Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy; by Peter Schweizer.

Seems to consist mostly of pointing fingers at various public figures that are not republican, and saying "look who has stock (or money or property)".

The said figures are the targets because they dare to speak in a different voice on behalf of what might be good for the people who are not major stockholders or property owners, and the danger is it might come to pass if more people heard this.

It might not be possible to have another affairgate, and some way of throwing sand about to create a storm and make people shield their eyes had to be found.
......................

It might be informative to read of some of the details, and even disheartening, to find out about various public figures who tried to do good for people and spoke out on behalf of them, to find out that White water consisted of middle class and poor getting a raw deal bordering on cheating and Pelosi owns expensive resorts with no one allowed to join unions, to find out how Soros played with economies of various nations and how Streisand does not pay happy wages. To find how few of them employ any minorities, any other races or cultures, or even women.

But only if one thinks that this book gives all the information there is to give on any of those, with no context spared, and no mitigating circumstance left out.

Let us give benefit of doubt and say the writer is sincere, and not merely throwing mud at people who are likely to be good for the people of US who are not the top rich people.

But then one looks at his conclusions towards the end and sees the agenda clearly. Their practices are completely right and justified while it is their thinking and speaking and general public stance that is wrong, he states emphatically. They employ only "white" males because they want the best, and he does not blame them, he concludes.

To begin with humans are not, ever, "white" - except as an exaggeration or a euphemism. Cows, dogs, cats, horses, various birds and flowers are or can be white, but no human ever looked naked while wearing white clothes, of any shape or size. If there were such a risk no white clothing would be allowed in public much less formal occasions.

That aside, to conclude that employment of males of a certain origin implies that they are the best, is to go with a logic much like rich making money because they are rich - by being given positions and higher pay packets and market tips and club memberships where real deals are struck and expensive gifts worth millions that they don't need.

Or one could conclude that any conqueror was always right, which is why the attack succeded - whether Attila the Hun or any of those that managed to attack various western nations, including their own parts.

Shocking? Yes, it is - and so it is to conclude that "white" males get all the well paid jobs only because they and no one else is good enough.

The real agenda of the writer is not even for the men and women who can do it, as it was of Ayn Rand, but it is of rich white men ruling because they according to the writer are the only competent ones.
............

If such conclusions along his logic were warranted, let us see where it can take us.

Schweitzer says that people who speak for the poor and against malpractices of stocks and business should not indulge in stock. If they do, it is because their practices are good and their speeches are fraud.

Would he say Roman church consisting of bishops indulging in paedophilia and other unsavoury activities amounts to their theory being no good and paedophilia being good?

He says Streisand and others lobbying for fair pay and hours are fraud because they do not practice it. And he further says this proves their theory is wrong, since they cannot live it.

Would he admit that any male MD or otherwise medical professional practicing in ob-gyn is deficient in knowledge by definition, since they their professional activities have nothing to do with their own personal experiences? Would he condemn them for fraud?

Would a lawyer be fraudulent in practicing defense or prosecution of murder accused without having experienced murder? Should an actor die in process of portrayal of death?

According to his logic, no male, much less a celebate institution, should have any right to say a word about pregnancy or anything related to it.

In fact no celebate person should have anything to do with a marriage, much less proclaim rights and wrongs of one, or performing the ceremony.
..............

That was a few of the natural conclusions arising from stretching the logic of his concluding chapter and applying it to other fields of life where it might make more sense, such as male ob-gyn or celebate males dictating rules of marriage and reproduction.

He could just as easily have left it at a more natural conclusion, which is that while these people preach much lofty sounding stuff they practice another. But that had the danger of people merely holding them on par with the fallen bishops who have after all not all been automatically ex-communicated.

In fact one parallel with his logic and conclusion about practice of left wing being better than their theory applied to the paedophile bishops would be to say that it is priesthood that is wrong while porn and paedophilia is the only right thing to do. Shocking, right? But it is his logic and his conclusion, only shifted from those who speak for people and do not practice their theory in their life in perfection, to those who uphold celebacy of their own as superior to others while practicing otherwise in private and preaching compulsory childbearing to all married people and almost all women.
............

He goes into another plane of vitriol when dealing with Steinem, and wishes to know what she expected to find at playboy if not sexism.

Fact is the said sexism was not only about women prancing about in impossible, silly, unhealthy gear for fancy of well fed males - that much is visible from outside the building for any decent person to be disgusted with.

Her working there for investigative jounalism was on one level about exposing how little the pay and how tough the work, unlike the advertisements about fun and glamour and good pay, and how discriminatory the employers towards the women employed compared to male employees, in various terms.

On another level it is about making those women seem less objects and more human to the casually dismissive Schweitzers of this world if possible, by telling their story, even if through one person.

One might as well question Memoirs of a Geisha or indeed all literature with the same Schweitzer question of "what did they expect" of anyone in trouble. One might question what a woman "expected" if her husband murdered her or if her brand new date raped and butchered her. One does not, because one expects more humanity from humanity.
................

He mentions about women who did not marry due to listening to Steinem and are now left alone and forgotten. He blames it on her.

But isn't the idea in west that one marries for love, that love is all, that one should not marry except for love no matter what?

If those women had found love they would have never been alone, married or not; and if they did marry what guarantee did Schweitzer have that they were not divorced, left alone and forgotten after a few or even many years of a marriage? Has it not been happening in his culture, his nation? All too frequently, at that?

His words blaming Steinem indeed belie the notion that west marries for and only for love. While they do not have a system that takes care of a woman finding a home, a husband, security, and is not "left alone and forgotten", they also do not have any social system that would guarantee an equal opportunity to them of a life otherwise, whether socially or professionally. So they are left at the mercy of men who might or might not offer marriage and there are the Schweitzers of the world to blame them for letting go of "opportunities of marriage", in a twisted logic that forgets conveniently about love in blaming the women in every way.

Is love merely a convenient word for the husband of a few or several years divorcing the older wife for a younger toy trophy?

Or is it all just blame the women, blame even more the women who speak - and denounce marriages of any other cultures because they work, with no control by Schweitzer's capitalist system?
...........

Schweitzer would be doing fine if only he refrained from commenting or drawing conclusions, if he merely documented the gaps between practice and speech by various public figures, and it might help if he were not discriminatory in picking on the Streisands and Clintons and Steinems and so forth while leaving alone the paedophile bishops of Roman faith and other goons on the side he claims is honest if thugs.

The Longest Day; by Cornelius Ryan.

It needs to be kept as a book on shelf to read more than once - one might read it, and see the film, and yet the the overwhelming character of the subject along with the exhuasting detailed research and writing leaves one submerged. One is glad to raise one's eyes and see one is not actually there, fighting for life and death for oneself as well as the human civilisation, and silently thanks those that did it before we came.

Where did you go? Out What did you do? Nothing; by Smith Robert Paul,

A very endearing reminder of yesteryear that we remember, of days before cheap or expensive toys of recent times that fill houses and leave little for the child's imagination - the role taken up at a later date today by other commercially provided occupations, such as malls, unlike those years when people had time and more basic, natural, imaginative ways.

Feynman played with radios then and had his scientific questioning mind kept sharp and fresh, Asimov read, others wrote poetry, and so on.

Perhaps today the internet has replaced the neighbourhoods as meeting places and it is once again a space of mind for people to explore. Still, the years of when one could do infinitely many things with spools (who has now heard of them, in more consumeristic nations?)are past. Not all that good.

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography; by Simon Singh.

It is rare one comes across a book of this calibre written for lay readers, so very informative and so good in its level of intelligence that borders on testing.

In discussing codes he goes into history and discusses various codes used historically until one reaches Enigma and realises why it was so prized as to have British intelligence and government risk loss of many lives rather than allow the enemy to suspect that they had in fact cracked it or obtained a key, a variation of each having happened during the war.

Then there is the part about Elizabeth I obtaining incontrovertible proof of Mary, Queen of Scots involving herself in plots to murder her and subsequently the ordering of execution of the latter of necessity, unlike the popular misconceptions about the reasons.

A must read for anyone even remotely interested in any topic touching - whether practical application today or historical significance or simply an intellectual challenge. ”

The Guide: A Novel; by R. K. Narayan.

He was a tourist guide who happened to be a resident of a town close to a cave complex in mountains nearby, with amazing paintings and sculptures, and his street smartness in acquiring a smattering of all languages possible that he might need so he can conduct tours with commentary in the language his clients require (and this is no joke, often people in India who look poor and illiterate do have this amazing achievement as one of their many, the ability with well over a dozen languages or even more acquired with enough vocabulary to take care of whatever few conversations they might need to have with clients) has made a comfortable living for him. Until she arrives in town.

She was a danceuse by not only training since childhood but also from ancestral profession over generations of women who were artists and performers. Her mother, however, did not wish that life for the daughter and got her married to the best candidate she could find so she could have a respectable life, unlike her ancestors.

But art was in her very blood, and the life that required her to wait for the staid husband - an archeologist busy with his research - had her desperate with boredom.

