The most haunting, horrifying book I have ever read…

Was reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go”, and am struggling to find words to describe it. Its haunting, its scary, and its really really creepy. What makes it so? Why does it keep me awake at night, grappling with the memories of some “students” in a book?
It starts off as a boarding school story, a world of children growing up, becoming friends, dealing with their “guardians”. All of them are aware that they are not destined for the usual world, the everyday world outside. But the focus is on interpersonal relationships that draw you in, make you involved in their stories, their little gains and losses, the preparation for the world outside. They seem a little deprived, in some way, more evidenced by their joy in little things than any major cruelty they suffer. Their dreams are small : “to work in an open office space”, “to become a fireman”, “to have a relationship with a loved one”, but at the outset, it is clear that these dreams are out of reach for them. They are hoping for the impossible. You root for them, you find yourself turning pages to see if any of them “make it in life” if their love stories work out, if somehow, anyhow, humanity does not fail them.

But it is , of course, impossible. They know it, and you as the reader, know it too. For one thing, the “students” are clones. Created, educated and prepared for one reason: their vital organs are needed for transplants for “normal” people. They are aware of what they are and why they exist, right from the time they are children. What is brought out in the course of the novel is “who” they are: real people, with hopes and feelings and joy and sorrow and a heart-rending acceptance of their function in life. Ishiguro’s genius lies in the fact that he doesn’t linger on their being clones, on their status, first as “carers”, then as “donors”, and finally, that they “complete” after their second, third or fourth “donation”. These are incidental to the main story, which is about people complete in themselves, just existing to make life possible for others to survive, live and prosper.

It brings to mind all the occasions, past, present and future, where being human in not enough.
If Orwell’s 1984 was scary enough, 20XX is way more so. Where is science taking us? In its search for the cure for disease, in its denial of old age and in its giddy intoxication with itself and its own advances…

I can’t recommend that you read this book, or not read it. I just had to write about it, get it out there, so I don’t think about it so much.

A Mango Shaped Space…..

I recently read a book called A Mango Shaped Space by Wendy Mass. Initially, it was the word “Mango” which caught my attention – nostalgia for childhood summer days spent eating juicy mangoes….sweet, a little squishy, a wonderful orange-yellow… warnings against over-eating, since it could cause tummy-aches….  The first mango of summer… the excitement and curiosity it engendered: would it be sweet, as in really really sweet? Sometimes the sweetest mangoes had an insect burrowed inside…Ah, mangoes were worth the wait. A short mango season, but what an indulgence!!

By evoking all these memories – “an universe in a tea cup” – the book had a lot to live up to. Having picked it up at random, I had no idea what the book was about. I soon discovered it was all about associations. Specifically, about synesthesia. I had heard about synesthesia, and how synesthetes associated colors with numbers and letters, how sounds provoked visual images. I had, after all, read Baudelaire’s Correspondances. What I knew about it was some information tucked away in the trivia section of my brain. In the book, A Mango Shaped Space, the protagonist is a synesthete who initially tries to keep her condition a secret.  An informed doctor helps her understand her condition for what it is, a gift rather than a shameful secret or a dangerous illness. She is in danger of losing herself in her expanded world when a traumatic experience temporarily deprives her of her extended senses, and brings her back to her family and the real world.

Wendy Mass does a fantastic job of making a synesthete’s world seem natural and accessible to her readers. She also brings home how being different is an isolating experience, and while the synesthetes’ world can seem so much more, it does come with a price. While reading the book, I got a glimpse of a world which made my own seem like a 2D version, with the 3D world in living color just beyond my reach.

Historically, a lot of creative people were synesthetes. Some tried to replicate the experience with mind-altering drugs. Two of my favorite poets have written about the synesthetic experience, Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Proustian descriptions of nature seem to have a touch of the synesthetic mélange of senses about them. For Proust, flowers and bushes are more than just themselves, they are people, they are character traits, they are events in themselves.

From Wendy Mass’ to Proust is a long journey indeed, both in time and experience. A Mango Shaped Space is a lot shorter for sure, and a lot easier to read than In Search of Lost Time. I will not ask you to go out and read Proust, but if you get a chance, pick up A Mango Shaped Space. Your child will enjoy it, and so will you.

