Book tag (stolen aeons ago from She whom I do not remember)

Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror?
 Sci-fi – Hmm.. I’m pretty sure Animorphs doesn’t count. H.G Wells I didn’t much like. I want to start on Asimov. Aldous Huxley and Kaziguro were good if they qualify.
Fantasy- Er. I’m not sure what exactly you’re categorizing
Horror- Rarely. Dracula. Frankenstein. Bas.

Hitchhiker or Discworld?
Reading Hitchhiker, haven’t Discworld.

Bookmark or Dog ear?
Bookmark! Urgh, dog ears are desecration.

Asimov’s Science Fiction or Fantasy & Science Fiction?

So. I feel stupid now.

Alphabetize by author, Alphabetize by title, or random?
I used to be very big on arranging them according to title and favourites and author. Now it’s more like size.

Keep, Throw Away or Sell?
Keep. Keep all of them and accumulate and buy some more. Beg, borrow and steal till they grow silverfish.

Keep, dust-jacket or toss it?
Keep.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?

Too different. HP is HP and I like Lemony Snicket’s grim humour of despair.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?

Stop reading the night before the exam. Or when someone calls or nature calls.

"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"?

Fairytales annoy me of late. Methinks I need some pixie-dust.

Buy or Borrow?
Borrow. Buy if I’d like to collect and read a kazillion times.

Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse?
Browsing all the way. Book reviews also. Recommendations from selected people.

Lewis or Tolkien?
I didn’t like Lewis much actually. Tolkien I haven’t read. Yes, I know. DON’T look at me like that!

Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading?
Anytime. Lazing in bed in the morning, lolling in bed in the afternoon and much the same at night.

Standalone or Series?
Standalone.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? (dunno about the nobody though)
Cafe Tropicana- I don’t remember whom it’s by

The Land of Far Beyond, The House at Redroofs- Enid Blyton

Haroun and the Sea of Stories- Salman Rushdie
Coram Boy- Jamilla Gavin

Top 5 favorite genres of all time?
Anything. Not too much of a thriller fan though. Archer I can tolerate, Cook not at all and for some reason have always been allergic to James Hadley Chase.

Top 5 favorite genre books?

Uff, enough with the genre aantlamo. Some I can remember at the moment:

Sophie’s World

The Kite Runner, Not without my Daughter- Go classify

The Book thief, Chocolat, An Equal Music, Gone with the Wind, All quiet on the Western front

Comedy- The inscrutable Americans

The Hungry Tide, Opal Mehta, Rebecca, The Little Prince, Matilda, The Witches.

Currently Reading?
Milan Kundera- The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Virgina Woolf- Mrs. Dalloway

Love is a four letter word too. Bomb never should have been. RIP.

