Resident Dormitus

Can there be a person who doesn’t know what he wants? Yes. Can he be such that he revels in not knowing? Possibly. Can there be someone who not only revels in not knowing what he wants but also tries to trivialize every good opportunity he gets, who thinks that not defining any morals for himself is a way to be unique and who tries his best to be a nuisance to strangers while trying to do as little with his life as possible? Guess so. Can this person also try to understand his situation in a philosophical manner and eventually succeed in fighting his internal demons, though the answer dawns on him after committing a near-murder? Vikas Rathi answers this question with a “Yes”, as he sculpts the character of his protagonist in as inconspicuous a manner as possible.
 
Achet, a young man from Jaipur who starts off on his corporate career, after a  business education, is the kind of person who never takes independent decisions. He tries to do as little work as possible (mental, physical, official, whatever) though he continues to exercise his brain enough to make innumerable trivial jokes at the expense of other people. Not particularly heartless in introspect, but selfish and cruel in action, Achet is the man who is nearly evil by virtue of not having done anything. He pushes his luck as far as it can go, until a murder pushes him back to the reality he has evaded for long.
Plot-wise, this book is just ok. It is interesting though Achet’s inactivity stagnates the book in many parts and one might just lose interest. However, the plot hook right in the beginning ensures that you will eventually return to the book, at least to find out why was there a murder at all.
 
The real essence of the book is in the character of Achet and the experience of seeing the world through his eyes. There will definitely be many parts of the book where Indian youth would identify with him- if you have ever taken a decision purely because that’s what everybody does, (or) if you found that you have started drinking for no reason tha the boredom fo the corporate jungle soon after you started on your career, and you know it’s bad for you, but you also don’t feel like stopping, you would relate to Achet. Of course, if you are plain lazy, you would still relate to him.
 
If you, like me, are none of the above- if you have taken decisions on your own (Whether right or wrong), if you generally have the courage to face your true self and shun inaction, then this book might help you understand your anti-thesis. (Often, it is most difficult to understand the other side of the coin when it might seem totally senseless from your side- that's where this book helps!)
 
One good thing about the style of the book is that Vikas talks quite sensibly about a good many serious topics, in a way that you don’t even realize he talked about them! The other thing is the way he ends the book (which, of course, I will not talk about!) Of course, I wouldn’t like the constant drinking and smoking pot and what not, but by now I have learnt to expect these as Indian authors’ tickets to sounding authentic and mature! Also, like Vikas himself says, one often finds the greatest insights from sources that are otherwise not to your taste. This particular insight was itself an example to that theory (Ya, I am obsessed with recursion! ;) )

There is one problem though.. Most vices have a tendency to infect you if you look too closely into them (that maybe why they are termed vices!) - primary one among them being laziness and inactivity. To some extent this books slows you down and infects you with a boredom and vagueness in your mind (which you can only remove by readng a different book or watching a movie!). However, that only proves that the book is true to its own cause.
 
So, do I like this book? Not greatly. But, it did offer me an alternate perspective and contributed in at least a small way to improving my understanding of people. 
 
Will I recommend this book? Yes. If you think you are directionless, if you don’t know where you are and don’t even think that you might ever find your life’s calling this book might prove to be the “Resident Dormitus” for u. Or if, you are sure of yourself, at least to some extent, and, like me, you are interested in understanding people who are your opposites in life, you should. Whatever the side-effects, it at least leaves you with some insight. And for that alone, any piece of art would be commendable!

This review is a part of the " Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com.

All for Lust?? - Part 1

“The world runs on lust”, Alex said. At this point I put down the book Resident Dormitus which I have been reading since yesterday (and which will be my next review candidate) and started thinking whether Alex’s theory is really true--  do people really do everything only for lust.. This post is a product of this particular mental aerobics session of mine. (This post became quite long, so putting up the first part here. Part 2 coming soon! And ya, I know I don't usually write adult stuff and this might not go well with some of my readers- you can still read on.. This post is very much in the style of "Love is in the air"... )

 Ok. So the theory here is that everything that men (or women) do is with the intent of finding a better partner to bed. Actions like trying to find a better job (better job = better salary= higher chance of finding a more desirable spouse), or having spikes in your hair (looking cool= being more desirable to opposite sex) quite obviously substantiate the theory. But what about actions like becoming the CEO of a company? In the book, the guy argues that wanting to become a CEO is a product of the desire to earn respect, which is itself born out of the desire to find a better partner. He goes on to argue that in every action a person does, he/she seeks to differentiate him/herself from the majority in order to increase his/her chances of finding a better partner.

Looking at it from an evolutionary standpoint, this theory looks like it makes sense. As all animals, humans started out as a species whose ultimate goals were to find food and to reproduce, while staying alive, where there was always competition in finding food and sex; evolution would naturally lead to a set of humans whose every action would optimally lead them to both. To some extent, the act of reproduction is more important to a species in evolution than finding food, once the animal has passed on its own genes to an offspring (selfish gene point of view*), and hence we could hypothesize that the incentive from food eventually wanes out and all actions are intrinsically motivated by lust.

