Book review - 'Lone Fox Dancing'

'Lone Fox Dancing - My Autobiography'

Just finished reading the story of 'Ruksan' in his own words, and it's difficult to come out of the aura created by Bond through his magical pen.  Words at par with the gentle stories he weaves, so authentic that the reader just wants to believe that Bond actually lived each story!

From his early life to ripe old age, Bond has laid out his whole life, though he admits towards the end that for some personal anecdotes he has changed the names.  One thing that comes through is his deep love for his dear departed dad, whom he lost in his early teens, and the undertones of a strained equation with his mom, with whom he tries to make up on her deathbed.

And the other theme is his deep love for India.  He does hop over to England for a couple of years at the beginning of his writing career, also taking up odd jobs to support himself.  But he gets restless and comes back to India, to his beloved Doon, to the friends of his younger years and some new.  His early struggles as a writer vouch to his abiding love for the art of writing, and he keeps at it for well nigh four decades before starting to get a degree of recognition.  

It's amazing that Bond has continued to live in and around Mussoorie almost his whole life, that he continues to delight in and get inspiration from the trees, the birds, the wildlife of the hills, even as life around him has changed beyond recognition over the decades.  And he continues to live with and support his adopted family of a man of the hills, his early support, over three generations.

A rewarding story of gentle love and deeply humanist outlook.

Book review - 'The Order of Time' by Carlo Rovelli

Having earlier read 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' by eminent physicist Rovelli, I had high hopes from 'The Order of Time'.  Not only have those hopes been fulfilled, but Rovelli has gone much beyond.  This book would be favoured by readers who like to be challenged.

Rovelli starts with the seemingly innocuous fact that "time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level", something empirically proven but perhaps not known to the majority of common people.  He goes on to prove that this is true across the universe, well-proven a hundred years back by the curved space-time equations of Einstein (later revealed to be a gravitational field), who postulated that time slows down the closer one is to the source of greater gravity.

Next, Rovelli demolishes the idea that time is unidirectional, establishing that it's increasing entropy and a phenomenon called 'blurring' which gives the impression of time progressing, and that heat exchange is the only event which is unidirectional and thus giving rise to 'thermal time'.   On the way, Rovelli puts paid to the concept of cause and effect, and even to past and future. (Did Einstein really write that "the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion"? Rovelli provides the context for that famous saying in chapter 7).

Coming to the 'present', Rovelli next establishes that "the present of the universe does not exist", using the example of interstellar travel.  What effect this has on genealogies is an interesting aside.

Ultimately, Rovelli says, 'The world is made of events, not things'. And as Aristotle said: 'Time is nothing other than the measurement of change' in those things.  Along the way, Rovelli also refers to the concept of 'loop quantum gravity' which is one of the approaches in quantum theory on which he works.

And all this is explained by about the middle of the book.  The rest of the chapters touch upon more complex, seemingly esoteric, concepts like 'indexicality'.

The range of sources across centuries accessed by Rovelli for this tome on time (though a slim volume at less than 200 pages) is mind-boggling, from Mahabharat to Ecclesiaste to the Greek philosopher Anaximander (the title of the book is from one of his writings) to the the Persian poet Shirazi to Aristotle to Newton and much beyond upto 20th century - reminds one of Carl Sagan's legendary 'Cosmos' which also had similar breadth of references.

This is not a book for casual reading.  I usually read parts of 4-6 books on a typical day, but for this book I had to ensure complete peace and focus, else one may tend to lose the train of thoughts.  But once the reader is able to focus, a rich harvest is assured.

Book review - 'The Hidden Life of Trees'

 #trees #woodwideweb

'The Hidden Life of Trees' by Peter Wohlleben

That trees in a forest communicate with and nurture each other through a vast underground 'mycelial' network of 'mycorrhizal' fungi, sometimes spanning hundreds of miles, is only one of the more astounding facts we learn from this treasure trove of a book on something so close to us and yet so far in understanding. 

Contrary to the impression given out by the subtitle 'What they feel, How they communicate', this book is not only about these things, but also about other facets of the lives of trees - how they talk (using scents and sounds), how they walk (across generations of course, but over vast distances of thousands of miles over ice age progressions), how they fight back attackers (by synthesising specialty chemicals and by attracting other predators), how they nurture their 'young' (the 'old' being upto a thousand years of age or even more!), and the like.

