They say you stumble upon inspiration exactly when you’re not looking for it, and how right they are. Life has not been the same ever since my unexpected encounter of two hundred pages of absolute brilliance with Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh and of course, the essential Richard Dalloway.

Until I read Mrs. Dalloway, I was capable of imparting only a very practical and literary opinion on most books. Books were either trash or not trash. They could either interest you in their well worded pages, or distress you with their poorly framed sentences. But a walk across London in the shoes of, and with Clarissa Dalloway completely blew me away. Sometimes you connect with a book to unimaginable extents. You are able to invest yourself in it, emotionally and mentally. You see yourself in its splendidly crafted characters, and not superficially, but intrinsically. The resemblance is so uncanny that you sometimes think you’ve changed, after having read the book, to fit into the identity of Clarissa Dalloway. That’s the kind of book that you call powerful and overwhelming. You cannot simply gather every strand of emotion it has managed to bring to the surface, and collectively stuff it inside the label of ‘not trash’. This book is not merely the complement of trash. It is a separate space altogether. This book defines you, or maybe, you have finally allowed a book to define you.

Virginia Woolf starts with a sentence so simple and unassuming that you will make nothing of it the first, or even the second time you read it. But when you have obsessively pored over her sentences a number of times, you will see them in a new light. Perhaps in the light she wanted you to see them, perhaps not. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Yes, she did, because this is exactly what Mrs. Dalloway would say. This is not Clarissa. Mrs. Dalloway is the person you are afraid you will become one day. You like her, because you can telepathically identify with her – you empathize with her reason and unreason. You can magically understand the significance of introducing Peter Walsh in the second paragraph of the book. You would have done the same, had you possessed the genius of Virginia Woolf. You smile with wisdom at the sheer beauty of the lines, ‘…and he could be intolerable; he could be impossible; but adorable to walk with on a morning like this.’ Because you know someone exactly like Peter Walsh; you know what it feels like to walk alongside someone like him, someone whose presence is comforting and suffocating, all at the same time. You know why Clarissa had to let go of Peter, ‘…she had to break with him, or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced.’ You also know how she couldn’t, even after all these years.

Clarissa represents a side of you that has been overshadowed or maybe even forgotten. She lacks the consistency you do, and she has made the compromise she tries to justify every waking minute of the day, the compromise you sometimes fear you will settle for someday. In a class that had literarily examined Mrs. Dalloway, of which you were a part, everyone had come to the conclusion that Clarissa possessed a fear of intimacy. But not all of them knew why, which you did. Perhaps you have to meet a Peter Walsh, to understand why. You can almost cringe as much as she did at the word ‘hostess’, because although you don’t throw lavish parties yourself, you understand her need to, most perfectly. So when Woolf writes, ‘Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat’s; or she purred’, you get the spooky idea that she is writing about you. Haven’t you filled pages and pages about people? Don’t you indulge yourself in them? As a matter of fact, you do. It follows logically then that this book is about you. So much so that you can even understand the unavoidable need for Richard Dalloway.

Clarissa is not easy to understand, but her actions and reactions have some strange kind of natural appeal to you. You identify with her insecurities. You can feel her hatred for Mrs. Kilman in your own veins, because you know it stems out of her sense of ownership, a sentiment you recognize so well. Her idea of happiness perfectly resonates with your own, for you know that yours was contained in its one, isolated, defining moment, too. ‘And she felt she had been given a present, wrapped up and told just to keep it, not to look at it – a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!’ You too have worshipped that matchless, precious moment repeatedly, and it has come to give you the kind of hope only love, for lack of a better word, can impart. Then of course, you smile wryly at the lines, ‘Had not that, after all, been love?’

You cannot ignore the understated, yet powerful character of Richard Dalloway. Because you know him too, or maybe you know him like Clarissa does. You need him like Clarissa does. For in some twisted moral framework, Richard Dalloway happens to validate the existence of Peter Walsh in Clarissa’s routine of twenty four hours. All of her life shall fall apart, without Richard. He needs to exist in her vicinity, simply to prove his presence; enough to justify why not marrying Peter Walsh was the right decision. Richard signifies a relationship she can fathom and live with, a relationship you can live with.

