Once upon a time Dostoevsky wrote about a poor man murdering a rich one, and then the rest of the work was about his - the poor killer's - suffering due to his very alive conscience not letting him rest with his intellectual justification of the murder he had committed.
One of the best works of Alfred Hitchcock a few decades later in another part of the world, Rope, showed the dilemma from another angle, that of a theoretician about supremacy of some part of humanity recoiling in horror when his pupil commits a murder as a practical application of the teacher's theory. The teacher could not approve of this result and his mind working faster than ever found the serious flaw in the pupil's interpretation and explained why his act was severely wrong.
Both did this with little if any - none if memory serves right - reference to any religion or human authority, including law, whatsoever. Morals are universal in humanity.
Adiga, however attempts to avoid this question by putting forth facts of life of the murderer protagonist and almost pushing the reader to the conclusion that the poverty of multitudes of a particular nation - Adiga's own - and riches of the few are justification for this murder for profit, new identity, new life. This is left unsaid but again pushed silently forth as a populist agenda, a leftist ideal leading to revolution.
But fact is fascist and nazi regimes of the twentieth century began with lower class goons with no moral agenda and no theoretical support that could withstand any scrutiny of serious nature, paraded as leftist while shaking hands with rich that were coopted by blackmail and subsequently dealt with as fit for the moment, and on the whole had no agenda other than the regimes and their goons proliferating at expense of not only rich but all that was good, all the achievements of humanity through history. It was power of physical sort used by evil for no other possible goal than complete destruction of civilisation.
Adiga's work - this one, anyway; and if this one is any indication one would hate anyone to be punished with reading of another work of this author, no criminal except a child abuser would deserve it - is closer to fascist than to leftist regimes of yore, and is as far a cry from the gentle Dostoyevsky as Emily Bronte is from porn.
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While one cannot say there is no truth in the picture painted here so garishly, various incorrect details of fact and more make it obvious it was written with a readership other than home billion; that it got a Booker is no surprise any more than the Oscar that slum dog millionaire did, that merely makes the politics of the prizes obvious to all but willfully blind - after all Gandhi did not get a Nobel prize for peace (imagine the massacre if he had approved of finishing off the rulers, and the capability of people in this matter was proved amply during partition but only against one another, not the rulers - and it could have been channeled easily enough for all that towards the ruling few after all), and someone who converted under guise of help did.
It is about seeing a nation, a culture one does not comprehend and hates for its qualities galore, as something less and pulling it down by insisting they leave off being what they are and follow the line set by the prize giving who can withhold it from the superior and give it to trashing portrayals.
Adiga might have been less incorrect in the details if he had only stuck to his own background rather than imagining he knows all the billions in every corner. As it is he gives a clue to begin with in the name of the protagonist, translated very loosely from his own last name (- Adiga is cook in region Adiga is from, Halwai is sweetmaker in north, it is a bit like someone translating boulangerie to patisserie except no baking is involved in the adiga or halwai bit while the French words are all about baking), but he imagines India to be a uniform seamless society where regional differences can be overlooked by a writer aspiring for fame overseas - who cares if readers in India find faults, first they don't give a booker and second they usually fall in once he has achieved his fame and money with overseas base.
For example, he takes a now frighteningly common occurrence - a servant murdering a member of his master class - and gives it a hue of almost communist revolution (Tsar and family being murdered by starving proletariat!) what with the lurid descriptions of poverty of the murderer. But reality is very very different.
Murders in various large cities have occurred in middle class neighbourhoods (and middle class of India would not be so classified in west, economic levels being entirely different, but as poor) including upper and lower middle class, but victims are mostly either old couples living alone murdered by the servant in the know, or middle aged housewives who are kind enough to go fetch a glass of water for the known or stranger asking for it in the middle of the day. Sometimes there has been a rape of a younger woman dressed in western attire but the attire is irrelevant and the woman being alone, unlikely to be heard by neighbours, is more the point for the opportunist who subsequently kills his victim for his own safety.
In all this the victims are not - most assuredly Not - anywhere near the level of wealth described by Adiga for his victim, the younger son of a coal mining owners who buy politicians for their perpetuated ownership of the coal. That level of wealth is usually quite conscious re their need of protection from those that would rob them and in all likelihood attack them, and don't go about without bodyguards galore. With a multitude of servants kept in place at various degrees of hierarchy a unified attack on a master - and a male in his prime, at that - is as unlikely as someone walking into white house with a bazooka.
No, in reality most women or old people who do get murdered are not much richer than the killers. It is only that there is likely to be some money to be had from murdering people in their own homes by looting whatever is around, which is likely to be more in middle or lower middle class homes, since they are likely to keep their gold and silver at home. Westernised upper class is very unlikely to be profitable for attack in this way - if they keep such stuff at home they have guards, and those living as single males or hep couples away from extended families don't go about keeping gold and silver at home, or much cash. They spend on other things and use plastic like normal western middle class.
Another factor in his tale is about a murderer being one who ferries the employees of the new prosperity harbingers, the IT and call centre employees, especially women. Male employees are less likely to keep depending and more likely to get a motorbike or car for transport, while women still tend to save money and depend on being transported with other colleagues. At least one such woman has been murdered post rape by a substitute unauthorised driver, but the case is not clear - the driver who committed this murder was caught immediately and claimed he was paid by the murdered woman's husband who had been separated with her wanting a divorce and his family being dependent on the loan she had taken in her name.
Naturally the drivers of the city (Bangalore this time, although the other murders are equally divided between three prosperous cities of Bombay, Bangalore and New Delhi - Old Delhi being still quite old fashioned in many respects including neighbours being far too close to allow a murder to progress without danger to perpetrators) were quite upset since everyone looked askance at every driver for quite a while, and they in truth are a decent lot. As are most poor of India, no different from the lower middle or upper midddle class for that matter in any way except fortune, which is seen as a temporary condition rather than something that can be remedied only by murder a la French or Russian revolutions.
Another small incorrect detail is about anyone in north - anyone traditional, that is - allowing a mix of two actual professions, a driver entering the kitchen and touching anything would be taboo enough much less actually cooking for the masters and mistresses. Those that don't care about caste still care about someone who has been dealing with cleaning a car cooking for them. Cooks usually are expected to be cleaner than the household they cook for, whether employed or related to those they cook for.
In fact in proper traditional homes of north India (which term includes east, west and central India, since it is nomenclature invented in south India, a peninsular quarter, to counter the term South India that they identify with) a cook has a chalk boundary around the cooking area within the kitchen which not even the owner of the household may transgress without proper bath and clean clothes. Needless to say the cook begins the work only post bathing and fresh clothes, and with a cleaned kitchen, before the chalk boundary and subsequent cooking.
And employing more than one person is de rigeur unless it is a woman employed to generally serve with a variety of household work, but that again is amongst the distictly non traditional households. A driver in particular does not cook, period.
South is more, not less, stringent on this issue. I have seen old women starve rather than adjust to circumstances on a long trip if they do not approve of the food due to some irregularity in the person or whatever of the cook, and sustain on fruit through times until a proper approvable meal is possible, even though normally "adjust" is the requirement especially from all women of India, to most circumstances. If Adiga has simultaneously cooked and chauffeured both for some master, it would be a surprisingly lax sort of employees with neither old traditional nor new awareness re cleanliness about kitchen.
As for the accident, that is a real danger for any driver in India and especially one used to rules, regulations and clear roads of west. Most so called highways, no matter if they are one lane or divided six lane or more, no matter what region, are likely to trip any driver with a pedestrian of any age or gender whatsoever crossing the highway or even walking on it, as leisurely as if it were a stroll by a queen in her own private garden with no disturbances expected. Accidents do happen, and if the vehicle happens to be a car rather than a truck driven by a poor truck driver, hell breaks loose with villagers sitting on highway and stopping traffic for miles and hours until their ego is satisfied.
Accidents on highways happening in this manner are routinely blamed on "speeding" with no reference to rules being completely ignored by anyone including victims - for example, it is common to see a vehicle of any shape or size, bikes and trucks and auto rickshaw and oxcarts and pedestrians, not only traveling in the fast lane but coming at you opposite to traffic which is with you - they are saving a few precious drops and money, and if you object can inform you that the road does not after all "belong to your papa" and if you are not dead, what is your problem? And anyone who complains is treated as someone "who makes noise" - meaning, shut up and adjust.
One has to sympathise with Pinky who went back, and cheer her for doing so. Many who wish they could in reality cannot. Her relatives protecting her (- for a policeman might just take it into his head to book her and lock her up, and this is unspeakable horror for any poor male, not to mention a delicate female, in these parts of the world where a whim of the authority matter more than actual rules much less considerations -) is normal in every way, except the driver being made to take it upon himself (with his family back in his village in accordance, since they gain prestige and money as well) which is a total horror. It - such drivers taking (or having to take) the blame for money and more - probably does happen all too often (- one suspects in some famous cases, famous due to fame of a person involved), but likely the perpetrators of such accidents are drunken rich males rather than a woman whose only wish is to return back home west.
Adiga probably chose Pinky the young wife desperate to return to US for this master class involved in accidents, rather than a powerful male (usually single and "young") drunk in small hours, the usual one at wheels of such accidents, in his tale due to his need to avoid trouble with questions about who he meant. Although if only one reads a newspaper, accidents by drunken drivers - young, well employed, single, as often as poor truck drivers supporting large families, male in both cases - do happen so commonly one can safely say they are several every week in Bangalore alone. Deaths of the said drunken drivers is quite common too. One only has to drive a bit to see trucks upended on side of highways, and read the newspaper to find out about the well employed biking or car driving young males of middle class or well to do origins.
Adiga in short has used material from reality to paint a very pseudo version of reality where details are incorrect and hence the whole picture seems false, but that does not spoil the enjoyment of the tourist variety readership that is only too happy to see some more muck (a la slum dog and so forth) thrown on the land revered for spiritual knowledge in past and seen askance with surprise for a decade now for its prosperity based on technology and intelligence, rather than cheap labour a la other poor nations that have taken away manufacture of goods - try any department store in US and try to find a dress, shoes, bags, anything at all, that is not made in Asia, particularly in China (and the label that says "Malaysia" or whatever might just mean a trade off that amounts to the label as well as the object being in fact made in China), and you might find that the only possibility is to buy fresh food (fruits and so forth might be imported, but usually donuts are made locally).
Which explains the booker, the fame, the awed reverence from readership far removed from realities of India for this work and its author.
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The title - and its explanation thereof in the work, too, - is not without its questionable nature - which is being generous in allowing for doubts, rather than calling it outright incorrect politely or plain wrong for those that prefer a spade being called a spade. (I had some colleagues who prefer to call it a bloody axe in name of frankness, but that is another level of dialogue, one too like Adiga's work and not my way.)
Adiga may or may not have grown up in Bangalore, which does have a white tiger in the zoo brought all the way from Siberia, but it is nowhere near as impressive or frightening or angry as the Bengal tigers in cages in Delhi zoo - Delhi does have better enclosures, large and with trees, water, stone houses for the particular animals - but the outdoor tiger enclave is either not suitable for new males of the species or is crowded already, in any case the indoor facility with half a dozen cages or so is filled with a tiger alone in each pacing furiously, and obviously very very angry unlike the royal lions in their spacious outdoor enclosures, or the friendly (posing for camera) bears, or the silent cheetah whom one discovers right above one's head suddenly in their fully enclosed cages unlike the other species' vertical enclosures with opening to sky.
If there is a white tiger there now, it is less than famous. Even in Bangalore it is the officials that keep pointing at the white tiger, the viewers are merely taking it as yet another design of nature. Which is true across India about colours of eyes or hair in general - colours other than the normal dark do exist even without a mixed race, and are accepted as a variation, with no relation either way to beauty.
A boy from a rural area in northern poor parts of the country is as unlikely to be impressed by much less think of a white tiger as something special. This equation of pale tigers or colourful eyes and light hair with special or beauty belongs to the regions where they exist. Which is as it should be. Orientals prefer small nose, hair free males and almond eyes - others, especially those from European ancestry, are called "foreign devils" or "barbarians" by Chinese.
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Lurid descriptions of poverty are an effective weapon to shame the place, the land, the nation and culture that one is referring to, effective as long as the intended target can be shamed and won't hit back. Few are as convenient in this as India is - poverty in US is seen by those in power as proof of laziness of those that are poor even if the real fault is with various prejudices against the race or gender or non-wasp origin of the poor, poverty of various other nations is either ascribed to similar factors or to leftist regimes.
Truth is poverty exists everywhere including in most prosperous cities of US, and few nations of central Europe have been able to keep it in check but it is due to various reasons apart from the equable distribution of wealth. And poverty is never so dire in warm or rural places as it can be in cold urban ones - someone old, sleeping with a newspaper to cover oneself against cold of January on a bench out in the park in a northeastern city of US is far more pathetic than someone on a sidewalk in Bombay. This is also why one sees far more poverty in warmer lands than in colder - in former poor can survive and do so even out in open, in latter they have to find shelter and death from cold is far more likely, starving is far more dire.
So these shaming, embarrassing descriptions of poverty are a bit like attack on virtue of a woman - it works when the woman in fact has any virtue, honour, integrity, but not if she is without principle and manipulative and likely to deny it all.
That said, fact is when one is without something that people may have across the world on the other side as a matter of routine - or for that matter next door - that is not necessarily a cause for pain or unhappiness or feeling of deprivation, whether it is parents or wherewithal. Children take for granted whatever is around, and unless there is starvation or abuse of severe nature or something really unfair in dealings of adults with them, that which they are used to is how they see and expect normal life to be. A car and a bathtub is a necessity when one is used to it from birth but really is far from a need even for transport or bathing. Most Europeans manage fairly well with public transport and most in India bathe every day with no tubs.
This extends to other circumstances such as those described by Adiga in taking this shaming of India as far as possible in descriptions of urban squalor and especially of public open toilet practiced in urban slums. Which is not to say it is pleasant or desirable as a normal part of urban life. But it is only that these poor are people that have migrated from rural areas in search of work due to landless nature of their circumstances, and if they have land in rural areas they may continue there with no plumbing with no deprivation or filth. Disposal of waste or practices of toilet in rural areas according to old fashions worked for centuries and it is only a dismal picture when the two, westernised cities and rural traditional poor, come into contact and clash. One only has to see plastic waste on sides of roads in villages as one gets closer to towns, but then plastic islands in Pacific dumped by US and now grown to size of Texas are not exactly the way to go either. It is a problem of development, in fact.
One can experience very different interpretations of "normal" across the world even within developed nations, such as US and Germany and UK, so all the more it is understandable that a readership used to two car homes is shocked with Adiga's descriptions and sees murders as justified consequence. That there are poor far closer to their own homes is easily forgotten, as is the fact that murders for no reason are common in US (massacres in schools, an old husband shooting dead his equally old wife of well over half a century one fine day due to a small quarrel, freeway shootings in spring in LA, just some factual examples over some three decades) - it is forgotten that human is not that different across the planet and just or unjust is not that diverse. Yes, often people do get mugged in US for money, and while pickpockets proliferate in Paris and Mumbai alike mugging is less common.
The unique factor to India is common or similar instead with (what one reads about) mafia of Russian new free variety, those organised gangs that hire killers for little - the objective being looting the wealthy and murders to keep them in line. The two sets of gangs are separate of course, those from Russia operate presumable in US and France (again, from what one reads or sees on television) and those that operate in India being maneuvered as puppets from other lands far closer to the Mumbai wealth. And in neither of these is poverty a factor unless one counts the killers for hire and considers how little they earn in poorer lands. Those that order the killings and manage the extortion money are not poor, by any standards.
So Adiga has in fact created a fairy tale populated mostly with demons of various sort - fairy tale in the sense that his objective is to get a reader to pity the poor servant murdering the master, if not admire and sanction morally. This in fact is what nazis did with two pronged approach - mass killings post robbing (whether rich or poor they did get robbed of all before they were killed), and propaganda against them. And seemingly he succeeds, too - he did get a booker!
Really, is booker given by people with their minds closed? To facts, to principles, to history?
Do they not realise that this being lauded might just encourage poor Hispanics or indigenous populations to massacre the wasp masters of north, and Africans to do so to Europeans - and what is more, provide them with a semblance of justification as well, since a prize winning work cannot be seen as immoral or criminal but will of necessity be seen as providing justification for murder of all comparatively well to do by those that would exchange places by any means fair or foul? And just as past begins a nano second ago, that comma there is past already, so "comparatively well to do" is anyone with a shirt more than another, a child with one piece of candy more than the next.
If awarding this work is not seen as justifying such murders, is that indicative of morality of those that gave it, with might or physical power justifying it all, and one who takes it (land, money, Kohinoor, "Elgin" marbles, whatever) away from another being in no need of justification and the act of taking it away being its own justification, murder being the sanctioning of the surviving murderer by the act itself?
Perhaps - or how else can any colonialising, occupational power live with its existence?!!
Monday, October 3, 2011
Ben Hur by Lew Wallace.
