Desicritics Author: The Buddha Smiled

Book Review: First Among Sequels

The Buddha Smiled — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 08:39:06 EDT

Like many parties in the world, the Jasper Fforde series of novels that centre around Thursday Next is yet another one that I am late for. Showing up late often means that you’ve missed some of the festivities and have to play catch-up to get yourself to the same state of mellow bliss that your fellow revellers have less difficulty in reaching, given that they usually have a head start in working their way through the cocktails list.

So normally, I would expect reading First Among Sequels, the fourth in the Thursday Next series of fantasy/comedy fiction to be a bit challenging. Most fantasy novels that run across several volumes tend to be fairly closely interrelated, and as a reader you suffer terribly if you try to pick one up and try to work your way through it without the benefit of having read earlier volumes.

Thankfully, First Among Sequels does not suffer from this particular malaise of the multi-volume genre of writing. Fforde writes a standalone novel that for first-time readers like me does not overwhelm or discombobulate with multiple, cryptic references to events and characters from earlier volumes; where a character is repeated, a brief and helpful description is supplied, sufficient to let said character stand alone, but also purportedly to allow the reader familiar with earlier works connect all the dots. Similarly, events from prior novels are explained in brief, and for the first time reader offer just the right amount of colour to be useful background without boring you with excessive verbiage.

So what exactly is First Among Sequels about? Well, you see, that’s the hard one to explain. Thursday Next, secret agent and member of the officially-disbanded Secret Operations Network’s Jurisfiction department, is charged with the maintenance of law and order within BookWorld, the world / dimension / weird sort of place where all stories and novels are set. BookWorld is where stories actually happen, fictional characters exist, and narratives are played out on a daily basis. A journey into BookWorld could mean running into Cinderella, Gandalf, Juliet, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and even Flash Gordon. Next, having inspired several novels about her exploits, has variations of herself wandering through BookWorld, but since they’re “written” differently from her bear little resemblance to her other than physical (hence the title).

Next juggles her role as a member of Jurisfiction with the challenges of raising a family in Swindon and running an illegal cheese smuggling organisation – the separation of the Welsh Socialist Republic having led to a significant decline in cheese imports into the country. But her time in First Among Sequels will be complicated by having to deal with some unusual apprentices training to be Jurisfiction agents, trying to prevent the Books Council from turning Pride and Prejudice into an “interactive” reality show edition (a surreal attempt to stem a staggering fall in readership levels across the world) and also trying to ensure that her son, meant to be the future of the ChronoGuard (time travellers) actually gets his act together and joins the force instead of being a teenager that doesn’t bathe or shave and prefers to spend the day sleeping. Throw in legions of Mrs Danvers, who operate as the armies in the BookWorld, the Stiltonistas (Swindon’s infamous cheese mafia) and an evil corporation called Goliath that is trying to harness the technology to facilitate travel between BookWorld, and you have a novel of over 250+ that keeps you engaged, and often laughing out loud.

Fforde is reminiscent of Douglas Adams in his ability to create a parallel world in his writing, with the humour very dry and tongue-in-cheek and, well, very English. The writing is engaging, though by page 175 you do start to wonder about the point of it all. Though it sometimes feels as if Fforde had too many good jokes built into the story to risk editing out, generally though you get to the end without too much grief. And if you are a lover of literature, you can only admire and laugh at all the many references that he manages to pull into a generally tight script. Fforde also successfully works in scathing criticism of today’s mass media and celebrity culture, where reality TV and abysmal pop culture has led to a massive decline in good literature.

All in all, though a little long, First Among Sequels is an entertaining read, something to clear your literary palate in between more serious works of fiction, but for a lover of literature and for someone who knows their books, it is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the world of fiction. And perhaps as the biggest sign of what an enjoyable read this book is, I will be tracking down earlier volumes of the Thursday Next series as I attempt to play catch-up...

Book Review: The Amnesiac - The Art of Forgetting

The Buddha Smiled — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:03:09 EDT

Writers and philosophers often ruminate on memory and the art of remembering - perhaps because in so many cases the creative process itself is a means of commemorating a past, and the act of creating a story is often the path to remembering something. Over the past two hundred years, authors ranging such as Kafka, Kundera, Borges and Murakami have spent a great deal of intellectual horsepower on what it means to remember, and what it means to forget.

Following this noble and illustrious line of storytelling is The Amnesiac, by Sam Taylor. The narrative opens in Amsterdam, where the protagonist, James Purdew, is recovering from a broken ankle. Living an apparently satisfactory life (he has a stable job, a loving girlfriend, an apartment in the heart of Amsterdam) his veneer of contentment is perpetually ruffled at the edges by premonitions of his past, and the fact that he has no memory of approximately three years of his life. What happened to him when he was a university student in the English town of H.? Why is he haunted by the strains of a tune that he cannot remember more than two lines of? And above all things, who is Anna?

Ankle healed, relationship with Dutch girlfriend Ingrid terminated, James returns to H. (why can’t we call it Hull and be done with it?) to try to find out more about his past, and to (both figuratively and literally) find a key to unlock his past – because of all the diaries he’s ever kept throughout his life, the ones pertaining to the three years he cannot remember are in a locked black box, and he cannot find (or even remember) where the key is. From here on the novel begins its tortured tour through the past of a life that is at once fascinating and also equally dull and pointless. For Purdew’s life is very bourgeois, with all the trappings of a traditional English childhood in the seventies and eighties – the bad hairstyles, the quaint television shows on the BBC, the agony and the ecstasy of first love, sex and death. Add to this mix an ongoing renovation project that Purdew takes on (how could a novel so thoroughly English leave out the persistent English obsession with home equity?) and you have a classically English novel for our times. Through all these events, clues towards unlocking the past slowly accumulate; references (almost tongue in cheek) zip past as we hurtle along the narrative as the author throws in clues to the denouement.

