Saul Bellow- Seize The Day

"The great weight of the unspoken left them little to talk about."


Its interesting that i should come upon this book straight after Youth. Both are books on trounced upon optimism. Its a day in Wilhelm's life. Wilhelm who gave up a steady job, left his wife and kids in the hopes of marrying another though his wife wont grant him divorce. His father is living a comfortable life on his life's saving, but would not help Wilhelm financially. Wilhelm feels victimized by all he is closely related with except his dog whom he would like to keep with him but his wife would not allow him that too.

Wilhelm had on the words of a Hollywood casting agent left his studies to try his luck in acting. Seven years later he admits defeats takes a regular job, which at this point in his life he has quit at being treated unfairly. He was passed over for a position which he deserved . He has to support his wife and his kids, which is rapidly draining out his pockets and destitution is imminent.

Bellow has an immense grip on this mans psyche, i lived Wilhelm when i read him. Its a story from inside Wilhelms mind, from his mind, not just Wilhelm telling his story, Wilhelm living this day in his life, of course we as a reader also flit out to observe him especially at the end, looking at this miserable man. Was there any other moment we were so clearly outside? We are so caught with Wilhelm's thoughts, little trips to his past. But all of it seems like a day in the life in his head.

The Youth

A maths major from South Africa determined to get out of the provincial life in his small town moves to London, to bask in its glory, to read poets and talk them, to write his masterpiece. The unparalleled optimism of Youth and what it boils down to. Loved the book. Strange Coetzee.

An End to The Suffering - Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra. Its like this place is where i come to profess my ignorance. Yes, its that again. I had not heard of him. Yes i sound repetitive. Its serendipitous the way books find me these days :).

This time i picked up "An End to The Suffering", from this wonderful couple's place. Lovely people. Meeting them was so unlikely and now that i think of it i have spent quite a lot of time at their place, more than any other house in Bangalore including my relatives.

He is scarily understandable and mighty high and knowingly unapproachable at the same time. Beautiful penmanship. Emotions quietly stated, and so identifiable. I had to return the book, i wish it wasn't so.

The book is about Buddha and the writers studies, observations, personal experiences and cultural exposures that led him to conclude that Buddha is a contemporary "spiritual/social/political guide". I am not sure if he used that word. The book is a sometimes seamless, sometimes abrupt blend of travelogues, and more personal travelogues. It also has Buddha's life with the historical facts, his relation to contemporary figures like Bimbisara, Ajatashatru, his political and administrative capabilities and his humanizing and psychological traits. All this added together convey Budhha as a person in flesh and blood not some mythical indescribable being.

Mishra explores his own head, his life, experiences and mental states at all the times he encountered Budha as a concept or a possibility of ideology or a historical figure. My personal favorites were of course all the times in small cities of India, his time in Allahabad, Mashobra but not Kashmir so much. These bits piqued my curiosity but were strangely familiar at the same time.

The Book Attack

I had entered the library with all the determination that I am not picking any book by any author who won a nobel/booker/pullitzer/whatever. I am targeting chick lit. The Bridget Jonesy kinds , the re-hash of pride and prejudice. The last time I read one the same bad taste in your mouth , like you picked up something that everyone else seems to enjoy and you cant understand why. What is wrong with me??? Oops, a very big , universe-encompassing question.

So anyway, here I am in the library looking for what I am supposed to be looking , trying to remember who wrote “Devil Wears Prada” and then i see the book catalogue Kiosk. And what do i type? Dasgupta , i am looking for Rana Dasgupta. Good they dont have it, now move on. I start my walk along the bookshelves, my gaze stops at Jennifer Elkridge something, my hand pops out, picks it, (sigh) , Bingo ! , Nobel Prize Winner. Nope, PUT IT BACK! I look down , noooo not Milan Kundera, I loved him in The Joke that I finished a week back. I tear my eyes away. Hari Kunzru ; I have always wondered what he is about, maybe I will find out today, NO, NO. Doris Lessing. Argh! Help! Whats going on? The conspiracy , THE conspiracy. How do these books find me, now that I think of it even my roomie has been making sure that my supply of heavy reading stuff is maintained.

