The past few weeks have been wonderful . Full of the illicit pleasure of being able to read . to read without having the weight of unfinished work pressing down on you , hovering at the corner of your eyes and nudging you in the back of your shoulder .
I have had this felling for more than 6 years now , ever since I became an office bearer in this NGO that I work with .
I borrowed an armful of new books from the club ( we are allowed only one out of 7 ) And I have been spending day after day reading and I love the feeling . Getting lost in another's life in another time on another continent .
I just finished "The Settler's Cook Book" by Yasmin Alibhai Brown . A kutchi Ismaili , born in Uganda , thrown out by Idi Amin and now in London . Did not think much of her recipes , though that was the reason I borrowed it in the first place . But her impressions of attitudes over the years to immigrants , the immigrants themselves - indians - are ones that I agree with to a great extent .
And yes I find this whole business of blending in with the place that you migrate to or keeping up with the trend really very tiresome and boring . You just have a whole lot of clone like creatures at the end of it . Clone like - because they are not clones and will eventually come apart with the strain of being alike .
I like the way she put the Satanic Verses issue . Yes , you have a right to your opinion but not to wilfully hurt or abuse another.
And all those dogmatic , jingoistic people who belong to NGO's , think tank's and organisations - they have a desert of their own - where alien thoughts and ideas are shrivelled at germination itself
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