Andamans Dreamin'

Yesterday I played out my ultimate fantasy. If you are expecting the perfect orgasm or something, this is the part where you start feeling cheated.

This is my blog and my fantasy so here goes - Girl, alone. In a bookstore. With unlimited cash. And it gets juicer..she can pick up anything she wants, no holds barred.

I sort of give back to the community (or so I pretend) by volunteering at a local library once a week and being the only volunteer with a yen for books I was given the awesome responsibility of stocking it up! Five hours of all the books I ever wanted. Heaven!!

Anyway from one strata of the heavenly kingdom to another. All plans to the Andamans are on, tentative travel schedule on ROAD TRIPPING:: COORG AND BEYOND.

Car still at the cleaners. Drat and double drat. Should be getting it by Thursday. Please pretty please or it will be a bumpy ride by bus to Chennai.

Smashed Cars

After having driven 8000 kms cross country over the worst terrain possible, our car gets smashed 800 metres from our house. The irony of it!

Ah well, the dreaded “new-car-meets-with-its-first-accident” jinx has been lifted. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Insurance is covering it and we might just make the weekend drive to Chennai - A place I abhor and try my best to avoid. But a necessary evil. Flights to Port Blair operate from there.

This year has been a rather strange one. After hitting rock bottom at the beginning of the year, and well, pretty much getting smashed (not THAT way) I figured I might as well do stuff I have been talking about for years but never got around to doing. Coorg, the MA, the Andamans…it’s all working out and to think it took a whole lot of wallowing in despair to get till here.

I can’t stand ‘self-help-masquerading-as-fiction’…but funnily enough one such book I did happen to read (mostly on account of no other books behind around) does spring to mind. Veronika Decides To Die. Not an earth-shattering read but the concept got to me. Honestly, it does take a nasty upset and then some, to get you moving. It’s a necessity; maybe it has something to do with evolution…minus that occasional high dose shot of despair the species would stagnate.

Having been to Lakshadweep, I can't wait to get to the Andamans. Will be doing a thorough recci - diving, snorkelling spots etc. So if anybody is interested to know more...mail me when I get back. All details will be uploaded on my psuedo-Travel Blog. Travel tips welcome!

Mocking Bird

I cried when I lost TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. It was this battered old edition with a yellow cover and my father's name neatly printed in his careful hand on the front page. I have read that book at least 6 times and each time I see a bit of my life in a forgotten paragraph.

Maybe it had something to do with my dad being Atticus and me being Scout. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Boo Radley lived down the road, a horrific Down Syndrome afflicted boy who would insist on lunging at us terrified kids. He wanted to be friendly, we didn’t know any better. Not until the kids from A Block threw stones at Faran. Then he was one of us.

We fought his battles for him. He never understood local politics. B Block and A Block were separated by a rift - a scary boy shaped rift. I wonder if Faran went back to Afghanistan and remembers the rag tag bunch of kids who trailed him, scurrying away the moment he came lumbering towards them. If I were him, I would want to forget us, never mind the bloody battles and the black eyes.

My Dad is Atticus, he still is, he always will be.... my friend says every girl thinks her dad is Atticus. Not every girl reads, so I know he is wrong. My dad is as reasonable as Atticus and never forced me to do a thing, he just explained the consequences, the decision was mine and he respected it.

There are some books that make you cry, and some make you remember and well some are so stupid you wish the publishers had sensibly burn the manuscript before unleashing the monstrosity on an unsuspecting public that judges a book by its cover.

To Kill a Mockingbird is different, it's a biography of every adult on the face of the planet. Every adult who was a kid once and forgot what being a kid is about. The Soviet Books and Harper Lee do have something in common, they hit home. You know what sort of a grown-up you ought to be.