A Reading Challenge ramble

Goodreads is not for everyone. The website isn't the most responsive, the reviews are mostly unorganized, and the iOS app can be clunky... and yet, I have stuck with it for five years now, despite not logging in for several months at a stretch. The reason is that Goodreads has become a place to chronicle my personal reading habits and preferences. On Goodreads I reflect upon my past readings and discover new things to read. My social interactions on the social network begin and end, for the most part, through additions to the 'Want to Read' and 'Currently Reading' shelves.

One aspect of Goodreads that has enriched my reading over the years is its annual Reading Challenge. The idea is simple: at the beginning of the year you set a personal goal of reading some number of books during that calendar year. The rest of the year, through a combination of personal drive and fear of public shame, you try to read enough to meet the goal. Nobody wants to be the person who aims to read 60 books in a year and yet stands at 3 books read by the beginning of December. 

Despite reading being a mostly private affair, a reading habit is often flaunted in very public ways. When I first signed up for the challenge in 2014, driven partly by this desire to flaunt, I set myself a target of reading 50 books – a ridiculous reach considering I was to join grad school midway through the year. Unsurprisingly I failed to hit my target, but I didn't fail too badly. I managed to read thirty five books that year – the most I have ever read in a calendar year. The quality of my reading was fairly high as well. From Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose to Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; from Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence to Hamid Kureishi's The Black Album, I was exposed to a wide breadth of ideas and writing styles that year. By the end of 2014, I was inspired to write this about my reading that year. 

2015 was a regression to the mean. I could read just seven books, albeit books of remarkable note such as Fahrenheit 451 and Donna Tartt's The Secret History. This was also the year I truly discovered Salman Rushdie, despite having read some of his works back in India. You see, to realize the magic of his words one must have experienced the life of a cultural transplant, lost between two cultures, forever in known places and yet never at home. Shame, his book on Pakistan, ranks in my all-time top five. To me, Rushdie and Arundhati Roy are in a league of their own. They are like glass-blowers with words, they make language weave and twist in mesmerizing ways that one can't fully understand but still recognize as beyond one's abilities to mimic. 

The poor showing in 2015 lowered my expectations for 2016. A book a month was all I asked of myself. The score at the end of the year was a very healthy 15. One book that stands out, in hindsight, from that year is Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. I have always fancied melancholy in literature, especially when it is tied to a good plot and relatable characters. 2016 was also the year I was introduced to graphic novels, thanks to my friend Clint. 

If 2014 was my Steven Spielberg year – voluminous – then 2017 would be my Daniel Day Lewis year. I read half as many books, but each one was a hit out of the park. Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses will rank as one of the most involved reading experiences. The North Water was chilling and brutal. Zadie Smith's On Beauty was wise and cool. I was breezing through incredibly complex works and my writing improved, including my technical writing at work! At one point I was reading over two hours a day. 

Sadly 2018 was another regression. I was still spending time with the occasional gold nugget, such as Salman Rushdie's Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights, but the bulk of my reading during the year consisted of Tintin on my iPad. For most of the latter half of the year, I didn't touch a physical book. This continued into the early months of 2019. Eventually in March, I logged into Goodreads and saw Reading Challenge progress updates from many of my friends. I was very disappointed with myself and set myself the lowest bar yet. I challenged myself to read merely six books in the remaining nine months of the year. 

When you are coming back to reading after a long layover, it doesn't bode well to start with an award-winning literary work. My incipient attempts at reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North or the Moor's Last Sigh quickly failed. The books were too deep and the language was too convoluted. I needed an easier read that could keep me engaged. Around this time, I ran into my school friend Radhika who highly recommended The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh. She gifted me her own personal copy, rife with her underlinings. The gift became my motivation and I plowed my way through the book. It was a work of non-fiction that ruminated the lack of climate change as an actor in contemporary literature. While Ghosh's searing insights into the depredations of the western model of economic growth was enjoyable, the bits I loved the most were his anecdotal passages that bore resemblance to his works on fiction. Fiction will always remain my first love. I followed it up with Sing, Unburied, Sing. It was a weird book; a mishmash of the scars of racism in the deep south and the unquenched thirsts of spirits roaming in the afterlife. It was marvelous, dull, and terrifying in parts. Next came When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. As expected it was a tearjerker. Paul's life reaffirmed something I have long believed in – it is through the confluence of disparate ideas and interests that the greatest writing is born. Paul's deep interests in literature, philosophy, medicine, and morality was evident and inspiring. 

