Men Without Women

That’s what it’s like to lose a woman. And at a certain time, losing one woman means losing all women. That’s how we become Men Without Women.

The unpredictability of this author is mesmerizing. He begins without any pretext. So much so that the book does not have the usual long and irrelevant waste of pages known as the foreword. Before you know it, the setting is in place. You are already familiar with the characters. Or the central character at least. Which is almost without exception a lonely middle-aged man. The story moves at a brisk pace as you become intimate with the life of that lonely man and his thoughts. And then suddenly, as you turn a page, the story ends. But not before a twist which is delivered more often than not in a single line. A change of perspective or a change of heart.

I generally do not look at the foreword or chapter index of a book but head straight to the first page. So, I had no idea that this book is a collection of six stories. I was almost heart broken when the first story ended. I had wished to be with those characters for a little longer.

Perhaps that is why I liked the first story the most. First love, as they say, can never be surpassed.

As with most people who are well raised, well educated, and financial secure, Dr. Tokai only thought of himself.

Murakami has a beautiful way of building his characters. Though there is a common theme to these characters, each is very different and deep. There is no repetition or overlap. But there is always a dark, restless side to them. Sometimes it is so intense that it is incomprehensible, at least to me.

To be honest, not all stories were that great. But just like music, you don't care for the average. In the end you only care if there was a high point somewhere which made it all worthwhile. Some of the stories will stay with you and some won’t. As one of his characters says, remembering someone for a long time is not as easy as people think.

[This is part of a series of book reviews I am doing for Flipkart]

Seasons of the Palm by Perumal Murugan

We glorify the grand and the majestic yet it is the everyday lives that are the most interesting. It is astonishing that the accident of birth leads to such different lives when we are essentially the same.

Sitting in a coffee shop, as I start reading Perumal Murugan’s story of a little untouchable boy I begin to feel the usual sympathy for him. But the story cuts me short. This is not about me or my distance from the characters in this act. It is only about a few friends who meet every day while grazing the cattle for their Masters. It is about the bond between a boy and a mute sheep which is stronger than any bond between humans, yet at the same time, more delicate than the morning dew. It is about a relationship between two boys which looks like friendship but can never be that because they are born unequal and will always stay that way. It is about the earth and a people who live by it. Understand it. Something that most of us living in concrete houses can only imagine.

Who likes things to end? But they do end, there is destruction waiting in the wings, and all that is left finally is sadness and desolation.

This is not a sorry tale. But gloom and disaster always lies about the corner. A lost lamb, a failed attempt at collecting some peanuts from another’s field, a day missed at work can always lead to terrible consequences. But there are consequences for the Masters as well.

The description of the countryside and all its treasures is mesmerizing and flows smoothly. The translation is of high quality. You forget that it is a translation and immediately get engaged in the story. The one sore point I have about the translation is of the use of nicknames like Tallfellow and Stonedeaf. These might be accurate in the cultural context of the original language but feel out of place in English. Much like the hurriedly dubbed Chinese action movies on TV.

Poor strong Belly – she talks tough, sings merrily, but a single fear sits snug and heavy in her heart.

Isn’t this true for all?

[This is part of a series of book reviews I am doing for Flipkart]

The Corrosion of Character

I have started reading this rather weird book upon the recommendation of an even more weirder character I know.

As I went through a few pages I have realized that this book presents a different view of things. New often means controversial, challenging your beliefs and the very way in which you have put your life together thus far. New also means it is not necessarily true. Or maybe true in general but not true in my case, our yours. Thus, there are going to be many interesting tit-bits in this book that I would like to record. Some in agreement, some in disagreement and some otherwise.

I generally use twitter for such shit. But the 140 characters thing can get irritating at times. So I will be sort of live blogging this book as a go through it. This post will be updated often, I hope.

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"Career", for instance in its English origins meant a road for carriages, and as eventually applied to labor, meant a lifelong channel for one's economic pursuits.

The author is saying that earlier times people lived out their whole lives in one job/company, so there was great certainty and stability. Which was a good thing. Now people have to hop around so life has become more uncertain and stressful.
Me: Disagree. Stress is a result of trying to control the uncontrollable. It cannot be blamed on random stuff.

Time is the only resource freely available to those at the bottom of society.

Me: Interesting. Wonder if it is available freely at the top too.

The author writes about today's world and how we move around and keep changing jobs.

But his deepest worry is that he cannot offer the substance of his work life as an example to his children of how they should conduct themselves ethically. The qualities of good work are not the qualities of good character.

