KRG – The Kochi Reading Group

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, Sep 25, 2026

2026-10-04T19:49:02.430+05:30

First edition cover (1980), illustration by Ed Lindlof published by Louisiana State University Press

Several of the readers found this novel indigestible. It is not that they have not met with comedic or eccentric characters in other novels, but an Ignatius Reilly who walks around illustrating so many psychosomatic disorders is a unique novelistic find. Dyslexia, which one of the readers claimed was his major shortcoming, was probably not among his scourges, because it was not with words or numbers that he had problems. The verdict of Gemini, the AI program, is that “Ignatius J. Reilly is not formally diagnosed with a single, real-world medical affliction. Instead, he is a dramatic composite of various physical, psychological, and behavioural traits that rarely – if ever – occur together in a single individual in the manner Toole presents.”

Ignatius Reilly’s stubborn persistence in his quirky behaviour and his conviction that “I’m not the problem, the world is the problem,” leads to a series of mishaps with other people, many of whom have heir own behavioural problems. The unrelenting march to doom in the novel is supposedly lightened by ‘humour’ but it is not of the kind where you laugh with the character in a jokey situation, but at the pitiable character. Who is this blunderbuss of an idiot who adopts the pose of a philosopher in the mould of the 6th-century philosopher Boethius who had the concept of a Wheel of Fortune? And eats a vendor of hot-dogs out of his entire cart’s supply?

It was all too much. Even the cockatoo undressing an exotic dancer in a saloon in Bourbon Street, New Orleans, did not lend much fun.

The Cockatoo Act

Out of a sense of duty several readers did plough through the academic essays of Ignatius Reilly and survive his buffoonish behaviour on display in the novel throughout. As one reader put it, the novel has no plot, but offers a series of disjointed incidents in the life of a ridiculous man.

But it all ends well:

Myrna Minkoff driving off with Ignatius Reilly just as the ambulance arrives to take him to the asylum

Author Bio

John Kennedy Toole

Priya gave a brief on the author John Kennedy Toole. The name Kennedy is from his mother's family – they were French. And Toole is the name from the father's family, who were of Irish origin, and and had come to New Orleans. His nickname was Ken. He is best known for this novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published posthumously in 1980, more than a decade after his tragic suicide at the age of 31.

He was born in 1937 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Toole demonstrated literary talent from a young age. His first novel was written at the age of 16, called The Neon Bible. In that novel the end is very different; it's a violent end with no relation to the story.

Toole's suicide at the age of 31 happened because the book was rejected by Simon and Schuster. He was unhappy about it, and had a big argument with his mother. He left home, he drove in his car, and went to a particular place and ended his life. Exactly a year before he did that, he had taken a friend there and shown him the place, saying, “this is where I will die, I'll be buried here.”

If you read about him as a young boy and a young man, there is no hint that this person will end his own life. Because he was full of life and a brilliant student.

He received his higher education from Tulane University and Columbia University, eventually teaching English while pursuing a PhD during his military service. During his military service, he began writing A Confederacy of Dunces, which tells the story of the eccentric, lazy Ignatius Riley.

Toole was born to a middle class family in New Orleans. From a young age, his mother Thelma taught him an appreciation of culture. She was thoroughly involved in his affairs for most of his life. And at times, they had a difficult relationship.

Many people attribute his suicide to his mother being very controlling and bossy. He had a good relationship with his father, but not with his mother. Yet it was finally his mother who brought him all this fame by hawking his novel around to publishers until it was placed.

As a child, Toole had a great affection for his black nursemaid, Willa Matthews, who cared for him when his parents were both working. An excellent student, Toole curtailed his stage work when he entered high school. He concentrated on his academic work. Toole wrote for the school newspaper, Silver and Blue, worked on the yearbook, The Tarpon, and won several essay contests. Toole spoke at gatherings of civic organisations.

His father had given him an old Oldsmobile car when he was 13, and he used it to deliver newspapers at that age, despite the legal age of driving being 18. In high school, he was like any other young boy, dating his girl friends. Nowhere do you get a hint that this boy was under any kind of depression.

His mother was absolutely convinced that he was without flaw, and in him she entertained great hopes. It was an extreme form of maternalism, where all your pride and all your hopes are focused in one person. He had to grow up with that burden. She was very ostentatious, shrill and loud-voiced, a bossy braggart of a woman.

He had an academic scholarship during his undergraduate years at Tulane University in New Orleans. He did very well. Then he was drafted into the army. He had a short stint of military service, during which he was inducted to teach English to the Spanish recruits. After receiving a promotion, he got a private office and began writing A Confederacy of Dunces there.

That was 1968. And then he went around with the manuscript to publishers. It was rejected.

It was rejected also by Robert Gottlieb, the legendary American literary editor and publisher who started his career at Simon & Schuster in 1955. He went on to nurture authors like Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, John le Carré, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and biographer Robert Caro. He was looking at the manuscript of Heller’s Catch-22 at the time he rejected A Confederacy of Dunces.

Toole couldn't accept the rejection. He ended his life and died by suicide by running a garden hose from the exhaust pipe in through the window of his car on March 26, 1969. His car and person were clean and the police officers who found him reported that his face showed no sign of distress. An envelope discovered in the car was marked ‘To my parents.’ The suicide note inside the envelope was destroyed by his mother, who later gave varying accounts of its details. She said it expressed his feeling for her. Later she said that the letter was bizarre and preposterous, violent, ill-fated, full of nothing but insane ravings. He was buried at the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans.

A Confederacy of Dunces has been described as a grand comic feud and is considered one of the seminal works of 20th century Southern literature. It has received praise for its accurate use of various New Orleans dialects, including the YAT dialect. The title of the book is from a quote by Jonathan Swift's essay, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

It was his mother, Thelma Toole, who refused to let her son's genius be forgotten. For years, she shopped carbon copies of the manuscript to various publishers, getting rejected every time. In 1976, she marched into the office of the prominent author, Walker Percy (who later wrote a foreword) at Loyola University and demanded he read it. Once he started reading it, he found it so brilliant that it just sucked him in. Percy helped get the book published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1980.

It became a massive literary sensation, and in 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Thomo told about the comparisons of Ignatius Reilly with Billy Bunter. When Thomo was thinking about this character, Ignatius Reilly, the image of Billy Bunter came to his mind.

You may know Billy Bunter from our school days when we read Billy Bunter comic stories. Billy Bunter is a famous fictional English schoolboy known as the “Fat Owl of the Remove.” He first appeared in a boys' weekly magazine called The Magnet in 1908 which ran until 1940. In appearance he was very overweight, wore glasses, and tight checkered trousers. He was lazy, greedy, selfish, and often got into trouble. Later Billy Bunter starred in novels, comic strips, and a 1950s BBC TV show.

Billy Bunter, the fat boy

Billy Bunter and Ignatius Reilly are surprisingly close as comic characters, according to ChatGPT, even though they belong to very different literary worlds. Both are larger-than-life parasites who create chaos, while remaining convinced that the problem is everyone else's. Billy Bunter was created by Charles Hamilton, and Ignatius Reilly by John Kennedy Toole.

Billy Bunter stories take place in Greyfriars School. A Confederacy of Dunces takes place in New Orleans.

One is a schoolboy, the other is an adult. In physical presence, both are extremely fat, obsessed with food.

And Ignatius is very large, poorly groomed, and physically eccentric. The central obsession for Bunter is food and money. And central obsession for Reilly is food, comfort, and his elaborate ideas about society.

Bunter constantly borrows money, begs for food, and avoids paying. Ignatius, lives with his mother and repeatedly exploits other people. Honesty, habitual lying and bluffing, that's Bunter. Self-serving, manipulative, and frequently dishonest, that is Ignatius.

Bunter thinks he's cleverer and more important than he really is. Reilly believes himself to be a profound intellectual and cultural critic.

Obsessed with work, Bunter does everything possible to avoid studying. And Ignatius avoids conventional work and regards ordinary employment as beneath him.

Billy Bunter creates comic trouble and financial inconvenience, and Ignatius creates much more serious social disruption and misery.

The comic method in Bunter is slapstick repetition and schoolboy mischief. Ignatius' satire, irony, grotesque behaviour, and intellectual absurdity is characteristic of A Confederacy of Dunces. Both characters are masters of self-deception. Bunter can be caught red-handed and almost immediately invent a story explaining why he is actually the victim. He has an extraordinary ability to turn his own selfishness into an apparent virtue.

Ignatius does much the same thing, but on an intellectual level. He constructs an elaborate philosophy to justify his laziness, hostility to modern society, and refusal to accept responsibility. In his mind, he's not a failure who refuses to work; he's an intellectual refusing to participate in a corrupt civilisation.

Both characters operate on the principle, “I’m not the problem, the world is the problem.”

Ignatius is a much darker creation, according to ChatGPT.

Geetha was the first one to read. Sadly, she confessed she had not completed the novel.

It brings a certain society to light and also probably certain off-beat personalities. Very seldom do we meet such people in real life. Is there a single medical affliction that Ignatius Reilly suffers from in the novel A Confederacy of Dunces? Or is he a composite of many medical afflictions that seldom are manifest in one person?

Joe asked Gemini AI app this question and here is what it returned:

Ignatius J. Reilly is not formally diagnosed with a single, real-world medical affliction. Instead, he is a dramatic composite of various physical, psychological, and behavioural traits that rarely—if ever— occur together in a single individual in the manner Toole presents.

While Ignatius frequently attributes his erratic behaviour, physical outbursts, and dramatic bodily complaints to a single, hyper-specific organ—his famous pyloric valve—this serves primarily as a satirical device rather than a clinically recognised medical condition.

The "Pyloric Valve" as a Satirical Construct

Ignatius constantly claims that his “pyloric valve” opens and closes unpredictably in response to the atrocities of the modern world, trapping gas and causing severe internal pressure. In actual human anatomy, the pyloric sphincter controls the passage of food from the stomach into the duodenum. While conditions like pyloric stenosis (a severe blockage) or functional dyspepsia exist, Ignatius’s self-diagnosed, volatile valve—which opens or shuts based on his moral disgust, television shows, or aesthetic offense—is entirely a figment of his theatrical hypochondria.

A Composite of Psychological and Physical Manifestations

Rather than representing one distinct disorder, Ignatius exhibits a constellation of symptoms and behaviours that span multiple clinical and physical profiles:

Severe Somatisation and Hypochondria: He translates emotional distress, anxiety, and social conflicts into extreme physical symptoms, constantly fearing immediate bodily collapse.

Agoraphobia and Social Withdrawal: He displays a intense reluctance to leave his neighbourhood or home, expressing profound fear and disgust toward the outside world and modern society.

Neurodivergent / Autism Spectrum Traits: His extreme adherence to rigid routines, intense fixation on specific historical periods (Boethius and the Middle Ages), sensory oversensitivity (loud noises, bright lights, crowds), lack of intuitive social cues, and highly formal, pedantic speech – all mirror traits associated with the autism spectrum.

Personality Disorders: He demonstrates strong narcissistic and paranoia-driven traits—harbouring a belief in his own intellectual and moral superiority while simultaneously convinced that society, his mother, and various acquaintances are conspiring against him.

Obesity-Related Complications: His severe obesity, extreme physical lethargy, and gastrointestinal distress reflect real physical ailments, though exaggerated for comic effect.

By weaving these disparate physical complaints, psychological fixations, and personality quirks into one character, Toole creates a uniquely eccentric figure who functions as a walking manifestation of medieval humorism—specifically an excess of “black bile” or classic melancholia—rather than a case study of any single modern medical condition.

Geetha read from chapter three in which Ignatius and Mrs Reilly have a conversation about Mancuso, the cop who is victimised by his boss.

Several appreciated the realistic reading by Geetha. Joe said ‘¥ou sound like the sympathetic mother.’

Saras

Shoba and she chose successive sections in chapter 4. This is when Ignatius goes to work at Levy Pants, and he's been asked to do the filing. He cannot bend down and open the file cabinet. So the administrator, Mr. Gonzalez, gives him a wheeled stool. Ignatius is propelled on this low-wheeled stool for rapid access to files at Levy Pants company, but falls flat and can’t get up. The other three people in the office are trying to hoist him.

This is so funny. Miss Trixie is also one kind of a character. It is definitely a comedy show at Levy Pants.

Likening his buttocks to the bottom of an eggplant is a good humorous simile, said Joe. ‘Eggplant on a thumbtack.’

Toole is good at writing such scenes – he just finds the right words to express these comic situations, said Shoba who read the continuation.

Shoba

Ignatius from his supine position instructs Gonzalez and Miss Trixie how to get him upright – meanwhile the owner Gus Levy walks in. This was a good passage to choose, said Zakia. Mr. Levy wanted to run out of his office, he did not want to spend time there. One likes the way he threw all the files into the dustbin.

He did not do any filing ultimately, said Pamela. Yes, he keeps throwing out the files, said Saras. And later he organised a protest like a union leader. He should have come to Kerala, mused Zakia.

Joe

Also from chapter 4, this is a conversation between the owner of this Levy Pants and his wife. It is a study of a nagging housewife who is disappointed in her husband

KumKum

In chapter 6 Ignatius foments rebellion among the workers at Levy Pants and organises a strike at the factory.

On a dirty bed sheet they wrote out the slogan of the uprising: Crusade for Moorish Dignity.

Thomo

This is from chapter 7 where Ignatius gets hired to vend hot-dogs after he tastes them at an old man’s cooking range. He becomes a hot dog vendor and winds up polishing off all the hot dogs himself. They are quite long and you have to cut out some stuff in the middle. John Toole, the author, apparently as a young boy, did have a go at this gig, working as a hot dog vendor.

The French Quarter backdrop of Toole's novel. Source-Bookpackers

Was Ignatius all that dysfunctional that he ate it up himself? The following comes from Gemini:
The character of Ignatius Riley may have been modelled on a professor of English, called Bob Byrne. John Kennedy Toole met Bob Byrne while teaching as an assistant professor of English at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (University of Louisiana at Lafayette or UL Lafayette, University of Louisiana) in 1959. Byrne served as one of the primary real-life inspirations for Ignatius. Byrne famously wore a green ear-flapped deerstalker hat—a signature part of Ignatius's wardrobe that Toole frequently teased him about. Byrne was a scholar of medieval literature who loved discussing the 6th-century philosopher Boethius and his concept of the Wheel of Fortune, both of which became central obsessions for Ignatius in the novel. Friends and colleagues noted that Byrne possessed a slovenly, eccentric appearance, played the lute, loved to argue, and had a penchant for eating hot dogs. So there, Toole borrowed a lot from his fellow academic’s quirks.

However, Toole also infused the character with elements of his own life (such as his real-life experiences pushing a street food cart and working briefly in a garment factory) along with a healthy dose of exaggeration for comedic purposes.

Thomo narrated that they had a guy in their office in Kochi, called Napoleon or something like that. This guy could just eat and eat and eat. He was a slightly fat, but not corpulent. If he went to a wedding, he would just continue eating from start to finish – there was no stopping him – how did he do it? There are people like that.

Ignatius goes around the town, and returns with an almost empty cart. He’s eaten the whole lot, and not sold even one!

Pamela

This was from Chapter 8, where Patrolman Mancuso loses his copy of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy when he tries to arrest George.

Pamela took off on her commentary from Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Why was that contemplative book given to the policeman, and why is the book mentioned so many times in the novel?

Pamela delved into that book a bit. Boethius was a 6th century Roman senator, historian and philosopher of the early Middle Ages, known for this book which he wrote while in prison, awaiting execution.

It is a masterpiece, addressing fate, free will, evil and human happiness through a dialogue with Lady Philosophy. It became one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages. Lady Philosophy tells him in answer to his queries to recognise his own identity. She tells him that life works like a Wheel of Fortune; it constantly spins, taking away wealth, fame and power.

Philosophy informs us that these worldly goods are unstable and cannot grant true happiness. Lady Philosophy argues that true happiness comes from God who is the ultimate good and source of good and the ultimate good and source of all wisdom. This reminds one of a saying of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew Ch 6: 19-21 ”Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

Boethius asks why evil people thrive and then considers Chance, Providence and Free Will. Lady Philosophy keeps answering him and her answers seem to bring calm to his soul. Pamela concluded that the theme of this book is being connected to the theme of The Consolation of Philosophy.

The ending of the whole story comes about when Ignatius’ reconnects with Myrna Minkoff, Ignatius Reilly’s intellectual foil, former classmate, and ideological nemesis-turned-saviour. She was a radical Beatnik counterculture activist from New York City, who met Ignatius during their graduate studies in New Orleans. Throughout most of the novel, she is physically absent—having returned to New York—but remains a constant presence through an ongoing, furious exchange of letters. Minkoff is the one who actually understands his thinking and extracts him out of the whole situation that he is mired in. In the novel’s final chapters, when Ignatius faces imminent institutionalisation by his mother, Myrna drives down to New Orleans in her Renault and rescues him, driving him away to safety and providing the story's resolution.

His mother was not mature enough and objective to understand why Ignatius thinks in this odd manner. Pamela had a feeling he had dyslexia and the only person who could understand him was Minkoff. But as Gemini has pointed out earlier in this reading, Ignatius is a capricious composite of so many aberrations foisted on him by the author, that there is no medical diagnosis known that fits all his behavioural eccentricities.

Hence, Joe sensing this was an author’s imagination gone berserk questioned the dyslexia-only hypothesis

Priya added that he is dysfunctional, socially dysfunctional. And he is impossible in interpersonal relationships. That is the area of dyslexia, said Pamela. Priya noted he could not do even a simple job and the way he lived was extremely messy, starting with his messy personal hygiene.

But he wrote well, didn’t he, asked Pamela? When he wrote, he wrote well, Priya agreed. He wrote beautifully. But Joe said the person who wrote well in those snatches was the manifestation of Toole’s own essay writing – it is not easily ascribable to the character Ignatius.

Priya said it is an anarchist kind of a writing. He's like what they call an anti-hero. He's planning all the mischief with relish.

When these dyslexic children are tested for IQ, they are always rated as super IQ, said Pamela. But dyslexia, recall, is primarily characterised by difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition, spelling, and phonological processing (the ability to match letters to their corresponding sounds). Ignatius has many afflictions but processing words is not among them. Regarding him as dyslexic is not only mistaken if you judge from the novel regarding his odd behaviour, but it may be a wholly false lead in assessing Ignatius.

No doubt today he would be definitely asked to go and see a therapist, as Priya said, but not for dyslexia, which is a learning disability concentrated in the areas of reading, writing and numeracy.

Zakia criticised his mindless eating of hot-dogs that didn't even look at or smell appetising. Priya commented on his needlessly confrontational attitude. He would fight, and argue about anything. The latter bogey of his did not permit him to get along with people, Pamela said.

Socially he was far from fitting in at home, at work, or among his associates and strangers.

