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Word tagged and tongue-tied

There are words that I like to roll my tongue over, like serendipity and mordant and pusillanimous in English or telakucho and ajgubi and buri dihing and srotoshwini and aschorjyo in Bangla. Their meanings are submerged within their sounds and the physical act of speaking them.
There are words that hold a great deal of meaning to me because they refer to or remind me of places, people or things that mean a lot to me. College Street, Pujor Chhuti, Boi Mela, Class kata, Apu, Didibhai, Ma.
And words that I like just because. Lush fragrance, Orchid, remembrance, Impressionism, sensual, macabre, eerie, and awry. What about ab-o-dana, wafaa, dhuan? Even erschatz, colloquial and nonpareil. Mayhap, fustian and ochre? Pari nah, nyaka, shala and chal phot?
Finally I suppose, The End and Om Shanti.

P.S. Gati and Arnab are the ones that I tag - refer to the original Kaashyapeya post for more of an idea.

At least I have my blog. Heh.

So I read about this guy who was in Biz school with me. I suddenly feel underwhelmed by anything I have ever done.
I watched four movies over the weekend including Crash, which was an honest try but some of the twists were too predictable. Oddly I left wondering what Sandra Bullock had had done to her nose.
In other news I have been word-tagged by Swati. I will get back to that soon. The moment I have gotten back to my usual color, which is not green.

Oh my!

Hmm...

Tagged, I have been.

I am a little late on this one - Ani and Swati were the taggers - but here goes.

Total Number of Books I Own: Hmm I am too lazy to count but there are books numbering somewhere in the six to seven hundred range (about 13 shelves of about 50 books each) that are here with me. These are mostly in English but there are fifty odd Bangla books too. I have a couple of hundred more books back home that were accumulated during my college days so that they include loads of used paperbacks which Kiki (and my Ma) would call dusty, musty and fusty. I am leaving out of the equation the books I grew up with at home, most especially the 'forbidden shelf' that I devoured in secret like a diabetic with mishtis.

Last Book I Bought: Among the bunch of books I bought on an unexpected trip home are Bimal Jalan's Future of India: Politics, Economics and Governance, Stephen Cohen's India: Emerging Power, B.K.S Iyengar's Light on Yoga and two volumes of Swami Lokeshwarananda's Bengali translations of the Upanishads. Now I feel about sixty years old.

Last Book I Read: In the last fortnight I have flown a total of 40 hours of long haul flights. In these I read Donna Leon's Death at La Fenice: a nice but mild thriller, Laurie King's The Game: an adventure story only pretending to be a mystery and two of G.K Chesterton's shorter novels - The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill. While they were all entertaining, I thought The Man Who Was Thursday was a fantastic ride in spite of the allegories and allusions coming through its seams.

Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me: Uh oh. This is a toughy. Most people don't know which books to leave out. I have the opposite problem! Anyway here's my list:
1. Circus of Adventure by Enid Blyton - We had an old hardback edition with beautiful illustrations. One of the earliest books I remember reading. I was convinced those days that picnics and high teas with ginger beer and potted meat were a must for a well balanced childhood.
2. Kim by Rudyard Kipling - The ultimate adventure, my father read it when he was in school and loved it and bought it for me from the Book Fair when I was probably thirteen. I just adore this book.
3. An Introduction to Positive Economics by Richard Lipsey - Hey I am an economist, what can I say. This book was one of the first ones to give me that Eureka moment of "It all makes sense now".
4. Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter - I understood less than half of it when my brother brought it home from college one summer. There was more than enough for me to chew on though and gave me a lasting interest in the twists and paradoxes of human thinking and its limits.
5. A Student's Companion by Wilfred Best - Well not the book itself, but the brown paper cover for it - it was the perfect size to cover trashy novels to read at school and at home while pretending to do homework!

There are lots of other books that belong in a list of books I love or books that I want others to think I have been influenced by but the above is probably the most honest.

Tag Five People And Ask Them To Do This On Their Blogs: I don't think anybody has been left untagged of my pretty small blogging circle. So let me try Priya, Soma and Moongphalli. They have all been tagged already but what can I say? Short of creating multiple personalities for myself (ahem), thats the best I can do. Blog more everyone!