Man in the Dark

The weird world rolls on- a statement from one of the works written by Rose Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter. Miriam is writing a book on Rose Hawthorne. Miriam empathizes with the failed literary career of Rose. Perhaps, she too does not have the confidence as a writer. Miriam is the daughter of August Brill, a seventy two year old book reviewing expert.

In one hundred and eighty pages Paul Auster creates a different world and it is titled ‘Man in the Dark.’ This novel, which is magically real and really magical, tells the story of August Brill and Owen Brick, and all those people related to them.

August Brill, a widower, currently wheelchair bound after a car crash, is no longer active as a book reviewer. But his daughter Miriam, divorcee and her twenty three year old daughter, Katya want him to write about his life for the ‘posterity’. He would like to do it, but thanks to the unfortunate incidents in his life- the demise of his wife Sonia, the breakup between Miriam and her husband Richard, the beheading of Katya’s boyfriend, Titus Small by the Iraqi extremists etc- he is not able to do it. He, like his grand daughter is not able to sleep.

In his sleepless nights, he conjures up a new America, which is in arms against itself. The states are against the centre. Everything is in ruins. The twin towers still stand. There is no Iraq war. But the American states are against the Federal power. They demand freedom from the Federation. They call it the Liberated States of America.

Ownen Brick, a small time magician living with an Argentinean woman, Flora, one day finds himself in a pit, wearing a military uniform. Someone saves him from the pit and assigns him with a mission: to kill a man. He meets Virginia Blaine, his childhood love interest and she turns out to be one of the co-conspirators against the Federal state. The mission is to kill one man who has created this war- and he is none other than August Brill.

Going through a chain of events we come to know that the war is happening in Brill’s mind and that world really exists somewhere. Logic is simple- if this world could exist, then other worlds also could. There are parallel worlds and we do not know about them until we cross the borders by chance or by force.

Paul Auster makes us believe that the world where the American war is on, really exist. The narrative link between the world of August Brill, which is real as we too habit in the world of Brill, and that of Owen Brick, which we do not want to believe as we force ourselves to think about it as only as a phantom or a distant possibility, is created by mixing up two narratives happening in the minds of two people; Brill and Brick.

Like in our ‘real’ life, we too would like to control the lives of other people, but keeping ourselves out of the phantom world that we create for them to suffer. However, any narrative has an intrinsic tendency to include the narrator somewhere in it, either as a controller of the events or as one of the negligible victims, who has only one power, that of witnessing.

Brill is aware of the power of t/his narrative, which he is facilitating in his mind in order to ward off the evils of his times and also to control the torturous sleepless moments. One day he has to enter into the narrative, unwillingly and wait for Brick to come and execute him. However, Brick’s conscience does not allow him to commit a murder for no reason or a reason forced on him by Brill himself.

Finally, Brick pays for his reluctance. He is killed by the Frisk and Duke, who somehow want to end the war by killing the person who has created a world of war.

Paul Auster gives us the guilt of an American citizen, who lives in total conformity with the state and takes a lot of pride in such subjected life. One day, as the novelist prophesizes subtly, the conformed citizen would rebel against the powers that curb him down, at least by creating a parallel world of chaos and freedom.

There is something Baudrillard-ian about this novel. Baudrillard claimed that the Gulf War did not take place because all what had been broadcasted in television were the simulation of a war. In Man in the Dark, we see a world of simulation, but apparently real. The collusion between these two worlds happens in the narrative structures that we make in our imaginations, till we lose control on the worlds that we ourselves have created.

But soon we regain control over the ‘real’ world with families and familiarities around. That is the only safe way to make the ‘weird world’ roll on.

Story of a Broken Leg

One day she broke her leg. She was just climbing down the stairs, holding her husband’s hand, happily chatting away those little nonsense matters, which her scientist husband always disliked. At the last step she tripped.

While falling, she was still holding her husband’s hand. She was wearing a frilled skirt and that spread around her leg like a flower. She thought, I am a flower, just got dislodged by a strong wind, but still hanging from its stem.

Then she smiled. Her husband hurried to pick her up. Oh slowly, she moaned. With the moan that came out her throat uncontrollably, only she realized that she was injured. But she did not know what exactly was broken in her.

This time, with no nonsense topic to discuss, she limped towards the garden bench next to the pool. Her husband made her to sit there, slowly. She clutched his hands as if he was going to leave her. He too was visibly worried. It shouldn’t have happened at this moment, he thought.

