The Universality of Music and Literature

‘Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night’

(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west-wind)

Shelley imagines the West Wind singing the dirge for the dying year in the poem “Ode to the West Wind”. Shelly believes that the dying year will always lead to hope and regeneration. As the year 2019 comes to a close this blog celebrates the musical spirit of the season. There is the jingling sound of the Christmas chimes and bells in the air. This music or the chanting is universal as Shelley describes in the last stanza of the poem. He wants the West Wind to scatter his words and thoughts in the world. This is a typical trait of the Romantic poets who firmly believed in the dictum of 'personal to the universal'.  Even though the poet is falling on the thorns of life and bleeding, he is willing to influence the world with his ideas and thoughts. 

“by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth 

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!”

(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west-wind)

The universality of music is discussed in the article which appeared in the Science magazine which was followed by newspaper reports. The study on music reveals that the songs covering different languages and ethnic groups across the world show common behavioural patterns. The research area which studies the music of different ethnic groups is known as ethnomusicology. The research covered more than 300 societies across the globe. The researchers have discovered that the ethnic groups share common musical behaviours such as infant care, healing, dance, love, mourning and warfare. The Highland Scots in Scotland, Nyangatom nomads in Ethiopia, Mentawai rain forest dwellers in Indonesia, the Saramaka descendants of African slaves in Suriname and Aranda hunter-gatherers in Australia. The ethnic groups which were included in the study are some of the ethnic that were covered in the research. The study proves that songs sharing similar behavioural functions have common musical features. 

Would like to conclude this blog by mentioning the recent collaborative musical work by U2 and A.R Rehman titled as Ahimsa which has both English and Tamil lines. The track was released in connection with the U2’s concert in Mumbai two weeks back. 

April 2016 First Year Question Paper

Previous Year Question Paper

November 2015 - First Year Question Paper

Previous Year Question Paper

William Wordsworth and The Solitary Reaper

He was born in England in the year 1770. William Wordsworth is famous for his nature poems. His poems described the scenic beauty of nature in England and Scotland. 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud', commonly known as 'Daffodils', is one of the most famous poems in the English language and it is considered a classic of English romantic poetry. He is known as the poet of nature. All his poem describes his love for nature and the bliss that he found in nature. His most famous are: The Prelude, The Solitary Reaper, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Lucy Gray, Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, etc.

Quotes from William Wordsworth: 

“My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man”

“The child is the father of the man.”

Sources used for this biography

https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Wordsworth/The-Recluse-and-The-Prelude

Leo Tolstoy and Little Girls are Wiser than Men

He is a Russian prose writer and novelist. He is famous for his two novels – War and Peace published in the year 1869 and Anna Karenina which came out in the year 1877. He is a master of realistic fiction and one of the world’s greatest novelists. A novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art but a piece of human life. Tolstoy was a man of peace. He wrote many good stories. Each story has a valuable moral lesson. Little Girls are Wiser Than Men' is a short story by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1885. It takes the form of a parable about forgiveness. The lesson is a fable. A fable is a short story which conveys some useful moral lesson. The story talks about forgiveness and non-violence. Tolstoy and Mahatama Gandhi used to exchange letters. Some of the memorable quotes by Tolstoy are given below.

"In our world, everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself."

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity."

"The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience."

Resources used for preparing this blog:
https://fee.org/articles/12-quotes-from-leo-tolstoy-on-truth-violence-and-government/
The Oxford Companion to English Literature - Edited by Margaret Drabble

Google Image

Little Girls are Wiser than Men - Task 1

https://www.pinterest.com/terrihughes7/little-angels/

Arrange the following events in the order they appear in the story:

1. Akulya splashed muddy water on Malasha's dress
2. Akulya’s mother came to support Akulya and both the mothers started fighting
3. An old lady tries to tell them to stop, but she is ignored.
4. Everyone calms down and goes home. 
5. In the meantime, the two little girls continue to play joyfully with the 
6. muddy water.
7. Malasha's mother noticed how her dress was dirty and scolded her and 
8. angrily slapped Akulya.
9. Moral of the story: Everyone should be like the little children, forgetting our worries and refrain from holding grudges, only then we will reach the kingdom of heaven. 
10. The muddy puddle on the road attracted their attention.
11. The old lady points to the young girls and tells the people not to bother 
12. fighting.
13. Tolstoy ends his story with a quote from the Bible
14. Two neatly dressed girls, Malasha and Akulya, meet after church on Sunday

Solitary Reaper - Summary

The poet, in the first stanza, invites the reader/listener to look at the Highland Lass who is singing a song standing alone in the field. She is gathering the crops and she is also singing a beautiful song. The poet asks the reader/listener to either stop and listen to the song or leave the place gently. The solitary reaper is cutting, and she is also binding the grain. Her song has got a melancholy tune to it. The whole valley is filled with the intense song of the girl. 

