Pack a 'State of Wonder' for your holidays

I recently read this book for a book club meeting and thought I'd post this short summary here as suggested reading while you lie on a beach somewhere on your December break.

The women of the Lakashi tribe living deep in the Amazon forests are having babies even in their 70’s. If this miracle of science can be cracked and marketed in a little pill, the pharmaceutical company bankrolling the research could make windfall profits. Standing in the way, however, is the very person appointed to do the research - a sinister Dr. Swenson - who refuses to report back on what progress she has made. When Dr. Anders Eckman is sent into the forests by the pharmaceutical company to investigate, the only thing that emerges is a terse letter from Dr. Swenson saying he is dead. What’s really going on down there in the jungle? Ann Patchett’s ‘State of Wonder’ is the story of Dr. Marina Singh, the next person to go into the forest and the shocking discovery she makes. It’s a great holiday read and a good Christmas gift as well.

Jill by Philip Larkin

'Jill' by Philip Larkin is an insight into the stratified world of 1940s Oxford University. A young man, John Kemp from the north of England ends up sharing a room at the University with a brash, uber-confident Londoner, Christopher Warner. Kemp's desperation in trying to get with the in crowd even as they mock and denigrate him at every turn reveals some incredible class differences. The reader feels constantly embarassed for John Kemp as the more he gets mocked, the more it seems to sharpen his desire to be part of their circle.

A turning point in the story comes when John feels he may have discovered a possible chink in Christopher's seemingly impenetrable armour. Could it be that Christopher may envy him his warm family ties?  This discovery thrills John so much that he ends up inventing a whole fictional narrative around a loving younger sister named 'Jill' he doesn't actually have.

This harmless pursuit initially involves leaving invented letters from Jill lying around their shared room in the hope that Christopher will secretly read them. John diligent creation of this world of make-believe turns him into something of a writer of fiction. Through this he is hoping all the time that Christopher will take a real interest in his life and start noticing him more, unlike his current interest levels where John may as well be part of the furniture in their room.

For John this is all innocuous stuff till one day his 'character' Jill actually materialises in Oxford in the form of a teenage girl coincidentally called Gillian. John becomes instantly infatuated with the real Gillian, fuelled no less by his own creation of her. He pursues her madly; following her on buses, waiting for her in cafes and showing up at parties where she is likely to be.

Read the book to find out how John Kemp's pursuit eventually ends.

PS: Philip Larkin is considered by some to be the greatest modern English poet. That high stature notwithstanding, there has been increasing attention paid to the personality of the writer, with some accusing him of being a bit of a racist and misogynist. I personally find it very hard to enjoy a writer's work if I know about some of their odious views (although I still enjoyed this book). But if you're interested in reading more about Philip Larkin try this Guardian article here.

'Gujarat Beyond Gandhi'

At the height of the Ayodhya movement, with tension spreading in large ripples across north India, political and social psychologist Ashis Nandy interviewed an RSS pracharak (worker). Despite being very familiar with the Hindu fundamentalist ideology that was leading to those dramatic shifts in Indian political and social life, Nandy emerged from that interview completely shaken.

He wrote about this interaction more than a decade later saying, “It was a long rambling interview, but it left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only ones ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualising the ideology…..”



The then RSS pracharak he had interviewed had been Narendra Modi, current Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Modi presides over a state that is well-known today as the laboratory of Hindutva where dangerous experiments such as the mass killings of 2002 have taken place. But despite this recent history of obscene bloodshed, Indian businessmen are lining up to praise the state for removing the red tape and inefficiency that they encounter in most other states in India.

Such contradictions and complexities and Gujarat’s swing towards the ideology of the killers of Mahatma Gandhi are the subject of a scholarly new book ‘Gujarat beyond Gandhi – Identify, Conflict and Society. Edited by Nalin Mehta and Mona G. Mehta, it is a collection of essays on different facets of Gujarat and where the seeds of its major communal conflict lie, examined through different lens’ of anthropology, media studies, sociology etc.

