You're cordially invited...

Dear friends,

We have a special WhatsApp community of readers on WhatsApp! It's a vibrant and enthusiastic little flock of readers who believe in sharing whatever we read!

This reading community was created in the year 2017, with the only avowed aim of promoting books and reading. 

Who is eligible to be a part of the group?

Any passionate, ardent and enthusiastic lover of literature! Preferably with a literature background!

What is the criteria for being a member?

Any Indian citizen, with a love for literature is eligible to become a member of this group.

All posts should be connected only to books and reading.

No other post of any nature is allowed on the group.

Groupies are expected to contribute posts on the group, on a periodic, regular basis.

Passivity is a strict no-no on the group! As we believe that passivity pulls down group vibrancy.

Saturdays are days meant for panel discussions on the group.

Previous panelists on our group include Dr. Aparna Srinivas, Dr. Maria Preethi Srinivasan, Dr. Susan Deborah, Prof. Sharon, Prof. Prem, Prof. Rasheeda, Prof. Rufus, Dr. Melwin, and the list goes on and on!

Panels will be on specific topics and it will be given to the groupies well in advance.

There will also be reading challenges on the group, where groupies can choose a book of their choice, and read it for 28 days. 

After this time-frame is up, they will be asked specific questions on the whatsapp reading community, based on their reading. Winners also get prizes sponsored by famous publishers. The last prize winner was Dr. Melwin, who won a cash prize of Rs. 2000/- for being the Winner of the past Reading Challenge.

Whom to contact?

If you are really keen on working on your reading skills, do ping us at our whatsapp number, 98400 42856, introducing yourself, your designation, (student or teacher or professor) and the institution you study at/work for!

We would respond to you rightaway!

With One equal temper of heroic hearts, we sincerely believe that, some work of noble note may yet be done!

And yesss! 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. 

Fond regards,

Admins

'You’ll take walks, talk to friends in person, engage your community, read books, and stare at the clouds!'

Just over a few days ago, this last Tuesday to be precise, a few of us, bibliophiles, met up over a cuppa, nay three cuppas each, ;-) at the famed Writer’s Café! We started off on a discussion over the concept of mindfulness, and that took us all to the books that we’ve been reading of late! Me, for my own little part, shared something on my latest read from Cal Newport that waxes eloquent on doing a digital declutter! In fact, the book talks about being mindful around our technology and doing a digital detox or a digital downsizing at that! 

And quite interestingly, it so happened that, just this morn, I had misplaced my mobile phone while in college, and was quite blissfully unaware of it for more than an hour late into the morning, when alas! finally it so dawned on me, with such a vigorous and an impulsive jolt, on the ‘harmful effects’ that come along with losing out on one’s mobile phone! On this jolty dawning on my mind, I should admit that I was a real tad jittery on the very prospects of having to lose my mobile phone! Added, I couldn’t really fathom a wee bit on where exactly I had misplaced it too!

With a heave-ho, thence on, I busily amble up and down the stairs! Tread this way and that! Stride a hither and a thither, hoping to stumble across it by some stroke of a fortuitous chance, somewhere along my way! All to no avail! Then I contemplated quick on first calming my kinda anxious soul a wee bit, and then to recollect with some cool, on the places I’d been to, since this blessed morn while in campus, and quite soon happened my sweet 'eureka' moment! Yesss! I recollected being there at our department staff room just the previous hour! And when this sweet moment of realization happened, me, with some added grin to the likes of the Cheshire cat, strode my way albeit with a twinkle of a beam, radiant and happy, quick to my desk, and arriving there, and finding it safely ensconced on my desk, with a few good souls (colleagues) keeping a watchful eye on it, I quite heave-hoed now a happy-happy sigh of relief! Added reason to amble my way quietly over, for a relaxing cuppa!

Well, this incident set my mind wondering - or rather pondering - over a few hypothetical assumptions!

What, if it hadn’t been the mobile phone that I’d misplaced?

What if it had been for some book that I’d misplaced?

Or what if it had been my wallet that I had misplaced?