In the second stanza, the poet compares the song of the girl to the nightingale’s song. The song is more appealing than that of a nightingale. It is so soothing to the tired travellers taking rest in the shade of the Arabian sands. In the same stanza, the poet compares the song to that of the Cuckoo bird. The singing of the girl is so thrilling that it even broke the ‘silence of the seas’ which lay beyond the Hebrides. 

In the third stanza, the poet is guessing the topics/theme in the song of the reaper. He says that the sad song maybe is about ‘old, unhappy, far-off things and old battles’. The second guess is that the solitary girl is singing about some ‘ordinary sorrow, loss or pain which might have happened in the past and may happen again in the future.

The fourth stanza is about the way the poet left the valley. The poet says that the girl’s song didn’t have an ending. He saw her singing at work, bent over the sickle. He listened to her song, without moving. As the poet moved away, he carried the song in his heart and afterwards the song disappeared. 

Little Girls are Wiser than Men - Summary

It was the time of year when the snow started to melt and make nice mud puddles in the street. Two girls, Malasha and Akulya, meet after church on Sunday. Their mothers had dressed them neatly. There was a muddy puddle, and the girls just couldn't resist.  They were careful at first, but eventually, Akulya splashed on Malasha's dress. Malasha's mother noticed how her dress was dirty and scolded her. Malasha, of course, blamed Akulya so the mother slapped Akulya on the back of the head. That made Akulya cry, and Akulya's mother came to her defence. Both mothers argued heatedly, and then the men came out and joined in the argument.  Eventually, a whole crowd was arguing, almost coming to blows over this incident. An old lady tries to tell them to stop, but she is ignored and practically knocked off her feet. In the meantime, the two little girls continue to play with the muddy water and joyfully follow a piece of wood they put into the muddy stream they had dug. The old lady points to the young girls and tells the people not to bother fighting, the little girls themselves have forgotten about it and are playing again and that the others should follow their example. Everyone calms down and goes home. Tolstoy ends his story with a quote from the Bible: "'Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3) This statement means that unless you change and become like little children, who forget their worries and refrain from holding grudges, you shall not reach the kingdom of heaven. Children readily forgive and forget, and adults need to do the same. Russian author, a master of realistic fiction and one of the world’s greatest novelists. Tolstoy is best known for his two longest works, ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Anna Karenina’. A novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art but a piece of life. 

10 Lives and 10 Books..

The following information is gleaned from the Weekly Quiz that appears in the Hindu Literary Review. On 24-11-2019, the quiz featured Life writings - autobiographies and biographies. Here is a list of books written by people about their lives or someone else's life. As a preface to the Quiz, the curator @bertyashley gives a meaningful quote - 'Biography should be written by an acute enemy' - Arthur Balfour. 

An autobiographical account of an animal that a little girl had a love for Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

A cricketer who was a qualified doctor is celebrated by the biographer Richard Tomlinson in the biography titled- Amazing Grace by W.G Grace

British Comedian and writer David Mitchell wrote a memoir about his childhood, schooling and career. The title of the memoir is Backstory 

This exiled religious leader who sought asylum in India wrote two autobiographies - Freedom in Exile and My Land and My People - He was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The name of the author is Dalai Lama. 

Sunny Days is the autobiography written by Sunil Gavaskar. 

Tall, Dark and Gruesome is the autobiography of Sir Christopher Lee. 

Corey Feldman, the American actor and performer wrote his autobiography titled - Coreyography. 

A Prison Diary is the autobiography written by an author whose books are all bestsellers. His name is Jefferey Archer. 

Gene Simmons is the bassist and co-founder of rock band Kiss. His autobiography is titled Kiss and Make-up. 

Jim Moir who is popular by his stage name Vic Reeves published his autobiography titled Me: Moir. 