Roman occupation of Judea was no more benefic than occupations of various nations of other continents by nations from Europe in modern times, it is only that attempts to wipe out memory of that older occupation - or if not wipe out then bury it under a plethora of lies galore - is older, and conquistadores write history while wiping out that of those occupied and enslaved even in the later era. Here one sees the occupation as it was, and the crucifixions (- not only one, that of a Divine Being, but doubtless plenty of good men amongst those that were criminals against humanity and not merely against the occupying rulers -) as a part of it, unlike the later lies forced on those that chose to believe them.
This story focuses on one that was amongst the wealthy and on equal footing with the occupying Romans due to his status and education, and was enslaved during that occupation due partly to the jealousy of the rulers and particularly one that called him a friend, and partly to his having taken side with his poor people rather than the cruel occupational forces in the injustices they committed. In this he was not unlike any other freedom fighter, Divine or otherwise, but unlike his more famous contemporary (since then appropriated by the occupying colonial rulers while driving out, persecuting, falsely blaming and all but wiping out his people) persona, he was not crucified outright, but rather enslaved personally and tortured on and on. His fate and his personal qualities were his only help in freeing him - and bringing back his family to life was another matter, that of divine intervention.
This story focuses on one that was amongst the wealthy and on equal footing with the occupying Romans due to his status and education, and was enslaved during that occupation due partly to the jealousy of the rulers and particularly one that called him a friend, and partly to his having taken side with his poor people rather than the cruel occupational forces in the injustices they committed. In this he was not unlike any other freedom fighter, Divine or otherwise, but unlike his more famous contemporary (since then appropriated by the occupying colonial rulers while driving out, persecuting, falsely blaming and all but wiping out his people) persona, he was not crucified outright, but rather enslaved personally and tortured on and on. His fate and his personal qualities were his only help in freeing him - and bringing back his family to life was another matter, that of divine intervention.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006) A Memoir; by Bill Bryson.
Apart from all the fun, very informative in more than one way - from matinees being really a dark space for four thousand children to riot to match fights to how was alcohol stolen when no one distrusts neighbours, all of this in a prosperous and happy bygone era in a small town midwest US - and yet the nostalgia connects to those that lived that decade elsewhere and differently. Wonderful book.
Incidentally Bryson is a fan of my favourite show, and I have not found another one either until now, not an independant one anyway. The only difference is he watched it when he was young, and I watched it when I was finally free to relax a little post final graduation and during first serious professional post. Then it played at midnight and I stayed up to see it.
Incidentally Bryson is a fan of my favourite show, and I have not found another one either until now, not an independant one anyway. The only difference is he watched it when he was young, and I watched it when I was finally free to relax a little post final graduation and during first serious professional post. Then it played at midnight and I stayed up to see it.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Everything Is Illuminated; by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Someone young goes into unknown territory, one moreover that has been demonised where he grew up, for sake of looking up a vital piece of the past, someone who had saved his grandfather from being captured and carried to death if not killed outright. To thank someone who existed once -
Gratitude is a rare virtue, and this tale a moving example of gratitude at its best, when one may not find the person to be thanked however belatedly. Belatedly it had to be, because of the various closed borders.
Gratitude is a rare virtue, and this tale a moving example of gratitude at its best, when one may not find the person to be thanked however belatedly. Belatedly it had to be, because of the various closed borders.
Love, Life and All that Jazz; by Ahmed Faiyaz.
Language mixed beyond real or tolerable for a serious reader, local background of India and Mumbai perhaps modern, perhaps imaginary, likely both. Truly ridiculous errors like someone in India waking up while a friend or a lover in UK is already in a classroom, and this is not about those that wake up late in the afternoon. An attempt to transplant a basically western, perhaps really of US, tale onto India, with poor grafting.
Down The Road; by Ahmed Faiyaz, Rohini Kejriwal.
Collection of stories with forced language - a mix of local with some English de rigueur - local colour and perhaps not quite local audience or readership in mind when editing or ordering the collection.
The Finkler Question; by Howard Jacobson.
It is not clear if he bores the reader out of socks for the sadistic fun of whether one shall chuck it after the first page or not, obfuscating the issues he deals with by the language as well as irrelevant details and descriptions, and worse. If one does plough through, one is then certain of never ever picking up anything by this pretentious bore. At the end he refuses to make it clear if the protagonist died of the attack which may or may not have been anti Semitic, in the heart of London. The porn details sprinkled like pepper all over do not work with the anti Semitic attacks described almost off hand (any concern hidden under ponderings and obfuscating language), they merely add to bad taste overall one is left with.
Almost Single; by Advaita Kala.
Reasonably good version of the corresponding variations from UK (shopping girl, what's the name?) and US (Prada et al), but is the hidebound traditional society of India, or even (New) Delhi, gone so far ahead as to let a bunch of women live alone and work and move about so freely and survive the city? Mind you they are without their own cars (most of the time) much less a hefty bodyguard or a bunch, or even chauffeurs for that matter, needed to ensure protection against stray male attackers. But on the whole definitely a feel good variation of the books of similar sort from UK and US, without pretension of local language making it unpleasant as some other recent reads do, although not without local colour and lingo for that matter.
Cranford: by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Cranford:- Life in a small town or village in nineteenth century England described with Gaskell's skill at human lives and characters' description - human nature may be pretty much the same, hence the recognition and amusement for a reader, while material life has changed and hence the value of a detailed account by a skilled and observant author.
Mr. Harrison's Confessions:- True if amusing portrait of a small town's attempts to hook the eligible bachelor new in town.
Doom of the Griffiths:- Tale from Wales of a legendary curse on someone who Brutus-like cheated a friend he owed loyalty to, the curse coming true against all possible expectations in a very roundabout way in the precise ninth generation it was for.
Lois The Witch:- Story of an innocent English orphan young girl sent to New England to seek out her only living relative by her dying mother getting caught up in the Salem mayhem due to the prejudiced and ignorant immigrants to the new lands and accused of being a witch due to a young spiteful child's plea for calling attention to herself through accusing someone of witchcraft. Sordid example of religious persecution that would not tolerate, much less understand, differences within branches of the same religion.
Curious, if True :- A man goes about looking for descendants of his illustrious ancestor Calvin in Tours and comes upon a castle with fairy tale personae come alive albeit unrecognisable - they have proceeded to live beyond the tales and are no more the same as described but have grown in directions the authors couldn't have thought of.
Mr. Harrison's Confessions:- True if amusing portrait of a small town's attempts to hook the eligible bachelor new in town.
Doom of the Griffiths:- Tale from Wales of a legendary curse on someone who Brutus-like cheated a friend he owed loyalty to, the curse coming true against all possible expectations in a very roundabout way in the precise ninth generation it was for.
Lois The Witch:- Story of an innocent English orphan young girl sent to New England to seek out her only living relative by her dying mother getting caught up in the Salem mayhem due to the prejudiced and ignorant immigrants to the new lands and accused of being a witch due to a young spiteful child's plea for calling attention to herself through accusing someone of witchcraft. Sordid example of religious persecution that would not tolerate, much less understand, differences within branches of the same religion.
Curious, if True :- A man goes about looking for descendants of his illustrious ancestor Calvin in Tours and comes upon a castle with fairy tale personae come alive albeit unrecognisable - they have proceeded to live beyond the tales and are no more the same as described but have grown in directions the authors couldn't have thought of.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
My Feudal Lord; by Tehmina Durrani.
Tehmina Durrani portrays a life with all its contexts - a nation formed on basis of an intolerant creed (and then she claims that democracy took root in India while in Pakistan it did not, as if democracy were a weed that accidentally takes root rather than a creed that needs protection of thought and action in every sphere of life by a nation awake to alternatives and not willing to allow them), a creed that demands much out of women but allows a lot of leeway to males no matter what is supposed to be done in name of fairness if anything, a powerful male who therefore can play with women as he chooses and break them for the fun of it, a society that is supposed to be intolerant of adultery but allows it between two married people as long as the male partner in the said fornication is one with power of various sorts, a society that flouts much when it is a question of money or power or spending on luxuries like carpets and paintings but thinks that an education is matriculation in a convent school with no other objective than teaching a girl how to look seemly in society, and much much more.
One of the most interesting points is about a society so hell bent on a skin colour never mind the supposed equality inherent in creed, that "whitewashing" one's descendants by marrying "white" women and producing offspring through them into one's nation and creed and family name is as common as status and money can allow the male. This is so extreme as to have the darker children of people proud of their skin suffer from the mother's disdain and harsh treatment with the grandmother explaining to the hurt children how they can win the said mother's love by lightening their skin and other servile methods. This is presumably much more harsh on daughters of the said mothers who hate their own darker progeny. And yet a constant theme amongst expats is the equality of all men in the creed, irrespective of colour of skin.
Durrani fails to connect the hypocrisy with hollowness of the basis of formation of her nation although she does manage to rise above some of her severe beginning handicaps and her subsequent fallings including into adultery and slavehood status to a second husband who abused her in every possible way after having wrenched her away from her loving first husband. She sees the point about her not loving her first husband in spite of his being a loving and gentle person while the second is anything but; nevertheless the desire to reinstate herself in her parents' society as acceptable socially after the dual handicap of a dark skin and a husband of lesser class (and they say they have no caste barriers!) is too powerful to stop her from getting caught in a marriage of abusive years and years.
That she finally managed to escape and survive is supposed to be a great victory of freedom with bugles - and the fact that many women in similar circumstances do not manage to escape but die sooner or later in the abusive relationship makes it true enough. That she does not see the hypocrisy and gaps of logic and information of her background says she has miles galore to go before she begins to comprehend just where the handicaps and hypocrisies begin.
One of the most interesting points is about a society so hell bent on a skin colour never mind the supposed equality inherent in creed, that "whitewashing" one's descendants by marrying "white" women and producing offspring through them into one's nation and creed and family name is as common as status and money can allow the male. This is so extreme as to have the darker children of people proud of their skin suffer from the mother's disdain and harsh treatment with the grandmother explaining to the hurt children how they can win the said mother's love by lightening their skin and other servile methods. This is presumably much more harsh on daughters of the said mothers who hate their own darker progeny. And yet a constant theme amongst expats is the equality of all men in the creed, irrespective of colour of skin.
Durrani fails to connect the hypocrisy with hollowness of the basis of formation of her nation although she does manage to rise above some of her severe beginning handicaps and her subsequent fallings including into adultery and slavehood status to a second husband who abused her in every possible way after having wrenched her away from her loving first husband. She sees the point about her not loving her first husband in spite of his being a loving and gentle person while the second is anything but; nevertheless the desire to reinstate herself in her parents' society as acceptable socially after the dual handicap of a dark skin and a husband of lesser class (and they say they have no caste barriers!) is too powerful to stop her from getting caught in a marriage of abusive years and years.
That she finally managed to escape and survive is supposed to be a great victory of freedom with bugles - and the fact that many women in similar circumstances do not manage to escape but die sooner or later in the abusive relationship makes it true enough. That she does not see the hypocrisy and gaps of logic and information of her background says she has miles galore to go before she begins to comprehend just where the handicaps and hypocrisies begin.
The Motorcycle Diaries; by Ernesto Che Guevara.
If one comes to this book with any sort of expectations whether from having a glorified image of the author's life and work or - like I did - due to a strong impact of the film made after the book, repeating the journey of the two young boys well over a half a century later when the circumstances of the people of the continent are not really changed for better, especially those of the indigenous people of the continents, one is bound to be disappointed. This is unadulterated diary of a young male of that era, and whatever else he understood or learned or was impressed with that led to his life and work is here only fleetingly while the prejudices of his own roots often enough do show. He says more than once that he has not thought it proper to add to what he wrote then in publishing it later; fair enough.
If one does wish for a better view of the formation of the man that he became later, the visual impressions left by the film do a much better work of giving one what he saw and what impressions it left. One could, of course, undertake to repeat the journey oneself. One might however find the roads and other conditions not improved, and one's fitness to undergo such an ordeal must be taken into account beforehand. Personally I would take note of all the difficulties of roads mentioned herein before even a touristic travel to see the splendours of the continent, whether of cultural history or nature. Pity one could not do it while young and healthy.
If one does wish for a better view of the formation of the man that he became later, the visual impressions left by the film do a much better work of giving one what he saw and what impressions it left. One could, of course, undertake to repeat the journey oneself. One might however find the roads and other conditions not improved, and one's fitness to undergo such an ordeal must be taken into account beforehand. Personally I would take note of all the difficulties of roads mentioned herein before even a touristic travel to see the splendours of the continent, whether of cultural history or nature. Pity one could not do it while young and healthy.
The Tell-Tale Brain; by V. S. Ramachandran.
An interesting review of brain from a well known neurologist, for professionals and for those not in the profession. The author is either ambivalent about some aspects of his work and conclusions thereof - conclusions neither necessary logically nor valid logically but drawn nevertheless usually by most so called rationalists - or unwilling to look a bit further and see more. Correlation does not necessarily amount to a causal relation, much less necessarily one way, he and his ilk ought to remember.
A User's Guide to the Brain; by John J. Ratey.
Could have been written or edited better, but from point of view of information provided especially to non professionals very interesting, valuable, and so forth.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Fingerprints of the Gods: by Graham Hancock.
After finishing this one, with a few books read in between, I happened to pick up Chariots of Gods by Daniken, and was surprised - first, that I had not read it before (seen and heard about it often, though without anybody mentioning anything about its contents), and second, that this book is like an exercise at checking out various facts mentioned by Daniken in Chariots of Gods - Hancock goes into all of it at length and gives a different theory about it, one more suited to present times with more known about space and universe, albeit just as novel for standard scholars of the subjects; then he recants it all in a chapter after the book itself is finished, chapter giving an interview on BBC.
The following is the original review as I wrote it, with the above as it ought to occur, as a postscript - except that Chariots of Gods did come first and so does deserve to be mentioned before, which is why the paragraph above is left where it is at risk of duplication.
(May 6, 2011)
It is taking long to finish not because it is not attractive but on the contrary - it gives so much to think and mull over, one needs time to go over and go back to the book again before reading more, rather than finishing it like a racy read all at one go.
Gives a lot of information and raises a great many questions too, about various parts of the world that were supposed to be unknown until comparatively recently in human history.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
.....................................................
This book was in reading for nearly two years, perhaps longer, when the above was written; one reading over, I suspect it could take another or more before a good comprehension of all that goes into the theory formed here is well understood in detail. It is an intriguing theory, or rather, a banquet of many many theories brought together with much detail of facts around the world from archeological and legendary nature investigated.
When one finishes reading this, one would like to go on and know more and investigate more about the various possibilities. And then one goes on to read the BBC interview where the author reverses much of his revolutionary thinking, and whether in an attempt to placate the historians or otherwise simply bows down to the establishment and their comfortable assertions about age of civilisation et al.
This is where the cursory nature of his looking at legends around this world by whatever name comes in. Fact is people of various disciplines - sciences, history, archeology, whatever - of western establishment, and therefore of most of the world, do not dare to cross the church even when they are against all religion and avowed rationalists according to their own affirmations; their subconscious plays tricks and does not allow them to disobey several dicta of the institution that once burned people alive for daring to disagree, forever calling them heretics and making it sound like that was the greatest atrocity one could think of. So they might claim they do not care for religion or church but would face a huge wall of opposition all the more for the crossing of various bases of church dogma, which of course includes the age of civilisation.
And yet, by what miracle of meditation could another civilisation halfway around the world have known of the fact that the Himaalaya rose out of the ocean, or have a theory of evolution (cloaked in story of Divine appearances or Descent on the earth in successive stages), millennia before Darwin, is a question worth asking.
Moreover there is the engineering feat as well of bringing down Himaalayan mighty river Gangaa by one man, a legend firmly established and worth investigating.) This contradicts the theory that the civilisation is only a few millennia old like the church says. (Alternative, after science in recent decades having established the fact of the rising of Himaalaya from the ocean - just like the old, old legend goes in India since ancient times, is that India knows of such facts due to the sheer brilliance of its thinkers and seers who have extraordinary perception into knowledge west cannot imagine how, since very ancient times; which could be all too correct as well!
Although one must say this author too does the usual callous thing of taking an immense trove of knowledge and taking a few things and attempting to fit them to his own theory - for example, the interpreting of Samudramanthan (churning of oceans - by Gods and their opponents) as the apparently turning of heavens observed from an earth in process of the crust slipping over the core. This interpretation is suited to the theory of the author, but he forgets the churning is supposed to have brought up Himaalaya out of the oceans on the earth, not the Milky Way as the author interprets the ocean. So one needs to think over the discrepancy of the new interpretation and the known and understood one.
So never mind the recanting of the whole cataclysms periodically destroying advanced civilisations theory by the author for various reasons of his unknown to the reader, fact is some of it is known to be true and some seems to fit in with the various stories and legends. Precession of the axis of rotation is true and the changeover from Pisces to Aquarius is expected soon (although he does not make it clear how it happens, does the spring equinox shift to 21 February suddenly or is Aquarius already close to rising with the sun on 21 March, for one thing; and how is this related to the precession of the equinoxes, or is it separate, for another; and so forth); and so is the periodic shifting of the poles, even reversing, while the magnetic poles are already known to have been shifting and are away from the geographic poles. The author mentions and semi explains some of this, repeating but not explaining some parts very well.
