Why I chose to give away my books

Each one of us has a unique relationship with books. We all have anecdotes and stories to tell about the books we buy, collect, read, hoard, and never read. Then, one day, something—I don't know if it's age, wisdom, or common sense—prompts us to do what once seemed unthinkable: downsize our collection. Give away books we have been holding on to for years. Free up space on shelves, in cabinets, and up in the loft. And start again, one book at a time.

At least, that was my plan.

I owned very few books in my youth, the years between 14 and 25 when I read the most books. In those days, I could finish a novel in two or three sittings, sometimes in half a day, and start another by night. I borrowed books from private circulating libraries, the British Council Library and the American Library. 

Then, somewhere down the years, career and family life took precedence. I stopped going to libraries because of the distance and lack of time, and instead started buying books—more than I could read. Not that anyone or anything stopped me from reading as I did before. Yet, somehow, I never quite read with the same intensity again.

Over the next three decades, I accumulated so many books that several of my mysteries, thrillers and westerns followed me to every new place of work. They sat quietly in office desks and cabinets, seldom getting a chance to tell me their stories. Then came the comforts and distractions of the tech age, and my goal of reading a certain number of books and short stories every month—in other words, reducing my TBR pile—went out the window.

About a year after the onset of the pandemic, I decided enough was enough. We were in the middle of a home renovation when I took stock of my collection and removed nearly two hundred books. I eventually gave them away to anyone who was interested or sold them to footpath booksellers at throwaway prices. 

I had little choice. Some of those books had remained unread for years. My logic was simple: if I hadn't read them by then, I sure as hell wasn't going to read them now. Fortunately, most of the books I weeded out were secondhand and didn’t cost a lot of money, though the parting did hurt for a while.

Now I have fewer than a hundred books, mostly paperbacks by some of my favourite authors and a small collection of nonfiction. Among them are a dozen books on the craft of writing by seasoned writers such as Stephen King, Francine Prose, Ray Bradbury, Anne Lamott, Benjamin Dreyer, Annie Dillard, and Bill Bryson. These are the books I return to often. They are my writing companions, offering lessons in craft, sharing the wisdom of experience, and helping me become a better reader and writer.

Over the past three years, I have made up for the "loss" of my books by buying ebooks or downloading them from public-domain and online libraries. I read them on my Kindle and Samsung tablet. I still buy paper books, of course, but no more than half a dozen a year. Most come from Amazon, second-hand booksellers, and book fairs, depending on what I happen to find.

The thing about de-cluttering books, to borrow a phrase from George Bernard Shaw in another context, is the illusion that it has taken place. No matter how many books we discard, there are always plenty around the place. I guess the only way to pare down our collections is to read books as soon as we buy them.

Why I left a book fair empty-handed

About a month ago, I visited a Books by Weight exhibition in South Mumbai hosted by Butterfly Books and, in a rare display of self-restraint, left empty-handed. 

It wasn't because there were no good books to buy. I simply didn't feel the urge. Perhaps two years of working from home, followed by a hybrid routine, had something to do with it. Apart from evening walks, the occasional social visit and grocery runs in the neighbourhood, I had barely ventured out until that day.

I was also conscious that there was little point in adding to a collection of books that already contained many unread books. Only a few months earlier, my wife and I had given away more than a hundred paperbacks. I had no desire to replace them with another stack that might sit unread for months, if not years.

As I grow older, though not necessarily wiser, I find myself increasingly drawn to the idea of owning fewer things and making better use of what I already have. That applies to books as much as anything else: read them, enjoy them and then pass them on. 

One evening, my wife asked me, "What are you finally going to do with all your books? It's time to move on." 

She had a point. It's not as though I own a treasure trove of rare and valuable editions, aside from a few out-of-print western paperbacks and some books with particularly memorable covers. What she really meant, I think, was that I needed to outgrow the habit of buying books simply because I loved the idea of owning them. There was a time for that, and perhaps that time had passed.  

We still have many books, I more than she. I'm also holding on to my comic books, some of which I've owned for decades. What will become of them when I retire, I don't know. Paper, after all, has a shelf life.

These days, I do most of my reading on a Kindle and a tablet. Both are convenient, reader-friendly and, above all, kind to limited shelf space. Physical books possess a charm that ebooks can never quite replicate, but practicality has led me to draw a line between the two. My reading is now roughly 70 per cent digital and 30 per cent print.

I still buy the occasional paperback from secondhand bookshops and book exhibitions, but only after asking myself if it's really worth having the book and wouldn't an ebook serve my purpose just as well. 

The answer to those questions is increasingly shaping my book-buying habits. Having fewer books doesn't mean reading less.

The last books I bought before lockdown

If there was one thing I missed during the lockdown and the long months of working from home, it was regular visits to secondhand bookshops, pavement booksellers and book exhibitions. 

During that period, I bought only two books from Amazon India—a used but rare Corgi edition of Sudden and a new Fantastic Four: The Coming of Galactus comic-book digest, both featured here. 

Finding Sudden felt like winning the lottery. I was surprised and delighted to come across the paperback—with its striking cover art—on Amazon India for just Rs.295. My favourite western isn't the sort of book one easily stumbles upon at second-hand book sales in Mumbai.

Most of the books in this post, however, were purchased in the weeks and months before the pandemic changed our routines. I've included their covers, original publication years and brief synopses below. 

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

The New Collected Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer

"This brand new edition brings together three of Jeffrey Archer's classic collections of short stories—To Cut a Long Story Short, Cat O' Nine Tales and And Thereby Hangs a Tale—showcasing the master storyteller's skill like never before. Every reader will have their own favourites: the choices run from love at first sight across the train tracks to the cleverest of confidence tricks, from the quirks of the legal profession, and those who are able to manipulate both sides of the Bar, to the creative financial talents of a member of Her Majesty's diplomatic service—but for a good cause. In `Caste-Off', Jamwal and Nisha fall in love while waiting for a traffic light to turn green in Delhi, and in `Don't Drink The Water', a company chairman tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St Petersburg, with unexpected consequences... The stories held in these pages are irresistible: ingeniously plotted, with richly drawn characters and deliciously unexpected conclusions. Some will make you laugh. Others will bring you to tears. And, as always, every one of them will keep you spellbound."

The Twisted Thing by Mickey Spillane

"This was some household.

"The kid was a genius, the father a scientist of international repute. Money was problem. Not shortage of money but the opposite: too much. The sort of money that brings the envious and the scheming clustering like flies round a pile of ripe offal: nieces, nephews, cousins - a family of mean minds and gross appetites.

"The hired help had its peculiarities too: the chauffeur, an ex-con; the governess, formerly a featured act in strip clubs from New York and Miami; a secretary with a well developed taste in other women.

"Quite a household. And not one to welcome the arrival of Mike Hammer—not when the kid had been kidnapped and everyone else was a suspect."

Snobs by Julian Fellowes

"The English, of all classes as it happens, are addicted to exclusivity. Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them."

"The best comedies of manners are often deceptively simple, seamlessly blending social critique with character and story. In his superbly observed first novel, Julian Fellowes, creator of the Masterpiece sensation Downton Abbey and winner of an Academy Award for his original screenplay of Gosford Park, brings us an insider's look at a contemporary England that is still not as classless as is popularly supposed.

"Edith Lavery, an English blonde with large eyes and nice manners, is the daughter of a moderately successful accountant and his social-climbing wife. While visiting his parents' stately home as a paying guest, Edith meets Charles, the Earl Broughton, and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, who runs the family estates in East Sussex and Norfolk. To the gossip columns he is one of the most eligible young aristocrats around.

"When he proposes. Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that goes with it?"

Sudden: Law O' The Lariat by Oliver Strange

"The word had filtered out that Sudden was dead—and there was no one around to contradict it. Men who had cringed before, swaggered now; others boasted of their encounters with Sudden, the coward.

"Only one man stayed quiet: a tall, saturnine fellow wearing two guns tied low. When he heard the rumours, he gave a thin smile; and when someone asked him who he was, he said shortly: James Green. James Green — alias Sudden!"

Maigret and the Headless Corpse by Georges Simenon

"Two brothers find a grisly package clinging to the propeller of their barge in the Canal de Saint Martins, and by the time Maigret arrives most of a mysterious corpse has been assembled, except for the head. The search shifts from finding the missing piece to finding a motive, as the Inspector's keen mind assembles clues from the dismembered torse which lead to a trio of suspects. A flash of intuition linking the principal suspect's sordid life to the whereabouts of her victim on his last day alive closes the case but opens Maigret's mind to the reason for the crime."

I have yet to read Julian Fellowes and Georges Simenon.

How a bus chase became an accidental film festival

Last Thursday, February 6, I learnt an important lesson: if you've crossed fifty, never run to catch a bus. Instead, wait for the next one, take an autorickshaw or call an Uber. 

That evening, I ran, ducked, leaped and dodged like an African gazelle to catch a bus leaving the railway station in suburban Mumbai, when my knees buckled and I nearly fell. A sharp pain shot through my leg, as if someone had struck me hard with a stick or fired a bullet into my calf. A couple of passersby helped me up and I managed to hail an autorickshaw home. By then, I was in agony and fighting back tears.

The injury forced me to stay home—or rather, work from home—for nearly two weeks. I was advised complete rest: no travel, no unnecessary movement, and no yoga either. The physician didn't think it was a tear and therefore didn't recommend an x-ray or scan. He prescribed ice and heat packs, painkillers and anti-inflammatory medication, a pain-relieving balm, my trusted homoeopathy, and plenty of pampering from the family. The calf is still sore, but it is much better.

With little to do, I spent my days at home reading, watching movies and listening to old music. Here is a recap of the films, mostly from Netflix and a few from cable TV.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

Red Joan, 2018: Loosely based on a true story, the film follows widow Joan Stanley (Judi Dench), who is interrogated by British intelligence decades after allegedly passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets during WWII. Convinced that she was acting in Britain's best interests, Joan believes that maintaining a balance of power between the Americans and the Soviets would help preserve peace. Told largely through a series of flashbacks, Red Joan makes for an interesting watch.

Beirut, 2018: Set in war-torn Beirut in the 1980s, the film follows Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm), a widowed and washed-up former US diplomat who is drawn back to Lebanon to negotiate the release of a friend and colleague being held hostage by a PLO faction. I liked the film partly because I have followed events in the Middle East since the 1980s.

We Bought A Zoo, 2011: Rich widower Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) and his children buy a country estate, only to find that the deal includes the zoo that comes with it. The film also stars Scarlett Johansson as his love interest and Thomas Haden Church as his brother. Based on the book by Benjamin Mee, We Bought A Zoo is a warm and enjoyable family drama. 

The Kominsky Method, 2018: This is the kind of story I'd like to write. The series follows two ageing friends—acting coach Sandy Kominsky (Michael Douglas) and his longtime agent Norman Newlander (Alan Arkin)—as they navigate the ups and downs of life together. With humour, wit and warmth, they confront old age, cynicism, loneliness, illness and personal loss. It was one of the best things I watched on television during my enforced stay at home.

