The Home and the World

"I am willing," he said, "to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it." - Nikhil

"And so I will bear what you people are pleased to call false witness, as they have done who have created empires, built up social systems, founded religious organizations. Those who would rule do not dread untruths; the shackles of truth are reserved for those who will fall under their sway. Have you not read history? Do you not know that in the immense cauldrons, where vast political developments are simmering, untruths are the main ingredients?" - Sandip

"My country does not become mine simply because it is the country of my birth. It becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force" - Sandip

Truth v/s the Reality, Heart v/s the Head, Intuition v/s insight, Home v/s the World - so many duels

The novel and movie is so relevant in these times (first published in 1915).

Satyajit Ray takes the novel to another level, another must watch (and not just watch, but the deep thought afterwards).

Movie link: 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087328

Book is available on Gutenberg/Amazon (free): http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7166

An enemy of the people

Last week I got hold of this DVD of "An Enemy of the People," a wonderful drama in three acts by Ibsen. I had watched Hedda Gabler - but don't remember liking it much. This one, however, I found marvelous, a classic! Arthur Miller sure did choose a perfect drama to adapt to English. Salute!

Subject? The topic? This is a story of a doctor who finds toxic effects of a local bath (spring is perhaps a better word) that the City is using as tourist attraction, a means to overcome poverty. Thinking of the discovery as a triumph, the doctor takes the route of publishing in a 'liberal' newspaper, effectively going against the high-flying Mayor: his own brother. As he finds out, standing by Truth, and convincing people to take side of the Truth is not easy. The liberals, are no more liberals and are hypocrites actually. The Mayor will not allow this devastating discovery to become a hurdle in economic growth of the town (only a handful powerful people, effectively). The two brothers turn enemies, and over time, entire town declares the doctor an enemy of the people. He stands alone in this battle.

Dr. Stockmann. Yes. (Gathers them round him, and says confidentially:) It is this, let me tell you--that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

You may replace the context of poisoned springs with corruption or even the issue of global warming - it's generic.

Definitely, a recommended watching (and a reading post-viewing).

Those Who Go Beneath the Surface Do So At Their Peril

The artists is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal that artist is art's aim.

The critic it he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a model of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

[...]

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirros.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All are it quite useless.

This intriguing paragraph comes from the preface to this shattering book called, "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the only novel Oscar Wilde wrote.

IMHO, this is the most difficult novel I ever set my eyes upon. And I won't be surprised when I am done reading it, if it turns out to be the most beautiful one!

To an admirer of his novel, Oscar Wilde wrote, "I am so glad you like that strange coloured book of mine: it contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world things of me: Dorian what I would like to be-- in other ages, perhaps."

It is quite possible that he meant "in other pages, perhaps". But unfortunately, that was not supposed to be. This remained his only novel!

They know it!

I am reading this amazing book by Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out". A couple of pages later, he's talking about The Beauty of a Flower---

[...]

but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imaging the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at a dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting-- it means that insects can see the color.

[...]

I was thrilled when I could read further between those lines. The last lines not only infer that the insects can see the color, but the fact that the plant knows that the insects can!

Yeah. Pleasure of finding things out indeed!

A word on words

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

--Emily Dickinson

Walking among the books of the Chandler Public Library, I came across this wonderful poem by Emily Dickinson (I had read it before too, yet it sounded so new to me!). I was still admiring the collection, when a friend casually mentioned, "well, you can search for books online if want, too!". And the reply came to me almost naturally, "well, but then where is the surprise element? Nothing compares to the pleasure of coming across a book!" Search would just say, "book found in database," I doubt if the search-engine really found the book!

That apart, the whole concept of public libraries with free (again, free) access to all, is just mind blowing. And what's even better, the whole concept works here!

Walking in the aisles with book-racks filled with exciting topics and varied range, I admired Dickinson's words again. Perhaps ages ago, or maybe just the last month, all these words were said, were written. And then they came alive, of course! Who the hell said, "a word is dead; when it is said"? He must be the most boring creature around.

Or he may well be a dumb search engine, mentioning, a search is dead once found?

Boyhood

Nobel Prize winning author J M Coetzee has moved couple of tens of places up in my all time favourite authors list. And not that his name was lying the at bottom of the list by any means!

His 166-pages caricature of a kid (presumably his own story, but the back-cover mentions the genre as "fiction") underlines his ability to be a versatile author. The last (and the first) book I read by this South African author was Slow Man. In that, he portrays an old man who met with an accident and who has be incapacitated below the waist. The style then was, as the name suggested, slow and patient.

