There’s a feeling inside me which knocks and tells me that I’m going far away from stories. All in all it is true because I’ve hardly read a book in over 4 months now. I’ve started too many of them, but read none to the end. So this feeling is becoming more and more pronounced such that it makes me want to give up everything and just read. However, I’m in the middle of so many titles namely – Crime and Punishment, On Grief and Reason: Essays, Letters to Sartre, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity, and a few pages of Pnin – that it scares me to pick another one. Since I am reading most of these on my Kindle, I try to attribute this absence of stories in my mind to the e-reader. Suffice to say that it is a sorry reason. So, I think of various ways in which I could use my Flipkart vouchers to maybe buy the paperbacks (when I had already bought the e-books. Imagine!). However, none of this has brought me closer to latching on to a story that I cannot stop witnessing. And I sorely miss it.
I would like to follow someone into an alleyway and watch what they do, how their life unfolds, what challenges they face and how they overcome them or concede to them. I would like for myself to write such a story. Because my mind misses the paintings words make on it. I miss the numerous lives that I would lead while reading. I miss the places I would go to. I miss the person I became when I read.
Now that I am slowly picking up the threads of my ‘real’ life together and knitting them, I will start with finding better uses for Flipkart vouchers. And I will try to ignore all the noise and the forces that seem to pull me away from a life while I try to make a living.
Somethings gotta give.
Some punches should be delivered.
amarllyis 
I’m leading an exactly opposite life this year 😛
I have almost re-read Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason. I will be beginning with his Shadow Lines. I am 35 pages into Narcopolis. I have finished reading Roy’s The God of Small Things. I am not counting the almost dozen short stories that I have read since the start of this year.
Thing are looking up for me. I am totally going to credit this turnaround to my resolute decision of a particular aspect of my life. I will tell you when I speak. Not here. Too risky 😛
On a serious note, you should relax. There are times when one can’t get ANYTHING done despite having time. You don’t have much time anyway these days. Give yourself time. You’re a reader. You’ll always be one!
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