Comfort reading

Trust me, it’s the best way of keeping calm and carrying on in the midst of a lockdown

Whenever I am going through a period of stress – and it will surprise precisely no one that this lockdown period has been a unique stressor – I always seek succor in my comfort reads. 

You know what I mean, right? Comfort reads are those books that transport me to better worlds, minutely imagined parallel universes, where all problems have resolutions, and every loose end can be niftily tied at the end of the narrative. These are books I have re-read so often that I know some of the dialogue by heart and yet the punchlines leave me chuckling each time. And these are the books that I have been turning to, to keep my spirits up, during this enforced stay-at-home period.

I am happy to report that they have done the trick quite nicely. I usually spend about an hour or so with them in the late afternoon after I have done my writing for the day and need to decompress. And I turn to them last thing at night, when I read myself to sleep. And they soothe and calm me much more than actual meditation ever does.

So, on the off chance that you may benefit from this remedy too, here’s my list of go-to books and authors. I hope they bring you the same comfort they do to me.

• I have always been a fan of Margaret Atwood, but it had been a long time since I read her seminal work, The Handmaid’s Tale. But after bingeing on the three seasons of the TV show on Amazon Prime, I had this irresistible urge to go back and re-read the book the series was based on. And I am ever so glad that I did. The sparse prose, the easy cadences, and the effortless grace of Atwood’s writing left me in awe yet again. To read this book is to see the author at the height of her powers. And marvel once more at the imagination from which the dystopian world of Gilead sprung, fully-formed and full of horror.

• The other TV series that sent me scurrying back to the book it was based on was Little Fires Everywhere on Hotstar. I had read Celeste Ng’s bestseller when it was first published but given that my memory is like a sieve these days, going back to it was like reading a new book. So, I could appreciate afresh the universe that Ng had created, with two intertwined families at the centre of the narrative, which spooled in a direction that was entirely unexpected. The show has deviated at many seminal points from the book, so even if you have seen the series, the book will still provide you with many surprises.

• I had mentioned in my last column that I intended to explore the entire oeuvre of Elizabeth George, to chart the progress of Inspector Lynley and Barbara Havers’ careers as they went about solving murders across the decades. I have since begun reading A Great Deliverance, the very first Inspector Lynley mystery, which came out way back in 1988, and I am astonished to see just how much the characters have evolved since then. In this book, for instance, Lynley is portrayed as a dashing ladies man, who has slept with most of the women in his department, and Lady Helen Clyde is described as his ‘longest-running mistress’. As someone who rejoiced at their wedding and (spoiler alert coming up!) and cried tears at Helen’s passing, this throwback was startling to say the least.

• As regular readers will know, whenever I need cheering up, my go-to author is Georgette Heyer. Her Regency romances have been a staple of my comfort reading list ever since my teenage years – and that hasn’t changed even though I am now well into my middle age. This time round, I first sought refuge in Venetia, in which the heroine of the title falls prey to the charms of a well-practiced rake, only to win his heart – and his hand – in the end. And then, I dived right into The Grand Sophy, in which the redoubtable heroine re-arranges the lives of all those around her, much to their consternation and my delight. 

• Now that I am cooking more than ever, given that there is no other way to put food on the table, I keep dipping into food books to find inspiration (not recipe books, I am afraid, because I like to make things up as I go along, rather than follow in well-trodden paths). Some of the books that have provided food for thought in this period are Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat (she has a show by the same name on Netflix, which you could check out), Pasta Pane Vino by Matt Goulding, and closer home, The Flavour of Spice by my old friend Marryam H. Reshii. I like to think that the information I have gleaned from these worthy tomes has made me a better cook – the botched experiments, needless to say, are entirely of my own making.

If you too want to read yourself out of a lockdown-induced depression, then I can’t recommend comfort reading enough. Start with some of the books I have recommended, or find your own. But do read for a couple of hours every day – and no peeking at your phone while you do it. Believe me, it will make a world of difference to your day.

The book's the thing...

