Dominique

I re-read The Fountainhead often. Usually in times of uncertainty, change, angst, or just moments when I am in need of affirmation. I also re-read Atlas Shrugged as, if not more, often but that is another post for another time. 

However, this time's re-read of The Fountainhead has been one of the most enriching. I am suddenly seeing deeper into some of the characters and pieces of the puzzle that remained only vaguely understood have become clearer. One of these is the character of Dominique. 

Dominique's quest for self-destruction has always fascinated me. More so perhaps because I can never quite fathom such hopelessness. But the last year, one of the most trying ones in life so far, gave me new appreciation for her angst. Her utter hopelessness in being able to reconcile her idealism and her dream of the perfect man with the halfway that exists in reality plunges her into despair and when we meet her, she has already decided that the world is deserving only of mockery, that a to live a life well, fully and consistently and emerge victorious is impossible; for the terms of battle are those that she cannot accept. 

And so, Dominique Francon, Femme fatale, the love interest of three men who stand at counterpoints to each other, chooses to expose the pretence that the world expects by pretending openly and consciously. She is contrarian in everything she does, flinging the unexpected, making a mockery of the rules. In all this she is amused yet miserable. Miserable for the lost ideal, the wasted potential, the indignity of fighting imbeciles at their stupid games to make place for those who should not need to fight at all. 

I've always found Dominique puzzling for how can one of her obvious intelligence be so held by the opinions of others? She of all people should know better than to care. But she does. She does because what she really wants, deep down is to be proven wrong. She wants to see Roark succeed even though she does everything she can to ensure otherwise. She believes she is protecting him from the pain of falling by not allowing him to rise at all.

This fierce desire to protect, to not be used by those unwilling to even acknowledge their need of you is something I've felt in some measure. The pain at having to explain oneself to those one believes to be inferior, to have to justify decisions, and demand acknowledgement because they don't know better. To make allowances for their ignorance and then finally coming to the realisation that lies at the crux of The Fountainhead and of Dominique's transformation by the end of the novel - that one needn't base one's estimation of success or failure by the standards set by others. That one's pain and one's happiness is for one alone to define. To know, with absolute certainty, that other's failure to recognise is not a failing in oneself, that one is not obliged to fight in order to be able to acknowledge that inner sense of being.

That is my lesson from Dominique for 2017. And as usual, I am absolutely dying to discuss some of this with the few people who I know will get it.

Writing for the movies

When I was a teenager, I firmly believed that movies made out of books were doomed to failure. There were few exceptions to the rule of course - The Silence of the Lambs, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. But every time I saw a Harry Potter movie, my belief in this maxim would become stronger. Books and movies were just not the same thing. A novel is incredibly detailed, a movie more visual and for one person (the director) to have the vision to stay honest to both an incredibly tough task.

More than a decade later, I am revising my views. More and more movies each year are based on novels. Are film-makers suddenly better at adapting? Reading this article in the New Yorker, made me think of an alternative explanation for this phenomenon - Increasingly, authors are writing for the movies.

Let me elaborate. The article suggests that the book publishing industry, and the revenue it generates are both in peril for various reasons. At the same time, the competition amongst authors is fierce with opportunities to self publish online or even offline and the availability of FREE quality content through blogs and other web platforms. In a situation where nearly all forms of print are declining and margins on book sales are reducing, there is no economic incentive for authors suggests the article. Follow this train of thought and one logical conclusion that emerges is that movie deals are an excellent revenue stream for authors of any talent.

Education no longer being the privilege of the very rich, there are a fair few of us with good language skills, ideas and no money in the bank. Not all of us come from an academic bent of mind either to build careers in academia where authorship is encouraged. So then those who want to write are left with two choices - write in the scraps of free time that you can get together while building a career and don't expect to make a career out of your writing (you might and you might not) or write in a way that your work reaches a wider audience, albeit through a different medium.