Gospel of Yudas - K.R Meera

K R Meera and Writing 

In the Gospel of Yudas, K.R Meera weaves a tale of intense female experience which is a result of her rich journalistic life coupled with her writerly ambitions. K.R Meera is the first woman to be hired by the newspaper Malayala Manorama. K.R Meera’s popular novel Aarachar - Hangwoman is also highly female-centred and it narrates the story of the first woman executioner. A highly socially committed writer, she has developed a craft which appeals to both the high -literature followers and the masses. She believes that writing is a way to repair her own life. She describes her act of writing as an act of revenge against the treatment of women in the patriarchal society. When she writes, her mind is so embedded in the experience of the character. One can see three types of trauma when it comes to K.R Meera’s craft - The trauma that she feels when writing, the trauma embedded in the story and the trauma of the reader who is reading. Her tales doesn’t have any ‘cushioning effect’. She reminds us of Tolstoy who was a pioneer of realistic fiction. The novel is intense and dark. Since she is a felt-writer K.R Meera says that she needed time to get out of the mould of the characters that she has created.K.R Meera talks about her experience of writing hard-hitting realistic stories as ‘not an easy task because I had to experience everything in every cell of mine'. 

Themes of Death: 

One of the primary themes in the Gospel of Judas is the theme of death. Das the character is busy dredging dead bodies from the river. He does this act in different rivers and different river banks. These acts make him an archetypal figure engaged in a routine which reminded me of the myth of Sisyphus and the story of Naranath Bhranthan in the Malayalam folklore. He is known as the Crocodile (Croc) Yudas for his diving skills. He is an amphibian living in a thatched hut on the river bank and spending too much time in the water. Most of the deaths happening around him are suicides. The dead bodies that are taken out of the river as shapeless and formless due to the nibbling away of flesh by fishes. The way Das is etched bring to our mind the character of Najeeb Muhammad in Benyamin’s classic Aadujeevitham. 

The theme of Guilt: 

Like Dr Faustus in the 12th scene of Marlowe's play, Yu-das is yearning for redemption. His sin, like that of Lord Jim, is that he had betrayed his Naxalite comrades during the Emergency period raids and the subsequent torture in the infamous Kakkayam camp. Yu-Das lives in his world of guilt and pain, haunted by the memories of his past. The novel begins with the admission of this guilt which like an albatross is hanging on his shoulders. 

"A traitor can never sleep. His hunger is eternal; his thirst, insatiable. The burning inside his body won’t be doused even if he immerses himself in water. No matter how hard he tries to drown himself in alcohol, he remains intensely conscious". Meera, K R. The Gospel of Yudas (p. 3). 

The theme of Love:  

The character of Prema is the mouthpiece of the author. She is an independent woman who makes decisions of her own. She has seen her father as a terror figure who used to engage in domestic violence. The violence became a routine for Prema once he retired from the Police department. He was on duty at the Kakkayam police camp which specialized in different torture forms. The most infamous form of torture was the 'roller'. After retirement, he suffers from Post-traumatic stress disorder. Towards the fag end of his life, he becomes bedridden with Parkinson's disease. He is the one who identifies Yudas as Das. Prema like the housekeeping girl Elisa Esposito played by Sally Hawkins in the movie Shape of Water is curious to know more about the amphibian - Yudas. The novel moves forward as a result of this quest by Prema. She hunts Yu-das wherever he goes. Longing for his love, I looked everywhere for a glimpse of Yudas’s shadow. Meera, K R. The Gospel of Yudas (pp. 32-33).She sees him as free-spirit and she wants to escape with him. For Yu-das, tender emotions are all a thing of the past. Yu-das was dead long ago and now he dredges dead bodies for a living. One of the poignant observation about love is 'None of us has ever had anyone else’s love. Life had always unfolded under an emergency of some kind. Meera, K R. The Gospel of Yudas (pp. 57-58). 

The Political Theme: 

Gospel of Yudas is an intensely political novel. K.R Meera uses the backdrop of the Emergency days to bring out a narrative which is intermingled with the Naxalite uprising of Kerala in the 1970s.  Through Prema, the author says that the Emergency 'purged the young things’ audacity and grit to love, trust and fight'. Meera, K R. The Gospel of Yudas (p. 37).Das was arrested and kept in inhumane conditions of a room in the Kakkayam camp. ‘The most vivid memory of that time will always be a certain room that was darkened, its windows padded with cardboard rags. It stank horribly the moment I walked in. Was it pee, shit, blood or death? People screamed dreadfully all the time. Meera, K R. The Gospel of Yudas (p. 45).  Prema like a journalist goes to dig the past of Yu-das. She even visits the houses of former Naxalites and quizzes them about the events that happened. K.R Meera skillfully blends the past and the present in the novel. Prema in her quest to find more about Yu-das meets Sangeetha who is the niece of a former Naxalite. Sangeetha in the present world is engaged in a people's protest to prevent private mining companies from occupying their farmlands. The author brings back the memories of the Emergency times when she writes 'Revolutions do not cease. Little people persist with their might wherever they are'. Meera, K R. The Gospel of Yudas (p. 118). 

