Desicritics Category: Culture: Books

Bhagvata Purana, Skandha 1

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 2 Mar 2010 22:40:03 EST

I have to admit that I did not even know about this book till somebody told me that the Bhagvata Purana is also known as the fifth veda. I further saw references to this Purana in the Dharmasahastra book by Kane and then figured, it is high time that I actually take a look at this book praised by so many, but not discussed enough. And once I actually got my hands on a couple of copies, I think I figured out why this is relatively obscure (compared to the Vedas, Upanishads, Shruti’s and Smritis). Depending upon the version, the books range from 1500 to 2240 pages in length, containing north of thirteen thousand Sanskrit verses. One needs to be very dedicated or locked up for some serious time to really go through this. Nevertheless it is a beautiful book with lovely tales and I thought of reviewing it, as I really could not find any good reviews elsewhere.

Before I start, first some background and logistical points. I used the following books:
1. The Bhagavata Purana: v. 7 (Ancient Indian Tradition and Mythology) by J.L. Shastri and Ganesh Vasudeo Tagare (1994)
2. Bhagavat Purana by Ramesh Menon (2007)
3. A Study of the Bhagavata Purana or Esoteric Hinduism by Purnendu Narayana Sinha, 1901.
4. Srimad Bhagavata Puranam, Sanskrit, 2004.
5. Bhagavata Puranam, Sanskrit, 2006 (under revision)
6. Srimad Bhagavatam (Bhagavata Purana) by Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupâda.

Quite a lot of the versions are different in formulation, usage of English and the so on. If one wants to be true to the Sanskrit versions (which themselves differ a bit), then the Prabhupada version is good, as it has the original Sanskrit, a word by word translation and a summary. In any case, my knowledge of Sanskrit is barely intermediate and I wouldn't be comfortable in dealing with a review based upon that language based book. Reading Sanskrit is one thing, but reviewing in pure ancient Sanskrit? No Sir. If one wants to have a bit more colloquial English usage and more understanding as per modern usage, then I suggest the Menon version. Rest of them use a bit of archaic English and can be a bit difficult to digest. So this review uses the Menon version.

So how do you review such a monumental book? I was struggling with the answer. I could have reviewed the full book down in one long essay but then this would have missed out on giant parts. Doing a translation is simply out of the question. So after discussing it a bit, I hit upon the idea of writing a summary per Skandha (canto or book) and then highlighting any interesting points that popped up in my mind. This means twelve rather long essays, but I think I can live with that on my conscience that one has done justice to it. If you want to rather get a quick overview of the purana, then the wiki entry is a good place to start. Without further ado, lets crack on.

My first impression after I finished the book was that it was mainly about love, very very intense love. Extremely emotional love. Something that makes you weep uncontrollably. Not bawl, but weep. Not sure if you have experienced this, but it's like none of your emotions (speech, sight, touch, smell…) are able to express it and tears are the only way to do so. I felt like this when I first held my kids in my arms. Or when I used to dance in front of Ma Durga during Durga Puja back home with the Dhunuchis. This book is an expression of very intense love towards Vishnu or his incarnation Krishna. Have you read Rumi? The feeling I got was a bit like what I felt when I read Rumi. Rumi, though, is a bit more earthy and this is a bit more esoteric, although some parts of the purana are quite earthy. It is Bhakti personified.

The purana is roughly dated to between 500 to 1000 AD, but it has gone through so many changes, accretions, embellishments, etc. that it is tough to date it correctly. Plus let us not forget that these are stories and generations of scholars and teachers in a vast land have told these stories in a variety of locales and to a huge number of people. It is a miracle that we actually get to a version in the first place.

The first Skandha introduces the purana, which written by Veda Vyasa, who writes this after completing the vedas and Mahabharat. The main reason behind writing this was that the Vedas and Mahabharat do not satisfactorily deal with the highest goal of knowledge and that is devotion to God (Bhakti). Another reason for for writing it, is to assist us in handling the Kali Yug, which came into being when Krishna died. When people begged him to leave something of him behind so that they can cope with the Kali Yug, Krishna poured his essence into the Bhagwat Purana.

Narada Muni is a key participant in the beginnings of the BP. An interesting story is said about him. Narada is disconsolate, because he is wandering around in Kali Yug and is observing the breakdown of divine order. While wandering on the banks of the Yamuna, he notices a young woman sitting next to two very old sick men, while being surrounded with many other young women. The young woman turns out to be Bhakti and the two old sick men are Gyan (knowledge) and Vairagya (detachment or renunciation). The other young women are the sacred rivers such as Ganga, etc. who are trying to provide comfort to Bhakti. The Kali Yug has devastated her two sons even though it spared her. Narada blesses her by saying that Bhakti will be the only way to salvation and then tries to rescue her two sons by chanting the Vedas and Upanishads in their ears, singing the Bhagvad Gita to them. They improved, but not completely. On beseeching the Lord to provide him with some guidance, a voice from the skies tells him to go speak to certain Munis. On searching and leter finding them, Narada asks the Munis about how to cure the two sons of Bhakti? The Munis state that he has to recite the BP to them and since it contains the essence of Lord Vishnu, it will revive them. So he does and Bhakti and her two sons are also revived.

But this was not the first time that the BP had been recited. Thirty years after Krishna died, Vyasa’s son Suka recited the BP to King Parikshit, grandson of Arjuna, son of Abhimanyu, who succeeded Yudhistra to the throne of Hastinapur. But this story is for later. The second great recitation of the BP happened two hundred years after the Kali Yug had started by Gokarna Muni.