Should I really be surprised then that books increasingly cater to the movie audience? I suppose not. Is this is a good thing or bad thing for literature? I know not.

A look in the mirror

I've been brought up on a diet of English and American Writing. I first read Indian writing in English in my late teens, loved some of it, found the rest quite pedestrian. But this is not about the quality of English or American or Indian writing.

As I make my first, tentative attempts at story telling, I've realised what this extremely western diet of literature has done to me. It's made me feel unnatural about using Indian names in my stories. At the same time, I feel false if I try to situate a story in any place but India. Do you see the dichotomy there?

More than the dichotomy though, I felt a gut wrenching sadness when I realised this. I like to think of myself as sufficiently over the colonial hangover. Of not looking up blindly to the west, of being sufficiently appreciative and proud of my culture. And here I am, fighting in my mind over what name sounds more attractive! This is what a lifetime of exposure can do to you. 

I am left with a sense of envy for authors like Murakami and Pamuk, who write in their own language and yet connect with audiences across the world.

On reading and writing

Voracious reading must be accompanied by voracious writing. Else the mind gets too cluttered and ideas really can't find a place to move around.

There has been too much reading the past few months. There is thankfully some writing now (though not in this space) and so, I might just pull myself out of this hole.

I am all hopeful. :)

Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance

India | International

"We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the results is not just bad, it is ghastly."

Writing the post on this book has been postponed multiple times. First because I didn’t really know where to begin and then due to Murphy developing a sudden liking for me and my gadgets (scowl scowl scowl!).

But the technical snag is also serendipitous in a way because this is exactly where Pirsig starts his enquiry into the nature of knowledge, its acquisition and how we relate to the world. Pirsig begins his self proclaimed Chautauqua by talking about his travel companions’ discomfort with the very technology that makes their bike trip across the US possible. The specific case of John and Sylvia not wanting to know just what makes a motorbike tick (a very important skill according to the author when one is on a cross country trip through deserted backroads… and I would tend to agree with that) soon becomes a more generic pondering on the nature of knowledge.

As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is – emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty. That, today, is where it is at, and will continue to be for a long time to come… I see people like John and Sylvia living lost and alienated from the whole rational structure of civilized life, looking for solutions outside that structure, but finding none that are really satisfactory for long.

With each discovery, Pirsig steps back, trying to arrive at the root of the problem. From our every day relationship with the world around us and the alienation that technology has brought, he moves on to how the education system plays a role in dividing knowing into dualistic, mutually exclusive yins and yangs creating our discomfort with a holistic, non-dualistic view of knowledge and the world around us.

… is the branch of mathematics known as the calculus, which every engineer uses today. Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that’s what makes it hard to see.

Of an experiment conducted with a course he was teaching:

… the brighter, more serious students were the least desirous of grades, possibly because they were more interested in the subject matter of the course, whereas the dull or lazy students were the most desirous of grades, possibly because grades told them if they were getting by.

Pirsig then relates the quest of his alter ego for a unifying concept that brings together the dualities of the subjective and the objective. He recounts vividly, the uphill climb of trying to escape the dualistic though process as well as mode of expression that one has been long conditioned to.

Mountains like these and travellers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make

As Pirsig and his son journey through the mountains and valleys together, the reader knows from the pace of their journey, the pace of the upcoming portion of the Chautauqua. Pirsig also gives encouragement to the reader to chug along with him, advices to go slow but steady to avoid burning out through the advice that he gives Chris on pacing himself through the climb to the top of the mountain. Advice that the reader would do well to take at this part of the book.

Pirsig's argument for the fundamental unity of knowledge (defined dualistically as subjective and objective or classical and romantic or art and science) draws extensively from the oriental – Zen, Hinduism, Khayyam’s Rubaiyat – and the Occidental – Plato, Socrates, the Sophists, Aristotle, Kant, Hume. There is a particular section that reminded me directly of the cornerstone of the Hindu notion of detachment and the Bhagvad Gita:

This inner peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding. Physical quietness seems the easiest to achieve, although there are levels and levels of this too… Mental quietness, in which one has no wandering thoughts at all, seems more difficult, but can be achieved. But value quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs the acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest.

