Raghav Rao's Blog, page 3

Can a genre be perfected?

This is a newsletter about information saturation but I’m not above some clickbait myself. Of course, perfection is an abstract ideal but today I want to look at two or three short passages from a near-perfect crime noir, Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto, the only novel by the creator of Seasons 1,2, & 3 of the HBO Show, True Detective.

Quickly though, this week has been pub week for me and it’s been a joy. Friends and family have been sending me selfies with their copies of MISSY! By the way, I have a TON of copies from the publisher so if you’re in Chicago and would like a hardback copy for $20, just write and let me know.

But it’s also been unrelenting me, me, me, self-promotion for about two weeks, and I wanted this post to be different. First, here’s Ursula, darling doggo, reading my book in Singapore.

Picture courtesy of Janel, friend of the newsletter, and masterful pet portrait-er. Pigeonhole

And more thing before I get to Galveston.

My UK publisher, Hera Books, submitted Missy to Pigeonhole, a social reading experience app; I’d never heard of it. I had no clue what to expect. And it was AMAZING! I will write at length about it but basically, the book is batched up and shared with readers a few chapters at a time. Readers can annotate and comment on specific lines. It’s like a real-time book club where the author can see readers reacting to the pacing, the characters, and specific lines. I was overjoyed to see people staying up until 5am wanting to know what happens in my book. I have anonymized the following screenshot because I’m still awaiting permission from Pigeonhole to confirm that I can share them.

Warm praise from the effusive pigeons

The “pigeons”, as they refer to themselves, are careful, discerning readers. Many of them left five-star reviews for Missy and, hopefully, will be readers of my future work as well. Another book is in the pipeline, after all, (though not a Missy sequel). But enough about me. Let’s talk about Galveston.

Hard-boiled crime noir; not for the faint of heart

First, let me give you an excerpt to give you the flavor. I typed this out a few times because I wanted to feel the sentences. There’s only three sentences. The scene is absolutely quotidian: a man sitting in his car. How many times have I sat in my car? But good writing is often about taking the quotidian and seeing it again.

I felt along my mouth with my tongue and watched the passing cars enter the freeway, and the gamy taste brought with it the heavy feelings of sunlight on my skin, the layers and layers of lush greenery, the soft chirring sounds that were part of the silence, the silence in the cotton fields, the briars cutting your hands, long days spent hunched and picking, blind with sweat.

A dragonfly kept circling my head as if it had something to tell me, and the air of the hot night was like breathing ashes. In the distance I could hear the cars pass whoosh-whoosh-whoosh like the great heartbeat of some huge animal that had swallowed me.

The reason this passage interests me because he retains auxiliary words that I, wanting to feel like a WRITER, would remove in order to speed up the prose.

For example, I might take the sentence In the distance I could hear the cars pass whoosh-whoosh-whoosh like the great heartbeat of some huge animal that had swallowed me. and re-write it like this: The cars passed whoosh-whoosh, the heartbeat of an animal that had swallowed me.

or I would drop the “kept” and say “a dragonfly circled” my head; my reasoning is that this is more immediate. More direct.

So, here I am looking for ways to speed things up, but in so doing, missing the larger point of the paragraph. These two paragraphs function as a steadying beat in the book. The author is allowing a moment of reflection between two massively important scenes. So the whole point is to sink into the moment, rather than to speed it up.

Hence, the long sentences, the repetitions, layers, layers, silence, silence, and the auxiliary verbs extending the moment. The point is to elongate the beat. You can see why the guy was such an exceptional screenwriter, particularly excelling with his car scenes by the way. Let’s do another quick analysis.

This is the scene that precedes the beat in the car. It’s an absolutely devastating longer scene where the protagonist (dying of cancer) makes a surprise visit to a former girlfriend who has moved up in life.

A mirror with a gilded frame hung above a fine wood console and little tables with jars and vases were set here and there, scarlet flowers. The hallway opened into a vaulted living room with a kind of small chandelier overhead, and to the left a staircase wound above the room. Thick couches in sand and earth colors, a pair of chocolate leather chairs. These things embarrassed me. When she turned, the look on her face embarrassed me.

I felt foolish, because I marked the soft white tablets of light that came down through the tall windows, facing out on a plush yard and pool, iron patio furniture, and I understood what she had always been on her way to being. How little I’d been a part of that.

It’s so simple. You can say it violates “show don’t tell” because it directly says things like “felt foolish” and “felt embarrassed” but that would be reading too literally. Obviously, there’s “showing” going on here, too. More important than that sort of workshop advice is the tensions. This scene embodies what Janet Burroway says in “The Writing of Fiction”:

When disharmony between setting and the character’s mood occurs, there is already “narrative content,” or the makings of a story.

I will continue in the following weeks to write more about Nic Pizzolatto’s Galveston; quotidian things, seen feelingly through the prism of mood, can lock in a feeling. And what is noir, if not a feeling?

I shared this same passage with my Loyola class this week. I hope you, too, found it useful.

MISSY Information:

Thank you for ordering my book. Please do rate and review it on Goodreads and/or Amazon. That will help me sell my US rights to a reputable publisher.

The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. If you’re in Chicago, you can get a copy from me directly. Here’s the India pre-order link.