Earth crust development theory is startling, unsettling, and one must admit it gives sleepless nights all the more so with a possible next date (21 December 2012) provided with ancient unexplained calculations from Mayan or older civilisations for the end of this civilisation as we know it. Global warming unsettling the earth is yet another factor known to scientists as well as people who do not live with their minds blinkered by the unwillingness to change gas guzzling habits. The latter makes the former seem plausibly loom on the horizon.
Why the author - having established after strenuous arguments that the engineering feats of the older buildings in Egypt and Mexico and Peru and so forth, with details of monoliths placed interlocking in huge structures and so on - now turns around and says they are the work of the known civilisations after all (who produced much inferior structures soon thereafter, which was his first argument for a much older and lost civilisation with tremendous knowledge of various kinds), is unclear - since he merely recants and gives no argument other than being convinced by the establishment after all with its theories he has fought so valiantly through the book.
All in all, much food for thought.
.......................................
After finishing this one, with a few books read in between, I happened to pick up Chariots of Gods by Daniken, and was surprised - first, that I had not read it before (seen and heard about it often, though without anybody mentioning anything about its contents), and second, that this book is like an exercise at checking out various facts mentioned by Daniken in Chariots of Gods - Hancock goes into all of it at length and gives a different theory about it, one more suited to present times with more known about space and universe, albeit just as novel for standard scholars of the subjects; then he recants it all in a chapter after the book itself is finished, chapter giving an interview on BBC.
(May 6, 2011)
The following is the original review as I wrote it, with the above as it ought to occur, as a postscript - except that Chariots of Gods did come first and so does deserve to be mentioned before, which is why the paragraph above is left where it is at risk of duplication.
(May 6, 2011)
It is taking long to finish not because it is not attractive but on the contrary - it gives so much to think and mull over, one needs time to go over and go back to the book again before reading more, rather than finishing it like a racy read all at one go.
Gives a lot of information and raises a great many questions too, about various parts of the world that were supposed to be unknown until comparatively recently in human history.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
.....................................................
This book was in reading for nearly two years, perhaps longer, when the above was written; one reading over, I suspect it could take another or more before a good comprehension of all that goes into the theory formed here is well understood in detail. It is an intriguing theory, or rather, a banquet of many many theories brought together with much detail of facts around the world from archeological and legendary nature investigated.
When one finishes reading this, one would like to go on and know more and investigate more about the various possibilities. And then one goes on to read the BBC interview where the author reverses much of his revolutionary thinking, and whether in an attempt to placate the historians or otherwise simply bows down to the establishment and their comfortable assertions about age of civilisation et al.
This is where the cursory nature of his looking at legends around this world by whatever name comes in. Fact is people of various disciplines - sciences, history, archeology, whatever - of western establishment, and therefore of most of the world, do not dare to cross the church even when they are against all religion and avowed rationalists according to their own affirmations; their subconscious plays tricks and does not allow them to disobey several dicta of the institution that once burned people alive for daring to disagree, forever calling them heretics and making it sound like that was the greatest atrocity one could think of. So they might claim they do not care for religion or church but would face a huge wall of opposition all the more for the crossing of various bases of church dogma, which of course includes the age of civilisation.
And yet, by what miracle of meditation could another civilisation halfway around the world have known of the fact that the Himaalaya rose out of the ocean, or have a theory of evolution (cloaked in story of Divine appearances or Descent on the earth in successive stages), millennia before Darwin, is a question worth asking.
Moreover there is the engineering feat as well of bringing down Himaalayan mighty river Gangaa by one man, a legend firmly established and worth investigating.) This contradicts the theory that the civilisation is only a few millennia old like the church says. (Alternative, after science in recent decades having established the fact of the rising of Himaalaya from the ocean - just like the old, old legend goes in India since ancient times, is that India knows of such facts due to the sheer brilliance of its thinkers and seers who have extraordinary perception into knowledge west cannot imagine how, since very ancient times; which could be all too correct as well!
Although one must say this author too does the usual callous thing of taking an immense trove of knowledge and taking a few things and attempting to fit them to his own theory - for example, the interpreting of Samudramanthan (churning of oceans - by Gods and their opponents) as the apparently turning of heavens observed from an earth in process of the crust slipping over the core. This interpretation is suited to the theory of the author, but he forgets the churning is supposed to have brought up Himaalaya out of the oceans on the earth, not the Milky Way as the author interprets the ocean. So one needs to think over the discrepancy of the new interpretation and the known and understood one.
So never mind the recanting of the whole cataclysms periodically destroying advanced civilisations theory by the author for various reasons of his unknown to the reader, fact is some of it is known to be true and some seems to fit in with the various stories and legends. Precession of the axis of rotation is true and the changeover from Pisces to Aquarius is expected soon (although he does not make it clear how it happens, does the spring equinox shift to 21 February suddenly or is Aquarius already close to rising with the sun on 21 March, for one thing; and how is this related to the precession of the equinoxes, or is it separate, for another; and so forth); and so is the periodic shifting of the poles, even reversing, while the magnetic poles are already known to have been shifting and are away from the geographic poles. The author mentions and semi explains some of this, repeating but not explaining some parts very well.
Earth crust development theory is startling, unsettling, and one must admit it gives sleepless nights all the more so with a possible next date (21 December 2012) provided with ancient unexplained calculations from Mayan or older civilisations for the end of this civilisation as we know it. Global warming unsettling the earth is yet another factor known to scientists as well as people who do not live with their minds blinkered by the unwillingness to change gas guzzling habits. The latter makes the former seem plausibly loom on the horizon.
Why the author - having established after strenuous arguments that the engineering feats of the older buildings in Egypt and Mexico and Peru and so forth, with details of monoliths placed interlocking in huge structures and so on - now turns around and says they are the work of the known civilisations after all (who produced much inferior structures soon thereafter, which was his first argument for a much older and lost civilisation with tremendous knowledge of various kinds), is unclear - since he merely recants and gives no argument other than being convinced by the establishment after all with its theories he has fought so valiantly through the book.
All in all, much food for thought.
.......................................
After finishing this one, with a few books read in between, I happened to pick up Chariots of Gods by Daniken, and was surprised - first, that I had not read it before (seen and heard about it often, though without anybody mentioning anything about its contents), and second, that this book is like an exercise at checking out various facts mentioned by Daniken in Chariots of Gods - Hancock goes into all of it at length and gives a different theory about it, one more suited to present times with more known about space and universe, albeit just as novel for standard scholars of the subjects; then he recants it all in a chapter after the book itself is finished, chapter giving an interview on BBC.
(May 6, 2011)
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Prime Obsession: by John Derbyshire.
The book and the style of writing are maddening, especially coming from a professional in the field - as often as not one wishes one could do more than raise eyebrows in a civilised manner and simply bop the fellow one on head, hard. It is bad enough he downplays or speaks degradingly of his professional colleagues in general, although not anyone in particular. He also refuses to provide extremely simple proofs claiming "that way lies madness" thus depriving non professionals of an opportunity of being charmed with the beauty of the subject of Mathematics. Why he feels the need so desperately to kowtow to idiots by disparaging the subject, the profession, the people in the profession, and so on, is difficult to comprehend for anyone unfamiliar with the atmosphere in general from early schools to colleges to universities - indeed generally any institutions short of stature compared to, say, Princeton or thereabouts - where jocks are worshipped and those capable of thought are abused verbally and in almost every other way beginning with epithets such as nerd, geek et al (and then comes the resentment against other cultures that actually do study, worship knowledge, and reap benefits of intelligence era in work and employment); but still, he need not have assumed the reader of such a book would have the same idiot bully attitude or that he would be stoned to death if he did not disparage his subject and badmouth it.
All that is bad enough, but having gone through the book it is far more maddening to find extremely important clues missing, almost as if he is afraid a stray reader might solve the Riemann hypothesis while reading this if he provided the important clues. He covers his back by mentioning that Mathematicians do handwave and leave gaps that are expected to be filled by the audience, but those are the sort that are more obvious, and one is not expected in the course of a lecture or a series of lectures in the subject to know why a sum of an infinite series of powers of positive integers becomes zero at negative even numbers even if the said sum can be shown to equal an infinite product of inverse terms involving primes, all primes. If one is needled, one has to go through the book over and over to find somewhere hidden in a corner a mention that a third expression for the same function is a product including sine function with half pi integer multiple, but if he has given why the third expression is equal to the other two infinite ones, one a sum and another a product, that is far too well hidden - or one has missed it due to some miracle.
All this exasperation and the double wish the book generates, one regarding going into the subject and another about bopping the fellow a few times on the head, still strangely enough does not do away with the fact that the book is very worth reading for someone not already deep in the subject. For those very familiar with all the mathematics herein I suppose the history nevertheless is extremely interesting. One does feel an immense sense of gratitude to all those great geniuses for not bending their minds to reap immediate rewards for personal benefit.
All that is bad enough, but having gone through the book it is far more maddening to find extremely important clues missing, almost as if he is afraid a stray reader might solve the Riemann hypothesis while reading this if he provided the important clues. He covers his back by mentioning that Mathematicians do handwave and leave gaps that are expected to be filled by the audience, but those are the sort that are more obvious, and one is not expected in the course of a lecture or a series of lectures in the subject to know why a sum of an infinite series of powers of positive integers becomes zero at negative even numbers even if the said sum can be shown to equal an infinite product of inverse terms involving primes, all primes. If one is needled, one has to go through the book over and over to find somewhere hidden in a corner a mention that a third expression for the same function is a product including sine function with half pi integer multiple, but if he has given why the third expression is equal to the other two infinite ones, one a sum and another a product, that is far too well hidden - or one has missed it due to some miracle.
All this exasperation and the double wish the book generates, one regarding going into the subject and another about bopping the fellow a few times on the head, still strangely enough does not do away with the fact that the book is very worth reading for someone not already deep in the subject. For those very familiar with all the mathematics herein I suppose the history nevertheless is extremely interesting. One does feel an immense sense of gratitude to all those great geniuses for not bending their minds to reap immediate rewards for personal benefit.
Fermat's Last Theorem: by Simon Singh.
Anyone who needs being reminded that there are mountain peaks of people out there through history past and present, and shall in all likelihood always be, far more brilliant and dedicated and hard working and perhaps lucky - some far from lucky but possession of all the other aforenamed virtues to larger extents - then that person can do no better than to pick up this little volume and read it start to finish. If then it makes one feel very small indeed, so one finds it hard to live with oneself and call oneself a human belonging to the same species as these giants, one better make sure one is in close proximity with someone who reminds oneself why one deserves to live.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Only Time Will Tell: by Jeffrey Archer.
If Archer does not come forth with a sequel, soon and satisfactory, one would not mind him being sent back in for a while to encourage him towards the process. The book is not only that good but drives one to fury ending the way it does, with an innocent victim of circumstance - and a poor bright one too, generally adored one on top of all his other excellent qualities - looking at the noose he not only did nothing to deserve but far more.
Generally I am beginning to suspect there has been at least one very high profile real story in English "society" of this nature: not only this is the second time Archer is writing about an upper strata bounder being vicious to the child he fathered and the woman who is supporting the said child, but there too is the work of Catherine Cookson with the basically similar storyline albeit very different plot and characters.
Generally I am beginning to suspect there has been at least one very high profile real story in English "society" of this nature: not only this is the second time Archer is writing about an upper strata bounder being vicious to the child he fathered and the woman who is supporting the said child, but there too is the work of Catherine Cookson with the basically similar storyline albeit very different plot and characters.
Chariots of the Gods: by Erich Daniken.
Many real mysteries, many questions, ... a must read.
In details this is the book that evoked many questions, and brought much to notice of general intelligent well informed reader that was swept under the rug by historians and archeologists alike in their prejudiced bibliophile view. Graham later went about exploring the places mentioned here and produced a huge tome with a completely different theory to explain the same phenomena, before recanting it. Daeniken gives the space travellers theory with much conviction on his part as to its being the only explanation and a need of human future, but he does give a good deal of details of world past in the process of his reasoning. Today we know a bit more about for example Mars, still, all in all this is worth a read.
In details this is the book that evoked many questions, and brought much to notice of general intelligent well informed reader that was swept under the rug by historians and archeologists alike in their prejudiced bibliophile view. Graham later went about exploring the places mentioned here and produced a huge tome with a completely different theory to explain the same phenomena, before recanting it. Daeniken gives the space travellers theory with much conviction on his part as to its being the only explanation and a need of human future, but he does give a good deal of details of world past in the process of his reasoning. Today we know a bit more about for example Mars, still, all in all this is worth a read.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Long Walk: by Slavomir Rawicz.
Astounding, amazing story of grit and determination to survive, walking four thousand miles from Siberia to India. Based on true story - and there was more than one such story of survival, with another of escapees from Russia walking to Persia. One has to salute human spirit, and thank whatever brought the very uplifting tale to one's notice.
Amos Barton: by George Eliot.
For an early work this story has amazing insight into human nature and behaviour, along with a detailed description of the place and time, and also usage of the language far more extensive than what one is used to during 20th century even before the sms era.
Even if one knows nothing of the author it is easy to suspect post finishing the book that this is an autobiographical tale, and it mainly at heart is a very deeply loving daughter's heartbreaking tribute to her very beautiful and universally loved mother who was also a very good person, along with the outward story that is a factual exoneration of her father of a false blame and suspicion harboured by silly neighbours of the parish who could not imagine a beautiful woman taking an extensive stay with a family of a man of cloth even if his own wife was beautiful, much loved by all including himself, and very much present on premises.
Why the author could not show details of the family post the departure of the mother is what one immediately questions after finishing this abruptly ending tale - along with such questions as what happened to other children (only two are mentioned, did the rest die as children did of decease and starvation in poverty in Europe those days?) and why Patty did not marry. That can be only explained by the surmise that this is the story of Mary Ann Evans who took the pen name of George Eliot in order to be able to write in peace and publish at all (- misogyny was not so violent then as now what with crimes against women being more violent and explicit by the day, but women were not seen as people who could think and were certainly not allowed to write and publish, and being an exception was a harsh struggle, so Bronte sisters had male names to publish too as did Madam Sand -) and that she did not marry due to the horror and pathos of the marriage of her mother who died so early in her life, compounded by the fact that there was no dowry for Patty or Mary Ann Evans to help her marry with security of a middle class life, since her father was a poor man of cloth with several children to feed and clothe and shelter.
One cannot but help compare here, since it is very pertinent and relevant - Barton in all his poverty and ordinary Englishman's life and persona of someone who has been to university and is involved day to day in matters intellectual and religious (for Barton approaches religion and sermons within strictly the intellectual realm and bores his parish stiff, enabling them to distance themselves until they sympathise with his loss of his wife) and little or none of the luxuries or power in his life or riches for that matter, is nonetheless no different from the Mongol (Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and the close relatives of Kublai Khan that settled in India routed via Persia bringing that nomenclature) emperor Shah Jahan who built that extravagant mausoleum for his wife on top of the revered temple of the majority religion of the country, achieving two shots in one; both the women were worn out by extensive childbearing beyond their health capability and died due to this " excessive love from the husband", a husband who was incapable of forbearing his sexual appetite even when the consequences endangered the wife's health to the point of death.
Perhaps the only difference is that Barton (or Evans) had no harem to satisfy his needs elsewhere while preserving the loved wife's health and life, and Shah Jahan did but wore out the one loved nevertheless. Amelia Barton died after giving birth to seven children (or is it eight?) and Mumtaj Mahal to fourteen, but then the latter had servants galore to do all her work and take care of her as well, and no lack of physicians or food or remedies of any sort available around in half the known world.
Milly Barton was poor, overworked, starving, worrying about her children being fed and clothed, and paying the bills in all honour.
This says two separate and related things to any aware reader - one, those involved in intellectual and spiritual line of work are likely to be poor as a rule, whether vicars and curates of England or Brahmans of India or rabbis of Jewish diaspora anywhere for that matter, and especially more so when they have families of their own to support and are not allowed to make money by using any skills since they are men of cloth or are Brahmans as indeed they are not by tradition allowed in most of these cases. And two, the only difference in the various traditions mentioned here is that in the older ones the Brahman or the rabbi is at least nominally most respected member of the society while a curate or a vicar is not accorded that social respect without backing of independent wealth, which in fact gets him a better living too.
Positions of vicar, curate, etc might be obtained by anybody and are not hereditary, but that in practice merely means that the positions are either bought by someone for the person appointed or are doled out as a favour to someone for some reason for the favour; as a consequence those richer get higher positions and those from poor background get less paid ones if at all, in church as well in trade or military or any other sphere of work.
On thinking it over, men inheriting their father's trade is not so far off this buying of positions, since most poor in the world are limited to what knowledge their parents can provide them as heritage; and women all over the world are limited even now with everyone seeing them as reproductive functionaries and food preparing and other services providers, to be browbeaten and blackmailed and threatened into it irrespective of time, place, relationship, occasion, whatever.
