First Impressions: Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton

I  read the book in the hospital while waiting for the nurse to finish dressing my mother's wounds. I read the book in the stupor between reaching home late at night, finishing an assignment and client call before beginning another stint at work. 

So, I didn't just like the book. I am grateful for it.

Love warrior is the memoir of a woman who describes herself as 'a recovering everything.' She became bulimic when she was ten years old and slowly got addicted to alcohol in her teen years. She would have a lot of casual sex but never enjoyed it. The first time she got pregnant, she had an abortion. The day she had her abortion, she gave permission to her boyfriend to go and party with his friends. He had asked if she was sure. She had said yes. He had left.

The next time she had found out that she was pregnant, she was on the bathroom floor, tired of letting down everyone time and again. She describes the pregnancy test as an invitation to real life. The test was a sign that someone up there had considered her to be worthy of being a mother despite being so messed up. Despite that. And because of that too.

Her boyfriend at the time, Craig, and the father of the child then proposes to her. They marry. She sets up a domestic life - the solid evidence of this wholesomeness is that they bring out fancy salad dowls when guests come over.

Then one day, Craig shares some porn with her. They'd been having sparse sex before that. She watches porn and feels aroused. Then she has sex with him. There's guilt, shame, despise.

She asks him to get it out of the house for good.

Then, during therapy, she finds out that he has been unfaithful to her. She breaks. She protects her three children by asking Craig to move out. She takes up yoga. 

Then one day she comes across a TV show where a couple is deciding to move out of a house they have spent a lot of money on renovations. Turns out that none of the renovations have worked because the house is wired all wrong. Rectifying the wiring would be a long and tedious process. Not to mention hugely expensive. The wife wants to move out and cut losses. The husband tells her that at least now they know what is wrong. They can fix it. They will know for a fact when it is fixed. What's the guarantee that the next house they move into will not have faulty wiring? What if they continue to hang pretty pictures on walls that hide monstrous wiring?

Glennon wonders whether she has faulty wiring herself. She wonders whether she needs to fix it first before moving on? So she decides to stay on in the marriage and explore if there can be some grace to be had within that.

This book is an enquiry into the earlier question. And the book is a solace. For one thing, Glennon can articulate a sense of emptiness with very kind purpose. There is a portion where she is racked with shame. Her parents send her to the church for an intervention. She is scared of the priest. But before that, when she is waiting for the priest to show up, she spends a little time before a picture of Mother Mary holding baby Jesus. She feels a kind of acceptance that starts her off on a scary journey of finding peace. (So, when she gets pregnant the second time around, she sees it as a sign of approval by Mother Mary.)

And I was particularly moved by the way she has described her husband's adultery. There is a part where she asks why her own flaws - such as silent resentment, withdrawal from sex, a quiet, persistent rejection of her husband - should not be considered as important as her husband's flaw of using his body to satisfy a need. How is one thing more of a sin than another?

Earlier, I used to wonder why women whould stay with men who strayed. My initial assumption was that women remain in relationships they don't like because they are used to it, they are scared of the future, etc. This book is a nuanced perspective of a different mindset. Sometimes women may choose to stay with a partner who strays because they decide to tackle it with strength. They want to fix their own wiring and understand what it would take to forgive their partner and the situation.

It is moving that the book begins with the wedding day of a very pregnant Doyle. She thinks of the same thing the very first time her husband tells her that he has been unfaithful. That memory fills her with hatred. Finally, it is this very same memory that fills her with tenderness and love - so much so that she finally gets to the point where she forgives her husband.

Like I'd written earlier - when my mum was being operated, when she slept while ate cup noodles, when my father dozed off in hospital chairs because he was tired - I used to keep wondering that this tenuous, fragile life - what's it all about?

To feel, to fail, to forgive - maybe that's what.

So for this, Glennon Doyle Melton, thank you.

638, 637, 636, 635: Books I read (Part 1)

Maus by Art Spiegelman

This is a graphic novel and a fable of the Holocaust. The Jews are mice, the cats are Germans, and the Polish are pigs. It is also a memoir of sorts because it’s told from Art Spiegelman’s point of view (who is Jew – so, he’s a mouse). It is a record of his father’s memories of the Holocaust, and a portrait of how even the broad strokes of history shape the smallest details of our lives – how we might have breakfast or how our father may bolt the door.

The book begins with a young Art crying about being teased by his friends. His father then tells him that he knows nothing about hardship.

Then begins the story of Holocaust and his father's survival through it. Although the descriptions of the Holocaust are in themselves troubling and poignant, it is the stubborn humanness that I found unnerving. Like the common decency one jailor may show a worker simply by not pelting him with stones on a snowy day. Or why someone who gets beaten and prodded and treated like an animal would still do push-ups. The part that really made me cringe was the aftermath of the Holocaust - beyond death and discrimination, when the Jews were free. The Jews, like Art's father, returned home to find that the Polish have taken over their lands and homes.

There is a portion where Art is deeply troubled by his father's expectations of him. His father wants Art and his girlfriend to move in with him. They don't want to. Although one may be sympathetic towards a Holocaust survivor, one may not be very tolerant of being related to him. Art's father displays incessant penny-pinching traits. He hoards groceries. His 'stranger-danger' alarm bells get sounded off everytime he sees an African-American (they live in the US.). Also exhausting is the guilt Art's annoyance with his father brings with it. In one sequence, Art visits a counsellor who helps him see that maybe Art feels that he is less of a man, or more of a loser, because he did not go through the Holocaust experience like his dad.

It is an exceptionally powerful book. Every little victory seems pyrrhic: people survived the concentration camp, and committed suicide within a matter of days of becoming free. Why do we keep going? Why do we stop? Between those points, maybe, lies the story and the reason.

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

(Spoiler in the write-up.) Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist, of this book is twisted. He is grossly overweight, Irish, 30 years-old, unemployed, and lives with his mother in New Orleans. He can never hold down a job and is working on some serious manifesto of the age throughout the book. Something as menial as getting a job is ridiculous and leads him to believe he lacks (in his words), 'some perversion that a contemporary employer seeks' (or something to that effect.) 

The turning point comes when his inebriated mother drives and crashes somewhere. (Ignatius, of course, doesn't drive.) To pay for damages, now, Ignatius must get a job. He becomes a hot dog vendor, gets embroiled with a stripper who seeks to boost her business by employing a ridiculous parakeet act. There's a policeman. There's his mother who you really feel sorry for because...imagine a child like him. She has a friend who is this fiesty woman who always goes dancing. Ignatius tries his hand at working at a Levy pants factory where he meets people, tries to stage an uprising which fails because people snicker at his heft or something. And then there's Myrna Minkoff, Ignatius' pet peeve - but a woman he may share 'something' with. 

Whew!