Pamela insisted that only Myrna Minkoff understood him in this entire novel. She's probably as weird, Priya added. She was trying to tell the world that everybody must have sex because that is the answer to all problems. That was the consolation of her philosophy. Myrna felt that if that particular pleasure principle in him was satisfied, he would behave better.

That was Myrna’s answer for everything; it was her therapeutic method to cure him but he was against it.

Zakia

Her passage was a continuation of chapter 7, which Thomo read, about the hot-dog vendor, how Ignatius has to dress before he takes that cart out. He did not want to wear the assigned cap.

Zakia said Ignatius is stubborn about what he will do and what he will not do. Paradise Vendors are desperate and they actually employ him. One doesn't know what damage he's going to accomplish on his rounds by the time he comes back. So the owner gives him the cart – even the cart he's particular about which one he will trundle. Zakia said you can just laugh through some of this book, but it was quite frustrating to read it also.

It was quite difficult to continue on with it, one had to use a lot of determination to get through it. Priya noted people’s devotion to the reading group ensures they really finished the book; in the normal course you would drop such a book part way through. None of our readers would have got through this book without that external compulsion

Individual portions are quite funny, said Saras. There's no plot, there's nothing you are heading toward; this book is narrated as a series of disjointed incidents in a man's life. He's quite ridiculous in his ways.

But at the end, again, he doesn't get caught, said Priya. That’s the part Devika is reading. He gets away in the end.

Zakia was happy to see Devika was last in order of reading this time; it is a lot that usually falls to Zakia alphabetically. Devika's is usually at the top of the reading list; at any rate she is the first always to post her selection. This was a novel and it turned out Devika chose a passage toward the end. However, poetry is next, so she will be second in line after you-know-who.

The professor of English, who was Toole’s friend, Bob Byrne, used to dress up like this with a deerskin cap and fancy dress clothes like Ignatius in this novel, according to Priya.

This cop Mancuso was also wearing some costume, seated, disguising himself.

Priya

She read the nightclub scene from the French Quarter of New Orleans which is very famous among tourists. By coincidence friends of Priya were visiting America and chose to visit New Orleans and went to the French Quarter. Priya told them she was reading a novel which describes the scene in that quarter of NO which is full of cafes. Below are some details from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Quarter

The French Quarter, also known as the Vieux Carré, is the historic heart of New Orleans and one of the most culturally distinct neighbourhoods in North America. Established by the French in 1718, it is famous for its Spanish-colonial architecture, vibrant music scene, French culinary heritage, and round-the-clock nightlife.

St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square is also part of the French Quarter

The French Quarter is bounded by the Mississippi River, Canal Street, Rampart Street, and Esplanade Avenue. Its defining visual style is a mix of Spanish, French, and Creole architecture: multi-storey brick buildings with wrought-iron or cast-iron balconies, hidden courtyard gardens, and pastel-painted facades.

Jackson Square: The central public square facing the Mississippi River, anchored by the iconic St. Louis Cathedral and flanked by historic government buildings. It serves as an open-air art market and gathering space for brass bands, street performers, and fortune tellers.

Royal Street: Parallel to Bourbon Street, Royal Street offers a quieter, more refined day-to-day experience characterised by antique shops, fine art galleries, luxury jewellery boutiques, and historic Creole restaurants.

Culinary Heritage: The district is home to iconic dining institutions offering Creole and Cajun classics, alongside landmark cafes like Café Du Monde on Decatur Street, famous for warm beignets dusted with powdered sugar and chicory café-au-lait.

Nightlife in the French Quarter is world-renowned for its diversity, energy, and open-container laws, which allow patrons to carry drinks outdoors in plastic ‘go-cups.’

Bourbon Street forms the epicentre of the quarter's rowdiest evening activity. Neon signs line the pedestrianised street, illuminating karaoke joints, dance clubs, piano bars, and historic watering holes. The street is famous for potent specialty cocktails served in souvenir cups, such as the Hurricane at Pat O'Brien's or the Hand Grenade from Tropical Isle. Joe remembered walking along the French quarter, full of these clubs. They hucksters outside the door trying to get you in and each is vying with others, shouting out the great sights you will see inside. One of them accosted Joe yelling “You'll never see such big bums and boobs. Come on in.”

A view of Bourbon Street

Revellers gather on elevated iron balconies above the street to watch the crowds below and toss beads to passersby.

Traditional Jazz & Live Music is preserved beyond the revelry of Bourbon Street. Preservation Hall, located on St. Peter Street, is an intimate venue which hosts traditional New Orleans jazz performances in an unpretentious, historical setting. Numerous historic hotels and lounges feature live jazz quartets, blues performers, and brass bands into the late hours.

Preservation Hall

A typical jazz club

Priya read about how Lana Lee, owner of the nightclub, who wanted hers to be different from the others. She comes up with the idea of an animal show and getting a cockatoo who will undress the performer Darlene on-stage.

Lana Lee is the ruthless, manipulative owner and manager of the Night of Joy bar. She serves as one of the novel's primary antagonists. She is coarse, and aggressively greedy. Lana runs her establishment with an iron fist. She underpays her employees and brutally exploits her janitor, Burk Jones, threatening to turn him over to the police as a vagrant if he steps out of line.

Beyond selling watered-down drinks, Lana runs a covert pornography ring, selling illegal photographic materials to high school students through a local newsstand run by an elderly man named George. Her illegal side business becomes the core focus of Officer Mancuso's undercover investigation. When Ignatius Reilly accidentally comes into possession of one of her pornographic photos (using the back of it to draft a manifesto for his political movement), it sets off the climax that leads to Lana's arrest and the dismantling of her ring.

Darlene is an optimistic, well-meaning, but endearingly dim-witted B-girl and exotic dancer working at the Night of Joy. Unlike the cynical characters around her, Darlene is warm-hearted, cheerful, and desperate to break out of her low-paying job. She dreams of becoming a famous exotic dancer by creating a unique, sophisticated stage act, The Cockatoo Act. Her big artistic breakthrough is this performance involving a trained, live cockatoo named Harmonic (which she buys from a local pet shop). The bird is meant to strip off her clothes during her dance routine, though the act routinely goes off the rails during rehearsals.

Darlene takes pity on Jones and tries to help him stand up to Lana. She manages to convince Lana to let her debut her cockatoo act at the bar, which unwittingly draws the entire cast of characters—including Officer Mancuso and Ignatius's mother, Mrs. Reilly—to the Night of Joy for the disastrous, climactic showdown where Lana's crime ring is finally exposed.

Joe said the jazz clubs are wonderful places to be entertained with original numbers from the NO jazz scene. The drummers especially are wild and electric. It's not very expensive considering such good food is thrown in. New York jazz clubs are quite expensive, by contrast.

NO is famous for fish and oysters.

Mancuso's aunt says that as a child, she worked prying oysters open for her mother. Mancuso's aunt goes to the bowling alley with Ignatius's mother. She match-makes for Ignatius's mother.

Devika

She read the part where Ignatius seeks to escape New Orleans as Myrna arrives from New York and he decides to flee thither where Fortuna beckons. Devika read 10 or 15 pages of the novel a day, but started well in advance, and finished in July. When she reached the part where Ignatius was finally running away, she gasped in relief, “Thank God he's getting away from this place.”

It's good riddance as he realises that his mother is going to send him to a charity hospital, a kind of asylum. He wants to get out of the house and he's trying to figure out how to do it when Myrna Minkoff turns up, just in time.

When Myrna and Ignatius are driving away, he sees the ambulance coming also to pick him up. Devika confessed she had to skip portions of the novel to get through it.

But our reading passages got the essence of the story very well. Thank you to all the readers for selecting the featured passages.

The next session of Poetry was decided as 23rd of October. There are three readers’ birthdays coming up in October, soon after Joe and KumKum return from the USA. There will be a party in Devika’s house and everyone will bring a dish. Devika will get the biryani ready. And of course there will be enough vegetarian dishes.

The Readings

Geetha Ch 3 Ignatius and Mrs Reilly have a conversation about Mancuso, the cop victimised by his boss

Ignatius staggered up the brick path to the house, climbed the steps painfully, and rang the bell. One stalk of the dead banana tree had expired and collapsed stiffly onto the hood of the Plymouth.

"Ignatius, baby," Mrs. Reilly cried when she opened the door. "What's wrong? You look like you dying."

"My valve closed on the streetcar."

"Lord, come in quick out the cold."

Ignatius shuffled miserably back to the kitchen and fell into a chair.

"The personnel manager at that insurance company treated me very insultingly."

"You didn't get the job?"

"Of course I didn't get the job."

"What happened?"

"I would rather not discuss it."

"Did you go to the other places?"

"Obviously not. Do I appear to be in a condition that would attract prospective employers? I had the good judgment to come home as soon as possible."

"Don't feel blue, precious."

«Blue'? I am afraid that I never feel blue."

"Now don't be nasty. You'll get a nice job. You only been on the streets a few days," his mother said and looked at him. "Ignatius, was you wearing that cap when you spoke to the insurance man?"

"Of course I was. That office was improperly heated. I don't know how the employees of that company manage to stay alive exposing themselves to that chill day after day. And then there are those florescent tubes baking their brains out and blinding them. I did not like the office at all. I tried to explain the inadequacies of the place to the personnel manager, but he seemed rather uninterested. He was ultimately very hostile." Ignatius let out a monstrous belch. "However, I told you that it would be like this. I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it."

"Lord, babe, you gotta look up."

"Look up?" Ignatius repeated savagely. "Who has been sowing that unnatural garbage into your mind?"

"Mr. Mancuso."

"Oh, my God! I should have known. Is he an example of looking up'?"

"You oughta hear the whole story of that poor man's life. You oughta hear what this sergeant at the precinct's trying.."

"Stop!" Ignatius covered one ear and beat a fist on the table. "I will not listen to another word about that man. Throughout the centuries it has been the Mancusos of the world who have caused wars and spread diseases. Suddenly the spirit of that evil man is haunting this house. He has become your Svengali!"

"Ignatius, get a holt of yourself."

"I refuse to look up.' Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery."

"I ain't miserable."

"You are."

"No, I ain't."

"Yes, you are."

"Ignatius, I ain't miserable. If I was, I'd tell you."

"If I had demolished private property while intoxicated and had thereby thrown my child to the wolves, I would be beating my breast and wailing. I would kneel in penance until my knees bled. By the way, what penance has the priest given you for your sin?"

"Three Hail Mary's and a Our Father."

"Is that all?" Ignatius screamed. "Did you tell him what you did, that you halted a critical work of great brilliance?"

"I went to confession, Ignatius. I told Father everything. He says, 'It don't sound like your fault, honey. It sounds to me like you just took a little skid on a wet street.' So I told him about you. I says 'My boy says I'm the one stopping him from writing in his copybooks. He's been writing on this story for almost five years.' And Father says, 'Yeah?

Well, don't sound too important to me. You tell him to get out the house and go to work.""

"No wonder I cannot support the Church," Ignatius bellowed. "You should have been lashed right there in the confessional." (640 words)

Saras Ch 4 Ignatius is propelled on a low-wheeled stool for rapid access to files at Levy Pants company, but falls flat and can’t get up

"In addition, my valve has been misbehaving and has prevented me from bending over to reach the lower drawers."

"I have just the thing for that," Mr. Gonzalez said and went into the little office storeroom to get, Ignatius imagined, some type of medicine. But he returned with one of the smallest metal stools that Ignatius had ever seen. "Here. The person who used to work on the files used to wheel back and forth on this along the lower drawers. Try it."

"I don't believe that my particular body structure is easily adaptable to that type of device," Ignatius observed, a gimlet eye fixed upon the rusting stool. Ignatius had always had a poor sense of balance, and ever since his obese childhood, he had suffered a tendency to fall, trip, and stumble. Until he was five years old and had finally managed to walk in an almost normal manner, he had been a mass of bruises and hickeys. "However, for the sake of Levy Pants, I shall try."

Ignatius squatted lower and lower until his great buttocks touched the stool, his knees reaching almost to his shoulders. When he was at last nestled upon his perch, he looked like an eggplant balanced atop a thumb tack.

"This will never do. I feel quite uncomfortable."

"Give it a try," Mr. Gonzalez said brightly.

Propelling himself with his feet, Ignatius traveled anxiously along the side of the files until one of the miniature wheels lodged in a crack. The stool tipped slightly and then turned over, dumping Ignatius heavily to the floor.

"Oh, my God!" he bellowed. "I think I've broken my back."

"Here," Mr. Gonzalez cried in his terrorized tenor. "T'll help you up."

"No! You must never move a person with a broken back unless you have a stretcher. I won't be paralyzed through your incompetence."

"Please try to get up, Mr. Reilly." Mr. Gonzalez looked at the mound at his feet. His heart sank. "TIl help you. I don't think you're badly injured."

"Let me alone," Ignatius screamed. "You fool. I refuse to spend the remainder of my life in a wheel chair."

Mr. Gonzalez felt his feet turn cold and numb.

The thud of Ignatius' fall had attracted Miss Trixie from the ladies' room; she came

around the files and tripped on the mountain of supine flesh.

"Oh, dear," she said feebly. "Is Gloria dying, Gomez?"

"No," Mr. Gonzalez said sharply.

"Well, I'm certainly glad of that," Miss Trixie said, stepping onto one of Ignatius' outstretched hands. (421 words)

Shoba Ch 4 (following on Saras’ passage) Ignatius from his supine position instructs Gonzalez and Miss Trixie how to get him upright – meanwhile the owner Gus Levy walks in.

"Good grief!" Ignatius thundered and sprang into a sitting position. "The bones in my hand are crushed. I'II never be able to use it again."

"Miss Trixie is very light," the office manager told Ignatius. "I don't think she could have

hurt you much."

"Has she ever stepped on you, you idiot? How would you know?"

Ignatius sat at the feet of his co-workers and studied his hand.

"I suspect that I won't be able to use this hand again today. I had better go home immediately and bathe it."

"But the filing has to be done. Look how behind you are already."

"Are you talking about filing at a time like this? I am prepared to contact my attorneys and have them sue you for making me get on that obscene stool."

"We'll help you up, Gloria." Miss Trixie assumed what was apparently a hoisting position. She spread her sneakers far apart, toes pointing outward, and squatted like a Balinese dancer.

"Get up," Mr. Gonzalez snapped at her. "You're going to fall over."

"No," she answered through tight, withered lips. "I'm going to help Gloria. Get down on that side, Gomez. We'll just grab Gloria by the elbows."

Ignatius watched passively while Mr. Gonzalez squatted on his other side.

"You are distributing your weight incorrectly," he told them didactically. "If you are going to attempt to raise me, that position offers you no leverage. I suspect that the three of us will be injured. I suggest that you try a standing position. In that way you can easily bend over and hoist me."

"Don't be nervous, Gloria," Miss Trixie said, rocking back and forth on her haunches.

Then she fell forward onto Ignatius, throwing him on his back once again. The edge of her celluloid visor hit him in the throat.

"Oof," gurgled from somewhere in the depths of Ignatius' throat. "Braah."

"Gloria!" Miss Trixie wheezed. She looked into the full face directly beneath hers.

"Gomez, call a doctor."

"Miss Trixie, get off Mr. Reilly," the office manager hissed from where he squatted beside his two underlings.

"Braah."

"What are you people doing down there on the floor?" a man asked from the door. Mr.

Gonzalez' chipper face hardened into a mask of horror, and he squeaked, "Good morning, Mr. Levy. We're so glad to see you."

"I just came in to see if I have any personal mail. I'm driving back to the coast right away. What's this big sign over here for? Somebody's going to get his eye knocked out on that thing."

"Is that Mr. Levy?" Ignatius called from the floor. He could not see the man over the row of filing cabinets. "Braah. I have been wanting to meet him."

Shedding Miss Trixie, who slumped to the floor, Ignatius struggled to his feet and saw a sportily dressed middle-aged man holding the handle of the office door so that he could flee as rapidly as he had entered. (493 words)

Joe Ch 4 A study of a nagging housewife who is disappointed in her husband

"You've thrown your father's business down the drain. That's the tragedy of your life."

"Christ, who wants that old factory? Nobody's buying the kind of pants they make anymore. That's all my father's fault. When pleats came in, in the thirties, he wouldn't change over from plain-front trousers. He was the Henry Ford of the garment industry.

Then when the plain front came back in the fifties, he started making trousers with pleats.

Now you should see what Gonzalez calls 'the new summer line.’ They look like those balloon pants the clowns wear in circuses. And the fabric. I wouldn't use it for a dishrag myself."

"When we were married, I idolized you, Gus. I thought you had drive. You could have made Levy Pants really big. Maybe even an office in New York. It was handed all to you and you threw it away."

"Oh, stop all that crap. You're comfortable."

"Your father had character. I respected him."

"My father was a very mean and cheap man, a little tyrant. I had some interest in that company when I was young. I had plenty interest. Well, he destroyed all that with his tyranny. So far as I'm concerned, Levy Pants is his company. Let it go down the drain. He blocked every good idea I had for that firm just to prove that he was the father and I was the son. If I said, 'Pleats,' he said, 'No pleats! Never!' If I said, 'Let's try some of the new synthetics, he said, 'Synthetics over my dead body."

"He started peddling pants in a wagon. Look what he built that into. With your start you

could have made Levy Pants nationwide."

"The nation is lucky, believe me. I spent my childhood in those pants. Anyway, I'm tired of listening to you talk. Period."

"Good. Let's keep quiet. Look, Como's lips are turning pink."

"You've never been a father figure to Susan and Sandra."

"The last time Sandra was home, she opened her purse to get cigarettes and a pack of rubbers falls on the floor right at my feet."

"That's what I'm trying to say to you. You never gave your daughters an image. No wonder they're so mixed up. I tried with them."

"Listen, let's not discuss Susan and Sandra. They're away at college. We're lucky we don't know what's going on. When they get tired, they'll marry some poor guy and everything will be all right."

"Then what kind of a grandfather are you going to be?"

"I don't know. Let me alone. Go get on your exercising board, get in the whirlpool bath. I'm enjoying this show."

"How can you enjoy it when the faces are all discolored."

"Let's not start that again."

"Are we going to Miami next month?"

"Maybe. Maybe we could settle there."

"And give up everything we have?"

"Give up what? They can fit your exercising board in a moving van."

"But the company."

"The company has made all the money it's ever going to make. Now is the time to sell."

"It's a good thing your father's dead. He should have lived to see this." Mrs. Levy gave the shower shoe a tragic glance. "Now I guess you'll spend all your time at the World Series or the Derby or Daytona. It's a real tragedy, Gus. A real tragedy."