And obviously, in this memoir from childhood, the style is fluent, at times childish (oh! I felt the same way when I was a kid), probing, full of observations -- seemingly trivial but very important, and most importantly, free. It doesn't take many pages to find digressions (as a child's free mind would take). The memories from his beloved farm are especially telling of the minute details a child's mind is trying to grasp.

Every Friday a sheep is slaughtered for the people of the farm. He goes along with Ros and Uncle Son to pick out the one that is to die; then he stands by and watches as, in the slaughtering-place behind the shed, out of sight of the house, Freek holds down the legs while Ros, with his harmless-looking little pocket-knife, cuts its throat, and then both men hold tight as the animal kicks and struggles and coughs while its lifeblood gushes out. He continues to watch as Ros flays the still warm body and hangs the carcase from the seringa tree and splits it open and tugs the insides out into a basin: the great blue stomach full of grass, the intestines (from the bowel he squeezes out the last few droppings that the sheep did not have time to drop), the heart, the kidneys--- all the things that a sheep has inside it and that he has inside him too.

(Italics above mine)

As it's a memoir from childhood, there is not much of strong story to it. Perhaps, that's the book's biggest strength. Right from his school, where he is rank one student, but is afraid that they may split the class into English and Afrikaners, and he'd have to join the Afrikaners, to his faith (atheist by birth!), right from his love for his mother (he hates the word love though!) to dislike of his father, that turns into hatred towards the end, Coetzee takes us for a emotionally absorbing journey.

As it so happens, at many times, I found it so much parallel to my childhood. Not in terms of the experiences, but just the thinking process, I guess I had then. Or may be not. Or may be, that the success for the author.

He made me look back ever so often.

At the end, his father takes to too much drinking, is a broke and everything seems dark. speaking about his mother who stands tall amid all this, he writes,

This woman was not brought into the world for the sole purpose of loving him and protecting him and taking care of his wants. On the contrary, she had a life before he came into being, a life in which there was no requirement upon her to give him the slightest thought. At a certain time in her life she bore him; she bore him and she decided to love him; perhaps she chose to love him even before she bore him; nevertheless, she chose to love him, and therefore she can choose to stop loving him.

'Wait until you have children of your own,' she says to him in one of the bitter moods. 'Then you will know.' What will he know? It is a formula she uses, a formula that sounds as if it comes from the old days. Perhaps it is what each generation days to the next, as a warning, as a threat. But he does not want to hear it. 'Wait until you have children.' What nonsense, what a contradiction! How can a child have children? Anyway, what he would know if were a father, if he were his own father, is precisely what he does not want to know. He will not accept the vision that she wants to force upon him:sober, disappointed, disillusioned.

Only the other day, sitting in a restaurant, awaiting my bill, I was toying with a square tissue paper. Trying to make a paper-boat of it. It was not too long before it struck me that I have grown too old to be able to make one. My hands just couldn't fold that sheet of paper. In no time, my mind took me back to the past. That simple, carefree, issue-less world. Holding that piece of paper as my ticket, I made a trip that day, only to return back to present when the bill actually arrived.

After reading this book, I am even more saddened, that the time of my childhood is a bygone. And bygones are bygones. Unlike the skill of making paper-boats, which I am sure I'll re-learn in good time!

---

Some reviews for further reading: Amazon.com

Religion?

Religion...has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not?- because you are not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'.

Why would it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows -- but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe...no, that's holy?

We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furore Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally, there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.

Douglas Adams

On a lighter note, I find it to be ironical that we call Cricket a religion in the subcontinent, and yet spend hours together debating over it!

The Black Cloud

"You haven't very much respect for my profession, have you, Professor Kingsley?"

"Since it is you who wish for frankness, I will tell you that I have not. I regard politicians rather as I regard the instruments on the dashboard of my car. They tell me what is going on in the engine of the state, but they don't control it."

-- From The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle

For all those souls who are bored of reading heavy literature or light international fiction, here is one excellent science fiction. It'll delight the layman who is not-so-much scientifically inclined and will not disappoint for those possessing very high expectations from Sci-Fi's logical integrity. Also, as the whole setup is from the mid-sixties and that too in England, highest quality of English on the whole is guaranteed.

Definitely, a three and half star rating!

