PART 2 - THE DREAM OF A DISTURBED MAN – with due apologies to the makers of the film 'PK' and to Dostoevsky and his ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’

PART 2 - THE DREAM OF A DISTURBED MAN – with due apologies to Dostoevsky and his ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’

I stared at DY for some time, “You mean you do not have the means of returning back to your planet?” I asked in exasperation, now convinced that I was stuck up with him and wondering how I could shake him off and get away as quickly as possible from the place.

It was as if he had read my mind, he said “Oh don’t worry, I am not that dumb. You see when PK brought the idea of clothing ourselves he had not anticipated that we could, apart from covering our nakedness, hide many other things as well.” So saying he dug into the pockets of his trousers and took out what resembled a mobile phone and said “I hid this when I was put on that vehicle to transport me here.”

“So how is it going to help you” I asked.

He handed it to me so that I could have a closer look. It was black in color and as smooth as a pebble and of a size that would fit smugly in the palm of your hand. Except for a small round display screen which could accommodate just a finger, the rest of the object was opaque.

He said “It is called a Communicator in our planet. One has to just place his finger and think of the person you want to communicate with and you are connected.”

“But how do you talk to him? I cannot see anything that resembles a microphone or a speaker. Something like this” I said pulling out my mobile phone and showed it to him. He took it in his hands, examined it and returned it to me with a condescending smile.

“You guys are way behind by a thousand years. I told you that in our planet we do not have a language. It was only PK who brought it back with him from your planet and in the process set us back by a thousand years. You see I do not need to speak to communicate, I just need to place my finger on this small display screen and think of the person I want to communicate with and I will be connected. He would be able to read my thoughts and vice versa. You must be aware that thought travels faster than the speed of light, very many times in fact.”

“So how is this going to help you get back? You said you have been banished” I asked him, over emphasizing on ‘how’ in my eagerness to be assured that I would not be stuck up with him permanently.

He however caught on and replied “Oh don’t worry I will be going back as soon as I achieve my objective. You see, in a sense I allowed myself to be banished so that I may come over here and study how you earthlings shift allegiances – from one God to another. I am part of a rebel group, in fact their leader, who are dissatisfied with the rise of PK and the resultant confusion he has brought into the lives of the people our planet. You know this communicator is highly personalized and can respond only to the finger prints of the owner. It’s useless in another’s hand. I shall be transmitting whatever I gather to my group members over there.”

As I sat there wondering what his next move would be, he asked “Where can I get some carrots, please? I am feeling hungry.”

“Why carrots, you can have something else if you are hungry.

“You don’t understand, ever since PK brought back those sacks of carrots with him, it has become the staple food on our planet. You can find carrot farms all over the place and people munching carrots everywhere. It has become an addiction. Now the only things that have been growing are carrots and people’s ears. As it is, we as a race have long pointed ears, but now there is the danger of us becoming rabbits.”

“Look here, if you are really that hungry I can get you something to eat from a roadside food stall on the way for that is the only one which will be open at this hour” I said, making it obvious that I did not intend taking him home and feeding him.

But then what I feared happened, he asked me “Can I stay with you for the night, I am new here and you cannot expect me to sleep on the beach, please?”

Now I knew I was truly done for. Being of a tender disposition I could not bring myself to refuse. Luckily my wife was away visiting our daughter and so I with great reluctance said “Ok, but just for this night only.”

“Don’t worry, I will be able to find my bearings tomorrow and will leave.”

It was nearly eleven at night when we reached my place. On the way I had bought him a plate of bread and omlette for that was the only thing available, which he ate with relish. He walked alongside till we reached my house; all the while silent and trudging along in that stiff gait like PK, which I presumed to be a particular trait of all the inhabitants of their planet. Luckily there were not many people around and the few we came across did look back, at I presume what they thought was an odd couple.

As soon as we reached and I had opened the door, I could hear the ringing of the landline phone. It was my wife and from her voice I could guess that she was pretty upset. She literally shouted on the phone “Where the hell have you been and why have you switched of your mobile? I have been trying to get through to you for the last one hour. You got us all worried over here, in fact we were planning to ring up our neighbor and check out what’s happened.”

I realized that when I had handed over my mobile to DY, he had inadvertently switched it off. It took me some time for me to calm my wife and then related to her the happenings of the night.

