Spellbound by the two books

                                   

Don’t  you have moments in life when something makes you  miss your beats? Well, something quite akin made ‘Palampurbeats’ miss its beats last weekend; and then I have been under a spell too. And the spell has been cast not by any magician or a ‘tantric’; nor by any Urvashi from Indralok, but by two books I have as my bosom mates these days. To call them just ‘books’ is an understatement. For me these are precious gems. I am almost done with ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles, with less than 100 pages left to savour and enjoy word by word. And the second one is a bewitching beauty in Punjabi: ‘Muhabbatnama’ by Jang Bahdaur Goel that I have just read a few pages of…Well, I never thought that the little Punjabi I picked up in school would find such good use.

Amor Towles weaves his magic by the sheer elegance of language. Every word, each sentence sparkles and fills you with ethereal joy as the story of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov in post Revolution Russia unfolds. It moves at easy, gentle pace without undue twists and turns or steep climbs and descents. The Count, a widely-travelled, well-groomed and well-read aristocrat of exquisite tastes and refinement is put under house arrest for his poem which is termed as anti-State making him lead a life of confinement in hotel Metropol in Moscow. Not the one to be cowed down by this crippling circumstance, he manouvers his way through to still lead a life of fulfilment, purpose and creative engagement. For, the Count holds a firm view: “If one did not master one's circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them.” As we follow the trajectory of Count’s life, we also get to know the changing scene in Russia under the new Communist dispensation: repression, curbs against freedom of expression, and the rich old artistic traditions and icons giving way to things not altogether pleasant or sweet. For me, reading this book has been like being perched  in an easy armchair under a balmy sun, caressed by gentle breeze and a glass of beer to sip on the deck of a ship merrily cruising along a vast stretch of seamless sea!   Delightful, elevating, spell-binding.

 Muhabbatnama

Well, with both books and women, advise the wise: one at a time. Otherwise it all gets messy. But in the case of ‘Muhabbatnama’, I just couldn’t resist and made an exception. I stole some moments for a casual browse and at once fell in love. It is, believe me, worth its weight in gold. As I said before, it is not a book. I look at it as a garland of beautiful, fragrant flowers strung together with love and care by Goel Sahib. It contains painstakingly culled biographical sketches of some of the greatest souls that walked on this earth with a peek into their love lives; and the accompanying pictures that adorn the book lend additional charm to the book. Some of these luminaries include Tagore, Amrita Pritam, Balzak, Turgenev, and Khalil Gibran among others. If ‘Palamurbeats’ keeps beating, I hope to write more on it after I finish reading it.

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