Here are the rules of the tag:

Get the book closest to you. Open the book to page 123.Count to line five. Write the next three lines. Tag five people and acknowledge the person who tagged you.

I have a pile of books next to me, from the weekend shopping spree. Books are marginally cheaper in Johannesburg and I don’t need a better excuse. I pick the one on top and here we go:

“Well I wouldn’t. The less each group knows of the activities of the other, the better. But you are perfectly aware of that - you are. Particularly in the matter of recruitment to proceed outside. The people I work with won’t deal with that. There are others. She must have been with them - perhaps all these years and we didn’t know it.

Reading three lines of a book can be frustrating. I can only guess it is about Apartheid. It is from the book My Son’s Story by Nadine Gordimer. Here is a synopsis of the book from Amazon:

Highly praised as a literate goad to South Africa’s conscience under apartheid, Gordimer here delivers her most perceptive and powerful novel in years. The story of a man’s evolution as a political activist and the toll it takes on his family and on him, it is also a picture of a marriage and of an extramarital affair, set against a backdrop of daily life in segregated South Africa, even as the winds of change begin to blow. An exemplary husband and father, a pillar of rectitude in the black community, Sonny is dismissed from his teaching job after he leads a political protest. Imprisoned, on his release he becomes a leader in the revolutionary underground; at the same time he is swept into an affair with a white woman, a worker in a human rights organization.

The intertwined events that lead to the breakup of Sonny’s family and the tragic end of his high hopes and ideals are partially narrated by his teenage son Will, bitter and cynical over his father’s marital betrayal. The novel is eloquent in its understated prose and anguished understanding of moral complexities in a land where blacks keep “rags . . . on their persons as protection against tear-gas as white people carry credit cards.” Tightly focused and controlled, expertly plotted, the narrative is replete with ironies; the tension increases almost invisibly, until the unexpected, jolting denouement. In the end, Will resolves to record “what it really was like to live a life determined by the struggle to be free.” Which is exactly what this book does, honestly and memorably

And now it’s my turn to tag!

Edward Hyde
Riot of reasons
Varnam
Nanopolitan
Shoefiend

Picture: Pillars of the South African constitution from the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg

The fundamental concept in the book, unsurprisingly, is that human beings are rational – everything we do, however illogical it might seem – is founded in cold hard reason, if only you look hard enough. By the end of the first chapter, Harford has you pretty much convinced of this and you will be ready to believe that, from hookers to teenagers to criminals, everyone is endowed with a rational mind. The one caveat to this thesis that Harford himself admits to is that rationality is accentuated by experience. The way I see it, this is similar to conditional learning – the more times you have done something, the more likely you are to know the likely effects of a wide range of your actions and you will pick the one most likely to lead to positive gains for you – either now or in the future. Whether you call it good old common sense or logic, the end result remains the same, and can be explained rationally.

The beauty of the book lies in the wide range of examples that Harford has chosen to explain the logic of. Unlike many of the best sellers of the past years, which left you with the distinct feeling that one idea or concept, best suited for a long article, had been pulled and stretched in all possible directions to fill enough pages to call it a book – Harford introduces refreshingly new analyses chapter after chapter. His wand of rationality illumines the logic behind seemingly instinctive moves of seasoned poker players, emotion-laden decisions behind marriage and divorce and even tries to explain why your boss will always be overpaid and why your job sucks – obviously not a great ad for careers at FT considering that he does not even entertain the thought that some of us might like our jobs, but powerful analyses nevertheless.

Harford also tries to explain why some neighborhoods are better and safer than others and warns us that racism is not always the product of an irrational, unreasonable, bigoted mind. He predicts that people will choose to live in cities even with the proliferation of technologies and if anything, they emphasize their place in our lives – quite honestly, I am inclined to disbelieve. I was born and raised in a beautiful tropical place and the moment modern technology allows me to do what I do or love to do from the comfort of a sprawling villa built on a palm-tree laden beach, I am running back home away from my hundred square meter apartment in Amsterdam. But Harford’s reasoning is tight, and for now, I am placing no bets. The last chapter in the book tries to explain the logic of human existence and development over millions of years. Speculative by the author’s own admission, it is still an informative intellectual exercise.