If the Gujarat model of ‘developmental authoritarianism’ takes hold in other parts of India where there is an equal middle-class yearning for greater wealth and civic order, will the freedoms of speech and dissent be threatened in the same way as they are in Gujarat? And what will become of the idea of India itself ? These are some of the important questions raised in this book. But the reason I read this book with great interest was to seek explanations for the polarisation between the religious majority and minority that led to the organised violence in 2002 in which Muslims were killed with a brutality not seen since Partition.

There are some very interesting essays in there on vegetarianism and the politics of disgust, the segregation in urban geography and the one that I read with most interest - the legal battle between Ashis Nandy and the state of Gujarat.

Anyone interested in Gujarat and the communal faultline in India will find this a useful read.

Book Review: Egypt's Road to Jerusalem.

At the height of the February uprising in Egypt I happened to come upon former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s book ‘Egypt’s road to Jerusalem’. I thought this was a good time to read his story and found a cautiously written tale about the inner workings of the negotiating teams of Egypt and Israel that led to the signing of the historic peace treaty between the two countries in March 1979.



The book starts with the rather sudden and unexpected appointment of Boutros-Ghali as a Minister of State in President Anwar al-Sadat’s cabinet before Sadat’s ground-breaking trip to Jerusalem in 1977. It details the various conferences and characters that populated the peace process after that visit till the time the peace treaty was eventually signed two years later.


The book’s strength is not so much the overall insider’s history as much as it is the countless anecdotes Boutros-Ghali provides about world leaders. It is surprisingly limited however in its portraiture of the main actors such as Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Jimmy Carter, and most importantly Anwar al-Sadat. Of the personalities of these men, there are only glimpses.


The impression of Sadat I was left with through the vignettes was not a visionary of peace but more a secretive, unpredictable military man bent on winning back territory (Sinai Peninsula) through peace since he hadn’t been able to achieve it through war. That’s why the Israeli lack of sincerity in engaging on the question of Palestinian autonomy (something the Egyptians wanted to club with the return of the Sinai) didn’t eventually derail the peace treaty. Of course I could be horribly wrong.


Sadat was also strangely impervious to Arab, African and non-aligned countries’ criticism. Boutros-Ghali observes, “Sadat seemed ready to do with Egypt what Kemal Ataturk had done with Turkey – cut it loose from its most important historical, religious and cultural roots and become an integral part of the West.”


The Israeli side comes across as hard and unyielding. The Camp David Accords which led to the peace treaty were signed even as Israel launched its first invasion into Lebanon. A year later, Israel reversed a 1967 decision and started allowing Israelis to buy land in the West Bank and Gaza. Negotiations on Palestinian self-rule didn’t go anywhere and Begin successfully put pressure on Sadat to stop Boutros-Ghali from constantly raising the Palestinian question.


The best bits of the book however are Boutros-Ghali’s descriptions of his swing through Africa drumming up support for Egypt and Latin America requesting troops for a multinational peace-keeping force in the Sinai.


There is a great anecdote of his bizarre meeting with Ugandan leader Idi Amin. Amin took him on a boat to a place called Paradise Island, where he insisted on having the meeting in his bedroom without any aides.

Boutros-Ghali noticed that there were three doors designed to give Amin several escape routes in case of an assassination. Idi Amin saw everyone as a potential assassin. As if all that wasn’t weird enough, Amin suggested that Boutros-Ghali lie down on the bed to rest next to him. Hardly what you expect to happen when diplomats and world leaders meet!


The book’s final chapter is gripping in its description of the events of sixth October. The annual military parade is held on this day to commemorate the breaking of Israel’s Bar-Lev Line on the Sinai front during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As a Minister, Boutros-Ghali was expected to attend and would probably have been seated close to Anwar al-Sadat except he and his wife broke with protocol and decided to visit friends in Alexandria instead.


