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TOMAS TRANSTROMER TASTES TRIUMPH WITH NOBEL PRIZE

PGR NAIR — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:36:13 +0000

TOMAS TRANSTROMER TASTES TRIUMPH WITH NOBEL PRIZE

The poet Tomas Transtromer has finally tasted triumph by winning the Nobel Prize for literature for 2011. The Swedish Academy praised Mr. Tranströmer, saying that “through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” This is absolutely true of his serene poetry.

The 80-year-old Transtromer Transtromer is one of the greatest Scandinavian poets and has had a profound influence in the literary world as Sweden’s most important poet since World War II, an influence that has steadily grown and has now attained a prominence comparable to that of Pablo Neruda’s during his lifetime. But if Neruda is blazing fire, Transtromer is expanding ice. I was lucky to grab his new collected poems, “The Great Enigma” early this year and they are wonderfully translated by Robin Fulton and endorse his brilliant oeuvre.

His poetry thoughtfully explores the unconscious and challenges the reader’s conception of the world. He is also known for his subtle, multi-faceted poetry that typically explores man’s relationship with nature, and reveals mystical insights into the human mind, a result of his training in psychology.

Of his spare and incisive work produced over nearly 30 years, Transtromer has confessed, ”My poems are meeting places.” The metaphor is singularly apt for his divided career, his dominant concerns, his wide-ranging subject matter and, not least, for his claim on a growing audience. Transtromer displays enormous economy of words and expressions in his poems that gives his poetry a rare density. Equally notable is his marvellous ability to coin metaphors, not in a mechanical sense, but because they open up a world by itself. His metaphors give new meanings to things, situations, emotions or people. Just consider the very first poem that appears in the book mentioned above. The title of the poem is “Prelude”. It describes the process of just getting up from bed in the morning as a parachute jump.

“Waking up is a parachute jump from dreams.

Free of the suffocating turbulence the traveler

sinks toward the green zone of morning. “

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

Tomas Tranströmer comes from a long line of ship pilots who worked in and around the Stockholm Archipelago. He was born in Stockholm on April 15, 1931. His father and mother divorced when he was three; he and his mother lived after that in an apartment in the working-class district of Stockholm. He describes that apartment and the shifting of a bookcase into his room and filling of books that he had inherited in his poem titled “The Bookcase.”

” It was fetched from the dead woman’s apartment. It stood empty for a few days , empty until I filled it with books, all the bound ones. In doing so , I let in the netherworld. Something rose from the underneath, slowly and inexorably like a massive column of mercury. Your head couldn’t turn away.”

One of the most beautiful qualities in his poems is the space we feel in them. One reason for that is that the four or five main images that appear in each of his poems come from widely separated sources in the psyche. His poems are a sort of railway station where trains that have come enormous distances stand briefly in the same building. One train may have some Russian snow still lying on the undercarriage, and another may have Mediterranean flowers still fresh in the compartments.

”A man feels the world through his work like a glove,” Mr. Transtromer has written. The child of a broken home, the poet became a psychologist, first doing therapy and rehabilitation for six years at the Roxtuna Prison for Boys. Later he and his family moved to Vasteras where he worked with a state labor organization, counselling juvenile delinquents, treating the physically handicapped, drug addicts and parole offenders. rehabilitation.

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

Tomas Tranströmer’s poems are so luminous that it elevates you into a sombre mood of meditation about life. He has a strange genius for the image—images come up almost effortlessly. These images have a resonance with the outer and inner depths of nature and shows the psyche of a poet vulnerable to the shocks of our world. In a poem called ”Night Duty” he conceives himself in the figure of a ballast stone in the deepest hold of a ship. The poem begins as below:

”Tonight I am down among the ballast

I am one of those silent weights

that prevent the ship from overturning!’

Obscure faces in the darkness like ’stones.

They can hiss: “Don’t touch me.” ”

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

His powerful imageries are often concerned with issues of fragmentation and isolation. Forest is a recurring image in many of his poems. Being in the forest seems to connote a sort of existential abandonment — perhaps a necessary precondition to authentic discovery or salvation. The poem “The Clearing” begins:

“Deep in the forest there’s an unexpected clearing that can be

reached only by someone who has lost his way.

The clearing is enclosed in a forest that is choking itself. Black

trunks with the ashy beard stubble of lichen. The trees

are tangled tightly together and are dead right up to the tops,

where a few solitary green twigs touch the light. Beneath them:

shadow brooding on shadow, and the swamp growing.”

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

The exotic provenance of images in his poems is balanced by the stones, forests, villages and cities of his native Sweden, the chief metaphors of his meditations on existence. One obsessively recurring image complex : the car, the driver, the mass migration of traffic. The motif of driving somewhere, anywhere, becomes an effective symbol for contemporary man, encased in his technology, separated from the earth, prone to sudden accident, moving in the blind flow of traffic like ”a sluggish dragon” over asphalt where ‘’seeds try to grow.” His marvelous poem “Alone” is an example of it. May be his life as a psychologist explains his fascination with things that might have arisen only from dreams, from the archetypal forms that lie deep, deep within us all. Consider the following passage

“It’s spring and the air is very strong. I have graduated from the university of oblivion and am as empty-handed as the shirt on the clothesline.”

Swedish poetry tends to be very rational, and therefore open to fads. Tranströmer, simply by publishing his books, led a movement of poetry in the opposite direction, toward a poetry of silence and depths. Read the poem ” April and Silence” and note the striking third stanza.

April and Silence

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

Spring lies desolate.
The velvet-dark ditch
crawls by my side
without reflections.

The only things that shines
is yellow flower.

I am carried in my shadow
like a violin
in its black box.

The only thing I want to say
glitters out of reach
like the silver
in a pawnbroker’s.

Tranströmer was able to tackle the ‘big’ subjects without seeming in the least bit pretentious or foolish. I was bit shocked to read his description of how grief displaces our everyday sense of reality in ‘After Someone’s Death’. It is a poem of three stanzas of four lines each. As in many of Tomas Tranströmer’s poems, this one begins with the appearance of a story, but by the end, the series of disconnected images do not seem to add up to a coherent narrative. It is the speaker’s visual (rather than organic) ordering of things that holds the poem’s various images together. The title suggests the discontinuity between life and death; it is the time after someone’s death that the poem considers.

After Someone’s Death

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

Once there was a shock
that left behind a long pale glimmering comet’s tail.
It contains us. It blurs TV images.
It deposits itself as cold drops on the aerials.

You can still shuffle along on skis in the winter sun
among groves where last year’s leaves still hang.
They are like pages torn from old telephone directories–
the names are eaten up by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear your heart throbbing.
But often the shadow feels more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

Transtromer has traveled extensively, and much of the pleasure of his art is in the wit and accuracy of his imagination as it expands our awareness and renews the familiar. In a smoky hut in Madeira, two fish are frying with ”tiny garlic explosions.” New York City seen at night from a distant prospect is like ”a spiral galaxy seen from the side,” the dozing bodies in its subway cars becoming ”catacombs in motion.” (Ref to the poem `Schubertina given at the end`). Sometimes these deft formulations go beyond pungent perception to express an aesthetic credo, a moral stance, as in a prose-poem titled ”Upright,” which captures the condition of living ”free but wary” in the memory of a visit to the Sara tribe in Africa. In ”From an African Diary”, he describes climbing on a canoe hallowed from a log:

”The canoe is incredibly wobbly , even when you sit on your heels. A balancing act. If the heart lies on the left side you must incline your head a little to the right, nothing in the pockets, no large gestures, all rhetoric must be left behind. Just this: rhetoric is impossible here. The canoe glides out over the water.”

Penetrating insights about the mystery of existence are abundant in his poems and it has led to Tranströmer being described as a visionary poet, and certainly a sense of the numinous, of moments of spiritual epiphany, embalms his poetry. They are full of stolen moments when he seems to have caught himself off-guard: “I pause with my hand on the door handle, take the pulse of the house”, or “I stand under the starry sky / and feel the world creep / in and out of my coat / as in an ant-hill”.

