Books Read and Liked

Technofeudalism

What Killed Capitalism

By Yanis Varoufakis

Released September 2023

Publisher Penguin Audio

Yantis Varoufakis is a Greek economist who was briefly Greece’s minister for Finance (2015). He has been for about 6 years the Secretary General of a left-wing Pan-European party that he founder in 2018. He has also been a member of parliament from 2019 to 2023. Before becoming a politician, he taught Economics and Econometrics at the University of Essen, East Anglia, and Cambridge. In 2000 he returned to Athens and was Associate Professor at the University of Athens. For a politician, he has impressive academic credentials

The book makes an interesting start linking the concepts of economics with Einstein’s theory on the wave-particle duality of light. Labour has a duality – there is commodity labour that which is priced in the market and bought and sold. Salary is the exchange rate for commodity labour. The job in turn gives different people different experiences what is called experiential labour which drives their attitude to the work and which cannot be bought. It is not quite job satisfaction the term that behavioural scientists use to discern between boring and non-boring jobs. It is more akin to an exhilarating performance which provides the employee satisfaction and the owner extraordinary output. Experiential labour cannot be bought but goes a long way in the success of companies.

Capital too has a duality – Commodity Capital – which is typically the equipment that is invested in and has a cost that can be inferred. The fishing rod for the fisherman. The duality of Capital is in its power to make you do things – Power capital or Force Capital. This view of Capital has been illustrated in the book “Capital as Power” A Study of Order and Creorder by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler 2009. "According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power." (“Capital as Power A Study of Order and Creorder - Routledge”) It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or Creorder – their society. This is the view that Yantis also expounds in his book. Power capital again cannot be priced, unlike commodity capital. I suppose in countries like India where playing conditions are determined by the state “Power capital” is the capacity of the company to influence the referee. The recent changes in permitted levels of pesticide in food, an increase of ten times from previous levels is a case in point.

Money too has a duality like light. At the individual level, it is a measure of wealth in that it can be converted into assets which adds to a person's wealth. At the level of the community or the state money is a form of debt a capture of the future real income of the country. The author is strongly critical of the Central Banks of the Western countries baling out Financial Institutions after the 2008 crisis citing the support given and the printing of money as to be the primary reason for the growth of Technofeudalism. He argues that the support given to the banks did not find its way into productive capital (commodity capital) for investment in “fishing rods” because the industry had an oversupply of products. Instead, this funding found its way into the private equity market where significant investment happened in firms that are exploiting the “cloud commons”.

The argument is that the capital requirements of firms operating in the cloud are very small. Most of the development happens free of cost by people who work without wages. They develop the apps that are hosted on various platforms for rent. There are therefore two categories of people cloud serfs who pay rent for the use of the cloud services (shared between the host and the developer) and developers who develop apps free of cost and pay rent to the cloud landlord to host their app.  In the economic structure that has emerged since no capital or labour is needed, there is little incentive to invest traditional capital. Profit too which is an earning on capital has ceased to be important what is critical is the rent and the multiplication of the rent collected and its continuance. This is a fascinating view of companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. That is not to say that traditional companies do not exist they are just not the glamourous investment opportunities that they were thirty years ago.

This view of firms seeking rent rather than profit is an interesting perspective and can also be considered to apply to non-tech firms that operate in regulated environments like infrastructure, mining, power. In short in any industry that is regulated by the state and where innovation is low. That may explain the scramble for licenses in telecom and other infrastructure areas where from a purely financial perspective profits would have been unlikely in a reasonable time frame.

Yanis Varoufakis analysis is interesting and quite convincing. The last chapter deals with a possible solution to the problem identified. The problem to my mind flies against my belief in human nature. I think humans, in financial matters, are driven by three overriding emotions, distrust, greed, and fear. The first will surely stand in the way of any utopian cooperative as suggested by Varaufakis as a way of managing corporates. Greed and fear will also play a significant role in destroying successful cooperation. That said striving for the unattainable is what leads to better and better forms of human cooperation.

I came across a review of this book in the Guardian, one of the international newspapers I follow. That should surely convince any self-respecting neo-liberal that this book must be trash but then as the author points out Neo-liberals are neither new nor liberal and I for one am convinced that they have contributed enormously to the destruction of everything – economic, environmental, and social.

The book is written with humour as if it is a conversation with his father. The author's parents were long-time Marxists who were incarcerated during the dictatorship in Greece. The death of communism with the breaking up of the USSR and the changes in China have put paid to communism. The views are leftist which is hardly a reason to ignore them. The framework put forward appears to be interesting and the problems identified are real issues that we are grappling with today. The core question that is facing the world is the allocation of resources in a sustainable manner with a voice for every participant in the economy. The decline of capitalism and the rise of Technofeudalism with corporations beyond the control of society is indeed a dangerous world that is emerging.

Prophet Song

By Paul Lynch

Narrated by: Gerry O’Brien

Published by Bolinda Audio

It is a haunting book that narrates the tale of an ordinary citizen as they live through a violent world where democratic norms are being fast abridged. Set in Ireland it could be a tale from any of the many parts of the world that are seeing dissent and the State fighting back in the only way the State knows with psychological and physical violence.

The central character is a mother of four, Eilish Stack, whose husband s a teacher and a leader in the teachers' union. The book begins with two officers of the newly formed secret police knocking on her door seeking to interrogate her husband.  He is later picked up and disappears and is never heard from again. The family goes through the typical reactions of families in similar situations the mother holding out hope the eldest son convinced that the father will never be seen again the second son angry, rebellious yet still a child. The teenage daughter is confused and often angry at her mother and the youngest a child in her arms quite oblivious to the turmoil around him.

After his father's arrest and disappearance, the eldest son joins the rebel forces. The story predominantly revolves around Eilesh, her son and daughter, and the baby child. Their world has become a nightmare that she tries to understand, often unsuccessfully. The world around her and her family are falling apart at great speed as she tries bravely with some success to hold them together and make sense of the world around them.

Predictably she loses her job and is forced to survive on her meagre savings and help from friends and relatives. The physical hardships, shortages and the scramble to provide for her family are well depicted.

Her experience with a stonewalling bureaucracy as she tries to understand what has happened to her husband is saddening. Later after second so loses his control and is identified by the regime as a potential dissenter. He is injured in a bomb attack on the neighborhood where they live and is taken to the hospital. Mindless bureaucracy is at its best here he is too old for the children’s hospital and too young for the adult.  Finally, he disappears from the children’s hospital and Eilish traces him to the prison hospital where dissenters are kept. A heart-wrenching moment in the book occurs when she finally gets through the bureaucracy to identify her son's body in the morgue, quite obviously murdered by the regime.

Relatives living in safer countries keep urging her to leave and support her financially to do so. She finally decides to flee with her baby and her daughter.  Is it too late do they make it across. What we also see is the maturing of a teenager into adulthood at a tender age and her consoling Eilish that she did the best she could in a world of conflict and turmoil. There are some powerful passages in the end which reflects the sentiments of peoples around the world who are living through the terror of conflict, and wars, and strife and totalitarianism.

…” the world insisting on itself the cement sedate crumbling giving rise to the rising sap beneath and when the yard has passed there will remain the world’s insistence, the world insisting that it is not a dream and to the looker there is no escaping the dream, the price of life that is suffering, and she sees her children delivered into a world of devotion and love and sees them damned to a world of terror. Wishing for such a world to end wishing for such a world its destruction and she looks at her infant son this child who remains an innocent and she sees how she has fallen afoul of herself and grows aghast being that out of terror comes pity and out of pity comes love and out of love the world can be redeemed again and she can see that the world does not end.”

