etcetera

I thought Shankar’s sis­ter was hot. She was the only girl in the neigh­bor­hood that had got­ten into med­ical school, and ever since Rex told me about the things (he thought) Med­ical stu­dents did, I had the hots for them. The only prob­lem was that Shankar hap­pened to be my friend, so I had to watch it. Plus she was a good ten years older than me, so yeah, I really had to watch it. That didn’t stop me from try­ing to talk to her as much as I could, and brag­ging to my friends in school that I had a girl­friend. Of course, I didn’t tell them that I called her Akka — that was totally besides the point.

When­ever I went to Shankar’s place, she would be sit­ting on the sofa, or on their mot­tai madi , read­ing a Mills and Boone. She seemed to have an end­less sup­ply of the books.

It was my Hardy Boy’s phase, and I’d never come across M&B before. But, I had this vague notion that these were naughty books, rein­forced by the cov­ers that almost always had a pretty girl (and her cleav­age) hug­ging a shirt­less guy. To make sure my hypoth­e­sis was right, I went and asked an older friend. “Oh, they are sex books alright,” he assured me.

After this rev­e­la­tion, the object of my amorous atten­tions was no longer her, but the books. I resolved to read one of them, come what may. The next time Shankar and I were alone in his house, I asked him (rather rudely, in ret­ro­spect): “Hey, can we read one of those sex books that your sis­ter has?”

“Man, how did you know?”

I was taken aback by this unex­pected response, and mut­tered some­thing about a friend at school, but he was too excited to care about my response.

“It’s an awe­some book you know, it has pictures.”

“Pic­tures?” Damn, this was bet­ter than I thought. “And your dad doesn’t mind her read­ing them all the time?”

“No, why would he?”

As I was try­ing to fig­ure out what this meant, he went in and brought a book back. He flipped through the book pur­pose­fully, and as soon as he located what he wanted to, directed my atten­tion to it. He was point­ing to a pic­ture of a nude woman from his sister’s anatomy textbook.

PS : Check out this Guardian col­umn byZoe Williams, where she talks about Mills and Boon launch­ing a new line that will “tackle the harder edges of life — can­cer, divorce, dif­fi­cult chil­dren, the whole raft of dis­sat­is­fac­tion and weltschmertz that might beset the mod­ern female as she lights some can­dles, sinks into a bath and, er, does those things that ladies do.” I did, and it trig­gered some memories.

A group of sailors — tal­ented mav­er­icks — set out to sea on a war­ship. Amer­i­cans, World War I if my mem­ory serves me right. They get near the Bermuda tri­an­gle and mys­te­ri­ous things start to hap­pen. An eerie light comes out of nowhere — and the ship sinks. One can­not be too sure though — the captain’s log for the day is cryp­tic. But wait; there was a sur­vivor, a young man who can shed lit­tle light on what really hap­pened. Sev­eral years (forty? fifty?) later, the ship unsinks all by itself. A pass­ing ves­sel notices the bat­tered old ship on the sur­face of the ocean, and lets the Navy know. The Navy tows the ship back, and it sits idly in a ship­yard — until some­one has a bright idea. He wants to find out what hap­pened to the ship, and what bet­ter way than to recre­ate the voyage.

The Navy is con­vinced to give up the ship, and a crew is recruited. And sur­prise! The crew includes the sole sur­vivor. The ship gets a make over, and they set sail on the same route. Near Bermuda, same thing hap­pens — an eerie light, some weird noise, a long drawn out cli­max at the end of which the ship sinks. Again. But this crew was smarter — they had a lifeboat, and all of them sur­vive. Except one, that is. The sole sur­vivor of the first ship­wreck dies. The moral being, the ship unsunk itself to get the guy that man­aged to elude it the first time around.

A creepy tale that scared a young me. An uneasy, per­va­sive fear for a few weeks after. Close win­dows at night, sleep next to daddy. An anony­mous tale I want to read now and prove that old fears have been con­quered.
.….….….….….…..

