OBOC - Colombia

I’ve heard about the comparisons between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Borges, but having previously failed at Borges for Argentina, I was in two minds about picking up “100 years of solitude” lest it met with the same fate at my hands. Still I wanted to give it a shot. At the outset I have to say, I am not familiar with the history of Colombia (other than what I read as part of this effort), neither am I a student of literature. So if you are looking for an insightful review that connects the history of Colombia (specifically Aracataca) to that of Macondo and draws out the similarities and differences between the 2 legendary writers, please keep looking. If you are just curious to know what I thought of the book, read on.

“100 years” traces the fortunes and misfortunes of 7 generations of the Buendia family in Macondo starting from the patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia and his wife Ursula who founded the city. Macondo is a city of dreams or a city of mirrors/mirages depending on how you see it. Jose Arcadio finds it believing it to be a city of mirrors but it ends up being a city of mirages as people remain trapped in the city until its eventual destruction. Isn’t that a straightforward plot? Not quite.

One of the central characters in the story is the wandering gypsy Melquiades who brings the newest inventions to Macondo and serves as the only connection to the outside world for Macondo. Towards the end of his life Melquidaes to avoid solitary death comes back to the Buendia household spending his remaning years writing mysterious parchments. Every male of the Buendia household attempts to decipher the parchments written in a cyclical cipher and just like them , we the readers are trying to decipher the code which is hidden in the “100 years”.

What is real and what is myth, what is history and what is prophecy? Lines blur and although time moves in a linear direction events repeat themselves through the 7 generations showing the cyclical nature of time. Every male is named Arcadio or Aureliano in keeping with the repetition. What is common among the people of Macondo is their tendency to believe in the fantastic and forget the facts, and a resignation to fate. Is Garcia implying that the destruction of Macondo is due to the residents’ attitude and is that a commentary on rural Colombia at that time? I don’t know. Again I believe Garcia is playing a trick on us like Melquiades and I will leave it to students of literature and experts to answer these questions.
The 2 words you hear the most associated with this book are “Magical Realism” - women ascending into heaven along with their laundry, raining for 4 years without even a brief respite, yellow butterflies following people in love everywhere, magic carpets, a plague of insomnia as a result of modernization that is so pronounced that even things like milk and cows had to be labelled – how do you explain all this? Poetic justice, clever allegorical references – whatever it may be, it was captivating to read and then there were the historical references which were woven into the magical narrative – the wars between the Conservatives and the Liberals, the atrocities of the Banana Company (United Fruit?).


In a story that spans generations where the family home is always full with multi-generational relatives, what struck me is the solitude that the characters experience even when living with one’s own flesh and blood. There is strikingly complete lack of love between people except in a couple of relationships. And anyone who is unlucky to fall in love with a member of this highly dysfunctional family pays a very high price sometimes with their own lives. This selfish, egocentric streak in the family finally results in complete destruction of their ancestral home and their family line and the town they founded. Garcia ends the novel by saying that races condemned to 100 years of solitude will not get a second opportunity on earth.

The novel and particularly the ending left me disturbed. Is Garcia condemning the nation of Colombia to a complete solitude? What was he trying to say? So I did some research and chanced on his Noble lecture for this book, where he describes the utopia he is longing for. I leave you with his own words....

“On a day like today, my master William Faulkner said, "I decline to accept the end of man". I would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possibility. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”

Attack of the Nerdy Princess

“A lot of mothers will do anything for their children except let them be themselves”. This is one of my favorite quotes attributed to an artist I admire very much and I’ve been proudly flaunting this on my signature. At that time I had no idea that this will come to bite me. Let me explain.

If you know anything about me, you know that I am not hesitant to use the F word to describe myself – yes I am a proud Feminist and of the old-school variety, so much so that my daughter in 5 years of her life has never seen even a lipstick in the house. When someone gave her a lipstick “piggy bank” she wondered why the “rocket” was an odd shape! Mom was always someone in trousers with only two sets of earrings and two sets of shoes and black was mom’s favorite color. Other women in Indian dresses and accessories to match were a novelty to be stared at and admired, but they lived in a parallel universe and would occasionally pop in to our lives never lingering long enough to cause any permanent damage.

