It's 3am and I've just sat down to my computer after showering and washing the dustbunnies from my hair and from all over me, though there's still dust in my lungs.
My brother usually comes home twice a year. Once during the summer and once around Diwali. This time he's taking a longer chutti and coming home today. So when "chote sahab" (I tease him with that name because his coming is always an "event", like in the movies, Shahrukh Khan coming off a helicopter in K3G style) is returning we try to make things good for him, the house is cleaned (also usually because this coincides with Diwali time) and things are bought and good food is prepared. So to do my bit I decided to clean my room. Yesterday was the day for organizing my clothes scene and dusting my posters and walls. Today was the daunting task of cleaning my bookshelf, armed with a rag, a jhadu and 90s music.
For someone who's decidedly not an open book, I derive this great sense of wonder and excitement at discovering little things hidden away. Specially when it's obscure objects from the past, looking at photographs, or listening to stories, no matter how trivial about people's pasts. And certain things are goldmines. Like bottom drawers, bulky army style black metal trunks, places under peoples beds, clothes. Even bodies. Scars are personal histories.
And books. Books tell you things without even having to read them. So even though I was covered in soot, breathing through a scarf on my face that made me look like an ugravadi, sneezing my ass off, sitting without a fan in this blasted blistering heat I was OK. Because I wasn't there.
Start from the bottom with the CDs and movies and the pulpy novels with whipcracking ladies in lingerie on James Hadley Chase, just legs on the back cover of Moravia short stories, some sort of enormous demon on "Samari Ke Pret". 1975, 1977 books belonging to Biman Basu (Why do I have books belonging to Biman Basu? This is the writer, the one who wrote science books for children, not the communist leader, btw. As far as I remember, he's the brother of a friend of my mother's and he was shifting houses long ago and asked if we'd like to take some books). Books I bought when I was much too small because the covers intrigued me. Mystic Book Shop in Shankar Market was like this magical experience when I was a kid and my mum would go to buy all her spiritual books from a wise old man while I poked around inside the dark shop. Books from my cousins who had spent some years in America and read Judy Blume and Jean Craighead George (Julie Of the Wolves has a cutout of a sumo wrestler holding up Shane Warne and some other bloke, I think it's a Pepsi ad. WTF?). Politically Correct Bedtime Stories with my scribbles. A list of Hindi essay topics for my holiday homework scribbled at the back of Roald Dahl's Short stories "Bharat aur Pakistan cricket series, samachar patr, kisan aur varsha ritu". Chicken Poop for the Soul.
Now Cleaning - Indian fiction. Listening to Rocket From The Crypt.Spend several minutes staring at Indy Hazra's picture behind Garden of Earthly Delights. Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali is fantastic for anyone interested in Delhi before Wast Patel Nagar and Rajouri Garden existed. Interpreter of Maladies (which I've never read) spits out 2 photorgraphs of our Lucknow house (the biggest house I've ever lived in) Me, age 11 with the long brown hair of much of my life, posing with my dad who is in uniform. My mum and dad on the verandah of the Raj era bunglow (it was an official residence, don't get excited). My dad had just been promoted and this was the first year we actually lived together (minus my brother who was at med school) in a very long time. The manthan continues... Kamla Das' "My Story" throws out a booklet of a play in Bath, a coaster with a very retro ad for Stella Artois (a pouting blonde on one side and a brunette with red lipstick on the other - guess which side is on my wall now?) and a visiting card+tour flyer for Gadjo (I've been meaning to post pictures or write about them earlier, saw them busking in Bath last year, for now here's their website). A gift offer from Readers Digest from 1988 to my mother's address in Lucknow in a derelict copy of Umrao Jan, the last few pages+cover missing. If you've read A Case of Exploding Mangoes, you know why I developed a habit of eating elaichi after reading it.
My brother's mad childhood squiggles asserting his existence and attempts to write his name on a book gifted to my Ma by her brother ("To N for her birthday love M") about Maya Plisetskaya the ballerina, 1977, before he was born.
