Books

I finished The Old Man and The Sea and was spell- bound. I knew it was a classic, but I hadn't expected it to be so good. I can't pinpoint what exactly was so captivating about it. But there were times when I deliberately put the book down because it was too painful to keep reading. After an endless struggle, when the man finally reels the fish in, it seemed too simple to be actually real. And when the sharks came, it was just too painful to bear. It was as if they were biting away pieces of me and not the fish. Every time they bit into the flesh, it was my own loss. I swear, the pain was too intense to bear. I had to stop reading it to stop the hurt, even when my mind wanted to race ahead to reach the end. I really really enjoyed it. I recommend it to anyone who cares a whit for books.
Next on agenda is One Hundred Years of Solitude, also by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have a ton of books lined up to be read, now that I'm home. My aunt wants me to start working in the office as soon as possible. Seems we are short staffed and in need of translators. But I don't want to fall in the trap. It's a thankless job. Have been translating English to Hindi since donkey's years.

The Old Man and The Sea

I have a Feminism and Women's Writing paper on Monday, the 16th, but can't seem to get down to studying. Instead, I've been reading. Reading books that have nothing to do with my exam coming up. Typical. Last night I finished Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Today I'm reading The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Both the books have been pretty good. The first book by Marquez I read was Love in the time of Cholera, an absolutely delightful, charming book, full of magical realism. It's full of passages of intense love and feeling which in the hands of any other writer would have boring, unbelievable and just plain tiresome. But Marquez creates characters who have strange, unbelievable eccentricities which contrary to expectation make them all the more real. He creates parallel worlds and lives effortlessly.His style of writing is really simple, but the simplicity forces us to conjure images and ideas in our heads about the exact meaning of his words. However, this post is not a book report on Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

As I was saying, I'm currently reading Hemingway. I actually wanted to read A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls earlier, but I found the book at an exhibition for 10 bucks and couldn't resist buying it. (Actually, come to think of it, I have of late been coming across a really large number of cheap books that I've wanted for a long time all over Mumbai. My last purchase was 4 or 5 MAD Magazines I picked up dirt cheap while I was walking from the V.T. McDonald's to Fort).

So, coming back to the point. The book. It's good. I had a million reservations about reading it. I've heard really bad reviews about it. It just drags on and on...It's never ending, yaar. It just has no plot...no story...how the hell can anyone read 109 pages about an old man trying to fish? But it's not really as bad as that. It does have no plot, but that's because the author didn't intend it to. Sample this excerpt:

Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought. Never had I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin by jumping or by a wild rush. But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and knows that this is how he should make his fight. He can not know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great fish he is and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?

Similarly,

I wonder why he jumped, the old man thought. He jumped almost as though to show me how big he was. I know now, anyway, he thought. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand.Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.

It's been three days now since the old man has hooked the fish and is being pulled by it into the sea. I still don't know if he finally manages to kill the fish, and he if does kill the fish, if he manages to return home. I can't wait to find out.

The book seems highly allegorical, like in the passages above. I wonder what the sea and the fish and the old man are motifs of? i guess I'll think about these more deeply once I finish reading the book.

Elizabeth Hurley and the Indian Ecology.

Recently, newspapers and magazines have been flooded with pieces on carbon foot printing.
While India was going ga-ga over the gorgeous Ms. Hurley and her beau Mr. Arun Nayar, environmentalists were shaking their head in disapproval about the ecological excesses committed by Hurley and Co. in India. Green campaigners have slammed Hurley with accusations that her week long wedding in India produced more carbon emissions than the average British couple do in a decade.

Newspaper reports also said it would take an Indian couple 123 years to cause similar ecological damage. Now, much as this sounds like an opportunity to lash out at the couple for being so environmentally irresponsible, they're not the only ones committing such crimes. Much worse things have happened in the past and will probably continue happening in the future.


We need to ask what we can do to reduce our carbon footprint on the earth. It's pretty simple actually.

Firstly, what exactly is a Carbon footprint?
According to http://www.carbonfootprint.com/ ,

A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.

The web site is quite comprehensive. You can put in your life style details and they calculate your carbon footprint for you. They then suggest ways to reduce your carbon footprint.

Some of the easiest and most practical measures are:


1. Holidays
Don't go by air

2. Electricity
Sign up to renewable energy

3. Gas
Try using solar water heating - this can reduce your gas bill by up to 70% over a year.

4. Traveling around
Use public transport as much as possible. Find out about your local bus services and then use it.

5. Car Share
Sign up to a car share scheme to reduce your travel footprint


It's as easy as that. We all should try.