A Separation- Movie Review

In the age we live in, regional movies with limited international appeal forges ahead if, despite the contemporary barriers, it captures that basic tenet of ‘human experience’, which is universal and knows no boundaries. Such is the nature of the art, that despite our inability to imagine ourselves in their shoes, despite our disconnect with the lives they lead and despite our ignorance of the subtle vagaries that dominate the individual’s lives, their suffering and their emotions filter through the geography, and into our subconsciousness. A Separation is one such cinematic experience, universal in its appeal and regional in its setting.

The movie is about the suffering of a family with a schizophrenic parent, about a separation of two lives intertwined for the past fourteen years till frustration takes its toll, about the love for the eleven year old girl that both parents evidently possess, about a careless mistake, about anger and the memory lapse thereon, about the disconnect between the Iranian middle-class and the lower-class, the complexity of the law, the world-from-the-eyes-of the child, the duality of one’s beliefs and the ambiguity of the principles of a devout and finally about the mysteriousness of the truth. That one truth, which during most of the second half of the movie, overtakes everything else. In a way, the movie reminds you of ‘Rashomon’ with multiple accounts of the one unfortunate incident, multiple conclusions and ofcourse multiple principles. All binded together through the strong ropes of suffering.

Three characters which stand out is the father (Nader), the eleven year old daughter (Termeh) and the little girl (Somayeh). The father, because he is suffering and knows not how to express it, the daughter because she suffers and knows the solution, the little girl because she suffers while she can only understand specific things which limits her ability to comprehend the angst of people around her. Shahab Hosseini as ‘Hodjat‘ is stellar in his portrayal of the hot-tempered, lower-class, debt-ridden father while Sareh Bayat as ‘Razieh‘ is impactful as the devout with a twisted sense of morality- one that eats her up from inside due to its ambiguity.

The director Asghar Farhadi is on a quest. His quest is to understand the difference between truth and reality. Are they both the same or are they limited by the body they inhabit? The various moral tangles reflect his chase for what we should accept as truth- is it the facts that stare at us along those winding roads or are they the beliefs we entrust to people we respect and look upto. Morality and truth, their tussle with the lives of two intertwined families. Suffering and choices, their tug within each of the families and the ambiguity within each. The open-ended climax is for the readers to fill in- for the eleven year old is unable to comprehend the question, just as the little girl is unable to comprehend the situation.

‘A Separation’ is one of those movies you will lovingly search through your trunks and ‘archived’ scroll-throughs’ a decade down the line only to be struck by the ambiguous moral tangles all over again. It is one of those masterpieces which will be watched for a long time to come.

While Mumbai runs..

7 kind of people inhabit the amplified air-conditioned world of gym. Some peek in, wishing it all could somehow work out by itself and give it a weak shot only to find themselves drawn to the comfort of their moth-laden sofas. For matters of simplicity such species are excluded from the list. Homo sapiens of such kind need to be dwelt on in a broader canvas, which is certainly out of scope for this curriculum.

Anyhow, below is an exhaustive compendium of the species. As species evolve however the list is therefore not exactly exhaustive. Some,who chose to stay are chronicled here, while others who left, either in contempt or under debt have been left out.

1. The heavy-weights- despite the ambiguous name the kind of metropolitans who inhabit this sphere are not the ones who pull and push heavy weights. Au contraire, this category draws inspiration from those who themselves are one. They can be seen during varied hours of he day, recognised duly through the unnaturally wet gym gears they are made to wear, their appetite for longer gym hours and their inability to visibly show the effect of the gruelling routines they are pushed towards by their hapless instructors. They are by far the meanest and the most diligent of the lots yet somehow find themselves perennially on the cross roads of recovery. Looking at them is, and I am in no way being disrespectful or condemning, a comforting and uplifting experience. All stemming from the huge base effect they are made to constitute.

2. The lurkers: the most dangerous of the lot, stemming from the evident seriousness in their face and the rippling-branded-wet-skin tight tshirts they pair their ultra-shot knickers with. They are there whenever you are there, it matters not if you arrive a day, a week, a month or a year later you will find them going about their routine with utmost sincerity. The trouble is when their efforts show. The first hint of danger knocks its presence when you chance by often, the second when their glare casts you in stone, the third when they demand the machine to be vacated for their use because there is no use (according to them) to explain to you why, the final and the last hint arrives when you, having worked your ass off for more than an hour still find the lurker going about his ordeals as if he has only just started. You wonder of they ever leave the gym or what. You wonder and then decide that since you do not want the fitness level matching his, the muscles more than his, the sincerity more than his and the discipline better than his he is not in your way, nor you in his. It is easier to look at them from a distance and assume their personal life is next to zero, their professional life is not as taxing as yours, and their life in itself is not as knitted as yours.

