Contrary to everyday existence, the evening was one of those when I again got smitten thru my bones by a seraphic apparition resembling a woman’s whose booming laughter sent eclectic tremors through the foundations of my imagination…beautiful, wheatish, simple…the fact that our roving eyes met not once, not a meagre twice but three whole times only lent a luminous hue to an otherwise cloudy evening…but alas! I couldn’t go up to her or even smile back and that is the reason I sit here and record another small, sweet and unsuccessful glimpse into a magical world of smiles, bob-cuts and an eloquent nose…ah! The nose…the olfactory organ that stood out like a beacon of subliminal poise whilst eyes roved about and around to meet and lock and kiss…but the kiss that strangers share can be and often is what transcends into the musty ruins of memory or the freshly printed pages of books written for an audience who have had no first hand knowledge of the experience itself…Coming back, standing by the counter with a head dying to jut slightly around the pillar that blocked my view, I realised that I was already being looked-back at, for the pillar was no pillar because the waiter who was standing there had ceased to stand. And how do I know this? Because I looked straight at her. Her face was impassive. If her lip quivered under the weight of my gaze, my eyes were too fondly locked into hers to have noticed.
I withdrew. Broke the lock and turned my face away. Her expressionless face looking me straight into the eye still floated in my head. To make sure that the image that had frozen in my mind was accurate enough for long term perspective, I turned and looked back.
O! Hungry flames that battle to burn each other to smithereens…
O! Nature’s immovable objects that are struck by nature’s irresistible forces to bring about ultimate cataclysms…
O! Avalanches of a thousand peaks that tumble down in eternal fury into the lap of their own tumultuous fall…
It was the second time. Impassive face meets exploring eyes. Bob-cut hair stood still whilst tall, lanky guy looked on. A pendent, the shape of a solitary, white sea shell hung about her throat. And it shuddered as she swallowed. The eloquent nose still held its poise whilst the eyes played a deadly duel. Had there been a smile, or a semblance of positive societal gesture, the moment would have faded into the crass banality of the Age; into the second-handed wallpapers and coffee mugs of the place. But it didn’t.
Walking now, across her table to the exit, I decided to, or rather impulsively looked back. All I could catch was the sight of her head turning towards me. Our eyes met once again but that was in the midst of our heads turning towards and away from each other. I looked away and walked out the gates…
Sigh
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
All the Right Reasons
Oh my God! Look how they protest! Look how they come on the streets with their placards painted in middle-class anger to shout out the second-handed slogans against a ‘callow, careless’ State. How they stop trains, disrupt buses and show their impotent angst by howling at the ‘solitary soul’ doing an ounce of honest work on the day of National Bandh. At one level, I feel sad; almost sympathetic towards the stupid, stupid common man and his eternal conquests with the daily-dom of routine existence-struggling to pay the electricity bill in long lines bathed in sweat, struggling to get a gas connection, struggling to save and save and save for the next generation, struggling to hold on to their gloriously banal 9 to 5s, and struggling more so to have a decent orgasm at the end of tired, harrowing day! Sad…
But place this against his complacency at seeing 82 CRPF jawans man slaughtered, or the daily rape occurring in the capital, or the sloth of the modern day Judiciary pronouncing sentences for murderers and rapists after decades of debating; and you’d see the how pathetic, myopic and narrow the stupid, stupid common man and his sphere of concerns really are! That social, ethical or moral obligations do not even figure in the A-list of the collective’s concerns is not only noteworthy, but beckons a sarcastic sneer as well! But then Black Gold is a tricky bitch. Somewhat like the modern day incarnation of Cleopatra! If she could hypnotize Uncle Sam to kill a few million Iraqis in its megalomaniacal whim to conquer her, guess a hundred thousand Indians going berserk over her is understandable!
Maybe at the heyday of philosophizing, Marx would be the only one, whose ghost would be roaming about our protest-impregnated streets and laugh the mocking laughter of a true fortune teller at what is happening! The dynamics of economics, of demand and supply and resource and limitedness is what drives Man then…the tri-murti of roti, kapda, makan or jar, joru and jameen …no glory there!
But after all, Marx was whom the Existentialist Sartre had turned to when the meaninglessness of existence had given way to ‘finding meaning’ in the paying of electricity bills, taking the yearly vacation to Manali, Shimla or Goa, watching the evening news and probably breaking windows and burning BEST buses to register hollow protest too.
But maybe there is a catch to this situation: the same age old scenario wherein the faceless, direction-less collective and the power of its numbers has been tapped in by the purveyors of impious ideologies; the ones who realise the awesome strength of number and the flavour of their ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ and use it to implicate their own private agendas, the background of which are very much banally political in nature. So when I realised that most of the states wherein a thorough breakdown of state machinery did take place, where there were bandhs and demonstrations and slogan shouting and tear gas and lathi charges and political shenanigans courting arrest and bus burning and train stopping it reminded me of the ‘Lotus-followers’; the saffron-clad youth belonging to a sect whose growling reminds us of the loud sound of a chocked lavatory just when it is in the process of being flushed! Awe-inspiring it is to realise of how much their growling can really absorb! Almost sixteen states lie marred in the predicament of inconvenience; probably this one single day of (supposed) protest (instigated by a saffron-clad, top-heavy organization constituting the drinkers of their own hypocrisy-flavoured urine,) is a good enough reason for another ten million ‘normal’ people to protest! To come out on the streets and protest against the inconvenience caused, buses burnt, trains halted, flights delayed, shops closed, businesses suffered, hospitals rendered dysfunctional etc etc etc.
But unfortunately they never learn! They are like cattle, like clouds, like hollow pebbles waiting for the tumult of saffron-coloured vomit to come and carry them away into the horizon of irrational protest! After all that has happened too many times to refer to it as a mistake.
True, there has been a price-hike; true the stupid common man’s struggles will only get steeper from here on, true! Inflation has sky rocketed to Andromeda! But to vindicate one’s own lack of direction by being allowed to be lead into a protest whose agendas from with out seem noble, but whose implications from with in stink of the age-old, Great Indian Political manoeuvrings practiced since the days of Nehru and Patel is a sorry, sorry picture!
Point here is not that the “masses” on the streets are protesting. That’s a good thing, right? Else the Government is likely to shit in our backyards, grow poppy out of it, and tax us for smoking weed! Point is, protest is a good thing. But the idea that it is not really protest but cheap political manoeuvrings; which is not only adding to the woes of the fabled and celebrated Common Man, but also exploiting him, in an age old way to score over the exiting set up, is what adds shades of ‘ugly’ to the picture of a burnt bus or an unattended patient!
Anyways, hope O! kind reader that you enjoyed your one extra holiday; and if you were on the streets pelting stones at policemen, you were doing it for all the right reasons…
Peace
Oh my God! Look how they protest! Look how they come on the streets with their placards painted in middle-class anger to shout out the second-handed slogans against a ‘callow, careless’ State. How they stop trains, disrupt buses and show their impotent angst by howling at the ‘solitary soul’ doing an ounce of honest work on the day of National Bandh. At one level, I feel sad; almost sympathetic towards the stupid, stupid common man and his eternal conquests with the daily-dom of routine existence-struggling to pay the electricity bill in long lines bathed in sweat, struggling to get a gas connection, struggling to save and save and save for the next generation, struggling to hold on to their gloriously banal 9 to 5s, and struggling more so to have a decent orgasm at the end of tired, harrowing day! Sad…
But place this against his complacency at seeing 82 CRPF jawans man slaughtered, or the daily rape occurring in the capital, or the sloth of the modern day Judiciary pronouncing sentences for murderers and rapists after decades of debating; and you’d see the how pathetic, myopic and narrow the stupid, stupid common man and his sphere of concerns really are! That social, ethical or moral obligations do not even figure in the A-list of the collective’s concerns is not only noteworthy, but beckons a sarcastic sneer as well! But then Black Gold is a tricky bitch. Somewhat like the modern day incarnation of Cleopatra! If she could hypnotize Uncle Sam to kill a few million Iraqis in its megalomaniacal whim to conquer her, guess a hundred thousand Indians going berserk over her is understandable!
Maybe at the heyday of philosophizing, Marx would be the only one, whose ghost would be roaming about our protest-impregnated streets and laugh the mocking laughter of a true fortune teller at what is happening! The dynamics of economics, of demand and supply and resource and limitedness is what drives Man then…the tri-murti of roti, kapda, makan or jar, joru and jameen …no glory there!
But after all, Marx was whom the Existentialist Sartre had turned to when the meaninglessness of existence had given way to ‘finding meaning’ in the paying of electricity bills, taking the yearly vacation to Manali, Shimla or Goa, watching the evening news and probably breaking windows and burning BEST buses to register hollow protest too.
