River of Smoke : by Amitav Ghosh.

What with the meticulous research that went into this one, it has taken a while for this second part of the trilogy of opium to come out. Meanwhile one has the details of the first one a bit blurry if one did read it. No matter, though, what is necessary to remember is referred to more than enough with more details and one begins to recall the first part vividly when those references do occur.

Opium was forced on Asia by powers of Europe and the so called New World, in a two pronged strategy, after this and other similar substances were banned with heavy, harsh penalties in the home lands of those powers that benefited from this forcing of the substance on Asia. Back in UK for example anyone trading or possession or indulging in opium stood to lose three times the market value of the substance in possession, while being in danger of prison or worse. Abroad, however, the same people who abhorred the substance in their own countries and obeyed the laws thereof, traded with impunity. This might sound innocent until one realises that fact is such trade was not only forced and manipulated by these people but was in fact introduced in the first place by them, those that would not tolerate it in their own homelands.

Part one described how East India Company forced poor farmers of India to convert their lands to produce opium, instead of the variety of foods the produced which had kept them in good health and wealth until the lands thus converted amounted to shortage of food and other necessary produce and byproducts - animal fodder, thatched roof material, and more. The opium thus produced with pain by the poor farmers was then compulsorily sold to the same British at the prices they set, thus driving the poverty of the farmers to further dire levels.

And all this was "justified" by British in a sentiment quoted in a private speech amounting to necessity of sacrifice for sake of the benefits of opium in new research for medicine - never mind that the most benefits went to the profits in pockets of the British while the sacrifices were the poor Indian farmers' lot.

In this one the well known (but less publicised and hence twisted to the opposite of facts in general public knowledge) facts about how opium was forced on China by British, other Europeans, and in fact by US in the first place, traders, is the gist of the story.

The first ship to introduce opium to China was in fact from Boston, Massachussetts - and while reading this I recalled how my housemates in Boston discussed substance abuse and their firm belief (they thought, of course, that it was fact and general information, rather than belief) that it was Asia that introduced such substance abuse to innocent youth of their ilk, their brothers who had gone out to various nations of Asia as part of the wars they were sent out to fight to defend democracy in the world.

The arguments of the foreigners of west - west of Asia, that is - justifying not only trading of opium in China but forcing this trade on China and people of Asia in general are given at length in this, and are astounding to read in their out and out openly fraudulent leaps of logic. They amount to the following.

Back "home" in "civilised nations" of (Europe and US) there are laws preventing everyone from trading and abusing and possession of the substances, therefore those laws are sacrosanct, since the substance abuse is evil in the first place. But any attempt of a nation such as China to enforce the same laws already in place are merely evil intentions of a mad despot on throne to enforce his will on the people of China against their "right" and their "free will", hence not worthy of respect.

Moreover, such an attempt to enforce the laws is against free trade, which is to say liberty, which is breath of God. (Why this breath of God is then allowed to be curtailed in nations "back home", by laws respected by the same "free trade" mouthing traders, is only because those laws are enforced - by the same powers that would fight exactly the same laws of China!)

In all this, there are a few men - foreign women are not allowed in interiors of China, even as visitors, even if there were any in the trade of that era in the world - who happen to be from the nations subjugated by west (again, meaning Europe and US and co) who happen to be trading in the small fraction of the trade that they can deal in, and they happen to be from various nations around the Arabic Sea. Their lot is the most fragile, since the Chinese success in confiscating the illegal materials is too heavy for their small investors to bear, and unlike the European traders and investors these poor ones can neither wait nor profit from the subsequent "Opium Wars" between China and the powers that sought to force opium trade on China at gun point, much less benefit from insurance. They stand to lose the heaviest, symbolised in the drowning of a figurehead.

The descriptions of Fanqui Hong - the little annexe outside walls of Canton where foreigners were limited to live and do business, not being allowed to enter Canton or China any further - are very evocative, and one only wishes there were maps if not pictures. The place was razed to ground by Chinese post the hostilities of opium and the behaviour of the western traders, and exists no more, according to Ghosh - which there is no reason to disbelieve, of course.

The bits of descriptions of various details are very telling.

