Why do people have to be this lonely?

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"

--Sputnik Sweetheart

Sputnik Sweetheart

""Don't you just love it?" she said. "Every day you stand on top of a mountain, make a 360-degree sweep, checking to see if there're any fires. And that's it. You're done for the day. The rest of the time you can read, write, whatever you want. At night scruffy bears hang around your cabin. That's the life! Compared with that, studying literature in college is like chomping down on the bitter end of a cucumber."
.......
"Sumire was a hopeless romantic, set in her ways - a bit innocent, to put a nice spin on it. Start her talking, and she'd go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn't get along with - most people in the world, in other words - she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she rode the train. She'd get so engrossed in her thoughts at times that she'd forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian movie - like a stick with eyes."

Well, that's just an introduction to one of the most brilliant books I just read-Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

PS: I can fill pages just writing about this book. That's how much I loved it and thats how much I could relate to it. However, one thing that has been my biggest and most personal takeaway from this book is the "ability" to write for oneself and thats exactly what I am gonna do now.. :)

Haruki Murakami and Kafka

'Kafka on the Shore' is the first Murakami's book that I am reading. Honestly, I was introduced to Murakami through a very dear friend who had suggested that I should read 'Sputnik Sweetheart' because (as per my friend) I bear some sort of resemblance to one of the characters in the book. When I couldn't find that book at a bookstore, I impulsively picked up Kafka.

Kafka has been one of the most intriguing books I have ever read. I am yet to finish the last 100 pages but I am actually clinging on to it because I don't want to put it back in the bookshelf. Kafka has been like a dream, a mesmerizing dream, a kind of dream that you don't want to get over.

After Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I think Murakami has made the most wonderful use of magic realism. He treads into the deepest recesses of mind and dreams and takes you, the reader, along with him. There are instances of subtle play between reality, dreams and the subconscious.

Each and every impossible thing that he talks about seems more real than the actual reality. His narration is flawless and especially unique in this particular book. The way the two seemingly parallel stories are running only to intersect at some of the best parts in the book.

Will post some awesome stuff from the book once I finish it. For now, I leave you with this.

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory."