Riot, A Novel

The death of an american women, Priscilla Hart, serves the pretext of Shashi Tharoor's 2001 novel, "Riot, A Novel". Of the many things that is good about this novel, the first and the foremost is the fact that its written by Tharoor. A thoughtful, sociologically precise novel that not only brings with it a great flavour of Indian social stratification, the religionism, the conservativeness of a small Indian town, but also manages to present the very Indianness that lies at the heart of a middle class Indian society. Tharoor holds a grip over this very Indianness and continues to show his great understanding that he has on India,  its people and their mindset.
In September, 1989, a 24 yr old american, Priscilla Hart, working with an NGO, is stabbed to death in a riot that erupts in the town of Zalilgarh near New Delhi. Priscilla's divorced parents, Katherine and Rudyard Hart, then visit the town to find out what happened and in the course of their stay at the town meet all the people associated directly and indirectly to her. They meet and talk to everybody and try to learn the conditions in which their daughter was living in there and also the one in which she was murdered. A mystery in itself, the reason of the murder is not told till the end and leaves the reader with so many possibilities. A story that deals with love-hate, social norms, communal riot, political issues all at the same time gives everything of these one or more reasons for Priscilla's death.
Riot comes out as a novel knit with the threads of completely different contexts. The writing of the novel is unique in its own sense. So far, I have not read many novels but I am very sure that there will be, if any, very few novels written in that style. It starts with the newspaper cuttings of The NewYork Journal about Priscilla's death and the news of her parents visiting Zalilgarh a few weeks after. And then follows a mixture of too many accounts of all the characters involved in the story without much regard to the timeline. The story goes into flashback, comes back to real time, then again goes further back and keeps on jumping time all through. A total story of around a year being presented in a screenplay style was something different to me but without doubt interesting.
The last time that I was reading Tharoor was his first novel, The Great Indian Novel. Sadly, I could not finish the major part of it, still, whatever I did, I was too much involved in it and liked it. His understanding of the Indian culture and tradition was pretty much evident in that book and so came the anticipation of a similar understanding in this book also. I must admit the fact that this book managed to fulfill my anticipation and I am pretty much content by with this one too. All in all, if not a great book, it surely is a readable book at least.

The Truth of Truth

"You know, there's an old Hindu story about Truth. It seems a brash young warrior sought the hand of a beautiful princess. Her father, the king, thought he was a bit too cocksure and callow. He decreed that the warrior could only marry the princess after he had found Truth. So the warrior set out into the world on a quest for Truth. He went to temples and monasteries, to mountaintops where sages meditated, to remote forests where ascetics scourged themselves, but nowhere could he find Truth. Despairing one day and seeking shelter from a thunderstorm, he took refuge in a musty cave, There was an old crone there, a hag with matted hair and warts on her face, the skin hanging loose from her bony limbs, her teeth yellow and rotting, her breath malodorous. But as he spoke to her, with each question she answered, he realized he had come to the end of his journey: she was Truth. They spoke all night, and when the storm cleared, the warrior told her he had fulfilled his quest. 'Now that I have found Truth,' he said, 'what shall I tell them at the palace about you?' The wizened old creature smiled. 'Tell them,' she said, 'tell them that I am young and beautiful.'"

The above excerpt from Shashi Tharoor's Riot, a novel brings to us the very truth of Truth. Not that the writing in this very paragraph is splendid yet, it presents the philosophy of truth in most basic style. Yes, truth is not beautiful and yes, truth is not true itself all the time either.

Lately, I have been reading this book and so far, has been an endearing, to say the least, experience that has kept me bound to it. Tharoor's hold on India, its history, its religions, its stories, its people, their mindset and above all the very Indianness keeps you along with itself. Looking forward to writing about in much detail once I finish it...

Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai diaries)

Its really been a long time since I wrote my last post here. I started this blog with much determination but was totally without any idea of how I was going to be regular on here. There were a few books that I had to read and a few films that I had to watch, and hence with a slight (may be recurrently transient) inclination towards English, I started this blog. I couldn't finish those books through this time and, although, managed to watch those movies, just couldn't get enough time to spare here. Maybe, sometimes, career has to be put ahead of hobby, I suppose. Anyways, with no more boring stuff let me come straight to the point.
Dhobi Ghat, Mumbai Diaries......what was it, story of the city mumbai, story of the four characters, story of the character mumbai, story of their life or just Kiran Rao's experiment with film-making? What it really was? It was nothing, but a simple way of story-telling. The telling of the stories of the four lives, stories which does not start with their start or doesn't end at their ends. It starts from somewhere, at some point in their life and all of a sudden, after almost 95 mins, ends abruptly at some another point in their life downstream.
We in India have been watching movies that take somebody as a central character and then just take us through either the whole life right from its birth to the end or through a special episode in that life. Dhobi Ghat is completely different on this aspect (and, by the way, also on many other aspects). The original notion of bollywood of making films based on characters having quite an eventful life is being challenged here with this very simple, yet very different art form. Most of us, common people, take birth and die, and in between lead just an uneventful life. Dhobi Ghat is just about a small passing by part of such uneventful lives of four characters.
Arun (Aamir Khan) is a painter by profession, a loner by attitude and a question for everybody who comes in contact with him, including the audience. He has serious problems with relationships, is a divorcee, loves to live alone and has no one really to talk or rather doesn't like to talk to anybody. His only acquaintance is Yasmeen (Kriti Malhotra), a small town girl who comes to Mumbai as a newly wed and is busy in exploring Mumbai and making videos for her brother. She is the only one who manages to arouse interest in Arun's lonely head that too through her video tapes that Arun just finds serendipitously.
Shai (Monica Dogra) is a investment banker in America who is on her Sabbatical and is exploring Mumbai just for the sake of her hobby, photography. She manages to have a one-night stand with Arun (who denied any prospect of a long term relationship out of this), and then manages to find Munna (Prateik Babbar), a neighbourhood dhobi and starts exploring Mumbai. Shai sees the different characters of the city with Munna's eyes. Munna is a migrant from Bihar, who has a deep feeling for but is hesitant of any kind of relationship with Shai.
To say that the movie is all about these four characters and their interaction with Mumbai is totally wrong. Its nothing about it. After so many featurette released, so many of interviews of the film-makers watched, one enters the cinema hall with a clear-cut idea in his mind that there is gonna be a completely different experience inside. And yet, one walks out of the theatre dumb-struck. Nothing to think, nothing to say, no opinion, no views. Thats the real beauty of the movie. It manages to keep its "differentness" even after your expectations of differentness is at its highest level.
To say that the movie is completely flawless is totally untrue. The characters of Shai and, even, Munna, are a bit beyond understandings for me although Prateik Babbar as Munna has showed real glimpse of his immense talent in acting. Although, the cinematography is fabulous, editing could have been a lot better. The biggest reason why the movie is not gonna be liked by masses in India is the story of the movie, because there is not any. We, the masses in India, have watched the Johars and the Chopras so much that we only think of their stories to be STORIES although, they attack haplessly on our emotions. For those who keep themselves in 'intellectual' category, the stories of films from recent years who have promised to be different like Udaan or Dasvidaniya are the stories to look for, although, they attack on us emotionally. Dhobi Ghat with its complete novice idea does not attack at all. It, now, might define the 'intellectual' category amongst the movie-goers in India.
Marissa Bronfman writes about the movie and about its premiere at Toranto International Film Festival at The Huffington Post. Excerpts:

"There were no choreographed dance sequences, no lip-synched songs, so while Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries) may not have been a typical Bollywood blockbuster, it is paving the way for a new era in Indian cinema to emerge without sacrificing it's heart along the way.....At its world premiere in Toronto, Dhobi Ghat showed the world that Indian cinema is no longer stuck making homelessly formulaic films and that the industry is growing up and starting to experiment with different characters and narratives."

Well, all in all, Dhobi Ghat is a wonderful collage of faces on the canvas of life which does not end. It goes on. There are no resolutions in the end, there are no morals too. Just like it starts from somewhere, it ends at somewhere abruptly, maybe because, it has no end, maybe because life has no end. It moves on, it goes on and on and on...

Obama and Brown: Speech that need to be studied

Many a times long hours of studies bore you so much that you start to loose the interest in almost anything. With a competitive exam over the head more and more time is being demanded by the ever exhausting studies and this is were I often end up being, i.e. my blog. It has been a practice for me for some time. Such activities that require a diversion from usual course of studies gain so much more importance at the time of examinations. It has always happened with me and with it also happened my doing extraordinarily well in those exams. Maybe, this is a good omen for me. Anyways.

