Snow: This is why I read Orhan Pamuk

It's been a gorgeous winter in Dallas - with the sun rays streaming through the blinds on to my living room from morning through late afternoon. The bright, sunny days with highs touching 70s at times are as far removed as can be from the snowy, stark and silent streets of Kars. And yet, such is the power of Pamuk's prose that during all those hours spent reading his masterpiece, I felt like I was in Kars.

Early on in the novel, snow - one of the recurring themes in the novel, makes an appearance.

...he peered into the wretched little shops and bakeries and broken down coffee houses that lined the streets of Erzurum's outlying suburbs, and as he did it began to snow. It was heavier and thicker than the snow he'd seen between Istanbul and Erzurum. If he hadn't been so tired, if he'd paid a bit more attention to the snowflakes swirling out of the sky like feathers, he might have realized that he was traveling straight into a blizzard; he might have seen at the start that he was setting out on a journey that would change his life forever and would have chosen to turn back.

Trimmed down to its very basics, Snow is the story of Ka, a Turkish poet exiled in Frankfurt, who comes to the remote Eastern border city of Kars to investigate the string of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear head scarves. But he is also there because of memories of a beautiful woman named Ipek.

In the whirlwind three days that follow, a blizzard isolates Kars from the rest of Turkey as roads and rails are blocked; the boundaries between art and life are blurred as a theater troupe stages a farcical coup; people are killed as political intrigue involving the Kurds, Turkish Republicans, and Islamists deepens; Ka finds sudden inspiration as poems magically start coming to him as he falls desperately and passionately in love with Ipek and realizes that the only happiness he can know is spending the rest of his life with her in Frankfurt; and we encounter a handsome and charismatic Islamic terrorist as Ka begins to question his beliefs on atheism and wonders about God and his existence.

Throughout the novel, Pamuk gives us a glimpse of what makes Turkey and Kars in this case, unique. The chequered history and a melting pot of civilizations which makes it hard for its people to find their identity.

As he gazed at the grand old buildings on either side, admiring their handsome doors, their generously proportioned eaves, their beautiful friezes, and their dignified but timeworn facades, Ka had a strong sense of the people (Armenians who traded in Tiflis? Ottoman pashas who collected taxes from the dairies?) who had once led happy, peaceful and even colorful lives here. Gone now were all the Armenians, Russians, Ottomans and early Republican Turks.....

As we get to know about the life of the people in Kars - the poverty and hopelessness, the struggle to define their identity and religiousness, the constant conflict between East and West: manifested not only in religious beliefs but also in values, morality, culture and a way of life; we are slowly drawn towards the people in this far away city and we begin to understand their hopes and fears, their needs and desires. Coupled with the constantly falling snow which shrouds the city in silence and a sense of desolation, it is easy to see why the novel effortlessly transports the reader to a different world.

And then there's Ipek. Ka's is so enamored by her beauty that he cannot think of a life without her. It is this fear of losing her and losing his last hope of finding happiness that makes him so vulnerable and humane. Even when Ka's friend (who is narrating the whole story) meets her, he is left amazed.

Ipek was more beautiful than anyone could have imagined. At this dinner, where I had my first glimpse of her, I mush confess to have found myself stunned, bedazzled and deeply jealous. ... I was beset by all manner of those feelings that women of exceptional beauty never fail to inspire; gazing at this paragon before me, I felt myself crumbling, I felt possessed.

Love, God, happiness, patriotism, change - the themes that make up Snow are universal and timeless. The setting, though (for an Indian residing in a secular US), is totally different. And the greatness of this novel lies in the lucidity and honesty with which it manages to blend the familiar with the unknown. Everyone should read this. If not for the commentary about modern day Turkey told in a mash up of political thriller, travelogue, historical fiction and drama; then for the sheer joy of discovering how a great book can make you feel.

Reading Again

Always, at every moment, asleep and awake, during the most sublime and most abject moments, Amaranta thought about Rebeca, because solitude had made a selection in her memory and had burned the dimming piles of nostalgic waste that life had accumulated in her heart, and had purified, magnified and eternalized the others, the most bitter ones. 