If Septimus Smith has not received a mention until now, it is because he is far removed from where Clarissa is, and yet exactly who Clarissa is. Just like you relate to Clarissa, you know Septimus. You can’t imagine his insanity, but everything else you can. You know why he writes those little notes, and why he burns them away before he jumps off the window. You can understand his sense of privacy, just like Clarissa can. You know why he jumped, and like Clarissa, you too hope he ‘plunged holding his treasure.’ By knowing Septimus, you have further blurred the line between sanity and insanity, which brings us to the eternal question of whether there is a line at all. Of course there is, you would say. But have you not repeatedly crossed the line? Have you not felt like an emotional wreck every now and then? Have you not felt incapable of feeling, at some point? Where then, is the line? Virginia Woolf has not raised these questions for nothing. You know she has written with a mind that can see the blur, the smudgy edges; a mind that can easily see the grey areas. And isn’t all of life about struggling to find yourself in the midst of innumerable grey areas?

Every time I pick up the book, which acts as comfort food for my soul, I unravel another layer, decode another level. Maybe we find meaning when and where we want to. A book makes a lasting impact only when you can find yourself inside its pages. There are many ways of reading this book, and you shall find your very own. Maybe you won’t like it as much as I did. This speaks nothing of you or the book. You both just don’t intersect. I, on the other hand, am contained in the space of Mrs. Dalloway. If you happen to get through all of its pages, and read the last line, you shall know what I mean.

Abhilasha Kumar

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The World Book Fair at New Delhi is about to begin, and INDIAreads will be there.

Do visit the INDIAreads stalls – we can’t wait to have you paw our brand new merchandise even as you struggle to manage a cheap sandwich with one hand, and a screaming brat with the other.

It’s always a pleasure to hear you gossip about the authors in hushed tones (“Amartya Sen – isn’t he the guy that invented Amul..?”), and it really makes our day when you ask us 50 painfully mundane questions and end up buying nothing. We live for those moments!

The theme at this year’s fair shall be ‘Indian Cinema’.

Cinema and Literature – Really…?

As long as the cinematic medium has existed, the movie industry has looked to literature for both inspiration and content.

But when turning a literary masterpiece into a movie, do the two mediums share enough commonalities so as to enable a smooth transition…?

The filmwallahs would answer ‘yes’. From ‘About A Boy’ to ‘Wuthering Heights’, the conversion of popular books to big screen pictures has been a recurring theme in film, particularly in recent years with the success of huge franchises like Harry Potter and the Twilight saga.

While much discussion centers around adaptations that aren’t seen as having lived up to the literature on which they are based, there are many adaptations that actually enhance an existing story; or completely supersede it.

Example: Fight Club – a brilliant movie, stemming from an okay novel.

Or Clueless, which takes a novel from 1815 and makes it relevant to the modern day by setting the story of Jane Austen’s Emma in the context of a Beverly Hills high school.

But all faffing aside – the tendency to make film adaptations of books stems largely from the desire for a guaranteed audience, and is not quite the ‘natural progression’ for a book as advocated by some filmmakers.

Flipside? Stories are abridged, scenes are added, movie-only fans (newbies, resented by the hard core lit enthusiasts) are born, and those who followed the series from its inception are often left feeling a little disappointed at the end product.

The greatest difference between movies and novels is that cinemagoers share a much more social, passive experience than bookworms – who enjoy an active, solitary read. This means that while those reading the book have their own visions of characters and events, film audiences are forced to share a single vision of what these aspects of the story look like.

This alienates the book fan further – what was once a personal experience for him/her, is now universal; with the perceptions and prejudices of producers, directors, actors and audiences – all influencing the final product.

All is not lost, though.

In Part II, we shall take a look at some of the more successful experiments to have managed the leap from literature to cinema.

I say again, lest my last post failed to register with the ‘deaf futtbucker’ demographic hiding amongst you: The Jaipur Literature Festival 2012 is about to get underway.

There are Lit Fests and there are Lit Fests. This one, though, is not your average overdose of book readings and (equally lackluster) panel discussions. The authors will not brood and the audience will not snooze.

For one, it’s a free festival.

So you see..? It is a chance for bottom feeders (like you) to approach Salman Rushdie, sip coffee with Michael Ondaatje, rub shoulders with Amish Tripathi, or admire Fatima Bhutto in toto for her, er, literary excellence.

Choosing what events to attend may be the only stress of the day for your cheap derriere. You’ll pay nothing to get in; then mull difficult session choices over a free lunch.

The atmosphere will be informal, interdisciplinary, and infectious. Actors, directors, fashion designers, economists, travellers, politicians, scientists, students, bloggers and all manner of urban hipsters will congregate in the gardens of an old and intimate Rajasthani palace to spend 5 days “in conversation”.

At night, the wine will flow. Expect the stage to come alive with the Dionysian revelry that typically follows a literary salon.

But there’s a catch.