Would I have really bothered to go places looking around here and there, for this 'lost sheep,' with the same vigorous, panicky intensity and agitated anxiety? Or would I have bothered to search for it at all, in the first place? ;-)

Speaks volumes and volumes to the myriad ways in which we have been held for ransom, in this 'techno-trap' on our own sweet volition at that! Alley? 

Without a doubt, the hegemonic hold of technology on its unsuspecting victims, has led to a whole lot of ruminations, deliberations and discussions on how best to keep this addictive device away at bay!

I steal a quick guess that, it is perhaps on cogitating upon this hegemonic hold of technology over its unsuspecting addicts, that Nassim Nicholas Taleb quips his intense quip, thus: “The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free!”

How trueyyy is Taleb!

(On an aside: For an added dose on Taleb, you might want to read this blogger’s past year’s post on yet another Talebian take on a different tangent altogether, HERE)

In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that, today, we live in an era of wired-sadhus, gadgeted-gurus, techno-sanyasis and new-age-ascetics for whom renunciation is, ‘The world behind me, but iPhone before me!’

Rephrasing Donne’s mighty lines of yore would mean much to this post! And this is from his celebrated poem, “Canonization” – Here it goes -

Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove. Into the glasses of your eyes!

Rephrasing the last word alone -

Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove. Into the glasses of your mobiles!

Such is the sway of technology over our lives! Such is its charm! Such its allure! Ain’t it?

This lure sure gives us all, added reasons to do a technological detox, or a digital declutter, every once in a while, in this our mundane, slavish lives, to be away from being silent slaves, addicted full throttle to these maddening technological demigods!

That’s one reason why, Adam Alter rightfully calls this age as ‘the age of behavioural addiction’ wherein half of the population is addicted to at least one behavior or the other, hyper-obsessed over the quantum of likes we get, the videos we watch, and the emails we receive!

To Adam Alter then, ‘Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone!’ and sadly enough, today’s thumb generation or the millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle much to interact with real, live humans!

On an aside, this shocking state of affairs quite reminds me of a little poem that I had attempted, well over thirteen years ago, on the thumb generation. You may want to read it here on poemhunter!

Adam Alter among a host of other techno-detox gurus have come up with numerous strategies and techniques to wean away the soul from this addiction! In fact, Alter has also laid bare the candid truth that, technology is good and advantageous only for the capitalists, the business tycoons and the corporations who tweak and tune social media to their advantage, and fashion it in such alluring ways as delicious as a dainty dish, dressed up in such delightful ways, meant for mass consumption! And the pavapetta consumer swainggg falls prey to their bait with such finesse and elegance!

How trueeyyy!

That gives us even more reasons to do a digital detox on the go!

One such detox guru I so loved reading this past week, and brought up for discussion in large quota with my bibliomaniac friends at the Writer’s Café this last week, is Cal Newport, who’s given us such an able and wonderful read that recommends a digital detox in such convincing ways!

'If I drew a house, I felt as if it were my house. I felt I owned everything I drew!'

Be it a Deleuzean conception of walking along, all alone in some foreign city, or Le Corbusier’s conception of the Radiant City, or John Bunyan’s description of the Celestial City, or Joseph Conrad’s take on London, the “Great City,” or of the crowded streets of Brussels, the “sepulchral city,” or of Theodore Dreiser’s vicissitudes of Kansas City, or Mistry’s description of the “City by the Sea,” or Alan Paton’s evocative portrayal of the ‘great city of Johannesburg’, every city scape has its own enthrall and its enamour! Ain’t it?

Maybe that’s one reason why cityscapes have been an all-time favourite jaunty-haunt for poets and writers across times and climes!

This painting of the cityscape in all its intricate hues has been so amazingly captured in the works of a plethora of writers whose poetic frames and cadenced sketches make even the most remotely unseen skeletoned lives and their respective cultures come to life with flesh and blood in their rhapsodic phrases and rapturous lines!

Sample this, from Haruki Murakami’s After Dark!

In fact, it’s anybody’s guess then, that this beautiful Murakami-ean depiction of the wonderful cityscape through his amazingly descriptive sketches has real enriched the elegance and the grace of this read beyond measure, for us all! No wonder this legend has been translated into more than a fifty languages and counting…!