The BP then embarks on a long tale of how a childless Brahman begged for a boon of a child from a Sanyasi. The Sanyasi gives a blessed fruit to him and asks his wife to eat it, keeping a vow of truthfullness, kindness and charity for an entire year, not eating more than one meal per day, and if that is done, then a pure golden hearted pious son will be born. But his wife did not want to ruin her figure or go through the pain of childbirth so she hatched a plan with her sister. The fruit was given over to their cow while her sister’s new born baby was smuggled in to be shown as the Brahman’s son called as Dhundhukari. Three months later, the cow gave birth to a human child with golden skin and eyes like lotus petals, but with cow ears. Hence his name, Gokarna (or Cow Ears). Both grow up together, but Dhundhukari turns out to be a devil in disguise, a disgusting sinner, while Gokarna is pure as the snow on Mount Kailash. The Brahman is at his wits end and Gokarna advices him to cultivate dispassion and renounce the world, which he does. Gokarna also leaves on a pilgrimage. Dhundhukari commits terrible crimes, beats up his own mother, steals, whores and lies and at the end, the whores decide to kill him and they do. Unfortunately, Dhundhukari remains behind on earth after death as a spirit. Gokarna senses Dhundhukari’s death and the fact that he is not truly dead, but is still a tortured spirit. Gokurna performs a shraddha at every holy spot, but it does not release Dhundhukari from the earth and finally he returns to his hometown. Dhundhukari begs him for help to be released and Gokurna then embarks on a deep dhyan (meditation) to Surya Deva (Sun God) to learn how to address this. The Sun God advices him to recite the BP as that is the only way Dhundhukari’s soul will be released. So Gokurna starts the recitation with many many people attending the week’s worth of recitation and when he ends, Dhundhukari is released from his earthly bounds.

The others who were listening, though, do not get their sins washed away. Gokurna is told by the sages that Dhundhukari fasted for seven days and he listened to Gokurna’s recitation with all his faculties and might. This is the reason why Dhundhukari was released and not the others. When the others learnt this, they begged Gokurna to recite the BP again which he did. This allowed all the listeners to also be washed free of their sins by Vishnu who appeared after a great conch shell boom in a blaze of light.

Thus ends the first book. I had to consciously lay aside my erupting cynicism. The first book tries hard to explain why the BP is so important and how it helps to wash away the sins. I thought about self praise? However, as I kept on reading, I realised that I was reading it as perhaps a professor wanting to write a book review and not as a worshipper or a person of faith wanting to learn. That switch was not easy and I found myself slipping back into the cynical, doubting persona many times. The apparent inconsistencies about the origins of the purana bothered me as well till I spoke to my father. He told me, if Vishnu is indeed the world, then how does it matter if one manifestation or another wrote or spoke what? What matters is the content. And that made perfect sense.

What was also a bit frightening for a grown man like me was the underlying concept of letting go. Letting go of everything and with tan, man and dhan (body, mind and wealth) and concentrate on the pursuit of Bhakti, devotion to God. I am not sure if I have achieved that and am very far away from the ideal. It felt quite strange reading about people who can be so dispassionate that they are able to walk away from everything that they hold dear (for me it would be my family, my iPhone, my books, etc.) and devote their all and everything to being in love with Krishna. I am not sure if I can ever do that and it was very humbling to find that I do not have the courage or guts to do so.

What a fascinating journey into a wonderful book which is raising more questions than answering them.

Book Review: In an Antique Land

Kim — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:02:09 EST

In an Antique Land was a unique book for me, as its two threads focus on a small town that I grew up in for the first 20+ years of my life and a Country that I have lived in for the last 3 years. So I had a unique connect with this book.

Not so surprisingly, the description of my hometown did not ring a bell as it focused mostly on the town as it existed 800+ years ago. The description of rural Egypt created a veritable clang in my head as I kept thinking to myself "How true" or "Yes, I know someone who would have reacted the exact same way"

This is a book of non fiction. Amitav Ghosh chanced upon a letter between Abraham Ben Yiju, a Jewish merchant living in Mangalore, India, and Khalaf ibn Ishaq from Egypt, written in 1132AD. Part of this narrative focuses on Ghosh's search for more documents relating to Ben Yiju and part of the narrative tries to imagine the world that Ben Yiju lived in.

The other narrative in the book, covers Ghosh's stay in rural Egypt (Mashawy and Lataifa) and it was this section that I found infinitely more interesting and hence hope to pick up his book of essays The Imam and the Indian which promise to shed more light on this phase of his life.

It is in this second narrative that Amitav's gift of story telling is showcased, while in the first narrative it feels stilted, focused on facts and doesn't flow as naturally. Blending history with a a current travelogue is an art perfected by William Dalrymple and sadly in comparison, Ghosh didn't match up.

While Ben Yiju did spend time in Egypt and his letters were written to people living there and most of the surviving documentation came from the Geniza Documents cache from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in the Coptic Cairo area of modern day Cairo and Fustat of Ancient Cairo, this is the only point at which the two narratives seem to meet. For the rest of the book, they just continue parallel to each other.

In the final chapters, when Ghosh heads out towards the tomb of a Jewish Saint in rural Egypt venerated by Muslims and Jews alike, I hoped it would bring about a meeting of the parallel stories, but unfortunately it didn't.

Both narratives on their own are great and very illuminating, I just didn't see the point of putting them together.

Its a great read for someone visiting the Fustat area or interested in observations/revelations from the Geniza Cache or life in Rural Egypt.

