Richie Rich, 1994, and The Parent Trap, 1998

Since I’m currently in the pre-production stage of a special issue of my newspaper, which goes to print Friday, I thought of missing Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Besides, I haven't seen, for a long time now, any films that merit serious inclusion in the Tuesday meme. But then, I remembered the two films I saw again recently—action-comedy True Lies (1994) directed by James Cameron and family-comedy Richie Rich (1994) directed by Donald Petrie (Miss Congeniality)—and decided that the temptation to participate was too strong to ignore, whatever be the film.

This post is strictly not about True Lies, an action film about secret spies, a cloak-and-dagger adventure between a husband-wife, nuclear terrorists, a kidnapped girl, and a good dose of humour. The antics of US secret agent Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his wannabe secret agent wife Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) are comical. Art Malik, the Pakistan-born British actor who plays Salim Abu Aziz, head of a ragtag bunch of clumsy terrorists, joins the party that also includes spy sidekick Albert Gibson (Tom Arnold) and skirt chaser Simon (Bill Paxton).

One liners too many: “You're fired!” Arnold Schwarzenegger
tells Art Malik before firing the missile.

In one ludicrous scene, Schwarzenegger takes off vertically in a US fighter plane to rescue his daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku) who has escaped from Malik and is hanging precariously from a giant tower crane high above ground. She drops down on to the nose of the plane and clings on to its windshield. Malik follows her swiftly and jumps on to its wing. A brief duel ensues before Malik finds himself hooked to one of the missiles. He looks, rather stupidly, at Schwarzenegger who has no qualms about firing the missile in the direction of a terrorist chopper hovering nearby.

True Lies is a downright silly movie, but very entertaining.

This post is really about Richie Rich and The Parent Trap (1998), the latter directed by Nancy Meyers (The Holiday). The two films are about two kids who must “rescue” their parents in two different situations.

In Richie Rich, Macaulay Culkin plays the poor little rich boy who must rescue his parents, Richard Rich (the affable Edward Herrmann) and Regina Rich (Christine Ebersole), from a scheming Rich Industries’ executive Lawrence Van Dough (John Larroquette) who is after the family vault, predictably, hidden away in the Rich version of Mount Rushmore called Mount Richmore.

As a kid I loved reading Richie Rich and other comics from the Harvey stable like Casper, Hot Stuff, Little Lotta, Wendy, Little Dot, Spooky, Little Audrey, and Sad Sack. Over the years I have formed a certain image of most comic book characters. So I wasn’t surprised when Macaulay Culkin as Richie Rich, Jonathan Hyde as his butler-bodyguard Cadbury, Michael McShane as Rich scientist Professor Keenbean, and Stephi Lineburg as his girlfriend Gloria failed to convince me. Dollar, the Rich dog, was okay. Irona, the robot-maid, was missing. The plot reflected the stories in many of the comics where Richard Rich is kidnapped by his enemies only to be rescued by Richie Rich and Cadbury with help from Professor Keenbean and his outlandish gadgets.

Disbelief is not something I lend easily to film adaptations of cartoons and comics.

In The Parent Trap, two twin girls, Hallie Parker and Annie James (Lindsay Lohan), are living separately with their divorced parents, Nick Parker (Dennis Quaid) and Elizabeth James (Natasha Richardson) in America and Britain, respectively. The girls, who have never been with each other since birth, meet at camp, discover they’re twins, and plot the grand reunion of their parents. They exchange places but their parents don’t know it.

There are some nice moments in the film; for instance, when Grandpa Charles James (Ronnie Stevens), the mother's father, and Chessy (Lisa Ann Walter), the father's maid, discover, separately, that the girls have switched places or when they play a nasty little prank on Meredith Blake (Elaine Hendrix), their father’s girlfriend, in order to drive a wedge between the two.

The Parent Trap is a delightful family drama. What worked for this film was the cute and precocious character of Lindsay Lohan and the on-screen chemistry between Quaid and Richardson who, as parents, decide to bury their past for the sake of their “innocent” girls. A nice, feel good movie.

I’m waiting for an opportunity to see the original version of Walt Disney’s The Parent Trap (1961) starring Hayley Mills as the teenage girl in a double role and Mitch Evers (Brian Keith) and Margaret ‘Maggie’ McKendrick (Maureen O'Hara) as the parents.

