Thursday, December 17, 2020

Silver Linings

 An absolutely disastrous year is finally coming to a close. I had originally thought of calling this an uninspiring year, but quickly realized that would not be accurate. This was after all an inspirational year. We managed to boot a liar out of the office, health care and other essential workers ceaselessly inspire us, artists have found ways to continue producing art to not just document these horrific times but also remind us of better times in the past and look ahead to the future and we've all come to the realization that real meaningful connections are absolutely necessary for humanity! Finally, as I write this, vaccines for COVID are finally here.

I tried to make a list of my own personal silver linings and here they are

  • Trump is out!
  • Friends and family have thus far avoided the virus (we've lost two members of our extended family to covid in India but they had lived reasonably long happy lives and left us with lots of memories)
  • I've managed to work throughout this time. The days are long and one day blends into another but am glad for the paycheck and the intellectual stimulation
  • Time spent with my teenager knowing that she will be out of the home in a few years. As expected, we got on each other's nerves sometimes but as Robin Kimmerer reminded me "Mothering is like a net of living threads to lovingly encircle what it cannot possibly hold what will eventually move through it"
  • Grateful that our teen is able to attend school in person at least two days a week
  • I've read 30+ books this year and I am especially thankful for the Cosmere of Brandon Sanderson, Cromwell's inner world by Mantel and a number of nature and science books that have given me hope
  • We got to experience our child doing live theater over zoom along with our family in multiple locations in the world
  • Except for the weekly grocery store trips I didn't have to drive
  • Spent a week among the Sequoias and am thankful for those giants still gracing the earth
  • Although we were robbed, am glad we were safe and didn't lose too much
  • Working out 5 days a week every week
  • Take-out a few times a month
  • Great British Bake Off, Merlin, Seinfeld, Kim's Convenience, Godless, Upstart Crow, Sherlock - some old favorites and some new shows that made us laugh, transported us to other worlds
  • Nightly walks
  • Online volunteering for the Audubon

Yes, I miss visits to museums, movie theaters and travel! I will miss going to Boston and NY for Christmas. Miss meeting with friends and eating out! But I am fully cognizant that these are minor inconveniences in the large scheme of things and I am aware of how blessed I am if that's all I miss. It also told me how little I truly need. Needs and wants came into full focus. As I write this post I am filled with gratitude and I hope to pay it forward as I know that many organizations need support as the public health crisis has become a personal one for countless people. As this is a season for gifts I wanted to wrap this post with another quote from Kimmerer

We are showered everyday with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out in the universe will always come back.


So let me pass along a gift that was given to me. If you've never heard the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, here is my gift to you! A link to the full address in English

 
 



Sunday, November 8, 2020

In the end, truth will out!

 Compared to 2016 I was prepared this time, in case of Dejablue. I was hopeful but not confident. So, I did what I normally do -  prepare to wrap myself in a cocoon for a couple of months with comfort reads. Prior to November 3rd I ordered a bunch of books - "Transcendence', "Magna Carta', "Arctic Dreams", "Braiding sweetgrass"(you can see the theme) and told myself have a little faith in the system and the people and trust Truth will eventually out! There was one night of hopelessness this past week and I clung to the opening quote from Dan Jones' Magna Carta


I had to trust this, otherwise I had to painfully conclude that I am living in a Banana Republic. I am not a registered Democrat. I would like to believe that I will vote for the person and the platform and not for the party. Biden was not my first choice. Bernie was, but as I've mentioned many times, Barney the Purple dinosaur would have had my vote if he had stood against the incumbent. I understand Republican values even if I don't always agree with them. But I vehemently oppose a governance based on lies, division, and deception, one lacking human values of decency and empathy. I refuse to accept that a sexual assault perpetrator, a racist, a misogynist and a narcissist can represent America in its highest office. 

I understand the anger people felt in 2016 and why they wanted something drastically different from what they've always had. However, this conman did not deliver anything for anyone besides himself and that makes me sad more than angry. I am happy that we have a normal human being, someone who has failed in the past, has experienced innumerable losses and therefore has empathy, and someone who is willing to learn from his mistakes, as our President. I am ecstatic that a woman is in the White House who has a name that so many of my aunts proudly carry. She carries my hope for a diverse America where immigrants can rise to the very top. While this euphoria is visible in me, I know that this is also the moment for deep soul-searching. 

70M people voted for Trump. I am not going to dismiss them as racists or irrational. The two-party system and winner-takes-all voting mechanism leaves no room for nuances. There is not a way to say that I am for lower taxes but I am pro-choice or to say I am pro-life but i want healthcare for all, or to say I want climate action but don't want to give up my meat. Life is not black and white, but our electoral system is unfortunately Red or Blue. I also know when faced with changes that are outside our control we have a tendency to double down on our beliefs.

I now see Biden's appeal - he is known to make deals, known to compromise and reach across the aisle.  But I hope the other side responds and reaches back. I want the Green New Deal, I want healthcare for all, and I want public education to be well funded, and I want a woman to be 100% responsible for her own body and her own choices. However 50% of the electorate is not going to have these exact same wants. I know that certain fights cannot be compromised (after all certain rights are inalienable), but are there other middle grounds we can seek? Can we fight systemic racism without completely de-funding the police? Can we provide healthcare in an affordable way without losing private option? Can we not pit the economy against covid as though it is one or the other? These might not be the conversations I wanted, but these are the conversations we need to have. 

For many progressives this might not be what we aspired to, but the focus should be on driving changes bottoms-up. When changes happen at the local level in their community, people become less fearful and have time to get used to the change. I was thrilled to hear that Oklahoma elected its first Black, Muslim, non-gender binary person to its legislature. Missouri elected its first Black congresswoman. Where I live, the electorate voted for someone who is for mass transit as opposed to road-widening as a solution to our transit and climate change problems. To me, the persons occupying the White House should reflect our bigger aspirational ideals but true change begins at the local level. 

Here I have a couple of things to say to Indian Americans. While we rejoice that 'one of us' has reached great heights, we should remember Kamala's mom's courage. Her participation in Civil Rights movement is a call to action in our times. Indians often view themselves as legal immigrants who are outstanding citizens because of our education and contributions to the economy. This was all possible thanks to the Civil Rights movement by MLK. We basically rode the wave and won the immigration lottery without putting our bodies on the line. That is why Shyamala Gopalan is my hero. Today when I support BLM or Black Mama's Bailout I do it as a tribute to what the Civil Rights movement did for people like me. Now that one of our own is going to be in the White House, let's acknowledge how we got here and pay our dues. Everyone from Tamil Nadu has a Kamala in their lives. The Kamalas I knew were fighters against all odds who overcame unprecedented challenges. I associate the name with courage and strength because of the people I knew in my family who bore that name. I wish Joe and Kamala all the very best as they face unprecedented challenges. 

The men who stood at Runnymede in June 1215 and came up with the charter that challenged the excesses of the rulers had no idea that the document would inspire a middle aged immigrant amidst a nerve wracking election in the US in 2020. As I read more about it I was a bit disappointed that this was not all that we make it out to be, but that's the power of a symbol, especially one that has become synonymous with challenge to authority. While I will revel in symbolism for the next couple of weeks I know that meaningful action is needed to realize the ideals of democracy and I commit to that.

