Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 27

Book Review- The Insulted and Humiliated- By Fyodor Dostoyevesky

There are books and there are books. There are books which you read, dreamy eyed, amid slothful slumbers, floating between various stages spread between consciousness and unconsciousness. But then there are books which hit you hard out of your stupor, pulls you out of a protective Utopian shell of false well being, churns your heart and makes you want to cry out the truth which you encounter in those pages. This Novel by the great Russian is one such book. Having read it and wept over the pages, it makes you want to wander around Nietzsche's Madman with lantern in his hands. It exposes one with the sadness in this world which embraces the Earth in its grey dullness which extends across the continuum. Right when you are so dispirited to jump off the cliff, you find an audacious and stubborn dawn struggling to break free on the farthest end of the gloomy dark sky. This gloom, the dark and the sudden light at the end is wherein lies the beauty of the book. 






Typical of Dostoevsky, the story does not play with character to put forward a high flying banner message. It creates living, breathing people and delves deep into the hearts of the characters and looks at their trials and tribulation and the message which comes out is natural derivation and incidental. The characters are developed with love and patience and grow into the story. 




The story is formed out of two sub-plots converging into one in the latter part of the story. Ivan Petrovich, or Vanya as he is fondly called is a writer and narrator of the story. He is the bridge which connects the two sub-plots, each with parallel thoughts. On one side of the plot is Natasha daughter of Nikolai Ikhmenev, who Vanya, an adopted child of the landlord had grown up with and is silently in love with. This love lingers through the lives of Natasha and Vanya, while the world around them moves fast. Aloysha or Prince Alexey is the son of scheming and wily Prince Valkovsky- former being a grown up, egoistic child. Prince Alexey's world revolves around himself and while he falls in love with Natasha, the difference in their temperaments, maturity and perspective of love, results in immense pain, particularly for Natasha. Nikolai and Prince Valkovsky, are connected to each other by a common history, and the time of story engaged in legal battle, wherein, the Prince wrongly accuses the Nikolai with embezzling his money and the upright and moral landlord is decided on getting his name cleared. Both the parents oppose the union of the star-crossed lovers for different reason, Prince- because it disturbed his plans of regaining his slipping wealth and Nikolai- because he hated the prince for betrayal and hurting his honor. Natasha, totally in love with the young prince leaves her home, her parents. Vanya, acutely aware of hopelessness of the situation, for himself, for Natasha helps her elope, if that could be a word. He himself bleeds in pain, as Dostoevsky writes, " All my happiness was ruined from that moment, and my life was broken in half. I felt that poignantly..My thoughts we num; my legs were giving way beneath me. And that is the story of my happiness. " Anyone who has loved and lost can identify with how life splits in to two defined epochs of before and after kind of situations, colored in strong contrasts and how masterly the author writes it. Vanya gets them together, and lost, defeated reaches his home. In such moments of poignant defeat the dimensions of the world around us changes, it either expands with such rapidity that we gasp for breath or it shrinks so quickly that there is no place left for us to stand in sanity. Ivan says, "As it got darker my room seemed to grow larger and larger, as though the walls were retreating." Nikolai breaks down with what he looks as an act of thorough betrayal by his daughter. 




This is the saddest part of love which this novel writes about and yet the most profound- the love for the child. He struggles with himself to conquer the stubborn feeling of love which survives and even at times overpower the anger, betrayal and defeat which his loving daughter brought on him. To describe love between man and woman as lovers could be easier, but the describe love between a father and his child, in the middle of anger, defeat and a sense of loss takes rare delicacy of pen. Any father's heart would melt away when he reads how helpless Nikolai is when he wants to curse his daughter but is unable to bring himself up to the required hardness of heart to be able to do so. Dostoevsky writes here," In solitude, unseen by all, he had gazed at the face of his adored child with infinite love, had gazed and could not gaze enough;..he had to shut himself from everyone to talk to his precious Natasha, imagining her replies and answering them himself; and at night with agonizing grief, with suppressed sobs, he had caressed and kissed the dear image, and instead of curses involved forgiveness and blessings on her whom he would not see and cursed before others." - which father's heart would not wring and bleed reading this? The sadness, the grief and profound love can soften the hardest of the heart. Natasha remembers how her father loved her as a little girl; a grown-up child  but is helpless in the face of the love of the prince which she opted for and laments that I should be a woman..It's never entered his head...even if he (Nikolai) did forgive me he'd meet quite a different person now. 

As Vanya predicted and forewarned Natasha, the prince leaves her. He falls for mechanization of his father and is victim of his own inadequacy as he laments" she (Natasha) loves me too much, so that it's all out of proportion, and I suffer for it, and she too".  Soft of resolve and unsteady of mind, and meets up with Katerina with whom he eventually marries.




