Writing..

Re-discovered the joys of reading over the last month or so. Just put down the latest book by Shashi Tharoor called Bookless in Baghdad - it's a collection of essays about writing and (Indian) writers. Am a big Shashi Tharoor fan, having read 2 of his earlier works. I read India - From Midnight to the Millenium first, was mighty impressed, and then The Great Indian Novel was even better. The Great Indian Novel superimposes characters from the Mahabharatha on the Indian freedom struggle and beyond (Gandhi is Bhishma, Karna is Jinnah..you get the point..) - it's a great way to retell a myth, fusing it with history. His writing really speaks to people like me - he was born in London, brought up completely in urban India and now lives in NY and works for the UN. All his books and writing so far is about India and emphasises how one can be Indian, at heart, living outside of India. He has this line in Bookless.. which goes, "one has to get out of the frame to see the whole picture" (which is debatable, but very comforting and redeeming nevertheless for someone like me).

In his review of different writers in Bookless.., I completely agree with his take on R.K. Narayan (too simplified, made me wonder if I was missing something that everyone was loving about his books, much like what I feel about New Yorker now - come on, isn't most of the stuff there plain pretentious cra*?), V.S. Naipaul (I like a conclusion in a novel, that's just me - once I finished his book, it left me thinking that maybe he didn't really incorporate that thing called "conclusion" in the structure of his book; I'd like to read Father & Son though), & Salman Rusdhie (sheer admiration - excited about reading, Shalimar the Clown, his latest, next).

Indian writers in English have a flair and a fascination for the language, its like a kid being all excited about a newly acquired skill. It was the best Colonial influence that the Britishers left us back with. We have a fascination for long sentences, packing a lot in a single sentence, going on and on, comma after comma, making the reader crave that full-stop (like this :) - someone I spoke to about this believed it was because we fear that we may lose the thought if we didn't get it down asap in one BIG sentence - not sure if I subscribe to that theory, but anyway..). We fill our writing with convoluted, arcane words and imagination - most Indian writers would prefer to take the prettier, scenic, curvy, convoluted path to get an idea across rather than a crisp short-cut.

In that respect my writing (this thing that I do here :)) is all Indian (my pathetic attempt to put myself in the same bracket as Salman Rushdie :)) - brevity is not really my strength (if you've made it this far into this posting, you definitely have realized that by now), humor is subtle (at best!). I like having a main train of thought with a parallel, related line within ( ) (I think I sometimes put more within ( ) than out of it (and the programmer in me wants to have mulitple levels of nesting of ( ))).

I should bring my indulgence to a close now - last, but definitely not the least (trite, trite!!), thanks for spending your time here - I mean there is so much else you could be doing, even if you decide to read/browse, there is so much out there for you to choose from, the fact that you chose to come here and read through a posting like this means a lot to me.