ഫാലിമിയും വാർദ്ധക്യപുരാണവും...

ഏതാണ്ട് മുപ്പതു വർഷം മുൻപ് വന്ന ഒരു ചിത്രമായിരുന്നു രാജസേനന്റെ വാർദ്ധക്യപുരാണം. മൂന്നു സുഹൃത്തുക്കൾ റിട്ടയർ ആയ ശേഷം നാടക ട്രൂപ്പ് തുടങ്ങുന്നതും, തുടർന്നുള്ള പ്രശ്നങ്ങളും ആണ് പ്രമേയം. സിനിമാ ഭ്രമം അതിന്റെ മൂർദ്ധന്യത്തിൽ നിൽക്കുന്ന, സീരിയലുകൾ പ്രേക്ഷകരെ മോഹവലയത്തിലേക്ക് ആകർഷിച്ചു തുടങ്ങിയ കാലഘട്ടത്തിലാണ് മൂവർ സംഘം നാടകവുമായി ഇറങ്ങുന്നത്. കാലോചിതമല്ലാത്തത് എന്നു പൊതുബോധം വിശ്വസിക്കുന്ന ഈയൊരു തീരുമാനവുമായി ബന്ധപ്പെടുത്തിയിട്ടാണ് മിക്ക ഹാസ്യ രംഗങ്ങളും,  ചിത്രീകരിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നത്. നാടകഭ്രമം വയസ്സാൻകാലത്തെ നൊസ്സായിട്ടാണ് ഇവരുടെ വീട്ടുകാർ കാണുന്നത്. എന്നാൽ ഇവർ നാടക ട്രൂപ്പ് തുടങ്ങുന്നു. കാരണം താന്താങ്ങളുടെ കുടുംബങ്ങളിൽ അപ്പോഴും ഇവരുടെ വാക്കുകൾക്ക് വിലയുണ്ട്.

എന്നാൽ  ഈയടുത്ത് ഇറങ്ങിയ ഫാലിമി എന്ന സിനിമയിലെ അപ്പൂപ്പന് ഇത്ര പോലും സാധിക്കുന്നില്ല. പ്രായമായി വീട്ടിൽ വെറുതെ ഇരിക്കുന്ന അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ ആഗ്രഹം കാശിക്ക് പോണം എന്നാണ്. ആദ്ധ്യാത്മിക ഭാഷയിൽ ഒരാൾ, അതും പ്രായമായയാൾ, കാശിക്ക് പോകുന്നത് തന്റെ മരണത്തിനെ പുൽകാൻ വേണ്ടിയിട്ടാണ്. അപ്പൂപ്പൻ പക്ഷേ ഒരു അഡ്വഞ്ചർ ട്രിപ്പ് ആണെന്ന് തോന്നുന്നു ഉദ്ദേശിക്കുന്നത്. ആയ കാലത്തു നന്നായി യാത്ര ചെയ്തിട്ടുണ്ടെന്ന് ഉറപ്പാണ്. വീട്ടുകാർക്ക് ഈ വയോധികനെ തനിച്ച് വിടാനുള്ള ധൈര്യമില്ല. എന്നാൽ ഒന്നു കൂടെ കൂട്ടി പോയി വരാനുള്ള സമയമോ, സൌകര്യമോ ഒട്ടില്ല താനും. അങ്ങേർ ഇടക്കിടെ വീട്ടുകാർ കാണാതെ ഒളിച്ചുകടക്കും. റെയിൽവേ സ്റ്റേഷനെത്തുമ്പോളേക്കും ആരെങ്കിലും കൈയോടെ പിടിച്ചു തിരിച്ചു കൊണ്ടുവരും. 

നമ്മുടെ സമൂഹത്തിൽ, ഇന്ന് പ്രായമാകും തോറും ആളുകളുടെ ഏജൻസി, അതായത്, പ്രവർത്തിക്കാനുള്ള കഴിവ്, കുറച്ചു കൊണ്ടു വരാനുള്ള ഒരു പ്രവണത കണ്ടുവരുന്നില്ലേ? വയസ്സായാൽ അടങ്ങി ഒതുങ്ങി, പിൻതലമുറ പറയുന്നത് അനുസരിച്ചു, ആഗ്രഹങ്ങൾ അടക്കി കഴിഞ്ഞുകൂടുക. വളരെ അധികം പേർ ഈ സമ്മർദ്ദം അതിജീവിക്കുന്നവരും ഉണ്ട്. വർഷങ്ങൾ ജോലി ചെയ്തു ശേഷം, റിട്ടയർ ചെയ്തു തനിക്ക് ഇഷ്ടത്തിനൊത്ത വണ്ണം ചെയ്യാൻ കഴിയാത്ത കാര്യങ്ങൾ ചെയ്യുന്നവർ: പുസ്തകം എഴുതുന്നവർ, പാട്ടു പാടുന്നവർ, യാത്ര ചെയ്യുന്നവർ, അങ്ങനെ അങ്ങനെ... 

എന്നാൽ ബഹുഭൂരിപക്ഷം പേരും പ്രായമായാൽ സ്വയം ഒതുങ്ങുകയോ, ഒതുക്കപ്പെടുകയോ ചെയ്യും. ഒന്നു പുറത്തിറങ്ങിയാൽ, ഒരു ഒച്ച പുറത്തു കേട്ടാൽ, പ്രായമായാൽ അടങ്ങിയിരിക്കണം എന്ന ശാസനം. താൻ നയിച്ചുണ്ടാക്കിയ സമ്പാദ്യം ചെലവഴിക്കാനും മറ്റുള്ളവരുടെ സമ്മതം തേടണം. വീട്ടിലും സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യം കിട്ടില്ല. ഇതിന്റെ എല്ലാം മീതെ, പറഞ്ഞാൽ അനുസരിക്കാത്ത ശരീരവും. ചെറുപ്പക്കാർ പ്രായമായവരുടെ സംസാരവും പെരുമാറ്റവും കാണുന്നത് പലപ്പോഴും തമാശയായും ചിലപ്പോഴെങ്കിലും അലോസരമായുമാണ്. അവർക്ക് വേച്ചു വെച്ച നടപ്പും സ്ഫുടമല്ലാത്ത സംസാരവും ഇഷ്ടപ്പെടുന്നില്ല. 

ഈയൊരു സ്ഥിതിയിലേക്കു നാം എങ്ങനെ എത്തിപ്പെട്ടു? വളരെ പഴയതല്ലാത്ത ഒരു കാലത്തിൽ വാർദ്ധക്യം അറിവിന്റെയും, ജ്ഞാനത്തിന്റെയും അടയാളം ആയിരുന്നു. സമൂഹത്തിലെ ഏറ്റവും പ്രായം ചെന്ന വ്യക്തി ആയിരുന്നു തലവൻ. മൂപ്പൻ, ഗുരു, കാരണവർ, മുഖ്യൻ എന്നിങ്ങനെയുള്ള വാക്കുകൾ കേൾക്കുമ്പോൾ മനസ്സിൽ വരുന്ന രൂപം പ്രായമായ, നരച്ച താടിയും മുടിയുമുള്ള വൃദ്ധന്റേതല്ലേ? പ്രായമായ അച്ഛന്റെ ആർജ്ജിതജ്ഞാനത്തിൽ നിന്നു പകർന്നു കിട്ടിയ അറിവുപയോഗിച്ച് ജീവിതം മുന്നോട്ടു കൊണ്ടു പോകുന്ന മക്കൾ. സമൂഹത്തിന്റെ സുഗമമായ നടത്തിപ്പിന് ആവശ്യമായ നിയമങ്ങളും, ആചാരാനുഷ്ഠാനങ്ങളും, അരച്ചു കലക്കി കുടിച്ചിട്ടു അത് സമൂഹത്തിലും സമുദായത്തിലും നടപ്പിലാക്കുന്ന തലവന്മാർ. 

