Thoughts across eras - in books

It's surprising how certain ideas and concepts seem to be transmitted across eras and writers. I was reading a chapter of the book/collection of columns of Capt. Raghu Raman 'Everyman's War' titled "Surviving a Perfect Storm".

Coincidentally, I'm also (re)reading these days the Leo Tolstoy magnum opus 'War and Peace':

Raghu Raman's piece starts with "No plan survives first contact with the enemy”—Carl Von Clausewitz’s aphorism —seems prophetic in current volatile times", and then goes on to describe a process which "allows officers to know the extent of leeway they have when situation is not going according to plans and they can assume orders when communications break down—a very frequent occurrence during combat."

This passage took me back Chapter 33 of 'War and Peace', the following passage:

It'd seem certain ideas in certain domains, for instance battle combat, have eternal validity.  Time for us all to start reading Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War'...

TV movie - Haven (2001)

With the US, many countries in Europe and elsewhere wracked by anti-immigrant sentiments, it's instructive to go back to a time when similar sentiments against 'the other' were at their peak and resulted in a ghastly tragedy of unparalelled proportions.  So this (TV) movie by John Gray chooses to go back a full seven decades, to a Europe and America in the throes of World War II and its aftermath.

It's a true story based on real events and characters, which makes us reassess our commitment to certain values, especially in the face of adversity.  An American journalist, Ruth Gruber (Natasha Richardson) working for the Dept. of Interior, voluntarily takes on the dangerous responsibility of escorting nearly a thousand of the refugees fleeing a Nazi onslaught and granted asylum by US Govt. Gruber, of Polish ancestry and Jewish faith, volunteers for the assignment over the objections of her parents (Anne Bancroft and Martin Landau).  Supported by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (Hal Holbrook), she travels to Europe aboard an Air Force plane, which comes under fire but lands safely. She helps the refugees board the US ship escorted by warships.  She's discouraged to see the many refugees rejected by US troops, mainly because of lack of space but some on spurious criteria laid down by Govt.

On the transatlantic journey, especially during the air raids and submarine chases, Gruber feels the latent hostility among the wounded US soldiers, also travelling on the ship, towards the Jew refugees, though the situation eases a bit by the time they reach US.  Gruber's despatches to US from the ship, with the horrific stories recounted by individual refugees, melt the hearts of even some of the soldiers like the communication man.  Stories lIke that of the claustrophobic Mordechai (Daniel Kash) who had been buried alive by Nazis after his family and friends were shot.  However, these stories are suppressed by bureaucrats, just like earlier stories emanating from European missions about concentration camps, as narrated to Gruber by a sympathetic bureaucrat later.  He also tells her that Jewish immigration applications from Europe had been deliberately blocked by bureaucracy, as she suspected when her German Jew friends Beata Stern (Sharon Bernbaum) and her Papa (Yank Azman) had been denied US visa before the War even after repeated attempts.

Then the Govt. declares, upon the refugees' arrival, that all the refugees are to be housed in a camp in Oswego, New York, even those having families willing to house them. Gruber realizes her work with the refugees is far from done, and she bravely battles against both bureaucracy and racial prejudice to win both dignity and fair treatment for the new settlers.

Intially, the town residents are hostile towards the refugees, some on the ground that their sons have to fight (and, for some, die) defending distant Europeans, some in the fear that the refugees would take away their jobs.  But slowly the refugees are accepted by the residents, with shared experiences like Thanksgiving meals.  The incident of a runaway refugee girl Manya (Tamara Gorsky) poignantly brings such integration to the fore, when the town residents join the refugees in searching for her amidst a snowy night.  Thus, a whole lot of people are forced to confront their own prejudices and overcome them with their innate humanity.

There are emotional moments in the film which bring out the personal nature of the characters.  Like Gruber's touching relation with her father (who passes away towards the end) and mother.  Like when two of the refugees Manya and Ernst (Henry Czerny) develop a chemistry, rising above their brutalized past, and eventually marry, helped along by Gruber.  Like the dead soldier's father, Myles Billingsley (Bruce Greenwood) who develops a friendship with a refugee Bruno (Colm Feore) who recounts how his own son was shot by Nazis in front of him.  Gruber also helps some young refugees to go to college, taking advantage of a bureaucratic loophole, where they're initially resented by some of the other students but eventually do well (one even gets an admission opportunity for Harvard).

The movie is interspersed with Gruber's own recollections of her pre-War time in Europe earlier, especially with her German boyfriend Johan (Sebastian Roche) who she had to disavow before she left Germany, after he was revealed to be a member of the Nazi party.

It's when the War ends and, despite Gruber's efforts, the refugees are ordered to be sent back to Europe, that things come to a head.  In a moving sequence, local residents are seen to step in before the refugees, asking Govt. officials to send them also back to Europe as they also hail from various European countries originally - one even points out that a Govt. officer processing the refugees himself hails from Europe!  This sequence powerfully illustrates the fact that (relatively) earlier 'settlers' at a place start 'owning' it and tend to deny the same opportunity to others later.