It’s sad that the once famous child stars, Culkin and Lohan, who set out to "rescue" their parents in the films, have since needed to be rescued in real life.

Back to work.

Nelson Mandela: 1918-2013

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

© Debbie Yazbek/AFP/Getty Images

The news of Nelson Mandela’s death, at 95, on December 5, was all over the internet. But, as with all major news, you haven’t read it till you have read about it in the papers next morning. There is no need for a separate tribute or obituary on South Africa’s legendary freedom fighter. The headlines across the front pages of Indian newspapers in English said it all. Comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi, that other apostle of peace, were inevitable.

The Mahatma of our times is forever free
The Times of India

‘He was a giant among men’
Hindustan Times

Nelson ‘Gandhi’ Mandela passes away
The Tribune

Mandela leaves heart in darkness
The Asian Age

A giant of forgiveness
The Free Press Journal

‘Mandela has gone up there to sleep with the angels; it's time for him to rest’
DNA (Daily News & Analysis)

© London Herald, February 11, 1990

Mahatma of our time
The Telegraph

Without Mandela

Indian Express

Peace icon Mandela is no more
Deccan Herald

A legend departs
The Hindu

Work done, Mandela bids adieu
The Pioneer

Anti-apartheid icon Mandela passes away
The Assam Tribune

Nelson Mandela was a wise man whose words were filled with wisdom. Of all his sayings, I found this profound—“In my country we go to prison first and then become President.” It spoke of the 27 years he spent in prison, under apartheid, from which he emerged to become a free South Africa's first black president.

The Killers by Ernest Hemingway, 1927

This is my contribution for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

“What are you going to kill Old Andreson for? What did he ever do to you?
“He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us.”
“And he’s only going to see us once,” Al said from the kitchen.

A classic story never dies. It lives on long after it is published and its writer has passed away from this world. The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell (1924) and The Killers by Ernest Hemingway (1927) are just two examples of short stories that continue to enthral readers and viewers through early and modern adaptations retold via stories, novels, plays, films, and even comics. For instance, James Hadley Chase borrowed the basic premise of Richard Connell’s story for his 1969 novel The Vulture is a Patient Bird (1969), reviewed here. At the time it didn’t occur to me that I'd read it somewhere before.

The two short stories are so well written as to inspire the reader to try and write in a similar fashion. Those who write short stories know that writing one is not as easy as it seems. In Hemingway's case, you have to be a miser with words and generous with the narrative. Just as he was in his short story The Killers first published in Scribner’s magazine in March 1927 (see below) .

© www.library.sc.edu

The iconic writer is so annoyingly sparse with words that it’s a wonder there is a story at all. But that was his greatness. There is little description of the two mobsters, Al and Max, who walk into Henry’s lunchroom in Summit, a crime-infested suburb of Chicago, looking for a big Swede called Ole Andreson. They want to kill the former heavyweight prizefighter when he comes in for his daily supper. The hitmen are wearing derby hats, silk mufflers and gloves, and are hiding sawed-off shotguns under their tight overcoats. They look like twins and they're menacing in a quiet way.

While Al and Max wait for double-crosser Ole Andreson at the lunch counter, they order ham and eggs and bacon and eggs, and make fun of its owner, George, and the food on his menu, his black cook, Sam (who is referred to as “nigger”), and the only other diner, Nick Adams (frequently teased as “bright boy”). There is no description of George, Sam and Nick, or their thoughts and expressions, or their state of mind. But you know they're scared of what’s going to happen. If there is any description at all, it is to be found in the dialogue between the five characters, Ole Andreson, and his landlady.

A scene from the 1946 version of The Killers.

There is history behind this short story, just as there is history behind nearly every story written by Hemingway. Reading about it on the internet, I found that the writer lived in Chicago for a while. The city was under prohibition and organised crime was rampant. Summit was ruled by the mob. Those were the days of Al Capone. And a real boxer called Andre Anderson was killed by real gangsters, which formed the basis for this story. While Hemingway had intimate knowledge of gangland crime, he conceded that he left out most of it: “That story probably had more left out of it than anything I ever wrote. I left out all Chicago, which is hard to do in 2,951 words,” he has been quoted as saying.

Prohibition probably got to Hemingway, a heavy drinker, more than the gang wars. He sort of ridicules it in The Killers.