But maybe there is a catch to this situation: the same age old scenario wherein the faceless, direction-less collective and the power of its numbers has been tapped in by the purveyors of impious ideologies; the ones who realise the awesome strength of number and the flavour of their ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ and use it to implicate their own private agendas, the background of which are very much banally political in nature. So when I realised that most of the states wherein a thorough breakdown of state machinery did take place, where there were bandhs and demonstrations and slogan shouting and tear gas and lathi charges and political shenanigans courting arrest and bus burning and train stopping it reminded me of the ‘Lotus-followers’; the saffron-clad youth belonging to a sect whose growling reminds us of the loud sound of a chocked lavatory just when it is in the process of being flushed! Awe-inspiring it is to realise of how much their growling can really absorb! Almost sixteen states lie marred in the predicament of inconvenience; probably this one single day of (supposed) protest (instigated by a saffron-clad, top-heavy organization constituting the drinkers of their own hypocrisy-flavoured urine,) is a good enough reason for another ten million ‘normal’ people to protest! To come out on the streets and protest against the inconvenience caused, buses burnt, trains halted, flights delayed, shops closed, businesses suffered, hospitals rendered dysfunctional etc etc etc.
But unfortunately they never learn! They are like cattle, like clouds, like hollow pebbles waiting for the tumult of saffron-coloured vomit to come and carry them away into the horizon of irrational protest! After all that has happened too many times to refer to it as a mistake.
True, there has been a price-hike; true the stupid common man’s struggles will only get steeper from here on, true! Inflation has sky rocketed to Andromeda! But to vindicate one’s own lack of direction by being allowed to be lead into a protest whose agendas from with out seem noble, but whose implications from with in stink of the age-old, Great Indian Political manoeuvrings practiced since the days of Nehru and Patel is a sorry, sorry picture!
Point here is not that the “masses” on the streets are protesting. That’s a good thing, right? Else the Government is likely to shit in our backyards, grow poppy out of it, and tax us for smoking weed! Point is, protest is a good thing. But the idea that it is not really protest but cheap political manoeuvrings; which is not only adding to the woes of the fabled and celebrated Common Man, but also exploiting him, in an age old way to score over the exiting set up, is what adds shades of ‘ugly’ to the picture of a burnt bus or an unattended patient!
Anyways, hope O! kind reader that you enjoyed your one extra holiday; and if you were on the streets pelting stones at policemen, you were doing it for all the right reasons…
Peace
Friday, June 18, 2010
Riding Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino
It would be misunderstood if I were to say that I was left with a lump in my throat and a heavy heart after watching Clint Eastwood's masterpiece, Gran Torino. Yes! the movie, akin to the Marlowesque school of drama, centers around one man; so much so that almost 90 of the 116 minutes seem to have been devoted to Walt Kowalski(Clint Eastwood); his disdain, his cynicism, his morbid self-deprecation, his compassion and even his brand of love. But then one thinks, of how inept an endeavour it would be, had the director or the script tried to encompass the totality of events, and the multitude of effects they have on human nature. But these 116 minutes stand testimony to the fact that at times, Man, and by that I mean a single, solitary Man, can become an anthem of reflections that represent not only the tragedy of living-dead, but even the beauty of a dying-life. Rushdie, in the voice of Salim Sinai had once remarked, 'all of us owe a death to life'; Walt's life and thereafter his death had a deeper connection than this. For though, his life and thereafter his Death, wasn't the psycho-philosophical bliss akin to Kate Winslet's as Iris, nor was it a metaphor of cruelly twisted irony that was to become of Kate at the hands of her Reader. Rather, Walt Kowalski lived a life carrying a burden that quite literally weighed him to the annals of self-deprecatory scorn and hellish cynicism. 'I want to be left alone', were what we started with; that the end would be of a man paving the way for his own salvation, albeit absolutely unknowingly, is what overwhelms us with sense of profound realization. And which is this: Death is what brings a limiting factor to the infinity of life. And yet, Life is what gets us there. In effect, Life and Death aren't 'Cause' and 'Effect', but it is the other way round; 'Death' is the 'Cause', and 'Life' is the 'Effect'. Do think about it, O! kind reader.