Taylor does well in creating a haunting reality, almost Camus-like in his emphasis on duality; his one passage on how hope and fear, light and dark, are potentially merely two sides of the same emotion is very reminiscent of The Absurd. Taylor veers between different times and narratives, choosing to work in several voices (the hidden observer, the narrator, the first person) to move the story forward. Over the course of nearly four hundred pages, Taylor moves (sometimes smoothly, other times not) between genres, going from nihilistic twentieth century self-reflexive novel to Robin Cook-like medical thriller involving large sterile corridors and doctors with mind-altering chemicals speaking in hushed tones through to nineteenth century Victorian murder mystery, tracing its path through the narrow side alleys behind Waterloo.

But alas, that is where the good times end. The extended references to Borges are cute to start with but soon belabour the point, and there are sections where he insists on discussing philosophy that could have been handled with more subtlety; either readers will already know about solipsism, or they will have the good grace to find out; you don’t need to explain it a la Philosophy for Dummies. And perhaps most disappointingly, after all the build-up, the denouement is completely unsatisfactory; loose ends come together a little too neatly, the whodunit solved cleanly, all the pieces falling into place too well, but the overall conclusion is like the English football team (who also make an appearance, albeit tangentially, alongside Doctor Who) – just not good enough. And if you rely on Borges’ trick of nothing being as it seems, surely there was some way to keep the ending as engaging as Borges?

Despite its flaws, The Amnesiac is an engaging read; Taylor writes cleanly, albeit a little too consciously and cerebrally, and his prose is crisp and engaging. One has to acknowledge that despite the shortcomings, The Amnesiac is better than a lot of what passes as literary fiction these days, and Taylor knows how to dot his literary i’s and cross his cultural t’s; he just needs to do it with a little more aplomb. Maybe he’ll remember that for next time?

(The Amnesiac is published by Faber in the UK and Penguin the US)

A Veiled Insult

The Buddha Smiled — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:25:45 EDT

Serendipity is a word that we apply to happy, unexpected but ultimately personally satisfying discoveries; things like finding that perfect little café that has the best cheesecake in the whole city. Sadly, no similar word exists (and if it does, I certainly am not aware of it) for discoveries that are unexpected but can be quite distressing. Sometimes, personal epiphanies or revelations about oneself can fall into this category too. I had a similar “eureka” moment on the ubiquitous London Tube some weeks back, and it has taken me a long, long time to come to terms with all three major components of that biblical moment: the actual discovery , the events that triggered it, and my own personal reaction to realising what it was that I had found out about myself.

What happened is this – I boarded a Tube train some time back, my mind focused on Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah on my iTouch, and took the only free seat available opposite a Middle Eastern couple. Unlike other Middle Eastern / Arab Muslim couples, however, who tend not to be incredibly expressive in public, this one was generally quite “couple-y”, holding hands, whispering softly to each other, feeding each other cookies out of a bag from Cranberry; you know, just generally being very lovey-dovey. Nothing too out of the ordinary for a normal train journey in London, albeit with one surreal twist.

The man had a long, unkempt and straggly beard, and was walking around in a long djellaba/thawb/dishdasha that could have done with either a wash and darn, or possibly a binbag. The woman was wearing a long black burqa and had a full facial niqab, with a tiny little crack in the face for her eyes to peek through. But that was not all; not only did she have several layers of veils on, she was also wearing black gloves on her hands - from the part of her hands that protruded from the long billowing sleeves of her cloak, they caught the light in that weird way that cheap synthetic faux opera gloves that you can buy at your local costume shop do. I could almost imagine her wearing elbow length opera gloves, and who knows, potentially a black off-the-shoulder evening gown underneath her many-layered veil. All very bizarre, especially that given the warm weather and bright sunlight, the black material was a portable heat sink.

So why am I taking this much time to describe how this couple was dressed? For a very simple reason: the sight of this otherwise so ordinary couple filled me with completely unexpected, and at the time, inexplicable, rage.

My sudden anger at seeing this couple dressed in what would be a totally unremarkable way in the Middle East, including that "Western" idyll of Dubai, totally caught me completely by surprise. I spent the ten minutes or so that I was in that carriage sitting opposite them listening to Jeff Buckley's dulcet tones, trying to calm down, not looking at them and generally trying to come to terms with the fact that I was very, very angry. And I was very glad to get off my train after a couple of stops, with a chance to walk and clear my head. But once my rage dissipated I had to spend the remainder of my journey, and several days afterwards, trying to get my head around what it was about that perfectly ordinary, typical couple that had angered me so much.

What was particularly galling about the episode was that I like to think of myself as a multicultural citizen of the world; someone who is truly a global person, able to live in anywhere on the planet (well, except Singapore, maybe) and accept and appreciate diversity in culture, food, music, dress, religion. And having spent time in countries where the sight of women in full black veil is not uncommon (try walking through the old city in Istanbul, Delhi, or even East London, and you would be hard pressed to avoid them) I could not fathom what it was about the couple, and particularly about the woman in the opera gloves, that really drove me over the edge.

After several days of introspection and having discussed my reaction with several friends, I think I'm beginning to understand the causes of my rage. It is always very difficult to talk about Islam in today's world, and I know that what I will say may be construed as being incendiary, but in the spirit of independent, liberal analysis, and in the interests of freedom of speech, here goes nothing.

Essentially there were two main things about the woman in the niqab and opera gloves that got me angry. And they had to do with how the veil was a symbol of broader interactions concerning the woman in her own life, and her interactions with me as a random passing stranger; a stranger you share space with in public transport, but do not actually verbally communicate with.

