Month: April 2020

A Love Story | Normal People, by Sally Rooney

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Normal People,
by Sally Rooney,
Published by Hogarth Press (2019)
Rating: ***

Introduction

This book was recommended to me by a friend who told me she stayed up past her bedtime to finish the book once she started. To me, that’s always a good sign: a story that keeps you gripped to make you ward off sleep is one I’m going to be curious about more often than not. Thus began my adventure with Sally Rooney. I didn’t take a break while reading the book, and my reading of the book was on one of my more productive reading days. However, what kept me going was the hope that it would get better (and better). Unfortunately, while the book was good, I felt the story and the characters – particularly supporting character arcs remained unexplored, making this a lukewarm 3.5-star book for me.

Plot

Quite straightforward. The story follows two teenagers, Marianne and Connell through their final years in adolescence and into early adulthood. They study at the same school in County Sligo and move together to Trinity College Dublin. Connell is popular at high school, and begins a relationship with unpopular Marianne, whose mother employs his mother as a cleaner. He keeps his relationship with her a secret. At Trinity College Dublin, however, the roles are reversed, as Marianne blossoms at University, while Connell struggles to fit in. The book revolves around their everchanging dynamic over the years, examining what bonds them together and what pulls them apart.

The Relationship

Fiction books that rely on characters rather than worlds, or dialogue, need to be able to have firm character arcs: motives, flaws, strengths, that help them blossom through the book. However, a critical aspect of this is their relatability, which, for me, stems out of their interactions with other characters. Where media pieces set themselves up in the context/focus of a singular relationship (think, Titanic), I enjoy them only when I find myself caring about both characters equally. It’s what upset me at the climax of Titanic. Caring about both characters equally means giving them equal footing throughout the book, and allowing them both to play out without remaining in each others’ shadow. More crucially, their interactions need to be real – and not pretense. Rooney accomplishes this by giving both Marianne and Connell strong introductions, and right off the bat, you begin to care about the fate of both characters. As they get to know one another, you begin wondering where their relationship will go. For a book like this, that is particularly helpful, and I enjoyed the fact that I cared about them so much.

However, simultaneously, I was disturbed by the manner in which they romanticized their difficulties. As things progress, there seem to be explanations for some bizarre ways both characters respond to circumstances – but no real discussion of those explanations (which are traumas).

The Writing

Sally Rooney writes beautifully. Her sentences and descriptions are vivid, and in several places, lyrical, like poetry. It’s part of why I kept reading the book. It suited the ending she had set up – which was cheesy and wonderful for the kind of writing she executes. However, it didn’t “move” me in the way that several similar pieces have previously. I wish there was more exploration of secondary characters – their mothers included, which I feel would have added depth to the book.

Conclusion

I completed the book and was left wondering at all the things that could have been. This was, for me, a good, quick, not-so-immersive read.

64 Squares and Technology | Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins, by Garry Kasparov

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Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins,
by Garry Kasparov,
Published by PublicAffairs (2017)
Rating: *** 

This book was recommended to me at University by a guest lecturer who was taking sessions for us in Information Technology Law. I’ve been playing chess against the computer every day since the start of the year (my record is dismal, and improvements, if any, are not noticeable yet), so this book caught my fancy instantly. Deep Blue, in general, is well-documented, but I hadn’t read Kasparov’s thoughts on the game, or on machines generally. Plus, having read Andrew Yang’s bleak painting of what technology was doing to us, I figured it was time for a bit of a more uplifting take on things. One that inspired, and catered to the boundless possibilities that advancements in technology unlocked.

Kasparov takes a fundamentally simple approach the book. He traces through the history of artificial intelligence and machine learning, particularly in the context of chess, and paints how his matchup with Deep Blue came to be – and where the algorithms will take us next, with AlphaGo and everything.

This was a useful exposition of that history. However, my issue with the book is that the blurb made is sound like it would discuss the interaction between humans and artificial intelligence. I was curious, in particular, about Kasparov’s own work with artificial intelligence, and the manner in which he has contributed to chess algorithms and chess database systems, or studied them. That constituted less than one-third of the book, which is the reason for my rating.

