This is a dark and hilarious story about two kids, a maratha Hindu, and a roman catholic and their childhood adventures in a CWD chawl in Bombay.

Bawdy and disturbingly funny, the author traverses what may be called the dangerous and controversial territory on the Indian writing scene. The main characters are two kids, innocent and gullible yet rebellious and adamant at the same time . . .
The story takes you to post independence India. The nation that has just tasted freedom, its colours and quirks all going on in the background, the story progresses like a wild romp through the mist of a Bombay Chawl.

Any language is as powerful and capable as you make it and Nagarkar writes with a vicious honesty. The book is filled with gems of a paragraph by the author that make it all so much different from the tame ones. An excerpt :
"Parvati had taken to going to the temple regularly. She prayed with an intensity that must have intimidated the gods. In mythical times they were often caught in the bind. Overwhelmed by the unswerving and relentless force of an ardent disciple's devotion, they were compelled to part with boons. Soon a time came when the devotee's powers posed a threat to the world order and the gods themselves.Desperate for survival, the gods resorted to dubious, unorthodox and underhand methods-- subterfuge, sex not to mention foul play-- to regain the upper hand."

To sum it up Ravan and Eddie is a brave compilation. If you thought gregory david roberts did a frank and bold writeup, wait till you read this one. It compels attention. The characters are the bright lights of the "never say die" human spirit. The Kiran Nagarkar has taken the same spirit and spun it into this cocaphany of words that only he is capable of.

The semi-autobiographical story is set in a dystopian Orange County, California in the future of June 1994. The book includes an extensive portrayal of drug culture and drug use.

The title is a reference to a passage in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13, which states:

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known[1].


In Chapter Eleven of the novel, the novel's central character, Bob Arctor / Fred, thinks to himself:

What does a scanner see? I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner … see into me — into us — clearly or darkly? I hope it does see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.

The protagonist is both Bob Arctor, member of a household of drop-out drug-users, and Agent Fred, an undercover police agent assigned to spy on them. Arctor/Fred shields his true identity both from those in the drug subculture and, ironically, from the police themselves. The requirement that narcotics agents remain anonymous, to avoid collusion and other forms of corruption, becomes a critical plot point late in the book. While supposedly only posing as a drug user, Arctor becomes addicted to Substance D (also known as Slow Death, Death or D), a powerful psychoactive drug. An ongoing conflict is Arctor's love for Donna, a drug dealer through whom he intends to identify high-level dealers of Substance D. Arctor's persistent use of the drug, which causes the two hemispheres of the brain to function independently, produces the strange scenario in which Arctor and Agent Fred do not realize they are the same person. Incapable of combining what each persona knows, Fred begins spying on himself, Arctor, more passionately. Through a series of drug and psychological tests, Arctor's superiors at work discover that his addiction has made him incapable of performing his job as a narcotics agent. Donna takes Arctor to "New-Path", a rehabilitation clinic, just as Arctor begins to experience the symptoms of Substance D withdrawal. It is revealed that Donna has been a narcotics agent all along, working as part of a police operation to infiltrate New-Path and determine its funding source. Unknowingly, Arctor has been selected to penetrate the secretive organization.

The flow of the book is consistent and author's knowledge and experience of drug culture creates a feeling of realism.
I didn't put it down till I finished it . . .
A must read.

This was one book I really wanted to read after I watched the 1972 movie based on the novel.
The novel by Stanisław Lem is about the ultimately futile attempt to communicate with an alien life-form on a distant planet. The planet, called Solaris, is covered with a so-called "ocean" that is really a single organism covering the entire surface. The ocean shows signs of a vast but strange intelligence, which can create physical phenomena in a way that science has difficulty explaining. The alien mind of Solaris is so inconceivably different from human consciousness that all attempts at communication are doomed (the "alienness" of aliens was one of Lem's favourite themes; he was scornful about portrayals of aliens as humanoid).

The novel begins with the arrival of the protagonist, Kris Kelvin, at a scientific research station hovering above the surface of Solaris. Research has been ongoing for years, but scientists have been unable to do more than observe the highly complex phenomena on the surface of the ocean, all the while classifying them into an elaborate nomenclature without understanding what they actually mean. When the protagonist and his colleagues become more aggressive in trying to force contact with Solaris, the experiment becomes psychologically traumatic for the researchers themselves. The ocean's response, such as it is, lays bare their own personalities, while revealing nothing of the ocean's. To the extent that the ocean's actions can be understood, the ocean begins experimenting with the researchers' minds by confronting them with their most painful and repressed thoughts and memories through the materialization of complex human constructs: the protagonist is confronted with memories of his deceased wife and his guilt over her suicide. What torments the other researchers is only hinted at (as they are careful to conceal it) but it appears to be much worse.

Its a good read and recommended for any serious science fiction fan