A quick note, folks. Who wants a copy of Zubaan Books’ interesting sounding The Bad Boys’ Guide To The Good Indian Girl? Go comment here, with your thoughts on the Good Indian Girl (GIG) - and it may just be yours.
Conservation, in India, can become a polarizing subject. Green activists are often seen as woolly-headed intellectuals, out of touch with the realities and prioritizing trees over humans. The media too sometimes present debates this way. There is a growing realization though, that it is not a question of trees over humans; that indeed, humans need trees (and the other living things that form part of the ecosystem) for their very survival. Writings on the environment that are accessible to the layperson, will play an important role in spreading this awareness.
The Sprint of the Blackbuck, a collection of writings on wildlife and conservation in South India, selected from The Blackbuck, the quarterly journal of the Madras Naturalists’ Society, is one such effort. Edited by Theodore Baskaran , himself a well-known writer on environmental issues, it is an excellent collection, that can be enjoyed equally by the layperson and someone more steeped in the academic/scientific discourse on wildlife and conservation.
Divided into 4 sections - Wildlife, Habitats, Conservation and Documenting Wildlife - it covers many different issues and perspectives. Some of the best pieces in the collection, such as M. Krishnan’s Nilgiri Langur in Mundanthurai Sanctuary, cover beautifully the intersection between a particular species, a habitat and it’s response to human-engineered conflict. Indeed, all of M. Krishnan’s writings included in Sprint of the Blackbuck are notable for the love of wildlife evident in the writing, the attention to detail and the manner in which scientific concepts such as adaptation are explained so lucidly. (Next on my reading list is Mazhaikalamum Kuyilosaiyum, a collection of M. Krishnan’s writings on the environment, in Tamizh).
Some of the best pieces of the collection are also to be found in the Habitat section, evocative writings on animals in different environments. One grouse I had with the book is that while the pieces have been picked from 25 years of The Blackbuck journal, the original dates of publishing have not been mentioned along with each piece. This is a drawback for most pieces, but especially for those in the Habitat and Conservation sections - while reading about the scrub jungle on the edge of Chennai or an experiment in conservation at Rishi Valley, it is important to know what period these descriptions refer to.
Another drawback is the absence of good-quality photographs, but this presumably, is a budget constraint. If not, it would have been good to see photographs at least for those pieces where one species of deer or monkey is compared to another, and the layperson does not really know the difference between these.
In all other respects, The Sprint of the Blackbuck makes for excellent reading and will open your mind to thinking of the environment and conservation efforts in a more inclusive manner.
This post has been written for the Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Campaign - please check it out; this review includes some spoilers though I’ve tried my best not divulge plot details.
When I received the copy of HUSH that I had ordered online, at first, it seemed like there was more packaging material than book. HUSH is a slim book indeed, but weighty nonetheless. A graphic novel that takes on a troubling and uncomfortable subject that most people would prefer not to think about - child sexual abuse.
With absolutely no text, and very few images, this graphic novel by Pratheek Thomas and Rajiv Eipe tells the story of a girl in a seemingly normal urban family, which really isn’t normal at all. While I am not going to divulge the details of the story, suffice to say that the book makes a strong impression. A couple of things stood out for me.
One was the helplessness of children - not just in the context of abuse but in general. For adults who have the care of children, I can understand how frustrating their behaviour can sometimes be - the yelling, the tantrums, the way they sometimes can embarrass parents - and yet, how frustrating must it be for a child to constantly be told not to do something or not follow all their natural instincts. (This post - “Respect” is worth reading in that context). In one of the panels in HUSH, a little girl cowers in the Principal’s room, and while I don’t think it was meant to indicate sexual abuse, the question of power and the use of fear to control children loomed large. If we teach children to fear adults and that good behaviour always means saying Yes, how can we teach them at the same time to say No?
A while after reading the book, another thing that really stays in the mind is the vivid expressiveness of all the characters’ faces in the book - and especially, of the anger that an abused child feels. HUSH does its close-ups superbly; in fact, in many places, it feels uncomfortable, as though one is personally part of a system that has failed this child - such is the anger in her eyes that glare at you.
Which can only be a good thing - it’s time more of us took responsibility for looking out for children we come in contact with, and not necessarily only one’s own kids.
Good friend and fellow blogger Uma (of Pattu fame) suggested that I read a book called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and what’s more - even lent me her copy. I’d never heard of the book or the author, Betty Smith before, but I read the book over a short span of 3-4 days. It helps that we haven’t yet got the TV set up at our new place in Chennai!
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the kind of linear, simple narrative that can be considered terribly unfashionable today. It follows a young and gifted girl, Francie, as she grows up in the poor neighbourhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn sometime in the early 1900s. At times, Betty Smith’s writing can seem overtly simple, and even somewhat over-explaining. Any writer writing today, has the ’show, don’t tell’ so drilled into them that we feel the pressure to go the other extreme - with self-conscious writing that tries its best to avoid talking about anything that it really wants to talk about. (Of course, not all complex styles are bad or simple styles good, or vice-versa).
A Tree...suffers from no such considerations. Betty Smith first and foremost, wants to tell a good story, and that’s what the end result is. What makes it even more worthwhile is the painstaking detailing of early 1900s Brooklyn - from the mom-and-pop stores to the clothes of the children to the foods and languages of the different ethnicities - Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Polish that live in the neighbourhood, Betty Smith recreates it all in beautiful detail. It is almost as good as seeing those black-and-white pictures of another era.
I also liked it for its tremendous optimism and courage - without in any way flinching from the harshness of life in a poor time and place. Read it if you can lay your hands on a copy. (Stores don’t always seem to have a copy and even Flipkart only sells the imported edition).
This blog has been neglected for a while. Revamp issues on Women’s Web (why do web developers say 1 month when they really mean 2 months and some-more-time-please?) and a cold-turned-minor-lung-infection have kept me away. Despite the weird noises and gross stuff that issued from my chest and throat, I managed to squeeze in a visit to the Bangalore book fair. Given that I’ve pretty much issued myself an embargo on buying books the rest of the year, the book fair is the annual respite I permit myself.
This year’s haul included an equal balance of English and Tamizh books. The list goes as follows:
In English:
The last of these, which translates loosely as ‘Snow falls on Chekhov’ (hence the post title) is what I am currently reading. It is an insightful and deeply personal collection of essays on great European (mostly, Russian) writers.
My acquaintance with the Russian greats is limited. I have read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and a few short stories by Chekhov. That’s about it, I think, which is of course a shameful thing for any serious reader to confess. Dostoevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Turgenev, Lemontov - all completely unknown to me, and all due to a fear that Russian writers are “difficult.”
Reading Ramakrishnan’s ‘Chekhovin meedu pani peygiradu/Snow falls on Chekhov’, it is hard not to be seduced by these writers. He writes lovingly about these writers’ styles, motifs, themes and influences, but what is different is that he doesn’t hesitate to delve into their lives and talk about the connections between their lives and their work.
This can be dangerous of course, since fiction is not autobiography, but in the title essay, for e.g. he narrates an incident in Chekhov’s life when, as a young boy, he stands in the freezing cold and snow of a Russian winter, after seeing a horse standing out in the cold. It is hard not to nod when he connects this empathy for a mere horse to the humanism that pervades all of Chekhov’s writing. (In one essay alone, when Ramakrishnan discusses the relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo, did I get the feeling that the personal story sidetracked, in fact, hijacked his observations on the artist’s work).
I still haven’t lost the feeling that Russian writers are difficult, but I’m eager to take on the challenge now!
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