അക്കാലത്തു സാമൂഹിക മാറ്റങ്ങൾ കാര്യമായി നടന്നിരുന്നില്ല. ഒരു ചെറിയ മാറ്റം പോലും വർഷങ്ങളും തലമുറകളും എടുത്താണ് നിലവിൽ വരിക. തലമുറകളിലെ അന്തരം, അഥവാ ജനറേഷനൽ ഗാപ് പരിമിതമായിരുന്നു.  അതിനാൽ സമൂഹത്തിന്റെ നിലനിൽപ്പിൽ ആർജ്ജിത ജ്ഞാനത്തിന്റെയും അനുഭവ ജ്ഞാനത്തിന്റെയും പ്രാധാന്യം വളരെയധികമായിരുന്നു. ഇവ കൂടെയുള്ളത് വൃദ്ധർക്കൊപ്പമായിരുന്നു. വൃദ്ധരുടെ സംഖ്യയും സമൂഹത്തിൽ പരിമിതമായിരുന്നു. കാരണം കുറഞ്ഞ ആയുർദൈർഘ്യം തന്നെ. അതിനാൽ ആവശ്യകതാ-വിതരണ അനുപാതം, അഥവാ ഡിമാന്റ്-സപ്ലൈ റേഷ്യോ, പ്രായമായവർക്ക്  അനുകൂലമായിരുന്നു. 

പക്ഷേ, കാലാന്തരത്തിലെ മാറ്റങ്ങൾ ഈ വ്യവസ്ഥയെ തകർത്തു. ആദ്യത്തെ പ്രഹരം ഏൽപ്പിച്ചത് വ്യവസായ വിപ്ലവം തന്നെ. കൈത്തൊഴിലുകളിൽ അധിഷ്ഠിതമായ ഉത്പാദനം ബഹുജനോത്പാദനത്തിന്റെ (mass production) രീതിയിലേക്ക് മാറിയതോടെ ആർജ്ജിത വിജ്ഞാനത്തിന് പ്രാധാന്യം ഇല്ലാതായി. പ്രായാധിക്യം കാരണമുണ്ടാകുന്ന ശേഷീനഷ്ടം ഉത്പാദനത്തിന്റെ കാര്യക്ഷമതയെ ബാധിക്കാതിരിക്കാൻ പ്രായമായവരെ ഉത്പാദന വ്യവസ്ഥയിൽ നിന്ന് ബഹിഷ്കരിക്കാൻ തുടങ്ങി. അങ്ങനെ റിട്ടയർമെന്റ് ആവിർഭവിച്ചു. 

കാര്യങ്ങളെ കൂടുതൽ വഷളാക്കിയത് ആയുർദൈർഘ്യം മെച്ചപ്പെട്ടതാണ്. ഇത് കാലക്രമത്തിൽ സമൂഹത്തിലെ വൃദ്ധരുടെ സംഖ്യ മുൻപില്ലാത്ത തരത്തിൽ വർധിപ്പിച്ചു. ഡിമാന്റ് കുറഞ്ഞു, സപ്ലൈ കൂടി. അതോടെ ജ്ഞാനിയായ വൃദ്ധൻ എന്ന സങ്കല്പം ഇടിഞ്ഞു പോയി. വാർദ്ധക്യം ദയനീയതയുടെയും അസ്ഥിരതയുടെയും പര്യായമായി. ഇതിനോടൊപ്പം സാങ്കേതികതയുടെ അതിപ്രസരം ജനറേഷൻ ഗാപ് കണ്ടമാനം വർദ്ധിപ്പിച്ചു. വലിയ വിഭാഗം വയോധികർ മാറിവന്നുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുന്ന സാങ്കേതിക വിദ്യകളോട് പൊരുത്തപ്പെടാൻ മല്ലിടേണ്ട അവസ്ഥയിലേക്ക് തള്ളപ്പെട്ടു. പുതിയ തലമുറയുടെ വിനോദോപാധികളോ, ഭാഷയോ, ഭൂഷയോ, ആദർശങ്ങളോ മനസ്സിലാക്കാൻ പറ്റാത്ത പഴയ തലമുറ, സാംസ്കാരികമായും റിഡൻഡൻസിയിലേക്ക് പതിച്ചു. 

ഫാലിമിയിലേക്ക് തിരിച്ചു വന്നാൽ ഇതിന്റെ പൂർണ്ണമായ ഭീകരത കാണാം. ചിത്രത്തിലെ ഓരോ തലമുറയും അതിന്റെ മുന്നത്തെ തലമുറയോട് പെരുമാറുന്ന വിധം നോക്കൂ. ബേസിൽ അഭിനയിച്ച കഥാപാത്രം പോലും അയാളുടെ അനിയന്റെ മുന്നിൽ ഒരു പഴഞ്ചൻ ആണ്. ദ്രുതഗതിയിലെ സാങ്കേതികവും, പ്രത്യയശാസ്ത്രപരവും, സാംസ്കാരികവുമായ മാറ്റങ്ങളെ എത്തിപ്പിടിക്കാനുള്ള സ്ഥിരമായ വ്യർത്ഥശ്രമമായി മാനുഷികത മാറുമോ?

Book Review: What Mother Won't Tell Me by Ivar Leon Menger

Juno is raised on an unpopulated remote island with her brother Boy by her father and mother. Her parents protect them obsessively from anyone outside the island. They live their lives in perpetual fear of outsiders, whom they call strangers. It seems certain elements are searching for her father to take revenge. They have devised seven commandments that the kids have to live according to for their safety. But as Juno becomes sixteen, she resents her parents and her solitary life. She wants to get away from the island and learn about the outside world. When one stranger spots her, their lives fall like dominoes, and she finds reasons to suspect all she knew about her entire life were lies.

What Mother Won't Tell Me is a psychological thriller that was originally written in German by Ivar Leon Menger. The book, I feel, will be more appealing to readers in the young adult category as it addresses many issues faced by teenagers. The plot reads like a modern fairy tale, with many familiar and stereotypical fairy tale tropes making frequent appearances in it. Its upcoming translation into English is done by Jamie Bulloch. I received an advance review copy from the publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, through Netgalley in exchange for honest feedback.

The story is narrated in the first person from the point of view of sixteen-year-old Juno. We follow her uneventful but paranoid life on the island under the strict supervision of her parents and her interactions with Boy, her twelve-year-old brother. We sensed a certain 'not-ok-ness' in her situation from the word go. The mock drills, where the kids are fed with placebos when they are compromised, or the weekly arrival of the old postman when the kids have to stay in hiding—everything reeks of hidden secrets. The book does a great job of portraying the confusion and angst of teenage Juno, which makes her eager to explore her life on the island, her past life, and the world outside.

The narration is fast-paced and thrilling, and the author never holds back any punches, delivering many hard ones to the reader regularly. To his credit, many of them landed fair and square. He has used the darkness of the theme and the setting of the lonely island to narrate a claustrophobic story. I loved his parallels with fairy tales, especially Thumbelina, which is referenced many times in the plot. The lonely princess and the brave prince to the rescue themes are effectively used in the narrative and even subverted a few times.

My only gripe with the writer is that he chose to show his hands quite early in the game. When he did that, I expected that he had kept a secret trump card up his sleeve and that he planned to deal while I least expected it. Alas, the wait for that final reveal turned out to be a red herring, and the story, nevertheless a strong and satisfying one, ended without any spectacle. What My Mother Won't Tell turned out to be a reasonably well-told suspense thriller that also delves into teenage psychology. The translator also needs a pat on the back for expertly doing his job when the plot uses multiple languages, including English.

Book Review: The Religion of Wonder by Narendra Murty

 

For the last two hundred years, humanity has been riding on a path of enormous material progress. Our lives are much simpler today, thanks to all the technological developments that flood the market with gadgets and apps that are supposed to make our lives easier and better. But at what cost are we enjoying these luxuries? The planet on which we live is being exploited for resources, and the ecological balance that took millions of years to build up is shattered. But still, even after such progress and comfort that our forefathers could never dream of, our minds are not at peace. The prosperous and peaceful utopia that had been promised to us still remains as illusive as it was two hundred years ago.

Where did we go wrong? In this nimble volume titled The Religion of Wonder, writer Narendra Murty explores the history of religions and explains how science turned itself into another religious entity. He proposes a new religious thought that can bring back the concept of an enchanted world, something that we lost on our way when we decided that we were apart from nature and that nature was just dead matter, a storehouse of resources that was meant to be used up for our progress.

Primitive humans always considered themselves part of nature. They were not aware of its secrets and believed that natural phenomena were governed by supernatural entities who were to be pleased by worship and offerings. Thus, the world was considered enchanted and to be worshipped in order to survive. Slowly, organised religions came into being. They established a supreme authority over nature and human beings called God. God sat somewhere in another dimension and controlled the entire universe. Organised religions curbed free thought, and as a protest against this tendency, the Renaissance occurred. Free will and individuality were established as higher virtues than blind belief. Science became the ultimate authority.

