Objectivity - A lesson from Yuganta!

Irawati Karve offers a wonderful lesson in Yuganta, through an imaginative conversation between Gandhari and Dhritarashtra. The scene is one from the last few days of the lives of Kunti, Dhritarashtra, Vidura and Gandhari, as they live together in the forest, awaiting their death. Dhritarashtra says to Gandhari -

'Every person gets entangled in a mesh of injustices. I wronged you. Pandu wronged Kunti. And whose wrong doing was it that Pandu and i should lead such fruitless lives? Can we say that wrongs done to our mothers, the misery they suffered brought this curse on us? Poor Vidura was the only one completely sound in mind and body. But because his mother was a servant, he could not become a king. He did not try to take revenge on anyone for his life's disappointments. Kunti and Vidura were the only two people in our whole clan who were consciously watchful. You feel, Gandhari, that you have been cheated and deceived, but think for a moment: in the three generations of our family every person has been cheated and deceived. I am pleading with you to not merely ask for forgiveness, but to persuade you to give up your fight against life. Give up your anger, not only against me, but against life itself. My injustice to you does not give you the right to do an injustice to your children, to your whole life. How can one wrong compensate another, Gandhari? At least now take off that blindfold. Learn to look at world, at human beings, and at your own past life objectively. Our life is nearly over. At least do not die with your eyes bound'.

I understand philosophy very less, but i was amazed and amused, at the same time, by this conversation. I almost burst out laughing at the line 'in three generations of our family every person has been cheated and deceived'. How ironical!

It is very difficult to digest such learnings ,irrespective of the whether you believe in Karma, luck, fate and other such things. But maybe, just by knowing this point of view, you can be little a closer to implementing it.

Learn to look at life objectively!

Yuganta is a small but beautiful collection of essays on the characters of the great epic Mahabharata. It is an anthropologist's take on their lives, looking beyond the myths associated with them. She takes the critical edition of Mahabharata as a base and mercilessly dissects these characters exploring their motives, weaknesses and strengths.

A good review of the book can be found at
http://jaiarjun.blogspot.in/2007/10/irawati-karve-and-yuganta.html

An online edition of the book is available at
http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Yuganta_The_End_of_an_Epoch_2nd_Edn.html?id=uJz4ZWsRcsAC&redir_esc=y

Cross posted on Facebook.

Fiction that Breathes History

In my, self proclaimed, insatiable thirst for historical fiction or fiction in historical settings, i might have committed a sin today by picking up Ashwin Sanghi's 'Chanakya's Chant'. I was almost dying to read more about ancient Indian history. Somehow i have come to believe that although reading history through the lens of fiction might not be the purist’s way of doing it, it is certainly more enjoyable and sustainable( mba speak :P). So after reading a bit about the book i picked up today, which a lot many have called, just another 'dan brownish' fast paced mystery, i am trying to perform some penance by talking about some of the bests works i have read in this genre.

But before that, let me clarify that i have nothing against Dan Brown or his genre of fiction. It's just that as a history lover, i would want such works of fiction to maintain a fine balance between the truth and author's imagination. Ideally never distort truth, but only fill gaps and in the end clarify and dissect these parts in the work. Somehow all the 'Dan Browns' just do the opposite.

So let's started with the list, the names appear in my order of preference but i must tell you, all of these are great works in this genre.

1. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children : I had a very tough time selecting between the first two novels in this list and in the end, i chose the one which delighted me more. Some people would argue that a book like Midnight's Children should not even figure on this list, with protagonists having super natural powers and author's own political views trickling down in some parts. But believe me, this novel never distorts history and somehow because the fictional parts being so fantastical, they not only delight the reader but make the demarcation from truth very obvious and clear. Midnight's children is set around events in Indian subcontinent during the 20th century. It starts in second decade of the century and ends just around the Indian emergency. Easily one of the best works of fiction by an author of Indian origin, Midnight's Children will tell you a lot many small things which you would have never read in your school History books. I can go on writing about this book, but i guess you'd find much better reviews of this book at other places on net. In this list i just hope to tell you about books which you must pick up if you love history and fiction!

