Power of Our Geographies

Guided by self-interest, all countries seek power, leverage and resources. In this, a country's geography is like a prison, because its limits and constraints are difficult to overcome. This is the basic premise of Tim Marshall as he looks at the geographies, histories and challenges of ten areas of the world in his 2015 book, "Prisoners of Geography - Ten Maps that tell Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics". 

I have just finished reading this book and I found its conclusions very harsh, sometimes even heart-breaking. At the same time, I found it stimulating and thought-provoking.

We live in utopian times - even with the wars and climate change and loss of bio-diversity, I somehow feel that with our new knowledge, understandings and innovations, the humanity will find a way to a better tomorrow. I dream that our future world will be guided by ideals of peace, brotherhood and mutual collaboration between countries and peoples. Marshall says that this utopian dream may remain just a dream, because countries and peoples are guided by their self-interests and they can't escape their geographies.

Geographical Areas Covered in the Book

The book looks at geographies and histories of ten areas - Russia, China, USA, Western Europe, Africa, Middle East, India & Pakistan, Korea & Japan, Latin America and the Arctic. For each of these areas, Marshall provides an overview of its geographical layout and history, especially the evolution of its relationships with its neighbours.

He says that the relationships between countries are dominated by the ancient ideas of suspicion, self-interest and gaining control over resources. Countries and their governments might talk of brotherhood and collaboration but they never forget those ancient ideas and when needed, go to war over them.

For example, in the part about the geography of Russia, he writes:

"Poland represents a relatively narrow corridor into which Russia could drive its armed forces if necessary and thus prevent an enemy from advancing towards Moscow. But from this point the wedge begins to broaden; by the time you get to Russia’s borders it is over 2,000 miles wide, and is flat all the way to Moscow and beyond ... You might think that no one is intent on invading Russia, but that is not how the Russians see it, and with good reason. In the past 500 years they have been invaded several times from the west."

There are different wars in the world-history, described in Marshall's book, that I was unaware of, and thus it was very instructive to read this book. For example, I was not aware of the history of the Kurds. Here is a part about it, in the section on the Middle East (p. 256):

"Kurdistan is not a sovereign recognised state but it has many of the trappings of one, and current events in the Middle East only add to the probability that there will be a Kurdistan in name and in international law. The questions are: what shape will it be? And how will Syria, Turkey and Iran react if their Kurdish regions attempt to be part of it and try to create a contiguous Kurdistan with access to the Mediterranean?

There will be another problem: unity among the Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan has long been divided between two rival families. Syria’s Kurds are trying to create a statelet they call Rojava ... If Kurdistan does become an internationally recognised state then the shape of Iraq will change. That assumes there will be an Iraq. There may not be."

His descriptions of the fissures in the Middle East are the most hard-hitting and pessimist part of the book. For example, he writes about Islamism and Palestinian refugees (p. 259), "Such changes to a country’s demographics can cause serious problems, and nowhere more so than in Lebanon." Another example, is in the following extract about the future of the "Arab Spring":

"In the Middle East power does indeed flow from the barrel of a gun. Some good citizens of Misrata in Libya may want to develop a liberal democratic party, some might even want to campaign for gay rights; but their choice will be limited if the local de facto power shoots liberal democrats and gays. Iraq is a case in point: a democracy in name only, far from liberal, and a place where people are routinely murdered for being homosexual.

The second phase of the Arab uprising is well into its stride. This is the complex internal struggle within societies where religious beliefs, social mores, tribal links and guns are currently far more powerful forces than ‘Western’ ideals of equality, freedom of expression and universal suffrage. The Arab countries are beset by prejudices, indeed hatreds of which the average Westerner knows so little that they tend not to believe them even if they are laid out in print before their eyes. We are aware of our own prejudices, which are legion, but often seem to turn a blind eye to those in the Middle East.

The routine expression of hatred for others is so common in the Arab world that it barely draws comment other than from the region’s often Western-educated liberal minority who have limited access to the platform of mass media."

In Conclusion

The book ends on a pessimistic note and is brutal about our prospects for a more peaceful world, at least in the immediate future:

"As the twenty-first century progresses, the geographical factors that have helped determine our history will mostly continue to determine our future: a century from now, Russia will still be looking anxiously westward across what will remain flatland. India and China will still be separated by the Himalayas. They may eventually come into conflict with each other, but if that does happen, then geography will determine the nature of the fight ... Of course geography does not dictate the course of all events. Great ideas and great leaders are part of the push and pull of history. But they must all operate within the confines of geography. The leaders of Bangladesh might dream of preventing the waters from flooding up the Bay of Bengal, but they know that 80 per cent of the country is on a flood plain and cannot be moved. It is a point the Scandinavian and English leader King Canute made to his sycophantic courtiers in the eleventh century, when ordering the waves to retreat: nature, or God, was greater than any man. In Bangladesh all that can be done is to react to the realities of nature: build more flood defences, and hope that the computer modelling of rising waters due to global warming is overstated."