He argues that quality, or a sense of value, is the central unifying theme and that while this quality cannot be defined, each of us is equipped to recognize it. That it is because of this underlying quality that science and art essentiallyfeed off each other (In the first part of this video, visual artist Kelli Anderson talks about her two loves - Physics and music). ↬ visual news

Pirsig’s Schizophrenia (Pirsig and Phaedrus) to me was also essential to understanding the difficulty, the near impossibility of stepping out of established ways of thinking (especially for a mind conditioned to think dualistically) and near insanity that it could drive one to. I love the fact that the story of the road trip is almost an analogue, an allegory to the philosophical Chautauqua that is the main purpose of the book.

This is a book that is worth a slow thoughtful read and then many multiple reads thereafter. My biggest take away from this first reading is to not be restrained in my thinking by the formal processes and ways in which we acquire knowledge and to know that there are deep relations even between things that my seem un-related.

My copy of the book also looks much thumbed after this single reading and I must add that I am glad I bought this book and did not borrow it. Reading this book, I've discovered the joy in marking and post-it-ing books!

Changing forms

I was reading a piece in the Paris Review this morning and this sentence took me back to my own antagonism towards e-books – An antagonism not even a year old in its demise.

True, I frequently condemned e-books as yet another symptom of a world unable to sit quietly with itself.

In a discussion harking back to 2008 with a dear friend, I remember dismissing e-books as something that would never quite have the charm of paper books, something that could not compete with the musty smell of a library, with scribbled notes and underlinings in second hand books.  Re pointed out then that a part of my discomfort lay perhaps with the fact that I was attempting to read books on a laptop with tools (software) that did nothing to enhance the reading experience and that my experience with an e-book reading device such as the kindle might change my mind. I shrugged off the argument then. I see some truth in it now.

I started seriously considering e-books at the beginning of this year as I was hit by the finiteness of space and the ensuing clutter (something else that this piece talks about). Books began to spill out at me from a reasonably spacious cupboard at home and I am not one of those who like to keep books out on the nightstand or piled up on the floor. I like them stacked neatly, in some sort of order and in a way that gives me access to most of them. I hate having to wade through two rows of books to get at something I want to read or re-read – something that was becoming common. There simply wasn’t space enough to stack them in single rows!

I began the process of wrapping my head around the idea of an ebook, a process made easier by an impending move back to Mumbai and a decision to take only those books that I’d not read yet (a formidable stack in itself) and my Food and Photography books (even then, I did manage to sneak in one much thumbed, comfort book). Flats in Mumbai being matchbox sized, I wanted to keep the new pad spare and not overflowing with things.

My Kindle Library

I finally got myself an iPad about a month ago and since then have been reading voraciously on the Kindle app. Yes, having a handheld device has made reading in the electronic format much easier. Another plus point has been the free access to a ton of books that are out of copyright restrictions – Books that I would have thought twice before buying in print. I have also fallen in love with the ability to switch between books seamlessly, with being able to make notes as I read.

The one thing that I can’t make up mind about though, is whether I like being able to check out related stuff online as I read. At times it seems like a needless distraction, at others like a definite boon in being able to piece things together. I miss the dedicated act of reading… of being immersed in a book and nothing else.

I also miss the feel of paper, connected so intimately in my mind with the art of storytelling. While I don’t intend ridding myself of physical books entirely, in time that nostalgia might fade. For now, I am happy balancing the two, basking in the breathing space that gadgets give me.

Tolkien - the influences that could have shaped Middle Earth

I was rabbit holing through the web today, as I am often won't to do on a light and/or moody day. I first stumbled onto to this infographic (I was searching for a Lord of the Rings book cover for a little home project and google images threw up this result):

After promptly pinning it to my bookworm pin board, I happened to browse through the blog on which this infographic was posted.

