Identity 3 : The Hidden

==========================================

The Hidden

At the stroke of midnight

The weary flee the floors;

Pride holds back the dreams you had

That follow out the doors.

Games are played and names are changed,

And three old childhood friends

Give way to newer meanings that

See them to their ends.

I will find a little place,

A small world of my own --

And there I'll seek the peace that comes

To those that weep and mourn!

But far and few, the fresh and new

Will see me dancing on:

In steps and swirls and risky whirls,

Braving dusk and dawn.

==========================================

Identity 1 : Thinly Veiled

==============================

Thinly Veiled

Air

Between branches

And in lungs

Of the dead and the dying;

Breeze

In greener boughs

And grandmother's tales

And lovers' lanes;

Wind:

In Kenneth's willows,

As panic strikes

Numbed pain;

Gales!

Every day in farms,

And fresh residue

Of the outbound;

Storms:

Outdone only

By old hearts that find

Very little in names.

==============================

Hat tip to The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame, one of my favourite books of all time.

The Black and White Train

When my mother bought me my first Enid Blyton at the age of eight, I refused to read it for the lack of colour. The book, a three-in-one compilation of The Faraway Tree Stories, had minimal illustrations, all done in inked drawings. Eventually I did get drawn to the book (as my mother had shrewdly predicted), and both the book and the author have been revisited and cherished many times thence; and, needless to say, both remain favourites to this day.

The second realization in my life of the minimal importance of colour to human emotion came during the last long weekend, when the Movie Club at CMI screened the Apu Trilogy. I had been reluctant to watch the movies, albeit legendary, before reading the two novels behind them first (as is my regular practice) but then I jumped on the chance to experience the movie in the company of my friends, in my first true home away from home.

The movies deserve all their hype and then some, if I may be so daring as to judge them through the gap in cultural acumen and time. They are, as such, difficult to describe in words, but I will make an attempt by saying this: though, having had a much better life one cannot completely comprehend the feelings of the lead characters, there is a little of them in each of us. Ray's symbolism is through the roof, and every bit of work in the making of the movies is perfectly done. The trilogy spills over with soul, pathos and, as the Facebook-era terminology goes, the feels. I was dumbfounded to find that I related with someone so removed in space and time that I began to miss my past and rethink my present. Many a scene in the films reminded me of leftover feelings from my daily life: like, for example, the quiet that descended over my group of friends returning to college from home when the parents had waved goodbye and the train pulled out of sight -- for some minutes before we descended into the mandatory revelry, I remember how the hush brought us all closer as the train huffed us away from those closest to us. It helps, of course, that the train is an important trope in the Apu Trilogy (and has remained so in Bengali life)!
The third movie was a bit outside my taste and comfort levels, and seemed a bit too hopeful. However, as I told a friend afterwards, it is perhaps because we are still too young to relate. All through the three films, Pt. Ravi Shankar's music remains both an apt and necessary element and a masterpiece in its own right. The actors have all played their roles immersively, and I somewhat understand what people mean when they speak of Ray's laborious and realistic casting.

To conclude, some observations: I shall not rehash the obvious social commentary of caste and gender and family and the like; those, while pressing and poignant, have been spoken of in better words on greater pages. I shall only venture this much: Ray was badass (trivial), Apu is a little bit of all of us (not-so-trivial), and Sarbajaya is one helluva kickass bitch (#respect).

An afterthought: it has been a while since I wrote blank prose. My blog has, of late, been swamped sick with abstraction, which is a great thing in itself, but never a good thing if it sticks and is overdone, and especially if it restricts one's frontiers and counters the very vulnerability to one's medium that it is supposed to engender. I am grateful to this fellow (budding) blogger whose work, despite its many flaws, has reminded me of the honest beauty of blank prose.

Inspired by Stephen Chbosky

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Song Of A Shut-In

Outside, it's far too lovely,
Too many pretty folk --
But the good and the strong are ugly
And don't deserve a second look;
So within these walls I've been
To look out, but never be seen.

Outside, it's too noisy,
With people, beasts and birds:
They're crowded far too closely.
It's too loud for thoughts to be heard --
So here in my home I stay
And think my time away.

Outside, it's always buzzing
With far too many lights.
The days are far too long
And there isn't enough night --
So here in my room I'll keep
And sing myself to sleep.
================================

Asleep by The Smiths, via The Perks Of Being A Wallflower:

Whoa. Burn.

That's not a post title I'm proud of, and when I found out partway into Dan Brown's Inferno that his primary historical inspiration this time was Dante's Inferno, I immediately judged that the book was rather unimaginatively titled. Without risking a spoiler, I can say that the element of the plot which is called 'Inferno' appears to be named rather poorly as well, in context of the allegorical relations to Dante's work -- unless we consider the deep symbolism in that old masterpiece, which the common reader, unfamiliar with Dante except in name, will find difficult to grasp through its treatment in this book alone. Then again, of course, Langdon is a symbologist, so maybe the symbolism should be important.