Indeed the only women that escape it might be born princesses and queens regina of Europe, if any. Others may fight back, but this merely makes life unpleasant, and this is the choice offered them socially as a weapon to force them to submit - until they do submit they are constantly attacked. I have heard a supposedly educated scientist from space agency of Europe questioning sexual capacity of a very famous high profile chief of a computer firm only because he heard about her being appointed in that position, and he went worse from that point. Till date I suspect most people hold him innocent in the huge quarrel we had and of course he probably does not mention his wrongs if indeed he is aware of them, but then even if he did they would not seem wrong to most people but only humour, not to be taken seriously or pointed out the wrongs of seriously. He in fact said it was different if he made racist jokes, which he would not, and was very angry when informed it was not different at all.
His wife wanted to discuss caste system of India, and was nonplussed when pointed out that her not requiring her sons or husband to help her in the kitchen but requiring or expecting any woman around irrespective of age, including any casual visitor or invited guests or new acquaintances, was caste system.
Most men and probably most women too would think this is harsh against Barton and against someone who spent twenty years and millions of public fund to build the most famous mausoleum in the world, since men's sexual needs are held not only incontrollable but sacrosanct, with rape considered natural and of no consequence and in fact the woman's fault for being raped (why was she there, what did she were, did she not encourage it and want it and if so how does anyone prove it, what difference does it make unless it is a damage to her husband or father's honour) through most of the world even now when law is changing and some lip service to a woman's right to be not assaulted is paid at some places around the world.
But fact is, these women died of their husbands "love" for them, thoughtless as it was and driven by the physical needs of the husbands, and what difference does a tombstone or a mausoleum make to the one that is dead?
If that is not convincing, consider what a man - any man anywhere in the world - would say offered the same alternative, of repeated usage and death in youth with a handsome mausoleum as a memento to the "love". It is a no brainer - men would club anyone suggesting this to death, with no memorial.
Even if one knows nothing of the author it is easy to suspect post finishing the book that this is an autobiographical tale, and it mainly at heart is a very deeply loving daughter's heartbreaking tribute to her very beautiful and universally loved mother who was also a very good person, along with the outward story that is a factual exoneration of her father of a false blame and suspicion harboured by silly neighbours of the parish who could not imagine a beautiful woman taking an extensive stay with a family of a man of cloth even if his own wife was beautiful, much loved by all including himself, and very much present on premises.
Why the author could not show details of the family post the departure of the mother is what one immediately questions after finishing this abruptly ending tale - along with such questions as what happened to other children (only two are mentioned, did the rest die as children did of decease and starvation in poverty in Europe those days?) and why Patty did not marry. That can be only explained by the surmise that this is the story of Mary Ann Evans who took the pen name of George Eliot in order to be able to write in peace and publish at all (- misogyny was not so violent then as now what with crimes against women being more violent and explicit by the day, but women were not seen as people who could think and were certainly not allowed to write and publish, and being an exception was a harsh struggle, so Bronte sisters had male names to publish too as did Madam Sand -) and that she did not marry due to the horror and pathos of the marriage of her mother who died so early in her life, compounded by the fact that there was no dowry for Patty or Mary Ann Evans to help her marry with security of a middle class life, since her father was a poor man of cloth with several children to feed and clothe and shelter.
One cannot but help compare here, since it is very pertinent and relevant - Barton in all his poverty and ordinary Englishman's life and persona of someone who has been to university and is involved day to day in matters intellectual and religious (for Barton approaches religion and sermons within strictly the intellectual realm and bores his parish stiff, enabling them to distance themselves until they sympathise with his loss of his wife) and little or none of the luxuries or power in his life or riches for that matter, is nonetheless no different from the Mongol (Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and the close relatives of Kublai Khan that settled in India routed via Persia bringing that nomenclature) emperor Shah Jahan who built that extravagant mausoleum for his wife on top of the revered temple of the majority religion of the country, achieving two shots in one; both the women were worn out by extensive childbearing beyond their health capability and died due to this " excessive love from the husband", a husband who was incapable of forbearing his sexual appetite even when the consequences endangered the wife's health to the point of death.
Perhaps the only difference is that Barton (or Evans) had no harem to satisfy his needs elsewhere while preserving the loved wife's health and life, and Shah Jahan did but wore out the one loved nevertheless. Amelia Barton died after giving birth to seven children (or is it eight?) and Mumtaj Mahal to fourteen, but then the latter had servants galore to do all her work and take care of her as well, and no lack of physicians or food or remedies of any sort available around in half the known world.
Milly Barton was poor, overworked, starving, worrying about her children being fed and clothed, and paying the bills in all honour.
This says two separate and related things to any aware reader - one, those involved in intellectual and spiritual line of work are likely to be poor as a rule, whether vicars and curates of England or Brahmans of India or rabbis of Jewish diaspora anywhere for that matter, and especially more so when they have families of their own to support and are not allowed to make money by using any skills since they are men of cloth or are Brahmans as indeed they are not by tradition allowed in most of these cases. And two, the only difference in the various traditions mentioned here is that in the older ones the Brahman or the rabbi is at least nominally most respected member of the society while a curate or a vicar is not accorded that social respect without backing of independent wealth, which in fact gets him a better living too.
Positions of vicar, curate, etc might be obtained by anybody and are not hereditary, but that in practice merely means that the positions are either bought by someone for the person appointed or are doled out as a favour to someone for some reason for the favour; as a consequence those richer get higher positions and those from poor background get less paid ones if at all, in church as well in trade or military or any other sphere of work.
On thinking it over, men inheriting their father's trade is not so far off this buying of positions, since most poor in the world are limited to what knowledge their parents can provide them as heritage; and women all over the world are limited even now with everyone seeing them as reproductive functionaries and food preparing and other services providers, to be browbeaten and blackmailed and threatened into it irrespective of time, place, relationship, occasion, whatever.
Indeed the only women that escape it might be born princesses and queens regina of Europe, if any. Others may fight back, but this merely makes life unpleasant, and this is the choice offered them socially as a weapon to force them to submit - until they do submit they are constantly attacked. I have heard a supposedly educated scientist from space agency of Europe questioning sexual capacity of a very famous high profile chief of a computer firm only because he heard about her being appointed in that position, and he went worse from that point. Till date I suspect most people hold him innocent in the huge quarrel we had and of course he probably does not mention his wrongs if indeed he is aware of them, but then even if he did they would not seem wrong to most people but only humour, not to be taken seriously or pointed out the wrongs of seriously. He in fact said it was different if he made racist jokes, which he would not, and was very angry when informed it was not different at all.
His wife wanted to discuss caste system of India, and was nonplussed when pointed out that her not requiring her sons or husband to help her in the kitchen but requiring or expecting any woman around irrespective of age, including any casual visitor or invited guests or new acquaintances, was caste system.
Most men and probably most women too would think this is harsh against Barton and against someone who spent twenty years and millions of public fund to build the most famous mausoleum in the world, since men's sexual needs are held not only incontrollable but sacrosanct, with rape considered natural and of no consequence and in fact the woman's fault for being raped (why was she there, what did she were, did she not encourage it and want it and if so how does anyone prove it, what difference does it make unless it is a damage to her husband or father's honour) through most of the world even now when law is changing and some lip service to a woman's right to be not assaulted is paid at some places around the world.
But fact is, these women died of their husbands "love" for them, thoughtless as it was and driven by the physical needs of the husbands, and what difference does a tombstone or a mausoleum make to the one that is dead?
If that is not convincing, consider what a man - any man anywhere in the world - would say offered the same alternative, of repeated usage and death in youth with a handsome mausoleum as a memento to the "love". It is a no brainer - men would club anyone suggesting this to death, with no memorial.
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March 10, 2011.
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Sunday, March 6, 2011
Silas Marner: by George Eliot.
The story of two men, and a little girl, and rectitude and values, ethics and right choices, loss and redemption, love and caring and the joy they bring to life.
The wealthy young man married in what moment of temptation is left unsaid, but he did wish to not only keep his family hidden for fear of his society, he was in love with a good young woman, and did not wish to lose her. When the wife turned up in the village and was found dead - due to starvation and cold, having been neglected by the husband - he took the opportunity to say nothing about his connection.
The little child had wandered into the home of a stranger to the village society who had left a traumatic past behind him in the city, where he was persecuted due to his epileptic fits being mislabeled as dealings with devil and he had been thrown out of his work and his life. He had lived for years in the village, but connected with humanity only when he found the child in his home shortly after being robbed of all his money, all his saving, and insisted the child was his to protect and care for.
The father of the child let that be - and so lost the only child he was ever going to have, as it turned out.
Silas Marner gained a life by his act, his choice and his heart's truth in giving love and care to an orphan as he thought the child was. The father of the child lost all but his wealth by deliberately not acclaiming the child he knew was his, and while he married the good woman he loved, he knew he was not good enough for either her or her love, since he was an untruthful unworthy man by virtue of having denied his wife and his child, having neglected one until she died of starvation and cold, and having not claimed the child so she was taken and raised as an orphan by another man, who found the whole village gather round him in the process.
One of the most touching tales about human relationships, mistakes and redemption, crime and sin, fate and choices.
Silas Marner found life, and love of a daughter, with the little girl wandering in and falling asleep at his hearth; it was not his duty but a choice he made to keep the little one he could ill afford. Meanwhile her natural and legal father has refrained from admitting his family, falsified his identity in relation to the family he would not own, for sake of the good young woman he loved, and he lost much in the process of fall from rectitude.
The wealthy young man married in what moment of temptation is left unsaid, but he did wish to not only keep his family hidden for fear of his society, he was in love with a good young woman, and did not wish to lose her. When the wife turned up in the village and was found dead - due to starvation and cold, having been neglected by the husband - he took the opportunity to say nothing about his connection.
The little child had wandered into the home of a stranger to the village society who had left a traumatic past behind him in the city, where he was persecuted due to his epileptic fits being mislabeled as dealings with devil and he had been thrown out of his work and his life. He had lived for years in the village, but connected with humanity only when he found the child in his home shortly after being robbed of all his money, all his saving, and insisted the child was his to protect and care for.
The father of the child let that be - and so lost the only child he was ever going to have, as it turned out.
Silas Marner gained a life by his act, his choice and his heart's truth in giving love and care to an orphan as he thought the child was. The father of the child lost all but his wealth by deliberately not acclaiming the child he knew was his, and while he married the good woman he loved, he knew he was not good enough for either her or her love, since he was an untruthful unworthy man by virtue of having denied his wife and his child, having neglected one until she died of starvation and cold, and having not claimed the child so she was taken and raised as an orphan by another man, who found the whole village gather round him in the process.
One of the most touching tales about human relationships, mistakes and redemption, crime and sin, fate and choices.
Silas Marner found life, and love of a daughter, with the little girl wandering in and falling asleep at his hearth; it was not his duty but a choice he made to keep the little one he could ill afford. Meanwhile her natural and legal father has refrained from admitting his family, falsified his identity in relation to the family he would not own, for sake of the good young woman he loved, and he lost much in the process of fall from rectitude.
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March 6, 2011.
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Adam Bede: by George Eliot.
A bit of a tough going for those not quite facile with old dialects of northern country England, especially from a century or so ago, this starts slow and takes time to grip one, what with the extensive description of religion and Methodists of the fledgling times. Then before one quite knows the characters grip one, with a familiar tale of temptation and lack of resolution and foresight made more than worth reading and in fact a must due to the excellent descriptions of characters and variety thereof.
As to the story, surprises await one around every corner, almost. And before one knows there is the wolf in the woods dressed up in a deceptively attractive form. (The wolf is only the temptation leading to disaster, though, and not presented here quite as a personified human as another author would present it.) And before one knows one is deep into one third, then half, and then two thirds of the tale, all the while wondering why Eliot has not been allowed the same high pedestal as Austen, Hardy, and so on. Adam Bede has the same character of a story where little happens page after page and yet one is unable to leave it behind, most of the time.
The explanation comes soon enough with the - as Maugham described it of the most popular Tolstoy work of literature - barely or not even barely disguised nature of the moral lesson presented as a story. Hardy's Tess, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and then Eliot's poor Hetty Sorrel who is a barely mid-teen country girl with no knowledge and experience to keep her out of danger that presents itself disguised as love of a beautiful man, the lord of the land, all are innocent women that suffer consequences of their being unprotected as Tess was or not well guided as Hetty or falling in love as Anna Karenina does, and one is left to wonder if the author or the readers of those days were quite aware that these women, indeed very young women at that, were only human. They are punished, every one of them, with ruin of life and love, and death coming as the only escape for their ruined lives. Meanwhile Tess's rapist or seducer must be murdered by her as the only possible punishment he could find in the social set up, and the various other men of the stories depend on the authors for their just due, with Anna's brother habitually straying and nevertheless maintaining a social respectable position, and Arthur Donnithorne suffering on par with Hetty Sorrel (although not physically or socially but only at heart and less so socially) since Eliot would not let the guilty male go scot free.
As an aside, Eliot is rather less realistic about the time frames - Hetty's travails seem to be sprung on not only the reader but all of her family and other people as a complete surprise all of a sudden, and at that the reader is better prepared with a couple of hints but then lulled into comfort with the passing of time until the troubles suddenly pile up (a bit like the several miles long pile up of the vehicles on highway some years ago in Virginia due to paper mill and fog). This confusion of time factor leads one to wonder if Eliot is quite unaware of facts of life or was dressing those days so very aiding and abetting in hiding them from people - but no, even then, the women around Hetty being unaware for so long of the state she is in is inexplicable. And this must be the reason for the otherwise excellent work being not so very popular or held high in esteem in comparison with works of Austen.
As to the story, surprises await one around every corner, almost. And before one knows there is the wolf in the woods dressed up in a deceptively attractive form. (The wolf is only the temptation leading to disaster, though, and not presented here quite as a personified human as another author would present it.) And before one knows one is deep into one third, then half, and then two thirds of the tale, all the while wondering why Eliot has not been allowed the same high pedestal as Austen, Hardy, and so on. Adam Bede has the same character of a story where little happens page after page and yet one is unable to leave it behind, most of the time.
The explanation comes soon enough with the - as Maugham described it of the most popular Tolstoy work of literature - barely or not even barely disguised nature of the moral lesson presented as a story. Hardy's Tess, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and then Eliot's poor Hetty Sorrel who is a barely mid-teen country girl with no knowledge and experience to keep her out of danger that presents itself disguised as love of a beautiful man, the lord of the land, all are innocent women that suffer consequences of their being unprotected as Tess was or not well guided as Hetty or falling in love as Anna Karenina does, and one is left to wonder if the author or the readers of those days were quite aware that these women, indeed very young women at that, were only human. They are punished, every one of them, with ruin of life and love, and death coming as the only escape for their ruined lives. Meanwhile Tess's rapist or seducer must be murdered by her as the only possible punishment he could find in the social set up, and the various other men of the stories depend on the authors for their just due, with Anna's brother habitually straying and nevertheless maintaining a social respectable position, and Arthur Donnithorne suffering on par with Hetty Sorrel (although not physically or socially but only at heart and less so socially) since Eliot would not let the guilty male go scot free.
As an aside, Eliot is rather less realistic about the time frames - Hetty's travails seem to be sprung on not only the reader but all of her family and other people as a complete surprise all of a sudden, and at that the reader is better prepared with a couple of hints but then lulled into comfort with the passing of time until the troubles suddenly pile up (a bit like the several miles long pile up of the vehicles on highway some years ago in Virginia due to paper mill and fog). This confusion of time factor leads one to wonder if Eliot is quite unaware of facts of life or was dressing those days so very aiding and abetting in hiding them from people - but no, even then, the women around Hetty being unaware for so long of the state she is in is inexplicable. And this must be the reason for the otherwise excellent work being not so very popular or held high in esteem in comparison with works of Austen.
March 6, 2011.
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Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Cobra; by Frederick Forsyth.
Forsyth takes one what is usually misnamed drug trade but ought to be properly referred to as narcotics, and Forsyth does not mix the terms, to be fair - drugs include those that are in fact legitimate sold in a pharmacy with or without prescriptions from medical authority, and the term ought to be reserved for that part of substances, whether abused or not. For instance in poorer social strata people have been known to abuse fuel meant for stoves (less refined variation of petroleum) or glue, and they certainly do not qualify as drugs in any way, but have lethal effects along the lines of narcotics (hence the abuse). A better term in general would be abusive substances.
Descriptions of the narcotics and especially cocaine industry are extensive as are the financial and trade organisation structures involved along with logistics, and its well known social devastating consequences are given briefly since most of western society is by now all too familiar with those.
As usual there is excellent and well thought out plans about what can be done to cripple the said trade in a few short devastating blows - although this book sort of nullifies the effectiveness of them, so if anything such procedures must either have been gone through already or they are of little use (yes, the drones and gps etcetera can take out the small planes and sea vessels, but the disinformation requires lack of forewarning to be totally effective, as does the surprise "normal" raid to capture any corrupt officials). Possibly they have been used, or there are better variations not leaked here.
Devastating is the anticlimax where it becomes all too obvious why such measures must and do fail in US, which is, politics and dependence of politicians on elections by a populace unwilling to stomach the death throws of the narcotics trade which involves gang wars and innocent people caught in crossfire. So just when the whole thing is about to collapse effectively, it is reigned in, and the cocaine trade resumes - with a surprise or two yet by the pair that made the war against it happen.
