A growing problem, too

A follow-up to the last post. Didn't realise it hadn't been posted earlier. I really need to pay a bit more attention to lil bloggy.

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A corollary to the books-I-cant-be-bothered-to-finish, is the books I want to finish, but somehow just can't. Case in point: Sealy's Trotternama.

I can't remember where I picked up my copy, which is in itself an unusual occurrence (I have a vague feeling it was on sale at some book exhibition).  What I do remember is that I hadn't heard of Sealy or the book before, but was simply intrigued by the title.  Which might or might not have to do with the vague feeling that I'd eaten Khyber's* then-famous paaya shorba a few days earlier.  I could be imagining this memory, of course.

The book's been with me for around 15 years.  It's a lumpy Penguin edition, slightly bigger than standard paperback size, which means it sort of flops around.  And it's one of those poor prints that Penguin occasionally comes out with, with a weird narrow font size in a not-blackily-black ink on paper that's really too thin to not see what's on the other side of the page, and with a so bleh cover.

I've made several forays at the book.  I keep getting a quarter into it, and then just ... moving on.  I know I'm quite interested in all the minute details that he goes into, and I don't really mind the archaic English form he slips in, or the fourth-wall breakouts.  But I just couldn't ever finish the book, and a few years ago, I'd put it on my shelf of books-to-be-finished.

I took it up again recently after picking up copies of his Everest Hotel and Red, and devouring them over a couple of days. Right, I figured, you just didn't get Sealy at the time.  Maybe it was all too jumpy-abstract for you then. But you get him now, and Trotter-nama's going to be awesome.

Like bugger it is.  This time I've got halfway through it, and I'm stuck.  The damn thing has been lying on my bedside table for a month now, striking up irritatingly brief conversations with all the other tomes that have passed through, and wondering what it can do to make me love it that little bit more.

I'm seriously considering blaming the physical book for it, for the reasons above.

Which would of course raise a whole set of other questions and issues, such as whether I'm really that shallow as to require good form to appreciate good content, and so on.

Bleh.



* Whatever happened to Khyber? I can't remember it ever being discussed as an option for eating out in the last ... decade or so.  Heck, I can't remember anybody even mentioning it in the same time. Even in guides or somesuch. It's one of those places that seems to have simply been bypassed by the foodie crowd, and probably relies on old faithful diners**. 
** Now that I think of it, this applies to a whole bunch of places that used to be the eating-out option, when there like, five. And are now just staples, dinosaurs, same-old same-old and quite rubbish in most cases. Delhi Darbar's another that springs to mind.

A growing problem

I'd like to think it's because of the way I was taught to eat food - if it's on your plate, you finish it. And that somehow this extended in my mind on how to read books - if you started it, finish it.  Or maybe I just watched too much Mastermind.

It used to be a point of pride.  No matter how plodding the book, how utterly bad the writing, how boring the plot, if I'd got past the first dozen pages, I was going to finish it. If only so I could utterly shred it apart once I was done.  That was the rule.

Somewhere down the line, though, that changed.  I think the first book I consciously put aside was American Psycho*, which was just too .... 

Then came the ill-fated re-re-attempt to read Ulysses. Which, by the way, I blame for the stoppage of my blogging back then. 

And since then, it's become increasingly frequent.  I get halfway through a book, and if I can't take it any more, I discard it.  Just like that.  And not just with books that are bad.  I've even got to the point where I'm comfortable with leaving a book just because I don't like it.  No more 'oh I should read it to expand my horizons', or 'I should be open to all forms of writing', no more 'oh but novels are meant to be deep and full of pathos and misery'.  Screw that.

No regrets, no feeling of ashamed guilt, no itch of incompleteness.  Just, away, and onwards.

Maybe it's the increased awareness that there are so many better books that I could better be spending my diminshing time on.  Maybe it's the acceptance that I simply don't like some genres and styles of writing, and more importantly, that I don't have to.  Maybe it's just the fear of disappointment, and being content with the books that I know appeal to me**.  Maybe I'm losing that sense of urgency and drive to go read the works of all the amazing authors I have only heard of thus far.  Maybe it's that I know the world is shite, and I just can't deal with more tragedy and pain and angst in the fiction I read for pleasure, however well-written they may be.

Maybe it's just a phase.




* I was certain I'd posted about this before, but can't seem to find any mention on the blog.  I might have deleted the post.  I do that quite often.
** I find myself re-reading a lot.

A quiet chat

Do you remember ICQ and MSN and Yahoo messenger and GTalk?

I used to use several of these, because different friends had different addresses and preferred the look-and-feel of a particular one. And then people started shifting to Orkut and FB and Twitter and Whatsapp and Viber and Snapchat.

It slowly got lonelier and lonelier.  After all, in this always-connected world, who needs those old IM platforms when the smartphone apps are so much better? (Well, people who don't use smartphones, for one!) 

I still use one of the old ones, mostly for work.  Till not so very long ago, there used to be a regular flow of friends on it.  But slowly slowly, the logged-in list has been growing shorter and shorter, till now it's only populated by those who know it's the best way to reach me for conversations (when they can't talk, of course).

I guess the reasoning is not without logic - why bother to log in on multiple platforms when nearly everybody is on the two-three big ones? And for those who aren't, well, tough. In a world where we have too many friends in too many places and too little time, a few are bound to slip through the crack, right? And if they do, and you don't really miss them, then obviously they didn't matter to you that much, yes?

