Ghachar Ghochar : Vivek Shanbhag / Srinath Perur

 Brave new world

Societies rise and decline over time not unlike people. This involves birth pangs, separations, coming off age, and decline in fortunes among other things. Every so often there is a particular moment in time when a society transforms from one phase to another which is enthralling as well as painful for those people in the middle of it all. Of course this is fertile ground for literature and there are many instances where writers catch this transformation in all its complexity. Occasions include Dickens following the emergence of an England into the industrial age, Tolstoy tracing Russia’s break from feudalism and so on.

India too has gone through such a transformation in the last 25 years brought about by the economic liberalization started in the early 90s. The liberalization unleashed elemental forces that swept the entire population making some raise with the tide and some drown in its ferocity leading to the emergence of a new India. Most notably Aravind Adiga has captured this transformation in English at the macro level but here in this great Kannada novel we have Vivek Shanbhag capture this transformation at the basic unit of Indian society – the Family. ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ captures the opportunities unleashed by the economic liberalization and the joys, anxieties and fears it invokes in the middle classes who are the most impacted by it.  

The story revolves around a small lower-middle class family living in one of the many small rented houses in Bangalore where you could open the door and be on the road in ‘exactly four steps’. It’s a family of five where the father is a diligent salesman with meagre earnings and the mother who manages the household with their son – the narrator – and their temperamental daughter. The fifth member is the father’s younger brother ‘chikkappa’, a commerce graduate with initiative and vigour. The family subsists on the salary of the father who goes out every morning to sell tea powder and tallies the money accrued and sends it to the head office the next morning. They have a hand-to-mouth existence and limited desires but are a satisfied lot since ‘when you have no choice, you have no discontent either’.

The author manages to capture the lower-middle class life of the pre-liberalization era and it deeply resonates with those who lived that life. The small unventilated houses which were barely furnished save for a table and chair, the way the entire family helped the bread winners in their job, the euphoric celebration on the arrival of a ‘gas connection’ (something which is taken for granted now), the numerous tea sessions conducted to pass time, the washing of ‘vessels’ – all these bring to life the India of those times beautifully.

There is an affecting scene early in the book where the father makes an error in his tallying which results in 800 rupees left unaccounted and the entire household toils to find out the error to save the father from having to pay the amount from his pocket. The mystery is solved early the next morning by the chikkappa after a sleepless night of poring over tally sheets and the family celebrates the triumph the next morning as if it’s a festival. The scene touches you because it brings to memory those times when such acts of collective responsibility and collective joy were possible and are no longer possible now. It recreates an era that is gone right in front of our eyes.

Then comes liberalization which gives the educated middle class people who have the enterprise a great chance of social mobilization. And chikkappa is the right man at the right time and he invests his brother’s retirement money (in exchange for a 50% stake) and sundry loans to start a trading company which flourishes beyond imagination making the entire family rich. The rest of the novel is a brilliant study of the effects of the sudden wealth on the family members and how it changes their equation with each other and with society at large. It explores what happens when the lower middle-class crosses that coveted line and becomes the upper-middle class within a short span of time. It explores the impact of new money on age old middle class values such as decency, honesty and thrift. And finally the impact it has had on Indian families. The study is fascinating and all this is done in a little over hundred pages which is a miracle of conciseness.

Probably such a story can only be narrated in an Indian language as it is more suitable to explore the family life of a typical middle class family. Having said that the translation by Srinath Perur brilliantly conveys the ideas and thoughts of the original and keeps the Indian-ness of the original text. The Kannada idioms are translated faithfully hence you have new English sayings like ‘Holes in dosas in everyone’s house’ or ‘the newly rich carry umbrellas to keep moonlight at bay’ or 'this girl is good as gold'. The translation also weighs in on its own by contributing phrases like ‘chemical warfare’ to describe the mother’s use of potions and powders to fight an ant menace in the old house. But the biggest success of the translation is something else. Every piece of art conveys something unsaid and it is the recreation of this unsaid in a language like English which is as different from a language like Kannada is the biggest success of the translator.

The ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ of the title is a nonsense word invented by the narrator’s wife to describe a situation that is entangled beyond recovery. At the end of the book most of the characters find their lives to be in such an entangled state owing to the choices they made in response to the challenges posed by liberalization. It is a beautiful metaphor for modern India and a cautionary tale for the generation ahead as they face the brave new world created by liberalization.

Chinaman - The Legend of Pradeep Mathew : Shehan Karunatilaka

An Ode to Sport

Everyone who follows sport has encountered this inevitable question from family and friends at least once: What is the point of sport? The question acquires an edge especially when one does not play the sport or in any other way benefit from watching it. This amazing novel is a long, rambling attempt to answer this question and as a result it is an ode to sport. It is also the great Sri Lankan novel we have been waiting for as it intimates us with the culture and recent history of the country and the exaggerated role Cricket plays in its life.

WG Karunasena is an alcoholic Cricket journalist who in his heydays has written for the best journals in the country and abroad although he is largely ignored now. He is a lover of sports who sees beauty in “free kicks, late cuts, slam dunks, tries from halfway, and balls that turn from off to leg”. He is a drunk too and claims that alcohol has rid him of cliches and made him into a better writer and unabashedly admires the "drug refined over the centuries by all civilizations".

But he is dying. Thanks to his prolonged drinking habit. However to make the most of the remainder of his ever shortening life he has embarked on a quest to discover Pradeep S. Matthew, an elusive chinaman bowler who has been erased from the cricketing history who he considers as the greatest cricketer ever. On this quest WG discovers startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket and himself. In the process he tries to answer the above mentioned question about the significance of sport. Time is short and we as readers are not sure whether he will manage to make it that long but he is confident as he philosophically puts it "there is nothing as inspiring as a solid deadline".

Sri Lanka is in the middle of a civil war, a consequence of the high-handedness of the Sinhala majority who "knew the Tamils could out-bat, out-think, out-everything" them. Amidst this war cricket is the only outlet for normalcy and the country is indeed blessed with a talented bunch of cricketers one of whom is Pradeep Matthew. A Tamil, he practices the rare art of left-arm chinaman and owner of numerous mystery deliveries including the unearthly double-bounce ball. However he does have a reputation for brushing the people in authority including fellow players the wrong way and after a promising start to his career has mysteriously disappeared. But WG knows he is a genius as he has watched him live in a match where he bamboozled the visiting team by taking 9 wickets including his famed delivery. The match is abandoned for some political reason and it is forgotten in everyone’s mind except WG’s who is now inspired to discover him and write about him.

WG is aided by his friend Ari and together they embark on this quest overcoming major squabbles (‘Murali chucks or not?’) and talking to various people connected to Pradeep including his family, fellow players and coaches. In the middle of this quest comes the 1996 world cup and to everyone’s surprise Sri Lanka "whack the cup" and cricket becomes even more popular in the country. Monetary rewards chase the players, even lesser known ones become millionaires, except Pradeep that is,  who stays out of it all and thereafter undergoes a slide in form and finally disappears. The rest of the book is about if and how WG tracks Pradeep down, how he comes to term with his family and whether he will have a happy ending to his life’s innings.

The book is remarkable about its insight into sport as WG admits that "Of course there is little point to sports" but hastily adds "there is little point to anything. In a thousand years, grass will have grown over all our cities. Nothing of anything will matter." But sport he says produces magical moments that can be remembered for hundreds of years and that is the whole point of sports. As he puts it…

“Sport can unite worlds, tear down walls, and transcend race, the past and all probability. Unlike life, sport matters.”

It’s a beautiful sentiment and one that we sport lovers can use to counter when someone inevitably questions why we follow sport.

The novel also explores the state of the Lankan nation and also on the Sinhala-Tamil tension. He laments the Murphy’s law of nations which Sri Lanka seems to have followed where by the colonized country becomes a parody of the colonizers and instead of inheriting their good traits they inherit their bad ones. As he ruefully says "we inherit the power lust of our conquerors but none of their vision". This I dare say is true of India too. 

He says that although the British as part of their ‘divide and conquer’ policy created a fissure between the communities, "by the 1950s, we begin to develop our own dangerous ideas without any foreign assistance. The idea that the nation belongs to the Sinhala or that Tamil deserve a separate state." The novel cites the example of India which despite more diversity has managed to create a united, peaceful state. Finally the author compares how similar the two communities indeed are and hopes for a reconciliation in the not too distant future.

In the end, this novel can be described as the arrival of Sri Lankan literature in English, indeed it is the ‘Great Sri Lankan Novel’ and all that English literature aficionados like us can do is echo that famous quote ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom’.

