Alex Garland - The Beach

What a horrifying book.

I picked it up because my brother had been recommending it to me for years. I'd resisted for a long time because our tastes aren't exactly similar. He likes abstract stuff, whereas I prefer straight narratives. But I was looking for a book to read on the flight back to Bangalore from Trivandrum. I picked this one up and flipped through it, and it seemed a racy enough read for a boring flight.

And boy, was it.

It starts innocuously enough. A traveler who has just landed in Thailand. A strange night-time conversation, a map stuck to the door, a mysterious suicide. Soon, we're on our way to a mysterious beach in the middle of a marine park. 'Eden' the beach is called. A Holy Grail for travelers, spoken about only in whispers, a place supposedly so beautiful and enchanting that people stay there for years.

They do discover the place, and it turns out to be everything they've been promised. A tiny hamlet, a flawless beach, a beautiful lagoon. The people staying there are travelers from all over the world. They've landed up on Eden because they're tired of the beaten path, of the masses that descend on every beautiful place. They live simply, eating fish and rice, smoking up at night, playing football on Sundays, just enjoying the beauty of the place.

Heaven? Yes. Until things start going wrong. The problem is that they are trying to escape the very thing they cannot escape - people. The hamlet looks may look idyllic from outside. But there are rifts within the group, tiny enmities, factions that form on the basis of perceived slights. Group politics dictates everything.

This book is about madness. It's about how fragile human minds are, how fucked up they can get. How seemingly small things can turn people's heads. How strangely and horrifically people behave when they are put under pressure.

The tempo builds up slowly. You hardly even realize it when things start to go off the rails. People's minds starting to behave strangely, the increasingly horrifying events, the nightmarish and surreal climax.

Racy, unputdownable, horrifying. Must-read.

Weekend

New cities are exciting. Especially when you land there at six in the morning. Getting off a bus, being mobbed by autowallahs. A red sun rising between two trees. Women carrying yellow flowers in baskets. Sleepy neighbourhoods. Murugan Idli. Yellow autos.

The city I've heard so much about, the city I used to wish to be a part of, the city I started to hate for no fault of its. I finally saw it, and it made me realize how soulless Bangalore is.

***

Sitting on the rocks lining Pondicherry beach, feet dangling over the drop. Slightly high. Talking. Listening to the waves breaking upon the rocks below. Wishing he was here with me. The breeze coming in from the sea. Wishing it wasn't so cloudy. The realization that this will be one of my favourite memories years down the line.

***

It was seven in the night, and Besant Nagar (?) beach was so crowded. People sitting in circles on the sand. Kids running around. Young boys playing football. Colourful lights that went zooming into the air. Women selling peanuts. Above it all, and as a background, the waves pounding the sand.

XL Again!

I'm going to do the whole Bangalore-Calcutta-Jamshedpur thing again. I'm going to go in through those wide open black gates again. I'm going to see Anu again! I'm going to sit on JLT and drink nimbu pani again. I'm going to have coffee at Daddu's again - steaming hot coffee with chocolate powder liberally spilled over it. I'm going to talk to the Profs, and this time know what an honour and opportunity that is! I'm going to sit on El Top Top and watch the orange lights of Tata Steel again. I'm going to go to Karnel Singh's Dhaba and have butter naan and paneer butter masala again. I'm going to walk under those tall tall trees and be awe-struck all over again. I'm going to visit the library and walk through the fiction shelves again. I'm going to watch the dawn lighten over the top of GH1 and feel an indescribable longing again. I'm going to have Bishu Da's Cheese Maggi again! I'm going to NOT be a company senior. I'm going to ride back from Bistupur in a cold cold auto again. I'm going to go to Mad Sam and have butter masala dosa and their insanely sweet coffee again! I'm going to try to get enough people to play basketball again. I'm going to sit on a green bench in the sun and read a book again. I'm going to take a walk through Faculty Quarters with Anu again.

For two whole days in February.

