Ignorance by Milan Kundera

Kundera’s novel, Ignorance, follows themes similar to several of his other novels, with the concentration of this one on nostalgia, on what people believe they should be feeling at a given moment even when they are not, and on how the decisions we make at the “Age of Ignorance” (or in our late teens/early twenties) affect our lives when we come to know and understand ourselves better later in life. Intermixed with these themes is the story of Odysseus’ travels in the Odyssey and how it parallels the Great Return home of each of the characters.

The story is about two Czech émigrés who left during the Communist era and are now returning to Czech for the first time since the Communist regime ended in 1989. During Irena’s return, she realizes how people have come to accept her as an émigré who left instead of staying loyal to her country. As she meets with her old Czech friends, she realizes the terms of their acceptance. They want to know nothing about her life outside the country. They want to amputate it, as she puts it, and by doing so, make her the same as them. Josef, on the other hand, returns to visit his family and revisits an old diary of his childhood. He marvels at the character he once was with distaste – how could he have been that creature, who seems so different from who he is now? These two émigrés end up meeting by chance to continue an old romance that neither of them accurately remembers.

One of the main themes of the book is the terms and conditions by which people accept another as one of their own. They look for similarities, memories they can both reminisce together, even if they both share a different perception of what actually occurred. After all, no two people share the same memories, which fade with time. Often people don’t even remember themselves for who they were, and reading old writings, they ask themselves how this writer could have possibly been them at one point. People change, but others don’t see them for who they are now. Only who they once knew, or as Kundera puts it “a reality no longer is what it was when it was it cannot be reconstructed.” 

I always walk away from a Kundera book thinking a little differently about life, and while many of the ideas in this book have been written about in greater detail in his other books, I still enjoyed it as a quick read/refresher.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Bought this book at a whim and did not wish to read it for a long long time, till I picked it up and then could not stop until I had reached the very last page.
   Sijie’s first novel or rather novella (considering it is only something like 184 pages long) begins with the Chinese Revolution headed by General Mao and the concept of “re-education” – as a result of which two teenagers are transported to an ancient village away from civilization.
   No one being re-educated is permitted to read any books excepting the little book of sayings written by Chairman Mao. It is when, through a series of events, they obtain a book written by Balzac (the reading of which is now a crime) that suddenly the world of literature and of ideas abruptly opens to them. They are so hungry for more that all they can do is dream (and scheme) about getting other such books. They later meet the third primary character in this book, the very beautiful young seamstress , and, by relating to her the words of Balzac , produce in her too the desire for more such words and thoughts. She is as hungry for new stories and ideas as are the two boys.
   Luo, now in love with the girl, wants to obtain more books for her, not only to please her but also to raise her up from her lack of education to become something other than the peasant girl she is (albeit a beautiful one). In that desire to “re-educate” the girl he loves resides their ultimate future.
   This is a wonderful story about relationships and love, about the buoyancy of youthful souls thrown into the cold and potentially drowning waters of very trying circumstances, and, lastly, about the need for those things in our lives that stir our imaginations to life and so generate fresh desires and new dreams within us. It is the stirring of human imagination that ultimately changes the world.

The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri

On a breezy Sunday afternoon, I happened to read ” The Death Of Vishnu” by Manil Suri. I picked up this book with great trepidation. Also, on the personal front, who would like to read about a man dying? That’s what I thought until I read this one. As the title goes, the narrative also comes directly to the point – that of Vishnu, an odd job man, laying dead on an apartment landing of Mumbai. This is where the crux of the story lies.

Here we meet the Pathaks and the Asranis, two arch rival neighbours; what’s worse is that they share the same kitchen and each claims to be taking care of Vishnu better.

Then on the other hand there are the Jalals – the husband who doesn’t believe in any religion and just wants to gain spiritualism the easy way; the son Salim who is madly in love with the Asranis’ daughter Kavita (here comes the Hindu-Muslim divide).