The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:10:09 EST

This book review is a tad late compared to the time the book was published. It is estimated that the book is a copy of an original work compiled and copied by unknown authors somewhere in the 11th century in Egypt. This copy is roughly dated to approximately 12th or 13th century and refers to work done by a variety of astronomers, historians, scholars, travellers, cartographers and scribes from the 9th to the 11th century. It is currently available in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, UK and its reference shelf mark number is Bodleian Library, Dept. of Oriental Collections, MS. Arab. c. 90.

The original book contained 5 separate books, only two of which have been copied in the current book. The first book relates to astronomy and has 10 chapters. The second book relates to the earth and has 25 chapters. Totalling 96 pages, it measures 324 x 245 mm. Unfortunately, there have been some losses of chapters in the second book. The paper used is brownish and black ink has been used to write the text and red ink for the headings. There are also other versions and copies of the original book in various other places such as in Cairo, Milan, Mosul, Algiers and another copy in the Bodleian Library.

Here is the full table of contents. As can be seen, book 1 talks about the celestial sphere, zodiacal signs, constellations, stars with occult influences, comets, stars with bad and good influences, planets and their influences / properties, lunar aspects etc.

Here’s a screen shot of the celestial sphere. The sections on the outermost circle relate to constellation signs like Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, etc. Left is the eastern horizon and the right side is the western horizon (remember the centre for the writer is Cairo). Then the next circle inside relates to the major stars, constellations, and bodies such as Ursa Major, Cepheus, Lupus, Orion, etc. Then comes what looks to me like a monthly cycle around zodiacal signs and then the central circle talks about the earth’s seven climes which are aligned to the zodiacal signs. I have absolutely no idea about this detail, but it looks quite impressive.

This page shows details of comets and their properties.

Book 2 talks about the depiction of the earth and time zones, lands beyond the equator, the Arabian Peninsula, cities, seas, islands and other geographical entities, the cities and forts along the Indian ocean, the eastern Mediterranean sea and the cities/forts along the sea shore, the Caspian Sea, various other islands, lakes, rivers, fishes and animals of the seas, and then wondrous waters, plants and animals.

This is how the ancients looked at the world. This is the world map.

You have to put aside your current cartographic perspective to read this map. In the old days, a particular spot which was well known then, would become the centre of the map. So for example, Jerusalem was, for many many centuries, the centre of the map and everything else would be drawn with reference to that single location. Also, cartographically speaking, you will not measure distances and locations by latitude or longitude but by the distance travelled from the centre. As with everything, accuracy of places and diagrams was maximum closer to the centre. This map is actually somewhat oriented with geographical south in the top. In the centre you have the Nile Delta and the River Nile flowing up into the Mountain of the Moon and the Sudan. On the far right is Morocco. The bit in the bottom right quadrant is Europe with Constantinople, Spain, France, and Italy marked out. On the bottom left quadrant is Asia and Central Asia. See the two round fingers in the top left quadrant? They are supposed to be the Arabian Gulf with Mecca and the second finger is a mix of India and Iran. The round spot between the 2 fingers is Sri Lanka. The little edge on the far left is China. The blue lines indicate rivers. Deserts are marked and so are mountains. Pretty fascinating.

The text also has lots of maps of the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Caspian, Scicily, Madina, Tinnis, Cyprus, Aegean Bays, etc., and then maps of rivers. Some of the explanations of marvelous sea creatures are very fascinating such as:

فهولا المشوهه خلقهم من تلك الامم فمنهم امة سكان بحر / برهاندين [؟] في بحر الهند ي15سُود الوُجُوه كخلق عادية واقدامهم من خلف أعقابهم مقدار الذراع شمط الشعور مرد الوجوه / طوالها ياكلون من وقع ياليهم من الرجال ويستبقون النسا ي

English translation:
Of these nations, the deformed peoples are the following: Creatures in the Sea of Barhāndīn [?]7 in the Indian Ocean. They have black faces, like normal humans, but their feet are turned backwards and are a cubit long. Their hair is grey, and their faces long and beardless. They eat any man who falls in their hands, and they share their women.

The map of the Indian Ocean was brilliant

It talks about two cities in India, Thaneswar, Dipalpur and then 3 additional unnamed cities. All these cities are separated by various rivers which rise in various mountains. They even mention Manila in here, showing how far the Arab sea farers fared in their voyages. It was difficult for me to conceptualise and mentally visualise these maps. It's so foreign to me, the current cartographic framework so settled in my mind, with the globe and Mercator projections that this kind of 2 dimensional, directionally challenged mapping was just so strange.

Interestingly they also talk about the infidel Turks. I am guessing they are referring to the Turks and Mongols. I think the Mongols heard that the Muslims in Fatimid Cairo were calling them Infidels and in 1258, the Mongols invaded the Arab lands pretty much destroying the Arab civilisation. Many draw the decline of Muslim civilisation from that event.

Here’s a circular map now:

South is at the top, West to the right and East to the left. Remember this is following on from ancient Egyptian times. The Nile River is one of the very few rivers in the world which flow to the north, for some strange reason, most rivers flow east / west or to south, very few flow to the north. So when the Egyptians would look at the river which provided them with their water, life and sustenance, they would look south. So for them the south direction was most important. Hence “Upper” Egypt. All Egyptian maps, till recently, were all oriented South on top. Sort of made me have a cricked neck, but it is a fascinating exercise to think how we are so accustomed to think north is top, and when something like this happens, you get all confused. It's like seeing the water circle the other way around when going down the toilet when you are in the south. You look at it but dont know what’s wrong.