“It is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event. What ends in your life and only your life. That what is sung by the prophets is the same song sung across time the coming of the sword the world devoured by fire the sun gunned down to the earth in noon and the world cast in darkness the fury of some god incarnate ……”

“…. And the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has be done, what is being done and what will be done to some but not others. The world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and the end of the world is always a local event that comes to your country, and visits your town, and knocks on the door of your house and comes to others as some distant warning a brief report in the news an echo of events that have passed into folklore …. “

This is true of individuals wherever there is conflict. Mothers and fathers holding families together taking decisions with little of no information and never ending hostility which finally consumes them. At the moment of consumption extinction is only for them not others not for those sitting back in their armchairs with a glass of wine unshocked by the horror of mans cruelty to man, and we call ourselves civilized sometimes the oldest one.

I loved the book as it touched me in ways that a novel rarely does. The narrative style is interesting almost as if the conversations are being reported.

 

Smoke and Ashes

By Amitav Ghosh

HarperCollins Publishers (Epub. Edition June 2023)

 

The Ibis Trilogy – Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire- is a historical saga, in three parts, set against the backdrop of events leading up to the First Opium War between Britain and China.  It is very well-researched and focuses inter alia on the opium trade between India and China.

“Smoke and Ashes” one could say is a product of the research work that went into the writing of the Ibis trilogy. The research is broad and detailed and covers almost all aspects of the opium trade from its cultivation, processing, auction, and eventual sale in China. He has referred to works by many experts on China, smuggling, the growth of Capitalism, trade in Opium, and so on.

The Purvanchal (East UP, Bihar to Jharkhand) was the main area where Opium was grown for the East India Company (EIC). The contract farming practices - the meager payments, the corruption of intermediaries, forced cultivation of opium as against food crops are all vividly described. The shift in recruitment to the British Army from these areas to Punjab ensured economic deprivation that has stayed till today.

Ghosh brings an interesting perspective to our perception of China. We know of the West through language, cinema, arts, and so on, but we know little about China though China is pervasive in our lives through objects – tea, pottery, silk, fishing nets (Cheena-vala), the Wok (Cheena Chatti) and so on.

Ghosh traces the development of the Opium trade from the times of the Portuguese and Dutch. The emergence of the EIC and the cartelization of the DEIC and EIC with Indonesia (Java and Sumatra) being left to the Dutch and China being kept by the British.

The need for the opium trade as an economic necessity is well brought out. The West was running a huge deficit on its trade with China and in the absence of viable products of interest to the Chinese, Britain, and Holland had to fund their requirement for Tea and Silk with hard currency. It, therefore, became necessary to push opium to fund the trade. They were in a sense the original drug dealer. After American independence, a number of notable wealthy families, Boston Brahmins, also dipped their beak in the sea of money.

The Government Opium Alkaloid Works – Ghazipur was set up over 200 years ago by the British who also set up a factory in Danapur (now closed).

The book illustrates the differential development of Calcutta (now Kolkatta) and Bombay (now Mumbai) which in a way the gateways for the export of Opium to China. In Calcutta, the trade was firmly in the hands of the EIC with some local businessmen getting crumbs off the table. In Bombay, the trade was in the hands of the Parsis, Baghdadi Jews, Armenians, Marwari, and Gujarati Hindus who would source their opium from the Malwa, and the British only levied a transit tax on them.  Thus, Bombay prospered and grew into a commercial hub over the decades because of the development of a strong business community. Three Parsis and a Baghdadi Jew were on the founding committee of HSBC.

There have been many works in the last twenty years that have covered the sordid history of the Opium Wars. The books range from researched erudite history books emanating from Academic institutions and serious journalistic works that are more readable.

Smoke and Ashes is interesting in that the canvas is not just history but also covers culture, sociology, and economic development. There are a number of interesting characters who come and go both on the British and on the Chinese side. The sheer detail of the research is staggering and would do credit to a scholarly book. Yet the book cannot be called an academic book. Filled with data that are all cited the book still has Ghosh’s interpretations which though valuable and interesting would make it difficult to classify as a research tome.

In recent years history has been made more accessible to the lay public by various authors and the continuum would range from historical fiction moving through journalistic depiction of history to a well-researched history textbook. Smoke and Ashes lies close to a well-researched history text with just a dash of editorializing to make it interesting to a wider audience. Written in a conversational style on a broad canvas moving effortlessly between art appreciation, history, business and economic development, arts and culture, travel and even gardening.

I found the book an eye-opener. Those of us who went to school in the 1960s were indoctrinated through English literature and Indian History written by English authors have often missed out on understanding the role of Britain in the opium trade. Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, the cocaine trafficker, was often referred to as the World’s greatest outlaw. He however pales in comparison to the EIC and Britain in their drug trade. A trade that was foisted on a sovereign power at the point of the gun. This is an inconvenient truth that is missing in our education and even in the education of British children today.  The nasty violent side of colonial history was played out as late as the 1950s in Kenya.

The book has three distinct characteristics – a riveting narrative, a wide canvas ranging from linguistics (Cha, Chah, and Cheeni), history, sociology, travelogue, and even the development of mercantile cities like Mumbai and Calcutta.  At times national and world history intersects with personal history. The book is neither an academic tome nor popular history, like many that have become popular in recent years). It is, however, a fine read and extremely informative one.

“Khasakkinte Itihasam” or “The Legends of Kasak” by O.V. Vijayan

Translated from Malayalam by the author (1930-2005) Penguin 1969

When I read the book, I was reminded of my childhood when my parents and I would make the triennial journey to our hometown near Chalakudy Kerala. Chalakudy in the planes is very different from the scene in Vijayan’s novel - The Legend of Khasak. Yet many images that formed in my mind while reading the book reminded me of Kerala in the late 50s and 60s. With many teachers in the extended family, some of whom would congregate in my maternal grandmother's house at 4:00 PM for a cup of tea before starting their long walk back home, the sound of the word “Mashe” still rings in my ears.

In today's era of polarization and hatred, “Kasak”, is a reminder of a bygone era of tolerance and mutual support which is much stronger among the less economically fortunate. The book, however, true to form, is replete with the multiple fractions that exist in Indian society in general and Kerala society in particular. The innocence of the intermingling was a delight to read.

O. V. Vijayan, like many young people in Kerala, was drawn to the communist ideology. He was disenchanted by communism after the purge of Imre Nagy by the USSR under Khrushchev. The book written immediately after his disenchantment with Soviet-style Marxism is reflected in the main character Ravi who is himself undergoing a process of self-enquiry after his disenchantment with formal education. His exploration into life and his delight and wonder at the richness of the canvas of rural Kerala have been caught vividly in the short book. As narrated by Vijayan himself at the end of the book, he has set the book on a real village “Thasarak” where his sister was posted, as a bare-foot teacher in a single-teacher school. This was an experiment carried out by the Government of Kerala to bring literacy to remote parts of the state. His parents accompanied his sister and he joined them soon after having lost his teaching job at a college. The college authorities did literature a great service by sacking him which enabled him to produce “The Legend of Khasak” his first major work and still his most celebrated novel. One must also thank Khrushchev for changing the novel from a pedantic paean to communism to a slice of the rich socio-cultural milieu of a Kerala village.

