I have finally come to terms with the fact that I have become too busy or (more likely) too lazy to ever keep a full time diary again. The average day seems much too short for 24 hrs and the odd long day finds me without my diary(a coincidence?). This is the way I found to eliminate problem no.2.
A Russian doll of a book. Story inside story inside story...
I bought Cloud Atlas in August 2011 after hearing exorbitant praise from people who are generally stingy with the stuff. It sat patiently on my shelf for the past 15 months, gathering dust, acquiring the heady aroma of aging paper and giving me occasional twinges of guilt. I had just about forgotten about it when the movie got released and all at once, Cloud Atlas became the talk of the town. Oh the pain, the agony. Having to say no to movie invitations from friends because I had let the book rot on my shelf. So, last Sunday, I opened the book, threw away the odious flipkart bookmark and started.
The story, or in this case stories, are told through writings in a journal, letters to a friend, the manuscript of a novel, an autobiography of sorts, recordings of an interrogation and at the very core, a first person narrative. Set in six different time frames, separated by centuries and generations, Cloud Atlas tells the stories of six interwoven lives. Each story begins, gains speed and is cut off to make way for the next. Five story lines are left open in this way when you reach the last story at the middle of the book which is the only uninterrupted whole. After that the author starts tying up the threads in the reverse order and the book ends with the completion of the very first tale. In the midst of all this, there is that gossamer strand that connects the narratives. A connection that is left mostly to the reader’s imagination to make of what he will. Reading the book was for most part, anticipation of the appearance of the next connecting link .
David Mitchell has endeavored to narrate six different stories in six different styles and succeeded. The way each character speaks is so distinct, a reader could perceive the shift in the story to a new plane even without the helpful title pages. This success is, to my mind, also in a way its downfall. Even though I admired the craft that had gone into its making, even though I found it an enriching experience; I found nothing in it worth cherishing. It is undoubtedly a very well written book - a well conceived and well executed project. That is all there is to it.
The plots are at best mildly interesting. They do pique your curiosity, but none of them have you jumping up and down howling with frustration when they are abruptly cut off to make way for the next bit. The characters are spelled out for you as there is very little time to do much more, what with six different stories to finish in as many hundred pages. Even then, they end up being puny and unremarkable, being driven down life’s path by an avalanche of events. Each situation that calls for any action from a protagonist is built up in such a way that there is only one clearly defined exit which the character invariably takes.There was no point where the book surprised me. Worst of all, there is no underlying theme or purpose to the connection than hinting at a vague possibility of shared genes or if you wished to speculate wildly, rebirth. It could, for all you know, be an excuse for writing six stories together and not having to call it an anthology.
All that said, I honestly think it would be a better movie and this I hope to confirm shortly. I also have a niggling suspicion that I would have liked it better if it had not been hyped to the skies. Though I am not a fan, Cloud Atlas is definitely one of the best books I have read recently and is worth picking up for its sheer novelty. But now that I have read it, I think I’ll put it back on the shelf and happily forget about it.
It turned up as an unexpected birthday present...
Jaya was a book I had read about and seen in stores. I saw it, yes, but never felt curious about it, never took it down from a shelf to look at it. It is the Mahabharatha. What could possibly be new? After having read and heard multiple versions of the epic since childhood, I thought I knew it all. But once I started reading, I finished in two sittings for the simple reason that I could not put the book down. For that I give half credit to Devdutt Pattanaik and half to Veda Vyasa.
The book follows the conventional narrative starting with Vyasa and Ganesha, going through the eighteen chapters and ending at Vaanaprastha. But far from being the dashing, romantic epic tale of political intrigue that we are all familiar with, Jaya is extremely clinical. The chapters are structured into three parts - the story, the analysis and the box of facts. One of my favorite aspects of the book is the tagline at the beginning of each main chapter. How Vaisampayana condenses the gist of the chapter into one dialogue “ Janamejaya, in your family...”
