women with spunk

This from the devdaas post, talking about Paaro got me thinking how many other women I know who have spunk like that? How many women, when they like a guy can go up to him and say, "Hey! Genius! Hum bhi hain raahon me." I know I cannot. Not in a million years. Most women I know cannot have done that. Most women I know would rather wake up every morning and pray "Please Ramji please, ...." But then, some can.

A few. Very few. Very very few.

Like there was this one, she asked him to explain to her, just what he was waiting for? You see, he is the kind of guy who has an answer for every question under the sun, but right now, as she is asking him this question, almost for the first time in his life - he is stumped. He has no idea, what he has been waiting for. He does not even know what he should do next. So she tells him, may be you should talk to my father - "oh ! yeah! right! that! I knew that." Men! I tell you. If she had not told him, it would not have occurred to him, physics or no physics. :)


Then there is this other one.Oh boy she has loads of it. And she is the kind who wouldn't mind letting me tell you her story so I will, this is what she did.

She called him. In the middle of the night, at 2 am or some other god forsaken time like that, she called him and said come and get me. He wasn't too sure, wasn't it too late, "Can we do this in the morning? " अब ले जाते हो तो ले जाओ आकर, और नहीं ले कर के जाते हो तो वो भी कह दो , सह लेंगे हम, सहने वाले क्या क्या सह लेंगे। Poor thing, like that left many options, so he came। He came up those stairs and he wasn't sure if he should ring the bell, it was really late in the night, or very early in the morning, depending on how you looked at it. But he did not have to. She came flying out, and in a country where these things are not talked about much, at an hour when girls don't go out of homes, when she is hindu and he is muslim, right there, in the middle of that night, in the middle of those stairs, she kissed him. She kissed him and he did not know what had hit him. He did not know why she could not have kissed him all those years in school, why had she wasted all that time yapping and running around and doing everything else, instead of this? That's all it would have taken, पर नही, दिमाग तो रात के दो बजे चलना शुरू होता है। Why now? Why does she have to make things so god damned complicated?

Oh I didn't tell you, kahani me twist hai. She got married last month. It was an arranged marriage, but technically this is still her sasuraal. Her in-laws are inside. And here she is, with her classmate, her best friend, the boy she has known all her life, but has only now figured out that he is the one she is in love with, now after one month of being married to someone else. Stuff like that, it can get you killed.

Yeah! I wish I was there, I wasn't, but knowing her, she probably shot one look their side and said "Fuck off!" and walked away. Sorry they are not my words, I don't use them, but this is not my story either, this is her story and she will kill me if I don't tell it in her words.

Now, if you see her, you will see a woman who reads her namaaz five times a day, she keeps his dinner ready before he gets home and she helps their ten year old daughter with her homework. You have to see her in the evening, one minute she is talking to you and then she sees his car take that turn and she is gone. You would never guess that part of their story.

You see, normal day to day life, it hides stuff. People look different buying vegetables on the roadside. You would never know where they come from, what their stories are. Lions pass off for lambs. You would be a fool to be fooled by the exterior. He isn't. He knows that underneath this very obedient wife is still that girl, who could, if the situation warranted, look you in the eye and say "Fuck off!"

Spunk - it is the kind of thing that once you have it in you, it doesn't get out of you.

You know how they say in our culture - that it takes a lot to keep the relationship it takes nothing to break it. I think that is wrong. It takes a lot of guts to break a bad relationship, it takes a heart of steel to walk out too. Most women I know, just keep putting up with nonsense in the name of keeping a relationship. it takes a lot to get up and say stop. I am done. Goodbye. And I admire the women who can do that. And I am so glad I know a few of them. Very proud to be able to call them my friends.

I did not tell the rest of the story here, because someday, I want to tell it right, all of it.

number plates

I just realized I have not collected number plates in a while. i had a piece of paper i used to write them down on, last year or something. Well, another thing on that to do list.