My rapid progress encouraged me to rise my target for the year to ten books. Let's see if I can achieve it. I am currently reading Shrilal Shukla's Raag Darbaari, and John Le Carre's The Honorable Schoolboy. I will be tweeting about my reading this year on Twitter chain. 

You can find my Reading Challenge scorecards here:

2014 Reading Challenge

2015 Reading Challenge

2016 Reading Challenge

2017 Reading Challenge

2018 Reading Challenge

2019 Reading Challenge

The girl across my table

Originally written in May 2013 but wasn’t published then for unknown reasons.

A few months back I needed a new set of passport photos for work. My office insisted on a particular photo-studio miles away from where I lived. So at 10 am on that Saturday morning, off I left donning a freshly laundered shirt and freshly washed hair whipped all the way back. An alien stared back at me from the mirror. But isn’t that the whole point of a passport photo?

It started raining as I hailed the auto. Not a thunder-storm but not a drizzle either. It was a quiet, steady rain, soothing when you are inside with a cup of tea, depressing when you are outside & trying to salvage your files. The air turned cold. My straight-jacketed arms were a tenuous shield against the flat fisted fury of the wind as my auto whipped past puddles of rain water.

After my lack of photogenicity was duly reaffirmed in a velvety room that reeked of falsehood and claustrophobia, I left the photo studio with an hour to burn before the photographs were due. The rain had slowed by then and I fancied a walk.

It was a nicer part of town. Despite the rain the roads were teeming with life. Restaurants were filled with happy people brunching with fruity cocktails. Exhausted shoppers lugging their bags and slurping colorful beverages. People shouting into cell-phones, couples in a scène d’amour under an umbrella, beggars huddling against the cold, a senior citizen with an irrepressible dog — urban India. I dropped a fiver to an old lady sitting under the metro line, hugging a cold pillar for imagined warmth.

My morning cereal long digested, my tummy grumbled for attention. The rains had picked up again and luckily I found a place that claimed to be inspired by the road-side dhabas of Amritsar. It was a good selling pitch on that inclement day. The insides didn’t resemble a lorry-joint; everything was sterile yellow with a yellow washing machine by the cashier. Probably a post-modern art thing I will never get. It was self-service and I joined the lengthy queue, full of wet umbrellas and dirty shoes. A few places ahead of me was a girl. Fully covered in a black shawl and huge sunglasses, she had very short hair and was as tall as me.

The service was excruciatingly slow, but eventually I faced the (distinctly non-Amritsari) cashier and ordered a vegetarian combo meal. Armed with a beeper I sought out an empty table, reluctant to intrude upon couples occupying tables meant for six — the blindness of love I suppose. I had to settle for an empty one by the window. Occasionally the rain would sweep inside, garnishing the food with acidic rain-water but at least it afforded a great view of the street below.

As I was aimlessly scrolling my Twitter feed, I saw the same girl sitting at the table across me. She had exchanged her shawl & sunglasses for a fat book. She was not uncommonly pretty, inured as we are to the constant bombardment of celebrities in every screen. But she was striking — a sense of surity, uncommon among people constantly thirsting for attention. She had a long, tapering nose; a thin lock of hair would occasionally escape her ear. She would draw it back only for it to break free again — waves crashing against the dike. She was out of this world! Such was her utter concentration in the book. I am no stranger to the time-warping powers of a good book, and as badly as I wanted her to look up and see me, I was loath to take her away from her state of enrapture.

A green sleeveless kurta and blue denims. A blue scarf was tied around her neck, a little bit of a pirate. Occasionally, she would glance at her watch, shiny black metal against burnished skin. Around her neck was a most unusual necklace, jagged jade (?) rocks strung together with gold nuggets in between. In that yellow hive pretending to be a dhaba, she was a carnival of colors.

Suddenly the siren on her table came to life, wailing for attention. Her spell broken, she was flustered, lost for a moment. I imagine the slightest tinge of color flooded into her face as she moved lazily to the service desk. A few minutes later, it was my beeper’s turn to blare — no doubt an authentic Dhaba tradition.

The food was mediocre. The rice was cold and straw-like. The parathas were tasteless, dripping with ghee. The rajma was at least hot but too salty. The potatoes were good, a little too dry. With mouthfuls, I surreptitiously looked up. She delicately balanced a spoon in one hand and the fat book in another. Occasionally she would scoop in a distracted mouthful.

