The question of Merit

Who should receive the top rank in your class? The best performing student. Right.

What is the best way to fill a job opening? With the candidate who has the perfect qualifications and experience. Right.

What is the right way to organise our society, our businesses, our government? On the basis of merit. Right?
Not really, as the person who coined the word ‘meritocracy’ would have us believe. Not least because he, Michael Young, created the word in a satirical novel about a merit-rewarding dystopia.

According to him:

It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.

I encountered Mr. Young in Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit. At this point, one may attempt to guess that Sandel’s book is about the failure of meritocracy to live up to the ideal. That it is prone to be captured by the well-to-do who scheme to perpetuate their privilege.

But what Sandel does is to take the fight well beyond the surface, right down to the fundamental questions. Such as the very definition of merit. Why should it be linked to academic credentials? Why is talent more prized than moral worth? Why is a college education even necessary for gaining practical wisdom or an instinct for the common good? Are we losing our shared humanity in our rush to reward merit?

He has dealt with these questions in great detail, with plenty of philosophical and historical backdrop. 

The premise is this: Developed countries like the US that embraced globalization have promoted ‘equality of opportunity’ as a remedy for rising inequality in society. But this has not succeeded in curbing the resentment of the working class. He believes that the meritocracy project, at its very essence, is a flawed one. While I found some views rather extreme, I did derive some useful lessons from the American experience, and insights for devising welfare systems.

Here are my top 3 takeaways (includes quotes from the book)

1. The ‘winners’ in a meritocratic society cannot claim full credit for their success.

“That I live in a society that prizes the talents I happen to have is also not something for which I can claim credit. This too is a matter of good fortune.”

 

2. The ‘losers’ in a meritocratic society need more than distributive justice

This is particularly relevant in the US, where he believes the working class displaced by globalization has been short-charged by the technocratic elite.

“Proposals to compensate for inequality focus on increasing the purchasing power of working- class families, or to shore up the safety net. But what these families really want is to reclaim their status as producers.”

Welfare schemes do them a disservice by not helping them keep their status as worthwhile contributors to society (Contributive justice)

 

3. We need general diffusion of intelligence and learning across all classes and vocations

The system of merit as it stands now rewards one’s learning in a tertiary (college) education setup. What we need, instead, is to cultivate the ability to reason and deliberate about fundamental moral and civic questions across all kinds of educational settings.

 

“Civic education can flourish in community colleges, job training sites, and union halls as well as on ivy-strewn campuses. There is no reason to suppose that aspiring nurses and plumbers are less suited to the art of democratic argument than aspiring management consultants.”

I don’t agree entirely with his radical rethinking of the concept of merit. For instance, he believes that college admissions should be based on a lottery system, with merit being only a gating criterion.

My scepticism about such ideas notwithstanding, I came away with much fodder for thought. And I’ll certainly be wary of taking anyone’s standing in a meritocracy for granted.

 

A liminal state of mind

She mooned about the house listlessly. She had lain awake most of the previous night, shifting on the sheets, unable to sleep. A snatch of a memory and a few oh-so-perfect phrases lit up her mind and led her to smile inwardly. Then she would feel the anticipation that she had felt every day of the past week, of what was to play out the following day. And then with a finality as irrevocable as the banging of a gavel or a shutting of a door, she would remember that it was... finally... over. Those times of bonding and eager anticipation of what was to come, how it was to all turn out... were over.

Her flatmate looked at her keenly, noting all the tell-tale signs. No words exchanged, she  understood the situation. That faraway look, the reliving, the state of being in a liminal- it was all too easy to guess.

"The next one is just round the corner, chin up!" she beamed encouragingly.

After all, she had seen it play out so many times:

The heaviness that sets in when a book is closed down on its rear cover, the reader still under its thrall. That awkward stage after a memorable read when one is still living in its world.

Feeling too vulnerable, too fragile to break out of its hold and face the strange world outside of its familiar scent, its characters who have become one's closest friends, and the comforting rustle of its pages.

Dreading talking to people who seem alien because they do not belong to or understand the world she had been inhabiting these past days.

She was between books. Awaiting a new love, a new delight to hold and read and cherish. 

