illicit happiness

This isn't really a post about the book. Having so disclaimed, I will write on. 

I just read my third* book this year in which a person commits suicide: The Illicit Happiness of Other People, by Manu Joseph.

The other two are Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes) and Foreigner (Arun Joshi). I think  Arun Joshi and Julian Barnes are absolute geniuses. No question about it. I'm yet to make my mind up about Manu Joseph, although I must say I am veering towards pretty good. 

I started reading this book at my grandmother's funeral. I sat in a corner while everybody else did their own thing and read. It was slow progress. I got through about 100 pages over that week. I did more staring at the book than actual reading, but I was glad to have something to hold. When I picked it up, I didn't know it was a book about a dead person. It was only on the flight home when I pulled it out of my bag, my cousin told me with a wrong-choice sort of tone, "it's pretty intense book". She, herself, bought a book called 'Punjabi Parmesan' which also turned out to be a wrong choice. (It turned out to be non-fiction and nothing like the name suggests. Go on. Google it.) I don't think the being-about-death bothered me though. In the general state of mind I was in, any book would have taken me this long to finish. 

Immediately after the week I spent at home with my entire family doing our own thing and only reading about 100 pages, I was on a flight to Patna. I spent a whole week in Bihar at field work, mostly alone, living in okay hotel rooms in Gaya and really crappy hotel rooms in Muzaffarpur. During this time, I tried to read. Instead, I watched Homeland. (The first season. The second and third seasons I reserved for Muzaffarpur).  

I ended up reading more of this book when I was waiting for my train to Patna at the Gaya station. My suitcase, my backpack and I, we sat there for a whole couple of hours again making very slow progress at the whole reading thing. A man who was sitting next to me (whose efforts at putting his hand on my thigh I kept thwarting) eventually tried to make conversation with me: "Aankhein kharab ho jayenge. Idhar mat padho." I shot him my angriest look and turned up my headphones. Again, the book became something I only pretended to read till the train came while I listened to that week's All Songs Considered and seethed. 

The book has remained in my handbag since.

I only picked it up today because I wanted to do something that wouldn't involve my laptop (and as is evidenced by this blogpost, that didn't last very long), and didn't want to read something new because all the books I am in the middle of are making me very guilty. (There are a couple more on Kindle. Kindle is the worst, because I don't even remember which books I have started reading. Today, I clicked on a book called 'Thief's Magic by Trudi Caravan, and as I started to read it I realised I had actually finished reading the damn thing! I really need to go back to updating that list.)

And I finished it.

And I must say that it's quite good, this book.

Okay goodnight.





*I'm fairly sure there is a fourth. I just can't remember which.