Not to forget the Tanejas – Vinod Taneja whose wife’s death has left him with so much grief that he just doesn’t get out of his apartment anymore… 

And what’s surprising is that all these characters are intertwined with one. And the connecting factor: Vishnu! The story binds itself based on what others perceive Vishnu to be – his mother, the Pathaks, the Jalals, the Asranis, Padmini, Kavita, and others like the scavenger and the sweeper working in the apartment. There is a holistic perspective to the point that it infringes on who Vishnu really is and what he embodies for all the bystanders. There is a singular thread running through the book – that of isolation on various levels. The Pathaks and Asranis share a kitchen, almost to the point of invading each other’s privacy and yet are so distant and cold. Vishnu is dead and yet no one wants to claim him and take him to the nearest morgue. Her husband and son, seeking refuge in intellectualism and staunch belief, leave Mrs Jalal alone. 

Vishnu in another realm altogether believes that he is God (or rather is made to believe that by Mr Jalal) – Vishnu , who had ten reincarnations. His love for… Padmini, his longing for Kavita, and his thoughts on living make the book one delicious course.

This book is not an easy read. There are layers and sub-layers to this course though. On the surface, things are quite simple and easy to understand, but what Mr Suri has created is something else. He has created what one might call “a quilt of emotions” – right from love to the isolation one feels in the metropolis to the bare human nature. In short, Manil Suri has created a Universe in an apartment of Bombay – a city so huge and yet so cold and distant. So uninviting.

The spiritualism as one would expect from this book is on many levels rather ambiguous and unclear. In the sense that while the author tries to portray the elements of reincarnation and giving up on worldly pleasures – like Mr Jalal often tries doing – it all is actually a mockery of the same. One of the redeeming features of the book is that it is not written from an outsider’s perspective. It is carved by an Indian living in India and breathing the air, which was what Vishnu did. An ordinary man elevated to something extraordinary to satisfy the superstitions and religious notions of the upper notches of society. This is where the element of comedy throws itself in your face.

The prose is certainly clever; however, the ending is left hanging. Possibly the author expects the reader to decide that for himself. In many ways, this resembles a grand chorus from a huge and wonderful comic opera, with all the inhabitants of the building singing at once. And underneath all the voices wailing about their personal concerns is the insistent bass of Vishnu as he prepares to die. Dealing with the most basic aspects of religion, love, and human kindness in a city setting which challenges its inhabitants to the limit, Suri creates a warm, funny, and very human drama of a every man’s search for meaning in life. Suri writes with obvious affection about a Bombay perhaps already lost, evoking easily its moods and attitudes, its light and smells. One can almost feel the heavy evening sea breeze, taste the roasted peanuts sold in paper cones along the sea wall, or see the Maharaja looking down from the Air India hoarding. A Bombay that rings true with its Irani Cafe, cigarettewalla, and radiowalla. Manil Suri’s sharp eye for detail and natural ability to create a strong sense of place and time define his considerable talent, and one can look forward with a certain assuredness to its maturing in his promised books on the other two Gods of the Hindu trinity, Brahma and Shiva.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

 

Mr. Orwell never manages to disappoint me. This is the fifth time I am reading it and honestly it has amazed me all the four times I have read them. According to me “1984″ is the best satire ever written. Every time I have read this book, it runs a shiver down my spine and I do not know what to make of the feeling. May be its just fear. Fear of being born in a totalitarian society and following its hapless rules which do not make any sense whatsoever.

Set in the year by which the novel was titled, Winston inhabits a world completely different to the one in which we all inhabit today. After the nuclear war of the 1960’s, democracy was abandoned as the civil war which engulfed Britain turned against the capitalist hegemony. The workers (or proles), believing that taking away business interest meant that power would be vested in them through the collective state, backed a regime change which exterminated democracy and capitalism and replaced them with an horrific autocratic system of governance, the embodiment of this is the all-seeing omnipotent “Big Brother”, the nominal public figurehead of the newly formed Oceania (British Empire and the US mainly) to which subservience and adoration is required in equal measure. To achieve this, the “Party”, who run this new world, have removed all civil liberties. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and human rights are alien concepts. Attempting a degree of free thought is punishable by death. Indeed, the word freedom no longer exists, thanks to the removal of Common English, or “Oldspeak”, and the lack of comparative word in the new, preferred language, “Newspeak”. Words, work, broadcast media, social life, books-everything is designed to create mass adulation to Big Brother and the party. This is helped by the encouragement of “doublethink”, the process by which a loyal party member can take what may appear to be an untruth and accept that it is a truth by training his mind to ignore the former and blindly accepting the latter.