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My Book Has Entered The Culture!

I know many of you are subscribed to this newsletter because of its emphasis on information saturation. However, this is the month that UK preorders for MISSY ship out and MISSY comes out in India as well so I apologize if today is more promotional than substantive.

For years, I wondered when will I ‘enter the culture.’ It’s happened and I’m in the midst of emotional turmoil. There have been some high points so far.

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MY FRIENDS ARE SENDING ME PICTURES OF MY BOOK IN-STORES!

Literally a dream come true. All the pictures, whether its screenshots of preorders or images of the book itself, make my heart sing so please send if you have them. Also, please let me know if I have your consent to use on my social media.

This is from Waterstones - Covent Garden. Can you believe it? BEHOLD! MISSY - INDIA COVER The India Edition of MISSY!

Finally, the book is available for pre-order in India at the healthy price of Rs. 525 for a hardcover ($6.25). Here’s the amazon pre-order link for any Indian readers or international arbitrage lovers.

My First Goodreads 5-STAR Review Helped Ease A Longstanding Fear

I love my friends and family but until the reading public affirmed MISSY, I felt that my impostor syndrome would not lift. Yes, that’s after securing an agent and two International rights deal. Still, I wasn’t sure if I belonged, if my work was market caliber.

Enter Annie. I’ve never met this lady. She’s reviewed over 2,000 books and is circumspect with her 5-stars. She gave Patricia Highsmith’s “Strangers on a Train” four! Her review prompted me to finally relax, secure that I’m not wasting readers’ time or taking their money without offering value in return.

Here’s my favorite part of her extended review:

I realize that the above summary makes Missy sound like a heavy book. There are heavy moments, but I was charmed by the lightness of this book. The scenes showing Missy and her family’s home life feel like being wrapped up in a warm blanket and served something hot and delicious.

Lastly….

Please know that ratings and reviews matter, particularly early days. Rate and review and duplicate across Amazon and Goodreads if it isn’t too much trouble. You may think it’s small or that family and friends don’t count. They absolutely do.

Yours In Gratitude,

Raghav

MISSY - Goodreads page, UK pre-order link (this will work for people in the US, too), India pre-order link

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Happy Birthday to me (33) + Transition Guidance

Happy Birthday to me! I’m 33 today. For years, I struggled to enjoy my birthday, overwhelmed by the sense that I hadn’t achieved what I ought to have achieved. Mercifully, that feeling has abated in recent years. In short, I’ve chilled out. In a couple of hours here, I’ll be flying home to Chicago. I was in Switzerland for a wedding. In Zurich, I popped into the FIFA museum which is covered in quotes from the highly quotable Arsène Wenger, former coach of Arsenal. In my first ever full-time job as a copywriter at an ad agency in New York, I hung up a printout in my cubicle. It was Wenger yelling at me. It looked something like this:

I hung this up in my office cubicle for “motivation” from the boss.

Back then, I didn’t have a sense that fear could be underneath my need for distraction. Ten years on, I’ve learnt a lot, some of which I share with you today.

(Those of you who read this substack primarily for interesting, eclectic tidbits and not for self-help-lite, I refer you out this week to this excellent substack on how US shipbuilding declined from a height of 5,000 ships during WWII to just 5 oceangoing ships commercial ships in 2022 - LINK).

The Promised Self-Help-lite

Summer is wrapping up. Fall is approaching. Those of us in education have an abrupt transition to contend with. Also, my book will start to ship later this month. I go from soon-to-be published author to published author, in the arena, open to critique, open also to being entirely ignored. Naturally, a strong wave of emotion will result from that.

Neurotic that I am, I maintain transition docs. I read them when I feel on the cusp of major transition. You may think, “Wow — this is over-the-top.” But writing and verbalization have proven reliably helpful to me.

Transition Document 1 — Things to Remember in Transition:

You are in a transition. Things won’t be as smooth as they were until you establish a new routine.

Remember, you can only do one thing at a time when you sit down to work.

Don’t worry about the work piling up. First, try and establish what from your old routine you can keep.

If you can’t work out, don’t let de-training set in; this will cause you to lose conditioning. Do 1-2 home calisthenics if necessary.

You are in a transition; therefore you are stressed; noticing this stress, auto-regulates it.

Watch out for the brain trying to soothe with alcohol; keep it to 1 night of a couple for drinks for the next couple of weeks, if possible; this will also help you to re-establish morning writing.

The sooner you can build back morning writing, the sooner you will be close to end-transition/new routine.

Remember — the inner critic seeks to infiltrate the brain under the cover of transition

In order to fight the inner critic, realize that the SHAME you’re feeling is not synonymous with your self. It is external / a passing feeling, a thought you can de-identify with it.

You may feel a tendency to over-commit to writing, trying to finish your whole book in a short time — this is also the result of transition. Invest in Process; ignore outcome.

Practice intentionality, almost to the point of excess; plan all blocks of time, meals etc; you will feel good.

Watch out for the siren call of immediacy, a silver bullet.

Take whatever is in front of you and without wishing it was different, love it.

Happiness is not tied to external circumstances, wanting, and grasping. It is tied to inner modes of living, what I’m doing, day in, day out.

