Revisiting the book-to-be

Title: Magnificent Loss
It shall be a story in 4 parts.

Part I
Neha and Avinash, the background of love, trust, comfort, security, friendship, aspirations, ambitions, gods, myths, resolutions

Part II
Avinash and his loneliness and his search for that elusive indistinct something, coping with loss, guilt, psychiatry, looking within

Part III
Avinash and Syamala
New beginnings, awakenings, coming out of shell, but still haunted by the past, conflict with the present, yearnings and disillusionment

Part IV
Resolution of conflict, the finding of peace, the gathering of energy, flowing in the river of life, awakened, alert, joyful and light.

Notes
1. Extend Part I to include background, develop characters, ground them in a self-made reality of dreams, then the sudden parting, and reality catches up with the romantic side

2. Rewrite Part II, focus on loneliness, relocate character and show his reaction to things external, and his dwelling on things internal - loss and guilt, and his search for the UNLOSABLE - what is the word here? Get the shrink into this section.

3. Part III explores the relationship between Avinash and Syamala. Let each interaction give a new insight or generate some conflict, in addition to the feelings expressed. Remove the shrink from here and let him discuss his problems with Syamala, who helps him to unfold, untangle

4. Part IV brings the preceding conflicts to a pinnacle. Both Avinash and Syamala go through intense soul searching, and the situation forces them to take a decision. Either they split and go their separate ways, or they come closer and marry. It would be right perhaps to leave them in a live-in relationship and end it on a happy note, with a hint of promise for something more...
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Time and Value

Time is a measure that the mind uses so that it could work in an organized way.

Valuation is the measure that the mind uses so that it could value the work it has done or the thing it has come upon or possessed.

Mind uses time also to value a thing. The older a thing is more valuable it becomes.

The mind seeks to possess things it considers valuable. By possessing it, the mind enhances its own value.

The intrinsic worth of a thing is separate and distinct from the value it is given by the mind.

The value of a thing is measured in terms of the currency invented by the mind.

The measure of time is computed by the units which the mind has invented to do it, namely, seconds, hours, days, years etc.

Time, like value, is not an intrinsic property of anything. Time and value don't exist in nature; they exist only in the mind that measures them by means of its own devices.

The mind measures time in other ways too. The chronological way of measurement is a physical aspect of measuring time. The physical measurement of time is scientific and the means used to measure are applicable world wide, such as a clock. This manner of measuring time is limited to the movement of matter, the work accomplished by humans and machines and the cycles of nature. It is universally regarded as accurate. Errors and disputes arising out of such measurement are resolved against common and universally accepted principles and tools.

The mind also invented a subjective way of measuring time. It is a personal reckoner, its own means to mark time for itself. These are many and they overlap with each other and sometimes align with physical time. When the mind hopes for a change in its present condition, it is marking time. When it is desirous of something, it is marking time. When it is believing in something, it is marking time. When it is impatient about something, it is marking time.

Time and value go together. If a change is desired in the present condition, then the mind is seeking to enhance its value. Until that improvement is reached, it is marking time, hoping that the change happens and the value increases in the time it has hoped it would happen. This kind of time is not measurable by any scientific means and its passage manifests in the mind as impatience, agony, frustration, despair and so on. The mind then resorts to other means in order to 'speed up' the process. It depends on its beliefs to 'get there', 'get that'. The physical time and this subjective psychological time then overlap and become a tremendous burden on the mind. When the desired change eventually occurs, its value increases greatly. Time through effort and agony enhances the value.

Nothing occurs in time. Only the mind is observing every occurrence in time. Strangely, the mind became subservient to its own invention. Instead of using it only as a tool, the mind has given it the status of a master and allows itself to be governed by its own slave.

Not knowing the intrinsic worth of itself or of the things around it, the mind invented value. In the notion of improving its value through possession of things it has valued, the mind is marking time to fulfil.

What happens when time and value are dropped from our observation - the internal subjective time and the external value of a thing? Could we then come upon the timeless existence in which we behold everything in its intrinsic worth? Is that what reality is, knowing the true nature of things, including our own mind?

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Rockhound

He doesn't know why, but he collects pebbles, colored rocks etc., much to the annoyance of siblings. He stores them in a desk drawer, sharing the space with his books. His trouser pockets sag and become frayed, sometimes tear at the seams or develop holes, much to his mother's chagrin and she is always calling on the seamstress to get them mended. His father says it is a childish infatuation, that he will get over as he gets older.