This development caused a fundamental shift in how we see nature. Science considers nature to be a resource. Instead of a holistic view of the universe, science established reductionism. Components of nature were dismantled and studied separately, resulting in our loss of sight of the universe as a wholesome unit and not bits and pieces of dead matter. This caused ecological and environmental degradation on our planet, and it turned into a disenchanted world. The purported peaceful utopia, where all are equal, that was to be established through scientific progress, crumbled.

But at the beginning of the twentieth century, science itself provided a way out. Quantum mechanics proved that the universe is as mysterious to us as to the primitive human being. The predictive quality of Newtonian science gave way to probabilistic calculations. For every new breakthrough, new doors of uncertainty opened. Narendra Murty proposes that these new doors are not new disappointments but new avenues to be explored, rekindling our lost wonder at the secrets of the universe. This development should make us aware that life isn't as absurd or meaningless as we imagined during the bitter years of alienation and existential angst, but that it is a magic show encoded with mathematical theories written by the Ultimate Mathematician, whose creations should leave us as awe-stuck followers of the Religion of Wonder. This is our path to re-enchant our world.

This is the third book of Narendra Murty that I am reading, and it's always a joy to read him. As in his previous attempts, this book also never disseminates any new information. Every bit of fact, figure, and quote you find in this book is already recorded elsewhere. But what The Religion of Wonder does is establish connections between these pieces of information. In our information-rich world, where we can get any data with a click, it is more important to possess the skills to connect the dots between them and arrive at novel conclusions. The book demonstrates this analytical skill to its readers, and I believe it is something that is essential in today's world.

The cover of the book offers a gist of its philosophy. You find the silhouette of a person standing on a hill, using a torchlight to light up the dark sky. In the sky, embedded with stars, we find that the light illuminates minor portions of mathematical equations and geometric shapes. A huge part of them is still hidden in darkness, and the torchlight is too weak to fully light up the entire sky. But with the wonder that they have in their soul to uncover the remaining secrets of the sky, we hope they should lead the way forward for humanity.

Very recently, there was a phase where I read many books of popular science, especially the ones about cosmology, quantum physics, the concept of time, and string theory. Reading them, one cannot help but get dumbstruck at all the secrets that the world still withholds from us. The Religion of Wonder is all the more special for me because it is able to provide a perspective that ties in several concepts, like nature, religion, and science, that we imagine as being separate. It asserts the importance of preserving the mysticism within us, even when it is science and mathematics that can take us deeper into the religion of wonder, and they aren't antonymous. It is by this union alone that we can regain 'the chant of life that has lost its divine note' (Sri Aurobindo).

 

Book Review: The Glass Box by J. Michael Straczynski

 In the recent future, Riley is arrested while protesting on the streets against a new law that forbids the assembly of more than ten people in public. She has a choice: either go to prison or get admitted to any one of the recently opened American Renewal Centres for mandatory re-education for six months. Riley chooses the latter, hoping that a quick escape is possible from the psychiatric facility. Little did she realise that she was about to enter a new-age prison that would play every dirty trick to break her and make her snitch. She decides to fight back and expose the secrets of the institution that tie it to a forgotten evil of the Cold War.

The Glass Box is a dystopian novel written by J. Michael Straczynski, an award-winning writer of novels, comic books, television series, and movies. He has been associated with movies like Changeling, Thor, and World War Z, and he is the creator of the series Babylon 5. The book, though set in the future, mirrors the discontent within the present society and the ruling governments' different attempts to suppress its outflow in the form of public protests. It serves as a powerful critic of the current political system, often tending to become oppressors under the guise of benevolent benefactors. I received an advance review copy of the book from its publisher, Blackstone Publishing, through Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

It may probably be due to the background of the writer in visual media like comics and movies that The Glass Door follows a style of narration that is very non-descriptive. While reading it, the reader easily visualises the events, compared to other novels. This makes it very engaging, as the reader has to just go with the smooth, flowing narrative to enjoy it. While I loved this aspect of it, it cannot be denied that the novel fails to be immersive. For serious readers who also want their experience to be one of discovery, to form a deeper bond with the book, and to make their reading of it a two-way conversation with its author, the book doesn't offer much.

The protagonist of The Glass Door, Riley, is its biggest strength. The entire plot is narrated from her point of view, and though it is written in the third person, we get occasional peeks inside her chaotic thoughts. Riley is portrayed as a steadfast, strong, and ever-scheming woman who can never compromise with her principles, even when her life depends on them. On first glance, I wondered why she doesn't have a good character arc—the transformation of a hero—that makes readers more relatable to her.

But then it came to me that, though she retains all her characters even in the end, she finishes this episode of her journey with an important lesson. She discovers the importance of cooperation and working together. When every attempt of hers failed, she received help from others, from even unexpected quarters, without which she would have burned herself out. These assistances found her only because of her above-mentioned characteristic qualities, which force her not to compromise even when the entire world stands against her and urges her to accept defeat.

This transformation of Riley is also affecting the portrayal of the other characters. As the novel progresses, we find that the depiction of other characters in the story, who start out as one-noted, uninteresting entities who are always relegated to the peripheries of the plot, just like the protagonist wants them to be, acquires more uniqueness and individuality. Along with Riley, the reader also discovers them, their traits, and their constitution, becoming part of her journey.

The Glass Box by J. Michael Straczynski is dystopian fiction that closely mirrors the systematic oppression imposed on the public by ruling authorities and how society can pay heed to a lonely voice, get inspired, and protest against these attempts. The book is an engaging read that is difficult to put down and has a great plot and a powerful protagonist, though I would wish it to be something more deeper in its storytelling.

Rise, Fall, and the Resurgence of Lord Bobby

 Who thought Bobby Deol would go viral, not as a subject of memes but as an actor in an actual hit movie? I still remember reading the review of a movie in 2002 that emphatically stated that Bobby Deol tried every kind of hero role available in Bollywood and spectacularly failed in all of them. After that, he acted in another two dozen movies and gave a couple of hits like Ajnabee and Humraaz. But most were misses. Until he hit box office gold with a twenty-minute role in Animal.

It felt weird when one fine day I was bombarded with a barrage of memes, reels, and videos of a man from the old memories of a distant past that your brain had already labelled as irrelevant anymore, dancing with a peg on his head to the tunes of a song in a foreign language. It felt good to see it. And then see it some more, and then many more times. Also, to piggyback on his sudden popularity, Prime Video released a package of many of his old films that I remembered watching. So I sat down and watched a few of them on consecutive days, and these are my thoughts on the phenomenon of Lord Bobby.

There was a time when Bobby lit the screen with oodles of style. His debut movie, Barsaat, was produced by his dad, Dharmendra, who ensured that he got the best launch pad. Helmed by Rajkumar Santoshi, one of the best working directors of the era, Barsaat was a safe-zone romantic action movie that catapulted him to stardom. The movies that were released next, like Gupt, Kareeb, and Soldier, further solidified his stand.

What happened then? Bobby was never a good actor. Armed with just a few expressions in his arsenal and a face that exuded an innocent, boyish charm, there were limitations in his range as an actor. His brother Sunny has a similar boyish look to him, but like a magician, he swaps it for intense and fierce rage. So we see him wooing Meenakshi Seshadri, looking all cute and earnest, singing 'Nigahon ne cheda hain' in one scene and roaring 'kuthon ka sahara lena chod de Katya' in the next, showing off his 'dhai kilo' arms in Ghatak. Bobby never went for it. He banked on his innocence alone to carry him forward. Even in Soldier, which was a revenge movie, action scenes relied more on comedy.

But, even with limited talent, one could work hard and come on top, like Saif. After a lull in his career, Saif got a chance, grabbed it, and gave it his all, portraying the character of Iago in the Vishal Bharadwaj movie Omkara, which is based on Othello. More than the nuances of the character, it was the hard work and sincerity of Saif that made that portrayal special. He used these acquired qualities to tackle his later movies and became a formidable entity in the movie business.

But Bobby never tried hard. You could see him giving his all until Soldier, but then it looked like he stopped caring. He was essentially sleepwalking while portraying his later roles. Is it because he thought that the thrust he had built up until then would carry him forward? Or that he never cared to 'sharpen his saws'? Or was it the fault of movie makers who couldn't make out his utility? Following Soldier, a spate of horrible movies followed, though one such movie, Badal, managed to become a hit, until Ajnabee came.

