Is it a prefect book ?

I had three choices and they all seemed equally inviting. I personally wanted something very light that would not have me straining my mind at all and be a breezing read. "Accidents like love and marriage" by Jaishree Mishra then seemed an ideal choice.I had read her debut book "Ancient Promises" and I knew her latest book would be as light as the first one was dark,brooding and introspective.

I had almost zeroed in on it when I eyed Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake" and a quick mental calculation revealed I had been waiting for that book for five months now and I'd better take it when it was there.Now, I was in a dilemma since it was another of those "coming to terms with one's life" kind of a book,something I was not exactly looking forward to after ploughing through a thick book on best business practices.Then it was time to give a what-the-heck shrug and pick up both and later decide the order of reading. HAd this been the end of dilemma,I would not be writing about it. As it should not have been I saw "Bunker 13" a book that is claimed to be a catch 22 by an Indian author.Now this was getting interesting.It is one of the books that dont stay on the shelf for a whole lot of time in this library and I was tempted in three different directions and definitely I was not going to take all three of them because I have been seriously trying to cut down on my reading.

So what followed was what usually follows in such situations : talks . I started talking to this library guy and we talked about a lot of things well books basically and about a book fair in my office and he wanted to know which ones sold better than the others.Mindless talks,I should say but anyways one thing led to another and he told me about his latest buy and took out this huge greenish book that looked like a paperback Oxford dictionary at first glance.Top cover had a green hideous thing on it and a bold declaration "5 novels in one outrageous volume". Now I had enough of those three choices early on and I thought why not give this monster of a book a shot even though,being a sci-fi, it is not exactly about my domain of interest.Th book was an easy page turner inspite of being bulky and had a charm that all those new books have with dark black words neatly printed on a glistening white background and I thought those were enough reasons to make a seemingly wrong choice.

Last minute precaution.I casually flip through the book,pick out random pages and start reading.Long weird names,not again, of galaxies I guess and I start having second thoughts about taking the book with me and then I come across that line " The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" and I think I will survive.

PS : 20 chapters and I am kicking myself for putting it off for so long and I am kicking myself as hard as some teachers I know have not been kicked as yet unfortunately.