The biggest one, of course, the key to the whole tale - how the foreigners contained in their buildings and deprived of their until then plentiful Chinese servants and providers of necessities, were provided by the legal Chinese authorities that were merely demanding the surrender of the opium before they could be allowed to leave - are telling in the difference of level of civilisation. On one hand, the chicanery of the western traders in forcing opium on others while obeying their own home laws; on the other, the Chinese allowing them to stay in the buildings in Canton and providing them with all possible necessities of life (rather than throwing them in jail and executing them summarily, as they would be in their own nations) and only demanding the surrender of the abusive substance.

But the other bits of descriptions are no less in making it all come alive - the unacknowledged son who basks in his father's attention while being still unwilling to smile, years of neglect and lack of status being not made up for sufficiently by the new attention; the love of the employees of Modi for his generous good heart and their loyalty to him; the history of art of Chinese souvenirs; flora one is so used to one is unaware came from China; various people who travelled and migrated back and forth in lands in East, from Egypt to China; various intercommunal and international marriages or otherwise families and consorts with much love; and more than anything, the descriptions of how shipbuilding in India was superior to that of west and had to be swatted down by British law making it illegal for them to continue ordering ships from India, as they later killed other trades and crafts of India (beginning with fabrics manufacture, killing thousands of weavers by starvation and driving poverty to new levels).

And one has to mention the enchanting descriptions of homes and gardens of the wealthy traders in China, of course, as something beyond what one has seen in west or imagined.

But the book does suffer from never quite becoming a tale, a story on its own, what with connecting part one of trilogy to the next one to come and stuffing this one out with historic documents and details. It is almost there, and one keeps on reading it more and more in hope of the story continuing and getting somewhere, but it flounders in the far too long letters of the artist to the botanist duplicating the already described events of Fanqui Hong. This book remains a connecting link, however important and good, between the part that was (Sea of Poppies) that the part to come. One hopes the author changes his mind and makes it more than a trilogy, with a couple of more parts to come or three. Bimal Mitra did the history of Calcutta in five parts after all, very detailed and long ones too. This one is about the sweep of history of the era, the lands from China to Africa in focus, with traders of all over the globe on sea routes. It could stand more.

History and general descriptions of the colonial era focus on the takeover of the Asian lands, "discovery" of the "new world", assuming ownership of Africa and not mentioning it much at that; the thoughts and awareness that gets a mention is generally of men (and rarely of women) of west. This book changes a lot of one's perception of the era shaped by those as it mentions men and women of the occupied lands and their sweep of awareness of the world of west as much as that of the lands around them. An Armenian of Egypt, and a Parsi (literally, Persian) of India, being aware of Napoleon and his wars and his predicaments, and the effect thereof on their own lives and trade, is just one such detail.


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Cousin Phillis; by Elizabeth Gaskell.

A more beautiful, lyrical, calm and yet realistic description of a young woman and the travails she goes through - due to a thoughtless male who flits about - is hard to come across. The writing is more natural than Austen and so is the construction, with no forced happy ends or tragedies either.

The Mistress of Spices: by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

The initial uncertainty between confusion, bafflement, protest or irritation at this tale that lives somewhere on border of knowledge, fantasy and satire (- satire against the western ethos holding not only all the unknown as exotic but as witchcraft to be feared and punished, especially when it comes to women's - or any woman's - knowledge of even the areas she needs to be expert in, such as her kitchen and condiments, spices and foods, their properties of nutrition and medicinal values, their overall effect on a person) in a magical land superimposed on a real city with a very real huge earthquake, a country with its history of migration, its real problem of hostility and animosity against each new wave of immigration, its horrendous silent atrocities against migrants.

Spices as any other foods - fruits, vegetables, grains, whatever - have very real values in terms of nutrition and effects on body that span from appetising to medicinal. Turmeric does have antiseptic properties, it does stem blood flow and helps it to clot (so it is kept pure without touch of another spice in homes of those that know) and can be used for preliminary help with small wounds or scratches; fennel does cool and sweeten breath; cinnamon does help warm up a body; cloves do help with toothache and with cough and cold; and so forth. All this and much much more, all such other knowledge about food and spices, has been known for millennia in ancient medicine of India, Ayurveda, the knowledge of life literally, and is known to not only doctors but women through teachings of generations propagated at home. It is an integral part of Ayurveda, of a woman's education at home, of a homemaker's and a mother's necessary part of her qualification as a householder.

Chitra Banerjee's tale lives with all this and yet in a magical land where the spices have personalities with other, far more unknown qualities. Are they real, are they known to her grandmother, only she can say. One can only say with any certainty that as far as one knows they are unheard of.