A parallel story runs of an old man, Smith, who dies in a cafe. Vanya, coincidentally is there at the time when Smith dies, together with his dog, Azorka. He takes up Smith's lodging, and finds a visitor, an impoverished, little girl of fourteen, Nellie. The girl is rescued from her distressing circumstances by Vanya. She stays with him, but is marred by several factors like her distrust of people, her past, her ill-health (she is epileptic) and her own feelings for Vanya, which she fails to understand well. At the advise of Natasha's mother, Vanya advises Nellie to join Nikolai household, who refuses as she hates the fact that Nikolai had abandoned his daughter for false pride. She then shares with Vanya, that her mother, was abandoned by her grandfather on account of her marriage which Smith did not approve of. The story painfully sad at the first time told to Vanya, breaks all bounds of grief, as if a there was tears raining from the skies, when she narrates how Smith ran with his grand-daughter when he learnt that his daughter, abandoned by him, was dying and could reach her only to find her dead. She tells that Azorka was the dog, Smith gifted to his daughter, and tells Nikolai, "When Mother left, she left Azorka behind. And that's why he was so fond of Azorka. He didn't forgive mother, but when the dog died, he died too."  This story moves Nikolai who forgives Natasha, abandoned by then by the immature, young prince, and brings her back home. Nellie, in the middle of epileptic fits surrenders to death, but with hope as she witnesses her beloved Vanya finding love in Natasha. 

It is a simple tale, which touches the reader on account of sheer honesty and force of emotions. When you close the book, having finished it, you smile in tears. I did, as I kissed my five year old daughter, who was fast asleep by then. This book transcends time, nationality and gender.




It is one such book which one reviews as a tribute. These are the books when not read are not a loss for the book or the reader, but a loss for the reader who went to the bookshelf and did not pick this book up. 




Ratings: 5/5 (Since more can not given)




Must read for all readers of literature, writers and fathers and daughters.

First published: 1861

The Insulted and Humiliated- Amazon Link

No Country for Young Kids

We as a country have numbed down.
The politicians, out of their own wily designs call it a resilient spirit.  They fool us out of their obvious incompetence, and confuse us with a helpless courage with which they credit us. What
we are is a citizenry which has lost all hope, and which is as trivial and
useless as the leaders that govern it. A soldier was killed in UK and it
created a global furor, with the UK PM condemning the incident and the
governments across the world coming in solidarity.  The following week six soldiers were killed
and we greeted the news with our usual silence. It is not only about the
governance, and how far in their incompetence the leaders will go; It is about
how far we as citizens will go. The killing of soldier was not only marked by
the PM of the country coming in to condemn it and getting visibly engaged right
till the funeral. It was also marked by thousands who came out on streets to
grieve the dead soldier. We are a dead society led by a dead leadership. We
treat things which others across the world find condemnable and worthy of
society-wide disgust as usual and then do not seek answers from the leaders.





It is neither our innocence nor
our nobility which keeps us quiet. It is our shallow selfishness as a
collective which kills us as a nation. On Thursday, my five year old was out to
her dance school. She was late to return by thirty minutes, as it turned out,
on account of the School Van breaking down. I went out in Pyjamas downstairs to
her school, which was walking distance from the residence. I walked with a deep
sense of remorse and guilt of not being able to drop her myself to the dance
school and an unnerving fear. However, she turned up at the door right then,
with her smile and two ponytails, dancing on that beautiful head. My worry,
guilt and nervousness were washed away by the sudden sense of relief. My daughter came back, angelic and smiling, but soon I was to learn of twenty three kids who were to never return home from their school.





In the evening, I
watched the Television and was hit hard on the consciousness with the News of
twenty three kids who died of poisoning of Mid-day Meal served by the government
to the kids in the government school. 
The midday meal was initiated by TN government, though some say inspired
by few schools in Saurashtra, in 1960s later on adopted by many states and
mandated for by the Supreme Court in 2001. The scheme essentially provides food
to kids when they attend the schools. The schools in turn get the food from the
NGOs, many of them being second refuge of scoundrels, the first being politics.
The scheme was introduced and let to be run on its own without monitoring and
governance. That is where a money-making opportunity was discovered by the
people. The relatives of the school authority provided the ration, often of
dubious quality which was paid for through government subsidies. The pattern is
common across the country without any centralized, well-monitored procurement
of food grains and other ration which is used for preparing the food for the
poor unsuspecting kids. The scheme has been fraught with scams for long, which
included poor quality food, government provided ration being diverted to
private traders. The leadership as usual, runs the who hog of insensitivity,
from thwarting the well-meaning directives of  courts as interference into policy making,
then bound by regulations and stuck in the middle by public visibility
implementing it, and thereby claiming the credit for it, and the allowing the
scheme  to wither away and ending in a
squalid mess by exemplary administrative sloth and disinterest.





We can blame the government and then
go again in 2014 voting for the candidates basis the caste and religious waves.
Are we such self-centered idiots who are left with no trace of conscience left
in our conduct? Our kids do not understand religion or caste, and they are
doing before they could understand anything because we understand nothing but
religion and caste. We are a decaying society not because of poor governance,
but because of our own stupidity which allows this poor governance to
propagate. Market surveys show that kids education and kids product are a high potential
market. Not because the kids are going to walk into the malls with loads of
cash and spend it on themselves, but because we as parents are going to try to
provide them with the best that we can provide. But that is about things, what
about the country that we are going to provide to our kids when we are long
gone? Are we going to let our kids be ignored by the governance, getting them
dead, maimed, raped in the country simply because they cannot vote. To protect
the young, all living beings bring out all the weapons which nature has made
available to them-vote is our weapon, aren’t we going to close our eyes and
think of the twenty three dead in Bihar school and Gudiyas of the world and then
think of our own kids before approaching the ballot box? Are we going to listen
to what the kids with their big, loving eyes ask from us or are we going to
listen to the frenzy created by caste-leaders and religious leaders? We owe
this to our children. We must remember, to quote Oscar Wilde-“Children begin by
loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they
forgive them.” Will we be forgiven by our children for the world which we leave
for them? We embrace our kids closely as we watch the father of a girl breaking
down on Television, remembering who his daughter asked for two rupees before
going for school and could never return from the school to get it from her
father, and we are sad and guilt-ridden with uneasy conscience, but is that
enough? For how long do we live with shifting responsibilities and denials? Are we going to demand election manifestos to spell out what plans in concreted framework terms they have for our kids, or are we going to still allow our own fears  and insecurities to dictate our actions?