Friday, October 16, 2020

Vote 2020

 This year is rapidly approaching its end and come November we are going to be voting in what seems like a monumental election for a number of reasons. At the time of writing this I have already cast my ballot and got my first-ever flu shot - two civic duties performed while wearing a mask. I never imagined it would be like this but here we are. I am sure someday we will look back on these times and be able to see the forest, but right now I am only seeing the undergrowth in front of me, not even the trees and there seems no way out of the forest. 

If anyone out there is still wondering if they should vote then I am going to turn to art to help inspire them - specifically two artworks that have been speaking to me in these times. Many years back, at the Louvre I gave them only a fleeting glance, but if I ever make it to the Louvre again then I know where I am headed. 

JEAN LOUIS THÉODORE GÉRICAULT - La Balsa de la Medusa (Museo del Louvre, 1818-19).jpg 

The Raft of the Medusa by Gericault seems like the perfect metaphor for our times. An incompetent and inexperienced captain given command over a ship because of political connections wrecks the Meduse. Not enough boats to carry the 400 people, a make-shift raft is all that is available for the unlucky who are then cut loose to fend for themselves with just one bag of biscuits. Only a dozen survive after a chance rescue in the open ocean but only after resorting to cannibalism. Gericault portrays human misery but his work is also an ode to survival against all odds.

This painting has been on my mind for the past few weeks. Covid, economic collapse, environmental disasters are all hitting us and we have callous, unreliable, incompetent "leaders" who are quick to cut the raft adrift. I know that given my socioeconomic situation I will probably be on one of the boats and not on the raft, but I also know that these past four years the raft has been occupied by Dreamers, migrant children at the border, Puerto Ricans following Maria, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and soon it could be occupied by people with pre-existing conditions. The French monarchy was shamed following the incident depicted in the painting. Unfortunately, shame and embarrassment don't seem to exist for our current crop of leaders who can say one thing today and take a 180 degree view tomorrow all without missing a heartbeat. So it is time we ask ourselves if passivity is acceptable, when people on rafts are being abandoned by those on boats, knowing well that the randomness of tragedy can put any one of us on a raft?

The other painting on my mind is by Gros - Napoleon visiting the plague victims at Jaffa

Antoine-Jean Gros - Bonaparte visitant les pestiférés de Jaffa.jpg 

One of the best known pieces of propaganda art, this shows Napoleon at his best. A fearless leader, with no masks or PPE, visits victims of the plague quarantined in an Armenian monastery and in fact touches them despite his doctor trying to stop him. The consensus of art historians is that this painting was commissioned as a propaganda piece especially to quell rumors that after this visit Napoleon ordered the execution of the plague victims.  Besides Napoleon's photo-op this painting reflects our current crisis in many other ways. Do you have any doubts who is held responsible for the plague? Not the invading army or the sack of Jaffa, but this is "foreign plague" as seen by the exotic backdrop for the painting.  The Orients have always been blamed for the plague in history and one overlooks the fact that in this case the invading French army intruded into the Ottomans' domain. The conflict between what Napoleon wanted and what his medical officer recommended is left unsaid. Napoleon is in the business of politics, the doctor in the business of saving lives. Napoleon eventually blamed the plague and the practitioners of medicine for his failed campaign and left it to them to deal with the victims. Sounds familiar?  All leaders make use of art as a propaganda tool and Napoleon was no different. What one sees in this painting depends on what one feels about Napoleon. But it is important to remember that Napoleon met his Waterloo eventually and Gros who had hitched his fortunes to the Emperor found critics coming after his painting and his part in the propaganda. 

This election season, I am sick and tired of TV ads and the pamphlets that bombard me with propaganda. Unlike Gros' painting I can't admire these propaganda pieces as I am living through these times. Truth and trust have vanished from the system. While all politicians lie, some do lie far, far more than others. While we all have come to expect some lies from our leaders and can live with those in "normal" circumstances these are anything but normal times. So am hoping that people don't get deterred by long lines and having to wear masks but take the time to vote so we can restore some semblance of normalcy. I will look forward to the day when all this is behind us and future historians and artists look back and say, yes it was a time of chaos and pain but people didn't let covid-fatigue stop them from putting their best foot forward.

Sunday, October 4, 2020

Cricket Country

When I picked up "The Boundless Sea", I looked at the other titles nominated for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize and Prashant Kidambi's "Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire" caught my eye. It has been a couple of decades since I have followed International Cricket (and most organized sports for that matter), but my husband's mid-life crisis has him on a personal cricket journey, and as a co-traveler in his life, I am on the periphery of that journey. I thought this book might intrigue him and might actually force him to pick up a book for a change. The odds are pretty low, but one can still hope. 

I am of the firm belief that two people's interests don't have to match for a long term, successful relationship as long as there is mutual respect, so I wasn't bothered when we first met more than two decades back that none of our interests aligned except, back then I too followed sports though not sporty myself. But the day we were getting ready for our plane ride back to the US from India after our wedding, I was happy to note he packed a book for the flight, albeit a technical book called "Real Analysis." It is a 20+ hour flight from India to the US and he spent a sum total of 2 mins on the book before he decided to take a nap! Since then, this scene has been repeated innumerable times in the 22 years of our marriage and the countless long distance trips we've made.  "Real analysis" has accompanied us all the time but the bookmark hasn't moved beyond the first few pages. It is now a token of luck that we carry with us, one that we all know is a mere token and will never be read. Will "Cricket Country" fare any better? I don't know, but at least I enjoyed the book more as a history buff. 

Cricket is perhaps the most long lasting colonial legacy that the British left and as Edward Said reminds us, the Empire Strikes back. The game now is more Indian than British that Ashish Nandy's pithy saying "Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British" rings true for modern India. But back in 1911 when the first All-India team was assembled to tour England, no one could have anticipated what would come in the years after Indian independence in 1947. Prashant Kidambi's focus is on this particular tour but the actual tour starts in his book only around page 250. The preceding pages detail the first Parsee tour of England back in 1888 and the development of native cricket in Bombay spearheaded by the Parsee community. As with many things in India, cricket back then was also a communal activity and soon enough there were Hindu Cricket Clubs, Muslim clubs all playing cricket sometimes against each other and sometimes against the colonizer. In those days, cricket was seen as a way of uniting the ruler and the ruled and an All-India tour would promote unity among the people of India, give them a proper education about how the game is played in the mothership, and also promote the civilizing mission of Imperial Britain. Kidambi gives us a profile of the 1911 team which eventually comprised of Parsees, Hindu Brahmins, Muslims and two Dalits (the Palwankar brothers, Baloo and Shivram) all led by the Maharaja of Patiala Bhupinder Singh who accepted the position to create a favorable impression with his British minders. 

1911 was an interesting year in Britain with the coronation of King George V and it was the pinnacle of Imperialism. In addition to the cricketers from India, there were also a team of wrestlers, an Indian strongman, a racket champion (precursor to squash) all in Britain at the same time. Kidambi gives us memorable stories about these people too which truly deserve a book of their own. The cricket team performed dismally against first class cricket clubs, fared better against lesser teams and had some success in Scotland and Ireland.The team was inexperienced, was a conglomeration of individuals who had not played together as a team, were in a very different environment, were on a brutal schedule with no more than 2 days of rest between games, and were deserted by their Captain and one of their star players mid-way through the tour. The Palwankar brothers, especially Baloo distinguished himself as a bowler of great merit and his brother saved the Indian team a couple of times with his scintillating batting. Baloo went onto have a successful political career and his life intersects Gandhi and Ambedkar at a later point. Indian cricket history is incomplete without mentioning Ranjit Singh. Being singularly gifted as a cricketer, his only contribution to Indian cricket is to help break the stereotype that the game cannot be played by natives. Other than that he appeared to be just a savvy political operator who was looking out for himself. The book is full of interesting facts that I've been spouting to my husband in the hope he will be interested enough to pick it up. For e.g. the 1911 Indian team possessed fairly outdated technical knowledge that they experienced the googly for the first time, and that the Yorker was probably invented by an American from Philadelphia called John Barton King.