This is the story of the two, who met and it changed their lives. He helped her leave the husband and go back to her art while he promoted her in a profession to its pinnacles. Only, she couldn't care less for the fame and money she commanded - and his double role as her manager and her lover was demeaning in both by being both. She is just as bored with his "connections" that are after all due to her, and she would rather spend time with poor artists he cannot comprehend her wanting to be with.

A fateful moment, a mistake of a decision to hide from her the book and the jewellery sent by her husband - in fear she might melt and go back to him - lands him in jail for fraud, for the signature that is not hers and is easily so recognised by the husband.

When out finally he does not know where he could go to show his face with dignity, the mother who left him due to the bad woman ow the woman who did not testify on his behalf so he could escape going to jail. He walks away and keeps on walking, and is mistaken for a spiritual man since one such had covered him in his own covering while he was asleep, to protect him against cold wind.

The simple villagers and their simple problems that he solves and their sincere faith, and the tremendous calamity facing the region in the draught that he casually mentions "used to be solved once upon a time by spiritually achieved men by their fasting and prayers" - it all lands him in a position he never had thought of going to, that of fasting till either his death or rains that might solve the famine problem. And with the faithful villagers and increasingly more visitors of the region and beyond that always surround him, to take care of him, there is no possibility of cheating.

For the first time it is a struggle he never thought he would come to - that of his higher self and his lower, of bodily hunger and the inability to break hearts of the simple villagers with their faith.

Devdas; By Saratchandra Chattopaadhyaay.

A decent young man and a caring, but self respecting, young woman - and a feudal society where he has no means of supporting her if his family would not have it, and so lacks courage to elope with the woman he loves, so he does the decent thing and instead tells her he never saw her as a lover, a mistake he repents forever while throwing away his life.

Wealth comes but is too late, and is of little use when love is lost.

....................................

Paro, the love of his life, sees her loss when she sees him throwing himself away in drink and dissipation, sheer depression and inability to get past loss of her, pretty much a boat that has lost its sails and sailor and is at mercy of all winds and waves, and hears him telling her that if only she had been there she could have taken care of him and his household, his home, his mother who is at mercy of the other - the only now that he is alone - daughter in law, and he would have been free to not worry.

She reflects on the irony of caring for the widower she married, along with his grown up children who have come to respect and admire her for her virtues of patience and caring and selflessness, and all the while letting the people she cared for be left to mercy of fate.

She makes him promise he will come to visit her marital home - it is large enough to accomodate any number of relatives, servants and guests, as old well to do homes did - so she could care for him. One has to admire the sheer certaintly of her virtue she has, that there is no concern about anyone holding her in suspicion if this ever came to pass, and indeed she had established her own persona, her virtue and her clear conscience in her home by her life there being one of faultless exalted kind that even her much older husband respects her for.

But life takes its own course and she is immersed more and more in the day to day affaires of the household, and with no news of her older concerns they are sort of veiled and remain behind her everyday awareness. When he does arrive at her doorstep, finally, to fullfill his promise to her - he could have come earlier but has his self respect too, about being ill in her home and recovering, so he would rather throw away his life until it is too late to recover and the promise is fulfilled only in name - he is then too ill, dying on her doorstep outside the gates.

It has a haunting quality, the last few hours of his life when he is lying there, dying, and she keeps on waking up, hearing in her sleep her name he keeps of whispering and and going to the terrace wondering who is calling her. She keeps on being disturbed through the morning until she accidentally hears about the details of the guy who died outside the gate - it is too late then, to see him, even though she tries, running in desperation and throwing the household in turmoil to see her sedate usual self behaving in sounusual a manner. The villgers outside the gate have already taken him away for cremation.

..................................

It is almost as if the writer was unconscious of what came through while he merely wrote the tale of an unfortunate man. For it is not just about loss of love that might mean loss of a future, a life that could have been, loss of the persons that were separated. Which is tragedy enough.

The last few hours of Devdas's life while he whispers her name again and again and she wakes up from her sleep hearing someone calling her, but is unaware of what might be going on right outside her own gate, has the quality of a truth of a higher plane. Thus might one lose one's own soul while one got busy with worldly care and lost track of that which one had brought with one's birth from above.

..............................

I have heard many quote the facile summing up of Devdas, about comparison that men easily might make between the two women in his life. And I find it short sighted. This is not a story about ego vs love, one woman losing the latter for the former and the other the reverse.

Paro took much from her love of childhood as her parents did from his wealthy parents, the neighbours in village they lived in, but being told by him that his parents were right about not wishing to step down in matters of forming relations with a lower class family - not a serious caste difference but one of class, that is, of money, which came to replace the older and more benevolent system in that it was more snobbish and had no values to go with it - could finally not overcome the slight to her parents, her family by her love.

By the time he arrived to repent and offered to make it work, it was too late, and he assumed all he had to do was to express his wish to her parents - which was the last straw and she boiled over with indignation. She told him off, in no uncertain words, that her parents knew better than to leave her at mercy of so weak a character, and they mattered, and their submission to his will was by no means a guarantee as he assumed. And moreover they had prestige of their own too, she informed him, indignant at his remark in his letter about their lowering their status by this marriage. As a matter of fact they had easily found her a match far wealthier than his family, which was only a proof in her eyes that her family had no reason to feel low in comparison.

Self respect, not ego, was what this was about, when she told him off. That he could have in spite of that tried to make her parents and his agree to their marriage escaped his notice, and he satisfied his injured ego with hurting her, and giving up rather than carrying out his promise of a sincere attempt to make the two families see reason in the matter and make it happen. His love was sacrificed at the alter of his class and the ensuing ego of the family that he shared - and his temper.

...............................

The other woman did not, could not have had an ego, in the profession that she was in, due to whatever circumstance - she and others in her profession have it hard enough to have self respect, or indeed even a sense of self, if they are not of a low consciousness, and this woman was awakened from her stupor of everyday life into her self by the disdain this man of clear conscience made clear to her. She longed for his respect and love and in the process her life is cleansed of the muck her profession throws at her. She transformed herself, but was not above setting up shop again when needed to find him when he was lost, and that did not bind her again to the profession either - she gave up all to live in a small village in a very simple lifestyle earning much respect from the villagers that knew her for her true self.

In the final hours Devdas confused her face with his mother's in his unconscious state, and becoming aware of that fact, did not think it was incongrous to confuse the two supposed extremes, a revered mother and a common courtesan. This, for the culture this story belongs to, where mother is an extremely revered persona and the Divine is seen as The Mother, is testimony indeed to the clear souls and the relationships.

Adventures of Tom Sawyer; by Mark Twain II.

It is very unlikely anyone over ten needs an introduction to Tom Sawyer and his adventures - and especially the way he got his friends to paint the fence for him, clamouring for the privilege, while he took it easy.

Mark Twain was no simpleton, at that, and managed to teach a lesson in that story about fence painting, about how capitalism and enterprise works - it is about getting others enthusiastic about manual hard work, by some spiel or other, while one then has time to manage, invent, profit, and so forth.

The introduction to his autobiography was unforgettable.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Other Pieces; by James Thurber.

Thurber writes about a norman average guy in this one, one who is not a hero but secretly wishes he were one, and it is touching more than hilarious - while it does bring a smile that stays for the duration of reading.

Other pieces are his usual good quality too; very worth keeping.

Golden Straw; by Catherine Cookson.

A young woman victimised by a well to do man and the consequences that she has to pay all her life, but more, the next generation too, his as well, and not only hers.

The Outsider; by Albert Camus.

About a person who is emotionally untouched by much that is expected to touch one deeply, such as funerals in the family.

One wonders if the shock and novelty of this then new admission gave way to a whole cult whereby men were supposed to be untouched by emotions and uninvolved in anything in their lives of the nature that was relegated to women, unless it was about their sons, and less often, fathers.

Certainly the images that have come to prevail in west, especially west from Europe in US, and have come to be prescribed as the appropriate behaviour for the human male have been sort of unnatural, as has been the division of emotional responses deemed appropriate.

Women falling in love with the first or every man who looks at them or the babies they give birth to is as likely to not happen at all as is the emotional blankness of men about women they are involved with or married to, or their own children and parents. Often men can be caring and loving, and just as often women are likely to not have experienced emotion or have been overwhelmed by expectations as the protagonist of this work.

Subliminal Seduction; by Wilson Bryan Dey.

This book is not only worth reading but should be made compulsory, so people get some idea of the manipulation they are subjected to in and by various forms of media and advertisements. In fact news media is not exactly immune either - only perhaps more subtle.

There might be books later and even more extensive on the subject, but this one is really a good one. In a slightly off context, Naomi Wolf's Beaty Myth connects to it - and quite thouroughly well, too.

Endless Night; by Agatha Christie.

A man has more than one chance, of doing well and taking the higher path, and is free to do so at every opportunity presented. Some, however, do not do so - hence the title.

Title taken from a well known poem - while there is murder and mystery all right, this time it is more about human faults and depravations than about a detective solving a murder, though solved it is - by a fortuitous accident rather than anyone intelligent applying mind to the clues. The solution is presented finally by the killer, with readers left wondering about their own prowess as riddle solvers.

Sons and Lovers; by DH Lawrence.

