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Stone Flowers trailer

Sleep

That summer when there was a water shortage and I had to get up at 4: am has to be the worst time ever in my life. I am not a morning person. I think I need about 12 hours every night. The bane of my life is I can manage only six, with my present schedule. I once consulted an astrologer, who was highly recommended by a friend. He told me that I could be successful only if I got up at least 5 mins before dawn every day. Then I read a book on Ayurveda, which lists all the body types with a quiz to show you which type you belong to. Even though I was more pitta with a bit of vata, I find that like kapha people, my day goes well only if I wake up at 5: am. Does that mean I have reached the old age stage where kapha predominates? Terrible to contemplate! This is why when I read, Sleep by Tejaswi Niranjana [ I hope I got this right] in a book called the Inner Courtyard, I was gobsmacked by how right it felt. She writes, in the first person, about a woman who couldn’t sleep when young as she had to study, when newly married, due to her husband’s desire, when a young mother, because of her baby’s demands and when older, because she had lost the habit. So she takes an overdose to court the long sleep! What a telling comment on a woman’s life! Any wonder I am fed up?

Hey, I discovered a super bus, at 20 bucks a ride, rather dear but still much cheaper than an auto ride. It’s got padded [unworn] seats, is clean, with piped music AND DOORS since it is, hold your breath, air-conditioned!!!

Oh I’ve fallen....

….in love! With Fannie Flagg’s Aunt Elner- she’s the protagonist in “Can’t wait to get to heaven’ and appears throughout “ Welcome….Baby Girl” and Standing In…This is such a nice homey view of small town America. Elmswood, the prettiest place to live and reminds me of EL Doctorow. Their lives go on with much love and laughter, there is so much safety and security in the sameness, the small joys of blue bird tracks on a cake spelling disaster[ if only that was true of my life] and women cook and bake and get their hair done and clean house and run businesses if they need some money and get ulcers in case they work in the city becoz they can’t stand the erosion of values success brings. What you see is what you get- almost as Aunt Elner demonstrates by dying and going to heaven and coming back to tell the tale. Who would imagine that she had to conceal evidence when her mentally challenged neighbour killed a man in self defence and was prepared to take the rap!Great books of the salt of the earth and I had to go out and get the earlier books. Reminds me of EL Doctoro’s ‘Ragtime’ and Smiley’s “ A 1000 Acres’ or Tyler’s ‘Saint Maybe’. Have you read it yet?

Fannie Flagg Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

I just finished this book.Its amazing.Heaven is just one big party.Or so she says and the future is bright not bleak. In Nov 2007 when APWLD, WLD and WILDAF completed 2o years, we had a workshop in which one session consisted of constructing the future.Everyone came up with Apocalypse- terrorism made worse by technological and medical advance, inhumanity and environmental collapse.When The Lovely Bones [or whatever] came up with a heaven where people could do what they want even party all the time or interfere in human lives in realtime, it made some meaning. However, Flagg has come up with a fantastic character in Aunt Elner and she's so good but so lovable. outside Caspar , I thought such a character was impossible.