Current Read 3: Elphame's Choice

"We are the soul of woman
A wondorous gift
Both rich and knowing
In praise we lift!"

With the word lift the women raised their arms to the domed ceiling and spun, humming the melody together. The silky clothing they wore drifted around their bodies like falling leaves, framing them in shimmering rays of changing light. All of the women were smiling, as if they were taking part in an event filled with such wonder that it was impossible to contain within them, and the happiness came spilling out of their bodies. ..."

Current Read 2: Cannery Row by John Steinback

" Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine caneeries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said. "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody.

Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and how he would have meant the same thing. ... "

- Steinback

Current Read: Poetry: The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

Love Letter by Sylvia Plath

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chisled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

Current Read 1: Noonshade By James Barclay

My tale on the short story, 'Our Lady of the Massacre' by Angela Carter

Angela Carter's collection " Black Venus " has been a plunge into the world of feminism largely combined with patriarchy and the supposed justification of colonization. 'Our Lady of the Massacre' ( the third story in this collection) reverts around the identity of a naivete girl under her English mistress whose journey then proceeds as a plantation worker in Virginia and her escape to the Indian community which she stumbles upon accidentally, finally back again to be captured by the white masters. As I read through, what shined out weren't the literary contours rather it was her prose, her language that made everything just come of some imaginary sharp edge. As I read fiction, a single story of carter turns out to be my doze of literary theory for the day.

Take 11!

Why should books not be treated as everyday objects, as necessary and as available as socks and tea?

— Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

My Blessing To All Those People Who Can't Live Without Books...

The Last Few Words ...

Ever since I've known how to read I've always treated books more as teachers than friends. Their voice has always assumed a superiority above my own. But something happened yesterday afternoon. Something that I've never experienced all this while with books. The book I finished last was still echoing its few words very subtly in my unconscious. I went up to my shelf, opened it up and got the book out. At the last page of the book I wrote down a few words of my own. The journey then became a new beginning from an old end. My  voice was now added to the book's. My tiny shadowy footsteps through the pages disappeared into its spine. The conversation continued with those few freshly written words and now I await the answer.

My First Ever Reading Lamp : Courtesy my Best Friend

** It was the most unexpected and the most beautiful friendship day gift I've ever received. The minute I was at home, at night, I very purposefully switched off all my bedroom lights, arranged my pillow just so, and started reading under it. Bliss! **

There Is No Word - Tony Hoagland : Best Poem I've Read In Days

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers

—so that before you are even out the door
you feel the weight of the jug dragging
the bag down, stretching the thin

plastic handles longer and longer
and you know it’s only a matter of time until
bottom suddenly splits.

There is no single, unimpeachable word
for that vague sensation of something
moving away from you

as it exceeds its elastic capacity
—which is too bad, because that is the word
I would like to use to describe standing on the street

chatting with an old friend
as the awareness grows in me that he is
no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,

a person with whom I never made the effort—
until this moment, when as we say goodbye
I think we share a feeling of relief,

a recognition that we have reached
the end of a pretense,
though to tell the truth

what I already am thinking about
is my gratitude for language—
how it will stretch just so much and no farther;

how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how it will move, if not inside, then
around the circumference of almost anything—

how, over the years, it has given me
back all the hours and days, all the
plodding love and faith, all the

misunderstandings and secrets
I have willingly poured into it. 




Courtesy: Dhiren Shah

I Read So That I Don't Die - Lara Kattan

** I just read this article ( The link to the article is below :) ) through a blog I was visiting and I got those tears and goosebumps you can receive only when you can feel and understand each word of what someone else who shares a similar passion with you is trying to communicate to you. Just the fact that this reader states that she would read a means of survival rather than just an act of passing time, got me a lot of respect for her. There are people who inspire you and then there are those others whose words just transcend you to the place you were struggling to be at. This article, this reader and these words have made such a place possible for me in those few minutes. I can't stop myself from re-reading it all over again. **

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/i-read-so-that-i-dont-die/

Soft -Board Treasure:

