Absolution

You were flawed. You did bad things. And yet you loved me unconditionally, like an idiot. That's the only noble, selfless, stupid thing you ever did. But that one thing absolves you, of everything.

YOUR OLD PHOTOGRAPH

What if I had met you then?

MILAN

Milan, who always used to insist that her name be pronounced not like the Sunil Dutt reincarnation movie but the old Italian city of ruins and two football clubs. One day, her name shall be gone and I wouldn't have to pronounce it anymore. That day, these lovely houses shall be wrecked and the empty spaces will look like graves.

7.11.11

Cellular phones are replacing letters as the preferred means of communication, the 'verbal' jostling the 'written' out. Don't we realize that in doing so, we're leaving so little of ourselves behind? Our existence is being churned each day and turned to airwaves.

For example, today I dropped my phone and it fell and broke. All the records of your being got erased with it. Now, I will never be able to find you again. It was as hard or as simple as that.

..

I’ve now realized that just because you’re a writer, they won’t believe a word you say, even if it is true. It maddens me how you, who I didn’t even know existed some moments ago, could inflict such tranquil, exquisite, subliminal pain. And if apart, the knowledge of how close we had come; is going to stay with me forever, and haunt and clobber and madden again, and there’s nothing you can do about any of that. That’s what makes it so scary, that this one would always hurt; this particular one.

Nine Stories (Salinger J.D., English, 1953)

A Perfect Day for Bananafish- 9/10- This genre-defying short story mostly consists of a haunting, sorrowful conversation that its war-returned protagonist Seymour Glass may or may not have had with a little girl, Sybil; a conversation of such sustained, evolved pain. Salinger unrelentingly, even sadistically, contrasts the surficial and the profound, and through technical near-perfectness and subliminal allegory, the story is also fraught with his decisively unique leitmotifs: fallen Icaruses and battle-time scars; a story as hurtful perhaps, as only the happiness of children can be.

Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut- 10/10- Nothing apparently happens in this story until it all culminates into that last sentence, an abrupt, animalistic, tempest-voyage of a plea that when one really thinks about it, has been slowly simmering throughout the rest of the text, manifesting itself in little clues but the puzzle-maker is clever for we mistake them for something else. A counterpoint of a comedy of manners, this is a dark work about memories, choices and quite a lot else.

Just Before the War with the Eskimos- 7.5/10- If any piece in this collection is stylistically closest to 'A Catcher in the rye', it is this piece. Dialog-driven, this is a triumph of characterization over narrative, with the minimalist 'sets' almost serving to balance the verbal excesses. A small gem with rough edges, it talks about the inherent goodness inside us.

The Laughing Man- 9/10- At once a cerebral, meta-narrative shell and also, a vulnerable, melancholic core; 'Laughing Man' remains one of the most successful amalgamations of form and concept. Mary Hudson attracts some of Salinger's best lines and yet even in his most downright romantic tale, she remains elusive, ambiguous, sketchy and sexy. In fact ultimately, she remains quite like Salinger's other protagonists: lonely and undeciphered.

Down at the Dinghy's- 7/10- A mother-son tale spun on a languid, unforgettable afternoon, this is moody, atmospheric and what it lacks in heightened realism, it more than makes up with its subtle turn of phrase, touching fleetingly upon marriage, racism and the class-divide. It also sits firmly within the Glass-family canon.

TO BE CONTINUED..

The Whole Ramdev Thing....

Even if (and it is big 'if') for a moment, I were to accede that his demands are legitimate, and also his reasons, intentions and methodology; even then I find myself feeling increasingly aloof to the whole issue. Perhaps, there is a sense of reverse-flippancy. As in even if the Baba solves this crisis, then yes, we would have less corruption, more money flowing through the system (gushing like the Ganges, in fact), and ultimately, more equality, less poverty and so on; but what would he really have accomplished? What about the things that really matter? The intangible and the pertinent: Why are we here? Where do we go? Don't know about you but I prefer my Babas answering those questions instead.

PS: The whole 'doing away with the higher denomination notes' argument seemed extremely environmentally-challenged