It’s not a belated birthday wish. It’s a continuing one. Breathing in the Proustian air is one of my most favorite stress-busters since the time I have been introduced to it. An air so rich yet so clear, it permeates into my lungs with its slight, caressing bend, filling me with a sense of beauty that no amount of dark inhalation can pollute. Proust was special, even as a child. Which 14 year old would scribble such answers to a random, vanilla questionnaire after all? Even if I squeeze my most refined juices, I won’t be able to drench his intellect an inch.
While I have read only two of his books, I feel I have lived two hundred emotions, each chiseling the other into something more meaningful. Marcel Proust wrote about nostalgia without losing the redeeming verve of a hopeful tomorrow. He wrote about longing with the fluidity of belonging. I couldn’t fathom if it was all possible till I came into his world. And things suddenly turned so beautiful, so enriching. A random cup, an abandoned twig, a lonely road, a discarded pebble, ah! quite everything!
Unending beauty kept dripping from his pen and like a lost, fatigued, exhausted traveler in a desert, I lapped up the fountain at its first bounty. It has kept me nourished till date.
The prospect of reading him again keeps my reading world in spring and the gift of having read him keeps the autumn, singing.
Happy Birthday, Monsieur Proust. You are a blessing! 🙂
SEEMITA DAS 