What say y'all?

Well, with the weekend getting over, mind you this being an extended weekend, the plans going into it were quite extensive, about how I would turn my life around, doing constructive activities and all..Guess thats out the window..This weekend was more about finding myself more than anything else, with me going back to do what I do best.. Writing, I guess one of the few activities I have left without being bothered by what other people think..Freewriting, I guess inspired by my sophomore English teacher, Ms. Eldredge, was one of the pure joys that I discovered. Every class we used to spend the first ten minutes just writing whatever came into our minds and discuss about it.. That one year, I learnt more about English than I ever had..My writing had improved from a childish level of writing to an adult style.. I was able to enjoy what I wrote for the first time and discover the joy of doing it..I was able to write stories for the first time..Ah the good old days..Since then, the loss of the computer for three years and then responsibilities on campus prevented me from writing.. I always believed that writing is the art of saying more with the right word at the right time..its not about using fancy words or using words that no one understand..The content and how you deliver the message is what is important.. Thats what she drilled into me, as the bootcamp throughout the year, writing 5 page reports every three days on different topics..I hated it back then, but that might have been the most important year of my life..That was the last time I was in US..A long time ago really..

So moving on now, I was just reading Conspiracy of Fools, a story about how Enron rose and fell..Really a fascinating story of how men can be easily corrupted, hopes raised, fortunes made..Gives whole new meaning to Balzac's saying, Behind every fortune there is a crime.. I mean I have to admire some of the people on that though..Jeff Skilling, who became CEO at 30..Andrew Fastow, CFO of the year at 37..How Jeff was able to convince SEC that mark to market type of accounting is correct in the energy industry and should actually be done by other companies as well..All the accounting gimmicks, not that I condone them, which not only fooled the investors but the regulatory bodies themselves..I mean the presentation skills that Skilling possessed to pull this off.. Really brilliant..This book is a must read to anyone!

As you might have guessed by now, I really love reading books and I read vociferously, anything and everything that I can find. I have lost count of the no of books I have read and the different kinds of authors..I have read classics, epics, biographies, non fiction, business, you name it, I would have read it..One genre I am not able to bring myself to read is Indian authors, whose themes are generally to do with loss of innocence, or social themes in India. I have respect for them, and what they are trying to do, but somehow I am not able to identify with those issues. I dont support the statement that one shelf of English literature is better than all the Indian literature either. In fact Indian literature is very fascinating in the way it uses form and function to create a setting which brings out a message. Western literature misses out on this aspect. The words in India are designed according to the way language flows rather than following any particular rule and it gives authors poetic licence with the language. Western literature closest similarity to Indian literature is probably found in poetry rather than prose, where poets like ee cummings, or Langston Hughes or Sylvia Plath, emily dickinson experimented with forms. The only author who was able to pull off poetic license in a book is probably James Joyce in Ulysses, where his own invention of words lead to an entire revolution. Anyway, I appreciate Indian literature, but I cannot bring myself to read it.

Speaking of Langston Hughes, the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers comes to mind.. Beatiful poem about how the neglected groups of society had always been there with the flow and ebb of time and tide.. I have included here for everyone to read..and the spacing and the way the words are arranged is also important..So read it slowly and imagine a river meandering through time as you read this poem..

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln 
     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy 
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers