Nasuralla Mambrol and www.literariness.org

Nasuralla Mambrol hails from Vanimel, a village located in the district of Kozhikode/Calicut, Keralam state. He is working as a guest lecturer in Nadapuram Government College. He did his schooling in a Government school and the medium of instruction was Malayalam. He graduated in B.A. English from Islahiya College in Chennamangallur. He did his post-graduation in MA English Literature from Jamal Mohammed College, Trichy. He completed his M.Phil. from Kannur University. 

Thousands of people read his blog and they are not from India. He has readers from countries like England, U.S, Canada, Germany, France and Turkey. Literariness.org deals mainly with Literary Theory and criticism. While preparing for his UGC/NET exam, Nasuralla Mambrol realized that there is a dearth of standard exam study material. This realization led him to create the blog Literariness which came into being on March 16^th, 2016. It began as an ordinary blog hosted by WordPress and after one year of its inception it became a full-fledged virtual space with Nasuralla purchasing the domain name – literariness.org. (He secured the third position in the all India UGC/NET exam conducted by the CBSE)

One person who inspired Nasuralla is his own professor from Kannur University Dr.K.K. Kunhammed, who is now the Head, Dept. of English, Kannur University. Literariness.org today has around 200,000 visitors every month. The blog contains the latest trending topics in literary theory like, Affect theory, Zoo criticism and captivity narrative. The blog also provides e-books and journals. There are more than 2,000 books and audio lectures. There are also numerous study notes and digital documents. All these, you get for free. Nasuralla has published articles in The Guardian, Month Review, Ceasefire Magazine, and the Fem Magazine published by University of California. Literariness.org is prescribed as an online reference for the courses offered by Yale University, Wisconsin University, Mac Evan University.

This article is a translation of the article that appeared in the online news portal of Madhyamam.

https://www.madhyamam.com/lifestyle/special-one/blogger-nasrullah-mambrol-lifestyle-news/574522

Tales of Pi # 11

Yann Martel has dedicated one whole chapter to the story of Francis Adirubasamy aka Mamaji.  The life of Mamaji is an inspiring one. A free-spirited person who did his studies in Paris in a time ‘’when the French were still trying to make Pondicherry as Gallicas the British were trying to make the rest of the India Britannic’’(P#10). The character of Mamaji has a Ulyssean feature to it. ‘Mamaji was a champion competitive swimmer, the champion of all South India. Even in his sixties, when he was little stooped, Mamaji swam thirty lengths every morning at the pool of the Aurobindo Ashram’. Mamaji was a great teacher. He tried teaching Pi’s parents the art of swimming but he was unsuccessful in that. Even Pi’s brother was ‘unenthusiastic’. Like the Zen Koan saying – When the teacher is ready, the student will appear, Pi appeared as the perfect disciple. The relationship between Pi and Mamaji is a beautiful one. The day Pi appears on the beach to learn swimming Mamaji tells him - ‘This is my gift to you’. A gift which later saves Pi from the shipwreck. Water is a powerful symbol in Life of Pi. It destroys and preserves like the West Wind. Pi talks about his teacher as a ‘patient and encouraging’ one. He ‘remained faithful to his aquatic guru’. Apart from being a swimming champion, Mamaji was also a great story teller. (Story telling is one of the central themes of the novel) ‘All his stories had to do with swimming pools and swimming competitions’. One of his favourite hobbies was to recall the details about the different pools from around the world.  His passionate and endless talk reminds me of the character in Forest Gump (authored by Winston Groom) known as Bubba Blue who continuously talks about shrimps. Mamaji and Bubba Blue shared a common trait – They were passionate about what they did and loved in life. The chapter ends with a beautiful one liner – ‘Mamaji remembered, Father dreamed’, which neatly summarizes the difference between doing and dreaming. 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953)

Tales of Pi # 10

Richard Parker is introduced for the first time through these words. The Royal Bengal Tiger is an enigma because he is a symbol. When the Japanese shipping officials were asked the question Which Tale do you believe? ‘One with the human beings’ or the ‘One with the animals’, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba replies “Yes, the story with animals is a better story”. Life of Pi is not just one story or a tale. It is a collection of tales in the mind of the reader based on the understanding of the novel. What does Richard Parker ultimately refer to? He is the only animal in the story who has a human name. Other animals have pet names like Orange Juice. The story of Pi and Richard Parker is the story of the human soul and the human mind lost in the ocean of life. Pi (3.14) is a transcendental number just like human soul or ‘atman’. The soul exists outside of time and the lifetime of our current personality. Our bodies end but our souls never end. The soul has its own natural state of love, compassion, and clarity. Richard Parker represents the human mind which should always be kept under control. How the soul and the mind co-exist creating a wonderful amalgamation is the crux of the novel. The mind should never dominate the soul. If that happens then there is total ruin. It will be a soulless world devoid of any meaning or spirituality. When the human mind gets corrupted the true essence is lost. Pi is in total control of his own essence and Richard Parker is tamed and conquered. 

