Ruminations & Reverie

As part of their Pocket Classics, Everyman released Stories of Books and Libraries , edited by Jane Holloway this year. The 494 paged hardcover features a fantastic collection of stories (and essays) from literature’s who’s who celebrating bibliomania. From Italo Calvino’s critique of censuring books in a fascist state in “A General in the Library”, Borges’ celebrated “The Library of Babel” with its fascinating inception of a cosmic library that contains every possible book to the German erudite Walter Benjamin, illustrating the exhilarating essence of book collecting in his “Unpacking my Library”, the book has a slice of biblio-spirit for every reader, of every taste and interest. What, however, is missing from the anthology, and what possibly could’ve been a cherry on top, is a rather neglected story that Gustave Flaubert, the author of the popular 19th-century novel Madame Bovary — a defining work of Realism — wrote at the age of 14 titled “Bibliomanie”. Beyond the convenience of ...

Sturm und Drang.  German for storm and stress. The invocation of this German phrase is not to refer to the proto-Romantic literary movement of the 18th century marked by its ebbing sentiments of mirth and melancholy and celebration of sensibilities but to signify the course(s) of lives the people I am concerned about here have taken over the years. One that has stretched over three decades and expanded itself to many a strange place.  At the dawn of a new millennium, in the cozy town of Kakching, we met, not entirely by happenstance, as our mindful parents queued for days to make the wonderful event happen, at a marvelous school called Padma Ratna English School, Kakching. This was in 2003 when we, unknowing children, left the kingdoms of our birth wit and stepped together into our shared initial journey of life. This year, 2023, completes the 20th year, yet none of us, foolish, clumsy children who played, fought, and cried at the hillock that our school is, has come together...