The art of political writing

A total literary loss

Book and note book

A title could be a book. For the wretched souls who toil producing letters to make literature or those that produce the reviews of it, it is a non-book. People interested in reading between the lines may be disappointed. But with ‘Man’ and ‘sex’ as bold letters on it’s cover, it could be a success. The difference between a note-book and a book has been eliminated–give or take the title. The five stars are for the silence after the cover. https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R36N3XI1GBZ3DT?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

Treading the trade of trade.

Trade as a diplomatic tool

Uninspiring literature

….Like the writing of Philip Roth… or Updike, it was sterile for lacking in emotions. One may feel neither hot nor cold thinking about it now or a century later. Nothing stirred inside him. He dropped on the sofa and was fast asleep before long though the muted TV was playing scene after scene of the drama where the actors made faces as if the dialogues they were saying were best not said or silenced. It looked as if the world was waiting for a pandemic to take over the life.

Introduction

If you meet a stranger from a place far away, do you try to define him through the books you have read of his culture or you go by the talks you have with him?

Dog Years by Gunter Grass : It makes one’s heart bleed for the pathos of the writer of this novel.

What a dogged reading. Looks if nothing is going to happen. None of the character talks with himself to bring out any kind of insight. There is a parasitic dependence on the things without to have any movement in the story. It at times is a dog thinking and reasoning like a man and the other way for a man. What is the point if it is as uncertain and as non-starter as it appears, if not a sudden quirk or a twist in the story occurs, which makes it worth to continue?
Before you reach the middle of the book Gunter Grass begins to overwhelm with the brilliant way he uncovers the distress and consequences of the war under Hitler in the country. An elderly school teacher, a neighbor of the narrator Harry, who taught literature and writing methods, often by leaving them alone, to his students, besides other subjects, disappears for his crime of failing to celebrate the birthday of Hitler. He was charged with eating the candies the school administration has allocated for his students.
The cousin of the Harry named Tulla, who he fingers at times beside the daughter of the disappeared school teacher, Jenny, to check the depth of their holes–as he puts it, speculates that the teacher has been taken to a place from where a heap of freshly collected human bones have been dumped in open in their town, which foul the air of it all the time and attract a large number of rats and crows. Tulla brings a human skull from there to prove her point.
Sex scenes, more often than not, by Gunter Grass, are not the tenderest and delicate type. They are vicious, crude and occur like an act of sabotage. Taking a reader by complete surprise, besides the characters performing it. Similar can be said about the writing style. It makes things obscure in the way they are described in a convoluted language which often is difficult to get hold of. By keeping the going on a scene surprises by its sudden arrival, for it is shocking not only for what it is but also for the lucid and forth-coming language in which it is described.
One hopes the original German language edition reads better than its translation. Also that, a better translated version comes soon in English, which also cares about readability as well. For the subject is the most deadly war one has known; written by someone who fought it as well. Little other literature is available on this subject otherwise–from the side which lost it.