For once, try to visualize now, right now, dear reader, a ‘still’ or a ‘tableau’ in such picturesque ‘word-painting’ right in front of your eyes, from Murakami’s description of a lovely cityscape in such evocative lines –

Here we go –

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature—or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.

Our line of sight chooses an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, silently descends to it—a sea of neon colours. They call this place an "amusement district." The giant digital screens fastened to the sides of buildings fall silent as midnight approaches, but loudspeakers on storefronts keep pumping out exaggerated hip-hop bass lines. A large game centre crammed with young people; wild electronic sounds; a group of college students spilling out from a bar; teenage girls with brilliant bleached hair, healthy legs thrusting out from microminiskirts; dark-suited men racing across diagonal crossings for the last trains to the suburbs. Even at this hour, the karaoke club pitchmen keep shouting for customers. A flashy black station wagon drifts down the street as if taking stock of the district through its blacktinted windows. The car looks like a deep-sea creature with specialised skin and organs. Two young policemen patrol the street with tense expressions, but no one seems to notice them. The district plays by its own rules at a time like this. The season is late autumn. No wind is blowing, but the air carries a chill. The date is just about to change.

That’s Murakami for us all!

Now let’s move on to yet another famed writer of today, Orhan Pamuk, whose autobiographical read titled, Istanbul: Memories and the City (2003), forms the subject matter of discussion on today’s kutty little post!

A scoop of a vignette from Pamuk’s description of his cityscape for us all –

Accustomed as I was to the semidarkness of our bleak museum house, I preferred being indoors. The street below, the avenues beyond, the city’s poor neighborhoods seemed as dangerous as those in a black-and-white gangster film. And with this attraction to the shadow world, I have always preferred the winter to the summer in Istanbul. I love the early evenings when autumn is slipping into winter, when the leafless trees are trembling in the north wind and people in black coats and jackets are rushing home through the darkening streets. I love the overwhelming melancholy when I look at the walls of old apartment buildings and the dark surfaces of neglected, unpainted, fallen-down wooden mansions; only in Istanbul have I seen this texture, this shading.

When I watch the black-and-white crowds rushing through the darkening streets of a winter’s evening, I feel a deep sense of fellowship, almost as if the night has cloaked our lives, our streets, our every belonging in a blanket of darkness, as if once we’re safe in our houses, our bedrooms, our beds, we can return to dreams of our long-gone riches, our legendary past. And likewise, as I watch dusk descend like a poem in the pale light of the streetlamps to engulf these old neighborhoods, it comforts me to know that for the night at least we are safe; the shameful poverty of our city is cloaked from Western eyes.

A photograph by Ara Guler perfectly captures the lonely back streets of my childhood, where concrete apartment buildings stand beside old wooden houses, the streetlamps illuminate nothing, and the chiaroscuro of twilight—the thing that for me defines the city—has descended. (Though today concrete apartments have come to crowd out the old wooden houses, the feeling is the same.)

No wonder then that Pamuk has given us an impressive epigraph from Ahmet Rasim, ‘The beauty of a landscape resides in its melancholy,’ that suavely sets the tone and the tenor of his absorbing read for us all. 

Well, that’s just for a snippety sample for us all from Orhan Pamuk! This enthralling autobiographical read titled, Istanbul: Memories and the City was published in the year 2003, and translated into English by yet another equally well-known novelist Maureen Freely. Interestingly, Maureen’s translation has set the benchmark and the basis for Pamuk’s memoir to be translated into other languages, as she has had the privilege of working in tandem with Pamuk himself on this amazing translation!

So yesss! Full credits and plaudits to Maureen on her impeccable translation, which makes us transcend our very own space and time and enter the Istanbul of Pamuk in one subtle change of gear!

Cityscape descriptions apart, Orhan Pamuk also excels in bringing out those nostalgic childhood memories in such vivid recollects! It’s something akin to Orhan leading us all by hand, to his childhood home to relive with the other Orhan, (the child Orhan!) and take a delightful peek into the cityscape of Istanbul!