I read the book long back but I remember laughing out loud at the sub-plots. Ignatius' character is pretty much all-round iconic but the other secondary characters are so...I can't think of a word more apt than 'silly' - so specifically, deliciously, thankfully silly - that you want to belong to Ignatius' world. To be surrounded by that kind of naivete and pillowy, wholesome good-heartedness. 

Yet, towards the end - right at the  end, when Ignatius leaves home and is driven of by Myrna (who lands up unexpectedly), I felt sad. A melancholic, deflated kind of sad. In light of that ending, I went back through my favorite parts of the book and then, for some reason, I got the sense that maybe despite the snobbish slobbery of Ignatius J. Reilly, he just needed his mommy to hug him. This was before I read up about the author. He committed suicide and this work was published post-humously. His mother had met with several publishers to get this work out. 

Now, I'm not saying that the book really points to all this or whatever. But there's a fragility behind all that big humour that I found masterful.

Room by Emma Donoghue

This story is narrated by 5-year old Jack who has spent his whole life, thus far, in a small room. The reason it has worked out this way for our little boy is because his mother was held captive in that tiny room years ago. The kidnapper raped her repeatedly (and continues to) and Jack was born. He was born in that room and has lived in there ever since. 

The story begins with Jack's birthday. There are some treats in store for Jack - a pancake, a toy, a shirt. These are portions of the ration the kidnapper brings them periodically. Unless he is angry with the woman over something. That's when he stops bringing them food or does set the thermostat properly so that the mother and son have to freeze. Jack learned numbers and counting by going over each tile in the room. There's a wall where Jack's mother marks his height. There's a closet where Jack hides on nights the kidnapper comes to have sex with his mother. He only hears the man's grunts and groans, speculates on why his mum is so silent, and wonders when he'll be allowed out so he can snuggle with his mother. 

THEN, there's this other tiny piece of sky they see through the skylight. Jack doesn't know what that is, considering the room is in a basement and the only windows are really high up, beyond Jack's eye level. That place is 'outside', his mother explains. Jack narrates his possessiveness where he feels his mother seems is more besotted with 'the outside' than she is with him. 

Although the book's premise is grim , the first few chapters are cockles of sunshine. Jack is a happy child. His mother takes very good care of him and she's such a hero that you want to applaud. 

One day, certain events take place and Jack and his mother escape. (The portion where the escape happens is really thrilling.) That, at first, seems to be good news, except that it's not.

While the heart was heavy in the beginning, it positively breaks when Jack's mother tries to mesh back with her family. There comes a point when she commits suicide, after the escape. The onslaught of beneficence almost gets to her. Jack, on the other hand, was told the 'outside' is where freedom is. He finds, though, that you cannot walk on grass, take a toy in a store, clang your spoon, or do any number of things in the world. There's a part where he wonders whether his mother could have wrong about the 'Outside'. Then he resolutely decides 'No' because his mother could never be wrong. 

Like Maus and other horrific stories, I really wondered about the mother. How do people survive the worst periods of their lives and then somehow decide that it's time to get out? Is it because they feel that what they struggled for isn't worth it? Or that the banality is far more excruciating than a crisis?

This book is a very tender potrayal of how two broken people hobble along after a crisis. The goalpost, what everyone tells you, is normalcy. That goalpost keeps shifting. 

In the end, Jack's mother decides it's time to revisit the place where she was held hostage because it's time to make peace with her past. She returns with Jack. Jack's survey of the room is a sucker-punch. 

He feels the room is much smaller than what he remembered it. He says goodbye to the room. He says goodbye to the skylight. He simply sees the place as a spot where something had happened.

Jack has grown up. Jack has grown up?

First Impressions – The fault in our stars by John Green

It’s not the most original premise – two teenage cancer patients fall in love. Their love is doomed because they will suffer for a long time and long suffering is a ‘side-effect’ of dying. (This phrase ‘side-effect of dying' is often used by the central character.) These two teenagers have smart mouths and do their part in breaking through the myth of suffering cancer-patients who march their way to heaven through martyrdom. One of them dies – the one you don’t expect to (the boy). The other one copes. (The girl.) There’s also a writer of a book ‘The Imperial Affliction’ who plays a part in the way any writer plays a part in our lives when he has written a story that resonates with us. 

Overall, the book is good. I found a few portions a little forced and stilted but there are also passages that are beautifully written. Especially when the two lovers quote poetry or share stories with each other. This book was gifted and recommended by Ma, so it will always be special. But this does not take away from the merits of the book itself. It finishes on a note that a person will die, a love will end and so what. (But this nihilistic nature that blazes through us, however briefly, when we suffer before we start hitching our pain to some greater, grander plan is better captured in Lionel Shriver’s ‘So much for that’.)

All said and done, glad I read it.

Lavender lies

 

A lake and a mountain

Painted on a snail

A vaporized sky exhaled through a flute

Music in the sweet curve of a ripple

Sound on a grain of mountain dust

Pink stardust on fingertips

Smudging the edge of notepaper

Hushed indigo of the day's goodbye

And the snail moves to Norwegian wood

 

-          Started reading it last night.

Fever, yoga, reading, a little of this and a little of that...

I have been really unwell the last few days. High fever, a very sore body, thumping headache and, since misery loves loves loves company, there's a toothache doing the salsa with a sore throat as well. (How do they manage, you ask? Well, illnesses have a way of getting around.)


Now, just a few days ago I had started yoga. And this time I was determined to do yoga regularly to get fit and burn off my karmic deposits. (No, that’s not what they are calling body fat nowadays.) I wanted to settle at least that part of my karmic cycle that has kept me tied to the drama of anger. I have tried to figure out why I have so much anger inside of me when, frankly, I have around 2,800 things to be grateful for every single day of my life. And this is a list I can make up right from stuff at the top of my head.

I have tried to get to the bottom of this for a while now. A friend's sister is a hypnotherapist. Nearly a year ago, I had visited her on account of some issues that I was really tired of - like getting short with people, taking so many things personally, getting defensive about Mumbai. (It sounds crazy, I know. But that was when I had started feeling sick in my stomach. I could calmly respond to someone who accused me of being an escapist from my marriage but if he/ she made a comment on how dirty Mumbai was - man! the heights to which my hackles got raised!) Then, it reached a point where I sensed a lot of people distancing themselves from me. No-one was telling me anything but there wasn't the warmth I had felt earlier. I almost didn't notice it until one day - I did. I was with a friend and I saw a tight smile, a formal shrug and a quick, "See you later." So, I asked her what the problem was - right out - and she said, "This is the problem! You are always so aggressive and you are always so moody and you are always so opinionated! I can't handle it!"

All that was news to me. So, of course, I told her that she was a coward and constantly whining about stuff and what kind of an imbecile expects a human-being to be in one constant mood? Well, that was that. She cried, I felt horrible and we didn't communicate for a while.

