the kite runner...

i'm not the voracious reader who is entitled to give recommendations. Its strange though being an arbit reader (note the word 'arbit'), I was drifting towards non-fiction as the genre to catch on to. But this book proved me wrong -- and this is after unsuccessful attempts, of late, at reading 'Choker Bali' and similar novels....
Borrowing from the official site, this book is 'An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from the final days of Afghanistan’s monarchy to the atrocities of the present'.
A critic says - "A wonderful work... This is one of those unforgettable stories that stay with you for years. All the great themes of literature and of life are the fabric of this extraordinary novel: love, honor, guilt, fear redemption...It is so powerful that for a long time everything I read after seemed bland." ......... I couldn't agree more.
get a copy. Lets see what some of you 'voracious' readers have to say :)

Perforated Holiday

What happens when a man is left all alone for three days in Iowa after a memorable but short holiday trip - after which he is left longing for more of it?

He gets his left eyebrow pierced :D I finally did it. A word to describe the feeling - euphoric. Finally a foreign body has found it's rightful place in me. Holiday season jus can't get better...what started out disastrously, is now getting better by the day. Finals week...it was the first week of december - and to sum the week up, it was a "How bad can you screw up things in one week" contest. No surprise - I came out with flying colors...botching up perfect situations and crawling my way back into academic existence. And then started the fun part...holidays...I'm AVK again after being tied down for a week.

Buffalo...here I come...ready or not. Well I'm not sure if buffalo was ready, but the people who I met there sure were. Auspicious start to the trip - the usual quarrel with my philanthropic friend and then went right into business - SARAKKU!!!! amidst smoke/booze...reality/pseudo- reality...joy/hyper-joy...we encountered niagara. And boy was I instantaneously longing for a magic spell that would turn all the water into something edible (like whiskey?) - fair enough. Things turned even better when I spent one whole night playing pool rack after rack after rack...truly enchanting experience...I finally realized how pathetic I was in the game, and on top of it...had the entire night to keep reinstating the fact to myself...however I was truly at peace to myself after that effort. To sum it up...the trip to buffalo was...I would say a short and sweet trip that left me longing for more...

Back in Iowa city - like the typical Chennai IT professional unboarding the company bus on a monday morning in a campus that's way away from civilization. Well...to make matters worse I realize pretty quickly that the description I provided earlier is a terrible understatement. There was absolutely no accustomed homosapien contact(in any degree) for quite sometime before some bipeds I know came to my rescue. I can now be proud and state that "I...have realized to an absolute degree what boredom can and cannot do to an average human-being...and what it can and cannot do to me"...yes there is a marked difference in the inferences of the above two viewpoints. Some of the notable activities done (mentioned in the order of execution) are
1. Eat
2. Stare at the laptop display
3. Go out for some pranayama(U know what I mean)
4. Stare again
5. Sleep off in boredom
6. Wake up at around 3 AM and curse myself for that
7. Stare
8. Stare some more
9. Sleep contended that I have screwed my sleep cycle
10. Pranayama
11. Eat
12. Stare
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Finally there's netflix now...a saving grace...as a matter of fact I'm kinda satiated with the bulletin diary type of blog posts...I hereby have decided to wake up...and thus wake people up...