Lucky, 2017: Harry Dean Stanton was apparently 91 when he played Lucky, a reclusive Navy veteran living in a small Arizona town. The film follows his rigid daily routine until one day he collapses at home. Although remarkably healthy for his age, the incident forces him to confront the realities of ageing and mortality. Lucky offers a profound insight into one man's philosophical journey and features some memorable dialogue along the way. Stanton, who died before the film's release, looks every bit his age, and that makes the story poignant from the start.

The Big Short, 2015: Another true-life story about the 2007–08 US financial crisis, triggered by the collapse of the housing market. Remember subprime mortgages? This one largely went over my head, though it is based on Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

The Hard Way, 2019: Payne (Michael Jai White), a retired soldier turned bar owner, travels to Romania to avenge the death of his brother, a secret operative. He finds a capable ally in Mason (Luke Goss), his brother's former teammate. Avoidable.

Boy Erased, 2018: Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), the son of preacher Marshall Eamons (Russell Crowe) and Nancy Eamons (Nicole Kidman), is forced into a church-backed gay conversion programme. I found the film rather disturbing. How can parents do such a thing to their children? Accepting and loving one's child should never be a parental issue. The film's emotional climax comes when Jared tells his father: "I'm gay, and I'm your son. And neither of those things are going to change. Okay? So let's deal with that!" By that point, it is hard not to wonder who really needs 'conversion' therapy? The film is based on Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family by Garrard Conley.

In the end, what began with a painful dash for a bus turned into an accidental film festival at home.

On a blog break

I have not blogged for a month and nor have I visited other blogs in recent weeks. Unfortunately for me, that's going to continue for a few more days, probably until early May, as I rush to fulfil personal commitments and finish work-related assignments.

My review of Past Tense by my good friend Margot Kinberg is still pending and I owe her a big apology. The review will be the first thing I'll be posting on my return, though I hope I can do that much earlier. Joel Williams, the former police detective-turned-professor, is a likeable main character in this nice little mystery set on a campus. I enjoyed reading the book. It had a light and easy pace. You can read Margot's guest post about her new book and flash fiction by clicking on the above link.

Meanwhile, I remain active on Facebook and Twitter, as some of you may have noticed, but that's only because I mostly post while waiting for a bus or train or just before turning in for the night. That way I can at least follow what many of you are blogging about.

See you in May.

A year gone, a year to come

Since I did not write or review much this year, I thought I would at least end the year with a post on one of my favourite literary genres—classical poetry. Fittingly, a poem about New Year's Eve or New Year.

There was plenty to choose from. I read Alfred Lord Tennyson's The Death of the Old Year, Thomas Hardy's New Year's Eve, Christina Rossetti's Old and New Year Ditties, Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne, Helen Hunt Jackson's New Year's Morning, D.H. Lawrence's New Year's Night, Sylvia Plath's New Year on Dartmoor, and John Clare's The Old Year.

I liked them all.

A lot of people look at the old year with sadness, regret, and emotion. And a lot of writing, and especially poetry, reflect those feelings. We remember it mostly as just another year when we grew old and where we could have done so much more, personally and professionally. Fortunately, our minds are trained to conveniently hide unhappy memories, if not erase them completely. Every passing year brings in its anguished wake a new year filled with renewed hope, optimism, and purpose of life, where we dream of doing better than we did in the previous year, and where we truly believe—"This is going to be my year. And I am going to make things happen for me and my family."

Of all the beautiful poems I read, the one that resonated with me this evening, hours before New Year, was The Year by American author-poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919). I thought it was realistic and balanced. I liked the way it bids goodbye to the Old Year and ushers in the New Year, depending on how you read it. And it rhymes very well too.

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of a year.

Ella Wheeler's most famous poem was Solitude which gave us the equally famous opening lines:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth
But has trouble enough of its own.

I sincerely hope you will have lots of reasons to laugh in 2017 and beyond. I wish you a joyous New Year filled with health and happiness.

Musings from my Facebook page

As you can see, I have not been posting much on my blog for a variety of reasons, mainly lack of time and general lethargy. I have been trying to get back into blog and review mode by writing on my Facebook page, where I'm more consistent. I pen my thoughts, and little stories, mostly on sentimental and nostalgic stuff almost every day. I steer clear of controversial topics, politics and religion, about which there is growing intolerance on social media and elsewhere. The forced refrain is: “You have a right to your opinion provided you agree with mine.” There is just too much negativity out there and it is pathetic. 

I'm on Facebook for a bit of fun.

I stick to the simple and ordinary things of life—memories of my childhood years, everyday observations, books I read, movies I'm watching, inner peace, food I love eating, places I visit, life in pictures, and that sort of thing. I write about things that make me feel good—as everything we do, should—and also resonate with others including family and friends.

You’ll get an idea from the following compilation of my most recent Facebook entries published over the past ten days. Some of my blog friends who are also my Facebook friends might have read these before. Others need not be compelled to read at all. It might be dreadfully boring and result in reader mortis. I have edited some of the posts for brevity, if brevity is, indeed, possible these days.

November 8: The Phantom—The Ghost Who Walks and Man Who Cannot Die—married in the mid-80s, a few years before I did. I "attended" his wedding in the Skull Cave. He tied the knot with the beautiful Diana Palmer of New York, in the presence of an odd bunch of guests—Diana's mother and Uncle Dave; Mandrake the Magician and Lothar; the pygmy Bandar led by best man Guran; his adopted son Rex; friend Thal, king of the Little People; Hero and Devil, his white stallion and wolf; and, Hzz, the prehistoric half man-half beast living on his isle of Eden, where all his other animals, including a stegosaurus, eat grass and live peacefully; where lions eat fish.

