Epiphany in an omnibus

I am sitting in the bus on my way back home. Radio City 91 FM is belting out Hindi & Kannada numbers at full blast. This cacophony coupled with the rhythmic jolting of the bus (courtesy the numerous crests & troughs which punctuate the arterial roads in Bangalore) leaves me in a hypnagogic state. That's when an ad break comes up on the radio. An announcement is made as part of the What's up Bangalore? section - "Rotary Club of Bangalore Indiranagar is conducting a general quiz on September 19. This quiz is open only to college students. Blah blah...". I am suddenly wide awake. I remember being placed third in this quiz 5 years ago (Mithun, Hemant and Chinmay would probably remember this). Arun Hiregange & Ochintya Sharma had been the quizmasters then. This time it would be Arul Mani.

"Ah! Excellent! Another college quiz. Must inform the gang soon." My hand goes automatically to my pocket to retrieve my mobile. That is when reality plays spoilsport. In one epiphanous moment, reality hammers in its blunt point into my psyche. For the first time, I truly understand that the stamp of finality has been indelibly embossed on those golden pages of my life. But more than that, I accept, albeit resignedly, the fact that those pages have been actually turned over irrevocably. An ineffable sense of loss pervades my soul as I meander through the remainder of the day.

A Bookworm's Diet

Here's a chronological listing of the books I have read since The Last Burden.

• Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (Atrocious. Period.)
• The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber (Brilliant)
• Nerds 2.0.1 by Stephen Segaller (as the book's tagline says, A Brief History of the Internet)
  
• Just for Fun by Linus Torvalds & David Diamond
  (Autobiographical)
• Free Software, Free Society by Richard M Stallman (Profound)
  
• Rebel Code by Glyn Moody (Linux and the Open Source revolution)
  
• The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen, Linus Torvalds (prologue) and Manuel Castells (epilogue)
  
• The Invisible Man by H G Wells (Chilling and depressing)

On the shelf, waiting to be consumed, are the following:-

• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Godel, Escher, Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Peter Pan by J M Barrie
• The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
• The Lord Of The Rings by J R R Tolkien
  
• Hindu Mythology by W J Wilkins