The theme of Naming or Labelling (Identity)  

Gospel of Yudas is significant for the names of the characters. There is one pertinent question that K R Meera is trying to answer in this novel - How did Das become Yu-das?. Before becoming Yu-das, Das was a student and he was a slave to the ideology of Naxalism but after the torture camp experience in Kakkayam, he became a betrayer - just like Judas in the Bible. Y-das betrayed his colleagues by sharing information about them with the police. His life is his Gospel and Prema is an admirer of Yu-das. The name Prema reminds the reader about love and its balmy effect. What will make the world a better place, is it love or is it violence? The contradiction in the title is quite evident. Gospel is supposed to be a holy text with some moralistic messages. Ironically, this is the Gospel of Yudas, the one betrayed Son of God who had come to save humanity. Will this Gospel turn out to be a panacea to the problems of this world. We may have to wait and watch. 

References: 

https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/da0MI0UGvgjZ77gPEf4M6O/Writing-is-my-revenge-KR-Meera.html

Image source: https://scroll.in/article/810053/malayalam-writer-kr-meera-writes-explosively-and-her-new-novel-is-no-exception

New Semester, New Us

A new academic semester began today. After metamorphosing myself into the new official avatar I entered the classroom with the sole objective of making the students think independently and I made them think about their immediate academic past. The semester began with a review session of the just concluded University exams. In the world of literary critics and post-modern theorists, it is termed as 'analepsis'. In layman's language - flashback. To make the language more figurative it can be termed as 'a trip down the memory lane' The activity in my class today had the following objectives:

1. To encourage students to think critically and voice their own opinion. 

2. To conduct informal minor research based on the topic:  General English/University Exam -     

    Experience Sharing 

3. To make the students speak/communicate

4. To make the students aware of the importance of the feedback system.

5. To get to know the students' linguistic level through a result-driven informal interaction. 

In the first class which I attended this afternoon, students were pretty satisfied with their University exams. One boy stood up and told that he found it difficult to write exams seated in a room which was not his classroom. He said that he felt strange and eerie inside these rooms which were in some unexplored areas of the campus. Two girls shared the same opinion that they had problems related to time management. The stipulated three hours was not just enough for them to pen down their answers. One girl bemoaned the fact that she was not able to fill up the 42 pages which are the number of pages found in a University answer booklet. 

In the next class, which was a foundation English I year class, I was able to witness two cases of students' apathy towards learning. This made me realize that there is an extreme need for the teachers’ sympathy and empathy. In the first instance, one boy found it difficult to get the English word for 'nail'. He was able to communicate the word in his mother tongue. I found the experience quite bewildering. The second student was not able to express in English his excuse for arriving late to the class. He wanted to convey that he got up late and he missed the train. It was indeed shocking that the students are not able to convey simple thoughts in simple English. I really should do something to address these issues and help these students to come up in their lives. Will be posting more about this journey and the tales from my ESL classrooms. 

Interpreters and Translators

           

                                            

This post is based on one section from the book ‘Talking to Strangers’ by Malcolm Gladwell, where he talks about the historic meeting between the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II in the 16th century. The meeting happened in the city of Tenochtitlan. A city which was much advanced in its technology when compared to the Spanish cities. It had ‘grand boulevards, elaborate aqueducts…public gardens and even a zoo’ and it was ‘spotlessly clean.’ One thing which aroused my interest in this encounter was the way these two figures interacted with each other. The only language that Cortes knew was Spanish. In his entourage, there were two interpreters/translators. An Indian woman named Malinche, who was held by the captive by the Spanish and she knew the Aztec s which were Nahuatl and Mayan. Cortes also had in his company a Spanish priest Geronimo del Aguilar who knew Mayan because he was shipwrecked in a Yucatan island. Cortez spoke to Geronimo in Spanish. Aguilar translated the same into Mayan for Malinche who translated Mayan into Nahuatl for Montezuma. Malcolm Gladwell describes this communication in these words “The kind of easy face-to-face interaction that each had lived with his entire life had suddenly become hopelessly complicated” - Excerpt From Malcolm Gladwell. “Talking to Strangers.” Apple Books.

                                                   

Fast forward to the present. A few weeks ago, the Chinese President Xi Jinping met the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mahabalipuram. When watching the videos of the informal summit in the YouTube channel of DD news, I was fascinated by the presence of the two translators/interpreters who were positioned right behind the two leaders. It was great to watch how these two were listening to every word that the leaders spoke. The two interpreters followed Modiji and Xi wherever they went. They were even travelling with them in the golf buggy which took the two leaders to their meeting place inside the Taj Fisherman's Cove Resort & Spa. 

