Pandemics and POTUS

It’s the start of an eventful century.

 Barely two decades into the century, sweeping changes have taken place in technology and connectivity. Asian heft is on the rise. The world has witnessed many wars and a global upsurge of nationalism. And then, a pandemic rages through the world, affecting people across continents. Even the most powerful man in the world is not spared.

Sounds familiar? It is strange that it does, for the year I am talking about is 1918.

The Great War is about to come to an end. The US President Woodrow Wilson’s famous “Fourteen Points” speech convinced Germany to put an end to the War and come to the negotiating table, raising hopes of an enduring peace, and a Treaty without punitive clauses.

Germany’s traditional rival, France was baying for blood… but it was widely thought that Wilson would prevail over France’s Clemenceau and broker a fair Treaty.

The Fourteen Points were widely circulated and this cartoon of Wilson (from Punch) moving with a sense of purpose, exuding firmness and capability, captures how he managed to infuse hope for a just peace, projecting the image of the American warrior arriving in Paris to settle the knotty problems of the warring Europeans.

And so, the Fourteen Points became the basis of Armistice in 1918.

But then came the twist in the tale…

Woodrow Wilson came down with the then-raging pandemic, the Spanish Flu. He was never the same again. He was left physically weak and disoriented. He was no longer the man of purpose that Punch so hopefully portrayed. He lost the ability to argue with Clemenceau and he gave in to the French demands, resulting in a Treaty that sought to punish and humiliate, rather than set the tone for a new, peaceful world order.

The heavy reparations, the insertion of a clause on War Guilt, French occupation of German territory… and the sense of betrayal and outrage that the Germans were left with… the consequent rise of National Socialism…these are only too well-documented.

And we all know how badly it ended.

History throws up villains and we rush, often rightly so, to be outraged by their actions and seek to ensure that villainy of that sort doesn’t rear its head again. But those villains are the product of the circumstances that came together to create them. We may choose to believe that no circumstances extenuate what followed, in this case. But we must not forget those circumstances either.

We fixate on and are appalled by the hideousness of the actions of the villains produced by history, and not so much on the events that led to the rise of such a persona. If only we could learn more from the milieu of history than from personalities of history, we may achieve more success in ensuring that kind of history doesn’t repeat itself.

Would there have been no WW2 if Woodrow Wilson had not been affected by the ‘flu? Would there have been a just and enduring peace? Would the League of Nations have been an institution to reckon with rather than the toothless one it turned out to be?

Hard to say.

But a compelling counter factual to consider.

Book Review: Pachinko

 

 

 

Pachinko: a Japanese pinball game that is wildly popular, that spawned an economic behemoth to rival any major industry. An industry that is dominated by ethnic Koreans in Japan. And when the Pachinko parlours are frowned upon because of (real or imagined) links to the yakuza gangsters, it taints all the ethnic Koreans by association. Yet they cannot escape this spiral: they got in to this business because other avenues of employment were not open to people of their ethnicity. Pachinko: a metaphor for the “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” predicament of immigrants who are treated as second class citizens. This metaphor is uniquely applicable in this case, but the inescapable tragedy is that parallels abound around the world.  

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is a well-researched saga of immigration, exile and hyphenated identities. The tales of Korea’s annexation by Japan and the excesses of the world wars, the division of Korea, and the subsequent wars: these are all well-known to students of history. But what of the stories of ordinary people caught in these times of great upheaval?

The author has woven this novel seamlessly into the fabric of the 20^th century: starting from a humble fishing family in Busan in the South of unified Korea, a chance encounter with a Korean wholesale trader which ties their fortunes to a family from the North, and a resulting immigration to Osaka. This cements the family’s identity as Korean-Japanese, a hyphenation that proves definitive to the course of the story. Persecution and discrimination are constant, though they change garb as generations shift; but just as constant and is the will to survive and thrive. The female characters are found saying more than once, “A woman’s lot is to suffer. We must suffer.” Yet, these women are no damsels-in-distress; they in fact are the prime movers of this tale: whether it is finding a way out of financial ruin by sheer enterprise and dogged determination or making critical decisions whenever the men, bogged down by the weight of tradition are found wanting. Not all of them are martyrs either, and the book stands out in the way it deftly projects changing social mores, building an appreciation for the rapidly evolving role of women across generations.

This novel has a rich and well-crafted cast of characters across four generations, covering the breadth of ideology, religion, aptitude and aspirations.  Take the case of Solomon, the son of a second-generation Korean immigrant in Japan.  His father Moazasu rose from debilitating poverty and crushing life events, going on to build a fortune in the Pachinko business, managing to realise a much-cherished dream of educating his son in the United States. But does education help Solomon make a clean break from his Pachinko-linked past, making the question of immigrant identity a thing of the past? Even when he seems to have lost all he worked for to petty racist stereotyping, Solomon refuses to paint all members of the oppressor community with the same brush, even as he demands the same for his own community.