I thought the Phantom's attire was wholly inappropriate for such an important occasion. But then, he got married as the Phantom and not as Kit Walker, his secret urban identity. If Diana didn't mind, who the hell was I to object? I wore a suit at my wedding. The Guardian of the Eastern Dark didn't show up. Ever since, we haven't been on talking, or reading, terms.

November 6: My dad loved Kapi. He liked his coffee hot and strong with a spot of milk and very little sugar. Sometimes he used to skip dinner and have Kapi and buttered bread or toast, instead. He'd apply a good amount of butter on the bread slices and toast them on an open pan till they were golden brown. He'd then carefully slice each toast into four perfect squares, dip each bit in hot coffee, and pop it into his mouth. He made them for me, too. And was it delicious! The taste of salted buttered toast dunked in coffee or tea, if I may rightly exaggerate, is heavenly. Over the years I have tickled my palate by dipping crisp and crunchy Khara biscuits and Brun-maska in tea.

I'm not fond of coffee unless it is an authentic South Indian brew. Occasionally, I feel like having Kapi when I'm reading about detectives in crime fiction, gulping down mugs of steaming black coffee. I can almost smell it.

November 5: I love slapstick comedy and I'm extremely partial to Laurel and Hardy. They are the best. Such sweet innocence and so much fun. It's a pity there have been such few comedians in that laugh-out-loud category. I left Charles Chaplin out because, while I like him as an actor and have enjoyed many of his films, he is not funny. In fact, he can be quite depressing. When I think of slapstick, I think of mindless comedy. Comedy for the sake of comedy.

November 5: Last evening, I hit pay dirt at one of my secondhand book haunts: a used brand new 4-in-1 collection of Lucky Luke comics. Lucky Luke is a Belgian namesake comic-book series created and drawn by Morris (Maurice De Bevere) and written by Goscinny, who also wrote many of the earliest Asterix comics. I have been reading the adventures of Lucky Luke, the American cowboy known to "shoot faster than his shadow," since early teens. Good fun and absolute value for my Rs.50 (less than $1).

November 5: My reading room on wheels—where I read more Facebook and less book. The 7.45 am siren at the Khar railway yard, en route to work, just went off. A familiar sound back from my childhood. As long as it's not an air raid siren, all's well with our world.

© Prashant C. Trikannad

November 4: At the end of the day

I step out of my air-conditioned coffin.
Street boys hammer drums,
the devil knows why.
Roadside woofers, like black holes,
blast distorted music.
Fuckin' drivers leapfrog signals,
nearly knocking me down.
Crackers go off on my tail,
precursor to the advent of hell.
I rugby my way to the station,
past hawkers and jaywalkers.
I sweat it out in a crammed local.
I sweat it out in a snaky bus queue.
I sweat it out in drunken traffic.
Two hours too late,
I reach home, lose my head.
My pet wags her little tail.
I growl at her, sending her off.
“How was your day, darling?”
My face looks like burnt toast.
A hushed silence descends.
The air-conditioner comes on.
I set off again,
this time on a guilt trip.

November 4: I grew up with images of many iconic films. Of course, I realised they were iconic much later, after I started watching old movies on VCR & VCP and cable in mid-80s and early 90s. Two classics are etched in my mind: the scene where a crop-dusting plane is chasing Cary Grant in Hitchcock's North by Northwest, 1959, and the Burt Lancaster-Deborah Kerr steamy beach kiss in From Here to Eternity, 1953.

Elders in the family fondly recalled actors of their generation, who they grew up watching on the big screen. I'm glad they became actors of my generation too. When I look back on their era, I think of absolute class, style, and substance.

November 3: This Christmas-New Year I'm going on a tour of some of the most fascinating places in the world. My global stopovers will include Gotham City, Xanadu, Metropolis and The Daily Planet, Jaigarh, Gaul, the Skull Cave and Denkali, Asgard, Marlinspike Hall, Dwarka, Riverdale, Mongo, Bayport, Rich Mansion, Coast City, Pellucidar, Disney, Atlantis, and Sherwood Forest. S.H.I.E.L.D. is lending me their Quinjet.

Would you like to join me?

© Prashant C. Trikannad

November 3: Spare a thought for my pet...and me: Next week is Diwali, the festival of lights...and loud noise. The next few days are going to be traumatic for Stubs as deafening firecrackers cause her such fear as to make her lose her appetite and spend most of her time under the bed. She and her affectionate kind must curse humans, as I do. Request a reveller to desist from firing bombs, or light them elsewhere, and the smirky response will be, "Uncle, it's Diwali. No fun without crackers!" or it could be something like this, in crass Hindi, "What goes of your father?" effectively telling me to go to hell.

There is growing awareness about the harm firecrackers can cause to animals and people, but it's never going to be enough without a corresponding increase in compassion.

November 6: The World's Finest comic pictured below was one of 40 DC-Marvel comic-books my uncle from San Diego gifted us in the mid-70s. He inspired my dad, and his elder brother, to add to the lot every month. Before long, we had an impressive collection of Amar Chitra Katha, Indrajal, including Phantom, Mandrake, and Flash Gordon, the Harvey bunch, Archie and the Gang, Walt Disney, Tintin and Asterix, Dell, Whitman, and pocket Commando, and Western.

