The Company of Women - Khushwant Singh

I admit it. I had always been curious about what Khushwant Singh wrote like. He was openly lauded as the 'dirty old man' when I was growing up. But since I had never read any work of his apart from a small snippet (which turned out to be from this very book) in a magazine, I remained curious. So when I was browsing around for a new set of books, I suddenly recalled my curiosity. The result of which was this book which I chose since Khushwant Singh is known for his 'expertise' on the matter. It sat in the shelf for a few months before it was its turn.

I developed an apprehension in the opening pages of the book that turned into mild amusement when I was a couple of scores down. I think it was the puerility of my mind that had led me to be intrigued by the snippet in the magazine years back. But when the cover boasts :

Khushwant Singh is India's best known writer and columnist.

and 

This book is a triumph.

then one can do little but shake his head at the sorry state that India's literature has been in for so many years. No wonder people hail the likes of Chetan Bhagat as a writer in India. Half baked stories and mindless plots grab the country's interest. Our brains have been rotted over the ages. Anyway, back to the book, it was one of the most pathetic attempts at literature I have ever read. Though it was not exactly literotica, it failed to match up to the standards of the free pieces available online as well. I breezed through the 230 odd pages in a couple of days and put the book back in the shelf.

The story is about a certain Mohan Kumar who went to went to Princeton and was a lauded scholar. He comes back to India to his widowed father who gets him married. He calls it quits after a few years of tumultuous married life and his wife goes to her parents with their two children. He places an advertisement for female companionship in the newspapers. The story is about his recollections of his trysts in Princeton and the women who respond to the advertisement. Oh, he also has a huge penis.

Now I am not too sure what made Khushwant Singh's books so popular. Maybe this was a bad specimen to judge by. But even the fact that it was a book published by a reputable publisher in his name makes me doubt a lot of things now. Even though he adds a disclaimer that it was just his fancies, it could have been done better. I am not even remotely inclined to try any of his other books now. Good bye and good riddance.

Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre is one of the most prominent names in existentialist philosophy. I have been reading Dostoyevsky for some time now, so the philosophy itself is not alien to me. But outside of the Russian, seldom have I ventured to other authors of the pedigree. A book by Camus (The Outsider), Kafka (The Metamorphosis), Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) are the few ventures. I did read Nietzsche but the existentialism in his work was shrouded in layers of hubris. In a dearth of better options and a search for something different, I went for "Nausea".

Sartre described existentialism as : the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism; which is what he has attempted to do in this book. This book follows the thoughts and actions of a young man in a city. He is facing his existentialist crisis; his 'Nausea'. Through the protagonist, Roquentin, Sartre debates on the act of existing and the necessity of it. He calls the world and its population superfluous and absurd. To quote my favourite line from the book :

Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

This line is representative of the philosophy expounded in the book. Sartre ridicules all 'bourgeois' sentiments and squashes them into a state of absurd. Art, travel, love, learning; all hold no meaning in a world that is random and beyond one's control. Even death would be nothing more than another random event.

Antoine Roquentin is a young man living in Bouville - a fictitious character in a fictitious setting. He has travelled far and wide and has settled down to write a book on a historical figure of the eighteenth century. As he struggles through his research and his life, he records his thoughts in a diary which is presented to us readers. His life is quite ordinary; he spends time in the library for research, goes to cafes for food, is physically intimate with the pattronne of the cafe, goes for walks. But his thoughts are anything but ordinary. He is constantly struggling with a 'nausea' that attacks him from time to time. In this nauseous state he finds himself questioning the existence of himself and everything around him. He has a friend of sorts, who he has nicknamed the Autodidact, who believes in humanity and then there is Anna, his old love and his only hope of salvation.

Sartre more than impressed; enough for me to want to read his more acclaimed work "Being and Nothingness". He excels in writing about abstracts. The long rants about meaningless and unreal things adorned his book immensely. His settings were not very thorough though. There was something amiss in every scene he created. Nevertheless, "Being and Nothingness" enters my list somewhere in the upper echelons. Would definitely want to read more of this one.

The Landlady - Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky

It was about time that I made progress with my list of Dostoyevsky's works. The list had only few novels left. Just one post-underground, which I will probably save for the last, and four pre-underground. I decided to take up 'The Landlady' next. With a seventeen hour flight coming up, the rather small novel found a very comfortable niche in my itinerary.

This was Dostoyevsky's third novel, after 'Poor Folks' and 'The Double'. Of the recurring themes that Dostoyevsky would use later in his writings, 'The Landlady' had glimpses of the "religious fool" and the delirious protagonist. Dostoyevsky has attempted to describe a complicated relation in this book. One that born of and ends in the fantastic. There is little that is rooted in realism, much that is obscure and in parts, it is downright difficult to follow. Of all the Dostoyevsky's I have read thus far, this is probably the least I appreciated. But it is possibly because I have read his later works. The contemporary audience to whom this novella was presented accused Dostoyevsky of plagiarism. But this book seems much in line with Dostoyevsky's later works. Not as polished and complete; perhaps missing a few chunks here and there; but it certainly has all the elements.