On closer quarters, though, I saw that same pattern with my family. I noticed that my father wouldn't say something to me because he didn't want a heated argument, a cousin wouldn't call me up because he didn't know what mood he'd find me in, a niece would be iffy about sharing her essay because she thought I'd rip it apart (she got that impression from the others). My friends from 10 years ago went their ways without even saying goodbye. Colleagues at work started agreeing with my opinions rather quickly, without even venturing to offer their own. (Can't say I complained about that.) But as soon as I took stock of the situation, I realized that there was a problem and I wasn't very sure how to tackle it.

My friend's sister, E, helped me tremendously. She's much younger than me and ordinarily, I wouldn't have consulted her at all. I had some reservations about hypnotherapy as well. But at the time I thought - why the heck not? I was at that stage when I had done a lot of introspecting. I have usually kept a diary and I kept poring over entries to figure out what was going on. I sensed that there was a pattern here. And as a sociology student - this much I know: where there's a pattern, you look beyond incidents to figure out the reasons. Actually, even law has much the same approach. (Okay, more pedagogical analogies for another post.)

My session with E was a BIG eye-opener. As I spoke to her, some instances came to mind - those I had pushed to the back of my head because I was so busy focusing on 'main' issues such as temper. For example, I knew that I always got defensive about Mumbai. But while talking to E, I recalled instances when I have defended Delhi vehemently. I used to hate it when people called Delhi 'the rape capital' or its people loud and uncouth. Then, I noticed that there were times I went hoarse praising Pune. When people would call Pune a mousehole, I would defy them to find the kind of evolved lifestyle you find there. I have almost shouted myself out saying stuff that LA is far better than Boston. Who cares about a few universities around stupid green areas when there's far more life and action to be had elsewhere. I was indifferent about Bangalore or Ahmedabad or Kolkata or New York. You like it? You don't like it? Oh well.

That's when it hit me. I only got defensive about places I had lived in. There was something so primitive and ferocious about my territorial allegiance that it was scary. I would have definitely missed this aspect if E hadn't helped me with it. This also overlapped other areas. I could have a problem with you but if someone spoke against you in front of me, that person had had it! Somewhere, I felt the need to be a protector. I had to protect what was 'under attack'.

Then we came to the part of why this was so and what to be done about it. Both areas would take a certain about of effort and honesty which I can't summon just yet (given that I have fever, etc.)

However, E got married and moved to another city and my work of getting anger in check got waylaid. For a while it was okay, I was calm, and then it acted up again. The last straw was when I threw a glass of water on someone's face because I lost my cool. No. The last straw was when she didn't react. It was when she didn't hit back or retaliate or do anything. The last straw was when she walked away, saying nothing.

I can't explain the feelings that followed. Of course, what I did was wrong and there was an apology. But these things - they break you. In a good way. I think when I saw, in one interaction, the lows to which I had sunk and the highs which the other person upheld, it was clear. Clear like when you wipe a muddy window with a wet cloth and through that gleaming swipe, you see a waterfall. I had made a choice and she had made a choice and we both will live out the consequences of our choices.

It is odd that I felt no shame, remorse or self-loathing. Usually, all outbursts are loyally followed by this trinity. None of them are useful. I just felt that the worst has happened. It will only get better from here as soon as I decided the path. I don't care with the reasons for the temper now. My soul has truly just had it with the drama.

Many moons ago, I had read a book, 'You can heal your life' by Louise L. Hay. I read it around the time I was skeptical of self-help books and all that. However, my friend, J, (www.teerathyatra.com) had told me that this book linked diseases to a thought pattern and I was intrigued.

I strongly, earnestly recommend this book to anyone out there who wants a good read. Yes, it is one of those 'Secret' type books that speak of affirmations and law of attraction, etc. But it had been written at a time when only nut-eating, weed-smoking junkies in California believed that stuff. Louise L. Hay, perhaps, has the sweetest, most tender style of penning advice. If she were a neighbor, I would visit her everyday with treats from bakery. If she were on radio, I'd listen to her every day. She just has a way about her. Even if you don't believe in 'that sorta stuff', read her. If you have ever been in a position where you've asked yourself, "What the hell is wrong with me?" and honestly wanted an answer, read her. You will be so surprised at what you find. (Or you could meet E. It's been a while since we've been in touch but if you write to me, I could send you her contact details. She may suggest this book, too, by the way.)

So, in any case, Louise writes about certain ways of releasing a thought process and getting over things. Around the time I read her, I had started learning yoga. The two just seemed to click with me.

I'll make another strong recommendation here and then move on to the rest of my post. Please learn yoga. If you have learnt it, do it. If you're not interested, just be around people who do it. You will benefit. It is my personal opinion that you can have the most chiseled, perfectly toned body with a proper yoga routine. I believe that because I have seen that. You can have it in just as much time as you spend in a gym, if not sooner, and you can have it for life. I'm not in any shape or form to actually be the poster-girl for this sort of thing but I know of men who have six-packs and do the mayurasana like poetry. I know of women who do 30 minutes of asanas with 20 minutes of meditation and they could light up a room with the glow of their skin.

But I'll tell you why I do yoga. I do it because through my body, I realize that I was much more than it. I have to admit I am not big with the pranayams and kriyas. But I try to do a few asanas as regularly as I can. Any angry person is a stiff person with a disposition to joint problems. There are a lot of blockages that occur in the body because of what one has thought and believed over a period of time. Since I find it difficult to change my thought process internally (through awareness, meditation, etc.), approaching a mental change from ‘outside-in’ is what helps me. That means being more centred in what I practice and being more simple in what I consume. Also, I had read a book on Hatha Yoga that spoke of the link between karma and yoga. (Karma, in my mind, is an axiom. I just believe that it exists. Have been ridiculed a fair bit on this but…what can I say? That is something I have full faith in.) According to this book, when you are mindful of going through the motions of Suryanamaskar, it is not just about saluting the sun. With every motion, you are actually working off a portion of your karmic debt. That I found really interesting.

This insight particularly resonated with me. Through my session with E and learnings from Louise L. Hay, I realize that my anger issue is old and deep. It’s got to be grinded out of my psyche peacefully, firmly and consistently. I was anyway doing yoga. So why not do it with this orientation in mind? It’s far more interesting than getting a toned back! (Although I would love a toned back.)
Then, after one day of yoga, I fell ill. Very ill. That night, I felt so desolate that I cried through different thickets of self-pity. I really felt bad for myself, mainly, because just the night before I had made grand resolutions of taking charge of my life, etc. Now, taking charge of one’s life means not having anyone to blame when you are ill and aching. That is not the time for the Universe to tell you to just ‘suck it up!’ but it says that anyway. It’s hard.

