OBOC - Korea

As I start to write the review for "Please look after mom" I have no clue how it is going to go as i am very ambivalent about the novel. Kyung-sook Shin's novel won the Man Asia literary prize which is how I had heard about the novel. It was a very easy read, moving in many parts and quite well done technically (a second person narrative that works!). The ambivalence comes from the portrayal of the mother as the ultimate martyr and hence the soapy feel to the novel

It is the story of a hard working, illiterate, almost infallible mom who goes missing in Seoul on a visit from her village to the capital to see her grown up sons and daughters. The whole family frantically searches for mom following up on every small lead they hear from strangers. Mom is more present when missing than she ever was and every child recounts how much their mom has done for them over the years and how much they needed her.

Mom gone missing is also a metaphor for traditional values slowly disappearing from Korean society as she writes about people holding ancestral rites in time-share vacation condos or hopping on planes going abroad. It juxtaposes a number of issues in today's recently modernized, traditional societies -parents Vs kids, arranged marriage Vs dating or choosing not to be married at all, traditional rituals Vs pressure on time etc

The novel is a guilt-trip as every child regrets for not taking good care of their martyr mom  (who at the very end of the book is compared to the ultimate martyr mom), and now full of penitence they all vow to be better persons.

As an Indian woman/mom I can very well relate to MMS or Martyr Mom Syndrome. My mom was one of the early generations of working moms in India who actually chose to work outside the home and juggle motherhood at the same time. The "juggling" of motherhood and career was achieved by 1) totally ignoring her health 2) not really having a career 3) making her kids the center of her life. But working outside the home gave her independence, a sense of self and a break from us that she didn't have to turn into a martyr, just an overworked, tired mom.


As a teenager I remember often mocking her and remarking that I would never be like her when it would be my turn. And now that it is my turn, I realize that although i am not guilty about having a career and having to juggle motherhood, it seems that some of her traits are hardwired into my DNA.  When I found myself making vegan pad thai (one of my daughter's favorite dishes) at 5:30AM on a weekday for our lunch boxes it dawned on me that I AM my mom, minus the guilt (or so I think).

Anyway, coming back to the novel....I liked it for the most part except for the soapy bits. As you can see the novel did make me think about motherhood, my own mom and even my grandmom. It would have been nicer if she had managed to do all that with a bit of editing and without dishing out the guilt.

Sad Day for African Literature

Just learned this morning that Chinua Achebe the Father of modern African literature has passed away. I've read only two of his books, Arrow of God and Things Fall Apart but he is certainly one of my favorite writers! In fact I kicked off OBOC back in Nov 2009 with his novel Arrow of God which I just couldn't put down.

It is a shame that I hadn't heard about him earlier and it was by chance that I read his analysis of Conrad's Heart of Darkness which was so powerful that it made me want to read one of his books.  Literature from Africa has historically been the whiteman's forte and so all we got was the colonizer's point of view. By choosing to write in English Achebe managed to reach worldwide audiences and brought international stature to African literature. In the past African Music has always been the torchbearer for African Culture and its influences on world music are taken for granted. Chinua Achebe did for African literature what numerous musicians like his countryman Fela Kuti, or Malian Ali Toure did for African Music. No wonder he is such a towering figure of inspiration for the new breed of African writers.

I've heard many high schools in America have "Things Fall Apart" as required reading. I can't wait to have my daughter read it. I remember the feeling I had when I first read "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a 9th grader in India (It was required reading for me as determined by my dad) and the book still stays with me. "Things fall apart" is not very different, and I will mandate both these books as required reading for my daughter in a few more years.

He will be missed!

Backyard Bird Watching

We are by no means amateur Birders in our family and can profess to having little to no-skill in that area. I can't even localize human sound that usually begins with "mommy" in a small enclosed space, so forget about identifying bird sounds and tracking them in a nature hike. But what we lack in skill we make up with enthusiasm and an aspiration to be in harmony with nature.

As Gandhi (nope i am in no way comparing us with him, but bear with me as i might have a point) remarked in his "My experiments with truth" that his opinions might change later, and he was merely recording his experiments in the form of narratives, I too am simply recording some of my experiments in trying to live with nature which I might abandon (i mean the specific experiment, not the goal) anytime. So don't expect a Walden from me, just some random ramblings.