Thanks to a rise in the number of programmes (and an ever increasing attendance) over the years, the venue is straining to breaking point and the nature of the event is changing. Last year, J.M. Coetzee had to clamber over hundreds of people squeezed next to speakers, crouched next to seats, or sitting on folded newspapers on the churned-up grass.

To reach the stage.

Those who have experienced the intimacy of earlier editions of the JLF lament that it is now impossible to have conversations with their favourite writers. The authors, too, may bemoan the festival’s increasingly unwieldy size.

Junot Diaz, a witty and thoughtful commentator on the lot of migrants in America, used one session to blame capitalism for encouraging writers to pursue their work not because they have something important to say, but for the sake of getting approval from the largest possible audience. “We know that we need less applause and more conversation,” he told a packed room.

Promptly—inevitably—the audience clapped.

One can certainly nitpick, and criticism has always been a blood sport in India. My money, though, is still on Dalrymple (co-Director of the event) to put up a great show. The self-confessed “Indophile” has always had an acute understanding of the way things work (or don’t work) in India (a fact amply demonstrated in his books). Vikram Seth may well buy George Herbert’s house and own an umbrella but he won’t ever really be ‘British’; while one may safely proclaim Dalrymple is more ‘Indian’ now than when he first came here (as a backpacker in 1989), and less of an anglophile than a lot of us.

Ergo: Mister William aage badho, hum tumhaare saath hain.

At the 2010 Lit Fest;

1. Catherine Clement, French intellectual and author of ‘Edwina and Nehru: A Novel’ and Nayantara Sahgal, Jawaharlal Nehru’s niece discussed the roaring affair between Jinnah and Sarojini Naidu. “It is well known in France. Why is it not spoken of in India?” asked Clement. Came the reply, “Because our national leaders are not allowed to have sex organs.” Sahgal and Clement also agreed that Sahgal’s ‘maamu’ was a beautiful man while Edwina was ‘nice’.

2. The toothsome Bangladeshi author Shazia Omar had to be shepherded through crowds of autograph-seeking men. Subsequent to getting her autograph on brand new notebooks came the question, “What is your name, madam?”

3. Hanif Kureishi, irritable about being on a panel called ‘Migrant Words’, snapped, “I have moved a few kilometres within London. That’s the extent of my migration.”

4. At one Litfest venue (the Mughal Tent), speaker Amitava Kumar stopped to salute William Dalrymple, who’d just entered. He went on: “I hear Dalrymple is soon taking over the world. This is how the East India Company began; one Mughal tent at a time.”

5. Hearing a ‘whoosh-whoosh’ sound, Wole Soyinka paused mid-reading to peer down his chin at the mike: “Is my beard doing something?”

Earlier, Soyinka had the pleasure of being introduced by Urvashi Butalia as ‘the greatest thing since sliced bread’.

6. Sidin Vadukut (then first-time author of comic novel Dork), on the Jaipur Litfest experience: “It’s like a college fest, except you don’t go home — you just grow older.”

7. During a session titled ‘Bin Laden after Bush’, Javed Akhtar jumped out of the audience to accuse Steve Coll of being part of an American conspiracy to pretend Bin Laden was still alive. This, in January 2010.

At the 2009 Lit Fest;

1. Authors Ira Pande and Namita Gokhale, cousins, began a session by chattering jovially amongst themselves, completely oblivious to the audience, and apologising for the same later: “Sorry about this, when Namita and I get together we turn into a Johar Mahmood show and forget all about the audience.”

2. Bruce Palling, a journalist for over 40 years and well-known travel writer, recalls seeing Colin Thubron being addressed scornfully by a visa officer at the Indian High Commission in London.

Thubron, whose novels and travel books have stopped just short of the Man Booker Prize but earned him the sobriquet of “gentleman traveller”, was apparently trying to assert himself as a delegate for the Jaipur festival but the documents he was presenting, rather than earning him a visa, seemed only fit to draw derision. Bruce, with all his experience of India pulled him gently aside and counselled in a whisper, “Colin. Just go back home and come again tomorrow with an application for a tourist visa.”

3. Amitabh Bachhan, attending the festival to release ‘Bachchanalia’ (a book in his honour) was seen brandishing his trademark native wit. When a crowd gathered on an overhanging terrace came too close to the edge and an announcer requested them to move back, Amitabh translated, “Peeche hat jao nahin toh aap meri godh mein giroge!” (Please get back, lest you fall in my lap)

4. When a young school girl asked Nandan Nilekani, what prompted him to write a book, the Infosys co-founder replied, “I wanted an invitation to the Jaipur Literature Festival.”