 

On spines and meditation

Is there anything more meditative than organising a bookshelf? My child loves to arrange her books by colour. The red spined ones first, then the orange, all the way upto violet to make a rainbow of book spines. Sometimes she makes mountains, alternating the tiny valleys of baby board books with the peaks of the thicker nighttime books, some plateaus thrown in here and there for good measure. 

I myself like to mix it up. Some days I would obsessively organise books by genre. Those are the days when I would take a dim view of a Wodehouse nestling against Wolfhall (Alphabetic justice, but ludicrous). On other days, when no one is looking, I turn whimsical about my bookshelf. My prized Calvin and Hobbes can snuggle up with The Clash of Civilisations. The Principal Upanishads are standing shoulder to shoulder with Principles of Corporate Finance. Zia Mody’s little tome of key judgements is quietly leaning in to What the Ladybird heard. Feeling particularly impish, I even let Piketty’s Capital rub shoulders with Liar’s Poker. 

Then I carefully reorganise it before anyone can see me - a bookshelf that’s not severely and painstakingly organised by subject is shockingly out of character, bound to startle those who (think they) know me. It’s a secret, guilty meditative pleasure that I share only with my books. Don’t tell anyone 😉 📕

How do you meditate? 

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. 

The case for Range

Book Review: Range by David Epstein

Is it better to learn more deeply than more broadly? Can ‘mental meandering’ be turned into a productive pursuit? Is there such a thing as being fooled by expertise? What is ‘T’ shaped knowledge?

For those with a wide-ranging set of interests, the premise of the book is engaging: that of breadth of knowledge built on a bedrock of clear thinking, rather than laser-focused domain expertise bereft of the benefit of eclectic interests.

This book stands out in a world where specialisation is seen as the ultimate form of expertise. He starts off by making clear the differences between 'kind' and 'wicked' (his words) learning environments, and demonstrates that relentless practice may work for the former and may fail miserably in the latter. A 'kind' learning environment is one where rules are well-defined and where practice makes perfect. A 'wicked' one, which is the category most real world endeavours fall into, calls for a fresh way of thinking, of solving problems by synthesising across various domains, and in general, for people to have breadth of knowledge, rather than depth in a particular specialisation.

The author has flung his net far and wide across history and comes up with examples ranging from 17th century Venetian musicians to modern day Nobel laureates to demonstrate his point. Apart from this, he talks about the gaps in our education system (even in the First World) which is oriented towards nudging students to arrive quickly at the right answers rather than spending time understanding problems and thinking through them deeply to arrive at a solution.

Range has its share of overturned truisms, even as it creates new ones. For those who start to acquire a skill later in life, the 'Don't feel behind' advice is certainly heartening. So also with 'mental meandering' being a source of power, and head-starts being overrated. But some of this advice is to be taken with caution, with appreciation of the context. Some of his conclusions may seem tough to practise in the world as it is today. Being a 'deliberate amateur' in a world that demands very specific skills to count one's contribution as worthy of value can be problematic. It may be that van Gogh meandered through various dead ends before becoming a sensation. But such examples make for fascinating anecdotes rather than evidence of a trend.

Some of the examples illustrate how essential it is for experts to break free from their silos and trenches and collaborate across disciplines. Specifically, the need for experts with "T" shaped knowledge, which means depth in any field with breadth across multiple other fields, makes tremendous sense. Even in the examples in the book, a vast number are of specialists who bridged several streams of knowledge, while a smaller number is dedicated to plain vanilla generalists who struck gold.

As someone who believes in the power of the polymath, maybe I expected more from this book grounded in the current world. I would posit that specialisation is inescapable to showcase the 'grit' that he talks so much about. Having said that, specialists should take their lessons from this book, and avoid falling into the trap of being fooled by expertise, and be open to solutions that arise from outside of their proficiency.

Where I agree with the author completely is on the need to flip the education system over to one that values showing your approach to problem solving rather than rewarding the shortest path to success.

A closing caveat from my point of view: while it is good to know something about everything, there is no merit to it unless you know (almost) everything about something. In short, this book is not to be read as a validation of the ‘jack-of-all-trades but master-of-none’ school. Rather, the case made is for ‘master-of-not-just-one' but ‘jack-of-some-other-trades-too’.

Epstein manages to shatter the belief that super-specialisation is the only way to expertise, and this book will certainly spawn a whole genre around cross-disciplinary thinking. 

Cinders in paradise

A well-crafted amalgam of first-hand accounts and stories from a decades-long conflict, 'This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan war' by Samanth Subramanian traces the origins of the Sri Lankan problem, through epics of the past, colonial shenanigans, religious and ethnic bigotry and the compulsions of contemporary politics. This book stands out as a well-researched  compilation of everything  about the conflict years, as well as post-war Sri Lanka, traversing gut-wrenching stories from both sides of the war. Encompassing a wide cast of journalists, social workers, war victims, monks, politicians, wary former Tiger sympathisers and Lankan Tamil diaspora, the book spins an account of how trouble brewed in this island paradise, tore people from their homes, scarred atleast two generations and left behind a legacy of fear and gloom.

Writing about a long-drawn out conflict that continues to haunt a nation is no mean task, especially where there are no easy answers, no obvious sides to pick, where the lines between the 'good' and the 'bad' are so impossibly blurred. The author plunges into this task with seeming ease, first by drawing out stories from former Tigers who struggle to come to terms with their Cause that turned futile, and vivid accounts of the atrocities committed in their heyday. Then there are stories of majoritarianism, suppression of the Tamil minority, lionisation of a 'Sinhala only' past, and of the paradoxically extreme ways of a religious tradition founded in moderation and the 'Middle path'.

The accounts of the two warring sides are followed by the problems of the present day, of vanished journalists, missing ex-Tiger sympathisers, and of the survivors struggling to eke out a life from the embers of a still-burning conflict. In this post-conflict world,  the annihilation of the Rebels and the victory ring hollow, leaving more questions unanswered than ever. The author paints a word picture of startling clarity, ringing with a palpable sense of desolation, and the stale but ever-present taste of fear. A keen seen of irony, and an eye for the ludicrous, help provide respite from the bleakness of the subject. 

On the whole, the narrative is relatively tight; the author's tone tinged with empathy, displaying sensitivity in interviews with victims, genuinely contrite in expressing helplessness in the face of despondency. However, quirky digressions into the extraneous and a tendency to move back and forth across people and places are distracting at times. 

Shunning the tedium of chronology, the book manages to keep in sharp focus the inevitability as well as the hopelessness of it all, with the powerful writing deftly laying bare the cruel ironies and delusive nature of this civil war. In the end, people, and not ideology or religion, drive conflict: not least by 'shrinking the humanity of the enemy', by 'pouring (religion) into new and unexpected moulds'. Violence begets violence, and beyond a point, the war  turns into an exercise in brinkmanship and futility. The conclusion is strangely appropriate in its abruptness:  conveying that even the final 'victory' has brought no semblance of clarity or closure to the people on either side of this Divided Island. 

A Man who belongs to the ages

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is set in one of the most interesting turning points in history. In this film based on a Lincoln biography, Spielberg captures the drama that takes place in Washington during the turbulent period of the Civil War. The Yankees of the north pitted themselves against the Southern Confederacy, as Lincoln presided over the bloody war that will decide not just the fate of the African Americans, but of the Union itself. The casting is perfect, the pace of the narrative keeps viewers engaged and the dialogues leave you re-running lines in your mind over and over again.

The War is still raging on, Lincoln has just been re-elected to a second term as President and is fighting  get the Thirteenth Amendment passed - the amendment to the American constitution that would abolish slavery in all forms. The Conservative Republicans are in support of inviting the peace-seeking delegation of Confederates to Washington to bring an end to the war, while the Radicals would drop support if that were to pass. Meanwhile, the only hope of garnering the required two-thirds majority for the Amendment in the Congress lay in persuading "lame duck Democrats" (those who had lost their seats in the elections) to switch support. The movie is about how Lincoln sets his men the task of procuring twenty Democrat votes; the final  leg of which task Lincoln takes on himself. To some, he appeals to the heart, to some with the soundness of reason, to others with his eloquence and still others, when all else was lost, with the iron fist of one "clothed in immense power".

