P for Phillip, Pirrip and Pip. Also, P for Pestilential.

I thought I wouldn't blog again till May started, but you know what, I'm done with moaning over how indecisive I am (insert rude noise). Anyway, I bought this book on the right sometime last year and let it lie around unread until yesterday morning. We were studying Great Expectations as a part of our Victorian Literature course, and I thought it would be a nice accompaniment to it, almost an appetizer, more fool me. I like using more fool me whenever possible. But the point is, this book isn't something you use as a reinterpretation or an accompaniment because it's unfair. I don't know why I didn't read it earlier, but now that I have I want to go back to Dickens all over again.

This is not a review. Ad Libber wrote a very good non-review sometime back that hit the nail on the head in its description of the book as "devastating in its simplicity". I cannot think of anything better to say. In the past year of reading mostly contemporary fiction, this is the most understated one I've read, and very possibly the one that will stay with me the longest.

I'd like to believe I started reading the book because I woke up yesterday morning with angry red abrasions running down my calf. My father said it was probably spider bite. My mother seemed to think it was lizard pee. It smarted like the dickens - pardon the pun - and so I put on some Boroline. It is the one ointment I have complete faith in. It is infallible. I am very used to smearing it on everything, from scratches to chapped lips to school shoes (it used to clean them beautifully). I stick my tongue out at Vaseline, Boroline gets my vote anyday as the vanquisher of spider-bite. I refuse to accept that I've been defaced by a lizard.

Additionally, my mother came running into my room soon after, flapping her hands and looking very agitated. "A bird's eating the chow! A bird's eating the chow!" she exclaimed.
Mystified, I tried to calm her down, only to be told that a mynah had hopped in through the kitchen window and was caught stealing noodles off a plate. First insects, then birds, you get the idea, not to mention my mother.

Speaking of which, the mater has now found a new way of getting my goat. In keeping with Sunday's outing, I was trying to figure out what the easiest way to Mani Square was from our place. Here is the conversation that followed (Please note that I begin most questions with "Achha"):

"Achha, where is Beleghata?"

"Near the Beleghata post office." This was said in the most dismissive manner. I'm surprised a 'Duh' didn't follow.

"Accha. Then where is Bakultala?"

"Near the Bakultala post office."

"Which way is ITC then?"

"Near..."

"Aha! Ahahaha! I caught you! There can't be an ITC post office!"

"Give it some time. Lassi?"

This isn't fair. It's not like I ask too many questions. Do I look like the kind of person who'd bombard the world with query after query? But I have to admit that I'm rather impressed with this new tactic of fending me off. Post offices, of all things. Much smarter than the usual parental dismissal, that ever-ready "Go look it up". Post Offices. And then she offers me lassi. Sheesh. Sometimes I get the feeling that nothing sort of getting onto a tropical island will placate me, lassi and spiders be damned. Even if there is a civil war on, it would be worth it just to live in a place called Bougainville. Do go read the book? I'll even lend it to you provided you complete the seven tasks I set before the entrustment. Yes, there will be fire.