So many thoughts, and so little time to blog them.
Just:
about beauty.
Be a connoisseur. Be as intrepid and determined as a treasure seeker. And like a leaf unfolding, it will appear before your eyes, startling and perfect. It doesn't have to be typical, like a sunset or a flower. It's there in your friend's welcoming eyes. It's in the private joke that no one else thinks is funny. It's in an unexpected smile from a stranger.
Learn to accept it, not mindlessly turn to your soulless machines and forget the living, breathing world around you. Like default. And may you find that one perfect bud in the midst of the raging storm.
About friends:
Maybe the reason why I love people so much, why I generally like to observe others around me and find the best I can in them, is because I don't know them very well. People, who as a whole; are faulty with misconceptions and half-truths and agendas and biases and identity confusion. And complexes. And Issues.
And the way they surprise you sometimes, telling you things about yourself that you never knew, or just never examined closely enough to realise. Then you realise that while you were watching others, they were just as closely, as perceptively - or maybe even more - watching you.
About Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things:
She can write. She doesn't write steamy novels about scandalous liaisons between people of different castes and how a pair of twins rediscover each other. She unfolds the story, first arranging the cutlery, then putting each dish on the table with its covers on and then slowly, with all eyes watching, removes each one. The tension coils around your stomach, and you know it's going to be awful but you can't stop reading now, you have to know. It's like modern Greek tragedy, which is actually timeless tragedy. It's just so good. It's not just her sentences, of which there are some pretty picturesque ones, but her descriptions which have true power. When she describes a place in a few lines I have an image of it in my mind. Not just an image, but the out-of-body-but-still-in-body feeling of actually being there, amid the sweat and dirt and grime.
Lyd, I know the difference between her and those other "once upon a time in a steamy Asian village" novel writers now. It's not the story but the way you tell it.
3 comments:
the god of small things is heartbreaking. i chickened out early and read the end first, and never had the courage to go through the entire book. ( i admit this with embarassment.) it's amazing the way she holds the tension, and the mystery of the twin's silence, and then unveils it in one short paragraph way at the end of the book.... she reminds me a bit of oondatje in that way - they both write very *local* books, a very rooted sense of person, time and place without succumbing to awkwardness or exoticism. Yeah, i really really hate the "steamy asian village" thing. Soggy Kinta Valley indeed! HAH!
hey the god of small things is cool! love the descriptions- not going overboard but giving the right feel to the story. also love it because it is not an 'asian story' but a story that happened to happen somewhere in asia.
I KNOW!!! It's sooooo heartbreaking. I heart Indian writers now. They're amazing. Chinese writers just don't have that voice. I am Arundhati Roy's fangirl now. But I can't read another book of hers for some time now, my heart hasn't recovered yet.
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