TO BOOKS, BIBLIOPHILES AND BONDING

I picked up an old issue of Reader's Digest while sorting out a bookshelf this morning. The very first article I chose to read was about a family's immense love for books- so much so that they were facing severe space crunches,trying to accommodate a few hundred new books (they actually love reading their books). Though I do not relate to their problem, as of now, I can identify with their fondness for books which they lovingly refer to as 'family'.



My earliest memory of books is of big, fat, musty volumes filling up the bookshelves in my parents' modest apartment - the standard RABINDRA RACHANABALI, SHARAT RACHANABALI, BANKIM RACHANABALI,SHARADINDU-S AND SUNIL GANGOPADHYAY-S, with a few English classics (old Penguin editions) thrown in for good measure. What amazed me as a child was the huge number of gargantuan medical texts (my father and brother are doctors) that lay piled up on my brother's bed and on our living room couch during weekdays when my brother would be away. This meant that when guests visited, I had to jump into action, pronto, taking the books off the couch and onto my bed. There were strict instructions not to keep the books on the floor for that would mean heresy, tantamount to a violation of the House of God.



I do not remember the first book I read all by myself for pleasure but by age ten, I got used to the fact that they would be the only kind of gifts my father would buy for me. Soon I became a voracious reader, only too willing to wolf down a smorgasboard of delectable tales, whenever served. From AAM AANTIR BHEPUand CHAANDER PAANHAR to FAMOUS FIVEs and LITTLE WOMEN, it was a journey undertaken for sheer delight. Without my realizing, Apu, Durga, Julian, George, Jo and Beth had become my best friends, my only friends. Don't feel sorry for me on this account for I feel a bond with them that has lasted over the years, a bond that, I am not sorry to say, has outdone many others in loyalty. It would be unfair if I do not mention here a certain Mr. D. Sen, bookseller, who gave me new books on the sly, not taking a penny but only the promise that I would return them in impeccable condition after having read them. Or my high school English teacher, Mrs. Una Jones who catered to my unusually large appetite for books from her personal collection. From my adolescence to adulthood, books have found new friends for me. Happy exchanges of books with classmates during recesses at school left me enlightened and richer without my having to spend a rupee. I recall how intensely and desperately we kept looking for Heathcliff in real life for years and how it crushed our souls to know that Heathcliff and we were better off in our separate worlds. I recall how we discussed our waiting to lay our hands on 'Lolita' - a forbidden fruit in our teens. I remember raging debates in college over the aptness of the decision to give Arundhati Roy the Booker, debates about who was the better writer -Saramago or Coetzee, about who had more enduring appeal - Holmes, Poirot or Feluda. I have lost touch with so many of my friends from those years but I feel connected whenever I go through the books that had brought us together.


During my final year in college, a very dear Professor had invited some of us to her house. The lasting impression of that visit that I brought back home was of her huge library, overflowing with hardbound classics and paperbound pulp. I made a decision that day. I didn't know who I would eventually become or what I would do in life but I would most certainly and lovingly set up a personal library at home. I have managed to do that, buying, reading and preserving books over the years with a gusto that I rarely show for any other activity.I too love my books like 'family', I get paranoid when I have to lend them, I leaf through them ever so delicately, they act as touch-therapists when I am under the weather and I promise them ever so often that they will have new companions in new bookshelves. I have revisited many of them a number of times and I am happy to say that they have not tired me. No wonder then that I have not taken to e-books that don't quite seem made for personal use and collection.



Meanwhile, my father continues to buy books for me and I can never thank him enough for the best gifts ever.

BACK TO THE VEDIC AGE

This is going to be a long one. Leafing through the October issue of GRAZIA (famed to be Europe's number one style magazine), I came across features as 'varied' (guffaw!) as 'The Grazia Best Dressed List 2008', 'The Big Bag Blowout', '10 Ways to Long Locks','Which Desperate Housewife Are you',etc.,etc.,and could not help wondering how far, far removed from all this is the cocooned world I just visited in Mayapur, Nadia, supposed birthplace of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the once living reincarnation of Lord Krishna (as legend has it).

I returned yesterday after a three day trip to ISKCON, Mayapur, not exactly reformed but definitely questioning a lot of the 'reality' that I am fed with everyday.

