Mundane Musings

It did feel a bit odd to be planning a family trip to Yercaud in November, bang in the midst of torrential rains. But one of the brothers was landing only then and the rest of my family thought of swinging it and face the consequences. The consequences, I am happy to report, were of the joyous kind; it is Yercaud we are talking about after all. The very Yercaud which had pulled my heart and locked it somewhere in its lush, green wild mountains when I had first visited it about 7 -8 years ago. I didn’t realise how much I would miss the sound of silence, which when punctuated by the chirping or tweeting of birds only seemed to augment the immense, humbling, wholeness of that silence. I fell in love with this small town nestled in the Shevaroyan hill range with its tiny roads that surprisingly could accommodate a good car and which had myriad trekking trails. This time I felt like I was coming home. Any doubts I had of it having changed in the interim were firmed up as we made ou...

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a true prize winning book, written in that particular style that these books often come in. That said, after reading the book my most pressing urge was to re-read it -rather leisurely this time, connecting the time lines and the journeys of the various characters. When I had started to read this book, I found myself losing my attention plenty of times. I wanted to push on and finish the book, just the way I felt when I had read The Handmaid's Tale or Cloud Atlas. The latter books, both, were a beautiful read as the I moved on through the initial parts. The same too with The Narrow Road to the Deep North, only I wouldn't use the word 'beautiful' to describe this meandering, philosophical, prose-y book. At first I had trouble connecting with the Australian POWs and the back and fro movement of the story, but slowly I got caught up by the effects of this side of the war that I have...