I took the comics baton from dad in the early 80s and widened the collection to include M.A.D., Maus, Classics Illustrated, and DC-Marvel annual editions. Forty years later, I can still smell those 40 brand-new comics. 

If you've read thin A4-size comics from that era, you'll know what I'm talking about. It felt like heaven to this kid.

November 1: Chess has been the single greatest learning experience of my life. This beautiful game beats school, college, and university education by a long mile. Chess is a seamless blend of passion, excitement, concentration, strategy, management, sacrifice, loyalty, patience, and ambition. I like to think of the 16 pieces as members of a close-knit family who look out for each other, like the mafia. They have their strengths and weaknesses but what holds them together on the 64-square board is blood kinship. 

Chess has taught me a lot in life; everything else I learnt on the job.

October 31: Barring Red Sonja, I have read the wild adventures of the other three superwomen—Axa and Modesty Blaise as comic strips and Xena as a comic book. I first read Axa—the forever-nude female Conan written by Donne Avenell and drawn by Romero—in the tabloid magazine, The Sun, known largely for its coverage of music. This was in the early 80s. I think, The Sun bought the rights for Axa from its British namesake where it was originally published. 

Axa bears a striking resemblance to Red Sonja who came before her. The origins of these two sword-sorcerers is interesting. Modesty Blaise was, of course, a three-unit black-and-white comic strip that many Indian newspapers published, alongside a similar James Bond strip. Sometimes, you didn't know which was which. I'm sure most Indians first heard of Xena the Warrior Princess through her television show. I didn't know she had a comic-book until much later.

Have you read any of these femme fatales of the comics world?

October 29: Every morning, a blind couple enters my coach in the 7.49 local and begs for alms. They sing lovely bhakti-geet, or devotional songs. They don't have much of a voice but together they sound good. I find it soothing, even if it is for a brief moment, till they get off at the next station and hop into another coach and start all over again. Singing blind during peak-hour rush can’t be easy.

I was raised on devotional songs, thanks to my dad who sang to my sister and me at bedtime, almost every night in our childhood and early teens. You can't go to sleep with a more secure and comforting feeling.

October 28: I'm seriously thinking of replacing my car with this single-wheel eco-friendly self-propeller. I could get around much faster. But I'm going to have to make sure I look like a formal guy and not a circus clown. Imagine, I could wheel myself right into my office and up to my desk. No pay and park. The more I think of my fuel-efficient idea, the more I'm convinced it'll work.

This weekend I'll hop over to the nearest stone quarry and place an order for a custom-built spoked wheel with a small headlight and a loud horn that I can control with my feet. I"m pretty excited. I must thank Johnny Hart whose B.C. comic strip was my inspiration. Next step: licence.

October 27: When we dogear the pages of our book, the book must feel like someone is twisting its ears. We know how painful that is. A book has life too. Every word on a page is like each breath we take.

That’s all the corniness for now. If you’re on Facebook, I’d be delighted to connect with you.

© Prashant C. Trikannad

All quiet on the reading front

The last three months have been quiet. I could almost hear pins drop as I struggled with my reading, writing, and blogging. The transition from my old job as editor to my new job as content writer has been easy but somehow I haven’t been able to get back to my pre-May routine with books and blogs.

I think, somewhere in my head there is a mental block that’s feeding the reader’s and writer’s block as well. The thing is men don’t adapt to change as well as women do and it’s possible I still haven’t, at least subconsciously, though I'm quite happy with my new work profile and environment. I just don’t get enough time to read or write during the week.

I have been reading some books, no more than two or three a month and a couple of short stories. I’ll be reviewing a few of these eventually. I read 10-15 pages a day, sometimes less. My fiction writing is a work in progress. I hope to have something ready, and likely e-published, before Christmas.

I have also been watching some good films, including reruns, over the past couple of months — Chef, Patch Adams, The Shawshank Redemption, Last Vegas, The Bucket List, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Sound of Music, Frozen, Dallas Buyers Club, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Gone Girl, Notting Hill, Sweet November, and Argo, to recall names off the top of my head. I mostly watch films the family is already watching.

One of the English channels is beaming The Flash series. I saw a couple of episodes and I thought the production was slick. I haven’t read Flash comics in several years. Comics, now there’s another joy I have been missing. This month, we intend to catch the final season of Downton Abbey to see what fate awaits the Grantham family. We were hooked to the previous five seasons.

I continue to post my two bits on Facebook. It has helped me connect with long-lost family and friends in my own city, in my own country. Of course, it’s one of the great illusions of Fb—you think you are getting in touch with someone, somewhere, when in effect you’re getting nowhere. It’s fun and an ego-kick depending on what you are posting.

Sometimes, I think it’s wise to slow down, step back, and start all over again—a few pages to go, one book at a time, and occasional posts. I'm hoping things will get better this month onward. I miss connecting with my blog friends.

Transition

I have not been frequent on blogs, my own as well as visits to yours, because of the transition from my old job to a new one which, incidentally, happens to be in the same group I have been associated with for the past fifteen years. Only my line of work has changed, from that of a full-time journalist to a content specialist in one of Asia’s leading public relations agencies. I started out on July 2 and I'm looking forward to my new career in this challenging and exciting field.

© Faber & Faber

I hope to make up for my absence from blogging this weekend, by visiting my friends’ blogs rather than posting anything on my own. That may take a while. However, I owe my friend Sarah Ward an honest apology. I still have to review her brilliant debut, In Bitter Chill, that she so kindly sent me by post a month ago. I'm halfway through Sarah’s gripping mystery novel and I'm excited about reviewing it next week.