I was pretty surprised to find J.R.R Tolkien (and C.S Lewis) being described as Christian authors on the blog. Now I'll admit I don't research authors much but Tolkien is one of my absolute favourites and I've read most of what he's written on Middle Earth. And it never struck me as particularly Christian. However, now that I think about it, there are similarities - the creation story, that of the elves being exiled from the home of the Valar in the western lands (the fall from the Garden of Eden), the battle between good and evil. I wonder though if Tolkien meant it to be Christian so to speak.

From what I've read Tolkien's intention was to create a British mythology but I'd definitely be interested to find out if there was a strong (and intended) Christian influence in Tolkien's writing. As a first step I plan to pick up this compilation of letters that Tolkien himself wrote once the Kindle version is out in November this year. If anyone out there has any other suggestions, do drop in a note.

I'd definitely love to delve deeper into the influences that shaped Tolkien's expansive and wonderfully imagined fictional world. I think it's one of the most completely imagined alternate universes ever written about!

The good, the gentle and the brave

Hemingway wrote that the world “breaks everyone,” and those “it does not break it kills.” “It kills the very good and very gentle and the very brave impartially,” he wrote. “If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” 

ᔥ  NYT - Hemingway's alternate endings to Farewell to Arms | International

You were all three.

On War

Moments like these absolve the needs dividing men.
Whatever caught and brought and kept them here
Is lost: and for a while they join a terrible equality,
Are virtuous, self-sacrificing, free:
And so insidious is this liberty 
That those surviving it will bear 
An even greater servitude to its root:
Believing they were whole, while they were brave;
That they were rich, because their loot was great;
That war was meaningful, because they lost their friends.


-- From War Music by Christopher Logue | International | India |

The Paradox called Love

... love involves (tragically, incorrigibly, but also beautifully) a desire for something that continuously transforms. Love is painful because we want the object of love to change and stay the same, love is a desire and a fiction that animates our greatest pleasures and our most profound sufferings. Love hold us to this life, keeps us faithful to it. Yet nothing can save us from our ultimate reentry into oblivion - the point at which no amount of consciousness or desire can preserve identity or the energies that we once called our own.

-- By David LaRocca in the afterword to Schematics: A Love Story.

I found this quote at Brain pickings

Finishing some unfinished business

In the new year one of the things that I want to do is give a little more focus to my reading, make it organised and keep track of what I read and want to read. Am doing the keeping track bit on Goodreads. Having used the website for the better part of 2011, I find it a good way to add and keep track of all that I am reading. I like the interface, the reviews and recommendations. Besides, it's the only one that's gotten me to actually regularly update even though I have librarything and Shelfari accounts.

Attacking the former has taken quite a bit of thought. The idea of a reading challenge first caught my attention when I came across a reading challenge 2011 post on a blog that I follow. That was in early 2011. Through 2011, I made a promise to read more since I'd noticed a sharp decline in how much I had been reading lately. There was a time I used to easily finish a book a week. What I found as I neared the end of 2011 was that I had no idea whether I'd actually managed to up my reading or not. That's when I started keep serious track of my books on goodreads. I am happy to say that I did read more in 2011. By how much I don't know. As 2011 neared its end and I saw the books piled up in my cupboard as well as those in my "to read" list on Goodreads and my wishlist in flipkart, I decided I'd set myself a few goals in 2012.

While as Rehab was telling me when we were discussing this, reading should be effortless and free wheeling, I want to have clear goals for reading this year because there are many things I've wanted to read but I've just not gotten around to them or gotten through them. One of the things that tends to happen to me when I am reading is that there are books that I just give up on - either after a few pages or when I have been half way through. And then there are books I've bought on recommendations and then promptly forgotten about. And lastly there are books and authors that I've been wanting to read for a while but they keep getting pushed to the bottom of my lists and the back of my mind!

