The next book acquisitions of mine shall be Borges’s “Fictions” and “Non Fictions”. Borges’s mythology (for every writer in the process of writing creates his own myths and mythology) has been called labyrinthine. And the few short stories that I have read of him have indeed this maze like structure to them. I suppose this comes from his voracious reading and retelling of all that he had read.

A few nights ago I came upon Borges in an anthology of Latin American short stories, rather I went looking for him. The story was called “The Other Death” and dealt with two versions of a death of what was presumably the same person. In the first thread the chap dies a natural death after he had become a recluse. The reason behind his reclusive ness is revealed to be because of cowardice shown during a skirmish and the shame that resulted. In the second thread however the chap is killed honorably on the battle field as he behaved in a valorous fashion.

So Borges sets the death of this person as the labyrinth that all past essentially devolves into and how memory fluctuates. He writes “to modify the past is not to modify a single fact; it is to annul the consequences of that fact, which tend to be infinite.” It seems to be that Borges was hinting at the fact that when we become the storytellers, which all human conversations to a certain extent are, we tend to lie, we tend to twist the facts, even if a little bit.

In an interview of Borges, I read “when I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.” These books for me would be R.K.Narayan’s Malgudi, which still could be conjured up in the 80’s (pre multiple TV channel, pre “liberalized”, pre infotainment) India and then, because then USSR wanted third world minds to slant towards it and thus heavily discounted, the great Russians; Chekhov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Yes we did read Browning, Keats and Wordsworth who occupied the last few middling pages of our school English textbooks. However my memory of those poems is quite dim.

Also in a conversation with Ai, she commented that I should lift up this intellectual portcullis (“teach, learn or get the f**k out!”) of mine and let all the “riff raff” in. This when I said I need to experience life more widely to be able to fashion literature. I think my doubts in a way mirror what Cotezee wrote in his memoir “Youth”, wondering about how he could produce literature if he is stuck behind a desk at IBM London, fiddling with programming and now sucking on the marrow of life.

Perhaps there is some truth in what Ai said. However the problem, as I have observed in the past, is that even if I lift the portcullis, my mental castle either (here I am guessing) is too forbidding or is quite un-Disney like for their liking! For example I tried to be friends with a doctor at V, I allowed her entry. However she almost resented the amount of stuff I knew and in the fact that I like to stick my nose into every smelly hole! And I grew tired of listening to her monologues on dietary habits, her calorie intake, her exercise schedule, her “Buddhism” (yes sir Buddhism a la chewing gum) etc.

This means that I am cranky and need to pack up for the day as I brace for the turkey massacre!