Stealth

I can say with some confidence that 3 months (almost) of inactivity have turned me into what i truly am: nocturnal. "Maggot Brain" by Funkadelic playing in the background. I may have admitted to detesting funk in the past; I have my inconsistencies.

I admit it. I furious at you, my readers. I have no right to be but everyone is entitled to his/ her share of misdirected anger. Do you know why i keep a counter on my blog? To appease the timid, attention-seeking, embarrassed chihuahua (Chi) in me. For the record, I hate chihuahuas. My Chi would be dejected but peaceful if there were no people reading it at all. I know there are lots of people reading my posts because I'm certain no one is so crazy about my blog or me to reload it a dozen times every day. Nah. no one is that crazy. I am not.

I'm staring into absolute darkness and i know many pairs of eyes are trained on me, watching, observing, recording, judging. I can't assign these eyes to faces or names. Hell, i can't see the eyes to begin with. This is what blogging is like occasionally. It irritates my Chi and consequently, me.

I was brought up in a small township. The people were not bad at all when it came to leaving others alone but it was awful as far as resources, supplies and exposure were concerned. We did have everything technology had to offer as years slid by. Born a Hindu, I stopped believing in active worship when i was 6 years old. At 12, I was an atheist. Only, i didn't see the point in being vocal about it, simply because my parents let me be me.

Books were with me. The colors, fonts and sizes changed with the stories they held in them. Just like the people i let be my friends for a while; always for a while. People never stick. Books always do because they don't talk. A lot like god, if you think about it. I learned about the world. All I could read and remember, I did. I also have turned out to be one who's driven by curiosity and wants to know at least a little about everything in the world and also wants to be good at many things. I don't know which fed what, which was the egg: books or curiosity. Today they both are fully-grown hens that will die the day I do.

Why all this bullshit today? I'm only telling you why I get irritated that i don't know who my readers are and also telling you how the reason came into being one.

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Ha! I didn't digress at all today. Amazing. Meanwhile, remember this: I'm addicted to lip balm. If I'm ever made to quit, I ll need to be put in a rehab center. Some place with lawns, books, music and handsome doctors.

books

I sincerely don't know why i'm doing this. Anyway, here it is nevertheless:

01 – Best book you read last year- Shantaram by Roberts

02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times - Wuthering Heights by Bronte

03 – Your favorite series- LOTR by Tolkien

04 – Favorite book of your favorite series- The Fellowship of the Ring

05 – A book that makes you happy - Happy?

06 – A book that makes you sad- The Winner Stands Alone by Coelho

07 – Most underrated author - If it's not so much as underrated as not having received the deserved attention, then i'd say Yann Martel

08 – Most overrated author - Dan Brown, Chetan Bhagat

09 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving - (Edited on Feb 21, 2012) - The God of Small Things by Roy.

10 – Favorite classic book - Great Expectations by Dickens

11 – A book you hated - Foucault's Pendulum by Eco

12 – A book you used to like but don’t anymore - The Alchemist by Coelho

13 – Your favorite writer - Tough question. Lately, Julian Barnes

14 – Favorite book of your favorite writer: ?

15 – Favorite male character: Ka in Snow by Pamuk

16 – Favorite female character- Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged by Rand

17 – Favorite quote from a book- “And those who were dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." - Friedrich Nietzsche

18 – A book that disappointed you - Sea of Poppies by Ghosh

19 – Favorite book turned into a movie - The Kite Runner by Hosseini

20 – Favorite romance book - Wuthering Heights. (I don't read romance at all, actually)

21 – Favorite book from your childhood - The Secret Seven by Blyton

22 – Favorite book you own - Most books I've read are my personal copies.

23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t - Gone with the Wind (I'm wary)

24 – A book that you wish more people would’ve read - Vertigo by Banker

25 – A character who you can relate to the most - ?

26 – A book that changed your opinion about something - I can't recall

27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending - Snow by Pamuk

28 – Favorite title - Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez

29 – A book everyone hated but you liked - Three Mistakes of My Life by Bhagat

30 – Your favorite book of all time - Wuthering Heights by Bronte

Life in Constant Motion

Reality either takes an eternity or an instant to manifest. It takes about 60 years of living for one to feel aging in all its glory. At 20, one's sure he/ she will only eventually get there. Fundamentally, death is always instant. Passing from living to dead takes an infinitesimally small period of time. The many or few days leading up to it produce an illusion of it being drawn out. Relatively, life is infinitely long. Enough Bullshit.

I have a bone to pick with every person who expects writers to pack ten lifetimes' worth incidents in a single novel. Thriller trilogies sometimes make me feel sorry for the writer for having subjected himself to writing a super-fast version of life not once but three times. Mystery is about the only genre of fiction that can enamor a child so as to make him read books for life. No kid wants to read what a man stuck in a snowed-down Turkish town has to say (Snow by Pamuk). However, some times people tend to fall more in love with the concept of thrill and mystery than with the written word. One cannot expect for a million things to happen in a book which has its focus on emotion or philosophy. In my opinion, it's about the same as expecting a car to fly off the stage and onto the audience in a theater showing a musical.

Anyone who's watched more than 2 episodes of an Indian soap opera will agree that life in these serials is super-slow. As if the dialogue delivery isn't slow and labored enough, lines that the director thinks are terribly important are repeated in a loop, much like an echo. Enough digression.

One should open a book with an open mind. Some people would prefer to witness quarter of a lifetime in it and some would prefer twenty-five.It's apples and oranges. Don't shun the apple because it's not a orange.