So with all of that in mind, I've been browsing around looking at reading challenges and I've finally decided to make my own reading goals based on everything that's been piling up and include a couple of online reading challenges that appealed to me as a part of that.

Now that I've given you enough of a background (whether you want it or not) to why I want to set myself a reading challenge (with many many small subsets) for 2012, I shall get down to actually stating the unfinished business that I hope to finish.

The Universal Set
Read 52 books in 2012. I want to get back to reading at least one book a week if not more this year. If I succeed in this, I shall aim to make this a habit every year and slowly increase the number of books. Having browsed a lot of book blogs over the last couple of days, I don't think reading 52 books in one year makes me a very huge geek as some people would like to believe ;) . Relevant some people, you know who you are so please take note. In fact I've realised 52 books just puts me at the bottom rung of the ladder of geekiness. Sigh!

Read for a cause
As a part of my read more books this year mission, I've also decided that I will put aside a fixed amount of money (as of now I am thinking Rs. 100-200) per book that I read. At the end of the year, I hope to use this money to buy books for the library of a government or municipal schools given that these schools often don't have good library facilities if any at all. I am still to figure out how exactly I'll go about this but I have till December to do that. This will also hopefully be motivation for me to read more than that target of 52 books and help me make that an enduring habit.

Mount TBR Challenge - reduce the To Be Read Pile in my book cupboard
I picked up this challenge while I was browsing online for reading challenges that would help me with my reading goals for 2012. To see the challenge and it's rules click on the link above. I plan to climb at least Pike's Peak (read at least 12 books from my personal library bought before 1st Jan 2012 that I have not read yet). The 12 books that I definitely want to finish this year are (in no particular order):

1. Birth of the Prison - Michel Foucault
2. River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh
3. Madness and Civilization - Michel Foucault
4. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
5. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. The Happiness Project - Gretchen Rubin
7. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
8. A Dead Hand - Paul Theroux
9. The Black Book - Orhan Pamuk
10. Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk
11. Neti Neti - Anjum Hasan
12. Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

Some of these books are also a part of some of other reading goals but these are the first 12 books I could remember (without looking at my bookshelf) that I want to finish. If I manage to get to the top of Pike's peak by April 2012, I shall try and make it to Mt. Vancouver too (25 books out of my personal library bought before 1st Jan 2012). While I have plenty of books to finish at home, I am not aiming for Mt. Kilimanjaro just yet (50 books) because there are books that I want to read that I will either buy or borrow from a local library. Plus I want to keep some room for surprise reads.

Read some classics

I started reading classics when I was in grade 8 and then I think forgot about them by the time I got to grade 10. So I want to go back and read some Jane Austen (I haven't read Emma yet), Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre and Villete), Goethe (Faust), Dante (Divine Comedy) and whatever else catches my fancy here.

Read the books that I've marked to read on Goodreads/Flipkart in all my book browsing of last year

Defnite ones here are going to be:

1. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
2. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett (I've been wanting to read Pratchett for the longest time!!!)
3. Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett
4. The Declaration - Gemma Malley
5. Faust - Goethe
6. The Secret Lives of People in Love - Simon Van Booy
7. 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
8. Abarat - Clive Barker
9. One thousand and one nights - Hanan Al-Shaykh
10. War Music - Christopher Logue

Getting lost in a comfortable book challenge

This is another challenge I came across online. Now, I totally get the idea of a comfort book. There are books that I have read millions of times and I love going back to when I am feeling off - Gone with the Wind, Thornbirds, Lord of the Rings, The Fountainhead... there are many. So I am looking forward to trying some books that others love. I am still researching the books in the list on the challenge website. The only one that I know I am definitely going to read as of now is Jane Eyre. I shall update this bit in the next couple of days as soon as I have decided which five I am going to read!

