My favorite books

I hate chained challenge, like they do it in those shit fund (opps ! chit funds schemes), So when a phenomenon called ‘ice bucket challenge’ was circulating in the social media I found it irritating. After a few days another kind of request was hovering around –it was a favorite book challenge. Throughout my life I am very much into book (may be because we were born and brought up in a different kind of world than today).It hurts when people say reading out of syllabus is a not so cool thing. So when the name ten book challenges was circulating and a friend requested me to name my favorite books I thought I should accept it. I went back to my memories and chalked out a plan about how to approach it .To includes books I liked or books that had some influence on me? I took a mean between them and come out with the following list.

1Bhagwat Gita: There are many versions of Bhagwat Gita .I liked the ‘BhagwatGita as it is’ by Swami Prabhupad. First I read the English version that was in my friends place then I brought the Assamese version translated by Mukunda Madhab Sharma.The translation is also brilliantly done.

As the book is titled –Bhagwat Gita as it is (যথাযত) few people have some strong inhibition with the word ‘as it is’. That may be actually true. Things can be interpreted differently by different people under different condition. As a snssrkit sloka goes -ekseyisha padrathai nanarupe prakalpanum.  To make my understanding even I have never gone through the explanations given in the book. I read one sloka a day, then its translation: then try to think what it means and have my own interpretation. Throughout my life the book has shown me light in many of my dark days of confusion.

2.Yairuingam(ঈয়াৰুইঙ্গম) :by Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya : I think the first novel of my life was Mrityunjay by the same writer .I was in class III and blown away by it .Later when I came across yiauingam I fell in love with the narration and the plot. It is a novel about Naga ways of life –seen through the eyes of a young teacher from the Brahmaputra valley .I dreamt about making a big budget movie –a cinematic adaptation of the novel. Now life has moved ahead and I don’t have that much of resources to do justice to the project but some where I someone come out with the dedication I still think it is an Oscar wining idea. 

3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; May be first classic I read in English, the murder scene is still entrapped in my mind .May be my fascination for dark literature has roots to this book .To be precise it made me what the dark painter as many of my friend and reader puts it.

4.Eyi Bondoror Abeli ,এই বন্দৰৰ আবেলি /ভবেন্দ্র নাথ শইকীয়াৰ নাট্য সংকলন: it is the book or his writing or the book? I would put it as the persona .As many put it as এজন মানুহ এখন আকাশ(one man and the sky)Why two book clubbed together? ‘Ei bondoror abeli’ because the book gave me the idea of writing short story one day. It is a collection about love and longing of the writer towards his land when he was faraway doing his PHD in United Kingdom. Many years later similar themed movies were brought into mainstream what we know as –NRI movies .

 and natya sankalan because of its quality and overall influence of his plays (or persona) on me. Many people don't think that drama is a thing to enjoy on stage not a thing to read .Many who reads drama shy away from naming some play in their favorite books as it is an unconventional thing. But surprisingly when it comes to learning literature methodically people start with Shakespeare first.

For me many dramas their styles have enriched my love for literature as it is. To name a few: all Girish Karnards play, collection of plays by Mahesh Dattani and a few.But first and foremost these dramas by master playwright Bhabendra Nath Saikia

5 The Unbearable Lightness Of Being by Milan Kundera: -It was love at first sight . May be it was in early nineties when I found his book in the district library shelves and one of my friend recommended him to me. The style the content of his writing had many inspirations. After a decade I have brought the book again and have re read it to found that the effect was same.

There is no doubt about his class and what boosted me more  was the fact that he don’t write in English.He is from a small country and he writes in a local language but he has readership across the globe.I had problem against few of the English writer whom I thought were not worthy of the attention they use to get . Being from a small state of local language, iconic status of Milan Kundera boosted on my moral. Though I had a issue against him ,not about the class but about possibility of bias. As he was vindicated by one party that had certain political and economic believe and he writes against them my apprehension was that he is promoted by people who had the opposite lineage. Even though I admit Kundera is Kundera when it comes to writing.

6. Mahabharata the complete collection by Aamar Chitra Katha: I have read Mahabharata in many forms, but first love for books was through comic .The foundation of my knowledge of history and mythology was through  amar chitra katha, just to revisits my past I brought this complete collection of Mahabharata by amar chitra katha the thrill is same like in those good old days, I found out that the pleasure and taste of discovery was all the same.Thank you uncle pifor enriching our childhood.

7. Xugandhi Pokhila (সুগন্ধী পখিলা); by Hiren Bhattacharya. I brought this book in class V just because the name was so popular, and today I have to admit this is the second book whose pages I have flipped over and over again after Bhagwad Gita. His lines always it takes me to a different hasnahana nights. Unknowingly his words has mutated inside my vocabulary .may be because of which I dare not to write poetry. Because if you write any –invariably you might find some his influence or may be his replica of his poetry only. May be same is the case with many of us.