Being bored with studies, recoursing to something that is not sports or facebook is quite unfamiliar for me. But, I think with the time a change has occured to me and now, neither sports nor facebook seem any important. At such a time, watching HT leadership summit on the web looked an interesting prospect and combined with the idea that studies can go simultaneously with it, I whole heartedly went for it. I didn't even look for the schedule and started watching the summit and found Ex-PM of the UK Gordon Brown starting his speech just in few minutes.

The starting part of the speech is what I actually want to write here about. It, in many ways, reminded me of Obama's speech at the central hall of the parliament just a few days back. Brown started off, very much like Obama, with the references to India's contribution to mathematics, its economic supremacy at a time when world was facing global recession and above all, Gandhi. Whenever it comes to Gandhi, there is too much to say for any political figure. And when it comes in Indian context then Gandhi gives a limitless opportunity to speak about.

Coming after George W. Bush, Barrack Obama's interpretation of Indianism, in his speech, was not only praiseworthy but also surprising. Where, allegedly, Bush didn't know what India actually is when he first entered the White House as US president, Obama had already done his homework on India very efficiently. The way he spoke about India and Indianism on that very evening, he managed to leave an impact over millions of Indians. What Gordon Brown's speech today did to me was to reduce dramatically that very impact that Obama had to me.

At a time, when India is really moving briskly as a power to reckon at the world stage, maybe, the western world is not finding it very easy to swallow. India's strength at a time of global recession has been beyond understandable limits and the western world just doesn't seem very comfortable with it. With China, already, so very well pushing the axis of world power away from the western world, the rising of India as a world power must give sleepless nights to the leaders of the present day world powers. For them the rising of these two asian giants is not only a rising but also a fear of their own downfall. World has surely seen such shift of powers in the modern history. The fall of USSR and rising of USA is a testimony of such a shift. The western world must be sensing a similar shift of powers and in the interim, is doing anything and everything to please these new powers.

Obama's recent visit to India was described as a token of the recognition that USA has for India. For me, after Brown's speech, it only seems to be a way to keep India pleased. References about India's historic greatness is what was common in both the speeches. Gandhi, from a 'nanga fakir' has become a tool to make India pleased, it seems. You iterate Gandhi, and we start applauding is what the two speeches has seen.         Maybe, what we are overlooking is something that the western world is cooking behind the curtains. Do we really need to be happy with such speeches and by the recognition that they extend in these speeches? I doubt!

  

  

Great Expectations!

The title of the post derives itself from a yet to be read by me novel by Charles Dickens. A copy of the novel has been under my custody for just under a decade now and I must admit, here, the fact that for all this long time, it has been there in my priority list of the things to do. The last decade has seen me making and then abandoning too many of such lists. All this time, there have been items from the English literature that have formed a constant part of such lists. Great Expectations is one of them. The another one, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, was there in that list till last year when I finally completed it. Its not my laziness that I have not been able to complete these novels in all this time, its only my lack of interest in literature that I have already referred to in my earlier posts on this blog. Things have come and gone from the priority list, most of them bypassing these novels in the process, but one thing is for sure that these novels have always managed to maintain their position there in the list. With time, their glamour decreased and so did my enthusiasm towards them. Still, a hope of completing these novels are present.
Anyways, the post is not, in any way, about Dickens' Great Expectations. It is about my own expectations from two books that I have recently bought. The last weekend saw me visiting Kolkata where an evening was planned for window shopping at a mall. The evening went as was planned except for the fact that I found a real rich book store there. Having already mentioned my lack of interest in literature, it was probably my first time to witness such a rich book store. Maybe, this was the first time when I actually showed some interests towards a book store and hence, such a book store that might seem mediocre to many others, looked rich to me. Finding too many of books at a place felt me with a fear and an enthusiasm at the same time; the fear of books that I have already described here and the enthusiasm of getting over this fear this time round. With a determination in my mind, encouragement by my companion there and suggestions from my brother, I finally managed to lay my hands upon two books, Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel and Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead.
Anybody can deduce from the name of the authors itself that I am a complete novice to this field of reading. Two different novels on two different themes by two completely different authors from two totally different era, was all what I could find there. Nothing, at all, common between them. Even for me, it was hard to discern my actual taste. Where Tharoor is a 21st century Indian politician, statesman, columnist, author, activist, Dostoyevsky is a 19th century Russian writer, essayist sometimes a nihilistic, sometimes a rebel, sometimes a cynic. The simultaneous selection of such two completely different authors must be bewildering to many (atleast, it is, to me).
My knowledge about the two authors is also not complete. Whatever I have mentioned about them above is acquired in recent times from various sources on the internet. For Tharoor, the way he and his tweets have managed to create a hype in recent times has let me to know about him more and more. Maybe, this was how, I knew about the book and hence, finding it compelled me to buy it. I won't deny that my love to Indian political history was also a considerable factor for my selection of this book. For Dostoyevsky, the selection was mostly due to the strong inescapable suggestion by my elder brother. Amongst his penned novels, the selection of this particular book was completely based on the volume of the book. This seemed the least voluminous in the lot and hence, came the selection. Having said all this, I must make it clear that I was not completely unknown of Dostoyevsky before buying this book. My first encounter with him was reading his short story, White Nights, a story of the dreamer that it most simply can be described was fairly well liked by me. Reading him once again never seemed a bad idea for me.
Now comes the expectation part. The first and the foremost expectation common to both the book is that I would be able to finish them. For Tharoor's novel, I have already started it and what I could make out of it is that it must be a satirical presentation of an epic that Mahabharata WAS, in relation to another epic that the Indian political game IS. For Dostoyevsky's novel, reading itself, the introduction on the back, fills me with a certain amount of depression, a doom. A character who dies and dies again in the search of real death is all that I can expect from this. Nihilism and pessimism is echoing from the book and giving me a feeling that I could end up being sad at the end. Yet, strangely, a feeling of optimism is what I am getting at present. Its strange but true, maybe this is the beauty of Dostoyevsky, maybe this is the beauty of literature that I have been away from, maybe this is what I am going to witness with it this time.
Will keep posting my updates on the books as I move on with them.

Random Movies, Random Thoughts

Most of the foreign language films that I watched recently were, in some way or other, based on the theme of a dysfunctional family. Its not that this was the keyword for my searches on the internet that I got these films. Nor that my search engine was a little biased towards such films. Surfing or rather straying on the internet, reading blogs and going to the different links that one gets there may prove useful sometimes. This is how I got to know about and watched such films that includes Last Tango in Paris(Fr., 1972), Little Children(En., 2006), Ma mère(Fr., 2004) amongst others.

All these films were based upon human emotions arising from a dysfunctional family often leading to the evils of perversions, infidelity, adultery and even to incest. Watching the films left me thinking about all these issues. Paul (Marlon Brando, Last Tango...) mourns the suicide of his wife and strays into a senseless relationship with a young strange girl. Having grieved by his wife's infidelity and then by her death, he tries to give himself the pain. He wants to see his own death in front of his eyes and for that goes even to the limits of sexual perversions. He bangs into a strange girl and urges her to continue the strangeness. Maybe, after one failed marriage, his belief on a family system was over.

Pierre (Louis Garrel, Ma mère) also suffered the agony of a dysfunctional family. After the death of his father, he realises the bitterness of the relationship between his parents. Discovering a pile up of porn magazines from his father's wardrobe and knowing of the amoral character of his mother left him wandering. He then succumbs to the amoral promiscuous ways of his mother and ends up having a incestuous relationship.

Amongst the films that I have mentioned earlier, Little Children left me thinking the most. Four characters, having failed in life once or more, try to win it for themselves. Sarah (Kate Winslet) failed to his husband's perversions towards internet pornography. Brad (Patrick Wilson) had too many problems, the agony of being fed by his earning wife, the annoyance of failing the law exams twice, the irritation of  not being able to continue his college-days legacy in sports and the frustration of not being successful at all in life. Larry (Noah Emmerich) lives with a guilt of killing a child unknowingly. Then you have Ronnie McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley) who has to live with a lifelong curse of being a pervert. All the characters with their own share of problems tend to do something to prove their identity. Sarah choses to get closer to the 'prom king' (Brad) to prove herself in front of other ladies from the suburban neighborhood ultimately going to the limits of having an adulterous relationship with him and planning to flee away with him. Brad sees in this relationship an identity for himself that he lost to his earning wife. He wants to be recognised by the skateboarders en route to his law classes. Larry wants to do something for the children of the locality and in that sees Ronnie, the pedophile, a big social problem and launches a movement against him. The psychosexually ill Ronnie wants to improve himself but nobody allows him to do so. When he is ousted from a public swimming pool for his past deeds, he shouts that he just wanted to chill out, but the society doesn't let him to.

