Cultures across the world find innocence an endearing aspect of personality. This is innocence in its meaning of ‘freedom from guile or cunning,’ a synonym for simplicity. But Innocence is also a euphemism for foolish naivety.   Graham Greene says in his 1956 novel The Quiet American  that in life one needs to be as much wary of innocence as of duplicity. I read the book more than two decades ago. I found in the character of the protagonist, a most skillful portrait of innocence ever drawn in literature. Over the years, details of the plot vanished from memory, but the poignance, the humour, and the tragedy of Alden Pyle remained and rose occasionally, whenever I came across similar themes in my readings. I read the book again, a few days back. My opinion that this is one of Greene’s finest was reaffirmed. Greene was war-correspondent of The Times , based in Vietnam in 1951-1954. He drew extensively on his experiences to lend verisimilitude to his story. The 1956 novel, ...

Words lie inert on the pages of a book. Process of reading breathes life into them – and the inanimate squiggle of ink on paper wakes up with vigour. Sensibilities and idiosyncrasies of a reader endow the same book with various lives in the minds of different readers. I am often astounded to discover that books which moved me to peaks of ecstasy or depths of gloom, have fallen off the conscience of other readers like water off a duck’s back. Way of looking at the world is shaped by our nature. No two natures are alike. Hence, a book cannot evoke mirror worlds in different minds. Reading a book is an experience like all else in life. Except that it is intensely personal, often involves heightened emotions and feelings, and changes the reader a little, although, only occasionally, and perhaps transiently. Philosophers and physicists do not accord time a prime role in a material world, but the world unfolds in our consciousness on a melody set by time. We experience life in its in...