My Top 10 Books

There was a book challenge going around, on Facebook. You list your 10 favourite books and nominate friends who you wanted to take up the challenge too. When I first heard of it, I desperately wanted someone to pick me. Unfortunately, it fizzled out. Maybe those in my friends' list just didn't do it because it came back on. Earlier today, a friend nominated me to list my top 10 books.

I didn't think it would be hard to choose 10 books. I was right, it wasn't hard to pick 10. The hard part was picking ONLY 10. There are so many books I love. There are different kinds of love I have, for books. So, how was I to choose?

I love some books so much that I could read them over and over again. I also love some books immensely but could never read them again. I love some books so much that I can't put them down while I read them. I may read them again but they don't leave a deep imprint in my mind. I've even gone through phases where I just love the author and read anything they wrote.

This was the list I came up with, in the end.

1) Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
2) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
3) The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
4) Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
5) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
6) A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
7) The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins 
8) Harry Potter - J K Rowling
9) If You Could See Me Now - Cecelia Ahern
10) The Old Man and The Sea - Ernest Hemingway

With the exception of the last book, I have read these books more than once. They have each left an impression on me and I could easily read them all again. Maybe I could replace #10 with The Devil Wears Prada, as one that I would read again.

The Old Man and The Sea is an amazing piece of writing but it was heart-wrenching. I knew it would have a sad ending but it wasn't the kind I expected. It was like Hemingway didn't just pierce through the heart but decided to twist the knife as it went in. For just a story about a man who broke his dry spell of fishing with a big catch, it was quite an unputdownable narrative. I couldn't read it again.

I asked the husband if he'd like to list his top 10. He didn't. Then he went through my list and said, "Well, at least we have this in common. Your top 10 list is my top 10 too, except that they are your favourite and I hate them all".

Well said, husband, well said. Which couch would you like to sleep on, tonight?

No Points For Loyalty

I have been loyal to the Indian Cricket Team since the first match at the Boxing Day series. It is true that I have had my share of rants and flashed anger but I did say, back in the days of the Test Series, that if I could afford it, I'd be at every single one of the stadiums to cheer them. In fact, I would have loved to be at the SCG (Sydney), Adelaide Oval, WACA (Perth), MCG (Melbourne) throughout the series. When the ODI started, that is just what I have done. 

I was at the MCG a couple of matches ago, cheering every odd 4 or difficult 6, as I watched us lose. When the team arrived at the Gabba and played the Aussies, I was there, knowing there was way too much pressure than our boys might be able to handle. I enjoyed the first session of the match until they threw it away in the slog overs of our bowling and sealed the deal with the first over of our batting. Gambhir, who was playing well until then, was either too caught up in his rift with Dhoni on who should get the credit for the earlier win/draw or just plain careless. Sachin may be playing alright but he hasn't been sticking around long enough on the field to make a difference, in the entire series.

Yesterday's match was no different. I entered the stadium as we faced the first ball, and by the time I was seated, we had lost one wicket. Sehwag's non-performance in this entire tour has been apparent to all but him. Sitting him out in the last two matches has been a very good call by Dhoni. With Dhoni out of the picture, his rotation concept was flung out the window and Sehwag brought in, along with the other 2 top order batsmen. A lot was riding on the man, who also replaced Dhoni as captain of the Indian cricket team. He failed us miserably. 

The top order batsmen started off well. Sachin was putting on his class act, until he was struck by a stroke of bad luck. Why does that happen whenever he's giving us a good game? Gambhir threw away his wicket too early, yet again. This was his one chance to prove to Dhoni, and whoever else cared, that he could win matches for India too. He could have got all the credit he needed but he chose to waste his one opportunity to get us those 4 points on the Tally Board. He should've have learnt from Sunday's match that the key was to stay on the field. He simply didn't wait to settle in, before flailing his bat about. 

