First Impressions: The drama of the gifted child by Alice Miller

 I will dive right into the portion that gutted me: "I think that our childhood fate can indeed enable us to practice psychotherapy, but only if we have been given the chance, through our own therapy, to live with the reality of our past and to give up the most flagrant of our illusions.. This means tolerating the knowledge that, to avoid losing the "love" of our parents, we were compelled to gratify their unconscious needs at the cost of our own emotional development. It also means being able to experience the resentment and mourning aroused by our parents' failure to fulfill our primary needs."

Alice Miller is a psychoanalyst whose main work (or at least what she is known for) is parental child abuse. In this book, she covers various aspects of this abuse and, interestingly, how it relates to psychotherapists or healers or anyone who wants to 'help other people'. 

The book covers several broad themes. Parents themselves are prisoners of their own unhealed wounds. These wounds get projected onto their child - and this projection is even more dangerous because it seems to be 'sanctioned' by society. There is obviously a very skewed balance of power between a parent and child (Miller focuses a lot on the mother). The child, when abused or manipulated - often with good intentions or ignorance on part of the parent, has no say. Then this child grows up without having the emotional language to explain or understand that what happened to him or her was wrong. The child, now an adult, does not see the point of confronting the parent. And the lie becomes so deep that the person does not even entertain the possibility that the parent was using the child to feel important, safe, relevant, validated (everything that the child, in fact, should be expecting from the parent). The child internalizes this lie so completely that he starts believing that he had a great, happy childhood. 

In the book, Miller cites one of her patients who is 42 and seems to be exhausted in his search for his true self. He says," I lived in a glass house into which my mother could look at any time. In a glass house, however, you cannot conceal anything without giving yourself away, except by hiding it under the ground. And then you cannot see it yourself, either."

The book has several examples that are, frankly, a little creepy because they seem to be innocuous. 

A father enjoyed telling gruesome stories to his daughter. When she got scared and cried, he would cajole her by saying that it was only a story. This father is manipulating his daughter this way because he had a mom who was schizophrenic. He would himself be scared when she would have one of her attacks. But he was too small to know how to handle it and the adults in his life responded by hiding the truth from him. So he wants to take back control for that little boy by behaving a certain way with his daughter.

There's a mother who grew up in a very strict household where sex was taboo. She sees a penis for the first time after marriage, in the context of conjugal relations. She is scared. Later, when her baby boy is an infant, she explores his private parts - not as abuse or anything - but curiosity. She feels safe only around an infant to get the information she wants. This was denied to her as a kid and then later as a wife. So as a mother with absolute control over her child, she gets her way. Of course, such behavior has ramifications on the child's auto-erotic tendencies. (He can't get aroused unless there is some shame involved.)

Miller also presents some moving psychological portraits of great artists - Henry Miller, the painter, who had to rub iodine on his mother's back as a child. So a major part of his ouevre involves reclining ladies with exposed backs. 

There's Herman Hesse who was institutionalized by his family because they found him too 'difficult' - and 'difficult' mainly because he was different from his religious parents. There's Ingmar Bergmann who used to watch his father beat his older brother. He never really talked about whether he was subjected to such violence (chances are that he was). But his movies involve the theme of being powerless against authority. 

Speaking of power and authority, Miller postulates that a lot of people who have built the myth of a grand childhood in their heads (to avoid the pain of confronting just how mean their parents were) have staunch nationalistic ideologies. Their ideology will necessarily involve obedience, abject allegiance to a greater common good, etc. A lot of this stems from the fact that as kids, they were not allowed to stand out. They were not allowed to complain for basic things like food or attention or love without censure. These things build up.

The other side of the delusion coin is the psychotherapist itself (or, in my opinion, one of the many 'healers' one finds in the alternative healing space). They themselves are very deeply messed up. To avoid the work of ripping their identity to go to the truth of their pain, they decide to 'help others'. Consequently, much of their advice is a projection of their own pain and aspirations.

This book was a tough read. But an important one. I came across this book because I once chanced upon Miller's son's interview. Her son is also a psychoanalyst and he has written a book that basically states that his own mother subjected him to emotional neglect, the same things she articulates so well in her theories.

At some point in the book, I did feel that we are all just doomed. Who here has parents who were not in pain themselves? I am sure that every parent, unless they are really cruel, want a better life for their kids - or if not better, then one that is devoid of whatever trauma or pain they themselves went through. Yes, it's reasonable to assume that people rarely take the time or effort to truly work on themselves. It's easier to look at your baby and try to give the kid a blank slate. But then what? What's the way out? 

The book does indicate that one has to really confront one's parents, tell them that they were cruel or dominating, then feel whatever powerlessness or shame you went through to finally close one chapter. But I don't know. I was not entirely convinced. I am a little skeptical that this can become like a blame-game with nobody getting the peace or closure they need.