"Don't try to make a big Arthur Miller play out of Levy Pants." (571 words)

KumKum Ch 6 Ignatius foments rebellion among the workers at Levy Pants

"Friends!" Ignatius said grandly and lifted the arm that was not holding the sheet. "At last the day is ours. I hope that you have all remembered to bring your engines of war." From the group around the cutting table there issued neither confirmation nor denial. "I mean the sticks and chains and clubs and so forth." Giggling in chorus, the workers waved some fence posts, broomsticks, bicycle chains, and bricks. "My God! You have really assembled a rather formidable and diffuse armory. The violence of our attack may surpass my expectations. However, the more definitive the blow, the more definitive the results.

My cursory inspection of your arms, therefore, confirms my faith in the ultimate success of our crusade today. In our wake, we must leave a sacked and pillaged Levy Pants, we must fight fire with fire."

"What he say?" one worker asked another.

"We shall storm the office very shortly, thereby surprising the foe when his senses are still subject to the psychic mists of early morning."

"Hey, Mr. R., pardon me," a man called out from the crowd. "Somebody tell me you in trouble with a po-lice. Is that right?"

A wave of anxiety and uneasiness broke over the workers.

"What?" Ignatius screamed. "Where did you hear such slander. That is totally false.

Some white supremacist, some upstate red-neck, perhaps even Gonzalez himself no doubt began that vile rumor. How dare you, sir. All of you must realize that our cause has many enemies."

While the workers were applauding him soundly, Ignatius wondered how that worker had learned of the mongoloid Mancuso's attempted arrest. Perhaps he had been standing in the crowd before the department store. That patrolman was the fly in everyone's ointment. However, the moment seemed to have been saved.

"Now this we will carry with us in the vanguard!" Ignatius shouted over the last sprinkled applause. He dramatically whipped from his pelvis the sheet, flapping it open.

Among the yellow stains the word ForwArD was printed in high block letters in red crayon.

Below this Crusade for Moorish Dignity was written in an intricate blue script.

"I wonder who been sleepin on that old thing," the intense woman with the spiritual bent, who was to be the leader of the choir, said. "Lord!"

Several other prospective rioters expressed the same curiosity in more explicitly physical terminology.

"Quiet now," Ignatius said, stomping one foot thunderously on the table. "Please! Two of the more statuesque women here will carry this banner between them as we march into the office."

"I ain puttin my hand on that," one woman answered.

"Quiet! Everyone!" Ignatius said furiously. "I am beginning to suspect that you people are not actually deserving of this cause. Apparently you are not prepared to make any of the ultimate sacrifices."

"How come we gotta take that old sheet with us?" someone asked. "I thought this suppose to be a demonstration dealin with wages."

"Sheet? What sheet!" Ignatius replied. "I am holding before you the proudest of banners, an identification of our purpose, a visualization of all that we seek." The workers studied the stains more intensely. "If you wish to simply rush into the office like cattle, you will have participated in nothing more than a riot. This banner alone gives form and credence to the agitation. There is a certain geometry involved in these things, a certain ritual which must be observed. Here, you two ladies standing there, take this between you and wave it thus with honor and pride, hands held high, et cetera."

The two women whom Ignatius indicated ambled slowly to the cutting table, gingerly took the banner with their thumbs and index fingers, and held it between them as if it were a leper's shroud.

"That looks even more impressive than I had imagined," Ignatius said. (637 words)

Thomo Ch 7 Ignatius gets hired to vend hot-dogs after he tastes them at an old man’s cooking range.

He stepped into the garage and looked around. In a corner an old man was boiling hot dogs in a large institutional pot whose size dwarfed the gas range upon which it rested.

"Pardon me, sir," Ignatius called. "Do you retail here?" The man's watering eyes turned toward the large visitor.

"What do you want?"

"I would like to buy one of your hot dogs. They smell rather tasty. I was wondering if I

could buy just one."

"Sure."

"May I select my own?" Ignatius asked, peering down over the top of the pot. In the boiling water the frankfurters swished and lashed like artificially colored and magnified paramecia. Ignatius filled his lungs with the pungent, sour aroma. "I shall pretend that I am in a smart restaurant and that this is the lobster pond."

"Here, take this fork," the man said, handing Ignatius a bent and corroded semblance of a spear. "Try to keep your hands out of the water. It's like acid. Look what it's done to the fork."

"My," Ignatius said to the old man after having taken his first bite. "These are rather strong. What are the ingredients in these."

"Rubber, cereal, tripe. Who knows? I wouldn't touch one of them myself."

"They're curiously appealing," Ignatius said, clearing his throat. "I thought that the vibrissae about my nostrils detected something unique while I was outside." Ignatius chewed with a blissful savagery, studying the scar on the man's nose and listening to his whistling.

"Do I hear a strain from Scarlatti?" Ignatius asked finally.

"I thought I was whistling "Turkey in the Straw.'"

"I had hoped that you might be familiar with Scarlatti's work. He was the last of the musicians," Ignatius observed and resumed his furious attack upon the long hot dog.

"With your apparent musical bent, you might apply yourself to something worthwhile."

…

The old man looked at Ignatius and then at the massive pot, the gas range, and the crumpled carts. He said, "I can hire you right here."

"Thank you very much," Ignatius said condescendingly. "However, I could not work here. This garage is particularly dank, and I'm susceptible to respiratory ailments among a variety of others."

"You wouldn't be working in here, son. I mean as a vendor."

"What?" Ignatius bellowed. "Out in the rain and snow all day long?"

"It don't snow here."

"It has on rare occasions. It probably would again as soon as I trudged out with one of these wagons. I would probably be found in some gutter, icicles dangling from all of my orifices, alley cats pawing over me to draw the warmth from my last breath. No, thank you, sir. I must go. I suspect that I have an appointment of some sort."

Ignatius looked absently at his little watch and saw that it had stopped again.

"Just for a little while," the old man begged. "Try it for a day. How's about it? I need vendors bad."

"A day?" Ignatius repeated disbelievingly. "A day? I can't waste a valuable day. I have places to go and people to see."

"Okay," the old man said firmly. "Then pay me the dollar you owe for them weenies."

"I am afraid that they will all have to be on the house. Or on the garage or whatever it is.

My Miss Marple of a mother discovered a number of theater tickets stubs in my pockets last night and has given me only carfare today."

"T'll call in the police."

"Oh, my God!"

"Pay me! Pay me or I'Il get the law."

The old man picked up the long fork and deftly placed its two rotting tongs at Ignatius' throat. (612 words)

Zakia Ch 7 The old man who owns Paradise Vendors equips Ignatius with a fitting dress before he goes out

"Just don't ever try to rob a hot dog man again."

"You've just made your point. Actually, you have made two of them, literally in my throat and muffler. I hope that you are prepared to compensate for the muffler. There are no more of its kind. It was made in a small factory in England that was destroyed by the Luftwaffe. At the time it was rumored that the Luftwaffe was directed to strike directly at the factory in order to destroy British morale, for the Germans had seen Churchill wrapped in a muffler of this sort in a confiscated newsreel. For all I know, this may be the same one that Churchill was wearing in that particular Movietone. Today their value is somewhere in the thousands. It can also be worn as a shawl. Look."

"Well," the old man said finally, after watching Ignatius employ the muffler as a cummerbund, a sash, a cloak, and a pair of kilts, a sling for a broken arm, and a kerchief, "you ain't gonna do too much damage to Paradise Vendors in one hour."

"If the alternatives are jail or a pierced Adam's apple, I shall happily push one of your carts. Though I can't predict how far T'll go."

"Don't get me wrong, son. I ain't a bad guy, but you can only take so much. I spent ten years trying to make Paradise Vendors a reputable organization, but that ain't easy. People look down on hot dog vendors. They think I operate a business for bums. I got trouble finding decent vendors. Then when I find some nice guy, he goes out and gets himself mugged by hoodlums. How come God had to make it so tough for you?

"We must not question His ways," Ignatius said.

"Maybe not, but I still don't get it."

"The writings of Boethius may give you some insight."

"I read Father Keller and Billy Graham in the paper every single day."

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius spluttered. "No wonder you are so lost."

"Here," the old man said, opening a metal locker near the stove. "Put this on." He took what looked like a white smock out of the locker and handed it to Ignatius.

"What is this?" Ignatius asked happily. "It looks like an academic gown."

Ignatius slipped it over his head. On top of his overcoat, the smock made him look like a dinosaur egg about

to hatch.

"Tie it at the waist with the belt."

"Of course not. These things are supposed to freely flow about the human form, although this one seems to provide little leeway. Are you sure that you don't have one in a larger size?

"Upon close scrutiny, I notice that this gown is rather yellow about the cuffs. I hope that these stains about the chest are ketchup rather than blood. The last wearer of this might have been stabbed by hoodlums."

"Here, put on this cap." The man gave Ignatius a little rectangle of white paper.

"I am certainly not wearing a paper cap. The one that I have is perfectly good and far more healthful."

"You can't wear a hunting cap. This is the Paradise vendor's uniform."

"I will not wear that paper cap! I am not going to die of pneumonia while playing this little game for you.

Plunge the fork into my vital organs, if you wish. I will not wear that cap. Death before dishonor and disease." (576 words)

Pamela Ch 8 Patrolman Mancuso loses his copy of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy when he tries to arrest George

Patrolman Mancuso looked at the tiles on the floor. They were out of focus. He felt panic. Then he stared at them more closely and saw that the haze was only the moisture that formed a gray film over almost every surface in the rest room. He looked again at The Consolation of Philosophy, which was opened on his lap, and turned a limp, damp page.

The book was making him more depressed. The guy who wrote it was going to be tortured by the king. The preface had said so. Now all this time the guy was writing this thing, he was going to end up with something driven down into his head. Patrolman Mancuso felt sorry for the guy and felt obliged to read what he had written. So far he had only covered only about twenty pages and was beginning to wonder whether this Boethius was something of a gambler. He was always talking about fate and odds and the wheel of fortune. Anyway, it wasn't the kind of book that exactly made you look up to the brighter side.

After a few sentences Patrolman Mancuso's mind began to wander. He looked out through the crack in the door of the booth, which he always left open an inch or two so that he could see who was using the urinals, the lavatories, and the paper-towel box. There at the lavatories was the same boy that Patrolman Mancuso had been seeing every day, it seemed. He watched the delicate boots moving back and forth from the lavatory to the paper-towel dispenser. The boy leaned against a lavatory and began drawing on the back of his hands with a ballpoint pen. There might be something in this, Patrolman Mancuso thought.

He opened the booth and went up to the boy. Coughing, he tried to say pleasantly,

"What's that you're writing on your hand, pal?"

George looked at the monocle and the beard at his elbow and said, "Get the hell away from me before I kick your nuts in."

"Cawd the police," Patrolman Mancuso taunted.

"No," George answered. "Just get away. I ain't making trouble."

"You afred udda police?"

George wondered who this nut was. He was as bad as that hot dog vendor.

"Look, kookie, move it. I don't want no trouble with the cops."

"You dote?" Patrolman Mancuso asked happily.

"No, and neither does a screwball like you," George said, looking at the watering eye behind the monocle and the moistness at the mouth of the beard.

"You udder arrest," Patrolman Mancuso coughed.

"What? Boy, are you out of it."

"Patrodeman Madcuso. Uddercover." A badge flashed in front of George's pimples.

"Cubb alogg wid me."

"What the hell are you arresting me for? I'm just standing here," George protested nervously. "I ain't done nothing. What is this?"

"You udder suspiciudd."

"Suspicion of what?" George asked in panic.

"Aha!" Patrolman Mancuso slobbered. "You rilly afred."

He reached out to grab George by the arm and handcuff him, but George snatched The Consolation of Philosophy from under Patrolman Mancuso's arm and slammed it into the side of his head. Ignatius had bought a large, elegant, limited edition of the English translation, and all fifteen dollars of its price hit Patrolman Mancuso in the head with the force of a dictionary. Patrolman Mancuso bent over to pick up the monocle, which had fallen from his eye. When he straightened up again, he saw the boy scraping rapidly out of the door of the rest room with the book in his hand. He wanted to run after him, but his head was throbbing too badly. He returned to his booth to rest and grew even more depressed. What could he tell Mrs. Reilly about the book?

Priya Ch 12 Ignatius has a run-in with a cockatoo in a night club in New Orleans

Lana Lee appeared on the stage in what looked like gold lamé overalls.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius spluttered. The doped Negro had tricked him. He wanted to bolt from the club, but realized that it would be wiser to wait until the woman had finished and left the stage. In a moment, he was crouched down against the side of the stage. Over his head, the Nazi proprietress was saying, "Welcome, ladies and genitals." It was so dreadful a beginning that Ignatius almost knocked over the table.

"You are pay me now," the woman was demanding, sticking her head under the table to find the face of her customer.

"Shut up, you slut," Ignatius hissed.

The band stumbled into a four-count version of Sophisticated Lady. The Nazi woman was screaming, "And now that pure Virgin-ny Belle, Miss Harlett O'Hara." An old man at one of the tables clapped feebly, and Ignatius peered over the rim of the stage and saw that the proprietress was gone. In her place stood a stand decorated with rings. What was Miss O'Hara up to?

Then Darlene swept onstage in a ball gown that trailed yards of nylon net. On her head was a monstrous picture hat and on her arm a monstrous bird. Someone else clapped.

"Mira, you are pay me now or else, cabron."

"There sure was plenty balls at that ball, but I still got my honor," Darlene said carefully to the bird.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius bellowed, unable to remain silent any longer. "Is this cretin

Harlett O'Hara?"

The cockatoo noticed him before Darlene did, for its beads of eyes had been focusing on Ignatius' hoop of a novelty earring ever since it had come onstage. When Ignatius bellowed, it flapped from Darlene's arm to the stage and squawking, hopping, dashed for Ignatius' head.

"Hey," Darlene cried. "It's the crazyman."

As Ignatius was about to dash from the club, the bird hopped from the stage to his shoulder. It sank its claws into his smock and snagged his earring with its beak.

"Good heavens!" Ignatius leaped up and beat at the bird with his itching paws. What avian menace had depraved Fortuna spun his way? The champagne bottles and the glasses shattered on the floor as he sprang and began staggering to the door.

"Come back here with my cockatoo," Darlene cried.

Lana Lee was on the stage now, screaming. The band had stopped. The few old male patrons moved out of the way of Ignatius, who was floundering around among the little tables making moose calls and beating at the mass of rose feathers welded to his ear and shoulder.

"How in the hell did that character get in here?" Lana Lee asked the confused septuagenarians in the audience. "Where's Jones? Somebody get me that Jones."

"Come here, you big crazyman," Darlene hollered. "On opening night. Why you hadda come here on opening night?"

"Good grief," Ignatius gasped, feeling for the door. In his wake he had left a trail of overturned tables. "How dare you fiends inflict a rabid bird upon your unsuspecting customers? You may expect to be sued in the morning."

"Come! You are owe twenty-four dollar to me. You are pay right now"

Ignatius knocked over another table as he and the cockatoo lurched forward. Then he felt the earring loosening, and the cockatoo, the earring firmly in its beak, fell from his shoulder. Terrorized, Ignatius bounced out of the door just ahead of the Latin woman, who was waving the check with great determination. (589 words)

Devika Ch 14 Ignatius seeks to escape New Orleans as Myrna arrives from New York and he decides to flee thither where Fortuna beckons

Escape. Escape.

Ignatius looked in his wallet. The thirty dollars was gone, apparently confiscated by his mother at the hospital. He looked at the clock. It was almost eight o'clock. Between napping and assaulting the glove, the afternoon and evening passed rather quickly.

Ignatius searched his room, flinging Big Chief tablets around, mashing them underfoot, dragging them from beneath his bed. He came up with some scattered coins and went to work on the desk, where he found a few more. The total was sixty cents, a sum that limited and blocked escape routes. He could at least find a safe haven for the rest of the evening: the Prytania. After the theater had closed, he could pass along Constantinople Street to see whether his mother had come home.

There was a slipshod frenzy of dressing. The red flannel nightshirt sailed up and hung on the chandelier. He jammed his toes into the desert boots and leaped as well as he could into the tweed trousers, which he could hardly button at the waist. Shirt, cap, overcoat, Ignatius put them on blindly and ran into the hall, careening against the narrow walls. He was just reaching for the front door when three loud knocks cracked against the shutters.

Mr. Levy returned? His valve sent out a distress signal that established communication with his hands. He scratched the bumps on his paws and peered through the shutters, expecting to see several hirsute brutes from the hospital.

There on the porch stood Myrna in a shapeless olive drab corduroy car coat. Her black hair was braided into a pigtail that twisted under one ear and fell on her breast. A guitar was slung over her shoulders.

Ignatius was about to burst through the shutters, splintering slats and latches, and wrap that one hemplike pigtail around her throat until she turned blue. But reason won. He was not looking at Myrna; he was looking at an escape route. Fortuna had relented. She was not depraved enough to end this vicious cycle by throttling him in a straitjacket, by sealing him up in a cement block tomb lighted by florescent tubes. Fortuna wished to make amends. Somehow she had summoned and flushed Myrna minx from a subway tube, from some picket line, from the pungent bed of some Eurasian existentialist, from the hands of some epileptic Negro Buddhist, from the verbose midst of a group therapy session.

"Ignatius, are you in that dump?" Myrna demanded in her flat, direct, slightly hostile voice. She beat on the shutters again, squinting through her black-rimmed glasses. Myrna was not astigmatic; the lenses were clear glass; she wore the glasses to prove her dedication and intensity of purpose. Her dangling earring reflected the rays of the streetlight like tinkling glass Chinese ornaments. "Listen, I can tell there's somebody in there. I heard you stomping around in that hall. Open up these crummy shutters."

"Yes, yes, I'm here," Ignatius cried. He tore at the shutters and pushed them open.

"Thank Fortuna you've come."

"Jesus. You look terrible. Like you're having a nervous breakdown or something. Why the bandage? Ignatius, what's the matter? Look how much weight you've gained. I've just been reading these pitiful signs out here on the porch. Boy, have you had it."

"I've gone through hell," Ignatius slobbered, pulling Myrna into the hall by the sleeve of her coat. "Why did you step out of my life, you minx? Your new hair-do is fascinating and cosmopolitan." He snatched at her pigtail and pressed it to his wet moustache, kissing it vigorously. "The scent of soot and carbon in your hair excites me with suggestions of glamorous Gotham. We must leave immediately. I must go flower in Manhattan." (621 words)

Reading the Romantic Poets – Aug 3, 2026

2026-08-08T12:34:52.500+05:30

The origins of Romantic Poetry though nominally confined to a small group of poets in England had such a vast influence that its effervescence may be detected in the poetry of nations across Europe. So special is the delight in their poetry that KRG devotes a whole session every year to mining the untold riches of what those poets left behind, though several of them died very young.

The usual suspects were represented – Wordsworth, Keats, Byron – but so were three women poets and a dashing representative from Spain. It was a thrilling experience. The joy comes through in the accounts supplied by several readers, especially in the verse casually appended to a letter of Keats to a friend where the poet recounts his spontaneous reaction to the song of a thrush floating into his study through a window.