The Kohli-Raina partnership started slow and steady but was looking good until Raina played a careless shot that sent him back to the pavilion. The match started to lean heavily on Kohli's shoulders after that. Unfortunately, he didn't last too much longer either. He was our highest scorer but that wasn't even enough to grant us a less disgraceful loss. A couple of easy catches dropped by SL man Chandimal had saved him earlier but if he expected the luck to carry him through to the end, he was asking for too much. Sehwag sent Pathan in to bat, before Patel and Ashwin, to hitch the runs up a few notches. The man tried but there was not much he could do, with little support from his partners. Patel walked away with a single digit score. Ashwin was looking good with the bat for a few minutes, only to join the ranks of the failures sooner than we could have afforded. A couple of Dhoni's classic sixes would have helped us greatly. The man was sorely missed on the field.

The bowlers had given away too many runs in the first session. Expecting them to salvage that in the batting arena was taking optimism to another level. In a blink, we lost Vinay Kumar. Yadav did well to take a couple of dot balls and let Pathan face the ball in a last ditch effort to close the gap. The first of those balls spelt doom for us. He was caught by the bowler Malinga. 

Sri Lanka was clearly the better team in this match. Their batsmen had taken knocked up 289 runs. In spite of a few fielding glitches, their bowlers served them well too. Kulasekara was truly deserving of the Best Player of The Match award, having claimed 3 key wickets, including Sachin Tendulkar's. 

With that, the noose around the Indian team's necks have been tightened. A win in this match would have increased their chances of reaching the finals. The loss meant that it can be any team at the finals, depending on how each of the next few matches play out. India has slipped from the top to the bottom place at the Points Table in just 2 games. We will have to win both matches coming up and pray that Sri Lanka will lose at least one, to make it to the finals. It is not impossible but not one bit easy either, given how quickly we buckle under pressure. 

Alone At The Movies

A couple of years ago I would never watch a movie by myself. The very idea was appalling. Having to watch a movie alone meant that you had no one to go out with. In other words, it meant that you had no friends. If you've lived for a quarter century and had no friends, there was something seriously wrong with you. If you've lived in the same city during most of those years, and had no friends, you really need to be worried. In other words, if you went to watch a movie alone, it was time to stop and review your life.

One day, when I was alone at home and bored, I did it. The walk to the cinema felt like an adventure. Once there, I felt everyone's eyes on me. The voice in my head responded to each one of them with, "Yeah, I'm here by myself. Do you have a problem with that?" There was excitement coursing through me as I got down the stairs after the film ended, and walked home. I sent a text to my husband and called mum to tell them what I had done. I wrote to my best friend that I had been to the movies by myself. At twenty-something, going to the movies alone should not have been something to get so worked up about but it was. 

Now, if I had had no one to share that with, I would have been miserable. It goes back to the same theory about not having friends. You might as well be the protagonist in one of those romantic films, looking desperately for the right guy/girl to come along and growing miserable while you wait. Friendship is to us what falling in love is to the Western world. 

One fine winter morning, I arrived in Australia to start a new life. One of the biggest things about this new beginning was being alone. I had no friends. I knew no one. I assumed that I would make lots of friends at work. Everywhere I had worked so far, people had loved me. Imagine my horror upon finding that was not to be the case. While people would be friendly, making friends was not as easy as I thought it would be. I joined classes and I spoke with strangers. I remained alone. Everyone was nice but I had no friends.

I realized that I was on my own and I had better make the best of it. Staying home, reading books was one thing but I could not stay locked inside for ever. I had to get out if I wanted to make friends. Initially, I whinged to my best friend about not being able to make any new friends. He said to give it time, "Within a year, you will have lots of friends to go out with". I was horrified! Was I going to be alone for a year? 

I started going out by myself. I found that I enjoyed it. Being alone meant that I got to meet with lots of strangers. I could have conversations with people who shared similar tastes as mine and come away without any obligations. I didn't know the names of most people I spoke and a lot of times I didn't know what they did. It was just two people or a group of people exchanging a few sentences. It was almost always happy conversations. There were no emotions involved, no expectations. This was the a new kind of friendship altogether. The free games by the city council on Thursday nights were my favourites. I could play Chess, Scrabble, Jinga and I could watch others play. I didn't have to know anyone. I had a whole bunch of new friends every week. We played, we laughed, we had so much fun. Being alone and meeting new people was such an amazing endeavour. I began to enjoy it immensely. 

