Capturing the spirit of the sixties in style

It will be a one-off incident if someone sees his book and walks right past it without batting an eyelid. For with its cover in bright blue and the graffiti on top of it in brighter pink, yellow and green, the book will be hard to miss in a book store. And nobody who has spent the 60s in Madras will choose to ignore the title. Ice Boys in Bell Bottoms (If you did spend the 60s in Madras, you would immediately recall summer evenings playing I-Spy or ‘Ice Boys’, to be more Madras-accurate) was released by author Krishna Shastri Devulapalli and historian and journalist S Muthiah and visual artist Parvathi Nayar.Speaking at the book launch function which was held at the Taj Connemara recently, Krishna revealed that the only similarities between his book and life are a famous poet grandfather, a self-taught cartoonist father (who he calls his hero and has dedicated the book to) and an incontinent horny dog.The book is a coming-ofage tale of a person who grows up in a creative family that moves to the city from Hyderabad. Taking inspiration from the popular TV show The Wonder Years, Krishna has maintained a first-person narrative through most of his book.He explains, “Children very rarely have a voice of their own. So, I thought that at least in my book, let them have one.” Krishna’s primary inspiration for humour is his father, who filled his childhood with funny anecdotes and memories. With his hero being a fun-loving person, it is not surprising that he thinks it is “cool” to be funny. “Funny guys are popular and they always get the girls,” he says with a grin.Writing a book is always a journey, and during the course of writing his debut novel, Krishna says that he has discovered much about himself. “I have discovered that I can sit down and complete things!” “My only criticism of the book is that it ended too soon,” said Parvathi Nayar, who suggested that the book might have ended a bit abruptly, to which Krishna replied, “This is the first book of a trilogy. The second book Rally Days and Disco Nights will come out next year or the year after that.” He is also half-way through a thriller set in the Tamil film industry.Perfectly encapsulating the essence of the 60s, Krishna amply speckles his book with humour, bell bottom stories, and of course, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.The only concern is that after this book, he just might have a difficult time in selling his kids books, which is what the author is primarily.