The Happiest Man on Earth
I finished reading this and did this come at an incredibly needed hour. Books do find you because I have had this in my collection for so long now and yet chose this moment to pick this up hoping it would be a balm to my senses that seem to be pulled in very many directions each day, from the joy of the simple and the routine to the sadness of the loss of the simple and routine for many to an absolute disdain for the inhumanly acts only humans are capable of and the anger at having to watch it all. But if you were to watch from the big tree far away, everything seems to move on, as if untouched.
Eddie’s story is of not just survival but he champions the power that hope brings in the darkest and most dreadful of times. It is a story of how you do everything to squeeze out that last ounce of innate strength and keep going for the light at the end of the darkest tunnel. Eddie highlights the most simple and profound truths and remind us of what truly matters in life. His stories are vivid, uncomplicated and there is a quiet dignity to the book that made me hold onto it. He starts with “my dear friend”, and that is how I left feeling.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
By now, you know my love for Japanese writing and well done translations. I love how familiar, simple, relatable conversations are dealt in simple yet profound ways. The ones I have read are not exactly fast paced, infact, the lives move with slow deliberation and it is exactly that kind of pace that gets me every time.
The Days at the Morisaki Bookshop follows Takako, who quits her day job and her relationship. It is at this point, she receives an invitation from her uncle whom she considers quirky/unrelatable, to move into the apartment on top of his bookshop, which changes the trajectory of her life. Her uncle whose wife leaves him without any explicit reason, lives and manages the bookshop alone. The book has two parts – the first one around Takako finding her next steps and the second one is about the uncle’s wife coming back and reasons behind her departure and return.
It is as much a book about finding your ground as it is about connecting with and re-learning about people whom you’d already formed an opinion of.
This book is magical in its own way, different from the kind of magical feeling that “Before the coffee gets cold” evoked in me. This magic is in its comfort, in the characters who feel so endearing and real, in the books, bookshops and coffee that wraps you in a warm embrace letting you cozily engage with a very well written and translated story. I recommend
Siddhartha Street
Here is the thing about rain. It evokes something poignant and nostalgic and wishful all at once if I only sat by the window and watched it hit the ground. Slowly surely and in an oddly comforting way that does not seem extraordinary at first but then I sort of begin to realise how this is exactly the kind of quiet that I have been busy for.
I am talking of a drizzle that gains and loses momentum as you get lost in a world thousands of miles and sometimes, years away. The extraordinariness of the ordinary and the familiar is something that energises you and reminds you of a self you may sometimes forget in the humdrum of life.
Like this book and its stories.
Simple, everyday movements that seem slow and set in environments that seem so familiar that I started imagining my street, my neighbours we knew but not necessarily the stories that came with them. The book touches on an event in the lives of different neighbours along Siddhartha Street through slow, everyday actions that are visible to a naked eye and through conversations and emotions that reveal the story behind them all. A lovely read that I finished long back but the rain today reminded me of my street and then this book.
Rain does that to you, takes you to places and people and books in the deepest corners
Nobody will tell you this but me
I cannot remember a single day when I haven’t played back something a loved one has told me in the past or imagined what they’d tell me in a situation am in. For no reason at all, sometimes when I sit down with my coffee (okay this one is not exactly as calm every time), I rewind to a conversation with someone who is far away. This experience itself can be sweet, bittersweet, funny, poignant – anything. Imagine writing this all down – all these conversations real and hypothetical (because you can do that when you know someone really well) into a memoir – that is what Bess has done, giving us a glimpse into the life – love, laughter, legacy and all with her grandmother. I absolutely loved the grandmother’s character as Bess outlines it – such a strong personality, opinionated, humorous, knowing exactly what needs knowing. I loved the message she reinforces throughout, “If the earth is cracking behind you, you put one foot in front of the other.”
I love memoirs, stories, the simple stuff. They teach us things that matter, in a manner that stays and a relatedness that makes you pause. This one made me laugh and teary and in an odd way comforted me about how people never pass. They live on within you, in those memories you made with them and through the words and moments you shared with them. And they live on in others too, through the memories you share of them.
Life and Times of Piyu 