Standard of Living | The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future, by Andrew Yang

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The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future
by Andrew Yang
Published by Hachette Books (2018)
Rating: ****

Introduction

A while ago, I wrote about my journey reading about the White House. Since then, I shifted my attention to reading about, and books by candidates running for the Presidency this year. It seemed like a useful way to gain contextual information about some of their policy goals, but also understand who they were as people, in their own eyes. Autobiographies and personal narratives written by the people going through them provide the perspective (and opportunity) for people to articulate their ideas without too much restriction or restraint. I began this journey by reading about Andrew Yang, whose #YangGang trend on twitter blew up in and around the Democratic primary debates when he wasn’t on stage.

Summary 

The title is a mouthful but is a summary of the core argument this book makes: people in America need a Universal Basic Income. This is premised on the changing dynamic of the economy, one that is more technology-focused and technology-driven, which has far-reaching consequences on communities across the economic spectrum. Yang, however, centers his consequential analysis on marginalized communities to showcase how a Universal Basic Income could alleviate additional societal stresses such as drug use and crime that pervade American society.

The Narrative

I enjoyed Economics as a subject throughout high school and University. However, reading non-fiction Economics for me is quite a challenge. Generally, non-fiction – especially those pieces of work that seek to argue a point of view, for me, are easier to follow along if there is a narrative to follow along too. Freakonomics and Outliers, for example, both take case-studies on a chapter-by-chapter basis. That seems like a simple enough way to present argumentative information.

Yang, however, splits up the book, in tone, into two distinct parts. There’s the premise, and the argument. His narrative is built up through the premise itself, drawing on from his own life – hailing from an immigrant family, and talking us through the history (recent past) of America’s economy, to understand the seismic shift that the economy has grappled with in recent years. He moves this narrative forward by talking us through the venture-focused economy America has become, of which, mind you, he is both a contributing cause – and effect. That enables him to portray a bleak picture of what the human has to endure. Additionally, America is a fractured country. Despite being the wealthiest nation on Earth, it has a significant wage inequality. The median, therefore, is not representative. Nonetheless, it is most significant to his argument – and so, he defines his “normal people” – the median in America.

The Argument

This brief history contextualizes most of the analysis that Yang provides. He puts forth, in plain terms, his belief that a Universal Basic Income would help address these issues of wage disparity, and help with the transition that has already begun.

However, Yang’s analysis goes deeper, looking at social dysfunction. He looks at gender imbalances in society, and how income would empower to help further the cause of equality. More importantly, any further stresses on people’s personal and social lives as a result of job disruptances (which Yang links back to the health of the economy) could be contained through the UBI mechanism.

The Humour

There are references to Civilization VI and computer games, which are always worth enjoying.

Conclusion

My only issue with the argument is that I needed more evidence – particularly in the second half. There was a point at which it delved into proselytizing people on the basis of faith and trust, which seemed like it made sense for a Presidential candidate to do, but not as much as an academic endeavour. Some of his statements felt suspect – and the case for the UBI could be made with evidence in a better manner. The tone of the book in these parts was misplaced.

Nonetheless, worth reading – particularly as a thesis on a strategy to cure economic inequality.

Preserve Joy | No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai

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No Longer Human,
by Osamu Dazai, translated by Donald Keene
Published by New Directions (1958)
Rating: ****

Introduction

Goodreads recommended me this book once I had added a few books on Asian and Oriental history generally. Reading the blurb, I felt a newfound appreciation for the algorithm that suggested gems such as this based on my past reading history. Prior to starting the book, I read a little bit about Dazai. Just getting through his Wikipedia page, I recognized that this was going to be a book that would make me feel extreme emotion, or induce extremities in emotional response. This is honestly a heartbreaking story, from start to finish, but a heartbreaking story that deserves the read for the perspective it offers.

Plot

No Longer Human tells us the story of Oba Yozo, a confused child who became a troubled man, someone unable to show his true nature to most people, and feels disqualified as a human being. The story is told in three parts – three distinct memoranda from different parts of Yozo’s life, that attempt to channel his sense of isolation and loneliness he experiences. You can tell, while reading, that this isn’t a fictional character. Oba Yozo, the name, the person, may be fictional, but his emotional responses, his characteristics, speak of a very real struggle. Dazai’s writing has always been classified as being semi-autobiographical. I can’t attest to this, but Oba Yozo’s thoughts lift off the page and speak to you in a manner unlike much else I’ve read.

