Book Review: Half Pants Full Pants – an enjoyable read

Some weeks ago, I received a package from Hector Beverages. It seemed too small to be another flavour of their Paper Boat drinks but bigger than the Paper Boat Chikki – it turned out to be a book, “Half Pants Full Pants” – by Anand “Suspi” Subbarao.

Unfortunately, after the initial glance-through, the book just lay in the cupboard for a while (my love for reading has been in hibernate mode for a while now), before I finally decided to check it out – and wow, what an enjoyable read it is!

Half Pants Full Pants

The tag line says, “Real life tales from Shimoga” and that instantly reminded me of a couple of my classmates from back in the day while at school in Yelahanka, Bangalore.

Shimoga was their hometown, and remembering these classmates brought back a flood of memories of stories they’d share when back at school after the summer holidays, as well as some of the Kannada words and phrases sprinkled throughout the book.

R.Balki hits the nail on the head in his foreword, and this book is indeed a worthy “follow up” to that timeless classic, “Malgudi Days” by R.K Narayan.

The stories in the book take you back to an age when the pace of life was more relaxed, and bring with them a wave of nostalgia from those early years. It was a time when there were no fancy gadgets around and one derived joy from simple pleasures and innocent ‘hacks’ – whether getting something to work or playing a prank on someone. 😛

I really liked that the stories themselves are all broken down into short anecdotes of 5-6 pages each, so one can read several of them at a time, and then get back to the book after a while (instead of long-winding episodes) – almost like having a conversation with someone narrating these incidents.

The folks at Paper Boat Drinks had previously sent across books as well but those were reprints of “Three Men in a Boat” and “Jungle Book” – Half Pants Full Pants is their first foray into publishing and wow, what a winner with the first book. Like those reprints, the new beginning with Suspi’s book ties in perfectly with their nostalgia themed drinks and that “bachpan connect”.

As mentioned in the author’s note, the manuscript was rejected by almost ten publishing houses, so a big round of applause for Anand Suspi for writing this wonderful book and Paper Boat Drinks for letting it see the light of day 🙂

You can get the paperback or Kindle version of Half Pants Full Pants on Amazon