The same meaning is echoed in the lines of W.B Yeats when he says 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/what-is-soul-or-atma

http://paultkidd.blogspot.com/2013/09/interpreting-meaning-of-richard-parker.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

Tales of Pi # 9

This part of the novel examines the connections between life and death. A theme that is explored in great detail by many authors in literature. Even the image of the skull reminds one of the skull in Hamlet which can also be interpreted as a reminder to the world that death is an inevitable reality. The classic posture of Hamlet looking at the empty eyes of the skull is another symbolic way of telling the audience that death is a fast approaching reality. ‘The skull itself is a physical reminder of the finality of death’. The famous painting by the Dutch Post Impressionist artist, Vincent van Gogh depicts sunflowers at the height of their beauty. Cut off from their stems and placed in a vase, we experience their last burst of vitality as they begin to wilt in various stages of decomposition as captured in this painting. Recently I watched this movie Bohemian Rhapsody (the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all time) which is a biopic of Freddie Mercury who was the lead singer of Queen. Freddie Mercury died at the age of 45 due to AIDS. The band is famous for the anthem like songs like – We will Rock you, We are the champions, Radio Ga Ga and Bohemian Rhapsody. (Will do a post soon on the Magic of Freddie Mercury) Freddie Mercury’s songs have references on life and death. Sample this lyric.

Too late, my time has come

Sends shivers down my spine

Body's aching all the time

Goodbye everybody I've got to go

Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth

Mama, oh oh (anyway the wind blows)

I don't want to die

Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

The mori painting (grinning skull) that Pi refers to in his life is a power Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’. A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses (I found one in a Pizza Hut outlet) or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers. A memento mori is an artwork designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the shortness and fragility of human life. But Pi is not ready to surrender before death. He says “You may not believe in Life, but I don’t believe in Death. Move on”. The reader is now aware that Pi has transcended the gloominess and sadness that he had experienced earlier. He says “gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud” which is comes after one of the beautiful descriptions about life and death – ‘Life is so beautiful that death had fallen in love with it’. Would like to end this post with the lyrics of the song – We are the Champions by Queen 

I've taken my bows

And my curtain calls

You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it

I thank you all

But it's been no bed of roses

No pleasure cruise

I consider it a challenge before the whole human race

And I ain't gonna lose

We are the champions, my friends

And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end

We are the champions

We are the champions

No time for losers

'Cause we are the champions of the world

Tales of Pi # 8

Pi admits that he came out of his ‘gloomy and sad state’ by devoting himself to the study of religion and zoology. Both of these subjects play a dominant role in his life. He gives the reasons why he chose the sloth as the subject of his zoological study. Sloths are ‘calm, quiet and introspective’. Yann Martel then embarks on a journey to describe the sloths in detail. My above post talks about one member in RR who is a keen observer of nature. I think that’s one thing we all miss in our lives. To stop and gaze at the world passing by. There is one similarity between Yann Martel’s life when he visited India and Pi’s life in Canada – both of them had a ‘shattered self’. With one failed book behind him, Martel – then merely an aspiring writer – spent six months in south India in 1996. He visited Trivandrum Zoo, where he interviewed its director, observed the tigers, and ate French toast in the Indian Coffee House just across the road. The Life of Pi started to emerge in a “smashed up, kaleidoscopic” way.                                        

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/29/india.bookerprize2002 As we listen to the soul-stirring OST of Mychael Danna, we feel the slowness of life. Pi quoting a zoologist writes that the sloths reminded him of the ‘upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing’(P#5). It is quite unfortunate that in the movie Zootopia, the sloth is made a butt of ridicule and it contradicts the notes on sloth by Pi. ‘The three-toed sloth lives in a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips’’ (P# 4)

Name and the Named

The discussion on Anton Chekov in RR, made me do a minor research on the surname Chekhov. It is a well-known fact that Salman Rushdie throughout his post-fatwa life adopted a pseudo name. It is a historical irony that Rushdie received the life-changing call from a BBC journalist on the Valentine’s day in the year 1989. The hatred had its epicenter in the Iranian theocracy. Rushdie was immediately asked to invent a new avatar or an alias and as a fan boy of both Chekhov and Conrad, the name that came into his mind was Joseph Anton. He describes them as his ‘godfathers’ and he was greatly influenced by this quote from Joseph Conrad “I must live until I die, mustn’t I?” Salman Rushdie didn’t stop there. ‘Chekhov and Zulu’ is the name of the short story in the collection titled – East, West, where the themes are drawn from his life as Joseph Anton. The story is about two friends with codenames Pavel Chekhov and Hikaru Sulu who are entrusted with a mission to collect intelligence on radical Sikhs in Britain following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Pavel Chekhov is also the name of the character in the Start Trek series and it was played by an actor by the name Anton Yelchin from 2009-2016. 

The act of naming has become quite rampant these days. I would like to pinpoint two instances where names where changed due to some political drama. President Trump referred to Tim Cook as Tim Apple during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board. The Apple CEO has replaced his last name with Apple logo on his twitter profile. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cortège renamed their twitter handle to Chowkidar Narendra Modi in an attempt to thwart the opposition jibe based on the name ‘chor’.

