Gift from My Little Angel

                  Towards the last quarter of 2013, I had decided to quit my job to focus on my writing. I already had a plot of a novel in my mind. All I wanted to do is write it in peace, away from the grinds of daily routine.

                   I had started buying the books I thought I needed for researching the background of my story. And I found most of the books I was looking for.

                   At the office, I had put down my papers and had started serving out my notice period.

                   That Monday morning, I was just preparing the files that I need to share with the team for knowledge transfer that day. When I got a call from the Mailroom – which handles the deliveries of couriers inside the company campus – I was a little surprised. I have not ordered anything – which basically means books – in the last few days. And I did not remember anyone telling me of anything that they had couriered to me.

                    I went down to the Mailroom to collect it. After signing for it, when I saw the parcel, it was from my kid sister.

(I have not written about her before because she is so much a part of my life, that writing about her seems impossible; maybe because I still doubt that I am a good enough writer to describe what a great sister she is.

She is that most beautiful surprise that life offers you at the most unexpected moment, making you believe in an all merciful power looking over us, that most beautiful surprise that makes you forgive all the nasty stuff that life has pulled on you before and instead makes you feel kind and humane towards other beings.

She makes me humane and human, makes me feel kindness and empathy. She makes me believe, in myself. When a little angel accepts you as her brother, you realize that you are not as damned as you thought before, or as evil as you were accused by others. Her presence makes me believe in the power of love, and my ability to love someone. She broke the dark, cynical spectacles – through which I had been watching everything; and I could see the beauty of life.)

                  My kid has sent me a parcel. I was already smiling. I hurried to my desk to open it.

                  Once I opened it, what do I find? Lying inside, well wrapped is a book. No, not just any book. It was a book that I believed I needed to understand the geographical background of my novel. Unfortunately, the book had gone out of print. No amount of searching of book sellers – online, offline, secondhand – has brought me any luck.

                   I must have mentioned it to her, about my futile attempts, and also how important that book is for me. That was a month ago. In my hand was now the same book. She remembered it. But I knew that she was busy with her studies. And the book was not on the market.

She must have spent a lot of effort and time on tracking and then buying that book for me, not to mention the monetary cost. (Later, when I insisted, she only mentioned that she got it from abroad.) It was one of the best surprises I have ever received.

                    Even more than her efforts, it was her belief in my dream. Writing has been a lonely dream for me. But her trust in me, my writing – epitomised in her act - is an even more precious gift to me.

I am still working on my novel. But I also write the occasional short story and send it out to magazines. But no matter, what I am working on, I keep that book right in front of my eyes, on my writing table. And every time I get a rejection email – which is almost too often – I just pick up that book, hold it for sometime, maybe read couple pages, and I could feel that same surge of emotions I felt when I got it. I feel motivated, inspired and I start writing again.

                     Each gift from my kid sister is very precious, very special to me. But this is the best gift that my Little Angel has gifted me. Her trust that inspires me to pursue my dream.

Now, I believe, I should mention the name of this person. Her name is Priyanka Dey. She is already a renown blogger and poet and short story writer. And she is my Little Angel.

Kid, Love and Resurrection in a Bookstore : Reviewing The Collected Works of A. J. Fikry

Let me start with a confession. I stop to watch whenever I come across You've Got Mail running on any channel. And no, I'm not romantic enough for that movie. I just stop to watch the bookstore scenes.

There is something so cosy and reassuring about an old and small bookstore, where picking a book becomes a very private, a very intimate, a loving act. I feel like walking into such a store and spending half a day or more, just loitering through the well laden shelves, sitting down occasionally, flipping few pages now and then, finally walking out with a treasured bag of books. 

Mr. A. J. Fikry, the protagonist of The Collected Works of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, runs the small and only bookstore on Alice island. He is an eccentric with quite definite tastes in books. He knows his books and certainly not afraid to refuse any that doesn't comes upto his mark, even if they are the bestsellers of the time. The list of what he is not going to stock on his shelves is long. I mention only one gem out of that list. ( "I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and - I imagine this goes without saying - vampires.") How can I not like such a bookseller? 

But he is also a lonely widower, who is going through the motions of living. And though he feels an occasional pang of guilt over hurting someone, he is not going to change his behaviour. He does not know how to. He does not know because he is cut off from humanity.
His loneliness is unbearable. (No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset. No one cares why a thirty-nine-year-old man has thrown a plastic tub of vindaloo across a room like a toddler.) His loneliness is insurmountable, not only because he does not have anyone who would go to the trouble of connecting and caring for a grieving loner who is in anger over his loss, but also because he is not able to feel the tinge of humanity or love or care for anyone.