Then there his uncle Noa, who makes a startling realization about those who claim to accept him despite his background and origins:  “…seeing him as only Korean—good or bad—was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human.”

I will carry this moment of Noa’s realization with me: isn’t this what our struggles are ultimately about? To be free from stereotypes of gender, race, religion... To be seen as human.

 

 

Book Review: Three Daughters of Eve

Three Daughters of Eve  by Elif Shafak

Book Review

Not very often does it happen that a book set in a completely different cultural milieu manages to feel so close to one’s heart. This is the story of a bored upper-middle class socialite: in some ways it’s a ‘coming-of-age’ story, except that the usual elements that define a classic coming-of-age setup are displaced in time: the elements start to come together during the globally accepted norm of adolescence, but find their culmination only in the protagonist’s 30s.

Growing up in a middling Istanbul family in the 80s and 90s turns out to be not too different from an equivalent Indian experience. At the centre is Peri, a girl who is sensitive ‘to the point of self-effacement’, growing up in a household where battle lines are drawn between father and mother,  between disparaging atheism and dauntless faith, between a longing for a better future and a hankering for the past. She develops her own credo, but is torn apart internally by her efforts to maintain external peace.

 A life-defining move to a university another country exposes her to a different kind of life. Yet, the battlelines are absurdly similar. The liberals, she discovers, are as prone to stereotyping and intolerance as are the conservatives.  The debates here are couched in sophisticated language, but the simmering tensions are the same.

 Of the eponymous ‘three daughters’ , she is the ‘Confused’, playing the thankless role of peacemaker between the ‘Believer’ and the ‘Sinner’. There is a mentor who could have helped her recognise her unique ability of being able to empathise with both sides. However, things take an unexpected turn, and it is only years later, in a day in bustling Istanbul involving a party for the elites, a mugging, a photograph from the past and armed robbery, that she experiences catharsis.

The story seems to end too soon, and I expected a stronger finish; but I’m not complaining. The book more than made up for it by its richness in its descriptions, in capturing the sights, sounds and flavours of Istanbul and Oxford, and in its ability to turn old arguments over into an entirely new light.

In an age when ‘taking offence’ has turned rampant, and when debates only cause positions to turn more intractable than ever, we need more of the wisdom that Shafak showcases in this book.

As the Professor puts it in the book, “… participating in an open debate is a bit like falling in love. You are a different person by the time it comes to an end.” Did the three daughters of Eve find this out for themselves in an experiment designed by their professor? I leave it to you to find out. 

Love in the time of sanitizers

 

It was a bright and warm day in April and the clocks were striking twenty-one. Days of lockdown that is. Who has the ability to keep time by the hour when the seconds and minutes have congealed into a gloopy mess of hours, she mused.

It was a momentous day, and she got up with not a little trepidation. The previous

day, worn down by her incessant proselytizing, the home sanitization protocol was adopted in the household, with unanimous approval. The usually unwilling member immediately accepted his duties (which not too long ago had been relegated to the one-person clean-freak of the abode).
This, then, was the first day of the new protocol and she was anxious to see what the day would bring.

Wake up and smell the roses, the poets used to sing in another era. But here she was waking up to the most reassuring smell in the world: heady fragrance of protection-granting, life-affirming sanitizer. With which the aforementioned member had swabbed the surfaces of the house, in accordance with his allocated duties. She felt woozy in delight, or it may just have been the effect of all the alcohol (strictly not less than 60%) in the air.

Even as she was revelling in the headiness of it all, she overhears snatches of father-toddler conversation from the other room.  “Clol Ekideen” she thinks she hears the toddler lisp.“  The beaming spouse looks up as she walks in, and says brightly, waving the spray bottle of sanitizer. “I just taught her the word of the day. It’s Chlorhexidine.”

And just like that, she fell in love all over again.

Nothing is the real Every Thing

My mind has been bursting
At its seams.
Filled with Everything
Filled with Nothing.

The act of living, it’s packed
With the Everything
That fills the hours
But hollows the soul.
And leaves a Nothing-sized hole
In the recesses of myself.

So I decided one day to put
The Everything on hold.
And have my fill of
The Nothing.

So I watched the sun rise
Listened to the birds chirp
Inhaled the aroma of my coffee
Soaked in the sights and sounds of rain
Flipped through photo albums
Called up an old friend
Savoured the taste of water
Pace mellowed, senses nimble.

