Reading

Though I have all those romantic notions about books and print, I am not averse to reading electronic media. Kite-runner was the first novel I read as an e-book and from time to time I have returned to this format. The shot here is rather dull I admit, but it captures how my early mornings are sometimes.

And here's yet another extract from Pirsig:

"We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn?t see it so much.

The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed."

I remember, in Munnar, I was taking an early morning walk through the woods when my parents called to wish me on our anniversary. And when they got to know where I was and the fact that I had come alone, the first thing they asked rather apprehensively was, "Is it very lonely there?" Though I was alone and all I heard were the sounds of insects and birds, loneliness was the farthest thought from my mind. I wanted to reply "Loneliness is state of mind. It has very little to do with your surroundings." But then I refrained, continuing to assure them that I was indeed safe.