For the first time, my
own copy of Inferno, not
a picture off the internet;
with my hand for proof!

Brown's fourth Langdon story had been on my reading list since it was published, and I finally got to it last week. A novel of its length and pace would take me a maximum of three days earlier, but given my altered schedule I had less hours per day to read -- which means it took me four; and for three of those four days, I was disappointed and nearly bored. Almost everything was predictable, with a little concentration I could see through nearly everything, and as usual Langdon was running around with a younger woman of academic background who had begun to feel warm and fuzzy towards him -- till then I wasn't impressed with the plot, and the small reference mistakes that one can condone in researched thrillers of this kind began to grow big in my head and irritate me to no end.

The consolation, however, lay in the fact that this time, Brown had brought forth richer imagery, better language, more variation of style, better gelling subplots -- and so, lacking thrill, I delved into the technicalities of the thriller. I noticed how, this time, the balance between science and history typical to Langdon stories was tipped heavier towards science than ever, and that gave me some warmth, being a student of Science myself.

Perhaps it is unknown or even unthinkable internationally, but it is a fact that Indian litterateur snobs had criticized Brown's work as cheap, old-wine-in-new-bottle thrill, and drawn comparisons with 'mature' writers like Rushdie and Jeffrey Archer -- comments and comparisons that I always considered baseless and foolish but was hitherto unable to counter adequately. As such, I began gearing myself up to point out all the technical improvements in Brown's work in this post and in my conversations with fellow readers. Suddenly, however, on day four, Brown smashed so many twists in my face that it felt like he was holding it all in for the rest of the novel to dump it into the last third of it. I forgot all about the technicalities, started feeling utterly stupid, went red, broke a sweat, did a dance, tweeted about it, and then sat down to read again -- burn, critics; burn, smart-asses -- Brown just upped his game. You know how they say good writing is about being unafraid of vulnerability? Well, if not really himself, Brown made his protagonist Langdon more vulnerable than ever in this novel, sometimes to the point of appearing clueless and puppet-like, and that gave his story new places to go : the fact that Langdon's vulnerability opened up Brown's writing makes me wonder more than ever about how much of Langdon is Brown's alter ego. I, for one, have always felt that the greying hair and well-tailored clothing are, um, inspired, which is why I've never reconciled with the screen version of Langdon.

Reading Inferno, my first lasting reaction was to rethink my choice of picking French as a fourth language instead of Italian, though both are available, among others, on DuoLingo, because this book has more unexplained Italian than The Da Vinci Code had of unexplained French. The second lasting impression was from a gender equality standpoint -- mostly of a female lead who is, for a change, partially outside of stereotype, but not quite enough. The lead woman this time essentially works independently and does not conform to the expected appearance, but I would like to see a character who is a person first and a woman second. The other strong females in the story are also too far defined by their femininity in some way or the other -- this is something common to Brown's Langdon novels, and absent or inconspicuous in the others. Whether Brown feels the need to design them this way to protect Langdon's masculinity or something stupid like that, I do not know. Also, in this book and previous ones, I dislike how Brown always prefixes the gender of unnamed female professionals. He writes 'female technician', and simply 'technician' for males. It seems to further the idea that the nature of the profession is affected by gender, or like being female is a part of the job description, thus making it different from the 'normal', male version of the job -- it sounds like a clarification or even an apology. I'm all for a healthy mix of equally strong and important male and female characters -- otherwise all this I'm saying wouldn't have a point -- but I think the pronouns should do the defining. It shouldn't be so, that unless specified, the person is male; unless specified, gender should be just that -- unspecified, and if it's a character who comes in for one line as a part of their job in the story, why does the gender matter anyway?

Third, I found the the characters better fleshed out this time, as if Brown paid more attention to them. We are given deeper insight into a larger number of characters besides Langdon, complete with better back-stories and more page space given to their individual thoughts and feelings. They are also more indispensable to the story this time. This, combined with the science-leaning narrative and the relative departure from a Langdon-centric approach makes this story more similar to Deception Point and Digital Fortress than the other Langdon stories -- I always felt that except for being a secondary character, Tolland in Deception Point could be, with a bit of reworking, be replaced by Langdon.

The most lasting impression, however, is of the impact of this book's ending. All of Brown's novels, especially the Langdon ones, have left me with new insight and new moral dilemmas, but the endings have not threatened to change the nature of life as I, or as we, know it. Even issues relevant to modern life have been conclusively put to rest, at least within the scope of the story. But this time, the issue and the ending are especially chilling because the issue is the realest yet, and the ending would have had serious repercussions on everyone's life had it been true. It is a new kind of ending, with a new kind of exit sequence for Langdon, which Dan Brown veterans will find a pleasant surprise.

And yes, the last word. If not for anything else, do read the novel for its last word.

