Here's what I do when I am stuck in a hotel room

Ok..so here's what I do when I am stuck in a hotel at 7 pm in this district HQ of Ghana..I get on the wireless and read random blogs like there's no tommorrow. And while doing it, I chance upon a quiz that I feel like answering..

1) What author do you own the most books by?
That would be 4 authors:Alexander McCall Smith, Jane Austen, Satyajit Ray and PD James. Kind of a weird combination there.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I used to own dozens of copies of Amar Chitra when I was growing up. And of course copies of my beloved Anandamela, the children's magazine, with which my fondest childhood memories of reading are associated.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Nah. I didn't even notice them.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
So many, but Captain Wentworth from Austen's Persuasion has top-of-the-mind recall, followed by Tridib from Shadow Lines. And Holden Caulfield. And I have always wondered how Maxmillian De Winter would look like. But now that I think about it, I would also like to add some heroes from Shirshendu's novels who made me wish they were real.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
It'll probably be the Feluda series. Evertime I desire a return to my childhood, they are what I read. Also some of Buddhadev Guha's early novels.


6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Enid Blyton's books, esp Malory Towers. I was so influenced by them that I remember begging my mother to send me to a boarding school.


7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
So many. I keep picking up books that I don't like.

8) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Am back to 'A Case of Exploding Mangoes'.


9) If you could force everyone to read one book, what would it be?
I would make people read holy books of religions other than their own. So much ignorance and prejudice can be done away with.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
Haruki Murakami.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
As of now its the Zoya Factor. It's a book made for filming. I would be interested in knowing who play the roles of the Indian cricket captain and his love interest. And Chander Pahar, if only the brilliance of Peter Jackson and BibhutiBhushan combined!

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Definitely 'Shesher Kabita'. They should stop muddling with Tagore. And I didnt like Rebecca, though Hitchcock won an Oscar. It is just made differently in my head.


13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
None really. I don't dream about writers/books/heroes.


14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I read anything I can lay my hands on, but for me the pitts would be Paulo Coelho. I just don't buy into his brand of motivation at all.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
Would be some of the English poets that I studied in college. I always found hard to concentrate on the meaning of each and every word. Oh and how could I forget Hardy, Beckett and EM Forster?

16) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare. The others are more difficult.

17) Austen or Eliot?
Austen.I could live a life just re-reading Austen.

18) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Shakespeare, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Our famous English Professor, Sukanta Choudhuri had violently castigated the entire Eng Lit class for not having finished at least half of Will's original plays. Almost 10 years down the line, I am still happy with Charles Lamb.
Oh and Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Martin Amis. I am yet to read their works. But this gap I am determined to close.

19) What is your favorite novel?
Shadow Lines.

20) Play?
None.

21) Short story?
Telenipota Abishkar. The writing style electrified me.


22) Work of non-fiction?
All seminal work on feminism.

23) Who is your favorite writer?
So many...Austen, Amitav Ghosh, Orwell,Murakami, Italo Calvino, PD James, BibhutiBhushan, Jeebanananda Das,Satyajit Ray

15th May, Accra

Its 11 pm and I am alone in my hotel room in Accra and I find that I can’t sleep. I am home-sick. But this is a different kind of longing. Oh yes, I miss being away from home, miss my parents, miss my phone conversations with my nephew, the sheer physical togetherness with A, but what I miss the most is my Indian existence. It’s just not about missing the food (though I don’t think I can have one more day of Ghanian food), but missing all that that makes up India for me, the sights, the sounds, the craziness, the chaos, the contradictions, the sheer force of life unfolding itself in all its possible forms around me all the time. I remember when I was in London, even though it was only for a week and even though it was lovely, I was craving for the warm sunlight back home. I was hungry for some contact with life. I felt that London was too ‘sanitised’ for comfort and that I would be divorced from reality if I lived long enough in that environment. And this is why I wonder how I would cope it ever means for me that I would stay away for a long stretch of time from my country. Yes, in contradiction I often contemplate that it would be nice to stay outside, to contemplate order instead of chaos, to view life as it should be and not as it is. But I do not know how long will I last.
As I listen to Gulzar songs on my cell phone I am suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to set foot back in my country, and just to breathe in that warm, musty air of Delhi, which will tell me that I have come home.

Google in Dubai is driving me nuts..everything is in Arabic and I couldnt even sign in to my blog because my sign-in name was going from right to left!! Managed with a lot of difficulty. MM and Abs, if you guys are reading this..am thinking of the 'sisterhood' here too..

Blogging from Dubai

What is the feeling that Dubai airport evokes in me every time I step into it? Do I love it or hate it? Or am I simply indifferent? Am I impressed by the dazzling display of enormous wealth, the shiny duty-free shops beckoning with endless materialism, the gigantic structures that have created a city within an airport? Am I envious that I will never be of one of the multitudes who casually saunter into a perfume shop and pick up a few bottles without mentally calculating the cost into their local currencies? Or am I just disgusted by this blatant display of wealth, limited only to the privileged few belonging to this desert-island and elsewhere in the world, and created no doubt on exploitative structures put up in poorer parts of the world?
Like much else in my life, I am yet to make up my mind about the Dubai airport. Probably it reflects my general inability to come to a conclusion about many important decisions about my life.

Nostalgia

Am switching channels, and I suddenly chance upon Vikram aur Betal, the old Doordarshan version, with that still remembered serial tune in the end which I still remember from my childhood and I am filled with nostalgia. The set is so out-landish, with a paper moon, and Betal wildly flinging his arms as he flies away from Vikram’s shoulders, that you can make out the special effects and clearly understand how the ‘flying’ scenes were shot. But instead of laughing, the scene transports me back to my days of childhood, the days of Doordarshan. Was that actually a more innocent, less divisive world, the times when I was eight, and we only had Doordarshan for our entertainment? That was also India before 1989, before Kashmir insurgency, before Ayodhya temple, before Mumbai blasts, before Mandal Commission, before the 1991 liberalization era. Was that a more innocent, more understated world that the one we have now? or is it as A says, it was all there, except that it didn’t register in the consciousness of an eight year old? Also because that time was free from 24/7 new channels, hungry to serve up real and imagined news, the world only seemed to be a hushed and less discordant place?
I am a sucker for nostalgia..the Bong in me rearing her ugly head

The Neglected Debate

http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1095624