I opened the New York Times Book review section , ready to toss it to the paper garbage , after-all I will never have the luxury of time to read. What is even the point of scanning at the grapes presented, preemptively knowing that they are going to be sour or just sit there and rot. Besides why spend thirty quid on some book that likely will looses flavor in a few pages, just to add to the fattened pot of an author who when not writing , may minister to the sick or infants of the profession ...thus went my thoughts as the page opened to the heading 'family medicine '.
I scanned through the review, made a face and threw into the paper pile. In the evening as I made my next day's lunch ,a part of me go over to the paper pile and read the review a little bit.
Some thing in the review irked me and I mutter to myself about 'some Solomon guy who has no clue about places and people sit there and feel all mighty big and judges a book's content...I bet he has nothing to do with India ' The phone rings and its my daughter... so I express my annoyance about the reviewer .
Thus I decide to buy the book and as I read , I am more annoyed at some random reviewer with no clue of the land or people or a past that is plausible( and true if you stitched together just the group of people and families I knew in my infancy in a tiny village area ) had felt righteous to judge with his words . Move it another generation back and I see it all as really possible . The story flows and here I am reading it - the covenant of water...
I change the names and move them like chess pieces and I have my childhood vividly displayed with all the dramatic flair of those days .There are too many mishaps and terrible things happen in the book, and possibly in a past not that far away , but life did go on and people had an element of goodness and ethical ways to get through from one day to the next as best as they could . I am not blind to the impact of caste system and the power of the landed over the poorer sections of the society , nor am I discounting that the corrupt systems' grapple-hold and the powers be created and made so much suffering , but the simple goodness despite it all in those around me is what I recall . It has changed now and just like the dew drops dies on a blade of grass ,the good in people have shrunk and the goodness dies daily and gradually... Just like the reaches of a cancer , quietly invading and eroding the goodness within people , in our Gods own country...yes God has been quietly slumbering , unable to heal our minds ,may be.
Back to the book - I am glad to be reading it , makes me skim to the surface of a time that at once makes me sad and touched, for that which is gone as it is part of the fabric of me... a person , part of my mind , my memories that makes me , the parts I hold dear and those had moved me through my life in times that would have felled some others under the strain it brought... I am glad to get back to that land through a book , so thank you book for getting to me through a confluence of chanced emotions and actions...I am certain some call that 'fate' and others call it 'god /deity in action', but what ever name it carries it chanced me to the book and through that into a window that I can slide into the past where with all the faults it was truly the land where God lived in its peoples minds perhaps..
by Pc-3 (05/15/2023)
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