facing the mirror: lesbian writing from india

Ashwini Sukthankar (ed.)

(I can't find a copy of it to buy online, but find extracts here: Google Books)

This is a collection of short stories that I read some five years ago. I found it in the library at TISS, borrowed it immediately and swallowed it whole. I don't remember too many of those stories right now to write about the book, but I do remember feeling a sense of amazement and revolution when I read it.  

I'm only making a note of it here because I tried to remember the name of this collection about five months ago but I couldn't. I came across it all of a sudden when I was reading something else entirely. 

If you do find it somewhere, please either buy me a copy or be a pirate and send me a photocopy!

tender is the night

by F Scott Fitzgerald

Close to the end of this book, I got very very sad. It wasn't really a tearing-up kind of sadness. It was a more moving sadness about loneliness, love, age, powerlessness, about loss and failure; but not any of these things by themselves. And then, when I finished reading the book, I did something I haven't done in a long time. I flipped it and started over. I started to read it again, watching for depth where earlier I only read with curiosity.

I fell in love with this book about at the same point at which everyone in the book fell in love with the Divers: at their party on the terrace. But the moments leading up to it, the flirting so to speak, was exquisite. The passage about Nicole in her garden, for instance:

"Along the walls on the village side all was dusty, the wriggling vines, the lemon and eucalyptus trees, the casual wheel-barrow, left only a moment since, but already grown into the path, atrophied and faintly rotten."

And then, the party reached its climax: there were fireflies by the cliff, and the table they were sitting at seemed to have risen towards the sky like a mechanical dancing platform.

There's so many little things that I love about this book.

"Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?"  

It's such a beautiful line. Used in so many ways. Used for so many things. Used for one thing, most of all. Rosemary. The first time I came across it, I giggled a little. It is the first time Dick imagines Rosemary with someone else:

"Only the image of a third person, even a vanished one, entering into his relation with Rosemary was needed to throw him off his balance and send through him waves of pain, misery, desire, desperation. The vividly pictured hand on Rosemary’s cheek, the quicker breath, the white excitement of the event viewed from outside, the inviolable secret warmth within.

- Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?

- Please do. It's too light in here."

(Although my favorite usage is where he says it at the end of a chapter. Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?)

It's very difficult to try and write about a book that is considered a classic. People have read in so many ways that I can't even count, and they've been doing it for the better part of a century. I feel really out of my depth, even trying. The last time I felt like this about something I fell in love with was when I watched Rear Window and Birds. Even before I could think about something to say about it, I was bombarded with hundreds of exciting people saying exciting things about Hitchcock. (I googled Tender is the Night and one of the first things I came across was "Metaphysics of Style and Tender is the Night." Really?!)

I know this is a very fractured post that isn't really saying anything but that's the way I feel about this book right now. I'm very moved, and I really don't know how to talk about it.

Anyway, I'm a bit obsessed with this book and Fitzgerald for the moment. There's that.

bookstores

I love bookstores.

Big, chain ones with outlets all over the country; small, tiny ones in which only one person can actually fit; lovely, comfortable ones that play the blues in a corner; beautiful bookstores for which I am willing to visit a whole new country; bookstores with reading rooms that even F Scott Fitzgerald used to frequent; stalls that sell second-hand books or pirated books; vendors on footpaths with old, fraying books; bookstores whose books only the shopkeepers can find. 

You can gauge reading habits of a whole town from its bookstores, sometimes. 

I know that Landmark in Hyderabad has a horrible collection, but Landmark in Madras is always rich in the books they have. Blossoms in Bangalore is possibly my most favorite bookstore of all time. Bookstores in Delhi are usually eclectic. They have shelves and shelves full of academic books (neatly arranged by printing press) often just behind the section with poetry or graphic novels. They'll have three different translations of Marx or Dostoevsky and depending on how the bookshop owner leans politically, he'll tell you which one to buy. (I've come across very few women who sell books. Barring the Full Circle in GK, I can't remember a single one). Bombay is strange about its bookstores. They're commercial and mindless, except may be Strand when it's in a good mood. I never found a bookstore I liked in all my time in Bombay.