February Books

It is the tenth of February and I have not completed a single book as of yet. I go through these phases, of reading and then not reading. I do not read anything, absolutely nothing in my not- reading phase. So I am really hoping that this is not the onset of the not-reading phase. That would be terrible especially because I did not even have a good reading phase for the last two years at least. I have just been cruising along, picking and leaving things here and there.

Now that i am writing it, I realize how helpless I make it sound. Its not like I am leaf in the wind or something, I guess I do have some control over what i do or do not do, so maybe I can exercise that control, maybe I can just get over myself and not allow me to plunge into a not-reading phase. hmm.. okay good, lets see how that works out, eighteen more days to go :)

January Books

Well, January started out like a fair month to read but it did not really feel that way, even though on paper it looks like i did get some reading done, i have this uncomfortable feeling about it, mostly because I started most of these books in December, so i just finished them this month, did not actually read them start to finish per say. :(( too much to do, too much TV my husband keeps recommending, oh you are going to love this, oh you just have to watch this... and the thing is , once i start it i do get hooked and there goes the book :) I am only writing the books that I either finished reading this month or books that i started but figured will never read ever :)

so lets see what we got done
Piligrim's Progress - i started it with a lot of hope but, i could not get through it, so i don't think i will pick it up again in the near future, this is as close to reading it as i am ever going to come. unfortunately. unless of course my sister decides to help me out and explain the book to me, then i might be tempted to try it again.

Bertrand Russell's autobiography - it was interesting, I really wanted to read it, but it was overdue at the library and i was not getting it done so i decided to give it back instead of paying fines. i think i am going to pick it up again soon, just was very heavy - so kinda awkward to hold while lying in bed :(

Scripts people live - Claude Steiner :) I am not writing anything about this one because either i should write a whole post about it or just shut up. So shutting up is the route i am going right now :)

Toxic in-laws - uff! i cried and cried and cried. Seriously, i did :) This was what I got from the book - a) it has happened to other people, i am not alone and b) when you are not sure if what is being done to you is right or not, imagine the same thing being done to someone you love. Would you want them to put up with it? if not, why are you putting up with it? Why should you not stand up for your self?

The Great Gatsby - Gatsby was in the same category as Mockingbird with me - the list of books i somehow do not want to read, the other one in there is Dickens' Great expectations. So its a wonder of sorts that i randomly picked up Gatsby, and then actually read it, because i cannot tell you the number of times i have picked up Mockingbird and then not read it. I have even paid library fines on it. But, boy am i glad i read Gatsby. This book has completely changed my idea of American literature. It really was a wonderful book, very simple sweet and yet very profound, in a folk lore-ish, non - grand-eloquent way. So elegant, succinct, to the point, that that in itself makes it grandiose. I did not really cry or anything when Gatsby died, but the story left me with a bit of bitterness and resentment. There were moments in there that I so completely could relate to, I admire Mr. Fitzgerald's ability to put in words feelings that can be so hard to describe, and like i said above, he does it so simply, so unostentatiously, that I am just... wowed! Like this moment, when Daisy is standing beside Gatsby, and he is happy, but he looks at the blinking light of her home across the river, and that makes him slightly sad, because now he can never look at that light the same way as he did before, when he longed to be with her, the light has now lost its brilliance. I am not doing justice to it in all these sentences, but F just says it in a matter of words, something like, "it was the loss of one more enchanted object" see, that is beautiful.
या रब दुआ-ऐ-वस्ल न हरगिज़ क़ुबूल हों, फिर दिल में क्या रहा जो हरसत ही निकल गयी।
And to me that is the mark of good storytelling। It does not matter what that emotion is - frustration, pain, pleasure, hope, anger - anything, if someone can put a bunch of words on a piece of paper and make you feel something, i think they did a darn good job.

