Ashwatthama ka Abhishap by M.I. Rajasve
Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao by Lindsay Pereira
Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima
शेष यात्रा by Usha Priyamvada
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
A man leading his pregnant wife on a burro, like Joseph and Mary. Three long-legged girls in dresses straddling one gray mare, their legs hanging down like a giant insect. A peevish rooster that ought to have been in a better mood, because look here my friend: at the roadside butcher stand, all your comrades hang upside-down ready for roasting. Sausages also were slung over the line like stockings, and a whole white pig skin just hanging, as if the pig went off and left his overcoat. His wife the sow was alive, tied to a papaya tree in the yard with her piglets rooting all round. They could be free to run away, but don't, because of their mother chained on the spot.… a sleepy afternoon in a Mexican town
In the afternoon when the sun lights the stucco buildings across the street, it's possible to count a dozen different colours of paint, all fading together on the highest parts of the wall: yellow, ochre, brick, blood, cobalt, turquoise. The national colour of Mexico. And the scent of Mexico is a similar blend: jasmine, dog piss, cilantro, lime. Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes. The pebble thrown into the canyon bumps and tumbles downhill. Here life is strong-scented, overpowering. Even the words. Just ordering breakfast requires some word like toronja, triplet of muscular syllables full of lust and tears, a squirt in the eye. Nothing like the effete "grapefruit," which does not even mean what it says.Here is the irrepressible Frida
"Everyone will say horse shit smells like flowers," she stated, "if they want to be popular with a horse's ass."The protagonist’s self-effacing amanuensis
Natalya takes Phanodorm morning and night, and cups of tea one after another: drowning her sorrows, as Frida would say, until the damn things learn to swim. But maybe some sorrows can't be borne.
"Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down."This is the weird and famous house designed by the architect who was le Corbusier’s disciple
When he stops to rest, that poor old man has to raise his eyes to this modern mess of glass and painted cement that looks like a mistake. It looks like a baby giant was playing with his blocks when his mother called him, so he ran away and left his toys lying in Calle Altavista.Viva Frida!
Two blocks: the big pink one and small blue one standing separately, each with rooms stacked one above the other, screwed together by a curved cement staircase. The big pink block is the Painter's domain, and his studio on the second floor is not so bad. That window is the size of a lake, a whole wall of glass looking down at the neighbour's trees. The planks of the floor are yellow, like sun on your face. That room feels like someone could be happy in it. Everything else feels like being shut up inside a crate. The small blue block is meant to be for the small wife.
आदमी का जहर by श्रीलाल शुक्ल
The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay by Varun Thomas MathewNewspaper boys lined the pavements, pushing advertisements for computer repairmen into the sheaves of the morning newspapers. Vendors pushed their carts along the sea-facing roads, heavy with fresh vegetables that would become lunch for the now-sleeping millions. Dozens would take their morning dump by the rocks along the shore and wash themselves in murky salty water, the ideal liquid for nether-cleaning. Street sweepers would sit on their haunches and drink tea and tell each other about the strange things they found on the street the day before. Rat killers would carry their nightly catch in a blood-stained sack to deposit it at the corporation offices. These were the elves of the city: invisible, yet without whom the city would cease to function.In contrast to a future Bombay
Indeed, they have robbed you of your agency, snatched away your sense of history, confounded your idea of what a nation should be - to the extent that the Constitution of India is now nothing more than a few lines of software embedded into the Bombadrome's operating system.It’s fine to have differing views – that’s what a democracy is all about, but this is positively secessionist
…we have a Supreme Court that is for sale. But you really don't really care. You are content with your lives, happy to violate your wives each night and bow down before idols to heal your gay children, and tomorrow you will gladly put a blogger in jail. So go ahead, play your patriotic songs and buy your little plastic flags from children at traffic signals. Rejoice in whatever way you can, for this country of yours is one year older. As for me, I hope that your neighbour in the east devours you, while your sister in the west swarms you with her children. I hope that your glaciers melt faster than ever before, that your tectonic plates shift and consign everything you have built to the bottom of the earth, and that the seas rise up and wash away all memory of you from this land. It is a miracle that this country has survived so long despite being populated by the likes of you, and perhaps that single accomplishment is in fact deserving of the celebration that will be in plentiful supply tomorrow. In fact, why not? Let me give it to you now. With a full heart, allow me to wish you all a very happy Republic Day, though I would much rather tell you simply to take your accursed flag and go fuck yourself.The author is obviously a member of the tukde, tukde gang – a self-aggrandizing group of traitorous left-leaning ‘intellectuals’
That life in this country, as it exists now, is absurd. That people are arbitrary, and society is run by chance. So the truths that you fight for in court don't matter.I wish he was more circumspect with his poison-spewing quill.
I know now that I'm not really a Kashmiri or an Indian, but just a human being. I do not believe in a motherland or a chosen race, which are concepts that can destroy lives. Nationalism is one of the worst creations of men.