Last Man in Tower : Aravind Adiga

 The Old man and the Building

At a vertiginous moment in this brilliant Novel the eponymous last man in the tower - Masterji - looks at the neighbors he has lived with for 30 years and asks the question “Am I looking at good people or bad?” It is the sort of question we find ourselves asking about people around us whom we feel we knew who change drastically when circumstances change and to our dismay they become strangers. 'Last man in Tower' is a devastating portrayal of shifting morals of shifty people in the city of Mumbai. A city which is always asking “What do you want?” and goading you to get it and in the process enriching you and itself thereby making it into a megalopolis. Here is when a person like Masterji stands out as an anachronism as he wants “nothing”.

Yogesh Murthy or Masterji is an obdurate teacher and widower belonging to the Vishram society in the northern suburb of Mumbai. Vishram society is “a dreadnought of middle class respectability” built in the 1950s and by the start of the Novel already creaking under infrastructural problems. The society is home to a kaleidoscope of people belonging to various castes and creed who over the years have shared each other’s joys and sorrows and have generally got along like one big family.

Enter Dharmen Shah who sees in the acquisition of this society for redevelopment a chance to become the biggest builder in the city. He has in fact called the new luxury apartment building he is set to build on the site ‘Shanghai’, a tribute to the Chinese who he idolizes for their sheer will power. He is no novice in such matters as he believes that “human greed must be respected” and hence makes a generous offer to the residents of the society. Eventually all but Masterji are goaded to accept the offer by appealing to their basest selfish desires. Only Masterji holds out despite his neighbors’ pleas and eventual boycott as he is the one who has least to gain from the offer as the building is “pregnant with his past”. A past with his loving but deceased wife and daughter. Also he sees in this final battle a chance to redeem his lifelong timidity in dealing with similar situations earlier in his life. A chance to become a man again at the age of 61. So much is his stubbornness that it seems to border on Nihilism making him an ambivalent hero whom we are not sure whether to sympathize with or not.

Masterji hails from the Karnataka coast and has made it as a teacher in Mumbai. He has old world virtues and moralities and a penchant for acquiring knowledge. His son has inherited none of his qualities and has moved out with his family which has left Masterji alone. He has recently retired and spends the time teaching the society kids and despite being agnostic reads spiritual books about transmigration of the soul to understand what became of his wife and daughter. He is the kind of man who does not trod over a Times of India copy because one of his students writes for it now.

Dharmen Shah on the other hand is also a self-made man who came from his Gujarat village to the city with a handful of rupees and made it as one of the most important builders by a combination of “charm and brutality”. He can charmingly breakup a mutiny of laborers as well as threaten people with violence to leave their homes.  He believes that “deep down, everyone admires violence”. He divides the world into two kinds of men “those who can get things done and those that can’t” and he places himself proudly in the former. On the verge of greatness he encounters a man who has the same stubbornness as him but on the other end of the morality spectrum. And he knows he has met his match in Masterji in whom he sees, “a weak man who has found a place where he feels strong”.

As Hegel used to say a tragic situation is one when two rights collide. And here in the collision of the builder and the old teacher we have a classic tragic situation which Adiga brilliantly delineates. Along the way Adiga shines his light on the amoral nature of human beings and the collusion of vested interests in the city and society in general who will eventually get what they want even at great human cost. Hence Adiga is ringing a gong about the kind of society we have become and it is gripping as it is disgusting to see what unfolds.

Once the battle lines are drawn both the teacher and the builder dig their hoofs in. Masterji takes recourse to what he thinks are institutions of democracy – Police, Law and Media – who all disappoint him showing how hollowed out with corruption they have become to be of any use to the weak. Shah himself is trapped in his own image as a builder who will be the first suspect if anything happens to Masterji. Hence he relies on psychological tactics to influence Masterji’s neighbors to do what he himself cannot do. The denouement of the Novel deals with how these two opposite men face off each other and who wins in the end. However ironically they never meet through ought the Novel and their fight is carried out in the shadows of the city and its institutions. They are like two massive celestial beings circling each other trying to gobble each other up without ever meeting.

Although this book does not have the biting satire of the White Tiger it is one of the finest examples of character studies ever attempted in fiction. The characters are put inside the cauldron created by the clashing moral universes of the two protagonists, allowed to simmer in their hypocrisy and in the end stripped of their basic human decency. They look like the people Adiga characterizes in his other Novel 'Selection Day' while describing the Indian middle class 

“What are we, then? We are animals of the jungle, who will eat our neighbor's children in five minutes, and our own in ten”.