Curious kids who were playing around the pool gathered around her and started asking various questions. Aunty, does it hurt too much? How did you fall? Where is it hurting aunty, should I do something for you?

The last question came from a girl child, may be of ten year old. She was wearing a white frock with a lot of flowers printed on it. Only a girl child can ask such a caring question at this tender age, She thought.

Her husband was making some phone calls while hurrying towards the parking lot. Primarily, he was postponing a meeting with his friend, then he was apologizing to another friend saying that he wouldn’t be coming for the dinner.

He helped her to get into the car. He drove in silence. The stereo was playing some music. Suddenly she felt the music very odd inside the car. Why don’t we talk instead of sitting quietly like this? I am in pain I know. May be the music will help me to forget the pain. May be if he talks to me something that would be better, she thought.

He was not in a mood to talk. He was not insensitive or uncaring. He was really worried. He wanted to get her into some hospital’s emergency ward at the earliest. The traffic was terrible in the city and one needed a lot of patience and concentration to drive. Now he was worried and he needed to be extra conscious about his driving.

She looked outside. Everyday sights; she knew each and every building on the way. She knew the small little alleys that quarreled with the main road and ran into thickets and dirty water. She knew the places where these alleys led. She used to go there quite often to get her materials. Yes, she was an artist.

But now the sights looked different. Seeing things through the thin film of pain makes things different, she thought. She noted it down in her mind. I should be making a work about the pain and the visions induced by pain. The car reached the hospital.

Duty doctor came to her without much ado. He took her case quite casually. May be he sees many like me, middle aged women, with broken legs and hands everyday, she thought. Well, let us get an X-ray done, he said. One girl in light green uniform helped her to sit in a wheel chair and rolled her into the X-ray room. Please go and make the payment, the doctor asked her husband and he walked hurriedly towards the cash counter.

He always hurries, she thought wickedly while the broad door panels closed behind her leaving her hurrying husband out. She was made to sit on a high table. She looked at the swollen ankle of her left foot. Farewell to thee my dear ankle, she told her self. She was finding it really funny. She had a broken bone in her left leg and what did was just thinking about in poetic terms. How absured….ouch…..She felt the real pain now as the technician pulled her leg, carefully though.

Yes, there is a hairline fracture here, pointing at the X-ray with a pen, which was obviously a complimentary one, perhaps given to him by one of those medical representatives who wait patiently at the doors with their bulging leather bags, the doctor said. We need to put a plaster cast. No movements for six weeks.

Six weeks, thought she, that is quite a lot of time. But the rider had not yet come. We need to fix the bone with a steel plate and eight screws. Considering your age, it is very necessary. The steel support will be permanent, said the doctor. Hmm..so it is going to be something serious. Do I see some irritation on my husband’s eyes? No he loves me.

Back home she started contemplating about the steel plate inside her. She examined the X-ray pictures taken on a weekly basis to see the progress of her cure. May be for others they do not make much difference, she thought. But it made difference for her. Suddenly she started loving that one steel plate and eight screws, which were not a part of her body till the last few weeks. Now they had become a part of her.

When her husband went out to the Institute, she found she had a lot time. The maid servant came, did the errands and left. She watched the movies, one after the other; some she liked and some she did not. She refused to pick up phone calls as she started contemplating more on the steel plate and the eight screws in her body.

Slowly she stopped watching movies. Instead, she spent her time in speaking to the broken ankle and the steel plate and the screws inside her left leg. She did some drawings of her leg. Then she removed the image of her leg from her drawings. It looked very abstract. No, they were not abstract images. Soon she realized that she was unconsciously drawing the steel plate and eight screws.

The huge sculptural installation that she did exactly one year after her tripping and falling, received one of the prestigious art awards for that year. It was installed at the city park. The City Mayor inaugurated the sculptural installation and praised her to the skies. Many galleries came forward to sponsor her works and she got several invitations to participate in international biennales.

She is a very successful artist now. But she rarely speaks to people. One day I had a chance to talk to her. While talking to her she asked me, Could you discern the images in my award winning sculpture? I was a novice, a new journalist. I said, No.

One steel plate and eight screws, she said.

The Winner Stands Alone but with Angels for Company

Many of my friends do not like reading Paulo Coelho. Whenever I mention his work they tell me, “Look, his masterpiece is The Alchemist. Rest is the repetition of the same.”

Some other friends say, “May be for the Western audience the kind of spirituality he writes about must be appealing. But as Indians we know the spiritual search that he is talking about.”

Another set of friends just smile. I know the meaning of that smile. “Oh, you still read Paulo Coelho, the bestseller type.”