But things take a turn when two year old Maya turns up at his store. He clumsily changes her diapers. (Babies move more than books and aren't as conveniently shaped.) He is not sure about what needs to be done to look after a baby, but he takes up to look after the baby for the weekend with the support of his sister-in-law and Google. Being a lonely person and never being around kids, Fikry is completely unsuitable for the role of caring for child. He is completely out of his depth. But within that two days, he starts growing this strange sense of responsibility for her. Towards the end of that weekend, Fikry gives Maya a bath. He gets ready for this task with quite a few Google searches. And the bath: it is one of the most beautiful passages I have read in a long time. He sings to her in the bath; she claps. I don't like to go emotional while reading. But that small passage made me. Giving a bath to your kid, that must be something awesome. (He lifts her out of the tub and then towels her off, wiping between each perfect toe.)

The book - and the life of the main characters - though based in a bookstore, is not about books alone. It is about the human bonds that makes our lives unique. How love for the baby Maya changes Fikry's life, how and what he learns about relationships, how his life changes because of Maya, how he finds love again because of Maya

More than books, more than humanity in general, this is a book about how a child changes or can change a person's life for good, making him a better human capable of understanding love. 

It takes a certain kind of courage to love a kid because you may not be able to express it in understandable ways and this non-understanding may make you doubt your own love. But you love your kid no matter what. You cannot, just cannot stop loving and caring for this big bundle of joy that is in your life and making it better with her presence. She teaches you the purest form of love. And her love makes you know and believe in the power of love and make you care for humanity in general. 

Yes, Dad. Dad is what I am. Dad is what I became... Dad. What a word. What a little big word. What a word and what a world! 

And looking after that kid, being her family, being her father trumps all books and a bookstore, and all other riches.

Author- Gabrielle Zevin

Price- Rs 350

Publisher- Hachette India

The Journey for a Sister

I barely managed to grab the plane home. Home, the phrase sounded unsure in my mouth, as I turned it over on my tongue. I was basically running back to see my mom. Home was incidental.

I was born with wheels. My parents kept on moving around with their jobs. I saw quite a few homes, but never home. The only family I knew was my parents and my sister. There were uncles, aunts, cousins whom I met annually; they were festival persons, never family. 

But this time, Mom has returned to our home town, settled in the house we have built, a building I can dubiously call home. My uncle and aunt stays close by with their two children. I have been hearing how my uncle and aunt, and especially the daughter made sure my mom felt at home in home. Practically, she made home home for mom.

So, I was going home. But I knew I was going to my mom. I'll meet everyone. 

(Aside, even though I have never felt home, I have always been, ever since I was a kid, looking for the one person I can accept as my sister, my younger sister, the younger one I can take care of.)

I reached home a day earlier than I told mom, just to surprise her. I was spending couple of lazy days as the previous week was 12 hours-a-day and I was bone tired.

Every day I would be meeting my uncle, aunt and almost always the girl cousin. Every moment she was preparing something for me to eat, getting me something. She, a practicing lawyer, taking as much time out as is possible. I had never seen so much care from a younger one. To be honest, never have I been close to her. But this level of caring. Still, I am a hardened outsider, never easily felt anything.

One night, Mom & Me were invited over to my uncle's home for dinner. Just across the road from our home, we walked over. 

Being the family, we just sat down in the cooking area, chit chatting with aunt and my cousin. 

Just to stretch my legs, I got up and walked around a bit. Then is when I heard my cousin's shout. 

What happened to you?

I had a vague feeling that one of my foot was feeling sticky. But then I put it down to the rain. When I looked down on my foot, it was on the bloody red side. But as is my norm, I tried to shrug it off, when I got a stern look and a soft plea from her to sit down and let her have a look at my wound.

I had to bow before her wish. I had to put up my bloody foot on a stool. She got on her knees, trying to gauge my wound. But the blood flowing as well as that which has already dried, made it hard to point the wound. She hurriedly got some Dettol soaked cotton. I extended my hand to grab the cotton to clean off my foot. But she shook her head. 

She bent on her knees and gently started to clean off the blood from my foot. I felt bit embarrassed. I have never had anyone attend my wounds in a long, long time. And with my multitude of wounds, it was a high hope.

I noticed how much caring there was in every time she cleaned off my foot. My blood had never been in short supply. It kept on flowing. She gently kept on cleaning it. Finally my blood gave out before her persistence. 

For those who no longer remember, Dettol still burns like hell. I flinched once or twice. Then I just noticed the warmth of a sister's care. It no longer burnt.

She hurriedly applied some ointment on my wound. I am not sure it burnt or not.

She kept on inquiring whether my leg is alright, whether I can walk or not. I did actually limped a bit while walking down my dinner. She walked just at my right hand, in case I need any support.

After dinner, she actually walked along with me and mom to make sure I reached home without any further bloodshed.

This uninhibited care, the loudness & the softness of caring, never seen ever. 