Just few days back, I came upon this interesting thread of exchanges in Twitter which appeared in the timeline of my favorite author – Manu S Pillai. 

What's your name?"

"Manu"

"I mean your full name."

"Manu"

"Arey your school name?"

"Manu"

"Is it short for something?"

Out of sheer frustration:

"Yes, Manmohan."

The excitement reached its pinnacle when our old RRian and MCCian P J George of the Hindu shared his version of it. 

What's your name?

- George

- But what's your Indian name?

- George

- No, what do they call you in India?

- E M S Namboothirippad

- Ah, so George...

My first name had many versions in different places that I have worked. In North Africa and the Middle-East they called me as Bremjith due to their issues with the plosives. In Thailand, they called me Plemjith due to their problems with approximant consonants. 

Tales of Pi 6-7

The Tales of Pi - #6

The author is seated inside the Indian Coffee House and like any other writer was looking at the world go by. Maybe he exhibiting signs of restlessness, maybe sporting a blank look on his face. All around him there is the hustle and bustle of an Indian coffee shop in a crowded Indian city. He befriends this elderly man who had ‘great shocks of white hair’. The usual conversation between a curious local and backpacker ensues. When the elderly man learns that the foreigner is a writer he was amused and ‘his eyes widened and he nodded his head’ When the author is about to leave, the elderly man makes a statement that becomes the crux of the novel. ‘I have a story that will make you believe in God’ he tells the author and asks to visit Canada to meet the main character of the story. He encourages the author to ask ‘all the questions that he wants’. Yann Martel has said that he was a non-believer and in the article in The Guardian he talks about this.’ At the end of 1996, as a hard-up writer with two little-known books to his name, he backpacked to the Indian subcontinent and was, he says, “dazzled”. He enjoyed visiting Hindu temples, but found himself absorbed in other religions too: “Round the corner from where the Hindu gods lived there was always a church or a mosque or a temple of another faith.” Martel’s upbringing had been non-religious, but in India he realized he was “tired of being reasonable”; it was leading him nowhere.’ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/04/books-interview-yann-martel-the-high-mountains-of-portugal. There is also this connection in our country between animals and religion which created in Martel to delve deeper into faith. Life of Pi is also Life of faith and belief. 

Tales of Pi #7

The novel, Life of Pi is divided into three parts and all the three parts are based on three locations underlining again the importance of ‘space’ in contemporary literature. All three spaces mentioned in the book is connected by the ocean. The diminutive sized ship/floating vessel in the cover page for Part 1 also reminds me of NGC explorer Paul Salopek’s narrative of the human migration from Africa to the other parts of the world. Even Cheron and his boat trips across the river Styx (memory and forgetfulness) can be used as reference here. The ship also becomes a symbol of hope and it offers the possibility of starting a new life in a new land. Alan Kurdi’s image brings us closer to the perils involved in this great human migration which we have read in the poignant tale by John Steinbeck – Grapes of Wrath. The title of the novel by Deepak Unnikrishnan - Temporary People talks about the Middle East expatriate population. The tale is also the tale of the Con-temporary people. The opening lines of Chapter one is all about the state of a new face in the ‘unaccustomed earth’. For Pi, the struggles were extreme and he was alone in the gloomy world. He narrates his experience of visiting an Indian Restaurant in Canada and how he used his fingers to gobble down the south Indian food. The waiter with a critical look on his face asks ‘Fresh off the boat. are you? Pi says that the waiter had no idea how deeply those words wounded him. ‘They were like nails being drive into my flesh. I picked up the knife and fork. I hardly ever used such instruments. My hands trembled. My sambar lost its taste’. (P#7) 

Tales of Pi 1-5

The Tales of Pi - #1

á mes parents et à mon frère – (to my parents and to my brother)  

The dedication that precedes the author’s note is a reminder of the lives lost during the perilous voyage in the Pacific Ocean. There is loneliness and a sense of rootlessness in these words. The heaviness of 227 adrift days is reflected in this dedication. The dedication also brings in the fact that the speaker is alone on one side and the other members of his family are together on the other side. The dedication is also a journey from hope to hopelessness. ‘I returned scrutinizing the horizon, my hopes high’ (P#122) versus ‘I looked out at the empty horizon. There was so much water. And I was all alone. All Alone. I burst into hot tears. I buried my face in my crossed arms and sobbed. My situation was patently hopeless (P#169) 

The Tales of Pi - #2

In the author’s note, the author in the novel talks about being restless and how little money he had with him. He goes on to describe the three reasons why he journeyed to India. The first two reasons are really interesting - that a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature and a little money can go a long way in India. The way the world looks at India is worth exploring here. Victoria and Abdul, Eat, Pray and Love, These Foolish Things (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), and Passage to India are some of the literary works that explored this subject matter. 

