Saturday, March 27, 2010

How I discovered BBH

A few years ago I had a chance to read "The Bourne Identity" by Robert Ludlum. The critics review promised it to be a good read at the least and un-put-down-able at the most. That sparked my curiosity and I ended up, reading it over the next few days. Boy!! Were the critics right!! The story of an amnesiac Jason Bourne proved to be some story! As I discovered the true identity of Jason Bourne as a certain David Webb, an undercover CIA agent, brought in to bring down an international criminal Carlos, the plot turned all the more interesting and the novel ended. Now for the rest of the plot I had to read part 2 and 3 of the trilogy series, Bourne Supremacy & Ultimatum, which unfortunately I did not have at the time.
So I set off on my ritual shopping around Commercial Street, MG and Brigade road (I did that every semester vacation, spent in Bangalore). In my search, I finally ended up on Church Street, stopping at every street hawker's display of books in hope of finding those 2 novels. I finally struck gold when I discovered an old second/third hand copy of Bourne Ultimatum among those displayed. Now all I needed was the Supremacy, to complete the trilogy. But to my dismay I found out that even he did not have the book. It made no sense to read Ultimatum without the continuity of Supremacy, so giving it a try again I inquired if he knew of another seller where I might find a copy. To this he took a card out and handing it to me told me that further down the road was a certain book shop where I might find it. The card read “Blossom Book House”, and I thought to myself that it might turn out to be one of those expensive, pricy places.
Walking into the shop I was proved right, the books all stood in their hard bound covers and appeared way beyond my limited budget for the novel. The shopkeeper, looking at my perplexed expression inquired what I was looking for and directed me to the first floor where I would find it. Having been taught by mom and dad, that books are always a good investment I went to the first floor preparing myself for an expensive buy.
The sight that met my eyes, struck me dumb (Now that’s a difficult thing to happen since I almost always have something to say and very few things have the power to incapacitate my power of speech)!! But there I was, like I said “Dumbstruck, Awestruck, and all other of kinds of struck”! There were huge towering shelves filled with almost all kinds of books ever written (excuse the exaggeration, but you get the idea), neatly stacked into different sections in several rows. Never had I seen so many books and felt like reading all of them. Of course I had seen lots more in the college library when I happened to wander down there by mistake, but those books in the first place were the reason I avoided going to the library.
Between the racks/shelves were small plastic seats where one could sit and read for sometime before buying the book. There is no disturbance to those who sit and read through the books and are lost among the works of some of the best story tellers of old and recent times, the likes of which include Homer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Dan Brown, Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsythe, Jeffery Archer, Leon Uris, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, etc and poets like Wordsworth, Milton etc. I stood spellbound in a place where many people start improving their vocabulary.
Looking through the books, I did find Supremacy, but more importantly I had discovered a place which would turn into one of my favorite haunts in the time to come.
There are places much better stocked than this book house but this place has a certain unique-quaint charm to it. Browsing through the books you might come across an old forgotten book printed ages ago, like I found “An essay on criticism” by Alexander Pope (If you have read, The Da Vinci code by Dan Brown, its this person he refers to when he talks about A Pope, a friend of Isaac Newton), printed in 1902 in London and bought by an Indian gentleman in 1904 (I know the year of purchase, as he happened to sign the book with the year). I bought the book purely for its history of around 108 years. Now that’s a really, really long time.
That was how I discovered Blossom book house. Irrelevant of whether one reads or not, this place is worthy of a visit, where you find the latest literature in peaceful co-existence with the historical ones and vice-versa.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

LOCKED OUT!!!

This happened a few days ago on a Saturday. I was out learning Basketball with my cousin Amri (actually, she’s teaching me the game) in the evening and after the game (technically it wasn’t a game, it was just me running around the basketball court while simultaneously dribbling the ball and trying to aim at the basket, pathetically I might add and trying to score. Score in the real sense of scoring a point, not the other sense, PERV!!!) we started back home on her Scooty. As luck would have it, just about a kilometer away from the house the engine spluttered to a stop. Try as we might we could not get it to start again cuz the geniuses that we are, we had forgotten to take a look at the fuel tank before starting off like Roadies. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a show on MTV where a bunch of fools (well not bigger fools than us seeing as they have the sense to check their fuel before taking off) go on a journey and perform tasks for money and immunity. So each of us took turns to push the scooty till the nearest Petrol station only to find to our chagrin that because of power failure, we would not be getting any fuel for at least another hour. So it was another round pushing the vehicle home, thankfully it was not all that great a distance.

It was almost dark when we got home and since no one else was home apart from us we decided to go upstairs to the terrace next to our room and stargaze. I have been interested in the heavens (I mean the night sky) since my high school and I know quite a little about the constellations (now I am bragging, I only know to spot 2-3 constellations, namely Orion, Canis major, the great bear, the scorpion etc), so I decided to educate my lil sister bout them.