3. The middlemen- not because they are somewhere between the two categories I enlisted above, but more due to the pseudo-knowledgeable expert advice they are so free to divest themselves off. Men of such kinds think not when they exercise. They look. They soak in their relative advantage over the less fortunate ones and miss not a chance to demonstrate their prowess. They lie in the thickest the slimiest the stupidest bracket. But one you would like to inhabit save some particular idisyncrasies and some other individual ideologies.

4. The cougars-let us now swap the genders. In uni-sex gyms, which are the most common of all, there are those ladies who, in their forties or maybe fifties have decided to give shape a shot. They are one of the most enthusiastic of all ( within their sex ofcourse), probably the weirdest of all, possibly the most careless of their lot and evidently the smallest ( in terms of count) of all. Their work hours are flexible and so are their exercising shifts. While their inability to shift within the machines is limited, which gifts them some brownie points, their immobility when it comes to the treadmill is a source of constant headache however. The gyrating posteriors and the flowing dresses notwithstanding, they take ages to complete their turn, contribute the most to the sounds of the gym ( leaving aside the amplifiers blasting Micheal Jackson or pitbull ofcourse) and extract the least from the monthly fees they dole out to the hefty gym manager. They most likely pare their hours at the gym with the dining hours post-it and emerge unscathed from the whole wetting turmoil.

5. The ogled ones- they are the prize possessions in a gym. If the managers had their way, a new scape-goat would most likely be treated with a lineup of all such dwellers rather than a demonstration of the myriad machines that dot the wooden flooring. Looking at them, apart from a visual delight is, at the same time, a source of constant befuddlement. You wonder ( though you are thankful) why such species call upon the white stinking-wet-overused-gyrating- monotonous machines. If you are a girl you imagine yourself in their position and speculate what better use ‘ you’ would have put this ‘ gym time’ to. If you are a guy, you would be in no position to even think.

6. The ‘lean’ers- the mirror image of the first species in this list, there name alternate between the lightweights and the ‘lean’ers. Not because they lean or anything, more because of their lean’ness’. For the dwellers of species 1 such kind evoke the same sentiments as the girls in species 5 evoke in their brethren.

7. The Us: last and certainly not the least this is the world we inhabit. Us, the fortunate ones for some and not so much for others. Us, who alternate their days, rejig their schedules, forget their instructor’s names, mark their attendance in an effort towards accountancy. Us, the ones with the perennial sense of guilt, the half- hearted efforts, the random thoughts and the ones on the periphery who, like the lurkers,lurk, only, with a different face each time and with significantly more time to dwell on the state of affairs in a gym, the kind of members and their traits, the few selected machines they are authorised to lay their hands on. Us, the ones who run. On the treadmill, away from the lurkers, away from the zealot instructor, away from their guilt, away from the cougars, towards the ogled ones, away from discipline, away from the crunches, away from the dumb- bells ( it’s not for nothing they are called dumb, afterall) and finally, away from the gym itself.

Sakaranti

Sourced from wikipedia :

Makar Sankranti, apart from a harvest festival is also regarded as the beginning of an auspicious phase in Indian culture. It is said as the ‘holy phase of transition’. It marks the end of an inauspicious phase which according to the Hindu calendar begins around mid-December. It is believed that any auspicious and sacred ritual can be sanctified in any Hindu family, this day onwards. Scientifically, this day marks the beginning of warmer and longer days compared to the nights. In other words, Sankranti marks the termination of winter season and beginning of a new harvest or spring season.

While on the path to development are we leaving behind our culture in a cess pool of negligence? Today, the day of sakaranti, as I look towards the sky from the windows of my central Mumbai apartment I cannot help but wonder the expansive blue sky above, minus the dots that once pitched that very blue expanse in a sea of swarming, laced, paper-planes. The kites or guddi or patang as we used to know it has all but vanished, save some enthusiastic souls who climb their terraces on this auspicious day and lock horns with their counterparts in a tussle to win over the skies.

