Reading

Post Number 52 : A Case For Re-Reading(And Re-Everything Basically)

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

An essay exploring the need to re-visit old books, and more.

Today marks a full-circle moment for me as a reader, 6+ years in the making. A sub-conscious itch has been scratched. I’ve re-read ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid and can now claim not only to have understood it but to have liked it too. But why should you, kind reader of the blog, care? Well, you shouldn’t, to be fair. But I hope you empathize with my sentiment of achievement. Because this book ‘launched’ my ambition of reading diversely, fuelled equally by unbridled curiosity and a bruised ego.

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Courtesy: Amazon.in

22nd March 2014 was my last Board Exam. A rite-of-passage had been…passage-d? I came home in a mental state that was common to me then – happiness at having written the exam, with sudden pangs of panic that I’d made an error, my percentage would drop, no college, no future – the usual overthinking spiral. A string of stress inducing entrance exams were a fortnight away and nearly two years of analyzing sin θ equations, monkeys hanging from pulleys, and seeing how Cyclohexa-1,3,5-triene reacts(that’s benzene, if you recall), were to (hopefully) bear fruit. But that night I put that aside and picked up this book, having refrained from reading for recreation all this while.

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Post Number 37 : Reconnecting with Reading

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

I used to go to school in a yellow-green DTC bus that roared and wheezed as if it was seconds away from a breakdown. And many a time it did. But what I remember most from that time was the unadulterated joy I would get from reading on the 45-minute journey. The light breeze, muted chatters, and (mostly) sleeping kids made for an interesting reading environment. I would either read my textbooks or if I felt fancy, a novel that I’d take with me. It didn’t matter what others thought or said. If my eyes were in my book, chances were, my other senses were oblivious to the world outside.

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Post Number 31 : On Sadness and its kinds

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

Reflecting upon the last few weeks of my epeolatry adventures, I’ve sensed a profoundly universal theme running through the books. Sadness. If asked to define sadness, most of us would spring to the definition of happiness so that we may create contrasts. Would that suffice though? Emphatically not. For in the books that I read, sadness itself was a continuum. In A Little Life, it was unflinching, dark, and encompassing. In The Casual Vacancy, it was an unpleasant presence. In The Bell Jar, it was a looming shadow, following Esther everywhere. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, it was deeply entwined with hope. And in The Color Purple, it was slowly receding, giving way to a long-pending and deserving joy for Celie.

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Post Number 20 : The Long and Short of Micro-Fiction

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

In my constant quest to discover new pages and reading material to follow online, I stumbled across the page of Akshay Dalvi. Akshay maintains a page on Facebook called ‘Words of Akshay’ which deals with micro-fiction. With over 96000 people following the page, I was certainly intrigued. I approached Akshay for his opinion on micro-fiction. He was kind enough to respond. Reflecting on his success, Akshay shared,”I tried writing micro-fiction 2-3 years back but I did not get the attention I wanted. Nevertheless, I carried on with my blogs, poetry and short stories. Upon my father’s passing, I started expressing my emotions via short stories. I started getting positive reactions. Within 3 months, my page went from 3000 followers to 96000+ followers.”

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Post Number 16 : Letter to a Younger Self

Posted on by Candid Wallflowers

Dear Chaitanya circa 2014,

It’s 22 March today and you’ve just walked out of your Computer Science board examination. You know it pretty well that you aced it. Your friends share your expression of relief at having just written their last board exam. All this while, it was hyped up to be this Herculean task that only gladiators survived through, but now that you have experienced it for yourself, you realize it was more of a test of your temperament rather than your knowledge. Congratulations, this is one of the biggest Eureka moments you will have in the upcoming years. Henceforth, most of the tests you will encounter whether of an academic or of a personal nature will test more of your attitude and disposition rather than your factual ability to decompress it and deduce a solution.

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