8. Golam (গোলাম): by Sourabh KumarChaliha. I believe in structure and plot of a story, when I ask myself -why can't we narrate a story around a plot (like mental arithmetic around incident, a notation of a song or an idle afternoon.) There is a fear that the narration can be dull, product can be without outcome.story can be without a kahani/ But with skc rest assure that you are in for an unusual treat.

9. Tintin. (Name any, Hergé,): My loves with books were before I was acquainted with written words, and every frame of any Tintin book was source of amusement and pleasure. Even today I enjoy those books. In Tintin pictures even a bystander who has nothing to do with story or a stray dog have many things to say.

10. Alchemist by Paulo CoelhoSapiosexuals tend to avoid mentioning alchemist, may be to avoid cliché. And may be because of simple way of his writing (not the content). When I first read this book I was sad, as me too had something similar in mind . With time I have realized that everything is there in the universe since antiquity and time and time again people write in down on their own way and people will accept or reject it on their merit.

The list can continue, but I was to select 10 so hence the list.

No one writes to the colonel

There was a time when I had ample time to read and books were the optimum medium for peeking into the treasures of the outside world. My mind had a voracious appetite for exotic wonders; that was how I came across his writings. I must confess that I didn’t take an instant liking to his style, the way I took to Kundera. Nevertheless, in my small contemporary world, the people who mattered were big fans of his, so I had no other option but to read his works. We used to read only fiction at that time and the District Library was the only source of world famous literary works. In our circle, the rule was, “If you manage to lay your hands on a Marquez, read it.” I read “Love in the time of cholera” expecting a love story. I didn’t know much about him at that time, but I had heard of the book which was a bestseller worldwide. As time went by, I read a few more of his books, although his memoirs are still in a half read phase in my bookshelf. I have forgotten most of his works, but the appealing titles, the plots, the sea side settings, banana trees and tropical weather still linger in my memory.

Nowadays, I am busy making a living far away from home; let alone reading; I have no time for just about anything. Most of my friends with whom I used to discuss the stories of the literary world are also suffering a similar fate. Technology has kept our acquaintances intact; thanks to the internet, social networks, e-mail or cell phone, everyone is just a click or touch away. But that old fragrance of times spent with friends, gossiping about books, movies, in fact anything under the sun is missing as we are all so very busy.

Just the other day, as I was having some precious “free” time, I looked at my call history and noticed that no one has been calling or texting me for a long time. I cross checked my mails, facebook, etc…….it was true, no one was saying “hi”.

Now a days I have built a habit of checking the junk mails too, there was nothing in the spam box also.

“No one is writing to the colonel”, I murmured.

Then, I felt lonely and sad. The story is the same for most of us – the so-called “modern man”. We live in densely populated cities, work in busy offices, have a hectic social life, but even so, we live a lonely life, away from something that we connected with so deeply. This distance can be measured by time (we are never far away from the happy memories of our childhood and the “wonder years” of growing up) and place (not for everyone, but many of us are away from our roots). All these thoughts lead to a sense of eternal loneliness. “A hundred years of solitude”, I mused.

This thought precipitated a bout of verbal diarrhoea of titles of books by this author……

“Living to tell a tale”, “Chronicle of a death foretold”, “Memoirs of my melancholy whore”….

At that moment, I saw one name trending in all news items – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I was aware of his illness and could appreciate why this name was trending.

May be it was a telepathy, maybe it was a psychosomatic connection  or a mere co incidence but when I got the news of his demise I told enough is enough –I should blot the event down no matter however busy I may be.

Google nose

 

Halt

“A huge clock was hanging against a foggy backdrop, and a small kid was getting restless at its rapid speed. The boy grew anxious with each passing second and eventually jumped onto the minute’s hand of the clock. Its lever and pulleys were so strong that the boy started to move along with it. The poor child was sweating in fright and angst but he could not succeed, eventually the clock rang with a very shrill sound, and the boy got up from his dream”.

It was a classic scene from a 1992 Classic movie ‘Abhayam’ .Although more than twenty years have passed; movie buffs still remember it with nostalgia.

Now, we live in an era of ‘too many’. There is excess of information everywhere but we can’t remember anything from anywhere, be it music, book, events, cinema, serial or event called life. We forget a movie; we forget the song we were singing along, we forget the name of next door neighbor or colleagues soon after they leave the place and so on and on. Where is the problem? Is there a dearth of real talent today? Or it’s a mass amnesia that is affecting all of us.

Few days ago while interacting with a eight year old kid I got to know that this guy has never observed that there are thorns in the roses (roses that he see sometime in the park and mostly in fathers laptop). And when his mother tried to explain what rose are all about the boy exclaimed ‘So, roses smell like our bathing soap? Boy, Boy! That’s not the end, his father said that last fortnight the boy had argument with his father when he said that cow gives us milk, to the boy it is the supermarket salesmen that gives us milk!