With regards to the woman herself, I don't know why she was veiled. The standard, often immediate, assumption made about a woman in a veil is that she is oppressed and has been coerced into wearing it, or that she would be risking honour killing by choosing to discard it. It is also the easiest and most accessible assumption to make about the veil, particularly in societies where the majority of women are not veiled. However, I have also met several people where the adoption of a hijab has been a personal choice, usually as a consciously forged link with a heritage, but also often as a very visible form of personal protest – Turkish women being a classic case in point. A (Muslim) female friend in London also once told me that sometimes a woman can choose to wear a veil (usually a hijab) as an educated adult in the West as a way of registering political protest in today's Islamophobic geopolitical environment, but also as a means of demonstrating an awareness and acknowledgement of her own sexuality and as part of the process of sexualisation into an adult. There have been several news articles in the mainstream UK media about women choosing to adopt a full niqab out of personal choice.

That is not to say, however, that all women wearing the niqab in the West do so out of personal choice. Furthermore, given that personal decisions are coloured by the lenses of our upbringing and our environments, I don't know whether the woman in the tube wore a full veil out of free will, or because that was what she had been brought up to do. But my anger surrounding her being veiled was partly driven by my own implicit assumption that she had somehow had been coerced into being fully veiled; an assumption that was reinforced by her obviously intimate interactions with a man himself dressed in a way as to facilitate easy identification as a conservative Muslim man. I realise that this part of my anger was possibly based on a preconception on my part, and therefore probably the more irrational part of my being angry. It is also the pettier and baser part of my own anger, something that does me no favours, but therefore all the more necessary for me to challenge and confront as a (previously) hidden prejudice.

What is not so easy to explain away as irrational is what the niqab implied with regards to the woman and her interaction with me as a co-passenger in London's public transport. The entire premise of wearing a niqab is to protect yourself from the gaze of strange men; men who as strangers might be driven to uncontrollable lust by the sight of an unveiled face, or the sight of an ankle or wrist. The veil hides, covers, shields, but most importantly, protects, the wearer from the attention of strange men.

So by choosing to wear a niqab in public in London, this woman was making a statement about the potential people she would be likely to encounter on the street, ordinary people like you and me. The veiling of her entire body in public was a statement that as a random (male) stranger in her Tube carriage, I was a threat. I was assumed to be incapable of controlling my sexual urges, and that the safest thing she could do to protect herself was to cover herself up fully to remove the slightest threat of temptation. The wearing of the opera gloves was the reinforcing element that catapulted me over the edge. Not only was I unreliable as a purportedly healthy male, I was so much of a threat that every last vestige of flesh that could be concealed had to be; who could say that the glimpse of a fingernail would not send me over the edge and turn me into a boorish caveman, bursting with lust and full of dishonourable intentions?

And so by choosing to wear a niqab, by branding me (not personally, but as a random male stranger on the street) and a threat, this woman had insulted me and my ability to interact as a civilised member of society in public; or perhaps she was calling into question our assumptions that existing societal structures would be in a position to protect her. Historically societies have developed rituals and norms around "protecting" women, particularly so in Asia where concepts of family honour are intrinsically tied to the "virtue" of women. And if it was the 12th century and if I was a Safavid soldier at the siege of Jerusalem I could understand the assumption being made by a veiled woman that all men were potential rapists. But to perpetrate the niqab in Central London was perhaps taking things a little too far.

Now don't get me wrong - I don't mean to say that women are not harassed while walking down the street in many parts of the city by men who find it easy fun to wolf-whistle or to (in more unpleasant situations) actually grab or pinch some body part; in India this goes by the anachronistic and incredibly ludicrous phrase of "eve-teasing". But at the same time, there is an important distinction between wearing what you want, regardless of its suitability for the neighbourhood you walk through and in wearing a full niqab with gloves and black shoes to prevent the slightest chance of skin being exposed.

I suspect that I would probably not mind the full veil as much if I was in a country where the social norm was for women to be veiled, in as much as my choosing to live or visit a place where such traditions exist would involve a subconscious acknowledgement of that tradition, and of accepting it within my own consciousness. However, when in a culture where a woman being veiled is not the norm, then I have to call into question what the act of wearing a niqab is about. Is it about exercising religious freedom? Is it about personal choice? Is it about a right to be able to discriminate against complete strangers on the basis that they are strangers? And if a woman choosing to wear a niqab is exercising religious freedom, what about my own personal right to not be insulted?

I don't have the answers - not yet - but hopefully I'm asking the right questions...

Torture Relay - Why Tibet Matters

The Buddha Smiled — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 00:17:29 EDT

It's been almost fifty years since the 1959 invasion of Tibet by China, an act of aggression which merely formalized the sustained political, military and social pressure that an increasingly strident Communist government had been applying for several years to the isolated country. The political and religious elite fled soon thereafter, crossing into India where they were granted political asylum, setting the precedent for a stream of over one million Tibetan refugees over the years. However, after capturing the attention of the world for a few brief years, the Tibetan struggle for independence soon fell by the wayside, as more and more governments sought to form stronger ties with a China that was growing at a sustained pace never recorded before in world economic history. Who cared about the concerns of a small minority, whose only claim to fame was that their temporal leader was also one of the most influential figures in Buddhism, itself a religion easily relegated by the more rigid of thought to a less than serious status as the manna of a hippie fringe seeking enlightenment?

And so it may have been - for over thirty years, the world turned a blind eye as the population of ethnic Tibetans remained stagnant at just over 5 million, while the number of ethnic Han Chinese in the territory has increased several fold. The world ignored Tianenmen Square, and also the brutal suppression of protests in Lhasa in 1989. The world ignored the Chinese crackdown on Falun Dafa, as it ignores the continued arrest, torture and detention of Chinese human rights activists; the recent imprisonment of Hu Jia is only one of many such acts. In fact, not only did the world ignore these excesses, it was often complicit in them: multinational companies, including Google and Yahoo, were too eager to bend over backwards and provide sensitive information to Chinese authorities regarding political dissidents in their attempts to avoid being kicked out of an increasingly attractive market. Economics, or so it appeared, had won the battle for the world's willingness to engage with China. The manner in which Chinese support for a regime supporting genocide against its own people in Darfur has stymied international intervention over the past two years seemed to indicate that the Red Dragon had won, and nobody would quite be willing to take a stand against what is most likely going to be the hegemon of this century.

