Cloud Atlas - A story within a story within a story within..

I am one of those people that believes that every one has enough material in us for one great piece of work - A book, a movie, a tune, a story - whatever. If pushed hard enough, I can probably write a fairly interesting story or lyrics for a tune or compose a simple tune. After that, I don’t know. And that is probably the difference between great artists and ordinary people like us.

I am amazed at writers who can write interesting prose, good enough to hold the attention of a reader. Apart from the knot of the story itself, he/she needs to ensure that the style of prose is consistent, all characters are etched well, conversations sound real and relatable (even if it is a fantasy), maintain the flow in the narrative and so on. Over a period of time, reading many books, we start associating the author with a narrative style - The subtle humour and ridiculous situations in works of P.G.Wodehouse and Devan (Tamil writer), great level of attention to historical details with a dash of humour in the works of Kalki (Tamil), high degree of imagination in works of Asimov, Sujatha (tamil), J.K.Rowling, sarcasm of Saki and so on.

These are probably reasons why the latest book that I read - Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell left me spellbound ! Here I am, struggling to find my own voice while writing a few paragraphs of a blog post, while this author has achieved the amazing feat of writing a novel which is more like a collection of six novellas that are loosely linked and woven one within the other. What is interesting about these six stories is that each one is written in a completely different style and is set in a different period of time.

The novel is structured like a Matryoshka doll or a chinese puzzle box, according to a reviewer (although I have no clue what a chinese puzzle box looks like!!) and in the first half of the novel, the stories move forward in time and in the second half, the stories move backward in time.

It starts with the journal of Adam Ewing - an American notary, on a voyage in the Pacific ocean. This story is set in mid-1850s. The narrative stops mid-sentence at a certain point of the novel. In the next story, we get to know why.

Next comes the story of Robert Frobisher, an English musician who travels to Belgium and works for a composer there. The story takes place in 1930s and the narrative is in the form of letters from Frobisher to his friend - Rufus Sixsmith.

The third story is set in 1970s and is the story of a young journalist called Luisa Rey, who at the beginning of this story meets with Rufus Sixsmith. She investigates the corruption and murders associated with a nuclear plant in California.

The fourth story is that of Timothy Cavendish - an aging book publisher in the UK, who, in the course of fleeing from his gangster client is imprisoned in a old-age home.

The fifth story is set in the near future where human clones are ‘manufactured’ to perform mundane chores. This piece is set in Korea and is the story of the ‘fabricant’ Sonmi-451 who rebels against the system and is subsequently executed. The narrative is in the form of a record of Sonmi’s interview before her execution.

The sixth and the central story of the novel is set in the distant future in Hawaii, when human beings go back to the primitive way of life. The tribesman Zachry and his family are visited by Meronym, one of the few remnants of the technologically advanced civilizations. Zachry narrates his story, when he is an old man, to a group of young people.

The most striking feature of the book is, as I already mentioned, the distinctive styles of writing of each narrative. Every story stops midway, except the sixth one. After the sixth story, the concluding parts of the fifth, fourth, third, second and finally the first stories are presented, and hence the comparison with the Matryoshka dolls (refer Wikipedia for what they are. I did !!).

All the stories are weakly linked and a common feature in all the stories is the presence of a comet-shaped birthmark on the protagonists of all stories and David Mitchell supposedly said that they were reincarnations of the same soul. This was one of the books short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2004. Just goes to show that not all award-winning books are necessarily profound (=boring)!!

Of the six stories, I found the story of Sonmi the most interesting. The story of Timothy Cavendish is the funniest. The first story of Adam Ewing is the least interesting, probably because of the old-fashioned English and circuitous sentences (after discussing with my cousin who recommended the book and reading reviews on Amazon, I found that this was a common feeling among most readers. So I am happy to know that I am normal !!).

Although at some places, the book drags and the narration seems a little pretentious, Cloud Atlas is definitely a very ambitious piece of writing. Those who want to take a break from murder mysteries, espionages and regular romances, can take a shot at this one. Definitely worth a read !