The website is seriously flaky in term of performance, although it is well laid out. It took me 2 days to complete this review and this was after trying to connect over 20 times. I was not very happy with it but still, one day I will go to Oxford and see if I can sniff at it. There is something about old books and their smell which appeals to me. All in all, this document which is now free and freely accessible to everybody in the world with a net connection (when the site is up of course), is one of the world’s treasures. I strongly suggest you go take a peek at the book here.

Book Review: Victoria And Abdul

Deepti Lamba — Thu, 4 Feb 2010 04:51:10 EST

Shrabani Basu's book Victoria and Abdul takes us into a world of love, companionship, untamed ambition, colonial grandeur, petty human emotions and fall from grace that leaves a broken heart.

Shrabani weaves the last ten years of Queen Victoria and her relationship with Abdul Karim, her Indian secretary ( also called Munshi) with brisk yet detailed narration. The love the Queen bore for Abdul caused great deal of fur flying not only in her household but also became a cesspit of gossip for the court and a source of irritation for top brass of the British bureaucracy ruling India.

Initially one may get the impression that the opposition Abdul Karim faced from the Queen's household, nobility and even her children was based on racism and social discrimination but Shrabani delved deeper and showed that Abdul's shameless desire to elevate his status and that of his family to the level of royalty was one of the main causes for his unpopularity amongst the Queen's entourage and amongst the Royalty.

Unfortunately as Shrabani points out after Queen Victoria's death most of the letters that were written between Victoria and Abdul Karim were destroyed on King Edward's command such was his shame regarding his mother's relationship with Adbul and his resentment against the Munshi.

To be fair to those who hated the high handed ambitious Mushi the Queen's preferential treatment towards her Scottish gillie John Brown in the near past made them fear that the same routine would be played out with the young Abdul Karim.

To be fair to the Queen as well, her love for Abdul Karim was that of a mother and her childlike dependence on him was probably a sign her advancing age. And despite pressure from the household, her children and despite the hawk eyed surveillance that was done of Karim's movements both within Britain and India he remained in their midst and the Queen's constant companion till the end of her days.

The rise of Abdul Karim from a vernacular clerk at the Agra Jail to being the Queen's urdu tutor and a gentleman who hobnobbed with Kings and Queens made him a darling of the press both within the country and in Europe and inflamed his enemies even further.

The skirmish between the Queen and her household continued for ten years and the go between the Queen and her employees was Dr Reid who obviously suffered the worst casualty in the war of words and veiled threats. His personal diary in fact was filled only with the pall of gloom that lay over the Queen's household over this issue.

Apart from showing the close relationship the Queen had with her Munshi Shrabani also provides detailed insight into the intricate social protocols of the time that existed amongst the highest echelons of the British Empire and how Abdul and even the Queen blundered and broke many of the sacred rules and ruffled the feathers of the lords.

The detailed research that Shrabani Basu did for this book both in Britain and in Agra has also been narrated in a matter of fact yet delightful manner.

The book till the end was intense and hard to put down. Its a must buy even for those who are not interested in history.

Book Review: Delhi by Khushwant Singh

Anuradha Goyal — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:38:53 EST

I picked up Delhi by Khushwant Singh in my quest to read about Delhi, and I knew the author is someone who has spent his life in Delhi and hence expected it be a good read.

After reading the book, I am ANGRY.

Depending on how you like extensive erotica, you may love or hate this book, but that is not what makes me angry though I do not really enjoy reading 300+ pages of nothing but sleaze. I hate it because of the double standards that the author follows. I can ignore the sleaze as that is his world view may be, or that may be the lens through which he sees everything or more appropriately everyone. All through the book, he talks in first person through some historical figures, through common men from a certain periods, interspersed with his own encounters with a whore from Lal kuan and several other females. Each character is described from his bedside and no matter what their relevance in the world today is or the world then was, all he focuses on his their sexual behaviors. At the cost of repeating this can be Mr Singh's specialty or his world view but it makes me angry is when he does not go near his all time favorite topic in two chapters. And guess what these chapters are focused on - His father and grandfather. He never talks about how his father or grandfather treated their wives and never explicitly describes their intimate relationships. Surprisingly in the whole book they are the only characters who are pious, show no infidelity and only events that mark their lives are that they get married and then one after the other they have children. This is given the fact that his father became one of the richest persons in Delhi during the time when Lutyen's Delhi was being built, in a very short duration of time. If you have the guts to write dirty about every other female on this earth, dead or alive, please start with your own family, a family that produced a son with a head full of nothing but sleaze. Another way to look at it can be that he is at least being a bit courteous to his family, but then you feel it is so damn unfair.

If you can ignore what I write above, by putting the history in first person, with people like Mir, Aurangzeb, Nadir Shah and a Kayastha in the times of Nizammudin, it makes an interesting reading for people who may find text books very boring to read. He has written about Delhi from the times of Lodhis to the 1984 when the anti-sikh riots took place. There is nothing new that you may come to know about Delhi from this book, but the first person accounts makes it easier for you to visualize things as they might have happened. I do not see the need of interspersing chapters where he goes on and on about his encounters with Bhagmati, the female eunuch and various other females, some of whom he plays tour guide to and some walk up to him only to sleep with him. There is a whole chapter on farts, now what has that to do with Delhi.

This book is supposed to have been sold out even before it hit the bookstores with a third reprint within 15 days of release, I am sure there must have been a huge audience for the book. I could be biased in this review because of my anger. I waited to write the review after I had read the book, so that I write in a more neutral mode, but as soon as I started writing the anger re-surfaced.

Nevertheless, I did get a small list of places that I want to go to from this book which I had nor heard of earlier or at least did not have the context to go to. So to that extent, I am happy to have read this book. The format is interesting, probably should be used to make history more interesting.