You've got to read this book - umm.... was fine no big deal except the first part, which has made me want to read this other book, A tree grows in Brooklyn, will do

How to win friends and influence people - yeah! well... it was a nice book, it talks about some very basic things people could do in their interactions with other people. Some are intuitive, plain good breeding and some need a bit of a paradigm shift. but i must mention that i have my issues, i don't buy the premise. You see i don't think people should go about making plans to influence other people. It is demeaning, insulting, and very very rude in my opinion. Perhaps I am being juvenile and adamant with the same boorish attitude i had twenty years back, but... well that is who i am. The book like so many people before it, says you can gather more flies with honey that with vinegar, well, am sorry to disappoint you, but I am not a fly - catcher, i don't want anything to do with flies. Now I don't think I am doing justice to this book, so perhaps I should sit down and write a full post about it. Will do that too.

A new baby card

I loved this card, the image is not as clear and i was not able to get the inside photograph because i had already written in, but it came out beautiful.

I liked the orange - yellow paper and the small beads detail that i added. i am not so good with color so i was glad to see that the red and green beads at the bottom actually work. Inside it had a red lace border that i punched out using a Fleur-de-isle border hold punch.

I also cut out a matching red ' little miracle'. Overall I think it looked really pretty. Of all the cards i have made so far, i would say this was my favouritest. It was actually hard to mail it :)

is se pehle ki yaad tu aaye

meri aankhon me phir lahoo aaye,
tujhse rishtaa main tod jaaunga
main tera sheher chhod jaaunga

I like this song because
1) Kishore Kumar has done such an amazing job of singing it, when he goes tujhse rishtaa ... i love that
2) It is all sorts of crazy, and i like all sorts of crazy. I can see myself doing something like that. ...इससे पहले कि तू मुझको ठुकराए, मेरा दिल तोड़े, अपना दिल खुद मैं तोड़ जाऊँगा.... वाह वाह वाह, क्या ज्ञानी हो जी आप तो। अरे, कोई हमारा दिल तोड़े, वो एक बात, और हम जो खुद ही अपने से दुश्मनी निकालें, पक्की वाली, तो फिर तो ... बल्ले बल्ले हो गयी है... अब् कोई रोक सकता है क्या ऐसे किसी पागल को।

an expression of love

In the way that I evaluate the world, I put great stock in the ability to love something or someone to the point of oblivion to everything else. If you have to pencil it in your calendar and force yourself to make time for it, it is a chore, it is not love. When you are in love, you never have to find time, it makes its own time. It nudges everything else around and makes its own space. When you are in love, you don’t think I have no time to call her, no, you think how am I going to finish all this other stuff up so I can call her. When you are in love and she calls you, you don’t bark a ‘what?’ into the phone. No, you just cannot believe that she has finally called you, you try to hide how happy you are, and yet the smile that is exuding from every pore of your being somehow makes its way across the oceans and seven thousand miles away from you, she is happy too. That is love. I know it because I have been there, I have had it, and nothing you say now is going to convince me otherwise.

He now tells me that ‘all the work I do is for this family, for all of us, it is an expression of my love’ well, that is such baloney and crap. Because all the work you do is an expression of your contentiousness, your taking the responsibility of providing for this family, it is not an expression of your love for me. And you are right, you are doing an amazing job of providing for us, I have absolutely no complaints in that regard. But when you have to take your blackberry out to figure out when you can or cannot have lunch with your wife, and you end up telling her you don’t see how you can make it anytime before the 15^th of February because you are just so swamped with work meetings, it is not an expression of love.

And the least you can do is understand why she is not so appreciative of you trying to give her some time. You should wipe that bewildered look off your face when she gets up and leaves, ‘Forget it, I don’t want to have lunch with you. Ever.’ Seriously, you are not the injured party here, so please stop acting like one.

agar tum na hote

na jaane kyon dil se ye awaaz aayi
milan se hai bardh ke tumhari judaaii

I love these lines, I love them because they are hopelessly romantic, they are asinine, asinine is my new favourite word, you figured eh! yeah! i like using that. back to the song, well... its a nice song, apart from the absurdity mentioned above, but then that is what love is, it confuses the hell out of you, and like i said elsewhere, the more logical analytical you get on its ass, the more the solution eludes you. and that is when you come up with this kind of nonsense. milan se hai bardh kar tumhari judaaii, what does that even mean, how could that be possible, only in upside down universes like ours do fools like me fall for this kind of trickery, because in all those other sensible universes, milan just has to be better than judaii, par shayad angoor khatten hain.

how do you copy from word to blogger

does anybody know what the best way to copy your word document into blogger is? every time i do that, i find that the formatting gets messed up and i have no way of fixing it, short of re-writing the whole thing.

do i sabotage myself?