“What, you brought a nude man back home?” she roared.

“No, no, he came fully dressed, not like PK. You see PK had already taught them to dress up properly. Don’t worry it’s just a matter of one night. He will be gone tomorrow.” I said trying to calm her.

“Well he better be gone. I am returning home tomorrow and I don’t want him over there when I come back. My God! An alien in my house, that’s the last straw.” She banged the phone down.

I turned back and saw DY looking at me with an impish smile “Women” he said “they are the same everywhere”

TO BE CONTINUED

THE DREAM OF A DISTURBED MAN – with due apologies to Dostoevsky and his ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’

THE DREAM OF A DISTURBED MAN – with due apologies to Dostoevsky and his ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’

PART 1

With due apologies to the makers of the movie ‘PK’ and to one of the great short stories of Dostoevsky – ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’

Last night I went for a walk along the seashore. It was late and there were very few people around, in fact you could say it was desolate. Why I chose such an hour for a walk is beyond my comprehension, it was just an impulsive action. But anyway I do concede that it was perhaps my disturbed state of mind which was responsible. Why disturbed, you may ask. Well ever since I saw that movie ‘PK’ three days ago I have had recurring dreams of flying away to a distant planet and not knowing how to return back home and to top it all I was all naked (in the dream of course, in case you start to let your imagination run wild). I would suddenly wake up and find that I was safe and sound in my own bed, with my clothes on. I did switch on the light and examined myself in front of the mirror to ensure that my ears were of the normal shape and my eyes were my very own dark brown eyes.

I sat on a bench under one of those neon lights, looking across at the vast sheet of water rising and falling and the silver streaks of reflection of the moon above dancing to their rhythm, when I saw a bright object travelling at great speed across the sky in the distance. For a moment I thought that it was a plane, but it was too big and too fast to be one. I decided that it could be a meteorite, but then it seemed to halt in its path and slowly started its descent. It landed a hundred meters away from me on the sand. The object was a huge ball about fifty meters in diameter. As I watched partly in fright and partly in wonder, a door opened near the underbelly of the object and a figure slowly descended from a ladder. As soon as the figure touched the sand the ladder was pulled up and the door closed. the object then rose up slowly, the same way it had landed and the next instant there was only this flash of light and the only sound that emanated was ‘whoosh’ and it had vanished.

As I stared at the figure, it moved towards where I was sitting. Initially when it was in the shadows, I could make out only the dark outline of something which resembled a human being but with a predominantly large and pointed ears very much ‘Spocklike’ (in case you wonder – Spock of Star Wars fame). It was only when it came and stood in front of me under the light did I immediately recognize it. “My Gosh!” I said to myself, “that’s PK”. I continued to stare at him, dumbfounded. I was confused for this guy was fully clothed, in fact as colorfully dressed as PK was when he decided to return. “Thank God, for that” I said to myself “Can’t imagine finding oneself on the seashore late at night with a naked man. Ugh!”

“Hello” he said “is this China?”

“No, this is Chennai” I replied “May I ask, who you are?”

“S—t, these guys back in control room again got their spellings and co-ordinates mixed up. Well you asked my name? You can call me Dostfromsky. You know very well, that is if you had met PK, back in our planet we do not have names.”

“What sort of name is that and how did you suddenly decide on it?” I asked.

“Well when PK came back he brought a few things he had picked up from you guys here – language, dress and how to lie. So you see I know your languages as well. Dost means friend, isn’t it, in Hindi? The rest is English I guess. So you get it –‘Friend from the Sky’. Well what’s your name?”

“Can I just call you DY that would be easier? You may call me GS that would be better.”

“What’s your full name, I guess it would have a meaning.”

“I don’t know, but it would be a long story so forget it” I replied.

“Don’t worry, just let me hold your hand that would be enough.” So saying, he grabbed my hand as in a handshake and for a minute I felt a current passing through my whole body.

“I got it” he said “but you also speak a strange language.”

For a moment I was uneasy wondering what dark secrets he had unearthed.

“It’s not a strange language. It is Tamil one of the many national languages of this vast country and perhaps the oldest. This is the language of Chennai, so you better not call it strange. Your PK never bothered to come down south here (except perhaps through the movie screens). If you ask me your PK returned to your planet with insufficient knowledge. The whole time he spent here searching for his remote control to return back home he went around exposing Babas prancing around with babes, while he ultimately left covering himself. If you don’t call that hypocrisy, then what is? There is more to this planet than all the ‘B’s.”

