Work from Home or Homework - Which do you prefer?

Every time I saw someone in the office, with a laptop or a blackberry, I used to feel jealous. They looked so damn cool. They did not have to raise PC requests. Their CD drives were functional. They could access their emails from anywhere etc. As cliched as it may sound, the fact is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence !! So as you must have guessed, these misconceptions vanished a week or two after I got my laptop a couple of years back. I was now permanently available to work, to respond to emails etc. The only time I could escape, was when I was driving to and from work.

Then I started envying people who worked from home. They did not have to travel all the way to work. They could wake up when they wanted to, take bath when they wanted (and if they wanted to), they did not have to wear formals everyday, no shoes (in US) and so on (may sound silly to you, but they meant a lot to me). And now I know how wrong I was in wanting that !! I seem to have the knack to always want the wrong things in life or atleast, only when I wish for wrong things is my wish granted !!

Now I have been working from home for more than a month. So what is wrong? I am a positive person (or so I would like to think) and I don't mean only my bloodgroup. So let me start with the good points :

• I can wear a salwar kurta when I work
• I don't have to comb my hair every day
• I can eat food out of a plate instead of from a tiffin-box
• I don't have to meet with people
• I don't have to spend money or time on commuting to work.
• No shoes required
• I remain silent most of the time.
  

So what's wrong with it?

• I am cooking 3 times a day
• I don't see people
• I am turning to something like a UFO (heard of but never seen)
• I never 'go home' after work. An hour, a day, a week - are all like the next
• I feel guilty when I go for grocery shopping, since I am 'missing work'
• All days are workdays. A workday is 18 hours long.
• My phone's receiver is losing weight instead of me. I swear that once when I took the receiver from my ear, I found my dislodged ear attached to the phone. I then had to use some 'Made in China' glue to stick it back in position. You will believe when you see me and find one ear slightly differently positioned compared to the other.
• I am forgetting how my voice sounds, except when I chat with people at home
• I have no place to run to, when I receive my daily call from my manager telling me how disappointed he is in me. I would like to have a team-member to shout at too.
  

My habit of wishing to be like people older or more experienced than me or different from me, has more often than not, led to all my disappointments in life. As a child, I remember always wanting to grow up and get out of school, so that I would not have daily homework, or to write any assignments or tests or examinations or wear uniforms. I thought taking a book or a single notebook and wearing clothes of your choice was cool and longed for college. In college, I wished to become financially independent and longed to start working. Now I would give anything for the life of a student, a life with a lot of certainty (again, you see I am wishing for something out of my reach !!)

Give me home-work any day. I would prefer that infinitely to working from home !!

Kalki's works

At the age of about 5 or 6, I remember being fascinated by my father, who could read a book, only with his eyes ! He did not have to read it out aloud to understand and I remember thinking it was one of the coolest things I had seen in my life (till then !!). I guess my initial reading was restricted to devouring anything and everything by Enid Blyton. So there I was, living in a small hill station in Tamilnadu, dreaming about ginger-beer, ham sandwiches and bacon (not knowing it was meat of course !!) without a clue on how they would look like.

I had studied tamizh for exactly 2 years in school. The first was in class I, when I learnt the alphabets and then in class III when I learnt words and sentences. The difficulty in finding a good library was probably the first reason for me to turn to reading Tamizh magazines and books. That and the concept of a circulation library where a person would come and deliver weekly and monthly magazines right to our doorstep. Now tamizh magazines and books were usually censored by my mother then. There were authors that were considered acceptable by my mother and I could read anything by such authors and then there were those that were absolutely banned for fear of getting my mind corrupted. In case of authors like Sujatha, the book had to first be read my mother before the verdict was passed.

Kalki is probably the first writer, that my mother encouraged me to read. ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ - supposedly Kalki’s most popular work was serialized in the tamil weekly magazine called Kalki, was my first attempt at a historical and it was my first exposure to Kalki’s works too. And the rest, as they say, is history (I mean, my history !!).