6 January 2011

There is snow falling out of the window I am sitting in this kids play area slightly depressed. I am not entirely sure why I am depressed, or perhaps I am but want to ignore the reason, thinking that if I look at the reason it might be hard to ignore this feeling down business, which is weird because haven’t we been told enough number of times that staring a problem in the face makes it go away. Or is it possible that we do not stare in the face for precisely that reason we do not wish for it to go away the problem is familiar, we know how to act around it and … well that sounds asinine, why would anyone willingly choose to stay with an unpleasant situation. Who says it is willingly done, subconsciously; we make bad judgment calls and then cry about them. Like last night I thought about putting away my daughter's birthday gift and then I started doing something else and left it there, what did I expect? of course she found it and then I was sad that my surprise had been ruined. Well I sabotaged myself.

what passes off for news in indian media

I watched this clip on zoom (yes, my own fault) about Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha, and god is it ridiculous or what? Here is the breaking news: Amitabh Bachhan was at an award show, he was walking up to the stage, he passed Rekha, Rekha was looking at him as he walked her by and he walked by. umm... i am still waiting for the news.

What happened? Nothing? Then what was the big deal?

If one person is walking up to the stage and they stop on the way, they falter, they say hi to someone, they talk to someone, well even that is not news, it happens, but the fact that they were focused and kept walking in the direction they were going is most certainly unremarkable, every one does that.

If you are sitting in the front row and someone is walking by, you will have to look at them, it would take a lot of effort to look away, why would you bother doing that. So she looked at him, and he walked by, seriously, who cares? But apparently this is enough for some people to lose their marbles.

This passes off for main stream Indian media? This is journalism? By what standards is this news?
arghh!

Now the other part of the picture, let us for the sake of argument assume that maybe there is something between them. Let us agree that she actually has some feelings for him - no i am not saying that based on badly edited flimsy evidence the zoom people provide, i am just saying, for no reason in the world at all, let us just take that as a given. Even then, where is the news.

So one person likes another person, the second person does not reciprocate those feelings, the first person is unable to get rid of their own feelings, I am still looking for the news? They are not stalking anybody, they are not going out of their way to impose themselves on the object of their desire, they are just choosing to experience an emotion they have, and not bowing down to the fanatic societal pressure that tells them that what they feel inside their bones is wrong. Yes, it stands to reason that they are being self destructive, it is counter productive, and no good ever comes out of this kind of business, but still, it is their life to live, and their life to mess up. Leave them alone people. I do not know a single person, and I do mean a single person on the face of this earth, who has not experienced unrequited love at some point or another in their lives. It is as prevalent as human beings are.

The duration is immaterial, whether you suffered for two hours or two days, you remember what it felt like. You can extrapolate and imagine what it would feel like for someone who has been nursing this for two decades. No, don't tell me you cannot. If you have ever burnt your finger you can imagine the hell it would be if you sustained whole body burns. Yes, it would take some imagination, a whole lot of compassion, and kindness, but if we apply ourselves, everysingle one of us is capable of imagining what it would feel like to be in someone else's shoes, within an acceptable margin for error. So maybe we can stop being Mr. Lazybones and exert ourselves, and let people be.

And finally, the feminist in me is offended by the insulting tone this channel uses for Rekha. If a man nursed a wound for a woman for ages, he would be deified, and hero-fied. The woman would be made out to be a callous, calculating, cold-hearted B***h, who hurt him. But when a woman holds out for a man, the man is made out to be a decent family man being unnecessarily harrased by some female banshee who does not take no for an answer. They make Rekha look so pathetic. Oh my god! are you kidding me! get out of my face! seriously!

