Works of John Galsworthy; by John Galsworthy.

A Bit O' Love
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A Knight (A Knight For My Mother):-

One is reminded of the prelude to the film Gone With The Wind as one reads this - not due to any possible similarity, which there is none, but the spirit of the central character (not the protagonist) of this story that is celebrated in that prelude, about gentlemen and code of conduct.

A man may be a soldier all his life, and unable to find employment, with starvation to death a real possibility that is avoided only by an ex comrade of a way of yore - and here is a real connection with Gone With The Wind, that particular war in the life of this gentleman from South Carolina happens to be the Civil War in US - and a chance encounter with such a comrade who happens to be English meeting and saving his life in London, and giving him a partnership in a business suited to both, a shop selling equipment related to - and a training school attached to the shop, training people in - fighting.

It is love that brings him down, and what is more love for the daughter of his partner, not due to opposition of the father or unwillingness of the young girl, but far more complex. And this is where Galsworthy excels, in bringing our ways of youth, love, passion and complications thereof. The young wife strays to a young stranger who is a student of the school, elopes with him, and the gentleman can only let her be. She comes to grief, the young man having left her and the childbirth taking her life.

And the gentleman, having lost his business due to his partner being cheated, and almost all his money too, is now living in penury because he is supporting the young daughter his wife died after giving birth to, struggling to send her half his income every year and living the life of a gentleman the best way possible to him without money. It is the taste and the code that are paramount.

And it is the code that he follows to the end of his life.


Saturday, November 23, 2013
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A Man of Devon (My Father Man of Devon):-


Love is a much used and little understood reality, with various people experiencing perhaps different things and in attempting to identify the beautiful yet terrifying mystery seek to give it a known name.

Not so Pasience, whose name is really Patience but pronounced and spelt in an original way from times before English language got uniform spellings due to print - (although, for that matter, accents and diction and entire dialects differ still across the small nation, and even more so through the rest of the English speaking world, evidence of George Bernard Shaw's witty truth casually given in his Pygmalion as description of US and Britain being two nations separated by a common language - and who encountering a York accent for the first time has not been baffled?) - Pasience who is young, restless, talented at playing violin that she makes sing her heart's music, spirited, and without a woman's guidance or a father's stronger protection or even company of her own age, so that she is eager to experience life beyond what is known to her in her grandfather's company. When she meets men, she has no mysterious veil over her heart, only a yearning for she knows not what, world, life, and she chooses that man amongst all that she sees - she has more than one choice, and young males with varying prospects that are confronted with her are all alike under her spell so she really has her choice of those around - she chooses not the one that is likely to give her all she wishes but one that promises the adventure, lacking the wisdom and guidance to see the difference.

A marriage so made in haste can end in any number of good or bad ways, or mediocre as most unfortunate marriages do anyway. Here the tragedy is partly due to times and rest spurred on by the youth of the girl who has only an old grandfather to look after her and to guide and contain her vital spirit.

As usual Galsworthy treats readers to beauty of the surrounding country, this time the land and coast and sea at Devon. It must be a hard heart that reads this and won't wish to see it for oneself and experience the beauty so hauntingly portrayed here.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013.
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A Portrait:-


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Another Sheaf
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Beyond:-

Reading Galsworthy brings a kaleidoscope effect after a while with themes and characters familiar yet not quite the same, and of course the every living beauty of countryside.

In Beyond he centres it on the father and daughter duo, the daughter born of love and claimed jealously by the father post death of the mother and the husband of the mother, with great care to avoid any blame for the mother but only until he could claim the daughter. The theme explored is love and marriage, togetherness and solitude, in marriage and in a live in situation.

A virile male might corner a young woman as a great serpent would a rabbit, and gain her hand in marriage or her body for his pleasure, but love is another story. If she is not in love with him, all the social propriety and financial security and all her compliance with his needs will yet not make him happy; nor will another younger woman with all her beauty and her being desperately in love with him if he is not in love with her.

Gyp's father is able to live on his memories of the only love he ever had, Gyp's mother, whom he saw but rarely during the one short year they had together; his life is devoted to his daughter and he is happy in his memory of his love, his integrity and faith with his love and his creed, his utter love for his daughter.

Gyp has inherited the integrity and the nobility of character, and the immense capacity for intense love, but love has its own life and cannot be summoned like water on tap. She is cornered and unable to escape the attentions of the handsome artist Fiorsen, but with all her will to go forth is still unable to love him, and is only able to comply with his needs and take care of him and home. This is not good enough for the artist who knows what love is and knows too that the wife does not quite love him, he does not have her heart. His dalliance with a beautiful young dancer brings danger and shame to the women and no solution for him, either, until it is too late for him to have another option - and even then it is a falling backward into something available rather than appreciation of what he has or had.

Gyp finds love unexpectedly after she has left her husband for sake fo protecting their daughter - the husband couldn't care less for anyone other than Gyp, and not only antagonises her relatives and what few friends she might have, but is callous enough that he terrorises their daughter and hurts her physically while she is still a baby - and Gyp lives in an era when separation was social stigma enough, divorce difficult and often impossible if the partner did not comply. She realises her love is all to her, is fortunate enough to be given her daughter back after being kidnapped by the husband to blackmail her into returning, but the interlude of her bliss with love is short lived albeit as deep and complete as her father's.

It is not that the man who loves her is short of courage to love, or any the less in love, or likely to tire of her, or any of the possible dire disturbances to love and bliss whether marriage is possible or not. It is that even with the best of all circumstances - her father supports her socially, she cares not a fig for other society, she is financially independent, they live in seclusion in country and he works three days a week in town - still, there are other possibilities of a wedge, and he is young enough to not avoid it soon enough.

As the author clarifies, the distant cousin is familiar enough that her society is not avoided before it is too late and not close enough to be a sisterly repugnant association, and while Summerhay sees the justice of Gyp's need of him avoiding the cousin and other such temptations, he does not see how he can or why he should, since his love and faithfulness are entirely with Gyp, the love of his life.

This tragedy could in life draw on and exhaust the people concerned; the author's narrative turns to another twist reminiscent of Summer part of The Dark Flower, and Gyp remains the fortunate tragic heroine albeit not quite as artificially forced so as Anna Karenina - she has read it and cannot understand why Anna is unhappy due to social stigma and forced reclusion status, she is all too happy to be not required to be social and to comply with necessities of formality, happy to be with her love and with nature, books, music, and her daughter. She thinks unhappiness of Anna Karenina is forced as moral lesson to comply with social need, and in this she is not incorrect. But life and love and one's nature is another story, and such happiness or love as one may find might be disturbed by a thousand factors in as may ways, albeit it has little to do with being married or single or living together in perfect situation where only the two people matter.

One keeps being reminded of various other works of the author, and the similarity of characters or their situations - Soames and Fleur of Forsyte Saga and its sequel, Charwell sisters of Forsyte Chronicles, Summer part of The Dark Flower, and bit of The Country House as well, with a ghost of Irene in background (art, music, taste, integrity of a sort, passive softness, ...) - and yet here too the characters and their story do manage to make a mark individually.

Monday, November 11, 2013.
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Essays Concerning Letters
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Essays on Censorship and Art
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Five Tales
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Fraternity
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Inn of Tranquility and Other Essays
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Quality and Other Studies and Essays
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Saint's Progress:-

Galsworthy touches real ground of the time and place in this work more than his usual - which is beautiful dreamy landscapes and problems of heart, of individual travails of love, and of individual rights, especially those of women, and conflicts thereof with social norms and rules. All of which appears here too, in a central way and surrounding every character, every other problem. But the main theme is something we all are familiar with - the devastating and at the same time liberating effect of the first world war on lives, especially in Europe.

The first and foremost effect was the growing awareness amongst the young who paid the greatest price for the war with their lives and love and marriages and more, of future and children and limbs and lives disrupted, that one really could not trust norms of expectations any more, one could not trust time and social rules and life, and life was to be snatched here and now whatever way possible. Young people refused long engagements and if they did not, often they paid the price with the boy dead and the girl left alone for life. Lucky were the brides that conceived before their men went to the war. Not so lucky were everyone else.

So young couples denied a quick marriage could part with death looming, or snatch a few moments of love before that, and the latter resulted in what the then society stupidly called war babies. Babies and innocent no matter what and in this situation so were the parents, and the real guilt of stupidity lay with those elders that refuse to let them marry before the boy went to the war. Young were correct in this and the elders wrong in every way.

This work is about the devastating effect of just such a situation on a family and other people related one way or another to it - the young girl in love and the young boy about to leave for the war in a couple of weeks, the priest father of the girl who considers a quick marriage unwise and refuses to consider it and expects them to come to their senses and wait, the death of the boy very soon in the trenches and the pregnancy of the girl (who is wisely pointed out by a cousin that this means she has not lost her love after all, and has him with her as the child), the effects of this on the girl and much more so on her father the priest who is the titular saint that progresses from refusal to see facts and horror of the situation to fierce protective attitude for his daughter and her baby son, to more.

Nature's beauty here is not missing, but rather more of London in wartime than of English countryside, the usual favourite of Galsworthy. And he shows his mastery in this too, with poignancy of the story reflected in the moonlit Thames and the dark parks and the flowering trees of London.

Monday, December 16, 2013.
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Salvation of a Forsyte
(To My Brother Hubert Galsworthy, Salvation of a Forsyte):-


Forsytes have been connected to the Villa Rubein story with the business partnership of a Forsyte (James, the father of Soames?) with Nicholas Treffery, in a way the hero of Villa Rubein what with his nightlong ride to rescue the love of life of his niece from her stepfather's threat of setting police on him.

Now, the connection is via a passion of Swithin, twin of James Forsyte, for a young Hungarian girl when he himself is not quite young, and having never been social or charming or attractive, is no great catch either. But the girl is young, and generous and sincere as youth will be when encountering someone who is attracted to one, and this is her great fault and reason for downfall. If only she were grown up or knew in some other way that the way to secure respect for herself is to be less generous, less caring of someone else's pain or any feelings, she might have had a different and perhaps safer life. Then again, it might have led to Swithin marrying her and perhaps she escaped the deadly boredom of a Forsyte clan life by being herself, young and sincere and natural as a flower.

Swithin cannot help his own passion, and goes after her when her father has taken the family off for a return to his country from Salzburg where they met, but then has a typical Forsyte moment - of an indignation that perhaps her family intends that he marry her, which he finds is quite unnecessary and out of the question, especially since she is not only without a dowry (it goes without mention here but is a silent factor in all dealings of Forsyte with the family) but has also "yielded to him".

Needless to say he, like most males before and since, does not see that the "yielding" on her part implies he was a thief and an attacker that she fell prey to, rather than looking at it as her gift of love to his passion; he assumes - like most males before and since - that it is his birthright to so take advantage of a woman or girl however young and innocent, and that he therefore is free of any need or obligation to marry her.

That he thereby forfeits any possibility of a future of a life for himself does not occur to him either then or until perhaps the very moment of his death, perhaps not then, but so it is. He lives - and dies - alone, attended only by his valet, never mind the huge clan and daily visits by his twin brother, and recalls on his deathbed the love he escaped by literally running away from it. He closed all possibilities of opening his heart to love ever after when he did that, and became a fossil of a Forsyte prototype instead of allowing love in his life and blossoming.

Thus do one's own choices make for rewards or otherwise of one's own.

Monday, November 25, 2013.
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Six Short Plays
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Tatterdemalion
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The Burning Spear
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The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy
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The Complete Plays of John Galsworthy
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The Country House:-

One reads The Forsyte Saga trilogy, and wants more, and goes on to search out the rest of the tale about the characters one is so involved in by now, Irene and Jon most of all. Irene remains elusive and if anything more so than through the first trilogy, but one gets more of people related to Forsytes, and of beauty of England and some insights of social life and political state of the country and the world of that era. One finishes Forsyte Chronicles, three trilogies, nine books each of which is further three parts, and two in each trilogy connecting the parts. And one wants more. So one goes on to other writings of Galsworthy.

And one is not disappointed. Only, rather than go forth, one gets a view, an insight into how Forsyte Saga and Chronicles came to be the finished, polished, elusive portraits of the time and life veiled with a very English poetic mist wafting over the whole tale.

The Country House is set as the title would tell one in a country house, primarily, and the village life in general of that time, the mindsets still entrenched in the traditions and caste system of that time and place, but the people evolving at their own speeds of comfort.

A woman unwilling to live with her husband is at the centre of this work, with the peripheral people vivid as usual with the author. How her decision to separate affects people, how her involvement impacts on them, how they deal with the questions of divorce and involvement and questions of whether a woman may leave her husband and still be respectable, is the work.

There is the rector who is unable to deal with his wife's tenth confinement and the question of whether she will survive it, and with her contempt and pity for him hidden well until her moment of agony when she still smiles at him and tells him to go for his usual walk - and he never connects it in his conscious mind to his condemnation of the woman divorcing her husband for moral reasons. The opposite are the squire and his wife and son, each of whom deals with the same woman in a different way, but more humane and more civil. And the heartening part is, the husband she separated from is not automatically held up as free of guilt and full of innocence - rather, everyone including the rector is quite honest about how he is no better than the wife but merely has more rights to possess the woman since he is the man.

This admission of the skewed basis therefore makes them able to look at the whole question in a more honest way, and to go as far as he or she might with comfort with one's inner core, into the question of a woman's being a person in her own right rather than a mere possession and chattel bound and branded by her husband's right to her.

Not that these questions are now universally solved to satisfaction of justice much less satisfaction of everyone, especially those not willing to grant a personhood of a woman, but that era was the beginning of such questioning and thought in Europe. Tolstoy solved it by having Anna Karenina miserable with her choice of going away with her lover, unable to love her daughter by her lover, pining for the son she has by the husband she is unable to live with, and unable to feel secure in her love, committing suicide at the end symbolic of her choice of love over respectability of unhappy marriage stifling her heart - the choice that was a social suicide for her.

Galsworthy is kinder and more honest in that he does not attempt to satisfy all regressive or closed minds, much less authorities of the kind that attempt to rule personal lives by impersonal laws same for all, but rather shows a whole spectrum of people that deal with these questions in different ways, thus freeing the reader to think and feel and explore one's own heart and mind and thought, while looking at the portrayal by the author.

Thursday, October 17, 2013
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Monday, October 21, 2013.
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The Dark Flower:-

The dark flower as a concept used in the title and elsewhere in the work by the author is symbolic of passion, not represented by any particular flower but by the dark colour representative of the dark area where a person's reason and other sights of consciousness fail to guide one, and a dark force pulling and pushing one takes over.

Galworthy here takes stages of an artist's life, symbolised by three seasons (he refrains from exploring winter as a season for passion, leaving one to imagine that one is finally settled into one's marriage and not available any more for passion outside it), and the passion is of the variety not likely to come to a happy solution all around, hence dark all the more.

Over and over there is characterisation of English life as that bound by "good form" when freed from other bindings such as those of religion, and thus not allowing the freedom one speaks of or assumes for a person and especially an artist or thinker when it comes to passion.

The tale begins with an involvement of spirit between young Mark Lennan and his teacher's wife Mrs. Stormer whose husband, a don at Oxford, is far too dry and intellectual to answer his wife's needs of love and adoration but is rather more likely to deal with it by humour and standing aside in spite of awareness of it. Sylvia, the young fair girl Mark has protected and known since his childhood, solves the dilemma for the older woman (who is really young by the standards of today but was a century ago looking at her last chance for romance, passion, beauty in life at mid thirties), by simply coming to her attention as a younger person on the horizon who might not be an equal opponent but is simply younger.

Mark is not involved with Sylvia romantically yet, and goes on to become an artist, and happens to subsequently meet and become involved deeply with a young married woman desperately unhappy in her marriage in spite of wealth and respectability, with most of the involvement consisting of an innocent - by today's standards - togetherness and a passionate awareness of one another that is clear to everyone around. With a husband who is just as passionately in love with the wife as Mark being in the picture, and violently jealous one at that, it is bound to end in a separation, and one expects a chase when the young woman in question make sup her mind to go away with Mark. But the end of this part comes rather suddenly and shocks one, being so at odds with what generally one is led to expect of an English spirit. Then again, of course, the husband is characterised long before that by the wife's uncle musing about his being an adopted heir to his father and hence an unknown factor, unlike Mark whose very deep propriety in his following the form is observed and satisfactorily so by the uncle.

