Norwegian Wood

Over the years I have read my fair share of Murakami short stories but I am yet to read him in the longer format. And now I must. Why? Because we are acquainted now. Okay, that's an exaggeration. He knows of me. He does! Or atleast that's what I intend to believe. I have exchanged emails with his agent, Sam in NY to procure a license to perform one of his short stories for the next event at Readings in the Shed. This is how my mozzarella-like stretched imagination imagines the chat between Sam and Murakami.
S: So, there's this girl Himali, brilliant writer it seems from her emails, she has written to me for a license to read your story...
M: Uh huh (I imagine he is a man of few words...he saves them for his stories)
S: It is for this brilliant initiative (Here Sam goes on to extol the work of Readings for a full 5 minutes)
M: Wow (High praise coming from him!)
S: So should I give them the license?
M: Hai!

Or, more likely Sam is at his filing cabinet checking his list of documented instructions on license requests for Murakami stories and gave me a thumbs up without any calls to Tokyo.

But, I am going to go with scenario one.

****

I choose Murakami's Norwegian Wood. It is the story of Toru Watanabe, in flashback, as he recalls his years at university. When Toru starts university, besides the usual pressures of transitioning from a teenager to an young adult, he is also coming to terms with the suicide of his best friend. He goes to class, makes new friends, gets up some shenanigans, has one night stands, falls in love and has his heart broken. But, he also grapples with issues far behind his years, death, mental illness, loss, friendship...and he wades through all this and comes of age. Watanabe is the smartest, sportiest, handsomest or for that matyer any -est. But, it is impossible not to fall in love with him, much like the many female characters in the story. He is not the perfect guy but there could not be a better guy.
One of his love interests Midori tell him,
"I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”
Toru is that guy.

Murakami describes Norwegian Wood as his most realistic story. He says he made a conscious effort to steer away from his preferred surrealist style and write something that more people would enjoy. While the story may be more realistic, the quality of writing brings out the extraordinary in the ordinary.
He lends depth to commonplace thoughts:
The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute—like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness.
He creates images that demand a second read to be savoured:
Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul.

Mental illness is a huge part of the plot almost to the point of being rampant amongst the youth of Japan. The novel is set in the 1960s, about 20 years after the Second World War and the nuclear bombings... the darkest period in the country's history. Murakami's characters would have likely been born just after the war. Could the adult generation's occupation with rebuilding the nation and coping with the loss have contributed to building an emotionally stunted generation? Perhaps. Or, perhaps it is simply the novel's fabric.

I am left shocked by the sex scenes. Their graphic nature would make writers of hardcore porn turn deep shades of red. I admit I would have been less.hocked had the story been set in America. The young characters discuss sexual acts with an abandon that I do not associate with Japanese people. I have a single image of the Japanese in my head...they are shy, reticent people and correct to a fault in their speech and behaviour. I had succumbed to the danger of a single story (despite Chimamanda's warning) and had assumed all Japanese as the same. It is due credit to Murakami, that not once do I question the realness of his characters, despite what I mistakenly perceive as their un-Japaneseness. Toru, Midori, Naoka and every other character become living, breathing windows to Japan.

Such is the power of good fiction, it opens the mind to the realities of the world.

Death has a Thousand Doors

Yes, I admit it. I have read them all - potboilers branded with a gilded #1, semi-porn cloaked as romances, detective novels cheesier than Sony's CID and more. Those were simpler times, I read for fun. I laughed, cried, gasped and moved on to the next book.

Things changed when i started to write.

'Read like a writer,' said my teacher Renu, in the first writing workshop that I attended. The more I learnt about good writing, the more i demanded from teh books I read. I wanted to be wowed, by the story, yes, but also by the words, the turn of the phrase...the craft. I wanted to revel in the genius of the writer, at her/his grasp of the craft. I started to read for the writer in me.

As I move along the world map, I almost miss the fourth one - Andorra. On the map it is a speck, almost like the cartographer rested his pencil on the map for a bit and then forgot to erase the mark made by the pencil-point. Located between Spain and France, Andorra is so small, it does not qualify to be called a country, it is a micro state. Irrespective, I was not going to discriminate on size. As, I looked for a book based in Andorra, a murder mystery caught my eye. Do I dig deeper for a more literary book or read this one which seemed to have all the trappings of a quickie mystery novel. I was keen to check if I had, indeed, left my past behind me...and I decided on the latter.

Death has a Thousand Doors ticks all the boxes as far as mystery novels go - a heroine with a troubled past, a missing person, romantic undertones between heroine and detective, clues that flummox, creepy people who turn out to be okay and regular people who turn out to be creeps. A mystery novel does not have to do much to keep the pages turning, human curiosity to know whodunnit is enough. The writing is ordinary and the plot is often manipulated to accommodate a romantic scene or attempt to throw the reader off-track.  

The best I can say is - it is not terrible.  