कसप by Manohar Shyam Joshi
The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion by Wendy Williams
राग दरबारी by श्रीलाल शुक्लमंगल/सनीचर, लंगड़, रुप्पन, रंगनाथ, वैद्यजी, खन्ना, मोतीराम, मालवीय (kleptomaniac), the unnamed प्रिंसिपल व् क्लर्क, दरोगाजी, रामाधीन भीखमखेड़वी, स्व ठाकुर दुरबीन सिंह, रामस्वरूप चोर, काना पं. राधेलाल, बद्री पहलवान, छोटे पहलवान एंड बाप (cantankerous family), कालिका प्रसाद, बेला (एकमात्र महत्वपूर्ण महिला पात्र)ये कथा है शिवपालगंज के बाशिंदों की जो अपने आप को गर्व से गँझहे कहते हुए आसपास के गांवों में दादागिरी करते हैं, परन्तु उनकी गतिविधियाँ देखकर उन्हें गँजेड़ी बुलाना अधिक उचित है। लेखक की लिखने की शैली अति हसीपद एवं रोचक है। प्रत्येक वाक्य हँसते हँसते लोट पॉट करा देता है, किन्तु शीघ्र ही कटु सत्य सामने आ जाता है और पाठक सोचने पर विवश हो जाता है अपने देश व समाज की दयनीय दशा पर।
प्रायः सभी में जनता का एक मनपसंद पेय मिलता था जिसे वहाँ गार्ड, चीकट, चाय की कई बार इस्तेमाल की हुई पट्टी और खेलते पानी आदि के सहारे बनाया जाता था। उनमें मिठाइयां भी थीं जो दिन-रात आंधी-पानी और मक्खी-मच्छरों के हमलों का बहादुरी से मुकाबला करती थीं। वे हमारे देसी कारीगरों के हस्तकौशल और उनकी वैज्ञानिक दक्षता का सबूत देती थीं। वे बताती थीं कि हमें एक अच्छा रेजर-ब्लेड बनाने का नुस्खा भले ही न मालूम हो, पर कूड़े को स्वादिष्ट खाद्य पदार्थ में बदल देने की तरकीब साड़ी दुनिया में अकेले हमीं को आती है।A typical roadside scene as you approach any Indian village
थोड़ी देर में ही धुँधलके में सड़क की पटरी पर दोनों ओर कुछ गठरियाँ-सी रखी हुई नज़र आयीं। ये औरतें थीं, जो कतार बाँधकर बैठी हुई थीं। वे इत्मीनान से बातचीत करती हुई वायु-सेवन कर रही थीं और लगे-हाथ मल-मूत्र का विसर्जन भी। सड़क के नीच घूरे पटे पड़े थे और उनकी बदबू के बोझ से शाम की हवा किसी गर्भवती की तरह अलसायी हुई-सी चल रही थी। कुछ दूरी पर कुत्तों के भूँकने की आवाज़ें हुईं। आँखों के आगे धुएँ के जले उड़ते नज़र आये। इससे इंकार नहीं हो सकता था कि वे किसी गाँव के पास आ गए थे।Here’s more dementia precox type of writing
तुमने मास्टर मोतीराम को देखा है कि नहीं। पुराने आदमी हैं। दरोगाजी उनकी बड़ी इज्जत करते हैं। वे दरोगा जी की इज्जत करते हैं। दोनों की इज्जत प्रिंसिपल साहब करते हैं। कोई साला काम तो करता नहीं है, सब एक दूसरे की इज्जत करते हैं।Bureaucratic behaviour
एक पुराने श्लोक में भूगोल की एक बात समझाई गयी है कि सूर्या दिशा के आधीन होकर नहीं उगता। वह जिधर उदित होता है, वही पूर्व दिशा हो जाती है। उसी तरह उत्तम कोटि का सरकारी आदमी कार्य के आधीन दौरा नहीं करता, वह जिधर निकल जाता है, उधर ही दौरा हो जाता है। ... पिछले साल के व्याख्यान के कारण इस साल रबी की फसल अच्छी होने वाली है। काश्तकार उनके बताये तरीके से खेती कर रहे हैं। उन्हें यह मालूम हो गया कि खेत जोतना चाहिए। और उसमें खाद ही नहीं, बीज भी डालना चाहिए। वे सब बातें समझने-बूझने लगे हैं और नयी समझदारी के बारे में उनकी घबराहट छूट चुकी है।An example of filth and our pullulating population
गांव के किए एक छोटा सा तालाब था। गन्दा कीचड़ से भरा-पूरा, बदबूदार। बहुत क्षुद्र घोड़े, गधे, कुत्ते, सूअर उसे देखकर आनंदित होते थे। कीड़े-मकोड़े और भुनगे, मक्खियाँ और मच्छर - परिवार-नियोजन के उलझनों से उन्मुख - वहां करोड़ों के संख्या में पनप रहे थे और हमें सबक दे रहे थे कि अगर हम उन्हीं के तरह रहना सीख लें तो देश की बढ़ती हुई आबादी हमरे लिए समस्या नहीं रह जाएगी।An acoustically accurate description of the noise pollution emanating from a blaring radios and other glimpses of rural India
गन्दगी की कमी पूरा करने के लिए दो दर्जन लड़के नियमित रूप से शाम-सवेरे और अनियमित रूप से दिन को किसी भी समय पेट के स्वेच्छाचार से पीड़ित होकर तालाब के किनारे आते थे और - ठोस, द्रव तथा गैस - तीनो प्रकार के पदार्थ उसे समर्पित करके, हलके होकर वापस लौट जाते थे।
अपने पिछड़ेपन के बावजूद किसी देश का जैसे-न-कोई आर्थिक और राजनितिक महत्व अवश्य होता है, वैसा ही इस तालाब का भी, गन्दगी के बावजूद, अपना महत्त्व था।
तहसील के सामने तम्बोली की दुकान पर बैटरीवाला रेडियो अब भी बज रहा था और फ़िल्मी गानों के परनाले से 'अरमान, साजना, हसीन, जादूगर, मंजिल, तू कहाँ, सीना, गले लगा लो, गले लग जा, मचल-मचल कर, आंधियां, गम, तमन्ना, परदेशी, शराब, मुस्कान, आग, जिंदगी, मौत, बेरहम, तस्वीर, चांदनी, आसमाँ, सुहाना सपन, जोबन, मस्ती, उभर, इंतज़ार, बेजार, इसरार, इंकार, इकरार' ... जैसे शब्द लगातार गिर रहे थे जो भुखमरे देशों में नवजागरण का सन्देश देने के लिए सब प्रकार से उपयुक्त थे।The imagery of a bucolic rural scene
रुप्पन बाबू, जिनका जन्म 'अंग्रेज़ों, भारत छोड़ो' का नारा बुलंद हो जाने के बाद हुआ था, बड़े विश्वास से बोले "खुदा अपने गधों के जलेबियाँ खिला रहा है। हर शाख पै उल्लू बैठा है।"
उन्होंने सबसे पहले पान की दुकान खोजने का विचार किया। हिंदुस्तानी के लिए यह कोई कठिन बात नहीं है। रॉबिंसन क्रूसो के बजाय कोई हिंदुस्तानी किसी एकांत द्वीप पर अटक गया होता तो फ्राइडे की जगह वह किसी पान बनाने वाले को ही ढूँढ़ निकालता। वास्तव में सच्चे हिंदुस्तानी की यही परिभाषा है कि वह इंसान जो कहीं भी पान खाने का इंतज़ाम कर ले और कहीं भी पेशाब करने की जगह ढूँढ़ ले।
पीछे-पीछे मोटरें आती-जाती रहीं और लड़कियों की अंग्रेजी से सनी हुई आवाजें हवा में तड़प पैदा करती रहीं। खिलौनेवाले, किसी सिनेमा में किसी खिलौनेवाली ने जैसी ट्यून बजाई थी, उसी के नकल पर कर्णविस्फोटक संगीत के रचना करते रहे।
थाने के बहार कान पर जनेऊ चढ़ाए हुए, बनियान और अंडरवियर पहन हुए तंदरुस्त सिपाही। पेड़ों के नीचे कुत्तों की तरह पड़े हुए चौकीदार। टूटे कुल्हड़ों, गंदे, भिनभिनाते हुए पत्तों और धुआँ निकलने वाली ढिबरियों से संपन्न मिठाई और चाय की दुकानें। चीकट लगी हुई तिपाइयाँ। सड़क पर घरघराते हुए नशेबाज़ ड्राइवरों के हाथों चलनेवाले हत्याभिलाषि ट्रकों के कारवां। साइकिल के कर्रिएर पर घास-जैसे कागज़ात लादे हुए वसूली के अमीन। तहसीलदार का बदकलाम अरदली। शराब पीकर नाइ की दुकान पर बिना मतलब झगड़नेवाले पं. रामधार का बेलगाम बेटा, जिसे सप्ताह में सात बार स्थानीय पोस्टमैन उससे भी ज्यादा शराब पीकर जूतों से पीटता है। कॉलेज की तरफ से आते हुए, एक-दूसरे की कमर में हाट डालकर चलते हुए, कोई कोरस-जैसा गाते विद्यार्थी।A pithy rustic saying
शहर का आदमी है। सूअर का-सा लेंड़ - न लीपने के काम आये, न जलाने के।A bonus is the garnishing before each chapter – a simple, yet cute graphic by Vikram Nayak.