DY was silent for some time and then he started speaking “In a sense I empathize with you. Why do you think I have come down here? The return of PK has unleashed chaos on our planet. He came back fully clothed hiding his nakedness, he said. You know till he came back we never felt that we have to be ashamed of our bodies. He taught us to hide behind clothes and our emotions behind lies. He taught us that it is necessary to have a language to communicate. This has only led to misinterpretations and misunderstandings among the populace who now have started fighting among themselves for petty things. When he first returned he said how on this planet of yours people created Gods whom they worshipped not understanding that it was the other way around. He talked about the gullibility, stupidity and the exploitation that is rampant on your planet and that you worshipped idols as Gods and called it religion.”

“So what happened afterwards in your planet?”

“Well in course of time the people looked up to PK as a messiah. You can find his pictures and idols at various places and in short PK is now God.”

“Then how come you landed up here?” I asked.

“See, I was one of the doubters and so I have been banished and sent away from there and the worst place PK thought would be here. I have been sent here without a remote control so that I cannot return.”  

(TO BE CONTINUED)

MEMORIES WERE MADE OF THESE

 MEMORIES WERE MADE OF THESE

Today I decided that I would dump all my old belongings, of course it was my wife who took the decision. The decision did not include dumping each other and so you see we are still together. Well you may ask – why such a drastic decision? The truth is that we were hemmed in on all sides and it was becoming difficult to breathe. You may again ask why now and so suddenly? I have an answer to that also – the New Year was around the corner and that is when everyone resolves to make new resolutions. So what happens to all the resolutions you made the end of the previous year for this present year? Well dump them for you have no options left now as the time has run out.

We live in a small flat but sometimes the thought crosses my mind that we should have gone for a bigger one instead at the time when the prices were low. What’s the point cribbing about it now! Then, I had just enough money after taking a loan from the bank and some personal savings to buy the place where we now stay. When I had some more money the prices had also gone up making it impossible for me to think otherwise. But whenever someone asks me this question, I just say that the value of my house has appreciated more than thirty times in the last two and a half decades and proceed to point out that it was the only wise investment that I had made in my life (apart from my wife of course). What was once a deserted suburb has now become a hub of commercial activity and though I like calmer climes I have no choice, for even if I decide to sell this flat and more over to farther suburbs where it is possible to get the ‘quiet’ and a bigger place to stay (that sometimes crosses my mind), it wouldn’t be worth it for we are growing old and need to stay where we are closer to what we are used to. So you see I cannot dump my house. It stays along with my wife.

So you will ask me once again – why all this prattle, what did you ultimately decide to dump? That’s fair I guess because I started it all. Today my wife came to me when I was busy looking at my music collection – she said “Do you know there is a website called kuppathoti.com (literally translated in English as garbagebin.com)? They are ready to take whatever junk you have and you get paid for it. Why don’t you just check it up?”

As always when I am shaken out of my reverie it would take a few minutes for me to become conscious of my surroundings. The full import of what my wife had just said slowly descended into my consciousness. Strewn before me were the two hundred and odd music cassettes, a collection dating back three decades. My wife’s voice once again boomed – “So when was the last time you listened to any of them? I am sure that if you try to play them on that cassette player we have, you will hear only scraping sounds. Don’t you feel that we don’t need them anymore and can dump them along with the cassette player? After all you have told me that now you can download any music you want and store them on a pen drive or on the Ipod. It would save me a lot of bother dusting and storing the cassettes when I know they are not going to be used anymore.”

My wife is a sensible person and practical to the core. She of course never mentioned my huge stack of books or my LPs for she knew that was a touchy subject. Another consideration could have been that they were not as perishable as music cassettes and could always be considered as collector’s item.

I went back in time to a period when as a young man much into music and a newly found economic freedom (the aftermath of the first job) went about acquiring the things that I always wanted to have – a motor cycle, a stereo system, music LPs and ultimately a wife; for all practical purposes it was in that order. The others have been dumped while the last one endures.