I am not recommending this book, unless like me you are trying to read about Delhi and you feel compelled to read it.

The Writer In The Artist Spectrum

IdeaSmith — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:43:38 EST

I think all artists need an audience. This is everyone from musicians to sculptors to painters. Everyone who has ever expressed an idea in tangible form or otherwise has needed an audience. To those who disagree - if they didn't, then they'd just keep the idea in their own heads. There is an undeniable need in an artist for other people to experience their art. Art is after all, an interaction between the artist and the audience. It is absorbing impressions and communicating them to the universe outside.

Each art form carries its own framework of the artist/audience interaction and I think we gravitate to art forms that fit our needs the best.

The visual arts, painting and sculpting and other related arts are at one end of the spectrum. The artists are usually recluses. They rarely interact with their audience during the creation of their art and their only communication is in the final product. How often do you see a painter or sculptor standing next to his or her work, willing to talk about it? These people are somewhat reclusive and in some cases even antisocial, preferring the least amount of conversation with their audience.

At the other end of the spectrum are the performing arts - music, dance, acting, oratory. The audience is crucial to the performance as the performer himself/herself. Ask anyone who has practiced these arts and they will tell you how important it is to relate to the audience, to get them involved and enjoying the performance. As a result I think these are also the arts that draw the more sociable artists of all. Immediate and constant interaction with other people is very important to the performer. I'll go so far to say that performers are the artists who need other people the most, during every minute of their performance. (For the after, that's true of all artists).

So where does writing fall on this spectrum? Are we the reclusive visual artists because we hide behind our smokescreen of words? Or are we the vivacious performers because we are constantly engaging and facilitating conversations?

I always thought of a writer as someone who lets you sit on his shoulder and view the world as he sees it. Or even better, he lets you in through a little door, into his mind and allows you to read what he thinks and understand what it is like to be him. In that sense, the writer is exactly in the middle. The visual artist is at one end, holding out his art at arm's length for you to see. The performer is the quicksilver, weaving himself around you to take on your form. The writer, in contrast to both the above, brings you into himself and allows you to experience the world as he does.

I have an interest as well as at least a little bit of talent in music as well as painting. I've performed on stage and I've won some recognition for my paintings. But writing is art that feels most like me.

Writers are the only other people who understand my alternating between being a social butterfly and an extreme recluse. That back-and-forth is the very essence of being a writer. Letting the whole world in and then shutting it all out - it's as natural as breathing for a writer. We have neither the stoic dignity of a visual artist who doesn't need another person till he has finished. And nor do we have the unwavering adaptability of a performer to dissolve into other people. We have a little bit of both and we oscillate, collecting material from the world around us, turning it over in ourselves, carrying other people inside our heads and then examining how we feel about that. The words, the thoughts are constantly shifting and shaping themselves and we chase after them with nets of language to convert them into stories for the next person to ride our minds.

Book Review: The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets

Vivek Sharma — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:02:14 EST

The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, edited by Jeet Thayil, includes an eclectic, exciting and incredible anthology of poems by seventy-two poets from India and Indian diaspora. These voices that span the last fifty-five years includes works by all the major poets, (more familiar names) of Indian English including Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar, Agha Shahid Ali, AK Ramanujan, Arvind Krishan Mehrotra, Adil Jussawala, Keki Daruwala, Jayanta Mahapatra, Kamla Das and R. Parthasarthy. The collection also includes many younger poets and and many upcoming voices including Vikram Seth, Jeet Thayil, Ravi Shankar, Meena Alexander, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Kazim Ali, Daljit Nagra, among others. The voices bring forth influences and feelings excavated, collected, cultivated, imported, ingrained or extracted from a rich and varied landscape of Indian heritage, culture, philosophy, religion and echoing the daily chaos and beauty of Indian existence. Diversity in temperament and tastes, rich colors and varied textures, aroma of spices, shingle of bangles, Hindu and sufi mysticism, Kamasutra or censored sexuality, chutnified or dignified English, free verse and sonnets, and a grand tour of modern and ancient world is served in this collection. Voices that are of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, Indians, Americans, Britishers, and World citizens versify such that each poem both represents the local, particular idioms, icons and ideas and transcends these in creating literature that is human, universal, eternal.

Adil Jussawalla, perhaps speaks for every Indian writer, who spend his lifetime pursuing poetry in a country, where there is little reward for bards writing in this 'phoren' language, and whose English poets, are yet to be welcomed in international circuits, where a bad translation from another language gets more audience, than original writing in English from a poet born in India/non-Western countries: "Bright sparks / on the international back-slapping circuit / are picking up prizes like static. // He's for the dark." Arundhati Subramaniam, in a poem titled "To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn't Find Me Identifiably Indian" provides a succinct portrayal of both Western prejudice about who they consider is Indian and what is not, and the frustration of an Indian writer seeking to speak in this language about his or her complex existence that is not bound by what textbook definition proclaims to be his or her territory or ideology. The anthology also includes essays by Jeet Thayil, Bruce King and Arvind Krishan Melhotra. These essays provide insight into the life and work of few of the famous poets as well as the state of/ regard for English poetry writing in India. Similarly there are poetic tributes to the likes of Nissim Ezekiel and Agha Shahid Ali by poets touched and transformed by their work, and other poems that stake claim on English as language of expression, exile, migration, longing, learning and spirituality .