That's why I don't watch TV.

december books

So i had decided to start keeping track of the books i read, coz i find i am getting more forgetful lately, this list is to be irrespective of whether i liked them or not.

hmm..

what did i read this last month:

Anna Karenina
1984
Games people play


that's it? I have been reading all month, how is that possible? :( this memory loss is more real than i thought :D

उस हाथ का साया सर पर था
तब बाप का साया सर पर था
मैंने गलियों गलियों ढूँढा जिसको
वो पीर तो मेरे घर पर था
उस हाथ का साया सर पर था
तब बाप का साया सर पर था

the rogue data point... excerpt

here is an excerpt from a story i am supposedly working on, supposedly coz, i am not actually working on it. it is just sitting here...

To my happy place,

The source of youth, renewal, and forgiveness

To T,

For her receiver transmitter analogy

And

To Mohammad Rafi,

For singing so beautifully ‘tumne mujhe dekha, ho kar meherbaan, ruk gayi ye zameen tham gaya aasman’

(You looked at me, in kindness; the earth stopped, the heavens bowed)

Started: 17 March, 2009

Finished: not yet

Dr. Mahesh Dixit was at the clinic when the call came, a barrage of words that he is supposed to understand, but somehow do not seem to be making any sense. An accident, his wife, severe traumatic brain injury, subdural hemorrhage, the information does not sink in to the extent that he actually debates whether or not he should ask Patricia to cancel all his day’s appointments.

He drives himself to the hospital, all the time wondering if it was a mistake of some sorts, because shouldn’t she have been at work, what was she doing down at queen street anyways? It was only when he saw her, in the sterile hospital bed, surrounded by the low hum of equipment over which was the voice of this bright young thing, rehashing the very same words that Dr. Mahesh Dixit has himself fed to countless spouses and their families before, that a strange numbness spread down his arms. He glanced at the name tag, Gordon Smith, first year? He must have said it out loud because the bright young thing was now defending himself with medical jargon that doctors throw down at the simple folk. Dr. Dixit just stared at him, the numbness having now made its way to the rest of his body.

“Dr. Dixit! I have been waiting for you.” It was Janelle, one of his favourite nurses, from back when he was an attending neurosurgeon at this very hospital years ago. She glanced at the listless figure that was his wife, pursed her lips and looked away. Then with an effort that showed, she walked around the bed, and hugged him, “I am so sorry.”

Dr. Gordon smith had now stopped talking, it was the sheer helplessness of the young doctor’s expression that set off a cold bitterness cruising through Dr. Dixit’s veins, his stomach churning, and before he knew what was happening, he was throwing up in a bin.

The next few days are a blur. She never regained consciousness. He was never left alone. friends, or supposedly friends, they are all husbands of her friends, people who surround him, who look into the details of the funeral arrangements, and their wives who take over the home, filling it with so much unnecessary food. Women, when they don’t know what to do, they bring you food. And they say stupid stuff; like God’s will, and destiny, and she is in a better place; when they don’t know what to say why don’t they just shut up? He totally understands why Rohan has not come home, why he is staying at a friend’s place, and no matter what these women tell him, he is not going to call him until he knows what to say to a boy who has just lost his mother.

Sanjana was different, she came home, she cried, she hugged him, she went to see Rohan, she did the laundry, she did everything a sensible person would do, everything except she ironed her mother’s blouses and hung them in the exact color coded spot in her closet where she herself would have hung them. That was the only indication he had that Sanjana did not know what she was doing either.