Thomas Mann, You Sneak!

Image Courtesy: Google Images
ie. the picture is of a copy
identical to mine, and not of
my actual copy.

I recently finished an anthology of stories by Nobel Laureates, which I received as a token of felicitation from my school for qualifying for NTSE. It had been a while since the last anthology I read before this (another Nobel Laureate one, from Mom), and I found it strangely exhausting, having to read so many stories to finish just one book. I've realized that it is the storyline which grips me, not the desire to finish the book. In the course of finishing the anthology I had some wonderful moments of predicting the outcome of stories, which as always made me feel clever. I had some more moments when I was able to mentally compare the work of an author to something else by them that I'd read before -- it made me feel very well-read.

The most exhausting part, though, was reading Thomas Mann's novella Death In Venice, which takes up nearly half the book's volume. When I started the book, I expected short stories and stories, not novellas -- which took me by surprise when this piece refused to end. Then I remembered that the introduction mentioned it as a novella. So I had to persevere, and to put it frankly, in this case the desire to finish the book was what fuelled me to read through it. Being unexpectedly long, its intellectual challenge (and the requirement of constant Googling to get all the inter-textual references), which I usually consider part of the enjoyment of reading, began to feel like a chore. The central character was arguably the creepiest central character in the whole book. The introduction says that the object of the central character's near-criminal creepiness is inspired by a real person, who I feel sorry for. The novella was good, but by the ending I was too tired to be moved by finer things like subtlety and understatement, which is probably why I didn't enjoy the ending all that much. Once I finished that one novella, I had a surge of false gratification which was cruelly dashed by the sight of the remaining thickness of the book, but I got through it; and I must say, after many full-length novels, an anthology was refreshing.

The last story, like in almost any other anthology or compilation I've ever read, was the most psychologically disturbing and confusing. I've never ever comprehended the closing story of an anthology to my satisfaction, barring the ones prescribed as schoolwork, and this one was no exception: even Google could not help me. The story was Il Tratto di Appelle by Boris Pasternak. The scariest story was John Galsworthy's The Silence, and the most intriguing concept, for me, was in Anatole France's The Red Egg. I was pleasantly surprised by The Musician by Selma Lagerlof, because her The Rattrap is in my school text this year. As always, it felt good to find India's own Rabindranath Tagore on the list -- this book contains his Artist, which I faintly remember reading in the original Bengali a long time ago, somewhere. The most predictable story for me was The Hack Driver by Sinclair Lewis, but only because this kind of story, pioneered by the likes of him, has inspired too many later works and become overdone to the point of being cliched. I can only imagine the ingenuity it took to come up with that without inspiration. Then again, who am I to pick favourites in a long list of Nobel Laureates? Shaw, Tagore, Kipling, Hemingway, Yeats... all the greats, and that's the best thing about an anthology -- at the end of the book, we get to come away touched by the thoughts of not one great author, but many. They leave you stimulated, outraged, emotional, sympathetic, enthused, inspired -- not to mention more knowledgeable and mature. To more anthologies!

On second thoughts, The Hack Driver wasn't the most predictable for me, in the literal sense. The Sardinian Fox, by Grezia Deledda, was in common with the other Nobel Laureate anthology that my mother gifted me, and I clearly remember being very disturbed by it at the time. I still did reread it, and this time it outraged me much less than the last time -- back then when I was younger, the concept had seemed far more dreadful and the twist far more, well, twisted. Whether I should attribute that to maturity and age or prior familiarity with the story, I don't know. I could also attribute it to the desensitization by all the way more outrageous things contained in this book.

Now I'm thinking I should probably re-read that other book sometime. I might find more stories in common, or more stories to be outraged by, which I don't remember because I didn't understand them then. By the way, I'm too tired to give hyperlinks for all the works listed above. Google them if you're interested. Seriously people, do your own work sometimes -- I'll catch up with y'all later.

Altogether changed, yet the same

Yesterday I finished reading Lew Wallace's Biblical masterpiece Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It is a bestseller and a classic -- child of the world's most printed book and parent to a 1959 award-winning blockbuster, Ben-Hur had been on my reading list for some time now. Hunting in the school library for some summer reading and not finding my first choice (J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit), I scanned the shelves again and ran into this.

The cover design of the HSMS library's copy of Ben-Hur,
showing a detail from Chariot Race by Alexander von Wagner.
The picture is of another copy, available online.

The writing is vivid and engrossing, and I enjoyed the descriptions of places, people and food, which are typical to period narratives. I am partial to old stories retold from different viewpoints, which, combined with my love for history-fantasy-thrillers, made Ben-Hur exceptionally enjoyable to me. I liked how Wallace elaborates on Ben-Hur's life and touches upon Christ only when their lives intersect. That way, despite knowing the original story of Christ, there is no way to be bored. Moreover, the usual exciting elements of narrative -- betrayal, conspiracy, conflict, envy, manipulation, malice, pride -- are all illustrated many times over. The book also fed my weakness for archaic convoluted English, and left me weirdly nostalgic because anything about Jesus reminds me of my old Roman Catholic school.