The next morning I woke up even more unwell than before but I decided to do yoga anyway. I hated every single minute of preparing for it. From opening the terrace to unfolding the mat to joining my hands and starting the Suryanamaskars. Then, as I quieted down and started doing my rounds, it started to rain. When rain falls on a grey and misty world, you catch your breath. Because the beauty is so fragile and fleeting. It looks as if a child is weeping and smiling quietly in her sleep because of what she sees in a dream. It was lovely. I finished yoga in more peace than I have felt in a long, long time. I almost felt like the Universe was moved by what I’d done.

This is why I feel hopeful, at times. I feel that no matter how bad or deep my problem, there is more help around than I can imagine.

Makes me weep. Makes me smile.

Slowly, surely...Hemingway

I sat in the pantry, looking out at chattering tree-tops. A kite soared miles above bricks and concrete. It seemed to do a soft salsa glide in the sky. Maybe it liked looking at brown-grey strips. It was going to be a long day at work. I wanted this tepid coffee to fill me with as much satiety as it could manage.


This sad satisfaction of looking at the world go by, to be dimly aware of time passing…this cusp of peace and wistfulness…I find it in Hemingway’s writing. As luck would have it, I read one of his short stories a few hours after my coffee-break. ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’. This story is so ephemeral. Light, gossamer-like, sea-spray like. All true yet almost there. I love reading Hemingway’s stories. They’re so short, yet I lose myself in them completely. Not knowing how long I’ll be remembering pieces from it, or quoting from it.

Reading Hemingway is like sleeping off after doing something decadent. You may not recall everything, yet you’ll always remember waking up to chocolate on your fingertips.

*************

The short story is here: http://www.mrbauld.com/hemclean.html

Book List

I’m feeling really jumpy today. I have so many things to write about, but all these ideas and words seem to have spilled all over my brain like jelly beans. Bright, jelly beans – all purple, yellow, bubble-gum pinks, tangerine orange, Kermit green, neon blue – spongy little gel-spurts of color inside my head. It’s impossible to get hold of these beans, much less string them to make some sort of a sentence. I think I’ll simply make a list of books that I have but haven’t read yet:

1. Inventing Memory by Erica Jong (I’ve read ‘Fear of Flying’. It’s excellent.)


2. Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh (I still think his best work is ‘Shadow Lines’.)


3. Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie


4. Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie (I honestly have not read this one yet because I want to be worthy of reading it. It’s a strange feeling, inadequately expressed, but that’s the only reason I reverently touch the spine of this book every night before putting it back on the shelf.)


5. How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto


6. Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (This one I borrowed and am reading it now. I don’t much care for fantasy fiction, but my colleague seemed delighted by it. Thought I’d give it a try. Liking it immensely so far.)


7. Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (This book is the reason Indians learn to read and write English, apparently.)


8. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (I had loved Tipping Point.)


9. From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (I haven’t read any other Stephen King novel. But have cringed through several movie adaptations. There’s one book, ‘Art of Writing’, though, that I strongly recommend. It’s a sort of a guide on how to write novels. King got this idea when he was playing in a music band with other writers – and Amy Tan was one of them. One day he asked her what question she wishes she were asked by reporters, when they interview her.
She said ‘…no-one asked about the craft.’ This book, ‘The Art of Writing’, is apparently a response to that unasked question.)

10. Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (I’d started reading this book and it was quite entertaining. But I misplaced it somewhere. I do want to finish this book in some nice coffee shop between movies or when I’m travelling somewhere. Seems that sort of in-transit read.)

11. City of Djinns by William Darlymple (Took it up, read a few chapters, left it…took it up again, read the same chapters, left it…etc. etc.)

12. Age of Kali by William Darlymple

13. One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow (Law…Harvard…all the things I’m besotted with.)

14. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

15. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez (It’s time now…it’s high time now…)

16. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta (I stopped reading it mid-way when I started getting nightmares about the Mumbai riots. But increasingly, with a shifting sense of an ‘insider/ outsider’ duel inside my head, this book is becoming a very important one to read now.)

17. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

18. Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

And these are the books on one shelf in one room. I think I’m set with the reading for the rest of this year.

Request

If anyone from Delhi will be visiting Mumbai soon, and will be staying over the weekend - could you please get me a copy of the 'First City' magazine? Will pay for it, of course. Thank you!

And for the people of Delhi, do read it if you haven't. It's a really well-written, intelligent magazine. When they interview writers or artists, they actually ask about their craft and metier and stuff like that. Not simply, what's their favorite food, colour, or holiday spot.

So, yes, it is published work that is not tinted with the contemporary virtue of dumbing things down...but you will love it despite that.

Had me at hello

On the first page of a book: To Lori - my search was over the day I met you.

The book: ‘The Google Story’ by David Vise.

Emphasis supplied, by the way.

Momentous Things

Momentous things will happen
Those grey clouds seemed to say
Between chunks of imbued lightning
And timbres of sombre grey

Momentous things will happen
Across the wet, green land
Momentous things will happen
With a book in my two hands

p.s. – Started reading this book at Anumita’s place: love and longing in Bombay. Just started…but oh! what a book! If there’s a book to be read in this wet, wet season, it is definitely this. Interestingly, the author’s (Vikram Chandra) earlier work was titled ‘Red Earth and Pouring Rain’. He seems to be some sort of a eulogist for the gifts of the clouds.

Something small

Read this in a book now:

Bird alone, flying high
Flying througha clouded sky
Sending mournful, soulful sounds
Soaring over troubled grounds

- Words from a song by Abbey Lincoln

First Impressions - The Little Lady Agency by Hester Browne

A while ago, I wanted to read something airy and light. A friend of mine loaned me Hester Browne’s ‘The Little Lady Agency’ – a book written in tradition of most chic-lit capers and Hollywood rom-coms.

I enjoyed it immensely, though. Possibly because I pored over it during my favorite times of the day– on the bed on lazy weekends, with strong tea over breakfast, with a bag of chips during some free time in office, in the autorickshaw on a pleasant morning, in a long bus ride. But even without such temporal, culinary and lifestyle accoutrements, the book was a nice, breezy read.

The book is about this girl, Melissa, who can’t seem to get a break in life. She comes from a moneyed but embarrassing family. Her father is a local MP with an armoire full of scandals. In fact, Melissa has spent most of her school years dodging her way through her father’s colorful escapades. He’s the sort of parent who feeds off his children’s inadequacies and prides himself on being judgmental and critical. Her mother is a pleasant, mild trophy-wife who has a nicotine addiction. Her sisters come equipped with unique defense mechanisms of their own – one has the pleasantness of a cactus and the other one has the grounding of a soap bubble.

She is the most organized and disciplined girl of the lot, and an unsuspecting martyr in most family situations.

Melissa works in a real estate firm and lives with an exemplary flatmate Nelson. He is employed in some sort of indeterminable tax/ accounting business and is also engaged in a variety of social causes. He bakes the best brownies and proffers a strong, comforting shoulder when Melissa cries over her heartbreaks. Now, her heartbreaks are numerous and deep, given her crippling bad taste in men. In recent times, she has been let down by her lover.