Tulla takes Harry and Jenny to a leech infested area and makes them attach leeches to their bodies and feed them till they are fully fed on their blood and become easily detachable. Then she collects those leeches and cooks them in a tin pot till they become a thick paste, then she eats it and asks them to eat it as well. Tulla thinks this is how her brother, somewhere fighting in France, might survive the war. But he is killed soon. In their early teens, these three characters try strange things to deal with the effect the war has created in their lives.
When, after his disappearance, the school teacher’s daughter is taken away by a middle-aged dance master and a probable Nazi official, who wants to keep her as a mistress while she learns dance in Berlin, she comes to knock at the door of Harry’s to say her goodbye. Harry and his parents do not open the door. But She and Harry continue to write each other till a long time later.
A Poignant and heart-breaking scene is when Harry, now inducted finally into the army at the age of sixteen, comes to say goodbye to Tulla, who is pregnant now at the same age by a person she never discloses. She is now working as a bus conductor to support herself. She wanted Harry to make her pregnant but he always declined this possibility. She offers him bundles of ticket as a souvenir with which he plays-with his fingers, just like a child.
It makes Tulla laugh. How the war was sucking in and destroying the lives of young children fills one with a profound sadness. A while ago, a bomb drops at a place where Jenny was performing and both her toes were amputated to end her dancing career. But the war was to last another three years. Tulla asks Harry to pay the bus fare for the distance he traveled with his modest luggage, before he leaves to join his duty in a war turning increasingly bloody.
The third and the last part of the novel deals with post war years in the country. Grass deals with so many trends in a desultory manner in the beginning. He picks technology, economy, politics and much more randomly and in an arcane language, without making any point clearly.
But soon he picks the people trying to practice a conscious collective amnesia to forget the bad memories of the war. But then a glass comes to the market for children of ten years of age, a time since the war has ended, which makes them see the past of their parents clearly. They see all the murders and other crimes which their parents have committed but never discussed. It leads to an epidemic of psychiatric diseases in the children using those glasses and many of them commit suicide.
But, some how, behind the religion, liberalism and progress, the society tries to hide from its past. The author sarcastically deals with the hypocrisy of the society to collectively forget a criminal past. It shows how neatly and effectively the author is capable of dealing with the things he really feels are important before he goes absent-minded again and talks about so many generalities in a language which is difficult to decipher.
In a way he expiates alone for the scores of unacknowledged sins committed by the society he belongs to. There are not many writers courageous enough to take up such a thankless task, though many other countries have perpetrated no less horrendous crimes on mankind than the Nazi violence.
On the contrary, all the efforts in literature mostly have been to make that past obscure enough, so that any future inquiry is preempted. In it not only the writers from the side of the perpetrators, but also a few from the victims’ side, too have contributed.
It makes one’s heart bleed for the pathos of the writer of this novel.

