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Reading Agatha Christie

Reading detective fiction has been one of my favourite pastimes since childhood. Many of these still remain my favourites because of the fact that they are so readable and at times so forgettable. Among such books, Agatha Christie’s works stand first and foremost. 

Her detective fiction gives a kind of “aha” feeling, which can be compared to the exhilaration that one feels on putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Now wonder, the historian Romila Thapar advises her research students to read Agatha Christie to enhance gestalt thinking or the ability to see the whole picture. As these books belong to the category of popular fiction, they are easy to read and intellectually stimulating at the same time. 

Her most famous detective is Hercule Poirot who has been immortalised on the small screen by David Suchet. Poirot is a retired police officer from Belgium who is known for his penchant for detecting crime. He is described as short, with his head the shape of an egg, moustache always well-trimmed and shining, and with good manners. He is shown as obsessed about neatness and order, be it solving the case or his attire. The most famous among Hercule Poirot novels are Hallowe’en Party, Five Little Pigs, Elephants Can Remember, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Appointment With Death and Murder in Mesopotamia. 

Miss Jane Marple is one of Christie’s detectives who views human life everywhere the same as in her village of St. Mary Mead. She is an elderly spinster who is very observant and manages to ask the right questions at the right time. Some of the books with Miss Jane Marple as the detective are The Murder at the Vicarage, The Body in the Library, A Murder is Announced, They Do It with Mirrors, A Pocket Full of Rye, 4.50 from Paddington, At Bertram's Hotel, Nemesis  and Sleeping Murder. My favourite is At Bertram’s Hotel, which is about a nightmarish world where some very innocent people are framed for crimes they have not committed and the police recognizes a gang of lookalikes who manage to get away with it.

Though not so numerous as the Hercule Poirot mysteries or the Jane Marple stories, there is the couple Tommy and Tuppence. Her true names are Thomas Beresford and Prudence Beresford and they appear in stories such as Partners in Crime, The Secret Adversary, N or M?, By the Pricking of My Thumbs and Postern of Fate. Tuppence is shown as a charismatic young lady who manages to keep her head in cases involving mafia or espionage. 

Though there are chances of reading an earlier read Agatha Christie by mistake, most of the time, it goes completely unnoticed. 

Pic: www.telegraph.co.uk

friends forever

time for everything

Timing

positive affirmations

New Woman

 

This soul was once like a huge flame leaping to the skies,

Then it withered, dried and drooped to the very earth;

Sometimes, like Icarus, it leapt out of its many mazes,

But burnt out in the heady dash for total freedom.

Then she brought forth a new-born, a swaddled baby

She sang her magnificat of newly found motherhood;

The soul forgot its troubles for a joyous interval

And learnt how to escape the many mazes again.

Yet mostly this soul was a single-celled organism,

Cowardly and crawling in this huge universe,

Too silent, too shut out and too withdrawn,

Incapable of learning or making its way around,

Sometimes, it longs for the crazy days of yesterday,

When the sun of total freedom had burnt its wings.

Pic Courtesy: Icarus and the Sun by Serena-Moretti

growing up

wuthering heights

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” 

“Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more then I am always a pleasure to myself - but, as my own being.” 

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

A perfect life

If life was perfect, I would never have lost you to silence,
Or you thought over what an innocent smile really meant,
It would have been a celebration of our mutual silences
With a huge degree of understanding, not hide-and-seek.

If life was perfect, it would have smelt of fresh coffee,
Your perfume, glowed with your glaring new blue shirt,
Your movie-star good looks and impeccable manners,
Along with those caring ways, never with another.

If life was perfect, to laugh would have been easy,
To cry easier and to trust and confide the easiest,
It would have given freely, not full of tragedies,
Which were between the cup and the lip always.

If life was perfect, I’d be what I am in my dreams,
Putting words into perfect little sheets, bound to books,
Or teaching children to sing rhymes and poems,
Or loving my little voices that mingle with mine.

