tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14674185000568839852024-03-14T00:08:11.516+05:30wits endYou won't need a sounding line to plumb my thoughts. I write about incidents, books, films & people who provoke intensity & lead me to rant, rave, celebrate or censuredrift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.comBlogger161125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-15895195275869752782021-02-28T11:28:00.004+05:302021-02-28T11:28:44.806+05:30The Highlighting Menace<p> <span style="font-family: "Calibri Light", sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">One of the horrors of the Indian education
system is its excessive reliance on text books and the examiners' need for
students to regurgitate the written matter without expending any effort in
trying to imagine how the same can be applied to real situations to either
change, recreate, amend, dire circumstances or a crisis. We study about historic invasions,
about the grandeur of Chola temple architecture, about sound patterns, about
labelling parts of a leaf, about law of diminishing returns, about wretched
Shylock demanding his pound of flesh, with little understanding of why each of
these are momentous concepts, whose understanding can help us create noise free
urban spaces, or teach us to be a bit more tolerant when that new neighbour
moves in, or the origins of organic chemistry. However, our children have not been trained in this. Instead, they
are expected to reproduce keywords and large chunks from paragraphs that have
been endlessly highlighted in fluorescent markers. I don’t resent the marker
pens though – nothing like a new market set-of-5 to motivate your 10-yr old to
open and browse through the textbook !</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The text book is perhaps the most reviled and desecrated
object in the Indian education system. It is rewritten not to accommodate man’s
evolution and discovery of newer scientific or social facts or even their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">probability</i>. It is changed in accordance
with the ideological/unscientific biases of the ruling dispensation.
After the academic year, it is sold to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raddiwalas</i>
to be made into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bhel</i> sachets and
paper pouches. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Students don’t refer to
the textbook to learn, but to secure marks. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">During a course i attended at IIM Ahmedabad , I encountered texts of a different kind – ones
which I looked forward to and stimulated the mind. We were given a small bag
full of reading material on diverse topics such as leadership essentials, improving supply chain stability, product pricing strategy. Since this was a short course, there were no text books and all the topics were covered via case studies. The liveliness and diversity of opinion in the classroom was infectious and memorable. One wrote down sudden thoughts that surged rather than highlighting large swathes of the case study. <o:p></o:p></span></p>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-22183458185538307902019-07-02T13:03:00.000+05:302019-07-02T13:03:39.582+05:30From: Great House by Nicole Krauss<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>I'm embarrassed to say that my eyes actually filled with tears, Your Honour, though as is so often the case, the tears sprang from older, more obscure regrets i had delayed thinking about, which the gift, or loan, of of a stranger's furniture had somehow unsettled.<br />
<br />
*************************************************************<br />
Our kiss was anticlimactic. It wasn't that the kiss was bad, but it was just a note of punctuation in our long conversation, a parenthetical remark made in order to assure each other of a deeply felt agreement, a mutual offer of companionship, which is much more rare than sexual passion or even love.<br />
<br />
**************************************************************</i><br />
<i>There is a fallacy that the powerful emotion of youth mellows with time. Not true. One learns to control and suppress it. But it doesn't lessen. It simply hides and concentrates itself in more discreet places. When one accidentally stumbles into one of these abysses, the pain is spectacular. I find these little abysses everywhere now.<br />
<br />
*******************************************************************<br />
</i><br />
<i>I knew that to find and to feel Yoav again would be terribly painful, because of what had become of him, and because of what I knew he could ignite in me, a vitality that was excruciating because like a flare it lit up the emptiness inside me and exposed what i already secretly knew about myself : how much time I'd spent being only partly alive, and how easily I'd accepted a lesser life................................................................................................................................................................................................................He awakened a hunger in me - not just for him, but also for the magnitude of life, for the extremes of all it has given to us to feel. A hunger and also courage.<br />
<br />
**********************************************************************<br />
In life we sit at the table and refuse to eat, and in death we are eternally hungry.<br />
<br />
**********************************************************************<br />
There are time when the kindness of strangers only makes matters worse because one realises how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.<br />
<br />
**************************************************************************<br />
<br />
And the answer that comes to me, which is only part of the answer, is that i wanted to punish her for her intolerable stoicism, which made it impossible for me to ever be truly needed by her in the most profound ways a person can need another, a need that often goes by the name of love. </i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i><br />
</i></div>
drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-20199979979276105242019-07-02T13:02:00.000+05:302019-07-02T13:02:03.052+05:30Notes on 'Unapologetic Feminists'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In
the wake of the #MeToo movement, I attended an event at the Andheri Social
outlet titled ‘She Too’ where the agenda included several women activists and
social champions (I don’t know if the term ‘social worker’ is politically
correct any more) who were all fighting to make women’s voices heard and more
relevant in a society that remains patriarchal. The speakers comprised brave
warriors who were working for various worthy causes such as improving mobility
options at railway stations for the disabled, encouraging transgenders to
contest elections, fighting to eradicate FGM amongst Mumbai’s Bohri community, fighting
to curb the practice of unwanted caesarean deliveries in India, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What
confounded me abt these worthies was that each of them opened their talks by
offering an gratuitous and redundant-in-that-context ‘I am an unapologetic
feminist’ introduction to their self and work. Frankly, I’ve never understood
the meaning of that phrase – are there people around who are apologetic about
being vegetarian? Or smokers? Or gay? Or Hindu? What is the need for a tag that
adds nothing to the noun? Anyway, the event made me realize a disturbing fact
that had been taking root in my mind since 2013 when I worked in a large Indian
pvt bank and was part of its Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) dealing with
issues of gender discrimination and sexual harassment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">It
is this, dear unapologetic feminists – you do a great disservice when you focus
your narrative solely on instances of patriarchy and its exploitative impact on
women; on the ways and means by which women are held back from realising their
true potential. By doing that, you are as guilty of perpetrating gender bias as
anybody who claims <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girls</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should learn to adjust</i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">But
let’s rewind a little to my bank days. One of the eye-popping revelations of
that experience was the considerable number of sexual harassment cases the ICC
heard which later turned out to be motivated by two broad instances – first,
the age old jilted-lover syndrome where the male had promised marriage to the
female employee; the second, the refusal of the male reporting manager to grant
promotion to a female employee who had embarked on an affair on the promise of
a promotion. This is not to say that there were no instances of genuine
harassment. Unfortunately, most of them were resolved by transferring the
offender to a remote branch rather than summarily dismissing him. In the rare
instances where dismissal was suggested, the respective zonal authority often
stepped in to stop the process, recommending a transfer instead as the offender
was a star performer, with a great sales record. Yes, this is the unfortunate
fact of corporate POSH policy implementation which not many people talk abt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Hell
! I digress. Coming back to the Andheri #SheToo event, the sad fact of most
such events is the way women come together and make a mockery of a very real,
burning issue – gender inequality. In fact, Feminism for me is nothing but the
continuous struggle to ensure gender equality; to sensitize people (not just
men), even the ones who believe they are permissive and modern, that we are
caught in a mesh of stereotypes and unfair expectations, too tangled to work our
way out; that there can be no emancipation for either sex without breaking away
from the unrealistic expectations that both sexes have dumped over the other;
that equality means ‘sameness’ not difference, hence gender-based reservation
is not the right answer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">If
we were to look at Feminism from the above lens, one would see that it is not
abt constantly bashing men or designing feminist-label line of clothing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I kid you not !), or calling out men <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> for eve-teasing<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> It is as much abt these things as encouraging women to earn a
livelihood and share their husband’s financial burden (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shadi ke baad kyun kaam karna; pehley to ghar var set karungi</i>); it
is abt listening to those husbands who are unprepared to become fathers (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">After all it is my body and I have decided
that I want a child now!!</i>); it is about supporting our spouses and brothers
who wish to stay at home to pursue an unremunerative initiative (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am fed up supporting his mad passion for
art and am moving back with my parents</i>); it is about learning to drive (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Papa uss party mein nahin janey denge kyun
ki voh itni raat ko leney nahin aa sakte</i>); to create assets so that there
can be complete autonomy over its use (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my
husband does not allow me to send money to my parents</i>); or expecting our
boyfriends to look like Salman and behave like Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kya chomu hai yaar ! Ma ke saath album
dekhkar, rota hai</i>). You can add, your own line of instances. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Which
brings me to my last point – that of choice. Most card-carrying Feminists
define choice as the freedom to work, to attend college, to wear a bikini, to
stop attending church, to have an abortion, etc. These are indeed valuable and
must be guaranteed to all. However, for some it is abt the choice to wear a bindi,
to take their husband’s names after marriage, to talk proudly abt their roles
as mothers/daughters/wives without necessarily being made to feel like cave
women who were slung over men’s shoulders and left to tend to the home fires.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In
a PEN event early this year, award-winning author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
criticised Hillary Clinton’s then-Twitter bio (Clinton has since changed it)
which read “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wife, Mom, grandma,
women+kids advocate, senator, SecState, hair con, pantsuit aficionado, 2016
presidential candidate.”</i> Adichie claimed that she felt <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">just a little bit upset</i> , more so after she went and checked Bill
Clinton’s Twitter bio where the first word was not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">husband</i>. In return, Clinton explained abt the internal conflict one
faces when one is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">committed to relationships</i>
and also their own work and identity, and have to describe themselves. That Clinton
subsequently changed her bio smacks of the tokenism that characterizes so much
of current activism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">As
a mother and a fiercely independent woman who is respected at work, doesn’t
depend on her spouse financially, often sports the symbols of a Bengali married
woman, goes for drinks with friends in the evenings, cannot cook to save her
life or drive, depends on her spouse to invest her money, manages the grocery
and taking the elders to the doctor, if you asked me for the truest and most
unequivocal definition of myself, I’d reply – I am D’s mother. And I see
nothing un-feminist or patriarchal abt this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I
cherish this definition as much as I groan abt D’s incessant demands sometimes;
I celebrate this definition each time she confides her latest crisis to me; I
am true to this definition when I teach her how important it is for her to work
and learn to drive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br /></div>
drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-88065940166498001332019-07-02T12:51:00.001+05:302019-07-02T12:51:46.146+05:30Where Are Our Stories of Defeat and Dust?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There
was a time when I loved films and books that celebrated the ‘triumph of the
human spirit’. This was before my cousin returned from Columbia after 7 years
of struggle, suffering from a mental breakdown, overweight and dumped by her
fiancé. This was before my husband was handed the pink slip 3 weeks after
being awarded the company’s Quarterly Star award. Then, I didn’t know that no
heartbreak on earth compares to the one you suffer when your child suffers her
1<sup>st</sup> heartbreak; no shock as great as the one you encounter when your
diseased heart refuses to beat according to a fixed rhythm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Life
as I’ve known it over the past decade has been a slowly accumulating debris of
failures, thwarted hopes and faded dreams. About 4 years ago, a chance
opportunity to relocate to the middle east seemed to be offering us a break
from that monotonous run of disease, mediocrity and ordinariness dressed in fancy nurses, silver
sedans and gated towers that characterizes middle-aged ennui and contentment.
Several small and big changes were planned and for a fluttering 7-months or so,
it all worked out beautifully. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Till it didn’t one day. November 18, 2016.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Looking
back on that morning, I am doubtless that it was a small catastrophe compared
to the shit I’ve seen others stuck in. I acknowledge that it wasn’t anywhere
close to the worst that can befall us. That came much before and taught us so
much in its wake. What this did mark, however, was an irrevocable moment of
defeat and its stolid acceptance by us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Strive.
