A Country Bar Named Johnny B Goode

Places, Food and Books

Lame title aside, some books have a very strong sense of place or food (since it's me we're talking about) associated with them and will forever be locked with each other in ones memory.

All my Enid Blyton memories are very strong, because when I read them I was a) Hugely unpopular in school, I had NO friends, and I mean none, like I used to roam around alone during break and everything and b) We lived in this massive old bungalow with like miles of wilderness on either side (ok not miles but really dense undergrowth type things, and people used to spot snakes on an hourly basis.) All those Fatty mysteries were so real because we had a garage/shed kinda thing just like in the book and I had very strong visuals for the place. This is the same time I used to play Xena with colony friends and set out with laser killer pieces of stick and fight demons and witches that lived around our house.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - I got a day before my chemistry exam in the 7th, think mum or someone had just returned from Delhi and had got that book and a big box of melted choclates for me. Needless to say the book was devoured and I was eating that stciky choclate alongside and you can bet I was too lazy to go wash my icky fingers before turning a page and so my copy was brown finger marks all over, which makes me love it even more.

I remember reading A Suitable Boy after the second term exams in the 10th which I had worked super hard for and before the preboards (which I totally blew.) The parts when Pran is falling for Saeeda Bai and he's hanging around her place is very descriptive and well written. She entertains all these people and they have Shammi kababs and hookahs and there's always music and a singing (rather annoying) parrot remember? So I was reading this part and I was getting major cravings for kababs. As luck would have it, we'd had a big party in our house and there were these kababs in the fridge and omg its bliss when you're reading about something and your mouth is watering and you can satisfy it instantly! Zap it in the microwave and get back into bed..and no one bothers you because you can lock your door and say you're 'studying.' Good times I tell you.

English, August is one of my all time favourite books, I read it when we were living in a place so so like Madna it freaked me out a bit, and I got everything he was sayng. I was Agastya man, ofcourse I wasn't stoning back then, it was simple sitting on the fence and liking a book sorta thing.

Oh and for Wodehouse there was this wonderful obscure Gymkhana in some shanty town where them Britsh Bozos used to once live, and the loo/Ladies rest room was HUGE, I mean like the size of a persons house with sofas and reclining chairs, and dim yellow bulbs and mottled mirrors and I loved it. Discovered it really late, when it was about time to leave but I pictured the whole English thing. (argh, we've been studying colonialism and when we take notes instead of writing the British I write BB - British Bastards, oh the latent anger)

Delhi by Khushwant Singh was another book that had a huge impact on me but more than that people remember me reading it. It was the beginning of 11th, when the board results weren't out and everyone's sorta strung out, didn't really feel like studying etc, and our temporary classroom was in some basement type part of the school and I'd sit at the back and read this book, and I didn't really know anyone in my new class expect Puri who ofcourse would be off all over bunking, making new friends, doing his imitations which I'd seen a gazillion times before, and I remember Yadu coming over, reading the blurb and laughing his ass off, because it said, 'back from his whoring days' and guys can never stop finding stuff like that funny. When he sees me today, he usually mentions that book, still reading books about whores? he'll say and I'll laugh like it's really funny because it's sweet no?

Though I don't like to admit it, I've also read all the Shopaholic books(Fly take a bow) and this was the summer before college started and all of a sudden you have to go shopping for a whole bunch of new clothes, and you really need them right, no more uniform to put on sleepily every day. So I would just buy without thinking, oh heady days and then when I became a poor college student who refused to spend more than 15 bucks on lunch I was reading Shopaholic and Sister which had her super frugal sister who hates shopping and kept saving up or was broke and she was totally in sync with my new self!

Zorba the Greek is ofcourse for my fututre travels which I've mentioned earlier in this post.


PS - Is anyone else television blissed as well? New seasons of The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Entourage AND Greys Anatomy. Sigh, life can hardly get better..