2. Amitav Gosh's  Sea of Poppies :  Sea of poppies is easily the most extensively researched work of fiction i have ever come across. The book has its own chrestomathy , a diction type guide on what Gosh calls  the 'Hindoostani Sailors dialect'.  Set in 19th century Bengal, this book tells you a lot about Calcutta, the British rule in Bengal, Bengali tradition, the last of Bengali Aristocracy, the Bhojpuri proletariat and their traditions. Calling this book very rich in historical content is like calling Satyajit Ray or Akira Kurosawa just good directors. Bottom line, this book is the gateway to non-revolting 18th century India, essentially Eastern India.

3. Magaret Mitchel's Gone with the Wind : Again a choice which is highly debatable. Many would call this book the best fictional romantic and i can't dare to disagree with them. Even i have always felt it to be one of the most intriguing books with a woman protagonist.  Nevertheless, this epic drama set in 19th century USA, tells you a lot about America of those years and of course a lot about the civil war. If you are one those 'MCPs' who shy away from reading anything remotely romantic or feminist, probably this might be your reason to pick this wonderful piece of fiction. I must clarify here though, that wasn't my reason to pick this book :).

4. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of Yellow Sun : I still find it extremely difficult to pronounce the author's name correctly in one breath, but that handicap set aside, the book spells out the best of way to tell the young generation about the tough and gory times in  their country's past. Something that Adichie does mention, she set out to do. In so many ways i think this book is the literary heir of Gone with the wind :)

Set in Nigeria of late 1960s, Half of yellow sun, tells you a lot of about Nigeria, a country almost as diverse as ours and the Nigerian civil war, which was almost as gory as our partition. I am not sure if somebody has written a fictionalized account of our partition which matches Half of yellow sun in its fine balance of detail and delight! I have been searching so much for a book like this. May be Cracking India ,the book on which the movie Earth was based upon or Pinjar could come close. Although i have just seen these two movies, haven't read the novels.

5. Indu Sundaresan’s Shadow Princess: Shadow Princess is a novel which i finished very recently, although i liked it a lot, but i could only give it the last place on this list. That doesn't a take away anything from this wonderful piece of art. The novel is very well researched and lush in its description of Mughal India. Apart from that,  Indu does, exactly what i mentioned an author of this genre should do,. She lists down her research sources, clarifies which items are specifically fiction in the book and even gives logic trail of her imagination of these fictional parts. I just felt that the fictional part of this book could have been stronger and little richer. Still i would put it down as one of the best reads in Mughal fiction, a great alternative to Darlymple which requires a lot of patience and never delights at all.

I am sure there are many more in this list and i haven't added many which i didn't find worthy. All these five books are wonderful works of fiction in their own right, it's just that being set in poignant times in the World history is the icing here.

I am tagging some people i know enjoy reading history or fiction. Feel free to add any worthwhile works in the comments. So next time we are searching for an interesting work of fiction that breathes history, we don't accidentally pick up a Dan Brown

P.S I just noticed that three books in this list, have very strong woman characters or have woman protagonists. Probably Jahanara in the Shadown Princess would have been most powerful politically, but all of them - Scarlet in Gone with the wind, Olaana and Kanine in Half of yellow sun and Jahanara were very intriguing and emotionally very strong characters. I guess it is easy to accept and interesting to read intriguing woman characters! ;)

Cross posted on facebook

Biopics

Biopic or a Biographical drama is a significant genre of film making. Some of the most popular and best known movies of our time fall into this category. A Beautiful mind,Cinderella Man, Gandhi,Schindler's List and many more. Most of them have been DVD/video hits or very high grossing movies. There can be several reasons behind their success, simplest that comes to my mind is that these movies are essentially stories of triumph - they inspire us, they give us hope, they make us think and dream beyond the petty struggles of our mundane lives.