The test of my transition is can I be deeply present with all the things that I want to be deeply present with.

I have succeeded when I feel abundance.

Being in a state of anxious energy is comfortable — but abundance is true safety.

Perhaps you, too, have documents like this. If so, I’d love to hear your pithy pearls of wisdom.

MISSY Pre-Order Information:

MISSY will be shipping out soon! Mid-September!

Apologies if you have already pre-ordered my book. Some people have mentioned having a hard time pre-ordering my book. The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Amazon US does not currently support my book because the US rights remain on submission.

Missy by Raghav Rao - Hera Books UK - Cover Reveal

Here’s the pre-order link again.

For more info about my book and why it’s currently only available for pre-order in the UK or to share it with other interested parties, please see the previous post on this subject.

Thanks for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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ChatGPT Jungian Analysis of Around The World In 80 Days by Jules Verne

This week, I finished reading Jules Verne’s ‘Around The World in 80 Days.’ You know it as a brilliantly plotted adventure romp with the stoic Phileas Fogg, accompanied by his manservant Passpartout, attempting to circumnavigate the globe in an age of steamers and newly-constructed rail lines, all to win a wager. Along the way, Fogg scoops up an Indian bride.

A 19th century classic — worth studying for anyone interested in fast-paced plotting

The book is delightful in its pacing, its descriptions of places like Singapore, Suez, Yokohama, and San Francisco; with brilliant invention, Fogg manages to overcome every setback; the book never lets up and, with a magician’s flair, dazzles with its final twist.

But because it has so few characters, and since those characters are quite fixed in some respects, I thought it was ripe for ChatGPT Jungian Analysis.

For a while now, Tatum has been using ChatGPT to provide Jungian Analysis of her dreams and it is, to date, the best use-case of ChatGPT that I have seen. The normally superficial ChatGPT is unlocked, suddenly becoming precise, perceptive, and willing to stake bold claims.

Is this exercise valuable? Short answer: I don’t know. Is it fun? Hell yes.

According to ChatGPT, Around The World in 80 Days is “not just an adventure story but also a psychological journey of individuation.”

In the beginning, Fogg’s wager “is symbolic of his need to prove himself, to conquer the world.”

Passepartout, his servant serves as the Trickster archetype, bringing unpredictability to the mechanical Fogg. His disruptions ultimately lead to opportunities for Fogg to grow and develop. For example, in Hong Kong, Passepartout gets high in an opium den, a classic trickster succumbing to temptation, forcing Fogg to change his plans and show greater flexibility than he’s used to.

Aouda, the Indian princess whom Fogg rescues from a “sati” (widow burning) ritual and later marries, “can be interpreted as the Anima—Jung’s concept of the feminine aspect within the male psyche”. Through their relationship, “Fogg becomes more in touch with his emotions, compassion, and inner humanity, aspects that were previously suppressed.”

And what of the antagonist, Detective Fix of Scotland Yard doggedly pursuing Fogg in the belief that he is a bank robber? What does ChatGPT have to say about him?

“Detective Fix can be seen as an externalization of Fogg’s Shadow. Fix represents the suspicion, doubt, and mistrust that Fogg must overcome in his journey. Fix’s eventual realization of his mistake and his help in the final leg of the journey symbolize the integration of the Shadow into Fogg’s conscious mind.”

Meanwhile, the countless entertaining cultural encounters that must have fascinated 19th century audiences represent the larger collective unconscious, all of which had to be navigated to be ultimately integrated.

“Around the World in 80 Days is not just an adventure story but also a psychological journey of individuation for Phileas Fogg. His transformation from a mechanical, isolated individual to a more emotionally connected and self-aware person reflects the Hero's journey towards wholeness, integrating various archetypal forces within his psyche.”

Not bad, ChatGPT. You’re finally getting somewhere. Used to be, you could only help with itineraries. Now look at you.

On the whole, I agree with ChatGPT but there is one other that I noticed that I want to add because us fictions writers, I think, are always in search of credible motivations for characters.

Honor over Money —- A large part of Passepartout’s admiration for Fogg stems from his disdain for money. Fogg is not motivated by the monetary aspect of the wager. He is wiling to spend freely, extravagantly, rewarding people along his journey, and is willing to risk ruination but not his honor. The wager therefore has more spiritual weight: Fogg’s stakes his whole life, his whole fortune, on his own capacity. It makes him truly a hero of our times.

I hope you enjoyed this brief little detour. I certainly enjoyed reading Around The World in 80 days. My current work-in-progress novel has travel aspects and many cultural encounters so I’m definitely not above copying the techniques of masters like Verne and others. It is a very quick read and Spotify also has an excellent audio version read by Ralph Cosham.

MISSY Pre-Order Information:

Apologies if you have already pre-ordered my book. Some people have mentioned having a hard time pre-ordering my book. The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Amazon US does not currently support my book because the US rights remain on submission.

Missy by Raghav Rao - Hera Books UK - Cover Reveal

Here’s the pre-order link again.

For more info about my book and why it’s currently only available for pre-order in the UK or to share it with other interested parties, please see the previous post on this subject.