The book was a fun and fast read and made me relive some of my childhood memories. I was 9 when India won the World Cup cricket for the first time and four years later India hosted the World Cup! The evening before the start of the matches our old television broke down. I don't think we've made a faster purchase decision than buying a color television the night before the 1987 world cup. My dad, my brother and I were in Vivek & Co picking out our TV and asked for same day delivery. The funny part was the delivery truck had only one stop that night - our home, so the driver asked us if we wanted a ride back in the truck and there we were - the 3 of us and our TV in a Vivek & Co delivery truck making sure we had a fully functioning TV for the world cup. Needless to say, my dad was a huge fan and one of the items in his possession was a letter from the great England Keeper, Alan Knott, which on his passing is now a treasured artifact for my husband. Playing in a local cricket league has been one of the best things that happened to my husband and he also has a fabulous coach who does more than teach just cricket, someone who emphasizes the process instead of the outcomes. So while he might never pick up the book, I am genuinely happy he has picked up the bat and as his coach seems bent on teaching an old dog new tricks, I am happy to see him enjoy the game not just as a spectator. To that the 1911 All-India team has my thanks!




Saturday, September 26, 2020

The Immortal SPB

 I asked my daughter to contribute her Top 15 SPB songs for all time and this is her list. She also said that she doesn't feel sad at his demise because and I quote "if there is anyone who has a shot at immortality it is him as his songs will live on forever!" So here is her list, not in any particular order.

  1. Megam Kottatum
  2. Keeravani
  3. Autokaran Autokaran
  4. Summa Kizhi
  5. Ilamai Enum
  6. Oruvan Oruvan
  7. Poonthalir Aada
  8. Ilaya Nila
  9. Malayoram Veesum
  10. Mama Un Ponna
  11. Madai Thiranthu
  12. Chinna Mani
  13. Tholin Mele
  14. Paadi Parantha Kili
  15. Sangeetha Jaathi Mullai

Enjoy!

 

 

Covid Obituaries

This week I lost two people in India to COVID. They were both 74 years old. One was the legendary singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam who provided the sound track of my life. The other was my aunt who was with me for many of my firsts. Although I never met the former, and hadn't seen the latter in nearly a decade both the losses feel extremely personal.

My aunt was one of those rare persons in my family who spoke multiple Indian languages and English. She was my aunt by her marriage to my maternal uncle, which explains her linguistic abilities as we just didn't have the genes for it in ours. She was one of the most cheerful people I ever knew. It did not mean she had a trouble free life. She just had the knack of having a sparkling smile and welcoming face no matter what. She, with my uncle, was always there for all my important first steps - my first school, my first job, my first trip abroad - and they, along with my parents set me up for success. She also took care of my maternal grandmother (her Mother-in-law) as though she was her own mother. That's something I would always remember her for. Yes, my grandmom was amazing, but caring for a 97 year old when you yourself are 70 and doing it with cheer is not easy. My uncle has a gruff exterior although he is one of the kindest people I know. You need time to warm up to him. My aunt smoothed his rough edges and made him palatable to strangers. Her death was untimely and completely avoidable. She had breathing issues but unfortunately an overrun medical system unable to handle COVID patients failed her as she could not get a doctor or a hospital to take her in. This fact is going to remain with my uncle and my cousin for a long time. She was a collateral damage to COVID and she will be sorely missed!

COVID also claimed the life of a legend this week. Growing up in Chennai in the '70s to '90s there was one thing constant in my life - seasons, politics, friends, interests and tastes change, life ebbs and flows - but throughout it all the voice of SPB was the one constant.  Tamil Nadu is famous for its polarizing dualities - MGR or Sivaji; ADMK or DMK; Kamal or Rajini; (and like that's even possible) Illayaraja or Rahman - but everyone and I mean EVERYONE unified around the voice of SPB. You get a bunch of Tamils in a room, sooner or later we will end up discussing Illayaraja + SPB songs. I definitely went through phases in my musical taste - I learned Carnatic, listened to a lot of pop, love alternate rock and even some metal, now I listen to opera. But once again throughout it all, SPB never left my life. I had seen him in live shows when I was in my undergrad in Chennai and then again in 2012 in California where he mesmerized my then 7 year old who also grew up with his music. I don't remember a day when we didn't have his voice in our midst. One of the earliest memories of my childhood was my brother's Kindergarten "interview". He was 3 and I was 7. My mom desperately wanted him to get into this school as it was close to our home and near mine - as a working mom this was critical for her. But you can't prepare a 3 year old who had a mind of his own! When asked what was his name, he belted out a "My name is Billa". The interviewer burst out laughing, much to the relief of my mother. He was then asked to sing a song (she didn't say rhyme) and so he did - another SPB tune. Subconsciously he covered both bases (Rajini and Kamal) and one can safely assume that the teacher must have been a SPB fan as the school did pick him! My brother and I never agreed on anything until we became adults, but SPB was the one great unifier in our childhood. SPB was with us for all occasions. He sang in 16 Indian languages and he was the one, before globalization and Rupert Mudroch invading our skies, who taught us the numerous genres of music - from disco to Indian classical. There was nothing he could not do. Dulcet tones with emotive power that stirred something deep within us - no wonder he was also a terrific actor although he only acted in a handful of movies. When I moved to the US I made a list of some of my favorite tunes (a couple of hundred) and my dad and brother got them recorded for me in tapes and shipped them for me.  My daughter who was born in the US and grew up here, not fluent in Tamil, certainly doesn't understand the lyrics, has a playlist in her iPod for SPB! This is a child who learns the piano, loves Radiohead, Spoon, Imagine Dragons, Adele, Massive Attack and she still thinks SPB is special. There is a SPB for every occasion, she says. We were in Iceland a couple of summers back with our friends, and our kids were being DJs and suddenly they would say "it's time for some good SPB" and there he was -  in Iceland, in our van, two families from two different parts of India with kids born and raised in the US listening to his voice! It didn't feel surreal, it felt natural. He was 74 when he passed and normally I would say he had a good life, left us a collection of 40,000 songs, enough for multiple lifetimes. Anyone else, I would say their best days were behind them. But not him - he had so much more to offer. He was 74 when he sang this song (one of his last) - a mindless, opening number - but the energy in his voice is pure magic, that my 15 year old once played it non-stop over a weekend. In Tamil Nadu music he was with us for three golden periods - MSV, Illayaraja and A.R.Rahman - three generations of composers and towards the end of his life sang for composers who as kids grew up listening to him. He was truly ageless that I never imagined there would be a time when we will not have any more new songs from him. This loss feels personal because his voice was personal to each and everyone of us and losing this constant almost feels like the loss of a parent.  I was lucky to have had him in my life and thankful for the joy and comfort he provided. Here is a list of my favorites which will remain with me forever

 

1. Sangeetha Megam - A song that eulogizes him 

2.Unakenna Mele Nindrai

3. Sangeetha Jathi Mullai

4. Pani vizhum

5. Sundari Kannal

6. Roja Ondru

7. Chinna Mani

8. Andhi Mazhai

9. Ilaya Nila

10. Namma Ooru Singari

11. Singalathu China Kuyile

12. O Vasantha Raja

13. Ada Mapillai

14. Anjali Anjali

15. Engeyum Epodhum

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Oceans, Cosmere, Roman Lawyers & Millenial Romance - Books of September

I spent the last couple of months tackling not one, but four, 1000 pagers. I have survived and am here to say that the effort was worth it. The Boundless Sea  by David Abulafia, a human history of the oceans, was the only non-fiction of the 4.