I'll discuss here three biopics which i found really interesting. Not from a cinematic point of view ,but a feature of the character that stood out for me. I normally detest writing philosophical stuff only because i know i am very bad at it,which is almost an understatement because i also know i am a bad writer too, and it precisely makes no sense to attempt a combination of two. So as i try to discuss these characters/personalities below, i will try to be as pragmatic as possible and stay away from any kind of sermonizing.

Let's start with Natarang. Natarang is essentially not a biopic,by that i mean, it is not based on a true story as per known facts. It is the story of a village farmer, Gunavantrao Kagalkar or "Guna", who aspires to be a Tamasha or a theatre artist in his life. He has always wanted to play the role of king and often behaves like one in his normal life; he has a good built and a kind of swashbuckling demeanor. Apart from that he is shown as a versatile artist - who writes, sings,can direct and act really well. Circumstances, lack of resources and an unusual turn of events land him in a precarious situation. He has an opportunity to start his own theatre company.However there's a catch, he has to take up the challenge of playing a Nachya or a 'Pansy'[1] artist,basically a man who performs a woman's role. Imagine,for a man who aspires to play a king, to take up the role of a pansy artist. He has to learn the demeanor of woman,lose a lot of weight and built, and face several other difficulties. I'll let you explore all that in the movie; but the point that stands out here is often our destiny lands us in a situation where we are forced to make choices which are diagonally opposite or much below our aspirations/expectations. Implications of all that,as i said before,fall in a domain which is beyond me.

Next is Patton,based on the life of General George S Patton.What stands out for me in Patton, is portrayal of man who has always believed in his destiny. Patton had several problems most of which can be crudely classified as behavioral. Although one of the best generals of armored warfare,Patton's career was marred by several controversies,mostly due to his outspokenness. At one point he served under people who were once his juniors in army(Omar Bradley and Eisenhower). But i guess Patton, as he is portrayed, more or less accepted his weaknesses, although never really succeeded in overcoming them. However, he believed he was destined to achieve something great as a general and he did that. Initially when the allies landed at Normandy he was not part of the battle but when he got his chance, he proved his mettle. Third army,which he commanded, engaged far more divisions of the enemy in far less time as compared to any other division of US army.At one point during the Battle of bulge ,he removed some corps of the third army from an already fighting position and turned them abruptly north to relieve another division of US army stranded at Bastogne. You can read more about it here,watch the movie,or better still read parts of his diary here.

Finally I'd like to discuss Ed Wood based on the life of Edward Wood, Jr; a very different case.Ed wood loved to make movies.Period.Nothing more to it; he neither had great movie-making skills to boast of nor did he always have sufficient means to them.Most success stories one comes across, are of people who became champions of their field by virtue of their skills or sometimes by chance.Wood was different,i'd like to say he was a classic case of, "I'd-like-to-live-my-life-the-way-i-want,do-hell-with-the-world". Big deal,you'd say,but isn't that a classic case of "Stay hungry,stay foolish".To quote from his page on Wikipedia.

[..]Wood made a run of cheap and poorly produced genre films, now humorously celebrated for their technical errors, unsophisticated, large amounts of ill-fitting stock footage, idiosyncratic dialogue,eccentric casts and outlandish plot elements[..]

In an essay paying homage to Wood in Incredibly Strange Films, Jim Morton writes: "Eccentric and individualistic, Edward D Wood Jr was a man born to film. Lesser men, if forced to make movies under the conditions Wood faced, would have thrown up their hands in defeat."

Back home Kanti Shah would probably come close.

That's it,a very long post,i'd say. I composed it over few days,writing for few minutes everyday. And that's all ,that's one for the season, no more philosophical or even semi-philosophical posts from me for some time.

[1]I have used this word because i couldn't find a proper translation for the Marathi word Nachaya. This word was used in movie subtitles,although, i guess it doesn't exactly mean the same.