Violence is NOT the answer. and it never will be. I guess when we hear about these Bomb blasts, we feel shocked for a while. But it doesn't really strike us. I guess it doesn't really strike the bombers, or perhaps it Does strike them and some incredible way, they just don't care, that these are real People out there. Actual living breathing people with lives of their own that are going to be scattered. That are going to affect a thousand other lives entwined with theirs.
I guess it does shock one for a while, and you know how bad it is. Or that, you know, justice and peace has been violated again. That this is a sad occassion. But stuck within our cocoon of all the things we build our world with, our tiny little crises and thoughts, and wants and desires, we forget about........the bigger picture? What Real problems may be like. How fleeting, and impartial and even ruthless life can be. And is.
This isn't a post really about how much we should value life or how important it is. Or then again, maybe it's a post reminding me of exactly that. But it's about more than that. This isn't one of those customary 'post bomb blast-passionate writing' thingies. It's just something that i Had to write. It's about much more than that. It's about how Unfair and how Incomprehensible and just how little sense it makes that people as brilliant and by all accounts as wonderful as Ankik and Anindyee and their friends had to be killed. It's about how difficult it is then to believe that good things happen to good people and stuff like everything happens for a reason. It's about how there is absolutely NO justification for these deaths.
I was just going through Anindyee's Facebook page- the tons of people writing on her wall, the group she had last joined and the normal Social interview questions. And it's so ....funny? ironical? heartbreaking? I don't really know what to say- it just Is. to see this stuff when she's dead. Her brother Ankik with a brilliant future ahead of him with a JP Morgan job and a gorgeous fiancee, a promotion and a new posh flat all lined up for him, now instead has bereaved bewildered friends and parents and an obituary and a webpage dedicated to him. Reading about this has really shaken me very badly, and why it should have this huge an effect on me, is probably 'cuz I can relate? It could have been anyone. It could have been any of us. They were young, and full of life and smart- all the things we belive ourselves to be. They were students. It could have been any of us and where the thought of ourselves dying seems incomprehensible except as twisted idle "Who will cry when you die" type fantasies, the fact of them dying contradicts that. It's an anomaly. Which Shouldn't have happened!
 I believe 2 rickshaw wallahs also died in the bomb blast. But I'm not writing about them here 'cuz they're easier to dissociate ourselves from. But when it happens to people as close to ourselves as Anandi and Ankik, it becomes a terrifying reality.
I'm not really sure how writing this helps. I Definitely know that violence is not the answer. All the stirring up, all the protests and all the citizens being proactive type stuff that occurred after the Mumbai blasts- I'm pretty sure they meant well and they were trying to Do something. I just wish something could be done. I wish I knew what we could do. And that this could stop.
If this post is a little incomprehensible, it's 'cuz I'm a Lot shaken at the moment. And I'm unable to comprehend why these things have to happen.
In the meantime,
Love, not Hatred.
Life, not Death.
Peace, not Terror.
Light, not Darkness.

Cinder and Smoke VI

Leo! Damn, Leo. Damn, damn, damn! I glance at the clock and see that it’s past 8. Another frozen dinner tonight. Leo must have eaten. I ignore her or rather tolerate her presence these days; our interaction is at best, limited but somehow, she’s always in my head- I have to go out, where’s Leo? I have to eat- Leo- has she eaten? I’m sleepy, is she asleep on the couch again? Leo. Always Leo. I feel obsessed. Behind the facade of this life we are living- no this stagnant Existence. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. Nobody blames me. I have the cushy job, I pay the bills, and I had the once gorgeous, brilliant girlfriend. I’m still young; I’m on Sheridan’s team, for the love of God. I have- I have “prospects”! Nobody would say I’ve shirked responsibility. Nobody would say anything. Mama would be rather relieved if she knew. Vinnie- she always liked Leo. Vinnie might refuse to be reasonable for a while, but she would come around. That is, if she even called one of these days. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t have possibly stopped it or seen it coming. She was so strong, so sure. I Couldn’t have prevented it! I stuck on for this long, trying to make it work. Did I? Did I persevere, did I ignore? At least I tried; didn’t I? I’m not being hypocritical, I stuck on this long. It’s not my fault! There is nothing left from who we used to be, no reminder of the life we led before. Nothing but the cracked remains. The chipped cherub in the hall that bears the ghost of Leo’s mocking smile. It wouldn’t be difficult. She could still have the house. I am a gentleman. And I did love her. Did? Do? I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know.

Leo with her mocking smile. Leo lost in my white shirt with wet tousled hair, humming Van Morrison. Leo on cold winter nights with hot coffee in her hand. Just Leo on cold winter nights. Leo buying Vinnie a big bouquet of gladiolas when she came to visit that one time. The way Leo smelled and the way she felt curled up tightly beside me. The way she loved to be kissed, softly on her eyelids before she fell off to sleep. Leo screaming and arguing-arguing furiously and suddenly laughing by mistake halfway. Leo‘s rich, husky voice. Leo’s love for anything that involved James Dean. Leo and her Bob Dylan-Robert Plant obsession. Leo. Leo’s face when she was excited. Leo on the rare occasions that she blushed. Leo running her fingers gently up and down my spine. Leo lying next to me on the balcony. Leo and her fiery brown-black eyes. Leo trying not to cry with her nose turning red. Leo making me laugh. Leo’s laugh. Leo. My Leo.  

