Kari…

Crossword has a sale going on and while I didn’t have the time or money to indulge the bookworm in me yesterday (after having blown a significant part of my Kerala holiday in various nooky bookshops in Palakkad) while grocery shopping at Hypercity but I did manage to sneak into the small Crossword section that they have next to the payment counters. Came across Kari, the graphic novel by former copywriter Amruta Patil. I had heard about it but never gotten around to buying a copy. I tend to behave like a bit of a spaced out cadet when I am in a bookstore, dazed and spellbound, not sure where to start, convinced I missed out some gem in a far flung corner of the store. In this case, I was intrigued enough by the pages that I flipped through, squabbles with parents on a holiday home, a peek into the life of an advertising agency executive, I could relate to most of them. i’ve promised myself that I’ll pick it up in a week’s time…

I recently read through a limited edition of Batman’s graphic novel which Husband picked up from a store in Bandra but have usually stayed away from graphic novels myself. I am, for most part, generously non-discriminatory when it comes to buying new books. Purchases in the last two weeks include, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth; JM Coetzee’s Inner Workings, a collection of essays; Lauren Weisberger’s Chasing Harry Winston and Joe Dunthorne’s Submarine. Oh and also, Sanjeev Kapoor’s ‘Dal-Rotis’ and ‘Chinese Cooking’ (someday! ever the optimist…)

A Bookworm in Palakkad

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.