But the magical quality of the tale takes over, and one stops bothering about how real it is. In this she is very successful, except at the very end when the couple resolve about what next. That seems forced, somehow.

There is only one respect in which the very well made film was different - obviously. Aishwarya Rai fits the role of the unimaginable beauty that Tilottama (Tilottamaa is literally "every particle excellent", an apt description of the most beautiful woman in court of Gods in heaven) becomes for a night, but certainly not the seemingly old woman with wrinkles or the other one at the end. Even with her normal dressing of an Indian woman through the film there is no hiding her beauty, it depends not on clothes or cosmetics. For reasons unknown, Raven is changed too to a biker rather than a long low car owner. To add the element that making him blue eyed (rather than what he is in the story) took away from his persona, perhaps.

The tales of migants being beaten up severely (and the court saying it was self defence on part of those that initiated the beatings rather than a feeble attempt at self defence on part of the migrants assaulted and maimed severely) are not unknown in the country where they came from, or amongst the migrants in US, or other such lands.

In US those stories however true are held as not newsworthy, just as they are in Germany, since a bunch of "white" young males injuring or killing people of other races of whatever age is considered fit to be ignored in both lands. But the known - evermore since a decade ago - stories of such racist assaults has done all it can to wipe out the self created image of US as the nation of fair law.

Why do migrants still go to US? It is for the same reason the ancestors of the so called "white" ones did not so long ago, for a living, for a life. Now, the migrants often return, finding it better at home in much poorer nations. It is a matter of being poor in civilised lands versus being a bit better off in a jungle with wild beasts lurking around.

Interpreter of Maladies: by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Unlike the other works of her I read before this, this collection of short stories is smooth like a properly aged mild liqueur, and comforting, without the raw edges in her other works that I read before that gave a pain sometimes, often dull, sometimes sharp - which did not detract from the literary qualities of those works, but rather enhanced the experience for a reader familiar with her world.

Lahiri either always was or is developing into a rather fine author and deserves a place in classics. That she describes or writes about the world of Baangaalie immigrants in US is not a limitation but rather her down to earth wisdom of writing about what she knows best of. And she does it very well, in this collection of short stories too, as usual.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011.
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Theodore Boone - The Abduction; by John Grisham.

It is not clear if Grisham is trying out a new genre for the pleasure of it, as he did with a couple of other works, or if this is his new career to attract a younger generation or age group, possibly some of his children or grandchildren - either way, he is as good, as perfect as ever.

Especially for the younger age group and their parents, this is practically a textbook of what might happen, with merely a caution in the scare but an entirely satisfactory resolution of problems on all sides.

Having read this, looking forward to reading the next one!

Londonstani: by Gautam Malkani.

One suffers stoically through the pain of the language and the pages which merely - repeatedly - establish that the protagonist is trying to be cool by giving up his A level grades, joining the local gang of second generation immigrants from India (and other parts of India that was before it was divided due to religious fundamentalists requiring to rule a "pure" nation that was washed out of any sign of those that did not confirm), speaking their language rather than a good English, watching them beat up - but seriously, injuries and all - various youths for little or no reason, and hiding his desire to get a girlfriend his gang friends don't approve of. All this could be done effectively in a page or two, three at most - this writer makes a third of this verbose book hiding clued behind the chaff of the verbosity of little content.

One is shocked a little at the needless death and wonders if they have all gone bonkers - marriages across various divisions of society have always happened in the world and especially in India, and this is a story set in UK, with a young couple that does not exactly depend on parents for providing a home, since they both earn well.

But the last page or two take the whole point of reading the book and throw it in a trash bin - the whole point of going through the book so painfully for a literate reader having been to get to understand the immigrants, and tolerating excuciatingly bad writing for the purpose. One feels the author is enjoying this cheating, this in-your-face reversal revealation. It may happen, for all that, in real life. But in real life the protagonist is not suddenly revealed to be someone or something else. One knows who he or she is.

This tale of majority vs minority switching and reverse colonial existence belongs really elsewhere, but putting it where it belongs would get the author a tag of "right wing, non secular" and mucho brickbats. So he plays it safe by placing it where those labels have not been used quite to fit his tale. Clever trick, not much. Low blow, definitely.

