Uncategorized Posts

“How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness and Community in Times of Global Crises” by Paolo Giordano

Physicist Paolo Giordano’s essay written at the start of the lockdown was shared more than 4 million times and helped shift public opinion in the early stages of the epidemic. This edition translated from Italian into English by Alex Valente is a slim little booklet that outlines simply the different stages of the epidemic.

Paolo Giordano says “Epidemics are mathematical emergencies first and foremost. Because maths isn’t the science of numbers — not really — it’s the science of relations it describes the bonds and the exchanges between different entities, regardless of what these entities might be made of, abstracting them into letters, functions, vectors, points and planes. The contation is an infection of our relations.”

An essay that discusses the different stages of an epidemic, how it affects us all, the newness of the experience creates unexpected reactions but it is important to recognise and imbibe qualities that will help survive an epidemic. Also to understand that it is important to be a little more careful than usual, a little more kinder. It will go a long way in helping us survive this pandemic.

An essay that is essential reading. No surprise that it was shared over 4 million times when it was first published. So many gems of wisdom with a deep analytical understanding of what is the life cycle of this pandemic. Although it is about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it is oddly a reassuring book to read.

4 October 2020

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o “The Upright Revolution”

Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s The Upright Revolution is a short story that was originally written in Gikuyu. The author wrote it as a Christmas gift for his daughter. According to him the primary essence of this story is “co-operation”. He wrote it while he was living in Cape Town. The fable tells the story of how “a long time ago humans used to walk on legs and arms, just like all the other four limbed creatures”, but how “their rhythm and seamless coordination made the other parts [of the body] green with envy”, and “they started plotting against the two pairs”.

This fable has been translated into 63 languages, 47 of them African, making it the most translated story in the history of African literature (Seagull AIS, PanMacmillan India, 2019). Some of the African languages it is available in are: ” Amharic, Dholuo, Kamba, Lwisukha (Luhya), Kipsigis, Kinyarwanda, French, Arabic, Luganda, Kiswahili, Afrikaans, Hausa, Meru, Lingala, IsiZulu, Igbo, Ibibio, isiNdebele, XiTsonga, Nandi (Kalenjin), Rukiga, Bamanankan, Lugbara, Lubukusu, Kimaragoli, Giriama, Sheng, Ewe, and Naija Langwej.” ( Alison Flood, “Short story by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o translated into over 30 languages in one publication“, The Guardian, 29 March 2016)

The Seagull Books edition of Upright Revolution is richly illustrated in full colour with graphic artist Sunandini Banerjee’s marvellous digital collages, which open up new vistas of imagination and add unique dimensions to the story, making this volume a veritable collector’s item.

In November 2019, an exhibition showcasing the history of modern Indian art had an entire panel devoted to Sunandini Bannerjee’s incredible digital collages created for this book. It was a fascinating display that had my little daughter mesmerised. So later when she received a copy of the book from the publisher, Naveen Kishore, her joy knew no bounds! To admire and appreciate art framed and hung on the walls of an art gallery and to be able to hold a book made of it is an incredible experience.

Buy this book! It gives one pure joy with the story, the illustrations, the manner in which all the elements come together to create a picture book for young and old alike. Love it!

4 Oct 2020

“What’s wrong with you Karthik?” by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

What’s wrong with you Karthik? by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan is a debut novel that was shortlisted for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. It is set in 1993 when young Karthik Subramanian, Grade 7, has been enrolled in Bengaluru or then Bangalore’s St. George’s school. It is a prestigious institution known for its illustrious alumni. They consist of professionals, sportsmen, entrepreneurs etc. It is a hard act to follow. Torn between belonging to a traditional TamBrahm family and the very alien, environment of St. George’s, Karthik works his way through. He ultimately survives. What’s wrong with you Karthik? has a lot of potential that has not been exploited. The flatness of women characters is bothersome but not as much as the ill-crafted male characters. It was a great opportunity to explore different forms of masculinity and it would have been a magnificent canvas to explore. Instead it seems as a thinly garbed memoir passing off as fiction and thereby not really doing justice to either genre. Karthik Venkatesh points out in his review that “More could perhaps have been done. A tad more attention could have been paid to coming up with a meatier plot, perhaps. A little more attention to trimming the bulges in places.” ( Deccan Herald, 6 Sept 2020)