R.Krishnamurthy, more popularly known as Kalki was a freedom fighter, magazine editor, novelist, short story writer and an art critic. He was the man who made the popular weekly ‘Ananda Vikatan’ a household name in lakhs of Tamizh homes. He gained a lot of popularity for his epic trilogy - Sivagamiyin Sabatham, Parthiban Kanavu and Ponniyin Selvan. His other famous works include Alai Osai, Tyaga Bhoomi, Poimaan Karadu, Kalvanin Kathali etc.

I will not elaborate on Kalki as a person as I will not be able to give more information than Wikipedia or the internet, nor is my information drastically different. I will instead, attempt to describe his greatness as a novelist, especially in his works based on Tamizh history, or atleast their impact on me and my literary tastes.

So what makes these three novels great? Why, the characters, for one ! Every character is well-etched and Kalki’s writings made you actually visualize a lot of incidents. His works are a wonderful mixture of history, fiction and humour. They are historicals, but no less thrilling than any best-selling mystery novel. For once, his female characters are extremely strong and not mere supporting characters.

For instance, take the case of Sivagamiyin Sabadam :

Facts :

-King Mahendra Varman converted from Jainism to Hinduism after Appar (aka Thirunavukarasar) cured him of some disease.

-The Chalukya king attacked Kanchi.

-Narasimhavarman (popularly known as Mamallan) avenged the seige of Kanchi by attacking Vatapi and burning it down.

-Paranjothi was the commander of Narasimhavarman’s army and lead the attack on Vatapi (Trivia : He supposedly brought back a pillar with the idol of Ganapati on it as a proof of his victory and installed it in the temple in Tiruchengatangudi in the Tanjore district. This idol was the inspiration for the Vatapi Ganapati idol installed in Tiruvarur temple and hence the song ‘Vatapi Ganapathim Bhajeham’ by Dikshitar).

-Paranjoti later gave up worldly life and changed his name to Siruthonda Nayanar and was one of the 63 Shaivaite Nayanars.

-During Mahendravarman’s rule and his son Narasimha Pallavan’s rule, arts and crafts flourished in the region and the shore temples and numerous other sculptures were created in Mamallapuram (now known as Mahabalipuram).

Now if I look at sculptures of a beautiful woman in Mamallapuram, I would probably take a few snaps (most that would include me in silly poses and posing for the camera !!). What would happen if a creator of Kalki’s stature saw them? - An epic romance set in the time of Narasimha Pallavan !!

The prince Mamallan (aka Narasimha Varman) loves the daughter Sivagami of the master sculptor Ayanar. Sivagami is a great bharatanatyam dancer and is the inspiration of many of her father’s sculptures. As in any love story, the emperor is against this romance and orders the son to stay back in Kanchi while he engages in a battle with the Chalukya king Pulikesi. After a lot of interesting twists, Sivagami and Ayanar are captured by Pulikesi. Pulikesi humiliates her and Sivagami vows that she would leave Vatapi only if Narasimha Varman burns the city down and rescues her (and hence the title). So even when Narasimha Varman visits her secretly and tries to rescue her, she refuses to go with him. Narasimha Varman later returns after almost 9 years and re-captures Vatapi, but things are not the same anymore.

On reading the novel, you will realize how beautifully the above mentioned historical facts have been woven into the novel. It is hard to separate facts from fiction. All characters are complete and well-written.

The heroine is a damsel in distress, for sure, but she is extremely strong willed and is not faultless. She has a bad temper and is extremely stubborn. This novel has one of the most chilling villains in Tamil literature. The Jain monk - Naganandhi, whose actual name is Neelakesi and is the brother of the Chalukya king Pulikesi is a connoisseur of arts, unlike his royal brother and is a master king-maker and spy.