Wendy Mass’ book for children did a lot more than bring the remembered taste of mangoes to my mouth – it gave me a glimpse of a world I didn’t know, and regretted not knowing.

When I grow up, I want to be……Amelia Peabody

There is something so satisfying about a new Amelia Peabody mystery. You know what to expect, and you get it, and somehow, it is all the better for it. With Elizabeth Peters you know you are in safe hands. She keeps you informed, engrossed, and laughing hysterically all at the same time. It is a whodunit, but it is not a guilty pleasure. Imagine eating comfort food that was actually good for you – that’s what an Amelia Peabody mystery is. Elizabeth Peters has a doctorate in Egyptology, and all her books are meticulously researched. So the mummies and the sarcophagi will actually belong to the same era, and the historical details are accurate (maybe not the washed donkeys[1]).

Her latest book came out in April, just in time for my birthday. Another guilt-free pleasure – I promptly ordered the hardbound edition as my birthday present to myself. I saved it for my birthday and read most of it in one sitting, when I should have been preparing for my Lit. Theory class. River in the Sky is set in the middle of the series, before Ramses and Nefret are married. For a change, it is set in Jerusalem and not Egypt, but there is the usual satisfying number of corpses, and Ramses is in deathly danger several times. And of course, he survives them all with his usual panache. You can find the summary on amazon, so I will not bore you with the story. What I will do is reproduce some of my favorite Amelia Peabody quotes, and whet your appetite for more.

On Marriage

“Marriage should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.”

“Five years of marriage have taught me that even if one is unamused by the (presumed) wit of one’s spouse, one does not say so.”

On Religion

“Godly persons are more vulnerable than most to the machinations of the ungodly.”

“I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian.)”

On Archaeology

“I will tell you a little secret about archaeologists, dear Reader. They all pretend to be very high-minded. They claim that their sole aim in excavation is to uncover the mysteries of the past and add to the store of human knowledge. They lie. What they really want is a spectacular discovery, so they can get their names in the newspapers and inspire envy and hatred in the hearts of their rivals.”

On Men

“Men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging themselves.”

“The difficulty was that he was a man.”

“Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point.”

“It is impossible for any rational mind to follow the peculiar mental convolutions that pass for logic among the male sex . . .”

“Men are by instinct untidy animals.”

“Emerson likes to think he is the master of his fate and the lord of all he surveys. It is a delusion common to the male sex and accounts for the sputtering fury with which they respond to the slightest interference with their plans, no matter how impractical those plans may be.”

On Women

“A woman’s instinct, I always feel, supersedes logic.”

“No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.”

On Crime and Murder

“Most people obey the orders of an individual who is pointing a gun at them.”

“High-minded individuals are more dangerous than criminals. They can always find hypocritical excuses for committing acts of violence.”

On Human Nature

“When one is striding bravely into the future one cannot watch one’s footing.”

“If someone lies down and invites you to trample on him, you are a remarkable individual if you decline the invitation.”

For more, check out www.ameliapeabody.com

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[1] If you are a fan, you know what I am referring to. If not, read one of her books and find out.

In the middle of exam week… will the vacations ever start?

To Minerva

My temples throb, my pulses boil,

I’m sick of Song and Ode and Ballad -

So, Thyrisis, take the Midnight Oil

And pour it on a lobster salad.

My brain is dull, my sight is foul,

I cannot write a verse or read –

Then, Pallas, take away thine Owl,

And let us have a lark instead.

—Thomas Hood

Should I wear a wig and a beard everyday???

No, I have not lost my mind. No, I have not joined the transgender community. To explain: in our medieval French lit. class, we performed a play called Jeu d’Adam, in old French. I learned a lot from the play, not just about medieval French lit, or about Genesis or the Fall. I learnt some things that I perhaps should have learnt years ago.

First of all, it was fun. Surprisingly so! It was fun working as a team, coming up with ideas on background, props, ad-hoc solutions which could work within the restrictions posed by a run-of-the-mill classroom. Lamps strung with vines and flowers became trees, one of which framed a stuffed serpent. Plastic fruit and vegetables used as teaching props indicated a lush and green Paradise brimming with plenty.