Me: Completely Disagree. A hard days honest work is enough substance for making a good character. It does not matter if you have worked there 10 days or 10 years.

Enrico had a narrative for his life, linear and cumulative, a narrative which made sense in a highly bureaucratic world. Rico [his son] lives in a world marked instead by short-term flexibility and flux; this world does not offer much, either economically or socially, in the way of narrative.
Me: Again Disagree. The narrative is that if you acquire a skill that is marketable then you don't have to depend on any one company for your economic needs.

"Change" means just drift
Me: Agree. If you have not figured out your own agenda then you will most like drift. But how was this different earlier? Lack of movement does not imply stability.

No long term
Me: The author says today's society is based on the above principle. I agree. I myself cannot make any long term plans. Because I can see it does not make sense in these times. But I do wonder what will happen to me in the long term. Hmm as Keynes used to say, everyone is dead in the long term.

The Inheritance of Loss

27 hours ago we were in our home-town celebrating Diwali with our family and friends. Pleasant Indian evening weather filled with brightly lit lanterns and tasty festive food. Now, we are driving down to an empty home in this cold and dark, frost filled night in Boston. Is this what it feels to be uprooted?

My sister had said something like this to me when we were travelling back to the US from India. I understood what she meant, but only slightly. My stint in the US didn't last very long. She stayed there for more than a decade. Understanding grows deeper with time.

This book opens with a retired judge living out the rest of his years in a secluded bungalow in Kalimpong. A bungalow with a spectacular view of the Kanchanjunga. His life slowly unfolds throughout the book.

The solitude became a habit, the habit became the man, and it crushed him into a shadow.

First i felt he was boring. That turned into interest. Then anger. Disgust. And finally into a helpless sadness. His thoughts are locked in a hell he himself created through stubborn denial of reality. He ends up creating logical supports for his actions which seem justifiable in theory but in fact, hide strong prejudices towards others.

This was why he had retired. India was too messy for justice; it ended only in humiliation for the person in authority. Give these people a bit and one could find oneself supporting the whole family forever after, a constantly multiplying family, no doubt, because they might have no food, the husband might be blind and with broken legs, and the woman might be anemic and bent, but they’d still pop out an infant every nine months. If you let such people get an inch, they’d take everything you had—the families yoked together because of guilt on one side, and an unending greed and capacity for dependance on the other—and if they knew you were susceptible, everyone handed their guilt along so as to augment yours: old guilt, new guilt, any passed-on guilt whatever.

We all have our insecurities, our complexes. But when we are cut from people we know and like for too long, these negatives grow on us. And they can turn a simple, average, common, person into a monster. And the victim of the monstrosities that average people commit are the people closest to them.

For crimes that took place in the monstrous dealings between nations, for crimes that took place in those intimate spaces between two people without a witness, for these crimes the guilty would never pay. There was no religion and no government that would relieve the hell.

Then there is Biju. Son of a cook living in a hut outside the judges's bungalow. Desperate to go to the US like the judge had been years ago, to go to England.

In this room it was a fact accepted by all that Indians were willing to undergo any kind of humiliation to get into the States. You could heap rubbish on their heads and yet they would be begging to come crawling in….

The son fighting for his survival as an illegal in the US. Working and sleeping in kitchens of Harlem. Underpaid, overworked. The father unhappy and longing for his son, yet proud of his achievement.

This way of leaving your family for work had condemned them over several generations to have their hearts always in other places, their minds thinking about people elsewhere; they could never be in a single existence at one time. How wonderful it was going to be to have things otherwise.

There are many other characters. Sai, granddaughter of the judge who arrives at his doorstep on day, orphaned. Their neighbours Noni and Lola, living in a colonial hangover, eating oyster mushrooms for breakfast. Gyan, Sai's maths tutor and many more. These diverse characters come from totally different backgrounds and living in totally separate worlds, yet they are next to each other every day. Class divide, religion divide, sex divide, every possible prejudice is laid bear by the author beautifully. Though it began slowly this book was a treat to read once i got involved in the story. The trick, i guess,  is to find something to relate to with every character.

“Time should move,” Noni had told her. “Don’t go in for a life where time doesn’t pass, the way I did. That is the single biggest bit of advice I can give you.”

“He was the real hero, Tenzing,” Gyan had said. “Hilary couldn’t have made it without sherpas carrying his bags.” Everyone around had agreed. Tenzing was certainly first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.

"He hated his tragic father, his mother who looked to him for direction, had always looked to him for direction, even when he was a little boy, simply for being male."

