I have gone through six months at a stretch with the extent of my reading material restricted to 22 pages of The Times of India and six (four, then?) pages of Bombay Times. Shameful, shameful… I know. So holidays are really the best times to catch up on your reading. Or so you would think. Well, not, I discovered, if you are meeting up with your parents after a year and your sister and her two demanding, adorable kids after seven months. After all that, there’s the gorgeous rain drenched balcony to deal with.
Still, when I did manage to pack in a book, I was on a roll and managed to eat up the hard bound edition of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ in one day. Thats not bad at all. I am also reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, the late professor at Carnegie Mellon who was suffering from pancreatic cancer, while writing the book. He recently passed away. The book is part of a pass it forward kind of exercise started by someone who knows someone who knows me and I am supposed to pass on the book to a friend after I finish reading it. Thats work in progress…
There is also the mandatory chick lit in my laptop bag with Chasing Harry Winston, haven’t gone beyond 15 pages, tho. Much has been made of the book but I haven’t come to the part that grips me yet. For truly entertaining chick lit, try the Second Assistant, the Shopaholic series and of course, the Devil wears Prada, in case you haven’t read it yet!)
Three close friends in the big bad city of New York? Now where have I heard that before?!! Surprisingly enough, actually in my own life. My move to Mumbai eight years ago (round about this time of the year) is actually uncannily enough pretty similar. Two girlfriends who I befriended back then at the PG dig that I lived in, became my extended family in Mumbai. Late nights, strenous jobs, demonic landlady, boyfriends and subsequent break ups, and a trip to Goa (which inspite of regular demands to be repeated, never materialised) we were there for each other for all that and more.
So can I pen a book on my single years in the city? Probably… Would I do it? Unlikely. I’ve moved on and my two dear friends have as well. We aren’t that close anymore. We had always assumed that we would drift apart when we moved to our respective cities but ironically, we all drifted apart living in the same city.
binduiswriting