Guards and Masks

Across all three memoranda, you can recognize that while Yozo struggles with identifying exactly what his emotions represent and point to, he has a self-destructive streak that makes him consistently behave in a cruel manner to anybody who cares about him. His childhood notebook is easy to read, and you can sort of understand the trials and tribulations of a confused child who increasingly feels alienated from everyone else. However, beyond a point, Yozo seems to do things that cause hurt knowingly, which is at the point that I began to develop a distaste for the character. It was odd to realize at the end of the book that there was such a brutality to his honesty about his misdeeds.

Preserving Joy

At the end of the book, all I could think about was the kind of nurturing, joyous environment we need to create on Earth for individuals who struggle with aspects of their identity. While Dazai’s writing makes it almost inevitable at Yozo would have rejected any further nurturing, it pointed to me that perhaps nobody tried to help him let his guard down. Nobody peered through as clearly as he expected. That miscommunication is fatal, and one can’t help but feel sorry for Yozo.

Conclusion

I’d recommend reading this, but the depth of the translation I read felt lacking in parts. Guess it’s time to take all the manga and anime I’ve been exposed to in the past two-three years and learn Japanese to read the original.

Rinsing Rincewind | Interesting Times (Discworld #17), by Terry Pratchett

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Interesting Times,
by Terry Pratchett,
Published by HarperTorch (1998)
Rating: ***** 

Introduction

I was introduced to Terry Pratchett in my second year of Law School, by a junior who had just come in and shared a love of reading, but was also willing to talk about his books and share them with me. By then I had read Good Omens, but had never ventured into Discworld. This friend of mine shared with me the Discworld Reading Guide 3.0. Although I remain aware that every book in the Discworld empire (if I can call it that) can be enjoyed independently, it felt nice to have some direction in the manner I approached all the books. And so, in 2017, it was, that I finally began this task. I return to finish and tick books off my list whenever I feel like I’m going through a reading slump or I need more dry wit and humour in the material I’m consuming, and Sir Terry never disappoints me. A quick addendum before I begin the actual review: I’ve not written any reviews for other Discworld novels, but will be writing them henceforth.

Plot

Rincewind is returned to Unseen University and makes a deal with Ridcully to go to Discworld’s oldest Empire to help them with their current revolution in exchange for being allowed to come back for good to be called a wizard. Due to the fact that the old Emperor is about to die, the struggle to determine his successor was about to begin, but there were also workers uniting after reading What I did on My Holidays. We get a History lesson, Sir Terry style, what with an Asian empire, diplomacy, slavery, and oppression, Barbarians, and pretty much everything else all wrapped up into one.

Dialogue

I’ve always enjoyed Pratchett’s work because of the rapid exchanges and dialogue weaved into the book. While large portions of the Discworld novels I’ve read so far are written in the third-person descriptive, there are several bits of dialogue to help further the characterization and contextualize plot development. However, given that this is a world of it’s own, it is easy to slip to large bits of dialogue – swathes and pages of exchange between characters. Tolkien is often accused of doing this – although, that is something that is worth getting into in another piece altogethr. Pratchett keeps his exchanges short and sweet and filled to the brim with bone-tickling humour. A prime example of this is the exchange amongst the faculty at Unseen University.

Setting Up Ankh-Morpork

Ankh-Morpork features prominently in Discworld, and this is the first Discworld novel I’m reading that takes place for the most part away from Ankh-Morpork. One of the things I admire about this series is how it’s both stand-alone and a series. Books therefore need to establish some level of context, and also need to further larger plot narratives within Discworld. I’ve been super interested in the art of world-building, and what creative decisions authors take while building up worlds and conjuring up stories. What I found most unique to Interesting Times was Pratchett’s use of the historical empire to reflect various aspects of Ankh-Morpork from the previous books, while using Rincewind’s own ruminations to introduce someone reading this book exclusively to the mad world that is Discworld.

Conclusion

An extremely fast-paced, humorous read. Classic Sir Terry.

