Hemingway's Book "The Sun Also Rises"; Re-read It

One of the best books I have ever read is Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises." Recently I read it again and enjoyed it all the more. The novel is also Hemingway's best work. It portrays the post-war generation their angst, their love, their romances against a back drop of bull fighting by matadors and toreros.

Read it if you can get hold of a copy. Meanwhile here is the Wikipedia article about the book.

Joseph Lelyveld's Book on Gandhiji "Great Soul"

I don't know what's this controversy about the biography of Mahatma Gandhi "Great Soul" is all about. The book is written by Joseph Lelyveld, a former executive editor of New York Times. I remember buying Gandhiji's "My Experiments with Truth" and being bored in about 50 pages. I don't know if it is the writing style or something, but I remember a terrible ennui that prevented me from going any further. Here's a book review in Wall Street Journal.

Sure Gandhiji was frank about his frailties, his shortcomings, which we all have in plenty. At least, he was honest about revealing them instead of keeping them pent up inside, like we all do. So what's new? He has already written about sleeping with virgins and the experiments with truth he has conducted in his lifetime. We venerate our great souls and we don't question their behaviour, do we?

This is what Hari Kunzru writes about the book in New York Times, "Judicious and thoughtful . . . Great Soul will come as a revelation" Surely, the controversy will give the book a lot of attention, therefore, more sales.

The Romance between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

One of the most enduring romances in the annals of poetry and, indeed, in the awesomely rare world of poetry is that between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Both were poets. Their romance was marked by huge controversies which have still not been explained, expounded.

Plath was an American from a very conservative background while Hughes was an Englishman given to lascivious ways. Hughes had many affairs with other women and, obviously, this upset Plath. They separated after they had two children - Frieda and Nicholas.

In the closed and rather incestuous world of poetry there are many such romances which bloom in the darkness of secrecy and cloistered confines. Of all of them the one essayed by Plath and Hughes remain noteworthy and mentionable.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes R.I.P.

A Swing; a "Jhoola"

I am rather proud of my swing ("Jhoola" in HIndi). Here's a picture of it if you would like to have a look at it.

Traditionally a Jhoola occupies a pride of place in any Indian home. Here are some pretty Jhoolas for your viewing pleasure.

Of Technorati Tags and Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle

Technorati, the acknowledged and well-connected blog rating site has a feature called Tagging. I occasionally write for Technorati. The advantage of a tagged article is that it is looked upon as an authoritative piece on the subject and is linked and referred to often on the blogosphere. You can be a writer on Technorati and blogcritics. Here's where you go.

Here for example is a Technorati tagged article on Sarah Palin - that venerated bumbler of a Veep.

On the subject of Sarah Palin I don't know how that great democracy across the seas throws up such gauche presidents and voice presidents.I don't know what is the political process there. Really, I would like to know how Amrika selects its Presidents and Vice-presidents.I would like to know if this is a trend or the last great dumbing down of Amrika, before it descends into illiteracy and general idiocy.

Example:

• George Bush II (see any of his pronouncements on "eyerak" and you will die laughing, really.)
• Dan Quale (George Bush's running mate who spelt "Potato" as "Potatoe" and insisted he is right.)
• Bill Clinton (Should I? Should I?)
• Ronald Reagan (Photogenic but not a chromosome of intelligent thought.)

At least India produces politicians who are wily deniers, liers, and alleged murderers. Yes, after this process of dumbing down that's what U.S. is descending into is my guess.

Arts Council of England Slashes Funding for Literature and Combined Arts

It's indeed sad. When the arts is suffering from a lack of audience and when only old people attend poetry readings and book readings, I wonder whether we are really progressing or regressing when the Arts Council of England has announced huge cuts in its budget for performing arts and literature. This article in the Guardian states that £19.1million has been cut and most are from the performing arts and literature. Excerpt:

• 206 bodies have received 100% funding cuts from Arts Council England
• Those cuts are worth £19.1m - compared to the total funding for 2011/12 of £310.5m
• The biggest group of organisations are in London - 49 of the 206. But London has more arts groups than any other part of the country.

Deep sigh!

I guess England is going the Indian way. Indian way? Yes. Here we artists and writers fund ourselves by slogging on our day jobs to pay for our artistic oeuvres. That's what makes me more sad. Our contribution to the world?

The Incident at the Mall, Dark Thoughts After a Win!

Had a peaceful Gudi Padwa, Udgadi, Vishu, Baishakhi, Cheti Chand. A happy day to all. 

This is going to be a long rant, so bear with me, I need to vent this, need to get this out, like a sneeze, a cough, whatever.