Women protest in Chicago.

“Got anything to drink?” Al asked.
“Silver beer, Bevo, ginger ale,” George said.
“I mean you got anything to drink?”
“Just those I said.”
“This is a hot town,” said the other. “What do they call it?”
“Summit.”

Hemingway was in his late twenties when he wrote the story and I'm not sure if he was already drinking a lot at the time.

Final word
As you read The Killers you'll mentally play it out on a black-and-white cinema screen. It's that kind of a story, fit for a low-budget noir film.

In fact, there are two full-length movies, made in 1946 (directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, and Edmond O'Brien) and in 1964 (directed by Don Siegel and starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, and Ronald Reagan). The 1946 version had Charles McGraw as Al and William Conrad as Max. Besides, there are at least four short films including a student film in 1956 made by Andrei Tarkovsky and others. Having never seen any I don't know how true the films are to the short story.

It’s a real talent to be able to narrate almost an entire story as a conversational piece and still retain all of the suspense intact. Ernest Hemingway was a past master at this storytelling.

Dame Maggie Smith

A fleeting look at the English-born grand dame of Hollywood for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

Minerva McGonagall has all but erased my memory of Maggie Smith’s earlier films, some of which I have seen though I don't remember much. Close your eyes, think of Maggie Smith, and up pops her image as the stern but kindly transfiguration professor and head of Gryffindor house at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

I recall her, rather vaguely, in Death on the Nile (1978) and A Room with a View (1985), almost entirely in the Sister Act duet (1992 & 1993) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), and absolutely everything about her place in Harry Potter’s Voldemortised life. I’m scratching my head over Gosford Park (2001), though.

Dame Maggie Smith was already 67 when the first Harry Potter movie came out in 2001 and a decade older when the two-part film of the seventh in the series was released. Richard Harris, who was slightly older than Smith, died after playing Dumbledore in Harry Potter 1 & 2, making way for another Irish-born actor Michael Gambon, ten years his junior. Maggie Smith, however, continued to lend her distinguished, albeit underrated, presence to the popular franchise till the end. She was overshadowed by the others and most especially by Alan Rickman who played Severus Snape, arguably the best character in the entire series.

Today, Maggie Smith is 79 years old and in spite of health issues is still going strong, delivering fine performances as ever. She is set to appear in a film called My Old Lady (2014) with Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas. She is also expected to reprise her role in the as-yet unannounced The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2 along with Judi Dench, Billy Nighy, and Richard Gere. The first part, set in India, was a very nice film and I recommend it to those who haven't seen it.

The earliest Maggie Smith movie I can recall is The V.I.P.’s because I remember liking it as much for the story as for the multicast. Smith plays Miss Mead, a young secretary to Les Mangrum (Rod Taylor), a cash-strapped businessman from Australia who urgently needs funds to prevent a hostile takeover of his tractor company. They are stuck at London airport, en route to New York, along with an assorted group of rich travellers with their own seemingly intractable problems.

There is Paul Andros (Richard Burton), a brooding tycoon desperately trying to prevent his wife Frances Andros (Elizabeth Taylor) from running away with Marc Champselle (Louis Jourdan), a casanova equally desperate to whisk her away; wealthy filmmaker Max Buda (Orson Welles), who is vexed by tax problems, and Miriam Marshall (Linda Christian), his actress and muse; and the Duchess of Brighton (Dame Margaret Rutherford) who has her own reasons for leaving the London fog behind.

Rod Taylor and Maggie Smith 

Miss Mead doesn't say much in the film but her actions as a loyal secretary speak louder than her words would have. She approaches Paul Andros, rather tentatively, with a financial proposal and is taken aback when the distraught tycoon, after realising why she is doing it, signs his chequebook and hands it over without a word. His generosity is guided by a simple philosophy: of what use is his wealth when he is about to lose his love, at least it can help the devoted secretary win something for her charming boss. Miss Mead is clearly besotted by Les Mangrum, the gentleman-employer.

What I liked about The V.I.P.’s were Maggie Smith's separate scenes and dialogues with Rod Taylor and Richard Burton. They lent a nice touch to a story largely characterised by human foibles. I also found Maggie Smith's character more appealing than Elizabeth Taylor's. 