The song thrush

The poem by Wordsworth concerned a hero of Haiti whose leadership in mounting a revolt of the slaves against their exploitative slave-owning plantation masters won the independence of the island (western part) from France – but, at the cost of Toussaint L'Ouverture’s imprisonment and death in a French prison. The poem excited discussion about the subsequent impoverishing debt imposed on Haitians by France to compensate the French landowners for their losses.

Lord Byron, Cleaned up Image of a large statue of Lord Byron erected in the courtyard of Byronei Messolonghi. The statue shows him in Greek costume of the time, standing, gazing at the waters

A poem by Byron demonstrated how committed he was to the cause of the independence of Greece from Ottoman rule. HIs poem was written only a few months before his death from a mosquito-borne fever in Messolonghi – the historic town in located about 250 km west of Athens on the edge of a rich ecological lagoon. Byron seems to have had a presentiment of his death as he ponders his thirty-sixth birthday in the poem, filled with a determination to fight on.

It was invigorating to listen to the Spanish verses of Bécquer, the very embodiment of the spirit of Romanticism in the soil of Sevilla. His famous Rima LIII was recited by Thomo, attempting to learn Spanish through the effort of decoding the pathos of the poem.

Read on and savour the pleasure of reading the Romantic Poets … to whom KRG returns every August.

Full Account and Record of the Romantic Poetry Session

Devika

Devika was quite surprised, actually, that nobody had read Casablanca so far in our group, because it's a poem we have all read in school. We've only read one another poem by her. This is such an iconic one, by the poet Felicia Dorothea Hemans.

Felicia Dorothea Hemans Bio (September25, 1793 to May16, 1835)

Felicia Dorothea Hemans was an English poet regarded as the leading poet of her day. She was immensely popular during her lifetime in both England and the United States, second only to Lord Byron in terms of book sales. Two of her opening lines “The boy stood on the burning deck” and “The stately homes of England” have acquired classic status. Born on September 25, 1793 in Liverpool, the Romantic poet Felicia Hemans was the daughter of the Tuscan Consul in Liverpool and the fifth of seven children. The family shifted to Wales following a period of financial difficulty in 1800. Hemans was a voracious reader, and she made use of the extensive home library and was instructed by her mother in several languages – Welsh, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Hemans first published her collection Poems in 1808 at the age of fourteen. She married Captain Alfred Hemans in 1812, had five children by him before separating when her husband moved to Italy in 1818. She had to support her children with the income from her poetry. Despite her illustrious admirers, her stature as a serious poet gradually declined, ironically on account of her success in the literary market place. Her poetry was often assigned for school children to read, as it was considered morally exemplary.

The poem, Casabianca, is sung in ballad form and consists of a boy asking his father whether he had fulfilled his duties, as the ship continues to burn until the magazine catches fire. Hemans adds the following note to the poem: “Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son to the Admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile) after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned, and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames reached the powder.”

From 1831 onward Hemans lived in Dublin which was recommended for being healthier than Liverpool. Despite the change, she continued to experience poor health. She died on 16 May 1835. Sources suggest that she had suffered from an attack of scarlet fever, followed by a ‘consumptive decline‘, or by ‘dropsy’. She was regarded as a leading an English poet of her day.

It's a tragic poem. It gives you goose bumps when you read it. And the other one we often read in school is The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson. Do the children learn these poems nowadays? Every year, there would be at least one child reciting the poem at elocution competition in school. These poems were par for the course and another was Lord Ullin’s Daughter, the ballad by Scottish poet Thomas Campbell.

Geetha

Usually Geetha choses poems from Byron or Keats or Shelley for this session, but she chanced upon a lady poet who's actually older than all of these and was an inspiration to them.

Her name is Charlotte Turner Smith, known as Charlotte Smith (CS). She was born on May 4 in London, Great Britain, 1749, died October 28, 1806. She was born 200 years before Thoreau. She was a pioneering English poet and novelist who helped to revive the English sonnet and heavily influenced the early poetry foundation of the Romantic movement.

Indeed, she can perhaps be rightly called the first of the Romantic poets, influencing those who followed, including William Wordsworth, John Keats, and so on. Outspoken for the time, she once described her early marriage as nothing more than prostitution because her father sold her to the richest suitor; her father was a spendthrift.

But although it was not the happiest of relationships, she still managed to have 13 children by her husband. OMG, someone exclaimed.

Her early life was marked by the untimely death of her mother and the poor spending habits of her father. She loved to read poetry as a child and even submitted some of her own work to local publications, only to have them rejected. Her father, finding himself in severe financial difficulties, then married her off at age 15 to Benjamin Smith who hailed from a very well-off family, landed family. He was a violent and financially reckless West India merchant.

From the beginning she didn't get on with her in-laws, whom she thought rather uncouth.They, in turn, thought her frivolous for spending so much time reading poetry. It turned out that Benjamin was nearly as bad with money as her own father had been and ended up in a debtor's prison. As was a custom at that time, Charlotte went to join him in King's Bench Prison in 1783, where she wrote her first collection of poetry called Elegiac Sonnets.

The poems were a great success and gave her the chance to pay for their release. They fled to France in order to avoid any further debt collection. She separated formally from her husband in 1787 in order to live independently.

Literary Career

Charlotte Smith published her breakthrough poetry collection, Elegiac Sonnets, in 1784, which became immensely popular and helped revive the sonnet form in English poetry. CS transitioned to writing novels for financial stability, publishing her debut fiction, Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle, in 1788.

She also authored radical works of social criticism, including Desmond (1792) and her finest novel, The Old Manor-House (1793). She also wrote educational books for children, notably Conversations Introducing Poetry (1804).

Despite eleven novels, four children's books and other works, she saw herself mainly as a poet and hoped to be remembered for that.

Death and Legacy

CS died on October 28, 1806, in Tilford, Surrey, broken in health and financial distress. She was praised by William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott for her profound sensitivity to nature and melancholic lyrical style.

What Geetha read was an excerpt from The Emigrants, a two-book blank verse poem published in 1793. It describes French Catholic and royalist refugees fleeing the Reign of Terror and arriving on the cliffs of Sussex, England. The speaker blends their national grief with her own personal financial and marital displacement. It's in sympathy of the French Revolution and what the people suffered. And this excerpt is just a part from the second book.

The setting is a Spring landscape of the blossoming Sussex countryside in April 1793. There is a contrast between Nature and Violence. Spring arrives with blooming flowers, but the speaker cannot enjoy nature because she is haunted by the human bloodshed and political madness of happenings in France.

CS is all-in for true liberty that will bring peace rather than terror and chaos. She condemns radical tyranny and war.

The excerpt ends with the words ‘for employment.’ Those are the needy. Somewhere, Geetha felt the poet is siding with the monarchy. She was initially for liberty and freedom, the call of the revolutionaries. But during Robespierre's reign of terror, all that wanton killing and beheading, turned Charlotte Smith against the revolution. She laments that, actually.

The readers were glad that Geetha introduced an old lady’s poem that we haven't heard before. To think that she's one of the first poets of the Romantic period. A bit of it reads like modern poetry towards the end.

Joe

Joe read a poem that Lord Byron wrote toward the end of his life. called, On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year.

Lord Byron wrote the poem on January 22, 1824, in Missolonghi (now mostly spelled Mesolongi), Greece. He died less than three months later on April 19, 1824, of a severe illness while still in Missolonghi.

He wrote this while he was on his single-minded vision to help the Greek people win freedom from the Ottoman Turks. After selling his English estates he invested his own money into the revolution. He took command of a brigade of soldiers, intending to lead an attack on the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto.

The swampy, damp environment of Missolonghi severely worsened his health. Doctors used bloodletting to assuage his fever, but they bled him to exhaustion and it hastened his death.. The Greeks deeply mourned him, and he remains celebrated as a national hero in Greece to this day, with numerous statues erected to him in Greece.

Lord Byron statue in Messolonghi Garden of Heroes

Byron faced severe political chaos in Greece because the Greeks were fighting a brutal civil war against each other while simultaneously trying to fight the Ottoman Empire for independence. Main regional factions included the military chieftains of the Peloponnese, the wealthy shipowners of the islands, and the politicians of Central Greece. The primary internal struggle was between a Western-educated politician and a powerful guerrilla military leader.

The first stanza reads –

Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it hath ceased to move:

Yet though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love!

Here Byron, Joe thinks, is expressing his failure in love among the women he knew – it was not for lack of trying. This handsome flamboyant man of wit and with a heart large enough to embrace several women at once, had only encountered failures in love:

1. Mary Chaworth – A distant cousin and teenage muse who rejected him, inspiring many of his early melancholic poems.

2. Lady Caroline Lamb – A passionate aristocrat who famously described Byron as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." She caused public scenes about their volatile affair.

3. Lady Oxford – A politically minded, older married woman who provided Byron with a peaceful refuge =after the chaos of Caroline Lamb

4. Lady Frances Webster – A married woman whom Byron courted in a tense game of psychological seduction.

5. Annabella Milbanke – A mathematical heiress whom Byron married in 1815 in a disastrous attempt to reform his life. She left him in just one year on account of rumours of incest with his sister. By Millbanke Lord Byron had his only legitimate child, Ada Lovelace (born Augusta Ada Byron); she went on to become the world’s first computer programmer under the tutelage of Charles Babbage, the ingenious British engineer, who invented the Differential Engine to solve mathematical problems by automatic programming.

Byron left England four months after his daughter’s birth, never seeing her again. Byron famously dedicated the opening of Canto III of his epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage to her with the lines:

Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!

ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?

When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,

And then we parted, -- not as now we part,

But with a hope. --

Lord Byron was rumoured to have had an incestuous relationship with this older half-sister, Augusta Leigh.

The second stanza of Byron’s poem in Missolonghi begins

My days are in the yellow leaf;

– which will remind the reader of Shakespeare’s sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

The third stanza is where we hear the sad cry from the heart when ‘Volcano Isle’ and “funeral pile’ are used as rhyming phrases. The first refers to his heaving heart, the emotional state of longing and fighting for an independent Greece. The second is probably the premonition of his death to come. He is feeling prematurely old at 36, exhausted from his affairs of the heart, and now mired in a fight.

But in a later stanza he recovers his spirit and cries out

The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,

Glory and Greece around us see!

The penultimate stanza begins in a sinking mood but ends singing the Glory of valorous death:

If thou regret'st thy Youth, why live?

The land of honourable Death

Is here:—up to the Field, and give

Away thy breath!

Joe was reminded of Captain Bikram Batra who died in the Indo-Pak Kargil War of 1999. He wrote to his family:

या तो तिरंगा लहराकर आऊंगा, या तिरंगे में लिपटकर आऊंगा, लेकिन ज़रूर आऊंगा

I shall return with flying flag

Or wrapt in the flag –

But return, I shall!

For Byron it was the latter alternative. We still mourn him, a flawed romantic hero whose heart was in the right place.

Kavita

It so happened that Kavita selected another poem of Byron’s, Stanzas to a Hindoo Air.

Though Byron was a Lord by heredity, he didn't depend on his lordship for his fame, which spread far wider than that of any other Lord of the time as a result of his poetry.

Stanzas to a Hindoo Air (written in Pisa, 1821) is a lesser-known yet fascinating lyric. Written toward the end of his life before his departure for Greece, the poem reflects both Byron's characteristic dramatic intensity and the 19th-century British Romantic fascination with Orientalism.

The poem was composed to fit a popular Hindustani tune of the time titled "Alla Malla Punca", which Byron's mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, was fond of singing. During the early 19th century, returning British colonial officials brought back popular Indian melodies, which were arranged for piano and sung in European salons.

Like today, we sing, Parda Hai, Parda, from the film Amar Akbar Anthony; but Hindi film songs are so popular that they are sung in many parts of the world – here is an Uzbek group singing that number:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVpRGt4ostM

Somebody else gesturing to our Priya, cited the song Pretty Pretty Pretty Priya from the 1970 film Priya. In the film the character of Priya is played by the actress Tanuja (younger sister of actress Nutan, and also famous as the mother of actress Kajol). So one could sing here Lonely, Lonely Pillow. Our Hindi translation would be so funny, said Priya. But it will make a good Bollywood song if set to lilting music.

Byron adopts a female voice, turning the pillow into a confidant while her lover sails away over the ocean.

The poem makes use of repetition and incremental refrain (e.g., "Oh! my lonely—lonely—lonely—Pillow!"). This repetition echoes the rhythmic cadence of a musical song or "air," mimicking a mournful chant or lullaby.

Byron weaves typical Romantic motifs – dreams, ships ("bark"), waves ("billow"), and drooping flora ("willow") – to emphasise physical isolation and emotional agony.

The speaker addresses an inanimate object—the pillow—transmuting a domestic item into the sole witness of her grief:

Oh! my lonely—lonely—lonely—Pillow!

Why must my head ache where his gentle brow lay?

The contrast between the past (where the lover's head rested) and the present (where the speaker's head aches in isolation) reinforces the pain of sudden absence.

Because daytime reality offers no comfort, the speaker relies on the nocturnal realm:

Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking,

In return for the tears I shed upon thee waking;

The dream becomes the only site of potential reunion, a common trope in Byron's poetry where real-world exile is countered only by subconscious escape. In classic Byronian style, extreme emotional states collapse into one another:

In one embrace let these arms again enfold him,

And then expire of the joy—but to behold him!

The emotional intensity reaches a peak where the speaker desires to die not from sorrow, but from the overwhelming sensation of seeing the lover again ("expire of the joy").

Byron’s poem is often compared to Shelley's famous Lines to an Indian Air (also known as I Arise from Dreams of Thee), composed around the same period.

Byron had a clubfoot, but he was a very handsome man. Among the romantic poets, he was the rich one. The others had no money, except Shelley, who was born into a wealthy, landed gentry family that attained minor nobility when his grandfather received a baronetcy in 1806. Shelley grew up in a privileged aristocratic environment, with his father serving as a Member of Parliament. During his life he had a good relationship with Byron.

Joe said Byron had all the characteristics of a romantic poet. He not only romanced several women, but embraced lost causes. He was a failure in love. These things conspire to make him uber-romantic, in Joe’s opinion. And then just imagine, that he sold his estates and invested in a cause which would not be realised for many years afterwards. Greece formally won its independence when it was recognised as an independent sovereign state by major European powers via the London Protocol on February 3, 1830, concluding a revolution that began on March 25, 1821.

KumKum

KumKum read a poem by Keats, What the Thrush Said. It's a sonnet. But he didn't write it as a poem in the first instance. He was writing a letter to a friend, and at the end, casually subscribed this verse.

These last three lines are beautiful:

He who saddens

At thought of idleness cannot be idle,

And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

Joe noted that it seems rather irregular because it doesn't have a rhyme scheme. Sonnets, whether they are Shakespearean or Petrarchan or whatever, do follow a certain rhyme scheme. But this doesn't have one. It does have 14 lines, though.

Poets are rather finicky. They won't call a poem a sonnet unless it follows one of the established sonnet forms. KumKum said “Maybe Keats didn't call it a sonnet. But those who included it in collections called it a sonnet.”

Geetha noted the footnote says ‘lines from a letter to John Hamilton.’ KumKum replied that Keats was writing a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, the poet, satirist, critic, and playwright who was a close friend and correspondent of Keats. At the end of the letter, he added this gift of a poem.

Keats heard a thrush outside his window and spontaneously added on these lines. Recall that Keats composed rapidly. But he didn't have time to polish it, remarked Joe.

Later KumKum added this appreciation:

John Keats: My Favourite Romantic Poet

Regarding What the Thrush Said

Sculpture of John Keats seated on bench by Vincent Gray, in Chichester, West Sussex, UK

Among the Romantic poets, KumKum’s first choice has always been John Keats. The great figures of that movement are Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats – but there is something particularly appealing about Keats. Perhaps it is his extraordinary sensitivity to beauty, his love of nature, or the way he could transform an ordinary moment into something magical.

Keats lived a remarkably short life. Born in 1795, he died in 1821 at only twenty-five years of age. Yet in those few years, he produced poetry that has continued to speak to readers for more than two centuries. Though his life was marked by illness, financial hardship, and personal sorrow, his poetry remains filled with beauty, music, and an intense awareness of natural existence.

Keats believed deeply in beauty. However, his idea of beauty went far beyond aesthetics; for him, beauty was intimately tied to truth, imagination, and the very experience of being alive. His poetry compels us to stop, look, and listen to the world around us. Yet, Keats was also acutely aware of impermanence – he recognised the fleeting nature of beauty at the very moment he found it.

Consequently, a wistful melancholy runs through his odes, sonnets, and shorter lyrics. They seem to remind us that even though “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” nothing in life or nature lasts. The present moment is what truly matters.

This fragment was originally included in a letter Keats wrote to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds on February 19, 1818. Though written as a sonnet apparently inspired by a thrush's song, its concluding lines cited above carry a profound philosophical weight:

He who saddens

At thought of idleness cannot be idle,

And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

It is a short poem, but she found it deeply moving. It draws us into the quiet stillness of nature where a thrush is singing. There is no grand story or dramatic spectacle – simply the bird, its song, and the poet listening.

Yet in Keats’s hands, this simple moment becomes expansive. The thrush seems to speak through its song, and Keats listens as if receiving a revelation. Nature is not merely a passive backdrop; it becomes a living presence. The bird has something meaningful to say, even if its language transcends ordinary human understanding.

What she loves most about Keats is his willingness to remain open to mystery. He does not force explanations; instead, he allows himself – and us – to simply dwell in the experience.

The thrush’s song also reminds us of how brief life is. The bird sings entirely in the present, unconcerned with yesterday or tomorrow. Keats, who certainly sensed that his own time was short, was especially attuned to such moments. The song becomes a celebration of life precisely because it is transient.

There is also a gentle restraint in the poem. Keats does not try to dominate nature or impose a heavy-handed message upon it. He simply listens. That is perhaps the greatest lesson of this small poem: sometimes we understand more by listening quietly than by trying to analyse everything.

This is what makes Keats such a special poet for KumKum. His work invites us to pause – to notice the bird, the flower, the season, the sound, the light – and to recognise that these quiet moments hold something profound.

Rather than viewing Keats merely as a figure from literary history, KumKum prefers to experience what the poet offers directly: his love of beauty, his sensitivity to nature, and his ability to find wonder in a fleeting moment. Perhaps the thrush is telling us what Keats understood so well – that life is short, but while we are here, there is always beauty to be experienced.

Priya

We've read Sir Walter Scott before, said Priya. She gave a brief recap on the poet.