4 October 2020

Two books on Kashmir

Is it the same for you? by Neha Singh and illustrated by Priya Sebastian ( Seagull Books) is a large format picture book telling the story of a young girl in Kashmir as she goes through the turbulence of adolescence in her conflict-ridden world. It is an astonishingly powerful book. The story from the title onwards forces the reader to align themselves with the young girl narrator. It forces the reader to understand the horrors of living under conflict-like situation 24×7. The barbed wire detail illustration on the same page when the narrator speaks of the humiliating frisking of one’s person at the police posts that are conducted, sometimes at random, for the sake of safety is a very disturbing design detail. The barbed wire evokes images of the fencing that is seen in large parts of Kashmir, in rural and urban spaces. Most of the barbed wire fences have empty bottles and cans strung on it so as to alert locals in case someone tries to cross the fences under the cover of darkness. To juxtapose this detail with that of the body search bordering on sexual harassment of the helpless girl who as a local in the face of authority can do little except be mute. This is a powerful moment in the story as it exemplifies not only her state but at a broader level it is emblematic of the challenges faced by other citizens of Kashmir. Yet, given these trying circumstances, the girl-narrator tries to seek hope.

The illustrations accompanying the story are fantastic! It is extraordinary what can be done with different tones of brown and black. Is it the same for you? is a powerful book at many levels but definitely because it asks the readers the haunting question whether they share similar experiences as the protagonist. A question that is not easily answered and instead leaves much room for introspection. Even though it is illustrated like a picture book usually created for little children, this is more like a book that develops the principles of a picture book of showing a complicated reality to a new reader. A child coming into the world has to be introduced to the world and its various elements. Similarly the world needs to reckon with the difficult circumstances under which Kashmiris live and perhaps do something about bringing some positive changes.

The Plague Upon Us is Shabir Ahmad Mir’s debut novel ( Hachette India) set in Kashmir and is also about living constantly under conflict. It was published on the first anniversary of the revoking of Article 370 that gave the state of Kashmir a special status in India. The book is told in four tales each focusing on the lives of four main characters – Obaid, Jozy, Rabia and Muzzafar. It has all the classic details of torture, army abductions, wronged youth running away to join militants, rape scenes, festering anger, the noise of chatter, the conversations and the simplistic way of linking informers and security forces does not sit easy. This novel capitulates to all the popular impressions of what constitutes Kashmir. It seems like commercial fiction dressed up as literary fiction and put through production in haste to mark one year lockdown of the state.

The writer has potential. There are parts in it that can be lifted out of the ordinary but there is no gravitas. So many missed opportunities of detailing the ordinary folks who become victims in the crossfire of security forces and militants; the extortion rackets, the wrongful imprisonment of young men, the informer network, the impact on women, the families that are torn apart etc. It also lacks descriptions of Kashmir. The beauty and the devastation. It is so focussed on the conversations that really lead nowhere.

In this day and age when there is ready access to war literature, testimonies, information in real time on social media, documentaries and live television, etc. Literary works such as The Plague Upon Us that are positioned as a retelling of Oedipus Rex could do with much more layering. To invoke Classical Literature, then it must be used correctly. Not flippantly. Talking about militancy and the troubles of Kashmir does not make it a Greek tragedy. There is justifiably a lot of raw rage on display. A rage that burns within the writer. While rage is good, it is raw energy that could easily have been used to some creative good. It is also impossible to tell the difference between the characters. Their voices are flat. There is no rhythm in the text. Isn’t the idea of literary fiction to focus on the events, use them and present them in a little more than journalistic writing?

Both the books reviewed here are stories from Kashmir, detailing the horror that the civilians experience daily. But it is the minimalist picture book with its powerful stories and use of few words that has a greater impact than the novel.

4 October 2020

World Translation Day

30 September is celebrated worldwide as International Translation Day. On 24 May 2017, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 71/288 on the role of language professionals in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development, and declared 30 September as International Translation Day.