My new job falls midway between my home in a northern suburb and my old job in South Mumbai, or downtown, which means I will have less time to read during my train commute. I'm going to have to make up for it by reading whenever time permits, and time doesn’t permit a lot. You know, we readers have as little time to read our books as sleuths have to solve their cases.

Among other things, it’s nearly three months since I bought a paper book, and I don’t intend to buy any till I have read at least two dozen paperbacks from my existing lot. This is a promise and I aim to keep it. The only exception would be Sudden novels, the western series by British writer Oliver Strange that I'm so fond of. Nothing, absolutely nothing on earth, can prevent me from grabbing his priceless books. To hell with TBR and all that.

That’s all for now.

Musings on a Good Friday

As far as my reading in 2015 goes, I have begun the year with woes rather than wows. I’m running out of excuses and lamentations on why I’m reading and reviewing fewer books and blogging even less, although I have been managing to visit a few blogs. And yet, I find there is no dearth of alibis and they’re all genuine; that is if alibis can, indeed, be genuine.

Over the past few days I have been caught up in both personal and official responsibilities like a fortnight of major home repairs, helping a friend look for a new house, a Wi-Fi router on the blink and in need of immediate replacement, a brief out-of-town visit to my company’s annual sales conference, braving above 32-degree Celsius (90 F) temperature that is so humidifying as to take the fun out of reading in non-air conditioned trains—my library on wheels—and single-handedly writing, editing and filing stories for my paper and portal. 

An illustrative picture of an autorickshaw.
© Wikimedia Commons

It’ll be a while before I regain my mood to read books and improve my statistics that nearly hit the bottom in March. I’ll cover that in two sentences in my next post. For now, I’ll tell you about my travel to the annual conference. 

Thursday morning, I took the ‘local’ train to a distant suburban railway station from where I took a “sharing” autorickshaw to the venue, a resort, located some 15 km (9 miles) on National Highway-8. “Sharing” means you share the auto and the fare with five or six people. It’s a popular money-saving concept in India. We were seven passengers and three of us, including myself, sat next to the driver on a seat that was no bigger than a large pillow. My left leg and half my ass were out. Don’t ask me how I managed. The incentive was the fare per passenger, Rs.40 (0.64 cents). 

© Prashant C. Trikannad

As I got off at the station, called Naigaon, where “nai” means new and “gaon” means place or village, I felt as if I’d got off at a station in the countryside hundreds of miles from Mumbai when, in fact, it was less than 30 km (18 miles) from the bustling suburb where I live. As you can see from the picture, the station was so deserted, I found it spooky. If you’re from Mumbai, you’re not used to such empty platforms. From 7 am to 11 pm there are no less than a thousand people on the platforms at each of the dozens of stations within the city and its neighbouring suburbs.

At Naigaon, there were no buildings on the east side where I was headed; only a creek, salt pans, and open land almost till we touched NH-8. The place wasn't quaint or anything like that. But it struck me as odd because I realised development hadn't even remotely touched this distant suburb, ironically, in spite of its proximity to India's financial capital. It's a good thing it hasn't. The last thing we need is one more urban jungle ill-defined by narrow thinking and claustrophobic living.

I resisted the urge to drive down to the venue because a fast train cuts travel time by half and besides you get to read on the 45-minute single journey, as I did yesterday. On the way back I listened to some good old Hindi film songs, equivalent to 50s & 60s hits in America.

Today is Good Friday, a public and bank holiday in India. I don’t have an official holiday but my Christian colleagues are entitled to take the day off. I walked in late as I had to sort out a few things with the contractor and his kadias (masons) at home. I thought I’d file this piece before I left office later this evening. In case I don’t come back on the weekend, here’s wishing ‘Happy Easter’ to all my blog friends and their families.

Musings from my Facebook page

This would be my first Musings post this year. I’d forgotten all about it. I thought I’d share with you some of my inane jottings on my Facebook page under the heading ‘Odds and Ends’ which is neither here nor there, or anywhere else for that matter.

March 25: The fat is really in the fire. It’s an absolute scorcher out there, 41 degree Celsius (105.8 F) at 2 pm, up from 33 (91.4 F) on Monday. Wet with sweat? No, it’s much more than that. It's sweaticles! This is the time I wish I’d heeded my mother’s advice—“Finish your graduation and get a nice job in a bank,” she said. “You can stay there till retirement,” she said. “You’ll get free bank loans and so many holidays,” she said. Free bank loans? Never mind. I'm thinking of all the public holidays and no travelling to work. Right now, I'm staring at next fortnight’s calendar and asking myself—“Why couldn't I have had an employer like RBI, our federal bank?” What a generous fellow! Take a look.

March 28: Ram Navami (the day Lord Ram, the Hindu god, was born)
March 29: Sunday
April 1: Annual Closing of Accounts (at least no customers)
April 2: Mahavir Jayanti (the day Lord Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, was born)
April 3: Good Friday
April 4: Half-day, being Saturday
April 5: Sunday

Withdraw your money in advance. Later, there’ll be a run on ATMs. The machines will dry up, that is, if the heat doesn't melt your card first. You can’t bank on anyone these days.

March 24: I'm putting my neck on the guillotine. It is two months since I jumped on the Fb bandwagon and here is my verdict. It does wonders for the bruised ego, for the ego is always bruised. All these likes (and yikes), comments (and laments), and shares (and tears), making you seem popular and notorious at the same time, or notoriously popular if you like. A mild and harmless activity, really, even if a self-conscious and self-absorbing one. An occupational hazard, for the more prolific you are here, the less productive you are elsewhere. I, me, myself, 24x7, well almost. So here I am: addicted to my status, for all it is worth, 7 likes and 4 comments.