Note: Yvette Banek has written an excellent review of The V.I.P.’s over at her equally excellent blog In so many words… Click on the link to read the review.

The Big Fix by Vikas Singh, 2013

Review & Interview

“There’s twenty lakhs in there,” said the conduit. “As a gesture of goodwill, I’m going to let you keep it. There will be more later, if you do what I tell you. Fail me, and I’ll send another bag to your family, this time with your head in it.”

No other sport captures the imagination of an entire nation as cricket does in India. Football enjoys that distinction on a global scale. More than half of the 1.60-odd billion cricket fans worldwide are in the subcontinent and the bulk of these are in India, where cricket is a religion and cricketers are worshipped like gods. Curiously, while cricket has been the subject of academic and biographical books, it has never had a formal run in fiction, until Vikas Singh decided to score one. He may have set a precedent.

The Big Fix by the Delhi-based journalist is a fast-paced thriller that plays out both on and off the field, inside and outside the stadium. There is cricket, the game itself, played with familiar passion and intensity, a betting syndicate run by the mafia, unscrupulous businessmen, tainted players, a high-profile murder, and a police investigation.

The story is narrated in first person by its two principal characters, Shaurya Chauhan, the skipper of Capital Cavaliers, and Mitakshara, a dauntless crime reporter, in the backdrop of an explosive cricket championship called T20 and spot- and match-fixing scandals that threaten to derail the Cavaliers’ chances of winning the trophy.

In a Twenty20, the official term, each side with 11 players bowls a maximum of 20 overs of six balls each. The team that scores the highest wins the match although even scores can lead to a tiebreaker. The high scoring and electrifying nature of the game has endeared it to millions of cricket fans. T20 teams consist of players from around the world. It is the fastest and most advanced form of the game as opposed to the equally fast scoring 50-over ODI (one-day international) and the traditional five-day Test match that purists insist is the only way to play the game. The Indian Premier League is the official T20 championship in India. Held annually, the nearly dozen teams are sponsored by corporate houses and film stars with the tacit support of political bigwigs on one hand and punters and bookies on the other. The game is a money-spinner.

A T20 cricket match is a batsman’s dream and a bowler’s nightmare. A batsman doesn't just hit the ball, he bludgeons it, like in baseball or Quidditch. Shaurya, a top-order batsman, is struggling with his form and is easy target for opposition bowlers which puts his captaincy under a cloud. An in-form teammate is waiting to step into his shoes and lead the Capital Cavaliers. The explosive batsman almost gets his wish as Howard Jensen, the popular South African coach of the team, tells Shaurya to step down and let his teammate captain the remaining matches.

The next day Jensen is found unconscious in his hotel room with an injury to his head and the last person he met was Shaurya. The finger of suspicion points at the captain of the Cavaliers and the Delhi Police Crime Branch comes sniffing like a bloodhound. Matters get worse for Shaurya when his comatose coach eventually dies.

Who killed Howard Jensen and why? Was it Shaurya Chauhan? Was it one or more of the players with links to bookies and the mafia? Or was it someone influential with a sinister plan of his or her own?

Final word
The Big Fix is a finely crafted whodunit that keeps you guessing about the identity of the suspect and his or her motive until the end. In the midst of it all Vikas Singh entertains you with a ball-by-ball account of some exciting cricket, which is central to the mystery, even as Shaurya regains more than just his form with the bat. He also finds Mitakshara, the beautiful reporter with a hidden agenda of her own.

I know next to nothing about baseball but if a baseball fan had written this novel, I’d have enjoyed it, just as someone unfamiliar with cricket will find The Big Fix a racy story with a little humour.

The author
Vikas Singh, Resident Editor of The Times of India, Delhi, loves cricket and reading. The “self-confessed word addict” is already working on his second novel, “a Woody Allenesque romance” as he told this blog in an engaging interview (see below). He has also co-authored a brief history of knowledge titled The Know of Things. Vikas lives in Delhi with his wife and daughter.

The author spoke to the 3Cs in an email interaction organised by his publisher, Westland Ltd, Chennai, which sent me a review copy of The Big Fix. A Kindle edition of the book is available at Amazon for readers abroad. I have split the interview into three parts: the book, the characters, and the author. Over to Vikas Singh...