A Clergyman's Daughter: George Orwell by George OrwellShe had come, like everyone about her, to accept this monstrous existence almost as though it were normal. The dazed, witless feeling that she had known on the way to the hopfields had some back upon her more strongly than before. It is the common effect of sleeplessness and still more of exposure. To live continuously in the open air, never going under a roof for more than an hour or two, blurs your perceptions like a strong light glaring in your eyes or a noise drumming in your ears. You act and plan and suffer, and yet all the while it is as though everything were a little out of focus, a little unreal. The world, inner and outer, grows dimmer till it reaches almost the vagueness of a dream.His vivid portrayal of nature and humans is underappreciated
It was a life that wore you out, used up every ounce of your energy, and kept you profoundly, unquestionably happy. In the literal sense of the word, it stupefied you. The long days in the fields, the coarse food and insufficient sleep, the smell of hops and wood smoke, lulled you into an almost beast-like heaviness, Your wits seemed to thicken, just as your skin did, in the rain and sunshine and perpetual fresh air.
Miss Mayfill was very old, so old that on one remembered her as anything but an old woman. A faint scent radiated from her – an ethereal scent, analysable as eau-de-Cologne, mothballs and a sub-flavour of gin.Certainly not his best book, yet, immensely readable.
A momentary spear of sunlight had pierced the clouds. It struck downwards through the leaves of the limes, and a spray of leaves in the doorway gleamed with a transient, matchless green, greener than jade or emerald or Atlantic waters.
The day, which, like some overripe but hopeful widow was playing at seventeen, had been putting on unseasonable April airs, had now remembered that it was August and settled down to be broiling hot.
When he was puzzled or in difficulties, his moustaches seemed to bristle forward, giving him the appearance of a well-meaning but exceptionally brainless prawn.
Chowringhee by Sankar
महाभोज by Mannu Bhandari
The Road to Wigan Pier by George OrwellThe road to Mandalay to Wigan is a long one and the reasons for taking it are not immediately clear.He does elucidate his journey along this path.
And that is the central fact about housing in the industrial areas: not that the houses are poky and ugly, and insanitary and comfortless, or that they are distributed in incredibly filthy slums round belching foundries and stinking canals and slag-heaps that deluge them with sulphurous smoke – though all this is perfectly true – but simply that there are not enough houses to go round.Besides the economic disparity, he also dwells on the prevalent class system in Britain. It may not have been as evil as the divisive caste system in India, but was very much in evidence
A slag-heap is at best a hideous thing, because it is so planless and functionless. It is something just dumped on the earth, like the emptying of a giant’s dust-bin. On the outskirts of mining towns there are frightful landscapes where your horizon is ringed completely round by jagged grey mountains, and underfoot is mud and ashes and overhead the steel cables where tubs of dirt travel slowly across miles of country. Often the slag-heaps are on fire, and at night you can see the red rivulets of fire winding this way and that, and also the slow-moving blue flames of sulphur, which always seem on the point of expiring and always spring out again.
You cannot have and effective trade union of middle-class workers, because in times of strikes almost every middle-class wife would be egging her husband ton to backleg and get the other fellow’s job.The second part is more autobiographical. He talks about his experiences as a police officer in colonial India – in Burma, to be precise, and then his experiment with poverty as in Down and Out in Paris and London. Witnessing the poverty and indifference of the governing dispensation, both political, as well as bureaucratic, his inchoate ideas start to crystallize at this stage, as he develops his philosophy on Socialism, Fascism, Communism, totalitarian regimes etc – this tends to go on and on a bit, but is still fascinating, seeing Orwell’s thought processes that culminates in Animal Farm and 1984
That is what we were taught – the lower classes smell. And here, obviously, you are at an impassable barrier. For no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamental as a <>physical<> feeling. Race-hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament, of intellect, even differences of moral code, can be got over; but physical repulsion cannot. You can have an affection for a murderer or a sodomite., but you cannot have an affection for a man whose breath stinks – habitually stinks, I mean. However well you may wish him, however much you may admire his mind and character, if his breath stinks he is horrible and in your heart of hearts you will hate him.
In the end I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that punishment always does more harm than the crime and that people can be trusted to behave decently if only you will let them alone. This of course was sentimental nonsense.Not as entertaining as his other novels, nonetheless, it's an important seminal work.
I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man’s dominion over man.
