indiascribe satire

  (photo courtesy: YoutTube) 'Le Roi de Coer' (King of Hearts) is a French-Italian co-production movie released way back in 1966. manages to capture hearts to this day mainly on account of highlighting the absurdity of war. Managed to catch it on TV5 Monde Asie, a French channel available on Asianet broadband (channel no.426) recently. The film opens with the shot of an ancient town, complete with a church and its clock tower. As the clock strikes 12, a knight comes out and strikes 12 chimes on the bell. This is of great significance in the film as we will see. Well, with the movie being set during World War 1, the town is deserted by its citizens to escape the advancing Germans, camped somewhere on its outskirts. Similarly, the British forces are encamped nearby. When a spy from the French resistance informs the British about the German's plans to blow up the town, a Scottish soldier, Charles Plumpick, played by Alan Bates, is despatched to find, defuse and save the town.

                                                        The graphic novel genre seems to be slowly gathering a mature audience. It needs the coming together of a good scriptwriter to tell the story, an illustrator to bring out the subtle nuances of the characters. Most of these novels are dark, brooding accounts or violence-filled superhero stuff. Thus, it is a relief to come across the "Glorious Summers" series that brings plenty of sunshine and cheer to the reader.    Pierre Faldérault is a comic book illustrator who is always dreaming of creating that one character to catch the imagination of the reader and make him famous. However, he is stuck ghostwriting or illustrating the comic magazine Zagor for his boss, who doesn't mind saddling Pierre with last-minute colouring work and taking off to exotic locations for his own vacation. But the Faldérault family gets to go on their vacation every year, even if delayed by a few days. Where do they go each time from their ho

Just finished reading "Face to Face", the first book by Ved Mehta that incidentally is also the first of his autobiography published by Penguin in 1957, when the author was just 23! Ved lost his eyesight following cerebral meningitis when he was just short of his fourth birthday. Having absolutely no recollection of sight, he adapts himself to a world where he would work a little extra hard to live like any of his siblings, participating in all their activities. So what if it involves kite-flying on the rooftops in pre-partition Lahore, or jumping from rooftop to rooftop. He also learns to cycle all by himself in the spacious grounds of the government quarters in Rawalpindi, where his father was posted as Director, Health Services, the first Indian to hold the post in the years leading to Independence. He even follows his elder sisters, without their knowledge, all the two kilometres to their school. And all this after being sent to a small institute for the blind in Dadar, B