Mr. 'Gracious' Smith

I got this parcel today from the office courier person. The picture on the left shows who sent it . I was on cloud nine. It had finally arrived !!









So what was in the parcel, you may be a wondering. A book !
The front cover is shown on the picture on the right.
Well it was not just "a book" - it was actually a gift from Mr. Smith himself. Yahoooooooooooo !!

Does it get any better, you may be wondering , again.









Yes it does !! The book is actually signed by Mr. Smith himself. Don't belive me ? Here's a picture of the first page of the book with the signature on it.


Cool icing on a delicious cake ? You can say that again. So how did I get this wonderful gift, you may be wondering, again. Let me explain.

Tue 08/21/2007 7:31 PM: I send a "thank you" email to Mr. Alexander Mccall Smith. I had visited his website sometime back. Today I chanced to the visit the site again and found that the url has changed along with the site layout. Watched his interview video and saw some of his pictures. Also noticed an email id bearing his name. I had been wanting to getting in touch with some of the authors, whose books I have read and liked and this seemed to be a nice opportunity. So I send this message basically thanking him for all the wonderful books he has written and conveying my liking for his works.

Tue 08/21/2007 7:32 PM: I get a reply ! Wow, that was fast, I thought. Turned out to be an automated reply that said that Mr. Smith will try to reply "as soon as possible". Hmmm...

Tue 08/21/2007 11:42 PM: I get another reply !! Of course, I saw it the next day. But I was really elated to see a reply from Mr. Smith himself. My joy doubled on reading the complete mail. Mr. Smith actually asked me to send my mail address so that he can send a signed copy of his latest book !! How great is that ?

So immediately I send a reply thanking him along with my adress. After that I got one email from his secretary mentioning that the dispatch process has been initated. And today I finally held the book in my hands. It is difficult to express, in words, how I feel exactly but I will try one last time

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!

Let it 'Snow'

'Snow' is an amazing novel. Orhan Pamuk has managed to create an intriguing milieu of art, philosophy, religion, politics and human emotions (love,fear,jealousy, guilt to name a few).
I bought this book on an impulse from Strand while on book buying spree. I started reading and was immediately hooked on to it. Ended up reading the complete book making full use of the extended vacation I had taken to be with Meera and Vidush.

The thing I liked the most in the book was Ka's struggle to uncover the pattern of his poetry. He spent more than four years in exile and could not write even a single poem. Back in Kars he suddenly finds himself in the grip of strange force and ends up writing 19 poems in about 4 days time ! And then he goes back to Frankfurt and spends another four years in trying the decipher the pattern of those poems. His final solution of arranging his poems along the axes of a snowflake was so beautiful (a nice picture at the end of Chapter 39 depicts this quite vividly) . The underlying symmetry of a snowflake that he was always fascinated by also helps him understand himself and his poems. Philosophis of life like the one below also emerge.

Every life is like a snowflake

While I was enjoying the book, I kept wondering if reading the work in Turkish would have had any different effect. Would there be some kind of loss during the translation process - would the ideas and thoughts that the author was trying to covey represented as accurately in the English version. Of course, someone who has read the book in both Turkish and English only can shed more light on this.

I will end with another littel gem from the book

Life is a meaningless string of random incidents.