Whatever. All I know is that I have to continually log on to bloody FB to keep tabs on my friends. 

And let's not even get started about emails. 

Hidden deaths

There's a dead wasp on the path. Ants swarming round, calling in reinforcements till they successfully begin to lift-drag it away.  I wonder if it died, fell and was then discovered, or if it was got injured and fluttering on the ground, got pounced upon by this army.

I realise I don't know how long wasps live, or how they die if fortunate to live their entire lifetime. Do they just stop breathing (how do they breathe)? Do they just stop and settle down somewhere, waiting as their vitality drains away? Or do they submit to the hive-mind, surrendering their bodies for the little nutritional value; one last task for the good of all? 

I look around, and I see butterflies and birds and little flies brought by the heat.  I see them everyday, and when they flit off, I dismiss them.  Show's over, see you again tomorrow.

But where do they go? Do you butterflies group together in a bush at night? Do flies have hives or nests? Are these the same ones I saw yesterday, or are those all just so much fodder by now?  And if they are mulch, did they topple over, or did they just stop and fall mid-air?

I keep thinking I've read all of this somewhere before, but I realise that I don't really know, and am merely trying to convince myself. And I realise that where once I would have rushed off to learn about such new things, today I insist that if I just spent enough time reflecting, all this information would be dredged up from whatever deep recess it had been stored in. 

I try not to even think about the fact that I haven't even thought about these things. Or why.

The thought of my curiousity dying scares me more thoroughly than the prospect of my own death.

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All the dead wasps I've ever seen have been curled up, like a newborn baby.  One position, two diametrically opposite stages of existence.

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So much to know. So much to known about what to know, what there is to know. 

Planting roots

Increasingly, there are days when I daydream of planting fruit trees.

Over the years, I've had the fortune of having access to private gardens and courtyards that have had a plethora of fruit trees.  There are the friends and family who've lived on land where fruit trees existed (some of which they planted themselves). In England, the houses I lived in and visited all had fruit trees, even if just one lone apple tree, not to mention fruit bushes everywhere.

One of my favourite memories is of discovering a love apple tree in Lonavla, and plonking myself in the branches one whole morning, stuffing myself sick with dozens of a fruit which normally cost a pretty penny back in Bombay.  I'd like to think I love that memory because it's a mixture of the large-village atmosphere of Lonavla as it was back then, the knowledge that this wonderfully warm summer morning held no threats of schoolwork, and the fact that I was on holiday away from the city.  But I know it's mainly because I remember the delightfulness of crunching into dozens of sweet fruit, which had not been touched up or fake-ripened and were not bland.

I have a couple of fruit saplings now, but they're in pots.  I tend to them, enjoying the few fruits they've already started giving, and hope I will be able to take them along in the next move.  I could leave them behind to some little park here, but the gardeners don't seem to be too fussed and keep talking about quotas, which makes me angrier at the concept of planned gardens.  And perhaps, even if they were enthused, I mightn't leave them behind.

Because I want to watch these trees grow.  I want to see them age year by year, defying the winds and the rain and the sun and the horrible things in the air to keep getting a little wider, a little more hard-skinned.  I want them to not be the nomads we're all increasingly becoming, to settle down in one spot and create a little bastion of oxygen and shade and coolness and colour and aroma and taste.  I want them to be the little permanence I can return to, a little reminder of time and memory that will (hopefully) outlast me.

I want to plant apples and love apples, and pears and guavas, and peaches and nectarines, and plums and damsons and greengages, and oranges and sweet limes, and papayas, and mulberries and raspberries and gooseberries, and figs, and chikoo, and mangoes and mangoes and oh-so-many-mangoes.  I want to wander the countryside to plant them wherever there's space and suitable conditions, and wherever somebody wants them.  Call me Johnny Fruitseed.

And who knows, maybe some day, some kid might hoick themselves up into one of them branches and spend a lazy summer's day curiously watching to see just how far their tummy will swell and just how messy their clothes will get if they keep eating.

And who knows, maybe some day, I will too.

Long, long ago

... I'd written about how my personal library now expands almost entirely thanks to the existence of street-vendors and charity shops. Well, five years since then and things are pretty much the same. And yet, not.

I still almost never buy new books for myself, although I don't buy as many books anymore* either.  I still prefer thumbed-through books, but I've started leaning towards ones that not that thumbed-through. I pick up random books that seem interesting, but only if they seem really interesting, and are likely to be re-read over the years.

I've also entered what I can only term as a period of consolidation.  Which means I'm replacing copies that have become decrepit over time (if they weren't already to start with**). I still don't mind a faded cover and yellowed pages, but I no longer seem to compromise on torn corners and ink marks.

Most curiously, I've got to the point where I'm begun selecting (and discarding) books on the basis of their book covers.  So I will only pick up a Discworld book if it's one of the original Corgi prints with the Josh Kirby designs, rather than the miserably 'adult' Harper Collins ones. I used to think it was just that I wanted to standardise any series I had, but now I find myself rejecting stand-alone titles because the cover is 'meh'.

