A long overdue book recommendation

It's almost the end of the year, and I'm desperately looking forward to the next year! So I haven't been doing much lately; other than waiting around for time to fly by, of course! And reading Discworld - every second that I am at home.

It's a comic fantasy series by Terry Pratchett and I have been reading it for the past couple of months. There are 39 books in the series, 6 short stories and a couple of more books about the Discworld; so you really can't blame me for taking a lot of time. Actually, I'm still in the teen-ages of the series!

It's about a flat disc-shaped world, that rests on the heads of four huge elephants, that are standing on top of an enormous turtle named the Great A'Tuin, that is slowly swimming through space! Don't imagine a "Horton Hears a Who" kind of world, it's an enormous planet, the Disc! Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once. It's quite different from the worlds made by creators having less imagination and more mechanical aptitude!

The Discworld series is a mind blowing read for an fantasy fiction fan! It's also one of the few books that can actually make you laugh out loud! I'm not writing a review of the books, because there are too many new ideas to understand and explain; and because I have read too little of the series as of now! But I want to recommend the books, to anyone looking for an interesting and fun read! So I decided, instead, to write(type) down one of my favourite introductory paragraphs from one of the books:

I would like it to be understood that this book is not wacky. Only dumb redheads in fifties' sitcoms are wacky.

No, it's not zany, either.

This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions.
It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author's control. They might.

However, it's primarily the story about a world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive...

I hope someone does take my advice and reads these books; because it will be only the best thing that's ever happened to them! Also, I'd like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year, in advance! I created my little blog in 2010 and honestly, I'm totally looking forward to having a "2011" section on it as well!

A Trip

So, as the unimaginative title clearly states, this is about a trip I went on, with my relatives last weekend...or the weekend before that...or the one before...that's not the point! It was a three-day trip to a place near Solapur. Whoever said that the journey is more important than the destination clearly never travelled in such a battered old bus. I can't imagine how listening to the windows rattle in my ears for twelve straight hours can be anything but awful! Our journey was as terrible as our destination was amazing.

There is a small village named Harali located about 27 kms interior of the Solapur-Hyderabad highway in Maharashtra. It is one of the many victims of the 1993 Latur earthquake. With the help of Jnyana Prabodhini, a non-political organization, the village was literally restored from the ruins. Today, the people have jobs, and the residential school has over two hundred students staying, and many more coming to study from Harali as well as neighbouring villages. There is also an agricultural college there which provides a diploma after schooling. A place where there is no electricity for almost 17 hours, functions perfectly on its own gobar gas plant and solar energy plants. There is a huge horticulture project that grows vegetables and trees bearing fruits like guavas, tamarinds, cashews and custard apples in the 60 acres of land; which generates both everyday food for the students and staff, and financial support for the school.

The place is awesome; even for a skeptic like me. I might have been slightly bummed about getting up early in the morning(5.30!!) to say the prayers with the school students; but that's the only time I passed any sort of sarcastic remarks about the place. Achievement. For a person who was never a part of that bunch of kids that goes around climbing up trees and knocking off mangoes or tamarinds; eating fruits right off the trees was quite a fun experience. It may have had something to do with the fact that you don't need to climb a guava or custard apple tree to get the fruit. We ate like we had been starved for a month; and the food was absolutely delicious!

I didn't have a great camera on me, just my cellphone. So there is no question of the tilted super-meaningful way-too-zoomed-in photos. Either way, our group already had that one member that doesn't let go of his camera for a second, takes tonnes of photos without even looking at what he's away clicking at; and there's not enough room for two such people in a group of sixteen! It was a great experience, to see people living away from what we call the "real world" and not giving a care in the world. Made me think about how we are so dependent on such unnecessary things . I tried not imagine what would happen to me in a place with no computer and no television and no KFC! It was nice to see children playing outside unlike the kids here that are glued to video-games. None of us felt like leaving that place, specially in that bus!

I remember writing a post, "Where have all the sparrows gone?", a long while back. It was about how there are no sparrows in the city anymore. This place had hundreds of sparrows; just like Pune when I was a kid. I was glad to see, that the sparrows really have flown off to a better place...

"Mort" - Just a random crazy post!

It's getting colder every minute, and the winter has dried up my brains along with the entire city. Not to mention the cold, the fever and the fact that even climbing the stairs upto my room seems tiring now.

My last post was kind of uninspired, so I ended up deleting it (though I'd like to tell my future self not to do delete any more or I'll end up deleting the whole blog, considering how paranoid I am!)

The past two-three weeks have probably been the least creative times of my life. Frequent holidays, with nothing particular to do, can be terribly boring. I just want to fast forward to next year, so I can be super-busy again!

A couple of minutes back I was reading an interview by Keri Smith; exactly the kind of person who can help you get over a creativity block. I came across a sort of a challenge: "Create an "instant sculpture" using whatever you have in front of you right now. (You only have two minutes, GO!) Take a photo of it."

The two minute time limit didn't give me, well, time, to wonder about whether I should do it or not and I just went right ahead. And there you go, in little less than the assigned two minutes, I came up with this crazy little 'sculpture'. It's a good thing my room is so messy, there was a lot of useful stuff in front of me (there was no cheating involved, mind you).

So it consists of- a bottle of water color and I've no idea why it was lying on my desk. That smiley-faced ball is 'physiotherapy' for my fractured hand, so I always carry it around with me. The two bottles of water and the big brown jar are from my stash of afternoon snacks (guilty!) and the newspaper that I hardly ever read also came in handy (yes, pun intended)! I've decided to name him Mort, since I was reading that book from the Discworld series right before I came across this and because I'm too tired to come up with something else.

Now, the fact that I actually did that challenge is kind of amusing and dorky. But hey, it got me to open my blog after ages; and now, there's another nice little post that I've been meaning to write sitting in my drafts waiting to be edited and published! All thanks to Mort, here. Seeing how this has worked, I might as well start a journal like Keri Smith suggests (she's awesome, if you're as artsy as I am, you might want to check her out!!)