Salman Does it Again
I was fascinated to the limit of creative numbness. I think the greatest strength of the book is its uninhibited prose that leaps out to the reader with an authoritative, new-fangled firmness and leaves him happily caged in a new world order from where even the basic understanding of the scene all around is interestingly altered
It’s like Déjà vu for many like me. We had almost seen this coming. Perhaps it was inevitable. 36 % of people voted for Midnight’s children. The voters also included an overwhelming number of youngsters. It puts to rest the views of a few critics who have publically documented older people going for his book more than the youngsters. It seems that the ‘young-disconnect’ theory was only in their minds. I guess Rushdie’s acceptance is beyond the dividing lines of age, religion, culture or race. ‘Best of Booker’ has proved the point.
Salman Rushdie is a big guy. He has success, women and lots of money. His intellectual strain is worth cloning many say and the air he breathes is creatively rejuvenated when exhaled. I have grown reading his books. I guess an entire generation has. Frankly, I haven’t read all of his books but I think Midnight’s children happened to be the first one. I must have been in college at that time. The impression that I got still resonates vividly in my conscious. The book had spun a virtual world around me. I had begun to see and feel the world through its characters. Then I read it again, about six or seven years back. I was fascinated to the limit of creative numbness. I think the greatest strength of the book is its uninhibited prose that leaps out to the reader with an authoritative, new-fangled firmness and leaves him happily caged in a new world order from where even the basic understanding of the scene all around is interestingly altered. Yes, this is the way I would like to describe his works.
Read my other article about Salman here (though it in a different context altogether). I am leaving the readers with a part from the interesting stretch (The complete stretch makes the whole book, actually…)
…moments of solitude in the gloomy spidery corridors of the landowner's
mansion he was gripped by an almost uncontrollable desire to turn
and run away as fast as his legs would carry him. Unnerved by the
enigma of the blind art-lover, his insides filled with tiny scrabbling
insects as a result of the insidious venom of Tai's mutterings, his nostrils
itching to the point of convincing him that he had somehow contracted
venereal disease, he felt his feet begin slowly, as though encased in boots
of lead, to turn; felt blood pounding in his temples; and was seized by so
powerful a sensation of standing upon a point of no return that he very
nearly wet his German woollen trousers. He began, without knowing
it, to blush furiously; and at this point his mother appeared before him,
seated on the floor before a low desk, a rash spreading like a blush
across her face as she held a turquoise up to the light. His mother's face
had acquired all the scorn of the boatman Tai. 'Go, go, run,' she told
him in Tai's voice, 'Don't worry about your poor old mother.' Doctor
Aziz found himself stammering, 'What a useless son you've got,
Amma; can't you see there's a hole in the middle of me the size of a
melon?' His mother smiled a pained smile. 'You always were a
heartless boy,' she sighed, and then turned into a lizard on the wall of
the corridor and stuck her tongue out at him. Doctor Aziz stopped
feeling dizzy, became unsure that he'd actually spoken aloud, wondered
what he'd meant by that business about the hole, found that his
feet were no longer trying to escape, and realized that he was being
watched. A woman with the biceps of a wrestler was staring at him,
beckoning him to follow her into the room. The state of her sari told
him that she was a servant; but she was not servile. 'You look green as a
fish,' she said. 'You young doctors. You come into a strange house and
your liver turns tojelly. Come, Doctor Sahib, they are waiting for you.'
Clutching his bag a fraction too tightly, he followed her through the
dark teak door.
Builders build houses and fools live in them
It must be so.Frankly, I don’t know how to deal with people who cheat habitually but profess exactly the opposite. The builder who made the society that I am living in at the moment certainly is one such. Preaching a catchy slogan ‘We deliver what we promise’ the builder (Mahagun) promised the innocent public delivery of modern apartments. But instead what we got in return for our hard earned money was one hell-of-a-hole-stacked-in-a-wall with falling plaster, leaking basement, crowded open area and generally substandard infrastructure. Soon after moving in I had written an article for the Hindustan Times consciously choosing not to use the builder’s name. I don’t think, now in the hindsight, it was a very good idea. See the article here.
I moved in my flat in April last year and since been surprised at the lack of interest shown by the residents to take up these issues with the builder. The attendance of the residents during the weekend meetings has been slender. Until last Sunday when at last, the people of our society woke up to a rare solidarity for the common cause and were truly up in arms against the builder. See the pictures above.
Soon the police had to be called and a case was registered against the builder for the failed promises and far from satisfactory maintenance standards of the society. A couple of TV channels too followed to record the resident’s concerns. Looks like now at last the builder will finally pull up his socks, connect better with us residents, leave the business of running the society to the duly elected RWA (a long pending demand of the residents) and part ways smilingly. If he is good businessman I see him going away after shaking hands with our RWA. But if he is not, we might have to invent more ways to step up the pressure.
A Donkey and a Car
Ask the people of Afghanistan the value of a donkey and they will be ready to pay you more money than a car. For, utility of an asset defines its value. But not here in India…. Stray animals in our cities reflect the apathy we have heaped on them. It echoes our diminishing civic sense (if there is one such at all). We have conditioned ourselves to happily ignore these guiltless creatures of God. Today an entire society is living blindly in a crowd of germinated and discarded animals. Our eyes turn blind when we see one run over on the road. I feel time has come when someone – and constructively, maybe without the NGO badge – does something to lessen the plight of these neglected animals.
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dear CC,
seeing you after some time..
liked your take on mrushdie..
the aprtment apthy is seen to be belived.
i have had such an experience...
donkeys are endngerd animals today....
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