Driving Through Conclusions

Bangalore-based Karthik Iyengar and his much-talked-about almost-book Horn OK Please  are a study in both savvy marketing and a certain inspiring idealism. And, well, a lot of goofiness and silly talk. But most importantly it is humorous and that is what something that terribly lacks in the Indian literature market. It chronicles Kartik’s journey across many countries. The plot is simple, plain and exact. A trip loaded with adventures at the back of your car which trips you over and over again at the exciting new ventures when the passengers encounter. Humour is the sole truth and you can feel it in every word of the book.

Fused with the life of a corporate executive – it explains the new dimensions of the young clan of India 2.0. You travel on the roads of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and then to the abode itself – Jammu and Kashmir meeting the up’s and down’s of life. Encountering the tiny bits of experiences and smiles which we choose to ignore.

The book is hilarious. The writing is flowing, filled with sarcasm and witty lines that hook you on the book. A story which grips you all the way to Ladakh. The comments and witty nudges bring up the typical smirk-ish smile to your face one a page while the other leaves you in shock and amazement. It zooms about the poem being felt and then cooked with moralistic viewpoints to present you a recipe to digest for a happy lifestyle.  He cooks the happiness of tactless commercialism, a dream of roads and dressing it with a new fresh India, as a nation for the world to witness.  Definitely not a travelogue, the road trip shows us the shades of Kartik’s life.

It has anecdotes from the journey and snippets of randomness that end up instigating brain waves to ponder on the reality around us. A great read -to treasure and cherish!

Little Annoyances And Light Humour

Ian Urbina is a reporter for The New York Times, based in the paper’s Washington bureau. He has degrees in history from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and his writings, which range from domestic and foreign policy to commentary on everyday life, have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Harper’s, and elsewhere. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, son, stepdaughter, and a nuisance of a dog.

In Life’s Little Annoyances, Ian Urbina chronicles the lengths to which some people will go when they have endured their pet peeves long enough and are not going to take it any more. It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted “business reply” envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us.