Finally, I present below one of the great poems of Transtromer. It is titled, ` Schubertiana’`. His brilliant artistry in combining visuals to create a sense of cosmic wonder, of communion across time and space is magnificent in this poem.

Here’s how he describes what happens as he listens to the Schubert String Quintet: ‘I curl up like an embryo, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future/suddenly feel that the plants have thoughts’. The importance of music, in this view, is not just that it transcends our daily lives, but that it connects different aspects of existence. Moreover music wakens us to ways of being human that elude the grasp of our worse instincts. The great composer Franz Schubert’s String Quintet may indeed be ‘heroic’ but

…those whose eyes enviously follow men of action, who secretly

despise themselves for not being murderers,

don’t recognise themselves here,

and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can

be bought, don’t recognise themselves here.

Read the poem in its entirety as below

Schubertiana

(Translated by Robin Fulton)

In the evening darkness in a place outside New York, a viewpoint point where

one single glance will encompass the homes of eight million

people.
The giant city over there is a long shimmering drift, a spiral galaxy seen

from the side.
Within the galaxy coffee-cups are pushed across the counter, the shop

windows beg from passers-by, a flurry of shoes leave no prints.
The climbing fire escapes, the lift doors glide shut, behind police -
locked doors a perpetual seethe of voices.
Slouched bodies doze in subway cars, the hurtling catacombs.
I know too – without statistics – that right now Schubert is being played
in some room over there and that for someone the notes are
more real than anything else.

The endless expanses of the human brain are crumpled to the size of a fist.
In April the swallow returns to last year’s nest under the guttering of this

very barn in this very parish.
She flies from Transvaal, passes the equator, flies for six weeks over two

continents, makes for precisely this vanishing dot in the land-

mass.
And the man who catches the signals from a whole life in a few ordinary
chords for five strings,
who makes a river flow through the eye of a needle,
is a stout young gentleman from Vienna known to his friends as `The
Mushroom,” who slept with his glasses on
and stood at his writing desk punctually of a morning.
And then the wonderful centipedes of his manuscript were set in motion.

The string quintet is playing. I walk home through warm forests with the

ground springy under me,
curl up like an embryo, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future, suddenly

feel that the plants have thoughts.

So much we have to trust, simply to live through our daily day without
Sinking through the earth!
Trust the piled snow clinging to the mountain slope above the village.
Trust the promises of silence and the smile of understanding, trust that

the accident telegram isn’t for us and that the sudden axe-blow

           from within won’t come.
Trust the axles that carry us on the highway in the middle of the three
           hundred times life-size bee swarm of steel.
But none of that is really worth our confidence.
The five strings say we can trust something else. And they keep us com-
           pany part of the way .
As when the time-switch clicks off in the stairwell and the fingers –
          trustingly – follow the blind handrail that finds its way in the
          darkness.

We squeeze together at the piano and play with four hands in F minor,
two coachmen on the same coach, it looks a little ridiculous.
The hands seem to be moving resonant weights to and fro, as if we were

         tampering with the counterweights
in an effort to disturb the great scale arm’s terrible balance: joy and
         suffering weighing exactly the same.
Annie said, `This music is so heroic,’ and she’s right.
But those whose eyes enviously follow men of action, who secretly
          despise themselves for not being murderers,
don’t recognize themselves here,
and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can be

bought, don’t recognize themselves here.
Not their music. The long melody that remains itself in all its transfor-

mations, sometimes glittering and pliant, sometimes rugged

and strong, snail-track and steel wire.
The perpetual humming that follows us — now –
up
the depths.

By bestowing Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy has finally recognized the world’s most translated poet, a poet who truly grapples with the agony of modern man and daringly defines our inner world.The turbulent silence of Transtromer has triumphed finally.

Ref: The Great Enigma: new and collected poems translated by Robin Fulton

The Winged Energy of Delight-poems from Europe, Asia and the Americas translated by Robert Bly

It’s the Dream

PGR NAIR — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:43:08 +0000

Some poets conquer you at the very first reading itself and you know that they are going to be part of you forever. For me, the great Norwegian poet Olav H Hauge was one of a kind, a rarity in modern literature. I encountered his poetry first in an anthology edited by Robert Bly titled, “The winged Energy of Delight”. Since then I had been waiting to get hold of his poetry collection and I must confess that my emotions on reading them were ineffable. As Robert Bly says -” Olav Hauge’s flavour is persistent, like the taste of persimmons that we can never forget.” I agree that the tang that even his tiny and taut poems give last for long.

Norway has produced three great poets in the last century and they are Rolf Jacobsen, Olav H Hauge and Tarjei Vesaas. Their contributions were significant in bringing Scandinavian poetry to the forefront of modern world literature. I had written a blog earlier on the poetry of Rolf Jacobsen titled Room 301 . This blog is the second in the trilogy series that I have planned. Like Robert Frost, Olav Hauge led a solitary life and wrote poetry in a country side in western part of Norway. He was born in 1908 and lived all his life on what he could produce from three acres of ground.

He lived in the old pre-commercial gift-giving society and visitors say the richness in his house lay in the handmade spoons and bowls, the wooden reading chair, and book cases to which best poetry from many continents had found its way. Olav was an avid reader and he modestly confesses in an interview that half his life was spent in the world of literature. Thus, working as a gardener and fruit farmer in Ulvik where he grew up, he lived a grand life in the books that he collected and the poems that he wrote.

Olav Haugue’s poems are written in his native western Norwegian dialect, conveying by their very word forms both an earthiness and a down-to-earth acceptance of the cycle of life which Standard English cannot transmit in the same way. Yet the translation by Robert Fulton, with its simple, concrete vocabulary, repetition, and straightforward syntax, is as close one can hope to get to the deceptive simplicity of the original. Let us start with a very well known poem.

Don’t give me the whole truth

Don’t give me the whole truth,
don’t give me the sea for my thirst,
don’t give me the sky when I ask for light,
but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote
as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing
and the wind a grain of salt.

The above poem is simply sublime as it is about sensitivity and delicateness. The beauty of it is that the poet does it marvelously with concrete images. And it has an amusing and appealing quality too. The poet announces right away what he wants:”Don’t come to me with the whole truth”. The poet then asks us to bring only a “hint” when he asks for truth, and as a model for such discretion, mentions that bird carry away only a few drops of water and the wind takes from the ocean only a grain of salt. This short, straightforward and tough style is remindful Chinese poetry, of putting as few words to a phenomenon as possible.

The following is another famous poem in Norway, and in its simplicity it points to something central to each of our particular expressions of existence. A comforting as well as uplifting poem in the sense that each has to tread one’s path in a unique way knowing that even the trail of one’s journey will be cleaned irrevocably

Your Way

Translated by Robin Fulton

No-one has marked out the road
you are to take
out in the unknown
out in the blue.

This is your road.
Only you
will take it. And there’s no
turning back.

And you haven’t marked your road
either.
And the wind smoothes out your tracks
on desolate hills.

Olav’s poetry varies in form, from sonnets to short haiku-like poems, and the quality varies as well, but he has written a great deal of poems of simple beauty and usually with a meditative approach to all things small and universal. He is also a significant voice in the Norwegian geographical landscape too, as he in many ways expresses its grandeur and simplicity, its wildness and purity, and the human feeling of separateness from each other and from nature, while at the same time he transmits a sense of unity with everything and everyone.

December Moon 1969

Translated by: Robert Bly

It hides its steel
In a silver sheath.
On the edge there is blood

His spare imagery and unpretentious tone ranges from bleak to unabashedly joyous- an intricate interplay between head and heart and hand. Look at this poem in which he lauds the thorns of a rose. I loved this deft poem where the poet finds something truly positive in the apparently negative.

Briar Rose

Translated by : Robert Hedin

The rose has been sung about.
I want to sing of the thorns,
and the root–how it grips
the rock hard, hard
as a thin girl’s hand.

Sorrow and suffering are essential elements in Hauge’s poetry. It is present at all times, weighing down as well as lifting up, hopelessness combined with an anticipated redemption. Negative experiences are greatly represented in Hauge’s poetry, but they are not the final destination for the poetic self. The sorrow is heavy, and sometimes even paralysing, but the author brings a movement to the poems where these depressing emotions appear. For example in the poem titled “Ophelia” , he asks

“Where would we go
If we didn’t have sorrow and death?”

