Reflections

Three kinds of books

I’ve been known to read a lot. I mean, really a lot. Not a single day goes by when I don’t get lost in the fantasy world that authors create for me. I can even spend my entire life (or lives too, if I’m lucky enough to have more than one) navigating through the literary passageways without tiring, and without complaining. Just give me a goddamn book!

From all the books that I’ve read, I can surmise that they are of three kinds –

  • The first kind are absolute trash. When I come across such a book, I either mechanically go through the motions of reading the text (just for the sake of reading it), or I leave it half way. Believe me, nothing can be more derogatory for a book than a reader leaving it before it is finished. So yeah, I can be cold when it comes to the wrong kind of literature.
  • The second kind of books are well-written page turners. Think of a Dan Brown for example… Once you start reading it, there’s no going back. You either complete the book or you rot in hell. There is no third option. When I come across such a book, I’m overcome by a desire to finish it as soon as possible. No matter what I miss in between, but all I can do while there are still pages left to read is to keep reading. I forget everything else that has to be done, or that should be done. And when it is finished, I don’t heave a sigh of relief, I heave a sigh of triumph (if it can be heaved, that is!). I feel satisfied for having done this. I feel happy as I read that last line. There is literally a noticeable smile on my face as I turn over the last page and close the book.
  • There is a third kind of book too. This third kind of book is extremely well-written. It takes the work of a passionate to produce such kind of literature. And when you find such kind of literature, you are mesmerized. You care not about the size of the thing. You care not about the scale of the thing. You want to get lost in the world that the author has created, but not in a normal kind of way. The problem is that you never want to come back to your own world, because the other one is much more comfortable to live in. When you are reading, the line between fact and fiction blurs into non-existence, and it becomes difficult for you to distinguish between the two. If the author describes a world with two moons, you instinctively look up in the sky to count. If the author mentions a fictional town, you want to look it up on the map. If the author talks about a special power that everyone in his world has, you start looking for it inside yourself. Magical realism.

I have found the third kind of book. It is called 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

I have finished reading it just half an hour ago, and believe me, I am sad. Because I wanted to keep reading it for the rest of my life. It was a rather large book to start with—more than a thousand pages long. It took a long time for me to finish it, but then, I did finish it. Now nothing can be done about it.

The story of 1Q84 is complex. But when you get around to reading it, you do not feel it at all. Murakami explains the finer points in such a subtle way in his text that you feel that you’ve known them all along. Yes, it is a world with two moons. And there may not be a way back. Most of what he’s written in 1Q84 will sound weird to any logical person, but he will come to terms with it. Eventually. That is the beauty of Murakami’s work. No matter how improbable it may sound, you will accept it.

There is a certain romance in his writing that keeps you hooked to those little black words and before you know it, you are wandering on the streets of Tokyo. Your life seems to be intertwined with those of Aomame and Tengo. You laugh with them, weep with them, mourn with them, sympathize with them, fear for them, encourage them… They become your new best friends! You are as mindboggled as Tengo is when you meet Fuka-Eri. You are as confident as Aomame is when she goes out to kill. The book is about an alternate reality. And you start to live in it.

Murakami’s literary style is absorbing. He transports your soul into his text. The detailed imagery that he uses to describe even the smallest possible details confirm that he is indeed the master of his craft. You tend to lose the passage of time when you are reading him.

You know, something happened to me when I realized that the book was about to end. I slowed my pace of reading, so as to prolong the moment when I will turn to the last page. I never do that. But for the sake of 1Q84, I broke my personal rule. I wanted it to keep going on and on and on. I hope you feel the same way when you read it.

Please read it, because finding a book of the third kind is not so easy as it sounds!

Read Read Read!

Read Read Read! Antonio Mantero

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Reflections

Small Pleasures

Have you ever smelled a book? Ever taken in the aroma of freshly baked paper, savoring each and every thread of invisible fumes coming out of it? Eagerly anticipating the secrets that are about to be unveiled from the little black letters printed on it?

No? Do so!

Have you ever observed a child? Ever seen the way he makes too many mistakes and quickly learns from them? The way he keeps smiling, come rain or shine? The way he laughs and cries at the smallest provocation? The way he makes you come to him, and the way he makes you want to never leave?

No? Do so!

Have you ever fallen in love? Ever experienced thousands of butterflies in your stomach, with your heart in overdrive and your wits gone? The joy, the adrenaline rush when you are with your special someone? The depression it brings when she goes away? The pain in your heart when you pine for her? And that quick recovery when she comes back?