These days he spends half his time trying to remember the last thing he said to her, it was something about a soap dispenser, it was not important at all, another one of those mundane conversations they have been having these past many years, only now, that conversation has acquired new meaning. What was it? He keeps racking his brains, what had she said? Somethigna about buying it on sale, what had he said? Something not nice, not intentionally bad of course, but he remembers having hurt her slightly, he had not meant to, and he knows that she knew that, she was not mad at him either. A lousy soap dispenser. This is nto what it should come down to, a twenty year long relationship ending with – not even an argument, not a fight, at least you could have had that, gone out with a bang, said something terribly mean and hurtful, something worth being guilty about for the rest of your life, but it was not that. Their last conversation was unremarkable, nothing stood out, no grand last words, no frilly promises, no instructions, no secret desires or wishes revealed, nothing, there was absolutely nothing in it that you could hold on to.

He had gotten her clothes, her bag, her shoes with a heel missing, and the remnants of what was her phone at the hospital that day. He has gone over the contents of her bag many times in order to make sense of what has happened. You see, he gets the old woman driving the car, looking away for a second, he thinks it is acceptable that Ipsita came out of nowhere, he understands the accident, the injury, and her subsequent death. All of that makes sense, the part he still doesn’t get, is just what was his wife doing at that place at that time? It is the kind of thing he cannot speak to anyone about, without making it look like he doubted her and he did not, it is just that it does not add up.

Her purse was full of junk you would expect, nothing out of the ordinary, make-up, wallet, cards, money, loose change, a couple of business cards – some investment banker and a nail salon, and receipts – a bag full of receipts, from all sorts of places, grocery, dry cleaning, gas. For all her organization, he wonders why she never threw out the garbage receipts, what did she plan to do with a receipt of bread bought five months back? You are not going to return it, why hold on to it? He has figured out that she had a dentist’s appointment that day, she evidently left work for it, her car was parked in the basement, why did she not drive? If she was not going to her dentist’s why did she not call to cancel? That was not like her at all; Ipsita was meticulous about keeping appointments, so why would she choose to miss an appointment she apparently left work for and then go in the exact opposite direction? It is the one fact that does not sit in with the rest, the one piece of the puzzle that stands out, the one question he would very much like answered.

It was almost a month after she had passed away that he noticed the coffee shop receipt from the day of her accident, and he didn’t tell anyone about it. He told Patricia to find him an hour’s break between patients and went to the place, with her picture, he felt guilty doing it, but he did not know what else to do. The girl remembered her, mostly because of the accident; she was sure the lady sat alone and did not talk to anyone. ‘She seemed thoughtful, pensive, you know, like she knew what was coming.’ This was said in a conspiratorial, half leaning into him, whisper. Dr. Dixit took in her blonde dreadlocks, the charms, her crystal bracelets; he realized he must have been staring at the pentacle on her neck, because she touched it and said ‘Oh! I am a witch, you know.’

‘Right. Right. Of course.’ He nodded, stepping back.

‘I can see you were related…’ it sounds like a question, takes him a few seconds to answer, ‘Yes, She was my wife.’

‘Oh I am so sorry.’

‘Thank you. But are you sure she was alone?’

‘Yes. But I am really sorry, I should have done something.’ He is perplexed what does she mean, ‘I saw her ethereal aura expanding, but I am new to reading auras and I doubted myself, I did not want to scare her, but now I know I was right, I should have warned her. I am so sorry.’

It is perhaps his professional training that reassuring people comes so naturally to him. ‘No, it was not your fault; don’t beat yourself up for it.’ He says. ‘Did it look like she was waiting for someone?’

The girl looks away, bites her lip, ‘Umm…. Now that you mention it, I think it was the other way round. I think she gave up on waiting for someone. Like she was finally ready to let go, to leave. You know.’ She expects some appreciation for this deep insight. Dr. Dixit has none for her. ‘But then, why would she come here? She had to be meeting someone. Was she looking outside? at her watch? Anything of that sort, that looked like she could be waiting for someone?’

‘No, not that I can think of.’ She is not happy that he was not grateful for her deeply perceptive observations, he seemed more hung up on obvious details.

‘Was she making phone calls?’

The girl really does not know. ‘I was working you know.’

‘How long would you say she stayed here?’