Let us consider another striking poem titled “Black Crosses”

Black Crosses

Translated by Robin Fulton

Black crosses
in white snow
stooped in rain, awry.

Here came the dead
over the thorny moor
with their crosses over their shoulders
and laid them by
and went to rest
under each icy tussock.

The combination of the pure, simple image and the symbolic treatment of the liberation from suffering are almost gothic in its emphasized and clear darkness, where rain, snow and crosses appear together in the above poem.

The dead come walking, they move – come walking with their sorrow, and as such they are used as a personification. Life and death mirror each other. The dead come walking and lay their suffering down, before they go to rest. Hauge animates the inanimate, what is already dead and buried. In this way, even the unmoving sheds a cold light on our lives. Death in this poem is suddenly our own death, as if death is already here. Hauge creates a moving image of how the dead have walked there, perhaps together, like a long file of doomed on their way to the final rest. The poet is absent, like the absence resting over empty space where no one is looking.

Think of Zen poetry of immediate experience, place it in a northern climate and austere living conditions and you have the poems of Olav Hauge. Despite sorrows, many of his poems are radiant with its bright positive outlook to life and future. Consider the following poem.

New Tablecloth

A newtablecloth,yellow!
And fresh white paper!
Words will have to arrive,
Because the cloth is so fine
and the paper so delicate!
When ice forms on the fjord, we know
Birds do come and land on it
(fjord: a long narrow inlet of the sea between steep cliffs; common in Norway)

His carefree and come-what-may attitude is again beautifully reflected in the poem below.

You Are The Wind

Translated by: Robert Bly

I am a boat
without wind.
You were the wind.
Was that the direction I wanted to go?
Who cares about directions
with a wind like that!

For the word to be a vehicle of signification seems to be its most important aspect to Hauge. The following lines from “Prayer” emphasize it

“Open my eyes, Oh Lord,
that I better can gaze
upon the wonder, not only
its outer glaze.”

I wish to end my blog with my favourite poem that I think casts a very positive outlook on life and with the craving for freedom it expresses, translates well into any human language. I wish someone had painted a picture with these lines embedded in it so that I could hang it up my drawing room. It is made up of a chain of repetition of the subordinate clause ‘that’ as its key structural component and point of departure. It is interesting to note that this acts as a dominant rhythmical unit in this poem that works through continually adding new elements to it.

It’s the Dream

Translated by Robin Fulton

It’s the dream we carry in secret
that something miraculous will happen,
that it must happen –
that time will open
that the heart will open
that doors will open
that the mountains will open
that springs will gush –
that the dream will open,
that one morning we will glide into
some little harbour we didn’t know was there.

At sixty-five, Olav married the Norwegian artist Bodil Cappelen, whom he met at one of his rare poetry readings. He died at 86 in 1994 in the old way; no real evidence of disease was present. He simply did not eat for ten days, and so he died. A horse-drawn wagon carried his body back up the mountain after the service. Everyone noticed a small colt that ran happily alongside its mother and the coffin all the way.

Ref: The Dream We Carry: Selected and last poems of Olav H. Hauge translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin

Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses by Olav H. Hauge translated by Robin Fulton

SLAVONIC DANCES

PGR NAIR — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:39:09 +0000

SLAVONIC DANCES

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) is regarded as the greatest music composer of Czechoslovakia. This Romantic-era composer is perhaps best-known for his 9th Symphony, also known as the “New World Symphony”, one of the greatest symphonies in Classical music. I first listened to Slavonic dances when it came as a bonus along with a CD containing his 9th Symphony.

The Slavonic Dances are a series of 16 orchestral pieces composed by Antonín Dvorak in 1878 and 1886 and published in two sets as Opus 46 and Opus 72 respectively (1-8 in OP46 and 9-16 in OP 72). Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, demonstrates not only the musical legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the formation of Czechoslovakia but also of the Slavic people. These are vibrant, stirring performances inspired primarily by Czech folk music. But, Unlike Brahm’s “Hungarian Dances”, which were based on actual folk melodies, Dvorak didn’t use a single bar of folk music in his works. It can be said that he immersed himself in the rhythm of folk music and styles of Slavic dances for his own invention.

He has thus made each “Slavonic Dance” a compact rhapsody able to stand on its own, in varied moods. Slavonic dances exuberantly expresses many of the distinctive qualities of Dvorak’s genius, among them his wealth of pure , fresh musical ideas; his ardent love for his land and people; and his inspired mastery of instrumentation. Vibrant with characteristic melody and rhythm, the Slavonic dances celebrate Czech dance forms, Czech humor and folk merriment as well as the supreme individuality of Dvorak’s music temperament. The Prestos and Allegros in these musical pieces are full of life without being bombastic. And the slower music has a lyrical sweetness while adding a meditational dimension to the music.

If you haven’t heard this before, this mirthful melodic music may remind you of the merriment of listening to a Mozartian rhapsody. There is a whole world within each small segment of these short musical pieces, a world that comes alive with every listening. One can simply put this on as background music (for it is beautiful and well-played), bounce along to it, or even just sit down and absorb every sound. They are played with sovereignty, energy, wildness and noblesse.

The first number , OP 46 No.1, is from one of Dvorak’s favourite dance forms. This is titled Furiant Presto has the fast and fiery rhythm change characteristics of a Bohemian dance (Furiant). After a crashing chord, the fullorchestra launches into a vigorous presto theme which is repeated. This is followed by a quieter theme stated by the woodwinds. This piece is directed by the famous Japanese conductor Seiji Ozaka. His unique conducting style and easy personality inspire the thousands of musicians under his direction as well as his audiences. He is said to have phenomenal photographic memory of the scores of all great composers. Seiji is electrifyingly alive on the stage.

The OP 46 No.7 titled Skocná- Allegro assai is a rapid Slavic folk-dance or hopping dance. The song is a little over three minutes and is very catchy with a blend of dash and lyricism. It begins with a delicious oboe figure that soon grows into brazen, monumental chords for the entire orchestra.

The No.9 of Op 72 titled Odzemek- Molto vivace is a brilliantly scored dance in the rhythm of the Slovakian Odzemek or Shepherd’s dance. The exuberant zest for life and tremendous vitality that ensues in the first bars of this piece is packed with hot-blooded ardour. It is an incredibly infectious piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKVmSVYqIjs&feature=related

The No.10 of OP 72 titled- Starodávný- Allegretto grazioso - has been identified as an example of the Lachian starodavny , a processional dance. This one is one of my favourites. Here the strings come to the force in Dvorak’s reduced orchestration. It somehow brings a mood of melancholy that grows increasingly sombre. It is again conducted by Seiji.The Cellist is none other than Yo-Yo Ma , one of the greatest cellists alive and the violinist is equally reputed Itzhak Perlman. It is fun to watch them compete like kids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE4iNSi3a4w

(Embedded file not working. So do open the above link and listen to this as it is the best slavic Dance of Dvorak)

(The No.10 of OP 72 is followed by the lively number No.7 in C Minor. It is pleasure to watch Seiji in this one too )

I am also posting here a 1955 recording conducted by Vaclav Talich, one of the greatest Czech conductors and an authority on Slavonic dances. Dvorak’s popular Slavonic Dances are traditionally approached rustically, and the definitive vaclav Talich recording from decades past immerses you immediately into a Czech landscape of peasant festivities. The sound of the orchestra may not be very gorgeous but I love them for its neutrality and they are shorn of embellishment.

I must acknowledge that I lack in-depth knowledge in explaining more on these compositions as I have not learned any music in a systematic manner though my mother was a music teacher. But then, the language of music is universal and I hope the above musical pieces are good to drive away the winter blues

Dvorak

THIRUVATHIRA THOUGHTS

PGR NAIR — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:26:34 +0000

THIRUVATHIRA THOUGHTS

INTRODUCTION

Milan Kundera, the great Czech novelist, mentions in one of his works that a nation or society that has no folk tales, folk dances or folk festivals is a spiritually dead nation. In that sense, our nation, India is spiritually vibrant as it is a paradise of folk festivals and dances. Among these, there are a few that still retain a pastoral flavour and evoke an intense wistfulness that inexorably connects one to the village one grew up in. For me, one such festival is ‘Thiruvathira’.