Civil Wars

Civil wars can also be cataclysmic in the extent of damage they cause,particularly the ones which involve secession of a small part of a country which claims its independence. The damage caused, albeit isolated to the small secessionist state, is total, wiping out almost everything. I just finished reading Half of yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, centered around the events of Nigerian civil war of late 1960s. This was first novel i read that was set in Africa and the first one after i resolved to pick up of novels from different countries and continents which i haven't touched till now.

I saw Nigeria of 1960s as a country with lot of diversity,grappling with post imperialistic problems which combined with ethnic tensions actually led to the civil war. I feel had India not been partitioned after independence, we might have gone through a similar civil war which would have been even more devastating considering the size of the nations involved and it would have also ended with two separate nations. Also with this context,one might realize,how important were steps taken against Khalistan and how severe can be the Naxalist problems of our country.

Adichie's work is very humane and involving in its approach, to say the least. It is not just a compilation of events, but a thickly woven story,told from three different view points. This combined with the fact that this was an hitherto unknown part of history to me, made the novel an interesting read for me.

There are a lot of countries today that are grappling with with political instability or conflicts with neighboring countries; the world death toll due to human conflicts it seems, was never higher. An argument against this can simply be that in today's information age we are more informed about other parts of the world and hence perceive that death toll today is high. May be the 19th and 18th century were as tumultuous,but because of the communication gaps,the extent of damage at any moment was never perceived to be that big.

P.S I decided to carry on with the blog and will try to post alteast more than once a week. However, i don't expect myself to spend a lot of time posting,hence most of the posts would be short,on-moment-types and as you can read above,hardly structured.

Sophie Scholl- The Final Days

I just saw Sophie Scholl- The Final Days. Throughout the movie I just found myself saying two things; What grit and what clarity of thought.She was of my age(21) when she was executed;I wish I could have that clarity of thought.

Two things come to my mind,one related to something I read in a review at Imdb. I can't site the source but the comment goes as follows.

True heroism, like martyrdom, must be imposed by fate, not sought.

I don't know about heroism but true martyrdom should be imposed and not sought for personal glory.

The last rebel movie I saw was 'The motorcycle Diaries". Although it was a good movie,but I didn't like it much because I can't convince myself to follow the cult of Che` Guevera. True revolution,I believe, always seeks peace and never violence. Sophie Scholl I guess would now stand as the best rebel movie for me till I come across a better one.

This quote truly sums up the reason why I revere her. Source [wikipedia]

Playwright Lillian Garrett-Groag stated in Newsday on February 22nd, 1993 that "It is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the 20th Century... The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I don't know why."

I also wanted to draw a comparison between a scene at the end of the movie and a scene at the end of an Indian movie called 'The legend of Bhagat Singh',based on life of Bhagat Singh,but I after I had written most of the post,my gem of a pc restarted and I had to write from the last auto draft position.

Anyways to sum up Sophie Scholl is much more humane and less melodramatic. It focuses more on Sophie's believe in her ideas and her conscience.

The world that is..

The whims and caprices of few men, are largely responsible for the difference between the world that is and the world that could have been or the world that should have been or the world that might have been, for many others.


So,there was Howard Huges,the aviator,who built Hercules the largest flying boat with the largest wingspan marrying a soon-to-be outdated technology — flying boats — to a massive airframe using some truly ingenious engineering innovations.

After lots requests to N number of friends to download the movie for me and after missing it N-1 times on the TV, I was finally able to catch the last part of the movie yesterday and I truly loved it.

Coming back to the theme of the post imagine what would have been of the most of the world if the Soviet had not invaded Afghanistan,Osama Bin Laden and much of the terrorism would not be there.There are ofcourse and will always be several other examples to support this theory. These days I prefer to call all of my vacuous thoughts as theories.

I am thrown back into a deluge of unrestrained thoughts everytime I think of the book Animal Farm and Geroge Orwell's profound words

"All animals(men) are equal,but some animals(men) are more equal"

Found the english translation of my favorite poem by Mirza ghalib "Hazaaron khwahishen aisi" on this wonderful website which is an anthology of some of the most beautiful poems ever written.