Biography:

Scott Monument on Princess Street, Edinburgh

Statue of Sir Walter Scott within the Scott Monument on Princess Street, Edinburgh

Walter Scott was one of the earlier romantics, 1771 to 1832 was the time frame. He falls in the romantic era and was one of the most important men of letters of his time.

He was born in Edinburgh, and is famously known as the pioneer of the historical novel, the Waverley series, which he wrote starting in 1814. The Waverley series is a group of 26 historical novels, published anonymously, The books explore Scottish, English, and European history, shaping the modern historical fiction genre. Scott did not admit he wrote them until 1827.

He spent his early childhood years in Edinburgh, studying at the Edinburgh High School. He got a law degree at the University, and at the age of 25, started writing.

At first he wrote poems. He was very prolific. He wrote a lot of poetry and lots of novels, particularly the historical novels, for he had a great interest in history.

In 1797, he married the daughter of a French refugee, Charlotte Carpenter, with whom he had four children. In his legal career, he became the Sheriff Deputy of Selkirk, a position that he occupied till the end of his life.

He championed Scottish traditions, history, culture, and stories of the highlands and the lowlands. In 1820, when King George IV visited Edinburgh, he was asked to handle the entire grand event. People were amazed that he made the king wear tartan and kilt and pink stockings.

Scott became famous because of his literary output. But in 1825, his financial state deteriorated drastically.

He was very successful in his writing. So how did this happen? His dramatic financial ruin was caused by secret business partnerships in printing and publishing, and by lavish overspending on his estate. In addition a major 19th-century banking crisis exposed his web of debt.

He lived in Abbotsford near Melrose in Edinburgh and died there in 1832. Among the tributes, a splendid one is the prominent Scott Monument on Princess Street in Edinburgh. There was also a laudatory biography by his son-in-law, John Lockhart, which speaks volumes about him. You can read more about him on the Britannica site:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Scott

The Lady of the Lake was written in 1810. All his poems are narrative poems, rather long. This poem, is as large as a book, with four cantos as subdivisions.

Priya’s choice was from stanza 29. You need to know a little bit about the story behind this to understand it. The importance of this poem is that the hymn Ave Maria by Schubert was inspired by this poem. For the connection between The Lady of the Lake and Ave Maria, the hymn, see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_(Schubert)

“In Scott's poem, the character Ellen Douglas, the Lady of the Lake, has gone with her exiled father to stay in the Goblin's cave as he has declined to join their previous host, Roderick Dhu, the chieftain of Clan Alpine, in rebellion against King James. Roderick Dhu sets off up the mountain with his warriors, but lingers and hears the distant sound of the harpist Allan-bane, accompanying Ellen who sings a prayer addressed to the Virgin Mary, calling upon her help. Roderick Dhu pauses, then goes on to battle.”

In Schubert’s oeuvre it is known as Ellens Dritter Gesang Opus 52, the 6th in a collection of 7 lieder he wrote inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake. The Latin version of it, the Ave Maria, has words from the Gospel of Luke when the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary and announces that she will be the mother of Jesus. It was set to this same music of Ellens Dritter Gesang. You can hear it below:

Mezzo-soprano Dorothea Fayne sings Schubert’s Ellens dritter Gesang (Ave Maria)

The story behind it, of course, is The Lady of the Lake. James Douglas was a nobleman, and the king of Scotland at the time was James V. This nobleman has been exiled, because he's fallen out with the king. The king disguises himself and goes around the highlands and the lowlands. He goes near the lake, where this girl and her father, James Douglas have been exiled, and are living in a cave.

There is another nobleman called Michael Green, who she's in love with. Then there is another rebel (Dru) who's at war with King James. The story is about all of them. There is a big battle. James Douglas, though exiled, is loyal to the king. So he says he will fight for the king, and the battle happens.

This stanza 29 is about Ellen Douglas, the daughter, whom the king also finds very attractive, very kind and a sweet-hearted girl, who rescues him. When the battle is going on, there's a storm. The romantic elements of the storm, the battle, and the kindly girl, all combine with the thunder and lightning.

The girl in the cave is praying to Mother Mary, addressing her in the prayer Hail Mary (Ave Maria, in Latin) , to protect her father, to protect her country. That's the poem which Priya read. You can imagine this girl inside the cave with a storm brewing outside, and the battle in full swing. She is trembling and shivering, and her only hope is Mother Mary.

Very nice, said KumKum, when Priya finished reading, but she could not believe it was such a long poem. This much is good enough. It's beautiful, said Zakia.

You can listen to Luciano Pavarotti sing Schubert’s Ave Maria.

Priya was surprised about the connection between these stanzas and the music composed by Franz Schubert, using the words of this and other stanzas of the poem to compose seven of his lieder comprising his Opus 52. It's so beautiful.

I love the hymn as well, said Priya. “And it's so romantic.”

Shoba

Shoba read the poem titled Toussaint L'Ouverture by William Wordsworth,

Toussaint (short for Tous les saints) means all saints. All Saints' Day in French is la Toussaint. It is a public holiday celebrated every year on November 1st. It is meant to honour all faithful people who have reached heaven, including both famous and unknown saints. It reminds believers of the spiritual bond between the living on Earth and those in heaven, and it encourages everyone to live a holy life.

In the poem Toussaint is the name of a French general, from Haiti, a Caribbean island and a colony of France.

It's the second biggest island after Cuba, which was called Hispaniola, at the time, made up of Dominican Republic, in the eastern part of the island, and Haiti was the western part.

At first the island was taken over by the Spanish. The portion which is Haiti was taken over by the French in the 1600s. They brought in slaves from West Africa and it with slaves in order to cultivate sugarcane and make sugar there and export it to Europe and other parts of the world.

Almost 60% of the sugar that the Western world was using came from Haiti because the soil was very good. 9 out of 10 people in Haiti were slaves. The rest were the rich landowners who owned these plantations.

The slaves were treated very poorly. They worked in the fields and operated the machines used to crush sugarcane. Often there were accidents and some slaves would lose their hands and die there. They were treated most cruelly.

The slaves banded together to fight against the French colonisers. The Spanish who controlled the Dominican Republic gave some help to overthrow the French.

Toussaint Louverture, the subject of the poem, was born into a black household. Fortunately, the slave-owner was kind. He gave this boy a chance to spend time in the library and learn to read. He educated him somewhat. Toussaint grew up literate, unlike the slaves around him. He became a leader.

The slaves would run away to the mountains, and there, they formed a small army to attack the French. Meanwhile, the French Revolution happened – that gave an impetus to these slaves to also demand freedom from the colonisers.

When the fighting was going on England sent forces to take over Haiti, because they also were avid colonisers. But the English were defeated.

Then finally, after the French Revolution, Toussaint Louverture, made a constitution for a free Haiti and he declared independence. Once he did that, he began to have a relationship with the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte was very unhappy and he wanted to capture Toussaint and put him in prison. He sent his brother-in-law with soldiers to Haiti to capture him.

They told Toussaint that they were going to have friendly talks with him. He innocently, he believed them. When he came to speak to the brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, he was captured, taken to France and put in prison. This happened in 1802.

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

It was while he was in prison that Wordsworth wrote this poem in support of Toussaint. He was in a French prison only for one year and died while incarcerated in 1803, before Haiti won full independence. This poem was written in the year following his death. Haiti became independent just one year after his death.

When Haiti declared independence another cruel man became the leader of the blacks. They killed about 5,000 French people. They made gallows all along the coastline and left the French landowners hanging there to show the passing ships what they had done.

It was extracting bitter revenge for slavery. The slaves took back the country into their own hands with a lot of violence.

Sugar made France rich because they were controlling almost 60% of the world’s production. Later on, coffee also was grown there. Ultimately it all ended badly for them.

The original native people were native Indians of the Arawak tribe who died out. Now the population is entirely black. Unless we know this background the poem won't make sense.

It's amazing to think Wordsworth wrote this. It’s a kind of tribute. He was upholding liberty when Toussaint was unjustly imprisoned. It was Wordsworth protesting. There was no television or radio to convey news but there were papers, probably one month old when received in England, said KumKum. By boat and ships sailors carried the news.

The French don't regard Toussaint kindly because he was a revolutionary.

KumKum recalled the poem of Keats On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Keats compares his amazement at reading Chapman’s translation of Homer, to that of the Spanish explorer “stout Cortez” staring at the Pacific Ocean with his men in silent wonder upon a peak in Darien. But as commentators have pointed out the Spanish explorer who stood on a peak in Darien (the Isthmus of Panama) and first beheld the Pacific Ocean was Vasco Núñez de Balboa, not Hernán Cortés, the “stout Cortez" of Keats.

But you might ask how did Keats learn of that fact in order to use it in his poem as a metaphor for his own amazement at reading Homer through Chapman?

In a similar way Devika was surprised when she read the poem that Joanna Baillie wrote about Rani Ahalya Bai of Indore. She lived in Britain, and Ahalya Bai in Indore was 8,000 kms away.

Yet Joanna Baillie wrote a poem of 22 lines about Ahalya Bai, which was amazing, thought Devika. Today, we can just type a query into Google and get voluminous information and scores of original references to sources. How did people in those times learn about happenings?

Joe thought of Haiti as one of the worst and most despicable cases of colonialism. In return for granting them their independence in the 1820s the French foisted a huge debt on Haiti. They stated that unless Haiti paid hundreds of millions of francs, in recompense for plantations lost and future income foregone, France would not give them their liberty.

Consider, said Joe, this colonial nation of France, which has profited for centuries from slavery and extraction of Haiti’s wealth, now demanding that in order to free them, they must further compensate the slavers too.

After the landowners had extracted the wealth and stashed it in foreign banks Haiti was left as an impoverished nation. It could not pay that amount. It had to take on debt by borrowing from banks in France in order to pay the compensation. And of course, France profited from those debts in turn.

Joe read that it was not until the 1950s or so that the debt incurred in 1825, with interest, could be paid. By that time, Haiti had paid out a further half a billion dollars to France. And it became bankrupt, a charge on the charity of other nations and the UN. Here are the details from Google Gemini:

Haiti’s 1825 “Independence Debt”

In 1804, after a 12-year war against Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies, Haitians defeated French forces to establish the world's first free Black republic and the only nation created by a successful revolt of enslaved people. However, colonial exploitation transformed from physical slavery to financial bondage:

• Gunboat Extortion: In 1825, French King Charles X dispatched warships to Port-au-Prince and demanded Haiti pay 150 million gold francs (equivalent to tens of billions of dollars today) to compensate former French slaveholders for lost "property"—including the human beings who had liberated themselves.

• The "Double Debt": Threatened with total trade embargoes and military re-invasion, Haiti was forced to sign the treaty and borrow money from French banks at exorbitant interest rates just to make the initial payments.

• Century-Long Stagnation: Paying off this indemnity consumed up to 80% of Haiti's national budget for decades. It took Haiti until 1947—over 120 years—to fully pay off the debt and interest to French and American banks, leaving the nation utterly incapable of building public infrastructure, schools, hospitals, or modern agricultural systems.

And that is what Haiti is today, an impoverished, denuded nation. The country became so poor because were bled dry by their erstwhile colonial masters. This is the most disgraceful thing that France could ever do. Of course, analogues of this have been done by all the other colonial nations.

You should read the economist, Dr. Utsa Patnaik of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and ponder the research she has done to uncover the sly underhand means used by the British to extract the wealth of India, and spirit it away to the British Treasury. It's something on the order of $45 trillion worth in modern equivalent wealth that they pillaged.

“Do you mean the Bengal famine, and Churchill“, asked Priya. No, said Joe; the Bengal famine was something else, demonstrating the callous racist disregard for the lives of Indians by Mr Churchill. That is a different aspect of colonialism. What one is talking of here is about the ransacking of the economy of a colonised nation to enrich its colonial masters. One is talking here of pillage, of revenues from taxes levied in India being spirited away to a foreign land, instead of benefiting the Indian people – more than a third of those taxes left India to benefit the British treasury. Read Utsa Patnaik. That's how the British got rich.

To consider a theoretical converse: how many years would it take to reduce Britain to penury? – if one-third of its current tax revenues (estimated as £1,232 billion), that is £411 billion, were paid out as a due annually to an external entity, instead of being used for the benefit of British citizens. Joe estimates Britain would be bankrupt in 10 years; and reduced to the current living standard of sub-Saharan Africa, if the theft continued for another 50 years.

That is what Haiti has been reduced to today, an impoverished nation.

If Britain has lost much of its former glory today, and become a second rate power economically and militarily, that's because they've lost their colonies, of which India was chiefest source to pilfer riches.

Joe said all colonial nations – Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Portugal – in their heyday stole the wealth of colonised nations on a massive scale. If they ever paid reparations, they'd be paying reparations for the rest of their existence. Of course, they never think of reparations for their crimes.

France still does not recognise its major culpability in the impoverishment of Haiti.

They grandly proclaim Liberté, égalité, fraternité (LEF). But over its entire history, France controlled about 80 to 90 distinct colonial territories and major possessions, making it the second-largest colonial empire in modern history behind Great Britain. At its peak around 1938, the French Colonial Empire spanned roughly 13.5 million square kilometres, about 25 times the size of mainland France.

What France offered abroad would amount to

Emprisonné, Discriminée, Diminuée (EDD)

Geetha said LEF was what her poet, Charlotte Smith was supporting. She was lamenting, actually. She had some bias, a soft corner for the monarchy initially in the poem. But only because they were butchered afterwards. The Haitians killed their French oppressors and hanged them; that too was cruelty.

Geetha mentioned that on the previous day, they saw a video. It showed the 15 rulers who had massacred the most people. One was Leopold II of Belgium. King Leopold II gained the Congo as his own private land at the Berlin Conference in 1885. He privately owned and brutally ruled the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. Driven by extreme greed for rubber and ivory, his regime used forced labor, starvation, and mutilation, causing an estimated 10 million deaths – halving the region's population. He annihilated the people there.

According to that Top 10 list, the top is Mao Zedong. He erased about 60 million of his own Chinese compatriots, it is estimated, by his policies. KumKum and Joe attended a session of the Hay Festival in Trivandrum in Dec 2011 at which Jung Chang, a Chinese author settled in Britain recounted her detailed history of the times in a 832-page biography titled Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the Irish historian Jon Halliday. The most shocking news was that the great famine of 1958-1961 in China was a deliberate starvation of the people by sending grain from China to the Soviet Union and its satellites to pay for armaments; it was paid in grain to the extent of 7% of China's GDP at the time.

There are so many Maoists, so many communists who speak so highly of Mao. Jung Chang at the 2011 Hay Festival said “In the 50s, 60s, 70s, you could be excused for being pro-Mao, but being pro-Mao now is inexcusable ignorance.”

Pol Pot is on the list, as one of the most brutal despots in modern world history, who headed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after seizing power in 1975. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5–2 million people died – approximately one-quarter of the country's then population.

Hitler and Stalin are there too on the list, and after them in rank comes Leopold II of Belgium.

Thomo

Thomo mentioned his exercise regimen these days. In the morning, he climbs seven stories to his rooftop terrace, then comes down by the lift, and walks around the condo property, listening to the sounds of nature. To this listening he has added Spanish songs.

It occurred then to him why not use YouTube to learn some Spanish. When this poetry session came up, he found a Spanish poet, who by Joe’s reckoning doesn't actually fit neatly in the Romantic era – he’s a little past that time. But that was fine; he had other characteristics that made him a good fit.

Birthplace of the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer on what is now Conde de Barajas Street, Seville

The poet Thomo chose was Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, born 1836, and died 1870. He is considered to be Spain's greatest romantic lyric poet. In fact, he's the second best read of all Spanish writers after Miguel de Cervantes, famous as the author of Don Quixote, spelled Don Quijote in modern Spanish, and pronounced dohn kee-HOH-teh.

Portrait of Bécquer

Gustavo Adolfo was also a playwright and a literary columnist. He was talented in drawing and painting. His father was a noted painter, from whom he must have inherited his talent.. Unfortunately, his father died when he was five. His mother died six years later when he was 11. He and his younger brother, Valeriano, were brought up by their uncle.

His collection of work is called Rimas y Leyendas. It transformed Spanish poetry with its simplicity, musicality, and emotional depth. Rather than using grand declarations, Bécquer wrote with quiet intensity about love, longing, memory, and loss.

His influence on later Spanish poets, including Antonio Machado and Federico García Lorca, were profound. His work remains among the most widely read in the Spanish speaking world.

He married Casta Esteban Navarro and had three children by her. He died very rather young at age 34. They say it was of tuberculosis. His final months were clouded by the painful loss of his brother and artistic collaborator, Valeriano.

His last words were, “Acordaos de mis niños“ (remember my children).

Statue of Becquer in Maria Luisa Park in Seville

Thomo read out the English translation of Rima LIII before the Spanish original. But he read only 3 of the 6 stanzas. Refer to Joe’s selection of Oct 2010 for the full poem.

Thomo agreed this was not the whole poem but could get a translation only these 3 stanzas. There are many translations of the entire poem, Joe said. When he recited it in 2010 a translation by Kate Flores was provided. There is also a translation by Brian Cole.

Thomo then read the poem in Spanish. Thomo expanded his knowledge of Spanish by selecting this poem. That’s a major benefit of making the effort. ‘Golondrinas’ means swallows. What is the ‘Volverán’?

Opening line of the poem by Bécquer – Volveran las oscuras golondrinas (The dark swallows will return)

It is interesting that Bécquer uses the word volveran, meaning to ‘return’ as a refrain in alternating stanzas. The poet is reminding his lover everything will return again (the swallows, the honeysuckle, words of love) but NOT in the way they experienced it once. The sixth stanza offers deep pathos when he tells his lover:

But mute, enraptured, kneeling,

As God before His altar is adored,

As I loved you … be not deceived:

You will be loved no more!

Geetha then volunteered an unpoetic reminder that ‘Voveran’ is the name of a painkiller. It is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) containing diclofenac that treats pain, swelling, and inflammation. I hope none of you have had to take this to suffer my reading, said Thomo (laughter …)

Zakia

Zakia read a sonnet by William Wordsworth. It's a simple, charming and romantic one.

Wordsworth wrote this Petrarchan sonnet in 1835. It explores the emotional vulnerability and anxiety of a distant lover. He is painfully alienated. An agonising void has been left by an uncommunicative loved one. It was composed while he was on a walk with his daughter, Dora. He saw an empty nest on this snowy winter’s day, in the leafless tree.

Petrarch (1304-1374) perfected the sonnet form in his famous Canzoniere, which is why it bears his name, rather than that of Giacomo da Lentini who invented it a hundred years earlier

The poem strictly follows the Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet structure, divided into an octave (first 8 lines) and a sestet (final 6 lines). The rhyme scheme of the Octave is ABBA ABBA, and of the Sestet, CDE CDE. The meter is iambic pentameter with subtle variations to reflect emotional agitation.

