Books in 2013

 It is the big wall that has been the catalyst to my reading frenzy.  Not that there is much left of the wall- it has been hidden by a lovely bookshelf, wood of course , pride of my heart, second only to the daughter  and the son. Let me explain . We got our house renovated this year and the architect ( if for one reason or the other, or for no reason , you want your house  done / redone, look no further than RLDA Studio, Architects and  Designers ( www.rldastudio.com ) based in Delhi. Well, for the longest time ever, we had this absolutely huge wall in our , ummn- informal living room. My uncertainty before the ‘informal living room’ is because I have just been through a crash course in what not to call the different rooms. And so now I  know that there is nothing like the drawing room - it drew its  last , albeit long, shudderingly drawn breath somewhere in circa 2000, but since I have always been backwards by a decade I just caught up with  this. The drawing room has been replaced by  the living room, yes, the place we earlier ( and sometimes in a fit of  amnesia colored red by rebellion still do )hung out in. It was here that all the action happened ( well almost all).We fought ,ate, skipped, cried, studied  in this place. Now, the living room is the new drawing room, the master bedroom is the new  ‘papa-mamma’s room’, and so on.  But  to come back to the wall.  Lakshmi Chand Singh, partner RLDA, came up with the brilliant idea of  covering the wall with  a floor to ceiling bookshelf . The long and short of it is that when the last brush of polish had been applied and the last worker had moved out we were left with a beautiful home and a humungous book unit. I looked at the house with pride and the wall unit with horror. How on earth was I ever going to buy all the books needed to fill those yawningly empty spaces?

 Well, I haven’t bought all the books needed , but a fair amount of purchasing has been done. The books came home, in singles, in two’s and three’s and once  two dozen of them. The son would get a lot of  joy in arranging the books. Not arranging by genre, of course, but by their height and ‘weight’. Terrified lest he be ever admonished for not reading the books he was so diligently arranging, the fattest books went right on top, he  getting comfort from the fact that out of sight  meant out of  mom’s mind. The thinnest ones ( Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Animal Farm…) were right within winking distance.

The pattern just crept in on me- of  picking up a book and reading it whenever I got the time- so I started reading while waiting for the milk to boil, in the loo, mid morning, late afternoon, whenever. I read a lot of books the first month, somewhat less the next and now have established a comfortable pattern of reading in the afternoons.

Some of the books I have read so far in 2013 :

v    The illicit  happiness of other people by Manu Joseph- brilliant in most parts- impacted me strongly enough to agree to the son not opting for engineering

v    The Shiva trilogy by Amish- good -interesting reads

v     The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri – good first half , not so enchanted with the second

v    The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald –brilliant but  depressing

v    Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – I know it’s a classic, know that the opening lines are considered as one of the best openings- but the book left me feeling sick and disturbed.

v    Fried Green tomatoes at the whistle stop café by Fannie Flag- have already written a review of this marvelous book a few months back in my blog

v    The Zoya Factor and Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan-  found them shallow- good only  for a few laughs

v    The Help by Kathryn Stockett- excellent, have written a review earlier

v    The Litigators by John Grisham- engrossing

v    Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson- read it after Steve Jobs death- lingered on every word.

v    The Eagle has landed by Jack Higgins- a page turner

v    Chanakya’s Chant by Ashwin Sanghi- surprisingly good

v    Brick lane by Monica Ali- not at all enamoured of this one

v    Narcopolis by Jeet Thayal- ditto. Couldn’t really get it

v    Pelican at Blandings by P.G Wodehouse- do I need to even say anything- Wodehouse delivers, as always

v    Return of a King by William Dalrymple – W.D is one of my favourites- and so are his books

v    Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- my first Gabriel Garcia M- and I loved it – loved every word.

The book I am now looking forward to reading is a book of poetry by my all time favourite  contemporary hindi poet , Gulzaar.

