My Name Is Rushed

As one of the luckier ones during the Day It Poured in Mumbai, one found oneself spending the night in office. With the Net connection having failed and most colleagues curled up in some form of slumber, one found oneself rummaging in the drawer in search of something to read -- and coming up with a copy of Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red.

One had started this book months earlier, leaving it aside after a chapter or two. So, that night, one ploughed through half of it, finishing it last evening.

Though thought-provoking, sumptuous and detailed, by the time one gor the the last few chapters, one found oneself hurrying through it, even skipping a paragraph or two in order to lay it aside.

Now, this wasn't because one didn't like the book, or that it was especially thick, or because one had to return it. Rather, it was because of those voices that began to whisper in one's head: "You're spending too much time on this!" "What about all those other books lying there?" "When are you going to take up Nicole Krauss' The History of Love? Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days?"

And, behind all those voices was the rumble of yet other books that, shamefully, one has not yet read: Remembrance of Things Past...War And Peace...The Brothers Karamazov...

Had one but world enough and time, one would linger lovingly over every well-crafted sentence. Perhaps the way out is to sternly cut off other activities that suck up the minutes.

But -- oh, no! -- that would mean missing Desperate Housewives this week. Decisions, decisions.