That was what inspired him to write these lines. It's a sweet poem expressing the devotion of a lover and the sudden desolation he feels. Wordsworth has used his signature imagery of nature (plants, frost, wind) alongside classical stone imagery (marble, grave) to contrast organic, living affection with deadened silence.

Such was Zakia’s poem for the day. Joe noted the reference in the penultimate line to the flower eglantine

a forsaken bird’s-nest filled with snow

‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine—

Eglantine – admired as a country rose, acquired all sorts of romantic associations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

The eglantine (also known as sweetbriar, Rosa rubiginosa) is a Eurasian wild rose known for its delicate pink petals and apple-scented leaves. It has long served in Western poetry as a symbol of rural beauty, sweetness, and delicate romance. See below how many English poets have used it as a signpost.

This flower occurs in Shakespeare‘s play A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act II, Scene 1) where Oberon describes Titania’s lush, enchanted arbour:

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

Keats in his Ode to a Nightingale (Stanza 5) evokes the sensory richness of the dark woodland in spring:

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Shelley weaves eglantine into a dreamlike bouquet of wildflowers in his poem The Question:

And in the warm hedge-growth bell-flowers, that keep

Their wet cups open to the embraced bees,

As their young mother Green Earth powers,

Keep the child happy; and eglantine,

In which the pale rose will not blue so soon

John Milton in L'Allegro links the flower to morning cottage life:

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And singing startle the dull night,

From his watch-tower in the skies,

Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

Then to come in spite of sorrow,

And at my window bid good-morrow,

Through the sweet-briar or the eglantine,

Arundhaty

Joanna Baillie has been read before. She's a Scottish poet and a playwright whose work challenged the prevailing literary trends of her time. While her plays were popular and critically acclaimed during her lifetime, Baillie is primarily remembered today for her poetry, particularly her series of plays on the passions, a collection of dramatic verse exploring the full spectrum of human emotions.

Baillie's writing is characterised by its psychological depth and focus on the inner lives of her characters. Unlike the sentimental poetry popular in the late 18th century, Baillie's work embraced a more realistic and unsentimental approach to human nature. This emphasis on psychological realism anticipated the work of later writers like Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson. It was influenced by the Enlightenment signalled by thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith.

Baillie was fascinated by the power of emotions and their influence on human behaviour. Her poetry often explored the complex interplay between reasons and emotion, showcasing the ways in which passions can both elevate and destroy individuals. Baillie's work contributed to the development of the romanticism by emphasising the importance of subjective experience and the power of the imagination.

Joanna Baillie

Baillie was born in September in 1762, and her mother was a member of the Physicians and Anatomists. her father, Reverend James Baillie, was a Presbyterian minister, and in his last two years, Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. The Baillies were an old Scottish family, which claimed descent from the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace. Wallace is not known to have had any children, however.

Joanna Baillie was the youngest of three children.

A Summer's Day is a very long poem (2375 words, as Joe pointed out). It talks about the summer's day, starting from the night and then moving on to the sunrise, and then moving on to noon, and finally to dusk again, and then sunrise.

It covers all the activities that human beings do during all these various stages of the day, but Arundhaty read an excerpt of 60 lines (about 460 words) – the part leading to the noon.

The Poems

Arundhaty – A Summer ‘s Day (excerpt) by Joanna Baillie

The dark-blue clouds of night in dusky lines,

Drawn wide and streaky o'er the purer sky,

Wear faint the morning purple on their skirts.

The stars that full and bright shone in the west,

But dimly twinkle to the stedfast eye;

And seen, and vanishing, and seen again,

Like dying tapers smoth'ring in their sockets,

Appear at last shut from the face of heav'n;

Whilst every lesser flame which shone by night,

The flashy meteor from the op'ning cloud,

That shoots full oft' across the dusky sky;

Or wand'ring fire which looks across the marsh,

Beaming like candle in a lonely cot,

To cheer the hopes of the benighted trav'ller,

Till swifter than the very change of thought,

It shifts from place to place, escapes his glance,

And makes him wond'ring rub his doubtful eyes;

Or humble glow-worm, or the silver moth,

Which cast a feeble glimm'ring o'er the green,

All die away. ––

For now the sun, slow moving in his grandeur,

Above the eastern mountains lifts his head.

The webs of dew spread o'er the hoary lawn,

The smooth clear bosom of the settled pool,

The polish'd ploughshare on the distant field,

Catch fire from him, and dart their new got beams

Upon die dazzled eye.

The new-wak'd birds upon the branches hop,

Peck their loft down, and bristle out their feathers;

Then stretch their throats and tune their morning song;

Whilst stately crows, high swinging o'er their heads.

Upon the topmost boughs, in lordly pride,

Mix their hoarse croaking with the linnet's note;

The village labourer, with careful mind,

As soon as doth the morning light appear,

Opens his eyes with the first darting ray

That pierces thro' the window of his cot,

And quits his easy bed; then o'er the field,

With lengthen'd swinging strides, betakes his way,

Bearing his spade and hoe across his moulder,

Seen from afar clear glancing in the sun,

And with good will begins his daily

Half naked children, half awake, are seen

Scratching their heads, and blinking to the light;

Till roused by degrees, they run about,

Or rolling in the sun, amongst the sand

Build many a little house, with heedful art.

The housewife tends within, her morning care;

And stooping 'midst her tubs of curdled milk,

With busy patience, draws the clear green whey

From the press'd sides of the pure snowy curd;

Whilst her brown dimpled maid, with tuck'd-up sleeve,

And swelling arm, assists her in her toil.

Pots smoke, pails rattle, and the warm confusion

Still thickens on them, till within its mould,

With careful hands, they press the well-wrought curd.

So goes the morning, till the pow'rful sun

High in the heav'ns sends forth his strengthen'd beams,

And all the freshness of the morn is fled.

Devika – Casabianca by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

The boy stood on the burning deck 

Whence all but he had fled; 

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

  Shone round him o'er the dead. 

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

  As born to rule the storm - 

A creature of heroic blood,

  A proud, though child-like form. 

The flames rolled on - he would not go

  Without his Father's word; 

That father, faint in death below,

  His voice no longer heard. 

He called aloud: – 'say, Father, say

  If yet my task is done?' 

He knew not that the chieftain lay

  Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, father!' once again he cried,

  'If I may yet be gone!' 

And but the booming shots replied,

  And fast the flames rolled on. 

Upon his brow he felt their breath,

  And in his waving hair, 

And looked from that lone post of death

  In still yet brave despair; 

And shouted but once more aloud,

  'My father! must I stay?' 

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,

  The wreathing fires made way. 

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,

  They caught the flag on high, 

And streamed above the gallant child,

  Like banners in the sky. 

There came a burst of thunder-sound – 

The boy – oh! where was he? 

Ask of the winds that far around

  With fragments strewed the sea!– 

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,

  That well had borne their part – 

But the noblest thing which perished there

  Was that young faithful heart.

Geetha – from The Emigrants: A Poem by Charlotte Smith

[Disillusion with the French Revolution]

So many years have passed,

Since, on my native hills, I learned to gaze

On these delightful landscapes; and those years

Have taught me so much sorrow, that my soul

Feels not the joy reviving Nature brings;

But, in dark retrospect, dejected dwells

On human follies, and on human woes.—

What is the promise of the infant year,

The lively verdure, or the bursting blooms,

To those, who shrink from horrors such as War

Spreads o’er the affrighted world? With swimming eye,

Back on the past they throw their mournful looks,

And see the Temple, which they fondly hoped

Reason would raise to Liberty, destroyed

By ruffian hands; while, on the ruined mass,

Flushed with hot blood, the Fiend of Discord sits

In savage triumph; mocking every plea

Of policy and justice, as she shows

The headless corse of one, whose only crime

Was being born a Monarch—Mercy turns,

From spectacle so dire, her swollen eyes;

And Liberty, with calm, unruffled brow

Magnanimous, as conscious of her strength

In Reason’s panoply, scorns to distain

Her righteous cause with carnage, and resigns

To Fraud and Anarchy the infuriate crowd.—

What is the promise of the infant year

To those, who (while the poor but peaceful hind

Pens, unmolested, the increasing flock

Of his rich master in this sea-fenced isle)

Survey, in neighboring countries, scenes that make

The sick heart shudder; and the man, who thinks,

Blush for his species? There the trumpet’s voice

Drowns the soft warbling of the woodland choir;

And violets, lurking in their turfy beds

Beneath the flowering thorn, are stained with blood.

There fall, at once, the spoiler and the spoiled;

While War, wide-ravaging, annihilates

The hope of cultivation; gives to Fiends,

The meager, ghastly Fiends of Want and Woe,

The blasted land—There, taunting in the van

Of vengeance-breathing armies, Insult stalks;

And, in the ranks, “Famine, and Sword, and Fire,

Crouch for employment.”

Joe – On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year

By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it hath ceased to move:

Yet though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;

The worm—the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some Volcanic Isle;

No torch is kindled at its blaze

A funeral pile.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,

The exalted portion of the pain

And power of Love I cannot share,

But wear the chain.

But 'tis not thus—and 'tis not here

Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now,

Where Glory decks the hero's bier,

Or binds his brow.

The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,

Glory and Greece around us see!

The Spartan borne upon his shield

Was not more free.

Awake (not Greece—she is awake!)

Awake, my Spirit! Think through whom

Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake

And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down

Unworthy Manhood—unto thee

Indifferent should the smile or frown

Of beauty be.

If thou regret'st thy Youth, why live?

The land of honourable Death

Is here:—up to the Field, and give

Away thy breath!

Seek out—less often sought than found—

A Soldier's Grave, for thee the best;

Then look around, and choose thy Ground,

And take thy rest.

Kavita – Stanzas to a Hindoo Air by Lord Byron

Oh! my lonely--lonely--lonely--Pillow!

Where is my lover? where is my lover?

Is it his bark which my dreary dreams discover?

Far--far away! and alone along the billow?

Oh! my lonely-lonely-lonely-Pillow!

Why must my head ache where his gentle brow lay?

How the long night flags lovelessly and slowly,

And my head droops over thee like the willow!

Oh! thou, my sad and solitary Pillow!

Send me kind dreams to keep my heart from breaking,

In return for the tears I shed upon thee waking;

Let me not die till he comes back o'er the billow.

Then if thou wilt--no more my lonely Pillow,

In one embrace let these arms again enfold him,

And then expire of the joy-but to behold him!

Oh! my lone bosom!-oh! my lonely Pillow!

KumKum – What the Thrush Said by John Keats

(From A Letter To John Hamilton Reynolds)

O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,

Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist

And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars,

To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.

O thou, whose only book has been the light

Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on

Night after night when Phoebus was away,

To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.

O fret not after knowledge -- I have none,

And yet my song comes native with the warmth.

O fret not after knowledge -- I have none,

And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens

At thought of idleness cannot be idle,

And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

Priya – The Lady of the Lake, by Sir Walter Scott

Canto III Stanza 29

XXIX. Hymn to the Virgin.

Ave. Maria! maiden mild!

Listen to a maiden's prayer!

Thou canst hear though from the wild,

Thou canst save amid despair.

Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,

Though banished, outcast, and reviled—

Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;

Mother, hear a suppliant child!

Ave Maria!

Ave Maria! undefiled!

The flinty couch we now must share

Shall seem with down of eider piled,

If thy protection hover there.

The murky cavern's heavy air

Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled;

Then, Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer,

Mother, list a suppliant child!

Ave Maria!

Ave. Maria! stainless styled!

Foul demons of the earth and air,

From this their wonted haunt exiled,

Shall flee before thy presence fair.

We bow us to our lot of care,

Beneath thy guidance reconciled:

Hear for a maid a maiden's prayer,

And for a father hear a child!

Ave Maria!

Shoba – To Toussaint Louverture by William Wordsworth 

Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men! 

Whether the rural Milk-maid by her cow 

Sing in thy hearing, or thy head be now 

Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;-- 

O miserable Chieftain! where and when 

Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou 

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow: 

Though fallen Thyself, never to rise again, 

Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 

Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies; 

There’s not a breathing of the common wind 

That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; 

Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 

And love, and Man’s unconquerable mind.

Thomo – Rima LIII Volverán las oscuras golondrinas (Excerpt) by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

ORIGINAL SPANISH

Volverán las oscuras golondrinas

en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar,

y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales

jugando llamarán.

Pero aquéllas que el vuelo refrenaban

tu hermosura y mi dicha al contemplar,

aquéllas que aprendieron nuestros nombres...

ésas... ¡no volverán!

Volverán las tupidas madreselvas

de tu jardín las tapias a escalar,

y otra vez a la tarde, aún más hermosas,

sus flores se abrirán.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

The dark swallows will return

to hang their nests upon your balcony,

and once again, with beating wings,

will tap upon your windowpanes.

But those that paused in flight

to gaze upon your beauty and my happiness,

those that learned our very names...

those... will never return.

The thick honeysuckle vines will return

to climb the walls of your garden,

and once again, at evening, lovelier still,

their blossoms will unfold.

Zakia – WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant. By William Wordsworth

Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant

Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air

Of absence withers what was once so fair?

Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant—

Bound to thy service with unceasing care,

The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant

For nought but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak— though this soft warm heart, once free to hold

A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,

Be left more desolate, more dreary cold

Than a forsaken bird’s-nest filled with snow

‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine—

Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon — July 24, 2026

2026-07-27T14:45:24.511+05:30

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time - first edition 2003 by David Fickling Books,UK

Mark Haddon’s Novel concerns a boy named Christopher Boone whose mind functions far outside the typical norm. He is labelled as ‘neurodivergent.’

Neurodivergence is an umbrella term used to describe people whose brains process, learn, or experience the world differently than what is considered typical.

Instead of treating these differences as flaws or illnesses to be "cured," the Neurodivergence concept views them as natural variations in human brain function – much like biodiversity in an ecosystem. This idea accords with the modern trend of accommodating everyone into society and finding a place for them. Here are some definitions from an AI app, Gemini.

Common Types of Neurodivergence

Neurodivergence isn't a medical diagnosis itself, but rather a category that includes several specific conditions and traits:

Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC): Differences in social communication, processing sensory information, and deep, focused interests.
ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder): Variations in executive function, impulse control, focus, and energy management.
Dyslexia, Dyscalculia & Dysgraphia: Specific learning differences that affect reading, processing numbers, or writing.
Dyspraxia (DCD): Differences in motor coordination, spatial awareness, and planning physical movements.
Tourette Syndrome: Neurological conditions involving involuntary physical or vocal movements (tics).

Mark Haddon has explained that the novel was sparked by a single, vivid visual image rather than a fully formed plot:

A dog lying dead on a front lawn with a garden fork thrust through it so deeply that the fork entered the earth and remained standing upright.

At the time, Haddon was trying to write a new novel and sat down to write three entirely different opening paragraphs without knowing where any of them would lead. The image of the dead dog with the upright garden fork was one of those three experiments.

Original Cover of the Novel shows the scene that triggered the novel

As he wrote it, he began imagining who would find this dog and how that person would react to the scene. That train of thought led directly to the creation of the narrator, Christopher Boone, a teenager who sees the world with intense logic, order, and detachment. He is possessed of a different sort of mind than normal people. What began as a striking image for Haddon became the opening line and trigger incident of the entire book.

One of the creatures that provides a stand-in for the human friendship missed by Christopher is a pet rat, named Toby. Here is a picture:

Christopher and his pet rat Toby

Lastly here is a collage of Collage of Five Famous Persons who may have been Autistic by the modern definition.

Collage of Five Famous Persons who may have been Autistic

Top Left: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830 – 1886), Poet

Top Right: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791), Composer

Center: Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727), Mathematician and Physicist

Bottom Left: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902 – 1984) , Physicist

Bottom Right: Steven Paul Jobs (1955 – 2011), Computer Entrepreneur

Full Account and Record of the Reading Session

Shoba – Mark Haddon Bio

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Haddon)

Mark Haddon, the author, born 1962

Mark Haddon (born September 26, 1962) is an English author, illustrator, and poet best known for his multiple award-winning 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He lives and works in Oxford, England. Mark Haddon is the same age as Shoba. His father was an architect. They were not very rich, but he was sent to a very posh private boarding school, which he doesn't seem to have liked it very much. He was bullied there.

After school, he went to Oxford. When he graduated he tried to do a nine-to-five job, but that only lasted three weeks. He found he couldn't work for anybody. That realisation motivated him to try something better. Thus he became an illustrator for magazines and children's books. Meanwhile, he was also writing children's books., but was not entirely comfortable writing for children and illustrating.

Eventually he started to write for adults and that he felt could become his career. Before he wrote this book, he discarded five novels because he was not happy with the way they were shaping up.

Mark Haddon has done some work with children with special needs, and he's worked in prisons, just going there and speaking with them.

When he came to write this book, he asked himself what would be a good opening scene for a novel. He wrote three. In one of the scenes, there was a dog on a lawn with a garden fork thrust through it. He wrote that scene, and he laughed to himself. His wife asked him, “What are you laughing at?” He says that that scene implied a story that was both dark and vivid, and to him, quite funny.

He had to find someone who would describe that scene in a way that was gripping and darkly amusing. He waited, needing a voice. Then Christopher turned up as the owner of that voice. That's how this novel came to be.

The book itself is about a ‘neurodivergent’ person, which is how we refer to people who think and behave differently than ‘normal’ people. Such people like to live in very organised routine. They do not like their routine to be broken in any way.

Something forces the neurodivergent boy in the novel to break that routine – it's the death of his dog. He's forced out of his reticence. He discovers something about his family and then circumstances force him to take a trip to London. Many things happen to him in that journey, to force him out of his comfortable routine.

This book, actually reminded Shoba of a Malayalam movie, 24 North Kaadam. In that movie, Farhad Faisal plays a neurodivergent person. He's ‘on the spectrum’ and also has OCD. He's working in an IT firm. He's forced to step out of the office routine and make a trip by train for a presentation to a client. There's hartal and the train journey is blocked and he has to step off the train with two others and somehow find his way back. The whole journey he makes is hilarious. It reveals a lot about him and his growth, which resulted from this journey. Do watch it if you can on the Hotstar streaming platform.

More bout this author. He had COVID and then he had long COVID. Hence, for years he suffered from the after-effects of COVID. He's written other books for adults:

A Spot of Bother (2006)

The Red House (2012)

The Pier Falls (2016)

The Porpoise (2019)

Social Distance (graphic short story, 2020)

Dogs and Monsters (2024)

Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour (2026)

Besides this novel Shoba has read The Porpoise and The Pier Falls.

One can spot neurodivergent people because they stand out. The opposite is neurotypical, I.e. ordinary folks like you and me.

What is a typical brain? We are able to pretend to be typical. That's it. If you can pretend, you're good enough to be called ‘typical.’

Neurodivergent people are just not able to do that because they're a little too genuine, so they can't really pretend. Nowadays there are more diagnoses of neurodivergent people than earlier, when they were just labelled as ‘odd’ or weird or something like that. There's more understanding now.