I realized that this is the younger sister I was looking for. The one who cares so unconsciously, so completely. The one I can call my sister and care for and never again feel the sense of loss I have carried within me always. The same sense of loss which turns me careless at most moments in my life. From now on, I will always be thinking of this caring young sister and be a bit more careful.


I am a thick headed person. So, it took me so long to recognize the younger sister I have always looked for everywhere.


This was my pilgrimage, the one journey where I found the one being, one invaluable being I have seek like forever. I realized the truth of family and found my younger sister.


By the by, her pet name literally translates into younger sister.

This entry is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with imlee.com

The contest came before me may be a day after this revelation for me. And I decided to break my rule of distancing an experience before writing about it. This is one journey I had to shout about from my roof top. The My Family Memory Contest was even better. I am writing this out of that pure sense of awe I felt when I found my dear young sister I had been blind for in so many years. To you, sister.

Love & Other Things

"And my conclusion was this: that as you go on living with someone, you slowly lose the power to make them happy, while your capacity to hurt them remains undiminished. And vice versa, of course." Mme Wyatt

How true it is ! Wait a minute. How true it is? Or, is it true? 

Is it just another way of saying familiarity breeds contempt? May be I am making it very simplistic. Simple is something that Talking It Over is not.

Though I picked the book looking for a light read after finishing Barbarians at the Gate. That is a different book, different post. But suffice to say that though a real engaging read, it is not an open-read-shut-over kind of book. You keep on mulling over it for sometime to come. So, right after finishing reading the book, and still reeling under the facts in it and trying to judge it maybe, I looked for something light to engage my eyes. And though much abused a genre, love stories still deliver on this, if you choose carefully enough. 

Julian Barnes managed to disabuse this illusion with the very first chapter of his book. Using multiple point of views to narrate the same incidents is not an unique style. But in a love story, it was the first time I was reading it. 

And more than a style device, the real intriguing part was how differently the three protagonists of the book view the same incident. How three people so closely linked can have so varied stances on each aspect of life! It does not really boggle the mind. We know that each person is unique. But when you read the first chapter, it certainly strikes you between the eyes. 

Strike the word read out. You are not reading the novel. The three persons are talking to you. And occasionally few other persons too. 

Listening to them talk, you jolt with a bewilderment on their having any kind of relationship. But there it is. Our two male protagonists Stuart and Oliver are friends from school. The solo female protagonist, Gillian is the wife of one and the ex-wife of the other, though you will come to know that later. 

I am not providing a summary here. But just few thoughts that popped up in my mind/heart while reading the book. Just to make the context, I will be using couple of quotations from the book.

Ok, spoiler alert. Oliver falls in love with Gillian on the day of her wedding to Stuart, though he knew her for sometime before that, but only as Stuart's girlfriend. Oliver, a philanderer, not a good character starts seeing his salvation in her face. 

"You know that story of the man who wakes up and finds he's turned into a beetle? I was the beetle who woke up and saw the possibility of being a man." Oliver

But why would Gillian love him? How would Stuart see this love? As a betrayal or inevitable?

Reading till now, you may have puzzled out that Oliver does become Gillian's second husband. But how? Or why Gillian makes this choice? Can we logicalize her choice? Can love be logically argued out?

But what about Stuart? How does he take it? Does he breaks down? No, he becomes all the more successful materially. How or Why? No logical answers. Only because he had nothing else to do? But would he be whole again? Would he love again?

"Love is only what people agree exists, what they agree to put a notional value on. Nowadays it's prized as a commodity by almost everyone. Only not by me. If you ask me, I think love is trading artificially high. One of these days the bottom is going to fall out of love." Stuart

Is this how he truly feels? Isn't anger & sadness just another expression of the love that have made him alive in all ways and which he have lost? And does he get over it?

"It's not over till it stops hurting. There's a long way to go." - Stuart

After sometime when Stuart visits the small French village where Oliver and Gillian has relocated after marriage, was he there seeking revenge? Or just looking for some sort of closure? It can't be revenge because never did he attempted anything. He just waited in the hotel and watched their daily happiness. Was he there just to make sure she is happy? Is that love? Or was it the sight of her baby that undoes all his revenge plans?
And the longing of his heart for that future which could have been his. Was it destined? Is that how love works?
But then does love really ends? If Gillian loves Oliver and has got over Stuart, why does she enact that play of domestic violence ending with a cut on her face, before Stuart's eyes? Why does she not hesitate to gamble away Oliver's respectable presence in the village, by making him out as a domestic violence type. What was she looking for? What she wanted to show Stuart and why? Maybe she desired to show Stuart that life is not all perfect for her too. Maybe she was trying to mitigate his hurt. But why? Was it simple pity? Or a deeper care? Or was it some form of love that withstood everything that happened? Or else why would she throw away her well settled domestic life to put up a show? But what sort of love is this?