I came victorious in the end. Armed with “Pillow Talk” , (Title in nice flowing pink and the water colour and ink drawing of a of a lady with big eyes and eyelashes) and TinTin. I did it. I have been a member of this library for close to a year and now I come victorious. Lets just see how palatable I find em. How lasting the content? ??? Wrong expectations? Why cant a fun book be lasting as well, a work of art too. Why is a work of art always leaning to the morose?

The White Tiger, SlumDog and Hemingway

Pardon the title, pardon my head. This is how thoughts wrestle in my head. So when i read White Tiger i could not help but think of Slumdog Millionaire, you know poor India and all. Hemingway ... welll i cant talk or write about him but i could not help think about him. I had finished my first Hemingway just before picking up White Tiger so i could not help compare.

My roommate hands "The White Tiger" before heading out for work. The door closes and the book opens as i plonk down on my constantly bean-spewing bean bag. And i finished it in a day, if it werent to meet a friend for lunch, i would have finished it in one sitting. About the book, its about India, the "servants" in India. How a driver is not just a driver but a servant. The accusations levellled at Slumdog for showing only the ugly side of India, selling it to westerners, i cant help but notice such tiny ones creep up in my head for The White Tiger. Nothing prominent and fist-raising kinds. I cant be certain as i am doubtful as to how a driver (or someone at that economic level) would feel or think, a driver from darkness, lets say UP or Bihar. Sometimes feels like an eye opener. Sometimes you do wonder at the level of the exaggeration.

Gurgaon! the place has threat written over it right ? The only time i went there was at night and this shining city rises out suddenly scross the highway. And i was like whats happening, what happened, why is India letting this happen! Then a week later you are at Delhi Railway Station clicking the snaps of good old rats prancing around the platforms. Mules still being used to lug construction material across at the station. The gap is huge.

And i remember having thoughts in the initial days in Bangalore, you see the glitz, the money, hear about the thefts , "they" think its rightfully theirs. "They" see us spending so much money on cells, cars, malls, clothes, flights. It would not kill us if they swiped a little. I would mentally calculate the cost of the items, watch, cellphone, shoes clothes etc that i was carrying on me and wonder does the vendor across the street make that much in 3 or 6 months? My thoughts felt little exaggerated. And this book feels for certain brief moments seems exaggerated too. But in a country of millions isnt that a possibilty. It definitely is, but ya i do wonder maybe now after Arundhati, Rushdie, Adiga would someone have a tale from India to tell which didnt always tight-rope walk on destitution, rage and disappointment? A tale which the world will consider worthy of recognition?

This is where Slumdog comes in, though it showed slums, the whatever that pissed people off, it showed them happy depite of all. They were so alive and had such a desire to live ! And thats what you sense feel and know in India. Ya the big cities might drain that exuberance out of you, but strangely it stays alive in the lower stratas of society. Its strange. The other day a very staid BBC reporter/anchor interviewing a family in the slums of Dharavi and while she is interviewing the man of the house, the lady of the house can barely suppress her smile and the moment the camera is turned to her, she acquires a poker face, she talks of water, schooling etc as her parameters for choosing the next Govt. But she still seemed miles happier than a guy who would want huge tax shields from the Govt. That is the mystery that India offers . Doesnt it? But it is so huge and disparate that you can never say what could or could not happen. So though we have lot of films on happy go lucky stories and melodrama in Bollywod in Indian Cinema, we havent read stories of warmth and smile which abounds here when it comes to textual material.

