My friend Bhaswati has tagged me with this list. Answering the questions has been a strange journey into myself and shown me things I didn’t consciously know about me. Quite a fascinating experience. Anyway, the answers are given below. I think I have to pass it onto someone else to complete, but I’m not sure.
1. One book that changed your life?
The Bible – cliche but true. I first read it when I was 13, along with the Book of Mormon, an English translation of the Koran and a number of other works. I was searching for spirituality and had no desire to receive secondhand opinions, so I read the entire thing to make a judgement for myself. Its wisdom moved me profoundly and I found myself, as Solomon did, asking for wisdom rather than riches. I like to think I got what I asked for, because I certainly don’t have riches!
Coming from a mixed background with a Bangladeshi Muslim father and an English Roman Catholic mother you can imagine the debates about religion in that household. I found that neither my father nor my mother really knew their own holy book and their ideas and opinions had been given to them by a leader of their respective religions. And a lot of what they believed was not supported by their own holy book.
I have since met many ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’ who have never once read the full text of the Bible or Koran, or studied them. Why bother when someone else can do the work for you and give you ready canned beliefs?
Having read what I’ve just written I can see that such lack of faith still disturbs me greatly. And it is a lack of true faith not to study your own holy book.
2. One book you have read more than once?
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. I first read it when I was 11 and it was a little hard going, but very rewarding. When I come back to it from time to time it reminds me that Dickens work always tastes like a Christmas dinner to me. For anyone who doesn’t know what that’s like in the UK, it’s usually (at least in my household) a very heavy and sumptuous meal with many courses, flavours and always excess. I particularly fell in love with the rhyme of his opening lines, ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ etc.
3. One book you would want on a desert island?
Have to be the Bible again. It’s got the lost: drama, passion, love, hate, revenge, redemption, instruction in living, inspiration, poetry, health information. I think it would be a good resource.
I’ve just remembered we had that same question at school when I was thirteen and I gave the same answer. The other kids branded me a religious fanatic because of it. One girl even asked me if I though God was a darkie (North of England abusive term for anyone whose skin was dark). When I asked her if she thought God was a white man from England she was astonished that I didn’t think it too!
4. One book that made you cry?
One rupee and a bundle of rice. I can’t remember who wrote it and I’ve only ever read it once, when I was 11 or 12, I think. But it was powerful and moving and winsome. I must find a copy, actually!
5. One book that made you laugh?
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith. A brilliant first novel and it depressed me totally because I know I could never reach that pinnacle of achievement.
6. One book you wish had been written?
An instruction manual for the brain: we use so little of it, it’s tempting to wonder what we could achieve if we knew how to use the thing properly. Even the most illustrious fall so far short of their true potential. What’s holding us back, I wonder?
7. One book you wish had never been written?
I can’t think of any – even the rubbish. What an awful idea, that any book should never have been written. Eurgh, makes me shudder just to think of it.
8. One book you are currently reading?
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.
I am rather forlorn about this world’s current state and I’ve recently read 1984 and now Brave New World. It’s hard to read them without seeing a foreshadowing of a world even worse than the one we’re in and one towards which we seem to be headed at ever faster speeds. Human nature is capable of so much that is good, so why do we produce so much abject evil? We seem unable to master ourselves and yet we are blessed (whether you think Divinely, or evolutionarily) with extraordinary abilities.
9. One book you have been meaning to read?
Portrait of the artist as a young man.
Such a big book and daunting. I may return to it one day, but for now the sheer bulk of it intimidates me.
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