Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 21

Book Review- The Summing Up- Somerset Maugham

Is it not amazing that precisely at the time when you start believing in the childish notion of knowing all there is to know, like a bolt from the sky, awakening descends on you, as you suddenly find yourself, ignorant, devoid of any knowledge. The good part is that this revelation is not particularly embarrassing or demeaning, rather you feel elevated and enlightened with the understanding of your own smallness. Reading "The Summing Up" by W. Somerset Maugham was one such moment of revelation. I am just through with getting my book of philosophical essays published, and while I would take all the praise which would come from friends with a pinch of salt and sincere humility, a little strike of wickedness, allowed me to secretly feel happy with the praise. But that was till I came across this book, which once I picked up and finished reading, left me dwarfed and happy at the same time, in the backdrop of the greatness of the author. 

The book is autobiographical in nature, although, Maugham in the book itself, waves off any suggestion of auto-biographic nature as he starts the book with the statement "this is not an autobiography nor is it a book of recollections. So there are no controversial chapters, with people casting aspersions on the truthfulness of the accounts, but the author more than makes up for the juicy gossips, with a rare sincerity and razor-sharp honesty as he with disarming simplicity says " I have no desire to lay bare my heart, and I put limits to the intimacy that I wish the reader to enter upon with me. and says "There are matters on which I am content to maintain my privacy". Here is a writer who seems to be supremely confident in the quality of his writing to be strong enough to arouse enough interest in the readers, without leaning on the "Juicier chapter and racy content" to bind the interest. Although he does demonstrate a degree of disenchantment as he says "Everything I say is merely an opinion of my own.The reader can take it or leave it" or when he says "I do not much care if people agree with me. Of course I think I am right, Otherwise I should not think as I do, and they are wrong, but it does not offend me that they should be wrong. Nor does it greatly disturb me to discover that my judgement is at variance with that of the majority." Despite the disclaimers to its autobiographical nature that Maugham has spread through the book, there is no denying that the book is absolutely autobiographical in nature although it stays confined to the limited area of author's life that is the part which deals with him as a professional writer. Although the book briefly touches upon Maugham's childhood and ancestry, it essentially examines the impact it might or might not have on his writing skills and style.  
The effort that the author makes to keep the book simple and honest are mighty obvious, still the depth of Maugham in terms of literature results in gems entailing profound life truths slipping through fingers, and noticeable all across the book like "There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain" or " Perfection has one great defect, it is apt to be dull." or when he says " Most people have a furious itch to talk about themselves and are restrained only by disinclination of others to listen." "You can get a great deal of entertainment out of tedious people if you keep your head. "The Value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens." is one such jewel, towards the last few chapter as he dwells on his interest in writings of philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche, the book moves to a completely different plane as he ponders over intricate and complex subjects like the meaning of life and comes with great statements like "I was taught that we lived in the presence of God and that the chief business of man was to save his soul." But apart from the profound truths which the author cleverly hides in the fabric of the book, it is his struggles in being a writer which makes the book a great read for anyone who seriously wants to take writing as a profession. As he speaks about multiple iterations he put his work through to get the right word and structure, his efforts to enhance the vocabulary, and his deep interest in reading as a way to enhance and improve on his own writings, is something, which makes me believe, that if I were the person finalizing the curriculum for creative writing, I should seriously make this book a mandatory reading. And above all, summing up, which it opens your eyes to the fact that writing is not a profession of idle men (and women), it needs a great degree of devotion and commitment to be a decent writer, and in the process, as Maugham would do with his novels like "Of Human Bondage" he secretly passes the keys to be better human being in your hands, without your realizing it, unless you are watchful enough.

The Writer's Block- Looking Pack From my Old Post

(This was first published on Hubpages)When Dreams were YoungThere used to be a time, when as they say, spring was in the walk and the dreams were young, when words would float in front of my notebook and land softly as today my toddler walks around in the room in the winters of Delhi..on the tip-toes. Dreams were beautiful and not yet impossible. Truth seemed to be an idea which lived and breathed next door and not a distant idea. Those were the times when an equitable limitation of resources cut across the social position and we all stood in front of each other, devoid of the fig leave of social backgrounds. Calls would be made through the public call booth across the road from the Hostel and with new mobile set was not a status defining instrument but only a flight of fantasy. In all our nakedness we shall be all be judged as friends or not by those around us, simply by the grandness of our dreams, our understanding of our ideals, and more importantly, by our ability to love. Love, I had in my heart in abundance, writing poetry on the back of cigarette packets, which friends claim even today to be of readable kind; reading the material which would transport me into an era of self-belief, and belief in all that is good in life. Everything good in life was possible, and all that was needed was to merely stretch the hands out wide, with a heart full of conviction as The Messiah taught the pilot in the books by  Richard Bach . I read it, pretty happy in meeting in thoughts with authors good enough to be published and make a best-seller. The NowThe words come out on the screen, which replaces the notebook of the past, apologetically. A gloomy mist descends over the world with a minor trace of sunlight in the form of my toddler, who is constantly trying all the time to cope up with my cruel mood-swings, I just hope that her efforts to accommodate my mood swings outlives my ability to grow beyond them. I know, it is cruel, but I know it is true and is almost as cruel as truth can be. I keep on thinking if the world in which I live has changed or have I, as a pesky and demanding inhabitant changed. Was the world always like that, ruthless, competitive and all the time measuring me against the scales which were all tilted against me? and I was living in my own euphoric world of imaginary goals and ideals, that I never noticed the crookedness of all straight-lines which I drew around myself as pointers to what I presumed then to be a life of delirium. The words, enter as a soul wretched with poor self-esteem and poor acting ability thrown on the stage to perform an act of consequence, with conviction of not fitting in deeply placed in the heart. Was it that I was happier then because all the expectations of life I had with myself, which I could control and change and shift, thus the goals closer or farther as I wanted to? I do not know, what I know is that then I could be kinder to myself and to the world around me, and I have somehow, now, pushing people to the walls asking them to play the roles as the play which I have scripted requires them to, become to be the living equivalent to the movie recently released called "Despicable Me". Nothing comforts, this unkindness which I had not seen in my life even in the days when Nietzsche and stoic philosophy literature replaced the lofty, happy world of Erich Segal has now descended so deep down, that now I find myself unbearable and writing, which always came to me as an answer to my disturbing dreams, has eluded me, as a disappointed friend who came to meet me after a long time. I hope, somehow, I can run after my long lost friend, beg him, reason with him and ask him to stay back, for I need this ray of sunlight in my life, to pull me out of the depth of darkness. Writing for me is a way to converse with myself, and as with verbal conversation, in the face of emotion, the lump rises in the throat, the clot rises in the pen or the kepboard mocks me, of what I have become. But I have to write, even if it does not make sense to anyone, including myself, as there is no other cure that I know of. 