As for Hemnigway, i read my first one, courtesy rooomie again. Its the Garden of Eden, a book published posthumously. So not cent per cent Hemingway. But this book preceded White Tiger hence the comparision. No i shouldnt. Nope i would not. All i know is Hemingway was intense. No i should not compare. Just because i read it before White Tiger i would not. Hemingway was a master, i feel inadequate to write about his writing. There is so much exploration of the psyche without the superfluosness. His thread bare simple sentences sink so deep. It was a pleasure and i would love to revisit it. Being slightly auto-biographical adds so much more to the novel, just the character of David Bourne and the later part of the book. No its a little too mammoth to compare Hemingway with _______ anything right now.

J M Coetzee and A S Byatt

Coetzee and Byatt are two enormous writers whom i have accidentally come across. I will grapple but still try to explain what is it about their prowess which struck me.

My flatmate was reading Coetzee's 'Disgrace'. That is the first time i heard of him.

I read the initial 20 pages with a sense that this a fast paced read with some pithy statements emdedded in between. But by the time i finished, which i did faster than ever in last few years, you are in awe of the man: the author. The character David Lurie is strangely at moments idealistic, predatory and most interestingly unabashedly honest. Honest to himself; again at moments. You know its one person but there is no predictable fashion in which a person behaves, not in real life, in fiction yes.

Not since i read Anna Karenina have i come across such an astute observer and portrayer of the workings of human mind, of how society and institutions' web tightens and molds you into what is deigned acceptable. Both for David and David's daughter. Though David does not bend, he casts himself off. As for the daughter, inspite of the cruelty inflicted upon her she seems to be calmly content accepting a primeval role for herself.

The helper, the animals finish the portrait of Luries months from and after the 'disgrace'.

I came across A.S Byatt browsing through the bookshelf of our hotel in Pokhara,Nepal while i was waiting for my dinner to arrive. And it rescued me. Those two days the 'touristy' feel of Pokhara had left me cranky and pissed off. The Matisse Stories trasported me to the sketchy and vivid world of a middle-aged woman, her visits to her hair dresser who is tired of facing age at some level, of a sense of panic, of exasperation of trying harder than ever to keep 'her looks together'.

In one hand there was the banality of experiences in Pokhara or maybe my dislike towards having companions while i travel, on the other was Byatt! Even while i would be reading her story, i would stop go back the last few sentences and then scratch my head. How did she create all that she did! I went looking for a book of hers in my library just to figure out how she does it, but they seem to have misplaced the only book of hers they have.


I read "The Chinese Lobster", in a little clearing on my way to Kahun Danda, top of a hill in Pokhara. By the time the villagers had directed me to the base where i should start my climb for Kahun Danda i was beginning to lose my excitement to get to the top. And more disappointing was the fact that it was dust road, of the finest powdery dust.

"Medusa's Ankles" was more intoward. I remember it as the tired taut thoughts of Susannah and the chatter of Lucien the hair dresser, the cracks in her thought from within. The walls and the pink nude. The change in Lucien's design of the salon. And all the scared floating thoughts, glances and thoughts in between. It was also the first piece of Byatt that i read. Hence the novelty.

The crooked line (Tehri lakeer) -Ismat Chughtai

Read Ismat Chughtai’s The Crooked Line this Saturday. I had really boring work planned for the Saturday all of which I dropped more than happily, as they concerned no one else more than me. The book reminded me of Prem Chand. It brought India of those days to me, the India of Prem Chand. But certain things were different now. Now I was in affluent city instead of the villages where his characters thrived. The social circles were more affluent as well. And somehow everybody was not worshipping Gandhi. Rather one of the characters even says something to convey the irreverence. It was a revelation to realize that not everybody was idolizing Gandhi those days.

I did not know there was so much that can easily be communicated even from under a burqa. There is this bit in the story where these girls go around flirting (in their own way) while being confined in burqa. Somehow I assumed the life within burqa to be quieter. Our protagonist and her friends don’t seem to even sense the presence of it. It seems to compliment their coyness.

