GE Revisited

(This is a post about books, so if you don't read, I'd suggest you find yourself something better to do.)

I identify with most of the books or movies I really admire, for instance I went for years believing that Jo from Little Women was my alter ego. And then Maverick Mitchell from Top Gun took over.

This is the perfect time for me to talk about the debilitating effects on readers due to the more attractive visual media but since I haven't read anything as compared to the numerous movies/sitcoms I have watched, I shall refrain from judging myself. But it's mostly books that I read while growing up, which shaped a good deal of what I am today and from where I draw most of my inspirations.

I could give an exhaustive list of such books but the three closest to my heart are Little Women (which includes all: Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys), Anne of Green Gables (again, includes the entire series) and for some vague reason, Great Expectations.

Writing about the first two would take hours. Not just writing about them and how they changed the course of my life but reminiscing the situations in which I read them and we all know how delightfully 'senti' I get on such occasions. Chiefly, I'd just say that these books teach you much more and in a far better fashion, than any crappy stuff from any management guru or any hotshot ceo.

It was really hard to agree with my English teachers, when in 12th standard they said that what applied to Shakespeare's era or Dickens' era still aplies to 21st century India what with the advancement in technology and blah blah blah... But having had three years of class-free afternoons to think about it, I'd say that the message in any classic is timeless. If I had great-great-great granddaughters, I'd still advise them to read Little Women.

And though this isn't considered Dickens' best work, Great Expectations too.(but so would my great-great-great grandsons)I've read Oliver Twist at a time that seems to be eons ago and inspired by my success with Great Expectations, read David Copperfield, unabridged and came out unscathed. The similarities are only too widely known, the distinctions, subtle. It's probably the effect of having 'studied' the book for a good two years that leads me to say that I like GE the best. But no one can deny that the understanding of human nature as displayed by Dickens in GE can put any celebrated psychiatrist to shame.

I remember all this right now because I've spent the last so many 'bad days' watching sitcoms (mostly Scrubs) where there is a good deal of drama involved so that I can cry buckets feeling sorry for somebody else instead of being frustrated due to things around me. Strike a chord?

Yeah, it's Pip yanking his hair out and kicking the wall really hard so that the physical pain can give him a quantifiable reason to cry instead of the wordless anguish he feels at each of Estella's smarts.

The context is universal, the message is universal, death in a book or a terminal illness on some medical drama is my wall.

But then the morning comes and brings with it the realities of life, classes, assignments, engagements and what not. Some will be broken but most have to be fulfilled. And you just get up, sell the ruby ring, swallow your pride and guard your convict of a benefactor with your life.

"Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no better words that I could say beside his bed, than `O Lord, be merciful to him, a sinner!'"

*Sigh* Not much of a believer in God but imagining a gray, hairy convict, dead with a formerly ungrateful, now devoted adopted son kneeling over the cadaver, saying this as a eulogy always gets to me. Amen.