This Novel is a moral playground of epic proportions and is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the decadence of our times. 

Karvalo : Poorna Chandra Tejaswi

Science and Philosophy in the Ghats

Karvalo is a story set in the interiors of Karnataka, along decrepit towns dotting the beautiful Western Ghats. The Ghats with their teeming flora and fauna provide the perfect backdrop for this amazing Kannada novel that combines nature, philosophy and science. Poorna Chandra Tejaswi the writer of this amazing novel was a nature lover himself and his love for nature comes across in every page.

The novel is set in the sleepy town of Mudigere where resides the eponymous scientist  Karvalo, a Mangalorean catholic which is somewhat of a rarity in these parts. He talks in the crisp Kannada of his native Mangalore peppered with generous English phrases like ‘My dear young man’ and ‘Yes yes’. A brilliant scientist he is somewhat of a mystery to the townspeople who cannot understand why a man of his talents is wasting his life in this decrepit town.

The answer is revealed by Karvalo himself in the middle of the Novel. The scientist is in search of a ‘Flying lizard’, a mysterious creature belonging to the age of the dinosaurs which has survived unscathed through the ages but also considered to be extinct by the scientific community now. Recent sightings of a similar creature inside the jungles has aroused the interest of the scientist.

Equipped with this knowledge the scientist and his assorted band of unlikely explorers set out to the jungles to capture the creature. This merry band includes the narrator and his dog curiously called Kivi (“Ear” in Kannada), Mandanna , the local bee keeper and Karvalo’s trusted lieutenant , Prabhakara an assistant of the scientist specializing in photography and the eccentric Biriyani Kariyappa who specializes in cooking “hot foods”.

This bunch of explorers roam the forests in futility it seems in the beginning enduring hardships and along the way ruminating about such things as the nature of God, evolution and man’s relationship with nature. In the end the creature is indeed sighted and is caught on camera but it has one final trick up its tail!

The novel impresses you with its humanity and its concern for nature that man is now hell bent on destroying. Considering that the novel was written in 1980 it does come across as remarkably prescient. Tejaswi continues the humanistic tradition of his father the great writer Kuvempu who created the philosophical concept of ‘Aniketana’ – the universal man who is at home everywhere in the world and is one with nature.

In one vertiginous passage Karvalo is chided by one of the townspeople for mixing with the lowly Mandanna who with his low caste and sparsely educated background the townspeople see as a bit of an upstart and a rascal who is indulged by Karvalo. The scientist retorts back dismissing labels like ‘Scientist’ or ‘Uneducated’ assigned by society and instead urges them to see the true self of any person and in this case Mandanna who is a born naturalist in his eyes thereby compelling us to slice through the smoke screen of society in order to  approach the real truth of human existence.

In another passage when the explorers are spending time in the forest the narrator asks the scientist if he believes in God to which Karvalo being true to his scientific self replies that he trusts nothing without evidence and when proffered with ‘evidence’ for God’s act on earth he tersely replies that only the acts are real but the proofs are all illusions. How many of us who think ourselves as 'scientific' can be true to ourselves and reply with this clarity without fear of society?

Evolution too is dealt with in the novel where the scientist gives an explanation of the mechanics of evolution and the role of historical chance. Of how man due to some chance broke from his ape siblings and descended to the ground resulting in his weak arms due to which he developed tools and weapons hence kicking off our civilization whereas his ape siblings delayed their decent a bit longer – thousands of years in evolutionary scale - hence missing the chance to create civilization.  

The essence of the evolutionary process is caught perfectly in the last paragraph of the book where the narrator seeing the flying lizard in flight notices that its wings were evolved from the rib cage and not the forearms as with birds thus reasoning its stunted growth through the ages hence concluding that it took a bad evolutionary turn when compared to birds who ‘won’ the evolutionary battle. When pointed this observation Karvalo simply sighs saying there is no right or wrong in evolution and the evolutionary process never ends. How true.

This is a remarkable novel which needs to be read for its humanity and scientific temper, both attributes sorely going amiss in today’s world.

Selection Day : Aravind Adiga

Exploring the great nastiness

In the middle of the novel Tommy Sir, the talent scout scouring the maidans of Bombay "who was given to the truth as some men are to drink" ruefully says this about the game he loves:

"How did this thing, our shield and chivalry, our Roncesvalles and Excalibur, go over to the other side and become part of the great nastiness?"

