Thursday, May 28, 2009

I do not not need opium, I have the gift of reverie


Everything is as interesting as you are interested in it. I had heard someone say someday, "people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that..", probably true but I am not going to write about the awesome game of football, or the Champions League finale, the Barca vs ManU and how Barca won 2 to 0, or even how dear Messi became God n C' Ronaldo the fallen devil. Citizens of the world have already done a lot to arrange words for them. Neither would I take an opportunity to talk about the IPL Season, the grand boring final, the excitement of the cheer-leaders or its affects n effects on Indian economy, on Government formation, on you, on me. Yet "interest" is an interesting word literally and mathematically (if you want to use it there). Today I would prefer to use it interestingly only. It is remarkable to see how with interest comes in desire, attitude, commitment toward that interest and the enthusiasm with which the interest is retained. The later part is evidently more volatile and conflicting.
While at school, we divided “interest” into forms and formations, today I say it was such a ridiculous thing to have tried, same goes for addition tables; one plus one equals two. Everyone could have learned it eventually, it’s so obvious. But I do not dare to say the same for multiplication tables; I still miss all that is above multiple of twelve. If you ask me why is it so? Then I have an answer for that, “not interested! Maths sucks!..rate of interest =0”

An interesting interest that I had while at school, were my hairs and hair style!...always wanted them to flow this way and that, but all oils failed and all gels too, my deterrent hairs stood straight all way through. Later when it was all spikes and pyramids and all towers in trend, my then trendy hairs fell flat. And now when hairs are gradually diminishing over the edges, I would have to say I am no more interested. So Interest’s they keep on changing or deflecting in its direction as we have the liberty to change ones course of interest.

Hell!!! ..”Liberty” is another dangerous word; I always love it, yet the most feared one. The same goes for its twin brother “Freedom”. Though both the words convey the similar sense, however the interesting thing is that both are not equally popular and its popularity has changed over time. For instance these days French Fries have been re-baptized as “Freedom Fries” where as back in the time of the great wars Sauerkraut were renamed as “Liberty Cabbage" and Dachshunds as "Liberty Dogs." Whatever be it interests are always driven by want of liberty and sense of freedom. Now tell me something, is it more interesting to look for a different girl at different traffic signal or look for the same girl at every signal?

They say there are two types of people - those who come into a room and say, “Well, here I am!” and those who come in and say, “Ah, there you are.” I am least bothered as to which kind you belong, or if you were least interested in reading this, however since you have reached this far and still reading, it has to be bit interesting indeed!

Monday, May 25, 2009

falling into short stories

It was only very recently that I was introduced to this particular genre of literature called short stories. I do not know the big names of this culture and haven’t had any time to do a digging into the relics of short story telling. Apart from the fact that the flickering tongues of the grand-moms are an expertise in narration of short stories, unfortunately of which my ears have no experience. But I have to indeed mention the old school Gulmohar English books of prose most of which I don not remember, some of which I only made notes, and a few I loved reading.

Since those days and now most recently I picked one Rudyard Kipling’s collection after which I picked Maupassant’s and then Saki’s and now looking for O Henry’s. Tell you what its really good reading, does not take long time though I haven’t finished all of them yet. Deciding to read one I end up reading five or till ‘am dead asleep (mostly do reading before sleeping). Talking about Kipling, his stories are more about the sub-continent’s life then, during the British rule. Lots about the soldiers living in India, the life of people under British rule. His way of narration is very raw to read (my opinion as an armature) in an English that I had not learned at school. But once you start picking up you might find hard to keep it down (not always, sometimes you might sleep). Among all that I had read “The Story of Muhammad Din”, “The Phantom Rickshaw”, and “The Daughter of the Regiment” is worth mentioning. And yes! “The Finest Story in the World” was real fun.

Of Maupassant and Saki, they are all individually different from each other, so are their stories. Will talk about them some other day.