“Mitesh began reading about King Yuvanashva, who accidentally drank the fertility potion meant for his wife.”
POCKET DIARY BOOK CLUB
MINUTES OF THE MEETING
YEAR 2023
19/02/2023
3:00 PM
Mitesh began reading about King Yuvanashva, who accidently drank the fertility potion meant for his
wife. He is a science guy. He has been learning to fly drones for the government.
Getting formalities out of the way, because Jay Patel has asked for a list of books we read, and as
always, it is incomplete. To you Jay:
• The Pregnant King
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• 40 Rules of Love
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• Moriarty
• Sita – Warrior of Mithila
• The Metamorphosis
• The Zahir
• Normal People
• My Life in Words
• Man’s Search for Meaning
• Notes From the Underground
• Dil Dehlani Wale Kisse Kahaniya by Rajeshji
Nirali was wearing Dexter’s sister on her socks. A good goodie idea for the members someday, when
we have enough budget for personalization. No two feet like the same socks.
My camera man has been on leave since last two editions leaving me to do two jobs at once.
For more accurate minutes, kindly read and watch on the Instagram highlights here:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17946341984528441/
…
“…’There is no one here. Just you and me. Will you, just once, just this once, call me “mother”? Just
once. I so long to hear it.’ ‘My king, your father’s name?’ the priest repeated a third time, a little
louder, but careful to hide his impatience…”
If you brought a seed, put it in a pot, watered it every day, waited for it to sprout out, and grow up,
watching it and dreaming of fresh green leaves a nd colourful flowers adorning its stem, essentially,
giving it your hope, love and time.
“…Jayanta wept. He wept for his family, his mothers, his brother and for his grandmother, the
venerable Shilavati, and for all the pain and suffering that we endure to maintain a façade of order.
He wept for his father, the pregnant king, for the imperfection of the human condition, and for our
stubborn refusal to make room for all those in between…”
The End
Mahabharat has inspired international theatre veteran Peter B rook (9 hours long play), Indian
filmmaker Satyajit Ray contemplated turning the Dice Game in Mahabharat into a film, and now
authors have shown men and women oppressed by a society that plays by rules that arm twist women
into submission and paint men as a painless demigod.
…
There is extreme fiction, fiction and all other types of fiction. Best answered by asking our members
who coined the term. Such extremists!
The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy defines multiple usages of the adjective ‘stupid’. I could relate
with Zaphod.
Make a note, it’s stupid.
“…One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to
distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be
stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and
really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so –
but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He proffered people to be puzzled
rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could
no longer be bothered to argue about it…”
Nirali was scribbling furiously as if her life depended on writing down her thoughts, she wrote that
writing like this felt stupid.
…
Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka
Raxil hadn’t attended the last one or maybe two editions. Hence, he decided to make up. He read the
entire book.
If a person turns into a cockroach, just one fine, regular day, (it was mild weather outside while we
read inside), we imagined how fine can one really be, if a family member turned into an insect, we
usually… well, kill. Sometimes by spray, other times, slipper. Even non-violence followers like me.
How did the term ‘extreme fiction’ get its meaning?
Historically, as per our records, Ankit, Shaurya and Rajesh ran a campaign against the improbability of
a human being turning into a cockroach. Nirali entered and termed the book as an example of
‘extreme fiction’. Who coined the term amongst the members is a mystery we shall solve in the next
minutes.
Nirali writes, “This book discusses the inner psyche of a person who becomes an invalid and a baggage
for the family. It has very dark undercurrents. And also explains a lot about the writer’s own turmoil
as Sandeep ji elaborated on the same.”
…
Yogesh Ji is Jonathan Livingston Seagull
What a person, what a spirit, and what vibes he creates….
– Nirali.
He brought well pressed booklets of the songs written by Neil Diamond with the current logo of Pocket
Diary Book Club on each page. Tiny looking efforts are the greatest signs of commitment and creativity.
He turned the speaker on, and we were all to sing together. Everybody sang on low volume so it was
difficult to pick out one Indian Idol.
BE
“Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet’s eye
You may find him
If you may find him …”
…
Deepen brought The Zahir by Paulo Coelho
Sometimes, I read the copyright or the preface page. I am an advocate, side effects of a 5 year long
graduation and this is what I noticed while searching for Deepen’s Zahir,
“…According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the is thought to have arisen at some point
in the eighteenth century. Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is
someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies
our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness
or of madness…”
Deepen did not join us before edition 7, he wanted to but didn’t. I wonder why. I blame life.
While reading, he talked abou t how this book made him reflect over existence, happiness, why and
the why not and what is needed to reach that temporary state.
Everything we absorb affects us. Books are like magical potions which once we start drinking, cannot
stop and works best when taken in solitude or concentration. Deepen was a changed mind, he then
decided to tell others, strangers, what a book, what this book did for him.
