What's in a name?

India, A million mutinees now by V. S. Naipul

A common thread to be observed about anything you want to read and watch about India is that the sources are from people outside India. It is like we Indians lack the ability to look inward. We are so used to see the other state, the other country, the other city. We know so less about ourselves, our locality, our country but somehow we seem to know a great deal about he "other". It is a shocking and fascinating thing. So when Naipul came to India, he saw what we ourselves dont want to see. He saw that we dont want to see. He saw a million mutinees for which the people opened up. There are other trillions which people did not open about. There were several of his mutinees he couldn't prod further because people wouldn't. They wanted him to leave it as it is. If knowing about a country is knowing about its extremes, then to know India, you should be reading this. Indians should read this book. Every Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist & the other plethora of unscientific societies should read this book. It is like a mirror held up to them. People visiting India should read this book. They know the extremes and they know that safe zone now. India is easy to travel an move about in that safe zone.

I loved the book. It is well written. It is well researched. And majority of the people he has talked to are real people and somehow he has made them comfortable to talk about things which people dont talk in their normal sense of mind. It is not a secret. It is just that we dont want to talk about it. He has understood that modern India as it stands today would have been a million pieces if not for the modern advent and administration of the British. But at the same time he has laid bare the brutality, unjustness, usurping, Plundering, Caste politics, Famines and many other synonyms related to these words. What I liked about his choice of interviewees is their innate purity. Everyone wants to be good. Every one wants to do good. But they are result of circumstances. Circumstances are staged by one group and the results spread across the community creating chasms between individuals. These chasms then end up in physical barriers. These then extend to fighting for rights. This then gives rise to leaders, sects, followers and what not.

I loved the way the history seamlessly gels with the present in Naipul's India. The transition from historical perspective to the present is one of the best I have read in any book. It is like India itself where the old co-exists with the modern seamlessly. I love this flow. It just shows how beautifully the author has envisioned India in his travel. Once he catches a thread, on a majority of cases he has followed it on his own because he was not ready to be biassed. This though is awesome. Once he sees that a particular individual is pushing certain things down his throat, he will take only what he thinks applies and then travels around to confirm or negate it with completely unknown individuals.

When you talk about India, foreign nationals and the commercial media is bemused by the mystic rather than the core India. They are also interested in the destitute. So here again, the author has added sufficient amount of both these aspects. But I did not mind much since he tries to juxtapose the mystic, the destitution, the middle class, the affluent class, the billionaires in a complete round up. So if any reader is expecting just "slumdog millionaire" he will be disappointing. This is much more. The narrative is not linear, and I liked that style of writing. It is like when you start to have a preset image of India, he will stop you and take you on a different ride. Only this time, your thoughts change to something else and when you come back to the same topic, you no longer have that previous notion.

The book is thoroughly entertaining and bold in certain aspects. The bold aspects are cleverly hidden and is available only to the more interested and demanding reader. It is not a book to finish in one sitting. It has to be savored. It has to be understood. Ultimately the author is happy with how India has turned out. The last few pages become dull after so much action in the majority of the portion. It appeared as thought the author was finished. He was tired and he couldnt find anything more interesting. And one more noticeable thing is the coverage of south India. Normally majority of the authors stop at the middle and the northern part of India and dont look south. But the author here has spent sufficient amount of time in the south also. There is good work on periyar of Tamilnadu and the wodeyars of Karnataka. All in all, the book is a testament to the never die spirit of India.

Franz kafka's "The trial" between the indivdual and the society

There was a sudden void in my reading habits. I had gobbled up all the hardy boys, the nancy drews, alistair mcleans, agatha christies, desmond bagleys, eric van lustbaders, Mulk raj anands, sherlock holmes, Dalgaleish, Asterixes, tintins, phantoms, spidermans and what not. There was a certain appetite. I just gobbled up books. Sometimes finishing them the same afternoon and taking them back to the library only to be informed that the books can be exchanged only the next day. So I have to wait out the whole night before I could bring a new book. Buying books was out of the question. So to ensure that the book i want is available the next day, I used to misplace the books to my favorite location, the most dusty part of the library. To this day I don't know the books which were kept there. This place was my insurance. I would walk up the next day to that specific location take the book which I had hid and exchange it.