A fortunate by product of the paranoia pervading US in particular and the aviation industry in general since about a decade ago is the inability of huge streams of carriers of narcotics to get through various entry channels into countries where markets offer a high payoff, all too believable. Then again, there is always the spectre of the corrupt baggage handler who can choose your bag at random. But now that such baggage is always x-rayed at point of boarding, that ought to be clearly impossible. So one hopes. Plight of the innocent Miss Arenal is a separate horror. Here it is a conspiracy, but it could very well happen to anyone caught in a war of a rich nation against another, less powerful one.
Descriptions of the narcotics and especially cocaine industry are extensive as are the financial and trade organisation structures involved along with logistics, and its well known social devastating consequences are given briefly since most of western society is by now all too familiar with those.
As usual there is excellent and well thought out plans about what can be done to cripple the said trade in a few short devastating blows - although this book sort of nullifies the effectiveness of them, so if anything such procedures must either have been gone through already or they are of little use (yes, the drones and gps etcetera can take out the small planes and sea vessels, but the disinformation requires lack of forewarning to be totally effective, as does the surprise "normal" raid to capture any corrupt officials). Possibly they have been used, or there are better variations not leaked here.
Devastating is the anticlimax where it becomes all too obvious why such measures must and do fail in US, which is, politics and dependence of politicians on elections by a populace unwilling to stomach the death throws of the narcotics trade which involves gang wars and innocent people caught in crossfire. So just when the whole thing is about to collapse effectively, it is reigned in, and the cocaine trade resumes - with a surprise or two yet by the pair that made the war against it happen.
A fortunate by product of the paranoia pervading US in particular and the aviation industry in general since about a decade ago is the inability of huge streams of carriers of narcotics to get through various entry channels into countries where markets offer a high payoff, all too believable. Then again, there is always the spectre of the corrupt baggage handler who can choose your bag at random. But now that such baggage is always x-rayed at point of boarding, that ought to be clearly impossible. So one hopes. Plight of the innocent Miss Arenal is a separate horror. Here it is a conspiracy, but it could very well happen to anyone caught in a war of a rich nation against another, less powerful one.
Monday, February 7, 2011
East of Eden; by John Steinbeck.
John Steinbeck is not only one of the most famous writers, and generally also a very respected one, but more than anything he transcends often from good writer to a great one. This is one of the works that is evidence of his quality that is at once magical and great both.
East Of Eden rises above the mundane and the unusual, the common and the evil, the different characters that it describes, by the good and the superlative, the aspiring human spirit and the calm, comprehending one; the courage of one and the silent tragedy of another.
It is not just the mirroring of Adam and Charles with slightly skewed images in Aaron and Caleb, and the questionable source of the money fo Adam's father mirrored in the beyond question source of Cathy's - it is the whole lot of people.
Especially Samuel and his whole clan, on one hand, with Adam's chinese housekeeper and cook on the other with his elders who went through years of learning to ponder on a question that had nothing to do with their ancestral culture. And found the answer, too!
It is Olive, with her stoic encouragement of a pilot she thought was in trouble; her sister who spread delight and peace and joy like a delicate but definite perfume in hearts and lives and brought smiles of expectation to those that expected to meet her, and herself died silently of a heartbreak. Another one who married an inventor, who went on trying, at the expense of making money - in fact spending all he had for his experiments.
Samuel's horse who had a grand name because he had nothing else. His wife who cared for her large family with the very little that their land could provide, and did not worry, only worked and provided and organised. Samuel who knew that Adam's Chinese housekeeper was more literate and erudite than his pretense to the contrary for sake of conforming to the local social prejudice, in order to blend into the background.
So many characters unforgettable - and so many lessons implicit and otherwise.
Of course, one may complain Steinbeck went with the more socially acceptable norm, in depicting evil in the accepted form in prevalent cultural prejudicial terms of Christian and Islamic heritage, by personifying it as a female - while evil rages far more often and far more visibly out there in garb of male gender. Think nazis, think Stalin, think kkk, think pedophiles and other abusers.
But one cannot expect everything from everyone, and if Steinbeck did not rise above all of his upbringing limitations, he was only human.
Friday, September 26, 2008
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It is sometimes surprising how time changes perception with a widening and a lesser acceptance of morose, morbid love of grief that youth might tolerate under the assumption of such an attitude being the more grown up; one then suddenly realises that Divine is above all such attitudes, is about Bliss, and in fact love of morbidity or grief merely attaches one to heavy loads that keep one weighed down since that is precisely their function - and they keep one from Divine in fact.
An abridged or Readers' Digest version of the book keeps some beautiful prose bordering on poetry that Steinbeck is good with, but it also keeps one from the less appealing aspects of this book in particular, perhaps his writing in general. When re-reading it in the full version one is sickened with his obsession with sin, his entirely negative portrayals of women in general - those not related to him, that is; his portrayals of his mother and her sisters are free of this blemish - conforming with the semitic religions' identification of all that is negative with the female. This obsession with the semitic religious view - and by that I mean all the religions that originate with the old testament as their first book, that is to say chiefly three religions and otherwise a good deal larger number if one counts all branches as separate - keeps him in the fixed attitude of innocent being pigheaded idiots that are loved but do not love and are murdered, while those that love are the ones that get into murderous rages and survive with a permanent guilt weighing them down as if their being unwanted were not enough.
These obsessions of the author take away what beauty pervades the book on the whole and one is sickened by the end of it enough to wish one could hit him on the head with the book and say, get over this fixation, you have other heritage that can lead you to light, stop obsessing with the darkness. Divine is about Beauty and Light, not this sin-guilt load designed to keep you weighed down.
East Of Eden rises above the mundane and the unusual, the common and the evil, the different characters that it describes, by the good and the superlative, the aspiring human spirit and the calm, comprehending one; the courage of one and the silent tragedy of another.
It is not just the mirroring of Adam and Charles with slightly skewed images in Aaron and Caleb, and the questionable source of the money fo Adam's father mirrored in the beyond question source of Cathy's - it is the whole lot of people.
Especially Samuel and his whole clan, on one hand, with Adam's chinese housekeeper and cook on the other with his elders who went through years of learning to ponder on a question that had nothing to do with their ancestral culture. And found the answer, too!
It is Olive, with her stoic encouragement of a pilot she thought was in trouble; her sister who spread delight and peace and joy like a delicate but definite perfume in hearts and lives and brought smiles of expectation to those that expected to meet her, and herself died silently of a heartbreak. Another one who married an inventor, who went on trying, at the expense of making money - in fact spending all he had for his experiments.
Samuel's horse who had a grand name because he had nothing else. His wife who cared for her large family with the very little that their land could provide, and did not worry, only worked and provided and organised. Samuel who knew that Adam's Chinese housekeeper was more literate and erudite than his pretense to the contrary for sake of conforming to the local social prejudice, in order to blend into the background.
So many characters unforgettable - and so many lessons implicit and otherwise.
Of course, one may complain Steinbeck went with the more socially acceptable norm, in depicting evil in the accepted form in prevalent cultural prejudicial terms of Christian and Islamic heritage, by personifying it as a female - while evil rages far more often and far more visibly out there in garb of male gender. Think nazis, think Stalin, think kkk, think pedophiles and other abusers.
But one cannot expect everything from everyone, and if Steinbeck did not rise above all of his upbringing limitations, he was only human.
Friday, September 26, 2008
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It is sometimes surprising how time changes perception with a widening and a lesser acceptance of morose, morbid love of grief that youth might tolerate under the assumption of such an attitude being the more grown up; one then suddenly realises that Divine is above all such attitudes, is about Bliss, and in fact love of morbidity or grief merely attaches one to heavy loads that keep one weighed down since that is precisely their function - and they keep one from Divine in fact.
An abridged or Readers' Digest version of the book keeps some beautiful prose bordering on poetry that Steinbeck is good with, but it also keeps one from the less appealing aspects of this book in particular, perhaps his writing in general. When re-reading it in the full version one is sickened with his obsession with sin, his entirely negative portrayals of women in general - those not related to him, that is; his portrayals of his mother and her sisters are free of this blemish - conforming with the semitic religions' identification of all that is negative with the female. This obsession with the semitic religious view - and by that I mean all the religions that originate with the old testament as their first book, that is to say chiefly three religions and otherwise a good deal larger number if one counts all branches as separate - keeps him in the fixed attitude of innocent being pigheaded idiots that are loved but do not love and are murdered, while those that love are the ones that get into murderous rages and survive with a permanent guilt weighing them down as if their being unwanted were not enough.
These obsessions of the author take away what beauty pervades the book on the whole and one is sickened by the end of it enough to wish one could hit him on the head with the book and say, get over this fixation, you have other heritage that can lead you to light, stop obsessing with the darkness. Divine is about Beauty and Light, not this sin-guilt load designed to keep you weighed down.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
The Confession; by John Grisham.
Grisham used to give satisfactory if fantastic but not unrealistic endings to his tales of horrors and travails suffered by innocent and good people due to life and law in US, and then he went on to give some realism by doing away with the satisfactory endings in a couple of comparatively recent books; in this one he sort of finds a midway by describing how the legal and political (which is far too entangled in US at almost every level) system works like a beast of prey intent on finding a satisfactory victim to sacrifice for a crime and keeps the sacrifice on when the doubts about the identity of the criminal are overpowering, especially when the victim is the "right" race and the person caught in the legal net and browbeaten into signing a false confession is of the "other" race. That is the major gist of the background machinery crushing justice and people alike in the story, but it is all the more horror as well as satisfactory solution combined with a clever adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo with the identity of the criminal brought forth via a confession to a pastor by the said criminal, and the posthumous honour bestowed on the executed young boy (since he was taken in at eighteen and executed at twenty seven with no relief in the interim, he never really experienced being a young man or an adult) by the total exoneration is as tragic as the satisfactory prosecution of the secondary criminals in the story - the police officer who manipulated the innocent boy into confessing to something he did not do and repeatedly said so, the prosecuting attorney who knew the case was weak and got through on the basis of the affair he had with the judge, the subsequent judges who refused to consider the appeal on merits of the case and the new evidence submitted by the defence, the governor of Texas who refused to reprieve a mere day or week or month to consider the new evidence and his henchmen who lied, and so forth.
One does wish Grisham would show a downfall of the governor as well, but we know how Texas is. It is miraculous enough in this story that the exoneration was so clear and so quick, although the politico-legal machinery executed the innocent man nevertheless. The execution set in motion a huge storm against the whole process nationwide but was used in the wrong way by the guilty governor and his men for political survival (give reprieves to all the next guys for whatever flimsy excuse their attorneys bring up, never mind the total lack of doubt about the crimes).
One does wish Grisham would show a downfall of the governor as well, but we know how Texas is. It is miraculous enough in this story that the exoneration was so clear and so quick, although the politico-legal machinery executed the innocent man nevertheless. The execution set in motion a huge storm against the whole process nationwide but was used in the wrong way by the guilty governor and his men for political survival (give reprieves to all the next guys for whatever flimsy excuse their attorneys bring up, never mind the total lack of doubt about the crimes).
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Mexico; by James Michener.
October 15, 2008
This is temporary I hope - I haven't finished this yet, partly due to an unwillingness to go on to watch a bullfight even on paper, what with the very evocative writings of this author.
He truly brings alive the history of the continent, of the indigenous and their encounters with the invading marauders who assumed supremacy due to colour and size, the change over from a once flourishing civilization that not much is known now about, to one in constant state of flux with various military and other regimes and neighbours looking down on the nation that was once great in various achievements.
But reading this made one aware of much of the world that one is generally unlikely to know about, and the history is sometimes - often more often than not so, amazing; and then again a little off-putting in the concepts about bloodshed.
And then the fights themselves, while reading this I found an unasked question being answered, though it was not mentioned here - not as far as I read.
One always wonders why torture an innocent animal like this, one that can be far more useful and friendly too, unlike dangerous ones that can turn into human-hunters, although mostly even they do so usually by accident.
And I wondered if it was not a necessity of food, and the difficulty of killing a bull in prime without a fight, that began as a needful activity and turned into a spectator sport. Else it makes very little sense really.
Various people that go throwing paint on fur coats have not paid attention to this and other cruelty to animals on everyday basis is also due to this - it is easy to shout against a luxury of a few that kills a few animals, but difficult to protest against food of many. This is all the more so, especially when huge financial interests are involved, the butchers (who have taken to call themselves farmers, as if they and not the animals are responsible for the cattle reproduction, which is not a sowing and harvest, it is a mammal reproduction of the species) and the markets that sell and the chains that serve it.
So the protest against mink coats that makes no sense to a vegetarian might be really a token by an awakening mind and consciousness that nevertheless weighs carefully the consequences - if you protest against any chains serving burgers, you might be thrown in jail or worse, asylum; while throwing paint on a coat you couldn't afford anyway is treated lightly, the rich one might be induced to buy another one after all!
It is a fight they pick carefully, and do not even protest the leather shoes or bags or briefcases when those have become unnecessary. And of course those are the least of it all - if you are going to eat a huge quantity of animals in a culture what do you do with the leftovers? The least is leather goods manufacture, which in fact can be done even without the eating part - after all the animals are going to die one day, on their own.
It is far easier to protest killing of foxes in distant regions where their roaming is not a threat to your children and your pets and your barn animals.
October 15, 2008
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December 9, 2010.
Finally one gets over the reluctance to go through a gory death or two, certainly of the innocent animals involved who are bred and brought up only so that they can be murdered for sport, never mind the honour of being mounted on walls of owners and breeders with pride about how they fought well, but also of the men involved in the killing of the animals, occasionally - after all it is an honourable way to kill the poor animals tricked into the arena to be killed, only with swords and other similar weapons rather than with a bullet at a distance safe enough for the killer.
Having sealed oneself to any sensibility of the gore involved, one proceeds to go through the rest of the book and it proves more rewarding with a history of Mexico along with the related parts of history of Spain, US, church, and so forth. It is a letdown to accidentally read the acknowledgement at the end to find that a good deal of it is "fiction" as stated by the writer, but then again, that is about specific people and names mentioned, including that of city of Toledo in Mexico. Other parts however are perfectly true, such as inquisition in Europe in general and Spain in particular. Palafoxes might be fiction, but burning of dissenters by church is as real and historical as bullfights or civil war of US.
That being the case, the initial uncanny feeling one gets while reading the history of Mexico, (with the history of its primitive and beastly nomadic tribals from northern parts creeping closer to and overtaking the far superior civilisation of the Builders who have grown too peaceful to resist the vicious onslaught due precisely to the vastly superior civilisation they have achieved - they have built, are peaceful, have civil administration, and other amenities and achievements more than comparable to any other of the period in the world - and the subsequent subjugation and massacre of the superior civilisation by the wilder tribes from north before the wild tribes settle down, adopt ways of the subjugated ones and absorb their culture and achievements and proceed to be civilised and build on top of the ruins they brought about), that it is all too similar enough to history of Asia (what with tribes of Mongolia and central Asia descending on India and reigning havoc with destruction and massacres before settling down and adopting much of Indian culture including superior buildings albeit built over the destroyed older ones), is all too easily explained after all. It is perhaps an coincidence of history after all, with similar events occurring clear across the world, but it is just as likely a history of another land written by someone more familiar with the more famous history of a much older civilisation overrun by tribes of Mongolia, central Asia, Arabia and then Europe, just as it happened perhaps in Mexico. The Goddess described by Michener with revulsion might be a fact of Mexican history, and then again his description might just be the reaction of Europe to images of Kaalie the Mother Goddess worshiped in India, a reaction that stems through a total absence of perception and comprehension. Certainly the description and the reaction is all too similar, with the difference of the thought that all such images stem from imagination rather than a greater perception of reality, for how could anyone with a more than feeble colour of visage and less than totally vicious lack of regard for others have any superiority of mind and spirit, goes the reasoning.
All this from a source that has historically brutal massacres of any dissenters merely for the reason of dissent, massacres held valid while dissent held abominable even now with usage of words and terminology describing the inquisition, the burning at stakes, the subjugation and conversion of other people, and so forth including enslaving of almost three continents and looting of their wealth while sneering at the people empoverished thereby. It is almost a vicious satire on the thinking of the dominant races that preach of their supposedly superior idols and the murders, massacres and slavery of others in the name of a philosophy of love and kindness, all the while boasting of their horror at idols of others who in fact are far more of the civilised and achieved people in terms of mind and spirit.
.....................................................
Europe had gunpowder - from China - while Mexico and southern civilisations had astronomy, architecture, and much more; the meeting of the two civilisations resulted in havoc reigned on the latter by the former. Admission of all this is covered with equivocation by the descriptions of human sacrifices by a fictional tribe in a fictional city and building of structures of civil society over an already established city while stealing its valuable minerals - silver in this case - in the book; much of the fiction is only fiction re specific names, while the general history is all too real, only taken from various sources in Mexico and perhaps subconsciously from Asia as well.
The greatest virtue of the book is in the fact that one wishes to go on reading about the history of Mexico and various other parts of the continent of what is so falsely termed "New World" - twenty thousand years of life in the continent, including nearly a millennia of familiarity to Nordic Europe what with Viking settlements in Canada and as far south as Boston, is hardly what one would call "new", unless compared to far more ancient civilisations of Asia such as India or China - and this even apart from the dismay at the discovery of the author's declaration that the specifics herein are "fiction". So next one finishes the other book, not declared fiction by the author of that one but on the contrary one that questions the popular and assiduously propagated versions of history, by Hancock.
