Dancing with Maharaja

Ready for the Jan launch - my first fiction.


Updated:

From the Flipkart reviews:


"one of the best..
Dancing with the maharaja is a sheer master work by sundar.. He being himself in the civil service have written a beautiful and touching story.. reading it will take you to a whole new dimension and you will start feeling for Satish's(the lead). Will recommend it to everyone. Enough of reading the same Love Stories from our young Indian writers.. Dancing with the maharajas is here to steal the show..! "

"Nice Novel BUT.....
The book provides good insight of life of IAS aspirants and their lifestyle. But i didn't like the use of excessive smoking content in it. This book should have warning on each page stating "cigarette smoking is injurious to health". "

"vijakant movie is better than this crap
dont waste money on this cinema story.. full of crap... work hard and smart.. practice preliminary test.. write mains exam get it corrected..attend interview with confidence...most ll clear upsc..instead of working in govt this,,A** is writing book!!"

"AWESOME
sooooooo goooooood.
A really good drama, a good time pass and also the deep view into the life styles of IAS aspirants at Delhi IAS coachig centers . Also many heart breaking stories for some aspirants make this book enriched with all 'masala's to be worth buying."

"Worth its weight in gold !
Read it for the umpteenth time , and still you would like to read it 'again', i bet ! The quintessential ways of Delhi-ites and the enigmatic Old Rajinder Nagar add to the beauty of this masterpiece .. written in lucid , yet strong language ! "

awesome and inspiring :-)
this is the most interesting book I've read ever. I started this book and surprisingly I couldn't stop reading myself. the language is simple and lucid, flawless and motivational for evry person who want to achieve sumthng in his/her life.


Ten Down

I was impressed by Dances with Wolves (Eng/Kevin Costner/1990). I was more impressed to realise that Avatar (Eng/James Cameron/2009) shares its central plot with the Costner's movie. The plot: the saga of how our man becomes a part of the other men and ends up siding with them in their justified fight against us. Replace our man with a US soldier and other men with Na'vi or the Native Americans. Bingo! You get Avatar and Dances with Wolves. I do not say Cameron has borrowed from Costner. It would be like saying all the cop movies are the same; all the love movies are the same. It is just that I am surprised to see how the change in "treatment" to the central plot can lead to two very different experiences; Very different, but classics in their own right. When compared to seven, three is not a pretty figure, but when we append "Oscars" to the numbers, three is equally laudable. Avatar had managed three Oscars, while Dances bagged seven.

When we talk about "treatment" I can only awe at the confidence of director Shankar. Here is a man who teaches with examples. Year after year, starting with Gentleman (Tam/1993) and topping with Enthiran (Tam/2010), the director has made us deliver many super hits. But most of them with the same central theme - one man's fight against corruption. I am happy that Hirani is nice enough to give Shankar 3 Idiots for remaking in Tamil. Immaterial of the treatment, I do not have mood to watch any more fight against corruption by the ace director.

Well, coming back to Avatar, I am reminded of Unnal Mudiyum Thambi (Tam/KB/1988) where a radical from the society's upper strata enters the slums to empower the masses. In the process he fights his people. Well, probably the central plot in these movies seems to be "a reformer/activist's story".

I am not sure if this plot has been tried - rather than our man joining hands with them to help them win over us, the movie can be about their own hero winning us. Like, say, one among the Na'vi collects his fellow humanoids to beat us, the homo sapiens, black and blue.

By the way, only two more months left in 2011.

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