The story is all there, in more detail that I have ever seen in one place. But the narrative is crisp to the point of being curt. It is rather disappointing to find the emotions being almost completely eliminated from the telling. While it makes an excellent study with all facts put in order for the analysis, Jaya has nothing of the enormous entertainment value that Mahabharatha always had for me. For me Mahabharatha, Ramayana or Bhagavatha are primarily stories. I remember sitting enthralled as my grandfather read them out to me with ample dramatisation... The blow by blow accounts of battles and tournaments, the colourful descriptions of palaces and the grandiose white lies about divine births are all part and parcel of the great epic. They are what will make you read the Mahabharatha again, tell it to your children and stop scrolling channels on TV when you see the re-run on some obscure station you did not know you subscribed to.
The analysis is what I liked. After rushing through the story, one or two paragraphs the author dedicates to spelling out his thoughts on the motives and machinations of the characters. He looks at them as normal people and tries to explain their actions based on human emotions. All the characters portrayed in Jaya are capable of love, hatred, anger, jealousy, avarice, pride - the full range. They do the things they do for specific and personal reasons. How those actions are publicized is shown either as the character’s own endeavor or that of the people who wrote the stories to suit their respective era’s audiences. It is a refreshing change from morality being stuffed down one’s throat, albeit with the best of intentions.
The box of facts at the end of each chapter is reminiscent of the NCERT text books of our time. The blue boxes with the extra juice - the facts that could not be crammed into the lesson but which would give one perspective if one chose to read. In this, the author speaks of different versions of the tale told in different places, the nuances of names or shares some trivia.
The thing about Jaya is that it manages to be different even when it says nothing new. Devdutt Pattanaik presents different viewpoints on the same scene without sounding biased towards any particular theory. The book comes across as almost academic. It is a breath of fresh air for those who have read the epic, formed their opinions and debated them time and time again; because there are at least a couple of things you wouldn’t have thought about. I really cannot decide whether it is a good thing that I would almost rush through the story to reach the analysis part...But Jaya is not something I would recommend to someone reading the epic for the first time. First time needs to be with all the masala; at least in my opinion.
One last word regarding ‘Illustrated Retelling’... The book is illustrated, yes. But frankly, the illustrations are nothing out of the world. While they give a graphic novel feel to the entire business, I still prefer the old Mathrubhoomi publication’s version or Artist Namboodiri’s drawings for M.T Vasudevan Nair’s Randaamoozham (again Mahabharatha from Bhima’s perspective).
Bastard son of Ned Stark does not seem adequate any longer. A lot of birds seem to think he is the son of Lyanna and Rhaegar. The only grievance I have with that theory is 'Why didn't I think of that myself?'
Premise
Rhaegar might not have raped Lynanna as Ned would have us believe or have Robert believe.
Only Robert seems to think Rhaegar was a monster. Everyone else seems to think he was almost godlike.
GRRM repeatedly states - Arya looks like Lyanna - Jon looks like Arya ergo Jon looks like Lyanna.
Lyanna died - noone knows exactly how.
Noone knows who Jon's mother is.
Princess Ashara eliminated from picture as Ser Barristan clarifies the circumstances of her death.
Also, the Targaryen dragon needs a third head - Daenerys, Aegon and Jon?
Why would Ned lie?
To protect his sister's son. Robert had already murdered (by proxy) Elia's children and would not have taken kindly to a son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. So, the only way to keep the child safe would be to splash some dirt on his own impeccable name and tell everyone that Jon is his bastard son.
Is Jon Azor Ahai?
Possible. Melisandre keeps seeing him in the fires whenever she looks for the prince that was promised.
Possible Targaryen + Stark bloodline - Ice and Fire
Prophesy fits more or less.
Ideally placed to fight the Others.
Is Jon dead?
I don't think so. So much pain to create such a character and so tame a death? So many unsolved riddles, unanswered questions? It is GRRM's habit to kill off characters just as they become interesting... Also, he can't have anarchy at the wall at this moment. Melisandre is also conveniently at hand to give him the Kiss of Life which is apparently R'hllor special.
" When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."
Thus goes the driving line of The Song Of Ice And Fire by George.R.R.Martin. Five books down, two more to go and everyone seems to be dying. Statutory warning - this is not a review - this is theorizing on where the series is going - so spoiler alert would be a gross understatement.