Ajnabee is an interesting movie. After Shah Rukh Khan successfully portrayed villain roles in the beginning of his career before transitioning into a romantic star, there was a long period where heroes would never dare try out greyish shades for their characters. When Sanjay Dutt returned from jail, he tried to bring back the anti-hero into mainstream cinema, with movies like Vaastav achieving success. Ajnabee was a profitable movie in which a successful actor went on to portray a plainly evil role with no justification for his actions. Soon, Humraaz followed. Both movies became milestones for the actors who played the negative characters.

What was common to these films? The presence of Bobby. He was the hero in both of them—the good guy who got cheated and was on the verge of losing it all, fighting hard to reclaim it all. There is a lesson that Sunny Deol learned a few years ago doing Darr against Shah Rukh: being a good guy in a movie that has an antihero can be disastrous. Sunny, with his immense talent and screen presence, as well as a trend that favours good guys, could overcome the setback and churn out many more hits. But Bobby unfortunately chose to be the good guy in a bad time. The industry was exploring grey shades, and Bobby never tried to capitalise on and co-explore this trend. Soon, he slowly plodded towards the oblivion of irrelevance.

After a few instances of personal meltdowns and troubles, as he himself admitted in recent interviews, he decided to work again and got hold of a few projects. This time he shed off his good guy persona and donned the evil with vengeance. Thus came Ashram, Love Hostel, and finally Animal, a dream comeback and an answer for all his detractors. Only one comment on the incredible success: 'der aye, magar durust aye'.

Enduring Love and a Misleading Title...

 

Science writer Joe and his partner Clarissa are on a picnic while heavy winds drag a huge helium balloon out of its mooring with a kid trapped in its basket. Along with five other strangers, Joe also attempts to rescue him. One of the rescuers dies after falling from a height, and the couple is disturbed by the incident. Trouble starts when another of the fellow rescuers, deeply religious Jed, starts stalking Joe, professing his love for him. Joe gets tormented by Jed's constant shadowing and his wife's reluctance to believe him. Moreover, when the dead man's widow confronts him with a secret, Joe realises that the only way out is to apply what he does for his living—research deep and uncover the hidden layers.

Enduring Love is a 1997 novel written by the British novelist Ian McEwan. The novel is a psychological thriller that is based on de Clérambault's syndrom, a rare and not much known psychological condition where the patient gets infatuated with another person and strongly believes they are in a relationship. The novel also deals with several different themes, like trust, morality, rationality, religion, and the power of perspective to bend reality. The novel is adapted into a movie starring Daniel Craig.

The plot is mostly narrated by the protagonist, Joe, in the first person, while one chapter uses the third person to show the domestic turmoil in his family. A few more chapters, which are letters from Jed, show his perspective and make the reader grasp his complex psyche. The novel is told as the reminiscences of the protagonist from a future time. He lets us know many elements of the story with the benefit of hindsight. It is very rarely that I encounter such an approach, even in novels written in first-person style. The novel contains two appendices at the end. One is a fictional medical report on Jed, and another is a letter from Jed that concludes the novel.

Joe, who is a writer of science books and articles, is portrayed as a rationalist who is very particular about perfect knowledge of things that concern him and is ready to deep dive into researching them. As a contrast, we find Jed, who is extremely religious and interprets each experience as a sign from his God. It is this aspect of Jed that causes deep disturbance to Joe. I believe if Jed were a more rational man, Joe would act more tolerant of his advances and may not even consider him a freak from the outset.

Joe recounts his tale like a thesis or a scientific paper. He never tells the story straight, as it is. To reach a point, we find that he uses the most convoluted route. He gives detailed descriptions of the surroundings, jumps back into the past and sometimes briefly into the future, tries to pry into the minds of others, explains certain nuances, and then, when you least expect it, slams you brutally with the plot. This strategy used by the author has an enormous impact on the plot. Before something eventful happens, you are given a few clues, you get to comprehend its enormity, and then the event is withheld from you ominously, to the point that you literally dread it by the time it arrives.

The novel also deals with the idea of perspective, about how the same event will be viewed, remembered, and retold by different people in a very disparate manner. For example, after the opening of the balloon accident, one of the best openings I ever read in a novel, it is mentioned that no one could remember who dropped the rope first. Everyone insists that someone else dropped first. After another important scene in a restaurant, when the police ask some questions about the dish each of them had for lunch and the order, we find that even the flavours of ice creams aren't matching.

The title of the novel Enduring Love may denote only one of the three love affairs recounted in it. The love between Joe and Clarissa, which starts out as a strong relationship, smashes into the waves of the obstacles placed by Jed. We find the unwinding of trust and confidence in each other, causing a deep wound in it, and with every hurdle, it only deepens. Similarly, the second relationship between Logan, who dies in the balloon accident, and his wife Jean goes for a tumble when Jean finds a picnic basket and a scarf inside his car posthumously. She suspects that her husband has an affair, and he joined the rescuers to show off to her, ultimately resulting in his demise.

The third affair, which I believe is the only enduring one in the plot, is Jed's love for Joe, for which he doesn't have any boundaries or an issue of trust. He earnestly believes that it is reciprocated by Joe, and he never considers any attempts that Joe makes to push him out of his life. When we read the title, we believe that it is a positive and wholesome one, only to realise after the end that the enduring love portrayed in the novel is a toxic one that crashed and shattered the lives of its characters.

Book Review: The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Santlofer

 

When artist Luke Perrone's art historian girlfriend, Alexis Verde, bought a cheap painting from a thrift store, little did they expect to find a lost work by Van Gogh hidden inside it. Rumours of a self-portrait painted just before his death and stolen during his funeral have always been around in the circles of art experts, collectors, curators, and the dangerous underworld of the art world. When someone steals the Van Gogh, Perrone has to join hands with Interpol agent Smith and uncover an art puzzle. But he never anticipated that there would be many bigger and more treacherous players searching for it, and the quest would lead to the unveiling of the mysteries of a dark era in human history.

The Lost Van Gogh is a historical mystery novel written by Jonathan Santlofer, with criminal activities associated with art works as the background. I received an advance review copy of the book by the publisher, Sourcebook Landmark, through Netgalley in exchange for honest feedback. This is the second installment of the series that started with The Lost Mona Lisa, which I never had the opportunity to read. This one can be read as a stand-alone novel, though the relationships between some of the main characters are continued from the predecessors, and reading that one, I hope, may illuminate the plot more vividly.

The theme of the novel is very interesting and has elements of several conspiracy theories spun into its plot, like the mysterious death of Van Gogh and the case of numerous valuable artworks stolen by the Third Reich from the hands of Jews, many of whom were ultimately tortured and killed. The novel asks a pertinent question about the future of such stolen art that even today adorns many major museums around the world and if they have a moral obligation to return them back to their rightful owners or their heirs. The novel makes the reader aware of the fact that these art works, termed degenerate art by the Nazis, are still sold and bought globally through underground channels, involving dark web and hired muscle.

The plot of the novel reminded me of Dan Brown novels that use real events and places to narrate an intriguing mystery. Though I am not an avid reader of his, I love the way he fuses facts and fiction, which can be found in The Lost Van Gogh too. But here, the welding is improper, and the two elements—actual history and a concocted story—stay apart. The life of Van Gogh or the fate of degenerate art never comes to the forefront and affects the plot. Instead, we find a generic race-against-time kind of thriller, which I agree is a pretty engaging one, reducing the titular painting to just a macguffin in the plot.

The writer has chosen to narrate the novel using first, second, and third-person narrators. All the chapters that are from the point of view of Perrone are narrated with him as the first-person narrator. Other chapters where he doesn't appear are in third-person narrative, except a few chapters in between using second-person to capture the point of view of a mysterious character whose identity is revealed only towards the end. I've read some incredible and complex novels that use such a structure, which aids in developing a complex plot or making the reader find aspects in it that may never be revealed by a standard narration. For a plain suspense thriller, I am not sure if such gimmicks are warranted.

The novel has around a hundred chapters, most of them only two or three pages long. I found it tough to properly follow the characters or plot threads. In such a novel that has many characters and subplots, a sudden shift of perspective and narrator, I feel, breaks the flow. Whole reading and small chapters had the effect of watching tiktoks or reels. I also felt that concentrating all expositions in a few chapters has also spoiled the fun of reading.

The upcoming historical thriller The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Sandlofer is a standard thriller with certain important and timely themes that may make the reader interested in learning more about history and the arts.

