maybe

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I must have been eleven or twelve, I imagine, when a teacher gifted me with a tiny book hardly the size of my hand. It was an enchanting little thing and I carried it around in the pocket stitched into my school uniform. It was a big pocket and I remember how during recess the girls in school walked around the canteen with their wallets bulging from below the fabric. I stole nuggets of time for nuggets of poetry, skimming through (not without guilt) the longer verses, hoping they’d finish faster. I might not be wrong to suppose that that was when I first cultivated an appreciation for poetry that could capture an entire idea in eight lines or less. A Child’s Garden of Verses BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN- (skip a line) SON, illustrated by Charles Robinson, whose art in this collection established his reputation. He went on to contribute work to hundreds of editions, including Alice In Wonderland and The Secret Garden. Every poem, however tender and true, is accompanied by images equally tender and true. They created for me a secret passage out of the mundane lessons in school and boring family dinners; I had repeated a few quietly to myself so many times that they were committed to memory. ‘The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings. The world is so full of a number of…’ I dare say some kids thought I was a nut but no one understood, or maybe I couldn’t explain, the magic I carried inside me. I am bigger than you, I think I might’ve said then (but I didn’t for surely that would have invited a host of criticism since I was a fairly large child). So I sank deeper and deeper into myself and into my kingdom of happy thoughts. Eventually I lost it in heaps and piles of rubbish accumulated over the years, gradually forgot about it and gave the memories free rein to recede into the gray area of time and age. Imagine my surprise and delight when today, while clearing drawers and sweeping up a decade of memorabilia, I chanced upon my childhood imaginary world, this wonderful tiny book of escape; I sat on the dusty floor, opened it up. Stevenson says it best when he writes, 'But the glory kept shinning and bright in my eyes, / And the stars going round in my head.'

Yes! I've got Hotel Dusk! Now I'm stuck between wanting to start on it today after finishing the first part of Ace Attorney and starting on it after the exams when I'll need more distractions..

Yes, Preet. What a life-altering decision it will be either way.

If and when there is milk in the fridge, these days I mix myself a cup of coffee with just a dash of Van Houten chocolate powder, and sip at it until I feel the cotton-wool-and-oil heaviness melt off my head. The coffee powder is a cheap 3-in-1 but my taste buds are surprisingly accustomed to its thin, weak taste; I've come to like it, and although I don't look forward to waking up, I do look forward to home-made mocha warming up the insides of my mouth and stomach. There are days I go for seconds; one year ago my caffeine receptivity would never have allowed it but these days, I get a raging headache and movie-character cranky if I don't get my fix within 2 or 3 hours of waking up and then some more. But in the mornings I like to imagine myself at a 1900s hole-in-the-wall sort of Parisian cafe with a dainty obligatory croissant next to my cup and checking my email on a super high-speed wireless internet connection. Or that ahead of my study table, which is plastered against the wall, is an Italian barista and imagine I can have all the comforts of my books and internetitivy while across the table/counter lie the coffee-making paraphernalia and crumbs from the loaves of bread baking in the oven and if I crook my head and look further behind the barista, I can discern quite clearly a quaint little street winding off to somewhere.

I need a job so I can buy and read Margaret Atwood and Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

After 'The Grand Inquisition', the best chapter I've read so far is Chapter 17 in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in which Mustafa Mond and the Savage talk about god and religion. It's absolutely brilliant. Honestly, I can see Mond's side of the argument quite well and I sympathize with his vision of the world. Unfortunately, I do not sympathize with the results. Such a totalitarian, consumption-driven, class-stractified world would be a good solution, I think, if its citizens were less stupid. Why is Mustafa Mond so eloquent and brilliant and the products of his science so dumb? Maybe it's necessary to be aware that one has rejected truth for happiness as opposed to simply living happily. A conscious decision has to be made, a suffering must be undergone. More on all this when I find the time to put my thoughts together. Anyway, I must confess I found John Savage a trifle annoying.

I hope the get my hands on The Island soon. It seems like the perfect compliment to BNW.

"K. V. Mardia, in his book The Scientific Foundations of Jainism, has interpreted karma in terms of modern physics, suggesting that the particles are made of karmons, dynamic high energy particles which permeate the universe. However, most scientists do not consider karma theory to be within the bounds of science, as many believe it is a non-testable idea and so cannot be considered science."