I wish more and more people just talked about books instead of propaganda. How different would the
fighting people in the line be, at the sophisticated airport where I am writing this.
We wish him to restart his initiative cut short by 2020.
“…I decide to move to Paris because of its cafés, its writers, and its cultural life. I discover that none
of this exists anymore: the cafés are full of tourists and photographs of the people who made those
places famous. Most of the writers there are more concerned with style than content; they strive to
be original, but succeed only in being dull. They are locked in their own little world, and I learn an
interesting French expression: renvoyer l’ascenseur, meaning literally “to send the elevator back,” but
used metaphorically to mean “to return a favor.” In practice, this means that I say nice things about
your book, you say nice things about mine, and thus we create a whole new cultural life, a revolution,
an apparently new philosophy; we suffer because no one understands us, but t hen that’s what
happened with all the geniuses of the past: being misunderstood by one’s contemporaries is surely
just part and parcel of being a great artist…”
Isn’t this the reality in India as well? So many books sold, yet, which ones are written?
The language of the book isn’t as philosophical as The Alchemist and the likes.
Who is the Zahir? Who is the wife? Who is the girlfriend of the husband? Rajesh needed answers.
Dear Ankit,
We have 10 rules in book club. You brought 40 more!
Popular review: Overrated book.
Nirali: Ankit is growing into a storyteller.
Ankit: A novel within a novel. Rumi, Shams of Tabrez in the book increase his love for the book.
The 40 rules of love by Elif Shafak (unusual name).
While reading the first chapter, in hunt for something from ‘Shams’, I came across this line,
“…Her breasts swollen with milk and her belly so huge it looks as if it could rip apart…” and I recalled
a female on internet who said, imagine if women authors wrote about men like this.
But another passage caught my eye,
“…On their last Valentine’s Day, her husband had given her a heart -shaped diamond pendant and a
card that read,
To my dear Ella,
A woman with a quiet manner, a generous heart, and the patience of a saint. Thank you for accepting
me as I am. Thank you for being my wife.
Yours,
David
Ella had never confessed this to David, but reading his card had felt like reading an obituary. This is
what they will write about me when I die, she had thought. And if they were sincere, they might also
add this: Building her whole life around her husband and children, Ella lacked any survival techniques
to help her cope with life’s hardships on her own. She was not the type to throw caution to the wind.
Even changing her daily coffee brand was a major effort. All of which is why no one, including Ella,
could explain what was going on when she filed for divorce in the fall of 2008 after twenty years of
marriage…”
– prologue.
What happened? I continued reading the first chapter. I wish I could copy it down word for word, at
least the family fight in the kitchen, the drained love between Ella and David, the literary agent’s call
and the postcard within the manuscript.
“Dear Sir/Madam,
Greetings from Amsterdam. The story I herewith send you takes place in thirteenth-century Konya in
Asia Minor. But I sincerely believe that it cuts across countries, cultures, and centuries. I hope you will
have the time to read SWEET BLASPHEMY, a historical, my stical novel on the remarkable bond
between Rumi, the best poet and most revered spiritual leader in the history of Islam, and Shams of
Tabriz, an unknown, unconventional dervish full of scandals and surprises.
May love be always with you and you always surrounded with love.
A. Z. Zahara”
…
Who are these Normal People that Soumya reads about? We suddenly became a primary class of kids,
almost asking, “Teacher, Teacher! Where do we find these normal people?”
There is an aim to be a writer, there is praise by friends, there is emotional anguish of the struggle.
But you won’t find an actual struggle by the character. That’s not Sally’ style.
The story reminds me of Conversations with Friends. It reminds Sally as well , she says so herself . A
flipside:
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/surely-there-are-better-literary-heroes-for-our-
generation-than-sally-rooney-20210817-p58jfp.html
Her redeeming quality lies in fallibility.
…
Sandeep, the dramatic reader, has a voice with a personality of its own. He brought alive words from
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Aishwarya read from ‘My Life in My Words’ by Rabindranath Tagore. Online hunting, I found a book
called ‘My Reminiscences by Sir Rabindranath Tagore’.
“The rain falls pit-a-pat, the tide comes up the river.”
Tagore remembered these words from his childhood. What were the original words? How did h is
relative, who arrogantly must have spoken those, say this? When we speak an old local phrase that
goes back to unknown history, we get a little confident, knowing that at this moment, we are sharing
that history.
…
Shaurya read Man’s Search for Meaning. We have had it multiple times, sometimes inside the
concentration camp, sometimes outside, remembering his wife while walking in the line, keeping close
to each other to fight frostbite from torn, stolen shoes. It’s supposed to be an amazing book. If it
remains with you long after you forget when you read it.
Neha read Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. She has a sense of humour she uses. Passion between
arch-enemies or is it love?
The book containing life stories of ‘Rajesh and Ratan’, is excellent. We all heard the author read, and
I can vouch from all their expressions and laughter, it is an amazing read. Must buy, if you can get it.