I turned light with the weight of
All the Nothing that had filled my day.

And I feel that Nothing-sized hole

Fill up, well up with a light joy.

Sometimes Nothing is the real
Every Thing.

The blaze after the storm

Sunset after Cyclone Nisarga

Storm whorls whirl away
The sun sets the sky ablaze
Water turns to fire

Cocoon's caress

A very hungry caterpillar, that’s what I was

My little world, I roamed without pause.
Such a world of plenty, a world of joys
Thriving, fattening, so what if it cloys?

And then one day, the powers-that-be
Came to light and said to me:
It’s now time to stop your play
Keep to yourself, hide away
Spin yourself a littler world
Want not a jot, stay withheld
All for your good, all for the best
Consider this time to renew, to rest.

So here I lie:  so still, so quiet
Breathe the calm. No fuss, no fret.
My physical self, cocoon-bound
But the mind, it soars with aplomb.
Times of feasting, the old way
Seem so distant, fade away.
I thrive anew, in cocoon’s caress
Nourish my soul, I learn afresh.

I know one day, when time is ripe
I’ll wake to the new world outside
As a beautiful butterfly.

My fear wears a mask

I let my fear wear a mask one day
And let it move my temper astray.

Like the crafty amoeba, though one-celled
It filled out, stretched, snowballed, swelled.

Fear can mutate, masquerade
Grow on and on, roam untamed.
And I let it free to change its shape
Prowl my emotional landscape.

“I love you so, this anger is concern.”
But at that decibel, but who can discern?

“I’m just afraid, just need to be held.”
But too proud to say, to make amends

Why would we rather…

Be thought stern than soft?
Short-fused than burnt out?

Why not pregnable and kind?
Than stormy in fear-bind?

So afraid of letting down our guard
That we would rather be scarred?

Would they love us any the less….
Our unnamed fears, if we express?

An electronic love

She was a broken shell
Merely a throbbing soul

He had space
In his generous core
So there she lay
Curled up in his embrace

Now their worlds merged
Seamless-
Linked to the outer world
By a single face.

The sim from her broken phone
In his dual sim device

Rush

All at once, in a heady rush
Flying, soaring off-my-cuff
Words welling up inside of me:
Like unbidden tears, a happy sea.
Writing themselves into poetry

Oh yes..
Shoulders squared. Ardour peaks.
Lightning flashes. Flushed cheeks.

I break into sprint:
A mad dash to my pensieve
My pensieve? Ah hapless muggle!
A phone, a pen, some paper
Something, anything.
But no…
I stop. Am stopped in my tracks.
Unbought groceries. Unwashed clothes.
Unfed self. Unmet deadlines.
Doleful dance of the day-to-day.

Shoulders sag. Ardour ebbs.
Fervour fades. Thoughts retreat.

Oh well…
She who thinks and files away
Will strive to write another day 

Lockdown Poetry

Today I’m thinking about Emily Dickinson. A stalwart in her own right, a sort of progenitor of American poetry of the modern day. Her poems are mostly without titles, and named after their respective first lines. Introduced to one of her poems in an English course in school, I, as a restless teenager, was completely underwhelmed. I can picture myself now, a rather self-conscious schoolgirl in awe of the Romantic poets, still a little in love with John Keats whose wrote odes to Grecian urns and melancholy and nightingales, and titled poems with fancy French words that I was proud to be able to pronounce. If there was indeed any space for an American poet in that teenager’s heart, it belonged to T.S.Eliot, a genius who could gather fragments of the Upanishads and weave them into The Waste Land, replete with incomprehensible and lofty words and ending with a shanti mantra.

What place was there for a poetess writing about offering a crumb to a bird (A Bird, came down the Walk) in that world? It was much later in my adulthood that I rediscovered Dickinson, with her stunning short poems with slant rhyme and layered metaphors. I was exhilarated when I managed to truly appreciate her oddly structured short lines, with strange patterns of spaces and punctuation, that I understood to be her way of nudging her readers into pausing and reflecting over certain phrases in her writing.

For a woman of her times, going to one of the newly established ladies’ academies was a privilege that gave unheard-of freedom to young girls. But life afterwards was expected to settle into a pattern involving paying calls, marrying and furthering the career of one’s husband. ln all, a life of dreary domesticity and of subsuming the woman’s identity into her family’s. All of which was anathema to her. The idea of a buzzing social life did not sit well with her either, and she was to remain a recluse for most of her life.

As a caregiver to her ailing mother, her withdrawal from the outside world turned near-complete by her 40s. She surrounded herself with her beloved plants and the world of her poetry. This self-imposed period of isolation proved to be a prolific writing spell.