I remember when back in school, I made my mother sit one day and tighten all my pants as with the advent of the Beatles and the aftermath of Elvis and Cliff Richards the drainpipes were the in thing. Of course we had our own desi James Bond, Jeetendra prancing and romancing his lady interest round and round every goddam tree in the vicinity in his skin tight pants in the movie Farz – the villains could never take the pants off him. I grew my hair long and believe me when I say it, for that is one thing that I have shed over the years and reached a stage where no change in hairstyle fashion would affect me. I remember my schoolmates especially my Anglo Indian friends who would spend considerable time styling their hair the Cliff Richard way – comb all the hair (properly oiled so that they stay in place) back over the head and then with a flick of the comb pull the front portion and make it dangle over their forehead; after all Cliff was an Anglo born in India. My head is now absolute and can never become obsolete. But came another period when the drainpipes gave way to bell bottoms. That was more difficult for you could never convert your drainpipes to bell bottoms, you had to stitch new pants and that cost. Well you had no choice but to fall in with the crowd. In the wedding reception photograph I can be seen fully suited with bell bottomed pants. The more it waved in the wind the more you were with the Joneses. After all it was Amitabh Bachhan who really set the trend with his long legs, the bell bottoms really swayed along with the audience every time he delivered a dialogue or kicked the villain. But I have a sneaky feeling that the bell bottoms were invented to cover long and skinny legs. Imagine a short guy wearing them, there will be no bottom only a bell. The coat, I never wore after that. Years later whenever there was a chill in the air my wife would dig it out for me to wear. I did wear it but never ventured out. This went on till I developed broader shoulders and some muscular structure (believe me once again when I say this). The only way I could insert my hands inside the sleeves was the back in front position. The wedding suit was preserved till the time our marriage was confirmed strong enough to dump it. Oops! The suit I mean. The moral of the story is that we dump our clothes ever so often to keep in tune with the changes in our perception of how we should present ourselves to the discerning eyes of the beholder. Again I have to clarify that this does not include all the times we dump our clothes when we go to the loo or to have a bath or to bed (Oops! There I go again. Pardon me). Well to cut the story about my clothes short, my wife said to me “your cupboard is stacked with clothes you don’t wear at all. You need only jeans T-shirts and Kurtas nowadays and of course shorts when you are at home. Why do you still keep all those branded full sleeve shirts and ties, the remnants of your working days? You are never going to be called for an interview or given a job any more. In fact you do not need anything more than shorts since you are mostly at home sitting in front of your latest paramour (She has a point when she says - why should we call a laptop a laptop when now there is so much written about the hazards of keeping it on your lap”. Of course I never replied, keeping what I wanted to say to myself – anything on a lap is hazardous – Oops! ---). Well ultimately I decided to abide by what has been said by Gita (hey I meant the Bhagavad Gita) – shed all attachments and proceed on towards realizing the self. I took the first step today, I cleaned out my cupboard – two thirds of it, and my wife was happy. She did not give up “Well tomorrow ring up Udhavum Karangal – Helping Hands and ask them to pick it up. We can at least finish the year with a good deed and start the next on a clean slate”. Tomorrow I shall say ‘The deed is done’.

I joined the club of smart people a few days ago. Don’t get the idea that I was a dumb ass all along and somehow enlightenment dawned on me and I became smart. I was along happy leading the unsmart life till now. It was simple and there were no additional demands on my slowly deteriorating mental faculties. Well, all that changed when my daughter bought me a new mobile phone after severely reprimanding me for clinging on to my antique mobile which had been with me for nearly six years, served me well, survived many a fall and fitted into my pockets smugly without any evident protuberances. “It’s time you got out of being an antique yourself. This is called a smart phone and it will help you keep upto date with what is happening around even when you are on the move”.

“You mean to say that I shall become smart if I have this? I think I have been smart enough till now and that will do”.

Well, what can one say about daughters! They always have their way in the end. So now I have a smart phone and I have been receiving complaints from my friends asking me as to why I keep cutting off their calls – you see I realized later that I have been swiping the wrong way. Well in the end I have now dumped my old mobile. But I did not throw it away. It has gone into that pile of other things I have been accumulating over the years – older mobiles, old cameras, watches, spectacles and pens. Well they stay for now. The day for dumping them may not be far off.

So now can you guess why I titled this ‘Memories were made of these’ and not ‘are’ made of these? These things have been dumped and so have your memories along with them. And then one day it shall happen – You get dumped.

