Rushdie is a difficult author to hate. Rushdie is a difficult man to love. But oh, when he writes, how he writes. And the words, like the source of all words in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, flow across, over, on top of one another. Messy and frightening and incredible and flawed, but, above all, above all, incredibly, incredibly beautiful.

Such a beautiful, difficult, annoying book. Such a different book from Rushdie's usual haunting magic realism offerings. Such a living, breathing proof of why, and how, people differ and act and love and live. Such a Hogwartsian glimpse into an extraordinary life lived under extraordinary circumstances.

Many reams, many columns have been written about the self indulgence of this book and this author. About the dismissive hurt of his four marriages. About the drabness of the last hundred pages. About his inexplicable life with the fourth wife, the millennial illusion as he refers to it. I agree with all of these.

But I am, at the end of it all, a plebian, humble Rushdie fangirl. And to me, the words, the utter beauty of this man's writing, make me want to hug this book. Secretly and tightly to my chest.    

It's been a long time since I read. Properly read, I mean. (Glancing at the morning headlines, and occasionally racing through a bestseller don't count.)

My previous job sucked me dry and spit me out so that all I could do at the end of each day was collapse and sleep. My eyes ached from the Excel sheets. My mind was a mush from the inane everyday Honey Singh banter. It wasn't my fault. Or maybe it was, for letting the job take away far more than it gave back.

Enough of the whining, though. The thing is, the job is gone. The mush is gone. The roommate has purchased a new bookshelf, and my life is brilliant again. The colours are brighter. The coffee is stronger. There is a spring in my steps. And I can read again. Oh sweet, blessed, glorious words. How I have missed you.

I am currently in the middle of Joseph Anton, and wondering why this wasn't read before. Such sheer perfection, it is. I wake up every morning, and sit beside the window for a while before going to work. Looking at the sunshine. Reading my book. And generally contemplating life.

My heart, as they say, is happy.

Watch this space.

This blog is not dead. Like the proverbial Arnold Schwarzenegger, it'll be back. As soon as I dropkick my current soul-crushing corporate existence into oblivion and find some time to write about books I am currently reading.

This place is too precious to lose out to a heartless steel-n-glass multinational behemoth.

Overwhelming. Underwhelming.

When the life being described is so extraordinary, the words that describe them seem too mundane for comfort.

Or maybe...just maybe...I have come to expect too much from Jerry Pinto. Too much, too often.

Sigh.

There is a Sunil Ganguly-shaped hole in my heart currently. And I don't even want to talk about or discuss him or do anything else really...because every such session brings with it such absolute absolute heartbreak.

However, even magical authors tend to go muggle-like sometimes. And in the history of magic, this book is a Petunia Dursley.

Would've been great, really, if I hadn't read a Professor Shonku with an annoyingly similar premise. (Without the entire fantasmagoria and other creatures and the resolution, of coure.)

Bangla sahityo has ruined me.

My relationship with Harry Potter has been an obsessive one. I have pored over pages. I've trawled the internet for every spare nugget of information on the series. I've memorized lines of dialogues. I've watched all the movies. I've cried at the end of the last book. I've fallen in love with more than one character.

               Hogwarts has helped heal heartbreak, ease bereavement, and provide a sanctuary for a bewildered youngster like no one else. Therefore, 'The Casual Vacancy' would have to do very VERY hard work if it had to live up to the previous stalwarts.

And it did, internet, IT DID! It is a beautiful book. It's not suckerpunch-let-me-suck-you-into-my-world like Harry Potter, of course. I don't think anyone is capable of replicating that. Not even Rowling herself. (Also, to give credit to her, Rowling actually went out and wrote something completely different and put herself out there to be criticized and dissected when she ALREADY HAS ELEVENTY TRILLION POUNDS AND HAS WRITTEN HARRY POTTER. If it were me, I would just lounge the rest of my life away. Writing Potter would have guaranteed that much.)

'The Casual Vacancy' was well-written, well-plotted, and some of the scenes are masterfully Rowling. My heart, it kind of broke in the end. The effort of creating a world as far away from Hogwarts as possible is evident. And Rowling, thank god, proves to be deft storyteller even when she restricts herself to one small parish populated by the non-wand people.

The book is not Harry. But it's definitely, at least, a Neville Longbottom. And who can resist his underdog charm?