I had climbed the seven stories to get some solace wherein I could read the case of one Salem Sinai, immortalised by Salman Rushdie in The Midnight’s Children only to find four expatriates from US atop the tank- terrace fighting to sail aloft the skies their rocket shaped paper toy. While they had got it all wrong tying the ‘kanni‘ only at the top leaving the kite perilously lurched at the front and unable to scour the skies, a deft manipulation ( with my expert advise ofcourse) they were able to make their way onto the expanse and into the wide blue sheet. It brought the time to a standstill for me as I was thrown back fifteen years trying ( in vain) to induce ‘dhar‘ by using rice, mashed wheat and what not onto the white threads that went in a roundabout along the four pillars that held aloft the verandah in my home.

Some children watched in awe as the kite soured the skies. The firangees were having a nice Saturday with bottles of Kingfisher immersing them in the activity of the day. Even as they shouted ‘ringardium laviosa‘, jumped about their conquest of the sky, gulped down the frothy liquid and whaled in their accomplishment I was at a loss. Around me, a 360 degree view of central Mumbai opened itself up to the Indira Gandhi domestic airport to the north, the shanties of kalina to the south, two deserted apartment high-rises on the east and a cascade of domestic life through the windows of another high rise on the west. A bunch of kids swarmed the south- east corner playing with a oft-used and long discarded football, some scampered stop the deserted water-tank playing catch-me-if-you-can, a middle aged man peered through his half- balcony, a lady dusted the wooden furnitures, another started on the long process of dinner while another sat about watching Star Plus, evident with the glossy and abrupt sequence shifts that could push a head ache in a hurry.

In short, another Saturday in the life of Mumbai complete with the to-do lists of office-goers( which included afternoon siestas for some), evening playgrounds for kids and family time for businessmen. Neither do I know if my
Mumbai ever celebrated this day neither do I care for the same. In a city which prides itself as a magnet which draws Indians from the nook and cranny of India I find it impossible to accept there are not some who haven’t ever let this day take its own special significance.

In an age where being an atheist and agnostic is high brow and intellectual, accepted and desired I do not expect religion to motivate people to let go of this one day and try and sit back under the swath of open skies. What I do not understand is, if we travel seas to immerse ourselves in the local cultures, pride ourselves as widely travelled ones and as jet setters, why in our own country do we scurry when such opportunities knock at our own doors. What is it that we, who were once, known country- dwellers are now indifferent towards the wreak that seems to be emerging in our very own backyard.

In Identity and Violence, Amartya Sen goes about explaining how an individual during his lifetime comes to associated with a wide array of identities, each succeeding the other as and when situation arises with some presiding like demi- gods over the other for some. While we are quick on our feet to denounce and condemn attacks at our culture, gods and traditions it would be interesting to know how many know the constitution of what they defend, how much they understand of those very ‘precious’ identities and what pains they undertake to preserve it in their own glass- houses. With that said, I would be quick to acknowledge my ignorance of the people who do care and who do give a damn.

While I am on the issue of disclosures I should also concede that I am not your front page conservatives, nor am I those page 3 connoisseurs with profiles undertaken by the likes of Mint Lounge, TOI Crest, The Caravan etc. I am your quintessential average citizen who wants to give a damn. You might want to skip the history or the ancient logic but you should be careful while phasing out the actual action. It might seem pre-historic, but it’s important because it helps you understand where you come from, helps you keep intact the nostalgia and pushes you to cherish and promote something which, an antique at present, helps you sit back and reflect, share and reminisce, understand and preserve your root.

Quick Thought

In a rapidly fossilizing government an 80 year old technocrat known more for reforms and less for politics is struggling to promote his visions. In a party that is known more for its cronyism and allegiance to a pseudo-monarchist family than its transparent process of promoting merit, this comes as little surprise. While the crown-prince acknowledges this very fact, the grand lady wields the powers-in-the-shadows deftly and sometimes, brazenly. Accountability is therefore thrown for a toss. We are left in the lurch as to whether to tarnish the image of an old, nimble and shy PM or attribute it all to SG who is above accountability. This is not to say that the government has not been trying. Rather that the docility with which it approaches each issues and policy decisions it looks more and more akin a dog with bones that it brings back to its master, wagging its tails and showing intent. Sometimes, it does make one wonder if a two-party system would have been better in India despite its myriad and gigantic populace. This also, despite one’s sharp aversion to dynastic politics and power-by-birth doctrine, makes one wishful of the virtues of one prodigal son, hoping against odds that he learns and delivers– it then matters not how and what gave him the power. At the very least, a central authority with visibly wielded powers is better than an opaque power sharing agreement, one where each decision is fraught with melodramatic emotions, stupid blackmails, irrelevant logic and a paralyzed parliament. As long as he learns, understands and corrects himself and his alma mater I vouch for the king-to-be, not because I think he deserves to be more because pragmatism and resigning to the best alternative go hand in hand. Too much of wishful thinking? That’s all that can be done isn’t it?

