Thursday, January 8, 2009

Torturing My Grey Cells

The title for this one comes from a comment on a previous post. I kind of liked the phrase, so I thought I'd use it here.

In the last fortnight, I have rediscovered the avid reader in me. After I read three books during the shutdown, on the first day back at work, Bhatti handed me his copy of The Kite Runner, since he knew I wanted to read it. I have been reading it the last three evenings, and it has engaged me to the extent that I feel sleepy, but do not want to put the book down. Yesterday my mom was recollecting how I always used to fall asleep with a book in my hand or on my chest. That happened again last night. And the night before that. After a really long time. So my mom has, once again, added this item to her list of household duties. Keeping my book aside and putting out the light in my room.

This morning, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail mentioning the fact that I didn't write a post yesterday, and asking if everything was quite all right. That pointed out to me that my evenings have become a bit of a battle between my two addictions - blogging and reading, and the need for sleep.

My brother says that, some years back, I used to fall asleep reading something, and if he shook me a little, I would wake up, and not realise that I'd fallen asleep, and nonchalantly resume reading from the same point. He also claims that sometimes I used to wake up in the middle of the night, perform some random calculations on a notepad (a paper notepad) or a calculator, and go back to sleep. I also used to mumble stuff about sequences and series in my sleep. I know all this is a little far out, but I do think that most of it is actually quite accurate.

Guess what? Today I spent around fourteen hundred rupees at a bookstore. That's about as much as I spent on clothes on my last shopping trip. And today's shopping trip bought me a little more satisfaction than the last one. And a reason to look forward to many more odd evenings.

9 comments:

actinium said...

And pray, what have you bought?

Anonymous said...

Reading is not torturing your grey cells,it's nurturing your grey cells..

And I am also interested to know the list of books that you have bought. Or are you again keeping that to yourself till you get a chance ot review those. (BTW, I'm sure FLT must be in the list)

Bhavya said...

It is nurturing, Bhatti, but not in case your mind is craving rest and you keep nudging yourself to read another ten pages.

Vaise maine is baar blog pe mention kar diya tha ki main The Kite Runner padh rahi hoon... so I'm not keeping everything to myself now.

And you are right again, Bhatti, FLT is on the list. And the Feynman autobiography, which Abhinav has already laid claim to... he'll read it while I read FLT. And then there is The Notebook, the novel on which a particular movie is based, the movie which Mr Chopra here keeps mistaking for my favourite movie. And then there is a P G Wodehouse (Abhinav's recommendation) and another one called The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. This lady has written a series of books with a shopaholic as the central character and I'd heard a lot about them, and I thought this is something I would be able to relate to :)

actinium said...

d name's actinium

Bhavya said...

Maybe you should call information services and ask them to display "actinium" when people call 33982

actinium said...

ha ha ha (sarcasm)
its a misplaced joke...i'm actinium only in web-space

Bhavya said...

Then why does the from field of your e-mail read Ashish Chopra? Does your email travel beyond web space?

actinium said...

i had chosen the following for my gmail signature dis year, a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.

so yes, i was wrong :-)

Bhavya said...

To quote you: huh! And double huh!