‘Still alive’

In an excellent essay in The Guardian, Marcela Mora y Araujo talks about the enduring enigma that is Diego Maradona. Titled Diego Maradona, living legend, she talks about how the highs of sport are never equalled by the life that follows. This probably explains the story of excess in Maradona’s life – the eating binges, the drinking problems and of course, his well-known addiction to drugs. Its a poignant sketch of the legend who is struggling to channelise his energy, now that his life as a footballer is over.

Araujo recalls amusing anecdotes, and thankfully stays away from the cliches that we usually encounter in relation to Maradona. Her correspondence with Maradona stretches back to 1995, she also translated his brilliant, raw autobiography El Diego into English.

With a sense of wonder and enchantment as if viewing a miracle, she says -

If we were to be able to study him cognitively, I think we would find evidence that he is a true genius. Perhaps, the greatest one alive in the world today.

Still alive.

India Will Survive

Am looking forward to reading Ramachandra Guha’s magisterial work on the history of the world’s largest democracy, India After Gandhi. Excerpts from the book appeared in Outlook’s latest issue. I particularly liked the conclusion of the essay -

So long as the Constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as citizens can speak and write in the language of their choosing, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army, and- lest I forget- so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive.

Salivating on my summer reading list

Exams are going to be over within a week, and I’ve already started dreaming up my summer reading list. There are books lying at home for ages that I’ve been trying to finish. Anyways so here it goes -

The Koran
Shame Salman Rushdie
The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus
Collected Short Stories Anton Chekhov
Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
On Liberty John Stuart Mill
Gilead Marilynne Robinson
White Mughals William Dalrymple
The Last Mughal William Dalrymple
City of Djinns William Dalrymple

And then there are some books I absolutely need to go back to this summer, to establish acquaintance again.

A House for Mr Biswas V S Naipaul
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ian McEwan’s early work – The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers and two short story collections – First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
And of course, as always, Albert Camus’ The Outsider

Really looking forward to reading and lazing around on hot summer afternoons.

The Sacramento Bee

The Sacramento Bee is a collection of photographs of the last days of Derek Madsen. Afflicted by neuroblastoma, a rare childhood cancer, the images tell the story of Derek and his mother Cyndie. Poignant and moving, it subtly portrays the frustrations and the futility, as they fight against the inevitability of their predicament. It nearly drove me to tears.

(The Sacramento Bee recently won the Pulitzer for Feature Photography.)

Buenos Aires

Can you fall in love with cities you’ve never been to? Can you fall in love without smelling the odour of its streets, without breathing the air in its open spaces?

Then why do I have a strange fascination for the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. A fascination that Colm Toibin’s novel, The Story of the Night (set in Buenos Aires), did nothing to dissipate. It only made me believe that I knew its streets better, that I somehow had an intimate connection with the city.

That’s why I was stunned after reading Robert Elms’ observation in The Guardian. He writes,

The greatest surprise about Buenos Aires is that it’s so familiar. You’ve crossed continents to land in a misplaced shabby Milan or retro Madrid. You soon realise that this is not exotic South America. BA is not a colourful town of ancient indigenous cultures or African rhythms, but broad stately avenues adorned with a surfeit of statues, fountains, parks and an endless grid of apartment blocks with a newsstand and cafe on every corner. The whole feel of the place reflects the millions of Spaniards and Italians who left their homelands to start again in a new world, determined to make an even more grand facsimile of the towns they originated in. And they’ve succeeded.
Buenos Aires is one of the great American cities precisely because it tells the immigrant story, a place so potently yearning for the lands left behind.

Or is this familiarity not uncommon, or weird? As Roosevelt said, “Remember, remember always, that all of us… are descended from immigrants.”

(Also can’t help mentioning that from the fringes of this town, from its crowded streets, once upon a time a boy named Diego Armando Maradona rose to glory.)