Love Goa? Love Dogs" Read Eddi & Diddi

Goa has gone to the dogs, some say. Well, dogs are an essential feature of any Indian landscape. It is true that, with the increase in human population, dogs have increased too. 

Before the British arrived to colonize us, only royal families bred dogs, mainly for hunting. Even in Europe then, pet dogs were not popular. 

In the past, besides royal dogs, there were village dogs who served as guards. If some typical Indian villages still survive, one will find such dogs. They are fed stale rotis in the wheat-eating north.

In towns too, especially those that retain a rural ethos, one can find dogs per area who will set up a chorus of barks at night should a stranger enter the territory. Indian cities also follow such a pattern.  

However, there are variations across the country. Kerala, for example, appears to have had next to no strays even into the nineteen eighties when I used to visit Guruvayur and Trichur and the rare pet dogs were housed in cage-like dog houses. 

But, by the 2000s there is a visible surge in the canine populations across the nation. The number of stray dogs in cities has become fodder for news at an almost daily rate with reports of dog bites, dogs killing babies and dogs attacking people.

Along with the increase in stray dogs, the number of people who feel for dogs has grown. In Pune as well as in Goa, I have observed people who appear at regular times in the day to feed strays. There are societies dedicated to strays as well as individuals. Some even connect with veterinarians to care for wounded strays and such people help with efforts to sterilize strays.

But there is a larger population, influenced by media, who buy pedigree dogs. Often they soon find that they don't like the dog and abandon it on the road, creating new strays. 

Besides the people who want fancy breeds from other regions, there are people who are interested in Indian breeds. I suppose the typical Indian dog with any sort of breeding would be of the hunting variety – slim and a long snout.    

The caravan hound is one such. 

Caravan hound Dolly1, Wikimedia Commons

In the complex in which I now live, there is a dog called Chillar. And I was told that it might be a hybrid of that breed. 

To throw more light on the issue, someone told me to read Eddi & Diddi by Savia Viegas.

Like Chillar, the book is slim and elegant and like her other book that I recently reviewed on this blog, it is a must read if you are visiting this part of Goa – Camona, Orlim, Varca, Mobor…

The book is also bound to enchant dog lovers and while Goa has a healthy share of this breed of humans, visitors to Goa too tend to contain a significant number of dog fans.

Since the book is so slender, I will not offer any spoilers.

Buy it here: Eddi & Diddi 

Some illustrations from the book

Savia's Song Sung Blue: a Carmona primer

 It is nearly seven months since we moved to Carmona in Goa. And somehow it has brought me back to books. 

Perhaps it's just a fact of new beginnings. I remember that moving to Pune had reignited a reading and writing spree. But, unlike Pune, Carmona has rapidly introduced me to at least three writers. I've covered one in my last post and remain in close touch with the author, a kind and interesting person. 

Interestingly, it was when I was with him at Rosie's pub, just outside the gate of the complex in which we live, that I found Savia's book. Since I'm now fairly indigent, I made him buy a copy. 

That was months back and, the other day, when I dropped in on him, I saw the book and borrowed it. 

Before I move on to my journey through Song Sung Blue, I have to tell you about the third author that I met here. Jacqueline is from Kenya, married to a man from Vienna and they both play a medley of musical instruments. Jacqueline makes games and books for children and she also takes things like ropes that the sea washes ashore and under her deft fingers they metamorphize into beautiful trinkets. She's made a bunch of tiny books for children 

I do hope I'll be able to do a post about those but am yet to get a chance to flip through them. So let's get back to the book that brings Carmona to life. 

At first flip it brought Marjane Satrapi to mind but, unlike Persepolis or Chicken with Plums, Song Sung Blue is not a graphic novel.

Or is it? From the first page on it is graphic and not merely because it has pictures. The descriptions of events and people leap out from the pages splashing visuals on the mind's eye. 

Song sung blue

Everybody knows one

sang Neil Diamond back in the day. 

But hardly anybody, alas, knows about Savia's Song Sung Blue. I wonder why? 

Diamond croons on

Song sung blue

Every garden grows one

Nope. A Savia sprouts rarely here as anywhere. 

Why, we wonder. when Goa appears to be slightly more favourable to books than many another Indian state? Most vacation places in Goa keep a smattering of books in the reception area. As do the eateries. And there are frequent book events too.

A quick look at the types of books reveals a part of the why. A good many of the books at the hotels and restaurants are left there by tourists from other, mostly European, countries. Most of these tourists come from a certain class. A class whose reading tastes rarely venture outside random detective or romantic fiction. Now and then one can spot a classic or serious work of nonfiction but it's more a then than a now. 

Neil Diamond sings

Song sung blue, weeping like a willow

I soon ended up weeping like a willow as the book rapidly plunged into painful truths of the here and now. Perhaps that's why Song Sung Blue is in the red? 

Me and you are subject to
The blues now and then
But when you take the blues
And make a song
You sing 'em out again

- Daimond's take on dealing with the blues.  

Song Sung Blue is a kind of Carmona primer. 