UPDATE: Here are my five comfortable books to read in 2012:

1. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
2. Mists of Avalon -  Marion Zimmer Bradley
3. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
4. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
5. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

Read some books released on 2012

I've realised that even in 2011 or the years before that, I've hardly read any book released in that year. So I'm going to keep my ears and eyes open for new releases and try a few!

Phew! Now that I am done writing this, I shall get down to reading once I get home ;). I'll be posting some reviews of the books on this blog, if I feel strongly enough about the book that is and I'll definitely be keeping track on Goodreads and hope the size of the read list grows!

My thoughts on all the books I am reading this year are HERE

PS: I am definitely behind on how much reading I need to do. But hopefully, will reach closer to that goal of 52. **Fingers Crossed**

PPS: A Little catching up has happened. I hope more does. Not much progress on the lists up above though (A little, not much).

PPPS: Woohooo! Some catching up happening and I am enjoying crossing out some of the books mentioned about at least. Though I do have a writing backlog now. But I much prefer that to a reading backlog.

By, Of and For Book Lovers

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

-- The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

Book love can be obsessive and to a degree far greater than one might think possible for  something so benign as a few pieces of paper with some ink on them. But for those who know the power that a good author can wield with words, it is not a strange thing to imagine oneself completely lost. Reading a book about book lovers then, is almost like introspection. At so many points does one pause to say "Oh! I totally know where that feeling is coming from!" And so it has been with me. Over the last couple of months, I have completed two books based on a central character who runs or rather helps run a book shop. These books have engaged me far more, to the extent that I have forgotten meals (after a very long time) or other pursuits in order to finish them as soon as I possibly can.

The first was The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - a recommendation and gift from a dear friend. It is a mystery novel of sorts where a boy, whose father owns a antiquarian bookshop, traces the anguished history of author Julian Carax and tries to discover who is destroying Carax's little known works. Along the way, the boy discovers love and friendship in unlikely quarters. While the plot of the mystery became predictable after a while, the book kept me bound by virtue of the protagonist's fierce desire to protect the last known copy of The shadow of the wind, the last novel by Julian Carax. As someone who fears the demise of physical books in the face of the advent of ebooks (there are many points for and against that debate an I am not getting into it here. Suffice to say that I love my paper books to the ends of this earth and have no qualms carting them around with me no matter where I go), I can empathise with the boy's anguish as he fears an author lost to the world.

Zafon's prose is beautiful as he paints Barcelona in shades of antiquity. It seems a world far far removed, untouched by technology, where friends meet everyday and lovers write letters (a lost art!). He manages to transfer the moods of his protagonist on to his reader (or was that just me) and so compels one to finish the journey so normalcy in life may be restored.

The second book was The Thirteenth Tale, an excerpt from which appears at the start of this post. I picked up this book from a list on "Best book cover art" on Goodreads. I fell in love with the rich cover and then the plot summary intrigued me. For once, I went in search of an edition with exactly that cover and though I found other editions with different covers more easily, I wouldn't buy them. The Thirteenth Tale, is about books and stories on almost all levels. It is the story of a famous but reclusive author who decides to tell her true story before she dies. Vida Winter has invented many histories for herself while she was alive but as illness eats away at her, she decides finally to tell the truth about her past to Margaret Lea. Margaret Lea is an equally reclusive biographer and prefers to write biographies of authors already long dead. Margaret's father owns an antiquarian bookshop where Margaret has spent all her childhood. At the time of Vida's invitation to be her biographer, Margaret lives in an apartment above the bookshop and spends most of her time with the old books and almanacs there. Vida's story eventually also helps Margaret deal with events of her own past that she has not yet been able to come to terms with.

