Ranjit Kulkarni's Blog, page 19

Firebird

I recently read a novel called ‘Firebird’ which is the English translation of the original Tamil book by Perumal Murugan. I had heard an interview of the author at the Bangalore Lit Fest and got interested in the book. It is translated into English by Janani Kannan.

The novel is steeped in the world of Tamil villages, customs, foods, people, gender and caste equations, ordinary life, village routines and societal norms. Therefore, while I read the English version, I cannot be certain how much of the original has been maintained in the translation. But as a non Tamil reader, I must affirm that it takes you into the world of Tamil farmers, family structures, villages, caste politics and everyday life fairly deeply.

The story revolves around the journey of a poor farmer whose life is uprooted when, as the youngest member of his family, he is left with a raw deal as part of the family land distribution. To add to his woes, he finds himself angry yet helpless when his fiery wife is molested by his fatherly eldest brother and leaves home with the condition that she won’t return till he finds a new place to settle. He then sets out on his oxen cart with a loyal, senior helper assigned by his father-in-law in search of land to set up house and farm.

The story is non-linear and keeps shifting between present and past, adulthood and childhood of the main protagonist Muthu. There are substantive roles for his helper Kuppanna throughout the journey and his wife Peruma has a constant presence in the background. There are important influences from his brothers, his parents, a number of villagers he meets, and even a grandmother of his wife towards the end. The author transports you into the real world of Tamil villages and the rural, poverty-struck, mundane life of a farmer, perhaps from a few decades back. The amount of detail in the aspects of ordinary life such as the types of clothes and foods to the intricacies of farming, woven into the story along with unsaid social and caste structures, undercurrents of village politics, unfair gender equations, tenuousness of family relationships, bitterness of language – make this novel extraordinary to read.

The first half of the novel is gripping when the plot moves fast and it seems like Muthu – the main protagonist- is on his way towards deliverance when he seals a deal for land in a village far from his native place after suffering at the hands of his own family. But the second half meanders for a long while with backstories that don’t tie up while he faces various hurdles and spends time to set up the land for cultivation. It has painstaking details on the farmer’s problems, toddy tapping and even removal of stones from his land which don’t move the plot anywhere forward. Eventually, the novel ends while he is still in that process, and the reader is left wondering what happened to the others, especially his wife Peruma and his other brothers in the village. Most of all, it is unclear whether Muthu himself has achieved closure on his search. Hence, I found the end incomplete as far as the story line is concerned.

But then, such novels are not about the plot as much as they are about the reading itself. On that front, this book kept me hooked and engrossed in the world of Muthu and Tamil village life right through. It painted a picture through words like I have not seen or known before. One does empathize with the main characters and gets involved in their desperation during suffering and optimism when a life of promise beholds. But as a reader, I remained somewhat unsatisfied at the end when I wasn’t sure of the state of the deliverance of Muthu and Peruma, the real Firebird. Despite that, just for an in-depth experience of the world of Tamil villages and a farmer’s journey that the author brings to life, Firebird is highly recommended reading.

Thoughts on Approaching Seventy

As I approach fifty, I thought it might be apt to put out an extract from a book by one of my favorite writers – Ruskin Bond. Of course, one must bear in mind that there is a difference – for many, lot of it – between turning fifty and turning seventy. And biologically, there indeed is. But when I read (or re-read) these notes (like I do from most good reading) from this book that Bond had written as he approached Seventy, I couldn’t but notice that a lot of what he had written at Seventy holds true even at Fifty, albeit with less caution, less resignation, more hope, perhaps. So whatever it is worth, here are that extract from book titled ‘The India I love’ by Ruskin Bond.

Thoughts on Approaching Seventy

The pleasure, as well as the pathos of life, springs from the knowledge of its transitory nature. All our experiences are coloured by the thought that they may return no more. Those who have opted for perpetual life might find that the pleasure of loving has vanished along with the certainty of death. We are in no hurry to leave the world, but we like to know that there is an exit door.

Creative people don’t age. Their bodies may let them down from time to time, but as long as their brains are ticking, they are good for another poem or tale or song. And what of happiness, that bird on the wing, that most elusive of human conditions? It has nothing to do with youth or old age. Religion and philosophy provide little or no relief for a toothache, and we are all equally grumpy when it comes to moving about in a heat wave or getting out of bed on a freezingly cold morning.

External conditions do play their part in individual happiness. But our essential happiness or unhappiness is really independent of these things. It is a matter of character, or nature, or even our biological make-up.

