Flakes

Coincidences. Sigh.

Up until a few weeks ago, which is like more than a quarter of my entire life, I hadn’t seen snow ever. I mean, even the freezer in my house used to be on perpetual defrost or something, thereby depriving me the chance of making snowmen and all. Traveling to places where it snowed was always ruled out as a holiday option because the places used to be invariably too cold (duh, I know).

Then I come here to the US, where it snows everywhere and all the time - at least in all places I’ve been to so far. My cousins dismiss 8 inches of snow like I would dismiss 8 inches of rain. And - here’s the coincidence part I sighed about at the beginning - as I sit in a Greyhound bus staring out at the infinite snow along the road, reading the book Snow by Orhan Pamuk, which song should play on the music player but Snow (hey o) by RHCP. You just can’t make such stuff up. Srsly.

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The aforementioned book is pretty good, btw. The author won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, and funnily I read his Acceptance speech first, which was quite interesting (link). The book has in common with other good books those two crucial ingredients which are seemingly simple but quite elusive when you sit down to write - small sentences, simple words.

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On the topic of coincidences, here’s another one: The other book I’m reading in parallel - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - has a reference to the Sohrab and Rustam story. (That story was one of my favourite stories ever when I read it more than a decade ago - it still is, in fact) And Snow also has a reference to the story. Made me smile