The plot of the book is the Biblical tale of Jesus through the eyes of an affluent Israelite of the house of Hur in Jerusalem. Since it follows the title character and his family, the life story of Christ is curtailed and, in the greater part, given indirect treatment through the words of the central characters. All His miracles are presented as hearsay, and post-Calvary, we see no more of Him: the story continues with an account of the Hur and his people. The book deviates somewhat from the chronology of the Bible and, in order to execute the change of perspective, Wallace fleshes out some lesser characters and smaller incidents using his creativity and, reportedly, his historical research. Ben-Hur is more a story of Christ's effect on people than one of Christ Himself. Even the events at Calvary are written from a viewer's perspective. Like all period pieces, Ben-Hur is also a window to the times; as a 21st century reader, however, I found in it a second, much smaller window to the author's times (the late 19th century) as well -- there are instances where the author compares the Biblical people and places to 'modern times', which made me compare his 'modern' to mine.

Through the course of the story, the writer's voice is always present, sometimes addressing the reader directly and at other times consolidating the story with his commentary. Keeping with the style of his times, Wallace also breaks off from the narrative to comment on the instances of human emotion and folly, thus taking the reader deep into the social and philosophical implications of the book. Being the kind of reader who thinks, I liked that aspect, and was further convinced of Wallace's mastery of the pen when I found him depicting the most complex emotions and human interactions with surprising ease and exactness. On the other hand, he handles relatively simple emotions like separation and mistrust with impressive depth of understanding. He also maintains a very tight grip on the narrative and, intentionally or otherwise, clues for the twists to come are present in the leading chapters. However, as much as I enjoy predicting the course of thrillers, the twist involving the second betrayal suffered by Ben-Hur felt a bit too obvious. Moderately seasoned readers, I feel, will be able to see through one of the early devices of the betrayal, and even figure out where the loyalty of the betrayer is shifted. Also, I would have liked to see a bit more of the Magi in the end, given their importance in the early chapters. Overall, though, Ben-Hur is a gripping read, and the conclusion felt perfect for Wallace's target reader, who is not a scholar but an ordinary person with a commoner's affinity to warmth, hope and faith. I would recommend it for the thrill and the classic value. Readers unaccustomed to period pieces are warned, however, to be prepared for long-winded language and some blatant social injustices which are portrayed as normal, since they were typical in those times (and are less blatant now. Ahem.)

The introduction  to the book says that the psychological impact of the book on Lew Wallace himself was a strengthening of his Christian faith, which may serve as an added incentive to the Christian readers among you. Not being a Christian myself, and having a limited knowledge of Christ, my takeaway from the book is of a socio-political nature. I was reminded, yet again, that our claims for liberation are, more often than not, cloaked demands for the power to enslave others, and that pride without freedom is more favourable to us humans than freedom with acceptance. For all our advancement, we still feel special not in our own right but by denigrating others: just look at modern politics and you will find parallels to the shock felt by the Israelites when Jesus treated the Gentiles as equal to them. The conquering Romans would naturally have political enmity against a King of the Jews, but the Israelites rejected their much-awaited prophesied Messiah when He loved, blessed and healed people of all races, thus depriving them of the honour of calling the Saviour their own and dashing their hopes of Judaean supremacy. They hated Him for loving without condition, for not sharing their racial pride, for not being partial to their race -- which we continue to do today. He was laughed at because, instead of a royal air, he carried himself with humility, in a commoner's garb -- and even today we respond better to pomp and show: not quality, not deed, not character. Given the circumstances, then and now, I have immense respect for anyone who tried to make a difference. Which is why, though I'm not Christian, I have always maintained that Jesus, Son of God or not, Jesus, the flesh-and-blood man, was pretty damn awesome, and reading Wallace's book has strengthened my conviction in His awesomeness.

Title courtesy: The Voice of the Rain by Walt Whitman. Image courtesy: Book Shack

Of Interludes and Creations

It has been a long time. And in this interval, I have had time to think if I would continue with this blog. Meanwhile loads of things have happened in the school: I had my last SPICE Club meeting, where we outgoing members were gifted saplings. I had loads of family stuff, friends stuff, please-let-Obama-win stuff and yay-Obama-won stuff. I also had Runescape-is-launching-Evolution-of-Combat stuff, lost-access-to-my-Runescape-account stuff, and thank-you-mods-for-helping-me-get-it-back stuff. I also read Midnight's Children and The Catcher in the Rye, which I got for my birthday (21st Oct -- I'm 16!) and I have a lot to say about them that I might get to some time in the future. I celebrated Durga Puja and Diwali and went through Carmel Treasures Retreat, which is sort of a seminar for the outgoing students. And in all this time I have decided that this blog deserves my attention from time to time. I am not in a space now where I want to put in too many hours in this: yet I want to put up things I make for all who care to see. So, there will be some changes, at least until I cope with the whole situation involving me being a public exam candidate and having only the last few months left of my 12 years as a student at CCHS (and less than a month of working days). And with growing up.