‘Hardly any fiction is written about a game
packed with drama and thrills as cricket’

THE BOOK

Prashant C. Trikannad: How do you relate to cricket? Did you play the game or are you a fan like millions of Indians?
Vikas Singh: Like most Indians, I passionately love cricket. I've played the game a lot for fun, though not at any serious competitive level. However, luckily for me, my job (I’m Resident Editor of The Times of India, Delhi) allows me to interact a fair bit with cricketers and support staff. I've also had the opportunity to cover some of the most memorable moments of Indian cricket, including India’s victory in the World Cup, Sachin Tendulkar’s double century in an ODI and, most recently, his very emotional 200th Test and retirement (India-born Tendulkar is a cricket legend and the highest run-getter in the history of the game).

You have written the cricketing aspect of The Big Fix like a professional cricketer right down to the last ball and the last run. How well do you know the game?
Over the years, I've had the opportunity to spend some time talking about the technical and mental side of cricket with players like Sir Viv Richards, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, and Yuvraj Singh, and I also get to interact regularly with sports journalists. Plus, there have been tons of autobiographies and other books by cricketers, all of which I’ve devoured. All those insights came in very handy while writing The Big Fix.

Author and journalist Vikas Singh 
Photo: www.thedesijourney.blogspot.in

What prompted you to ground your debut novel on cricket?
I had always found it strange that hardly any fiction is written about a game that is so inherently packed with drama and thrills as cricket. There have been many outstanding non-fiction works, but good novels based on cricket have been few and far between. The honourable exceptions include Chinaman and The Zoya Factor, but even they didn’t really provide the cricketer’s perspective. As a reader, you don’t get to inhabit the players’ minds during those tense last-ball finishes. Why do some players thrive under pressure, while others crack? To me, that’s one of the most fascinating mysteries of cricket.

Simultaneously, there have been lots of real-life controversies. There was Bob Woolmer’s dramatic death in the 2007 World Cup, and the conviction of three Pakistani cricketers for spot-fixing in 2010. Last year, India TV did a sting operation which seemed to show some little-known players openly discussing fixing. And, of course, this year there were allegations concerning S. Sreesanth and other players from Rajasthan Royals. I thought if I could combine the on-field action with an off-field whodunit, it would make for an interesting book. So that’s what I set out to do. How far I succeeded is for readers to judge.

Did you meet with current or former cricketers, senior police and cricket board officials, and sports journalists to research for your book?
Yes, though for obvious reasons, they prefer to stay off the record. The one police officer I've mentioned in the acknowledgements is Satyendra Garg, who’s now IG, Law & Order, in Arunachal Pradesh, but was in Delhi while I was writing the book. He spent a lot of time explaining investigation procedures and techniques to me, though we didn’t specifically discuss the fixing case since he wasn't involved in those investigations. Incidentally, I’m part of a panel discussion on December 7 at the Times Literary Carnival with Neeraj Kumar, the former Commissioner of Delhi who actually led the investigations. It’s a session that I’m really looking forward to.

How much of the events in the story are based on real betting incidents in the cricketing world?
I’d say about 50 per cent is based on stuff that actually happened, or was rumoured to have taken place, while the remaining 50 per cent is pure imagination. It’s up to readers to figure out which is which!

The novel is told in the present tense and Shaurya Chauhan and Mitakshara, the two main protagonists, narrate their individual stories in the first person. Do you think readers would be comfortable with this approach?
I certainly hope so. The way I visualised the book, there would be two parallel storylines–one, the cricketing action, and two, the investigations and finally, they would converge at the climax. I was keen on Shaurya’s perspective because I wanted to make sure that the cricket part of the story didn’t get relegated to the periphery. But there was no way Shaurya could have known about all the stuff going on in the investigations, so you needed another point of view. It could, of course, have been the chief investigator’s perspective but having Mitakshara allowed me to bring in a romantic angle.

Have any cricketers read The Big Fix? If yes, what did they think of it?
Former India player Deep Dasgupta tweeted that he loved the book. Another former India player, Aakash Chopra, tweeted that if you’re into cricket, The Big Fix is a must-read. I really like reading Aakash’s columns, and I think he explains the technical nuances of the game better than anybody else, so I was quite thrilled that he enjoyed the book. Leading cricket websites like cricbuzz and cricketcountry have praised the book, as has Wisden India. And yes, some players who are currently playing have told me that they enjoyed reading the book, but are reluctant to say so publicly since some rather powerful individuals are being probed right now.

