I am now in a mood to write a lengthy post. So, here I am typing away all that’s coming to my mind.

The Saturday before last was a day when I didn’t have any specific plans and all I wanted to do was just laze around doing nothing. A movie or a book is what I found to be the best company when I feel like that. On seeing that ‘The Namesake’ was about to begin on Star Movies, after reading a couple of reviews to make sure it was watchable, I decided to give it a try.

There are some actors whom you don’t like seeing onscreen at all. For no specific reason whatsoever! Irfan Khan is (it’s got changed to was now after watching this movie) one such for me. There was a time when I used to change the channel the moment the Hutch/Vodafone ad featuring him came on TV! At the same time, there are some actors whose acting you like so much that you won’t mind watching bits and pieces of movies that may not even be of your preferred genre. Tabu is one such for me and that’s what cinched the decision to watch the movie.

The movie, though seemed to move a bit slow, still had me glued to it throughout and at the end of it, neither did I like the movie nor did I dislike it! All I felt was I had gotten to know some characters. And there were also a few moments in the movie that I liked. That was all.

Having watched the movie, I then wanted to give the book a try too just to make a comparison of the book with the movie, if not for anything else. Besides, I keep reading about her books in Nithya’s and Priya’s blogs. So that’s what made me read the book since I had never read Jhumpa Lahiri’s books before.

I really liked the book more than the movie for the first 150 pages or so and I felt that Tabu and Irfan Khan (Both of them have acted so well in the movie) were apt choice for the roles. But after that, I started finding the too many details, that too trivial ones, that were packed in each page, a bit boring despite the fact that I generally do like descriptive writings.

Say two characters meet in some restaurant. Before the two start conversing, you get to know the clothes that they both are wearing, a few words thrown in tell you about the other people in the restaurant. Then about the food they have. Yes. Every time some character in the book has breakfast/lunch/dinner/whatever or when a party is thrown, an elaborate menu of the food they are eating fills up too many lines in a page. I do remember how I used to love reading Enid Blyton’s ‘Famous Five’ series of books, in which in every other page, the kids used to go on a picnic packing a whole lot of cakes, pastries and what not. :) But, reading often about the food they are having was one thing that didn’t appeal to me in ‘The Namesake’.

Again at the end of the reading the book, neither did I like it that much nor did I dislike it. But it did make a good read and the book too had its own share of some nice moments.

After reading the book, my curiosity to read Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’, which I wanted to read after watching the movie itself, only increased further and I did read that short story too later. That type of story is definitely not my cup of tea!

I am feeling very sleepy already. So I am ending my post right away without boring you any further. Do let me know how you liked ‘The Namesake’.