Families and family bags

Packing for a long trip is always stressful. Starting from indispensable parts of the wardrobe, extending to pure narcissistic indulgences, suitcases are stuffed like fat pigs. Add to that, a veritable library full of books, which titles like "simplified Physics" (the general theory is that, the more innocent looking the title, thicker the book). To aid in our efforts of 'organizing' the plethora of trousers, shirts, t-shirts, books, copies, two volumes of spiral-bound thesis, and other items of dubious usefulness, my mother decided to employ a bag of considerable vintage.

Dragging it out of whatever corner it had retreated to was difficult enough, but the moment it emerged from its hiding place, i was immediately reminded of a bag, which has been made famous through most Jack-the-Ripper movies. It was sinisterly similar to the bag carried by the good doctor who made a hobby of killing prostitutes.

Witnessing the bag being opened one would expect sharp instruments with crusted blood to spill out, accompanied by jars of preserved genitalia. Unfortunately, this did not happen and nothing more scary than a few spiders creeped out.

Every family has skeletons in its closets and lofts, back-stabbings, feuds and whatnot, my family appears to have cultivated a taste for conspiratorial looking bags. It is doubtful, that any of the members happened to have a fetish for ripped out organs, still one can hope.

I think the purpose of the family lies in the fact they provide u with excellent stories for conversation, my family appears to be excellent material for blog-posts, or at least their taste in bags is.

Two Books and a revelation

As convention would have it, to read a book is to read it as whole. To read it is to investigate its nitty-gritty details, to roll every word on the tip of your tongue and comprehend the meaning of every sentence of every paragraph of every page of every chapter. To read any good book like this is indeed an enjoyment. Yet, one cannot help but notice the lack of that simple thing which is often lacking in wondrous and utopic sentences such as the one above - common sense.

WE DO NOT HAVE THE TIME!!!

We often skip paragraphs with long pondering descriptions, dialogs of romantic balderdash and sometimes even pages worth of literary gibberish. This is true, and it is honestly, necessary to even finish any substantial book. considering the amount of time we spend in

official duties and the state of our mind thereafter, i would even say it is justified. as it is clear from my statements i do not object to people skipping parts of book to get to the end. (my mother commits that heinous crime of read in the end in the beginning, despicable!!!)

Now during the weekend i have come across two books which both support and negate my preconceptions as stated above.

Perhaps i should now introduce the two gentlebooks who are responsible for my revelation. One is the Modernist novel extraodinaire, the heavy weight of French literature, In Search of Lost Time, by the biggest sissy of all time Marcel Proust. The other, by the much-accoladed, nobel prize winning, Mario Vargas llosa (pronounced yosa, god why cant we all have proper names!!)

, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto.

A note: i do not possess any of the books yet. Of Proust, i have only two volumes and the Notebooks are too expensive for me.

Now, Proust's magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time, is a seven volume work of unquestionable quality. It is undoubtedly colossal and has earned titles like: 'Boring", "too long"., "too sissy" or even. "the quality of Proust's work is as questionable as the existence of extra-terrestrials"

I managed to buy one volume of this notorious book with my limited funds and started reading it. One thing i discovered was that you CANNOT skip even a single wor

d! To an advocate of skipping pages this was to say the least deeply infuriating. Still i persevered, the detail of each sentence was astounding, and i LOVED it! but i couldn't get it out of my head that i had managed to finish only one page in fifteen minutes, which is pretty frustrating if you are accustomed to finishing books in one sitting. But i must say, it was worth it.

The second book, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, attracted me because of its well, because of its 'uncensored' contents. I opened a page at random, and it made perfect sense, it is a novel, but it does not need to be read continuously, hence i went to three different book stores and read three different parts of the book and they were all independently beautiful pieces of literature. I am not aware of how they would read as a composite whole, but i am sure it is brilliant.

So, my last inference from my interaction with two great books, while most books can be read like dal-bhat (gulped down till you reach the end), some books needs and deserves more attention and delicate sampling,

It is unfortunate that the majority of intelligent people cannot find the time or desire to even turn the pages of these books. Must we always go for the Dal-bhat and forget the French wine???

The disappearance of a word

When i was much younger, and by 'much' i mean when i did not even know my first four letter word, (which is saying something), we had this exercise in English. We would be given a noun and we had to write down the counterpart masculine or feminine noun of the supplied word. I was, to say the least, VERY good at it. One of the words in the countless lists was "poet". Unsurprisingly enough, my friends, who even with their limited intelligence, were able to answer it correctly as 'poetess'. Imagine my surprise when an acquaintance of mine who occasionally happened to write poems of doubtful virtue (her virtue being even more doubtable) declared herself to be a 'poet'. I with the pomposity of a respectable guardian of the English language, went up to her and told her in the politest possible terms that she must mean poetess. She gave me a scornful glare and proceeded with obscene accuracy to deflate my ego and informed me that poetess was sexist and no longer used. I, with my ego duly punctured, dragged my sexist behind away.

Indeed, the absence of the word poetess has bothered me since. Granted the English tongue is evolving at an exponential rate, granted that words like 'bloody' and 'damn' have been elevated from being vulgar to merely informal, granted that Indlish has no space for archaic 'sexism'. But must we do away with beautiful and elegant polysyllabic words? Communicativeness is all very fine, but there is something about the way long words roll off the tip of your tongue which gives you a passing and albeit very temporary satisfaction. Just because some plebeian cretins who are vocabularily challenged cannot keep up with those who are blessed with a better grasp of the language (i do not count myself among them), does not mean that the world needs to become linguistically barbaric!

And i do not call the word 'poetess' sexist, i call it a great salute, a perpetual testament to women who compose verses. Think of the poor creatures who do not have any feminine terms, antelopes, cheetahs, hyenas, none of these blessed creatures of our creator has a female counterpart. and here are the poetesses of today, sorry the women poets of today scorning such an honor! I mean don't get me wrong, I love a poet as much as the next person, but a poetess is always so much more welcome.......;)

[the image is of Sylvia Plath]