Gone with the wind..

Just finished reading 'Gone with the wind' and 'Ratham ore niram'. I bought 'Gone with the wind' back in 1998 but never got to read it because the size of it was frightening. But after I watched the movie sometime back, decided to read it in full. And what a story it is. It does not pretend to preach anything(which is important to me!) and looks squarly at life without any frills to go along with it. Scarlett is flighty, brave, does not have moral values, does what she thinks as right and is terribly opinionated. But the spirit with which she makes a life for herself in the post-war Georgia is amazing. Rhett is just as vile, oppurtunistic and speaks what he thinks. But you end up liking him anyway. Somehow, whenever I was reading about Rhett, the image of Clark Gable standing in the bottom of the stairs came repeatedly and it tells something about the film. Since I lived for sometime in most of the places and visited everyone of the places add to the charm (Marietta, Jonesboro, Peachtree boulevard, Charleston, Decautur and Atlanta etc!).

"Ratham Ore Niram' by Sujatha is about the First war of independance or the sepoy mutiny of 1857. It tells a simple story but the backdrop is the Kanpur rebellion lead by Nana Sahib and Tantiya Thope. The Ghatt massacre and the Bibigar massacre form the backdrop of the story and it is interesting to note that Sujata takes a center position regards to the atrocities of the British and the sepoys. He criticizes both and blames none. That was not so fair anyway. There was a cause and the effect was savagery. But it was interesting to read a historical novel which was more honest to history than reading about the slender waists of the heroine and the swahbuckling sword-plays of the hero.