Miss me? Not really.

Miss me? Not really is the short answer. For the long answer read below.

I do but I don’t want to deal with all the things that follow in your wake. It’s a chore and like blizzards always intense. Why is it never sunny? It was a deadly winter and I need to survive.

Why so many lies or omissions of truth, in your words? Why promises that you won’t keep and had never intended to keep in the first place, made only for the sake of making yourself look good?

I catch myself thinking you would like Inspector Montalbano or tell you that I found peace in volunteering. I wanted to tell you the person who loved me most in the world was dying and ask you what the right thing to do was. But I could never get past how formal and cold we had become. And you had never shown any interest before in spite of knowing the circumstances. So I absolve myself from all guilt.

It doesn’t matter now because I have seen through you. Perhaps there is a price you pay for being naive stupid. Believing you was my Achilles heel. The amazing thing is the disbelief because I am not usually the kind of person who gets caught up in this kind of drama. You proved me wrong yet again and my only consolation is for everything in life there is a first time (and hopefully a last time).

Why is there never a straight answer but only roundabout clues? It’s a maze I am tired of navigating and red herrings I am tired of dodging. You probably think people have a lot of time on their hands to brood over things. Let me correct you. They don’t. Survival takes precedence. Wading through your mess without complaining, I laugh to myself thinking about it now. Didn’t anyone tell you I don’t even like getting my feet wet and here I am drowning. I don’t even know how I got here. Oh wait you knew I disliked it yet continued to pour water saying it will quench my thirst.

What’s the use of saying pretty please, listen to me? What will I do with it, you selfish pig? Once someone tells you truth, instead of acknowledging it, you wave it aside and walk away only to come back to stomp on their hearts later. I wish you would vanish into the unknown never to be seen. Wait, that’s not completely true. In this age of social media I check if you are alive by stalking you online like normal people.

Beginning by Mitra Samal

Note – The book Beginning written by poet Mitra Samal is published by Authors Press. She is a bookish acquaintance and gave me her book in return for a review. I was initially reluctant because I was busy and poetry isn’t something which can be rushed. She agreed to wait and I thank her for patience. My hesitation also stemmed from the fact that it’s the first book of poems that I was about to review and I don’t think poetry can be reviewed as such (not by people like me at least!). So what follows is my takeaway from the poems.

There are 50 poems in the book and I read them over the course of a month. Beginning is accessible poetry for the common reader where people like me can appreciate poems without feeling the need to whip out a dictionary. Her simplicity is her strength. It is written in free verse. The poet said it was better than forcing it to rhyme and I agree.

Fairy Tales started well about the girl wanting to be the hero and her own saviour then became about a working woman being better than a homemaker, a bias which I never truly understood. Because work is work and both contribute to the GDP. What a woman chooses to do should be her own choice. Unfortunately we are far from a society like that.

Still got a Chance reminded me of Neel Mukherjee’s A State of Freedom which had the insider’s point of view as opposed to the outsider looking in here; the former worked for me.

Her poem Scars covers the entire gamut and this line really resonated with me – Scars that stay whether or not you want them.

Trust me Father is about an offspring telling a parent to let her fight her own battles. Letting go as an Indian parent (most just want to swoop in and take care of the problems for their children) is hard even when the children are adults. In this regard, like in many others, animals fare better than humans.

Will things be back to normal again? asks a line in Will the Rains Feel the Same. The normal is always changing but it remains our single minded pursuit to go back to what doesn’t exist and only remains in our memories.

Possession by A.S. Byatt

If any book was made for a reread it’s Possession by Antonia Susan Byatt. The language lends itself to a slower reading with multiple pauses, not the way I read it. Initially I required pauses but as the book progressed I became breathless with anticipation. The story shifts from the past to the present and unlikely but delicious connections are forged. A literary mystery with a difference. I’m way under qualified to talk about Possession. Consider this a book appreciation post, if you may.

It was a slow start with too many characters and their backstories, with some passages dragging in between but the plot and the writing more than made up for it. I raced to the end, and this after having seen the film should tell you what kind of a book it is (more than my feeble attempt at a review!).

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

This book made me work hard, like the few classics I have read do but none had actual poetry in them. The poems took me back to school (the way we were required to study it but we didn’t have long epic poems thankfully). The poems were interwoven so delicately that I actually read all of them though not in order and, of course, I couldn’t understand everything. Out of all the poems Swammerdam stood out for me.

What surprised me was the amount of natural science present in this book about the Victorian romance of two poets. And it is clever because the year 1859 was an important year for biology. It was the year Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published. I could appreciate the book better because I knew some of the things being talked about. Who would have thought my biology background would lead to a greater appreciation of this splendid book.

I loved the book and won’t be forgetting it in a hurry but I am unimpressed after seeing the film a second time. There are huge chunks missing from the film and it would perhaps work better as a miniseries. Everything was so  elegant in the book which isn’t the case with the film. I read Possession 27 years after its publication (it won the Man Booker Prize in 1990) and it’s a book which commands all the attention you could possibly give it. Finishing the book I realize it would have been stunning had I not seen the film; the suspense would have been nail biting. Until I fancy a reread there is The Children’s Book and Angels and Insects to plough through.