RANDOM THOUGHTS - 2

I remember, that time when I was out in the rain with not a stitch of clothing on me, dancing to the rhythmic patter of those million drops. Mother caught me in the act and spanked me. I was only five years old then. I was dried, wrapped up in a blanket and made to sit in front of the fire, lest I catch cold and fall ill. Mother later said that it was God's grace, that I did not fall sick.

But Mother what about all those children playing on the street, they live on pavements and always get wet in the rain. Don't they ever catch cold?

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Andre Gide in his book " Fruits of the Earth " writes -

"I am afraid that every desire , every energy I have not satisfied in life may survive to torment me.I hope that after I have expressedon this earth all that was in me waiting to be expressed - I hope I may die satisfied and utterly hopeless."

Gide wrote Fruits of the Earth in 1897 while suffering from tuberculosis. Gide says "I will teach you fervour". The book is a hymn to the pleasures of life that Gide came so near to losing. He has had a profound impact on later writers like Albert Camus. Camus says about Gide " Certain men find, in their reflections, the secret of a serenitywhich is neither miserly nor facile. Gide's secret lies in the factthat never, in the midst of his doubts, did he lose the pride of being a man. I read the whole of Gide's work, and received, from Les Nourritures terrestres ( Fruits of the Earth ), in my turn, the upheaval of my whole being that has so often been described. But I received that on my second encounter, as can be seen, perhaps because when I read for the first time I was a young barbarian, but also because this revolution could not be, as far as I was concerned, in anyway concerned with the senses. The shock was decisive in quite a different way. I learned to read it as the gospel of self deprivation that I needed."

But why Gide? thats because " Fruits of the Earth", has had a similar a similar impact on me, this was long before I read Camus.

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."- André Gide