From the start where we encounter turtles and cobras, we're soon rushing down Carmona roads in a bus, listening to Goan songs. 

It's be a pity to come to Carmona without this book. But, alas, I don't know where you can get a copy. 

  "To order Song Sung Blue, please contact saxtti@gmail.com." says a book review by Augusto Pinto 

Encountering an Author: Aliens in Goa?

 Moving to Goa was much like transitioning to another dimension. Each day brought new encounters and new experiences. One such was meeting Dr Ashok Saxena. 

One morning when I went to the little shop near where we now live, I was introduced to a dapper gentleman with an elegant goatee. And was thrilled to learn that he was a doctor. An orthopaedic surgeon by profession, Ashok turned out to be a man of many interests. That morning I only got a glimpse of one of the many facets of this versatile soul.

He very candidly told me, an utter stranger, that he had written a book - a story about an encounter with an alien. 

Dr Saxena very kindly gave me a preview and I was thus plunged into an exciting world of adventure, scripture and science.

The book has 14 chapters, two appendices, a glossary and a bibliography - all that we must expect given the author is a medical professional. And yet this is a book for the layperson, for the masses so to speak. 

Where the idea of a preface can be such that many tend to skip the section, in this case it is a must read - an essential part of the narrative structure. 

And then there is the first chapter that has the appropriate shock value to get you hooked to the story: I FOUND MY FATHER DEAD ...

After that it is an exciting journey through Europe, from the high Alps to all the famous monuments of the continent and more - all the while keeping the reader glued to the tantalising thread of the story of a human-alien relationship of sorts.   

After consuming this exotic tale, you have the two appendices that are rich in resources and insights. Appendix A covers calculations with explanations while Appendix B takes the reader through concepts  from India's historical past that could possibly relate to science as we now know it. 

All in all, the book is the author's attempt to reach out to the masses to make it easy to engage with the worlds of science and scripture.    

Buy the Book

The Man from Motihari - a need of the hour

The Man from Motihari comes as a need of the hour. The novel speaks in the almost now – we are surrounded by the kind of historical events which form the background of the story. Though set in a small region of one particular nation, such unfortunate happenings are being echoed around the world in our now. In a sense, Abdullah Khan captures this universality by sending his protagonist across the globe in the later part of the story.

The story serves another and much more reasonable function then telling us about these times. I use the word reasonable in the sense of a thing which can be reasoned out and which can thus prove functional. The Man from Motihari wants to write. He writes across all possible challenges of his circumstances. And his foray into this profession so unlikely in his world exposes him to all the steps and tips and traumas of writing. The book thus becomes a valuable guide or manual for those who want to write.

 The value of a book increases with the number of functions which it serves. The Man from Motihari, besides giving us history in the making, and telling us what it takes to be a writer, goes on to offer an anthropology and sociology of Bihari Muslims as well as anthropology and sociology of a section of our youth who seek education for jobs – the community of Indians of a certain age who struggle through bank and civil services exams.

As mentioned, novels with many dimensions sparkle like diamonds with every facet they task themselves to bring to light. So Abdullah Khan has well-honed his work and besides all the robust functions I’ve discussed above, he brings to the reader the clarion call for good quality education especially for girls.

Lest you imagine that since this book is so diverse in what it covers it might be boring, let me hasten to reassure you. It is a most delightful entertainer and a page turner feast. It has all the spicy delight to tickle the Indian palate and enough cosmopolitan garnish to please the epicure from elsewhere.

Stupidity Infection: Reading remedies

 Yesterday, I finally finished Moby Dick.

. 

Since the onset of the pandemic and the first strict lockdown, I felt as if I was on a desert island or in some other form of solitary confinement but with access to books. It is at times like this that one thinks of what remains to be done in life. For many today, that, for some extraordinary reason, involves bungee jumping. For others, especially since lockdown curtailed bungee jumping avenues, it became a chance to read the books one should read in a lifetime.

Time in such periods of solitary confinement becomes both endless and terribly short. One thinks about the time one has left on earth, in this odd combination of flesh and consciousness. Physically, we can only explore so very little of the world. And, temporally, we can only be in the now, physically speaking.

The only way, then, to be able to see a great deal of the world and to travel past our lifetimes in either direction, is to read. Great books describe places and things and people and more. They are a passport that is always valid to visit anywhere and anytime.    

And it is thus that I consumed War and Peace.

I felt a twinge of regret that such a book was not suggested to me when I was very young. After gobbling up the Tolstoy tomes, I fell upon that whale of a book – Moby Dick. And nibbled my way through the giant. Again, I wondered why such a book was not handy when I was at my most bookwormish. Yesterday, I completed the huge Herman Melville early in the day.

Around mid-afternoon, the Internet became sluggish and stuttered to a standstill. I spent some time investigating my offline hoardings – chanced upon some books I’d forgotten I had or had mislaid in my drive. I organised some other things too and finally, switching on a defrag, I took my Kindle and curled up on a sofa, looking forwards to 100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature that I’d found there for free.

