Words of Freedom - Ideas Of A Nation

This a series of booklets punlished by Penguin Books (I only recently go to know that enguin's founder was V K Krishna Menon!!!) that gives us a collection of speeches and writings of 14 personalities involved in the freedom struggle.

They are B R Ambedkar, Aruna Asaf Ali, M K Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Rajaji, Maulana Azad, Subhash Chandra Bose, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Sardar Patel, Periyar E V Ramaswami Naiker, Bhagat Singh and Rabindranath Tagore.

The basic idea behind the series is to highlight the fact that the freedom struggle was not a monolithic or monochromatic movement that had no centrifugal and centripetal forces acting on it.

The struggle for Indian independence had a collage of ideas and minds fuelling it. The idea of freedom and nation as espoused by Bhagat Singh (a thorough communist - though he is much in demand among today's Hindutva brigade) and Rabindranath Tagore is so widely apart and dissimilar that one wonders how and when such thoughts managed to merge into ne mainstream and form a torrent that the world's mightiest empire could not held against.

What comes across is the unthinkable pain and effort that these guys went through to give us that much cherished freedom. And what makes the reading even poignant is the fact that so many of us today choose to deny these gentlemen the credit by unilaterally declaring that India gaining freedom had nothing to do with the lifetimes these folks gave up for the cause and the British themselves left India because they became weak following the world wars.

I am sure it serves a definite purpose to paint such a picture, which is mass character assassination.

Meanwhile, each of these characters -- be it Bhagat Singh or Maulana Azad, Naidu or Periyar – with their distinct vision for the country, went through immense personal difficulties (which many of us take pleasure in declaring as personal failures, as in the case of Gandhi and his eldest son Manilal) to maintain the integrity of their mission for India.

Take these words of Patel, for instance, on February 23, 1949, at Madras: “In this country, the greatest need of the hour is food. We import millions of tons of food into our country. We have not got the ships to bring that food that we want. So we pay crores of rupees as freight charges simply to bring the food here. We have not enough boats to even catch fish. We have no mercantile marine. We have nothing left in the country; for the past 200 years it has been bled white; during the war years in particular, every ounce of blood has been taken out. Our railways system has been completely disorganised. The transport member makes tremendous efforts to set it right. But the railways are like a decrepit old widow. Railway sleepers and rails were taken out and sent to various theatres of war. We cannot replace the wagons that been over used for so many years. We cannot get locomotives. We cannot make them here; we have yet to establish factories for meeting the requirements of our country.”

The sad part is not that Patel struggled his entire lifetime for the country. The sad part is that the freedom struggle in its entirety is painted as bogus and meaningless by a good section of our generation today. The sad part is that many of us try to make Patel a pawn in trying to project his colleagues, whom he held so dear and loved so much, as villains of Indian history – be it Nehru or Gandhi. The sad part is that we are totally decimating history for our own partisan purposes.

If we have an iota of shame, gratitude and dignity left in us, all we can do is thank the likes of Patel, Bose, Nehru and Gandhi and move on with our present and future.

Paleri Manikkam - T P Rajivan

"Death complete's and complements a woman's beauty."

This is my translation of a vital quote from the book. It is perhaps also the gist of the book.

Weaved into an investigative novel, the story of Paleri Manikkam -- a 19 year old married woman in north Kerala -- is an evocation of the depth and complexity of womanhood, both physical as well as mental.

At another level, the story is also an honest rendering of the colours, hypocrisy and innocence of a social, political and cultural era that Kerala has left behind in the past few decades.

Rajivan also does a splendid job of stripping the man-woman relationship of the aesthetics, mores and moralistic trappings and treating the human body, especially the female body in all its crudity, without for a moment sounding indecent.

Refreshing in its style and narration, I will remember Paleri Manikkam most for its honesty and straightforwardness.

I hope the movie is even half as good. Although I can already imagine Mamootty rocking in that most important role.

Yakshi -- Malayattoor Ramakrishnan

Thank god I had not watched the movie before I read the book. (Although I love the song Swarnachamaram Veesheyethunna Swapnayirunnenkil Njyaan, from the same movie it seems).

Yakshi is a fantastic novel. Multilayered and psychedelic, it explores the human mind – particularly the male mind – in its full flowing despondency.

