here is a quick update and a post too.
I've moved from Mumbai to NJ.
I've lived here before so didn't expect anything new
But it turns out that it is really interesting this time around.
i've taken a few fotos and as usual thoughts to accompany them,
i will be posting them sometime in the future.
After the initial setting up of the house, me, Aravind and Tanya took a trip to Chicago(later about the trip)
On my way back, i picked up a couple of novels.
1. Khalid Hosseini's - A thousand splendid Suns.
2. John Grisham's - Playing for pizza
i had exactly 3 minutes to select and bill before boarding
so my usual discretion was absent and i simply bought the book by its cover
( no pun intended)
If Hosseini turns out dissappointing i had plan B and that was Grisham.
First of all Hosseini's story had the present day Afghan back ground
which i tend to avoid whenever i can.
A fiction according to me should take me elsewhere.
I don't like being reminded of the present day cruel world.
I read about them in newspapers and watch them on TV so enough already!
But i had underestimated the power of great story telling.
It was simply beautiful.
When the novel ended i wished it hadn't, i wanted it to go on.
i had picked that book because the title 'A thousand Spendid Suns'
sounded very poetic and different.
It so happens that it was taken from one of Khalil Gibran's poems.
One of the great poetic minds of many that Afghan has produced.
This book has politics, hopes of a child, innocence of first love, the brutal truth
of a woman's condition elsewhere in the world, justification of a murder, punishment for the same, the life of a muslim man and a woman in comparison, the hopes
of people shattered in a jiffy only to be rekindled by the turn of events which is beyond an ordinary man's control.
Every time Hosseini mentions 1996 .. 1999..2000...2001 etc. i couldnt help but recall what was happening in my life then.
I was happily enjoying the vagaries of life with the security of my family, friends and soceity, totally oblivious to the sufferings that was happening elsewhere.
How strange.
How i had everything then and had still craved for more.
What a contrast.
I hear that his 'The kite runner' was a best seller. I want to get hold of that but not yet. i still savour moments from this book every now and then. When i have rerun it many times more in my mind i'll go in search of more splendid moments.