Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Lois the Witch: by Elizabeth Gaskell.
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.
The Return of Lanny Budd II (World's End): by Upton Sinclair.
This part, 11th in the series beginning with World's End, covers the beginning of cold war and the disenchantment of Lanny Budd with socialist and communist ideologies, chiefly due to practices of the regimes professing these ideologies rather than any reducing of his belief in rights of individuals, equality of people, freedom, and so forth.
He has opposed the fascist and worse regimes with all he could do, lost a great deal in the process (- one beautiful and loved wife left him due to her conviction that right wing regimes were not wrong in keeping the poor out and the poor were only out to fleece everyone with a soft heart, and another was a German caught by occupation Gestapo in Paris and tortured to death; then there were other friends and relatives galore) - and finally saw their downfall with the end of wwII, testifying against those that were fooled in thinking he was with them.
But the role of leftists has now ('46 - '49, the time period covered in this part) undergone a change from rights of humanity and equality of people to adherence to repressive regimes at all costs including of conviction, thought, mind and soul, not to mention lives of anyone who opposes.
So Lanny and his wife (he married a writer from Baltimore post loss of his second wife to torture chambers in Paris and mourning her in total secrecy of necessity, due to his role as secret agent of Roosevelt) run an independent radio station to air thoughts of those that would not so adhere to any such regimes and champion freedom, equality, thinking.
He has opposed the fascist and worse regimes with all he could do, lost a great deal in the process (- one beautiful and loved wife left him due to her conviction that right wing regimes were not wrong in keeping the poor out and the poor were only out to fleece everyone with a soft heart, and another was a German caught by occupation Gestapo in Paris and tortured to death; then there were other friends and relatives galore) - and finally saw their downfall with the end of wwII, testifying against those that were fooled in thinking he was with them.
But the role of leftists has now ('46 - '49, the time period covered in this part) undergone a change from rights of humanity and equality of people to adherence to repressive regimes at all costs including of conviction, thought, mind and soul, not to mention lives of anyone who opposes.
So Lanny and his wife (he married a writer from Baltimore post loss of his second wife to torture chambers in Paris and mourning her in total secrecy of necessity, due to his role as secret agent of Roosevelt) run an independent radio station to air thoughts of those that would not so adhere to any such regimes and champion freedom, equality, thinking.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Mrs. 'Arris goes to Paris and Mrs. 'Arris goes to New York: by Paul Gallico
A simple kindhearted elderly charwoman who serves upper class bachelors in London by keeping their premises clean and is generous to her possible extent to her niece, and is content with her life on the whole. All she wants, if and when she permits herself to think of it, is a nice dress - a really nice dress, not an off the rack or anything in between but a really first rate dress from Paris. And then her adventures begin - first to Paris, then New York ....
The Gold of Troy: by Robert Payne.
Son of a lower class family from Germany who emigrated to US as many did in that era, Heinrich Schliemann lacked schooling beyond rudimentary but read a great deal due to his hunger for knowledge not satisfied with the day to day need to work hard and earn to survive. He grew a conviction contradicting that of the era about Homer's work being not fiction but historical, and when he had amassed enough riches to begin his dream project he went with a determination to look for Troy and Agamemnon's gold. For this he had to first marry a Greek girl since he would otherwise not have permission to dig in Greece, which he did with an honest explanation to her after searching for a suitable wife - he was in his fifties, she at the end of her teens - who married him for sake of her nation apart from finding his mission attractive. It so happened they finally succeeded in finding the gold and Troy, but it was in then Turkey, and had to steal it out illegally. He however changed his mind about restoring it to Greece and after much swerving back and forth gave it to Germany, rather than US or Greece, which did not find approval with the wife who had been with him in all his travails.
The gold, then on in a museum in Berlin, vanished post wwII and surfaced only recently with opening up of the iron curtain. It was safe in Russia all these years post wwII.
The gold, then on in a museum in Berlin, vanished post wwII and surfaced only recently with opening up of the iron curtain. It was safe in Russia all these years post wwII.
