The Book List

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Books are my first love. Books are my first friends, my best friends for life. My only hope in distress. My anti depressant. People often joked that I could even find a telephone directory interesting. Recently Shruthi Raghunandan nominated for a similar challenge in FB and one of the friends whom I nominated obliged by saying if you have the list of only ten books read more books :P.

So, going forward I am a person with a big heart. I fall in love very easily. I fall for people fast and I fall for a book real fast. So, all the books I have read are my favourite. But here I manage to have those books where I felt I am just into the story. I spent days and nights with them, seeing them. Living with them in their home. Advicing them, being real worried for them. The books which became me and the I became the books. Books which were there while I was growing up. Books which were there to show a newly wed bride how to deal with this new role. Books that I have laughed with cried with, fell in love with, went on a date with, and slept with. Starting from The Chacha Chowdhury to The Mahabharata to Lajja to The Illiad to The Paradise lost to The Mayor of Casterbridge to The Da Vinci Code to The Immortals of Meluha, I have books all the way. My dream in life amongst many is to own a library of my own.

So without much ado about the rest here is my list.

1. The Ruskin Bond Children Omnibus: This book is my Holiday read. I first laid my hands on it when I was ten and I began reading it after C.R, Rajagopalachari's Mahabharata. In a lazy summer afternoon I fell in love with Rusty and swung around with The Blue Umbrella all the while motivating Ranji and helping kids to steal guava or to set up a zoo. It is my piece of sunshine. Till now I start my reading session with a peek into this book. The streets of Dehra, the Tunnel, The apple train are my haunts.

2. Poor People: Fydor Dostoevsky. This name still rings a melancholy tone. I had snuck out a book containing many famous works of Dostovyskey from my Late Grandfather's book shelf, hid in my backpack and brought it 1500 km to read it and my book affair with Russia starts from here. I have since then bought many books from Russian Authors. Almost so much that people have threatened me to pack me to Russia. This entire story is written in Epistles (Letters) between a man and a woman both of whom are poor. It will break your heart to read this. (His another novel "The White Nights" was moulded and made in to "Sawariya", the movie, I read this after finishing Poor People.)

3. Anna Karenina: If Dostoyevsky  showed the poor Tolstoy showed the aristocrats. When I began reading

this thick and lofty book I thought It will never end with all it's plot and sub plots. Anna, Lucy, Konstantine Levin will steal your heart away. You will always find a piece of you somewhere in the characters. Warning do not watch the movie without reading the book. It is a tale of Passion and Happy and Unhappy families.

4. The Scarlett Letter: Hester and Pearl and their creator Nathaniel Hawthorne. A book about adultery and doesn't even mention the word once, the incidence once. Set in Puritan America. Hester's stoicity and Pearl's playfulness will make you pass through a myriad of emotions.

5. Oedipus Rex: First tragedy of the trilogy of Thebes. Sophocles deals with the subject of incest and makes us disturbed from within. This drama gave me sleepless nights and goosebumps. This book, it's story just imprints in your mind once you read it.

6. The God of Small Things: A story of a Family and the story of History and all rules trespassed. it is the story of Ammo, of Inverted smiles,of the twins. You can never read it once. You have to come again to it.

7. Srimad Bhagwat Gita: I know the eyebrows are raised. No, I am not religious. No, I am not promoting The Religion. I had to write a paper presentation for Seminar on Poetry and "Karma Yoga" in Gita was my topic. So, I read it. I read the book published by Ramkrishna Mission. I read it as a work of Literature and Philosophy. My learning be Focused, be Patient. My recommendation go beyond religion and prejudice and give it a try.

 

8. The Wuthering Heights: If God has granted someone enough ink to pen just one novel then look up to Emily Bronte regarding how to do it right. Heathcliff and Catherine and their all consuming passion. They live with you and with in you long after you read that last page. 

9. The Train To Pakistan: Kushwant Singh at his best. I read the book as a 11 year old and those who have read it i am sure will be surprised. But I grew up as I turned it's last page. i finished the book in three days. Iqbal is some one you will love to hate at first then hate to love and then you will cry for him. The book shows the time when humanity was partitioned and bleeding.

10. Metamorphosis: The troubled Genius Franz Kafka was! Gregory wakes up from a Disturbed Dream and finds that.....he is a cockroach. Yes, you read it right. The novel just shakes your soul. I fell in Love with Kafka because of this and the love is still going strong,

This is a small Glimpses of my lovers/the books I would die for. do drop in your favourites too.

Inspired By Indispire:

Submit a list of your 10 favourite books with reasons why they made it to your list. Let us try to complete a circle and complie a list of books we yet have to pick. #loveofreading

Posted by Jyoti Chettri under Books
17 votes

Indispire Edition 29

Canvas Kolkata-Kumartooli The Durga Puja Preparations - 1

 As The Mother Eagerly awaits at the gates of Kailash
To descend to the Earth, once her abode......