March 23: A week ago, it was 24 degree Celsius (75.2 F) at Churchgate. Either the winter gods had overstayed their visas or the sun gods were in snooze time. Today, it is 33 degree Celsius (91.4 F) and climbing, and it looks as if the hot gods are making up for lost time—they're throwing flames out there. One singed my eyebrows, another seared my earlobes and I can already feel the skin peeling off my back in April-May.

While I can’t run off to 14°C (57.2 F)  Darjeeling, here's what I'm going to do to take some of the heat off from the fire-breathers in heaven—cut down on tea and coffee and drink four bottles of water a day, with a couple of fresh coconut water thrown in; eat plenty of fruits and salads without sugar and salt; cover my head with a wide-brimmed hat like the sombrero, they come in many colours; wear loose cotton clothes, preferably a poncho for maximum cross-ventilation; remain indoors, switch on the air-conditioner, and forget about next month’s electricity bill; speak less, that way I scream less; and finally, meditate, to keep a lid on my simmering temper—the sun total of all our troubles every summer.

March 20: I'm back in the 8.03 am local. Me and my fellow commuters are doing things without actually doing anything. Scanning financial newspapers, playing with cellphones, snoozing and snoring, reading books without turning pages, staring aimlessly into space, staring at each other, listening to music without earphones, reading shlokas and scriptures...a compartment of collective boredom and symbolic gestures. Aren't we the fortunate ones?

March 19: With so many logins and passwords online, it’s a wonder we don’t forget our own names. It’s not always easy to remember which login goes with which password and where, especially if you haven’t written it down somewhere. I usually devise my passwords by mixing and matching titles of, and characters from, books and comics and films and television series as well as memorable lines from all of these sources. I like them long. I find them easier to remember and I mostly log in successfully in my first attempt.

Sometimes I have a lot of fun thinking up weird and whacky passwords like these.

youmiserablethumbsuckingswine (you miserable thumb sucking swine)

whatthebloodyhell (what the bloody hell)

youlistentomeandyoulistengood (you listen to me and you listen good)

keepyourfilthypawsoffme (keep your filthy paws off me)

I think I'll lay off crime fiction and crime films for some time.

March 18: Every time I sit to meditate, I remember what the mystics say, "Witness the flow of your mind. Let your thoughts come and go." Thoughts come and go, all right, only to be replaced by newer and more robust ones. They are a formidable lot, these thoughts of ours. They play musical chairs in our head. This morning, for instance, try as I might, I couldn't remain immune to my thoughts, particularly one nagging thought that just wouldn't go away—“what shall I post on Fb today?” I found myself very eager to answer the question.

March 17: This morning, Mumbai woke up to pleasant weather and a cool breeze. It's March 17 and the temp is 24 degree Celsius at Churchgate, 9.25 am. Let's not wake up the sun gods.

Musings on the last Sunday of the year

I had no intention of buying any more books between Christmas and New Year but the devil tempted me with a sale organised by Strand Book Stall, a popular bookstore. It was held in the foyer of the 144-year old David Sassoon Library and Reading Room in the south of the city.

© www.davidsassoonlibrary.com

I bought Deadly Justice (1993) by William Bernhardt, an American author of thriller and mystery fiction known for his Ben Kincaid series. The writer is new to me but I think he specialises in legal thrillers. “Justice” is a recurring word in his titles.

The family bought two books, To Be the Best (1988) by Barbara Taylor Bradford, the continuing saga of a family dynasty, and Sons of Fortune (2003) by Jeffrey Archer, which has shades of his famous novel Kane and Abel.

We also bought a spiritual book called Mantram Handbook by the late Eknath Easwaran, a renowned Indian spiritual teacher who, in 1960, established the Blue Mountain Centre of Meditation in Berkeley, California. The book tells us how we can release new energy, recast our old ways of thinking, and become more sensitive to the needs of others, by using the mantram, a short, powerful spiritual formula, to call up “what is best and deepest in ourselves.”

I have been reading and rereading Easwaran’s writing for the past two decades. His books are an infallible antidote to worry, fear, and depression. Spiritual books are like tonic. They keep you going through all the vicissitudes of life. I keep one handy.

Comics go extinct
It saddens me to learn that the thin A4-size comic books we read as kids have disappeared. DC and Marvel and the others stopped publishing them a long time ago. They have been replaced by glossy volumes and graphic novels whose computer generated illustrations are as unappealing as their price. This year, I received inquiries from people looking for some of these old-fashioned comics. I’m tempted to sell my lot to the highest bidder. But I know I won’t.

Drinking, driving, killing
With New Year’s Eve round the corner, the traffic police department is already cracking down on drunk driving. The number of fatalities due to drinking and driving has been increasing every year and a lot of innocent people are getting killed. It gets worse on the night of December 31. At the various check posts across the city, traffic police stop bikers and motorists, stick their heads very close, and ask them for their names. If they suspect alcohol, they use a breathalyzer to confirm it.

On New Year’s Eve, last year, I was stopped thrice on the highway and asked to state my name. I don’t drink but I felt silly repeating my name until the cop was satisfied he couldn’t smell liquor on my breath. My wife had a good laugh.

This breathe-in-my-face method can’t be hygienic for the cops.