No? Do so!

Life is littered with such small pleasures. Look for them. Smile! And let the world smile with you too.

They say that time and tide wait for none. That you will become old-fashioned if you don’t walk in pace with the times. I say bullshit.

True, time will not be waiting for you to catch up. But do you really want to? Do you really want to experience everything in life? Trust me, you don’t. After all, you’re just one in a Billion. (7.1 Billion to be precise) You won’t be able to see the world from any other set of eyes except your own. And your own set of eyes are going to have their prejudices and failures and mistakes muddled with the list of your triumphs. You won’t be happy if you see the big picture.

It’s the small pleasures that matter. Small pleasures that keep you alive. So smell that book. Observe that child. Fall in love. And smile!

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Uncategorized

Sadness

Sadness is effortless. It grips you, engulfs you… silently. Sneakily. It creeps up on your senses like an unwanted weed, and you have no choice but to be surrounded by it. Bit by bit. Inch by inch. Step by step.

It’s like darkness, only blacker. It’s like silence, only quieter. It’s a mess. Only, messier.

But it’s your life, no? You have to embrace every difficulty that comes along your way. You have to face every single wrong that happens to you. All because it is expected of you. Because it is the right thing to do. And you must do it all alone. Tread along a path that was never made for you. All because life has a tendency of not being fair.

Are you up to it? Because one day, it will be too much. One day, the dam will break. And that day, you will be hit with a gush of unadulterated grief. You will be overwhelmed. You will break down. And you will pray for it to get over soon. Very soon.

You will be reborn that day. And you will rise again. Fear not.

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Reflections

Distances

You were at this new place, nervous like hell. You search all around for familiar faces but don’t find any. You keep looking… scanning faces, gauging expressions, trying to recognize voices. Nothing. You start to panic. You are clammy with sweat. You are getting thirsty by every passing minute. You swallow but that doesn’t provide any comfort. You want to run away… run away from all this… run away from everything.

But then you notice someone. She is right there—in the middle of the crowd. Her angelic face stands out… radiant even in the darkness. It is as if you are comforted by her very presence. As if order is restored to the world, and as if everything has become alright.

You approach her, tentatively at first. Comforted you may be but she is still someone to behold. She smiles, and your day is made.

No matter that she is a stranger, you feel relaxed talking to her. Gradually and steadily you start speaking. You are astonished at how easy it is to talk. You talk about a variety of subjects. You find out common interests. You find out shared hobbies. You tell her your darkest secrets, she tells you hers. You lose the sense of outside, for you are busy living in your own world. Life is perfect.

You come out, you feel miserable. You go in, you are ecstatic again! You don’t mind small disagreements… they are too petty to even think about. You ignore them, and keep on living. Keep on being on a high.

Small things lead to mild things, mild things lead to stronger things, stronger things make you snap. You get into your first real fight, astonished that you of all people should get into it. Yet get into it you do, and come out more bitter than sweet. But it is only the first fight no? You say sorry, then kiss and make up. It was fun fighting, you decide later.

But are all fights fun enough? You think not. Subtly, mischievously the disagreement is escalating. You find the need to compromise greater and greater. You find saying sorry tedious. You find kissing and making up irrelevant. Your precious ego is hurt, and you are frustrated.

What were cracks at first now become wedges. Those wedges then give way for cliffs and valleys. You feel trapped. You feel obstructed. You feel unable to go on.

Distances start to develop.

These distances are terrible to bear, but they have to be bore. You come to realize that your journey together can go on no longer. That you can no longer walk step-by-step and run length-by-length. That the marathon of life has separated you. You pine for her, but no avail. She is not coming back. Not yet.

Not yet.

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Reflections

On Browsers

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Internet Explorer was the king of browsers. It had defeated Netscape Navigator by huge margins. If internet browsing was a mountain, Internet Explorer was the pinnacle of it.

Alas! Good things never last forever. Then came Mozilla Firefox, based on the codebase of the one that lost, and quickly became the browser of choice for nerds, geeks, and a few others too. But it never could challenge the might of IE.

Another one was needed to dethrone the king, and it was destined to be Google Chrome. A fresh new browser, based on a fresh new rendering engine. Millions around the world lapped it up like hungry kids clamoring for candy. It took time, but IE was finally defeated. No more faulty CSS. Praise the lord!