Patience

What would be the virtues to possess if one wants to be a near-perfect historian? I think, it'd be patience! Patience of telling the story as it happened, from all angles, from all possible points of view; without actually passing any opinion about it.

Thankfully, the reader need not possess that virtue (or the lack thereof). He is allowed to create an opinion, to nurture it as he turns more pages and probably dumps it at a later time. At times, he may even find a feeling of triumph when his prophecy is found to have become true (in the future of the past, so to say!).

At times, reading India After Gandhi, I have come across many such pages. At times I have felt, I'd been rather better off if I had been living in those pages of history. And at multiple times, I have felt pity and admiration (in that order) for the author who held his own (or rather who as a matter of profession, had to) and restrained from passing any judgment on the situation.

No wonder this book is running strong on the best-seller list for some time now.

Books for the month

Two new books are in house now:

1. The God Delusion: Much talked about book by the author of The Selfish Gene. Some short-story ideas around God have been making rounds in my brain for a considerable time now. Hopefully, the book will help me refine those.
2. Jawaharlal Nehru: A biography, by Frank Moraes. Hailed by one of the best by one the best historians who is Ramchandra Guha. India After Gandhi has fueled my interests in history ten folds. At 295/- it was a steal I think.

Subtle humour

Some of the masterpieces from "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K Jerome.

• For the next four days he lived a simple and blameless life on thin captain's biscuits (I mean that the biscuits were thin, not the captain) and soda-water; but, towards Saturday, he got uppish, and went in for weak tea and dry toast, and on Monday he was gorging himself on chicken broth.
• I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee. [...] I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me.
  
• Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup.
• George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two
  
• "What can I get you, sir?" --- "Get me out of this," was the feeble reply.
  
• Harris always does know a place round the corner where you can get something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe that if you met Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing likely), he would immediately greet you with:
  "So glad you've come, old fellow; I've found a nice place round the corner here, where you can get some really first-class nectar."

Since long I was longing for such a subtle humour (humour: I cannot quite call it comedy).

Each page, each paragraph of this book is filled with English sense of humour (to understand it one must possess sense of English humour, though). More about it when I finish reading the book.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Ah, we are about to arrive at the gates of your hotel. It is here that you and I shall at last part company. Perhaps our waiter wants to say goodbye as well, for he is rapidly closing in. Yes, he is waiving at me to detain you. I know you have found some of my views offensive; I hope you will not resist my attempt to shake you by the hand. But why are you reaching into your jacket, sir? I detect a glint of metal. Given that you and I are now bound by a certain shared intimacy, I trust it is from the holder of your business cards.

And in this way, The Reluctant Fundamentalist comes to an end. This one, Mohsin Hamid's second novel (after Moth Smoke) hits you hard; it catches you unaware, holds you captive and finally takes your breath away. There are times at which you find yourself wondering if the author is going the cliche way, and precisely on that page he comes up with brilliance, reassuring you that you have made a right choice in considering this book for your best-reads-of-the-year.

It's basically a (lost) love story. Not only Changez's love with Erica, but his longing for the country, and later love for his country of birth--- Pakistan. The backdrop is that of September 11 attacks on WTC, and how his life takes unimaginable-to-a-22-year-old turns. Changez is in deeply love with Erica, who is not yet out of the trauma of death of her beloved to cancer. At the same time around, war is looming large at his home country, and a crisis already up on in his mind.

Perhaps it's not a coincidence that Changez works for a top-notch firm that consults its clients in valuing firms for prospective take-over bids. Perhaps, it's not by chance that the motto of his organization circles around Fundamentals. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that Erica should be so much interested in knowing more about Changez's country. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that Erica should commit suicide just when Changez decides to give up on his job and return home. And perhaps it's not just a coincidence that this whole story be told to an unknown business traveler to Lahore in a restaurant.

I am no literature critic, but the fact that above thoughts should come to my mind is an indication of how well designed the novel is! It's layered. Something I enjoy very much. To every character in the story, there is a purpose; which obviously is not revealed completely to the reader, but needs to be interpreted according to her own imagination (and liking!).

In passing, Mohsin Hamid's monologue style is different, his careful choice of italicized words commendable, and pace, well, lively. Told to an unknown American, this account of a Pakistani class-A student, makes you stop at the end of every one of the twelve chapters and makes you think. Although, in my first reading (which was in two days!) I must have missed a lot of key points, at the end of it I found the reading a memorable experience.