Current Read : Black Venus by Angela Carter

" Her granny speak Creole, patois, knew no other language, spoke it badly and taught it badly to Jeanne, who did her best to convert it into good French when she came to Paris and started mixing with swells but made a hash of it, her heart wasn't in it. no wonder. It was as thought her tongue had been cut out and another one sewn in that did not fit well. Therefore you could say, not so much that Jeanne did not understand the lapidary, troubled serenity of her lover's poetry but, that it was a perpetual affront to her. He recited it to her by the hour and she ached, raged and chafed under it because his eloquence denied her language. It made her dumb, a dumbness all the more profound because it manifested itself in a harsh clatter of ungrammatical recriminations and demands which were not directed at her lover so much -- she was quite fond of him -- as at her own condition, great gawk of an ignorant black girl, good for nothing: correction. good only for one thing, even if the spirochetes were already burrowing away diligently at her spinal marrow while she bore up the superb weight of oblivion on her Amazonian head.
       The greatest poet of alienation stumbled upon the perfect stranger, theirs was a match made in heaven. In his heart, he must have known this."


..... ...... ......


" The young man inhales the aroma of coconut oil which she rubs into her hair to make it shine. His agonized romanticism transforms this homely odor of the Caribbean kitchen into the perfume of the air of those tropical islands he can sometimes persuade himself are the happy lands for which he longs. His lively imagination performs an alchemical alteration on the healthy tang of her sweat, freshly awakened by dancing. He thinks her sweat smells of cinnamon because she has spices in her ores. He thinks she is made of a different kind of flesh than his."

" I only grieve for what never was. Only for those pretty pictures we made for ourselves, and now they've faded."

The Reading Kit

Its probably a very lame thing to mention but I feel extremely proud about the effort I took to create a portable reading kit. A lot of times as readers, we face those sadly annoying moments when we want to note down a certain line, passage or quote from the book we are reading and it turns out we have none of the rough papers or stationary items required for the same. I decided a few days back to make a stack of unused single ruled papers and divide them in cubes, punch a hole, bind all of them with a ribbon to be made in to a mini writing pad for my random reading moments.Then I took alongside a pencil, my favorite pen and a few paper marker-stickers to highlight the important pages, put these all in a user-friendly pouch and placed it with my book inside my bag. Now, whenever those moments of noting down come, I am prepared to write those moments on paper. :)

Up close and personal..

Stupor of a Story..

When I am with a book for a consistent amount of time through the day, I become so much a part of the story that reality then just seems to drone on. I feel captured inside the pages of the book and locate the various scenes on the blank spaces of the sky as I travel across the city daily for my activities. The story lulls me and rocks me back and forth as if I am a temporary sailing pirate who has been chosen to steal off as much of the treasure residing in that particular book as she can. I then find silence as my best companion to get me through.. to just let me be.. still there.. basking and swinging in the stupor of a story.

Books and Bibles:

There are some books, among the many that we read throughout our lives, which possess this magic where we can read them at any given point in time, on any day, opening the pages to a random number and still finding something in there which strikes us with continuous awe and wonder on reading it. Such books are what I like to call "My personal Bibles." There is some thing entirely warm and open about them, and something so blissful that you would love to hold it close to your chest even when you are in a cab traveling, or with a friend, crossing the road and even when you are walking a lane absorbed in music and thought. My latest prayer,somewhat, goes like this: "I hope each and every person has in the least two comfort books, which can uplift their hearts when they are sad and lonely or share in their joys and victories, no matter what stage they are in life." 

Time to Know You, Dear Reader : An Interview with Nishi Shroff

** My journey with books cannot proceed without the company of other readers. Its an unsaid, unclaimed family that we are all part of. Its simply beautiful to know how other people feel about books and it can't get any better than when they share their journeys with you. So I am taking on this new venture of knowing the people/readers who inspire me by letting them take me through their own worlds of books and the art of reading. Its the most joyous event I've been a part of. Here is my very first reader in all her simplicity and wonder, recounting her memories and happy times with the books that have inspired and formed her being.**

Readers Name: Nishi Shroff

Obsession: Steaming hot cups of coffee, Dance, Music, Muffins, Cookies and Quotes by Sri Sri.  

