Magic of Marquez

Sleeping beauty and the air plane..

This afternoon,for the first time, I read a literary piece written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The chance literary encounter happened when a story of GMM got published in the Malayalam page pulp, quasi-feminist magazine Vanitha. It is titled ‘Sleeping Beauty and the air plane’ which is taken from the short story collection ‘Strange Pilgrims’.

The story was so empowering that I read it standing and transfixed to the ground. It is gladdening to know that my constant hobnobbing with the intricacies of ESL has not spoiled the taste for literature. As I continued to read the biography of GMM, i came across this interesting comment about Gabito from Salman Rushdie. The article was entitled - 'Marquez the Magician' which was written after GMM won the Nobel Prize for Literature. ' He is one of the Nobel judges' most popular choices for years, one of the few true magicians in contemporary literature, an artist with the rare quality of producing work of the highest order that reaches and bewitches a mass audience'

The story triggered in me many personal thoughts. I was even thinking about my Pune bus journey ( seated in my dream vehicle - Airavat and seated next to an iPod-Jazz memory)  and the Jagathy -Nitya Menon starrer episode in the movie - Kerala cafe.

GMM is a person I am internalizing these days. His biography is reveals - word by word the man behind the magical words. The story is a narrative of an ordinary incident that happened in a flight from France to New York. The ordinary is turned into the extra-ordinary by the infusion of some more ordinary events and incidents. The old Dutch lady with her fourteen bags and the snow fall which delayed the flight are some of the usual occurrences in an air-passenger's life. The references to the Japanese bourgeois watching naked nymphs sleeping is a classic example of how GMM’s world view is shaped by numerous literary landscapes from all corners of the world. The Japanese author mentioned here is Yasunari Kawabata - (Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award - Wikipedia).

The sight of the co-passenger brings in GMM, the pangs of love and lust. His breath is laced with passion and he concludes by saying that - ‘there is nothing more beautiful in nature than a beautiful woman’

Charm of a place...

Traveling to different countries makes one experience different cultures. So far I have traveled to five countries. I had the time and space to write about some of these countries. Reading Garcia Marquez's biography this morning made me reflect on the possibility of writing about the country in which I live right now. Gabito was traveling in Europe from Paris to Moscow to Budapest. He was a keen observer and had some authentic reflections to make about the countries he had visited. Sample these words about London - ' When I arrived in London i thought the English talked to themselves in the street. Later I realized they were saying sorry. On Saturdays, when the whole city piles into Piccadilly Circus, it is impossible to move without bumping into someone. Then there is a vast buzzing, a uniform street chorus: 'Sorry'.' When his eyes saw Moscow, he wrote - "I didn't want to know a Soviet Union with its hair done up to receive a visitor. Countries are like women, you need to know then when they've just got up."