Thanks for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Embodied Presence vs. the Arbitrary

Imbuing an arbitrary detail with implied meaning weakens fiction. It weakens story. I’m gearing up for a new semester of teaching and this is one of the core lessons I hope to impart. Readers are seldom interested in meaning that is not physically situated in action.

I’m going to share with you three related quotes from Flannery O’Connor’s “On Writing Short Stories” and then an extract from John Le Carré’s ‘A Legacy of Spies.’ Hopefully, together, they succeed in making my argument for me:

Flannery O’Connor’s book of essays and yet another spy book from the master John Le Carré

Quotes from Flannery O’Connor’s “On Writing Short Stories” -

In good stories, the characters are shown through the action and the action is controlled through the characters, and the result of this is meaning that derives from the whole presented experience.

The fiction writer has to realize that he can’t create compassion with compassion, or emotion with emotion, or thought with thought. He has to provide all these things with a body; he has to create a world with weight and extension.

I have found that the stories of beginning writers usually bristle with emotion, but whose emotion is often very hard to determine. Dialogue frequently proceeds without the assistance of any characters that you can actually see, and uncontained thought leaks out of every corner of the story. The reason is usually that the student is wholly interested in his thoughts and his emotions and not in his dramatic action, and that he is too lazy or highfalutin to descend to the concrete where fiction operates. He thinks that judgment exists in one place and sense-impression in another.

Extract from A Legacy of Spies -

As they reach the footpath, I tag along behind them. A grey-haired woman grants me a polite smile. She thinks she should recognize me. Pedestrians on the public footpath mingle with us. A sign says To Battersea Park. We approach an archway. I glance upwards and see the hatted figure of a large man in a three-quarter-length dark overcoat, standing on the bridge, scanning passers-by below. The spot he has chosen, by chance or design, gives him a grandstand view of three of bastion’s exits.

Having profited from the same vantage point myself, I can confirm its tactical value. Owing to the downward turn of his head, and of his hat, which is a block Homburg with a crown and shallow brim, his face is in shadow. But his boxer’s bulk is not in doubt: broad-shouldered, wide backed and a good three inches taller than what I would have expected of Alec’s son; but then I never met his wife.

Look at the ratio of embodied narrative — lines about what the character sees and does — compared to explicit meaning-making. I’d say only the last line is massively plot-advancing. And there are about 9 lines that precede it. A ratio of 9:1

A lesser writer (me) might have instead written something like this:

I made my way through the tourist-dense streets of central London. Barges plied the Thames. From the lower level riverwalk, I glance up and see a man in a three-quarter-length overcoat scanning passers-by below, a hat shadowing his face. He’s taller than I would have expected from Alec’s son but then I never met his mother.

What’s the difference?

In my rush to move the plot forward, I’ve only thrown in a semblance of place-making with some irrelevant details — tourists and barges — and instead tried to arrive at the major plot point, the protagonist following the son of a former associate.

But JLC is a lot more patient, focused on embodying the character, by filtering the world through the character’s prism. The result? More thoughtfully-selected details and fewer random ones. I threw in barges because I looked at Battersea Park on Google Maps and saw that it was along the Thames. That’s lazy writing. But JLC embodies his character and writes, “she thinks she should recognize me”, referring to a grey-haired passerby. This sensory detail, a woman who never returns to the plot, is not arbitrary. It reveals the protagonist’s state of mind. After all this entire passage is in some way about recognition or rather the expectation of recognition.

Vu Tran, author of Dragonfish, and professor at the University of Chicago said as much as to me — be alert to that which is arbitrary in your writing. It’s a sign of lazy writing or insufficiently revised writing. And be especially careful when you start justifying arbitrariness.

So this is a rejoinder to myself to be more patient, more embodied and less arbitrary. Hopefully it will also help you be a more discerning reader.

MISSY Pre-Order Information:

Apologies if you have already pre-ordered my book. Some people have mentioned having a hard time pre-ordering my book. The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Amazon US does not currently support my book because the US rights remain on submission.

Missy by Raghav Rao - Hera Books UK - Cover Reveal

Here’s the pre-order link again.

For more info about my book and why it’s currently only available for pre-order in the UK or to share it with other interested parties, please see the previous post on this subject.

Thanks for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Wonderful Piece of Sports Journalism

One of the joys of the Olympics is to witness excellence from unexpected corners. Julien Alfred made history for St. Lucia in the 100m as did Théa Le Fond in Triple Jump for Dominica. These are incredible accomplishments.

Next Olympics, LA 2028, the sport I love, squash, will have a chance to tell its story. And we have good ones! Today, I share with you our own remarkable island story: How Thierry Lincou from Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, with an area smaller than Grand Canyon National Park and a population less than that of Jacksonville, FL, managed to become World No. 1! Lincou did not leave Réunion to train in France until he was 18! It’s astounding that a man who managed to become World No. 1 and retain it for a period in 2004-05 was coached by correspondence from France. Can you imagine? Coached by fax! Not even a Youtube tutorial!

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Left: Réunion Island. Top: James Willstrop. Bottom: Thierry Lincou.