"Considerthefemalebodyyourmost / Basictextanddontforgetitsslokas" suggests Rukmini Bhaya Nair, whereas "You are no plagiarist of dusk. / Nothing in the sky equals itself." writes Kazim Ali. At once, homage to a thirty century old tradition of Sanskrit verse form, shalokas, is made and in another poem, the limitlessness of possibilities is hinted at. The collection contains a large number of quotable lines, and startling sentences, each embedded in nicely sculpted lines and word images. Moreover, the collection includes works by poets who deserve way more attention than we have given them. Not many of us know of the poems by G. S. Sharat Chandra, who was once nominated for Pulitzer Prize. He writes: 'My good shoe has run away / with the tacks /of its slutty twin.' Similarly Agha Shahid Ali is quite unknown in India. He, like G. S. Sharat Chandra has a prize named after him (by University of Utah). Shahid was a Kashmiri-American poet, best known for his Ghazals in English. He was devoted to the cause, and taught many Americans that this form of verse is not merely about rhyming couplets, but about rendering a lament that stretches the personal grief, till it becomes an umbrella over everyone who reads the poems.The collection does not contain any of his Ghazals, but his accessibility and depth is reflected in these lines I often quote from 'Stationery', "The world is full of paper. / Write to me."

Works by Mamta Kalia, Leela Gandhi, Eunice de Souza, Kamla Das and others have an edge to them, a revolt against the Kaushalya-Sita-Sati-Savitri (ideal mother/housewife) image of Indian women, a celebration of contemporary movements in celebration of right and freedom of women. Eunice de Souza has lines like: " 'O Universal Lover / in a state of perpetual erection! / Let me too enter into / communion with the world / through thee.' " and others like: 'It pays to be a poet. / You don't have to pay prostitutes.' Leela says: "Our desire wanting we tried our love / and found it good enough without / this sex thing, this hip and lip thing. / Let other lovers sweat and grind, / our love's refined, raising virtues from necessity." In a poem titled Brat, Mamta Kalia, has a daughter say: "You, perhaps, were hardly proud / Of your creativity -- / Except for the comfort / That I looked like Papa / And not like the neighbour / Who shared our bathroom." While Vivek Narayanan celebrates the vamp from silver screen in "Three Elegies for Silk Smitha", Arun Kolatkar picks an "Ogress" from a poverty-striken street and describes her "has always been a kind / of an auxiliary mother, / semi-official nanny // and baby-bather-in-chief / to a whole chain of children / born to this street".

Reading the poems included in this collection helps us arrive at answers to our own quest in poetry, as well as in life. Jayanta Mahapatra, who is another pillar of Indian writing, usually keeps irony to minimum, but in a poem titled "The Quest" he says: "Even computers begin to understand our castes and prejudices. / The voluptuous figures of women in stone / only wish to save our feelings of love and freedom;" While Nagra and Ezekiel provide glimpses of Indian English, countless lines, similes, metaphors and allusions scattered throughout the book emphasize the "Indian" (in English).

Indian poets writing in English have had a few guiding lights in the subcontinent. The inimitable Nissim Ezekiel as a mentor, and the tireless P. Lal (Writers Workshop , Calcutta) as a publisher are two significant pillars. The anthology is a tribute to the lifelong struggles of these and other poets. Jeet has done a commendable job in compiling biographies, digging out unpublished and published poems from known and obscure sources and highlighting how poetry defies the artificial constraints and bounds of time, space, age, location and traditions. Philip Nikolayev, the editor of Fulcrum, who inspired the project, and everyone else who contributed to its completion deserve the gratitude of every Indian (especially of the poets). Other anthologies that deserve our gratitude include collections edited and/ or translated by AK Ramanujan and R. Parthasarthy.

I highly recommend this Bloodaxe anthology for its reach and range, and for a comprehensive and erudite introduction to Indian poetry in English. It includes most of the important poets born before 1975 (or as I jokingly tell myself, all poets older than me!), and provides exemplary poems about every imaginable theme and subject that poets and readers will remember and relish in years to come. I will close this review with another set of memorable lines from Ranjit Hoskote, who in a poem titled "Ghalib in the Winter of the Great Revolt" writes:

"The friend, with a spy at his shoulder, writes back: / When did you become a poet of adjectives / roosting in the rafters of a broken house? / Ghalib, the owl must hide in the tamarind for now, / but the genie of havoc will go on furlough soon. / You say your ink-well is empty, but your dry quill / still claws at the fibers of the heart."

Photo Essay: Victoria and Albert Museum, Part II

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 05:15:29 EST

I had to meet a Canadian friend at V&A. As it so happens, she is over here to research some very interesting areas, such as the evolution of Indian dress, but that’s for another time. Still, I was a wee bit early and she was a wee bit late, so I ended up walking around to check some of the galleries. You might have seen my previous post on V&A. Just like that one, this post is divided into parts to reflect the various interesting bits that I saw here. Be warned, this is a long post. You might want to go straight go the slide show if all you want to see are the pictures.
The Library

The library was lovely. It was absolutely chock a block with lovely old bound books from bottom to top. It has two things that speak to me, first is the soft light, not the harsh white light that so many libraries have. This soft light just provides a great ambience to the entire reading and browsing experience. The second thing that this library has, is this fascinating scent of old book. This room had that smell by the ton. I walked in and was immediately entranced. They have lovely displays of how different kinds of bindings were made and there is an absolute shed load of art books. I could not take more pictures as the librarian lady was giving me those scary looks…

The Smaller Sculptures
Then I moved into the smaller sculpture gallery. It is almost like a bridge over two galleries which house the larger sculptures, (well, plaster casts) but more about that later. This smaller gallery is almost like a demonstration gallery with examples of small sculptures sculpted from various types of materials using various techniques. Also the historical development of sculpture can be seen. You can see wood, ivory, clay, bronze, etc. Here are some of the sculptures which spoke to me.