The community library run by the government was my favorite place in the whole world. To this day I am shocked that the library knew the tastes of their audience so well. Newer books would be a cross between the popular demand, the critics collection and topics spelt out by the government as standard. With a paltry strength, the library was well maintained and the classification was consistent. If you had a doubt the staff were very supportive and they knew your tastes exactly when you are a regular. There were books which were returned that day and not yet stacked. I was allowed inside this chamber to chose whatever has just been returned. I still cherish those memories.

It was now time for my professional education. The books are different, they are to be read in a different manner. They are to be read with emphasis on application. Engineering is a different word for "applied" pure sciences. It was very difficult to carry out my hobby reading. This period put my reading habits on the back burner. Then while commuting to work by my car, I was spending nearly 3-4 hour for commute. This is the time now, I have recognized for bringing my reading habit back. I was never so happy. Over this non-reading period there have been plenty of books on my to-read list. So started without the top most. P G wodehouse. While buying them, my eyes fell on the Franz kafka section. I was always coming across the term "kafkesque". I associated with so many things. All things particularly dark. I thought my reading habits will re-start with one from Kafka. Without knowing anything about the stories they were telling I picked up a random kafka book. The one I picked up was "The trial". What follows below is my thoughts on this book. There may be spoilers. Your are warned.

The feeling of reading the first few pages gave me a feel of deja-vu. I remember an Alistair Mclean book where the first few pages are used to describe a gun with so much detail that it transcends the physical gun to something with its own life and then at the end of the chapter, the protagonist tells that "This gun is aimed at me". The first chapter of The trial gave me the same rush. It was a jolt. It hit me directly. The first page, the first para was as harsh on me as on the protagonist. The novel is a celebration of the complexity of our societal system. It mocks the system and shows how complex it is to understand the system. The division of labor is laborious in our societal system that nobody knows much beyond what he is born to. I remember I ridiculed the life of a mosquito, wherein it dies within a range of a few kilometers. The human life also has become the same. There is division of labor at work and there is a specific role you are to play in the societal setup. This is brought out ever so elegantly with all the characters. Every character thinks itself important in the large order of things. But nobody knows beyond a very specific limit about the broader prospect. The people in the higher echelons also know only what they are supposed to know. The highest in this bureaucratic setup also only knows only what he is supposed to know. This is a just a result of the complexity of keeping the human race in a bound setup. Does the author suggest anarchy then? No he does not suggest anything. He just holds a mirror to the complex societal setup we humans have developed. Nobody has a mind of his own. All the actions/thoughts are suggested by the people around above and below. The individual is dead, always. In fact, when anybody tries to be his own, he is dead. Until he fits in the larger scheme of things everything is fine. When you start looking out of your work, your friends, colleagues, peers you see a different world. When you try to see beyond what you are supposed to then you die on your own or the system will kill you by showing how out of place you are.

There have been reviews of the book which tell that the author visualizes a totalitarian regime. This is far from the truth. The author is talking about our societal setup whatever be the system you use. Be it socialism, communism, democracy and other theories. All work on a whim that few people know what is good for the human largess. And nothing can be far away from truth. Yes, it is dark. Yes, it is chilly, Yes, it talks about how complicate the human mind is, how dark it is and how it always tries to break free. Yes, it talks about how the societal system tries to imprison the human mind putting it into a conundrum. The author wanted all his works burnt. Was he afraid to that he may disturb the societal setup with this. Normally all authors talk about how the bureaucratic societal setup is so bad. Nobody has brought to the fore how every individual is in the same mental situation. How everybody do their part, in ignorance to complicate the setup. The trial is where the author puts the societal setup on trial and the individual loses and the society wins.

But the, would we be better off in an anarchist system. We don't know, yet. It is very difficult to visualize something so big, bigger than figuring out and imagining galaxies, while still living inside the system. Can you get out of the system. Now, what does that even mean...........