The book drives home the main point of life being all about logic, but on many other topics, it raises more questions than answers, which I mean as an excellent compliment for a book of this genre. To Harford’s credit, he mentions many books that I am now very tempted to read (reading list at end of post). Even the Undercover Economist has crept back to the reading list – after reading twenty-odd pages on supply and demand which could just as easily been explained by a graph that could fit a gapingvoid postcard, I had judged it a waste of time, but I am now tempted to reassess my judgment.

I am not sure whether this book will “forever change the way you look at things” as the blurb on the cover claims, but it is definitely an insightful and entertaining book that would be of interest to anyone with a slight interest in economics and the logic of our lives.

Reading list inspired by the Logic of Life:

1) Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
2) Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
3) How to lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff
4) Origin of Wealth by Eric D. Beinhocker
5) The Hare and the Tortoise by John Kay
6) The Winner’s Curse by Richard Thaler
7) Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Thomas Schelling
8) The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Last weekend while I was browsing at the local bookstore, I picked up Desert Flower. Waris Dirie grew up as a nomad in Somalia, until she ran way from home at the age of 14. With no language skills, no formal education and not much of external support, the lady goes on to become a model and then a UN Ambassador. She has been subjected to so many horrors, which would have definitely crushed a lesser human being. How does anyone not feel bitter after being subjected to genital mutilation at the age of five and then having had to survive a few rape attempts?

At every step of the way, she is faced with so many hardships and you often find yourself wondering how in the world would she get out of this one? You find yourself wishing that somehow, she would. And then miraculously, she does. If it were fiction, I would have scoffed at it saying its too far-fetched. But that this is someone’s real life makes it truly exceptional. For many parts of the book, I felt that I was part of a surreal world. After a long time, I felt like this was a book that stretched the boundaries of my imagined world - life in an African desert had definitely been a black box to me.

The book is well written. I loved the simple way in which the story is told. It is in stark contrast to the twists and turns that happens in the story matter. And that the book treats some of the unfortunate, shocking I should say, incidents so matter of factly leaves it to the reader to fill up the emotions - which is such a better way of writing, than to try and direct our feelings.

Despite all the differences that most readers would have with the author, the book has a universal appeal. At the core, it is a story of human determination and grit. A young woman who, with her confidence and perseverance, overcomes the many prejudices, myriad difficulties and outright injustices to find a place of her own in this world and to then strive towards making this world a better place for the rest of us to live in. Now isn’t that who we all really wish we were - whether we are born a Somali nomad or not?

All in a all, a book not to be missed.

For the uninitiated, The Plague is an account of life in Oran, a city in Algeria that finds itself, rather unexpectedly, in the middle of a deadly epidemic. The book follows the reactions of various individuals as well as the collective, as they progress through the various stages of the plague. I am not sure I would call it an existential classic, but it definitely does a phenomenal job of examining the absurdity of life, its irrationality and human reactions to anything that they have no control over.

One of the emotions that Camus paints beautifully, especially in the early stages of the plague, is the feeling of exile. The town walls have been closed and almost all means of communication have been stopped. Telegrams have become the only means of sending and receiving messages of any sort.

“Creatures bound together by mutual sympathy, by flesh and heart, were reduced to finding the signs of this ancient communion in a ten-word dispatch, all written in capitals. And since, as it happens, the forms of words that can be used in a telegram are quickly exhausted, before long whole lives together or painful passions were reduced to a periodic exchange of stock phrases such as “Am well”, ‘Thinking of you’, ‘Affectionately yours”.

We don’t need to imagine a plague to appreciate the gravity of the message. Perhaps it has been exaggerated by the unusual circumstance, but it is hard to deny that this is increasingly relevant in our interconnected global world. Far from isolation we are, you might say. But then reducing exchanges to stock phrases must be all too familiar. Loved ones who knew every aspects of our lives are reduced to being recipients of abstract accounts of general happiness, on account of the distance that separates us. Friends are emailed that all is well and that the summer is bright. For, after all, how much distance and isolation can you conquer with a message, no matter how much it is filled with love?

Which brings me to abstraction. To not experience something is to, in a way, alleviate it to a level of general abstraction.

“He tried to put together in his head what he knew about the disease. Figures drifted through his head and he thought that the thirty or so plagues recorded in history had caused nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has fought a war, one hardly knows what a dead person is. And if a dead man has no significance unless one has seen him dead, a hundred million bodies spread through history are just a mist drifting through the imagination. The doctor recalled the plague of Constantinopole which, according to Procopius, claimed ten thousand victims in one day. Ten thousand dead equals five times the audience in a large cinema. That’s what you should do. You should get all the people coming out of five cinemas, take them into a square in the town and make them die in a heap; then you would grasp it better.”