All of them say one thing for sure: Paulo Coelho says the same thing in different ways.

May be that is the reason I like reading him- he says the same thing in hundred different ways.

I remember Bruce Lee, the martial artist and superstar. He says in his biography, “I like the martial artist who can perform the same punch in hundred different ways than the one who can perform hundred different punches in the same way.”

Paulo Coelho belongs to the former category. His single punch is this: The human being in his never ending quest for power, fame and glory, has lost his soul. One needs to search for it. And perhaps, everyone is in a path of this spiritual search.

I have read most of Coelho’s works and each time I find something new. I realize that the same story of different people rendered in different ways could show you a new path, a new experience, a new and unexpected vision.

Hence, reading his latest novel ‘The Winner Stands Alone’ was a pleasure for me. Unlike his other works (mostly set in a particular period in ancient or modern history), this one is a ‘contemporary’ novel. By contemporary I mean the fading baggage of history.

The only historical reference to it is the Afghan War waged by the Russian Army. That too comes as a part of the protagonist’s psychological make up. Otherwise it happens in one day, precisely on 19th March 2008.

Don’t look for the exactitude of the incident narrated in this book. It starts on 3.15 am in Cannes, France. The setting is Cannes International Film Festival. Simultaneously, international fashion shows are also on.

Igor, the protagonist, owner of a huge telecom company in Russia arrives in Cannes in his private aircraft. He is here to ‘destroy worlds’ for retrieving his lost love. His wife Ewe had deserted him two years back in order to live with one of the fashion moguls, Hamid Hussein.

Igor believes that by killing a person, he could destroy one ‘world’, which would send messages to his former wife who is present in Cannes along with her new husband. Igor believes that he saves a life by destroying a world.

It is a thriller, with sex, lies and of course video tapes and surveillance. Igor befriends a young peddler, Olivia. He kills her after knowing that her life is not going anywhere with her abusive boyfriend. Then he kills Javitz, a film distributor. Then he kills Maureen, an aspiring film maker. Then, the lot falls on a famous film actor.

Each murder, Igor carries out meticulously without leaving any trace of suspicion. The Cannes Police spend hours to nab the serial killer but in vain.

Igor does not select his victims though he plans the method of killing flawlessly. The victims come to him by chance or by choice. He feels that he saves them and he identifies himself with Jesus Christ with a mission to save the world from people who are suffering out of love; everything done for getting back his love, Ewa.

However, people and incidents are connected by providence. Maureen was almost sure of getting her film funded by Javitz. Gabriella, a twenty five year old woman was about to become a superstar as she was signed by a director to act against the murdered superstar. She enjoys her moment of glory by walking upto the steps of Cannes Palace. She never realizes that her world is already collapsed. Jasmine is about to become a supermodel. But the man who is supposed to produce the movie for Gabriella and make Jasmine a supermodel, Hamid Hussein is already fallen a victim to Igor. Finally Igor kills Ewe also.

The police never get a clue about the serial murderer. He leaves Cannes safely in his private aircraft.

What we get from this novel is a cross section of the world of fashion and films, its undercurrents, money laundering, pains of the models, futility of power, glory and fame. Each person is a lost person in this novel and they are searching for their souls. Ironically, before they meet their soul, they lose the vision of it. Either they are taken away by circumstances or are killed by someone who is pathologically inclined to cleanse the world of its loveless-ness.

Paulo Coelho’s works are always page turners, so is this one. Each character in this novel reveals a new world for us and soon we realize that the world thus revealed is not new any longer as we too take a share of it on a day to day basis as consumers of popular culture. Our souls are lost in our culture and the point is that we are aware of the slow erosion of our worlds from under our feet.

Paulo Coelho just points this out through an extremely thrilling narrative structure which spreads out before us in twenty four hours.

You can hate Paulo Coelho for him being a popular writer. But for me popularity does not indicate the lack of verve, intelligence and grip in narrative. Perhaps, you don’t read him twice. But you definitely read him once, whenever he comes up with a new book.

Hair Raising Thoughts

After a long gap once again I am here in my blog with something that has been tickling my brains for the last few months.

I drive daily to my work place and I prefer listening to the FM Radio channels than playing regular music CDs. Reason is very simple- here in FM Channels someone is always speaking to you in a very artificial voice. You can feel the sound grains of the RJ’s throat or even the heaving of the female RJ’s bosom. I call it ‘lisping unlimited’.