REBECCA

REBECCA

It was sometime in Aug 1975 nearly four decades ago when I visited the Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad and for the first time gazed at the statue of Rebecca I was awestruck by the sheer beauty of the marble sculpture and penned down a few lines of verse. That’s all I could do for I did not have a camera. When I look back and read what I had written I realize that it was an outcome of the impulsive romantic that I was at that time. I still enjoy reading it and relive that phase of my life. Now in December 2014 nearly four decades later when I went there again, I spent time standing there staring at the statue, but now I did not need words for I had a camera and so I captured what I saw. I was no longer the romantic who bid adieu with a heavy heart but someone who had realized that ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’  

Rebecca

Rebecca! Rebecca! I cry,

To her the veiled splendour,

My thoughts now fly.

There she stands clad in white,

Her beauty sheds a divine light.

Ah! There she smiles,

I can see through her veil,

In my heart an ache I feel.

Rebecca! Rebecca! Can’t you see,

For your love I long to be;

Your beauty so possesses me,

That now no longer am I free.

In this bondage I revel,

As I rest in this love’s cell,

And when softly I call your name,

You come to me,

To feed my flame.

Rebecca! Rebecca! I am aware,

For my love you may not care,

But this intense fervour of mine,

Shall speak of your face divine,

Your smiling lips, the caressing veil,

Your gentle feel,

Your silent grace.

Rebecca! Rebecca! I have come

Your true love to become,

But your smile I do not see,

And your stare is not at me.

My presence you do not feel,

Your vision thwarted by the veil.

Rebecca! Rebecca! Now I stand,

Love forlorn in front of you,

I make my way to distant land,

With a heavy heart I bid adieu.

BOOK REVIEW – THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY PART 1

BOOK REVIEW – THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

PART 1

In the introduction to his translation of ‘The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky’ David Magarshack observes that it is in Dostoevsky’s smaller works that we find the highest expression of his creative power and profundity of thought. The selection of stories in this book include –

White Nights

The Honest Thief

The Christmas Tree and a Wedding

The Peasant Marey

Notes from the Underground

A Gentle Creature

The Dream of A Ridiculous Man.

My reading of Dostoevsky so far had been limited to his three major novels –

Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot and the shorter novellas The Possessed and Notes from the Underground (included above in the short stories)

These stories are so distinct and still so interconnected that the full force of Dostoevsky’s thought processes so elaborated in his more famous longer novels are brought out here with such impact that I thought that to do justice to this collection of the best short stories it would be necessary to review each story individually and as such I thought I should do it over a series of posts on this blog.

WHITE NIGHTS – A sentimental love story – From the memoirs of a dreamer

And was it his destined part

Only one moment in his life

To be close to your heart …..    – Ivan Turgenev

White Nights is a story spread over four nights about a lonely man (the narrator) and his unrequited love for a young woman whom he befriends one night while she is waiting for the return of her lover to be reunited with him. This is a simple story and in fact was adapted as the underlying theme for the Hindi Film ‘Saawariya’ by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Dostoevsky’s story however delves deep into the psyche of the lonely man – a man who had shut himself off from human relationships and seemed to be more at ease with the inanimate objects around him; a man who had withdrawn himself into a shelf of self-pity and deprecation. Like most of Dostoevsky’s novels the story is told in first person by a nameless narrator –

“When I woke up in the morning I felt strangely depressed, a feeling I could not shake for the better part of the day. All of a sudden it seemed to me as though I, the solitary one, had been forsaken by the whole world, and the whole world would have nothing to do with me.”

He feels more comfortable walking the streets of St. Petersburg at night for during the day though he was never in the habit of interacting with anyone he used to connect emotionally with the faces he encountered and felt uneasy when they were absent or he came across new faces. At night he felt alone and happy and was surrounded always by the things he knew, the houses as he walked down the streets. They seemed to talk to him. He says –

“The houses too are familiar to me. When I walk along the street, each of them seems to run before me, gazing at me out of all its windows and practically saying to me, “Good morning, sir! How are you? I’m very well, thank you. They are going to add another storey to me in May”; or, how do you do, sir? I’m going to be repaired tomorrow”. And so on. He says some of them are great favourites of his and good friends.

White Nights is to a large extent considered autobiographical of a young Dostoevsky’s personal impressions during his own nocturnal wanderings in Petersburg.  