Fail. Despair. Accept. Strive Again. Fail....<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
sheer dichotomy that outlines what I see in the popular culture of my time and the reality of the lives of the people
around me, is appalling. Suddenly, I’m left wondering -- where are the stories
about the injured, the sick, the bipolar, the old, the 34-year old spinster who
dreamed about being a bride since she first chanced upon her parents’ wedding
album as a child, but is doomed to a life of loneliness and longing, writing mediocre
rhymes that her friends <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Like</i> on FB? Why
aren’t there stories and posts about those whose lives aren’t a testament to
the ‘triumph of the human spirit’? Sure, those tales will be morose, dark and
scary. But wont they be authentic and closer to our shared humanity? Aren’t they worthy of being chronicled? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Why
must we all Like and Comment on the endless fat-to-lean stories that
proliferate social media? Who will write the story about that 32-year old girl
whose eating disorder went out of control when she fell into a deep depression
as her research funding was cancelled? Where is the story about the bright
blind boy from Ajmer who was sent to a school for ‘special’ children and who slowly
receded into a darkness far more potent than his visual impairment till he
gradually stopped speaking? Ok, not so morose? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">How
about the homemaker from Jaipur who wanted to learn music all her life but was
too busy to devote time for her hobby, and later found that when her son offered
to enrol her for music classes on his visit home from Ontario, she had just
lost interest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">You
may say, I’m not a dreamer. You’d be right. I’m struggling to make sense and
fit your shiny world where there is continuous adulation and celebration of the
perfect, of victory, of shiny BMWs, 28-inch waists and lustrous hair, of IIT
coaching and perfect 99% scores, of glass cabins, of the disabled who run
marathons, and of the blind who write complex algorithms. I am protesting
against the relentless Oprah-like glorification of the inexorable and commendable
will to conquer obstacles. Because this relentlessness is based on a lie. The
lie that hides the fact that the larger share of the pie belongs to those who
have failed, whose scholarship didn’t work out, whose genius went unrecognized,
whose weighing machine never reflected their efforts, who gave up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Surely
their stories matter, too?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br /></div>
drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-37187586978351380642018-04-21T11:53:00.002+05:302018-04-21T11:54:47.288+05:30Notes on October<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis_2zJO-_2ArlCwVfMBN5jHhLVi6CzQn7Gxj0HF7q7ZZJixLL_VE_rXMgWzmXeMMG7ytugbZBQYnCWEZQ5CEoaogee0hD_Bku-wdZCWvdV4KDDgS7TXqvRBa3RPaOQasLPIVBNjK_nKYk/s1600/shiuli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis_2zJO-_2ArlCwVfMBN5jHhLVi6CzQn7Gxj0HF7q7ZZJixLL_VE_rXMgWzmXeMMG7ytugbZBQYnCWEZQ5CEoaogee0hD_Bku-wdZCWvdV4KDDgS7TXqvRBa3RPaOQasLPIVBNjK_nKYk/s320/shiuli.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Let me state at the onset that I liked <i>Piku</i>, Soojit Sircar (director) & Juhi Chuturvedi's (writer) last collaboration, much more than <i>October</i>, their latest. While the former flowed seamlessly, unencumbered by false notes or an at-times-sluggish pace, <i>October</i> is sometimes bogged down by the weight of what it wants to say. Having said this, it is an important and memorable film. How many films have you seen in the last 2 years about which you can say this?<br />
<br />
The problem with <i>October </i>is its protagonist Dan (Varun Dhawan); it is too easy to dismiss him as petulant, selfish, arrogant, inconsiderate and annoying. He is all that and perhaps something more. That something more, no I'm not talking abt his capacity for unconditional love, is neither hinted nor painted with broad strokes. It is simply there if you care to see. Dan reminded me of those children that used to be classified as 'problem child' during my childhood. Today it is said that they 'lie on the spectrum'. Whether it is Autism or Asperger's or something less defined, these folks find it difficult to fit in and say or see most things the way others do. I have known many such kids who sorely lacked social skills and always stood out unfavourably. Not only do such kids come across but they often are indeed self centred and self contained in ways that can seem offensive. Once Dan has decided to take care of Shiuli, he shows no consideration for his parents or his close friends, or even his own welfare. While we applaud and cheer for him, it is obvious that his decision is neither grounded in reason nor practical.<br />
<br />
Much more than the 2 young protagonists, i felt invested in the peripheral characters like Shilu's mom, Dan's two best friends, and his weary manager. In fact the scene with both Dan and Shiuli's mothers in it, wrenched a lot more out of me than anything else in the film. The former's appears only briefly but her weary hopelessness breaks your heart. She knows Dan better more than anyone and is aware that the boy has lost something precious forever and there is no going back. Shiuli's mother on the other hand is played by Gitanjali Rao with such calm and understated poignancy that you are pinned by the weight of her grief and loss. A person of science, her faith is answered in strange ways. In what is perhaps one of the film's most beautiful scenes, she sits besides Dan with a steaming mug of tea at dawn and says something that expresses why he is so precious to her. Dan is not the child every mother would have wished, but Dan is definitely the best friend every mother will wish for their child.<br />
<br />
The parts that work wonderfully and elevate the film are Shantanu Moitra's stunning background score and Avik Mukhopadhay's cinematography. The soaring shots of Kullu seem almost like oxygen after the sterile indoor shots of the hospital.<br />
<br />
In a time where gruesome rapes are being defended or being leveraged for ideological and personal gains, Sircar is one of the few directors who is brave enough to tackle the subject of difficult love. Whether it is for a cantankerous and selfish parent (Piku), or for a young girl whose vegetative state makes unimaginable demands on others, or even a mother's boundless love for a problem child who is not like the others and keeps her awake at night. There is a beautifully wise line in <i>Piku </i>where referring to her father, Deepika Padukone tells Irfan Khan, "<i>Ek umar ke baad, khud se zinda rehni ki icha khatam ho jaati hai. Unhey zinda rakhna padta hai." </i><br />
<br />
Both <i>Piku </i>and <i>October </i>explores why and how those who love unconditionally, dare to tread along paths that are not only arduous, but also hopeless. </div>
drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-45517152735667049662017-07-19T15:12:00.000+05:302017-07-19T15:15:36.209+05:30Some Thoughts On the FOP (First Day of Period) Leave Policy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So, the weekend was washed away in the deluge of arguments in
favour of & against the First Day of Period (FOP) policy in the workplace.
The starting point in this latest Twitter debate was when digital content
agency <a href="https://culturemachines.com/"><b>Culture Machine</b> </a>announced the
launch of its FOP policy in early June. This was followed by the company
starting a Change.org petition to the Ministry of Child Development to
introduce this policy across all organisations. Predictably, this was followed
by arguments both lucid & banal in favour of and against the policy. While
many have made the case that this is a step towards shaping the workplace in a
way that accommodates women’s unique needs, others have argued that such a move
will be construed as a sign of weakness, also inhibiting the cause of women’s
recruitment even further. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m looking at this issue from the prism of a working woman and
one who employs women in her team and household. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As a woman employee, I’ve realised that we will always have
‘special needs’ and anybody who thinks those needs will taper off as the child
grows up, is fooling herself. These needs are as much about our unique
biological functions (menstruation, childbirth, breast-feeding, menopause) as
our social roles (mother, home manager, daughter-in-law). I could shout myself
hoarse asking why it is so, but the fact is it has largely been my
responsibility to ensure my kid’s vaccinations were on time, that her diet
meets certain standards, that her school work is up to date. Her teachers,
coach, our neighbours and our maids, unfailingly contact me whenever there is
an issue concerning the household or our daughter. I am not the exception – 8
out of 10 working women I know, lead similar lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My current workplace has fantastic HR policies which strive to
offer employees excellent work-life balance. We have a work-from-home policy,
we have remote access-enabled workstations, and my manager has never asked me ‘why’
whenever I’ve applied for leave. Nevertheless, there have been instances when a
pressing requirement at home has clashed with a commitment at work, and the
former has taken a backseat. Nobody forced me to, it simply had to be done. The
reality today is that companies are hiring increasingly lean teams which means
there really isn’t much scope to transfer or share your workload with another.
In such a scenario, companies will prefer the more dependable, the safer bet,
when it comes to hiring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Speaking as a woman who has managed all-women teams and employs women
at her home, I’d like to share an incident that took place in 2015. We were
living in Abu Dhabi then where it’s fairly common to employ men for domestic
chores. Frankly, the degree of professionalism I observed in those men was far
better than any ‘maid’ I’ve ever had – no gossip, no demands for ‘extra
clothes’ or ‘salary advance’, minimal fuss and far quicker service. When
Rajendra, my domestic help, had to return to India as his visa had expired and
I was looking for a replacement, I had a distinct preference for a male helper.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">They just suited me better. Till I met Laxmi, who I learnt would
be deported back to India if she couldn’t supplement her income to meet her
basic visa requirements. I don’t think I chose Laxmi as much as I gave in to
her brother’s entreaties. Was I very happy with my choice? No. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Much later, after I’d returned to India and re-joined work, I
realised that my mindset was a reflection of how HR works. It is about putting
my money on the headcount that serves me best. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As a part of the Diversity & Inclusion CoE in my organisation,
I know how difficult it is to get the ‘right’ women candidates for many of the
senior-level recruitments we do. Added to this is the problem of a steep drop
in women employees as they advance from the Assistant Manager to Manager roles
– most of them get married and are either forced by circumstances or choose to
quit. Then comes maternity and the guilt
associated with long hours, not being able to breast-feed your child, lack of a
support system, is enormous. I am not sure introducing different kinds of leave
policy for each of these situations which women tackle is the answer. Why then
I’d argue, we must also introduce some sort of leave for employees whose
children are appearing for their Board exams, or for those whose children
qualify for school or state level sports competitions! I know of a female
colleague whose son has to travel alone for his chess competitions as her
manager has refused to grant her leave so frequently (3-4 days every few months.)
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The answer in my view, doesn’t lie in Policy making, instead must
be seen from the prism of Culture Building. Yes, I know that while the former
is binding, the other is subjective and may not ensure a uniform employee
experience. But Policy Making alone won’t suffice – make FOP mandatory and you
will still have women swallowing pain killers and turning up at work because
that’s what their role or manager demands. I’d much rather go with manager
sensitization and a focused and continuous thrust on making the workplace as
employee friendly as possible. Trust me, all it takes is an understanding
manager. Replace and reward people, not policies, is what I’d stress on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-4564364759992791972017-04-18T14:18:00.000+05:302017-04-18T14:18:30.370+05:30Notes on The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnD0UKMHnP4xISsSY8Z1zvON4RTrct6q2SlIkDNA5q0q4fGvQlBOmWeQiB7K6agya3rj9mLQ3DHtfIuNQIZFhG2OFxP1cOra_QaBf7ytk8FeCciH7DjTD9muCZPnGf1wGxwy4Tgn41dSo/s1600/201607-orig-underground-railroad-cover-949x534.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnD0UKMHnP4xISsSY8Z1zvON4RTrct6q2SlIkDNA5q0q4fGvQlBOmWeQiB7K6agya3rj9mLQ3DHtfIuNQIZFhG2OFxP1cOra_QaBf7ytk8FeCciH7DjTD9muCZPnGf1wGxwy4Tgn41dSo/s200/201607-orig-underground-railroad-cover-949x534.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">It cannot be a coincidence that 3 of the several award-winning
novels published in the US in the last 2 years, all deal with the question of
race and America’s unreconciled problem with it. While <i>The Sellout</i> is a comic satire about race, <i>Between the World and Me</i> explores the whole question of destiny and
free-agency as evinced in a Black life, and <i>The
Underground Railway</i> (TUR) is a fictional account of the appalling life on a
Southern plantation and how similar it was to the one in the free world outside
then. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is much in <i>TUR </i>to
make the reader angry even as we shudder in disgust at the description of the <span style="background: white;">putrefying Black bodies that hang from
trees along a path in North Carolina ironically called the Freedom Trail. However,
it is not the graphic descriptions of the routine outrages of plantation life
that are particularly revealing or poignant. After you’ve read pages full of descriptions
of daily whippings, rape, assault, castrations, wounds being doused with pepper
water, you reach a point when you wonder, “After such knowledge, what
forgiveness?”. Whitehead knows this and it is to his credit that throughout the
novel, he spends time focusing attention on the minor deprivations, the sense
of helpless longing for freedom that chains every slave, the stink of fear that
taints even the free slaves, the almost unbearable poignancy captured in the familiar,
yet unimaginable luxury of a Black being the first recipient of a book and
inhaling the scent of its unwrinkled pages. Such descriptions form the powerful
engine that draws this tale of abomination and hope across the American deep
South from Georgia, to North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana to the hope of a
frontier far beyond the tentacles of slavery.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The novel opens with Ajarry’s story which forms a kind of prologue
to that of our heroine Cora, who is a slave on a Georgia plantation. Ajarry was
kidnapped in Africa, shipped abroad a slaveship and bought and sold several
times before she landed on the Randall plantation in Georgia where she gave
birth to Cora’s mother Mabel. There is a matter-of-fact, unabashed tone to the
hardships that accost Ajarry which act as a kind of prelude to the horrors that
Cora’s story contains. Cora’s story is interspersed with those of the other
major characters such as Caesar, Ridgeway, Mabel, and Sam. Cora’s nemesis in
the novel is a relentless slave catcher Ridgeway whose code of personal honour
does not allow him to return home empty handed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Cora’s story begins on the Randall plantation which is ruled by
the vicious Randall brothers and their foreman Marshall. While freedom may seem
like am impossible dream here, we are told “<i>Every
slave thinks about it. In the morning and in the afternoon and in the night.” </i>Cora’s
mother, Mabel, escaped from the plantation, abandoning her 11-year-old
daughter. Left a “stray”, Cora develops the unique ability to silently question
and rail against the misfortunes that govern the lives of the plantation
slaves. This is important since she is our protagonist who escapes from the
plantation at 16 and the rest of the novel is the story of her flight across
different American states, her experiences of brief moments of fulfilment and
joy, the selfless support she receives from several white Abolitionists and
free slaves on the run, the macabre public hangings she spies as she lies
hidden, Ann-Frank-like, in a secret attic in North Carolina, and the duplicitous
kindness of the white folks she encounters in North Carolina. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Colman skilfully reveals to us the less-than-pure motivations of
the white folk who appear to be supportive of the Negro emancipation cause. While the underground railway of the title
refers to a secret railway carriage that runs deep in the tunnels of the South,
working to ferry escaped slaves to the North, its historical counterpart is
actually the network of white abolitionists and free slaves who created a
secret system of safe houses, coded messages, safe passages, and tips that
enabled escaped slaves to reach freedom. Whether it’s an actual railway car or
a resistance movement, there is no doubting its role in offering a beacon of
hope to so many impoverished, unfortunate lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">What is unmistakable in the novel’s tone is Colman’s raging anger
at the country of his birth and its legacy of bloodshed and oppression. This is
beyond disgust or mere cringing or embarrassment and makes the read that much
more compelling. Compare this, “<i>The white
race believes – believes with all its heart – that it is their right to take
the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This
nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its
foundations are murder, theft and cruelty</i>.” with a line like, “<i>Throughout 1990, Pandits are picked up
selectively and put to death. They are killed because Kashmir needs to be
cleansed of them.” </i>(more on the 2<sup>nd</sup> novel hopefully in my next
post later,) and you will know what I am talking about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">One of the things that struck me as I read was the truism of “The
more things change, the more they remain the same.” In Cora’s world, slave
patrollers<i> “required no reason to stop a
person apart from color.” </i>Compare this with the spate of police brutality
videos that have exploded across America in the past 2 years where white
policemen routinely and with little cause, stop, harass and often shoot men of colour,
coupled with the anti-immigrant rhetoric that runs through American politics
and policy today. The novel achieves a precarious balance in its end, a note of
faint hope that accompanies the realisation that centuries of death and
oppression cannot be washed away by the faint promise of a better tomorrow. However,
it is better than living without hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-38847760236027383852016-05-11T18:47:00.002+05:302016-05-11T18:55:13.421+05:30Notes on Child-44<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Along with the award-winning
fiction and classics that I dig, I’m also a huge fan of the paperback thriller.
There’s quite nothing like a Lee Child or Jo Nesbo to forget abt your cares for
a while and immerse yourself in the world of mutilated bodies, cryptic
talismans and the brooding alcoholic detective. So, it is no wonder that I
would love <b>Child 44</b> – Tom Smith’s
debut novel set in Stalin’s Russia. I must add that this is unlike any thriller
I’ve read before as the tension here has as much to do with the chase of a
dangerous psychopath who is murdering children around the western countryside
and carving out their stomach, as it is abt the State machinery which is
pursuing the protagonist Leo Demidov, a member of the State Police (MGB), for
his efforts to catch the murderer. In case you are rightly puzzled, this is
because in Stalinist Russia, crimes such as murder, burglary and prostitution <i>cannot</i> exist and therefore, the murders
must be written off as accidents unless Leo can prove otheriwise and stop the
murderer. Thus, the chase for the serial killer is intertwined by the State
Police’s machinations, persecution, and eventual hunt of Leo & his
beautiful wife Raisa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">The novel’s prologue
describes the disappearance of a young boy Andrei who had gone hunting in the
forest with his younger brother. Jumping several decades, the novel then brings
us to the dead body of a young boy, Arkady, who may have committed suicide on
the railway tracks. Parallel to this thread is introduced the thread abt Anatoly,
a veterinarian, who is suspected by the MGB of being a spy and is pursued and
eventually killed by them. The protagonist Leo Demidov is part of the team
which investigates Arkady’s death & writes it off as suicide, as well as
the team which finally captures Anatoly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Leo is a part of the MGB whose
task is to wipe out the faintest stench of any real or imagined dissent or
disloyalty to the State through continuous spying, interrogation, torture,
threats & lies. This is a world where Anatoly, a respectable veterinarian,
is forced to flee from his home as he fears the net is closing around him,
though he has committed no wrong & is simply ‘suspected’ of being a foreign
spy. Leo is a part of the system that persecutes innocent citizens like Anatoly
and believes that in doing so, he’s actually serving the country. Like most of
his colleagues, he too initially rejects evidence that a murderer is committing
the killings around the countryside. It is only when he becomes a pawn in
bureaucratic politics and is framed for being disloyal to the State, does he slowly
begin to reexamine the foundations on which his profession has rested. He
realizes that he is the only one who can apprehend & stop the murderer
since the actual State refuses to even accept that there have been any murders!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Alongside the story of Leo’s
gradual awakening, Tom Smith also infuses the thriller with the
slowly-raveling & unusual love story of Leo & his wife Raisa. It is a
love that is neither rooted in the conventional framework of marital affection
& respect, nor does it seek succor from some deep-seated passion. Raisa, a
school teacher & free thinker, who is critical of the Soviet State’s
politics and Leo’s role in furthering its atrocities, emerges as his equal and
his true partner once Leo becomes a fugitive, being relentlessly punished for
questioning the State’s decree. When love finally blossoms between the two, it
is with the poignant acceptance that it is bound to be fleeting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">The second half of the novel
revolves around Leo’s demotion & exile where he continues to invstigate the
murders with Raisa’s support. While the ending is a bit too pat for my liking,
one also realizes that a tragic end, while more realistic, wouldn’t necessarily
be more satisfying. Perhaps my only genuine crib is that the murderer is never
fully fleshed out or terrifying, perhaps because the MGB and State policies are
far more so. <span style="color: #4a4a4a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-50890207302916824402016-04-13T09:43:00.002+05:302016-04-13T09:46:57.503+05:30Intolerance, Liberalism, Dissent, and the Arrogance of Power<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">One cannot be an Indian & stay insulated from the happenings that are tearing my country apart currently. To say that this deep divisiveness is unprecedented in India’s history or wholly unexpected, is to be naïve or deliberately ignorant. Starting from the Partition, to the Khalistan Movement, the Mandal Commission agitation, the demolition of the Babri Masjid, to the Godhra massacre, our checkered history has more stains than stars. Nor are these incidents such that they can be easily pushed under the rug of a distant past – party workers hacking members of rival parties to death, point blank shootings of critiques of Hinduism, calls for purging Mumbai of non-marathis, destruction of entire belts of Dalit villages in Haryana, rape & abduction of Hindu girls in Assam & WB – these incidents have continued to dot the pages of our national & regional dailies. It would be a matter of individual ideology & also depend on which data one would be likely to refer to in order to argue for or against the allegation that we are becoming more intolerant under the current government.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It is no secret that Liberals & intellectuals across the country openly mourned that “<i>the fascists have won” </i>when the BJP won a landslide victory in 2014. Nor can one blame them entirely -- that Mr Modi is cut from a very different cloth than the previous BJP PM Mr AB Vajpayee was quite apparent to all. Modi’s pedigree as a RSS stalwart who has made his way up the ranks of the party was proudly touted in his tenure as Gujarat CM & his pre-election campaign. His past record during the Godhra riots, completely unapologetic stance in its aftermath, and aura of arrogance, didn’t win him many friends. While his promised mandate to the electorate was reforms, minimum governance, and boost to manufacturing, little or no profress has been made on either of these areas. Economists like Swaminathan Ankleshwar Aiyer today lament that Modi has shown none of the Capitalist-minded reforms that many Liberals feared. Instead, turning on the TV these days means witnessing yet another public spat between the BJP & Kejriwal/Rahul Gandhi, or listening to obnoxious & utterly shameful pronouncements from minor BJP leaders & supporters. One’s heart goes out to BJP spokespersons like Nalin Kohli or Sambit Patra who are called upon every evening on primetime TV debate to defend the callous and insensitive remarks of their party colleagues. One thing is amply clear – the quality of public discourse in India is abysmal & belongs to the gutter. One needs only to follow/participate in such debates on Twitter (I’ve recently become quite active) to discover new & colourful abuse at the hands of the trolls – largely from Right Wing supporters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Having said all this, I think the BJP’s political ascendency under the leadership of Mr Modi was welcome and much required for our country to gain political maturity, for many of us to actually grasp a genuine understanding of such noble text-book concepts as ‘secular’ & ‘nationalism’; for India’s intellectuals to acknowledge (if they have the courage to) that their ideologies and choices are barely a representative of the country’s electorate; for the ‘other’, who we easily label as ‘bhakt’ or ‘anti-national’ or ‘presstitude’, to lend their voice to the larger question of what should India be in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, or, to determine which kind of economic theory & history (both Left & Right or only one) should be taught in the country’s leading universities. So far, our public discourse has largely been dominated by the Left & that is also not without reason – the Right has always decried any kind of intellectual engagement depending instead on a version of muscular Hindu nationalism. Today, I am glad that I have access to mainstream RW news & opinion sites such as Swarajya & DailyO. While I may not agree with some of their columnists, I am at least exposed to a factually whetted & well-articulated point of counter-view to what is the prevailing thought in my country. And to be absolutely frank, I find RW commentators such as Ashok Mallick, Swapan Dasgupta, Sanjeev Sanyal, and Tavleen Singh far more bipartisan than any of their Left colleagues (Kavita Krishnan, Arundhati Roy, Brinda Karat).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For many days now we have heard people argue about the idea of india? This is a stupid argument in the first place. My idea of India changed drastically when I undertook a fairly long road trip of north-India earlier this year. My cousin -- who runs his small insurance business in Murshidabad district of WB and struggles to ward of the muslim goons who haunt the area often rants that ‘<i>we should throw all muslims out of the country’</i> -- is quite different from my husband’s uncles from Madhya Pradesh who belong to the Hindu upper caste and openly advocate banning not only beef but all kinds of meat among Hindus. How can their idea of India concur with mine? I, who am writing this sitting in a Muslim country and enjoy my steak & red wine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">At Jhargola village in Rajasthan it was difficult for us to find a single shop in the local <i>haat </i>which sold clean cooking oil – mustard or vegetable. The local brand sold there is so badly adulterated that one can barely see through the foggy, dense mix inside the bottle. Till about a year ago, I worked at one of India’s largest private banks whose corporate brochure proudly claimed its network of 2500 branches & 12,000 ATMs. Yet, as we toured more than 1700 kms across Delhi & Rajasthan, we must’ve passed about 7 ATMs & only 4 branches operated by SBI, Union Bank & HDFC Bank. Mind you, I am talking about small towns which stretch across the NH7, not the heartland of our villages. In Mulund, I am spoilt for choice – Kotak, HDFC, Axis, SBI, Canara – you name it and you’ll find them all with 300 metres of my house. So, how can my experience of India and hopes and expectations from it be in any way similar to the priest’s family in Chittorgarh who wanted our advice about his elder daughter pursuing a career in Commerce?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I’ve always believed that the absence of choice is the worst fate than can befall us; bringing up millions of countrymen on a single, homogenized and sanitized ideology is dangerous. The greatest nation on Earth too is not immune to such danger. Why else would it be reeling under the threat of a presidential nominee who has openly insulted minorities, women, and gays and still hopes to occupy the most powerful office in the world? When you try too hard to accommodate the ‘other’ without realizing that its definition is fluid and ever-evolving, when political correctness takes precedence over the country’s interests, and when most of the country hasn’t attained the political and social maturity to even grasp what it means to be the ‘other’, we court such dangerous phenomenon as we are seeing in the world’s two largest democracies today.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For me the saddest day was not when the BJP won the election, but every time I hear one of my urban, salaried, ‘educated’ friends & colleagues evince the desire to turn India into a China (<i>Kanhaiya Kumar would be shot in Tiananmen Square!</i>) and speak glowingly of Saudi’s law & order (the punishment for rape is stoning; no wonder women are safe there! <i>Kar sakenge humare desh mein?</i>). Blaming the BJP is the most convenient & obviously lazy thing to do. It is far more difficult to introspect and accept historical mistakes, political mishaps and vote bank appeasements.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-79181670061460801412016-04-10T09:45:00.000+05:302016-04-13T09:45:49.336+05:30Notes on We Are Not Ourselves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoPAH5FZv4PT8G0LKRw1c4L2lPE6rQYoBaC1rEoquDgisc6YMAQmmeZN5avm2CvlwiKSTjfwjbfN-3fT23y3r6XWZzZO4J50aGaaE8W2EBDPJpysz1z0ceF5yv71dA6bO8QIeExVFf3Cs/s1600/we+r+not.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoPAH5FZv4PT8G0LKRw1c4L2lPE6rQYoBaC1rEoquDgisc6YMAQmmeZN5avm2CvlwiKSTjfwjbfN-3fT23y3r6XWZzZO4J50aGaaE8W2EBDPJpysz1z0ceF5yv71dA6bO8QIeExVFf3Cs/s1600/we+r+not.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">It seems only fitting that I resume my book notes with Mathew Thomas’ <b>We Are Not Ourselves (</b>WANO), seeing as the book is about family (complete with its burdens of keeping up traditions & caring for its members), and forgetting (the state life reduces us to when we are nearly forced to forget why & how we loved the people we still are with for they have long since ceased to be themselves.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">I read somewhere that it took Thomas a decade to finish his novel & taste the fruits of success. A high school teacher in NY, he’d been working on his novel in between his class assignments. What never fails to surprise me is the unity of tone that an author is capable of maintaining when he’s plodding away at the same project for years on end (Donna Tratt’s <i>Goldfinch </i>is another example.) There is no abrupt deviation in the protagonist’s voice, no rude revelations about her character, and certainly no jarring breaks in between the novel’s different parts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">WANO opens with a dedication from <i>King </i>Lear, "We are not ourselves / When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind /To suffer with the body." Those familiar with Shakespeare’s play will recognize how pertinent they are in the context of what befalls Lear and how he is mightily reduced, and also subsequently elevated to. It hints at the diminishment that automatically follows when we are forced to abandon our true selves. While the major part of the novel focuses on a particular disease which brings about this diminishment, we also witness other ways in which people often forget their better selves, as in the case of the protagonist, Eileen’s mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">At the novel’s centre is Eileen Tumulty, raised in an Irish-American immigrant family in Queens, NY. While the novel accommodates her scientist husband Ed and her son Connell later on, she remains the pivot from which all action flows.Thomas paints an authentic picture of the community Eileen and her family are a part of and which grants them their respective identities in America. The traits which will characterize Eileen for much of the novel and which will also determine much of how we, yhe readers, respond to her, are planted & described meticulously by Thomas in the book’s early sections. Her essential aloofness, her fierce desire to leave behind the gloomy environs of her childhood and aspire to a better life, her ambitions, her independence and sheer physical capacity for hard work, her wordless commitment to taking care of her own, irrespective of her personal feelings towards them – is all there in the first 200pages of the novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">Studying to be a nurse so that she can one day get away from her childhood background of poverty and alcoholism, Eileen has no plans to marry when she meets Ed, a young neuroscientist who is as taken in by her as she is by him. While there is no doubt about how impressed she is by Ed, one cannot help but guess that part of her also sees Ed as an extension of her aspirations of material and intellectual ascendency. However, neither recognizes that there are huge differences in what each wants out of life and these differences in ideology, aspiration, intellectual power, and sheer will, forms a vivid backdrop of their long married years together. They are even different in what each wants for their son Connell and how they bond with him. Mathews great achievement lies in his depiction of their shared lives, the outbursts, unreasonable demands, emotional upheavals and occasional manipulations that most marriages are made up of.