![झूठा सच : देश का भविष्य [Jhootha Sach: Desh ka Bhavishya]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1365351110l/12453284._SX98_.jpg)
झूठा सच : देश का भविष्य [Jhootha Sach: Desh ka Bhavishya] by यशपालकांग्रेसियों ने गाँधी जी से एक ही बात सीख ली है कि चाहे जिस कड़की या स्त्री के कंधे पर हाथ रख लें। सभी अपने को राष्ट्रपिता समझने लगे हैंIt is a time for enterprising opportunists to set up business and industries. Nepotism, bribery prevails
सभी राज्यों की जनता शाशन में निधड़क कुनबापरवरी, नोच-खसोट और धाँधली से निराश और खिन्न हो रही थी। अंग्रेजी सरकार के पुराने रायबहादुर और खैरख्वाह अमन-सभाई और सरकारी अमलदारी से लाभ उठाने लोग कांग्रेस के मेंबर बन कर सफ़ेद नोकीली टोपी पहनने लगे थे। अब कांग्रेस का चंदा चार-चार आने और रुपए-रुपए की रसीदों से इकठ्ठा नहीं किया जाता था। चुनाव फण्ड में चंदा मिलों और कंपनियों से बीस-चालीस हजार और लाख-दो लाख रुपए के चेकों से आता था। कांग्रेस से सम्बन्ध रखने वाले जो लोग चार साल से सौ-सवा सौ की नौकरियों से निर्वाह कर रहे थे, अब अपने सम्बन्धी के मंत्री बन जाने या किसी महत्वपूर्ण कमेटी का मेंबर बन जाने पर जहाँ-तहाँ हजार-बारह सौ पाने लगे थे। मंत्रियों के मेट्रिक भी पास न सकने वाले सुपूत, सरकारी विभागों के अध्यक्ष बन कर हजार रुपए मासिक से भी संतुष्ट न थे। मंत्रियों के दामादों के लिए मैनेजिंग डायरेक्टर से काम कोई पद सोचा ही नहीं जा सकता था।Indictment on Gandhi and his childish puerile attempts at achieving independence
लोग धारासभा के सदस्यों (मेंबर ऑफ़ लेजिस्लेटिव असेम्ब्ली) को एम्. एल. ए. न कह कर घृणा से 'मैले' लोग कहने लगे थे।
"और तुम्हारी कांग्रेस क्या करती रही? गाँधी जी क्या करते रहे? पहले नामिलवर्तन (असहयोग) में हजारों लड़कों के स्कूल-कालेज छुड़वाये, हजारों लोगों की नौकरियाँ छुड़वाईं और लाखों डंडे खाकर जेल गए और तुम्हारे बापू को लगा - ओह, हिमालयन ब्लंडर हो गयी। आंदोलन वापस ले लिया। पहले विदेशी कपडे की होली जलवानी शुरू की, उसे बंद किया। नमक सत्याग्रह किया और बंद किया। जंगल सत्याग्रह किया, लगान न देने का आंदोलन चलाया और बंद किया। कॉउन्सिलों का बायकाट किया, फिर कौंसिलों में गए। राउंड-टेबल कांफ्रेंस का बायकाट किया, फिर उसमें भी गए। पहले जंग का बायकाट नामुनासिब बताया, फिर उसी जंग का बॉयकॉट किया। पहले पार्टीशन की मुखालफत की फिर उसे कबूल किया। गाँधी और कांग्रेस के कब, कितनी बार नीति नहीं बदली? ... तुम्हारी कांग्रेस का तो गोल (लक्ष्य) ही चेंज होता रहा है। कभी 'डोमिनियन स्टेटस 'कभी 'फुल फ्रीडम अंडर द एम्पायर' कभी 'इंडिपेंडेंस' कभी 'रिपब्लिक' कभी 'रामराज' कभी 'कैपिटलिज्म' कभी 'सोशलिज्म' !The latter part of the book starts to dawdle with the love affairs of the protagonists, but the ending is on an optimistic note
अब तो विश्वास करोगे, जनता निजीव नहीं है। जनता सदा मूक भी नहीं रहती। देश का भविष्य नेताओं और मंत्रियों की मुठ्ठी में नहीं है, देश की जनता के हाथ में है।Just one small extract form the middle of the book when a train overladen with refugees struggles to leave a station
इंजन ने चीख-चिंघाड़, गर्जन-तर्जन द्वारा बोझ बहुत अधिक होने की शिकायतें कीं, क्रोध और बेबसी में बहुत-सी फुंकारों से धूएँ के बादल चोदे। फिर लाचार हो गाड़ी को धीमे-धीमे खींचना शुरू किया। कुछ दूर चलकर गाड़ी की गति ढचर टाँगे-रिक्शा के बराबर हो गयी।एक विशाल परिदृश्य पर एक मनोरंजक कथा, महाकाव्य।
Coming Up for Air by George OrwellWhen I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpseand addresses his favourite tropes – poverty, war, totalitarian regimes (fascism, communism).
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look, but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, the dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb
Just a prison with the cells all in a row. A line of semidetached torture-chambers were the poor little five-to-ten-pound-a-weekers quake and shiver, every one of them with the boss twisting his tail and the wife riding him like a nightmare and the kids sucking his blood like leeches.His take on processed foods
Everyone that isn’t scared stiff of losing his job is scared stiff of war, or Fascism, or Communism, or something. Jews sweating when they think of Hitler. It crossed my mind that the little bastard with the spiky moustache was probably a damn sight more scared for his job that the girl was. Probably got a family to support. And perhaps, who knows, at home he’s meek and mild, grows cucumbers in the back garden, lets his wife sit on him and the kids pull his moustache.
Everything comes out of a tin, or it’s hauled out of a refrigerator or squirted out of a tap or squeezed out of a tube. No comfort, no privacy. Tall stools to sit on, a kind of narrow ledge to eat off, mirrors all around you. A sort of propaganda floating round, mixed up with the noise of the radio, to the effect that food doesn’t matter, comfort doesn’t matter, nothing matters except slickness and shininess and streamlining. Everything’s streamlined nowadays, even the bullet Hitler’s keeping for you.A bureaucratic Kafkaesque nightmare that could be something out of Catch-22, a scenario that Milo Minderbinder would thrive in
You know the smell churches have, a peculiar, dank, dusty, decaying, sweetish sort of smell. There’s a touch of candle-grease in it, and perhaps a whiff of incense and a suspicion of mice, and on Sunday mornings it’s a bit overlaid by yellow soap and serge dresses, but predominantly, it’s that sweet dusty, musty smell that’s like the smell of death and life mixed up together. It’s powdered corpses. Really.
The war did extraordinary things to people. And what was more extraordinary than the way it killed people was the way it sometimes didn’t kill them. It was like a great flood rushing you along to death, and suddenly it would shoot you up some backwater where you’d find yourself doing incredible and pointless things and drawing extra pay for them. There were labour battalions making roads across the desert that didn’t lead anywhere, there were chaps marooned on oceanic islands to look out for German cruisers which had been sunk years earlier, there were Ministries of this and that with armies of clerks and typists which went on existing years after their function had ended, by a kind of inertia. People were shoved into meaningless jobs and then forgotten by the authorities for years on end.Echoes of Yossarian – albeit a matured Yossarian
If the war didn’t happen to kill you it was bound to start you thinking. After that unspeakable idiotic mess you couldn’t go on regarding society as something eternal and unquestionable, like a pyramid, You knew it was just a balls-up.Here, the British seemingly living in blissful ignorance, denial of the impending malign influence of Nazism
A queer trade, anti-Fascism. This fellow, I suppose, makes his living by writing books against Hitler. But what did he do before Hitler came along? And what’ll he do if Hitler ever disappears? Same question applies to doctors, detectives, ratcatchers and so forth, of course.