‘Parthiban Kanavu’ is chronologically after Sivagamiyin Sabadam and describes the story of the Chozha prince Vikraman who father dies in the battlefield after expressing his dream of regaining his kingdom from the Pallava King Narasimha Varman (the hero of the previous novel), to a mysterious monk. As in a good Indian movie, our hero falls for a girl Kundavi, who is none other than the daughter of his arch-rival Narasimha Varman. This novel too has many historic references and has interesting narratives of practices during the period including the Kapalikas (worshippers of Goddess Kali) who believed in human sacrifices etc. There is a wonderful suspense in this novel too, but unfortunately I saw the B&W movie made on the novel first and knew what the suspense was in the first shot (Why did they think that makeup could completely disguise a person like Ranga Rao?

‘Ponniyin Selvan’ is the last in the trilogy and is about the Chozha dynasty. This is by far the most interesting of the 3 books and has more colourful characters than the other 2 put together. Although the title Ponniyin Selvan (son of Ponni, the river) refers to the prince Arulmozhi Varman, the actual hero of the novel is Vandiyathevan, a lovable rascal, who is a close friend of Karikalan, Arulmozhi Varman’s brother. This book has not one or two, but at least 6 very strong women characters - Arulmozhi varman’s sister Kundavai, the boat woman Poonkuzhali (what a beautiful name !), the queen of pazhuvoor Nandini (a wonderful character), the kodumbalur princess Vanathi, the mute woman Mandakini Devi, Raakammal the spy and so on. The most interesting character is that of Aazhvarkadiyaan, the vaishnaviite who roams around the country and picks up fights with Saivaiites.

The plot of the novel is very intricate and maintains a superb suspense till the end. One part of the novel, that seems particularly etched in my memory is where Kalki describes and compares the beauty of Kundavai and Nandini. Both of them are extremely beautiful women, but while one’s beauty is pleasing and has a calming effect, the other’s is mesmerizing and is capable of driving men crazy. He compares Nandini’s beauty to that of a serpent and for some reason I seem to remember this particular description very well.

For each run of these novels in the Kalki weekly magazine, a different artist was responsible for the illustrations. I remember Maniyam Selvam’s illustrations and later Vishnuvarman (I think that’s his name). However, the best illustrator would be our own minds. As I have said often before, my worst fear about Ponniyin Selvan is that someone would decide to make a movie out of it and ruin the whole magic. One of my favourite pastime is wondering who, in the current crop of actors, could play of each of these roles and sadly I can’t think of any suitable ones, especially if they have to speak in chaste tamizh.

I have read all the other works of Kalki too, including Alai Osai and Tyaga bhoomi, but to me none of them can match this trilogy in terms of pace or characterization. I have also had a chance to read some of his other non-fiction works including some music reviews that he wrote under the pen-name Karnatakam, some of his old editorials and a collection of essays etc and the genius of Kalki shines through every single piece of work.

Sorry about the long post, but the comment from a fellow blogger on one of my previous posts, brought a flood of memories of Kalki and ‘Ponniyin Selvan’. For those who cannot get the book, the entire book is available online here. The English translation is available here although if you can read Tamizh, I would strongly recommend the original.

Good Morning.. hmm.. err… Phoenix !!

So there I was, grinning stupidly at anything and everything, whiling away my time in the customer’s office with nothing to do, but day-dream about my return - functions that I will attend (Perippa’s sadabhishekam !!) and of course the music festival in December (must attend at least 2 concerts of Sanjay and TMK!!), visits to the dentist (need to get these teeth set right !!) and drive a relatively new car (only 3 years old instead of 11 years old) for a change in that chaos that is Chennai traffic !! I had developed a thick skin in the past few days, ever since I got my itinerary from the travel desk (woohoo.. it is Air Emirates), nothing the customer or anybody said affected me whatsoever !! I had done my purchases, and planned for more in the Dubai airport (perfumes are dead cheap !!), had picked superb seats in the flight online ! Three more days to go !! My mom had made plans for me (need to visit A,B,C relatives and friends !!) and I was happily chatting away with her and my dad, getting updates on family gossip, when the phone rang !! And life changed… again !!