The Idea of Justice

(Reproduced from Hubpages)
The new year of the new decade has dawned in all its glory with delightful cold and somewhat shifty sun. The clouds of the gigantic corruption of past year and years does not seem to be getting dampened by the festive spirit of the X-mas followed by the New Year. The dirt seem to have risen so high that now it has reached the highest offices of Justice and I sit myself down with an attempt to understand what actually constitutes the noble and yet, elusive (and maybe, an impossible) idea called justice is. Is it something beyond revenge or is revenge good enough to be termed as Justice is the collective exercises it on behalf of the individual? Is justice something which pleases the most number in a society or can Justice in the extreme loneliness in the face of public opinion against its exercise?The fact is that the topic is so subjective and so skewed in the direction of numerical strength and it does not seem like justice any more. It is like, if a law, which is said to be formulated by large majority of people or those who rule them on their behalf, allows for a revenge, it is justice; when an individual does so, it is criminal. I am not for revenge in any way, as I do believe it is forgiveness which address both the concerned parties in the most positive manner, and we do not forgive the perpetrator of a wrong for his good, but for our own good, given the amount of tranquility it brings about to us.
Justice- The Definition with Current Perspective.While seems to be that the efforts to tie it into a neat definition has been going on since probably the first time, a man stepped into other man's periphery and the idea of Ethics and what is proper started troubling men, the attempts could not get more accurate than too close. That could be more because to my mind, justice is a subjective term. However, let us try to explore how close we as humanity ever came close to define it, in concurrence to our individual wisdom. The online dictionary terms it as the quality of being Just, without getting engaged in the more difficult task of defining what is the meaning of "Just". Thesaurus defines it as revenge when undertaken by the collective, which is a definition which I have concern about, since it at the first look itself seems to unjust. Justice, Plato says in Republic, Book II is the type of good which is desirable on its own merits and also is advisable from the point of view of expected outcome. While Justice is one of the integral component of what constitutes ethics (which includes other features like courage, magnanimity and kindness), Ethics is both inward and outward looking, while justice is all the time outward looking defining fairness in one's interaction with the world around one.Aristotle in his famous treatise on Ethics  (Nicomachean Ethics - Book V) divides justice into two aspects based on the proactive or reactive nature of it asDistributive and r ectificatory or corrective  justice. The distributive one refers to the distribution of wealth among the members of the society (based on Geometric proportion), and the corrective justice (Based on Arithmetic proportion) refers to the resolution of inequitable distribution of the wealth. Further, Aristotle, so well looks further deeper into the matter and explains in a manner which is nothing short than a breeze of fresh air in an otherwise stale environment (what would you feel when you find all the top spokesmen of top political parties, for some reason, all lawyers, debating smugly on justice and hiding behind law will take its own course). Aristotle further stresses that in the event of inequitable distribution of the good, it is the distributer who is more culpable then the receiver. This is what I was arguing on when I objected to the media pursuing the beneficiary of wrongly placed and accepted bail plea, on the appropriateness of the same in Delhi, in an infamous murder case involving son of a noted politician (latter was helping the party in power in Delhi, to set up a government in the neighboring state), as the latter was the beneficiary, it was the Government of Delhi or its chief representative who should have been the one carrying the key culpability, as she had given inequitably, benefit to one person of the society as against anyone else.It may be noted, it is equitable is the key word not the equal. The distributive justice does not require equal distribution, but equitable distribution, in a manner termed as geometric proportion , as per the merit. This law of geometric proportion takes out the air out of the claim of the government that they can not distribute the food grains rotting in government warehouses, shoddy as they may be; on the ground that then they will not know who they ought to distribute it to as it is not enough to be equally distributed to all. The government of the day, in the backdrop of news reports of food grains getting washed away in rains and people facing increasing food inflation, in its arrogance went on to even ask the highest court of the land to keep off the area of governance. The principle of geometric proportion also brings in a sense of reality and consolation to people what modern day philosopher Alaine De Botton terms as the pressures of presumed meritocracy on account of which people unnecessarily set themselves to the goals not in line with their abilities, when Aristotle says," If the persons are not equal they will not have equal shares.We however would be wrong to presume that justice is defined by law, it is rather the other way round. When we find people against whom there is a great amount of evidence of unlawful conduct, moving around with immunity, constitutional or otherwise, in disgust the common citizen only complains of lack of justice. This is where justice is in contradiction to the law, and that is what Aristotle refers to when he says," whatever is unfair is lawless, but not everything lawless is unfair" .Plato in Book V of Republic, explains that while Justice is helping the friends while harming the enemies and returning the debts one owes, constitutes justice, but not adequately. Socrates in the Book V defines Justice as "Working what one is naturally best suited for" (how many are able to do that???) and to do one's business and says that justice is what protects and nourishes virtues like Temperance, wisdom and courage. The society to be just needs to have rulers (The executive- cabinet and government) creating Just laws, Soldiers (The Judiciary) which ensures the implementation of those laws and Producers (The Citizens) who ought to be willing to follow those laws.John Rawls Who wrote "The Theory of Justice" in 1970, counted Justice as one of the primary virtue of a social system, just as truth is for the system of thought. Building around the Aristotle's idea of Golden mean, John Rawls defines the concept of Justice as that of proper balance between competing claims. He says that a Just system sets the boundaries of the ambitions and aspirations of individual, with a presumption that " Interests requiring violation of justice holds no value." John Stuart Mill's idea of Utilitarianism propounds an interesting view of the act which brings welfare to the largest average is just. The idea is however, suffers the same problem which I had expressed in my some other blogs as the problem of numerical superiority as a proof of justice (as can be seen from the way a government in majority, tanks through a numerically weak opposition even in the face of blatant unethical acts). The major issue with utilitarianism as proponent of justice is that it does not base the driver of justice and social laws on Socratic idea of Ethics but rather on Epicurean ideal of Pleasure as an end to itself. This in itself is not something to have worries about, the dilemma appears when we start thinking of my pleasure against yours, and then we try to decide whose pleasure will take precedence in the event of contradiction. Utilitarianism bases the precedence of idea on numerical strength, which makes a lonely man, a wretched soul and a lonely idea an orphan to social security. This principle builds on the idea proposed by Jeremy Bentham in the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1780.