On the bright side though, as the story winds through the towns and the surrounding mountainside, the landscape pops up on its pages. The characters zip through the towns and streets and give an insight of life in Andorra, best known for being a tax haven. To its credit, the book brings this unknown location under the spotlight and for the 300-odd pages I discover the world within this speck.

...And at the end of the 300-odd pages, I am safe in the knowledge that my past will not come back to haunt me.

So Vast a Prison

All I knew about Algeria was one, it is somewhere in Africa and two, it had been a French colony. The second fact a remnant from some history lesson in school.

An online synopsis of Assia Djebar's So Vast A Prison described the book's unique narrative style and how it intertwined two different threads. I was sold. Stories with complicated narrative are a weakness. It is like reading and doing a jigsaw all at once, two of my favourite activities.

The novel is sliced in three parts. The first part introduces the reader to Isma's present life. Married with a daughter and a job in the city, she seems to have a full life. But, it is clear right from the start that there is something amiss. She meets a young student, falls in love and has an affair. When she confides in her husband, he beats her up almost to the point of blinding her and then leaves her with the word 'talaq' thrice. This part ends with Isma determined to resurrect herself. The narrative style of this part is dreamy and I feel that Isma's caught me by wrist and pulling me along as I float through her story. I must move along at her pace, I cannot take my mind off for a second or I need to backtrack and read again.

The second part is a detailed history lesson on Algeria of the ancient times. If it has a relevance to the plot, it is lost on me. I drudge through it but don't retain a single detail. And I almost give up on the book. I skip a few pages, and hurry on to the rest of Isma's story.

The third part starts with Isma in the present as the director of a documentary - Arable Woman. This part alternates between Isma's experience directing the film and her memories as a child and the stories she has heard of her mother and other ancestors. Once again, Isma has me tagging along with her and once again I must keep pace.

The underlying theme of the so-called modern woman connects as it is much like in India today...a constant struggle between balancing the present with tradition, the superficial with what is deep-rooted in the collective psyche of society.

It is not an easy read and I would recommend skipping the history lesson entirely. But, what struck me is the similarity in traditions and mindsets here at home to a country somewhere in Africa.

Chronicle in Stone

I didn't know anything about Albania. If I had to point out where in Europe it is, it would be like playing pin the tail on the donkey blindfolded - the tail could land up on its ass or its nose or anywhere in between. So first things first, Google. I discover that Albania is in southern Europe. It is bordered by Greece in the south and shares the rest of its borders with some other countries I know nothing about. Yet.

I chose Ismail Kadare's Chronicle in Stone for the period it is set in - World War II. Of the little that I know of WWII, Somewhere-in-Europe-Albania figures nowhere

The novel is set in a small city close to the Albanian-Greek border. When the story starts the border with Greece has just been closed and the city is under Italian control. But, this does not affect the protagonist's life, a young boy of 12-13. He spends his days traipsing around the city with his best friend Ilir, dreaming up gory fantasies and listening in to the gossip that the neighbours bring to his grandmother. But, his idyllic existence is short lived. The war intensifies and air raids, fighter planes, sirens and bomb shelters take over the cityscape. The city gets tossed around from the Italians to the Greeks and back and forth a couple of times. Every change brings with it more mayhem in the life of the boy and his friends and neighbours. They are forced to seek refuge first in the citadel and then later in a village in the outskirts. The story ends just before the end of the War, as the inhabitants return to their homes...'Again the tender flesh of life was filling the carapace of stone.'

While neither the name of the protagonist or the town is mentioned in the novel, the age of the protagonist and the description and location of the city implies that it is autobiographical in nature. The events that inflict the region are in sync with the history of Gijrokaster, Kadare's hometown.

The writer creates many detailed images and makes the landscape pop up from the pages. His favourite tool literary tool is personification. The river, his house, books,  the streets, all come to life. In one instance, he describes the fortress where the boy along with the rest of the citizens seek refuge:
'The fortress was indeed very old. It had given birth to the city, and our houses resembled the citadel the way children look like their mothers. Over the centuries, the city had grown up a lot.'

The novel delivers a strong message about war and its effects on everyone in its path. As I read it I picture a boy in a city in Sudan, watching the buildings around his house crumble to the ground. Or a young boy on a Greek island looking out from his window as refugees filter into his town...'The windowpanes were covered with frost. I stared blankly at the swarms of refugees on the road below. In tatters. Snowflakes and rags. The world seemed filled with them.'

Strange that descriptions from half a century ago, stand true today. Only the locations and the players change.

Zurich Transit by Max Frisch

My dad once told me of a neighbour who placed his own obituary in the newspaper. He wanted to see who would turn up for his funeral. His family, which had not seen the obituary, was shocked when mourners started turning up at their house. The young man was asleep in his room unaware of the chaos his little experiment had caused. When the truth emerged, he was declared an oddball by the community, and kind of ostracized for the rest of his life.
"He had always been a bit eccentric," my dad said. "But that was over the top even for him."