Bookstores are how I find new things to read. They are where I experiment. They open my eyes to new books, writers, genres, ideas, styles like nothing else. I have never made a friend in a bookstore, but I've never needed anybody's company but my own in one. Sure, I buy more off Flipkart and Infibeam these days, but I mostly buy books that I've already looked longingly at in a bookstore or read parts of in a library or borrowed from someone else. But I do it only because the discounts are amazing when I buy them online. (Student, okay?) 

Bookstores make me happy in any shape and form. 

They make me happy because I always end up looking at more books than I can buy. (They make me sad for about the same reason). I have found the strangest, loveliest books just browsing in bookstores. It's how I found American Gods by Neil Gaiman (at Blossoms, was I 15?). It's how I found Kari by Amruta Patil (in Chennai, I was bored), Em and the Big Hoom, Hush, Sita's Ramayana (all in Yodakin while waiting for people to show up). Spending hours and hours in bookstores with friends or cousins, before or after or during coffee also yielded great results. I was introduced to lots of wonderful books like this: Nick Hornby, Aminatta Forna, Sandman (frikkin' Sandman!), Jasper Fforde. Actually, if I think about it, that's how I spent much of my time as a kid in Walden, with my grandfather.  

Bookstores make me happy for the smell of old paper and the promise of a new book. I know it's a romantic thing to say and we're all against the idea of being romantic about bookstores these days, but I don't think I'm going to apologise for it. I love bookstores because I can get lost in them. (Not like a library, where the book isn't yours to write your name in and hide in your cupboard or write little notes in and stick pretty flags in).

Bookstores make me happy, and that's about that.

south asian women writing

Aisi at freeze-dried along with Aishwarya S has started a challenge called the South Asian Women Writer's Challenge where they've asked participants to read and review books written by South Asian women.

I've signed up for Level 2 which is read 6 and review 3.

This month, I've already read Adi Parva by Amruta Patil and Love Stories by Annie Zaidi. I definitely want to write about the very beautiful, very evocative Adi Parva (every panel of which I want to own as a poster or a print). On my list for next month is Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. Kuzhali Manickavel's Insects Are Just Like You And Me Except Some Of Them Have Wings has been on my list for more than two years now. I just haven't gotten around to it out of sheer laziness.

I can't think of more writers I want to read just yet.

From Bangladesh, I have only read Tahmima Anam. I haven't read any fiction from Sri Lanka at all (whether written by men or women, unless Ondaatje counts). From Pakistan, I've only read men: Mohammed Hanif, Mohsin Hamid, Daniyal Mueenuddin and Hanif Kureishi. It's not something I had thought about before now. 

Suggestions as we go are welcome.

Also, please go and sign up for it if you can!

reading is bliss

In a week that I've been thinking about how integral reading is to my life, Maria Popova's literary jukebox threw up this:

"Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss."

-  Nora Ephron in I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

:)  

Mixtape

by Praveen K, Devaki Neogi, Archana Sreenivasan, Manoj A Menon, Tina Thomas, Sachin Somasundaran, Jasjyot Singh Hans, Pratheek Thomas, Prabha Mallya.

Manta Ray Comics.

(Buy here.)

I remember when I first read Hush. In a tiny bookstore that was discretely playing some blues, I sat on a stair just looking at the first couple of pages. Eventually, the pages started to turn. Page after page, I kept thinking that I must put it back in the bookshelf – That if I read anymore of it, I’d be teary eyed and awkward in an almost cramped public place. But I read it anyway, because not reading wasn’t much of a choice.

I say “read”, because I am not sure what the better word for it would be. Obviously I bought it before I left the store. I needed for it to stay in my cupboard, even though I couldn’t say if I would really read it again. (Not because it wasn’t beautiful. It was. It’s just not the kind of story that I can bear myself to, again for the lack of a better word, experience for a second time)

When I got an email telling me that they were coming out with more of these comics, I was curious. Curious, because I had assumed Hush was what it was because of what it was dealing with. In its own way, it was a silent story about silences. But the very concept of whole stories being told without words, it was something that I was really excited about. So on the first weekend since the email that I had to myself, I bought the book.