This belongs to an era when women still had little choices and had rarely any control over their persona or their lives, and frequently little in way of any connection with the men in their lives - husbands, that is - except being used in carnal way, and receiving what sustenance was provided to maintain the home and children.

Many - many more than otherwise - women still have such lives, fairy tales of love or not.

When such women are well to do due to the wealth of the husband or otherwise inheritance, it is another story, with perhaps other women in similar circumstances for company. But a woman who is also poor - she has only one hope for a secure connection and an ultimate security or emotional and otherwise sort, and any chance of an ascendence to power at all, and that is with her sons. If she is fortunate enough that not only she is emotionally connected to them but they are connected to her as well, then she is secure, free of worry, they will fulfill the needs their fathers left unsatisfied - which is, every other but carnal.

And yet, there is the one person (per son) who can threaten this bond - the woman who awakens love in the heart, not merely the nether region, of the son. The latter can be managed, will be manageable. The former is a formidable competition, and too an opponent. There is no tolerating her when the mother needs her son dependent on her emotionally, seeing her as the epitome of womanhood as he always has done while he grew up. That love cannot be allowed.

Some sons escape, and some are caught, their lives thrown in directions they did not necessarily aspire to.

My World-and Welcome to It; by James Thurber.

It is hard not to relax, smile and then start laughing some time later, even completely uncontrollably, when one reads Thurber. His writings are all of a piece, generally giving you a window into his life - or so you come to feel, at home and in a rocker, feet up - and laughing uncontrollably. And it is difficult to remember which story is in which book.

I have a fair certainty that some of my early favourites are in this one, but am not sure which ones. It is worth discovering again though - no matter how many times one has read it.

For instance I think the Great Run, due to a mistaken rumour about a dam broken and the natural consequent flood scare, is part of this book. Only Thurber could make it that funny. And then there is the aunt that went about screwing light bulbs into empty sockets and very certain she was plugging up the leaking electricity. Perhaps this one also has the story of Roy informing his father that the engine had fallen out, using kitchen pots and pans and so on to create a frightening scare.

But even if they are all in another book by Thurber, what I am sure of is having read it and loved it.

The Black Candle; by Catherine Cookson.

Human psychology takes you on a roller coaster ride as the fates of two sisters involved with another family and the children thereafter unfold before you like a forest tangled and growing towards light.

The Rag Nymph; by Catherine Cookson.

Story of trials and tribulations of an orphan with unusual looks as she is prey to men around, and has to grow up from a little girl to a young woman with fragile dreams and a grown up with romantic illusions gone before she finds love and security.

As usual Cookson excells in the atmosphere of times and place and people coming alive.

The Third Eye; by Lobsang Rampa.

Even after so many years after reading it, a little over three decades, a few details remain etched in memory from this book.

The little boy who grew up to be the Lama that wrote this story of his life and times and experiences and all he saw, liked to play within the remote plains of Tibet - and what could he have played with, it was not only not a rich place (still very poor, Tibetans, and since occupation the light of free smile is gone too) in terms of money, it is also the large expanse that is often named roof of the world for good reason. It is at a great height, the highest in the world. very remote from most other human settlements since it is very large too, and devoid of most greenery of nature.

Little grows there, and so the games and play that is available to most little children in rural India for example - playing in trees, swinging, and games devised around ability to climb up a root of the Banyan tree (the roots off a grown up tree come down from branches to root themselves and spring up new trees around, so that often there is a mile around a tree and its descendent trees around it, all thriving and growing more around in turn) - a variation on the old chasing game.

But little grows in Tibet, no trees certainly, and to devise play for little children would take some ingenuity - which fortunately all children do have until their culture deprives them by filling their space with toys and limiting their imagination.

This little boy - the picture is as vivid as if I saw it - liked to walk on stilts and so once while he did that crossing a river, a grown up man looked at the little boy walking and decided the river had to be very shallow and so walked in - and fell in way over his expectation, to his surprise, and got angry.

He was destined for a life as a Lama and so joined the lamasery quite early as they do, and grew up with the other Lamas to for his family for rest of his life, to guide and care and console him those early days when he missed his earthly family. There was education too, which involved more than learning from texts and other normally understood parts of learning. There was meditation and opening of the inner parts, and therein comes the title.

In India the third eye is very well known and understood but it is something of an inner vision, developed or opened with yogic discipline. I had never heard of a physical operation performed to open the third eye, and this is described on the book.

Subsequently he saw people's auras and was educated by his teachers in deciphering them. He could see that the Indian mission to Tibet was trustworthy but the Chinese could not be trusted, and more.

The book is much more than all this that I remember after well over three decades after reading it.

The Tide of Life; by Catherine Cookson.

A young woman, barely out of girlhood yet, poor, in need of care and support herself - takes life and responsibility for her fragile younger sister, and works hard to support the two of them, and face life as best as she can. And the world is no fairy land - she has to face much, and overcome it too, irrespective of her ability - since it is a question of survival.

Catherine Cookson at her best, with northern rural England brought alive from a century ago, the poor and the not so poor, the noble and the ignoble, the honest and the cheats.

The Bridges of Madison County; by Robert James Waller.

According to an inside tip, by a colleague of the creator of the film that was subsequently written up as the book, the two went and saw Parama, a bilingual film by Aparna Sen.

The points copied are clear but this one goes far more into sex and misses out on the rich texture of the other that was partly contextual and partly in the artists that created it.

Also, since the story was taken to the other side of the world in more than one way, it had to be changed enough to make sense and romance from another perspective since it was being planted in another culture, where an extra marital affair might not be such a thrill or a sin in social terms of today either. And while the original was about an identity that was lost in the everyday life of the woman and she found it - accidentally as it were - when someone out of her circle loved her for herself, that again was not going to be a new thing either, since that has pretty much been a theme of women's movement since the sixties in west.

So it was then pared down to an intense love story that began with sex and very soon changed into a love that remained faithful but unrequited, with the two neither meeting nor every forgetting one another. The self discovery of the woman and the guilt imposed by society were both thrown out, reducing the complexity and making it less her story and more of the tryst that became a romance. In the original the man is a catalyst, the copy made him a partner and a lover till his death.

Some features were retained - the photographer who travels around the world who meets a seemingly ordinary housewife and falls in love with her, the talk of traveling around the world, the dreaming, and so on, with her rediscovering beauty and romance that she did not have in her own life much.

A haunting love story, worth reading, almost of another era if you don't know where it came from - and it is, of another ethos.

A Streetcar Named Desire; by Tennessee Williams.

Parable for southern (once Confederate) society in form of heroine as usual in the writer's work - she is trying all possible means and ways to keep her flag flying, her dignity gathered, but is cheated, exposed, defrauded, and ultimately raped - and sent off to asylum for saying so.

Life with Father and Life with Mother; by Clarence Day.

One of the most delightful books one can ever find.

A very neat, organised, methodical young man sets himself up in work and personal life before marrying someone he liked - only, she is neither organised nor methodical, not enough for him anyway.

On the other hand she is caring and wishes to keep up relationships, which goes towards disturbing his plans and life further what with relatives arriving and staying on for visits, and joining them for outings. And then there is the engagement ring he never gave her, and the question of church which he thinks he is too grown up now for, except as a benevolent head of the family looking on at others joining - very proper.

And above all, the accounts! The sicknesses and the preferences of each about how to deal with them .....

Really full of love it generates while reading, because it is chronicled by the son.

The Color Purple; by Alice Walker.

Colour Purple arrived on the scene with a thunderclap and lightening - oscars went to Out Of Africa, because it was more convenient, though that was very deserving and excellent as well. The books are more than worth reading in both cases.

Rural poverty and injustices of every sort victimising the weakest in that society - young girls, especially those of the lowest rungs in social order that refuses to give way to more just and equitable arrangements.

How the woment that grow from those girls survive and grow to find life and identity and some semblance of happiness or at least peace, is worth reading.

I would recommend it to anyone over twleve, and for anyone over eighteen it is almost a must read.

This has a history of a suppressed people, and in as much as it is about people who were poor and had been slaves for a long time and had lost their roots and civilisation and left adrift after emancipation, it is of dual suppression - the story of women of African ancestry living in US at a time that I am not sure is specified, but some time between civl war and 70s.

It does have all sorts of things you might not like but is uplifting because they triumph over the longest possible odds.

The Age of Innocence; by Edith Wharton.

A portrayal of another age, of society as it then was, of love and marriage and family and lives.

A time when society was more rigid in norms that were beginning to be loosened, but a woman nevertheless stood to lose, and so her family and society joined together to see that she kept her marriage and her status - and if that was not acceptable to her it was rather difficult to keep on supporting her, and she had an exile to other lands as a route if she could afford it.

Men had more power, true, but were not as free as today when some societies have left security for women in marriage as a completely open door situation, whereby no one really benefits although the thoughtless and the loose profit in terms of money that their wives and children lose when they separate.

Love was then a deep, intense hunger of heart as it rarely can be experienced by much cheapened word and much indulgence that has veiled the truth of Love from most people and their lives.

The Picture of Dorian Gray; by Oscar Wilde.

Story of a man who is able to keep an innocent visage in spite of a horrible life and actions, and it is only his mirror - an allegory for his conscience, his inner self - that shows him as he is.

The President's Lady: A Novel about Rachel and Andrew Jackson; by Irving Stone.

In this Stone takes up the era of exploration of the land and large part of continent that is now USA, and the story of a good woman and a good man who were maligned due to the then conventions for no fault of their own - the fault in fact lay with the man who had lied and allowed them to believe that there had been a divorce, while he had simply not done it. Much life threatening dangers were braved by the explorers, which is difficult in this era of mobile (cell) phones and GPS and so on to imagine.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; by Robert Louis Stevenson.

In many ways this work was pioneering, in exploring the concept of drug related personality change and writing about it, depicting the effect of drugs on psyche to the extent that a person under effect of a drug can chane completely in personality and behaviour; however that aspect of the work was pushed aside, buried, and got lost in the sensation of dual personalities of the title and the rest of it, the horror, the murder without mystery and so on.

In a way it might be about the writer himself - when you read his poetry you cannot imagine him creating a Hyde, and vice versa. (Don't tell me they are separate people, that would make sense!)

Boston; by Upton Sinclair

I was new to the country when I read it, in Boston, and it was quite something to read an intimate history of the society and the lapses from justice that happened not due to legal and justice systems overlooking a crucial part, but because the ones that got a poor deal were poor immigrants early last century.

Manassas; by Upton Sinclair.

A comparatively fresh look at the civil war in US. Fresh, from the perspective rather than time of course.

It is a bit comparable in freshness of outlook to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia.

War and peace; by Leo Tolstoy.

There was a once a one year old telling a parent "isn't that girl beautiful" and the father turned around, but there was no one there. After a bit of talking to the child the father realised the beautiful girl was in fact Audrey Hepburn, the heroine of the film they were watching. Impressed, he informed his wife of their child's beyond the young years capacity of observation and opinion. The two conversations took place during the interval, over half a century ago. (The film of course was War And Peace.)

It so happens Audrey Hepburn was someone who grew up herself in another era of trying circumstances of war, and went on to do much during peace years of her society for people of another war torn continent, on behalf of UN, for peace.

The book is about society in general and a young growing girl in particular during times of a war and later peace in feudal society in Russia, in a bygone era.

It is interesting to compare it with Gone With The Wind, which is on a similar subject, only that one goes on to document far more of a loss as indeed apparent in the title, whereas this one deals with a war that did not yet end the social structure as it then was in Russia.

That - the dissolution of the social structure - happened later and is documented in Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago.

Chokher Bali; by Rabindranath Tagore.

This title is clearer and better spellt than another edition of the same book.

It is about as trivial as a grain of sand but when in the eyes, the pain that can ensue with so small an object that you would not notice otherwise; has nothing to do with either a necklace suggested by choker (as it is misspellt on some other editions) or an island named Bali. Chokher is of or in the eye, bali(e) is the grain of sand.

Life might be all perfect from every side - wealth, a young attractive couple happy in their marriage and with little or no trouble, a large household with many hands to take up any work needed to be done, to shoulder any burden - and yet, a small grain of sand in the sensitive place is all it takes to threaten and perhaps destroy it all.

I read this way back before it was a film in English - the version I read was a translation in a language close to original. The film is beautifully made and brings out the nuances well. With the director of this calibre, and artists so good, perhaps this is to be expected.

So if you are not an expat Baangaalie, perhaps seeing the film might help, since connecting to the life and conventions of that day would be not so easy, and much is assumed in writing that is made explicit in the film.

Dracula; by Bram Stoker.

One has to wonder if the writer meant to write it as a parable for happenings on another plane, and that those truths were not seen for the literal thrill of the horror genre, and perhaps it is seen at other levels by a few but not consciously by general public - or if it was simply that while the writer meant to write a simple horror story something far more got written instead through him.

Either way the story is far more of a horror as a parable than literal, which is horrible enough.

Elizabeth I; by David Starkey.

One wonders if there were other reasons for Starkey to go equivocal about the persona that saved England and set the strong base for what it rose to become later, out of the chaos she had received. Was it the apologetic stance of the various branches of church currently that would rather be seen as not divided at all but essentially together with the Roman orthodox one thay all fought to break away from, or is it merely the guiding hands behind the now monarchy that seeks to disassociate the approved set of things from the past rule, especially what was the quintessentially English rule?

The thought above would be valid from merely reading the book, even if one missed all the not so subtle televised efforts to make people think that the love and grief for Diana was either merely an aberration on part of those that were emotional (translate as lacking in self control and so unreliable when it comes to discourse of mind or power), or not quite in good taste, and forgotten at any rate; one does wonder if those who try so assiduously to throw the black veil on the quite alive memory of Diana and her legend that after all she is eventually the future queen mother, and it won't do to throw mud on her name or memory especially whe she was so very loved?

As for the church, I have heard some protestants apologetic about Luther - though why should they only their preachers can tell, and it probably has to do with policy decisions - while some others still have disdain for any who worship any woman, including the mother of their own god. And they express it quite vocally too.

Why all this while reviewing the book on a namesake of the current monarch, one might wonder. Well, actually, none of this is unrelated when it comes to Elizabeth I.

You might not think it from this book and that is probably the intention, but she was the very loved Queen Bess, of England's own. Loved not only for her red hair, and other beauty which she inherited from her mother, but for the calm and secure stability, and sense and selfhood she brought the nation, while beginning a new era of prosperity and adventure, all out of the chaos begun with her father disassociating the nation from Roman authority in all matters, and worse, the complete chaos then wrought by his first daughter, who has been always called by England with the apt name Bloody Mary they gave her for the years she ruled.

Elizabeth brought sense to the chaos, peace to the people tired and fed up with the years of various sides murdering people wholesale in name of faith (and actually for question of what authority they would follow), and ruled long in spite of all attempts on her life, more than a few authorised by Rome, with vituperation.

For the sake of her nation, she had to give up any sense of a personal life, since a monarch could only marry another royal and she stood to compromise England if she married. No children, either. Her England is what she became identified with, an emblem, a personified Britannica and more.

Starkey seeks to equivocate by sifting around and while not quite badmouthing Elizabeth I who was after all monarch (he is a royal subject and so even apart from questions of people throwing eggs at him if he were too obvious at this, it might be treason and an ordinary citizen might be aware of that too, much less the laywers and so forth) - what he does do is to equivocate by painting Mary (Bloody Mary, not the other one) as somehow right and good and not so bad and therefore managing to make Elizabeth look like she was in fact at fault for not obeying her sister.

One suspects therefore that it is a point of view from elsewhere, since it is so very much at odds with the English point of view when it comes to matters of those times.

Heidi; by Johanna Spyri.

It has always been seen as children's literture, but really it is a simple tale for all ages - clean air and surroundings contribute to health, as simple as that, while no doubt dense human settlements are interesting in ways of providing pursuits for mind.

The God of Small Things; by Arundhati Roy.

First and foremost it is a good read and a racy one, and a good piece of writing too. That much is obvious - it won the Booker prize, after all. It was a sensation when it arrived, not the least because it was already portrayed as a sensation on distant shores, slated to go win much - and it did win the booker, giving us an elation.

In India though there were opinions as diverse as could be, with the most innocent detractors pointing out that writers in India had written much greater stuff and while this one was good it was hardly the best of Indian writing or even representative of India either in social terms or in quality of our best.

At one small gathering of friends at our place it was suggested that we should do something, make efforts at social and national levels, to bring out best of our literature to the notice of those that were holding up this as our best. While I don't think there is anything to be said against such an effort I thought it was not a "should" - it could be done but was rather of questionable relevance.

It was only those who gave importance to bookers and oscars and other "foreign" fame and notice and acknowledgement forms that were disturbed by the phenomena that this book had become, I thought (and said) - if "they" like rock and we have great music of Bhimsen Joshi and Jasraj and Amir Khan and Hirabai Badodekar, "them" not noticing our best does not change the fact of our classical being superior, unless we have a psychological need of approval from "them" to certify our rich heritage in its superiority.

Now remembering the distant memory - it was a storm in a teacup really, so ten years or so is a lot - one can see another side of it, too.

Pather Panchali was a much heralded film, with awards galore, and fame that went on and on. Part of it was due to its being more accessible to a sensibility that was linear and strictly of mind level, while more complex sensibilities are perhaps of our preference, with inputs from the worlds of heart and music and earth's or world's visual spectacular bounty, and dance. For a while there was a distinct divide - with those that preferred Ray considering themselves superior and those that preferred average Indian cinema apologetic or uncaring. Now, we have come to terms with our own. And meaniwhile there has been all along every kind of cinema in between, too.

So why was Ray the heralded one in west, while we ignored the phenomenal and much - very much - deserved popularity of Awara in Russian, east European and much of other parts of the world? The latter had to do with our colonial past still shadowing us in our need of approval, now a past. The former is another story and connects to the booker prize of Roy in a distant link.