This is, if I am not wrong, made out of wood. Brilliant work, you can see the furrowed brow of the pope, the tilted head, the different shaped eyes showing evidence of a stroke, the clothing being a counterpoint to the face skin tones.

Here’s another one of an old man. He looks a bit miserable, but look at the face, it's furrowed and deeply lined with age. And it's a tiny thing, hardly couple of inches tall. Can you imagine somebody doing such a delicate piece of work on such a small thing? Amazing. You can see the bones, and the way the ivory has discoloured, it makes it look like you can see the chest hair even. That one definitely spoke to me.

The final one which spoke to me was this ivory carving, about 6 inches tall, showing a group of nymphs and a warrior in a woodland scene with a cherub at the bottom. The work is extremely detailed, the muscle tone is very clearly defined. You can make out the difference between the skin tones of the male and female bodies and the leaves are amazingly detailed. When I started to steam up the glass cabinet and make skin oil marks, I knew I had to leave.

The Staircase

I wanted to go to go see the big sculpture gallery so I had to walk down the staircase when I spotted another staircase. Say what? why on earth would you have a staircase in a museum? A non functional one at that?

It's a very intricately carved staircase out of wood, obviously for some building of 3 stories. Very very imposing, very warm and brilliant.

The Plaster Casts of Large Sculptures
Now come the big ones. The idea behind this is good, the museum has collected together plaster casts of a whole bunch of famous sculptures and placed them into this room. It's a very good idea, but why on earth is the lighting so poor? It is dark as the pits.

One gallery is closed, but you can see our man David standing there. But the other gallery was open.

It is overshadowed by the plaster cast of Trajan’s Column, in two pieces. It's also missing the statue of St. Peter on the top. I guess it would have been too big to fit into the hall otherwise. Funnily enough, I have seen the original and it is nowhere as imposing as I recall compared to this plaster cast. Strange, but there you have it.

Peeking down at the gallery.

A plaster cast of some church up in Scotland somewhere.

This was truly beautiful. It's a Tabernacle in stone near Brussels designed by Cornelis Floria around 1552. It is fantastically detailed, the scope of the carving is vast, on so many levels. Every angle you look has something which attracts your attention. One day I need to visit this place and check it out properly, as there is simply not much information out there in books. Absolutely beautiful. But as you can see, the light was horrible, it was not showing the true beauty of this wonderful sculpture.

Here is the facade of the famous Santiago de Compostela.

Here is a bunch of rather frolicsome girls and cherubs as a representation of summer by Claude Michel put up in a house in Paris in the late 18th century. Not much is known about this but I liked it. The girls look good, they are seemingly there to have a right old time.

This is a bronze tomb in Germany for some churchman somewhere. The contents are not as important as the very impressive metal work. Very fine work pouring metal like this. It could have done with some dusting though.

Guess what? This is a statue of St. George slaying the dragon, in bronze, and it is currently in the National Gallery in Prague. Funny, St. George is the Patron Saint of England and a lovely statue like this is in Poland, while we only have a dark plaster cast here in London…Anyway…
Next time, I am going to go check out and spend some serious time in the South Asian Gallery.

Book Review: Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

Sunil — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:46:03 EST

Ever thought about how healthcare could be improved? How doctors could reduce errors or complications during serious operations? Almost everyone has a theory on why hospital errors always occur. But Gawande, in his latest book The checklist manifesto: How to get things right, suggests that a major part of the solution lies in an innocuous and mundane a checklist. The book’s point is very simple. No mater what you do, checklists can help you do it better. This applies to the usual suspects (like the airline industry which pioneered checklists) as well as what would seem improbable; a hospital.

He sets us up well, starting with typical medical almost horror stories, of near misses and tragedies in the operating theater, and lays out what he calls “the problem of extreme complexity”. Medical cases are astounding in diversity and complexity. Problems can arise at any time during a medical procedure, and quickly go out of hand. So what can be done to improve this? Aren’t doctors and nurses doing their best already? And then, right away, he throws at you a solution so startlingly simple that you almost laugh it off. A checklist. Checklists work and are widely used in a whole range of professions (who sometimes don’t even call it a checklist). Gawande first describes a few cases in medicine that he came about during his academic research, which intrigued him because they achieved improvements that were way above the typical average in those settings. Piecing together the facts, he realizes that what works here is a little list of things that doctors and nurses run through before, during and after every medical procedure, as part of a defined yet flexible and adaptable checklist.

Digging deeper, he starts to explore checklists in a diverse range of industries. The airline industry is an obvious place to start, and Gawande draws us into the process by taking us to testing facilities at Boeing, starting from the first checklists the airline industry drew up in the 30s and 40s. But from there he starts seeing and then describing checklists in a whole range of industries, from the building industry to investment bakers, top chefs and Wal-mart. The story on the response to hurricane Katrina, the government bungling and incompetence, and the emergence of Wal-mart as an unlikely hero in New Orleans thanks to its superb enforcement of checklists is as amazing as it is inspiring. By the time he gets into specific studies in the medical profession, you already know that checklists make a huge difference. Then comes the studies he helped carry out in hospitals across the world, from rural Tanzania to crowded urban India through the UK and America. In every case enforcing these checklists dramatically improve hospital performance. And the items on the checklist are simple, obvious things. Check antibiotic, wash hands, change gloves, change tubing, that sort of thing. But in the heat of a critical operation, or when overwhelmed by huge patient numbers the obvious is often skipped. By setting up the checklist, giving nurses the authority to enforce them, and making medical teams work like a team the checklist becomes a staggeringly effective weapon, taking little time to enforce, but packing a massive wallop of effectiveness. The errors that come up can be quickly spotted and fixed, the entire medical team becomes more effective, and the doctor’s ego can be kept in check.