Alas, it had not been downloaded. And so I turned to the Kindle app on my phone and it is there that I found The Brothers Karamazov. 

Now I have read some Dostoevsky back in the day. I was terribly terribly young then and very odd. And so I read or tried to read The Idiot in French.

 

I would hardly browse a few pages before I became Prince Myshkin. 

Now, several decades later, I’m ready to take the plunge again to try and discover why so many people say one should read Crime and Punishment 

and why so many film versions of the Brothers book continue to come out.

And this is what I read:

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this “landowner”—for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate—was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity—the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough—but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it.

 

I was already unable to suppress a smile – such brutal truths and so eternal and yet as gentle as neighbourly gossip. I read a great deal more without feeling restless – it was that easy.

But it was not really my choice for my next read which was perhaps a Thomas Mann as some of his books are held in high esteem by my partner and I have never read anything of Mann. 

In the meantime, I’d also like to finish A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov.

 

Even if lockdowns no longer loom, you are always free to retire to your desert island and open the treasure chest of books waiting to be read. Don’t waste your time on trash from the present for the works that have survived time hold many secret messages for you which will, time and again, help you through all the troubles of life whatever they may be and, if not, they will entertain and enrich you infinitely beyond anything bestsellers can supply. 

Maxwell's Demon: a useful devil!

Demons are scary and Maxwell's Demon is bound to be even more so. Maths and physics frighten many of us as much as any ghost or devil. But did you know that physicist James Clerk Maxwell, in 1867, actually birthed a demon in a thought experiment? 

In the thought experiment, a demon controls a small massless door between two chambers of gas. As individual gas molecules (or atoms) approach the door, the demon quickly opens and closes the door to allow only fast-moving molecules to pass through in one direction, and only slow-moving molecules to pass through in the other. Because the kinetic temperature of a gas depends on the velocities of its constituent molecules, the demon's actions cause one chamber to warm up and the other to cool down. This would decrease the total entropy of the two gases, without applying any work, thereby violating the second law of thermodynamics.

Most demons are rather useless in practice, because they simply don't exist. However, Maxwell's demon has helped scientists, pointing the way to overcome problems even in concrete aspects of life. 

To understand more about Maxwell's demon, try How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists:

Ideas like this could prove useful in designing more efficient thermal systems, like refrigerators, or even in developing more advanced computer chips...

But, if that's too much too, try a short story based on Maxwell's pet thought experiment: Maxwell's Demon Went Down to Georgia.  

And, if that is also not your cup of tea, try this:

While too many humans still cling to beliefs about supernatural beings, and while such persons often end up causing devilish horrors in real life, there are also a number of people who prefer to flex the muscles of their brain to learn more about the world in which we live. So let's put all our mythical monsters into fiction where they belong and enjoy them only in stories.  

Our children would do better to learn more about Maxwell and other great minds than be brainwashed into primitive belief systems which are causing barbaric bloodshed in the present. James Clerk Maxwell produced his first scientific paper, “On the Description of Oval Curves,” when he was only fourteen! If parents can focus on reading to improve their knowledge of the world, rather than on consuming best sellers, would it not give a nation's children a better chance at improving the world? 

 

Tolstoy's War and Peace: a tale of two families

War and Peace was much in the news in India some years back. Apparently, it was considered a dangerous book by some arm of the law. But did the noise it created incite interest in the book?

Leo Tolstoy - a painting by Ilya Repin

Not for me, at least. In my case, the tipping point came early in the pandemic when some people began online readathons to keep sane during the lockdowns. And what can be better for the purpose than books that people insist should be read in a lifetime? So I began the big book.

I began it on June 4, 2020. However, I seem to have suddenly picked up the pace in more recent months. Certainly it was after I came across an article which looked at reading for 30 minutes a day and covering some 30 pages in that rhythm. And thus it is that I finished the book sooner than anticipated.

It is an easy book to read and holds your attention most of the time. People love family gossip. War and Peace is as easy to get into as is the TV series, Friends. And, while friends are many in the book, the story mainly revolves around two families: the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys.

The Rostovs are father and mother and their three children. There is also a poor relative, a girl called Sonia. But our attention from the start is focused on fair young Natasha, the little daughter running hither and thither at a grand party for the grownups. Although we will plod through the wastes of war after all that partying, she will linger in our memory and slowly but surely emerge as the love interest for Prince Andrew Bolkonsky, one of the major figures in the story.

Though Natasha’s confidante is mostly poor Sonia, she is equally at ease with both her brothers. And the destinies of the two major families in the story are further cemented when the elder brother, Nicholas, falls in love with Andrew’s sister, Princess Mary.

While both families are wealthy and from noble lineages, the Rostovs reach ruin as the elder son incurs gambling debts but their father is no less responsible for rapidly running through the family’s finances.

And, lastly, there is the youngest son, Petya, with whom Natasha continues to enjoy childhood joys well into her womanhood.

