Love in the time of oblivion

I know that it is rather late in the day to be reading Gabriel Garcia's masterpiece 'Love in the time of Cholera' but I just couldn't get around to wrapping it up the first time I read it.


What he glorified as love seems to me as nothing more than an obsession, a perverted kind of obsession that lasts all life. So Florentino Ariza has to endure the curse of love and all its flu like symptoms for about fifty three years when finally a widowed and lonely Fermina Daza gives in to what she never thought possible. 


Our mainstay, Florentino would, after his first agonizing heartbreak, for the next fifty years use sex as a coping mechanism and fuck every department of womankind including the widows and the sweet sixteen year old's. He would however prefer the skinny inconspicuous lot of them who turn out to be most of the times as per his calculations astonishingly exceptional in bed.  


My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse, says a dejected Florentino Ariza. 
And if I could, I would ask Florentino Ariza only this... How many?


'Book Devourer' says D. Lets see what I was able to tick off my list this summer.

• White Teeth - Zadie Smith
• The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith
• Flesh and Blood - Michael Cunningham
• The Brief and Wondrous life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
• Still here - Linda Grant
• McSweeney's Collection Volume 1
• Who's Afraid of Virignia Woolf
• Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler
• Granta 96 The best of young British Novelists
• Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Well books are books nonetheless. They go with coffee, rainy days, hot summer days, likewise solitude. 

So I wasn't exactly as woebegone as I might have appeared to be while trying to sell insurance and working under someone who uses words like 'hardworkingly' and 'rememberable'. 

And Bangalore is quite a sanctuary for book lovers.

Oh yes, Bangalore..the new city, shining in all its eccentric splendor. All those assorted experiences that I would tuck safely in my memory box for now. 

Behind Closed doors

The doors are shut
They shut long ago
when you weren't looking.
The knocking ceased, when
somebody hung a DO NOT DISTURB
on the once shiny door knob
There is silence and sometimes
a creaking when you climb the stairs.
The stairs overlook a forgotten corridor
where you'd once count your stash of juicy fruit
or study
or kiss your lover
or sometimes a stranger
and once your own best friend.
or yell 'I'll be back in a while..'
Only, it was quite a while
In the meantime your mother prepared dinner
roast chicken and salad sprinkled with a bit of parmesan
the way you liked it
after which she waited
on that very corridor
Until the winds changed
and you came upon that shut door
Only this time you knocked
instead of barging in (and throwing your bags and keys)
or sneaking in (a shoe in each hand)
You knocked
and waited...