Bookie Waffling

Got done with 'An Area of Darkness' yesterday. Its a quick read written in a brutally honest fashion like Naipaul normally does. However the book, read today, seems pretty dated to me – and I'm not talking about physical changes that have taken place since the book was written. Basically, the generalizations done on the 'Indian' character seems to be fairly dated (hopefully) and I feel the way people around here think has changed considerably ( at least in Bombay). But, Naipaul does have the advantage of an outsiders view and so there's a bright chance that things are exactly the way he writes them (and that bhaaya is scary).

An extremely interesting bit of the book for me was about his stay in Kashmir (restricted to the Valley and Amarnath – unfortunately he never did Ladakh, which must have been pretty closed at the time + it was just before the Chinese Incursion). I was there around 3 months ago and bloody hell, the way he has described the people over there (of the valley ) is bang on. Its like they've been stuck in a time loop or something.

Its the same over there now – most folks still think that the Kashmir problem does not involve them. You could live a month over there and except for the bunch of CRPF guys with guns you would not know about the issue. They still try to cheat the living crap out of you – all while moaning about their sorry fate. They still treat the Dal like a massive sewer – we were the guys who got laughed at for refusing to chuck our cigarette stubs into the lake.

Yup, so an interesting read. For now I'm trying to get my hands on a book of short stories by Marquez. Lets see what happens with that.

Adios