I have to talk to Leo.

"But my hands remember hers, rolling 'round the shaded ferns
Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned”

I walk into the living room. “Leo”, I walk towards her. She’s asleep. Her hand flung over the edge of the sofa. Her eyes shut, barely breathing. Her tangled hair hides half of her face, her lips a little parted. She looks so frail. I take her hand and for now she is my Leo again. Things will be different. Things Can be different. Unsaid things don’t have to smother what’s left. Maybe we could- we could talk about it.
I kneel down beside her and knock into the bottle. It rolls away beneath the sofa, clinking into the chintz darkness and I catch a whiff of Leo's permanent scent these days.

“Cinder and smoke
You’ll ask me to pray for rain
With ash in your mouth
You’ll ask it to burn again”

Cinder and Smoke V

The telephone rings waking me from the trance I’ve fallen into. I’m not really in the mood to talk, it’s probably J.D or God forbid, Madison calling about the latest brief. I sit on the bed idly, listening to the discordant clang of the phone ringing. Leo won’t pick it up, she never does. Leo. As I sit here on the bed playing with memories, she must still be in her stupor. Her self induced, poison stupor. It’s difficult for me to come back into the present. These perfect memories don’t fit in with the life we lead now. I feel like I’m dragging them through the mud, soiling them even as I associate them with us, now. The Leo I knew and loved and this Leo are so different. I don’t know who this person is; I doubt that even she knows. Or cares. Who even knows what Leo thinks anymore. She’s isolated herself from her circle of friends since she started flirting with drinks. One too many at the last party she had been to, and I gather she’d embarrassed herself. I hadn’t been there that day, so I didn’t know. I’d been working late as usual; it had been a busy period of time for me. We were working on a pretty high profile case as I remember. In fact, I’d come out of that looking pretty good. Got into Sheridan’s good books, and earned myself a most comfortable position. I heard about the party later. Not from her, a few chance remarks from an acquaintance. Something about Leo being in pretty high spirits that day. Btu I’d put it out of my head. Leo was always dancing around, I’d figured. Must have gone a little overboard. She didn’t tell me and I forgot to ask. Besides, I was preoccupied with work. But that was the last party she went to. Occasionally the odd invitation still trickles in. A discarded envelope in the dustbin or by the ashtray in the evening.  People know now of course, or at least they suspect. It’s one of those things you don’t quite come out and say in polite society. Besides, vodka is a relatively tame indulgence for a lot of the people in her business. Her friends or whatever it was that she had, do know by now. They don’t blame me for it though. I don’t think anybody does. If anything they respect me. I get the title of being “the responsible one”, the “strong one”, “a really decent chap”. Sometimes they invite me over for dinner. Very rarely, I accept. Leo never bothers to ask me why I’m late. I don’t know how we slipped into this routine of not asking each other questions, or asking them and not waiting to hear the reply. That would be me. “How was your day, Leo?” Much too often she has fixed me with a blank stare in response to any questions I would ask. And now-now I can’t even stand to be in the same room. There was a time when we’d put off eating, sleeping, even sleeping together- though that, not very often- to just talk. She would talk and I would talk and then she’d talk some more. My Leo. And I’d listen. She would tell me about their old house by the cliff, the sound of the sea each time her father would return and her mother’s half smile goodnight’s. She would tell me of the glitz and the veneer of the sets she visited and of the worlds they took her to. She would tell me of the new idea that had just struck her and sometimes, she would practice her lines on me. She’d always wind up laughing though, halfway through them. I didn’t care. I listened some more, caressed her hair, ran my tongue along her ears. The hollow of her neck, where her shoulder and collarbone met- that was where she loved to be kissed. I would talk as well-when I wasn’t distracted. She knew about my solid childhood, my sister Vinnie and our hikes with Papa, Papa and Mama and the incredible safety they provided us with. Our country house, Frankie in the kitchen cooking pot-pi on Sunday afternoons. Papa with a pack of cigarettes, the perpetual cloud of blue smoke that surrounded him, Mama in her flowered apron and her crinkled smile, smelling vaguely of cinnamon. Vinnie and our imaginary fortress, her sneaking out to meet her first boyfriend, growing up with a cloud of friends and degrees balanced on her head, moving away and sometimes reminding me with an unexpected phone call that I missed her. Leo’s  moon-river outside her house, her attempt to run away to bring her father back one day, her first boyfriend who taught her how to kiss, then her second boyfriend who taught her that her first boyfriend couldn’t kiss. Radcliffe and Rilke and a trip to Spain mixed up altogether.  back to me- stammering till age ten, my fascination with red hair, baseball and hockey- the only two subjects she showed little interest in, though she definitely tried to fake it, university, J.D and our sudden passion for long hikes into unknown places, weed, my failed attempts at writing poetry, booze- lots of it and the guys, summer days spent doing nothing. More memories. More talking, then no talking at all.