‘Tell me, porteous, what do you think of Hitler?’He paints such a vivid picture of something so mundane as a smouldering pile of ashes
‘Hitler? This German person? My dear fellow! I don’tthink of him.’
‘But the trouble is he’s going to bloody well make us think about him before he’s finished.’
‘I see no reason for paying any attention to him. A mere adventurer. These people come and go. Ephemeral, purely, ephemeral.’
You know the look of wood fire on a still day. The sticks that have gone all white ash and still keep the shape of sticks, and under the ash the kind of vivid red that you can see into. It’s curious that a red ember looks more alive, gives you more a feeling of life, than any living thing. There’s something about it, a kind of intensity, a vibration – I can’t think of the exact words. But it lets you know that you’re alive yourself. It’s the spot on the picture that makes you notice everything else.So what is the title all about?
I don’t mind towns growing, so long as they do grow and don’t merely spread like gravy over a tablecloth.
You know the feeling I had. Coming up for air! Like the big sea-turtles when they come paddling up to the surface, stick their noses out and fill their lings with a great gulp before they sink down again among the seaweed and the octopuses. We’re all stifling at the bottom of a dustbin, but I’d found the way to the top.Such artistry!
…
Coming up for air! But there isn’t any air. The dustbin that we’re in reaches up to the stratosphere.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
A nasty raw wind. There was a threatening note in it as it swept over; the first growl of winter’s anger.Orwell seems to have inspired the lyrics of Roger Waters
In all bookshops there goes on a savage Darwinian struggle in which the works of living men gravitate to eye-level and the works of dead men go up or down – down to Gehenna up to the throne, but always away from any position where they will be noticed. Down in the bottom shelves the ‘classics’, the extinct monsters of the Victorian age, were quietly rotting.
He almost wanted to laugh at them, they were so feeble, so dead-alive, so unappetising. As though anybody could be tempted by those! Like succubi with pimply backsides.
Of all types of human being, only the artist takes it upon him to say that he ‘cannot’ work.
…the sort of dingy, drabby fornication that you can imagine happening between Egyptian mummies after the museum is closed for the night.
All over the darkish drawing-room, aging, discoloured people sat about in couples, discussing symptoms. Their conversation was like the dripping of stalactite to stalagmite. Drip, drip. ‘How is your lumbago?’ saysa stalactite to stalagmite. “I find my Kruschen Salts are doing me good,’ says stalagmite to stalactite, Drip, drip, drip.
Gordon walked up Malkin Hill, rustling instep-deep through the dry drifted leaves. All down the pavement they were strewn, crinkly and golden, like the rustling flakes of some American breakfast cereal, as though the queen of Brobdingnag had upset her packet of Tru-weet Breakfast Crisps won the hillside.
No rich man ever succeeds in disguising himself as a poor man; for money, like murder, will out.
As a rule a dwarf, when malformed, has a full-sized torso and practically no legs. With Mr Cheeseman it was the other way about. His legs were of normal length, but the top half of his body was so short that his buttocks seemed to sprout almost immediately below his shoulder blades. This gave him, in walking, a resemblance to a pair of scissors.
The books were published by special low-class firms and turned out by wretched hacks at the rate of four a year, as mechanically as sausages and with much less skill.
Yes, the war is coming soon. You can’t doubt it when you see the Bovex ads. The electric drills in our streets presage the tattle of machine guns. Only a little while before the aeroplanes come. Zoom – bang! A few tons of TNT to send our civilisation back to hell where it belongs.The protagonist’s constant hostility towards the long-suffering aspidistra is very evident in the narrative. While attempting to escape the clutches of Mammon in his masochistic journey, he repeatedly encounters his botanical nemesis like a persistent totem
…his eye fell on the aspidistra in its grass-green pot. It was a peculiarly mangy specimen, It had only seven leaves and never seemed to put forth any new ones. Gordon had a sort of secret feud with the aspidistra. Many a time he had furtively attempted to kill it – starving it of water, grinding hot cigarette-ends against its stem, even mixing salt with its earth. But the beastly things are practically immortal> In almost any circumstances they can preserve a wilting, diseased existence. Gordon stood up and deliberately wiped his kerosiny leaves on the aspidistra leaves.His animosity does not decrease with time
The aspidistra stood in its pot, dull green, ailing, pathetic in its sickly ugliness. As he sat down, he pulled it towards him and looked at it meditatively. “I’ll beat you yet, you b---,” he whispered to the dusty leaves.The seemingly immortal shrub responds to a change in the weather
It was an aspidistra. It gave him a bit of a twinge to see it. Even here, in this final refuge! Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? But it was a poor weedy specimen – indeed, it was obviously dying.
The aspidistra, it turned out, had not died after all; the withered leaves had dropped off it, but it was putting forth a couple of dull green shoots near its base.The protagonist’s antipathy seemingly gets attenuated
They had their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’ – kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do.As he yields
’I expect we’ll settle down all right, though. With a house of our own and a pram and an aspidistra.Finally, an epiphany dawns
The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly.One small but profound phrase
Poverty is spiritual halitosisThere’s so much more to George Orwell than Animal Farm and 1984.