The canvas is not vast, it is a short book all of 188 pages. The tapestry, however, is rich and complex with a riot of colours making the book into a page-turner. Ravi is the central character but as such the book is not a story of his travels of travails. Instead, it is almost a collection of short stories revolving around incidents involving various characters in the book.  These characters come alive under the deft penmanship of the author. The story truly reveals the complex multi-layered society that was in Kerala in the 50s and 60s. The book in the genre of magic realism is a delightful read and my major regret is that I am not able to read it in the original Malayalam. I am told some of the impact has been lost in translation.

My earliest memory of a Malayalam story narrated by my mother is that of a poor widowed mother striving to celebrate Onam with her two small children. The mother a daily wage labourer has very little to spare for the festival. I don’t know the author or the rest of the story. I do remember that she managed to give her children an oil bath, get them new clothes, and have a breakfast of idli (steamed rice cakes). While reading The Legends of Khasak I was transported back to that world when I must have been 6 or 7. A world of poverty and dignity where even the wealthy eschewed flaunting their wealth and seemingly the difference between the rich and the poor was not so skewed. Will have to wait for three decades of Neo-liberal policies before that happens.

The book is short but very rich in characterization and narrative covering a large multitude of events that give us a glimpse into rural Kerala its society, and the flora, fauna, and the land itself. The characters and well developed and it is amazing that this has been done in just a few words. Many events are metaphorical and reality and the magical blend seamlessly to give us a delightful read.

 

Winners Take All by Anand Giridhardas

Penguin Audio 2019

In general, the world over, socialist forms of economic development have given way to free markets by eliminating price control, deregulating capital markets, and lowering trade barriers. With the fall of the USSR and with China all but giving up Mao’s economic ideas in content if not in form, socialists are in retreat the world over. The ultimate fall must have been when the Labour Party in the UK jettisoned its socialist cloak under Tony Blair. Jeremy Corbyn’s effort at driving on the left side of the political road was roundly rebuffed by voters who preferred an Indian-origin plutocrat to anything resembling the left. In India, too socialist deities have been mothballed by major political parties except the CPM which seems to be in a time warp. Some pious statements at election time are made about the need for succor for the poor, which both the voters and the voted know are not for serious consideration.

One can look at four decades of neoliberalism through a number of lenses. Some may look at it with economic and income distribution data or in terms of wealth creation or GDP growth. As we add social dimensions to the economy the story is mixed.

Anand Giridhardas in “Winner Takes All” looks at the people side of capitalism. Capitalism and charity have been a feature of the capitalist society. It would not be out of place for the company that has displaced a large number of workers to run soup kitchens for the poor. Or for a company that is at the heart of the opioid crisis to donate millions for social causes like supporting museums and art galleries for the edification of the common public. Anand Giridhardas tears the mask of this charade of help that the winners provide the losers. The help is provided without disturbing the framework that created the losers in the first place and ensures that the winners keep on winning.

One of the interesting facets of the book is that it helps us understand the difference between thought leaders and critical thinkers. This is the century of thought leaders; critical thinkers are in decline or cloistered in academic citadels. Anyone who is successful as an entrepreneur, or writer, can be accepted as a thought leader if he or she can strike a chord in the minds of the cognoscenti. Thought leaders are like problem solvers with a hammer – solutions are unidimensional.

In addition, all solutions are within the framework of the market economy which created the thought leader in the first place. The problem with thought leadership is the absence of dissent and intellectual autonomy not to mention the following of an interactive process to arrive at solutions that are more universal in their appeal. In fact, some thought leaders' solutions appeal often to only the thought leader and a small group of people who are starry-eyed by the success of the thought leader in their field.

One of the fallouts of neo-liberal economic thought has been the belief that the models used to generate wealth by entrepreneurs and corporates are equally applicable in the provisioning of social services and aid to the less fortunate. This has also been the basis on which various state and central governments have sought support from top-ranking corporate consulting firms for the provisioning of public goods and services. A fallout of this is that often efficiency trumps effectiveness with the result that the basic malady remains unaddressed.

An interesting development is the rise of social entrepreneurship and social venture capital over the last two decades. In many cases, they are trying to balance returns with social goals which often results in falling between two stools.

This book by Anand Giridhardas is an important reality check on the whole framework of winners in global capitalism helping the losers. Well investigated with powerful case studies it is a must-read for those who are interested in economics and society.

Victory City – Salman Rushdie

Penguin Random House India 2023

 

I must confess that this is my first Salman Rushdie book, and I am mesmerized by the tale that has been woven in a mere three hundred and fifty-odd pages. The book was released after the failed assassination attempt in August 2022. Grounded in the real world of the erstwhile Vijayanagara Empire which has given us the wonderful ruins of Hampi the tale weaves fantasy and historical reality into a rich tapestry of motifs that shock us at times, make us stand back and admire the beautiful craft of the author and sometimes immerse us into the lives of characters in the book.  We move seamlessly between fantasy and reality in a manner where we cannot distinguish one from the other until we stand back and reflect.

Rushdie is there with the best as an exponent of the craft of Magic Realism a genre of literature that emerged a hundred years ago and was crafted by Latin American authors into the art that it is today. Magical Realism has realistic settings – here the very real Vijayanagara Empire of Kishnadevaraya. Magical elements like bringing up a fully functional city overnight and whispering people's lives into the first citizens’ ears are a part of the many magical elements. The main protagonist, Pampa Kampana, has magical attributes and human foibles. The magic is unexplained except for the rather fleeting reference to the goddess giving her the powers after her mother commits suttee. Throughout the book she has powers and then again, she is powerless. Critiques of society and the polity across the globe are liberally smattered throughout the book and need very little panning to glean them out. Interestingly the book follows a clear narrative arc through Pampa Kampana’s life from a little child of nine to her death after more than a quarter of a millennium. As the dynasties rise and fall over these two hundred fifty-odd years one comes away with the feeling that it is a repeating pattern the rise to glory and the eventual decay and fall. Every ruler in this book fails the common citizens in the end. In a way, it is the story of modern governments the world over. The rise, the optimism, the glory, the decline, and the change which make the king unrecognizable from the original. The narrator acts like a translator of Pampa Kampana’s Jayaparajaya (Victory and defeat). Denying scholarly credentials, the narrator translates the work into English adding only when there are places that have been skipped or are untranslatable. The translator, Salman Rushdie claims to be a “spinner of yarns” retelling the story for “entertainment and possible edification” of the reader, but what a yarn even Pampa Kampana, with magical powers, would have been hard pressed to weave a better one.

The language is delightful raising the novel to a work of art. There is subtle humour which while not raising guffaws leaves us with a smile in the corner of our lips. The number of characters that have been introduced and developed is astonishing in a novel of this length. Many authors would have to devote twice the number of pages to achieve what has been done in three fifty plus pages. This charactar development has been done keeping the flow of the narrative - the seem like full-fledged tributaries (rivers in their own right) that have melded into the central stream seamlessly.

One of the central facets of Victory City is the wide acceptance of migration. Migration is an important way for people in developing countries to better their wealth. In the period in which the story is set China and India would have been the most economically prosperous countries in the world. This attracts migrants from developing countries like Portugal and the Arab world to seek trade and careers in Bisnaga and Vijayanagar its capital.

The city of Vijayanagar and the country Bisnaga is visualized by Rushdie to encourage independent thought, where women and men have equal rights and opportunities. Kindness, creativity, and scholarship abound making it an ideal for all time. In the end time and time again the imperfections of humanity and the inability of the rulers to rise and see the larger beautiful picture change that ideal country into one that is commonly seen around the world. The continuous need to go to war that even enlightened rulers cannot avoid help us see them as men with feet of clay. A very powerful message at a time when the world is witnessing the Ukraine war, turmoil in Sudan, and growing tensions between China and Taiwan.