Last but not least is the long suffering Sonia who is in love with the elder brother, Nicholas. Having no money of her own, she spells tragedy for the family if Nicholas marries her and so it is soon established that this is a lost cause.

In contrast, the Bolkonskys are an aloof lot. An eccentric father spends his days in study and torments his frail daughter out of contempt. He is rather more proud of his son who, in any case, respects his aged father.

We meet most of this star cast early and mostly in the grand settings of ballrooms and at dinner parties. Except for the elderly Prince Bolkonsky and his daughter who live in exile.

Then comes the war – Napoleon has marched into Russia. Prince Andrew goes to battle as does Nicholas. And, in time, Petya too.

The volumes of the book that deal mostly with the war do not mention much about the rest of the family but there is a break in hostilities and we return to the families. Andrew comes back from being a prisoner of war to find his wife on her death bed from childbirth. It is a dark tragedy for him, compounded by the guilt he experiences as he had pure contempt for his childlike wife.

However, when his mind is more settled by working for the welfare of the peasants who toil for him,  and in the course of traveling for work, he stays a night with the Rostovs and there he becomes aware of Natasha. 

The seeds of love are sown and bear flower when he meets her next but his ill tempered father does not view the match with favour and so Andrew chooses to stay away from Natasha for a year.

As fate will have it, when his return is imminent, a scoundrel seduces Natasha and is about to elope with her. The bid is foiled but rumour spreads and Andrew coldly sets Natasha free of their engagement.

War returns to tear the families apart and, this time, Andrew is fatally wounded.

Battle of Moscow, 7th September 1812, 1822
by Louis-François Lejeune

Natasha serendipitously nurses him to the end and, somehow, that love is vindicated. 

Yet, somehow too, his death sets his sister free to marry Nicholas. Thus the story closes with the two families becoming very close.

Besides these two families there are, of course, several others but those are not shown to us in as great detail.

Taking these two families as background, Tolstoy paints for us a grand canvas of Russia in that time and exhorts us to remember how terrible war is.

Families lose dear ones in war. Even unarmed women and children get killed in battles. Wars destroy the finances of a nation, affect agriculture and lay low edifices that have taken years to build. The heart of a nation beats in its household hearths. War plunders not only the wealth of a country but decimates the peaceful pace of family life.

I Prefer Not To: Are we Bartlebys?

Unlike the Bartleby in the short story, I have recently decided to do things I prefer not to do. Thus, I'm back to a routine of writing a thousand words every day. That mode has always been productive. The first time I undertook the challenge, I wrote some short stories of which I remain fond.

Read the short story in question: Bartleby the Scrivener. Unless you prefer not to. You might want to listen to it instead:

Most do very little that is worth the while. Is it because, most of the time, we prefer not to? 

In writing a thousand words a day, is it the routine that becomes a chore over time and, one fine day after another, I find I prefer not to?

Reading the classics is another thing one avoids. And, thus, though a teacher tried hard, early in my life, to interest me in Herman Melville, I preferred not to. 

However, I recently came across a useful tip that will probably help me try some of Melville's longer works some day: Moby Dick, Billy Bud and Typee. There are films of these works and watching them might inspire some to proceed to the book:

or

The book is about a whale and it is a whale of a book. When that is the case it is not often that you have a whale of a time because you have to spend a whale-like amount of time on it. However, as a consequence of trying to write a thousand words a day, I've had to decide to read something good every day too. For it is impossible to churn out so many words a day without knowing much about anything. 

But how does one get around to reading when one prefers not to? I soon found some help online in an article on how to read the classics and it suggested reading twenty pages per day. And that is how I now have a whale of a time every day, galloping through Tolstoy's War and Peace for some thirty minutes at a time. 

However, fiction is not enough to provide fodder for a daily writing habit and I soon had to factor in another half an hour for reading research. All in all, one good habit leads to another.

And so I’ve managed to read up a tiny bit about Moby Dick and why it is considered so great. One thing becomes clear: like all the greats, Herman Melville was extremely well read. For example, in Moby Dick, he mentions the Indian matsya avatar.

‘Moby Dick’ says Elephanta has the oldest whale portrait. Where on earth did Melville get that idea?

To return to another specimen or avatar, Herman Melville's short story Bartleby the Scrivener is about a man who prefers not to. Whatever you ask of him, he prefers not to do it.

I was reminded of another story in this context. It was about a little boy who said no to everything. That was a very moral tale and I think the boy had the bad luck to meet a witch who cursed him for his 'no' to her. The poor lad then said 'no' to everything, even when he wanted to say 'yes'.

In the case of Bartleby, also, he comes to a rather sad end.

Melville’s story first introduces us to the narrator, a lawyer with an office and some employees. Then he describes these – two copyists and an office boy. Along comes an increase in work and enter our 'hero'. 

The work of a copyist must be a thing of the past, given that we now have photocopiers and such.

Bartleby does a lot of copying but absolutely nothing else. At first it seems like that’s alright but in time the narrator begins to be annoyed by the refusals and, indeed, at some point, Bartleby even prefers not to do any copying too.