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">When Ed is struck with early onset of Alzheimer’s, the novel begins its last and major section. What is remarkable about Thomas’ achievement is that what could have easily become a tear-jerker is transformed in his hands into a sacred gospel of other lives from which one can learn and be enriched. The reader feels privileged to be able to catch a glimpse of the magnificent spirit which animates Eileen and which is fully realized only in these later sections. It’s as if whatever we’ve known about her has only been a prep for this final revelation which strips away every impression and response we have garnered for her so far. Far from being distraught, Eileen accepts and tackles her husband’s illness in much the same way she had earlier accepted her mother’s irresponsible behavior. The underlying difference is, of course, the deep and unshakable love and pride she feels for him. If there is outrage, it is never directed at any deity or destiny, merely at those who now treat Ed as she knows he really isn’t – not quite himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">Interspersed in the story of Eileen’s life is that of her son Connell, his extreme closeness with his father, his later quite-cavalier-yet-wholly believable response to his father’s disease, and final reconciliation with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 16.4067px;">Long after the novel ends, one is left with minute incidents and gestures that animate its narrative – a hand patting its knee compulsively, a letter from a father, a mother’s calm fury that she is on her own and must get through a long night, a humble and grateful acceptance that whie life deprives us of much, in the end, it also compensates in strange ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-61599264928970666562012-07-20T11:12:00.004+05:302012-07-29T11:58:17.852+05:30Notes on 'Freedom'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizkHz8FLmtEoti_YJWY_8HThxP2Fm5vLA_TKqY_A4SWUuNU09Qb7MRwr7-8nhY6lStwK0ggcQ48V_S16EdZ3BqwfeF93QXrUSIr-qb9GFlZM_mUocg8ZoY5C5_IvoqckaTpGBNIEJEkBs/s1600/freedom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizkHz8FLmtEoti_YJWY_8HThxP2Fm5vLA_TKqY_A4SWUuNU09Qb7MRwr7-8nhY6lStwK0ggcQ48V_S16EdZ3BqwfeF93QXrUSIr-qb9GFlZM_mUocg8ZoY5C5_IvoqckaTpGBNIEJEkBs/s200/freedom.jpg" width="134" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I read Franzen’s celebrated <em>The Corrections </em>last year and reviewed it <a href="http://r-all-names-taken-4-chrissakes.blogspot.in/2011/02/notes-on-corrections.html"><strong>here</strong></a>. To ask me to choose between the earlier novel and <em>Freedom</em> would be like asking a woman to choose between poetry and perfume. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Despite the similarities, there are obvious differences between the two novels. <em>Freedom </em>clearly exhibits its creator’s age - by age I don’t imply any bettering of his craft; simply, that he is more obviously sentimental, more accepting of human failures and the lies we tell ourselves and each other to make life bearable. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There are obvious flaws in the story, its ending being a convenient copout that enables everyone to live-as-happily-as-they-could-ever-after. But this is Franzen writing after 9/11, after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, after he has seen thousands of families losing their homes, and the government embroiled in an endless war on terror. This is Franzen who knows that the great culture of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln has long disappeared and states like Arizona are now seeking Bills that will enable public officials to arrest Hispanics and other minorities without an actual warrant should they be suspected of not carrying proper papers. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There’s a reason why Franzen is hailed as The American novelist of our times, up there with Fitzgerald and Steinbeck and Roth. A lot of American novelists have managed to capture the fine details and nuances of what it means to live in America, what is it that distinguishes this great nation from the Continent, its all embracing culture at odds with its history of violence and racism. But Franzen goes a step further. He brings to us the smells of Taco Bell, the staid lifestyle in the god-fearing midwest, the upward social mobility and distancing from one’s roots as one moves eastwards, and in the midst of all this, he places the minds and thoughts of actual lived lives. His characters are never caricatures trying to support an idea, they are all people who we have met at the supermarket, who we are in our daily lives.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><em>The Corrections </em>recounted the story of the Lamberts—Arthur and Enid and their three children. <em>Freedom </em>tells the story of the Berglunds—Walter and Patty and their two children. Educated, financially sound, holders of liberal principles, the Berglunds have everything and slowly proceed to lose it all. Introducing and explaining their liberal attitudes, Franzen adds with a nasty aside that they were the "<em>the super-guilty sort of liberals who needed to forgive everybody so their own good fortune could be forgiven; who lacked the courage of their privilege</em>."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Patty and Walter live in the suburbs of St Paul, Minnesota, with their two children Jessica and Joey. The novel opens just as the Berglunds are about to relocate to Washington DC from Minnesota, after Joey has left home and moved in with their next door neighbor, and Jessica is practically not on speaking terms with her mother. We learn that Patty was a former basketball champion who was forced to give up the game after an injury; though she was always strongly attracted to Richard Katz, lead singer of the indie band The Traumatics, she ended up marrying his best friend Walter. Things nearly develop between Patty and Richard whom Patty knows she is ‘<em>somewhat more than sort of into’</em> but not quite. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While the reader may gnash his teeth in frustration at Patty’s impulsive marriage, Franzen has done enough groundwork before to prepare us for this. Patty is the daughter of the powerful and influential Emersons who clearly have no use for a jock daughter and are only too happy when she chooses to apply to an out-of-state college. These are people who are willing to look the other way when they learn that Patty has been raped by the son of one of their close associates. Confronting Patty’s outrage after the incident, “<em>Her dad turned to her like an attorney. Like an adult addressing another adult, ‘ You drop it’, he said. Forget abt it; move on</em>.”</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So acute is Patty’s loneliness and misery in her earliest years that everything she does in retrospect, is a life-long reaction to these events and their terrible impact on her psyche. Later she writes, ‘<em>Looking back now, (she) sees her younger self as one of those miserable adolescents so angry at her parents that she needed to join a cult where she could be nicer and friendlier and more generous and subservient than she could bring herself to be at home anymore. Her cult just happened to be basketball</em>.’ When she meets Walter, it seems to be the ‘<em>first time that a person had ever looked through her jock exterior and; seen lights on inside</em>.’ </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As for Walter, he is besotted with Patty from the moment he lays eyes on her and insists on believing the best about her, despite evidence to the contrary! Is it any wonder that this girl ends up marrying him? More importantly, what is the true significance of a bond borne out of deep need and insecurity on the one hand, and unreal deification on the other?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The initial years of marriage are good, with Patty playing the role of the social butterfly, always meeting her neighbours ‘<em>with a plate of cookies or a card or some lilies of the valleys in a little thrift-store vase that she told you not to bother returning’</em>, and Walter being the upright employee who his company assigns to '<em>outreach and philanthropy, a corporate cul-de-sac where niceness was an asset’</em>. This mention of his proverbial and incurable niceness is interesting since later we are told that ‘<em>the fatal defect in his (Walter’s) own makeup, (was) the defect of pitying even the beings he most hated</em>.’</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Even before we know, things start to spiral downwards and the perfect couple make a hell of their own. As in life, everyone has an opinion about this too; the neighbours are quick to pronounce, ‘<em>Patty had too much time on her hands. In the old days, she’d been great with the little kids, teaching them sports and domestic arts, but now most of the kids on the street were teenagers</em>.’ And thus, once again, Patty is cruelly diagnosed as the frivolous housewife with too much time and too little to do. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The unraveling of their marriage which follows is hardly surprising. We, as readers have anticipated this with dread even as Walter and Patty were busy playing house. Joey, always precocious and fairly rude as a child, abruptly decides he’s had enough of his moralising, interfering parents and moves next door where he takes up with his under-age girlfriend Connie. It is an entirely different matter that the Joey-Connie story will form the other love story in this novel that is far more moving and unusual than Walter and Patty’s. Indeed, Frazen’s portrait of the sexually-ravenous Connie alone should make him eligible for literary awards. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Soon, Walter compromises on his lifelong idealistic principles and agrees to work for Texas baron Vin Haven, part of the George W. Bush coterie, who decide to strip-mine a particular region in West Virginia for coal and later allot the land for the breeding of an endangered avian species – the Cerulean Warbler. Walter justifies his decision on the grounds that he’ll finally have the means and reach to save this endangered species and also promote his campaign against overpopulation. His fast crumbling marriage to Patty is not helped when his young assistant ardently starts wooing him besides being his greatest support at work. To make matters worse, Joey gets embroiled in some shady deals involving supplying trucks for the American forces in Iraq; and opportunity finally throws Patty and Richard in each other’s way where they promptly proceed to fuck each other’s happiness - to employ a cliché. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In terms of a storyline, one might argue that Freedom mirrors the lives of several other such marriage sagas. But what makes Franzen’s prose stand out is the astute way he sees through his characters and explains their weaknesses. This doesn’t make them any less culpable, it just makes us more human. Thus, he beseeches our understanding when he writes, ‘<em>She didn’t think she was an alcoholic. She wasn’t an alcoholic. ……………It wasn’t alcoholism; it was self-defense</em>.”</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It would be amiss to talk about the novel without a mention of the clever way in which Franzen structures his narrative. Each section ends on a tantalising note where the character’s story is ruptured just when something momentous is about to happen or a long-awaited resolution is imperative. As we glimpse the different characters from each others’ perspectives, we realise that there are no heroes, just like there are no villains. Richard, Joey and Patty are all victims of their most earnest efforts to learn better and to be better. This ‘better’ comes naturally to Walter, but it is no less important when it blossoms in the others for that is the source of all healing. That is what lies at the heart of this tale of loss and redemption. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No post is ever complete without a note on its theme. What is Franzen really trying to explore and how does it tie in with the title? Is Franzen shedding light on the destructive nature of too much freedom? While this may be true, it is too simplistic. Perhaps, the subtler theme is: there is but one freedom which we all enjoy – the freedom to nurture or destroy those around us. This being so, what is the ideal state? And, how does one go through life, knowing as we now do, that we all bear the burden of that boundless freedom? As Joey wonders, ‘<em>He’d asked for his freedom, they’d granted it, and he couldn’t go back now</em>.’</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-38918065278958186242012-04-12T21:38:00.000+05:302012-04-12T21:38:33.962+05:30Notes on The Sisters Brothers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0DCUKRyaqttz6dQ5D66yooThF1mlMXcZAL_EmhR6Tw8f8Lc0eefhIc6yT-9rF1WZ0fUvIUAva6Nj93DqeQR9iGtby3oRVV7eQd15_6CTobPVkTRXu1Ptx8WfIiDSaFosSyWaD6Kl74MA/s1600/TSB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0DCUKRyaqttz6dQ5D66yooThF1mlMXcZAL_EmhR6Tw8f8Lc0eefhIc6yT-9rF1WZ0fUvIUAva6Nj93DqeQR9iGtby3oRVV7eQd15_6CTobPVkTRXu1Ptx8WfIiDSaFosSyWaD6Kl74MA/s200/TSB.jpg" width="132" /></a></div><div style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .1in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The Sisters Brothers (TSB) by Patrick deWitt made it to the Booker shortlist last year, and, while I had no qualms about it not being the finalist, I must admit that it made for very refreshing reading and also broke a lot of myths regarding what constitutes ‘good’ fiction. Never have I come across a novel (save perhaps for Updike’s Rabbit series and Roth’s Zuckerman series to a limited extent) where violence, comedy and a certain air of melancholy mingle so effortlessly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .1in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">First, I’d like to mention the book’s outstanding cover which shows the two eponymous Sisters Brothers of the novel in garish, black cartoon outline with a pair of eyes that seem to stare out at you. Once you read the novel you realize the level of detailing and wit that has gone into its design. The eyes sit in a face that belongs to a man who yields the power to disintegrate the fragile bond between the two brothers. Does he succeed? The novel will answer that.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .1in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The Sisters Brothers is a western in the manner of Wyatt Earp’s myth and John Wayne’s films, set in the late 19th century, with characters who are not so much grounded in real life as representatives of a way of life which the gradual rise of capitalist America killed. However, one must note that TSB is as much a part of the Clint Eastwood’s western capers as Cormac McCarthy’s gory <i>Blood Meridian</i>. It derives from these works, and also parodies and deviates from them.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The story is fairly simple: t</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">his novel follows two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, infamous assassins sent on an errand</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, an eccentric and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">brilliant inventor</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">who has found a way of distilling gold from the river valley; and </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">who is accused of stealing from their boss, the ruthless gangster Commodore.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> However, this unique method of extracting gold doesn’t come without its own risks and in the end leaves none completely untouched by retribution. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As the brothers set out on their quest from Oregon City to San Francisco, they meet a variety of colourful characters and encounter several adventures all of which is laced with a kind of joie de vivre that celebrates rather than condemns unholy relations, dubious characters, ruthless miscreants and unabashed swagger. This is what makes the novel so enjoyable. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The characters in this novel are all brutal, rude and depraved; however, occasionally, one glimpses a stray current of virtue or kindness in them. The brothers themselves are poles apart – Eli, the narrator, is sensitive and has started to question the relentless and unquestioned violence of their life; Charlie, the older brother is cold blooded, nasty and an unrepentant mercenary. As they travel across the rugged Nevada mountains, they banter, tease, argue with each other and also save each other’s skin. These sections are often farcical in a Jim Carey kind of manner, yet they never seem to dilute the strength of deWitt’s narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">There is no doubt that Eli is at the heart of this saga. An odd mix of sensitivity and unpredictable violence, sometimes slow witted and occasionally almost spiritual, lonely yet capable of enjoying the small pleasures of a lonely life, the reader stays committed to this endearing character. While he has chosen a life of evil, one senses that there is something within him that struggles with this life, “<i>My very center was beginning to expand as it always did before violence, a toppled pot of black ink covering the frame of my mind, its contents ceaseless, unaccountably limitless. My flesh and scalp started to ring and tingle and I became someone other than myself, or I became my second self, and this person was highly pleased to be stepping from the murk and into the living world where he might do just as he wished. I felt at once both lust and disgrace and wondered, Why do I relish this reversal to animal?”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As the novel progresses, Eli begins to wonder and wish for a way out of his current life. While he doesn’t exactly evince any great regret or deep seated philosophizing, he wishes for a little warmth, “<i>I had never been with a woman for longer than a night and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness.</i>” Such parts make this novel truly rewarding.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Thing is, Eli carries within him traces of a world that has long passed him by. He is not really an outsider in the manner of Randy the Ram, but he is also burdened by a lack of adequate understanding regarding what goes, what works. This is best demonstrated in the episode with his injured horse Tub. As his introspection deepens and the cracks in his character widen, his relationship with the animal changes. He has the chance to swap the slow and wobbly Tub for a new horse, and he does so, but then changes his mind because "<i>he has been a faithful animal to me</i>". All the while, Charlie mocks him as ‘<i>The Protector of Moronic Beasts</i>’. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The truly touching parts of the novel always revolve around Eli, his unmistakable loneliness and his constant efforts to win his brother’s approval and affection, who never misses a chance to remind him what a sentimental bumpkin he is. Despite these bits, Eli never fails to make us laugh, especially with his reactions when he discovers the joys of a toothbrush or the magical powers that a telephone, the “<i>large black horn emerging from the wall beside the bed</i>,” bestows. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the end TSB is about a journey, from ambition to an acceptance of one’s limitations, from callous disregard to the discovery of a common humanity, a journey from bathos to pathos. It is rollicking as all such journeys are. The journey is as old as time, yet as timeless as any good fable is. As Eli, the narrator, himself agrees, “<i>You will often see this scenario in serialized adventure novels: two grisly riders before the fire telling their bawdy stories and singing harrowing songs of death and lace.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-23384893766757401102012-04-06T20:04:00.003+05:302012-04-11T09:52:15.207+05:30Whimsy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-origin: initial; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">They say Time heals all; that Time spares no one and nothing. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Time does something much worse – it dilutes and erases the fine ridges and smooth geography of his face; it leaves you confused about the exact shade of his eyes – were they hazel or a whisky brown? It no longer allows you to conjure up the sound of his voice. <br />
<br />
</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 16.5pt;">After all this time, I cannot tell you the shape of his nose or the slant of his eyebrows, but I remember precisely the smell of his soap, the feel of his thick hair clenched tight in my fingers, and the sound of his voice comforting me, as he held me close and released me, and I clung to him as one would cling to a raft in a raging river. Without real hope, but with desperate relief.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I also remember the feel of his ring. It was sharp and it dug into my cheek as he held my face. Often he would hold me in so tight and for so long that my cheek would get a dent and my breath would stop. I think I was happy to have my breath stop as long as he did not stop holding me.</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Now everything starts to resemble a scrabble board where the chips have been hastily scrambled after a long game.</span></span><br />
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</div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-84690323526766330972012-04-02T17:18:00.001+05:302012-04-06T12:36:27.715+05:30Marginalia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Came across a fascinating discussion on the </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><b>Guardian books page</b></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> on marginalia, or the scribbling down of one’s thoughts/notes while reading a book, where most commentators seemed outraged that any reader would callously maim a book by scribbling on its margins. I disagreed. </span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> <br />
I am a compulsive annotator; most of my books have notes scribbled on their margins; passages of outstanding linguistic virtuosity and sections that have filled me with outrage or immense joy are underlined. I am not in the habit of picking up second-hand books (the market’s dismal in India), but occasionally some distant relative passes on a much-cherished book to me. My collections of short stories of Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe, and novels of Victor Hugo are all legacies from my mom’s uncle. Some of them have his scribbles in the margins – in faded, beautiful handwriting. When I first started reading Maupassant in class 8, I remember looking forward to what<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>phool dadu<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>had scribbled about a particular story. I guess if I came across a copy of American Pastoral all dog-eared and full of a previous reader’s notes, I wouldn’t mind it at all. I would think it made the book a dynamic object, containing not only the words and ideas of Philip Roth, but also another reader before me. Isn’t that a treasure nonpareil?<br />
</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Reading is a deeply personal and intense experience – in the confines of your bed or chair, with the ashtray beside you, and the drapes pulled aside to reveal the tree tops outside, you sit absorbing words that a Woolf or a Pamukh took months to pen. The careful reader doesn’t merely read – he looks for clues in what was left unsaid, he looks for subterfuge in what was said, and he makes it a dialogue, not a mere monologue. He scribbles and tells the author about similar experiences he may have had, or similar characters he may be familiar with. He shares with the author things he cannot bring himself to share with any other. He intuits when the author’s heart is soaring as his protagonist tells a 10-year old boy while flying kites, "For you a thousand times over", as also when an author has seen defeat and written about the, “</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">enormous assailability, the frailty, the enfeeblement of supposedly robust things.” Can there be a truer soul mate than an intuitive reader?<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<br />
*********************************************************************</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Selecting a Reader by Ted Hooser</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.25in; text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">First, I would have her be beautiful,</span></div>and walking carefully up on my poetry<br />
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,<br />
her hair still damp at the neck<br />
from washing it. She should be wearing<br />
a raincoat, an old one, dirty<br />
from not having money enough for the cleaners.<br />
She will take out her glasses, and there<br />
in the bookstore, she will thumb<br />
over my poems, then put the book back<br />
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,<br />
"For that kind of money, I can get<br />
my raincoat cleaned." And she will<br />
<br />
<br />
</div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-83144068585193972722012-03-15T19:01:00.001+05:302012-03-15T19:13:01.101+05:30Requiem For a Dream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, a lot has happened since the time I last posted here. Indian cricket has hit its nadir, Vidya Balan has created Bollywood history of sorts (go girl, go!), UP has just passed from one set of thugs into the hands of another, and Rahul Dravid did the only thing any dignified individual should do. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I didn’t watch the test series against either England or Australia, though I did hear abt them and later, read their coverage. I don’t know if you’ll call me a pessimist, but to me these twin series marked the end of an era, a golden age in Indian cricketing history that for me began not with our Wold Cup victory in 1983, but with that memorable test victory against Australia in 2001. Harbhajan Singh created history during that series and nobody could quite comprehend then captain Sourav Ganguly’s strange fixation on this spinner. For me, that test series has always been abt one thing alone - possessing ‘balls of steel’ - something which I consider as Ganguly’s legacy to Indian cricket. Does that mean I am belittling the efforts and achievements of the other players like Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble ? No way. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All these players epitomise the joy of watching cricket for people of my generation; of uplifting a beleaguered team to its moment of glory. To claim, as some do, that its only moment of glory was lifting the World Cup last year, is foolish. Excellence takes years to come by; it is a by-product of a manic desire to hold the bull by its horns; and of an unquenchable thirst. Once you have sat at the bar drinking the finest liquor, no matter how badly you crave a drink, thirst is only an idea, a vague concept. So, no, I am not going to write off our current players, nor am I saying that they are at fault for playing too many matches or being involved in too many endorsements. They are just not thirsty anymore. Enough said. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The newspapers are full of columnists playing tribute to one of India’s finest batsmen. As I read them, I am filled with a deep sadness: maybe Dravid is a greater player than Ganguly after all. Look at the outpouring of genuine admiration! I am simply blown away by Rahul Bose's tweet, "Rahul Dravid reflects an india that is honourable, ethical, hardworking, and thoughtful."<br />
<br />
Please note that I use the word greater and not better. Greatness is not a mere matter of statistics; it is a holistic concept of hundreds of minute qualities and habits and choices and achievements and decisions that define a person and his legacy. It is the goodwill that a person leaves behind when he’s no longer around. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In an odd way, it seems befitting that I write about my favourite sport in such elegiac terms today. The past few weeks signified the passing of an era in a personal sense too. But let's not talk abt it today.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps my next post will be abt a good book or film; perhaps it will be a long rant about uncouth Indians who rush into the elevator as if there’s a fire raging behind them; or maybe I will end up telling you why I think Barack Obama should kick Biden's ass and nominate Hillary as second-in-command; or maybe I will just tell you abt the time the world fell apart and the plate slipped from his hands as he looked on with helpless anguish. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-3941002109652292212012-01-20T18:19:00.008+05:302012-01-20T21:55:03.451+05:30Inspiration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Failing and Flying</b><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's the same when love comes to an end,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">or the marriage fails and people say</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">they knew it was a mistake, that everybody</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">said it would never work. That she was </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">old enough to know better. But anything</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">worth doing is worth doing badly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Like being there by that summer ocean</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on the other side of the island while</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">love was fading out of her, the stars </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">burning so extravagantly those nights that</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">anyone could tell you they would never last.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Every morning she was asleep in my bed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">like a visitation, the gentleness in her</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">like antelope standing in the dawn mist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Each afternoon I watched her coming back</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">through the hot stony field after swimming,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the sea light behind her and the huge sky</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on the other side of that. Listened to her</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">while we ate lunch. How can they say </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the marriage failed? Like the people who</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">came back from Provence (when it was Provence)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">but just coming to the end of his triumph.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>by Jack Gilbert</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
*******************************************************************</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Together</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I cannot do without you I think,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">as I listen uncomprehending to their words<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">tumbling out quicker than diamonds,<br />
out of a bandit’s purse string.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Eager promises, stupid condolences,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Earthy philosophy they offer too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I turn a deaf ear and cast my mind<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To times when you were my sound.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Speaking on my behalf, knowing<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> their stares alone would bring a silence profound.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was told it would be impossible <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To live under the same roof.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Never once did you complain<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As I read late with the light on,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When your speakers blared, not once did I frown.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perfect harmony is made up <br />
of two of a kind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At the busy corners, my hands and lips,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Would beat a wild stacatto,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in sync with the tap of your stick on the ground. <br />