One day, the real estate firm is taken over by an American agency and her services are terminated. What makes the deal more awful than normal is that she owes her father some money – it’s the money she had borrowed for her no-good boyfriend. Her father who seems to have minimal scruples liberally uses this loan as a manipulating tactic to get her to do thankless jobs, such as organizing her sister’s wedding single-handedly.

At a club one evening, Melissa runs into an old school friend and is taken in with her charming and posh transformation. The friend puts Melissa in touch with their erstwhile Home Ec. teacher who runs some sort of an agency that provides ‘discreet companionship’ to ‘busy business men.’ Although it starts off meekly, Melissa finds herself in a spot when a man insists on having sex with her.

Although Melissa hastily abandons the job, she is rather taken in with the money. It’s a fabulous way of getting rich quickly. If only one didn’t have to throw the money baby with the sex bathwater.

One thing leads to another and she starts her ‘Little Lady Agency’ – an agency that will provide organizational and social support to men who need it. Sex is out of the question. What does fall into the ambit are the sort of dilemmas gauche, single men may find themselves in – geeks who don’t have a date for a business dinner, men who cannot fire their housemaids, guys who are really bad with selecting gifts for their women relatives and friends, men who want to throw a party but don’t know the difference between a beer mug and a wine glass, etc.

The catch here is that Melissa operates the agency under another identity – Honey Hesterneckett. Hoeny is a sassy, sexy, voluptuous woman with golden hair and high heels. ( Melissa has dark hair and considers her curves to be ‘rolls of fat’.)

In the course of her job, she meets an American, Jonathan, who is the boss of the American company that has taken. In time, she falls in love with the guy and stands up to her obnoxious father.

Admittedly, much of the book is predictable. However, I suppose the British setting makes it really fun to read with interesting British phrases – ‘tempting’, ‘jollities’, ‘knickers’, etc. And while it is not exactly a treatise on seduction, the novel does have some fascinating pointers – like if you want to sound good on the phone, you ought to think of something really relaxing and interesting. In one portion, Melissa thinks of creamy white chocolate being poured in bone white china before attending a call. And a spritz of perfume in the stilettos goes a long way in making you feel ready to party.

Many parts of the book read like a travelogue or an article in a lifestyle magazine. (Watching fireworks, or going to the London Eye, strolling through the Tate gallery, having mulled wine in a pub, etc. etc.)

Some bits of the story like Melissa confronting her father in a lingerie shop are a tad theatrical, but her fuzzy relationship with her flatmate is sweet. Her romance with Jonathan is trite, but her methodical strategy of giving challenged men a workover is funny. The part I liked best was when the lines between Melissa and Honey started blurring, and Honey started taking over even when the blond wig was off.

There are times when one enjoys such books…even though they come reviewed by Cosmopolitan as ‘a tasty read for the beach.’

First Impressions – A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

‘A million little pieces’ is Frey’s memoir of the time he spent in a de-addiction centre. James is 23 when he is addicted to crack, liquor, and is wanted in three states. He started smoking and drinking since the age of 10 and had tried drugs since the age of 13. One day, after a virulent session of crack, Frey has some sort of an accident and gets injured badly. Then, he is flown in to Ohio by his parents. This is where they admit him in a rehab centre.

Frey then recounts day after difficult day on his road to recovery. He explains the fury that envelops him when he is getting detoxed. The rage he feels when he is around his parents, especially, seems to be a running theme in his life. He writes about the total hopelessness and despair when he thinks about his life. There are paragraphs on the sordid tribulations that his body undergoes – constant, incessant retching where he vomits ‘blood, food, and chunks of his stomach’; an aversion, yet an obsession to fill a hole with anything –food, mindless T.V., coffee, cigarettes, or routines of cleaning the toilet. Perhaps what is mind numbing is his strategy to methodically relive every little experience.

When James is first brought in to the addiction centre, he is badly wounded. He has a hole in his cheek, scars and wounds around his eyes, a broken nose, a broken jaw, and several broken teeth. His mind runs amuck with hatred, guilt, shame, and despair. He is angry with everyone and everything. He doesn’t believe in God or any of the 12 steps in the Alcoholics Anonymous program. At first, he and his thoughts are a congealed mass of wounds, scars, and screw-ups. He undergoes four root canals strapped to the dentists chair without anesthesia (anesthesia cannot be administered because he is on an addiction recovery program.) He scrubs toilets (as part of his duty in the Centre) even though he is faint from puking violently. Expectedly, he attempts suicide, and during one such attempt, an inmate talks him out of it. Frey and this inmate, Leonard, later go on to share a very close bond. (James Frey’s next book ‘My friend Leonard’ is based on this friend.) Leonard’s simple advice to James is to hold on.

As the book progresses, the author writes about how he held on. He decided to just be mindful of one moment at a time – not necessarily categorize it as good or bad, progress or plateau – but just go through each moment, choosing not to bolt or kill or drink or die. As with all kinds of addiction, the healing signs come by really slowly. At first, he can simply taste the sugar in his oatmeal. That is a notch in the scale of recovery. Then he can eat one donut with his coffee without throwing up. Later, he gets past 3 hours of nightmares and sleeps for 15 minutes without fear. He can sit beside someone and not feel like ripping the guy’s head off. A girl called Lily smiles at him and he smiles and stares, long after the girl is gone. This too, is healing.

Sporadically, James introduces portions of his life before he joined the Centre. He talks about the girl he fell in love with – ‘the one with Arctic eyes’. When his family comes to participate in the Family Program, he introduces pieces of his childhood when his father wasn’t around much and his mother seemed to be overprotective of him. He talks about his run-ins with the law.

At the end of the de-addiction program, James needs to make a list of all the things he must confess to a priest. Although James doesn’t believe in God and isn’t a Catholic, he still consents to meeting one. He knows that he won’t be able to go further before he senses some sort of closure – something that marks the end of this phase.

This book courted controversy briefly when it was published. It was nominated to be part of Oprah’s book club and later it was found that Frey had exaggerated or fictionalized portions of the memoir. In an interview with Larry King, Frey talked about what kind of changes he had made to the book – he changed the scar on the lip to the scar on the cheek, he changed criminal charges of DUI to charges to possession of drugs, certain names in the book were changed to protect the identity.

And since the colossal trademark of our times is to completely miss the point, certain factions were furious about the book being a fallacy. Memoirs were supposed to be factual and anything falling out of this puritan premise was to be discarded. Oprah, who interviewed James Frey, ticked him off over this. Later, in an interview with Larry King, Frey defended his book. A memoir, he explained, was a personal account of one’s own experiences and by virtue of this, it can’t be objective. The undisputed portions of this book are what are most important though.

