Reflections: The World We Found

Thrity Umrigar’s latest book surrounds the stories of four college friends who drifted away in the currents of life, but come together for one last poignant reunion. Laleh, Kavita, Nishta, and Armaiti were an inseparable, idealistic bunch in college. With fiery beliefs in socialism and secularism, the girls envisaged creating a New India, a new society, a new way of life. Now, after the passage of more than two decades, fate draws all the four women together as Armaiti battles a fatal illness. As they reconnect, they are forced to reflect on their own lives, confront their pasts, their regrets, their simple, touching idealism, and wonder how their worlds shaped in directions almost contrary to the beliefs and ideologies of their younger selves. Faced with this jolt of realization, the women deal with their inner conflicts as they decide what little steps should be taken to resurrect at least a portion of their dreams to build their own world - congruent to their terms. This is a reflective book that juxtaposes idealism with reality, individual forces against political and religious forces, specifically in the context of Indian society in the thriving city of Bombay.

I loved Thrity Umrigar’s Bombay Time for the wonderful, memorable characters that she weaved into a complex story that involves people, culture and society merging into one another and influencing each other. This book has a similar theme. The threads are similar, the colors are similar, but the patterns and textures are different. One major aspect that I appreciate in Umrigar’s writing is her beautiful, realistic depiction of how people change, and what causes them to harbor thoughts and execute actions that are socially appalling. The psychological characterization makes it easy for the reader to readily sympathize  and empathize with even those characters whom we resent in our lives. One such character in this story is Iqbal, Nishta’s austere muslim husband. Although I was unable to empathize with this character in the beginning, my heart went out for him by the end. And the most amazing part was I sympathized with both Iqbal and Nishta, felt their emotions as if they were my own, read their thoughts, and connected with their fears and frustrations. I couldn’t view one as the victim and the other as the perpetrator as we so often do while coming to know of real life stories. Both were victims in my eyes, and that was precisely the author’s aim. She convincingly crafted the story to show how forces and powers much much bigger than our idealism crush the essence of our ideals. Religious violence, communal violence, and the accompanying prejudices and discrimination, often turn people to seek comfort in the very arms that slashed them - religion and community. An idealistic, secural Iqbal who was daring enough to oppose his family and community by marrying a Hindu, was pushed to embrace his religion and community to protect himself. My favorite piece in this book is the story of Nishta and Iqbal. It has the most impact and significance to the book.

In addition to the strong thread on Hindu-Muslim rivalry and prejudices, Umrigar also focuses on the subtle but powerful influence of capitalism in our socialistic structure. Money, higher “caste”, and power are the reigning elements in India, despite the extents of good-will, idealism, and socialistic attitude that one tries to wear, and live by. These pieces are tightly strung into every chapter and every scene, making it thought-provoking for the reader to inspect into their own lives.

Another piece that touched me was Armaiti’s thoughts and her slow, gradual reconcilement to her illness and mortality. Umrigar’s writing on mortality was refined, deep, and moving.

These strong and relevant themes carry this book along. I was a bit disappointed with some of the main characters in the book - they seemed a bit cliched and didn’t seem to have distinct personalities that I could remember. I think this is because Umrigar tries to cover a gamut of social themes using more than five primary characters, that some characters don’t have enough room in the story to be entirely fleshed out. For instance, the social issue on lesbianism is part of the book, but it merely exists within a cliched, obvious character and setting.

Umrigar’s writing is beautiful and touchingly insightful in some sections, but some of the dialogues seemed a little unnatural and trite. And knowing the various little hoops one needs to jump through, and the lengthy, arduous rigmarole that Indians go through to obtain their US visa, I felt the visa interview process was not represented in its true light. But, that’s just a quibble in the overall framework of the story.

Except for these few quibbles, I quite liked reading the book. It was deeply relevant and meaningful. I could very easily identify with the young idealistic girls who were slowly pulled by life’s uncertain, inexplicable paths. I already cringe at the unnerving prospect of looking back and pondering how far removed life looks from the idealistic image painted by the younger me. I’m sure to remember this book and its themes for a very very long time. This is an interesting, contemplative read that I recommend. 

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I received an advance-review-copy of this book through a publisher-organized giveaway that was hosted here. Quite exciting! Thanks to the publisher (Harper) for sending me a review copy, and to S. Krishna for organizing this. 

A disclaimer that my thoughts on the book are honest and are not influenced by the free copy.

Reflections: The Lovely Bones

A fourteen year old girl Susie Salmon gets raped and murdered in a cornfield near her house. The dead girl watches over her family, friends and her killer from Heaven and narrates this tale. No doubt the content is dark and weighs heavy, but the book tells a very moving tale of a young girl's hopes and angst, and her family's tumultuous journey of coping with their loss.