Every night he would open the drawer to look at them, feel them, their surface, the curves, the colours excite his interest as much as the light that reflects off the surface. He keeps a count and feels awfully good when as it grows from a single to a double digit and racing to reach the three digit figure.

He begins to segregate according to colour and roughness of the surface. He needed more space, so he starts taking out his books and soon like the camel that drove the Arab out of the tent, the rocks occupied the space entirely and the books driven out of their enclosure begin to clutter the table top or scatter in the room. Mother begins to complain about his untidy room but he ignores concentrating only on making more space available for his collection.

The drawers now became heavy and creaked and groaned whenever he opened and closed them. And the noise irritated his older sister who would snap at him when it intruded in her work or music listening. So he with utmost caution he pulled or pushed at the drawers an inch at a time so as to make the least noise possible. He knows now he needed a bigger container to hold his rapidly growing collection. When the house is empty, he brings down an old wooden crate and pushes it under his bed and draws the coverlet down to hide it from inquisitive eyes. It was necessary not to draw attention to his collection, for every stone he brought in increased the danger of losing the entire collection if and when it becomes known to the household.

He made several partitions in the crate - he used thick cardboards as dividers - and filled them according to the segregations he had made earlier. The drawers continued to receive his findings immediately he reached home and at night he would transfer them to the crate according to their colour and shape, according to the pattern he had established to store them.

In the days he returned home with nothing he would shut himself in and go over the contents of the crate gazing at them fondly, until the last light went out in the house. On the nights that he couldn't sleep he would use a pocket torch and study them in its light, enjoying the reflections on the crate.

Sometimes for days he would go without a single find and he would feel sad. He would venture farther into places he had not been before. He would spend more time with the ones he already had. But it was also a time that made him look closely at them and he would further separate them according to shape, weight and location. He also utilized the time to remove duplicates. In the beginning he had often collected the same kinds of rocks, but as he collected more and looked at them often, the practised eye told him if a find was original or a duplicate. But before discarding something as duplicate, he often replaced his specimens with better ones when necessary. This exercise was very important to him for it improved his collection. As he grouped them according to a layman's classification, his eye by and by trained to see the diagnostic features of rocks, features by which rocks can be differentiated.

Of course there were difficulties along the way. Once he had lost a whole bag of stones. That was in the very beginning before he started to take proper care of them he used to drop them into a canvas bag and soon it became heavy and started to bulge. At that time he didn't even care if there were duplicates. Soon after he found it, he just felt it for as long as the contact gave him pleasure and then dropped it into the bag. One day his mother asked his sister to fetch something to collect the autumn leaves she had swept and piled up near the garage. His sister found the bag full of stones and swearing under her breath she lugged it across the compound and emptied it into a large waste bin. That incident alerted him to the threat of loss and took care to hide them first and later on to put a lock on the containers which could not be just lifted and thrown away.

His parents are worried about him. He doesn't take much interest in his studies. The only subject that interests him is Geography, and that too the topic of rocks and minerals. In all other subjects he is uninterested. They take him to counsellors, prayers, amulets and babas and finally to the exorcists thinking he is possessed by demons. He goes through it all, inwardly pained but to all appearances unfazed, unchanged and unresponsive.

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Feedback on A Ghost Story

In the LICH meetup, we were about six people gathered around a table. Keku the organizer asked me to present my piece. I felt nervous and asked if anyone would volunteer to read my story. One of the ladies readily agreed and started to read.

As she read, I felt that certain words didn't come out easily - I felt I have used a strange juxtaposition of words which sometimes sounded a discordant note. But no one mentioned it. It was received well and they appeared to have enjoyed it. The reader mentioned in between that she found it interesting. Another said it was good.

One lady commented that the title was not appropriate. I said I suck on titles, never seem to get the right one for the story. She said it was not just a ghost story; it seemed much more than that, something that conveyed more, like a dream within a dream which included something that actually happened. This made me think and wondered if I had not fully appreciated what I wrote. The story reminded them of a movie Inception which I did not see.

I felt good. It occured to me that I must get my stuff read out so that I could feel the flow of the narrative. This time I felt it just did not sound right in some places. Perhaps I use too many complex and long sentences. I should break them down into simple sentences, present one idea at a time. Like Paulo Coelho did in The Alchemist.