The autumn chapter brings a stormy turmoil of an involvement with an illegitimate daughter of a schoolmate to Mark's life and threatens to destroy the peace of his now wife Sylvia's life and mind, and while he is tossed about in this storm seemingly far more, the concern and responsibility for Sylvia who is more than only a wife but rather the innocent person he is used to protecting since she was small, brings him to port to safety. The end is abrupt, since one is rather led to expect a chapter on winter, but perhaps the author could not imagine passion in winter and made subtle allusions to Sylvia asleep by fire to indicate that would be the winter of life of Mark Lennan.

A slight lessening of quality of Galsworthy comes about by the usual excuse to the passion inappropriate to age being led by the woman in question, and while it might be likely in the first it is a very transparent excuse in the last, a bit reminiscent of the far more unpleasant Nabokov. It is always possible of course, only, with the striking beauty of the young girl in question, one wonders if it is due to her being an illegitimate and therefore hidden daughter of a not very high caste English man that she is thrown on the society of a man in his mid forties and being the one to take a lead in the affair, declaring her passion and holding on and so forth rather than being one to be surprised by his declaration of love and considering it for reasons of her situation in life. It does not quite fit except as an excuse for his passion to be reconciled with his status - he cannot offer her marriage and a safe home and respectability, being married - and thus must be propositioned rather than the one to lead. Thin excuse, at that.

Spring and Summer are haunting parts, with autumn rather more troublesome and stormy with one wishing he would sooner come to his senses. Perhaps it could not be otherwise in any way, but with quality of Galsworthy's works in general one goes in expecting him to do better, and is a bit disappointed. Still, all in all perhaps it forms a work preparatory for the far more satisfying and wonderful Forsyte Saga and Forsyte Chronicles, and perhaps it ought to be read before them, not after.

Monday, October 21, 2013.
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The Forsyte Saga - Volume I


The Man of Property:-

The Man Of Property, with its very apt title, begins with Soames Forsyte, the man of property who not only inherited but is very good in acquisition of property and taking care of it. As such he has virtues necessary to society, honesty and prudence and more, but lacks in those that cannot be taught and must be developed by sensitivity - those dealing with heart. He has no comprehension of those, and proceeds to acquire the object of his passion, his first wife Irene, pretty much like he would any other property - with steady and unrelenting pursuit and some crafty methods that make it difficult for her to stay the course of not acquiescing. In this however he is wrong, and the marriage goes sour long before he would acknowledge it, with his total bewilderment and lack of understanding of his beautiful and sensitive, artistic, intelligent wife - he expects her to settle down and do her duty, and be happy with all that he can provide for her in ways of house and clothes and jewellery and stability, but she is made of a different mettle and is not one to see herself or any other woman as an object of male property.

She might have continued the slow death within, forced to do so by her husband reneging on his promise of letting her go free if she were not happy, had it not been for the architect Bosinney, fiance of her niece by marriage June Forsyte the daughter of Young Jolyon, first cousin of Soames. Bossinney has sensitivity to match and recognise and appreciate Irene, and more - he falls in love with her, even as he is contracted to design and construct a house for the couple far away from the city where Irene may find solitude and peace and come to terms with her lot, or so her husband Soames plans mistakenly. The house is beautiful, but the love of the architect for the woman who the house is meant for is not to be bought or killed, and tragedy begins to unravel the lives involved, Irene and June and Bosinney - and Soames.

Young Jolyon, the son of Old Jolyon who disapproves of his son's second marriage and has not till date seen his new grandchildren by the woman who used to be in employ of his first wife before they fell in love, is a presence that comes to fore slowly in this, with art - he is an artist, and Irene appreciates beauty as much as he appreciates her in all her qualities - and the relationship and a recognition mutual to both. She seeks his help in the support and strength that his daughter needs from him now, with June too proud to be friend of Irene any more after the revelation of Bosinney and Irene being in love.
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Interlude: Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-


Indian Summer here refers not to unbearably hot 45-50 degree centrigrade summer but the soft warmth of India of post rains in September - October that here the author uses as a silent metaphor for the beautiful life of Old Jolyon in his old age after he has bought the house Bosinney built for Irene, after Bosinney is dead, where he now lives with his son Jo, Young Jolyon, and his three children from his two marriages, June and Jolyon "Jolly" and Holly. Jo with his second wife is traveling in Europe when Old Jolyon discovers Irene sitting on a log in the coppice on the property where she had been with her love, Bosinney, and invites her to the home that was to be hers and is now his. This begins his tryst with beauty that is Irene, in the beauty that is Robin Hill, his home, and the surrounding countryside of which his home includes a good bit.

Jolyon employs Irene to teach music to Holly and invites her for lunches at Robin Hill, and listens to her playing music; they go to theatre, opera and dinners in town on days when she is not teaching Holly, and meanwhile he worries about her situation of barely above penury that her separation has left her in, her father's bequest to her amounting to bare subsistence. He decides to correct the injustice she is meted due to her husband not providing for her (this being the weapon to make her come back to him) and makes a bequest to her for lifetime, settling a good amount that would take care of her reasonably, and let her independence from her husband supported well.

He comes to depend on her visits, and she realises this, returning his silent affection and appreciation - and he dies when waiting for her one afternoon, in his armchair under the large old oak tree, with beauty coming to him across the lawn.
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The Forsyte Saga - Volume II.

In Chancery:-

In Chancery continues with young Jolyon and Irene and Soames, the beautiful new house designed and constructed for Irene being now put up for sale by Soames who is tenacious in his not giving up on her in spite of her leaving him. Irene connects with Jolyon, partly due to Soames bringing an action against him for alienation of his wife's affections and then far more due to their being well matched, and they are together in spite of Soames trying various tactics - threat of divorce (a far more lethal weapon in that era), refusal to give a divorce when they wish for it, and so forth. Finally the divorce goes through and two children are born, Jon to Irene and Joyon and Fleur to Soames and Annette, a French young woman he finds in an inn and marries.

The new house is in chancery as are the people in this interim period and old Jolyon has bought it partly due to James, his brother and father of Soames, telling old Jolyon he owes it to Soames and to the Forsytes, seeing as how young Jolyon is responsible for the quandary Soames is in. Old Jolyon however is as much in love with Irene as most of the clan, and when once he finds her sitting in a corner of the property he assures her of his lack of disapproval of her finding refuge in the home built for her by her lover.

Jolyon helps Irene as his father's wish, and his own, having been appointed executor to the bequest of his father for her, and in the process comes to not only protect her from the husband who wishes her to return (so she can give him a son and heir, after all they are still married twelve years after she left), but also comes to be her friend, her companion and more. He does not admit his love, but she understands it, and their days together are spent in the same beauty that she did with his father until they are thrown together far more due to the persecution of her husband who would divorce her and marry a young woman he has fixed his sights on so he can have a son after all - he is now near fifty and his father James is dying, hankering for a son for Soames. But divorce laws were then difficult and Soames is unwilling to pretend an affair, so his choice is to name Irene and Jolyon, which neither of them oppose irrespective of facts.

It is the news of death of Jolly, son of Jolyon, that throws them together finally when both younger children of Jolyon along with Val Dartie the son of Winifred have gone to Boer war and June has joined Holly as nurse, and Jolyon in his grief for his son that he thinks he did not give enough of the love in his heart for him to has only Irene to consol him with her compassion.
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The Forsyte Saga - Volume III.

Interlude: Awakening:-

Little Jolyon, Jon, awakens to the beauty that surrounds him, the beauty that is his mother, and the love personified that is his father, even as his days are spent in play about the home Robin Hill that is now his parents' in more than one sense - his grandfather bought it from her ex-husband the first cousin of Jo, Young Jolyon, the father of Jon, after the architect Bosinney who was her first love died and she fled from her husband. Jon knows nothing of the history, and his blissful life is carried on the wings of imagination where he plays out every possible scenario from every book he reads, so his half sister Holly returning with her husband and second cousin Val from South Africa (where they married during Boer war and stayed to raise horses) finds him painted blue head to toe, playing by himself in the garden.