The play was in old French, which was intimidating at first (since we couldn’t understand any of it without the English translation). But it was curiously liberating as well, mouthing words that I didn’t understand. I could distance myself from them in a way. And I’m glad I decided to wear a white beard and a wig – I felt well-disguised and separated from myself. End result – as I was walking towards the classroom and the impending performance, I was quite relaxed. The absence of stress, ever present in my life, particularly when a paper or a presentation is due, was remarkable. And that is why, as I was walking home after class today, I was wondering: Should I wear a wig and beard everyday? If “I” am nervous, should I become someone else? Should I create a distance between me and the roles that I play everyday: that of Mom, Teacher, Student? Maybe “performing” everyday will help me approach situations in the manner I should, help me decide how I should be viewed and act accordingly.

All of us do that, I think, in varying degrees in our life. And it is not really a bad thing. It makes us more conscious of how people react to us, how they view us, and whether we present ourselves the way we see ourselves.

Serious stuff aside, what made it really fun for me was how involved my daughter was in the whole project. She helped me practice, reading lines in English while I read mine in the original. She made me practice, because she thought it was all a lot of fun. Some of that rubbed off on me too, and it became fun instead of another assignment to worry about. She read the entire translated version of the play, and came up with some very pertinent observations. Reading about Adam and Eve being sent out of Paradise, she asked me thoughtfully: Mom, why is it such a bad thing to be thrown out of Paradise? The earth is pretty nice to live on. I replied that perhaps Paradise was even nicer. She still insisted that it was a good thing that Adam and Eve were sent out of Paradise, because, “Mom, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. They would have been immortal, and we’d never have been born!” Hmmmmm…..out of the mouth of babes.

Cheers!

I can’t believe it. We are well into February, and the newness is beginning to wear off 2010. I have already forgotten one important birthday, all of us at home have been through two rounds of colds/flu, and I for one, am ready for a vacation. I keep telling myself that I’ve been back at work for only 3 weeks this year, but its not convincing enough. I need a vacation.  I miss my mom. I want some TLC.

My daughter came to me a couple of days ago, asking, “Mom, do I really need to go to school? I’m bored of going to school, I’ve been going for sooo long.”

I think that about sums it up. Its that time of the year when we’ve had enough. Enough of winter. Enough of the daily blah. From September on, it’s the excitement of the new school year, followed by fall and Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year….. What is left is taking down the Christmas tree and the outdoor lights (hopefully by Easter), buckling down to steady work with no respite in sight…. A month of that, and we are ready to cry “Uncle”.

We need something around end-February, something to raise our spirits. I wouldn’t say no to a nice carnival with lots of noise and laughter and cheer to raise our spirits and dispel the lingering gloom of winter, which, alas, looks well-entrenched. Sitting by the fireplace, sipping hot cider, reading a good book, is fine – for December. By late February, its like : Let there be (more) light. Let there be more warmth, and sunshine, and flowers and something fresh and green. Away with the slushy murky piles of blackened snow, indestructible edifices of winter!

Oh, well, I am going to go warm myself some red wine, [http://dreamingofwinter.blogspot.com/2009/08/gluhwein-recipe.html] switch on the TV, stack all my study material next to me…. And watch the snow piling up in Washington DC. More of the white stuff – Ugh!

More wine, please.

“……. six impossible things before breakfast.”

Discours de la méthode by Descartes; Medieval poetry in the original Occitan; Course in General Linguistics by Saussure – Phew!!! These are the books I am currently reading: or more accurately, am attempting to read. I can feel my brain stretching in hitherto unimagined ways to wrap itself around so many new ideas and concepts. Rather like a piece of well-chewed gum.

By the end of the day, I simply can’t think anymore. My brain just gives in and shrivels up. And that’s when I get to the good stuff. Comfort food for the brain. Junk-food equivalent. No, not reality TV. I mean light reading, books that don’t demand anything of you, other than a suspension of disbelief, a willingness to be sit back and be entertained, and logic and reason be damned. Plain, good, undemanding fun.