Story available at http://www.ryze.com/posttopic.php?topicid=1078814&confid=1199

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A treasure

The Alchemist is making an impression on me that no other book has in the past, not since I read the folk tales of gentle wisdom. A book that captures the timeless widom of humans in a simple language, in a story that could be read by the fireside in winter and in the shades of a tree in summer. It is ageless, it can be read to children as well as a tale of adventure, or adults may be read it in order to find their destiny. Even the young may find it inspiring to test their mettle and search their hearts for the one thing they would live and die for. It is a tale at once charming in its simplicity and profound in its sweep. I wanted to read the book because the blurb said it affected the lives of millions around the world, having sold 30 million copies world wide and been translated into 63 languages. Originally authored in Spanish by Paulo Coelho, the English version is published by Harper Collins. I am happy to be reading this book of magic and omens, of adventure and learning, of soul and destiny, of hardship and loyalty, of perseverance, intuition and travelling down the river of life.
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Moral Screen

While watching a movie, mother would make us cover our eyes when the "scenes" came - the scenes that were supposedly made only for adults. However, the very masking elicited the undying curiosity for the forbidden and found release in furtive glances and later on lurid fiction.

A film that we all as a family had gone to see depicted the life of Vemana the poet who had miraculously transformed from a life of debauchery to one of a poet-saint and lived the remainder of his life as a naked mendicant singing eternal truths.

The first half of the movie showed the decadent prelude and we were naturally submitted often to sharp glances and hisses from the mother to drop our heads. When the second half began to take the audience through the transformational process, which included much abstruse poetry and high-flown language, we lost interest and started to fidget and beg to be taken home.

Mother oberved rather ruefully that just when she wanted us to watch what was needed for us, we wanted to leave, while all the time before that we were gawking at the screen as if we were imbibing at the fountain of divine wisdom.

New Writing Styles

For modern writers it is a Brave New World out there. Every new writer is writing in a format that is new, original and bold. It is no longer like in the past when a successful author experiments with a new style occasionally. Today writers have, in the manner of the World Wide Web, separated content from its presentation. New styles of presentation have appeared in the novels that indicate a boldness, a tendency toward novel (Ugh! Pun not intended) presentations which make the reading fresh, interesting and prodding to try newer ways of telling a story. It is a clear departure from the classical style that comprises a running narrative relieved by dialogue. Today one often comes across styles that break away from the old world model and present the content in radically different ways.

There is also a move away from the omniscient narrator who lords it over his or her fictional characters. This breed of writing seems to decline in favour of first person narration which seems to give to the narrative more solid believable characters and at the same time give the story a temporal quality. But it is not just the shift in the point of view (POV) that we are witnessing today. It is a wholly new perspective that allows the characters to reveal the story and the author is merely bringing the pieces together without making it obvious or becoming visible in any manner.

Two examples:
1. No God In Sight by Altaf Tyrewala
2. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday

The innovative courageous writers are debutants, who have presented - not experimented with - new styles of writing the novel.

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Be there

A strange thought occured to me now. Look at the world through other's eyes. Completely and without judgment. Just let them talk, give opinion, say whatever comes to their mind and never, never interfere when they talk. Don't prompt when they are looking for a word. Wait. Wait and listen. With the patience of a hawk. Wait and watch how they react. Just look with eyes and ears open. Be so absent in the other's presence that s/he speaks openly, unreservedly, without fear of being contradicted or judged. Be gone, get lost, be nowhere, be not where the other is. Listen, observe. Without interruption. Let it flow, whatever it is, from their mind, from their heart, from their lips, from their hands, from their movements, from the look in their eyes, from the breath through their nostrils, from the shuffling of their feet, from the trembling of their fingers, from the tightening of their veins in the temples, in the jaws, in the arms. Just be, without being active, without being gentle or rude, without aching to know, without bothering to understand, without encouraging or otherwise, without caring or being sympathetic, without condemning or justifying, without patience or irritation. Just be, with your eyes and ears open, with watchfulness and alertness, without a thought in the mind or an expression in the face, like a stone idol, passive, aware, available. Say nothing, do nothing, no geatures, no movement. Be there, yet make not your presence loud.
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Twilight

I wait for dusk to fall as eagerly as the struggling world awaits a new dawn. It is the time of the day when the activities of the world ebb and the laboring humanity return home to rest and recuperate, a time when the harsh light of the day mellows and explodes into the fading soothing colors of an evening, when the blue of the sky deepens to indigo and the birds return to roost, and the family members come together but only to lose themselves in their separate rooms. I look forward to that time when I could walk the earth like a free man, a man without encumbrances, without hopes of an unborn dawn or the entanglements of a dead night, the only time of my life when I meet people of my age, all in one place. In the evening of our life dusk is our meeting time, the community hall our meeting place and the hoot and clatter of a train our common refrain.