क्याप by Manohar Shyam Joshi
A matter of honour;: An account of the Indian Army, its officers and men by Philip MasonThe princes of the past had ‘hereditary troops’ and hired troops; the former served in recognition of feudal overlordship, the latter were hired for the campaign. Neither had any expectation of a pension. Again, neither the Mughals nor the Marathas paid a man regular monthly pay for the period of his career, nor did they accept any responsibility for him after he left them. The permanence of the Company’s service had been a strong point from the first.The book may be of some relevance if one is interested in the history of the Indian Army's regimental system, which, in any case, is in danger of slowly disappearing due to the Agniveer style of recruitment.
but a sufficiently intelligent observer should have been able to see that Pakistan would find it more difficult than India to keep the army out of politics. Pakistan was from its foundation an islamic state; in islam, there is traditionally no division between Church and State, no distinction of priest form husband and father, of citizen from soldier… But the division of function is an essential part of Hinduism, and though India after partition was supposed to be a secular state, its thought and the structure of its society are still deeply Hindu. It was traditionally the brahmin who was counsellor and the Rajput who was warrior; the new officers became in a modified form a new occupational caste and they perform their proper function outside politics.Here the latter argument seems to be stretching credulity a bit. This is how the book ends
The soldier seals his devotion to his craft with his life. He may by chance also win hour in the eyes of other men, but not in the highest degree unless his concern is with his own honour, with his own determination to perform his proper function to his own best ability. This is a central virtue of Hinduism and it is close enough to what is best in islam and in Christianity to have made it possible for men of these three faiths to live and work and die together.Strongly biased views of the author labelling the British as ‘us’ and the native Indians as ‘them,’ and the tone is undoubtedly patronising. There is an occasional nugget. The account of some loyal servants/soldiers - archetypal stuff of Kipling – are shown as representational of all natives, but in truth the feelings were more ambivalent. Better books for Indian military history for he lay person would be: India's War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia, India's Wars: A Military History 1947-1971, Full Spectrum: India's Wars, 1972-2020, Ayo Gorkhali : A History of the Gurkhas.
पल्टू बाबा रोड by फणीश्वर नाथ रेणुब्रेसरी: brassiereस्थानीय हलवाई की दूकान के बाहर यह छोटा सा अंतराल जहां ग्राहक एक खड़ूस वृद्ध और एक युवा महिला-वकील के बीच होने वाली शादी के बारे में गपशप कर रहे हैं
धनभाग: धन्यवाद
पाट: part
फुटगोल: football
भोलंटियर: volunteer
डिस्टीबोट: district board
हरमुनियाँ रोग: hernia
हिमापोथी दवा: homoeopathy
ठेठर: theatre
नारवास: nervous
हनिबूल: honeymoon
फत्तू खलीफा ने कचौड़ी खाते हुए स्टूडेंट से पुछा - कहिये तो बाबू, हनीमून का क्या माने होता है अंग्रेजी में?यह राजनेताओं का व्याप्त पाखंड तथा लज्जाजनक कामुक्ता का एक उदाहरण है
विद्यार्थी ने कहा - हनि माने शहद, और मून माने चाँद।
- तो टोटल माने हुआ जाकर के - शहदचांद?
- शहदचांद
- क्या कहा? कुन्तला क्रिस्तान हो जाएगी?
यह मुरली बाबू जिसको देखते ही मैं, तुम एवं हमारे परिवार-भर के लोग श्रद्धा से, आदर से सिर झुका लेते हैं, जिसके भाषण को सुनने के लिए दूर-देहात के लोग उमड़ पड़ते हैं, जिला कांग्रेस में जिसको नए खून का नेता माना जाता है, वही मुरली बाबू चोली-अंगिआ, ब्लॉउज-ब्रेसरी के समस्या पर बीजू-दी से बात करता है। छबि के साथ अभद्रता कर सकता है। लेकिन, सारे समाज की समस्याओं को सुलझाने का सूत्र भी यही देते हैं। आश्चर्य की बात है न? तो, तुमने देख लिया कि किस तरह व्यक्तिगत रूप से, एक विकारग्रस्त व्यक्ति सामाजिक कल्याण के बातें सोच सकता है। कर सकता है ...।गृह क्लेश की एक झलक
सभी तो देश का काम करते हो। फिर, आपस में यह लड़ाई क्यों? एक घर में वैष्णव और शाक्त रहते हैं, लड़ाई तो नहीं करते?जहाँ परती : परिकथा में लेखक का वैकल्पिक-अह्म (alter-ego) 'मीत' नामक एक कॉकर-स्पैनियल था, इस कथा में वह 'रूपन' नाम का एक पिंजरे में बंद तोता है।
घंटा बोला - यदि वैष्णव की बिल्ली, शाक्त की मछली चुराकर खा जले - तब भी नहीं ?
The World of Null-A by A.E. van VogtFear must derive from the very colloids of a substance. A flower closing its petal for the night was showing feat of the dark, but it had no nervous system to transmit the impulse and no thalamus to receive and translate the electric message into an emotion. A human being was a physico-chemical structure whose awareness of life was derived from an intricate nervous system. After death, the body disintegrated; the personality survived as a series of distorted impulse-memories in other people’s nervous systems. As the years flew by, those memories would grow dimmer. At most, Gilbert Gosseyn would survive as a nerve impulse in other human beings for half a century; as an emulsion on a film negative for several score years; as an electronic pattern in a series of cathode-ray cells for perhaps two centuries. None of the potentialities diminished even fractionally the flow of perspiration form his body in that hot, almost airless room.Shall start the sequel (The Players of Null-A) to see if things get a little obfuscated.
Deus Irae by Philip K. DickTwo young males, tall and thin and horny blue-grey like ashes. The one who had spoken raised his hand in greeting. Six of seven fingers – and extra joints. They were nearly eight feet tall. No flesh – bones and hard angles and large, curious eyes, heavily lidded. There undoubtedly were internal changes, radically different metabolism and cell structure, ability to utilize hot salts, altered digestive system.Bugs (who worshipped the VW Beetle)
…them and their multifaceted eyes, their gleaming shells – a weird conglomeration of unhuman parts. And to think that they bred their way out of mammals, he thought, and in such a few short years. Speeded up frantically by the radiation. We’re related to them and they stink. They offend the world. And surely they offend God.Runners and other oddities and chimeras
The creatures were not over four feet high. Fat and round, covered with thick pelts … beady eyes, quivering noses – and great kangaroo legs.Some mutants were mere teratomas
Amazing, these swift evolutionary entelechies, cast forth from what they were essentially poisons. So many and so fast; so many immediate kinds. Nature, striving to overcome the filth of the war: the toxins.
and some have a single eye in the centre of their head. Cyclopism, I believe it’s called. And with others, when they are born, their hide is cracked and dried and sprouting a heavy coat of dark, coarse fur that covers the baby. And then there was one where its fingers came out of its chest; it had no arms, just like you. And no legs. Just the fingers protruding from the ribcage. It lived almost a year, I understand.PKD’s usual tropes are there – paranoia, hallucinations, religion, the German language (even an allusion to Beethoven’s IXth Symphony, the dichotomy of good and evil.