So up we went, bolting the main door from within (mind you, I say bolting, not locking) to the open terrace. The first constellation was the Orion or Great Hunter as he’s called, as it’s the easiest to spot because of the three stars forming his famous belt. It took some time for Amri to get the complete constellation (help came n the form of his shoulder, the red star Betelgeuse, making it easier) since it was her first date with the Hunter. Next was Canis Major, which lies next to Orion. This again is easy to spot because the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius is a part of this 5 star constellation and also because it has a distinctive inverted Y or lambda shape. Before I knew, I was telling her about the few Indian and Greek mythologies that I had heard about or read and the time just flew.

It was time to get back into the house and surprise, surprise!! We had conveniently locked ourselves out when we slid the glass door a little too hard and the automatic lock had slid back in place!! The catch, no one else is home apart from the two of us and we lock ourselves out. As if that was not enough, my aunt reached home the exact minute and started ringing the bell. We started yelling at the top of our voice to let her know that we were locked out and it would take some time to sort the whole thing out. It took a lot longer(round about 20 mins) since the two of us had to calm down completely, as we were laughing hysterically at our own foolish predicament, when my aunt heard our laughter she told us to get our act together and get inside somehow. I tried climbing over the parapet and jumping down into the balcony below but gave up on the idea soon as there were no handholds or footholds for any grip and one slip, I would either land on the Mangalore tiles of the balcony roof or 6 floors on the ground, neither of which was a very comforting thought.

The last option left was to break down the sliding glass doors, and very frankly I was not all that happy to do that. So, to make sure that we had tried everything else possible before breaking the door down we started tugging hard at the door away from the frame. As were just about to give up, Viola!! The lock released with a snap and the door slid open. We heaved a sigh of relief, not about getting back in but for the fact that neither the main door nor the door upstairs had to be broken down. I learnt my lesson not to bolt the main door when I was home alone but rather lock it so that even in such situations it’s easier to unlock a door than having to break it down or sawing it off the frame.

Some day that turned out to be, first out of fuel, then out of breath for having had to push the vehicle and then finally locking ourselves out!! But all Amri and me did was laugh about it whole-heartedly, since both of us agree on the fact that it’s these silly goof-ups that make the journey called LIFE a little more fun and interesting.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The good old summer days

As summer approaches I am lost in the sweet nostalgia of the good old childhood days.
The ending of February and beginning of March is usually one of my favorite times of the year, when its neither too hot nor too cold. The time when the trees start shedding their old leaves, as they get ready to deck themselves with a shiny, fresh, new leafy coat. And the old leaves drift down from their lofty post in ones and twos (sometimes in a shower) in the summer breeze, to make way for the new G-gen (Green-generation of leaves :D )
The love for this season is probably linked somewhere deep-down to the summer vacation of the school days and the freedom of having finished the annual exams. The summer vacations were more enjoyable than the winter cuz of two main reasons- one, they would be twice as long as the winter vacations and two, there would be no holiday homework assigned then.
There are a few things about this season that I remember more vividly than the others. The fragrance emanating when the dry parched earth eagerly soaked up the water we sprinkled around the courtyards of our houses to keep the summer dust at bay and to induce a sense of coolness (the summer temperatures in my hometown range between 40-48 degree Celsius any given day) around the time the sun started setting.
Another extremely vivid memory is lazing in front of the TV watching CN (Cartoon Network) on hot afternoons as we would be forbidden to go out and play in the sun, lest we suffer a sun stroke (not that I never tried, sneaking out carefully making sure Mamma didn’t notice. And I have never had a sun-stroke, wonder why the adults didn’t understand that?? Oops, yeah!! They never knew I sneaked out, until now), all the while receiving a cold blast from the air-cooler. And the icing on the cake for this situation would be my mum’s yummy, delicious home-made custard-fruit salad, an extremely wholesome food (containing a mix of rich dry fruits, seasonal fruits and milk). I would shamelessly hog it like I have been starving for decades and usually end up skipping either breakfast/lunch/dinner for the greed of eating two or three servings of it. And not once did Mom complain that I ate like a glutton, she always made it with a smile (I wonder how!!! But then I guess that’s how most Moms are), not for a week or two but two whole months from April to beginning to June. Feast every single day :D
It was during these days that I discovered my love for reading when one day I tagged with my Dad to the local circulation library and picked out some comics (not to read, simply to look at the pictures. There you have it!! I never was interested in reading, it simply happened “by the way”). I always wondered why anyone on this earth (including Ma and Pa) would want to read some thick, fat, novel so bland in illustration when there were so many colorful books around(Exactly my thoughts then, but gimme some credit.. I was only 10 then)? As I soon was to discover, it was not the illustrations but the amazingly well woven plot that kept people glued to the novels. I slowly graduated to mystery novels like the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and P G Wodehouse. Little did I know that this ‘by the way’ hobby would soon turn into a love for books (which has only grown and never dissipated) thanks to Dad for introducing me to the proper kind of literature at the proper time, specially the serious plots as I entered High School. It has been an amazing learning process.
I should be thankful to the long walks I take in the afternoon around the office campus after lunch, because it was during one such walk that a solitary drifting dry leaf from its parent branch triggered this memory, which started as a small trickle and then transformed into a smooth flowing brooke, bringing along with it so many other forgotten memories.