I shed my pajamas and change into a brown cotton trousers and a plain white bush-shirt. Adjusting my spectacles, I bend slightly to pick up the walking stick that was leaning against a corner of the room. The fist curls over the knob, but before I could grab it, the stick slips on the smooth tile and clatters to the floor. Ths sound from the fallen stick bounces off the walls and the ceiling and dissolves into silence, leaving a dull echo in my mind. The slender aluminium body of the stick gleams pitifully in the fading light. I push a cane chair close to it. Holding the arms of the chair in order to break the fall, I lower myself gently into it. I pick up the stick and using it as a prop I hoist myself up, groaning from the effort and cursing out of habit at nothing.

From a window sill I collect the lock and key, my mobile phone and wallet. I step slowly out of the apartment and lock the door. I double check the padlock by pulling it down twice, check to ensure I am carrying the mobile phone and the wallet, then slowly turn round toward the staircase. I hold the bannister for support and feel my way down with the stick one step at a time, taken slowly, ponderously, like I was hauling down a load.

As I round the street toward the back of the apartment blocks, a train chuggs past the community hall - I am late by a few minutes. When I reach the hall, I find that my comrades are already chattering and shuffling about in short awkward movements. It is a large hall, ideal for ceremonies and celebrations. We take turns to be the secretary and assume responsibility for its upkeep and arrange functions on public holidays. On a normal day, like today, we just get together and talk to one another until the train returns after two hours.

After the usual greetings I limp to a plastic chair and go through the circus of occupying it. The voices echo from the high ceiling and linger for some time like murmuring spirits. Women speak longer and louder than men. We all sit in an imperfect circle, turning this side and that side, or looking ahead leaning far out of the chair sometimes to hear better or to respond to queries.

We don't have an agenda for these meet-ups. We meet simply, casually, for companionship, for having someone to hear and talk to. Growing old is painful physically and lonely psychologically. We overcome the physical inconvenience in order to share a few moments together; we are then no longer lonely or feel out of place in this fast changing world.

Each of us has one single unchanging characteristic that distinguishes itself from all other qualities of the person. Call it a trait, a habit or an obsession or what you like. It is something that is so innate and intrinsic to the person that he or she may be easily identified with it. The person and his or her distinguishing quality are so inseparable that the person is the very embodiment of the quality.

Sarala is talking to Manohar about her grandchildren. She has short scanty hair that ruffles as she shakes her head this way and that way, making a point or gesticulating with a sense of hopelessness. She is angry that no one in her house cares about cleanliness any more. She expends a lot of her energy in cleaning the dining table, the curtains and the furniture. She spends a good deal of her time arranging things around the house. Manohar says he has been to her house a couple of times and found nothing to complain about. He tries to change the subject, but she keeps returning to it.

One of the helper boys comes in with a small steel drum of hot tea and sets it up on a table. Manohar excuses himself and gets up for a cup of tea. Sarala turns to Lakshmi and continues her harangue without interrupting her flow.

Lakshmi is a soft-spoken woman who rarely exhibits strong emotions. She looks frail and her forehead is creased with lines as though she were in a perpetual expression of anxiety. She has a granddaughter who spends most of her time partying and shopping. Her son is an artist who has had a modicum of success, for his paintings appear now and then in the art galleries. He is too preoccupied with his work and his wife, who works in a government office, is also very busy. Lakshmi is a pious lady who performs pooja twice daily and listens to the bhakti channel on the TV regularly. She has a duaghter who is married to a business man whose fortunes fluctuate on market conditions. She speaks to her often and enquires of her well-being. Lakshmi lost her husband a few years ago and since then she has devoted herself to praying, seeking divine munificence towards the families of her son and daughter.

I have known lakshmi for a number of years. She was religious, but not much given to rituals. However, as days passed and she was getting older she became more and more attached to the gods, going on pilgrimages, listening to religious discourses, performing the rites and praying, praying and praying.

The two women comfort each other as they share their mutual hardships, anxieties and helplessness. The tea is served, and it is drunk cold. The women continue their chatter as if talking it over together is going to resolve their problems.
TO BE CONTINUED...

