Gin a body, meet a body, comin through the rye...
Holden Caulfield is my hero. And Salinger, probably one of the few people I aspire to write like. You may laugh, if you like, but it's true. Since the first time I was caught in the rye, the book has remained one of the strongest influences on the way I think and look at the world. The phonies, that abound round every corner... the desperate need to fit in.... the sheer futility of the scurrying human enterprise..... All came into being the instant I left Holden in that asylum.
It's strange, that a book written before my parents were born, can still be so pertinent and relevant today. In fact, in India, it is more timely now than it was when i first read it. Now that the true consumerist holocaust has well and truly invaded our shores. The manic parents - ever pressurizing their kids to "top" everything - reality shows, entrance exams and coaching classes. Fuckin Bollywood - blindly churning trash that wants to make you puke all over the place. The greedy middle class - chasing to acquire new signs of wealth, that makes the gold rush look like a three legged race. The corrupt society - that still has not learnt to stop at red lights or desist from the horn. The monsters from Salinger's pages have well and truly spilled into my back-yard.
Fortunately, I am well armed - thanks to my relationship with HC and JDS.
I admire Salinger, because he walked the talk and went into total seclusion. He REALLY saw the world for what it is. A bunch of phonies, chasing bits of paper and plastic to buy goods that promise nirvana. Two lines from the book come to mind - "Goddamn money. It ends up making you blue as hell" and "All morons hate it when you call them morons". It's Salinger and Holden who inspired me to give up on television many years ago - and save my senses from the battering ram of "Nazar Suraksha Kavach" and the Fair advertising that says I need to shed my dark skin, and aspire towards the white colour of our British oppressors.
It's to this duo I owe the fact that i walk out of failed relationships, rather than keep up social pretenses and propagate paleolithic institutions like organized religion and marriage. It was these two fellas, who are responsible for teaching me one tenet - be true to your own self. "Do what thou wilt" - a credo like Alistair Crowley's Thelema - minus Crowley's mumbo jumbo. Holden and JD have prepared me for the people i meet everyday, but more importantly, to deal with my own hypocrisies.
I feel a deep sense of personal loss at JDS passing away - and i'm pretty sure the man would not give a rat's ass, that i do. It's as if, your most cherished spirit on Earth (or "warld" as Robert Burns - whose poem inspired the title of the book - would call it) has left for another dimension and the hollowness touches you, physically.
But, before I get into any more Jane Austen kinda crap of melancholy and sadness, the bottomline:
In Sanity and Insanity are just one space bar from each other, as Holden points out. And I'm grateful that the book teaches me to choose insanity and the comfort of a loonybin - rather than to stay in sanity. Where that extra space between the two terms is filled with trophies won at the rat races and no weet body from Jenny, comin through the rye - to meet or kiss...
PS:
Wonder why I'm posting this on FB, though? Guess it's time for another Caulfield lesson in behavioral change:
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
It's strange, that a book written before my parents were born, can still be so pertinent and relevant today. In fact, in India, it is more timely now than it was when i first read it. Now that the true consumerist holocaust has well and truly invaded our shores. The manic parents - ever pressurizing their kids to "top" everything - reality shows, entrance exams and coaching classes. Fuckin Bollywood - blindly churning trash that wants to make you puke all over the place. The greedy middle class - chasing to acquire new signs of wealth, that makes the gold rush look like a three legged race. The corrupt society - that still has not learnt to stop at red lights or desist from the horn. The monsters from Salinger's pages have well and truly spilled into my back-yard.
Fortunately, I am well armed - thanks to my relationship with HC and JDS.
I admire Salinger, because he walked the talk and went into total seclusion. He REALLY saw the world for what it is. A bunch of phonies, chasing bits of paper and plastic to buy goods that promise nirvana. Two lines from the book come to mind - "Goddamn money. It ends up making you blue as hell" and "All morons hate it when you call them morons". It's Salinger and Holden who inspired me to give up on television many years ago - and save my senses from the battering ram of "Nazar Suraksha Kavach" and the Fair advertising that says I need to shed my dark skin, and aspire towards the white colour of our British oppressors.
It's to this duo I owe the fact that i walk out of failed relationships, rather than keep up social pretenses and propagate paleolithic institutions like organized religion and marriage. It was these two fellas, who are responsible for teaching me one tenet - be true to your own self. "Do what thou wilt" - a credo like Alistair Crowley's Thelema - minus Crowley's mumbo jumbo. Holden and JD have prepared me for the people i meet everyday, but more importantly, to deal with my own hypocrisies.
I feel a deep sense of personal loss at JDS passing away - and i'm pretty sure the man would not give a rat's ass, that i do. It's as if, your most cherished spirit on Earth (or "warld" as Robert Burns - whose poem inspired the title of the book - would call it) has left for another dimension and the hollowness touches you, physically.
But, before I get into any more Jane Austen kinda crap of melancholy and sadness, the bottomline:
In Sanity and Insanity are just one space bar from each other, as Holden points out. And I'm grateful that the book teaches me to choose insanity and the comfort of a loonybin - rather than to stay in sanity. Where that extra space between the two terms is filled with trophies won at the rat races and no weet body from Jenny, comin through the rye - to meet or kiss...
PS:
Wonder why I'm posting this on FB, though? Guess it's time for another Caulfield lesson in behavioral change:
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
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