Question 1:  How did your journey with books begin?

It started with the Library Period at School. I began with Knights of The Round Table, as I grew older I started picking the thickest novels, mostly classics, because I wanted to improve. But my interest in reading developed when I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’. I was too small to understand most of the words, so I sat with a dictionary and after every few sentences I’d be looking for meanings. It was frustrating, but I wanted to read the book so badly that I didn’t care. It is still my favourite and it’s the only book I’ve read more than once.

The Harry Potter series had me hooked. It’s fantasy, but it has been my place of escape from the drudgery of the mundane and the problems you face growing up.

Question 2:  Who according to you is a reader?

When the written word, a phrase or a sentence, strikes a chord with you, you automatically become a reader, it doesn’t matter what you read.

Question3:  What is it that you love about books?

They contain the universe in them. There’s inspiration, there’s hope and sometimes there’s that vacation you want to take from the people you interact with. A book is romance, sometimes it’s a forbidden affair and sometimes it’s your best friend, it makes you experience feelings you never knew, it helps you uncover elements of your own personality.

Question 4:  How would you define the art of reading?

 The art of reading is silence; it is the art of taking a moment with yourself.

Question 5:  One reader that inspires you and why?

No reader inspires me, people inspire me, birds inspire me, the weather inspires me, words inspire me - oxygen inspires me; but not a reader, because reading is so personal that taking advice on it is like asking someone whether you bathe correctly.

Question 6:  What according to you is the connection between words and images?

An experience, that it captures an experience.

Question 7:  Do you like visiting libraries/bookstores? If so, what is it about a library that would make you feel at home?

Bookstores. I like getting lost in them, feels like no one can find me and there’s nowhere to go and no one to know. All I need is the serenity of music, the cool air, the smell of coffee and the time to discover messages hidden inside hardcovers I don’t know as yet. And these books are safe to know, I can start where I want and leave when I like, and if I get hooked, it’s just a book.

Question 8:  Have you ever stumbled upon an unknown book store? How was the feeling?

Yes, it feels like I have discovered a new haunt, so I explore every inch of it as soon as I can.

Question 9:  Books come unexpectedly and very beautifully in our lives. There are moments when they come least expected. Have you experienced this? If so, which book made you lucky?

Yes all the time. I hate looking for a book to read, that’s why these days I barely read. I’m very selective, so I haven’t read much. For me it was Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Alchemist and My Sister’s Keeper.

Question 10:  Have you ever faced a readers’ block?

I think I’ve been facing one for about two or three years now.

Question 11:  If you were to write your own book journal what would you name it and why?

I always have these crazy names pop up, but today I can’t think of any.

Question 12:  One library around the globe that you would like to visit?

None.

Question 13:  A bookstore you would want to recommend:

TITLE WAVES, Bandra.

Question 14:  The current quote in your mind right now:

Blank, blank, blank, but this is my favourite:

“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke.

Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly,

Or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”

– Chuang Tzu

Question 15: Books v/s E-books: your pick?

BOOKS, I like holding them and I love the feeling of placing bookmarks in them, and I love the smell of the pages of a really good book.

Question 16:  The current read on your bedside table:

Not on the table, but in my bag (all the time) – EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES by Lynne Truss; hilarious book about punctuation.

Question 17:  Define your version of an ideal reading experience:

An ideal reading experience is to have some time on your own, at a place that offers a relaxing ambience and allows you the freedom to look up from the pages and wonder about life and how beautiful the day really is.

Question 18: 3 favorite authors:

No favourites, I could name some but that’d just be pretentious. I think everyone manages that one fantastic book and barely anyone is second time lucky.

Question 19:  3 favorite books:

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

THE HARRY POTTER SERIES

THE ALCHEMIST

MY SISTER’S KEEPER (for artistic sensibility)

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Question 20:  Any wish-list reads?  