I would not refrain from acceding that our protagonist hadn't been the morbid, edgy, grumpy Old man through out! Through his own ministrations we get to know how much he loved his wife; through his confessions we realise how much the human in him repents at not being able to foster a 'normal father-son relationship'! But 'Korea', or precisely, the Korean War is what left its indelible mark in him. After all, what are Wars for?! Let Homer's Chariots and Valmiki's Bed-of-Arrows rest in peace in the musty pages where they sleep immortalized! The fact remains that there is absolutely no glory in killing another man for State, Borders or Constitution! It is redundant, it is supercilious and most of all, it just reflects as to how insecure Humanity really is! Not one man, but the whole breathing, living, thriving multitude of uniqueness-in-sameness humanity! Even the 'Rhetorical Justice' of the 'Blind Statue' standing with her scales is symbolic of how restrictive and 'blind' we really have to turn ourselves to bring ourselves to co-exist! And this is another one of the schisms that the protagonist addresses! Giving the impression of finally being 'the avenger', he avenges the follies of lesser beings by sacrificing himself. And yet, even though, the trickle of a tear from the audience's eye is testimony of how much glory we seek in his martyrdom, the fact remains that for this man, his death was simply a way of giving back to Life.
It wouldn't be inappropriate to accede that the film was in some way, an excoriation and an antithesis of Modern Christian dogma. On one hand, we see how much Walt's 'troubled soul' initially shrugs at the notion of 'Confession'. The fact that his 'confessions' are totally devoid of the flavours of 'juicy sin' carries a quasi-ironic, quasi-dark humoured flavour. For we know, as he remarks, 'I am at peace, now!', that for a Man such as him, Peace certainly means a sort of End while still being alive. Thus we arrive at the antecedent that to attain Salvation whilst we live shall only drive us to death, or better still, 'Suicide', for there isn't a higher state of existence that one may achieve! It’s the Idealistic! And yet, as happens with Walt, he some how does achieve it. But since, to attain the 'Perfect Calm' of elemental proportions would transcend Man to a height wherein there is no more room to evolve, to change, to twist and turn, and thus he has no other option but to kill himself! And probably, that’s what he does in the end. The Glory, as Aristotle would have remarked, is a cause of Accidence. Death, however, I daresay, is Incidence.
A Word About the Technique:
The dialogues, for their part, and the heavy silences punctuated by Walt’s silent shrieks and grumps play as much an instrument to understand the character as does the screenplay and camera. The strength of this film lies primarily in its script, which stands on the strength of its central character. All that happens in the story, even a ghastly Rape, only enrich and bring out the different shades and manifold depths of Walt’s character. There has been an intertwining of different cultural milieu wherein the Orient has again been represented though its traditions, customs and ‘witch-doctors’, whilst, the West has found face as fractured Father-Son relationships, a conscience wounded by the Korean war, and the final attainment of Meaning through a meaningful death, that makes a fruitless life worthwhile. Ironically, it’s the Orient Witch-doctor who tells Walt the truth about himself! The plot in itself follows the unities of Space, Time and Place; although all of this is relegated to the background as most of the story is told through Walt by his self-impressions, silences and overpoweringly expressive eyes.
Anyways, I shall stop here. For I have a habit to wander off to unknown territories; though most of them are the mothballed, shadowy precincts of my own wandering Mind…
PS. Ironically, if you’d notice, there has been absolutely no mention of a 1952 Green Gran Torino…As they say, Presence maybe Incidence. Absence is always Accidence.
Cheers...
I would not refrain from acceding that our protagonist hadn't been the morbid, edgy, grumpy Old man through out! Through his own ministrations we get to know how much he loved his wife; through his confessions we realise how much the human in him repents at not being able to foster a 'normal father-son relationship'! But 'Korea', or precisely, the Korean War is what left its indelible mark in him. After all, what are Wars for?! Let Homer's Chariots and Valmiki's Bed-of-Arrows rest in peace in the musty pages where they sleep immortalized! The fact remains that there is absolutely no glory in killing another man for State, Borders or Constitution! It is redundant, it is supercilious and most of all, it just reflects as to how insecure Humanity really is! Not one man, but the whole breathing, living, thriving multitude of uniqueness-in-sameness humanity! Even the 'Rhetorical Justice' of the 'Blind Statue' standing with her scales is symbolic of how restrictive and 'blind' we really have to turn ourselves to bring ourselves to co-exist! And this is another one of the schisms that the protagonist addresses! Giving the impression of finally being 'the avenger', he avenges the follies of lesser beings by sacrificing himself. And yet, even though, the trickle of a tear from the audience's eye is testimony of how much glory we seek in his martyrdom, the fact remains that for this man, his death was simply a way of giving back to Life.
