Suffering a good book

Coming to the end of a good book is the most bittersweet feeling that I know of. It's almost like finishing a bar of chocolate - you relish every bite and when you know you've reached the last, you prolong it, just so you can try to etch the taste in your memory.

Thus, I found myself avoiding millions of other things I had to do, just so I could get back to my book and read the last ten pages. I concentrated on every word, appreciated every clever turn of phrase, felt more connected than I had throughout the book, knowing that the end was depressingly close.

When it did finally dawn on me, I felt strangely satisfied because I had read a good book, which is always a wonderful, wonderful experience. At the same time, I felt restless. I wanted more and that was that.

I tried to pick up another one from my bedside, which is where all my pending reading is stacked. But I just couldn't go beyond the first few pages. Nothing seemed to be as good. So, I picked up my good book again and opened it to random pages, re-read it, re-lived it. I think I'll be doing this for the next couple of days at least.

It's almost like the end of a relationship. You don't want to let go but sometimes, you have no choice. So you hang on to the past till you can. You might try to fill the void with something else but it will never shape up to be the beautiful thing you had to leave behind. And so, at least for a while, you refuse to think about an alternative future, one that will never match up to your past and so, is useless and irrelevant to you.

Of course, the good news is that this is about books, not men. So one might have to wait a little but surely, something as good, if not better will definitely come along. :)

When the truth is fiction

I'm currently reading an autobiography (one of my first few) and what struck me most was the blatant honesty with which it seems to have been written. And that took me back three years to a wintry day when I sat somewhere in the Gargi lawns and debated the veracity of autobiographical texts with my professor.

How honest can you be about yourself, really? When you know that what your life story is going to be read by millions of people, the majority of whom don't really know anything about you at all, and never will except for what you tell them, how true to the task are you going to be? How true can you be?

By extension, aren't our blogs too just fragments of a larger, truer and non-existent autobiography - one that we will never let out into the world, or admit that it exists because parts of it make us too uncomfortable about who we are and what we have done.

In that case, the blogosphere is just one big half-truth.

How cool is that? :D

My shining armour

Cynicism is not as bad as it is made out to be. It is the thing that protects you from irrelevant and potentially harmful things like hope and faith. It is the thing that makes you feel secure and cosy and comfortable. It is a cold and heavy armour - but it is the only one that works.

It is better to embittered than to be battered.

In Loving Memory

The emptiness that I have felt in the past few days cannot be put into words. It is with immense regret that I announce to the world, the death of my beloved N 70. My love affair with it was too good to be true, but it was; too good to last, and it didn't.

I shuddered when they told me its insides had been burnt - probably the consequence of recharging it with a fake charger. Like I would do that to my baby. Like I would charge it on anything less than the original Nokia charger. All I know is that it ran out of battery one day and never came back on again. It's almost like it died in its sleep.

I keep it next to my bedside still. I almost expect to wake up to the very funky Punjabi song that was its ringtone. I have not yet thrown away the cover that it used to rest in, protected and safe from scratches and falls - phenomena that are too common where I'm concerned. It still rests there, though now it needs to be protected no more.

My lovely Nokia N 70 - my first (and only, for a long, long time to come) camera phone - thou art missed.