The Sense of an Ending- Book Review

Nostalgia is a perception and a misty one at that. You memories are essentially facts about your life you had forgotten. History is not the “lies of the victors”, it is more “the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated”- those who are sort of in a no-man’s land and in a constant tussle to lead life “peaceably”. History also, “is that certainty at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation”.

Confessions have always held a sacred place amongst the tools of an author. Across generations, from Lolita to Moll Flanders, A History of Time to Crime and Punishment this form of narration confronts the reader, nudging him to understand the narrator in ways the author has deliberately held back his pen from describing. In an open-ended book, such as The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, the very same narration strikes gold in the eyes of the receptive reader, leaving him to interpret as he may the fate and the wry thoughts of the delinquent narrator. What makes the narration all the more brute is the reliability of the narrator. If we are, by deft means of course, left in the lurch as to whether to trust the narrator or not, a new story constructs itself parallel to the original. This guides the reader as in a mystery novel, as if a puzzle lies in waiting.

The Man-Booker winner novella tells us a poignant tale of a man’s quest to retrace his life and discover amazingly new and tantalizingly destructive facts- one that is bound to shake the whole system he based his life on. In the words of Webster, the narrator- “My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being.” In some ways, the novel turns back on the notion that life, lead in full, is supposed to welcome wisdom. This novel, in a way negates that, suggesting it may further compound the questions themselves. A life which ends in questions? Is that so hard to believe?

The novel achieves the distinction of being didactic, a page-turner and at the same time, a sharp observation that casts an intensely ferocious look inside the machinations of a complacent life. The narrator provides us a disclaimer as to his inadequacy at having understood life, even his.

“This last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed”- to the credit of the author we have been presented with a disclaimer in the very first page itself!

Nevertheless, as we turn the pages, the wry, sometimes splittingly funny, sometimes brutally honest and cutting observations push us to give him a sympathetic ear and cannon-blast attention- till we come to the second part of the book where both our and the narrators’ beliefs are shook to its very foundations.

As Webster looks into his childhood days, he describes the dramatic entry of one Andrew Finn: “There had been three of us, and he now made the fourth. We hadn’t expected to add to our tight number: cliques and pairings had happened long before, and we were already beginning to imagine our escape from school into life.”

“In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives—and when that moment came, our lives—and time itself—would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first indiscernible.”

The setting is a classic 60s England where those “book hungry, sex hungry, meritocratic and anarchic” youth indulged in understanding intellectuality, British snobbery and the idea of life and where “morbid disbelief was a natural by-product of adolescence”. Finn, the ideal intellectual with a supremely confident notion of history, life and of British mannerisms- also the leader of the pack of 4 who “each felt himself close to Andrew” and regarded his notions in high esteem.

“I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious. I really hate it.”- Finn in one of his rarest outbursts; is symbolic of the pathos of the British sense of being, one he found condemnable and one in which Tony finds solace post his “humiliating” encounter with his girlfriend Veronica’s family- the root of the novel.

His ideas and principles were a mystery to them and hence he had become de-facto the coolest person in their eyes. So much so, his death, as a suicide, had a profound effect on them- each wishing to decode his parting note and trying to understand life as it happened to them. Of them, Tony, the most observant of the lot, or so we are led to believe had a different take on life- he respected Finn but did not emulate him, unlike the others.