One nice point is the beginning of a consciousness in humans of the brains of cattle with the fast learning ability, all too similar to humans; another is about the genealogical relationship of qualities received from the parents - physical abilities from father, courage from mother. Put the two together, it is not difficult to understand how those that live with cattle in harmony rather than a relationship of slavery have a regard for the cattle, brought about by the perceived and understood qualities of gentle and yet strong, courageous species with an ability to understand, an ability to learn and love and more, all too like humans. And if this perception is allowed to filter through the ego it has to lead to the destruction of misogyny - for a clear evidence of qualities of cows compared with bulls has to lead anyone not too stupid to question if the inferiority of the human female is not an invention of male institutions of church and other sort to subjugate and enslave half of humanity for selfish purposes rather than an actual perception of qualities and differences thereof.
This is temporary I hope - I haven't finished this yet, partly due to an unwillingness to go on to watch a bullfight even on paper, what with the very evocative writings of this author.
He truly brings alive the history of the continent, of the indigenous and their encounters with the invading marauders who assumed supremacy due to colour and size, the change over from a once flourishing civilization that not much is known now about, to one in constant state of flux with various military and other regimes and neighbours looking down on the nation that was once great in various achievements.
But reading this made one aware of much of the world that one is generally unlikely to know about, and the history is sometimes - often more often than not so, amazing; and then again a little off-putting in the concepts about bloodshed.
And then the fights themselves, while reading this I found an unasked question being answered, though it was not mentioned here - not as far as I read.
One always wonders why torture an innocent animal like this, one that can be far more useful and friendly too, unlike dangerous ones that can turn into human-hunters, although mostly even they do so usually by accident.
And I wondered if it was not a necessity of food, and the difficulty of killing a bull in prime without a fight, that began as a needful activity and turned into a spectator sport. Else it makes very little sense really.
Various people that go throwing paint on fur coats have not paid attention to this and other cruelty to animals on everyday basis is also due to this - it is easy to shout against a luxury of a few that kills a few animals, but difficult to protest against food of many. This is all the more so, especially when huge financial interests are involved, the butchers (who have taken to call themselves farmers, as if they and not the animals are responsible for the cattle reproduction, which is not a sowing and harvest, it is a mammal reproduction of the species) and the markets that sell and the chains that serve it.
So the protest against mink coats that makes no sense to a vegetarian might be really a token by an awakening mind and consciousness that nevertheless weighs carefully the consequences - if you protest against any chains serving burgers, you might be thrown in jail or worse, asylum; while throwing paint on a coat you couldn't afford anyway is treated lightly, the rich one might be induced to buy another one after all!
It is a fight they pick carefully, and do not even protest the leather shoes or bags or briefcases when those have become unnecessary. And of course those are the least of it all - if you are going to eat a huge quantity of animals in a culture what do you do with the leftovers? The least is leather goods manufacture, which in fact can be done even without the eating part - after all the animals are going to die one day, on their own.
It is far easier to protest killing of foxes in distant regions where their roaming is not a threat to your children and your pets and your barn animals.
October 15, 2008
............................................
December 9, 2010.
Finally one gets over the reluctance to go through a gory death or two, certainly of the innocent animals involved who are bred and brought up only so that they can be murdered for sport, never mind the honour of being mounted on walls of owners and breeders with pride about how they fought well, but also of the men involved in the killing of the animals, occasionally - after all it is an honourable way to kill the poor animals tricked into the arena to be killed, only with swords and other similar weapons rather than with a bullet at a distance safe enough for the killer.
Having sealed oneself to any sensibility of the gore involved, one proceeds to go through the rest of the book and it proves more rewarding with a history of Mexico along with the related parts of history of Spain, US, church, and so forth. It is a letdown to accidentally read the acknowledgement at the end to find that a good deal of it is "fiction" as stated by the writer, but then again, that is about specific people and names mentioned, including that of city of Toledo in Mexico. Other parts however are perfectly true, such as inquisition in Europe in general and Spain in particular. Palafoxes might be fiction, but burning of dissenters by church is as real and historical as bullfights or civil war of US.
That being the case, the initial uncanny feeling one gets while reading the history of Mexico, (with the history of its primitive and beastly nomadic tribals from northern parts creeping closer to and overtaking the far superior civilisation of the Builders who have grown too peaceful to resist the vicious onslaught due precisely to the vastly superior civilisation they have achieved - they have built, are peaceful, have civil administration, and other amenities and achievements more than comparable to any other of the period in the world - and the subsequent subjugation and massacre of the superior civilisation by the wilder tribes from north before the wild tribes settle down, adopt ways of the subjugated ones and absorb their culture and achievements and proceed to be civilised and build on top of the ruins they brought about), that it is all too similar enough to history of Asia (what with tribes of Mongolia and central Asia descending on India and reigning havoc with destruction and massacres before settling down and adopting much of Indian culture including superior buildings albeit built over the destroyed older ones), is all too easily explained after all. It is perhaps an coincidence of history after all, with similar events occurring clear across the world, but it is just as likely a history of another land written by someone more familiar with the more famous history of a much older civilisation overrun by tribes of Mongolia, central Asia, Arabia and then Europe, just as it happened perhaps in Mexico. The Goddess described by Michener with revulsion might be a fact of Mexican history, and then again his description might just be the reaction of Europe to images of Kaalie the Mother Goddess worshiped in India, a reaction that stems through a total absence of perception and comprehension. Certainly the description and the reaction is all too similar, with the difference of the thought that all such images stem from imagination rather than a greater perception of reality, for how could anyone with a more than feeble colour of visage and less than totally vicious lack of regard for others have any superiority of mind and spirit, goes the reasoning.
All this from a source that has historically brutal massacres of any dissenters merely for the reason of dissent, massacres held valid while dissent held abominable even now with usage of words and terminology describing the inquisition, the burning at stakes, the subjugation and conversion of other people, and so forth including enslaving of almost three continents and looting of their wealth while sneering at the people empoverished thereby. It is almost a vicious satire on the thinking of the dominant races that preach of their supposedly superior idols and the murders, massacres and slavery of others in the name of a philosophy of love and kindness, all the while boasting of their horror at idols of others who in fact are far more of the civilised and achieved people in terms of mind and spirit.
.....................................................
Europe had gunpowder - from China - while Mexico and southern civilisations had astronomy, architecture, and much more; the meeting of the two civilisations resulted in havoc reigned on the latter by the former. Admission of all this is covered with equivocation by the descriptions of human sacrifices by a fictional tribe in a fictional city and building of structures of civil society over an already established city while stealing its valuable minerals - silver in this case - in the book; much of the fiction is only fiction re specific names, while the general history is all too real, only taken from various sources in Mexico and perhaps subconsciously from Asia as well.
The greatest virtue of the book is in the fact that one wishes to go on reading about the history of Mexico and various other parts of the continent of what is so falsely termed "New World" - twenty thousand years of life in the continent, including nearly a millennia of familiarity to Nordic Europe what with Viking settlements in Canada and as far south as Boston, is hardly what one would call "new", unless compared to far more ancient civilisations of Asia such as India or China - and this even apart from the dismay at the discovery of the author's declaration that the specifics herein are "fiction". So next one finishes the other book, not declared fiction by the author of that one but on the contrary one that questions the popular and assiduously propagated versions of history, by Hancock.
One nice point is the beginning of a consciousness in humans of the brains of cattle with the fast learning ability, all too similar to humans; another is about the genealogical relationship of qualities received from the parents - physical abilities from father, courage from mother. Put the two together, it is not difficult to understand how those that live with cattle in harmony rather than a relationship of slavery have a regard for the cattle, brought about by the perceived and understood qualities of gentle and yet strong, courageous species with an ability to understand, an ability to learn and love and more, all too like humans. And if this perception is allowed to filter through the ego it has to lead to the destruction of misogyny - for a clear evidence of qualities of cows compared with bulls has to lead anyone not too stupid to question if the inferiority of the human female is not an invention of male institutions of church and other sort to subjugate and enslave half of humanity for selfish purposes rather than an actual perception of qualities and differences thereof.
Fingerprints of The Gods; by Graham Hancock.
It is taking long to finish not because it is not attractive but on the contrary - it gives so much to think and mull over, one needs time to go over and go back to the book again before reading more, rather than finishing it like a racy read all at one go.
Gives a lot of information and raises a great many questions too, about various parts of the world that were supposed to be unknown until comparatively recently in human history.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
.....................................................
This book was in reading for nearly two years, perhaps longer, when the above was written; one reading over, I suspect it could take another or more before a good comprehension of all that goes into the theory formed here is well understood in detail. It is an intriguing theory, or rather, a banquet of many many theories brought together with much detail of facts around the world from archeological and legendary nature investigated.
When one finishes reading this, one would like to go on and know more and investigate more about the various possibilities. And then one goes on to read the BBC interview where the author reverses much of his revolutionary thinking, and whether in an attempt to placate the historians or otherwise simply bows down to the establishment and their comfortable assertions about age of civilisation et al.
This is where the cursory nature of his looking at legends around this world by whatever name comes in. Fact is people of various disciplines - sciences, history, archeology, whatever - of western establishment, and therefore of most of the world, do not dare to cross the church even when they are against all religion and avowed rationalists according to their own affirmations; their subconscious plays tricks and does not allow them to disobey several dicta of the institution that once burned people alive for daring to disagree, forever calling them heretics and making it sound like that was the greatest atrocity one could think of. So they might claim they do not care for religion or church but would face a huge wall of opposition all the more for the crossing of various bases of church dogma, which of course includes the age of civilisation.
And yet, by what miracle of meditation could another civilisation halfway around the world have known of the fact that the Himaalaya rose out of the ocean, or have a theory of evolution (cloaked in story of Divine appearances or Descent on the earth in successive stages), millennia before Darwin, is a question worth asking.
Moreover there is the engineering feat as well of bringing down Himaalayan mighty river Gangaa by one man, a legend firmly established and worth investigating.) This contradicts the theory that the civilisation is only a few millennia old like the church says. (Alternative, after science in recent decades having established the fact of the rising of Himaalaya from the ocean - just like the old, old legend goes in India since ancient times, is that India knows of such facts due to the sheer brilliance of its thinkers and seers who have extraordinary perception into knowledge west cannot imagine how, since very ancient times; which could be all too correct as well!
Although one must say this author too does the usual callous thing of taking an immense trove of knowledge and taking a few things and attempting to fit them to his own theory - for example, the interpreting of Samudramanthan (churning of oceans - by Gods and their opponents) as the apparently turning of heavens observed from an earth in process of the crust slipping over the core. This interpretation is suited to the theory of the author, but he forgets the churning is supposed to have brought up Himaalaya out of the oceans on the earth, not the Milky Way as the author interprets the ocean. So one needs to think over the discrepancy of the new interpretation and the known and understood one.
So never mind the recanting of the whole cataclysms periodically destroying advanced civilisations theory by the author for various reasons of his unknown to the reader, fact is some of it is known to be true and some seems to fit in with the various stories and legends. Precession of the axis of rotation is true and the changeover from Pisces to Aquarius is expected soon (although he does not make it clear how it happens, does the spring equinox shift to 21 February suddenly or is Aquarius already close to rising with the sun on 21 March, for one thing; and how is this related to the precession of the equinoxes, or is it separate, for another; and so forth); and so is the periodic shifting of the poles, even reversing, while the magnetic poles are already known to have been shifting and are away from the geographic poles. The author mentions and semi explains some of this, repeating but not explaining some parts very well.
Earth crust development theory is startling, unsettling, and one must admit it gives sleepless nights all the more so with a possible next date (21 December 2012) provided with ancient unexplained calculations from Mayan or older civilisations for the end of this civilisation as we know it. Global warming unsettling the earth is yet another factor known to scientists as well as people who do not live with their minds blinkered by the unwillingness to change gas guzzling habits. The latter makes the former seem plausibly loom on the horizon.
Why the author - having established after strenuous arguments that the engineering feats of the older buildings in Egypt and Mexico and Peru and so forth, with details of monoliths placed interlocking in huge structures and so on - now turns around and says they are the work of the known civilisations after all (who produced much inferior structures soon thereafter, which was his first argument for a much older and lost civilisation with tremendous knowledge of various kinds), is unclear - since he merely recants and gives no argument other than being convinced by the establishment after all with its theories he has fought so valiantly through the book.
All in all, much food for thought.
Gives a lot of information and raises a great many questions too, about various parts of the world that were supposed to be unknown until comparatively recently in human history.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
.....................................................
This book was in reading for nearly two years, perhaps longer, when the above was written; one reading over, I suspect it could take another or more before a good comprehension of all that goes into the theory formed here is well understood in detail. It is an intriguing theory, or rather, a banquet of many many theories brought together with much detail of facts around the world from archeological and legendary nature investigated.
When one finishes reading this, one would like to go on and know more and investigate more about the various possibilities. And then one goes on to read the BBC interview where the author reverses much of his revolutionary thinking, and whether in an attempt to placate the historians or otherwise simply bows down to the establishment and their comfortable assertions about age of civilisation et al.
This is where the cursory nature of his looking at legends around this world by whatever name comes in. Fact is people of various disciplines - sciences, history, archeology, whatever - of western establishment, and therefore of most of the world, do not dare to cross the church even when they are against all religion and avowed rationalists according to their own affirmations; their subconscious plays tricks and does not allow them to disobey several dicta of the institution that once burned people alive for daring to disagree, forever calling them heretics and making it sound like that was the greatest atrocity one could think of. So they might claim they do not care for religion or church but would face a huge wall of opposition all the more for the crossing of various bases of church dogma, which of course includes the age of civilisation.
And yet, by what miracle of meditation could another civilisation halfway around the world have known of the fact that the Himaalaya rose out of the ocean, or have a theory of evolution (cloaked in story of Divine appearances or Descent on the earth in successive stages), millennia before Darwin, is a question worth asking.
Moreover there is the engineering feat as well of bringing down Himaalayan mighty river Gangaa by one man, a legend firmly established and worth investigating.) This contradicts the theory that the civilisation is only a few millennia old like the church says. (Alternative, after science in recent decades having established the fact of the rising of Himaalaya from the ocean - just like the old, old legend goes in India since ancient times, is that India knows of such facts due to the sheer brilliance of its thinkers and seers who have extraordinary perception into knowledge west cannot imagine how, since very ancient times; which could be all too correct as well!
Although one must say this author too does the usual callous thing of taking an immense trove of knowledge and taking a few things and attempting to fit them to his own theory - for example, the interpreting of Samudramanthan (churning of oceans - by Gods and their opponents) as the apparently turning of heavens observed from an earth in process of the crust slipping over the core. This interpretation is suited to the theory of the author, but he forgets the churning is supposed to have brought up Himaalaya out of the oceans on the earth, not the Milky Way as the author interprets the ocean. So one needs to think over the discrepancy of the new interpretation and the known and understood one.
So never mind the recanting of the whole cataclysms periodically destroying advanced civilisations theory by the author for various reasons of his unknown to the reader, fact is some of it is known to be true and some seems to fit in with the various stories and legends. Precession of the axis of rotation is true and the changeover from Pisces to Aquarius is expected soon (although he does not make it clear how it happens, does the spring equinox shift to 21 February suddenly or is Aquarius already close to rising with the sun on 21 March, for one thing; and how is this related to the precession of the equinoxes, or is it separate, for another; and so forth); and so is the periodic shifting of the poles, even reversing, while the magnetic poles are already known to have been shifting and are away from the geographic poles. The author mentions and semi explains some of this, repeating but not explaining some parts very well.
Earth crust development theory is startling, unsettling, and one must admit it gives sleepless nights all the more so with a possible next date (21 December 2012) provided with ancient unexplained calculations from Mayan or older civilisations for the end of this civilisation as we know it. Global warming unsettling the earth is yet another factor known to scientists as well as people who do not live with their minds blinkered by the unwillingness to change gas guzzling habits. The latter makes the former seem plausibly loom on the horizon.
Why the author - having established after strenuous arguments that the engineering feats of the older buildings in Egypt and Mexico and Peru and so forth, with details of monoliths placed interlocking in huge structures and so on - now turns around and says they are the work of the known civilisations after all (who produced much inferior structures soon thereafter, which was his first argument for a much older and lost civilisation with tremendous knowledge of various kinds), is unclear - since he merely recants and gives no argument other than being convinced by the establishment after all with its theories he has fought so valiantly through the book.
All in all, much food for thought.
Monday, January 24, 2011
In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce.
Luce is an extremely unfortunate person who looks at a living treasure and is too blinded by his agenda of destruction to recognise the value he is looking at, of an oppoutunity in an eternity he has found for transformation, and carries on the hacking by a sword barely disguised as a pen (or a writing instrument of whatever sort before he publishes). Extremely unfortunate, reminding one of the old proverbs about those who have nothing to receive and hold it when heaven showers blessings.
A priori the very title clears the fact that one must expect some bias, at the very least, from this author; but Luce goes much further in his determination to remain pathetically, despicably poor in matters above stomach, matters of heart and higher mind and spiritual. He deals cleverly enough with mention of all sorts of greatness of India and of those that belong to India, of the culture and people and persona, but camouflages his agenda the usual way in weightage assigned to various matters. His agenda begins to be clear pretty soon, although for a reader unfamiliar with the country - and today that can only be said of people very remote from world concerns - it is an informative book and comprehensively so. The danger is, one might assume it is a fair description. It isn't - and that is clear for anyone familiar with the country, the culture and history thereof.
For instance Luce mentions the train full of people burnt to death, prior to 2002 riots but gives it short shrift, and while he refrains from assigning or admitting where guilt lay thereof he mentions how the people on the train taunted those that have been blamed for the burning of train and the passengers locked in. He refrains from mentioning that the proportion of people arrested was 3:1 during this riots unlike any other occasion of the riots that happened regularly in the state and elsewhere for that matter, but mentions that police were not as impartial as they ought to be.
He does mention '84 massacres and calls them riots, one falsehood; does not mention the partisan role played by the party he approves of for rule, another implicit falsehood; makes no mention of the comments made openly and officially by those responsible for the nation on that occasion, or of the fact that the so called communal party had helped save lives of victims (of another community, those they were supposed to be at war with) during this - '84 - horror; nor of the fact that two of the top persons responsible those horrific days for the nation and city of the capital went on to be top office holders. This last compares ironically with the clamour for resignation of the chief minister of the state accused for 2002 riots.
It gets even more bizarre when compared with his accounts of the '46 massacres explicitly ordered by a communal leader demanding a division of the nation, which forced the division due to the horrific bloodshed the said leader commanded and made happen - thousands dead in a day or two of what was called "action day". He does not see that one man cannot massacre thousands with knives, that the community that obeyed him must then remain suspect that the very least to those that were related to the murdered a la Germans to Jews, and he lets off the said leader lightly with no blame while giving certificate of peace to those responsible for the massacre then.
This very agenda of anti Hindu attacks in the book is camouflaged with praise of the Hindu culture of tolerance and the repeated surprise at India remaining a democracy successfully, not seeing that the latter is due sheer to the very nature of Hinduism, of Indian culture rooted in Hinduism, of ancient treasure of knowledge inherent in the living nation of very ancient roots that did not fall to any conversionist onslaughts the way most of the world did. He repeatedly attacks the highest priests and teachers community of Braahmans, comparing them incessantly with the lowest and accusing them, never reflecting that in his root culture no one expects the pope or the monarch of a nation to live on par with East Enders much less with colonial citizens or ex ruled. That there is a complex net of a hundred if not thousands of communities is forgotten or glossed over for the convenience of attacking Braahmans, never questioning if a carpenter would admit a cleaner as equal for marriage, much less if an ex ruler or a rich owner of a trading house would.
His agenda of attacking Braahman community - who in fact are mostly poor or very poor, since by tradition they are not supposed to engage in money making, devoting themselves to preserving knowledge and helping teach others along with priestly duties of various kinds - is inherited from the days immediately past 1857 when colonising rulers and missionaries alike realised it was necessary to attack and destroy Braahmans in order to demoralise and disintegrate India, since Braahmans kept the roots alive and India living despite horrendous onslaughts from abroad seeking to loot wealth and rule a nation that never went out attacking others. This agenda has been since carried out diligently with every falsehood employed for the purpose, including blaming Braahmans for various acts that in fact the church and especially Rome was responsible in their own territory for, short of the inquisition or slavery.
Another falsehood is about introduction of other religions in India - Luce goes on repeatedly blaming Hindus for holding Islam responsible for attacks and forced conversions and claims that in fact Islam was introduced by traders along the coast by peaceful means, attracting lower classes with its promise of equality. The latter is true on a very small scale of the total experience with Islam in fact whether in India or in general in the world, although the promised equality is a lie, unveiled at that, in any conversionist religion for that matter. Fact is India did experience huge violence due to expansionist agenda of Islam prior to Europe taking over, and those memories necessarily take over being the largest part.
What peaceful introduction of either conversionist religion did take place made no more disturbance than that of any other such faith or community from abroad, and of those India has more than the rest of the world is even aware of existence of. That various people from Jews to Parsees (fleeing Persia at the Islamic threat to their indigenous culture and finding refuge and respite in India, nowhere else, and flourishing here for centuries) in past millennia, to Tibetans and others in more recent times, have found refuge and respite in India to sanctuary and flourishing after a stabilisation, is taken for granted in India as much as the flourishing of various branches of Indigenous faiths either separating or branching or interacting or absorbed back as a stream, including Buddhist and Jain and Sikh and many, many others, old or new.
Luce and his sorts may see it, and yet be unable to comprehend it - which is why his bias and his incessant attacks on the majority while absolving those that have an agenda to convert the world. Luce and his sorts comprehend being a jackal, but do not comprehend gratitude to those that provide sustenance and help in life, without whom life would be direly destitute. Hence his derision of those that love cows and the nation that depends on cattle for milk, farmwork, transport, fuel, and much, much more. He forgets laws of yore in out west in US, not so long ago, hanged a man to death for stealing another man's horse - since life there depended on a horse likely as not. He forgets life in India for the poor billion depends on cattle for the livelihood and food. He can afford to forget it, as can those that just as soon move on when India is torn to shreds and poor starve to death. It is another story for those that care about the land.
.............................
The official description on the site where I discovered the book before finding it in a store and buying it to read it (a site based in US and related generally to books and readers with worldwide membership (but nevertheless an assumption by its US members of an implicit ownership of the site and in fact of the very internet that is in fact a work and space of the whole world to meet), a description which officially may or may not represent the book or the author, and might very well be an editorial comment on the site, goes :-
"India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the world’s third largest economy within a generation, outstripping Japan. It will surpass China in population by 2032 and will have more English speakers than the United States by 2050. In In Spite of the Gods , Edward Luce, a journalist who covered India for many years, makes brilliant sense of India and its rise to global power. Already a number-one bestseller in India, his book is sure to be acknowledged for years as the definitive introduction to modern India. In Spite of the Gods illuminates a land of many contradictions. The booming tech sector we read so much about in the West, Luce points out, employs no more than one million of India’s 1.1 billion people. Only 35 million people, in fact, have formal enough jobs to pay taxes, while three-quarters of the country lives in extreme deprivation in India’s 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the world’s largest experiment in representative democracy—and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption. Luce shows that India is an economic rival to the U.S. in an entirely different sense than China is. There is nothing in India like the manufacturing capacity of China, despite the huge potential labor force. An inept system of public education leaves most Indians illiterate and unskilled. Yet at the other extreme, the middle class produces ten times as many engineering students a year as the United States. Notwithstanding its future as a major competitor in a globalized economy, American. leaders have been encouraging India’s rise, even welcoming it into the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance China’s influence in Asia. Above all, In Spite of the Gods is an enlightening study of the forces shaping India as it tries to balance the stubborn traditions of the past with an unevenly modernizing present. Deeply informed by scholarship and history, leavened by humor and rich in anecdote, it shows that India has huge opportunities as well as tremendous challenges that make the future “hers to lose.” "
The underlying biases are so taken for granted that they are not clear in plain sight, and amount to biases similar to equating blond with beautiful (with opposite assumptions silent but held tacitly far more strongly).
The title for instance assumes no reaction to any insult to the many, many religions and faiths and differences of thought that are equally held reverent in the country, mainly due to the character of the traditional way of thought of majority and their religion (often denied a status of religion in western television channels, since it does not confirm to a one person one book one god imposed on all followers and attempting to convert all others sort of pattern understood more easily for its simplicity, never mind the similarity of such faiths with any totalitarian way of thought) - but also the very freedom of worship inherent in the character of the nation is blatantly ignored, or worse, heavily disrespected, in the title and the underlying assumption therein.
Often people tend to hold concatenation as causal connection, and in west this has happened with economic rise being related to a relentless imposition of authoritative mode of faith and wiping out of alternatives - even all knowledge and rights thereto - being imprisoned within the authority fences and the duel that therefore necessarily was fought for freedom of thought against the religious authorities. It is forgotten that while this need to fight for the freedom of thought and knowledge might have helped a great deal, the prosperity would be far less if not accompanied by colonial occupation of other continents and usurping of their wealth, whatever the state of the local people and the treatment accorded to them by the colonial usurping occupiers, whether in Australia or across the ocean in American continent or Asia or Africa.
If this is not believable, just think of how life would be in Europe if there were no migration possible to any other continent, if everyone who wished to travel from Europe anywhere had to mortgage a significant part of their properties and undergo humiliating experiences on arrival in the other lands. Without the migration and the loot from other continents, Europe would be very crowded with poor as it was only two centuries ago - in fact, UK sponsored migration to Australia for all her poor just post wwII, officially, just as it was done for a while towards Canada or US prior to the wars so as to free large estates of aristocracy of the poor locals.
Much more to the graphic illustrative point, imagine if Africa owned the diamonds and the firms in Europe and coffee were to be as expensive as diamonds are today to west, while diamonds cost as much as best Champagne (and I mean, Champagne, not sparkling wine from elsewhere) - which might very well happen if local people owned the lands and used it to feed their own, sparing little for export to others for luxuries.
Once a neighbour in Germany had described poverty of East Germany where she visited relatives by relating how they could not afford bananas. I pointed out that first and foremost if the thing does not grow locally it could not be good for health, much less a necessity; as long as they had apples in their back or front yards on trees, they were in good shape for health and food and fruit. Bananas in fact are suitable only for tropical consumption, where they do grow - they are good food for heat of the locales and are cold in effect as food.
But to continue the thread, here is one more - imagine bananas cost more than opium and its byproducts in lands where they do not grow, and coconuts are no less than precious metals by weight. Would that be deprivation, when a product of one's own land gets a mere fraction of that from another? That is what the ex colonial lands (and natives of occupation forgotten lands of Australia and America too) have lived through.
In short, the prosperity of west has just as much to do with the looting via colonial occupations of various lands and migration to the lands taken over for good, as to do with the science versus faith wars Europe had to fight resulting in tremendous growth in science and technology.
Relating this prosperity to the religion of the west is the false assumption inherent in the title. Relating the prosperity to virtue of every kind is the other, deeper false assumption.
..........................................
A priori the very title clears the fact that one must expect some bias, at the very least, from this author; but Luce goes much further in his determination to remain pathetically, despicably poor in matters above stomach, matters of heart and higher mind and spiritual. He deals cleverly enough with mention of all sorts of greatness of India and of those that belong to India, of the culture and people and persona, but camouflages his agenda the usual way in weightage assigned to various matters. His agenda begins to be clear pretty soon, although for a reader unfamiliar with the country - and today that can only be said of people very remote from world concerns - it is an informative book and comprehensively so. The danger is, one might assume it is a fair description. It isn't - and that is clear for anyone familiar with the country, the culture and history thereof.
For instance Luce mentions the train full of people burnt to death, prior to 2002 riots but gives it short shrift, and while he refrains from assigning or admitting where guilt lay thereof he mentions how the people on the train taunted those that have been blamed for the burning of train and the passengers locked in. He refrains from mentioning that the proportion of people arrested was 3:1 during this riots unlike any other occasion of the riots that happened regularly in the state and elsewhere for that matter, but mentions that police were not as impartial as they ought to be.
He does mention '84 massacres and calls them riots, one falsehood; does not mention the partisan role played by the party he approves of for rule, another implicit falsehood; makes no mention of the comments made openly and officially by those responsible for the nation on that occasion, or of the fact that the so called communal party had helped save lives of victims (of another community, those they were supposed to be at war with) during this - '84 - horror; nor of the fact that two of the top persons responsible those horrific days for the nation and city of the capital went on to be top office holders. This last compares ironically with the clamour for resignation of the chief minister of the state accused for 2002 riots.
It gets even more bizarre when compared with his accounts of the '46 massacres explicitly ordered by a communal leader demanding a division of the nation, which forced the division due to the horrific bloodshed the said leader commanded and made happen - thousands dead in a day or two of what was called "action day". He does not see that one man cannot massacre thousands with knives, that the community that obeyed him must then remain suspect that the very least to those that were related to the murdered a la Germans to Jews, and he lets off the said leader lightly with no blame while giving certificate of peace to those responsible for the massacre then.
This very agenda of anti Hindu attacks in the book is camouflaged with praise of the Hindu culture of tolerance and the repeated surprise at India remaining a democracy successfully, not seeing that the latter is due sheer to the very nature of Hinduism, of Indian culture rooted in Hinduism, of ancient treasure of knowledge inherent in the living nation of very ancient roots that did not fall to any conversionist onslaughts the way most of the world did. He repeatedly attacks the highest priests and teachers community of Braahmans, comparing them incessantly with the lowest and accusing them, never reflecting that in his root culture no one expects the pope or the monarch of a nation to live on par with East Enders much less with colonial citizens or ex ruled. That there is a complex net of a hundred if not thousands of communities is forgotten or glossed over for the convenience of attacking Braahmans, never questioning if a carpenter would admit a cleaner as equal for marriage, much less if an ex ruler or a rich owner of a trading house would.
His agenda of attacking Braahman community - who in fact are mostly poor or very poor, since by tradition they are not supposed to engage in money making, devoting themselves to preserving knowledge and helping teach others along with priestly duties of various kinds - is inherited from the days immediately past 1857 when colonising rulers and missionaries alike realised it was necessary to attack and destroy Braahmans in order to demoralise and disintegrate India, since Braahmans kept the roots alive and India living despite horrendous onslaughts from abroad seeking to loot wealth and rule a nation that never went out attacking others. This agenda has been since carried out diligently with every falsehood employed for the purpose, including blaming Braahmans for various acts that in fact the church and especially Rome was responsible in their own territory for, short of the inquisition or slavery.
Another falsehood is about introduction of other religions in India - Luce goes on repeatedly blaming Hindus for holding Islam responsible for attacks and forced conversions and claims that in fact Islam was introduced by traders along the coast by peaceful means, attracting lower classes with its promise of equality. The latter is true on a very small scale of the total experience with Islam in fact whether in India or in general in the world, although the promised equality is a lie, unveiled at that, in any conversionist religion for that matter. Fact is India did experience huge violence due to expansionist agenda of Islam prior to Europe taking over, and those memories necessarily take over being the largest part.
What peaceful introduction of either conversionist religion did take place made no more disturbance than that of any other such faith or community from abroad, and of those India has more than the rest of the world is even aware of existence of. That various people from Jews to Parsees (fleeing Persia at the Islamic threat to their indigenous culture and finding refuge and respite in India, nowhere else, and flourishing here for centuries) in past millennia, to Tibetans and others in more recent times, have found refuge and respite in India to sanctuary and flourishing after a stabilisation, is taken for granted in India as much as the flourishing of various branches of Indigenous faiths either separating or branching or interacting or absorbed back as a stream, including Buddhist and Jain and Sikh and many, many others, old or new.
Luce and his sorts may see it, and yet be unable to comprehend it - which is why his bias and his incessant attacks on the majority while absolving those that have an agenda to convert the world. Luce and his sorts comprehend being a jackal, but do not comprehend gratitude to those that provide sustenance and help in life, without whom life would be direly destitute. Hence his derision of those that love cows and the nation that depends on cattle for milk, farmwork, transport, fuel, and much, much more. He forgets laws of yore in out west in US, not so long ago, hanged a man to death for stealing another man's horse - since life there depended on a horse likely as not. He forgets life in India for the poor billion depends on cattle for the livelihood and food. He can afford to forget it, as can those that just as soon move on when India is torn to shreds and poor starve to death. It is another story for those that care about the land.
.............................
The official description on the site where I discovered the book before finding it in a store and buying it to read it (a site based in US and related generally to books and readers with worldwide membership (but nevertheless an assumption by its US members of an implicit ownership of the site and in fact of the very internet that is in fact a work and space of the whole world to meet), a description which officially may or may not represent the book or the author, and might very well be an editorial comment on the site, goes :-
"India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the world’s third largest economy within a generation, outstripping Japan. It will surpass China in population by 2032 and will have more English speakers than the United States by 2050. In In Spite of the Gods , Edward Luce, a journalist who covered India for many years, makes brilliant sense of India and its rise to global power. Already a number-one bestseller in India, his book is sure to be acknowledged for years as the definitive introduction to modern India. In Spite of the Gods illuminates a land of many contradictions. The booming tech sector we read so much about in the West, Luce points out, employs no more than one million of India’s 1.1 billion people. Only 35 million people, in fact, have formal enough jobs to pay taxes, while three-quarters of the country lives in extreme deprivation in India’s 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the world’s largest experiment in representative democracy—and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption. Luce shows that India is an economic rival to the U.S. in an entirely different sense than China is. There is nothing in India like the manufacturing capacity of China, despite the huge potential labor force. An inept system of public education leaves most Indians illiterate and unskilled. Yet at the other extreme, the middle class produces ten times as many engineering students a year as the United States. Notwithstanding its future as a major competitor in a globalized economy, American. leaders have been encouraging India’s rise, even welcoming it into the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance China’s influence in Asia. Above all, In Spite of the Gods is an enlightening study of the forces shaping India as it tries to balance the stubborn traditions of the past with an unevenly modernizing present. Deeply informed by scholarship and history, leavened by humor and rich in anecdote, it shows that India has huge opportunities as well as tremendous challenges that make the future “hers to lose.” "
The underlying biases are so taken for granted that they are not clear in plain sight, and amount to biases similar to equating blond with beautiful (with opposite assumptions silent but held tacitly far more strongly).
