□ Placeholder: 14 — Life in the time of Corona
Hello from a 28°C weather, where the sun leaves its marks on the day like it should... preferably everywhere (I am looking at you Amsterdam!).
Feb - Mar is a great time to be in Bihar. The sun shines in a way that's desirable and not unbearable like the rest of the year. And I happen to be here during this pleasant yet strange(?!?) times. My flights were cancelled at the last moment and now I am happily stuck in what I would call glorious weather and for everyone else here, it's just... weather. It's borderline strange to suddenly turn into an outsider from being an insider. My memory is stuck in a particular time of the place but the place has moved on.
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## BookSwap
Before getting on the flight to India, I attended a meet up called BookSwap in Amsterdam. As the name suggests, a few of us met and swapped books. It's natural to think of it something similar to a Book Club but the only difference being you don't have any obligation to read the books you had swapped. And, you only talked about them if you felt motivated enough.
I had brought in Sourdough by Robin Solan to swap and I blurted a brief summary of the book to everyone that went something like this:
*Uh... umm.. it's a book about software engineer in San Fransisco, who loves baking... and uh... she comes across a mysterious starter for baking sourdough and is drawn to the world of magical realism where uh.. she discovers a colony of microorganisms that need to be kept alive ... it's not intense like you would expect from Murakami's stories but is rather simple light read... it's nice...*
It wasn't that long ago where we were still discussing the first case that had arrived in Netherlands. We felt perfectly normal back then and that's the reason why 10-12 of us had gathered in a cozy apartment to talk and listen about the books we had read. The term social distancing hadn't landed in our vocab yet. It's crazy to think how recent it was.
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## Books
Speaking of books, I have been focusing on reading literatures relating to walking (and travel) in pursuit of learning to walk better (deeply?). I started with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee, followed by The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Now, I am making my way through In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin.
It would be a unfair, foolish even, to try to summarise these books into a few paragraphs. However I will say this (and you probably already knew): travelling deeply is a time intensive task and someone that intends to do so needs to be interested and devoted to the craft itself.
Nan Shepherd spent her entire life in the Cairngorms and when I read the book, I could clearly see how deeply and madly she was in love with the not just the mountains but every aspect that touched the mountains.
Laurie Lee, decided to walk to Spain from London simply because he knew a Spanish phrase for Will you please give me a glass of water?. He then tramped through the country, on foot mostly, for a year and then went back again hoping to fight in the midst of the Civil War.
I expected these encounters and accounts of walking to be blown out of proportion because that's how the contemporary travel writings have always been. But I am happy to report that these are timeless books that have stood the test of time. If walking or even travelling in general interests you, you should pick up these.
Apart from these, I also read Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill and Cleanness by Garth Greenwell. I wanted to read Weather by Jenny Offill but picked up Dept of Speculation first to get a feel for her writing. Now I am intrigued. Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage where nothing much happens except everything happens that you can relate it with the day to day life. The writing style is fresh and I ended up feeling the urge to finish the story as soon as possible.
Cleanness was the most sensual books I have read in a long long loooong time. While the underlying theme of the story is woven from the concepts of desire, obligation and foreignness, it bases off on intimate encounters. The book is based in Sofia, Bulgaria — a place that I have been interested in for quite some time which made it even more interesting for me.
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Though I am at home, these books have been giving me a way of being at a different home... a home that's away from the realities of the real turbulent times. As Jeanette Winterson wrote in epilogue of The Living Mountain: we all have to find a way of being, a way of living... Life has an inside as well as an outside. Most, if not all, of our time and energy goes into life on the outside — jobs, money, status, getting and spending — and this is disorienting. And it means that if life on the outside is a mess, as it often is, or unsatisfactory, we have no inner resources to help us through.
Books work from the inside out. They are a private conversation happening somewhere in the soul. And when I am reading, I find myself less anxious and more aware. In other words, as my good friend often says: it has been feeding my soul. For you it could be writing or painting. The activity doesn't matter, as long as we feed the soul we will find a home where we can live in total time.
Stay safe (and wash those hands frequently!).
Until next time,
K