Even after reading the book, the whole concept of the plague remains an abstraction to me, the removed reader. Just a means to understand the message, the object that is separate from the idea. And as long as I haven’t felt it, seen it, heard it, touched it, it will remain an abstraction. As will most things in life, some pleasant, some unpleasant. Such is the blessing of life, though perhaps one less acknowledged.

Tarrou, undeniably one of the more interesting characters in the book, notes in his diary:

“Question: how can one manage not to lose time? Answer: experience it at its full length. Means: spend days in the dentist’s waiting room in an uncomfortable chair; listen to lectures in a language that one does not understand, …”

If we want to save time, and if doing unpleasant things seem to stretch time, why don’t we do it? Sure, you can appeal to the conventional wisdom that the time you have is constant - 60 seconds is 60 seconds no matter what you do. But then, I could argue that fragmentation of time itself is artificial and really, just a convention. When you wish you had 48 hours in a day, you don’t wish for 48 equally fragmented segments of time, but that you could achieve double the amount of whatever it is that you wish to achieve in 24. The end goal is not to save time, but really to have the perception of saved time. Then why not do something that manages not to lose time, especially when it is so obvious and easy?

Paneloux, the priest, no less of an interesting character, first thinks of the plague as punishment from God. Towards the later part of the book, after coming in direct contact with the disease, he delivers a controversial sermon, where he claims in effect, that there is no middle way - either you love God, or you hate God. Either you accept or you reject. Or more eloquently,

“When innocence has its eyes gouged out, a Christian must lose his faith or accept the gouging out of eyes”.

In other words,

“If a priest consults a doctor, there is a contradiction”.

The book reaches its epitome of eloquence in Rieux’s thoughts, almost towards the end of the plague, when the town had begun rejoicing over the imminent freedom from pestilence:

“But what had he, Rieux, won? All he gained was to have known the plague and to remember it, to have known affection, and to have one day to remember it. All than a man could win in the game of plague and life was knowledge and memory. Perhaps that was what Tarrou called winning the game! But if that is what it meant to win the game, how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, deprived of what one hopes. ”

Perhaps the book was an allegory on France’s Nazi occupation. Perhaps it was a fictional account crafted as a medium for exposition on the absurdity of life. Perhaps it was meant to exposit and acknowledge the sterility of life without illusions. Perhaps what I had read from it was nothing which the writer intended.

Does it matter really?

Everyman is a rather depressing narrative about an old man coming face to face with his physical vulnerabilities and eventually, his own mortality. The book opens with a funeral scene at a run-down Jewish cemetery, where the protagonist’s family is gathered for his funeral. The beginning sets the tone for the rest of the book. At times, it seems to be a never ending narrative of someone’s predictably uninteresting medical history. There is not much that even the best of writers can do to make hernia followed by appendicitis followed by carotid artery surgery and angioplasty and six stents interesting. At other times, it is his attempts to come to terms with the life he had lived, for the decisions he made, for the family he could have had.

Perhaps, this is where I let my own personal judgment cloud the literary appreciation of the book, but I just couldn’t identify with the protagonist enough to appreciate his worries, anxieties and vulnerabilities. A womanizer who leaves his first wife and two resentful sons for a woman, who by his own admission, was his perfect companion, whom he leaves again to marry a Danish model nearly 20 years his junior, and for whom the only passion, even when he is living in a retirement village, seems to be the young women jogging by his home and not even the art which he had decided to dedicate his retirement to. Perhaps it is that my age and gender combined are too big an obstacle in appreciating this book, perhaps I expect something of substance from a character whose introspections I read page after page, and if that substance is lacking perhaps I look for an explanation, may be even an apology even. But then, I am willing to admit that I might be the one missing the point here because after all the book is about everyman, the average Joe, and a man, not a woman.

As can be expected of a book about the subject, the book does have its snippets of wisdom. When Roth tells us that life’s most disturbing intensity is death or when he observes that old age isn’t a battle, but a massacre, we are forced to put down the book for a moment and think over the gravity of what we have just read. The devil, they say, is in the details and there are plenty of them, more often beautifully delivered than not. For one, I could not have imagined one could describe for two pages on how a grave is dug and still keep a reader turning the pages. And then, of course, there is the unforgettable narrative where he ponders about what could have been the thoughts that must have preceded his friend who had committed suicide, as an escape from the grueling pain that disease had brought upon her.