This is Winston’s problem. He has not quite got the hang of doublethink. He has memories of a time when the party never existed. He knows, through his job at the Ministry of Truth, that he is implicit in an elaborate falsification process. He cannot blindly accept these new facts, as he knows that they are not so. He is a minor member of the party, yet he hates the party and lives in fear of detection from the “thought police”. And what is to be made of Julia, the fervent young party member scrutinising his every action? The novel chronicles these physical and mental struggles as eventually he finds himself in the position he dreads the most.

Without ruining the novel for anyone who has not read it, this is as much information as I can really give without turning this review into a series of plot spoilers. What can be looked at, however, are some of the main issues arising in the novel, for it is the political repercussions of this work which have earned this novel its deserved status as a piece of classic literature.

In the second section of the novel, Winston is presented with a copy of “the book”. If you want to know more about how this happens-go read the novel! However, “the book”, for me, is the most fascinating part of this work. In it, Orwell creates a platform by which he explains why the world has changed into the way it is, how it has done so and most interestingly of all, why the population allow themselves to be subjugated as they do. In doing so, he exposes some of the most common devices for population control used by authorities all around the world. Many of them are still used today. The personal favourite of this reviewer is the principle of “Continuous War”. Orwell states that war, after WW2, has essentially ceased to be. Certainly there can never be another war of attrition like that seen in the early twentieth century. Due to nuclear proliferation, no major country can ever realistically expect again to successfully invade another, without inviting its own destruction. If society is destroyed, then no-one can have power, and those in charge never wish to relinquish power. Yet War is a splendid thing to authorities, when it can be controlled. It allows manpower to be used for production of goods which are largely destroyed and then rebuilt. It also keeps the populous fearful, and a fearful population can be manipulated much easier than a comfortable one. They will look to a leader, a protector, when they feel that there is risk. Thus war, so long as it can never cause true disaster to the homeland, is to be encouraged and sought.

In the face of world events since Orwell wrote his book, it is astonishing to see that, certainly on this theme, there are parallels which could be said to show that he was eerily correct. For 45 years the Cold War rumbled on, with near half the planet’s population living in fear of imminent destruction. Now we have a “War on Terror”, and with it a need for protection and a build up of fear. It has been used in the US to create the Patriot Act, while in Britain Parliament convenes today to discuss ID cards, both designed to curb civil liberties under the guise of protection from an international bad-guy…

There is so much more to this novel, which could be argued on similar lines. The proliferation of “text” (or txt, if you prefer) language shortening the English language, and thus reducing the potential for individual thought. The introduction of a national lottery to give the proles (that’s you and I, dear reader) a false level of hope each week to make the drudgery of life more bearable. The mass production of Newspapers which contain nothing except sport, sex and horoscopes to keep the masses believing that they know what is happening in the world, while telling them nothing. The list goes on and on and on.

And if there is a flaw with this novel, then this is it. While the central character’s story is moving and deeply disturbing at times, it is the potential conspiracies arising from Orwell’s predictions which spook the most. Once you read this book, you will see capitalist government conspiracies EVERYWHERE. I kid you not. This can leave you in a rather isolated social position. My brother, for example, is sick of me telling him that his life is being designed for him by others for their benefit. His last response was something about a good hiding or something…

Please read this novel. I implore this for two very, very good reasons. The first is that it will change forever your perception of the world in which you live, and make you realise that the b***tards running the show have much to answer for.