 

Writer or a Right-er?- Righteousness in Writing

Isn't it unfair to insist that stories should be cleansed to match the fanatic measure of moralism and righteousness. A story doesn't need to be a lecture or an essay in morality. I had recently shared an immensely beautiful, intricately ornate paragraph, picked out from "Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad on a social media site. As a rare one for me, I received an almost immediate response, objecting to the fact that women, some women was blamed for some sorry state of affair. Why women? was the theme of comment.

 

I was totally lost. The context was not there, agreed. But it wasn't supposed to be. It was written with a broad notice that it was an excerpt, which I was sharing simply because how exquisitely words were woven into that paragraph by the master wordsmith. The near-poetic feel of the prose was mesmerizing. It wasn't a political statement, neither from me, not from the writer. I could not understand the indignation.  

 

In my view, Every stories need both sides, as arrogant as stubborn as the other for one of them to prevail. Every writer takes a position initially when he writes a story. Story-writing is driven by two things, one- to propagate a position which is dear to the writer and Two- to tell an enchanting tale, purely out of a sense of sharing. Even when the case is former, still, the writer needs to have two sides. The two sides are represented by two characters, two forces in the story, who take diametrically opposite position and who have enough arguments on their respective sides to keep the story engrossing. The struggle, the drama arise from the two contradictory positions. If the two were to speak the same language, take same position, story becomes tame, rather it is no longer a story, it becomes an essay, a viewpoint.

 

The writer wears a mask of neutrality till the end, when he throws his weight behind the preferred point of view and lets the reader know where his sympathies lie. The insistence on the story not to have anything racial/communal/political/ gender- biased will kill a story. Any righteous fanaticism will kill the spirit of a story and kill its purpose. All kind of fanaticism kills free thought and thus kills literature and we must be watchful against it. We need to have characters speaking in different language through the story for the truth to emerge. All fanaticism rest on unyielding, unbending position. This can exist on either side of the divide. "All women are goddess and divine" is as ridiculous a position as is "All men as animals", thought the former carries the garb of neutrality and progressive thought. Life does not breath in absolutes. We are all children of gray. We live and prosper in our inherent contradictions. To insist to paint one class as absolutely divine is as much an insult to intellect as is to paint a class as criminal.

 

A writer can be a crusader of truth and justice, but truth and justice by the very nature of them are derived facts. You can not start a discussion with absolute fact and you can surely not write a story based on absolute fact. The story needs to tease you, guide and beckon you to the truth which itself can have many colors and hues. We all need to discover our own truths through the literature we peruse. The premise ought to evolve, the position ought to develop. The beauty lies in the contrasts. Through the contrasts, truth emerges- between Man and woman, Light and dark, ecstasy and gloom, dread and courage, confusion and clarity. A writer can not decide for you, he can merely be a light in which you may see.

Why I Write Gloomy?

 

I am not a writer. Well, at least not in the strict sense of the word. I do not have a room with a door which I would happily be willing to shut (to quote from Stephen Kind, who wrote, well, On writing, a pre-condition to be a writer is to "Have a room with a door and be willing to shut it) ; My books are not largely read, though I do compete strongly with Schopenhauer's first book which sold thirty two copies in all. My writings does not pay my bills and I do not have publishers lining up my door with Multi-million dollars contract. I have never been a banker, in this life or other, to make the matter worse, I have been spectacularly mediocre in Finance subjects in my Masters.



But I write. I started writing long time ago when I was a child, and just as Maugham, I took to writing as a duck takes to swimming. I wrote as a matter of necessity. I would think a lot about things which are as per adult advise are better left alone. I would mostly have more questions than answers. Those were questions which would leave the adults to whom I would pose them, evasive, disappointed with themselves, annoyed and violent in extreme cases. None of these were conducive for a dialectic learning. I therefore, turned inwards and by my stupidity which found no answers and by my stubbornness which refused to accept lack of logic, began writing. Writing was my debate with myself.

It sometimes gave answers, sometimes it ended up with failed debate offering no answer. But when answer will not coming floating through the dark skies, I would still be at peace for having tried and reached a point of conclusion-which was that no answer was possible.

 

Then suddenly, one day I got busy in living life and stopped pondering over it, thereby writing about it. But then as suddenly, one day I began writing again after I had the kid. I sought for something to leave behind for her. As some one said, first part of life is to gain legitimacy, second is too gain legacy. I sought to gain legacy, not in the strictest of the term. I did not seek to ensure my daughter will someday publish my notes which will sell as widely as "The Movable Feast" of Hemingway. But I want to leave her with my thoughts. I want her to know what I lived for. So I began writing seriously. I wrote a collection of Essays. I wrote some poems and short stories in the intermittent time. Then I sat myself down to write a Novel. It began with a vague idea. It is a work in progress. Even the novel is not progressing, I am progressing thinking about it. That is the beauty of writing, both the work and the Creator, together, are work in progress by virtue of writing.

