Thursday, November 17, 2011
Cousin Phillis; by Elizabeth Gaskell.
A more beautiful, lyrical, calm and yet realistic description of a young woman and the travails she goes through - due to a thoughtless male who flits about - is hard to come across. The writing is more natural than Austen and so is the construction, with no forced happy ends or tragedies either.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
The Mistress of Spices: by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.
The initial uncertainty between confusion, bafflement, protest or irritation at this tale that lives somewhere on border of knowledge, fantasy and satire (- satire against the western ethos holding not only all the unknown as exotic but as witchcraft to be feared and punished, especially when it comes to women's - or any woman's - knowledge of even the areas she needs to be expert in, such as her kitchen and condiments, spices and foods, their properties of nutrition and medicinal values, their overall effect on a person) in a magical land superimposed on a real city with a very real huge earthquake, a country with its history of migration, its real problem of hostility and animosity against each new wave of immigration, its horrendous silent atrocities against migrants.
Spices as any other foods - fruits, vegetables, grains, whatever - have very real values in terms of nutrition and effects on body that span from appetising to medicinal. Turmeric does have antiseptic properties, it does stem blood flow and helps it to clot (so it is kept pure without touch of another spice in homes of those that know) and can be used for preliminary help with small wounds or scratches; fennel does cool and sweeten breath; cinnamon does help warm up a body; cloves do help with toothache and with cough and cold; and so forth. All this and much much more, all such other knowledge about food and spices, has been known for millennia in ancient medicine of India, Ayurveda, the knowledge of life literally, and is known to not only doctors but women through teachings of generations propagated at home. It is an integral part of Ayurveda, of a woman's education at home, of a homemaker's and a mother's necessary part of her qualification as a householder.
Chitra Banerjee's tale lives with all this and yet in a magical land where the spices have personalities with other, far more unknown qualities. Are they real, are they known to her grandmother, only she can say. One can only say with any certainty that as far as one knows they are unheard of.
But the magical quality of the tale takes over, and one stops bothering about how real it is. In this she is very successful, except at the very end when the couple resolve about what next. That seems forced, somehow.
There is only one respect in which the very well made film was different - obviously. Aishwarya Rai fits the role of the unimaginable beauty that Tilottama (Tilottamaa is literally "every particle excellent", an apt description of the most beautiful woman in court of Gods in heaven) becomes for a night, but certainly not the seemingly old woman with wrinkles or the other one at the end. Even with her normal dressing of an Indian woman through the film there is no hiding her beauty, it depends not on clothes or cosmetics. For reasons unknown, Raven is changed too to a biker rather than a long low car owner. To add the element that making him blue eyed (rather than what he is in the story) took away from his persona, perhaps.
The tales of migants being beaten up severely (and the court saying it was self defence on part of those that initiated the beatings rather than a feeble attempt at self defence on part of the migrants assaulted and maimed severely) are not unknown in the country where they came from, or amongst the migrants in US, or other such lands.
In US those stories however true are held as not newsworthy, just as they are in Germany, since a bunch of "white" young males injuring or killing people of other races of whatever age is considered fit to be ignored in both lands. But the known - evermore since a decade ago - stories of such racist assaults has done all it can to wipe out the self created image of US as the nation of fair law.
Why do migrants still go to US? It is for the same reason the ancestors of the so called "white" ones did not so long ago, for a living, for a life. Now, the migrants often return, finding it better at home in much poorer nations. It is a matter of being poor in civilised lands versus being a bit better off in a jungle with wild beasts lurking around.
Spices as any other foods - fruits, vegetables, grains, whatever - have very real values in terms of nutrition and effects on body that span from appetising to medicinal. Turmeric does have antiseptic properties, it does stem blood flow and helps it to clot (so it is kept pure without touch of another spice in homes of those that know) and can be used for preliminary help with small wounds or scratches; fennel does cool and sweeten breath; cinnamon does help warm up a body; cloves do help with toothache and with cough and cold; and so forth. All this and much much more, all such other knowledge about food and spices, has been known for millennia in ancient medicine of India, Ayurveda, the knowledge of life literally, and is known to not only doctors but women through teachings of generations propagated at home. It is an integral part of Ayurveda, of a woman's education at home, of a homemaker's and a mother's necessary part of her qualification as a householder.
Chitra Banerjee's tale lives with all this and yet in a magical land where the spices have personalities with other, far more unknown qualities. Are they real, are they known to her grandmother, only she can say. One can only say with any certainty that as far as one knows they are unheard of.
But the magical quality of the tale takes over, and one stops bothering about how real it is. In this she is very successful, except at the very end when the couple resolve about what next. That seems forced, somehow.
There is only one respect in which the very well made film was different - obviously. Aishwarya Rai fits the role of the unimaginable beauty that Tilottama (Tilottamaa is literally "every particle excellent", an apt description of the most beautiful woman in court of Gods in heaven) becomes for a night, but certainly not the seemingly old woman with wrinkles or the other one at the end. Even with her normal dressing of an Indian woman through the film there is no hiding her beauty, it depends not on clothes or cosmetics. For reasons unknown, Raven is changed too to a biker rather than a long low car owner. To add the element that making him blue eyed (rather than what he is in the story) took away from his persona, perhaps.
The tales of migants being beaten up severely (and the court saying it was self defence on part of those that initiated the beatings rather than a feeble attempt at self defence on part of the migrants assaulted and maimed severely) are not unknown in the country where they came from, or amongst the migrants in US, or other such lands.
In US those stories however true are held as not newsworthy, just as they are in Germany, since a bunch of "white" young males injuring or killing people of other races of whatever age is considered fit to be ignored in both lands. But the known - evermore since a decade ago - stories of such racist assaults has done all it can to wipe out the self created image of US as the nation of fair law.
Why do migrants still go to US? It is for the same reason the ancestors of the so called "white" ones did not so long ago, for a living, for a life. Now, the migrants often return, finding it better at home in much poorer nations. It is a matter of being poor in civilised lands versus being a bit better off in a jungle with wild beasts lurking around.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Interpreter of Maladies: by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Unlike the other works of her I read before this, this collection of short stories is smooth like a properly aged mild liqueur, and comforting, without the raw edges in her other works that I read before that gave a pain sometimes, often dull, sometimes sharp - which did not detract from the literary qualities of those works, but rather enhanced the experience for a reader familiar with her world.
Lahiri either always was or is developing into a rather fine author and deserves a place in classics. That she describes or writes about the world of Baangaalie immigrants in US is not a limitation but rather her down to earth wisdom of writing about what she knows best of. And she does it very well, in this collection of short stories too, as usual.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011.
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Lahiri either always was or is developing into a rather fine author and deserves a place in classics. That she describes or writes about the world of Baangaalie immigrants in US is not a limitation but rather her down to earth wisdom of writing about what she knows best of. And she does it very well, in this collection of short stories too, as usual.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011.
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