In Search of a Lost World

Before I was out of kindergarten, I had already tried falling into rabbit holes, getting inside mirrors and climbing up trees, none of which led to any different world. Before long I realized that the only thing that entered at night through my open window was cold and sore throat but never any one called Peter Pan nor any flying object that remotely resembled a fairy. I should have given up at that time but I didn't.

Before I started my high school I was sure that the charming prince that all the stories kept talking about was somewhere  out there but in a different country or place, certainly he couldn't be from the same place that I stayed in. There was nothing charming about the boys I knew. By the time I went to high school, I had no interest in the prince anymore, charming or otherwise. There were other worlds of mystery and adventure that occupied my mind. By the time I finished my high school, I was so impressed by these imaginary worlds that I wanted to make one of my own. I believed everyone has a story and I believed each one of them are worth telling. And so I took time to listen to those. A friend once accused me of being a story stealer. The thought made me a little proud and I hoped with each story I stole, I was making my own story richer and better.

I wanted to tell my story. But I never did. Not after I finished high school, not in the college, not after graduation, not while I started working, not when I joined my post graduate course and not after I finished it, not when the corporate world sucked me up for the second time and not even now. Because, I don't have a story. At least not yet or rather not anymore.

By now I have lost even the fragments of my imaginary world. I don't have the thoughts or the characters who kept my childhood alive and colorful. Nor do I remember their features or presence. In fact I have started having doubts if they ever existed. They probably didn't. It is just that up until then, I believed that they did. Now I don't. I have heard, seen and read many stories. They all are still worth telling but perhaps I was mistaken. In the course of listening so many stories, I forgot how to tell one. And so now I no more want to create a world of my own. I just want to roam about or get lost in all those other created worlds. May be, just may be then I will find some of the fragments of my world back.

And so time passes

"I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I am tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?" - The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

That's the latest book I have picked up. There are a few more around. Some half read, some still not started and some on the verge of ending. They keep me company. It feels good to have books around me. Not a lot. Just a few so that I know I have something to do when I don't want to think or talk or when I can't sleep and songs are not enough. Most of the time I pick up a book and that makes everything simple. Cooking helps too but most of the time I used to be lazy. I have improved. One more task just gives me more choices on what to do to not think.

Then I pick up random hobbies. Blogging used to be a big thing once upon a time. One time I started crafts. Gifted that to someone. I started sketching. continued it for sometime but left all my books back at home so now I have to go buy them again. That will go in to my list of things to do. I picked up origami recently and used all available waste papers at home to makes all kinds of birds, flowers, butterflies. But it took too much space so I suspended a few of them above my bed and pasted the rest on the walls. If nothing else, it made my room a little more lively. Something that makes me smile every time I enter the room.  

Weekends, I meet up friends, go for a movie (rarely) or a play (latest craze) or just make a list of things to buy and go shopping. I am not much of a shopper. Not when alone unless there is something specific that I want to buy. Discs and pubs don't excite me at all so those places are not even thought of unless someone else suggests and even then most of the time I find a reason to not go. I wish I started writing again. But these  days words seem to just disappear before I can pen them down. Then again when I am trying to run away from thinking, how can I write. But I will again, soon.

"I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way." - The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Heroism and Martyrdom

When I took up the course for "Leadership: Inspiration, Dilemmas & Action", I hadn't realized what was in store. But with the end term over, I look back to a series of lectures that have rekindled my questioning. As part of the class presentation, groups had to take up sessions on given topics. Ours was "Heroism and Martyrdom" based on the book Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw. The groups were given the creative freedom to decide how they wanted to present.The topic was chosen by us of course. Our choice was based two reasons, it was about Joan of Arc, and it was a little later in the term. The third reason that it was based on a book applied for all other topics.

Back to books

If nothing else, this internship at least rekindled my first love. 

So one day I was updating my bookshelf in Shelfari when the about me section suddenly caught my attention and from there four little words stared back at me "Reading keeps me sane" and with that all those moments flashed before my eyes when reading had actually kept me sane. If then, why not now. :) So I was back to books. What about blogging then? Blogging keeps me alive. Not the 'alive and breathing' but the 'alive and living'. So in short last one year I had been insanely dead. Not that I can disagree.