So why bother? And does it matter whether or not the world takes up the Tibetan cause?

The answer is that it does matter. In fact, it is of crucial importance that the world engages with China (and when I say China I refer to both its government and its people) if we are to influence the the world we will live in tomorrow. Globalisation is often touted as a recent phenomenon, something that really only became a reality in the latter part of the twentieth century. This is, however, only partially true - the only thing that is recent about globalisation is its democratisation, and the flexibiltiy with which both human and financial capital can now be deployed around the world. Technological advances have made it much easier for individuals to move and travel, while access to information is increasing exponentially (provided you're not sitting behind a Chinese government firewall in Shanxi or Guangzhou).

What is a much older phenomenon is what I could call the authoritarian part of globalisation, where the fates of millions were decided by decision makers in places often thousands of miles away. Jewish populations in Lithuania and Italy were condemned to gas chambers by policies agreed in Berlin; millions of Indians died of famine during World War II thanks to Winston Churchill's economic policies, while Palestinians today live in refugee camps or in ghettos in the West Bank and Ramallah thanks to the Balfour Declaration made in London. Iraq is burning today thanks to decisions made in Washington DC, and even as we speak, it is difficult to guess where Iran will be in the next few years. The impact and influence at any given time that the world's current hegemonic power has over the rest of the globe is immense and often immeasurable; just watch the fascination with which media organisations cover US Presidential elections around the world; elections in which only a few hundred million will vote to choose a leader with the greatest global impact worldwide.

This is why Tibet matters. IR theorists have been debating whether or not America's role as the world's sole superpower, a position of preeminence that it has enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is coming to an end or not. What is not being debated is China's inexorable rise as a military and economic power; as time goes by, the extent and strength of the influence it will exert in global discussions will only increase.

So the question we must ask ourselves is what sort of global power do we want to be active in the world over the next one hundred years? Do we want the worlds that we and our children will live in to be shadowed by the presence of a large, largely democratic state that values human rights, encourages dialogue and freedom of speech, and values the individual's right to life, liberty and property? Or will we be happy to have the greatest influence of global discourse on trade, defence and economy to be an authoritarian state, where torture in prisons continues to be an endemic issue, where arrests are sudden, unprovoked and where shrill government spokespersons are the only sources of information, where free speech does not exist, and where critical thinking is not tolerated?

So the issue of Tibet is now much more than how China chooses to engage with demonstrators in the territory. While the protests surrounding the Torture Relay are as much about the brutal crackdown on clergy and laity alike in Tibet and China's western provinces, the issues has magnified into something much less tangible, but with far greater repercussions on all of our lives. How China deals with Tibet has become part of a broader discussion of the shape and form of the world that we want to live in. Tibet is no longer an issue between two Asian countries. And if you think that Tibet is someone else's problem, you only need to look at the streets of London yesterday, where a large Chinese security detail, part of the government machinery that uses brutal methods against its population and the Tibetans, jogged with impunity through the streets, while protestors wearing "Free Tibet" t-shirts were ordered to leave the area. Democracy is a very fragile institution, and it does not take much to descend into authoritarianism (and if you disagree with that, I'd only point you towards Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib). The question is, at what point does it become important to speak out?

So, dear reader, if you live in a country where you will not be jailed for raising your voice, for wearing your beliefs on your t-shirt, where it is legal to stand in the street and chant, "Tibet will be free", and if you are in a city through which the Torture Relay is scheduled to pass, then as a citizen of the world, as a friend to those millions who cannot wave a simple cloth without fear of detention, torture and summary execution, in solidarity with the people of a country where it is illegal to have a photograph of the Dalai Lama, go and protest. Do so nonviolently, because violence only begets violence. Go and stand in peace, in harmony and in solidarity. Go and protest the rally, not just for your Tibetan brethren, but for the millions of Chinese citizens who are currently locked up in prison for having the courage to express their views in public, for challenging their regime through peaceful protest and dialogue. Go and protest to send a message to your government and that of China's, and other authoritarian regimes like it, that the voice of millions cannot be discounted. Do not despair - it was after all the student protests of the 1980's that finally forced an economic embargo onto the apartheid regime in South Africa, which crumbled in the following decade.

Do not be silent, because that is another name for complicity. Protest, for the millions in bondage around the world. Protest, but not just for the millions in bondage around the world.

Do it for yourself, and do it for your children.

Musings From a Departure Lounge

The Buddha Smiled — Thu, 6 Dec 2007 12:59:16 EST

So I'm sitting here at Singapore's glossy Changi airport, sipping a glass of champagne and wondering how on earth I’m going to kill the next two hours while I wait for a much delayed flight to board. As I’m often wont to do when bored at work, I’m drawn to a site to which I’m an occasional contributor, Desicritics (note to self – can my interest be more than eponymous? Second note to self: well done on the self-referential linking - in the end, the snake swallows its own tail)

And so I discover while browsing the site that, as always, there are spirited discussions currently underway, all of them peppered generously with impassioned (usually hysterically so) comments, around articles relating to Islam, Islamofascism, Islamophobia, Islamophilia, Islamo-fill your appropriate phrase here – ia, and of course, freedom of speech. There were the usual suspects of Iran, Iraq, Al Qaeda, the evil Revolutionary Guard (whether Iraqi or Irani is unclear) the evil Hamas, the evil Knesset, the evil Hezbollah, the evil Zionists, and of course, Rushdie.

All that frothing got me thinking deep and hard. I tried to figure what all this Islam vs. the rest-of-the-world debate was all about. And while I don’t claim to have a solution, I think I had a (minor) epiphany. Yes, even us heathens are allowed those once in a while.

