Snapshots and Poems

My week in Pictures

2012-02-11T00:41:00.001-08:00

Perlmann's Silence - Pascal Mercier

2012-02-10T10:13:00.000-08:00

Blurb on the back: In a quiet seaside town near Genoa, experts gather for a linguistic conference. One speaker, Philipp Perlmann, is recently widowed and, struggling to contend his grief, is unable to write his keynote address. As the hour approaches an increasingly desperate Perlmann decides to plagiarize the work of Leskov, a Russian colleague who cannot attend, and pass it off as his own.

But when he learns that Leskov has arrived unexpectedly in Genoa, Perlmann must protect himself from exposure by constructing a maelstrom of lies and deceit that will push him to the brink of murder. In this intense psychological drama, the bestselling author of Night Train to Lisbon again takes the reader on a journey into the depths of human emotion and the language of memory and loss.

My Thoughts:This novel could have been a lot shorter; its about 300 pages too long. The protagonist (Prof. Perlmann) is confoundingly similar to the protagonist in "Night Train to Lisbon" (Raimund Gregorius) and I think it'd have been better if they had the same names as well. I find it unfair to any author when their work is constantly compared to the stellar "debut" novel/book but in this case I am justified because the characterisations, story and language are quite alike. What the book could have done without is the page after laborious page of linguist theory and Perlmann's sickening self-pity. At one point I wanted to scream "Move on, damn it!!!!!". But beneath the tonnes of verbiage there is fascinating plot which might be edge-of-the-seat exciting if one - like me - would skip a page or five. I bought this book because I absolutely loved NTL and wasn't even aware that Mercier's second book has reached the shelves until I saw it at the airport bookstore. If you haven't read Mercier before, I would not recommend this book. Read NTL first, you'll definitely thank me.

Rating: 3/5

Top 5 Re-reads

2012-02-09T08:25:00.000-08:00

[ Booking Through Thursday ] is a weekly book meme about books and reading. This week's question is "If you had to pick only 5 books to read ever again, what would they be and why?"

I am not a big re-reader. The only books I have ever reread are the Harry Potter books. The first time I read them, I fell in love with the series. The second time I read them at a much slower pace to absorb each and every part of the book thoroughly. The third time, I read the series backward i.e. starting with The Deathly Hallows because I just wanted to make sure whether all the loose ends are tied together.

Besides HP, no other book has tempted me enough to be reread. There are a lot of books that I treasure and have saved copies so that I can read them when I am 90-years-old but mostly I am of the opinion that if you don't love the book the first time, you never will. But I find this question mildly interesting. It's akin to "What are the five books you'll bring to a deserted island?". And frankly I have never struggled with naming my favourite books or authors. They are right there on top of my head always. So here it goes:

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
All the while I was reading this book, I thought it was about me. I know that's very preposterous of me to say something like that but I have never identified with a protagonist more. Everything I felt at that time in my life, Mercier put it in better words. May be it was just chance that I found this book precisely at a time I needed it the most but I can't be more glad that I did. I'll reread this if I ever need to find myself again.

Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
This is one book which made me completely rethink literature. Great books don't need serious themes, big words or complicated plots. They just need a sense of humour and a towel. It's insane how much I love Adams and his "Trilogy of Five". It's amazing how relevant this book is even after all these years. Before HP fandom took over the internet, the hitchhikers were the fun-nest cult and they continue to be the funniest one.

Vernon God Little by D. B. C. Pierre
One of the most powerful books you'll ever read. I had a hard time deciding between this book and "The Fight Club" because both are of the same vein but TFC was destroyed by the movie. I hope they don't attempt to make a movie of Vernon God Little too.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This is my favourite book of all times. ALL TIMES. EVER. I think that my life would have turned out a little different if I hadn't read this book. I read it when I was 15 years old and it just blew my mind away. Everything I know about Love and life, I learned from this book. The beauty of it is so overwhelming that I'd cry every few pages. Some of the passages are so magnificently written, I had to close the book and literally catch my breath as if I am reemerging from a deep dive. Breathtaking doesn't begin to describe it. Of all the books, I am most afraid to reread this one because I don't want to lose the magic that this book lead me into when I was young. I am sure that my adult mind will destroy this fragile memory of what the beauty of this book means to me.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
I hate to love this book, but I cannot help it. Its a disturbing masterpiece about love in its truest form. I know most people will disagree with me but I believe that Humbert Humbert really did love Dolores with the purest heart. That doesn't make the story less unsettling or morally wrong but Nabokov was a master of words. I would make this book a must read for everyone dreaming of becoming a writer. Some of them may be truly inspired but most of them will just weep at their inadequacies and hopefully will never write again. That way we can all be saved from bad books.

My week in Pictures

2012-02-04T17:47:00.000-08:00

Who Knows

2012-02-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should
get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people
than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where
always it's Spring)
and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves.

-ee cummings

Beautiful Words

2012-02-02T09:43:00.000-08:00

Anything else.

2012-01-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

There are many minarets of hope but none have come so close, to touching the sky of despair than the eyes which are stripped bare of any shame or guilt in the display of pain they hold inside. Why is there such a negativity attached to naked exhibition of emotions? If this was a bazaar of emotions of course happiness would be the most sought after product ever, with all 6 billion types of it sold out all the time. But there will be some soul, lost and confused who will look for something darker, something more sinister, depression or denial perhaps. Considering human behaviour there will be a huge market for the darker side only we'll all deny it and wish that it will go away. But this weed of the inner human demons will grow and grow in spite of all the denial and wishing ways. The want will grow and so will be the intensity. The more vulgar it gets, the closer we are as humans were intended to be. And that's the high that we all seek. The high of being human, in all its disdainful glory, above and beyond anything else.

You know you are a Flight Attendant if ....

2012-01-30T22:17:00.000-08:00

• You never unpack
• You look to the ceiling when your doorbell chimes
• You wish you had jet engines mounted in your bedroom so you could fall asleep faster
• You don't ever write a full city name (and it bugs your non-aviation friends): DTW MCO FCO BOM
• You get excited over certain types of ice
• You silently curse every Bose headset-wearing dude -- ("Yes, the electronic device announcement means you, sir.")
• You know how to look fresh in 5 day old clothes
• No matter how many times you clean out your suitcase you still find ancient hidden treasures in there
• You HATE boarding
• You LOVE deplaning
• You have figured out that turbulence is not caused by clouds but by the initial movement of all meal carts
• You can't believe that people let their babies and toddlers play on the floor of the aircraft cabin -- ewww, nasty
• You remember the passengers with great manners (that's sad)
• You can't remember when UM's actually became bigger than you
• You love foreigners because they can't adequately complain in English
• You have to turn your head when you see a passenger in stocking feet enter a lavatory
• You secretly cheer when another flight attendant has to deal with the medical emergency
• You HATE on board duty free
• You can't stand the frequent flyer who says "I fly more than you..." (yeah, right)
• You hate running into your passengers at your layover hotel
• Blankety-blank tray stackers!
• You hate when the heavy drinkers start flirting and calling you by name
• You long for the days when it was easy to rig the TV for free movies
• You want to smack the nail clipping -- finger nail polishing -- nose picking -- snoring passengers
• You want no passengers talking to you while you are non-revving
• Even when you are not working a flight, you travel in uniform for the liquids, creams and gels exemption
• If passengers can't find the flush to the toilet -- they should stay in there till they do!
• You wish you had a button to press that would announce, "No I don't have a pen"
• You are excited to find a can of different soda that is not supposed to be on your airline
• You could scream when people use an empty seat to change their baby's diaper, and don't even put a blanket underneath the little one -- worse yet, they ask if they can change the baby on the floor of the galley!
• You know a meaning for "crop-dusting" that has nothing to do with agriculture
• You cruise the aircraft after all the passengers have deplaned to find the discarded magazines and paperback novels before the cleaners get them
• You can spot the cover of a new crossword or sudoku book on an airport newsstand rack from 50 feet away
• You hate early morning departures -- Who in the hell HAS to fly at 6 AM?
• You wish every airline manager actually WAS a flight attendant at one point in their life (this goes double for flight attendant supervisors)
• You can't believe the senior F/A at your airline is in their 80's (doesn't matter what airline they all have them)
• You try not to go to the bathroom on the plane but you sure can catch a good nap in there
• You hate that passengers think they can hear you without taking off their headsets
• You are glad there are no hidden cameras in the galley
• Your non-aviation friends truly don't get the commuting part: "So you have to fly when and your trip starts where??"
• YES, "Remain seated for the duration of our flight" DOES mean YOU
• You can't figure out why your manager is not held accountable for the same things you are
• Your jumpseat partner knows more about you than your spouse or life partner
• You have at least 6 items of your own you could add to this list
• You had a memory for all of these, and understood every one.

Cat Lady

2012-01-29T22:43:00.000-08:00

I should really get a cat. I'm at the the right age to begin my transformation to a weird, haggard cat lady. That's what my future holds for me and I should start preparing for it. But I hate cats and the only thing I haven't managed to kill is a cactus.

My week in Pictures

2012-01-28T22:36:00.000-08:00

Love, with Trees and Lightning

2012-01-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking about what love is for.
Not the dramatic part where he gathers
until he is as purposeful inside her
as an electric storm. Not when he breaks
into a thanks so bright it leaves her split
like a tree. (How we all jolt back, our picnic
ten shades lighter, our hands clapped over awe
that is too big for our mouths, our raw hearts
more tender now that they’re a little burned.)

No, not the connecting and charring part.
(After all, nothing we like to call lightning
stays very long among the branches.)
But the two of them, afterwards, tasting
the electricity. Nibbling the charge
on the ions. When her soul has already
risked coming to meet him at the wide open
window of her skin. When what is left
of his body still feels huge, and he sits draped
in his fine, long coat of animal muscles
but uses all this strength to be human
and almost imperceptible. They curl up,
make their bodies the same size, draw promises
in one another’s juices. “You,” they say.
I love it when they say that.

Would that they could give a solid reason.
Sometimes they even refuse to try. They make jokes
while cinching their laces—”I’ll call soon,”
“You are so sweet.” The rank sugar of his breath
doesn’t summarize the world for her. “Not you,” they say.

And nothing bad has happened. They just turn
the doorknob that has been shining in their hands
the whole time, walk out, and continue to die.
Same as the rest of us. So maybe love
is a form of crying. Of finishing
what autumn leaves always start and turning
a brilliant color before we drift down.

Name one living thing that doesn’t
somehow bloom. None of them get to choose
the right conditions. Think of fire, of orchids.
She’s already up the street when he feels
his body pale, close, and become insufficient.
“If you go,” he says out the door, “I go too.”

There is no one like him, but she has no hope
of ever proving it. Instead she stays up
pressing old secrets into his skin and asking
if it hurts. He sets her on top of himself
so he can’t leave without her and confesses
to feeling as if he almost matters,
as if he no longer disappears
as soon as he connects with something
receptive on the ground. She says she will
split in half for him a million times.
They bring flowers and carpet and children
into the act, stand by one another’s side
for years. They refuse to move, ever. They act
as if they’ve found the only hospitable
spot on earth. I love it when they do that.

— Catie Rosemurgy

Beautiful Words

2012-01-26T21:39:00.000-08:00

Persuasion - Jane Austen

2012-01-25T01:00:00.000-08:00

Blurb on the back: Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne's family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?

Jane Austin once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work.

My Thoughts: I haven't read much of Jane Austen to decide whether this is her best novel or not. But it is definitely a far cry from the utterly boring wishy-wash world of Emma. Don't get me wrong, the novel is full of cunning, social hierarchy and lots of spurned love and arranged matches but there is a lot of reflectibility in Anne Elliot to make her real. She is irritatingly judgmental and intelligent to the point of self-righteousness but I love my herione with all their flaws. One thing that didn't go down well with me is the fact that every other character is named Charles. What's with that?

Rating: 3/5

Winter.

2012-01-23T01:00:00.001-08:00

“And yet the only exciting life is an ordinary one.” – Virginia Woolf

Finally I learned to decipher the fog. I come from a tropical beach city where temperatures rarely fluctuate +/- 5 degrees all year round. We are never too hot nor too cold and have massive amounts of rain and sunshine and this eternal summer is the standard to which I hold the weather all over the world. Even the most brilliantly beautiful cities with places right out of a picture postcard are reduced to masses of gray damp if the weather is not agreeable. Winter is my least favourite of seasons. I get lost in this maze of short days. As soon as I open my eyes its dusk already and all I am left to do is count stars on my fingertips because the night’s going to last forever and its too late to stop now.

I cannot for the life come to romanticize bare trees, icy winds and the monochromatic landscape. I know that these elements embody the cycle of life and la-di-la but there is nothing beautiful about the death of nature. And there is certainly nothing romantic about dripping noses, cramped fingers, wet socks and the flu every second week. 15 layers of clothing and huge ear muffs aren’t cute. This cold January has turned me into an obstinately hopeless grump.