The world of interpreters/translators took me to the world of literary translation. I am excited to note that this virtual space once hosted Dr E.V Fathima who translated the book by Subhash Chandran into English. My professor at St. Joseph’s College Devagiri, Calicut has translated Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis into Malayalam. I came upon this post by the author Benyamin in Facebook announcing that his book Jasmine Days is longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Prize. A visit to the website will take us to the world of books. https://dublinliteraryaward.ie/book-category/2020 I have added a few book titles here which are all works of translation.
  

                                     

Gospel of Yudas Reviewed...

This post discusses the book cover of the novel – The Gospel of Yudas by K.R Meera. The cover reminded me of the short story by Marquez – The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World and also of the cinema poster of the movie – ‘Shape of Water’ by the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro (Pronounced: ghee-YAIR-mo del TOR-o)

The water bodies like a river or an ocean are scary for its depth and the quality of making objects float. Marine biologists are always fascinated by the presence of a world inside in these depths. Authors and filmmakers borrow heavily on this idea of mysteriousness – Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea has a brilliant book cover which tells us about the mysteries of the deep. The Abyss by James Cameron showcases the darker side of these depths. Literariness is when we compare the depths of the sea to the depths of the human mind. Remember the one-liner from Titanic (again it is James Cameron) “A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets” lipped by the character Rose DeWitt Bukater. K.R Meera’s work is also heavily inspired by the Greek mythological reference of The Charon, whose duty it was to ferry over the Rivers Styx the souls of the deceased. 

Reading Challenges and Me

Dear reader, Greetings. It has been a while since I did some serious reading. I recently decided to delve into my world of teaching and research. The day, the decision was officially approved, I was invited to join the Whatsapp based reading club - Readers' Rendevouz. I fondly remember the good times we had in RR where we did everything possible to break the boundaries of a WhatsApp based reading group. I also remember the lovely books which I read only because of RR – Ignorance by Milan Kundera, 21 lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, Red Sorghum by Mo Yan, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, The Gospel of Yudas by K.R Meera, Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and now reading – Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. The four books which I read without being a member of RR were – The trilogy novels of R.K Narayan – (Swami and friends, Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher) and Milk Teeth by Amrita Mahale. 

Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers - Initial thoughts

Reading the e-book and listening to the audio version of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book is an enthralling experience. The audiobook is quite different from the e-book since it has a piece of unique background music and the real recorded testimonies of all the ‘strangers’ whom the author meets. The audiobook is more like an audio-documentary. The book opens with a disturbing story. Gladwell talks about the story of Sandra Bland, an African American woman who was found hanging in her cell on July 13, 2015, after her arrest by a state trooper for a minor traffic violation. She had her own YouTube channel and the link is given below. I have attached three video links here. One is to her own channel Sandy Speaks and the other two videos are about the case (Viewer discretion is advised)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQVtPYC_AYY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGnENyG3Aq4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsTgyabGtL4&list=PLMkogOT3Op_DO7CxQWwKU-BQEuN8sN3vW&index=29

Malcolm Gladwell is my favourite non-fiction writer after Yuval Noah Harari. I like him for four books – What the Dog Saw, Focus, David and Goliath and Outliers. I have not read his Tipping Point and Blink. I hope to read them shortly. Malcolm Gladwell is my favourite because he writes about topics which are quite common but his ways of building the argument are something unique. He is easy to understand and most of his books are well-researched. 

The book 'Talking to Strangers" is dedicated to his father who died in the year 2017. (Malcolm is the son of an English father, Graham Gladwell and Afro-Jamaican mother, Joyce Gladwell) In the first chapter, Malcolm talks about the police injustice that was meted out to Sandra Bland. To quote from the book  “There are bad cops. There are biased cops. Conservatives prefer the former interpretation, liberals the latter. In the end, the two sides cancelled each other out. Police officers still kill people in this country, but those deaths no longer command the news. I suspect that you may have had to pause for a moment to remember who Sandra Bland was. We put aside these controversies after a decent interval and moved on to other things. I don’t want to move on to other things” (Excerpt From Malcolm Gladwell. “Talking to Strangers.” Apple Books.) 