Regular readers of Gawande’s books or articles on healthcare in The New Yorker know that he is a consummate writer. He combines a doctor’s thorough knowledge of the healthcare system in America with the rigors of a scientist and the vivid imagery of a fantastic, old fashioned story teller. In his books you’ll find bits of the old sage, and the thriller writer, and the writer of a whodunit. The checklist manifesto is no different. With every old medical war story he brings up, and with every other profession he dives into, you are sucked into the details of that story, even while you shout out the solution; “a checklist!”. He draws you into the story, makes you feel involved in the process, and you gasp with him when checklists work, or scowl when medical professionals resist them, and smile when a great victory is won thanks to an error the checklist caught. Whether he overstates his claim or not, time, the clinical and hospital review process and accumulating evidence will tell. But he certainly does a fantastic job of convincing you that checklists can make a big difference in medicine. While medicine will remain a highly specialized skill requiring years of study and training, the adoption of a simple, rigorous, adaptable checklist is not only possible in medicine, but works magnificently.

Some might think that something as simple as a checklist does not deserve a whole book dedicated to it. By the end of this book though, even a seasoned skeptic will accept defeat. Through the book and this one simple point Gawande is able to give the reader a vivid description of the range of errors or complications in medical science, the immense complexity of modern medicine, and a whole host of issues doctors and nurses face in hospitals in every corner of the world, developed and developing. Some problems are not as disparate as one might assume. By the end of the book, it becomes obvious that some aspects of medical practice isn’t that different from any other complex (as opposed to complicated) field of work, and when checkpoints work so well elsewhere, there is no reason for it not to work as well in medicine. Even smart, intelligent, highly trained people can make mistakes, and checklists can help reduce them. And this is a smart, intelligent, simple book that is well worth reading.

Book Review: What Men Think About Sex - Guilt-Reading

IdeaSmith — Fri, 8 Jan 2010 21:18:22 EST

I've just finished reading my first novel of the genre called DickLit (as opposed to ChickLit).

The book by Mark Mason is called 'What Men Think About Sex'. My initial reaction, one chapter down was,

Whaaaaat? It's fiction?

and immediately felt cheated.

Despite its seemingly nonfiction (meandering into 'self-help' territory?*cringe cringe*) title, it is an out-and-out fiction story set in the form of diary excerpts of the protagonist.

The story itself is quite readable and Mark Mason even manages to pull off making The Clare Jordan Five and Three-Quarter Feet Handicap Stakes sound believable. The above is a contest between two men to seduce women whose names or seduction locations start with the letters C, L, A, R and E. All because the common object of their affections bears the now-offending name of Clare Jordan. Don't ask. It sounds bizarre but in a funny way, he manages to make it work.

On the other hand, I hate it when writers pull stunts like that, making a book sound like something else in its title. I only bought it because the blurb described it as the male 'Sex And The City' which at least half of you know (assuming an equal gender-ratio split in the readership of this blog) was originally a newspaper column.

I was mildly surprised at how like ChickLit it was. I even flipped over the cover to check that I hadn't misread what may have been a 'Marcy' or 'Margaret' Mason. No such thing....an ordinary, if not pleasant-faced man stared back at me from the book's inner flap. The format is even like Bridget Jones' Diary!

Okay, enough about what I don't like about the book...but when did I say I didn't like it? Such homogeneity with the female standpoint is reassuring.

Except, what is it with men and guilt? A particularly intriguing excerpt from the book goes on about the Guilt/Temptation trade-off. It says that men can and do feel guilt about succumbing to temptation. Exactly why they do succumb then and what's worse, doggedly chase after such temptation-laden situations is not answered.

"Because he does. Sorry I can't be more cogent than that, but I'm concentrating on Bloke Feelings at the moment, not Bloke logic. Which is by the way, your answer. Concentrating on feelings instead of logic is precisely what blokes do when Temptation's hovering."

That's cool, really is, since women have libidos too and yes, we give in to temptation too.

What stands out to me is that none of the women I know who cheat, have experienced the kind of soul-searing Guilt that Mason describes. It's not exactly that they are callous, but they've accepted their own folly and somehow made their peace with it.

It may be a fact that there are probably fewer women in such situations than men (okay, let that just be opportunity rather than character tilting the stakes). Be that as it may, shouldn't it be easier for an average man to reconcile this conundrum? Either be strong enough to withstand temptation & wise enough to avoid it. Or lay your guilt to rest. And yet it appears, they carry it around like a festering, burdensome sore, never resolving it and mostly adding to it.

The old adage,

All men are dogs!

...used to sound to me like Anticipatory Bail. Ever notice that it's only cheating men who say that? A sort of 'I can't help it, I'm a man' thing.

Somehow I'm not sympathetic. Truly womanlike, I want to say, good job he can't get out of the guilt then. He deserves it. Consider it my repartee to the guy who told me,

Why do women have periods? Because they deserve it!

At least I only bleed once a month. Guilt bleeds you every waking, conscious minute and if you don't know how to tackle it, the rest of your life is an endless pursuit of distractions from your own thoughts.

How about the book itself? I guess I liked it. A small part of me, the cynical one still holds out asking,

Do real men, I mean the ones walking around everywhere really think like this? About love and a special someone and the need for a 'spark' over and above good looks?

And then I think of Adi, Moksh, Rohan and I have to say, at least some of them do.