Suresh Anna was Lak­shmi teacher’s son. She worked in the same school as my mom, and like my mom, got the suf­fix “teacher” appended to her name when­ever some­one wanted to refer to her. Our fam­i­lies knew each other quite well. Suresh Anna had a “busi­ness mind” (my mom claimed in pri­vate that his marks were not so good) and so after fin­ish­ing school, he did a quick course that taught him clin­i­cal lab­o­ra­tory tech­nol­ogy, and set up a lab in our neigh­bor­hood. His dad was friends with the local doc­tor, and once in a while the good doc­tor would direct some blood and urine the lab’s way and every­one was happy. Except Suresh Anna’s busi­ness mind, that is.

Not con­tent with a clin­i­cal lab, he wanted to expand. And given the extra room he had in front of the rented house that was his lab, he decided a lend­ing library would be a per­fect fit. Not an extra room per se, the patients waited there to have their blood drawn, but what sick fool would mind a few healthy peo­ple brows­ing a few shelves with a few books? Plus, it was really none of their business.

Blood together with Blood Line, sem­i­nal works inter­spersed with semen sam­ples. Yeah. Pen­guin Flyer’s was born thus — apos­tro­phe and all, and “Blood, Urine, Spu­tum tested here” gave way to “Pen­guin Flyer’s Lend­ing Library — Tamil, Eng­lish and Mag­a­zines.” The busi­ness mind did not care that tech­ni­cally speak­ing, Mag­a­zines was not a language.

Used books were bought, mom’s old books — home bound ver­sions of seri­al­ized Tamil works — were brought, mag­a­zines were sub­scribed to, and the Pen­guin was fly­ing. Fly­ing, but not very high. Cheap books were needed. Busi­ness mind started think­ing hard, and it came up with an answer that had been right in front of its nose all along. Ask mom to ask teacher friends for books. For­get cheap books, these were free books. So my teacher mom got asked, and the ques­tion bounced off her and landed on me, with a rec­om­men­da­tion attached — “Paavam, he is try­ing to make a liv­ing, why don’t you give him some of your brother’s books, they are sit­ting on the attic gath­er­ing dust.” My response about dust being a supe­rior alter­na­tive to germs was ignored, and sev­eral con­ver­sa­tions were held out (but not too far out) of earshot about some­one climb­ing the attic the fol­low­ing week­end and bring­ing down the books.

Come Sun­day, Suresh came by the house, and I learnt that I was the des­ig­nated climber. I got on the attic using a makeshift lad­der con­structed from two stacked din­ing chairs held in place by my dad and started gath­er­ing the books from boxes, and throw­ing them down (“gen­tly, gen­tly”) one by one. Trea­sure Island and Huck­le­berry Finn, The Guns of Navarone, The Day of the Jackal, The Bourne Iden­tity, Sec­ond Lady, Pirates, pira­nhas — maybe about fifty books in all, dou­bling Pen­guin Flyer’s stocks in under 30 min­utes. Col­lected book by book by my brother, now slog­ging away at a bank in Ooty.

One more box left — with all of three books. In tat­ters, miss­ing front cov­ers, start­ing with a fer­vent plea about not buy­ing books with­out front cov­ers and depriv­ing authors of their right­ful dues. I climb down just in time to hear Suresh telling my mom that he didn’t want the three books in tat­ters. Gift horses, mouths — ring a bell? Turn­ing towards me, sens­ing hos­til­ity, he gen­er­ously offers free book rentals if I were to go to his place. Yeah, and rent my own books back right? I try to hint to him that he was being loaned the books. But he didn’t get it. Or didn’t want to. So he left, cart­ing away my books, leav­ing the tat­tered three behind.

Three torn, ter­mite eaten books — naked, vul­ner­a­ble and anony­mous. I read a few pages from the first one, and imme­di­ately rec­og­nize it — Tightrope men, Desmond Bagley’s taut thriller, now a lit­tle thin­ner, and not very anony­mous. The other two remained name­less though — no vain author’s name on top of every page to res­cue them from obscurity.

