Rustic appeal
My friend wanted to check out Booze Belly, which opened in February across from Roadhouse, Jhamsikhel. The main reason being in the evening the upper floor is lit in such a fashion that she assumed it was a large bar. And, of course, the name itself implies as much. When we got there at 5.30 on a Tuesday it looked much less interesting. The heavy wooden front door was shut and we wondered if the bar was closed.
On entering there is a less than welcoming square hallway. As it was our on first visit we had no idea where to go but the most obvious was stairs leading to the assumed rooftop bar. However, the first floor was not a bar but a terrace on two sides of a glass enclosed area with black sofas. We did not check if it was air-conditioned (which would be nice) because it was not appealing in daylight. Back downstairs we found a lovely outside space, which had a bar at the back. The rustic wooden sofas and tables were very welcoming and well spaced out so it’s possible to have a private conversation without being overheard.
On further investigation I found a cosy little library with old items such as one of the owners grandfather’s TV (circa 1980s in Nepal but 1950s elsewhere!) and old cassette recorders. Another long, narrow room housed a large aquarium and very small dining tables. My suggestion would be long tables so this could be for friends or family to come together, particularly in the winter.
On talking to the owners they said their target audience was ‘everyone’. For this reason there are so many types of furnishing in the different areas. But overall they say they are going for a rustic feel.
As it was World Cup time, they had a Special Events Menu with limited snacks and drinks. We ordered the Vegan Combo (which it was not, due to the mozzarella sticks). This was a great combination of mushroom chilli, peanut sandeko, onion rings, chips chilli and French fries. More than enough for two or three people for under Rs 1,000. The non-veg option was basically the same price with chicken, sausages, pork, and potato sandeko. Wanting to try BBQ items we ordered pork BBQ (Rs 500). The portion was big enough for two and the pieces very generous.
The taste was wonderful! Needing some carbs we tried the veg pizza on the special menu, which was heavily cheesed, very much to our taste! From the limited special menu we ordered a bottle of Sol de Chile. Under Rs 2,000, we thought value for money.
Looking around we noticed the other customers had ordered from the main menu. However, I was told this was an interim menu and the final one would be mainly focussing on Mexican food.
My recommendation would be not to try and reach ‘everyone’ but to focus on one theme. Once the new Mexican menu is up and running it will fit very well with the rustic theme of the outside (covered) area. The library is cute, encouraging people to come for coffee and pick up a book. We didn’t like the upstairs area much. We had to climb through plants to reach the toilet as the space is narrow.
The central, glass enclosed upstairs area—I’m not sure who that’s attracting. Not me. When we left and I looked back, the lights indeed made it look like a bar, and perhaps they should convert the first floor into a proper bar, in-keeping with the name. Regarding the name, despite having a lovely outdoor area, suitable for children, the name does not sound very family friendly. Yes, I am a bit confused on what they are trying to achieve, but overall we really enjoyed our evening at Booze Belly!
Name: Booze Belly Restro and Bar
Location: Jhamsikhel
Contact: 985-1174522
Opening Time: noon till 10pm
Breakfast: No
Live Music: Yes
Ambiance: Relaxing
Cost: Lower to mid range
Service: Polite and friendly but lacking knowledge (7/10)
Overall value: 8/10
Challenging yet charming
Fiction/Thriller
SACRED GAMES
Vikram Chandra
Language: English
Published: 2006
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Pages: 947, Paperback
Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games is an immensely demanding novel. At nearly a thousand pages, you would be better off picking it up only when you have lots of free time. A fair bit of understanding of politics and various religious practices in India wouldn’t hurt either. If you have all that covered, reading Sacred Games will prove to be a thrilling ride. If not, you will have to take to Google on occasions to understand the references it makes to various places and events because of the author’s blatant refusal to let outsiders completely in on a city that isn’t theirs.Sacred Games, a vivid portrayal of modern India, focusing mostly on Bombay, introduces us to a Sikh policeman named Sartaj Singh who carries the weight of a broken marriage, and can’t seem to climb up the ranks like his more ambitious colleagues. When Singh had an affluent wife, he didn’t take bribes but he no longer has that option. A tip-off leads him into the hideout of a famous gangster, Ganesh Gaitonde. At the impregnable white cube with green windows, which resembles a bunker-like structure and is fitted with security cameras all over, a voice, through the intercom, tells Singh that he will never get through.
It is apparently Gaitonde himself. And that is how Singh begins a conversation with him. After declining to surrender, Gaitonde starts telling Singh his life story. He talks about the first murder that he committed that gave him enough money to build a criminal empire. The narrative is interrupted when a bulldozer arrives and the police force their way in, only to find Gaitonde has shot himself. But Gaitonde’s death isn’t the end of it as Singh is told to further investigate the gangster’s last few days in a top-secret manner. The plot moves forward in parallel narratives that also include Gaitonde’s posthumous confessions.
