (at one point, Burke even attends an "exhibition of 'work by new young artists' in which every single painting was a portrait of the leader"). ... soon themes began to emerge and I realized that you could chart the whole of the recent history of Iraq, and the recent political history of the Middle East, through the daubs that defaced half the country's walls.The pictures could be split into six main categories, each of which had been most favoured at a different period and each of which represented a key constituency in Iraq for Saddam. Thus they revealed both the image the dictator was promoting at the time they were made and the ideology that was then more broadly dominant in the region.The account of the interplay of religion and political ideology as reflected in these portraits through nearly three decades of Saddam's rule is fascinating and is illustrative of the thoughtful treatment various ideas and themes receive at the hands of Burke in the rest of the book.Equally fascinating and uplifting, and for me the most attractive part of the book, are Burke's accounts of his meeting with many people over the years and the detailed observations of their lives and their condition. When you have peeled off all the layers -- the conflicts, the ideologies, the war and its justifications, the terror, the insurgency -- what you are left with are people. People who just want to "get on with their lives." Burke describes the condition of the Iraqis on his return to the country in 2003 and says simply, "They were just trying to get by, to put dinner on the table ... or simply gather the confidence to walk the streets without fear."Particularly memorable are his portraits of a group of refugee families in a ruined school sixty miles outside of Kabul, of Zara and her mother who he meets in Qala Diza in Kurdistan, first in 1991 and then again in 2003, and that of Omran, who had been a soldier in the Iraqi army in 1991, his body ravaged by a cancer he developed five years later. Nothing we know of any about these places and their citizens, or the terrorism and insurgency that seem to pervade mainstream media coverage of these places, none of these matter when you read about these people and their need for the most basic of human necessities -- food, a home, medicines, their families, the well-being of their children -- and their yearning for peace.Given this elemental level at which he connects with the people in the countries in which he travels, Burke is, by turns, frustrated, angry and disillusioned with the war on terror and the intelligence gathering and policy making that provided the momentum for launching that war. While Burke welcomes the attempts to free the Iraqis from dictatorship, he is quite categorical in his indictment of British and American policy making (he calls the efforts of the British and American governments to rally support for the second Iraq War "one of the biggest ever deceptions of democratic populations in recent history") and faults the governments' "failure to comprehend the true nature of the threat" of modern Islamic militancy.At the end of the day, Islamic militancy, according to Burke, had not won over "the ordinary people of the Islamic world" and Osama Bin Laden had been wrong when he believed he had their support in the wake of the 2001 attacks. It's hard not to get carried away by Burke's faith in the fundamental goodness of human nature and equally hard not to be rattled when that faith is shaken and there is confusion in the face of the attacks in London in July 2005. Burke is quick to acknowledge, honestly, that the views of people he had met with in the years earlier "had been repellent but had not seemed a personal threat" to him, but that his reactions to those very same people had changed when the terror attacks hit too close to home.The book does not, in the end, tie up all loose ends neatly or provide categorical solutions to the problems of terrorism. What it does do is to take that giant important first step toward understanding the people, the issues and the ideas at play. If you've ever wondered about all these countries of the "Islamic world" you read about every day in the newspapers and watch images of on television; if you've ever wondered about the lives of ordinary people in these countries; if you've ever wanted to know about the inner workings of a suicide-bomber or a terrorist; if you've ever wanted to know what it is like to be a journalist on the road in some of the most beautiful and brutal parts of the world; then On the Road to Kandahar is a must-read.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