The Tales of Pi - #3

As the author in the novel (maybe Yann Martel himself) gets ready for his trip to India, his friend warns him about the funny English that people speak and also the word bamboozle which means ‘cheat or fool’. As a writer, this is exactly what he plans to do. To write a novel set in Portugal without visiting the country. In the first few lines of the note he says, ‘a novel set in Portugal in 1939 may have very little do with Portugal in 1939’ and in the very next page he defines ‘fiction as the selective transformation of reality’ and he ends the argument with the question – What need did I have to go to Portugal? So, Is fiction trying to bamboozle the reader? 

The Tales of Pi - #4

The struggles of a writer to create something unique is the main idea that is portrayed in these lines. Just like Pi who tried to make meaning/value out of his sudden and unexpected orphan status, the writer tries for some truthfulness in his writing. He is aware of the moment that robs him off the spark or the element and he talks about the death of the story. The writer feels as if his ‘soul is destroyed’ and there is ‘an aching hunger’ inside him to create something with which can connect emotionally. He was restless once again. Like George Herbert’s ‘The Pulley” which ends with these lines 

“Yet let him keep the rest, 

But keep them with repining restlessness; 

Let him be rich and weary, that at least, 

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 

May toss him to my breast.”

The author is preparing himself and his readers for the great tryst with God. 

Since Canine literature is the talk of the day at RR with the lovely Nerudian lines and the subsequent discussions, I would like to share a personal literary creation of mine – a short story (if we can name it so) A story which I wrote in the year 2006, in the month of February while travelling in Mangalore Mail from my hometown to Chennai. This story is inspired by the Dachshund who died on November 11,2005. This story occurred in my mind because of the emotional connection I had with the dog who was the best we had in our family. The author in the author’s note is so correct when he says that we cannot write if we don’t have the emotional connect. Even to understand religion we need emotions and that extra spark to see God -the ultimate creator. 

These personal interpretations of Life of Pi by Yann Martel, are usually written while listening to the soulful music of Mychael Danna, the genius behind the OST. It helps me to connect emotionally with the life of Pi and his tales. 

The Tales of Pi - #5

One of the main motifs in the novel is the journey. It is both internal and external, physical and psychological. Every time I read the lines of Yann Martel I feel the hard work that has gone into the preparation of this masterpiece. I remember reading about Manjula Padmanabhan who locked herself up in a room to write Harvest and how it won the first Onassis award for Theater. It is a solitary process and like the journey, it should be undertaken alone. The words of William Hazlitt from his essay ‘On Going on A Journey’ reverberates in my mind. ‘One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey, but I like to do it myself’. The first quote from Life of Pi above contains the emphasize on the personal pronoun ‘I’ – I still had money, I was restless and I got up and I walked out…More like the Ulysses, the author continues on his journey and he takes his readers along with him. The next quote begins with the word – ‘I arrived’ which is an important stage in one’s life. Buddha ‘arrived’ when he sat under the Banyan Tree. Heinrich Harrer ‘arrived’ when he landed in Tibet and makes the profound discovery when he listens to the extraordinary wisdom from an ordinary tailor who tells him- “there is another great difference between our civilization and yours. You admire the man who pushes his way to the top in any walk of life, while we admire the man who abandons his ego.” 

The author arrives in Pondicherry which is just 150 km from Chennai. A magical land for the author because he meets three cultures there – One is the colonial French culture, then we have the Tamil culture and the Indian culture. A perfect case study for multiculturalism, assimilation, hybridity, identity crisis, acculturation and globalization. All these ideas shape the themes and writing of contemporary literature. The journey continues…

Who is Charles Dickens

John Forster published the biography of Charles Dickens titled – ‘Life of Charles Dickens’. It is mentioned that the main events that marked Dicken’s childhood continued to influence him as an adult.

“They used to say I was an odd child, and I suppose I was. I am an odd man, perhaps”.

Gone Astray, Household Words, 13 August 1853 Dickens began publishing the weekly periodical Household Words in 1850, and it was included in 1859 into All the Year Round, which he edited until his death. This anthology brings together the best pieces of his journalism from 1851-59 - from attacks on slums and factory accidents to comic sketches of contemporary

life.

CD uses his own personal experience in his works- His father’s arrest for bankruptcy and time in the Marshalsea prison, the period he spent working as a ‘poor little drudge’ in a warehouse and his loneliness as he wandered the streets of London, slowly sinking into the dirt and misery of those other poor workers living on the edges of the society, tramp existence hardening into a permanent way of life. The figure of an innocent child lost in the city is one that Dickens returns to like someone touching a bruise, at once drawing him back and driving him on. It is these events that stirred the young writer’s mind as he faced the world and established his place within it.

