I walked in at 6 AM, bought a bagel and a cuppa coffee and settled into a sofa chair by the fire place. I dug myself into Lahiri's 'Interpreter of Maladies'. Lahiri continues to inspire me to write. She uses unpretentious language and manages to word mundane and complicated emotions in a surprisingly sufficient way.
I walked into what looked like a prayer meeting of a group of 60 year old men. They were just finishing up. I silently recited the last few lines of the Lord's Prayer with them, and couldn't help but smile; it is the only conventional prayer I grew up with.
A gentleman (in a suit) sat down by a table near me, and planted a small stuffed toy of a bear and a coffee mug. He sat across the table from a 5 yr old kid and his dad. The kid had his eyes fixated on the bear. The suited gentleman continued to get busy with his binder full of paper and a very executive looking pen. A young man walked in and sat at his table, after they shook hands. After a few minutes, I realized the suited gentleman was a Columbia alumnus-interviewer and the 'young man' was a high school kid. The kid blushed all the way through his college interview; he tried to convince the interviewer about his passion for Engineering. His dad is a mechanic, and he grew up with machines in his garage. It was the typical interview. Eavesdropping on an interview is quite fun. I remembered my first college interview with a Princeton Alumnus. My application was good enough for Princeton, but Princeton was quite smart in rejecting me, because it was the worst interview I ever gave. I very definitely needed that reality check after burying myself in JEE books for two years, and not realizing there was a world beyond me. A real world, that made you understand engineering and science much better than the JEE books ever did.
It was 8AM, the sun rose bright and heavy.
I managed to finish reading 100 pages. Not bad, despite all the distractions.
A lanky woman in black stockings, a blazing pink dress and a tan overcoat walked in. She was quite loud (both in her appearance and her manner of speaking) for an English blonde. I guess she picked up the worst of American culture. She sat at a table with another man, who seemed to be a recent acquaintance. She started talking about her kid who is learning music and wants to be a musician. She complained about how he is stuck in the 70s with Pink Floyd and Iron Maiden (Be thankful, woman!). The man and woman continued talking about kids in general and their cognitive abilities. Nothing new. Boring. I don't enjoy parental talk, as yet.
I spent another hour and finished Lahiri's collection of short stories. She manages to transport you to the world of interracial relationships and estrangement with such ease. Her stories are repeatedly set in wintery North-East America (more often than not Boston), or Calcutta. Well, Lahiri is Bengali and grew up in Boston/Rhode Island/New York, and is married to a Guatemalan-American.
It makes me think about where my short stories will be set (Yeah, the writer bug frequents me quite often these days). Stories can be most comfortably set in Austin, Hyderabad, Bangalore and probably Chicago and New Jersey/New York City. One day I wish I can write stories set in California, London and Delhi. A city needs to live under your skin for you to write stories set in them...and so I drifted to story-writing.
A mom walked in with a pretty blue-eyed girl. Looking into her eyes and smiling back derailed my train of thought. Her mum tempted her to sit close to the fire. The kid was quite fascinated by the fire place. Kids who are learning new words are amazingly entertaining. This kid was served up a souffle for breakfast. She repeated 'Sooooo-flay mommy, S as in soo-flayyy' till she chewed down the last morsel of it.
While I walked out, Lahiri's words came back to me.
"She was excited and delighted by little things...it was a quality he did not understand, it made him feel stupid, as if the world contained hidden wonders he could not anticipate or see."
I pulled my jacket closer as I walked to the car and smiled.
Because sometimes you read lines that feel like they are describing you.
P.S: Lahiri is a gorgeous writer, some bong-beauty oozing there, and it's not just skin-deep.
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