If you're very divergent (there are some people who are on that cusp), people will notice something just slightly off – we would have seen quite a few people like that if you think back to your school days.

Nowadays they would be labelled as ‘autistic’ or at least ‘on the spectrum.’ ‘Masking’ is when you are able to hide this strangeness. They find strategies to cope.

There inclusive education available now; it's a big thing. Most schools have these odd children in the same class and there are resource rooms for such students and acceptance of them.

That also helps. Even this guy, Christopher, when he knows what his problem is, he knows that the red colour he has to see or this yellow colour will trouble him.

Once they are aware of what it is, it helps. There's a kind of a math problem, said Shoba, about those three doors and, you pick one door and you get a gift. How on earth do you know, if you change your choice, then you stand a better chance of winning? But apparently, mathematically, it's been worked out that it's better to shift your choice.

Glenn's (who is Glen?) son had something like this, when he was very young, this guy knew everything about the solar system and he was smart in his studies, but he didn't have a single friend. He couldn't go out and they would send him to a shop or something. He couldn't do all the social mixing, but was very good in his studies. Now, he's become an engineer, graduating from the Manipal Institute of Technology.

Who's son was that? She used to manage Fab India, Archana Nandal. Neel, her son had some issues like this, but today he's an engineer from Manipal.

There is a book of John Grisham, The Rainmaker. Do you mean Rain Man? – asked KumKum. No, not Rainman. John Grisham's The Rainmaker is a classic underdog story about Rudy Baylor, a young, broke Memphis lawyer who passes the bar and stumbles onto a multibillion-dollar insurance fraud case. He takes on a ruthless corporate giant that denied life-saving medical coverage to a dying leukemia patient.

Rain Man is a good movie, right? Rain Man (1988) is an acclaimed comedy-drama directed by Barry Levinson. It stars Tom Cruise as a selfish car dealer and Dustin Hoffman as his autistic savant brother, Raymond. The cross-country road trip film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In that movie, Dustin Hoffman's character is neurodivergent.

And there is a Shah Rukh Khan movie also, where he enacts Asperger's syndrome.

And then, of course, Aamir Khan, has done movies featuring uniquely gifted people. In Taare Zameen Par Ishaan is criticised by his parents for his poor academic performance and is sent away to a boarding school. Ram, an art teacher, however, realises Ishaan has dyslexia and helps him uncover his potential. Dyslexia is some form of neurodivergence.

And then the other thing is a movie where the hero writes everything on his hands. That was the 2008 Bollywood hit Ghajini (and its 2005 Tamil original), which was an unauthorised remake of Christopher Nolan's 2000 breakthrough film, Memento. Both feature a protagonist with anterograde amnesia (short-term memory loss) who relies on notes, photos, and tattoos to hunt for his wife’s killer.

Priya mentioned that her late father, Col. Banwari Prasad Singh, used to write on his hands exactly like Aamir Khan in the movie. The family used to write it for him. That was very easy to accommodate because he would remember the names of the generals who fought in the 1971 Bangladesh War, and the generals in the 1962 India-China War – all that the family used to write for him. That was all he required. Otherwise, he was fine.

Priya has photographs of his hands with all that written. Priya gave us one of those photographs to illustrate:

Priya's father used to write important facts on the hand to remind himself

When you talk about dyslexia, there's Tom Holland in telemarkers. Tom Holland revealed that his heavy dyslexia is why he has turned down opportunities to host Saturday Night Live (SNL), explaining that he is petrified of reading live cue cards that can change on the spot. He was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 7.

KumKum

KumKum read from Chapter 29 where Christopher is confused by body language and metaphors.

Joe noted that Christopher is analysing things down to the very etymology of names and words. Neurodivergent people don't get nuances, said Saras.

Shoba remarked that he cannot imagine – where is heaven? Is it in a black hole or is it past the black hole?

Just a small side-story here, said KumKum. She wonders whether her husband, Joe, is neurodivergent too. In their family gatherings, there will be talks going on. Joe doesn't ever get the nuances, family fights, family jealousy, nothing is apparent to him. Afterwards when KumKum mentions something, he will remark, “They didn't say that, how did you get it?”

Saras exclaimed, “My husband was exactly the same. He just could not understand. He would ask: why don't they say it if they mean that? When they say something and you're supposed to understand something else.” (Laughter)

Joe would come back, and if KumKum asked “Joe, didn't get it?” He would say, “No, they did not say it. They never said anything like that.” No implications for him, the things has to be said directly, if people mean it.

Priya

Priya read the scene where Christopher discovers from the letter, his mother was not dead as his father had told him.

The passage is almost a climax. It's a turning point because the story is about him investigating the murder of a dog and then about his mother's leaving.

He was given to understand by his father that his mother was dead. That's what he knows. He's been told that his mother was unwell and she was hospitalised and died.

But he comes upon the letters which his mother wrote to him and they're all dated after the supposed date when she died. Then he realises that she's alive; it comes as a shock to him and the story takes another turn from there.

Chapter 157, from which Priya read is of course, not the 157th chapter, but the next in the sequence of prime numbers he uses for his chapter numbering…

Christopher is writing a book.

The discovery must really have been very disturbing for him. Neurotypical people too would find it difficult. You feel sorry for the boy and for the father also. The father actually cared for him and didn't know what to do. He probably thought his son would be shattered to learn of the mother’s death – so he tried to mask the fact.

Why did he spear the dog, Priya wondered? That was such a cruel way to kill the dog.

Shoba said we don't know what happened between him and that lady next door. We don't know what happened there.

Very many people get irritated by poodles, said Shoba. It's a poodle, all right, but still very cruel.

The fact that he's written about a neurodivergent person, makes it a deep and sensitive book.

Saras has read about a family who have two sons, both = neurodivergent. They're coping: the mother lives separately, the father lives separately. Each of them looks after one child, because when both the kids are together, they are just not able to handle them. They set each other off. Imagine what some families are going through. If you think about it, OMG, what a life, for the parent and the child.

Zakia noted that here the mother really couldn't cope. Priya thought she had an anger problem. Why should she be the one to have to go through all this? Arundhaty observed that the mother felt she was not needed because Christopher always also called for his father.

She couldn't take his neglect. She probably just wasn't able to have the courage and patience to endure it all, thought Zakia.

But it's so nice in the end, that they somehow come together, not in a perfect way, perhaps noted Priya. It’s a nice story with a hopeful end and a good choice of novel by Shoba.

Joe

Joe chose from another prime numbered chapter, chapter 57, where Christopher demonstrates he likes order and proves that he's not a ‘spazzer’ (a spastic – derogatory term for an incompetent person) and starts writing this book.

Joe too likes order and that's why he chose the 15th prime numbered chapter, No. 47, because Christopher Boone is 15 years old and that's as logical as Christopher Boone would want a choice of reading passage to be, Joe guessed.

High achieving people with autism show some of the characteristics of Christopher.

They can be communicative, but not with everyone. They're mostly withdrawn and the great difficulty in making them contribute to society and exploit their talents stems from their inability to mix with others.

KumKum and Joe know a very good example of such a person whom they have observed since childhood, the son of a friend.

Now he has graduated with honours from the University of Maryland in computer science and he was able to break through his reticence by going to work in New York City. He was already facile in writing computer games and now has a company of his own in this business.

In this novel, you see that his teacher, Siobhan, has built trust with him. His active mind desires to get to the bottom of things and he employs that curiosity in tracing who killed his dog Wellington.

Toward the end of this passage, the origin of this novel is stated in the passage when Siobhan states, “Well, we're meant to be writing stories today”, and Christopher responded by starting to write this very novel.

Joe had not come across this word, ‘neurodivergent’, though he has known people with autism and autism is a very large, wide spectrum of people who have quite different characteristics at each end of the spectrum.

At one end, are the high-achieving people – an example comes from those who have studied the tics and foibles of Isaac Newton revealed in his biography. They that he was autistic, of course, at the high end.

Newton had some of these traits in the sense that he could get riled up about small things and he would engross himself in his work and forget the word around him. But, engrossing oneself in work is a sign of genius really, it's not really autism.

It marks people who can concentrate on a subject. In fact, Isaac Newton has a wonderful saying, which is the counterpart of his well-known saying that if he has seen so far and learned many things, it was because he stood on the shoulder of giants (i.e. other great men).

The counterpart of this was another statement of Newton that once he was on to something, then he could forget everything else. He used deep, single-minded focus to solve hard problems. He tuned out the world. He kept his mind fixed on one question for days or weeks. This extreme state of deep immersion helped him to see answers that other people never found.

And it was actually true, because his housekeeper said he could go for a couple of days without eating, without moving out of his room, without saying a word to anybody, but his mind was constantly churning and spinning away. To produce the kind of work that he did, which is everything from light to gravity to motion, making discoveries of the highest order, required this kind of concentration. And then to write it all down with mathematical precision in the Principia. He was one of those very wonderful minds that happen once in a century perhaps.

When you see people who are so-called high-achieving autistic people, you have to remember that there's a lot going on in their mind and you don't have the foggiest about it, and it's far deeper than what some term called neurotypical. The neurotypical can't even fathom that depth.

And then there are people at the other end who are the very low-achieving autistic people who don't have any of these gifts, they're mainly characterised by deficiencies in many respects.

Priya said IQ levels matter, that's how they test, a low IQ and a high IQ. Shoba said you can't test for neurodivergence by ordinary tests as in competitive exams. They don't communicate, so you can't test by such straightforward methods.

Priya typed neurotypical people as normal but everybody is normal in their own way. The parameters of normality are many – it means you're functioning normally and obeying the law, obeying societal conventions, and that sort of thing.

Joe said, “Thank God for people who don't function normally, because they are the people who really contribute in the end, at the high end of the autistic spectrum.”

This ‘normal’ is something that society says – it could be so different in different places. So who's to say? Priya said she knows a very high achieving person.

According to Shoba you are adjusting your behaviour to become a typical person in the society in order to function.

So that is a part of you adjusting in the typical population. But these neurodivergent people are a bit exceptional, and this is quite obvious when you observe them; you know they are different, like the boy in this story, Chris.

Priya knows two high achieving people, but their personal cleanliness is rather wanting. What do you do then?

Priya said she has heard that Steve Jobs was an oddball too. When Je consulted Gemini on the matter this is what it disclosed about the Jobs:

“Steve Jobs was never formally diagnosed with autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) during his lifetime.

However, observers, neurodiversity advocates (such as Dr. Temple Grandin), and biographers have frequently noted that he exhibited several behavioral traits often associated with the autism spectrum:

Hyperfocus and Special Interests: Jobs possessed an extraordinary ability to intensely concentrate on single projects or ideas, often to the complete exclusion of outside distractions.
Extreme Obsession with Detail and Perfectionism: He was legendary for his uncompromising fixation on micro-details—from product design elements to internal circuitry layouts that customers would never see.
Social and Communication Challenges: In interpersonal settings, Jobs was known for direct, blunt, and sometimes confrontational communication. He struggled with small talk, often lacked social filter or empathy in executive interactions, and viewed situations in stark "black-and-white" terms.
Rigid Adherence to Routines or Preferences: He maintained strict personal habits, including specialized fruitarian diets, wearing identical daily attire (black turtleneck, jeans, New Balance sneakers), and adhering to rigid design ideals.”

Zakia said they're not aware of their body, they're not able to connect their body to their mind – that is what she understood about autism.

Saras has learned from a Special Ed teacher that you have to teach a lot of social habits, as Siobhan does, Christopher’s teacher or mentor. She's teaching him many things, which is evident in the passage KumKum read.

The teacher told Saras you have to tell them repeatedly about good social habits. There was a child she was counselling, who would pick her nose and things like that, which is socially taboo.

The other children in the class refused to sit near this child, because she would pick her nose and she'd touch them all the time and do odd things. The other children used to find it very yucky, so she had to be told that you cannot do that.

These little things, these cues, they have to be taught, said Saras. They don't have the social awareness and don't relate to these kinds of things.

Normally parents teach you these things as you are growing up, said Arundhaty; they teach you how to eat, not to open your mouth too wide, and how to speak.

Saras maintained that a lot of the normal kids pick up from cues from parents, but the autistic children are not able to do that, so they have to be specifically and repeatedly told. That is the difference.

Saras

Saras read from Chapter 61, the 18th prime number so really Chapter 18 in normal books. Christopher ponders about God, Death and Black Holes and what happens to the body after death

When Christopher is thinking about death he's literal so he can't understand where heaven is and what is God – not that normal people understand it either, but they pretend they do.

When Joe suggested this little passage it was one of the few, Saras had marked out.

Chris discusses everything in a physical materialistic manner. Scientifically what happens to you when you die, has been the subject of discussion on the Web. When your body is cremated the atoms never die, so it just mixes up and disintegrates and takes on other forms as a result of chemical reactions.

Saras was recalling exactly what one can read on the World Wide Web. Chris is narrating that. What does happen to the atoms of the body upon death? Is matter lost or is it transformed? Gemini was a bit coy about answering, but DeepSeek with volunteered this straightaway:

“To answer your questions directly: No, matter is not lost. The atoms of your body are transformed—they break apart, rearrange, and disperse back into the environment to become part of other living and non-living things.

This is governed by the Law of Conservation of Mass, which states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another.

Here is exactly what happens to the body's atoms, step-by-step, from the moment of death to millions of years in the future.

Phase 1: The Immediate Aftermath (Minutes to Hours) When the heart stops, blood flow ceases. Without oxygen, the cells’ mitochondria can no longer produce ATP (energy). The sodium-potassium pumps in cell membranes fail, causing cells to flood with calcium and water. The atoms themselves don't change, but the chemical bonds holding complex molecules together begin to break down. Enzymes (which are proteins) start digesting the cell structures from the inside out—a process called autolysis.

Phase 2: Decomposition and the Great Dispersal (Days to Years) This is where the atoms truly begin their transformation.

Bacteria take over: The trillions of bacteria that lived harmlessly in your gut and skin no longer have an immune system to stop them. They begin consuming your soft tissues (muscles, organs, skin). They break down complex organic molecules (proteins, fats, carbohydrates) into simpler molecules like carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia.
Gases escape: These gases build up pressure and eventually diffuse out of the body or escape through ruptured skin. The carbon and hydrogen atoms in your body literally float away into the atmosphere as gas.
Liquids seep out: As cells rupture, water and dissolved minerals (ions like sodium, potassium, and calcium) leach into the surrounding soil (if buried) or evaporate into the air.
Scavengers and insects: Flies, beetles, and larger scavengers consume tissues, incorporating your atoms into their own bodies. When they defecate, die, or are eaten, those atoms move further up or down the food chain.

Phase 3: The Bones and Teeth (Years to Centuries) Soft tissue decomposes relatively quickly, but bones and teeth are made of dense minerals—primarily calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate. These atoms are much more stable.

If buried, groundwater slowly dissolves the mineral crystals over decades or centuries, carrying the calcium and phosphate atoms into the soil, where plant roots will absorb them.
If cremated, the extreme heat (1400°F+) forces the organic carbon atoms to bond with oxygen and escape as CO2 gas. The remaining mineral atoms (calcium, phosphate) form "cremains"—a dry, sterile ash that is chemically identical to rock dust. Even then, rain and wind will eventually weather these ash particles down, dispersing the atoms into the soil or water.

Phase 4: The Ultimate Transformation (Years to Eons) Once your atoms are in the soil, water, and air, they are entirely at the mercy of Earth's geochemical cycles:

The Carbon Cycle: The carbon atoms from your proteins and fats that escaped as CO2 or methane will be absorbed by plants through photosynthesis, or dissolved into the ocean to form carbonic acid (which marine life uses to build shells).
The Nitrogen Cycle: The nitrogen atoms from your DNA and amino acids are converted by soil bacteria into nitrates, which are essential fertilisers for new plant growth.
The Water Cycle: The hydrogen and oxygen atoms that made up 60% of your body evaporate, form clouds, and fall as rain, eventually being drunk by animals or absorbed by tree roots.
The Deep Earth: A tiny fraction of your heavier atoms (like iron, magnesium, and trace metals) might be buried deep underground. Over millions of years, under extreme heat and pressure, they could become part of sedimentary rock, fossil fuels, or even, over tectonic timescales, be pushed into the Earth's mantle and recycled into volcanic magma.

So, where do "you" go? 

Every single atom that makes up your body today has existed since the Big Bang (hydrogen) or was forged in the hearts of ancient stars (carbon, oxygen, iron). When you die, you are simply returning those borrowed atoms to the universal pool.

Within about a year (for soft tissue) to a few decades (for bones), roughly 99% of the atoms that were once "you" will have been absorbed into new life—the grass, the trees, the worms, the bacteria, and even the crops that feed other humans. As the famous quote by astronomer Carl Sagan goes, “We are made of star stuff.” In death, we become “earth stuff,” ensuring that the matter of your body will go on to form the leaves of a forest, the shells of sea creatures, and the cells of future generations for billions of years to come.”

Chris has a very logical mind and he is aware of the above fragment of knowledge. You can call him neurodivergent and so on, but actually Chris has a very scientific understanding of death. Namely, that that the matter of the body decomposes, and is transformed in a cycle that can take millennia but goes back to form the constituents of the Earth.

How do you hold the notion of God in your mind? That’s a whole different question.

Zakia

Zakia read from chapter 113. Since The 30th prime is 113, it I really Chapter 30.

This chapter is Chris’ memory of his mother. There is a deep connect with his mother; as Saras noted, he does think about how his mother would have gone to heaven. He doesn't react to anything, he's just going about his life, day to day, but in his mind, he has an image of how his mother has gone to heaven and he retains her in his memory.

Christopher can replay any scene from the past in his mind and sometimes it can frighten him.

Zakia noted how exact is the description Chris provides about his mother reading to him and the colour of her towel. He has beautifully recorded everything in his memory, all the details and it's like this whole book has been written with the words that just poured out as he was thinking. There are so many ‘ands’ and long sentences. It’s not written, carefully composed and edited, but more like his thoughts are just spilling out continuously as they come to his mind. The details like the name of the book she was reading – it’s all etched in his memory clearly, the date, that it was a Saturday, etc.. This is how his mind worked, it was so logical and his memory was photographic. Everything was temporally ordered in his mind and he could just play it back like a tape recorder.

Saras noted his mother is very matter-of-fact in comforting him – she just says there are no sharks in Cornwall, that is the only thing that would logically convince Christopher, she knows. Arundhaty observed that both the parents were very sensitive about his condition and both knew how they should respond to him because they understood the way his mind worked. They may have had issues with each other; however, they really understood Christopher and loved him.

It's quite understandable that the parents have issues with each other, thought Zakia. This is usual with parents, and imagine handling a situation like this, which needs so much patience and understanding.