“You are sure you want to go back??” Mr. Kakkar said alarmed, eyes popping. “You’re making a big mistake. Thirty years in this country, hassle-free except for the bitch-witch, of course, and I have never gone back. Just even see the plumbing,” he indicated the sound of the gurgling toilet behind him. “They should put their plumbing on their flag, just like we have the spinning wheel—top-class facility in this country.

The universe wasn’t in the business of justice. That had simply been his own human conceit—until he learned better.

Why write reviews

I have realized quite recently that honesty is undervalued. And it is rare. Even in casual conversation, let alone carefully crafted blog-posts and articles. It is easy and most times very convenient to say things which will impress others than what we truly want to express. If you offered me a choice between smartness and honesty, i would have picked smartness any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Chicks dig it! But i guess i have reached a level of maturity (read, age) where impressing girls, though extremely desirable, is not the only thing that occupies my mind. And perhaps experience has also taught me that no amount cunning, stunning, trickery, smoothness or smartness, can make you a likeable person.

So even if one does not posses scathing insights on a subject, even if one does not posses flowery and eloquent skill with language, one shall strive to be true to himself and write honestly. And perhaps another one shall like reading it.

I try to write reviews about any new book, play or movie that i come across. Not because i want to judge that piece of creation. I doubt if anyone can do such a thing. But you do not improve at anything, or gain anything from an experience, unless you put some mental and physical energy into it. Writing a review makes you think about the experience once again, and that is where part of the learning takes place.

So write on and send me a link, would love to read it :)

Where Good Ideas Come From: Book Review

Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation is a surprisingly fast read. The title makes it sound like it is one of those books which try to explain everything under the sun, but actually this book is not that self-obsessed :D
When i read books which are trying to establish a new theory or a thought line, i try not to approve or disprove it. I like to appreciate the author for bringing about a novel idea, for seeing a pattern that has not been seen before. I also try not to get into the 'how will this new thought ultimately help me' loop. Because that loop is endless.

REEF, CITY, WEB
This chapter makes a wonderful observation that we get more creative when we are more connected. Connected to other people, people different from us, to diverse activities and what not. Charles Darwin realised the same in the natural world when he was visiting coral reefs in the Indian Ocean. Coral reefs house roughly a quarter of all known species of marine life and yet, occupy only 0.1% of the earth's surface. That is remarkable density of diversity, so to say. Likewise, we humans got a bump in our innovations when we started living in cities, which expose us to diverse people and cultures every day. And the Internet is taking things to a whole new level now.

THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE
We are not born with Ideas, we collect them from the people and places that surround us. So naturally, our ideas are also limited by them. When people say: Damn, how does she think of such wonderful things? That's most likely because she is living a very interesting life with diverse experiences. Routine will only get you thus far.

LIQUID NETWORKS

The computer scientist Christopher Langton observed several decades ago that innovative systems have a tendency to gravitate towards the "edge of chaos": the fertile zone between too much order and too much anarchy.

 and this one

Dunbar's research suggests one vaguely reassuring thought: even with all the advanced technology of a leading molecular biology lab, the most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.

need i say more?

THE SLOW HUNCH
Discovering something new is an amazing experience. We remember that moment of realization (tube-light moment) long after its gone. But this chapter suggests that great discoveries (about yourself and the world) start as slow hunches. We need to nurture them, cultivate them, give them time and attention. Tim Berners-Lee (the creator of the Internet) had a hunch about information being connected like a web. It took him 10 years to realized that idea. Charles Darwin and a feeling that species adapt for survival, years before he published his most famous work On the Origin of Species.

Because these slow hunches need so much time to develop, they are fragile creatures, easily lost to the more pressing needs of day-to-day issues. But that long incubation period is also their strength, because true insights require you think something that no one has thought before in quiet the same way. Flash judgements are often that - judgements. Is the guy trustworthy? Is the sculpture fake? A new idea is something larger than that: it's a new perspective on a problem, or a recognition of a new opportunity that has gone unexplored to date. Those kinds of breakthroughs usually take time to develop.

 SERENDIPITY

The shower or stroll removes you from the task-based focus of modern life - paying bills, answering e-mail, helping kids with homework - and deposits you in a more associative state. Given enough time, your mind will often stumble across some old connection that it had long overlooked, and you experience that delightful feeling of private serendipity: Why didn't I think of this before?

There are more chapters and many intriguing anecdotes about the great discoveries and inventions in human history. For those interested in such matters, i would recommend a quick read.