5. Vikram Seth revealed that he had to buy a copy of his own book to read in one of the sessions, as he’d arrived at the festival without any copies.

6. Final Night. Writers’ Ball at the Jaipur City Palace. Chetan Bhagat was seen asking Vikram Seth for an autograph.

As India’s young rock-star novelist tried to convince the cranky genius (who sat there fretting with a wrinkled brow) to write something meaningful on a scrap of paper for his sister (or someone), a journalist (standing with Seth) noted that he might consider adapting the kind of line Asimov is reputed to have taken in such situations: “I’ll never forget our marvellous night on the beach.”

Seth guffawed, and Bhagat got his autograph.

Homies!

The Jaipur Literature Festival (20-24 Jan ’12) is about to get underway.

It’s been a bumpy ride - The inaugural event in 2006 drew a crowd of about 100 attendees, including some who “appeared to be tourists who had simply got lost,” according to the event’s co-director William Dalrymple.

And the naysayers feel the festival is all about pretenders and post-colonial sahibs. Like Hartosh Bal; in a caustic piece appearing in Open Magazine in 2011, he wrote the festival  “works not because it is a literary enterprise, but because it ties us to the British literary establishment”—exemplified, first and foremost, by Dalrymple himself (whom he went on to deride as the “pompous arbiter of literary merit in India”). Incidentally, Bal is an Oxbridge-educated Indian who sounds more British than the Queen herself.

Dalrymple hit back immediately, lambasting Bal’s screed as racist cant akin to “pouring shit through an immigrant’s letterbox”.

Sadly, things are less acrimonious now.

Let’s take one final, longing look back at some of the funnier and more candid moments from events of years past. To set the mood for the serious business that follows.

Literary foreplay, if you will.

At the 2011 Jaipur Lit Fest;

1. Orhan Pamuk, that grave purveyor of melancholy, is evidently also a funny man.

During the Q&A session, someone asked Pamuk if the theme of his new novel ‘Museum of Innocence’ was whether philosophical love was deeper than physical love. Without skipping a beat, Pamuk responded, “That depends on the penetration.”

2. Junot Diaz (author of ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao‘), during a session titled ‘Storyteller-in-Chief’, told a packed crowd under the Mughal tent, “I can’t imagine anything more foreign to Indian readers than the Dominican Republic or New Jersey. But white people were looking for YOU when they found US.”

3. During one of the interactive sessions, Gulzar amused the audiences with little anecdotes on the birth of songs in Hindi cinema before Javed Akhtar (who arrived 20 minutes late) could join him. He later apologised to Akhtar saying,” ‘Maaf Kijiyega, main inhe behla raha tha (Forgive me, I was just managing them).

4. During a Q&A session, a school girl asked Gulzar, “There was simplicity in our old songs. The vocabulary was simple and it touched our hearts. Why can’t we have a similar vocabulary in new songs?” Gulzar shot back, “You have used ‘vocabulary’ twice in your question. Can you tell me what it is called in Hindi?

5. An angry Indian editor from a well-known and respected publishing house was heard  describing Dalrymple (who at last year’s festival was reading his own texts while Paban Das Baul sang and swayed, even as certain sections felt as the Director of the Festival he should not have been hogging so much of the limelight) as “that self-promoting ‘White Mughal‘ who has turned down all my authors”.

People !!!!

Now is the time to subscribe to INDIAreads.

We’re giving away a Free Bestseller with every purchase of an INDIAreads Smart/Bonanza Plan in 2012.

You heard us; our shelves runneth over.

Only for New Members, though.

Existing Subscribers will have to settle for our massive discounts and flawless service; it’s quite sad, really.

So please hurry and mooch off of us.

For a complete overview of all INDIAreads plans, please click here. (for Delhi/NCR)

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NOTE: Offer valid only till midnight, January 2012.

On the occasion of William Makepeace Thackeray’s birthday today, we present to you the repeated adaptations of his famous work “Vanity Fair” on the audio-visual medium. He was famous for his satirical works and made the genre historical fiction his very own.

Vanity Fair (1923) was the first adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s most remembered work. This was a silent film, directed by Hugo Ballin.

Vanity Fair (1932) is a modernized adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel of the same name. The movie was directed by Chester M. Franklin and starred Myrna Loy. The story is reset in the twentieth century.

Vanity Fair (2004), this British-American costume drama film was directed by Mira Nair. Though an adaptation from Thackeray’s novel, there was substantial changes in this version, as the character of Becky Sharp had undergone a major transformation.

He film was nominated for “Golden Lion” Award in 2004 Venice Film Festival.