One bored day some­time in the future, I started read­ing one of them. Thick, small print, long hours. About Los Ange­les — the growth of the city traced through a two fam­i­lies that set­tle there. A feud between two broth­ers, a ten­der, del­i­cate young girl called Amelia, and the home they stayed in, Paloverde. Lots of romance, adul­tery, some sex, a nascent Los Ange­les serv­ing as a his­tor­i­cal back­drop, daugh­ters falling in love with sons of ene­mies, bitter-sweet end­ing, a pot­boiler. Fun. Curios­ity piqued, who wrote it. Finally unpiqued by Ama­zon — Jacque­line Briskin, and the book was Paloverde (duh!).

The third book remains anony­mous. No names in mem­ory, no key­words to jog Google. So I blog the plot. And cross my fingers.

How many books do I own?

A few hun­dred prob­a­bly. Over the last few years, I’ve been get­ting rid of my paper­backs and replac­ing them with hard­cov­ers, a habit that has con­vinced my dad, mom and wife that I am slightly off my rocker. (“Why would you buy the same books again and again?” my dad asked me when he vis­ited us, as my mom vig­or­ously nod­ded.) My prized pos­ses­sions include first edi­tions of the World Accord­ing to Garp, and a cou­ple of books from the Earth’s Chil­dren series. And a signed first edi­tion of Quick­Sil­ver, thanks to Manoj.

Last books bought

From Ama­zon: Seize the Day, a nice bound copy of Humboldt’s gift, Lolita, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

The Man who Knew Infin­ity was an impulse buy — we drove all the way to Miami to buy it — after a Sepia Mutiny com­ment that rec­om­mended it. Babyji too — I saw it at Barnes and Noble as a store employee rec­om­men­da­tion. That and an excerpt that had Anamika pro­claim­ing some­thing about col­laps­ing wave func­tions. No, the cover art had almost noth­ing to do with it.

And one called The Wis­dom of Crowds, by New Yorker colum­nist James Surowiecki. That was the _last_ book bought. I am not a big reader of non-fiction, but the premise was intrigu­ing (Why the Many are Smarter than the Few), and the first cou­ple of chap­ters were inter­est­ing. Per­haps my next post…

Last books read

Babyji, The Man Who Knew Infin­ity, The Wis­dom Of Crowds. A lit­tle bit of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Nor­rell. And Seize the Day.

Five Books that mean a lot to me

The World Accord­ing to Garp. quirky, witty and weird. For the unex­pected plea­sure it provided.

Crypto­nom­i­con — Neal Stephenson’s best work. Snow Crash and Dia­mond Age were cool, but this one is über cool. I can’t think of a book that was more fun than this. Stephenson’s irrev­er­ent prose, a com­plex plot, and large doses of irrel­e­vant detail that is nev­er­the­less inter­est­ing make for an amaz­ing read. I still chuckle when I think of the scene where Daniel Water­house goes to Lon­don, and every­one calls him Woe-To-Hice. (Say it out loud) He spends the bet­ter part of an impor­tant meet­ing try­ing to fig­ure out why they hate this dude called Hice so much.

A Con­fed­er­acy of Dunces. Not many books make you laugh so hard, and leave you a lit­tle sad at the end. Sad­der still when you know that the author com­mit­ted sui­cide because the book got rejected for publication.

Gravity’s Rain­bow Dense, Fre­netic, intri­cately plot­ted, filled with arcane ref­er­ences and insider jokes. Also hap­pens to be a clas­sic. I must’ve spent a month read­ing the book, and it was worth every minute.

Humboldt’s Gift. Bellow’s best book. ’nuff said.

Don Quixote. I approached it with a lit­tle bit of trep­i­da­tion, but it was thor­ougly enjoy­able. Clas­sics can be fun reads too.

Now the hard part, tag a few more peo­ple.… I got in late, so I have to try really hard.

Manoj. Updated.

Man­ish

Prashant

DoZ

More as I keep think­ing of names.

Thanks again to Navin and Sybil.