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To Let:-

To Let goes on with lives of the various families, and chiefly of young Jolyon and his now wife Irene and their home at Robin Hill, with his other children and their various cousins and uncles being part of the story. Soame's nephew Val Dartie falls in love with young Jolyon's daughter by his second marriage, Holly, and the two second cousins manage to marry and be happy in spite of an initial lack of acceptance by the clan due to their being not only second cousins but also related to parties feuding majorly about Irene's divorce of one and marriage to other cousin.

This has the unfortunate consequence of encouraging the other pair of second cousins, Jon and Fleur, in thinking they may make it a success as his sister and her first cousin did. This time however things are very different, and Jon's parents are as unlikely to approve of this match as Soames initially is. Soames gives in due to his heart being completely ruled by his daughter, and goes so far as to plead with Irene for his daughter's happiness, offering to never interact in their lives for sake of overall peace. But Irene cannot risk it, and Jon is sensitive to her and his father's point of view when he comes to know of their history.

He would be in a quandary but for the similarity of Fleur with her father in claiming him as her father had claimed his mother, and this repels him. Fleur's lack of comprehension in her loss is matched by her father's when he lost a wife he had a very slim chance to have a life with. And the beautiful home of Irene is now to let even as they leave to go as far away as they can from this place and this history.
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The Freelands:-

Galsworthy, amongst other worthy intellectuals of the day -such as George Bearnard Shaw - realised all too well the economic and social questions of the day, and caste system of the European continent was one, land and its ownership and usage towards luxuries of the owners detrimental to the general populace of the land and the world on a larger scale being one of the chief keys of the problems, with attitudes of those in power in dire need of change, conscience and consciousness of rich and poor alike in dire need of light being a factor such intellectuals could do something about. So they, in general, and Galsworthy in particular, wrote about it. Freelands is centred on this question, the very title and the name of the upper caste landowner family or clan telling us of the issue and its importance.

It is not that easy when most rich won't give up their privilege for sake of betterment of the poor, and most poor cannot afford even a peaceful strike, is the reality now as it was then. It is not easy to change the minds and attitudes, to wake up the power of the populace, and more. Power and energy of youth is needed, but it is sacrificed easily and blindly by those in power and blamed by the powerless for the consequences of the heavy handed and expected retaliation of power against poor hapless.

Blossoming of young, of love and consciousness, of waking up to the light and to realities of life under easy circumstances is not easy; under such struggle that needs one's life's blood it is life threatening unless there are enough caring and understanding elders who would act promptly.

The questions discussed here are mentioned elsewhere, in second part of Forsyte Chronicles (sequel to to Forsyte Saga) for example, where it is a bit more macroscopic view and from the point of view of upper caste and its exemplary behaviour along with the obligations inherent in being upper caste, and this latter takes a larger stage in the third part of the Forsyte Chronicles. In the Freelands the point of view is from an intellectual of the upper caste and centre stage is given to those in tune with land, nature, poor, in spite of being of the upper caste. Here the author can deal with the problems in their more dire nature.

Monday, November 4, 2013.
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The Island Pharisees
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The Japanese Quince
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The Patrician
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The Silence (To My Sister Mabel Edith Reynolds, The Silence):-


Galsworthy in this last offering to his family, this time for his sister, tells a tale about a world of mostly male endeavours of yore, although it is difficult to imagine even a century later that it would have changed much in that, and gives a glimpse of a world partly changed in that the colonial era is no more, but largely still the same in that while men do the work of the gritty sort and other men must manage not only the work but the men that do it, their thoughts and feelings taken into account as much as their living and working conditions for the betterment of the place, and yet make a profit for the shareholders of the company, all the while also writing as copiously to the bosses as they might desire to maintain the myth that they too care and have a hand in the day to day welfare and management of the work and the men.

It is this last bit, the writing and pretending, that the Cornishman central to the tale cannot abide, and his reluctance to do so that they won't let be, never mind he has turned the mines from desolate vacant bleak place to thriving glamourous place to be and paying a whopping twenty percent for the company at that, and managing all sorts of trouble single handedly on the paltry salary of a manager - paltry compared to the men who pay him and dictate his terms, certainly. When finally forced to do so he obliges with a lengthy missive and snaps.

This tale is told sensitively through a childhood friend of the manager who visits him occasionally in course of his own work, and to emphasise the sensitivity of it all, there is the oblique connection to Forsytes - who symbolise the moneymaking trade and industry caste of England and indeed of Europe - with the sensitive Old Jolyon Forsyte on the board of the company, refraining from the badgering of the manager who excels at his work but not at kowtowing to the bosses.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013.
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Villa Rubein and Other Stories

Villa Rubein seems to be an early work of Galsworthy, with Tyrol rather than England as the background. He attempts to write characters and families more cosmopolitan European than purely English, but it is more halfway than successful an attempt, and other than a few mixed dialogues - chiefly from the stepfather to the main female the story centres on - it amounts to a caricature of the said stepfather who is only good enough to bluster and really neither commands love nor respect from his stepdaughter or her maternal relatives whose house he lives in, nor at that much from his own daughter who is much younger, except as a matter of duty taken for granted.

There is portrayal of beauty of country and nature here too that blooms so very much through his later works, the latter being mostly of English countryside, but here the portrayal falls very short of how very beautiful Alps surroundings generally can be. Galsworthy truly belongs to England and does not quite flourish elsewhere.

Here the central theme is young love and art vs money, business vs career of vocation, work vs life assured with inheritance, and again it seems he tried it out first in this and later developed it into various other works. One surprising declaration and admission here is of the fact that it is those that have made money that care for it far more than those who have chosen to work for a living in a career of art due to a spiritual need of working for art. It is but logical that this be so, since one that makes money does not do so by a couldn't-care-less attitude towards money but only with great devotion of time and spirit towards earning and saving it, and while it is a fact perhaps known in life to all, it is but hardly ever admitted so in most works of literature in so matter of fact a way, refreshing in its simplicity.

Most different from his other works however - other than the placing out of England - is the little more explicit mention of the happenings of the time. Galsworthy is so given to love and beauty of nature and satirical portraying of upper caste England that one tends to almost forget he lived in an era of tumultuous happenings and thinking, when old traditional castes and their hold was not merely being questioned as in England but was elsewhere being violently rocked and even thrown away, and here one gets a glimpse of a character involved in past in a movement that shapes his life and endangers his love, even though the mention of the movement and its actual facts is left only to be guessed at by the reader familiar with history of the times. All very tangential and elusive, but still, it is there unlike his other works.

Monday, November 18, 2013.
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Those Pricey Thakur Girls: by Anuja Chauhan.

This book would be far more a pleasure to read if it were not peppered quite so unnecessarily with expletives and other unpleasant mentions or details in an effort to either introduce some so called realism (as if beauty is not real, and ugliness is the only reality), or to please the publisher with this instead of soft porn which is the usual ubiquitous choice of writers these days in works and places where it is quite unnecessary to the narrative and often would improve the quality of work by cutting it out.

But the work surprises in more than one way. To begin with one must caution a reader - this is too deep set in its surrounding of space and time, and anyone not quite familiar with it would perhaps find it harder than one who is. Which seems like a tautology but is really a caution a reader unfamiliar with what the title amounts to might heed - which is not to say don't read it, only that be aware it is firmly set in its time and place and social setting.

The work surprises to begin with by being not quite as light and trivial as its title might suggest, Even before more serious themes steal in it manages to be less than trivial in a Fiddler on the Roof sort of way about a couple and their five daughters and the worry about their various stages of their respective marital status and possibilities thereof, and then goes on to a bit of a Pride and Prejudice touch with introduction of young men interested in the two younger girls who are yet to marry.

By the time one realises this is not all there is to this the narrative is much further into the story and one realises that the time and setting of this is not merely incidental, but rather central to the story, and merely introduced in this way so perhaps as to lull the powers that might endanger the writer or the reader or an appreciative critic into a belief that this is merely to be ignored as chick lit. And much as that adjective is silly and stupid and derogatory, and much of good reading is thus branded with a misogynistic agenda, this work steals in a serious topic with the camouflage.

And then one is deep in it, comparing the known details with the version here that is perhaps softened so as to make it possible to publish it without risk of life and property and freedom to the author, publisher or critics, not to mention any readers that might actually not write it off as merely chick lit.