To counter these effects of winter I started reading some saucy, hot Greek mythology. Now I know what keeps those Gods and Goddesses busy. I eat bright red apples all day long, listen to Harry Potter audio books, miss home, watch George Carlin on youtube, crochet colourful flowers and miss home some more. I just wish I could make up this lost time in Spring or Monsoon and life wouldn’t seem so fleeting to me in those days. In winters I lose the demarcation between days and this blur of time just swallows up the most potent part of me. I wish the sun would come soon and help me find myself again.

Handmade Bracelet

2012-01-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

My week in pictures

2012-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Things that are not magic

2012-01-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

Electricity. Rabbits. Starlight. Starlings.
Clockwork. Respiration. Pop music. Time
travel, especially when it’s not theoretical.
Pharmacology. The way light bends when
it falls across water. The trajectory of fire.
Dream sequences. Architecture. Dark matter.
Calligraphy. Holograms, and any other surface
that glitters. Remembrance. Centripetal force.
The inverse relationship between duration
and speed. Agriculture. Aeronautics. Any
known taxonomy. Perfume. Small batch gin.
Windmills. Industrial dams. Field recordings.
Sex with a stranger, however significant, is not
magic. It cannot change history. It won’t rebuild
your broken heart. This is not my fault.

- Gillian Devereux

Beautiful Words

2012-01-19T03:23:00.000-08:00

I am America (So can You) - Stephen Colbert

2012-01-18T10:21:00.000-08:00

Blurb on the back:Congratulations -- just by opening the cover of this book you became 25% more patriotic.

From Stephen Colbert, the host of television's highest-rated punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23 hours of your day. I Am America (and So Can You!) contains all of the opinions that Stephen doesn't have time to shoehorn into his nightly broadcast.

Dictated directly into a microcassette recorder over a three-day weekend, this book contains Stephen's most deeply held knee-jerk beliefs on The American Family, Race, Religion, Sex, Sports, and many more topics, conveniently arranged in chapter form.

Always controversial and outspoken, Stephen addresses why Hollywood is destroying America by inches, why evolution is a fraud, and why the elderly should be harnessed to millstones.

You may not agree with everything Stephen says, but at the very least, you'll understand that your differing opinion is wrong.

I Am America (and So Can You!) showcases Stephen Colbert at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

My Thoughts: Stephen Colbert is a funny guy and this is a funny book (although he admits he hasn't written the book). It's an entertaining satire on the modern American society and it is done in the same dead pan mocking style for which Colbert is famous for. For me the funniest part of the book were the pictures of Colbert, he is quite the expressive guy. But quintessentially this is an airport book, good for a few laughs and over within hours. The book doesnt bring forth anything which we didn't know beforehand and the jokes seem forced sometimes. Anyone who has seen the show will find the book redundant. But good for a few laughs on a cold, dreary boring day.

Rating: 3/5

Booking Through Thursday Interview meme

2012-01-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

1. What’s your favorite time of day to read? - Anytime.

2. Do you read during breakfast? (Assuming you eat breakfast.) - I don't usually eat breakfast, but I love reading in the morning when I manage to get up before noon.

3. What’s your favorite breakfast food? (Noting that breakfast foods can be eaten any time of day.) - Dosa (Indian pancake)

4. How many hours a day would you say you read? - Any and every single minute I get.

5. Do you read more or less now than you did, say, 10 years ago? - More.

6. Do you consider yourself a speed reader? - I am fairly fast.

7. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? - The ability to travel through time.

8. Do you carry a book with you everywhere you go? Of course.

9. What KIND of book? - A paperback, preferably light.

10. How old were you when you got your first library card? - 12 years old.

11. What’s the oldest book you have in your collection? (Oldest physical copy? Longest in the collection? Oldest copyright?) - In that order: A very old copy of Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak in a surprisingly good condition, Copies of French and Russian Fairytales, the first two books I ever bought and The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer.

12. Do you read in bed? - Yes.

13. Do you write in your books? - No.

14. If you had one piece of advice to a new reader, what would it be? - Just read, you dont know whet you've been missing.

15. What question have I NOT asked at BTT that you’d love me to ask? - What is your most hated book or character?

Book Loot

2012-01-15T09:44:00.000-08:00

I must have been pretty lucky this year, although the feeling hasn't manifested itself in any other form, that I had the oppurtunity to visit Tokyo, not once but twice. And I'll be going there again on the 18th and this is too good to be true. I was there for Seijin No Hi last year as well as this week and I had a great time taking pictures with girls in beautiful Kimonos and traditional Japanese finery.

The sunniness of Japan always steals my heart. No matter how cold the weather or how short the days, its always sunny and tranquil.

Buying English books in Japan, especially secondhand books can be a problem if you dont know where to look. Most book store have miles and miles of Japanese literature & manga but the English books will at the most occupy a shelf or two in one corner of the store. I understand that the market for English books in Japan is pretty nonexistent but to someone like me who spends hours, if not days in a bookstore, a couple of shelves hardly whets the appetite. Somehow I always manage to find a few treasures in this little 100Yen bookstore in Narita.

1. The End of India - Kushwant Singh
2. Hideous Kinky - Esther Frued
3. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
4. The Japanese Mind
5. Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu
6. Perlmann's Silence - Pascal Mercier
7. I am America (So Can You) - Stephen Colbert (Already finished this. Hilarious!)

My week in pictures

2012-01-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

Richer than gold

2012-01-13T02:18:00.000-08:00

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be -
I had a mother who read to me.

by Strickland Gillilan

Beautiful Words

2012-01-12T05:56:00.000-08:00

Notes from My Travels - Angelina Jolie

2012-01-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

Blurb on the back: Three years ago, award-winning actress Angelina Jolie took on a radically different role as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Here are her memoirs from her journeys to Seirra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Cambodia and Ecuador, where she lived and worked and gave her heart to those who suffer the world's most shattering voilence and victimization. Here are her revelations of joy and warmth amid utter destitution... compelling snapshots of courageous and inspiring people for whom survival is their daily work...and candid notes from a unique pilgrimage that completely changed the actress's worldview - and the world within herself.

My Thoughts: Being from a third-world country and a granddaughter of immigrants, I have an idea about the extreme levels of hardship that exists in this world. What I did not know is how agencies like UNHCR, Amnesty or IRC worked in situations like these which - if newspapers are to be believed - are extremely volatile and hopeless. The problems of refugees are far from over. But with books like these which provide a bit of insight about the everyday workings of a refugee camp and a glimpse in to the lives of numerous doctors, nurses, human rights workers etc. who put their own lives on line, it does leave one with a sense of hope. Jolie is not a writer and she doesn't pretend to be one. The language is very simple and mostly in notes-form i.e. stream of onsciousness writing and disjointed sentences. But the emotions behind her words are real and you cant help but appreciate the fact that this book was written at all.

Rating: 3/5

Bobble Hat

2012-01-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I have a pretty-big head so if you follow the pattern to the T, the hat might be a little too big for your head but it also looks great when the hat is a bit slouchy. Adjust the stitches to your needs or sizes. The video of the bobble stitch below is not mine; I just found it really helpful. Also I have never written a crochet pattern before, so I dont really know what I am doing.

Step 1. ch 4.

Step 2. dc 11 in the 1st ch and join (so that you get a circle of 12 dc)

Step 3. dc in every ch and join (circle of 24 dc)

Step 4. Same as step 3 (circle of 48 dc)

Step 5. 2 dc in 1st ch, dc in 2nd ch, 2 dc in 3rd ch and so on. Alternate a 2 dc and a single dc in each ch (circle of 72 dc)

Step 6. Same as step 5 (circle of 108 dc)

Step 7. dc in each ch (circle of 108 dc)

Step 8. same as step 6 (circle of 108 dc)

Step 9: A Bobble sticth in 1st chain, dc in the next. Alternate a bobble stitch and a dc in each chain and join.

Step 10. single sticth in each ch.

Step 11. Same as Step 9.

Step 12. Same as Step 10.

Keep repeating steps 9 and 10 until you have the desired puffiness or slouchiness. I have done it five times in the above pattern.

Step 13. Slip st in each ch (circle of 108 st)

Step 14. Slip st in 1st ch, slip st in 2nd ch, leave 3rd ch, slip st in 4th and 5th ch (leave every 3rd chain)(circle of 72 st)

Step 15. Same as step 13 (circle of 72 st)

Step 16. Same as step 14 (circle of 48 st)

Step 17. Same as step 13 (circle of 48 st)

Step 18. Same as step 13 (circle of 48 st)

Step 19. Same as step 13 (circle of 48 st)

Step 20. Same as step 13 (circle of 48 st)

How to make a Bobble Stitch

My week in pictures

2012-01-07T21:16:00.000-08:00

Calicut, Kerala, India.

Yay for brand new notebooks!

First postcard of the year. :)

Tonight I can write the saddest lines

2012-01-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

- Pablo Neruda

Beautiful Words

2012-01-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

Thérèse Raquin - Emile Zola

2012-01-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

Blurb on the back:

"It was like a lightning flash of passion, swift, blinding, across a leaden sky."

In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Thérèse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend Laurent, but their animal passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them for ever. Thérèse Raquin caused a scandal when it appeared in 1867 and brought its twenty-seven-year-old author a notoriety that followed him throughout his life. Zola's novel is not only an uninhibited portrayal of adultery, madness and ghostly revenge, but also a devastating exploration of the darkest aspect of human existence.

My Verdict: I am a sucker for dark romances. Unrequited love, forbidden passions and sinister liaisons are required ingredients in the making of a classic for me. Although the book does feel rushed and impatient at times, the brutality of Zola's words pretty much makes up for it. Highly recommended to anyone who likes their love stories with a twist of insanity.

Rating: 4/5

Year end Books Meme

2012-01-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

1. How many books did you read in 2011?
41 (excluding re-reads, graphic novels and sponsored books).

1. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
2. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
3. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
4. Hunger - Knut Hamsun
5. Nausea - Jean Paul Sartre
6. I Lucifer - Glen Duncan
7. Ladies Coupe - Anita Nair
8. 84, Charring Cross Road - Helene Hanff
9. Hemmingway's Chair - Michael Palin
10. The Hobbit - J R R Tolkien
11. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
12. Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
13. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
14. You are here - Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan
15. Kane And Abel- Jeffrey Archer
16. Idle thoughts of an idle fellow - Jerome K. Jerome
17. The Lady of Camillias - Alexander Dumas fils
18. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
19. The boy in striped pajamas - John Boyne
20. The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth
21. Dubliners - James Joyce
22. Oracle Nights - Paul Auster
23. The Secrets of lost things - Sheridan Hay
24. Snakes and Earings - Kanehara Kitomi
25. The House in Paris - Elizabeth Bowen
26. The inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
27. Crash - J G Ballard
28. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
29. Snow - Orhan Pamuk
30. House Of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
31. Out Stealing Horses - Pat Paterson
32. God bless you Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
33. Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at high school - Jessie Graham Flowers
34. A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
35. Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
36. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
37. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
38. A Separate Peace - John Knowles
39. 69 - Ryu Murakami
40. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
41. Therese Raquin - Emile Zola

2. What's the best book you read this year?
As always, its very hard to pick just one book or even to judge a book because no standard or criteria exist to christen a book good or bad. Having said that, three books really stood out this year. "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte, "Kafka on the shore" by Murakami and "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery.

3. Any other reading highlights?
Every year I make a resolution to read more "translated" books but generally I just end up buying books off some bestseller list or books which have won prizes. But this year I did manage to read quite a number of books from different countries and languages and that has been an enriching experience.

4. What's the most challenging book you read this year?
"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun. This book made me realise how often I take things for granted.

5. What's the worst book you read this year?
"The Fountainhead" - Ayn Rand. No contest.

6. Which author featured most prominently for you in 2011?
I wouldn't name a particular author but in entirety I fell in love with Japanese authors this year and tried to read as many books I could find and no disappointments yet.

7. Were you part of a reading challenge? Did you meet it?
No.

8. Are you signed up for any in 2012?
No. I dont really have the patience.

9. What books are you hoping to get for Christmas (or buy next, if you don’t do the holiday gifting season thing)?
The list of books I'd love to buy runs not in pages but in notebooks! If only I could rob a bank ....

10. Which books are you most looking forward to reading in 2012?
I'd love to read more books by Russian authors. Also non-fiction books which are not related to Physics or Astronomy.

What are your favourite books of 2011?

Happy New Year to All!!!

2012-01-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

2011-12-30T07:41:00.000-08:00

So this is the new year
And I don't feel any different
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance
In the distance

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialog's bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that can hold us back

There'd be no distance that could hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back

So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year

Warning

2011-12-16T12:31:00.000-08:00

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

- Jenny Joseph

Things I love - Staring out the windows

2011-12-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

One of the things that I truly love is staring out of windows, especially when I am travelling. I enjoy it more than the company of other human beings and sometimes I enjoy it even more than reading a book. As a child I was called the lazy daydreamer; a badge I still wear with pride. In school I was always that girl - oblivious to the class, least interested in lessons and always being punished for looking out the windows. There was not much to see outside our school window except for another building and a bare playground. These days I am blessed with views more beautiful than that but those school windows nudged me on to the path of life long rumination.