And I'm also doing this by size. I keep finding myself staring at my shelves and getting irritated because a line of books by the same author are of varying heights and disrupt the flow of the book-line. I keep comparing different formats against each other to try and figure out which one I prefer and why. And then I keep hoping I'm not getting all obsessive-compulsive.

Thankfully, I'm not yet (too) fussed about the font size and page colour, but I suspect I'm headed there.

All of which only adds more impetus to my book-hunting, and introduces a heightened element of thrill. The joy of finding that one title you don't have in the cover you prefer in the size you like, for a sum that's a bargain, after months of searching through stacks of dusty piles? As the ad says: Priceless.

At any rate, the temporary adrenaline kick at such a discovery helps me pretend a little longer that I'm not just turning into a middle-aged fussy fusspot.



* I've even had to tap my inner executioner and cull my library***. This is what happens when you greedily accept random books your friends and relatives don't want, or buy ones that are on sale for 20p, in the hope that they might be interesting. And they turn out not to be.  Also, lack of space.
** Why would I buy such books in the first place? Because - a) I just had to have them then; and b) They were a bargain.
*** I needed therapy after the act(s). I still blame my evil twin.

Things change.

And you look back, and look around now, and you wonder.

And you doubt.

And you laugh. off.

And you cringe.

And you rationalise.

And you cannot believe it was you who was that, then.

And you cannot accept that it will still be you, soon, doing the same things in years to come.

And you deny.

And you fight.

And you reinvent.

And you never accept that this is you.

And that this will always be you.

And you're stuck.

And that if you just realised that, you would be free.

Space's lovely piece on Konark dove-tailed in rather nicely with this post that I'd been drafting, and finally pushed me into finishing it.

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Possibly the one thing I'll take back most strongly from my years in this country is the depth of appreciation for the - and I'm struggling to make this a proper term - history of social architechture (as it were).

Oh yes, they do go on about their cathedrals and palaces and monuments (which are fairly spectacular), but most countries will do that about major architechtural wonders. But what really gets me is this peculiarly British devotion to, and delight with, everyday architechture that dates back centuries. I guess it partly comes from the whole pride in the Empire part, and partly from being such a storied nation, but that itself doesn't quite explain the mentality of a people who maintain and quite regularly use a local church which was first thrown open to the masses in 1079 AD. Or a row of houses that are still lived in, overlooking a busy road, with the youngest of them being 280 years old.

Maybe it's the size of the island, which really is quite astonishingly small for someone who's used to 20-hour train journeys being normal (there's apparently only one train route in the whole of the UK which has sleeper coaches). But there's this distinct interest not just in things big and marvellous, but in things small and lovely.

You cannot but spend time travelling with a resident of this country without being pointed out fascinating little asides - oh Siegfried Sassoon lived here, and that place actually used to be a proper mill, and this Roman road goes on all the way to Bristol. And if you happen to know someone who's even mildly interested in history and architecture, then you can look forward to being generally hurtled about and made aware of all the endless crenellations and window types and roof variations that abound.

Which means that when I do get time in India, I see things with quite a different view. It's always been fascinating walking around the old parts of Bombay - again, perhaps because so much of the architechture was from the time of the British. Most of the structures may now be dilapidated and grimy, but if you look carefully, you suddenly see the quaintest, unique design structures. And I'm not talking of the standard places - just wander round Old Bombay, and really look at the buildings. The V-shaped structurs, the little balconies, the portholes, the beheaded gargoyles, stairs so steep you feel you're getting on a ladder...simply fascinating stuff.

Oh sure, they might not be the ideal house to actually live in. But they are - or rather, were - a damn sight more interesting than these monolithic slabs that have been erected all over their demolished foundations.

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On this last trip, I just kept wishing for a whole month where I could simply wander the streets of Old Bombay, taking lots and lots of snaps of the buildings. Much like what Szerelem was doing in Delhi. Maybe I should just get her to do Bombay too (which reminds me, where are you, Szer?)

Some day, maybe.

Commenting on the last post, KM asked some pertinent questions - particularly whether there ever was something that could be defined as Indian-ness, and whether my not finding it anymore is because maybe I've changed.

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There are two equally horrible traps an emigrant can stumble into - an unjustified nostalgia for the country they have left, which keeps growing with every minute not spent in the place, out of all proportion to the reality left behind; or, an undepth-able hatred for the place, which keeps growing with every minute not spent in the place, out of all proportion to the reality left behind.

It's a bit like school/college - you either remember only the good times and two decades later convince yourself that you had an awesome time while you were there, or you can only remember all the frustrations and humiliations and keep obsessing about them till you cannot help but spew vitriol all the time.

Both possibilities are open to those who choose to leave. But there is a middle ground - for people who move not purely because of choice, but because of a series of circumstances.

I am one of these people.

For the larger part of my life, I made no attempt to leave India. The option was considered, weighed, and rejected in favour of staying put. But then I had to move (various reasons for both, but we won't go there).

And so, I find myself on that middle ground. Where I can appreciate the quality of life in a country such as this, compare it unfavourably to that back home, and yet appreciate the many myriad ways life is better in India. I criticise both places, and appreciate them both, and I can do so without getting either sentimental or vitriolic.

Out here, I love recycling facilities, and cycle lanes, and orderly queues (oh baby, queues), and parks all around, and the abundant quantities of couscous and dark chocolate. I love that even in crowd, people tend to respect your space. I love that drivers actually make way for emergency vehicles, and honk only if the other person is truly an idiot.