Next - comics, graphic novels and childrens books. Sinbad the sailor illustrated by Pyotr Annenkov
A favourite from my childhood, it's illustrations are so unique. A Raj comics, omerta, nagraj etc. Lots of Amar Chitra Kathas. Shadowhawk 1,2,3. Xmen, Devi, Spawn, Big Bang Comics (they had a cheap ripoff of the JLA, it was too funny). Twilight Zone Dec 1970 belonging to Chandrika Rao and her brother Nagrat Rao's UFO flying saurcer comic. It has an ad for the 1970 World Fair in Osaka. Mad Magazines from 1989 onwards. Playing Sonny Vincent now. Tintin. 5 Tales from Shakespeare abridged by Bernard Miles and with the most beautiful fluid dreamlike watercolour illustrations by Victor G Ambrus
gifted to my brother at age 10.
Now listening to Teenage Fanclub. I dunno what this shelf is called. Modern classics? 20th century literature? Whatever, it's all mixed up. My mum's copy of Jules et Jim from the 60s, bought in Kanpur. Almost all of these are my books. Mirrorshades - A Cyberpunk Anthology, made my father buy it for me from a bankrupt gentleman in Nehru Place, a stockbroker or businessman of some type he said, selling off all his books. The Death of Bunny Munro, Nick Cave in Noida! (bought from BP)
Next Shelf, older books, quite a few are not mine. My Nani's sister's husband is an English prof somewhere in the US. He did his thesis on DH Lawrence, so we have several copies of Lawrence books brimming over with tiny scrawled notes. His son was an interesting character in his youth.A copy of Mornings in Mexico+Etruscan Places has the inscription "I am sinking, god bless me - Your Son P".
My mother's book of Khalil Gibran "Dramas of Life - Lazarus and his Beloved And the Blind" reads "For N - who is always a source of inspiration, beauty and sensitivity - S" 24/12/1968, very interesting considering this is a few years before she met my father. The Prophet with "Dearest D, wishing you happiness, health, success all the days of your life - love, E. Masi, P. Uncle, K and N" 23/7/97 for my brother. It also produces a picture of my then teenage brother and I along with our estranged family friends - the sister was his age and the brother was near mine. They were a tall family. I used to watch him play video games (I like watching because it's like a movie). His sister (still sensible) tried to get a job as an airhostess but was too tall. She didn't make it as a model either. He was once tickled so hard by my brother that he pissed his pants. The mother liked cards - bridge and Tarot. We were all in Assam and then Delhi together. He was a bit of an obnoxious child, he was already 6 feet something when I was 12 (a couple of years older than me) later I heard he may have given up studying, had to be bribed by doting mom with a playstation in return for a mere 2 hours of study, started wearing a mohawk and started doing some art or videogame stuff. Question on my mind? 1) Is he attractive now? (He wasn't attractive when we were kids, quite a gadha, infact) 2) Would I be friends with him if we knew each other? (Doubt it)
Kafka's America that my cousin got me in return for losing my copy of Trainspotting. A copy of the Metaphysical Poets (a Penguin one, college text from the 60s) belonging to one of my mother's beautiful estranged best friends (who is now an academic/journalist. I'm not sure why they're estranged. Ma hints that M. Mama was involved) I just know her as the woman in a white sari, face lit by a ray of sunlight, long dark hair over her roundish face.
The Master and Margarita has a fake leave note for Kavi's hostel warden from her "mother" from the time I lent it to her. Pasternak prose and poems belongs to someone called Najmul Hassan, bought in Aligarh. The Idiot throws up a note I wrote while watching The Ballad of Jack and Rose which will note be reproduced here because it is too stupid, mostly just random words, the names of the actors, dialogues and lyrics.
Chekov's plays from when my mother was still called Joshi. A note from a 1975 planner written by her BFF asking her to go visit the Chatterji's who are putting up The Dolls House in Hindi (Ibsen, you saw a picture of it in an earlier post) and want her to do a part and are quite desperate.
The Story of India for children by Gratian Vas bought for me during my bout with chicken pox/class 5 final exams which got me interested in History.