Why Writers Should Read the Classics

(The Article was first published on Literary website: The AirshipDaily.com)Despite the seemingly formulaic success of modern bestsellers, one writer argues that the classics are where authors should look for inspiration.“Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon (Parnassus)” by Claude Lorraine, 1680 (via Wikipedia)Pursuing a typical Indian middle-class dream of becoming an engineer, my exposure to classic literature during my adolescent years was dismal. It was only later in life that I came across those great names, attempting to school myself as a writer by reading Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Twain, Maugham, Bronte and others. I was awed by the beauty of what I discovered, which was hitherto hidden from me as a casual reader and occasional writer.But it was with trepidation that I read, with fear of their brilliant writing influencing my own. Books are now written according to calculated formulas of success defined by clever marketers. It is not a good moment to be influenced by classical styles marked by slow-paced, intricate storytelling — or so I thought. Yet the more I read, the more I was convinced that classic literature could and should help me mature as a writer.The classics illustrate for us the possibilities that language holds if only we were patient enough to look, dedicated enough to try. They inspire us to overcome the sloth that makes us use words carelessly. A modern writer might get away with less under the garb of realism (e.g. “She was a bitch”), but that will not stay with you, not like “Coquetry runs in her blood, blends with her brains, and seasons the marrow of her bones” (Jane Eyre). Charlotte Bronte is no rush to finish her story. She wants you to see and feel and understand these people, her characters.“The Kiss of the Muse” by Paul Cezanne, 1860 (via WikiArt)More importantly, the classics persist because they are timeless.“It is a classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness,” Ezra Pound once wrote. It hardly matters whether they were written in the Jazz Age of The Great Gatsby or the Victorian era of Jane Eyre, these works transcend their contexts, and it is this very timelessness which defines them. They are perpetual lighthouses.The classics are able to achieve this timeless quality because they are not descriptive; they are introspective. They are not focused on the world in which human emotions exist, but on human emotions themselves. Reading “The moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of dense cloud: the night grew dark; rain came driving fast on the gale” (again, Jane Eyre), you understand, rather than the banal weather, the emotional turmoil of the character. Indeed, the external world only seems to exists because of the character’s internal feeling, the landscape taking the color of her emotion.We, as readers, are able to find our own feelings in such words despite the distances between us and the time and space they were originally composed in because those emotions are universal. The world which surrounds these feelings may change, but the emotions themselves do not. Consider, from Heart of Darkness, the lines: “She carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though she would say, I — I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.” Simple words but an ache rises from the heart of even the modern reader, for who wouldn’t want to be loved thus?Great literature ought to have, to quote Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, “discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered.” Writers should employ eloquence because they want to whisper their truth to you. In this way, the classics are philosophy, with fiction there to illustrate the point. But a classic, contends Italo Calvino, is a book that has never finished to say what it has to say. Don’t we all want to read such a book? Don’t we all want to write such a book?
Saket Suryesh lives with his wife and six-year-old daughter in Delhi. He’s written a collection of non-fictions essays, If Truth were to be Told, and two compilations of poems, and is currently writing his first fiction. He runs a blog called Love, Life and Happiness on family, parenting, writing and, rarely, politics. In a parallel universe, he is an engineer with a Master’s in International Business.KEEP READING: More on Writing
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Dear Scotty- Letters from F. Scott Fitzgerald to his Daughter

F. Scott Fitzgerald With his Daughter, Scottiee

I was, of late, putting together an article on the letters of Francis Scott Fitzgerald or FSF. I have always been enamored by his writing. Fitzgerald had a daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, whom he lovingly addressed as Scottie or Scottina. Scottie was borne in October, 1921, soon after Fitzgerald married Zelda, the daughter of a Judge, riding on the success of his first book, This Side of the Paradise.