The title for instance assumes no reaction to any insult to the many, many religions and faiths and differences of thought that are equally held reverent in the country, mainly due to the character of the traditional way of thought of majority and their religion (often denied a status of religion in western television channels, since it does not confirm to a one person one book one god imposed on all followers and attempting to convert all others sort of pattern understood more easily for its simplicity, never mind the similarity of such faiths with any totalitarian way of thought) - but also the very freedom of worship inherent in the character of the nation is blatantly ignored, or worse, heavily disrespected, in the title and the underlying assumption therein.
Often people tend to hold concatenation as causal connection, and in west this has happened with economic rise being related to a relentless imposition of authoritative mode of faith and wiping out of alternatives - even all knowledge and rights thereto - being imprisoned within the authority fences and the duel that therefore necessarily was fought for freedom of thought against the religious authorities. It is forgotten that while this need to fight for the freedom of thought and knowledge might have helped a great deal, the prosperity would be far less if not accompanied by colonial occupation of other continents and usurping of their wealth, whatever the state of the local people and the treatment accorded to them by the colonial usurping occupiers, whether in Australia or across the ocean in American continent or Asia or Africa.
If this is not believable, just think of how life would be in Europe if there were no migration possible to any other continent, if everyone who wished to travel from Europe anywhere had to mortgage a significant part of their properties and undergo humiliating experiences on arrival in the other lands. Without the migration and the loot from other continents, Europe would be very crowded with poor as it was only two centuries ago - in fact, UK sponsored migration to Australia for all her poor just post wwII, officially, just as it was done for a while towards Canada or US prior to the wars so as to free large estates of aristocracy of the poor locals.
Much more to the graphic illustrative point, imagine if Africa owned the diamonds and the firms in Europe and coffee were to be as expensive as diamonds are today to west, while diamonds cost as much as best Champagne (and I mean, Champagne, not sparkling wine from elsewhere) - which might very well happen if local people owned the lands and used it to feed their own, sparing little for export to others for luxuries.
Once a neighbour in Germany had described poverty of East Germany where she visited relatives by relating how they could not afford bananas. I pointed out that first and foremost if the thing does not grow locally it could not be good for health, much less a necessity; as long as they had apples in their back or front yards on trees, they were in good shape for health and food and fruit. Bananas in fact are suitable only for tropical consumption, where they do grow - they are good food for heat of the locales and are cold in effect as food.
But to continue the thread, here is one more - imagine bananas cost more than opium and its byproducts in lands where they do not grow, and coconuts are no less than precious metals by weight. Would that be deprivation, when a product of one's own land gets a mere fraction of that from another? That is what the ex colonial lands (and natives of occupation forgotten lands of Australia and America too) have lived through.
In short, the prosperity of west has just as much to do with the looting via colonial occupations of various lands and migration to the lands taken over for good, as to do with the science versus faith wars Europe had to fight resulting in tremendous growth in science and technology.
Relating this prosperity to the religion of the west is the false assumption inherent in the title. Relating the prosperity to virtue of every kind is the other, deeper false assumption.
..........................................
From Here to Eternity; by James Jones.
Home truths about war and US military with heartbreaking and one being forced to recognise the truths of this work, From Here To Eternity is to US what All Quiet On The Western Front is to home truths of war in Europe and German army in wwI.
Lincoln's Mothers; by Dorothy Clarke Wilson.
A very good book about some very good people, nice to read, and leaves one with a good feeling suffusing one's heart.
Lincoln spoke about his mother, and most people understood it to be about his birth mother who died soon after. The author here questions that automatic assumption, and while makes no dispute about someone who gave life to such a great man, hypothesises that it might in fact have been about his stepmother who influenced him and was responsible for encouraging his aspirations of reading and learning despite the harsh frontier life of Illinois - Indiana - Kentucky border where his future wife was brought up in a mansion in style with slaves while he lived in a log cabin.
Lincoln spoke about his mother, and most people understood it to be about his birth mother who died soon after. The author here questions that automatic assumption, and while makes no dispute about someone who gave life to such a great man, hypothesises that it might in fact have been about his stepmother who influenced him and was responsible for encouraging his aspirations of reading and learning despite the harsh frontier life of Illinois - Indiana - Kentucky border where his future wife was brought up in a mansion in style with slaves while he lived in a log cabin.
Last Night at Chateau Marmont; by Lauren Weisberger.
Weisenberger is handicapped by her background of fashion magazine and fashion in general, which is good addition to descriptions in a story where it does not irk as it does at serious points. A woman notices her own and her friend's and others' clothings in detail - fine; but does she do so when her life is falling apart, and even if so, does the reader have to wait wading through what everyone is wearing to get to important points such as what is going to happen to her life? In a film one can ignore this on a conscious level, but only when the direction and acting and so forth allows one to do so, as a good film must. In a book the author must exercise some control especially when the book is not about fashion as her famous DWP is.
That she is dealing with serious topic and able to bring one some details of horrors of life of fame along with the skewed balance of lives of those not so famous joined to one famous, is a credit to the writer, and she indeed does it well. She brings home the vicious nature of the paparazzi, the gossip industry created around celebrities by careers depending on the well being and fame of the same famous celebrities, and the devastation wrought in lives affected by this vicious gossip magnified several times compared to lives of the comparatively anonymous. One begins to hate the busybody PROs and columnists and others intruding and destroying the lives of those that are merely seeking a fulfilling life with their talent.
That she is dealing with serious topic and able to bring one some details of horrors of life of fame along with the skewed balance of lives of those not so famous joined to one famous, is a credit to the writer, and she indeed does it well. She brings home the vicious nature of the paparazzi, the gossip industry created around celebrities by careers depending on the well being and fame of the same famous celebrities, and the devastation wrought in lives affected by this vicious gossip magnified several times compared to lives of the comparatively anonymous. One begins to hate the busybody PROs and columnists and others intruding and destroying the lives of those that are merely seeking a fulfilling life with their talent.
India's Unending Journey; by Mark Tully.
Mark Tully is afraid of becoming too Indian, and is like the person fascinated by Gangaa but holds on to a chain on shore while attempting to wash a little of his grime.
Interesting how he sticks to his bringing up prejudices in various contexts where he can open his eyes instead to how much further India takes it. Changing emphasis in the story of Shiva and Paarvatie for instance, reducing the tremendous Divine to the objectified ignominous of a semitic background, not understanding the difference between penance and Tapas, and so forth.
Also, he minimises the various threats that India has faced far more than west, as long as they are from sources British found closer to their ethos - so the massacre of '46 is minimised to a bare mention rather than the graphic butchering of a few thousand within a day or two that occurred on command for the demand to divide India along religious demands of the intolerant. He rightly identifies the two parts thereafter as fanatic and secular, but fails to give enough credit to the mainstream religion of the secular nation for making it possible at all in the first place. (Most so called secular nations of the west have an underpinning nevertheless of some variety of religion recognised by some church as proper, with due recognition of other religions as dim as light of the brightest star on earth, no matter how brilliant it be compared to earth's sun.) Moreover, he fails to take into account the effect of the trauma of years, centuries of butchering suffered by the said mainstream culture still continuing in forms of terrorist attacks orchestrated from across the border, along with organisations like simi. He thinks stick wielders are more of a threat to peace because they speak out, and those that are ready to massacre with more modern weapons than they used in '46 (which was with knives) need no mention in threats to terror.
As for the usual albeit slightly better expo about castes, he shows the same shortcomings. West's failure to recognise that castes are everywhere including in Europe and have always been (the very word being of Anglo Saxon origin in English from German), only the structure of castes being different as in vertical strata unlike the usually horizontal one - in Indian system money is below intellectual and protective functions while elsewhere money is above all and united with power so the lower strata has very little hope to do better or have recognition, for one thing; women had knowledge on par with their male counterparts in India unlike in west, for another; and so forth - and as for being defined by birth, that anomaly in India came in with other cultures dominating after conquest and attempting to dismantle the indigenous culture, whence the discontinuation of the schools called ashrams conducted as live in places for all pupils accepted (various instances have been always clear about people of different backgrounds having lived their student days in the same place, with the poor Braahman - and Braahmans are usually very poor - along with princes and other rich pupils learning on par just as pupils from variety of other backgrounds). Tully has failed to see the significance of something like Mahaabhaarata, and goes only by the usual criticism lashing out from those that had a vested interest in destroying the indigenous culture and imposing theirs.
All in all, he makes it clear he has a long way to go towards evolving into a fair mind, much less a higher comprehension.
Interesting how he sticks to his bringing up prejudices in various contexts where he can open his eyes instead to how much further India takes it. Changing emphasis in the story of Shiva and Paarvatie for instance, reducing the tremendous Divine to the objectified ignominous of a semitic background, not understanding the difference between penance and Tapas, and so forth.
Also, he minimises the various threats that India has faced far more than west, as long as they are from sources British found closer to their ethos - so the massacre of '46 is minimised to a bare mention rather than the graphic butchering of a few thousand within a day or two that occurred on command for the demand to divide India along religious demands of the intolerant. He rightly identifies the two parts thereafter as fanatic and secular, but fails to give enough credit to the mainstream religion of the secular nation for making it possible at all in the first place. (Most so called secular nations of the west have an underpinning nevertheless of some variety of religion recognised by some church as proper, with due recognition of other religions as dim as light of the brightest star on earth, no matter how brilliant it be compared to earth's sun.) Moreover, he fails to take into account the effect of the trauma of years, centuries of butchering suffered by the said mainstream culture still continuing in forms of terrorist attacks orchestrated from across the border, along with organisations like simi. He thinks stick wielders are more of a threat to peace because they speak out, and those that are ready to massacre with more modern weapons than they used in '46 (which was with knives) need no mention in threats to terror.
As for the usual albeit slightly better expo about castes, he shows the same shortcomings. West's failure to recognise that castes are everywhere including in Europe and have always been (the very word being of Anglo Saxon origin in English from German), only the structure of castes being different as in vertical strata unlike the usually horizontal one - in Indian system money is below intellectual and protective functions while elsewhere money is above all and united with power so the lower strata has very little hope to do better or have recognition, for one thing; women had knowledge on par with their male counterparts in India unlike in west, for another; and so forth - and as for being defined by birth, that anomaly in India came in with other cultures dominating after conquest and attempting to dismantle the indigenous culture, whence the discontinuation of the schools called ashrams conducted as live in places for all pupils accepted (various instances have been always clear about people of different backgrounds having lived their student days in the same place, with the poor Braahman - and Braahmans are usually very poor - along with princes and other rich pupils learning on par just as pupils from variety of other backgrounds). Tully has failed to see the significance of something like Mahaabhaarata, and goes only by the usual criticism lashing out from those that had a vested interest in destroying the indigenous culture and imposing theirs.
All in all, he makes it clear he has a long way to go towards evolving into a fair mind, much less a higher comprehension.
The Wedding Girl; by Madeleine Wickham (Sophie Kinsella).
Sophie Kinsella (here using another nom de plume) has developed into or proved to be more than frivolous entertainment for young women and teenage girls, in fact even with her shopaholic series that was true - generally she takes up problems the girls or young women are likely to encounter whether in themselves or in the world and find little if any help from elsewhere, and then proceeds to deal with it all in a sympathetic way with a charming tale woven to a happy ending. This one takes up a slightly deeper level of a problem than shopaholic tendency and makes one go through various pitfalls a young woman can fall into in the happiest of circumstances with no real villains (unless a middle aged woman relative counts as one - but that is overcome easily enough!) - in the process of a social diatribe, though, she does give a rather good picture of what seemingly pretty people are like, in the descriptions of St Catherine flock in general and Tom and Francesca in particular.
Paths of Glory; by Jeffrey Archer.
Archer is a master story teller and this book is another point in evidence, that he holds one glued to the tale that is mostly historical and documented - one assumes he is writing intimate scenes and private thoughts from his own ability rather than any sort of actual documented evidence thereof - and it is not only an eminently readable book, it is one to be recommended on most counts, not the least of which is the sort of determined effort that takes one and more over a barrier, and humanity to a new horizon.
George Mallory, along with his companion for the climb Irvine, has been suspected to be the first known person, certainly of the western world (which, ironically, includes Australia and New Zealand, without anyone giving that particular twist to or convolution of geography a second thought), to have set foot on top of the highest peak of the earth, known by various names - Gaurishankar, Saagarmaathaa, Chomolungmaa, and Everest, amongst many others in all likelihood. Very likely there have been local persons that have climbed it or even traversed the landscape in all sorts of paths as the Himaalaya was rising over the millennia after millennia as it still it, but those are unrecorded and hence even less admitted than the known previous discoverers or even occupants for millennia of other continents that were new to west. Mallory and Irvine vanished around a corner on the climb in 1924 and the body of one was discovered only recently in 1999 while that of Irvine is suspected to have been seen by a Chinese climber who died in an avalanche soon after.
This book is the story of the person and the life of Mallory. Very very interesting, gripping, with all the details about climbing the Eiffel tower and the tower in Venice, and the peaks in Alps and Himaalaya. One is almost there and triumphant for Mallory while weeping for Nyima and laughing ruefully at the Finch escapades.
Archer is strangely callous about some details, perhaps they - one, likely - belong to the history where the British climbers mention one amongst them speaking "the local language" is helpful - which is a bit like an Oriental, an Arab or an African speaking of a fellow Oriental, Arab or African speaking "The European language". There are other such careless little details, but then Archer while benefitting from his readers' avid interest in his work no matter where they are from must affirm his loyalty to the crown and hence show a willingness to be callous to the colonies, even ex colonies.
One rather glaring example of such incorrect detail bordering on false is his epilogue where he mentions someone being murdered by a "Pakistani" in 1931, which is when not only such a thing did not exist, but was not even a demand, only a tool for leverage in hands of someone machiavellian hungry for power who was dismayed to be granted his demand since he would not play by any fair rules or means of any possibility of a dialogue, while in reality he had wanted to really rule India undivided. To set Archer straight, it is no secret that in '31 the concerned person could only have been Indian, and saying Pakistani merely conveys the information in a short and therefore incorrect, false manner that that person's roots as well as future choice of a nationality lay in that direction.
What is irresistible is the descriptions of beauty of Himaalaya, of the peak they tried to conquer, of the view. One almost is catapulted into going over pronto to do it for oneself. Alas, one's years of any such activity are now definitely over, even though now it is practically a highway with several teams a year from anywhere and everywhere around the world achieving the conquest - including handicapped and blind climbers, old people and repeat climbers.
George Mallory, along with his companion for the climb Irvine, has been suspected to be the first known person, certainly of the western world (which, ironically, includes Australia and New Zealand, without anyone giving that particular twist to or convolution of geography a second thought), to have set foot on top of the highest peak of the earth, known by various names - Gaurishankar, Saagarmaathaa, Chomolungmaa, and Everest, amongst many others in all likelihood. Very likely there have been local persons that have climbed it or even traversed the landscape in all sorts of paths as the Himaalaya was rising over the millennia after millennia as it still it, but those are unrecorded and hence even less admitted than the known previous discoverers or even occupants for millennia of other continents that were new to west. Mallory and Irvine vanished around a corner on the climb in 1924 and the body of one was discovered only recently in 1999 while that of Irvine is suspected to have been seen by a Chinese climber who died in an avalanche soon after.
This book is the story of the person and the life of Mallory. Very very interesting, gripping, with all the details about climbing the Eiffel tower and the tower in Venice, and the peaks in Alps and Himaalaya. One is almost there and triumphant for Mallory while weeping for Nyima and laughing ruefully at the Finch escapades.
Archer is strangely callous about some details, perhaps they - one, likely - belong to the history where the British climbers mention one amongst them speaking "the local language" is helpful - which is a bit like an Oriental, an Arab or an African speaking of a fellow Oriental, Arab or African speaking "The European language". There are other such careless little details, but then Archer while benefitting from his readers' avid interest in his work no matter where they are from must affirm his loyalty to the crown and hence show a willingness to be callous to the colonies, even ex colonies.
One rather glaring example of such incorrect detail bordering on false is his epilogue where he mentions someone being murdered by a "Pakistani" in 1931, which is when not only such a thing did not exist, but was not even a demand, only a tool for leverage in hands of someone machiavellian hungry for power who was dismayed to be granted his demand since he would not play by any fair rules or means of any possibility of a dialogue, while in reality he had wanted to really rule India undivided. To set Archer straight, it is no secret that in '31 the concerned person could only have been Indian, and saying Pakistani merely conveys the information in a short and therefore incorrect, false manner that that person's roots as well as future choice of a nationality lay in that direction.
What is irresistible is the descriptions of beauty of Himaalaya, of the peak they tried to conquer, of the view. One almost is catapulted into going over pronto to do it for oneself. Alas, one's years of any such activity are now definitely over, even though now it is practically a highway with several teams a year from anywhere and everywhere around the world achieving the conquest - including handicapped and blind climbers, old people and repeat climbers.
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