An Immigrant's Super Bowl Ruminations

Sujatha Bagal — Mon, 5 Feb 2007 12:14:49 EST

That time of the year when men and women are in a supposed tussle - women fight for the men's attention, men fight for the remote and the right to sit on their ass for four hours and not budge - has just passed. For some women, Super Bowl Sunday is the most hated day of the year and they have no qualms admitting it.As for me, I spent all of last evening here in India reminding myself to wake up at five am so I could watch the game. If my husband hadn't called me from London at six am to tell me it was a good game, I would have slept on until seven when it would have been time to wake up my son for school. But I scrambled out of bed, made myself a cup of hot tea and settled down to watch the game for an hour before the mad scramble of the morning began. I would have loved to watch the game with my husband, or better yet, with my group of friends that we usually watch the Super Bowl with back in the US.Perhaps because I did not grow up in a football crazy culture and was not forced to spend Thanksgiving and many Sundays paying homage to men in tights bashing each other up, rather because I came to the game as an adult around the same time the men in my life came to it as well, I actually love the game. (On the other hand, I grew up in a cricket-crazy culture and am a huge cricket fan too - so perhaps it's just me. I just love to watch games on TV.)So for the past few years, the Super Bowl ritual has been to gather at one particular friend's house, with the requisite 50 inch TV, in Maryland. We all bring one dish, an assortment of Indian and typical Super Bowl fare, a few snacks and drinks and our kids. By the time everyone gathers in the early evening, the kitchen counters are overflowing with food and drink, the corridors and the family room floor between the TV and the sofas are overflowing with kids and the sofas are overflowing with people.There's good natured jousting for the prime seat (a single La-Z-Boy with a drink holder), with one or the other of the big men trying to stretch out on a sofa that could easily take three more people. There's noise emanating from all manner of Elmo toys, toy vacuum cleaners and tricycles. One group in a corner of the kitchen or the family room argues loudly about loyalties and which team will win. The host waves his Super Bowl pool sheet under their noses in a vain attempt to grab their attention.Most of us, not having grown up in the US, really don't have a "home" team that the whole family roots for. Our loyalties spring from where we live (and unfortunately for us, the Redskins suck big time) or where we've gone to school. One or the other of us will find a player from our college team and he or she will latch on to that team to root for. Some of us go back to the season and the playoffs and try to connect a team to the one that beat the Redskins, some of us just go by how cute the quarterback is or his status as a legend. Sometimes, we just want a particular coach to win, forget the players or the team (for me, in basketball, Pat Riley was such a coach).Watching the game itself is a chaotic affair. People mill around the kitchen, which has a clear view of the television, change seats, run after the kids, adjudicate disputes, munch on snacks, rate the Super Bowl ads, bang on the floor with all available appendages at fumbles, turnovers and interceptions, eat, drink a lot of beer, roar in approval at a touchdown - in fact, do everything but go to the bathroom.The time reserved for that important activity is the half-time, which is when all the poor souls who could not find a comfortable seat during the game zip into any available ones. So, at the Super Bowl two years ago, my last Super Bowl before moving to India, everyone but two of us, me and female friend, was up and about the house paying no attention to the television whatsoever. Only our squeals and a simultaneous high-pitched, "Did you see that!?" turned every one's heads. Of course, by then, it was too late. The "Wardrobe Malfunction" had corrected itself and there was nothing but confusion on the stage (staged or otherwise, you tell me) and expressions of horror from the hosts.The irony of the situation was not lost on the guys, but the shortcoming in their Super Bowl experience was quickly rectified the next morning (YouTube would have been so handy then) thanks to downloads of what has turned out to be a cultural watermark of our times.I know many arguments are advanced for negating the notion that football is a men's game and only men derive enjoyment from it - apparently more than fifty percent of NFL fans are women (at all the Redskins games I've been to there were a lot of women); women are more aware of statistics and the game's history than men are, etc. But, what I'm really saying is this - what's not to love about a game in which you can watch tight ends to your heart's content; in which, once in a while, you can watch history being made as new expressions that become ensconced in the lexicon are manufactured right in front of your eyes; where some coaches and his "boys" seem to develop this bond that is displayed for all the world to see on the field; where the entire families of the teams seem invested in the success of their men; when otherwise intelligent and reasonable men happily put on pig faces and cheese heads and actually show up in public and on national television?