Scott Fitzgerald’s later life was fraught with difficulties, financial and otherwise. He lived apart from Zelda who mostly lived out of hospitals, searching for the cure for her chronic depression. His later work could not replicate the early success of The Tales of the Jazz Age, and The Other Side of Paradise,  and his slip into abject poverty could not even be arrested by The Great Gatsby, which could get its due only after his sad death at the age of 44. He lived away Scottie, and wanted to teach her all that he could so that she may, in her own life be spared from all that pain. His letters to Scottie touched me especially, being a father of six years old, wanting to write similar letters, and failing to come around to do that. My “Notes to Nonu” stays a work in mind, not even in progress. I am very sure that while some of his letters are very stern, a worried fathers to his daughter, being raised with parenting in absentia, they still carry a great deal of timeless advice for kids today. While in some of his letters, he tries to part with his skills as a writer to Scottie, seemingly in the search of some kind of legacy; the letters are not about writing. The letters of Scott Fitzgerald to Scottie are letters of father to a daughter and have concerns and affectionate shades which are universal to any father. Let us look at some of the letters and his great advice to his loving daughter.
To Scottie Fitzgerald, Dated August 8th, 1933:  Scottie would have been twelve year when this very interesting letter written by her illustrious father first appears.  She is still little child to Fitzgerald who writes, “I think of you, and pleasantly always” before entering in a lovely banter threatening her that he will beat the white cat and beats its bottom every time she called him “Pappy”.  He then goes on to offer some great advise to her, telling her “Things to worry about:Worry about CourageWorry about CleanlinessWorry about Efficiency
Worry about Horsemanship” (in today’s context, we may replace this with physical activity)And then he tells her things not to worry about which is a long list, key things of relevance which we can tell our kids today as well not to worry about from his letter are:
Don’t worry about popular opinionDon’t worry about pastDon’t worry about futureDon’t worry about anyone getting ahead of youDon’t worry about triumphDon’t worry about failure unless it comes through your faults.
There is a very interesting letter written on August 8th 1934 where he writes to Rosalind, Zelda’s sister, many things about Scottie with great objectivity and affection. He discusses the inevitability of putting Scottie under the supervision of a Governess, parenting in absentia, and is worried about the weight of a celebrity father that she has to carry when he writes, “It is much easier for Scottie to play being the daughter of a writer that to get down and write something herself.” He is worried about the possibility of Scottie turning into a useless socialite and fearfully writes that, “Scottie can always change from an artistic to a social career but the reverse is very difficult”.
In another letter written to Scottie in 1935, when Scottie was around 14, he refers to typical teenage flings and disappointments.  He writes that, “your popularity with two or three dazed adolescent boys would convince you that you were at least queen of Sheba” and then he advises her that “you can think of others as valuing themselves, possibly quite as much as you do yourself.” He doesn’t put himself on a pedestal, he is as honest as only a father can be to his daughter when he writes that, “I didn’t know till 15 that there was anyone in the world except me and it cost me plenty” confessing his own life as a self-centered young man. He wants her to be a writer, asking her to write a one act play. He seems to be a man who had some sense of losing out on life and wants to pass on all the wisdom he had about his art, about his craft, about life to his daughter, in a hurry.  In a letter dated October 20th1936, He tells her not be “discouraged” about her story not coming on the tops, but also tells her that “I am not going to encourage you about it, because after all….you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience.”  He further adds, “Nobody ever became a writer by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say…..you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find a way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter.” He warns her, “It is an awfully lonesome business, ….I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.”  Of all the hallowed reverence of the writer, he, at heart is nothing more than a father.  In another letter of November, 17th 1936, he strictly admonishes her not to overlook scientific knowledge, telling her that, “there is no question of you dropping mathematics…I want you to take physics and I want you to take chemistry”.  It was the Thirties and Fitzgerald, a man of literature is not looking for so-called ‘feminine’ subjects for his daughter. He even threatens her with all the sternness of a disciplinarian father when he says, “You are an only child, but that doesn’t give you any right to impose on that fact.”  In the letter, one year later, October, 8th, 1937, he gives the sense of a drowning man, with the hand of his daughter fast slipping away when he urges her to not to smoke and that, “You have got to devote the best and freshest part of your energies to things that will give you a happy and profitable life. There is no time but now.”
An year later, on 7h July, 1938, he writes to Scottie, “I don’t think I will be writing letters many more years..”. Further he writes, “I never wanted to see again in this world women who were brought up as idlers. And one of my chief desires in life was to keep you from being that kind of person, one who brings ruin to themselves and others. This is one very, very sad letter, a desperate plea seeking understanding from his daughter when he writes, “You don’t realize that what I am doing here is the last tired effort of a man who once did something finer and better.”  In the throes of abject sadness, he puts forward a very profound thought about adolescence which I believe, should be read by every adolescent (and their parents). He writes, “You have reached an age when one is of interest to an adult only insofar as one seems to have a future…The mind of child is fascinating, for it looks at the old with new eyes- but at about twelve this changes. The adolescent offers nothing, can do nothing, say nothing that the adult cannot do better.”  He is unsparing to his little Scottina, when he writes, “when I do not feel you are ‘going somewhere’, your company tends to depress me for silly waste and triviality involved. On the other hand, when occasionally I see signs of life and intention in you, there is no company in the world I prefer.  When Scottie is finally at Princeton, he writes to her, advising her to be unpretentious and friendly, writing, “Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck..Everything you are and do from fifteen to eighteen is what you are and will do through your life.” There are several lists of recommended readings which pass from the father to the daughter, wise words on writing. But this is not about that. What I am writing here about how being a father overwhelms and dominates every aspects of your being. And about timeless advises which from a great father to his daughter and how it holds its shine even in today’s Sun, several decades later. In our own ways, aren’t we as father struggling to share our experiences with our daughters, trying to make them stand on their own, trying to pass on the wisdom we gained through our failures to them, so that they might not have to make them?


Note: F. Scott Fitzgerald, the acclaimed writer of The Other Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and The Doomed and several stories was borne on September, 24th.

The Joy of Writing and Running

Writing, I took to when very young. But I am sure, it was more as a solace, a way out, than a reason for joy. I need to commit myself to something to really belong to it. That is the way it is with me. I believe, it is the same was with most me. I cannot proceed with things half-measure. If I do undertake any venture in half-measures, I am sure it will die its own death very soon, and certainly not with a bang, possibly not even with a whimper.

When I took to running, I did try to slowly step on the peddle, but could never step beyond the frivolous slow peddling pace. Then one day, much to widespread condemnation, domestic furor, I went out and bought a pair of quite expensive running shoes. I still blush when I remember the embarrassment with which I obtained that for myself. Then went about buying clothes for running, shorts, for the first time anything above the knees. But then, having committed myself to running, I did run. Having reached eleven miles and working towards the goal of Half Marathon in the next two months, I can say, the plan has worked.

The same is with writing. I knew I had to take it beyond the doodles. I also knew I need to fit in the writing within my day job. That didn't leave much room for making stories. I worked with what I had- Ideas. So came out my first collection of essays. And then, I was committed. I wrote and even read with new set of eyes. I would swim deeper into the stories I read, analyzing them for style. I read memoirs (Anthony Trollop's, Stephen King's On Writing, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway), Letters (Kurt Vonnegut, Scott Fitzgerald) not for the voyeuristic pleasure of peeping into their lives, rather to learn their literary habit, how they approached the art. I read books analytically. I read what I wrote also analytically. I looked at the world from a writer's vantage point. 

The steps for writing to me have been similar to that for running.