The extremely well planned and organised massacre of a small minority that goes with the official label of 1984 riots is not hard to reason out as far as perception of reality under the fraudulent veil is concerned - the silence of the then state owned media, the methods of the genocide, the one way nature of the so called riots with deaths strictly in the small community during those few days, and the pin pointing of where members of the small community lived by strangers who did not know the victims or vice versa, with the exception of some political leaders who were identified at scenes but never did get the due in the judicial probes.

Here the author limits the probing to the small level political leader of the party then as now in power, rather than probing the difficult questions of responsibilities of those really in positions of power and authority. But then one expects little else if this much from what one picks up as a light read to begin with. The love story and family details that forms the skin and flesh of the narrative are satisfactory on the whole too.

The Lowland; by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Another work about Bengali diaspora in US, but this time it is personal and political, historical and more, both when it is in US and when the story is in India. Lahiri gives a kaleidoscope of broken images after the first straight narrative up to the moment when a sudden turn in the story with death of one character twists not only the story in unexpected directions but various characters too, and then on there are sudden and abrupt changes from one character, one time to another character and another time, quite often unexpected and sometimes more.

The small glimpse into history of a small part of Calcutta, now officially Kolkata as it always has been for its residents (or for the few centuries when colonial rule happened and until recently, anyway - if there was another name that makes more sense, it is lost not so much in antiquity as in full view of everyone, for fear of being named not secular enough in the pseudo politics that goes on in the nation to forget the majority of the populace and its culture, history et al, as far as possible and more). How British rule turned a stream named Adi Gangaa into Tolly's nullah (the latter being sewage outlet), a palace into a club for the ruling British and other non Indians, and more.

The two brothers grow up close to one another in Tollygunge, living close to Tolly club, and being very different in spirit take very different directions after high school. The elder, the quiet one who accompanies his mother at her work when he is home and not playing with his brother or studying, goes on to study and migrate for a doctorate to New England to a small town on seashore in RI. He is expected to return, to take up a safe job, to marry as per his culture according to his parents' arrangements for him (not yet taken up). He would too but for his brother the active and restless one who always takes initiative in unexpected directions with scant regard for safety of his own person or those associated, who is inexorably drawn to the movement that shook the region and the nation with its mixture of caring about poor and disfranchised while taking a violent route in name of revolution to achieve its goals, unlike the Gandhian path established in India until then as the way to go.

The author gives history and background, of the movement and its leaders, and a portrayal of the general adherents the intelligentsia and the students in particular, in very brief where it is not personal for the characters of the narrative, and extensively but subtly pervading the whole story otherwise like the scent of one's home, locale and land. The younger of the two brothers who goes into the movement with a deep dive as per his nature defines the whole story, events and turns of life and mindset or hearts for those close to him, and more. He is short lived, his effect not so much, but this is not laudatory in the narrative and this without any recriminations or branding or pointing at him by those who knew him and were close to him.

The author succeeds in making a point silently and tellingly - that often the ones who do one's own duty silently and care for others and get called selfish are those that end up with little, and don't even grudge having given their lives to caring for others with little or no consideration for themselves in exchange, while those that proclaim caring or love most loudly whether in words or political movements or acts of extreme nature in name of this caring end up destroying a great deal and leave it to others who carry their burden, and manage to deal with the devastation left behind.

Often the turns in the narrative are unexpected and often extremely so, and one cannot call this something satisfactory to read in terms of feeling good when one finishes, but if one misses this it would be a loss, and as usual to Lahiri one ends up wishing there was more - what happened to various people, especially the daughter and the granddaughter, even though if one thinks about it enough has been given about most characters. This is the success with this author, this wanting more.

Sycamore Row: by John Grisham.

The book is advertised in most places as one that takes up where his first work, A Time To Kill, ended, which sort of is slightly misleading and leads one to go on expecting and speculating about how and when this connection is coming to light, thereby spoiling the absorption of the reading itself and the joy thereof. Given that it is about continuing from where the first book left off, one also tends to be apprehensive, and really the justification for that appears only much later, while one could enjoy the story far better if it were not for the advertisements.

The lawyer who fought for the unfortunate father in the first story is the centre here in the foreground while other characters are central to the story but stay slightly off or in the background, and it could be argued that the main character dies before the story opens - with an employee going off to meet his boss and finding him precisely where instructed but in circumstances and condition far from anticipated. From then on it is about the man who committed suicide in so very precise albeit unpleasant a manner, questions about whether he was in his right mind and whether the will he wrote by hand the day before is valid, and more.

The shock of his having left the bulk of his estate to his housekeeper who happens to be black while explicitly depriving his children and grandchildren sets off a furore, all the more because he made a will a year or so before leaving them it all reasonably, and the only clue or point of curiosity for a disinterested person is the way he mentions his little brother whom he has left five per cent of it along with his church which he left another five per cent. But if part of the readership is disinterested, the people in the story are definitely not, it being set in Mississippi albeit in post lynching era (or is it?) - and most people in the book question whether the housekeeper was more than a mere caretaker, especially since it is considered inconceivable that a poor black woman could deserve so much money only by being a caregiver along with a housekeeper of an old man, however distant he be from everyone else and however little his kith and kin visit or even call him.

One wonders if the people would be a little less questioning of the beneficiary's character if she were an Irish or English person of the "right" race, or a man of the "right" race.
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Grisham gives the details of the fight the protagonist, the lawyer for the estate who was chosen by the deceased for the very reason of his having fought for the unfortunate father in the previous story, has to face to do his job, which is to fight for the holographic will and to see to it that his - the deceased's - kith and kin get nothing with the one exception of the brother whose whereabouts are unknown, including if he is alive at all. He has to walk a delicate balance to carry on the job he is given while trying his best to see to it that the potential jury pool that is most likely to be of the dominant race is not antagonised, and his job is not easy, even when - according to him - racism is on the wane.

Since the civil war in US there have been hundreds of lynchings and most of those were of black men women and children, with the exception of a few of horse thieves in the western states before the advent of the mechanical vehicle and its replacing the horse as the means of survival. Mississippi leads in the lynchings with Georgia and Texas close on its heels, and one wonders if Alabama merely hid it all well - for while hundreds are counted for, far more are not counted, in those days when birth and death records were not kept all that scrupulously and a black man, woman or child being murdered by anyone or a horde of the dominant race would not only be not counted as murder but be colluded with by the law enforcement authorities of the state, at any rate local ones.

And all this horror is now a horror to people of the state as well, according to the author - they would like to distance themselves from it, to do reparations if possible and would be ashamed of any ancestors who were part of it; and the story is about one such person who has gone to extraordinary lengths to attempt to correct the horrors perpetrated that he knew of. Fortunately there is someone who has witnessed it with him, and is able to relate it. Else the deprivation of the victims of injustice would continue fresh - and quite possibly, very likely, it does in most places. But this is a story that satisfies and a huge part of it is the satisfactory attempt to correct the injustices of the past.
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Calico Joe: by John Grisham.

At a cursory glance and more, even well into the book, it seems like the author's homage to baseball in particular and sports atmosphere in US in general, especially with the introduction meant for English and other readership of those nations that do not play baseball - and most of the world does not, while even those that do are not invited to play what is called world series in US, as the author admits in the introductory chapter explaining the sport. If one has no acquaintance with it prior to reading this book the introduction won't do much good, and one remains foggy about most of it. If one is a fan one might know a lot about this story in the first place, whether it was historic and if not was it abstracted from a few others and if so which ones.

Later into the book it seeps in that it is really about a boy growing up and his problems with a sports star father who is more than egoistic - the father facing mid thirties is dealing with his own slide downhill and more, and is unable to accept any responsibility even for himself, much less for a wife and two children, except financially, and the latter is only because he has been paid well rather than any thought on his part. He drinks and womanises extensively, and as he admits to the son and protagonist when dying, has never been faithful to his first wife, the mother of his only two children, for the whole duration of that first marriage. Subsequently he married for money and lust and then sheer necessity of human companionship or housekeeping, one is not sure which.

It is only past halfway through the story that is nevertheless engrossing due to the real hero of the book, the hero that gives it the title, that it dawns on one that it is neither about baseball which makes for the backdrop of the story and its details, nor about the selfish character the father of the protagonist, and not even really about the protagonist or the hero, not really. They all play prominent characters, but the centre is the clash of two very diverse philosophies of sport. And not merely sport at that but life really.