30 September celebrates the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator, who is considered the patron saint of translators.

St. Jerome was a priest from North-eastern Italy, who is known mostly for his endeavor of translating most of the Bible into Latin from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. He also translated parts of the Hebrew Gospel into Greek. He was of Illyrian ancestry and his native tongue was the Illyrian dialect. He learned Latin in school and was fluent in Greek and Hebrew, which he picked up from his studies and travels. Jerome died near Bethlehem on 30 September 420.

It is interesting to note that on the Internet, 30 September is celebrated with great gusto. Translators, publishers, writers, readers, booksellers etc promote translations enthusiastically. It becomes a fantastic excuse for world literature to be made visible. Many threads pop up on social media that are worth preserving and referencing for the future. Take for instance, Meru Gokhale, Publisher, Penguin Random House India’s tweets on 30 Sept 2020.

In all this exuberance of sharing and posting images of translated works in a predominantly secular world, the key connection with the Bible is usually forgotten. Ironical that the secular calendar requires a festival to be celebrated and borrows a date from the Christian calendar. Nevertheless it is worth reading about the various translations of the Bible that were made available particularly after Gutenberg’s printing press made it technologically “easier” to provide multiple copies of the text rather than await a handwritten copy.

In All Things Made New: Writings on the Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of History of the Church at Oxford University, there are a couple of chapters on the translations of the Bible. A neat division is made between the various translations of the Bible available before and after the authorised King James Version (1611).

Here are some relevant extracts from the chapter “The Bible before King James” ( pp. 167 – 174) that give a sense of how many translations of the text existed in circulation.

In the fifteenth centry the official Church in England scored a notable success in destroying the uniquely English dissenting movement known as Lollardy. One of the results of this was that the Church banished the Bible in English; access to the Lollard Bible translation was in theory confined to those who could be trusted to read it without ill consequence — a handful of approved scholars and gentry. After that, England’s lack of provisions for vernacular Bibles stood in stark contrast to their presence in the rest of Western Europe, which was quickly expanding, despite the disaproval of individual prelates, notably Pope Leo X. Between 1466 and 1522 there were twenty-two editions of the Bible in High an Low German; the Bible appeared in Italian in 1471, Dutch in 1477, Spanish in 1478, Czech around the same time and Catalan in 1491. In England, there simply remained the Vulgate, though thanks to printing that was readily available. One hundred and fifty-six complete Latin editions of the Bible had been published across Europe by 1520… .

The biblical scholarship of Desiderius Erasmus represented a dramatic break with any previous biblical tradition in England: when he translated the New Testament afresh into Latin and published it in 1516, he went back to the original Greek.

The next significant translation of the Bible was by William Tyndale, who is considered to be the creator of the first and greatest Tudor translation of the Bible. His is the ancestor of all Bibles in the English language, especially the version of 1611… By the time of Tyndale’s martyrdom in 1536, perhaps 16,000 copies of his translation had passed into England, a country of no more than two and a half million people with, at that stage, a very poorly developed market for books.

In 1535, King Henry VIII himself, never predictable in matters religious, achieved a first at the same time by commissioning the first Bible printed in the British Isles — not in English, but a Latin text, with selected edited highlights from the Vulgate Old Testament and the whole of the New Testament. … This was followed by the Coverdale Bible, the only one to be available in English. This was followed by a former associate of Tyndale called John Rogers, although his work went under the pseudonum of Thomas Matthew. After the Matthew Bible, Coverdale produced yet another version of his completed text that acquired the nickname of the Great Bible. Given that the preface was provided in 1541 by the archbishop, it is often called Cranmer’s Bible. Subsequently, other versions of the Bible were published — the Geneva Bible ( 1560 and 1576 with its first English printing it became a firm favourite with the reading public) and the Bishops’ Bible (1568). These were soon followed by the King James Bible ( 1611).

Diarmaid MacCulloch speculates that perhaps the 1611 vesion had such a lasting effect because of the quality of its translation.