1. Commit yourself: Get the necessary stuff, get the props to create the pretense. Notebook, books, pens, place to write, soon it will become reality. A notebook is a great thing, advances in the technology notwithstanding. You can open it and scribble whenever you want, even when the Air-hostess tells you to switch off all the electronic items. You will slide into it. 

2. Write a lot: Write regularly or as regularly as life would permit you. Don't be captive to the class or style. Write. On my bad days, sometime I run not more than three miles. But I need to run those three miles. It is better than not running. In writing, as well keep writing. Start a blog. While visitors on the blog is fun, don't hang by it. Write what comes to your mind (just as I am writing this post, or A sketch I wrote couple of weeks back). A sketch is a good way to stay on track, to quote David Ogilvy (in entirely different context) "to make sure that my fingers have not lost their cunning". 

3. Writing needs Discipline: Both Writing and running needs discipline. It is like running your own enterprise, where there is no one watching you except your own self. As in running, I need to plan the coming day, however vaguely to ensure the run in the morning or in the evening. Writing will need similar planning and scheduling, even more important if you have another day job (like me). I have in fact taken to commuting by public transport as much as possible, so as to be able to read on the way to the office, and if the time and crowd would permit, take some notes on the way. 

4. Read A lot: Read as much as you can. For running, I keep reading blogs and articles on running. It keep one motivated. For writers, it is even more necessary. It makes what Stephen Kings calls the tool box for the writer, the words, the rules, the grammar, the  perspective.

5. Announce to the World: Nothing keeps you motivated as much as a sense of personal vanity. By making public announcement (regarding finishing your book or running a marathon) you are committing yourself to your plan and thereby opening yourself for public ridicule. Should you fail to keep the commitment, you at least do not want to be a reason for it. Rest assured, you will not be able to find refuge in self-denials. Writers are brutal judges of themselves. If you have it in you for being a writer, you will be scathing in your self-judgment. Take pride in your writing.

Just as in running, it will seem like work in the beginning. Slowly and slowly, you will look forward for your daily writing and reading as much as look forward for your daily run. Write, by all means write, as Sean Connery, playing the writer William Forrester says in the movie, Finding Forrester - Punch the damn key.

Book Review - Savage Rose - Poems By Helle Gade

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold that no fire can ever warm me, I know that is Poetry" wrote Emily Dickinson. It that reflection of the world, that visual imagery were to be the sole definition of poetry, Savage Rose by Helle Gade, qualifies in flying colors. Helle is a great artisan of words and makes a great fabric of visual imagery.
She begins the book with 'Idun', her first poem. She writes,

"The Old elder tree blossomsHerbs break free of the groundBright green beech unfoldingand the swallow is chasing bugs."
The sensory liveliness is so noticeable, the imagery, one can even breath the smell of the picture she draws. Edward Hirsch wrote in his book, "The words move ahead of thought in poetry. The imagination loves reverie, the day-dreaming, the capacity of mind set in motion by words, by images." That is what poetry is, that is what Savage Rose is all about, picturesque words, grand sensual pleasure of worthy literature. 
I had read this book some time back. Poetry you do not read once. Especially, good poetry you need to read twice, for the meanings to sink in and for letting your own self to sink into the magic of written words. That is when you stop interfering with the pleasure of being overwhelmed in the truthfulness of the words. I read it again today. I tasted the wholesomeness of the poetry. When you read it second time, the sublime beauty of the words do not interfere with the truth they tell. They are the vehicles on which emotions ride, they are the grand carriage of the passenger. In the second reading, you take note of the passenger, understand her. When you read her poem 'Mourning', the sadness, the poignancy touches you so that you feel your heart pulsating within with a new vigor. It suddenly finds echo in the words you are reading and you feel the presence of the read beast inside your breast, as if for the very first time. She writes in 'Mourning'
"My heart is bleedingI cannot breatheTears burn in my eyes,and my throat hurts."
It attains a rare physicality of emotions through simplicity and honesty of the words. Helle is not a poet in search of her seat in literary greatness, she comes across a soul troubled by her own emotions, pushed by surging feelings to write them down. She is not the one to be bothered by ornamental words, She does not stop to pluck a flower to adorn her verse. The inherent truth of her emotions render eternal beauty to her verses, is the soul of her songs. She even admits to the helplessness of the poet, which every poet blamed of vanity as a reason for writing will find resonance in when she writes
"The voices startas silent whispersrising in a crescendoas more and more join inthey are all desperateNow shouting to be heard."
She writes with noticeable sense of urgency"My fingers are drummingA tribal rhythm on the keyboardwords flashing across the screenFaster and faster."
Her words chase the emotion and an enchanting race continues. The reader holds her hand, one moment we are walking, another running in the open fields, laughing, crying, like little children, basking in the bright sunlight of rare innocence. Then Helle turns philosophical, the mystic thought of dualism of the soul, the two people living in a body- the good and the evil. In her poem 'My Demon', she writes, 
"When I speak, he steal my wordswhen I am silent, He speaks for me,When I walk, he trips me."
And as a reader, we read mesmerized, we recall our own demon with which we wrestle everyday. Then, there are some poems in the collection like 'Frozen Pictures', 'Enough' and 'Burn for You', which are too personal, hitting closer home, almost autobiographical. The pain is to private, and therefore too haunting. It lingers for long and one wants to embrace the writer for such brutal honesty. When she writes,
"Who is that woman?The one that always look tiredwith the blue circles around the eyesand the pale, almost translucent skin"
You read those words in whispers, and notice the palpable pain, the longing, the moment of defeat and a defiant search for emancipation as she writes, 
"I do not deserve this,and I will not accept it.This stops nowbefore we break each other."
It is a rare book, an immensely pleasing collection of Poems which will ring into your conscious long after you have read it. And yes, you need to read it at least twice. Brilliant work by an exceptionally talented Poet. "Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear" I quote Sappho here. 
Amazon Link to Savage RoseAuthor's Page:  Helle Gade