Book Review: Slow Down by Kohei Saito

 We are facing an imminent calamity that places enormous existential repercussions on the entire planet that we live on. Climate change is an unprecedented challenge that we, as the human race, have to tackle, and we cannot deny that it is brought about by ourselves. We pumped an enormous amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere continuously for around two centuries, from the emergence of the industrial revolution, with its quantity increasing progressively every next moment. Today, the proportion is so high in the atmosphere that the climate of our earth, which emerged from the balance of several variables through activities that spanned millions of years, is changing for the worst and threatening even our existence. 

It is not that the world is unaware of this threat or is complacent in its actions. Most nations in the world have formulated policies and targets to reduce their respective carbon footprints in a timely manner to prevent any disastrous outcomes. The United Nations has created the Sustainable Development Goals, a collection of seventeen objectives that emphasise climate action. It is identified that even when climate change is a global issue, its effects are not evenly distributed and will be affecting those nations that are already impoverished, especially the Global South. Thus arose the concept of climate justice, which tries to protect the rights of these vulnerable populations. But on the implementation side, there are numerous geopolitical barriers that prevent prompt and regular addressing of most of these issues, like wars, mistrust between nations, political shortsightedness, plain selfishness, and greed for profit. 

Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto is a book written by famous Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito that tries to propose a solution to the immediate redressal of climate change challenges. The book, which was originally written in Japanese, is translated into English by Brian Bergstrom. I received an advance review copy from its publisher, Astra Publishing House, through Netgalley in exchange for my feedback. 

The basic premise of the book is that climate change is the direct result of the impact of capitalistic policies on the world economy, and the only path forward is a Communist degrowth of the economy. The writer puts the total blame for climate change on the capitalist philosophy of unchecked and never-ending ambition for growth and argues that the measures now proposed for containing this menace cannot be implemented successfully by systems that are biassed towards growth and its measurement by the GDP. He criticises the 'green' proposals, like shifting to electric cars, when the production of electric cars according to the demands of the global population will need more reliance on fossil fuels, which will in turn accelerate the dangers of climate change. 

His solution to degrowth is based on Marxist principles. But these aren't the ones that Marx and Engels arrived at while they wrote The Communist Manifesto. During that period, his theory was productivistic and described that the efficiency of production will grow in a capitalist system along with the exploitation of the proletariat, resulting in commodities being overproduced and a majority of the working class being unable to purchase them. The capitalist system will face a crisis causing unemployment among the masses, and finally, the working class will rise to bring about the socialist revolution. 

But in later years, Marx studied in depth about the pre-capitalist agricultural societies where small communities controlled production and the distribution of wealth among themselves and did not much bother about economic growth while giving more priority to sustenance. It is this idea of commons that Saito tries to develop into a working model of Communist degrowth that can, as per him, prove to be the only solution that can save humanity from immediate climatic challenges. 

This is distinctly different from the Soviet or Maoist style of centralised and state-controlled governance, which, as per the author, was a wrongful interpretation of the philosophy of Marx, which he arrived at only at the tail end of his life and which even his collaborator Engel failed to comprehend while completing the volumes of Das Capital following Marx's demise. This change in the philosophy of Marx, as per Saito, is evident in his studies about how the pre-capitalist communities handled the commons and the handwritten notes that he prepared during it, which incidentally are being collected in multiple volumes. 

Saito's proposal for the world to combat climate change is the total demolition of capitalism and the obsession with economic growth, which is an inherent part of it. He argues that governments all over the world are incapable, as they cannot opt for anything that could potentially hamper economic growth. Saito proposes the restoration of commons—provisions like air, food, water, education, power, medical care, etc.—that are essential for human sustenance, of which the operation and distribution have to be undertaken by the common people in a democratic way without any interference from the government or experts. The pathway is to be through non-violent civil disobedient movements like the People Power Revolution of 1984 in the Philippines or the 2003 Revolution of Roses in Georgia. 

Slow Down is a passionate cry for the knocking down of capitalism, to stop the obsession for continuous growth, and to restore the Marxist idea of the commons. The book is very verbose in its criticism of capitalism, though I cannot find any serious data that backs up several claims that the author makes. I am not denying that the obsession with growth is dangerous for our survival, and the incontinent technological advances that are unsustainable are the reason for the situation we find ourselves in. But the writer seldom goes beyond his claims and declarations and certain quotations from fellow thinkers to push his points. 

Most of his solutions can be implemented and may work locally, but I have serious doubt if they can be put to use for defending ourselves against a forthcoming global catastrophe. The concept of several independent mass protests erupting around the world simultaneously doesn't sound that right either. There are so many variables that can go wrong to provide a consistent result. Throwing the spanner on a functioning economy can also be a disastrous attempt. 

For example, Bangladesh is an emerging textile superpower. Just suppose that the developed nations are reducing textile imports considerably. The entire nation will crumble down in days before any kind of alternate 'degrowth' strategy can be employed. Rampant and sudden poverty will demolish social and systemic structures. An entire generation may go towards crime and extremism. 

The concept of degrowth is a necessity in today's world. The pathway that Saito has laid out is intelligent and workable. But to use it as your only weapon against a calamity of such gigantic proportions will be suicidal, a kind of existential hara-kiri.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

 

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

Daniel's book seller father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library that houses banned and rare books in Francoist Spain. There, he discovers a novel by a mysterious author called Julian Carax, titled The Shadow of the Wind. He loves the book and also finds out that its enigmatic writer is missing, and someone has taken up the mission to burn all his books. When he realises that the copy with him is one of the few surviving, Daniel is fixated on uncovering the mystery, embarking on a dangerous journey to uncover a tragic story of passionate romance, hidden family secrets, treacherous betrayals, and brutal violence.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a historical mystery with gothic undertones. The novel, originally written in Spanish in 2001, turned out to be a tremendous success all over the world. It is even touted as the most successful Spanish novel after Don Quixote. Zafón went on to write a few more novels that are set in the same universe, which I have yet to read. The writer employs a story-inside-story kind of narration to tell a tale of intrigue.

The novel has an embedded narrative, in which the main narrator takes a break and allows other characters to tell aspects of the story that only they are aware of. This is the facet of the novel that gives it additional layers and makes it more absorbing. The main branch of the narrative features Daniel recounting his experience in the first person. He is in search of the truth behind Julian Carax, all the while struggling with his own desires. He encounters several complex characters on his way, and it is through their accounts that the reader finds the keys to uncovering the mystery of Julian Carax and his tragedy. We also find quaint similarities in the way the stories of Carax and Daniel develop, signalling a circular narrative that the author masterfully delivers on the final page of the novel.

Along with narrating a striking tale of mystery, the writer ensures that he populates The Shadow of the Wind with brilliant characters. In a narrative that spans decades, we find that all the characters move and transform organically with the plot. Zafón treats his characters with much love and empathy, allows them to breathe and grow inside his plot, and simultaneously manages to keep them from affecting the overarching structure of the novel.

The chapters of the book very precisely label the time period in which the incidents take place and provide a temporal anchor for the novel. It helps to give a historic context and offers a perspective on the motives and actions of certain characters that may look rash and out of place at any other time. Breakage and reformation of social structure and class, as well as tumultuous political and economic situations, work as catalysts to drive the plot.

The Shadow of the Wind reminded me of several other novels, especially the ones by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The sprawling narrative, despondent humour, and a self-doubting protagonist on a journey towards self-realisation evoke novels like Life in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Some other novels that came to mind while reading this book were Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo, and Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I am not implying that any portion of The Shadow of the Wind is similar to any of these books, but that it possesses the power to invoke in its reader such strange feelings and emotions that cannot be named while enjoying it.

Book Review: Dead of Night by Simon Scarrow

It's 1940. The Nazis have already held Germany in their iron grip and are ready to unleash an ideology of brutality on the unsuspecting public. The mysterious death of an SS doctor is attributed to suicide by the authorities, but Inspector Horst Schenke has reasons to believe that it is a cold-blooded murder. His attempts to pursue the case are prevented by forces far beyond his power. But when another case of suspected killings of kids in a facility seems to intertwine with the death of the doctor, Schenke is forced to make a choice—either to serve justice or cater to the orders of a bloodthirsty regime.

Dead of Night is the upcoming historical mystery novel by Simon Scarrow, which is set in Germany during Nazi rule. It is the second installment of his Wartime Berlin novels, featuring Inspector Schenke. The novel, along with narrating a nail-biting mystery, explores the nature of justice, how effective a sense of justice is, and the pursuit of truth in a world where the regime itself is corrupt and the rules are meant to subvert natural ethics. I received an advance copy of the novel from its publisher, Kensington Books, through Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion of it.