Seven years in the making and with a seven-figure advance, Sacred Games was indeed an ambitious undertaking that could have gone horribly wrong. But Chandra manages to establish his two main characters and the city, with its many labyrinths, in such a relatable way that you simply won’t be able to get the book out of your head, while you are reading it, and long after you are done. We won’t say reading it is going to be easy but one of the charms of the book lies in the fact that it constantly challenges you to discover new things through a little bit of hard work.
Sacred Games is now an Indian web television series on Netflix starring Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte.
Neat and satisfying: Coben at his best
Crime Fiction
FOOL ME ONCE
Harlan Coben
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 2016
Pages: 405, Paperback
Harlan Coben is a popular name in the world of thriller writers, and rightly so. More than 70 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide and his works regularly appear on the New York Times bestseller list. His trademark edge-of-your-seat and often gut-wrenching suspense is what makes his books such page-turning thrillers. Every time he comes out with a new work of fiction, Coben sets the bar higher for himself, and in ‘Fool Me Once’, his 28th novel featuring Captain Maya Stern, a former army special-ops helicopter pilot, he once again outdoes himself.
Here Maya is seen grieving the loss of her husband, Joe, whom she witnessed being killed during a robbery and she’s struggling to keep it all together for their daughter, Lily. Then she sees footage of her ‘dead’ husband playing with their daughter on the nanny cam she has set up after Joe’s death. When she finds out that her husband’s ‘murder’ is connected to her sister’s brutal killing four years ago, she sets out to get to the bottom of the matter. The plot basically revolves around Maya trying to unravel this mystery, and unearthing other long-buried secrets in the process.
For avid readers of thrillers and crime fiction, this might seem like a simple enough plot but don’t be fooled. Or, as Coben said in a recent interview, one enjoys being fooled if it’s done correctly, and Coben, the master of precision in that matter, fools you so well into believing one thing to be true till he catches you completely off guard. It’s the ‘gasp’ moment, as Coben said in the same interview, that makes reading Fool Me Once such a bloodcurdling delight.
Critics have called Coben a skilled magician who saves the best, most stunning trick for the very end and Fool Me Once, like most of his other works, will have you under its spell. The magic in Coben’s writing lies in the fact that you never see the ending coming though but in hindsight it will be apparent that it was the only possible conclusion. The best part is that you needn’t have read other titles in the series to enjoy Fool Me Once.
Stories that resonate
Short Stories
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Anjum Hasan
Publisher: PenguinHamish Hamilton
Published: March 2018
Pages: 256, Hardback
Short stories can either leave you feeling like you have read multiple incomplete pieces of work or there will be, at most, one or two stories to save the anthology from joining the ranks of forgotten works on your bookshelf. But Anjum Hasan’s ‘A Day In The Life’, a collection of stories recently published by Penguin, is a class apart. The 14 stories that Hasan tells of seemingly ordinary people leading ordinary lives are anything but ordinary. Though essentially about belonging and personal peculiarities, A Day In The Life draws many parallels from everyday life that make the stories relevant and relatable. In ‘Sisters’, a woman shrunk by sickness starts to see healthy people as ogres. ‘The Legend of Lutfan Mian’ is narrated over a two-day walk to Banaras in 19th century India. ‘I Am Very Angry’ sees the arrival of loud, always fighting neighbors disrupting the life of an older Brahmin man who has lost his wife. ‘Bird Love’ revolves around a newly married couple discovering new things about each other and thus reinventing their life together and in ‘Godsend’ you meet two women with completely different parenting styles trying to compare and outdo each other. As varied as these stories are, dissonance, often inwardly, is the theme that ties them together. There always seems to be an internal conflict that underlines the lives of these contrasting characters.
That Hasan is skilled in analyzing the lives of different kinds of people and telling stories that resonate was evident in her first collection of stories, Difficult Pleasures, published in 2012. And she carries that legacy forward in her most recent collection as well. Hasan is also the author of the novels ‘The Cosmopolitans’, ‘Neti, Neti’, and ‘Lunatic In My Head’, and though all her books have a finesse that just isn’t there in works of other Indian writers, it’s evident that her expertise lies in telling short stories.
It’s very difficult to tell a good story in just a few pages but Hasan pulls it off with ease. Though A Day In The Life has stories set in different worlds, be it in terms of class or place, each story is so richly crafted that you feel like you know these characters. They could very well be you or someone you know. Hasan’s writing is elegant and nuanced, ensuring nothing is over the top or dramatic and the fact that she writes with such striking confidence makes reading the stories a pleasure. This is a book you would want to keep at your bedside, to revisit the neatly crafted worlds whenever you can.