And there. It's done, I've swallowed so much dust and now it's all in me. (Yo, D.U! Remember that story in our concurrent English book in 1st year? By Ambai, when she's looking at all those women's writings in their frail old books and she swallows a speck of dust from a crumbling book and feels like she's swallowing their world and becoming one with them?) My brother's plane arrives in 3 hours and I should be asleep but I had too much caffeine as usual and my hands were shaking earlier and I might have been having palpitations (Ma thinks it's a sign of 1.Drugs 2. Something wrong with my dimagi haalat due to sleep deprivation and poor nutrition 3. Disobeying some homeopathic doctor's orders of not drinking coffee when I'm taking his medicine - I think the answer is number 2)
My brother usually comes home twice a year. Once during the summer and once around Diwali. This time he's taking a longer chutti and coming home today. So when "chote sahab" (I tease him with that name because his coming is always an "event", like in the movies, Shahrukh Khan coming off a helicopter in K3G style) is returning we try to make things good for him, the house is cleaned (also usually because this coincides with Diwali time) and things are bought and good food is prepared. So to do my bit I decided to clean my room. Yesterday was the day for organizing my clothes scene and dusting my posters and walls. Today was the daunting task of cleaning my bookshelf, armed with a rag, a jhadu and 90s music.
For someone who's decidedly not an open book, I derive this great sense of wonder and excitement at discovering little things hidden away. Specially when it's obscure objects from the past, looking at photographs, or listening to stories, no matter how trivial about people's pasts. And certain things are goldmines. Like bottom drawers, bulky army style black metal trunks, places under peoples beds, clothes. Even bodies. Scars are personal histories.
And books. Books tell you things without even having to read them. So even though I was covered in soot, breathing through a scarf on my face that made me look like an ugravadi, sneezing my ass off, sitting without a fan in this blasted blistering heat I was OK. Because I wasn't there.
Start from the bottom with the CDs and movies and the pulpy novels with whipcracking ladies in lingerie on James Hadley Chase, just legs on the back cover of Moravia short stories, some sort of enormous demon on "Samari Ke Pret". 1975, 1977 books belonging to Biman Basu (Why do I have books belonging to Biman Basu? This is the writer, the one who wrote science books for children, not the communist leader, btw. As far as I remember, he's the brother of a friend of my mother's and he was shifting houses long ago and asked if we'd like to take some books). Books I bought when I was much too small because the covers intrigued me. Mystic Book Shop in Shankar Market was like this magical experience when I was a kid and my mum would go to buy all her spiritual books from a wise old man while I poked around inside the dark shop. Books from my cousins who had spent some years in America and read Judy Blume and Jean Craighead George (Julie Of the Wolves has a cutout of a sumo wrestler holding up Shane Warne and some other bloke, I think it's a Pepsi ad. WTF?). Politically Correct Bedtime Stories with my scribbles. A list of Hindi essay topics for my holiday homework scribbled at the back of Roald Dahl's Short stories "Bharat aur Pakistan cricket series, samachar patr, kisan aur varsha ritu". Chicken Poop for the Soul.
Now Cleaning - Indian fiction. Listening to Rocket From The Crypt.Spend several minutes staring at Indy Hazra's picture behind Garden of Earthly Delights. Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali is fantastic for anyone interested in Delhi before Wast Patel Nagar and Rajouri Garden existed. Interpreter of Maladies (which I've never read) spits out 2 photorgraphs of our Lucknow house (the biggest house I've ever lived in) Me, age 11 with the long brown hair of much of my life, posing with my dad who is in uniform. My mum and dad on the verandah of the Raj era bunglow (it was an official residence, don't get excited). My dad had just been promoted and this was the first year we actually lived together (minus my brother who was at med school) in a very long time. The manthan continues... Kamla Das' "My Story" throws out a booklet of a play in Bath, a coaster with a very retro ad for Stella Artois (a pouting blonde on one side and a brunette with red lipstick on the other - guess which side is on my wall now?) and a visiting card+tour flyer for Gadjo (I've been meaning to post pictures or write about them earlier, saw them busking in Bath last year, for now here's their website). A gift offer from Readers Digest from 1988 to my mother's address in Lucknow in a derelict copy of Umrao Jan, the last few pages+cover missing. If you've read A Case of Exploding Mangoes, you know why I developed a habit of eating elaichi after reading it.
My brother's mad childhood squiggles asserting his existence and attempts to write his name on a book gifted to my Ma by her brother ("To N for her birthday love M") about Maya Plisetskaya the ballerina, 1977, before he was born.