Interludes are good. They help you think, rearrange, re-prioritize. They are ways in which you do things without doing them too often. Hitherto, my breaks from the blog were interludes. Now, for some time, my posts will be interludes, and the breaks way longer. There will be no regular bite-sized pieces of my life, because I half can't and half don't want to keep up with that rather demanding routine, especially now that my life is just too eventful for me to handle. There will be updates, short ones, like in the beginning of this piece. And of course, there will be my creations.

First off, I made a wallpaper at the end of Durga Puja, for Bijoya Dashami:

For Carmel Treasures Retreat, we had tasks of writing a poem about ourselves, which I sat down to do but went a little off-topic:

========================================

MINE

They state, I disagree;
They assert, I challenge;
They hinder, I surge.
I purge
Their dreams
Of statement, assertion, hindrance.
They destroy, I rebuild;
They aggress, I avenge;
They control, I defy.
I deny
Them the pleasure
Of destruction, aggression, control.

They abhor clarity—
Confusion
Is the weapon
Of their cunning choice;
My voice
Is stifled.
Rights and duties,
Explanation,
Logic and reason
Are chained to fear;
And disappear,
Trifled.

I breathe, I exist,
My heart beats. I insist
That it’s no one’s business to tell me
When, or
Where, or
How—
If they cannot tell me
Why.
I love, I live,
I say (and so I believe)
That nobody can define me
Or advise,
Or patronize,
Me—
If they are not
Mine.

========================================

Also for Retreat, we had to make a bookmark with an inspirational message to exchange with our friends. This was my design, made from Wallpaper 34 (no Photoshop, just the a textbox in MS-Word and the Brightness and Contrast adjusted):

So there we are. I'm looking forward to watching the Life of Pi movie and playing the new Combat system in Runescape. Also, I'm not going to Vibes this year for two reasons: I don't want to risk an outstation trip in the last months before my Boards, and I have an outside exam to sit for on one of the days.  I shall see you, at the next interlude. Happy life.

Infinite Awesomeness

Yann Martel's 'Life Of Pi' is an amazing novel I picked up at the school library. Much heard of, finally read. The detailed story deserves to be found out on its own, but I can tell you that it begins with the writer writing in first person, mixing fact with fiction to talk about an encounter with a man who directs him to the protagonist Pi, saying that his story would make the author believe in God. The writer follows the lead though with little conviction as to the story's quality: his compulsion being only his writer's block. Pi tells the author his story, and the extraordinary narrative that follows is mostly in the form of Pi's delightfully vivid reminiscence, again in first person, interrupted at times by the author's commentary on Pi, his home and his family that he sees before him in the relative present. Pi is 'now', an Indian-born Canadian citizen, married to a woman of Indian descent, and with two children. The symbols of faith in his home reflect no particular religion or belief system, but that of multiple religions: Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. This peculiarity of faith, as we come to know later, happened to him early in life, in the happy young phase, before his life-changing adventure crept in.

The cover in which I
read the book

In the first part, Pi talks of his life in Pondicherry in South India as son to a zookeeper and his wife, little brother to Ravi the cricketing hero, nephew and disciple of an ace swimmer; an ace swimmer himself, Piscine Molitor Patel is named after the Piscine Molitor swimming complex in Paris that his uncle was extremely fond of. Tired of being called 'Pissing' in secondary school, both mistakenly and intentionally, he enforces the nickname Pi for himself in high school right from the beginning. It did lead to 'Lemon Pie', but he even prefers the impersonal and shadowing 'Ravi's brother' to 'Pissing'. Also, he begins a trend of Greek letter nicknames. These and many more are the enjoyable stories he tells of his childhood, some of which are rather ordinary ones, like those about teachers and relatives. He also dispels some myths about animals, and voices his opinions about animals and religion, the two big things in his life. Then he talks of the bombshell that fell on Ravi and him, when in the 1970s tumult in India his father gives in to the alluring prospects of greener pastures abroad. He sells the zoo's animals, which combined with other preparations like paperwork takes well over a year, and then they get on a cargo ship to Canada with a few more of the animals that were to be sold there. And there ends the first part of the novel.