The Boundless Sea is a fabulous book meticulous in its details, rich in colorful characters and set a number of facts straight for me. Growing up in India, ironically we accepted texts that stated Vasco Da Gama discovered India, much like Columbus' discovery of America! These statements not only ignored the presence of native population, they also ignored the seafaring adventures across the oceans by the indigenous people of these nations long before Europeans entered into the picture. Until the arrival of European adventurers the oceans were mainly used by traders, and successful trading usually involved learning another culture and customs. Abulafia's book is full of tales about how religions like Buddhism spread through the oceans, evidences of Greeks worshiping Indian Gods, a settlement of Jewish people in India, seals that bear inscriptions from multiple languages. However, the Portuguese and Spanish with the help of Italian seafarers took this to the next level. The big change that the Europeans brought about was the concept of conquest and colonization to control trade routes usually in search of a particular hot commodity. Human history of the oceans appears to be a human history of commodities - myrrh and frankincense, amber, spices (pepper and cinnamon especially), salt, herrings, tea, fur, and later sugar and cotton which in turn led to slavery. Abulafia could have told the story from the point of view of these products and our insatiable need for them. The oceans connect all corners of the earth, so it was no surprise that especially in the 15th century two key factors connect history of all humanity 1) The importance of the Indian & Chinese spice/tea trade to all European nations 2) European Christians wanting to avoid the Red Sea and the Islamic centers of trade in their effort to control the Indies. The colonization of the New World was because of this arms race to discover a route to India and that race determined winners and losers in multiple continents with consequences till date.

This book is not for the faint hearted or those with poor upper body strength (I got a physical copy - a mistake). Many days I wondered if it was for me too as it was just too much information to process! But Abulafia is a great storyteller and the book deserves the Wolfson History prize. If you don't want to read the book I recommend listening to this interview


 I was introduced to Brandon Sanderson by my daughter. This marked a big moment in our mother-daughter relationship. I remember when I started curating books and movies for my dad and it is inevitable I am at that stage right now. I am a big fan of Sci-fi/ Fantasy/ Speculative fiction. I like to think I don't distinguish between hi-brow literature and genre fiction. I love the great masters of the genre from Tolkien, Frank Herbet, GRR, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Neil Gaiman and recently Neal Stephenson, Ann Leckie. I regularly check out the Hugo/Nebula/ Locus award winners. But it's been a long time since I was consumed by an epic fantasy like that of Sanderson's. I have to say he is truly the Tolkien for this generation, and yes I am ranking him higher than GRR! I read Mistborn and Stormlight (3 books in each series) in a span of 2 months and they are still with me. The world creation, character arcs, the plot, the magic systems and the no-gimmick and no-pandering style is just so refreshing. The depth of philosophy and religion in these books and the emphasis on civil discourse is fantastic! Most Sci-fi/fantasy writers fall into the liberal/ atheist category and then there are people like Orson Scott Card who holds despicable views. It is hard to separate art from the artist (which is why I can't bring myself to read Ender's Game or Mists of Avalon). Sanderson doesn't shy away from religion in his books and his life but is not a bigot and doesn't have a hidden agenda to spread the beliefs of LDS. In fact the struggle between the Parshendi and humans in Stormlight seemed to me, a commentary on the relationship between the Paiutes and Mormons in Utah. What is the nature of god when we seem to be tearing each other apart, what does it mean to live a life of honor when everything around you has gone to dogs, what does it mean for a god to die and how does an atheist and a believer react to that - these are all questions raised and discussed in the Cosmere universe, and I found the arguments intellectually stimulating. In one of my favorite quotes from his book a character says (and I paraphrase) a hypocrite is someone who is in the process of changing and without change and flow we cannot evolve. In these times when we are so polarized, listening to another, discussing, understanding and evolving are all crucial if we want to solve existential problems. Sanderson is also very generous as he puts up all his lectures on writing on Youtube something my daughter truly appreciated. I was hesitant to pick up Stormlight as I know he has planned 10 books in this series and has completed only 3. I am already waiting for Winds of Winter from GRR  and it feels like an eternity, so I was hesitant to pick up an unfinished series. But the opportunity to read something with my daughter over the next 15 years was too great to pass up and I am richer for it. Now we both are waiting for the fourth book coming this thanksgiving.



RBG's passing was a sad day not just for women but for all underdogs. We shouldn't forget that one of her most successful gender discrimination case was won by her defending the right of a man to collect social security benefits as a home maker! The crazy election cycle just got crazier and I did not want to get sucked into a vortex of negativity. Instead, as a tribute to RBG I spent the day re-reading Mary Beard's Women and Power - A Manifesto. In Western civilization it looks like the first feminists were all lawyers - Maesia and Afrania who both went to court and were ridiculed for their androgyny - an outspoken woman has to be unnatural after all! So it seemed fitting that a petite, gentle lawyer had to school this country on gender equality. As Mary Beard states the problems are deep rooted and structural and as ancient as western civilization and dismantling these structures is going to take time. RIP RBG. The rest of us have work to do to make sure all the gains you made for us are not lost.


The other book I finished this month was Normal People by Sally Rooney which made everyone's list include President Obama's. I didn't think this book would appeal to me as I was not the target audience (or so I thought) but I was pleasantly surprised by the writing. I soon found myself absorbed by Marianne's and Connell's "relationship" - was it friendship or friendship with benefits? If you remember Seinfeld The Deal and thought how funny it was, take that premise subtract the jokes, add in smartphones + social media, depression, violence, alienation, class conflicts you get Normal People. Maybe it is the pandemic but I felt that as we all experience social isolation we realize that it is important to have at least one other person that we can absolutely lean on and in Normal People the two protagonists realize that they have been that person for each other but do not seem to have the ability to articulate that. Can tweets, tiktoks and texts help a human connect at a deeper level with another? At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I have to say that I found that Marianne and Connell (despite being well read, intelligent people who cared for each other) could not communicate openly and this thwarted communication was at the root of all their troubles.

Anyway those were the books of this past month. I am trying a few books now and while non-fiction has been easy to find, I am yet to get Stormlight out of my system and so the quest for fiction books for next month is still ongoing.