I definitely need to read it again. At a later time. And as Hamid would put it himself, "Ah, now I see that you are really keen on reading this. I like it."

Go for it!

46

I am a writer as I might have been a doctor or a lawyer. It is so pleasant a profession that it is not surprising if a vast number of persons adopt it who have no qualifications for it. It is exciting and various. The writer is free to work in whatever place and at whatever time he chooses; he is free to idle if he feels ill or dispirited. But it is a profession that has everyone in it and all its sights and events, is your material, you yourself can only deal with what corresponds to some secret spring in your own nature. The mine is incalculably rich, but each one of us can get from it only a definite amount of ore. Thus in the midst of plenty the writer may starve to death. His material fails him and we say that he has written himself out. I think there are few writers who are not haunted by the fear of this. Another disadvantage is that the professional writer must please. Unless a sufficient number of persons can be found to read him he will starve. Sometimes the stress of circumstances is too great for him and with rage in his heart he yields to the demand of the public.

---W Somerset Maugham

The above paragraph comes from chapter 46 of The Summing Up, an autobiography-style account of Maugham's writerly life. I would rather call it the bible for the art of writing, but the reader may well extract pieces of philosophy. As any religious text, this book needs to be read with devotion.

There are multiple places where you may find that you are not following the rules of the religion as set by Maugham, and you should. The text is not a Guide to the art of writing for Dummies, but an art in itself to be appreciated. I myself found that my writing style (if there is something like that at all) differs a couple of light years from what he has described as his (and his suggestions on how to write, I don't follow quite!).

The topic may well be very different from his other masterpieces, but the result is quite the same: magnificent.

India after Gandhi

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

---Oscar Wilde

Last few books I read (or am presently reading) have all revolved around history. It all started with Ram Guha's interesting and exciting account of Indian Cricket's history. Then I moved on to Suketu Mehta's bestseller, Maximum City (which, revolves around Bombay's past, present and in pages to come, probably future).

The next big one on my list is historian Ramachandra Guha's "India After Gandhi", history of contemporary(!) India, or rather, history of the largest democracy in the world.

History in school text-books ends on August 15th 1947 (or January 26th, 1950). Guha's book starts history-logging from that day onwards. I am sure this part of history will be as interesting as that of pre-independence and great freedom struggle. I am sure I want to know what exactly was the reason for the Emergency rule, how all the big leaders like Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Indira Gandhi, JP Narayan, YB Chavan, et al handle the reigns of the country after independence, etc. etc.

Guha's language is fluent and gripping. His command over English is commendable and overall every piece written by him is enjoyable and thought provoking. At the same time, his writings are easy-reads, not indulging into complexities beyond the reach of the reader (and we say history is never straight-forward!). Traditionally, history has been a rather boring subject, demanding chronological details, involving drub details of places and personalities involved and what not. At least that's the impression I remember from my school days.

History needs to be rewritten many times; for it is changing the present day in and day out. So far as school text books are concerned, that's precisely what's lacking and needs to be addressed. Now that I am out of school, I guess I can enjoy history books better (for there are no exams!).

To cut the long (hi)story short, I am looking forward to reading this book on history... and yes, let me have a go at modifying the quote by the great poet Oscal Wilde,

Any fool can read history, but it takes a genius to write it.

:-)
---
Some pointers: Past Perfect | DNA's story on book launch in Bombay | Amit Chaudhuri's review | The Force is with us

The Indian History of a British Sport

From the preface of "A Corner of A Foreign Field" by Ramachandra Guha:

For the social historian, mass sport is a sphere of activity that expresses, in concentrated form, the values, prejudices, divisions and unifying symbols of a society. The importance of sport to the modern world is manifest in the pervasive use of sporting metaphors in popular discourse. Why is it that a new and conspicuously successful party in the land of Mussolini and Michelangelo has called itself Forza Italia, or Goal! Italy? Or that a controversial law in the US state of California is justified in terms of a baseball metaphor, 'Three strikes and you are out?' Or indeed, that when faced with a political crisis, generations of British Prime Ministers, Tory, Labour and Liberal, take cover in the language of cricket, and speak of playing with a straight bat on a sticky wicket? And how is it that since the end of the First World War there has been only one Kaiser in German society, and he a footballer, Franz Backenbauer?

[...]