Awara was a beautiful film with a story and appeal that were universal in nature, applicable to any society with injustice against women in suspecting them of fall from virtue and discarding them while innocent, and the consequent social ills. It touched hearts and won them - Russians could sing the theme en masse, and did when they gave a thundering ovation to the star director - and even today Russia knows us by his name more than anything, as casual visitors testify time and again, with their being given friendly smiles and help with the name of India to which they respond with "Raj Kapoor, Awara".

Pather Panchali on the other hand could be applied to poor anywhere, but is visually very much identifiable with India, and so is a story of India identified as a poor nation in the western psyche, a story of poverty. That there is such poverty in their own backyards is swept under the rug, and this stark film is comfortable in their view for applauding. It is only India, and does not remind them of anything nearby. And it is easier to deal with, being much more if not exclusively on levelof mind rather than of a more integral perception.

The parallels are hardly anywhere near exact. Roy's work is on more levels than merely mind, and both the virtue of this work as well as the truth of there being better works even then in Indian (and therefore inaccessible to west) languages - I have met westerners that did not know we had languages, much less literature, and some thought we all speak English! - fact is this one in its value of literary virtue as well as sensational stuff that could be a silent pointing finger at India was more comfortable for rewarding with a much valued prize.

There is no denying this is good work, only, readers from elsewhere are likely to take it as representative of not only a specific story of a place and people or even some of society but of all India. Which is not the writer's fault really.

Roy is brilliant and fearless and has gone on to do superior work, which has gone unnoticed comparatively. Dams are still being built.

I am afraid (the last phrase and the last word can be taken literally only by disassociting it from the subject of the verb, in that everyone should be afraid of such a possibility) that major disasters of far more than environmental and ecological nature are likely.

This is all the more so when sensitive parts of Earth such as Himaalaya and other tectonic dynamic are being played with - without thought of anything other than power and profits.

The Class; by Erich Segal.

Erich Segal might have been excused to take it easy after the success of Love Story, but he went on to attempt to do better, to make sense of a lot of things he lived, and did do well in the process, as a writer. This is part of that attempt and success.

It is about a "class" graduating a particular year from Harvard, and how they proceed with their lives subsequently. There is a reasonable spectrum of people likely to be in a class in Harvard though he refrains from intimate portrayals of any "special" people such as royalty or otherwise nobility or political upper class of various other nations.

The two that stick on in memory are naturally the couple that graduate in Greek, with the various colourful incidents of their lives making that easy. And while he makes it easy to admire the poor Greek lad to begin with and his family that gets an easy victory with their down to earth simplicity at the wedding - when informed by the bride's mother that they should appreciate what an old family they are marrying into the bridegroom's mother looks at her and informs her she does not look that old, taking the strange snobbery out with a sharp pin prick without realising what is going on, sort of a Greek Gracy Allen - and in a neat turn of story later it is the wronged wife who turns the tables, again with no intentions of a fight.

The husband loses even while he wins, not the least due to losing the wife for a meaningless cheating but more so due to his will to win in terms of snobbery and be an ivy league person professionally while he could not be a preppy personally. He sacrifices much for the latter purpose, dignity included, though not publicly.

One wonders at the really stupid snobbery of a people who began the nation with rebellion against precisely the feudal Europe by migrating and separating and forming a nation of supposed equals, when one faces all these various snobberies - mayflower, ivy league - and one wonders if it is not merely a hypocrisy of keeping a two tire society where you have the above mentioned (anyone heard a redneck or a juvenile bully challenge one of those? NO, they bully the supposed lessers, the comparative outsiders, of course!) and then the others who are bullied with a stick of conforming to the standards of redneck bully and his (it is his before it is hers) whims socially.

One wonders if they realise they are falsifying the foundation of the nation they are bullying in the name of with every ill formed sentence they spew out at sight of someone far superior that is clearly not of their neighbourhood nor of one of their bosses'.

Man, Woman, and Child; by Erich Segal.

When an unsuspecting partner in a happy marriage discovers the other has not only had an affair, it was during the happy marriage, and what is more there is incontrovertible evidence - a child.

Worse, the child now needs to visit, perhaps live with the newly discovering family, being too young to be on its own.

Oliver's Story; by Erich Segal.

Love story was wildfire popular, with the lovable girl dying and the boy inconsolable.

But he had to go on living, and this is the sequel, of how he tried in near future after losing his love.

He tried with work, and with love, and came to terms with himself, with some measure of peace.

Love Story; by Erich Segal.

Good read, racy read, and quitessential college love story set in Harvard, with rich preppy guy falling for smart poor girl.

This book - and film - was so much a cult, that not only usual contingent of admirers of all things western, but even the most extreme of the self proclaimed leftists amongst our colleagues were all goofy over it - so much so any girl who looked remotely like the girl in the film was surrounded by men going gaga for little reason they could truthfully ascribe.

When the film and the book eventually lost its cult status, those admirers not only faded away, they soemtimes turned into severe critics, baffling the poor unsuspecting girl, who thought she had them admiring her truly for her virtues, which was only a convenient front for them to justify themselves. She would not have believed it, however, so no one told her. Most guys would have been too ashamed to even admit it to themselves much less inform her.

And the other important difference of course was that the film set a standard that was very romantic - for one half of the world, with the other half struggling to match it forever since it was impossible to really match it.

Think about it - not only a girl had to be smart and independent minded and cute enough to attract a rich and stupid guy but then had to sacrifice all her wishes and dreams, or at any rate put them on hold, while he went to graduate school and she worked to make it happen - to put food on table, pay rent, and still be sexy and independent.

Not that most women did not do attempt to make that struggle - in US, at any rate, where it was possible at all - but then came the whammy of the last needed step the girl in the story prescribed to be the idol, the icon, the forever unattainable unmatched one. She went ill with an incurable disease and died.

This is where most normal ones failed to measure up. They kept on living, very inconveniently, so the guys had to go through other steps to find the domestic wives that the independent strong first love did not transform into. Or they had children and Love Story had not prescribed how the guy should transform. Trouble. And struggle for the uncomprehending women about what exactly they had not struggled to do if they had lacked it in the first place, which they had not.

The girl in the book had no such problems - and while the cult status of the book is no longer hot, it is now set in concrete, with a stone on top.

Frankenstein; by Mary Shelley.

The story is well known by now. a few close friends, talented and well known, well respected writers and poets, had some sort of a bet or competition about who could write the best horror story, and each wrote one - Lord Byron, poet Shelley, - and the one whose story became not only famous and well known across the globe, but made a place for itself in history for all times, was the unknown, Mary Shelley.

This was that story.

Most people mistake Frankenstein to be the name of the monster created by the scientist - not so; it is the name of the scientist, in fact, that is now mistaken for the monster's name in a fitting irony.

A tale that cautions humanity about meddling with nature, with possibilities of dire consequences and horrors unforeseen.

Not that humanity would take the caution seriously - we have polluted rivers and lakes and oceans and watertables until the people of richer nations have come tho think of recycled treated reused water in their pipes as "fresh water", rather than the real thing provided by nature, real fresh water. We have dams on major rivers drying up the streams till fish and birds and the whole ecology is affected, with canals where water does not flow naturally till the land is salinated and no good for any crops.

And so on - with nuclear meddling into particles, with genetic meddling so in future it will be DNA tests that will tell you if you can marry the attractive person or you are siblings, with chemicals seeping into our water and our very skins through every day products.

Frankenstein's monster was one huge one - what we have done is a whole lot of small and large ones.

Can we now do something about return to safety? Who knows?

Two Lives; A Memoir by Vikram Seth.

I just finished the Memoir about Two Lives. It is written simply and spans almost all of last century in the story of the two it is about, and the span covered is amazing in scope; but it is far too simple for the century and the globe it flies around and over.

The subjects it touches, if one is not well aware of them one wishes to go on and read more about them. If one does know about them it leaves one feeling as if one were flying over lands one would like to see more of by descending and walking or even driving through.

It is worth reading yes, perfect it is not. But the taste it leaves might be deliberate, which is more like a very dry red wine or a strong tea with nothing added to soften the taste. It gives much to think over but is very spartan in the writer elaborating over any of it. That might have been the intention.

After all it is about two lives, not what those people lived through. Along the way one gets to see another life partly, that of the writer, intimately too. In terms of his growth as a person and as a writer, that is.
.................

Seth's aunt was a German by birth, and by all historical and testimonial records, Jewish people of Germany identified themselves as German and were ever more certain of their integration. That was one of the reasons they did not leave for greener shores where they might have been safe, even when they were increasingly threatened. Few fled while there was time and she, the aunt, was one such fortunate person - although it seems a bit heartless to say so since she lost her mother and her sister to the death camps, and forever later had good reason to be uncertain of her friends back in Germany, of the truth of their friendship, of their sincerity.

Seth mentions his aunt's reaction to Israel and her disapproval of "the terrible things happening there"; later he expresses his opnion, his disapproval of the whole principle, of formation of a state in the name of a religion and of displacing of the existing people living there in order to establish people coming from elsewhere to settle.

The aunt's feeling shows a good soul, one who did not wish on other people what was done to her own, especially if even a fraction of the perpetration was done by her own people for sake of the homeland. This is the sign of a noble soul.