We laughed and lectured about where these new generations are heading for? (Denial and Projection the very basic human nature) and tended to forgot everything soon after.

After that when I observed my own relationship with nature, I have to admit that even I have not been close enough with the rose that blossoms on my balcony tub every season. I have been busy with my office work, tv shows, Smartphone, social networking, I pad, traffic jam, family and social responsibility en all in such a way that I never got any time to be intimate with the basic feeling of a human being.

Not only me, most of today’s so called modern men are having the same problem. We are so busy and preoccupied every time, As a result we read but forgot what it is about, we see movie but don’t remember anything, and we listen to music but could not understand the lyrics and melody. So in short we have transformed into a virtual generation without feelings.

In this year’s April fool day Google launched an application just to laugh at our helplessness of our virtual situation: Google nose: an application that promises online smell!

We may laugh out and ignore these examples of ‘Supermarket salesmen giving us milk’ or April fool Joke of ‘Google nose’ but we tend to forget this are slap on our so called modern grandeur.

Most of us are celebrating this sans feeling nectarous state as a mark of modern time and those who are complaining like me are as helpless like the child protagonist of movie I was referring to in the very beginning.

Traumatized with the pressure of every contemporary child’s life-home work, school stress, parental expectation the boy doesn’t want the night to finish .Hence nightmare haunts the poor chap each and every night.

The boy as worried as all of us with this speed of modern life trying to halt this clock of mechanical motion.

Breaking News!

 

Television gives you a hard time when you want to take it nice and easy. Turn the TV on, surf across channels and there will be nothing interesting either in entertainment or infotainment. So, you decide to stop at a news channel, as in these channels, something always keeps happening. But after about an hour of viewing its content, you go into depression. There will be screeching, shouting, calling names for the sake of debate most of the time and the rare bit of news that might filter through will lead you nowhere. You will come to know of increased perverts, declining moral values, glorification of the criminal mind, lawlessness and what not about the seamy side of life. This leaves you in a fix. What to do next?

Now, your brain is intoxicated, you can’t think positively or constructively about anything hereafter for a long time. Thanks to these channels, this is the story of how most modern men are spending their spare time.

A similar thing happened to me today and thankfully, all of a sudden, my remote button rested on NDTV profit. It brought back memories of a young Prannoy Roy, reporting on challenges ahead of the newly elected American president, George Bush (Senior) in a classic ‘The World This Week’ show, followed by a five minute talk on the new (!) technology of in vitro fertilization,  finally concluding with the sports update about Martina Navratilova winning another Grand Slam trophy.

My mind went back to those days, when we had to wait for seven days to see a white skin and visions of the Great American Dream on TV. Three minute news about Colombia’s cocaine mafia was the only information we could gather about Latin America. Though there was paucity of information, purity and authenticity were a hallmark feature of news at that time.

I recall the first time in my life I got acquainted with the word ‘breaking news’. It was in 2001…….the date, 11^th September.

After that event, there has been a revolution in the electronic media and today, even a fart can earn breaking news status by virtue of this new found entity. And I wonder what our so-called “responsible” society as a whole is doing about it! Let us take, for example, the Bomb blast in Hyderabad a couple of months ago. Within twenty minutes, everyone (from the Police chief to top politicians, even the physician) who should have been busy in his/her work was all over the small screen. How I wished I could tell them, “My friend, now is the time to act, to get hold of the elusive clue, to treat the suffering masses”, but most of the manpower was wasted in cheap worthless live dissection of something about which we didn’t have any definite information.

More worrisome are the RED HOT breaking news (few call it “developing” story). For example, about six months ago, there was a breaking news story that there had been an earth quake of 7.2 magnitude (Richter scale) in my home town Guwahati. Naturally, I was petrified.

I rang up my folks at home, there was some network problem, so I called a friend who lives in my neighborhood – he didn’t pick it up. I was worried and justifiably so. Then, I surfed through all the North east channels available on my “direct to home” package, all were showing the same news of an earth quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale!

After about an hour of anxiety and twenty frantic calls, I got to know that there was indeed an earth quake but it was very small in magnitude, so small that many people didn’t even feel it. So how could it be 7.2 on the Richter scale? It was only then that they confirmed the epicentre in Indonesia and it was 7.2 in Indonesia only. Some parallel tremors were felt in north east India. The item was not even mentioned in the evening news to follow.

My question is, “What was the hurry to break the news? Couldn’t they even verify the news before bombarding it into the monitor for the world to see?”                                                                                                                                                                               

It is becoming a nauseating hazard.

My dear news channels, may I please request you not to break any news, Let the seed of event mature enough, then decide to deliver it to the public with great watchful expectancy and masterly inactivity, like all my obstetrician friends do for each and every delivery….