We can find parallels between this book and the other two books I am re/reading right now – The Gospel of Yudas by K.R Meera which is about the Kakkayam Police camp during the Emergency period and the other book is Hello Bastar – The Untold Story of India’s Maoist Movement by Rahul Pandita. There are numerous contemporary connections to these two books which I will talk about in my next post. Happy Reading 

Nasuralla Mambrol and www.literariness.org

Nasuralla Mambrol hails from Vanimel, a village located in the district of Kozhikode/Calicut, Keralam state. He is working as a guest lecturer in Nadapuram Government College. He did his schooling in a Government school and the medium of instruction was Malayalam. He graduated in B.A. English from Islahiya College in Chennamangallur. He did his post-graduation in MA English Literature from Jamal Mohammed College, Trichy. He completed his M.Phil. from Kannur University. 

Thousands of people read his blog and they are not from India. He has readers from countries like England, U.S, Canada, Germany, France and Turkey. Literariness.org deals mainly with Literary Theory and criticism. While preparing for his UGC/NET exam, Nasuralla Mambrol realized that there is a dearth of standard exam study material. This realization led him to create the blog Literariness which came into being on March 16^th, 2016. It began as an ordinary blog hosted by WordPress and after one year of its inception it became a full-fledged virtual space with Nasuralla purchasing the domain name – literariness.org. (He secured the third position in the all India UGC/NET exam conducted by the CBSE)

One person who inspired Nasuralla is his own professor from Kannur University Dr.K.K. Kunhammed, who is now the Head, Dept. of English, Kannur University. Literariness.org today has around 200,000 visitors every month. The blog contains the latest trending topics in literary theory like, Affect theory, Zoo criticism and captivity narrative. The blog also provides e-books and journals. There are more than 2,000 books and audio lectures. There are also numerous study notes and digital documents. All these, you get for free. Nasuralla has published articles in The Guardian, Month Review, Ceasefire Magazine, and the Fem Magazine published by University of California. Literariness.org is prescribed as an online reference for the courses offered by Yale University, Wisconsin University, Mac Evan University.

This article is a translation of the online news that appeared in the online news portal of Madhyamam.

https://www.madhyamam.com/lifestyle/special-one/blogger-nasrullah-mambrol-lifestyle-news/574522

Tales of Pi # 11

Yann Martel has dedicated one whole chapter to the story of Francis Adirubasamy aka Mamaji.  The life of Mamaji is an inspiring one. A free-spirited person who did his studies in Paris in a time ‘’when the French were still trying to make Pondicherry as Gallicas the British were trying to make the rest of the India Britannic’’(P#10). The character of Mamaji has a Ulyssean feature to it. ‘Mamaji was a champion competitive swimmer, the champion of all South India. Even in his sixties, when he was little stooped, Mamaji swam thirty lengths every morning at the pool of the Aurobindo Ashram’. Mamaji was a great teacher. He tried teaching Pi’s parents the art of swimming but he was unsuccessful in that. Even Pi’s brother was ‘unenthusiastic’. Like the Zen Koan saying – When the teacher is ready, the student will appear, Pi appeared as the perfect disciple. The relationship between Pi and Mamaji is a beautiful one. The day Pi appears on the beach to learn swimming Mamaji tells him - ‘This is my gift to you’. A gift which later saves Pi from the shipwreck. Water is a powerful symbol in Life of Pi. It destroys and preserves like the West Wind. Pi talks about his teacher as a ‘patient and encouraging’ one. He ‘remained faithful to his aquatic guru’. Apart from being a swimming champion, Mamaji was also a great story teller. (Story telling is one of the central themes of the novel) ‘All his stories had to do with swimming pools and swimming competitions’. One of his favourite hobbies was to recall the details about the different pools from around the world.  His passionate and endless talk reminds me of the character in Forest Gump (authored by Winston Groom) known as Bubba Blue who continuously talks about shrimps. Mamaji and Bubba Blue shared a common trait – They were passionate about what they did and loved in life. The chapter ends with a beautiful one liner – ‘Mamaji remembered, Father dreamed’, which neatly summarizes the difference between doing and dreaming. 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953)

Tales of Pi # 10

Richard Parker is introduced for the first time through these words. The Royal Bengal Tiger is an enigma because he is a symbol. When the Japanese shipping officials were asked the question Which Tale do you believe? ‘One with the human beings’ or the ‘One with the animals’, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba replies “Yes, the story with animals is a better story”. Life of Pi is not just one story or a tale. It is a collection of tales in the mind of the reader based on the understanding of the novel. What does Richard Parker ultimately refer to? He is the only animal in the story who has a human name. Other animals have pet names like Orange Juice. The story of Pi and Richard Parker is the story of the human soul and the human mind lost in the ocean of life. Pi (3.14) is a transcendental number just like human soul or ‘atman’. The soul exists outside of time and the lifetime of our current personality. Our bodies end but our souls never end. The soul has its own natural state of love, compassion, and clarity. Richard Parker represents the human mind which should always be kept under control. How the soul and the mind co-exist creating a wonderful amalgamation is the crux of the novel. The mind should never dominate the soul. If that happens then there is total ruin. It will be a soulless world devoid of any meaning or spirituality. When the human mind gets corrupted the true essence is lost. Pi is in total control of his own essence and Richard Parker is tamed and conquered. 