I spent about $30 and bought a bird feeder, a wren nest and some song bird seeds with the intent of attracting birds to our backyard. "What prompted this", you ask. Well we've always been early-morning hikers and despite myself not being endowed with good auditory equipment, the combination of my daughter's auditory and my visual equipment has led us to spot many birds on hikes. Also my 7 year old has been pestering me forever to have a house pet (for which i am not ready), and by some weird coincidence the only magazines I could find in my gym were from Audubon society or the gardening ones which seem to be persuading me to set up a bird haven in my backyard, and so here I am.

Thanks to my resident muscle man, I was able to set up the poles in the backyard, secure them to the trees and last week had everything ready for the birds. Now all we had to do was to wait and watch. What I didn't anticipate is the extreme-enthusiasm (i know, i should have, knowing that's the only kind of enthusiasm she has for these kinds of things) with which my daughter started observing the backyard, so much so she didn't have to be told to wear her glasses! She is desperate to have a wren's nest at our home and thinks she can do it by simply willing it.

At the end of day 1, she decided to get some extra help when she realized her will alone won't do it. So she turned to "praying to mother earth". She had purchased a book called Native American Book of Prayers when she visited Yellowstone last summer and had spent considerable time with it on the potty (not the holiest of places, but certainly a very meditative one for her), so anytime she needed a little help from nature she has been turning to that book and saying a few prayers from there!

I am now happy to report we now have frequent visitors in our backyard, a couple of them checked out the nest, but we are not in escrow yet, just open-house visitors. "It is so hard to tell girl sparrows from boy sparrows"  was her observation yesterday after she spent 10 minutes trying to egg one of the birds to find a mate - her way of setting them up by simply cheering from the background; when for "no apparent reason" they suddenly fought with each other ("They both had to be boys of course" was her conclusion). So yes, we are waiting and she hopes March will bring luck to the wren nest.

For now, we are happy to have "sparrows" and I call them that as I am currently clueless about the birds, some have a red breast, one was yellow, and there is constant chatter of birds throughout the day. Looks like I do need a North American Bird Book, and here is an app that I will gladly pay money for, but once again the resident computer vision expert reminds me object recognition is extremely hard.... ok, ok... so get cracking :)

Anyways, the raised bed is re-established, we've planted a few bulbs this time, the hummingbird feeder is back on, and the bird seed feeder is being used round the clock and the wren nest is waiting. So yes, we are ready for spring and after the cold spell this season I don't mind reciting a few prayers from the Native American Book myself so we can have a splendid spring and a nice summer!

OBOC - Srilanka

Apologies for not sticking to the alphabetic order. Have been meaning to read a couple of authors but if i had to wait for their countries to pop up in order it would have taken me at least another year or two! Also the BBC World Book Club was reading "The Reef" by Romesh Gunesekera an author i've been meaning to read, so, here I am with my choice for Srilanka.

Growing up in Tamil Nadu, Ceylon (as Srilanka was called in those days) was not far away both geographically and otherwise. The geographical proximity meant that at one time almost every household in Chennai boasted these giant "booster antenna" in the hope of catching Rupavahini (the famed Srilankan television channel) airwaves. Besides the friendly airwaves we also received waves of refugees as the civil war escalated and Tamil Nadu became almost a second stage for the conflict.  Srilanka held a fair chunk of the '80s news headlines in my state and every political party has gained some mileage by exploiting "the cause". Personally I've also known some really amazing survivors from Srilanka who came as refugees to India and now call it home, and others whose families are spread all over the world that organizing a family gathering is almost like organizing a UN Security Council meeting!

So when The Reef opened with an accidental encounter of a Sinhalese and a Tamil in London, my mind immediately raced with a lot of different possibilities for the novel. The story is narrated by Triton who starts out his life as a servant boy in the household of Ranjan Salgado and gradually grows up to be Mr.Salgado's sole aide. He leads a sheltered life in the household, as Mr.Salgado is an almost reclusive bachelor with just a very small circle of friends until Missy i.e Miss Nili enters his life. Now and then we get a glimpse of the larger events happening in Srilanka at that time but by far the characters are caught up in their own microcosm until the very end when Mr.Salgado and Triton leave the country to settle down in the UK.

