“Rajesh Ji was the first to arrive. Nirali, the moderator began with rules. Chocolates were given to the first two guests.”
POCKET DIARY BOOK CLUB
MINUTES OF THE MEETING
YEAR 2022
20/11/2022 3:28 PM
6 PEOPLE
Rajesh Ji was the first to arrive.
Nirali, the moderator began with rules. She is a teacher, by profession.
Chocolates were given to the first two guests.
While Nirali Ji were explaining the framework, Rajesh Ji got bored and started dividing up the
chocolate and eating. Uvais Ji came just as the rules finished and she started again.
Gaurav came but we were now done! with the rules.
We were successful in making Gaurav believe that Mitesh is in school. He was so happy that
he clapped him on the back, hard.
Reader 1: Rajesh Ji (Tumhare Baare Mein by Manav Kaul)
Rajesh Ji gave the book club a premature ending, leaving us all unsatisfied. So we asked him,
to extend his performance, and read a few more excerpts.
He was talking about rain and I had a cup of tea attached to my lips , warming my throat,
absorbing me in the realm his words created.
He slowed down his train as Sandeep Ji entered, a nd he was looking sexy , to Gaurav, they
both knew each other since the time they both were probably not sexy, “boys”.
Rajesh Ji began again. And I realised, not every work of the best author will be best. Just like
our marks during school. Sometimes 0, sometimes 2, sometimes a 10 plus a softy.
Rajesh Ji will bring Vinod Kumar Shukla next time.
Reader 2: Mitesh (पूस की रात by Premchand)
While reciting the minutes at the end of the meeting, I asked him the meaning of the title and
he explained it as the wintry nights, पौष का महीना, and gave us a summary of the short story,
we went into a reminiscence of the books we read in primary school.
हल्क ू ने आकर स्त्री से कहा सहना आया है । लाओं, जो रुपये रखे हैं, उसे दे द ूूँ ककसी तरह गला तो छ ू टे।
मुन्नी झाड ू लगा रही थी। पीछ े किरकर बोली तीन ही रुपये हैं, दे दोगे तो कम्मल कहाूँ से आवेगा? माघ
पूस की रात हार में क ै से कटेगी
Mitesh’s reading was calm, slow. It gave us all a challenge to remain silent and hear patiently,
like an adult without a smart phone.
Rajesh Ji & Jainal were busy on their phones. But why?
Jainal was not comfortable with Hindi stories.
Rajesh Ji’s reasons, I will not allow him to tell, he always has a valid answer.
Gaurav was slowly sinking into the pillow. Sandeep Ji was absorbed in the story and Salman’s
dumb charades, asking him for tea, were invisible to him. I could not see Uvais Ji’s expressions.
Reader 3: Gaurav (The English Teacher)
Gaurav hesitated reading his work, “The English Teacher” because Sandeep Ji was not his ideal
muse for that. Nirali Ji volunteered.
It’s his most performative work till date, Gaurav says. In three short words, to define him, “he
loves clothes”. That’s the level of our intimacy, the group’s intimacy with his words that he
dramatized, sensually.
Very smartly, he conveyed my narcissistic feelings about average, mediocre reading. (I am a
Narcissist. I intend to offend).
The story was in English.
I was so jealous of his talent of being a performing writer.
His protagonist, a school boy, used to cut tree stumps in school as punishment, with no moral
lessons and disputes were solved by boxing , the chemistry teacher being the referee . Is the
system even different today?
His performance, is better heard, than described, like being inside the storybook and watching
the boy with his English teacher.
Chapter: Sniffing Glue
I could relate , “the Eng lish Teacher told me that I have good ideas which might go
unappreciated. With these ideas, I will remain poor.”
“…That is the only thing I know how to do well and even in that I won’t succeed. People always
tell me you could do this, you could do that with your life, but somehow all these things do not
fall in my path…” and a lot more of frank and rude performance. When my parents ask me
leading questions about my life, I wish I could perform this in front of them without getting a
tight slap, as an interval.