So what am I blogging today? Obviously its about books. And why? Because I came across this post - "And so read on" and I thought, its time I added another list. This time not just classics :)

So here is a list (in no particular order) of what I have been reading in the last month:

1. Vampire Diaries by LJ Smith
2. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
3. A Room with a View by EM Forster
4. The Invisible Man by HG Wells
5. The Wedding by Nichloas Sparks

Life of (a new) Pi

As the world is moving towards a paper-free living, Idea came up with its new ad - 'the ped bachao ad'. And it makes more sense that Amazon should have tried to launch Kindle in India just a few months back. Although probably it did not click as expected.
And while iPad and Sony reader are yet to make way into the Indian Market, it seems India has come up with its own ebook reader - "Pi"

Read more here

The introductory price comes out to be 10k. You can pre-order it here for 999/-.
And in case you do can you please drop me the review after using it.

My brother bought a kindle long back (been more than a year now!) and ever since then I had been waiting for something like that to launch in India. And now finally the day has come.

But here is a list of my concerns:

• Does not support internet. I think it should support the USB driven net connections.
• Books are not part of the package. Will have to buy them separately. At least a few should have come with it.

That being said, it has some interesting features too

• It supports Indian languages but I could not find any regional language book in the site. (May be I missed them)
• Supports an array of formats like EPUB, PDF, EPUB, HTML, TXT, MOBI, DOC. So finding ebooks should not be a problem.
• For all those music lovers, it supports a music library of MP3 and you can plug in the earphones while reading.
• Says that battery life is 7 days. Now that is a lot of books for my kind of person!

And for any other specifications, please help yourself and find it on the net.

So now all said and done, I understand the concern of saving trees and hence a paper-less world but a book is still a book. What do you people think? How successful will Pi be?

And so read on...

"Fact is stranger than fiction" and yet, we readily accept the facts of newspaper but have hard time believing the fictions of books.

Well, that was not what I am going to write though. :)
I was on a classic reading spree for sometime. It broke because a speed-breaker completely toppled me and I found myself fallen on my face! So while I was on my classic reading spree, I read some unusual classics and I thought I might as well compile a list of those books (together with some I read before) for those few people who still come and peek in my blog :D

Ok, so here it goes in no particular order:

1. 1984 by George Orwell.
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
   
3. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
   
4. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
   
5. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
   
6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
   
7. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
   
8. Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marqez
9. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
   
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
11. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
    

Now, I have seen that it is quite difficult to find a classic lover and usually they will still fall into various categories. So if you find classics tiring, slow-paced or tedious, I will still say, you try reading the first 3. Although, 1984 and Brave New world are almost on the same line.

Science fiction lovers, "Brave New world" and "1984" is just the kind of book you might like. They are classics so don't expect too much of modernity and of course, keep in mind the the era in which they were written. (There aren't any aliens btw so if you are looking for that, I suggest go somewhere else :D)

For people who like reading about unreal things, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is a must, must, must! For me, it was an eye opener. If you haven't read this, you have no idea what a classic can be. And forget about the plot. Each of its sentence has so much depth that you can keep pondering upon it.

Lets see now... if you are one of those who like the female oriented classic sort of book then you will prefer "Jane Eyre", "Pride and Prejudice" or "Gone with the Wind". These are usually favorites among girls. "JE" was my first classic, so obviously it holds a special place :). In case of "P&P" and "GwtW", the main characters Lizzy and Scarlett have made the books special for me.
But then GwtW has a lot more. If War interests you, if you are curious to know about how wars have changed lives, "Gone with the wind" might interest you.

For all those people who have interests in psychology, "Lolita", "Crime and Punishment" and "Love in the time of Cholera" are sure to give you some new insights. However be warned, they can be slow. And especially for Lolita, I would suggest you read the plot first, it isn't the kind that triggers good feelings. "Love in the time of Cholera" - well actually it is a lot about love and cholera and once you read it, you wouldn't know where one ends and the other begins. No not the usual mushy-mushy love story. For "Crime and Punishment", the title suggests a lot. Existentialism readers, "Crime and Punishment" is the book for you. Go read the mind of person on how he justifies his actions.

That leaves us with "Anna Karenina" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge". You might call them typical classics.

Actually I read "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Far from madding crowd" one after the another and for some reason the first one caught my fancy. May be because the plot was a little different or the pace was a little faster. It is set on the rustic surroundings of a village and tells the story of ... well if you are so much interested, go and read the book!

Personally "Anna Karenina" is not one of my favorites. And if you have never read classics, I will suggest, you do not start with it. Let me tell you the reasons - firstly it is huge, close to 800 pages and slow. By the time you reach the end, you might have forgotten how it had started. No seriously! Secondly it has too many characters and somewhere in between the main focus changes from one character to another. So basically you might forget about whom you were reading. Thirdly, there are too many stories. You have to keep count. Fourthly, after all these, if you manage to finish it, you might not like the ending. I mean I did not find the end worth all the efforts :(

Inspite of all these, it is a masterpiece. You might want to read and know why. (Like I did :D)
I think, the character sketching is amazing. The way each of the characters develop with each situation. Nowhere, you will think the changes to be abrupt inspite of the fact that the characters actually undergo great changes. Ok, I told that it has a lot of stories bound together. But the binding part is quite good. In a way it feels likes you are watching a real life story and not a fiction. And probably the end part was more on the expected lines of the then society so I should not complain. Now I am leaving the choice to you.

I guess that should do for today. :)
Huge list and too many reasons. If you ever happen to read a classic, do let me know what you thought about it and why.

Happy reading

Of Books and Authors II

(For all the readers of this blog, I have included the links to my poems in the side-bar. If you go through them, don't forget to drop in your comment)

I never finished the more-than-1100-pages book in fear that once I finished, I would never care to look at Holmes again. Today I took out the book and smiled at myself.

Soon after this during the same years I was introduced to Ruskin Bond. It was his simplicity of words that stole my attention, the depth of his thoughts. And his stories were in first person and while reading them I felt as if I was his confidant. There was something personal in the way his stories were told, quite different from Dr Watson who (almost) merely placed the facts before the readers. There were more reasons - his closeness to nature and that he could touch all the stages of life - childhood, youth and old age in the same way. Then there was the twists he always managed to bring about in some of his short stories like "The eyes have it".

Coming to short stories of course how can I forget some of my all time favorites "The last leaf" by O.Henry, "The Open Window" by Saki, ... I am forgetting some of them, there are so many which I can always read and enjoy even for the umpteenth time. The best however remains "The face on the wall"by E.V.Lucas.

In my standard 9th and 10th I had to stop my frequent trysts with story books. Then in my 11th it started again. But this time the books were quite different. Most of the time I finished them just because I had started them. I didn't give them much of my time either. After 12th, I started classics. "Jane Eyre" was good. "Pride and Prejudice" was fine. But after reading "Sense and Sensibility", I lost interest. The next book I undertook was "Fountainhead". The philosophy went way over my head but I liked it because of the strength of the characters.

Many books came on my way after that - books by Jeffery Archer, "Harry Potter", "Class", "Animal Farm", "Diary of a young girl", and there were more (my memory fails me). I liked them for different reasons.

In the recent days I read Da Vinci Code, The Alchemist. I also read some Indian authors whom I liked because of the richness of language, the poetic approach and because it was not one of those cut-sliced-and-served-on-a-plate sort of book, it was as-you-want-to-take-it kind of book. This includes one more book "The pale view of hills" (my regrets, I forgot the name of the Japanese author).

But you see all these still do not answer the question "Who is my favourite author". All are so much different from each other and I like them for different reasons. Is it not possible that the question remains unanswered.

Of Books and Authors - I

I always believed reading is my hobby. Of course I will agree that from the vast sea of books that exist, what I have tasted probably does not constitute even one drop. But does that matter? I wonder. Then the usual question comes up, "Who is my favourite author". For various reasons I always stumble upon this question. Although I do manage to answer, but the question continues linger in my sub-conscious.

My earliest memories are of the "Champaks" and "Tinkles" that used to occupy most of my reading. Then came "Tintin", "Asterisks" and all. With the introduction to my mother tongue I came in touch with bengali works including compositions of my father. All these were very prized possessions of mine. And I still remember the feel of the warm fresh tears that streamed down my eyes when I was returned one of my prized possessions in tattered conditions. It was as if someone very close to me was returned to me in near-death condition after being brutally tortured. That was when I was in class 1st.

My change of school in 4th standard brought me to the magical world of library. And with that I was introduced to Enid Blyton and the like. I actually do not remember the various authors whose work I read then because at that time, the characters were more important. Some of the characters were Mr Pickwick, Amelia Jane, and how can I forget Alice and Peter Pan. Then came the adventures. My first step was Famous Five, then I ascended to Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. But none of these made much of an impact.

It was then that I came across Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. All previous books gave a feeling of imagination but this one was different. I used to get so engrossed while reading it that I thought I was a part of the team too. I started admiring Holmes. His deductions, calculated moves, acumen, penetrating mind, flawless logic, the calmness with which he dealt with the situations - all used to take away my breath. Each time I found him in some danger, my heart used to skip a beat. Everywhere I went, be it school or travel the almost 5 cm thick book was to be with me. For me he was a like a living legend and I denied to believe that he was a work of fiction. I still remember after I read a story in which he couldn't catch the culprit (the culprit was a lady) I remained heartbroken for quite sometime. That was in standard 7th - 8th.

I am sorry the constraint of time does not permit me to continue. So I will take a break today but I will return soon with the rest of the journey.