It caught up, finally. A calm and lazy city was forced to wake up and Bangalore had a blast – this time it isn’t fun we are talking about. In what seemed to be a declaration of sorts, the adherents of terror told us what they could do, leaving a lot of people relieved that they didn’t actually do it.

To a city that is quintessentially laid back, fighting “terror” and “terrorist” is a very alien concept. It is no defence, of course, but these are terms that we as Bangaloreans know exist. But that is all. So when the city was attacked, it did more than just jolt us. For the first time, it made everyone think why nobody had found the need to “get real.”

As is the case with most places that are “secure,” – a term I fear using now – animosity, deaths, bombs, riots and the like have never been Bangalore’s highlight. Sure there have been few incidents that have involved the aforementioned events, but none that were strong enough to instil fear or bog down the spirit of the city. Not that the latest one has shattered the faith of people here, but it has definitely got them thinking. Visiting malls or certain parts of the town, roaming around the city at odd hours, shopping excursions to Commercial Street… These don’t seem like the best things to do right now.

And that’s what has changed. For once we are being forced to think about where we want to go and why - rather why not. I’m not entirely sure that is a bad thing. Being relaxed and peaceful is one thing and being lax is something else altogether. May be it really is time to step up the vigil and acknowledge that we have an issue to address. That would probably be a start. Something else that we could do is being more aware of our surroundings and seeing things instead of just looking.

Sometimes, it probably takes an explosion to break the spell.

After a brief hiatus, when I resumed reading as regularly as I used to I started with an author I knew would not disappoint me. And he didn’t. “Of love and other demons” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was um…delightful. (I’m trying to emulate the ‘dazzling’, ‘sublime’, ‘spell binding’ and the like that one gets to see on the covers of novels) The book was most of these, but in moderation.

As always, Marquez does a fabulous job of blending the tangible and the intangible. I’m yet to come across an author (in my limited range of reading) who is riveting despite giving away the end to a story right at the beginning. His stories do not urge you to read on so you know how it ends; it’s more about the journey itself – so you can simultaneously go through what the characters experience as and when they do.

A 12 year-old girl, who has been allowed to grow wild, is bitten by a rabid dog. Her father is unaware of this and it is months before he becomes aware. The sudden realization inspires a love in him for his daughter that he has never felt all his life. In “saving” his daughter, he finds a purpose for his hitherto wasted existence. As the last resort, and after a muddled dream, the agnostic father seeks refuge in the church. The girl is confined in a convent as exorcism is her only hope and a devout exorcist is sent to redeem her. All elements of disaster right there on a platter. The celibate falls in love with the girl and their fates are sealed forever.

The only thing, though, is Marquez doesn’t tell you the story like this. This is what someone reviewing the book can do – show you what the picture looks like. Marquez tells you how to look at it. Even if I wanted to, I would not be able to describe the quirks of his characters. The girl’s hair being pledged till the day of her wedding, the hair growing even after her death, the mother’s cuckoo-ness of rejecting clothes, the father’s love for a madwoman, the madwoman, in reality, being the real mistress of the fated house…… and it goes on. His eccentricity is his strength and, eerily, that is what makes Marquez’s books so believable.

While the book is not on par with his truly superior works like Chronicle of a death foretold and One hundred years of solitude, it definitely is worth a read. And in my case, I perhaps appreciate this one a little more because the last novel of his that I read – Love in the time of cholera – was a bit of a let down after all the hype.

Pick up this book if you are in a mood to let your imagination wild without breaking ties with reality – it has all that you expect from Marquez’s books, but nothing more.

I think I need to start talking to spaces again. And the best place to start, I reckon, is this. What is it that they say about a void being a sponge? So here’s some junk coming up.

More often than not, I have been tempted to say that the existential crisis is extremely over-rated. Why exactly I have not been able to say it is due to the inability to free myself from the monstrous eddies of this crisis. In the brief moments that I manage to stop pondering about my life and the associated topics, I wonder about the existence of others. And when I say others, I refer to a particular lot. It is the bunch that makes you ask why homosapiens are called a superior race and where they left that lumpy grey matter that, presumably, all of us are born with.

I am increasingly finding myself in their august company - almost to a point of being paralysed with fear. They are there at your college, your workplace, in the party that you go to (even occasionally), in the malls, in the cinema halls – you name it. And what do you say to them? Contrary to what most people who know me are inclined to believe, I have tried my best to interact with them. Of course, no doubt that I have failed miserably.

And it truly boggles the mind. How, just how do these people that one tends to chance upon as an off-shoot of society get around everyday? They are most definitively toxic and I would imagine it would be impossible to afford them in today’s world where we are fighting, in more ways than one, for a safer haven.

Now, before I get those snarls, I would like to know or, in the very least, hear about someone who has never come across a specimen of the species I just described. The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to dunk the hitherto stationary object of my thoughts (me) in favour of this multitude I see everyday.

If it isn’t apparent already, then I’d like to spell out the point of this particular piece and this particular space -- Unburdening.

Soak it all up.