The journey of a man who wept with shame and guilt before bleeding and cussing every night at a de-addiction centre. His story talks about dealing with fury (in graphic, gravelly detail) by pulling out his toenail and washing the blood in cold water. The parts, which Oprah later commended Frey on in the same Larry King Show, were what resonated with so many people – this explanation of the light that comes to you when you hold on. Grief and guilt can be undignified little pellets of emotions. They come tangled and snotted and it is so easy to give up when they trap you tight. Frey, through some sort of serendipity, fell in love in the midst of this trap, was nourished by teachings of Lao De Jing, serenely deconstructed his life on paper over black coffee and cold, icy wind in the park. It took him time and turmoil, but he finally came to terms with this simple fact that so many of us take for granted – that there is a tomorrow.

I took up the book to understand somebody else’s story. I understood my own. I have always believed that life, even the most menial kind, comes with a very strong force. Sometimes the force is strong enough to self-destruct. I am that type, although I have never been an addict. (I have, consistently though, made the more difficult and inconvenient choices.) Sometimes, that force shatters everything you’ve got. And then, slowly, when the dust settles, you pick up itsy bitsy fragments and make something beautiful of your own.

The wondrous thing about life is that you remember it as one strong thing. The wondrous thing about life is that you forget it was, once, a million little pieces.

Something New

When I start a book, any book, it takes me to a different place. Whilst I am reading it, I literally disconnect from ‘this’ – whatever ‘this’ is – ‘this’ sum total of everything and everyone and ever after. When I am done reading a book, it stays with me always. Life goes on and so does time, and portions of the book swell its own formless limits until they become my idea. But before a page seeps into my mind, there is this little blizzard that happens in my brain. Portions of sentences and associated thoughts; fragments of words and associated sensibilities; bits of characters and associated resemblances. I think I should write about those. Because these little blizzards took me to a different place – and every time they did that, they brought me home.

I’ll call this series of writings ‘First Impressions’.

Shekhar Kapur's piece

In the vanity of darkness, when light plays but an attendant role, the mind wanders. To seek evidence of what once was, to look for predictions of what will be, and to sigh and reconcile that this is all there is.

In such times, I google for words such as Wednesday or diamante or stuffed figs. Searches take me to strange places. I listened to 'Bad' by U2 this evening for the very first time.

Also through some strange coincidence (and I don't believe in those), I came across this poem on Shekhar Kapur's blog: http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2005/12/my_wealth.htm#more

It's only appropriate that the guy who writes stuff like this would've directed 'Masoom'.

Book buys

After being lumped up the whole day in front of my computer, I thought I’d go out and get some swallow of fresh air. So I went for a book fair in Vashi, opposite Centre One. I wasn’t really expecting anything spectacular, because, truly the best deals I have seen so far are at the Strand book sales and Daryaganj. Very rarely has anything come close to being as remarkable as these – both in choice of literature available and the prices they are available at.

But surprisingly, I got a couple of books I wanted to dive in to as soon as I reached home. (But unfinished business beckons, and that’s the very worst kind of beckoning.)

The first one is ‘We’ll Laugh Again’ by Art Buchwald, who is astonishingly chuckleworthy. He is such a charming political humorist (or satirist, depending how you read him.) I’ll never forget the way he portrayed the Potomac in some of his columns – fulcrum of poetry, politics, and poofy presidential peccadilloes. (I think I am recollecting my impressions of 'Whose rose garden is it anyway?')

The second book, ‘Small Wonder,’ is a collection of essays by Barbara Kingsolver. I have been meaning to read her ‘Poisonwood Bible’ for a long time now, but the book has always been a little out of reach. Since I don’t think I can assimilate any kind of deep, conceptually challenging thoughts yet, a collection of essays would be just right for me to ease in to the world of reading.

So, that was an hour that was spent well. Now, all I need to do is find time to read these books and then, hopefully, write about them. I think that is what is going to drive me for a while – the motivation to share my impressions on what I read.

Probably, the next few weeks will see me put up smottles of these books on the blog.

Fresh from the closet

I have a very irritating habit when it comes to books and clothes. First of all, I am a hoarder. Second of all, I get mighty interested in properties of others. A book that a friend is currently reading will pique my interest more than the one I just bought. Or I will covet a slightly faded shirt of a cousin even though I have a brand new one waiting to be worn.

When I moved to Delhi, I brought along most of my unread or half-read novels from Mumbai. There’s ‘Grimus’ and ‘Midnight’s Children’ - my essential Rushdie components, Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender is the Night’, Virginia Wolf’s ‘To the lighthouse’, John Updike’s ‘Poorhouse’, Oscar Wilde’s collection (I must try and commit to memory ‘Ballad of the reading gaol’ - my favorite, favorite poem), Gladwell’s ‘Blink’, Clarissa Pinkola’s ‘Women who run with the wolves’, ‘The Jane Austen book club’ by Karen Joy Fowler, ‘Franny and Zooey’ by Salinger, a few volumes of poems by Tagore, Darlymple’s ‘City of Djinns’ and ‘Age of Kali’, etc.

Added to this list are the various gifts I have received thus far - ‘Namesake’, ‘Shantaram’, a biography of Sonia Gandhi, ‘Last Temptation of Christ’, 'A suitable boy', a version of the bible if Judas had written it (co-authored by Jeffrey Archer), etc. Yet, one evening, I felt as if I had ‘nothing to read’. (akin to the ‘nothing to wear’ syndrome.) Everything I had was either too breezy or too grave. Nothing was just right.

So, I started scrounging for ‘something to read’ in a rusty, dusty steel almirah. Here, I came across some gems. There were books of poems that belonged to my mom-in-law when she was studying literature. I also found ‘Magnificent Obsession’ by Lloyd C. Douglas. This one comes highly recommended by mom-in-law, so will pick it up soon.

There was also a delightful book, ‘Couplehood’ by Paul Reiser. (He was Helent Hunt’s husband in ‘Mad About You’.) It started off as being a regular okey-dokey affair by a celebrity author, but then I found myself chuckling through a few pages. A few paras later, I guffawed loudly, and woke A up to read stuff out to him. A couple of pages more and A asked me to read aloud some more anecdotes.

This book is about the song-and-dance routine that all couples go through in a marriage. The reason this book is such a hoot is because it is so spot on about the native quirks of the matrimonial province.

Like when Reiser describes how, when you sleep with someone for the first time, you suddenly realize that there are too many limbs on the bed. Where do the hands go and what about the legs and if you are cuddling up to someone, what if your nose is getting squished on someone’s chest and you risk getting smothered?