Brothers Karamazov, By F Dostoevsky: Characters with many layers like a Russian doll

Characters with many layers like a Russian doll

After three hundred pages you have an impression if the story is gaining momentum. Not quite so. You have to read another two hundred pages to find that things are now actually leading to the event which the author had in mind all the way. The big distraction is that a character is being called by four different pet names which are mercifully shorter than his real name.
The life described is stifled and stultified by the conditions around–till it suffocates. Landlords philander and drink recklessly and compete with their own sons to win a lover. The tyranny is so deep that the serfs are deeply scrutinized to see if they are rebelling against the state or the religion. They are engaged in an intellectual discussion only to make that inquiry. It is on top of the physical or sexual exploitation they are subjected to in the estate of a landlord, where they can live for many generations with their legal or illegal children. It was possibly a little better and a little worse than the slavery world witnessed due to colonialism at that time. For it was possibly not as penurious but emotionally was more exploitative.
But deep down the life was far more intellectual than in many other societies of the contemporary era.
The renowned poets and authors are frequently referred to. At times in a very discreet manner to remind a reader that the rebellion was never tolerated in the Russia of that era and any literary work with such undertones were silenced not too long after it surfaced.
One such instance is the reference to the banned poetry journal published by Pushkin twenty years before this novel was written. It is so discreet that one has to read the three-line paragraph many times to realize that the author wants to turn the table on the world around him all the way while writing such a lengthy novel. In a literate society revolt is crushed in a literature long before it grips the society.
Always aware of their class, the underclass characters in the book are conditioned enough to behave in a way which is politically correct to the core. Inviting ire of the power-that-be is something no one wants among them. So they witness but never interfere in the wasteful and indulgent lives of their higher class masters. But in their heart they harbour all kind of emotions including the idea of liquidation of a master.
This book the author wrote after the death of his beloved young infant son, one came to know, who was epileptic. There is a character who is epileptic in this book also it deals with the death of a young boy. Also there are other impressions of the life of writer in the characters of this novel.
The author lived only for a few months after his this last novel was published.
However, the Russian revolution completed only after thirty five years of his death. If one is looking for the conditions in the society which lead to violent revolutions like the Russian one, they are described in this book.
The apparently quaint and self-satisfied life of the rural Russia, where religion was used as a tool to perpetuate the system which is so unfair for the large majority, entailed what ensued.
It might not have been a surprise to this author, if he had lived longer, to witness the revolution unfolding and concluding.
The Translation by Mcduff is good enough for me. It effectively portrayed the ailing landlord too, among many other things, who sends a young man, one of the brothers Karamazov, seeking loan from him to a person who remained drunk for two days before he dismisses him with an utter disdain for his folly. This young man is planning to runaway with his young lover, who is almost a prostitute, who his father, another big landlord of the town, wants to marry as well. When he explains this matter to others to win the loan to finance his plans, no one seems interested and instead ridicules him behind him. The book is full of such characters and events which portray the life of the country then at a great length.
It took a long journey and waiting over the drunkard for two days for him to realize that the first landlord was only tricking him to ridicule him by sending him to some one who will simply scoff at his plans. But he does not mind it and is busy to find someone else who might lend him the money.
This book is described as the best ever novel by any writer in any language by some critics. One never came across any other one which under took a more comprehensive project while holding the attention of a reader as well.
Having been written such a long time ago, the book details everything. At times the furniture of a room during an important scene is dealt with–with a long description, which is very distracting. At times the author, speaking as a first person, warns that if he went into the full such detail of a person or a setting or a place, it might entail writing an entire book independently. So he is sparing those details–(and the reader as well, possibly). In modern times an author has no such authority over a reader to patronize him in such a manner.
However, lasting nearly a thousand pages, the book is full of characters being introduced as a sub plot often, who frequently make long discourses; mostly trying to make clear their position on religion or politics or other issues, before they do something which might actually give impetus to the story.
At times a character may speak for five pages without the paragraph being broken.
When the book reaches the denouement, the murder around which the story is built almost loses its importance and a character starts arguing at length with his alter self, trying to make several things clear with himself. He possibly has a psychiatric issue or too much time for intrigue; however, in the earlier part of the story, he is too clever to be a madman and seeks his interests with a great focus. But he is not alone in that. Most of the characters had many layers of thinking which they reveal one by one as the book progresses: Just like the layers of a Russian doll emerging one by one.