And in addition I saw one time a human ostrich - that is, long spindly legs, a feathered body, then naked up to…
Let me tell you the best I’ve ever seen, in all the places I’ve ever been. It consists of an external brain which is carried in a bucket or jar, still functioning, with a dense Saran Wrap to protect it from the atmosphere and to keep the blood from draining off. And the owner had to constantly watch it, to see if it hadn’t been dealt a traumatic jolt. That one lived indefinitely, but his whole life was spent in …
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthyThe murdered lay in a great pool of their communal blood. It had set up into a sort of pudding crossed everywhere with the tracks of wolves or dogs and along the edges it had dried and cracked into a burgundy ceramic. Blood lay in dark tongues vestibule where the stones were cupped from the feet of the faithful and their father before them and it had threaded its way down into the steps and dripped from the stones among the dark red tracks of the scavengers.Eww! But the vivid lyrical descriptions make the narrative a delight
…one of the Delawares emerged from the smoke with a naked infant dangling in each hand and squatted at a ring of midden stones and swung them by the heels each in turn and bashed their heads against the stones so that the brains burst forth through the fontanel in a bloody spew and humans on fire came shrieking forth like berserkers and the riders hacked them down with their enormous knives and a young woman ran up and embraced the bloodied forefeet of Galnton’s warhorse.
They were skewered through the cords of their heels with sharpened shuttles of green wood and they hung gray and naked above the dead ashes of the colas where the brains bubbled in the skulls and steam sang from their noseholes. Their tongues were drawn out and held with sharpened sticks thrust through them and they had been docked of their ears and their torsos were sliced open with flints until the entrails hung down on their chests.
Gold seekers. Itinerant degenerates bleeding westward like so heliotropic plague.Philosophical existentialism that require repeated readings to comprehend
The advent of the riders bruited by scurvid curs that howled woundedly and slank among the crumbling walls.
All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker…
Lightening shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlights advanced upon the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns.
The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely any space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their number are no less.
Sand in everything, grit in all they ate. In the morning a urine-coloured sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature.
… all tattooed, branded, sutured, and the great puckered scars inaugurated God knows where by what barbarous surgeons across chests and abdomens like the tracks of gigantic millipedes, some deformed, fingers missing, eyes, their foreheads and arms stamped with letters and numbers as if they were articles requiring inventory.
Each man scanned the terrain and movements of the least of creatures were logged into their collective cognizance until they were federated with invisible wires or vigilance and advanced upon the at landscape with a single resonance.
Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with she same weight and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us.Requires to be reread to be fully savoured.
… while someone asked the expriest if it were true that at one time there had been two moons in the sky and the expriest eyed the false moon above them and said that it may well have been so. But certainly the wise high God in his dismay at the proliferation of lunacy o this earth must have wetted a thumb and leaned down out of the abyss and pinched it hissing into extinction.
… The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a muddled field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
![जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1517145201l/23624200._SX98_.jpg)
जूठन: पहला खंड [Joothan] by Omprakash Valmikiइसे जस्टिफाई करने के लिए अनेक धर्मशास्त्रों का सहारा वे जरूर लेते हैं। वे धर्मशास्त्र जो समता, स्वतंत्रता की हिमायत नहीं करते, बल्कि सामंती प्रवृत्तियों को स्थापित करते है।वर्ण संस्था व ब्राह्मणवाद का कितना कठोर और कटु अभियोग है । अफ़सोस! हम भारत में इस उलझन, इस दुष्ट जाल, इस दलदल, इस जाति-पांति के चक्रव्यूह से कब बाहर निकलेंगे?
तरह-तरह के मिथक रचे गए - वीरता के, आदर्शों के। कुल मिलाकर क्या परिणाम निकले?
पराजित, निराशा, निर्धनता, अज्ञानता, संकीर्णता, कूपमंडूकता, धार्मिक जड़ता, पुरोहितवाद के चंगुल में फंसा, कर्मकांड में उलझा समाज, जो टुकड़ों में बँटकर, कभी यूनानीओं से हारा, कभी शकों से। कभी हूणों से, कभी अफ़ग़ानों से, कभी मुगलों से, फ्रांसीसियों और अंग्रेज़ों से हारा, फिर भी अपनी वीरता और महानता के नाम पर कमजोर और असहायों को पीटते रहे। घर जलाते रहे। औरतों को अपमानित कर उनकी इज़्ज़त से खेलते रहे। आत्मश्लाघा में डूबकर सच्चाई से मुँह मोड़ लेना, इतिहास से सबक न लेना, आखिर किस राष्ट्र के निर्माण के कल्पना है?
Atarapi by Dhruv Bhattपृथ्वी अनादिकाल से तय किये अपने मार्ग पर घूमती रही। अनादिकाल से धड़कते परम चैतन्य ने अनुभव किया कि इस आसीम ब्रह्माण्ड के कोने में एक पिल्ला अपने स्वभाव के विरुद्ध, एक चित्त होकर पाषाणवत स्थिर बैठ गया।The breed of the dogs was indeterminate, the cover photo showed a Pointer in profile, the intelligence could be attributed to a Golden Retriever, although the while haired breed may have been a Samoyed.