There were days when there were no games and there was not much happening where I could meet new people. I didn't want to go home and be alone. I decided the best thing to do was go to the cinema. That was an activity that didn't need any company. I could go by myself, choose a movie on the spot and watch it. I had the company of all the others at the cinema while, at the same time, I was by myself. It was like having the best of both worlds. Soon, it became the thing I did when I had nothing else to do. 

I bought a membership card at the cinema in town and it became my best friend. When I was sick, I could catch a movie. When I was alone and depressed, I would check out a new film. When there was a good movie playing, I could just hit it. When I felt like doing something and there was nothing else, I would head off to the nearest movie theatre. I am hardly ever disappointed. It's an escape and an entertainment. Now, I average at about a film a week. It has been over a year and I have plenty of friends. That means I don't always go by myself but there are days when I do just that. The time I spend by myself is my friend too. 

Chapter 3: Of Clouds and An Architect

It is imperative that I forget at least one thing when I pack. That is why I make a list. The trouble with a list is that if it is not on the list, it will not go into the bag and consequently, what was forgotten at the time of making the list are items that missed the bag.

Once I, Miss Villager, got on the plane, I reached the point in time where, not only could I not retrieve what I had forgotten to pack but I could not buy them at the airport stores either. Obviously, that is the moment when the things forgotten are finally remembered. I strapped myself into my seat and it hit me all at once. No ear-plugs, no belt for my jeans or my dress and no dongle. All of which were on my mind while making the list but slipped off before they could hit the paper. Fortunately, none of them were so important as to hamper the weekend.

Soon enough, the crew made the usual announcements, asking passengers to turn off their mobile devices, strap on their seatbelts and explained the emergency procedure. I half-listened to what was being said, as I am sure most of us who fly often do, until the speaker said something about it being minutes before the "blast off". That made me sit upright! It was the first time I had heard that term being used for take-off. When I fly international, I see warnings on walls that terms like bomb, blast, etc, are to be avoided in conversations, at an airport. So, hearing the air-hostess (do they still call them that?) say blast-off set off warning bells in my head. Nobody around me appeared to be reacting to it and, of course, it was nothing to get worked up about. I spent the next few seconds running it in my head and wondering if that was a term they used internally, to describe the jet fuel being blasted off and what other terminology was used in their training that was different from what the rest of the world gets to hear. I made a mental note to watch more episodes of Air Crash Investigation in the future, to familiarize myself with the aircraft terminology and inside stories.

As the plane blasted off, I looked out the window. My favourite part of a flight is take-off and landing. I love looking out of the window and watching the changing scenery. The bird's eye view of the earth below is always so lovely. Brissie looked quite good from up above too. The picture of the vast expanse of light and dark shades of green, the dark grey roads, little brown hills, winding river at the bottom and cumulus clouds hovering above them, was marvellous!

As we kept ascending, more and more clouds came into view, blocking the view of the earth below. There seemed to be more clouds in the sky than I had noticed when I was on the ground. The clouds below me were pristine white and appeared to be stationary, while the grey ones above me were moving really fast. It felt strange. Obviously we were moving at the speed of the white clouds and the grey ones were moving at a different speed, so the eye sensed them different. If I put the science asshole aside, the scene that played outside the window was fascinating. As we moved through the clouds, I felt like I was in Wonderland. There were so many fluffy things around me. Every now and then, when we flew right through one, it was like walking through walls, in the Harry Potter stories. The initial excitement over, I decided that I needed to fly more often. Clearly, it had been too long if I felt like this during the first few minutes of a flight that I had taken at least twice in the past.

