Rusty and His Maharani

There is one absolute reason I love Ruskin Bond and no matter how many great authors I cross paths with in my long journey through the bookworm life, nobody will ever be as momentous, as beloved as dear old Rusty.

Perhaps it's his insatiable love for India and the Sahyadris - every novel, novella and short story or campsite tale he has every told, has the Hills somewhere near its centre, at its very heart. Flipping between pages of his writing, I never fail to see the warm sun on a winter's morning, or the flavour of tea and hot aromatic cookies on a wooden breakfast table.Visions and images of places that are so deeply embedded into a positively chaotic mind, begin to float pleasantly on the surface, making me go warm all over and remember the feeling of snuggling under a quilt that had recently been soaking in the sun.

And so Rusty breaks into my snooty choices of authors after many years, cuts through the "hoity-toity" preference for Madness and Parallel Universes and Existentialism. And while he's at it, he reminds me once again of my own love for Gin and Tonic.

Maharani is not intentionally meant to be a spoof on the degenerate Indian Royalty of Old. It is quite simply the tale of a friendship that could have been something much less or a lot more. Bond does not waste his words weaving any undue sensuality into his protagonist, but focuses on her need to be loved, and her belated fear of loss. The novella begins with the Maharani prophetically declaring her impending death within the coming year, and then weaves back and forth into time, bringing a motley of extremely interesting characters to the fore, that a delighted reader would have loved to explore some more.

My personal favourite was the little boy Pablo. Despite a relatively brief print-space, Pablo manages to evolve as a complex, tragic and yet an exceptionally delightful child. I would love to know what happened to him after he exited the pages of 'Maharani'.

Musoorie and its lives, hills, mosses, cinema halls and grand hotels, rise and fall around the life of the Maharani. Even when Rusty tries to escape her into the cacophonous bustle of Delhi, he finds characters who can keep him woven into the mosaic of the Maharani's life. And when he returns, he remains affectionate and yet critical, distant, aloof, as he always does. His one true love being the Hills and his long walks (conversations?) in the forests. Perhaps the Maharani realises this, as does the reader.

I recommend Bond's latest offering to all of his seasoned fans. Only they can know why they love his work so much. And they will Love 'Maharani'.

Facebook and I

Everybody loves the idea of leaving a legacy behind for the world to mull over, well after they are done bring alive and healthy. But the world is so full of potential legacies, every him or her are lost in translation long before they even get to a place where legends can begin to be made. Time Magazine had a prophetic vision of sorts, the year the decided to bestow the "Person of the Year" to the Everyman/woman.

In the race to leave legacies, everyone is busy documenting their lives on social platforms. A very wise french literary psycho analyst once deconstructed Adam and Eve's perception of the self. Eve, he said, looked into the flowing water soon after she was born. There, she saw a reflection of herself, and thereby her own faith in her existence, in her being, was born and reinforced. Adam on the other hand, looked upon Eve and saw his other-self in her, thereby creating the critical and constant need for this "other" to reinforce his faith in his own existence. Eve was there, Eve saw him, Eve recognised him, Eve acknowledged him, and so he believed he existed.

The phenomena of social lives and networks has to be very similar, this construer feels. Having a Facebook page and two hundred friends and a million pictures documenting crazy drunken nights, is the best way to reinforce belief in existing, and existing in a way that is deemed "cool"... for the world acknowledges it with "likes" and "shares" and "comments".

But Imagine a facebook page which similarly chronicles  life and its aspects, and has a million pretty pictures - but nobody accepts / acknowledges friend requests from this profile, nobody comments on statuses, nobody likes any pictures, and nobody shares any videos...

All of us are so like Adam after his creation, and social media is our Eve. And if the Lord Almighty loves us, Facebook had better have notifications for us every single day.
 

The Construer's Big Bang Theory

We weren't there when it happened, but we all know the universe started with a big bang, and one fine day our world was formed out of nothing, from nothing - coalescing into the most astute form of existence we can ever know.

Similarly every existence is probably a mini-big bang in its own right. Suddenly Somebody is created out of Something - and volia, a new life is on its way

Would it be fair to say, this is where existence and its locus of control begins to shift, and move horribly out of control?

Perhaps life is created to focus on some form of destiny - born of fee will or determinism, I can't tell which. And it might pretty much have been a part of our Job Description to focus on achieving Karmic resolution to the questions of our respective lives.

But between then and now, every particle and inch of ourselves begin to scatter. Grinding to pieces until they are fine grains of sand that slip through your fingers the moment you try to hold on to it. So maybe the best thing to do is hold on to the sand-grains in the hollow of your palm, and hope as hell nothing happens to make you let it fall.

I suppose this construer is of the opinion that existence scatters us too much. That life from a still form begins to flow like fresh water - pretty to behold, happy to be, but so momentary. One moment we're here, the next we're gone, and by the time its Time to go, you wouldn't even know where to look, and where to begin. 

So here begins a theory that the construer would love to postulate. In time, until the locus begins to shift back where it belongs. Till then, we are happy to continue measuring our lives with coffee spoons.