An ability to draw startling insights from the least noticeable of creatures and the merest of things combines with her preoccupation with mortality & escape with dramatic results: her poems have a way of sudden shifting gears, the mundane turning into the sublime, or acquiring hidden depths or taking an unexpected turn. An imaginary outing to walk her dog by the sea turns into an event with misleadingly menacing undertones (I started early – Took my Dog). A simple piece of advice to tell the truth ends with an insightful reminder that the truth can be a dangerous instrument, to be used with due care (Tell All the Truth- But tell it Slant). An ode to reading ends with an insight into the human soul (There is no Frigate like a Book). And so on and on.

Many of her poems use metaphors involving the rooms or parts of a house to describe the outside world or even abstract ideas. Mermaids, in her imagination, come from the ‘basement’ of the ocean and war ships move along the ‘Upper Floor’. (I started early- Took my Dog). The world of poetry is a ‘House’ fairer than that of Prose, with the limitless sky as its ‘roof’ (I dwell in Possibility). Character is built with external support, but once formed has to function independently, just like a house stands on its own after the scaffolding and carpenter are long gone (The Props assist the House). Did she like being isolated in her house? Perhaps. Sometimes she seems to have found it suffocating. But then she was, in spirit, always far away. Even though her immediate space features often in her flights of fancy and wild poetic escapades.

But the poem that is closest to my heart today, as we all live in lockdown is “I taste a liquor never brewed”. And not for the reasons you are plausibly and (quite understandably) imagining. For a well-born woman of her times, to get drunk would have been quite a scandalous event: I suppose this only serves to underline her rebellious streak.

For those of you expecting a poetic outburst induced by sherry or claret (or whatever tipple folks took a fancy to in those times), the facts of the poem are delightfully and unexpectedly different.

To Emily Dickinson, the greatest intoxicant is Nature itself. In this cheerful poem, she imagines being inebriated on air (yes, precious…fresh…outdoor…sigh! air) and debauching on dew. And spending her summer days reeling under the blue summer skies. And now you know why I’m thinking of Emily today. The skies have never been clearer or brighter, and I have never wanted to be drunk on nature and the outdoors more than now, two (almost) months into lockdown.

All I can do is read this Dickinson gem and imagine myself slumped incoherent over fresh air, gentle sea breeze and swaying boughs. And then rising to walk...or stagger...over a carpet of crunchy leaves. Hic.

Here's Emily Dickinson herself:

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

Source: https://poets.org/poem/i-taste-liquor-never-brewed-214

When I’ve had my fill, I shall, just like her, ‘but drink the more’. I can see Emily leaning against the sun, nodding approvingly at my plan.

Maslow's chillies

Dabbling in the kitchen for needs arising from the lowest level of Maslow’s needs hierarchy, I discovered over the course of this lockdown, is a far cry from going occasionally into the kitchen to self-actualize by rustling together fancy ingredients into a photo-worthy salad.

This turned into a particularly searing lesson for me today. I mean, literally. Like actually literally. Not ‘literally’ like when people use the word literally to metaphorically mean something patently non-literal. Involving mindful cooking and green chillies, and hours of running laps from the living room to the kitchen madly flapping my palms*.

I have barely ever used green chillies in food prior to this. However, the latest fortnightly survival kit from one of the blessed e-commerce vendors who deigns to deliver to my building included a very, very generous package of green chillies. As my mantra during lockdown is “Waste Not, Want Not”, I resolved to use this entire lot. So it was that I surveyed three of the chosen ones from the pile. Two of them were curved in a particularly, warningly, sinister fashion. Alas, I failed to heed the warning of the fates and proceeded to gut them of their seeds and throw in the angry green skins into my waiting skillet. Within minutes, the cooking for the day was abandoned and the activity marked above with * commenced.

The spouse, patiently awaiting his victuals, was startled by this rather unusual sight. The lingua franca of my movement is invariably limited to plodding, ambling and slouching. Therefore, this sudden interest in indoor sprinting could scarcely go unnoticed. I breathlessly screamed, “Burning hands. Do something, do something.” My movements were so floppy and my manner so panic-inducing that he initially assumed that my hands were on fire. Like, you know, really, literally on fire. Like with flames. Not the metaphorical way people use the word ‘literally’ when you know, they’ve got chilli burn. But dash it, it really did feel as if my hands were spouting molten lava.

Once he got wise to the situation, he broke into paroxysms of laughter. I made incoherent threats (including but not restricted to using the vegetable in question as a weapon) to shake him out of his laughing stupor and google for remedies.

After a few rounds of hits and misses, and after slathering my palms variously with dishwash liquid, coconut oil, baking soda paste, hand sanitiser and aloe vera gel, we recovered some semblance of sanity in the household. Now I know not to take capsaicin lightly. Along with various other snippets, such as its official name: 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide.

The sole achievement of the day is that the placating party in this story now knows to never, ever offer such helpful trivia as IUPAC names of active spice ingredients while the suffering party is in the throes of chilli burn.

--Please feel free not to commiserate with me on the chilli burn. This is a work of somewhat pure fiction--

Midsummer Day's Musings

I dream of a summer that once was
Lived in lightness and sun.
In beaches, parks, in supposed bliss
None unsought, naught undone:

Market streets and impulse eats
Slides, swinging, parks brimming
Party dresses, salon-ed tresses 
Teeming malls and movie halls
Cricket craze in the summer blaze
And spur o’ moment holidays.
So breathless, so tireless
So fearless, those summers.

And now we huddle in stillness
Huddle apart, huddle within.
To each, her own address
Such a summer this has been.

And we huddle in this stillness
Socially distanced mites of hope
Even as tiny chinks in the darkness
Lighten us, help us cope.

And now we huddle in stillness
In the silence and din of our homes.
And thrive in a new busy-ness
As time, relentless, drones.

And now we huddle in stillness
Circumscribed by our walls.
Truth be told, droll thankfulness
In humdrum chores and calls.

And now we huddle in stillness
Necessity mothering invention
Shaking age-old “don’t know”-ness
No win too small to shun.

                As we wait:    in this crimping liminal
                As we wait:    to spring to the normal

 ---Which normal, I wonder---

A return to Old Breathlessness?
Or to craft a new Mindfulness?

Homecoming

There is always something special in going back to one’s roots. Especially when that means going to a place as captivating, as elegant as this campus.

As majestic as ever

When we left this breathtakingly beautiful campus over a decade ago, we carried a lot of it within ourselves. After all, it was in this place that some of us had learnt how splendid yet how tough being out on our own could be. Some learnt that they could simultaneously and with equal passion, love and hate the same thing. Each of us was tested to the hilt in various ways: thriving under extreme pressure, living with the staggering burden of expectations, dealing with bitter disappointment, building and retaining friendships in a competitive environment, always doing all we could to make the best out of any challenge that was thrown at us. Above all, managing to thoroughly enjoy every (ok, almost every) moment  of this mind-boggling, almost-too-fantastic -to-be real package. Two years that lasted a lifetime. Two years that flitted by before we could make sense of everything that was happening. Two years when we managed to cram ourselves with pre-placement talk pizzas while chasing resume-points, survived on borrowed notes and tutorial sheets while trying to manoeuvre the thicket of relative grading, even as submission deadlines, committees, and coursework kept us on our collective toes. All washed down with generous helpings of late-night coffee and DC++ downloads.

The scene of our many exploits

Ten years is a lot of time, and despite this shared history I worried that this homecoming may turn out to be far less than all it was touted to be. After having seen so much more of the real world, perhaps we would be underwhelmed by the occasion? Some of us had blazed trails from the get-go, some of us had slow starts but then pivoted into exciting paths, while others had sailed steadily through calmer lanes. How would we bond together, coming as we were now, from different places, with diverse life experiences? Would that decade-old shared history serve to paper over how different each one of us has become?

And then we all got together. Yes, some of us, in smaller groups, had kept in touch, but we discovered that being together again within this lovely campus completely redefined the experience. It was not simply about the shared “IIMB-ness” that we carried within ourselves that was the glue. It was also about the many little bits of ourselves that we had left behind, both individually and collectively, on campus. 

Those precious little crumbs of our long-ago selves that we had forgotten in the intervening years: those were what we reclaimed. Perhaps that impishness that defined our younger days. Maybe the one friend who got you through the first week on campus (whom you had inexplicably lost touch with). Or that one spot near the amphitheatre that was your go-to place for some peace and quiet. Or how creative you can get to (pretend to) stay awake at a lecture after pulling an all-nighter. Or even that lull at L^2 in the wee hours of the morning when you slipped away to grab a double cheese maggi. Or simply reconnecting with the fact that there was a time when and there was this place where you could just let your hair down and know you are around friends you can trust. Almost be a child all over again.

So there we were: re-living what we had shared long ago. And rediscovering, and relishing what we had unknowingly left behind. And that, we found out, is plenty to go on. For this reunion, and many more to come.

A Zen New Year

A prayer for this New Year:

The mind at work, the heart at peace

     Zentangle-inspired art