On 7th February 1812, Charles Huffam Dickens was born. He had one brother and two sisters. In Dicken’s childhood the family moved to London and then down to Chatham and the shipyards, Kent Marshes and river Medway which inspired landscape and action in Great Expectations. Charles was a small and sick child who enjoyed books, acting, joking and singing and wrote a couple of tragedies when he was eight or nine. He had a fascination for the Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One nights which he read when he was young, and it made a lasting impression which helped to shape his imagery and the adventurous wanderings of many of his characters. His education was interrupted in 1822 when the family moved back to London. There he became a household drudge, cleaning boots and going to the shops. The solitude and humiliation he felt when he was 11 or 12 made him discover the underbelly of London with its unpleasant streets, filthy river, its crimes, drunks, prostitutes, crowds and lonely people which all go to the creation of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. He started working as a clerk and that experience is used in the office scenes of Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol. He was inspired by his father who was making a fresh start as a reporter. Feeling his lack of education, he read history and the classics of literature in the British Museum Reading Room. Great Expectations is autobiographical and like Pip he too was wounded by a bad mother figure. He wounded but healed by the illiterate loving blacksmith Joe and by the convict Magwitch for whom he steals. Joe and Magwitch are two of Dicken’s best virtuous people.

Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812 to June 9, 1870) was a British novelist, journalist, editor, illustrator and social commentator who wrote such beloved classic novels as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Charles Dickens went on to produce a massive amount of writing during his lifetime. He published fifteen novels, wrote hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces, lectured and performed both in England and in the United States, wrote plays, wrote thousands of letters and edited two journals. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is suggestive of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically disgusting characters. On December 25th he met John Forster who became his close friend and

biographer. He died suddenly in 1870, leaving unfinished his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Life, faith & Literature

Connect the Dot # 9 

https://nation.com.pk/25-Oct-2016/life-in-literature

Literature reflects life. While reading Life of Pi this morning, I came across this line “the reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.  Three Dots. One theme 

The first dot is a continuation of the introductory remarks. The work in focus is Yann Martel's 2002 Man Booker Prize-winning novel – ‘Life of Pi’. The line of thought continues “Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can... But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud”. Life of Pi is a story of faith and Barack Obama in a letter to the author stated that it is an ‘elegant proof of God’. The story is also bordered on the concept of the ‘primordial soup’ from where all the life forms emerged. Primordial soup can even be described as water which in Hindu religion is the source of Life. The journey of Pi in the lifeboat along with Richard Parker is a journey of transformation and he is moving closer to God/faith. Due to a clerical error, the Thirsty becomes Richard Parker. Thirsty in the middle of the ocean. Pi is named after a Parisian swimming pool which is described as a pool “the gods would have delighted to swim in” The lifeboat, Pi, Richard Parker and the sea brings to my mind the poem which was inscribed on a block of wood on the desk of US President John F Kennedy. The poem is given below: 

Thy sea, O God, so great,

My boat so small.

It cannot be that any happy fate

Will me befall

Save as Thy goodness opens paths for me

Through the consuming vastness of the sea.

Thy winds, O God, so strong,

So, slight my sail.

How could I curb and bit them on the long?

And saltry trail,

Unless Thy love were mightier than the wrath

Of all the tempests that beset my path?

Thy world, O God, so fierce,

And I so frail.

Yet, though its arrows threaten oft to pierce

My fragile mail,

Cities of refuge rise where dangers cease,

Sweet silences abound, and all is peace.

- Winfred Ernest Garrison

The second dot is about the life portrayed in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is the story of political prisoners in Siberia. The central character Ivan strives to stay alive in the prison. He shows that the way to maintain human dignity is not through outward rebellion but through developing a personal belief system. Shukhov may be treated like an animal by the Soviet camp system, but he subtly fights back and refuses to submit. Faith can be a means of survival in the oppressive camp system. God, faith, and prayer mark Shukhov’s expansion beyond his usual thoughts of work, warmth, food, and sleep.  

The third dot is based on the book Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee. This thin book is about the story of K who is physically deformed and is hated by everyone including his mother. He spends his time living off the land one day at a time. After realizing that his mother’s dream is to go back to the countryside, he begins his journey with his mother. The goal of his journey is to assist his mother and fulfil her wishes, what he believed to be his original purpose in life. On the way, his mother dies and he carries the ashes of the mother in a box.  Michael happens to stumble upon his gardening skills by doing what he had to for survival. He loves his life as a gardener.  Michael K's is a memorable character for his resolve, his steadiness, his modest and determined way of being.  He believes that “A man must live so that he leaves no trace of his living." Becoming a gardener is Michael's best bet for living out his philosophy.

Life means to live, making the best of the given resources. What is your perception of life? 

Space probes and robots

Connect the Dots # 8

There is no end to human curiosity. It is the Ulyssean spirit that takes the mankind forward.  

