Authors, Ink Strokes and Myself

A friend of mine had recently started a thread online through the popular social media called facebook. The tagging thread reads like this:

The rules: copy this introduction then take fifteen minutes and try to list at least fifteen authors (poets included) off the top of your head who have influenced you in your life. Tag and share with fifteen of your friends including me, because I'm interested in seeing what authors you like, too.

I thought, it would be a great idea to type the names of the authors, their works and how their ink-strokes inspired my life, helping my eyes to look it the way I do today.

My love with books started from a very young age. Coming off the twinkling stars and the black sheep to the childhood of Tom Sawyer, where I took the flight on a journey through the world of books, taking me through the pages, flapping in the breeze of age and time on that old recliner in the corner of my room warrants those wonder years...

1) Mark Twain: His character in Tom painted the picture of a quite countryside where the boys used to play their tricks in the dust of nature. I grew up as a single child. Didn't have much time to play in the locality, as most were above my age to be with me. So, books were my faithful accomplice in the "game of skipping home-works". Tom Sawyer and his friendship with Huckleberry Finn and the adventures they had together, helped me to realize the fun of nature and the fun you can have with her as well. In Kolkata, to be amongst the brick walls and concrete pathways seldom gave you the spirit, except for the rain, when the smell of soaked soil still makes me run outside and get soaked. Wish I had  friends like Joe and Huck back then. Thank god, I have a handsome now though! Twain's series on Tom Sawyer was more than an inspiration. It started to build my love for the country side and wish to have a cottage somewhere in the remote village, at some corner of this earth. May be Mongolia!

2) Thomas Hughes: Since school was the time when I had enjoyed the maximum time to enjoy story books, Tom Brown School Days, part of the school curriculum, but inspiration beyond doubt. Coming from a methodist institution, where once, boarding was a norm; long before my time, I used to visualize Tom Brown in me. Oppressed in the beginning, Tom developed into a brilliant student and clever with the tic tacs of life. Life too decided to trod in such a path, bringing me to where I am. I never had the option to read other works of Hughes, but his work on Tom Brown inspired me to learn from experiences and recapitulate on the past.

3) Enid Blyton: Even before Doyle, Blyton made her ever lasting impact in my mind with the colourful countryside plots involving the Famous Five, The Five Find Outers, The Secret Seven. Be in a group makes you win. United we stand, Divided we fall or may be our classical texts of Mahabharatha (refering to the Pandavas). Blyton's variant team infused the hues of mysteries and my love for the unknown. That's why, an old dilapidated place or a barren hillock or a deserted place paints the lovely colours of the unknown in my mind. My friends would warrant this fact ever working and that's why I prefer to go to the jungles and if given an opportunity, would love to play with the ambiance.

4) Edgar Allan Poe: The Masque of the Red Death, a plot with enormous fiction into it, it makes me startle to the fact of the exquisite capability of Poe to absorb the lover of unknown mystery be engrossed with the story line. This story and the subtle works of EA Poe still lets my imagination loose when I see the dark night sky or travel in train, at night. In the modern context, I travel between Jadavpur and Sealdah by train and every night, my imagination tries to penetrate the epitaph of the islamic graves that falls enroute, specially at night. These inspirations are for ever I guess!

5) Guy de Maupassant: The master of Short stories and stories that lets you think beyond, exercising your capacity to deliver practicality in your life. His literal works on "The Necklace", "The Gamekeeper", "The Patron" are worth to mention. I will put the necklace as his best, I have read where he makes his point clear as to how your own greed will make you pay in this life itself and if you become humble, you will survive a respectful life!

6) Sukanta Bhattacharya: One of Bengal's jewels, went to his heavenly abode at an untimely age. His poetic works not only enlists words that mostly didnot rhyme, but spoke the soul's sentiments. Of them Charpatra, Ekti Moroger Kahini, Agami and Lenin are my favorites. He penned down the hope of Communism and Bolshevist ideas. He dreamt of equality and his work of "Ekti Moroger Kahini" was a satire to the system of Capitalism; feed for a need...! But, he died too young and too early!

7) Altaf Fatima: The goodness always suffers and I have taken that as a fact.... Geeti, the character proper from Dastak Na Do made me see to the fact. Although prior independence, this Novel snaps into the life and lifestyle of the people pre-independence and how your life can be bamboozled by the people around you, specially whom you rest your faith into!

8) Durjoy Dutta: Modern life and livelihood... feels great to see that others too have something that I have, it helps to be compassionate to the characters, at least. Durjoy Dutta is coming up with some of his finest works in Of Course I Love You, If Its Not forever, etc. His read gives a crispy feeling to the day to day life style...

I have said a lot about how some of the writers have influenced me, but there are many more, who more or else fall within the criteria that the 8- points I had discussed. But I have to list 15... difficult, but I guess this is it:

9) Satyajit Ray

10) Samaresh Basu

11) Agatha Christie

12) Mark Billingham

13) Arthur Conan Doyle

14) Alfred Noyes

15) Saratchandra Chattopadhyay

.... many more!