The Story Behind the Stories Somerset Maugham was one of the most travelled authors of his generation. He was born in France and lived there in luxury – his father was solicitor at the British embassy in Paris – till he lost both his parents at the age of twelve. He came to live with a prudish, self-seeking Uncle, his father’s brother, vicar of Whitstable, and his German wife, who, though not unkind, didn’t know how to be affectionate to a sensitive child. Till then French was his language. He had to adopt a new country as home, new people as guardians – an unwilling elderly couple, stern, and inept with children, of whom they have had none, and learn a new language to communicate. He felt an alien in a foreign land. He stammered. This disability further withheld him from social communion.  A poignant anecdote about his childhood illustrates his fear of ridicule and rebuke from strangers when he was young – ‘Tell him I stammer, Uncle,’ young Willie, as he was known, said to ...

“When you come down to brass tacks the value of a work of art depends on the artist’s personality.” W. Somerset Maugham   A book is not an inert squiggle of ink on paper. Every book has a soul which, to varying extent, reflects the writer's personality. Thus, reading a book, especially fiction, is an interaction between two personalities – reader’s and that of the book. Reader's past, present, failings, triumphs, fears, dreams, all colour the world that the words of the story evoke in his mind. No person is a mirror-image of another. Perhaps, this is why a story elicits widely different reactions among various readers. Outer world incessantly impacts and shapes the inner world of an individual, writer and reader, alike. No story can be read sans its geographic, cultural, and temporal context. These worlds, the inner and the outer, of the writer and the reader, come together in the act of reading. If they share some features, a powerful resonance is born that oscillat...

  Was universe born in a bang? Will it end one day in a crunch? Is man a product of evolution or the creation of an unfathomably profound being? How can human heart simultaneously shelter both: desolate miseries and eternal joys? Is human decision-making inherently rational or anecdotal? Will our species perish before does the earth? Are these queries lofty yet, futile preoccupations of an idle mind? Or do they highlight a distinguishing attribute of our species, the Homo Sapiens, man who knows? Origin of universe and life can be argued till there is none left standing, but knowledge could not have begun without a mind capable of thinking. And the language of thoughts is words. Human story must have begun with word. Words are the notes that produce the music of our mind called t houghts . Rob human mind of words and it is a spectre of a ghost stage complete with tanpura, tabla, sarangi, a musician; and a funereal silence.   I cannot date my love for books. The farthe...

When does a day begin? When does it end? Does dawn arrive with the distant blush of the dark sky? Or does it set in when a young sun hesitatingly appears at the horizon? Does the dwindling warmth announce a day’s demise, or does it linger till the last light is sucked out? Day is imperceptibly born in dawn and dissolves as furtively in dusk. Autumn unhurriedly begets winter. Winter disappears in spring. Spring after a protracted labour births summer that unbeknownst metamorphoses into autumn. When does life begin? Does the beat of foetus’ heart announce a new life? What about the three-day old embryo or a single-celled zygote after fertilization of the egg? Or each of the ova and the millions of sperm? Each of these throbs with potential of bringing forth a new life. Nature goes on cycling in its rhythm, ceaselessly and imperturbably. These relentless revolutions, pursued over eons, give rise to variations. Newer elements born with their unique cycles mingle in the grind of unive...