‘I don’t know, an hour maybe.’ There was a lineup beginning to form behind him ‘You shouldn’t do that you know.’

‘Do what?’

‘Think ill of the dead, it hurts them.’

‘I am not thinking ill of my wife.’ There was anger rising in his voice.

‘You are doubting her, snooping around.’ It is an accusation he cannot bear to hear, the audacity of this, this little chit of girl, what does she know what he is doing. ‘I am not snooping around. I am trying to understand why she was here in the first place, when she should have been at the dentist’s or at work. That is not doubting.’ He is almost talking to himself now. ‘In the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, why would she sit here, for an hour, alone?’

‘Oh I know you are hurting. But she had to come here.’

‘Had to, why?’

‘To die. She was meant to die here, so of course, she had to come here, she could not have been at her work or the dentist’s, this is where she was meant to be.’

‘Right.’ it is more than what he can take, he has had his full of this brand of philosophy. It is too much, he is walking out, this girl; he wonders if she has lost her brains, or never had any to begin with. She calls out behind him, ‘I am sorry for you, for what it is worth, she had a beautiful soul you know.’

‘Right.’ He waves his hand abruptly and steps out.

The freezing air hits him with a bang; he wraps his scarf around his neck, he shakes his head trying to get rid of the ‘witch’, no it still does not make sense. Why did she miss an appointment to do nothing and if she just sat here doing nothing, why did she not call the dentist? That girl is wrong. It is not like he does not trust her, twenty years of being together; she never gave him any reason to doubt her. It is just, it is….

anna karenina

I am just about finished reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and I say I really enjoyed it. I had tried reading it a few years back, well, many years back but I did not like it at all, I barely got past the first page, perhaps it had to do with that particular translation; this time it really jelled.

My first reaction, after reading about three pages was that of utmost joy. I have not enjoyed anything this much since Jane Austen. So I was just unabashedly happy with the mere thought that I had War and Peace to look forward to. Yes, yes, it is stupid to think about the next book when you still have about nine hundred and sixty pages left to read in the book in your hand and that probably qualifies for another kind adultery, but, whatever. I was just so amazed that here is this wonderful book, this writer, that I have known of all my life, and yet, have never bothered to read, and there is not just what is in my hands but more of what he has written. An embarrassment of riches if there ever was one.

Now, having almost finished it, I am a fan of his writing style. He is able to draw each character in such detail, he is able to relate to them all emotionally and he is able to give the appearance of them all being very different from each other. That in my opinion is the hardest thing for a writer, at least that is what I think right now. I am impressed by how equally well he can describe what the women and the men in the book feel, think, and want. Being a woman, I always find myself wondering what the men think and feel, mostly because of this notion in popular culture that men and women are so different.

Personally I am intimidated by the though of writing about a political, socio-economic debate between characters. I feel severely lacking in such knowledge and feel I shall not be able to bring out cohesive arguments, besides I always find such arguments pointless. They are a bad waste of good time in my opinion, and I am often bored when I listen to men discuss policy and stocks and stuff at parties, mostly because either they are all saying the same thing, or they are not listening to each other and merely want to prove they know more than the next guy, or more often than not none of them have any idea what they are talking about. Most of these discussions that I have heard in my lifetime, between my dad and his friends, and now between my husband and his friends are sad attempts at paraphrasing yesterday's editorial in one's own words and passing it off for original thought! really! I read the paper too! so please, spare me the horror!

Now what has that got to do with Tolstoy and Anna Karenina? Well, this, that he is able to not only write these arguments in a convincing coherent manner, but he is also able to show that they do not really matter. It is the fluff that the real story happens around, but it also goes to give depth or depict the shallowness of certain characters. I think I can never do it myself, not without considerable to the power of infinity effort that is, and hence I admire him even more for being able to do that. And I love him, for showing one of his principle characters (Levin) as taking no interest in these discussions. Well, glad to know there are men who are equally bored of this nonsensical talk. And yes, I accede that the stuff that women talk about, food, housekeeping, and kids is equally nonsensical too. They are both means of structuring time in social contexts coz for some weird reason we cannot sit together and be comfortably quiet. We just have to talk. It's a part of the human condition.