If you have the ability, or rather the gift of being able to see beauty in small things, then old age should hold no terrors. I do not have to climb a mountain peak in order to appreciate the grandeur of this earth. There are wild dandelions flowering on the patch of wasteland just outside my windows. A wild rose bush will come to life in the spring rain, and on summer nights the honeysuckle will send its fragrance through the open windows.

There’s a time to rove and a time to rest, and if you have learnt to live with nature’s magic, you will not grow restless.

***

 

The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told

I recently read this collection of Bengali short stories translated from the original by Arunava Sinha. It is simply outstanding – to put it in short. Verily a collection of carefully curated masterpieces by some of the most well-known as well as not so famous writers from Bengal that provide the reader with the cultural, social milieu of Bengal over the past hundred years or so with characters and stories that remain well-etched on your psyche.

Here is a short review of the book that I wrote on Amazon:

“What a treasure trove of short stories from Bengal this book is! Filled with exceptional pieces that will move you and stay with you for long, this contain masterpieces from stalwarts translated by an expert reader and writer so well that as a reader, I felt these stories were written in English. A collection that one can go back to again. I hope they come up with the next best 21 set soon.”

Clearly, I loved reading this collection!

Factors of Longevity

A Happy New Year 2024 to Everyone!

I recently watched a series on Netflix called ‘Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones’. It is a documentary on a set of zones in the world (called Blue Zones) which consist of the highest percentage of centenarians as compared to the rest of the world. The writer conducted a fairly indepth research to understand what factors led to this kind of outlier longevity and tried to find common factors irrespective of geography, ethnicity, genes – focusing on the ones that are associated with lifestyle choices. I made notes (as is my habit) while watching it to capture some of the factors he mentioned while traversing across the Blue Zones in the world.

It made for interesting reading. Here is the list of those factors for longevity.

Mostly Vegetarian dietFruitsNo meat except fishDaily low intensity physical activityJoyful CommunityLaughterLong-term Committed PartnerSweet PotatoFaith and Spiritual belief and practiceHoneyActivity or work providing purposeWineHerbs and VegetablesComfortable Income or Secure FinancesWork for up to four hoursStay with familyBeans Corn and RiceClose friends

The epiphany is that the same things that help us live a long healthy life are the things that make life worth living. This was the last line in the documentary.

***

Sakina’s Kiss

I recently read a novel by Vivek Shanbhag, the acclaimed Kannada writer, titled ‘Sakina’s Kiss’ – translated in English by Srinath Perur. I was introduced to this author by an earlier novel titled ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ again translated into English. At that time, I was left with a feeling of intrigue after finishing it in a couple of settings. This was more than a year and a half back after I attended one of his interviews at the Bangalore Lit Fest. Hence, I was eager to read this novel – again having this intriguing title ‘Sakina’s Kiss’. Let me just say that, as far as understatement, complexity and undercurrents in a story are concerned, I was not disappointed.

This is an absorbing book that keeps you turning the page, always promising intrigue till it leaves you wondering what actually happened. Eventually it is all about the style and craft of writing by an author who, one reckons, wants to highlight the many maladies of today’s life across family, individual hypocrisy, politics, generation and gender gaps, rural vs urban, etc. etc. It is a book that may be best described as an unsettling mix of understated and unexplained layers of stories and subplots beneath an ordinary looking life .. it’s a statement and meditation on modern life written by a master storyteller, a weaver of webs!

 

Unhurried Tales

Two book recommendations for the yearend. Both by Ruskin Bond. I read both of these one after the other almost a year back and was just going through my Kindle to check them out again.

Unhurried Tales is a collection of the longer, well-known stories by Ruskin Bond. Time Stops at Shamli is one of my favourites from this collection. I couldn’t believe it when I found out that he wrote this story in 1956, and it went unpublished for thirty years till 1987. And then, you can’t help cheer for the little girl Sita in The Angry River which is about a girl caught in a boat of sorts on a flooded river (probably the Alakananda as I remember during my travels to Uttarakhand how fierce it is). Of course, there is the famous Blue Umbrella which I have read many times. And there is a good story about a leopard and many about Pipalnagar.

The other collection which has many of Ruskin Bond’s lesser known stories is The Writer on the Hill. The common theme is stories about villages and towns set in the lower Himalayas, and about rustic characters from an era that seems (and is, perhaps) history. But just the same, that’s why it makes good reading, when you get lost in that world from the bygone past.

Check out the reviews I had written for these two books on Amazon after I had finished them.

