1.
It was the last week before schools opened, so we took one day off and spent it in Trivandrum’s Lulu mall’s play area. Kids had a great time. I was hoping we could get out in an hour or two, but had to drag them out in the evening.
I was mostly observing strangers, if that is a nicer way of putting it. So many different types of people. An old lady in a housecoat and thorthu, being pushed in a wheelchair. A thatha, so overweight she was hanging onto the railing, joking with her grandsons. A girl and a boy dressed fashionably, girl with rolled up tshirt, walking hand in hand - after some time, another girl joined them, three of them walking holding hands like an ad for something. School groups - I assumed some from International school, checking up on someone who was sitting outside a play area, from their group, video calling and chatting. Two lovebirds, thin, must be in 12th or undergraduate, clinging to each other, their group accepts this pair as one person. An american malayalee auntie of indeterminable age, striding here and there, in shorts and tinted glasses. Another English speaking family getting into the crowded lift, the daughter announcing if anyone wants to get down at level 1, no such good manners expected by anyone, hence the mother shushing the daughter. Kids shooting reels - one guy coming up the stairs, throwing his head back and running his fingers through the hair, doing multiple takes. Kids playing VR shooting games on motorbikes or horseback. A pair of sisters coming to play Bowling, one of the sisters all action, purposeful and determined. Another tamil family, drinking coffee from golden cups. New fashions, oversize shirts, sleeves falling beneath elbow level, hawaii shirts, lightly patterned white shirts with full sleeve buttoned, black tees and blue jeans, oversize jeans with high waist. Sea of humanity - I was exhausted by evening, even though I did nothing.
2.
Watched a movie, The Hours. I hadn’t read any Virginia Woolf, even though I had attempted once or twice, but fascinated by her life story and tragic ending. I liked the movie - I couldn’t recognize Nicole Kidman as Virginia, had to double check to be sure. Boredom with monotonous life, courage to leave a life which is as good as death and choose to live, mental illness and friendships. I was so affected once again that I started reading “A Room of One’s Own”, Virginia Woolf’s lecture on Women and Fiction. She was ahead in her thoughts by 100 years!
"You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard"
- The Hours (Virginia Woolf to Leonard)
3.
Finished 10th book of the year, A Glass Hotel, by Emily St John Mandel. It was deeply disturbing, but I am now going by below quote. I used to search for books that are comforting, with happy ending, about good people. But I realize I am trying to run away from reality.
"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."
- Franz Kafka
The Glass Hotel was about deeply flawed people, put through the meat grinder of life, surviving their childhoods, trying to recover their whole lives and succumbing eventually. Financial fraud, drug abuse, broken homes, people taking advantage of each other and eventually facing the ghosts. It was deeply depressing, so exactly the kind that is an axe for the frozen sea within us.
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