Today I spent about 20-25 mins searching for a review I posted on some site after I had finished reading 1984. And reason I took all the trouble was because I wanted to notice the difference between experiencing what you read and being a detached spectator to what you read. There are books which you become part of when you read them and 1984 has been one such book for me ( among a long list) and then there are ones which may be equally great but you still just feel distant from them. And that has got nothing to do with the author or the quality of book etc. I think it's very personal, just like making friends, if two people are given same set of people to make friends with, depending upon their personalities, they would connect with few and will not connect with few others. Books are same - a book's beauty lies in the eyes that read them and mind that experience them.

I actually finished reading a novel today - "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It may just have created a record for a novel to have stayed longest on my desk before being completed. I picked a copy sometime in middle of the June while in Chennai. And this novel has stayed with me since then. More than 6 months have passed since the first page was turned in that room at IFMR till today when last page was read in my living room. Karamazovs sat next to me as I saw World Cup Soccer in June in Chennai & Mumbai, they travelled with me to Singapore, they put up with me at service apartment, then shifted base to my present place, they did get left behind as I went back for Diwali but were pretty much with me rest of the time. They saw me get up late in the morning and rush for the office, they woke up to find my returning back at crazy hours, they kept mum as I preferred to spend an evening watching some movie, come to think of it those 1000 pages bound in a blue cover are there in so many of those scenes of my past 6 months but always as a silent spectator at the corner..

We didn't meet too often, which explains why it took me 6 months to finish the novel. There were stretch of weeks when I hardly picked the book. And then sometimes on a lazy Sunday noon I will read few pages and then the book would again go back to my desk waiting for next Sunday. But having said that, I must admit we were aware of each other all this while. It's like one's new neighbours that have just moved in, you invite them for a dinner at the beginning and an acquaintance is made. But after that, while you notice when they come or go, what they do over weekends , who visits them and who don't but unless you stuck it really well in first few meetings you just meet those neighbours of yours only once in a while. So while 6 months may be a long time, but both me and Karamazovs were just neighbours who noticed each other but were never friends.

And that's why I looked for that review today, coz most of the times - the books I read are my friends rather than neighbours. I tend to live them but today as I finished the novel I felt like one of those Dostoevsky's spectators in the court room waiting for something to happen, who just wanted to see Mitya let go, yes I used to applaud a clever collection of words put forth by Fetyukovich just as others did, I used to nod with satisfaction whenever an interesting deposition was made by one of the witnesses but that's because by then I had started reading the novel as a story rather than a work of philosophy. But this happens when you don't connect with the main plank on which an Author is trying to build the whole structure - the theological treatise being explored by Dostoevsky in the novel somehow didn't connect with me. Theology comes deep down my list of things that I look in a work of literature, so while there were times when Mitya's raw passion, Ivan's internal struggle, Grushenka & Katya's jealousy and Alyousha's sincerity interested me, there were times when bond between Ilyusha and his father touched me but overall I just couldn't get myself to become a party to Author's expedition to unravel the existence of God.

And so after I completed the novel and sat by the window think about it, I was reminded of that line from Alyousha's final speech at the stone "...there is nothing nobler, stronger , healthier and more helpful in life than a good remembrance.." and so I decided to turn back and look for a remembrance, of times when I felt being a part of what I read

-sid

PS: Given that I did spend around half an hour looking for my review for 1984, let me save it for future use right here, who knows when I may just need to look for it again and you don't always have 30 mins to spare. isn't it ?

I finished reading 1984 last night & am thinking of it since then. I went thru all the comments above but none of them was able to come near what I felt after reading it.There has been a lot of words written above to find out present day telescreens, oceania & Big Brother. But when I finished the novel last nite it was none of these things which occupied my mind. Only thing that occupied my mind was those haunting last lines.The irony contained in them."But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. " The struggle was finished , yes the struggle was finished,the struggle of a man to stand up for his beliefs 'coz he believed in their righteousness. He had won the victory over himself. It is this use of word 'won' & 'victory' to represent loss & surrender, irony contained in them,the utter hopelessness coined in those cheerful words which haunted me all through the day. The most dreadful aspect of oceania was not scores of rocket bomb falling or the continuous war or the poverty or the mutability of past, What scared me most was impossibility of calling, what Orwell called, 2+ 2 = 4. The final surrender of Winston in believing 2 +2 =5 is what made me dread the Oceania & then dawned upon me the realization that in various walks of life almost all of us chose to believe in 2 +2 = 5 rather than confronting our private "Room 101". So for me 1984 represents the inner fears & private guilt of betraying our beloveds, our ideals , our principles & our beliefs in the face of adversity.