Vanity Fair (1998-TV serial), this drama serial adaptation of Thackeray’s novel was aired on BBC; it was also previously adapted by the same channel in the 1967 & 1987. The series was adjudged the best drama serial at The British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1999.

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Robert Sheckley, ((July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005), is a popular American Science fiction writer

Mr. Sheckley wrote more than 15 novels and around 400 short stories. He was so prolific in his heyday that we cannot estimate the actual total. Often the magazine editors requested him to publish some stories under pseudonyms to avoid having his byline appear repeatedly in an issue. 
Four of his stories were made into films; the best known, “The Tenth Victim” (1965), starred Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Maplewood, N.J., Robert Sheckley had a two year (1946-48) stint with the U.S. army, having served in Korea. In 1951, he received an undergraduate degree from New York University and sold his first short story.

Over the next two decades, he was a major force behind the development of modern science fiction. His first collection of stories, published in 1954, was hailed as one of the finest debut volumes in the genre. In the 1960’s, he found a wider market for his fictions, as his stories started featuring in mainstream magazines such as Playboy.

Many of his novels were well received, among them “Journey Beyond Tomorrow”(1962) and “Dimension of Miracles” (1968), but Mr. Sheckley was best known for his short stories.

Mr. Sheckley’s works has been translated into German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish and Lithuanian. His works are most sought after in Russia and Eastern Europe.

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For once I am posting something that has nothing whatsoever to do with books, apart from the poetry of the season that inspires me to write Yes, I am writing about the monsoons that I meet every day on my way to and fro office…..

Delhi’s long wait is finally over. The mighty monsoon winds kissed the city, as expected (for a change the Met got it right!) in the first week of July. And as the romance has just started, you can still see the Capital blushing in rain. It’s the same story every year; the two lovers meet, sizzle and bond for a period of three months. The scorching summer heat all but vanishes, though humidity level mounts frequently. It’s bearable, for have we not waited with bated breath for the rains? The chirping birds, noisy grasshoppers, the swaying tree branches create a symphony of their own. The city looks beautiful in all its splendour. The traffic moves slowly, waterlogged streets turn into the workplace of the MCD workers. They put aside uprooted trees, clear the overflowing drains, much to the amazement of children. The spectacle provides diversion during their trips to and from school. Anxious parents are often seen making way through water logged roads, looking for their wards.

The rain does create havoc but can we forget the fun elements associated with it? How children, adults shrug off the concerns of their near and dear ones, just to get wet in the rain. Suddenly the warm tea tastes awesome, plates full of snacks are emptied in no time. Shopping and dining plans get aborted at the last minute due to rain but really it’s worth it. The morning showers give us an excuse to take leave from office or at least arrive late. Children  have something other than their run on the mill excuses to skip classes. Bus stands, shop fronts, trees, over bridges become the temporary shelter point for pedestrians, bikers. And suddenly you find yourself stranded at some odd, lonely location for hours, and you are forced to admire and get acquainted with your surroundings while you wait for the Rain God to take a break.  Of course, when you get wet for the umpteenth time and pile of wet clothes to be put in the sun becomes too huge, you are bound to pull at your hair. but hey, it’s all a part of the rainy romance.

Delhi’s tryst with the monsoon has started. It’s time to unwind from the stresses and get immerged in the flavour of the season. It’s time to be happy and spreading happiness all around us. Everything seems beautiful in rainy season, for does it not precede winter and festivities galore?

Pablo Neruda

• Neruda was born Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto. He took his pen name from the Czech author Jan Neruda.
• Although Neruda’s father opposed his writing interests, he persisted and had his first essay published at the age of 13.
• His Veinte Poemas, which includes the acclaimed poem “Tonight I Can Write,” was considered highly controversial because of its explicitly sexual nature. Neruda was only 19 years old when the volume it was published.
• Neruda was invited to speak at the International PEN Conference in 1966 and, despite the fact that he was officially banned from the United States, he was granted a special visa to attend.
• Chilean leader Pinochet tried to outlaw the public from attending Neruda’s funeral, but thousands of people broke curfew and attended anyway. This is considered the first public protest against Chilean dictators.

“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn’t play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly”……Pablo Neruda

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was a true child of nature. He appreciated the natural environment on a deep level, finding spiritual replenishment and inspiration in his lengthy walks each day. Henry pursued his own ideals in every aspect of his life. He moved to Walden Pond as an experiment in living simply and deliberately, while taking ample time for writing, walking, and observing nature.

Walden and duty of civil disobedience is considered his notable work.

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