random ramblings

Xmas is around the corner and end of a long year which I am not sad to get rid of. We were wandering around a Xmas shop this weekend, lot of pretty ornaments to hang on the trees, greens, red and gold. There was a kid running around the boxes of ornaments, calling out to his mother every other second, squealing with delight of discovering so many things, a bundle of energy. I watched him trot around, he had some difficulty in walking, which he was oblivious of.  I had read somewhere that sometime seeing beauty brings you certain tinge of sadness too and it is due to the fact that you realize at the back of your mind that it is not permanent, not everlasting. I was thinking that this kid will grow up one day, the unbounded happiness will get mixed with expectations, pride, competition, jealousy, desire and all the other maladies which eats up the adult world. I distinctly remember the time when I thought none of those matters, all that the adults were talking about are exaggerati...

Came across short stories of J D Salinger. Read two stories so far – " For Esme – with Love and Squalor " and "A perfect day for Bananafish". It is part of Nine Stories, so few more of this kept for the weekend, like saving few more servings of a delicious food for later. These stories had such a strange concoction that I ended up searching for the meaning of it. Why did Seymour Glass shoot himself, what finally prompted him? Why did Sergeant X feel sleepy finally after reading Esme’s letter? Turns out these stories have so much of symbolisms that each are like a crossword puzzle. Distaste towards materialism, failure to communicate, loss of innocence, loneliness – a whole lot of it is said in so few words, each sentence open for interpretation, containing back stories on motivations, philosophies and intentions. Now that makes the readers think to find out why he said something in that particular manner and different people are reading different meanings...

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...

Looking outside my window, I can see the tall building of Tata Steel. It is on the other side of a 4 line elevated highway, lined with footpath which looks pretty nice with some mosaic pattern. The stretch looks like a Hollywood set with façade buildings, looks unpopulated. But this is not what I saw for an hour drive through Kolkata. It is my first time here, was curious about Calcutta that I read about so much. Land of Tagore, Satyajit Ray, communism and literate intelligent people. But the drive through the city seemed to me like a horror show, like those Halloween rides in theme parks where you are taken inside through tunnels and suddenly zombie dummies jerk on to your path. Coming out of the airport, I took the pre-paid taxi – not the AC or private ones, but the one controlled by City Police. Yellow taxies here are all old ambassadors, taxi drivers in tatters. For few minutes after coming out of the airport, I was trying to connect to a conference call – it kept saying all lines...

After a long time, went for a long road trip – drove from TVM to Bangalore and back. We started through the back roads from TVM until we hit NH7, skipped NH47. Got lost a bit in between, ended up in few roads with grand canyons in them, but in between it was through real god’s own country and rural Tamilnadu. There is a very real life, away from the glamour and glitter of the city, if you travel atleast 5 kilometers inwards from any main road. Like in the Pixar movie Cars, where they complain that the new highway that bypassed the small town took away the local business, but also robbed the travelers of magnificent countryside. NH7 was beautiful too, very deserted. While reaching Bangalore, it said 1500 or so more kilometers to Varanasi. One day, in a distant future…. While returning took NH47 from NH7, but bypassing Nagercoil was also an experience. The kind of green hues by the side of that road might be hard to get even in “super vivid” mode of the camera. ...