Joe Castle is the young talent with extraordinary capacity at his sport of choice, baseball, where he electrifies a whole nation into being his fans with the first game he plays in the national arena for Cubs, the Chicago team, with not merely capability to hit the ball but to be able to deal with whatever the pitcher throws at him in a superlative way, and often doing something completely unexpected so the team gets further rather than his own record for another hit. He is from a small town in Arkansas and has a close knit family, and the whole town gets closer together if it is possible, while Cubs fans evolve into frenzied mob and other team's fans nevertheless admire him and wish him well, and while they wish their teams to win they wish his streak would continue and grow.

The protagonist Paul Tracey is divided at the crucial point in time where his father pitches to his hero - until then he wishes he could adore his father, and is aware of the special status of the family in his small town on east coast, but is far too close to the person that the father is, and has been at the brunt of his viciousness recently, over and above his awareness of the father abusing his mother when drunk and if at home after a bout. So he wishes his hero to make history again and break records and he wishes his father to strike him out. He however is afraid, and knows with a certainty the second before it happens, about his father hitting the hero.

Wonder why sport authorities are not more vigilant about penalising any sportsmen who intentionally injure a competitor during sports - if done outside the arena it would probably get such an offender a sizeable gaol sentence and more, and in US he would have to pay for all medical bills and much more. But during sports a player with an unsportsmanlike mindset gets away almost with murder.

Warren Tracey here hits Joe Castle with a ball aimed at his head at over seventy miles an hour, with hardly a second to spare between pitch and striking him at his eye and sending him into a coma with extensive damage to his brain, vision, and more. Decades ago another one specifically instructed his team to hit opposite players deliberately, and the authorities in Australia and England could not get past the excuse that it was cricket and if the other team could not play they ought to concede - it took serious injury to Bradman, and more, before body line bowling was declared illegal, and only a player for England from India had the courage to tell his captain that it was unethical and he would not play if forced to do this.

Tracey's philosophy as he explains to his son when he - Warren, not Paul - is dying, is that it is sport, and one gets hurt, and one does not cry and ask for sympathy. But the hit was intentional in every bit, not accidental, and Paul makes him confront that fact and admit it. Paul knows him only too well, and happens to have found out after the event why Warren did it.

It was a punishment meted out to Joe deliberately for not only being too good, young, rising star, and more, but for being someone Warren's own son Paul admired and adored and had a scrapbook about amongst his other half a dozen other scrapbooks.

And this, one sees clearly, is where it stops being about philosophy of sports and is really about philosophy of life and larger - it is clash of gods and titans, of those that are good and those that would kill anyone who is good, those that revel in the sport or life or art or poetry or whatever beauty life and heavens have bestowed and those that would strike at anyone who experiences that beauty and can achieve anything anywhere.

If one excels in anything including being a loving and happy person, a Warren Tracey would strike you in the head or eye, if not with a baseball or bat then with his hand hitting your head on the wall until you cry and beg for mercy, and this only because a Warren Tracey cannot tolerate anyone being good in anything, at anything, without a toll paid to the Warren Tracey in terms of satisfying his ego in whatever coin he demands.

And this is the secret of all abusers - whether the abuse is meted out to a wife, a child, whoever.

The Joe Castles of the world on the other hand would only rather play and experience the beauty of life or sport or whatever, achieve and find joy in it, and not ego but love is their source of sustenance - and they have it better effortlessly. Tracey has no love even for his own children, and couldn't care less about grandchildren - his children have no use for the money he leaves them when he dies, for it was not of use when a little was needed as they grew up. Joe on the other hand brings his brothers to a funeral of the man who destroyed his life, a funeral not attended by most of the family of the dead Warren and none of his wives other than the current one.

If one were inclined to sympathy with the person who never experienced love or joy and had only drinking and abuse for his near and dear, that would be a drop of falsehood somewhere within one's self - for all too often charity and generosity are mere cloaks for faults one sees in others and knows are a reflection of those in one's own being.

Cubs fans, and Joe Castle had more fans than Cubs, did see to it that Warren Tracey did not go scot free - his career did not survive this maiming of someone else for life, and he was forever at receiving end of any Cubs fans who found out where he was or if he tried to play, even another so diverse a sport as golf. But really it should not be up to fans to have to punish a wrongdoer, for a Warren Tracey could just as easily much more vicious and persecute a Joe Castle by using much more falsehood and his own coterie to destroy what little life Joe had post the coma and brain damage and loss of vision due to being hit by Warren.

It really should be the responsibility of authorities of sports and law and more to see that a Warren Tracey does not maim a Joe Castle or his own family without being punished severely.

And while in personal life the punishment has to be limited to those that commit the crime or aid and abet it in any way, in sport a team benefiting from it is unfair and can only let such things go on - it will stop promptly if a team is disqualified as soon as someone like Warren Tracey beanballs an opponent who cannot get up and hit him back, or even otherwise. In this story Cubs lost when Joe was lost to the game, while Mets went on to win, reversing the trend until the beanballing of Joe Castle by Warren Tracey; had the rules disqualified Mets whole team from playing that season, a Warren Tracey would not dare to hit a Joe Castle intentionally in the first place, and if he did he would be taken out by his own team. Short of this there is every likelihood that the Warren Traceys of this world will go on hitting the Joe Castles for being good, for having achieved, in sport or any other sphere of life.


Tuesday, April 8, 2014.
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The Adjustment; by Gulzar.

The Adjustment is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from eighth and final part of the collection, which deals with old age and facing last years with family and alone.

This one is about an old couple with an only daughter who is back with her parents with her two sons, after her husband brought home a second wife (since no illegitimacy of the said second marriage is mentioned, and since the old woman brought home her daughter, one may infer it is a Muslim family); the old couple has only this one daughter and that after years of praying and pilgrimages, so the old woman is unwilling to let the only child live in less than pleasant and honourable circumstances, although the old man bickers about it - but then they have bickered for over half a century of marriage and the old man thinks it takes time to understand another person.

The old woman though dies suddenly one day, and he is now left alone, in spite of the home filled by his daughter and the two grandsons. He begins to change in a startling way, speaking or acting like the wife now gone, and claims she is visiting him and occupying his being often. The family calls in a psychiatrist, who talks and more importantly listens to him for hours, and then questions why the family is bothered if this goes on. Which is wiser of him than generally one expects western oriented psychology professionals.

The writer stops the story where the old man is found napping in the bed of the wife now gone, wearing her feminine clothes. Perhaps he intends to shock the reader. That however depends on whether one is as wise as the psychiatrist that advised the family to let him do what consoles him, since it bothers no one.

Western culture now - post industrialisation and separation of genders into master and slave categories, or even before that due to inquisition and witch hunt carried on to weed out any possible knowledge or authority in lay persons and far more so in women - has heavy emphasis on gender separation in every sphere and especially in clothing, and women wearing trousers has been disapproved to the extent such liberties are strictly forbidden in professional circles, and more along such restrictions, never mind the weather making it extremely painful for anyone to shiver on a bus stop in skirts and nylons and even for anyone looking at this.

But before this discrimination began and spread to most lands, attire was more a matter of convenience with weather and other factors taken into account chiefly, and most cultures had - and often still do, unless tainted by colonisation from Europe - dresses not all that different for men and women.

So a reader being shocked at this merely tells about how conditioned he or she is by the post inquisition culture of Europe. For the rest, it should be perfectly fine if a bereaved old man finds some comfort wearing his dead wife's clothes and napping in her bed.

Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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Dadaji; by Gulzar.

Dadaji is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from eighth and final part of the collection, which deals with old age and facing last years with family and alone.

Dada in central and northern India (east, west and south can be different from one another and from central Hindi belt and north too) refers to paternal grandfather, with "ji" attached to addressing or referring to anyone as a matter of respect; this can be by choice but is not a choice when referring to or addressing someone elder or senior, culturally speaking. Addressing seniors and elders by name alone, especially first name, is considered lack of respect and indicative of lack of manners and culture in someone so doing.

The protagonist here, the old grandfather, is dealing with his grandson being the usual naughty boy while he is visiting him in the grandfather's old family home, built by the latter's grandfather originally and improved on by his father. The boy broke china to make perfect object to flip on the pond so it would skip a few feet before sinking, but is admonished although it is expensive. The crisis is when the boy is climbing a tree, and the grandfather this time spanks him when he is brought down. The boy is of the now and me generation and unlike his grandfather he is unable to comprehend this is love. He calls his father, the son of the old man, to come and take him away - and what is more, won't speak with the old man.