There were so many translators on King James’s committees that the effect was not cacophony but uniformity: one translator read out his effort at revision of his allotted secion to his fellows, and they all joined in criticism and helpful suggesion to smooth out idiosyncrasies … . ( p.179)

An interesting observation on the art of translation by a scholar of a text that has withstood the test of time!

4 October 2020

“The Secret Explorers and the Lost Whales” by S J King

In late Sept 2020, a pod of approximately 400 pilot whales beached on the west coast of Tasmania.

From BBC website

Beaching of whales is an inexplicable phenomenon. For decades scientists have been studying whales but they continue to be baffled by this behaviour of the mammals. The September event was heartbreaking as some of the whales freed by rescuers, returned to the beach once more. Ultimately, a few were set free but they were only a tiny proportion of the pod. The remaining had either died or had to be euthanized as they were too weak to survive any more.

I was reminded of this sad event while reading The Secret Explorers and Lost Whales by SJ King. It is a fictional account of group of children who gather from around the world and embark upon different missions. They are the secret explorers who have their favourite areas of research — Connor ( oceanography), Tamiko ( dinosaurs / paleontology), Kiki ( machine and technoloy), Leah ( plants and animals / ecology), Ollie ( rainforests/ biologist), Roshni ( astronaut), Gustava ( history) and Cheng ( rocks and volcanoes / geomorphology). They are teamed up depending upon the mission. The Exploration Stations always picked the two members with the right skills and knowledge for the mission. They set off in their trustworthy Beagle, named after the ship used by Charles Darwin on hit missions. But the Beagle behaves like the Magic School Bus, a significantly successful landmark in contemporary children’s literature and edutainment.

This is the first in a series launched by Dorling Kindersley, Penguin Random House. The series has been conceived and written by SJ King. In The Lost Whales, marine life expert Connor and companion Roshni need to use Connor’s underwater expertise and her navigation skills to help save a pod of humpback whales that have lost their way. They set out in the Beagle to search for a way to steer the whales back on track, but encounter unexpected problems along the way, including a lost baby whale and a fleet of boats that could again send the whales off course.

The book is a delightful mix of storytelling and information. With great ease little details of oceanography such an explanation for red tide is offered in the book. There are descriptions of the whales as well as astonishment of the children upon hearing the humpback whales communicate. ( Listen to this BBC radio documentary that celebrates 50 years of bioacoustician and marine biologist Roger Payne’s extraordinary recording of humpback whales in 1967. It was released as an album in 1970 and went multi-platinum!) The thrill of an adventure coupled with a mission are beautifully told in this storybook. The last few pages are dedicated to outlining important facts of the ocean mentioned in the story and that could have been missed by a reader. These are very neatly presented as “Mission Notes”.

Slim little book that is packed with information and seems to be worth the price. Apart from being a phenomenal resource tool for children. Perhaps even inspirational for the choices they make in the future when deciding upon careers.

Now only if the fictional account of steering the whale pod to safety had been easy to replicate in real life, then perhaps the lives of 400 pilot whales beached in Tasmania could have been saved.

4 October 2020

Romila Thapar’s new essay, “Dissent”

Dissent by renowned historian Prof. Romila Thapar has been published by Seagull Books. Prof. Thapar will be 89 this November.

Book blurb:

People have disagreed since time immemorial. They have argued or agreed to disagree, or eventually arrived at an agreement. But we live in times when any form of dissent in India is marked as anti-indian, suggesting that the very concept of dissent has been imported to India from the west—an argument made by those who visualize the Indian past as free of blemishes and therefore not requiring dissenting opinions. But, as Romila Thapar explores in this timely historical essay, dissent has a long history in the subcontinent, even if its forms have evolved through the centuries. Thapar looks at the articulation of dissent—focusing on non-violent forms—that which is so essential to all societies, and relates it to various moments of time and in varying contexts as part of the Indian historical experience. Beginning with Vedic times, she takes us from the second to the first millennium BC, to the emergence of groups that were jointly called the shramanas—the jainas, Buddhists, and ajivikas. Going forward in time she explores the views of the bhakti Santa and others of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ad, and brings us to a major moment of dissent that helped to establish a free and democratic India: Mahatma Gandhism satyagraha. Throughout her argument she emphasises the use of the idiom of religion as reflecting social change, ending with the eventual politicization of religion in the present. She places in context the recent peaceful protests against caa and NPR in places such as br>shaheen Bagh, Delhi. Implicit in this is the question of whether or not the idiom of religion is necessary. Thapar maintains that dissent in our time must be audible, distinct, opposed to injustice and supportive of democratic rights. The articulation of dissent and debate through dialogue is what makes of it a movement that changes society for the better. Written by one of India’s best-known public intellectuals, voices of dissent: an essay has immense relevance. It is essential reading for anyone who contemplates not only the Indian past but also the direction in which the society and nation is headed.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.in/Voices-Dissent-Essay-ROMILA-THAPAR/dp/0857428624/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Dissent%2C+Romila+Thapar&qid=1601788235&sr=8-1