It wouldn't be inappropriate to accede that the film was in some way, an excoriation and an antithesis of Modern Christian dogma. On one hand, we see how much Walt's 'troubled soul' initially shrugs at the notion of 'Confession'. The fact that his 'confessions' are totally devoid of the flavours of 'juicy sin' carries a quasi-ironic, quasi-dark humoured flavour. For we know, as he remarks, 'I am at peace, now!', that for a Man such as him, Peace certainly means a sort of End while still being alive. Thus we arrive at the antecedent that to attain Salvation whilst we live shall only drive us to death, or better still, 'Suicide', for there isn't a higher state of existence that one may achieve! It’s the Idealistic! And yet, as happens with Walt, he some how does achieve it. But since, to attain the 'Perfect Calm' of elemental proportions would transcend Man to a height wherein there is no more room to evolve, to change, to twist and turn, and thus he has no other option but to kill himself! And probably, that’s what he does in the end. The Glory, as Aristotle would have remarked, is a cause of Accidence. Death, however, I daresay, is Incidence.
A Word About the Technique:
The dialogues, for their part, and the heavy silences punctuated by Walt’s silent shrieks and grumps play as much an instrument to understand the character as does the screenplay and camera. The strength of this film lies primarily in its script, which stands on the strength of its central character. All that happens in the story, even a ghastly Rape, only enrich and bring out the different shades and manifold depths of Walt’s character. There has been an intertwining of different cultural milieu wherein the Orient has again been represented though its traditions, customs and ‘witch-doctors’, whilst, the West has found face as fractured Father-Son relationships, a conscience wounded by the Korean war, and the final attainment of Meaning through a meaningful death, that makes a fruitless life worthwhile. Ironically, it’s the Orient Witch-doctor who tells Walt the truth about himself! The plot in itself follows the unities of Space, Time and Place; although all of this is relegated to the background as most of the story is told through Walt by his self-impressions, silences and overpoweringly expressive eyes.
Anyways, I shall stop here. For I have a habit to wander off to unknown territories; though most of them are the mothballed, shadowy precincts of my own wandering Mind…
PS. Ironically, if you’d notice, there has been absolutely no mention of a 1952 Green Gran Torino…As they say, Presence maybe Incidence. Absence is always Accidence.
Cheers...
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Waking Sickness
This Age that differs amidst
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!
Time speaks another language now, that
Doesn’t seem of Old;
You and I fall out of Love
Our hearts are used being cold.
Kasab kills, and yet lives
To tell his story stylized;
To the Gospels who
Write of future ills,
Amongst nations too soft to decide!
Courtrooms exist, and
Lawyers do bicker, a
Man’s fate, as ‘FOR’ or ‘AGAINST’;
Alas! His conscience lies
Maimed and dead,
Satiated by inhumane,
un-Godly tastes!
The Confessional booths in
Churches lie empty,
For Sins seems to have vanished;
Whilst the order of the day
Marred by bustling activity
Are corruption, fun and frolic.
Sad it feels, yet you and I
Comprise the stupid
Common Man!
A Man who has voices in plenty
But not the courage to stand.
Tomorrow, we may
Look evil in the eye,
Our voices shrill and hoarse;
Yet the Martyr’s blood still upon our skins
Feels dry, cold and coarse!
This Age that differs amidst
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!
Sartre once spoke, but
Silently rests
And so do Byron and Shelley
Laden too has done his bit
And sleeps the sleep of yore!
Waiting for sleep, has made
One commit, the
Gravest folly in bed, but
Realize they not in this waking state,
Life itself
Is many a morning rough;
When karma, bomb blasts
And infidelities
Making waking unworthy, unfruitful,
Tough.
Amen
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!
Time speaks another language now, that
Doesn’t seem of Old;
You and I fall out of Love
Our hearts are used being cold.
Kasab kills, and yet lives
To tell his story stylized;
To the Gospels who
Write of future ills,
Amongst nations too soft to decide!
Courtrooms exist, and
Lawyers do bicker, a
Man’s fate, as ‘FOR’ or ‘AGAINST’;
Alas! His conscience lies
Maimed and dead,
Satiated by inhumane,
un-Godly tastes!
The Confessional booths in
Churches lie empty,
For Sins seems to have vanished;
Whilst the order of the day
Marred by bustling activity
Are corruption, fun and frolic.
