The other Shakespeare bookshops

RIP George Whitman, the eccentric owner of the original Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris’ Left Bank. The shop, now in its second avatar, celebrates sixty years of existence this year. And Whitman, who bought it from the original owner Sylvia Beach died last week, aged 98. I have been dying to write a story on this fabulous bookshop where I spent hours on my Paris trip – am waiting for an editor to bite buy. And I am really looking forward to writing that story. For now, just a pic.

Till then, let me tell you about the two other bookshops I spotted in Europe, named after Shakespeare. There are probably many more but these two for now. One in Prague – of all places, an English bookshop in an Eastern European country! Shakespeare in Prague – but then, I found Lennon there, so why not?

And the other, the really really charming one in Avignon in Provence – a small bookshop with what I can only call a typical French attitude. Look at the cheeky sign on the shop window. That said, the owner, who was closing for lunch, was nice enough to keep it open for ten minutes while I browsed and clicked and drooled. Go figure.

I found this in a small street somewhere in the heart of Avignon as I was wandering aimlessly one fine spring day. I probably would never be able to locate it if I were to try again. The shop also had a tiny cafe (I did try asking for a coffee but clearly, that was going too far!) and books stacked in some method-to-the-madness way that only the owner understood. In all, a lovely discovery.

The bouquinistes of Paris

The bouquinistes – outdoor booksellers – of Paris, by the side of the Seine are one of my absolute favourite things about the city (the other are the parks). There are over 200 of them now in Paris and between them, I read somewhere, offer over 300000 old and new books and magazines. Recognized by their iconic green metal boxes and grumpy expressions (oh, but that’s everyone in Paris, so yeah, just the green metal boxes), these book stalls are a joy, especially when the weather is good and walking by the Seine is one of the most pleasurable activities imaginable on earth. Sure, there is a lot of junk but there is also the rare used book that is a collector’s – or even an avid reader’s – delight. Most of it is in French but I did find some English titles hidden away in between the piles.

These booksellers with their green boxes have been a part of the streetscape near the Seine since the 17th century. Sadly, they have been facing severe competition from the big bookshop chains but they soldier on. Many of them are now reduced to stocking kitschy posters and magnets meant for those annoying tourists (heh!). But under the strict trade regulation by the city council – to preserve this quintessential piece of Paris history – each seller is allowed to have a maximum of four boxes, out of which three are meant only for books. It is reassuring to know these bouquinistes will never suffer the same fate as that of old booksellers of South Mumbai’s fort area.

My own rare find was posters of Asterix – which I could not afford to buy, not by a long way – but the shopkeeper was one of those rare friendly faces who also spoke English and let me photograph them!

Eat pray love: the book and the movie

I don’t know many people who liked the book. Or admit to having liked it. The main criticism against the book has been the tone of the writer – described variously as whiny, negative and complaining. Elizabeth Gilbert, a writer goes through an acrimonious divorce and then finds herself in deep depression, struggling to find her bearings in life. She finds herself bawling on the bathroom floor and having conversations with a god whom she does not fully believe in.

By this point, most readers have rolled their eyes and wondered what the fuss is all about. It is worse since it comes from a person from a privileged life – white woman, in good health (seemingly), financially independent, moderately successful – so what reasons does she have to complain?

I think it takes huge courage (not to mention a huge book advance, sniggers the sceptic in me) to open up one’s deepest and darkest emotions this way in a book – knowing that one is opening up to ridicule and criticism. But Gilbert does it, and with a charm that overshadows everything else.

In the wake of this depression, she decides to travel for a year to three countries – seeking different things from each. In Italy, she learns the language and eats her way out of depression. In India, she seeks spiritual solace in an ashram and then heads to Indonesia to spend time with the traditional medicine man she has met earlier. And there, she finally finds love.

The book is a wonderful narrative on Gilbert finding her way into the light – and a lovely look at how travel can be a healing, learning, enriching experience.

The movie, with Julia Roberts playing Elizabeth Gilbert (I can think of nobody else for the role) was released recently. I thought the movie was ok, ok – Julia Roberts smiles as luminously as ever, there are loving shots of Rome and the paddy fields of Bali (I am not saying anything about the India cliches) – you can’t go wrong there. However, it lacks the resonance that the book echoed with – it felt somewhat vacuous (and for that reason, precisely, I find that many people liked the movie!).

The movie version is somewhat uni-dimensional, lacking the nuances of the book. Here, you like the lady and you like what she is doing with her life – and there is no scope for any judgment. Apart from a couple of scenes of Roberts crying / unhappy, there is nothing of Gilbert’s struggle and angst. The movie falls into neatly into the category of chick-travel, without saying much about anything at all.