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Grace and Grief

 I remember the day I took my daughter to a double feature. We were going to see "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Black Panther" back to back. I had been trying to get my daughter to watch superhero movies and somehow she was never drawn to them. When I walked into the theater I assumed she would love Wrinkle, a book she and I read together when she was 7 and maybe not enjoy Panther. It turned out to be the opposite! She found the colorful world of  Wrinkle in the movie not jive with her mental image of the world from the book. On the other hand, she fell in love with Black Panther. There was something about the movie that appealed to her and since then we watched the 20 odd Avenger movies and she still ranks Black Panther as her favorite. The movie brought joy to billions and we were no exceptions. You didn't have to be black to appreciate what a force for good that movie was. Believe me, I have seen Indiana Jones Temple of Doom and know a thing or two about stereotypes in Hollywood. But Panther arguably did more than even Henry Louis Gates Jr's brilliant documentary on Africa to challenge Eurocentric (which is inevitably white-centric) views of the world. So, the death of Chadwick Boseman came as a shock to me like it did for the world. But I was unprepared for the intensity to which it would affect me.


I don't know why the death of Chadwick Boseman has hit me hard. I am a cancer-hardened veteran who has lost my dad, two uncles, one of my closest cousins, a couple of friends and more relatives to cancer in the span of 17 years. But this one felt as personal as the deaths in my family. Maybe it was just this man's gentle, lightning smile. Maybe it was his grace and dignity that we saw on and off screen but is now 100X magnified knowing that all that grace was despite facing something as horrendous as cancer. Maybe it was the premium he put on his privacy. But him going through his treatments and still showing up to the sets to bring joy to the world as Black Panther transcends greatness. 
 
Till date, I had only my dad as a model for grace in the face of an uphill struggle against cancer.  He was funny, joking and making light of his struggles, thoughtful about his caregivers and the nurses in his hospice till the very end. But in a few rare moments he confessed to me that he was tired of fighting and wanted the end to be quick and made me promise to not put him on life support in case he went into a coma. Cancer can do that to you. Somehow Boseman's death brought back all those intense feelings.
 
17 years back just after my dad died I found comfort in Rainier NP under the gaze of the mountain. I had not shed any tears in India as I had to make room for my mom's grief and also had to handle the funeral. It was in Rainier amidst the wilderness, in that solitude,  that I finally found the space to come to terms with my own grief. I was in Sequoia NP when I found out about Boseman's passing and standing under those trees I sought comfort and saw his spirit in those giants.Very often when people die we collectively remember only their good things. In my dad's case I knew that was all there was to remember. He was 59 when he passed. In my mind he is always the Atticus of Mocking Bird and never the old, cynical,  grumpy Atticus of Go Set a Watchman as he never reached that age and I believe his basic nature wouldn't have changed much. I have a feeling Boseman was like that. The goodness that people attribute to him is not simply a case of remembering only the good. It feels like that was the sum total of his soul. May he rest in peace.
 

 

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Wordsworth for the Weary

 As you can see from the last few posts, being cooped up inside for nearly 6 months has guided my reading in one specific direction. Being deprived of the great outdoors I am vicariously living through literature. Jonathan Bate's Radical Wordsworth was not just about satiating my need for nature. It also had a lot to do with human connection. Come September, I will celebrate 25 years of friendship with two special people with whom I had the pleasure to visit Grasmere and other places in the Lake District  that were fundamental to Wordsworth's poetry.

In Tintern Abbey, the prophet of nature wrote

Though absent long

These forms of beauty have not been to me,

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye;

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet 

Grasmere and the lakes of Lake District have offered similar sweet sensations to my weary mind especially during this pandemic. Back in 1997 my friends and I were  23, carefree, just getting started in our careers and had the opportunity to work and travel in the UK albeit each in a different city. Since then a lot has happened in our lives, both ups and downs and we've pursued our own interests. However, it has remained a steady friendship, a constancy in our lives without the need for instant gratification and frequent validation. We don't care where the other person works, what their title is, what their career progression has been. We are not connected on Facebook, LinkedIn and we don't even talk frequently.  As I get older I cherish the friendship even more now than I did in 1995. There are so many reasons that I am grateful to them for, but in the context of this post I am especially grateful that they humored my whims and wishes about the places I wanted to see in the UK and offered me their companionship.



 



Bate says he wrote this book for "anybody who raises an eyebrow when the poet's name is mentioned and the only word that comes to mind is daffodils." That was surely the case for us when we visited Grasmere back then. Since then I went on to read more of his verses from Lyrical Ballads for my M.A. in English and I am positive the other two have not read much Romantic poetry. Reading Bate's biography was going to be an opportunity for me to once more savor the landscape and the friendship and while it certainly achieved that, it offered me so much more. 

Wordsworth often lamented about the fact of growing up. Growing up meant that the unity between the body, the self and the environment gets broken and the only way to recapture that "primal spirit" was through poetry and memory. As I was house cleaning during the pandemic, I chanced upon my daughter's journal from first grade and she had written "I want powers to like everything I already like when I grow up. So that I can pass my thoughts to my children." Here was a 6 year old who seems to know that as adults we forget the simple things we loved as kids and she never wanted to lose that ability! 

 

Wordsworth's poems gave me insights into my daughter's sensibility. If I am Jane Austen's Elinor, my daughter is certainly Marianne and spontaneity and deep feeling are just first nature to her when they are not even remotely third nature to me. Yet, to my credit (even if i say so myself) I have not let my "sense" completely crush my daughter's "sensibility." She loves the outdoors and when I see her seek some "alone time" at the beach or in the woods with her "favorite tree" I am pleased to recognize

    In nature and the language of the sense

    The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse

    The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

    Of all my moral being

 

One of her lamentations is how in high school the emphasis is already on college and she feels she is on a treadmill that she never asked to get on. On top of that the racism, sexism, environmental disaster of contemporary times is crushing children with feelings of guilt even though it is not their fault. Dealing with all this baggage in isolation is worse. Childhood seems to have vanished in the past year. This sense of loss of childhood is one felt acutely by Wordsworth and he writes with hope that "The Child is Father of the Man"

    My heart leaps up when I behold

        A Rainbow in the sky:

    So was it when my life began;

    So is it now I am a Man;

    So be it when I shall grow old,

        Or let me die!

While childhood is hard to recapture, the things that restore childhood can be found in nature and the ability to be excited by a rainbow can remain with one all their life. This is my hope for her and the generations coming after us. They will have wild landscapes available to inspire and restore them.  

Bate's biography also introduces us to a few characters who I had never heard of but who were instrumental in his poetical and political development. I specifically wanted to mention two. Helen Maria Williams an abolitionist, an anti-imperialist and a poet of great talent who wrote sensitive nature poetry was one who inspired Wordsworth. The other was an eccentric man called John Stewart known popularly as "walking Stewart" - an 18th century Forrest Gump. He never rode in carriages because "they were both elitist and cruel to horses" and he had "walked halfway around the world from Madras, through Persian, Arabia, Abyssinia, much of North Africa and every country in Europe as far as Russia." Walking Stewart introduced Spinoza's ideas of pantheism and the belief that God can be found in nature to Wordsworth.

The second half of Wordsworth's life was dreary as he deviated from his principles of his youth. His poetry became monotonous and not very inventive and he lived for a really long time unlike other Romantic poets who lived hard and died young and in glory. Bate purposefully presents only a "lightning sketch" of the second half of the poet's life. Despite the gradual decline, he argues that Wordsworth is still relevant "because he reminds us ... to cherish a child's way of looking at the world. Because he wrote with unprecedented sympathy for the poor, the excluded, the broken... Because his elegian poetry can speak to us when we are bereaved...he foresaw that among the consequences of modernity would be not only the alienation of human beings from each other, but also potentially irretrievable damage to the delicate balance between our species and our environment."