The same meaning is echoed in the lines of W.B Yeats when he says 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/what-is-soul-or-atma

http://paultkidd.blogspot.com/2013/09/interpreting-meaning-of-richard-parker.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

Tales of Pi # 9

This part of the novel examines the connections between life and death. A theme that is explored in great detail by many authors in literature. Even the image of the skull reminds one of the skull in Hamlet which can also be interpreted as a reminder to the world that death is an inevitable reality. The classic posture of Hamlet looking at the empty eyes of the skull is another symbolic way of telling the audience that death is a fast approaching reality. ‘The skull itself is a physical reminder of the finality of death’. The famous painting by the Dutch Post Impressionist artist, Vincent van Gogh depicts sunflowers at the height of their beauty. Cut off from their stems and placed in a vase, we experience their last burst of vitality as they begin to wilt in various stages of decomposition as captured in this painting. Recently I watched this movie Bohemian Rhapsody (the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all time) which is a biopic of Freddie Mercury who was the lead singer of Queen. Freddie Mercury died at the age of 45 due to AIDS. The band is famous for the anthem like songs like – We will Rock you, We are the champions, Radio Ga Ga and Bohemian Rhapsody. (Will do a post soon on the Magic of Freddie Mercury) Freddie Mercury’s songs have references on life and death. Sample this lyric.

Too late, my time has come

Sends shivers down my spine

Body's aching all the time

Goodbye everybody I've got to go

Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth

Mama, oh oh (anyway the wind blows)

I don't want to die

Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

The mori painting (grinning skull) that Pi refers to in his life is a power Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’. A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses (I found one in a Pizza Hut outlet) or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers. A memento mori is an artwork designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the shortness and fragility of human life. But Pi is not ready to surrender before death. He says “You may not believe in Life, but I don’t believe in Death. Move on”. The reader is now aware that Pi has transcended the gloominess and sadness that he had experienced earlier. He says “gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud” which is comes after one of the beautiful descriptions about life and death – ‘Life is so beautiful that death had fallen in love with it’. Would like to end this post with the lyrics of the song – We are the Champions by Queen 

I've taken my bows

And my curtain calls

You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it

I thank you all

But it's been no bed of roses

No pleasure cruise

I consider it a challenge before the whole human race

And I ain't gonna lose

We are the champions, my friends

And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end

We are the champions

We are the champions

No time for losers

'Cause we are the champions of the world

Tales of Pi # 8

Pi admits that he came out of his ‘gloomy and sad state’ by devoting himself to the study of religion and zoology. Both of these subjects play a dominant role in his life. He gives the reasons why he chose the sloth as the subject of his zoological study. Sloths are ‘calm, quiet and introspective’. Yann Martel then embarks on a journey to describe the sloths in detail. My above post talks about one member in RR who is a keen observer of nature. I think that’s one thing we all miss in our lives. To stop and gaze at the world passing by. There is one similarity between Yann Martel’s life when he visited India and Pi’s life in Canada – both of them had a ‘shattered self’. With one failed book behind him, Martel – then merely an aspiring writer – spent six months in south India in 1996. He visited Trivandrum Zoo, where he interviewed its director, observed the tigers, and ate French toast in the Indian Coffee House just across the road. The Life of Pi started to emerge in a “smashed up, kaleidoscopic” way.                                        

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/29/india.bookerprize2002 As we listen to the soul-stirring OST of Mychael Danna, we feel the slowness of life. Pi quoting a zoologist writes that the sloths reminded him of the ‘upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing’(P#5). It is quite unfortunate that in the movie Zootopia, the sloth is made a butt of ridicule and it contradicts the notes on sloth by Pi. ‘The three-toed sloth lives in a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips’’ (P# 4)

Name and the Named

The discussion on Anton Chekov in RR, made me do a minor research on the surname Chekhov. It is a well-known fact that Salman Rushdie throughout his post-fatwa life adopted a pseudo name. It is a historical irony that Rushdie received the life-changing call from a BBC journalist on the Valentine’s day in the year 1989. The hatred had its epicenter in the Iranian theocracy. Rushdie was immediately asked to invent a new avatar or an alias and as a fan boy of both Chekhov and Conrad, the name that came into his mind was Joseph Anton. He describes them as his ‘godfathers’ and he was greatly influenced by this quote from Joseph Conrad “I must live until I die, mustn’t I?” Salman Rushdie didn’t stop there. ‘Chekhov and Zulu’ is the name of the short story in the collection titled – East, West, where the themes are drawn from his life as Joseph Anton. The story is about two friends with codenames Pavel Chekhov and Hikaru Sulu who are entrusted with a mission to collect intelligence on radical Sikhs in Britain following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Pavel Chekhov is also the name of the character in the Start Trek series and it was played by an actor by the name Anton Yelchin from 2009-2016. 