Do you think your novel will be of interest to readers in the non-cricketing nations?
Well, the South Asian diaspora is present in virtually every part of the world, so I’m sure the book will find readers even in countries which aren't usually associated with cricket. Of course, even if everybody who likes cricket reads the book, that’s a fairly large audience by itself!

THE CHARACTERS

I cannot help this question: is the character of Howard Jensen based on the English-born cricketer and international coach Bob Woolmer who died in 2007 under mysterious circumstances in a hotel room in Jamaica?
Well, the circumstances in which Bob Woolmer died certainly acted as a catalyst for my imagination. Of course, it was finally concluded officially that he died of natural causes, but conspiracy theorists remain unconvinced. Bob’s death was a terrible tragedy for his family and the world of cricket, and I have absolutely no desire to trivialise it. But it did act as a starting point for the book, though I have to say that the personality of Howard Jensen, and the final explanation in the book for his death, bears no resemblance whatsoever to Bob Woolmer and his life.

Can you put a real name or face on Shaurya Chauhan or is he an imaginary character who resembles one or more Indian cricketers?
About 50 per cent of Shaurya’s characteristics are a mixture of some of my favourite cricketers. The balance 50 per cent comes from my imagination. I can name the players but I think it would be a lot more fun for readers if they figured it out for themselves. It’s not particularly hard, really.

In the book Shaurya Chauhan comes across as a perfect specimen of a human being. Is his flawless character meant to send a message to a game tainted by match fixing scandals as well as to its many practitioners?
I don’t think he’s flawless. He’s stubborn and argumentative, and often loses his cool, much to his regret. As a captain, he tends to be authoritarian and takes some rather risky decisions, like plucking a teenager literally out of nowhere and throwing him straight into a big match. But yes, he’s clean and untainted by fixing. When I was writing the book, I met many people who told me they had lost interest in cricket because of the numerous fixing scandals. In a sense, the book reflected my angst as a cricket lover, particularly because I know that there are still some players who’re fiercely devoted to the game and will never stoop to unethical practices. I wanted Shaurya to symbolically represent these players.

Incidentally, I was very tempted to throw in one line at the end, where Shaurya looks at a bookie kingpin seated in the audience and winks at him. That would have given the book a real O’Henry-kind of twist in the tail. But it would also have been a betrayal of the character of Shaurya Chauhan and everything he stands for. So finally, I went with the present ending.

Mitakshara, the second major character in your novel, has the scoop of a lifetime but her feelings for Shaurya prevent her from writing her story and although she is around until nearly the end, I thought her role ended abruptly. Can you talk about her characterisation?
Well, you will get to see a lot more of Mitakshara in my next book, in which she really comes into her own. Obviously, I’m biased, but I do think that she’s one of the feistiest female characters you’ll encounter. She’s smart, sassy, loyal, and affectionate. And she has a strong sense of fair play, which is why she doesn’t break the scoop to begin with, because she doesn’t want Shaurya to be condemned even before he’s had a chance to prove his innocence.

THE AUTHOR

Vikas, how long did you take to write The Big Fix? Can you briefly take me through your writing process? For instance, how many words did you write everyday?
From the time I wrote the first line of The Big Fix to the time I wrote the last line, it took me exactly 43 days. I guess the story must have been bubbling away at the back of my mind for a while, because once I actually sat down to write it, it just flowed. I have a slightly weird work day, in the sense that I go into office in the afternoon and stay till well past midnight, so I had kept the mornings to write. I gave myself a target of writing about 500 words every day. But on most days, I found myself doing about 1,500 words. For me, the hard part was not the writing but forcing myself to stop!

I assume your next book is a suspense thriller called Another Time, Another Place. Would you like to tell me more about it?
My working title for the book was Love And Other Terrors, though I think we’ll finally publish it as Another Time, Another Place. It’s a Woody Allenesque romance that suddenly transforms into a thriller, with a terror plot thrown in. Yogi Mehta, who gets a one-line reference in The Big Fix (on Page 207), is one of the major characters. And, of course, so is Mitakshara. It’s not exactly a sequel to The Big Fix, because there’s no cricket involved, but it takes Mitakshara’s story forward and some other characters from The Big Fix also pop in and out of the book.