Yet another remarkable character is a fatherless, thirteen-year old boy Kolya, who reads widely from the books left behind by his father and tries to surprise the established intellectuals of the town and his friends with his knowledge. He at times pretends to know what he actually does not, in doing so; but he never fails to deal with an adult on equal terms and his peers as his underlings. In his younger days, he once slept on a railway track, on the prompting of his friends, and let a train pass over him. It was to prove that he is desperate character and it made him famous in the town.
So, most of the important characters are well-literate in this story, including a servant of the father Karamazov, who actually is suspected by all of being an illicit son of him. Father Karamazov is later murdered and his two sons and his servant are the main suspect.
Even the women looking for a financially profitable relationship with a high official or a landlord discuss a column published in a journal or newspaper published in St. Petersburg, which speculate about the people and society of their town. At times a character casually passes a serious literary judgement like if Lev Tolstoy can not actually write.
If it was not for the lockdown and isolation Covid19 imposed, one might have never had the chance to go back to a book long back abandoned after reading a few pages. The complicated names, slow pace and the formidable size of the book are not an appetizer really.
All very well but one feels that it could have been avoided and the book shortened to keep focus on the main story of the novel. It is the last book of the author which he wrote while he was in a fragile stage so possibly he wanted to say everything he had to, or having been co-opted into the system at this stage, he wants to make every character politically correct mostly, to save his position in the system. But he has less control over them and they surprise a reader often.
Because, a trained engineer Dostoevsky, after launching his literary career, suffered greatly in the earlier part of his life. By a General, who was an uncle of the writer Vladimir Nabokov, the literary group he was a member of, which did the crime of reading a banned literature, was sent to the notorious Siberian prison where they were to be executed by a firing squad.
While a few have been killed possibly, and he was the third in the line to be fired at, a missive from the Czar himself arrives and the remaining members including Dostoevsky were saved from being executed and were subjected to live for many years in sub human conditions in the jail. It all was before he wrote any literature seriously. So it had an impact on most of his writing.
The book has characters who are often corrupt to the core. A landlord and his sons have affairs with common women. The women know it all but vie with each other to win a common lover. His sons and the servants at his home want to eliminate him. All the characters mostly know each other and create intrigues against one another. It defines their whole life, as they seldom are involved in some other business or intellectual pursuit.
If it was not a murder mystery, about which even the author is not much bothered towards the end, then too the book is readable for the way it explains the social situation of the country.
The court scene in the end does not conclude the story by saying clearly who committed the murder, though it lasts more than one hundred fifty pages. One of the brothers Karamazov, who is convicted by the court, who is very sick after the verdict has been given, always maintains that he is not guilty; the other brother of him, who claims in the court to have committed the murder, is so sick with brain fever that the court and people think if he is having hallucination due to his condition. The third suspect, the servant and a suspected illicit son of father Karamazov, who is very sick during the trial and commits suicide on the eve of the verdict day, does so without saying clearly if he was guilty or not in his suicide note.
Another character dies who is a sickly child, who always is tormented by the insulting way people treat his father for being a drunkard and underclass and a former low-ranking soldier.
Possibly the author himself was very sick at this stage and dies a few months after this book was published. He writes so many things in such a great detail but finally himself loses focus from the story.
He often makes the dubious kind of characters in this book look like the people who are cynical and rebellious. But the upper class people too are very conservative. The Father Karamazov is an erstwhile under class who becomes rich due to his chance marriage to a wealthy women and once she dies he indulges in all kinds of excesses.
The system is so corrupt that the convicted Karamazov is already planning an escape to America while on his journey to the jail somewhere in Siberia–by bribing the guards.
It is a relief to have finally completed the books after dropping it so many times.

Fiction and imagination

In the days of yore, plutocrats or autocrats ruled the roost. They behaved as if the area they ruled is their fief.  They were photographed mostly in front of the library, which had a sumptuous collection of books, at their homes; wearing dresses, sun-glasses or watches of renowned foreign brands. It was to impress the public which often had no shoes in their feet.

Now since the people hitherto belonging to the peasantry have replaced them, their eccentricities too have been inherited by the new rulers without any hesitation. One might unsurprisingly find racks full of thick volumes of hard cover books–still not removed from their plastic covers–behind the seat of a leading politician of the country talking to a You Tube News Channel, betraying how plebeian he still remains for keeping his books in mint condition. Only if he had opened and read a few of them he would have said things more insightful.

However, the finance ministers of the country one witnessed over the years were said to be an educated lot, as, more often than not, they wielded a high degree from a Western university.

One of them once expressed his aversion to fiction and a preference to nonfiction. His policies lacked imagination obviously. While the economy of the country almost tanked, he returned to the office often enough. Before long he was winning awards financed by banks in Europe, as the capital was flying to them from here unabated in the name of liberalization.

In the meanwhile a group declared a war against the state, as it saw no chance of things improving in spite of the democracy the country now had. It did cost dearly to the country and nearly a whole generation suffered the great turmoil which a civil war entails, before the things became peaceful again, though the country is now a republic.

The incumbent Finance Minister too could not be accused to be a well read person either, or possibly, he too prefers nonfiction. As, while he made chocolates inexpensive, he increased taxes on electric vehicles and, the—of all the commodities—books, in the last budget he made public.

