The Impressionist

I have been re-reading Ve Din (tr. Those Days, English translation of novel: Days of Longing) and marveling at how timeless and precious Nirmal Verma's prose seems to be, with its haunting lyricism; atmospheric, ambient, low level fragrance of loneliness that permeates each page; and its lack of a conventional plot structure that augments the novel's fragmented narrative scope.

And so when I stumbled upon this gem of an interview by Karan Thapar, I couldn't but share. In it, the 'poet of loneliness' as Karan Thapar describes him, talks about the meaning of writing, the vacuous traps of happiness, the impossibility of true communication with fellow humans, the macabre inception of his writing career marked by his friend's death; and scenes from his childhood in colonial Shimla where he marveled at the beauty of the white legged British mems and the memory's bizarreness when juxtaposed with the destitution of the rickshaw-wallahs whose job was to transport those fragile beauties.

A great man, a deep thinker and in my opinion, the most beautiful writer I have ever read.