How else does one expect a Bartholomew - Cliveden going through so much subjugation and taking beatings and deciding not to report to his own homeland authorities? Not in London, not in England!
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This reverse scenario of a minority turning into majority locally and a majority local youth being or feeling colonised or behaving to conform with his surroundings rather than with his own majority people may, and does, happen - only, it is usually in another part of the world, where it is taken as righteous behaviour according to the pseudo secular code unwritten but dominant in public discourse while logic, facts, history, truth all go for a toss, since the factor that is important is that the minority or two happen to be vestiges of an ex colonial ruling power or two or more.

In UK on the other hand the minority of immigrants may at most be called economically successful by now, but they by no means are so dominant anywhere as to rule out a police complaint and investigation by authorities into a beating up of an English boy by sons of immigrants.

The only sign of any behaviour remotely similar in spirit to this is fairly innoccous, however pervasive - the immigrant culture from India has taken over in terms of dominant cuisine more than anything else except perhaps Yoga and a bit of spread of vegetarian culture, at least to the extent of eateries and supermarkets distinctly labeling food as vegetarian or otherwise and most restaurants sporting a vegetarian section of menu. Some people are fascinated by the immigrant culture enough to wish to watch films from India or learn Indian classical music or dance, and some would like to attend or watch a wedding conducted Indian style. And yes, a celebrity beauty might wed an Indian immigrant in Indian style in full show (but not in spirit - his family and relatives were invited and although very much present but not allowed on the stage where the wedding took place, and this alone goes majorly and horribly against any possibility of calling it a true Indian wedding in any way) - but thereabouts ends the reverse and entirely unintended colonisation.

Most immigrants keep their own culture to the extent they can or wish for sake of their own integrity of spirit rather than any thought of spreading it, although they do not grudge anyone around learning about it or making it their own, unless it is a mockery (such as the German young woman who wore a saree over her trousers and took it off in public during an Indian classical concert in Stuttgart). And if there happen to be physical fights amongst high school youth, it is hard to believe that authorities are not informed about an English boy being beaten up by sons of immigrants of the "wrong" colour.

Anti Social: by Sumer Chand.

For all the authors from India in English language out there, that is to say those that have been writing and publishing during last five or six decades post independence of India (and not counting the truly great that existed during the fight for independence of India and participated in one way or more), this one is the most authentic in two different ways - one, language and storytelling style, and two, story background and details.

Most authors of India when writing in English have either been brought up in a very westernised surrounding - church school, westernised social setting where people go through western dances decorously (but only with spouses post marriage or even engagement) and do whatever else the set thinks is the latest fashion, which includes looking down on some Indian things while adhering to some understood as necessary part of life and solidity (such as dancing only with one's own spouse, performing all the necessary traditions and excusing oneself with a "what to do, one must, parents" excuse if necessary).

Part of this when one of this set (- as opposed to the expat milieu settled elsewhere that writes in English naturally but has lost touch with India necessarily, not that that is bad, unless they do attempt writing about India seeking a booker or so - that is when they may get one but are seriously out of touch with reality of what they are writing about in the first place, and the prize is a mockery of colonial attitudes of author and prizegiving jury alike -) writes about India is that they attempt to write for non Indians, with whom they are really not in touch either, not much, since mostly they have lived in India; and so there is touches of Indian words or phrases here and there as one might patch one's thousand pounds a plate dinners for social causes with a patch of some starving Africans in a photo on one's wall in the drawing room. This language of patches is more natural to them than either pure English or pure Indian language (any one of the well over twenty odd offical languages with rich history of literature in most, some quite ancient, others with roots in ancient languages). But patchwork it is, albeit natural to the half breeds as it may be, since it is after all created by them.

Sumer Chand on the other hand writes as an Indian not natural in English speaks, translating his words and idioms and phases and the way thought is shaped, translated from Indian (any Indian language - amazing, since they are so different, how very united they are when translated - it is like a body in another garment, merely) often word for word. Reading this does require a thourough comprehension of Indian language (again, any Indian language will do for the purpose), of the idioms and phrases and how thoughts take the shape of words and forms of speech. Even the mistakes in the book are a reflection of this.

Far more valuable is the reality portrayed herein. Unlike various others who attmept to write with a disturbing consciousness about who they are writing for, this one is merely recounting a tale, and the reality of the background of social and political truths of India merely are portrayed as they are, neither with an attempt to cover up nor with the opposite of that with a deliberate slum wallowing torture for the reader.