As you held my hand,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Often I asked, ‘what’s on your mind’?<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They asked me what did <br />
it a</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 150%;">ll amount to?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sight and sound and amber</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and incense and fulfillment and knowledge</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">that i was not alone. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 150%;">Reading lips, fleeting touches,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The letters in Braille,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .25in;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Such was our holy grail. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><br />
<div><br />
</div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-2433278330672342152012-01-16T20:38:00.002+05:302012-01-17T17:16:15.281+05:30Ebar Ashi?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">One of the things I love about being a Bong is our language: the melodious, clean , rounded sounds of our vowels and consonants, the forms of respect accorded to each address based on one’s relationship with the addressee, and the meanings behind names. I find great beauty in my language, little that I know of it. Often these days, I meet people, both in mumbai and kolkata, who are ashamed of speaking in the vernacular, who stubbornly answer in english even when you address them in bengali. I find it annoying. Anyway, that’s not why I started this post.<br />
</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">One of the pet Bengali phrases that was once commonly used and is slowly dying is ‘<i>ebar ashi’</i>. Used as a signature at the end of epistles, and also in speech, its direct translation would be, “<i>now, let me come</i>.” But it is actually a form of goodbye and the ‘<i>ashi’</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>or ‘come’ is actually a promise to ‘return’ soon. Whenever we Bongs bid goodbye, we never say ‘<i>jachi’</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>or ‘I’m leaving/going’. It is always, ‘<i>ebar ashi’</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>– ‘let me go now so that I can return soon.’ More beautiful still is the ‘<i>ebar ashi</i>?’ - the question mark lends a dignity and sanction to the addressee that should be at the heart of all meaningful interaction. I don’t know if similar forms of leave-taking exist in other languages but I have asked my marathi and gujarati friends and it seems that they don’t have anything like this.<br />
</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">I don’t know anything about the genesis of my mother tongue so it leaves me free to imagine how things came to be. I imagine this graceful leave-taking must have its roots in the young boys who had joined the Swadeshi movement and who touched their mother’s feet and bid ‘<i>ebar ashi’</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>before leaving their homes for the eternal home. Or maybe, it was the only consolation a husband could offer his wife as he left home to eke a living in some far off land. For, poignant as these moments must have been, can you imagine a more hopeful and pregnant goodbye than this?</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-39907787661928686762012-01-10T12:04:00.001+05:302012-01-10T12:07:01.716+05:30Nobody<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I learnt I am nobody </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Did you too?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Why the pallor? Despair not.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">There’s a pair of us yet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Don’t show it,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">That you have me around.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">They’d banish us, you know,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Bury us underground.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Relish the thought,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">You are invisible,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Truly free,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Neither the volcanic ash,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Nor the minstral, can stop your departure.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Didn’t you find it dreary,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">To pose for the camera the livelong day?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">To perfect the collagen pout,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And colour the hair,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Modulate your clear voice,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And tone your skin?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I know you did,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">‘cause I did too.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Terrible it is to be somebody!</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">How like a frog</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">To tell your name the livelong day</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">To an admiring bog!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-70320044392482192702011-12-21T12:06:00.002+05:302011-12-21T20:20:08.269+05:30As If ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The only reading I’ve done this week is of tributes on and articles by Christopher Hitchens. One particular piece has stayed in mind. Almost everyone who knew Hitchens seems to unanimously nod their heads that the man was larger than life - everything about him vital, virile, articulate, bursting with energy, both pugnacious and kindly. That even esophageal cancer, one of the most painful forms of the disease, didn’t quite ‘do him in’ is a testament to the man and his almost God-like resilience. His literary output continued unabated, he attended parties (unless he was hospitalised) and till the end, he loved nothing more than a good conversation: "<em>For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one</em>." He also once said that smoking and drinking were stimulants in a conversation and he remained unapologetic till the end about both habits.<br />
<br />
In one of his last columns Hitchens wrote, ‘<em>Like health itself, the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs</em>.” Here he is talking about the loss of speech. When the radiation started, one day he discovered that his “<em>voice suddenly rose to a childish (or perhaps piglet-like) piping squeak</em>” and he was no longer “<em>able to stop a New York cab at 30 paces” nor could it like before</em>, “<em>without the help of a microphone, reach the back row and gallery of a crowded debating hall</em>.” Despite the casualness of his delivery, his words tear you.<br />
<br />
I’ve been wondering, what made the man tick? Suddenly, two scenes came to mind: one from Polanski’s The Pianist and the other from Milos Foreman’s One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.<br />
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One way of accepting life is to look upon it as a series of gains and losses: as Divine retribution and reward; sometimes deserved, often random. He didn’t really deserve to be kicked out of his job; she got what she deserved when she visited him; they really deserved to win the award - that kinda thing. What happens afterwards? What went on in Hitchens’ mind as the nurse left after injecting the last shot of the day, after the drapes had been pulled, and his last visitor left with hollow words of ‘let’s catch up soon’. How did he <em>pull</em> himself up, and <em>fight</em> his way to the table and <em>struggle</em> with the keypad to produce those glorious last articles? What stuff is man made of? I can’t presume what motivated him; such men are special. Genius always is. But for the rest, the antidote surely must be in a state of ‘As If’.<br />
<br />
The people in the Kolkata hospital who went to get well and encountered a sickening reality, what must be going through the minds of their family? Life is not fair; that’s the single, indisputable reality of our lives. The world which we permeate has the power to shape us and unmake us. When this familiar, comforting world crumbles, all known edifices of honesty and kindness disappear. This is when it is important we create a state of As If: to believe that the number tattooed on your wrist, doesn’t make you any less human, any less an individual, than the German officer who looks at you coldly; to believe that the death of your child makes you no more responsible than God who didn’t listen to your prayers; to understand that irrespective of it being labeled a flower without roots, it did change you forever.<br />
<br />
The two scenes below describe this state of As If. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve viewed these scenes over this year. Enjoy.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JkLSbDudrjU?fs=1" width="459"></iframe></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-83734908235513319442011-12-16T18:54:00.000+05:302016-04-04T11:04:08.041+05:30One Last Breath - RIP Chris <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When certain events unfold, they say Nature joins in the mourning. Flowers bend their heads, birds forget their music, and the musk deer loses her fragrance. I'm sure something like that happened today, for as i suddenly looked up from the computer screen, i was startled by the darkness outside. Rainfall in December in Mumbai? C'mon! Then my eye caught <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/arts/christopher-hitchens-is-dead-at-62-obituary.html?_r=1&hp"><b>sight of the news</b></a>. Everything fell into place. Why not? After all, 2011 didn't spare many. <br />
<br />
While I didn't always agree with <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2003/10/mommie_dearest.html"><b>some of his views</b></a>, I couldn't help but be dazzled by the clear, cold logic of his reasoning; his wit; his unequivocal support for the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/02/cartoon_debate.html"><b>values he believed in</b></a>, and his unflinching commitment to <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/12/augusto_pinochet_19152006.html"><b>calling a spade a spade</b></a>, diplomacy be damned! <br />
<br />
He was often in the news for his controversial views on Islamofaschism, his support of the invasion of Iraq, and his disbelief in God. I'd like to believe, the man possessed a heart too large and an imagination too liberal to accommodate our puny definitions of God. In his own way, he was a greater believer than either you or me.<br />
<br />
If you haven't read him before, <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-201009"><b>this</b></a> would be a good place to start: where he knew the end had begun. And yes, do please <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201#"><b>read this too</b></a>: a smack reply to all those who offer glib platitudes in the face of cosmic helplessness.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>RIP</i></span><br />
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drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-34211903941870439602011-12-03T18:05:00.002+05:302011-12-13T17:18:34.912+05:30Notes on Great House<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4fnCCwZ4SRDwmSMRnIrb8Z0TQsnounanCeYog8Y95BkhgywqPwJWl4RTCifF6MehyfQsZjTQNVGozMbaFoosHNWn-D_SLnQvj_QvLGx_2DwYGNS3aX2X31AYtaQstSLneNeJj7zlcqII/s1600/great+house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4fnCCwZ4SRDwmSMRnIrb8Z0TQsnounanCeYog8Y95BkhgywqPwJWl4RTCifF6MehyfQsZjTQNVGozMbaFoosHNWn-D_SLnQvj_QvLGx_2DwYGNS3aX2X31AYtaQstSLneNeJj7zlcqII/s200/great+house.jpg" width="131" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px;">I’ve never fought an impulse to abandon a book or film simply because it was wrapped in a brocade of endless gloom and grief. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px;">Nicole Krauss’ Great House is an aberration. I wanted to read this book when i learnt it was one of the finalist's in the 2010 National Book Awards, and also because her <a href="http://r-all-names-taken-4-chrissakes.blogspot.com/2011/07/history-of-love-i-loss.html"><b>first work had swept me away</b></a>. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px;">Of course, grief is as distinct from sadness as french fries from potato wedges. But Krauss’ Great House really tested my limits because despite the shining luminosity of her expressions, there were sections when I felt compelled to put my book down and move on to a James Patterson thriller! The reason I mention this at the onset is because this is not a book most people will enjoy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Does that mean I don’t recommend it? If you have an ear for music, if you don’t mind solitude, and if you are not impatient with those who couldn’t make it to the finishing line, read it. You will discover an author whose sheer mastery of emotions and language will leave you blinded. After Arundhati R0y’s God of Small Things, I have rarely come across such aplomb & aptness in language. Try this: "</span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">In life we sit at the table and refuse to eat, and in death we are eternally hungry."</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Like its delightful predecessor, Great House also revolves around an inanimate object and reveals how the lives of separate people in diverse locations are tied together through this object. In the former novel it was a missing manuscript, here it is a mammoth desk: “<i>an enormous, foreboding thing that bore down on the occupants of the room it inhabited, pretending to be inanimate but, like a Venus’ flytrap, ready to pounce on them and digest them via one of its many little terrible drawers.</i>”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The story is told by four narrators – Nadia in NY, Isabel in Oxford, Arthur in London & Aaron in Jerusalem. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Nadia, a writer, begins the story by recounting how the desk came her way. She addresses her story to a silent witness who she calls ‘Your honour’ and whose identity is only revealed in the final pages. We learn that she was left the desk by a young Chilean poet named Daniel Varsky who was leaving for home and needed a place to store his furniture. Soon afterwards Daniel falls a victim to Pinochet’s murderous regime and the desk remains with Nadia. Despite its foreboding presence, she forms a strange attachment with it as she continues to write at the desk. She remains unmarried and detached from any real human connection, and the desk and her brief encounter with Varsky seem to be the only milestones in her emotional landscape - "</span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">I'm embarrassed to say that my eyes actually filled with tears, Your Honour, though as is so often the case, the tears sprang from older, more obscure regrets i had delayed thinking about, which the gift, or loan, of of a stranger's furniture had somehow unsettled."</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px;">If there is no great exhilaration in her life, there is also no deep sorrow. Until the day Leah Weiz knocks on her door claiming to be Varsky’s daughter and requesting the desk back.