The act of naming has become quite rampant these days. I would like to pinpoint two instances where names where changed due to some political drama. President Trump referred to Tim Cook as Tim Apple during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board. The Apple CEO has replaced his last name with Apple logo on his twitter profile. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cortège renamed their twitter handle to Chowkidar Narendra Modi in an attempt to thwart the opposition jibe based on the name ‘chor’.

Just few days back, I came upon this interesting thread of exchanges in Twitter which appeared in the timeline of my favorite author – Manu S Pillai. 

What's your name?"

"Manu"

"I mean your full name."

"Manu"

"Arey your school name?"

"Manu"

"Is it short for something?"

Out of sheer frustration:

"Yes, Manmohan."

The excitement reached its pinnacle when our old RRian and MCCian P J George of the Hindu shared his version of it. 

What's your name?

- George

- But what's your Indian name?

- George

- No, what do they call you in India?

- E M S Namboothirippad

- Ah, so George...

My first name had many versions in different places that I have worked. In North Africa and the Middle-East they called me as Bremjith due to their issues with the plosives. In Thailand, they called me Plemjith due to their problems with approximant consonants. 

Tales of Pi 6-7

The Tales of Pi - #6

The author is seated inside the Indian Coffee House and like any other writer was looking at the world go by. Maybe he exhibiting signs of restlessness, maybe sporting a blank look on his face. All around him there is the hustle and bustle of an Indian coffee shop in a crowded Indian city. He befriends this elderly man who had ‘great shocks of white hair’. The usual conversation between a curious local and backpacker ensues. When the elderly man learns that the foreigner is a writer he was amused and ‘his eyes widened and he nodded his head’ When the author is about to leave, the elderly man makes a statement that becomes the crux of the novel. ‘I have a story that will make you believe in God’ he tells the author and asks to visit Canada to meet the main character of the story. He encourages the author to ask ‘all the questions that he wants’. Yann Martel has said that he was a non-believer and in the article in The Guardian he talks about this.’ At the end of 1996, as a hard-up writer with two little-known books to his name, he backpacked to the Indian subcontinent and was, he says, “dazzled”. He enjoyed visiting Hindu temples, but found himself absorbed in other religions too: “Round the corner from where the Hindu gods lived there was always a church or a mosque or a temple of another faith.” Martel’s upbringing had been non-religious, but in India he realized he was “tired of being reasonable”; it was leading him nowhere.’ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/04/books-interview-yann-martel-the-high-mountains-of-portugal. There is also this connection in our country between animals and religion which created in Martel to delve deeper into faith. Life of Pi is also Life of faith and belief. 

Tales of Pi #7

The novel, Life of Pi is divided into three parts and all the three parts are based on three locations underlining again the importance of ‘space’ in contemporary literature. All three spaces mentioned in the book is connected by the ocean. The diminutive sized ship/floating vessel in the cover page for Part 1 also reminds me of NGC explorer Paul Salopek’s narrative of the human migration from Africa to the other parts of the world. Even Cheron and his boat trips across the river Styx (memory and forgetfulness) can be used as reference here. The ship also becomes a symbol of hope and it offers the possibility of starting a new life in a new land. Alan Kurdi’s image brings us closer to the perils involved in this great human migration which we have read in the poignant tale by John Steinbeck – Grapes of Wrath. The title of the novel by Deepak Unnikrishnan - Temporary People talks about the Middle East expatriate population. The tale is also the tale of the Con-temporary people. The opening lines of Chapter one is all about the state of a new face in the ‘unaccustomed earth’. For Pi, the struggles were extreme and he was alone in the gloomy world. He narrates his experience of visiting an Indian Restaurant in Canada and how he used his fingers to gobble down the south Indian food. The waiter with a critical look on his face asks ‘Fresh off the boat. are you? Pi says that the waiter had no idea how deeply those words wounded him. ‘They were like nails being drive into my flesh. I picked up the knife and fork. I hardly ever used such instruments. My hands trembled. My sambar lost its taste’. (P#7)