Apu’s World

Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ for the tenth time, I am struck by the quietness of the book. This is not a book with verbal fireworks. The language is extremely simple and easy to follow, like most Ishiguro novels. The narrator is seemingly just narrating a story, her story. Yet, it all comes together to create a work that keeps me totally engrossed, and every time I read it, I feel such sorrow.

(Some spoilers ahead…)

Beyond the story however, in terms of technique, I find two things incredible - one, Ishiguro sets a fantasy in this world, in this time. Most fantasy novels are set either in a different time (like Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, in a medieval world) or a completely different place (Middle Earth or Narnia). I think it’s very brave of him to set a fantasy novel in a completely recognisable time and setting. The danger is that we can identify so well with the time and place, that the fantasy may seem absurd, this doesn’t happen where I live - a sort of reluctance to suspend disbelief.

But, somehow, this doesn’t happen with Never Let Me Go. Even in a familiar setting like modern day Britain, he manages to create an alternate reality. This is accomplished by creating a world within a world - in a sense, the main characters all inhabit a different universe which interacts only peripherally with the ‘normal’ world. Clones, created genetically to serve only as organ donors for the rest of the world, Ishiguro manages to give them their own landscape.

And this is the second amazing thing - this world has its own codes and rules and seemingly normal interactions. All the time I’m reading the novel, they seem like perfectly normal people and then suddenly, Ishiguro will thrown in a quiet word about “completing”, which jolts me back into thinking Oh my God, he means they’re dying, isn’t it! So, at the same time, their world manages to be both ‘normal’ and ‘different’, which is perhaps why we can believe it - it’s so much like ours- and yet we are awed by it - it’s not like ours at all, it feels like another planet! That’s how perhaps he reconciles us to strange happenings in a familiar world. It’s close enough to trust and feel sorrow, strange enough to generate interest and fear.

apu The Literary life

Also known as, How to show every other group in a demeaning way, so that a bunch of young, heterosexual men can get some kicks.

Props:

• 1 woman, a nurse, dressed in an impossibly short skirt (Don’t forget a nice slit at the back)
• 2 silly young men, just being men
• 2 hospital beds
• A mobile phone tucked away somewhere, unseen
• 1 man, a nurse

Stage Directions:

(Phones ringing). Cool Dude 1 asks Nurse to fiddle around in his pockets for the phone. He can’t reach it himself, arms being bandaged and all. Nurse’s main role of course should be to provide patients with a few wet dreams. As Nurse leaves room, unable to find phone in either pocket, make sure camera lingers on the back of her thighs, where her short skirt ends. (No nurses wear these, but shhsh, don’t let a little thing like that get in your way).

Cool Dude 1 fishes out the phone from somewhere and gleefully calls friend, Cool Dude 2 in adjacent room. Mutual congratulations ensue, for having got some jollies out of Nurse. Cool Dude 2 now gets his turn. Except oh, It’s a Male Nurse! Horror, horror, horror! Male Nurse enters with simpering smile and a graceful toss of head, to indicate you know, that he’s gay. Get it, he’s gay!! Of course, would he be in Nursing otherwise?

Outcome: Successfully offensive to

• Women
• Nurses
• Gay People

Seen the new Virginmobile advertising?

apu Media-Movies-Ads

I haven’t gotten around to my weekly linking feature for some time, but here it is, for this week.

In the last few years, Naxalite activity has been prominent in many Indian states and getting a good amount of media attention. I don’t believe that the violence unleashed by the Naxals will lead to any lasting solution, even if some of their objectives are fair enough. Equality and justice are some of the key demands of the movement, except apparently, when it comes to women. Sarbani Bandhopadhyay writes a fine piece, ‘The Revolutionary Patriarch’ on how even revolutionary movements are far from radical when it comes to sharing power with women.

Githa Hariharan has an account of ‘a feminist docudrama’ - a performance based on stories of women who could be considered modern India’s first feminists. Sounds very interesting - I wonder if there is any anthology which deals with the lives and work of these brave women and the challenges they faced, in a much more difficult world?

Nita, one of the most prolific bloggers I’ve come across, writes on the stupidity of legislating women’s right to work, rather than providing safe working conditions. She also makes the valid point that those who need to will any way end up working, perhaps in even more unsafe, dodgy conditions, if working late at night is made illegal.

Enjoy reading!

apu Women & Feminism

Some days ago, at a function, a distant relative was gently ribbing me and my husband as to who was responsible for cooking at home. Specifically, he was taking a few shots at my expense, that I must be ‘making’ my husband do all the cooking. Most of this was inconsequential small talk; I doubt this relative really cares about who cooks at our place or whether we cook at all. I didn’t take it seriously or feel riled. Still, behind these jokes are some notions so ingrained that we have a hard time recognizing them. The joke exists because the notion exists that a woman must be an excellent cook, devoted to feeding her family.

Read the rest, over at Ultra Violet…

apu Women & Feminism