Triton is an amazing cook and the book is full of references to food which as a vegan I didn't appreciate much but any other food lover would probably drool over. The colonial past of Srilankan society is also brought to focus and so are the class differences. (The scene that stood out for me was when Missy gives Triton a christmas present along with a 100 rupee note)

Mr.Salgado is a Marine Biologist of sorts.  As the beautiful ocean reef that he cared for starts seeing the damaging effect of pollution one cannot but draw parallels to the beautiful country of Srilanka and the effect of terrorism and civil war on it.

I liked the book for its prose, but was a bit disappointed that it dealt too much with just the domestic tale of the Salgado household. I didn't quite appreciate the interjections into the tale, incidents from Srilankan politics without any framework of reference for me. Like Triton, I too was clueless about some of the conversations and had to look up many events. I don't mind doing that, but it just didn't flow well in my mind. Also I felt misled by the opening scene where the Tamil and the Sinhalese accidentally met in London as that led me to believe that some Tamil-Sinhala relationship was going to crop up in the flashback, but there was nothing much of that.

Anyway, I've raised this small gripe of mine with Romesh Gunesekera himself through the BBC World Book Club and i am eager to find out if that question was raised and answered.

OBOC - Kiribati

Just when I was questioning if OBOC is actually helping me understand any nation any better, I realized that it is actually helping me discover nations that until now I didn't know existed in the first place! (Note: This from a person who prides on being above average in geography and knowledge of other cultures). But for OBOC I wouldn't have known Kiribati existed and would've also not known that it is to be pronounced as Kiribaas. Of course the "colonial upbringing" meant that Gilbert Islands seemed vaguely familiar, still I never imagined them to be a separate nation.

 I compromised and picked a non-native author from Kiribati as it was hard to find a beacon of literary treasure from Kiribati. I could've gone with Teresia Teaiwa but I desperately needed some light reading for the Holidays when I was going to be surrounded by 20+ people within a 2500sqft space. Not a time for serious contemplative reading. Maarten Troost's "The Sex Lives of Cannibals" was the final choice for Kiribati.

At the age of 26, tired of moving from one temp job to another, Troost grabs the opportunity to go to what he envisioned as a tropical paradise, Tarawa the capital of Kiribati where his stalwart bride Sylvia accepted a government position. His hopes and dreams of a paradise are completely shattered as he realizes that Tarawa is not a dreamy, exotic vacation spot, but just a hot cauldron with limited sanitation, hygenie, food, vegetation, and infrastructure of any kind.

Troost in a very wodehouse like manner captures his adventures in Kiribati over the two years he and Sylvia spend in the island, so much so that some of his (mis)adventures are plain laugh out loud funny. The island is also replete with colorful characters both human and non-human, especially of the canine variety. How he survives the two years by slowly unlearning his i-Matang ways and acquiring some i-Kiribati skills and in the process actually comes to admire some of the islanders way of living (without romanticizing it too much - after all it is hard to do when surrounded by filth and fish) forms the crux of the book.

I enjoyed it despite the stereotypes and somewhat cliched humor.  Recently I spent a week in not-so-remote villages in India. Having grown up in India, I assumed i would be at complete ease in such an environment. I would be lying if I said that was the case. Having to choose between exercising a 10hour bladder control to venturing into a pitch dark squat station during the day, I chose the latter. The acrobatic skills that were required to accomplish such a seemingly simple task with a Nokia phone clutched in my mouth as flash light while I vigilantly scanned the room for lizards and roaches told me how much I take things for granted. Now take that experience and multiply it a 100 times, that was Troost's. No wonder it made a funny and compelling read!

OBOC -Kenya

It has been a quarter of unintended consequences, and one of those consequences is the almost snail pace at which i am progressing with OBOC. Got caught up with too many things that started off innocuously but led to a series of events that were completely unintended, that I couldn't find the time or the frame of mind to sit down and dig into a serious book.

I gave up Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif which I picked as the book for Jordan. It is a great book and I loved the story of the Arabian world coming into collision with America and the impact of oil on Bedouins, but after 400 pages I wanted some closure, and this just wouldn't end! And then it was "A grain of wheat" by Nguigi Wa Thiongo, but gave that one up after 30 pages. I guess too much anti-colonial literature does get to you after all.

Then it was "One Day I will Write About This Place" by Binyavanga Wainaina, a memoir of the author's life in Africa that would've worked much better as a series of essays than as a book. Still I enjoyed the book and like a Christmas miracle managed to finish it, which given my recent track record is pretty remarkable! Although the story begins in Kenya, the memoir takes us through the author's time spent across Africa, especially South Africa, Ghana, Uganda and Togo.

