Friday, December 23, 2016

Surprise !

One good turn deserves another !

I lent my favourite fantasy ‘The Simoqin prophecies ‘ to a friend and in return,even without asking I got a book.

Now , I had a book by this author many years back. But all attempts to read it failed, all I could see was a sea of printing mistakes .( It was published by Rupa, a cheap edition,probably nobody thought of proof reading.) I gave the book away after many failed attempts and consoled myself : that author is not for me ,only contemporary fiction should be read.

So ,when R sent this book with my son (her daughter and my son are classmates), I thought about lying to her,saying how I loved it ,when I had no plans of reading it.

But , one day,when all library books happened to be wrongly chosen,I started reading ‘The best of Saki’ I had a very very pleasant surprise !

The best thing about the book is the length of the stories. Just 2 or 3 pages. Exactly right for my short attention span currently. The sarcastic humor tickles. The eccentric characters stay in your mind(The romancers). The nearly impossible situations(Esme),sometimes bordering on fantasy (Laura) and one with a Wodehousian kind of humor (‘ Louise’ : which reminds me of Maugham’s story of the same name. That too is my favourite.) There is a story (The window),which remember seeing dramatized on Doordarshan.

Now I wonder how did I fail to read this book !  It is fantastic !!

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