Finally, to get rid of him, for he now even lives on the premises, the narrator has to shift office. All is well for a while until the new owners begin landing up at the narrator’s new office for Bartleby will not vacate their premises.

Ultimately the pest is jailed or something like that.

Melville takes on the challenge of writing about something in which no action is imminent. And which is low in the promise of emotion.

Yet you will read through the story as gripped by it as if it were a tense detective novel!

I don’t know where I read this but apparently, before the fall of man in Christian theology, man enjoyed idleness – a condition that is also revered in the Ashtavakra Gita. So Bartleby is suffering the indigestion of the apple.

Condensed Books - Readers Digest Classics

Volumes of condensed books lined library shelves when I was young. These were brought out by a then popular magazine called the Reader's Digest. It was a magazine that looked more like a book and, while the magazine survives, its bookish nature has not. The magazine is no longer worth more than flipping through where once many hoarded copies and read them over and over. Every now and then, the Reader's Digest also brought out enchanting books on useful topics. Of all these achievements,  their Condensed Books remains the best.

Each volume had a certain number of novels abridged quite elegantly. And this is a really honourable service for we cannot read all the good books in the world in one lifetime. And it is often a quick way to know what to expect when you finally get around to reading the unabridged version. A synopsis can often be found on the Net but most don't give you an adequate idea of the story. And many will try to make you pay for shoddy summaries by some person of low worth for the task.  

Here is one of the volumes of the Condensed Books:

Readers Digest Condensed Books, Volume 4, 1973

The volume has the following:

La Balsa: The Longest Raft Voyage in History - Vital Alsar with Enrique Hank Lopez

La Balsa

This is the account of a great and unrecognized adventure in fairly recent times. My father was fond of a book about a similar, earlier escapade  - the Kon-Tiki pacific expedition by Thor Heyerdahl.

The Sunbird - Wilbur Smith 

The second novel covered by the volume is equally inviting. However, it lost popularity as it is reported to have a colonial stance. My attitude to such things is that we can surely read anything even if it conflicts with our stances on issues. Otherwise, we run the risk of being as narrow minded as those we oppose. 

State Trooper - Noel B. Gerson

I could not find out much about this book but readers have enjoyed it.  

The Search for Anna Fisher - Florence Fisher

From reviews online, I gather that it's a moving account of a lady who was adopted and who seeks her biological parents.

Mrs. Starr Lives Alone - Jon Godden

Again, the net offers too little about this story but it appears to be quite thrilling.

So, dive in and enjoy four books in one volume!

 

The Reading Habit: the what and how of it all

Reading is good. But what to read? And how to read. Because there is so much to read.

The Bookworm - Carl Spitzweg 

What to read comes more easily to some. In some families, most enjoy reading. So each new member gets the habit.  Seeing adults reading for pleasure, the child imitates them even before learning to read, even holding a book, upside down, perhaps. In some families, if at all there are books, no one touches them. They are for show. But even these collectors of books are rare. Beyond books bought to pass an exam, there may be no other form of literature in the house. Some households have religious books but even in this scenario, few are those who actually read the scriptures. 

Not all those who merely collect books but rarely read them are unworthy cases. There is the famous Tsundoku and most of this set that I have met have merit. Somehow, just owning the right books makes a difference. However, most of the benefits of that mode can more easily and beneficially be obtained in another manner. 

Identify, first, what people say are good books to read. This is easy today: Type best books to read in the box on your search engine page and you will get many suggestions. Most will repeat certain books. Thus, you will soon see which books many say need to be read in a lifetime. 

But can you read so many books? 

Reading will never become a habit where reading speed is low. Here is a way to test your speed: Free Reading Speed Test. 

Once your eyes are trained to spend time with words, the brain automatically kicks into gear in time to make sense of what you read. And soon your eyes will pick out what is important in text as you skim over pages like the bird diving in and out the flower to extract honey. You will note that people who love reading do not find it difficult to consume books and, in no time, finish one and hunger for another.

Often, what stops people from reading in the first place is the question: why should I read? In fact, in many regions of the world, most families are illiterate and poor. In such a situation, it appears normal to consider reading a waste of time that should be spent doing something useful. Alas, such a consideration does not take into account the fact that books tell you all you need to know about almost anything. Reading provides you with all kinds of information about the world. Good books are like libraries or encyclopedias and give you a glimpse of the most important thoughts in the world. 

And, if you learn to love books, you are never really alone. What is more, reading makes you a more interesting person.

If you need a nudge, try Writer Rites on Facebook where I have curated some literary gems. You can also find such a feed on my Twitter account.   

Happy Reading, friends! 

Down the Rabbit Hole - Alice's First Adventure in Wonderland

Stories that I read early in life have walked me through thick and thin. Providing many useful messages to future selves. One of those tales is called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

I hope to walk you through the story from my perspective. We begin by going Down the Rabbit Hole

A little girl sitting beside her sister on a river bank sees a white rabbit hurrying past. That sounds quite natural but the rabbit has a waistcoat and is consulting his watch!