As Lord Shiva looks at his wife longingly....

Nine Days of parting is a shade too long....

 Her sons and daughters fervently engage in creating divinity out of clay

The monsoon almost over....

A clear sky is all that they pray..

 God creates Humans and Humans create a frame for God...

The daughter of  This Earth

Is The Strength to the Supreme one....

Maa Asche......Mother is Coming

The Sky it Was-Thursday Challenge

The Golden Moment

Far away Land

To the Paradise

Homeward Bound

Kolkata Sky in its different shades

This is a part of Thursday Challenge initiated by www.spunwithtears.com for more photographs around the world please do click here
This Thursday's Theme:Sky

The Beginnings

.........And I missed my train.

I sat on my hunches, panting hard grasping every breath as if it were my last. My heart kept on jumping in my rib cage as if it just wants to be set free, maybe it wanted to be freed of the body it was hopelessly pumping life in.

I closed my eyes and still the pain won't go off. I tried to get up and somehow dragged my body to the bench and sat somehow clinging my bag, the only luggage I had. I looked up at the concrete roof of the station and the sickly ceiling fan and smiled. I never missed a train actually and it was my first.

"Hello, missed the train?"

I sat up startled and looked at a smiling face. A pretty good looking face at that. Missing train may have it's own perks I believe.

"Yes." I said

"Well I saw you running towards it and I was in it."

"Were you sleeping that it took you so long to get down at the station?"

"No, I got in the train from this station, I saw you missing your train and I got down."

"Why?"

"Because I felt like it."

"Why?" 

"The next train leaves at 10 o'clock in the night. We have 4 hours plus the train ride in our hands."

"So, what do we do?"

"Live the moment when we are still together."

"I don't know let us roam around the city." I smiled something in me told me that this is going to last.

Even if it doesn't last I wouldn't lose out on the moment where I can be in the road of falling in love with each other. Falling in love and the rush of this moment was so amazing that you could live your entire life in misery out of it. I was the one who lived in moments and this moment or the next moments were mine and I will certainly Live, Love and Laugh in them.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Sky on Fire

My Sky is on Fire

The earth is not my abode

Hither I wonder

Remember I am the Vulcan

Thrown out of heaven

Still too proud for the earth.

On Empathy

When I first stepped as a nervous newbie in that school little did I know how far will helping others take me. My first day in a new school and a new city was horrible. I joined mid session in the month of  September. On the first day as I entered the class all the kids were playing as the assembly bell was yet to ring. I was all of nine and half years studying in 5th Standard. After assembly I was introduced formally and was made to sit in a bench in the last rows because of my height.

The first day was:

Me smiling a friendly smile at all.

All frowning back at me.

This went on for a month till the mid terms I used to sit in a corner and quietly do my work. The Mid Term elevated my status from a "New comer Nobody" to "One of the Toppers Somebody". Atleast people didn't frown the just returned my smile with a blank stare.

Then that day came: One of the classmates accidentally dropped his tiffin and I quietly forwarded my tiffin and said him to have it. He had his fill and I was a bit empty stomach but it felt good when he smiled looking at me and said "Thank You". This is what I wanted for so log a selfless smile at me.

It slowly became a pattern in the class. If a student got stuck in a particular chapter I explained it. If a person had a problem in Drawing I helped her. I was my Class' "Help and Advice Centre".

On a lighter not being benevolent was my USP. I was not an interesting company nor I was a beautiful company. So, what won me friends was my benevolence and empathy. 

My mother said that they were just using me and I was investing my time on them for nothing but I was using their smiles to bring me joy.

That was when being benevolent helped me to become a better human. I learnt to be more empathic towards people.

True I don't give alms to beggars because I believe in empathy and not in sympathy. My logic is till there is life in you be the light in you.

I have seen a blind man selling incense stick in front of the Railway Station. I buy them even though I don't use them. The reason: I am respecting his choice of not bowing to easier means of work.  

Swami Vivekananda once said - If you give a fish to a hungry man you fulfill his hunger for a single day but if you teach the man how to fish you solve his hunger for a lifetime.

Benevolence for me is understanding a person's problem and work together towards solving the problem in such a way that the problem never comes again and even if it comes we have the solution in hand or are ready to face it efficiently.

If I help a person, I address the process and not the output. For eg: If a person comes and says me to write an application for him or her in English because he cannot frame words properly I will guide him to frame the sentences and give him a basic understanding of sentence formation. It will take much more time compared to the process where I simply write the letter but in the long run it will be much more fruitful.