So the epiphany goes like this. Some weeks back, I was trawling through a small privately owned bookstore in Berlin – there are so few of those left in England that it's quite refreshing to go to a bookshop and not find it essentially resembling the intellectual equivalent of a Starbucks (“…I need a double tall sugar-free vanilla skinny latte, STAT, to go – hold the froth; if I wanted any fricking air in my coffee I’d have asked for a fricking cappuccino – and throw in a skinny blueberry muffin, will ya….”)

Anyway, I’m browsing through the anthropological sections, and find what proved to be an incredibly fascinating browse. Far too fat to buy, unfortunately, but I have an order pending on Amazon. Written by Columbia academic Joseph A. Massad, the book was called Desiring Arabs, and deals with representations of Arab sexuality over the past two centuries. (This also being a privately owned bookstore - see paragraph above - they were kind enough to let me spend about 45 minutes perusing the book, and even got me a coffee while I was there; for those of you who're curious, it was NOT a double tall sugar-free vanilla skinny latte)

From what I could glean, the underlying premise of the book is incredibly Said-ian (Said-ist?) in approach and feel. It almost felt like this was our old friend Edward taking Orientalism and applying it to the specific context of human sexuality, and also discussing how Eurocentric constructs within art and literature essentialised the Arab within global discourse.

There has been a historic tendency to characterize the Arab as a sensualised hedonist, out to prey on virginal Europeans (both male and female). It's a view that could be seen in the depictions of Arabs (and by extension, Ottomans) in the 18th and 19th centuries. More recently it's been as sexually repressed and deprived members of a conservative society out to prey on European liberalism.

Fundamentally, Massad’s underlying premise is that whatever the contemporary view of the Arab, it has always been defined in contrast to the European. And over time, these definitions have tended to draw (often inaccurate) equations between Arab and Muslim identities. If ever there was a systematic process of othering, Massad argues, this is it.

Point being, I hear you ask while suppressing (barely) a yawn….

Well the point is this – effectively, what we see today happening across the globe and what is characterised by some as a “clash of civilisations” is merely a continuation of a well established trend of defining the other. The only difference is that the definitions have morphed slightly. What was originally classified as “Arab” is now conflated with “Muslim”, and the creation of an “other” is accompanied by the essentialising of what has historically been a very diverse area.

Ironically, this othering has not been a one-way street. If for the European, the Arab was to be viewed first as the overtly sexualised hedonist, and later as the repressed sexual regressee, then for the Arab, the European was the uncouth barbarian, later on to be replaced as the imperialist. Both processes reduced the chances to create any commingling, and we have two groups actively defining each other by what they are not.

History has its own part to play in this complication. What is viewed in the West as “Muslim” fury could quite possibly have a lot to do with Arabs (and other non-Europeans) taking umbrage at what is subconsciously perceived as a continuation of the colonial project, but which takes the manifestation of an “Islamist” response.

Oh wait… I think they’re announcing my flight (… finally…) Part 2 to follow soon, I promise!

(Now where’s the fricking Starbucks when you need one?!)

Burma - A Crumbling Palace of Glass

The Buddha Smiled — Mon, 1 Oct 2007 06:00:32 EDT

Things are stirring in Burma.

I've been following news reports of the protest marches that have been ongoing for several days now in Myanmar, as the crowds have gotten bigger and bigger, the protesting voices louder. Myanmar's people are, yet again, raising their voices against the tyranny of a junta that has stayed in power intermittently since 1962. Similar protests have been brutally suppressed, in 1988 & 1996, and pro-democracy activists arrested, beaten, tortured and killed in what has to remain, along with North Korea, one of the most isolated countries in the world.

The world has been watching with worry as the most recent protests have gotten louder. Everyday people expect news of the imminent crackdown, expect to see scenes of violence and brutality unfold through the few camera crews in the country. This week saw first signs of such a crackdown - monasteries raided at night & isolated, monks beaten up and arrested, live rounds fired into crowds attempting to reach Shwedagon Pagoda.

The UN Security Council has already expressed concern. But the organisation remains toothless, because even though the US, UK & EU continue condemning the oppressive Burmese junta, Russia, China & India have developed close economic & defence links with the regime over the years. All three have been attracted by the lure of Myanmar's oil & natural gas deposits, with Indian petroleum minister Murli Deora most recently making a trip to the troubled country earlier this week.

Calls have been increasing for both India & China to respond to the crisis, leveraging their historic & current econoimc & political ties to the country and impose either change or restraint. India, home to many Burmese refugees, is almost expected to take a stance in what is unfolding in its immediate neighbourhood. India, traditionally a supporter of pro-democracy movements around the world, has taken a different stance in its own neighbourhood. It has chosen, instead, to forge military & economic ties with the miltary junta in Myanmar.

India's decision to engage with the junta is predicated on three key factors; and for a change, none of the three factors relate to India's desire to be the moral compass of the world, in which realpolitik was replaced with idealism. The first, and perhaps most directly relevant reason for establishing relations with the junta has to do with insurgencey movements in the Northeast of India. Naga & Mizo rebels have long used the western jungles of Myanmar to regroup and establish logistical centres. Falling outside the area that could be accessible to Indian security forces, the insurgencies have managed to remain active. India's decision to support & engage with the junta has been a direct result of its desire to eliminate these outposts. The strategy, so far, has seemed to work.

The second factor is similarly related to regional stability, but in a more tangential way. With most of the Western world having shunned economic & political ties with Myanmar, the country's greatest supporter has been China, a country with which India itself has a complex relationship. In the dance of the elephant and the dragon, where countries are reduced to areas where the two jockey to extend their spheres of influence, to stand back and let Myanmar get totally overwhelmed by China became a position India could little afford to take. Myanmar has an extended border with India along the Northeast, and securing this border remains, as always a key concern for the Indian security establishment.