Illustration by John Tenniel

Alice follows the rabbit and falls down a rabbit hole. The fall seems to last forever - the feeling we have when we are about to drop off to sleep. In fact, I suppose we are to assume that little Alice has drowsed off in the pleasant heat of the day. And all that follows is but a dream. This is a good tactic to draw us into the story, to make us suspend belief so that we can expect almost anything. 

And the adventures that Alice has when she falls down the rabbit hole are absurd and beyond all belief. 

Before she reaches the bottom, she sees things on either side of the tunnel she's tumbling down: maps and bottles and bookshelves too. Though the fall is long, Alice talks to herself - a habit I'm sure many of us do to while away the time. Or has the habit gone since we talk on the phone to others all day long?

Upon landing she is faced with many passages and many doors. Which to choose? Is this not what we perpetually face?

Of course, in the marvellous insanity of the story, she finds a key! And so do we though there are few humble enough to confess to that serendipity in life.

Sure enough, Alice also finds a hidden door that the key opens. 

AnnaliseArt

Inside, she finds a Drink Me bottle. 

Illustration by John Tenniel

And that makes her very small. Which makes her rather sad as she can't reach things. But then she also finds an Eat Me cake - what will it do?

To find out, wait for my take on Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears ...

  

James Hadley Chase - Hardly Chased Today

 I cannot remember which I first read: a Raymond Chandler or a James Hadley Chase. Both write racy thrillers. However, while Chandler has received significant literary attention, posterity has not pursued Chase.  All I can proffer from memory is that, while Raymond Chandler had exquisite constructions which live on in the mind, the James Hadley Chase novels have not left much lingering.

Except for one story. It was in my early undergraduate years that I finally found my sort of friend. I lost touch with her after she left town to pursue studies in a big city. And I never quite found that kind of friendship later. But it was she who told me about Miss Shumway Waves Her Wand.

Naturally, a story about a bandit who becomes a sausage because of a curse and who is then eaten by a dog which then turns into a talking pooch is bound to fascinate. Well, let's admit that I have a taste for humour, for one thing. And, for another, whacky wit is irresistible to me. But it's not really everyone's cup of tea.  Most prefer the sensational tales of money hungry men and women and the bitter ends they meet.

That is what Chase basically offers (aside from the abovementioned sausage story). 

But who is Chase, you ask. Now, that is a charming story!

Like today's Lee Child, Chase was British. Like Child, Chase wrote about American gangsters. But how he came to do it is yet another fascinating tale. A salesman for books, Chase discovered that a particular novel was so well borrowed at the local library that it was always off the shelves. This gem was The Postman Always Rings Twice.

So Chase decided to pen some purple prose on his own and thus was born No Orchids for Miss Blandish. 

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (film) poster - Fair Use

And then he churned out one pot boiler after the other. Some were made into films but no one seems to rave about those. 

His novels were devoured around the world - India had or still has faithful fans. However, the Americans were not at all amused that a Brit made money out of their lurid lives. Oddly, the French have a fancy for Chase, it is reported. Which brings us to the similar phenomena with Harlan Coben. Whatever the je-ne-sais-quoi of a Hadley Chase, we must admit that the French have good taste.

At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. So why not nibble at a James Hadley Chase today? I bet you won't be able to stop till you devour the book and that you might not stop till you've munched through any Chase that you can find. 

Doctor in the House - Prescribed Reading

 There was a time when novels about doctors were popular. There were moving tales and funny stories. Somewhere along the way the stories grew dark and most medical fiction became scary. But, once upon a time, there was the Doctor series by Richard Gordon.

Doctor in the House is his first:

This first book opens with an exam situation. 

Every six months this orderly quiet is broken up like a road under a pneumatic drill. Three or four hundred students arrive from every hospital in London and from every medical school in the United Kingdom. Any country that accepts a British qualification is represented. There are brown, bespectacled Indians, invariably swotting until the last minute from Sir Leatherby Tidy's fat and invaluable _Synopsis of Medicine;_ jet-black gentlemen from West Africa standing in nervous groups and testing their new fountain-pens; fat, coffee-coloured Egyptians discussing earnestly in their own language fine points of erudite medicine; hearty Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans showing no more, anxiety than if they were waiting for a pub to open; the whole diluted thoroughly by a mob of pale, fairly indifferent, untidy-looking British students conversing in accents from the Welsh valleys to Stirlingshire.

Richard Gordon's books have left me memorable giggles and I hope you too will enjoy the amusing stories of life as a doctor. 

Sacks' Migraine - no headache to read

We tend to assume that good literature is fiction and poetry and drama. However, there are works of nonfiction that are gems of good writing and reading them gives as much pleasure as would any novel.

Books by Oliver Sacks cover a variety of areas, all more or less related to his field - medicine, in general, and neurology, in particular. He writes about medical conditions in an engaging style.

Neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks at the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival. © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons

His books are, basically, case histories. It is the way he narrates things that takes what might be dry-as-dust and makes it fascinating to read. Migraine, 1970, is his first book but rather hefty in size. 