It's a valuable book, though. Made me question my own upbringing, made me think about my parents' childhood, their dynamics with their parents...It's fascinating to see how the genesis of an emotional wound you have now - the story of that wound would have begun somewhere else altogether.

In the book, Miller quotes Pestalozzi who neglected his own son but was very warm towards orphans. (We find that Pestalozzi himself was neglected by his parents). "You can drive the devil out of your garden but you will find him again in the garden of your son."

So, if the story has to change, there's that much brute force and courage to muster up.

154 to 185 of 15,400 days

I was shocked when I actually had to read a book of fiction the other day. It was for pleasure. It was for no agenda other than to simply read it. And I could not do it. It felt like trying to walk after a really bad accident.

I have to read and write for a living. So I do a lot of it. Most days I work upwards of 10 hours. Much of that time is reading, researching, writing, and talking to people over the phone (conversations that are preceded with reading a number of emails and that are followed by sending out lots of emails as well.) So, of course, there is the matter of not having time to read for pleasure. But there was something else that I had not quite anticipated - a bleeding of joy around an activity that I had enjoyed a lot as a kid. In fact, I had enjoyed reading so much that a lot of my major life decisions - such as what to study, what job/s to take up, what to spend money on, what kind of structures to have to my days - all of them centred around the fact that I enjoyed reading.

Until one day I found that I couldn't. Not didn't love it as before. But couldn't love it as before.

After that moment, whenever I saw all those unread books around me, I felt really stifled. There were cartons and shelves with books that I had ordered, bought, sourced from quaint bookshops, serendipitously stumbled over, etc. 

And now, not only did they stifle and feel suffocating, they also felt as if they just did not belong to me. (This sentence practically wrote itself. I was thinking of something else but this just wrote itself out. So I won't delete it.)

Anyway, I was really swimming in work. Then one day, at a brainstorming session for one of my projects, we were all coming up with story ideas. I came up with one that was flimsy and hollow. And it was liked. That is when I felt a weird kind of fear -  one that I had felt three years ago when I started freelancing. That I could get applauded for mediocrity and that I could get used to it.

The thing is that I have read enough in my life and lived with sporadic periods of mindfulness to at least convey stuff interestingly. I am working with a particular circle of people. I could just coast along.

But since I don't want to coast any more, I decided to read. I picked up Paula Hawkin's 'The Girl in the Train'. It's a thriller and it's quite nice but I panicked at the amount of time I was taking to finish one page. But I read it through. I finished a page. Then the next one and the next one.

And then I wanted to know the whole story and I cried over Rachel's circumstance and although I had guessed the killer, I wanted to know how the story ended.

After that, I picked up 'A thousand splendid suns' by Khalid Hosseini.

Then I read Shaheen Bhatt's \I've never been (un)happier.'

I cannot explain the relief and joy I felt after discovering that I could still read for fun. Nothing in those are required for me to finish my storyboard or create a pitch deck. But I wake up in the morning and before I start my day (where I will be working in a subdued state of panic for running out of time), I read. After a tough call,  I read.

The benevolence of a story is just the best form of compassion there is. I think when a writer writes a book for a reader she may never know or may never even like (if they ever met) is reason enough to believe that we are made of goodness.

Anyway, I started recording my impressions of the books that I read here. Why am I doing that? Well, for a couple of reasons. Ideally, I would like to write about this but I want those thoughts and ideas to germinate in me for a while. Since I am doing a whole lot of other things to meet deadlines, I want to be stubborn about this one luxury (of writing when I feel like) to be stubborn about.

Also, a lot of my work now does involve writing for a lot of different kind of media. So I am trying to see how does recording something for YouTube differ from actually writing something in long-form? There are the obvious differences, of course, but also I notice that I may be choosing different things to talk about for YouTube. The process is new. I will probably write more about it later.

For now, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOwAM34h0nHcrfA1kPO-XpQ?view_as=subscriber

First Impressions: Split by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

It's close to midnight now. The sun has set and it's a relief. I've had two heavy meals in the day and can feel the bloat turn into something more dense around m midriff. That's nota good thing. Since I like to sip on something when I'm writing, I've opened a bottle of RAW's Aloe Vera lemonade. I had expected it to taste synthetic. But it's actually good. The agave, ginger, and rock salt make it refreshing.

What does any of this have to do with the review of the book? Nothing much. And that is my observation of the book itself. It's well-written but a lot of what is well-written, I think, wasn't necessary.

Anyway, on with my take.

Noor Khan Rai is a 16-17 year old girl whose mum, a Muslim, left her and har father to be with a childhood lover. At school, Noor is part of a chic circle of girls - called the 'Group'. A routine day involved school, hanging out with the girls, coming home and doing homework, a scheduled conference call with the girls, chat with her parents, music, and going off to bed.

This was the routine until her mother left. One day, Noor comes home to find that her grandmother, dad's mother, has moved in to take care of her. The grandmother is critical of Noor's mum and Muslims in general.