A treasure

This collection of novellas or long stories take the reader into the life of small villages and towns in the lower Himalaya with their motley set of characters and stories around rivers, leopards, train and bus trips, walks to school and so much more. Each story is unique in which not much but something happens that leaves us entertained or smiling, perhaps with some thoughts. A wonderful treasure!

What a delightful collection!

A collection of fiction some of which regular readers of Ruskin Bond are sure to have read elsewhere, and some that I hadn’t read. The nonfiction collection especially contains soulful pieces that I didn’t know existed. A collector’s book!

Aversion

We make a conscious decision by the intellect not to get pulled into certain things or situations or people which we might have learnt are not conducive to our growth. Sometimes we are successful at it due to grace of God. We can see situations and are able to discern them we having potential for entanglement, and using our discrimination are able to hold back.

But if the situation persists, sometimes we lose patience and in our effort to not get entangled, we develop aversion. This dislike or need to avoid something is also a form of attachment albeit a negative one. The manner in which we avoid getting entanglement in things, places, people, situations we like, in a similar manner, we must check if we are developing aversion for some thing, place, people or situation we dislike. Even aversion causes agitation or anger because it is based on a desire to dislike or avoid something. If we use self control to get rid of that, it will not disturb us and we can still act the way we ought to in that situation. From hankering and aversion both if we are free, there comes a peace that is undisturbed.

Life’s Amazing Secrets: Notes 4

Here are my notes (part 4) from Life’s Amazing Secrets: How to Find Balance and Purpose in Your Life by Gaur Gopal Das.

WHEEL 4: SOCIAL CONTRIBUTION

You can be completely selfish, completely selfless or any of the combinations in between. Life is a journey from being selfish to becoming selfless. ‘Act without expectation.’

There is no dessert as delicious as ice cream, especially in the tropics. However, the ideology behind the ice cream is: enjoy your life before it melts. It symbolizes hedonism; to savour every moment of your life through personal enjoyment. On the other hand, the candle is symbolic of another ideology: to give light to others before it melts. Both ice creams and candles melt, but their reason for doing so are completely different.

Just because we cannot be candles fully, it does not mean we should simply remain selfish at the ice- cream end. The journey of life is moving from being an ice cream to being a candle. That is the purpose of everyone’s life at the core: to share, give and contribute to others.

We can only share wealth with others if we possess wealth. Similarly, we can love others only if we know what it feels like to be loved. We can only bring hope to others if we feel hope for ourselves. In conclusion, we can only give to others what we possess.

The first step in selflessness is to practise it with our family. ‘You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.’

In Sanskrit, service is called seva. Adding a spiritual element to our seva can make it more fulfilling. ‘The service you do for others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.’

When we live superficial lives, dedicated to serving ourselves, we are like surfers: riding the waves, but not seeing what is beneath them. We may satisfy our own needs and concerns by doing so, but we will never be truly fulfilled. However, when we practise spirituality, we become like divers: we submerge ourselves underneath the turbulent waves to find a pleasure much deeper, beyond hedonistic ideals. That profound joy is only possible when one feels love to serve others. And how is that love maintained? Through being connected to God through spirituality.

Expectation

Expectations can take many forms. Sometimes it is with a clear tangible result in the form of money or some reward that is measurable materially. Sometimes it is unclear and intangible expectation like being appreciated or respected for work done. Sometimes it can be simply an expectation to be left alone or being given the independence to operate. We expect different things at different stages of life from different activities and people. Many of these are unconscious especially the intangible expectations. When they aren’t met, we experience disappointment or irritation or anger. The key is to be aware of these and make an attempt to not allow them to take root in the future. Easier said than done but that is the path of purification of the mind.

Why do expectations arise? What is the root cause of expectations? They arise because of actions taken out of some desire, direct or indirect. When we do something with some desire in mind, it gives rise to expectation. Why does desire arise? It arises due to attachment and contemplation on something. When we repeatedly contemplate on something as the source of our happiness, we develop attachment towards it and start building up a desire for it. Then when we act, that action is performed due to that desire.

So what do we do? Does it mean we should have no expectation, no desire? Or does it mean we don’t contemplate on anything as the source of happiness? The key is to build the knowledge that our true lasting source of happiness is in God. Once our intellect is convinced of that, we should use that conviction to tell the mind where our true happiness lies whenever it contemplates on something. The mind will not stop thoughts, so the key is to use our intellect and witness the mind thinking and creating feelings and try to bring it back to the Lord. If that is not possible, and a desire has already been created due to past contemplation or attachment, then it is better to replace that desire with a desire for the Lord. Hence we should keep doing the same things or actions but with a desire for doing it for God. That way at least we will not experience the misery that arises when we do something with a desire and the expectation is not met or fulfilled, something which is bound to happen.