The second part is a shock, with the fifteen-year-old Pi on a lifeboat, trying to rescue Richard Parker, until he realizes they'd be together on that boat, and tries unsuccessfully to prevent him from boarding it. He really can't afford to be together with Richard Parker. Because Richard Parker is a young adult. A young adult weighing 450 pounds. A 450-pound young adult Royal Bengal Tiger. And this tiger is not Pi's only companion. There's a zebra with a broken leg, that the hyena eats, an orangutan named Orange Juice that also the hyena eats, and this hyena is eaten by Richard Parker. Pi spends the rest of his lifeboat days (227 days, a record time) in alternating phases of desperation and resolve. He uses his experiences from the zoo to try taming Richard Parker. He builds contraptions of survival and tries to overcome his navigational ignorance to understand the survival manual completely. He learns to overcome his inhibitions as a lifelong vegetarian to kill and eat marine animals, and makes use of the different devices among the rations that he had never seen before. He even has an extremely surreal adventure on an island of algae (spoilercarnivorousalgaespoiler) with an equally surreal ecosystem. He occasionally writes undated accounts in the notebook he finds among the rations, as he copes with the innumerable travails of being a castaway. His hope of reunion with his family dwindles but never disappears, as on the day he estimates to be his mother's birthday, he sings 'Happy Birthday' to her loudly.

In the third part he finds land, loses Richard Parker and after a harrowing and rather comical interview with the Japanese authority of the cargo ship he was on, he makes a choice to take his insurance money and go on to Canada instead of back to India : he says India has only sad memories for him. Pi since then has grown in foster care, studied at Toronto University with a double majors, and has become a family man.

Some other covers

Life Of Pi is a gripping adventure, that, as one of the reviews says, is 'deceptively simple'. Martel spins a web of fact and fiction, of everyday life and adventure that truly cannot be described as anything other than 'life', however extraordinary it is. It, however, is more than just and adventure. More than a third of the book consists of the first part, which has nothing to do with the adventure at sea. It is a simple account of Pi as he was in India, but it does not feel boring or unnecessary to the book in any way. Somehow, it gels perfectly with the rest of Pi's story, at times with veiled allusions to the adventure, and at other times referring to life in the future in Canada without speaking of the saga in between. It explains a lot about Pi's character, gives a firm base to the adventure and thus does away with plot detours of explanation when the adventure sets in. It shows the sharp contrast between the two, or rather three lives, all the time being enjoyable even as a standalone account of a grown man's boyhood days. It also shows another significance as the story unravels: the very reason Pi stresses on his early life so much is that he doesn't have much to show for it; all memorabilia they carried are at the bottom of the Pacific. He, at one point, says that he cannot remember clearly how his mother looked like. The first part is also the part that has more of the author's commentary on the present Pi, which lessens in the second part to keep the adventure brewing.

In the second part, the dangerous situation sets in with suddenness that one can almost feel mortally. It just drops from nowhere, instead of picking up where part one left off, that is, at the journey's advent. It starts with a time after the sinking and retraces only to give an account of the sinking and some very essential details: Martel wastes no time in giving any details that have no place in the twists and turns of Pi's life; there aren't many necessary details left out in the first part. Then Martel takes to the adventure with gusto, in his extremely realistic style. Pi's plans of survival are often written in the form of lists, even when no list is actually made by Pi in the story. This is a risky device that could very well take away the flow of the story and give a poor impression of the author's literary flair. But Martel tames them and deftly integrates the lists into his narrative, squeezing every possible benefit from them. When there are no written lists, they serve to show that Pi has put his broader thoughts on hold to focus on a very immediate problem. Where there are, they reflect Pi's mental state, like when he takes inventory of everything he has, and in the end includes the animals, himself (one boy...), the boat and the ocean as items in it. He ends this list with the item 'one God', two simple words that show the source of his will to live.

Yann Martel: the novel novelist

Martel takes many more risks: he uses extremely simple language and contradicting emotions, that serve but to make his story more realistic. He weaves extreme surrealism, bordering on science fiction, into a story of realistic adventure. He ventures into statistical improbabilities, like Pi meeting another survivor, temporarily blinded by prolonged sea living just like him, but they only elevate the gripping headiness of the narrative. He jumps genres shamelessly, from happy anecdotes to adventure, to unreal themes, to comedy and all the way back. But never, ever, does the narrative come loose; it only draws the reader more deeply into it, until one is made to laugh or cry, feel despair or exaltation, hope or anguish, as and when the author pleases.

The novel differs from other adventures in being not comprising solely the adventure. It differs in the hero being not at all heroic, lacking much of anything, be it experience, strength, knowledge, or even constant hope and courage. He has the last two in abundance, but they come and go like the storms on the sea. Pi is not hardy enough to be able to make moral exceptions right away: he has to struggle with his conscience to give up his vegetarian ways, to kill another being for his own survival. To boot, he is only fifteen. His only strength is in the simple, unconditional will to live, in prayer and in the hope of reunion with his family that eventually gives way to fond memory of them. Unlike other adventures, Pi hadn't taken even a small risk intentionally, other than the inherent risk of overseas travel. Differently from other adventures but very realistically, the exaltation of deliverance is not very great in Pi's mind. He does not react to finding land except for the disappointment at the inconclusive way in which his relationship with Richard Parker ends, with the beast disappearing into the jungle.