Victory City has its share of irreverence – of kings (leaders) religious or temporal and human weaknesses of the rich and powerful. Even Pampa Kampana, bestowed with divine powers, is not immune to human weaknesses. The book read literally can be misunderstood by many. Some may consider it flippant, and others from one group or the other may find it offensive in parts. Rushdie has been threatened by fundamentalists in Islam as irreverent. If misunderstood counterparts in Hinduism could also take offense.

The book for me is at once a delightful yarn with not-so-well-hidden nuggets of comments on serious issues that plague us today. It is also a nifty commentary on history. Empires rise and fall, battles are won and lost from dust they come and to dust they go. When I think about the central theme of the book “The Little History of the World” by E H Grombrich one is struck by the absence of permanence of great empires and the theme of their rise and fall is repeated. Victory City is in some ways a small window into that historical phenomenon. A wonderful read it is a rich and complex tapestry.

A Little History of the World

E.H. Gombrich Yale University Press; New Haven and London. 4^th Estate New Delhi – 2022

Ernst Gombrich was born in 1909 and was an art historian by training. He is best known for his book on art history “The Story of Art.” His earlier book is “Little History of the World”. A young publisher had offered him a children's book of English history with a view of translating it into German. Not impressed by the book sent to him he told the publisher that he could write a better book. At that time he was completing his Ph.D. at the University of Vienna in 1936. He was also in correspondence with a friend’s young daughter curious to know what was keeping him busy. He enjoyed trying to explain his subject to her in a way that she would understand. The language of the entire book is like a conversation between the writer and a child.  His sample chapter was well received by the publisher who insisted that the entire book should be written in a period of six weeks. The book was plotted out selecting episodes for inclusion by asking himself which events of the past have touched most lives and are best remembered. The book came out in 1936 titled “Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für Junge Leser” (A Brief World History For Young Readers).

Ernst Gombrich, of Jewish origin, fled to England in 1936 with his family to take up an assignment at the University of London. His book was banned by the Nazis for pacifism. The book was re-written and updated and translated by him into English towards the end of his life. His granddaughter completed the work after his death (2001) in 2005. The approach he took was to make the pursuit of understanding history a pleasurable inquiry. “I want to stress that this book is not and never was intended to replace any textbooks of history that may serve a very different purpose at school. I want my readers to relax and to follow the story without having to take notes or to memorize names and dates.” He wrote this as a preface to the Turkish edition. I certainly, closer to one’s second childhood, did just that and it was the most pleasurable experience. Smita joined me, despite her busy schedule, in some of the chapters. Written with light humour.

The book starts with the beginning of the world and weaves a delightful tapestry through the ages civilization by civilization. Moving from Egypt through Mesopotamia, and Greece and crossing over to Italy and then on to Europe. India and China are often the missing civilizations in histories written in the West. Jingoistic Indians may have an apoplectic fit but I recall many years ago examining the history syllabus of Delhi University and finding that less than ten percent was World history.

Much of the book revolves around the rise and fall of countries seeking world domination in a sense, at least of the world they were aware of. In between are developments that are of wider benefit. The development of writing has a chapter. Other developments like the Renaissance are covered along with the changing of influence from one European nation and king to another.

The last chapter covers the 20^th century. The decline of the European powers and the disappearance of tolerance from political life in Germany (we are seeing a stunning revival of that in many countries around the world with fractured democracies, including the US which prides itself on being the flag bearer of democracy.) The book ends with the dismantling of the Soviet Republic and the decline of communism as we knew it.

An eminently readable or listenable book that gives us in an easily accessible way a bird’s eye view of the history of Europe. What is missing is the history of Africa and the role played by European colonisers in various parts of Africa. The US too receives scant consideration though the civil war is touched upon. The Chapter “Across the Seas” talks of opium wars in China, the revolution in Japan in support of the Mikado and Japan’s modernisation, and the Civil War in the US.  It is understandable that authors focus on areas they know best. Looking at the glass as half full rather than half empty helps us appreciate the quality of the work in the areas and eras it covers.

Bhima Lone Warrior

MT Vasudevan Nair HarperCollins Publishers India

Translated by Gita Krishnankutty

 

The original work in Malayalam is titled Randamoozham and was published in 1984. The English translation was done Gita Krishnankuty in 2013.

The Mahabharata is an epic in its own right and along with Gilgamesh, Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, it ranks as one of the great epics of the world. Considering that it combines, history, geography, botany, and zoology not to mention statecraft it is way ahead of the Iliad. Starting in 1988 the Mahabharata now rechristened in Hindi as Mahabharat was serialized on Doordarshan for over two years and 90 episodes. At its peak, it had a viewership of 22.5 million. In reality that viewership should be multiplied manyfold as people in large numbers usually congregated around available television sets. MT Vasudevan Nair’s rendering of the Mahabharata is unique in that the protagonist of the tale is Bhima. It is also a far cry from the sanitized version that was fed to us in the 80s. To top it all it makes for riveting reading. It goes back to being what Mahabharata originally was – a heroic tale albeit not of Arjuna or Yudhishthira or Krishna but of Bhima. Through Bhima’s eyes.

In Bhima, all the characters of the Mahabharata descend from the pedestal where they had been placed by those who wish to convert the narrative from an epic to a religious text. They are all human with all the incumbent human weaknesses. As the author himself says he was moved by the Malayalam translation of the epic by Kunjukuttan Nambiar and Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s English translation of the Mahabharata. They are the two most neutral translations of the epic. The perspective that the author takes is unique.

An important aspect is the treatment of women throughout the novel.  Bhima does not behave differently from other men as depicted in the Mahabharata. That he questions the fairness of his and his brother’s actions at various stages raises universal questions. The story starts with Bhima, forgetting the rules of the great journey, staying behind with Draupadi, who had collapsed, on their last walk.

Time and again Bhima meets women marries them and forgets about them. The story of Hidimbi whom he marries after killing her rakshasa brother is a case in point. He is separated from her when they leave the forest to spend a year in a village in an anonymous fashion. One can sense in the text the helplessness of Bhima who is instructed to leave her behind by his mother and Yudhishthira. Yet he forgets her and remembers with regret only when his son born from Hidimbi – Ghatotkacha joins the Pandava army before the battle.

The conversation with Yudhishthira about Draupadi being a common bride of the Pandavas is fascinating. During- the conversation, the contradiction between words and action when men relate to women is well depicted. Bhima is a quintessential male chauvinist like the others, but he is able to see his and others’ actions with dismay.

Draupadi is portrayed as one who is fascinated by war and the fights. She is never tired of hearing Bhima narrate the stories of his various battles. She also has him twisted around her finger and sets him off in search of rare flowers.

Bhima sees the weaknesses of his brothers and even of Krishna and many a time is dismayed by their actions and words. One of the most powerful statements in the book is when Bhima says to himself “The war we were getting ready to fight was between a king who had wagered a woman and king who had accepted his wager.”

In the novel, there is a lot of anger in Bhima. Anger against his brother mainly against Yudhishthira whose contradictions are plainly visible to him. Against his mother when Vishoka reveals to him that Karna is Kunti’s firstborn. He is a lonely man treated like a fool sometimes and with love at others. He is constantly dealing with disappointments and is often slighted. Yet he is shown to have a good understanding of those around him and carefully conceals his thoughts from others. In his dealings with people who are often treated with contempt by the other Pandavas, he shows great sensitivity.

