In the last decade there’s been a lot of discussion on e-readers and what they mean to the future of the book. Back in 2000 John Updike, in an essay reflecting on what he would miss about books if they go extinct, wrote about The book as furniture, The book as sensual pleasure, The book as souvenir, and Books as ballast. The debate has continued over the years, its intensity reaching a crescendo with every new advance in technology. More recently I’ve seen, through some blogs of book lovers, early signs of acceptance of the e-reader as an alternative. The practical advantages of the electronic version seem to be, if only slightly, edging out the charms of the much-loved paper-bound form. And if you were to believe the statistics, people with e-readers are reading more books than they did before – a healthy sign for the future of words and sentences.
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Saturday
At the hairdressers I’m assigned to the Turkish woman. In her mid-forties, she wears bright red lipstick, lets her hair hang loose, wears tight-fitting clothes – a light-maroon half-sleeved blouse over a black pant – that make her look more plump than is necessary. There’s a shine in her eyes as she goes snip-snip-snip all over. In about ten minutes she is done.
The owner – der chef, as the women (and girls) in the saloon call him – looks at me astonished as I get up from the chair next to him. He had started earlier, but isn’t halfway through his client.
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Santa tales
“…you get the sense that it’s possible simply to go through life noticing things and writing them down and that this is OK, it’s worth doing.”
– Joan Didion
In the recent weeks, there’s been a lot of talk on Santa. A colleague at work noted, with a touch of regret, that his four-year old already knew Santa was none other than the neighbour downstairs, and that he came in not through the chimney – they had one – but the front door. Another parent was furious: during a ride before Christmas, the anchor on a car radio channel had announced, with all of them listening, that there really was no Santa, it was all made up. Back home the children wanted the truth out; she had had a hard time rescuing the myth.
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The Mumbai weekend
Last January, during a five-week trip to India, I spent a weekend in Mumbai with a couple of ‘blog-friends’. Bunny, an editor at Hindustan Times, picked me up at the airport. It was to be our first meeting, and her SMS, sent from the gate, read: Shortish, messy hair, sleeveless purple and green top, black pants, small blue bag. Later that day Bips, a social worker engaged with a local NGO, joined us near the Gateway of India. It was probably the most memorable weekend of 2010.
We started with a Gujarati thali lunch that captured the essence of a Mumbai visit: there was more variety to experience than you could possibly take in. The dishes, brought to the table at a dizzying pace by uniformed servers, left me exhausted. (All these months later I do not remember what I ate; I see only the anticipation for the next delicacy to arrive, followed by the growing regret that I could not eat all that I wished to.) After lunch we rode South, towards Kala Ghoda, in a ‘Cool Cab’: an air-conditioned taxi, a charming old Fiat that was almost an antique piece. Traffic was inconsistent, clogged and snail-paced in some areas and breezy and fast in others. Bunny made the long drive short with her insights on Mumbai culture and the recent history of local politics. In between, around a bend or in the middle of a street, she would point to a house and refer to a celebrity who lived there: “That’s where Chetan Bhagat lives.” “And here’s Bal Thackeray house.”
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Snowy Sunday
“Thousands of travellers have had their plans disrupted by further snowfalls across Western Europe.” BBC News.
Bad Homburg is a small city – population: 60000 – near Frankfurt, about 120 kilometers from where we live. L, his wife U and daughter J moved there recently from Vienna, and we went to meet them last Sunday. It was drizzling when we left home early in the afternoon; snow on the street had turned into slush. Driving was slow, so Wife sent an SMS: Snow on the road – so it looks like we might be late. U responded instantly: R u sure u want to take the journey today? It was one of those sentences that is – given the nature of the medium – difficult to interpret: Was she suggesting we cancel? Was it a request that we cancel? Or was it, as we assumed, a hint that it was okay even if we did not turn up? We were well on our way and were in a mood to be outdoors, so we decided to continue: We are already on the way – it is not bad it’s just slow. Midway, when light rain had turned into a snow-blizzard and visibility was down to a few meters, we wondered if we had understood her right. (Later in the day, when the real trouble began, I would think back to our decision.)
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Alone in Berlin
Hans Fallada – have you heard that name before?
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Tucked in a corner of a mall near Heidelberg is a small shop that offers, among other things, a shoe repair service. The man behind the counter is in his work outfit, a red jumper over a blue shirt, and his coarse hands are dirty. Wife gives him her shoe with a broken heel; come back in two hours, he says. Two hours later, our shopping completed, when we return he is talking to another customer, taking another order – he needs another fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes. What do we do? Walk into Media-Markt and browse the DVD collection? Or visit the German bookstore nearby?
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A new arrival
1.
Snow arrived today.
Edward Hopper and the eternal moment
1. The exhibition
On a rainy Saturday afternoon in September, during a weekend in Lausanne, I spot a notice for an Edward Hopper exhibition running at a local museum. I have never seen a Hopper original, and I soon start towards Fondation de l’Hermitage – a 19th century residence that houses temporary exhibitions, – looking forward to a quiet afternoon in the company of paintings I love.
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Books, books everywhere
1.
There are few crowded places in the small-town Germany I have lived in. Parents apparently have difficulty in explaining the concept of a ‘crowd’ to children: television is mostly forbidden for kids, and real-life examples are hard to come by, unless you go to a Bundesliga football match or visit the Frankfurt book fair.
Serendipity
It happened the other day, on an evening that was turning into one of those you forget as soon as they are over, unremarkable and ordinary in every way. Until it happened, that is.
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I am following Eric Newby’s thoughts in The Big Red Train Ride, as he describes the history of the monastery of St.Sergius, a site that the Rossiya – the Trans-Siberian train, Moscow to Vladivostok, 5810 miles, 7 days – crosses on its journey through the countryside beyond Moscow. The sight of the “mass of spheres and domes” reminds Newby of their visit to the monastery only a few days ago. In particular, he describes the “austerely beautiful” Cathedral of Troitska.
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Parmanu 