 

The more I wrote, the more I realised that it is not a work of languor. It is not an easy job. To quote Joseph Conrad, "Just as the possession of long range arms do not make one a warrior", writing is much more than collection of vocabulary. I posit that It requires a certain softness of Heart, a certain tenacity of intent, a certain stiffness of spine, some tears  and blood mixed in an enchanting voice to make a writer. So I wrote, with difficulty, with uncertain steps. I received encouragement from friends, mostly out of their love for me as a person, but rarely as I would like to believe, on account of their love for what I wrote and their trust that what I write has answer not only for me, but also for them in some unknown ways. I worked on by novel and shared some bit of it on social media. It is a great encouraging force. It takes away some of the loneliness of literary pursuits. 

 

Then one of the friend wrote that I write with a very gloomy voice. And it set me thinking. She was indeed, very write. But isn't write inherently gloomy ? For some reason, to me, it has always been that and nothing around me could be singularly blamed for that. I grew up as an only child, given to much questioning of the ways of world in my introvert inquisitiveness. Much of the world, I did not understand, little which I did was not much likable. My growing up alone was part of the problem, other part of the problem was me, of what I was. But then what was so humorous about life, apart from people growing fat and occasionally falling on Banana peels. We invented happiness, rationalized and brought a forced peace on ourselves. When we do not get love, we teach ourselves not to want anything from anyone, when fate is unkind to us, we seek retribution in after-life.

 

I can not carry the deceptions of real life into my virtual world of writing. It is therefore, unavoidable that by world of writing will never be insanely happy. It will carry the sense of gloom as its leitmotif. The gray clouds will hang over its being and the bright light of felicity will make rare visit to this world which I create. It will not be happy with an intent, but I promise myself, It at the same time will not be not be sad with deliberate intent. It is a world that not only feels, but also thinks and it refuses to be happy when it is unable to find reason for the same. It is a world which refuses the temptations to fool itself into false sense of well-being when telling signs of grief are writ large on its skies. It will be happy on occasions, but it will be rare and mild, like the welcoming Sun in the winters, and it will not be unending and excruciatingly incessant Sun of the summers. I will not evade in my writing world of truth as I do in the real world. It will grind me, crush me but I assure you a fragrance so rare will rise from it that it will bring tranquil beauty to the life which will outlive me. That will be the movable feast for the readers, who against their better judgement will ever read me.

 

 I look at happy people around, laughing with abandon in Coffee houses around the world, people, in love, holding hands softly, oblivious to the world around, with an unblemished faith for it to be eternal and never-ending. But in my world, nothing is constant, Not happiness, not gloom.  Those men in coffee houses, those beautiful lovers holding hands, those kids playing with their parents are not aware, not at the moment, but I am, for I view things from a different vantage point, and I can not be blind to it. I do not suggest them to sult the ephemeral, but to appreciate it. A poignant air hovers over the pages which I write on at all the time, which I can not escape. If I were to not write about it, it would be a lie. Who would want to read a lie? that is a question and even bigger, existential question for me is, Who would want to write a lie? I can not promise you a hilarious tome, a laughter, a perpetual smile, but I can only promise you a sublime truth, which will initially annoy and even disgust you, but will eventually bring in a peace which will stand the scrutiny of reason. It will not exist to please you, but it will exist because it has to, and it will then please you with its sincerity. People with rare talent can write with great wit about the injustices and discrepancies of life, but then such writers are rare and such talent is rare. They can tell truth with humor, but we all can not be Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain. We can only be the best of what we are capable of being. I can not even think to pretend to be anything as such. As a writer to understand what I am capable of, and write accordingly. My reality is to immerse my being in immense pain and then rise from the depths of it with a truth which breathes hidden in the riverbed of the life. As writer, we create unreal world through which we propagate our thoughts and tell our stories. We are the only real part in the world which we create, and as writer we ought not compromise on that. Every writer in my view, ought not to abandon himself and for the hardship of pursuing his own style, should take consolation in the words of Joseph Conrad who wrote-"Where a novelist has an advantage over the workers in other fields of thought is his privilege of freedom- the freedom of expression and the freedom of confessing his innermost beliefs- which should console him for the hard slavery of the pen.

Book Review- Notes From Underground- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Honesty is a lightening that shines bright across the sky, as deadly, as sudden and as brutal. In a sudden flash, through raging squalls, suddenly the dead, dark Earth breathes into life for a moment as the white light spreads across its face with a sudden urgency. It is this feature which makes life worth living in spite of all its inherent bitterness, and which redeems any literature. The truth which slowly crawls across wonderfully and delicately crafted words, makes it alive, and the truth of life shines in the lightening of the honest penmanship, like a passive earth in the sudden lightening in a night rain. 




Fyodor Dostoyevesky's "Notes from The Underground" is one such book. I started reading this book, a sad and lonely epoch of my life, thrown away from the family for a longish travel on work. It is untrue that when you are down and depressed, you want to read something bright and sunny to lift you up. At least for me it is untrue. When I am down and out, I like reading something pensive and sad, something which churns the innards of my thoughts even further. It is only through immenseness of grief does peace for me emerges again. With a clear plan of such masochistic endeavour I picked this book. But I did dread that the book figures in the list of all great classic must-read, and worried that I should not grow bored of heavy writing, before my gloom could rise so high to the skies so as to cover the sun with the darkest clouds. Usually, such books are said to grow on you slowly if you could give them time. But, I get bored easily and thus picked this with some trepidation of never being able to finish it.




