the thing about autobiograhical memory...

I don’t know if this is true of everyone, but somehow with me, books remind me of places I’ve been, things I’ve done, what I was up to when I was reading a certain page. Of course, my memory may be playing tricks on me, but that doesn’t make the memory false, somehow. Catch-22 is the roshith’s and miss’s conversation about it, in the corridor, and the bus shed at school. Love story is the TV room at home, and shamefully, tears. :-/. The grapes of wrath is my first year at pondy, as is road to mecca (which I never finished, because it was in Malayalam)…. Of course, it works the other way as well, so my memories of coonoor are inescapably mixed with the james bond and Wodehouse I used to read in bed—which was a cosy closet with a nightlight…. Ah heaven.

Today, for example, I read (one someone’s facebook profile, where I was snooping) about an equal music. And suddenly I had this pang of memory: of reading to the last page sitting on the grey-tiled floor of the bathroom at home, and getting to the last page (you know, the place where julia’s playing the art of fugue, and Michael is either walking in or walking out….. which is it?) and then turning the book over and starting again. That memory’s what set this ramble off, which is why I bring it up.

The memory reminded me that the books I recommend to my friends have changed little or not at all, but the ones I do are always ones I remember in this way, which have attached a piece of autobiography onto themselves in this odd way. So I thought I’d set down my evangelism favourites, with as much as I can remember about where I read them, and ask this limited audience whether they have similar stories to tell.

1. An equal music I’ve already spoken about.

2. Seymour/raise high. There’s honestly nowhere I’ve not read this book, with the possible exception of my present room. So when I think of it, there’s the walk from school home, which I would undertake just to read this. There’s standing outside 215 lister and reading just one more page before getting on with something more important (?) there’s the 7-hour conversation I had with sapru, standing at his doorway (the one with the quote from dante on it?) about this and other things… i now wonder why I never thought of sitting… there’s jyothi’s cupboard, and her name on the front cover of the copy I lost. L.

3. The end of the affair. The bus ride back from Hyderabad, and migraine. I think I bought this book just for the way its jacket felt under my hand—it was one of those new ones with a matt finish that was all greys and browns. At a bookshop in jubilee hills which was much posher than anything else I’d ever been to till then. Also, the time I re-read it recently, lying on the top berth of the garib rath to ranchi, and the brown and cream walls of the carriage.

4. The earthsea books… oddly I can’t remember anything about reading a wizard… but I was so taken with it that I spent four hours typesetting an ebook of books 3,4, and 5 and printing it out—in size 10, two pages to one sheet of paper. So what I remember about earthsea then is that place, the dingy curtains and the printer in one corner. Also inextricably intertwined is our first experience with torrent downloads, and bizarrely enough, that snl episode where chris walken is shouting for moah cowbell. J.

5. Cloud atlas. Another book I read on the go, mostly, walking past vana vani trying to get to jyothi’s quarters. Also old monk rum, somehow. And morning raga music. I think I might be conflating multiple trips, tho: my copy lived for a while at my sister’s place, and it used to be on bookshelf where this morning raga cd was always there.

There, I feel much better now. J.

eats, shoots, and makes kungfu noises at the audience

a little context, first:

• i'm something of a grammarophile, whether i like it or not. i'd prefer it to be "anne fadiman and family parsing menus" rather than of the "lynn truss making fun of endangered species" variety. i would like to believe that i hold no personal grudge against perpetrators of grammar crime, nor do i want a uniform code of grammar conduct. these, imo, clear me of being a grammar fascist of any kind. u guys can tell me if i'm wrong.
• recently someone spotted an ungrammaticism (is that a word?) in this blog, and pointed it out to me. i was shocked because i didn't know that grammar rule, and was rather appalled by it (apparently the possessive form of it isn't it's but its. can someone explain to me why this is so?) and i've been unnecesarily hot and bothered about this ever since. whyyy whyyy etc.
  
• this grew out of a letter/email i wrote to someone to explain why i, rather nastily, corrected grammar on someone's facebook page. apart from the apology, i hope to expunge all personal reference.
  

there's a reason for grammar, and that's comprehensibility. apart from that, i guess grammar has its own beauty, its own rightness that u get an idea as u go along. and that's what i was arguing for, in the fry post. that laissez faire doesn't work because it introduces ugliness.

grammar nazis object to stray apostrophes, partial sentences and gerunds/conjunctions. none of which are my enemies, and i don't mind them. i stand by the it's/its debate on principle; i don't think it's uglifies the language, i don't see why it shouldn't exist, and i am therefore appalled by the rule's existence. until i can find a way to reconcile that with how i understand english grammar (which is something one feels thru one's fingers, not thru some higher cognition) i will continue to hold by that.


what i said in the second paragraph is what i meant. and i hold by that as well. there are usages that are ugly. and those ought not be grammatical, even if seemingly they are. one's appreciation of beauty/ugliness in usage comes from experience of whatever it is that one knows, the rules that u come to understand not because they were taught u when u were in furth standard, but because u've been thinking/writing/speaking in this english all ur life.

