Books and Bliss

After all the brooding and all the trying and all the feeling bad about it, hope came in the form of the movie running for the fifth week in one of my favourite cinemas and…I WATCHED IT!!!! AGAIN!! The Dark Knight!! Aaah!! The satisfaction I got from it was incredible It is one of the few movies that I would love to watch over and over again and is definitely on my all time favourites list, so I would have taken it as nothing less than an insult had I not gotten the chance to watch it another time at the theatre. And the best thing about it is I ended up having the right company while watching it both times. It’s no fun when you go with someone who doesn’t appreciate something the way you do…watching it in peace, with no one saying anything but following the movie word for word, frame by frame…yeah, it was good. The temptation to watch it yet another time is quite high but I guess I must refrain. I only just prevented myself from ranting about the actors and the acting and the actors…sigh… It really felt like heaven watching a second time. Now I can rest in peace!! Only till the DVD comes out that is

I’ve started reading a lot once again and it feels so good to be sitting with a book in my hand. It feels perfect. Like I have been missing an essential part of me for a period of four years and now I’ve reclaimed it. I’ve visited The Landmark, a favourite book store, at least three times in the past two weeks and the first two times I was so overcome with the emotion of being in a place that I loved Being surrounded by books made me so enormously content with myself I would’ve been taken for a fool!! There were so many of them!! I’ve been there so many times in the past year but honestly never felt this sort of a connection. Yeah, I tend to have more affection for inanimate objects these days and it really surprises me why not many people understand it. ‘tis alright for I’ve gone beyond the point of explaining these matters. It’s just there. Anyway, I just finished reading Jeffery Archer’s ‘A Prisoner of Birth’ and it is so very reminiscent of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. Very well written book, and I especially loved the courtroom scenes which obviously makes Alex Redmayne and Sir Matthew my favourite characters in the book. Danny, Nick and Al’s characters are also very nicely drawn up, which is the main reason I sat up through the night and finished the first two parts of the book, and this morning after waking up at 11 am, sat diligently with the book in hand from 1 to 4 and completed the remainder of it. It was un-put-down-able. No matter how often I end up reading authors I’ve never heard of and commending their books, or reading older works of fiction, be it crime, mystery, humour or fantasy, a Jeffrey Archer novel always has me hooked. Always. Even if it is False Impressions, which I really read for Jack Delany, I still bought the book after reading the reviews that only gave it an ‘ok’ rating, and read it during the days leading to some examination.

Come to think of it, I do that for a lot of books…but there are those classics which I drew out for months together before I finished them even though I took a keen interest in them, Emma and Sense & Sensibility for example. That I had Lord of the Rings for four years before I read it is insignificant because I was ten at the time of my first reading and it took a lot of sessions with my father to fully comprehend the epic. Still…books are always books to me. And they are precious. Hard bound, soft bound, leather bound (oh yeah, those leather bound classics seduce me like crazy!! ) e-books…whatever!! I love ‘em!! It’s not merely about having something to do as a hobby. It was never to have me cultivate a reading habit either. It was more of imagination, thinking and the ability and power of words. It’s that sense of identifying a spirit within you that takes flight when nurtured with all these stories, real or made up. It’s not the point of immersing yourself in a make-believe world to escape from reality, and that does help a lot, but more of identifying yourself in those pages, within a character. Putting yourself in that person’s shoes and going with the story as if you were living it yourself. Every page you turn is a new mystery because you are unaware, like the character, of what is going to happen next. Every line is a new sentence learned, Every word is a feeling put on paper. It is absolutely brilliant what a strong book can do to you. You get ideas, you think, you learn. Of course, the writing needs to be that strong for you to experience all the above feelings and more, because for me a book isn’t something I read in that moment and forget it the next. I carry it with me. Every book I’ve read so far, I remember. The situations in the book come clearer to me than the characters if the characters aren’t that strongly built, but every bit lingers. It’s like this song always playing in your head, reminding you of the melody that once had you smitten, or at least caught your attention for a few seconds. Either way, you’d never forget it. Books pretty much have the same effect on me, and for a few years in between when my reading began to wane because I had no choice but to pay attention to my studies I did fear I’d lost the touch, that I couldn’t hear its call. But now I’m assured it’s always remained within. Just needed the time to be jolted awake!

P.S. Reading James Patterson’s Cat and Mouse and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne simultaneously, and it’s fun !!

P.P.S. Addicted to having my headphones on for at least seven hours a day and presently on my playlist are the hundred songs I listen to most often J No, not gonna list them…at least not on this post !!