“So for example, What if Tony…”

As a 60 year old, while Tony recounts his largely amiable, complacent and peaceable life he receives a notice from a solicitor informing him of a will bequeathed on him by the late Mrs. Ford, mother of his ex-girlfriend of 40 years ago. A sum of 500 pounds and a mysterious package of unknown whereabouts is what is left for him. When he discovers it’s a diary of his friend Finn, he sets out on the elusive, mysterious and pounding quest to get back the diary, believing the diary would be a revelation as every diary is supposed to be. In the process however, as shreds of new evidence creak through, pushing him to shed his mind-blocks a shattering revelation about his past, one he had blocked himself out of, resurfaces. It is his piquant self, with acid in his tongue that leaves him dumbfounded and in the peril of recalibrating his entire existence.

History now becomes “the self-delusions of the defeated”.

“We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn’t it? But if we can’t understand time, can’t grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history—even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?”

The book trudges the thin line differentiating the “collective” and the “personal” history. One relying on “documentation” and the other on the imperfect assimilation of a forgetful memory and an imperfect documentation.

“It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.”- And surely, Webster masterfully continues to construct lives in his mind as he compiles newer information.

The book, in a way is also, despite its justifications for suicide and “taking things into ones’s control”, a celebration of life. It focuses on grave existential concerns and tries, albeit in a complicated fashion to bring out the essence of life.

Sample this: “We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things, rather than facing them. Time . . . give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical . . .”

Tony, in his unassuming way wanted an average, peaceable life, thinking, erroneously that he was being mature and responsible. As things go, he comes to disregard, even block things out of his way.

For me, the most rewarding aspect of the book is the astounding depths this concise masterpiece goes into trolling the inner workings of human emotions. Through brutal honesty and razor-sharp observations the machinations of the human mind, the frailties of the older age, the irresponsible youthful exuberance and “the attraction of overcoming someone’s contempt” is brought to the fore.

Carpe Diem! Cliched as it may sound the desire to live life to its fullest is given its full treatment in the book. Barnes plays to the ideology that it is better to regret something which you have done than regret something which you haven’t.

But anyways, “that’s kind of philosophically self-evident” isn’t it?

WordPress App for iPad

The more you try and find out the logic behind the myriad chain of events, the more you rationalise the process and the farther you get from the truth. What is truth anyways? Is it the knowledge that the happenings can be attributed to a particular chain of events and that for every action there is a motive and an end?

When you scour through the news and find something that you think appeals to your aesthetic taste and leaves you with a feeling that you know the ground rules, you know the motives, you are familiar with the cast, you are allergic to the director and you are supremely confident of your own powers you try and ascribe an intellectual fervour to it- which these days are not hard to come by, from people varied and sundry.

Anyhow, just testing the WordPress app for iPad. Much better than the pathetic Tumblr which, surprisingly, hasn’t taken the leap beyond the iPhone. Will be back soon!

Book Review: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders- Daniyal Mueenuddin

Stories are like windows in a train compartment. Offering a momentary glimpse of a stretched-out world outside. This short form of literature peeks into the complexities of your everyday lives and brings out feelings that stretch your thinking. It is, in the end, a means to look at things we look at everyday in our lives, only this time, through a quick and dirty telescope- zooming in and out as the author nudges and pokes, soaking in or puking forth as we come across the characters.

In Comédie humaine, the epic chronicle of french society by Balzac, an ingenious technique of using recurrent characters was used to bring out a sense of compassion towards those whose lives we earlier barely glanced upon. As we move from one story to the next, the ensemble resurrects the lives and times of people glimpsed earlier in passing or known through referrals in a different story of a different time. Likewise, Daniyal Mueenuddin, in his enthralling debut pitches us the story of an old-timer landlord in Pakistan and the cavalcade of people around him. Each linked to the other, albeit marginally and appearing as a shadow-ghost frequently.

Through the eyes of a critical observer we are pushed into the lives of the maid, the chef, the driver, the butler of K.K Harouni, the erstwhile landlord- now old and unable to rise above his ‘reality distortion field’ that heritage colonial riches and exploits pushed him to. Through de-linking each stories, other than the recurrent characters, the essence of the short-story is preserved while at the same time as we come across known characters, even if in passing, in each of those stories, the instigation of familiarity and acquaintance run common. This, to me is fascinating in that it mimics the reality of subjective perceptions ala Rashomon and is in a way strangely similar to A Visit from the goon squad by Jennifer Egan. Although, while the Kurosawa classic and Egan’s masterpiece is in-your-face and direct, Mueenuddin leaves it to the readers to interpret and even define the perceptions.

