Slender Fingers and a Shaving Blade

Holding a pen and jotting down the words

maybe the most divine thing

that slender fingers can do.

Or is it the strumming of a guitar?

But, sometimes they fail in doing

a mundane task as holding

a weightless ordinary shaving blade...

And, cut the bulging vien.

One more attempt in fiction

Full of possibilities....

Uncouth

He was literate according to the official statistics because he could write his name in his mother tongue and even in English using Capital letters. This was a thing to be proud of when you know that there are millions around you who used thumb impression wherever their signature was required. And, he took small pride in it. Economically too he had brought his immediate family a few notches higher than the people of his group, sending his three children to school and college, earning and investing in enough so that the children would inherit his legacy in equal proportion without any major disputes. His calculations for life and thereafter would have made any Chartered Accountant unashamedly become his disciple.

The Sense of an Ending

When you finish reading some books, they leave you depressed as if you went to drop a dear friend to the railway station still you feel that the train left before you'd say a proper goodbye. This is the same feeling you get when you finish reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes that has won the prestigious Booker Prize this year.

I'm not the person to discuss the literary merits or demerits of this deceptively thin book (about 150 pages only), as I'm not an avid reader (I feel lucky if I complete 5 books in a year), or comment on the controversy on whether it can be called a Novel or just a Novella. Seeing the size of the book I'd promised myself to finish reading it in a sitting taking 6 to 7 hours. But, it took me some 15 to 20 hours over a weekend with couple of meals and toilet breaks. And, I even had a couple of false starts when I stopped reading after the first 15 pages (I'd feared that the jinx of leaving the book incomplete with the bookmark intact had returned), before the lucky weekend.

This book mainly deals with memory. It shows how we mix it up with imagination to make our own history as years go by to make it comfortable for us to live with. And, how devastating it can be when the reality of the past confronts us breaking the spell of our imagined history.

The reason I told it is deceptively thin is because it isn't simple as its size may make you believe and if you are the kind of reader who likes to go over a passage a few times just to savour its feel or beauty may fail in the race against time. Here is one example appearing (about the passage of time) on the first page itself:

Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing – until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.

There are such nuggets virtually on every page that would stop and make you ponder for a while.

When I finished reading it, it just left me wishing that it was written a few years earlier. So, I could have avoided making a few mistakes that have remained with me as hurtful memories.

A couple of interesting and varied reviews here and here.

House of Cards

Life is always on I'll teach you a lesson son! gear, especially when you are feeling least vulnerable or feel a little high on confidence about tackling a situation (because you've been through similar things before and got out nearly undamaged in the past). It isn't about a warlike scenario or some extraordinary circumstances that I'm talking about, sometimes even going through your daily functions when you are at peace with yourself leave alone cheerful (oblivious of the fact that something may go wrong). This is the time it strikes; a bolt from the blue ( as the cliché goes), virtually pushing you to the brink.

You may have put a lifetime to train your mind to tackle such situations smoothly. But,at that moment everything seems to be falling apart like a House of Cards. Your faith, your belief just evaporate.

Eventually you survive, regroup, maybe a little bruised, maybe scarred. Because, you are programmed for self-preservation and to cheerfully continue the charade. 

Kaleidoscope

I found this passage in a long discarded story of mine (obviously because I found too much of me in it). This is also a tribute to one of first friends I made through blogs. His blog was titled Kaleidoscope, he has deleted his blog (for reasons that I cannot fathom), but, still he remains being one of my best friends and guide (as far as writing goes).

Hey friend, hope you revive your writing soon by whichever name you like.

Kaleidoscope is the word that reverberated in her head whenever she was with Rajan. It was not that she was good with allegories. For her everything was divided into two: Right-Wrong, Good-Bad, Like-Don’t Like or Love-Hate. Only a hyphen could fit in between and nothing else. Rajan was someone who rose above the two clearly divided portions of her mind. As a kaleidoscope was filled with broken pieces of glass, but would show colourful and vibrant images with a smooth jingle whichever way it turned, same way Rajan even with his deformed limbs and contorted face gave a sense of perfection and serenity to the world around him. The vibrancy he exuded was infectious, so was his humour.