The American writer Jane O'Reilly has remarked that the 'one nice thing about sports is that they prove men do have emotions and are not afraid to show them'. It is also, as this book shows, the one nasty thing. For the cricket field was both a theatre of imperial power and Indian resistance. The career of Palwankar Baloo illuminates the operations of that unique (and uniquely dreadful) human institution, caste. The disagreements between Hindus and Muslims before 1946, and between India and Pakistan since, have thrown a long shadow across the playing-fields of the world.

The commercialization of modern cricket and the corruptions that have come in its wake have led some commentators to speak wistfully of a time when this was a 'gentleman's game'. In truth, there was no golden age, no uncontaminated past in which the playground was free of social pressure and social influence. Cricket has always been a microcosm of the fissures and tensions within Indian society: fissures that it has both reflected and played upon, mitigated as well as intensified. The cricketer or cricket lover might seek to keep his game pure, but the historian finds himself straying, willy-nilly, into those great, overarching themes of Indian history: race, caste, religion and nation.

[...]

How wonderful is this book! The preface itself is so much enjoyable, the book itself is going to be a cracker of reading. The book is written with plenty of research, careful attention to the accuracy of data and of course, infinite passion towards the sport. Although it does not contain any statistics and records, this history-book is going to be arguably as entertaining as watching Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid in an ODI and a Test match respectively!

First two of 2007

After a long time, finally I got time to go book-shopping again. This was the first time in this year 2007. As I wrote about the movie, "The Usual Suspects," I got the chance to buy two books which I always wanted to.

1. A Corner of a Foreign Field, by Ramachandra Guha: Hugely entertaining Indian history of the British sport called Cricket. While skipping through the Preface, I never realized I was already into the first chapter...and almost half of it!
2. Godan, by Munshi Premchand: Hailed as the best novel ever written in Hindi. All along, I have always heard about this book. Looking forward to actually reading it.
   

Should come up with the reviews soon. Of late, despite reading quite some books, I haven't done any reviews; which I think I should. It's only the question of time, I guess.

Noise

In the area of chip design, the word noise takes an entirely different meaning. In communication technology, they try to extract whatever feeble signal they can out of noise. The technology has so much advanced that they can enhance the real signal which can be orders of magnitude weaker than the useless noise with which it has got mixed.

As I started off, noise in chip design world is entirely different matter. It is called cross-talk noise. If two wires are running parallel for a very long distance (read: a few tens of micrometers) at a very close distance (read: a fraction of a micrometer) then the voltage on one line can influence that on its neighbour. In most of the cases this neighbourly affection may become the cause of malfuncion of the underlying circuit. Of course, there are various ways of solving the problem (each one of these need to be handled separately and fixed).

But the point of this particular post is not to teach the reader some esoteric concepts in the area of chip design, but to mention the following paragraph from RK Narayan's exceptional non-fiction work (that appeared in the Hindu as a regular column long time ago)

It goes like this:

This age will probably be known as the noisiest in human history. We create a lot of noise not only to show that we are happy, festive mood, to canvass votes, to advertise a commodity or a point of view, but also for its own sake. Noise is the greatest bane of modern life. Every moment of our existence we are being distracted by it, necessary noise, unnecessary noise, purposeful noise, and the purposeless, enough to fray our nerves and madden us. If the average Indian's life it only twenty-six, we have only ourselves to blame for it. The noise in and around us is wearing us out at a terrific pace.

[...]

I sometimes feel that God, who constructed the human body with so much forethought and solicitude, seems to have become weary when he came to the ears, and left them as the most vulnerable portion of a human being. The result is that we spend all our hours hankering after something that we cannot attain, namely Silence.

The Love Song of Alfred Hitchcock

Nakulan Remembered everything and grumbled: my algorithm is going haywire. Moving step by step toward the problem; rigorous steps; approach ensuring solution: Emily's denial.

Step by step.

Towards the end.

Emily's denial:

---No, I didn't kill him.

Then she asked:

---Sure you know it, don't you?

Nakulan said:

---Emily, look here. If you are not interested in confession, well, I have nothing to tell you. Perhaps confessions are not meant for a girl like you, brimming over with intelligence. But you are the Ada Lovelace that time and I are waiting for - a computer programme with its roots in poetry! I love you with my body and intelligence. Not with my heart. The heart is a mere poetic technique. I don't know where the organ is. I speak of it with my hand on my chest. But what you have there is the organ that kills cardiac patients. Only a plumber can love a girl with it. My love is a revolt in my nervous system. Whatever it is, genius, our joint talent, will not lie in dying together with broken hearts. I believe you will die before me. Every person I love will perish before me. Only then can all losses be mine. You understand this, don't you? There is a pattern here. I shudder to think of the interval between your death and mine. How horrible and material a sense of isolation and loneliness. I will be fully helpless there, like in a dark corridor in a horror movie.