Alas! Good things never last forever. Soon it became apparent that even Firefox and Chrome have their faults. They are always hungry for RAM. Open a few tabs and the Photoshop window open in the background becomes in danger of dying. It was too much.

Try out the recently released IE10 and you will realize how much has changed. HTML5? Check. CSS3? Check. Speedy JavaScript? Check. Anti-Aliasing? Check. Return of the King, anyone?

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Observations

Phases

Sometimes, I read so much that I forget that there are other activities too that are worth doing. But sometimes, I give up reading altogether, as if that activity never even existed! Sometimes, I think so much that people have to tell me to take life a little less seriously. But sometimes, I do things without thinking—with no sense of consequence at all! Sometimes, I laugh so much that I manage to get on each and every nerve of the people around me. But sometimes… Oh well I will never give up laughing!

Welcome to my world.

I seem to go through different phases as I move along in life—much like the phases of the moon. The only difference is that moon’s phases are predictable. Mine are not.

This, for example, is my writing phase. Whenever this is on, I flood my blog with lots and lots of posts. One every week to the minimum, though sometimes even more. Once this gets over however, I mysteriously stop thinking about writing. I even forget how to write.

Even while writing, I get into a number of phases for different genres. Sometimes it is abstract philosophy – I write in third person (or maybe even second!) about random things that only a subset of people who read this kind of thing can understand. The rest just screw up their faces and move away! Sometimes, it is rebellion – I write solely to bring out the weaknesses in other people. I become malicious, mean even, and write unflattering things about them. Sometimes, I’m in a reflective mood – I write about myself, solely to bring about the misery inside me. When that happens, I get a few concerned texts and facebook messages from some friends, and I have to keep telling them that everything is fine!

I’d started this blog in 2009 with an aim towards documenting everything significant that was happening around me at that time. Even that was a phase. Posts dating back to that period are hopeless and mundane, from where the tagline of Rajat’s Diary is taken.

Not that it happens only to my writing. It happens to the kind of music I listen to, too. Back in the old days, I was all about Bollywood songs and an occasional Indipop. Then I discovered Pink Floyd and never looked back! Since then, I’ve been through a Bob Marley phase, an Enrique Iglesias phase, a Backstreet Boys phase, a Coldplay phase, a Taylor Swift phase, an Avril Lavigne phase, an Adele phase, and these days, a 90′s Bollywood music phase. (Life comes a full circle)

For me, there is also a laptop-loving phase and a laptop-hating phase, a fiction-reading phase and a non-fiction-reading phase, an epics-loving phase and an epics-hating phase, a morning-person phase and a night-owl phase, a sarcasm phase and a serious phase, an ambient-light phase and a table-lamp phase, a programming-in-free-time phase and a playing-AOE-all-the-time phase, and many many many more!

They say that only teenagers have phases. Well, their argument is invalid!

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Unformed Thoughts

Updates

The other day I found time to talk to a friend of mine after a long long time. So naturally I started telling her that she is crazy. [ Wink ] (Believe me, she is! But not the point here.) Anyway. She managed to convince me that even I’m not too far from absolute craziness. According to her, I’m crazy about books, music, programming, coffee, and my cute Saahiba. Quite right.

This is how my life is going right now. I read books on my way to office. I do programming while in office. And I listen to music while coming back from office. This is of course punctuated by endless cups of coffee from the coffee day machine (Godsend!), and whenever I can manage it, viewing photos of the cutest niece ever on facebook. Everything else has been put on hold, for now. Blogging too.

Say what?

Part writer’s block, part annoying perfectionism, and part lack of time have forced me to put blogging on hold for a while now. The very fact that I’m here, typing out whatever awkwardness my brain is spewing out, is a miracle in itself! Add to the fact that I can’t really type properly because one of my fingers is temporarily out-of-service. Using the keyboard is a pain in the ass at work these days, but that can’t be helped. What can be helped is, in fact, putting off typing at home. Which I’ve been doing quite spectacularly of late, no?  Confused

So how do I pass my time if I’m not writing at all? You see, that’s simple. Weekends are spent doing one or more of the following activities –

  • Sleeping
  • Shopping
  • Going on a trip to Agra
  • Office Party (yay!)
  • Entertaining the neighbours (more on that later)
  • Watching White Collar and Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai
  • Reading (a lot!)
  • Eating (a lot!)
  • Spending Sodexo vouchers
  • 9gag, facebook, cracked
  • You get the drift. 

