Story of the Week

For Jhumpa Lahiri, the gifted writer, everything that comes to her mill, ordinary or otherwise, is material for writing. Her newest work Whereabouts (Penguin Hamish Hamilton 202I) which is more an auto-fiction (her protagonist is an unnamed female storyteller) than a novel is testimony to that.
Throughout the book, she sketches scenes from a city that readers of all hues will identify with. What makes the book memo­rable is her extraordinary depth of feeling that imbues each word. I’m an avid reader of Jhumpa’s poignant prose. And I often remember the great prose of Virginia Woolf’s psychological fiction whenever I read her work.

The vehement impulse to have nothing to do with this meaningless existence sent him packing to the seppuku forest. Following the trail he eyed a sign: Don’t venture further. He took the forbidden path, his unsteady feet struggling to detangle the gnarled roots.

Of all the stress-busting means, watching aarti (the ceremony of lights) at temples does wonder for me. I have been to Dwarka, Somnath, Benares, Haridwar, Rajgir especially for this purpose and came back home refreshed and rejuvenated.
Another temple, almost at our backyard, I have often been to is Dakshineswar Kalibari. In the evening I would proceed towards the building, adjacent to the main temple, where people of all faiths converge. They team up and sing bhajans to the accompaniment of musical instruments, creating an aura, a divine atmosphere.

I often read, and listen to, authors’ interviews. Sometime ago, I came across on YouTube such a literary conversation of a renowned American author famous for works like The New York Trilogy (1987), and the novel 4 3 2 1 (2017): Paul Benjamin Auster.

Is the purpose of life only to eat, drink, and be merry? Or, is there a higher purpose that one ought to discover before it is too late? Surely, to know how to justify one’s own existence to oneself is to know one’s destiny. However, this is a rather difficult task which entails primarily two steps: to recognise the seeds of creativity one carries in one’s being; and then to nurture these seeds till they grow up to their full potential. And, along the way, one has to brace oneself for fierce opposition, for there are people who are ever ready to put a damper on your growing enthusiasm. And if they fail to dislodge you from your avowed path, they may indulge in activities generally known as psychic assassination.

The maiden Mussoorie Writers’ Fes¬tival was held in Woodstock, Mus¬soorieinApril2007.1t lasted five days, from 24 to 28 April Writers from different parts of the world came to attend, not to mention a sizeable number of Indian writ¬ers. I had by then met most of the writers hailing from that region and interviewed them. So, I was not exactly unknown. One of the main reasons for attending was to watch Ruskin Bond getting the Poet Laureate of Landour Award.

Grief, like a violent storm, has a span. While a storm usually spends itself after an hour or two, leaving behind a trail of devastation, the intensity of grief does not peter out that quick. It lasts for several months, in some cases for years. In most such instances, one doesn’t really know how to come to terms with it. A case in point is the moving memoir: H is for Hawk (2014), authored by Helen Macdonald.

Have you ever been to a poetry reading event? If you have, you blow how in most cases there remain in the hall more chairs unoccupied than otherwise. There is apathy towards poetry; maybe it’s got something to do with obscurity it usually entails.

The name I Allan Sealy, for those who dip into his soulful yet difficult prose, conjures up the image of a versatile writer. But the act of writing about what Allan is really known for pales somewhat when his other vocation, gardening, takes over. He beds out very uncommon and near-extinct shrubs and plants at his racecourse retreat in Dehradun. And at a time when the whole world was in a shuttered state last year, Allan was out in the open, right under the sun, tending to his favourite plants. I know this because we exchanged mails, frequently so, stuck at home as we were.