Wow, really? I raise my eyebrows in marvel and skepticism - on one hand, I question the bounds of human logic (rather, illogic) that allows us to actually postulate such radically radical (there's really no other word for it) ideas - karmons! - and on the other, I feel sorry for myself for not having the guts to believe this could be possible - because if it is, then based on the karma I've accumulated in these 22 years, this I fear this might be my last shot at moksha in a long long time.

"It has been 33 years since the book was published and plenty has changed, but I still had to put down Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization after a while (thirty pages from the end) because it became too much to stomach. While an argument can be made for its "stark honesty" (shouldn't it be stark misunderstanding or stark anti-Hinduism?), I think Naipaul's approach to India's post-Emergency problems are terribly myopic..."

rest of the review here.

I should be writing my essays, though...

That I have been exceptionally lazy is undeniable. I cannot even say that I've been busy with school - I wish I have - but that is exactly what makes Amit Chaudhuri's Afternoon Raag the perfect book to talk about in lieu of the recent events which have come to pass. But before I do that, I want to talk about a new secondhand bookshop introduced by Yisa (who very wisely set up a Facebook account for it). By local standards, it is a relatively large space, chockful with rows and rows of books carrying everything between American Surrealist poetry to South Asian literature to old single-issue comics to critical theory. Three weeks ago, I bought Amit Chaudhuri's Afternoon Raag, Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization and Dead Souls by Gogol for a total of - would you believe it - $15. I went back today not because I'm out of books to read but because the idea of purchasing good quality secondhand books from a multitudinous selection was too much to resist; I bought Amit Chaudhuri's A New World and the much acclaimed The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor for $10 altogether.



In Afternoon Raag, Chaudhuri waxes lyrical about the pivotal moment that is the college years. He writes about a young Indian from Calcutta who gains a scholarship to study Literature at the University of Oxford. His entire novel, which is pretty short at a total of 144 pages (Vintage edition), reads like a tightly-woven piece of prose-poetry (he somehow manages to merge the fleeting heaviness of poetry with the fluidity of prose). There is something so sublime, insightful and yet deeply saddening about his passages. They flow gracefully, lyrically; his descriptions of Oxford in winter, the occasional flashbacks to his character's home and family in Calcutta drips heavy with nostalgia - and, mind you, this is not nostalgia of the sickening sort. His observations are acute, sharp and lucid. He finds ways to sync history, myth and fiction in a way that will make any romantic weep with joy.

I have not yet read his A Strange And Sublime Address but this book, I think, was the perfect introduction to his writing. Reading this, as a student of Literature, was an incredible experience. Chaudhuri's story is an afternoon raag, the perfect musing between the morning of awakening and the wisdom before retirement - in between is the music of negotiation, the coming-of-age and sensitive blooming of consciousness. Chaudhari weaves beautiful, musical images on a string and knots the ends together to make a continuous flow of precise comments about being a student and coming to understand the universe in a personal and honest way. Absolutely perfect and the best book I've read in 2008 thus far.

I just thought of the perfect new year resolution. I should have done something like Read One Book A Week For One Year And Keep A Journal About It.

Oh, it's so perfect. And I know it would be cheating if I started now because then I could make an equally solid case about starting after the exams, during the 3-month break and that would defeat the purpose somewhat, wouldn't it?

