Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dum nikle bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikle
Mirza Galib
The year is about to end leaving behind unfulfilled promises and a rather uncomfortable amount of regrets. They say that time is a leveller and doesn’t really care who cries in its wake. Benazir is dead, they say she was great, they say she was corrupt. I guess I’m apathetic. Its long past when being concerned was a force of habit. What I do care is that I’ll turn 21 next month, with not much I can look back upon and feel proud. What am I? An engineering student in a b grade college, sure there is the rather large gre score and vague hopes of a future (like academia ever gave happiness), there is the 140 ‘I.Q.’, something I don’t care about (a long time back being smart counted), there is a smattering of pride in my rather select branches of interest, especially japan, a bunch of oddballs as ‘friends’, and a lot of might have beens..
I’ve survived christmas with a string of murders. Detective novels that is. Now I finished with old Sherlock when I was a kid (he still rules supreme though). So I searched for something old and obscure, and guess what I found. A certain Dr. John Thorndyke. Created by R. A. Freeman. He’s the worlds first fictional forensic scientist (a medico-jurisprudence expert they call him, as opposed to a detective). So instead of the pipe, tweed and glass we have a camera, x ray machine and a microscope. By the way its the first work of fiction which uses x ray for forensic purposes. Now this series might be a bit obscure but at least you have my word (little critical value though I can bestow) that the Thorndyke series is more than excellent. R. A. Freeman has found himself a new avid fan.
Generally detective stories are ‘whodunits’. However this particular author invented a ‘howtocatchem’, i.e. a detective story in which in the beginning you get to know who the murderer is and the story unravels how the detective (or forensic scientist in this case) catches him. This is an excellent style of writing as everything is known and you get to cheer on your hero as he displays his skill and outwits the criminal.
I am in love with Project Gutenberg (now don’t ask what that is). It has given me such rare old works which we don’t hear of everyday. Space opera fiction of 1850’s, legal fictions, detective novels, romances, explorations and works of every kind. A thousand sighs that some masterpieces are forgotten by posterity. Kind of a humbling thought and makes personal regrets seem insignificant.
So 2007 about to end. Life, thoughts, friends, books and an everlasting desire for meaning continues…
Have a great new year.
One of the few generals in history who never lost a battle