I've suffered from bad headaches for years and a lot of folks I know, especially women, endure terrible migraines. Sacks had his first one when he was just three or four years old!

“I was playing in the garden when a brilliant, shimmering light appeared to my left—dazzlingly bright, almost as bright as the sun. It expanded, becoming an enormous shimmering semicircle stretching from the ground to the sky, with sharp zigzagging borders and brilliant blue and orange colors. Then, behind the brightness, came a blindness, an emptiness in my field of vision, and soon I could see almost nothing on my left side. I was terrified—what was happening? My sight returned to normal in a few minutes, but those were the longest minutes I had ever experienced.“

A Perspective on the Migraine Mind 

 “My firstborn, written in a burst (nine days!) in 1967, stimulated in part by working in a migraine clinic and in part by a wonderful book (Liveing’s On Megrim) written a century earlier.”

oliversacks.com

 

It would do anybody great good to have several Oliver Sacks books at home but those who suffer migraines would be especially grateful to get to read it.

Infinite Vision

Today it is hard not to have contempt for the medical profession, hard not to mistrust doctors and hospitals. On the one hand, there is amazing progress in medical research. But, on the other, all one sees when accessing medical help is greed.

For me, it is especially painful to see how things are for patients. My father was a doctor and he even resigned his job at the top of his career because he could not live with the fact that his bread and butter depended on the misery of others. He continued to practice but not for money. 

So, naturally, when growing up, stories of doctors formed core reading for me. The Reader's Digest fed me a satisfactory supply of the lives and adventures of doctors. There was Lloyd C Douglas with his syrupy doses of the spiritual and the professional. There was The Dear and Glorious Physician, a historical account. And there was Richard Gordon with his hilarious Doctor series. 

Somewhere along the way books about doctors and medicine dwindled. And even writings from earlier times fell out of sight. Meanwhile, medical dramas sprouted on TV. Most of these are quite ridiculous and only add to the growing divide between the world of medicine and that of patients.

It is in such a setting that I found myself blessed with Infinite Vision. The book burst into my world bringing a bright gleam of hope. Infinite Vision speaks of a flourishing initiative that allows patients to pay or not and offers quality care either way. It is, basically, the saga of the Aravind Eye Care System, a set of eye hospitals and ophthalmological initiatives that is now spread around the world.

Have a look at what Aravind is basically about:

Today, in this terrible time, such a book can offer hope - what we need to do at this juncture is to look at how we can offer almost cost-free medical service to populations. Alas, that seems to be last on the list of anyone's concerns. The contemporary doctor has to whip up enough money to pay various EMIs - rent for the clinic, for equipment, for staff. And for family needs which rise with status. In this book you can find strategies which might provide some solutions. 

Coasting Masters' Savages - The Roots

A savage is a person whose way of life is at a very early stage of development. John Masters, a twentieth century English novelist, wrote a series of novels set in India at various historical times. The novels' protagonists, the Savages, all come from the same family. In this case, Savage is just a surname.  

But, to the Europeans who sailed forth to other continents at a certain point in history, the scantily-clad peoples of some warmer lands appeared as savages as they did not display much pride in their culture. Apart from a fanatic set of taboos and elaborate ritualistic behaviours. 

So, it is perhaps natural that the Europeans then regarded themselves as masters. And, perhaps, we can see that such an attitude would be fairly normal in anyone. However, why was there such a lacuna in the first place?  

For one thing, most of these lands had not passed through the then modern trend of revolutions. In many of the regions that the Europeans of that time encountered there was already a steep unchallenged hierarchy where cultural worth was forever out of the reach of most.  This rather savage view has coloured narratives from the colonial times. 

To counter the trend, some decided that the way out was to put these accounts out of sight and mind. Unfortunately, as with all such initiatives, it has not only not been too helpful in eradicating certain behaviours but it has helped create generations of real savages - people deprived of any thought of any cultural worth. 

Creators of cultural worth are rarely anything but extremely free in thought - which is anathema to those who hold morals above culture. Morals are unreliable artefacts of humanity's struggle towards humanism. Many a moral value has had to be challenged by cultural representations until some barbaric moral behaviour was forced to change. Social change has often had to tussle with existing moral bias to establish more humane principles. It is only when we examine world classics of cultural worth to help us process the past, voraciously, and without prior moral bias, that we can begin to evolve humane principles. 

Now, John Masters is not a writer of great literary merit but, because most of his novels focussed on India across history, they ought to be of interest to us. Given that most of us in India have a less than basic idea of our own history, it becomes more vital to set off in search of our past with whatever exists. Of course there are better books for the purpose but Masters is quite juicy and, once the novice mind is engaged, we can look more deeply, on our own, at the times of which he writes. Today, as we read on various apps, it is easy to quickly dive into the Net in search of further information.  Revisiting this novel that I read in my early youth, I had a delightful time exploring India in the seventeenth century via the Web.  