The Ghost Writer

We may never judge a book by its cover because it is nailed into our heads even before we begin to learn the nursery rhymes. But, what happens when you have seen the film based on a book and that too a gripping one? You go to the book expecting to be in line with the film, maybe little clearer and the characters etched with more depth and empathy; that is all. No, not at all! You be ready to be surprised and even shocked as the book takes a totally different trajectory or to another realm.

This was the feeling I'd while reading  The Ghost Writer (the American imprint of The Ghost as published in the UK) by Robert Harris, which is adapted into a film by Roman Polanski.

The story is political thriller where a nameless London based ghost writer (the book is narrated in first person by the writer himself without ever letting out his real name), who is called into to finish the work on the memoirs of the former Prime Minister Adam Lang (a character said be based on Tony Blair), when the man working on them is found dead just a month before the deadline for submitting the manuscript to the publishers. So, the Ghost heads to the USA to be with Adam Lang and his team holed up in Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, the summer holiday home of the rich publisher Martin S. Rhinehart to finish the book. Obviously, the sailing isn't smooth as the Ghost had expected. First, the manuscript he has been given to work with is bland and needs overhauling. Second, Lang is very reluctant to open up about is youth and his years in Cambridge, and, there is discrepancy in what Lang says about his entry into politics and the actual version as the Writer finds out through his research. There is more to come in terms of thriller and conspiracy theory.

The film starring Pierce Brosnan as Adam Lang and Ewan McGregor in the title role is loyal to the book as far as the thriller part of the story.

But, what I loved about the book is the fact that at least half of it is a writer's manual, a ghost writer's manual to be precise without the dreaded 'Do it yourself' exercise with the process of writing dealt with in detail; from drawing the Contract to how to present yourself in front of your subject. Everyone of the seventeen chapters begins with a quote from Andrew Crofts' seminal book titled Ghostwriting thereby giving direction about how the story will move in the said chapter.

Couple of interesting passages from the book:

All good books are different but all bad books are exactly the same.

Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk's too big, the desk's too small, there is too much noise, there is too much quiet, it's too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply start.

A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and immediately it becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it's halfway to being just like every other bloody book that's ever been written. But the best must never be allowed to drive out the good. In the absence of genius there is always craftmanship. One can at least try to write something which will arrest the reader's attention – which will encourage them, after reading the first paragraph, to take a look at the second, and then the third.This in no way means that this book is very high funda or technical; it can be enjoyed by anyone who is interested in listening to a good story.

PS. Searching for this book was an experience in itself. It was last year in Bengaluru; I went into an upmarket book-store and asked for this book. At least half a dozen of sale-people converged around me and virtually emptied the whole of the 'Horror' section on my lap. Ma and my sister-in-law had a hard time explaining to them that I wasn't interested in horror stories but just wanted a novel titled The Ghost written by Robert Harris. In the end, they themselves had to dig it out from somewhere for me.

A Day When Jagjit Singh Did Playback For Me

We often feel exasperated when a writer or a filmmaker overly depends on coincidences to move his story forward thinking how lazy of him to use a 'beaten to death' cliché rather than working out something natural or new. But, if we see minutely; the one who has written our lives is the laziest of them all, he uses coincidences that go on to become cliché when used by us in fiction. Here is one such incident:

Long back when I wasn't this bald and my beard was black pepper without even a crystal of salt in it. I was sitting here reading and waiting for my dinner to come. The cassette-player was soulfully playing Seher, the latest addition in my Jagjit Singh Collection.

But, before the dinner, she came that too with a red rose in her hand; “don't get any ideas in your head, this may be the last birthday I'm here to wish you in person. So, felt odd coming empty handed”, she said, handing me the rose. I held it near my nose as Dilip Kumar of Mughal-E-Azam.

At that precise moment Jagjit Singh started singing Tere Aane Ki Jab Khabar Mahke/Teri Kushboo se Sara Ghar Mahke (When the news of your arrival wafts through the air/My whole house becomes fragrant with your scent).



I started to lip-synch him as if I was Naseeruddin Shah. After a few moments she just said trying to keep a straight face; “please save your singing and acting skills for the time when you have a real girlfriend”.

PS. Here are two old posts about Jagjit Singh.