The feeling of a sense of victory soon fades off. The question that remains is what next? Where do we go from here? I am speaking of India's win in the Cricket World Cup which brought those warm fuzzy feelings into poor me suffering so many personal defeats through a lifetime. Yes, there's always a ray of hope and one holds to that ray like it is the only thing, the only straw to be clutched it. The world when we see it - I am not speaking of those smart-assed-fun-men-and-women who make a joke a minute and smile all the time like fools - has a lot of pain. This pain goes largely unacknowledged.

Just today it happened before me. I was coming out of a mall in New Bombay after buying something rather expensive and feeling utterly foolish. There was this woman outside and her son. She was dressed in the traditional sari and her son was a bit distracted playing at being a cricketer, you know, making action of making a defensive stroke. She was pointing to him and begging people for money. Probably, I am just guessing, she wants him to go to school and be a cricket player - experience the joy of holding a willow and thump a ball like Sachin. It's hot and the afternoon sun is like a desert typhoon on my head and back. I am dazed by the heat. I hold out whatever I can to her outstretched palm, feeling guilty as I did so. What shameful thing to do. 

It's all very well for us to shop in malls and bring home airconditioners. Yes, we deserve it, because we work hard for it. What about that woman? 

Does her son who dreams of playing the game he loves so dearly know that he has no chance of every distinguishing himself in the sport? Who robbed him of his chances? I wrote about pain going unacknowledged towards the beginning of this rant. This is the pain! I hear about several crores handed over to cricketers by the BCCI and governments around the country. Would these be justified when one in two people in Bombay lives in slums so putrid with faeces and piss that once you go there you would shudder at the prospect of going again? Netas handover money as if it belong to their fathers. Is this justified when their (woman's) problems aren't even addressed? What about the scams that have rocked politics recently: 2G scam, CWG scam (remember toilet rolls at Rs 4000 each?), the Palmolein scam, the, the, the, I don't remember. I can't keep a track of all of them. 

Well, these dark thoughts came to me when I went to buy me an airconditioner. It was getting unusually hot and the entire area where I live has been dug by the authorities and the dust gets blown in all the time. I hate dust. I am allergic to it. It gets into my lungs and gives me a nasty cough. So I need protection. Therefore the airconditioner as a last resort. To make matters worse a slum came up near where I live. I got it removed but it has come back again. I have again written to the ward officer as follows (don't mind my language, when I complain, I complain):

"I am a resident of Artist Village, the beautiful area created for artists and writers. I am concerned about a slum that is coming up in Veer Savarkar Ground, Artist Village. 

"They say they work for the municipality and that they will go away after the work is finished. However, I do not think they will do this and I would like them to be relocated in some other place. Once they live there for some time, it will become a permanent structure. 

"I request you to please remove this slum as it is spoiling the look of Artist Village. 

"Also recently some pipes have been laid and the roads haven't been resurfaced leading to a lot of dust being blown into our houses. Please do something about this also."

But nothing has been done this second time around. Naked children roam around, they burn firewood, they shit in the open and that's what's bothering me. I am not stating here that they give free flats to the people living there, but that are the issues of their healthcare, their education, their living conditions being addressed? Are they being treated as an equal citizen of the country who can one day play in a World Cup cricket match? Can that woman and her son expect to live a better life when their money is being squandered in scams?

Yes, we are world champions. But let us show some restraint in the celebrations and focus on the issues of "Sadak, bijli, pani" or "Road, electricity, water." Dear party president and prime minister, are you listening?

A Paean to Mahendra Singh Dhoni - What Else?

Victory is sweet! India's win in World Cup Cricket was the sort made in heaven. As one who had witnessed the 1983 win I was overwhelmed and there was an unknowing moistening of the corners of the eyes. Those days, with new television broadcasts coming to Bombay - I remember standing on my knees on a coarse cement-paved floor to watch my first match - I used to watch a lot of cricket. What's this game? Why are they padded up when I play with a tennis ball and don't wear any pads at all? Why are they taking so much time to walk to the other end of the wicket? 

After the initial disappointment of watching India lose against West Indies (in those distant seventies), I had strayed away from cricket knowing it to be an addiction that was taking me away from my goal of being associated with the arts. Ah, that dream is still waiting to come to fruition. Aside from that there was marriage, son, and a period in Saudi Arabia, and then back. One tends to lose track of where life leads you. If you drift, you drift, as my father always said. I drifted away from sports and my writing pursuits as my priority now became giving security to my family. Now that son is an earning member of the family, my choices are open. As I have mentioned before I am late entrant into creative writing after the initial infantile spark had died down. 

