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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