The book is an interesting concoction of generic crime mystery laced with a strong dash of ethical dilemma. Its protagonist, Schenke, is a no-nonsense cop who believes that his job is to nab criminals, and his sense of duty to his fellow citizens ends there. But on the course of his investigation, he succumbs to pressures from different quarters and has to pursue deep-down secrets that are way above his league. People nearer to him believe him to be a deliverer of social justice, but he knows that the authority above him is more powerful and can cripple him if he goes too far for their comfort. So he behaves as a practical person and tries to balance it out, even against his own conviction.

In the dark and depressing world that Scarrow narrates in this novel, the reader feels that more questions are left behind than resolutions. None of its characters accept being slotted as plainly black or white. For each one of them, their life, career, and the safety of their family are important. Most of them choose to be on the safe side of the rules and regulations that are landed down from the higher realms of an ideologically controlled, ruthless regime and totally close their eyes to the impact on the entire society. The book illustrates how seemingly conscientious people choose to close their eyes to gross injustice when they realise that it is not in their interest to fight a battle that has more chances to fail.

While reading the novel, even when engrossed in the suspense and thrills it portrayed, I couldn't help but reflect on the history of violence that unfolded under the Nazis. The novel depicts the beginning of the 'Aktion T4' programme, which is the mass murder of 'degenerates', in the language of Hitler, that includes other races like Jews and Gipsies and even physically or mentally deformed German kids. There is a blood-curdling situation in the plot where a German SS man loses his kid and rages that his son is a true German and not someone like a Jew who deserves to die.

Dead of Night, even though it is a murder mystery that follows a formulaic format, ends up probing its reader's mind with pertinent questions. We are compelled to compare the situations in which the characters find themselves with our present social and political situations and try to identify the signs of intrusion by a powerful regime into the way we desire to lead our lives.

 

A Flutter

A wavelet on still water.

A disturbance

on the surface

of the tranquil,

stagnant,

infested,

emerald coloured

immensity,

that twists its every part,

bends and misaligns

all its micro particles,

and shifts the darkness

around,

imperceptibly and

gradually,

while the whole world

carrying on

around it,

like a flock of birds,

not caring for their prey,

hurrying

to get back

to their respective nests.

And you standing

absolutely still,

taking in the rhythm,

the pain and the grief,

your desire and your ecstasy,

and scared of a sign,

an aftershock,

a recoil,

that may breakout

from within

and knock down

the sand castle,

that you painstakingly constructs.

While the rock,

once it starts that flutter

on your cursed surface,

sinks down unmindful,

to your deep center,

and you become grimly aware

of the impossibility

of a revival.

Book Review- Bukowski: On Film by Marc Shapiro

 Charles Bukowski never liked movies. And Hollywood never knew what to do with his books. Yet, the life and work of Bukowski were always an inspiration for generations of filmmakers, and many dozens of movies were made during and after his lifetime, with only a very few of them being established Hollywood productions. Most of these movies were short films, a majority of them student films directed on shoestring budgets solely out of a passion for the author and his works.

Who was Bukowski? A rebellious poet and story writer, he wrote six novels and countless poems and short stories in many literary magazines, including some obscure ones, which are collected in over sixty books. Called by Time as 'the laureate of American lowlife', Bukowski wrote about the poor by living among them. He wrote about impoverished Americans, alcoholism, sex, and the drudgery of ordinary living. He lived in L.A. and based all his writing around the city. He wasn't noticed much in America at the time, but Europeans celebrated him. Today, he is very popular the world over, with a dedicated fanbase and numerous academic studies being made about his life and work.

Bukowski: On Film is a volume written by Marc Shapiro that tries to list out the movies that were about Bukowski, by Bukowski, or based on the work of Bukowski. This is a tough work because, like his scattered collection of numerous poems and stories, a lot of the movies based on his works are condemned to obscurity. Many of the first-time directors who created them changed their fields, and many others consider them too benign to revisit them. To his credit, the writer has painstakingly tried his best to find out the majority of them and include the details in this book. I received an advance review copy of this book from its publisher, Riverdale Avenue Books, through Netgalley in exchange for my feedback.

The book consists of seventy-six chapters, of which the first few give the readers an overview of the famed writer, his life, and his rebellious ways. Then each chapter describes a movie that has the Bukowski name associated with it. It can be deduced that Marc Shapiro is a true fan of Bukowski, and his thoroughness is evident in that he has included some really obscure movies that have only a very distant connection with Bukowski. For example, we find a chapter on a surfing film in which a Bukowski poem is read in the first few minutes, and then the remaining footage is surfing footage with other tunes playing in the background.

There is another chapter about his movie debut in a B-grade movie in which he plays a dirty old man for a few seconds with no dialogue. Then there are footages of his infamous poetry reading sessions, in which he appears fully drunk and creates tension by exchanging abuses with the audience. His forays into the Hollywood system through movies like Barfly are described in more detail in multiple chapters. His abhorrence towards the system comes through very vividly, though he is portrayed as a man of his words who respects the contracts and is always cooperating with his director and actors.

With many short chapters focusing on obscure movies, the book is never a deep study of Bukowski or the movies that have his stamp on them. The whole endeavour, while reading, appeared to me like an effort to just list the movies out before they fall into the darkness of perpetual oblivion. But once I put down the book, I am feeling that through all these short reviews and the descriptions of the production of the movies, a larger picture of the nonconformist dissident genius gradually forms. It becomes clear why many young people, who are eager to make their mark on the world, take up the poems and stories of Bukowski and decide to associate with them and make them their own by creating movies out of them.

 

Japanese Mythology in Film by Yoshiko Okuyama: An Overview

 Japan's emergence as a global pop cultural behemoth is all thanks to the sudden popularity of Japanese cinema after the Second World War, led by phenomena like Kurosawa and Godzilla. In a few decades, terms like kaiju, ninja, harakiri, and samurai became familiar all around the world. The next big things coming out of Japan were manga and anime. The interest in Japanese popular arts laid the way for an interest in Japanese history and mythology.

Japan was, for most of its history, a closed country, and even today, it shies away from opening its doors, both literally and figuratively, to outsiders. The main imports to Japan from an outside country were Taoism and Buddhism, which permeated the indigenous religious beliefs, rituals, and mythology centuries ago. So we find a collection of mythological elements that are very varied and different from other parts of the world, though with direct and pronounced Taoist and Buddhist influence.

In her book Japanese Mythology in Film, Japanese professor Yoshiko Okuyama attempts to connect popular Japanese cinema with its mythology. She uses a semiotics approach, identifying the signs and symbols present in movies and interpreting them. Eight movies that are national and international hits are analysed in this book, and different aspects of these movies that mirror Japanese mythology are described.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, the writer provides a basic knowledge of semiotics. It describes how semiotics is an efficient, though not the only, tool for analysing art works like books, movies, or plays. Semiotics helps us identify the signs in movies and determine how symbolic meanings are coded into them and transmitted to the audience. We are made aware of the concept of intertextuality, which is an important part of the semiotic analysis of a text. Other important concepts with which the author familiarises us are tropes and motifs and how a shot, a piece of conversation, or a recurring background score can have coded associations with mythology.

Part two of the book is devoted to the analysis of eight popular Japanese movies. The author determines where, in Japanese history and mythology, each of them belongs. For example, the movie Onmyoji is set in the tenth-century Heian era and contains a wealth of cultural props belonging to that time. The movie, which deals with occultism, is loaded with imagery and motifs from Taoist mythology. The author explains the historic context of the movie and provides an intertextual reading of it based on Taoist mythology.

Likewise, the Shintoist aspect of Onmyoji 2, folklore motifs in Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, Buddhist motifs in Dororo and Departures, and other mythical symbolism present in Mushi~shi are explained in detail. The eighth movie that is analysed in the book is Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Along with Japanese obsession with dolls and the mythical belief that even inanimate objects develop consciousness, the modern mythology of cyborgs overlaps in this movie to provide a deeply philosophic message that makes the audience ponder about the future of humanity.

The author writes about the loss of cultural and mythological subtexts when a movie is watched by international audiences. Only the themes with global relevance and significance are recognised by even the greatest movie critics who are unfamiliar with the original culture and mythology. So much is lost in translation while subtitling or re-dubbing that what we get is only the gist of the wealth of vocal subtexts. At the same time, some of the motifs, themes, and intertextuality get lost even for the natives due to over-familiarity. Thus, the semiotic reading of such popular and internationally accessible movies will open new windows to viewers who are interested in a deeper subtextual and intertextual exploration of cultural and mythological motifs.