The first few pages of the book; I found the little protagonist in her early days vile and mad. I found this little demon’s life loathsome. On the other hand there was this quick and riveting change in events and characters around her. Her madness had a repulsive appeal. At times she reminded me of Gabriela Marquez’s Amaranta as a little girl. But while Amaranta seemed a little surreal; this girl was too real. A live and breathing creature she was becoming with every passing passage. Hence more was the revulsion and more the attraction.

The novel warrants a read primarily because of the geographic location of its characters and their placement in time. Towards the third and the last phase of the book, the novelty has worn down. There are lots of conversations which fail to interest one. And the protagonists a life has moved to a territory where nothing seems to be as significant as to be narrated. She could have shrunk the third bit and finished it a little sooner.

Me and Lenin, 1 year back.

Anna Karenina! You get to bite so much into it.

Its an epic. Its a study of multiple characters, but its fiction.

Lenin. Cleaning my shelf i came across my old notebook. Almost a year back, i had written down things which me could relate to with Lenin in the book. Here they are:
1. We both believe people spend their lives seeking distractions.
2. Can be referred to as disillusioned.
3. Don't believe in being a part of the so-called "we can make a difference" groups.
4. Hate to face practicalities of life, think of them as fruitless exercises.
5. Though we would not like to get emotionally agaitated, but we do seek affection .
Afterthought, not from the notebook:
6. In those days, though i still do too but at that time this desire was too strong. To spend my life toiling in the land. To be a farmer of some sort. To live in a village. Disconnected from all. A quiet life, a life in which days are spent in the sun, and nights sleeping. :-)

And somewhere last year, while discussing the book with a person about how much i related to Lenin, at least by my interpretations. And she told me they studied in college that Lenin's character was Leo Tolstoy himself. Damn! i dont feel literary with a long beard and steely eyes.

Turn the Knife.

Vernon God Little: Lets not talk about the plot, its ok in the beginning because there is not much of it and the beginning is always easy, it always brings the promise of something different which is almost always not there, which happens in the case of Vernon God Little as well. While reading this one I had that same sense of bewilderment as I had while reading, "To kill a mocking bird". It is like when you are reading to kill a mocking bird, you cant help but marvel at the clarity and ease with which the story unravels from a child’s point of view, bringing out the irrationality of grown-ups’ behavior which we come across as a child and kept wondering why don’t they understand, how could they not see it in the simple logics of a kid’s mind, isn’t it simple? They just have to remember…. weren’t they kids once?

So I guess the prime thing is when an author goes down the memory lane not just to relive an incident from the compassionate or amused eyes of an adult, but justifying, sensing and reasoning everything as a child or a teenager like in this case. This method of storytelling is refreshing, nostalgic, and very rare no doubt because it is highly demanding for the memory cells not just in remembering the facts but in accomplishing the superhuman tasks of narrating from a child’s rationale with the language commands of an adult. Though this quality stands way unprecedented (as far as my reading forays are concerned) in case of mockingbird in comparison to Vernon.

The other two things, which distinctly mark it out, are: Firstly, how Vernon compares an emotional bond to a knife, and the leisure with which this analogy is explained not in one go but in bursts, talking about it every now and then in context with the plot, especially by the end when Vernon watches a newborn playing with its Mom, he points it out as "the knife" has been planted. This analogy depicts the profound woe & confusion of a teenager who just realized all the transitory-ness and turbulences in relationships.
The second thing being the funny but situational substitution of Vernon’s middle name, from Vernon Gonzalez Little, to Vernon Godzilla Little, to so on.

VGL is a humorous insight into the mind of a teenager who is coming to terms with reality in a rush, which is triggered by unfortunate incidents happening around him. Vernon is depicted as teenager who has been fed too high on media, Van Damme movies and consumerism, shown in the book by the fact that his every other thought runs to his Nikes or, a bewildered comparison of what was happening around him, to what it would have been like in a movie.