On Bitter Chocolate...Words-worth

I went to a bookstore after a long break of four days. The last time was Monday and today is Friday.  Wordsworth at Janakpuri has been a favorite ever since I have moved to New Delhi. Crossword and Om Book Shop are other favorites and are a great collection.

Browsing through books is more fun than browsing on the internet (for book lovers). So I started my job- browsing through books. Lately, I have started reading Indian author's non-fiction category. Have read a few books and they have amused me, delighted me, disturbed me and many such emotions that come to mind when one reads a nice book. They were all nice books, written well, dealt with passion for exploring into human lives, their attitude, their nationalism, their soul-stirring raw emotions, etcetera. I don't say that I have read a lot, I am still in the process, but whatever I have read, brought me to a conclusion that reading an Indian author gives you an advantage of landscape visualization, provided you live in India and experience it. The situation, the canvas, the characters, the politics is such a visual treat when you read any Indian author. Be it Rushdie, or Gurcharan Das or Vikram Seth or Tharoor, Lahiri and so many others. Visualizing Ayn Rand or Orhan Pamuk or Dominique Lappierre misleads us sometimes into un-intended territories, movies of the same make it clear. For example, when I read the climax of The Fountainhead, the under-construction building that I had visualized was very different from the one that has being shown in the movie. John Nash was an entirely different body language from what I had perceived while reading A Beautiful Mind. I know many people will have difficulty in accepting this, but this is how I feel. You don't need to comply with me, after all. I am an amateur reader, still exploring the world of books, and wish to keep on doing that for my entire life, till death does me apart.

So, I was browsing through the books. The shelves started with Khushwant Singh, then R K Narayan, Rohinton Mistry, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ruskin Bond, Anita Desai, and many more. I moved past them and reached the shelf with some new Indian authors. At once, my eyes got locked at a book- Bitter Chocolate by Pinki Virani. Maybe it was the after-effects of Chocolate Day, I had consumed more than usual chocolate yesterday and it was payback time for my body system, haha.. I pulled out the book, white paperback cover with the title written in chocolate brown color. It looked nice. I have loved books for their physical existence too, and so I condemn soft copies or e-book readers and Kindle. They are just keepers of technological advancements, they cannot replace a physical book in a hand with the specific textured pages and the unique kind of reflection that they show against different kind of lights. Books will be forever. A book will never die. And that’s why I wrote- "till death does me apart" in the last paragraph.

My next move was turning the book to read the back-cover. That is like a reflex action for me, I can do that even in sleep, trust me. The book was about Child Sex Abuse in India (CSA as abbreviated In the book). It dealt with the horrors of child sex abuse, presenting stories from Indian households, cases of CSA reported and observed by the author and others. The next thing I remember was pulling the cube-shaped stool and sitting down to read more about the book. I was entrapped by the subject of the book. The back cover also boasted of the book being first of its kind. So I sat down and started turning the pages of the book, came to the Contents page, saw that the book had many short stories. I decided to read the first story. Page 3 to page 5. It took some 5 minutes to go through the story. A 3 months old infant girl child, in an Indian household, abused sexually by a 17 year old male domestic help. He, in the absence of other members of the house, had tried to mutilate the 3 months old infant girl's vagina. All that was given in the form of punishment was a slap and removal from the job.

I snap-closed the book, with both my hands. I felt the air that escaped from the snap on my face. My face, was distressed, lines on my forehead, eyebrows shot-up, and me gulped down a breath that was waiting since the last few minutes. I took a deep breath and let the air out loose. My heart was beating fast. I was angry, I was disturbed. I was disturbed by the first chapter of this book. My facial expression had changed completely from when I had entered the bookstore, Wordsworth. I wanted to see that 17 year person, I wanted to look deeply into his eyes, piercingly, I wanted to shake down his soul, I wanted to ask him- why? I wanted to put a 12mm bullet into his head at point blank range while looking piercingly into his eyes. I wanted a reform in the world judicial system, right there-right now, to legalize killing of such people found guilty of crime so in-human. Now I was breathing deeply. I turned the book to see the front cover again. Bitter Chocolate. The title was words-worth.

I left the bookstore without buying anything, not even Bitter Chocolate. I wasn't feeling nice anymore. I couldn't change my heavy facial expression. I walked out. I looked at the surrounding marketplace. Nothing bought my interest. I started walking towards the metro station to catch a train and go back to my flat. I was not in a good mood.

While walking back I recalled the conversation I just had with a fellow passenger in the metro train. His name is Mbiki (I hope I spell it right). An hour ago, when I had boarded the metro train to come to this place, Wordsworth at Janakpuri, I sat beside an African black man, whom I didn't notice at first. I was carrying the book with me which I have been reading since the last couple of days- The Elephant Paradigm by Gurcharan Das. It is a nice book. India observed crossing the 20th century and entering the 21st century, and the changes, huge ones. I sat down, removed the bookmark and started reading. After   a couple of minutes, this African black man asked me which was the next station? I couldn't understand because of his lingo, but got it when he repeated his question.

"Hi! I am Mbiki."

"I am Avinash", I said, smiling back. He extended his hand with golden palm for a hand-shake.

"Indians speak very good English" was his next comment to extend the conversation.

I was not so interested, but I replied- "thank you sir, we like speaking English." I wanted to go in the details of the racial anatomy of the human tongue on why some races in the world can speak a language more clear than the rest of them, but  decided not to. As I was already facing difficulties in contemplating his words, he was not speaking very clear, or maybe because it was the first time I was talking to a South African man, so I was not used to their accent.

"India is a very nice place" he said.

"Well, thank you again sir. It surely is. What are you here for sir?"

"Sorry?"

I had spoken my last sentence quite hurriedly. My clear English was not so clear this time.

"What  brings you to India, sir?"

"I am studying Mass Communication at DU."

"Oh wow! That’s great."

"Bachelors. I'll finish my course in two more years."

"That’s nice." I smiled and came back to my reading. This book has kept me glued ever since I started reading it.

After a few paragraphs Mbiki's destination arrived. Before getting up from his seat, he looked at me, smiled and did a tight warm hand-shake again.

"Nice meeting you, sir", he said and left the train. I looked at him. He was bulky, black, wore a loose fitting t-shirt and a baggy jeans.

"Nice man", I said to myself and resumed my reading.

Now I was walking back to the metro station, shaken by the first chapter of Bitter Chocolate. Goodwill and the Devil, contradictions, both had showed me their faces in the last one and a half hours. Good and the bad, acceptance and rejection, choices, decisions, solution or resolution; I was looking for a balance.

Eliminating the bad completely does no good to the Good, because for the Good to be good, the Bad needs to be bad. They both exist and should exist for the smooth running. The point is, where to draw the line of acceptance and non-acceptance (not rejection) for the good and the bad. A question I leave to be answered by my life experiences.