Being A Father

Avval Avval ki dosti hai AbhiNonu is away to visit her paternal grandparents. She has left only couple of days back, but the gloomy silence that has descended seems to be century old. The days are old, gray and wrinkled with her thoughts, like dying, decaying sheets of moth-eaten pages. She calls me in the morning today and weeps for blocked nose. Nothing serious, change of weather, her mother tells me. She also tells me that Nonu told her that Baba would know what to do in such a situation. It was a leap of faith for the six year old, who also calls me Bhoolne waala Papu or forgetful father, on account of my absent-mindedness.
She knows that I would have no clue what to do. She also knows that I would have no way to reach out the treatment of common cold to her from Delhi, sitting hundreds of miles away. But she knew that she was calling her father. She wanted to share. A father is that not-so-good looking, not-so-smiling, angel who will have the cure to all our problems. The father is not only a moral compass for the child; it is a sense of reassurance. It is a roof which stretches over our heads. It is the first friend that the child has.
Wikipedia has an objective and absolutely absurd definition of the term ‘Father’. It reflects on the biological definition of the term, which is essentially based on an accident of nature. This is so thoroughly incorrect. Fatherhood, I had written once earlier, is no freak accident of nature. It is an act of wilfully accepted responsibility. It is the fact that from the first time those little palms cuddle around your finger, you let that little hear breath in your body and spirit. That is fatherhood, the song we fathers sing in unison with our kids, which is heard only by us. It is an difficult responsibility and overwhelming reality, a reality which overwhelms every other facets of your life. So many twitter profiles describe the person as Writer/ poets/Actor/ thinker and Father. Rarely have I seen a profile proclaiming being Son/Husband/brother with so much of sincerity.  Having had a child to me has always been a path-breaking event, something like the Birth of Christ or World war, splitting the life clearly into two identifiable Before and After segments.

I may not have all the answers for you. I may not be the wisest of all with all. I may not be the strongest man to protect, nor the richest one to provide for you. But I will be your father, and that is something which overwhelms me being an engineer, being a poet, a writer even a human being. I will always be there for you and will offer you hope if not resolution. I always be the one to whom you would always come to cuddle up and grieve when you need and smile when you are happy. Someday, you will grow up and will not need me anymore, or maybe, need me still but will be thrown into ignorance by all the education you will get. I will still be there unmoved like a lighthouse on the lonely shore, for the ships which may not visit it on some days. I will always be there for you. It is not me as a person, who will have answers to all the questions of your life. We all will face our own questions, but when you are tired by these long voyages, I, as a father will be the port of calling for you to rest and heal. It doesn’t matter if I am weak or stupid or do not know the cure for a blocked nose, I am the guardian of your hopes and custodian of your happiness, even when I am long gone. For the power and magic is not in the man who is called Father, it is in the term itself- Father or Baba, as you call me.

Narendra Modi's US Visit and what it means for India- My take

The media in India is going crazy about Modi's first visit to the United States. The global and American media reports are also being analysed and re-reported in Indian media for any trace of enthusiasm about the maiden visit of the newly appointed prime-minister of India. He had a warm welcome by the Indian diaspora and with the extravaganza at the iconic Madison Square in the New York. If reports are to be believed, the such crowds were seen to watch an Indian was in the Eighties when a show of Movie legend Amitabh Bachchan was held there. 
Beyond the cultural show, the demographics, the mouse and the Mars, the difference which is most visible in India of late, is the swagger which has suddenly appeared in our foreign policy. Our administration in a long time, visibly reached out to save citizens from strife-stricken areas. Our near memory struggles to find some such effort apart from appeals and sadly pathetic condemnations in the past, quite helpless, quite feeble. We would watch with admiration the distance a global power, say US or UK will to protect its citizens held in dangerous situations in foreign lands, and lament our benignly lame foreign policy. The evacuation of nurses was an act seen not in a long time.
Another wise thing on foreign policy perspective was to get out of the sibling infatuation with Pakistan. After initial attempt to improve on the relations, the hard position with breakdown of talks with Pakistan, is proving to be a right strategy, much to the chagrin of pundits of international policies. This has helped de-hyphenate the oft ill-used Indo-Pak, which is about the way white world, still elitist in approach looks at the 'natives', clubbing them together. India and Pakistan are no longer to be treated with same measure. Pakistan is a failed democracy, which needs army to negotiate the formation and well-being of government, while India is reaching Mars. Pakistan is investment to the US, India is a business proposition. Pakistan keeps looking at the past and two countries looking forward to future cannot engage with a country with unclear future, finding solace only in the past.     
India in this sense, has arrived to its near rightful position on the global arena. It is right time to stand straight, with unyielding spine and things will come around. India is the fulcrum on which the tilt of the new world will settle as China and the US move in gladiatorial dance in global economy. The US can keep on putting its weight behind the Pakistan, taking a patronising view of the two as equally errant child, while China keeps on pulling it on the other side with crude economic considerations without moral scruples irrespective of their own freshly encountered trouble with Islamic extremism. As demonstration for democracy continues in the HongKong, it is important for the US to come true to its stated position as guardian of democracy. Whether it will keep putting its weight behind, it's tax-payers money behind the country which runs a sham of democracy under the guardianship of armed forces, which offered shelter to the man pronounced the biggest enemy of United State, and which was marred with selling nuclear weapons technology to banned country and still had the gall of coming on global forum of UNGA2014 and called itself a responsible nuclear nation. 
At a moment as this, irrespective of what the US does, it is important for India to resign itself to being a passive player and join the war on ISIS. It is too small and futile to try to contain Indian people from joining ISIS. I would say, it is even counter-productive to keep them from escaping India to join ISIS. By all means, let them go and get killed there, rather than keeping them here, and offering a ground to practice religious fanaticism in India. If they want to go, they are already lost for humanity, demonstrable by their willingness to kill other humans in cold blood. Why would we want to keep such people here in India? This is not a time to dither, and get involved in such futile and ineffective measures and then falsely claim being a participant in the war for peace. It is also not a time for India to wait for the decisive nations to fight the just war and then step in as UN peacekeepers to clean the mess. It is the time for India to come out of the shadows of British commonwealth and state its considered position, without doubt and dither.  We can stay in shadow, keep running the middle path, but will surely face the risk of eventually be run over. Or we can reach out to the Sun and take a bite of it. As they say in Sanskrit, 'Vir bhogya Vasundhara' or 'The brave shall inherit the earth.'  

