Post # 9 - On Our Wedding Anniversary...

.....I present to you, some very interesting quotes on marriage, from literature.

‘Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience.' (An American Marriage - Tayari Jones)

Who needs a studio audience when you have social media? However…..

‘A marriage is a very secret place.’  (The Black Prince - Iris Murdoch)

Instagram doesn’t tell the whole truth, always remember that because…

‘In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner.’ (A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch)

Sad, but true. In which case….

‘It is my advice to any woman getting married to start, not as you mean to go on, but worse, tougher, than you mean to go on.' (A Far Cry from Kensington - Muriel Spark)

It might work, it might not work but don’t fret because..

‘Marriages, my dear, are made to be broken, that’s one of the rules of modern civilisation.’  (A Backward Place - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)

Wait a second…this post is about a celebration of marriage, not dissolution! Most literary masterpieces are usually around unhappy marriages so I think it wasn’t such a good idea to dip into literary quotes..... 

‘Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.’ 

(The Course of Love - Alain de Botton)

2019 - The End

It's that time of the year when we make resolutions and revisit the various highs and lows of 2019 that we collectively, and individually, experienced. It’s also that time of the year when a gazillion posts about how you can become a 'better' person fill up the internet and Facebook starts sending everyone their respective 'highlights of the year'. Which makes the end of the year a little more overwhelming than it already is or needs to be. 

How was 2019 on the beanbag?

I walked into the new year with an armful of resolutions, a self-help book (which I still haven’t finished) and a Google sheet. This sheet became something out of a horror story after a couple of months. The thought of this daily accountability, though very exciting at first, soon became a nightmare. Even though it did help me get into the habit of performing some tasks, there were others I didn’t or couldn’t do every day and the sight of these incomplete tasks made me loathe the sheet. So I abandoned it and decided to focus on the big and some not so big goals I had set for the year.

The one big learning I’ve come away with from this goal setting process is that achieving anything requires resilience and consistency. No matter what the world throws at you, you’ve got to stick to your path. If you stray from your path, the big bad wolf will come after you and we know what he wants. I was able to do some things this year which I had not thought possible. At the same time, there were some other things which I failed at miserably. Does that make 2019 a bad year? Not at all. On the contrary, it was a year full of learnings and personal discoveries. 

Major takeaways from 2019:

1. Read for ten minutes everyday. There is no maximum limit.

2. Talk to Allah. There is no better meditation than prayer. 

3. Don’t be afraid of the world. Write, perform, create - on YOUR terms. 

4. Take more risks, Farheen! Be bold and make a statement. Whether it be through your attire or your posts on social media platforms. Get moving girl!

5. Wear more saris. Investing in lawn suits is ridiculous.

6. Spend quality time with the twins. In a couple of years they’ll be off to university and then I’ll miss not being with them. 

7. Take out the DSLR. Take pictures. Find beauty in ordinary things. Make an effort. You’ve done it before.

8. Write the twins’ journal regularly. Write in your own journal regularly. 

9. Be kind. Be patient. Be kind. Be patient. 

10. Focus on your health. Do what makes you happy and content but do it diligently and sincerely. 

Signing 2019 off with some words of wisdom from my favourite bear, Winnie the Pooh. "Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear and not bothering".


Note: Some of the highlights of 2019 on the beanbag. You can read about them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Whew!

Photograph: I took this pic of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet at the Flower Dome in Singapore during our visit in Nov-Dec 2019. 

Post # 16 - Shoes matter!

Always check the shoes to assess what sort of conversation you might have with another Asian woman, whether she was the type who wanted to discuss the price of gold and baby clothes, or talk about travelling around India and how crap men were. It was one of Chila's secret tactics in social situations, and it never failed. 

(Life Isn't All HA HA HEE HEE - Meera Syal)

Straight from the book - Afternoon Raag

When one remembers a scene from the past in which one is with a loved one who is now dead, it is not like a memory at all, but like a dream one is having before his death, a premonition. In this dream which precedes death, the person is tranquil and happy, and yet, without reason, you know he is to die. When we recall the dead, the past becomes a dream we are dreaming foretelling death, though in our waking moments we cannot properly interpret it or give it significance. My memory of the day I bought the tanpura with my guru is like such a dream. 

(Afternoon Raag - Amit Chaudhuri)

straight from the book - Milkman

"There was food and drink. The right butter. The wrong butter. The tea of allegiance. The tea of betrayal. There were 'our shops' and 'their shops'. Place names. What school you went to. What prayers you said. What hymns you sang. How you pronounced your 'haitch' or 'aitch'. Where you went to work. And of course there were bus-stops. There was the fact that you created a political statement everywhere you went, and with everything you did, even if you didn't want to". 

(Milkman - Anna Burns)

straight from the book

'But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.'

(After Many a Summer - Aldous Huxley)

Straight from the book

'Other men slowly build up the sense of home by accumulation - a new picture, more and more books, an odd shaped paper-weight, the ash tray bought for a forgotten reason on a forgotten holiday; Scobie built his home by a process of reduction.'

(The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene)

Save your story from pneumonia

"Write to please one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

(Kurt Vonnegut Jr.)

20 minutes

Twenty minutes' sleep. Just a nice doze. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club - maybe. 

(Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler)

Types of Readings

"There are readings - of the same text - that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, that snatch for personal meanings, I am full of love, or disgust or fear, I scan for love, or disgust or fear. There are - believe it - impersonal readings - where the mind's eye sees the lines move onwards and the mind's ear hears them sing and sing.

Now and then there are readings which make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark - readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how".

(Possession, a Romance by A.S. Byatt)

The True Writer

A writer only becomes a true writer by practising his craft, by experimenting constantly with language, as a great artist may experiment with clay or oils until the medium becomes second nature, to be moulded however the artist may desire. 

(Possession - a Romance by A.S. Byatt)

The Secret Compartment in a Writer's brain...

"In a radio interview in 1970, Roald Dahl described the utmost sensual delight he got when he went up to his hut, closed the door and sat down in his chair.

You become a different person, you are no longer an ordinary fellow who walks around and looks after his children and eats meals and does silly things, you go into a completely different world. I personally draw all the curtains in the room, so that I don't see out the window and put on a little light which shines on my board. Everything else in your life disappears and you look at your bit of paper and get completely lost in what you're doing. You do become another person for s moment. Time disappears completely. You may start at nine in the morning and the next time you look at your watch, when you're getting hungry, it can be lunchtime. And you've absolutely no idea that three of four hours have gone by. So when you meet a musician or a writer, you shouldn't be surprised that they look exactly like ordinary people, because in that part of their lives they are...All the best artists that I've known, like Hemingway and Steinbeck and EB White and Thurber, behave very normally in their private lives...They are ordinary people who have a secret compartment somewhere in their brain which they can switch on when they become quite alone and go to work."

Tomorrow, 13th September, is Roald Dahl's birthday. And the celebrations are going to go on all this month on the beanbag. 

Source: Storyteller - The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock

Picture: Google Images