Flavours of Friday

It is a big toss-up for me to decide if I should give you Neruda first or Pasternak. Or Fitzgerald. Three giants. Pasternak emerged victorious as there is not only a film of his famous novel but the theme music from the movie remains, for me, very related to love. 

Listen

Lara's theme from Dr Zhivago:

The movie was pretty famous back then:

For the absolute novice or newbie to Pablo Neruda's wonderous verse I offer the easy route:

His poetry in How I Met Your Mother

You will find many many renderings of Neruda poems on Youtube and elsewhere for good poetry gets recited. Over and over again. There is a Neruda for every love. He wrote voluminously. And I look forwards to finding and watching this film about his life:

Browse

Next year, a book of Neruda's poems should be a gift to the love of your life. Find below one that is available on Amazon India but you can find a good number of his poems for free on the Net too. 

As for Pasternak, it's what a dear friend would call a double whammy - there's the book and there's the film. 

An excellent present to any book lover

Read

Lara: The Untold Love Story that Inspired Doctor Zhivago. The film and book were popular in those days and Omar Sharif melted many a heart in the role. 

And that is why I make bold to recommend the film - there is a good video on The Guardian that will tell you more about why you should watch it. David Lean was a director of no mean repute and my good friend, sitting next to me, here, says it had very striking scenes which remain memorable.  

The book, according to him, is rather tedious. I do hope that does not discourage you, though, as I would consider it a piece of some historical importance.  

After that throwing such heavy stuff at you, I now gift you Sonnet Xiii:The Light That Rises From Your Feet To Your Hair Poem by Pablo Neruda on Writer Rites. The epitome of the exquisite!

We proceed thence to The Offshore Pirate, said to be one of the most romantic of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories. For me, Fitzgerald conjures up an era. An era of larger-than-life figures such as Hemingway, Stein and others... Isabella Duncan... I recommend him if you are serious about literature in English.

Free on Kindle

Saturday highlights five Indians writing rom-coms, a short story about a walled city and another Neruda poem. Somehow I can't think of anyone who speaks of love so well and such a voice then belongs to all of us, wherever we are or find ourselves.