Krishna conscious Vaishnavs lead an almost sur'real' existence there, beginning and ending conversations with a soft, lilting 'Hare Krishna', surviving on vegan appetites, worshipping Lord Krishna at least twice daily and chanting the 'mahamantra' countless times a day. It is a fairly convenient lifestyle (I will not get into the economic and socio-political dynamics of the place)-as in there are no rulings against sex (although not illicit), conjugal life, love or dancing in spiritual ecstasy (the only rigorous form of physical exercise).

Boys live in the 'Gurukul' and study in a co-ed school within the premises. Being a high school teacher, I could not resist the temptation of visiting the gurukul. What I found there reminded me of my history text at school with chapters devoted to the Vedic way of life in the Aryan Age. The gurukul here is built against an Arcadian backdrop, the only 'modern' touches in the place being a small football field, a basketball court, tubewells and electricity.Premananda Das, the man in charge of the gurukul is a soft-spoken South indian who came all the way from South Africa in 2004 and decided to settle in this sylvan heaven-on-earth to teach boys from far-flung places in the world what he knew best - woodwork. He showed me a mud hut where four boys have been chosen to live because they have shown a greater inclination towards leading a simple,pray...austere, Vedic life.Their weekends are spent cleaning the mud hut and reading the scriptures. Well, how far is that from the life of the boys I teach who will not bother to keep their almost futuristic rooms in order just because paid domestic helps have been for long the order of the day! Of course, I am not exactly in favour of advocating regular reading of the scriptures,but I did realize the value of performing certain rituals daily. If not for anything, it taught me that rituals, religious or otherwise, offer man a centre to hold on to, a sense of belonging and kinship to a community of like-minded people and hence a sense of security.

While returning I could not help but recall a scene from Aparna Sen's 'Yuganta' where the male protagonist, a bohemian creative head in an ad agency (played by Anjan Dutta) realizes that his wife, a disciplined classical dancer (played by Roopa Ganguly) is the stronger, sounder and more rooted of the two because her days are bound by simple rituals, worship and faith.

IT'S DD TIME AGAIN!

durga pujo came and went this year without creating much of a ripple in Joan's world.shopping had been completed long ago,keeping in mind a lazy pre-pujo trip rather than the pujo itself.meeting friends during the festive days was an impossibility, what with most of them out of town.so the four days were reserved for some really quiet time spent at home, catching up on good ol' Doordarshan.the ironic part was that Joan planned to revisit Doordarshan on a DVD player.so she did, watching eight vcds filled with deliciously simple televised episodes of R.K. Narayan's 'MALGUDI DAYS'-simple indian life at its best!depicting an imaginary everyman's land where humour and pathos play hand in hand, a postman is as rich as an advocate is as rich as a schoolboy in matters of the heart,where wisdom comes from a life lived rather than places visited and books read, where sambhar-rice,chhach and nimbu ka aachar are good enough for a feast and Gross Domestic Happiness is of greater significance than Gross Domestic Product. if only globalisation did not bombard our lives..! how would it affect the average indian? gucci hobo bags in shopping malls would lack import or not register instant recognition and instead grandma's tales would continue to colour quiet nights.would it be all that undesirable?
times have changed. people have moved on. Doordarshan has given way, in the collective indian imagination, to dozens of private channels telecasting blingy tearjerkers, glitz and glamour.Joan hasn't changed much. in a quiet neighbourhood of kolkata she still yearns for HUMLOG, HONI-ANHONI,KATHA SAGAR, YEH JO HAI ZINDAGI and UDAAN.

VANITY!

i realized something today. i am vain. or why else would i wish to create a blog of my own and share my posts with others? it stems from a deep-rooted sense of vanity, my friends! one could argue that blogging is a technologically savvy way of maintaining a diary. i don't buy that. people don't maintain diaries to let other people peep into their private/personal worlds. they do that more often for self-introspection, as a matter of habit or even for practising handwriting (lame as this sounds), if you please...not because they are vain. i am blogging because i feel important enough to myself to let my thoughts and opinions be known. so i'm vain. there, i've said it. clip my wings if you will.