Gaurav was flowing like a river in spring.
Reader 4: Uvais (Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVII, who will believe my verse in time to come. If it
were filled with your most high deserts?)
He was researching Gujarati poetry when he came across the sonnets of Shakespeare. A
sonnet, a form of Italian poetry, is a 14-line poem with a twist at the end of the 12th line. While
it is a prevalent myth that Shakespeare conceived the concept of sonnets, this is not a fact.
स्क ू ल में ककवता सुनते थे किर भावाथथ समझते थे। It has been ages, since childhood, listening to
Shakespeare being recited with explanation.
Conversation snippets:
Gaurav: It is written in pentameter. (I don’t know the meaning).
Nirali: Sonnets are not named, they are numbered.
Uvais: The structure is either 8+6 or 4+4+2
Gaurav: He was predecessor to Petrarch.
Thank You for reintroducing Shakespeare.
Sandeep Ji (theatre tea cher) discussed how a work of Shakespear e should be performed,
“Conversations with a hint of poetry”.
He gifted a book, “There are no secrets” by Peter Brook.
“…That is why I insist on the dangers that represent a very great author such as Shakespeare,
or great works of opera. The cultural quality of these pieces can bring out the best or the worst.
The greater the work, the greater the dreariness if the execution and interpretation are not of
the same level…”
Uvais Ji next read a self-help book. He told us a very valid point that when people counter him
that a self-help book is designed to make you feel good, he said, “but I want to feel good.”
We are all looking for a therapist.
If I haven’t written about a reader, it’s because I was listening and had to keep the pen down.
Sandeep Ji’s toe was dancing.
The minutes have tasted the t ea. They are now as alive as any of us, half dead, working and
earning living beings.
Gaurav read the book of the books. He broke the rule but he w as allowed because from his
eyes, I could guess, he had found the right audience. He is a rule breaker.
We crave to relate to another person’s book and there, we find a book friend. Which was
perhaps a goal of this club, we realised later on.
Those who could not read to their heart’s content, this was chapter 1.
Your character gets his due in the upcoming chapters.
3rd Edition: 04.12.2022
Moderator: Nirali
Her friend and assistant: Priya
We have Rajesh, Salman, Adil, Owais, Gaurav, Sandeep, Mitesh, Jainal and Chirag.
I was depressed when we began. I am on a book high, in its end. Loving books and planning
to ban the topic of books, for today.
But I know, I will think of them ton ight, in a quiet moment, before I sleep and dream,
hopefully, a new story. I am an overthinker.
Salman The Pig
(Pig, Written by: Andrew Cowan, 1994)
I wonder what labour of one-sided love he undertook for “the friend”.
He is a Muslim. His papa was cool with pig but his mama did not want pig in the house.
Was the book cover so good that it felt real?
The books led me/my thoughts astray. It reminded me of all the things that I want to do,
instead of my to do list.
I want to cook tonight.
He was loving reading about the pig’s antics, washing him with writer as it squealed, forgetting
all of us were listening to his antics with the pig.
Sandeep (Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino)
He says that this fiction is his most popular work.
His lectures are stronger than his fiction, when he talks about literature.
“Why read the classics?”, “Book of sand”
Someone collected sand from different places and kept in a museum…
Sandeep Ji had an accident. He was alive. It would have been inconvenient if he would have
died today.
A fictional conversation between Marco Polo and emperor Kublai Khan. N either of them
speaks the same language. They play dumb charades and the emperor does not want the
explorer to learn and use Tartar language, his language. He prefers a mystery, guess the signs
and symbols. The cities described are fictional and both of them know that. But Kublai Khan
is having fun. Like Akbar and Birbal, presenting the court diamond with a new challenge, just
entertainment!
Gaurav: He talks about Venice.
We end here with Nirali reading a few lines
Because she went to the woods and she wanted to live deliberately.
She interrupted the quote and told its gist because we interrupted her.
Moral of the story: Not to interrupt her when she reads.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to
practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the
marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut
a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”
― Henry David Thoreau