I was fascinated by this scene. Every so often, I would grow conscious and hastily return to my food, but eventually my attention would go back to the girl and her book. The rains picked up as did the honking of scooters on the road. The sun slipped behind the inky clouds and a shroud of darkness fell upon the restaurant. Her lighting disrupted she looked up with annoyance. She glanced at me. I hurriedly looked down at my food, pretending it the most interesting food ever made . I furtively looked up to she her beckoning an employee to turn on the lights. Suddenly swivelled her face towards me and once again, I dived into my food. I did not look up again. I scooped up the last bit of rice and left the restaurant.

Do I wish I had made a move on her? Sure. Did I have the guts to do it? Nope. If she had approached me, would I have been able to string together a sentence or two? I hope so. At least I am left with a unique memory and a burning question, what book was she reading?

The Man in the middle seat

As soon as I sat down at my seat, I knew the man next to me had to die. Probably 6'4'' or 6'5'', he was a giant of a man, undoubtedly used to towering over the rest of us mortals all his life. 

I could hear the Viking blood coursing through veins that irrationally popped out of layers of old tattooed ink. Red serpents and black vines writhed passionately with one another in a bloodless conflict, coming closer at one moment and pulling back the next when the man would move his arms or flex his biceps. His white tee shirt, a little too tight for my comfort, declared in a bold font Make Beer, Not War, and yet despite its pacifist message it appeared to be a perennial state of Total Warfare with the layers of rippling muscles on his chest and back. If I sat back and edged to the side, I could feel his heat and it made me quiver a little. He was completely bald; despite the air-conditioning a thin layer of sweat was lodged on his scalp and made it shine and glisten. I had to focus intensely to curb the urge to stand up and kiss it clean. I pushed the pin harder into my thigh to push back these unclean thoughts, reciting my mantra over and over again. I am Pure. I am Pure. A small drop of blood appeared on my new khaki trousers. He was a Lion among men, belonging on tourney grounds battling for glory – not in the cramped middle seat of row 19 in Basic Economy. I am arrested by an image of him giving the winning rose to me. I am dressed in the finest red velvet gown and I can feel the jealousy of all the other girls on me. The jealousy brings me back to the present and I push harder on the pin to keep away the dirty thoughts. I am Pure. I am Pure. 

Around us was unfolding the packaged and rehearsed dance that is performed thousands of times every day all over the world. An intricate performance of the same dull people, the same crowded seating, the same stale air, the same duels between pudgy fingers and minuscule overhead air vents, the same stewardesses peddling tiny plastic cups of water and shoveling giant heaps of disgust, and the same captain's mumbled reassurances. One stewardess caught my eye, her beauty a gravitational pull that yanked my attention away. Her Asian heritage overflowed like a river past Monsoon and she carried herself like a prized fighter. She was helping a pitiful old man stow away his luggage. She lightly bent down and swung the box into the air, neatly placing it in an empty bin. At that moment the bag left the floor, a tiniest grunt escaped her prim self and rattled its way onto me. I was struck mute by it. I wanted to wash her feet and rest my tired head on them. Even if she spat on me, I wouldn't let go.  She walked over and asked me, "Would you like some water, sir?" I shake my head, sweat gently pouring down my upper lip. She too should die, she shouldn't need to suffer the impudence of my presence, but I know I cannot kill both at the same time. I would have to choose. 

To the man's right sat a pre-teen boy swinging his bony leg back-and-forth in the aisle. All his attention was reserved for the iPhone in his hands that chirped and beeped with the sound of a game. His eyes betrayed a tiredness reserved for the youngest. The kid was clearly the man's spawn. He was still young but I could see the same broad-shoulders, the same regal bearing, the same lean muscle that sinewed under his shirt. Like our flight, his hormones would soon lift off too, transporting him to that reserved club of the beautiful. I wanted to hate him as I hated his father, but not now, not yet. His father tried grabbing his iPhone which the kid resisted with great gusto. They soon began wrestling, throwing small jabs and shoves at each other in between peals of laugher. It was clearly an old game. The people around us seemed mildly alarmed at this unexpected violence, but soon cooed softly at this display of familial affections. Only I felt the bruises of every misplaced shove and jab, a slap of pleasure every time. 