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The dinner party - I

Dressed in jeans and an open-necked plain white T-shirt I join the talkative bachelors who loiter in the playground waiting to form a group. No one ever wants to step into the RM's house alone. A group gives strength to the individuals who come together to form it. And it is always the like-minded who make up a group, like birds of a feather. In a group it is possible to divert attention from oneself, take refuge in a united front, slip into the background when singled out.

Usually the RM's secretary is a man who doesn't belong to any group, for fear that he may overhear or discover something and pass it on to the Big Boss. But luckily I don't inspire fear because as you know, Mrs. Arora, I don't gossip. I neither squeal nor carry tales. I am therefore welcome in any group, though I can sense an undercurrent of caution among the members; after all, though I am powerless and inconsequential myself and even though I am known for my neutrality, my proximity to the local power center is enough to make any man wary in my presence.

The trainees, the junior engineers and clerks I find are among the most outspoken of the lot. As men grow older they become more guarded, behind their apparent joviality lies fear; fear of God, fear of job, fear of the boss. I am sure they shun me inwardly, for they greet me with undue respect.

The groups have now formed, isolated clusters of men and women, chatting, shuffling, and looking towards the path leading to the RM's house - who will take the lead?

A pandal is erected in front of the house and chairs and tables waited to be filled. Behind it, there were lights in every room of the house and the sound of music reached our ears through the still moonless evening. It was very quiet, the trees scarcely moved. The heat of the day rendered the trees motionless in the night; they were silently recuperating, sustaining on bare essentials and waiting for the rejuvenating morning dew. The stars shone with brilliant clarity in the dark sky, something that is never seen here in the city. The cloudless sky, vast and peppered with numerous points of dazzling shimmering light, produced a grand spectacle. But very few looked at it, for they were engrossed in their own world of endless chatter, and missed the beauty of the world that is constant and available free for all who would experience it. It seems to me, Mrs. Arora, that there is more to living than merely seeking success, striving endlessly as if it were the very goal of life.

Now, a couple of cars drove up and the contractors, including Mr. Abdulla, arrived for the party. They looked around once at the arrangements, nodded to themselves and made their way into the RM's house. Then the senior managers started to move purposefully towards the pandal, followed by their juniors, and the clerical staff brought up the rear.

"Excellent arrangements, Mr. Abdulla." The RM expressed his satisfaction and Mr. Abdulla grinned effusively and bowed to acknowledge the honour.

"Thank you, Sir. It is my pleasure." Mr. Abdulla declined to take a glass of liquor offered to him by the office boy. He pointed at the RM and told the boy to begin from there.

"You are being too formal, Mr. Abdulla. Remember, this is an informal get together. Come on, friends," the RM picked up a glass,turned and swept his hand in an all-inclusive gesture. "Make yourselves at home. The party begins now."

The women formed a cluster around the First Lady who offered cool drinks and snacks to her retinue. From time to time their eyes roved over the partying male fraternity which was now slowly regrouping in the vicinity of the RM.

The men stood respectfully around the Boss, some closer and some a little farther, while the rest watched from the sidelines. The men who were closest formed a coterie, a loyal group of men who made the RM's life easy in this industrial outback. They spoke to the contractors on his behalf and arranged matters so that he could quietly enjoy certain benefits which would not be possible even at his position in the company. These men formed the first circle, followed by hangers-on who were eager to do their bit if they were given a chance to prove their worth. The men on the sidelines envied those in the cynosure of the Boss and watched helplessly. The men who did not and couldn't care to belong to the elite group were the clerks, the trainees and the juniors. They crowded near the liquor counter, cracked lewd jokes, argued over cricketers' fortunes or listened to the music in a wistful way as if it reminded them of home.

"They seem to be discussing something seriously with the RM. Why are they crowding him?" the junior trainee wanted to know.

"Oh, no, no, no." The senior trainee has seen a bit of the world, so he says, "they don't discuss. They are yes men, they repeat what the Big Boss says and feel satisfied that they have repeated it verbatim. Look at them running to fill his glass, how they jostle to light his cigarette and fetch snacks for him."

"Not all of them, though. I can see only some of them fawning all over him while the others are merely nodding and talking politely." The junior corrects him.

"Yeah, and those fawning men have an unenviable epithet - every one of them is a chamcha, a stooge," he said contemptuously. "You see them buzzing around him like flies around a Gulab Jamun."

Drinks begin to loosen tongues, raise the level of voices, increase the clatter of utensils and before long there is din enough to submerge the music from the record player and the silence in the vast open fields beyond the pandal.