Thiruvathira is celebrated on the star ‘Thiruvathira’ and it falls on a full moon day in the month of ‘Dhanu’-the fifth month in the Malayalam Calendar (December/January). Thiruvathira is perhaps the only festival, other than Karva Chauth, that I know is exclusively meant for the women-folk in India. From ancient times, the Malayalee women enjoyed an enviable position in the society, and to a considerable extent influenced the social structure, customs and religious practices. The culmination of this phenomenon is clearly visible in this great festival which was earlier confined to the upper classes such as Brahmins, Nairs and Ambalavasis (temple professionals). The first Thiruvathira coming after the marriage of a girl is known as Puthen Thiruvathira or Poothiruvathira and it is celebrated with grand gaiety.

As per the ancient Sangham Krithi, ‘Paripadal‘ by Nallezhuniyaar, Thiruvathira has its origin around 9^th century AD. ‘Paripadal’ has a description of women moving as a group to the Vaigai river for taking a bath. In that sense this festival has an antiquity of about 1200 years. Thiruvathira is celebrated predominantly in Kerala and to a good extent in Tamil Nadu.

THE LEGEND

Legend stresses this festival’s association with Shiva-Parvathi union. Shiva is considered as the perfect male and Paravathi the perfect devoted wife and their matrimonial solidity is an aspect that gives oomph to this festival.

Sati, the consort of Shiva was the daughter of Daksha Prajaapati. She had married Shiva against the wishes of her father. When Daksha performed a great yagna “Brihaspathisavanam” she attended it against her husband’s wishes and was insulted. Unable to bear it, she immolated herself. Enraged at this, Shiva danced the dance of destruction throughout the Universe. The other gods intervened to stop it.

Later, engulfed by sorrow, Shiva went to the Himalayas to perform a fierce ‘Tapas’. Around this time Tharaka also performed a Tapasya and Brahma granted him two boons that he could be killed only by a son of Lord Siva who was seven years old, and that he would be invisible to others. Taraka started ruling the demons as a good king but later attacked Deva loka and soon conquered the three worlds. The Devas fled heaven and went to Brahma to appeal for help.

Brahma said to the gods, “O Devas, I cannot destroy Taraka. But let me give you a suggestion. A girl named Sati Paravati will born to the King Himalaya and his wife Queen Mena and she will be a great devotee of Lord Shiva and will dedicate herself to Shiva undergoing Thapas to get him as her husband. Get the help of Kama Deva , the God of Love. Induce him to tempt Lord Shiva, who remains absorbed in His Yoga Samadhi. Let Lord Siva unite with Parvati. A powerful son, Lord Subramanya, will be born to them. This son will destroy the demon that harasses you.”

Indra, the chief of the gods, thereupon requested Cupid (Kama Deva) to go with his wife, Rati, and his companion Vasanta (the season of spring), to Mount Kailas, the abode of Shiva. Standing behind a tree, Kama Deva shot his arrow of passion at Shiva, whilst Parvati was placing some flowers in His hands. The moment their hands met, Siva experienced a distracting feeling and fell in love with Parvati . He wondered what it was that disturbed His Yoga. He looked around and saw Kama Deva crouching behind the tree. The Lord opened His “third eye”, and Kama Deva was burnt to ashes. However, after burning Cupid, by His Yogic vision, the Lord realized that the birth of Lord Subramanya was absolutely necessary to destroy the powerful Taraka. Siva’s seed was thrown into the fire which, unable to retain it, threw it into the Ganges, which in turn threw it into a reed forest. This is where Lord Subramanya was born; hence, He is called Saravanabhava–”born in a reed-forest”. He became the leader of the celestial hosts and the destroyer of Taraka as Brahma had ordained.

Paravati performed an intense Tapas for her union with Shiva. Meanwhile, Devas lamented the death of Kama Deva as without him, there wouldn’t be any matrimony. All the women including Kama’s wife Rati started praying for Siva-Parvati union. After a lot of tests to ensure her genuine devotion to him, Shiva married Parvati on the Thiruvathira day. At the wish of Paravati, Shiva revived Kama to life to delight Rati Devi on the same day.

So Thiruvathira celebrates the intense devotion of women to their husbands. Observing Thiruvathira Vrithamm (Austerities) by women is said to bestow blessed conjugal bliss on them and also prosperity, longevity and blessings to their husbands . Nubile girls are believed to be blessed with befitting and devoted husbands if they undergo Thirvathira Vrithum.

As with most time-honoured traditions, men are not required to reciprocate for the women in their lives in any way, shape or form.

THE THUDI RITUAL

This season is noted by mild cold breezes, pleasant weather, all embracing moonlight, and starry skies. It is considered to give the women folk a lot of inner peace and fill them with a rare sweetness and sensuality. The Thiruvathira Vrithum also known as Ardra Vrithum starts seven days before Thiruvathira on the star of Revathi . From that day onwards, the pubescent girls and married women wake up very early in the morning, march as a group with lit bronze lamps and “Ashtamangalyam’ to the nearby ponds. After placing the lamps on the bank, they plunge into the pond, form a circle and begin the ritual of ‘Thudikottu’ . One of them takes the lead, singing a song pertaining to Kamadeva. ‘Thudi’ songs also invoke images of the bathing scenes of Paravti and her consorts. These songs are simultaneously accompanied by a interesting sound produced on water. The palm of the left hand is closed, and kept immediately underneath the surface of the water. Then the palm of the right hand is forcibly brought down in a slanting direction, and struck against its surface so that the water is completely ruffled, and is splashed in all directions producing a deep reverberating sound. This water dance is known as “Thudi”. Since Thiruvathira also commemorates the death of Kamadeva, this hitting the surface of water with an orientation towards the breast is symbolic of breast beating, lamenting the death of Kamadeva.

On every Thiruvathira, one could hear this resonant and rhythmic beat of Thudi all over the village. As a boy I too used to jump into our pond along with my grandmother and mother splashing water. After the bath, the women dress in the neatest and grandest possible attire and visit the nearby Shiva temple to offer prayers and to commence their Vrithum.

THIRUVATHIRA PUZHUKKU

As Thiruvathira is an auspicious day of penance, women do not take any food containing rice. Instead they have plantain, tender coconuts, tubers etc.

This has consequently led to the ritualistic preparation of the famous dish , “Thiruvathira Puzhukku” which is prepared with eight different tubers, also known as ‘Ettangadi’. Traditionally, it is prepared with roots such as koorka (Chinese potatoes), Taro (chembu), Kaachil, elephant yam (Telinga potatoes), Tapioca, Red beans, Potatoes, and garnished with coconut shreds, cumin powder and curry leaves. I think this dish has a fertility myth associated with it as a majority of the vegetables used are tubers that grow beneath the ground or the womb of the earth.Another belief is that through this ritual of preparation, Kamadeva’s body represented by the tubers is regained.

THE SWING SESSION

After a leisurely lunch, women chew betel. Among Namboodiris, Ambalavasis, and high class Nairs, there is a convention that each woman should chew 108 betel leaves. Then they move as a group for the Oonjalattom (swinging on an oonjal or swing). Though this swinging is an important item of amusement, it is said that it typifies the attempt these women make in order to hang themselves commemorating the demise of Kama (Cupid).

During this season, huge swings would come up in the backyards of most of the houses, on trees like the mango tree, jack fruit tree etc. Often, the strongest vines were tied on to two huge coconut trees, and from that vine was suspended the swing. In my childhood, the swings were made of coir ropes. The seat would be rough hewn: the wide end of a coconut palm leaf stem, cut to the required size. Often, with a strong push, the swing would go so high that the seat and the person on it would veer in another direction. And then, the vines would get intertwined. One would have to go round and round till the swing stopped moving. It was adventure sport of a different kind. Often, it was not confined to sitting but standing on it. Shouting out a rhythmic ‘Aarpo, iyyo, aarpo iyyo..’ while on the swing added to the festive feeling.

