Malvika's Ramblings

Smelly ol books

Filling questionnaires once in a while, as fun as painting toes.

1. One book that changed your life

Can’t decide between Mistletoe farm, and Dervla Murphy’s Full Tilt, and Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre and just maybe Wuthering Heights. No, actually not Wuthering Heights.

Mistletoe Farm, built all the pleasure in tramping outdoors, looking for rabbits and snakes. You know a kiddie version of Man vs Wild. And then, as in all Enid Blyton books, the picnic mats or ‘high-tea’ would always be loaded with scones (never seen them), large chunks of fruit cake and ginger ale. Mean aunts were the ones who serves thin bread slices with light buttering. Food was constantly passed to dogs under the table.

Full Tilt – 21 year old Dervla Murphy cycled from Ireland to India, going over Afghanistan mountains, falling sick, sorting visas, fighting off men towering over her bed at night by whipping out her revolver. A true story there. Her cycle was called Roz, short for Rocinante, which was also the name of John Steinbeck’s trailer in his travel sacross America with a black poodle Charlie. (Blame me not. The blog clearly says – Ramblings.)

Nausea – Ohh. The existentialist crisis. Discovered just one way of confronting it – falling in love! The one time that worries of the world just can’t get through to a dreamy head. In the book, the author’s sick of the way things just are, sick of his purposeless existence, sick of purposes which are basically just useless, tired of the scheme of things. He thinks of suicide but says – But what use? I could be a useless living body. Or a useless rotting corpse.

While we’re on the topic of books that influence, think of Catcher in the Rye, that influenced John Lenon’s killer. Shudder shudder.

2. One book you have read more than once

Can't think of any. I forget the plot, story, characters but I don’t re-read. Might have been over Ruskin Bond’s stories more than once. Would like to read Witches by Roald Dahl again.. all his stories beautifully macabre, and all the illustrations by Quentin Blake awesomely quirky. Once I thought I’d read my ninth standard’s Physics book again. Didn’t but still think that the idea was fab.
Oh yeah.. finally. I read A Brief History of Time by Stpehen Hawking again, because that’s how long it took for me to understand it.

3. One book you would want on a desert island

I once read a book in my dreams. Don’t remember the content now. Would like that book again and again, with new content each dream.
Or let’s see… just maybe a PG Wodehouse. Let’s settle for – some new book.

4. One book that made you cry

Cry. Nope. But one intense bit where I pored over the book as a sad, sad teenager – From the book We The Living, when Sasha and his/her lover go off in different trains, in opposite directions forever, forced by the socialist regime of Russia. Having said that, not a big fan of Ayn Rand.

5. One book that made you laugh

Books have made me laugh. Right now I can think of Inheritance of Loss, where a young scholar returns to his Bengali family after studying in England. He’s back with all the manners, discreetness and understatement of an English gentleman. His family respects his new anglicised avatar but can’t help being their raucous selves. So when he loses his powder puff, they go all around the house asking loudly – arrey dekha kisi ne, judge sahib ka paavder puff?

6. One book you wish you had written
Kari

7. One book you wish had never been written

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

8. One book you are reading currently

Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist

9. One book you have been meaning to read

Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

10. Books you’d recommend to others

A brief history of nearly everything – Bill Bryson
City of Djinns – Dalrymple
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen
A House for Mr Biswas – VS Naipaul
Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa lahiri
A fine balance – Rohinton Mistry
Shame, Fury – Salman Rushdie
Anything by John Steinbeck
House of Blue Mangoes – David Davidar
Short stories by O’Henry