Yercaud - in the lap of nothingness

Tall trees. Signature sign of the hills. Like standing alone together, dignified, aloof but not forgetting that there is beauty in togetherness. And that typical rustling hushed unhurried sound of breeze flowing through leaves. And those winding trails, stone-crusted, roughly-hewn, made of the trampling of a myriad human and animal feet. 

And the sudden turn of a corner and the sound of water. It's such a sound. Gurgling. Joyous. Fulfilled. Needing but unheedful. It's what stops you in your tracks to search for that glimpse. Is it a waterfall, a stream or just water from a village finding its way? Whatever it turns out to be - its a discovery. The sight never stays, the sound does. 

And the locals, up early, carrying wood up steep paths, turning into an early bazaar for a cup of tea from a roadside cart with steam gushing out in little clouds. Women with wizened faces and toothy smiles, with tiny children holding onto their hands for dear life. Do children grow slower and gentler in these parts? 

And I, a stranger, lingering, for resuscitation from a hurried harried life, seeking to find something lost in my life, amongst trees and flowers and meandering paths and tiny streams. So much to ask from so little. 

A strange insistent bird calls out with a rich fruity whistle. It's sound fills up the forest and the paths around. One bird. One sound. Enough for a universe to pay attention to. And I know, in all the noise I surround myself with, all I require to live is to have a gentle sonorous voice. I require that to live. The world may find it too. 

I walk back refreshed. 

Caravan to Vaccares

This supple, muscular, hilarious and heart-stopping thriller is my favorite Alistair Maclean.  Considering  that Maclean's oeuvre consists of the likes of Where Eagles Dare,  Guns of Navarone,  HMS Ulysses et al,  it's saying a lot. And what a riot I had re-reading it after, I think, twenty years. And I was again in thrall of the writer's  consummate mastery over language and plot.

I grew up with Alistair Maclean's books and those of Desmond Bagley, Arthur Hailey, Irving Wallace, Harold Robbins - till I discovered the Hardy's, Fitzgerald's, Cronin's, Proust's,  Mausappant's and the like. But Alistair Maclean was always a bridge for me - the guilty pleasure, which still enabled pencil markings under consummate writing.

And Caravan to Vacarres is ultra-special - the way Kill Bill will be, however great a film Tarantino might have or might  make or Mad Max: Fury Road would be, however incredible all road thrillers might be. 

First and foremost the atmospherics of the book. Set in the starkly beautiful and menacing Provence area of France, it evokes the romance and fascination and foreboding related to gypsies. The plot follows them as they travel deep into the region - and all kinds of utterly fascinating encounters take place. Violence is embedded in the story but it is the characterisation of the protagonists and the conversations, which take it to another level.  The mordant humor of Neil Bowman, the hero, who calls himself an idle layabout, as he goes about poking his nose into the affairs of the gypsies with some pretty dire consequences, or the ducal snobbery of the regal and rotund Le Grand Duc,  whose wealth is only matched by his appetite, will have you chuckling away the night as you simply have to finish this utterly enthralling book in one hungry bite!

The set pieces - the chase into the craggy heights of the Alpilles; the fight inside a caravan as it ends being clinically wrecked into smithereens; the absolutely heart-thudding encounter in the callajon, the bull ring, with an Andalusian monster from Spain, whose horns have been sharpened to make it a killing machine, where our hero has to become a razateur to survive. Oh the riches abound.

The heroes are tough, the girls are pretty and pretty tough themselves, you learn about gypsies and things you shouldn't do with them, and an intimate guide into the  must-visit and never-visit areas in Provencal France. What else can a simple pleasure-seeking,  lotus-eating reader ever want?

Alistair Maclean 's books always resonate with one dialogue in this book, when Duc is about to walk into a situation he has nothing to do with, in front of his perplexed girl-friend -

"But you can't just barge in -"
"Nonsense. I am the Duc de Croytor.  Besides, I never barge. I always make an entrance."

You could say that for all the books of the redoubtable Alistair Maclean.