I love being the observer of life. I can watch the world passing me by for hours, mesmerised. Little details that might escape another's eye, I make fairytales out of them. When things get a little tough to handle I just calm my mind by watching the clouds float by, the breeze whispering softly through the leaves. The mind stops working, in a good way of course. Its so Zen. I believe what the world needs is more windows and more time to gaze out of them.

"The day was sliding
toward its provincial graveyard
and between the bread and the shadow
I remember
myself
in the window"

- Pablo Neruda

My week in Pictures

2011-12-10T22:49:00.001-08:00

As One Listens to the Rain

2011-12-09T07:23:00.000-08:00

"Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
not attentive, not distracted,
light footsteps, thin drizzle,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day is still leaving,
the night has yet to arrive,
figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,listen to me as one listens to the rain,
without listening, hear what I say
with eyes open inward, asleep
with all five senses awake,
it’s raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, words with no weight:
what we are and are,
the days and years, this moment,
weightless time and heavy sorrow,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
wet asphalt is shining,
steam rises and walks away,
night unfolds and looks at me,
you are you and your body of steam,
you and your face of night,
you and your hair, unhurried lightning,
you cross the street and enter my forehead,
footsteps of water across my eyes,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the asphalt’s shining, you cross the street,
it is the mist, wandering in the night,
it is the night, asleep in your bed,
it is the surge of waves in your breath,
your fingers of water dampen my forehead,
your fingers of flame burn my eyes,
your fingers of air open eyelids of time,
a spring of visions and resurrections,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page.”

- Octavio Paz

Ennui.

2011-12-06T07:37:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living. - Jonathan Safran Foer.

The past two weeks have been torturous. Too much socializing, too many people met, too many words said and not a moment of solitude to keep me sane. Every destination is just another transit and every second another aeon. This passing city is dusty and smells of burnt rubber with a sky covered with fog so thick I could reach out and touch it. The last one was cold, covered in dead leaves and populated with shiny people who seemed partly happy. No footprints anywhere, just visible breaths floating in mid-air. Last night I wished life didn't mean sleeping in strange beds and carrying my world around in a suitcase. But as they say "If everyone threw their problems in the air, you'd be lucky to catch your own."

I am struggling to find the correct words. A new language needs to be forged which could answer the question "Could we live happily in a perfect world?".

Cimetière de Montmartre

2011-11-28T09:47:00.000-08:00

From Lonely Planet: #247 of 1470 things to do in Paris. The most famous cemetery in Paris after Père Lachaise, Cimetière de Montmartre was established in 1798. It contains the graves of writers Émile Zola, Alexandre Dumas and Stendhal; composer Jacques Offenbach; artist Edgar Degas; film director François Truffaut; and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky – among others. The entrance closest to the Butte de Montmartre is at the end of av Rachel, just off bd de Clichy or down the stairs from 10 rue Caulaincourt. Maps showing the location of the tombs are available free at that entrance.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

2011-11-25T05:13:00.001-08:00

Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson

2011-11-17T04:58:00.001-08:00

It took me a little less than 2 days to finish this book. At first I couldn't quite figure out what the book was about. It starts with 67-year-old Trond going about his daily life in a remote cabin in the woods and reminiscing about the summer when he was 15 years old and went "out stealing horses" with his best friend. Another novel about a troubled old man's reflections of a cruel world??? Do I need another endlessly bleak narrative and adolescent brooding even when it reeks of Thoreau? But then the power of the melancholic Nordic landscape seeps in with every turning page. At one point I stopped caring about what was happening in the protagonist's life and found myself lost in the beauty of the words describing the frozen north. At its heart the book is about a teenage boy's relationship with his father. But its also a coming of age tale, of a family destroyed by the worst of tragedies, of lives in Norway during WWII but above all it a tale of friendship surviving all odds.

Or at least that is what I know about the book.

"People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself."

Things I love - Sunday Newspapers

2011-11-14T00:20:00.001-08:00

In one of those rare instances when I get to spend a Sunday at home, my favourite thing to do is read all the Sunday Newspapers. I wake up when the morning is just starting to get warm, have a long, lazy shower, enjoy a cup or two of milky ginger tea and then step out to buy a ton of newspapers. Printed Pleasure. On my way back I also buy mango and pistachio kulfi because nothing doubles up bliss on a warm day quite as well as icecream. Nothing like sprawling in the mid-morning sunlight with newspaper spread in all corners of my bare living room floor and enjoying a well written article (or 20).

Last week in pictures

2011-11-10T08:23:00.001-08:00

If encountered with bad behaviour on a plane .....

2011-11-06T02:49:00.000-08:00

I dont usually crib about my work. Alright, alright I crib about my work all the time but who doesn't? This article on Up, Up and a gay recently caught my eye. Its uncanny (and very disappointing) how passenger behaviour is the same world-wide.

Synopsis of the article: Flight attendant (FA) closes a tray table for take off since its her job, passenger complaints about her, is not satisfied. Keeps on complaining and the CSA at the airport rewards the pax with an upgrade.

Its sickening how far airlines would go just to placate a passenger and avoid bad press even if the person in question is a douchebag. Moreover, is this what passes for decent human conduct these days? All of it sounds so familiar. A few weeks ago, a passenger boarded the aircraft with his wife and two kids. Right at the gate he proceeded to tell the FA that he is coming directly from his father's funeral and he'd like some privacy. Since the flight wasn't full we gave the family 6 seats in one corner of the aircraft and offered the beverages and snacks and tried to make them as comfortable as possible. Even as passengers were boarding he asked if it is possible to be upgraded since you know, he is coming from a funeral and wanted to be alone. Of course the FA said that it is not possible. By the time the doors closed this guy has asked every single FA onboard and even some ground personnel for the upgrade, repeating the same sad story again and again. Fortunately, he got the same answer from each of them. The doors were closed and the flight took off without incidence. The beverage service started and the rear FA (who also happened to be the junior-most FA on the flight) found that this guy was missing from his seat. Nothing wrong with that; he might have gone to the toilet so she didn't pay much attention to the fact. In the middle of the service the business class attendant calls up on the intercom and asks this junior girl if she had mentioned to a passenger that it’s alright to go and sit in the business class. The girl of course knew nothing about it. The pax just came and sat on the only available business-class seat without permission and was trying to avoid eye contact with the crew. This seat was free only because it was broken and couldn’t be reclined back at all hence it wasn’t released for a fare paying passenger.

I was working the galley position at that time and cabin attendant told me what had just happened and since we were also in the middle of a beverage service she said that we'll wait till she serves all the other passengers and when she gets to his seat, will discreetly ask him to return to his economy seat. By the time she reached his seat, this guy was ready with his tray table drawn and asked for a whiskey double! She politely asked to see his boarding card. He said that it was with his wife at the back of the plane and he didn't feel like getting up and going all the way there. However the FA was firm and she requested him to move back to his original seat. He started making up stories saying someone has asked him to sit here and why can’t he sit there if the seat was vacant etc etc. She explained it to him what the protocol is and how the fare structure worked and why we cannot upgrade even if the entire business class was empty but this guy wouldn’t budge. In the middle of this conversation he abruptly mentions "I am coming from my father's funeral and you guys don’t show me any compassion". His voice was getting louder and the people around were starting to get uncomfortable so I called up my flight purser. He knew about the situation because he had already turned him down once before takeoff.

He also repeated the same things firmly but politely to the passenger and asked him to move back to his original seat. This time too he started arguing and saying that the crew is heartless and how he'll never fly with us again. Eventually he reluctantly went back to his seat and I and the rest of the crew sighed with relief. The rest of the passengers were very happy with the way the crew conducted themselves and some even thanked them for handling the situation so well.

After both the meal service and beverage services were completed and most of the passengers fast asleep, the First Officer comes around for a walk in the cabin. Seeing a new face in a uniform the same passenger asks him for a complaint form. The F/O asks him the reason and this guy starts on all about how rude the crew has been to him and his family, how we refused him drinks and even water for his kids and we are forcing him to sit at the back of the aircraft and that he is coming from his father's funeral and how the crew made it worse. Now, our airline policy specially mentions that flight deck crew is not to be involved in cabin matters unless they are of a grave nature and so the commander wasn't made aware of this situation.

Conventional wisdom says that the F/O must have referred the pax to the customer service on ground or at least asked the crew for their side of the story but nooooooo. This guy not only allows the pax to sit in the business class but also reprimands the junior-most girl working at the rear for being so rude to this "Poor Gentleman"!!! She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this. Furthermore he comes with the pax to the business class galley and demands that a bottle of champagne be offered to this pax as compensation to our bad behaviour!!!! The Flight Purser calmly refused and asked him to take the matters up with the Chief FA for the whole story. To this the F/O says "He was right. You guys are a very rude bunch" and walks off to report to the commander. Fortunately the Chief FA was in his right mind and managed to convince the F/O that the champagne bottle wouldn't be necessary and that the cabin matters weren't their concern at all. We didn't see the flight deck for the rest of the flight.

However the Chief FA also told us to let this man sit on the broken business class seat as long as he wishes but not to be entertained further than that. We had already crossed more than 2/3rd of the journey by this time. Soon the pax realised that the seat was broken and won’t recline but just to save face he sat there like a pumpkin while his fellow passengers snored away to glory. While deplaning he comes up to the FA bidding people good bye and asks her for the bottle of champagne "which I was promised". She just flashed her fakest smile at him and said "Thank you for flying with us. Good Bye."

I can understand that this man was upset because of his father's death and wasn't in the right state of mind. But what I don’t understand how a free upgrade and/or a bottle of champagne would have made any difference. In the economy class, where it was less crowded his wife and kids slept peacefully on three seats each and I am sure had a much better flight. Since when did behaving badly become an acceptable way of getting things? Where does this sense of entitlement come from? This man was just trying to milk a situation for all its worth but nothing he did was as unforgiving as the F/O behaviour. What makes me sad is that this guy, forget backing his crew, waddles into a situation which is clearly not his area of concern at all and makes it worse. The icing on the cake was being called rude by this dick who wouldn’t know nice if it hit him on the head. I am sure that the guy will try the same tricks with other flights and airlines as well. One of these days I am going to go Steven Slater on their asses.

source: zazzle.com

Book Loot

2011-11-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

London - A place you go to get bronchitis - Fran Lebowitz

In my head I listed a lot of reasons not to update at all but then I got all excited about showing the world all these fabulous finds I managed to acquire. But first, since I am in London, let me discuss the weather like a proper Brit. London weather went completely schizophrenic on me! When I woke up it was quite understandably cold and gray; the moment I stepped out it started raining like no tomorrow. Somehow, all drenched and sneezing I managed to catch a bus and hey presto, bright sunshine outside. I love me a changing weather but can I have consistency for at least a minute? The fall colours are beautiful though and make me yearn for those few moments when the clouds part and the sunlight pours to the earth making everything bright and beautiful again.

So the books are:

1. The troublesome offspring of Cardinal Guzman- Louis de Bernieres
2. Possessions - A. S. Byatt
3. Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
4. A treasury of Hans Christian Anderson
5. The Impressionist - Hari Kunzru

Personally I dont really like hardbound books. They are so heavy and cumbersome; you cant carry them everywhere in your little bag, they keep slipping out of their damn covers all the time; you cant fit too many of them in the ever-diminishing check-in weight limit and I can never twist my wrists into holding them at a comfortable readable angle while I am lying about. I have always preferred paperbacks and their fragile nature. But lately I have noticed that all the second hand books in London have a majority of hardbound books as opposed to any other country where paperbacks are in abundance. May be the English prefer it this way since they are keepers and hardbound books look pretty neat and prim on the bookshelves. I don't know. These titles were just too hard to let by because they had the wrong kind of cover. Especially the first book by Louis de Benieres. I had been searching for it everywhere forever. Its the third novel written by the author and as with all my favourite authors, I like to go through their bibilography chronologically. Also I am really excited about the Hans Christian Anderson Treasury because believe it or not I have only read two of his stories :/ I have a lot of catching up to do.

I want to change a few things around this blog. It feels very dated. I wish I had the patience to code from scratch like I used to. If someone would like to help me out with this I'd be indebted to them forever ......

A day in an Indian market

2011-10-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Everything is a diary.

2011-10-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

“Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose. It’s all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand. Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary.” - Chuck Palahniuk

I wish I could say sorry for the lack for posting but the truth is I feel like I have nothing left to say. My life has turned ordinary. Who knew that could happen when you living out of a suitcase and a half and that words lose their amusement if left alone for more than a fortnight. But I guess everything is a diary. The footprints I am leaving behind in cold countries, the autumn leaves placed recently in the pages of a book, every window pane that I stare out of, every misheard words of a foreign language and every to-do list that will never be done. I have somehow mastered the art of remaining calm. I can sleep for days without feeling the need to wake up but as they say, dreams are the uninhibited realities you couldn't face when awake. My days are at the disposal of autumn's mercy.

When in Frankfurt ....

2011-10-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

Source: op-online.de

Rishikesh

2011-10-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

[ Entire Album Here ]

London Ramblings

2011-10-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

I got up at around 4 in the morning and have been trying to make sense of life since then. Its almost 8 now and I haven’t come up with a single sentence to call my own. I am dwelling in the past as I admire my own strength as a poet of a bygone era. Maybe its because I have stopped reading Marquez that I am having trouble with my own fantasy out of this world reality. There is a new movie coming up based on “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” which I am sure they have screwed up so bad. They cannot put poetry into celluloid frames, they can try but they wont succeed. Especially for a book of such beauty.