The format of the book is also quite inviting, with short chapters dealing with different aspects of trees' lives.

It can be guaranteed that anyone reading this book seriously will not only get invaluable knowledge and insight into our closest neighbours everywhere, but would also gain a large measure of empathy for the oldest living inhabitants of this earth.

Book review - 'My Autobiography' by Charles Chaplin

This must be the second most... ummm... fulfilling book I've read in recent times ('War and Peace' is a perennial favourite - now going through a second reading after decades - and 'A Man Called Ove' & 'When Breath Becomes Air' would probably take 3rd and 4th spots, though not comparable to no. 1 and 2 in terms of the vast span of time and characters covered).

Who of my generation (and probably the next too) doesn't know Charlie Chaplin? We've grown up laughing uproariously at the antics of Charlie (and probably of Lucy too). But who knew that behind Charlie's silent slapstick was such a poignant story of abject childhood poverty, deprivation and parental tragedy!

It's remarkable that Chaplin manages to keep the narrative on an even keel, even deadpan, and not bubbling with too much pathos, at least when dealing with his own story - his mother's repeated trysts with mental asylum, staying in Govt. orphanages, abandonment by his father, the works. Perhaps the most poignant episode is where his mother, after they come back from his father's funeral, has to sell household furniture so that the threesome (including Charlie's brother) can eat! But all this is narrated in a rather matter of fact way.

It's when he starts describing his rise in the show business that Chaplin's voice seems to get a new-found confidence, quite naturally. But even here, while an independent observer would marvel, mouth agape, at his meteoric progress from a pauper to a millionaire, Chaplin chooses to describe the minutiae rather than indulge in hyperbole. His initial struggles to make his own mark in Hollywood, struggling against restrictive studio contracts, and then coming into his own and starting his own studio and production ventures, are singularly instructive for an artiste as well as a shrewd businessman.

Chaplin maintains the matter-of-fact tone even while describing his interactions with the creme de la creme, from heads of state/government (like German Kaiser and Chrchill) to the most eminent personalities of his time like Tolstoy, Sartre, et al.  So it doesn't feel at all like he's bragging - it's just that he himself was great enough to move in those circles.

While Chaplin doesn't flinch from referring to his various flings and failed marriages, he states upfront that he'd not 'tell all' and would choose what to reveal, a blow for the concept of privacy which's become the in thing only now. And once he finds Oona, with whom his marriage lasts till the end, he also doesn't hold back from expressing in writing the extent of his love for her.

The last part of the book is quite heartbreaking, where Chaplin describes the events leading up to what was virtually his exile from the United States, then reeling under a strong anti-Communist hysteria post WW II. Charlie suffered for supporting the cause of Communists in fighting Hitler, against whom he campaigned personally apart from through 'The Great Dictator' (among the few of his talkies), but he steadfastly refused to back down from the cause even when intimidated by the Govt. agencies and the US media. He gets satisfaction, though, from being feted across Europe after he leaves US and settles in Switzerland.

An incomparable actor, director, composer and script-writer: Chaplin was all that. But most of all, he was a genuine, warmhearted (though not gullible) and courageous human being who rose beyond his circumstances and (much beyond the cliche) left his footprints on the sands of time...

Book review - 'The Scapegoat' by Daphne du Maurier

Many (most?) of us may've wondered, at some point or other, how our life would've been if we were actually living not our own life but the life of another, known or unknown, person.  We've just a hazy idea of such a 'substitute' life, usually focusing on the more rosy aspects, and either totally ignoring (or ignorant of) the travails, or (consciously or unconsciously) glossing over such potentially unpleasant aspects to keep the 'desirable' quality intact.  This 'what would've happened' question is what Daphne du Maurier, more famous as the author or the legendary 'Rebecca' and 'Birds', sets our to investigate in this complex novel.

The story starts with a suspenseful move, as a rakish French landed aristocrat Jean meets his doppelganger, an English teacher John touring France and, after peddling John copious amounts of alcohol, scrams with John's 'identity', leaving him sleeping in his hotel room.  Then starts the 'will he, won't he' game, to guess the point upto which the humble John will carry forward the deception, either willingly or by force of circumstances, or give up and (at least try to) go home. 

As things start to happen rapidly in the week or so over which the story unfolds, John goes about the charade first reluctantly and then with a sense of mission to 'heal' the inhabitants of Jean's chateau, the family members, each of whom Jean seems to have treated badly in different ways.  Initially, John seems more a victim of the circumstances than a willing imposter, just going along with things to keep up the pretenses so as not to hurt the family members.  But by and by he starts to take a more active role to 'set things right' as he - sometimes misguidedly it seems - deems best.  He does flinch away from some hard decisions at first, giving morphine to the old mother, and negotiating a hugely disadvantageous contract with the main customer of the family's glassworks just to keep it afloat.

It's only after Jean's pregnant wife commits suicide, after his pre-teen daughter has run away from home (though later found at the glassworks), that John resolves to take things into his own hands and takes some decisions to the decisive benefit of all family members.  At that point, inevitably, Jean comes back and John, after failing to bump him off, is forced to make his exit from the scene, after saying goodbyes to Jean's mistress Bela who had probably seen through him anyway.

While the story itself is pretty interesting, almost a page turner, the underlying philosophical aspects are what impart it a certain unique quality.  Looking deeper, it seems that, rather than a story of two characters with diametrically opposite nature and behaviours, it's actually about the different personalities hidden within us all.  And how we choose to bring one or the other - sometimes parts of both - to the surface, sometimes to deal with different people or circumstances and sometimes on a whim.  John cannot always get away with being the 'goody-goody' benefactor to all, sometimes - for instance during the bird shoot - coming across to others (notably to Jean's younger brother Paul, almost all the time) as a bumbling idiot or worse, as an insensitive prick, mostly for no fault of his!  This dichotomy is brought out well towards the end - when John condemns Jean as evil, Bela tries to impress upon him that Jean also has some good qualities and does love his family after all.

And these are the two axes - the futility of aspiring for 'a different life', and the co-existence of both good an evil within a person - on which this excellent novel spins.  Good as an engaging story, and great as a 'look within' tale.

Book review - 'A Room With A View' (EM Forster)

#aroomwithaview

This is the first Forster novel I've completed in full (not counting Forster snippets read somewhere or parts of movies watched), so these are my first impressions. (And thanks to the kind soul who gifted this classic to me.)

The first half or so of the novel seems quite slow in taking off (and not only by today's standards). The actual happenings seem to consume less ink than the ruminations of the characters (and, in some cases, of the author), especially while the action is centred in Florence. It's only towards the end of that sojourn that things start happening, bringing into focus not only the slowly developing love story but also the sharp distinctions in mores and behaviour between the English middle class landed gentry and the upcoming citizenry. Overall, the treatment in the first half of the novel seems excessively verbose.

It's when the action (!) shifts to Surrey that Forster seems to come into his own, etching out in sharp detail the internal struggles and frustrations of the lead character (Lucy) who, while seeming to conform to the expected behaviour patterns of the day (including submitting to and supporting the sometimes obnoxious behaviour of her beau), actually has a rebel inside wanting to break free. The entry of George Emerson, with whom she had a brief 'encounter' in Florence, into the scene and his passionate courting of Lucy only provides the trigger for her to break off her engagement. The scene where she explains her reasons to Cecil is almost a cry out by Lucy, notwithstanding his nuanced imputation that she's speaking someone else's words. The few chapters upto this stage bring out the feminist slant of Forster's writing, and could be considered quite bold not only for his times but decades thence.

A modern story might have ended with Lucy sticking to her resolution to go abroad again and thus plowing her lonely furrow (perhaps remaining a spinster a la her cousin Charlotte, as insinuated by her mother). However, in perhaps a doffing of hat to the conventions of the day, she is eventually 'won over' by George, with not a little help from his free and frank father Mr. Emerson, and the novel ends with the married couple coming back to the Florence 'pension' (hotel) where they originally met.

Readers of other classics authors may find this novel a bit more 'ruminating' and with less 'action' than a novel on the same times by, say, Hardy or Tolstoy. But Forster's novel does throw light on the struggles, internal and external, which women of that day faced in the initial days of asserting their individuality, if from the perspective of a privileged class.