The Diary of Midnight's Children : The Game

27-7-11

(I have really begun to doubt on the real-ness of time)

Feeling a deep sense of loss. What has been lost but? Some dice , some coin , some beads are missing… but to where have they gone? Diaries! my first friend in this world was a diary and others were those words and spaces captured in that diary… but here we will talk about games… didn’t I use to say, “The games that we always played…”

 

Snake and Ladders. He writes : “All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is just waiting around the corner, and for every snake, a ladder will compensate.”

Indeed an eternal truth, to which no explanation is requisite.

Two full pages without a full stop and first time I felt something sort of a liking for this narrative. Flowing, lucid, lyrical almost like chanting the sacred letters on beads… I felt like I am walking on silken road while reading the prose…

The Diary of Midnight's Children : in Fragments

(No date can be given because this draft was written in Fragments)



So our protagonist Saleem Sinai is not yet born. And we are around January 1947 , the most terrific year in the history of India. What a perfect time to be born.

"It seems like a day for big questions." ... Of course or why would I meet with a midnight tragedy , pause my writing work, resume again , fail again and now when I wake up I confront a big question. But leave that, here I must be in the circumference of the text. So the big the questions are -

Where the optimism is? If even time can be changed like this ("...clocks in Pakistan would run half an hour ahead of their Indian counterparts...") what's real anymore? And "what's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same."  Now no more about these questions.

The announcement of Saleem's birth saves one life. And then destiny takes Saleem's mother to a prophesy - a prophesy about Saleem's birth. Quite crudely , we come to know about Saleem Sinai. Something as the apparitions in Macbeth  had prophesied...

"He will have sons without having sons! He will be old before he is old! And he will die... before he is dead."

Well lets move on. There is this quote I had underlined : "My God... it seems that there are a million different things to love about every man." When Amina says this , I know what does she really mean. As her father , Ahmed Aziz , had once attempted to pray , she is attempting to love her husband. Its a nice way to love someone - love in bits. This way you would never fed up with the person and find  him anew every day. Only a woman can choose this way because a man always has more easy ways. But even when she tries to love his every part and action, what is surety that she would be able to love him in integrity? After all, "who... ever truly knows another human being completely?" In Adam Aziz's relationship with Naseem he had loved her (literally) in fragments and so could never be at peace with her when she came in his life in integrity. We think of fragments and are overjoyed that we are in love and yet we don't know who the person really is.

Anyway , one more typically Indian reference can be traced in the motif of 'nose'. These olfactory references are so powerful and obvious in the text that one can not ignore them. I guess would discuss them later.  

(to be continued...)

The Diary of Midnight's Children

“Please believe that I am falling apart.”

Quite impressive is the first sentence of the third chapter of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. But the following paragraph, specially the concluding lines explicating the science of ‘falling apart’, is what I would say pulls me back out of the text.

The book has a grand opening. And after the two pages you feel you have chosen a great book. And that’s not ironic. I loved when the protagonist’s grandfather (he is dwelling in the history of his past) meets an alteration in his faith in God. The whole incident is beautifully described and in somewhat filmy-graphic style.

 “. … And was knocked forever into the middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve. Permanent alteration: a hole.”

Such fragments are scattered all over the text but after all they remain fragments. In brief, Salman Rushdie seems to me the “Shobha De intellectualized”. The witty, adroit language and aphorisms* surely captivates a reader but this magic spell is unable to transform one.

However , this book seems more sensible and intellectual than many by Indian authors and of Indian context. Rushdie plays upon local words, phrases, attitudes and characters confidently and almost humorously. But I do not mean to examine the text critically just now --- I have only completed a half century, and Gosh six more are yet left.

Not a review but this time I intend to maintain a diary of Midnight’s Children. Primarily because this was an impulse and logically, because it’s a huge book and worth an attempt at critical analysis. This being the first post of this series, it may seem messy , unclear and digressing from the points but let us tolerate a bit and help to make it better.

A little overview and a bit of thought –

Saleem Sinai, the protagonist is not yet born. We meet his grandfather , Dr. Adam Aziz , a Germany return a skeptic, vulnerable fellow. He is shown to have lost his faith while hitting the stony frost ground and losing three drops of blood. Anyhow, It doesn’t convince. Losing a faith or even an alteration can occur if there is already a space and cause for that. Author’s choice for diction itself proves it:

“One Kashimiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Adam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray.”  

This highlighted word emphasizes the fact that he was attempting and not actually whole-heartedly, devoutly praying. There is a great difference in ‘praying’ and ‘attempting to pray’.