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

The Power of the Pickle

Sujatha Bagal — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 07:23:35 EST

My kitchen condiment cupboard here in India as well as in the US is always well stocked with pickles of all brands (MTR, Ruchi, Mother's Recipe, mom and mom-in-law made) and all varieties (garlic, vadu manga [baby mangoes], mango thokku [grated or ground mango], lime, tomato, onion, chili, mixed vegetable). Every time I visit the grocery store, I can't resist reaching out into the pickle shelf and seeing what delicious flavor I've laid my fingers on this time. There's a pickle bottle in my basket no matter how many unused jars remain at home.Nothing says 'Indian' better than pickle, but beware ye uninitiated, there are imposters roaming this world claiming to be the real deal. Soon after I moved to the US, the first time someone offered me pickle, I eagerly extended my plate and to my utter confusion found a slice of cucumber that looked it had been struck by a bad case of freezer burn and then had been left out to thaw. My enthusiasm crumbled under the weight of that unfulfilled anticipation. Of course, none of my non-Indian friends had a clue what I meant when I said pickle.Just to give you an idea, here are the ingredients in a typical Indian pickle: the thing that is being pickled (mango, garlic, tomato, carrot, etc.), salt, gingely oil (oil made from sesame seeds), chilies, mustard, cumin, fenugreek, turmeric and asafoetida.A couple of Thanksgivings ago I decided to try my own hand at pickle-making. Fresh homemade pickle. Just the thought was enough to get me to make a few calls and consult the experts – my mom, mom-in-law, and a friend who lives in Maryland. The result was cranberry pickle. Yes, that mainstay of Thanksgiving dinners, the one that is almost always consumed in a gooey, sugary, thick, treacley form, met its match in a heady mix of spices – chili powder, mustard powder, and salt. The combination was deadly. The rich, crunchy, red berries, halved to open up more space to store the spices, tingled the palate as they made their way down, the tangy sweetness complementing the spicy hot, bitter, salty juices.No matter what the flavor, in that spoonful of pickle lie many things: a whiff of home; some ingredient or the other that just about completes your meal; color that complements the rest of the things on your plate; a combination of tastes and smells that heighten your senses; the answer to your longing for home and plain old Indian food after days of working late and eating Chinese and pizza and pasta at your desk from the takeouts near your office.There have been nights when I'd come back from work in the wee hours of the morning, head straight to the kitchen to put a pot of rice on the stove before changing, and with Conan O'Brien and infomercials for company, eat hot rice mixed with ghee and pickle followed by curd rice with mango pickle before going to bed, content in the knowledge that all was well with the world.A spoonful of pickle, as they say, makes life go down easy.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