Discovering Scott F. Fitzgerald through His Letters

We are flooded with communications and a splurge of media is overwhelming our lives. The Social media is ubiquitous, addictive and imperiously intrusive in modern lives. It has fooled us to believe that it is a mode of communication, replacing something as humble and thoughtful as a letter. Communication is two people talking to each other, which is not the case with Social media. It talks at you. The letters, those humble things which arrived with promises and hope in the envelopes carried a little bit of the soul of the writer in them. When the reader read them, ran his or her fingers over the writings with ink smudged due to bad nib, damp weather or tears, we touched the other person. The fact that writing letters took time and effort made it impossible for one not to leave something of oneself on those pages. The letters tell you a lot about the person who wrote them and therefore reading letters of historical figures is a re-discovery of the great minds and souls as thinking, breathing, feeling individuals, long after they are gone. Most letters are an act of vulnerability, a willingness to expose the self.It is therefore, very interesting and charming to read letters of great writers. The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald always attracted me, for the writing style is quite divergent for the most part from his literary writing style. But through the objectivity of his letters, makes Scott appear more human, more real to us than we could ever imagine. We take a look at how different aspects of the life of the great creator of masterpieces like The Great Gatsby, Other Side of Midnight, The Beautiful and The Damned, which is unfolded in a collection of epistolary writing, A Life In Letters ,  edited and put out by Mathew J. Bruccoli. I landed up with this treasure through internet references of his famed letter to his daughter, Scotty, with fatherly advice to his growing daughter, something which Slate correspondent Amanda Hesssays keeps on going viral every six months. Apart from the letter to ‘Dear Scotty’, there are several which makes us not only understand Scott Fitzgerald as a writer, but as a father, as a friend and as a husband. These letters fill colors into the persona of the writer, creates several dimensions to Scott Fitzgerald. Letters tell us of the writer’s real interpretation of the world around him and how it reflects into his own life. Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby  holds uncanny resemblance to Scott Fitzgerald, a poor struggling writer, observing the world of decadent prosperity with the objectivity of an outsider, awestruck and wistful, at once, at the lack of soul in the charming and glittering world. When we read Fitzgerald’s letters lamenting his pecuniary troubles, while living in pulsating fast life of Hollywood, we know how he would so artfully and honestly write about it. We understand the honesty of the writer, writing while writhing in enormous pain.

The collection of his letters constitutes for a significant part his communications with his editor, Maxwell Perkins, while the latter was working with Charles Scribner’s Sons.  Their relationship began with The Romantic Egotist, written during the war, which after initial rejection by Scribner in 1919, finally reached the people as This Side of Paradise on March 26, 1920. In the backdrop euphoric success of the novel, which Fitzgerald called as “a quest novel”, FSF quickly married Zelda, within a week. This started a strangely strained relation of love, which was doomed from the beginning but which eventually survived till the very end, one would believe, solely on unflinching romanticism of Fitzgerald. Zelda had one week before the success of the book rejected Scott on account of his poverty and the same seemed to have found its way in Gatsby’s “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys”. He loved Zelda nevertheless as these letters tell us, hopelessly, through her ambitions, her efforts to come out of the shadow of her brilliant husband and bouts of depression.

We discover Fitzgerald as a tired, broken man, and an immaculate writer. It is great to find how Perkin’s relationship with Hemingway did not eclipse his relationship with Fitzgerald even at the time when they were at the bitter ends after initial bouts of admiration.  In a world of shifting loyalties, Fitzgerald comes across as a man given to lasting relationship even in professional sphere. His relationships not only his editor, Max Perkins, but also with his Agent Harold Ober, lasted till the end of his short but astonishingly prolific and productive creative life.  

His Letters:

He is as witty, as honest and as amusing in his letters as he is in his writings. The dry sincerity appears so often in his letter and is so charming and holds truth even to this day. He is unsparing in his advises and admonishment, for instance, when he writes to his sister, Annabel  Fitzgerald in 1915- "No two people look alike in same thing…Shopkeepers make money on the fact that fat Mrs Jones will buy the hat that looked well on the thin Mrs. Smith." He takes intense interest in people around. He understands himself and the world around. He writes to his mother having enlisted in army having left Princeton, “to a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing. I have never been more cheerful.” 

Scott is a confident writer, having discovered his voice early in his writing life as he writes to Shane Leslie in 1917 “My novel isn’t a novel in verse- it merely shifts rapidly from verse to prose.” It clearly demonstrates the seriousness with which FSF approached his art even at the start of his literary career and he confidently writes to Scribners, “I really believe that no one else could have written so searchingly the story of the youth of our generation..” and even proceeds to write to Shane Leslie “Did you ever notice that remarkable coincidence- Bernard Shaw is 61 yrs old, H. G. Wells is 51, GK Chesterton 41, you’re 31 and I’m 21- All the great authors of the world in arithmetical progression.” – Audaciously optimistic or prophetic?

He does falter in his judgment when he writes to his agent and friend for life, Ober in 1922 regarding his play “It is a wonder, I think, and should make a great deal of money.” Of course, the play was bust and did not make any money. His friendship with Max goes deeper as he begins sharing his moments of self-doubt which every writer does as he writes in March 1923, “I doubt if, after all, I’ll ever write anything again worth putting in print.” A self-observant writer, he laments in April 1923 that “I’ve-well, almost deteriorated in the last three years since I finished The Beautiful and The Damned ” in letter to Max. He is sad, analytical, and unsparing when he writes further that had he written The Beautiful and The Damned at his current rate of 100 words a day, it would have taken him four years to write it, and sadly mentions “the moral effect the whole chasm” left on him.