Sad it feels, yet you and I
Comprise the stupid
Common Man!
A Man who has voices in plenty
But not the courage to stand.
Tomorrow, we may
Look evil in the eye,
Our voices shrill and hoarse;
Yet the Martyr’s blood still upon our skins
Feels dry, cold and coarse!
This Age that differs amidst
Old and New,
Whispers the self-same words;
That fate was as inconsistent then
As Life anew yearns!
Sartre once spoke, but
Silently rests
And so do Byron and Shelley
Laden too has done his bit
And sleeps the sleep of yore!
Waiting for sleep, has made
One commit, the
Gravest folly in bed, but
Realize they not in this waking state,
Life itself
Is many a morning rough;
When karma, bomb blasts
And infidelities
Making waking unworthy, unfruitful,
Tough.
Amen
Sunday, February 14, 2010
To a Fairy Godess
No ruffled flowers,no selfmade memory
Brings me close to a sweet friend'o mine,
The whiff of your hair,the smell of your neck,
Please care to be my Valentine...
The day dies,yet to your voice in dusk
Seeks my heart a solitary sign
Your touch is fresh,your smile the air
Please care to be my Valentine...
Seen have I other fairies; flirting laughing-
Rising as my thoughts entwine
To your aspect, a shape of eternal sunsets
Please care to be my Valentine...
Worship, I will and care I shall
To keep you away from mortal strife
If only a Godess as such as you,
Be willing to be my Valentine...
Promise I not,yon heavenly pleasures
For mortal he made me,who made u too
In his image,I shall give you my counted moments
Please care to be my Valentine...
Brings me close to a sweet friend'o mine,
The whiff of your hair,the smell of your neck,
Please care to be my Valentine...
The day dies,yet to your voice in dusk
Seeks my heart a solitary sign
Your touch is fresh,your smile the air
Please care to be my Valentine...
Seen have I other fairies; flirting laughing-
Rising as my thoughts entwine
To your aspect, a shape of eternal sunsets
Please care to be my Valentine...
Worship, I will and care I shall
To keep you away from mortal strife
If only a Godess as such as you,
Be willing to be my Valentine...
Promise I not,yon heavenly pleasures
For mortal he made me,who made u too
In his image,I shall give you my counted moments
Please care to be my Valentine...
Friday, February 5, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Book Review:On Beauty by Zadie Smith
What can be said about this except that it is immensely entertaining, very simple and of all the things, real. Language, unlike the Rushdies and Rands of this world has been relegated to the background whilst a truly beautiful panorama of human lives in a human world is painted by the author. Let us take it one at a time:
The characterization is the first strong point of the book. Without the various members of the Belsey and Kipps household and their distinct eccentricities, the storyline would have fallen into the mundane category of other American novels, with its share of heartbreaks and infidelities and Conservative-Liberal debates. But alas! The characters, and the way the author serves them to the world definitely lends a sort of authenticity to the novel. The characterization being such that neither of the characters are exaggerated, nor are they under sketched. Rather, they sway and move appropriately to their own natures lent to them by the author, and according to the various ups and downs in the real-life tale of human beings as it happens. There are no magically born Midnight’s Children, nor are the intellectuals hell-bent on sticking onto their ‘individualistic’ beliefs and strive for a new world. For instance, Howard Belsey, the most typical middle-aged man and by en far the ‘most judgemental Liberal’ one can come across, cheats on his wife, twice, and yet one can’t help sympathise and frown at his ‘weak’ arguments and far-fetched intellectual mumbo-jumbo whenever it comes to sitting by the table and quietly discuss the ‘problem at hand’. And then, there is Monty Kipps, the other half of the Liberal-Conservative dipole; just as flawed, but slightly less brittle than his polar counterpart, Howard. Guess, since the author is a woman, the female characters in the book, namely Kiki Belsey, Howard’s wife, Zora, his daughter, and Carlene and Victoria, the Kipps-women, are more substantial, better sketched, and garner far more awe and empathy than the brittle, floating, indecisive males, who have a way of succumbing to situations that is common amongst the ‘common-men’ of the world. Kiki, by en far, is sympathetic, thoughtful, sensitive, and more than anything else, strong. Sort of, the ideal 21st woman who’d be best suited for the uncertainties of this Age. Zora, probably, seems to be the author’s self-image of her childhood; or maybe a reflection of what girls go through in that volatile 16-19 year age bracket! As the author sketches a pen-picture of Zora, “And yet in college, she knew she was famed for being opinionated, a ‘personality’-the truth was she didn’t take these public passions home, or even out of the room, in any serious way. She didn’t feel the she had any real opinions, or at least not in a way other people seemed to have them. Once the class was finished she saw at once how she might have argued the thing just as viciously and successfully the other way round. Was anyone ever genuinely attached to anything? She had no idea…”
Another interesting excerpt: “…it was either only Zora who experienced this odd impersonality or it was everybody, and they were all play-acting, as she was…and nervously rumbled through possible topics of conversation, a ragbag of weighty ideas she carried around in her brain to lend herself the appearance of substance…”, she makes her sound more like a human being than just a girl. Kudos! To Ms. Smith for rising above the gender-bracket for once!