The book is set in the late-20th century Pakistan, where, as a judge puts it, “all things can be arranged,” and concerns both those young, wealthy, secular and globalized people who lead a trashy life-style like youngsters from any other country and those downtrodden and enslaved labor class whose definition of the world runs as an antithesis to that of those wayward profligates. Thus providing a spectrum of colorful and self-conscious characters through the prism of which Pakistani culture and principles disperse.

The book starts with a bucolic Punjabi saying that goes- “Three things for which we kill– Land, women and gold”. Indeed, as we move into the book, get encapsulated by the vivid yet simple imagery and marvel at the picaresque settings the one common theme of corruption shadow each of them. We see corruption, degradation to a eurotrash lifestyle and the corresponding regret with which the character reflect upon his/her decisions/choices. They barter one for the other of the three coveted belongings, becoming, at times violent and corrupt, and at times hauntingly sad and depressing.

In each of the stories, we learn about a character’s past, then zero in on the central crisis of his or her life and, even while we are expecting more development, suddenly find everything wounded up in a paragraph or two- the climax or the closing scene can therefore be interpreted either as too abrupt or simply making a home-run towards the soul that the author wishes to reflect upon. It is not merely the story of the main character but the particular phase he is going through which forms the bulk of his imagination.

A Visit From the Goon Squad- Review

This ambitious novel by Jennifer Egan sets out on an experimental overdrive employing age old techniques of shifting ludicrously from first person to second person, from one generation to the next- travelling a whole lifetime sometimes in barely 100 odd words. It includes a 72-pager story that is set out in a powerpoint format tells you what exactly I mean when I say Egan has left no stones unturned in seeing to it that the novel capture both, the age-old infatuation of writers with the decay that time does to people in general and to appeal to a generation that is hung-up on the latest fads in technology. So, through the prism of the music industry, the papparazzi and nomadic instincts this Pulitzer Prize winning novel encapsulates what it sets out to achieve. Sometimes, it does go overboard and digresses but that remains only some of the weakness in the novel which is otherwise stimulating and thought-provoking.

Having come onto this book just after reading The Fall- Albert Camus, the narration- one of the primary traits that appeals to me as a reader is being projected tacitly into a trajectory that while aint all encompassing  but is nevertheless inspiring. It is an intelligent novel I would proclaim in not what it sets out to reflect and incite but the way it does that. While the semantics of terming it as a series of intertwined stories or a novel can be best left to literary anthologists and history keepers, the best way I can describe this book is that of an unending tree which branches out from every nook and cranny.

Borrowing lines off this interesting review on NYT:

The book starts with Sasha, a kleptomaniac, who works for Bennie, a record executive, who is a protégé of Lou who seduced Jocelyn who was loved by Scotty who played guitar for the Flaming Dildos, a San Francisco punk band for which Bennie once played bass guitar (none too well), before marrying Stephanie who is charged with trying to resurrect the career of the bloated rock legend Bosco who grants the sole rights for covering his farewell “suicide tour” to Stephanie’s brother, Jules Jones, a celebrity journalist who attempted to rape the starlet Kitty Jackson, who one day will be forced to take a job from Stephanie’s publicity mentor, La Doll, who is trying to soften the image of a genocidal tyrant because her career collapsed in spectacular fashion around the same time that Sasha in the years before going to work for Bennie was perhaps working as a prostitute in Naples where she was discovered by her Uncle Ted who was on holiday from a bad marriage, and while not much more will be heard from him, Sasha will come to New York and attend N.Y.U. and work for Bennie before disappearing into the desert to sculpture and raise a family with her college boyfriend, Drew, while Bennie, assisted by Alex, a former date of Sasha’s from whom she lifted a wallet, soldiers on in New York, producing musicians (including the rediscovered guitarist Scotty) as the artistic world changes around him with the vertiginous speed of Moore’s Law.

In one of the Newyorker broadcasts on Fiction Writer’s Beginnings, Egan strikes me as one of the self-conscious writers who is modest while at the same time articulate in what she sets out to convey. She would be placed in one of those in-classifiable writers who develop their own peculiar and often unsettling manner of narration. The book sets out to explore the vagaries of time on various people connected through a thread and travels across time, culture, generation, eyes and grammar.