I want to write a long, long update about Life Thus Far, which would include school, recent literary exploits, a paragraph about unnecessary studying (which includes but is not limited to tests, exams, essays and the like), book reviews I've been meaning to write, about my room and how I rearranged it (don't laugh, this matters to me), a beautiful black-comedy Brit sitcom called Black Books and why the first season is infinitely better than the next two, milk-and-chocolate meal combinations which would then expand into my recent unhealthy eating habits, a quote about a conversation over late Bak Kut Teh lunch about sexual domination and submission, and why it is hardly accurate to call it an either-or situation, power play and bed politics; also, I want to explain in lucid detail why Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles pales in comparison to the Original (although it is not bad on its own at all), why HL Strawberry milk is better than HL Banana, and why Big M Strawberry gives it a good run for its money; there's the issue of books, too, that I'd like to touch: V.S. Naipaul, Bapsi Sidhwa, Amit Chaudhari - who has written what is possibly the most lucid prose I've read in 2008 thus far, and definitely deserves a review - and my recent comeback into science-fiction-and-fantasy with Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series; I would also love to wax lyrical about the best essay I've read for any module of literature I've taken in the past three years: Freud's essay on The Uncanny is brilliant and beautiful, I loved that he made his subject the study of his essay and his essay a study of his subject; finally, I should mention, briefly, fleetingly, with a practiced nonchalance and a subtle degree of intrigue (this, I predict, will take time to craft) something lovely about memory and love-making, not so crudely as I've mentioned here, but with more grace and poetry, because memory, it seems, is like that, it stays that way, unchanging, light like summer wine but honey-thick, too, and it will remain dormant and sweet and you will want to keep it in your pocket, in an hourglass, untouched except by you, until suddenly reminded of it, an urge arises to enter a magic vortex in the deep of the night, and dive into the memory, live it again, destroy nothing, go through the motions and exit when satiated, remember with satisfaction that there was a rainy afternoon and a man; I wanted to write about all this but I'll do it another time.

Customer: "Excuse me, those books, leather bound ones... "
Bernard: "Yes, Dickens. The Collected Works of Charles Dickens."
Customer: "Are they real leather?"
Bernard: "They're real Dickens."
Customer: "I have to know if they're real leather, because they have to go with a sofa. Everything else in my house is real. I'll give you 200 for them."
Bernard: "200 What?"
Customer: "200 Pounds."
Bernard: "Are they leather-bound pounds?
Customer: "No"
Bernard: "Sorry, I need leather-bound pounds to go with my wallet. Next!"



Oh yes, I am surely addicted.

Last night's dreams were a strange superimposition of images, one on top of another receding into an infinite regression, a plethora of confused meaning. (The same, I presume, can be said of every dream.) The family took a holiday to Switzerland to meet my cousin, Anil (who really lives in London with his wife and child), but I got lost in the train and traveled the entire length of the south region. The train stopped at small stations. Outside the window were thrift shops selling knitted beanies, scarves; men and women pushing prams which carried babies with sparkly blue eyes. The color of the streets was a dull gray but life felt vibrant. The winter clouds hung over the small town, threatening a blizzard. Although I was lost, I had an acute sense of direction (which was unreal because I lack this quality in my waking hours). When I was finally found, we went to an exclusive local wine club where I had a figurehead position of "Executive Member". Other than the most exclusive wine, it served gold-tinted quality champagne. Someone spilled coffee on my attire here and patched the red carpet an obscene, diarrhoreal brown. She was terribly apologetic after, and in a way of compensation smeared her hands, feet and beautiful gown with the drink.

Is this a story? Who weaves it and how perfectly? What is time and where is it? I float in full spaces; in space where no one looks at their wrist and worries after appointments. Between you and me, behind this black velvet backdrop we have mapped a constellation of memories.

"Hindus almost universally accept a view of time as cyclical, an idea first articulated in the Upanishads, and elaborated upon subsequently. While various different ways of counting the years in World Ages can be found, a popular enumeration of them is the following. There are four eons (Yuga) in each Mahayuga, or cycle: Krta or Satya Yuga (lasting 4,000 divine years), Treta Yuga (lasting 3,000 divine years), Dvapara (2,000), and Kali (1,000). Each Yuga is worse than the one before it. Preceding each such Yuga is a period of unmanifest potentiality or latency, lasting respectively 800 divine years, 600, 400, and 200. Thus each Mahayuga lasts 12,000 divine years, equivalent to 1,555,200,000 human years. A thousand such Mahayugas equals a Kalpa, or a day in the life of Brahma, the creator God who presides over the world. Then follows a night of Brahma, in which the world is unmanifest. After 100 years of such days and nights, the lifespan of this Brahma is exhausted and all is absorbed back into its divine source, from which a new creation begins. This cyclic and infinite view of time is typical of Hindu and other Indic religious traditions, including the Jain and Buddhist traditions."

taken from Hinduism, ed. Bruce M. Sullivan


Also, someone please buy me this wonderful cushion.