Carping writers

When a novelist laments in her critique of another novelist, that he could never reach his full potential, you loath both, and turn to the publishers.
The industry is doomed.

Fair-weather friends

Rajat Gupta has only two friends who are not fair-weather kind. Kofi Annan and Bill Gates. He should be thankful. Because most of us have none.

Capitalism as we know is crumbling.

To be replaced by something better. When the rest of the world is growing at an astonishing pace, why is it that that the world which defined the age of present is coming apart? Is its loss a gain for others? Or it has not lost the initiative and will redefine its place through means other than war?
Let us see.

Five star reviews

… take my breath away. The best ever should get four.

Author and politics

It is difficult to write avoiding politics entirely. But I feel foolish when I find myself talking about politics in my work. I feel if I will be ridiculed for the same. But I see an interview often, where the work of a writer is almost totally ignored and only his political opinions are discussed.
I wonder if the people tend to like an author who most closely confirms to their political prejudices. The pressure becomes immense for the authors to take a side and have a constituency, if not readership.

A bad poem.

Trying to eulogise a deceased good poet creates bad poetry.

Bank on bank?

If your leading banks are facilitating drug-trade and money laundering and still need to be bailed out, nuclear Iran is a lesser threat. The war against terrorism is at home.

News and seduction

The business of presenting news on television is possibly getting more competitive by the day. As, more recently, lacing the news with a bit of glamour, or even sex, has apparently become necessary, to sell it on screen.

 

These days even a reputed news organization like BBC too, is routinely accused of twisting or fabricating the News; and its CEO has to resign due to such controversies. Seducing a cynical audience therefore, into believing the News – that may often prove to only be proximate to the facts – indeed, may take a good-looking face, to break it.Watching endless avoidable human tragedies on the screen might lead some to think no News is better than the News available.

However, maintaining such aloofness from ubiquitous human miseries around could be narcissism of its own kind, which every one could not afford.If News, no matter how much beside the facts, once is broken by a decent looking presenter on TV, one might be tempted to not separate it from the propaganda, that the modern day news almost always entail.In fact, leading TV news channels of USA like CNN or Fox News, with their loud background music and comely lady news presenters, might look more like a show business to one.

These channels do not mind routinely being accused of hiring the news presenters for their looks only, rather than for their sound journalistic instincts.The other day, one became baffled on being informed that, in the city-state Singapore; on a TV news channel; a lady presenter would gradually strip her clothes while reading the news.

One was not informed however, where the stripping would end: before it is two pieces, or one piece; or no piece at all, before the commercial interrupts?In the follow up photo in newspapers a few days later, however, a bespectacled and serene-faced lady was shown; who was bowing forward to remove her dress, while standing on a table. And stretching her neck at the same time, to read News to a microphone hanging from the roof of the studio.The stripping news presenter of Singapore deserves the kudos of News aficionados the world over, for her innovative effort to sell the News; and herself becoming News, thereby. In the so-called post-feminism age of this century too, exposure of female skin continues to guarantee the sale of different commodities, including the News.

Remember the photograph published in the newspapers a few summers ago, in which the women’s football team of Australia posed together in nude, to promote their game in the continent-state?France has set yet another trend in this regard. News says that naked female presenters will present the news on a TV channel in France. It is just befitting for a nation known for its love of reality TV, apart from the individual freedom.

So, dear connoisseurs of News and readers, in the days ahead, brace yourselves for more shocks while watching the TV News: other than the routine stories of human tragedies. It may be a time, for the domestic news TV channels too, to remove the geriatric and unsmiling wooden-faces, from the screen.

The Kite Runner : Ironies, tragedies and No humour

This book that I read a while ago, by Khaled Husseini, had been a good read. It already is a best seller and a movie based on it is about to be released with or without the rape scene described in the story. The writer, a physician by profession, seems to be a humble guy who said recently that it was very difficult for him to get the Literary agents read his work before it was published.

The Afghan culture of the time just before it was occupied by USSR is richly described in the book, in the earlier part. It reveals the cruelty and violence prevalent in the society, against the weaker sex and the minority hazara community, which is perhaps Shia sect, though the life looks peaceful to the main character, living a protected life in the -what could be said to be- the upper middle class of the city.

But life begins to change as the hidden conflict in the society escalates and the King deserts the people, and the USSR troops occupy the nation; later facing a stiff resistance from the people of it after the rise of Taliban. While the ones with a wherewithal and connections leave to or through Pakistan. The truck drivers extort big money from these fleeing people, while a Russian troop could not rape the wife of a refugee, while the father of the main character intervenes -to his dismay- to protect the honour of a lady; and the soldier’s officer, later, apologising for the incident. A refugee commits suicide as soon he lands into Pakistan after the difficult journey, and the anguish and humiliation.