He is a talented man spiraling towards his doom. That is the sad fate of every man of talent. He is too exposed and his constant struggle to contain his misery becomes so sad, his plight- too pathetic. He escaped to Paris. He writes The Great Gatsby , and writes to Max that it is “about the best American novel ever written”- an accurate premonition, only to come true much after his death. He meets Ernest Hemingway in 1924 and writes to Max about it (later Max would also become editor to Hemingway, while FSF’s relation with Hemingway will deteriorate as latter would look down at sensitive nature of Fitzgerald though the mutual literary admiration will remain). He expressed worries as he writes to Max that he is tired of being the writer of The Other Side of Paradise . He writes to H L Mencken in 1925 with an endearing honesty, “I want to be extravagantly admired again.”

What brings him and keeps him close to Max is clear in his letter dated 20th of November, 1924, which is something of a critique of The Great Gatsby- A shared love for literature, two worshipers of words. Max explains wonderfully the eyes of Eckleberg, the personality description of Tom Buchanan and the deliberate vagueness in the character of Jay Gatsby. In February 15th, 1925, he respectfully makes amends and writes to him that he had “brought Gatsby to life and accounted for his money.” These conversations holds lessons for the due respect and seriousness with which each story and each character in the story ought to be treated. In another letter in 1934, written to Rosalind, Zelda’s sister, he sorrowfully writes about writers who are like, untrained doctors, who “walk into a John Hopkins this afternoon, asking for a scalpel and an appendicitis patient, on the basis that I had an uncle who was a doctor, and people told me in my youth that I would make a good surgeon.”

Scott Fitzgerald, a great writer, always in financial difficulty, always in debt, something like the great Urdu Poet, Mirza Ghalib, comes out as a painfully honest man when he writes to Max seeking lower royalty for The Great Gatsby than the earlier book on the ground of compensating for the advances Max had given to him. To be fair to Max, he writes in to FSF, asking if there is some reason to lower royalty. It is this kind of honesty and fairness in professional relationship which forms the foundation of friendship. His fairness even in literary matters is quite evident in the letter written in April 1925 to Willa Carther, referring to the idea which he borrowed from her book A Lost Lady . It takes courage and commitment to honesty and surely trust in one’s own station in literary life which is quite visible here. He writes that he held similar idea for long time but gracefully concedes that his own idea was “neither so clear, nor so beautiful, nor so moving as your (Ms. Carther’s)”. It is such magnanimity of nature which makes Fitzgerald not only a great writer but a likeable man in spite of all his failings.

By 1925, Scott Fitzgerald was a drowning man, gasping for his breath, quite contrary to rich, shiny and confident characters he wrote about. He writes to Ober in March, 1925, “I don’t know what the matter with me is. I can’t seem to keep out of debt.” The frustration over the ground shifting swiftly from under his feet appears here. He was a writer of the 20s and demise of 20s saw his own life going down, Zelda goes the hospital for the first time. His sadness comes through when he writes to Zelda Fitzgerald in 1930 that “there seemed to be nothing left of happiness in the world anywhere I looked.” The same decadent lifestyle which he wrote about in his story, slipped into Fitzgerald household as Zelda complains in a letter, “I couldn't go into the stores to buy clothes and my emotions became blindly involved.”

His letters to Ms. Fraces Scott Fitzgerald, his beloved daughter Scotty, in those gray days in August, 1933, as she was twelve years old. A loving father, he gives great advices to Scotty, telling her not to worry about popular opinion, or dolls or past or future. There is friendly, very charming father-daughter banter when Scott Fitzgerald threatens naming her Egg in return of her calling him Pappy. His affection for Scottie is profound, where he deliberates deeply on the future for her in the letter to Rosalind referred above. By 1935, he was trying to get over his infamous alcoholism, struggling with ever-failing health of Zelda. He tries hard to be a stern, disciplinarian father, in the throes of desperation, knowing that life was failing him. He loves her, adores her but still wants to keep her in discipline and tells her, “you are an only child, but that doesn’t give you any right to impose on that fact”; advises her to inculcate a scientific bend of mind, study calculus and geometry. His love for her is most profound when he writes to CO Kalman about Scottie that “I want to bring Scottie …and seeing her, you will see how much I still have to live for, in spite of a year in a slough of despond.” He advises her many thing, parenting in absentia, many things which even today makes sense, for instance, to keep her scholastic head above the extra-curricular activities, or not very surprising advise on writing, telling her, ”A good style simply doesn't form unless you absorb half a dozen top flight authors every year."  

His love for life, his undying optimism is almost similar to that of Jay Gatsby. He is a man in absolutely sad state, failing health, dwindling finances and a heavy sense of duty as he writes to Max, “Scottie must be educated and Zelda can’t starve.” He wrote to Scottie in 1938, with a sad sign when he mentions that he will not be able to continue writing to her for many years, he mentions that “my chief desires in life was to keep you from being that kind of person, one who brings ruin to themselves and others…It is a different story if you have spent two years doing no useful work at all, improving neither your body nor your mind, but only writing reams and reams of dreary letters to dreary people…” he declares that “I am no longer interested in your promissory notes but only in what I see.”

He is in the throes of sadness, but like Gatsby, he still feels it is possible to keep love alive when everything else is morbid and dying around you. He writes to Zelda, in 1938, “Oh Zelda, this was to have been such a cold letter, but I don’t feel that way about you. Once we were one person and always it will be little that way.”  He hoped still. I wonder if he whispered to himself in the solitary nights as he wrote his last and unfinished “The Love of Last Tycoon” those immortal words of Gatsby, “..the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but then that’s no matter, to-morrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further..and one fine morning..”.  One cannot but feel the loss at the death of such a great writer at the early age of 44 and one cannot look at the great body of art that the skillful writer produced in such short span. 

(Scott F Fitzgerald was borne on 24th of September 1896 and wrote great novels like The Other Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and The Damned,  and numerous stories within a span of 44 years, when he died by a sudden heart attack while working on The Last Tycoon. I have, as a writer been always in awe of the great style and profundity of his work and of course, I get carried away (so I learned through the rejection of this piece). But a tribute need not be stylistically correct, it needs to be heartfelt. ) 



My review of The Great Gatsby
Reference :F. Scott Fitzgerald- A Life in Letters- By Matthew J Bruccoli Further readings and References:
The Great Gatsby
This Side of Paradise
The Beautiful and The Damned