K.C. Bhatt's Blog, page 4

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https://akalol.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/krishna-bhatt-the-underclass-lover/

A glass of Yak’s blood

Middle age brings crisis in the life of Rajib with health, job and family issues arising and compounding his problems…

A richer slice of life

“This is a very sweet, romantic story.

There is petty trickery but no matter how much, it becomes a minor thing, a slight detail to a richer slice of life.”

A devastating work on family, corporate culture and sexual insecurities–which come with age.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/554305

Uninspiring literature

….Like the writing of Philip Roth… or Updike, it was sterile for lacking in emotions. One may feel neither hot nor cold thinking about it now or a century later. Nothing stirred inside him. He dropped on the sofa and was fast asleep before long though the muted TV was playing scene after scene of the drama where the actors made faces as if the dialogues they were saying were best not said or silenced. It looked as if the world was waiting for a pandemic to take over the life.

Introduction

If you meet a stranger from a place far away, do you try to define him through the books you have read of his culture or you go by the talks you have with him?

Ulysses by James Joyce: Taking in denial a work of literary resistance.

 In a mood of denial or resistance you approach this novel. For it is not an enticer to take on, due to its size and reputation. You expect certain loftiness and intransigence on the part of the author, which makes it difficult to decipher what is going on: in the story. You have read a few more novels of this time and earlier.

You find that you were not wrong about how you should take it. You read on trying to grasp as little as possible and think about all other things but the story you are reading.

You are distracted at times, by the act of a character, for an instance, who possibly is having an affair with a married woman; or that he is constipated by the food he eats to need to read a literature while defecating. That he wipes himself with that literature afterwards shocks you a bit. For the character possibly wants to make a comment about the quality of the reading it made.

But you read on without caring much. For it is always in a very convoluted language which you are never sure about, so you never know what is going on. The sentences are very short at times. But they illuminate very little and the writer presents many new words he invented and he only used, which are many times longer than his sentences in terms of the alphabets used. At times it annoys you to think that you are reading a largely acclaimed masterpiece of the last century.

Then you think that the First World War was going on while this novel was being written. You understand that the writer is disturbed greatly by some thing. Then you read his loathing of Jews. Then you relate it to the rise of Hitler in the later years and his even more emphatic loathing of this community even in his autobiography. Then you discover a character who soaks himself in a hot bath and reverentially considers his floating pubic hair and settled genitals.

It possibly is the dissatisfaction of the writer with his life or the people around him that his characters in this novel do such eccentric activities and find an immense peace and happiness in them. Possibly their lives were much stultified and they felt accordingly thwarted, to the extent that there were limited ways for them to express themselves and they ended up doing such things.

You know that times were far more troubled then. The artists too even found it difficult to come to terms with something unfamiliar or different. But the characters in this book never seem to give up and try to put up a resistance with their strange thoughts or actions.

That age is possibly gone forever, you would like to assume. And the more forthcoming and tolerant artists than Joyce hence have created a world where literature could be not so opaque and extreme to provoke a similar response among its audience. But you discover that, mostly, the perspicacity of the more recent literary products is almost appropriated before it is produced to the extent that it looks as if it belongs to a world one never has known. For the simple reason that it has forgotten to strive almost totally.

And the world is unpleasantly surprised by something it has always ignored—which is illuminated, perchance; exceptionally by someone from out of the scheme of the things. One thought if one needed an alien to make such a discovery, for the rest have been already been taken on board.

Continuing to read similarly, you wait to be surprized by proven wrong about your perception of the book or writer. That it was not that an unhappy place where the writer lived, and all the good weather and warmth in human relations existed in a far away place like Ceylon, which produced also the tea a character liked.

But you cannot forget to empathise with the characters, who possibly do their best to make a life where they are and by what they are. It is the longings and the pathos which they try to pass on, hinting that it was not easy to do so, which echo in your mind to remain with you afterwards. Possibly a writer does his best to explain himself and his times, knowing that he is bound to fall short.

For, falling short is a virtue in a writer which elucidates his times more than his explanations, more so in a work of fiction. A book of which might outweigh a whole library of nonfiction books.

It opens the way for a reader to similarly approach life which has not become any more perfect since. And keep a well-deserved grudge that the literature created by the likes of James Joyce will never lose its relevance.

K C Bhatt.

Ulysses by James Joyce: A Review

In a mood of denial or resistance you approach this novel. For it is not an enticer to take on, due to its size and reputation. You expect certain loftiness and intransigence on the part of the author, which makes it difficult to decipher what is going on: in the story. You have read a few more novels of this time and earlier.

You find that you were not wrong about how you should take it. You read on trying to grasp as little as possible and think about all other things but the story you are reading.

You are distracted at times, by the act of a character, for an instance, who possibly is having an affair with a married woman; or that he is constipated by the food he eats to need to read a literature while defecating. That he wipes himself with that literature afterwards shocks you a bit. For the character possibly wants to make a comment about the quality of the reading it made.

But you read on without caring much. For it is always in a very convoluted language which you are never sure about, so you never know what is going on. The sentences are very short at times. But they illuminate very little and the writer presents many new words he invented and he only used, which are many times longer than his sentences in terms of the alphabets used. At times it annoys you to think that you are reading a largely acclaimed masterpiece of the last century.

Then you think that the first world war was going on while this novel was being written. You understand that the writer is disturbed greatly by some thing. Then you read his loathing of Jews. Then you relate it to the rise of Hitler in later years and his even more emphatic loathing of this community even in his autobiography.

You know times were far more troubled then. The artists too even found it difficult to come to terms with something unfamiliar or different.

That age is possibly gone for ever. The more forthcoming and tolerant artists hence have created a world where literature could be not so opaque and extreme to provoke a similar response among its audience.

Continuing to read similarly, you wait to be surprized by proven wrong about your perception of the book or writer. That it was not that an unhappy place where the writer lived, and all the good weather and warmth in human relations existed in a far away place like Ceylon, which produced also the tea a character liked.

But you can not forget to empathise with the characters, who possibly do their best to make a life where they are and by what they are. It is the longings and the pathos which they try to pass on, hinting that it was not easy to do so, which echo in your mind to remain with you afterwards. Possibly a writer does his best to explain himself and his times, knowing that he is bound to fall short.

A good literature

Awards no more signify excellence in a discipline but are meant to reward a mediocrity which is steadily sucking the vigour out of the human civilization.

The Nobel award in literature is a case in point, which is recently being given often to the writers writing the most innocuous type of romantic poems or the equivalent kind of short stories, or composing folk songs.

Displaying a zero political consciousness in a work of literature is the most favourable quality of a literary man these days, when everything has been mainstreamed so rigourously by the education of the universities, which need movie-stars to promote their courses.

It gives an impression if the world is almost a conflict free zone now and can indulge permanently in the finer emotions the love brings to life.

It is an about turn since the days of yore, when the acerbic writers writing in favour of the power-that-be were being rewarded with most of the literary awards.

It was better as compared to the present situation, as it created a sharp literary response from amongst the other side of the divide.

But now it seems if the literature no more has the resources to kick the world out of its comfort zone to intellectually renew it perpetually to salvage it from falling in a torpor which leads to the black hole of degradation, and the final, consequent annihilation.

Having taken away that venom thus, from the literature, the decline in other forms of human enterprises is bound to set in.

There have been a number of Nobel laureates in economics from the third world countries, who have written speculative theories about the prevalence of poverty in their countries of origin but have failed spectacularly to recommend a solution.

Having originated from where they have, they have possibly accepted the poverty as fait accompli of their brethren, about which nothing can be done. So they too have accepted their karma in a way and that of their subject, in which they were trained in a Western university.

That, no matter how knowledgeable they become, they cannot have a solution. Strangely, a few such laureates were seen vying for a high political office in their countries of origin, entirely giving up on academics after winning the Nobel thereby.

In a way they have become like beauty-queens of their disciplines, from this part of the world–which is so full of tragedies, mostly man-made. They could be looked at in admiration for their accomplishments by their universities and its young students. A learning which is as impotent as Casanova: the impotent god of male beauty.

In order to make the beauty-queens and the values they represent look more egalitarian, it was only recently that the women of colour were started being rewarded with the beauty crowns.

The politics and the commercial interests of the first world in the third world made sure that they always remained the women of colour for nearly a decade.

Now this charity has been extended to a few disciplines of academics too, which have the possibility of making endless speculations without making any recommendations.

So the pure science Nobel awards remain still far from the reach of the people of colour, except for a few exceptions. For, that scientific temperament is still out of the possibility in the people of these cultures, which espouse the philosophy of karma so eternally.

In a way the pandemic plaguing the humanity now is a cruel reminder to it, that its failure recently has been total.  A good literature might have kept the world in an ever present pandemic like terror, to save it from the present predicament caused by a new pandemic.

Ana Karenina by Lev Tolstoy: A Review

After dwelling in on mundane married lives of characters after their courtship in length, the author surprises one by dealing with the issue or declining agricultural output in the then Russia in three or so paragraph. He blames the introduction of the means of communication, transport and stock exchange for it, apart from other industries, maintaining that the same could work successfully in more developed Western Europe than Russia, where agriculture is far less developed. This novel was first published in 1878.
The author lived a life of an aristocrat in which he fathered dozens of children, most of them from a dozen or so serf women he employed, being a landlord.
So the love he describes in his writing and the lives of the characters he talks about may look too lofty and far from the life of peasants of the Russia of the time, who were in a large majority but appear only as servants in his novel, who greet and serve their masters to create scenes of drama in a family and the society.
In fact, this novel is comparable to modern day soap opera on television, which remains far from the social and political reality but has a palliative effect on its audience, which is mostly a middle class or an upper class one, with unlimited time for indulgence. The life described is grand and far away from the worries of a common man. This family drama with an aristocratic ambiance through out was produced almost simultaneously with The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
Comparing these two novels leave one stunned about how little Tolstoy saw as compared to Dostoevsky, of the society from which he came. It may also leave a reader of Tolstoy deluded that all the Russian life was as happy as portrayed in his novels and the only problems were those which arose in the relationship in a family. So the Russian revolution must have greatly surprised Tolstoy though he died only four years before it concluded. But not to Dostoevsky, who dies thirty years before Tolstoy.
Of the many writers not rewarded with a Nobel, Tolstoy was a worthy one for not receiving this award even though he was nominated multiple times. His work was not worthy of it. It gives no impression of the society at large. But he tenderly describes the relations in family though. However, a good writer has to have some profound political understanding of his time and display it in his work to remain relevant for all times. On that count he fails miserably. Now think about the literature produced in Russia or elsewhere, which was inspired by Tolstoy, as he is regarded highly in many countries outside Russia as well.
In fact, his work was translated in many languages to distribute among the people reading those languages even by the erstwhile USSR almost at no cast. For it makes the life look glorious enough in Russia to serve the propaganda purpose of every system ruling the country, even a century after the writer died.
Besides it also shows which side of the revolution he was on, at that point of time when it was brewing and he wrote this novel, which was to change Russia and the world once it concluded. So his work was useful in Russia when he lived and outside when he is no more, serving the common goal of creating an unreal impression of the real life.
It was the disintegration of the USSR by the end of the last century, which shocked the people in the Russia and elsewhere, as it came apart like a house of cards. One never thought the things were as fragile there, reading its literature especially like the one of Tolstoy. It could be true about all the totalitarian states, where civil liberties are always subdued by the powerful leaders.
The so-called great literature at times disappoints profoundly and leaves one feeling happy that it is only in one’s later age that one had a chance to taste it. One may wonder if it was the age which compelled a writer to do such a work or he chose to do so out of his immediate needs. Corrupt lives entail an output of a literature which borders on indulgence, both for a reader and a writer. It signifies the treachery and deceit which marked everything of that age, including its art.
If one considers that Maupassant and Thomas Hardy too wrote about this time elsewhere, one finds that a true art too was more abundant in Western Europe, besides the successful commercial agriculture: which Tolstoy despises.
It influenced the Indian writers like Prem Chand more, rather than the work of Tolstoy, who too produced an equally competent stuff, which has no parallel even today.
The question comes if a good writer is always outside the mainstream and being a landlord or an aristocrat worked against this great Russian writer.

Dog Years by Gunter Grass : It makes one’s heart bleed for the pathos of the writer of this novel.

What a dogged reading. Looks if nothing is going to happen. None of the character talks with himself to bring out any kind of insight. There is a parasitic dependence on the things without to have any movement in the story. It at times is a dog thinking and reasoning like a man and the other way for a man. What is the point if it is as uncertain and as non-starter as it appears, if not a sudden quirk or a twist in the story occurs, which makes it worth to continue?
Before you reach the middle of the book Gunter Grass begins to overwhelm with the brilliant way he uncovers the distress and consequences of the war under Hitler in the country. An elderly school teacher, a neighbor of the narrator Harry, who taught literature and writing methods, often by leaving them alone, to his students, besides other subjects, disappears for his crime of failing to celebrate the birthday of Hitler. He was charged with eating the candies the school administration has allocated for his students.
The cousin of the Harry named Tulla, who he fingers at times beside the daughter of the disappeared school teacher, Jenny, to check the depth of their holes–as he puts it, speculates that the teacher has been taken to a place from where a heap of freshly collected human bones have been dumped in open in their town, which foul the air of it all the time and attract a large number of rats and crows. Tulla brings a human skull from there to prove her point.
Sex scenes, more often than not, by Gunter Grass, are not the tenderest and delicate type. They are vicious, crude and occur like an act of sabotage. Taking a reader by complete surprise, besides the characters performing it. Similar can be said about the writing style. It makes things obscure in the way they are described in a convoluted language which often is difficult to get hold of. By keeping the going on a scene surprises by its sudden arrival, for it is shocking not only for what it is but also for the lucid and forth-coming language in which it is described.
One hopes the original German language edition reads better than its translation. Also that, a better translated version comes soon in English, which also cares about readability as well. For the subject is the most deadly war one has known; written by someone who fought it as well. Little other literature is available on this subject otherwise–from the side which lost it.
Tulla takes Harry and Jenny to a leech infested area and makes them attach leeches to their bodies and feed them till they are fully fed on their blood and become easily detachable. Then she collects those leeches and cooks them in a tin pot till they become a thick paste, then she eats it and asks them to eat it as well. Tulla thinks this is how her brother, somewhere fighting in France, might survive the war. But he is killed soon. In their early teens, these three characters try strange things to deal with the effect the war has created in their lives.
When, after his disappearance, the school teacher’s daughter is taken away by a middle-aged dance master and a probable Nazi official, who wants to keep her as a mistress while she learns dance in Berlin, she comes to knock at the door of Harry’s to say her goodbye. Harry and his parents do not open the door. But She and Harry continue to write each other till a long time later.
A Poignant and heart-breaking scene is when Harry, now inducted finally into the army at the age of sixteen, comes to say goodbye to Tulla, who is pregnant now at the same age by a person she never discloses. She is now working as a bus conductor to support herself. She wanted Harry to make her pregnant but he always declined this possibility. She offers him bundles of ticket as a souvenir with which he plays-with his fingers, just like a child.
It makes Tulla laugh. How the war was sucking in and destroying the lives of young children fills one with a profound sadness. A while ago, a bomb drops at a place where Jenny was performing and both her toes were amputated to end her dancing career. But the war was to last another three years. Tulla asks Harry to pay the bus fare for the distance he traveled with his modest luggage, before he leaves to join his duty in a war turning increasingly bloody.
The third and the last part of the novel deals with post war years in the country. Grass deals with so many trends in a desultory manner in the beginning. He picks technology, economy, politics and much more randomly and in an arcane language, without making any point clearly.
But soon he picks the people trying to practice a conscious collective amnesia to forget the bad memories of the war. But then a glass comes to the market for children of ten years of age, a time since the war has ended, which makes them see the past of their parents clearly. They see all the murders and other crimes which their parents have committed but never discussed. It leads to an epidemic of psychiatric diseases in the children using those glasses and many of them commit suicide.
But, some how, behind the religion, liberalism and progress, the society tries to hide from its past. The author sarcastically deals with the hypocrisy of the society to collectively forget a criminal past. It shows how neatly and effectively the author is capable of dealing with the things he really feels are important before he goes absent-minded again and talks about so many generalities in a language which is difficult to decipher.
In a way he expiates alone for the scores of unacknowledged sins committed by the society he belongs to. There are not many writers courageous enough to take up such a thankless task, though many other countries have perpetrated no less horrendous crimes on mankind than the Nazi violence.
On the contrary, all the efforts in literature mostly have been to make that past obscure enough, so that any future inquiry is preempted. In it not only the writers from the side of the perpetrators, but also a few from the victims’ side, too have contributed.
It makes one’s heart bleed for the pathos of the writer of this novel.