In spite of discovering his sense of irony in his writing that is so essential for an aspiring writer – in his school days, at home, with the help of one of the friend of his father, as he finds his father indifferent to his feelings though he throws lavish parties to celebrate his birthdays, and takes him around in the city Kabul, as he lost his mother while he was very young – the chief protagonist has failed to explore circumstances that the safer world like the USA too is created and maintained by people, to which he would run away in his childhood along with his father, from the turmoil at his home; and be educated there enough to write the stories that the world would read and appreciate.

In this world the writer will also find his large refugee community, living, to meet a girl -one who had fallen out of a brief marriage to a drug addict and is a daughter of another Kabul elite- to do the courtship in an as orthodox, inhibited way, as in his home, Kabul; and will play the music so loudly to celebrate his marriage that the neighbors would have to call the police late into the night, to shut it.

However, the jealous psychology of a young motherless boy is splendidly described in this novel, who finds his father’s love for an orphaned boy with a cleft lip difficult to live with. He conspires in a way that the boy, with corrected lip now by an Indian doctor, had to leave their home, and feels guilty for it ever since. Later he discovers that the boy, who collected the kites for him with his uncanny talent to predict where a one would land after being cut by another, was actually a half-brother of him from a pretty lady of the hazara community, with whom his father had an affair, while she was raising him after he lost his mother so young. The lady is sexually exploited by many men including a few from the army, as she belonged to the minority and had little protection, before his father brought her home to marry and live with their servant. On the birth of a boy with cleft lip she is disappointed – hysterical as her character is depicted, for being exploited to the extent she is – and runs away to only return to take care of her grandson from the boy: The Kite Runner. The servant of the family of the main protagonist and her husband raises the boy and the main protagonist. The Kite Runner too was once raped by the boys belonging to the majority community of the main protagonist, those who vy to collect the defeated kites with the two: the kite runner and his young master and friend. He watches this scene helplessly.

Later he returns to look for The Kite Runner, leaving behind a wife he could not make pregnant, on realising that he was his half-brother. The frustration of having sex while knowing that it will not result in a pregnancy is well described in the novel. He finds that his country is totally destroyed by the civil war he escaped, though the USSR troops have left, after he reaches Kabul with a great difficulty. He discovers The Kite Runner – who is later murdered by the Talibans for being a hazara – and also that his young son is in the captivity of Talibans. The revisiting of the town and the home, both are though nearly in ruins, where he passed his childhood days, are poignantly described in the story. His sense of loss appears profound.

It turns out that the boy who raped The Kite Runner was the leader of the captors of his son as well, and sexually exploits this boy too by dressing him as a girl and make him perform dance after he becomes inebriated with alcohol and drugs. The chief protagonist finds that the old enmity against him was not forgotten by this war-lord now, while they competed to collect the Kites. Who was incredulous that he returned from the USA to look for his half-brother from a lunatic hazara woman, out of an illicit relationship of his father. Also is described in this book a horrific scene, in which a young man and a young married woman are stoned to death for committing adultery. A death that the man does not resist while the woman does everything to mean that she did not agree with the justice.

Some how he manages to take this boy away from his childhood enemy, surviving a violent confrontation and injuries, into Pakistan, where he was delayed while he receives treatment and the USA embassy takes its time to arrange visa for the young boy. In the meanwhile the boy tries to commit suicide and is rescued with great efforts by the Pakistani doctors. The proceedings in the hospitals -earlier also, when he tries to treat the infertility of his wife,in the USA- are described in fair details, as the author is a physician by profession. His frustration of the USA embassy in Pakistan is portrayed in length, apart from the Afghan people living as refugees in Pakistan – a difficult life full of conspiracies, intrigues and crimes.

The Book amply displays the turmoil and violence in the societies in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, and the destruction the years of civil war has wreaked in Afghanistan. The sensitive way the story has been told may leave a reader choking with emotions. Though the author has acted in a correct way by not exploring much the political dimension of the tragedy, that is the life of the main protagonist, who appears to be at a fault to have been a victim. Being a hero he bears every indignity and tyranny with grace and style. He almost appears like a paragon of virtues, ironically.

The continent of circe: Essays on the People of India ( By Nirad C Chaudhari, Jaico Publishing, India) : A profound book on Indian culture

Nirad C Chaudhari, who lived most of his later life in Britain and died there a few years ago just a few year short of hundred, has presented in this book his deep understanding of Indian culture and Hinduism.