                                                                          - excerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude

I've gotten back to reading. Or so I would like to think. During the winter break, I managed to read 'Love In The Time of Cholera', my first Marquez. I was hooked. Every moment described in excruciating details, the semi-fantastical setting and the heart breaking story of unrequited love was unlike anything I had read earlier. So I decided I would pick up 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' next. I'm a little more than halfway through it and have a feeling that I would finish it this time. My previous attempt during the winter of 2007-08 had been a disaster. In hindsight, I was not in the state of mind required for the rather slow and intense reading.

I'm probably the worst multi-tasker I know. This, despite being almost done with my MBA! So I cant, for example, read and watch TV at the same time. Or browse and listen to music. I don't enjoy it and I invariably end up losing one thread completely. Anyway, the point is, I need time and space to read novels. So last Saturday when I woke up early (8 o' clock) and saw the sun streaming through the balcony door, I decided not to open my laptop and instead pick up the book. For the next 5 hours or so, I kept reading. Stopping only for the cup of tea and bowl of cereal in between. The phone didn't ring and there was no music playing. And the world didn't change because of my absence from Facebook.

Enough talking about reading. Back to doing it.

Perfect Lazy Sunday. Well, Almost

Of late (and by late I mean the last couple of years actually), my attention span has reduced significantly. I keep moving from one task to another without being able to concentrate for more than 30-40 minutes. To some extent it has been accentuated by the B School life, where you are constantly trying to cram in as much as you can within a given time. But that apart, the two main evidences that it's more than just a passing phase is the fact that I had all but stopped reading and watching movies. Don't get me wrong here. I still go out with my friends to watch Avatar and Iron Man II. But whereas earlier, in my spare time I wanted to update my 'movies seen from the IMDB Top 250' list; nowadays even 90 minutes seems too long a time to sit still and do one task. And I cannot watch a movie in bursts. And reading. I guess this was more because of an actual lack to time. I would manage to read for a couple of hours in a week and by the 4th week, would lose the thread and abandon the book.

I also have a tendency to get bored of the setting of the house/room I live in. So when I woke up today; instead of sitting at home and aimlessly trying to move between watching a movie, reading a novel, calling friends or killing time on the internet (yes, my Sundays are really that happening) - I took my novel and went out to have breakfast. I got my bagel with sausage and eggs and a coffee and found myself a corner. And for almost three hours, amidst murmurs of people coming-ordering-talking amongst themselves, the soothing sound of some jazzy music playing in the background, and a few coffee refills - I read. 

I came home at noon to do some work and went back at 2:00. Ordered a sandwich and iced tea, found the same place and spent another three hours.

The book resonated with a few of the things I have been thinking about (and talking to my friends) of late. What kind of life do I want. What makes me happy. What matters. Choices. It's a little unsettling to say the least, that in less than a year, school will be over and the 'real world' will come back again. Decisions would have to be made regarding everything. And this time around, most of them would be long term. You know, the really important ones. So far, all the phases in my life came with an expiry tag. Even with the job I had before, I knew I would eventually get an MBA (it's cool to say it now that I am actually doing it!). I have a feeling, the next phase doesn't necessarily have one. Not a clear defined one anyway. And no, I'm not saying I'll have the same life for the rest of my life or will do the same job or live in the same place. But I think you get the point.

Which also means that in the 10 months or so that I do have, I should make sure I visit the places and people I want to, soak in as much as I can so that there are very few (if not none) 'Ah, should have done that' experiences, and to use the cliche, make the most of it. With some effort and luck, hopefully the rest will fall in place.

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

It's Beautiful

'Three bedrooms in Malabar Hill! It's beautiful.' ....

.... By 'beautiful' she didnt mean what she meant when wandering about an art gallery, or assessing one of her husband's graphic designs; as an adult sometimes pretends to use a word in a simple, clear, limited way for the benefit of a child, she used the word as the upper reaches of the bourgeoisie thoughtlessly used it, as an uncomplicated acknowledgment of well-being. At the same time, the observation was an afterthought she'd almost come to terms with, without too much ruefulness: about the impossibility of ever possessing anything like this lifestyle...

Reading Amit Chaudhuri's The Immortals.

Never Let Me Go

I don't know how you pick your books. I read the title and the blurb. So when I found this book - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro among the others my father had recently bought, I thought it might be a good time to get back to reading again.