The swing is one Thiruvathira motif that’s missed by people nowadays, particularly the city dwellers.

THIRUVATHIRA DANCE

Once the dusk sets in, the ladies in the neighborhood assembled in the central courtyard and placed a tall bronze lamp (Nilavelakku) and an image of Shiva with some flowers, plantains and jaggery on a banana leaf as offering to the deity, in the centre. Then begins the dance called Thiruvathirakkali or Kaikottikali. They would be neatly attired in a gold bordered traditional two piece dress called Mundu and Neriyathu. A Mundu is a one piece cloth draped on the lower part of the body while Neriyathu is worn over a blouse. The hair may be tied in a bun with a fragrant jasmine garland around it to enhance the charm.

Photo Courtesy : Association of Malayalee Professionals in Saudi Arabia( AMPS)

They would stand in a circle around the lighted lamp and dance as per the rhythm of the songs, often pirouetting and moving in a clockwise and sometimes in an anti-clockwise direction, gracefully bending sideways, as they sing. Dancers also beautifully co-ordinate their hand movements as they go clapping their hands upwards and downwards in rhythm with the beat.

The dance is celebration of marital fidelity and the female energy, for that is what brought Kama Deva back to life from ashes, and is performed to gain everlasting marital bliss. The sinuous movement executed by a group of dancers around the ‘Nilavilakku’ embody lasya or amorous charm and grace.

Today Thiruvathira dance has become a popular item for all occasions and is an integral part of School and University Art Festivals in Kerala.

END OF THIRVATHIRA VRITHAM

The Thiruvathira dance would continue past midnight as women were not supposed to sleep during Thiruvathira night to obtain full ‘Vrithum’ benefits. The dance would be interrupted by “Pathirappochoodal” or the picking and wearing of ‘Dashapushpam’(Ten sacred flowers) at midnight. They are worn with an intense remembrance of their husbands. The dance is then continued till early morning when it is stopped for ‘Ardhanareeshwara’ pooja. After this, the women go for bath and prayer in temple. The Thiruvathira Vrithamm comes to a finale upon drinking the “Theertham” (holy ablution water).

My eyes well up when I think of the innumerable folk festivals of ineffable charm and allure that are losing their rustic charm and fading from our collective memory. I believe that no human being can impart true grace and meaning to his existence if he delinks himself from his cultural myths, symbols and heritage.

Will Thiruvathira mean anything to our women folk fifty years hence? I wonder.

PS: Thirvathira falls on 22 Dec this year

Here is a Thiruvathira dance scene in its pastoral setting from the Malayalam movie ‘Parinayam’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zGuG-gjeeqk

BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR

PGR NAIR — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:54:43 +0000

BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR

It was a leisurely dinner evening in a Greek restaurant in Toronto. There were only three of us- my friend, Dr. Roger Greenwald, poet and distinguished translator of Norwegian poetry, and my wife Raji. We reached the restaurant after visiting the Toronto public library near our residence to pick up a book I had reserved- ‘The Selected poems of Nazim Hikmet’ translated by Randy Blasing and his Turkish wife Mutlu Konuk. I had read poems of Hikmet in the late eighties and the only poetry book of Hikmet I had owned is now the permanent property of my friend after loaning it to him. He still says he will return:). So, it was a pleasure to read a new translation of him after many years.

As we settled down in the restaurant, I showed Roger the book I had picked up. He instantly recognized it and asked me whether I had read the poem, ‘Bach’s Concerto No. 1 in C Minor’. As I am a huge fan of the baroque music of Bach, it was the first poem I picked up to read while I went through the book sitting in the subway. With rapturous joy I yelled-Repetition!!!. Roger laughed hearing my euphoric exclamation and endorsed it as one of the most beautiful poems of Nazim Hikmet.

I have posted below this poem to add to my perennial joy of sharing beautiful poems with my friends here.

Nazim Hikmet was one the greatest poets of modern Turkey. Hikmet revolutionized Turkish poetry by introducing free verse and modern poetic techniques, and combining these with traditional and folk styles. He was also jailed and eventually exiled for his leftist political beliefs and his work for social justice. I love Hikmet’s fresh imagery and spirited tone. He is comparable to Pablo Neruda in his style and humanistic vision which can be summarized in the following two lines that appear in one of his poems.

“To live like tree, unique and free

Like a forest in harmony”

Incidentally, both were friends and shared the same ideology and no wonder they became endearing poets of humanity.

Nazim Hikmet is a poet of great compassion and courage, and a believer in the human race in spite of having been in jail for many years. His poems are intimate, honest, uncompromising, gently humorous, filled with longing and hope and refusing to let despair triumph in spite of outward circumstances.

This poem is a simple one and he speaks, probably to his lover Rose, about the innumerable repetitions that one sees in nature. They are verily joy dancing in nature and without those voiceless, clueless and endless repetitions, our life is monochrome. As the poet affirms at the end, the key is, ‘to repeat without repeating’.

BACH’S CONCERTO NO. 1 IN C MINOR

Fall morning in the vineyard:
      in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
                      of clusters on the vines,
                      of grapes in the clusters,
                      of light on the grapes.

At night, in the big white house,
                       the repetition of windows,
                       each lit up separately.

The repetition of all the rain that rains
                      on earth, trees, and the sea,
                      on my hands, face, and eyes,
                      and of the drops crushed on the glass.

The repetition of my days
                      that are alike,
                      my days that are not alike.

The repetition of the thread in the weave,
                      the repetition in the starry sky,
                      and the repetition of “I love” in all languages,
                      and the repetition of the tree in the leaves,
                      and of the pain of living, which ends in an instant
                                                          on every deathbed.

The repetition in the snow -
                       the light snow,
                       the heavy wet snow,
                       the dry snow,
the repetition in the snow that whirls
in the blizzard that drives me off the road.

The children are running in the courtyard;
in the courtyard the children are running.
An old woman is passing by on the street;
on the street an old woman is passing by;
passing by on the street is an old woman.

At night, in the big white house,
                     the repetition of windows,
                     each lit up separately.

In the clusters, of grapes,
on the grapes, of light.

To walk toward the good, the just, the true,
to fight for the good, the just, the true,
to seize the good, the just, the true.

Your silent tears and smile, my rose,
your sobs and bursts of laughter, my rose,
the repetition of your shining white teeth when you laugh.

Fall morning in the vineyard:
       in row after row the repetition of knotty vines,
                     of clusters on the vines,
                     of grapes in the clusters,
                     of light on the grapes,
                     of my heart in the light.

My rose, this is the miracle of repetition -
to repeat without repeating.

(PS: I have strived to maintain the syntax as given in the book.)

Ref: Poems of Nazim Hikmet, Revised and Expanded Edition [Paperback] Nazim Hikmet (Author), Randy Blasing (Translator), Mutlu Konuk Blasing (Translator), Mutlu Konuk (Foreword)

Shift Foreman Speaking

PGR NAIR — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 03:12:13 +0000

“Shift Foreman Speaking”

Luis Urzua (in green) with President of Chile standing on his left

The extraordinary feat of rescue of the 33 Chilean miners trapped 2,000 feet underground for 70 days will be ranked one of the most inspiring events in modern memory. The rescue began at midnight on Tuesday, 12^th October, when the metal capsule Phoenix 2 pod was lowered to where 700,000 tons of rock had collapsed on Aug 5 entombing the miners. The mission was certainly an unqualified success, both from technology and leadership angles. I am more enchanted by the leadership and command-and-control strategies one could witness during the unfolding of this human drama. I did considerable reading of various newspapers and articles on this incident and what I have given below is a summary of the leadership episodes that emerged from the beginning of the tragedy to its miraculous finale.

It was Napoleon who said, “A leader is a dealer in hope’. Right from the beginning, the Chilean President Sebastian Pinera shared this hope in no uncertain terms. The president was not a mere spectator.He was in the thick of everything and his visibility was simply amazing (Compare it with the importance our Indian counterparts give to such tragedies). If perpetual enthusiasm is a force multiplier, this was evident in the missionary zeal with which the technical and leadership teams worked together to ensure synergy at every step.