As they exchange their stories the protagonist finds himself falling in love with the young woman Nastenka. A lonely man at last finds there is someone actually real who has evoked this feeling of being wanted, for all the while he has been inside his self-imposed cocoon of solitude. His feelings are very clear when he says – “I know you’ll hardly believe me, but I’ve never spoken to any woman, never! Never known one either! I only dream that someday I shall meet someone at last. Oh, if only you knew how many times I’ve fallen in love like that!”

While Nastenka does develop feelings for him she never does acknowledge that she loves him and at the end on the fourth night when the young man whom she had been in love, and for whom she was waiting, does appear she goes away with him after giving our protagonist a letter where she states she will always love him as a dear friend.

The narrator ends by saying “Good Lord, only a moment of bliss? Isn’t such a moment sufficient for the whole of a man’s life?”

But perhaps the most telling passage in the story and which brings forth the angst of existence and by which I can surmise that therein lies the foundation of the whole of Dostoevsky’s philosophy and a forerunner of Existentialism is when he tells Nastenska –

“And you ask yourself - where are your dreams? And you shake your head and murmur; how quickly time flies! And you ask yourself again – what have you done with your time, where have you buried the best years of your life? Have you lived your life or not? Look, you say to yourself, look how everything in the world is growing cold. Some more year will pass, and they will be followed by cheerless solitude, and then will come tottering old age, with its crutch, and after it despair desperation. Your fantastic world will fade away, your dreams will wilt and die, scattering like yellow leaves from the trees. Oh, Nastenka, what can be more heartbreaking than to be left alone, all alone, and have nothing, absolutely nothing, because all you’ve lost was nothing, nothing but a silly round zero, nothing but an empty dream!”

(Book Review – to be continued)

THE BOOK SELLER

THE BOOK SELLER

I paused before I rang again and waited patiently outside the apartment. It took a good two minutes before the door slowly opened; obviously the person behind was being cautious not wanting to be surprised by an unwelcome guest. Of course the danger of any intruder barging in was out of the question as she stood safe behind a grilled door, an additional reinforcement to keep away pests of a different kind. The look she gave me made me feel that I did belong to the second variety. The opened door did allow the aroma of ‘Sambhar rice’ reach my nostrils and for a moment I forgot the purpose for which I had come; the blistering sun outside, my aching limbs and the rumblings in my stomach had already made me groggy.

The lady of the house, she had to be that for she stared at me with such authority and with a trace of contempt while wiping her hands on a towel slung over her shoulder.

“Yes, who are you and what do you want?” She asked.

“Madam, if you can spare me two minutes of your time I will be grateful” I replied.

“Well man you have already interrupted me in the middle of my cooking. Are you a salesman? If it is Maggie noodles since you want just two minutes of my time, I am not interested. No one in this house likes them anyway.”

“Madam, I am sorry you misunderstood me. I am not a salesman and I do not sell noodles. I am here to talk about a book” I said trying to sound important,

“Oh books! Please I am not interested in any of your encyclopaedias or children books. You see our children have grown up and moved away and only I and my husband live here. We have no need for books”.

“I think this book would interest you and your husband, just have a look at it” I persisted thrusting a copy of my book through the grilled door.  

She looked at the cover without reaching for the book and for a moment looked surprised. “That’s you on the cover. You wrote the book?”

“Yes Madam, I am the author. The book talks about the life of an ordinary man, his dreams, beliefs, aspirations and the transformations that take place in his life during the process of aging. I think your husband will definitely like the book.”

“So you are here to sell me your book, isn’t that your main intention?” she asked.

“In a way yes” I said sheepishly.

“So you are a Salesman after all, you sell books” she said with a smile.

“Yes Madam, by that definition I am a Bookseller. Why don’t you ask your husband to browse through it? I shall leave a copy with you and come back tomorrow. You can buy if you like the book.”

She took the book in her hand and flipped through the pages and in the end said “I am just an ordinary man? What a funny name for a book. I don’t think that we need this book. Ordinary eh! My husband is already that – Ordinary.”

With that she handed back the book to me through the grilled door.

When I got my book published I never thought that I would at last have to resort to climbing stairs, knocking on doors to be met with cold stares, scour the streets in search of gullible victims, learn to take ‘no’ for an answer and ultimately come back with my inventory more or less intact. May be I misunderstood my friend when he said that I needed to raise the sales pitch, I started climbing stairs.