What I did not like that much about the book was Tolstoy's failure to depict Anna's emotional state when she decides to finally give in to Vronsky's overtures. We see her resistance, we see she is aware of the downfall this will be, we see her pushing him away and then suddenly she has taken the plunge. Why? What was she thinking? It was especially disheartening for me to see Tolstoy evade that part, because I see him doing this astonishingly detailed description of her mindset just before she commits suicide. It was like I was with her, I was feeling and thinking everything that she was, I took that journey with her going to Dolly's home, feeling humiliated, lost, option less, and I was with her when she went to the railway station, I was with her when she stood beside the platform and imagined herself falling on the tracks. I can't say if I agreed with her about the hopelessness of her situation, but I know that I understood her. I got it. I got why she felt that the jump and the subsequent death could be her only means of getting out of the mire she was in.

So when he can write so well, that he can convince me that she felt helpless enough to jump, why did he not write to convince me that she felt equally compelled to commit the adultery. Which in effect was the same thing. I got the impression that Anna, from the beginning understood that adultery was suicide, in her social position. She understood that it was a one way street and at the end of it, she would be a fallen woman. But he never goes into her mental state at that time, he does not so acutely describe why she took that first step towards her ruin. She was smart enough to expect every single consequence, but Tolstoy does not describe it, why? Is it because it is impossible to keep the aura of the heroine if you go into such murky confused workings of the brain? And by the time he begins to describe her end, she has already fallen from grace and we can pity her as a once loved friend who has lost her mental balance, whereas in fact that balance never existed. It would be hard to love an imbalanced character from the start so he hides it? Because when i think about it, Vronsky was was just another young captain trying to flirt with a married woman. Anna must have met many of them. Why him? What was so special about him? Why does Tolstoy not write about that? At times I felt like the adultery had nothing to do with Vronsky. It was all Anna, and her own self-destructive streak. He just happened to be there.

Is that what is his "brilliance" because Tolstoy without writing it explicitly, creates her character as one that defies logic to make these grand acts of self-annihilation and self-loathing. Her committing adultery, her telling her husband about it to incite his wrath, her refusal of his offer of divorce, her insistence on going to public places and facing humiliation, and her final suicide. I don't know. Maybe that is his brilliance, but I felt cheated. I think these were such complex decisions that he being this great writer that he was, I wish he had tackled them. I wish he would have written about her mental state at each of these moments, when she took these logic defying steps. It if it meant she could no longer come across as a cool heroine then so be it. I would have still read that.

But, overall, he writes beautifully, and I feel a special friendship to Levin, which i believe is Tolstoy himself, and that is nice feeling, to feel like you and someone else this great think on the same lines :)

The adventures of Huckleberry Fin

I just finished reading my first Mark Twain book, i only remember reading that one chapter way back in grade school where Tom Sawyer hustles his friends into painting the wall instead of doing it himself, and I must say I was quite impressed with him. I mean it is not the kind of thing i could do myself, I would probably sit there very diligently painting the fence my self, but it is the kind of thing I can admire atleast.

My reaction:

Why is this book so famous? Why does it make to the 100 best novels ever written list? Why did ernest hemmingway call it THE book written in America? I have no idea....

It was funny, it was an easy read, and yes it was funny. Saying it again because there were parts in there that i just had to hold my stomach and laugh, so it was not a waste of time or anything, but it was in no way a grand treatise either. I am much more inclined to agree with Mark Twain when he says the book was just an accompaniment to the earlier Tom Sawyer book and nothing else. Forgive me, but I don't see anything remotely as magnanimous as what Hemingway says.

And I must say that Tom Sawer fellow, he's a numbskull! he ain't got no brains worth a dime! And aunt Polly has every right to beat the crap out of that fool. To imagine the grand scale ruckus just one idiot can create! argh!