My name is Nobody

First things first – dream, thyme and asparagus. Now, I can actually start writing what I want rather than follow the diktats of a tyrant (I could have said diktats of a dictator for the sake of alliteration and all that, but haven’t done so to display the self control in the writing).

There is this old Bud Spencer and Terenzel (hope I got the spelling right) called ‘My name is Nobody’. It’s about gun-slinging cowboys and the Wild west. However, unlike most other Westerns, it’s a lovely comedy like most of Bud’s movies. I won’t talk much about it, though – this post isn’t on the evolving dynamics of Western talkies nor is it about the effects of Bud on making America wiser (Sorry, couldn’t help that one).

So what am I going to talk about then, that would interest you, my gentle reader, and, more importantly, interest me? Well, for one, I’m going to speak about myself – Nobody. Am I going to ask the fundamental question surrounding the makings of me or question the ambiguity and sophistry surrounding things like I think, therefore I am? Not quite. I’d much rather stick to saying Mojito ergo sum, like my old friend, T and have my friends bear me with a smile.

So, coming to the heart of the matter, I primarily wanted to talk about the things I find interesting. Strangely enough, this has become people and books. The latter isn’t strange, in itself, but coupled with the former, I have begun to observe a whole new side of me. One that was never exposed to the sun, but left to die of lead rot owing to our society’s penchant for tempering our mettle in barrels of engineering rather than in economics, psychology or the arts. (Remember relatives of yours looking with abject scorn at anyone who said he had done his B.A.). However, H has just spoken of people rather recently, so I’m going to talk about books. Again.

I was reading a rather queer book yesterday called the Curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. It was lent to me to read just the other day by H and knowing how rarely he reads books, I was sure that it wouldn’t disappoint. Well, it didn’t and then it did. I won’t reveal any of the book for you save that it first spiraled me out on a rather interesting journey of thought, through other books that I have read (I do this often) and then brought me back, rather dishearteningly to a mundane Earth. My fly by night was stemmed (at the root, as it were) by a mere boy writing in blank verse. However, let me digress a bit to mention that I also thought of the curious, and then the words queer, quaint and so on and how the words themselves have become curious, or quaint or queer. Look at the word attic, for example, do you think loft or do you think greek?

I was talking about my fly by night. The author, very early in the book, begins talking about Sherlock Holmes and the way he solved the story of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Not surprising in itself – authors often mention other books they love, it is the way they bring a bit of themselves into their books – what was strange was that my dad, on hearing the name of the book, immediately said “There is this Holmes quote I recently read – There was something curious about the incident of the dog. It didn’t bark. Yes, that was curious” (I promise I haven’t spoiled the book for you). Let me throw in another example before I explain what I’m trying to get at – mid way into the book, I began to read a letter to the protagonist. Apart from my feelings of disgust and voyeurism on reading someone else’s letter, I began to recall a similar style of writing – that of the Fobishier (or is it Frobishier) in Cloud Atlas and how much of oneself is revealed in one’s writings to others – that letters hold memories as much as the mind itself does. I wonder if what they say in the movie AI is true, that space and time are able to hold the very essence of the world around us to the extent that we are able to synthesise it ourselves by reading old memory. God destroyed dinosaurs. God created man. Man destroyed God. Man created dinosaurs. Dinosaurs ate man. Woman takes over…

And, once more, we get to the heart of the matter. The matter of how words, nay, not just words – but words, actions, scenes enacted, smells can evoke memories of all we have seen, heard, touched, tasted and, yes, loved, (for, have I not loved before, my gentle reader?) It is passing strange that people try to forget their past, while yet others cling onto it for dear life, as if that is the only straw keeping them attached to an unreal world. However, it is rather different for me; I cling onto the books I have read to escape from an all too harsh reality. Even now, memories are woken, creating a chain reaction from book to book, scene to scene, person to person and memory to memory. I met a girl as fair as summer… May I give a few words of advice in a rather tiring, cryptic manner? Happiness is a hammock. More on this in another post.

And so let me leave you here, brave soul, to go forth and forget your own past, to forget all the words you have read, to start afresh, to treat every moment as if it were your first, or last, to be eternally surprised by the world because it is create anew each moment and this one was not the same as the previous; or mayhap I should entreat you not to forget – to remember and forgive old quarrels, to renew old friendships because they shaped your lives, to miss old flames and give them a ring because they loved and cared for you and more importantly, you cared for them. Go…

And so it is, that a nobody might do something – to realize that his whole life is a beautiful thread to be lived to create a grand pattern. Because Bud Spencer did not mind people saying – “He was beaten by nobody.”

And for H, that is why I’m s_____

T