Book Review: Not On The Level by Michael V. Maddaloni

Sujatha Bagal — Sun, 7 Jan 2007 01:52:19 EST

About two-thirds of the way into Not On The Level, one of the characters explodes in frustration:Another example of our tax dollars hard at work. The fucking U.S. attorney wanted the publicity, so he spent about a million bucks trying this case twice. The guy's not on the level and neither is the whole fucking U.S. attorney's office.These eloquent words illustrate the central message of Michael Maddaloni's second book - institutions function within the framework of rules which individuals seek to bend for personal profit at the expense of the larger good.Not On The Level is an engrossing coming of age story of a first-generation Italian-American who goes on to build a successful career in the US Secret Service and subsequently in the private sector. The story begins at the beginning, as it were, in Philadelphia, with the birth of Joe De Falco, whose father has just died in less than admirable circumstances in World War II. Joe grows up in an extended family with his mother, sister, grand-parents, aunts and uncles.The first few chapters describe, in some detail, Joe's Catholic upbringing at home and at school. Much of the narrative is given over to documenting the rules and traditions that govern life at home, school and church. Under the veneer of order, normalcy and regularity that elders, teachers and priests dictate, Joe encounters aspects of people's character that don't quite live up to the standards imposed by these institutions - a school official who's a pedophile, a sextant who steals from the church, a boy scout official who molests children, a grandfather who carries on an affair with his second cousin, and an uncle whose actions, while achieving their objectives (well, most of the time), are not exactly illustrations of moral, upstanding behavior.Ever the bloke with the clever ideas, Uncle Sal is the purveyor of all things street smart. He encourages Joe to play with non-Catholics against the wishes of his mother (Joe's grandmother) "because there were a lot more of them in the world than there were Catholics, and most of them were decent people"; he tells Joe to mumble pig Latin under his breath if he forgot the Latin responses on his very first day as altar boy; he coaches Joe to learn the answers to the questions on the exams from previous years (rather than preparing from scratch) because the teachers always reuse old test papers.Following high school, Joe decides to join the Marine Corps (when one of Uncle Sal's plans to help Joe make a quick buck and pay for college backfires). One would expect that the Marine Corps, given all the good, clean values it stands for, would be devoid of the kinds of ethical conflicts that are prevalent in, say, politics, but no. Drill Instructors at the Marine Corps, under pressure to perform and focused on their own career advancement, resort to cheating to improve their success rates.The story is not much different in the US Secret Service, where Joe begins a long career, in the US Attorney's Office with which Joe works closely on his cases, or at the multi-national pharmaceutical company that he later joins as vice-president of security. If the stories of the underhanded, shady goings-on at all these institutions come as a surprise to the reader, then it serves to drive home the author's point - things are not what they seem or how they should be; things are not on the level.There are a couple of different varieties of conflict that are at play in the story. At one level is the conflict between the interests of the individual and the institution; at another level, it is the tussle between Joe's two paternal uncles, Sal and Tony (an upstanding citizen who strives to keep Joe on the straight and narrow), for influence over the direction in which Joe's life is heading.The book is most attractive for the endearing portrayal of a large, bustling Italian family and for the fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the Marine Corps and the US Secret Service. Having worked in both the Marine Corps and the Secret Service, Mr. Maddaloni succeeds in painting a realistic, absorbing picture of daily life in these institutions.Perhaps for the same reason, however, the narrative reads, on occasion, like a report of some activity the author was involved in some time ago. This drawback is magnified because the story is told in first person. Apart from this and a couple of irksome errors (when Sal is referred to as Tony, the protagonist's other uncle, in a few instances), Not On The Level makes for a pleasurable read. This is served, in large part, by well crafted conversations, be it between family members or in the workplace, and the warmth and sense of humor with which Mr. Maddaloni sketches his plot and characters.If you're even the slightest bit curious as to what goes into the making of those people in the dark shades you see hovering around the President, Not On The Level is for you.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

Falling On The Tummy Is Serious Business

Sujatha Bagal — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:41:32 EST

Little N turned six months nearly two weeks ago. She's progressed phenomenally from the mostly inert infant imaginable, which she was when we got home from the hospital. Initially she slept for a solid 23 hours a day. Eating and sleeping were her only two activities. She would sleep through diaper changes, loud noises, dress changes, hot summer days and cool nights with nary a whimper, sometimes even while feeding!After Big N, who used to wake up every two hours on the dot, even at night, I wasn't sure if I should be thankful for Little N's habits or, frankly, be worried.Now, six months later, she still sleeps through the night (hallelujah!), but is awake most of the day. She's also into putting her body into various positions - on her back, on her tummy, on her side, with head wedged against the side of the crib. She also does a really funny backstroke kind of a move on any flat surface that propels her backward at a fast clip.The process that led to her falling on her tummy is rather intriguing. She first started out lifting her right leg and throwing it over the left, the rest of her body still hanging back. It took her a couple of weeks to figure out that the top part of her body needed to move too. After days of promptly flinging her right leg over the minute she was laid on her back, she finally fell over on to her tummy, but now her left hand was stuck underneath her chest. After a further few days she figured out how to pull her hand out.Each time she tried to turn to her side it was as if something beyond her control compelled her to do it. The same is the case with flipping on to back from her tummy, which she mastered a few days ago. Now it's a constant flip-flop - on to her tummy, then promptly on to her back.There is a fair amount of frustration involved. During the time she did not know how to get off her tummy, her neck got tired from keeping her head up and she'd let her head fall forward on the mattress, rest for a few minutes and then lift her head again. Even this got tiring after a few minutes and not knowing how to move from her position, she would start whimpering and looking around for someone to help her out. But none of this prevented her from promptly getting on her tummy the minute I turned her on to her back, her demeanor approximating that of someone working seriously on an important task and intent on accomplishing it.Now that she is able to get on her back by herself the next item on her agenda is to figure out how to move forward while on her tummy. For the present she's stuck in reverse gear.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.