I found the book a great read which is not surprising since the Mahabharata is always a fascinating story. The narration of that story from the perspective of Bhima gives it enormous potential which has been used to the fullest by the author.

The Living Mountain

Amitav Ghosh; 4^th Estate New Delhi - 2022

 

“The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.” (National Geographic)

The formal term for the current epoch is Holocene which began 11,700 years ago. These classifications are based on scientific analysis of rock layers, and fossils found within them. In 2000 the term Anthropocene (anthropo – man and cene – new) was coined and popularised by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen. The debate of whether the Anthropocene is a separate era is still continuing. While the broad consensus is that this era started in the 1950s there are those who think it must be attributed to the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800s and some believe the dropping of the atom bomb is the starting point of the year. For me, this epoch starts with Renaissance – “Man is the measure of all things – Protagoras” became the central tenet. Protagoras was talking about the individual and that each person’s perception of reality is the ultimate authority.  Compound this with the belief that wants are ever increasing and the human capacity for invention is boundless we have an explosive combination for self-destruction.

“The Living Mountain” by Amitav Ghosh and published by Fourth Estate is a multi-layered fable. I listened to the Audible version read very nicely by Pallavi Bharti and Ranjit Madgavkar (May 2022). It is a fascinating fable that like an onion has many layers.

The fable at one level is a short summary of all colonial activity that started in the 15th century led by countries like Spain Portugal England and others. It reminds us once again that the desire to garner resources is at the core of all colonial activity. Modern-day economic colonialism is not different.

Man’s relationship with the environment is another important thread in the fable. The transition from coexistence and mutual sustenance to unsustainable exploitation clearly reflects what we have seen during the three centuries of the industrial revolution.

The hierarchical structure of human society and the exploitative relationship that exists between the haves and the have-nots is a third thread in the fable.

These three threads by themselves are possibly worthy of three separate books. Consequently, when they are dealt with in a short fable the treatment would look superficial. This fable is akin to a road sign - it warns us that there is danger ahead without detailing the danger or its consequences. If it can help us slow down and reflect its purpose would have been served. I, however, fear that like most road signs on the expressway most of us are likely to ignore it to our peril.

The Living Mountain complements The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the unthinkable, written by Ghosh earlier. The Living Mountain converts the message of The Great Derangement into something that a child in junior school can understand. Maybe this should be compulsory reading for class 7 students when they will also be able to link the narrative to what they see around them.

All the Light We Cannot See (A Novel)

Anthony Doerr; Publisher - 4th Estate London

 

I came across this novel purely by chance and I consider myself lucky that I paused and took time off to read “All The Light We Cannot See” By Anthony Doerr. An added pleasure was that Smita and I read the book to each other.

 

The two protagonists in the book are both similar and yet completely different from each other. The story is predominantly set in the Second World War through the last few chapters bringing the reader into the 21st century.

 

A beautiful interplay of the delight of unstructured learning, the war, parent-child relationship, survival, endurance, moral obligations, and a political commentary on fascism, makes for a lovely collage of day-to-day living, dramatic tension, hope, despair, fear, pathos, and finally serenity - calmness like a placid lake.

 

Written as if the story is being narrated by the two main protagonists the language is engaging. The purist may be troubled by three-quarter-page chapters, but it makes for a delightful read. In addition, the flitting from one protagonist to the other from chapter to chapter and the movement back and forth across timelines ensures that we are on our toes. The writing style holds our undivided attention. There is never a dull moment in the novel though in terms of timelines the period covered in most of the book is a mere decade. 

 

To ensure that our romantic cravings are satiated boy meets girl finally, after a long winding route which takes one from Paris to Brittany and the other from Leipzig to Russia and finally Brittany. The meeting is short and bittersweet. The book finally ends with all loose ends tied up and we are left with a feeling of satisfaction. 

Microbe Hunters

The Classic Book on the Major Discoveries of the Microscopic World by Paul de Kruif (Published by Audible Studios – Narrated by Michel Quinlan)

The book was first published in 1926. I read the condensed version of it as a young boy of about 12 in the second half of the 60s. It had appeared in Readers Digest Condensed books. In the ’60s, these condensed books were a window into the world of current literature. The Audible version was released in 2017, and the book is as fresh as it was in 1966.

As a student of science whose enthusiasm far exceeded his ability, I was drawn into the romance of inventors, discoverers and microbe hunters of yore. To my mind, their working in grey, ill-lit laboratories with little protective gear was a great adventure into a little-understood world. When I started studying the sciences, I realised that science before the 20^th century was different from science today. Then, the field was so flat that anyone with curiosity and a keen eye could become a scientist if they put their mind to it. That few did, is another matter.

The book starts with Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch lens grinder. He took a bit of material from between his teeth and looked at it under a lens. He was the first man to see microbes – small little animals prancing around under his lens. He was invited to be a member of the Royal Society and carried on a scientific correspondence with the venerable members about his observations of microbes. His reports were liberally peppered with village gossip. Since he retained his membership till death, his writings must have much scientific value.

We then move to Italy to the laboratories of Spallanzani, a priest. A catholic priest’s work on biogenesis undermines the theory of spontaneous generation. The last nail in the coffin of that theory was hammered by Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur has two chapters sandwiching Robert Koch, another great microbe hunter, contemporaries and competitors. Pasteur developed the vaccine for rabies. The chapter is dramatic due to the story of the boy from Russia being bitten by a rabid wolf 14 days before reaching Pasteur. Pasteur and Koch set the foundation stones for the field of immunology, study and cure of bacterial diseases.

Roux and Behring follow the second chapter on Pasteur. Behring was able to take the work of Roux forward into immunisation for diphtheria. Behring is credited to be the founder of serum therapy. Emile Roux discovered tetanus anti-toxins. Roux and Behring were both assistants of Robert Koch. Koch, Roux and Behring were all awarded the Nobel prize instituted in 1901. Interestingly Pasteur never did.

The book moves on to Metchnikoff. He was the first to discover a process of immunity called phagocytosis and the cell responsible for it phagocyte.

Theobald Smith brought microbe hunting to the US. Known for propounding the Law of Declining Virulence, his major breakthrough work was identifying an arthropod linked with the transmission of disease. For the first time, insects were connected as an important vector for disease.

David Bruce comes next with his path-breaking work to treat Malta fever (named after him as Brucellosis) and identify the cause of yellow fever.

Ross and Grassi, eminent scientists and eminent rivals, independently discovered the malaria parasite. Ross found the transmission cycle in culicine mosquitoes and birds infected with Plasmodium relictum. Grassi established that human malaria was also transmitted by mosquitos – anophelines.

Walter Reed, a US Army doctor, follows Ross, Grassi, and mosquitoes. He extended the work of Carlos Finlay to establish that mosquitoes were a vector in the cause of yellow fever. To his great credit Walter Reed always acknowledged the pioneering work of Finlay.

Paul Ehrlich is the last in the book. Distinguished in haematology, immunology and antimicrobial chemotherapy, he discovered arsphenamine, a cure for syphilis.

The stories of each microbe hunter are written with passion and help the reader relive each researcher’s emotional scientific, and human challenges. Reading this book during the Covid pandemic helps one understand the trials, tribulations and frustrations of those trying to understand microbes and make life safer.

 

Poets Corner: The One and Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family by John Lithgow

Listened on Audible Narrated by the Author along with Morgan Freeman, Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren, Glen Close and Gary Sinese. Hachette Audio publishes the audiobook.