Her mother was a dipsomaniac.

“Give me your hand
Your mother is drunk as all the firemen shake
A photo from father’s arms”

Cinder and Smoke IV

I sit on the unmade bed for a while. No loose sheets litter the floor now.  I was never given a chance to get irritated, you see. It simply hadn’t been long enough. Once my workday ends I’m not really sure what to do with myself anymore. Leo had always been the driving force at home. Impetuous and insistent. “Bear we have to!” she would shriek gleefully. And we would. Whatever she happened to want at the time. I would go along with her and we would have fun. I remember this one day on the beach. We had been driving because Leo had suddenly had an urge to go for a long drive. It was just that sort of a day where the sea was calling out to her apparently. I had woken up on a lazy Sunday morning to find a dark sky looming and a breeze swirling the leaves outside. “We have to go for a drive, Bear”, she’d said, as soon as she had seen me. I feebly protested and she waved aside my arguments with a kiss and some coffee. She was wearing something white I remember and she had her hair cut short just a little below her ear. She had lost a lot of weight at that point of time, and she looked like a little lost boy, with her elfin frame and pixie-like face. She had been unusually quiet for a while; stressed about this screenplay she had been working on.  We had been driving in silence for a while with the only sound that of the wind and the sheet on the backseat flapping with it. I turned to see her looking at me seriously. It was so unusual for her, I panicked a little, I’ll admit. I thought she was going to tell me it was over and she was bored. Instead she smiled at me so sweetly, it almost broke my heart and said, “Thank you”. “What for”, I asked her, completely mystified, but she just smiled and nodded her head like an adorable little kid. We had nearly reached the beach and you could see the blue temperamental gray of the water. Hardly had I parked the car that she bounded out. She whooped and ran across the soft brown of the beach, spinning, arms flung out, and hair flying in all directions. The beach was empty for once, not surprisingly. The storm was getting close and the wind was strong now. Leo of course, loved it. She danced with wild abandon on the beach. That was something i loved about Leo. Unlike myself who had so many hang ups,, my image, respectability and just, “being proper” in front of people, Leo had no such qualms. She just didn’t care. She let herself go completely and she did exactly what she felt like without a second thought. Her moods dictated her actions. Perhaps, she hadn’t completely grown up, perhaps she was being immature. But to me, she was a wild, untamed spark. She was free. That day she danced with the wind and flirted with the waves. She danced with me.

She was laughing as she reached for my hand. She pulled me into her dance. Clumsy, uncoordinated, stiff fool that I was, I just couldn’t do it. Bound by my limitations, feeling like an utter jackass I tripped along clumsily. I couldn’t look her in the face; for the hundredth time I questioned what on earth this creature was doing with stolid me. Leo drew to a stop and put her arms around my neck. She smiled and then we were slow dancing. Unhurriedly, so close that I couldn’t figure out where I ended and she began. “This we can do, Babe?” She gave me her funny little grin, with eyes sparkling. “Music?” I asked. “I would say something like the music is in your heart, Bear, but you, Mr. Big shot Lawyer would need concrete evidence” She rummaged in the car and brought out a   CD. “Def leppard”, she said grinning, like a ridiculously delighted child.