The story is about Kathy, Tommy and Ruth as they spend their lives in Hailsham, a boarding school in the English countryside. As a thirty-something Kathy starts reminiscing about her childhood days, we are drawn to a world where everyone is brought up to become 'carers' and 'donors'. Ishiguro conjures up a world which is difficult to comprehend. We dont even fully know what these terms mean. Yet, he manages to put in the same ethos, the same doubts, the same little joys that we all must have felt while growing up. From the sense of pride in collecting items, to the fear of asking an elder about something we know is forbidden, from the love-hate relationships we had with our friends to the games we played; the process of growing up, getting to know the world around us but at the same time having one of our own is vividly portrayed throughout the narrative.

Reading the book is almost like walking through mist. There's a sense of apprehension which never leaves you. You are not quite sure of what to expect though you have some idea of what's coming. A delicate thread binds all the three principal characters. You can almost feel that it could snap anytime and change the course of the novel. It is this sense of fragility which makes the novel a pageturner. It's hard to 'let go'. Because even though as you read on and begin to feel that the end would leave you unsatisfied and sad, yet you want to get to it. To know for sure.

Never Let Me Go is a novel about a special bunch of kids. Their visions of adulthood, their struggle to come to terms with who they are and their hopes of achieving something which isn't meant for them. It's a story of friendship and love and the complex dynamics that rule most human relations. It hits you and would stay with you long after you have closed the book. It doesn't leave a good feeling even. It leaves you with more questions than answers. But it's a unique story. So removed from reality yet so close to it. And the most striking thing was the fact that at so many levels, I was able to identify with it. The english countryside description with its hillocks and ponds reminded me of similar ones I have read or listened to. And so many emotions which Kathy, Tommy and Ruth go through have been ones that I have felt in the near past.

It's an odd world that this novel is set in. Even after having read it only recently and now writing about it, I don't really know how to talk about it. Except that it's very human. And it has got an amazing pace to it. Not too fast. Not too slow. I didn't quite like his other book, 'When We Were Orphans'. But this one definitely makes me want to read more from Ishiguro.

One Man's Bible

It was not that he didn't remember he once had another sort of life. But, like the old yellowing photograph at home, which he did not burn, it was sad to think about, and far away, like another world that had disappeared forever.

Thus begins Gao Xinjiang's fictionalized account of his life as a child and an adult in one of the most tumultuous periods in China's history. Set primarily amidst Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, One Man's Bible traces the life of Gao through the labor camps, politburo meetings and party propaganda that formed a part of everyday existence in China. Also chronicled in this account is his lust for women and the varied relations that he has with them, the betrayals and the chance encounters. It's a commentary on the confusion and the disillusionment that he suffers from, which in some way mirrored the sentiments of the masses and the turbulent and chaotic times where paranoia of the present and fear of an uncertain future reigned supreme.

As the narrative twists and turns through the lives of revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries, reactionaries and counterreactionaries, we get to realise the meaning of freedom in its very basic form. It's a world where an aspiring poet becomes a fisherman and then a vegetable seller. It's the story of his decadence and resignation before the 'Party'. It's a world where a mathematics buff in college is forced to herd cattle in a farm. It's the story of his dreams that never came true.

In a hotel room in Hong Kong, a Jewish German woman brings out the repressed memories of a time he had forgotten. It's a release, both on the physical and emotional level. He feels the need to express himself and relive the pain to detach himself from it.

Gao meticulously describes the working and the thought process of the 'Party' and what happened to its enemies, the Ox Demons and the Snake Spirits, as they were called. Freedom of thought, expression, and even choice was not allowed. Either you conformed to the party's diktats or faced its wrath.

Freedom....it is a capacity and an awareness that needs to be defended. Moreover, even dreams can be assailed by nightmares.

The style of writing, itself, is something which needs to be talked about. Gao uses 'he' to refer to the period about which he is writing, the past so as to say. Whenever he is talking of the present, though, like about his Jewish German mistress, Margarethe, or the numerous Western women he beds, who in their own way inspire him to write, he uses 'you'.

You must find a detached voice, scrape off the thick residue of resentment and anger deep in your heart, then unhurriedly and calmly proceed to articulate your various impressions. Your flood of confused memories, and your tangled thoughts.....You are striving to describe in simple language the terrible contamination of life by politics....that penetrated every pore, clung to daily life, became fused in speech and action, and from which no one at that time could escape.....You are you and he is he.