I would read the book again and again, but I am not so sure about watching the movie again. What did you think about the book and the movie?

The geography of bliss

Let me say this right away – I liked the book a lot. And reading it, like other pleasant experiences, made me happy. Atleast, it left me with a smile on my face, which lasted long after I finished and put it away. In The Geography of Bliss, self-proclaimed grouch Eric Weiner (my name rhymes with Whiner, he declares, and tries his best to live up to it) travels the globe in exploration of the happiest places on earth. His research (the things we do in the name of research!) takes him to places as varied as Switzerland, Bhutan, Thailand, India (all the usual suspects) and then some – like Moldova, Qatar and Iceland. A few of these places he visits to see what makes them not happy – why they are so low down on the happiness list (otherwise known as the World Database of Happiness, according to happiness researchers in the Netherlands).

There is a surprise right in the beginning – most people in most countries of the world say they are happy, scoring between 5 to 8 on a 10 point scale. Is this a true reflection of happiness levels? Or is ‘are you happy’ just one of those survey questions (in whichever form it is asked) that is impossible to answer in the negative without feeling like a complete loser?

Anyway. What I liked about the book is that it has a good mix of expert opinions, scientific studies (among them, my favourite Ronald Inglehart and his post-materialism theory) and his own impressions of the countries he visits (including his preconceptions and biases – but so what? it just makes for more interesting reading).

Weiner finds various factors that contribute to happiness levels – including a democratic society, the quality of governance, sunshine and weather conditions and surprisingly, culture (the presence or absence of it). However, these bland labels mean nothing really, as we find out – for instance, Iceland is one of the coldest places on earth – and according to Weiner, having no cultural heritage to speak of, is creating its culture right now. Qatar, on the other hand, uses its new-found prosperity to “rent” culture – or even stays happy in the absence of any.

I also like it that Weiner not only makes an attempt to find out what makes the people happy and to what levels, but also defines their happiness in different ways. For instance, the Swiss do not appear to really ‘happy’ – their state is one of “Conjoyment”, an existence that combines contentment (passive) with enjoyment (mildly active), the Bhutanese are simply content (passive again) – whereas the Qataris are into pure hedonistic pleasure (aggressive active). The Thais convert even potential unhappy situations into non-unhappy (I cannot really call it happy) ones with their philosophy of ‘mai pen lai‘ – meaning, “never mind” – or “let go” (which I personally believe is the secret mantra for true happiness).

The other reason the book works for me is that Weiner lets the places and their ‘happiness climate’ affect him – it is a human way of approaching any subject, especially one as subjective as this. For instance, if he tells himself mai pen lai in Thailand, he also comes away from Moldova (one of the unhappiest on the list) feeling blue and depressed himself. Incidentally, Moldova is a piercing insight into how we as humans judge our happiness levels too – in relation to something else (like all emotions, happiness is not absolute); Moldova compares itself not to other poor countries like say, Nigeria or Bangladesh – but to other European countries like Italy and Germany).

My only disappointment was the bit on India – why, oh why, is it not possible to explain India without a spiritual angle? Is this the only form of bliss or happiness that Indians themselves (as opposed to visiting foreigners) seek? In India, Weiner heads to Art of Living Ashram and then finds a temporary home in Bangalore, and apart from the banal generalizations I have read elsewhere about India, I find nothing new here.

Overall though, the book is a great read – part travel story, part personal experience and part social research – and all the parts come together engagingly. Go read it now.

Seeing the world

I’ve found me a sparkling new way of feeling all angsty (as if there wasn’t enough earlier) – for the last week or so, I have spent every day going through travel blogs that I have discovered lately. Many of them are round-the-world travel type blogs – high on the angst scale, since this is something I never see myself doing. A few days, a few weeks at a time, yes (and it is abysmal, how little I have actually seen of the world – don’t even mention it), but months and even years on end, no.

My first brush with these RTW types was in Ladakh earlier this year. Prior to this, I’ve always known in a distant, pleasant kind of way that such people existed – people who have taken it on themselves to see the world, literally. So, there was this Chinese couple from Canada spending a year each in India and China. And there was this solo female traveler from Singapore traveling around Asia for eight months.

And best of all (hi! if you are reading this) were Paul and Claire on their grand world tour. We spent a few days together in Leh, drinking lukewarm coffee on the rooftop of Lala’s Art Gallery Cafe and tucking into huge dinners at the Oriental Guesthouse – and took a day trip to Lamayuru monastery. You cannot listen to them talk and not want to go off to South America right now.