I crib about all this whenever I go back home...no, that's not right. That's stuff I used to crib about even when I was back home. Stuff lakhs of other people crib about too. And when I get home (it's still home), and plunge into a noisy crowd and walk down dirty roads and eat junk off street vendors, it all just...fits.

Yet. With every passing year, I find myself getting more and more irritated with the attitudes and practices of Indians.

Actually, make that Indians in cities.

I just cannot bothered with the sheer aggravation anymore. Whether it's multiplexes that think it's fine to charge me thrice the amount a single-screen cinema charges (can't anybody teach about economies of scale?), or news channels that have six (six!) lines of text on the screen, or neighbours who still think it's ok to have their marble floors cut and polished at 10pm, or idiots who will stand off the kerb on a blind corner when traffic is rushing at them, or....

I keep telling everybody that I doubt I could live in an Indian city again. Ok, I could, but in the same way I could poke knitting needles into my little toe every morning. I just wouldn't want to.

Because the simple truth is that, over the decades, cities in India have simply gone downhill. I'm not even blaming the corrupt bureaucrats or the uncaring politicos. It's just the sheer numbers that drown every effort. Our cities simply do not have the long-term planning or the time to implement them, or the infrastructure to cope with the millions who pour in all the time. Even if there was somebody honest enough to try and do something, at best it's like trying to stop a leaking dam with some towels.

I walked around Bombay this time. And yes, there are all the new roads and highways and sea bridges and new trains and smart buses. Improvements. But all it will do is convince more people not currently living in the city, that it is now worth living there, and draw in more moths to the burning flame of commerce.

Like Delhi. In the past decade, the city has improved amazingly, and even people from other metros might consider living there, despite all its pretensions. And where does that leave us? With more chaos. I tried thinking of what I'd do if I somehow managed to get enough idiots citizens to vote me into power. Scared me to heck.

Where would you even start? You need lots of cops for one. Who'd want to be one though? You can't even give them decent housing, and their salary is so shite, they are pretty much forced into accepting bribes. You need to get all the cabs and rickshaws sorted - it's illegal to drive in a private car without seatbelts, but try getting the cabbies and rickshaws to do so, and the unions would shut down the place. You need to start recycling garbage, but who's got the trucks and manpower for it? And then where would you dump it? Other countries send their stuff to us to recycle.

It just....

So yes, there was something that could be termed Indian-ness. Now it's just...me-ness. And no, I'm not jealous of the rise of the new middle-class. I just wish they'd appreciate what they have, and learn to preserve and enhance it for others around them, and all those yet to come. Which is why when I get back, I'll probably live in some gaon. Nahin toh 'Khooni darinde ne bichhaaya maut ka jaal' headlines will be soon flashing on a screen near you.

Sorry Brinda, we'll try chirpy next week.

Sometimes I think the worst thing in recent decades to happen to India is the suddenness of the economic boom in the past decade or so (the assorted wars, riots, scams, natural disasters are nothing new, unfortunately).

The suddenness, mind you. Not the boom itself.

I can't help but feel that if we had instead grown along at a solid but unspectacular 4-5% GDP, things would have been far smoother than they are today. It's as if you've taken children who were used to owning a frisbee and a couple of Lego pieces and suddenly given them an anything-you-want voucher from Hamleys.

And then you realise that the little indiscretions you used to gloss over, the not blaming the children for being grabby and thrusty because 'after all, they have so little', cannot now be excused away.

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Indians are warm, friendly, helpful, smiling, inventive, entrepreneurial, hard-working. Canon, yes?

But we are also petty, and bitchy, and inquisitorial, and discriminatory, and selfish in a way that only living in such crowded conditions can make a person.

Till a decade ago, people could just about excuse the latter, because such qualities were thrust into the spotlight only occasionally, and everybody could go back to singing the former platitudes. And it worked (or at least it seemed to) in a 'noble poor' kind of way - yes, we have our faults, but given our conditions, isn't it amazing we're not worse? - that managed to make everyone feel just a little bit better. What else could you do anyway? Everybody was in the same shit, and somebody must've learnt a lesson from crabs, so it made more sense to try and get along.

And then, the money poured in.

And suddenly, people remembered that they didn't care if the music their car was blaring was perhaps a little too loud for 2am; they didn't care about beggars because there must be something really stupid about you if you can't earn money in this economy and besides, everybody knows it's a racket and they're secret millionaires; they didn't care about being delayed from their important work because of arcane rules such as stopping a vehicle when the signal turned red; they didn't care about the impact their lives had on the world around them, because it's just a little litter anyway; they didn't care about pointless concepts such as sustainability, and air quality, and deforestation, because that wasn't happening here, was it; and they particularly didn't care about being told that maybe, just maybe, they did not have the right to violently thump their opinion into somebody who still laboured under the misunderstanding that there was anything to discuss.

And now you've got this weird mixture of old-school feudality and new-age liberalisation, where you can pick up avocados in supermarkets, but only if you let the insistent service attendant pack it for you in a plastic bag that you don't want, so that it can be inspected by a guard near the exit gates which anyway beep if the product has not been scanned.