Taking stock of them as would be Kings or Queens -
Baratheon
Robert, Renly - dead and Stannis reportedly dead.
Joffrey, Tommen, Myrcella - not Baratheon.
Lannister
Tywin, Kevan dead.
Jaime missing and seems to be unsympathetic to Cersei by now. Might die shortly.
Cersei is a blithering idiot. Period.
Tyrion - alive. But now what? Lead the sellswords to Westros and join Connington? Go to Dorne?
Greyjoy
Euron - lacks the numbers to do anything to Westros. Will be a persistent pain in the ass till someone kills him. Assuming Victarion is going to do the honours.
Victarion - Almost at Mereen. Caught in between gods of sea and fire??
Theon - Will have some part to play but no chance of fighting or producing children to complicate matters if he dies.
Asha - God knows and GRRM (hopefully).
Stark
Ned, Robb - dead
Cat also dead but still active.
Sansa - alive. High chances of getting raped/married by Littlefinger though not necessarily in that order. Alternatively Littlefinger might discover hitherto unsuspected reserves of good and decide to be a knight in shining armour and remain father figure with slight groping tendencies.
Arya - alive. Will emerge key player.
Bran - alive. Another key player but not in the Game of Thrones. He looks like he is being groomed towards the battle beyond the wall.
Rickon - alive. Brat. Has shown no talents so far. But heir apparent.
Jon - stabbed. I don't think dead. Too important to die so tame a death.
Benjen - Presumed dead. Coldhands?
Targaryen
Rhaegar - hopefully dead - nowadays it is becoming extremely difficult to be sure.
Daenerys - Alive and will remain so. Else why the dragons? Loose motion might have been from eating the berries. Cant be the water. She had been drinking the water before as well.
Aegeon - Newbie. Apparently groomed to be king. Being backed by almost all the intelligence of Westros.
A recent series of events made me think of death. Not as a character in a book by Pratchett but as a phenomenon that everybody has to deal with at some point or the other. While searching around for the right words of consolation, we invariably end up with some form of 'Its all right'. I have heard those words said to me and at that point of time, I vividly remember, I wanted to strangle the person saying them. At that moment, in that place, standing with your world broken into minuscule pieces around you, it is bloody well not alright; but trust me when I say, in time, it will be. This is something of a reassurance, I am not exactly sure for who. Myself most probably.
A Time For Grief
A time for denial,
For dry eyes and preoccupied manner,
Mind running in loop - 'no,no,no,no'.
A time to see lips move but hear no words,
Stand limp in embraces wondering,
'Why?why?why?'
A time for laments when truth trickles through,
Sob shaken shoulders, gasping breath,
Heart hammering its way out your chest.
A time to cry yourself to sleep,
Wake up and remember,
Then cry some more.
A time to be strong for others' sake,
To hold them as they break,
Whisper in their ears, 'its all right, its all right'.
A time for people when you want them least
Awkwardness borne for a courtesy call
Torturing themselves, torturing you...
A time for loneliness and an empty house
Imagining movements at the corner of an eye
Listening for footsteps which will sound no more
A time for anger, face down on a bed or against a wall
Punching, kicking, hurting yourself
Shifting the pain from the heart elsewhere
A time for long showers
Mingling your tears with the water streams
So no one would know.
A time to try and forget
And be cruelly reminded by force of habit
A name choked on, speed dials pressed and cut.
A time for normalcy, when life calls you back
Things which have piled up
Phone calls, e-mails, the works.
A time to know that time has passed
To flinch and then know that pain is a thing of the past
Salt drained, leaving the sweetness of memory
Times will come when remembrance will hit you
The colour of the sky, the smell of a flower
Triggers for dormant memories
Broken bones of the past twinge on cold nights
Or some old forgotten joke suddenly make you smile
Time will come for you and me and them we love
Goodbyes followed by times of grief
But that is a price one has to pay
For the privilege of sharing their time
For calling your existence a life well lived in their company.