Spidey Sense | Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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Children of Time (Children of Time #1)
by Adrian Tchaikovsky,
Published by PanMacmillan (2015)
Rating: ****

Introduction

In 2016, this book seems to have set the Science Fiction world alight. My discovery of the book was only in late 2019, and this was my first read in 2020, which was quite a nice way to start off the year. What intrigued me the most when I found the book on Goodreads was the fact that the author’s last name was Tchaikovsky, and for a while, I thought there was a connection with the famous composer. Turns out there is none. Then I discovered that the author was a legal executive – and the commonality in profession and vocation perhaps drew me to the book even more. This was a solid read, and I’d gladly recommend this as an excellent starter book for those curious about themes that you will meet frequently in Science Fiction/Fantasy writing.

Plot

An experiment seeks to uplift monkeys to sentient levels through an engineered nanovirus, in order to place them on a habitable planet. Unfortunately though, that project is tampered with, and all the subject monkeys are killed. Nonetheless, the nanovirus is transported to the intended planet, infecting several species of insects. Spiders end up becoming the chief beneficiaries as a result of this “botched” experiment. Thus begins one prominent narrative throughout the book, which explores spiders as rulers of their planet – looking at the kind of society they set up. The second, interconnected narrative is a group of humans fleeing from Earth, now destroyed by a final world war – who end up finding the spider-race planet. Thus begins an intermingling of worlds.

History 

Over the past few years, I have noticed that the Science Fiction/Fantasy books that I enjoy indulging in the most are books which have elaborate histories constructed for the world they seek to establish. This, for me, enables a greater contextual understanding of the issues that the book seeks to deal with, and allows me to immerse myself in the world that the writer envisages with more ease. With this genre particularly, there needs to be an element of relatability for me – a fine tightrope between creating a distinct world and actually allowing for some elements to continue uninterrupted from the world we know. History does this best. Tchaikovsky accomplishes this wonderfully. Aside from all the chapters aboard the ship fleeing Earth, Gilgamesh, Tchaikovsky weaves the history of compelling spiders like Portia, looking at how her species develops language, understands rules to live by, and develops culture to pass down through their civilization. It’s amazing.

What’s even more remarkable is the fact that Tchaikovsky weaves what is clearly an inter-generational saga into a singular, mammoth book, without losing track of the key plot points he seeks to elucidate. That takes a fair amount of foresight, and inspired writing. For me, only one other author has managed that successfully, and perhaps that speaks to how recently I’ve discovered how much I enjoy this genre, but that’s Cixin Liu.

 Conclusion

This book is a great introduction to science-fiction/fantasy because it establishes a planet afresh, and perhaps gives the nicest overview of the kind of dilemmas the genre seeks to engage with.

Rediscovering Runescape

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I’ve waxed lyrical about Runescape several times on the blog. This is one such post.

This evening, while catching up with my high school friends, one of them mentioned that he had started up playing Old School RuneScape again. In an instant, I told him I had an active account, and we set up within 10 minutes to play together again. In an hour, we had convinced the other member of our little trio to set up his own account and join us in the same world.

For 2 hours, we did nothing but mercilessly combat goblins. As we each combated goblins, we traded information about our statistics, all got banned from trading items, and repeated a mindless cycle of, find goblin, attack goblin, take coins, take bones, bury bones. All the while, we explained things to our third friend – since he was new to the game, and planned out what adventures we’d go on, including Quests, the next time we all played together (in my mind, this is likely to be tomorrow).

This was an extremely, extremely, mindless activity. I did 0 application of brain, and my mouse pretty much did everything for me. I had an audiobook of Lord of the Rings going in the background, which I thought was perfect company for a game like RuneScape generally, since there are so many fan theories about how Middle Earth and RuneScape intersect – particularly in terms of their timeline. However, the activity itself used 0 brain cells or creativity of mine, especially since it wasn’t as dynamic as say, smithing, mining, or even woodcutting and fishing.

Speaking of, as a quick aside, it is worth mentioning how I sold my parents on the idea of the game aged 7. I informed my parents, while signing up to the website, and while playing, that I learned essential survival skills in the game. For the most part, this remains true. I incorporated words like “tinderbox” into my vocabulary the first time I played the game.

Turning back to playing RuneScape itself. When I played it through October and November, I played alone. None of my friends were playing at the time, so while there was a lot of nostalgia involved in the activity itself, and rediscovering all the information I had stored in the treasure trove that is my brain, none of it was shared. That absence left a void in me, and prevented the access of a very important, associated RuneScape memory.