And finally, in the most prosaic of terms, India is severely energy deficient.To have massive oil & natural gas reserves in your own neighbourhood, as is the case with both Iran & Myanmar, and not be able to tackle them for reasons of diplomatic morality is a difficult & economically unviable position.

So while understanding why India has chosen to do business with what is quite arguably one of the worst regimes in the world helps contextualise India's current silence on the situation, it does not answer the question of whether or not taking a stand against a brutal and tyrannical regime in its neighbourhood is the appropriate strategy. Because whether we like it or not, India has moved away from its historical blunder of being the world's moral police, adopting the idealistic high ground and wagging a finger at other powers in the world. India has increasingly moved away from this limiting position, towards one where pragmatism has taken root.

The idealist would argue that India should step in, take a stand against the junta, and use its political & economic leverage with the regime to force change, or if not change, at least prevent the sort of bloodshed and brutal suppression that the entire world fears is already underway. I would argue that this is probably incredibly counterproductive; not for Myanmar's people, but for India's longer term ambitions in the country & wider region.

India lives in a pretty bad neighbourhood. With the exception of Bhutan & China, all of our neighbouring states are in the grips of the sort of political turmoil and armed conflict that at worst could flare up into civil war, if they haven't done so already. General (President?) Musharraf is battling to retain control over Pakistan, which is steadily getting out of his hands; Nepal is in the throes of a Maoist uprising, Sri Lanka has yet to resolve the Tamil civil war, Bangladesh looks like a coup is underway, and don't even get me started on Afghanistan. To step into Myanmar, which itself has a long history of ethnic turmoil and political instability, and jeopardise the regime that has allowed India access to valuable energy reserves & cooperation in tackling military training would be pretty self-defeating.

The pro-interventionists argue that if India were to support the move for democracy, it would gain credibility with the local populace, who on forming a democratically elected government would continue to support India the way the junta has done. I'd point out a few facts here first. India has economic clout with Myanmar because it was able to access the market without competing with Western companies. ONGC & CNOCC have access to Myanmar's oil & natural gas reserves because the BP's, Chevron & Texaco's of the world do not. Were Myanmar to gain democracy, the chances of these countries remaining out of the race would decline significantly, taking away the cost advantage that the current arrangement provides.

We also have historical precedents of our intervention not quite going to plan. When India entered Bangladesh in 1971, with the full understanding that it was breaking up Pakistan, its soldiers were greeted with cheers by the local population. Within weeks, those cheers had turned to hostile sloganeering, with India being accused of "separating brother from brother". To expect our grandstanding in Myanmar to be received better in the long term is a delusion we would do well to consider carefully. India has an unusual position in South Asia. It is the largest country, and its sheer size, scale & power act as both an advantage, and an immense disadvantage, in its relations with significantly smaller neighbours, who operate out of a mentality of inferiority and resentment.

Finally, Myanmar is today a stable country (not counting the past few weeks). The price of that stability is the brutal suppression we see in the country today. I do not condone that suppression, and neither do I suggest that it should remain in place. However, for India to act unilaterally against it is not in our best interests. Because let's not forget that political allies are fickle friends in the world, and to expect eternal gratitude or friendship from any country is nothing short of delusional.

So what's the way forward? Whether we like it or not, the UN must remain the key tool of international dispute resolution. Myanmar's regime should go, but it is NOT for India to force it to do so.

The title of this post is inspired by Amitav Ghosh's novel, The Glass Palace, which takes place extensively in colonial Burma, and deals with the historic ties between India & Myanmar. No other direct link is implied.

Book Review: What Happens After Dark?

The Buddha Smiled — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:03:42 EDT

Children of the night; dark alleyways. Lives small and limited, but simultaneously interconnected and expansive. Coincidence, destiny, chance encounters, randomness. A series of unrelated concepts & events unfolding through the course of one night. Spare, precise prose. Japanese minimalism, white walls, brushed sand, polished river pebbles.

But perhaps, most of all, a haze. That slightly nauseating dizziness, a sense walking through clouds, where images don't seem quite solid, when moving figures seem lose shape as they pass through air thicker than mercury, where the boundaries that define images begin to blur, when nothing seems real anymore. The intoxication brought on by insomnia, by fatigue, by watching the change from dark to light as a new day breaks.

All of these permeate After Dark, Haruki Murakami's latest novella. And it is a novella of several firsts. For starters, it is a short work by most standards, but doubly so for one by Murakami, whose novels tend to be long and complex narratives that allow the reader the luxury of many, many pages of the sparse prose so characteristic of his writing. Another departure for Murakami is the time span of the story, starting just before midnight and ending soon after dawn breaks the next morning. The one thing that Murakami retains is the simplicity and honesty of his characters; their utterly ordinary lives, which are at the same time unique & quixotic.

If that seems oxymoronic, it is, because in true Murakami style, while initially each character appears, at least on the surface, to be totally unexceptional, it is when you get under their skin that their unique circumstances paint them in a more unique light. It's almost like you're walking down the street and ignore the ordinary masses all around you, but suddenly have one deconstructed in front of you to reveal the complexity within.

And then, there is the emergence of Murakami the voyeur, the film-maker. His prose veers eerily close to the tightness of a crafted script, minutely filling out the mise-en-scene; the music in the background, the colour of her jumper, the half eaten sandwich on a plate. There are directions for the cameraman, of when to pan out and take in the room, of when to focus in on the twitch of her lips as she sleeps.

What is the story? To be honest, it doesn't matter. The specifics of the events that take place during the night are irrelevant to the overall writing. There is meaning and symbolism in everything, but at the end, do the events of the night make a difference?

Ask someone who spends the entire night awake, only to see the morning wipe away all the fantasies that the darkness allows.