It was raining here in London some time back indicating its back to being autumn here. That’s means the sky will be grey and the days will be dull and the air will be covered in mist and the evenings will be drowned in rain. After 4 days of sunshine in the so-called Summer, London will be London again. Time for me to be introspective again.

I just want to get out of here. Just go out and get some fresh air instead of this recycled air-con air but the weather is putting me off. Where is the beauty in fall?? It feels like its going to rain but its not, and I cant figure out what the temperature is outside. I hate these hotel windows that do not open. As if we are some kind of prisoners and wont stay inside, unless completely blocked and sealed. Its ridiculous, the windows and the doors. Spent all morning watching TV and mocking young people for their immaturity. But little did I know that they are smarter than I am. Well not all of them, but it’s a fact that the newest generations are always smarter than the previous ones. That’s because they comparatively have more sources of information and easier access to the adult world that any of the older people. Kids are becoming adults earlier and earlier and that should a matter of great concern.

First of all they are not equipped with the mental abilities to handle the adult world even if they have access to it. Second, I guess they have less and less time just being kids, they lose their innocence too soon. Call me naïve but I think that innocence is one of the most precious experiences of life. That complete abandon and no hesitations in the mind should be the right of each and every kid. But they are the ones too keen on losing it. That’s because nobody realises the importance unless you have lost it. That applies to a lot of other things too.

Chaucer and other struggles

2011-10-01T10:42:00.001-07:00

So a September has faded away and autumn is ready to take its rightful place in the scheme of things. Life has slowed down a bit after the emotional and metaphorical rollercoaster the whole last month happened to be and having some free time makes me all warm inside. Somehow I find myself free of any commitments for the next few days and I am trying to remember what that used to feel like. Breathing easy. Being purposeless. Being alive. Just being.

In a positive wave of self-confidence and a thirst for knowledge mixed with a very heavy dose of panic over the temporariness of my youth I decided to take a major step towards becoming the kind of person I want to be. I enrolled myself for a Masters course in English Literature. After all these years of just wishful thinking of going back to school I finally took the plunge two days ago. It’s so liberating to study something that I truly love rather than a degree which would result in a great job or a financially rewarding career. I feel so blessed at the moment.

When the clerk handed over the books I was so overcome with a sense of a belonging to this subject and to literature in general that I stood there for a moment just holding the heavy books awkwardly in my hands, making sure they were real. Just the titles of the course books are so beautiful: “Elizabethan Poetry”, “The Romantics”, “The Renaissance of Wonder” etc. I love books and I have been a reader all my life but I have never “learned” this obsession of mine. I have no sense of history of the language or why we love the books we do or even about the politics of publication. The term is yet to start but I am all pumped up for some hardcore discussion and debate.

My first topic is “Literature from Chaucer to 1660” and the one of the prescribed text is The Canterbury Tales. Now for the damp squib; I tried to read this book in August when I first bought it (referenced in the movie Seven) and thought it was the most boring and inconsequential piece of poetry I have ever read. From what it looks like, the Father of English Poetry had a penchant for sticking his nose in other people’s business and a little too much time on his hands. But guess now I’ll just have to brave through it. Learning cannot all be fun now, can it? Interestingly, the copy that I own shows all the evidence of having once belonged to an English Literature student just like myself as every single page is marked, underlined, scribbled down, explained, annotated, cross-referenced and commented on. Guess Chaucer isn’t easy for anyone.

Monsoon

2011-09-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

The world is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. -
William Butler Yeats

So September is coming to an end and with it, she'll take away my beloved Monsoon. All I can say is come back soon old friend to cleanse our hearts, recharge our souls and make us feel young again. I live for days when it rains for weeks and the skies are forever gray with clouds missing their silver linings. Everything is covered by an all consuming dampness and the air is wet enough for fishes to breed. These are the days I am in love with. These are the days that I am so so so grateful that I was born in a country with a distinct monsoon season in all its powerful glory. No matter what destruction the rain gods bring, I can never settle for puny little showers and impotent drizzles which barely make a scratch in the routine.

I want rain which epitomizes the phrase “a force of nature”.

I want thick clouds which make the 747 quiver like a leaf.

I want thunderstorms loud enough to give one sleepless nights.

I want bone chilling lightning every few minutes.

I want knee-deep muddy water which brings life to a halt.

But most of all I like day in and day out of nothing but rain. Sheets of water thick enough to render one blind. And the sound of rain drops on a window pane on a dark inky night, that ecstatic chorus, the sound of divinity. Combine that with the earthy fragrance of the first rains. Poetry for the senses. And it is this spellbinding force that bursts my heart with pure bliss. I crave for the months when monsoon will fill my reality again.

When I grow up, I want to be this lady ....

2011-09-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

...... or can I at least steal her wardrobe. Please.

Ilona Royce Smithkin for Stylelikeu.com from StyleLikeU on Vimeo.

The past week in pictures

2011-09-18T01:47:00.000-07:00

Treasures

2011-09-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons why I cannot possibly jump to the e-reader bandwagon are the treasures waiting to be found inside a book. Most of the time the treasure is the author's words. Other times its the readers' words; a little scribble in the margin, a loving note on the front page or a cry of exasperation about the worthlessness of that particular novel. But on rarer occasions one finds treasures which don't necessarily belong in the book. These small treasures, hidden, stashed away and long forgotten. After all, books by nature are a private pleasure and concealment are just one of their virtues. Sometimes I buy a book just for the sake of what's left inside. Besides the usual bookmarks, receipts and class schedules I have also found money, pressed flowers, plane tickets, birth certificates and gretting cards. I love the whole universe which exists only between pages.

I recently bought a hardback copy of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (one of favourites of all time), and inside I found this unsent postcard. Sending postcards being my other love I was a tad bit disappointed that this wasn't sent. Is there anything more melancholic than an unsent letter? But the squirrel with the peanut makes up for it.

Links

2011-09-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some links I'd like to share with the universe (bridges = links, geddit??):

1. Postpals: If you are like me and love snail mail (or even email for that matter), you can brighten-up a child's day by sending a postcard/letter/email etc. or even donate some money to help a child in need.

2. 100 Best Opening Lines of Novels

3. .... and the100 Best Closing Lines.

4. The Craft of Verse - Jorge Luis Borges: The Norton lectures delivered at Harvard University.

5. How to Live a Beautiful Life: One which is your own and not a scaled down version of someone else's.

6. Booklamp: helps you find books with similar themes and writing style to books you like.

Snow - Orhan Pamuk

2011-09-04T00:30:00.000-07:00

"Immersed as he was in the dusky melancholy that had begun descending over the city, he still felt happy. A long procession of images paraded before his eyes as he awaited his next poem - a waking dream of ugly unadorned concrete buildings, parking lots buried in snow, teahouses and barbershops and grocery stores all hidden behind their icy windows, courtyards in which dogs had been barking in unison since the days of the Russians, stores selling spare parts for tractors alongside horse-drawn carriage supplies and cheese. He was seized by the certainty that everything he saw - the banners for the Motherland Party, the little window hidden behind those tightly drawn curtains, the slip of paper someone had taped to the icy window of the Knowledge Pharmacy months earlier to announce that the shot for Japanese influenza had finally arrived, the yellow anti-suicide poster - every last one of these details would stay with him for the rest of his life. There arose from these minor things a vision of extraordinary power: so certain was he that everything on earth is interconnected and I too am inextricably linked to this deep and beautiful world, he could only conclude another poem was on its way, and so he stepped inside one of the teahouses on Ataturk Avenue. But the poem never came."

This is a book about wanderers, about loss and about conflict, within oneself and with the world. Ka is an exiled poet; Orhan Bey is a incisive writer. Both come to the pitiful town of Kars in search of things which escape and fascinate them. Things they have lost and yet they yearn for. Ka comes to Kars to write an article about an epidemic of suicides among young Turkish women. His other, more important motive is to find Ipek, his unforgettable long lost love who is recently divorced. Orhan Bey arrives in the dead of winter to piece together the last days that his “friend”, Ka, spent in his hometown. And in this conflicting and dreadful world, snow is the universal metaphor for all things hidden and sorrowful.

I love this book for the honest moments it creates in spite of the little worlds falling apart in every chapter. The language is made beautiful by the innate poetry of Pamuk’s words which reek of purity and anguish. Some of the things worth pondering over like the power of women in an Islamic society and the everyday struggles of the immigrant class stay with you long after the novel is finished. But the novel never gets dull with polity or religious commentary. The fascination always remains with the three key themes: memories, unrequited love and snow. Pamuk seems to have bitten off more than he can chew when he tries to bridge the differences between East and West. But the mirror he holds up to the modern Turkish society isn’t shattered and one ends up thinking of the two worlds as mere reflections of each other rather than the opposites.

The one thing I feel really frustrated at is that Ka wrote 19 poems during his time in Kars and the reader doesn’t get to read any of them.

Rating: 4/5

"In a smoky corner of my mind I was reminded of a truth drawn from bitter experience: Immersing oneself in the problems of a book is a good way to keep from thinking of love."

Reading - The Best State Yet

2011-09-01T02:40:00.000-07:00

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay. ~ William Styron

As mentioned in the earlier post, in case of an emergency, hurricane or otherwise, I am most likely to grab the nearest book pile than anything which might actually come handy for survival and it is a proven fact. So while NYC was being shut down and people were scrambling for emergency supplies and water, I realised that I had only one book with me with just a few chapters left to read. Being holed up in a hotel room for more than a day with the possibility of no electricity and just one book to keep me company is the stuff my nightmares are made of. So as soon as morning arrived bringing the first showers with it I rushed to my favourite book store, hoping with each step I took that it’d be open. Hurricanes, you see, can be quite the deterrent.

It’s a great feeling when one unexpectedly realises that the peculiar trait considered unique to oneself is shared by a great number of others. Surprisingly the book store was crowded more than ever. People holding battered umbrellas and in various stages of saturation from the rain pulling random books from the shelf. That is one of the things I love about NYC, it is filled with crazies like me. I managed to slide and slither through the crowd and get my hands on the following books.

1. The Music of Choice – Paul Aster
2. Perfume – Patrick Suskind
3. The old Curiosity Shop – Charles Dickens
4. Paula – Isabel Allende
5. Selected Poems of William Blake
6. Paradiso – Dante
7. A Separate Peace – John Knowles
8. Saving Fish from Drowning – Amy Tan

Birthday Resolutions

2011-08-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

" ... for life's not a paragraph / and death, I think, is no paranthesis ..."
- e. e. cummings

I turned 28 on the 24th and the past few days have been such a whirlwind of unbelievable events that I can hardly breathe. It all feels like a fairytale and it happened so fast that only Fate could have guided this. Two days before my birthday I met this unbelievably cute guy on my flight to London and we really hit it off. A day after that my grandmother’s beautiful little cottage which was stuck in a legal dispute for years was finally returned to its rightful owners. I kind of inherited it. In an effort to boost employee morale my airline decided that we’ll all get UNLIMITED FREE international passages for us and our family and friends whenever we want. And we are also entitled to a 20-days paid leave every 3 months. Two months ago I entered in a raffle at the airport duty free and the first prize was a 2010 VW New Beetle. I had completely forgotten about it until a few days ago when they called and told me that I have won myself a new car!!!!!! And the incredibly cute guy mentioned above, well, yesterday he asked me to marry him :D.........

....... And it would have been perfect if it wasn't just all in my head.

In reality, I spent my birthday trapped in a smelly aircraft for 17 hours with a bunch of impolite, ill-mannered imbeciles who constantly bitched and moaned about everything under the sun and mistook my veneer silence at the ramblings of self-obsession over the triviality called their boring/meaningless lives as a sign of interest. And that was just the crew; don't even get me started on the passengers. Human race, you never fail to disappoint me. At the end of that day I was so tired I couldn’t even sleep and after almost 48 hours without sleep I just collapsed on my bed and slept for 14 hours straight. When I woke up Hurricane Irene was heading our way. Perfect bright red cherry on the top.

(On a completely unrelated note: Irene has taught me a very valuable lesson; I should not be trusted with my own life let alone anyone else’s. In case of an emergency, hurricane or otherwise, I am most likely to grab the nearest book pile than anything which might actually come handy for survival and it is a proven fact. More on that later.)

I am not complaining. Well, I shouldn’t be complaining because I love my job and I kind of like my life. It’s the creeping old age that’s worrying me. I just feel old and none the wiser. I’ll be 30 in two years and my life doesn’t resemble an adult’s life in any way. Never had I thought I'd live this long, not once. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any basis or justification for these feelings. I had a blissful childhood and pretty rocking teens (OK I was mildly sullen and angst-y but that comes with the territory). Truth is I have had a wonderful life. I just never thought that I'd get all old and mouldy and have to choose a life different from what I have always be living. I love my space and my little quirks and even the slightest deviation from the norm makes me distressed. So when the world and their cousins are having babies, getting mortgages and investing in pension plans; my biggest ambition is to drink butter beer at Harry Potter World and/or to meet Stephen Fry. As Margaret Atwood rightly said “Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”

I need to grow up and get my act together. I guess with age comes new perspective and I have taken a long time to figure out that the transition comes from within. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. So to make it easier for me to embrace the change, I have come up with the following goals. This was originally my 30 before 30 list but I lost track of it somehow and ended up back at square one. Some of these are time bound resolutions; others are guidelines to a better future and these probably won’t make any difference in the big picture but it has to start somewhere.