वातावरण में ठण्ड बढ़ गयी। भोर की नीरव शांति में अचानक कहीं से कोई अनजाना, सूक्ष्म अपानदान जैसा, अश्रव्य स्वर सुनाई दिया।
सामने ही ऊंचे पत्थरों पर से प्रपात के तरह बाह रहा झरना, किनारे पर खड़े वृक्षों के पत्तों को चमकाती हुई चांदनी, झरने के कलकल आवाज़, अचानक ही नव सर्जित किसी नए जगत को देखकर सरमा आश्चर्यचकित होकर देखती रही।
शांत समुद्र, पानी के काम होने पर भी लहरों को उछलने का स्वभाव छोड़ नहीं सका था। पृथ्वी से करोड़ों प्रकाशवर्ष दूर ब्रह्माण्ड के गर्भ में से उठते अनजान, लयबद्ध स्पंदनों का जैसे जवाब दे रहा हो, इस तरह से वह एक के बाद एक छोटी-छोटी मौजों को उछालकर रेतीले तट पर मंद, तालबद्ध ध्वनि करता हुआ, सफ़ेद रेट पर पड़ रही सुबह की कोमल धुप को भिगो रहा था।
विराट अर्धचंद्रकार में विस्तीर्ण किनारे के उत्तरी छोर पर चट्टानों पर से सागर पंछी कलरव करते उड़े। एक पत्थर लुढ़का और उसी पल दूधिया रंग का, लम्बे रोंएदार बालोंवाला, फुर्तीला सारमेय चट्टान पर आ खड़ा हुआ। जैसे इस पूरे दृश्य का अविभाज्य घातक हो, इस तरह वह स्थिर खड़ा रहा।
उसी क्षण प्रकृति अपनी परम मोहिनी के कल्पना साकार करना चाहती हो, इस तरह पश्चिमाक्ष के घने बादलों में से सूर्य ने झाँका। पूर्व दिशा में काले बादलों पर इंद्रधनुष रच गया। अगले ही पल समंदर पर से सागर पंछियों का जत्था उड़ा।
घनघोर बादलों की पृष्ठभूमि में, इंद्रधनुष के नीचे उड़ते जाते शुद्ध श्वेत सागर पंछिओं के पंक्ति, भीगी हुए धरती, गीली चमकती चट्टानें, उस पर खड़ा दूधिया रंग का रोबदार सारमेय। इन सबने मिलकर कदाचित देखने को को मिलता, ऐसा अप्रतिम दृश्य रच दिया।
तीव्रतम बनती शीत ऋतू की ठण्ड ने सूर्य की अनुपस्थिति में जैसे कहर बरपाया हो, ऐसा सन्नाटा छा गया। आकाश में उत्तर-दक्षिण तक फैली हुई आकाश गंगा, किसी सदस्रोता महानद जैसे नक्षत्र, तारों के वृन्द और वायुमंडल के बीच नभ पथ पर सरकते जा रहे थे। अगणित तारक रत्नों की स्वामिनी एक के बाद एक रत्न आकाश में बिछाती जा रही थी।
कोई महारानी अपने रत्न भण्डार के तमाम रहस्य खोल देना के बाद रत्नों के बिछौने पर बैठकर रत्नों के आभा ग्रहण कर रही हो, इस तरह दक्षिणाकाश को भर देती वृशिचक के अंततगत धनु निहारिकाओं में मन्दाकिनी परम तेज से झिलमिला उठी।
In Ascension by Martin MacInnesFrom the day we arrive on the planetTowards the end the MacInnes writes in this book
And blinking, step into the sun
There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round
It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life
In order to create itself, life already has to exist. Cell theory is circular. Marine chemicals build a membrane that’s a prerequisite for synthesizing the chemicals needed to build a membrane. The end instigates a beginning. Cells produce the conditions essential for their own creation. Life is circular, atemporal. Every cell an instance of time travel.The story starts off slow, promising a lot more later. The pace accelerates and the narrative gallops along breathlessly. But then it starts to meander and muddles along to a mystical end – proving the The Circle of Life – albeit on a cosmic scale – a symbiosis, a syzygy.
My favourite species were those that lay dormant in husk form before reanimating, such as the rotifers discovered in Arctic ice-sheets after 24,000 lifeless years. Able to withstand almost any force, they seemed to challenge the distinction between life and death, annihilating the concept of straight and linear time to suggest something more circular and repetitious instead.There were a lot of new terms I learnt about in the book - one of them being the Cassini Oval
‘The cell is basically an ocean capsule. A preserved primordial capsule, holding the original marine environment inside. This is … this is beyond incredible, isn’t it? I mean, you could describe us both as people, and as mobile assemblages of ocean. I am not ready to get over this.’
they weren’t just exhausted, they weren’t just emaciated to the expected degree. They were actually in the process of consuming and evacuating their own organs – they were eating themselves, attempted self-digestion, ouroboros syndrome.Boundaries of a nation’s territory are determined on a two-dimensional scale, but what determines the vertical limit of a country? It’s the arbitrarily defined Kármán Line
Chest and throat issues are treatable, neurological ones less so. The problem is general, possibly intractable. Globally, articulation is delayed, in speech and in writing, infancy – defined as an enduring state of helplessness – prolonged.
Senility rises exponentially. In many ways it’s a crisis of language, words taking longer to emerge and disappearing quicker…this was a pathology developed by the species to protect itself, turning away form an increasingly insupportable reality into denial and hallucination. Vision is failing too – everything is, depending how you track it. Depth fields atrophy from lack of stimulation as life is lived increasingly indoors. Sometimes, from her twenty-third-storey apartment, visibility barely reaches 15 feet.
‘…Bush signs an executive order lowering the height of the country.’
‘The president can do that?’
‘Well he did…’
The power, as we attempt and fail to observe it, resists us like it is itself alive. Life is not necessarily carried in a body. And what is a body, in the loosest terms, but a set of agreements among matter and energy that endures foe a period and exhibits a metabolic response? The alien may be a particular way of calibrating energy, not constituted in any one of the properties that delivers the power, but in the act of delivery itself. A state and not a body, a pattern not a form.Engrossing but, at times, loses steam.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr SolzhenitsynI started this year with Dan Simmons’ Olympos where the robotic LGM (little green men of Mars) are called zeks – slaves and here I come across the original meaning of the word
Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eye-wash.
Now we could take things easy. Everyone was delighted. As delighted as a hare when it finds it can still terrify a frog.
First he only drank the liquid, drank and drank. As it went down, filling his whole body with warmth, all his guts began to flutter inside him at their meeting with that skilly. Goo-ood! There it comes, that brief moment for which a zek lives.The novella describes in vivid detail “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” and ends thus
The bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a rascal. It doesn’t remember how well you treated it yesterday, it’ll cry out for more tomorrow.
A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.Poignant!
There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail.
The three extra days were for leap years
Fire Bird by Perumal MuruganShe hates the very scent of a man. Like an aalanthaapatchi, a fire bird, she never let anyone come close to her even when she lived here. She flies in quest of human flesh, picking up the trace of a man or woman. If you are not careful, she will use her words to pierce your skin and feed on your flesh.It is a story of a pioneering farming family, narrated with a bucolic touch, with a spiritual flavour that is in close touch with nature.
In response, the men yelled back, hit them, ran after them and caused a big commotion. To Muthu, it was like watching a murder of crows cawing and fighting amongst each other.Beautifully translated, although I wish there was a glossary of the names of the trees, plants and the various food items... And is there really a bird by this name or just a descriptive term?
Sometimes only one bird sang. When that bird stopped, the next one started to sing. Sometimes the two sing together without a pause. She felt there was a meaning to all that and began to try to decipher their sounds.
The first gruff voice that was loud must be a male bird, she decided. The voice that was soft and subtle was a female’s. Every morning they would discuss their agenda for the day. ‘You go in this direction looking for food, I will go in the other direction. Before the heat rises, you must bring back a bug or worm or a piece of corn. We will meet up later. Shall we wager on who is going to bring more food? Until I return, you must remain in the nest. You can go after me, I will then take care of our things…’ That was what paati imagined their conversations to be like.