The flight was in the air now. Meals had been provided and dispensed. Sleepy heads started nodding off around us. I couldn't risk sleep lest the dirty thoughts encircle me in my sleep as they so often do – there are no pins in sleep and no amount of flagellation when awake could wash off the sins of the asleep. The man and child began talking about their layover in Beijing for the next flight. Anticipation began growing in me. I had a layover in Beijing too, two hours would be more than enough for the deed itself the trick was in delaying the body's discovery until I was out of the scene. It would have to be the bathroom – I wasn't keen on repeating myself, but the wet blood in my pants would testify that these were desperate circumstances. Yes, it would have to be the bathroom. I had the syringes and the prescription vial of insulin. The act began unfolding calmly in my mind's eye. It was only during the planning that I didn't need to be vigilant with the pin. A crowded Saturday in the airport. Crowds swarming at every terminal. I will follow the man into the bathroom which too is buzzing with passengers. I will stand next to him resisting the urge to peek. I pee a little into my left hand. When he turns around, I too will turn and clumsily attempt to overtake him, only to stumble on him. The left hand smearing urine all over his arm while the right swiftly jabs the syringe into his hip. As he rushes to wash off the ignominy of another man's urine all over him, I apologize profusely and walk out. In ten minutes, the man collapses in his boarding area. I wish I could witness the collapse but I know not to ask too much of life. Unlike my younger days, I no longer deny the violence of my being but neither do I ask too much of it. Only when the act is complete can I let go of the pin – the pain is the only thing keeping me Pure. 

The planning calmed me a bit. Thankfully the beautiful stewardess too has retired to her hidden seat and I feel my discomfort waning. The man and his kid get up to visit the loo, I grab the opportunity to retrieve my backpack from the overhead bin. I probe inside for my travel-sized copy of The Invisible Man. My fingers land on the smooth surface of my compass – a gift from the Master Felipe. How wonderful is the compass? It claims to point to the North, but it really points to the Past. It is a scratched and handled hunk of metal, every cut a past journey. The dial claimed we were traveling West. That was odd. Were we being re-routed due to a storm? The skies didn't seem rough. I flung the compass back inside and sighted my book finally. I settled in under the blanket as the man returned. Focussing intensely on the book, I managed to read a few pages before drowsiness took over. I snuck my boarding pass into the book as a marker and placed it into the flight pocket. As sleep finally washed over me, through closing eyes one end of my boarding pass came into brief focus – the flight number printed in large black bettering that said MH370. 

Thoughts on the movie, Newton

The conduct of free and fair elections is often used as a medallion for burnishing a country's democratic credentials. This is to be expected since elections have that peculiar property of being a self-fulfilling prophecy: the conduct of an election often justifies the future conduct of elections. Every five years India hosts the largest general election in the world. The national news and discourse, while dominated by exit poll predictions and political machinations, will inevitably feature one or two quaint stories about officials operating polling booths in some remote part of the country - often for handfuls of voters. The specifics of the story vary from year to year but the underlying message is always the same - universal adult franchise is a cornerstone of our democracy and must be celebrated. The movie Newton features one such story. A principled election-duty volunteer is tasked with operating a polling booth in the middle of a Naxal-dominated jungle for merely 76 voters. Whether he succeeds and the travails he faces in his line of duty form the meat of this movie. 

Rajkumar Rao's character, Newton Kumar, is one-dimensional; he is brutally honest, principled to a fault and aggressively bound to his duty. This black & white character, bordering on caricature, stands in stark contrast to the gray dominion of Dandakaranya Forest, the stage for a long-running conflict between Maoist insurgents and security forces of the state. In this verdant jungle the lines of oppressor and oppressed shift and blur on a day to day basis. The character's rigid exterior serves as a compass while navigating this nebulous setting. The 'system' is represented by the character of Assistant Commandant Atma Singh (AC). Despite his spiritually rich first name, the AC is a thick-skinned realist and a cynic. He distrusts the tribals - the historical residents of the forest -  and doesn't hold them capable of appreciating adult franchise. The clashes between these characters bring to bear a number of uncomfortable questions about adult franchise in these remote parts. The tribals are caught between forces they cannot control. The state wants them to vote, the insurgents don't. The insurgents surround them, but the state is everywhere. They are too few to be of interest to political leaders and too poor to be of interest to most media. The leaders speak about foreign things (infrastructure growth and foreign direct investment) and in a foreign language (Hindi). Is it really freedom of choice when the only choice is between different levels of grime on green buttons in a voting machine? Why should we celebrate the active presence of the state once in five years in these remote parts? Shouldn't the state be present every single day offering essential services such as education and healthcare? By calling attention to the one-off occurrence of elections as evidence of democracy, aren't we also highlighting the failure of democratic governance in making these remote parts more hospitable to the pursuit of a good life? 