You've got this mentality where families will bitch about how the inflationary pressures of world quota systems have helped sugar prices jump three-fold in the past two years, but will still see fit to raise the salary of their domestic help by 5% a year, because that's how it was always done.

You've got this belief that you're entitled to home theatre surround sound systems and hi-def earphones, without any attempt at making the one-brick-deep walls any more soundproof, or taking a bloody look around you and realising it's 5.30am in the morning and your fellow train passengers are asleep, because what's a little noise more in all this racket?

You've got convenience food with very little idea of how to implement it, and a lack of understanding which somehow makes people believe it's just fine to spend 80 bucks on a frikkin' burger, just because it's in some fancy mall, and nevermind that the filling is two-thirds flour and one-third six-day old murder-fried veggies.

You've got retail chains trying to create a standardized environment, so that you could walk into any of their shops in any part of the country and be able to pick up the same item there. Which is why you get fleece-lined snow-proof long coats being flogged in a city where the day time temperature is 36C. In January.

Because you now have money. And everybody is equal. And we're entitled to it, and if you don't like the sound of it, you can say hello to my fifteen bulky friends.
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India, by definition, was a confusion of pluralities.

If you lived there out of choice, you loved it for all the eccentricities, all the chaos, all the misunderstandings and subtle elbowing between region and religion and language and community and gender. It was the kind of picture that made sense only if you looked at it from deep inside, and was completely lost to perspective from a long-angled view. The kind of symphony, though just this side of grating, that still had an underlying thread that linked it together.

Now, though, the confusion has crystallised into a blur. Disparate dots that do not connect. White noise in electronic disco beats.

We're rushing so eagerly towards the future that other countries exist in, we've forgotten to ask ourselves just what those people had to go through and how they adjusted, in order to get where they are now. We're running so fast to get to the top of the hill, we don't even realise our shoes have scraped away and the crudely-done road is beginning to cut into our feet.

We're trying so hard to forget what things were like, that we run the risk of erasing who we ever were.

The first thing that hits you when you land here is the smell.

It hangs heavy in the air, wrapping round you with every step you take further in. If it was a person, it would be a late-middle-aged man sitting by a beach, slumped in his unwashed and crumpled shorts, sweating out the cheap rum he's been investigating so intently. The little cooling machines that are planted around only help to make it swirl around even more, chasing you as you try to hurry your way through bored gazes and hustling chancers.

You might be tempted to think it's caused by a mixture of the carpets in this airport and the high humidity, or by the sprawling labyrinth that houses so many thousands nearby. But if you breathe in really deep and let it percolate through your little passageways, you will feel the undercurrent of brine, floating in from all the nearby edges of this little jut of land.

It all floats in - the everpresent threat of malaria from the marshy waters in the undeveloped open grounds, the decades of untreated toxicity from the creek that used to define where the suburbs began, the stupidity of drowning bodies in the shifting sandy beaches to the north-west, and even the smug satisfaction of the ever-powered promenades to the south.

This is not the smell of the city.

This is the smell of what it fought so hard with to become this city, and what it now woos so fervently in order to stay alive. This is the smell of patient and unavenged wrath, waiting to reverse the centuries of desecration and drown this impertinent invader under the weight of its own plastic and broken statues and shit. This smell is a reminder of all the years you were buoyed by all that it contains, and of how you can never escape it, run away though you might.

Welcome to Bombay.

This is the way we ride our bike, ride our bike...

Keys. Helmet. Lights. Vest. Gloves.
Checkcheckcheckachinchang.

Hmm, those treetops are getting it good from Mr. Breeze today.

No, my mistake. It's Mister Wind. Mister I'm-going-to-slam-into-you-from-the-left Wind, to be precise. The Doors would have been appropriate right now.

Oh well, thank goodness for tree cove...

Uh oh.

fuckfuckfuckfuck.

Why are you honking you moron - you think I like swerving randomly into the middle of the road?

HatecyclinghatethesestupidcarsHATEthismiserableislandanditsmiserablebloodyweather.

STOP honking, you little shit - it's a cycle not a bloody tank, you try and keep it stable!

Ok let's just make it to the turning - once we go right, the wind should be behind us, and hopefully that will...

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Is it a bird? Is it plane?

HolycrapIfrikkinLOVEcycling.

Hey doofass, race you in your schmancy beemer.

...what is he grinning he abou...

Uh oh.

Two rights doth maketh a wrong.

fuckfuckfuckfuck.

Whoooaaa shit. Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to bang into you like....Hey, it's not my fault you're not looking while you're walking - and what are you doing out for a stroll on a morning like this anway? Oh yeh, well at least somebody wants to screw me. Jerk.

Just another few hundred metres and we'll be fii...

Whooooaaa shit. Sorrysorry, didn't mean to bang into....yes, simply dreadful weather, isn't it? Hmm? Oh well, it's not so bad usually, and it's good exercise too. And the same to you. Goodbye.

50 metres....

Whooooaaa shit.

Screw this.

This is the way we walk our bike, walk our bike...

Sometimes I wonder how many people have wondered why they keep on going, since nothing matters in the end anyway.

I wonder if they then go on to wonder about this till the very end, even after believing it does not matter anyway.

I wonder if they wonder about the end, and about whether they will still be able to wonder then.

I wonder if at the end, they will be wondering about why they wondered if it does not matter.