The book rose in a sudden gush and held me in an tight embrace. There are few books which enamour  you with such suddenness, and it is not cunning craft, rather honest insolence which endears you enough to make the book what is called, unputdownable. The book held me by the collar, so hard that it bruised the neck, and I am sure so it could anyone near the middle age from either end, when the narrator says, "To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral." 




The novel narrates the thoughts of a government officer, on the wrong side of forty, full of spite directed largely at his own self. He pitied his own life, having lived it with mediocre achievements and a subdued intellect, in a consolation which he describes with brutal honesty as he writes,"Now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously and it is only the fool who becomes anything."

 

The narrator, the protagonist retires from government service. He begins the notes with an admission of having been a "spiteful official" and substantiates it admitting that he "was rude and took pleasure in being so."

He however, introspects deeper and comes out with a eureka finding- that he was incapable of being spiteful. We all know how it is- we believe ourselves to be decent men, but still get swayed by the stray power we might be holding over other people's lives, howsoever insignificantly, howsoever momentarily. We enjoy those moments which takes us out of our inconsequential existence and we love playing near-god in such moment and at the end of it, become complete devil. We kill our conscience little by little throughout our growing up till one day we are carrying nothing but a ghost of a conscience on our weary shoulders. Which is still fine, till you do not notice the stench of morbidity which follows our existence. More often than not, one day like the government official whose note one is reading in these pages. But then he realises how others around them carry the same dead baggage on their respective bent backs, and therefore he claims he does not want forgiveness from them or does not intend to amuse them, since they are leading an existence as shallow and as meaningless as his own.

 

The narrator endears himself immensely to the readers when he plainly admits having quit his job not on an account of a new found sense of justice, but simply because a relation left him with six thousand roubles in will. Money is a close substitute to a living conscience. It washes away all sense of guilt and allows one to be honest about his own character. And then there is no apology, this is not a confession of a sinner, he subject himself to the most brutal treatment when he refuses to take shelter in the immortal human shield- the rationale. He says that one would explain to oneself, that "one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel." He contests that there is no refuse for a man who has seen his own soul naked and exposed. He can only torture himself and find some solace in the self-inflicted punishment.. as "in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position."



In the second part- A Propos the Wet Snow, the narrator than takes you back to the time when he was twenty four. He was a young man of living intellect and for that very reason disliked the clerks he worked with. Ah.. the pain of surviving a living intellect, to feel much and know little. We all do that and punish ourselves incessantly on that account. "A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standards for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments." He kept on feeling "I am alone and they are everyone" - Who doesn't feel that way, maybe those who carry stupid grins on their faces all through the day don't, but every one else. He makes an every working man's confession (at least for every working young man) that he " despised my official work and did not openly abuse it simply because I was in it myself and got a salary for it." He struggles against faceless and nameless mediocrity and even dreams of getting into a bar-brawl in a tavern. Instead he is pushed aside, without any deliberate intention by an officer, as he stood in the way. He is bitter, reduced into ignominy of unacknowledged presence, as he writes "I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me." He dreams of getting into a quarrel with the officer, but fails to do so.



The intellect forced him into a solitude, from which he felt need to come out of time and again, much to his own disappointment, he went to his superior on such occasions, when ..dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my fellows and all mankind...at least, one human being, actually existing. He goes to meet his school friends, much successful in life than the narrator, planning for a farewell party to one of them, Zverkov, an officer in army for was getting transferred away. He gets himself invited to the party and when treated with spite, to use one of Fyodor's most loved word in this book, goes off the handle. The sad solitude, bitter insignificance with which he lived in silence, suddenly explodes and he fights with his friends. He flees from there and encounters the prostitute Liza. He enters into sermonizing her in an attempt to redeem his insignificance and mediocrity. He promises her freedom from  a life of prostitution inviting her to his house for "Its rightful mistress there to be." Out of the impact of alcohol and free of any grand ideas about his own being, he is embarrassed of his projected grandness and his reality which was poor, weak and base. He turns her away.



He closes his notes with sad acknowledgement how we all have established molds of right behavior and that "we are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man."

This novella holds you by your ears and makes you look at the limp persona which we have become, and pulls us up to try to stand on our own uniqueness. No wonder, Dostoyevesky found appreciation in none less than Nietzsche who said about "Notes from Underground" that it "cried truth from blood."

This book on account of its intellectual greatness and longevity (it was published in 1864), needs no recommendation. It is a wonderful book which should be read by all those who, as per Fyodor Dostoyevesky, are vulgar enough to live beyond forty.



Recommendation- Absolutely must read.