Ever since I started blogging I found that I have turned into some sort of Nostradamus while trying to understand the travails of aspiring authors. In the process all that I had written about the number of likes far exceeding the number of books has come to pass. The initial euphoria accompanying the announcement of the launch of my debut novel has at last waned and all the congratulations and best wishes have now been confined to the recesses my Facebook store.

But it has been an awakening of sorts. The author cannot expect that everyone he knows be it a friend or a relation would ultimately purchase the book, though every one of them in their heart of hearts is genuinely happy for you. The author is in a hurry and the reader is not for he has his own affairs to attend to. I do not exclude myself for though an author, I am also a reader.

But one thing is sure that the writer who is in the process of testing the waters is an Author, Publisher and above all a Bookseller and believe me that the last role is proving to be most difficult.

B00K REVIEW – ‘Do Not Take This World Seriously’ By Kishore R. Kulkarni

B00K REVIEW – ‘Do Not Take This World Seriously’

By Kishore R. Kulkarni

Spirituality is serious stuff and that is what this whole book is about. In the author’s own words he says “I have presented my understanding of spirituality from an ordinary seeker’s perspective. It is not a scholarly treatise. It simply presents the “musings” of a spiritual seeker based on the classical Indian spiritual thinking as epitomised in Shrimad Bhagawad Geeta.” Yes, it is the author’s own understanding and interpretation of The Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures that is spread over twenty chapters, seeking to convey to the reader the essence of Hindu Philosophy through a process of dialogue and introspection. In the prologue itself the author sets the pattern when he says “my idea is not to convince any reader by means of this book to take up spirituality. It is simply a sharing that may have a role to play in some people’s lives, if the divine scheme has it that way.”

Some time back I read Richard Dawkins book ‘The God delusion’ where the entire book is based on the author’s contention that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. Kulkarni asserts that “I strongly believe that there is a divine plan behind this creation, and certainly behind someone getting on to the spiritual path.”

Born into a conservative Brahmin family, it was but natural that Kulkarni imbibed the theistic values of his surroundings grew up as God fearing individual up to his early youth. There were two transformation moments in his life – one in the author’s own words “I may concede that by virtue of my education and profession, I must have changed significantly from a god fearing child and teenager to a “rational intellectual adult”, such as they come in the modern times! So, I never thought I would ever become a serious spiritual seeker” and the second was when he met his spiritual guru when on a trip to Singapore, again in his own words “Those couple of hours somehow left a deep impression on me. Not that she revealed any great fundamental truths or put forth any “convincing” arguments in favour of spiritual pursuit. But something happened to me all the same through that session. Since then, I engaged myself in a little bit of meditation and gradually got more and more interested in spiritual pursuit.” Though he says that he is an ordinary seeker, it is evident that he has engaged himself in a serious study of the Hindu scriptures.

The interesting part however is that the book will indeed appeal to the ordinary seeker as it is for most part in the form of a conversation, a question and answer session between the author and the reader with the author’s own narration and interpretations thrown in to amplify the concept with examples from our own lives thrown in. The twenty chapters cover the entire gamut of questions from the creation of the world, the Creator to the question of ‘Who am I’, of desires and detachment, freewill, destiny and action – the meaning of Vairaagya and the outcome of actions or Karma Yoga, love, forgiveness, faith and non-violence. In the end there is chapter on the significance of the scriptures.

The glossary of Sanskrit terms at the end of the book is a must and the author has compiled it an easy to refer tabular form. Without this the book would have proved unintelligible to the ordinary reader and the others who would see it as an introduction to Hindu spiritual thought.

This is a vast subject and the author Kishore Kulkarni has acknowledged – “The book is organised into two volumes. Language has very serious limitations and when it comes to spiritual terms, two persons may understand them quite differently. That is the reason I have presented up front in Volume 1, my understanding of the various important spiritual terms and concepts, so that the reader can appreciate my philosophy better. Volume 2 presents my ideas about the real spiritual goal and the practice for achieving that goal – what exactly a spiritual seeker should be doing – both in the inner mental realm as also in the external world of action.”

I however felt that the title could have been different for spirituality is a serious matter. All in all a commendable effort for as the author says “After all, it is my strong belief that spirituality is all about transformation of mind through constant contemplation on the matters beyond the physical creation.”