And in this way the entire novella "The Love Song of Alfred Hitchcock" by Maythil Radhakrishan proceeds. And after a few pages further, one hardly sees a difference between the emotion and the words that describe the emotion. The words float, the story surges ahead, in what may be termed as an intense war of emotion. Emotion of love.

The central character, Nakulan is in love with Emily. Emily, who is married to John. John has died. Died of poisoning. But let me not dwell too much upon the story, for like Hitchcock's movie, the story is just a means of conveying emotion. The emotion, that is full to its brim in every frame of the movie; the emotion which does not hide itself behind extravagant metaphors, but strikes you clean and deep.

In the end Emily dies. Or rather, kills herself.

Emily!

Who, or what am I now?

A betrayed lover robbed of everything?
Is the madman who measured your death by the length of candles a thinker?
I don't know.

My hands are full of the touch and heaviness of your body. Or, what grows heavy on my hands is its absence; its burden lowers me into bottomless despair. When again will you ever be here to fill these two hands of mine?

Love is a kind of heaviness.
The weight or heaviness of the beloved's private materiality. Now, without it, like a moonwalker who has lost his weight, I move around in a damned lightness, a ridiculous figure.

What strikes us is the uncontrolled flow of words. They seem to be just flowing, like the flood water: one can't catch it. At one place, author Radhakrishnan describes conversation over candle-lit dinner with a backdrop of thunderstorm---

"Emily, this white pepper has been disturbing me for some time now. Don't you have black pepper?"

"Yes, just a minute."

Emily rose and went to the kitchen.
Somehow, Nakulan felt that he had been married and that the woman who went into the kitchen now was his wife who had been living with him for a long time.

[...]

When Emily left for the kitchen her vacant chair was illuminated for a second by a flash of lightening. Nakulan felt that she had disappeared in a flash of lightening and that she would reappear in another flash. For some unknown reason this silly idea attracted him very much.

This is extremely life-like expression by the author; that could be probably paralleled by Hitchcock's long shadows in "Dial M for Murder."

The 56-page novella keeps you disturbed till the end; and even after you have finished it, has the power of keeping you awake for a very long time in the night.

The words keep coming:

I dream of a girl
With a hand
That smells of blood;
I dream
Of making love to her
On the decked-up coffin
In the dark basement...

Surely, one of the best reads of the year!

Strand Book Stall - the annual sale '06

The last year's Strand Book Stall's annual sale of books suffered from want of space, or rather unimaginative use of ample space at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Much to the book lovers' satisfaction, this year's Strand Book Stall's annual book sale at the same venue is very impressive. Not just for the arrangement of the books in well organised manner, but also the classification of books in three separate halls. If you are a photography or architecture book buff, you can have your quiet time browsing through the books in Hall 1. To book lovers like me, who have taken to literary addiction, can spend hours in the Hall 2 and Hall 3.

The book collection is quite exhaustive - from the century classics to contemporary writing, one may find many titles to his or her own liking. I found myself three titles-

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

• The Writerly Life, by R K Narayan

• The Search for the Pink-headed Duck, by Rory Nugent

The sale is on for two more weekends to come. Leisurely browsing is definitely recommended!

London

'It's no one's fault, really,' he continued. 'A big city cannot afford to have its attention distracted from the important job of being a big city by such a tiny, unimportant item as your happiness or mine.'

This came out of him easily, assuredly, and I was suddenly interested. On closer inspection there was something aesthetic and scholarly about him, something faintly professional. He knew I was with him, listening , and his gray eyes were kind with offered friendliness. He continued:

'Those tall buildings there are more than monuments to the industry, thought and effort which have made this a great city; they also occasionally serve as springboards to eternity for misfits who cannot cope with the city and their own loneliness in it.' He paused and said something about one of the ducks which was quite unintelligible to me. 'A great city is a battlefield,' he continued. 'You need to be a fighter to live in it, not to exist, mark you, live. Anybody can exist, dragging his soul around behind him like a worn-out coat; but living is different. It can be hard, but it can also be fun; there's so much going on all the time that's new and exciting.'

- E R Braithwaite, from 'To Sir With Love'