Seth's thoughts must be understood in a larger context, of the history of his own nation during those years. While Jews in Germany were being massacred in name of one religion another one in India was out to carve a separate nation in the name of a separate identity in its own name, of another religion.

Soon after the end of wwII when the horrors of the German regime were discovered, even as the perpetrators were being judged, the horrors were perpetrated in India with escalating ferocity until the demand of another separate nation in the name of a separate religion was granted.

The granting of another nation, however, did not stop the horrors. One estimate is of a half a million people killed and several million displaced as the "new" nation carved out in name of religion went on a killing, raping and looting spree to expel those of other religions, and much distress that took place in those years was swept under the rug in the urgency of forming the newly independant India and of immediate needs of fighting a border war with the other part for territory they saw as free for taking while India had it signed over by the ruler.

Another mirror image of the happenings took place in Israel immediately after its formation, when as soon as British military left the neighbours all attacked, convinced they would drive Israel into the ocean and announcing it so.

While Seth presumably did not have relatives that went through the horrors of fleeing the homeland in west and arriving in the partitioned India destitute, or worse, India saw the distress of those that were its own and forever disapproved of any formation of a nation on principle of a religion, especially of driving out people of other religions.

Usually though this was left unexpressed in all other cases except of Israel, and indeed India did not recognise Israel until the advent of the new millenium due to this reason, although there was much in common and much to be gained by a diplomatic relationship of the two.

Seth, being brought up in that era, understandably had those thoughts and reactions that he penned in the book.
...................

One might think along the lines logically, though, and see if such a principle has been applied to any other nations that were formed on basis of a religion and displaced people living there for settling others from faraway lands.

Not only India and Israel live in a part of the world where few, less than one can count on fingers of one hand, nations are formed on any other basis - indeed much of the world from Indonesia and Malaysia to west Asia and much of central Asia all the way to Turkey is Islamic - but tales of what is perpetrated on people of other religions in those nations is rarely publicised or recognised, much less protested, by any agency in the world. Even the bible thumping crusades find other, "softer", regions easier to target and publicise and make propaganda in or about or against.

But that does not mean to say that this part of the world is what it is about. Indeed one may take a look at almost any part and open one's eyes about what really did or does go on there.

In much of Europe, holidays are all of one religion, and no recognition is given to the fact of any of other religions living there for more than a few decades. In much of Europe shops must close on Sunday and may not on other days, in Germany one may not dare to do any work on Sunday (at any rate what can be seen by anyone) unless one works in a restaurant or a bar where people are normally out in afternoons onwards. Not even a lawnmower or a carwash might be performed at home.

In France much trouble visits one if one happens to even transit through the country in an airport with any sign of any other religion displayed on one's person, whether in form of a piece of jewellery or a Tilaka or a turban, or head covered by a scarf that cannot be recognised as haute coutoure of the approvable - read European - origins.

UK is more open since its cosmopolitan society and its own character of ability of growth of awareness, but it has not always been a happy place for others. Still, growing towards light is a positive sign. And they do not force the shop closing rules to conform to one religion either.
...................

What about the "new world", the continents to the west?

The nations were formed there by European migrants by using the indigenous people and all their help even as they were killed, massacred, infected deliberately, and pushed back on and on, until they are either the poorest and almost bonded labour in some nations or segragated and corralled into a few territories instead of the free ranging life and rule of the continents that were theirs. They were pushed back, and migrants of other lands and culture and religion - specifically of one religion from Europe - were welcomed and encouraged to settle in the new continent.

And while there were others, to beging with of African and Chinese roots, they were brought by force as slaves or lured as cheap bonded labour that was unwanted as soon as the purpose was over.
.............


Does any of that say that such practices are legitimate? Only if one decides that whatever ruling powers do must be approved of.

What is certain is that the driving out and dispossession of homelands of Palestinians is on par with those of natives of what is called "American" continents (with Europe wiping out the original identity of the continents by imposing a name of a person of European origin on them), of natives of the parts of India that separated as other nations and had the people of other religions forced to flee as refugees, and so on.
...................


As for the settlers brought from elsewhere, what is the legend of the statue of liberty is to some extent true of the lands that give refuge to fleeing terrorised populations and allow them to make a home, whether it is Jewish of any other lands taking refuge in Israel due to persecution in the lands that were not a home ever, or populations of various parts of the world finding refuge in India either on a personal or a larger scale.

A Suitable Boy; (Perennial Classics) by Vikram Seth.

I read it when away, and it brought back the atmosphere of small town India, here taken in centre and Calcutta but the centre can be easily changed to another part.

One factor that one kept on thinking of - and finally it happened - was about the testimony of the victim not against the accused who is a friend, freeing him, when he has understood a few things.

Another point remarkable was a very mature reasoning and decision by the young woman, not for the sake of society but for her own peace, having seen something in herself she was not willing to live with.

Very readable no doubt, and more.

And Ladies of the Club; by Helen Hooven Santmyer.

A small town in Ohio, and its intimate inhabitants as they grow when the nations is still young, and some immigrants still speak their original languages from Europe other than English with their children who are second or third generation of the nation.

The girls grow up and form a club reading books together, and grow together in their minds while they have growing families and the children grow, mirroring their parents' lives in kaleidoscopic patterns.

Fascinating, in spite of its calm and rather comparatively uneventful life. Would it that we all had such lives of serene growth! One wonders how much of this is the writer's own life. It is not possible to bring into your writing what you don't have within you.

The Constant Wife; by W. Somerset Maugham.

He has been having an affair, and she has been trying to keep a good front for sake of the home, the children, the society.

A friend returns from abroad with lvoe for her still in his heart, and his eyes light up when she walks into the room. She takes him up on his offer to go away - and the husband confronts her.

How she smoothly irons those difficulties is the delight and the charm of this work, this writer. She intends to go, have the holiday, and return to her home - and cannot be threatened out of her well deserved vacation or her home either, the husband has lost the moral right and does not have the courage to be exposed to the public eye as the philanderer he has been and they have all known.

How He Lied To Her Husband; by George Bernard Shaw.

This play is one of the most delightful ones penned by the writer and it is completely unlike anything anyone (outside old British social life) might imagine.

There is the whole setting - the very beautiful and wealthy Aurora who is married to a common businessman although able to have a social life of consorting with various artists and so forth.

The poet who is in love with her, writing poems to her, willing to do anything for her, whether taking her our to theatre every evening or stay in and amuse her or be shot by her husband or elope with her, whatever destiny might have in store for the love of his very exilarated heights of romance.

And the husband, the very practical and very much bourgois man who has provided his wife with everything she could ever wish for in terms of wealth and social life, has now rumoured to have found out about the poet and the wife.

I have no intention of spoiling the delight of reading further by saying another word about what comes next, for those that have not read this yet.

Saint Joan; by George Bernard Shaw.

An inspired young woman, a young country girl without education, saved France - from foreign invasion as much as from destruction and chaos - and the then powers had her not only imprisoned and tortured, but burnt alive in public, for fear they will lose their power, their straglehold over people.

Few intellectuals have either bothered - or really have had the courage - to set matters straight, down even on paper, much less pay the homage due to the young woman who seems to have had more courage than the generations of men since then.

Shaw is amongst those very few men who did not lack the courage to write about Joan of Arc.

Saint she was, and a true heroine, whether any human authorities - with any institutional power and claims to any other source of authority - say so or otherwise.

One wonders if anyone would have the courage to compare the two (spiritually) tall figures, who were executed by the same empire, for very similar reasons - being heroic about liberating their own people, and with claims of direct connection of their souls to higher realms - one was crucified two millennia ago in west Asia, the other burnt alive a few centuries ago in France.

Divine after all is beyond time and space and geography, empires and institutions, and most certainly beyond gender.

Captain Brassbound's conversion; by George Bernard Shaw.

For a long time this was a very favourite play and that merely means when you have lived so much more and read as well, other works add to the favourite lists.

It is an amazing play, beginning with what might be - or should be - a common fear in minds of all colonial masters traveling in parts they misruled once; a bandit capturing and kidnapping a small party of travellers and promising to sell the lord of the group to a dreaded ruler for beheading after a few games.

And from this dreadful start, it then proceeds into a delightful play, with one pompous man (the ex colonial ruler sort, naturally) brought down by one of his own party - his sister-in-law, and the bandit outsmarted by her kind ans sympathetic but shrewd dealing iwth the situation, so he comes out looking like a hero who saved them, in fact.

One of the lines - "it becomes clear that an agitated man pacing furiously cannot win against a woman knitting calmly" - of course this is as I remember it after the few decades it has been since I read it yet again for pleasure. He wrote it much better, of course.

The Philanderer; by George Bernard Shaw.

Women - and too, enlightened men - were in favour of women's education, property and voting rights, enfranchisement, suffragists demanding and chaining themselves. many identified these movements with left for obvious reasons - it seemed against interest of any conservatives to lose any source of free labour, and women just as slaves or colonial possessions were source of it.

But most people also misuderstood women's liberty and freedom first and foremost in the wrongest possible direction - one that would actually benefit men. Some people saw it coming and they were not all against women's rights - and Mr. Shaw was one such man.

