A Reader's Journal

It's back to the library and back to reading!

First, On Beauty, where I kept flipping over to the jacket to look at Zadie Smith. Like her, Howard's End is a special favourite. I was reasonably engaged trying to draw parallels - Oh look, Kiki Margaret Schlegal! Carl is Leonard Bast! They even have a stealing scene - only a discman, not an umbrella! But just before it got too distracting, On Beauty found its own steam, its own relevance (ok - sounding pompous now!). EM Forster would have loved it.

Next, Engleby by Sebastian Faulks who I am definitely going to read a lot more of. Amazing. I loved the university setting. About halfway through I figured out which way the wind was blowing, but I suspect I was supposed to, though the clues were very subtle.

Picked up Marry Me as a tribute to John Updike. Should be ashamed to admit that I haven't read any of his work. Why Marry Me? Because it looked slim and non-threatening enough. I must admit I couldn't engage with it at all, though I read it diligently from end to end.

Have now almost finished Jahnavi Barua's Next Door collection of short stories. Growing up in Assam, obviously I was an outsider, but reading these very evocative tales makes me feel as though I too, belong. These tales are set in Lower Assam, while we were in its upper reaches. Maybe its the familiar ring that 'Barua' and 'Barun' have. Maybe its the description of the Brahmaputra as being as vast as the sea, which is exactly how I remember it, though I have only ever flown over it. Maybe its the descriptions of gardens and time spent outdoors, which is what I remember most from my childhood there. I know for a fact that anyone who has at least a nodding aquaintance with Assam will read these stories very differently from the rest!

Dipping my toes in again...

2008 was my worst year by far for reading. I still read some fabulous stuff, but for the very first time in my existence it felt as though I could go through life without ever reading anything at all. Yes, it was a crazy year. From beginning to end, every certainty I ever possessed was questioned. I thought I had figured some things out - myself above all - but I was wrong. And yet it was a year I will be grateful for.

I went back to the library, ironically a year to the day I last did - Jan 25th. Planned to borrow a bunch of M & Bs or at least pseudo historical romances, which is my preferred form of trash reading. Struggling through The Last Mughal made me think that perhaps I was better off reading only frivolous stuff. But standing there in front of those bookshelves, it wasn't the romances that I felt like picking up. I did pick one, The Weaver's Daughter, but even though it was a pedestrian piece of writing, it was less a bodice ripper than a low-brow attempt at capturing a time in history.

So now I'm reading a book that I have long wanted to: On Beauty by Zadie Smith. Marvelous. Especially the Howard's end style beginning.

See, I'm less frivolous than I think!

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.