"Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri

Among the pile of daily chores and lots of unexpected happenings, this and that, I had had for more than six months to start reading this book "Interpreter of Maladies". This is a collection of nine short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri who won many authoritative literature awards including the Pulitzer when it was first published as her début book. As soon as I finished the first story "A Temporary Matter", I moaned, realizing I could have gotten acquainted with this excellent writer six months earlier if I had just opened the pages when I first bought it! Jhumpa Lahiri leapt onto my top ten foreign women writers (to me, "foreign writer" means non-Japanese). 

Jumpa Lahiri is a second generation Indian, the daughter of immigrant parents, raised and educated in the U.S. I was intrigued not only by her astonishingly rich, smooth and beautiful style of writing, but also by her themes. The nine short stories are scenes of the daily lives of Indian people or Indian-Americans. She picked out scenes from their lives made them into beautiful short vignettes. Their lives are filled with cultural challenges , bewilderment, confusion… and of course warmth and contentment. I am also a foreigner living in a foreign country. Like Lahiri, I see things around me here from the point of view of an "in-between". Things are very different in a way, but I see a lot of similarities too. As far as being human beings, we have common basic sentiments. She rarely describes the sentiments or feelings of her characters, focusing instead on their movements, their surroundings and their properties. 

Living in Seattle, I often pass by Indian people at malls or on the street, because many people from India now work in the IT industry. Jhumpa makes me feel much closer to them and to their culture.

Since I was so moved even by the first story, I felt it was a shame to finish this book in one quick read, so I decided to read one story a night before bed. It was pretty luxurious, as if I were selecting one piece at a time from a box of the best quality chocolates.

"My neighbor Totoro" (DVD)

Sometimes you can find yourself inside a book or a movie. The thin, short-haired girl who live in small village and liked to run and run across the countryside, liked to believe that there were magical creatures in a big camphor tree. Satsuki- the older sister in this Japanese animated movie " My neighbor Totoro" (1988, directed by Hayao Miyazaki) , is a kind of reflection of my childhood.

The two young girls and their father moved into a mysterious new house on the edge of a forest.Together they become friends with the King of the forest :Totoro. He is a funny looking creature living in a secret world inside a giant camphor tree. There are also small sized totoros and their friend a magical "Cat-bus". Theses friendly characters help the young girls to see their mother who has been hospitalized for a long time.

The movie takes place in the countryside in the early 1950's. this small village in a rural area could been seen throughout in Japan in those days. I was born in mid 60's. a decade later the story took place, but it was preserved pretty much as it had been generation earlier. so actually I grew up in the setting you seen in this movie : the thick woods, rice fields,, rippling streams, ponds with green mossy water,,,

The messages from the movie - the importance of nature to humans and believing in the power of magic - are often forgotten in our hectic modern lives. It's simple and beautiful story for children of all ages as well as for adults.