Tommy Sir is the puritan fan who believes in old-world virtues of principles and righteousness hence does not fit into the modern world and is definitely setup to fail. The above lines capture the wretched transformation in a game "invented by medieval shepherds" which has been corrupted beyond recognition from the gentleman’s game it used to be.

Having said that this is not just a cricket book but the story of modern India told through its most popular game. Since the game now cuts across classes and reaches new audiences and participants alike it is a great lens through which to look at the country as a whole. Hence the corruption in the game is a mirror to the corruption that infects the body-politic of the nation at large.

Aravind Adiga as in his master piece 'The White Tiger' manages to capture the voice of the aspirational underclass of the country who have migrated to the big city and demand their share of the prosperity pie. This time though this happens through the agency of two brothers who have migrated from a village in the Karnataka coast along with their father who amidst selling chutney in Bombay spots the natural talent of his boys for Cricket and then pushes them into the game. So unlike ‘The White Tiger’ the aspiration here of the two boys is forced by the obsessive father. 

The father Mohan Kumar wants to develop his elder son Radha into the 'best batsman in the world' and the younger and more complex son Manju the 'second best batsman in the world' using his home-grown eccentric techniques (“No shaving until Twenty-one”). In steps Tommy Sir who has a lifelong dream to uncover one real talent who will make it to the Indian national team before he dies. Tommy Sir also introduces the family to the visionary entrepreneur Anand Mehta whose vision is to support young cricketers with a monthly stipend in return for a portion of their marketing revenue when they make it to the big stage. Anand Mehta is himself the son of a wealthy stock broker who has rebelled against his father and gone to the US and on his return spends his time squandering the family wealth by investing in flop schemes. But with this new vision of sponsoring budding cricketers he thinks he can fulfil his lifelong ambition of gaining entry into the exclusive business club of Bombay. He is also given to spouting insightful social commentary on modern India. Sample this:

“Indians, my dear are basically a sentimental race with high cholesterol levels. Now that the hunger for social realist melodrama is no longer satisfied by the Hindi cinema, the Indian public is turning to cricket.”

At one point Mehta says that Cricket is essentially 'state-sponsored lobotomy' and its chivalrous ways are ideally suited for male social control especially in a country where the sex ratio is so skewed. So the only way to maintain the sanity of the nation wrecked by this crisis of masculinity and to keep the "rogue Hindu testosterone" in check is "Bread and Tendulkar" and hence a steady dose of live cricket. Such observations make you realize the social impact of the game on the country which might be bigger than even Football’s impact on Brazil.

The elder boy Radha is indeed the protégé but soon Manju overtakes him much to the displeasure of the elder brother. But what everyone fails to notice is to ask whether Manju himself wants to play the game. Manju himself is much more interested in Science and forensic science at that in the mould of TV series CSI.  So he halfheartedly takes to the game and perhaps for this reason does not feel any stress and this ironically makes him excel in the game.

Manju also has his growth pangs as he is ambivalent about his sexuality and this reaches a head when he meets an equally talented but disinterested in the game cricketer, Javed Ansari. J.A. as he is fondly called makes Manju question whether he loves the game at all or he plays it in fear of his maniacal father. He tethers between the poles while answering this question and in the end his indecision leads to his tragic fall to mediocrity. Radha on the other hand feels fate has been unkind to him and blames Manju for usurping his space. The father in the end feels if the God of cricket Subramanya he trusts "gave one boy the talent and the other the desire". This adds up to a tragic climax for each of the protagonists and the boys themselves realize all too late that they have "martyred ourselves to mediocrity'.

If anger marked ‘The White Tiger’ then fear marks this novel. As Manju’s father is driven not just by the desire of the riches but also from fear of what will happen if his sons do not succeed and as the end shows this can lead to nothing but tragedy.

Adiga also revels in biting satire as in when he says:

'Nothing is illegal in India. Because, technically, everything is illegal in India... See how it works?'

Or

'Revenge is the capitalism of the poor: conserve the original wound, defer immediate gratification, fatten the first insult with new insults, invest and reinvest spite, and keep waiting for the perfect moment to strike back'

Or when he describes the boys' father :

“Because Kumar’s eyes had in them what Anand Mehta called a ‘pre-liberalization stare’, an intensity of gaze common in people of the lower class before 1991, when the old socialist economy was in place”  

This is genius in one line!