when those rules are bent, it has to be done with finesse, by someone who can sense the ebbs and flows and knows that this thing, this possibly mutant monster that he's creating by mixing metaphors/inverting syntax/bubbling cauldrons is something that would be a tudor rose and not a minotaur. when that doesn't happen, it's not pretty for the reader, and that's all i'm objecting to. it's the reason i don't write, because i don't know whether the "lyricism" of the sentence above is twee or incredibly profound.

and in a related theme, there are levels of grammar crimes. there's verb agreement which is easy enugh to spot, and the only kind that naturally sets my teeth on edge. the hanging gerund, the don't start with because, rule etc are somewher in that hazy middle ground between syntax and style and it's there that things fall apart mostly for grammar nazis. the apostrophe crime in general i notice but don't point out, except when it makes things funny.

i'm sorry. this isn't something we should be arguing about at all, because it's relatively unimportant. but u're seeing double standards where i can't, and i swear i'm not explaining this to u out of pique or whatever; i just think this is worth writing about. believe me, my english education is mostly informal (with apologies to any of my english teachers who may chance upon this) and so i could be completely wrong about some of these things. and i'd be glad for u to point out those (and any grammatical errors as well) in this post or any other.

ps: when i was ten, i was convinced that the word was lucridous. i argued for half an hour with my cousins, who were moved to much merriment by this. thereafter, each time i stumble upon ludicrous, i roll "lucridous" over my tongue, and agree with myself over and over again that it's a relaly awful sounding word, and how could i think this was it. this story doesn't have an ending, but i present it to u as a gift, nevertheless.

and because i think it's worth writing about, this blog.

cultural terrorism, and it's consequences for the soul

Someone was telling me recently that i tend to be dictatorial in my tastes. That i don’t have too much patience with book/movies i dislike (which is fine, isn’t it?) but even more damningly, with people who read said books/movies. I stood my ground then, but this morning, i thought of the converse of this statement, and what it says of me.

Because what this means is that i want others to share my views. If i see someone reading a book anywhere i tend to sneak a look at the cover, to see if it’s something i’ve read. and if perchance it’s one i love, i go into a series of almost-convulsions, as i suppress the urge to walk upto them and shake them: “Didja like it? didja... didja... didja...” of course, i rarely have, except with people i know at least slightly, but even they look so uncomfortable at this, that i’m reasonably sure that it’s because my eyes shine with the light of fanaticism, and they’re secretly shaking in their shoes with the thought that if they tell me they didn’t like ‘The End of the Affair’ i might pull out a cudgel and whap them.

So why should my tastes and what i read have to do with anything/anyone else? It ought not to, but it does.

ps: the extension of this conversation that was the core of the argument that day, was whether or not people who can't write, should. and one argument that was brought against me was that i have a blog, in spite of my hatred of pedestrian writing. a paradox i cannot deny, nor mitigate in any way. :-/.

possession: an old rant

I wrote this immediately after i read the book/watched the movie.

AS Byatt deserved it.

It’s usual to mourn the ruining of a good book, by movie maker who seal things that aren’t of the essence, and leave only the bare bones of plot, distorted by levels of over-simplification. This is why the lord of rings is easy to dislike, what with it’s clearly stated obsession with making every battle picture-perfect, orc by orc. While turning Frodo’s strengths into formidable weakness, and making all of the subtlety that Tolkien suggests for the magic of the ring into storms and shadows and hoarse voices.

But it’s worse, apparently, to destroy a book that’s not-so-great.

Possession is a book that’s so well thought-of that i ought to just shut my gob. But i can’t help but think it was a book with massive flaws. A book that ends too pat, with action and adventure that is quite a shock after the relative quiet of the rest of the book. Though even along the way, it has it’s share of shrill moments and silliness. and the plot, stripped of it’s literary complexity, is more deserving of the da vinci code, than of a woman more famous as a critic than a novelist.

What the makers of the movie have done, is to do that very thing. To excise the mystery of the hunt, the uncertainties of the scholars as they discard the positions they had held for so long. The title’s many-layered meaning: possession of the letters that are exchanged, the way in which, as byatt would have it, that scholars are possessed by the lives of the writers they study; of the right to live a private life, and the roundabout that leads to such a dramatic ending.

The book’s conjectures, it’s suggestions and the possibility that this is merely one explanation for the facts at hand (which i found fascinating) have been discarded wholesale in favour of visible, in-your-face angst, which replaces the mere suggestion of silences and headaches that christabel’s letters (in the book) give the reader. And somehow, as much as i like Jennifer Ehle, she makes a better Elizabeth Bennett than a Christabel la Motte, who ought to be an ice princess, not so buxom, hearty and so full of life, so ready with her smile. Which is a kind of transformation that they’ve performed with Maud bailey’s character as well, but only to the extent that Gwyneth Paltrow’s natural iciness allows.