He tries not to colour the 'he' with the present day 'you' so as to be able to bring out an account which is as truthful and real as if written in those times. The chapters where he writes about the need to write and the essence of writing and pure gems. I might as well quote pages after pages.

...to articulate pain in order to alleviate pain seems to make pain bearable.

It is by cloaking naked reality with a gauze curtain, ordering language and weaving into it feelings and aesthetics that you are able to derive pleasure from looking back at it....

In the process of linguistic actualization, the present and past history, time and space, concepts and knowledge, all become fused and leave behind magical illusions created by language.

And he fills pages after pages with such thoughts.

He says that the circumstances were such that one couldn't be a fence sitter. Either you joined parties or perished. Being a silent observer was not a choice and so in all this confusion, he had to rebel. If not for anything then merely for existence. Merely because of the fact that he was a human and there was no other option left.

It's an essay on the meaning of freedom and the necessity of expressing oneself. It's about trying to find meaning in everything that happens around us, savoring life and the sufferings and delights it brings. It's a lesson on how to deal with suffering and how to overcome it.

After suffering has past, it, too, can become beautiful.

Life in itself is an inexplicable miracle; to be alive is a manifestation of that miracle. Is it not enough that a conscious physical body is able to perceive the pains and joys of life. What else is there to be sought.

Soul Mountain and now this. I'm glad I came across this author.

Istanbul

There are parts in almost every book we read which makes our heart leap with joy. Those moments of brilliance. Sentences that stay with us long after the book is read and tucked away in some corner of the cupboard. It could be the sheer beauty of the prose or the simplicity of some profound statement or even when we can associate some experience, some feelings, to our lives, our selves. Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul only comprised of such parts and nothing else.

It's a memoir of the city the author was born in, grew up and has made his home for over fifty years. It's about the only place on earth he knows. It's about the reflection of the city on his life and it's a love affair that's hard to replicate at any level.

Here we come to the heart of the matter; I've never left Istanbul - never left the houses, streets, neighborhoods of my childhood......Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul - these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imagination was fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness; mine however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am.

Pamuk explores what he calls the 'Turkification' of Istanbul in particular and his country in general, caught as it was, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, between the East and the West in every sense of the word. He talks about his joint family, his parents and his relation with them, replete with little anecdotes of the streets and bylanes of the city. He talks of the melancholy that engulfs the entire city in its drive to westernise and get rid of the bitter memories of the fallen empire much like a 'spurned lover throws away his lost beloved's clothes...'
Pamuk has a very keen eye for detail as he goes on to describe the 'sad joys of black and while Istanbul'. In one such inspired sentence he tells us how the 'crumbling fountains that havent worked for centuries, ...the little grocery stores darkened by age, the ferries going up and down the Bosphorus...' all add to the enigma that is his city.

It's impossible for me to describe in words how I felt about the book. The fact that it is a very personal and touching memoir about growing up a city such as Istanbul which itself was on the doorsteps of history, the effect it has had on its inhabitants who have come to share the melancholy of the city and carry its burden of history and the detail in which Pamuk describes the paintings and literature that have been inspired by the city and been created for it, make it a delightful read.

To see the city in black and white is to see it through the tarnish of history: the patina of what is old and faded and no longer matters to the rest of the world....

Pamuk's love for Bosphorus, the sea which divides the Asian and European parts of Istanbul, is very vividly brought out. The walks that he undertook alone or with his mother, during sunny afternoons or dark nights tell us about how deeply it has affected his growing up.

To see the cypress trees...the empty and neglected yalis, the old weathered ships...the poetry of the Bosphorus ships..., to discard historical grievances and enjoy it as fully as a child, to long to know more about this world, to understand it - this is the awkward surrender to uncertainty that a fifty year old writer has come to know as pleasure.....
Life cant be all that bad....whatever happens, I can always take a walk along the Bosphorus.

Very central to the novel is the idea of huzun or melancholy in Turkish. Pamuk in a entire chapter goes on to explain the meaning of the word linking it to the Koran and Sufi culture and how the Istanbullus wear this huzun with pride, how it is a 'state of mind that is ultimately as life affirming as it is negating'. It would be foolish for me to try and explain the meaning of this word. For that you would have to read the book.

Taking us through a tour of the city's landscapes, music, literature, prominent personalities and history in general, Pamuk beautifully shuttles between presenting before us a glimpse of his life and that of the city for the past hundred years and a little more. It is as much a personal diary, as it is a memoir of a great city. I started out thinking I would give you an idea of what the book is about but have realised that I am in no position to do that and have failed miserably. Instead, I leave you with a few extracts from the book which to me are the best examples of prose writing that I have ever come across in my limited readings.

Huzun does not just paralyze the inhabitants of Istanbul; it also gives them poetic license to be paralyzed.

Caught as the city is between traditional culture and Western culture, inhabited as it is by an ultra rich minority and an impoverished majority, overrun as it is by wave after wave of immigrants, divided as it has always been along the lines of its many ethnic groups, Istanbul is a place where, for the past hundred and fifty years, no one has been able to feel completely at home.

For the past hundred and fifty years, we have lived in timorous anticipation of catastrophes that will bring us fresh defeats and new ruins. It's still important to do something to fight off the dread and the melancholy, and that is why the ideal contemplation of the Bosphorus can seem like a duty.

While talking about the end of the Ottoman empire and the Westernization of Turkey, this is what he says.
It was an end of the grand polygot, multicultural Istanbul of the imperial age the city stagnated, emptied itself out, and became a monotonous, monolingual town in black and white.

...what is important for a painter is not a thing's reality but its shape, and what is important for a novelist is not the course of events but their ordering, and what is important for a memoirist is not the factual accuracy but its symmetry.

Here, among the old stones and the old wooden houses, history made peace with its ruins, ruins nourished life, and gave new life to history...

...true happiness and meaning resided in places we would never find and perhaps did not wish to find, but - whether we were pursuing the answers or merely pleasure and emotional depth - the pursuit mattered no less than the attainment, the asking as important as the views we saw through the windows of the car, the house, the ferry. With time, life - like music, art and stories would rise and fall, eventually to end, but even years later, those lives are with us still in the city views that flow before our eyes, like memories plucked from dreams.

It's a wonderful, wonderful memoir, the best I have ever come across. It's a book that will make you smile and cry at the same time with its sheer beauty. It's a book that makes you happy to be alive, makes u feel blessed to have come across it and read it.

Excerpts from 'The Plague'

In short, we returned to our prison house, we had nothing left us but the past, and even if some were tempted to live in the future, they had speedily to abandon the idea - anyhow, as soon as could be - once they felt the wounds that the imagination inflicts on those who yield themselves to it.

But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of endless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress. Thu, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in a company with a memory that serves no purpose.

All I maintain is on that this earth there are pestilences and there are victims and it's up to us so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.

Next day these fancies would have passed and qualms of doubt returned. But for the moment the whole town was on the move, quitting the dark, lugubrious confines where it had struck its roots of stone and setting forth at last, like a shipload of survivors, toward a land of promise.

So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories

And when the train stopped, all those interminable seeming separations which often had begun on this same platform came to an end in one ecstatic moment, when arms closed with hungry possessiveness on bodies whose living shape they had forgotten.

For the moment he wished to behave like all those others around him who believed, or made believe, that plague can come and go without changing anything in men's hearts.

The leveling out that death's imminence had failed in practice to accomplish was realized at last, for a few gay hours, in the rapture of escape.

In short, they denied that we had ever been that hag-ridden populace, a part of which was daily fed into a furnace and went up in oily fumes, while the rest, in shackled impotence, waited their turn.

....we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

Read & Remembered

An effort to remember the books read over the last 4/5 years.

Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, Fury, Shalimar The Clown, Step Across This Line (collected non fiction) : My favorite author. Fell in love with him after reading Midnight's Children. There's nothing I can possibly say about him which has already not been said.

Rohinton Mistry: A Fine Balance, Family Matters : A writer with an eye for detail. He can portray emotions as few can. As some critic put it, Mistry doesn't require the magic realism of a Rushdie....in his prose, the mundane becomes magical. Should also thank Mistry for earning me my biggest blog fan!

Amitav Ghosh: In An Antique Land, Shadow Lines, The Hungry Tide: Shadow Lines is a wonderful novel. It talks about geographic boundaries, and others which divide and unite us. The author keeps shifting time frames which makes it a difficult read and tough to grasp at times, but this was the novel which hooked me to Ghosh. In An Antique Land is an account of the author's travels as a student through Egypt. I loved The Hungry Tide because I had earlier been to the Sunderbans which has been brought to life beautifully by Ghosh. The struggle between land and water, man and beast and how the Tide rules everything there.