It is exceedingly hard to become world-class without a supportive ecosystem, without high-caliber players to push you. Luckily, we have a wonderful piece of sports journalism to help us understand. James Willstrop, an Englishman and former world no. 1 of squash, wrote this wonderful piece for The Guardian in 2015. Willstrop is an immensely popular figure in our niche world, known for his doggedness and tenacity and also for his sportsmanship and sublime racket skills. This piece is evergreen because of its tone. James’ humility allows for an intimate, admiring portrait of Lincou and the island that birthed him. It’s not just sports journalism; it’s travel writing as well. Here is the LINK

Here’s my favorite line from the piece:

Re: Lincou’s childhood squash ‘club’ — “behind the padlocked door was just an old, abandoned barn that was completely caked in bird shit”

LINK: How did a world champion squash player emerge from Réunion Island? by James Willstrop Lincou and the ghosts of training sessions past

Now, Lincou is Head Coach at MIT where he coached a reader of this newsletter (Brad Levin). If you’d like to learn more about Lincou, here’s an in-depth interview with him.

If you enjoyed James’ piece and if you’d like interesting updates from an active world-class athlete, I enthusiastically suggest subscribing to Nathan Lake’s newsletter.

Nathan Lake. Chicago legend.

Nathan trained in Chicago for two years while his wife, Haley (recently retired from pro squash herself) went to graduate school at UChicago’s Booth School of Business. In that time, Nath endeared himself to the Chicago squash community with his warmth and curiosity.

I’ve learnt so much from his newsletter about psychology, motivation, openness to possibility, and the ups-and-downs of life as a touring professional; his next update will likely be in September when the season resumes — Newsletter LINK ; you can follow Nath on Insta here, too.

Project Beacon:

If you’re interested in supporting Chicago squash, consider supporting Project Beacon. I’m part of the volunteer group that is trying to bring outdoor squash to Chicago’s iconic Union Park. Learn more here and make a donation if you feel like.

Let’s bring outdoor squash to Chicago! MISSY Pre-Order Information:

Apologies if you have already pre-ordered my book. Some people have mentioned having a hard time pre-ordering my book. The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Amazon US does not currently support my book because the US rights remain on submission.

Missy by Raghav Rao - Hera Books UK - Cover Reveal

Here’s the pre-order link again.

For more info about my book and why it’s currently only available for pre-order in the UK or to share it with other interested parties, please see the previous post on this subject.

Thanks for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Assam - India in Translation: Reading Through Each of India’s 28 States

I’m returning now to one of my favorite series — Indian Novels in Translation, State by State. Other posts in this series. Tamil Nadu |Karnataka | Andhra Pradesh | Kerala | Telangana | Goa | Orissa

Part of why I'm so excited about this series is that it takes me to places that I have rarely, if ever, visited. I was fortunate to go to Assam as a teenager, to world-famous Kaziranga National Park where we saw magnificent rhinoceroses. We boated along the wide, resolute Brahmaputra river and I had a sense of the vastness and history of the land. But apart from those three or four days spent in nature, Assam is a state that I know little about. 

For this recommendation, I turned to an absolute expert -- Aruni Kashyap, esteemed author and Director of the Creative Writing Program at UGA. I met Aruni only recently but was instantly struck by his warmth and generosity. Aruni writes short stories, novels, poetry in English and Assamese and has also translated between the languages. I'm excited for his latest release, The Way You Want To Be Loved, from Gaudy Boy, a really amazing, exciting press originally out of Singapore, and am proud to say that I've preordered my copy. 

Today's book: 

On a Wing and a Prayer
by Arun Sarma
STATE: Assam
Original Language: Assamese
Original language title: Aashirbador Rong

Publisher in English — Rupa (2013) - LINK

Translated by Maitreyee Siddhanta Chakravarty

It was with the confidence of Aruni's trustworthy recommendation that I opened A Wing and A Prayer by Arun Sarma.

I was instantly transported. The first twenty pages are vital for building a story world and creating its rules. Here, we are taken to 1935. Several Muslim boatmen are plying a difficult trade up and down the Brahmaputra river when they are stranded on a sandy bank by low water levels. There is evident authorial mastery in the nuances of the niche world. Mansoor swims out to shore for a reprieve; there, he speaks to a "well-built man coiling ropes" who tells him of a barren expanse with "no zamindar and no headman", probably because the river's flooding and receding makes cultivation difficult. Here's the description of that land: 

Sloshing through the muddy grassland, Mansoor soon reached the dry riverbank. A tiny lane led through rows of silk-cotton trees and thick shrubbery, straw and thatching grass at their base. Moving along this, he eventually landed near a big river -- probably the Kuroi that merged with the Brahmaputra slightly further on. He walked on until he chanced upon a vast open space stretching right down to the river, a thick forest on one side and grasslands on the other. There was a field to one side and beyond that, far away, signs of a village. A row of tall trees etched a dark horizon. Some scattered hutments, a herd of cows or buffaloes...

Years later, Mansoor, having never forgotten this sojourn, brings his young wife, Nerisa, and his daughter, Hasina from their "unknown little village in Chittagong" to this expansive dreamland. Another former Muslim boatman joins him, and then another, until they have built for themselves a tiny Muslim village. This is the opening chapter of On A Wing And A Prayer and you realize that you are in the grip of an author confident in telling a wide-ranging story, one that covers communities and decades, even as it foregrounds the dreams and ambitions of central characters. 