Though it starts slow and the build-up is not really exciting, by the time you are half way through, Yakshi has caught you by the throat.

It is the story of a young and handsome chemistry college professor – Srinivasan -- who, I a quirk of fate, has his face burnt in a freak accident in the laboratory. Just when his life was about to blossom, it wilts.

His lover, a student of his, promptly ditches him. He turns a recluse and decides to take up his passion seriously – a study of Yakshis.

Just when life seems to have got into the new routine, Ragini – an abnormally beautiful woman – literally walks into his life.

He is first astonished, then relieved to have such a beautiful companion and decides to marry her although her background, whereabouts and history are quite murky and vague. If nothing, this is one way Srinivasan can “give it back” to the world which rejected his horribly ugly face.

But unknown to him, Srinivasan has another shock awaiting him. The lab accident, along with an extremely disturbing experience at a brothel just before meeting Ragini, have wrecked him internally too, and he now incapable of making love.

The well-built and athletic Srinivasan painfully realizes that he has become impotent. But his conscious mind refuses to acknowledge the fact. Instead his mind activates the classic defence mechanisms – projection and denial.

He starts believing Ragini is a Yakshi. He begins hallucinating about non-events. Coincidences start throwing up new meanings that reinforce his fear of Ragini.

Malayattoor paints a powerful picture of male ego, Freudian symbolism and schizophrenic desperation. A wonderful read.

Nakshatrangale Kaaval – P Padmarajan

Pappettan is my favourite Malayalam movie director by all standards. But I was told he was a better writer than a movie maker.

That spoilt the party for me.

This novel – my first Padmarajan work – was such a huge disappointment.

Cliches and boring melodrama mar the otherwise manageable plot. The characters are extremely inconsistent and unreal.

The only saving grace was the unpredictability of the narrative – as often seen in his movies -- and the author’s attempt to show different perspectives to a single event.

Why have Malayalam authors – the very few that I have read – been obsessed with the “over-descriptive” style? Why do they blindly follow Hardy and Lawrence?

The most ridiculous part of this novel – as also a few other Malayalam novels I have read – is the unrealistic English conversations among characters.

Even in this day and age, I doubt whether urban middle class or lower middle class families use English as a conversational tool between family members – or even among friends. There would be even little chance of this happening in the 1970s in a rural set up – even if the characters are well off.

Padmarajan peppers the narrative with statements like “I say you get out!” and “leave me alone” to add that dramatic feel. But they turn out to be damp squibs.

Because there is the least possibility of one using an alien language when one is emotionally charged. When in anger, grief or desperation, most of us instinctively use our mother tongues to express ourselves. Not Pappettan, it looks like.

Anyways, I guess after finishing the two other books of his that I have I will simply stick to his movies.

If you intend to read this novel, forget it. Try out something else.

Riot After Riot -- M J Akbar

There is a point beyond which it is impossible, at least for me, to describe death: you have to leave it as a statistic and be done with it.

Akbar, a veteran journalist, traverses a forbidden landscape of our collective consciousness. An area that we pretend does not exist, but is fertile in that corner of our mind.

Riots -- communal, casteist, ethnic -- seldom raise our eyebrows today. Death is a mere tag-along. Even when massacres, mass murders and virtual ethnic cleansing are given the less-offending epithet of “riot”.

Reading through his pages, it is this escapism of ours that is exposed. And besides the mere documentation of such heart wrenching incidents, I have a feeling that precisely is Akbar’s idea. To strip us of our make-believe world where such heinous crimes happen only in the fringe. “It happens to them, not us”.

Blood curdling incidents of human decimation -- be it in the hinterlands of Bihar or UP, or in the heart of Chandigarh, or in the forgotten suburbs of Meerut, or under the pristine foliage of the Dandakaranya -- have been described, investigated into and the culprits found, by Akbar.

Lost innocence, devastated childhoods, vanishing lifestyles -- these are the recurring leitmotifs of the narration that also uncovers the omnipresent web of lies, politics and rhetoric -- used by individuals and institutions to further their own interests.

Akbar spares none. The supposedly “decent” V P Singh, the “living Durga” Indira Gandhi, the “secular nationalist mask” A B Vajpayee. He tracks the establishment’s instincts to side with the perpetrators of sickening crimes like burning of innocent Muslim children, raping of pregnant Dalit women and public whipping of tribals.