With women free, and access to women granted freely to any man, those that had no honourable intentions were in heaven. They could play with women's hearts and discard them - all in name of women's freedom, since the misunderstanding was, it was about no chaperone watching over to make sure their real important rights were guarded - those related to just such men not destroying hearts and lives.

This is the story of just such a woman who has a heart and would hide it behind talk of freedom, so she can try to attract one playing with her heart, her subsequent - or even, consequent - heartbreak when it is clear he never had any intention that could be then called honourable (now the word has gone out of usage, almost), and the philanderer who nevertheless sees what havoc he has wreaked, with clear eyes.

Widowers' Houses; by George Bernard Shaw.

In a way this play is a companion os Mrs. Warren's Profession, both about money earned by a parent through unsavoury means of varying questionable repute, of course this one being far more common than the other both in practice and held not so often repugnant by society - rich society that is - but morally no less, in fact in some ways more, reprehensible.

Mrs. Warren's profession is held in n good repute anywhere in the world, but it can be argued that most people in that profession are not in it from choice as much as from either being kidnapped and brought into it or from necessities of survival of a family which often when needed to be provided by a woman she might find little or almost no recourse. When one is safe, moralising about another's circumstance is all very well; it is likely to be another story when it is your own child's survival in question and you have not much of a choice.

This one is about rich people who earn their living by providing housing bordering on slum to the poor and then charging extortion level rents while providing little or no amenitites, and evicting those that default at short notice without care about if they could in fact survive.

And yet most rich could hardly stand a scrutiny about the roots of their wealth - if it is not opium or colonial (robbery) it might be soemthing akin to this, or worse - it might be selling things that actually damage those that pay for them. Not just illegal substances, either - often legal substances can be just as bad for health, even lethal, and yet they take time to become known as dangerous or worthless at best. Even today that is true of much that forms multi billion industries, in much misused names of fun or beauty.

The Doctor's Dilemma; by George Bernard Shaw.

When it comes to a choice of only one patient you can save, who do you choose - is it the rogue with an attractive wife, or a sincere poor colleague who did much good and helped the poor and has no money left?

Back to Methuselah; by George Bernard Shaw.

An attempt by one of the most intelligent thinkers, writers, people of last century to peep into future of evolution - beyond the present limits of where we are.

Life spans of longer than a century or two, youth and ability well into third century, or lives a millennium long with growing up and reproduction finished soon so the true vocation can be taken up, of thought and creation? Sensational, either way.

Major Barbara; by George Bernard Shaw.

A delightful look at various prevalent notions and hypocrisies of the times - and realities as they are. Salvation Army, church, politics as a career, ethics of business; niceties of law that might make one illegitimate in UK or at least in England but not in Australia, much less anywhere else in the world; and inheritance vs competance, when it is about running a business.

US, particularly NRI of US (as in gun lobby, not the other NRI) seem to have adopted the creed of one of the characters in this to an extent that poor Mr. Shaw could never have imagined - "seem to" being the key here. But on the other hand, who knows, he would perhaps have said that neither NRI of US nor he were wrong, and that any society that allows such happenings without curbing them with laws that made sense and protected children perhaps deserved the grief they allowed the arms manufacturers and dealers to let loose on them. And really US has much that is legal in US but illegal in Europe in many countries, or at least those that matter. Germany for example has outlawed any organisations or pictures to do with their past horror - but not US where those proliferate; so guns too, and the consequent stupidity of innocent persons and your own children massacred in their own homes and schools.

Gun lobby of US - and much else of the world - might claim they follow this very intelligent writer for ethics, but if you look at it with a scrutiny, actually, no they don't; they are doing precisely what the writer cautions against, that is, mixing politics and business - for example in deciding who they will or will not sell to (or allow to carry arms), whether on personal level in the country (men get license easlily, women don't, even though they are far more in need of self defence, whether from personal attackers or home robbers and so on), or on global level about nations and gangs (here there is no need of examples - they are far too obvious, well known), therefore making it a mess - or at least helping politics do so.

That said, this is of course an extrememly intelligent play as almost everything written by this writer is; this one deals with an arms dealer and the possible social embarrassment his family with aristocratic connections must go through - his son requires that the father help him without allowing it to be known, since he needs to have a social status - and various issues around the question, morality vs. arms manufacturer.

Man and Superman; by George Bernard Shaw.

The idea had been around for a while, in various - genuine, not cartoon - forms, one supposes. At any rate various people developed it according to their best capacities of conception and perception. And it was a natural idea, after all. When one looks at evolution, it is only natural to expect that it might not be yet finished, and there might be higher rungs. If one thinks of creation, why suppose it is over? Who are humans to dictate that Divine can appear only once or is finished with Creation?

George Bernard Shaw goes here into a hilarious look at things as they are and then into what might, what magnanimity they can achieve at the next stage; at life force that dictates people marry and reproduce, albeit calling it romance and love; at limitations of best and sharpest intellect when faced with life force; and in an inspired act, at concepts of heaven and hell as they really should be seen, rather than the silly prevailing ones.

Truly delightful, one of the most hilariously delightful works of Shaw, and that is saying a lot. It leads you to think deep within while you are too busy laughing to notice it.

Caesar and Cleopatra; by George Bernard Shaw.

Here is a fresh look at Cleopatra as the young girl she must have been, compared to the much older Ceasar - and while it is delightful in seeing a petulant young pretty girl getting her education rather expensively, through life and war, it is also a scathing commentary on various issues around war and morality and dealing with enemy, with Ceasar above his fellow men - and women - providing them insight about why it was wrong what they did wrong.

Most delightful remains the prologue, a monologue by the Egyptian god Ra, addressing the audience disdainfully.

A sample - "O you compulsorily educated people!"

Candida; by George Bernard Shaw.

Revolutionary, as much else by Mr. Shaw, this work, about a luminous woman with her own mind and strength and wisdom - perhaps much like your wife or mother, at that - and entirely worthy of more than reading. About love and truth about love, and about marriage. About strength, and about one's responsibility.

Once it was understood without hypocrisy that a man looked for a wife who could make a home for him, and a woman had to make the best possible choice at every moment, either gambling on getting a better offer, or taking the best she had, in marrying a man who could provide for the home she would make. Few were lucky to find lvoe as well, at the same time - most did the best they could, and things have not changed in this respect, only there is more hypocrisy in name of love.

Love is not so easy to either find or chooose or live with.

Love might very well be a man too young to provide a family for the woman whom he fell in love with - she might be married, with a family, if she is lucky, not still waiting and dispirited. Will she then choose him? Or will consevative values win and she advise the younger man, the lover, to go find soemone appropriate?

If she does, it might just be that she has wisdom and courage to name the real reasons for her decision, and explain them. A woman - a wife and mother, in potential and instinct even when not de facto - chooses the weaker one, to care for and to protect with all she has to give, which is love and care and understanding and more.

A scrawny young poet, and a respected much loved minister, who does the woman choose? Or does she have to choose between them?

The Apple Cart; by George Bernard Shaw.

When in heat of parliamentary debate a member is insulted for his race, he can point out much that is true - who is a native, and who is cultured, for instance.

A rational colleague may calmly point out that you are not white, but oatmeal at best. "Chinese call us Pinks; they flatter us". (In fact, the word in Chinese is not Pinks when they speak to other Chinese, it is "barbarian" or "foreign devil", when refering to race of European descent.)

A king might be tolerating a beautiful attractive mistress and far more at ease with the wife he is comfortable with.

When a popular monarch is persuaded to abolish monarchy it is just possible the monarch might stand for office and have all on office thouroughly routed.

Just a few of the gems from the play. Delightful as most work from the writer, and one of the most delightful at that.

The Complete Plays Of BERNARD SHAW. by George Bernard Shaw.

I went through this - not this volume, but most likely a Times two volume edition - I found serendipitously while on a one year stint with work that was stressful but not time consuming or for that matter in need of that much of attention from mind. It was a great solace to have something so wonderful to take my mind off the otherwise stressful year.

It is difficult to count how many of these are personal favourites, how many with ideas or arguments that open up a mind's vision, how many truly delightful, how many hilarious, how many sharp on the mark in nailing conventions or hypocrisies. One would need a list of the plays, and over three decades after reading most of them a little nudge to remember which title is which story amonst the twenty or so I remember less well.

Come to think of it, it is time to buy yet another copy - I lost the ones I bought and either gave away to those I loved, or in the process of moving yet another time.

Mrs. Warren's Profession; by George Bernard Shaw.

Age old dilemma of society - "respectable"vs. the other side, and the need of one for the other. It must have of course been extremely controversial when it was written - and published - but this writer was always more than equal to any criticism and could always argue either side of a debate with reason.

This one is not a comedy, though, and one is presented with Mrs. Warren's side quite reasonably.

Arms And The Man; by George, George Bernard Shaw.

What seems obvious might after all not be so, and those that are seemingly snobbish and haughty might be not as affluent after all as those that seem casual or even comic. those that speak of love and are rewarded for their bravery might have never experienced either.

And then there is Switzerland, the beautiful land with snow and meadows and chocolate and cheese, and contradictions - a country that never fought a war in recent history but has always hired out mercenaries to every nation.