There is also a rejoinder from the man to his critics who panned his first novel for bashing the dreamy eyed Indian middle class:

'What we Indians want in literature, at least the kind written in English, is not literature at all, but flattery. We want to see ourselves depicted as soulful, sensitive, profound, valorous, wounded, tolerant and funny beings. All that Jhumpa Lahiri stuff. But the truth is, we are absolutely nothing of that kind. What are we, then? We are animals of the jungle, who will eat our neighbor's children in five minutes, and our own in ten. Keep this in mind before you do any business in the country'

Personally for me this novel is also a depiction of millions of Indian kids who lose their childhood in pursuit of the goals set by their over-ambitious parents who do not care about their real ambitions and in the process manage to push them into a life they do not want but who still labor on courageously knowing well that they might end up as tragedies.

So in the end this is the work of a genius, our own Flaubert who dissects the hypocrisies and ironies of modern Indian life like no other!   

This Divided Island : Samanth Subramanian

Hand grenade country

Somewhere in the middle of this riveting biography of a nation at war Samanth Subramanian dismisses the  banal expression terming Sri Lanka a 'teardrop island'. He instead views it as a hand grenade with Jafna being the safety pin. Suddenly this becomes your image of Sri Lanka too as you view from the bloody prism of its three decade old civil war and it feels like an accurate description of the country. It is moments such as these that make this part war book , part travelogue such an interesting read.

Samanth simultaneously explores the civil war, it's aftermath and the social conditions which led to it in the first place. Although this appears to be a daunting task he pulls it off with spectacular finesse giving one a whole new perspective of the country.

The book starts with a look at modern Sri Lanka as it copes with the aftermath of the civil war. The Sinhalese are in a triumphant and brash mood after vanquishing the Tigers in the bloody endgames of the war while the Tamils are a sober lot learning grudgingly to play second fiddle to the Sinhalese even as they stew in their new insecurities. The urban landscape is undergoing a transformation to reflect the emerging Sinhala majoritarianism where a 'brawny and purposeful'  rather than the serene Buddha is making conspicuous appearances. The creation of an overtly Buddhist landscape is also accompanied by cleansing of any Tamil remnants. As he ruefully observes - 'where there was nothing Buddhist to reclaim, there was always something Tamil to destroy'.

For novice outsiders like me Buddhist fundamentalism was a revelation. Buddhism is often cited in religious debates as an example of a truly peaceful religion compared to the other lot(the religious minded miss the delicious irony that by making such a case they in fact worsen their brief by accepting the violence of the other religions). This simple minded assumption is credibly questioned in the book as Buddhism employs casuistry to shamelessly legitimize the war effort by terming it speciously as a 'war for peace' effort and the war being carried out in the name of the Buddha himself.  Buddhist moral high ground is ripped apart layer by layer as monks are presented as specimens who rival the bigots from other religions.

The book then tracks the origins of the conflict and it's surprising to note that rather than being a recent phenomena it has a 2000 year history dating to the founding of Sri Lanka. The Mahavamsa,the Sinhala epic exhorts fellow Sinhalese whom it deems to be of superior Aryan stock to actively hate the much inferior wild Dravidian Tamils and stake their claim as the first sons of the soil. The British true to their policy of divide and rule favor the minority Tamil community which angers the Sinhalese further and once freedom arrives the  Sri lankans feel it's their time to redress the balance. What begins as preferential treatment for the Sinhalese turns into outright institutional discrimination towards the Tamils by the 70s.

Thus the middle of the 70s is all set for a showdown between the two communities and confrontation does come in the form of riots across the country. As Tamils realize the failure of constitutional methods of their moderate politicians they are drawn to the extremist ideology advocated by the Tigers spearheaded by Prabhakaran. This of course is a catastrophic choice and the remainder of the book deals with this horrific cycle of violence which culminates in the defeat of the Tigers three decades later with the world questioning the purported war crimes committed by the Sinhalese. 

The books also holds out a lesson for India which has - thus far - been saved from majoritarian excesses. India proves the need to have a feminine accomodative touch rather than an aggressive masculine approach in handling diversity. Lest we forget it we just need to have a look at our southerly neighbor.

The book in the end explores the psyche of the two communities and arrives at the surprising conclusion that the civil war has rendered both with the same temperament marked by extreme insecurity, fear of the authorities and loathing of the other. It is here that the book ends with neither hope nor despair for what is to come as it leaves time to decide on either path.