The movie does not answer these questions. However, there is one key scene where the movie ventures to speak out. When Newton and his colleagues are returning to their camp after disbanding the polling booth, they meet four tribals seeking to vote. The AC and his team shoo away the villagers; Newton loses it! He grabs the nearest gun to hold the AC hostage and commands his colleagues to setup an impromptu polling booth in the middle of the jungle for these four men. The booth is organized and the tribals vote! Four votes are successfully registered in an election with over 800 million voters. It is obvious that these four votes don't matter in the grand scheme of things. And yet, it MATTERS to those four tribals. When you are nothing more than living shades in a dark forest, being even just a canvas for election ink adds a little bit of legitimacy to your life as a citizen of India. An institution of the state of India has recognized them -- maybe just for one day, but that's still one day more than they are used to. That is the power of an institution such as universal adult franchise. 

A few thoughts from my recent trip to Italy

A few notes I jotted down while my memories of Italy are still fresh:

Fig: A shot of Pisa city captured on my iPhone X

Italy was an experience of a lifetime; it was so refreshing to see a proud, old people content in living their lives the way they want to. Italy is a small country; it certainly feels cramped and overcrowded and yet manages to retain a sense of classy elegance with its cobbled streets, dusty streetlights, blue skies, brackish rivers and grand houses. In many ways it reminded me of Kolkata, another old, proud and overcrowded place with its unique charm and appeal.

Idiosyncrasies define humanity. If we did not have our weird quirks, we might as well give up to the machines. I loved how obstinately the Italian cling to their cigarettes. The world has long moved past cigarettes and yet the Italians can’t seem to live without them. Every train journey would end with nicotine-starved, sophisticated Italians jumping off their carriages while lighting their smokes in mid-air. Is it foolish? Perhaps, but you have to admire the bravado. 

Religion is everywhere in Italy, but never in an oppressive way. Almost every town square seems to have an old church in it; often with frescoed walls that depict beautiful images from Christian gospel. The churches are also filled with invaluable paintings and sculptures by great and insignificant artists. Only a sustained support of the arts and genuine admiration for beauty could amass a vast wealth of art in such a small country; I am truly jealous of the Italian people for this cultural inheritance. 

The only institution that outnumbers churches in Italy would be its cafes. Italians love their coffee (what an endearing quality!). You can see Italians lining up in these coffee bars at all times of the day and night to sip from tiny cups of espresso and munch small cookie bits. The baristas clearly take pride in their work; I can never forget the dimpled barista in Florence who made me sip my cappuccino four times till I acknowledged the drink was hot enough for me. 

And lest I forget to praise the train service. I crisscrossed the country on the sleek, high-speed trains that whiz by at over 250 kmph. The trains depart by the dot and have sparking clean toilets. The ticketing system is efficient and fast. One of my trains was delayed by about thirty minutes but otherwise the trains ran faster than scheduled. Commuting within cities was a breeze as well with plenty of metro lines and buses. Italy’s success with public transport suggests that overcrowding cannot be an excuse for India in denying its citizens fast and efficient public transport. 

Public transport is not the only place where India can learn from Italy. I think the Italian experience holds great lessons on how a country can deal with the seemingly oppressive weight of a long and glorious history. Italy’s history is daunting - the country has witnessed the Roman civilization, the rise and rule of the Catholic Church, the Holy Roman Empire, the split and subsequent reunification of the country, the rise and fall of fascism and the recent European project to join arms with old foes. And yet this history doesn’t seem to tear this country apart. I didn’t see any Italians admonishing the church for trying to erode the pre-Christian wonders of the Roman age. Even the ugly past of fascism seems to find a place in its history; albeit scorned with charming disdain by my tour guide in Milan. Italy seems to embrace all aspects of its history and accept that some historical puzzles won’t align homogeneously — a lesson India can learn from during its present struggles with reconciling its Vedic and Islamic histories. History need not fit a simple narrative. 

There were a few things I didn’t like. I was not crazy about having to pay for drinking water everywhere. I also found the great necessity of cash for making payments surprising in a first world country. I was also shocked by the prevalence of poverty - almost every tourist spot was teeming with beggars asking for alms. I expected Europe to have a better social security net. Italian drivers are shockingly impatient and are often rude to pedestrians. Crossing big thoroughfares can be quite challenging. 

To summarize, I think Italy is a must-visit place and I can’t wait to go back and explore the country some more.