Instilling courage

When audio contact was first made with foreman Luis Urzua after 17 days of search , the first words he uttered was, “Shift foreman speaking,” a true professional voice even in times of extreme crisis. The 54-year-old took charge of the situation, distributing food and allocating jobs to keep the men busy. That voice, “Shift foreman speaking” will be remembered as one of the greatest leadership quotes in recent times. The most miraculous part of the story is not the rescue. The real miracle — and most inspiring part of this story — is how shift boss Luis Urzua managed to overcome darkness, despair and the prospect of starvation to mobilize a team, who worked together to ensure that every man survived and thrived in the worst of conditions. He had a reputation among employees and one said- “He is very protective of his people and obviously loves them.” This reputation had to be pivotal when he needed to convince 32 other hungry miners, many of whom thought they’d be rescued within days, to ration two-day worth of supplies to last the 17 full days before they were discovered. The miners, at Urzua’s urging, reportedly ate one teaspoon of tuna and a half-glass of milk each 48 hours. True leaders like Luis Urzua follow heart and soul, even in circumstances that seem impossible and hopeless.

Teamwork

Everyone wants to survive. In crisis, it’s tough to keep people focused on the team rather than themselves. One of the techniques Urzua used to remind the miners that they were in this together was to have everyone eat their paltry rations in the same spot at the same time. Knowing that there could be no cheating, that no one had more than another, had to help obviate the natural tendency to break away from the team into a every-man-for-himself mentality that would have sunk them all. By the end, the miners were so bonded that they asked rescuers if they could all remain on the site until the last man was brought to the surface. Not surprisingly, Urzua was that last man.

Discipline

Every miner had a job. One became the religious leader; others helped map their tunnel to see the potential ways out. Urzua organized work shifts, giving each miner responsibilities that kept them busy, improved their living conditions and emphasized that individual’s importance to the the team. They maintained a schedule, shining lights to simulate day and night. They also maintained a strict diet even after they were delivered food. They were focused on a goal — getting out. They needed to be disciplined to keep their living conditions acceptable and keep their waistlines in check to be lifted to safety.

Strategy and goal-oriented focus

The power of plying with a purpose was the most visible leadership lesson in the whole episode. The Chilean rescue was truly a multinational and multidisciplinary affair, with contributions from a variety of companies and institutions around the world. The rescue capsule was designed by an Austrian firm. Experts from NASA and other American agencies helped to sustain the 33 miners underground, and an American company from Pennsylvania supplied the drills that bored through half-a-mile of rock. Geologists, psychologists, and other experts from several different countries offered advice while the Chilean government, under mining minister Laurence Golborne, remained firmly in control.

This might sound a facile task. One should but it’s extraordinarily difficult to assemble resources from dozens of providers while preventing turf battles from bogging down the whole effort. Not-invented-here syndrome is a universal danger to any multilateral effort, since people in charge always prefer their own solutions to those offered by somebody else, especially when national pride is at stake. Military and law-enforcement officials routinely face this problem when operations cross jurisdictions or involve units under different commands. Corporations often struggle to get agreement between department heads, even on the smallest matters. In the pursuit of a singular goal—rescuing the miners—the Chileans have shown focus and discipline that ought to humble so-called leaders the world over.

Under-promise and over-deliver

“Under-promise and over-deliver” is a popular quote by business guru Tom Peters. Yet, this is what Chilean authorities did. This may be an old cliché, yet leaders at every level routinely ignore it by creating unrealistic expectations that leave people disappointed. The Chileans did the opposite. In early August, when the mine first collapsed and the fate of the miners was unknown, Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said there was a slim chance they’d be found alive. That brought criticism, but it also set the stage for a tragic outcome while still leaving room for hope. Then, when the miners were found alive, Chilean officials cautioned that it could take as long as four months to reach them. That might have come from naiveté or lack of familiarity with state-of-the-art drilling equipment, but now that the miners have been rescued ahead of schedule, everybody awaiting the rescue feels relief rather than anger. And the Chilean government looks competent instead of ham-handed, which would have been the case if they had to backpedal from an overoptimistic timeline.

Compare that to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and low-ball estimates of the amount of oil spilled, which were continually revised upward by huge amounts, trashing BP’s credibility.

Have backup Plans

Yet another leadership trait is the virtue of laying backup plans. The shaft that ultimately reached the miners was the second of the three being drilled, and the only one using innovative air-powered drills that turned out to be ideal for the type of rock in the area. Since miners had never been rescued before through such a long shaft, the rescue operation was basically an intense experiment. Trying several different things at once obviously raised the odds of success. That can be hard to do in more mundane situations where nobody’s life is at stake and funding is tight, but it’s always worth keeping in mind that there might be more than one way to succeed—and that your first idea about how to do it could be wrong.

Shared credit

When it came time to speak to people at the surface, Urzua stepped aside, preferring to have another miner narrate a video requested by health officials. While miners in and out of the shaft talked about Urzua’s leadership, Urzua talked about the skills and welfare of his men.

Marching with a single heartbeat

Finally what everyone witnessed was the joy of team pride. It was gratifying to see the Chileans come together and win one for the home team. In an era of corporate bloodletting, political warfare, and generally low morale, the Chilean rescue is a reminder that people really can work together to accomplish something.

Celebrate Humanity

Rare are the incidents that attract international media attention for their power to instill wonder and joy, rather than horror and trepidation. This was one occasion where all citizens of the world could forget their many differences (cultural, religious, and historical), at least temporarily, and unite in a collective outpouring of human empathy. Ultimately, the miners’ rescue is a study in the capacity for peoples from diverse backgrounds and cultures to recognize that what ties them together is often just as significant as what makes them unique.

There is no rocket science to leadership. Leadership is a collection of seemingly minor things that, taken as a whole, create a climate in which people feel honoured and valued. The Chilean Miners rescue will be remembered for long time as a glorious leadership exercise in the history of human endeavour where every team member felt valued and honoured.

Reference: Articles on Leadership experiences from Chilean Mine Rescue by Rick Newman and Kathy Kristof

NOBEL PRIZE FOR MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

PGR NAIR — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 06:34:23 +0000

NOBEL PRIZE FOR MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

The great Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa (pronounced as MAH’-ree-oh VAHR’-gahs YOH’-suh) has finally won the 2010 Nobel prize for Literature. The Swedish Academy which manages the Nobel Prize stated that the award goes to him for “his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” For many years, he had been sidelined by the academy for political reasons. He is a worthy successor to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Columbian author and the last novelist to win a Nobel Prize from Latin America (famous for masterpiece, “One Hundred of Solitude”. He won Nobel Prize in 1981). My joy doubles as I am a huge fan of Latin American Literature . The academy’s perennial neglect of great Latin American writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Roberto Bolano and Juan Rulfo-all who died without winning the Nobel- is notorious. I pray that one day the living Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes too wins this prize.

Non-literary readers may still recall Mario Vargas as the Peruvian presidential candidate who contested against Albert Fujimoro in 1990 and lost it. His Cuban friend and writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante had at that time characterized his defeat as a gain for literature. As Infante said, “Literature is eternity, politics mere history.” Throughout his storied career, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has been regarded as one of the most influential writers in South America. Mario Vargas Llosa is very popular among literary readers for his astonishingly great works like “Green Hose”, “Aunt Julia and the script writer” and “War of the end of the World.

“Aunt Julia and the script writer” is a novel that walks on the thin line of fact and fiction. It is a novel that I discuss every time I encounter a fan of his works. “Aunt Julia” is perfection in craft and thematic integrity. Mario, a 19-year old Law-student working in a radio station, falls in love with his aunt-in-law, Julia Urquidi. She thinks Mario is a child and calls him ‘Varguitas’ but soon he proves to her he’s a young man already, with great ambitions of becoming a novelist in Paris. They end up in love, and issues arise when relatives become aware of this. They flee to an unknown town intending to be married. Meanwhile, Mario finds a friend in Pedro Camacho, a soap opera radio writer who, after achieving great success, has begun to lose control over his characters (they die in one episode to reappear the next) and runs of the risk of being fired since the audience is getting confused. The boiling imagination of Camacho’s scripts and the riotous life of Varguitas is interwoven in the novel. This is the most fascinating aspect of this novel. Varguitas confronts his family claiming that he will provide a good life to Julia. She encourages him to pursue his dream of going to Paris and the script writer Camacho loses his mind and is sent to a mental hospital.

