It is my fourth month in Chennai and I hope that it deems me fit to write about Chennai or rather the incidents I’ve encountered here. I write as I sit with my t-shirt stuck to the skin from this heat. It is no wonder that Chennai is synonymous to heat with blatantly three kinds of weather: hot, hotter, hottest. You take a shower, return to the room only to find that “before-shower” and…
“I’ve been writing a four-part article for Field Newspaper Syndicate at the beginning of each year for several years now and in 1980, mindful of the approach of the year 1984, FNS asked me to write a thorough critique of George Orwell’s novel 1984. I was reluctant. I remembered almost nothing of the book and said so – but Denison Demac, the lovely young woman who is my contact at FNS, simply sen…
Sometimes I wish was born in the late 1800s Europe; in the times of Royals, solitary reapers, lush green woods, where a cow would be my treasured possession which I’d hang on to dearly, wander in the wide meadows, get lost in dark deep woods, drink in an azure sky devoid of pollutants every night, have a meager, thin vegetable soup and a bite or two of bread for dinner and poached eggs for lunch, listen to someone play a piano and violin, yearn to get invited to the parties and balls conducted by the haute monde, I’d probably own a clothe of silk and satin each in case I get invited to a party and a turquoise hairpin to go with the dress, wear beaten up clothes of cotton for daily-wear and milk my cows every morning, walk in long strides in the prairies pushing aside the knee deep grass as I walked, walking through a castle-sized mansion owned by a handsome Fitzwilliam Darcy, walk on the shores of a tranquil sea, soaking in the rhythmic to and fro of the foamy waves as the salty wind caressed my face, strolling into a marketplace where I buy an apple and sell my cheese. I’d watch a little boy with dark hair and blue eyes, who could easily surpass for Heathcliff and Cathy’s offspring (if they had one) playing a sad violin that got lost among the million market voices. Back in my two-roomed cottage, I’d munch on a piece of toast, sitting on the only chair I owned (stiff and armless), trying to read a periodical by Dickens under the flickering, yellow candlelight and lay down to sleep on a mattress that had gone rock-hard ages ago. I look at stars through the skylight window, trying to sleep without realizing that far far away a man who’d lose his ear was making yellow, white, blue and black swirls in an attempt to paint the starry night sky.
Sometimes I wish was born in the late 1800s Europe; in the times of Royals, solitary reapers, lush green woods, where a cow would be my treasured possession which I’d hang on to dearly, wander in the wide meadows, get lost in dark deep woods, drink in an azure sky devoid of pollutants every night, have a meager, thin vegetable soup and a bite or two of bread for dinner and poached eggs for lunch, listen to someone play a piano and violin, yearn to get invited to the parties and balls conducted by the haute monde, I’d probably own a clothe of silk and satin each in case I get invited to a party and a turquoise hairpin to go with the dress, wear beaten up clothes of cotton for daily-wear and milk my cows every morning, walk in long strides in the prairies pushing aside the knee deep grass as I walked, walking through a castle-sized mansion owned by a handsome Fitzwilliam Darcy, walk on the shores of a tranquil sea, soaking in the rhythmic to and fro of the foamy waves as the salty wind caressed my face, strolling into a marketplace where I buy an apple and sell my cheese.
A beautiful book! This epistolatory novel, another witty one from the author of Silver Linings Playbook charms you with its raw emotions, disarrays of people dealing with mental issues, their lives and so on. The protagonist, Bartholomew Neil (fatherless, introvert, jobless and aged over forty), recently loses his mother to brain…
“Why, at such a time as this, I ought to snap my fingers at aestheticism and all the rest of it; and yet, I am all at once as particular as a dog looking for a corner?”
After a series of relentless obstacles from a severe fit of cold ripening to a fever, to vacationing in hill-stations and conning the science of “making perfectly round dosas and chappatis” so I don’t bring ignominy to my family…
A lizard from the far-future at one point observes, “all time was one instant, all space one point.”
Apart from scrambling for the dictionary more than often, this book has got me hooked! You might wonder how I like nearly every other book that I read; the thing is I really find it ill of me to not like books/certain plots for various reasons. There are some books though that I’ve had a hard time…