Indeed, memories of his past give him such huge doses of nostalgia, but they are of a different type, altogether! To Orhan, past memories give him a melancholic kind of nostalgia, which Orhan refers to as collective nostalgia, that seems to have seeped into the psyche and the spirit of every Istanbulite!

The Dominant Rasa...!

It’s a Saturday, so…😍 

This is about a momentous recall from down memory lane that merits a wondrous, descriptive detailing of sorts, quite over and over again, for the lovely, enriching life-lessons they gave us!

Auroville, Puducherry

Well, this memorable incident of sorts happened just over a few years ago! 

And what memories it gave us! 

And I bet, it real will remain etched in our hearts and minds for years and years and years to come!

But first things first - 

Yes! Let me first give a kutty prelude to the event for y’all -

Some of us, colleagues and friends, are usually wont to go on those occasional weekend jaunts to places far and near, on those memorable adventure trips, which, by default, almost always double up as arattai trips of the highest order! 

Some high-intensity ‘conferences’ or ‘seminars’ were those sweet little excuses for us all to go on such high-octane driving and hikings!

What with two amongst us having just gotten for themselves, brand new cars! One a Maruti Swift, and another, a Hyundai i10 – Ganesh Sir’s, and this blogger’s! ;-)

Gives us all the more reasons to take to the roads on adventure mode, alley?

So it was, that we’d all decided, in one harmonious accord, to take out our brand new cars, that were radiating a lustrous shine and sheen on their Teflon-coated bodies, on a one-day jaunt, through the amazing, beach-way also called the ECR scenic highway on East Coast Road towards Auroville, Pondicherry.

Eight of us in number we were!

The much awaited red-letter day dawned, and on two newy, brighty, ‘brand newy’ cars in tow, we were all up and sprightly, spruced up, and all geared up in all vibrancy and enthu, for the gala trip that was waiting in the loop exclusively for us all!

Well, this one-day trip, we should acknowledge, became a reality, thanks to a cordial invite from a lovely past student of ours, from Pondicherry, Mr. Dhanasekar, (who’s been asking us all along, this long, to pay a visit to his house, for i guess, well over two years now!) who took the necessary strain and pain to make meticulous arrangements for each and every mile of our travel down the scenic highway to Pondicherry, what with intermittent fun stopovers, all along, at least every ten or twenty kilometers, heartily sipping away at a cuppa, doing boatrides, trying to taste the salt from off the salt pans that were piled up by the mounds all along the seaways, enjoying the sea breeze, soaking ourselves in the waves, enjoying the mamallapuram caves, et al et al et al!

No wonder then, that a ride to Auroville, that would have been – on ‘normal mode’ - done in three hours, had now taken us a whopping five and a half hours to finish! 

The serene, calm, and delightful place – Auroville - has its own endearing, enigmatic appeal and its charm! Foreigners from all walks of life make a beeline to this mystic delight - Auroville, and camp here for months together in a row, just to breathe the therapeutic air and the mystic aura that permeates and populates the environs in this sylvan, peaceful abode!

At Auroville

Now, at Auroville, we walked down this long pathway, through its meandering ways and labyrinthine paths, through its rich red, fertile soil, over spirited discussions, lively conversations, happy jokes, impish pranks what with an amiable weather to cap it all up, we were all walking happily all along our amble, up the green corridors of Auroville!

Me now cutting short on many other eventful incidents that happened on our sojourn, (perchance up for grabs on a different post altogether) we headed next, after our Auroville delight, to Pondicherry University, and after meeting up with a few good ol’ friends there, we next drove down to the beach, where we had our share of hilarity and fun unlimited, until sunset signaled to us all, to take to the wheel again back to namma Chennai, on our return journey!

[Well, let me add on an aside, that, we used to have an amazing Ahuja mike with a Stranger (speaker) always handy in our car, to facilitate impulsive antaksharis (singing sessions) on the go!]

That said, Mr. Dhanasekar from thence on, took gracious charge over the hospitality part, and invited us all to his house!

En route, Dhanasekar, out of sheer concern and courtesy, asked us if we could fill fuel for our tanks at a fuel dispensing bunk quite well-known to them, in the immediate vicinity!

So we obliged, yielding to his call!