(P.S. - For those who like offbeat fiction, the Wind-up bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami is an option. The book is extremely engaging and intriguing. But, and this is a big BUT, be warned, the book has no end. Anyone with superhuman intelligence, who managed to figure about what it is about, please contact me and enlighten me too ! This is a P.S. here because I did not want to write a post on a novel that I both loved and hated !!)

To Smile or Not to smile !

There’s another guy. He is walking towards me.

God, please let him not make eye-contact, please !!

Our eyes have met. I smile immediately.

Damn, that guy is looking through me and has moved his eyes away from me ! That is so insulting !!

Here comes the next one. Should I or shouldnt I? This one is Indian too !! What if he refuses to smile too? Research has shown that people with names starting with R, are physically incapable of enduring more than one insult a day. Coincidentally, my name starts with R too. Forget about it, I can’t help it if my lips are wired to my eyes. The minute I make eye-contact, my lips automatically expand and I end up smiling.

Before any of you notice a statement made before that may sound a tad judgemental or biased, let me hasten to correct it or rather expand it. I don’t mean to say that all Indians are averse to smiling. It is definitely a cultural thing. While we treat guests like God, we don’t treat other people as human, unless they are our guests, friends or family. To us Indians, bestowing a smile is a mark of acceptance, show of love or gratitude, a sign of cognizance of your existence, a symbol of familiarity etc. What it is definitely not, is something you would waste over some random passer-by, who, just because he/she has made eye-contact with you, expects you to smile (the nerve of the person !)!!

In the US, it is a part of the culture, to smile and wish people if eye-contact is made. It is irrelevant that the smile lasts exactly for a millionth of a second and more often than not, rarely reaches the eye. I am not sure about other countries. I was in London a few months back and people there seemed normal. They don’t look at you and smile ! They don’t wish you good morning or inquire about you !! They are just…. normal !! (Of course I am being sarcastic, do I have to say that??)

Learning to smile at the right person is an art. No, not the smiling part. The key is ‘the right person’. Will this person smile back or do you have to pretend afterwards that you suffer from facial paralysis and what seemed like a smile to a bystander was actually a temporary spasm?

Is this do with the nationality of the person? Probably not ! Americans are becoming normal too. In this place, I have encountered at least a dozen Americans, who contort their faces like they have seen something distasteful, the minute they spot you and hurry in the opposite direction maintaining a certain distance. There are those who pretend they are lost in thought just when you cross them (again, nationality does not matter). All this for what ? To avoid smiling !!

I know of a family that does not smile as a rule. They will wish you, invite you home, greet you when you enter the house, inquire about your well-being etc, all without a single smile. I think that’s an incredible feat !! Don’t you? I mean greeting someone without a hint of a smile, to me, sounds as impossible as sneezing while keeping your eyes open !

Fortunately or unfortunately, we in India, seem to be changing too. Or should I say, that we are becoming abnormal too? On some of my visits to the Bangalore office, I remember smiling at a lot of people I didn’t know (I often forget where I am !) and, hold your breath, have received smiles back (Of course I am not quoting about Chennai office, because I actually know many people by face there. So don’t gloat, you Chennai-haters !!).

What is it that makes some of us so reluctant to smile? After all, a smile does increase a person’s face value. Laugh lines make a person look more beautiful. A smile does not cost anything, except working a few facial muscles (and research shows that it is good to exercise facial muscles through means other than chewing on food and gossiping !!).

Meanwhile, I request all of you, to respond with tips on how to change a smile to something else (like may be a thoughtful expression), that will help me out in my daily dose of humiliations (which sadly always exceed 2) of not being smiled back at !! I tried sneezing, but the transition is not easy !

Blindness..

What does eyesight have to do with the actual nature of the person?

Do we behave the way we do, because we know there are people watching us?

If nobody was watching, would we indulge in despicable activities too?

Are human beings basically base and bestial creatures?