I wonder why I wonder about this, when it does not matter in the end either.

Talking of preconceptions

...you'd think by now I would stop being surprised by them, right? Nuh-uh.

Take this film, for example.

It got rented out a while back, because it looked interesting, and it had an interesting mixture of stars. Then, on reading the synopsis a little more, I assumed it was going to be too serious and melancholia-inducing, and decided I was only going to watch it when I was ready for it.

Which meant not when I was already depressed, not when I was very happy either, not in the night so I'd go to bed miserable, not on a Sunday evening because I really don't want to make those worse than they already are - just a very neutral day when things had been just medium-tedium.

Yes, picky. And don't you judge me for not wanting to watch hard-hitting films - sometimes you can have too many of them, and all you want is popcorn brain-numbers. Or a re-run of O Brother (Pop quiz: Is it possible to have watched that too many times? A: Irrelevant query).

Anyways, in the end I got fed up of having it around (plus those nice people from the rental firm were sending out polite reminder emails), so on it went.

And it was....lovely.

Quirky, and funny, and not too cloying or too preachy, and Rickman being typically snarky Rickman, and....just lovely.

So (Shyam, since you were asking), yes, I'm thinking of not seeing the description of an unknown film either and just watching it.

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Of course, since we're on preconceptions and films, I have to bring this up.

Am I the only one who had no clue whatsoever that this film had been made?

And after watching the trailer, and taking into account the discussions of the past two posts, should I not be too quick to be yelling "Travesty!" at the top of my lungs and refusing to go watch the film or even stick around when it's being discussed? Despite the nice little boxing hat-tip, and despite RDJr (Jude Law....meh)?

Should I not give it the benefit of the doubt? And, even if I'm right, and the reviews find that it totally tarnishes the entire vision that Doyle created, should I still not put that aside and just go watch it as just an extremely drug-induced interpretation of his work?

Will you?

Book randomness

Increasingly, I find myself reading books without first reading the back cover or the sleeve, which carries the intro/summary. Of course, it's not completely random - I pick them from a certain genre selection, so I am somewhat aware of what it's going to be like.

I've been thinking about it, but I'm still not really sure why. I first noticed it when I started reading the latest volume in a couple of series, and realised I was 80 pages into it and I hadn't bothered to see what exactly to expect in this one. I shrugged it off.

Then I found myself doing the same with any book which had written by an author I knew and liked, but which I hadn't read. I sort of rationalised it away, figuring maybe it was because I already had some idea about the quality and tone of the book, having read the author's previous works.

But the last few times I've gone to my local library, I've found myself randomly picking up books - even though there are dozens of books that I want to read by authors I really like. And now I'm quite confused.

I'm certainly not bored of reading, or bored of the stuff that's out there. And no, I'm not four, so it's not about pretty bookcovers, ok.

Whatever the reason, there is this - I find myself reading the books more closely. You know how it is when you pick up a book that looks interesting and you sort of know how things are going to go until a certain point, so you sort of just skim through? Not happening.

Because I no longer know what the book is about, or what's going to happen, I'm reading every page like it's going to be the one where things really start to happen. And when they do, it's like that bit in a horror flick where the monster jumps out and shocks you. It's like being told a story when you're a kid, and you're just hearing it unfold, with no preconceptions. It's so much more fun.

Sure, you're likely to pick up some bad books in the process, but the experience of reading the good ones this way is worth it. Try it.

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Talking of books and preconceptions, here's the reverse.

The Bride and I plan to try and read Joyce's Ulysses, as part of a we've-stopped-being-litty-readers-and-have-lost-our-culture (more details on her blog). In addition, I also plan to eat a lot of curd.

I've started the book at least five times, and have never gone beyond page 18 (hush, Falsie, no sneering now). For several reasons.

At first, I was put off because I felt I had to read the book, because it's such a wondrous masterpiece, dontchaknow, and how can you call yourself a bibliophile if you haven't read it, which immediately put me against it (I've posted about this attitude before - any sociologists/psychologists out there who know if there's an actual term for this?). So I picked it up, but resented every word, and eventually put it away.

Then, when I had cooled off enough (give or take two years), I picked it up again and got tired because I thought he was just trying to be clever and difficult for the sake of being so (which he was). And I was like, sod it if I'm going to be patronised. And the last time, well....it just didn't grip me (ok, enough with the gasps of horror already).

Still. There must be something in the book, right? So, once more into the breach, and all that. And in the interest of doing something interesting with blogs, we'll post our progress publicly, discuss how we interpreted/liked the latest bit, and so on.

Anybody want to join in? We could make this a group effort.

Death Post

This post has been in my drafts folder for a year now. I'd decided it would be the last post I'd ever put up on this blog. Then I decided it would be the post I'd give to somebody to put up as the last post on this blog, in case something happened to me that would prevent me from blogging again. My Post From The Beyond, as it were.

Now I've decided to just post it. I guess I'm just tired of seeing it in my drafts folder.

And no, I'm not dying. And no, this isn't the last post on this blog.

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

This is going to be disjointed, rambling, yet (in my mind) connected. And long. It's because I'm sleepy (and you know the theory about talking/writing while sleepy, right? Alrighty then).

I'm probably going to hate dislike it in the morning, but that's why I'm writing this. Because I've been putting aside the things I think of to write, realising I won't be happy about having published them.

Which is not how it should be. Writing. Blogging. Whatever.

It should be easy. Fun. Cathartic. Enlightening. And it is...occasionally. When I'm blogging spontaneously, or thinking about the little things and making sure they're not about the (seemingly) big issues. Like Life.

Because there's no point to that. Talking about Life, that is, or giving your own views on it.

That's hubris.

Because the moment you say things like "the moment you" is the moment you've decided you understand how things work.

But we don't....we don't.

We're all just living this little dream, hoping to whatever powers we may choose to hope in, that we'll get through all the traps without hurting ourselves too much. We're all just hoping that we won't be the ones that will be hit by natural disasters, we won't be the ones to suffer random accidents, we won't be the ones to be diagnosed with some rare terminal disease. We're hoping to make sense of it all, when all we're really doing is trying to find some justification for this perpetual guilt we feel that we have because we have homes, and food when we want it, and money to spend on things we desire, and the knowledge and freedom and the opportunity to be able to reach out and improve ourselves.

And saying all that too, is hubris.

It's me thinking I know more than you. It's me believing that the little minor insights I have gained, which make it easier for me to deal with others and see their problems, makes me better than you. It's me hoping that if I think hard and long enough, something somewhere will make somehow make sense. And that I will be able to explain it to you, and everything will be happyhappyjoyjoy.

It's me keeping this blog alive because I thought I had something to say once. It's me hoping that by thinking and writing, I will some day do.

Do the things I could do, and perhaps should do, given that I can do them well (and better than many others if I choose to), and given that if I did do them, it might make a difference to somebody somewhere.

This is me hoping this isn't my epitaph.

And it's all hubris.

But tomorrow, I'll probably laugh cynically. And turn again to thoughts of how little this all matters anyway. These hopes and thoughts and dreams and actions. These intense investigations of ourselves and our desires and our lives. This handwringing about the true nature of things, and the underlying facets, and oh yes, let's not forget that big grandpappy of them all...the Meaning Of It All.

I believed in it once. I believed that everything could be explained if you could just realise that one moment of complete understanding. That everything would make sense. And that even if it didn't make things, it would make them bearable at the very least.

And I've lived by that credo. Lived by laughing at life, yet living it. Lived by saying that nothing really matters, but willing to accept that perhaps it does. Lived by being alive, but keeping a part of me dead, ready for the possibility that all this is some incomprehensibly complex and insignificantly irrelevant joke. Hedging my bets that this life is all there is, but with the possibility that there's something more.

....
This is all so ridiculous. And petty. Look at the comfyliving pseudogourmet booklover whining about his existential angst. Oh yes, so much woe is me.

What fuck.

I'm doing exactly what I for so long have tried not to - try and explain myself. Describe myself. Telling someone who you are or what you feel, uninvited, is one of the most pretentious and ego-seeking things I can think of. It's like people who go 'Oh I have such a sensitive nature'. Prats. Show, don't say.

And yet here I am, going - oh look at me, look at the 'deep' thoughts I think. Aren't they so insightful? Isn't your life now so much better than it was ten minutes ago? Aren't you just blessed to have found this blog, or even that I deigned to write all this out for you? Worship me, fool!

Again...what fuck.

Like you don't think of them too. Like they haven't been thought of by countless others before, and will be thought of by countless others again. Like they aren't just another piece of surreality that makes this whole life feel like an endless repetition of a terrible waste of laboratory resources. Like any of it matters.

So what's the point of it all; why am I typing all this?

I don't know.

I really don't.

And I'm just too tired, too confused, too thought-out to care.

Maybe I do need to just witter away about something so specific that only eight other people in the world are interested in it. Maybe I need to just witter away about anything and everything in general, that may or may not catch my fancy. Maybe I need a project. Maybe I need to stop being all meta about blogs and blogging and friendships and (you guessed it) Life, and just go with the first thought that occurs to me.

Maybe.

I just can't help feeling that even doing any of that will still be hubris, though.

In one of the chapters of Himalaya, Michael Palin writes about this Bhutanese concert he's attended. And there's a throwaway line where he mentions that the final piece is "anti-climactic", because it's this slow flute solo that follows a tempesteous group number.

And it struck me, that that's the perfect example of how we look at or expect our entertainment to be (or not, in this case).

All concerts must end with a bang. All jokes must have that punchy one-liner. All stories must have that all-conclusive tying up of threads. All films must reach soaring new heights. We litter our lives with such words - Showstopper. Crescendo.

And when anything goes against the grain, we instinctively react with a sense of discomfort and alienation. It's such an ingrained process this - that everything must build/converge to a singularity of maximum impact - that the concept of serene goings-on after the big explosion feels....wrong.

And what struck me particularly, was that's it's just like sex.

Build up, build up, buiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild up....bang. See?

Oh sure, a song may have a quiet note or two after the screech, and a book may have a small epilogue. And that's just like sex too, the gradual climbdown after the big event (that is, if you have one).

But a slow piece following a rock anthem? A film where the crux happens in the first half, and the rest is spent meandering? A crime thriller where the motive/identity is revealed with six chapters to spare, and the rest going on about food? Happens, but very rarely. And when it does, the large proportion of those who partake of it, don't like it. For instance, remember how many people cribbed about the ending of LoTR 3 - despite the fact that it was based on the book, and they even cut out the Battle of the Shire - just because it followed the blowing up of Sauron?