If there were any honesty in the various prizes - this one deserves more than one of International kind for its honesty in toto. But the prize giving is not as honest as this book or this author - so this might very well be the only eulogy for the very deserving book and author.

Lady Windermere's Fan, and Importance of Being Ernest; by Oscar Wilde.

Lady Windermere's Fan:-

With a name like that you would expect a delightful comedy, and you would be wrong - this one begins to break heart right from the word go. There is the very young Lady Windermere with her new husband she is very much in love with and the friend of the couple who is in love with her, and the whole society buzzing with the woman of disrepute new in town who the said husband has recently taken up with, including paying her very expensive bills; she even almost blackmails him to give her more money, and he is unable to refuse. The woman is audacious enough to make acquaintance of Lady Windermere herself, which might compromise the latter in view of the reputation of the former, and has boldness enough to demand that the husband gets her invited to the party the wife is throwing. The husband is desperate enough to ask, the wife refuses in all rectitude, and the husband sends out the invitation anyway in the wife's name, normally a privilege and a right that belongs solely to her. The wife upon seeing the woman she has not invited informs him she shall strike the woman with her fan, a public insult he implores her not to offer - and she lacks the courage to do so. Then she sees the huge amount he has paid out to the woman, and decides it is time to leave him, and takes support of the very persuasive friend who has been attempting to convince her he will be a far more faithful lover than the husband - of course he is not about to remind her of the life of ignominy she shall live thereafter as either an adulteress or as a divorcée, or worse if the said lover abandoned her.

And then comes the full knowledge offered by the author to the reader (but it is to be kept from the innocent young bride for her own security) and the twists that save her, and too the "other" woman. The end is truly delightful, after all the heartbreaks through the whole play.
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Importance of Being Ernest:-


Delightful and seemingly silly comedy with Ernest being a name, one that more than one suitor of a couple of young women claim, and seem finally to have - what with a nanny who lost a baby by confusing it with a handbag she was going to check in at a safe storage facility, fortunate finding of the said lost baby transformed into a young male, and so forth.

The title however is a clue to the wit of the author, the subtle or perhaps under the circumstances not so subtle commentary on the prevalent norms that penalised him for his lack of reverence for social norms of the day, the tongue in cheek nature of the title being hollow since Ernest is only a name after all.
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The Salamander, and The Shoes of The Fisherman; by Morris West.

The Salamander:-

A phoenix rises out of the ashes alive. But a salamander stays alive through the hottest fire.

Politics and society and church in Italy, and a young official caught in the midst of the whole thing coming out alive by sheer presence of mind and power of thinking, of seeing things and people for what they are, perhaps losing a little of the credulity of the youth but not the essentials needed for trust.
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The Shoes of The Fisherman:-

Informative about inner workings of Vatican especially about the change of Bishop of Rome, that is, election of a new pope after death of a current one, and educational about the role politics - of world and church - plays in the workings.
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Survivor Personality: by Al Siebert.

No great insight here, but generally good cataloguing of traits commonly possessed by those that survive all sorts of things, tragedies and more.

Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility


This one gives the clash of values characteristic of the writer, with wealth and temptation and opportunity versus rectitude and character and propriety as well as prudence playing the major part. How love itself must give way to rectitude and character is the chief theme, with the obvious lesson that giving way to temptation for now might close the door to happiness, love and future in fact.
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Pride and Prejudice


"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So the writer states right in the beginning.

That is because while this is assumed to be a romance it is really a very astute picture of society that transcends time and geography and social boundaries and cultures, and applies universally to any place where there are young women at an age ripe to marry without dowries to bring out grooms out of the woods swarming. This is all the more so when the young women in question are not about to while away time with pretense of careers and attempts at education while the men they school and party with are getting ready, or any other subterfuges of societies they belong to.

Marriage is the beginning of the life they are going to lead with homemaking and child rearing and building of social fabric and of future as their occupation, since time immemorial. It can be said to be the most important occupation in the world, and yet few societies make a provision of how the young women can go about securing their life in it, with few structures and storngholds and little if any security.

Jane Austen writes extensively about this in various settings in her works, and offers much light to guide people - not only young women but men and women of all ages - with good counsel. This is her most popular work and most famous one, and with good reason.