None. With books (as it is with people) – I know it when I see it.

** Thank You Nishi Shroff -- You've just enlightened me today! :) **

                     

Absolute Wonder ...

My Guide for the Week : Paulo Coelho's ' The Manual of the Warrior of Light'

Current read: The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

"... he leans down and touches the page, delicately stroking the engraving. I look at him, look at the book, remember this book, this moment, the first book I loved, remember wanting to crawl into it and sleep "..

Take 10!

" There is nothing quiet so intimate as the space between a page and the reader's eyes."

A World which I Refuse to Grow Out Of: Harry Potter.

A gift from a loved one: 2

Untitled - John Berger
My heart born naked
was swaddled in lullabies.
Later alone it wore
poems for clothes.
Like a shirt
I carried on my back
the poetry I had read.

So I lived for half a century
until wordlessly we met.

From my shirt on the back of the chair
I learn tonight
how many years
of learning by heart
I waited for you.

A gift from a loved one : 1

You and Sarajevo
by Bruce Dawe

for Gloria

Hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep,
with the dog at your feet, his head resting
on a shoe, and the clock's ticking
like water dripping in a sink
-- I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact,
given the inherent cruelty of the world
where beautiful things and people
are blasted apart all the day long,
I would never want to come back, knowing
I could never be this lucky twice...

A Sudden Blessing : 2

I am on a new mission to find book lovers and most importantly soul warming readers. How randomly, beautifully, and so nonchalantly readers come by you and you get inspired to no bounds. My first step was the beautiful UNPL which I blogged about recently and requested every reader to check the link for the same. At present, at the doorstep of my heart has arrived a new guest and a beautiful crazed reader who photographs books and the act of reading and collects such photos respectively. Its a lovely insight into the cube whole of the other-worldly act of reading. This is my way of respecting and acknowledging a wonderful gesture.

http://bookporn.tumblr.com/

Take 9!

“The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.”


 ― Virginia Woolf,Orlando

From: The Manual of the Warrior of Light:

Every warrior of light has felt afraid of going into battle.


Every warrior of light has, at some point in the past, lied or betrayed someone.


Every warrior of light has trodden a path that was not his.


Every warrior of light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons.


Every warrior of light has, at least once, believed that he was not a warrior of light.


Every warrior of light has failed in his spiritual duties.


Every warrior of light has said 'yes' when he wanted to say 'no'.


Every warrior of light has hurt someone he loved.


That is why he is a warrior of light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope being better than he is.

Take 8!

“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.” 


―Saul Bellow

** The universe speaks with me through books. **

All of us have that one portal to escape the world, that one medium through which each of us is allowed to skip through our world and enter others which reside in the realm of the imaginary. It is music for some, while dance for the others, food and fashion or a camera lens. I found mine after 22 years of unbinding existence.

Mine is the realm of words and images. Mine is the realm of books.

And the magic begins all over again. Unconsciously, unhurriedly you cross those boundaries of the formal to enter the vistas of comradeship.

I've something more precious than human beings with me. I've myself and I've books.

" You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. "

   -- Rumi

My life has holistically, in every other worldly sense been woven with books. People have hallucinations about loved ones, hysteria about losing the things they love, but I have premonitions about the next book to read. In whatever state of mind, I look towards a book to either end or extend a state of mind or a series of questions. The answer resides in the books I begin to read. Somewhere between the pages, I stumble across something I've long forgotten to live. The nostalgia of that particular moment back in time washes over me again with the same scents, smells and sights. Sometimes words just fail me, when I try to realize how books come to be so magically placed in my life. How the voice in my head unknowingly guides me to the next copy or title that is currently placed in these hands

All the world's roads lead to the heart of the warrior; he plunges unhesitatingly into the river of passions always flowing  through his life.

The warrior knows that he is free to choose his desires, and he makes these decisions with courage, detachment and - sometimes - with just a touch of madness.

He embraces his passions and enjoys them intensely. He knows that there is no need to renounce the pleasures of conquest; they are part of life and bring joy to all those who participate in them.