Dr. Ganesh, snapped on the occasion

Dr. Ganesh, and myself, the two ‘drivers’ of our respective vahanas, now halted our cars, at a fuel dispensing bunk, each! Dhanasekar further added, ‘Sir, you may fill your tanks to the full, as fuel here is quite cheaper compared to the prices in other places!’

We doubly obliged!

Ganesh Sir was the first to take to the call, and fill up his brand new car’s fuel tank at this outlet! I was at the other end, equally busy filling fuel to the brim!

Then, it was, that, all of a sudden, I, happened to look up, quite nonchalantly, at the price meter, to check on the price of the fuel at this particular fuel dispenser!

‘It looks so damn cheap! So amazingly damn cheap the fuel here is,’ I said to myself! ‘Cheaper by more than twenty rupees!’

But the very next instant, sensing something grossly amiss, I popped my doubt straight to the operator, “Is petrol this damn cheap here at Pondicherry, Sir?”

The operator gave back an equally casual, nonchalant reply saying, “But this ain’t petrol, sirrr! this is Diesel! Diesel! Diesel, as you know, is always a tad cheaper than petrol, ain’t it?”

‘Deivameyyyy! STOPPPPPP!!!’ I shouted. ‘Stop dispensing the diesel! Ours is a petrol tank!’

He stopped, full well shell-shocked, right there on his tracks, in a fit of a stupor at that!

I quickly turned off the engine on my car, got down and lunged as quick a manoeuvre as I possibly could, towards Ganesh Sir’s car, and shouted out, ‘Sir, quick! turn off the engine. Quick! Stop the fuel! He’s filling up diesel! Ours is a petrol car!!!!’

But by then, quite sadly at that, the damage had been done in both the cars! Both our brand new cars! And almost completely at that! 

‘Total damage,’ as they say!

With eight of us staring our blank stares at each other, at a time when the sun had almost set, and the owls were peeking out of their treehives, and here we were, out in the lurch, not knowing what to do next, looking so blank a gaze - first heavenward, - then earthwards, - then upwards, - then downwards, then sidewards, - then finally towards our pavapetta, amiable host of the day, Mr. Dhanasekar!

Dhanasekar was all paavam personified! He didn’t bat an eyelid! He couldn’t rather!

Little would he have expected, this debacle to fall on us, his teachers, at this time of the night! Neither did we!

Then the bunk operators very quickly took control of the situation, and pacified us, asking us not to worry a wee bit about it at all!

But it was no easy joke to say the least!

Two brand new cars! Two brand new fuel tanks on two equally brand new engines have been heavily affected because of the wrong fuel that’s gone down the engines, corrupting their efficiency in toto, as they’ve been filled to the brim with diesel!

Prof. David Albert

Brand new cars that were meant for petrol and petrol alone, were here languishing because of a wrong dose, and an overdose at that!

It was then that we decided to take graciously to our bestest vajrayutha! 

That joyous dominant rasa! Yesss! Unending humour and amazing laughter followed in quick succession! Literally laughter from all quarters! We indulged in those pranky leg pullings with such suave gusto and humour!

Dhanasekar then decided to take us home in another vehicle! 

There his whole family was waiting to warmly welcome us all! His parents and his siblings were so overjoyed to see us all, and what a warm, unforgettable, lovable hospitality they gave us!

Taking along our Ahuja mike and speaker, we eagerly wound our way up the stairs, straight to the cool, open terrace! 

And with the beautiful moon shining up above and giving us the added momentum and the enthu, we started on our next antakshari for the night, completely oblivious to the precarious predicament that had befallen both our brand newy cars!

Ganesh Sir being the seniormost of our lot, started off with his favvy Kannadasan number, to shouts and claps and plaudits and smiles and laughter, and then Prof. David continued from there on, and we all took each our turns, at singing! 

Almost the entire neighbourhood amongst the village folk had by then gathered around us, bemused in toto, on seeing our pranks, our arattais and aaravaarams for the night, watching as some of them did from their respective terraces too! 

Then Ganesh Sir, as usual, went on an emotional high when he started talking on Nadigar Thilagam Sivaji Ganesan! All of us were quite absorbed listening in rapt attention to him all through!