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The next part of the story is told by Aaron, the recently widowed father of Dov, who he addresses through his monologue. Aaron is in fact the single character in this book who seems intent to redeem himself, who is aware of his severed connection from his own blood and is desperate to find common ground again with Dov. His anguish, his fury, his sense of utter desolation that no matter how hard he tries, he cannot scale the impenetrable wall that Dov has built around him, comprise some of the most beautiful sections of this novel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">We next meet Arthur Bender, who has only recently discovered (while caring for his Alzheimer-afflicted wife Lotte Berg) the extent of the secrets she kept locked within her self during their long marriage. It is in fact Lotte, who’d given the desk to Varsky. As these stories unravel, you realise neither Dov nor Lotte nor Nadia are ordinary people who look for and cherish concepts like stability, love or happiness. They are consumed by memories of a loss so immense that it makes it difficult to stand straight afterwards. Yet, what is truly painful is Krauss’ intuitive understanding of the unhappiness that falls upon those who are attached to these broken figures. As Arthur describes his long marriage, we realise the long periods of uncertainty, the endless doubts, and the effort required to silently accept the whims and silence of Lotte without ever voicing what it must’ve cost him to live like that. In many ways, Arthur reminds me of Tagore’s Nikhil from <i>Ghare Baire</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The fourth narrator is Isabel, a student at Oxford who falls in love with Yoav Weisz, Leah Weisz’s brother. Like Arthur and Aaron, Isabel too soon discovers the pitfalls of caring deeply for someone whose entire life is in the thrall of something greater than himself – in this case the siblings’ unusual and disturbing closeness, and the presence of their domineering father George Weisz. George is a famous antiques dealer who specialises in restoring old pieces of furniture looted by the Nazi’s to their rightful owners. Needless to say, George wants the desk. As George explains his peculiar occupation to us, we seem to glimpse what lies beneath Krauss’ magnificent meditation on loss and grief.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">George Weisz says, “<i>Bend a people around the shape of what they have lost, and let everything mirror its absent form</i>." His words are at complete odds with our commonplace understanding of grief and loss. We think (that’s what is taught and that’s what we witness in most around us) that time and life are the greatest healers; that with time, it is possible to overcome, or at least noticeably ‘move on’ from the epicentre of one’s great loss. This may be true of most. But the reverse is also true – that there may be some who simply do not have this faculty of self healing; who stand rooted in the quicksand of their loss and defeated by time; there is a kind of soil which no matter how much you water or fertilise, will yield no fruit. And this brings us to, perhaps, the book’s great existential question – if such loss is a definite possibility in one’s life, how does anything really matter? How do we lend meaning to the concepts and constructs that are purportedly meant to make life meaningful?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">According to Joan Didion the answer lies in writing: ‘you write your way through it’ she prescribes of crushing grief. Krauss is far cannier and offers nothing. There is no hope, no comfort, no light at the end of the novel: just shattered glass.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">As I read Great House I found myself impatient to see how the 4 stories would come together. Readers who expect neat endings will probably be a little miffed at Krauss for the manner in which this is done. I think this is also a deliberate ploy on her part because to search for meanings and connections in a merciless existential universe is perhaps as futile as trying to comprehend God.</span></div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-92231603899827378582011-12-01T20:49:00.058+05:302011-12-03T18:14:49.643+05:30On the badminton court<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22px;">His eyes focused on the black mole on her right foot - vivid, familiar, and enticing as always. Despite himself, he looked for the blisters which he knew had long healed. He daren’t look up for fear the others would see his eyes. He sat with his head bent, looking intently at the white hospital tiles, seemingly mesmerized by the pattern of 4 regular white squares interspersed with a lone brown; couldn’t wait for the entire ordeal to be over, and had it not been for her aging parents, the years that stretched between the two families, he doubted he’d be present.<br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">It was strange but not once did he feel like touching her, that familiar pull to thread his hand through her thick hair & pull her close; or run his thumb over her lower lip with a slowness that’d made her gasp and look at him pleadingly. That there would ever be a time when he could resist reaching out and pulling her close, was something he’d never imagined. The touch was all they’d ever had; when the words had betrayed them, it was their skins that spoke eloquently; in her small cluttered apartment, on his terrace, in busy airports, and cramped changing rooms – they’d allowed the madness to overpower them and left traces of a love that had stopped breathing a long time ago. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yet here he was once again after a gap of seven years. Seven long years of <span class="apple-converted-space"> a furtive peace and thankfulness that he’d finally found someone else who didn’t make him feel haunted all the time; someone who didn’t always expect the world of him. Now, those seven years had come to an end – in a dirty hospital room where four patients struggled for an elusive peace and privacy.</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Suddenly he arose and went over to stand beside her. As he looked down at her sunken cheeks, the sharp nose that he’d loved to tease her about, he wondered at the stillness that emanated from her. It was difficult to remember her without her nervous tic of pulling at the ends of the shaggy bangs that framed her face, to see her lying still instead of pacing restlessly, fuelled by nervous energy as she puffed on one cigarette after another. In all the years that he’d known her, he’d never seen her still. Now her chest was still; all was quiet within. The stormy turbulence of 33 years had finally ceased. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">He sat down and couldn’t help his eyes travelling over the familiar mole once again. Her toes were unpainted – a sight as alien as her lying on the bed without trying to cram all her thoughts into a babel of incoherence. She had abhorred make-up, but nail polish had been her single vanity.<span class="apple-converted-space"> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> </span>Crimson, orange, pewter grey, and green – he’d reserved his usual scorn for them, but had secretly smiled at her exuberance.<span class="apple-converted-space"> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"></span> </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Almost immediately his mind jumped to a particular evening they’d spent in a small hotel in Rishikesh. They’d travelled all the way from Hardwar where she’d had much fun floating the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>diya</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and flower baskets in Hadki Paori in the Ganges. Her squeals, her radiant smile, her childish excitement, the glow from the hundreds of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>diyas</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>floating in the water, it was one of those rare moments when everything came together and was perfect. Later at Rishikesh, she’d taught him how to paint her toes. Despite his complete disinterest in the beginning, he’d soon come to enjoy it. It was in keeping with so many other things he did because his initial reluctance would soon be overcome by her enthusiasm. None of the other women he’d known, and there had been quite a few, had come so unfettered, so free. He still remembered the evening they’d first had sex.<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">You’re losing weight! are you fine? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hey..hi…I am good. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">No, I am good is no good. It is I am fine or I am ok. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Oh, I forget, you’re the English major. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">It’s not that, at all. I am good sounds pompous. Let others decide if you’re good or bad.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Smile</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Silence</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">You’ve known me since you were a kid. Am I good or bad? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">I think you’re very good. You’re the best.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Shy smile</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Slow, lazy smile. Silence. Pinches her cheek.</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Do you want me to pick you after college tomorrow? We could go pick up those goldfish for your bowl. I spoke to a guy at Manish market and we could check him out. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Flushed</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">. You did? !! Of course I’d like to go tomorrow. Does he have the Indian variety or the Turkish? I have read that the Turkish ones learn to emote with you orer a period of time while the Indians are just dumb. I want the Turkish ones. Buuuutt, wont it be rather far for you to come all the way to college? I could meet you at the park? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Look, I just said we will check out what he has. I have no idea if they come from Turkey or Syria! And, if I said I can come, it means it’s no problem. Unless you have a problem with me picking you up? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">I was only thinking about you. Why do you get so easily irritated with whatever I say? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">I don’t. You imagine it. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Silence</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Why are you so silent? You want me to leave? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">No baby. Stay. Just some things on my mind. Thinking. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Tentative</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">. Have you been thinking about me? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yeah. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Silence</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Do you want me? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">More than you know. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Silence.</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">If I were to take you home now, you know it’d lead to hanky panky? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Laughing aloud.</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yeah? And then what? You know I can’t give you anything. That works for you? </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">It does. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">I don’t understand you….really I don’t at all. How can it work for you? How can you be so flippant?<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Voice rising now.</i> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">I am neither deaf nor flippant. You don't understand me, how can you even begin to understand my love? It doesn't matter.<br />
<br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;">And that’d been it. Not a word was exchanged & after a while, she’d beckoned to the waiter, paid the bill, gently taken his hand and brought him to her tiny apartment. He was in a daze, it was as if he was looking at her from amid dense fog.</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px;"> She’d caught him completely by surprise and the pleasure of her hands as they worked their way across his body, was a feeling he had never forgotten. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Yet, that was not when he felt protective about her. That had come much before. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">She’d been three when their family moved to the quarters below in the steel township managed by the company their fathers worked in. Their fathers were colleagues and she’d soon become his sister’s best friend. The 12 years that separated them ensured she was never anything more than a pesky nuisance, a precocious girl with stubborn ways who always borrowed his cassettes without seeking his permission. He’d hated that about her. Later when they were married briefly, she’d raid his clothes. He pretended to be angry and smiled at her mockingly, but deep down he was always oddly touched. In the end, she’d been the one who protected him, not the other way around. Though, all he’d ever wanted was to shield her. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ever since the incident on the badminton court. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">During the summer holidays, the badminton court became a beehive of activity. Boys and girls of different age groups congregated there since 7 in the morning to make the most of the outdoors before the heat became unbearable after midday. While the older children played their game, their younger sibling sat on the clubhouse steps under the shade, enthusiastically cheering and clapping for their older siblings. She’d always be there with his sister. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">He must’ve been around 16 then when the incident took place. He’ was engrossed in the game and was startled to hear a loud wailing. He looked around to find her rooted to the middle of the sun-baked cement court on her bare feet, wailing loudly as the heat scalded the tender insides of her bare soles. She’d sauntered over to him to tell him she wanted to go home and had forgotten to wear her sandals. Instinctively, several of them had rushed to pick her up, but by then blisters had covered her tiny pink feet. As he carried her inside, he’d been aware for the first time in his life, of a feeling of absolute terror, terror that he was solely responsible for something infinitely precious to him. Mingled with this terror was the awareness that he would do anything to protect the little girl in his arms. Never again had he experienced that same tenderness, that same terror for anybody else again in his life. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">It had always seemed odd to him that she had no memory of an incident that was so deeply etched in his consciousness. Often when he worked late, he’d stand quietly for a few seconds in front of the bedroom door, at daybreak, or after a night when he’d promised to be at home with her; he’d stand there with a sore conscience knowing she had finally fallen asleep with disappointment in her heart. He couldn’t even begin to count the times. At last his tired feet would remind him that he had to go inside and he’d press the door handle which he knew would creak halfway down. And she would wake up, look at him with sleepy eyes, more angry than hurt, until he slipped under the duvet, snuggled up to her body and felt its stiff resistance melt. But she wouldn’t give in. She’d quietly turn he back to him. And then he would stroke her more, kiss and nibble at her, be her servant until she was sitting on him, no longer the queen in her slumbers, but purring and moaning, wanton and offended at the same time. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17pt; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Later, lying beside each other in the darkened bedroom, he’d often recount the day on the badminton court. The script never changed and she’d fall asleep in his arms almost immediately afterwards. Now, he wasn’t so sure how much of what he remembered of that incident and used to tell her was actually true, and how much he’d made up to please her. Like she always assured him, it didn’t matter. </span></div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-12470700618497755332011-11-26T22:56:00.002+05:302011-11-26T22:58:30.946+05:30Red<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A colleague in Denmark who recently quit the company and relocated to Germany wrote me a mail describing the new workplace, travel involved, search for a house, etc. He mentioned, "I can feel this move will change me in several unknown, unseen ways but I guess it'll all be for the good in the end. I try and remain stoic but the prospect of all those dialysis machines leaves me wondering what good is life about anyway."<br />
<br />
Dumb me jumped to conclusions and dashed off a mail immediately remarking that i wasn't aware he was relocating for health purposes and commiserating with his misfortune, et all. PL replied later explaining that the 'dialysis' reference was solely due to the fact that the Communications department of this huge hospital was located on the same floor as the nephrology section and he passed them daily on his way to his office. He thanked me for my 'kind mail' but assured me that he was in perfectly fine health.<br />