In that fateful month of January (1865), the United States faces its true test of its professed sense of equality and freedom, the ideals that the founding fathers of the Union had given to the fledgling country less than a century earlier. And no one is as conscious of the significance of this test, of the urgency to show to the world the States would rise to the defence of their lofty founding ideals, as Lincoln is.

It seems almost as if Lincoln's struggle to get the Amendment passed was a lone one: even those on his team seem to be fighting for other ends: the Secretary of War intent on defeating the Confederate rebels; the Secretary of State keen to play to the gallery, worried that Lincoln's stature would be reduced on failure to pass the Amendment;  the First Lady keen to end the war that had already taken one of her sons, and fearful of losing another who had just then enlisted; the Radical faction seeking to go all out for an emancipation plan for the Blacks, unmindful of the fact that such a revolutionary plan would  frighten away even  the Conservative supporters.  In this melee, when the trials of the war had left the leaders disillusioned, all that seemed to matter was to seek to end the war. Lincoln, on the other hand, was acutely aware that the original aim of ending slavery would come to naught were the war to be ended before the passage of the Amendment. In this, he was not being cruel; he was evidently carrying on with a heavy heart.  His horror of the war is only too clear, but it was a cross he realized he had to bear, so that the States could regain moral standing in the then-prevailing world, and for ages to come. He saw, with a clarity that eludes all but those with keen foresight, that the position of the States as the upholder of natural laws was under threat by the scourge of slavery.

Spielberg has done a class act of unveiling this drama, of multiple factions pushing multiple agendas, even as Lincoln keeps his cards close to his chest, revealing only as much as was necessary to nudge the game forward in the intended direction.  Lincoln stands tall in  this motley cast of characters, firstly because he is a man ahead of his times. His support for abolition arises from a startlingly fierce drive to establish justice and freedom. He was a man with a powerful vision, who was able to see beyond the narrow lens of his contemporaries, beyond the parochial nature of prevailing customs, and tap into the heart of humanity and reason.  He fashions even a dry mathematical axiom from a millennia-old geometry book (that things that are equal to the same thing must be equal to each another) into a passionate argument for equality of all mankind. What truly sets him apart, is that his passion is not  the blind, destructive passion of obsession: his passion is tempered by steady wisdom, a sense of balance, and a consciousness of the nature of his antagonists and the means to win them over.

One of the finest moments in the movie (and there are many of them) is one where the radical Republican Stevens accuses Lincoln of not abiding by his 'inner compass'. To which, Lincoln succinctly brings to the fore the difference between marching due north as shown by the compass and superimposing one's knowledge of the lay of the land with the direction shown by the compass.

Many may find fault with Lincoln's approach as one where ends justify the means. Even his wife said of him, "no one knows the art of treading  treacherous paths better than you do,"  encouraging him to personally take on the task of garnering support votes for the Amendment. His delaying tactics in keeping the peace-seeking Confederates away from Washington till the Amendment had been passed, his denial of the existence of a negotiated peace plan to his Secretary of State and his skill in managing the many factions in his party, all  belong in the world of political intrigues, I concede. His Democratic opponents even went so far as to accuse him of being a dictator, a tyrant who wanted only to enforce his will. To all these detractors, I would say only this: The ability of a man whose vision transcends his own times is limited only by his dexterity in steering the actors of his times. Lincoln could, and did. All that matters is that his goal was the greater good for his country, the world and of the people in the times to come. He belonged not just to his time, but as was aptly said in the penultimate scene ,  "he now belongs to the ages".

The lost world of books

There was a time when going to the bookstore was a planned ritual. At the start of every vacation, an expedition to the largest bookstore in the city would be arranged by the parents. I would be let loose upon that jungle soon after the store commenced business for the day, and given free rein. At the end of hours of scouring, heart-wrenching choices and intense decision-making , I would settle upon my chosen pile.  And then the whole family lived happily for the course of my vacation. Such was the idyllic world of my schooldays.