Then there is an absolutely brilliant bit about couples going to the movies. First, Reiser poses the very incisive question: ‘Why don’t you see a whole lot of single people inside movie halls? Because they can’t manage to get tickets.’ Then he goes on to explain how couples have a distinct advantage. (And this is very much what A and I do when we go to Saket for a flick.) One person drops the other off at the ticket counter and glides forward into the parking lot. The other one dashes to the counter, scans for the timing, knows whether 5 seats from the screen are okay or not, understands that aisle seats are a must because the partner has to take at least two smoking breaks (all these details have been discussed on the way to the hall). No time is wasted on deliberation.

Here’s what a single person is thinking:
do I really want to sit 5 seats from the screen? Maybe I can go for a nice coffee and a read to Barista? Or wait, there’s Bennigan for a superb apple crumble.

This is what’s going on between a dating couple:
What would you like to watch?
Anything, what would you like to watch?
Would you prefer going for a play?
No, movie is okay.
Really?
Yes. Sure?
Yes.
Is 10:30 too late?
Not really.
Because, if it is...

A scenario for married couple:
One person parks. One person gets tickets. Both have voices in their heads pounding: go, Go, GO!

There are other hilarious snippets. (I am giggling just thinking about them.) One day, Reiser’s wife mentions that they need a tea cosy. He turns the two words in his head, and in his own admission, cannot fathom what possible relation they may have with each other. So he asks his wife what it’s all about and she says it’s a sort of a coverlet for a kettle.

‘Why?’, Reiser asks.

‘It keeps the tea...’

‘Cosy?’

There you go.

Reiser also discusses some clichés at great length. Upon reading, one realizes why they are not really clichés but some sort of anthropological truth. Like why most men cannot dress to the satisfaction of their wives. And one reason, a big reason, is because they refuse to grow up.

My husband is a reasonable man with good taste in clothes. But he has a pair of shoes that drives me crazy.

It makes an annoying tock-tock-tock sound which A is in love with. Every time I tell him that he must change into something less ear-grating, he looks hurt. More than that - he is hurt. Apparently, there is some cult-classic movie of Amitabh Bacchan where the depiction of childhood into adulthood is testeronically rousing. Only a child’s feet are shown as he walks, and in the same continuum, these feet change into the feet of a man; an angry young man. (I guess it’s Shakti or Deewar or Kalia or Khuddar or Sharaabi or Mr. Natwarlal or Coolie or Kaala Patthar - is AB versatile or what!) And as an adult, those feet go tock, tock, tock, tock.

In respectful memory of that frigging scene, my husband will walk on all hard surfaces wearing those shoes. Our bedroom has marble flooring and often A wears these infernal shoes in the middle of the night and goes tock-tocking around the bed.

In any case, getting back to ‘Couplehood’, Reiser raises some interesting points about how deviant from normalcy marriage is.

But what makes this bumpy ride worthwhile?

To use the limbs-on-bed scene as a metaphor - initially, it’s all awkward. It’s all bones and elbows and tangled hair. But with time, with love, and with loads and loads of good humor, you find that perfect spot on his chest or her shoulder - and it’s a spot you can count on for life.

Ironically, this lofty longing is echoed in another brilliant bit that I read - a bit about loving and losing - a bit in the end of the script of ‘Annie Hall’:

Woody Allen as Alvy:

After that it got pretty late. And we both hadda go, but it was great
seeing Annie again, right? I realized
what a terrific person she was and-
and how much fun it was just knowing
her and I-I thought of that old joke,
you know, this- this-this guy goes
to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc,
uh, my brother's crazy. He thinks
he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor
says, "Well, why don't you turn him
in?" And the guy says, "I would, but
I need the eggs."

Well, I guess that's pretty much how how I feel about
relationships. You know, they're
totally irrational and crazy and
absurd and... but, uh, I guess we
keep goin' through it because, uh,
most of us need the eggs.

Ch- Ch- Ch Gratitude

The other day, I had lunch with a friend, SC. There were two pretty small portions of inexpensive pasta. Tasty sauce but a little watery. During lunch we talked of how we had left Pune behind and how it was lovely to be back (a thought that crossed our mind after we’d forgotten the harrowing, smoky traffic one endures to meet a pal in Mumbai.) To celebrate, we went to the posh little café in Crossword at Nirmal Lifestyle. (It’s called ‘Brio’ because that’s so chi-chi.)

I was looking for the biography of Ram Jethmalani for A. On being asked if they had it, the assistant kept asking me ‘Rumi who…?’ So, for quick reference, I told them ‘Ram Jethmalani - the defense for Manu Sharma.’ The next thing I see, the person is typing out ‘Manu Sharma’ in the ‘Author’s’ list. When I further told him that Manu Sharma was not the biographer, he looked a little annoyed. Why had I brought up Manu Sharma if he didn’t have anything to do with the book? I moved on. Why complicate matters of the Universe for an unsuspecting soul? But the thought of Manu Sharma writing a book on his legal counsel was very story-worthy, I must say.

SC and I ordered some coffee and a dainty, blueberry cheesecake.It was pretty good. Over delicate spoons of creamy cheese with blueberry jam, she told me how she loved chocolate. I had no idea what ‘Lindt with 85% chocolate’ meant. And why, with chocolate, bitter means better. Since I am not a chocolate afficionado, I generally regard discussions on chocolate the same way I would regard a documentary on body-piercing. It’s fascinating, sure, but I can’t relate to it.

The discussion stayed in my mind for long after. There are so many people who like chocolate…and that other complicated tasting food – cheese. I wonder why I never liked them. For one – both chocolate and cheese have absolutely no subtlety in their body or taste. (With some varieties of cheese, there is also the matter of overpowering odor.) And the second reason I don’t have them is that you can’t taste anything else when these bulwarks of strong tastes are around. But I do enjoy other people’s rhapsodies on the subject.

That night, I was going through an old edition of Vanity Fair. It’s damn good! I had never read a Vanity Fair before and I probably would never have bought one in India (considering the magazine costs 450 bucks or so). But I got an old copy near Vashi station for ten rupees. I wasn’t expecting much from it, but was very pleasantly taken in with all the feature articles and so on. First of all, I had no clue how BIG Martha Stewart is. I mean, I knew she was rich and all, but the lady has an empire! All these houses in the cities of New York and Paris and Montreal and other countrysides, 100 acres of farms where she lets loose her black studs at night (because they get red if they run during the day and Martha hates that), some 35 rooms in some villa, a separate kitchen only for a boiler that froths milk for her cappuchinos…it’s mind boggling – the amount she has built for herself! Truly, the way to a lot of money is through a lot of stomachs.

Anyway, half-way into the article, I got this very strong urge from somewhere behind my heart and deep into my gut. The urge was some sort of a morphed assortment of taste and texture – something crumbly, salty, creamy, sweet…something like that. A little bit of targeted introspection later, I realised I had the urge to have chocolate and cheese. So, I trooped to the kitchen and of course, couldn’t find anything there because that’s a place I never visit….ever. But after rummaging the fridge a little more desperately, I found some sliced cheese and a box of Ferrero Rochers. Now, I like sliced cheese. They are little less obtrusive than the chunks. And Ferrero Rochers suit me because of the variety in the layering. So, I took a flap of cheese, put a Ferrero Rocher in it, and pressed the ends to make it look like a dimsum.

