My Escapes

I wish I could write well. I admire those who write well and there are obviously many out there who do. But, there are authors and there are authors par excellence. Remember in one of the previous posts I mentioned feeling nostalgic and hence re-reading books I read earlier (or please scroll down and check if this is your first time here or need help remembering). These are books you read again to relive certain moments, moments that left an impression on you, or moments that bring back old memories. And you are able to do this because someone brilliant knew how to imagine and knew how to write!
The book I am re-reading currently is God of Small Things. As much as I enjoy reading A.Roy's non-fiction works ( I mean, learn from her the power of rhetoric!) I wish she wrote more fiction. To make my point, how can you not feel nostalgic reading this....

" by early June the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water and short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with.The countryside turns an immodest green.Boundries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom, Brick walls turn mossgreeen. Pepper vines snake up electric poles.Wild creepers burst through laterite banks and spill across flooded roads..."
"Happy earthwors frolicked purple in the slush, Green nettles nodded. Trees bent. Further away, in the wind and rain, on the banks of the river, in the sudden thunderdarkness of the day, Estha was walking...." ( GOST- Chapter 1-Paradise Pickles & Preserves, page 3 &11)

You read and be amazed at how beautifully an emotion or thought or an experience was articulated and how it instigates perhaps similar emotions or remind you of an old secret thought or relive a similar experience you may have had. They write without fuss, without complications, without any over-analysis. They may write about themselves or sometimes every character is fictitious and yet you relate to them mainly because they seem normal, regular and simple in some ways.
From the same book, a moment between Estha, Rahel and their mother Ammu...

" ..their small hands laid flat against the bare skin of her midriff. Between her petticoat and her blouse. They loved the fact that the brown of the backs of their hands was the exact brown of their mother's stomach skin...." " Between them they apportioned their mother's seven silver stretch marks. Then Rahel put her mouth on Ammu's stomach and sucked at it, pulling the soft flesh into her mouth and drawing her head back to admire the shining oval of spit and the faint red imprint of her teeth on her mother's skin." (Chapter 11- The God of Small things, page 210-211)

I relived a moment here and the emotions you feel....hmmm. Wish childhood never ended.

Thank God for these brilliant writers or how else could I fly back in time or escape momentarily from my now & present?! Now I must get back to Ayemenem where Estha, Rahel, Ammu, Chako and Baby Kochamma are on their way to Cochin, to the airport, to pick up Margaret Kochamma and Sophi Mol.