Thursday, July 29, 2010

Bombay pace Delhi paced

Romanticisation ahead so beware. And I've had to explain that this is to me , to me and to my life. 


Anyhow so Bombay to me is a thriller, a page turner, yo are interested in what happens in the next page. It's all fast paced but when you are done, you are somewhat spent and you realise you had such a great time , and you did all these fabulous things,  but you don't remember the details.You are kind of hungover and want to drink lemon juice and go to sleep under razai, over AC.Plot takes centre stage. 


Delhi though , is more like literature , not nobel prize winning or anything but an amazing book on the fringes of great literature. 
There are pauses and spaces where you can see that there are branches and birds and trees. There are experiments in metaphor. 
And there are layers, there is ancient History that underlies many things.It is slow, and at disco like moments in life, you want to hit the speed button.When you are done, you remember the details, the anger, the pain , the joy but the plot does not take centre stage. 


 Ofcourse such a comparision can never be made in a wholesome way, because Literature cannot be defined .
But, this is a thought that came to my head when taking an auto. 

I read a Vikram Seth quote recently. I am not quoting , but paraphrasing. There is no point, over fine tuning , editing sprucing up writing because life is messy and the messiness is lost in writing when you do that, some life is leached out of it. 









No comments: