Apu’s World

Just a tip, to this heartfelt post about the frustration that women face, in trying to reconcile a career and home. From Deborah, at ‘In a Strange Land’,

The fact is, I have been able to find no solution to the problem of ensuring that my children are cared for, and loved, and parented, and nurturing my own career, and me.

Do read.

apu Women & Feminism

It’s been a depressing sort of day, with the Mumbai blasts and deaths, and that’s an understatement. All day, my mind has been on the news, and the hysterical media reporting is just making me feel queasy, apart from the immense sadness I feel for the victims, and for our country. When will we or will we ever, find peace?

I went to sleep early last night and woke up to the horror of the Taj burning and hostages at multiple places. Leaving for a guest lecture at a local college, I hoped fervently that the crisis would be resolved by the time I got back. Misplaced hope.

As usual, politicians are busy pointing fingers. I’m glad that the PM has stepped up to say clearly that the perpetrators will be dealt with, regardless of religion. While this shows the scale on which Islamic terrorists are operating, that should be no reason for Hindutva terrorism to be excused. What was that Gandhiji said about an eye for an eye making the whole world blind? While everyone is making brave statements, I can bet that we don’t learn anything from this episode.

This is the free India our leaders fought so hard to secure, and this is the free India which our youngsters are now working so hard to break down.

apu In General

I’ve now seen two movies by the Coen brothers, No Country for Old Men, and Fargo; while amazed by the amount of random violence, I liked both movies very much for their depiction of an authentic America as opposed to the pipe-dreams that Hollywood mostly prefers. Even when the characters are weird or dark, you still get the sense that they are real. In No Country for Old Men, when the serial killer catches up with the wife of one of his victims and tells her that he has to kill her, “on principle”, it is one seriously deranged, yet normal-looking man. The directors resist the temptation of making him look wacky or evil or abnormal in any way; it is his actions that are evil.

You get the feeling that you’re really following these characters around in their small-town lives; and that’s another thing the Coen brothers do fantastically well - small-town American life that isn’t idealised or idyllic. Besides the realism, I loved Fargo for one more reason - it has one of the best female characters I’ve seen in Hollywood - Marge Gunderson, the chief-of-police at Brainerd, the town where much of the action is located. It is so refreshing to see a woman as a cop, and a damn good one at that.

One of the infuriating things about Hollywood is that women in Police/FBI/Investigator/Scientist kind of roles are usually sidekicks or inefficient or too-emotional or bookish without ‘practical’ know-how. Marge Gunderson knows her stuff and shows it. While she is pregnant, constantly hungry and eating,  has an artist husband (again, inversion of roles?), all the family drama is only on the sidelines. Her main role in the movie is as a cop single-mindedly pursuing a murder mystery and nowhere is she shown as making any decisions on account of her gender, nor did the director feel the need to ’sex her up’. The interest in her is not because she is a woman, but because she is an intelligent cop.

Don’t you wish we got to see more women in such roles?

apu Media-Movies-Ads

Ardhanarishwara.

“How could they? How could they?” He would ask himself. “How could you?” He asked his parents. He didn’t long for a Rahul or a Rohit. A Sundar or a Murali or a Kartik would have been just fine. But Ardhanarishwara? He dismissed his parents’ tale of having been blessed with a child by the Shiva who went by that name. What, did they imagine themselves to be living in a mythical age?

When he was really young, all it had meant was an unpronounceable name. Everyone just called him Ardha, which wasn’t that bad, even if it did sound incomplete. When he crossed primary school though, and the kids figured out what it meant, he lost all hope of ever living a normal life. “Ey, you, half-and-half”, they would call him, or just Number 9. Even then, things were tolerable until he reached class 8, when an Akhilandeswari had to join their school and wriggle her way into roll-call. That really pushed him to roll number 9. There was no way he could possibly overcome that.

With a name like that, there would be no place for him at the IITs or even at a second-rung engineering college. He finished his boards with an astonishing 55 percent, a record low for the family. A B.A. That was all he could hope for. It was then that he started collecting words. Epiphany. Colloidal. Oppobrium. Catatonic. Prehensile. Three or four syllables - he was very specific about that. No more and no less. He would place each of them on the tip of his tongue, and roll it around. Gently. Words deserved careful handling. When he was finished with one, he would pause for a moment before lapping up the next one.

College ended and he landed at the calling of the new generation - BPO worker and shirker. He was twenty one now, and the sound of his own money was pleasant to the ear. He considered changing his name. If he could, he would have a name like Archangel Correlation or Mellifluous Persiflage, a four-syllabic beauty. It wasn’t possible, of course. One day, his boss called him and announced that they were making it easier for American customers to talk to the agents. And they christened him, Ar-ty.

apu Original Fiction

Yesterday, I managed to visit the Bangalore Book Festival, right on the last day, though it was raining so hard that I feared the canvas roof would come down! I’m very proud of myself for having given myself a budget and managing to stick to it - on previous such occasions, I’ve been known to go berserk and return home with a staggering load of books, some which I would discover later that I didn’t even want. This time, the discounts were good too. So, the haul was as follows:

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adhichie - this is a novel set in Biafra, a province in Nigeria that tried to break-away and set up an independent Igbo country; both the historical context and the story itself are very good. I’ve read this one before and thought it is a book really worth having on one’s shelf. Price: Rs.225.

After the Ice, by Steven Mithen: Ever since reading Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, I’ve become really interested in pre-history and the beginning of human societies; coincidentally, I’ve also been looking to read about the Ice ages and their impact on human evolution. This book promises some good information on those lines. Price: Rs. 350

Irandaam Jaamangalin Kadai, by Salma: The festival had a good number of Kannada and Tamizh book stalls as well. This Tamizh novel, by a Tamizh Muslim writer, deals with issues of family, society and Muslim women. It’s been published by Kalachuvadu, a magazine and publishing house that deals with alternative/ progressive literature. Price: Rs. 225

Breaking Barriers, by Parvathi Menon: This is an account of 12 women in India, who were among the pioneers of the Indian feminist movement, and broke social norms and taboos, in a far more conservative time. This has been published by Leftword, a leftist-marxist publishing house. I’m really looking forward to reading it. Price : Rs. 75

The Travels of Ibn Battutah, Edited by Tim Mackintosh Smith: Along with Fa Hien and Huan-Tsang, Ibn Battutah was one of the illustrious travellers we learnt about in school. From an India-centric perspective, certainly, these travellers appeared more interesting than people like Columbus and Marco Polo. This book is an abridged version of Ibn Battutah’s ‘Travels’, his account of his journey over West Asia, India, China and parts of Europe. Price: Rs. 125

One of the interesting things about the festival was the diversity of stalls, from well known names like Oxford University Press and S.Chand to much smaller presses. I got to see quite a few books which most large bookstores don’t stock. Overall, a really well-spent afternoon!

apu The Literary life