Albert Camus: The Stranger (aka The Outsider), The Plague: Just finished reading The Plague and believe me, it's an absolute masterpiece. Will soon compile and put up a post on it consisting purely of quotes from the book.

Leon Uris: Exodus, The Haj: My interest in the Middle East, Arab-Israel conflict was totally due to Exodus. To me the best fact based fiction ever written. Would recommend both these books to anyone who wants to know the story behind Israel.

William Darlymple: City OF Djinns, At The Court Of The Fish Eyed Goddess

The Impressionist - Hari Kunzru : A very interesting read with a lot of Rushdie in it.

Kim - Rudyard Kipling : It's a classic I know and it was good but I expected more.

Soul Mountain - Gao Xingjian: A semi autobiographical account by China's first Nobel laureate in literature. The author's use of I and You to depict the same being is an utterly unique and amazing concept as he goes on describing his journey through China in search of the Soul Mountain. The novel is steeped in Mao's exploits, the Cultural Revolution, the effects of industrialization, vanishing Giant Pandas and more. It has a magical element to it and as the blurb at the end of the book puts it perfectly, it's like walking through mist.

Red Poppies - Alai: This one takes us to Tibet, before the Chinese invasion. A land ruled by warlords. A land full of lust and sin. And how eventually opium yielding poppies destroy it and its people.

An Equal Music - Vikram Seth: Its hard to believe how an Indian writer could so beautifully conjure up a world of Western Classical Music. Replete with details of a string quartet and Bach and Beethoven, it is quite unlike any novel written by an Indian writer. Another must read.

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini: Absolutely loved the book. Its a poignant novel, written in very simple prose and even though has its fair share of 'Bollywoodesque' coincidences, yet it remains one of my favorites till date.

The Swallows Of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra: Bought it after reading The Kite Runner. Another novel based in war torn Afghanistan, not as good a read as the former though.

My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk

A Sense Of The World- Jason Roberts

To Sir With Love - E.R. Braithwaite

Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom : Touching

Princess - Jean Sasson: A rather disturbing but true account of the plight of females in Saudia Arabia. And this one belonged to the Royal Family!

Those Days - Sunil Gangopadhyay & Tamas - Bhisham Sahni : Read them during my first Humanities course at IIT, ' Modern Indian Fiction In Translation'. Was particularly impressed by the former due to its sheer scope and epic nature. Have never read a book with so many characters. Talks about 2 families in pre - independent India, the time of the zamindars and has several historical characters like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Michael Madhusudan Dutt in it.

The World Is Flat - Thomas Friedman: Outsourcing, Supply Chain Management, China, India, Globalisation, Infosys... a very well written book full of anecdotes and small stories explaining the world we live in.

The Life And Times Of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee : The simplicity of Michael K leaves you speechless. A superb depiction of South Africa amidst the civil war.

Above Average - Amitabha Bagchi : The inspiration behind this

Complete Guide To Guys - Dave Barry : Hilarious! A total read aloud book to guys. Laughed till my stomach hurt.

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro : Another one of those books that I bought reading the blurb and title. Set in Shanghai and England, it's a crime fiction. Didn't particularly enjoy it though it certainly added to my knowledge of Chinese history.

There could be more, but right now I can't remember. If and when I do, I will put them up here.
And right now I have about 14 books in my room which I haven't read. So please no more suggestions for the time being!

My Name Is Red

It's a land where imitation is sacred and individuality profane, a land where portraiture and perspective are as much the tools of Satan as of the European Frankish masters, where art transcends the skill and dexterity of the artist and merges into Allah himself, where memory is the artist's greatest gift and where every miniaturist percieves blindness as the ultimate recognition by the Almighty. It's sixteenth century Istanbul with the Ottoman empire at its zenith. A city full of darkness and light, love and intrigue and masters and apprentices.

Orhan Pamuk's tour de force, My Name Is Red (MNIR) is unlike any novel I have come across. Its a difficult read by all accounts and slow and laborious at times. But what it does very successfully is transport you to a completely different space and time, when Sultans reigned supreme and art flourished under the wings of religion. MNIR is steeped in Islam and the art of miniature painting. Here every character has a voice of his own. From the Head Illuminator Master Osman to his three Master Miniaturists: Olive, Stork and Butterfly, from the beautiful Shekure to her lover and husband Black, from the Jewess clothier and letter carrier Esther to Enishte Effendi, the father of the lovely Shekure and from the dog to the gold coin, every character speaks.