Binayavanga through the memoir takes us through his early childhood, the school years, his struggles as a student in South Africa and later as a budding writer. Interwoven into his personal story is the story of the changing political landscape of Africa, and the struggles of the people. Many of the changes in Africa have been played out in front of a world audience especially the end of Apartheid, the Rwandan Genocide, the numerous dictators and their brutal reigns, the struggles of Sudan, but this book shows what it means to actually live through and experience those changes.

Although am not a big fan of the youtubish art of self-expression through comments, I do sometimes read the comments on the "Have your say" section of the BBC News website as I like to hear what the people from the region affected by what is otherwise just a headline for the rest of us have to say. This memoir was certainly a window into Africa in that sense and so it was worth reading just to get that perspective. One more book that proved how little I know of too many things. OBOC while an interesting project, has led me to writers i had never heard of, but i have to concede it has not really furthered my understanding of any country beyond the surface.

OBOC - Japan

After a long hiatus I finally sat down to write the review for Norwegian Wood. Although I finished the book about 3 weeks back, this summer has been really busy that I have longed for a room of my own and some time of my own to actually sit down and put pen to paper so to speak.

Norwegian Wood is the book that propelled Japanese writer Haruki Murakami to overnight super stardom, and sure enough I can see why the book has its enduring appeal especially to the young. After all even the Ulysses appealed to a certain segment of the population purely for Molly Bloom’s soliloquy if you get my drift. The book spans a whole lot of issues from mental illness, suicide to the obsession of the young with sex and alcohol, all set in the '60s Japan with the student strikes as the backdrop.  Just like the Beatles song which has the ability to tug at your heartstrings, the novel which is inspired by the song does the same.

The hero Watanabe is torn between the love for two women who are in contrast with each other. One the terrific beauty but mentally disturbed and therefore almost unattainable Naoko, and the other the lively, outgoing and confident Midori. One finds Watanabe an unlikely hero in this novel. He is extraordinarily ordinary and is always caught between two extremes, whether people, places or situations. Lives in the dirtiest of men's dorms with the cleanest of roomates, is at ease in the all-night clubs of Shinjuku or in the desolate, idyllic mountains, is caught between the promiscuous yet charming Nagasawa and his kind and complex girlfriend Hatsumi.

When Naoko's boyfriend (and Watanabe's closest friend) Kizuki commits suicide on his 17th birthday for no apparent reason, their lives are permanently altered, so much so when Naoko and Watanabe bump into each other in Tokyo, Kizuki is ever-present but is hardly spoken about.  Their feelings for each other is never revealed until the night of Naoko's 20th birthday when both are extremely vulnerable. Naoko unable to handle her new relationship with Watanabe checks herself into a sanatorium in the mountains to deal with all her inner demons. Watanabe copes with his loss and patiently waits for Naoko who never returns as she ends up committing suicide.

During this entire time Watanabe leans heavily on Midori but at the same time ignores her needs, until he spends a night with Reiko (Naoko's friend) from the sanatorium. Reiko advices him that it is time for him to seize happiness and live a full life on behalf of Naoko and all the others in his life. She also helps him realize that Midori is the most important person in his life. Will Midori accept him back? That is left unanswered.

I just simply couldn't put the book down. The characters were very well defined and etched skilfully. While many pages were extremely morbid and gloomy, like the extremes that the hero lives in, there were many other pages that were funny and even raunchy! After all it is the '60s and we are talking of 17 to 20 year olds here. Some of the language in the book was just plain poetry, and even as a simple love story this would have worked just on the strength of the language. But this is much more than a love triangle. It is a lot more complex and the emotional upheaval of adolescence dealing with love and loss and coming of age in such turbulent times is beautifully told.

As someone who went through a very peaceful and very easy adolescence I couldn't fathom how much the characters in the novel had to go through. There are no safe havens. There is no mention of a home or a family one can lean on, except for Midori. There are only institutions, Schools, Sanatoriums, Hospitals, Dorms, Universities. Even the dorms look like prison walls, and there is death everywhere.

This is certainly a love story, but most certainly not a fairy tale romance. I recommend the book to anyone who doesn't mind a fair amount of realism and a dose of pessimism as at one point Murakami says life is inherently unfair and "no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning"