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I have read many thrillers. So many that I’ve lost count. Over the years, I have become really good at figuring out who the bad guy is. I would say I’m right 95 percent of the time. Let’s up that to 97 percent. You can tell I’m quite smug about it, can’t you? So, when I’m more than halfway through a thriller novel and still can’t guess who the murderer/stalker/rapist is, I have to give it to the author for weaving a unique and captivating narrative. I have to concede defeat.

‘The End of Her’ by Shari Lapena never gave anything away despite having so much going on. I could not make up my mind about any of the characters. They all seemed flawed and perfect at the same time—very human. One moment I would think I had it all figured out, and the next I would be unsure again. The plotline isn’t unique but what Lapena has done with it is phenomenal.

Stephanie and Patrick are adjusting to life with their colicky twin girls in New York. Stephanie is a stay-at-home mom and Patrick works a nine-to-five job to foot the bills. Despite being largely sleep-deprived, they are happy. Then Erica arrives. She was Patrick’s first wife’s best friend. She also had an affair with him. Now, she claims Patrick murdered his first wife. She then starts blackmailing the couple, threatening to go to the police otherwise.

Patrick insists he is innocent, that his first wife died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She was in the car while he was shoveling snow right before they were to leave to visit her parents. But Erica says he wanted her out of the picture so that he could start all over. She says she was too scared to come forward earlier. But she wanted to warn Stephanie when she found out he had remarried. Then, why is she blackmailing them? Did Patrick really kill his wife?

 The entire novel reads like the last 50 pages of a thriller; there is so much happening and so many gasp-inducing moments in each page right from the start. There are also other engaging sub-plots that weave into the story and make it compelling. Author Linwood Barclay called Shari Lapena ‘The queen of the one-sit read’ while Steve Cavanagh said she was one of the best thriller writers in the business. The End of Her was my first Lapena book and I’m a fan. Immediately after finishing The End of Her, I started searching for her other books and I’m elated I found ‘A Stranger in the House’. If it’s even half as good as The End of Her, it should be another fantastic read.   

Four stars
Fiction
The End of Her
Shari Lapena
Published: 2020
Publisher: Penguin Random House  
Pages: 414, Paperbac

The web series “Ray,” created by Sayantan Mukherjee and based on short stories of the famous Indian auteur and writer Satyajit Ray, occupied enough space on my social media this week to make me give up everything else and gobble up the entire series in a single sitting. That’s the power of social media influence and since its release on June 25, Ray has been exercising full control over social media with people recommending the series without a second thought.

The anthology, written for the screen by Niren Bhatt and Siraj Ahmed and directed by Srijit Mukherji, Abhishek Chaubey and Vasan Bala, contains four different stories originally penned by Satyajit Ray. Although the stories are of completely different people and places, they are all identical in the sense that they revolve around the psyche of their central characters and how they interact with their respective environments. The series weighs heavily on its main characters to retell Ray’s stories, with each episode tinged with suspense, a stylistic signature of the master storyteller.

Ray begins with “Forget Me Not” where Ipsit Rama Nair (Ali Fazal), a successful entrepreneur known to have a sharp, computer-like mind that never forgets suddenly finds himself searching for lost memories after a mysterious encounter with someone from his past.

Next, in “Bahrupiya,” Indrashish (Kay Kay Menon), a regular office employee and a part-time make-up artist struggling with work and his love life comes across an unexpected inheritance. Alongside a large amount of money, Indrashish gets a book on the art of makeup and prosthetics from his recently deceased grandmother, forever changing his life.

In a train journey, two strangers sharing a compartment quickly befriend each other. A popular performer Musafir Ali (Manoj Bajpayee) and a wrestler-turned-sports journalist Aslam Beig (Gajraj Rao) become drinking buddies in “Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa.” But it turns out that the strangers share a past, the recollection of which haunts one of them throughout the journey.