He disturbs the apparent calm that has set in for us in the mainstream society. He disturbs our complacence. In the hope that that somewhere we would be stirred.

High hopes, I must say!

"Riot After Riot" is a mere blip in the radar of our conscience, Mr Akbar.

India's Struggle for Independence

There is this beautiful song in the old movie "Jagruti" (which was generously ripped off to make the modern day classic "Taare Zameen Par") about juvenile reformation and student life. The move ends with Mohammed Rafi crooning:

"Hum Layen Hain Toofan Se Kashti Nikaal Ke.

Is Desh Ko Rakhna Mere Bacchon Sambhaal Ke."

("We" have tugged this boat out of the cyclone. Please keep this country safe my children!)

Blood, sweat, heat, dust, grit and finally glory.

Contradictions, resentment, rebellion, debates, determination and finally freedom.

That our struggle for independence is a fascinating story of perseverance, will and fortitude is well known. But it was also one of differences, clashing opinions, ideologies and personalities is a lesser known fact.

The greatness of the movement was not that it achieved its goal. Its greatness lies in the fact that it did this despite the variety of... hmmm everything... that existed in the country.

The greatness of the men and women who wasted away their lives for this purpose, I feel, is misplaced. It is not because of the hardships they went through towards attaining independence.

It is the how they forged a unified force towards this, enveloping all streams of thoughts, all kinds of personalities -- with mutual respect.

Of course, this book -- a collection of erudite essays by historians like Bipan Chandra, K N Panikkar and Mridula Mukherjee – is not just an eulogy to the people and the movement itself.

Because, besides describing the events, thought processes and ideologies between 1857 and 1947, the book also throws light on the failures of the leadership and people.

The inability of the top-line leadership – Nehru, Gandhi, Patel, Jinnah etc -- to identify and tackle the socioeconomic roots of communalism in the subcontinent and the emphasis on discussion, the compromise among leaders themselves to tackle the issue is a case in point.

Clearing up some of the misconceptions about individuals and the principles, explaining the idea behind some of the controversial steps, the basic theory underlying the whole independence movement in the post-Gandhi era, the book provides a basic theoretical framework for the whole movement.

Forget about interest in history as such, this book is a must read for anyone with even an iota of interest for how we became what we are today.

Indeed, the book cries out: “We have done our job. It’s your turn to safeguard the country.”

The Difficulty of Being Good -- Gurcharan Das

I had been hearing rave reviews about the book. I had also a lot about Gurcharan Das's previous book -- India Unbound.

So when our resident editor discarded some of the books she received I picked this one up.

Perhaps Das is not the first person to use the plot and ideas of the Mahabharata to express his views. Nevertheless, Das does a decent job of making his book the next step towards a more philosophic understanding of the great Indian epic rather than the mere character based tale.

He uses this plot to tackle -- quite superficially, I felt -- some of the biggest problems human beings face today like the global economic crisis, the Iraq war, the Ambani brothers feud etc.

Eminently readable, The Difficulty of Being Good tries to understand the complexities of the major characters like Bheeshma, Karna, Krishna, Yudhishtira, Duryodhana and others to dissect the subtleties of human nature perpetually dilly-dallying between the good and bad.

Das shows how we all are a mix of good and evil and even this good an evil are very subjective in nature. He also shows how the entire epic, despite the presence of Krishna -- the godhead -- is actually very human in nature. Ultimately, it is about human nature and not about god.

What I didn't like was the fact that while his reading of the epic itself was quite sophisticated, Das oversimplified it when he superimposed the Mahabharata's lessons on to today's world -- very Mani Ratnam-ish I guess.

For instance, referring to the Ambani feud he plainly writes the younger sibling Anil is smitten by a Duryodhana like envy for his more talented elder brother Mukesh!

Also, the way he talks about his own father as someone who was closest to Dharma. While I am not against an autobiographical viewpoint, I think the subject is trivialised when one starts portraying one's own moral infallibility! Come on we all love our parents and think our father is the best. But not at his age. And certainly not enough to be quoted in a book that has pretentions of high thinking.

Nevertheless, overall a worthwhile book.