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End of the year. I am sitting alongside of Janus, staring at the Ghost of the Christmas Past. The future won't begin until two days go by, where I stare from. Lessons from the previous year, whispers the apparition, so tell me. Ghosts are hard to exorcise. Ask
anyone who was ever in love. So I am forced to reflect.

Let us start with Madeleines. Yeah, the sweet, sea-shelled concoctions eternalized by Marcel Proust in his Remembrance of Things Past. Not that I have ever dared to read Proust. I get by happily with the essays on him. But first, the Madeleines. I encountered the existential version in reality and simply fell in love. Got to hand it over to the French, I say. From Chanel to chic, from cooking to cuckolding, no one beats the French. (Pardon, but wasn't Madame Bovary French after all?) Yes, Ghostie, I discovered the sweet bliss of biting into a milk soaked-fifteen seconds microwaved-and melting in the mouth-ambrosia. Amen for that.

It was Sarah Ban Breathnach who showcased that rare gem of a poem. A poet, obviously a woman, had discovered God in soap suds. The writer had been washing plates, as her soul traversed into its own heaven. So did I, this passing year. I discovered God in not just soap suds, but also in changing diapers. God just happens to be a kind Domestic Goddess for ordinary mothers like me. She understands how impossible it is to tune in to the intellectual proclivities of a higher order when there is that stubborn tomato sauce sticking onto the wash basin. Orhan Pamuk can wait a bit - I am Red - with exasperation; now that the stain has gone, what about Istanbul, sir?

Ah, Ghostie. After French cookies and domestic bliss, comes essays. Now, that is fodder for the craving heart and soul. Never judge an author by his novels, I say, but by his essays. Orhan Pamuk is a sheer joy to read. Brevity, he knows, is the soul of wit and wisdom. Besides, that earns him fans like me, who cannot afford to sit and read calmly for fifteen minutes at a stretch. In between two toddler nap times, three Pamuk essays (Other Colours) can be comfortably consumed.

Not so with Coetzee (Inner Workings). I struggled with his erudite essays and concluded that Disgrace had been a better read. I am just not into dense intellectual matter now. But still I tried Fuentes (This I believe). That man has charm and wit. If I cannot understand his metaphysics, I make do with what he writes of Women and Amor! After all, he finishes his essays in two pages. I am going to quote a line from one of his essays, which I have taken to heart. "Aun a pesar de las tinieblas, bella/Aun a pesar de las estrellas, clara." (Even in the face of darkness, lovely/Even in the face of stars, luminous.)

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Ministhy Dileep is PG (PM&IR) from XLRI-Jamshedpur, and currently, an IAS officer working in the UP cadre. She has written three books - 'Unequal Equations', 'Learning with Tippy Tortoise: Tales for Kids', and 'Happy Birthday: Poems for Kids', and hopes to publish her first novel in the year 2008.