A Lazy Sunday

Since I am completely and utterly inspired and my mind is a blank canvas and as a blogger I feel obligated to update once in a while (it’s been ten days since my last post, I know there are a zillion bloggers out there who go for months without updating but I'm not one of them, and seeing the same old post day in and day out can get slightly irritating at times) today’s topic is one about which I've written before and will yet write again in the future. Yes, you guessed it – books.

This morning I started reading Eric Van Lustbader’s Beneath An Opal Moon, I don’t know if I will have the strength and the patience to finish it, it’s too unreal. That’s the problem with fantasy books, everything is so imaginary and unreal (no wonder they are called fantasy), and it’s a tad difficult to keep up with the names and places. When I read Lord of the Rings I kept turning back the pages to find out who was who and from where, and of course the fact that it was an unusually thick book and it took me a year to finish it could also be another reason. I started reading The Hobbit some time last year, it’s a very thin book, roughly 300 pages, and yet I still am stuck somewhere in the first 100 pages.

A couple of weeks ago I borrowed three romance novels, yes, good old M&B’s. When I was a teenager my cousin used to have a huge collection and I think I read every one of them, it was interesting then. The ruggedly handsome hero who would invariably be a rich and successful businessman, who was arrogant and rude but caring and tender when you get to know him, and the heroine who would be as fragile as porcelain and of course always an innocent virgin, well, that was fifteen years ago. Growing up sure opened your eyes and your mind. Rich successful businessmen don’t spend their time trying to lure virgins into their beds; there are too many willing women out there. And virginity, hah! The word might as well be obsolete, what with the virgin population going down every year.

I didn’t finish any of the three M&B’s I borrowed, I found them absolutely boring and predictable, the hero was still brooding and commanding and rude and the heroine who was a successful actress/career woman found herself all flustered and disturbed every time they were together, and I stopped reading.

Next stop is a book by R.K. Narayan, The Indian Epics Retold. Ramayana and Mahabharata and some other Hindu folklore. It’s going to be an interesting read, Drona, Arjuna, Duryodhana, the five brothers, etc etc. And of course it is written by R.K. Narayan, one of the greatest Indian authors ever. I loved his Malgudi stories, stories of ordinary people in an ordinary town, but brought out so colourfully and so riveting and very very well written. He doesn’t use big show-offy words, the narration is simple and straight, but there is always an interesting plot. I think that about sums up life, it’s not about showing off how much you know or how much you have, it’s all about being simple and straightforward and letting others discover the wonderful person that is you.