Picture credit: Sharmistha Chaudhury

4 Oct 2020

“Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is about the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet. A twin who died due to the plague. It is told from the grieving mother, twin sister and grandmother’s perspective. Shakespeare comes and goes through the novel but is never mentioned by name. Even though the novel is about the grieving family, it is utterly magnificent. I read it months ago. In fact as soon as the lockdown began in early April 2020. I could not put it down. It is an outstanding novel. I was delighted when it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 as it just seemed so perfect. It moved me so much that in all these months I have been unable to write about it on my blog. It is an emotional rollercoaster. Personally, I found it immensely healing to read during the pandemic. And then I heard an interview with pianist Vladmir Ashkenazy recorded in 1972 discussing Beethoven. Ashkenazy said, “It is no good to describe it. it always degrades music as great like this. You better leave it alone.” This is how I felt upon reading Hamnet. No point in describing it. Just experience it. Treasure it. Hold it dear.

Here is an utterly stunning passage from the concluding pages that made my heart sing with hope and joy given the horrendous pandemic we are living through:

Gardens don’t stand still: they are always in flux. The apple trees stretch out their limbs until their crowns reach higher than the wall. The pear trees fruit the first year, but not the second, then again the third. The marigolds unfold their bright petals, unfailingly every year, and the bee leave their skeps to skim over the carpet of blooms, dipping into and out of the petals. The lavender bushes in the knot garden grow leggy and woody, but Agnes will not pull them up; she cuts them back, saving the stems, her hands heavy with fragrance.

Maggie O’Farrell holding aloft Bessie, the Women’s Prize for Fiction trophy

30 September 2020

Ken Follett, international launch of “The Evening and the Morning”

On Tuesday 15 Sept 2020, Ken Follett’s publisher PanMacmillan held a virtual press conference, in association with the Foreign Press Association (FPA), to launch The Evening and the Morning. The virtual press conference was held on Zoom and moderated by the Director of the FPA, Deborah Bonetti.

I was one of the fortunate few who attended the event and I am so glad I did! The intention was to show a short film that Ken Follett had made giving a background to his interest in Kingsbridge, cathedrals, the desire to be historically accurate as far as possible, etc. Unfortunately the film refused to work due to a technical fault. So Ken Follett immediately stepped in with an impromptu and an excellent lecture on “Where do you get your ideas?” He answered it beautifully by saying it is not a bad question and that readers often provide the answer themselves. Then he spent the next ten minutes discussing it, weaving it around The Evening and the Morning. It was magical to hear a hugely successful author, who has purportedly sold 170 million copies of his books till date, talk about his writing craft, how to write historical fiction, why he writes such big fat stories that range between 300,000 to 400,000 words etc. It was a fantastic experience participating in the conference. Alas, neither the movie nor the recording of the press conference can be easily uploaded. I wish it was!

Nevertheless, the novel begins well. I have not finished reading it at the time of writing this novel as it is a doorstopper of a novel and needs to be read slowly. But from the little I have read, it is a promising read. Also as Ken Follett mentioned in the press conference that he would rather write novels that can be read slowly and savoured over time.

Press Release:

From the bestselling author Ken FollettThe Evening and the Morning is a historical epic that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.

