CHANGING INTERESTS

I like the word proclivity. I don’t hear it often enough but it explains so many things all at once. According to the Merriam-Webster thesaurus, it is synonymous with affection, affinity, aptitude, bent, bias, disposition, leaning, partiality, penchant, inclination, and tendency.

I used to be able to read anytime, anywhere. Not any more. When I bring a book with me to bed, I only manage to finish a few pages before my fingers reach out for the bedside lamp and I float off to dreamland. This routine is repeated the next night, the only difference being I would have forgotten who is who in the book, how they are related and why they are all gathered in the country manor house in the first place. Re-reading to find the connections is arduous.

I thought that with retirement I would be able to read War and Peace, cover to cover, several times over. How strange that getting past the daily newspaper or the occasional magazine has become a great achievement.

I am surrounded by a reading culture. The library is nearby and the helpful librarian will bring in the books that I request if they are not on the shelves. The charity shops and flea markets are overflowing with pre-loved books.

As a child I would re-read my favourite books. So recently, I purposed myself to set aside every Sunday to read a novel before I miss all the good stuff that is trapped between the pages. It is the chance to reclaim something pleasurable.

Firstly I re-visited Roald Dahl’s books. 2016 marks 100 years since the birth of the story teller. Running though his books are the themes of loneliness, abuse, friendship and kindness. The child in me identifies with the unlikely hero or heroine. My favourite is Matilda.

But what next?

I find that my interest in fiction has waned. I’m no longer captivated by plots of mystery or love. I tear through best sellers and they have come up short. In fact the first ten pages can tell you how the book will end and how the characters are all related. There is a lack of originality in the themes.  There is a lack of depth as sense that these writers are trying to squeeze in too many modern day concerns between the covers. These modern day popular writers are a poor comparison to yesteryear’s Charles Dickens or the Bronte sisters.

So I’m more attracted to non-fiction particularly memoirs, culture and history.

My latest favourite is Elie Wiesel’s Night. All 116 pages of it.

The same can be said of television programmes. Gone are the days when I would wait for serial episodes and the like. Now I mainly record documentaries or travel pieces and watch them at my leisure, fast-forwarding all the advertisements in between. As for movies, nothing beats the big screen whether it is Disney’s Polynesian princess Moana carving out her adventure trail in 3 D or Tom Hanks following a trail of clues connected to Dante.

Even the taste for food differs. Sweets and chocolates used to entice me as a teen but now I prefer anything home-cooked and the more authentic the recipe the better. I re-discovered an old recipe that I had written down for savoury pumpkin cake where ingredients were measured in katis and tahils! Needless to say, I quickly harvested the pumpkins from my garden. I never understood why my mother liked the miserable looking bittergourd either but now I can snack through crispy bittergourd fries (pavakkai varuval) with relish!

My taste for clothes too changes with the seasons. Wouldn’t it be nice to have four wardrobes, one for each season?

With time, our proclivities and prerogatives change and I’m ok with that.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW STRAITS TIMES, MALAYSIA
13 NOVEMBER 2016

http://digital.nstp.com.my/nst/books/nstnews/2016/20161113nstnews/index.html#/23/

THE PRESENCE OF PRESENTS

There’s this humourous quote that I saw ‘Forget about the Past, you can’t change it. Forget about the Future, you can’t predict it. Forget about the Present, you didn’t get one.’

Well, there was a time when I loved holding the gift wrapped box, shaking it to guess its contents and then ripping the wrapping paper apart. Everything boils down  to the mystery and excitement of receiving a gift.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love receiving presents.

But.

It is grammatically wrong to let a conjunction stand by itself. Yet, ‘but’ is so appropriate here because it creates a pregnant pause for dramatic effect. It conveys a whole lot of reasons why the spirit towards receiving presents could be different altogether.

The culprit must be the cupboard that stands in the room.

Yes, a cupboard full of presents that we have no use for or can’t find a corner in the house to be placed. Most of us have this shelf, drawer or trunk where we keep the presents that we have received, to be recycled. Recycling seems a harsh word, so we say to ourselves we’ll give the presents away to someone else or to charity.

Birthday gifts - When the children were young, we used to organise birthday parties for them. Somehow half of the presents would be gorgeous teddy bears. Now, how many gorgeous teddy bears can a child bring to bed with him?

Wedding gifts - Among the many presents we had were 10 dinner sets and 6 electric irons. We only needed one dinner set and one iron at any one time, if you catch my drift. They have this service nowadays called the ‘Wedding and Gift Registry’ at some department stores to help your friends and family buy the perfect gift for you but I don’t think that will work for all the guests that you invite.

Christmas gifts - Suddenly the drawers are over taken by reindeer socks, snowmen candles, Christmas ornaments, toiletries, jewellery, cook books and more cook books. Now I won’t even go there.

Just the other day, I saw a sweet elderly lady buying a garish piece of jewellery which cost her an arm and a leg. The cashier asked if she was buying it for herself or for someone else. She said she was giving it to a friend. I hope her friend likes garish jewellery.

I find that cosmetics, perfume, clothes and toiletries are very personal choices. I use a certain range of skincare products, perfume and toiletries. It will be rather difficult to convince me to use any other. We tend to buy for others what we would like to buy for ourselves. But you can’t get  more wrong than that. For example, I love the smell of lavender but my beautician hates it, so if I get her a lavender scented gift it would most likely end up being recycled.

When an acquaintance asked me what she should get for her teenage grandson’s birthday, I said cash is best. He can buy something he likes with the money. But the doting granny recoiled in horror and said cash is too impersonal. The last I heard was she was going to knit him a jumper. I think I’ve heard enough jokes about young people receiving jumpers from senior relatives each year and what they do with them.

After so many years of giving and receiving presents, I’ve narrowed my choices down to cash, dining vouchers, departmental vouchers, holiday vouchers and the occasional handmade quilt. I find all these very practical and altogether delightful for myself and for any age group. Sensible things like disposables for a new born or a few bags of coal for a wintry night are all very welcome.

Meanwhile, I have to clear that cupboard of presents and hopefully it won’t be restocked any time soon.

This article was originally published in the New Straits Times, Malaysia on 26 June 2016

http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/06/154711/presence-presents