He repeatedly maintains that he technically is a Shudra: the lowest caste among the Hindus. His criticism of the Independence heroes of India and the writer Rabinrda nath Tagore is plausible and a little intemperate if one is to consider it in the present context, when most of the people he criticised has been deified to the extent that they are considered beyond any scrutiny.

Also is remarkable of his recognition of Hindu militarism and its going unacknowledged by the conquerors who ruled the India for centuries. It is presented as something different than the others and is directed inwards; and remains dormant to appear sporadically and surprisingly in the history. Nirad’s analysis in this regard is important as he was hired as a military expert by the colonial government during the second world war.

Nirad Chaudhri has intended in this book to put ahead the debate that the Aryans of India were migrants from the West and became brown by the ’sun and wind’ of the continent over the centuries.

Their inability to accept the black colour as equal; and their love and appreciation of rivers and other traits Nirad had presented as a proof to this end. The waters of a holy river lapping the ample breasts of a half-naked Hindu woman, while she is chest deep in it to offer prayer to the deities, while the naked Naga Sadhus pass from a  holy river bank nearby, with their genitals pierced and chained to suggest their celebate lives and the detachment to worldly matters is a scene depicted in the book, to explain the times, people and attitudes the writer knew.

He has hinted at the unavailability of Hindu women for blacks, unlike the European or American women, as a proof of the loathing the black color receives from Hindu higher caste. He maintains that Hindus are incapable of seeing any beauty in black colored people. This all may look a needless point, unsuitable for this remarkable book, that has an acuity rarely seen in the work of recent authors from the continent, and the writer’s deep study of the Hindu religious books that the authors refers to frequently in this book, and a first hand knowledge of the Sanskrit language. Nirad was not called ‘Brown-sahib’ for nothing.

Then he focuses on the matter of cow slaughter and debates that eating cow meat is nowhere prohibited in Hindu religious books. And he argues that the Indian cows are more beautiful than anywhere else. Nirad maintains that it is due to the color only that the buffalo milk is unacceptable to higher caste Hindus though it is more nutritious than the cow milk. Also the buffalo is slaughtered in the religious ceremonies of Hindus.

Nirad also dwells on the issue of Hindu sexuality, sounding a little prudish, when he rejects the ancient erotic art carved on the caves and the literature like Kamasutra as of little value and not the genuine representative of it. He argues it is lecherous in nature and meant to stimulate or satisfy the physically incapable or mentally perverted, men or women. He also disapproves of the Western curiosity and appreciation of the same. He states that the Hindu way of sex is not Gandhian non-violent type. Then he goes on to express his dismay when he noticed among an old married couple in his childhood, the amount of verbal abuse, sallies and innuendos going on,  the man mostly receiving them. Though they looked perfectly happy to the other people. 

He maintains that there is much self-wounding and violence taking place among a married Hindu couple than ever noticed or reported, by the scholars – indegenious or foreigner. The latter actually have no means to understand the cultural nuances of Hindu society, Nirad often asserts.  

He also reports the continuous emtional black-mail a Hindu man, particularly a jobless one, suffers for the sex he receives from his wife. The thought of the sex he would be receiving from his wife in the night keeps him going through all the harshness he is subjected to by his wife or the larger world, for his joblessness or other matters, keeps him going on. The couple hating each other to the utmost go to bed and fulfil their carnal desire in the dark, and detest each other for everything the next day, to became again aroused br the desire by the evening; never coming out of the fatigue of copulation really. Gratifying oneself by courtesans is what most people could not afford and having extra marital relations is always a risk of another marriage, entailing a lot of family quarrell and sufferings, more than anything else, as per Nirad. But he also states the Hindu capacity to ignore the inevitable adultery in some cases. These observation are of a time Nirad lived. They may look relevant or not in todays context, when the Hindu sexuality too, like many other things, has undergone a remarkable shift.

Nirad subtantiate most of his arguments in this regard by quoting from saskrit and French or Latin literature, displaying  his eclectic source of knowledge, to lend credence to the same. Defying his tyrannical observations would take a longer appranticeship with an intelletual career and greater insight than his, though the informations are more readily available nowadays.

This book also has the attitudes of English rulers before independence and shows how much they were worried about the mob overwhelming them and a possible sabotage. It was an uneasy relationship that is well explored by Nirad. 

And at times the arguments may appear without any sound proofs, that the author forwards with emotions, ran out of the quotes in different languages; and it seems the author is never ready to concede on anything he is arguing about. But it was a book written more then fifty years back. So such flaws could be ignored. Considering the fact that even today this is how matters are debated in the Continent.

For the people interested in the history of the Indian sub-continent, that is not much reported nowadays, or is tempered with even in the academic papers, this book is a delightful read, if one can ignore this singular flaw of the book: Of presenting the Aryans as the European Migrant.