Book Review: How to Draw a Novel by Martin Solares

Novels, more than any other narrative artform, take you on a long journey—a transformative one that passes through extensive imaginary and lawless landscapes. They demand your commitment and compel you to bear it till the end, fluttering and oscillating according to its rhythm, making your emotions dance to its tunes. According to Milan Kundera, Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, written in the sixteenth century, started it all, followed by Cervantes with Don Quixote. Novels were historically considered a rebellious, mutinous art form. They always refused to conform to any directives, regulations, or jurisdictions imposed by hegemonic authority.

But till the end of the nineteenth century, novels were largely confined by the limitations of space and time and adhered to a descriptive style. Twentieth-century novels broke these chains, and novelists started to explore new frontiers. The plot lost its prominence to style and structure. Modern novelists tried to rein in their impulse to describe the scenes and spoon-feed the readers, always striving for innovative means to convey the purpose in as few words as possible. Novels followed the breakout of poetry from the confines of rhyme and rhythm.

In his collection of essays titled How to Draw a Novel, Mexican writer and publisher Martin Solares explores the narration, craft, and structure of novels. Along with essays that detail different aspects of the construction of a good novel, they also contain drawings that represent the flow of many famous and popular novels, which helps us understand the methods used by their authors in their creation and also helps us realise why we found them great after reading. The book was first published in 2014 in Mexico in Spanish, and its English translation, done by Heather Cleary, is scheduled for publication. I received an advanced copy of the book from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, through Netgalley in exchange for honest feedback.

The book is composed of twenty short essays and numerous line drawings. Each essay elaborates on an important aspect of the creation of a great novel. Most of them are accompanied by drawings that further clarify how different authors practically tackled them and created masterpieces. Along with many reputed European and American novels, Solares introduces numerous novels and writers from Latin America and Mexico through these essays. This is the most tempting aspect of the book—you get a taste of books from totally strange novelists, most of whom I don't think are even translated into English.

As mentioned, Solares discusses different pertinent aspects of novels that greatly impact their valuation. Using several examples, he illuminates the process of developing a protagonist(s), the importance of a title and a beginning that are essential to capturing the reader's attention, and ways to end a story that make the reader remember the novel for the rest of their lives. He uses pictures to deconstruct the building style of different novels. For example, he demonstrates the evolution of novels from rather simple stories that are adorned with detailed descriptions into complex machinations that rewrite the concept of reality by breaking out of space or time.

The writer then explains how different inanimate things can be used to create meaning inside the reader's mind while reading a novel. In another essay, he explains the reason why in the novel Moby-Dick, there are long pauses in the narration, only to describe the nitty gritties of whaling and how The Catcher in the Rye stops the motion of time and defies the natural laws. We find a detailed analysis of the structure of crime fiction and the characterization of various detectives. Among other essays, we find an interesting and affectionate discussion on the form and structure of Pedro Paramo.

How to Draw a Novel by Martin Solares is a collection of poetic and evocative writings on one of the most modern narrative arts—the novel. He uses visual representations that can convey how a novel is structured and the crests and troughs in the narration. This book can enhance the reader's affection for novels, improve their understanding of them, and alter the novel reading experience to a better one.

Book Review: The Mantis by Kotaro Isaka

 Kabuto is a family man, living with his wife and a growing son and working in the sales department of an office supply firm. He tries very hard to please his wife, who always finds fault with him. His boy loves him very much but thinks of him as a bumbling husband who every time bends over backwards to appease his wife. But what they don't know is that he is also an assassin, one of the best in his trade, who specialises in taking out other professional killers. With his son growing up and his family's safety in mind, Kabuto wants to get out. But his manager, the Doctor, who assigns him jobs, is reluctant to relinquish him and tries every trick in the trade to retain him.

I have read the previous books of the Japanese writer Kotaro Isaka and like them very much for the craziness that they bring with them. Bullet Train, which is also made into a movie featuring Brad Pitt, is a crazy ride with the paths of many characters converging with each other, often ending up at each other's throats. Three Assassins is its prequel that focused a bit more on character development, though not compromising on the scale of thrills. That is the reason I was gleeful when the publisher, Random House UK, Vintage, offered me a review copy of the third installment of the series (christened Assassins) through Netgalley. The book is translated from Japanese by Sam Malissa. 

The Mantis thematically follows the path of the previous books on several fronts. It is located in a fictional (?) universe of professional assassins, featuring several of them with their own personal styles and morals. The novel tries to explore the moral code of characters who do essentially immoral activities like taking the lives of other humans. It uses black comedy very effectively to merge two universes—that of the common people who go on with their lives and the assassins who work in the underbelly of society. Narration of The Mantis also follows its predecessors by using a non-linear approach to story telling that uses multiple points of view, though at many points it made me wonder the need for such gimmicks in a novel that concentrates on a single character. We find the writer's entemophile compulsion of calling his hitmen with insect names continuing in this novel too.

As closely as the plot and structure follow the other books in the series, The Mantis also displays some major differences, which can severely affect the reading experience and the enjoyment that can be derived from it. For the majority of its length, the novel lacks a structured plot or cohesiveness. It revolves around the conversations between Kabuto, his wife, and his son. Most of the remaining time is spent between the Doctor and Kabuto, one trying to force a job on the other while the other trying to deflect it. The book is lacking in the shocking and breakneck action setpieces that were a predominant part of others. The plot focuses heavily on the familial story of Kabuto and his efforts to balance it with his secret identity. Although it is heavily implied that he is an efficient hitman, even when he displays his skills in certain scuffles, the narrative never tries to demonstrate it effectively.

It is the black comedy in the plot and the dilemma that the protagonist faces that become the saving grace of the book. Kabuto dodges his wife's questions and doubts better than he dodges the attempts on his life by other professionals. He is even in the process of documenting the wisdom that he has accumulated in years of working his way around his wife. His conversations with his son are insightful and warm. It is this relationship that pays off our wait in the final act, when events start unrolling. The part where he has to exterminate a hornet's nest at his wife's behest while he is targeted by a hitman who is also named Hornet is, for me, the most hilarious part of the book.

Of all the characters in all three novels by Isaka, I feel that the character of Kabuto is the best written. The author takes up more than half of the novel to establish him evocatively. He is funny, naive, loyal, dangerous, loving, philosophical, and tragic all at once. Even then, many of the nuances in his portrayal are cleverly hidden under his pattern of floundering behavior. His transforming moral stand from a ruthless killer to someone more compassionate, helpful, and regretful of his past misdeeds is depicted very effectively.

For me, The Mantis is equivalent to The Godfather 3, a decent and enjoyable enough attempt that fares far better than any average ones that populate the genre that it belongs to but is never able to attain the high benchmark that the previous installments already set.

 

Book Review: On the Isle of Antioch by Amin Maalouf

 Behind all our human progress—inventions, technological advances, comforts, and medical breakthroughs—that have made our lives better, longer, and more pleasant are stories of toil, struggle, and hard work. But even when we are in the middle of all these advancements, we realise that we are facing challenges of unprecedented magnitude. We are arming ourselves with deadlier weapons, researching and producing dangerous viruses artificially, eroding and destroying natural resources and the flora and fauna, oppressing the downtrodden, and generally making mistakes that can threaten our own existence on earth.

What if there is a different branch of humans who seperated themselves from us in a distant past, who refused to participate in the rat race and single-mindedly strived to achieve a utopia, made unimaginable strides in technological innovation, and even challenged the notion of death? What if they are observing our lacklustre and unfocused efforts to get ourselves out of the ditch, like a modern man observing a hunter-gatherer tribe? How would we react if they decided to interfere in our lives? Will we trust them to help us ascend, or will we be threatened by their superiority? Will we deify them as our saviours, or will we demonise them for their interference?

In his novel On the Isle of Antioch, the French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf depicts a situation in which a technologically advanced set of humans decide to interfere in our affairs and our varied responses to it. This is speculative fiction, with undertones of existential philosophy. The story has the potential to make its reader contemplate our own past and our interferences with each other and with nature in a critical manner. The novel was originally written in French, and its upcoming English edition is translated by Natasha Lehrer. I received an advance copy of the book by the publisher, World Editions, through netgalley.com in exchange for my honest feedback.