Book Review: The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al Aswany - Cairo Claustrophobia

The Buddha Smiled — Sun, 27 May 2007 00:54:00 EDT

It's funny, isn't it, how travelling to a place always somehow makes something written that much more real and identifiable? I always find that once I've been to the place that a particular novel is set in, the stories that I may have read before become that much more magical for me when I read them again. Perhaps all I do is colour in the narratives in my own head with what I now know of the place, but in any case, I somehow find the second reading so much more intimate.

This is exactly what happened with a book I'd read some months back, but hadn't thought to write a review of. But after my recent whistlestop tour of Cairo, which only served to whet my appetite for going back, I picked up The Yacoubian Building again. The book itself was a gift from a friend who was passing through London from Cairo last year. When I'd read it originally, it had seemed a good read, but nothing exceptional. But after spending just over 36 hours in Egypt, with a hotel view that looked out over Garden City towards Mohandiseen & the Citadel, I was somehow drawn back to the novel, and picked it up again last week.

First published in 2004 in Arabic, The Yacoubian Building is the work of Egyptian author Alaa al Aswany, a dentist by profession. The story traces the lives of several characters, each from different walks of life and different social strata, with very little to connect them to each other other than the fact that they all live in The Yacoubian Building, a typical Egyptian residential block in the old city. While the more affluent & powerful residents live in the large apartments in the main building, the roof contains small rooms which are inhabited by the poorer characters in the tale.

The story reads like a mosaic, moving fluidly between multiple narratives and tracing the ordinary lives of its protagonists, each of whom is in a unique way a victim of their own circumstances. There is Zaki Bey, an affluent man from a landed family, who was destined for power and influence, but had that deprived by the 1952 revolution. Taha just wants to be a police officer, but his humble antecedents deprive him of a place in the academy. Busayna does her best to earn enough to feed her widowed mother and younger siblings, but ends up in all her jobs as the victim of sexual exploitation. And there are many, many others.

Through all of their troubles and worries, the Yacoubian Building is the recurring leit motif. The story takes place in many locations, but at several points the scene is set in one of its apartments or on the crowded rooftop. On the whole, the story is not particularly cataclysmic, and there the ending of the story is somehat abrupt, leaving you feeling as if you were being led along, but were not given any catharsis. The small joys and sorrows that are spread through the novel continue until the end, perhaps appropriately illustrating what the realities of its characters must be like to live through. But there are two things I found remarkable about this novel, and more so after my trip to Cairo.

The first is this incredible sense of claustrophobia that pervades the novel. The overwhelming sense of entrapment, of being stuck in a situation from which you cannot get away, is one that affects each and everyone of the characters. Whether due to a lack of money, or for other, more complex circumstances, each protagonist is a prisoner of their own reality, unable to break out of a cycle of corruption, fraud and exploitation, whether a perpetrator or victim. While this claustrophobia came across even the first time I read the novel, it was magnified after I went to Egypt, and could see the streets and city for myself. Like so many developing countries, people in Egypt are either extremely rich or extremely poor, with very few individuals qualifying as "middle-class". And associated with these extremes are the classic cycles of exploitation, whether economic or sexual.

The second point that, at least for me, was quite unusual, was the sexuality of the writing. The Yacoubian Building was originally written in Arabic, and was for some time a best seller across the Arab world. Perhaps this is symptomatic of my own ignorance of the region and its multiple realities and complex social mores, but there is a frankness in dealing with so many things that I would have thought would be taboo. Whether it is the detailed exposition of Busayna's exploitation at the hands of her many bosses, the extensive lovemaking between various couples (never graphic or titillating, nor even erotic, but suggestive) or in the extensive description of the gay scene in Cairo, I was suprised by the extent to which Aswany deals with what I would have thought taboo, especially in a country like Egypt.

Finally, and perhaps appropriately for our present day realities, there is one subplot that is worth mentioning. Aswany describes in one of his subplots the evolution of an Islamist, one who is motivated by the desire for change in what is perceived to be a corrupt and decadent establishment to one that is fair, egalitarian and just. The sense of inevitability that surrounds the birth of the extremist is handled adeptly, but also sensitively, without going into any moralising or political grandstanding. Aswany reminds us that there are no black & whites - just one really confusing grey.

Book Review: A Tale of Love and Darkness

The Buddha Smiled — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:24:55 EDT

Buying novels at an airport can either prove to be serendipitous or they can be terrible finds. Either you end up reading another rehash of the Da Vinci Code ilk of writing, or you can often find some hidden gems. Airports in India especially seem to favour selling copies of Pablo Neruda right alongside Dan Brown, Borges next to Barbara Cartland. The eclectic organisation of books can be either frustrating or entertaining, but never dull.

It was during a frantic rummage while my flight was being called that I stumbled across Amos Oz' autobiography, A Tale of Love & Darkness. A quick glance at the back-cover, coupled with the heft that would guarantee the consumption of several hours of flying time(and did I mention the dirt cheap price?) made the purchase an easy decision.

I didn't manage to get around to reading the book until many months later, but the decision still remains a good one. Oz's story traces the origins of his family in Eastern Europe, where as Polish & Lithuanian Jews they are persecuted over several centuries. Subsequent migrations, to the USA, Odessa, and finally to Ottoman/British Palestine in the early 20th century are traced in the first part of the novel, as Oz builds up through a mosaic of stories the extended history of a family. Oz narrates the story along multiple chronologies, moving between family history in the "old country", while his "present" traces the development of the state of Israel in the 19030s through to the late 1950s. Stories of how the Irgun, Stern Gang & Haganah begin the process of British resistance are counterpoised against the tales of industrious ancestors running flour mills in 1800's Poland.

More disturbingly, the entire narrative is an attempt by Oz to understand and explain his mother's suicide in 1952 through an overdose of pills for her depression, a time when Oz was an incredibly intelligent & sensitive 12 year old. Oz takes us through both the origins of his family and the present of his mother's time to deconstruct the sources of her depression, her loneliness and the marital discord between his parents that eventually drove his mother to take her own life. By reconstructing the events, both political & personal, that eventually led to her death, Oz tries throughout the narrative to understand why his mother would choose to abandon him.