The Cradle Will Fall: by Mary Higgins Clark
About a doctor who transplants embryos, and a woman who cannot come to terms with loss of her perfectly healthy fetus for no known reason and with no pain or accident discovering to her horror that in fact her baby had been transplanted in another woman without knowledge, much less consent, of either of the two.
Then it was futuristic, perhaps. Today there is a lot done that is perhaps a little less crude but could have more devastating impacts on society tomorrow.
Medical practices meanwhile have improved little in treating patients, especially women, with any respect more than a useful object for study of science and a source of income that demands little and can be browbeaten into any treatment or whatever. Most changes in this attitude that need to be evolved have mostly changed attitudes of what needs to be said or thought as window dressing, and a deep hypocrisy, much like racism or gender discrimination in general ("you should not say that" or "don't think that way" is usually a pat response).
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Then it was futuristic, perhaps. Today there is a lot done that is perhaps a little less crude but could have more devastating impacts on society tomorrow.
Medical practices meanwhile have improved little in treating patients, especially women, with any respect more than a useful object for study of science and a source of income that demands little and can be browbeaten into any treatment or whatever. Most changes in this attitude that need to be evolved have mostly changed attitudes of what needs to be said or thought as window dressing, and a deep hypocrisy, much like racism or gender discrimination in general ("you should not say that" or "don't think that way" is usually a pat response).
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World's End: by Upton Sinclair.
This is the beginning of a series of books, about the world with Europe centre stage with time spanning from end of world war I to cold war.
A young boy who is coming of age as the first war, then called the great war, is ending, and he happens to be in place where he can be useful as an interpreter - his father is from a US family with a gun manufacture business, and the mother - Beauty Budd, Budd being the name of the family that no one can be sure she legally does have a right to, but most find it more convenient not to challenge her on the point - living in southern coastal France is from US too, a beauty and an ex-model who worked with artists including her own brother in Paris before having a son.
Lanny Budd is growing up with Riviera for home and Europe for a playground, and the education he receives from various sources - his New England austere and wealthy Budd family, his mother with her genial and loving, kind and compassionate character and her coterie of friends who are wealthy and of upper class; his friends from England and Germany, whom he has mutual visits with, and his extended family with various half brothers and sisters, is all giving him a base from which he grows to be a man of education and learning and a good conscience and a good heart. He is the protagonist and in some sense the soul of the world he inhabits where much is to happen - and the future of humanity is at stake.
This is the first volume of the series that has ten volumes or eleven in all - I always forget the number but do wish one day to have them to read again. It was fortunate to stumble across them in the first place, in a library that was a refuge and a retreat all those years, and incidentally is now a landmark and a preserved heritage structure.
A young boy who is coming of age as the first war, then called the great war, is ending, and he happens to be in place where he can be useful as an interpreter - his father is from a US family with a gun manufacture business, and the mother - Beauty Budd, Budd being the name of the family that no one can be sure she legally does have a right to, but most find it more convenient not to challenge her on the point - living in southern coastal France is from US too, a beauty and an ex-model who worked with artists including her own brother in Paris before having a son.
Lanny Budd is growing up with Riviera for home and Europe for a playground, and the education he receives from various sources - his New England austere and wealthy Budd family, his mother with her genial and loving, kind and compassionate character and her coterie of friends who are wealthy and of upper class; his friends from England and Germany, whom he has mutual visits with, and his extended family with various half brothers and sisters, is all giving him a base from which he grows to be a man of education and learning and a good conscience and a good heart. He is the protagonist and in some sense the soul of the world he inhabits where much is to happen - and the future of humanity is at stake.
This is the first volume of the series that has ten volumes or eleven in all - I always forget the number but do wish one day to have them to read again. It was fortunate to stumble across them in the first place, in a library that was a refuge and a retreat all those years, and incidentally is now a landmark and a preserved heritage structure.
The White Tiger: by Aravind Adiga.
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?!!
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?!!
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)
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