Next - comics, graphic novels and childrens books. Sinbad the sailor illustrated by Pyotr Annenkov
A favourite from my childhood, it's illustrations are so unique. A Raj comics, omerta, nagraj etc. Lots of Amar Chitra Kathas. Shadowhawk 1,2,3. Xmen, Devi, Spawn, Big Bang Comics (they had a cheap ripoff of the JLA, it was too funny). Twilight Zone Dec 1970 belonging to Chandrika Rao and her brother Nagrat Rao's UFO flying saurcer comic. It has an ad for the 1970 World Fair in Osaka. Mad Magazines from 1989 onwards. Playing Sonny Vincent now. Tintin. 5 Tales from Shakespeare abridged by Bernard Miles and with the most beautiful fluid dreamlike watercolour illustrations by Victor G Ambrus
Now listening to Teenage Fanclub. I dunno what this shelf is called. Modern classics? 20th century literature? Whatever, it's all mixed up. My mum's copy of Jules et Jim from the 60s, bought in Kanpur. Almost all of these are my books. Mirrorshades - A Cyberpunk Anthology, made my father buy it for me from a bankrupt gentleman in Nehru Place, a stockbroker or businessman of some type he said, selling off all his books. The Death of Bunny Munro, Nick Cave in Noida! (bought from BP)
Next Shelf, older books, quite a few are not mine. My Nani's sister's husband is an English prof somewhere in the US. He did his thesis on DH Lawrence, so we have several copies of Lawrence books brimming over with tiny scrawled notes. His son was an interesting character in his youth.A copy of Mornings in Mexico+Etruscan Places has the inscription "I am sinking, god bless me - Your Son P".
My mother's book of Khalil Gibran "Dramas of Life - Lazarus and his Beloved And the Blind" reads "For N - who is always a source of inspiration, beauty and sensitivity - S" 24/12/1968, very interesting considering this is a few years before she met my father. The Prophet with "Dearest D, wishing you happiness, health, success all the days of your life - love, E. Masi, P. Uncle, K and N" 23/7/97 for my brother. It also produces a picture of my then teenage brother and I along with our estranged family friends - the sister was his age and the brother was near mine. They were a tall family. I used to watch him play video games (I like watching because it's like a movie). His sister (still sensible) tried to get a job as an airhostess but was too tall. She didn't make it as a model either. He was once tickled so hard by my brother that he pissed his pants. The mother liked cards - bridge and Tarot. We were all in Assam and then Delhi together. He was a bit of an obnoxious child, he was already 6 feet something when I was 12 (a couple of years older than me) later I heard he may have given up studying, had to be bribed by doting mom with a playstation in return for a mere 2 hours of study, started wearing a mohawk and started doing some art or videogame stuff. Question on my mind? 1) Is he attractive now? (He wasn't attractive when we were kids, quite a gadha, infact) 2) Would I be friends with him if we knew each other? (Doubt it)
Kafka's America that my cousin got me in return for losing my copy of Trainspotting. A copy of the Metaphysical Poets (a Penguin one, college text from the 60s) belonging to one of my mother's beautiful estranged best friends (who is now an academic/journalist. I'm not sure why they're estranged. Ma hints that M. Mama was involved) I just know her as the woman in a white sari, face lit by a ray of sunlight, long dark hair over her roundish face.
The Master and Margarita has a fake leave note for Kavi's hostel warden from her "mother" from the time I lent it to her. Pasternak prose and poems belongs to someone called Najmul Hassan, bought in Aligarh. The Idiot throws up a note I wrote while watching The Ballad of Jack and Rose which will note be reproduced here because it is too stupid, mostly just random words, the names of the actors, dialogues and lyrics.
Chekov's plays from when my mother was still called Joshi. A note from a 1975 planner written by her BFF asking her to go visit the Chatterji's who are putting up The Dolls House in Hindi (Ibsen, you saw a picture of it in an earlier post) and want her to do a part and are quite desperate.
The Story of India for children by Gratian Vas bought for me during my bout with chicken pox/class 5 final exams which got me interested in History.
And there. It's done, I've swallowed so much dust and now it's all in me. (Yo, D.U! Remember that story in our concurrent English book in 1st year? By Ambai, when she's looking at all those women's writings in their frail old books and she swallows a speck of dust from a crumbling book and feels like she's swallowing their world and becoming one with them?) My brother's plane arrives in 3 hours and I should be asleep but I had too much caffeine as usual and my hands were shaking earlier and I might have been having palpitations (Ma thinks it's a sign of 1.Drugs 2. Something wrong with my dimagi haalat due to sleep deprivation and poor nutrition 3. Disobeying some homeopathic doctor's orders of not drinking coffee when I'm taking his medicine - I think the answer is number 2)
12 comments:
I didn't get this reference - "The Death of Bunny Munro, Nick Cave in Noida!" are these books?
have you heard the new TF album? i've a feeling we discussed this, but maybe not. Although we may well have since it came out last summer. They were plugging it on jimmy fallon which was a memorable performance that i saw live while eating dinner, and when tf came on i did a double take, cause mostly fallon has shit bands on.