For many years now, I haven't chanced upon a bookstore.  I have stepped into fancy superstores masquerading as bookstores. Stores  that hawk an assortment of music CDs, videogames and the ilk, while relegating the bookracks to an unobtrusive corner where they don't disturb the jazzed up sections that display the fancier stuff. There have been times when I walked into what once used to be a bookstore, and had to wade through displays of varieties of chocolate, computer peripherals and a zillion other things that have no business in a booklovers' paradise, before chancing upon the books themselves. I could have cried with relief when I found out that they hadn't done away with the books altogether!

And after all these years, I found a bookstore today. Yeah, I'm talking about a real 'book' store. One where you walk in, to be greeted by rack upon glorious rack of tomes. Tomes, waiting to be released from the rack, their heady 'new book' fragrance setting your brain tingling with anticipation of a long afternoon turning pages. Pages, that hold you in thrall, immerse you in their tale, such that the thought of looking up from your book never crosses your head. But, I digress!  I felt as though I was in a time warp, transported magically to the days when bookshops used to be just what they were supposed to be. A store such as this, untouched by the ravages of commercialization,   exuding an old world library-like charm, is rare in these days indeed.

Fellow bibliophiles, there is yet hope in these dark times!

Legends that live on...

It was the summer of 1990 or perhaps, 1991, when I delved into my older cousin's bookshelf and found my first colourful book of pictures. He would hold up the picture book as he read it, with the following page folded to my side. And I recall standing in front of him, reading the stories backwards, trying to keep pace with him as I attempted to make sense of the words in the little white balloons in each picture frame.

The years wore on, but the picture books stayed a part of my life...in stages, though. From reading along with my cousin, I started devouring (yes, that is the word) them in solitude on lazy afternoons perched on the cozy living room sofa. I would wait eagerly for my fortnightly installment; pouncing on my copy when I returned from school to find a small package addressed to "Baby Radhika"...in the process building a collection to rival my cousin's. And then, of course, the trips to Higginbothams to pick up the Tinkle Digests and innumerable Amar Chitra Katha books… all those afternoons huddled over a Birbal the Witty, Jataka Tales: Monkey Stories, Krishna, Valmiki or The Churning of the Ocean.

I chanced upon Uncle Pai's obituary in the papers today, and these memories came rushing back. I thought of the (atleast) two generations of Indian children who owe so much to this man.. For such a delightful and lasting initiation into Indian lore, and thereby the attendant values. For encapsulating tales of wisdom, wit and valour in such an easy-to-imbibe package. Quietly, this man had created a wealth of knowledge to engage and  inspire young minds… even as he passes on, his appropriately titled Amar Chitra Kathas (Immortal Picture Stories) will live with us. Will further generations of little Indians continue to love these stories as much as I did? I really, really hope they do.
Thank you, Uncle Pai

Motley thoughts on The Black Book

Some childhood memories are poignant... vividly etched in memory, they are hard to forget.

I imagine a sieve in my mind that filters snatches of memory all through my life, letting slip the tiny, inconsequential thoughtlets, and hoarding the important ones. Ever so often, I imagine, some not-so-important thoughtlet remains in the sieve, persisting in active memory... and I would be amazed as some shards of memory come back to me, wondering why the mind ever thought that it was worthy of preserving on the sieve.

Ever since I discovered my love of books as a little child, I was haunted by a lingering fear: That some day, I would have exhausted my capability of understanding books, and reach a stage where I would no longer be able to comprehend the book that I had to read, that somehow, inexplicably, there existed a barrier that would be a test of my skills and which, if I could not cross, I would languish for the rest of my life with the books of early childhood.

Years later, I read a certain book, and I knew instantly that, this was the hurdle and that I had cleared it... and I need fear no more.

It was this thoughtlet that floated up to my mind several years ago when I read Dosteyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and again, and most recently, today as I finished reading Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book.

Beginning as the story of a man trying to solve the mystery of his missing wife, The Black Book builds into the most unconventional form of detective story. There are clues everywhere, but not all of them add up, and most of them have no bearing on the mystery. With each clue the protagonist Galip follows, with each new idea of his, the author develops yet another theme, slipping in a short story in the guise of a newspaper column that Galip is shown to be reading. The result: a multitude of themes, all beautifully woven in the twin forms of the protagonist’s experiences and reproductions of a celebrated local journalist’s daily columns.