1. Reduce my carbon footprint.
2. Plant a tree for every year of my existence. (I am 25 trees short)
3. Have my own second-hand bookshop.
4. Go back to school and this time around, learn what I really want to.
5. Learn to ride a motorcycle.
6. Start giving more to charity.
7. Visit a new country every year.
8. Read "Remembrance of things past" in entirety.
9. Exercise more (and be healthier in general).
10. Swimming with dolphins and Whale watching.
11. Invest money in things other than books.
~~12. Climb Mt Fuji.~~
13. Be fluent in French.
14. Be a Guitar God.
15. Buy and use a telescope.
16. Touch an iceberg.
17. Bungee jumping.
18. Sky Diving.
~~19. Watch a Broadway Play.~~
20. Cirque du Soleil.
21. See the Northern Lights.
22. Grow and eat your own vegetables.
23. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon.
24. Watch a meteor shower.
25. Aisle Surfing.
26. Visit all the 7 continents.
27. Visit Afghanistan (the birthplace of my grandparents).
28. Visit all the Seven Wonders of the World (new and old).
29. Make different pasta from scratch.
30. Write a book.

Last week in Pictures

2011-08-22T00:11:00.000-07:00

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

2011-08-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe."

How do I feel after reading the much hyped Kafka on the Shore? I don't have the words for it but Murakami has reinstated his number two position on my list of favourite authors. After the slight debacle called Norwegian Wood, Kafka … is a prime example of how rewarding the quintessential Murakami can be; great music, Meta dreams, spooky cabins and lost cats galore! The book is very surreal and magical but not as out of touch with reality as some of the author’s stuff. The stream of consciousness writing and the psychological turmoil flit between the boundaries of the acceptable and the supernatural. It reads like a transcript to a fantastically weird dream.

The book has two narratives running parallel to each other. Almost one half of the book is the story of a runaway teenage boy who names himself Kafka Tamura and his alter ego Crow. The other half is about Mr. Nakata, a cat whisperer who is rendered “not normal” due to a freak accident during WWII. It doesn’t seem like at first but their existences are intertwined. Kafka is trying to escape the “Oedipal Prophecy” in which he kills his father while Mr. Nakata hunts for a magical entrance stone which might make his light shadow, complete again. These two “disturbed” individuals are drawn into each other’s lives to, what we are made to believe, is a life-changing climax.

In their journey they are helped by talking cats, transgender librarians, a trucker who wears only Hawaiian shirts, Colonel Sanders as a pimp and 15-year-old-girl ghosts. There is also a serial-cat-killer called Johnnie Walker.

The story isn't linear and in the end there are a lot of ends left hanging. But this is not a conventional book after all. At first the parallel structure was getting on my nerves and I was quite tempted to skip the odd chapters and read Mr. Nakata's story faster because I found it more interesting. But in the end you realise that the book couldn't be structured in a simpler way to make these two worlds meet. Although coming-of-age characters like Kafka are Murakami's forte, I have really come to adore Mr. Nakata who wins your heart with his simplicity and politeness. The only criticism I can conjure up in my mind is the character of Oshima who comes across as Mr. Smartypants the way he spouts out philosophy unrelated to any conversation.

This book is not for everyone, not just for its bizarre storyline and quirky characters. There is a lot of perceived violence and one particular scene involving cats is really gruesome. Other than that most of the book is up for interpretation. For example, I never took the mother/sister angle very seriously. The spiritual shift of power from Nakata to his traveling buddy had a far greater impact on me. There are so many levels of reality that the reader has to negotiate. If you like mind-bending, metaphysical trip of a book, this is the right one for you.

Rating: 4/5

Book Loot

2011-08-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Wear the old coat and buy the new book. - Austin Phelps

Or if you, like me, have taken the second-hand book pledge, must rely on the kindness of strangers. I haven't been this thrilled in a long time. Yesterday, I received a package full of bubble-wrapped delight i.e. books from Justin, who has the best taste in books of anyone I know and (luckily for me) a remarkable collection of books. Its almost indecent how much I love these titles even before reading them. I cant decide which one to start first.

1. The Thief's Journal - Jean Genet
2. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
4. The Quite American - Graham Greene
5. A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami
6. Ulysses - James Joyce
7. Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire
8. Invitation to a Beheading - Nabokov
9. Goethe's Faust
10. The Trial - Franz Kafka
11. Sixty nine - Ryu Murakami
12. Let it come down - Paul Bowles

Silence.

2011-08-15T01:52:00.000-07:00

Sunlight streaming through a transparent vellum of manufactured roses. Rich, Voluptuous sunbeams make it seem like its midday full of warm zephyrs and sweaty brows. But it’s early morning and actually quite cold and clear, nothing moves as there is no air. Deserts can do that to you. This place scares you, or so they say. The same way difference of any kind scares people. People here are veiled, women more so than men, like they have something to hide. Something will which be destroyed if an outsiders eyes fell on them. And these veiled figures white males and black females move across the sand dunes, almost phantoms, leaving no footprints behind. They are there but they are gone.

There are many minarets of hope but none have come so close, to touching the sky of despair than the eyes which are stripped bare of any shame or guilt in the display of pain they hold inside. Why is there such a negativity attached to naked exhibition of emotions? If this was a bazaar of emotions of course happiness would be the most sought after product ever, with all 6 billion types of it sold out all the time. But there will be some soul, lost and confused who will look for something darker, something more sinister, depression or denial perhaps. Considering human behaviour there will be a huge market for the darker side only we'll all deny it and wish that it will go away. But this weed of the inner human demons will grow and grow in spite of all the denial and wishing ways. The want will grow and so will be the intensity. The more vulgar it gets, the closer we are as humans were intended to be. And that's the high that we all seek. The high of being human, in all its disdainful glory, above and beyond anything else.

What I've been listening to ...

2011-08-10T02:39:00.000-07:00

Laduree, Paris

2011-08-07T02:24:00.000-07:00

Since I don't have a sweet tooth its pretty rare that I tuck into something sweet and find it delicious. Quite honestly I didn't even know what macaroons were till a few years ago when I had them for the first time in Toronto in a "chain store" bakery. The gooey chemical-tasting filling made me gag. One of my friends got inspired by the pages after pages posts of pastel coloured macaroons on tumblr and dragged me to Laduree while we were in Paris. Its what all the pretty girls eat, or so I have heard. They are supposed to be the best in the world and have 24 different flavours to prove it. The less sugary ones were pretty palatable (no chemical taste at all) but I still dont like macaroons. For all its worth I can at least I can add one more thing to the list of things I have done in my life "Had macaroons at Laduree, Paris".

The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai

2011-08-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

"The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind."

Part of my effort to read all the Booker winners.

To start off, this book is beautifully written. Every place, character and emotion in the book comes alive with the magic of Kiran Desai's words. However, that doesn't mean that it’s a beautiful book. Actually there is too much of it; too many details and adjectives and descriptions of seasons. The details suffocate the story. What could have been a linear masterpiece suffers from the author's determination to be overtly poetic.

Set against the backdrop of the Gurkha uprising of the early 80s, in the Himalayan town of Kalimpong the story revolves around an array of related characters grappling with terms of their losses. There is Mr. Jemubhai, a retired judge, so mortally embarrassed is he by his native roots and culture that he nearly drowns in his desire to be "Civilised". His orphaned granddaughter Sai, who I first thought would be the protagonist but her only purpose in the book, is to be depressed and fall for her tutor. Their devoted cook, whose name is revealed only at the end of the book, acts like an anchor for all the parallel narratives. The cook's son Biju who learns the harsh reality of the Great American Dream the cruel way.

True to the name of the book, a sense of loss and longing prevails through the book like fog in the Himalayan Valley. A lot of pain is captured within the plot as thin as mountain air. The characters are not very well developed so the dialogues stagnate and the emotions seem forced. Although every line is impressive there is a lack of motive in everything that happens. A lot of Why's remain unanswered because the author is busy describing a stick insect for the nth time. There is also a vilely described rape scene which left me gagging. But as a stream of consciousness, almost existentialist poetic-prose the novel works. As a novel and one which has won a Booker at that, it is very disappointing.

Nobody loves like Snape does.

2011-07-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

I know it has all ended and we are all dead (with grief) but I couldn't let the series go without a fangirl post. I am fairly new to HP fandom having read the books only last year and watched all the movies this year, concluding with the epic DHP2 in 3D. So the next logical progression for me is fanfiction and I have read quite a few well-written ones. However I do not understand the obsession with The Marauders in the fan-fiction community. They were the most boring and predictable part of the series. What we need is more Draco and more Luna. But what we need most is Snape/Lily. Unrequited love, darks arts, a double agent, potions, a brooding Alan Rickman .... what's not to love. I demand better written Snape/Lily fan-fiction. And Snape OBVIOUSLY happens to be OBVIOUSLY my favourite character in the series, OBVIOUSLY. Now Turn to page THREE-HUNDRED-N-NINETY-FOUR.

Its just a dream

2011-07-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic"
- The magnificent Oscar Wilde

It starts with a gray mist of secrets
hanging densely between me and the world
the conscious and the sub-conscious blend
to create an everlasting lucid dream
an unbroken pain pulsing through my nerves
webbed lightning taking a human form
I ponder over the perception of reality
And the ground just vanishes like smoke
Do the cracks in my mind really exists?
I unravel in spirals of lost energy
my wings crumble and turn to ashes
my un-caged sanity breathes fire as it awakes
then why are the faces blurred and words obscene?
Act like the universe makes perfect sense
stay still, breathe deep and forget the dream
don’t wonder, be shattered and close your doors
go blind, shut up and follow the mainstream
its glorious to submit, to blend in
This is how it must feel like to drown...
And now I lay atop a cold marble tomb
The gray mist heavy and warm on my chest
While time lays crumpled and hidden away
Only old memories remain unbruised and clean
a tangle of soaring skies and deep seas
and a tear drops through this insentient realm
are we dreamt or do we just dream?

Whenever it rains .....

2011-07-21T01:47:00.000-07:00

Even though I am so mad at the rains for flooding the city and ruining the organised chaos it contains, I still love it to the core. It brings back such beautiful memories, blemish free. I remember when we were young the monsoon used to be unerringly punctual, always arriving on the 1st of June like clockwork. I remember the first day of school, 15th of June, and everyone used to arrive soaking wet, damaging all the new shoes, uniforms, books, bags, covers and everything else on the very first day. I remember we used to lay out our soaking books with their transparent wet page on the floor at home under the ceiling fan so that they would get dry till the next day and we may be able to use them.

I met my sister after a month of literally not seeing each other which is a rare thing for us. We decided to go for a walk because the weather was all misty and dreamy and seldom is it so quite than it is right after it rains. It was drizzling a little, very lightly, hardly touching surfaces at all. It was beautiful. I am not going to talk about the freshness of the air, the smell of the soil or the greenness of the leaves or even the patter of raindrops on the window panes, because when a season as divine as monsoon is a part of your life, there are little things of beauty that you take for granted.

I was reading Night train to Lisbon at around 2 am last night and the book is so beautiful I wanted to cry and during one of the more pensive parts when everything was quite as a murder scene and the darkness outside was complete and I felt like I was alone in the world at last and then suddenly it had started raining heavily, the silence destroyed but yet the solitude remained intact. The rain fell heavily and very noisily but still no one woke up and I switched off the lights and came up and sat at the window admiring the wetness being consumed by the ground and already little rivulets forming in the parched ground and then there was the smell of the wet soil, so precious and rare Probably it was the unruly clouds playing mischief that day, but does anything smell as heavenly as the first rain? They should bottle this stuff and sell it.

And there when the wanton clouds were pouring out in their mischief, as I sat in complete darkness on the window sill and I reached out my hand and raindrops kissed my fingertips, there was a poetry in that moment, a longing, I couldn’t stretch too far and could only get my fingertips wet but still the little sprays were brushing my face, the wind too strong to be stopped by our heavy brocade curtains and there in that moment my life was bliss. There are very few moments in my life when I can remember being so happy and so alive, so blissful it was almost like the world didn’t matter and the universe was acknowledging my presence.

"There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won't remember and that she can't even let herself think about because that's when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it's always raining a slow and endless drizzle.

You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sign, and a voice that might be hers will say something that you cannot interpret before the connection crackles and is broken.

Several years later, from a taxi, you will see someone in a doorway who looks like her, but she will be gone by the time you persuade the driver to stop. You will never see her again.

Whenever it rains you will think of her. "
— Neil Gaiman

Lotus Temple, Delhi

2011-07-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

Research

2011-07-06T06:12:00.000-07:00

Guess the topic of my next story....

