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Re-discovering Lin Yutang

It was a perfectly useless afternoon – like the one that Lin Yutang urges you to spend in a ‘perfectly useless’ manner. The chilly winter breeze of Northern India and its accomplice the dense soupy fog had made commutation redundant and I was confined to stay at home.

It was then that I turned to my old bookshelf, rummaged some of the lesser accessed shelves and blew away dust from atop some of the volumes and made a nice pile on the center table. I had read some of these works partly earlier a long time ago, and the others I had kept for leisure reading. It was like meeting a handful of school friends once again after years – not at the planned alumni meeting, but while you are out shopping your week’s supplies – by sheer chance.

I pulled out a mid-sized volume with a yellow cover that shows a man playing flute by the river and a few others listening to him, leisurely resting on the nearby rocks and trees. It was ‘The Importance of Living’ by Lin Yutang – a work I had discovered in a guest house during my travels in the Champavat region. It was a really old one. It said that it was published in 1938, and reprinted in India in 1966. I kept looking at the printed price – 5 rupees!

Lin Yutang may have other works like ‘My Country and My People’ to his credit and those that could be considered his claim to fame, but the one I was holding in my hand is an immortal gem nonetheless. Equipped with a kettle-full of supply of warm tea to go with the reading, I spread leisurely to commune once again with this great thinker and writer – and completely lost the track of time.

Time and again I felt like getting up and dancing around the room. Now and then I was laughing loudly. If one of the principle purposes of a book is to make you feel happy about life – this work stands the test truly, and over and over again. Just take a look at some of the titles of the essays – ‘On having a stomach’, ‘The importance of loafing’, ‘On tea and friendship’, ‘On rocks and trees’, ‘The art of reading’, ‘The problem of happiness’, ‘On having a mind’ – you can just read the titles of the essays and feel good.

I am not going to write any critical review of the book - at least not just yet- nor am I going to quote from the work. It is a breath of fresh and fragrant air, and it must be enjoyed first hand. It is not a bedside book, as one of the reviewers have mentioned on the first page. It is something that you grow old with.

I am glad I have found an old and wise, yet very charming and slightly mischievous, friend in Dr. Lin.


Best
- Shreekant
5th January 2011

Comments

  1. KalpakMay 4, 2012 at 4:13 PM

    Interesting. I check the hardcover imported edition here. INR 2500+ !! Sad...

    ReplyDelete
  2. KalpakMay 9, 2012 at 2:50 PM

    Started reading this. Indeed good.. Thanks. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wandering NomadMay 10, 2012 at 10:01 PM

    @Kayn, nice pseudo name! ... Cybernetics huh? How you doing post Sitel?

    ReplyDelete
  4. KalpakJuly 29, 2012 at 11:58 PM

    Hi Shreekant, just saw your comment. blogspot doesn't email you when you are pinged.. shud learn from Facebook ;-)

    About the pseudoname.. nah. It's only Kay (K as in pay, day, etc.) and N for my last name. :-)

    I am doing fine, very interesting experiences.. So far so good.

    ReplyDelete

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