Throughout the book, Turkey’s East vs. West dilemma runs as a raging undercurrent. As civilizations come to increasingly resemble one another, with some attaining aspirational value, a process of imitation sets in. This process turns people, customs, cities into mere ghosts of an earlier rich past, in attempting to fashion themselves to the culture they aspire to. The portrayal of Istanbul and its changing landscape, and its people and their changing preferences symbolizes this essentially Turkish dilemma, equally adaptable to cultures like ours.

Another dominant theme is “I must be myself”. The novel is replete with points and counterpoints on imitation as Galip tries to slip into the character of his cousin in a bid to find his missing wife. Another twist is added to this theme, culminating in the power of writing and storytelling as a weapon in “being oneself”.

Layer on layer of abstractions reveal glimmerings of subtle subthemes, ideas within ideas, intertwining of themes. Nothing is what you think it is at first read, and the book may leave one vexed with its pace at times, flummoxed by seemingly irrelevant interpolations and wholly mystified by the last page, where the author and protagonist speak as one.

Maybe my childhood fear was not so unfounded after all… some books call for more than a “reading”, they demand to be pondered over, to be read not just for the words, but for the elusive meaning behind the strings of letters, to involve oneself as an active participant and to engage with the book beyond the words, at the level of ideas.

Meaning... in the true sense

I recently read Man's search for meaning (by Viktor Frankl) on a friend's recommendation... and I lost myself in the journey that this slim book took me on.

It's quite uncanny how all of us think we know all the answers, but somehow lose sight of the biggest question that fills our existence... and seldom think of answering it. 

The friend that I mentioned probably picked up this book for different reasons altogether- he's been on a concentration camp pilgrimage (more on that later :) ) and is devouring CC literature like there's no tomorrow! I think that this book would make a profound impact regardless of the circumstances surrounding its creation - however, the fact that it was written by a concentration camp survivor adds a ring of authority to his words - for, is there any person better qualified to savour the joys of life than he who has been pushed to the unimaginable brink?

The first part of the book is about Frankl's experiences at the concentration camp - only it runs on quite unexpected lines; the focus is less on the horrendous facts and the suffering and more on the saving graces and the lessons from camp life. He is a psychiatrist and blessed to be able to view the life at the camp from an objective perspective. 

At first,  I wondered how someone who was living only in a nominal sense, deprived of everything that defines humanness - freedom, food, sleep, recreation, expression, could occupy himself with deep thoughts and introspection... and one of the first things that made a huge impression on me was his statement on an undeniable human right: he may have lost most of the freedoms afforded to a human, but there is that one freedom cannot be taken away - and that is the right to shape your attitude to a given situation. The way you exercise this undeniable freedom determines whether you wallow in sorrow and remain grief-stricken or manage to maintain your dignity and be worthy of your sufferings. 

The second part of this book talks about "Logotherapy": the school of therapy that Frankl created. Logos itself is Greek for 'meaning'. When he returned to his practice, Frankl had to deal with a number of cases of people searching for a meaning for their sufferings, and even their existence. 

On suffering, he says one can withstand any 'how' as long as one knows the 'why' - understanding the meaning of your existence and giving it a purpose can help you tolerate any amount of suffering or obstacles. The key, therefore, is to find a meaning. Patients came to him, suffering from the loss of a loved one, or a tormented existence, and questioned him, asking what meaning there is to their life. He boomerangs the question back to them, saying, it is not for us to question life for its meaning. Life itself sets our obstacles and throws the question to us, and challenges us to find a meaning. 

When I discussed this book with the friend who had given it to me, I was astonished that his impressions were along completely different dimensions. 

He spoke about how it made him want to develop a vision in his life, and work towards it. I, on the other hand, spoke about making one's life an answer to the existential question and using one's sense of purpose to handle suffering.

Then we realised that he was trying to relate the lessons from the book to his current preoccupation with career choices, while I, to my state of soul-searching on the path of recovery from an immobilizing injury. 

Amazing how a treatise on meaning can serve as a balm for wholly disparate maladies...