Kindness and empathy are two things which can never have a transactional value in terms of material. The only thing you expect out of being kind is the smile of the person whom you help.

OF JUVENILES

As I walked along the stadium boundary, I increased my speed many folds.No, not because I was followed but because it was a natural impulse. All of fifteen yet eight years in the constant shadow of eve teasing, groping, molestation makes you instinctive and alert like a deer in the forest.

All of a sudden I hear a voice, "tssk tssk" I speed up frantically and in moments, a boy hardly of 16 or 17 comes in grabs my hand and says "Come with me."

"No!" I shout back and try to bite him. He slaps me but I somehow manage to free myself but he grabs me from the back

"Kick them hard on the balls." 

I remembered what my father said to me but he is facing my back so, how can I. I struggle vehemently making sure I don't shout because I knew shouting may turn this into a group thing and a lone person is easier to fight than the group.

As I struggled my life flashed past me. "The Topper Me", "The House Vice Captain Me","The Good Daughter Me", "The Responsible Elder Sister Me.", "The Writer Me.", "The Ambitious Me.", "The Hopelessly Romantic Me." all flashed past me and I thought all will end. Was my life all these to come to an end like this? Am I nothing but a stranger's object of perverted lust? Will my first touch by the opposite sex be that of a horror?. Funnily I didn't know how intercourse is but I knew Rape was something which can even kill you.

As I was counting my breathes thinking it to be my last few I thought that let him turn me and then I will kick him but then he left me and I saw that the reason for his sudden kindness was a car that passed by, I ran hard and reached to a place where there were people and soon faced another eve teasing.

I confided in my best friend who was a girl as I could not disclose it to my parents as they had hands full with their own problem. What she did was amazing. She spread it across like a wild fire. i was taunted and teased in hushed voices just because I was a quiet child my emotions were not counted in.

It made me very angry.

A few days later while traveling by a Tempo (Ford Tempo in Public Transport Form) I was groped as usual by someone aged 20 to 22. I kept quiet and tried to angle myself to safety. All of a sudden a boy from the tution of my age riding a bike (in small towns legal age of driving a bike is not an issue) offered me a lift and i gladly took it. On sitting on his bike the first thought struck me was, "Oh My God! What have i done?" this boy had a crush on me and used to gaze me all day long in the classes. I became petrified remembering the incident a few days back. The way I was treated and the insults afterwards had shattered my confidence. it had robbed me of my childhood and adolescence. All the while he was talking sweet nothings and was having a time of his life (We didn't had social networking so, the adolescent love had its innocence) and i was having a harrowing time with in me that he would.....

But he didn't. He left me to my destination and the next time we talked properly was ten years after.

My anger subsided after this.

I noted a few things:
1. The person who assaulted me was from the unprivileged section of the society: He lacked education, had to see the harsher part of the life and was aggressive and brutal. He was so, used to be treated like an animal that he became an animal. If he is a criminal in the making whose fault is it? His or the society? The Government? who runs on Vote bank and educating him is a tough process so, create flashy schemes to lure them.

2. The people who mocked me came from good families.The school where I studied was one of the top schools in the city. It has produced bright professionals. But why did they lack empathy? Is it their fault or the fault of the education they received? Do we need to make our children a better humans first and then successful people?

3. I hid the fact. My thought process was its a big stigma, I might be framed as someone with lose morals. My self confidence hit the lowest abyss. As parents are we giving our daughters the confidence they need to have in us? We educate our children so that we have faith in them but do they have faith in us?

4. The bike boy: Well, he was someone who was a Juvenile technically and mentally. Compare him with the Stadium boy. He was more privileged, more educated, rightly educated than the Stadium Boy.This brought in a change in mentality.

I am not talking about what is to be done with the Juveniles who commit heinous crimes. My objective here is to raise some points that how these can be avoided because on the day of the incident

I thought If I had died will hanging the boy bring me back to life? 
No. It will be justice delivered.

Will it stop all the crimes of the same fashion? 
No, People will commit crimes.

Why?
Because CRIME HAS BECOME AN ATTITUDE.

So, how to uproot this permanently?
 Evolve into a better informed and empathetic society.

How much time will it take? 
Many years.

Which government will do that?
We will do that because Government is BY THE PEOPLE, OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE
So, we are the only power who will stay forever the rest will come and go in five years.

It's our Country, Our People, Our Children.

Weather the victims and criminals both are our children. So, its our responsibility to correct them before their souls are lost. Weather a murderer or the victim both the souls are lost forever.

DISCLAIMER: ALL THE CHARACTERS IN THE STORY ARE JUVENILES AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ANY PERSON NEAR BY YOU IS TO BE ADDRESSED BY YOU AND ONLY YOU.