Vasily Ordynov, the protagonist, is an unemployed nobility who has dedicated his life to the obscurely described realm of science. He lives a solitary life and when his landlady moves out of Petersburg he is forced to look for new lodgings. While roams the outskirts of the city, he sees an old man and a young woman in a church. He is drawn to the woman and follows them to their quarters. The next day, he lands at their building and asks for lodgings. The woman accepts and then follows a series of delirious episodes where Ordynov lapses into sickness and is nursed by his landlady Katerina. They develop a relation and he tries to figure out her relation with the old man.

Yes, I continue to be awed by Dostoyevsky. And this has been a terrific journey thus far. Twelve down, four to go. I think I will pick up his unfinished work 'Netochka Nezvanova' next.

The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman

'Maus' was a recommendation on goodreads. It had been a while since I had read a graphic novel and this book had really rave reviews. Although the Nazi holocaust was becoming redundant of recent, I decided to go ahead with this book. I ordered 'The Complete Maus' and picked it up after I was done with Murakami's short stories.

I started it in the dead of the night right after I came back from watching 'Fury', another story from the second world war. The first few pages were quite catchy and I had read three chapters by the time I decided to doze off. The following day, I picked it up as soon as I was back from work and put it down late in the night after having completed it. The book really was un-put-down-able! It was not so much the story. It was how it was written. Art Spiegelman had not limited the book to just the holocaust and survival. He had written the book depicting him asking his father for the story. The book uses animal analogies to depict races. The Jews were mouses, the Germans cats, Poles were pigs and Americans dogs. There were the caricatures of his father, his second wife, himself and his wife in the book. It is this personal aspect of the book that sets it apart from the other holocaust stories. It speaks of Spiegelman's father and how he was as a person before and after the war; Spiegelman's own complex relation with his father; his memories of his mother and rivalry with a ghost-brother. In short, the personal touch that Spiegelman adds to the redundant holocaust story makes it different and captivating.

The book tells the story of Spiegelman asking his father Vladek to tell him the story of his survival. Vladek and Anja, Art's mother, had survived the holocaust. Vladek tells him of his life before the war. His life when he met Anja and they married. His successful business and of Richieu, their first born. Then the war struck and they slowly lost their families. The story is of Vladek's survival. He and Anja somehow managed to be together throughout. Through luck and wit he managed to stay alive in every camp and ghetto. Eventually in Auschwitz as well, they somehow stayed clear of the chambers and survived long enough to see the war end. Vladek also talks about how others whom he knew survived the war. He tells about the conditions they were forced to live in, the tricks they had to resort to, the sacrifices they had to make. As he puts it, there were no family or friends in those days; it was every man for himself. Interspersed in between is Vladek's character as a part of the storytelling. He is the typical miser Jew who is pained whenever he has to part with any money. This leads everyone around him to anguish. Whether his character is a result of his survival or vice versa is left unclear.

The book was very captivating. The animal analogies were interesting but wore off rather quickly. It was the Vladek's caricature and simultaneous narration that held the book together. There was no boring rant about the hardships in the camp. It was a personal story, a subjective point of view of two people, the one writing the story and the one narrating it. Though I really liked it, I have not been looking at Spiegelman's other works. And I have had enough of the second world war for some time.

The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami; I had read the name on my facebook wall one day. Intrigued, I had looked him up. Seemed like an interesting author to start reading. But I had left it there until my last visit to the local Crossword store. I was looking for Neil Gaiman but instead returned with this collection of short stories; the back cover had a compelling teaser. And although I had planned a short break from reading books, I found myself looking at a twenty hour train journey to Chennai. So I packed the book in my backpack and started flipping the pages as the train started it's slow journey.

I like reading short stories. They make for interesting fast paced story telling. The author is not bothered with filling up spaces between episodes and thus spares the reader of potentially drag stretches. Murakami is another case. At times there were no defined episodes to his stories. At times they were taken up rapidly. And most of the times, he danced about the bush to his heart's content. Surprisingly, I liked almost all of them. For very soon it was evident that Murakami is not trying to relay stories. He is trying to communicate thoughts and personalities. Stories were secondary. Rather, this book was a collection of short sketches of people who Murakami drew and detailed with evident pleasure.

There were some stories that stood out for me. The Last Lawn of the Afternoon was probably the best of the lot. Then there were Family Affair and Barn Burning. All these stories (and the others as well) present a very believable narration. At times it is evidently fantastic and strays from the realms of normalcy. But it is still believable : incredibly credible. One could imagine a sibling's hatred for his sister's fiance. One could imagine a quality assurance manager develop a fancy for a complaining customer based on her letter. And a hunger stricken couple holding up a Mc Donald's for burgers? Or a woman divorcing her husband for a pair of shorts? Murakami writes in a way that makes it all a possibility.

I really liked this collection of stories. More for the way they were written than the stories themselves. Murakami will resurface in my reading list soon. I will reserve more comments on his writing till a later date, when I have read more of him. These seventeen short stories were not enough.

The Little Prince - Antonie de Saint-Exupery

I saw "The Little Prince" mentioned in the list of top books by a close friend in one of those facebook chain posts (it is interesting how some things never seem to die!). There were a quite a few in her list of ten that I had not read. Some did not interest me much, others did. This one lied in the latter. Co-incidentally she had borrowed the book from a colleague and I borrowed it from her before it was eventually returned.

I am not too sure whether this book is for children or adults. But then that is probably what distinguishes a great book from the lot. Every age that you read it, you have a different understanding of it. There are layers that you unravel with time and experience. "The Little Prince" is one of those books that I wish I had read as a kid. In the book, de Saint-Exupery shows the world through a child's eyes. The world of adults and what they (we) hold dear and how pointless and funny it seems to a child. He also talks about love, its pangs, and death which give an eeire dark side to the otherwise light story.

The narrator finds the little prince in the desert while fixing his crashed aircraft. The little prince asks a lot of questions but answers very few. The narrator manages to reconstruct the little prince's story from the bits and pieces he gathers during their conversations. The prince lives on a planet with two active volcanoes and a dead one, and a flower which is the most beautiful in the universe. He loves to see sunsets and keeps his planet free of baobabs. The flower's vanity and demanding nature make the prince leave his planet to explore the universe. He visits six other 'small planets', each inhabited by ridiculous 'adults' and finally ends up on Earth where he meets the fox which teaches him the meaning and importance of love, and the snake which promises him a passage back to his planet and his beloved flower.

This book can easily be finished in a single sitting, but 'we adults' are in such a haste to complete! I imagine it as a bedtime story that one could read to a child. Though I did not mind it much, the book seemed a little random in the way it is structured and I liked almost everything about this book, especially the paintings that accompanied the story. It was an extremely delectable read.

The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

This one came up during a discussion with a colleague about random things during the night on the train to Goa. I think we were talking about thinking out of the box and perspectives. He had said that this one offered a fresh perspective on Physics. I have always been passively interested in Physics; it used to be my favourite subject of study in school. It is now, many years later, that I fully grasp why it was so. Anyway, I ordered the book upon return and took it up a few months later.

"The Trouble With Physics" is a brief recap of what has happened in Physics since Einstein. More specifically, it is an analysis of the biggest fad that Physics saw in this period, the 'string theory'. Smolin recaps how 'string theory' promised a revolution (or the end of it) in the 1980's and how a quarter of a century later, there was still no inkling of that revolution. The book is written in a language fit for an enthusiast. The language does get technical at times but mostly it is something that a layman can easily follow. There were two things that I specially liked about this book. One was that it introduced a lot of ideas that have been worked on or that came up and failed. Writings of this kind tend to trigger one's brain in directions that one does not think in usually. It makes the reading slow and interesting, propelling you in tangential directions. The second was the bit where Smolin explores what science is and how it should be done. Ensuing was a general discussion about what is wrong with the way power is distributed within the academia. This brought me back to my university applications a few years back and reminded me how the entire process had made very little sense to me. As another tangential offshoot, it resulted in this.

Smolin begins with Einstein and the 'revolution' that he had triggered with his relativity theories. The quantum theory was advancing in its own right but a unification was lacking. This unification was the primary target for this revolution to end. Enter 'string theory', a promising and enchanting young candidate. Smolin does a quick tour of the more important ideas that arose as a result of the academic world jumping into 'string theory'. He then tells us of the problems that have ensued, like poor distribution of resources, cult formation, etc. Towards the end, Smolin expresses what he feels to be wrong in the academic community; how and why such problems arise and how they can be averted or rectified. He says that there are more than one kind of scientists : the ones who bring a revolutionary idea and the ones who progress it. He talks about a few of such revolutionaries in the making and tells us that all is not lost.

The book was extremely well written for a book on Physics. Moreover, it presented an objective point of view on the subjects that the author touched. The author presented a few facts, his opinion on the matter and left it on the audience to decide what they would. There was no definitive judgement, which is what I like in books of science. By the end of the book I had a list of three topics that would interest me ("The Fabric of Reality", "The End of Time" and quantum computing). However, I don't think I would like to read this much of Physics at a go. I will leave those for sometime later.