First meetup . Bookclub – Luxembourg

For some old and rather odd reasoning, I always thought of Europe as a place of lonely individuals with shallow relationships and similar views about the depth-ness of communal life, a place where all values and ethics revolves around the individual self and one has to feel that loneliness to become a European. Was this because of my time spent in middleast and Africa ? where people are expected of thinking of others as a part of their own extended selves? and life is not just a collection of dots but a one big existence; in Shakespearean term full of sounds and fury? My time in Europe this time is proving me wrong. Europe is opening herself to me little by little.

So it was with these thoughts and with a soul tired of stomach-affairs, I started searching for a group of like minded people to spend time with and that’s when I came across a book club meeting planned nearby and the book to be discussed was “the reluctant fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid. I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued to find a perfect setting with a favourite book by a Pakistani author to be discussed and so, reluctantly made up my mind to attend the event.

She opened the door of her house with a big welcoming smile. It was an old house with high ceilings and with dull lights seen in old dutch paintings . There were already few people from all over the world sitting around the living room amid two friendly cats, and wine bottles and nibbles laying around. Most of the people were new, so the meeting started a bit formally but soon after started flowing naturally. We discussed identity, writing styles, culture, globalization, relationships, food and much more in that warm cozy living room of hers and for some brief moments forgot that we are sitting in someone’s else house. It was one of those moments when we humans go through a collective de-individualization process and find peace and eternal bliss in forgetting our individual selves and biases and our thoughts starts to dream and dance with the group totally in natural sync and not until when our wrist watches and wallclocks reminds us of time to leave that we reluctantly and with an effort collect ourselves again.This was one of those evenings…. and after a while the two friendly cats were also moving their heads in affirmation as if they were listening and understood all that was said and experienced there.

So Europe is happening to me. Wishing to find and make more new friends and memories in this phase of my life which i can think of  long after when i am gone from here.