Some years ago, my uncle lent me a novel around my birthday. It touched me so much that I never returned it and I’ve turned it into a litmus test of sorts. I’ve waxed poetic about The Elegance of The Hedgehog to everyone near and dear, and then some. My friends groan at the mere mention of this name.
When I meet new people who are deemed worthy enough, I gauge their reactions to this book. Surprisingly, the test works.
So as you can imagine, I’ve had a quite some practice excitedly ranting about this book and what it is about it that gets me going. However, I’ve gotten no better at articulating my thoughts on the particulars. I try, sometimes, but I always feel like I’m not doing justice to the book. I feel like I don’t have the right words. I feel like I don’t have the right examples. I feel like what I feel is too much to be contained in the words and examples I cannot frame. Sometimes, I feel like I don’t have the right medium. Clacking at a keyboard isn’t doing it for me, scribbling in my journal doesn’t quite lend to the flow of my thoughts. A series of images, feelings and thoughts all interspersed in my head just doesn’t seem to come through.
If I had to guess, I’d blame it on emotion. Sometimes, thoughts are hard to formulate and whats arguably harder is expressing emotions – through any medium. It’s beautiful when it comes through, but I like to think of it as a process a little like this:
I think what makes emotion very hard to express, among other things, is that you’re trying to tag it with why it was such a unique experience for you that cannot quite be described using the existing framework of words while simultaneously trying to make it sound relatable to a larger audience. That is in a way while its wholly personal to you, it’s also perhaps a more universal feeling?
So, the book is about a lot of things. Its about all the things not highlighted in the blurb, hidden between the lines that leaves you feeling sated. It’s an experience worth having. In a blurb like fashion, to provide a little context I will furnish some details.
The story is told from the perspectives of a 12 year old girl – Paloma and the concierge of her apartment – Renee. Paloma is the intelligent kid, living in a sprawling apartment with parents who are typical of the affluent class, concerned with matters like intellect and fat cats and not of anything particularly relevant, at least from her view. Renee is clandestine intellectual princess, who truly exists in the world of her books and Art and but tries hard to maintain the pretense that she’s a mere middle-class woman incapable of dreaming of an erudite world beyond.
The book begins with Paloma deciding to end her life to escape adulthood and to spare herself the goldfish bowl experience. To this effect, she decides to maintain a journal of Profound Thoughts and another to record the beauty of movement.
If there’s beauty in this world that makes living worthwhile, she didn’t want to accidentally miss it.
While I’m not plotting my demise or anything as angst-y, the idea of actively making an effort to notice the beauty in everyday affairs feels like it’ll make the world a more tolerable place to inhabit.
Anyway, the aim is to curate some of these thoughts, as and when they strike me. I don’t have rules or format for this, I’m just going to play it by the ear. It’s also about being more observant and just being present, y’know?
Fair disclaimer, a large portion of my life revolves around reading cute books and learning some cool biology.
Sankalpa Venkatraghavan 