Past, Present, Future or whatever else it’s called

-
A friend of mine recommended ‘The Glass Bead Game’ by Herman Hesse. I’ve tried reading Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha’ and it seemed like a sordid ordeal to me. Understandably, I was wary of picking up this book. So, googled the dope on Hesse’s work and, well, it will take some initiation before I take it up. It seems to be set in an unidentified period and involves a game that has specific rules, but these rules aren’t spelt out clearly, but only alluded to. The game involves an expert (Magister Ludi) and, as with other oeuvres of Hesse, there are plenty of philosophical mechanics to bring out essence of spiritual crises, travesties of soul-search in society, etc. etc. Suffice to say, I don’t think I can tackle the subject just yet.

Although it did get me thinking on the dimension of time. The future, it seems, arrives too quickly. It’s funny when I think that at one time ‘1984’ was ‘futuristic’, and now, it is more than two decades ago. If I try to imagine the future and think of what sort of gadgets there might be, it’s difficult. Because most of the gadgets have already been invented. Sometimes I think that whatever can be thought about has already been thought about. There is no new ground to cover.

But maybe if you really look waaay into the future, you’ll see the tip of a teeny nubble of something new. It’s the beginning of time’s circuitous cervix. So, when you look ahead, you don’t see the future; you see the past.

Maybe I should try to read ‘Siddhartha’ again. The ‘Glass Bead Game’ seems to be out of my league.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I read Siddhartha, and it came across as a difficult read. It felt similar to what would feel if I, having never visited Bombay, were telling you the ways around Bombay by looking at a map. It had a very subjective experience as the topic; and came across as if the author has never really experienced what he is talking about.
8:20 AM
phish said…
if you are so keen to try your hand at herman hesse, there are others which are far more beautiful and evocative.

try peter camenzind for starters.

and no salman rushdie isn't that beautiful at all. can't say that about his choice of women though :)
12:40 PM
Neville said…
Ahh. Phish to the rescue... Thank you.
Also where is that tag, lady?
2:51 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Check (the) mate

-
My cousin, who was born sixteen hours before me, got married recently. I am expected to follow her footsteps soon. Thankfully, I have been granted more than sixteen hours to do that. My father’s health has taken a turn for the worse. My mother is completely exhausted. Rationally, points 1, 2, and 3 would be distinct from each other. But in my family there is no such thing as ‘rationally’. Therefore all these points are inter-related. Strangely, here, we believe my marriage to be an antidote to mortality and fatigue. I happened to be sitting in my parents’ room while Ma looked through Papa’s blood reports. They didn’t look good. Ma was worried and Papa didn’t help matters much. He kept talking about Sourav Ganguly and why he deserved better. Ma got further agitated and after flinging the reports somewhere inconvenient to retrieve (I should know), she snapped, “So what? There are many like him.” Papa doesn’t believe that and would have no one in his family believe that either. He went to...
Read more

Not the same, all the same - Rang de Basanti, being a Hindu, uniform civil code, and Hostage – in that unrelated sequence

-
I watched ‘Rang de basanti’. That, however, is not the point. Everyone now wants to go to Delhi and cruise around in jeeps at night. And that too is not the point. I need to say something. That, really, is the point. ‘Rang de…’ is a good movie but frankly, I’ve seen better. I’ve seen ‘Yuva’. It is creditable, though, that the movie could say what it did without using the ‘sage on the stage’ (as we say in Instructional Design) approach. The movie does have a couple of ideas that I have been besotted with for a long time now. One is the life of a story. There is the germ of an idea about men who go to their deaths cheerfully. There is fascination about what could inspire such courage in ordinary people. That story lays inside a diary for a long time. How long? Long enough for history to play itself out and begin the process of repeating itself. A nation goes the ‘Animal Farm’ way – humans out, pigs in. The story lays untouched – fermenting in latent vigor. Then someone discovers it. She ...
Read more

Save the Indian (male) child

-
This isn't exactly a feminist tirade, but this is written by a woman, and it is written in annoyance. You raise your girls to be sweet, strong, and independent. (Wise parents teach their children to listen to opinions and discard or heed accordingly. The other ones just teach their kids to bullshit everything that everyone says. Still others bring up girls to be on guard and forget that spine so that everyone thinks well of them. I am not sure which is worse, but I detest people shoving their opinions down other people's throats in a show of liberation, so I'll lean towards the former. But only slightly.) As the gender construct of being a 'female' is pushed even further, you teach your daughter complicated activities – driving, perhaps, sending them off away from home, wearing a sari (those freaking pleats!), cooking and de-veining prawns for added advantage. At the end of that, you have a person who genuinely dislikes blending into anything, doesn't like bei...
Read more