True that his action had been extreme but the thought is something most of us could probably identify with. Would not most of us want to know what happens after death? And not just in the after life, but also after in the lives that continue. How many will show up at our funeral? Who will speak how of us and how? How will the lives around us go on?

Theo, the protagonist in Max Firsch's screenplay Zurich Transit unwittingly gets the opportunity to do exactly that. He is on a flight back from a trip abroad when he discover through the newspapers that he has been declared dead, the victim of a car accident. He lands up at his funeral planning to reveal to his wife that he is alive but holds back for some reason. He then follows his mourners to the cafe for the wake in his honour and again does not come forth, instead choosing to eavesdrop on the goings on. He walks over to the shop his mistress works in and again turns away after a glimpse from across the road. He bumps into an Italian immigrant who proclaims that his fiancée is dead and he does not have the money to return home for her funeral. Theo plays out various scenarios in his head of the reactions of his wife and others when he reveals himself. As the story progresses, Theo's discontent with his life comes through.

The writer moves the camera frequently and quickly, from following Theo to following his wife post-funeral to his mistress who think she has seen him and takes off on a wild goose chase. It goes to his workplace and also follows his mother-in-law. The screenplay displays that these shifts would be like snapshots, quick and brief...glimpses into Theo's after-death. Reading a screenplay takes getting used to. The dialogue is interspersed with descriptions of the setting, the character, his expressions and actions. The language of the descriptions is instructive in nature...notes to the director who may be filming the movie. Firsch's directions are adequate enough.

The film script of Zurich Transit emerged from Firsch's novel My Name is Gantenbein. It was to be filmed in 1965 but was canned because of creative differences between the writer and the director. It was then published as a screenplay the following year. In 1989, the rights to the screenplay were procured by director Hilde Bechert and in 1992 it was filmed. Firsch had died a year earlier. But, perhaps he sat in the shadows during the premiere, watching his film sketch on screen. Maybe he was happy with the way it turned out and walked away into the light. Or, he grimaced and squirmed through the screening, and dissatisfied, gave up and took off for a new start.

Afghanistan: The Unexplored Frontier

It was 11^th September 2001. The printers in the University computer cluster had been spitting out papers non-stop as dissertations were printed out. It was the final leg of our Masters degree. I don’t recall how the news came in. Maybe someone rushed in and announced or maybe someone saw it online and it spread across the room like a game of Chinese whispers. But, in a few minutes all the screens were tuned into one version or other of the planes crashing into the twin towers. And then in minutes, the towers collapsed into the ground in front of our eyes.
My first thought was that it could not be real. A movie promo? A prank for a show? I scrolled up and down, for a sign to prove that what i had seen had not happened. I looked at my classmates around me, their faces mirrored my disbelief. And that's when reality struck.

For me, that was the day Afghanistan was born. And for the next 14 years, that was all that I identified it with. Up until a month ago.

“I am reading - In A Land Far From Home,” my friend Yash told me. “It is hilarious.” I Googled it and found an excerpt. It was nice but it did not hook me. Then the entire title caught my eye - ‘In A Land Far From Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan’. I was intrigued. I looked up the summary which explained that the novel was an account of the time spent by Bengali writer Syed Mujtaba Ali in Kabul as a teacher in the late 1920s. I was hooked. I wanted to know about the Afghanistan of way back then.

The novel was originally written in Bengali and has been translated to English by journalist Nazes Afroz. In those days, Afghanistan was unknown territory and the translator, in the Preface, describes it as a country ‘keen to shed its hermit image’. The story starts with the writer’s journey from Calcutta to Kabul, first leg by train and the latter by bus. Mujtaba Ali delineates the tribulations that he faces on his trip and the many characters he encounters on the way. Once settled in Kabul the first year passes by without incident. The description of the settings, the food and the people invokes the travel-lust in me. Will it be possible in this lifetime to travel to Afghanistan like one would to Spain or Thailand or …? And see the gardens that Mujtaba Ali spent afternoons in or the snowy peaks of Paghman that formed the backdrop of his house? Unlikely.

Two-thirds into the story, the political climate of Afghanistan changes. The reigning king Amanullah is forced to abdicate and a brigand takes his place. Thievery and rioting are rampant in the streets of Kabul and diplomats and ambassadors of various countries are evacuated by the embassies. With India under British reign at that time, Mujtaba Ali’s evacuation is more complicated and takes longer. Money and food is in short supply and the writer is driven to the brink of death by starvation. But, he survives to tell his tale.

The writer’s incisive observations about everyone and everything around him bring the anecdotes to life. He finds humour in his daily life and interactions with those around him and relays it well to the reader. I am not enamoured by the storytelling skills but the story holds me. Most of all, it is the revelation of a different Afghanistan, the before of the horrific after, that is intriguing.

The story ends just as things start turning downhill for the country and even though it is more than 80 years ago from today, the start of the decline is visible.
Or maybe I say that because I have seen the future.