But he never loses sight of those things that last or of the strong bonds that are forged over time.

A warrior can distinguish between the transient and the enduring.

-- Paulo Coehlo, The Warrior of the Manual of Light.

A Sudden Blessing..

I am looking for pictures on Google of readers caught up in the act of reading, and I randomly open this page called The Underground New York Public Library and I find out its a blog where this individual captures New York subway passengers/readers reading through the camera lens. Its a tribute to this anonymous being for showing me a new world of readers and the beauty of books. Hereby posting the link to his blog, please go to it, its a masterpiece and my storehouse of inspiration.

http://undergroundnewyorkpubliclibrary.com/

One of the Many Tides of Change..

Ever so often, whatever medium channels our learning becomes a revered " Teacher". I always considered books as a personal space for learning and growth. But something new and fresh changed this mode of perception as well. Books now are not on an imaginary didactic pedestal for me, rather they have become companions and friends, where no compulsion reigns on liking a particular story or finishing it through to the end. It is now a portal for exchange of worlds, mine along with the story's. We are equals and undivided, books as human as my soul and body. Their frail pages and scents, the odor of their spines and its molded edges remind me of the frailty and familiarity of my own human body.
With each new day and with every new act of reading, definitions crumble only to form a mosaic of words and thoughts that end up as nameless and without any need of labels.

Take 7!

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Reader's Bill of Rights ― Daniel Pennac

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud 

10. The right to not defend your tastes.

Something I would love to roam in for hours..

Take 6!

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” 


-- William Faulkner

Take 5!

"After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.” 


― Jasper Fforde

Take 4!

“Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.”


― Cornelia Funke

Take 3!

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.” 


― Joyce Carol Oates

Finally Home..

It's a normal rainy day somewhere when June is ending and the rains are just starting to gear up on their pouring end. I've been roaming around the streets, eating and wondering, travelling around the city which forms the routine course of days lately with my best friend and childhood sweetheart. We have decided to visit a bookstore that I love exploring. Its brand doesn't matter but the fact that unexpected titles make their way to my sight. I am particularly distraught today, for something seems to be eating me up since quite sometime. I forage through those books, look for sights that have yet to be wowed at. I carefully pick up the two Calvino copies of short stories, which I had previously preferred to stay away from. I start reading, and the cold, the drudge and the thoughts all seem slowly to vaporize in an unknown world. I am reading about the art of being human, of the collapses and the uprisings of hearts that are contorted and civilized at the same time. I pause, reflect, move on, catch empty stares on my way and return to the page of black and dull grey font and paper. No sooner have I started reading, I am ahh-ing  on the one liners that compose and form a novel for me. I am flowing with the words but also with something nameless behind them, something unformed and raw. How words just seem to signify worlds of images and sketches of individual perceptions! They try and convey the unnamed and profound only to castrate and degenerate it into something plastic and hard. But for everything, when I raise my head from the book, I discover I have been transformed into something less formidable and gloomy, something that has just managed to touch itself in some part or corner and has been revived and refueled. I look at my best friend and sigh and sigh of contentment and relief. How everything materializes when I am around a tome of books and binders. What must those collected bound pages contain that transforms into the warmest hug the universe can provide?

Its been almost 11 years with books, on and off and suddenly I realize, they will form the most integral part of my personal journey. It is a surprisingly strange and nervous feeling, since what you once took for granted, becomes that one source of escape and exploration, and everything around you seems to take a back seat while you watch yourself grow all those years through that particular medium. There are sometimes, when leaving a book is more painful than not having spoken to a friend or not having had a good night's sleep. Possibly because, I want to be with book more than I can afford to. The exasperation that I feel when I cannot sit up in the morning, after being awake and spending at least an hour reading, is something that almost chokes me to tears. What then would I truly define as passion? for the act of reading, and the feel of books forms a world that I've always craved and hungered for. At the same time, that distance, that slight ache of not being ever present in that constant state of story telling, fills me up with a silence so profound that redefining, re-articulating seems a futile option.