When I saw the young Markus Zusak at the Hindu Literary Festival speaking on the pangs of writing, I was ignorant of his novel "The Book Thief". He spoke about how he had to rewrite the book after finishing it once. These days I try to balance too many things in life and delving into a work of fiction is not a luxury I can afford anymore.
Often I think of the many twists of life that landed me in a Babu's job. Your world is consumed by lies. There are everyday events that goes to show how shallow and artificial our existence is. I often wish I was that Babu who enjoys sunning himself in winter Delhi, enjoying munching peanuts and discussing the next pay upgradation. The beauty of good literature and exquisite music be damned. This is life and beneath this thin veneer of respectability, it is filled with lies. In an average day, I see government employees tampering evidence, concocting and planting false stories, running parallel businesses, collecting bribes, that too for decisions they have no means of influencing.
Reading a fine work of fiction is the last thing on my mind. But I plodded on with The Book Thief and I ended it with moist eyes towards the lyrical and melancholy end. It gave me some solace thinking how life must have been unfair to people torn by wars, Jews living in Germany in mid 1940s, how a barely literate accordionist-painter brings the joy of letters to a little girl, how a Jewish fist fighter given shelter in basement writes about ruling the world with words.....
It is a book that's narrated by death, about how it was such a beautiful day to die, about a promised kiss, about the beauty and brutality of life. For once I was thrown back into the world of letters. I was grateful that I still have it in me to enjoy good literature. I read this book slowly ...at the rate of perhaps fifty pages a day. Trying to let the joy of words create mini-explosions in my mind. It is a sad book, and it almost reflected the state of things around me.
The other book that I relished reading was the Pigeon Tunnel by John Le Carre. This is the official memoirs of the man of whom I wrote glowingly elsewhere in this blog that, if he had chosen a different genre, he'd have snagged the Nobel for literature. I was always wonderstruck by the economy and careful usage of words that he deploys....almost like a battle where he chooses to field his little soldiers who constitute the big picture, the big war..... The most touching part of this book is where he writes of his father, a charlatan, serial debtor and not someone you could own up to. Somehow at the end of that sad narration, one could almost believe that his father made him who he became...A teller of tales. I have always gone through his books missing the plot completely. Totally absorbed in the build up of characters. George Smiley for one. I could almost see him. Loser in love, immersed in the job that is filled with lies of a different kind..... Somehow I see what we all are, at the end of the day. Living a life of lies....