At a time when the country is expected to have surplus hydro power, which it plans to sell to the neighbors; and the bill of petroleum in dollars drains most of the hard-earned forex—mostly by the migrant workers, and the electricity is the most costly in Nepal than anywhere else, such policy of deterring the consumption of a local product only needs an education a foreign university imparts on a natives, to formulate. It could not be even an over- worked imagination, which comes by reading too much of fiction.

Also, as the journalists have unearthed a business house which imported a fleet of electric cars just prior to the day the Finance Minister announced the budget and cancelled a large import order of chocolates. So too many coincidences here indicate that it was not an act of genius on the part of businessman but the sensitive information has been leaked by the state for private gains. Besides the journalists here only do not lack imagination.

One cannot forget here a Prime Minister one saw, who too holds a foreign university degree; who nearly established a diesel plant to produce power in a country which is the second richest in hydro power potential in the world. It later transpired that the country already had enough power but it was being stolen by businessmen with the collusion of politicians and bureaucrats. Thankfully, the PM lost the office before long, as then the political instability prevailed in the country and we do not have a diesel power plant to feel proud of.

The political instability was, during yesteryear, a blessing in disguise in one way, as it did not give any politician enough time to do all the damage he could have done. But now since politics has become stable, one wonders how the country could fare.

K. C. Bhatt

Stimulous far worse than recession

A recently published report has brought to light that the global debt is escalating faster than expected and has exceeded two hundred fifty trillion dollars earlier than it was predicted.
It was also mentioned in the report that the two biggest economies of the world account for sixty percent of the total borrowings recently which raced to a staggering 7.5 trillion dollars in the first six months of the current year.
It was not mentioned in this report by what percent it grew over the last year. It also does not mention which of the two biggest economies is more responsible for pushing the world to the abyss of a total collapse. It is important to note that while China has a growth higher than six percent, the USA too has a cool growth of three percent. It is a remarkable growth because the rest of the world is feeling either recession or, worse even, a stagflation. Communist China or the democratic USA: the economic success story is the same for both.
Recently, the Chinese middle class displayed its muscle by spending thirty billion dollars within twenty four hours in online shopping to celebrate the ‘Single’s day’. It can be assumed that the people behind it are young entrepreneurs or professional in their prime years. So it is unlikely that any time in the near future any one can put pressure on China through economic sanctions to make it more amiable to making changes in its polity. Actually reverse could be the case as it is almost similar to the leading economy of the world in size and is growing twice the rate.
It may be a reason that the leaders of former European powers make a bee-line to win favours from China, as recently, President Trump has not been very friendly to them and has placed trade barriers to reduce trade deficit of the USA with EU nations apart from arm-twisting them to cough up more money to foot the bill of NATO.
Besides many countries defined as Emerging economies are already having a debt more than two times their GDP and they are borrowing more to avoid sinking altogether.
Many economies in EU and Argentina and South Africa are incapable of keeping them afloat without a routine bail outs from either IMF or WB; or other agencies; or Germany directly. But for them every fresh economic stimulous has proved worse than the diseases which ail their economies, and they might never get revived for they have a strong culture of distributing social benefits way beyond their capacities.
Any efforts at reforms there have been stiffly resisted by their people. Moreover, these countries have always been advised by their donors like IMF and WB and now in no position to decline more advice from the same. So they no more are sovereign nations in strict terms.
In earlier days these countries were colonial powers, when the plunder of colonies sustained them. After the end of colonialism money-laundering kept them afloat. But now the global public opinion against it has dried it up significantly.
There are more countries which were colonies earlier but are steps away from falling in the similar situation and still have debt less than hundred percent of their GDP. They do not take many advice from the donors but have a colonial system which was not changed much after independence and preys on the people to create a native ruling class which is far more ruthless than the real colonials in exploiting its own people.
However, this can be reversed only if the two largest economies agree to diversify their trade. They account for almost half of the global trade presently and any disputes between them do not last long for it hurts both the sides. Besides their debt situation indicates that they are not in as good health as they claim.
For this situation is precarious for the leading two economies too, as finally it could reach a point of no return and bring down drastically the economy of the world which is barely growing at two percent.
K. C. Bhatt
PR 21 Nov. 2019.

