random ramblings

I had stayed away from short stories – I felt those don’t treat the people, their lives in enough detail to paint the picture in mind and the endings are also inconclusive. But then read Alice Munro’s stories a few months back which changed the perspective. Recently bookmarked this page to read a short story a day . Came across Anton Chekhov’s story, The Huntsman . Russian authors are more familiar to us Keralites probably due to the communist link, we have a Russsian cultural center in Trivandrum and public library has Malayalam translations of scores of Russian books. I had read quite a few during school and since then. But I never came across Chekhov, maybe since he wrote stories and plays. His ability to paint a portrait of people and their worlds in few sentences is like some charcoal artists making a picture with few quick strokes. People in his stories don’t seem to be perfect, good and bad mixed in them, vain and profound alternatively.  Even though it has been mor...

(1) My writing education – http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/my-writing-education-a-timeline?src=longreads .  An inspiring article – on role models, good teachers, goodness in people, hope and persistence. Coming across a role model like this, who is infallible, a perfect human being – that is so rare. Last week I happened to connect briefly with a blogger whom I was reading for more than 10 years – I was introduced to many interesting books based on his recommendations. One of which is still a hard nut to crack for me (A Thousand Plateaus – Deleuze and Guattari), but it is one of his lifetime favorites. For me it is like drinking green tea for the first time. So I asked him how he came to like it – he said parts of that book hit him like a train. I was fascinated by that – to be moved that much by a book. When I read some parts of this article, it reminded me of that phrase. What we’re doing in writing is not all that different from what we’ve been doing all...

One of those days where disappointment hits hard When the clock that usually runs frantically, slows down Disappointed with futility of lot of endeavors How we convince ourselves that we are being useful How we convince others that what we are doing is important How we are all able to do more, but don’t     Disappointed in leaders who promise hope and bright future Talk a big game, higher purpose, incomprehensible philosophies Because that is what they were supposed to do To move people, bring about change   Disappointed to give in naively, believe in new fads Disappointed in mediocrity, mine and others around In doing something only until the tension builds In doing something, only to honor the duty than because I believe Disappointed in the charades, even when everyone knows And plays along with it, not being able to change a thing   None of this is important, in larger scheme of things Petty worries, irrelevant expectati...