City Reading – The Delhi Proustians XXV, Appetite Bakery Delhi Proustians by The Delhi Walla - July 30, 2012April 17, 20135 A la recherche du temps perdu. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Today is the 25th 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. Each week we meet in a new venue to dive into the atmosphere of Marcel’s novel. It is 7 pm and The Delhi Walla is at Appetite German Bakery in Paharganj. When I first arrived in Delhi a few years ago to work as a waiter in a hotel, this bakery was my shelter from life’s various dissatisfactions. I would come here with a book and dream of becoming a published author. Today, I am a published author of four slim guidebooks on Delhi. A new book will be published by Penguin India in November 2012. Still, there is no satisfaction. I want to meet the person I was when I first started coming to Paharganj. Would I like to go back in time by exchange places with that person? As a stock trader from Vasant Kunj joins me, and as we belatedly celebrate Marcel Proust’s birthday (10 July) by cutting a croissant, and as I start taking photos of the fellow Proustian, of Lost Time and of the croissant, I do not yet know that the 8 GB SDFC card in the camera would declare itself ‘seriously damaged’ the next day. The thousands of pictures stored in it would be erased mysteriously. The immediate past that I recorded as photographic images would be gone. The Sufi dargahs of Srinagar. The palaces of Rampur. The home-sick man I met outside Red Fort. Novelist Arundhati Roy whom I sighted sitting under an Amaltas. A fellow Proustian in Khan Market. The morning sight of Ghata Masjid. And this moment, too, which I am capturing through the camera. Nothing endures. One day a fire might destroy my library. I might be exiled from this city. If I could have foreseen the event of the next day, I would have re-read this passage by Proust: With a slow and rhythmical movement it led him first this way, then that, towards a state of happiness that was noble, unintelligible, and yet precise. And then suddenly, having reached a certain point from which he was preparing to follow it, after a momentary pause, abruptly it changed direction, and in a fresh movement, more rapid, fragile, melancholy, incessant, sweet, it bore him off with it towards new vistas. Then it vanished. But why feel the loss? One day I too will disintegrate. The 26th meeting of The Delhi Proustians will take place on 6 August 2012. The venue will be announced closer to that date. In search of lost time 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. FacebookX Related Related posts: City Notice – The Delhi Proustians XXV, Appetite Bakery City Reading – The Delhi Proustians XXVIII, Indian Coffee House City Notice – The Delhi Proustians XXIX, Outside Wenger’s City Reading – The Delhi Proustians XXXIII, GB Road City Reading – The Delhi Proustians XXXV, Mehrauli
I think you should call those images something fancy, like the “ceci n’est pas obscurite” series (after Magritte’s painting of that treacherous pipe).
Was a pleasure meeting you and liking the Proust you gave me..will update progress. Can’t say am unhappy the pics were lost. 😉 p.s. Am a stock Trader not Broker.