For me, John Masters was a reading hand me down. My father regaled us with snippets from Masters' Nightrunners of Bengal and The Deceivers. His words served to fill the rustling night outside with delicious dreadfulness. Along with Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham and others, the novels of John Masters brought to life the Western concept of an exotic Orient. Once we accept them as fantasy, such exotic writings can be entertaining.

Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) - The Fort of Vellore in the Carnatic, India - 732241 - National Trust, public domain

Though I began with family recommendations, I soon homed in on the first in the series and the fifth in order of publishing. In Coromandel! we enter the Savage saga in the 1620's with young and illiterate Jason Savage. In the general savagery of the times, his life takes an unforeseen turn when he has to flee for his life, boarding a ship that is off to the Orient. After onboard adventures, he's washed ashore with a map that claims to show where treasure is buried. 

Hand-coloured aquatint engraving of the "A picturesque voyage to India, by the way of China" / by Thomas Daniell, R.A., and William Daniell, A.R.A. Wikimedia Commons

The tale will ring many bells to those who have read Robert Louis Stevenson and Lobsang Rampa and, of course, the others we've mentioned above. And there will be love and passion and beautiful 'native' women and magic. Enough adventure and action to prove the right read for the indoor season when endless rain imprisons us.

It is a ridiculous novel but might trigger a hunger in the reader to know about the area, once called the Coromandel Coast, in the seventeenth century. For those who already consider themselves masters of the history of the region it could help more reasonably savage Masters' Savage accounts.

So, why not try Coromandel! with hot chai and snacks!

The Overloaded Ark - Cameroon's Birds and Beasts

Gerald Durrell is a childhood favourite. I've enjoyed many of his books on animals and you will too. When trapped indoors for ages, what can be better than going on a six-month journey to Cameroon to get some animals for a zoo? Begin with Durrell's first book, The Overloaded Ark. 

By Source, Fair use 

The Overloaded Ark is rich with descriptions of the country's landscapes and people. The book may be hard to find but if you take the trouble you will not regret your embarkation:

The ship nosed its way through the morning mist, across a sea as smooth as milk. A faint and exciting smell came to us from the invisible shore, the smell of flowers, damp vegetation, palm oil, and a thousand other intoxicating scents drawn up from the earth by the rising sun, a pale, moist- looking nimbus of light seen dimly through the mists. As it rose higher and higher, the heat of its rays penetrated and loosened the hold the mist had on land and sea. Slowly it was drawn up towards the sky in long lethargically coiling columns, and gradually the bay and the coastline came into view and gave me my first glimpse of Africa.

Wonderful illustrations enrich the book. So do try to find and read it. Also, it has a lot of humour - something that is good for us now more than ever. One of the most memorable characters in the book is a cigarette-smoking chimpanzee. 

I know that I visualized an ape about three years old, standing about three feet high. I got a rude shock when Chumley moved in.

He arrived in the back of a small van, seated in a huge crate. When the doors of his crate were opened and Chumley stepped out with all the ease and self-confidence of a film star, I was considerably shaken. Standing on his bowlegs in a normal slouching chimp position, he came up to my waist.He stood on the ground and surveyed his surroundings with a shrewd glance, and then he turned to me and held out one of his soft, pink-palmed hands to be shaken, with exactly that bored expression that one sees on the faces of professional hand shakers.

He seated himself in a chair, dropped his chain on the floor, and then looked hopefully at me. It was quite obvious that he expected some sort of refreshment after his tiring journey. I roared out to the kitchen for someone to make a cup of tea, for I had been warned that Chumley had a great liking for the cup that cheers.

As I poured the tea and milk into Chumeley’s mug and added three tablespoons of sugar, he watched me with a glittering eye and made soft “ ooing” noises to himself. I handed him the mug and he took it carefully in both hands. He tested the tea carefully with one lip stuck out, to see if it was too hot. As it was, he sat there and blew on it until it was the right temperature and then he drank it down.

Chumley’s crate was placed about fifty yards from the hut (next to a great gnarled tree stump to which I attached his chain) From there he could get a good view of everything that went on in and around the hut, and as we were working he would shout comments to me and I would reply.That night, when I carried Chumley’s food and drink of tea out to him, he greeted me with loud “ hoo hoos” of delight, and jogged up and down, beating his knuckles on the ground. Before he touched his dinner, however, he seized one of my hands in his and carried it to his mouth.

With some trepidation I waited as he carefully put one of my fingers between his great teeth and very gently bit it. Then I understood: in the chimpanzee world, to place your finger between another ape’s teeth is a greeting and a sign of trust. To place a finger in such a vulnerable position shows your confidence in the other’s friendliness.

His manners were perfect. He would never grab his food and start guzzling, as the other monkeys did, without first giving you a greeting, and thanking you with a series of his most expressive “ hoo hoos.” Then he would eat delicately and slowly, pushing those pieces he did not want to the side of his plate with his fingers. His only breach of table manners came at the end of a meal, for then he would seize his empty mug and plate and hurl them as far as possible.