It was a perfect, awkward confection to nibble while reading Vanity Fair. Nutty, salty, sweet, smooth, and sometimes a pefect melted smidge of it all.

I was so moved that I decided to think pleasant thoughts about Pune. Two memories stand out, because of the unprecedented kindness I encountered in the city. Here they go:

1. Late evening (a period that begins from 6:15 p.m. in Pune), Z and I caught a rick home. The rickshaw fellow had no change. He wasn’t willing to get out and get change either. Z and I were new so we didn’t know who to ask or where to go. Around that time, a couple came up and asked if the auto was free. The rickshaw fellow sat grumpily and refused to look at anyone. (Because we are such mean people that we deliberately refuse to give change.) The boy asked me what the problem was and I told him. He asked me how much I owed the rick guy. It was around 25 bucks. He said that he would be taking the rick upto Karve road and he’d gladly pay my fare as well. Of course, Z and I refused and all that, but the boy insisted. He and his friend rode off and I never saw them again.


2. The next time round, I was out of cooking gas. I had heard that I could get something near Wadia College. So my bai and I took an auto to this place. No luck because it was closed. Someone there suggested we go to Kalyaninagar. The rick guy agreed to take us there. (A small miracle). No luck there either. We were told to try Viman Nagar as well. Rick guy said ‘No Problem!’ Zilch success there. So, tired and unhappy, we decided to come back. The rick fellow, on seeing my weary face asked my bai if we could all stop for tea. ‘Why not?’, I said. He took us to a small dhaba and got us tea. Later he left us home and charged us only the meter fare. I insisted on paying for chai, but he said that was okay. He refused a tip too.


Many, many, many times I have criticized Pune for being slothful, rude, and cunning. Those times, I have disregarded the acts of kindness shown by these strangers. Interestingly, both times, the kindness came from classes of people I tend to be acutely wary of.

But today, I thank them and bless them because it is only with memories such as this can one think of moving to a new place, knowing that there are good people everywhere.

Why did I think of writing this? Maybe it was the chocolate, maybe it was the cheese, or maybe it was Christmas. Whatever it wsas, it was worth it.

Merry Christmas all.

Separates

For a while now, I have contemplated starting other blogs – one for food, one for movies and T.V. offerings (I have a lot to say about the show ‘Beauty and the Geek’), and one for books. There are a number of reasons I haven’t got around to doing it. Most of them involve sloth and a reflex to stay away from anything that I would ‘have’ to maintain in the long run. I wouldn’t want to read a book simply because I had to write about it. Or watch a movie because there was compunction to analyze. Or deliberately document stuff about yummies because there was a web page waiting to be updated. (The last bit reminds me to spread the good word about lychees chilled in frosted crystal bowls and doused with vodka. Must be had with eyes half-closed. In fact, will be had with eyes half-closed. Enough said.)

However, I do like the idea of segregation. I like pieces that do not meander but follow a consistent stream of thought. The prospect of writing something for a category dedicated to specifics interests me. But I realize that it takes a certain kind of mind to do that. And I don’t have it.

Interestingly, I can make out whether a person is capable of having different blogs from their voices. They speak neatly.

Jaygee has different blogs as does Warble. While J does not have a separate blog, she has a separate section where she posts poems on Dino Morrea. That is as much a reflection of queer taste as it is of a meticulous mindset, but all that for later.

When I speak with any of them, I notice that their mind works carefully. Words don’t tumble out, their thoughts are not clumped, they can enumerate things verbally (if they came with speech bubbles, you’d be able to see bullet points), and they speak in short sentences (that is not to say they don’t speak much – they do). In essence, they take a thought that may be tangled and knotted, but they can carefully unknot one thread at a time, smooth it out, and then take on another thread. My own strategy is yanking a bit here and there and just snipping off the annoying ends.

The ‘one by one’ preciseness is what enables a person to write in and for categories. As they speak, you can imagine words being taken off neatly from shelves, dusted carefully, and placed like alphabets on the Scrabble board. Contrast this to fun, yet muddled shuffling of the deck that my blog is reminiscent of.

To begin with Jaygee. I remember her telling me how to really appreciate a tomato sandwich. The tomatoes mustn’t be runny, the butter must be spread evenly, the bread should be soft, not soggy, etc. etc. If we were talking about the nuances of a good sandwich, we were talking about the nuances of a good sandwich. We didn’t go into the sad lives of bakers or Barista’s overpriced coffees or Bandra’s narrow roads, and then connect the dots.

J, while capable of being batty, is very prim in her discourses. Patiently (with excruciating details), she can explain the design on ethnic cushion covers sold in Delhi. The description is not jumpy, focused, and very rarely, could you quote a sentence out of context.

And Warble, one of my very, very favorite writers, can wring sense from any thought – any thought, I tell you. It’s like he pulls a rabbit out of thin air whether he is talking of something specific, like the third nail of the waiter serving the last patron, or something vague like, um, history or law or me.

Their voices are not always husky, but something about them reminds one of folding formal shirts and stacking them in a corner of the cupboard – the corner that doesn’t have pink parkas or acid-wash denims. You hear them, and you know that their handkerchiefs will probably be folded in a triangle or their drink will always be in the centre of the coaster. They will use a different napkin for keeping peanuts and another one for bite-sized cheese-cubes. They will brush off crumbs from their fingers before they pick-up another item. They won’t eat and read at the same time unless they are eating with a fork and spoon.

Tidy. That’s what they are. That’s what goes into crystallizing thoughts in compartments.

I tried. I tried to write about ‘Shalimar the Clown’. While it’s not the best book that I have read, I liked it. I liked the thought that went into one of the characters declaring the fight for an independent Kashmir as stupid. ‘Why not draw a circle around yourself and call it ‘Selfistan?’, he said. Salman Rushdie is just so clever.

But I couldn’t. For some reason, midway my review, I had put in a paragraph about my English teacher and why India, to me, is really a developed nation that just doesn’t know it. I wrote a bit about the sharp taste of shrimps braised in garlic (I was having those while reading the book), the scene from Hurricane when Denzel Washington smiles. I don’t know why I did that. The intention was to write about the plot, go on to the characters, speak about the language, discuss the style, and eulogize Rushdie a little more (‘Selfistan’ – I mean, who would have thought of that!). I could count off the items I had to pen on one hand.

And then I just went ahead and interlocked my fingers.

***********************************************************

You can read the fine writers I’ve talked about here:

Jaygee - http://abibliophobia.blogspot.com/
J - http://www.teerathyatra.com/
Warble - http://blogusinterruptus.blogspot.com/