 

Source: CNet

‘Touchdown confirmed’ was the announcement that launched a thousand smiles and hugs at the Insight mission control in NASA. The spacecraft Insight landed on the surface of the Mars after completing a seven month and 485 million km journey through space. The title of the mission is meaningful because the probe will provide fresh insights into the interior structure of the red planet. Scientifically Insight stands for, (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) As soon as the Solar panels attached to the spacecraft is charged, it will initiate the use of a robotic arm to deploy a seismometer and a probe designed to measure the heat beneath Mars’s surface. The seismometer will record Marsquakes and study meteoritic impacts. The number of Marsquakes will indicate how geologically active the planet is. The heat probe is a mechanical mole that will drill to a depth of five meters, to take Mars’s temperature. Marco-a and Marco-b, the two CubeSats will function as radio relay stations and they will pick up signals from Insight and relay them to Earth. You can explore more about Insight using this link – 

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

The second dot is about the Parker Solar probe. The mission is to study the Sun’s behaviour. It is the first spacecraft to be named after a living person - astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 91, who first described solar wind in 1958. The parker probe during its seven-year stay in the space will make 24 loops around Sun to study ‘the physics of the corona, the place where much of the important activity that affects the Earth seems to originate’. (BBC) The Parker probe is also the fastest man-made object which can travel at the speed of 690,000km/h i.e. we can travel to Tokyo from New York in just under a minute. The Parker Solar probe is about the size of a car.  “We’ve been waiting 60 years for the technology to mature enough for us to do such a risky mission. It really is going somewhere we’ve never been before,” says project scientist Nicky Fox who has been working on this project for the past 8 years. Parker Space probe (PSP) will dip into the sun’s atmosphere, where it will have to tolerate temperatures of around 1,400C (seven times hotter than a kitchen oven). PSP will sit behind a heat shield. This special hi-tech parasol will keep the spacecraft alive and able to work. You can join PSP as it moves closer to its objective by clicking on this link - https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

The third dot takes us to the capital of South Korea Seoul where you can see AI in action.  You’ll find bins that politely ask you to fill them with rubbish, and automated smart apartments that anticipate your every need. The subway system is spotless, efficient, ubiquitous, with wifi so strong my fingers can’t keep up with my thoughts. People don’t read the print-and-paper book on the subway. Even inside the toilet, we have the wonders of AI in action. Smartlet from Korea’s Daelim is one smart potty which has a control panel with close to 20 buttons. 

The apartment buildings are examples of the ‘Internet of things’. When you pull into the garage; a sensor reads your license plate and lets your host know that you have arrived. Another feature monitors the weather and warns you to take your umbrella. An internet-connected kitchen monitor can call up your favourite cookbook. Apartment owners wear wristbands that allow them to open doors and access services in the building. Hubo, a charming humanoid robot is another that is a representative of the AI revolution that is happening in South Korea. The humanoid robots can provide assistance to the elderly and can even provide emotional companionship. JunHo Oh the creator of Hubo says that in the future “Everything will be roboticised.”

The future is getting shaped and it will unlock new worlds. How do we prepare ourselves for this changing worldview? How will we descibe it -  a utopia or a dystopia? 

Death and Creativity

Connect the Dots # 7 

Tonight, we explore the life of three creative minds. All of them had a fascination with the visual medium. They will be remembered for ages to come. This post is also a kind of tribute for one of them. 

[File: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters]

RIP Bernardo Bertolucci– One of the doyens of the Italian film industry who was almost as important as Federico Fellini. I have seen two of his creations. One is the highly significant political movie – The Last Emperor and the Eve Green starrer – The Dreamers. The former one is about the Puyi, the last emperor of China and how he dies in the prison after he is dethroned because of the Chinese revolution. The movie is one of the rare movies which was shot inside Beijing’s Forbidden City.  The Dreamers tells the story of the American student who is caught in ‘an erotic triangle’. The movie is set in the background of the 1968 Paris student riots. I am planning to watch the movie for which Bernardo Bertolucci is still remembered – Last Tango in Paris. Bertolucci was 77 and he was suffering from Cancer. The Last Emperor got 9 Oscars all of those for which it was nominated. Right from his childhood, he was raised in an artistic atmosphere. Bertolucci was a communist and most of his creations reflect this strong anti-fascist temperament. When asked in 2013 how he would like to be remembered, Bertolucci told AFP: "I don't care." "I think my movies are there, people can see them," he said at a presentation of a 3D version of "The Last Emperor" to mark the 25th anniversary of its international release. Bertolucci was awarded an honorary Palme d'Or for his life's work at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. 

The second dot/story is from an article which appeared in the November 23rd issue of NYT. It is about the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman whose centennial birth celebrations is planned this year. (He died in the year 1918) Many studies have been done on his films, exploring his themes and the techniques. To commemorate the centenary celebrations a new set of Blu-ray discs was released titled - “Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema”. It is a 30-disc set, which presents 39 feature-length films and two documentary shorts by Bergman, along with an in-depth array of supplemental materials. It is packaged as a two-volume book (one holds the discs, the other comprises 248 pages of essays and notes) Film critics have dismissed his movies as creations less important because they have fewer (film) secrets to impart to the modern audience. Glenn Kelly who wrote the article and who has reviewed the Blu-ray set says that it ‘certainly offers dozens of hours of engagement, illumination and even entertainment’. You can get more information about this collector’s item from this link: https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/1427-ingmar-bergman-s-cinema