But things have changed in the past few months. I find myself now in a war and here I am a mid-30 year old battle worn Amazonian warrior taking on 5 and 6 year old girls in pink dresses for the control of the most prized possession – my daughter’s heart and mind! Thanks to these little mercenaries with killer smiles, she has discovered the color pink and princesses and all the stereotypes that go with it.

I look back on the time when she was condemned to a life without friends. “How big is your dad? He is as big as Vy Canis Major”, not the answer that would make you popular in Kindergarten – Oh what happy times! Makes me almost forget the gnawing motherly guilt that made me decide that she needs a conversational currency to exchange with other kids her age. And so I opened a window of concession and the first princess storybook came into our home. I should have known that royalty in any form is dangerous. However big their kingdom, they are always on the look out for newer pastures, and like Leopold taking over the Congo, Snow white and Cinderella silently plotted against me to take over the greenest of minds which until then was my exclusive territory!

“Do you know Sleeping Beauty lives in a castle in Disney Land”? My clever retort -  “Which part of the word Fantasyland didn’t you understand?”

“Do you know that girls like pink and purple and boys like blue?” Solution: “Today daddy will go to work in pink” – he, after all is collateral damage in the ongoing war!

“Why are there no pink shoes in REI? Don’t princesses go hiking?”

“Why don’t you like pink? I don’t think black is a color in the first place”

 “Why do you ask so many questions?” I answered her question with a question to which she retorted “Who was that great teacher that you said told everyone to ask questions?” I shut up. Now I know why they gave him Hemlock! Here I was being accused of “hating” pink and therefore by extension all girls! Sonia Sotomayor had an easier time convincing Republicans that she was not a reverse racist. 

I knew i had to dig deeper into myself to be able to call truce, and like Betteredge in “The Moonstone” who believed answers to all life’s questions can be found in Robinson Crusoe, I turned to my trusted confidant “To Kill A Mockingbird”. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” the wise man said. I realized that just because I viewed the pinkilicious form of girlhood as a “starched wall of pink penitentiary” she doesn’t have to.

So I’ve decided to embrace this princess thing and I am learning to walk around in her shoes (or “glass slippers” I should say) as Atticus advised me. In this process, I realized that being a princess didn’t take away any of the other things that I feared she would lose, which were so unique to her - her love for hiking, gardening, weeding, star gazing, reading, making up silly poems. Show me a princess who can belch and burp like her anytime, at will and I will start wearing makeup and high heeled shoes! And by being her pretend friends, I realized that Cinderella and Snowwhite have been learning a thing or two about planets and bugs and rocks which I am positive neither their Fairy Godmothers nor their Prince charming could have taught them!

OBOC - China

Picking a book from China had to be one of the most difficult things I had to do as part of OBOC. While some countries posed a great challenge because of the very few books available in English, China posed a challenge for the opposite reason – too many books covering the gamut of socio-political history. I picked Eileen Chang’s “Rice Sprout Song” for a few reasons.

Firstly it was about a period that I wanted to understand more – early ‘50s when Maoist land reform was promising a better life to peasants. Secondly the setting was rural China about which I know very little. Thirdly, it is no secret I have a preference for female writers , too much history in the world was written by men so it is imperative to hear the other gender’s voice even if it is only in novels – more about that later. Last but not the least, the book was written in English by Chang and was not a translation. Given that I can’t read Chinese, at least I know that this book is an accurate reflection of Chang’s thoughts and not an interpretation by someone else.

Rice Sprout Song is a portrait of rural China following the land reform movement which distributed land from landowners to peasants. While the redistribution brought great hope to the peasants, did it really bring about any real change in their situation? The answer is a resounding No. Watery gruel cannot quell the hunger in their bellies but fear can quell any rebellion - well almost.

The book starts off with a wedding - Gold Flower's and even in such a gathering the poverty is not lost as Big Uncle complains about the inferior food on his plate. Gold Flower's brother Gold Root returns to his village with his daughter Beckon awaiting his wife Moon Scent's return. Moon Scent works as a maid in Shanghai to supplement their meager income but is all set to come back to the country, now that they own a piece of land. Although very happy to be reunited with her husband, she is faced with the grim reality that the land reform has not really improved their situation and despairs to see the poverty around her.

If poverty is one theme, the second equally important one is the loss of freedom and complete subjugation by the party. Every word is uttered carefully even in the most private confines of one's own home. Don't dwell in the past or romanticize the old days, show just the right amount of enthusiasm to the Party and keep the rhetoric to the right, believable level - although not spelled out, these unwritten rules are obvious to everyone. To top it off there is the writer Comrade Ku who has come to the village to write a script around the life of peasants. Constantly having to prove his commitment to the Party and the cause, he suffers from a writer's block on one hand and experiences hunger for the first time. Loss of freedom of speech and curtailing creative freedom which were beautifully brought out by Chang, sadly is not restricted to Communist nations. We all know the subjugation of dissent that has happened in even most progressive democracies especially during war.

The presence of the Party is felt all the time throughout the book, but to Chang's credit, she has managed to evoke some sympathy even for Comrade Wong who is the local representative of the Party in the village. Lonely and feared by everyone, he has nothing or no one to lean on except the Party.

When Comrade Wong demands the unthinkable, a pig and 40 rice cakes from each empty-bellied family as a tribute to show support to the Army families, we see Gold Root transforming from the Model Worker that he was into a Reactionary protesting against the cruel demands made by the tyrannical Wong. The Rice Sprout song that was to be sung during the New Year's festivities becomes Gold Root's swan song . He had managed to remain a silent witness to the poverty and tyranny until it became too much to bear.

A tragic novel with a great insight into rural China about which we hear very little even today. Empty-bellied peasants are not new to India where farmer suicides make headlines, but what about the peasants of China? Does the economic boom benefit them or are they still silently awaiting trickle-down benefits? Something tells me this novel is sadly relevant even today and it reminded me that poverty is not just about hunger, it is about the feeling of despair that comes from no hope, no dignity and no recourse.

OBOC - Chile

A woman writer from Latin America with the last name of Allende, Isabel Allende was the natural pick for Chile for the obvious reasons.  So it was "The house of the spirits" for me for OBOC - Chile

What struck me about the book was that it refused to get boxed into any category - magical-realism (isn't that an oxymoron!), political novel, feminist literature, historic fiction - it had a bit of everything. Spanning three generations of women - Clara, Blanca and Alba, the wife, daughter and granddaughter respectively of the patriarch Esteban Trueba, "The house of the spirits", chronicles the upheavals in the lives of the women due to geological (earthquakes!), socio-political (Marxism, Dictatorship, Coups!) and inter-personal (the love of their lives - Esteban, Pedro Garcia and Miguel) transformations.

Isabel Allende is the niece of Salvador Allende the President of Chile at the time of the infamous 1973 coup which propelled the dictator Pinochet into office.  When Marxists and Conservatives clash, the only winners were the Generals. Without naming names (The President is just  The President - Allende, the Poet is just the Poet - Pablo Neruda?) , Isabel has beautifully woven this piece of Chile's tumultous history into the story and we get a glimpse of what Chileans went through during those years.

There is no such thing as a middle ground in the entire novel, be it in the events or the characters - maybe that is the reality that Chile faced through its history. Esteban has to be one of the most violent patriarch that i've ever encountered in a novel - his tantrums and dominance were always extreme and so were his passions. Similarly every character you encounter were extreme in their own ways - Clara's complete neglect for anything mundane, Blanca's love for Pedro, Ferula's love for Clara, Pedro and Miguel's commitment to Marxism, Jamie's concern for others, Nicholas' indulgences and so on. Even the events were catastrophic - from the macroscopic ones like the earthquake that rocked Chile, the dictatorship that came into power,  to the microscopic ones - Barrabas' death, Clara's silence, etc. That's what made the novel so gripping and only when I put it down did i realize that there was no middle ground anywhere.

The other major theme is conflict - landlord Vs tenant, Marxist Vs Conservatives, Nature Vs Man, the Patriarch Esteban Vs the Matriarch Clara, the young Vs the Old. All these conflicts ended in a lose-lose situation as the lack of harmony was capitalized the Military Dictatorship.

The third theme I saw in the novel is cyclical interconnectedness of events and characters. Esteban starts off the whole story with his brutal rapes, only to see his dearest granddaughter Alba being raped by a product of his own crime. Clara is the only constant thread that runs through everyone's life and even after her death, Clara is the one that evokes Alba's spirit to live and tell the story which Clara had painstakingly recorded through her notes.

The House of Spirits is a great piece of literature, at times humorous, fantastic, magical, gruesome, it just stirs so many emotions in the reader that it was so hard to put down. Now that I am reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for Colombia, I am eager to see why the two books are so often compared.