What kind of books do you read, in what genres, and who are some of your favourite writers?
It’s a long, eclectic list and includes John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro (I was delighted she won the Nobel this year, though I was hoping that Murakami would get it), Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, Conn Iggulden, Rick Riordan, George RR Martin (please God, don’t let him die before he completes the Game of Thrones series), JRR Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, P.G. Wodehouse, Larry Gonick, Neil Gaiman, and Lee Child (Jack Reacher is one of my favourite literary characters, though having Tom Cruise play him is a mistake IMHO. I’d like to see Cruise and Hugh Jackman switch roles, with Cruise playing Wolverine and Jackman Reacher. That would be a much closer match to the original physical descriptions of the characters).

According to your profile, your house in Delhi has more books than furniture. What is your private library like?
It tends to change quite a bit, because every few months, when it becomes hard to find seating space for guests, I give away lots of books to friends, colleagues, libraries, and NGOs. I try to make sure that I match the books to the tastes of the people who are getting them–I want the books I give away to find loving homes. Though, some old favourites stay with me–mostly books written by the authors mentioned above.

Finally, what do you think of current Indian writing in English?
There’s obviously a very strong literary tradition of Indian writing in English. Among the authors who’re currently active, I have a lot of admiration for Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Amitav Ghosh. But I'm also delighted to see the emergence of a new generation of very interesting, commercially successful Indian popular writers. Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi top the list, of course. But people like Piyush Jha, Madhulika Liddle, Anuja Chauhan, and Ravi Subramanian are pretty readable too.

10 animated films with the best voices (ever)

I enjoy reading and compiling trivia. They’re a source of amusement. Especially so if they consist of lists of this, that, and the other, which being subjective are open to scrutiny, criticism, and ridicule. Trivia are little titbits that you often find in small boxes and units as part of a larger story in a newspaper or magazine.

My earliest introduction to published trivia was The Book of Lists series compiled by the family troika of bestselling author Irving Wallace, his son, historian David Wallechinsky, and his daughter, writer Amy Wallace. Their people’s almanac covered such unusual and absurd topics as “Breeds of dogs which bite people the most, and the least” and “Famous people who died during sexual intercourse.” I don’t know if the almanac is still around.

British actor Jeremy Irons lent his deep
voice to the evil Scar in The Lion King.

This week, for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom, I decided to introduce an occasional post on trivia in films, starting with some of my favourite animated movies with the best voices (ever). I've selected these from the films I have seen and remember the most off the top of my head. I've left out several pre-1960 classic animated movies like Bambi, Cinderalla, Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and Pinocchio as well as many others made in the 1970s & 1980s for the reason that while I have seen most of these animated films, I don’t remember the voice overs.

But ten is a good number, and here they are in order of release and some of the finest voice overs in the business.

01. The Jungle Book, 1967
Best voice: George Sanders as Shere Khan, the Tiger.

02. Beauty and the Beast, 1991
Best voice: Robby Benson as the spellbound Beast.

03. The Lion King, 1994
Best voice: Jeremy Irons as Scar, Simba’s evil uncle.

04. 101 Dalmatians, 1996
Best voice: Glenn Close as dog-hater Cruella De Vil.

05. Shrek, 2001
Best voice: Eddie Murphy as Donkey, Shrek’s friend.

06. Ice Age, 2002
Best voice: Ray Romano as Manfred, the mammoth.

07. The Polar Express, 2004
Best voice: Tom Hanks as the young boy, conductor, and Santa Claus among other roles.

08. Madagascar, 2005
Best voice: Sacha Baron Cohen as Julien, the lemur and a self-proclaimed king.

09. Ratatouille, 2007
Best voice: Peter O’Toole as the intimidating food critic Anton Ego.

10. Rango, 2011
Best voice: Johnny Depp as Rango, the chameleon who becomes sheriff in Wild West.

If I were to pick any one that I like the most, I'd have no hesitation in choosing Beauty and the Beast followed by The Jungle Book, The Lion King, Ice Age, and Ratatouille as my top five. It's one of the most beautiful films I've seen. It's a story of love, courage, betrayal, compassion, and sacrifice, revolving around the unlikely pair of Beauty (Paige O'Hara as Belle) and the Beast (Robby Benson). One of the things I liked about this film is Belle’s hunger for books, her thirst for knowledge, even if it means reading the same books again from her village library. And then she meets Beast and steps inside his spectacular library. I reviewed this film last year. 

A Gentleman from Mississippi by Thomas A. Wise, 1910

For Friday’s Forgottern Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

“Senator Langdon is picked out by dishonest men in Washington to be used as their tool in the Senate. But the ‘tool’ proves to be sharp at both ends and cuts the men who mean to cheat the people.”

 A Gentleman from Mississippi, a post-Civil War novel by writer-actor Thomas A. Wise, is based on a successful play of the same title produced by Joseph Rhode Grismer and William A. Brady in 1908-09. Grismer and Brady were stage actors and were closely associated with theatre. The play was acted out 407 times at the Bijou Theatre in Tennessee. There is, however, some confusion over the authorship of the book which, aside from Wise, is credited to two other gentlemen named Frederick R. Toombs and Harrison Garfield Rhodes. My edition of the ebook had only Wise’s name.

Colonel William H. Langdon, a wealthy plantation owner from Mississippi, is elected to the United States Senate through the influence of James Stevens, his close friend and senior Senator from the state, Martin Sanders, head of the seven counties, Senator Peabody of Pennsylvania, and Charles Norton, a junior Congressman from Mississippi. They have conspired to send ‘Big Bill’ Langdon to the Upper House of the Congress because of a misplaced conviction that he will serve their vested interests.

While Langdon is ecstatic on his election to the Senate and dreams of serving his countrymen with honesty and sincerity, he is no puppet. He refuses to fall prey to the political intrigues and machinations in Washington, spearheaded by corrupt and unscrupulous politicians and lobbyists like Peabody, the powerful Boss of the Senate.

The story revolves around the siting of a new hundred-million dollar naval base in the South. Peabody and his cronies nominate Langdon on the powerful Committee on Naval Affairs in the hope that he will vote as they dictate, in favour of Altacoola instead of Gulf City. They have bought acres of land in Altacoola and stand to make a killing on their investment. But Langdon is no pushover. The proud and feisty Southern planter takes the ‘crooks’ head-on with help from an unlikely quarter, Bud Haines, an intrepid New York journalist whose cynicism of Washington politics and its politicians is overturned by this simple and sincere man from Mississippi. Together, Langdon and his faithful ally turn the tables on Peabody and company.

There are some interesting elements in this story. For instance, Langdon is crestfallen when he finds out that his son, Randolph, and daughter, Carolina, have conspired against him by investing his money in Altacoola. His daughter is engaged to the scheming Charles Norton who has convinced the two impressionable youngsters to cast their lot with him and work towards getting the Colonel and Haines separated. Another daughter, Hope Georgia, realises Haines is a good man and falls in love with him. Langdon is distraught over his children’s behaviour and shows them the error of their ways with an impassioned talk on the importance of righteousness above all things.

Final word

A Gentleman from Mississippi is the delightful story of a kind and genial old man who puts his moral principles—right against wrong, honesty against corruption—above power and pelf and any gains through ill-gotten means. Colonel William H. Langdon is a proud and an honourable man who still believes that politics is a career for gentlemen, a necessity for the service of his state or his country, in spite of his initial brush with unprincipled men like Peabody. In some ways Thomas A. Wise has painted the planter as a naïve and an innocent man but by no means foolish. As Langdon says, “No doubt, it won't be all plain sailing in Washington for an old-fashioned man like me, but I believe in the American people and the men they send to Congress.” He aims to be one of those men.

Colonel Langdon is an excellent byproduct of the South, honest, hardworking, and conscientious, an aspect that the author repeatedly weaves into his narrative. Langdon, the current patriarch of a long line of wealthy Langdons, is proud of being a Southerner and now that the war is over, he wants to enter public life for the benefit of the South, his own state of Mississippi, and the country as a whole.  

Thomas A. Wise has written a powerful character-driven novel that is as relevant to politicians and the people who elect them into office today as it was over a hundred years ago.

The author

Interestingly, Thomas A. Wise was an English-born American stage actor who starred in some half-a-dozen films including A Gentleman from Mississippi, 1914, in which he played the role of William H. Langdon. He had a successful stage career, including on Broadway, spanning over forty years.