It was amusing for my parents to recieve the first package from India from me in 2002. I had mailed them some Christmas presents and it arrived wrapped in cloth and sealed with red wax. They attributed the strange packaging to my recent BFA degree, and dismissed it as their strange ‘art school’ son. Actually, that is how every package leaves India. Enterprising young business men set up a tailor shop next to the post office, and charge 10 to 20 rupees for a parcel. The speed and accuracy that they make these parcels is to be admired and I have yet to have one go missing.
It took almost exactly 3 months for my shipment to arrive, which for 3 dollars is a great deal. If only the USPS had an international version of media mail.
This small cut in the side of the package is required to prove that it really is full of books (not elephant statues or charis???)
It was great to be away from cable TV and to read some books instead. “Shantaram” was a long and very entertaining read, although its autobiographical integrity is a little questionable and Johnny Depp has taken the lead roll in the 2009 movie. “Wolf at the Door,” was not my favorite Augusten Burroughs book, eventhough it completes a few gaps from his previous memoirs. Pico Iyer takes on the most honest and critial view of the Tibetans in exile I have ever read, he should be applauded for seeing the situation as it is. I am yet to write my indepth review of the “Denial of Death,” but I still think about those first few chapters every day and recommend it to as many people as possible. The rest were not amazing books, but kept me sane and out of trouble (I might even argue that the “Alchemy of Desire,” was infact a terrible book).
