Remains of The Remains of the Day!

There was one Mr. R (for the sake of anonymity, of course!) who was asking me to suggest an easy reading (read: trashy, racy and slightly erotic!) novel to him. I was caught up in the dilemma of suggesting him a proper erotic literature or a chick-lit novel, but finally I thought of doing some good to my lecherous friend and suggested him “Dork” by Sidin Vadukut (and of course there is no pun intended in the title of the book, because it was just a suggestion!). Now, I knew what I did was in scheme of things because, I happened to chance upon “An Artist of the Floating World” by Kazuo Ishiguro at the same bookstore in a South Delhi neighborhood, which started a chain of good movies and books! 

My previous brush with Kazuo Ishiguro has been a painful one (not that he punched me in the wrong areas!), as I read his “Never Let Me Go” while lying on my back for two continuous days in Chennai. So, cutting down on the painful distraction, we would come back to a more recent present(if some such time frame exists), because that Chennai thing is almost a year old story. Now, with Delhi Metro and A/C DTC buses it was not very long before I finished the 206 pages of “An Artist of the Floating World”. Set in Japan with a backdrop of the World War, it was a steady read which you could have read with music in your ears (although I never recommend such overlapping of creative and intellectual ejaculation!). Now, it was time to extend my Kazuo-esque reading and delve a bit deeper into his writing, so I got my hands on his Booker winning novel “The Remains of the Day” which of course was more highly acclaimed and more widely read (at this moment in time, I had no idea that a movie adaptation of this book also existed). Now for the first 50 pages, the only thought in my mind was why the fuck did they award him the Booker Prize over the likes of John Banville and Margaret Atwood? Now that previous mention of the work fuck is italicized because I have reduced all the expletive thoughts which came to my mind into one very versatile and capable word FUCK.

Now, since the usage of such word might outrage my aastha-channel-watching, proper and modest readers (if at all there are any!), we will apply some restraint and get back on track. Now as you read on pages of this book, you will feel, that traditional English country house type of environment is being built around you , and as a reader you are surely beginning to feel a part of it ,feeling the emotions of the various characters as of your own(they hardly show any, except for Miss Keaton , which too is in small packets), reading with double dose concentration  that blurs the boundary between a book and real life, Isn’t what books are supposed to be meant for?, or rather good books!  

When I started keying this one, the whole idea was to write about the movie “The Remains of the day” as I came to know and watched after reading the book, but you see the mind has the mind of its own and there are things you don’t know about. It is just a fucking question about chemistry and signals going back and forth in form of electrical-fucking –energy inside your cranium. Some minor shit happens in your cortex and you are taken hold of and you just do what you feel right at the moment. May be writing about the movie was not in the script Mr. T wrote!

Howsoever, trashy it may sound like, that’s the way it is. And yeah, about the movie, may be next time, Who knows!