Eventually, once Gruber approaches the new President Harry Truman, and actual stories of the Holocaust come out, the refugees are granted leave to stay in US.  A happy ending, but the film leaves the viewer with deep questions about attitudes toward 'the other', latent prejudices which surface especially during times of hardship, and the innate dignity of all humans.  Worth spending the 3 hours (it was released as a two-part feature).

Movie 'Amistad' (1997)

There are movies made with a high degree of cinematic finesse, with or (sometimes) without a substantial story or content, which cater to the very pleasure of movie watching.  And then there are movies which, while made with at least some degree of that finesse (without which they could be well nigh unwatchable), rest on a compelling story which forces us to reassess our own beliefs while learning about things anew.

Steven Spielberg's 'Amistad' (1997) is the latter kind of movie.  Helmed by a master craftsman, the movie's star cast itself is alluring, what with stellar performances by the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey and the redoubtable Nigel Hawthorne (Sir Humphrey of the legendary 'Yes Minister' fame) among others, playing characters as distinguished as US President John Quincy Adams and the abolitionist Theodore Joadson.

But it's the historical significance of the movie's story which compels us to give it the due importance.  It depicts an incident which caused an international dispute with another country (Spain) while bringing another great power (Britain) into play, brought an ex-President (John Quincy Adams) out of quasi-retirement to argue the case, and forced (at least a part of) America to crystalize its attitude to black slavery, perhaps also contributing to quickening the way to US Civil War in the bargain.  All with one single 'commercial' dispute.

The story is simple enough.  A shipful of African slaves mutiny aboard Spanish-owned ship Amistad near Cuba, killing their captors except two navigators to help chart the way back to Africa, are later overpowered by US forces and put on trial in US.  They're supported during trial by the abolitionists Lewis Tappan (Stellan Skarsgard) and Theodore Joadson (Freeman), a former slave himself who plays no small part in convincing Adams (Hopkins) to argue the case, leading to the slaves being set free eventually by US Supreme Court.

We (especially those outside US) have been brought up to believe that it was the US Civil War which in the 1860s arose out of decisive efforts to stop black slavery, and that Martin Luther King a century later succeeded in bringing things to a head.  Hence it's illuminating to learn that half a century back in early 19th century slavery had already been outlawed in (at least parts of) US, and prohibited by Great Britain, with treaties signed between the then great powers to that effect (though Spain and Portugal supposedly continued with illegal slavery on the sly).

It's the courtroom drama and the happenings around it which bring out the motivations and proclivities of different persona and groups of the day.  The arguments extended on behalf of US prosecutors, Spanish and English lawyers, and the defence attorneys deal with such astounding aspects as whether the slaves were 'property' or human beings!  And whether they were born in Africa (which apparently granted them full human rights) or on plantations (whereupon they became 'property')!  The movie also depicts how, despite signing treaties covering slavery abolition, some powers like Spain and Portugal supported the abhorrent practice on economic grounds, with the then pre-teen Queen Isabella II of Spain even writing to the US President on the case.  And how the then US President Martin Van Buren (Hawthorne), then running for re-election and dreading loss of Southern support, authorized filing of an appeal in US Supreme Court against the District Court judgment freeing the Africans, ironically delivered by a judge (Judge Coglin, played by Jeremy Northam) hand-picked by the Govt. after replacing the previous one during the trial.

As for the trial itself, Roger Baldwin (McConaughy) is shown to have argued the case very competently at District Court, even sleuthing around the ship La Amistad and finding evidence that the slaves were brought from Africa on Portuguese ship Tecora.  But it's Adam's concluding speech to the SC bench, touching upon the division between Executive and Judiciary and upon the essence of US Constitution, which delivers the final blow in favour of the Africans.  Before that, though, the legal questions posed to Adams during trial preparation by the Africans' putative leader Cinque (played by Djimon Housou, in a passionate and authentic performance) bring out the fact that intelligence and a sense of justice is innate in almost every human being, regardless of origin.

The story of the Africans' abduction (probably in Sierra Leone) and torture aboard Tecora on the transatlantic journey, including 50 slaves thrown overboard when provisions ran scarce, as recounted by Cinque, is heartrending, and evokes rightful revulsion against the abominable practice of slavery.  As I'm currently reading the book 'Roots' (by Alex Haley) which also describes intolerable cruelty by slave masters, this movie brings the travails of slavery into sharp relief.

This is not a 'feel good' movie to be watched casually.  While a treat to watch anyway, it evokes a degree of passionate reaction in the viewer as well.  It's a chronicle of a saga, at a point in history.

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...

Movie - 'It's A Wonderful Life' (1946)

There's a certain charm about olden movies which, while telling a jolly good story, manage to take in a lot about a span of time and a range of topics, describing a whole way of life prevailing at a certain time.  Hindi movies of 1950s like the Dilip Kumar-Vyjayanthimala starrer 'Naya Daur' come to mind.  This style of storytelling is quite different from modern movies which look at so many different aspects of the same thing, be it love or depression, sometimes sacrificing the charm of a good story itself in doing so.