These past few weeks of reading Wordsworth has taken me back to my past and also given me glimpses into the future. I remember the day we walked around Ullswater in the summer of 1997. There were no dancing daffodils to greet us, but we had "laughing company". Someday I wish to go back to Grasmere with my husband and daughter and see these landscapes once again

    For oft when on my couch I lie

    In vacant or in pensive mood,

    They flash upon that inward eye

    Which is the bliss of solitude

    And then my heart with pleasure fills,

    And dances with the Daffodils.



Monday, July 13, 2020

Reading Thoreau Under Lockdown

A dose of Thoreau in the right quantity is good for anyone, anytime. But if there ever was a perfect time to delve into him - this is it! I first came to Thoreau by way of Gandhi, but visiting Walden in the winter of 2010 set me on a path of no-return. Since then, I returned physically to Walden in the summer of 2014, read more transcendental literature and was eagerly looking forward to a trip this Christmas in preparation for which I was going to read Walden (again) and read Laura Dassow Walls' latest biography of him. That trip is up in the air now but this past month of (re) reading Thoreau has comforted me despite the madness that is the world today.




My daughter asked me one night as to why I admire Thoreau so much and I realized that it was the Thoreauvian idea of simplify, simplify, simplify that I admired the most! Thoreau challenges me to live deliberately and get to the truth of my existence. He proclaimed in Walden "My greatest skill has been to want but little" and this is a skill I aspire to. I also seek membership into his "Knights of umbrella and bundle" - but alas despite being a lighter traveler I am not there yet.

Thoreau is commonly perceived as a hermit, almost a misanthrope. (Also people need to read his full quote about Government. He didn't say no government at once, but called for a better government immediately!) He was a dutiful son, a loving brother, a loyal friend, and an inspiring mentor. The more I read about him I feel like he was the true renaissance man after Da Vinci. An inventor of graphite pencils, a civil surveyor, a botanist and birder, a naturalist of some repute, an Indian ethnographer, an ardent abolitionist (credit to his mom and other women of his household) , an inspiring speaker who combined wit and wisdom, and not to mention a wonderful philosopher and writer - he wore many hats and was truly a jack of all trades. He was also a man of contradictions and someone who struggled with the conflict - hated hunting but couldn't give up meat, was eager to learn from natives but at times dismissed their myths, made a living by surveying which in turn destroyed the woods he adored.

He was a man ahead of his times and is therefore a man for all seasons. When he lamented that "men have become the tools of their tools" I see a commentary on the modern day walking texting phone zombies. When he complains that "those things for which most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants" I am reminded of Hassan Minhaj's piece on if colleges are still worth it. When he wrote about the cable under the Atlantic he commented it appeared that the goal seemed to be "to talk fast and not to talk sensibly... After all, the man whose horse trots a mile a minute does not carry the most important messages" -  he could have been writing about our penchant for tweets. And before Jon Stewart critiqued the 24 hour news cycle Thoreau observed "Hardly a man takes a half hour's nap after dinner but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels."

Before we conclude he was just a 19th century equivalent of a late-night comic wielding satire as his only weapon, we should remember the courage with which he spoke up for John Brown when the entire nation seemed to disown him, even the abolitionists. In A Plea for Captain John Brown we witness Thoreau referring to death as an honor conferred only upon the select few who knew how to live. However, the death of such an honorable person enrages him especially because society determines him to be a failure. He states, “They talk as if a man’s death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.” The death of John Brown was not simply the death of a man, but the death of a principle, and he regarded this event "as a touchstone designed to bring out with glaring distinctness the character of this government." In 2020 we witnessed the death of George Floyd and his death revealed more about the character of our government than anything else. We were all implicated in his death and this is a feeling that Thoreau was familiar with. Walls states

“Thoreau was a haunted man. He and everyone he knew were all implicated: the evil of slavery, the damnation of the Indian, the global traffic in animal parts, the debasement of nature, the enclosure of the ancient commons - the threads of the modern global economy were spinning him and everyone around him into a dehumanizing web of destruction"

This is probably one of the reasons that Thoreau resonates even today when we as a species are faced with two main crises. One is the existential threat to the planet, its wildlife and its wilderness. The other is the world we are creating on the back of always-on, always-connected technology that fuels the gig-economy that makes us all expendable. In today’s screen-filled world where real nature is replaced by virtual reality, where privacy is rendered non-existent and voyeurism has become acceptable, the transcendentalists, especially Thoreau offer real solutions. Reclaiming wild lands and with it our wild spirits, getting comfortable in solitude by shutting out distractions and being disconnected, and living deliberately as opposed to instagramming every moment is needed now more than ever. Reading Thoreau is a reminder to myself of what I truly aspire to and how far away I am from my ideal. But as he said in Walden this is not an "ode to dejection, but to brag lustily as chanticleer in the morning only to wake" myself up.


Sunday, May 31, 2020

Property & People - the true pandemic in America

It has been hard to write anything these past few weeks, primarily because nothing seems to change day to day and a kind of paralysis has set in. Then the events of the past few days brought about the realization nothing has really changed, certainly not for the Black people of America. While we all look forward to returning to "normal", Black America is probably closer to Stephen Dedalus in thinking “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” As a country we are quick to decry the looting and violence meted out against property because property is sacred. (This is not new. The 14th Amendment which granted equal protection and due process under the law to former slaves was historically used by corporations to gain more property rights.) On the other hand, people seem to be expendable. Their rights can be trampled by those sworn to protect rights but all our attention is on the property damage. I shouldn’t have to state this but I know I am expected to, I don’t condone violence - but violence against property cannot be judged on the same scale as violence against people. 

It was pure coincidence that I just finished Ibram X Kendi’s masterpiece “Stamped from the Beginning: A definitive history of racist America”. He argues that the three most popular strategies against racism in this country have all failed:

  • self-sacrifice : a myth that claims that White people would have to sacrifice in order to ensure a more egalitarian anti-racist America. This has been disproved time and time again. You can pursue self-interest and also be anti-racist. For all the "others" in America, especially immigrants like me, Kendi says “it is in the intelligent self-interest of Asians, Native Americans and Latina/os to challenge anti-Black racism, knowing they will not be free of racism until Black people are free of racism.” I have not personally experienced hate in this country (UK - that’s a different story), but I am not naive to think that my group of people are somehow exempt because we are model citizens, highly skilled workers. Just see what other Asians are facing now as though every individual Chinese person was responsible for bringing the pandemic to this country! So yes, while we may not personally understand the struggle of black America it is in our self-interest to join this struggle. 
  • Uplift suasion - where Black people are asked to show exemplary, upstanding behavior to convince white people of their merits. This is a racist idea because individual Blacks (or Asians or Muslims or ….) are not race representatives. Every Black man cannot be Sidney Poitier or Denzel Washington. We are often quick to use “few bad apples” to explain away police brutality and systemic racism. Racism is individualized. But we don’t afford the same privilege to the other side of the coin. Welfare queens, Mexican rapists, Islamic terrorists … the epithets are endless.
  •  Educational persuasion - where we think we can educate the hate out of people. Instead we should focus on racist policies that lead to racist ideas leading to ignorance and hate as opposed to the other way around.
So do you blame when people who have tried every “approved” failed strategy resort to looting and violence to express their anger? Kneeling didn’t work. Just ask Kapernick. Black Lives Matter is still trying. What has changed? What have we all learned in the past few years? Just because we had elected a Black President can we close the book on racism? Paul Beatty in The Sellout states “That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the $%^*  on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.” The land of the free is also home to millions who are not free from prejudice and some of this runs deep through the entire existence of this country. History comes back to haunt us. To break this cycle Kendi proposes we should all be focussed on only electing principled anti-racists to any elected position - from our local school board to the President of this country. 