The character sketch of Adam’s friend Tai and his wife Naseem is quite interesting, as they present the other side of Adam’s attitude. They are quite attached to the past and traditional beliefs. Such as, Naseem does not bother if the Maulvi teaches their children to hate non-Muslims because her only concern is that the children should be given the religious education and Tai despises Adam’s medical kit (leather-bag) and its instruments because they are the symbols of outside unknown world with its unknown maladies.

In the beginning , the story goes along with the story of India’s struggle for freedom. The Muslim perspective might contribute the second dimension to the history. Let us see that …

(to be continued...)

The Glass Bead Game

I spent last few days reading the magnum opus of Herman Hesse , The Glass Bead Game. After going through some tiresome forty pages of introduction, I began with the life of Joseph Knecht, who was born into twenty-fifth century, according to our author.

This book is not an ordinary novel or biography, it demands your participation. While reading it , I had to pause many times for short meditation and contemplation exercises. I enjoyed them truly and found them fruitful.

Castalia , the educational province had a fine sketch and a major role to play in the book.

I realized that my experience of Banasthali helped me to get the idea of Castalia. They both are aloof from the outside world. In the period after Banasthali , I have often longed for the childlike innocence and simplicity of Banasthali Life. But this dichotomy of life is presented in many forms in the book.

The subject of dichotomy brings Blake to my mind. He had said , ‘Without contraries is no progression’. The crux of his “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” is that both innocence and experience are required for the development of soul. This experience is not something evil or worldly but a belief that truth is not simple or blissful. And this perhaps what Knecht realized later in his life and resigned from the post of Magister. He craved for risks, sufferings and worldly experiences. The innocence, chastity , intellectual freedom of Castalian life would not provide for the other side of his soul.

And It’s not only about being aware of dichotomies but about crossing the threshold of known to the realms of unknown. Knecht , in his childhood , had called it “a leap”. In his own words, “ But I do wish that if ever time comes and it proves to be necessary, that I too will be able to free myself and leap, only not backward into something inferior but forward into something higher.”

Freeing oneself – sounds so blissful. But it isn’t always easy to free yourself. When you grow your consciousness of the Life consisting of different stages and your ultimate goal would be something higher than things related to the World and aspirations of present life, you would be able to free yourself. You would move swiftly, firmly and without fear or regrets to the next stage , even if it is the period after promising youth or death.

Stages - a poem by Hermann Hesse , From Glass Bead Game

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permamence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

With Keats

Half of the morning today I spent with Keats. I have read him several times and this revision was a sort of reunion. When you read and penetrate into a beloved writer at different stages of your life, you happen to come close to him more and more.

Its quite funny to recollect, how for the first time when I read Keats’ quote , “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” (Endymion) I felt repulsion towards him. An instant hatred. Which anyone in my mind’s status would have felt. Perhaps I thought myself too ugly or un-beautiful. I saw this beauty in relation with physical beauty. How trifle my mind had been at that time. When after few years of that misunderstanding I read ‘Ode to Grecian Urn’ and its famous quote, “Beauty is Truth and truth beauty, All ye know, and need to know on earth.” I was perplexed. I didn’t accuse him or anything but I tried to go into deep and find what truth he had to present here. But again I couldn’t dive into the meaning easily.

Keats to me seems to be an Icon of Youth – a dreamy youth. And also of a path to Truth which worships Beauty. To an ordinary person this may sound ridiculous, for beauty and truth seems two poles apart. But if you telescope, you find them synonyms. And to avert the prejudice against Keats philosophy you need to speculate upon all his poems. For  Keats beauty does not only dwell in joyful things but it also resides in Melancholy. Scenes, things or feelings which arise melancholy may also be beautiful because there has some truth in them too, and so death also contains beauty in it. Truth and Beauty are thus inseparable.

Keats had a fine eye for beauty. And this is truly wonderful. Though the path of beauty to Truth sounds the best and without sorrows and struggles but this is not so. For Keats’ own life is an example of the perils, pains and sufferings one has to face in spite of choosing such perfect seeming path. In all Odes of Keats , the Melancholic note is prominent. His joy of beauty is not without the sorrows.

Keats aspires for the eternal beauty in the form of immortal Nightingale but he also finds beauty in the Songs of Autumn. This beauty has two facets. And both are welcomed by Keats. He is definitely not an idealist and escapist. He knows the reality of the world – the world of mortal sufferings and still he is able to find his song in it.

As I had said above, when you a love an author you gradually find a parallel of him inside you. You discover your own face which is akin to him. For a romantic, Keats could be such a beloved author. He is so natural , so ingenious and so very profound that you can take a walk with him time and again.