“Oooh, I miss you in a heartbeat.
Oooh, I miss you right away.
Oooh, I miss you in a heartbeat.
It aint love, if it don’t feel that way.”

The music washed over us and we swayed to it. Looking at Leo then, she looked so fragile, so incredibly/ bafflingly beautiful, I couldn’t say a word. Strangely I wanted to protect her. Leo is a strikingly attractive woman. But that day on the beach, in her white dress, and her little-boy face, with her blazing eyes shining- that is what I think of when I think of Leo.

I’ve never been a romantic person; I don’t have enough imagination I suppose. But nobody has ever had the effect Leo did on me. She was electrifying, she was-free. She scared me by the intensity of what I felt for her. She made me – happy isn’t the word. She made me, alive. She made me alive.

“Give me your hand
The dog in the garden row is covered in mud
And dragging your mother’s clothes”

Cinder and Smoke III

I step out of the shower and start dressing under the cover of the darkness. The blinds are always shut in the bedroom; that was something she had always insisted on from the very beginning. She wrote better without the sunlight she said. “It’s too bright, Bear!” she had exclaimed, tossing her head. “All that yellow light pouring in just makes everything so goddamned Ordinary!” And of course darkness can be used to uncover as well as cover, so I didn’t complain. Now we hide in this darkness, seek shelter in the silences, leave volumes unsaid- not because there’s nothing left to say, but because we’re too afraid of what we’ll be left with if we do say them. An elephant in the room. Such a funny phrase isn’t it? But that’s what it feels like. From the moment I step inside this house, our ‘home’ there’s this tension like everything’s hanging in the balance and something needs to be done. Something needs to be said, but no one can find the courage to say it. I don’t know when it started and whether it was the drink that drove away the work or the work that pushed her over the edge. But she started to take refuge in it. It was strange and it didn’t alarm me at first, because oddly enough she had always been the one to stay away from drink, even social drinking. I’d teased her about it in the beginning, but she’d stayed firm.  The strongest drink she would consent to touch would be a cosmopolitan. She liked the tangy taste of it, she said. She didn’t drink alcohol but lemonade was an obsession with her. Lemons with mint and sparkling water, lemonade with a hint of citrus orange. Lemonade with spices. Lemon tea. She loved the tangy taste and the scent. Even the perfume she wore had a distinct lemony accent to it. “Lemonora”, I used to call her. My Leonora. Leo, Love. Love, Leo. Where did you go?

“Cinder and smoke 
Some whispers around the trees 
The juniper bends 
As if you were listening “

Cinder and Smoke II

“Give me your hand 

And take what you will tonight, I'll give it as fast 
And high as the flame will rise”

I want her. I want to go back. I want to see her alive again, and see her gaze not dullened or stupid or indifferent. Fiery eyes. Not green, or hazel or blue or any of those exotic colors. Dark brown, blazing. Just the intensity and the determination, the spirit? Now I’m being cheesy, I know. But I never was the one good at words. That was always her job. She’d written me a poem. Just one. For all the amount of writing she did, I have to admit I was more than a little hurt that she’d hardly ever written anything for me. “You’re too good to spoil babe”, she’d told me once, matter of factly. Then she’d kissed me and I’d forgotten about it. I never told her this, for fear she’d laugh at me, and find it silly. But I’d written down the poem again and kept it in my drawer at work. J.D has a picture of his wife and kids on his desk, mine remains conspicuously empty of personal belongings, neat and clean, methodically arranged with the stacks of files kept according to urgency. I’ve been accused of being an automaton more than once by JD and the rest. But inside my desk, I’ve got that poem. It would remind me, that somehow incredibly, I’d managed to capture the spark that she was and hold its attention for so much longer than I could believe. She was fascinating, impulsive and changeable. I was methodical, intensely competitive and focused. The both of us were ambitious though. And we did so well towards the beginning. She did So well. They loved her, loved her incisive wit, her quirky use of dialogue and the words that made the scenes swim with color. Somehow though, it all unravelled.

“The snake in the basement 
Found the juniper shade 
The farmhouse is burning down”