Here are my picks for the week:

Finger lickin’ Fifteen, Janet Evanovich – Queen of the absurd and the ridiculous. The book is funny, gross, and manages to entertain. You do need a bit of a gap between reading her books. If not, the grossness factor hits you harder.

Swan for the Money, Donna Andrews. Murder with Peacocks, Cockatiels at Seven, and others in the series are all good books to read and relax by. The zaniest is Crouching buzzard, leaping loon. The heroine is a blacksmith, her husband is a hunk who teaches college and acts on TV sometimes, and the family is extremely large and terribly dysfunctional.  Tripping over dead bodies is what they routinely do, pretty much every week. I wait for the next book in the series to come out – it feels like getting news of relatives who live far enough away to be interesting.

Million-Dollar throw, Mike Lupica. Yes, it is a kids’ book found in the juvenile section. I just started reading it, and liked it. I think children’s fiction is a lot more interesting these days – they are not just school stories with midnight feasts and amusing French teachers.

Also read recently – Kindred in Death by J.D. Robb. Nothing like a gruesome murder set in the future to make you appreciate the “good old days” right now. Hint: I always skip over the gory descriptions, in order to keep my dinner down.

Other authors I like are Hilari Bell (found in the Juvenile and the Young Adult section), and of course, Meg Cabot.

Hey, I do read serious stuff when I have to!

For other times, there is http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lewis_carroll.html !

Marketing mythology

On a friend’s facebook page, I found a link to a video that I like very much. The speaker, Devdutt Pattanaik, didn’t tell me anything new, but connected up business practices and mythology. There is lots of potential for extrapolation, and I had fun connecting up mythological stories heard in my childhood to how we do business in India. Kept me thinking and smiling all day!

Well, Devdutt Pattanaik is a Chief Belief Officer (?) at a large company in Mumbai, India, and wants to harness the power of mythology for business. He is trying to create a Retail Religion. Go figure.

http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html

In spite of his self-avowed goal of making me spend more money, I still found his talk fascinating. That is because in the video above, he talks less about business and more about mythology, both Hindu and western mythology. He talks about the differences between the two, and how the two affect our belief system and our economic behavior. Indian mythology is not definite, is open to interpretation, and nothing is unique or finite. This creates a kind of “fuzzy logic” and a mind-set where nothing is “this” or “that” but more “sort of”. Everything is relative and tomorrow is as good as today. I am well acquainted with this attitude, and I do subscribe to it, when I’m not subject to western influences (once again, “sort of”). What had not occurred to me earlier, was that this could be a result of the Hindu belief in reincarnation – when you have several lifetimes to get something right, why hustle??? When you have several thousand manifestations of the one God, you can believe in some things, all things, or in none at all.

Devdutt Pattanaik illustrates this with a well-known tale from Hindu mythology. Ganesha, the elephant headed God of knowledge and Kartikeya, his warrior brother, have a race: whoever circumnavigates the world thrice the fastest will win. Kartikeya zooms off and circles the earth as fast as he can. Ganesha? He calmly walks around his parents – once, twice, thrice – and he is done, for his parents are “his world”. Who is right? And for that matter, is either of them wrong??[1] So many possibilities…..

Western thought is more linear, and concepts and processes are well defined. The workday is 9-5, the workweek is Monday to Friday. Business is as usual. An Indian shopkeeper will not accept returns in the morning, but is more acceptable to the thought in the afternoon. No important project can start, or important purchase be made, unless the time is auspicious.  Depending on the day of the week, the phase of the moon, or the month in the Hindu calendar, a Hindu will eat vegetarian or non-vegetarian food. So if you are a western businessman running a supermarket in India, will you know to reduce inventory of meat products in the month of Shravan[2]? I can understand how frustrating this sort of thing can be to someone from a different culture who is trying to do business in India – and how frustrating it can be for the Indians that they do business with. Priorities are different and methods are different. And if you apply one set of processes in another culture, the results are, well, different. Things don’t turn out as expected.

In a flat world, things get more complicated, because the two worlds with their different karmic baggage come into contact with each other regularly. The two business cultures clash all the time, and (hopefully) learn from each other. I hope the result will not be some kind of bland homogeneity. I like the big stores, the professionalism, and the ease of shopping in the western world. But the thrill of finding a bargain in the crowded Indian markets, the relationship you build with the shopkeeper in the corner store, the excitement and the disappointments of a shopping expedition in India is an adventure in itself, and one that I would sorely miss if the whole world shopped at Walmart.

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[1] I think that that is the greatest strength of Hinduism – when attacked and conquered by various races and religions through the ages, it calmly collects thoughts, ideas and beliefs, adds a few more gods to its pantheon, and moves on. A few more possibilities don’t matter. They have as much potential to be right as any other.

[2] around August /September – it changes every year, since it is based on the lunar calendar

Persepolis

It’s mostly in black and white, and it’s a 2D animation film, based on a woman’s autobiographical novel. In the days of 3D animation and amazing special effects, the movie stands out – it is a riveting tale simply told. The movie is available in French with English subtitles (my recommendation) or dubbed in English.  Here is a trailer of the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PXHeKuBzPY

Marjane Satrapi speaks of growing up in Iran, living through the revolution as a child, and the rapid transformation of Iran into a theocracy. Her love for her country comes through, and her concern for her fellow countrymen (and more obviously, women). Without it, she would not have the courage to raise her voice and protest. In spite of the obvious penalties for speaking out, she questions official dicta and what passes for official logic. She faces the consequences, but she is basically irrepressible (witness her graphic novel and movie) – she refuses to be silenced. The movie is a condensed version of her novels, and traces her life from the time she was around10 years old till she leaves Iran for France as an adult. In between, she spends her formative years in Vienna, away from her country and family, learning about growing up, life and love the hard way. She spent a lot of time away from Iran and from her family, but her family is at the center of her life and the movie. Her grandmother is the rock of her life, and supports her through every crisis. Their relationship is one of the (many) highlights of the movie.

Her grandmother is my favorite character in the movie. She is radically feminist, and intensely feminine. She smokes a pipe with an insouciance which appeals to me, and every day, inserts a few jasmine flowers into her bra to keep her smelling good through the day… She tells Marjane, when the latter is cut up about her impending divorce, that the first marriage is but practice for the second, better one. My grandmother was an extremely strong woman in her own way, but I can see her horror at the sentiment expressed by Marjane’s…

The film is serious stuff, but never weighs you down. Marjane manages to keep the oppression from silencing her, and by her reaction to it, robs it of a great deal of its power. Yes, revolution happened, war happened, friends and family were executed, but with her indomitable spirit, Marjane attests that life goes on. Growth happens, good and bad stuff happens. You just have to take it with your chin out -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zncsnYFGGQ

What was 2009 like??

As 2009 winds down, with cold winds blowing, I am thankful for the warmth of my home (literally) and the warmth shown by family and friends (figuratively) through the year. 2009 has been a year for “Change”– interesting to say the least. I went back to school, survived the first semester (with a few scars to show for it!), managed to juggle between two homes, and learnt my way around Facebook. Whew! It’s been a busy year. And it’s ending on a busy note too – the last days of the year have been spent cleaning out the house and preparing to ring in the new year with a few friends.

2009 has been a super year for friendships too. I managed to reconnect with friends from undergrad days that I had never seen since, and came face to face with reality at the same time. I had managed to ignore the passing of the years, but when I saw the same people I went to high school and college with looking grown up and responsible and adult – much like I remember my parents being all those years ago – it brought home to me that I Am Getting Old.  Like. My. Parents. Like all those authority figures whose authority we did our best to flout when we were 16 and 17 and 20…..

On the other hand, I also met some friends I made later in life – and they reminded me of how young I really am. It was as if the intervening years and decade(!) melted away, and I was back in my twenties, and the world was waiting for me to make my mark…..

If I had to give 2009 a name, I would call it the Time Machine, for the year had a curious feel of going back and forth in time. Forward because the new beginnings herald new adventures, and back because it was as if the past surfaced in the best possible way, with old and dear friends making a reappearance in my life.

I am waiting to see what 2010 will bring, with anticipation, some trepidation, and lots of curiosity. Best of luck to all of you, and may 2010 be the best year of your life so far. Happy New Year!!