This one's about writing...

This post will focus on writing too - but mine.
This ad was done for my favourite client Mather,
to commemorate the first Indo-Pak match in Cochin.

Slow going

Haven't been reading much lately. Perhaps this is the most barren I have been, with regard to books. I do have a stack to read, and maybe once I get my domestic help, I will be free enough to want to read.

I did read Two Lives - just my cup of tea, a prefect brew of history and biography. And I loved The Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan. If I were powerful enough a person, I would plug it. Luckily, Chauhan, National Creative Director of JWT, doesn't require my assistance. It is very much Chick-lit, but its Hindi-English voice is one that any urban, semi-urban Indian can identify with it. The advertising setting is an absolute bonus for me. On a much smaller scale than Chauhan, I have had my brush with cricketing celebrity in the course of my work.

The new Booker winner has been announced. Has a whole year passed then? I havent even got around to thinking of borrowing last year's winning novel, The Gathering, by Anne Enright!

Days

From diagnosis to death, 142 days.

From dignity to helplessness to dignity again, 142 days.

Have been reading poetry lately, on-line. Dylan Thomas says it best:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

War

An illness is like war. All normal rules are suspended.
People grow and diminish at the same time.
Boys become men.
Men become boys.
Fear makes us reckless and brave and sad.
Waiting.

Things are different

Since my last post, things have changed dramatically. An illness in the family means much less time for things like reading! I went to the library on Jan 25th and returned all my books and didn't borrow any new ones. Doesn't look like I'll be able to go to the library for a while - so shall go back to reading what my friends are kind enough to lend me.

In any case I haven't felt like reading anything new or challenging in the past two weeks. Luckily a friend had lent me books 2 & 3 of the Harry Potter series so that took care of the first week and the second week I re-read my tattered copy of book 5. Comfort reading, really.

Midwives

Oprah, Oprah, Oprah....!

How do you pick these stories? The latest I've read from your Book Club, though its not your latest recommend, of course, is Midwives by Chris Bohjalian. It has all the ingredients of Oprah Book Club fare. A nice homespun yarn set in Nowhere, America.

Oops. I don't mean to be derogatory. At least I know what I am getting with one of your Book Club tales. Though Midwives would, I suspect be a deeply uncomfortable read, for anyone who has not had a baby, and in cultures like mine, I'm sure it would be banned material for unmarried girls. The extended discussions on episiotomies and pushing, are discomfitting at times.

A decent book, but other than invoking Vermont beautifully, I don't see much in it. The relationship between the girl and her boyfriend is too cutesy-sweet - no hint of drama there. The attraction between the mother and the lawyer - which could've added something to the story - nothing there. Ditto for the promised dramatic ending. Several times, it was as though Bohjalian would like to have shocked us with one of these angles, but shied away from doing so at the last moment.

I will still pick up the next Oprah Book Club recommend I come across, though.