Defeat is ugly, scarring, dishonouring and the outcome is the worst possible things that could happen to man - depression. I have faced both victory and defeat. I have watched matches all these years (50 odd, I won't reveal how many that odd means, it's irrelevant) and I have found that sportsmen are better equipped to handle defeat because their bodies are fit and trim and they have a positive attitude to failure because otherwise they will never be where they are. The very act of being in a sporting arena is full of tension. I learnt this when I played for my college football team. Sportsmen not only play a game they hold the standards high for the institution they represent and indeed entire nation and its people. That's a big responsibility. You are watched all the time, evaluated for each move, analysed for shortcoming, in fact, treated as an object. So it was good to hear Harbhajan say, "We won it for the people of India. This is for you." Something suchly. I don't remember the exact words. 

I had made the mistake of dismissing India as a bad team, bad in morale and bad in strategy. But in Dhoni I saw a spark of a good leader. Considering all the tense matches, the clash of veteran players at the height of their performance, the watching billion fans, he was an oasis of calm. He was cool, calm, collected, almost zen-like. During the match with Pakistan Sachin seemed to have lost his avoirdupois and was seen shouting instructions to the players. Dhoni saw this and gestured to him (Sachin) to pare down. Dhoni's eyes and expressions show the kind of leader he is. He can inspire by his very presence in the field. No words, no admonitions, only performance. 

In these times when we think of bringing business at all costs to India - for the money of course - we need to look at the example set by that cool captain Dhoni. When the team needed him he went into the middle and he stood his ground delivering 90 odd runs. Each run of his was made with great deliberation, not just with any wavering shot off the bat. At a crucial juncture he kept his head when all were losing theirs. The fans were more tense than him, yet he maintained a squared shoulder which he never let droop. 

I love a winner, I loved the World Cup Final yesterday because of the exemplar that Dhoni is. I love his captaincy and hope he continues to lead India to victory. So I thought I would write this blog to sing a paean to him. You played very well captain. You deserved to win!

But, all things said, I still hate the game! It wasted an entire evening of mine.

Cricket World Cup Finals Today! (:As if you don't know:)

Oh! The fervour, the jingoism, patriotic fever pitch, the hooliganism! It's the cricket World Cup Finals and I happen to work close to the Wankhede Stadium where it is being played. I could see the magnificient lights that rise like some futuristic flagpole over the jagged buildings, I could hear the screams and shouts of the crowd which had already gathered there paying something like a common man's pay for one month to watch a game. Cricket is big business, and people have money to burn.

I mentioned hooliganism. I have heard of football hooligans, but here were cricket hooligans. In the Metro area I was in a shop buying a badminton racquet for my son (a good Yonex one made Carbon Graphite for a discounted price) and there were these hooligans pushing me aside to buy things like Indian tee-shirts, flags, stickers, vuvuzelas (the name had evaded me for some time), and other knick-nacks. They were very aggressive as if they were into something very big. And from the way they spoke and behaved they were from out of town. 

So welcome to cricket hooliganism (remember I invented the phrase)!

So there they were, the hooligans. I don't know if it is a good thing or bad. They behaved badly and I wonder if a game is good enough to show such aggression.But I am in a charitable mood being a final and seeing as I did India clawing its way to the final. The match with Pakistan was a humdinger (Something that is particularly outstanding, unusual, or exceptional).

But I don't want to be a spoil sport when India is in the finals. I don't have much passion - neither compassion - for a game I consider sluggish compared to football. So I could only stare in wonder at their enthusiasm bordering on mania for this sport of the lazy Englishmen. 

Hope we win the finals today. Writing this as I sit in front of the television with a laptop, where else, on my lap, watching, writing, watching, writing. Only wish they won't show ads when someone got out because that's like cheating viewers. 

Reading Saul Bellow's "Sammler's Planet"

I am reading Saul Bellow's "Sammler's Planet". Here's the review article in wikipedia. 

It's about a holocaust survivor, a scholarly and erudite kind of soul who is slowly assimilating into New York society. His struggle comes out as real and agonisingly familiar to someone who lives in Bombay. I especially like the use of short sentences - something I use myself - and the pithiness with which ideas (even metaphysical ones) are put across. 

Bellow examines among other things colonisation of the moon (a certain Govinda Lal is behind this!) the fraudulence prevalent in business, "You had to be patient with the stupidities of power, with the fraudulence of business." And then says, "It was plain that the rich men he knew were winners in struggles of criminality, of permissible criminality. In other words, triumphant in forms of deceit and hardness of heart considered by the political order as a whole to be productive; kinds of cheating or thieving or (at best) wastefulness which on the whole caused the gross national product to increase."

Must say this is going to be a hummer of a read.