The third dot is about a Brazilian illustrator who designed the jersey of the Brazilian soccer team. Aldyr Schlee died on November 15th.  He had skin cancer. Even though Aldyr was a professor he was best known for his design of the Brazilian soccer jersey. When he was 19, he came across this contest sponsored by the Brazilian newspaper, The Morning Mail. The only requirement was that the jersey had to use the colours of the Brazilian flag: blue, green, white and yellow. What was created Aldyr Schlee became ‘one of the best -known uniforms in professional sports — a canary yellow shirt trimmed in Kelly green with a touch of stark white, along with shorts of ocean blue’. The Brazilian team wore the uniform for the first time in the year 1954. On November 16th,2018 when the Brazilian team played against Uruguay, they observed a moment of silence in memory of the creator of the design on the jersey that they were wearing. 

The fourth dot pays homage to Prof. George Thomas who passed away this morning. He was the Assistant professor at Deva Matha College, Kerala. 

I would like to quote a line from the movie, Downsizing which I watched recently,  ‘When you know death comes soon, you look around things more close’. Is it true? 

Of memory, dreams and sleep

Connect the Dots # 6 

CtD #6 explores the human mind in the context of the three titular ideas. Memory is content-based, a dream is a process and sleep is an activity. These three ideas are explored through different stories/dots for the purpose of demystifying or decoding.

The first dot is a personal response to the novel Ignorance by Milan Kundera  which I read as part of the Reading Challenge in Readers’ Rendezvous.  The novel offers rich insights into exile and memory. Using the Odyssean tale of homecoming, Milan Kundera weaves a modern tale of nostalgia and personal memory. I was able to identify myself with some of the emotions portrayed in the novel since I too had a brief stay in a land which was far away from my ‘home’. Even today I am living the life of an internal emigrant away from my original home… but little closer.

I was able to make an immediate connection with the opening lines of the novel, Irena’s friend Sylvie asks her, 

“What are you doing here? “

“Where should I be?” Irena asked.

“Home!”

“You mean this isn’t my home anymore?” 

Kundera himself an émigré from Czech in France has rampantly used the themes of emigration and exile in his works. The novel deals with the return of the two central characters to Prague. Josef from Denmark and Irene from Paris. Irene is accompanied by her Swedish boyfriend. Kundera creates a narrative which oscillates between the lives of Irene and Josef. Irena realizes that people really aren’t interested in her experience of exile. The first chapter ends with the lines – “Odysseus sighting his island after years of wandering; the return, the return, the great magic of return”.  The second chapter contains an extended description of the word nostalgia as it appears in different languages. Nostalgia in the Greek language is defined as nostos (return) and algos (suffering), is the suffering caused by an unpassed yearning to return.  According to Kundera, the stronger the nostalgia the emptier the recollections. The more Odyssey suffered, the more he forgot. Nostalgia doesn’t heighten memory’s activity. The novel’s primary concern is all about memory and forgetting. Josef tells that seeing his old watch on his brother’s wrist “threw him into a strange unease. He had the sense he was coming back into the world as might a dead man emerging from his tomb after 20 years”. He describes his mother tongue as an “unknown language whose every word he understood”. The journal which Josef kept during his school days serves as another symbol of memory. He wonders looking at his own handwriting “How can two such alien, such opposite beings have the same handwriting? Kundera successfully mingles the political strife with the personal alienation and heartbreaks. The Communist regime serves as a background against which the lives of Josef and Irena is explored. The novel is described as ‘a novel of return’. Even though I have finished reading the novel, it is still growing inside me and in the near future, I will prepare an exclusive blog on Milan Kundera’s Ignorance. 

The second dot is based on the article which appeared in the NYT on November 15^th. The article deals with dreams and it comes with the one-line description – ‘Where your brain goes when you’re asleep helps you when you’re awake’. The article discusses the sad fact about how we disregard our dreams. As we reach adulthood, we go by the age-old wisdom that we shouldn’t ‘dwell on our dreams’. We are given lessons that say that dreams are juvenile, self-indulgent and that we should shake off their traces and get on with our day. The writer Alice Robb who has authored the book – ‘Why we Dream’, talks about how for the past two years she along with her friends meet and talk about their dreams.  According to her, there is a way the dreams will sneak into our conscious territory and influence our daytime time mood. She further illustrated the benefits of dreams by describing them as ‘a breeding ground for ideas. Dreams may even help us ‘consolidate new memories and prune extraneous pieces of information’. It is interesting to note that the book by Alice Robb opens with a quote from the novel by Susan Sontag titled ‘Benefactor’.  ‘I understand why most people regard their dreams as of little importance. They are too light for them, and most people identify the serious with what has weight. Tears are serious; one can collect them in a jar. But a dream like a smile is pure air. Dreams, like smiles, fade rapidly. But what if the face faded away, and the smile remained?’ (Why we Dream, Alice Robb) The article in NYT which is titled end with the lines – ‘Even in dreams we know who we are.’ You can explore the world of Alice Robb using this link to her blog - https://muckrack.com/alice-robb