And I wonder whether all these other modes of entertainment happen to imitate sex (because that was the original template), or whether it's just coincidental that they do? Did we subconsciously mould our....expressions to resemble that which first gave them joy, or is it just that this behaviour indicates that this is how humans prefer to enjoy anything? I'll even throw in a feminist angle, about how it could be argued that this 'standard' template of songs/books/stories/films resembles sex because for large parts of human history, they were created and propagated by men.

Fanciful theory, but interesting, na?

And when we're done fighting each other, having tired of throwing unbearable insults and sharpened rocks and sleek-nosed deliveries of scorching metals, we still fight on.

Fending off the prejudices and assumptions and suspicions and hopes that others have of us.

Refusing to believe in ourselves, or stop believing in ourselves, no matter the growing pile of evidence thrown in front of us.

Trying to crash through glass ceilings of all kinds, and break down barriers of race and religion and gender and colour and language and nationality and choice.

Battling our own fears and demons, against the stumbling blocks we place in front of ourselves, against the restrictions we so arbitrarily impose on the way we live our lives.

Internalising it all, with every cell resisting death, our blood straining against gravity, our minds struggling to retain what they have absorbed so far, and all the while, trying to resist the ravages of the glacial cleansweeping force that is Time.

And always, always scratching away at the mysteries of the world, and those in it, hoping to learn what no one before us has.

And yet, we talk and dream of Peace.
What a quaint little concept.

I Am, I Be

Take a stance, reach a decision, make a choice, follow a path.
Or don't.

Drink, or be a teetotaller. Carnivore, vegetarian. Feminist, traditionalist. Smoker, smoke-frantic-wave-offer. Mac/PC. Idlis loses to eggsontoast beats Porridge&cereal. I bike...Ha! but I drive. Kurta-jhola?No,no, torn jeans and slingbags! Writer, reader, listener. Happy-clappy fights show-me-a-miracle-now. Tolkien against Joyce. Socio? maybe Physics? maybe Stats. Dylan acoustic v Dylan electric. Couch potato hate lycra-lover.


You do or you don't.
You say or you don't.
You believe or you don't.
You are or you aren't.

On and on and on. Always with the making a choice.

And that's what defines us. Or that's how the world chooses to define us.

And look what a lovely little world we've made of it, eh?

Maybe we should just be more often.
Be more neutral, or be more everything.
Take a stance less often. Or learn some newer stances.
Make fewer choices. Or make more choices.
Reach that little twist in perception where you no longer have to choose between the choices. Or where you can choose all the choices.

I am, I be. And I refuse to be defined by my choices.

....except for mangoes. One is most decidedly all for mangoes. Make of that what you will.

If you've read this blog long enough, you'll know that I frequently return to a few key themes - one of which being that there's nothing original left to say or write about anymore.

It's something I try not to think about, something I try really hard to avoid acknowledging, but it just keeps returning ever so often to mock me and taunt me.

And it keeps asking - why, really, do we still write?

Are we trying to explain and describe Love? Lust? Sex? Greed? Betrayal? Despair? War? Marriage? Childhood repression? Struggles against despots? Surviving ethnic cleansing? Living in an alien land? Success despite the odds? Crime? Zombies? Elves and dwarves? Distant planets? Angst-ridden teenagers? The meaning of our existence? The lack of meaning in our existence? How our universe may just be a drop in a gigantic ocean of multi-verses? How there is no god? Or how there is a god and it created the universe as an experiment?

Done, done, and done again.

And done well.

And in different languages.

There is nothing you can pick up to read that somebody else cannot point to have been written before. And yet.....we keep writing. And we keep reading. And the trees, oh the tree, they keep getting murdered.

(A caveat here - I guess I'm really talking about fiction here. New books that are observational and informational non-fiction, those I can understand.)

So what is it? Why do we keep doing this? Why do those of us who do write, write? Why do we work so hard on these stories that we just have to tell? Is it anything more than just clever little nuances of word-arrangements and style-quirks and clever little lines?

And why do those of us who read, read? Why do we hunt down and devour all the "bright new voices" that spurt out onto the scene? Do we really think we're going to find something new that we haven't found before? Do we really believe that there's some new thought out there that nobody's thought of, and which will change the way we see our world? Or has it simply become about how well the person writes, rather than what they write about?

So, at what point does it stop being about the matter and becomes more about the style? If it's just about the latter, then that's fine. Reading Murakami and Keret and Vonnegut for the way they spin their stories is fine. But reading them and believing that they, and others like them, are saying something new and profound and, goodness forbid, wise - well, really now.

Yet, we write and we read. I write and I read.

And perhaps, the answer is because we want...need...the stories.

Because we want to keep understanding all the possible facets of any defined feeling/situation/era. Because we believe there is no absolute answer, and every story we read brings us closer to our version of the truth. Because we need to know we're not alone, and somebody somewhere looks at the world in the way we do. Or doesn't. Because this is the only way we know to live all those lives we haven't, or can't. And because, in the end, we still dream of being four years old and lying curled up somewhere while somebody's describing these wondrous lands and the amazing beings that inhabit them.

So, I write. You read. And when you're done, you can buy me a crate of mangoes.