A Review is a Picture of the Reviewer

A review is a picture of the reviewer. Poets and novelists float eternally, almost on the verge of sinking; a little push and they’re gone. It is their desolation which makes them write and they sometimes encounter other desolate fellow beings that cut them to size. Writers live on reviewers apart from the food and air that sustain them. A review is not about books that are under their focus; A REVIEW IS A PICTURE OF THE REVIEWER. A satisfied person will show a satisfied soul through the review; a desperately discontented and disgruntled person will reflect that trait in a review. An Indian saying goes: The frustrated dhobi (clothes-washer) must pull his donkey’s ears whenever his wife has stung him. He has no one to complain to.

There are days and days. No day is the same as the last one. Each morning we wake under a different constellation. Each morning has a markedly different flavour to the previous morning. Those who are sensitive realize this more than others. We are the same but our conditions, our general feel of a place and time has changed. There are days when one would like to watch a comedy and then comes a time when only a tragic piece will please. There are moments when one wants to hear music and then comes a time when that music seems out of place. The human lot is always subject to such a changing world where nothing pleases for long. Human relationships sour for the same reason. There is a time when someone seems attractive and then comes a time when the same person seems frightening. We are always seated on the wheel of time and time is eternally moving in a direction different to the present.

One day a virago writes a damaging review of your book and you feel almost dead. You wonder why she wrote that. Then you realize that a reviewer is also human, wanting to bash up someone in return for the bashing she has received from the one she craves for. But then comes another review, from a woman who has escaped virago-hood, and that changes the flavour of your morning. The air you breathe becomes different, the sun spells bliss, each flower seems to draw you, every bird whispering a kind word.