Advertisements of all kinds, information on weather and road conditions, bits of news, preaching on social awareness and to pep all these up, some music from the latest Bollwood flicks. Unlike Television, FM Channels have a lot of advertisements of local business establishments; right from vegetable shops to beauty parlors.

One ad caught my imagination by force. Two females are talking.

“Look, that’s coming again.”

“My God, I can’t wear sleeveless. I have to put up with the full sleeves. I hate it.”

A male voice chips in. “Don’t worry. Come to XY Parlor, where you have a FREE hairless skin design. Test and enjoy it.”

I realized the ‘horror’ that ‘coming’ was hairs (in armpits).

Hair removing is a ‘hair-raising’ experience for most of the young women (for oldies too these days, it seems). Ads are abundant in magazines and televisions that emphasis the need for a ‘hair free’ skin/body.

But ‘Free Hairless Skin Design’ is a new formulation. Euphemism for the same old painful plucking, waxing, shaving and erasure of the never say die dead cells of the human body.

To be dubbed beautiful, is it necessary to remove all those hairs? Who tells you that you should not have hairs in your visible and invisible parts (in public)? Individual fantasies regarding hairs in personal relationships are abundant. It varies from person to person.

The other day I was reading ‘Vagina Monologues’. One of the women tells that her husband wants always her vagina to be shaved. For her it is a painful experience. All those cuts and rashes. The vengeful return of dead cells and their conspiracy with panties. You make your life miserable.

Hair is political and hair removal is ideological. While the former revels and rebels in/with its existence, the latter cleans up the desire machines of ideologies.

Will you be put off by seeing the hairy shanks of a girl? If you, then why shouldn’t she turn cold when she sees your gorilla like chest?
It is the time for a hairy world. Add Hair to FAT FREE and FEMINIST.

Some people say, it is necessary to remove hair to keep the body clean. What about all those toiletries?

Hair is a surprise. The light seeps in through the window and it falls on her cheeks. You find golden hairs shining there and what a beautiful sight it is!

You look at her hands with small hairs holding a bead of invisible sweat on a sultry summer day. It is magical.

You see her in sleeveless clothes with a fair share of hair in her arm pits. You should be happy if you are an aesthete.

Again, you accuse me of talking about my own male fantasies. But then aren’t you going through all those pains of waxing, shaving, plucking etc to satisfy my male fantasy?

Wear your hair with élan. That should be the latest rebel statement (so that the fashion moguls could design clothes to emphasis hair in human body). What’s the point in shaving off all you have and fitting them up with all those feathers and frills?

I don’t know whether I make sense or not. But I like hair especially when she says, “I like it in this way.”

Dispatches on Survival: With Respect to John Berger

That’s why someone builds up things
Brick by brick
They know six half truths would make a lie
And one truth may be persecuted
Between words and rumors.
A deed done in conviction
Though deplored and disputed by many
Would eventually stay to tell the truth
That’s why they say, ‘we grow old in our deaths
And martyrs grow young in their sacrifice.’
Fear and shame make one to look
Only at the world as big as his toe
Even if you call it selfishness
Where would he eventually look
Otherwise for his ultimate salvation?
The rubbles of one’s own life
Is the last weapon against the sophisticated weapons
Of the rumor mongers
When he pelts it at the invincible forces
He pelts his own life with force and rage.
That’s why I let each pedestrian pass by me
Overtake me and make me understand
My unworthiness in my security
Like a worm cocooned in its sticky philosophy.
That’s why I make my life a brick
With several others, in silence and shame,
To build the fortresses of endurance
Which have pictures of every martyr
Pasted on the walls with tears and blood.

Happy Birthday

Then suddenly
The silence breaks,
Like a crystal glass
Kept for long, away
In the chest of memories.
While picking up the pieces
I realize it’s my birthday.
I am going to keep
The broken glass
In the broken shell
Of my soul
Forever for whatever.

Stop PRESS

‘All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others’- Geroge Orwell.

There cannot be any better definition for/of democracy than the one George Orwell had proposed in his famous political fable ‘Animal Farm’ (1945). In a democratic system, when the politicians fail to deliver, people look up to the media and the media people.

Ordinary people in the streets believe that the media personals can do wonders. Whatever is seen in print or on television screens, for the people, carry some kind of truth value. The names of the media work; it can turn a reluctant one into an obliging one and vice versa.

The magic word ‘PRESS’ opens several doors, which otherwise remain shut before the ordinary people like you and me.

Perhaps, that’s why the common Indian man buys a PRESS sticker from a footpath stall and sticks it on his Bajaj Scooter and small little Maruti 800.