Entrepreneurship: Alive and Kicking in Bangalore

Sujatha Bagal — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:37:37 EST

India may be known to the business world as the land of the Tatas, the Birlas, the Narayan Murthys and the IITs and IIMs, but the first thing that hits you when you land in India and you drive out of the airport to your hotel or home is the number of shops lining the streets - big department stores, tiny shops selling paan, biscuits, chocolates and juices, roadside stalls selling savories and snacks, makeshift stalls for clothes or just men and women squatting on the pavement selling anything from flowers to toys to books.Dry fruits and fresh fruits on a slow Sunday afternoonI wouldn't be surprised if the number of entrepreneurs per thousand in India is the largest in the world, though I sometimes wonder how any of these businesses make any money at all. Some of these are tiny businesses with just a table and a row of huge glass jars with some chocolates in them in the front room of a house (of course, that business may not be the enterprise sustaining the families).Of all the different examples of small business enterprises I've seen, the one that fills me with the most satisfaction is the food stalls operated out of tempos or out of the backs of Maruti vans. Because the vehicles are mobile, they are able to operate out of a small strip of pavement. These vehicles arrive at the designated spot (usually near construction sites of which there are untold numbers in Bangalore right now) with huge vats of sambhar, rice, curries and raagi (millet) balls, throw open the doors and set out the dishes. They also bring with them plates, glasses and jugs of water. There's usually a woman behind the vats serving mostly construction laborers their breakfast, lunch or dinner.It's thrilling to see this in operation. The food stall operators make brisk business and the laborers get home cooked meals, the kind they like, probably at even lower prices than the Darshinis, a chain of Indian fast food restaurants. A peanut seller finds some shadeAnother small business enterprise that has gained popularity in Bangalore is the mobile beautician. With every little nail clipper, eyebrow tweezer and cotton ball squared away into their one big bag, the women zip around town in their two-wheelers and snip hair, clip nails, pluck hair, scrub away dead skin, massage tired muscles, moisturize, peel, wax, thread - in short, a provide a plethora of services - all in the comfort of their patrons' homes. And from all accounts, the mobile beauticians do a roaring trade. Building her client list mostly from word of mouth, M, one such beautician I know, works from 6 am up to 9 pm, seven days a week! And on many days she still does not have time to break for lunch. At one point in her business, she got so busy that she enlisted her cousin as an assistant and it is a sight to see the both of them zipping through the community on their scooter, or one or the other of them walking briskly to make her next appointment, cell phones hanging around their necks. With a 10th grade education in which English was part of the curriculum, M does a marvellous job of communicating with her various clients (most of whom don't know Kannada, the local language). She has a business card and a rate card and no Blackberry. It is a mystery how she remembers where she has to be at the appointed hour, but she does - she's never missed an appointment and more likely than not, it'll be her calling me to remind me.Her drive and work ethic are nothing short of amazing, and her level of service exists in a rarefied world. When it comes to deciding whether to head over to a salon or pick up the phone to call M, the choice is clear. And the day might not be far behind when that Blackberry makes an appearance.

Sujatha Bagal, a writer currently based in the US, recently returned following three years as an expat in Bangalore, her hometown. For a glimpse into the life of an expat, visit Blogpourri.