Literary Characters...

The basic premise of this post is that lostonthestreet tagged me to write on my favourite literary characters. Hmmm...now lostonthestreet has worked hard on getting me back to occasional writings, so cant let her efforts go waste.
Ok now, I have read Assamese literature extensively, also exhaustively, and English and Bengali literature partially. There are numerous characters close to my heart. But there is no point in mentioning all of them here, as most come from regional literature. So, here's to lostonthestreet, sketches of a few characters universally identifiable, and also, close to my heart:
(Disclaimer: Please excuse me, all the following interpretations are completely autocratic, and does not claim to have anything to do with any accepted literary or popular interpretation of the books and characters. Moreover they are majorly affected by three characteristic traits of the blogger: very poor memory retention , verbal dyslexia and confused retrieval of stored memory images. So please excuse confused rendering of proper nouns, dates, quotes etc etc)
The Little Prince: The Little Prince by Saint Exupery
The Little Prince from the small star B...something, is the love of my life. He is certainly not one of the 'grown-up's and hence he can see 'what is essential'. This alien prince fell in love with a rose only to discover later that contrary to her claim that she is one of her kind, there are numerous roses, some even better than her. He feels aggrieved and deserts her. Later, on the planet Earth he meets a fox whom he 'tames' and realises that 'one has to feel responsible to someone he tames' and that it is not the beauty and uniqueness of the rose but actually the time he spent with her is what made the rose special to him. Finally the prince departs for his home where his rose was waiting leaving the narrator sad and alone in a desert. What remains with the narrator is an evening star, that reminds him of the little prince and its rose.
Huck Finn: Adventures of Hucklberry Finn by Mark Twain
Now I wish I were either Tom Sawyer or Mr Twain himself, or I would not even mind being Jim, and I wish I was with Huck on that raft of 'escape into a new world' drifting along Mississippi ... " Two drifters off to see the world/ There's such a lot of world to see/ We're after the same rainbow's end/-- waiting 'round the bend/ my huckleberry friend/ Moon River and me"
Do I need to say anything else???
Holden Coulfield: Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
Coulfield, I think, is loved by all those who live in the self chosen realm of the imaginary, an world that spreads across three ages, and those who decide to live invisibly, far from the scrutinizing eyes... Does not make sense? Never mind, Coulfield does not care because nothing else matters. Well I can completely identify with his dream, that he will be a catcher in the rye, a keeper of children, whom he would watch playing at the cliff. And if they go near the edge, he will be there to keep them from falling. The whole book imply symbolistic meanings at various levels and with multiple dimensions. I can also identify with Coulfield's anger and disappointment, against an world too arrogant to make space for simplicity and innocence. Tragedy of human life, as the catcher in the rye sees it, is that every child eventually fall, from the cliff of innocence, to the pit called civilization.
There are other characters like Hamlet and Ophelia (my all time favourites), Dr. Faustus, Merasault in Outsider by Camus, the narrator in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas, Huw Morgan in How Green was my Valley by Richard Llwelynne, Scarlett O Hara in Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell etc etc... which I liked at various phases of life ...

Give me a BREAK!

The fact that despite being married I stay alone itself generates a lot of curiosity leading to a varied range of speculations amongst my not-so-close friends...and foes as well (I am not sure if I have any, except for the former team member who had to quit because I proved to be too uncompromising a boss. This guy, I bet, must be cursing me at the moment) Well, there are couples who are in long distance relationships for years after years, is not it? And they do not always fail to be happy. Why then, every second person, every second day should come to me , as if I am more than their kith and kin, and as if all they are concerned about in life is my marriage and nothing else, and say, dear, please take care, such marriages do not work. Ok enough now, you guys are not the know-how-of-all. And even if you are, i do not care. If my marriage does not work out, that is none of your business. And if it does you guys are not going to be there to celebrate my 25th marriage anniversary. May be you have seen lots of long distance relationships not working, but I am sure by now that you guys are very short sighted, too short sighted to see that there are so many marriages of people who stay not only in the same city, but also under the same roof and sleep in the same f******bed, which fail miserably.

My dear generously sympathetic friends, and self professed welwishers, thank you so much for your concern. But i would prefer you save your concern from being wasted on such undeserving a cause.

Excerpts!

There was a kite made of hesitant clouds
To the world its strings tied down
Writes life’s annals on the bounds of the sky

Dense clouds deceiving clouds
I come down to earth
As the sorrow of the primordial couple

Harboring in heart
Memories of impossible dreams

What magic what charm
Do you have earth
I am your flitting visitor
The abiding shackles of your magic.

UnTitLD

My brother had left for home yesterday. I am again alone in my one bedroom apartment that refuses to belong to me. After a long time someone from my family stayed for so long with me. I just started to get used to all his childish demands, his tantrums, his idiosyncrasies... I just started to get used to his hour long bathroom rituals, his perfectionist tea preparing rituals, his all the time being dependent on me for almost all decisions. ...and suddenly I am here left alone missing all of them.

RetREat Oh reTrEaT

...8 pm, still at office. Been here since 8 pm yesterday. No output. Waiting for a meeting with my politically correct bosses...

Seriously, can I go back to the century when being politically correct was not such a big issue?