On multiplex books and Local

How do people who have a full time job find time to read? Here I have been, hardly a month into my job and it feels like all reading has stopped. I try. Oh, I try very hard. I keep a book open on my way to work – 21 long kilometeres of car ride across Bombay. On my way back home of course, I can barely keep my eyes open. I try again after dinner. Prop my eyes open with the help of matchsticks placed under the lashes. I can tell you it does not work. The words dance in front of my eyes and soon I find that I am smiling stupidly at the page. The same page I have been reading for the last fifteen minutes. How do people do it?

All the books I have bought and not read. And then the books I have borrowed (gulp). Not to forget those work-related tomes on design and usability and field research that I stare at (not the pages, just at the covers) on a daily basis. And top on my guilt list, the books sent by Simon and Schuster to read and mention on the blog (here, I report honestly that I have finally started reading The Untouchables).

In all this, I have come to appreciate the concept of timepass reading. I have heard often enough that after a hard day’s work, the average movie goer (whoever that is) does not want to see “reality” on screen; therefore, the appeal of the masala movie.

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Likewise with books. I have discovered this genre I call multiplex books – light reading, appealing to a limited audience and requiring no thought before or after reading. I have come to love multiplex books – the latest I read was Jaideep Varma’s Local. Local has been reviewed enough and I am not attempting it here. But Local is the perfect multiplex book. (I now digress and picture here Rahul Bose as the confused copy-writer Akash, taking in the world around him as he struggles with his own, the slightly perplexed look in place. Of course, anything to think about Rahul Bose in the middle of the day.)

Now coming to a theatre near your home – Local : the 8.14 Virar Fast (in keeping with the hallowed new-wave Bollywood tradition of name : subtitle)

Local is a feeling that all of us experience some time in life; wanting “out”, drifting along as life takes you, either desperately wishing for or not even seeking control. Local is the way we live, finding space for ourselves in all the noise and commotion of the outside world, the others.

Local is an interesting glimpse into the underbelly of that “glamorous” career advertising – the aging insecure creative head (hey, he was my professor at my ad school – and I know I cannot remember him sober much of the time), the accounts guy who keeps a close watch on the amount of toilet tissue being consumed, er, used up every month (which is practically every finance person I know in corporate organizations), creatives stolen and remixed and presented by someone else in some other form… And Bibek..

Local is about the way Bombay works – the railway line right in the centre and life all around – the insightful vignettes of people flitting in and out of the city and in some way, Akash’s life.

Local is not an engrossing book, not a gripping plot, not masterful language. It is those moments during the reading that made me sit up and say “hey, I know this person he is talking about“. And these moments alone are enough to make me recommend the book here.