Mid way through our arattais, and galattas, came paniyarams, appams, vadas, bondas, bajjis, murukkus, seedais, and many other eats for the special, memorable evening!

antakshari time

By then, we - all of us - had so blissfully forgotten on our ‘huge debacle’, when Mr. Dhanasekar came up the terrace with happy news that both our cars had been perfectly set right! 

(Well, the cars had gone up and up on those huge hydraulic jacks and levers for well over six feet in height, for the tanks to be removed and cleaned up!) 

Only when Mr. Dhanasekar came up and announced the news did we really even bother to look up our watches, and, hey presto! to our surprise, it was almost half past eleven on our watches!

Ende deivameyyy! Rakshikanameyyy!

Even at this juncture, Ganesh sir, quipped one of his spontaneous humourous dose from up his sleeve, 

‘We are so happy that the cars have at least come down, Dhana! It was so paavam to see them at such a height, all alone, without us!’

Then we all, ambled up towards our respective cars, thanks to Mr. Dhanasekar, and by the time we took to the wheels, it was almost twelve in the night! 

With all vibrancy and gusto before we could all hop into our cars, Ganesh Sir walks up to me and tells me,

‘Rufus, make sure you stop at the next available coffee shop! We need to celebrate this memorable event with a cuppa hot chaai, you see!’ ;-)

“Okay Sir! Done! I guess, it’s just half a kilometer away, Sir,” I tell him.

‘Apdiya? Appo stop there!’ he beams his radiant hearty smile.

Our Maruti Swift and Hyundai i10 on that memorable day! 

Now, even as our friends were busy getting into our cars, to start soon on our homeward-bound journey, one of Mr. Dhanasekar’s neighbours, so curious at that, ask him, 

‘Why are they leaving this late into the night. They could have stayed back for the night, ain’t they?’

Mr. Dhanasekar tells that elderly gentleman, 

‘Actually both their cars were filled up with the wrong fuel, and so they had to linger on for a few more hours, for the cars to be set right and made functional back again!’

Now his neighbor quips, from within our hearing distance, to our audibility, 

‘And in spite of all this, they all were making such wondrous laughter, fun and frolic, all along, till late into the night?’ albeit in a tone of surprise and astonishment writ large on his face!

Well, those words from that lovely gentleman, sums up in all its bonhomie, the sheer sense of joie de vivre and sweet abandon we all had, on that memorable night, in spite of the seemingly ‘perplexing’ occasion and ‘visibly’ upsetting situation!

Looking back, none of us could come up with a spontaneous reflective thought back then, on that particular occasion! 

Per chance, it was because we mighta impulsively practiced, carpe diem, not allowing anxiety or nervousness to play spoilsport on such a wondrous opportunity, an excellent opportunity, an amazing opportunity for that added fun and frolic!

Now, years later, on reflection, looking back down memory lane, I could now recall and reflect on a wonderful quote by G K Chesterton that merits the occasion to a tee! 

It’s from his delightful essay titled, ‘On Running After One’s Hat,’ and it goes thus –

‘An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.’

For once, I could feel the liberating power innate within these mighty lines of Chesterton cruising its way straight from the legendary Chesterton’s heart to mine!

Students' Seminar @ Chennai

A One-Day Students’ Seminar

On

Books and Reading

at

Chennai

to commemorate

World Book Day 2019

23 April 2019

Apart from presenting papers, students can do a book review

of any one book (fiction/non-fiction) of their choice!

Dr. Mini Krishnan will be presiding over the function.

Time, venue and event line-up will be announced shortly.

Our eyes light up at this apparition. "Did you see? You did see, didn't you? A tulip."

From Kurosawa, let’s move further on to Fanya Heller, one of the few Holocaust survivors much akin to Charlotte Delbo! And in this post, me thought of giving a few interesting convergences and divergences in the narrative style of these two authors, Fanya and Delbo, and their perspectives on the Holocaust, on a bird’s eye view at that! No spoilers attached though!