Source: Google

The third dot is based on the article which appeared in the August issue of National Geographic magazine. The title as it appeared in the cover page is – Sleep – The New Science of Slumber. The article says that every night of our lives we undergo a startling metamorphosis. The article traces the history of sleep from 350 B.C when Aristotle wrote an article “On Sleep and Sleeplessness” and to the invention of ‘electroencephalograph’ in the year 1924 by the German psychiatrist. The machine records the electrical activity in the brain. The article explores the importance of sleep in childhood development and health. Poor sleep in kids has been linked to diabetes, obesity and learning disabilities. What is most interesting about the article is the description of a performance by the composer Max Richter who has created a minimalist, scientifically informed piece that aims to guide listeners through a rejuvenating rest. It lasts eight hours. The article is a cautionary one which gives the message – A full night’s sleep now feels as rare and old-fashioned as a handwritten letter. It explores the different stages that human beings undergo in their sleep. The stunning description about this journey is ‘a serpentine, surreal descent into an alternative world’

You can watch the musical composition by Max Richter in this link: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHMCE-c8sUc

What happens to us in our sleep? Are we caught in the interplay between dreams and memory? 

Three lives in the Wild...

Connect the Dots # 5

This Saturday night episode of Connect the Dots features the life and times of three women who lived in close association with the natural world. This is also the time when BBC is celebrating the stories of 100 women from around the world. If you would like to explore more about the BBC project, you can click on the link given below: 

https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c779dqxlxv2t/100-women

The first dot is about the primatologist Dorothy L. Cheney who worked with the primates and studied the complexity of their thought process and social structures. She passed away recently on November 9. She was a spectacular scientist and the author of the book ‘A Primate’s Memoir’. She has undertaken numerous expeditions to understand how the primates understood the world around them. She discovered that they think in far more sophisticated ways than it was anticipated. She had an empirical approach to her research. She didn’t lock herself up in a laboratory with some caged animals instead she went to the wilderness of Africa and studied gorillas, baboons, vervet monkeys and other animals. She and her team recorded the sounds of the vervet monkeys and played it back to study the reactions of the primates. Dorothy L. Cheney and her team recorded the findings in their first book, “How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species” which was published in the year (1990) Dorothy strongly believed that you cannot study about the primates by looking at their dead bodies or the single animals brought home as pets. To have a deeper understanding of the primates it is essential to study them beyond their physical appearances and observe them patiently, witnessing their social interactions. Born in Boston, Dorothy L. Cheney had spent parts of her childhood in Malaysia, India and Netherlands. Her father was in the foreign service and the family kept moving from one place to another. Her father, Edward Cheney died in a plane crash in the Philippines in 1976. After her marriage to Robert M. Seyfarth who was a Zoologist, her life changed. He had plans to go to South Africa to study the baboons. Dorothy L. Cheney recollects that moment when she decided to take the zoological plunge along with her husband. “I thought, ‘What the hell, this could be fun for a year or two,’ so I decided to put off law school and join him,” she said in an interview. (NYT) She received a PhD in Zoology at Cambridge in 1977. Dr Cheney talked about the animals in a 2007 interview with NPR. “They seem to know a huge amount about each other’s social relationships and each other’s dominance ranks,” she said, “so the social complexity, on the surface anyway, appears to be very similar to that of a very complex human society, and yet they’re not humans. (NYT) 

The second dot examines the life and times of Jane Goodall. A regular personality that is featured in the university curriculum in India and abroad. This dot features details from the interview she gave to the Guardian in May 2018. She is 84 years old and she is seated in the office of the Jane Goodall Institute in London, wearing a VR headset watching the special series ‘The Wild Immersion’, a VR project to raise awareness about the natural world. Jane Goodall talks about the ultimate aim of this project is to make the kids interested in the wild. She is also afraid that this VR video will be the only way the children will connect with the wild because most of the animals are on the verge of getting extinct. In the year 1986, she stopped her operations at Gombe and now is a full-time activist attending awareness programmes, giving lectures and being part of the campaigns around the world. She confesses to the fact she has little time to watch movies, but she did watch the Planet of the Apes series because the production house consulted her on the chimp behaviour. 

The third dot is from NYT about a vintage photographer who worked without a camera. Her name is Anna Atkins and she is a British botanist. She invented the photobook in the 1840s. She is famous for making the blueprint of the marine plants in the year 1843. Her blueprints were published in the magnum opus “Photographs of British Algae”. Some of the pages from that book are displayed in “Blue Prints: The Pioneering Photographs of Anna Atkins,” at the main branch of the New York Public Library. You may access the same using this link: https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/blue-prints-pioneering-photographs-anna-atkins. Anne Atkins father is the one who inspired her to continue with her passion for making illustrations of the natural world. She also took the bold step of circulating/showing her work to her contemporaries

to get their expert opinion and feedback. Her magnum opus took almost a decade to complete. 

We stand in awe before these three women who took the road less travelled. What kind of life lessons can we acquire from these three lives?