Pygmalion; by George Bernard Shaw.

This is the original play that the very famous and popular "My fair Lady" is based on, except that was more of a sweet version, and this retains the original English, perhaps British or even Irish, taste - not sweet, not sour, not bitter or hot, but a little salt and some of that sixth taste that we call is like a very dry red wine or alum.

Here at the end there is a very well written epilogue that explains why the professor does not propose to any woman or have any romantic affair with any woman (and certainly with no man either) - not as a sickness on his part, but as a matter of evolution, and he is very evolved indeed.

Unlike US of today the social norms of Britain then were quite different and sex was not a compulsory activity to prove one was normal, and for that matter normal was never defined as average, either.

So eccentricity was not only allowed it positively thrived and flourished, and benefitted the society enormously. Men like the professor could devote their time and energy to their prefered pusuits. He does end up baffled and quite unable to escape Elizabeth Dolittle though.

Algebra of Infinite Justice; by Arundhati Roy.

I read it first when it was published as a long article in a periodical in India, and thought it brought up and presented to general public many points that might have been known to scientists and authorities but certainly not to those people that were not dealing with any of the factors directly affected by the dams.

The article explained much, including far flung issues - for example the insurgency in Punjab that had taken most population of India by surprise. It obviously had a great deal to do with poverty and unemployment in rural areas and yet Pujab had been the most prosperous state, the most fertile, the famed land of happy well fed and very patriotic people, for as long as we can remember.

This work of Roy explained the root of the inexplicable opposite - when one put it together with the other part of the picture, the disfrachisement of tenant farmers and other poor landless farm workers by the much heralded machinary such as tractors that was ubiquitous in Punjab since a few decades, driving much of the population into a silent but desperate poverty.

Naturally the unemployed, especially those that were young and therefore were far more vulnerable to propaganda and other - well funded, including ablity to provide arms - attempts from those that would be happy to see India permanently in turmoil, or worse.

Much of Punjab has suffered in all this since then, much blood shed and it was all unnecessary, starting from innocent dreams of prosperity for all by using dams to generate power and provide irrigation by canals to all.

But it is neither so simple nor without price to disturb Earth and ecosystesm, and the ill effects have been seen not only in India but in US as well, in many ways. This work goes into it all and is well written for a layperson, writer as well as readership - not that any professionals will not benefit by reading it, too.

It is high time humans stopped in tracks of arrogance of controlling nature and doing anything to any part of nature they can think of - but such awareness is not prevalent and there is far more of a resistance from those that would benefit more directly, whether it is about red meat industry or about dams or industrial pollution affecting rivers and air.

And dams are still being constructed, without regard to the fragility of Earth and its ecosystems, or even effect on human lives.

Wide Sargasso Sea; by Jean Rhys.

I read this, fascinated by the unfamiliar historical details of a land that was familiar - the days of slavery in south, that is, geographically southeast, of US - and then there was the journey over the ocean with descriptions of the phenomena the title is taken from.

It was not until I finished the book and found the end strange and puzzled over it that there were goosebumps - realising where the story connected.

Scarlett; by Alexandria Ripley.

Everyone would have had a different way of imagining how to extend the popular story, and so the heirs appointed someone of choice, and while the first few pages disappoint in style and substance - Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett was fire and spirit, she might lose but did not take humiliations like a woman is expected to, meekly - the later parts do very well in both ways.

The original told about the civil war and reconstruction in Georgia, both rural and Atlanta, where this sequel takes off and goes into neighbouring states where Scarlett has relatives, and her experience of the reconstruction years there and her spirited dealings with people. Then it shifts to her ancestral Ireland and to Tara, which her childhood home was named after, and deals with history happening there, with Scarlett playing multiple roles.

If you wish to know about her love life, read this for yourself.

Doctors; by Erich Segal.

About medical professionals, in their many specialisations and roles, including mishaps and - or - less than expected professional standards, with long lasting effects on human lives they affected.

Especially horrifying is the part where a doctor couple canot guarantee a safe birth of their own first child, due to various mistakes on part of the professional colleagues they trusted.

Citadel; by A. J. Cronin.

When I read it it perhaps was a cult and I was unaware of that - a friend I valued and discussed ideas with talked of it and I read it, and that was that. Over the years it has become clear how it was worthy in more ways than one. Apart from the intimate portrayal of the country and city that is much familiar and yet not, apart from the portrayal of conflicts of love and marriage with professional life and stress and the usual male folly of forgetting that while one earns life is passing and the loved ones may not be able to wait forever, apart from the all other good reasons to read this great book - there is also the much recognised but these days forgotten conflict of values.

Those days people often stressed over the conflict between ideals and money, and this one does not even stick to the question of ideal but even gives the practical need of the side that is treating patients who might not pay the most - namely, the oath taken and believed in by most doctors when young and starting out, at least in those days.

First Promise; by Ashapurna Debi.

This is the first part of a trilogy, about three generations of women at various stages of liberty of personhood.

This one is about the first generation well taught with education and values given by her father. She is married and has children of her own and they include a daughter, a piece of her own heart - she wishes to educate her as she was, give her all she can.

But this was well over a century ago and the families had different ideas often, and laws were archaic. And to make matters worse, child marriages were not only prevalent they had been the rule since Islamic rule over most of the nation made it extremely risky to have a grown up daughter, or transport a young bride to the bridegroom's home. It had been safer for a few centuries to marry off young girls, before they were anywhere near puberty. The new rule by British had not changed that.

Satyavatie's daughter, Suvarnalataa, was five, and Satyavatie had already made it clear she would not tolerate any talk of the child being married off until she was grown up and well educated, as she herself had been.

But the mother-in-law tricked her - when the child was on a holiday visiting the grandparents she was married off before the mother could arrive and prevent it. The child was small and it was not abnormal socially, so the trauma for her began only when she was then dispatched off with the new relatives to her own in-laws home, and separated from her own mother - who arrived too late to stop the wedding but early enough to see her daughter married - by force, and had to live with them and take the lifelong taunts from them about her mother and her strange behaviour.

The daughter, Suvarnalata, is the next volume in the series, in many ways the one who battled more and with courage and strength she had inherited from her own mother - even though she had so little a time with her and no education to speak of. She carried the mother's dream forth, with resolve, fighting not only her own mother-in-law and the rest of society, but even her own sons, who were on the side of social norms about marrying off the youngest - the third woman in the series.

It is really hard to put a value on the series, practically a chronicle of generations of women, though the pattern was not same for every family where India is concerned - it never is, in India.

Fortunately. Because that is what makes progress and evolution not only possible but easier, with no central authority conducting inquisition.

Beyond This Place; by A. J. Cronin,

A young man who discovered that his mother is in fact not a widow, she pretended to be one so her son could grow with no trauma. and that his father is serving for life for murder - and he knows in his heart that it could not be true, and sets out to find what is an old case but not quite forgotten in the small town where it happened, where his father is imprisoned nearby.

His father did always protest his innocence, and had no way of proving his innocence, but was a less powerful person than those that could and did not help. The son however has determination and a fresh youth on his side.

This is only an introduction - no way to sum up the writing of Cronin.

The Judas Tree; by A. J. Cronin.

A man who was well to do and on his way to become a doctor, and fell in love with a country girl, but could not sustain his promise to return to marry her, and is haunted by the memory of his having cheated on her.

He returns to look for her, and is startled to see her - young, fresh, the same beautiful innocent person he remembered. It is in fact her - but not his - daughter.

Filled with remorse about the way he treated the mother badly he resolves to make it up to the daughter, and decides he will give her everything he can, everything he should have given the mother - only to find himself repeating the same treacherous action, weak character that he is; he has deceived and used the daughter the same way he did the mother.

The Judas tree is a symbol, which stands outside his bedroom with his second - also wealthy - wife. And an indication of doom. To his character, his spirit, if not his life - which is spent anyway, even if he were to punish himself.

He missed his chance of retribution more than once, due to weak character, chronic cowardice, making compromises where one should not, and an ability and a habit of cheating the best in himself, and telling himself it will be all right.

Midnight's Children; A Novel by Salman Rushdie.

It is not easy to describe this book, and the thought of attempting is a bit daunting.

The story of some people, born at exactly the moment of independence of India, and the lives of three of them intertwined with one another, described in a way that is somewhere between real and fantastic and yet never either unreal - or boring.

One cannot bring the magic of the writer in the review, for that one has to read the book.

Death on the Nile; by Agatha Christie.

One of the most famous from this writer, not the least due to the spectacular film - the story does lend itself to a spectacular film, rather.

A beautiful young woman who is a rich heiress, with a brand new handsome bridegroom, setting out on her honeymoon - only, he had unceremoniously ditched his previous lover when he saw the beauty he married, and it so happened the two young women had been best friends, in fact that is how the couple had met.

Now, the spurned lover is haunting them on the honeymoon, she is there everywhere they can and do go, no matter how carefully they camouflage their plans. Finally they are on a cruise on the Nile together, and she joins the cruise just as they are congratualting each other. Now there is no escape.

And then begin the deaths...