What is so special about 5’o clock in the evening? Stupid question, really. Wait, 5’o clock on a weekday? That question is not so irrelevant. The small time window from 5 pm to 6 pm is very crucial for the common man or woman. It is the time widow in which a lot of things are set in motion. A lot of people are, at any rate, in motion or contemplating it at that time. I have lived in Kozhikode almost all my life till date and can claim an intimate knowledge of the way the city moves at this time. If I do not have first hand knowledge of some cases, I can hazard a pretty good guess. So what are the various citizens of Kozhikode doing in this little time window? The little offspring of modern parents, too young to go to school, too old for the cradle is hanging on the window frame or gate of the play-school or crèche waiting to go home. His little stomach is rumbling a little and making him regret pelting his friends with his lunch, which had seemed such a capital idea at the time. The young mother of this remarkable child is running out of her office. Being a zealous new member of the working community, her bag is heavy with some incomplete work. She is planning the menu for the night, worrying about the fate of her son’s lunch and hoping against hope that she is in time for the bus home at 5.10 pm. The somewhat older working woman is unhurried in her motions, she knows exactly how much time it will take to get out of the office, walk to the bus stop and catch the bus with a margin for talking to chums and purchasing vegetables on the way. She does not pack her work because she knows it will keep, knows exactly what dinner is going to be and is extremely interested in the reality show at 8pm. She boards the bus at 5.15 pm, nods to familiar faces, purchases her ticket home; the conductor does not have to ask her where she is going. Most of the school going population belonging to the carefree age group of 4 to 12 years is already at home, engaged in a recreational activity of their choice and therefore not subject to this discussion. However, thanks to the current trend of encouraging creative and artistic tendencies from a young age, many of them would be at their swimming, badminton, painting, dance, music or karate classes and will have to be picked up at 5.30 or 6. Now the other student group living in the shadow of terror of board exams, entrance exams etc- they would be dwelling on dinner, the latest movie, the cricket score, person sitting a few benches away or some other subject of their choice which bears no intentional resemblance to what they have been expected to absorb during the past hours of tuition, entrance class or extra classes at school which they happen to be attending. These uniform clad people will then try to make their way home in whatever mode of transport is available and willing to carry them. The young unmarried working community of which I am going to be a part and the college going community which I was till recently part of, generally move about as the whim takes them and are difficult to be fit into a definite time frame. Now, let us talk of the husbands young enough to be leaving the office relatively early say 5.30ish. They are walking out of their offices, helmets under their arms, hoping their bikes have enough petrol to get them home. They are in the process of fumbling in their pockets for keys when they encounter the shopping list which has been in residence for a few days. So, they resolve to drop by Varkeys on the way to avert a domestic explosion which would undoubtedly occur on turning up without the grocery again. The fathers of the aforementioned creative children are desperately squeezing their Marutis, Hyundais or Indicas into smaller and smaller openings in the traffic hurrying to pick up their wards whose classes ended at least 10 minutes ago. The fathers of children big enough to commute on their own have not yet thought about leaving office so they too can also be excluded from our sample space. So, on a working day in Kozhikode, between 5 and 6 pm, all these people are trying to move between their respective points A and B as our math teachers are so fond of saying.
Now imagine what happens when the traffic gets held up on such a day, at this time. Simply put, you get a lot of people frozen in their respective stages of motion, worried, tired, hungry and very very angry. How does the traffic get clogged in Kozhikode city? All roads here lead through if not to Mananchira. Almost all buses touch some part of Mananchira in their trips. So, if Mananchira gets clogged for a sufficiently long time, the city traffic grinds to a halt. Another lovely subplot in this little tale from hell is that once you are caught in the jam, you stay there, unless you are one of the more ingenious auto drivers.Though the volume of traffic has increased manifold in the past few years, the width of roads has remained the same. Now, you will probably be tapping your fingers irritably the unasked question being – All this to talk about traffic jams? What is so great about that? Every city has traffic jams. And it is not even as though Kozhikode is that big a city. To all these thoughts, I say bear with me for a bit more. I have a point, I promise. Let us look at what happens when a public meeting is held here. The first factor is the venue. The bigger political meetings are held at the Muthalakkulam ground or if the gathering is even bigger, the beach. The space in front of Jayanthi buildings, on one side of the Palayam bus stand, is popular for smaller gatherings. These places are all, in and around Mananchira, or approachable by some road leading via Mananchira. The other factor is the time. These meeting are usually scheduled to begin around 3 in the afternoon, but due to the famous Indian attitude towards punctuality, they are invariably a few hours late which brings the whole thing into the time window between 5 and 6 pm. Ergo when such a meeting is held Kozhikode city comes to an unwilling standstill or if the event is big enough, reschedules its activities so that the peak hour gets shifted to 4 pm to 5 pm or even 3.30 to 4.30 pm.
On 24th June I read an interesting and somewhat amusing bit of news. The high court had issued an order prohibiting political meeting in public places, especially roadsides on working days. The news report can be read here. I smiled on seeing it, my thoughts being – what a humongous bit of wishful thinking. I also indulged in a bit of wistful speculation of the Utopian Kozhikode which would emerge if the idea could indeed be made practical. A few days later when the state celebrated one of its periodic hartal festivals on Saturday, 26th June, I had the opportunity of sitting at home and flipping channels. This was when a curious snippet of news caught my eye. A politician, identified by the signature white and white, and a senior at that (identified by his grey hairs) had the media’s undivided attention (I later learnt that this *ehem* gentleman was Mr.M.V.Jayarajan) He was talking, extremely loudly in spite of the microphones thrust in his face, about the high court ban. The somewhat censored news clip can be watched here. The key dialogues being – (a) the judges who brought out this order are absolute idiots (b) the public would hold them in contempt for bringing out such an antisocial order. Whoa! What an accurate and concise estimation of public sentiment. I wonder who he was talking about when he said ‘the public’. The public who wish there was a ‘none of the above’ option in elections? The public half of who don’t feel the need to vote? Not them, they are out of context. It is not election time – yet. The only ‘public’ who seem to fit this bill are the ones who arrive from god knows where to swell the numbers at these events. Surely he must mean them.
We live in a state which boasts of complete literacy and an extremely high degree of political awareness, but we rarely mention an equally high level of cynicism and complacency. We have grown used to waiting for hours caught up in traffic jams just because some little ‘leader’ with just enough following decided to take out a rally protesting against some news item, someone calling someone else names, a dictator being hanged in another country, India losing in cricket, America making war on Iraq or anything which caught their fancy. We have also fallen into the habit of occasional rathyatras and pathyatras and other miscellaneous yatras our leaders undertake from time to time, always at snails pace and invariably causing the traffic to be held up sometimes hours on end. We understand that there are people whose livelihood is based on attending these events dressed in the trademark white and white. They are not going to allow this august tradition, of stopping whole cities in their tracks as a show of strength, to die out just because the court told them to. The public or more popularly put, the common man, is the one I have described initially, the one whose life gets paused on the whim of others. It is a rare breed of fool who imagines that this common man entertains loving thoughts towards those responsible for holding him up at 5’o clock on a weekday. The common man’s thoughts regarding the person or persons responsible for a traffic jam at any time can be expressed as an extremely long and vehement *beeeeeeeeep*. I am qualified to say this because I am one of ‘the public’, I have been there and I have thought that and other extremely uncharitable thoughts. Mr. M.V. Jayarajan can volunteer any number of opinions in the name of the public secure in the knowledge of their aforementioned complacency. But he had better pray hard that it remains that way and ‘the public’ do not decide all of a sudden to start speaking their own opinions for a change. Ending this tirade with a stray thought – if the judges felt that the public held them in contempt, they could resign their office. What would Mr.Jayarajan resign from? Wearing white?
As you would have already guessed from the title, this is going to be about Sherlock Holmes and his friend, assistant and chronicler Dr. John Watson. It would not be presumptuous to call them the most popular duo of sleuths in literature and their adventures have appeared in the form of magazine articles, individual novels, story collections and of course movies. As a matter of fact, the stimulus for this article (or series of articles if my phenomenal laziness permits) was a series of discussions I had with friends in the aftermath of the Guy Ritchie movie Sherlock Holmes (2009). To explain what I am trying to do in these articles, I will first have to touch upon my acquaintance with Holmes and my impressions regarding the movie.
I first came upon Holmes in the summer vacation after 6th or 7th std. I was packing for my vacation at my grandparents’ which involved trying to fit the maximum number of books in the available luggage space. I remember staring at the bookshelf trying to make my choice when two big brown volumes which I had never observed before caught my eye. At that point, my reading was comprised of children’s books with glossy covers in many interesting colours; sober colours and binding were automatically classified as ‘big’ books. But I took down these books nevertheless and on consulting my mother, was told that they contained detective stories. That sealed the matter because I was then a connoisseur of The Famous Five, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and loved a good ‘mystery’. So the two brown books made it into the reading list and over the space of two weeks, Holmes and Watson became my favourite detectives.
When I sat down to watch the movie, I had no expectations. This was because, I have found that good books when turned into movies generally become lacklustre or downright horrible. There are also exceptionally good movies based on books and sometimes even better movies than the original books. I was expecting a touched up version of one of the more dramatic cases and was therefore pleasantly surprised when the plot turned out to be completely new. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, from the starting imagery of the cobbled London streets and the captivating soundtrack right down to the sketches of the main scenes shown with the credits (There is also a nice interactive game on the movie website which was launched as a sort of promo). I was particularly pleased with the way Watson was portrayed. The only other Holmes movie I have seen is The Hound of The Baskervilles (1939) which had Nigel Bruce playing Watson. I was extremely annoyed at the way Watson was made out to be a
bumbling idiot and the fact that Jude Law’s Watson is actually a helpmeet to Robert Downey Jr’s Holmes endeared the movie to me. On the other hand, I was not very pleased with Holmes being portrayed as frolicsome (for want of a better word). Even the Holmes-Adler romance element and the suggestion of a shared history, though
inauthentic and not in keeping with my picture of Holmes, was excusable as the inevitable spice that has to be added to make a successful movie. But, Holmes actually picking fights and making funny/innuendos comments or a Holmes excessively possessive of Watson to the degree of interfering with his engagement was not acceptable
Going on a brief tangent here, I’d like to compare Robert Downey Jr’s Holmes and Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House in the Fox series House M.D. House is a medical drama series in which the protagonist, a brilliant diagnostician Dr. House, is based on Sherlock Holmes. House’s vicodin addiction is a parallel to Holmes’s cocaine abuse. But the series’ Watson equivalent, Dr. James Wilson, is totally different from the Conan Doyle character. In this series House is a curmudgeon who is at times downright obnoxious and gets tolerated only because of his brilliance. Wilson is the ultimate nice guy who is House’s only friend and buffer between him and the rest of the world. House meddles in the affairs of everyone around him, particularly Wilson, to the extent of monitoring their personal relationships. House is also dependant on Wilson, though he never admits it, and is suggested to be directly or indirectly responsible for Wilson’s numerous divorces. Now that has too many parallels with the movie viz Holmes’ resistance to Watson’s engagement, Watson saying he felt manipulated, Holmes’ behaviour disgusting the others (licking the bits of stone from the grave) etc to pick a few. Is it knowingly or unknowingly a copy of a copy or just a tangential thought on my part thrown up as a result of obsessively following the series, I really could not say.
From the books, my impression of Holmes physically, was that of a tall thin man with piercing eyes. I had imagined that he cultivated a high degree of aloofness so that his objectivity was never jeopardized. I had the view that he was physically strong because the poker bending scene in The Speckled Band was always a favourite, but I had pictured him to be the sort of person who would use his fists as the absolute last resort. When I had this argument with a friend who said he hated the movie, I realized how little I remembered from actually reading the stories. I recently read an article or re-reading which you can find here. Going by that, my reading of Sherlock Holmes would have concentrated mainly on the plotline and very little attention given to the characterization. I was also at an age where one reads for the stories only and has not thought about appreciation as a word relating to literature. So, project 221B is going to be a sort of journal of my re-reading of the complete Sherlock Holmes, split into small groups of stories, and the impressions I draw about the characters and persons and their evolution as I progress through the volumes.