Perhaps the strongest emotion that comes through the story is that no matter what the circumstances of our existence, and our daily realities, the greatest asset & burden we all have is the legacies of our personal histories. The legacy that Oz carries has helped feed his writing, his characterizations, his creativity; for his mother, they became a large part of what finally drove her to take her own life.

The centrality of the narrative is on the development of Oz's identity, and that of his family, as Israeli Jews. While focusing primarily on the implications of what it meant to be Jewish from the 1930s, and by focusing on the individual stories of what his own family goes through, Oz manages to describe a broader socio-political phenomenon - that of the construction of a national identity. The one insight that was perhaps most interesting for me is the realisation that despite being returned to what was their original "home" 2000 years ago, most European Jews were unable at the time to divorce their Jewish identity from their European one. Auteurs, musicians, artists, intellectuals, people who heard Mozart & Rachmaninoff, studied Spinoza & Kant, and often spoke several European languages, many immigrants to what was then British/Ottoman Palestine were distressed and horrified at being returned to what was clearly the "Orient". Palestinians weren't only just Muslims who were against the resettlement of Jews in their lands, they were also clearly Orientals who didn't understand the justification of the Israeli state. Ah, what it must have been to be European and full of the "white man's burden" back in the 1900's.

The book is surprisingly easy to read; possibly a result of being a translation from the original Hebrew, which is itself a more grammatically directive language than the obscurities & tangentiality afforded to the writer in English (amazing what you can do with an infinitive, isn't it?) Despite its considerable length (thankfully not as long as some novels, but easily crossing 500 pages of small font) the book can be one that you can choose to linger over, savouring the stories on each page, or one that you can blaze your way through.

A poignant, nostalgic and emotional look back at a personal history, A Tale of Love & Darkness, promises a lot, and thankfully delivers.

Movie Review: Eklavya - Reinforcing Orientalist Stereotypes

The Buddha Smiled — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 08:04:33 EST

I'll confess - I knew very little about Eklavya before I went to see it. I didn't know much about the cast - just that it starred Amitabh Bachchan, and just that it was directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Chopra is capable of either producing a real gem, as he did with Parinda & Mission Kashmir, but also very easily capable of producing what can only be described as bilge - as he did with Kareeb. It's like watching Sehwag go out onto the pitch - you can never tell at the start of the innings if he's going to knock a century or be out for a stupid shot in single digits.

Spoilers follow:

Eklavya has to be one of the worst Bollywood movies I've seen in some time. I just knew that the good run I've had watching Hindi movies in theaters over the past six months just couldn't last. After Omkara, Kabul Express, and even Dhoom 2, which at least qualified as a total time-pass movie, Eklavya will be my statistical correction. It has to be the single most reductionist, essentialising view of a world that is so unbelievably anachronistic as to be laughable. The entire movie is set in a royal palace (as a Rajput and someone with some genetic sense of what a fort actually is meant to be, I will NOT dignify the pleasure palace they filmed in with the term "fort", despite the insistence of the characters to do so) and is predicated on a great & terrible palace secret - that the heir to the throne is not the son of the King, but rather of one of the guards, Eklavya. The King opens the movie by reading Shakespeare, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" to his dying wife, in what seems to be an act of touching love, until we see him strangle her when in her dying delirium she keeps calling out for the guard, not him. Nice, isn't it?

Things steadily go downhill from there. There is palace intrigue, the King isn't impotent (as was earlier implied) but rather more interested in his stable boys than his wife (aha, that prediliction, do I hear you say?) Saif Ali Khan emerges to play the London-returned heir apparent (i.e. pretty much playing the nawabzada that he is in real life), there is a love sick girl from a lower family (Vidya Balan, who is stunningly expressive & just gorgeous on the big screen, but has REALLY flabby arms!!!) and also a demented sister who paints her mother in broad oil strokes reminiscent of Anjolie Ela Menon & M.F. Hussain.

Throw into this cocktail some long winded tirades about what dharma really means, a letter from a dying mother to her son explaining who his father is, and possibly the most ill-quoted phrase from the Mahabharata (Dharmah Matibhyah Utghratah - dharma is that which is born from reason & rationale) and voila - one orientalist fantasy with eerie Shakespearean intrigue thrown in for good measure. Eklavya, the title character, has been described as Bachchan's tour de force. Unfortunately, while Bachchan is definitely a good actor, even he cannot save his character from descending into what appears to be an almost Al Qaida like fanaticism of what his dharma truly is, and how dharma is above all reason, all question, all challenge. Besides, he's an incredibly weepy man!!

The real tragedy of the movie is that aesthetically it is quite beautifully shot. But to quote a fellow film goer, give a five year old a camera and some Rajasthani landscapes, and you'd get some amazing visuals. There are also some good performances from several characters - Boman Irani, a favourite after Don, plays an incredibly Shakespearean King, while Sanjay Dutt in his cameo as the untouchable who became a cop is a breath of fresh air. It was good to see Parikshit Sahani back on screen, but alas, even heavy hitters like these are unable to save Eklavya from becoming the hash that it truly is.

I am truly surprised by the reviews that this movie has gotten from international critics - but I suspect in so many ways the movie becomes much more accessible to a western audience that is immediately able to relate to a film that can so easily help reinforce an Orientalist stereotype. There are palaces, there is royalty, there are long speeches about honour, there are evil landlords who annex the lands of poor farmers - all in all, welcome back to the Raj.

I won't even GET started on the factual inaccuracies, because we could be here for some time, and I feel terrible about having wasted three hours of my life on this movie already. So I will finish this post with the following two comments:

1. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE unless you are totally masochistic

2. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE unless in the words of a fellow movie watcher you want to see if you will actually be forced to rip your seat off the floor to hurl it at the screen.