Literary Landscapes

I loved this post on this blog. And it got me thinking - if I could visit any of the places from the imagined landscapes of the books I've read where would I go. It's a charming thought really. And for me, that's what books are all about at the end of the day. About people and places that are so delicately imagined that by the time you're finished with the book they already seem familiar.

So here's my list of top five literary destinations in no particular order:

1) Macondo from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

2) Dehradun and Mussourie from Ruskin Bond's stories

3) Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series

4) Malgudi from R. K. Narayan's Malgudi Days

5) Istanbul from Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red

There are of course many many more like The Faraway Tree from Enid Blyton's stories, Miss Havisham's ruined mansion from Great Expectations, the fantastic cityscapes described by Marco Polo in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Mr. Biswas's house from V.S. Naipaul's A House For Mr. Biswas and Jack's Garden from his Enigma of Arrival, 1968 Prague from The Unbearable Lightness of Being to name a few. Even some not so pleasant lit-scapes like Orwell's dystopia from 1984 - Oceania, the Oklahoma dust bowl from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Limerick in Ireland in the 1930's and 40's from Angela's Ashes.

I'm tempted to list out fictional characters I'd like to meet (from literature and cinema), films I'd like to live in and and works of art I'd like to be! This could take a while.....

(....more later on literary landscapes.)

List-en to this...

I adore making lists. It gives me an absurd sense of purpose and the (often false) feeling that there is order where there appears to be chaos. But my lists are not always functional. Quite the contrary actually. Riffling through old notebooks, journals and the innumerable pieces of loose paper I hoard (I'll get into that subject some other time) I found list after list of things, names, activities, places, people, words and thoughts. (I was reminded of the film Pillow Book (1996) by director Peter Greenaway. The film had a fascination for lists - lists of a more 'bohemian' nature.)

I was going through the Top Ten section at sensesofcinema.com. Random lists submitted by readers of their top ten favourite films. Thats what got me thinking about lists in the first place. I have never succeeded in making my own "top ten" list of films. It's horribly tempting what with film magazines, e-zines and TV shows throwing lists at you from every direction. Best Directors, Best Films, All Time Greats, Top Ten Film Noir, Best Musicals and so on and so forth. Sight and Sound had asked renowned film directors for their own lists. One of the directors said "I won't put Citizen Kane on that list just because every list in the world tells me to!' Fair enough. And I don't blame said director for the outburst. Lists are sensitive things. You have to be careful what you put on it. When I tried making such a list I felt so burdened that I had to abandon the venture. How do you decide the criteria for such a list? And why only ten? Why not five or fifteen? Since then I have stuck to making lists that come with far less responsibility and where the criteria are not as important as the making of the list itself! It's been good going so far.

A list is ordinarily prioritised. Some things are more important while others are not so. Some things demand immediate attention while others may be content to wait a while. But then there are the lists that are simply there because someone felt like making a list. An idle mind is the perfect source of an odd little list. And the possibilities are endless!

My own lists include:
My favourite words with each letter of the alphabet
The books I simply must read before I die and a list of all the books I have ever read (it's a work in progress)
The films that I think have changed the way I look at cinema
'Indian' English words that I think are indispensable
Names for my dog when I do get one
Hindustani Classical Ragas that give me goosebumps and/or make me cry
Possible subjects for a research paper tracing the material history of an object (e.g. paper, cotton, salt, indigo etc.)
Overrated film classics (next in line is underrated film classics)
Credit lists for my various film projects
Thank you lists for various things
Things I learnt from Mumbai
Words to look up in the dictionary (obsequious, eponymous words like that)
Things to do when hopelessly bored
A list of my most vivid childhood memories

And now......A list of lists! How fitting!