A fine frenzy

2011-07-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

The lunatic, the lover and the poet
are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
that is, the madman...
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven
and as imagination bodies forth
the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
turns them to shape and gives to airy nothing
a local habitation and a name.

-Shakespeare "A midsummer night’s dream”

Paris sous la pluie..... Il n'y a rien de plus romantique ......

2011-06-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

Paris is so beautiful that if I was a more emotional person, I'd have cried every time I saw it. Well, I am more mature than that but my heart still skips a beat every time I land at Charles de Gaulle. The only day I had in Paris was marred by gray skies and intermittent rain but what is life without a gray cloud or two. And after experiencing blood curdling fury of the Mumbai Monsoon, these little summer showers could do little to dampen my wanderlust. Armed with my much tried and tested guidebook, the most comfortable walking shoes and a one-day Paris Visite card I ventured to seize the day.

As our hotel is close to the airport and out of city bounds, the journey always starts with a RER-trip to Chatelet or Port Maillot. The Paris metro is extensive, clean and one of the easiest to navigate. On terra-firma if you ever manage to get lost, just slip down to the nearest metro station (there is one every few hundred meters from any point in the city). So from Chatelet I went to Montmarte because i thought what better way to spend a gloomy day than with a bunch of famous dead people. My mind works like that sometimes. Cimeterie de Montmarte is a serene and beautiful place which lets you escape the alive world. The lack of sunshine gave the place a gothic halo while the rain proved to be a good humoured companion.

I could have easily spent a couple of hours of solitude here but was totally creeped out by this creeper of a cat which kept materializing out of nowhere.

Montmarte is always a new experience. Eternally beautiful and young.

Then I went to St. Martin Canal. You might remember it as the place where Amelie skips her stones from the movie “Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain”.

And finally some dessert after a long day of rootless wandering.

A night in Hong Kong

2011-06-16T03:17:00.000-07:00

May Reads

2011-06-12T22:37:00.000-07:00

I know I am almost half a month late but yesterday I had a stretch of free time and I decided to catch up on my book reviews. So here are the books that I read in May.

The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome.

This is one of the wittiest, most hilarious books I have read in quite a while. I was quite uncertain about picking up this book because the only humour or sarcasm that I really enjoy is written by Oscar Wilde. Previous experiences have taught me not to expect much LOL-inducing wittiness from other authors because they generally pale in comparison. But with The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, even before the book, the introduction caught me, hook, line and sinker.

"One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in MS having observed that they were not half bad, and some of my relations having promised to buy the book if it ever came out, I feel I have no right to longer delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, public demand, I perhaps should not have ventured to offer these mere 'idle thoughts' of mine as mental food for the English-speaking peoples of the earth. What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading 'the best hundred books', you may take this up for half an hour. It will be a change."

It’s not every day that one comes across satire of such quality or honesty. The essays cover a wide range of topics; from pets to babies to blues and clothing. I deliberately restricted myself to reading just an essay a day and most of the time I couldn't read this book in public because every other sentence is ridiculously funny and I’d break into peals of laughter at regular intervals drawing weird looks from the strangers around me. I thoroughly enjoyed these idle thoughts and Jerome K. Jerome just became one of my favourite authors of all time. It’s amazing how most of his insights and observations are relevant even after more than a century of the first publication of the book. I guess great humour is classic.

Rating: 4.5/5

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - John Boyne

If I didn’t respect books so much I'd have ripped this one up into pieces and felt quite happy about it. I don’t even know where to begin describing my dislike for this book. Some words that come to mind are stupid, irritating, unconvincing, fake naivety, offensive, shallow and just plain bad. Skip this one, read Anne Frank instead.

Rating: 1/5

The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth

I never read Roth before although I have had a copy of "The Human Stain" for ages now. That book came highly recommended from all quarters but the first few pages very too dry for my taste and I couldn’t commit myself to that book because it seemed to require a high level of patience with unwieldy dialogues.

Compared to that, "The Ghost Writer" is short and crisp, reads more like three short novellas and can be read within a day.

This novel introduces us to a young Nathan Zuckerman at the start of his career. He has published a few short stories and has been profiled by a magazine and this little taste of fame prompts him to pursue the next great Jewish American story. In his pursuit he goes off to meet his literary hero E. I. Lonoff, a middle-aged reclusive writer whose mantra to great writing happens to be "turn sentences around". There he meets Miss Amy Bellette who works as Lonoff's unofficial assistant and has a secret history of her own (or so it seems). Zuckerman ends up staying the night at his place and discovers a few of his mentor's secrets which could threaten Lonoff's marriage.

I love the straight forward language and the characterisation. All characters are imbued with flaws which define their whole identities. The book is full of surprises but not overbearingly so. There is a subtle tension, especially in the last novella which keeps the pace interesting. The conversations between Lonoff and Zuckerman are intriguing and wise. The only part of the book that didn’t work for me was the ending, a little too melodramatic and predictable. If Roth had handled the last few pages with a little more aesthetic and mellowed it down a bit, the book would have definitely achieved 4.5/5 stars.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas-fils

I feel I am very privileged to own a very old hard bound copy of this beautiful book, gifted to me by one of my colleagues. The first time I heard about it was on Qi and Stephen Fry was wearing a red camellia on his lapel and his guests were supposed to guess which book he represented. After reading the book I came to realise the significance of red and white camellias. The setting is mid-19th century Paris, very glamorous and extravagant, where parties and conversations are very rich and morality very libertine.

The book starts with the death of a very well known courtesan and is narrated to the author by Armand Duval who is on his death-bed. Marguerite Gautier is a lady of the night famous for her beauty and desired by many a rich men. But she falls for the young Armand Duval who although not penniless cannot afford her the luxuries that she has been accustomed to all her life. Still they both are in love and they try to make a life together, adjusting and compromising and are very happy the few months that they are together. But their relationship never receives sanction from Duvall senior or the society in general and then comes the big sacrifice of love etc.

The book reminded me so much of the movie Moulin Rouge and I guess quite a few other movies and books are based on this theme too. This premise may seem clichéd and done to death now but I guess The Lady of the Camellias was one of the first to tackle it. A beautiful novel of tragic romance and sacrifice, I wish it was as well regarded as other great literary love stories.

Rating: 4/5

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

This is the kind of book which doesn’t leave middle ground as an option; one either loves or hates it completely. And I am so sad to admit that I am leaning towards the latter. This is one of the books that I wanted to like, that I knew I'd like even before I've read it. I have read Michael Ondaatje before and I find his writing enchanting. But the book is so shockingly disappointing that about 100 pages into the book, I had to go back and start over again because I thought I wasn’t reading it right. Clearly Ondaatje could be so bad, could he? Considering the ingredients a) the setting (The end of WWII and a beautiful abandoned Italian villa) b) the tone of the book (poetic melancholy) and c)the characters (there is Hana - a beautiful and stubborn nurse who chooses to stay behind for her patient; Caravaggio - a warm, conniving thief; Kip - the strong and silent Indian bomb disposal expert and finally the Kipling quoting, charred and paralyzed English Patient) I expected the concoction to be fantastically otherworldly if not absolutely divine. But it just never came alive for me. There is no clear story line, just a vague hint of it running through the individual characters' reflections like an invisible thread. The POV shifts very often, sometimes even to minor characters. The language is breathtaking and some of the lines and paras are beautiful enough to make one cry, but the writing is pretty much the only great thing about it. I give this book a rating of 2 stars because I couldn’t make myself give 1 star to Ondaatje who is otherwise brilliant. I highly recommend Anil's Ghost, which is equally beautiful but less of a jigsaw puzzle.

Rating: 2/5

Currently reading: The House in Paris - Elizabeth Bowen.

My latest project

2011-06-10T01:37:00.000-07:00

So I am in the process of trying to learn some embroidery. Turns out it requires a lot of patience and that could be the only thing I am learning from it.

Zen and the art of gardening.

2011-06-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

I am not really good at gardening, primarily because I dont have a garden. I have a 5ft X 5ft overhanging balcony, a luxurious open space full of untapped potential in terms of Mumbai real estate. Half of this is used up by three flower pots which havent died on me as yet. Not that I am Cruella Voldemort or something but growning plants require a lot of effort or at least daily watering which I cannot provide because my job gets in the way.
I love flowers and have always tried my luck growing roses, blue sage, jasmine, Chinese hibiscus etc. but I get one long flight and they shrivel up or rot away. I was never really a big fan of cut flowers one can buy because I believe they look prettier growing on stems with leaves and thorns and their natural beauty intact. When you cut them you are just missing the bigger picture.

The three plants that I have now have been with me for more than 6 months now and I am quite proud of myself. The first one I dont even know the name of.

(No, I did not water it excessively, it rained pretty heavily last night.)

The only plants that I have managed to keep healthy for more than a year are the Periwinkle flowers, locally known as the Sadabahar which means forever blooming. I have two, a pick one and a white one and both stay true to their name. Come rain or shine, there hasn't been a day when these plants are perpetually in lush bloom. And they are the easiest to plant too. Just take a branch from the plant and stick it in some soil, within four weeks the plant starts to take root.

They add the perfect burst of colour to an otherwise gray surrounding. Other than these I have a money plant, a feng shui bamboo and a tiny aloe vera on my windowsill in my bedroom. These ones require absolutely zero maintenance.

I'd love to grow my own vegetables some day. Maybe when I am retired and can afford to have a routine and the luxury of time and have moved far away from the city to my own little patch of land somewhere near the hills. Maybe.

Thirsty

2011-06-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it’s thirsty for!
-Rumi

A walk-athon NYC

2011-05-26T01:45:00.000-07:00

For a change NYC was sunny and bright and a bit quaint in a very urban sort of way and I thought to myself, what a perfect day to wander around and do nothing but observe this most vibrant melting pot of humanity. But that was just in the morning. By the time I got dressed and stepped out for breakfast, the city was back to it's headless chicken mad rush which is comforting because its the only way I can picture the city. So armed with just 5$ in my pocket, my most comfortable shoes and a bottle of water I decided to walk to Central Park from 32nd street and then right back across to the Saturday Flea market on the 12th Street. Manhattan happens to be the easiest place to navigate in the world but walking is not the most pleasurable experience here. As the saying goes, when in New York .... try not to get trampled by the hordes of charging New Yorkers coming at you from all sides. But being from Mumbai one automatically becomes a veteran at walking extremely fast and dodging crowds while balancing 20 things and talking on the phone. New Yorkers are getting pretty good at it too. I bought a coffee and a croissant and managed to eat it while practically jogging. Whenever I found a bit of empty space I took out my camera and took pictures. I love Fashion Ave, its such a photogenic place that one can just point and click anywhere.

Since it was a Saturday, Central Park was crowded five times over. I saw my plan of sitting on the grass, reading my book and enjoy a bit of quite getting crushed by loud fitness freaks, over zealous tourists and entire schools of tiny tots accompanied by their nannies. Oh well, I should have expected just as much. I had a quick lunch of a banana and some yogurt and decided to head to the opposite side of town. By the time I left Central Park, my camera was dead and I realised I left my phone at the hotel. I ventured into the Seventh Ave and cursed myself all the way to the flea market for not being able to take pictures. The weather changed from sunny and breezy to hot and stagnant. By the time I reached 12th street my feet were killing me and I was questioning my intelligence as to why I was here at a market since I, a. dont have any money to buy anything and b. no camera to take pictures. I found a few benches under this huge tree and as I sat there under the shade all cool and wonderful, I felt better. Ironically the market was less crowded and quieter than the park. I sat there for some time and then look around a few stalls of trinklets and artifacts and hand-made clothing and concluded that even if I did have money, these aren't the kind of things that I'd buy.

From there I headed straight to my hotel room, had a long shower and an early dinner of Moroccan vegetable over steamed rice and instantly fell asleep.

Book Loot.

2011-05-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Some of the books I acquired in the past few days. Interestingly all of them are instinct buys as none of them appeared in any of my "to-read" lists (except Kurt Vonnegut). But I am very happy with my loot, may be my taste will evolve into something different.

1. O, Pioneers - Willa Cather
2. The Secrets of Lost Things - Sheridan Hay
3. The Sound and The Fury - William Faulkner
4. The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth
5. The Relativity Explosion - Martin Gardner
6. The Plumed Serpent - D. H. Lawrence
7. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
8. Candide - Voltaire
9. The Coming of Age - Simone de Beauvoir
10. The Crimes of Love - Marquis de Sade
11. The Lying Days - Nadine Gordimer

Any thoughts???

for one bright summer day

2011-05-17T06:20:00.000-07:00

I'd give all wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life's decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer day.
~Lewis Carroll, "Solitude"

The summer is right outside my window, waiting to swallow me up. I wish there were better ways to capture it than just words and pictures. There must be a way to bottle this warmth and ripeness but so far it eludes me. This year we have been spared the harshness of heat and humidity which broke quite a few records last year. Afternoons are much cooler and cloudier this year and monsoon is also predicted to arrive sooner. And here I was thinking that beautiful warm summer days were things of my childhood make believe games. Every now and then you come across little bits and pieces of the past that remind you who you once were. Like little pieces of yourself you left behind.