SPOILER In the third part, the shipping authorities interview him in the hospital as the sole survivor. Upon their disbelief of his story, Pi cooks up a more believable version of it and then gives them a choice between the two. He responds wryly to their doubts and their routine questions, and evidently doesn't care much about all of it. Martel's narrative changes tones drastically in this last part. The whole interview is in the form of an audiotape that the author obtained from one of the interviewers. It doesn't have any more of Pi's own words, and ends with the report that this interviewer had handed in: it diplomatically sidesteps details about Pi's lifeboat days, only mentioning in the end the record-breaking 227 days of survival, made more unique by the presence of a Royal Bengal Tiger. /SPOILER

That number pi just goes on and on. So does the awesomeness of this book. A must-read for anyone and everyone. Read it, and see how beautifully fresh and unique the novel is: not one bit of cliche in it. See how wonderfully the novelist has woven together completely diverse ideas into one tight package of excitement and food-for-thought. Truly novel, I must say.

Conspiracy Inc.

The cover in which
I read the book

I finished reading The Lost Symbol. This Dan Brown guy is superb. In the previous two Langdon books he did deal with controversial topics, but this one beats them, with it's background story set in a more modern time, and the greater number of complex emotions, deaths, shocking revelations, and plot twists. It smells typical Dan Brown, of course. Taking advantage of the same conspiracy theories that his protagonist hates so much. He's taken full advantage of the aura of mystery that surrounds Freemasonry. Reminds me of all the Freemason-themed eerie games I've played. By the way, I just found out that the game referred to in Angels & Demons, called 'Illuminati: New World Order' actually exists. I don't know if it was made after the book or before.
Edit: Remember the Freemasonry connection in the last Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear?
(Image: Google)

Hypocrisy, hypocrisy

The cover in which
 I read the book

So, I finished reading Angels & Demons. The flow pattern of the story is different from The Da Vinci Code -- instead of gripping action throughout, this book has a long period of cool tension; they know when the cardinals will die, when the antimatter canister's battery will die down. The instant of the danger looming is perfectly pinpointed, and the danger is inevitable unless they solve the puzzles correctly. Compared to Da Vinci Code, less research and code-breaking, more mature emotions, more bloody narrative, more sad deaths. And, oh my god, hypocrisy, hypocrisy. Nearly everyone turns out to be something different from what they had seemed to be -- had I not known Langdon and known this to be a prequel, I'd have half-expected him to show an unexpected side of himself. Also, it's less inclined towards one ideology and has a more global and practical approach to the intricacies of religion in the modern world. Just like Da Vinci Code, though, it leaves a loose end, and does this in a less skillful way than the other book. In the Da Vinci Code the reason for the inconclusiveness of the quest was successfully made convincing and did not seem abrupt at all. In Angels & Demons, however, the hiding of the truth didn't touch me that well and also it was a little bit more abrupt than I would have liked. Maybe the warlike strain in the title had made my subconscious expect more of a clear-cut win for the Angels.

The title written in ambigram, a
powerful visual and symbologistic
feature used in the book (this ambigram
with different or no ornamentation
has been used in the book's other
covers and related merchandise).

Initially I had thought maybe all four cardinals won't be killed, but then it struck me that Dan Brown would surely show us all the ambigrammatic brands, and what easier way than to let the killings happen and the Hassassin be caught at the last moment. The killings and the adventure took up too much more of the book that the conclusion -- the ratio was too skewed for my taste. Also, unlike in Da Vinci Code, the ending was hardly related to the adventure itself. It concerned Landon, Vittoria and a hotel room -- spoils the intellectual satisfaction of a food-for-thought, adventure-rich book , if you ask me. Not against consenting adults, but surely against handing them the all-important last page. I wonder if Langdon the confirmed devotee of free bachelorhood sleeps with yet someone else in the last book. One more interesting thought: most probably the author had the idea of the prequel in his head, maybe even had written it when the wrote the Da Vinci Code: the references in it to this book were pretty solid. I think he realised that one would sell more and help up this one and the prequel.
Sad casualties: Leonardo Vetra (not so sad as the narrative is based on his murder), Max Kohler, the Pope, Olivetti, Rocher, the folio from Galileo's Diagramma, the archives Langdon had to knock down, the four cardinals. Last I checked, that's a lot.
I read just a few pages of the Lost Symbol. Going slow and giving my brain a break from Langdon and his creator.
For people new to ambigrams, check out the Wikipedia page on them, and note that the ambigrams used in this book (and the title ambigram above) are rotational ambigrams that read the same way turned upside down.