It is when the younger two are leaving - the old man was forced by circumstance to come stay alone in his old village rather than traditional living with family, due to the son being restricted by his income and shortage of space in the city - that the old man is able to convey to the boy that the punishment was for another little boy long ago - he himself had climbed the tree and fallen and broken his leg, and limps since; he did not wish this on the little grandson, and the naughty little boy couldn't have comprehended the seriousness of the danger but would understand the spanking and the correlation of the prank with punishment, hence the instinctive nature of the spanking.

Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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Dusk; by Gulzar.

Dusk is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from eighth and final part of the collection, which deals with old age and facing last years with family and alone.

Dusk is about a couple with grown up children and young grandchildren, and dealing with social trends and relationships and one's own past and mindset, culture and fashion, tradition and dominance. Culturally Indian women are not supposed to cut hair until they face widowhood, just as males are not supposed to shave moustaches until bereaved of parents, and this changes if and when the relevant bereavement does arrive - then one is supposed to do it. This was followed rigourously until colonial trends changed it in parts of upper and thereby in trend followers in middle and lower strata, but is still deep in psyche of most.

Here the protagonist finds his wife with a short bob post her accompanying the daughter in law to the latter's parents who are military and therefore modern set, and while the wife attempts to explain that the hair will grow back soon enough, he is shocked to the core where an entirely different process is set in motion. He does not blame her, accepts explanations and even apologies gracefully from the women of his family, and does not blame the mother of the daughter in law who did it to his wife - the latter being not as dominant as the former - but stops talking generally nevertheless. Then one day he vanishes, telling them he is going to visit his daughter, but they find he is not there, and finally have to go through official channels of search.

None of it would be any use except the place where he found refuge and lived informs them he is unwell, but they rush only to find him gone - and now that he is no more, ironically his wife can perfectly legitimately have a haircut, with his permission too.

Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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Pickpocket: by Gulzar.

Pickpocket is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part seven, which deals with death and how people face it. This one is about a couple that waited long to have a child, and are anxiously or eagerly expecting one now.

The man returns home one day to be informed by a neighbour that his wife has gone into labour and is in the hospital. He is stressed enough that this is several days too soon, and keeps returning to his home to change or collect his wallet, and then is unable to find a vehicle quickly to take him; when it is time to pay, he realises his wallet has been picked by a pickpocket when he was paying more attention to getting to the hospital than to being safe from them in crowds of Mumbai.

At the hospital after a time of anxiety he is faced by the doctor after the operation his wife needed due to complications, to be informed that the baby was still born, and at this he is unrepentant in addressing his "big guy above" and calling him the biggest pickpocket of all, not caring about blasphemy this time.

Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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Shortcut; by Gulzar.

Shortcut is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part seven, which deals with death and how people face it.

Here the friends group from an earlier story, Bhushan Banmali, is on the trails in Himaalaya again, this time with a vehicle and a driver from Delhi. There is much to deal with what with roads only sometimes good, and this being not the best of affairs - when the roads are not raw paths they are likely to have uncertainty of whether the next stretch would be good, and more. Then there is cold to deal with and vehicles breaking down, even before one takes into consideration the volatile nature of the mountains where a landslide might occur any time at any place.

Himaalaya is rising steadily with Indian plate pushing and this makes the whole region, from Himaalaya down into Indian land - and this does not mean political labels of the day but the land that is referred to since antiquity by that name as far as those outside the land are concerned - and perhaps the most volatile is still the Himaalaya, which again refers to the whole sum of the snowcapped mountains that form the northern boundary of the ancient land from westernmost to easternmost edge, whatever the divisions and new nomenclatures ascribed dividing the mountains into several names and labels during last couple of centuries by those not of India.

The story here proceeds to let the reader experience travel along those small roads and a short cut along a smaller one taken by the writer and his friends so they might arrive sooner than way past midnight to where they might rest, while they see a small car passing them along the way with speed possible to small and powerful vehicles. There is the Yogi and local expert who can tell sitting in his ashram (literally, place of refuge, usually in the spiritual sense) at Hrishikesh that it seems to have snowed at Joshimath (originally named Jyotirmath), which is several miles up the road to Badrinath.

Then the shock of the driver stopping the vehicle and descending to see more - there is a huge rock right in the middle of the path, and one knows without being told that it has fallen recently, and that it bodes ill. Indeed the rock has a wheel and an axle of the car that had overtaken them more than once, and they all step out to see if anyone is alive. The car is turned turtle way deep down below the road due to having been struck by the rock fallen on it from above, and the driver is dead.

He has indeed found a short cut, comments the driver.

The writer attempts to induce some poetic descriptions in his usual convoluted style, but this is a huge mistake, for at least two reasons.  For one if one has been anywhere near Himaalaya and even seen the peaks at a distance, the grandeur, the beauty can only be experienced, and the simplest way of describing it brings it home, especially if one has been to those places. For another this attempt to induce one's own two bits seems pathetic, and one wonders why he is unable to perceive and open up to it in silence, rather than trying to paint his usual convoluted descriptions - here, simplest ones would be the best.

Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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Under the Earth; by Gulzar.

Under the Earth is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part seven, which deals with death and how people face it.

Under the Earth is about a man who wakes up as his building with several floors is going through an earthquake, and he runs out to see his neighbours doing the same, everyone in a panic. The lift is not available and the stairs cave all the way under the earth as he is trying to go down. He is trapped and sure if being dead when he is conscious, and is content, waiting for the two angels as per his religion - he is Muslim - who he expects to visit him. He is most disappointed to find himself not dead after all, when he is found by rescuers after some eighteen days, alive.

The writer has left perhaps deliberately uncertain the question of which earthquake is being mentioned here, Bhuj or Kashmir or something entirely different.

Saturday, April 5, 2014.
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The Orange: by Gulzar.

The Orange is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part six, which is about rather more personal stuff closer to heart or so it would seem from the couple of stories out of the three in this part. The third one is The Orange, and having read it now it seems this part is about parables or thinly veiled ways of saying something.

The orange here is real and a symbol both, latter for our home planet Earth. A little boy is sick but insists on his share of the few oranges even though he cannot have it until he is well (the writer picked a strange combination of fruit and sickness here - most illnesses allow one to consume an orange or at least juice thereof, and this boy only has a cold, where citrus fruits are prescribed - was the writer hitting the reader on the head with "this is parable?) but would keep it and look at it, and the story progresses with the story the boy is being told about the earth being seen as a blue green orange seen from distant space by aliens every once in a while with centuries in between viewings. As the story of the destruction of earth by humans progresses seen through alien eyes from distant space, so does that of the real orange being similarly destroyed by insects that have taken over.

It is a good way to tell the children about earth, but they don't need such convoluted deals, they accept facts fine - it is adults, especially those that cannot do without usage of various fossil fuels directly or otherwise. Or those that have invested heavily in such products and find alternatives difficult.

At that one might give a thought about other problems plaguing the earth that are generally not mentioned in conjunction with greenhouse gases or global warming, nevertheless are just as genuinely of concern about what we are doing to earth - such as the modern plumbing and what this is doing to our rivers and oceans. Most people would hate to use open fields as an alternative to secure closed spaces for toilets, and few would think poor of this world are virtuous since they don't have plumbing. Yet it is the very well to do that can afford to and do enjoy swimming in oceans, and usually people are content being taken care of by authorities informing them if the particular beach is too close to sewage pipes. Is that good enough, one might wonder - it is ocean where everything flows or floats, or can, after all.

But then most people who eat non vegetarian food don't stop to ask what the meat consumed when it was a creature alive, and most fish and other sea creatures are just as likely to have consumed human parts as sewage; crabs, one is informed on info channels, are the cleaners of the ocean, and clean up anything and everything - and most meat eaters not only are happy to consume crabs but usually it is considered a delicacy. So - so much for human thinking.

Friday, April 4, 2014.
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Ghugu and Jamuni; by Gulzar.

Ghugu and Jamuni is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part six, which is about rather more personal stuff closer to heart or so it would seem from the couple of stories out of the three in this part.