Aww man I LOVE this it's such book-porn. you know I really miss having a large room full of stuff that I can keep sitting in the middle of and examining.Which is why i might trade my present room for that big one? except it doesn't have a balcony(EPIC FAIL).i need your consult on this we have to decide soon. Ma just saw your blog and i shut it and she said 'Listen ma, I KNOW both of you smoke, and both of you write. And then both of you think you're cool.' hahahah. What book porn bro I love this. Keep the DHL's I need them for research paps this year. And (just sayin) if you want to donate any of these books to my cause you can. I'm sure wigs is loving being raju ban gaya gentleman, mere bacche ko nazar na lage type scenes. I love it when you write geek sentimental posts.It's probably number 1, or the lack of it.
I said book porn twice.Dude man i don't know how I ended up with band chick. Too bad it was me and not one of the boys. or you. Too bad for her, i mean.Sabko humaara lund chahiye :D hahahah BHAIJAAN itne door kyun ho aap. Bade bhaijaan ke saath chill kar happy birday par milenge.
The Death of Bunny Munro is a book by Nick Cave that I found in Noida. I haven't heard the new TF album.
Shanno, bookslut strikes again. All I need now is a sugardaddy with a vast library. Remember when I was talking about doing it in a bookshop sometime completely out of context?
My room isn't too large. It's exactly the same size as yours. I've just put a lot of shit in it. And the balcony is everything. Your mother as usual is immensely perceptive when it comes to us and our ways. Number 1 and number 2. Today I couldn't sleep till 1230 pm. Yes, where is this hot girl, introduce me pronto. But of course I will never do anything even if she decides ki usko mera lund chahiye.
Bade bhaijaan is very happy to be able to roam in a baniyan and half pant. Ma is going crazy fawning over her children and making food and going all 'mere do anmol ratan, this is heaven etc'. See you saturday bro.
i'd also say that amerika's a better trade by far in exchange of trainspotting. you definitely ended up on the better side of that deal.
Dude the hot girl is kind of daft she kept telling me that before I die i MUST date an english guy otherwise i haven't lived. My room is like tiny bro I WISH i could put more shit in it, its way smaller than yours, you just don't know cause yours has so much stuff in it :D I want to be fed.
Trainspotting rules.
Kahan se pakad ke layi is item ko? Chal don't worry we'll do some reorganizing in your room, sab sahi ho jayega. Your bookshelf is as big as mine.
Sap sorry but we are Welsh fangirls. Hamne uske sakshaat darshan kiye hain. Trainspotting is the shizz.
PS brothas, just found three spanking new Transmetropolitan books 8, 9 and 10 in Saket at the 2nd hand stall for a total of 400 bucks!
yeah i'm going to sound all avuncular elderly spokesperson again - but in 1996, trainspotting was really awesome and cutting edge, it somehow hasn't aged well. amerika on the other hand, is right up there with dos passos and nabokov, a loose cabal of modernists chronicling american life.
Just an update if anyone (...ladies). My childhood family friend is now very big and kind of scary. And might be balding?
Man childhood friends should always grow up to be hot for obvious reasons.
Sap yaar, Trainspotting rules.
I just bunked college because it was raining! But it was Ma's idea. Main college bunk kar ke patang uda rahi hoon dude. I am turning into Lucknow uncle full on. Aisa shubh arambh kiya hai na academic life ka. Fail. This place will eat me alive and spit me out man, I can't compete with marines and reuters dudes and filmmakers and double M.As. Some of them have already read half the reading lists. WTF.
Chldhood friend looks quite a habash uncle type. Disturbing.
Sap man don't you realize the golden rule? You tell us kids one thing and we'll live our lives by the opposite. Talkin' bout my g-g-genaration!
oh shit, irvine welsh is so diesel. acid house was my fucking jam when i was a little un.
actually irvine welsh is probably unhip among people 'your age'. it's really a gen x thing, kinda old even for a geezer like me.
where are you going to grad school at?
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