José Saramago’s ‘Blindness’ explores the above questions and more. Saramago, a Portuguese writer is the winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1998. ‘Blindness’ is one of his most popular works and was written in 1995 and later translated to English in 1997.

Always searching for interesting works, I saw that this book was highly recommended on Amazon.com, by people with whom I shared a liking for similar kind of novels. The idea of the novel seemed interesting and I borrowed it from the local library a month or so ago. I could not finish it before the due date then and had to borrow it again recently. This time, I finally managed to finish the remainder of the book in one day.

The premise is very interesting. A sudden epidemic of ‘white blindness’ hits a city. Initially only some of the citizens are affected. The government decides to quarantine them in a mental asylum till the cause and the cure for the sickness are determined. The first few victims of the disease include a doctor and a few of his patients. The doctor’s wife, who miraculously escapes the disease fakes it to stay with her husband.

The quarantined lot are treated like untouchables and armed soldiers are posted outside the hospital to prevent them from escaping. Food is dropped near the gates by the government and some of the inmates are allowed to pick it up. The conditions within the hospital slowly start degenerating. The soldiers refuse to deliver basic medicines to the inmates and things slowly turn into a nightmare as one-by-one, the soldiers too succumb to the disease.

Hygiene and moral conditions steadily deteriorate, as the asylum becomes over-crowded and a group of blind hoodlums take control of the asylum. This group takes control of the food deliveries and insists on ‘payments’ from the other inmates. The amount of food given to the inmate by the hoodlums is directly proportional to the payments made! With power in dangerous hands, things turn from bad to worse, as the group sexually abuses the women inmates in exchange for food. Husbands stoop to begging the wives to accept the offering, unable to withstand the hunger. All the atrocities are seen by a single pair of eyes - that of the doctor’s wife.

The victims decide to take charge and rebel. There is much bloodshed and later arson. The inmates suddenly realize that the soldiers who were guarding the hospital, are no more present. Apparently they have become victims to the disease too. The epidemic has spread to all the citizens and there is chaos. The small group of people, with the doctor’s wife leading them, leave the asylum, hoping to return to their homes.

The entire government has buckled down and everyday things like food, water etc have become luxuries. There is no electricity as the electricians have gone blind. People move in groups searching for food. The concept of homes has vanished. Most houses have been taken over by roaming groups of people. The small group sticks together and stay with the doctor’s wife, since they feel a little less blind, having a person who can see among them. They go in search of food in store rooms of grocery stores and try hard to hold on to some semblance of sanity.

The novel ends with the epidemic ending as suddenly as it started. People slowly start getting their eyesights back. Things will never be the same again for any of them, though.

None of the characters in the novel have names. They are referred to as ‘the doctor’, the doctor’s wife, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with a squint etc. Saramago’s style of writing is characterized by long sentences, little or no punctuation. Dialogues do not have quotation marks, so it is difficult to say who is speaking, although once you get into the flow of the book, it is not all that tough. I found the style strange in the beginning, but later got used to it (I later learnt that this style is characteristic of Saramago). I would call this novel one of the most chilling horror stories I have ever read (and I don’t read many of them).

Every time I read or watch something on the Holocaust or the Indian independence movement, it seems to me that human beings are capable of more cruelty than we think is possible. My faith in the goodness of people always becomes a little shaken when I read a good novel such as ‘Blindness’ or films like ‘The Pianist’ or ‘The Schindler’s list’, shocked at the inherent baseness of human nature. There were many instances when I was choked with emotion or was extremely disturbed by the horror of it all, while reading ‘Freedom at midnight’ and the reason was not mere patriotism.

Unsupervised and equipped with undeserving power, people are probably worse than the animals. Animals kill only for food, and we are probably the only beings that can kill and hurt for pleasure.Many modern novelists seem to think so too. ‘Lord of the flies’ by William Golding springs to mind. Civilization and culture exists because of others, not because we want it. Our constant need for approval from people around us is probably the main reason why we ‘behave’ in public or otherwise.

