Maybe I’m not curious.
Lists, and stories, written by someone less cynical than me in a different time.
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Found a new book in the shelf today. Well, it’s not brand new, but it’s new because it is previously unseen, unopened and unread by me. It’s a paperback version of RK Narayan’s ‘The Financial Expert’. The cover and publications page are missing, so I cannot ascertain the exact year of printing, but there is a marking from a reading room in Vijayanagar Colony registered in 1962, I’m assuming it is at least that old.
I asked Pa about the book. He and Ma and Padma have all read it. I like to think it belonged to Appa, and it went from him to his son, his daughter in law, daughter, his grandson (my elder cousin K is a reader), and now to a granddaughter, and each time, every one of them leaves something in it, something intangible, that the book absorbs and passes on to me as collective memory of some sort.
Mangayya’s story is beyond mere words in these yellow pages, there is an added experience, a remembrance that no other copy of The Financial Expert can give me.
A new book though, has the lure of being a canvas to start afresh, and leave my thought to the next reader. But I’m also hugely apprehensive of giving books to people who many not appreciate it, almost as if their indifference depreciates the mana it has soaked in.
One flighty life goal is to be old and be some sort of keeper of books (librarian?) with mind-reading powers to screen people coming to the chamber of books (library?) and chase away the non-readers and suggest books to bright little reader kids.
This will be a good occupation, a book suggester. I will add it to my list right alongside custom date idea suggester, and ink pen tester, but I daydream and I digress.
I will resume reading my book now.
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I’d borrowed N’s binoculars for the workshop a few weeks ago, and I still have them. They’re slightly off; the left and right don’t focus on the same object and I have to squint to see clearly. But they were better than G’s pair which seem to have inherited his languishing eyesight and so I took those, and woah, I can make mean jokes.
The haziness seems to go away if close one eye, effectively downgrading it to a unicular? ocular?
It’s amazing what they show me though! People-watching in Blore city is pretty entertaining, and most of all when the watching is being done from twelve stories up, while the people are grounded. Invading someone else’s personal space without having anyone even close to yours. Win!
I can see exactly who is buying what clothes from the makeshift road side stall. And there’s a man quarreling with an auto-guy directly opposite a building where a single fellow is working late hours in the reliance office on the ground floor. They don’t see each other, they don’t see me, I see them. I can the white Maruti van which is responsible for causing the traffic congestion that extends for miles down the main road. I know it takes the Ajja to walk half the distance around the park in the time it takes the running girl to finish a full lap. I see the L board maruti 800 trying to make a reverse in front of the rubble that was the house belonging to Nilekani’s family. It’s time for Namaz and a guy has come out onto a tiny cutout terrace space to pray, while the muezzin calls play in the distance. I can see these ladies walking towards the vegetable vendors, whoops they’re looking right at me binocular-ing at them. Should I slither back in? Nope. I’m a writer today. I make observations, and the people are extraordinary, with their everydayness. I possess my spirit and the spirit of these strangers, and I will remain eager and watch on. And there, my curiosity has been of use today, I spotted a new xerox shop!
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I’m in the midst of a technological crisis. I have the Electronic Jinx.
It all started with us discussing plans of acquiring a gaadi. We’d zeroed in on the item, a thing of beauty, a yellow vespa which would whisk me away from main roads into gallis cutting down my stuckintraffic-ness and reliance on baralla-autos and jaagailla-buses; daydreams cut in short when my other gadgets caught wind of these plans, and collectively decided to hamper the arrival of a new item in my life.
I should have seen the signs when the printer refused to print. I attributed the misalignment to a moving mishap, or maybe it was echoing my own oldhome-sickness and was just missing its old spot on my old desk in the old house and the printing error was a not-so-silent protest to move back.
Next was my phone Rex, the only loyal one that lasted me 2 and half years unlike the other kamchors who gave up within a year. Rex promptly went into an inactive sim state, right after I got off the phone telling a friend about my vespa. Et tu, Rex?
The others have followed in quick succession. The brand-new-microwave doesn’t brand new microwave and my earphones went kaput.
How do I finish writing this now. My computer is acting up.
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