The starting passage his chaotic epic novel “War of the end of the World” is one of the great literary passages in Latin American literature. The emergence of the hero at the beginning of this novel is an example of riveting characterization. The novel presents a detailed representation of Latin American history and epic storytelling. It is a fictionalized history of Canudos, a community in the dry interior of Brazil that was utterly wiped out by the Brazilian army in 1897. Llosa has a singular tenderness for this novel, asserting it in many interviews as his best book, and I cannot agree more on this.

“In praise of stepmother” is another very short novel that I thoroughly enjoyed reading, especially for the intellectually and erotically stimulating content. I would say it tastes exactly like ‘Bloody Mary”. Wickedly witty and fun, this is a strange and beautiful little gem and a truly masterful and original piece of erotic storytelling. The book is primarily around 3 characters - Don Rigoberto, his son Alfonso and second wife Lucrecia. I would recommend this to a casual reader who wants to taste his works. Another novel that hugely explores his arsenal of humor is “Captain Pantoja and the Special Service”

Most of his novels combine scathing political commentary with complex literary style that engrosses the reader. His first novel, “The Time of the Hero” is a thinly veiled account of the corruption Vargas Llosa himself experienced at a military Academy. “Clubs” explores the brutal rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood by telling the story of a boy emasculated by a dog. Another noted work, “Storyteller”, weaves together the lives of a Peruvian man who goes to live with an ancient tribe in the Amazon and a college friend who is haunted by the thought of the tribes. It alternates between sections of the writer`s life and the stories told deep in the rainforest. “The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta” is about a failed revolution of the 1960’s that was perpetrated by a high school classmate of a writer in contemporary Peru. “Death in the Andes” is structurally a mystery story in which two soldiers assigned to a barren outpost, investigate the disappearance of three men in the remote mining communities of the Andes.

Lastly, I would cite one non-fiction book, “Letters to a Young Novelist” (modeled on Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”) which has been hailed as the cheapest resource on how to write a novel. He has condensed his lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers. I would gladly recommend this to all budding writers. It is written in a lucid style with a plethora of illustrations drawn from many literary works of high repute.

Mario Vargas Llosa is a highly committed litterateur. In his Paris Review Interview (that appears in the book “Latin American Writers at Work”) he says, “You could say that to write is necessary and to live is unnecessary. Literature has been important to me ever since I was a child. Literature is more than a modus vivendi : I believe the choice a writer makes to give himself entirely to his work , to put everything at the service of literature instead of subsuming it to other considerations is absolutely critical. Some people think of it as a kind of complementary or decorative activity in a life devoted to other things or even as a way of acquiring prestige and power. In those cases, there is a block, it’s literature avenging itself, not allowing you to write with any freedom, audacity or originality. That’s why I think it’s important to make an absolutely total commitment to literature”.

At another place he says, “My greatest quality is my perseverance. I am capable of working extremely hard and getting more out of myself than I thought was possible. My greatest fault, I think, is my lack of confidence, which torments me enormously. It takes me three or four years to write a novel – and I spend a good part of that time doubting myself. I write because I am unhappy. I write because it is a way of fighting unhappiness”. While this can be rated as the mere modesty of this great writer, the Nobel Prize should surely skyrocket his self-confidence.

Reading Vargas Llosa is a treasured experience in life that no fiction fans should ever miss. If any of you think that it is not worth it, I can cite a passage from “Human Province” by Elias Canetti: ‘While the hemlock was being prepared, Socrates was learning a melody on the flute. “What use wlll that do to you?”, he was asked. “At least I will learn that melody before I die”, replied Socrates ’

By bestowing the Nobel Prize on Vargas Llosa, the academy has truly recognized the grandeur and legacy of legitimate literature as the finest expression of humanity.

THE DINOSAUR

PGR NAIR — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:47:53 +0000

THE DINOSAUR

In Latin American literature, there is a story titled ‘The Dinosaur’ by the great Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, who was well-known for his terse minimalist style of writing like that of Hemingway. The story has just nine words:
‘When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there’

A perfect story. Unbeatable power of persuasion, remarkable concision, perfect drama, color, suggestiveness, and clarity. A real minimalist narrative gem. ‘The Dinosaur’ is an interesting piece of writing because its simplicity makes it so complex. Monterroso leaves this text in suspense and offers to the reader an opportunity to become co-fabulator here. This enigmatic work has given rise to numerous doctoral theses.

In the book ‘Letters to a young Novelist’, the great Peruvian Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa discusses this story from the points of view of -the narrator, space, time and Level of reality. I have summarized it below.

The narration in ‘The Dinosaur’ is made in the past tense. So the narrator is situated in the future, narrating something that happened-when? In the near or middle past from the narrator’s future point of view? In the middle past. How do we know that the narrator is situated in the near or middle past in relation to the time of the narrator? Because between those two times there is an unbridgeable abyss, a gap, a barrier that abolishes all link or continuity between the two (The comma). This is the determining characteristic of the tense the narrator employs: The action is confined to a closed- off past, split from the time the narrator inhabits. The action of ‘Dinosaur’ takes place, therefore, in a middle past.

What is the point of view in terms of level of reality in this story? The narrative is situated in the plane of the fantastic, since in the real world you and I inhabit, it is improbable that prehistoric animals that appeared in our dreams–or in our nightmares–would turn up as an objective reality, and that we should encounter them in the flesh at the foot of our beds when we opened our eyes. It’s clear, then, that the level of reality of the narrative is an imaginary or fantastic reality. Is the narrator (omniscient and impersonal) situated on the same plane? We could venture to say that he is not, that he establishes himself instead on a real or realist plane–in other words, one that is essentially opposite and contrary to that of the narrative. How do we know this? By the tiniest but most unmistakable of indications, a signal or hint that the careful narrator gives the reader as he tells his pared-down tale: the adverb, ‘still’. The word doesn’t just define an objective temporal circumstance, indicating a miraculous occurrence (the passage of the dinosaur from a dreamworld to objective reality). It is also a call to attention, a display of surprise or astonishment at the remarkable event. Monterroso’s still is flanked by invisible exclamation points and implicitly urges us to be surprised by the amazing thing that has happened. (”Notice, all of you, what is going on: the dinosaur is still there, when it’s obvious that it shouldn’t be, since in true reality things like this don’t happen; they are only possible in a fantastic reality.”) This is how we know the narrator is narrating from an objective reality; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t induce us through the knowing use of an amphibious adverb (still ) to take note of the transition of the dinosaur from dream to life, from the imaginary to the tangible.

The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes rightly remarked the following about Monterroso – ‘He is one of the cleanest, most intelligent, transparent and smiling authors in the Spanish language’.No wonder, ‘The Dinosaur’ became such a hit in Latin American literary history.

Continuity of Parks

PGR NAIR — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:33:28 +0000

CONTINUITY OF PARKS

He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it aside because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations. That afternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney and discussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of his estate, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study which looked out upon the park with its oaks. Sprawled in his favorite armchair, its back toward the door–even the possibility of an intrusion would have irritated him, had he thought of it–he let his left hand caress repeatedly the green velvet upholstery and set to reading the final chapters. He remembered effortlessly the names and his mental image of the characters; the novel spread its glamour over him almost at once. He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him, and at the same time feeling his head rest comfortably on the green velvet of the chair with its high back, sensing that the cigarettes rested within reach of his hand, that beyond the great windows the air of afternoon danced under the oak trees in the park. Word by word, licked up the sordid dilemma of the hero and heroine, letting himself be absorbed to the point where the images settled down and took on color and movement, he was witness to the final encounter in the mountain cabin. The woman arrived first, apprehensive; now the lover came in, his face cut by the backlash of a branch. Admirably, she stanched the blood with her kisses, but he rebuffed her caresses, he had not come to perform again the ceremonies of a secret passion, protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths through the forest. The dagger warmed itself against his chest, and underneath liberty pounded, hidden close. A lustful, panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity. Even to those caresses which writhed about the lover’s body, as though wishing to keep him there, to dissuade him from it; they sketched abominably the frame of that other body it was necessary to destroy. Nothing had been forgotten: alibis, unforeseen hazards, possible mistakes. From this hour on, each instant had its use minutely assigned. The cold-blooded, twice-gone-over reexamination of the details was barely broken off so that a hand could caress a cheek. It was beginning to get dark.