White alphabets and numbers

Slates and chalks were rare during those days. Notebooks and ink pots were allowed only in the second year of the primary school or later, when one had already become familiar with the alphabets and numbers.

The mornings were busy. A small writing board of wood with a handle was needed to be rubbed with black colour. The filling of a worn out dry battery was mixed with water to make the paste to put on the board. It was black enough. Or one used the dyeing colour instead. Eveready or Jeep were the brands of batteries available, small or medium sized. The board with a handle was than left in the air or sun to dry. Then with the bottom of a drinking glass or a bottle it was rigourously rubbed to shine. One used both the hands to do so if his father was not available on some days to help.

In a small metal container, which may be an emptied can of condensed milk called milkmaid, was dissolved in water the white soil or chalk called ‘Khari’. It was the ink to write with–on the board. Khari was a frequently available local product, just like the red clay soil, though chalk came in paper cartoons, slim and long like fingers. There were made two holes on each side of the white ink pot, into which two ends of a thread were tied. With this thread one held the hanging metal ink pot while making his way to the school or back home. Time was already scarce while arranging the paraphernalia and a young student always looked busy.

He had a cotton bag on his shoulder. The Blackened and shined board was there in it, along with a neatly cut small stick of bamboo. One end of the bamboo stick was turned into a pen by cutting it in a slanting way with a sharp blade or knife. In one hand of the student hung the white ink pot. This ink had to be stirred often while writing, else the chalk settled at the bottom.

The Bell held in one hand was being rung by a hammer, held in another, by the monitor of the school, calling open the school day. The student ran up the climb, which was paved with stones; at the top of which was the monitor, in front of the school, who was ringing the bell faster now, as the students slowed neared the school crowding the narrow lane to it. A student was careful not to spill the white ink from the pot hanging from his  hand, else it will soil  his dress or the bag or that of the student next to him.

Once a student lost his balance while running on prompting of the bell. Managing the bag on his shoulder and the ink pot in his hand while hurrying to the school was a tricky thing for a boy just five year old. His head hit a stone and blood oozed from the wound, while his ink got spilled on the stones paving the way, and his ink pot lost in the fields down below the climb somewhere. He was taken to the hospital, which was very near, by his mates, and the doctor applied dressing on his wound. That smell of tincture and other medicines applied to his wound lingered in his mind for a long time afterwards.

Classes ran outside the class room and in open during winter. It was why his father was happy, that he will remain warm in the sun for the whole day. When the class started a thread was taken our from the bag along with the bamboo made pen and the black board,  or pati. This thread with be soaked in the white ink to make horizontal lines on one side of the black board and vertical on the other. It must be done with utmost care so that the black board does not get stained by the white ink. When the lines drawn have dried the black board is ready to write on.

‘Ka’ Kha’ ‘Ga’ Gha…’  The teacher wrote on the black board balanced on a tripod with a chalk while shouting the words simultaneously.

The alphabets came alive on a shining black board of a student on the side where horizontal lines were drawn. But they were wet still. They dried in sun soon. And they shined bright white to the satisfaction of the teacher who checked them.

It was time for a break for everyone and the class was adjourned.

The other half of the class time was for numbers. On the other side of the black board, where a student had drawn vertical lines, numbers had to be written.

The teacher wrote on the black board and shouted:

‘Ek… Do….Teen…Char…’

The students wrote on their patis and shouted back more lively:

‘Ek… Do….Teen…Char…’

The rhythm was established.

Now one looked ahead for the monitor to once again ring the bell and call it a day.

Only by next year a student will be allowed to use exercise books and fountain pens. By then he will be well versed in numbers and tables and the alphabets; and also in organizing his paraphernalia for learning.

 

(Watching a documentary by Tony Hagen on Nepal’s Bajang district, these memories came alive.)