At the end, everybody gets the better of him/herself. Sarah, watching the Ronnie's grief of losing his mother, realises that the real happiness lies with her family. Brad, on way to Sarah, is recognised and given a chance to skate by the skateboarders, in the process getting injured and ending up at the hospital, realises the love of his wife. Larry, causing the death of Ronnie's mother, realises the guilt and helps Ronnie with his life. Ronnie, to prove himself, ultimatly castrates himself and in the process makes Sarah and Larry realise their own guilts.

The movie was about human emotions, hope and despair, the elements that make in themselves the whole idea of human civilisation. We wake up in the morning with a hope of making better the day ahead. As the day progresses, the despair of this hope not being fulfilled fills us. Then we hope again and despair follows. The emotions attached with these hopes and despair can take us to all bounds. We may succumb to them as the characters of these films or we can come out fighting with them and ultimately getting victorious. The cycle of this hope and despair continues in our life and often signifies the very idea of being a human being. The motivation for moving ahead comes from these despair and the courage to execute these motivations comes from these hopes.

       

A moronic article from The Times of India editorial!

Sitting idly at work for 4 hours without doing anything may be a regular affair for the primary school teachers of govt schools in Bihar, but the same for people like me, who likes to be busy with work, is nothing less than a punishment. A total of 10 patients for 7 people at duty was all that we got today. With so less of work and medical books opened in front of me, it was getting harder and harder for me to keep my eyes open. This was the time when I fetched for today's newspaper and got to read this article from the editorial segment of The Times of India.
The article was about Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer filing for bankruptcy. Reading the first lines itself left me shocked and surprised. The roaring lion face surrounded by the filmstrip came before my eyes just by the mention of MGM's name. Some of the Hollywood's classics have come from this production company and thinking of all those films, I was not feeling comfortable with the news of it filing for bankruptcy.
The article also compared the Hollywood's style of functioning to the Bollywood and at many places indicated that Bollywood can be better than Hollywood. The title of the article itself contained a footnote saying, 'Days of Hollywood’s unquestioned supremacy may be over'. The article was in the editorial segment of the newspaper wherein the writer's name was not specified but whosoever he/she was must be a moronic follower of Johar/Chopra's Bollywood. Where the start of the article left me disheartened, at the end the feeling was completely different. Inspite of thinking of MGM's bankruptcy, I was, more of, laughing at the wits of this writer.
To quote him,

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the legendary 86-year-old Hollywood studio, is filing for bankruptcy. This relates to Hollywood’s style of functioning, marred by overblown budgets, unreal plots, unsure narratives and tired stars, none of which enthuse audiences that are themselves changing and seeking novelty mixed with realism. In contrast stands Bollywood, the Hindi film industry steadily expanding over the globe. Bollywood’s themes are constantly energised by everyday culture and mythology while increasingly including edgy, experimental stories.  

 The writer says that the Hollywood is suffering its overdependance on overblown budgets or unreal plots or tired stars and that the Bollywood is gaining global expansion due to its edgy, experimental themes. If that is the actual matter then how exactly the overblown budget of Raavan, or the unreal plot of Veer or the tired stars like Shahrukh or Salman are leading Bollywood to a global acclaim is completely beyond my understandings. Every second film in India is said to be a remake of some Hollywood movie and then this writer is expecting Bollywood standing side by side to Hollywood. Doesn't it all seem hilarious on his part!
The most hilariously absurd part of the article was yet to come in the last line. After all the optimism this was the punch line of the article, an unattainable height of optimism:

It is quite possible that Bollywood could teach America a trick or two about making hit movies, cleverly-budgeted, yet straight from the heart.

 For me these are these 'straight from heart' movies in India, that have never allowed the Bollywood to develop a well respected place in the art world globally. Some movies have come big hits in the world market but who are the viewers there. The reach of Indian people to each and every corner of the world is only what has made such films hit. For international viewers, Hindi films are still way down in priority list. Everyone in India considers Sholay a cult classic, this is what a review in Chicago reader has to say about it:

The tone alternates between slapstick and melodrama, and Sippy occasionally sneaks in some populist messages. The plot is formulaic, the camerawork is slapdash, the male bonding borders on camp.