Teaching Modi History

Meenakshi  Lekhi  looked at the men and women seated round the table and said, " we will really have to hold some lessons on history for Modiji .Something on the line of 'history for dummies'.Hearing the word dummy a sulking  L.K sat up straighter and turned to her with twinkling eyes, " have a samosa, Meenakshi ". "I don't mind if I do. I am coming straight from the studios of Times Now .It was tough defending the historical bloomers of our Prime Ministerial candidate".  Here she faltered a little because Nirmala had by now  fixed a steely gaze on her. "Yes, Meenakshi dear. It was tough watching you answer those questions . You made enough blunders of your own- imagine saying Alexander the Great was defeated by Chandragupta Maurya."  Meenakshi gave a throaty laugh which won her some slavish looks from the men and glares from Smriti Irani  and Nirmala Sitharaman. " Oh, I think I came out of it pretty well. I just kept saying that I am coming to the answer knowing fully well that the congress spokesperson would not be able to keep quiet for long and I would be able to slime out." Of course it was Rajnath Singh who brought  some gravitas to the situation.  " Let us come to the reason why we are meeting", said Rajnath Singh. " This meeting has been called to chalk out a damage control strategy for Narendra Bhai and ahem, to ask our P.M canditate to give history a wide berth." " I quite liked the idea of those dummy classes". This was ofcourse Advaniji. " Advaniji, I think those classes are not a bad idea for many of us. We may not speak about Pakistanis and infidels so lovingly then, " an acerbic Rajnath was quick to point out. The Jinnah jibe struck home and a pouting Advani exited the room muttering something about updating his blog.

Just then  the door  opened and Modi strode in .Everyone stood up  reverentially and chorussed ,” kem cho, Modi bhai ?” (  the BJP brass tacks and the RSS pracharacks had all signed up for a 40 days crash course in ‘ how to speak gujarati better than a Patel’ and were showing off their newly acquired proficiency ). Modi  ji replied ,” I am fine ”  in chaste English. Seeing the shock on the faces turned towards him he hastily added, "Hu saro chuu" !  Turned out he had come to check out when his next rally was. There was an uneasy silence . Modi repeated impatiently, " where is my next rally? infact why don't we have it at Saharanpur?It is such a historic place. After all the first mutiny against the Mughals started from  here". There was a shocked silence. Jaitly said uneasily, " you mean Meerut, don't you? and the mutiny was against the British". " Same thing Jaitly bhai. After all , both Meerut and Saharanpur are in Eastern U.P. Teme samjo chho ?( you understand? ) " Mane samjatoo nathi . And you mean to say Western U.P , don't you "?  "Western  Eastern -it is all the same. As long as they are in India and not in Italy", chortled an upbeat Modi. The opinion polls are out with their latest poll - is  Modi's history better than Rahul's -and a whopping 79% of the respondents have voted for me.  " Have  they " ? whispered  the disbelieving BJP brass. 

" Yes . They say that Rahul is history".

Pablo Neruda's Poem- Die Slowly

A friend sent me these lines today. I read them and realized that I had been ‘dying slowly’ over a period of a millennium instead of living passionately for a lifetime.

Do share your thoughts after reading.

Pablo Neruda - Die Slowly

He who becomes the slave of habit, 
who follows the same routes every day, 
who never changes pace, 
who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, 
who does not speak and does not experience, 
dies slowly. 

He or she who shuns passion, 
who prefers black on white, 
dotting ones "it.s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer, 
that turn a yawn into a smile, 
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, 
dies slowly. 

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy, 
who is unhappy at work, 
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty, 
to thus follow a dream, 
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, 
die slowly. 

He who does not travel, who does not read, 
who does not listen to music, 
who does not find grace in himself, 
she who does not find grace in herself, 
dies slowly. 

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem, 
who does not allow himself to be helped, 
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops, 
dies slowly. 

He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know, 
die slowly. 

Let's try and avoid death in small doses, 
reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing. 

Only a burning patience will lead 
to the attainment of a splendid happiness. 

Heartless Friend - a poem

                                           I  pass  you  by  haughtily
                                             my head turned away
                                            refusing  to  acknowledge you
                                          yes, you - once a dear friend
                                       
                                    We spent so much time together
                                           you always brought a smile to my face
                                  was there ever a day we did not meet?
                                           never ! not even one.

                                       How did everything change?
                                  Why did you become so cruel?
                                          When did my fall from grace start?
                                  Why did you snatch my smile away?

                                            Mirror, mirror on the wall
                                       you have always taken great pride
                                           in declaring who is the fairest of them all
                                  but now I take revenge in  declaring your greatest weakness

                                           Your weakness, heartless friend, is age
                                               not age that is  ageing but for
                                                      age that is  young
                                              and so,  I pass you by haughtily.
                                           
                                     
                                             

                                   
                                   

The Namokar Mantra

I had all but forgotten that once, in another age , another birth, I had been born a Jain. My second birth  ,after marriage, was as a Gupta and it was as a Gupta that I had been eating , praying and living. Of course, there were times when I would  hazily trace  my roots, such as when we would pass a Jain temple , or when someone would introduce themselves as Jains- and  by now having become a true blue bania – always on the look  out for fayda , with an ingratiating smile I would simper,’ oh ! that’s just so nice- my parents are also Jains”. Here my children would look as surprised as the guests but banias are used to dealing with surprised looks and the meeting would pass off in a very pleasant atmosphere  Post the meeting the Jainism part of me would be wrapped up and cordoned off  till needed again .

It was the evening of choti diwali  and we had gone visiting –  a Jain household. We were plied with   besan laddoos ,  kanji,  green tea and a host of other festive goodies. Just then the matriarch of the family announced that it was puja time. The family  graciously insisted that we were to join them. Shoes were taken off , diyas lit and the puja started. The Navkaar Mantra was to  be chanted nine times.  Faint memories of  the mantra reared their head through a cobwebby maze   of twenty five years . The first round  of the mantra was over before I could even open my mouth.  I listened intently to the words being spoken in the second round. In the third I merely mouthed the mantra. By the fourth round I was able to join in pretty well and by the ninth I had vowed that never again would I allow myself to forget the beautiful words .

Ladies and Gentlemen: Below is the Namokaar Mantra.

Namo Arihantanam

Namo Siddhanam
Namo Ayriyanam
Namo Uvajjhayanam
Namo Loe Savva-sahunam

Eso Panch Namokaro
Savva-pavappanasano
Manglananch Savvesim
Padhamam Havei Mangala

Namo Arihantanam I bow in reverence to Arihants

Namo Siddhanam I bow in reverence to Siddhas

Namo Ayariyanam I bow in reverence to Acharyas

Namo Uvajjhayanam I bow in reverence to Upadhyayas

Namo Loye Savva Sahunam I bow in reverence to all Sadhus

Eso Panch Namoyaro This five-fold salutation

Savva Pavappanasano Destroys all sins

Mangalanam Cha Savvesim And amongst all auspicious things

Padhamam Havai Mangalam Is the most auspicious one

The Navkar Mantra is the most important mantra in Jainism. While reciting the Navkar Mantra, we  bow down with respect for the   Arihantas, the Siddhas,  the Acharyas (heads of sadhus and sadhvis), the Upadhyayas  (those who teach scriptures to sadhus and sadhvis), the  Sadhus  (monks, who have voluntarily given up social, economical and family relationships)  and the  Sadhvis  (nuns, who have voluntarily given up social, economical and family relationships).  Collectively, they are called Panch Parmesthi (five supreme spiritual people). In this mantra we worship their virtues rather than worshipping any one particular person or Tirthankar. This mantra is also called  Namaskar or Namokar Mantra as we are bowing down. There is no mention of any particular God or Goddess in this mantra. We  Jains do not ask for any favors or material benefits from the Tirthankaras or from the sadhus and sadhvis. This mantra serves as a gesture of respect towards those the Jains  believe  are spiritually ahead and  it also  reminds  everyone of their ultimate goal of nirvana or moksha. My reincarnation as a Jain has well and truly  begun .

Words lived - a poem

                                                 In the process of writing a book
                                                         full of  words which
                                                     the nuns in the convent
                                                   taught me many years back
                                                    lessons which I forgot then,
                                                   but are surprisingly  fresh now
                                                         I think of the words
                                           of  loyalty, responsibility, commitment
                               heavy words and to lessen the sombreness of the words
                                                                I smile
                                         my muscles stretch in directions unexplored
                                                         and so I stop smiling
                                                   and go back to the thinking
                            and now it becomes clear why I forgot all those lessons then
                                    because I would have to live those words
                                 each second, each moment, each hour, each day
                                      and when , blasphemy, I dared to turn away
                                                    from those heavy words
                                             brought back like an errant child
                                                   I am writing a book
                                                         of words lived
                                                 
                                               
                                                

A limerick for Rahul Gandhi

                                        Why , pray, so much fuss over my dreams
                                       it's  enough to make even a dimpled prince scream

                                                        everybody is in a rush
                                                  to cuss about my use of crush

                                   nobody here understands the nuances of language it  seems