A la recherche du temps perdu.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Today is the eighth meeting of The Delhi Proustians, a club for Delhiwallas that discusses French novelist Marcel Proust. Every Monday evening for an hour we read his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time.

It is 7.14 pm and The Delhi Walla is comfortably seated with Marcel. The coffee house is crowded but my table is empty.

I show off my Proust, trying to say, “While you people are wasting your time in useless talk and bad coffee, I’m reading the world’s greatest post-modernist novel.”

[Yawn]

Reading Marcel is like a punishment.

[Looking at the watch]

The first volume has 610 pages. I’m on page 110. There are seven volumes.

[Requesting a steward to take my photo]

A sudden craving for Dickens.

Great Expectations.

Oliver Twist.

David Copperfield.

Abandon Marcel?

[Checking text messages on the mobile phone]

Turning to the book flap. It says, “… this huge and complex book is also a panoramic and richly comic portrait of France in the author’s lifetime, and a profound meditation on the nature of art, love, time, memory and death.”

I must carry on with Marcel Proust.

The ninth meeting of The Delhi Proustians takes place on 13 February, 2012.

Where Indian Coffee House (it has three seating spaces; enter the enclosed area that looks to Baba Khadak Singh Marg), Mohan Singh Place, near Hanuman Mandir, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Connaught Place Time 7 pm Nearest Metro Station Rajiv Chowk

Distractions

Passing thoughts

Messaging Marcel

Don’t talk, but read

I won’t ditch you Marcel