I will never know what it is to have been George Floyd, but his plight evokes a visceral feeling in me. To a small extent, the birdwatcher, Cooper in NYC - I could identify with him. As a fellow birder I am annoyed to see pets not on leash but I have hesitated so many times to call someone out because of the fear of being perceived as an outsider, someone who even after two decades of living here has been (and will forever be) asked, “where are you from originally?” and constantly have to prove I am 100% American. Black lives matter and not just for Black people. It matters to all of us - immigrants, minimum wage workers, Gay/Lesbian/Trans Gender, Women and even to the privileged majority. Covid-19 disproportionately affects African Americans, but so does this other pandemic which has been killing them long before the virus came around. When we find the cure for the former, let's not forget the latter.


Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Find Beauty, Be Still - "Underland" a Book for our times

I wrapped up Underland today. Somehow it doesn't feel right to write about it right away but it has stirred up a lot of feelings inside me that I would feel better getting them out. When I purchased the book we were in pre-coronavirus era.  I had listened to some talks by Robert Macfarlane and I thought his writings would help me "slow down". Little did I know that life as we knew it would come to a grinding halt. The current situation therefore colored my reading of the book and maybe some day I would revisit it with a different viewpoint. (If you want to skip this review and just listen to Macfarlane - here is a talk about the book.)

I saw two main themes in the book. It is an ode to the underland which according to Macfarlane has three main functions: "shelter what is precious, yield what is valuable, and dispose what is harmful". The other theme is a gentle reminder to us to be good ancestors, not just good parents or grandparents, but ancestors which automatically lengthens our horizon. "Deep time" is a defining feature of the underland and at the very least the book is a call to think in those time periods.

Macfarlane is also a lover of language and he bemoans the loss of so many words from our language as we become disconnected from our landscape. The book is filled with so many beautiful phrases that one can read it simply for the love of the language. Macfarlane is also a seasoned adventure traveler and in this book he explores some of the fantastical places on earth - burial chambers in Mendips, dark matter research stations underground, understorey of forests, the catacombs of Paris invisible rivers in Italy, hollowed lands called foibes in Slovenia, prehistoric caves in Norway, glaciers in Greenland and finally radioactive disposal stations in Finland!

I have done a bit of travel and have had enough adventures just a bit outside my comfort zone to know what it means to experience the exhilaration albeit on a small scale. With each such adventure my language also expands a bit and accommodates new words. "Switchback" was a word I had never used until about 20 years back when I started hiking. Similarly crampons, moraine, moulins were not words in my vocabulary until I experienced glaciers. The only place where I experienced total darkness was in a cave in Sequoia National Park. Hiking in Rocky Mtn NP taught me the risks of hiking above "treeline" - another word that I rarely use. MacFarlane's adventures are 100X magnified. I know that I would never do anything like he did and I am thankful for his book as it took me to landmarks in some extreme landscapes that I would not dare to visit. This also meant he gave me new words to add to my vicarious vocabulary. Here is a short list, some of which are slang:
  • derp = derelict + ruined places
  • bunkerologists
  • Cenote (Spanish) = sinkhole that is often flooded
  • Wunderkammer = place where curiosities are exhibited
  • doline = funnel shaped sinkhole
  • okna (Slovenian) = point where water has worn a passage through a rock
  • Karst = limestone landscape
  • turlough = intermittent lake that wells up from underneath and drains dry in summer
  • fluvial = of or found in a river
  • foiba = sinkhole used for killings
  • corrie / cirque = steep sided hollow at the head of a valley
  • occulting = nautical term for light that flashes on and off
  • scabious = a type of flower
  • posthole = cut used to hold wood in place
  • wind slab = layer of snow formed by wind 
  • cornice = overhang of snow at edge of mountain
  • zawn = deep and narrow sea inlet
  • Rime ice = result of freezing fog
  • katabatic wind = wind from higher elevation carrying higher density air
  • bergschrund = type of crevasse that separates moving ice from fixed
  • couloir = steep narrow gully

Made me look up Google Images and Wikipedia too many times and that's the only drawback of the book as he did not add any pictures. It was very hard to visualize - easier to imagine fantasy worlds / mythic worlds. This was harder especially when snow is involved as that's simply not my element. Our family doesn't ski and our snow adventures are limited to some snow shoeing, a couple of guided glacier walks for beginners. So I was glued to his adventures in Greenland and the North. With the warming temperatures he talks about how Greenlanders feel the soundscape of the glaciers has changed and they now experience a silence. The ice is a living, moving thing for them as opposed to a scary nemesis for me.

The book ends in Onkalo where humanity is trying to bury radioactive materials "in order to preserve the future" from the present. He contrasts that to the seed bank at Spitsbergen where we are preparing for a catastrophe when the Earth's biodiversity is lost. Both these acts are steps in becoming good ancestors. Somehow Macfarlane manages to leave us on an optimistic note. He quotes this passage from a book called "After Nature"

People are best able to change their ways when they find two things at once in nature; something to fear, a threat they must avoid, and also something to love a quality... which they can do their best to honor. Either impulse can stay the human hand, but the first stops it just short of being burnt or broken The second keeps the hand poised, extended in greeting or in an offer of peace. This gesture, is the beginning of collaboration among people but beyond us, in building our next home.

I believe we are at that point with the pandemic amidst us. What is needed is a spirit of collaboration to solve some of the big problems that we face. For now closeted in my home, I am trying to adopt a phrase that according to Macfarlane, W.H.Murray said after being released from POW camps in Germany and Italy

FIND BEAUTY, BE STILL

Monday, March 30, 2020

Closeted Contemplations

It is said Shakespeare wrote "King Lear" when quarantined during the plague. Thoreau wrote "Walden" when he self-quarantined himself to simply experience solitude. It's been two weeks since "Shelter in place" began in California for the Coronavirus and yet it has been so hard for me to put pen to paper so to speak. My neighborhood is eerily quiet and the freeway noise has died down. Birdsong is loud and clear. Inside the house we've each colonized a space as our "work area" and during school/office hours we sport our headsets and are glued to our screens. The saving grace is we have all our meals together, play at least a boardgame together and go for a walk in the dark, you guessed it, together.

I know I am privileged as I am able to work remotely and am getting a paycheck and most people I know are healthy. The economy is tanking but I have a shock absorber that will hopefully take me and my family through, something that countless others cannot count on. However, privileged as I am, I cannot help being caught up in fleeting moments of nostalgia and feeling sorry for ourselves - when can we go on a proper hike, when can I go to The Getty, will I ever be able to travel? But these moments pass and I try to take a look at the positive. What Greta Thurnberg struggled to achieve, the coronavirus has temporarily achieved - cleaner air and a respite for Earth from human pollution. Spring is here and there are birds nesting in my backyard. Signs of bird-life everywhere even if everything else is looking dead. Despite being closeted together 24 X 7 we've managed to not get on each other's nerves too much. Since I am not driving it has given me back some valuable time which I have spent reading and visiting art museums online.