Images: Google

The Calcutta Chromosome

The author

Yesterday I finished reading Amitav Ghosh's 'The Calcutta Chromosome'. Most of the book was quite slow-paced, and boring to read at a stretch. The writing seemed pushed-through, and there was much more of philosophy and mystery than science, unlike what the reviews seemed to say. The portrayal of futuristic technology and out-of-the-world ideas was also not very well defined, and the time jumps in between the chapters often got muddling. However, the idea behind the book is astonishingly unique and imaginative, and the last part of the book where all the preceding narratives and information come together is fast-paced, gripping and extremely thought-provoking, unlike the mellow feel of the whole long back-story. I finished this part in a few hours, whereas I had dragged on with the book for more than four days, unable to read much in one sitting and taking long to finish a relatively thin book as this.

The cover in which
I read the book

The word 'chromosome' occurs for the first time in this last part, and that too in a sense which is only an extension of the normal usage, which is a fragment of the author's imagination: that fragment which holds together the whole book, forming the base, spine, and soul of the whole story, if at all this overwhelming narrative can be done justice by that flimsy term. In those last few pages, the whole meaning of the time-leaping form of narrative, seemingly meaningless speeches and information, the eccentricity of the characters, all take logical shape and present themselves to the reader in some twisted manifestation of reason; reason which, in the real world, is quite unreasonable. In the real world it can only be considered a mind-boggling combination of far-fetched possibilities, but within the realm of the book's narrative, and within the scope created by it, all of the boring stuff begins to make sense when one reads through the last frantic efforts of the past protagonists, and the inconclusive fate of the futuristic ones. It suddenly makes sense why the author divided the book into two sections: one dealing with August 20, 'Mosquito Day', and the other dealing with the day after, and why he leapt between different time-frames, dealing with the occurrences of the day in question, in several different years across more than a century.

The whole connection between the killer disease malaria, the 'Calcutta chromosome' and the protagonists, and the mysterious existence of a controlling, scheming, invisible hand which partially reveals itself at times and in the end, is so unique and out-of-the-world that it hardly provokes a new belief, unlike the last overwhelming book I read (Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code). This book only puts forward completely off-track science fiction, with hardly any basis in reality, with even its historical references actually being true history overwritten by the author's imagination. The book is a good read altogether, if you can overcome the uncomfortable vagueness of the narrative while it builds up and manage to persevere your way to the end of the narrative that offers only an inconclusive conclusion, the only possible outcome, I guess, for the story hardly has any concrete base other than itself. 

Some other covers

The book has its flaws, for example the unsatisfying portrayal of a futuristic world and the lack of uniform excitement throughout the book. However, these could very well have been intentional, as this fogginess is possibly one of the reasons that the ending focuses the reader's mind solely on the actual 'Calcutta chromosome' storyline.  Thinking backwards after finishing the book, it took me some time to tie it all together, and it seemed as if the author had the ending planned throughout, but had to struggle to take his readers to that point where he could reveal his actual plan. However, having read Amitav Ghosh's 'The Hungry Tide' before and being familiar with his refreshing unpredictability and extraordinary thinking, I cannot decide on how much of the book's initial vagueness is intentional and how much a flaw. This gentleman has a way of toying with the reader's mind, and this particular novel of his leaves many, or rather, most of the threads loose for us to tie; most of the ideas open for us to interpret. Even after meditating on the book for a quarter of an hour, I could not decide on what impact to let the book have on my mind, what conclusion to draw from it, how to end it in my mind. I could not even derive what message the author had actually tried to put through, or had he intended no message, unlike most authors of far-fetched literary fiction? Was it only meant to be an enjoyable read based on a very unique and appreciable idea?

My understanding of this book shall forever remain incomplete, unless some miraculous new interpretation presents itself to me in the course of my pondering and rumination. I most probably shan't ever realise what I was meant to think and feel after reading the book. Whether that is my incompetence of thought and understanding, or that of the author, or of us both, I'm unable to say, and that itself will probably remain one of the indecisive trains of thought triggered in my mind by this book.

Not a proper review, not meant to be. Read the book, and see for yourselves, for I can't give you a clearer picture than I already have given. Revealing bits and pieces of the narrative and making a mouthful of learned-sounding comments are intrinsic parts of a proper review, which I'm not willing to do in this informal blog of mine. As this is a blog about myself, what I've written only concerns my reactions to the book based on the reading I do out of the love of it. (images: Internet)

Finshed A Book

Mom gifted me two books on Friday for my good results last year. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, and The Calcutta Chormosome by Amitav Ghosh. I finished Da Vinci Code. Nice half-truths, absorbing, but the ending didn't please me. Can you tell I'm too lazy to write a full-length review? I'm relaxing so hard that I'm thinking of missing singing class today. Something I've never done before without reason. Just read a paragraph of the other book till now. Sheesh, these short updates have got me!
Edit (14th March 2011):

The cover in which I read it
Looks like it's a less popular cover

The author --not that I need to say
much about him and his books, I guess

Yeah, that's an excuse for not writing a review-ish thing. A good excuse, you must admit.