Mixtape is, quite literally, heart-wrenching. But this time, I was prepared. I locked the door to my room. I made myself a cup of cocoa. I put on an extra pair of socks and snuggled into my blanket. And the book, it didn’t disappoint. (Even if it got over quicker than I wanted for it to).

It opens with Silver Spider, a story about a boy who does the sort of thing boys do and a story about a spider that doesn’t do the kind of thing that spiders do. I thought it was brilliant and twisted and dark and (yes, it’s true) funny! Stoopidkidsalwaysthinkingtheycangetawaywithstuff. Ha.

And then, well, and then. I was sitting there all pleased and stuff. I drank some of my cocoa and turned the page. I would have said that some warning would have been nice. But in all honesty, I was warned. Just a look at the cover would have been warning enough. The second story, Rather Lovely Thing. I don’t even know what to say about it. It took my breath away.

I wish I could say that I did justice to any of the stories that followed. I wish I could say that I was as moved by them.

I was clearly more impressed by them: Voyeur, worked a fun, sexy plot. I loved the irritation and rage on the man’s face. I loved how you’re expecting some sort of showdown. I’d like to think that I was the real voyeur. And I can’t say it enough, twisted and funny.

‘My Beloved’ seemed a little out of place. The art itself, for starters, was so much more full of detail than the rest of the stories. I’m not yet sure if I liked it. I feel like, as a plot, it had much more potential. I thought the first half was working up to something entirely different.

This little book packs quite a punch. I like the direction that it is taking Indian comic books to. I like that we’re growing up from Amar Chitra Katha, and Kari is not the singular standalone piece of work that was doing something amazing and downright brilliant. I like that I can look forward to things like Mixtape on a regular basis. (May I say, that Twelve in my head is already awesome?)

So go. Buy it. Make a cup of cocoa. Read it. If you don’t fall in love with it, I’ll give you your 55 rupees back.

a memory of light

robert jordan and brandon sanderson

this feels nice.

getting done, i mean.

and mat cauthon is my hero! on any. given. day.

sigh.

(if i ever get tangled up in a 14 book long series, in which each book is not less than 900 pages, and to which the prologue book comes out before epilogue; especially if the author who originally started to write such a series may happen to die somewhere in between; and which may demand my enthusiasm, time, emotion and interest for around nine years; ever again, please just punch me in my face okay?)

would i recommend reading the series from start to finish to anyone? 

probably not. 

except for those mat cauthon moments through pretty much the entire series, possibly.

would i watch it if they made it into some game of thrones-esque tv show?

probably.

the night circus

by Erin Morgenstern.

I don't know yet, what to say about this book. Apart from the obvious fact of its beauty and magic. Apart from the probability of its being one of the most stunning pieces of writing I have read this year.  

It pulls you in. From the very first line of the book, it pulls you in whether or not you want it, whether or not you're prepared. It spins you around like a dancer who knows what she's doing. Ever if you don't, you let her. 

She sweeps you away like a storm.

lalala

mat's coming back, ladies and gentlemen!

i'd deny it anywhere else, but here i'm going to sing it!

I'M SO EXCITED!

filler

Um, okay I know I've been slacking off.

I haven't updated my list in a month, I think. I will. Soon.

BUT. I'm reading Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace) and I want to write about it. So may be I will. If I'm not too lazy.

 

In the mean time, do read Action Philosophers! by Ryan Dunlavey and Fred Van Lente. Funfunfun, it is. (Also by the same people is Comic Book History of Comics which you should get your hands on if you can).

And I tried reading Steven Erikson, which I gave up the first time thirty pages in; but pursued later because of infinite boredom. Not even infinite boredom could make me go beyond the hundredth page though. Man really needs to learn how to form sentences. Occasionally use verbs, prepositions, perhaps somehow connect two words in a sentence, you know? Make it sensible? I mean. I'm not a grammar Nazi or anything, but respectable sentences are definitely appreciated. Sigh.