Still if life was perfect, I would sit at night on the seashore,
With you gazing surprised at how beautiful I’m in black,
Talking of sweet nothings to remember and treasure,
That would be a perfect moment, for years to come.

Garden of Eden

Let's hold hands and walk in the garden
Search around for the four-leafed clover,
Walk around till we find the true mystique
Of a clover much-searched for and found.

One leaf for faith, hope, love and good luck,
Good luck, the most needed of them all,
From morning till night, we could pluck
And learn from the leaves of a four-leaf,

When the magic of the purple riot falls off life,
In a sunless garden where the flowers are dead,
A four-leaf clover might bring in a warm smile
Memories of bright sunshine and summer rain;

An Eve in the Garden of Eden plucked a clover
To know if Adam is her one true faithful lover.

Togetherness

After the days of humdrum, you and I have met,
Savourings days of togetherness and promises;
After the sleepless nights of sad separation,
You and I have made recompense with our lives.

When the others have chosen the easy crossroads,
We have been foolish in not seeing the obvious;
The lessons that our elders gave every single day
Much to our dismay and feeling of righteousness.

We have not been lucky at the crossroads again;
You and I parted ways more than once in life;
While time ravages youth and leaves us feeble,
Broken, old, lonely, sad and too tired to talk.

We have been fools who missed the obvious lessons,
But when we come together, it is like spring again.

heathcliff

                If all else perished, and he 

               remained, I should still continue to               

               be; and if all else remained, and he 

               were annihilated, the universe w

                would turn to a mighty stranger.”

                He's more myself than I am.    

                 Whatever our souls are made of,      

                  his and mine are the same.” 

                   Nelly, I am Heathcliff - he's

                    slways, always in my mind - not   

                   as a pleasure, any more then I                            am  always a  pleasure to myself -                   but, as my own being...

Wuthering Heights 

loveless world

Samhain

solitude

endure

yellow rose

what I have always wanted to write is of you, 

the many unsaid words that are left between us, 

when your thoughts gather on sleepless nights, 

and I do not have any way left to talk to you. 

for the old wound of our love was never gone, 

when life punched some more on the very spot, 

for I was left to spin yarns that spoke of us

after the day when you decided to leave me. 

for this heart was naive in those bygone times, 

never knew what it was that ate my soul always, 

for we were close to each other in our hearts

and were not strangers as we pretend to be now. 

For all this naivete that I showed in love

You showed me how I was your yellow rose. 

love

From Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write, find out whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. 

Memory

A City Glimpse

In the morning light the city lies silent,
Slowly it awakes with the rising sun,
And life moves along its streets,
Children walking to school,
Joggers on the run to keep fit,
Vehicles roaring to arrive first.
I walk with you by my side,
Through the lanes and roads,
Turning once in a while to smile,
Laugh or reply to something you,
Just told me with the wonder,
Of a child shining in your eyes.
I love the city in the morning light,
Only when you walk with me.

Being

When away from you thoughts gather,
And desires like creepers murmur,
In the dark cloudy sky to trees,
Until you come with your silence
And rain bursts in my space,
Where you are is my dream,
That I would exchange my being,
For being the air around you.

Springtime

You were a springtime in this uneventful life, 

Where your promises filled this heart daily, 

Your thoughts played like a chorus in a song, '

And in those days, you were like a demigod. 

When you reach out with your tender words, 

When you return to this life with your bounce, 

I forget that once your absence left me dead, 

And I celebrate your homecoming with delight. 

My fears are about what I'll do if you go away, 

For a promising life had collapsed in a day, 

When you and I parted our lives eons ago, 

To leave behind a life of longing and strife. 

You bring new thoughts and dreams to cherish

And I speak of us as if we are together again.

@ YJHD

meaning

Relationship

awareness

periods meme

periods

love

periods

late period

periods

memory

be humble

A song for you

Of all the songs that have been made,
For you, until they turn old and fade, 

This one is short and may be the best,
In this world, I love you the most.