To read or not to read
As I type this I’m looking at two formidable trilogies from my daughter’s collection—The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson. Rather, Tolkien and Larsson are giving me inquiring looks—“Are you going to read either or both of us in 2015?” I don’t think so. “You’re both part of my post-retirement reading plan,” I tell them. They seem offended.

Christmas movies
This weekend, I watched two of the five Christmas films I wrote about last week—Christmas in Connecticut and It’s a Wonderful Life. The first was a mild romantic drama, enjoyable but passable actually; the second was an intense family drama that was more depressing than elating in spite of its happy ending. I liked both, though. It put me in the mood for more golden age cinema.

That is all for now. I hope you found these musings amusing.

Musings on a tired Tuesday

There are some things you don't forget. In my case there is a line someone said to me. Rather it was a question to which I had no answer. It has stayed with me.

I was in my late teens and on a trek to a mountain top 3,000 km (1,864 miles) above sea level. We were a big group and I was part of a small bunch of college friends and new acquaintances. The night before the long trek we halted at a desolate railway station and slept on the platforms. Some of us walked along the tracks, others sat huddled on the platform, talking and joking and laughing. It was winter and quite cold even by western India standards.

The conversation veered to sun signs and ego trips for that is what discussing sun signs are usually about. Linda Goodman was the unseen referee. We talked about each other’s sun signs, our good and rotten characteristics, and bragged about famous people born under our signs. A Gandhi here, an Einstein there, a Churchill above, a Hitler below.

One of the girls in the group wanted to know my sun sign.

“I’m a cusp,” I said.

“Between which two signs?”

“Libra and Scorpio,” I replied. “Bang in the middle.”

“What!” she said, and then came the unexpected question, “How do you manage?”

That took me by surprise. I didn’t know what to say.

Since then, I have always considered myself to be more Libra than Scorpio. I owe allegiance to the scales even though there is seldom any balance in my life. The signs are all there. Show me a menu with more than one dish on it and I’ll show you how not to make up your mind. Suggest a dozen lovely places to visit and I’ll come right back at you with, “So where do we go?” Point me in the right direction at an intersection and I’ll scratch my head and look the other way. Watch me make a decision to write a book and then watch me dream about winning the Booker already. And that’s just tipping the scales. For a Libra-Scorpio cusp, I manage quite well. I do, don’t I?

What was the wisest, weirdest or wackiest question you were asked?

Musings on a moody Monday

There is a crowded place called Irla some 4 km from my home in northwest Bombay (Mumbai) and on either side of the main street are retail stores selling everything from smartphones to electronic gadgets, dry fruits to household provisions, jewellery to saris, and clothes to footwear. Many of these stores are “custom notified” which means the goods (or contraband, in earlier times) are sold at lower rates, though, I don’t see how that matters now that India has opened up its economy, well almost. They only accept cash.

On the pavements outside these air-conditioned stores are a line of hawkers who sell fruits and vegetables, flowers and garlands, and ready-to-eat snacks the city is gastronomically famous for. Their trade is illegal but years of physical presence on the footpaths has earned them the right to stay put and shove pedestrians on to the road.

Beyond the hawkers and along the kerb are cars, two-wheelers, and autorickshaws double parked and causing traffic jams. Tempers and tantrums are traded freely. But man and machine co-exist even as human and vehicular traffic moves at a crawl.

It was into this cacophony of horns and hoots that my family walked into Sunday evening, to visit a bookshop we hadn't been to for more than two years. The shop is located in the back of a depressing mall. Once inside the bookstore, however, my eyes lit up and my spirits soared as I confronted hundreds and thousands of books spread over a vast area. 

Actually, it wasn't a bookshop; it was more like a dumping ground for paperbacks and hardbacks shipped from the West. Many of the books had stamps of their American distributors. There were all kinds of books, including popular and bestselling fiction by the likes of Grisham, Koontz, Cruz Smith, Deaver, Highsmith, Baldacci, Kellerman (husband and wife), Nesbo, Cornwell, King, Patterson, Rice and so on and so forth. The books were sold at Rs.50 (less than a dollar) and Rs.100 (more than a dollar). They were dusty but brand new.

I shot past this humungous heap of novels and made my way to a section that screamed Rs.20 (less than 50 cents) in bold letters. There I picked up my kind of books—five less-than-200-page paperbacks—one each by Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, E.V. Cunningham (Howard Fast), Don Pendleton, and Robert B. Parker. I was satisfied with my lot but I was disappointed I didn’t find more.

My daughter bought Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001) by Laura Hillenbrand. The book is loosely based on the real life story of the thoroughbred champion race horse, Seabiscuit. She had seen the 2003 film version of the book starring Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges, and Chris Cooper. It was a good choice and I hope to read it in future.

There were lots of books by writers I wasn't familiar with and I hoped that I didn’t leave behind some really good ones that deserved to be read.

Apparently, I did, for on my way out I spotted an espionage novel called Dagger (1984) by William Mason who turned out to be William W. Johnstone, a prolific American author of western, horror, and survivalist novels. You can read about him and his work here and here.

This is what Dagger is about.

The time for project Eagle-Fall has come—and that means that the President of The United States is going to die. The Secret Service is on alert, but not all the President's men can be trusted. Somewhere a traitor is waiting to strike, and when he does, Dagger will be ready. War hero, ladies' man, soldier for hire, Dagger is the one man who knows the meaning of the word survive, the one man who knows the international spy network like the back of his hand. He knows every agent in the world…except the one who is out to assassinate the President!

I could have kicked myself. Hopefully, Dagger will still be there when I revisit the bookshop; hopefully, soon.