With such a long time no see or
write, I’m finally coming back with a kind of a book review. So here it goes, I
hope it’s not too dreadful.
Every time I have Chopin’s
Nocturnes playing, Kafka on the Shore plays in my head in loops. I know I said “it
plays in my head” like it is a movie I saw some time back and am just thinking
of the scenes. But it is a book, a wonderful book, which at first had me hating
it but the line saying that silence is actually something you can hear sold the
book to me and I kept reading it. The story builds up around you and is
something you can gross your roommate out with saying things like, “a mad man
in leather boots and big hats kills cats and preserves their heads and eats
their heart while it’s still beating” or “hey, it rained leeches today like it
rained fishes a few days back”, if you know what I mean (an inside joke for the weekly fish market and it's "aromas"). But this book has had a
profound effect on me in ways that only happened with books of older times. It
kept me awake, it kept me reading it till I fell asleep and then wondered why was the light open at 4 in the morning. It gave me nightmares and weird
dreams which I couldn’t explain at all. And whenever Chopin plays every time I am
listening to music, it just comes up from the deep crevices of my mind in the
forefront while working on something else and there I am just sitting and
thinking about this weird cat talking man with a bizarre world around him and
this un timely or un common bond he develops with a random truck driver who
stays with him through everything in his dying moments, no matter how irrational
he had to be, he stuck with him and never left his side even though he knew
nothing about him. And on the other hand there is Kafka and his delusions which
somehow come true. All the things he thought about the cursed life and the
thing his father said of defiling his own mother and sister.
This book compels you to try and
keep up with so many narratives going on. For a person who is as lazy as I am,
if I could stick through it and finish it somehow and appreciate its art then
anyone could read it and be enthralled by the world that Murakami creates with
all the stories interwoven together in a way where it keeps the reader going
even with the feeling that, “this is too much with all the stories so abruptly
coming up and ending, leaving us with a mixed feeling within our heads.”
Another personal achievement for
me while in the process of reading this book was the deadline I had for
finishing this book, which was supposed to be Christmas Day, but with all the
house hunting, thanks to the hell I live in, I couldn’t make it and then
finally thought that I had to finish this year with this book and not take it
unfinished into 2017. So somehow I pulled through all the exhaustion of house
hunting, moving in bits and pieces and everything in between, I finished it on the 30th
somehow and felt as if I had nothing left to do. That is something I don’t
always feel when I read something, but this book left me feeling with no purpose. So a
big thanks to my friends who thought of finally, gifting me a book. I was
literally shaking with the surprise visit anyway and then seeing the book had
me reaching for support and not fall down (seriously). I also have to thank Shubham
for introducing me to Murakami and Kafka on the Shore. For all of you, who aren’t
yet exposed to the world of Kafka on the shore, go get it ASAP and float in a virtually bright and colorful world that Murakami paints with his stories.
And a very big thanks to Ashish for opening up the world of Chopin’s Nocturnes
to me. Happy reading!