Not looking at each other now, rigidly fixed upon the task which awaited them, they separated at the cabin door. She was to follow the trail that led north. On the path leading in the opposite direction, he turned for a moment to watch her running, her hair loosened and flying. He ran in turn, crouching among the trees and hedges until, in the yellowish fog of dusk, he could distinguish the avenue of trees, which led up to the house. The dogs were not supposed to bark, and they did not bark. The estate manager would not be there at this hour, and he was not there. He went up the three porch steps and entered. The woman’s words reached him over a thudding of blood in his ears: first a blue chamber, then a hall, then a carpeted stairway. At the top, two doors. No one in the first room, no one in the second. The door of the salon, and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel.

By Julio Cortazar

Source: Blow-Up and Other Stories

( Note to the reader: Julio Cortazar (Argentinean writer) is one of my favorite Latin American writers. He was a great sensation in the literary circles of Kerala in the vibrant eighties when yours truly also got exposed to some unadulterated Latin American stuff.

Pablo Neruda once said, ‘Anyone who doesn’t read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair’. I cannot agree more and anyone who has tasted Cortazar and Borges will assert that much of the fiction that one encounters these days is sadly insipid. This metafiction is an excellent example of Cortazar’s genius.

To read a gripping story is to be transported into its fictional world. Certain stories creates the illusion that I am no longer reading the story but I am actually in the story. ‘In continuity of Parks’, Cortazar memorably evokes this experience of total immersion in a fictional text. This story seamlessly shifts from two realistic narratives, finally provoking a metaphysical uncertainty about which is the text and which is reality.

A business man reads a novel sitting in his high backed green velvet armchair in his study. The novel he is reading tells of a desperate but resolute murderer who follows an avenue of trees that leads to a house; he climbs the stairs and locates the study,… ‘and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel’. When the crime is about to be performed, the victim is revealed as the businessman sitting in the armchair at the opening. So at the climatic end, the real man reading a novel suddenly becomes a character in the novel just as the characters suddenly become ‘real’ to end the man’s life.

Cortazar involves the reader, first by constructing the business man as the narrative point of view and then, without warning, abruptly shifting to the lovers. The rapid conclusion is a bit jolting, not only because the text ends just before the murder occurs, but because the reader was earlier positioned in the victim’s point of view, assuming it to be reality.

Thus the text that the hero reads becomes the text in which he is read. The reader immersed in the thriller becomes the victim of the narrated murder, thus paying with his life the disappearance of the boundary between fiction and reality. Note the economy of words in this story. The ending line is superb, perfectly balanced, without any superfluous or gory words to describe a cool murder…In essence, the sign of great fiction!….PGR)

NAVAL AIR SHOWS-ARE WE BECOMING NERO’S GUESTS?

PGR NAIR — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:03:49 +0000

Yesterday, on 3^rd March, an Indian Navy trainer aircraft crashed into a two-storied building in a congested locality during an air show, killing Commander S.K. Maurya and Lt Commander Rahul Nair . The incident happened when the HJT-16 Kiran MK2 trainer aircraft, built by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, crashed in Bowenpally locality near the old Begumpet Airport in the city.

The crash of a naval aircraft has been termed as ‘unfortunate’ by our honorable Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel Wednesday and he promptly declared that the tragedy wouldn’t affect the event in any way.

‘These kinds of mishaps have happened during such events in the past the world over. It is very unfortunate but I don’t think this (aircraft crash) will any way hamper or affect the event. The show will go on’- this was the disgracefully casual and insensitive declaration by the minster on the death of two naval pilots in the prime of their life.

According to a civil aviation ministry official, there were five such crashes during air shows in the world last year. Similarly there were four such crashes during air shows in 2008 and seven in 2007. In their viewpoint, sacrifice of these naval acrobats is a tolerable episode to trumpet the synthetic glory of our Navy.

I wonder why the prestigious Indian naval air cadets should work like circus artists. May I know from the minister what is the objective in showcasing this stunt show before public other than trumpeting the vanity of our vanguards in defense? As far as I know, air attack during war is not a colorful parade but a calculative blitzkrieg done under stealth. Practices required for the same are different and are performed in aircrafts designed for it. I wish such air shows were conducted using unmanned aircrafts so that human life is not at stake. I could have understood if such air shows were the events undertaken by sports clubs, like Formula 1 car race conducted by FIA or other similar adventure sports agencies. There the participants are aware of the risk; they often choose the very best vehicles with superlative safety features and above all they voluntarily choose that profession . How many naval cadets have the option to voluntarily choose the aircraft they need for such acrobatics? What avionics do these flying coffins have? They may often get an economy model of indigenous make or a third-rate Russian trainer aircraft. I am sure at least a few officers are pushed into this aerial extravaganza by the stern command of their superiors .

Our defense top brass should have the responsibility to the men and women under their command and to the nation as a whole. They cannot keep on shedding the blood of innocent men and women in their hands and such shows give a wrong picture to the nation and to the bureaucracy about our state of military preparedness when we are still dealing with 2nd World War vintage equipment. Our dear naval pilots do not have a death wish and are not adrenaline junkies like Michael Schumacher or late Ayrton Senna.

Above all, I am shocked at the decision of the Navy to continue the air show despite this traumatic tragedy. I am numbed at the willingness and mindset of our politicians, the colleagues of the killed and the elite class in Hyderabad who sat there drinking Pepsi to watch the rest of the air show while the beloveds of the killed wrenched in agony back in Delhi. Will the honor of the Navy collapse if we call off this year’s air shows as a mark of honor to the brave lads who died in the sky for a mere diversion than a mission?

I am reminded of a historical incident told by the famous journalist P Sainath in a speech. After the ruin of Rome in the great fire, the atmosphere was one of depression. The time was also one of rebellion. To deflect the attention from the incident, Emperor Nero hosted a lavish dinner party. The guest list was a virtual “who’s who” of Rome. The elite, the learned, the artists… everyone was invited. However, there was a problem of illumination. The torches were running short of oil. Nero ordered for his captive prisoners to be tied to the torches so that they could be the fuel for the torches.

Sainath informed that though Nero’s action was barbaric, it was in keeping with his royal attitude of insensitivity. But, Nero’s guests who devoured the feast, insensitive to the horrendous screams of prisoners being burnt at stake, were the greater culprits. Not one of them raised a voice of protest. They just gleefully gorged! Now, you may ask who the guests of Nero were.

Nero’s guests were educated men of arts. They were people who took pride in describing themselves as cultured persons. They were people who lived in comforts like some of us. They get entry into the social circles of the powerful elite of politicians and businessmen, they visit fun clubs, attend parties and while away time attending events like air shows. They are insensitive to the whimper of ordinary people like the pilots who are put at stake .

Indifference is said to be a greater crime than hatred. No matter what we do to enlarge our lives, it is of no consequence if we kill our conscience. To be better as a human being is to connect better with our humanism. To be better, we must be sensitive as well as responsive to what is happening around us. If we were sensitive to the life of each and every personnel in our Navy, we wouldn’t allow this kind of gory spectacle to unfold in the air and yet relish it.

Why don’t we ban such pompous naval air shows if they don’t serve any purpose other than entertainment - especially when we know we aren’t equipped sophisticatedly for such freak sports? Will the minister Praful Patel and his coterie of defence brass listen to my meek voice?