I am writing this because I'm in a very foul mood for some unknown reason.

And so in this mood I went to a bookshop to calm my nerves. Amidst those racks full of ancient wisdom, and contemporary knowledge, history, philosophy and what not, I usually feel at home, thinking all there is to know about the world in contained in some flimsy and some thick books here and there. Not quite unlike the character in the infinite library of Borges, deriving comfort from the fact that truth exists around him, howsoever unreachable.

Yet when I glanced through these familiar racks, I was almost offended by the appearance of these books.The shabby covers, the bad prints, several books comically balancing on the edge of the racks, fighting with all their might the force of gravity and I would have loved to throw the lot of them myself and stamp them underneath my shoes.

Why is it that people unburden themselves so gracelessly in public and embarrass themselves and the rest of us in the process? Why I asked myself, who was there in the supposed storehouse of knowledge, why really do people really write when the only novel aspect of their work is a certain combination of English words never seen before. Or to give them some credit, I think they sit with a jar full of star shaped red platics pieces for characters, blue triangles for settings and yellow circles for plots and they shake it vigorously and then draw 4-5 pieces out and surprised by the uniqueness of the combination, start out to set in a platitude prose the outcome of their monkey business.

One could still give them some credit if the events were experienced or witnessed in real life. At least there is some aspect of sentimentality linked to the work how so ever inferior it might be as a piece of art. And taking advantage of this concession we find people diligently transporting their entire not so distant past into our present in the form of fiction. Taking a peek into one of these 'novels' one feels sorry for the author who wrote these pages, for his life indeed, how dull, contained and all together lacking in imagination.

As if to answer an anticipated question, I will now try to specify the standards I've used here, so the criticism is justified. A good fiction in my opinion in first of all fiction. The only way a real life can match the vigour and excitement of fiction is when its compressed, when numerous years can make two lines, 4 lines or 10 pages; when the authors grasps the most important aspect of the life, the note and the base and then varies and fluctuates the rythm - not quite unlike the art of a music composer, changing the beats at different intervals yet never letting go of the 'unknown' element that is constant throughout the work, may be an emotion, or some vague childhood memory, or a dream. It is easier to accomplish this with imaginary characters, whose lives are completely in author's hand. Otherwise, either the 'real' work is not 'real' or it is too banal.

And good fiction appeals to imagination and memory. It speaks to you not about your heartbreaks and heartaches but about a certain shade of yet sunless dawn, a certain way of laughing, a certain tone of voice. It catches you unawares, like the coquettish ladies of our many classics, whispering into your ears, recreating a certain evening spent looking out of a train window, the foliage and the setting, the iron railings and the drops of water clinging on to them after a light shower. It slowly plants a seed in your head, takes you in its grip, sets the mood, and so when the commonplace life unfolds in front of reader's eyes, he/she relishes not the sequence or setting of events but the lucidity behind them, a certain life likeness about the character, because he partakes some of it from the creator - not the cv-like details, but what the creator liked, loved, hated, rejoiced, relished, remembered and lived.

Every stray twig of grass
was a jest, a playful tribute to life
- Variation of shade was a possibility

Blue skies dissolved -
metamorphosed into clouds
clouds to birds
and birds to nest, nests to trees -
to hunters too, and so the river contracted
to make place for land
and out bubbled on the surface
roughs stones, wild shrubs
springing to life
and then formed the figure of the man
half from the clouds half from the land
he plucks his bow out of empty blue air
and an arrow appears to come from nowhere

All this I create
with just variations of shades