Notes from ‘The Practice’- Set 4

A few months back I read a book titled ‘The Practice’ by Seth Godin. I loved it a lot and made some notes from it. They are some profound lines from the book which spoke to me. The first, second and third sets of these lines are here, here and here.

Here is the fourth and final set:

This desire for external approval and authority directly undermines your ability to trust yourself, because you’ve handed this trust over to an institution instead.

Certainty, then, must be elusive, because we can’t know for sure. The elusiveness isn’t a problem, it’s not a bug, it’s not something to be eliminated. The uncertainty is the point.

The practice seeks to make change, but the process demands originality. The practice is consistent, but only in intention, not in execution.

The infinite game is the game we play to play, not to win.

Play to keep playing.

Everyone who creates feels resistance. Everyone who is seriously engaged in the deep effort of inventing and shipping original work feels the fear. That’s not the question. The question is: where do you put the fear?

I stopped reading my Amazon reviews seven years ago. Partly because I have never once met an author who said, “I read all of my one-star reviews and now my work is much better.”

When you’re consistent in who it’s for and what it’s for, you can claim the high ground and clearly say, “It’s not for you.”

True fans require idiosyncrasy. True fans are looking for something peculiar, because if all they wanted was the Top 40 or the regular kind, they could find it far more easily from someone who isn’t you.

You are not your work. Your work is a series of choices made with generous intent to cause something to happen. We can always learn to make better choices.

We don’t write because we feel like it. We feel like it because we write.

Creators flee the bogeyman every day. They invent new powers for him, imagining his ability to destroy the work and derail a career. The more power you give him, the more power he has. But only if you’re afraid to look at him. As soon as you look him in the eye, he vanishes.

External success only exists to fuel our ability to do the work again.

Flow is the result of effort. The muse shows up when we do the work. Not the other way around.

We have unlimited reasons to hide our work and only one reason to share it: to be of service.

Don’t worry about changing the world. First, focus on making something worth sharing. How small can you make it and still do something you’re proud of?

It might be a trap to ask someone else (or yourself) if your work is any good.

Good needs to be defined before you begin. What’s it for and who’s it for? If it achieves its mission, then it’s good.

Genre is a box, a set of boundaries, something the creative person can leverage against. The limits of the genre are the place where you can do your idiosyncratic work.

Transformation begins with leverage. And you get leverage by beginning with genre.

Begin with genre. Understand it. Master it. Then change it.

There’s plenty of time to make it better later. Right now, your job is to make it.

The challenge, then, is to have one superpower. All out of balance to the rest of your being. If, over time, you develop a few more, that’s fine. Begin with one.

Because if you’re anyone, it’s worth mentioning that a search engine is happy to point people to plenty of other people who are as anyone as you are.

When we think of an artist we admire, we’re naming someone who stands for something. And to stand for something is to commit.

Choose the skill we’re going to assert to the outside world.

To be the best in the world means that someone with options and information will choose you.

Ultimately, the goal is to become the best in the world at being you. To bring useful idiosyncrasy to the people you seek to change, and to earn a reputation for what you do and how you do it. The peculiar version of you, your assertions, your art. To announce and earn a superpower, one that’s worth waiting for, seeking out, and yes, paying for. You’ll need to trust that this process makes it possible, and trust that you’re the one to do it.

Creativity doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. It’s not duplicative or repetitive. But it rhymes. Just about every frame shows the fingerprints (and idiosyncrasy) of its creators.

Finding the constraints and embracing them is a common thread in successful creative work.

When we trust ourselves, we’re focused on the process, not the outcome. The process of doing our work and paying attention to the outcome without requiring it to happen. The process of preparation and revision. And the process of caring enough to contribute.

We don’t do it to win, we do it to contribute. Because it’s an act of generosity, not selfishness, we can do it for all the best reasons.

Trusting yourself comes from a desire to make a difference, to do something that matters.

Where is the fuel to keep us going? Anger gets you only so far, and then it destroys you. Jealousy might get you started, but it will fade. Greed seems like a good idea until you discover that it eliminates all of your joy. The path forward is about curiosity, generosity, and connection. These are the three foundations of art. Art is a tool that gives us the ability to make things better and to create something new on behalf of those who will use it to create the next thing.

***