“Spotlight”—the final act in the series—is about a celebrated actor Vikram ‘Vik’ Arora (Harshvardhan Kapoor) who is going through an existential crisis as critics slam him: he supposedly has no acting talent besides his looks. Vikram’s insecurities are augmented when a religious figure called ‘Didi’ (Radhika Madan) appears at the resort he is staying in and completely takes the spotlight away from him.

As a series, Ray is one of the best things to happen to Indian filmmaking in 2021. The individual, independent episodes both excite and disappoint. “Forget Me Not” seems to hit the hardest with its dark, cynical climax and the sheer brutality of the characters involved. The beginning and end of this episode flow on entirely different tangents, unsettling the audience.

“Bahrupiya” wants to carry on with the same darkness, but fails. The story of a simpleton Indrashish turned into a sinister criminal needed some more screen time to be better told. Despite the seasoned Kay Kay Menon’s brilliant performance, the episode is underwhelming, to say the least.

“Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa” is light, poetic, and musical. The two main characters share almost equal screen time and are a treat to watch in their elements. Shot almost entirely in a train compartment, the audience will not miss anything else while the two veteran actors Bajpayee and Rao spread their charm on screen.

For newcomer Harshvardhan Kapoor and his “Spotlight”, Ray is a group of death. Not only is he pitted against some of the best in the industry, his episode is also aired last in the series after the audience has soaked in so much entertainment that it’ll need an absolute banger to raise their interest. Surprisingly, the actor does a better job in this episode than in all of his past performances. But this time, the storytelling, direction and his lead co-actor do him dirty.

Who should watch it?

The episodes getting slightly negative reviews in the series are because they’re being compared with each other. Outside the series, every episode of Ray is way more remarkable than maybe 70 percent of the Hindi-language films/series released this year. This is a series a regular OTT viewer should not miss.

Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Drama
Actors: Ali Fazal, Kay Kay Menon, Harshvardhan Kapoor, Manoj Bajpayee
Directors: Srijit Mukherji, Abhishek Chaubey, Vasan Bala
Run time: 3.8hrs approx.

YouTube time this week, and I wanted to check out films I had missed watching in recent years that were officially available on the app. After trying a couple of Nepali movies and barely making it through more than 45-minute each, I gave up and searched for some Bollywood flicks, expecting to find something that’d delight me.

I came across the trailer for the 2016 Bollywood thriller “Madaari” and the first few scenes with the late Irrfan Khan delivering massive punchlines blew me over. I had to find the movie online, which I luckily did on Cinekorn Movie’s YouTube channel.

Madaari is a movie cliché: a story about a common man fighting the system as we’ve seen in hundreds of films. But its protagonist Nirmal Kumar (Khan) is the anti-hero we all want to be. He is not this larger-than-life fighter who literally punches his way through the walls of social injustice or the trigger-friendly vigilante who blows up ‘villains’. Kumar is a common man who is wronged by the system and instead of accepting it as his fate he plans to fight against it. He is determined, yet scared; calculative yet vulnerable.

Rohan (Vishesh Bansal), the only son of Home Minister Prashant Goswami (Tushar Dalvi), gets kidnapped from his hostel one day. Following the high-profile kidnapping, there’s a storm of investigations all over the city, led by CBI officer Nachiket Verma (Jimmy Sheirgill). The kidnapper has vanished without a trace with Rohan and the only ransom he demands is that the government finds the whereabouts of his son, who was lost in an act of government negligence. Our protagonist Nirmal is the kidnapper here and as the story unfolds, the audience realizes what made him turn from a loving family man to a ruthless kidnapper.

This is the story of Madaari written by Shailja Kejriwal and Ritesh Shah (screenplay/dialogue). The writers have taken a cliché and weaved the narration with suspense, mystery, and a lot of emotion. Kumar’s fight becomes every common person’s and the fact that he is a kidnapper (sic criminal) is lost as we empathize with him and want to see him get justice. But what happens, in the end, is for you to find out.