The view inside the plane was less scenic than outside but definitely not less enjoyable. The best part of my seat was not just being at a window seat but having no one next to me. It was a 3-seater and there was a thin girl, dressed in tight jeans, tee-shirt and a loose jacket sitting in the aisle seat. Between us, there was one empty seat. It left me enough room to watch her, without being too obvious about it. I could see her scribbling away in a little notebook. After a short while, she opened the bigger book on her lap and skimmed through the contents before writing in her little book again. While at first, I has assumed she must be writing some sort of literature, off the top of her head, I now knew that she was making notes. So, she was a student. Well, she could have been a teacher too but somehow, she did not strike me as being a teacher. Her body language was more of someone learning something or creating something. If she was not a student, she could be a worker. It was a book on Architecture, so she could have been an architect. She was definitely preparing for something. Maybe an exam, or a class next day or a project. Maybe she was just being studious.

I could not see much else. There may have been a couple of people sitting together in the 3-seater to our left but I do not recall much about them. There were a few people walking around but I did not notice them much at the time, either. For a reason I cannot explain, I was more excited by the girl in the aisle seat (let us call her Ellie), than the view I had just witnessed outside the window. Everything else around me was background. She inspired me to put pencil to paper myself. I took out a couple of sheets from my handbag and started writing.

Chapter 2: Happy Kittens

Once I got off the bus and entered the airport, I headed to the screen which announced flight times and status. I scanned the display for my flight, without really knowing my flight number. I assumed I would be able to figure it out from the airlines and the destination. I was forced to pull out my ticket and get the number, when I could not see my flight on the list. That was a little silly because I should have been able to find out with the logo of the airlines and destination, if only I had been patient enough to wait for all the pages to flash by on the screen. I could not find my flight anyway.

I was not really sure that my cheap, no-frills, flight would fly out of the same airport terminals as the rest. Some cities seem to have a terminal for these carriers, a little distance away from where the 'regular' flights fly. So, I went off to check at the information centre, where a cheerful young woman pointed me to the check-in counters. I was going to tell her that I did not really want to go to the check-in counter but a little voice in my head stopped me. I trawled in the direction she had pointed. On the way, I stopped at the display screen again and this time, found my flight. How funny is that! It was at that point it hit me that I did need to go to the check-in counter, after all. There had been no web check-in for this flight.

I stood in line and got my boarding pass fairly quickly. The girl behind the counter was one happy chick. She had "seen Daniel" that morning, which had made her day, as I heard her say to her friend in the adjacent counter. I have not the faintest clue who Daniel is but obviously he was a guy both girls were drooling over. Good for them. A happy check-in girl makes a happy customer. I got a lovely window seat out front. I could not have asked for a better one myself.

Once the check-in process was complete, the familiarity of the airport started clicking into place, in my head. Most importantly, I remembered that there were more coffee and food shops after the security checks than there were outside. I finished my pre-flight activities first and arrived at the lounge. That was easy enough. Soon, I was standing in the queue at Red Rooster for my chicken and chips, both of which were not too great. I called up a friend I was going to catch up with, during the weekend, and when that was done, settled down to play a game of Monopoly on my iPad. It was going to be at least an hour's wait, if the flight would not be delayed.

Thanks to the people around me and my iPad, I had no trouble killing time at all. The wait was absolutely delightful. That is a good start to a trip, I should say. It made me rethink my decision never to fly out of that airport again. It was definitely worth saving the $30 and the time was well-spent.

I could not finish my game before they called us to board the flight. I hit the PAUSE button on it and moved to line up for boarding. As I stood there, tucking my iPad into my backpack, it dawned on me that I now had 2 mobile devices to turn off now.

"Technology!", I spat and turned both my iPad and mobile phone off, before I chucked both in the bags.

The friend of the happy kitten, from the check-in counter, was at the door, scanning our boarding passes. I should have realized it before but I did not until I saw the girl there - the same staff did both the tasks - handing out the passes and scanning them in later. Well, that  explained why the airlines insisted on closing the check-in counters 45 minutes before boarding time. It was the most obvious thing and yet I missed it.

"Hmm... I need to be more alert!", I thought to myself.

At my turn, the girl, reading out the name of every passenger as she scanned their tickets, said to me, "Thank you, Miss Villager!"

I have known people to mis-pronounce my name and surname before. It happens so often that I expect it now. Yet, she managed to have me in splits. How could she possibly read "villager" out of that? As they say, it takes all kinds to make the world!