Not that I even remember when weekends fall. Most of my Fridays at work I’m under the impression that I have to come back the next day! It’s only when I notice a less-than-usual working atmosphere and people sneaking out early that I realize that I’ll be getting the next two days off. Scandalous, I know. But such is life.

Anyway, back to the point. Updates! A lot has happened since I last wrote here. For starters, I seem to have regained my ability to write in first person. Other than that, I’ve acquired and managed to read several new books (including the just released The Oath of the Vayuputras by Amish Tripathi. A page turner if I ever read one!). I’ve also bought a new pair of headphones, a new pair of shoes, and a new pair of trousers, among other pairs of things. Quite a pair!

I’ve also managed to spend many a tireless nights almost awake in spite of everything that’s happening. But unfortunately, a discussion of that is out of the scope of this article!

Until we meet again.

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Observations

Expression

Authentic Delhi. The same jalebiwalla whose jalebis you’ve grown up eating, the same serpentine streets you’ve repeatedly lost and found yourself, the same Red Fort and Jama Masjid you’ve admired ever since you learned to admire. The same good people with their crazy and nasty sides, the same stock characters which are unique in their own way, the same celebrations and the same festivity. Delhi-6 is a masterpiece not because it tells an extraordinary story—it tells an ordinary story in an extraordinary way. You get a sense of déjà vu, a sense of been there, done that.

That is the power of expression.

A good narrative simply maintains a flow between then and now. Its objective is to prevent haphazard breaks and sudden jumps between characters and situations. A great narrative, on the other hand, tantalizes and excites, makes you turn the pages, and keeps both your mind and heart occupied with the story. A great narrative makes the reader an active participant, involving him in every minute aspect, every subtlety. A great narrative is the voice of God.

That is the power of expression.

A picture says a thousand words. A thousand words create a picture in your mind. If that happens, the writer has already won. If he makes you believe in what he believes in, if he makes you appreciate what he appreciates, and if he makes you stand up for what he stands up for, then he has already won. That doesn’t mean that you lose, no. You stand with him, on the dais of victory.

That is the power of expression.

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Observations

Let’s get in a trance!

Beauty queen of only eighteen / she had some trouble with herself
You were always there to help her / she always belonged to someone else

A beautiful, cold night. The silence of your bedroom. She Will Be Loved playing softly into your earphones. Reading a book to go with it. Wuthering Heights maybe. Relaxing.

Never mind I’ll find someone like you / I wish nothing but the best for you
Don’t forget me I’ll beg / I’ll remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love / sometimes it hurts instead

Soft piano melody. No guitars, no drums, nothing to distract. Adele’s soothing voice. Reminiscing about the past, of good times and the bad. Laughing and crying.

When you’re gone / the pieces of my heart are missing you
When you’re gone / the face I came to know is missing too

Travelling, and Avril coming up unexpectedly on shuffle. Smiling to yourself. Remembering how naive you were sometime before. People looking at your bemused expressions. Not caring.

Just a kiss on the lip in the moonlight / just a touch and the fire burning so bright
I don’t wanna mess this thing up / I don’t wanna push too far

Sitting in a coffee shop. Thinking up random things. Doodling. Looking up in the distance. Getting told off by the staff. Ordering more caffeine to calm them down. Seeing the future. Being optimistic.

If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman? / if I’m alive and well then will you be there holding my hand?
I’ll keep you by my side with my superhuman might / Kryptonite!

Walking with a spring in your step. Modifying your pace with the highs and lows of the song. Realizing that your hands are in sync with the drums. Singing along. Running and slowing down. Running and slowing down.

Nobody said it was easy / Oh it’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy / No one ever said it would be this hard
I’m going back to the start

Wandering aimlessly. Being hungry but not doing anything about it. Looking at the surroundings. Trying to remember each and every detail. Listening to the birds and trying to find them in the sky. Being happy, with a tinge of sad.

Somebody wants you / somebody needs you / somebody dreams about you every single night
Somebody can’t breathe / without you it’s lonely / somebody hopes that one day you will see
That somebody’s me

Getting up in the morning. Reliving last night’s dream. Thinking about someone who used to be. Having Enrique’s masterpiece stuck up in your head. Being up and about, happy about the absence of pain. Truly smiling.

Being in a trance.

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