Anyone inflicted with English education in India in the 60s would have had the experience of reading poets like Wordsworth, Longfellow, Frost, Shakespeare and many more. I recall that I was not too fond of poetry, convinced that memorising poems was yet another method devised by teachers to torture children in the same vein as learning to recite from memory multiplication tables from 1x1 to 20x20. I must confess I never had a great love for poetry except those of Shakespeare in the first thirty-odd years of my life. It was only later that I started reading some of the poets. I am sure that my love for poetry would have been greater in my early years if I had read a book like the Poets Corner.

The book covers poets from many centuries. The 50 poets covered are from The United Kingdom and The United States of America. Rather than follow a chronological order, the book hops from century to century, moving back and forth across centuries and the Atlantic Ocean. The author’s love for poetry in general and for the poems selected in the text is transparent and evident to the listener. As he says, his passion for poetry was infused by his grandmother and father at an early age. This collection of 50 poets covers all important poets in the English language, particularly those from the UK and the US.

The book provides a brief introduction to each poet and an adjective that describes them and their poetry. The short description and the adjective are helpful pointers for those who may not be familiar with the poet to appreciate the poem being read. I listened to most of them with my eyes closed, visualising the imagery created by the introduction and the poem. It was a delightful experience.

For most poets, John Lithgow has selected two poems based on his personal preference and writes lovely introductions to the poet. Then, John Lithgow and a galaxy of stars we are more familiar with on the screen read the poems.

To test the claim that the book is best enjoyed by listening with the entire family, my wife and I listened to the whole book over many breakfasts, with my mother-in-law joining occasionally. I think listening to this audiobook was far more powerful than if we had read aloud from a print version. I would have missed the inflexions and intonations.

At several places, the author mentions poems that have been recited by the poet and the recording of which is available on the net. So I guess my next project will be to listen to some of those poems.

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

Published by Penguin (Kindle Edition)

The Hungry Tide is the 3rd book by Amitav Ghosh that I have had the pleasure of reading. While reading this book, I read Jungle Nama in Audible. It is a book in verse, and it was delightful to listen.  The original legend dates back to the 19^th century and is composed in a Bengali verse meter known as dwipodi poyar. Jungle Nama, adapted in poyar like meter, narrates the story of Bonbibi and Dukhe. Bonbibi appears in The Hungry Tide too.

The Hungry Tide is a complex novel that moves between two unconnected yet intertwined stories. One of the protagonists, Kanai, runs a very successful translation business in the national capital New Delhi. Piyali or Piya has been researching river dolphins around the world. At the same time, Fokir is a fisherman who ekes out a meagre existence fishing for crabs in the Sundarbans. The story of Piya, Kanai, and Fokir takes place in a boat in the Sunderbans.

Kanai is our typical cynical upper-class gentleman with a veneer of liberalism. In a moment of severe stress, his class and caste consciousness come through. Fokir is stoic, silent, strong, forged in the furnace of adversity. Piya is a product of her heritage and environment. Born to Indian parents, the father is comfortable and well adjusted in a foreign land while her deceased mother wasted away in isolation. Her independence and passion for her profession are, in some respects, the result of her experience.

The other story is the story of Nirmal and Neelima. In many respects, they represent the liberal, educated individuals of the 70s in India and Bengal. Both start with strong socialist and communist leanings. Over the years, they drift apart, Neelima moving to the pragmatic centre while Nirmal stagnates. Neelima sets up a significant health and social welfare facility in Lucibari, a particularly backward region. Nirmal, on the other hand, focuses on the school.

On his retirement, with time on his hands, he discerns the chasm between Neelima and himself. Evaluating his life, he sees the distance he had moved from being the idealistic leftist in his youth. He rekindles his idealism by getting involved in the resistance of settlers in Morichjhapi against the Government. The contrast between him and his erstwhile leftist intellectual colleagues is starkly revealed during the feast thrown by Morichjhapi residents for the influential persons from Calcutta, most of whom are supporters of the Left Front Government. One recalls the scene in Animal Farm where humans and pigs are feasting and clinking glasses while the lesser animals look in at them through the window. Fokir’s mother refuses to leave before the imminent police action but convinces Nirmal to save her son. Nirmal entrusts the boy with the boatman, who brought him through the police blockade to Morichjhapi. Fokir is eventually brought up by the boatman. Nirmal chooses to stay back and dies in the police raid.  In some ways redeeming himself by making the ultimate sacrifice for a cause with which he identifies.

Lusibari and Garjontola are the author’s imaginations. There is an Emilybari in the Sundarbans. Morichjhapi is a real place where a massacre of mostly lower caste immigrants from Bangladesh happened. They fled their inhospitable resettlement colonies in Dandakaranya and came and settled in Morichjhapi. This forgotten massacre was the most significant human rights violation in independent India till the Nellie massacre, anti-Sikh riots and the Gujarat riots. Ironically, it happened under the CPM led left front regime in West Bengal.

A striking feature is a description of the tenuous balance between life and death in the Sundarbans. Losing family members to tigers, crocodiles, or floods is a part of life, and few families are unaffected. Moreover, the reverence of the local population for the forest is in sharp contrast to the indifference and contempt the majority of us who acquiesce to the exploitation forests feel. The other fascinating aspect is the cult of Bonbibi, a cross-community deity of the woods. Unfortunately, in recent times, each community has been claiming Bonbibi for their own, keeping with the winds of polarisation.

A broad canvas, well-developed characters, an important message, and an absorbing tale cannot ask for more from a novel.

The Professor and The Madman- by Simon Winchester

Harper Collins 1998

One of the protagonists in the book is  James Murray (1837-1915). A Scottish lexicographer and philologist. He was the primary editor of a New England Dictionary of Historical Principles, later becoming the Oxford English Dictionary. Herbert Coleridge was the first editor, but his untimely death slowed the progress of the project. Murray started his career as a grammar school teacher and served as president of the Philological Society. He undertook to edit a vast dictionary intended as an inventory of words used in English from the 12th century.

William Chester Minor was an American army surgeon.  Born in 1834, W C Minor served in the union army during the American Civil War, after which he moved to England. Suffering from schizophrenia, he shot a man and was committed to Broadmore Criminal Lunatic Asylum in 1872.  He was deported to the U.S. in 1910 after protests over his treatment. During his incarceration at Broadmore, he became one of the principal contributors of 16th and 17th-century quotations to the dictionary's first edition. The Yale School of Medicine has this to say about Minor. "Some alumni of the School of Medicine make groundbreaking medical discoveries. Some become leaders of medical institutions. William C. Minor, M.D. 1863, also left his mark: he developed schizophrenia, killed a man and became a brilliant linguistic scholar while in an asylum for the insane." To be clear, he's the madman in the book.

Minor was born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, where his parents were missionaries. Incidentally, Ceylon, often called Serendib by Arab traders, is the source of the word serendipity contributed by Horace Walpole. His three princes of Ceylon had the enchanting habit of stumbling across wonderful things. Minor's life is traced from his birth to adulthood, his career in the civil war and his hospitalisation for mental illness. He was retired from the army and received a pension for the rest of his life. In 1871 he reached London. Then via a murder, he came to Broadmore.

The development of a dictionary in the English language is a recent phenomenon. The project started in the late 18th century and was completed at the turn of the century.

The Professor and the Madman introduce the two characters and then move into a dictionary's history in English. Samuel Johnson had been thinking about and planning the structure of his dictionary for many years. The absence of a dictionary seems to have been a universal complaint led by authors like Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, John Dryden, and Jonathan Swift. Interestingly, despite dictionaries in French and German, a comprehensive dictionary in the English language arranged from A to Z was started in the late 19th century. Samuel Johnson developed a master list of English words with 115,000 illustrative quotations. Although he finally settled on 43,500 headwords for some words, definitions were created from scratch. Unfortunately, the completed work was published only in 1755. The delay had been caused by Oxford University not giving him a degree that he believed would greatly enhance the sale of the dictionary. The degree finally came on April 15th 1755.

Minor wrote a letter to Eliza Merrett, the widow of the man he had killed. He offered to support her financially and add to the contributions already being made by his stepmother. Sometime in late 1879, Mrs Merrett sought permission from the authorities at Broadmoor to visit Dr  Minor. It was allowed as an experiment. According to the sanitarium authorities' notes, the meeting was initially tense but progressed well, and by its end, Mrs Merrett agreed to come again. Before long, she made monthly visits and eventually decided to bring parcels of books to Dr Minor from the antiquarian dealers in London.

Dr Minor established contact with Murray, and his support was gratefully accepted with "considerable gratitude" and a request to start reading and making word lists. Then, without realising where Dr Minor was situated, Murray also formally entered into an agreement that officially invited Dr Minor as a volunteer reader. "For many years thence, no one in the Scriptorium was to learn anything about him (Dr Minor), except for the undeniable truth that he was very good at his job, very quick, and on his way to becoming an indispensable member of the great new dictionary team.

As doctor miners insanity increased, the flow of words also increased. Many of the words that fascinated him word were Anglo Indian reflecting his birthplace. Bhang, brinjal, catamaran, cholera, and cutcherry all found their way into his contribution. Dictionary staff at Oxford noticed that his frantic pace reduced in the summer. Result of Dr Minor enjoying the warm days outside away from his books. Autumn brought him back to his frenetic pace, and the flood of words started anew. He was fond of inundating the staff with packages of slips, more quotations than were required for any word.

When finished in 1888, nine years after the project started, the preface to the first completed volume contains a 1 line mention- "Dr W C Minor of Crowthorne". Though Crowthorne was only 40 miles from Oxford, Dr Minor, a prolific contributor and seemingly distinguished gentleman, was never seen. It tickled the curiosity of the editorial team and Murray. Finally, the mystery of Dr Minor was solved for Murray by the Librarian of Harvard College when he was visiting Murray.

In 1910 Dr Minor was deported to the United States and confined to army hospitals until his death.

It is a fascinating book as much about the history of The Oxford English Dictionary as it is about the tragic Dr Minor or Sir James Murray. One can enjoy the meandering tale of the development of the dictionary and the travails of Dr Minor interwoven with the story of Murray, the principal editor of the first edition.

Jungle Nama - A story of the Sundarbans - By Amitav Ghosh

Published by Harper Collins

I "read" the book on Audible where it is narrated by Ali Sethi.

It is a verse adaptation of the legend of Bon Bibi, the goddess of the forest. The book was interesting as I am currently reading the novel Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, set in the Sundarbans.

The entire book is in verse and is based on the 19th-century Bengali legend composed in the “dwipodi poyar” verse style. Jungle-Nama too adopts a similar verse style which makes fascinating listening. Dwipodi poyar – ‘the two-footed line’ is rhyming couplets of 24 syllables each.

Dukhe Jatra from Bonbibi Johurnama is the inspiration for Jungle Nama.  Bonbibi Johuranama narrates the story of Bonbibi, the protector of the Sundarbans. Honey collectors and fisherfolk generally chant verses from the Johuranama before entering the forest. The forest department, even today, has a puja for Bonbibi before allowing licensed honey collectors into the Sundarbans forest. As a mark of respect to Bonbibi, those entering the forest refrain from entering at night, do not defecate or smoke in the woods and enter with “clean hands” - without weapons.

Bonbibi is also known as Bandevi, Bandurga and Byaghara Devi; as the legend goes, she was born in Saudi Arabia. Her father abandoned her mother in a forest while she was pregnant, at the insistence of his first wife. As a result, Bonbibi and her brother were born in the woods, and her mother abandoned her as she could not raise two children. However, fate miraculously reunited the family. A holy woman, Fatima, granted her the possibility of saving forest people. Their search for a place to live brought the brother and sister to the Sunderbans. With the aid of Fatima, Bonbibi defeated the demon Dakkhin Rai and his mother, Narayani. The Sunderbans forests were then divided into two territories, half the land ruled by Bonbibi and the other half by Dakkin Rai – who incidentally adopts the shape of a tiger typically. In a world where people have lost near and dear to tigers, snakes, and crocodiles, it is not surprising that the tiger takes the malevolent role. However, to people with little assets, forced by circumstances to eke out a living in such a hostile environment, Bonbibi held out hope.

The Johuraanama by Abdur Rahim in the 19th century is an adaptation from an epic poem Ray-mangal by Krishnaram Das written in the 17^th century. The Johuranama describes the birth of Bonbibi and her brother and their fight with Narayani, the mother of Dakkin Rai. Narayani could, with her mythical powers, assume different forms, primarily that of a tiger.

Johuranamma also consists of Dukhe Jatra, where Bonbibi saves a young child brought up by his grandmother from being sacrificed to Dakkin Rai.

As with all similar stories, there is good and evil. In an allegorical sense, the battle between good and evil has many dimensions. First, there is the capitalist city-dwelling businessman’s greed for forest wealth. One may sacrifice own kith and kin to assuage this greed. Next, there is the illustration of sustainable coexistence with the forest practised by those who follow Bonbibi and are the beneficiaries of her largesses. Then there is the wide-eyed wonder of youth which draws Dukhe into an exploitative adventure. Finally, at a subtle level, the fable is a plea to retain mosaic and forsake the checked flooring currently in fashion. In the end, like all good fables, good triumphs over evil- Dakkin Rai defeated once again, and Dukhe returns riding on a crocodile with all the wealth in the world back to his grandmother.

The simple tale is captivating and the poetry exquisite. The simple story is a cry for tolerance and understanding of our relationship with our environment.

The Geography of Genius By Eric Weiner

If we start with the expectation that we will have a theoretical explanation and a blueprint for creating the next city of genius, we will be disappointed. The definition of genius is not easy to arrive at, and I am sure there will be little consensus. Take chess; for instance, our definition of genius could depend on our patriotic feelings, on our preference for the kind of game we play or on what we have read. Weiner has chosen creativity as the essential determinant of genius. Creativity is self-evident as a manifestation of genius. If one takes the point of view of creating something extraordinary, the little delta plus, and lasting, then one can have little quarrel with such a definition. It will, however, require a genius to be able to capture creativity in all walks of life and all disciplines. Eschewing a comprehensive treatise on genius the book follows a travelogue model and is eminently readable.

Just finished “The Geography of Genius by Eric Weiner”, a Simon and Schuster e-book on my kindle cloud reader. The blurb on the cover says “Weiner is a superb travel guide: funny, knowledgeable and self-deprecating – The Washington Post”. I read this blurb at the end. I started with the assumption that I would be going through an exciting hypothesis which explains the congregation of genius in certain places around the globe. In the end, I felt it was an outstanding travelogue. When I read the blurb on the cover, I had my ah-ha moment.