Let new songs come and years pass,
I cant find a word that rhymes with pass..;-)
(well, I can, what i mean is I don't want to)

Don't have much to say,only new words,
Come and take place of the old ones.

Scent of rain

The earth forgets the scorching summer,

At the first drop of pelting rain

And its scents are translated into perfumes

Waterlily

Just to take this picture, I kept an alarm and woke up early to everyone' s surprise.  Anyway, this picture has come out so well out that I have  made it into my blog-picture. 

You and Me

You and I don't have anything common between us apart from our love for words. You love stringing words together; beautiful words that collide against my mind, when I encounter them somewhere in books. They show how you have been digging words, their meanings and their various tones to paint pictures.

While here I sit and sweat trying to express what is on my mind; for words fail when it comes to what I feel for you. So I try to explain mystery after mystery, glance after glance, suddenly remembered conversations that bring you clear before me.

You and I have been away from each other for too long. Sometimes, I find that the colour of your words have faded and died. It has nothing to do with me, I know, but the fact is that  it no longer makes me laugh or cry unlike earlier and I long for those unwritten words of yours.

A sacred space

For a time, life meant complete relaxation. Getting up late, making black tea and later lunch, listening to favourite songs (which prompted a question from a curious neighbour who thought it was a guy who played music), checking mails, replying to them and sitting to read on my favourite chair.

That chair was like a haven. The view was restricted with a wall, sometimes with a cat on it, the road you can see at a distance, the neighbour's houses (where at night, the sound of the lady scraping the last bit of food from the vessel for her husband could be heard in my room even with the windows closed) and a guava tree.

On days when I cleaned my room, after the work is done, I would sit and stare, first at my ultra-clean room with white floor (God, I miss my room, with the neatly arranged furniture, whose position I change during every cleaning session, though I am no blood relative of Tuglaq) and after a while at the scene outside. Once or twice I have seen the neighbour plucking the ripe fruits from the guava tree. Anyway, the ripe smell of its soft tasty flesh reached me all those times.

Once, on an idle day, I saw that this guava tree has a strange resemblance to a human form (with a well-shaped posterior) though upside down, with intertwined arms like an ancient supplicant praying incessantly to the gods. I even made a rough sketch of this sight. 

Now living with a husband who runs a chidiyakhana (he’s fond of pets and keeps two cages of budgies in the room) that drives me mad at times, I miss my room of single days- my neat sparkling room with a lot of space and with a good view. 

peace

Unhappy Endings

 I was only ten when I learnt about unhappy endings.

Like when I knew my grandmother had cancer,

I kneeled in churches, for God answers a kid’s prayers, they said.

She died and I didn’t meet her to say one goodbye.

She looked like a horrible nightmare,

Not the one you saw last, not the one you loved,

A swollen, ugly remnant of what was once beloved, they said.

Once botched goodbye, an unresolved parting for a little girl,

There were no tears for her, only numbness that didn’t feel real,

From that chirpy girl who never gave her a proper burial,

Who died a little that day, with prayers unanswered,

Full of questions but never with answers or resolutions,

Now, I’ve grown older with bungled muted loves,

Improper goodbyes, giving up too easily, too easily. 

Find that rainbow day

Love

practice

compassion

enjoyment

suffering

Tales of love

In the dark rainy nights,
She sang lullabies to us,
In a very sweet voice.

The stories lived before us,
Brave knights and lovely ladies,
All fighting for love.

Both of us, listened wide-eyed
Lying on each of her arms,
As truth and love ruled.

Little did she know of its truth,
As we grew older, we realised,
With pain and disillusionment.

How our childish hearts soaked up,
These unreal tales of happiness,
And real love, truth and honour.

She said, love makes us whole,
She sang, never forget your truth.
She sang you are special.

Now aged and crooked, she sits,
She has lost her sweetness
And we, our innocence.

For him, love is sad and lost,
For me, love is cruel and lost,
For her, life is lonely and gone.

Yet the old hope in tales flicker,
When we meet a smile,
Of understanding in her eyes.