Rati, remember? The RM's daughter, the lone adolescent in that little community, chattered with her even younger companions and threw inviting glances at the trainees. Accidentally our eyes met and she winked. An itch arose on the inside of my palm as I remembered our last meeting and closed my fist almost involuntarily. She grinned and said something to a little girl beside her and they both burst into laughter. The junior trainee caught our exchange and let out a high-pitched yodel. When I turned to him, he buried his head into his glass and licked lasciviously at the golden liquid. I must have reddened, for his mate, unaware of the context, remarked, "Guru, I think you need to go slow on that stuff. You look like you are going to conk out soon."

"No, it's nothing," I said defensively and moved away with extra steadiness in my step to show him he was wrong.

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Movements

Talking of promotion, Mrs. Arora, brings to mind the notion of movement in the life of a construction employee.

There are two kinds of movement - the horizontal and the vertical, one is the physical and the other psychological. The physical movement happens when you relocate from place to place. Though one may have travelled often and to the far corners of the globe, there is very little movement paradoxically for the traveller. It is always a vehicle that moves while you, its occupant, is stationary, simply sitting in a chair or lying on a berth. The vertical movement occurs in the psychological realm as one climbs the ladder of success. Again, here too there is a notion of movement. The promotion of an employee is a vertical movement, while his transfer is a horizontal one. While he covets the former, he abhors the latter which entails much hardship and sometimes may mean separation from the family. The promotion, on the other hand, is the ambrosia of success. It is the only reason why I think most people work, for without a reward what is there to look forward to? To paraphrase Dr. Johnson: nobody but a blockhead ever worked except for money and, ah, promotion. More than the monetary gain, a promotion brings power and elevates one's status. Though it means more responsibility, it removes you from the ranks of those who toil in the sun and the soil. If the promotion did not come in the right time, then you lose face, lose the race and what is worse you may report to men younger than you. If there is anything in the profession that demeans you, it is not a bad name you got for your ill temper or your vulnerability to corruption, but not getting the promotion when it is due. Ingratiating behaviour, humouring the boss, being in their good books, pretending to be working and running errands for the boss or pleasing him with sweets and presents - all these and more happen in the race uphill. The vertical movement while rewarding in itself is fraught with expectation, frustration, loss of self-respect, indignity or impropriety. But it remains the prime mover and binds the employee into a straitjacket of subservience. It promotes (pardon the pun, Mrs. Arora, unintended of course) unhealthy competition and obsequiousness, puts power into the hands of unscrupulous men, corrodes their integrity and belittles their dignity. There are of course exceptions; take any human affair and you will find exceptional men and women who adhere to the lofty and the ideal, who are simple, honest and hard-working, without ever losing their sense of humour or their dignity or their self-worth no matter what the circumstances may be. The vertical movement degrades the human being, Mrs. Arora, while the horizontal movement more often than not makes you a solitary, away from the family. I carry a disturbing vision of an old man in the mess of an evening. He sat alone in the dimly lit room of the mess playing solitaire while his family lived a thousand kilometers away. I find both movements abhorring since both are debilitating in the end.
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We, the people

People seldom change, Mrs. Arora. There is a horrifying inevitability about life. Similar thoughts, feelings and similar circumstances recur with unvarying regularity and unchaging repeatability. All the stuff about change through intelligent choices, influencing it through prayers and wearing stones and amulets, following your heart or your favorite guru or the scriptures, and forever hoping for good times and remaining optimistic - all these operate only on the surface. The core of the person remains unchanged and propels the person inevitably into situations that the core dictates.
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Reading

Do you read books, Mrs. Arora? No? Oh, I have been a book reader ever since I passed out of school. I find it a heathy pastime. But it is for the special world they create that I visit them often. Each writer sees the same world differently, Mrs. Arora. Each one sees it imbued with a color that seems so right when you see it along with them. You live their experiences, their fantases, their ruminations - vicariously you go through it all for a small price. But there are some who disturb a great deal. Like Sartre. A little French bird whom I came across on a holiday tour found my pronunciation of that name execrable and showed me the right way to say it. I struggled for a while trying to imitate her guttural intonation and gave up. The man is an incorrigible rambler; my god he rambles about nothing consequential; he sees the world in black and white. Why, even the radiant colors he describes so vividly hit you as colorless and insipid against the despondent and desolate background. Existentialism. You see things as they exist now, not how they have been or how they are going to be. That seems so much akin to what the Vedantists have said a thousand years ago. But there is a fundamental difference. They found bliss while Sa - aargh! - tre found nausea.

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