In conclusion, ‘Blindness’ is a superbly written novel. It is definitely not for light reading and if you are easily influenced like me, you may feel a little shaken at the end of the novel. Definitely recommended for people who like offbeat fiction.

Revenge !

The popular saying goes ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ - Is it really true?

Do you like me, feel disturbed reading ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ - the brilliant novel by Alexander Dumas? If Dantès, wasting away his life in solitary confinement in a faraway prison wrenched your hearts, his subsequent retribution did send chills down your spines! Somehow, everytime I read the novel (couple of times in different versions), I always felt restless afterwards. Revenge, I suppose, is never sweet. It does not leave anyone satisfied. Even if the crime is huge and life-shattering, somehow revenge does not seem to bring the desired solace.

If you think about it, most movies and novels and TV soaps have revenge as the main subject. Turn to any channel, and you will find some heavily made-up middle-aged woman, announcing to anyone that cares to hear, that she will not rest till she destroys her enemy’s family. Since this is always a winning subject and the makers cannot afford the audience to have any symapthies towards the antagonist, they try to paint them as dark as possible to show why the revenge is justified.

Not so in true life, isn’t it? People are just people ! Not heroes or villains. Nobody is completely white or black. All of us are grey characters. What seems right to us, may not seem so to others. Who are we to avenge ourselves for what we consider ‘injustice’? I am not talking about clear-cut wrong-doings like murder etc, just day-to-day things that happen to us.

I still get extremely angry when I think about the sports teacher in school, who had treated me terribly (I had written about him in one of my previous posts). Every time I think if there is someone in the world, I really hate, I cannot think of anyone else, so deep-rooted seems to be my hatred, probably because the bad experiences happened at an impressionable age. I am not able to make peace with these memories and I still imagine situations where he will be at my mercy and I deny him the same !!

But come to think of it, for all I know, if I see this guy today, revenge will probably be the last thought in my mind. He must definitely be old and will probably seem so pathetic that the only that would seem more pathetic would be my grudge against such a loser. It is also possible that all the hatred in me, needs some channel, and I am using this guy for it !!

The whole idea of this post was to actually talk about a novel that I read recently, but as always, my musings about the book took up as much or more space than the review of the book itself. The name of the book is ‘Revenge’ and the author is Stephen Fry - a comic genius from the land of comic geniuses - Britain! However the book is anything but funny !!

There is a reason why I mentioned the ‘Count of Monte Cristo’ in the beginning, apart from the fact that it was also about revenge and retribution, and the fact that I love to write ! As Stephen Fry himself confessed, after a couple of days of writing of the book, he realized that his story was the same as the original classic. Call, ‘Revenge’ the modern day re-telling of Dumas’s classic.

Set in England in 1980, ‘Revenge’ is about Ned Maddstone, the popular boy in school. He is 17, happy in life to have everything, to be loved by all- well almost all; in love with a beautiful girl and studying to go to Oxford. There are others - Portia, his beautiful lover, Gordon - Portia’s cousin, Ashley - a boy from a poor background, a wannabe blueblood who detests Ned for being everything that he (Ashley) is not and Rufus, a spineless junkie, who again hates Ned for no reason.

If you have read Count of Monte Cristo, you will see parallels every where. Like I said this is a modern day retelling. So the setting is different, the context is different, but the story is essentially the same. Where you had exiled king Napoleon as the backdrop, here we have the IRA and its supporters causing Ned’s arrest. Instead of a prison in a remote island, here it is a lunatic asylum where some political prisoners are put away. The heart burn is the same, as Ned turns from a good-natured seventeen year old boy, with his eyes full of dreams, to a cold, calculating and vengeful business man.

When he returns to avenge himself, it is 1999 and sure there is a duel between him and Portia’s son, but it has an interesting and modern twist to it. The warfare is psychological and destruction is total as in the original. True to the original, Ned does not find peace after his plan is executed and feels more restless than before.

I had not expected a thriller from Fry, but he has done a good job of it. I would not call it great literature, but it definitely is an interesting piece of work. Definitely recommended.