reading-1

its almost surreal," reading about reading". just like writing about writing or dreaming about dreaming..:)

when analyzing, this appeared to be the most difficult and complex topic to write about. when i stopped analyzing , the demons melted away and i spent the best minutes with the keyboard in a long time.

anyone who will ever read this post must have loved reading for probably the entire memory of his/her conscious lives. i have and so have you.
and somewhere down the line, the act became as natural as anything else.

over the years we have climbed up and down on the fiction ladders, identifying with intriguing characters and vilifying the unruly ones. though not all nice, good ones turn out to be heroes just as black marketeers and hoarders are not always villains.

my choices have swayed. from an infant fixation with Astrix and nagraj to teenage endearments to characters like Archie and jughead. growing up changed everything.
my two heroes lie on the two ends of a variety of spectrum's. and yet, beneath the covers they are the same people.

Rhett butler and Howard roark. both are part villain part hero. Rhett lives in opulence and chases his desires. roark chooses penury over wealth and gives up any and all desires he deems unnecessary, which is almost everything.

Rhett butler is unprincipled and a crook of first level.he's an epitome of flexibility. he's selfish and smart. roark is ultra principled and won't compromise , at any levels.rigid is the word for him.

and for all these vices, they are packed with virtues of their own. for without them, they could not have carried 1000 page novels on their shoulders. of course their were very strong women characters to support them, specially in the case of 'gone with the wind' , but that's another story.

if there's a sterling quality that unties them, its honesty and raw courage. far away from their insular public posturings, they were sensitive people. there was a line in guru which best describes them "jab log tumhari burai kare, toh samajh lo tarraki kar rahe ho" ( if people start criticizing you, you must understand that you are doing well)

both of them were the people that they were because of one central reason. their total absence of fear. they were people who had nothing to lose. in the "godfather" the feared don is afraid of only one man. Luca. in don's word " this is a man who does not fear dying, you can never harm him". theirs more in this line for us, than what a Sicilian mafia don would have guessed.

our middle class lives are built on the platform of security and continuity.
even dropping a year in the academic session is considered "wild"
while the system has worked well for the society as a whole, the same cannot be said of individual dreams.

our fears are huge and overpowering, our lives consequently dull and sequenced. fulfilling the staple middle class dreams we forget something. their is a higher life beyond the charming world of everyday economics and commerce. it may be differently shaped for differently skilled people, but the point is, it exists .

its just one life we get, reclaim it while you still can.