These words truly encircle and might for a long time to come define my state of mind.

HazaaroN KHwahishaiN ‘eisee ke har KHwahish pe dam nikle
bohot nikle mere armaaN lekin fir bhee kam nikle

Here's the translation..

A thousand desires such as these,that each takes a lifetime (an eternity)
I found many desires and yet they aren’t enough

Holocaust Heros

The Holocaust saw many heros scripting great stories of courage, comradery and altruism.Here are some of them.

Oskar Schindler:Easily the most famous of them all courtesy Speilberg's brilliant movie 'Schindler's List'.He saved around 1200 jews by having them work in his enamelware and munitions factories.


Nicholas Winton:Often called the Schindler Of Britain,he rescued 669 czech children from Nazi death camps.


Raoul Wallenberg: A swedish diplomat who saved many Hungarian jews from the holocaust.Often called the 'Hero without the grave' because he went missing after WW -II


Ruth Gruber: An American journalist who secretly escorted a group of 1000 jewish refugees from Italy to USA.

Alexander Pechersky:Hero of the sobibor rebellion

They are many more ofcourse but these are the stories I found interesting.

Here are some other interesting links:

1.WW-II Resistance movements.

2.The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.

Congenital Indian Inefficiency

Indian governments have a congenital inefficiency; they are extremely inefficient when it comes to implementing laws. I say congenital because this has been going for more than 50 years. We are often besmirched with calumnious statements like we are laggards when it comes to taking decisions. We are like cows that we worship, capable but slow. Indian government to Indian judiciary anything that is state owned suffers from this malaise.

Reservations is one those policies which has had a mildewed effect for if Mr. B.R. Ambedkar was to be believed we should have done with our reservation policies before 1960's. Increase in quotas now only caveats the fact they have not had been successful.

In Times debate today, taking a counter view, Mr. Amrith Lal says

Quotas aren't anti-merit. Merit is a category that is influenced by social and economic hierarchies.

I think he still clings to old shibboleths of education and societal status, today the people who benefit the most from reservations are the ones who least need it, people who albeit being SC/ST/OBC are economically sufficient. Most of these families have a generation which has already reaped on the quota benefits. I think the reservation benefits should be limited to only one generation. But again we are known to make most perfect laws and implement them with resplendent imperfections; hence the repercussions are always unknown.

Although a 125% increase in reservations is exorbitant I think it was inevitable, the fact that this bill was passed 379-2 in the Lok Sabha speaks profoundly of decadent attitude and ethos of our leaders.

Often such cases are followed by page-3 aspirants sallying into action,calling for protests or giving 'I-know-english' type of comments to the local reporter.Last couple of years since my college has gained quite a bit of media importance I have been able understand media quite a bit by being close to such page-3 aspirants.I think I will post about it someday.

At same time protests like Hunger-strike,and other revolutionary measures are not only futile but also a blantant display of temerity.

The best way to deal with situations like these is first to create awareness and then garner some resources , file a PIL and fight it in the court of law. The strong alumni of the ivy -league institutions and the student community can financially support the court proceedings

On a more personal note the increase in reservations filled me with consternation initially but my tenacious optimism as always rescued me and I could laugh it out with this...

As the Old donkey says in Animal Farm

"Donkeys live a long time,none of you has ever seen a dead donkey"
well so do humans and dogs.

Sorry a bit of PJ(personal Joke) but i found the above quote very apt to the situation.

The Independence Hangover

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom”

"The world was not sleeping; it was for example 2.30 in USA"

- Hazaron Khwaishyein Aisi.

Yes, the world was not sleeping galloping rather. I somehow had come to believe that Nehru, his commanding heights theory and his “temples of modern India” were all to blame for India’s poor economic growth post independence. Also, I hail from a faction that has always believed that Sardar Patel would have been a better prime minister and Nehru with his ostentatious lifestyle and his deep rooted socialist believes was a mistake. Although I always believed that Nehru was a wonderful leader and a heartthrob of millions, I always doubted his capabilities as an administrator and a decision maker. A lot reading recently has changed my views slightly, though I still reckon he was not the best decision maker around.

One of the many things that we normally level against Nehru is that we had a shunted economic growth courtesy the PSU’s and his central planning concepts that finally bogged down to license raj and hindered the economic growth, in all his socialist views.

As MJ Akbar very profoundly puts it

“I think that's very very unfair. Every 'ism' is basically a reflection of the moment. There's no permanent ism. The only permanent ism can be faith -- like Hinduism or Islamism.”

Very true, Nehru did almost what most of his contemporaries did, at that time to lay out a proper an infrastructure the only way out was state intervention. As Manmohan Singh once said in an interview,

“Let me say that I think the economic history of the last 150 years clearly shows that if you want to industrialize a country in a short period, let us say 20 years, and you don't have a well-developed private sector, entrepreneurial class, [then central planning is important].”

But as somebody once remarked, “Business of the state is to stay out business”, I think after laying initial infrastructure government should have backed out. As Judith brown puts it,

“…the problems lay in the late 1960s and 1970s when the groundwork had been laid for development and the State could have stood back.”
“..Yes, I think he should have given up some time in the late 1950s.”

Actually most of the problems due to socialism that we attribute to him came during Indira Gandhi’s reign. As MJ Akbar says,

“Much of the Socialism that we attribute to him actually came during Indira Gandhi's time, when under the advice of certain people whose names are best forgotten, she went to the point of once even proposing that the wheat trade in the country should be taken over by the government. This is all post '69-70, when politics took over economics.”

Yes, that is when the draconian FERA and MRTP came, when we build walls around us. We prevented ourselves from the Coca-Colaism and Pepsism, although that execrable feat is normally attributed to George Fernandes, the foundations were actually laid with FERA. This was the same time, when Deng Xiao-ping, revered as the greatest Asian administrator, opened the floodgates for FDI in China.

Lets consider socialism as an experiment that failed, but an experiment that was perforce at the initial stage of developement after independence.

As Upamanyu Chatterjee puts it in his usual acerbic candor,

“Has socialism been good for anybody but the socialists?”

On a lighter note I just realized, while typing the above paragraph in MS Word that Deng Xiao-ping is actually a word in its dictionary and Indira Gandhi is not. Looks like Bill Gates, has same feelings for Mrs. Gandhi as Henry Kissinger.

Coming back, another issue surrounding Nehru’s leadership is that he committed an epochal blunder by referring the Kashmir issue to the UN. I am more inclined to believe that Pandit Nehru was culpable in this regard. Claude Arpi gives very strong arguements to this in his article,along with an anecdote redolent of Nehru' s incapabilty of taking decisions in imperious situations ,by Sam Manekshaw.

On the final front of Indo-China war, which finally became his Nadir, one of Nehru's personal weakness was to blame.According to Judith Brown,

[..]problem lay in the fact that he a. was his own foreign minister and b. there was no powerful counterweight of an external affairs establishment or minister to challenge his views.

[..]His inability to delegate -- gathering so much power to his own person as prime minister that he stifled opposition and failed to nurture those who might have challenged him

So, who do you think was a better choice, Nehru or Patel. Nehru was surely more suitable for the international arena albeit it is difficult to explain his grievous foreign policy blunders.

Supporters of Patel say that if he would have been PM , he certainly would have driven the tribesmen right out of India by never agreeing to ceasefire and there would'nt have been an entity like POK.


Alam Srinivas once wrote in the outlook, arguing that such a step would have created an international furore and embroiled Indian realtions with UN.

Although I find it hard to swallow this arguement after all that has happened in Kashmir,I must say that even if we employ inumerable casuistries in our essays we will remain as much vunerable in predicting the past in differnt frame of events as we are in predicting in future.