Samanth's writing in the best words of Orwell is as clear as a window pane and he peppers it with flourishes of imagination like a novelist. As he describes his intellectual friend M whom he meets in Jafna who he tries to pin to English to get the 'materialistic' information of the country even as he tries to defy him and  'soar in Tamil'. Also the description of the mechanic Nirmaladevan who is so purposeful in his daily chore that interrupting him would be like interrupting a phenomena of nature 'like a disruptive boy stopping the path of purposeful ants'. He is affecting when describing small actions of people that touches you like the 'beautifully futile act of resistance' of a Muslim butcher who hangs the key prominently outside to indicate a degree of ownership as 'he had ceded the house, rather than having it snatched from him'. Or the poignant request of a man who's leg is blown away by a tiger raid as he requests for a copy of the book when it eventually makes it to print. These and other such moments make sure that the book and the people it endeavors to describe stay in your mind for a long time to come.

To the Finland Station : Edmund Wilson

The History of an Idea

The history of man is the history of Ideas. However tracing the intellectual journey of an Idea is always complex but unfailingly interesting. The idea of Socialism is one such idea which has gripped mankind since the renaissance and continues to dazzle us even to this day. Here in this brilliant book Edmund Wilson tells the story of a succession of eccentric revolutionaries diverse in their temperament but united by the conviction that they have cracked the code for human prosperity. The idea that humanity need not depend on the mercies of celestial beings but in fact seize the engines of history and sprint towards their own progress. The idea of socialism.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the early socialists continuing in the renaissance tradition and deriving their inspiration from the French revolution. The second section and the crux of the book is the life and times of Karl Marx. The final section deals with the Russian revolution spearheaded by Lenin.

The section on the early revolutionaries is good and is an eye opener about the early socialists and shows how the idea existed long before Marx came along and made it his own so to say. The chapters on the great French historian Michellette and the irrepressible agitator Babeuf are especially good and exemplify French revolutionary thought. Their selflessness and passion for their ideas even as they fight the repressive regimes they find themselves under is truly inspirational.

The hero of the book really is Karl Marx and the middle portion and the biggest of the book is entirely dedicated to him. The picture that you get is neither the divinity ordained by his followers nor the ogre despised by his detractors. Instead you get a man of flesh and blood born at the end of a depleted rabbinical line who loses his religion to embark on a career of radical writing enduring poverty and displacement, all the time fighting for the cause of social justice, democracy and human freedom. A man who excoriated those who denied "human rights to human beings" as he endeavored to break the manacles binding humanity in order to release the genius of human creative energy. Wilson explains what made Marx a truly great writer as he combined his immense knowledge of social processes and history with an eye to pick the regnant issues of the day and to render them in witty, muscular and evocative prose.

This does not mean Wilson blindly worships Marx, he criticizes him for his gross simplifications and erroneous predictions regarding the classes and about his overbearing and fractious tendencies which duly got passed onto his followers. However he recognizes the genius in the man who spotted the trend of history like no other and pursued it with unprecedented drive. As Engels seems to ventriloquize beautifully Wilson's thoughts - "Marx was a genius, the rest of us were talented at best". Engels himself gets a sympathetic summary as the man Friday who supported Marx both financially as well as intellectually. In fact the section describing one of their rare and serious fights is touching as it shows Marx the sociopath genius who is suddenly terrified by the knowledge that he can lose his friend.

The last section of the book tells the story of the Russian revolution with Lenin at the center. The opening chapter beautifully describes Lenin's childhood in provincial Russia and provides a background into why he became what he became. Lenin is depicted as the iron willed revolutionary who brooks neither the theoretical hurdles of dogma nor the practical hurdles of personal calamity as he focuses on bringing to fruition the revolution Marx predicted. One feels this to be a far too generous assessment as his dictatorial tendencies and plain cruelty against those who disagreed with him are air brushed by Wilson who directs these aberrations to Trotsky's machinations. Nevertheless Lenin is brought to life in anecdote as well as deed as seen in the final paragraph of the book which has an ecstatic Lenin and his wife who have just arrived in a room in a palace even as the revolution has swept away the Tsar who formerly owned it. Finding no words to express themselves in they simply look at each other to realize that "everything was understood without words".

Edmund Wilson is a great writer and infuses this historical account with the urgency and human drama of a novel. The great historical actors leap out of the pages and fill our mind with their presence and their idea grips you like a vice. This is a rare book which needs to be read and re-read for generations to come.