Airplane reading

For me, the most important thing to pack for a flight - long or short - is a good book.

If only I could keep the book to a reasonable size. Even on a long flight it's almost impossible to finish an entire book - and yet I persist in carting along reading material the size of a doorstop.

For example, Sacred Games, an absolutely fascinating read. I actually bought the book in 2007, soon after it came out in paperback, and read about half of it before getting distracted. A day or two before leaving for Paris, I picked it up, decided it was reasonable to start from page 1 again, and stuffed it into the carryon.

"Stuffed" is the operative word here, because the book is 950+ pages long. You need two bookmarks - one to mark your place, one for the glossary of Hindi words (lots of expletives you probably haven't heard before) liberally sprinkled throughout the text.

The book is - loosely - about cops and robbers in Bombay (Chandra's preferred name for the city known as Mumbai.) There's a hardworking Sikh police detective, a Hindu gangster, a guru in a wheelchair, a movie star, a madam, a love story, a mystery, a terrorist plot - and a time frame that ranges from Partition, in 1947, to the present. It's as Bollywood-influenced as "Slumdog Millionaire," but far more intricate and thoughtful.

Well worth checking out, even if you're not planning a long flight. (But it's a good argument for investing in a Kindle!)