It is interesting to speculate how Weiner came to these specific cities as places where genius resided at one time or the other. It seems to be based more on his travels and experiences rather than any prior hypothesis. The reader is taken first through a statement on the definition of genius, which is an essential pre-requisite. The tune of the chapter, tinged with mild humour, suggests a serious scientific work. It is a delightful tour de force as a travelogue taking us through Athens, Hangzhou, Florence, Edinburgh, Calcutta with two dips into Vienna. The final destination is predictable for any book on any subject – Silicon Valley.

As we move from city to city, the contours of genius appear to expand with more variations and subtility in flavours. It feels as if one is looking through a wide-angle lens with broad coverage. By the time we land up in Silicon Valley, the view is almost 360°. Weiner moves effortlessly across time zones in the same chapter merging the ancient with today seamlessly, which is one of the delightful aspects of the book. The other being the mild often self-deprecatory humour that runs throughout the book.

Weiner links up with fascinating people in each of the places he visits. They are not only impressive by themselves – they are knowledgeable about the question at hand. The historical periods discussed come alive very interestingly in their conversations. Carefully selected discussants, lively discussion and a mild sense of humour make for reading with a smile on our lips..

In recent times I have believed that when one travels, it is essential to understand cultures and peoples as much as to gawk at places historical or modern. To this end, one tried to walk through parts of the city, use public transportation, visit small local restaurants or sit in the market place. The book provides a new twist of converting a journey into a quest for answers to an interesting question. Maybe if the COVID crisis abates and travel is once more possible without risk, the next could be an exploration of a theme.

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Pyre – Perumal Murugan

Saroja and Kumaresan fall in love and marry and do not live happily ever after. The fairy tale romance conducted through few words and many glances is beautiful in its simplicity and is in contrast to the trials and tribulations that they go through in Kumaresan’s home village after their marriage.

I had heard about Perumal Murugan but never got around to reading his work a loss I am sure to correct now that I have finished “Pyre” my first book by the author. I was introduced to “Pyre” by Sunayana, my daughter, borrowing her copy to read over daily drive to school.

Written by Perumal Murugan the book is translated into English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan and published by Hamish Hamilton.  The story operates at two levels, caste conflict in a Tamil Nadu village, which by the way is the theme in much of Murugan’s work, and a gripping tragic love story.

In some sense it is a rather simple Romeo and Juliet (Laila Majnu) story boy and girl marrying against the wishes of both families. Their trying to establish a life for themselves intertwined with Kumaresan trying to set himself up economically.

The couple try to set up home in a hostile unhelpful environment of his village. His mother’s hostility, in part determined by the difference in caste and in part driven by her inability to cash her son in the dowry market, is an important theme in Pyre.  The couple try to hide Saroja’s caste, a futile effort given the difference in complexions. This intensifies suspicions and increases the curiosity of the neighbours.

The nature of work that individuals do, and the accident of birth are some of the prime determinants of position in India’s caste hierarchy. Positioning in the hierarchy determines rules of social engagement and acceptability in society. These fissures are sharper in a small village where the anonymity of a large city is not available.

Ours is a deeply fractured society, growing intolerance, polarisation, competition for scarce economic resources and assertion for social equality leads to periodic violence against individuals and sometimes against communities. Mobility across levels of society is often not easy and violently resisted by entrenched castes. This violence often affects the smaller community much more than the dominant one. Pyre deals with this caste conflict through the story of Saroja and Kumaresan, a haunting love story overlaid on the hostile attitude of the community towards them.

Pyre moves like a Hitchcock movie, danger lurks at every turn of the page. I must confess that after holding out for three-fourths of the book I could not resist the temptation to flip to the end and find out what happened. It is, by itself shorn off all socio-political aspects, a gripping yarn.

How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt 

2 years ago

“How Democracies Die” by Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt is a recently (2018) published book on the fragility of democracy.   Across Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and Turkey one often sees the emergence of authoritarian regimes. In many cases they originally start out as democracies and become autocratic with the systematic weakening of various institutions of governance. Democracies are fragile as they are dependent on various arms of the state playing by certain, often unwritten rules, – the “Queensberry Rules” of politics and governance so to say. It requires politicians, state agencies, courts and elected houses to play by certain conventions.

The authors cite Juan Linz (1964) who characterised authoritarian political systems by four qualities

• Limited political pluralism, that is such regimes place constraints on political institutions and groups – legislature, political parties, interest groups;
• Legitimacy based on emotion, identifying the regime as a necessary evil to combat recognizable societal problems like under-development or insurgency;
• Minimal social mobilisation often caused by constraints on the public such as suppression of political opponents, press and anti-regime activities:
• Informally defined executive powers with often vague and shifting powers.

In the words of the authors the US is currently seeing all four of these characteristics in varying degrees. While one or more of these four have been seen earlier, for example prior to the Civil war, the scale and comprehensiveness of all four in play is possibly a more recent phenomenon.

The book highlights two important requirements for democracies to survive – mutual tolerance and forbearance. The former is the recognition by a politician that their opponents have an equal right to participate in the democratic process. An extreme form of tolerance could be two members of parliament from opposing parties car-pooling on their way to parliament. Forbearance means that while rules may permit, or the absence of rules may not prohibit people in political power from carrying out certain actions, but various arms of governance (Presidency, Senate, Congress) will exercise restraint and judiciousness in the exercise of such authority.

This has since broken down in the US evidenced by the attitude of the Senate to President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.  In a period spanning a hundred and twenty-seven years 11 nominations to the US Supreme court were rejected.  Republicans did not reject but delayed confirmation of President Obama’s candidate in 2016 the first time in thirty years, not for reasons of merit of the nominee but to deny the President’s right to nominate justices to the Supreme court. The Republican party had by 2016 systematically weakened democratic conventions over the last forty years. The polarisation of parties ensured that democratic norms would not be observed and a bipartisan approach to issues would be less and less common. “When political opponents view each other as enemies then both mutual tolerance and forbearance  cease to exist.

In India we have a belief that democracy is stronger in the US than in India. This book disabuses readers of that notion. Time and again less educated, poorly nourished and economically disadvantaged Indian voters (at least in absolute comparison to their American counterparts) have humbled leaders with authoritarian tendencies. Indira Gandhi between 1975 and 1977 is the closest that we came to a dictatorship. The last four years have revived memories of the Emergency era but authoritarian actions are subtler today than what they were forty three years ago. The book suggests that countries slip into authoritarian forms of government imperceptibly and that the façade of democracy is retained by almost all authoritarian dictators – particularly those who arrive through the ballot box

The authors outline possible scenarios of how the political drama will unfold in the US. In conclusion they do suggest that broadening of political base, particularly of the Republican party is necessary for the US to step back from the abyss of authoritarianism. The solution they suggest is extremely difficult, that of developing a multi-ethnic society where no ethnic group dominates. The book concludes with a universal statement that in the final analysis the state of democracy in a country depends not on any one leader but on the citizens of that country. – “a shared enterprise”. As with many academic works it is rich in analysis and ideas are well supported by data as also with much of academic literature the solutions are not easy to implement

The book ends with a quote by E.B. White when he was asked to make a statement on “The Meaning of Democracy” 1943 during the Second World War. Some of this may bear repeating – “….. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; …… Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor ………. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. …… Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is”

As I went through the book one was tempted to seek parallels in the situation in India. The electorate in three of the four states had voted out incumbent governments and given majorities to parties opposed to the central government.  A nagging thought that persists is that our founding fathers did well to decide on a parliamentary form of governance as against a presidential form. A parliamentary form of government with multiple parties has possibly some more checks to prevent the emergence of authoritarian leaders. One must hasten to mention that the party plays an important role in preventing a slide into authoritarianism. Something the Congress party failed to check in 1975.