The characters have been shaped with a lot of depth and reality. I have never before been scared of a character from a book - but despite hardly any gore or graphic descriptions of the violence or of the killer, Sebold brings out spine chills every time the killer is mentioned. Movies have their way of conveying this same fear through the actor's visual manifestation of the violence and psychotic instincts, but for a book to bring out that same impact with such subtle teasing of the killer's disturbed state, is pretty commendable. The killer really disturbed me, and that's not much of a surprise. But my recommendation would be to not sit through the book in the dead of the night :)

Quite a few paranormal phenomena have been integrated into the story, some of which I felt could have been done without. Some parts reminded me of "Sixth Sense" and the TV show "Ghost Whisperer"... both of which deal with the concept that the dead who were abruptly cut off from their life on Earth, linger on to avenge their death or communicate something to their loved ones. I'm obviously quite skeptical (and scared) of such phenomena and I avoid thinking about them. Since this is a work of fiction, I'm not dissecting these aspects. However with Sebold's poetic prose, one can imagine many metaphoric levels to these phenomena... spirits can be equated to memories of loved ones, etc... and that's what I tried to do. Despite bringing in such phenomena, the book doesn't turn into a scary/grim "ghost" thriller. The first half of the book has a tinge of humour to it, making the whole narration very interesting and creative. The middle of the book gets intense as the killer's life gets traced, and Susie's family falls apart with the pain of her death. Despite the killer being introduced within the very first pages of the book, the crux of the suspense is how the police/detectives and Susie's family track down the killer. Somewhere down the line, I vehemently awaited justice on behalf of so many young girls who have suffered a similar fate in reality. My main quibble is that I didn't find enough closure from the ending - I was expecting a climax, but it seemed to fizzle out with an induced paranormal phenomenon. It thwarted the momentum and flow of the book for me.

The family's grief and helplessness are quite moving, and Sebold's writing beautifully captures it all. I loved her lyrical prose. Her writing wrings out every subtle emotion from each of the characters. It doesn't do justice to gulp down her prose... the words hold a lot of insight and they are very creatively expressed, leaving a haunting and profound impact on life, death, acceptance and moving on.

Gruesome fairy tales

Adam, his friend (whose name slips me) and I were having a different discussion over lunch. His friend made a casual comment on how kids should be monitored even while watching animations, cartoons and fairy tales... Hold on there!! Did he say fairy tales?? I quipped in with an emphatic WHY? His reasoning was that fairy tales were actually gruesome, and Adam joined forces talking about Snow white and poisoned apples, the witch in Hansel and Gretel who ate kids, and how the witch was pushed into a burning furnace at the end, Hansel and Gretel's parents who abandoned their own kids in the heart of a jungle!! Hmm.... I admit I never thought of them... they are sort of gruesome when you actually think of the story.

This reminded me of the lawsuits that were against Tom and Jerry, claiming that the cartoon was getting far too violent with Tom treating Jerry in the most cruel, violent manners possible (trying to roast him in an oven, trying to skin him with a peel, dropping him into boiling water, trying to squash him with tables and bowling balls... ). The prosecutors were nervous that these animations portrayed the exact opposite of what kids are always being taught (i.e., to be nice and courteous and not to chase other kids with bowling balls). When these animations actually cast them in the light of humor, it seems to dispel the severity of such acts. Although Jerry is fine after being roasted in the oven and being squashed, that's not reality and we can't be sure if kids can discern between surrealism and reality. We don't want some bully to drag some child into an oven, thinking he will be fine.

When I first read about the lawsuits I was quite surprised. I mean, when I was young, my friends, cousins and I grew up watching Tom and Jerry and Walt Disney, forming the core of our childhood (at least for me). How come we managed to grow up ok? Was it our parents, the spiritual grounding we had? Or perhaps we were far too innocent (aka dumb) to try and replicate the acts, or we were far too smart (Of course!) knowing such acts were to be forgotten after the show.

But looking at contemporary cartoons, I am flabbergasted! If there were lawsuits against Tom and Jerry, where are the lawsuits now?? Cartoons have become far too violent and gross these days! Humor has become twisted - humor is constantly being equated to somebody else's misery, and in a far too vindictive manner than in Tom and Jerry. This gets us thinking of violence in everyday life.

Video games are another prime source of violence, becoming gorier by the day. I remember my cousin getting so involved in shooting and killing the bad guys that you could see him getting angry and worked up. Aren't such media only invigorating the baser violent instincts? After the shooting at VT, there was so much news and hype about profane essays the killer had written. The vocabulary and gruesome violence portrayed in his plays are something almost every guy I see around is capable of thinking... perhaps they don't have the guts to submit it to a professor.

There are many well educated and cultured people out there using gruesome video games of killing people and animals in the most gory manner possible, to vent out frustrations at work or just for pure fun. When these well educated, well mannered, apparently non-psychopathic people can display such traits, one wonders how acute should a warning be, to identify the ones in trouble.

The fact is that it's so easy for the mind to snap, and when it does, we call attention to so called "traces of evidence that led to the catastrophe". We see PLENTY of evidence and red flags among many in our everyday lives, but we literally don't do anything about it. A person is not born a killer or a psychopath... each of us have the potential to snap.

Violence has been encouraged as being part of our life and we mercilessly expose kids to violence from the very tender ages. And it's quite disturbing to realize that even cartoons and fairy tales are not spared...