This is what the whole understanding of Bollywood in the western world still is. And still, if someone thinks that a 'straight from the heart' movie can overtake Hollywood's supremacy, then I have no words for that moron. These 'straight from the heart' movies have only managed to make the viewers cry. The Johar/Chopra's or Shahrukh's blind supporters are not the only one who cry their hearts out while watching such movies. There are some other people also who cry albeit the reason is a bit different. The first group pf people cry as they succumb to film maker's desperate act to make people cry and the other group cries on that very desperate act. I don't know till when these people will continue to give such shits of melodramas but I am completely sure that till then Bollywood can never become a stronger force in international cine-world.

  

Books, Books and more Books!

What do you do when you go to a railway station to receive somebody and have to wait there for an hour or so for them to arrive? I usually pass my time wandering the full length of the platform, looking at different shades of life there. I have a belief that, in India, if you wish to know the culture of a certain region, the best place to look for that is the railway platform of that region. The kind of diversity in the life form that one sees there is just unbelievable. Anyways, I was talking about my time-pass at a railway station. Actually, one doesn't need to apply too much effort in order to pass time there. Trains come and go and with it hundreds of faces also come and go. You don't really get a free time that you have to pass. This goes about the railway platform but what if you have to wait for an hour or more at a small domestic airport like that of Patna?
Today was a kind of evening for me where I had to wait for more than an hour for the arrival of my cousin at Patna airport. I waited at the airport hall. Being a small domestic airport, it has nothing much to offer for waiting people like me. A restaurant that I can't afford, a small canteen and a small shop for books, gifts, etc and a small hall with some seats is all that it has got. Wandering in the hall up and down and occasional ogling at the air-hostesses bored me after a few minutes. Buying a can of coke and drinking it near the canteen occupied me for another few minutes but what after that?
The small shop that had gifts, books etc remained the only other option where I could spend some time. But, the shop was too small for comfort and just couldn't attract me to inside it. There were books on display towards the outside through the window pane. I chose to stand there and look at them. Books and books and more books! There was Chetan Bhagat (If you are in India and at a book store, you just can't ignore this man even if you want to), Agatha Christie, M.K. Gandhi, Ayn Rand, Naipaul, Rushdie, Paulo Coelho and not to forget the self-help gurus (In Indian literature these days, if someone is worshiped just after Chetan Bhagat, these are those people) amongst others. The list neither signifies their relative importance, nor my choice of authors nor their abundance at the store. It only signifies my poor ability of remembering names. Standing there and looking towards the shop made me realise why exactly the term 'Window shopping' is called so. Its not that I hadn't window-shopped before but living at a place like Patna where there are no malls yet (it doesn't mean I don't like Patna, I just love it!), you have to agree that people here are not so familiar practically with the term. Window shopping is one of the thing that the mall culture has inculcated into us. Anyways.
Standing there and looking at those books, reading their title and the name of the author, I suddenly started feeling frightened by them. Faces came out of the cover pages and started to give me looks, strange looks, staring looks. They were asking me from all the directions why I don't read them. I couldn't answer them because they wouldn't hear me.
I managed to run away from there, terribly frightened and obviously thinking. Thinking again all those things that led to my last post here. I realised, I don't hate these books. In fact, at some corner of my heart, I even love them. I have always wanted to befriend them but have always failed too, sometimes out of paucity of time, most other times out of paucity of interest. I recollected all those times when I had motivated myself towards these books and found out that I still want to be a reading buff. In my last post, I questioned the necessity of such readings and here I admit that they might not be necessary but as a hobby, these readings are awesome. There is a definite hope that, in future, these books would become my friends.
With this hope, the announcement of the arrival of the flight came. I received my cousin and headed towards my home. Such a great time-pass where I rediscovered my love for these books was totally unexpected. Unexpected again was to find, just after reaching home, at my blogger dashboard, this blog from my following list which, in some way or other, was concerned with this habit of reading. Roberto Bolano, in his collection of short stories, The Insufferable Gaucho, has an essay, 'Literature+Illness=Illness'. A beautiful excerpt:

 "travel, sex and books are paths that lead nowhere except to the loss of self, and yet, they must be followed and the self must be lost, in order to find it again, or to find something, whatever it may be - a book, an expression, a misplaced object........in order Rodin anything at all, a method perhaps, and, with a bit of luck, the new, which has been there all along".