You could think of it as a game and some actions you do increase your HP (Hotness points!), where HP is a measure of your desirability/eligibility in terms of finding a partner. If the goal of the game is to get maximum HP and keep yourselves alive, and if you had a time limit or an energy cost for doing any action, with time you would end up doing only those actions that increased your HP, such that you might reach a time where all your actions shall increase your HP in some small way or the other. (Rather, you would stop doing anything that doesn’t give any HP). So with a game theory-like argument, it is quite logical that humans might have ended up as a species whose every action is essentially motivated by the prospect of finding a partner.
 
If you are like me, you would stop here and ask- wait, isn’t there a catch? Yes! Yes! Of course! :)

Imagine a society of people who value celibacy. The most desired man in such a society is the one who can resist the most irresistible of temptations and who remains single throughout his life. This is purely hypothetical, of course, but there is nothing to stop such a society from existing in this world. Men in such a society might still go after power and money, and they might also style their hair into spikes, but their motivation might be to become the best looking celibate ;) From an evolutionary standpoint, one might argue that such a society will cease to exist since of course, no one is reproducing. Again, not quite true. Such a society could have a small subset of its population, say about 10-20% of people who are not “allowed” to be celibate, and who “must” reproduce. The children might be adopted by the rest of the population. If anyone wonders how this arrangement would work, one can imagine it as a type of caste system with the upper caste being celibate and prestigious, and the lower caste delegated to the menial task of sustenance! This kind of arrangement can survive for centuries, if backed by the proper belief systems and religious approvals. Again, all this hypothetically.

But I hope you do see there is a catch in the “All for lust” theory we talked about. So, forgetting the hypotheses, what’s the catch in reality? Which loophole in evolution allows humans to develop into a society that values celibacy?

(To be continued...
 Part 2 here. )

*Selfish gene point of view: Not going into the theory, here I mean that all organisms act in a way to ensure their genes' survival. Since after reproduction and sufficient growth of the offspring the gene does not require the organism to survive, the effect of food can be ignored.

Conversations

Conversations. The synopsis said a book with poems and short stories which reflect your own inner conversations. The problem with evaluating (or critiquing?) such a book is that most people have not read much of introspective stuff so if they have a taste for it they would find it good anyway. It is difficult to compare the book with an objective standard unless you have done enough introspection yourself. And as a corollary, if at all you are the kind that reads classic poetry and classic short stories (aka the minority) you run the risk of writing harsher reviews and having higher expectations. Since I have done all this and quite obviously over-intellectualized and over-philosophized every small detail of my life, I must admit at the start that if I rate the book 3, you can read it as 3.5..

Having said that, I must admit I started the book with very low expectations. After having been disappointed by too many Indian poets and writers, I couldn’t afford to start with a filled cup again. Luckily though, the book was good. It didn’t sweep me off my feet, it is not in my top 5, but it is good.
It is a collection of short stories, and not the red herring types. More introspective and down-to-earth- just as the cover promises. Writer Rajeev Nanda weaves tales that touch very important issues that each of us faces (more about them later) and the fabric does come out pretty well. Not too bright and fabulous but home-spun, comfortable and yet, wise.
(Note- It also has some poetry, but that's not too great. I will not comment further on the poetry and this review will focus only on the short stories..)

Rajeev starts with a minor Tagore-style story about dreams, then he moves on to a good discussion with/about God. A tale of a peaceful soldier and a predictable taxi ride later, there is the chance meeting between two travelers (Ya, it reminds me of “The Eyes have it” and “The woman on platform 8”  !), and then we are invited to listen to four eulogies for a man. If you pause at this point and observe, he has actually started with child-like dreams and the maturity level grows into touching adult issues like chance meetings that are part-attraction part-affection and part just that-- chance! Then we step into bolder territory- extramarital (and internet) relationships! After seeing two-three such, we walk into a group of friends who take the courage to face the truth about themselves and the book culminates with a peek into a euphemistic (and partly recursive) conversation about God and religion. But for 2 stories about God, the rest are mainly relationship-centric. Of course, there is a lot of liquor flowing through the book, as are physical intimacies and sex. Is it just me or is the world getting more openly carnal lately?!

The plots are not entirely novel, but then the story here is not in the plot, it is in the sub-text. There are some stories with a minor twist in the end, but I hope they were not intended to be twists, because I could see most of them coming all along. Again, it is not a big deal because plot is not the focus.
What about the characters? Some stand out (Like Melanie in Intersection- I just loved her!) Some were intended to stand out, but they fade away (Like Kundha in The Taxi Ride - this Roald Dahl style story somehow did not achieve the full surprise int he twist!). There are too many similarities between the characters in consecutive stories- men who try to push their limits, women who are both smart and good-looking, married men who are attracted to other women, mid-life crises, cynicism (the sheer number of times the word ‘cynical’ was repeated in the book was daunting!) -- with so many similarities, many of the characters fade to form one vague outline and few (almost none) stand out. But again, maybe they were intended to be inconspicuous so that one could identify them with themselves..

What I liked about the book are the many questions and many alternate viewpoints it offers. Some questions are fresh in the way Rajeev asks them, like “does commitment make sense in today’s world” (The Rabbit Hole) and “Would God care if mankind destroyed itself” (Tête-à-tête), some old yet haunting- like “Do we lose something by worrying more about the destination than the journey?” (The Truth Club) and “What is the most important thing in life?” (Splinters) and the mother of all questions- “Does God really exist?” (Conversation). If you read the stories and paused in between to think about the viewpoints, the book would truly reconnect you to your inner conversations. (As the cover promises, again!). Of course, personally some of these questions have occurred to me before, but then that was part of the book’s promise, right? :)
The bad part was that very few portions were striking and made lasting impressions. And yes, Rajeev needs to work on creating unique characters. 

Anyhow, my favorite stories were Tete-a-tete, The Rabbit Hole and Conversation. Overall, it is a good book if you want to think and introspect. Not great, but yes, commendable. Must try if you have not read this kind of stuff before.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com

Space, your time's up!

I know I haven't written in a long time. Been busy (yes, that's always my excuse! :( ) And I kept thinking I would do a review of "The Immortals of Meluhas" and a post on a Reading session I went to, then a post on the big questions in Life and then on "The Virtue of Patience". I hope I will do them some day. But today, I thought  that my "To-do" List is always growing and I might as well post what I am thinking about right here right now..

So I was reading this article about Space Travel (Shared by Deepak) which talks about the end of the space age and I thought I would write about it. I don't know how many of us noticed when the NASA closed down its space shuttle program. It was the day when I felt that it was going to be the end of the charms of seeing the stars and imagining the vast beautiful (empty or dark-matter filled) space and dreaming of space travel. Of looking into a telescope and imagining man would be there soon. But even if you didn't fantasize all this, if you just noticed the news, this article is worth reading. It is very logical (and as most logical things, negative in some sense), so I do hope its predictions do not come true. But then, even the best of wishing cannot change the logical course of action*. Or could it??

The first question the author  asks is, how far do you think man has traveled since 1980. It is a very good question to start with, simply because most people think that we have gone at least as far as the moon. Man did step on the moon once, didn't he? So we must be at least that far. But apparently, that isn't true. We have not gone anywhere beyond 0.1 times the Earth's radius post 1980!!

One might wonder why. Why not space travel? The answer lies in asking the reverse. Why was space travel funded in the 60s in the first place?? Nations thought then that they were going to colonize the moon. And there was a cold war going on. It made sense to invest in anything that helped you grow more powerful. Today it might just be too costly. Besides, today, there are no real superpowers. The developed nations worth anything at all are not leading the political game. (European countries, Australia, and so on). The only nation in a pseudo-superpower position is the US. And its economy is so hollow you never know when it shall collapse. There are a few potential powers- India, China mainly. But neither is developed fully today. There is no government today that would want to fund space science. Nobody can afford it. And if anyone could, there is no specific reason to. Besides, people are busy fighting terrorism and oil wars and the like- why would anyone burn their pocket to spend on something that wouldn't solve any problem for them?

The author also brings up some interesting points about the scientific challenges, assuming we get the funding. Rocket science is, well, ROCKET SCIENCE! It is not a fun filled cake-walk (or moonwalk, if you please). The challenges are many. The ROI is bleak. Fuel prices are ever-increasing. And NASA's action makes other countries think even harder about venturing into (this) space. Yes, we might not see a space race ever again.

We might, but chances are higher we might not. There was the day of assembly-line, the day of automobiles and then the day of rockets. Today is the day of iTechnology. It does not mean we don't use assembly line or automobiles anymore. Just that we may not innovate them a lot. Those paths may never again be broken, however well trodden. Already, not many students opt for astrophysics majors. And Star trek terms don't ring much of a bell to the Angry Birds Generation. It may be hard to accept, but the day of the large is over. It is the day of the nano. And continuing the philosophizing, I wonder, am I going to live to see the day silicon dies a death? Shall I be writing that the day of my favorite digital electronics and smart devices is gone? As always, only time can tell...

And oh, there was this line in the linked article- "Some future poet or composer, perhaps, will someday gather it all up in the language of verse or music, and offer a fitting elegy to the age of space." I hope I do. Watch this space.

* Aside, there was a similar line in The Selfish Gene - which made me simply love Dawkins oh, I need to write that review as well. And it really is too good a book to miss!

Love, Poetry and Aftermath

And when those poets spoke of love, red roses and dewdrops
They did not talk of the arguments- the disappointment of not being understood,
Of the days his eyes went red in anger, and her's in tears
Of the long nights when sleep grew to become an elusive stranger
Of the flowers falling off the garland of love, and the thin thread stretching to elastic
To bear this. Even this.
Wonder why they did not imagine, the days when the magic of "love" faded away,
And the sparkling colors of the rainbow turned a dull gray
Of the days after love died, though when alive it was true
Of the days when love died, but only after killing you.
Maybe the poets were never successful in love to witness its aftermath
Maybe love is truly beautiful only in dreams...
Only in dreams.