this post happened because i have lots of time to stare at movie posters

this post touched a nerve, mostly because i was thinking a very similar thought this morning, so this had the sound of a reply. i'm finding it difficult to find precise words for what i'm trying to say, but what it works out to is that looking around, i think that hindi films are no longer made for a common audience. there are the movies that could not hope to succeed in the heartland, and there are the others, that are made to be crowd-pleasers. what i take this to mean is that there's a loss of cultural common ground, and that's rather sad. what it means is that there are no longer lines like "arre o samba" and the like, that would be instantly recognisable to most indians who speak hindi, regardless of where he/she's from or how urbanised he/she is. that just can't be, any more. and i wondered if that's the reason why there aren't any "great" hindi movies any more (i can't think of few that would be watched twenty years from now).

there are of course the usual arguments about liberalisation and the split-down-the-middle that the intelligentsia claims to haunt india (i could segue off to naxalism from here, but i won't) but in human terms, i wonder if this absence of common cinema would mean that we understand each other less well than we used to: becasue our idiom, our cultural references, are now so different.
and extrapolating, does this mean that other languages, where the differences between the arty and the crowd-pleaser aren't so huge, are the people also bound to be more alike? are they likely to produce better cinema?

talking to the shrink-free.

this afternoon, between conversations on how to make a seminar and hrishikesh mukherji movies (it's a long ride from gzb to delhi... what can i say), the person i was talking to, started up on how being a psychiatrist makes u a poor conversationalist. what he said, was something that i'm currently a little touchy about, for disparate reasons, and it's not something that i expected, somehow, that someone else would point out. that it's a common affliction of psychiatry students, is something of a relief.

basically, what my co-jr said was that he finds himself boring his non-psychiatrist friends with conversation on topics that only psychiatrists would be interested in. that quirks in people around suddenly become worthy of note, and lead to expositions on whys and wherefores. and how this is something he's noticed that other people, including other doctors, don't do: that their occupations don't involve them or make them as incompetent at normal conversation, as ours does. everything seems relevant, and we tend to ask too many questions. all of which is true, and i guess it's the form of third year syndrome that affects psychiatry residents everywhere. it's not that everything becomes abnormal, merely that everything becomes interesting. which is probably worse. :-).

what bothers me about this, more than anything else, apart from the fact that it makes an unusually boring and self-involved person, is that this sort of thing must be obvious to everyone around (last week, someone asked me if i'm ever off work... :-/). and therefore, i'm starting to wonder if any future expression of concern on my part would be interpreted not as friendship, but clinical acumen. and that, therefore, everything that follows becomes slightly forced and manipulative. which is not the relationship i would like to have with people outside the workplace. but i guess, if wishes were horses.....


ps: the reason i'd decided not to continue with this blog is that i was sick and tired of writing an online journal, with silly trivia about myself. this probably qualifies for all those labels, but i'd like people to hold down this thought when communicating with me. so this post probably belongs where the statutory warning is meant to go... :-/.

Am I this person?

There’s this stereotypical character in many movies/books (mostly in those that’re written/made for preteens), who is perpetually unhappy with his/her lot (usually her, somehow). I’m speaking of the kind who are convinced (or self-servingly try to convince the world?) that they are always doomed to failure. And when the plot unravels, it seems they never do.

 

The results of the first of my exams came out this morning. For the last two weeks, I have been boring everyone to death (at least in my head my listeners are mostly waiting for an opportunity to flee) with elaborate details of what exactly went wrong at the exam.  And even though this was done with perfect sincerity, i still feel like a devious son-of-a-bitch because I’ve done much better than I’d’ve thought possible, and so apparently all I said about it were actually koncham inaccurate.

 

 The crux is this: I would’ve been slightly envious of any other person who’d done as well as this (there’s still a little voice in my head that I’d really like to suppress, that’s going “oh but what’s the big deal exactly). while now that it’s me, I’m desperately seeking loopholes: reasons why it won’t work out the way that people are telling me it will, convincing arguments about why so many other people are so much better off. These are playing in my head intermittently, and totally drowning out the fact that I’d’ve been totally overjoyed if my name was all the way at the bottom of the list, just yesterday.. I don’t know if this means that I’m just naturally cautious, a pessimist, or someone who’s desperately seeking appreciation. I wish I knew.

option b on why i'm not happy enough is that this is a deviation from the master plan i'd made for myself, tho in a completely unexpected direction: i was supposed to be cracking exams in february, and this was meant to be an "exam to do well on so that i'm on track by then". am i such a fool that this sort of thing throws me? or is this merely a need to always look at the other option and wonder if that's better than this? if i live all my life thinking that, am i not looking to be a scrooge and a dissatisifed lout? 

ps: i'm beginning to wonder if this blog is working out to be more a shashi tharoor blog than a ramachandra guha blog. in that while both tend to specialise in information that's exsoteric in the extreme, guha tends to speak of things outseide himself. while tharoor has only one thing to talk about, and that's himself. everything he speaks of (even obama's presidential election, come to thnk of it) he manages to subvert so that the universe is properly centred around himself, and all else is extraneous. and while blogs (and guha) are by nature self0indulgent, they do mostly manage sometimes to make the blogger only a participant/observer, not the be-all-end-all. 

i guess that's why everyone can't be tamizhpenn.