I am reading this very matter-of-fact book by Jonas Jonassan ,’ The hundred year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared’.
The prologue reads,’Things are what they are ,and what will be will be’,sounds fatalistic but written almost from a bird’s eye view ,his 100 years old life reads like it.
I found myself roaring with laughter and found wisdom in the life hacks he had to share ,not that he did much of that.He just keeps running into circumstances and floats with it.
If there were doubts,inner turmoil,second thoughts,regrets and as one of my tutors in fiction writing said,there is none of it.He just keeps it matter of fact and deals with whatever is before him.
‘What finally forms young Allan’s philosophy of life were his mother’s words when they received the news of his father’s death,it took a while before the message seeped into his soul,but once there ,it was there forever’. ‘Things are what they are.....’ she coughs,ruffles Allan’s hair and goes out to chop wood.
In the retrospect it takes us through world history with Stalin,Brezhnev,Gorbachev,Mao tse tung,Kim Sung 2,Kim Jong 2,Roosevelt,Truman ,Andrew Jackson,Churchill and the list of characters went on...In the current there were petty thieves,a forever scholar,a mafia,a strong woman,an elephant ,a dog,the republic of Bali and the way politics is done in the third world.
I enjoyed every bit of the book.
One really needs to seek out old people to talk to them,really talk to them,never know what their lives are packed with.What better time than the lockdown but with appropriate social distancing.
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