Not every part of the book is depressing. There is the occasional joy that he finds in remembering the joys of his youth and the vitality of his body.

The mark of any great book is its ability to make readers think, and if the thoughts continue to haunt them even after they have put down the book, the better it is. And on that count, Everyman scores very high. So much so, I am going to bore you, my dear readers, with some of my own nagging thoughts inspired by the book.

Recently, after a very long time, I met my great aunt, who is enjoying reasonably good health if you consider she is in her late nineties and discount some amount of memory loss. While the first thought that entered my mind when I met her was that I would be very lucky if I was like her when I am her age, she kept constantly reminding me that old age is a curse, even for someone like her. I guess it is. And I can only guess. And perhaps that is the real reason I didn’t particularly enjoy this book.

I like to live in my own delusion that when old age comes around, I will enjoy it and I will be happy to move into that phase of my life. After all, if I was happy to move from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence into adulthood, why would the next transition be any more difficult? Admittedly, one has more ailments and physical vulnerabilities, but I would hope one is surer of one’s place in the world, is proud of what one has achieved in his or her lifetime, and in general, is looking forward to a happy time, devoid of pressing demands and responsibilities.

I have reason to hope that the only topics that seem to be interest ‘everyman’ beyond the age of sixty are not nostalgically turning over their lives past events or trying hard not to stare at young women in jogging suits. Sure, the older you are, the more you are allowed to reminisce, and the frailer your health, the more time you spend realizing how important it is. But still. Perhaps I am too young or just naïve, but does old age have to be so depressing?

All in all, this book was not for me. May be it will be, when I am older and wiser. Or perhaps, it is not meant to be a book for any one, but one meant to jolt you from your daily life and make you look at the inevitable, in a not so kindly way. And in that sense, may be it is, after all, a book for everyman.

The protagonist, Changez, is involved in a monologue with someone who seems to be an American visiting Lahore. And as Changez captivates his audience and keeps him in his seat through the long evening, you find yourself listening in, enthralled.

I must admit that when I first read the synopsis on the back jacket of the book, I wasn’t that excited about reading it. After all, it seemed to be one of the several post 9/11 novels that seem to be sprouting up around the themes of immigrant identity and allegiance in the context of America’s changing international relations. But what makes this book different? It has to be the powerful and engaging voice and the complexity of the carefully created characters. Changez would have been unbelievable if a less talented writer had written the story. But in Hamid’s hands, we empathize with the 22 year old, who leaves his home in Lahore, builds a successful life first in Princeton and then in Corporate America, until he is dramatically affected by the turn of events following 9/11. It is interesting to note that Hamid had completed the first draft of the novel in the summer of 2001, and later changed it to include the events that followed.

Another haunting character in the book is Erica, Changez’s frail American girl friend. A typical privileged American girl, Erica is different in that she has suffered a tragedy and is unable to pull herself out of it enough to let Changez in her life. Again, Erica remains somewhat of an unbelievable character until you suddenly realize that the author probably meant Erica as an allegorical representation for America ‘(I) Am Erica’ and then it all falls into place. America, caught up in its own past and struggling with its own nostalgia, is unable to accept Change(z). Clever, if you ask me. This may sound a bit too carefully constructed and artificial to some, but let me hasten to add, such carefully planned allegories and symbolism, which are rife throughout this book, do not in any way hamper the reading. If anything, the subtlety makes the message softer, yet more striking and gives the reader a curious intellectual satisfaction of being a crucial part in comprehending the message. Unlike many books in this genre, The Reluctant Fundamentalist does magic in illuminating the prejudices and misunderstandings between the east and the west, without distastefully throwing them at our face.

A worthy review of this book should perhaps be a few pages long; there are so many interesting facets, from the literary accomplishment of writing a monologue the length of a novel to tackling complex political and social sensitivities in a delicate but powerful manner to employing subtle symbolism to involve and enthrall the reader to the unusual ending which is oddly satisfying despite its ambiguity. But for now, let me just say, do not be reluctant to pick up this book - engaging, unsettling and provocative, this is indeed a novel of our times.

Click for more only at your own risk (spoilers ahead).

The book is a definite page turner - its not every sunny weekend that I am convinced to spend at home. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum - but I am just dying to pen down a few thoughts. So here are some random thoughts:

I almost thought the half blood prince would be Voldemort himself, given that he was half blood himself. Well, you know who it turned out to be. That was quite a surprise. Now that I think about, I should have known.