Shoba mentioned the mother taking him shopping when he just falls to the floor and starts screaming, What do you do in such extreme situations? That was what made her break down.

Arundhaty

Arundhaty chose the part when Christopher discovers that his mother is alive. He’s afraid of his father now because his father lied to him and for him, lying was something that he could not understand or overlook – he could not trust his father any more and he was fearful for himself because he felt that the father would in some way betray him again.

He tries various stratagems; he goes out of the house and hides here and there, and he spends the night outside and he debates about what he should do, who he should go to and so on.

There's a long section before this where he goes to different houses and considers what is to be done. For a person like him it would have been difficult to figure out what his options were, and how to decide to do next.

Christopher in the passage is trying to gather his inner strength. He wants to become strong and logically figure out what to do.

Surmounting the train journey was a mental game he had played, and he learned how to catch a train, and how to go to the station.

Shoba

Shoba’s reading was about Christopher’s journey to London by train; his pet rat Toby escapes and he has to jump down on the rails to try and save it.

Toby is his pet but it's more than a pet because he doesn't have any friends. He just has parents and a teacher he has grown to trust, and that's it.

His world is just those people and this pet makes up for lack of friends; whatever he might get from a friendship he derives from this animal. He doesn't talk, and hardly communicates with people.

Therefore the pet relationship was very important and he's made the journey with the rat in his pocket, and on his way to London and something happens and he falls onto the rails. So, he just jumps down and his only thought is to save the rat. He doesn't think of the danger to himself.

It's a scene of action. At some point he waits at the station for nearly five hours. He just sits there and doesn't move.

From his description you can imagine visually those diamond patterns on the socks of his rescuer, said Zakia – the man is pulling him, you can just see that too from the exact description.

Shoba agreed that the author writes in a graphic manner where each scene is pictured as the neurodivergent boy sees it in his mind, in exquisite detail.

The author has written it very well, said Arundhaty.

Shoba noted there is something in the book; even though it doesn't have rich prose – there is something about the description of events that makes the story very powerful.

You see the tape recorder of his mind unravelling, according to Zakia. It's like taking a walk through his mind, and observing how it's working.

Shoba has read that for Mark Haddon, the author, when writing a story, the architecture of the space is very important to him. He has to see the room and everything in the precise layout.

For example in this house where the father shouts from the bottom of the stairs, the author has to visualise exactly where the stairs are and this boy's room and the father's room. Haddon has to have the plan of the house in his mind when he's writing – that’s very important to him.

Collected Readings

KumKum Ch 29 – Christopher is confused by body language and metaphors

I find people confusing.

This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean "I want to do sex with you" and it can also mean "I think that what you just said was very stupid."

Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry, and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you said just before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out in a few seconds.

The second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors. These are examples of metaphors

I laughed my socks off.

He was the apple of her eye.

They had a skeleton in the cupboard.

We had a real pig of a day.

The dog was stone dead.

The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words (which means from one place to another) and φϵρϵɩν (which means to carry), and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.

I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining an apple in someone's eye doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.

My name is a metaphor. It means carrying Christ and it comes from the Greek word 𝜒⍴ɩ𝛔το𝛔 (which means Christ) and and it was the name given to St. Christopher because he carried Jesus Christ across a river.

This makes you wonder what he was called before he carried Christ across the river. But he wasn't called anything because this is an apocryphal story, which means that it is a lie, too.

Mother used to say that it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.

Joe Ch 47 – Christopher likes Order and proves he is not a ‘spazzer’ and starts writing this book

In the bus on the way to school next morning we passed 4 red cars in a row, which meant that it was a Good Day, so I decided not to be sad about Wellington.

Mr. Jeavons, the psychologist at the school, once asked me why 4 red cars in a row made it a Good Day, and 3 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 red cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and why 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day when I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks. He said that I was clearly a very logical person, so he was surprised that I should think like this because it wasn't very logical.

I said that I liked things to be in a nice order. And one way of things being in a nice order was to be logical. Especially if those things were numbers or an argument. But there were other ways of putting things in a nice order. And that was why I had Good Days and Black Days.

Mr. Jeavons said that I was a very clever boy. I said that I wasn't clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn't clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like the universe expanding, or who committed a murder.

Mr. Jeavons asked me whether this made me feel safe, having things always in a nice order, and I said it did. Then he asked if I didn't like things changing. And I said I wouldn't mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example.

He asked whether I wanted to become an astronaut and I said I did. He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders.

Terry, who is the older brother of Francis, who is at the school, said I would only ever get a job collecting supermarket trollies or cleaning out donkey shit at an animal sanctuary and they didn't let spazzers drive rockets that cost billions of pounds. Terry is stupid, so quod erat demonstrandum, which is Latin for which is the thing that was going to be proved, which means thus it is proved.

I'm not a spazzer, which means spastic, not like Francis, who is a spazzer, and even though I probably won't become an astronaut, I am going to go to university and study mathematics, or physics, or physics and mathematics (which is a Joint Honor School), because I like mathematics and physics and I'm very good at them.

But this is what is called a digression, and now I am going to go back to the fact that it was a Good Day. Because it was a Good Day I decided that I would try and find out who killed Wellington because a Good Day is a day for projects and planning things.

When I said this to Siobhan she said, "Well, we're meant to be writing stories today, so why don't you write about finding Wellington and going to the police station." And that is when I started writing this. (594 words)

Saras Chapter 61 – Christopher ponders about God, Death and Black Holes and what happens to the body after death

Mrs. Forbes at school said that when Mother died she had gone to heaven. That was because Mrs. Forbes is very old and she believes in heaven. And she wears tracksuit trousers because she says that they are more comfortable than normal trousers. And one of her legs is very slightly shorter than the other one because of an accident on a motorbike.

But when Mother died she didn't go to heaven because heaven doesn't exist.

Mrs. Peters's husband is a vicar called the Reverend Peters, and he comes to our school sometimes to talk to us, and I asked him where heaven was and he said, "It's not in our universe. It's another kind of place altogether."

The Reverend Peters makes a funny ticking noise with his tongue sometimes when he is thinking. And he smokes cigarettes and you can smell them on his breath and I don't like this.

I said that there wasn't anything outside the universe and there wasn't another kind of place altogether.

Except that there might be if you went through a black hole, but a black hole is what is called a singularity, which means it is impossible to find out what is on the other side because the gravity of a black hole is so big that even electromagnetic waves like light can't get out of it, and electromagnetic waves are how we get information about things which are far away. And if heaven was on the other side of a black hole, dead people would have to be fired into space on rockets to get there, and they aren't or people would notice.

I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.

The Reverend Peters said, "Well, when I say that heaven is outside the universe it's really just a manner of speaking. I suppose what it really means is that they are with God."

And I replied, "But where is God?"

And the Reverend Peters said that we should talk about this on another day when he had more time.

What actually happens when you die is that your brain stops working and your body rots, like Rabbit did when he died and we buried him in the earth at the bottom of the garden. And all his molecules were broken down into other molecules and they went into the earth and were eaten by worms and went into the plants and if we go and dig in the same place in 10 years there will be nothing except his skeleton left. And in 1,000 years even his skeleton will be gone. But that is all right because he is a part of the flowers and the apple tree and the hawthorn bush now.

When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.

But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral. But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere. (618 words)

Zakia Ch 113 – Christopher can replay any scene from the past in his mind and sometimes it can frighten him

My memory is like a film. That is why I am really good at remembering things, like the conversations I have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like, because my memory has a smelltrack which is like a soundtrack.

And when people ask me to remember something I can simply press Rewind and Fast Forward and Pause like on a video recorder, but more like a DVD player because I don't have to Rewind through everything in between to get to a memory of something a long time ago. And there are no buttons, either, because it is happening in my head.

If someone says to me, "Christopher, tell me what your mother was like," I can Rewind to lots of different scenes and say what she was like in those scenes.

For example, I could Rewind to 4 July 1992 when I was 9 years old, which was a Saturday, and we were on holiday in Cornwall and in the afternoon we were on the beach in a place called Polperro. And Mother was wearing a pair of shorts made out of denim and a light blue bikini top and she was smoking cigarettes called Consulate which were mint flavor. And she wasn't swimming. Mother was sunbathing on a towel which had red and purple stripes and she was reading a book by Georgette Heyer called The Masqueraders. And then she finished sunbathing and went into the water to swim and she said, "Bloody Nora, it's cold." And she said I should come and swim, too, but I don't like swimming because I don't like taking my clothes off. And she said I should just roll up my trousers and walk into the water a little way, so I did. And I stood in the water. And Mother said, "Look. It's lovely." And she jumped backward and disappeared under the water and I thought a shark had eaten her and I screamed and she stood up out of the water again and came over to where I was standing and held up her right hand and spread her fingers out in a fan and said, "Come on, Christopher, touch my hand. Come on now. Stop screaming. Touch my hand. Listen to me, Christopher. You can do it." And after a while I stopped screaming and I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other and Mother said, "It's OK, Christopher. It's OK. There aren't any sharks in Cornwall," and then I felt better.

Devika Chapter 149 – Christopher opens an envelope containing a letter for him from his ‘deceased’ mother

And that was when I saw the envelope.

It was an envelope addressed to me and it was lying under my book in the shirt box with some other envelopes. I picked it up. It had never been opened. It said

Christopher Boone

36 Randolph Street

Swindon

Wiltshire

Then I noticed that there were lots of other envelopes and they were all addressed to me. And this was interesting and confusing.

And then I noticed how the words Christopher and Swindon were written. They were written like this

I only know 3 people who do little circles instead of dots over the letter i. And one of them is Siobhan, and one of them was Mr. Loxely, who used to teach at the school, and one of them was Mother.

And then I heard Father opening the front door, so I took one envelope from under the book and I put the lid back on the shirt box and I put the toolbox back on top of it and I closed the cupboard door really carefully.

Then Father called out, "Christopher?"

I said nothing because he might be able to hear where I was calling from. I stood up and walked around the bed to the door, holding the envelope, trying to make as little noise as possible.

Father was standing at the bottom of the stairs and I thought he might see me, but he was flicking through he post which had come that morning so his head was pointing downward. Then he walked away from the foot of the stairs toward the kitchen and I closed the door of his room very quietly and went into my own room.

I wanted to look at the envelope but I didn't want to make Father angry, so I hid the envelope underneath my mattress. Then I walked downstairs and said hello to Father.

And he said, "So, what have you been up to today, young man?"

And I said, "Today we did Life Skills with Mrs. Gray. Which was Using Money and Public Transport.

And I had tomato soup for lunch, and 5 apples. And I practiced some maths in the afternoon and we went for a walk in the park with Mrs. Peters and collected leaves for making collages."

And Father said, "Excellent, excellent. What do you fancy for chow tonight?" Chow is food.

I said I wanted baked beans and broccoli.

And Father said, "I think that can be very easily arranged."

Then I sat on the sofa and I read some more of the book I was reading called Chaos by James Gleick.

Then I went into the kitchen and had my baked beans and broccoli while Father had sausages and eggs and fried bread and a mug of tea.

Then Father said, "I'm going to put those shelves up in the living room, if that's all right with you. I'll make a bit of a racket, I'm afraid, so if you want to watch television we're going to have to shift it upstairs."

And I said, "I'll go and be on my own in my room."

And he said, "Good man."

And I said, "Thank you for supper," because that is being polite.

And he said, "No problem, kiddo."

And I went up to my room.

And when I was in my room I shut the door and I took out the envelope from underneath my mattress. I held the letter up to the light to see if I could detect what was inside the envelope, but the paper of the envelope was too thick. I wondered whether I should open the envelope because it was something I had taken from Father's room. But then I reasoned that it was addressed to me so it belonged to me so it was OK to open it.

So I opened the envelope.

Inside there was a letter.

And this was what was written in the letter

Priya Ch 157 – Christopher discovers from the letter, his mother was not dead as his father had told him.

Then I stopped reading the letter because I felt sick.

Mother had not had a heart attack. Mother had not died. Mother had been alive all the time. And Father had lied about this.

I tried really hard to think if there was any other explanation but I couldn't think of one. And then I couldn't think of anything at all because my brain wasn't working properly.

I felt giddy. It was like the room was swinging from side to side, as if it was at the top of a really tall building and the building was swinging backward and forward in a strong wind (this is a simile, too). But I knew that the room couldn't be swinging backward and forward, so it must have been something which was happening inside my head.

I rolled onto the bed and curled up in a ball.

My stomach hurt.

I don't know what happened then because there is a gap in my memory, like a bit of the tape had been erased. But I know that a lot of time must have passed because later on, when I opened my eyes again, I could see that it was dark outside the window. And I had been sick because there was sick all over the bed and on my hands and arms and face.

But before this I heard Father coming into the house and calling out my name, which is another reason why I know a lot of time had passed.

And it was strange because he was calling, "Christopher. . . ? Christopher. . . ?" and I could see my name written out as he was saying it. Often I can see what someone is saying written out like it is being printed on a computer screen, especially if they are in another room. But this was not on a computer screen. I could see it written really large, like it was on a big advert on the side of a bus. And it was in my mother's handwriting, like this

And then I heard Father come up the stairs and walk into the room.

He said, "Christopher, what the hell are you doing?" And I could tell that he was in the room, but his voice sounded tiny and far away, like people's voices sometimes do when I am groaning and I don't want them to be near me.

And he said, "What the fuck are you. . . ? That's my cupboard, Christopher. Those are. . . Oh shit. . . Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit."

Then he said nothing for a while.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder and moved me onto my side and he said, "Oh Christ." But it didn't hurt when he touched me, like it normally does. I could see him touching me, like I was watching a film of what was happening in the room, but I could hardly feel his hand at all. It was just like the wind blowing against me.

And then he was silent again for a while.

Then he said, "I'm sorry, Christopher. I'm so, so sorry."

Then he said, "You read the letters."

Then I could hear that he was crying because his breath sounded all bubbly and wet, like it does when someone has a cold and they have lots of snot in their nose.

Then he said, "I did it for your good, Christopher. Honestly I did. I never meant to lie. I just thought. . . I just thought it was better if you didn't know. . . that. . . that. . . I didn't mean to . . . I was going to show them to you when you were older."

Then he was silent again.

Then he said, "It was an accident."

Then he was silent again.

Then he said, "I didn't know what to say. . . I was in such a mess . . . She left a note and. . . Then she rang and. . . I said she was in hospital because. . . because I didn't know how to explain. It was so complicated.

So difficult. And I. . . I said she was in hospital. And I know it wasn't true. But once I'd said that. . . I couldn't. . . I couldn't change it. Do you understand. . . Christopher. . . ? Christopher. . . ? It just. . . It got out of control and I wish. . ."

Then he was silent for a really long time.

Arundhaty Ch 179 – By a process of elimination Christopher decides he has to go and live with his mother in far away London by taking a train.

And then I had to work out what to do.

And I did this by thinking of all the things I could do and deciding whether they were the right decision or not.

I decided that I couldn't go home again.

And I decided that I couldn't go and live with Siobhan because she couldn't look after me when school was closed because she was a teacher and not a friend or a member of my family.

And I decided that I couldn't go and live with Uncle Terry because he lived in Sunderland and I didn’t know how to get to Sunderland and I didn't like Uncle Terry because he smoked cigarettes and stroked my hair.

And I decided I couldn't go and live with Mrs. Alexander because she wasn't a friend or a member of my family even if she had a dog, because I couldn't stay overnight in her house or use her toilet because she had used it and she was a stranger.

And then I thought that I could go and live with Mother because she was my family and I knew where she lived because I could remember the address from the letters, which was 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG. Except that she lived in London and I'd never been to London before. I'd only been to Dover to go to France, and to Sunderland to visit Uncle Terry and to Manchester to visit Aunt Ruth, who had cancer, except she didn't have cancer when I was there. And I had never been anywhere apart from the shop at the end of the road on my own. And the thought of going somewhere on my own was frightening.

But then I thought about going home again, or staying where I was, or hiding in the garden every night and Father finding me, and that made me feel even more frightened. And when I thought about that I felt like I was going to be sick again like I did the night before.

And then I realized that there was nothing I could do which felt safe. And I made a picture of it in my head like this

And then I imagined crossing out all the possibilities which were impossible, which is like in a maths exam when you look at all the questions and you decide which ones you are going to do and which ones

you are not going to do and you cross out all the ones which you are not going to do because then your decision is final and you can't change your mind. And it was like this

Which meant that I had to go to London to live with Mother. And I could do it by going on a train because I knew all about trains from the train set, how you looked at the timetable and went to the station and bought a ticket and looked at the departure board to see if your train was on time and then you went to the right platform and got on board. And I would go from Swindon station, where Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson stop for lunch when they are on their way to Ross from Paddington in The Boscombe Valley Mystery.

And then I looked at the wall on the opposite side of the little passage down the side of Mrs. Shears's house where I was sitting and there was the circular lid of a very old metal pan leaning against the wall. And it was covered in rust. And it looked like the surface of a planet because the rust was shaped like countries and continents and islands.

And then I thought how I could never be an astronaut.

Shoba Ch 227 – On the journey to London by train, his pet rat Toby escapes and Christopher has to jump down on the rails to try and save it.

And then I saw Toby, and he was also in the lower-down bit where the rails were, and I knew he was Toby because he was white and he had a brown egg shape on his back. So I climbed down off the concrete. And he was eating a bit of rubbish that was an old sweet paper. And someone shouted, "Jesus. What are you doing?"

And I bent down to catch Toby but he ran off. And I walked after him and I bent down again and I said, "Toby. . . Toby. . . Toby," and I held out my hand so that he could smell my hand and smell that it was me.

And someone said, "Get out of there, for fuck's sake," and I looked up and it was a man who was wearing a green raincoat and he had black shoes and his socks were showing and they were gray with little diamond patterns on them.

And I said, "Toby. . . Toby. . ." but he ran off again.

And the man with the diamond patterns on his socks tried to grab my shoulder, so I screamed. And then I heard the sound like sword fighting and Toby started running again, but this time he ran the other way, which was past my feet, and I grabbed at him and I caught him by the tail.

And the man with the diamond patterns on his socks said, "Oh Christ. Oh Christ."

And then I heard the roaring and I lifted Toby up and grabbed him with both hands and he bit me on my thumb and there was blood coming out and I shouted and Toby tried to jump out of my hands.

And then the roaring got louder and I turned round and I saw the train coming out of the tunnel and I was going to be run over and killed so I tried to climb up onto the concrete but it was high and I was holding Toby in both my hands.

And then the man with the diamond patterns on his socks grabbed hold of me and pulled me and I screamed, but he kept pulling me and he pulled me up onto the concrete and we fell over and I carried on screaming because he had hurt my shoulder. And then the train came into the station and I stood up and I ran to the bench again and I put Toby into the pocket inside my jacket and he went very quiet and he didn't move.