Another important feature of the book is its treatment of marriage. Not the version of marriage that half the love-sick bachelors and spinsters long to get to; I mean, not the romantic extravaganza full of surprises and exotic adventures and ideal coexistence! Ha! Rather, Zadie chooses to deal with the most difficult version of it all: the middle-age period of their lives, when neither are couples gung-ho about practicing new positions from the KS, nor are they old enough to recline in their rocking chairs over dreamy fireplaces. Rather, it the age of transition; the age wherein the mind is desperately trying to believe in the shadow of ‘youth’ one last time and the body inches towards the portals of decay. Plus, their children too are undergoing the transition of youth. Where does the average middle-aged man and average middle-aged woman find solace?
In each other’s company. Or are they too bored of that as well! And that is the author’s point. Wherein, the crises doesn’t lie on the outside, like in many-a young relationship. The crises, or rather the lack of it makes the ‘insides’ so utterly predictable and mundane that try as they might, but a couple just cannot analyse what is it that has gone missing between the both of them. Some of them resign to it and continue to live life as it happens! Other, the likes of Howard Belsey helplessly try to rebel and end up having clumsy sex with girls more than half his age. Alas! the beauty of the book lies in the fact that not only does the author splendidly pose the possibility of a healthy marriage, but answers it as well with her vivid, surprising storyline that is sure to dazzle and shock the readers. The strength of the author and the whole narrative here lies in the fact that she strikes splendid balance between social responsibility and individual choice, between the ‘strength-of-the-human-will’ and ‘the strength-of-situational-fallacies’ that bend them.
A point worth mentioning is the treatment of various kinds of ‘love’ that the author engenders in her characters and makes am attempt to show what exactly is it to love and feel loved. The sort of understanding that Kiki shares with her sons, Jerome and Levi, in spite of the generation gap and their relative aloofness is heart-warming. So is the bond between Kiki and Carlene Kipps garnering so much goodwill and faith, amidst their constantly warring husbands! In essence, the author has tried to make various portholes into the way life moves from point to point, as seen flittingly through the way of the heart and the way of the mind. Interesting point being, that both the heart and mind know how to love, albeit in their different ways.
There are certain parts where a man by the name of Jean Paul Sartre is quoted here. His “We don’t know what we want, and yet we can’t help being who we are…”, from his Critique of Dialectical Reason makes us view the whole book from an existentialistic dimension. And so, this book too, reflects the characteristic uncertainty that looms at the centre of the ‘solitary’ man’s life. He may be married(Howard), widowed(Monty), in his teens(Jerome and Levi), greying(Harold, Howard’s father), in love(Jerome), in lust(Howard), two-faced(Erskine) or anything else that man is supposed to be, but the reason, and this gets tough, of his being what he is, still remains a mystery, to solve which he makes one choice after another, only to end up with the same sort of question in the end, as to what exactly was the essence of existence? Smith tries and succeeds in almost answering that question; that the essence of existence lies in loving and being loved, in giving and forgiving, in truthfully being whoever we are, and striving to be more than what we were yesterday. And yet, it’s not that simple; as Sartre wasn’t that simple. If being ‘good’ could have answered his query, probably a few pages of the Bible would have done the trick. But alas! Choice, as understood in the realm of existence, is the motif that binds him and frees him at the same time. What he chooses, and this applies to all the characters in the book, ultimately gets him closer or farther than the ‘truth’, which again, according to Sartre, is an emptiness lurking at the centre of his existence. The question is a circle, and unfortunately this is where Smith fails, like many others, in making her characters break through it!
Anyway, happy reading! If not for anything else, then for its strong, youthful flavour, sensitive characters and some real-time story-telling…
Cheers and Godspeed
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