    

I don't think I need anything to read

Sometimes some trivial talks about just anything can take you to a place where you ultimately realise the fact that what you have got at the end of it all, is a thought to cherish in your lifetime. Such talks are even more trivial if they happen at a place like facebook or orkut or other social networking sites. These places are full of jerks (and it includes me too) who have nothing to do but to pass their time rather waste it in silly talks with friends. One such silly talk ended quite high for me today.
The thought to cherish for me didn't arrive during or just after the talk was over. It led to a flight of thoughts for me, a flight where one thought came after another and I just kept jumping from here and there. Ultimately, where I ended was never expected of a flight that started at such a trivial place like facebook. Hmmmmm. Sometimes even places like facebook can be quite beneficial!
Actually, what happened was a debate that was going on some friend's wall between two friends. The debate involved issues of spiritualism and the idea of happiness. It was a heated debate in between the two of them and being influenced by it, I managed to sneak into it. There were references from mythology and from literature. The debate somehow ended with a reference from Swami Vivekananda. With the debate ending, I closed the chapter, though, continuing to think something about that. It was then, I realised that I haven't read a thing from Vivekananda. I realised the fact that though I have read a lot about this man and his ideas, I haven't read nothing from him directly. Thinking continued and then, I realised that I haven't yet read nothing whatsoever literature or philosophy has to offer.
There was a feeling of guilt that appeared inside me for not having time for such works of art. As far as my reading is concerned, it is completely limited to coursebook ones. Where people read and get influenced by the ideas of Tolstoy, Nabokov, Tagore or Vivekananda, I have always preferred Robbins, Harrison and Schwartz. Then the thought of what's wrong with it came to me. So far as my reading the coursebooks are going to give me my earnings, I don't think anything is wrong with it. Then the thought of what can I get from reading the others arrived. They can give me a school of thought. They can give me some ideas to base my life upon, to extract from them my opinions on issues of my life and to look beyond my life. Hmmmm. Quite a plausible answer, a witty one too, but not that much to stop my flight of thoughts. Yes, It continued.
The last question that my mind asked me was the toughest one to answer for me. Do I really need such school of thoughts or such opinions which are based upon other's observation and inferences? Any person is driven in his/her life by many different ideas. These ideas are mostly imported from others sometimes willingly, most of the times, imposed. The education plays a great role in formulation of our ideas and opinions and this education involves the ever continued process of reading. Reading the works of art, literature, philosophy and so on. So, it started to seem like necessary to read things in order to get my ideas of life. Then, something struck me somewhere.
I was not feeling comfortable, at all, by inferring all this. The whole idea of borrowing my ideas from someone else looked ridiculous to me. If somebody else can think, can formulate his own ideas and opinions then why can't I? Am I born with some mental disorder so that I will have to borrow my ideas from others? No, I am not. I can have my own ideas, my own opinions. The whole flight of thought recapitulated inside my mind in a flash and then my belief in myself grew even firmer. Inspite of the fact that I haven't read nothing so far, If I am able to think and formulate my opinion on this very issue of reading, I don't think I need anything to read. I have a set of ideas of my own to govern my life. I have a set of opinions of my own on issues of my life. I can, with an insight of my own, look beyond my life. So, why should I let anybody to come and influence me with these. As long as, I have a conviction of my own and I can defend it with logic, I really don't need any influence!

  

The first time that isn't quite!

So, the first post by me on this very blog. This very blog might be new for me but I am not in anyway, new to blogging. I have been busy here for quite some time now. I started there with english posts, usually about movies both hindi and english. There were occasional posts on literature and then there were others somewhat personal. With time, something like an attraction towards hindi blogging came. The reason, I can't really ascertain, but must lie with the fact that hindi is my mother-tongue and have always felt more conversed and comfortable with that. Having said that, my english is then not that bad to completely leave it. There were occasional english posts also there but they looked somewhat alien. So, just a thought of independent blogs for the two languages came, and here I am with this one.
Maintaining one blog has been difficult at times for me and hence, maintaining two of them is not going to be anyhow easier. Will try to be regular here with my thoughts...