Amazon Link - Notes from Underground

On Father's Day

Five years and a month backI lived,In and out of love,Love,Which much to my chagrinWould not spread Over my head in a continuum.
I was neededBut not so much,I was lovedBut never so much
The longingShadowed the moonsOf brightest nightsAnd cloudsFelt hanging in the cleanest skies.
The journey of centuriesWhich traversed,Across several birthsGasped and limped,With broken breathAnd battered soul.
And thenFive years and a month backA head with scant hairsLooked at meWith barely open Blue eyes.I droppedA finger towards youAnd your soft, pink, palmCuddled over it,Securing it As a comforting coast Does to the anchor Of a tired ship.
We went on walksWhile you Smiled and scared back Like a little Buddha In the small bed of yoursSet in the stroller,In the park andYou saw the ducksFor the first time,And with youI evidenced life for the first time,Drunk in our firsts, We smiled as friends.
You would walkHolding my handsWith uncertain stepsJoining the larger humanityAs a new entrantBreaking off from The fraternity of toy hood To which you seemed to belong.
As the novelty of walks wanedYou would hang by my beingBegging to be pickedAnd once pickedWould beg to sit on the shoulder.Over the yearsA certain deftness and dexterity You have earnedAs you would swiftly Climb through the lap to the  Shoulder,No longer needing to Balance yourself by pulling on my hair.
I remember that pulling of my hairs, Which you no longer needTo resort to,And dread the dayWhen I won't Even have your weight on my shoulders As you will growToo big And I will grow too feebleAnd as the circle completesWe will go back to our first connectWhen those tiny, pink palmsCuddled my finger,And like a weary voyagerI will rest my heavy headIn your lap,And close my eyesWatching You someday holdingYour fingerTo another pink, little palm.

       - (c) Saket, 16th of June, 2013

Surviving Betrayal in Friendship and Love

Wings in Solitude Courtesy: PS Extreme -Wallpaper




It is not easy to survive a betrayal. It pushes the knife into your heart and then twists it for the assurance of a perfect kill. If the repeat acts of failed trust hurt more, it is the absurdity on your part of setting yourself as a sitting duck, twice in a row, which hurts more. You feel let down by yourself as your own intellect mocks your judgement. One can survive lack of intellect, but to live with a mocking intellect, an intellect which blames you for bringing it insult and ignominy is utter despair. Wasn't the intellect always telling you that you can not be friends with people who are not free? 






A man, who is not free is not a man of integrity. What choice does he have, one may argue. It is not the question of what choice he has, it is the question of what choice you have. It is your own solemn responsibility to protect your self. You can not pass it on the one who perpetrates a nasty cut and looks at you with all his teeth gnashing. You look at him with the astonishment of a falling Ceaser and mutter in your breath,"Et Tu, Brutus?". But why do you say that? what good will it serve? You want to recall the nobility in your killer while you die. 




It is not he who has failed you. He has performed to the best of what he was supposed to be. He has rose to his excellence, his excellence was in the final at of betrayal. Yours was not to fall victim, you have fallen short of your being. You had the intelligence to foresee what was to befall on to you, and you chose to ignore it. You longed to be friends and you surrendered to the pangs of loneliness and allowed friendship to substitute your own judgement.As we grow older, isn't there a very lonely corner in our heart which finds home, which grows and grows threatening to engulf our very being and we desperately try to fill it up with those who do not deserve your kindness, let alone your friendship? You tried to wake nobility up where it was long dead. There was dust on the face of nobility. 




Not all men are victim of circumstances, we, more often than not, make the circumstances in which we thrive. Isn't it for such times that Nietzsche wrote,"Flee my friends,Flee to your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones...Where solitude ends, market place begins?."

We chose our circumstances, some people chose their ignoble existence and you can not invoke nobility in the heart where it is long dead. They look at your nobility with mockery, and examine your kindness with suspicion. The humane in them is long since dead, and they carry the dead, cold tomb of kindness in their heart. The stench rises time and again from their dead hearts, which Tennessee Williams termed as smell of mendacity, which he says is stronger then any other smell. The cold is so deep in their nature that warmest of the gesture can not melt it and they carry their ice-knife hid in their sleeves ready to slice your heart away. 

You have to get away from the squalor and rise to the peace. I suggest, the following to myself and to you.




Seven Steps to survive and avoid betrayal:

1. Do not be captive to your own nobility. Not all deserve your love. Do not be a compulsive do-gooder. Do not be a compulsive anything, it demonstrates frailty of human mind.




2. Do not be friends to someone who has no love for you. For someone who looks at you as a tool, an equipment, be that, an unfeeling, cold, hard piece of equipment, which hurts the toe when it falls on the feet. Do not comfort them with a feeling of kindness, maintain the uneasiness which they felt when they first sighted your straight-forward strength. 




3. Do not mentor them, try to invoke nobility in them. It is not asleep in them, it is long dead, killed by their ambition and selfishness. By offering to mentor, you are opening yourself to ridicule if unsuccessful and to damage if you are successful, by creating a monster, with strength same as yours but without your prudence.




4. Keep check on your intent to selflessness. Selflessness is over-rated, and a friend wrote recently, because it is rare. It carried a great truth and great insight. By offering selflessness without a check, we reduce the value of it and open it to public shame and private mockery.




5. Teach yourself solitude. It is sweet, it is understanding and it never betrays. It is the calm breeze which flows over your weary forehead as you lie on the hills where the wind flows in whispers through tall glass blades. Friendship, just as love, will seek you and find you from your solitude. Still, never abandon solitude, let be one of the deserving friends who reach out to you. Do not argue and struggle against it, hold its hands and sit in silence. Liberty lies not in struggle with solitude but in surrender to solitude. In solitude we discover ourselves.




6. All men are not equal. Some men are better men than others and by treating all men equal you are being unkind to those who are better. It takes courage and some amount of self-inflicted pain, to reach a certain degree of nobility. That nobility needs to be honored, and ought not be treated at par with many-too-many. Being kind to all defeats the principles of Justice and what can not be just can not be good. 




7. Spare your soul and spare your time for those who are truly deserving of your love. They are looking for you- your kindred souls and will reach you in time. You can not hurry love, it will find you in time when you are ripe for it. All else is a wait. Try not to fill up the wait with undignified eagerness, help to ripen yourself up.Polish the dust off the edges of your soul and be the love that you strive to obtain. After that you will strive no more, it will come to you, searching for you, calling for you like a long-lost friend, by a name that you have long forgotten.

Book Review- Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad

 


Heart of Darkness (1899)

Joseph Conrad


It takes courage to pick up a book by someone who is as celebrated as Joseph Conrad, who is something like a high priest of English Literature. It takes an amazingly strong writing to elevate a simple tale to the high pedestal of folklore, good enough to survive the unkind winds of changing centuries. Writing is a delicate art and takes a great amount of hard work, and extraordinary dose of talent to become a writer worthy of being called such. It is as easily likely to be a grossly misused term by lesser mortals like this blogger. Just as man has a natural faculty to speak, it does not make him a speaker, a natural faculty to write trivialities does not qualifies one to be a writer. It is not about vocabulary, a fertile imagination to create complex constructs. It is all those things and a bit more as Authors like Somerset Maugham, Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad tells us. These greats spread so wide across the spectrum in terms of style that it becomes impossible for an aspirant like yours truly to theorize and build a pattern which one may ape and try to get a hint of greatness in our writings.

 

It is a string of various pearls, from the no frills, simplistic writings of Maugham on one end, to the brilliantly adorned-by-metaphor writing of Nietzsche to the poetic and almost lyrical writing of Joseph Conrad. Only thing which connects the various and varied writing styles is the honesty which runs like a common thread.Joseph Conrad, the Polish author was borne in 1857, as India went through the throes of first battle for freedom and the great Mughal, fought their last battle to a definitive loss. While British set out to define colonial rule in India, Joseph Conrad breathed first to write this book of the continuous struggle between Colonial greed and Native way of life.

 

This is not the book to be lightly read. This does not imply however that this book is heavy in a sense of being boring or ancient in the feel. On the contrary, this is a book to seduce, mesmerise and captivate you and you have to let it. It is like the first shower of rain after an angry summer, which suddenly appears surprising all the nearly identical weather bulletins in a hot afternoon.If you try to run away from it, hide from the rain, it will bother you to no end and wreck your nerves, particularly as you try to hide you find no shelter within reach. But then what you can do is surrender to the beauty of the change of weather and soak in the sweet smell of rain falling on the parched Earth. That is how this book is to be read. You do not analyze it, nor do you rush through it. It is prose masquerading as Poetry or poetry breathing through the paragraphs as a soul in the body of a prose. You ought to let your soul soak in the beauty of the language.


The words though lovely and mesmerizing are too honest and innocent, which do not work too hard to grab your attention, but pleases you with their aptness. When he begins the narrative with "We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories." Who does not find the reflection of our own thoughts in a statement like that.

 

Charles Marlow, the narrator and chief protagonist of the book is set about by a company, which is into ivory trading, to ship to Congo River, to a country of savages as colonists would look at the natives. He is sent out to look for a Mr. Kurtz who is a company agent stationed there. The author speaks through Marlow and the gems of his exemplary command over the language shines with amazing brilliance as he writes about Kurtz. Young Marlow set about to the station commanded by Kurtz with very high expectations and high opinion of Mr. Kurtz. The image thus formed is quick to fall flat as Marlow comes to discover Kurtz on reaching the station as a mean person, too ordinary to the grand expectation Marlow had set on Kurtz. He concludes about Mr. Kurtzs based on his interaction with people at the station, with a rare eloquence,"The wilderness had found him early, and taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. (I think)it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, thing of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude-and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core." Hollow at the core- the phrase stays with you and hangs like a dark cloud on your head as you examine your own life and your own heart. That is the true power of language. That is the purpose of language, to express what is most difficult to express and Conrad sets an unsurpassable standard for expression. In Maugham, characters grown into expressions, in Conrad, expression grows into character.

 

The young Marlow finds Kurtz, a fallen man and struggles with the collapse of romantic illusions. He is confused as any young man is, who, as he grows, finds all those he kept on high pedestals falling to be mere mortals. He is a confused man and confesses,"If anyone had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man." His is left with his faith shattered and no explanation helps at such times, "No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity."

 

Darkness is a perpetual theme through the story. The landscape is of the earth where sun shines ever so dimly. The feel and strength of the language carries you to such a land, of savages and Pilgrims who work for the company and trees are wild and light is rare. The darkness deepens with the encounter with Kurtz, and is almost complete when Conrad writes,"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines."

 

Marlow reaches back to the civilization leaving behind dead Kurtz but is smitten by then by the wild. He resents being back in the city. The city remains same today as it was then in the beginning of Twentieth century, "People hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense." The bitterness flows through the air and slowly enters your breathing, the hatred for what we call civilization and the longing for the pure, the true, the earthy honesty of savagery. He carries the document which Kurtz shared with him, meets the girl, who Kurtz described with so many "My". Conrad is never short of words, he builds people with words, "(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." There is a turn, a very mild turn in the end as the girl asks about Kurtz's last word. There is no earth-shattering shock in the lie which Marlow tells, as he tells the girl that Kurtz spoke her name as he died, in stead of the actual utterance,"the horror, the horror". Author does not explain why Marlow lied, but you somehow feel that it is not to glorify the dead or the protect the feeling of the living love; you feel it is because Marlow discovers sudden connect with the dead man on account of common savagery and wilderness through which they lived together for some time. It is in that savagery they discover camaraderie.