Alec Zander, a cartoonist who leads a lonely life on the barren island of Antioch, wakes up one morning to find his power and all communication with the outside world cut off. When he realises that this is a worldwide phenomenon, he fears the worst—the nuclear standoff between the US government and a rebel group has been ended by one of them. He decides to contact his lone neighbour, Ève, a disillusioned, alcoholic writer who has written a cult novel and couldn't repeat the feat once again. Once the connection is reset, his friend in White House reveals to him the contact from an advanced human race that was separated from the main stream centuries before and has decided to support humanity. The novel further explores the ramifications of this information and how different people react to a better class of humans deciding to interfere.

The novel is narrated in the form of daily notebook entries written by the protagonist as the situation evolves. Narrated in the first person, this format gives a very personal feel to the plot. It also builds the suspense and tension of the plot, as readers are on the same page as the protagonist. We are as clueless about the situation as he is and are only privy to any information that he has. This helped to build a rapport with the character and feel the ambivalence of the plot with more intensity. It also helped that the protagonist is a largely impartial person who hears everyone with equal importance and decides to just chronicle the events instead of passing a judgement. He is wavered by emotions, temptations, and different narratives, but largely we find someone who is inquisitive enough to see things without an agenda clouding his intellect.

The novel works as a philosophical reflection on our past, present, and future as a human race. It makes us aware of our past, which built an empire through trial and error and by spending blood and sacrifice. But the past has led to the present, which makes us rely on an egoistic leadership that never thinks of us as a whole and a community that is ready to follow like sheep when someone offers a quick fix solution. As individuals, each of us has an eventual certainty of the future, but as a collective, we are anxious and unsure of it. The novel indicates a trail that may eventually lead us to a better place than our presence—a trail that's marked by increased empathy and cooperation between us.

Book Review: River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure

Alva is a Chinese American girl born to a failed American actress who grew up poor in Shanghai in 2005. She is unable to accept her mother Sloan marrying Lu Fang, a rich international businessman, as it destroys her plan to someday go to America, a country that she has never visited but is obsessed with. Little does she realise that there is a past that connects Sloan and Lu Fang, an ambitious soul whose academic dreams are cut short by the Cultural Revolution. This starts a story that spans two entwined generations of multiple cultural identities.

River East, River West is the upcoming debut novel by Aube Rey Lescure. The novel, which is set in China, deals with cultural identity and explores how a change in the political and economic situation of a country can create a crisis in personal relationships and one's sense of self. I received an advance copy of this novel from its publisher, Duckworth Books, through Netgalley in exchange for my honest feedback.

The title River East, River West denotes two districts of Shanghai that are divided by the Huangpu River. River West is the old colonial zone of Shanghai, and River East is the Chinese suburb. The plot of the novel is essentially a tug of war between two cultures—Chinese and American—and its effect on the characters. Alva is the main casualty, having belonged to both sides. When Alva has to choose between two campuses of an American school, she chooses the one in River West, indicating her interest in being an American. Her mother, Sloan, has abandoned America because she feels that being an expatriate in China will give her the respect that America never gave her. But her life in China was not a walk on roses either.

The academic pursuit of Lu Fang was culled by the Cultural Revolution. He had to contend with being a pen pusher, but later, when the economic policies changed, he struggled and became a wealthy businessman. He wanted his son, from his first wife, to pursue studies and a career in America. But his son, who never had to face the adversities that Lu Fang faced, never felt the need. Thus, we find that all the major characters are in a state of dilemma, and their ambitions and desires are contradictory to each other's.

Chinese policies and reforms play a major role in determining the motives of the characters. Sloan's satiation of her need for respect and privilege, Lu Fang's desparation to move away from China and his decision to prepare his son to pursue it when he realises it's impossible for him to do it, and Alva's desparation to identify herself as an American and her resultant descent into the rabbit hole all stemmed basically from societal conditions that arose from them.

Except for Sloan, who has experienced it firsthand and knows the reality, America is a dream world for all others. All of them have preconceived notions about life there, which are shaped by the American symbols they see around them in a newly liberalised China. We see several American brands and pop culture references popping up frequently in the narrative. At one point, Alva even asks a person who did a barbaric act if he would dare to do it if he were in America.

The novel follows a non-linear narration from the alternating points of view of Alva and Lu Fang. Alva's sections span a time period from 2007 to 2008 and Lu Fang's from 1985 to 2005. The novelist uses this format successfully to frequently topple the reader's expectations. We form conclusions from the information that is available to us, but in the next chapter, a new twist or turn shifts the narrative to a different angle.

The generational gap is a frequent motif that reappears in the novel. Sloan and Lu Fang have expectations from their children, and they enforce these without considering the reactions of their kids. They have good intentions in mind, but the rigidity of the parents' behaviour only serves to drive the kids away. Another example is the plight of Alva's friend Gao, who is also a victim of an over-disciplinary father. Another interesting element that the writer uses repeatedly is the fall from heights, both literally and metaphorically. We find this used to contrast the characters. Some of them fall and survive, while others don't. The final act begins the biggest fall of them all, the fall of the Lehman Brothers.

River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure is a devastating story of human beings who are essentially pawns of the bigger machinery that runs the system—local and global econopolitics. But reading it, we realise that they still have the power to adapt if they are ready to stand together as a unit, accepting each other.

Book Review: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

A derelict international space station that is moving around the earth at a distance of 250 kilometres at a speed of seventeen thousand miles. Six astronauts and cosmonauts of different nationalities are living inside this metal globe. In every twenty-four hours, they see sixteen sunrises and sunsets. Their job is to observe the earth, do experiments, maintain the station, coexist with one another, and survive their tenure inside it.

Orbital, the upcoming novel by Samantha Harvey, exhibits twenty-four hours of the existence of these six inhabitants. We find them observing their mother planet for sixteen earth days. We get to know about them, their pasts, their regrets and ambitions, their loneliness up there, their relationships with others in the team, and their struggles to maintain their physical and mental balance. I received an advance copy of Orbital from its publisher, Grove Atlantic, through Netgalley in exchange for my feedback.

The author uses a very interesting narrational style in this novel. The third-person narrative never anchors on any of its characters for most of the time, and even when it does, it shifts very quickly from one member to the next. Like a relay running team, each of the characters comes into focus for a short time, and in that time we get to know them personally. We find who they left behind on earth, the messages they receive, the experiments they have to do, and how they adapt (or not) to the situation of living inside a rapidly travelling vehicle far out in space with strangers and the constant change of scenery. Even when the characters are sleeping, the narrational voice never stops or cuts to the next scene. It goes on to describe the ever-changing geographic visuals of the earth that are visible from the station, maintaining a reporting style throughout the novel.

This kind of narration worked for the novel in two ways. First, the quickly shifting focus works as a disruptive force that constantly breaks the attention of readers. As a result of this rollercoaster style, they get the feel of travelling at high speed and being in an orbit themselves. There is no plot development as such in the novel, and most of the plot deals with the loneliness and internal struggle that the astronauts have to deal with. But the narration gives the novel its pace and urgency.

The second achievement of this unique kind of storytelling is that the reader is always kept at a distance from the plot. We understand the pain and loneliness, and we empathise with the characters, but eventually we are observers. We observe the six of them going on through their routine; we observe what's inside the station; and we also see the earth through the screens of the vehicle. The astronauts are observing the earth intently and communicating with their control on the earth. The earth control, in turn, continuously monitors the progress of the travellers. We realise that, essentially, we are also becoming a part of the chain.

We find that one of the characters has brought a postcard depicting La Meninas, the famous painting by Diego Velázquez, which also connects to the relationship between the chain of observers established by the plot. The painting, which is much debated and studied, poses philosophical questions about the existence of different points of view and the relationship of the viewer with art. It shows all its characters, including the painter himself, observing each other and makes the viewer not certain what exactly is the focus of the painting.

A few other artefacts described in the novel also make the reader debate this conundrum, like the moon landing photo by Michael Collins, which makes one character of the novel wonder if Collins is the lone living man who isn't included in it as it shows moon landers with earth in its background. This reflects the astronauts of the novel observing the earth, which they see as barren from up there, the only signs of life being illuminations whenever it's night, all the while it is teeming with life, invisible to them. Another photo of a character's mother taken on the day of the moonlanding that features the moon, of course without the astronauts who were on it while the photo was being taken, is another clue that reveals the intention of the novel.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey is a slender, though profound, novel that uses the tale of six astronauts inside a claustrophobic spacecraft to explore themes like relations, perspectives, points of view, and the temporal and spatial effects that different points of view exert on a viewer.