You see, RuneScape is an MMORPG. A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. A large part of what attracts people to it, and makes it a success, is/was it’s ability to share the experience with friends. I spent hours playing with friends who I went to school with, who stayed in the same building in which I did – and that was a very important part of the game. In front of my friends, I consistently felt like a noob, because with my internet restrictions at the time, I hardly had the ability to devote myself to the game in the manner they did. Nonetheless, there were evenings where we logged on at the same time and I learned things about the game from them, and even once where I remember spending an entire evening watching two of them play and access Member-Only features, since they were Members.

Playing with these two today opened up all of that for me, and I’m looking forward to accessing the Multilplayer components of the game with my friends.

I’ve convinced a friend from primary school – my best friend, to get back to the game too. Hopefully he follows through.

My days will lose all structure then.

Gated (II)

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The previous piece I wrote about the gated community I lived in was exclusively about the kind of privilege and protection this place offered me – aside from the obvious shelter it has given me for the last 12 years. I’ve now been here for three weeks. Since I moved out of Bangalore for University in 2015, this is the longest amount of time I’ve spent in my house barring one month in May 2017, which, despite the lockdown and everything, offers some time to think about how much time has actually passed since I’ve come here.

This is the only “home” I’ve known in India. Of course, there’s the family house, and well, the first house I visited in Bangalore where my dad resided, and places in Pune where family stays. However, none of those places are where I have grown up, or places where I have space all to my own. Actually, I’ll amend that. I do have space all to my own at my chikamma and uncle’s home – and I’ve laid down a marker for a future space all to my own wherever they are at all times. However, those places will not hold the emotional attachment I share to this house, even when its empty. Even when I return home to an empty house, and I have to maintain all of it, I consider having it a privilege, and I am oh so grateful for everything it has given me.

It is very difficult to think that 12 years have transpired since we relocated to India as a family. In several ways, both geographically, and emotionally, a small piece of my heart rests in the Middle East. Despite that, I have grown to love India with everything I can give to it, and love Bangalore especially. I have forged strong senses of identity here, for my city, my State, and my rural, outskirt, suburb, which is closer to another town than it is to Bangalore City proper.

None of this identity, or sense of belonging would be possible without a sense of community. I spent the first 10 years of my life in an apartment building, with several friends, but no real sense of community because “community gatherings” and celebrations, so to speak, didn’t necessarily take place in a manner that involved everyone in the building. Of course we played games and hung out with a large number of kids in the evenings, and naturally, sharing common spaces bred some amount of familiarity, I do not recall being able to identify very strongly with the values of the people in that building. It is a given that I was younger then, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that nothing really aimed to foster a community spirit. My sense of belonging to that building comes out of the infrastructure it has and the memories I created, as well as my parents and the fondest memories I have of the both of them from our time in that place.

Moving to India was very different to that experience. We lived in a larger community, which meant more people to share space with. When we first moved in, I recall there being 30 families – and a lot of empty houses. That meant you knew everyone in the complex. You knew which houses and lanes were unoccupied and were free-for-all cricket territory. That knowledge and familiarity bred so much security, and so much joy. You had a constant set of friends, and a constant set of activities to do. Age-groups were non-existent: we were all just one big blob, classified as “children”. Of course, those below 6/7 kept to themselves at the time, but the rest of us, right up to the eldest at 17 and 18 – we all pretty much played in the evenings together.

The community grew larger though, and as communities grow, identities change. This was no different, and groupism became prominent – everywhere. It wasn’t as easy to identify every person, because people came in and people moved out. The place was in flux – and still is, to this day. However, assimilation and understanding, or retaining that identity, for the most part, was easy. It was just a question of compromise. From the mundane: which sport to play in the evening, to the larger questions that adults fought over – a lot of it just boiled down to compromises being crafted.

Today, to me, I hardly recognize much in the community. In my mind, oddly enough, I’m able to live in the time that this community was just 30-50 families. They form this core that I believe the rest of the complex has grown around. It is natural that newer families will not feel this way – and after all, everyone has their personal history, but I remember those 30-50 families with a fondness that feels odd to extend to anyone else. This doesn’t mean I’m hostile toward anyone, not at all. But nobody knows the struggles of having to wait for the railway crossing to open up, or the pain of going 8km to get groceries like that first bunch.