It is in the second chapter that we are introduced to the book's true hero, seemingly luckless Gojen whose father was imprisoned because of his opposition to the tyrannical revenue collector, and whose mother died, leaving him alone with his grandmother. But Gojen is fierce, physically strong, a young man who disdains money. Instead, he values helping his neighbors, enjoying his ganja cigarettes, and long days spent fishing the Kuroi. 

It is a transition time in rural Assam where the newspapers arrive a week late. With growing rumors of independence, local thugs exaggerate their role in the freedom struggle. Arun Sarma shows, through interweaving storylines of a full cast of characters, the challenges of young India to unshackle itself from greed that threatens to co-opt the independence movement. The book manages to be an ensemble book about a village but also a hero's journey for Gojen who we increasingly come to identify with. 

The book advances a moral stance but does so through its characters and their choices; this is executed seamlessly so that you actually feel through dilemmas around caste, widow remarriage, and the independence movement. At one point, Gojen's grandmother is incensed at the thought of a Muslim girl entering her house; by the end of the chapter, she's feeding her by hand. It's done so convincingly, by appealing to a simple truth. It's easy to misunderstand from a distance but when someone needs help and is at your door, could you refuse them a glass of water or a bite to eat? 

Similarly, the book's 'A' plot, how the village deals with the pogrom that destroys the Muslim village built in Chapter 1, frames political, moral questions directly into the character's lives in a believable, realistic way. We see that some of the communal violence of partition was calculated as a land grab or a power consolidation move. We see how the courts and magistrates work well to an extent but, in remote villages, late at night, a machete or a gun can make a mockery of a verdict. 

You have to understand that in school in India we study the independence movement every single year. You think you know it. But Gojen's moral journey truly re-framed its stakes for me and its subsequent aftermath. 

Like the movie Casablanca, this book hits a different speed altogether in the final 10% and becomes a race against time. I found myself furiously skimming, dying to know what happened, needing for the characters I'd come to be fiercely protective of to end up okay. I haven't felt genuine fear while reading for quite some time. My heart rate was elevated like I was running in my bed. 

This is a book written by someone with a love of Assam and a love of its people but also someone who loves them well enough to point out their vices, their shortcomings. Moral courage is easy in the abstract. Arun Sarma's characters model for us the Jungian spectrum of our inner self and ask us --- when the chips are down, who are we really? 

Rating: 5/5. Without a doubt. 

MISSY Pre-Order Information:

Apologies if you have already pre-ordered my book. Some people have mentioned having a hard time pre-ordering my book. The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Amazon US does not currently support my book because the US rights remain on submission.

Missy by Raghav Rao - Hera Books UK - Cover Reveal

Here’s the pre-order link again.

For more info about my book and why it’s currently only available for pre-order in the UK or to share it with other interested parties, please see the previous post on this subject.

Thank you for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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A Tribute to Lala the Guinea Pig

This is a very short video of Lala in her final days. She was too thin and not eating well. She was struggling to poop and there was a little blood whenever she peed. But she was also alert, energized, and curious. You can see her stepping all over the plastic syringes that I was using to feed her a nutrient-rich slurry. She loved being placed on top of our table where she would sniff at the fruit basket, napkin holder, books, tea cups, and other miscellaneous objects. Her little nose knocked over a cup with water, nearly spilling on Raghav’s laptop. She persistently chewed on a woven basket that looked as though it should be chewable but was actually quite tough against her teeth. It was adorable to watch her.

Lala and Dot, my parents’ two guinea pigs, stayed with Raghav and me for three weeks this month while my parents traveled to Australia. At the time, Lala was just coming out of a period of rapid deterioration of her health and appeared to have narrowly dodged death for the moment. She required special care, including feeding by syringe on a nightly basis.

When confronted with health issues, there are not always a lot of interventions that make sense for guinea pigs. Their systems are not very complex and so when one thing goes wrong, a rapid cascade of effects can lead to death before you know it. Their issues are hard to diagnose because anything exploratory requires high-cost testing, like an MRI, which still may not get to the root of the issue. Even if the issue is diagnosed, half the time there is not really a “cure”. It’s heartbreaking to want to intervene but to have no meaningful interventions.

My mom often shares a gruesome story of a close friend who opted for surgery for her little guinea pig. Because they are such small creatures, the surgery effectively sliced into half of the guinea pig’s body and the poor thing never recovered and died after surgery. It was a cautionary tale of what to do and not do when your beloved guinea pig falls ill.

A Younger Lala

Here is Lala with her offspring Dot in younger days. My mom had lost her first, two-pair of guinea pigs Kahlua and Tiramisu about 6-8 months before. She would regularly comb the humane society online page for news of guinea pigs to adopt. That was when she came across notice of Lala and Dot.

Lala enjoyed being gently pet on the crown of her head. She was quiet, squeaking occasionally when she really wanted a treat. Sometimes she would run over to gaze at me, seemingly asking to be pet or fed. Seeing her want a treat so sweetly was irresistible. She would stretch up on her hind legs and sniff inquisitively with her delicate little nose.

The life of a guinea pig is one of eating and basking in the sun, or hinatabokko suru as my mom affectionately describes it. In addition to the food staples of timothy hay and food pellets, Lala and Dot are fed any of the following: organic spring mix and romaine lettuce; fresh cilantro, parsley, and carrot top greens; chilled and nicely sliced celery, baby cucumber, and red or green pepper; and the very occasional blueberry, apple, or grape.

Apparently the sugar content of fruit is very high for guinea pigs and so really they should not eat more than a blueberry or two a week. Lala and Dot both love blueberries. In her final days, Lala was eating less and less and I ultimately indulged her with 2-3 blueberries a day, which she would always eat. I’m glad that I did looking back and knowing now how little time she had left.

Guinea Pigs in the Wild

I have come to learn just how helpless guinea pigs are. So it is near impossible for me to imagine these animals in the wild. They are very soft and mild-mannered. They are perpetually in fight or flight. They don’t even run all that fast (certainly not compared to a hawk ready to snatch them up). One of my friends once came over while we were caring for the guinea pigs. Upon seeing them, she gently prodded at one of their plump little legs and commented, “they are literally pure prey.” My dad says that really their rapid reproduction is all that keeps them around as a species. God knows the individual guinea pig just isn’t going to be around for long.

There are many notices that warn people not to release domesticated guinea pigs into the wild with the misplaced good intentions of setting them free. These are not animals that will “enjoy” their freedom in the way we may hope for. Truthfully, I imagine that this same disclaimer could probably be true for wild guinea pigs, do not release into the wild.

My mom has built up a pen for her guinea pigs that is about the size of Raghav and my dining table. She generously feeds them. She takes daily walks to cut grasses for them from around the neighborhood. She scoops their poop 2-3 times per day. She changes their flannel bedding every few days. She recently bought flannel blankets with designs of guinea pigs. It is adorable to see guinea pigs scampering over flannels with guinea pigs. It is so clearly not something that Lala nor Dot can appreciate, which makes the whole concept of it cuter.

RIP Lala

Lala eventually passed away around six in the evening on Monday, July 8th. I noticed she was unmoving and unable to eat or drink water when I went to feed her and Dot around 5:30pm after returning home from work. I lifted her onto my lap and she seemed soothed by my gentle petting of the crown of her head until she died. My parents were flying into LAX right around that hour and were able to say goodbye to her over FaceTime. Unfortunately she was not able to make it one more day when my parents could have been with her in-person. Her decline was rapid and to a degree customary for guinea pigs. One moment they seem okay and then within hours they are at death’s door.

It was moving and humbling to be a source of comfort for such a small little thing in her final hours. I will never forget those last moments.

RIP Lala, we will love you always.

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Anger at Ruth Bader Ginsburg

This might be a polarizing post but I’ve felt this way for a while and I don’t see it discussed enough.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg let us all down.

Firstly, I know that in the public discourse, ageism is often overlooked and downplayed as not as ‘bad’ as other forms of discrimination. I want to make it clear that I’m not doubting the capacity for contribution of those advanced in years. I’m merely looking at her decision from an actuarial standpoint, from a risk of death.

In 2013, Ruth Bader Ginsburg turned 80. By then, she had already survived two serious bouts of cancer. In May of that year, she fell in her bathroom and cracked two ribs. But she refused to entertain thoughts of stepping down, insisting that she was lifting her weights again and had good bone density.

Harvard Law Professor, Randall Kennedy, urged her in the pages of New Republic magazine to step down so that Obama could confirm her successor, not because anyone doubted the state of her legal mind, but from pure political calculus.

"It seems to me that a justice should take into account the politics surrounding confirmation and not allow (an) opportunity to fall to a Republican," said Kennedy. (Reuters)

Her rebuttals were rooted in two non-relevant arguments:

She was still capable of doing the job.

She, personally, felt that she might regret any ‘early retirement’

Here are the quotes from her:

“It really has to be, ‘Am I equipped to do the job?' ”

"I wonder if Sandra regrets stepping down when she did?"

(Referring to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor who retired at age 75 to take care of her husband, John, who had Alzheimer's disease). Day O’Connor, a moderate, was appointed by Reagan and resigned during Bush II, and was replaced by Alito Jr, a man who is as close to the second coming as Revivalists are likely to get).

RBG stubbornly clung on, feeling that she was capable, not ready to retire. And IGNORING actuarial tables. Here is the actuarial life table from the Social Service Administration. The key word is ‘feeling’ here. She felt good. But what do the numbers say?

According to these numbers, for each year of the Trump administration, these were her % chances of dying.

Age 84, 7%

Age 85, 7.9%

Age 86, 8.9%

Age 87, 9.9%

Calculating the probability of her dying in that four year period, I get 29.6%.

I had written a draft of this piece last week before BIden’s announcement and, in case you’re curious, here’s the calculation for Biden.

First year: 7.7834%

Second year: 8.5686%

Third year: 9.4809%

Fourth year: 10.5090%

Which means that there was a 31.7% chance that Biden would not have made it through his full second term.

Actuarial Tables

I understand that this is in bad taste, calculating the probability of someone’s death. But it is the fear of bad taste that has cost so many people so much with the current composition of the court. Someone needed to show her that if the Trump beats Clinton, there is nearly a 1/3 chance your seat ends up filled by a Republican.

But RBG did the unthinkable. She gambled with her legacy and with our collective futures. She lost. Now she’s checked out of Atlantic City and we’re left holding the bag.

P.S. Not much discourse on this but there is one Politico piece on it, in case you’re interested - LINK - ‘Extraordinarily Self-Centered’: As a Roe Reversal Looms, RBG Admirers Wrestle with Her Legacy

MISSY Pre-Order Information:

Apologies if you have already pre-ordered my book. Some people have mentioned having a hard time pre-ordering my book. The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Amazon US does not currently support my book because the US rights remain on submission.

Missy by Raghav Rao - Hera Books UK - Cover Reveal

Here’s the pre-order link again.

For more info about my book and why it’s currently only available for pre-order in the UK or to share it with other interested parties, please see the previous post on this subject.

Thank you for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Answering Machine in Japanese

To date, I have learned about 667 Kanji. I am enjoying my journey and doing it マイペー (maipēsu), at my own pace. When I first posted about this (August of last year), I had learned about 375 of these logographs. My motivation remains strong. It’s just that sometimes I get busy and need to defer my practice. But overall, it’s been steady progress.

There are two important thresholds that I’m chasing:

1,006 —- this is the number of kanji taught in the first 9 grades of Japanese schooling. The majority of everyday Japanese is covered by these.

2136 — advanced Japanese literacy

Today, I want to share with you an unusual word. It is made up of 5 kanji and does not have any hiragana or katakana (the phonetic alphabets). Usually, the phonetic alphabets help mobilize kanji into speech. For example, a kanji ending in a ‘ru’ hiragana (る) is the verb form of a kanji and words ending in ‘i’ hiragana (い) tend to be its adjective form.

But today’s word is a noun and nouns often are made up of only kanji.

I should say that ‘nouns’, ‘verbs’, and ‘adjectives’ are not exactly perfect descriptors for words in Japanese. It’s more helpful to think of the kanji, as logographs that carry meaning, as ‘stems’ and then you learn, with phonetics, how to manipulate those stems. But let’s put that on a shelf for now.

The word I want to analyze is:

Does it look intimidating and complicated? Well, when you go step by step and component by component, it reveals its meaning. Let’s start right to left.

話 is composed of the radicals 言 ‘say’  and 舌 ‘tongue’ — it means ‘talk’

Mnemonic: It’s pronounced ‘wa’; who is talking? The Walrus! He’s saying, “I am the walrus!”

電 is composed of the radicals 雨 ‘rain’  and 田 ‘rice paddy’ and 乚 ‘umbrella’ — it means ‘electricity’

Imagine Ben Franklin running around a rice paddy holding an umbrella and hoping to be struck my lightning. I no longer need this mnemonic since it’s used in ‘densha’ 電車 (electric train) which is a very common word.

番 is composed of the radicals 釆 ‘sickle’  and 田 ‘rice paddy’ — it means ‘number in a serial’

You and your fellow agricultural laborers on this ghastly collective farm take turns harvesting with a sickle until you are banned from the activity. (Intense emotions help with memorization). The pronunciation is ‘ban’ but I no longer need the mnemonic as this kanji is used in 一番, ‘ichiban’, a very common Japanese word meaning ‘first’ or ‘number one’ or ‘best.’

守 is composed of the radicals 宀 ‘roof’  and 寸 ‘measurement’ — it means ‘protect’

In America, in the event that your contractor does a bad job with the roof and it fails to protect you from rain, you can ‘sue’ them. The pronunciation for this is ‘su’

留 is composed of the radicals ム ‘private’  and 刀 ‘sword’ and 田 ‘rice paddy’  — it means ‘detain’.

I imagine Tatum’s cousin Ryuichiro is part of a small rural militia that finds and detains a suspicious character. This makes sense to me because, in real life, in addition to his day job, Ryu is a volunteer firefighter. The pronunciation for this is ‘ryu’ or ‘ru’

So adding all these together, left to right, you get

Ru + Su + Ban + Den + Wa and the word is in fact Rusuban Denwa.

留守 = rusu = absence from home = detain & protect. This sort of makes sense if you think that you are detained away from the place that you are meant to protect.

So then, let’s add, 番 (ban), which is number in a serial, which can also be thought of as ‘turn’. So the person whose turn it is to take care of home during your absence is a caretaker!

留守番 = rusuban = caretaker

電話 = denwa = electric talk = phone

Caretaker + Phone?

Answering Machine!

Yay! Rusuban Denwa. 留守番電話. It means ‘Answering Machine’

Great job those of you who made it this far!

Hope you enjoyed this diversion.

Warmly,

Raghav

MISSY Pre-Order Information:

Apologies if you have already pre-ordered my book. Some people have mentioned having a hard time pre-ordering my book. The best online retailers for my book are currently Waterstones and Blackwells. Amazon US does not currently support my book because the US rights remain on submission.

Missy by Raghav Rao - Hera Books UK - Cover Reveal

Here’s the pre-order link again.

For more info about my book and why it’s currently only available for pre-order in the UK or to share it with other interested parties, please see the previous post on this subject.

Thank you for reading The Last Stop on the Late Train. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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