A TIME OF CONFLICT
It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages, and England faces attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Life is hard, and those with power wield it harshly, bending justice according to their will – often in conflict with the king. With his grip on the country fragile and with no clear rule of law, chaos and bloodshed reign.

THREE LIVES INTERTWINED
Into this uncertain world three people come to the fore: a young boatbuilder, who dreams of a better future when a devastating Viking raid shatters the life that he and the woman he loves hoped for; a Norman noblewoman, who follows her beloved husband across the sea to a new land only to find her life there shockingly different; and a capable monk at Shiring Abbey, who dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a centre of learning admired throughout Europe.

THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE
Now, with England at the dawn of the Middle Ages, these three people will each come into dangerous conflict with a ruthless bishop, who will do anything to increase his wealth and power, in an epic tale of ambition and rivalry, death and birth, and love and hate.

Thirty years ago we were introduced to Kingsbridge in The Pillars of the Earth, and now in this masterful prequel international bestseller, Ken Follett will take us on a journey into a rich past, which will end where his masterpiece begins.

30 September 2020

Christopher Raja’s “Into the Suburbs”

The memoir by Australian writer Christopher Raja called Into the Suburbs is about his family migrating from Calcutta to Melbourne when Raja was a child. It is an interesting immigrant’s story as he documents his parents struggle to adapt and fit into this new country, a country they had moved to fulfil their dreams. Instead they find that having left perfectly decent professions in India, they were working at odd hours, in factories and in shifts, as long as they earned some income and managed to pay their bills. Slowly and steadily they achieve what they set out to do — get a home, get jobs and educate their son. Large portions of the novel revolve around the boy trying to find a way of fitting in as well, first in the state run school and then the posh private institution where his father is part of the faculty. It is a curious book. As he says in this interview with Yarra Libraries, Christopher Raja was not sure whether to classify it as a novel or a memoir. But it is reading between the lines that makes this book fascinating. On the face of it, Raja is writing a memoir that documents what it means to be an Asian immigrant. He experiences racism and physical bullying that was unheard of in Calcutta. And then there are really the unsaid things in the novel such as the exploration of different kinds of masculinity. The children on the playground or in schools trying to assert themselves as they reach adolescence. Then the young adults and the elders having their own way of accommodating each other. Ultimately it is the complicated relationship that Christopher Raja has with his dad, David, that is very illuminating about how masculinities can really play out. David Raja wanted the best for his son, to provide for him in a manner that he felt he had missed out. Christopher Raja’s paternal grandmother died within days of giving birth to her son, David. It left his paternal grandfather devastated and fairly hostile to the newborn son. The onus was upon David’s elder siblings particularly his eldest sister to care for him. Ultimately David decides to emigrate to Australia but realises the challenges it poses. His son witnesses it all silently but at times clashes with his father. One fine day when his father leaves never to return, Christopher Raja is bewildered. His mother comes across as a strong woman who expresses his displeasure often enough but is also clear that she needs to support her husband. Although there are certain decisions such as wanting to return to Calcutta regularly that are never explained. Why does she travel alone? Why does she never take her family with her? Yet after her husband’s unexpected death she buckles down and manages to clear their debts including paying the mortgage. For want of a better word, the writing style is monotone. He narrates what he has experienced. It is impossible to tell which of the sections are fictionalised but it works. Perhaps it is a survival tactic similar to that of found in the testimonies of trauma victims. In order to distance themselves from the horrific moment of trauma such as a rape or a war crime or any form of physical violence, the victim’s testimony immediately becomes third person as if the body is incapable of processing this assault on the individual themselves. It is a distancing mechanism. Similarly with Into the Suburbs Christopher Raja opts to tell his story in a voice that is calm, cool, moderate, bordering on the dull which seems to be purely a safety mechanism. The trauma of experiencing racism and related violence, whether implicitly or explicitly, while navigating daily life in Australia as an immigrant activates latent suvival techniques that unbeknowest to the author come to the fore. It is apparent to a reader who is distanced from the experience but can empathise with the challenges documented. This monotone narration also ensures that the book never leaves you. For weeks after having read the book, it still haunts one.

Read it.

29 September 2020

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