Scotty’s “Time’s a goon, right?” is what the whole book revolves after and one which the reader can imbibe from each of the inter-connected stories save one. We have a “cokehead music producer” whose sole intention it is to restrict the passage of time, the punk-rocker whose fall is so steep that when he does come back he does so with a panache so monumental that the irony becomes banal. We have Lulu the new-age child who is so alienated and indifferent to the world that the images of gun-toting henchmen and that of her fellow classmates trying to unsettle her evokes the same characteristically inert response. Then there are the protagonists, or atleast they can be called one just for the heck of it – Sasha and Bennie who are both cardboard cut-outs of cocaine snorting, aimlessly travelling, disenchantment’ed’, desultorily meandering generation who has to come to grips with the erosion that time pushes on them.

The book, as described here,  works as an album in that you can enjoy each song as it comes independently. But then, when you try and relate each of those connected dots, the stark realism of the text strikes you smack on the face. What I love most about this book is the seemingly intelligent and digressing way in which it sets out to bring the one common theme that runs throughout the book. While the meta-fictional element that forms the core has been explored wide and out, especially in those vintage classics that ran pages with little or no plot, this new-age novel does so through a complex intermingling of characters, situations, time and narration.

Now reading:

1. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
2. How to be Alone – Jonathan Franzen
3. The Big Short – Micheal Lewis

Anna (Go to Him)

Anna (Go To Him)

A grungy molass, as it rests over the black monolithic stone  notices a small crevice breaching the laws of the land while crouching low to avoid notice. As is its wont to do, defying all sense of propriety it approaches the fissure with measured restraint and an intention to forge alliance. A bonding, as it develops, harbors trust and mutual understanding. The molass with its infinite capacity to spread and the cleft with its palpable guilt coalesce as strange bed-fellows.

As tides turn and return, while the colors come and fade away the structure stands the test of times, strong from the roots and confident of its ancient foundation. Forces of nature however, conspire to side with the minority. The accomplice, in the meantime spreads out; encouraged by the stark cleft and undeterred by the unconditional reception.

As time goes by, wind and water sweep by with utter disdain the remaining vestige of pride while the unintended consequences of servility and colonial baggage continue to play its part. Slow poison, as it spreads, chokes (in fractions) the functioning cells while Sushruta stands by and confers with the quacks. As it happens, a bit of trembling is all it takes to dismount the rigid structure from the mantle-piece, dislodging with itself, the myths that surround the prophesied ideals, the supposedly unassailable and indefatigable spirit of THE CONSTITUTION.

 

a perennial vacation, or vocation?

If there is such a thing would it kill to be on it for yes ever? The idea stems from the notion of necessity and happiness. You choose either, you equally necessitate the help of the other. While working, say I meet someone who has mixed his worlds so well that for him it is not a case of choice, it is just an extension and a natural one at that. Tom White washes away the fence.

Is it really that troublesome to go the whole hog and make en effort to be not unlike the little Sawyer who brought his qualms and his fountain of happiness together? For him, it was easy. It’s a short story, a figment of imagination. What else can you expect? Nevertheless. his fiendish cleverness helps him manipulate the world around him to suit his needs. Isn’t selfishness a bit over-rated and a tad over-demonized? I would refrain going down the Rand way though much as I like to dislike a Randish observation I am completely in agreement with some of her love letters. I would not go down that way for despite my affinity for digression I should better stick with a stick than a tree.

I am yet to see Sawyer rising from the pages of my 5th standard English Literature book and standing tall in-front of me. Though, small as he is I might have had a head held too high to notice someone standing right in-front of me. These things do happen sometimes and there is  no one you can blame for your negligence. So many people, so many stories..how many can you listen to? It might not be a case of small sample as well and there might be a null set yet to be proved and too difficult/subjective to prove.

The irony of a cliche is, it leads to another, then another and so on and so forth  till you come back to the original and start believing  in self-enlightenment.  I should better warp those in words and package it completely new so it rings in an epiphany. So photosynthetic. Romantically magical.

From the looks of it the man (or men?) peering through the pages seem incorruptible to me. For, from where I see it he has mastered sawyerism and is tendulkaristic in his feats. He has gangulified the dravidian task, a herculean effort I must say. But then, as I sit back on my bag (with missing beans) I am reminded of a phrase that would send one and all to the grave-pity I have no beans to spill on that front. So I constrain myself, again, and in more ways than one, as I am wont to do more often than not. For God’s sake, open this world a little more.

But then, when you were a kid was not a closed out world way better?