You may not be surprised to see a milkman’s rusty Rajdoot flaunting a PRESS sticker though it does not have a proper registration number. You don’t feel offended to see so many vehicles plying on Delhi roads carrying this five letter wonder sticker on their windscreens.

Somewhere you feel a kind of reeling in your head as you look inside these vehicles to see people who, even after a skillful make-up man’s hard work, would never look like press people. That’s the magical realism of Delhi. It reels you and floors you.

The most hilarious scene is citing a single vehicle with several stickers: Doctor, Lawyer, MP (Member of Parliament), Lions Club, PRESS and what not. The rickety vehicle owner would like to tell the world how powerful he is. He is all in one.

I have digressed enough. The key question: What do you do when the respected media person flouts the law of the land and tells you at your face that he or she is a more equal animal than you?

“Get them before the law.” That is the answer. “How?”

There are several ways. I heard one of the ways recounted by an artist friend of mine today.

This morning (18th March 2009), my friend was driving towards his studio. He was waiting at a traffic junction for the light to turn green. Suddenly a car with a sticker PRESS and the logo of one of the most famous Television channels in India zoomed past him and jumped the red light. An alert traffic constable was on the other side of the traffic light and he waved the car down and asked him to pull over to the side. The driver reluctantly obliged.

Seeing this, my friend too parked his car on the side and waited to see what was going on between the cop and the occupants of the car.

A girl, obviously a reporter or a technician with the television channel was sitting inside the car and combing her hair. She, according to my friend, was giving to the cop the kind of damn, which she would give to one of those lice that she was searching for in her mop.

“Can’t you see that we are from the media?” the driver told the cop.

“Whoever you are please show the papers,” the cop politely said.

“You will face the consequences,” shouted the lady.

It was when my friend decided to intervene. He walked up to the cop and told him, “If you don’t charge them, they will make a ‘human interest story’ out of it. And if you do then also they will make a ‘story’. So better go for the latter.”

She gave my friend a ‘who the hell are you’ kind of look. But she said, “Mind your own business.”

“I am minding my business,” said my friend. “If you are from XYZ TV, I am from UVW Newspaper,” he said confidently. Then he turned to the cop and told him, “Sir, please charge them, I am the witness.”

Supported by another PRESS (the magic word) and public, the cop fined the lady with Rs.1500/-. Grumbling and mumbling curses, she snatched the receipt and drove away, crestfallen.

Many media people think that they can flout law. They get scared when the public intervenes. They look at the public with that ‘who the hell are you’ look.

I have seen one of the leading news casters in Indian television, jumping queues at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. He was with his girl friend and his hands were around her waist, with fingers searching for private pleasures in public.

I had this rage in me to confront him. But the security personals were just letting him go. He knows his worth. PRESS. And he knows his face is beamed on the plasma screens there in the airport lounges 24x7.

And when the security is breached at the airport, it is he who screams from his studio chair, “Priyanka, please update our viewers with the latest position at the International airport.”

Then this cute lady comes on screen (with the airport buzz as a backdrop) telling us how lousy our security system is. Some animals are more equal than others.

But these animals are at times tamed, when the public in the garb of artists or layman intervene.

One day, again at the IGIA, New Delhi, I saw how the intervention could make these more equal animals equal with others.

One of the leading actors in Bollywood, who also used to be a Member of Parliament, was just coming behind me. I passed the second security gate by showing my ticket print out while the actor sneaked in and walked towards the check in counter.

The security officer called him back. The actor was offended. He refused to come back. The officer insisted.

“Do you know who I am?” asked the actor.

“I know who you are…but sir, you are no different than any other passenger for me. So please show me your ticket,” said the officer without any change in his facial expression.

May be the actor had not got such a treatment before in his life. Other police officers came around him. They all knew him as he was a star (not everybody recognize a member of parliament). They tried to calm him down.

Finally, kneeling on the floor, the actor opened his suitcase and started looking for his ticket. After much effort he took the ticket out of a bundle of clothes. With a ginger face he handed over the ticket to the officer.

“Sir, I know you. I am sorry if you are hurt. But I cannot let you go without showing the ticket. I am doing my duty,” said the officer.

The actor walked off in a huff. He might have felt like any other animal like you and me.

People can make a lot of difference in our society. Only thing that they should intervene whenever and wherever it is needed.

Otherwise the more equal animals would tell us as Philip Roth said in his famous novel ‘I Married a Communist’- “You should be happy that I only raped you. If someone else was in my place, it would have been terrible.”