 

The language is enchanting and the book, little dark, takes you into a a realm of high literature. If you love words, you will love this book. After all, how often do you read sentences like,"This was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth- the strange commingling of desire" It is like ornamental designs delicately drawn on marble in the Taj, one sentence inter-mingled with others. Some people mention they got introduced with this book in literature classes as a lesson on how not to write, not to write such long-winded, verbose sentences. Which is a truth, you must not write such sentences, if you are Maugham or Hemingway, at least not when you are not Joseph Conrad. But then I then have another lament, where do we have literature classes. Not in India, where every man or woman of intellect is to be Doctor or Engineer and pursuing literature is more often than not is a mark of failed intellect. We are missing so much, and when you read Heart of Darkness, you feel how dark our lives would be if not for the brilliance of books as these. For the love of words, please read this book, as a reader, you learn life, as a writer, your learn life..and writing. This is small book of 70 pages, but what power. This was my first book by him (going back to my lament, it is common for young men in India of average intellect to move away from literature and focus on Resnick and Halliday-Physics), but definitely swayed by a captivating language, I am going to read everything with his name on it. It is

Rating- Inspiring/ Amazing/ Brilliant/Mediocre/Avoidable- Inspiring, Amazing, Brilliant

 Heart of Darkness - On Amazon

Some Stray and Broken Thoughts- Poems on Weekend

This weekend, the mind is numb and heart is beating with some heaviness. The skies are unkind and the weather is unforgiving. Wrote some poems today, which I am putting here as this week's post.



A Noisy Silence

A silence
So loud
Hangs in the room
That it
Pierces through the hearing
And in the din of it
Drowns all
The soft and mild
Whispers of sweet love.



A Gift to be Earned







Love,
is not a divine entitlement.
The very idea of
love\

on account of being what you are
is flawed.
It is a right to be earned
you need to
struggle,
Get cleansed and grow,
into better being,
... Else it is all
narcissism
or sheer stupidity.


It is everything
but love,
admiration, infatuation
anything, but love.

(c) Saket Suryesh














Apart from this, a Short Story, Betrayed by Time got a life today, which I will share in following week. This is the second short story I wrote, after The Death of a Soldier which I wrote some time back. 

Ponderings of A Proclaimed Mugwump-Need for Positive Politics

Mugwump- is a term which stands out because of its peculiar sound, if you do not know the meaning, and stands out for the liberating meaning, if you understand the meaning of it. I came across this term while reading the The Autobiography of Mark Twain , wherein he wanted to petition the government and hesitated on account of being a Mugwump.

 

The term finds first usage in the English of Eighteenth Century and refers to one who is free of political inclination and derives its origin from the reference made to the Republican who refused to support his own party nominee in 1884, US elections, James Blaine. By the team, Mark Twain used it in his autobiography, it referred to someone independent of political leanings.

 

The term is confusing in pronunciation and meaning, though in today's time of political turmoil and quicksand ideology, to be a mugwump seems to be only reasonable political affiliation. Which party would you stand with when you do not know what ideology they stand for. The party in power resembles so much those out of it, that it is only minor difference in the level of arrogance which differentiates.

 

In times of turmoil, it is always better to build your own cocoon and stay in that, with a hope that some day the grey will melt into black and white on the either side and you will know which side to stand on. These are times of shifting loyalties and unclear convictions. To be stupid is alleviating and to be intellectual is a recipe for mental trauma. The world around us has lost balance, and its no wonder we don't know which way to head.

 

We are brought up to believe in a world in which the right and wrong, the just and the unjust, co-exist and the world stabilizes and prospers in the middle of these forces and counter-forces, which strike an equilibrium. The citizen today is at loss because there is no positive to counter-balance the negatives any longer. The negatives are responded to with negatives. The riots at the behest of one side of the political world, is responded by belligerent posturing by the other side. One man's inflation is other man's theatre.

 

How many times do we find, opposition parties travel to riot hit areas and set up camps to ensure restoration and rehabilitation? Inflation hits the poor, and the food on the plate goes scarce, but then on the street we find the theatre of absurd, with opposition leaders dancing with garland of tomatoes, highlighting scarce vegetables. Citizen is at loss, unable to understand who is being mocked, the party in power or the poverty of people. Are they blind to understand that the world needs balance and negative can not be countered with negative? When will we find them setting up food camps, emptying their ill-gotten election funds, thus creating a force of positive.

 

The light has to come in to fight darkness, you can not counter dark with more dark or funny dark. The world seeks the light and the political class is failing it. Violence needs to be answered with sanity and huger with prosperity. It is a difficult task, but is only hope that we as a nation have. Till then, I proudly continue to be a mugwump and the disease is spreading. You can not shame people into participating in the political process, you need to give them hope that things can change. We need to grow from the politics of protest to the politics of persuasion and progress.

 

I, being a mugwump, do not usually write on politics, not that anybody cares, but sometimes it gets too much and has to come out. Writing about desperate situations do not make them better, but it gives a moral satisfaction of blurting out my mind, with a hope that may be someone will listen. Your views??