Poets Printery

Popular novelist and a close friend Shreekumar Varma writes on the ups and downs in the world of books of 2009

Coming in the wake of terror and violence, meltdowns of various kinds, this year too carried the stains and strains, the echoes of the year gone by. Literature was solace as well as a reflection of a grim reality, finds Shreekumar Varma

It’s easy at first to choose between landscapes. Seaside, mountain, forest and hot plains. But as you pile up advantage and disadvantage, the memories of holidays and previous excitements — the push of salted breeze, the mix of sweat and cold as you climb, the delicious fear of unseen eyes beyond that drapery of greenery, the vastness of an empty land where the sense of your bearings gets gradually garbled — you wonder if it’s all that easy after all.

For preferences are coloured by memory and the current state of mind. By what we think we ought to like. And the subtle pressures exercised by others on our behalf.

Further reading, click here

I interviewed Shreekumar in this article, Royal Heritage, A Legacy in Poetry

First published in Deccan Herald and Boloji.com