As author and biographer talk, they reminiscence about their favourite books. Jane Eyre makes a repeated appearance as do Sherlock Holmes and Wuthering Heights. Books become expressive of personalities and behaviour as Vida's doctor recommends that Margaret read Sherlock Holmes in a bid to snap out of her winter induced depression. Setterfield explores how story telling is central to human life, how stories can be more powerful than the truth and most importantly how the telling and receiving of stories is cathartic. When Vida talks about the stories we weave around our birth, it takes me back to conversations with my parents as they described my birth and early childhood - moments that are not a part of my conscious memory but at the same time stories that I can now tell as if they were. The Thirteenth Tale hooks you in the dreamy manner of a book that promises to transport you to a different world. It makes you lose yourself in its folds by describing exactly that feeling of being lost in a book and completely cut off from the rest of the world. For any bibliophile, making the journey with Margaret and Vida, is at many points an introspection with the luxury of some outsider actually naming in words the way you feel inside when you read those words.

For that introspectiveness, I have enjoyed reading books about fellow book lovers. A genre that I intend to explore not for its plots but for the insight that it brings to me.

Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the first book of a trilogy. The story is set in an uncertain time in the future in what is now North America and in the book, the country of Panem.

Panem consists of a Capitol surrounded by 12 districts. Each year, to remind the districts of the consequences of rebellion against the Capitol, the Capitol holds the hunger games. Each district is required to send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate in the games. To win the Hunger games the participants must eliminate each other within an artificially created environment known as "The Arena" till only one of them is alive. The Games are televised and broadcast across the country as a show of the Capitol's power over the districts. In its setting and premise the book is highly reminiscent of  Battle Royale, the Japanese movie. There too rebellious adolescents are kept in place by a fight to the death.

The Hunger Games begins in district 12, the poorest of the districts with Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take her 12 year old sister's place in the Hunger Games. As a thriller Hunger Games scores full points. There are enough moments, nicely interspersed to keep you flipping the pages, enough to make me want to complete the trilogy.

As an exploration of war and its effects on freedom and morality it falls short. I would have liked to see Katniss make a few more tough choices. The book circumvents tough choices in fairytale fashion with the Capitol relenting almost too easily. Personal conflict is almost absent as Katniss hardly faces a dilemma that calls for her morals, actions or choices into question. What would she have done if it came to her survival vs. that of a friend? Would she value her life more than a past kindness? Would she consciously rebel against the Capitol and the powers that be? There is no choice that Katniss is called on to make that compels the reader to evaluate the ethics of war, dictatorship and rebellion; choices whose consequences are unpalatable for Katniss and the reader.

While there is promise of retaliation by the Capitol in the other two books of the series, I do wish this one had examined the personal choices that people make in situations of extreme stress with a little more depth.

A P.S to the Post: After reading the other two books, I think the only key character who represents the personal crisis that is created by war, dictatorship and rebellion is Gale. At the very end of the tale, it is his choices that are worth thinking about. I wonder if he would have played the Hunger Games differently as opposed to Katniss or Peeta. Sure would have made for an even more engrossing read.

In a P.S that is longer than it should be, I should also say that I think the ancillary characters add much more meat to the story than do the protagonists. They represent the entire spectrum of choices that people must make in situations where Peace is not an option.

Questions, questions, questions

The simplicity of Krishna's argument, and the utter difficulty of practising it, always stuns me. Krishna, through out the Gita, makes a very simple point - Do what you must, what the situation demands (from a larger cosmic point of view) unfettered by personal desire, power, lust, envy, anger, fear, vengance or any other emotion. Do it out of love he says. Not the love that is personal and exclusive, but love that is as large as life and all inclusive. Only then are you acting in favour of the cosmic balance of the universe.

It is this same principle that allows Krishna to manipulate and break the rules of righteous war, to dupe the Kauravas at every stage of the battle, allowing the Pandavas to win. Yet, at the end of the war, the Pandavas have done Krishna's bidding without understanding his purpose (with the possible exception of Yudhishtra who is the only Pandava who enters heaven).

Yet, as an individual, when I think about anything, it is hard to view a situation free of personal prejudice. How does one, at any point, determine whether a course of action is being undertaken because that is truly what the situation demands or because there is a subconscious desire for a particular outcome that one has not been able to identify yet? When do you know that you have peeled back all layers of prejudice and conditioning and desire? How does one calculate the merits and demerits of a situation without taking into account the gain or loss (happiness or sorrow) that one is expecting from it?