Pamuk uses a first person to narrate different chapters through his characters which has an even deeper meaning when we realise that he is trying to look at the world through individual eyes, the eyes of people and not through the eyes of an outsider. This is analogous to the major conflict between the Islamic tradition of painting sans perspective which tries to depict everything as Allah might have seen and not through individual eyes as done by the European Masters.

The book is replete with depictions of famous miniatures and epics like Husrev & Shirin, Rustem & Sohrab to name a few and the endless descriptions of the paintings, from the horses to the clouds, from the lovely hands and necks of maidens to the trees, do at times get exhausting to read. There's ample history though, to arise the curiosity of anybody interested in knowing the birth and lifetime of miniature painting, the seats of learning like Herat, Tabriz and Shiraz, the different workshops with different styles, the Chinese and Mongol influence and even references of Akbar and Hindustan.

A unique concept which I think is worth mentioning is the way miniaturists looked at the process of making illustrations during those times. It's said in the novel that painting is all about memory. Even when we look at something and draw, for a split second as our eyes finish their job and let the hands take over, its our memory which holds the image we are about to depict. So in this light what can be the ultimate goal of a miniaturist. To paint, to illustrate without the gift of vision, from memory alone. And this is what every artist in those times strived to achieve. Making a particular horse thousands of times till the hand could make it from memory alone. This concept encouraged imitation, making images as the old masters used to without any individuality of one's own, without a signature. For its the art and not the artist that matters. All this was particularly in line with Islam which forbade individuality at any level and so when old masters went blind after working for decades under the dim light of oil lamps, it was said to be a gift from Allah himself, a gift which freed a man from the ugly sights that humans are capable of seeing and enabled one to see the world as the Almighty does, beautiful and heavenly.

In short the story revolves around the secret book of paintings that the Sultan has commissioned to be made by the best miniaturists and gilders of Istanbul. A book to depict the Sultan's and the Ottoman Empire's grandeur and power to the Venetains, to be made in secret using the styles of the European Frankish Masters who look at the world as seen from a window and not as Allah would see it, from an exalted plane. And this in sixteenth century Istanbul amounts to blasphemy, a disregard of Islam which prohibits such styles and depictions. It is during the making of this book that differences arise amongst the artists which leads to two murders.

The story itself is composed of many levels. At one level MNIR is a murder mystery, the clues of which lie only in the paintings of the secret book. At another it is a love story between Black and Shekure, the daughter of one of the victims and Black's struggle to win the love of his beloved and her two sons, Shevket and Orhan, by finding the murderer. And of course it's a brilliant commentary on art, religion and society and their effects on the lives of people, their faiths and beliefs, their customs and traditions.

My Name Is Red is a unique book in all accounts. True there are parts of it which are very difficult to comprehend given my limited knowledge of miniature paintings, Ottoman Empire, Istanbul and Islam. Yet these very things combined with Pamuk's style and presentation make it as engrossing and rewarding read as any I have come across.

"Family Matters"

There are some books you don't like but still read through because they are supposed to be very famous, very good. There are others which you love and recommend to friends. And there are still others which move you to tears and for a long time after you have finished reading it, sitting on the bed alone in your room, you dont want anybody to look into your eyes for fear of ridicule. It's not that you cant hold back your tears, it's just that you want to give in, you want to cry. And you know the beauty of the story that I am talking about, it's not a tragedy, in fact its far from what you would call a tragedy or even a sad story per se. It's very commonplace , almost mundane in its spirit, yet seen through the eyes of one Rohinton Mistry even everyday occurences take the hue of magical appearences.