The year 2016 saw the release of ‘blockbusters’ like “Sultan” and “Dangal”. Understandable why a film like Madaari would have been neglected by Bollywood audiences and the critics alike at the time. Still, one can’t feel sorry for how such a gripping thriller remains obscure. Maybe because it does not appeal to the larger masses without high-flying action sequences and peppy item numbers.

Also, the film’s not perfect. There are a few lapses in the screenplay and the 2h 13mins-long film tends to lose pace at times, but the better parts make up for everything. Nishikant Kamat’s direction seems to bring out the best in Irrfan Khan, who embodies the soul of his character. Even the film’s dialogues with heavy punchlines feel tailored for Khan’s voice. Khan expresses every word with the conviction of an everyday man the system has driven to desperation.

In the scenes with Rohan, his victim Nirmal never bears the maliciousness of a kidnapper. He is still a harmless, caring father desperately seeking closure. The complexities in Nirmal’s life and how well Khan peels each layer of his character’s existence drive the film. The supporting cast also comes with its share of convincing performances but Khan is the film’s heart and soul. 

Who should watch it?

Most film lovers who like my selection of films have probably already watched Madaari. This is the kind of film you can revisit every few years. If you haven’t watched, you’ve missed an important film that defines the career of late Khan. Khan, in this movie, reinforces his legacy and goes on to prove no one else can replace him in the industry. His flawless performance in this film will make you miss him even more.

Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Drama, thriller
Actors: Irrfan Khan, Tushar Dalvi, Jimmy Sheirgill
Director: Nishikant Kamat
Run time: 2hrs 13 mins

There are books that make you cry ugly tears. You have to sometimes put them down and actually walk away because you need time to recover. But you can’t do that with Suleika Jaouad’s ‘Between Two Kingdoms’ because hers is a story that’s heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. You want to keep reading, though your eyes are glazed with tears and your heart shatters every now and then.

Jaouad was 22 when she was diagnosed with a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia and given a 35 percent chance of survival. Over the next four years, she went through rigorous chemotherapy, became a part of a clinical trial, and finally underwent a bone-marrow transplant that left her weak and heavily dependent on her caregivers—her parents and then-boyfriend she refers to as Will.

What makes this book different from other cancer memoirs I have read is that Jaouad doesn’t just share her experiences. Instead, she tells you what was going on in her mind while dealing with such a traumatic event, and that too when her friends were kick-starting their careers, traveling the world or settling down. It’s not about the event as much as it’s about her reaction to it.

As cancer ravaged her body, Jaouad’s spirit got stronger. She knew she might not make it but she would find little things to keep her going. One of them was the 100-day project. She decided she would write in her journal every single day, even when she couldn’t sit up. She had been considering a career as a war correspondent before cancer (B.C as she puts it) so writing was always something she enjoyed. She proposed to write a series of blog posts for The New York Times. Her column, ‘Life, Interrupted’ got her a steady fan-following and responses from other people who were going through difficult times themselves.

In Between Two Kingdoms, Jaouad hasn’t tried to present in a way to make you sympathize with her. She is selfish, needy, and even mean to those she loves. She breaks things in anger, says unspeakable things to her boyfriend when she knows he has always put her needs before his. She doesn’t sugarcoat her flaws and uses cancer as an excuse for her horrid behavior.

I would have probably given it a five-star rating had the book not felt a bit stretched in the end—where Jaouad embarks on a road trip with her dog, meeting people who had written to her and helped her in some way or the other. That aside, Jaouad’s writing is stunning and her story can inspire us to try and do--and be--our best but not be too hard on ourselves when we can’t either. 

4 stars                                                              
Non-Fiction
Between Two Kingdoms
What Almost Dying Taught Me About Living
Suleika Jaouad
Published: 2021
Publisher: Bantam Press
Pages: 348, Paperback