What is utterly fascinating is how Boutros-Ghali got to know of the attempt on Sadat’s life, especially because it is inconceivable in today’s well-connected world. As he relaxed on the beach, an old lady, recognising him, walked up to Boutros-Ghali and told him that she had heard reports on a foreign radio station about some trouble at the parade in Cairo. Boutros-Ghali gently told her not to believe the foreign press which he said was always fomenting trouble.


But she returned shortly afterwards for a second and a third time to say she had heard it on the BBC so he must investigate. Sure enough, when Boutros-Ghali went back home, he already had officials waiting to take him back to Cairo by train in a specially reserved coach.

Boutros-Ghali broke down and cried for Anwar al-Sadat had not survived his assassin’s bullets after a brief battle in hospital. Sinai had not yet officially been returned to Egypt and the architect of the peace treaty would not live to see the completion of his dream.

Howard Jacobson thinks Indians really get his humour

Howard Jacobson, author of The Finkler Question signs copies of his book at the Royal Festival Hall in London . His book has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2010.

I recently suggested to my friends that we all read the Man Booker prize-winner of 2010 and get together to discuss the book.



One of the recipients of my email wrote back saying we should also place bets on which of the short-listed authors was likely to win. Since I haven’t read any of the six short-listed books, I decided to place bets based on which book I would like to read rather than which book I think will win.


I became most interested in The Finkler Question because I want to read something funny while also getting a taste of British-Jewish identity. So a few days ago I bought a copy of The Finkler Question and went to the Royal Festival Hall to get it signed by its author Howard Jacobson. While waiting in line for my turn I decided that I would like to ask him two questions. Heres how it went. (Please note that I wasn’t making notes when we were talking so I’m quoting from memory. Its obviously not accurate word for word but this is more or less what he said.)


When I reached his table I smiled at Jacobson and said, “I have two questions for you. First, what is your writing regimen like?”


He answered, “I start my day early ...I wake up at 7.30 and start writing.”


“What do you do to take a break?”


“I don’t take breaks… well except to eat but I get back to it. When I’m writing well I just keep going and going. My next book is also ready. It means I’m very unfit right now…”


“My second question for you is about writing comedy. How do you improve the comic element in your writing?”


“Writing comedy is like creating music…you have to get the beat right. You have to listen and you have to keep re-working it till you get the beat just right.”


“I know I said I have two questions but now I have another one. Do you think your humour translates across cultures? Do Americans, Australians or Indians find it just as funny?”


He had been taking a sip of red wine from his glass and put it down in a hurry because this question seemed to excite him.


“Indians really get my humour. They just really get it! I got a good review in the Hindustan Times and yesterday someone else from another paper called.”


“Why do you think Indians enjoy it so much?”, I interjected.


“I think its because they are removed from it….they are outside….its different. I would love to go to the Jaipur literary festival.”


“Will you go next year?”


“No I can’t go to the coming one but hopefully in 2012.”


At this point I thought he was tired of my questions and would sign my copy and send me along. Instead he said, “Now, I have a question for you.”


“Go ahead..”, I said, looking surprised.


“You have the nicest set of teeth I have seen. How did you manage that?”


I was so flustered by the compliment that of course I said something stupid.


“Uh…umm… I think my mother took me to the dentist a lot.”


(Curse the flight of wit!)


This time he smiled and signed my copy and I spun around and left thinking to myself, “I’m so going to look after these teeth of mine…..”


PS: In about an hour from now we’ll know who won the Man Booker for 2010!

Update: Yay! Its 10:33 pm and he just won!

Starfish Enterprise

Keeping me company on the Tube these days is "Half the Sky", a book about the horrors of trafficking in women, written by the American journalist couple Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. At the end of a chapter called "Rescuing girls is the easy part", where the authors narrate their experience rescuing two Cambodian girls from the clutches of pimps, there is a beautiful old Hawaiian parable. It is worth keeping in mind because it takes the dispiriting hopelessness out of the statistics on human misery. Here goes:

A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water.
     
"What are you doing, son?" the man asks. "You see how many starfish there are? You'll never make a difference."


The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean.

"It sure made a difference to that one," he said.