In the past 12 years, as is natural, people have grown and changed. Take me – for example. I’m almost done with my degree. I came here aged 10, and I’m sure people who knew me at that age struggle with reconciling the image of me at 10 with me at 22. Even if people don’t, I do. I looked – and sounded, so different. For me though, it’s the kids I saw aged 2 and 3 who are now in their teens that make it seem like I’m far too old to consider myself a child. It’s rather odd, that these are people who in my teens I could not relate to at all, but with whose struggles I can now relate to far more than much else. For me, a mystery of the Universe will always remain why it’s tougher for a 12 year old to relate to a 5 year than for a 22 year old to relate to a 15 year old.

My hunch? Board exams.

Common enemies unite even the most distant of cousins – and so it goes with all people.

My identity though is so forged by this community, that seeing these little people grow up to become bigger people has really punched home that hard reality that I am, myself, a little person who has grown up to become a bigger person. My surroundings clamour that I ought to accept this – it is but natural. The little kid in me refuses, but relents. He cycles around cheerily with a half-functioning bell and waves to everyone he knows.

Unlike the adult who thinks four times about whether a walk to the gate is worth it.

Musical Lineage

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As readers of this blog will be aware, my music tastes have been altered slightly in the last 6 months, what with my rediscovery of how much I enjoyed classical music. Yesterday, while spending time on the internet, I discovered this fascinating piano teacher family tree. You can take a look here to contextualize this post.

I’m enjoying this classical music wave so much that I genuinely hope that the love affair I have going on continues for a long while. However, in the fear that perhaps it won’t, I’m consuming a fair amount of it while I definitively know that I enjoy it. Seeing this piano teacher family tree type diagram was quite astonishing.

When I started going for lessons again, in January, I learned about Hanon and Czerny. I’m yet to procure my copy of their exercises, but my teacher told me about their prominence, and how much their exercises help develop finger independence and strength, and how long they’ve been in use for. It surprised me that I had not learned about them earlier, given how many piano lessons I had gone to. I spent a large amount of time reading about these composers and their techniques, and I was floored by how they conceptualized all of these drills. It’s pretty easy to think about, but to sit and notate, and see demonstrable results – and start a school of thought based on pure technique is quite something, and a feat I found worthy of admiration.

This graphic sort of put their influence into perspective. Particularly Czerny. There are so many influential, incredible concert pianists and composers who have been taught by him or by his pupils – and in the same school of thought, no doubt. I sat on my piano in the evening after that, and at the moment, I’m learning Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata again, and it blew my mind that Beethoven taught Czerny who then taught so many people.

It shows you the whole “six degrees of separation” theory in action. There is a minute possibility that my own entry into the world of the instrument is perhaps 14 or 15 degrees down from Czerny, given his influence. If that is so, no matter where the influence comes from, perhaps I can channel that spirit into me the next time I have music flowing through my fingers.

Connectivity

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After three weeks of being away from University, I gave in today and used my phone-a-friend option, to try connecting with a friend whose company I looked forward to everyday in class. We’ve been good friends for a while, which is not to say that he is my closest friend, yet a friend with whom I have been able to share every portion of the last five years. More often than not, we used to sit near each other in class, allowing us to talk about books and the law – which has, for the most part, been my preoccupation.

On that call today, I thought a lot about connectivity. While I’ve been privileged enough to be able to speak to my friends regularly on WhatsApp, chatting with them pretty much every day, I was thinking about how, for each of us, our preferences towards the form and manner of connectivity inspires the way our interactions take place and our relationships are built. It does take considerable effort for somebody who has an aversion toward phone calls, for example, to pick up the phone and speak to someone else. As it does for people who are bad at texting to reply to messages. However, in an era where so much technology is available, attitudes towards this technology defines, in a large way the nature of relationships that are built up.

I thought back for a while to my time at school – primary school, that is. It was difficult to become friends with new people, largely because while friendships were created out of common spaces and common circumstances (take the classes I attended, or, for example, summer camps I was able to participate in), they didn’t really sustain beyond that time period – because I hadn’t set up my e-mail ID yet, and we didn’t call each other up on the landline. The only person I do remember calling up, and that too, pretty religiously, is my childhood best friend. I believe I spoke to him after school on the phone a reasonable amount, especially when our classes changed and we ended up in different sections. It was, and remains, a fond memory – and the only reason I still remember his landline number (which has not changed).