If Such a Fine Balance swept you of your feet due to its attention to details and the vast scope at the same time and the imbalance between hope and despair in the lives of its characters, Family Matters brings out perhaps all the emotions you can ever feel: love, hate, anger, compassion, hope, greed, pride, pity, despair, scorn..... I can't even name them. It's the story of a family, an old man, Nariman Vakeel, afflicted with Parkinson's, his two step children Jal and Coomy, both unmarried living in a big house with him, his daughter Roxanna living in a cramped house with her husband Yezad and two schoolgoing boys Jehangir and Murad. When a turn of events forces Nariman to stay with his daughter Roxanna in her little flat, it not only puts to test their financial and material resources but most importantly their spirit. What follows is as intricate and magical (I can't stop using this word!) a description of "family matters" as ever could be. From Murad's coming home on foot for days to save the bus fare for his little brother's Christmas gift, to Jehangir holding his grandfather's hand in the middle of the night while the old man is tormented in his sleep with memories of the death of his beloved Lucy and his wife Yasmin, from Yezad's realisation that in the end a little compassion is all we need to live in this mad world to Roxanna's ever ageing envelopes marked "Bread & Butter", "Electricity" and the likes in to see through the month, from Jal's guilt having failed to stand up to his sister's verdict to Coomy's anger and frustration with life, Family Matters makes you smile and cry at the same time, makes you marvel at the beauty of life itself, of bondage and the complicacies of human relations.

It reminded me of my grandfather and his death. It was sudden. The doctors called it a bolt from the blue. Through Nariman, I could almost hear my Nana speak. The way Jehangir became terrified and saddened by Yezad and Roxanna's fights reminded me of the ones which my parents had during my childhood which shook the world around me.

Family Matters is a beautiful novel, one to be treasured forever, one which I would recommend everyone to read. Don't expect anything dramatic. The novel progresses predictably except for the end where a few coincidences change its shape distinctively. Read it for the simple joy of reading, read it to know all the emotions that exist, emotions we could forget feeling if not reminded.

A Life Less Ordinary

Think of the world "traveller" or better still, "explorer" and let your stage be the entire globe. What are the names that come to your mind ? Amundsen, Peary, Marco Polo, Columbus, Vasco Da gama, Ibn Batuta, Fa-Hien.......

Ever heard of a certain James Holman? Chances are that you have not. Yet, clocking about a quarter million miles and coming to contact with about 200 different cultures, he was and remains history's greatest traveller in the truest sense of the word. Add to this the fact that he was completely blind and you have before you the most daring, astonishing lives ever lived.

He was known simply as The Blind Traveler--a solitary, sightless adventurer who, astonishingly, fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon and helped chart the Australian outback. James Holman triumphed not only over blindness but crippling pain, poverty and the interference of well-meaning authorities (his greatest feat, a circumnavigation of the world, had to be launched in secret).
Once a celebrity, a bestselling author and an inspiration to Charles Darwin and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the charismatic, witty Holman outlived his fame, dying in an obscurity that has endured--until now. (from A SENSE OF THE WORLD.)

Priced at close to a thousand Rupees, it would be the most expensive book that I bought. Yet going by my book buying instinct for the last three years or so, which is to buy completely random books without any pre-conception solely based on the book cover, title and blurb, I thought I would take the plunge. I can't and I won't even attempt to write a book review here. That's way out of my league and instead of making a complete fool of myself I would rather refer you to http://www.jasonroberts.net/ the website of the author, Jason Roberts who, through his marvellously researched book has tried to accord Holman his due as history's greatest ever traveller.

Poet, doctor, lieutenant, traveller; few men before or since must have lead such a charmed life.
"I see things better with my feet." said James Holman and so he did, embarking on a journey of the globe and experiencing it in a way the sighted could only dream of. For him, his blindness was not a handicap to be pitied upon, it merely meant finding a different way to sense the world. He rode horses, studied medicine in the University of Edinburgh, climbed up Mt. Vesuvius to witness its famous eruption circa 1821, climbed the masts of ships, travelled across Siberia right upto the Kamchatka Peninsula, made friends with natives and in the process visited every inhabited continent on the planet.

He knew no foreign languages, had almost no money, and carried little more than a primitive writing machine--yet he also had a prodigious memory, hyper-acute remaining senses and vast amounts of
personal charm. (From http://www.jasonroberts.net/introholman.html)

As the author found out, there is very little information available on James Holman anywhere in the world. Comparison of the Wiki entries of Holman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Holman) with that of Marco Polo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo) is just an example.

There's a famous quote saying "Life should be big, not long" . To me the life of James Holman epitomises this. I won't try to dish out what the book taught me or meant to me personally. Just getting to know about such a life was prize enough for me. Read this excerpt from the book and who knows you might also be prompted to go ahead and read the entire story, one of a life lived to the fullest.