I don’t know if this is true of everyone, but somehow with me, books remind me of places I’ve been, things I’ve done, what I was up to when I was reading a certain page. Of course, my memory may be playing tricks on me, but that doesn’t make the memory false, somehow. Catch-22 is the roshith’s and miss’s conversation about it, in the corridor, and the bus shed at school. Love story is the TV room at home, and shamefully, tears. :-/. The grapes of wrath is my first year at pondy, as is road to mecca (which I never finished, because it was in Malayalam)…. Of course, it works the other way as well, so my memories of coonoor are inescapably mixed with the james bond and Wodehouse I used to read in bed—which was a cosy closet with a nightlight…. Ah heaven.
Today, for example, I read (one someone’s facebook profile, where I was snooping) about an equal music. And suddenly I had this pang of memory: of reading to the last page sitting on the grey-tiled floor of the bathroom at home, and getting to the last page (you know, the place where julia’s playing the art of fugue, and Michael is either walking in or walking out….. which is it?) and then turning the book over and starting again. That memory’s what set this ramble off, which is why I bring it up.
The memory reminded me that the books I recommend to my friends have changed little or not at all, but the ones I do are always ones I remember in this way, which have attached a piece of autobiography onto themselves in this odd way. So I thought I’d set down my evangelism favourites, with as much as I can remember about where I read them, and ask this limited audience whether they have similar stories to tell.
1. An equal music I’ve already spoken about.
2. Seymour/raise high. There’s honestly nowhere I’ve not read this book, with the possible exception of my present room. So when I think of it, there’s the walk from school home, which I would undertake just to read this. There’s standing outside 215 lister and reading just one more page before getting on with something more important (?) there’s the 7-hour conversation I had with sapru, standing at his doorway (the one with the quote from dante on it?) about this and other things… i now wonder why I never thought of sitting… there’s jyothi’s cupboard, and her name on the front cover of the copy I lost. L.
3. The end of the affair. The bus ride back from Hyderabad, and migraine. I think I bought this book just for the way its jacket felt under my hand—it was one of those new ones with a matt finish that was all greys and browns. At a bookshop in jubilee hills which was much posher than anything else I’d ever been to till then. Also, the time I re-read it recently, lying on the top berth of the garib rath to ranchi, and the brown and cream walls of the carriage.
4. The earthsea books… oddly I can’t remember anything about reading a wizard… but I was so taken with it that I spent four hours typesetting an ebook of books 3,4, and 5 and printing it out—in size 10, two pages to one sheet of paper. So what I remember about earthsea then is that place, the dingy curtains and the printer in one corner. Also inextricably intertwined is our first experience with torrent downloads, and bizarrely enough, that snl episode where chris walken is shouting for moah cowbell. J.
5. Cloud atlas. Another book I read on the go, mostly, walking past vana vani trying to get to jyothi’s quarters. Also old monk rum, somehow. And morning raga music. I think I might be conflating multiple trips, tho: my copy lived for a while at my sister’s place, and it used to be on bookshelf where this morning raga cd was always there.
There, I feel much better now. J.
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