Labels: abdullah, multiple, privacy, shantaram, taheri, trains
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privacy is a strange thing. i found out yesterday about two blogs - one of them i had regularly been reading without knowing it belonged to a friend, and the other i recognized the moment i landed on it. the thing was i struggled whether to admit to these ppl that i knew. they wanted annonymity, i knew that. but eventually i told them coz i realised that i was in fact violating their privacy more by not telling them - they would continue believing they were cocooned and perhaps write things they wouldn't like me to see. and it felt creepy to know i'd be reading all that stuff. more so because they're my good friends, and somewhere along the way i might consider them hypocrites if they blogged one thing and told me another. but that's my weakness, not to be able to take a contradiction in a person. anna surname-with-n-something in her song 2 am says 'these words feel like im singing my diary out loud and i know you'll use them however you want to.' sometimes despite knowing that, you confide everything in a person. i for one have done that so many times that sheer practice rather than will power has taught me to get over that regret. i'm deviating. my point is this - how much privacy a person needs is often a decider of how much they understand different kinds of people. and how much they understand that if the two or multiple sides of them were to clash the ppl in both/multiple worlds would hate them collectively. its sad, but true. they often try to cover up so that one world won't think they're crazy to do something the other world thinks completely acceptable as part of the character.
i hate the fact that i have my exams so soon. i can only read max 4 chapters of shantaram a day. i'm currently on chapter 30. prabhaker died. now that is a character who has something most of us can't fathom the guts to even try to have - a completely unjudgemental love. he knows all sides to roberts and he still loves him. that doesnt happen often, not between husband and wife, not between the best of friends and is most often the cause of arguments between roommates who are forced to see the other from all angles. but personally i grieved for abdullah more. yes maybe he's sapna whatever but he's the kind of person you can tell anything to. you know he may completely disagree but it won't affect anything between him and you. that's one thing about men women can never hope to attain - the ability to love a person without liking them, or even while disliking them. its almost paradoxical to a female.
sometime in the future i hope there's a book called abdullah taheri. the name itself would make it a hit. it has a very lyrical lilt.just realised even my previous post was about annonymity. i may just be getting a tad obsessive. a friend of mine recently told me i have the unnervingly compulsive sixth sense of a detective and i love forming theories of accusation and deceit. she might just have a point. the irony is, you don't need anything to figure me out. just put me with an intelligent enough person in a train and assure me i won't meet them again. probably have
swapped even the stories of our last lives by dawn.that's what i love about trains. you feel yourself going from one city to another. the transition sort of swirls right through you. you look outside and see a million empty fields, you see a million boys running to catch up with the train and waving and tumbling and smiling and falling over each other. and it washes over you. you know you're leaving a place behind and you get plenty of time to rest the worries of the place left behind and allow the anticipation of the new place to set in. even better if you're travelling alone. the transfer is completely watertight, no ppl to link them. plus the added promise of meeting new ppl. which, i realised, is what was getting me so depressed for the last month. believe it or not, sitting admitted in a cadets' ward for 4 days, i was rejuvenated more by the fresh company than anything else.and i always wonder, where are the damn 1 billion people. i cross 1/4th of the country and i never see them. do they all live in the cities now?i really deviate too much!Friday, May 25, 2007
Labels: annonymous, shantaram
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i'm bang in the middle of shantaram, chapter 24 actually. so, quite fascinated, i went to the net to chk out what this guy was upto now and more about him. found out two things - first, it ain't all that real! also, turns out, he's become a bit of a...well...sissy! here was this, hulking dirty blonde mean ol' mate from f-oster-alia. and now he's doing 'writing art' (what is that?) and saying things like -
' I feel honoured that you've shared that crying moment with me, and I hope that you find just as much emotion in the pages of the sequel. Hang in there. I know how hard it can be, believe me. I've suffered to the wide horizon, and found myself afloat on the cold, merciless, rolling ocean of despair. But I survived. And having survived, I know, now, that there's no such thing as too much to bear. '
(responding to a mail by a fan who cried when she read of Prabhakar's death)
Now don't get me wrong - i still think its a FANTASTIC book, one that any of my many brain-dead brain-drainers (read fellow engineering students) should read. Maybe they'll understand why i insist india is the best country to be in right now.
All I'm saying is..why God why? why couldn't he have maintained the strong silent type character. It makes me lose value for so much of the book, the parts I thought were about a man grappling to come to terms about emotions without speaking of them to anyone. I now feel that maybe all those parts were actually mushy conversations with Khader and Abdullah - only since they don't make for good copy, he didn't put it in.
here's the before and after...
i mean come on! the one thing that keeps me happy that the book isn't real is that his highly personal description of Karla and his 'whatever' may not be real. When i thought it was, I found it utterly scndalising that he would reveal it in such detail for a book. I guess even an aussie can't stay in bombay without getting bollywoodized a bit, eh?
moving on to the movie - now there's something to chirp about. amitabh as Khader - brilliant. johnny depp is well - its him and he'll be 'bloody brilliant.' as for SRK...I mean come on SRK? really? the five-expression actor? what about nana patekar. and while we're at the good casting suggestions - kk menon as prabhaker.
still, looking forward to the movie.