I am holding 'Go set a watchman' in hand for the past few hours. Am I reading it? No. Honestly I don't want to read it because it will end soon if I started reading. And I don't want it to end. You may find it strange but ask any passionate reader and they will tell you that's their biggest fear. That the book will end. To kill a mockingbird was a wonder. And I know that this too will be.
Harper Lee might have been a one-book wonder but she was a wonder alright. Not like other 'intellectual' one-book-earlier-and-now-two-book wonders.
More about the book if I can bring myself to read it.
'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares?
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