Now in retrospect, May afternoons are what my childhood will feel like. Those beautiful summer vacations. My little brother and I were a formidable army of two. Nobody dared came between us and complete wastage of the only time which was ours and ours alone. My mom, a single parent, used to work two jobs and always worked through weekends and holidays. But this is not a sob story because we were never poor or without food and such. We have always lead comfortable lives, much better than most of the other kids around us. My mom had her priorities right and she never indulged us in any “extras”. That meant no holidays, no video games (I am talking about the days of Nintendo box-sets which came with Japanese instructions and a cartridge which had a totally of 999 games, most of which were related to Atari and which would conk off with the slightest of touch) and no fancy books (though we each had a library card). We didn’t even have a television till I was 12! So when most of the kids were sitting on their butts glued to the TV or playing the same games over and over again, we were creating a new adventure every single day.

The best part about childhood is that it comes with limitless imagination and we put ours to a quite vigorous test. My bro and I were so fascinated by trees that we’d practically live, eat and sleep there all through May. It was something about the whole ecosystem of the birds and the bees and the insects and different moss species that lived inside an ancient Banyan spread over half a kilometer which made us such stanch devotees of Kingdom Plantae. Apart from that we also flew homemade kites till our hands bled. Blistered our thighs from sliding down a stainless steel slide that was baking in the sun for hours. Caught tadpoles (mistaking them for fish) and adopted baby turtles from an abandoned well. Ran barefoot on scorching asphalt till we fell (we managed to mysteriously lose every single pair of shoes and slippers that my mom bought us). Plucked gulmohar and wild daisies to make pressed flowers for greeting cards we never sent. And climbing to hilltops to watch aircrafts land.

All this while the sun burning our skin to a crisp purple and our hair a mousy gray. When the world was quite and lost in its afternoon siesta, we created kingdoms, slayed beasts and travelled to the far end of the galaxy. There are some parts of you that must remain un-spoilt, untouched. The part that makes you the brightest beam in spite of the clouds and gives you rainbows when it rains. The stamps on my passport, the inches of my heels and the money in my bank account have their own heartwarming stories but I'll always be that girl, obsessed with trees and itching for adventure.

Guess the books meme

2011-05-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

Rules:
☇ Take four books off your bookshelf.
☇ Write the first sentence
☇ Write the last sentence on page fifty
☇ Write the second sentence on page one hundred
☇ Write the next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
☇ Write the final sentence of the book
☇ Let your friends guess what book it is.

Book 1.
x. One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.

x. You feel that, properly, Alexandra's house is the big out-of-doors, and that it is in the soil that she expresses herself best.

x. You've always had your own way.

x. The blood came back to her cheeks, her ember eyes opened slowly and in them Emil saw his own face and the orchard and the sun.

x. Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!

Book 2.
x. It was the last daylight hour of a December afternoon more than twenty years ago.

x. Describing all her sterling qualities, I had, in fact, brought myself nearly to the point of grief, as though instead of wailing with pain and telling me to leave and never come back, the unhappy dancer had died in my arms on our wedding day.

x. And which language was hers? Portuguese? Italian? Hungarian? In which did she overflow like a poem by Byron?

x. But next I heard Lonoff's carpet slippers - yes, he was out of his suit, dressed for bed - padding through the upstairs corridor.

x. "It's like being married to Tolstoy," he said, and left me to make my feverish notes while he started off after the runaway spouse, some five minutes now into her doomed journey in search of a less noble calling.

Book 3.
x. I will not drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week.

x. It was only then that I noticed Daniel was listening to us across the room and laughing.

x. "Saturdays. Blind Date is on Saturdays at seven fifteen after Gladiators."

x. Or organize picnics in the park and end up with all the women scrapping squashed gobbets of mozzarella off tinfoil and yelling at children with ozone asthma attacks; while the men swig warm white wine in the fierce midday sun, staring at the nearby softball games with left-out shame.

x. Number of New Year Resolutions kept: 1 (v.g) An excellent year's progress.

Book 4.
x. She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.

x. She was always hungry and found it a furious exhaustion to feed a patient who couldn't eat or didn’t want to, watching the bread crumble away, the soup cool, which she desired to swallow fast.

x. The Englishman had wanted to see himself.

x. Madox went off to one of the embassies to send a wire.

x. Kirpal's left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork and inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter, a wrinkle at the edge of his eyes behind his spectacles.

Summer is delicious - John Ruskin

2011-05-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

... and with its hot, sizzling weather it brings these divine delights.

The Cashew Fruit.

The Alphonso Mango

Papayas.

Jackfruits

Watermelon juice.

Dragonfruit.

Bye Bye Little Birdie!

2011-05-09T07:10:00.000-07:00

I usually do not post stuff about my professional life (not for the lack of exciting incidents, I assure you) but because this blog was started for diverting my attention and energies to things other than work or the work-related which would provide me the escape from becoming a casualty for whom work and life mean the same thing.

But I want to make an exception today. 15th of May will be last day my company will fly the last of its Airbus 310 as a passenger aircraft. A few days ago I did a flight that is most likely the last flight I ever do on the A310. It was pretty good for a tiny aircraft, sturdy to the core. I am not really sad that the aircraft is off to join its sisters and become a freighter. The aircraft was really old, more than 24 years old and a few ones which retired earlier this year were even older than I am. When I joined the company there were 12 of them; all named after Indian rivers. By June 2009 only 4 were left. They were supposed phase out a lot sooner but as with all things aviation, plans got delayed for no apparent reasons and we ended up flying this un-maintained caricature of an aircraft for an additional two years. I hope they let it rest in peace for now. Nevertheless I feel very sad and nostalgic about it because it was the second aircraft I was trained on. I'll never forget its duck-taped galleys, stinky cabin, wobbly projector screen and oxygen masks which dropped at will.

This was true in the 1980s.

I wish the camera had an odour capturing mechanism to make you believe how stinky this cabin really is.

The door with the ancient slide pack.

The galley, solely held together by ducktape and prayers.

Finally, the only thing which worked on the aircraft, The Crew.

So Random

2011-05-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

“Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn’t the world, it wasn’t the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don’t know, but it’s painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”
-Jonathan Safran Foer

(I don't fly for BA. This aircraft just happens to be my favourite aircraft ever and it breaks my heart that my company is phasing these majestic beasts out soon).

Hectic is the only way I can describe the past couple of weeks of my life. I didnt know you can compress so many things in a 24-hour period and then live to tell the tale. I was wondering why suddenly all of a sudden my head feels so heavy and my words are so few and far between. I have quarantined myself from the outside world and the sad part is that I feel good about it. SO many many things have happen in these past 2 weeks or so that I want to scream them out so loudly that my voice will resonate at the other end of the world but as usual I will just keep everything to myself and let it rot till I cannot bear it any more.

From outside of me, things should look content, prefect even but inside I am falling apart. I don’t know for how long do I have to stay away from myself, not be the real me and just be a shell, hide inside the shell like I am doing now. I am a working girl, I need to keep working, and I need to keep myself in motion up in the air with a juggler’s precision. But so far the year has been really cruel to me. It feels like I have been lost and I am so desperate to find myself again. I don’t know why but words do not accompany anymore. I am going straight for the stream of consciousness writing but I am having trouble with it as well. I don't know, I am just so sick of this place, I just want to leave.

I’ve been having pretty weird dreams for the past 3 days. I hardly remember dreams. Except for the first night I dreamt that I was dead and knew it and was going around finishing off my unfinished business and even though I looked like my normal self, people would realise that I am dead and they would cry and feel sorry for me. I didn't know how to get back to the land of the dead and was trying to figure it out when I got up.

The second night I dreamt about a hunter and it was so very lucid.

Yesterday I dreamt about some gifts, wrapping paper, ribbons, glitter and balloons. Lots and lots of balloons that I was handing out to people who were standing in this endless queue. People say that dreams are always in black & white but I clearly remember dreaming in colour.

My Best Friend's Wedding

2011-05-01T23:20:00.001-07:00

April in Paris

2011-04-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom
Holiday tables under the trees
April in Paris, this is a feeling
That no one can ever reprise

I never knew the charm of spring
I never met it face to face
I never new my heart could sing
I never missed a warm embrace

Till April in Paris
Whom can I run to
What have you done to my heart
- E. Y. Harburg

Summer, summer, it will always be summer.

2011-04-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

"The serene philosophy of the pink rose is steadying. Its fragrant, delicate petals open fully and are ready to fall, without regret or disillusion, after only a day in the sun. It is so every summer. One can almost hear their pink, fragrant murmur as they settle down upon the grass: 'Summer, summer, it will always be summer.'"
- Rachel Peden

I shield my eyes as I walk this summer morning. The summer sun, harsh as it may, I hold it unflinchingly over my bronzed skin, prepared for the unforeseen fires yet to be released from its bosom. I love this season, more for its cruelty than its amiability. So many memories, so many tragedies. Spring may be the most beautiful of all of nature’s phenomenon but summer, summer is its willful child which refuses to blend in. It surprises and it shocks and melts the coldest of hearts. Its thick foliage and emerald green carpets drenched with rainbow flowers and singing birds and ripened fruits. There is no place for envy here. The other seasons may take a step back; we only allow the most boastful of sufferers here.

Emily Dickinson was wrong. The beginning of summer is Delight, Retrospect and Ecstasy all rolled into one. And yet it manages to spiteful like only a scorned god can be. The summer day; heady, sweaty, brimming with misplaced ennui, is majestic in its misery. The burning solitude of the afternoon should be listed as a sin. The summer’s night with it inky skies and balmy air heavy with the scent of nocturnal blooms and confused emotions. But we take for granted these pleasures of summer. The idleness spent lying on warm grass, watching everything washed in fresh sunlight, inhaling air heavy with abandon and conjuring tales from years gone by. We keep on gazing into the dazzling skies from tinted glasses and smiling at wanton breezes from our shaded refuge. The summer smiles back because it knows we are a bunch of masochists.

Hemmingway's Chair - Michael Palin

2011-04-17T05:31:00.001-07:00

I love Monty Python and consequently I love Michael Palin. I didn’t know that he was a writer until I saw his name on the book spine at the bookstore and I so wished that the book was by him. Well, it was and he is very good at writing but I expected the book to be a lot more fun, a lot sillier. Maybe I was trying to find the Monty Python bit of him in there but alas, it was missing. What I did find was a lovely little novel filled with staid British humour, trivia about Hemmingway and glimpses of life in a post-office. Nothing to sharp or unanticipated; just a mellow breeze on a quite summer’s day kind of book.

Martin Sproale is a mild mannered Assistant Post Master at the Theston Post Office whose only escape from his boring county existence is his obsession of all things Hemmingway. He is content if not happy with his small town life until one day his world threatened by modernisation and privatisation. Little by little the world around him changes and Martin finds himself helplessly entangled in this situation where things could only grow worse for him. Around this time he gets an opportunity to buy a fishing chair which had been used by Hemmingway to fish marlin. And thus begins his transformation into this alter-ego of sorts who closely resembles his hero. Bold and fearless.

The ending is a little on the unpredictable side but nothing too harsh. I am not a big Hemmingway fan but I do understand the fascination one could have of a thing or person. I could also relate a lot to the exasperation of not being able to desist modernization and preserve the old-way of life. Highly recommended for those who like “There is a hero in all of us” kind of books.

Rating: 3.5/5

Better Book Titles

2011-04-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

I normally do not post stuff from other sites but this is one of the best sites ever. I am thinking of migrating from Goodreads to this. For all the classics you didn't find great. For everytime you missed the point when everyone else was getting it. For all the times you thought the movie was better. I swear, sometimes the internet just mirrors my life.

My favourites among the ones I have read.

The wind-up bird chronicles - Haruki Murakami

On The Road - Jack Kerouac

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

A Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood.

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevesky

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

The Dictionary

Lolita - Vladmir Nabakov

The Little Prince - Antione de Saint-Exupery.

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burguess

She's come undone - Wally Lamb

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Inferno - Dante

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

1984 - George Orwell

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

For the love of ink.

2011-04-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.” - Graham Greene.

My favourite pens and my daily diary.

I must confess I have never been very ambitious in life. I never wanted to be super rich or own fancy cars or have a walk-in closet filled with designer labels. The only so-called material things I have a desire to possess in excess are books but since I have taken the second-hand pledge a few years ago it barely makes a crease in my shallow pockets. For me happiness always lies in the little things, the details, the majestically mundane; the kind of happiness that self-help authors keep screaming about like they have revealed the great big secret which nobody else knew before they pointed it out, (insert the two-syllable duh!).

One of greatest of these little pleasures is the simple act of writing with an ink or fountain pen. Writing with a smooth-nibbed pen dipped in the darkest of the flowy ink is by far the most romantic way to write. Unless you know how to make quills from fallen feathers or own a pre- WW1 Remmington typewriter with a smudgy cartridge (I wish I had one of those). But I love ink and ink pens more than I should and the heavier it is the better. I hope there is word for a person who reveres pens like bibliophile is to books and gourmet is to food. I love the whole process of it, the ink bottle, the filling, the nib-cleaning, the scratchy noise a new nib makes on paper, the blotting, the little smudges and watching your words dry on paper. There is nothing more quixotic than ink-stained fingertips.

I have romanticized the written word, both reading and writing it. But writing is definitely more intimately gratifying because one becomes a creator and not just a passive listener of sorts. I’d love to carry ink pens everywhere with me. But alas, I work in an aircraft and no matter how good a quality pen you buy, they always leak due to the pressurization. Margaret Atwood had a pretty simple solution to this but the humble pencil will always be the third best thing. The second best thing of course is the bourgeois ball point pens which are so dreadful in their commonality to look at but at least they get the job done. I accept them as one of my professional hazards. As they say “If it doesn’t suck ink from a bottle, it’s not a real pen”; but sometimes, penning down the thoughts matter more than the penmanship.

It’s rare to find fountain pens and ink bottles in the neighbourhood stores these days. One has to go to those specialised stationary stores if one needs some decent ink refills. Gone are the days when only ink pens were allowed in schools and were more common and not just a style statement of the rich and academically inclined. I guess kids these days don’t even need pens and paper anymore, equipped as they are with their e-books and laptops and recorders. My school was very strict in this regard. We used pencils till 4th standard and ink pens from the 5th standard onwards. It was such a beautiful rite of passage from primary school to secondary; broken nibs, clumsily stained uniforms and ink bottles which opened in school-bags notwithstanding. Its such a shame that the future generations wont have a chance of experiencing this little nugget of joy. I guess ink pens have become an element of nostalgia, one of the things that you reminiscence fondly about when you think of days gone by when life was simpler and a little more beautiful.

"In today’s Internet-DVD-cellphone world where overachievers rule, dot-coms spring up as fast as houseflies on a hot summer day and die off just as fast, and nobody has time even to sneeze, a fountain pen is a wonderful — and useful — diversion, a practical reminder of a time when things were a lot less hectic. (...) It doesn’t take me any longer to write something with a fountain pen than it would to write it with a rollerball or a ballpoint, but it feels different. It feels better somehow." - Richard Binder.

Spring Favourites

2011-04-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (how can anyone not love it?)
"April is the cruellest month,breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

Bvlgari Blue.

Misty Mornings.

Chilled Nimboo Pani (Lemonade), freshly made is the best but for those of us who are constantly on the move the packged ones are godsend.

Daffodils.

Blueberry Pancakes.

The tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikubu

Norwegian Wood

2011-03-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

This is supposed to be Murakami's huge coming-of-age novel which everyone in Japan has allegedly read. The story is pretty simple. Toru Watanbe is a college student in 1960's Japan in love with his dead best-friend's girlfriend, Naoko. Then he meets Midori, a lively, free-spirited, fun loving girl, thus forming the third angle to the triangle. There is a fourth angle too but by that time you know where the narrative is going and everything turns predictable and boring.

I never thought I would give three stars to a Murakami novel but this is by far the worst book I have read by him. Don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant when it comes to dealing with aspects of love, lust, suicide, friendship and grief. If it were a bit lighter, I could have compared it to "Catcher in the rye" but some of the issues handle here are too deep for a YA novel. Murakami mastery at saying a thousand things in the simplest of sentences and turning the most mundane into a thing of beauty is undeniable. What I miss is the darkness, the cryptic underbelly, the hauntingly beautiful way in which me makes worlds turn upside down. There is no instance of surrealist magic-realism moments that are the author's trademark and the lack of them makes me feel cheated. Maybe the book did so well because it is the simplest and quite unlike any of his other work. I only came to know about the Beatle's song after I read this book but was disappointed when I came to know there is no hidden meaning in the lyrics.

The narrator comes across as very wannabe-ish and judgemental. His attitude is irritating at best and subscribes to the school of "I am so different I read books by dead authors but definitely not a freak like my cleanliness-obsessed roommate who deserves to be made fun of." And holy overdose of sex, Batman!! There is a sex scene practically every 10 pages or so. I wouldn't have a problem with it if it wasn't so blatantly unconvincing and childish. Talk about male fantasies... There is the virginal, shy, brooding best-friend's girlfriend; there is a kawaii nympho who loves to cook and then there is the chain-smoking, guitar-playing older woman. Hmmm.

Now to the thing I do love. I love how the essence of Tokyo is captured in the book. Although the book in set in late 1960s the description of energy and atmosphere (the record stores, the train stations, the bookshops, the crowd and the noises) of the city holds true till today. I love how everything is tinged with melancholy and longing. I particularly love the scene where Toru and Midori are on the terrace watching the neighbourhood fire.

But most of all I love how the book begins:
"I do need that time, though, for Naoko's face to appear. And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute-like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand-ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. Each time is appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. "Wake up," it says. "I'm still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I'm still here." The kicking never hurts me. There's no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick. And even that is bound to fade one day. At the Hamburg airport, though, the kicks were longer and harder than usual. Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."

If only the rest of the book lived up to its first few pages.

Rating: 3/5

Explorer

2011-03-27T03:47:00.000-07:00

These days I am concentrating more on visual beauty rather than the lyrical. Colours are attracting me like a magnet and Spring is giving me more reasons to fall in love with them all over again. No more of the monopoly of the black and white words, from now on I will try to have a balance of both in my world. Wanted to go to little park downstairs and take some pictures since the flowers have sprung there almost overnight and the leaves are the most innocent shade of green. Freshness everywhere. Paris seems all beautiful from up here too. All I did was read, sleep and exercise. Oh yes, I have been a good girl and I went to the gym for all of the days I am here and I think I am ready to take it up a notch. I didn’t believe in the whole "exercise releases endorphins and hence makes you happy theory" but I can tell you that it does give your self-esteem a boost. I still have oceans to go before I even come in the same continent as a great body but I guess a healthy body is better prepared for the stresses of the world. Anyways, a zillion pictures of Spring and/or other assorted fascinating phenomena coming up later.

Nothing to say

2011-03-24T08:14:00.001-07:00

The last few days have been full of ups and downs. I went to NYC, then fell sick, went to Tokyo, went to Paris and now I am back home for four days and it feels like I have been trapped here forever. I am wasting time watching reruns of Highway on my Plate and trying to organise my music collection when I should be out there getting my taxes in order and doing my laundry. I have been eating too much and sleeping too little. I am currently reading "Hemmingway's Chair" and "Kim" and both provide such a lovely glimpse of quintessential British county life.

I wanted to do a movie post but couldnt decide on a movie. I wanted to do the 30-days meme but I dont have the dedication or patience for it. I have nothing more to say so I am sharing these wonderful e-articles.

[ The most beautiful words in the English language ]

[ 20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world ]

[ Confessions of a book hoarder ]

[ Good writing doesn't come from Peace ]

.... and this quote because it pretty much sums up my life.

"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

Amsterdam

2011-03-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

I am not a big fan of Ian McEwan. I was just impressed with a few pages of "The Cement Garden", especially the infamous lines "Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading." But the book didn't leave much of an impression on me and I had to read "Black Dogs" to keep my faith in his writing going. This book leaves me neither here nor there. I love the crisp writing and the fact that it is a very quick read (took me a little over 1.5 hours) despite trying to be a serious/mature book. But its too flimsy to be Booker Prize material. I guess its the shortest Booker winner ever, not that a book's merit lies in its size.

Anyways, the story revolves around two friends, Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday who meet again at a common lover's funeral who has died under miserable circumstances. Presently both are entagled in professional issues which take up the bulk of the writing. Clive can't seem to get enough inspiration to finish the Millennium Symphony he has been commissioned for. Vernon, as the editor of "The Judge" is engaged in an ethical debate about whether or not to publish incriminating pictures of a powerful politician he personally loathes. Reminiscing about the past together, they remember their own lives with Molly Lane and that leads then to make a pact.

My biggest problem with the book is the light-handed treatment of strong subjects like active euthanasia, duties as a citizen and freedom of press. Sometimes its just downright funny how shallow the arguments are. I know the book isnt primarily about any of these topics but maybe a little bit of soul searching would have added a lot of credibility. The characters seem forced and too self-righteous. The ending is too bizarre and unrealistic. Now to balance the equation for McEwan I need to read something by him which is absolutely genius.

Rating: 3/5

I try not to think about it

2011-03-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. - Carl Jung

Oh Japan :(

I am so sad I dont even want to think about anything related to it. I always believed that I have a Japanese heart and now its completely devastated. I dont want to just give away money to some charity and wipe my conscience clean. We have resumed flights to Narita and Osaka yesterday, so after I go home from this flight Tokyo is where I am headed. Let me see what I can do once I am there. Some dumbass just texted me about radiation leaks in Fukushima and the consequent possibility of radioactive rain and thunderstorms, half-way around the globe and how everyone is going to die of cancer if they breathe the air. That's exactly what we need a**hole, more panic and rumours. Humanity never fails to enrage me. I went to NYC and what a disappointment that was. It rained every single day I was there; hard cold blue rain made of urbaneness and fear. I hate it when rain is so harsh but that didn’t stop me from wandering about, getting all wet, ignoring all the warning signals my body was sending me and hence further aggravating my illness. Only sickness can ever make me regret things that I do in life. But atleast I found some good books to keep me company.

1. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
2. 20000 Leagues under the Sea – Jules Vernes
3. Amrita – Banana Yoshimoto
4. Awakenings – Oliver Sacks
5. 84, Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
6. Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
7. The Kindness of Strangers
8. The Zahir – Paulo Coelho

Statue Days

2011-03-08T23:45:00.000-08:00

"Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue." - David Brent

So I haven’t been around much lately. I wish I was busy doing other things and writing and being all swamped with work but the truth is that I am sick and there is no more a self-pitying person I become than when I am sick. I rarely fall sick but when I do I act like the burdens of the entire world have been dropped on me. It’s just unacceptable. I hate being this way; helpless and restricted in the mind and body. I hate all the illness paraphernalia as well, the doctors, the clinics and medicines of every kind (you can’t even get me to take vitamins without force). I think it’s some kind of throat or chest infection and it makes me cough nonstop. Every couple of hours at night I wake up with coughing fits and it feels like I haven’t slept in years. I have dark circles under my eyes which extend right up to my cheek bones. Compound that with chronic jet lag, bad diet and being half-way around the globe from home and I am ready to write another “Hamlet”. This and a thousand other professional hazards.

I spend my insomnia induced wakefulness with Norwegian Woods and dreamy old movies, wishing that if I had enough sense I would write till the ink runs out. Or make something that I have never made before. But creativity and good thoughts aren’t best mates with an infected, whining body. So I lay there immersed in passive simulation hoping to slip away into blissful sleep. In this wait the horizon starts turning purple and the cycle starts all over again. I’ll just post random pictures that I took today now.

A day in a small town market

2011-03-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

- William Blake

A reader's life

2011-02-26T02:03:00.001-08:00

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate. ~Henry Miller

I spend most of my time reading. And the time I don’t spend reading, I spend thinking about reading and books. The above two places are just two of the many bookstores and libraries I wish I could live in. But most people seem to forget that bookstores and libraries are not a place for chit-chatting or making friends or scoring points for social graces. Bars, parks, hotels, cafes, pretty much every other place in the world are open for your indulgence and frolic. But please, please, please leave the libraries and bookstores for the purposes they were intended for i.e. Solitude and Peace.

One of the worst things that I had the displeasure of experiencing, quite frequently I must add, is when you are seated alone, completely engrossed in a book, enjoying the rare parts of the narrative which commands your attention completely and some random person whom you may vaguely know or not know, comes up and says "What are you reading?" If I was a more vocal person I'd scream my lungs out at them. It is such a pet peeve. Are you blind? Can’t you read the cover? I murmur the name of the book with contempt while pointing to the bold letters on the cover. But they are not satisfied by just breaking my concentration, they go a step further. They then ask "What is it about?" WTH? Now, I can tolerate such an inquiry if I am reading some insignificant book by a unknown author but if you ask me this when I am reading "Oliver Twist" or "One Flew over the cuckoo's nest" please don’t expect anything other than weird stares from me. I give them the shortest answer I can word together and speaking in a barely audible voice making it hard for them to stand there and chat longer. But more people miss such blatant cues.

Then comes the most dreaded part, the "How is it?" part. Why? Why would you ask me such a question? Anyone who has read even a single book ever will know that reading a book is a deeply personal experience and an opinion on it is purely subjective. How can what I think about it make any difference? I might hate Twilight with a vengeance but that doesn’t stop it from being No.1 on the Best Book Ever list on goodreads. And no matter how much I fawn over Murakami and his cat I accept the fact that he is not everyone's cup of tea. But this is where I falter. Sometimes I love a book too much to let such a question go unanswered. Sometimes I am so involved and awed with the words I am reading at the moment that when someone asks me about it I HAVE to blurt all the compliments, the praises, the odes to the brilliance of the author floating in my head. There is a sense of accomplishment in this but I do it more for myself than the book. You see I am a bookoholic. For me talking about books is like a food addict in an all-you-can-eat buffet; I wouldn’t know when to stop. So when you ask me how the book I am reading is, be prepared and bring a chair.