This one is more of a parable, being as it is about a bird, presumably parrot or parakeet, usually named Ghuggu in Hindi speaking central parts of the nation (which are mistakenly labled north in an attempt to pretend there are only two noticeable different parts north and south while in reality it is as complex as it gets and various other corners are not to be forgotten or dumped with others and also the fact that there is a north way north of the Hindi belt and comprising of various other languages).

This parrot or parakeet Ghuggu is according to the writer in love with a kite - the kind children fly rather than the predatory bird of course - which happens to be very colourful and very beautiful, and the protagonist bird proceeds to attempt to mate and begins to understand that his beloved whom he names Jamuni after the colour purple (or the fruit that gives that name to the colour) is rather bashful and would fly away as soon as he approaches. Undaunted he goes on chirping at her, marvelling at her not chirping back, and proceeds to build a nest for her in spite of her being so non committal.

In an effort to warn her away in an impending thunderstorm he risks his life and falls unconscious having hit an electric pole, after valiantly battling with strong winds of the storm and more, and comes to consciousness in captivity having been saved by a child. It so happens the child also subsequently manages to catch the bird's beloved kite and the kite comes to rest a few feet from his cage.

One may wonder if this is the way the writer chose to tell himself where he failed in his marriage, for his wife left him to live a life of her own but never did divorce, so it was not about general male excuse of her being with someone else. She was not to be caged by him, and this is what perhaps he finds incomprehensible, because it is only possible for him to sympathise with women - real or otherwise - he does not need for personal life,while his wife he like most men needed to play the traditional role common to all cultures - that of someone who exists only to take care of him.

Thursday, April 3, 2014.
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Gagi and Superman: by Gulzar

Gagi and Superman is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part six, which is about rather more personal stuff closer to heart or so it would seem from the couple of stories out of the three in this part.

Gagi seems to be the pet name of the little daughter of a famous film maker couple Aruna Raje and Vikas Desai, whose excellent work is well known, together and independently. Pet name because in all likelihood this is how this writer called her or perhaps others too, but the parents had given her something meaningful and with beauty rather than a meaningless word that sounds like something of a sound made by silly adults who think such sounds are what one is supposed to speak to babble to babies or rather at them, while in all likelihood babies however small comprehend a whole lot more.

The reason for this is more than just a very reasonable assumption about well educated and well meaning parents giving beautiful names reflecting their blessings and hopes and dreams to the children - it is also the fact that the writer twists his own daughter's name to something more ridiculous rather than the two beautiful names she has had from her mother as per the mother's Bengali tradition, one for home - Bosky, meaning silk - and one formal, Meghana meaning cloudy; love of clouds in India is as natural as it should be in any place on earth parched with heat where any shade is welcome and rain and breeze a welcome relief, and in India in particular clouds and rains are associated to hope, heaven's gifts, love, relief, and peacocks breaking into dance, a total celebration of beauty.

The writer diminishes his daughter's name to something that might mean "childish", and this is opposite of his valuation of himself - his known and famous name meaning garden of flowers is far from ridiculous and in all likelihood he chose it for a nom de plume, and got rid of his given name somewhere along the line. So one might safely guess he is refraining from mentioning the real, beautiful name of the little girl dying of cancer, daughter of his friends.

The story is about how the children of these couples - Gulzar and his beautiful wife Rakhee who was an actress superlative through the years she performed in films, Aruna Raje and Vikas Desai, and another couple also in film making - played together and were as completely into superman as any child familiar with the concept would be.

This story is real life, and the little daughter of Aruna and Vikas did unfortunately die of cancer at a very young age, and generally this caused havoc in the family life as can be expected. Here it is about how the couple was stunned when they heard the diagnosis, how they decided not to be sad before her and keep her in smiles until she had to find out the truth when she was taken to US and operated on, how it went bad, and more.

The writer won't however let well enough be and takes the opportunity of this tragedy told in his words to poke ridicule at perhaps what was serious faith for the parents of the child, certainly is for more than a billion, and perhaps for the wife of the writer too; is he taking revenge on his wife for separating from him by vicious fun at her faith however subtle, one can only speculate, but indecent of him it is. He covers it not too well by comparing the deity with superman, the latter being all too well understood to be imaginary on par with Santa and indulged in compulsorily for sake of children by conspiring adults.

Perhaps one day if he is so lucky the writer might rise to comprehend that it is easy and cheap to be cynical and poke fun and all the more so when it costs nothing, not even a threat from a believer (unlike in nations immediately to Northwest, of perhaps his faith, but then his roots are deliberately obscure), but an opening of mind and heart and a perception is a step far above this revelling in muck.

There is much to love in the story in spite of the writer and his splintered vision. There is the little girl and her friend the daughter of the writer, the latter another excellent film maker whose very first work went beyond her father - this story is bout events a few decades old - and other such details.

What he does not write but was written long ago by the grieving mother of the dying little girl were other details of their life and subsequent life the bereaved mother lived, when her marriage fell apart due to the death of this child, are things remembered from reading her account of it.

There is, amongst other such little details, the touching mention here of musical heritage of the dying girl whose father's uncle is a very famous, and great in his own way, music composer of quality with unmatched works. The little sick girl can no longer dance but goes on repeating the dance rhythm and one can imagine she is dancing in her mind.

Thursday, April 3, 2014.
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Half a Rupee; by Gulzar.

Half a Rupee is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, the title story in fact, and offered here as an independent read. It is from part five, which is about Naxalite movement in India, so named after the small rural place Naxalbari in West Bengal (east Bengal is what is now called Bangladesh, the half that split away from motherland in '47 at partition and then had to seek independence because faith based nations don't necessarily work when all other bases are diverse and diversity not acceptable to basis of the nation).

Half a Rupee is the third and final story from part five, and it is about a young boy from rural northern part of India running away to Mumbai as millions do from all parts of India to escape their poverty and other trails and travails such as loans they have taken to keep appearances or simply to survive, and interest rates they cannot then pay because the rural private lenders (who else would lend them!) charge high and sometimes or often cheat, and more.
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In case of this protagonist Chandu, he is merely escaping school and has managed to run clear across the country, and finds that it is not all that easy. One has to pay albeit a small amount to sleep on a sidewalk, and will be shooed away if one cannot. One might however find friends right there and they might provide one with work, which is easier in Mumbai than finding a place to live.

The story here is a platform for the author to air his pet hatred of the city and the state and the general situation he finds himself in (he has a well to do enough lifestyle, and perhaps fondly imagines life is better in another town, another state, another nation nearby), so he puts in all sorts of caricatures of ridiculous nature, including that of English and the local language (perhaps he would force his beloved Urdu on everyone, as one split part of India did only to lose a better half of it), a disease many that settled in the city from elsewhere suffer from; they ought to try living in a state occupying most of the eastern coast in southern half of the nation and try any fraction of the attitude, and would come out of the ordeal completely cured.

The so called story ends even more ridiculously with a politician whom the protagonist works for facing a terrorist wielding a machine gun and asking him who he is, apparently without fear, and a thoughtful discussion between the two about who is more to be feared and what is a preferable option, which is a question they put the protagonist who then tosses the half a rupee coin to decide, and both yell "heads", but the coin does not come down which is well for the protagonist, according to the writer.

One wishes the writer had taken time to think, to perhaps even read, and certainly either polish his works better or write when ripe rather than giving half raw unpalatable themes recognisable as amusing reaction to his peeves whatever they be; his poetry was once lyrical and worth reading, and sometimes even now arresting in bits, but whatever toll taken by life or his own inability to do better than he imagines he should have, this set of half ripe stories is on the whole a revenge on readers that don't deserve it for expecting better of someone with stellar work behind him.
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Gulzar to some extent and Sahir Ludhianavi to a far more committed extent were leftists - Sahir was about to be arrested for h in his chosen or default home in the other part of India as it was before independence, and had to escape to India as it is post independence, and yet he said it was lucky for Mumbai to have him, rather than admitting he was lucky he could get away and not be arrested to spend life in jail, rather than the respect and fame and prestige and satisfactory work he had during his life in India. Gulzar in that tradition sympathises with a suicide bomber who plans to blow up a prime minister, and writes a story and publishes it, apart from a film or more he made on the topic.

Wonder if they had courage enough to battle for Malala and her ilk. Easy to target a democracy, especially one that does not penalise you for being in minority politically.


Thursday, April 3, 2014. 
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