When I was talking about such travelers to a friend back in Bangalore, she and I both agreed that we did not see ourselves ever doing this. Her reason was being away from friends and family for so long (well, what is the internet for, dearie, I asked). Mine was, among other things, that I could never survive travel for months on end, being a vegetarian.

Turns out that is not such a big problem after all (dang! I need to think of new excuses now. Or perhaps, reconsider this notion that I could never do a RTW trip). For, I came across several travelers who have survived being vegetarian on the road and come back to tell their tales. Perhaps it is possible that I join the ranks of the Great Unwashed.

The fabulous A Little Adrift has a whole section of posts devoted to food – with a vegetarian slant – I particularly love the way she describes her new-found love for curd. Go read this blog – in her latest (mis)adventure, she cheats on her backpack and finds that she falls flat – literally – with a suitcase.

Then, there is Akila and Patrick’s blog – As the Road Forks – I first came across their blog through a link that someone had shared on their 99 lessons learned traveling. Check out No.55, heh! And then check out the rest of their blog.

As we travel is another of the blogs I have spent my entire day today – and surprise, surprise, see what I found (among many other interesting posts) – on vegetarian travel. Sofia and Nathan also have some great travel tips, especially on packing and traveling light (and you thought I only thought about food all the time?).

That brings me neatly to the other blog I have discovered recently (why did I not know earlier, I wonder) and spent way too much time on – Backpacking Ninja aka Aparna Shekhar Roy. Aparna also has this great post on packing light – No excess baggage (note to self: repeat these three little words a hundred times every morning – and reread these posts before packing for the next trip).

And on an unrelated subject, an interesting post from Twenty Something Travel – We’re All Travelers Here – on this whole snobbery about being a traveler and not a tourist. Hey, I have been guilty of this myself in the past – but this is so true – My problem with this attitude is that it turns the act of travel, which is awesome and fun, into a pissing contest. Travel is NOT a lifestyle competition. It’s not a battle for who has the lightest backpack, or visits the most obscure places. It’s not about what you should or should not do; it’s about meeting interesting people and doing interesting things and seeing the world, because you want to. A must-read piece.

From the lawyer-on-the-move – my latest blog find – here are 13 reasons why everyone should travel.

And finally, foXnoMad with tons of interesting how-to tips and travel stories.

So have a fun, totally (un)productive week! And let me know your favourite travel blogs so I can have one too…

Insipid tea: Chai, Chai disappoints

Chai Chai by Bishwanath Ghosh is a book I picked up with a lot of expectations – ‘Travels in places where you stop but never get off’, is what the cover proclaims, promising glimpses into the small town India that one hears and reads about all the time but rarely thinks about.

To write about small, anonymous towns is a task that requires a lot of skill – and while it is commendable that the writer had the courage to take on such a topic, he just does not have what it takes to make it work. The descriptions of places he visits and people he comes across are all in broad brush strokes with no nuances to bring them alive to the reader.

For instance, he starts his journey with Mughal Sarai – a major station during his childhood train trips from Kanpur to Calcutta – and through this section, there are repeated references to the notoriety of this place – we read about pickpockets, extortionists and the police-criminal nexus. Mughal Sarai is full of thieves, the author says – but how so more than other towns, even in eastern UP? What about the generic brown badlands of Omkara and the Gorakhpur of Ishqiya? There is nothing to tell me what Mughal Sarai is really about – what makes it different – apart from being a large junction for trains?

Ghosh takes his brief too literally – he gets off at the places that most people see only as stations to stop and stretch their legs – but does nothing more. For instance, he is rapidly bored by Arakkonam and Guntakal and says there is nothing to keep him there beyond a couple of hours. Really, nothing? If the excuse is that he does not understand Tamil or Telugu and so does not manage to get under the skin of these towns, then what is he doing there in the first place?

The tone is monotonous and tiresome after a few pages – all the pieces all have similar narratives of alighting at the railway station at ungodly hours and spending lonely evenings inside seedy bars drinking whiskey while eavesdropping and making severe judgments on the people around. Forget differences between the towns he visits – there is nothing to say how the towns in the North were distinct from those in the deep South. For, really, South India is not so much about chai-chai but idlivadaaapppi (idli – vada – kaapi).

Ghosh shows an utter lack of empathy – and after a point, even curiosity – for the people he meets, their lives, hopes and mistakes. So he descends into banalities about the “shameless man” in Mughal Sarai and the housewife-turned-prostitute in Itarsi who “could have easily used her housewifely good looks to find alternative ways of earning money”.

For a book with such a fascinating premise, Chai Chai sadly disappoints all the way. Thanks to the indifferent writing, small town India – the towns that nobody really knows – remains as obscure in my mind as ever.