I wrapped up Mantel's masterpiece "The Mirror and the Light" last week. I wouldn't be surprised if this one also wins her the Booker for the third time! There are so many things to say about the book but the plague and sweating sickness which feature only in a minor role in this book seemed prescient. Her characters deal with the plague as a fact of life and are ruled by a selfish, fickle king. The trilogy is a perfect companion for these times.

This week I spent a lot of time visiting the Van Gogh Museum online. I was lucky enough to have been there in person two years back. I remembered the "Skeleton smoking a cigar"

A skeleton, turned 45 degrees to the right and rendered only from shoulders and above. The skull clenches a lit cigarette between its teeth. The painting is rendered in somber tones of ivory, brown, and black, in thick yet detailed brushstrokes that reveal the texture of the canvas in places.

I don't know how well known this painting was, but it was new to me at that time. And then I found out that Tamino's song "Cigar" was inspired by this painting. Tamino's concert was the first casualty for me due to the Coronavirus. I had tickets to go see him on March 11th in LA and we decided to cancel in the interest of social distancing.

More than the sunflowers and the irises I remember being struck by Van Gogh's paintings of trees - where he focused not on the top but on the bottom - the roots of trees. I am reading "Underland" by Robert McFarlane and hence I seem more tuned to looking at the understorey


Vincent van Gogh - Tree Roots and Trunks (F816).jpg

 This was one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings. One of my friends went on a forest walk in India a few weeks back and wrote a poignant piece on what the forest meant to him. He talks about the need to slow down to nature's pace to become resilient. Maybe it is just that my brain is looking to make sense of these quarantines and social distancing, but his words seemed to resonate as we've all slowed down these past few weeks and there is no doubt that we have given the Earth a chance to heal. But will we able to heal and recover from this? Only time will tell.

Let me close this random rambling post with a self portrait of the man



The bandaged ear recalls what happened after 60+ days of spending time with Gauguin (only partly kidding). As we are all closeted with our near and dear ones - a friendly reminder to take care of boundaries, not to push each other's buttons and to pay attention to our mental health in unprecedented times like these.

Friday, March 13, 2020

On Privilege

T.M. Krishna is a musician I deeply admire not just for his musical abilities but also for his willingness to take on uncomfortable questions in the Indian Classical Music (specifically the Carnatic) world. Depending on which camp one falls in, he is viewed either as a progressive musician or an elitist trouble maker. His latest book "Sebastian and Sons" is a must-read whether or not one is into Carnatic music. This is a story about the first family of Mridangam (the foremost percussion instrument in Carnatic) makers who belonged to the Dalit (formerly "untouchable") communities and were often behind the foremost artists majority of them being upper caste Brahmins. In a quest to shine the light on these makers, T.M.Krishna walks us through the process of making Mridangams and helps us appreciate the art, the craft, the science and the sheer physical labor that goes into making these percussion instruments which are so revered and worshiped by the upper caste.

You can ask anyone from India for characteristics that define a Brahmin and I bet vegetarian, cow-lover, classical music connoisseur will show up in a list that may include religious and intellectual. So it is ironic that the Mridangam is a skin instrument that relies on healthy cows (especially female that have given birth to one or two calves) being slaughtered specifically for their skin, a fact that I was ignorant of or perhaps blind to. T.M.Krishna shines as a historian of music and the legwork he has done for this book has taken him to slaughterhouses and into the homes and workplaces of the legendary makers. At the heart of the book is the relationship between Mani Iyer and Parlandu, the artist and the maker, who together changed Mridangam and Carnatic music. However, Parlandu's story is rarely talked about or even known and this book attempts to change that. Although both Mani Iyer and Parlandu are no more, their stories are told through their progeny and students. In giving the "other" a voice, TMK is careful enough to make sure he is only a medium and the only judgements he passes are about the music.

Two men dominate the narrative in 'Sebastian and Sons'—Parlandu, a brilliant innovator and mrdangam maker,...
A picture from the book - Mani Iyer and Parlandu


This is also a book about privilege. There is a quote that is attributed to Chomsky that says "The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have the more responsibility you have." TMK is not adopting a holier-than-thou attitude in this book. As a man of privilege he is taking that opportunity to understand the sources of his privilege and feels that the whole Carnatic music world has a responsibility towards these makers who need to be not just acknowledged but also celebrated. Cow protection shows up in the Indian constitution and there are many who think that beef eating should be banned in India. However, the classical arts which rely on slaughtering animals especially the cow exposes the hypocrisy of this cow-loving stance.

Personally, this book affected me a lot.  As a Brahmin I grew up surrounded by Carnatic music. I was also surrounded by numerous "others" who did not belong to my social class. My parents and even my grandparents were generally very tolerant, but there were so many coded behaviors which were passed along from a place of privilege. There were numerous people in our lives who did not belong to our social strata and on whom we depended on - my mom's rickshaw driver, our maid, the lady who sold flowers, the lady who ironed our clothes, the newspaper recycler, the bicycle repair man, and the watchmen of our colony. My parents showed kindness to them, loaning them money, offering them a cup of coffee or food. My mom would always get down from her rickshaw when in an up slope and would walk next to the puller so as to not burden him unduly. My dad even attended the weddings of a couple of them and was the first to show up to the police station when one of them was wrongly accused of theft by someone else in our community. However the benevolence was often marked with certain class conditioning that both sides followed. They never sat on our couch, never entered our kitchen, always had a separate set of utensils from which they ate or drank and always addressed my parents with respect. I wish i can say I knew each of their names. Unfortunately a few were simply referred to by their professions while they addressed my parents as Sami or Iyer amma. Ironically the lady who ironed our clothes was christened by my brother as a toddler as "Sami" as he thought she was announcing herself when she was really addressing my dad - so in an interesting double twist she became "Sami" (upper class male) at least at our home until the end of her life. When TMK tries to understand who Parlandu truly was he is unable to break down the wall and beyond his technical skills was never able to get to the stories about the man behind the Mridangam. Similarly, I often look back on these people who formed part of my daily life and realize that I never really knew them as the caste barriers cropped up.

This book is an eye-opener on many levels, but especially on a personal level if you grew up in a privileged position. Privilege does not automatically mean a position of financial or political power. On the contrary many Brahmins (including my own family) were not wealthy. There were no ancestral properties. My parents didn't even own a cycle, or great luxuries, relied on public transportation for their entire working career and worked hard to pay off their mortgage. They had little to no influence in the corridors of power. Their votes hardly counted. However, we all grew up with a feeling that our lives and stories and that of our ancestors mattered and that was a feeling that gave us confidence in our future. Decades of Dravidian movement that had an anti-Brahmin policy at its core or an affirmative action policy that tried to shut off Brahmins from public sector jobs or educational institutions had still not significantly dented the cultural cache of the community or the upward movement of the class. The privilege also meant that someone else did our dirty jobs for us - whether that was repairing the sewer of the city or slaughtering a cow for its skin for our precious instrument.  Although unchained from the shackles of caste in the US, I realize that I need to be continuously aware of my privilege. TMK's book is a clarion call for awareness more than anything else.