I love the way Snape’s character has developed. I was always suspicious of Snape, right from the first book. But after the last two chapters, despite all obvious events pointing to the contrary, I think Dumbledore may not have been all that wrong in trusting Snape. Guess that will have to be the mystery we will keep guessing for a long time.

Its a pity he-who-dies died. I guess, I sort of expected it. I had a bet with another Potter reader (fan is too strong a word, though Srijith thinks that if Harry Potter could wake me up early on a weekend, I must be a die hard fan) at office about who would be the significant figure who would die in this book - sadly, I was right. *sob sob*

Overall, I liked this book slightly less than the previous two. Its a pity that Voldemort does not really appear in the entire book- though the insights into his past are very intriguing. The second half of the book is gripping, but the first couple of hundred pages didn’t have anything dark or dangerous, yet. Teenage crushes and infatuations seem such a waste of time, when more exciting things could happen in those same pages.

I love the concept of the Horcrux - guess that means we will have a lot more Potter books till all of them are retrieved and destroyed. Felix Felicis is really cool too - wouldn’t mind having some of that myself.

The next books should be really interesting - with Hogwarts no longer providing the background setting, I think they will be darker and more dangerous, and have a slightly different flavour. But I will definitely miss the school atmosphere and innocence.

Total number of books I own: In Germany, Srijith and I co-own abt 300 odd books. But back home, in India, thanks to my father who never said No to my excessive book-buying, a whole lot more.

Last book I bought: The Great Masters. It is “a selection of the greatest painters the world has ever known, all in one authoritative, beautifully illustrated encyclopedia.” I must admit this is the first art book I have ever bought, but after visiting so many museums and having the opportunity to visit a lot more, I thought its high time I bought one. I cant vouch for art-pros, but for amateurs who just want to appreciate art a bit more, this is a great book. It covers about 15 artists from Titian to Goya to Renoir to Van Gogh, and gives a brief introduction into each artist, followed by a life chronology and then some of their famous paintings. A great primer, if you ever need one!

Last book I read: “Parallel Worlds” by Michio Kaku. If you enjoy the subject, you have probably read this by now - so I wont try and “review” it. Also, I am a bit biased when it comes to Physics and anything related. So, lets just say it was a great read.

My unfinished book: A book which I plod through, but probably wont finish, now or in the near future - “Upanishads” by S.Radhakrishnan, which I keep at my desk and read a bit of, every once in a while. Srijith still complains how he had to lug the huge book all the way from home, so I have to keep it at hand’s length - well, seriously, its still on my desk, because with my hazy memory of Sanskrit, the difficulty of reading Sanskrit in English characters and the interpretation which sometimes I cant fully relate to, its taking a really long time. But I do want to read it and havent given up yet.

Books that mean a lot to me:

The whole Enid Blyton series: I can safely say I have read them all! From exchanging books with classmates, to begging my cousins, to calling up the bookshop every once in a while to order my book, to browsing every single title in our poorly indexed townhall library - I think I have done whatever it takes to get hold on every single one of her books. And I love them - and they mean a lot to me, because they single handedly made me fall in love with books.

Urmila - it was our standard IX Malayalam textbook. I dont remember who wrote it, and thanks to Urmila Mantodkar, google is not much help either. But I remember being truly moved by it. It told the story of one of the less celebrated heroes of Ramayana - Lakshmana’s wife, Urmila. She was the forgotten heroine who lived 14 years of her married life away from her husband, for nothing that was her fault. It was an entire book on her and it was one of the first Malayalam books that truly moved me.

A fine balance - By Rohinton Mistry. Not that I love only tragedies. But this one truly tugs at your heart strings.

I will update this when I remember more - for now, I am running out of energy.

Now I think I have to book-tag five fellow bloggers. Hope you don’t mind =)

Varnam
Venkat
Pramod
Anil
Najeeb

And just as I was trying to see who I can book-tag, I discovered that Pleomorphous had me book-tagged too.

If you are reading this, you are welcome to take this as an open invitation and continue the book-tag meme.

Hopefully, the book will give me some rare explanations into why Engineers turn Financial / Risk Analysts - to me its a natural step to take, just that nobody else seems to get it! Now, I just have to keep my fingers crossed that the bookshop assistant will be kind enough to order an English version of the book for me.

Who said men cant get their gifts right?