It seems like a romance and at some level it is but only after normal intelligent and prudent women - young and old - use decorum and wise counsel added to commonsense. This like other books by the author is about how to live well and safe and be good and decent, sensible and honourable, prudent and not blinded by illusions, and find love and romance and marriage as well.

Often people of a bit less comprehension are likely to make the mistake of a common sort, where they conclude "Elizabeth married Darcy not out of love, but for his money". She - the writer - herself makes a joke of the sort, somewhere along towards the end, but it is clearly a joke for all that. Elizabeth might not have been sighing and fainting with passionate abandon at first sight, but that is because unlike figures of trashy pulp she is a person with a mind and other concerns as well, and for a normal young woman passion does not necessarily come as the blinding flash at first sight any more than it does for - say - a writer or a poet or an artist or a scientist. Which does not reduce the final outcome of a certainty when it does come. Elizabeth married for her conviction of love, respect and rectitude, not for money.

If that were to be true she would not have refused him, or indeed even been off hand, and not fawning or manipulative, even before with all his standoffish behaviour.

But she behaved normally, and refused him with a growing wrath when he proposed - it was not his money, but to begin with the truth of his letter, and then the regard his household had for him, the people who knew him the most, and subsequently his more than civil behaviour towards her relatives who were only middle class, and his obvious attempts to have his sister know her and have her for a friend - these wer the successive steps that changed her more and more.

The final clinching one was of course his taking all the trouble to make amends to the grievous injury caused to her family by his silence, about someone he should have and did not warn people about, and keeping not only silent about it - the efforts he made to make sure about making amends to the injury caused by his reticence - but making sure her uncle would not tell anyone either.

In between was his aunt arriving haughtily to obtain a reassuarance from her to the effect that she would not marry him - which not only made her stubborn but made the three concerned (the two and the aunt) realise that she might be considering it seriously, although his offer had not been left on the table indefinitely.

So if anyone out there still thinks Elizabeth married him for his money - I suppose you did not read the story, really.
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Mansfield Park:-


The writer of the universally popular Pride And Prejudice explores another angle of the conflicts of dealing with life as it is dealt out - wealth and relative status, temptation and opportunities, family and relationships, extended family and relatives, and love that never might be attained. Above all are rectitude and character and values, to be never lost whatever the temptation.
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Emma:-


Perhaps arguably the second most popular of the writer's works vying with Mansfield Park for the title, this one again explores values and conflicts from another angle, with growth of character and perception, and temptation to meddle in social affairs, as the chief theme.

It is more serious than it looks, as is usual with a good deal of her work, where the seemingly most superficial and romantic turns out to be most serious and worthy of note.

More people than would care to acknowledge or admit even to themselves do meddle in affairs of others, especially those of heart, with a fond illusion that they can do good to others and provide their happiness for them. But lacking in perception and maturity and judgement and discrimination they often spoil more than they would like to admit, often ruining lives.

Couples that might change the world with their love are torn asunder by a disapproving bunch of relatives or even religious heads with their "concern" for the "soul" of the one who might bring wonderious gifts but is not one of them (hence the gifts of course), and the miracle that would have been the families and souls generated with such love are nipped in the bud. Of course, it is only the couple that knows the tremendous love and the pain and suffering of being torn asunder, while others merely go about congratulating one another for having averted an unsuitable match with an outsider.

Of course, meddling is not limited to that - couples that could have changed the course of the universe with their love and their gifts combined often get torn apart by meddling others who delude themselves that they were acting in good faith for the betterment of society, and if it is clear they were tormenting a woman or a daughter, well that is what they are for - so they can learn to do the same to others in turn, if so lucky, and so goes the chain. Jackals manage to devour the marriage and the love and even the children on all but physical level.

Meanwhile gifts of heaven go squandered into dust because the couples are either too weak to hold on to each other and to their heavenly gift of creation of a new world, or even worse, because one gets turned against another and hurts until the one hurt is no more, which is when the survivor might realise if lucky of what has been lost, even though it might be too late. Often such realisation awaits death of the one who hurt the other one into death.

None of this happened in Emma - she was lucky, to have good counsel and love guarding her, and her weakness of character of meddling with others nipped in bud and her mistakes of perception corrected by someone wiser and stern about serious faults. She was lucky indeed.
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Northanger Abbey:-



The not so well to do young woman is taken to a resort by comparatively well to do relatives and is invited by the master of the Northanger Abbey, the father of the young and eligible gentleman who has a mutual attracted to her and courting her, to stay with him and his family, under the impression the she is going to inherit the relatives' money.

