THE RIVER KNOWS ITS WAY

• Will the most neurotic, anxious and stressed person run inside a train?
• When you get into a train you simply forget everything and embrace sleep in your allotted berth, not bothering whether it is taking the right route or whether the driver is well-qualified to run it properly. It matters that you are focussed when you book the ticket and board the train on the correct date and recline in your seat.
• There is a scheme of things set in motion by our parents and society and we are simply caught in this and are taken by the current of it _ going to school, college, getting a job and entering wedlock. None of these things were decided by us, one merely follows the other.
  Most of our life is decided by others and hence why the need for tension?
• I don't mean you should not be interested in any aforesaid acts. But these are already travelled terrain.
• Many of our tense moments result from unnecessary concerns, and we worry about things over which we have no control. Poking our nose in other people's business and giving advice without anybody asking for it are the result of a heightened sense of concern.
  The driver drives the bus and the conductor issues tickets. Imagine the conductor grabbing the steering wheel or the driver doing the job of the conductor while negotiating a curve.
• I know people who worry about the lack of rain or its abundance, about the scorching heat etc. These things matter but you have no power to control these, but are destined to endure them.
• I remember a prayer:"God, give me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
• The boat takes the course carved by a hungry, knowing river. It knows the truth that the river knows its way.
  

IT TAKES ONE HOUR A DAY

• When you say you do not have time to read books, I sense a lie. Actually you are not interested in reading. I like straight-forward people who say they don't have an inclination.
• A small mathematical calculation which anybody can understand. It takes me one minute to read a page, so in one hour I can read 60 pages. In seven days I can read 420 pages. Now tell me, are you so busy that you can't spare even one hour a day? Then I must be talking to George Bush. So, my friend, don't tell me you don't have the time.
• I have read books during the interval of a film, while travelling by bus/train, while waiting my turn at the bank or paying the electricity bill. Often I have wished I would get caught in a traffic jam so that I could spend more time speeding among words.
• Most of us would have passed out of college and given up the habit of reading, some would have thanked their lucky stars.
• For students of literature, it's an Odyssey where you don't confront any Cyclops, but come across verbal delights. The journey ceases only when you hang up you glasses, so to say, when your time comes to an end.

RAY'S BRILLIANCE

• I am not an expert to comment about Satyajit Ray's films, but am too much of an avid enthusiast to restrain myself from saying a few words.
• The Postmaster evoked a kind of numb sadness, the effect of which lingered on as a sweet pain for sometime. It's about the relationship between a postmaster from Kolkata who comes to a one-horse town and a small orphan girl whose job is to take care of who ever takes over as the postmaster.
• He teaches the girl Bengali and she prepares food for him. After the postmaster catches a fever, he decides to resign and go back and the girl is upset. The last scene is a tragic moment which will be etched in the memory. The postmaster welcomes his replacement and calls the young girl. Seeing she is not anywhere within earshot, he gives a coin to the new man and asks him to give it to the girl, then pauses for a second and walks away with the money in hand. He sees the girl coming towards him with a water pail. He calls out to her, she ignores him and goes past him. The postmaster is left holding the coin as the girl reaches the post office.
• The offering of money to the girl is the most poignant moment; that the man tried to measure her sense of loss with a coin cannot be lost on anyone.
• Ray said so little, but the eloquence was explosive.
• Another film that touched me was Nayak, with Uttam Kumar, an actor, and Sharmila Tagore, editor of a magazine. Their friendship during a train journey forms the story. And what feelings they have for each other will cast a colour on the viewer. Ray leaves much to be inferred.
• The train reaches its destination and Uttam Kumar is welcomed by his fans and Sharmila is received by her uncle and they go off in different directions. And as in the earlier film, the last scene will linger on for years to come.
• Of course, there are many films of Ray, mainly the Appu trilogy, which I saw when I was very young. Would love to see it again and write.

MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

• Saw an excellent film about two friends going on a tour of Latin America to have fun and adventure, starting from Buenas Aires. What they see changes them for life. Both have a medical background and their final destination is a leper camp.
• Shot interestingly, the film caught my attention and kept me watching till the end. Terrific style.
• They see a communist couple whose land has been grabbed by the government and are forced to work as labourers. The scenes at the camp are realistic and idealistic.
• If you have not heard about this film, you come to know only at the end that one of the characters is Ernesto Che Guevara. His identity is not revealed till the end of the film which adds to the charm of the entire narrative. The film is based on Guevara's jottings in a diary, hence the name.

DIFFERENT MUSIC

• I went to the Connemara library recently and saw the entire area had changed beyond recognition. Naturally, as I was going there after 15 years.
• Getting a membership there was a nostalgic experience. The local lending libraries had simply left me tired with their staple diet of bestsellers/pulp fiction. I really wanted to sink my teeth into something hard like biographies, poetry and what not.
• I visited the art gallery where on display was paintings by Raja Ravi Varma and some contemporary ones. Can't remember when I went to an art gallery.
• To see something out of the ordinary is itself satisfying. I know nothing of art, have heard a few names such as Monet, not to mention Picasso and others. The visit only vetted my apetite for reading about the lives of painters and such like.
• Something is charming about books which I can never explain, though I have tried. The smell of books in libraries can't be put in words. Each book has its own smell, just like their font, printing and cover. It's a different kind of music that can be enjoyed only by a few whose minds are attuned.
• During college days I used to behave strangely when starved of feasting my eyes on words, like a drug addict deprived of his dose. If I say I have read books even during film intervals, you will consider it strange.
• I had a collection of books which I bought from roadside shops. I got Hamlet for Rs. 10 - a steal if there was one - from a seller who was certainly not Shylock.
• I sold my collection as my shelf was overcrowded and I couldn't maintain them, save for Hamlet, Julius Caeser, Old Man and the Sea, Anna Karenina and a few more.
• Anatole France said: "never lend your books to your friends, they never return them. All the books I have belong to my friends."
• At least I could have given them to my buddies. But tell me how many of my chums read books?