Two books and a week later…

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.. I’m not the person that I used to be.

Phew..
What an emotionally messy week it has been. It all started about a couple of months back when during a casual conversation Manu, a gr8 bud, made me write down the names of two books which fell under the “Must- Read” category and asked me to find those books and read them up asap. After we ended the conversation, I safely kept the piece of paper in my handbag where it would lie unnoticed for the next 2 months.

Cut to last week. I suddenly realized that its been more than a couple of months since I’ve read a book.So, on the way back home, I decided to stop at the lending library and pick up a good read. But which book to take? I racked my tiny brain all day. When I entered the library, out of the blue, the name of the book I wanted to take came to me. “Do you have a copy of the “The Kite Runner“? “, I heard myself asking the librarian. Now this is precisely the same book that Manu had asked me to read.

I read the book a bit slowly, by my standards. It took me 4 nights to complete the book. Halfway through the book I was sobbing so hard that I had to rush out of the bedroom, lest I wake up my blissfully sleeping brother. And the when I was reading through the rest of the book, there was this contant lump-in-the-throat feeling. When I finished the book, there were so many thoughts buzzing around in me.
In the same somber mood, I picked up “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and finished it in one day flat. Right through the book, I had to fight really hard to restrain myself from crying out loud. It was emotions all over the place.
My conscience bombarded me with missiles in the form of questions and thoughts..

• How many times have I been “Amir” and let down people who’d been “Hasan” to me?
• The quip from Hasan, “For you, a thousand times over” makes me cringe. I’m damn sure I’ve been blessed with people who’d say the same to me and yet I’ve been Amir to them and turned my back on them on more occasions than one. And yes, like Hasan, they forgive me magnanimously and always be their usual self.
• How many people around me have treated me the way Amir treats Hasan? Oh no, I don’t mean to say that I’m as unquestioningly loyal as Hasan. Loyal or not no one desreves to be treated the way Hasan gets treated. Amir, to me represented the majority of the people walking the face of the big bad world.
• How many children like Sohrab, had wished sorely that they could get back their normal course of life that war had so ruthlessly snatched form them?
• From how many children like Sohrab had the war had snatched the blemishless childhood they had every right to enjoy.

Just how lucky am I:

• to have been to be born in a time when there’s no war/unrest in the country.
• to get to enjoy the silence of the night.
• to go to sleep, every night, not thinking about some stray bullet/rocket that could kill me in my sleep.
• to enjoy the warmth of a cosy home and not run for my life across borders in an oil tanker?
• to have parents who love me unconditionally.
• to have parents who didn’t put me into an orphanage because they couldn’t affford to feed me.
• to have parents who’ve put me through school and college.
• to have parents who don’t think that girls should be married off at 15.
• to be able to go where ever I want, when ever I want, with/without anyone accompanying me?
• to be sitting here in my cubicle and typing out this post.

I could just go on. And all these questions/thoughts pile on truck loads of guilt. I’d read in newspapers about the war in Afghanistan, Iraq and so many more places all over the world. But nothing got to me the way these two books did. The stories might be a work of fiction, the characters Amir, Hasan, Ali, Soraya, Mariam, Laila, Tariq, Aziza, they all might be just figments of the author’s imagination, but they’ve taught me valuable lessons nothing else could. I may have read the books pretty late. But I’m glad to have read them. Real eye openers they’ve been.
My thoughts here may not be organized in a proper manner. Trust me thats how they came to me. I decided not to arrange them
With every passing day I think more and I’m sure I’ll be a different [read more mature] person than what I was before reading the two books. And the more I think.. more the rants here.. The more I think.. the more dangerous I become..

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Filed under Musings, Pour outs, Thoughts, children

Tags: Afghanistan, Khaled Hosseni, Kite Runner, life, sad, Thoughts, Thousand splendid suns