A beautiful afternoon spent sipping writing

May Day has never felt so good!! It's probably the only world holiday that's there. I'm not sure. Whatever, it felt good to get a day off from WORK :) Wednesday night was spent in having some beer, chilling out and relaxing. I had gone over to some friends' place and they unfortunately didn't have a holiday. Weirdly enough, their company had some strange arrangement which required them to 'choose' their holidays. Stupid corpo culture. Anyways, I got up in the morning and was feeling unusually fresh and nice. Probably there should be more of these sweet arrangements of mid week respites :D I had kinda made up my mind that I'd spend some time reading "Human Zoo" by Desmond Morris at Crossword. I find anthropology quite fascinating :) I got caught up a bit talking to a friend and watching some interesting programs on Travel and Living. It must be quite a job travelling across the world, meeting all these interesting people in the most obscure places, seeing the customs and traditions unique to these places. I must admit, it does seem quite attractive from the point of a viewer. Obviously there would be some big time negatives associated with it too. A job's a JOB. Isn't it?

Anyways, while I was engaged in talking to my friend and watching those programs, I saw a couple of Filmfares lying around. Now, I'm not the Bollywood masala movie fan from ANY angle. But lately I have started reading a bit about Bollywood gas from here and there. So I thought that I'd just flip through it. The first article that I read was that of the editor. HOLY FUCK! It was a KICK ASS article. He spoke about how the idea of a relationship has changed dramatically. About how it's nowhere near as sublime and pure as it once was. About how it is akin to a commodity that has a 'shelf life' associated with it. He was obviously referring to Bollywood relationships but it was beautiful beautiful writing nonetheless. Definitely NOT the kind of stuff that I expected in Filmfare of all the magazines! Whats there :) I read some of his other articles too. I read some articles aloud also. The exercise felt nice and touched the recesses of mind that were once devoted to elocution and debating.

I finally made it to Crossword and got my hands on the anthro book. Good writing. Heavy writing. The kind of writing that one should read at leisure and not while in a bookstore. Some interesting thoughts there. About how the human tribe slowly formed sub tribes within itself. How language has both united as well as divided society. Very good stuff. I moved on to some travel writing. Pico Iyer. I'd heard that he writes well and also injects a dash of humour in his works. Discovered it to be quite true! I picked up a book of his which dealt with 'lonely places'. Gosh, he sure writes amazingly in the brief intro wherein he talks about what loneliness actually IS. Thought provoking stuff.

I needed a break after reading. Went for a stroll outside ;) and then when I came back, I was in the mood for some light reading. Fresh from the Filmfare experience, I picked up a copy of "Cine Blitz". Good crappy Bollywood masala. Crap interspersed with my kinda stuff :) A Rahul Bose interview made for interesting reading. Some other stuff which I can't recall now. Must not have been as good. Aah yes, there was an interview of Nagesh Kukoonoor too.

And then I struck gold! Came across this book titled "How to read film". Enticing title isn't it? So I started going through it. I immediately knew that I'd got my hands on a bible kind of thing! A bible on art, film, the works. Read a chapter. Knew that THIS was a book that I wish to possess. Reserved it. And I shall collect it this weekend :D

Whew. Quite a cocktail of writing wasn't it? I enjoyed it THOROUGHLY :)