But first, let me begin this post on a note of thanks and appreciation to the reading community at Readers’ Rendezvous, a vibrant little garden of readers from far and near, of all hues and vibes on Whatsapp! I extend a special note of immense appreciation and thanks to Ms. Pheba & team at Rendezvous, for giving us all reading challenges that have so stimulated us to go that extra mile, and make us all look ahead eagerly for books to be read in that little extra time that we set aside for ourselves, on ‘declutter mode,’ for the sheer joy and delight of reading!

And this year as is wont and usual, RR has come out with its own exciting Reading Challenges neatly arrayed up for its members! Most of the members were so eager to take ‘em all up in full throttle, all geared up! And for once, we were all real eager-beavers, so enthusiastic and so thrilled to take up the challenge head on, and rightaway at that!

In fact, it real requires some reasonable degree of confidence, alley! But readers @ Readers Rendezvous are of a high-resolve calibre!

‘If I can do it, then you can! If you can do it, then we can! Yes! we can! Together we all of us, we can!’

That’s our shloka! Our mantra! Our enthu-tonic that keeps us going!

Come what may! Let’s take the Ulyssean resolve!

That which we are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

And thanks a million to Pheba mol and all lovely hearts at RR! For their patient striving! For their sustained endeavour in making reading a part of our daily routine! As one saying goes would like to go thus - Dosa for the stomach! Tennis for the body! Music for the soul! Reading for the mind! And where’s the yummy cuppa in the scheme of things? Yesss! The cuppa is for the stomach, the mind, the body and the soul put together! Howzaaat!!!

This stated, let me take y’all to Delbo and to Fanya! Two highly regarded, greatly respected holocaust survivors!

First Fanya!

Fanya’s memoir is titled, Love in a World of Sorrow: A Teenage Girl's Holocaust Memoirs (first published in 1993,) and it documents with such astounding simplicity a girl’s memories of the holocaust, in a way that’s nayver been said before!

Of course some of us might have been real familiar with the Night, Dawn, Day trilogy by Elie Wiesel, that’s been described as one of the pioneering ‘bedrocks of holocaust literature’ per se! And some of us might have been quite familiar with ‘The Kitty’ or The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank! Some of us might have been very familiar with Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz and After trilogy!

Well, looks like, Love in a World of Sorrow, though not a staple, or a default read in holocaust literature as such, is surely a cut above the rest in any many ways!

In this post, I would like to take a little-o-little peek into Delbo’s memoir vis-à-vis Fanya’s, to draw some vibrant connects and contrasts!

Charlotte Delbo’s epigraph to her intense memoir, Auschwitz and After, (published in English, 1995) and the insightful introduction to the memoir by Lawrence L. Langer, (LLL) serves an amazing focal point and a foregrounding of sorts, that steers ahead the Delbo-narrative that follows! In addition, Rosette C. Lamont’s ‘Translator’s Preface,’ albeit quite ‘minimalist’ in degree, helps the reader get a quick preview into what’s in store for the reader!

On equal measure, what makes Fanya click much in her autobiographical read, Love in a World of Sorrow [first published in 1993,] is her amazingly spontaneous way with words, which she’s managed with finesse, without the use of an interlocutor, a mediator or a translator! She opens her heart and her mind on to reams and reams of paper white! And the result is an astounding narrative of impactful proportions!

Any avid reader of Holocaust literature is sure bound to be in awe and wonder at her profound convictions that she puts forth in her ‘Author’s Preface’ on writing this book!

I can say with a certain amount of reasonable conviction that this Author’s Preface by Fanya Heller really merits a rock-solid place in any Department/Institution that specializes in Holocaust Literature!

Fanya and Jan

A poignant narrative in such sober prose makes it a representative narrative of sorts, on the holocaust and its horrors! A must-read at that, for paapas or toddlers in Holocaust Studies!

Well, personally I’d suggest that you take some little time off, to read this extraordinarily simple elucidation by Fanya, and her impressions on Holocaust literature, in such a delightful style, with immense poignancy, bared out in such gripping fashion, for the reader!

Here goes a Fanya treat for y’all, from her Preface -

Since the publication of my book Love in a World of Sorrow more than a decade ago, I have traveled around the country, speaking primarily to high school and college students about my experiences. My message is simple – that one person can make a world of difference.