Nature

On Friday, I took a bus from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. I got stuck in a traffic jam on a highway which lasted for well over three hours and the entire journey took fifteen hours instead of the normal nine. It ended up being a complete pain.

However before it went all wrong and while there was till light, the scenery was beautiful. Immediately after one leaves Mumbai, the lush green forests of the tip of the western ghats are all around. It has been raining heavily all over western India over the last four-five days and the might and flow of the streams was awe inspiring and beautiful. Beautiful in the way all things in health are. And then there were mountains. For a man, who has lived in the plains all his life in one or another part of the country, mountains will always be a thing of beauty and joy. I saw the sea the same day. Not the same beauty, not the same joy. Not the same heartstrings.

On a completely different note, talk of two books. Catcher in the Rye is a book I read quite late in life. I mean its a book for seventeen year olds, I read it when I was twenty two. Could empathesize with it in a way that i hadnt with any other book. And I also knew why. It touched the romantic in me. The other book is Fountain Head. I know its the favorite of a large number of people, perhaps more than any other book. I think its again due to the simplistic romance of the book. I read the book, earlier than most people. I was in standard nine when i read the book and for almost four years it was my bible, koran and gita rolled into one. I must have read the book atleast seven to eight times. As I grew up I realized that the book was rather simplistic in its interpretation of reality. Or was i being suckered into life just like people like Peter keating?

Lastly, my reading, all my life has had no pattern and now almost no existence. Its dead.