Frank Capra's 'It's a Wonderful Life' (starring James Stewart and Donna Reed) is that kind of a movie.  It's ostensibly about a do-gooder George Bailey in an American small town who gives up his aspirations to help his family (shades of Rakhee's character in 'Tapasya', though George marries and settles down unlike in that movie) and the larger community, is on the verge of suicide at one point (no thanks to skulduggery by a villainous character), is saved by a guardian angel from heaven, and is then helped to his feet by his friends and family.  The angel actually makes him realize how things would've turned out if he was not born at all (as George, in a moment of despair, wishes) - much worse, as it turns out - since our individual lives are connected to so many other lives in so many different ways.  Typical Christmas eve feel good fare.

But within this span, the movie looks at and comments on many American phenomena between the two Wars: the housing crunch (and the beneficial role of S&Ls), the Great Depression and runs on the banks (even a simplistic primer on the mechanics of banking industry), the American campaign in WW-II, et al.  Interestingly, the angel here walks around with a copy of a Mark Twain book - allusions to the post Depression 'New Deal'?

Given that modern life has perhaps grown too complex to be explained with the help of simple stories (though that's a doubtful premise!), it's sometimes good to hark back to simpler times with such movies from a bygone era.

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 - 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan

#cosmos  #carlsagan

(Just my personal perspectives on the book - it'd be pretentious on my part to 'review' a stupendous work like Cosmos!)

For those with a taste for knowledge on the human endeavour of all hues, this book may leave them speechless! It's anyway a well-known work of epic proportions, but probably more well-known to people of a certain generation, who grew up watching Sagan, in his TV series of the same name, explaining it all back in the 80s.

The book is divided into 13 chapters (perhaps as a protest against the stigma and superstition attached to that number?, but more probably to fit in with a 13-week TV schedule). And it covers a mesmerizing array of human knowledge - from astronomy (of course!), to history (esp. of science), to anthropology, to mathematics, to logic, to physics and biology! Sagan takes us on a whirlwind tour of the cosmos itself, from the time when it was evolving out of the big bang to the birth of galaxies, stars and planets, from the primordial gases which arose first. Dropping down to the solar system, he traces its (short, in cosmological terms!) history, and then the evolution and stabilization of planets including earth.

While laying out the process of evolution of lfie on earth, Sagan keeps going back to the cosmos to prove that 'we're all made of stardust'. In between, he describes in fascinating detail how early scientists of millennia ago persisted in their pursuit of scientific knowledge, including the hardships (and sometimes bodily harm) they faced.

But beyond the rich scientific knowledge, most of all Sagan's book is an impassioned humanist plea. Woven throughout the book are his firm convictions on the unity of human race and the overarching need for tolerance and comity among nations, that the resources being wasted in a mindless nuclear arms race could be so profitably used in endeavours to know the cosmos better and thus benefit the human race as a whole.

As Sagan says towards the end, in the last chapter 'Who speaks for earth?': "We are a rare as well as an endangered species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another"!

This is a compulsory read for anyone with a passing interest in science and the human endeavour.

Book review - 'Chasing the Monsoon' by Alexander Frater

#monsoon

And what a chase it was!

it starts off as a simple story of a British journalist resolving to literally 'chasing the monsoon', that is, physically travelling across India, from Kerala (where the Monsoon hits the Indian mainland) to Cherrapunji in Meghalaya, at that time (around 20 years back) the wettest place in India. It's apparently triggered by Alex's chance meeting with an Indian couple at a UK neuro clinic where he goes to be diagnosed for a neck concussion. But as the author says towards the end: "the seed had been sown not at the National Hospital, in the company of the Baptistas, but a year earlier when I received word of my mother's death in New Zealand. The loss of our second parent fixes us next in the firing line and makes life suddenly finite. It is the moment when we finally grow up".

Such musings of the author continue throughout the book, and lend it a lush, personal touch. The main story is interspersed with tales about the author's early life in a New Hebrides island in South Pacific, before the family shifts to Australia. And while chasing the monsoon across India, the author shares historical tales of the life and times in the places which he passes through - from how trade ships navigated the monsoon waters in 16th century to how Meterologists researched about the reasons and progress of the Monsoon across centuries. In between, the author writes about his travails with the Indian bureaucracy while trying to get a border area permit to visit Cherrapunji (which he gets, finally), his visits to places like a fort in Rajasthan (where the King had had 'artificial rainfall' pavilions constructed!), and interactions with a few friends he makes on the way.

It seems the Monsoon acts as a catharsis for the author, both physically (he's cured of his neck pain) as well as psychologically (he seems to fulfill his father's wish to visit the Indian hill state). As he says towards the end, "I felt younger, stronger, better, curiously at peace... because I... possessed a brief to follow it, I had been rewarded in the way that traditionally it was supposed to reward everyone".

A damn good read on a monsoon day...

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.