The character of this father, the rich owner of the home that is the title, unfolds, and there are confusion, test of virtue and character, and separations and misunderstandings.

The young man however has excellent character and fortunately realises what is what, and love triumphs even without money.
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Persuasion:-


The most gentle love story from Austen repertoire, with the usual cache of gentle women and men following a normal course of life for their day while falling into easy traps of faults or follies and realising their mistakes and generally rising above, with their counterpart of men and women of small follies or serious faults of character providing examples of how not to be or behave.

Someone (name escapes me, having read this long ago, two decades or more) had once pointed out that in Austen nothing happens page after page and yet one reads it with great interest, and to that one might only add, time after time again and again with the interest not diminished at all. And the most interesting are those of her tales that have the gentlest of stories, characters, et al.
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The Watsons


One wishes she had had time to write it up as she did others; here is an outline written in her green years.
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Sanditon



This barely begins before it ends. One wishes Austen had lived long enough to finish these few and write some more books as well of course. .......................................


Lady Susan


If one never knew anyone of this sort, one would think the character is entirely invented. At that it is not that uncommon to come across men who deal with their own children, especially daughters, this cruelly or worse, but they are excused or even pressured to be this cruel and admired for it in various cultures (not excepting west or US for that matter) while women are usually this cruel with children of other women, say a lover's wife or a sister in law. But the character therefore is entirely possible, especially in an era when a woman could only obtain wealth and consequence by marriages her own and her relatives'; and the only area she could use her mind however sharp was in fields related to intrigues of social sort, marriages, love affaires, and so on, especially gossip and vile gossip about other women. This unfortunately is what far too many women and even men use their minds for, even now, for sport and not for want of subjects that could use the sharp minds. Sometimes it is the heart of such a gossiper and mud thrower that is at fault seriously in that destroying another person is the pleasure, and use of mind and other facilities is merely a means.

Lady Susan comes as a surprise therefore not because of the subject but the author who chose to write it, since Jane Austen usually is as clear as a sunny day in desert about virtues and vices, and condemning not only the latter but even faults of character that might seem only human today but do lead to follies or tragedies even today often enough unquestionably.

Here Austen chooses the letter form prevalent in her time, and avoids commentary, except in letters of another character, giving equal voice to two opposite characters as it were. The story ends well as all Austen tales do to reward virtue, protect innocent and punish vice or folly only in measure.

A window as always to her time, and informative in that as well.
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Every French Man Has One: by Olivia De Havilland.

Olivia de Havilland had a life full enough before she married a French man - she not only was Errol Flynn's costar in his westerns about Custer and the Melanie Wilkes in the biggest film of that era, Gone With The Wind, but also dated Howard Hughes. Gone With The Wind the film is radically different from the book, not in a small part due to the performers being nothing like the characters they portrayed, and Olivia more than anyone was most unlike Melanie Wilkes - Melanie was timid, brown, quiet, afraid of males, and Olivia is not only beautiful but definitely exudes sexuality and confidence, however tamed.

Then Olivia de Havilland married a French man and went to live in France.

I forget the very innocent explanation of the title (which is why it is funny) but remember the one funny part (it has been an eventful life and a quarter of century post reading this, of which only later few were peaceful if any at all) - it is about her French dressmaker pushing her bosom firmly in with tight controls to tame it down, while she kept pushing it up in the standard Hollywood style to make it look bigger.

Oriental Mythology: by Joseph Campbell.

Informative and often horrifying, but one cannot help reflecting that it takes fringe practices rather than mainstream philosophy of a great culture - perhaps more than one - and such portrayals can make anything at all look ugly.

Silk: by Alessandro Baricco.

A whole new world opening up, and the charm of the perfect spouse can hardly compete with the thrill of the new world and new work and discoveries galore, especially when travel across the world to an entirely different land with very different culture is involved. Add a beautiful, enigmatic person (of the right gender) to this - and voila, you have a complex mystery of life, love, and more.

Here, it is about silk, introduction of silk from Orient to west, of attempting to grow sericulture in west by bringing cocoons all the way from Japan, while travel is by ship and all that such a travel entails.

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.

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 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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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.