Down with Aspidistras

 

posted by Bithran @ 2:02 AM 0 comments

An intimate affair

I came to know that Rushdie was coming to Seattle even before I had reached the city. I was at Seoul, bearing my liminal entity in the transit lounge, and plunging into yet another virtual realm. I was so excited, I had send email to people asking for sparable tickets. When I had reached the city, I had rushed to the University Book Store near my temporary stay to buy the book for that evening's authors event. However, that evening I was set for an dissapointment. With the beautiful book in my bag I had rushed in the book store just in time, only to learn that the event was taking place in another part of the town. I came back flustered and frustrated. How can it be that I could have not even given a second glance to the email that I was forwarding? How could I have not even looked carefully at the ticket which I was holding in my hand?

The next day morning I walk into my favorite coffee shop. Having arrived from a very different part of the world only 48 hours back, I was yet to shift my gears and 'settle in'. The cafe itself was semi deserted as the academic quarter was yet to set in. As I walked in, the familiarity of a collegue hugging me, and more so the familiarity of coffee inside me was bringing me back into a state of 'settlement'. I sat in one of my favorite corners, with the sunlight filtering through the huge glass windows, and with Mozart playing softly in the back ground. As I held the hard bound book in front of my eyes and read about the ambassador's daughter with an unbearable name...and of the stranger from paradise with an yearning to reach out...I was wondering did I really miss out much last night? I know that though I had dearly wanted to go to the author reading event, and hear the maestro, it wouldn't have been as intimate affair as I was looking forward to. It wouldn't have been the cozy basement of the Elliot Book store with rows of musty second hand books in the background. Rusdie would have been up in a stage, separated from me by the other 899 people who had bought tickets for the event.

And what do I want from him. I don't want to know him as a person. It is this moment of bliss that the poignancy of India and Shalimar can touch my soul. I am no in hurry to find out what is going to happen to them, I don't want to like/dislike the book. It is this moment that becomes cherished, and bringing me closer to the author than the event itself could have done that.

I have never met Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath. Nor do I know about their lives, or what kind of people were they. But perhaps it is in a moment like this that I can fathom why Plath would be pushed to the farthest edge. I remember I was introduced...rather, I chose to be introduced, to Plath through a person who was very dear to me at that time. But it was only more than two years after, somewhere hovering in the air on my way to the vulgarities of Las Vegas, Plath's journal spoke to me in clear voice. It hit my heart with the same kind of restlessness that young Plath probably would have felt.

It is true that these encounters reflect only miniscule fragments of these personalities. But then, it is as intimate as we can get to anyone, if at all.

posted by Bithran @ 1:12 AM 0 comments