Unless, of course, you are at a Literary Festival, where it is often, quite incidental 

If winter comes, can Literary Festivals be far behind? Of course not. One follows the other as surely as summer follows spring. And much like the heat of the summer, these Lit Fests - to give them the fond diminutive they go by in chatterati circles -- tend to take over the world. 

They are held in locations as far apart as Chennai and Chandigarh. Major cities like Delhi, Calcutta and Mumbai score more than one. But it is scenic locations like Jaipur that really rock, with literary stars flying in from across the world to participate in panel discussions, do some book readings, drink some bad wine, and with luck, flog a few copies.

I have done my fair share of schmoozing (what other, more elevated, souls call networking) at such events. And sometimes it has been entirely worth the effort. Listening to Ben Okri recite his poetry in the central courtyard of that splendid edifice, the National Museum in Calcutta, was a somewhat surreal experience. And seeing authors like Ian McEwan and Margaret Atwood, whose writing you have worshipped from afar, in the flesh is always a pleasure. 

And yet, despite my passion for books and a serious reading habit that often leads me to ignore real life for the imaginative world of fiction, I end up declining many more invitations to Lit Fests than I accept. And there's a good reason for that. With a few honourable exceptions, Literary Festivals have turned into tamashas, where books tend to get lost in a whirl of socialising and an epidemic of air-kissing. 

In a sense, Lit Fests are to this decade what fashion shows were to the last one. People turn up to be seen and heard, nobody really cares about the main event, but nonetheless, they all scramble to be seated in the first row.

I guess that's fair enough. Everyone finds entertainment where they can, and if Lit Fests are now the places to be seen and photographed at, well then the Beautiful People are bound to throng to them.

You know the kind I mean, don't you? The women are manicured perfection, every hair in place, wafting around in chiffon and pearls or rigged from top to toe in Fab India. The men are doing their best to blend in with the 'literary types' in their kurtas and waistcoats, pairing their designer blazers with well-worn jeans. And all of them are secretly hoping that one of the many photographers snapping away will get them on to Page Three so that their friends can see what well-read, literate types they are.

But these are not the only specimens you find at Lit Fests. There are plenty others who are much in evidence, as they flock from one session to another. Here, in no particular order, are just some types you can be sure to come across:

* The Poseur: You can't miss The Poseur even if you try. He's the one who rushes to occupy the front row at every session. She's the one who grabs the mike the moment the session is declared open, to make a speech masquerading as a question. You can recognize them by the librarian-style spectacles they wear, regardless of whether they need them or not. 

* The Intellectual: He's the quiet one at the back, taking copious notes in a tatty notebook. She's the one quoting from books that nobody else has heard of, let alone read, in the belief that conclusively proves her intellectual superiority. Steer clear of them once the drinks start flowing, or (fair warning!) they will bore you to death with their Existential musings and their Copernican theories.

* The Wannabe Author: This one is ubiquitous. No matter where you go, you will bump into him. If you are a publisher, he will hack you mercilessly for a book deal. If you are an author, she will unabashedly ask for writing tips, and pointers on how to get published. And if you are a journalist, you will be asked for an email id so that they can send over the manuscript for you to have a look at (just give me honest feedback, yaar!).

* The Selfie-Seeker: He doesn't have the slightest interest in books; it is, in fact, doubtful if he has even read one. She couldn't tell William Dalrymple apart from William Boyd if her life depended on it. But both can tell who the most famous person is in every gathering, and they inexorably head for that hapless soul to press-gang him or her into a selfie (duck face entirely optional).

* The Free-Loader: This one is a familiar figure. We've all seen them at fashion shows, book launches or, indeed, any other event that has an open bar. So, it is no surprise that they are out in force on the Lit Fest circle, where the booze is always plentiful and free (thank you, kind sponsors!) and the canapés are substantial enough to stand in for dinner if you manage to scoff enough of them in the course of the evening. Thankfully, they can't talk with their mouth full, so you will, at least, be spared all that cant about Kant.