Noor is sad, adrift, and not everything is good with the Group. The head of the group, a tall, beautiful, glowing girl called Armaana is getting nastier and bitchier by the day. One of Noor's closest girl-friends, Natasha, is beginning to act distant. Noor now needs to attend a group counselling session after school  for kids of families that have been broken. This session is first called TOD (I forgot the acronym now) and is later called 'Split'.

There are some really moving parts in the story - when Noor gets a letter from her mother, when she sees past the nasty exterior of one of the girls to see how her family may have broken her spirit, the communion she has with her friends. The parts that shine are Noor's engagement with her life and her navigation of he friendships. Where the narrative feels brittle is when the men come in - especially Ishaan, her love interest.

She's a Delhi girl and he's a Bombay boy and let thoughts of cliches not cross your mind. But they do - the Natual ice-cream parlour, the yearning for the sea, etc. etc. That is where I felt a lot of stuff was unnecessary. I wish the story had delved a little more in the psyche of the mother-daughter relationship. What did each one think?

At times, Noor wonders if there were signs that her mother was giving off before she decided to leave. There were huge fights but she couldn't be sure. That's when I felt protective of Noor. Who hasn't retraced the steps to a crisis to see if it could have been avoided? Especially situations where you have been let down by one you love.

But such instances are few. We see a lot of description of Noor's room, her group's parties, the loo stalls of the school, the kinds of lip gloss girls wear, and how deep and measured and totally fictional Noor's boyfriend is. I mean, it's not like men aren't that way but the fact that a 17 year old is that way was a bit much or me.

The book begins with the author's dedication, "To my mum, who stayed." It ends with Noor's character writing to her mother that ater she has fallen in love with Ishaan, she understands why her mother made the decsion she did.

Somewhere, between the first page and the last, I feel it must have been a brave story to write.

First Impressions: Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton

I  read the book in the hospital while waiting for the nurse to finish dressing my mother's wounds. I read the book in the stupor between reaching home late at night, finishing an assignment and client call before beginning another stint at work. 

So, I didn't just like the book. I am grateful for it.

Love warrior is the memoir of a woman who describes herself as 'a recovering everything.' She became bulimic when she was ten years old and slowly got addicted to alcohol in her teen years. She would have a lot of casual sex but never enjoyed it. The first time she got pregnant, she had an abortion. The day she had her abortion, she gave permission to her boyfriend to go and party with his friends. He had asked if she was sure. She had said yes. He had left.

The next time she had found out that she was pregnant, she was on the bathroom floor, tired of letting down everyone time and again. She describes the pregnancy test as an invitation to real life. The test was a sign that someone up there had considered her to be worthy of being a mother despite being so messed up. Despite that. And because of that too.

Her boyfriend at the time, Craig, and the father of the child then proposes to her. They marry. She sets up a domestic life - the solid evidence of this wholesomeness is that they bring out fancy salad dowls when guests come over.

Then one day, Craig shares some porn with her. They'd been having sparse sex before that. She watches porn and feels aroused. Then she has sex with him. There's guilt, shame, despise.

She asks him to get it out of the house for good.

Then, during therapy, she finds out that he has been unfaithful to her. She breaks. She protects her three children by asking Craig to move out. She takes up yoga. 

Then one day she comes across a TV show where a couple is deciding to move out of a house they have spent a lot of money on renovations. Turns out that none of the renovations have worked because the house is wired all wrong. Rectifying the wiring would be a long and tedious process. Not to mention hugely expensive. The wife wants to move out and cut losses. The husband tells her that at least now they know what is wrong. They can fix it. They will know for a fact when it is fixed. What's the guarantee that the next house they move into will not have faulty wiring? What if they continue to hang pretty pictures on walls that hide monstrous wiring?

Glennon wonders whether she has faulty wiring herself. She wonders whether she needs to fix it first before moving on? So she decides to stay on in the marriage and explore if there can be some grace to be had within that.

This book is an enquiry into the earlier question. And the book is a solace. For one thing, Glennon can articulate a sense of emptiness with very kind purpose. There is a portion where she is racked with shame. Her parents send her to the church for an intervention. She is scared of the priest. But before that, when she is waiting for the priest to show up, she spends a little time before a picture of Mother Mary holding baby Jesus. She feels a kind of acceptance that starts her off on a scary journey of finding peace. (So, when she gets pregnant the second time around, she sees it as a sign of approval by Mother Mary.)

And I was particularly moved by the way she has described her husband's adultery. There is a part where she asks why her own flaws - such as silent resentment, withdrawal from sex, a quiet, persistent rejection of her husband - should not be considered as important as her husband's flaw of using his body to satisfy a need. How is one thing more of a sin than another?

Earlier, I used to wonder why women whould stay with men who strayed. My initial assumption was that women remain in relationships they don't like because they are used to it, they are scared of the future, etc. This book is a nuanced perspective of a different mindset. Sometimes women may choose to stay with a partner who strays because they decide to tackle it with strength. They want to fix their own wiring and understand what it would take to forgive their partner and the situation.

It is moving that the book begins with the wedding day of a very pregnant Doyle. She thinks of the same thing the very first time her husband tells her that he has been unfaithful. That memory fills her with hatred. Finally, it is this very same memory that fills her with tenderness and love - so much so that she finally gets to the point where she forgives her husband.

Like I'd written earlier - when my mum was being operated, when she slept while ate cup noodles, when my father dozed off in hospital chairs because he was tired - I used to keep wondering that this tenuous, fragile life - what's it all about?

To feel, to fail, to forgive - maybe that's what.

So for this, Glennon Doyle Melton, thank you.

176, 175, 174, 173: First Impressions: The Bronte Project by Jennifer Vandever

The book revolves around a PhD student of literature. Her specialty is Charlotte Bronte and as part of her study, she is trying to get hold of the letters that the author wrote to her lifelong friend, Ellen Nussey and Professor Heger, the object of her affections. [It was a case of unrequited love and resulted in many soulful epistles and the novel, 'The Professor' or 'Villette'. It also seemed to fuel other people. These letters were considered to be incendiary by the author (she compares them to 'lucifer matches') and her husband, Nicholls, insisted on either destroying them or censoring them. Heger was married and would tear up Charlotte Bronte's letters.]His wife would tape them back together and keep them. When she died, she entrusted these letters to her daughter.]

Paul is Sara's boyfriend and he is also a literature student studying George Orwell.

Paul and Sara break up on account of a Claire Virgee who is studying the late Lady Diana as a social phenomenon.

The story is set in New York.

This tale of a broken heart plays out against a pastiche of subtext - the similarity between Lady Diana and Charlotee Brontee, the comparison between Orwell and Brontee, and the Brontee childhood that gave a pastor (their father) an experience of dining with three kids who'd written, amongst them, Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, and Wuthering Heights. The book also tells us of the humanity we lost when we stopped writing and reading letters. It has a segment where Sara traipses to some place in Italy to spend a night in a dream room in a castle. Legend has it that a woman died in a room pining for her lover. That woman's dream and pain melded into the air and consciousness and whoever sleeps in that same room, has a dream that continues from the pain that the dead left behind. There are other characters who alternate between annoying and vapid. There's a couple that only dresses in 17th century costumes and a Frenchman who spares no opportunity to tell Americans that they are prudish.

So, this book is about a lot of stuff. All interesting stuff. But it's an uneven read with a problem of plenty. There's a very strong piece that I liked about how both Diana and Charlotte Bronte obliquely entered the male world of publicity using female devices of depression and telepathy. (There's an interesting explanation in the book.)

Oh...and there's a plot. Sara needs to live on in New York to help write a movie about Charlotte Bronte. The production house finds Brontee too drab. This lays out the field of some social commentary about the sign of our times when quiet heroism does not stand a chance to be depicted in cinema.

While reading the book, I was not allowed to forget for even one minute that all the principal characters have literary backgrounds. You had to pay your dues by plodding through some juicy, if heavy-handed, metaphors and factoids. It brought back the experience of running into one of your kohl-lined literature friends in college (when you hadn't opted for the subject.) They went on and on about something with an enduring sense of plaintiveness about God Knows What!

I avoided my friends then. This time, I finished the book.

It's not very bad but it did get me into a state of panic when I thought that the book was just growing endless numbers of pages. But all said and done- it is Charlotte Brontee after all. Not the sister I would pick but still. Reading a Brontee was like peeking at the sun. So, any book inspired from her story would still gleam. I found this bit really moving:

"Anyway, Charlotte's very upset - her life is dull, her father is ill, her brother is an alcoholic - so she pours all her sadness into these letters and they're never answered. Then she suddenly shifts her attention to fiction, transforming her experience into art, which you might say can be read as one long, unanswered love letter."

So for that alone, the book has my affection.

179: First Impressions: An Unsuitable Boy by Karan Johar

I read this one really quickly. Actually bought this for mum and started flipping through it. Liked what I read, continued, and before I knew it, the book was over.

What struck me was that the most coherent, moving pieces of the book is when Johar is talking about his work. In fact, I think, wherever he has used his work as the prism and explained his world, he is really solid. Where he is simply talking about a person or a certain episode - like the tension with Shah Rukh or the rift with Kajol - it tends to get boring. (Okay, so you had a great friend and she let you down and now you're not friends with her. Or your very best friend got upset because you made new pals and didn't have time for him but you're back stronger now. It's not all that devastating or dramatic, really.) What is fascinating is Johar's description of the Bombay of the 80s and the cinemascape of when he became a director. 

I particularly liked the portions where he first finds his groove as the star of elocution competitions after giving his mother panic attacks. Or when he describes how close he was to his father. But the portions where he talks about how he found his calling, how Dilwale got made, and how he took over Dharma - that is really fine writing. He is straightfoward and articulate. You will always be closer to people who will set up your first work experience for you. Whether it was Adi who told him to stay back (Karan was about to leave for Paris at the time) and assist in his debut film or Shah Rukh who gave him a deadline to complete his first script and start shooting - one can imagine why the fondness is stronger there. I mean, yes, we all seek and perhaps get emotional support from our pals - but those friends who can show you what you are capable of - you just see them differently. 

I grew up in Bandra and have seen lives of film people, if not very closely, then in rather close quarters. At the time, what those people did, who they hung out with, what skills they had - you never really knew. But I knew men and women who would struggle to explain that what they did was also work - and hard work, at that. 

I think, in some ways, this book is a nod to that. That films, as an industry, has seen shifts that have caused the collapse of several mighty players. Not because the business itself is capricious and some hotbed of debauchery, etc. It got the patronage of the underworld at one point, it's facing competition from stronger international arenas - and in all that, people wake up and go to work. For me, the book scored the highest there.

He does talk about his mother's ill health, his worry of growing old alone, his dream of adopting a child, etc. Regular things. But you get the sense that he'll be okay because he's figured out what to do with his life. And that simple thing is a special blessing.

188: First Impressions: The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Finished reading 'The Alienist' by Caleb Carr. Disturbing, wholesome, solid. After a L-O-O-N-G time, noticed that I was holding my breath every few chapters. Noteworthy are a few things: the description of New York in the 1890s before it became Greater New York and Theodore Roosevelt as the mayor of the city before he became President, the rise of fine dining with Delmonicos, the ghettos, the impact of the man with the money who bailed out an entire nation - JP Morgan. Then, a killer who, against all of this setting, seemed like a normal guy. And a doctor who, against all of this setting, was anything but.

If you're looking for a thriller, this, really, is it.

300, 299, 298, 297, 296, 295, 294: Bought some books

I was at J.M. Road the other day and happened to locate 'Book World'. It's a tiny bookstore in the basement of a shopping plaza. They have loads of books and some good paperbacks for just a couple of hundred bucks. I got a few light reads to stock up on:

1. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penny
2. The Late Child by Larry McMurtry
3. Jennifer Government by Max Barry
4. The Bronte Project by Jennifer Vandever
5. Four blondes by Candace Bushnell
6. Girl Reading by Katie Ward

Listicle

Mukta shared this on LinkedIn. Some of you may find it interesting: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/listicle-5-what-ive-enjoyed-internet-mukta-raut?published=t

336, 335: I will read Eat, Pray, Love again

On Facebook, I follow Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of a moving portrait of an adventurer called 'Last American Man'. She also wrote 'Eat, Pray, Love' which is the book she is most popular for. I loved that. I also loved her novel, 'Signature of All Things' as well as her TED talks. Overall, I really, really like whatever she writes or says.

In her memoir, 'Eat, Pray, Love', Gilbert falls in love with a man in Indonesia. In 'Committed', she explores their journey as a couple before they get married. In her interviews on 'Signature of All Things', she talks about how nourishing their partnership was. He would cook for her and wait for her to finish a chapter so that she could read it out to him.

Her page on Facebook is such a wonderful repository of beautiful, kind messages of how to live in joy, how to keep being creative, how to stay in the light.

Yesterday, she wrote that she and her partner of 12 years were separating.

I took that pretty hard. I have just returned from a holiday in the mountains and was all fresh and everything. Yet, when I read that message on the wall, my stomach twisted into knots and I felt the same fear and pain that I had felt at the time of my divorce. (Thankfully, the memory is very faint now.) Yet, I wished that I could unsee that message and hope that I had dreamed it up.

But who knows why any two people get together or why they drift apart? I just know that the journey Gilbert went on in 'Eat, Pray, Love' had resonated so hard and deeply with me, that any news of her life seem to trickle into mine. Maybe that's what Holden Caulfield meant when he says in 'Catcher in the Rye': '“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.” 

I'll read Eat, Pray, Love again as a friend, then.

Books that I just downloaded to read at some point

I think a big part of packing for a trip is downloading books that I can read on the flight. Although I have stayed awake all night to finish an assignment so I think I'll just sleep through the journey. But it doesn't hurt to have some books on hand. So here's what I got:

1.Slaves of New York by Tama Janowirtz
2. The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty
3. The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob
4. Mysteries by Knut Hamsun
5. The Perfect Order of Things by David Gilmour
6. Hollywood by Charles Bukowski

aaaand we're done for now!

378, 377, 376, 375, 374, 373: First Impressions: Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed

I read this book on my birthday.

This book is a collection of musings, reflections, and quotes by Cheryl Strayed. The book begins with a very endearing little treatise on the importance of quotations and how she held on to them through life. A pithy filament of wisdom nourishing her, keeping her strong, and in a strange way, even letting her be.

There are certain pieces that I particularly liked - the way society absolves itself of taking on the responsibility of a sad person. We tell that person to 'get help', instead of softening our own gaze. There is another part she talks about how we ought to be a little kind - just a little bit if being a whole lot kind feels like having a toe-nail pulled out - if we are walking away from someone. You can make your decisions and stand by them, but you ought to be kind enough to still be a friend to the ones you leave. There is a humane touch to trite advice - you will go on the way you will go on. You will clutch at any little filament of hope or you will wade in despair and get out of breath. But you will continue little by little. Then you either get past the dark hole or you come to a place where you can claim the light.

The book, I felt, was an invitation to to be kind. That, incidentally, is an invocation to be brave.

Since I read it on my birthday, on a day when I look forward and back on what this stuff is all about, there is one piece that resonated. It is a gentle kiss to all the 'What ifs'.

"I'll never know and neither will you about the life you didn't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us.

There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore."

Definitely a book to have on your bedside. There is a restfulness in there that one can only be enriched by.

408: First Impressions: My Gita by Devdutt Pattanaik

When you start reading the book, you wonder about an interesting 'What-if' situation. What if Krishna had recited the Gita to Arjuna in the way Pattanaik has described it here? Chances are that there would have been no war. Everybody would have dozed off or Arjuna would have shot himself in the foot due to sheer exasperation.

But none of that happened. So I'll move on with my thoughts on the book.

The book begins with Pattanaik giving a brief overview of what the Gita is. (It's a song sermon, if you will, that Krishna gave Arjuna when Arjuna lost nerve while battling his family. It's an important text because it condenses some of the most important concepts of Hinduism and outlines a framework in which you can apply it.) Pattanaik then goes on to specify, rather elaborately, why the book is called 'My Gita' and not 'Gita'. It's his interpretation and therefore personal. He sees Gita as a treatise on how we interact with the world. This social dimension is as important as the commonly understood theme of 'self' development. Basically, 'My Gita' tells us what it is to be with others instead of the spiritual navel-gazing that other variations of the book may proffer.

But for all the democracy that the author wants to infuse, he sure pushes forth his ideas rather autocratically. So much so, that 'gita' becomes 'Gita' and that becomes 'My Gita' in the latter parts of the book. The capitalization is an interesting indicator of just how close Pattanaik is to his ideas and just how much he wants us to be on his side. (Or that may be my understanding of the book.)

There is also much contrasting of the Eastern open, meandering philosophy to the rigid, structured Western philosophy. Which would all be well and good if they didn't also come with some very simple, crude diagrams which are funny and paradoxical. Oh, and the long, long treatise on paradox!

What I found disconcerting is the dismissiveness of the traditions that have propagated monastic principles - like Buddhism. What I got from the book is this notion that Hinduism is a superior religion because it shows you a path to God even if you're a householder. This is not something that Buddhism or Jainism propagate. (To digress a bit: Buddhism for me has been about the message that you alone are enough. A lot of traditions insist on relying on a guru or a teacher to take you further. The guru shows you the way and makes it easier for your spiritual growth to occur. But until you find your guru, you flounder and therefore, you must seek. Buddha didn't have a guru. He was driven. He sat and meditated and he got enlightened.)

And Hinduism, frankly, explained through this book seems endless - a desert you have to drag your feet through. I felt like flipping across pages to get to nuggets about the war. But no. 'My Gita' will slowly take you through every turn of thought in Devdutt Pattanaik's mind before you can lift your finger and flip a page. (The first 50 pages seriously feels like a work out.) A lot of the themes have already been covered in the author's earlier works. So the repetitiveness didn't help either. In all honesty, I started feeling like I was reading a printed 'Goodreads' compilation of all of Pattanaik's work.

If this is your first Devdutt Pattanaik book, then I'm guessing you'll be impressed with it. Because he is impressive in the cogent way he even gives timelessness (or the sense of eternity) a historical context. He's gifted like that.

However, the book comes together towards the end. The pace picks up. Things start getting more lucid. You start seeing a pattern. Then the pattern seems beautiful. And then the beauty sets you free.

Maybe that's the point...of the author, of the book, of our lives.

426: First Impressions: Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is a set of five short stories, all centred around music and musicians.

In one, an aging singer serenades his wife before their marriage ends and their lives take a different direction. In another, a friend has been roped in to save his friend's marriage in an unconventional set-up. In the third story, an older musician couple interact with a young guitarist. As a result, the hollowness of this couple's equation with their own son comes through. The fourth one is a piece between a popular singer and a jazz musician. They meet in a swanky clinic where they have both had plastic surgery done. Although they are both bandaged and can't see each other, they connect through music, play each other's records, hum their favourite songs. This connection takes its time, though. In the final story, a Russian cellist finds and loses his groove through his interaction with an American virtuoso.

Each story is so delicately embroidered, so beautifully written - that they feel very touch and go...like gossamer, like the sweet smell of vanilla in milk, like the music that vanishes from the car when you go through a tunnel.

As a reality and a metaphor, Ishiguro explores the question of what remains when the music stops. And where would you be if the song played on.

438: First Impressions: Mrs. Funnybones by Twinkle Khanna

I began the year reading this and I liked it. It was a sweet, light read. I was looking for something to read between Bombay and Pune - something that I could finish in the two-and-half-hour car ride. This book sufficed perfectly.

Here's a little background about the author: She was an actress and is the daughter of considerably renowned thespians in Bollywood, Rajesh Khanna and Dimple Kapadia. She's married to Akshay Kumar, an actor. She was an actress with a rather unremarkable body of work. She gave up acting to take up candle-making and interior-designing and many years later, found her mojo as a columnist. This book is derived from the theme of her columns, i.e. - a famous person's observations as she goes about her mundane life. It's not 'ha-ha' funny but it is witty in places - especially when she talks about her house-help, her mum, and her kids, especially her elder son. I particularly liked a couple of entries.

In one entry, she writes about teen suicide. She's read an article on the subject while sipping her coffee in the balcony. Somewhere she spots her son flying a kite on the beach. She's feeling a little overwhelmed with the world her young son will inhabit in a few years. She just wishes and her son, through kite-flying, remembers the lessons - that if you hold on and not let go, the winds change.

In another chapter, she talks about one trip to Goa she'd taken with a bunch of pals. She'd learned to ride a scooter there, fallen into a ditch, and later pretended not to care in friend of her guy friends. There was youth and insouciance and the thrill of a forever kind of happiness. She captures that mood so well...a single evening of a single trip becomes so memorable that it skirts around all the other important areas of your later life. Twinkle bought a house near the café she'd lounged with her friends. She'd bough her family there numerous times. But she's aware that that time, though shared so often with so many, is now gone.

The other piece I liked very much is the final, concluding chapter. Her son's cooking while she's carping about something or the other. Her son stops her and asks her what she really, really thinks about an issue In response, she broaches the topic of being unsure of whether there's a God or not. Her son is surprised. Later, she's in the midst of a large dinner with her Punjabi family. The house is choc-a-bloc with relatives and friends. She's keenly aware that with her belief system (that she'd shared with her son earlier), she's an outsider in that milieu. But then, the music starts and her sister-in-law drags her to dance. And she dances. Again, keenly aware that despite the beliefs, there are worlds where you can belong.

All in all, a nice book. It's a simple record of a smart woman just trying to figure it all out.

___________________________

Note: I'm open to giving away this book. You ought to be in Pune and should be open to collecting it in the Baner, Aundh area.

439: First Impressions: Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto

Jerry Pinto's mother, Imelda or Em as the kids call her, is depressive, suicidal and schizophrenic. The big Hoom is Jerry Pinto's father and Susan is Pinto's sister. This is the story of a family that lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Mahim (a suburb in Bombay) and tackles incidents like attempted suicide, a son who is so frustrated that he calls his mother a filthy bitch one day. The mother who's 'mental' remembers that but pretends that she was out of her senses when she heard it. It's the story that ends with a family having a cup of tea in the memory of their feisty, wonderful mother who they'd just buried. It's the story of Em's illness, how the family copes, and it's core, the togetherness between a woman who fell ill and her husband who took care of her (and everything) until the very end.

It's a very moving story and a necessary one to read. There's so much strong and hopeful magic in seeing what all people can endure.

And despite all that, love.

440: First Impressions: Dying to be me by Anita Moorjani

This is a real life account of Anita Moorjani's Near Death Experience. She had been suffering from cancer for a long while and one day, had lapsed into coma. The doctors felt that they were losing her. Her mother and husband were crying and pleading with the doctor to try something...anything. But the doctors had given up hope. And the heart monitor indicated death. And Anita Moorjani revived.

The book is mainly about this incident and her observations on what she'd seen on the other side. You'd think it would make for fascinating reading but somehow I felt a little underwhelmed. In hindsight, I think it's understandable why.

Moorjani isn't a writer. She had had an experience that was profound and well, annihilating to logic and reason and vocabulary. How do you describe an immersion into a feeling of such peace and healing that you know it's love but it isn't love the way you know it? What word describes certainty of goodness? Sure, you call it peace because that's the closest you can come to that emotion. And how do you use words and language to describe something to a populace who haven't, or will not, ever go through what you've been through? Some may want to. Like I did. But I'm a writer who is reasonably proficient with words. And I get overwhelmed if I have to describe a stunning rainbow. Moorjani has to describe to someone like me an entitiy called God. Who she'd been with, by the way.

Yes, the immenseness of the endeavour does not escape me. Although the text may feel a tad plodding, the things she writes about are quite immense. She'd grown up in Hong Kong and describes her childhood vividly. We get a sense of her fun and wholesome time with her maid and the smells and colours of the markets in Hong Kong. We also understand the kind of a child she was whose main feeling was fear. She went to a Catholic school where she was scared that she'd be left alone on Judgment Day because she wasn't Catholic and didn't worship Jesus. She was so paranoid that her parents shifted her to another school.

She was from a conservative Sindhi family and battled her way through social mores to get a job, say no to a suitor who wasn't right for her, drank wine, and had fun. She also kept feeling guilty about a whole lot of things for a long time. Soon enough, her best friend died of cancer and so did her father. She was so afraid of getting it that she monitored her diet and exercise regimen. And then she got cancer herself.

This is where the book got really interesting for me. It outlined the philosophy that it doesn't matter what you're doing, if you're doing it out of fear, the very thing that's making you afraid will come to pass.

Moorjani's healing, her understanding of her place in the cosmos and the light, her subsequent work of writing her book - all point to some kind of a plan that was charted out for a specific life on earth. She was one of those who got to find that out.

I read it the way I'd pore through an entry in a Lonely Planet magazine. It looks like an interesting place - the one she visited. Who knows when I'll visit? But if I do, I'll know of a few interesting hangouts.

********
I am done with reading my copy and would like to give it away. If you're in Pune, I could give it to you. You'll have to meet me in the Aundh or Baner area. You can email me at mukta.raut@gmail.com.

And also...

After going through a dark night of the soul, so to speak, one finds that that one's favorite author has written a new book. And that suddenly stultifies all grief and one finds a million specks of the most beautifu sunrises floating about one's room. This is exactly why books save and why writers can be very generous people. So, for the publishing of the book 'Two years, Eight Months, and Twenty Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie rescued me again tonight.

Rushdie, my hero.

A review is here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/04/two-years-eight-months-and-twenty-eight-nights-salman-rushdie-review

592

Sometimes I really wonder just what has to happen to make rude and personal remarks so blithely. Like really - what ought to have happened to make a deeply personal remark and then say that it was a joke! What part of the brain or the heart ought to have shut down so definitely to not have any kind of empathy?

Anyway, since one ought to end the day on a good note, here are a few fun things that happened. I bought a bunch of books - Life after Life by Kate Atkinson and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I also ordered Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert online. I left a copy of this book in Bangalore and I haven't been able to get one at any of the bookstores in Pune.

Ate a lot of rice today which always makes me happy. There's also this preparation of a sweet puri that we make for Janmashtami that's real tasty. Also, did some yoga again after a really long time.

Ma left earlier in the day which was harder for me this time. But hopefully she'll be here soon.



 

61:7 First Impression: Man's Search for Meaning (Book I read - part 2)

Man’s Search for Meaning 

by Viktor E. Frankl

This is a vital book.

It’s about a doctor who underwent the concentration camp experience and, based on his experience, devised the theory and practice of logotherapy. Logotherapy is the treatment of a condition or a disorder by linking it to a person’s will to find meaning in his or her life. It is quite a major school of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The premise, put simply, is in a quote cited in the book, “A man with a strong enough why can put up with any kind of how.” (It’s not the exact quote but close enough.) The book, towards the end, has some tools to understand and apply logotherapy to one’s life. 

My interest in this book, however, was more at a small, individual level – as in, how do you butter bread or pour tea after you’ve come out from a concentration camp? You have lost everything - all your loved ones, your life’s work; you have undergone pain, you got through day after day clawing at any shred of kindness you can find (some prisoners would actually give one of their shoes to someone who’d lost a toe to frost-bite, even though they knew that they would suffer the same fate). These people who've gone through so much - if they survived the camp and were freed, they’d commit suicide. 

From what I understand, as long as they were in the concentration camp, they had a will to live. They had a purpose – to get away from the horror, to reunite with their loved ones, and to return to the life they had. Once they got free, maybe they didn’t have their loved ones anymore, they didn’t have the goal to get away from the camp, and they had the burden of the traumatic memories to carry for the rest of their lives. The clincher, is that piece– the.rest.of.the.Life. Considering that seems endless, why bother to continue living? 

This is where Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy comes in. The discipline is about finding out what goal is meaningful, as opposed to joyous. This was a huge revelation for me. Many times we get possessive about pain because it gives us a reason to continue living – because the maybe the goal of getting over the pain is the goal we move towards. If we happen to accomplish that, then what’s left?

As with books about the concentration camp or any such horror in history, I’m always intrigued with the human-scale bigness of the people who underwent that. There is a part of the book when Viktor is lying down at night in a cell that’s choked with a hundred men. He’s thinking about his wife. Somewhere in the distance, he hears a violin playing. It was his wife’s birthday that night.

Many times in the book he writes about how the memory of his wife and his love for her kept him going.

It’s a very good book, especially for the times when we forget just how much muscle love and meaning can have.