Mid way in the novel, the three character asserts:
Whatever happens ... whatever happens, I'm the one that's going to get hurt.
I'm the one in the middle, the one that's being squeezed every day. I'm the one that's going to get hurt.
Bash, bash, bash. I'm the one who's going to get hurt.

Maybe love is not about oneself. Maybe it is more about the person whom we love.
Maybe that's why Gillian did what she did. Maybe she owed him this.

Maybe love never dies out totally. It remains in motley forms. It remains.

Mme Wyatt got it wrong, I believe. Because living with someone for years, a person won't just lose the power to make the other person happy, he will also gain the insights on how to hurt the person devastatingly. If even after so much power, things don't turn so dark, it is because of the love that remains. And in times, it will rise to the surface. Such as in Gillian's act. Stuart's hesitation against any revenge.

Was it a happy ending story? No
Was it a sad story? No
It is just a novel that shows the ambiguities of love. And how our lives shape up based on this one emotion and its entanglements.

Words, Beings & Relationships

The more close to a person we feel...the more we care for someone...the more we think of someone as our own...the more dear someone becomes...when someone becomes really our own and knows it for a fact, we have to become all the more careful in our conduct, our choice of words, and how we use those words.


There's too much of understanding. But at the same time, there is too much of emotional openness, emotional tenderness, and emotional vulnerability here.


Even a pin-prick goes like a stab right at the nerve joints.


We can be wounded vitally, in the cardinal areas, only by those whom we love.


And we always feel secure knowing that they too know that truth; and care for us enough, love us so much as to not do that murderous act or hurt us anywhere else either.


Something that pass off as a momentary lapse in others, really takes the appearance of a betrayal in the action of a dear one. 


It is not the act really. 


But what comes to be expected of us, because of our implicit promise of understanding in that closeness, the tender fibers of the bond of caring, everything that is right & good in that relationship. 
Each of our action, till that moment, has built up a bubble of expectation. Even a pin of a small slip bursts it. And the whole foundation shakes to the core. But the worse thing is to face the pain in the eyes of the dear one. It is all the more painful for you.


Got to learn this lesson, in one of life's little stabbing tragedies. 


Though the initial act was just a momentary overlooking of vocabulary. But it got me a vital communication.

Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na Moment

Few days back, the movie Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na was coming on one of the TV channels. As I did not have anything really interesting on hand at the moment, watching the movie seemed a good idea.


I have an idea that most people in India, including me, have seen the movie at least once. Most people have a rough idea of  the story. I am not going to talk about it. Neither am I a critic to discuss the movie at length.


But somewhere in the movie occurs a scene that made me think, maybe even feel.


Now, if you have seen the movie, you may remember the scene where the character of the brother, played amazingly by Prateik Babbar, have a talk with his sister, the bubbly Genelia D'Souza, about her choice of a life partner. You may remember it, solely for the fact that it is like the Now-I-realize moment for Genelia's character. (As an aside-cum-confession, I don't remember clearly the names of the characters portrayed, but I think Genelia's was called Meow.)


But within the Now-I-realize moment, there was a small bit that struck me this time around.


During the conversation, Prateik almost casually makes a half comment, that puts his whole character into a deeper background. Till that moment, he is an eccentric character, taunting his sister's friends, keeping a mouse for a pet. Almost absurd.


And the few words he says now: my sister...who was my best friend...


Suddenly, he is no longer such an absurd existence. He is a brother who misses his sister. And because he misses her, he has made his room his fortress, not venturing out too much. And whenever he misses her too much, he comes out, taunts his sister's friends, so, that his sister would notice him, even though with anger. In a slightly mad way, he was just trying to spend a bit of time with his sister, who has moved away with her friends, away from him.


It could be a comment made by most brothers, who misses their sisters-who have grown and moved into their friends. Sisters, in a most elemental way, are a part of a brother's life: with their sharing, caring, simple demands, and in countless different ways.
But with growing, they completely move away. Friends become such an important part of their life. Things change. Brothers feel abandoned. But they cannot say that either. They too make their own escapes, in other ways.


Like Prateik's character, who just rolls up into his shell of a room, coming out only when the missing becomes unbearable. He has accepted it as inevitable. But at the same time he knows his sister so well, that he is the only one who understands her heart, and knows whom she really loves.


But does the character says all this? No. He uses only six simple words: my sister...who was my best friend... And with those six simple words, the whole character comes into a different light altogether. All his eccentricities becomes meaningful. He's just a brother missing his sister. Each of his activity till then becomes suffused by that meaning. Now, I don't want to go ahead and make an assertion that Genelia's character was also supposed to make the same realization, and she did. But I just could not help hoping that she did, that she got the meaning of her brother's half said, yet most telling confession in the whole of the movie. For me, that became the most important slice of an otherwise another routine love story. 


But the most amazing thing about that scene is its simplicity and effectiveness. So much telling, with so few words - six to be precise.


That's story telling.