A dream is a wish your heart makes...

Well, thanks to bad weather, and cheap internet access, you all get to be subjected to my musings two days in a row. I've been wanting to write a little about the things I've been reading lately. (Other than the aforementioned The Jungle Book, which by the way, I should take a picture of... the only copy I could find was in the children's section of the bookstore here and it definitely looks like it was marketed toward the under 10 set... I'm sure I'll get some strange looks on the train).

Anyhow, I have always loved to read. Being on this trip certainly hasn't changed that, but it has presented something of a difficulty from time to time, one, because books are heavy and not the thing you want to lug around on your back, and two, because books are expensive (with the exception of Cambodia and Vietnam where you can buy photocopies of pretty much any paperback you can think of... a practice I of course agree is *wrong* but at generally less than $2 a pop was far too tempting for me to resist). I have managed to get my literary fix in Thailand and India by trading quite a few books, occasionally springing for a cheapy, and spending more time than is probably fair "skimming over" interesting reads in bookstores. Incidentally if you get a chance to read them... I really enjoyed the excerpts I read from Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald, and Karma Cola by Gita Mehta. MacDonald's book details her time as an ex-pat in India and Mehta's skewers the whole Western fascination with Eastern religion/philosophy. I've found there is something fun about reading about the places I'm traveling in or about to travel to. There are far too many books about/set in India for me to even make a dent, but along the way I have read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I'd recommend them both, although I will say that Rushdie was a little hard to read (in a way I can't really put my finger on, but I think it's that the story just has so many characters and is so fantastical). Before I left, I read Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance which I would also highly recommend. And to think how badly I hated book reports when I was a kid...

More recently, I read Arundhati Roy's excellent collection of essays entitled The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Please read this book. Roy offers an interesting perspective with regard to how the United States is viewed from a distance and has written several very interesting pieces about political and environmental issues impacting India. Most recently of all (although having nothing to do with India, per se) I completed Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist. This is one of those books that I feel like I was the last person on earth to have read, but if, like me, you are far behind the times when it comes to pop-literature, READ. THIS. BOOK. I'm not saying it will change your life or anything, but you never know, it just might. It's a simply written but absolutely beautiful little story about following your dreams. It just might make you think a little bit...

Well, as per usual, I seem to have rambled on far longer than is absolutely necessary. I'm going to close this with a few thoughts from Coehlo and Roy that have been rattling around in me head for the past few days.

The soul of the world is nourished by people's happiness. - Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist

The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

Which means exactly what?

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of live around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. - Arundhati Roy, The End of Imagination

What do you want to be your epitaph? 'Paulo Coehlo died while he was alive.' Why this epitaph? Everyone dies when he or she is alive. 'No... this is not true.' -Paulo Coehlo, from the afterword of The Alchemist

Sweet dreams...