<br />
If stupidity can kill, i would be playing the harp in heaven now. Aaaaargh! </div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-36666209889399609762011-11-20T14:20:00.002+05:302011-11-20T20:30:58.479+05:30Notes On Rockstar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFJG4atcl7xNDHnK7FhuhGkvTQ5vuCefY-iASw2rsVFIbJkIX0zjFcHR18uJUsIBrVrKIhT6GT13TetGdT2hfJRJcQt7hSKKSmmORcNqgSfHU41auf76fFUkKR1UKJ0mUOL0t1qXMYpjw/s1600/rockstar_hindi_movie_stills__6_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFJG4atcl7xNDHnK7FhuhGkvTQ5vuCefY-iASw2rsVFIbJkIX0zjFcHR18uJUsIBrVrKIhT6GT13TetGdT2hfJRJcQt7hSKKSmmORcNqgSfHU41auf76fFUkKR1UKJ0mUOL0t1qXMYpjw/s200/rockstar_hindi_movie_stills__6_.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some friends call me a movie snob, an assumption I don’t bother to correct. If not liking hits like <i>Hera Pheri, Dabaang</i> and <i>Khatron Ke Khiladi</i> makes me guilty of such transgression, I accept the charge. But frankly, none of these films make me see red – I don’t enjoy them, but I see that they remain true and committed to their vision of ‘masala’ entertainment. There is no clash in values or vision that I perceive in these films. But films like <i>Rockstar, Dil Kya Kare </i>and <i>Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna</i> really upset me because they deal with issues which are compelling and close to my heart, in a frivolous manner; it’s like you pick the best canapés and then shallow fry them and the end result is a half-cooked, soggy mess. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For starters, I have no idea why Imitiaz Ali named his film Rockstar, it might as easily be a film about a genius techie, a maverick investment banker or just some bloke who tries too hard to impress. Early on in the film we are told that JJ (Ranbir Kapoor) dreams of being the next Jim Morrison ( the only rockstar allusion in the film!). He is advised by his college mentor Khattarbhai (Kumud Mishra) that the one thing common to all great artists is their experience of intense pain and the ability to infuse that pain into their art. I don’t know if Ali is going wink-wink here, but I do agree that there’s a problem with the way we Indians define a rockstar. We are still so preoccupied with Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury that we cannot think of an alternate prototype – one who isn’t necessarily self destructive, one who doesn’t do drugs, one who turns up for his recordings on time, and doesn’t throw tantrums. We can’t acknowledge that artists like Zakir Hussain, A.R. Rehman and Shankar Mahadevan are rockstars too! Thus, I really found JJ’s naïve understanding of who’s a rockstar quite authentic in the context of India. In fact throughout Ali’s film, you’ll come across many such moments of resonance where he seems to be trying to delve into or reflect upon something that is of consequence in our lives. Yet sadly, he doesn’t bother to really stir the broth once the lid has been lifted. He’s simply content to let you catch a whiff of the aroma and then seal the lid back into place.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It takes a certain sensibility and imagination to make great love stories. When you really think about it, all love stories are the same. Boy & girl start from the starting line amidst much sunshine and cheering, later, clouds come in the way, and only one of them makes it to the finishing line. But the love story takes place only after the clouds darken the sky and therein the beauty. <i>Casablanca, Dr Zhivago, QSQT, Walk the Line, Eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind</i>, & perhaps even <i>Sholay</i> – look at any of them and you’ll see what I’m talking about. That’s why these are the greatest love stories ever filmed. The saddest thing about <i>Rockstar </i>is that it’s neither about an eccentric musical genius nor a great love story. It compromises on both ideals because Indian film makers are wary of showcasing their heroes as absolute assholes. We make excuses for these jerks, we are a nation obsessed with explaining away our negatives. The only exception is probably someone like SRK who dared to make films like <i>Anjaan</i> and <i>Darr</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Anyway, to return to the limpid love story, Ali shows imagination but again doesn’t pursue his vision through till the end. His JJ is more a retard (middle finger to political correctness) than eccentric or endearing. Though Ranbir tries hard to ape his grandfather Raj Kapoor, what he doesn’t quite possess is the innocence, naivete and endearing charm of Kapoor Sr. Frankly, I felt like delivering a tight smack across his face every time he opened his mouth or grinned. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">About Nargis Fuckri's Heer, all I can say is that she elevates Katrina Kaif to the levels of Smita Patil in comparison. Every time she came onscreen, the audience broke out in loud guffaws! And I was like - was Ali doped when he signed her? Every time I raged and wanted to walk out, A gripped my hand and told me, “She’s the only Indian actress I’ve seen who has Peneolpe Cruz’s mouth’. As if that alone is enough. Grrr….<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps the greatest disappointment is Rehman’s music. Forget the fact that this film is apparently about an unrefined </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">musical</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> genius, ‘<i>ek bahut bada janwar</i>’, who’s passionate about making music. This film cannot even be about an artist like Himesh Reshammiya! A.R. Rehman has always been God for me, and it breaks my heart to have to admit that his muse has probably deserted him forever. The fire is gone and it is we who are the poorer for it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Is there anything I liked about the film? Tough one that. As stated earlier, there are 2-3 conceits that Ali employs which are an absolute must in a love story, but they all fall flat. The idea of the body not being able to keep up and breaking down eventually when separated from ones beloved <i>because the heart has broken</i>, and then miraculously reviving again, is something so <i>magical</i>, so <i>fragile</i>, that it cannot & shouldn’t be expressed in terms of increased blood count. No way! There are those who will laugh at this and dismiss it, and others who will nod with unshed tears in their eyes. That’s ok. But it definitely isn’t something you can explain in terms of reports and tests and walking down stairs as Ali does. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Again, the entire camaraderie between the two lovers comes across as completely make-believe. At no point do you sense that Heer feels JJ is an organic extension of her. That’s what the greatest love stories are about – about healing our fractured selves. The scene where they meet in Prague after several years could have been done so poignantly with an actress like Rekha or Kareena but with Nargis F, it is turned into mockery! <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I liked Ali’s <i>Ahista Ahista</i>, <i>Jab We Met</i>, and I thought <i>Love Aaj Kal</i> had elements of a great love story. I still believe he’s a sensitive and intelligent director. But he doesn’t possess the soul of a lover – a lover of films. To be so, you have to throw caution to the winds, stop explaining and annotating emotions, stop playing to the gallery, and must learn to walk on coals. He still hasn’t done that. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1467418500056883985.post-55143562581842978902011-11-09T19:23:00.002+05:302011-11-09T20:13:50.900+05:30Notes on The Sense of an Ending<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwwx1PrhYrRcpFpgyzQqL7qlYWB5t2VcdxV2ovgB9WM3bg3Tn_V8neYle0gtWm9FcnDbRR_i1yjs1FiSC7CokziHJ5EgzGA1tdA4ZWGSiqp3WKH4NizetFyyHukZrzNBDu7R2Sz1OiJB0/s1600/Julian+Barnes+-+The+Sense+of+and+Ending.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwwx1PrhYrRcpFpgyzQqL7qlYWB5t2VcdxV2ovgB9WM3bg3Tn_V8neYle0gtWm9FcnDbRR_i1yjs1FiSC7CokziHJ5EgzGA1tdA4ZWGSiqp3WKH4NizetFyyHukZrzNBDu7R2Sz1OiJB0/s200/Julian+Barnes+-+The+Sense+of+and+Ending.jpg" width="129" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">I read 2 magnificent novels recently – this year’s Booker winner The Sense of An Ending and Nicole Krauss’ Great House. I’ve never felt more intrigued or taxed as I did while trying to join the dots and weave the threads in these novels and arrive at a satisfactory ending. Even now I’m unsure whether what I understood and interpreted is really what happened.</span> <span lang="EN-GB">This ambiguity is part of being alive, as also part of the narrative tradition, of hearing and reading about other people’s lives, of history, and of recalling the past. </span> <span lang="EN-GB">Julian Barnes’</span> <span lang="EN-GB">The Sense of an Ending is about these ambiguities - the impossibility of ever arriving at the truth about certain pivotal matters in our life because the truth has long ago been distorted and destroyed. </span> As one character puts it early on in the novel, “<span lang="EN-GB"><i>History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation".</i> That is why this novel possesses that rare punch to change the way one has been interpreting one’s life or going about it. That alone should quieten all those murmurs which ask whether it was a deserving winner or not.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The novel is narrated by Tony Webster,</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB">a 60-year-old retiree, who recalls the events of his life, only to discover that what he remembers and what actually happened don’t always concur: “<i>What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed</i>.” As Tony works his way towards an epiphany, we realize that, even at the end, one cann whot be sure that what Tony now understands, is the penultimate truth. I think that’s why this is one of the most befitting titles I’ve come across – it hints and mocks and alludes to a veil, to a mirage, that upon closer examination will cease to be and reveal a darker truth. Very few of us have the courage to actually seek an ‘ending’ to our affairs; instead, most of us are satisfied with the ‘sense of an ending’ that matters have been peacefully resolved, mortgage payments met, P/L accounts closed, children settled, and daily vitamins taken.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The narrative is prompted by Tony’s sudden receipt of a lawyer’s letter informing him that the mother of his ex-girlfriend, Veronica, (whom he hasn’t met in more than 40 years) has left him £500 and a diary. The diary belongs to Adrian Finn, a brooding intellectual schoolmate-cum-hero of Tony’s and his 3 friends who later went to study at Cambridge and shortly afterwards committed suicide at the age of 22. At that time he was married to Veronica who started dating him soon after she split with Tony. She now has the diary and though she meets him after a lot of persuasion, she refuses to give him the diary. As he probes and pushes, what he gradually discovers upsets the cart of his peaceful existence and challenges the substance of his memories.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The first part of this thin novel outlines Tony and his friends’ days at school, the simultaneously repressed and restless energy in a typical 60’s boys school, the advent of Adrian in their midst and his unique and logical way of looking at things, Tony’s brief affair with Veronica and the ill-fated weekend at her place with her family, her mother’s odd gesture under the window and even odder warning to not let Veronica get the better of him, the eventual break-up with Veronica and later knowledge that Adrian was now dating her. As he recounts these sections, he continuously retracts and casts doubt on whether he remembers things correctly and raises doubts in our minds about his reliability as a narrator. For instance, was he really snubbed and looked down upon during that long-ago weekend at Veronica’s house or did he simply project his own feelings of inadequacy onto others? Was Veronica’s mother really kind or could her behavior be ascribed to something darker? Most importantly, what role did Tony play in Adrian’s eventual suicide and the larger tragedy that unfolds in the last pages? As the novel develops, these questions haunt Tony and he seeks Veronica, who now has her husband’s diary, to find some degree of understanding and closure.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not only this, he is forced to re-examine and reinterpret his vision of Adrian – the school chum whose intellect had always enthralled Tony. He’d earlier romanticized Adrian’s suicide as the truest manner in which one can exercise his choice in life; later, as he uncovers facts, he is forced to consider whether Adrian’s death was nothing more than a cowardly act, an inability to face up to the truth about one’s moral decrepitude.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we veer towards the end, it does seem that the ‘ending’ is a tad contrived and one can’t be faulted for imagining that Tony’s final reading of his own role in the grand tragedy that has enfolded all their lives, is perhaps a little far-fetched. I know readers will quibble with this. I’d like to imagine that Barnes shapes his ending in this manner precisely because he wants to sow the doubt – does Tony really ‘get’ things in the end? Did things really happen the way he imagines them in the end? There’s no way of knowing and Veronica’s single stubborn accusation throughout the novel - ‘You just don’t get it’ – continues to resonate in our ears. <br />
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<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps the best thing about reading a writer like Barnes is the complete lack of sentimentality, and his dry and mordant wit that pervades even the most poignant sections. Notice the characteristic brusque way in which he captures the essence of what it meant to be a school boy in the ‘60s, “<i>We were book hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchic</i>.” One can’t help laughing as he describes the dating scene thus, “<i>This is what used to happen: you met a girl, you were attracted to her, you tried to ingratiate yourself, you would invite her to a couple of social events - for instance, the pub - then ask her out on her own, then again, and after a good-night kiss of variable heat, you were somehow officially ‘going out’ with her. Only when you were semi-publicly committed did you discover what her sexual policy might be. And sometimes this meant her body would be as tightly guarded as a fisheries exclusion zone.</i>”<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But always beneath the wit and even tone of his prose, you come across passages which enthrall as when he writes towards the end, “</span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">And no, it wasn’t shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;">.” To me, this along with another passage is perhaps the key to the novel – the distinction between guilt and remorse and regret. A distinction we forget too easily. </span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tony is a kind of Everyman – just one of us. In the beginning he tells us, “<i>I had not wanted life to bother me too much</i>.” He’s the kind of person who, like you may, claims, “<i>I recycle; I clean and decorate my flat to keep up its value. I’ve made my will; and my dealings with my daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren and ex-wife are, if less than perfect, at least settled</i>.” Sounds familiar? <br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet, it is this very man who says in the end, “<i>You get towards the end of life: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have i done wrong</i>.” Ever since i read the novel almost 2 months ago, i’ve revisited this passage not less than 17 times and it never fails to bring the tears despite my resolve. There’s such immense empathy for mankind in his assured ‘what else’ and not ‘what have i done wrong’, that it cannot but shake you. The very idea that we are all aware of our mistakes, that we try and make amends, and yet there’s so much that we are blind to, is the keenest reminder of our frailties. This novel serves that reminder. </span></span><span style="color: #0070c0; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>drift woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01347336756998447009noreply@blogger.com61