On Reading

There is something wrong with me. I haven't finished a single book in the last one month. Oh, I'm reading all right. But I lose interest halfway and start another book. Here's a complete list of the books I've begun reading and abandoned in the last one month. Please note that this is NO commentary on the quality of writing of the below authors!

• Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient (beautiful, beautiful book)
• T. Coraghessan Boyle - If the River was Whiskey (Picked up in Blossom's - mostly cuz I liked the title!)
• Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
• Anjum Hasan - Neti, Neti (I've been wanting to read it ever since I read Jai Arjun Singh's piece on it here)
• J R R Tolkien - The Hobbit (PDF)
• Robert Jordan - The Shadow Rising (The fourth in the series - e-book version, though)
• Kate Fox - Watching the English

On Writing

Every story that needs to be told has already been told. And now we're telling the same things over and over again, in different words, in different colours.

Where do I fit in? Do I have a story to tell? Does anybody want to listen? My ideas are cliched, my tone amateurish. I read what I've written and wince at myself.

Yet I need to put words down. I get joy out of seeing them there, little black squiggles on white, little bits of my soul that I've squeezed out and lined up.

Maybe that's enough, at the end of the day. But not at the end of the life. Surely not?

Loneliness

Inspired by a couple of hours spent reading a book in the park today. Supposed to be fiction, but more a collection of impressions that a story. All characters are based on real people - complete strangers, except for a minor appearance by [drumroll please] me.

The park is cold today. The sky is dark overhead, no sunshine shining through the branches. I do my usual rounds, glad of the warm wool of my shawl, the silk of my salwar-kameez. Courting couples, a stern girl reading an orange book, gangs of boys, a family with a small muffled-up boy who smiles up at me.

I keep writing letters to you, letters I can't mail. I pile them up in my little wooden chest, one on top of the other, the older ones yellow and curling already. They keep me company these days.

There's an elderly man in a white kurta-pajama who comes every afternoon, accompanied by a teenaged boy. The boy holds the man's hand and walks him around the park a few times. The man's eyes are anxious, confused, scared. He doesn't know what's happening, why it's happening.

I've held on all this while because I thought it would be cowardice. But I'm tempted. Sometimes, I cross roads without looking either way. But always, somehow, I get to the other side. And I wonder why I did.

Sometimes I fantasize that I did die. Perhaps my body is lying on the blue road back there, streaming red blood onto the crevices. Perhaps it is only my soul, my spirit, that is walking on, unaware of the gathering people, the hushed voices. Any minute now, they'll come to take me to you. A golden chariot will land in the middle of the dirty road, and I'll ride away on it.

How does one know, anyway, when one is dead?

Cause and Effect

Two men met under a board at a station. It was early morning, and there was no train on the platform. The two men carried identical suitcases. They exchanged them without further ado.

No on saw them. A group of coolies stood nearby, but they were busy commenting on a girl. The girl went away soon after, and the coolies quietened down.

The first man went to a room in the station house and opened the suitcase. It contained, among other things, a set of freshly laundered clothes. He quickly changed. While he was changing, he heard the train chugging into the station slowly.

He spent some time praying. The babble of voices outside rose steadily.

He came out of the station house. Earlier, he had been an anonymous man in a checked shirt. Now he was an authoritative clipboard, and a dark jacket over a white shirt and trousers. A crowd of people converged on him, gesticulating, negotiating, pleading, arguing.

The unlucky ones got seats. The lucky ones went away, cursing the clipboard and the dark jacket.

The man suddenly realized that he had forgotten the suitcase. He went back inside the station house and got it. He tucked it safely under his seat. The train left the station with a final whistle.

The second man went back to his house and opened the suitcase. The suitcase contained money in thick wads. The man had not seen so much money in his life. He went to a nearby hospital and paid a bill. They finally released his daughter's body.

A while later, there was an explosion. Several bogies of a train fell off a bridge. Others hung down from the rails, and it was like a garland of bogies on the neck of the bridge. The river was a deep one, and it flowed on, unmindful.