Of readers and writers

30th March 2007

Of late I’ve experienced solitude like I’ve never experienced before. I have a premonition of impending doom on my life. There’s a reason for it and that in itself is paradoxical; knowing the reason should be a good enough reason to change the path leading to disaster. Sitting alone at my home, I’ve realized that I have little control over my bad habits. I will not delve into the niceties of how they eat up my time, but would like to quote something said by someone, sometime ago “temptation normally comes in through a door that has deliberately left open”. Sometimes the past haunts me while I’m trying to understand the principles of rotational motion behind centrifugation and my mind spins out of control. Then I start reasoning as to what happened in the past and why it happened while the chapter of centrifugation is snapped shut in frustration. But then I reopen it and say to myself "....I gotta do research buddy...I have to explore and discover and invent...I can't waste my time like this."

I’m not a student of literature but I do like reading once in a while. I do not like most self help books and most fiction novels (I do not really need to read an extraneously created fiction…there’s enough fiction stored and created every now and then in my brain…makes life difficult for me).

I love something else though; short stories, essays and sometimes, poetry. The other day I was reading a short story by Leo Tolstoy, “Three Hermits”, a wonderful creation and I strongly suggest you read it if you haven’t already. We all need to do a lot of introspection and you’ll realize what I mean when you read it.

Then I read Stephen Leacock’s “the awful fate”. I remember another one I read by Leacock a long time back “my lost dollar” and another one "my financial career" in which a guy has a phobia of going to banks. I just love the way Leacock creates funny situations on people who can not express themselves aptly and create difficult situations for themselves while clinging on to waning hope that others would understand them. By the time I finished reading “the awful fate”, I was hysterical; I couldn’t stop laughing (and almost empathizing) at the character Mr. Jones.

I also find Jim Corbett’s work (Of course! not the one he did with the gun) very interesting and while reading a collection of his stories in the book titled “Temple Tiger”, I was transported to another world. The fear and the adrenalin rush I felt as I read the book were surreal.

It’s 2:00 am in the morning and I’ll end it here. But before I do, I’d like to say one thing about “The metamorphosis” by Kafka. It deeply affected my psyche. It is so sad…WHY DID GREGOR DIE…why? Boo hoo hoo!! Why couldn’t he have metamorphosed back into a human and had a good life…why oh why? I read this story only recently…say 3 months back…and I’m still sad (even though it ends on some kind of a positive note.) Why is the world so cruel and why do people you love turn their backs on you and even try to harm you…WHY?? (OH DAMN! WILL I JUST STOP RELATING EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD TO MY PERSONAL LIFE…I just hate myself for this)

Last but not least, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created a character I absolutely adore (I’m sure I’m just one of the millions).