MORNING COFFEE 12 - proximity

MORNING COFFEE 12 - proximity

by Susan Weber

I sit with A Fine Balance in my lap, chuckling at Rohinton Mistry’s finely tuned scene of a family gathering. Thanks to the writer I’m here in this Parsi home, partaking of my well-plied plate and reveling in boisterous conversation. Were I your friendly reviewer, I might try to show by means of apt quotes and elegant summary how Mr. Mistry manages to pull us right into his prose. But such analysis would pull us both out of his prose and squander time better spent reading. I heartily suggest you read this book for yourself.

Educated minds try to make sense of things, especially things poised to carry us away in a surge of sensuality. Abstraction, where senses go to die, can’t do justice to the palpable experience of life. If I took you on a safari and told you to study my spreadsheets on rhino kills and elephant endangerment, even as our range rover rumbled across the savanna with wild beasts trumpeting their grandeur, you’d rightly call me daft.

It’s not that making sense of things is pointless. It’s just secondary when life is right here, in so many words, erupting.

Photo by Roland H. CC BY-SA 2.0