I have now developed a sense of respect for people we call gypsies ! After all, the important difference between us and them is the financial status and the extent of our travel. They travel locally and we travel internationally and we get paid for our travel !! It is a new life everytime - a new place, the same boring ritual of hunting for apartments and buying a cheap but good car (sounds oxymoronic, doesn’t it?).

I am suffering from a serious identity crisis, every morning !! I wake up and find my surroundings strange ! Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Is this whole thing a big nightmare? Why should I always reconcile myself to the maxim - Whatever happens, happens for good! Why can’t I get exactly what I want, instead of what is good for me - just once? (I know, I know, I am cribbing ! I know I have no right to, when thousands are losing their jobs and many people complain about lack of visibility at work !! But when logic and my cribbing come face to face, sometimes cribbing wins !!

For some reason, only spouse and children are considered ‘family’. So most of my conversations go like this :

‘Do you have a family in India?’

‘Yes, my parents and my brother and his wife are in India’

‘Oh, ok. But what about your family ?’

…

‘So you are single, then you should have no issues with traveling?’ (What has that got to do with wanting to travel? I mean single and married people can want/not want to travel equally, right?)

Sulking apart, I think the most painful part of traveling is the initial expenses and hassle of setting up the house. Every visit, I have to shell out a couple of hundred dollars on basic stuff like a rice cooker, a blender, a vacuum cleaner, a mattress, a used car, apartment advance etc. Add to it the fact that I always have to give it away for free, because no one will buy it and usually there isn’t any time left to try to sell, at the end of the visit. This becomes all the more irksome, when I dispose all my temporary possessions here assuming I am going back to India, only to realize in the last minute that the return trip is canceled and that I have to spend all over again !! (Remember, at this point, my mind has already started converting dollars to rupees, so every single dollar is Rs 48 (or something close) to me !

If organizations must ask people to travel, how about some innovative ways of reducing the stress on employees. For example :

a. A travel kit - including basic appliances and things like a sleeping bag etc. This can be provided during the first time the person travels on-site. When the person returns, some storage space where the kit can be stored can be arranged. The next time the person visits, the company can ship it to the person to his new location.

b. Short-term car leases - Some arrangement with car-leasing companies, to provide car leases on a month-to-month basis. Usual car hires from Hertz or Enterprise runs to about a thousand dollars a month.

c. A ready-reckoner for the location that includes information on location of good hotels to stay (with/without kitchenettes), Indian restaurants, Indian grocers, DMV office, SSN office, availability of public transportation, apartment communities, local attractions, cab services etc. This can be sent along with the deployment letter.

d. Make the policies a little more employee friendly and the staff a little more considerate. For instance, this time I was asked to travel from Dublin to Phoenix in the next 2 days. Now to raise a travel request, I was supposed to raise a transfer memo request for my visa and provide the request number to the travel team. Tedweb/MyWipro had an issue with the site, where I was able to select the project name, but could not submit it because there was no ‘Submit’ button. I put in a ServiceConnect request and waited for more than 2 days with nothing happening. There was only one more day to go and I requested the travel co-ordinator (non-Wipro) to book my travel, and that I would raise the request once the issue was resolved. She asked me to get the approval of the OOC person here and this person asked me to raise a ServiceConnect issue reporting the issue. It was a deadlock situation and finally my manager and his manager had to make desperate calls to the OOC person to get the issue resolved. The technical issue was later resolved about a week after I lodged the complaint. This kind of beauracracy added to the already existing stress that I was going through !

I am told time and again that this is a higher responsibility and once again I am supposedly the ‘Chosen One’ !! The job description is kept deliberately vague with words like ‘opportunities’, ‘business’, ‘techno-functional role’ etc. It is a double edged sword, doing well will extend my stay and going wrong may jeopardize my career !

Meanwhile I am trying to get adjusted to the time difference and remind myself daily that I am Rathi, that this is a hotel room in Phoenix and yes this is not a dream !!

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.