In sickness and in health...
Achoo. (Oh yes, Bless Me!!!) The last week has been terrible. First day of new job at MIT, and I was all coughed up, colded up, headached and fevered. After visits to MIT medical, ingesting copious amounts of Tylenol, nasal decongestants and what have you, I felt slightly better. Am recovering fine now, and I think what did the trick was cuddling up with my favourite, favourite novel of all time - Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. A re-immersion into the wonderful world of the Mehras and the Chatterjees, sexy bisexual Maan and Saeeda Bai, shoemaker Haresh and green eyed Malati... asthmatic Pran and devious Mishraji, Kabir, oh Kabir, and of course, Lata, my beloved, gorgeous, dreamy practical Lata, Brahmpur and beyond... riots, politics, cricket... Seth's post-partition India seems so familiar - have we really changed all that much. I've read this 1347 page book 4 times already, and each time, it feels closer to home than every before. I'm so excited that I'm going to go meet Seth next week when he comes to Cambridge for a signing tour of Two Lives.
And just when the world is looking up again (we even had a freak spell of sunny weather), what happens? Junri gets my cough, cold, sore throat, fever et al from me - and its deja vu all over again at the Shahani-Shimada household. What was that about being together in sickness and in health? Arrey baba, Junri, don't take it so seriously, ya! :-)
posted by Parmesh at 11:07 PM
2 Comments:
i started to read for the first time two weeks ago -- was immediately, viscerally drawn in. had to put it aside because i was running out of quality periods of time that i could dedicate to it. but yes, SO well written. i love south asian lit. and am very j that i can't be at the signing!
Thanks Simran. :-) I'll try to post more often, so that you can have more to read on your wonderful India trip. (I'm still soooooo J!!!)
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