Yet another reading of a retelling of the Mahabharat and I only have more questions. Still more questions and no answers at all (that in itself is perhaps, a good thing).

PS: I do recommend everyone to read at least a couple of retellings of the Mahabharat. The retellings themselves are an exercise in understanding perspective and points of view. Some of the ones I've read are:

1. Mahasamar (Narendra Kohli): This one is in Hindi and was recommended by a friend who knows the epic better than anyone else I know!
2. Palace of Illusions (Chitra Banerji Divakaruni): The Mahabharata told from Draupadi's perspective, the woman who is the pivot of the plot of the Mahabharata.
3. Mahabharata retold by C Rajagopalachari: This one was my first, perhaps the simplest, as the tale would be told to a child.
4. Difficulty of being good (Gurcharan Das): This is not a direct retelling of the Mahabharata but an analysis of its characters and plot, the lessons that can be drawn from it and the continuing relevance of the epic in present times.
5. Jaya (Devdutt Pattanaik): This is one I just finished. It is a simple retelling but what I love about it is the little side stories and the notes at the end of each chapter pointing out the moral, sociological and political debates and setting the historical context of vedic lifestyle for the reader. It brings out both the context that created the Mahabharata as well as the underpinning values that make it eternally relevant. 

All of these books are available in India on http://www.flipkart.com and http://www.indiaplaza.in

At this point, I am regretting not knowing to read a vernacular language such as Tamil. Would love to read a folk retelling of the epic!

The memories we talk about

I recently finished reading a book by one of my favourite Indian authors - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The book is called One Amazing Thing. To cut a long story short, it is the story of 9 people trapped under the rubble of the Indian Embassy after an earthquake. And as they wait to be rescued, they begin to tell each other stories of that one amazing thing or moment or event of their lives. And as I was reading each story I realised, they were all sad in some measure. No story was completely happy, from start to finish.

And so I started thinking back I realised that we tell our sad stories more than our happy stories. We take the happy stories for granted and wallow in the sad ones. Like telling them somehow eases the pain or gives more purpose to our lives. And that's really all wrong. Purpose in life should come from its happy parts. The things that made you giggle and laugh till your jaws hurt, till you are clutching your tummy and rolling around helplessly, hoping something will make you stop before you choke. And those moments are rare. Much rarer than all the sad things that life has to offer (it really has plenty of those).

One Amazing Thing is poignant and the stories are beautifully told. But somehow, I finished thinking amazing things should have left me smiling more than sighing.

Revisting and retelling history

Amitav Ghosh has a talent for description. He describes in a way that makes me feel like I was right there, looking, watching, hearing. It's the quality I loved about Hungry Tide - I could use that book as a tour guide when I do make it to the Sundarbans. In an Antique Land also has that power. It makes me want to get up, go explore, see a new city beyond what tourists see.

It moves between the 1980s and the 1100s, smoothly; the Egypt of the Jews interwoven with the Egypt of Muslims.It encompasses two countries - India and Egypt - and examines the layers of their relationship with each other - the demands of politics and economics bringing them together, the differences in culture setting them apart. The discourse of three religions that have been in constant conflict in modern times - Islam, Judaism and Hinduism - throws up a synthesis that the modern mind would not imagine.

Through the story of a Jewish merchant and his slave and the Author's quest to decipher their lives, Ghosh shows how history is constructed and how we ourselves never examine the stories that build our interactions and notions of other communities. It is a fascinating journey of discovering little told or remembered stories, the kind that make you think that you too will be a part of history someday. It is a story that makes you realize that most of history is outside the textbooks, hidden in memories and tales

The book is slow, and there are no heroes - much like real life. It is a slow re examination of ingrained notions and its pace is as determined by the reader as by the author.