That was on my mind today: the transitions that connections have gone through. Nokia’s old tagline was Connecting People. One day that was true of hardware. That era lies only in my memory palace now.

GloPoWriMo 2020: 5/30

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Today’s prompt is honestly the toughest prompt I’ve seen the good folks over at NaPoWriMo put out.

It’s called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. The challenge is to use/do all of the following in the same poem. Of course,  if you can’t fit all twenty projects into your poem, or a few of them get your poem going, that is just fine too!

  1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
  2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
  3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
  4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
  5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
  6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
  7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
  8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
  9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
  10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
  11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
  12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
  13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
  14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
  15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
  16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
  17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
  18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
  19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
  20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

I do not see myself weaving all 20 of these into a singular piece – for the most part because that does not interest me. Thus, I will be incorporating one of these things.

Peach Perfect 

“You’re a peach!”,
Merriam-Webster exclaims is the best example of a metaphor,
To call someone pleasing.
Au contraire, my peachy friend,
Peaches are not pleasing,
Their colour, in fact, they’re merely leasing,
Their appearance?
Round gluteus maxima, I say.

Oh, and the descriptions of their taste,
“Juicy orbs of sunburst deliciousness”,
Clearly, you pick fruit with haste,
But, come now, we must do our due diligence –
and spot the fur from a mile, nay, a marathon away.

You may think we’re brothers,
Maybe the hair gives you that notion,
In reality, we’re third cousins,
My genes contain some of the worse portions – and
as a result my appearance is a gag,
“A potato with fur”,
“A haggly sack”

I so dislike this peachy business,
Why must he get all the praise,
The next time you see someone please you,
Please call them a kiwi, I say.
“You’re a kiwi!”
You see, it rolls off the tongue,
Kiwi is two syllables,
While peach is just one.

Instability | Gate of the Sun, by Elias Khoury

Tejas RaoLeave a comment

Gate of the Sun,
by Elias Khoury
Published by Picador (2007)
Rating: *****

Introduction 

This book has been on my to-read shelf since 2016, and I was intimidated about picking it up because I feared that I would not like it. When I first heard about this book, I heard only good things – from the plot, to the characters, to Khoury’s writing – people praised the decisions he made throughout. I was told it was impossible for me to not enjoy it, and that I would leave the book with several questions.

The history of the Middle East is a history I have read obsessively about because of my own connections to that part of the world and my desire to understand how so much conflict has been allowed to persist in such a localized area for so long, with and without intervention.

At the start of this year, I decided that aside from reading a large volume of books, and reading widely, I wanted to remove books from my to-read shelf. My Goodreads is filled with all sorts of things I’ve shelved, and I figured that discarding those, or reading those would lead to better predictions from the algorithm, and fresh finds – things I’d genuinely like to read. After all, there’s too little time to do all the reading I want to be doing.

Thus began my adventure with Khoury. I completed the book in class, and recommended it instantly to the person seated next to me – certain that I had found another reader. So it was to be, and long may this book continue to travel.

Plot

The book is structured as a stream-of-consciousness narration by Khaleel, an almost-son-like figure to Yunes, a Palestinian freedom fighter, who is in a coma. Although others have given Yunes up for dead, Khalil sits vigil by his hospital bedside and recounts stories, in an effort to make sense of their lives, and to make some contact with Yunes.

Detail

There is incredible detail in Khoury’s writing. He spent years listening to stories at refugee camps, and those stories fed into the novel – and that experience shines through in a manner irreplaceable by any other experience. He weaves to life the Palestine cause, and in doing so, he is able to showcase the true sense of displacement that refugees live with and the burden that places on them. There are portions of this book that it hurt to read because I felt helpless – it felt unfair, and left me with deep despair that humans had to go through the harrowing experience of seeing their home, being able to identify it, but not being sure what the world identifies it as.

There is naturally, a grandioseness to Khoury’s writing that leaves you remembering the words he writes. One that stood out for me was:

“in the faces of those people being driven to slaughter, didn’t you see something resembling your own?”

These lines asking the Palestinians to understand the Holocaust.

This is an Odyssey.

Conclusion

If you cannot tell, I am enamored by this book – for it takes ordinary stories and everyday life in extraordinary circumstances and raises them to myth. If there is a book you read this year, please let this be it.