This book was written in 2015 and some of its worries about possible conflicts (such as Russia - Ukraine, Israel - Palestine, north and south Sudan, D.R. of Congo) have become realities.

If you are interested in geopolitics and want a deeper understanding about our past, on-going and potential future conflicts and challenges, do read this book.

*****

Books I liked in 2023

This post is about some fiction and non-fiction books that I had liked reading in 2023. I want to start with a book which had a strong impact on me.

“How I Rescued My Brain” by David Roland

I loved this book. Often, I had to stop, reflect, go back and re-read. It made me think of long-forgotten episodes from my life and how they had shaped me and my life-choices.

The book was published in 2014 and I had it in my “waiting to read” pile since 2020. It is a memoire of an Australian psychologist about his personal experience of neurological and psychological disturbances, including stress & burnout from listening to stories of extreme violence and suffering, facing financial ruin and finally, a brain stroke, which was not immediately diagnosed.

The second half of the book is about his attempts to regain control over his life, to recover some of his lost neurological and cognitive capabilities and to come to terms with his new body and self, even while he has to negotiate through relationship difficulties with his wife.

This book resonated with me in a personal way. Professionally, as a doctor, I could understand the difficulties of dealing with the pain and suffering of people. I also used to swing between over-empathy and complete detachment in similar situations. David's ideas about compassion made me reflect on those periods and wonder if I could have dealt with them differently.

I have also seen the impact of progressive cognitive decline in persons dear to me, and wondered about its inevitability, as I grow older. Thus, the cognitive challenges faced by David in the book and his attempts to find ways of dealing with it, also resonated with me.

Finally, his ideas about the episodes of deep psychological trauma, which we carry unresolved in our minds, sometimes from childhood, also stimulated me to think of different ways in which we deal with them.

It also has a lot of stuff, especially in the second half, about the potential role of meditation, mindfulness and Buddhism in dealing with psychological & cognitive challenges. I think that it can be a wonderful tool in our paths of self-discovery and development. As I look back on the year gone by, it was the most important book I had read in 2023.

Next part of this post starts with the fiction books and then continues with Non-fiction books that I had liked reading in 2023.

PART 1: FICTION BOOKS

3 Books About Bees and Bee-keepers

It was my year of reading about bees and bee-keepers. I didn't plan it, it just happened. I still have 2 more non-fiction books about bees in my "waiting to read" pile of books.

“The Last Bee-Keeper” by Julie Carrick Dalton is based in a dystopic future-world where all the bees have died and food-grain production can only occur in special green-houses where people work as pollinators.

A young woman called Alexandra is travelling, looking for her home, where she lived with her father Lawrence, who was one of the last bee-keepers in the world. Many years ago, there was a big scandal, when the last remaining bees were lost, Lawrence was sent to prison and Alexandra to foster care. Since then, talking about bees is prohibited.

Alexandra travels under a pseudonym Sasha and does not tell anyone that she is the infamous Lawrence’s daughter. She finds her house is occupied by a group of squatters (young people) and starts living with them. One day she finds out that some wild bees are still alive and they come to meet her in the forest. The bees bring hope to this dystopic world.

There was a time when I used to read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books. While I like films set in future dystopic worlds, I am not so fond of reading about them. However, this book was an exception, it drew me in and didn't let me go till the end.

“The Murmur of Bees” by Sofia Segovia has been translated from Spanish and is about the Mexico of early 1900s and its war of independence. Written in lyrical prose in the magical-realism style, the book tells the story of Simonopio, a boy born with a cleft lip and palate deformity, who has a special relationship with the bees. The book has a rich cast of characters from his adopted family called Morales, and the people working for them, including some superstitious peasants who think that Simonopio is the incarnation of devil and brings bad luck.

I loved this book's slow pace, and its rich exploration of different characters. From the first chapter, about an old woman who seems to live on a rocking chair, the story grabbed me immediately and did not let me go till the end.

The Morales family persons in the book are too good to be true, always kind and attentive to each other and to their servants, with no trace of prejudice against the deformed child and respectful of his gift of communicating with the bees, while the only evil lies in the heart of illterate peasants. These stark characterisations, gave the book a fairy-tale kind of feeling. 

“The Last Bee-Keeper of Aleppo” by Christy Lefteri - It is a book about being a refugee and the challenges of starting a new life in a far-away land after a huge personal tragedy.

Nuri and his wife Afra live in Aleppo in Syria when the bombings and war arrive in their lives and brings destruction. They start on a difficult journey, passing through the refugee camps in Turkey and Greece. Afra has lost her ability to see and must be helped by her husband. The refugee camp hides other dangers, including persons waiting to pounce and prey on vulnerable people like Nuri.

Finally they reach England, but they still need to find their cousin Mustafa who is also worried and searching for them. Mustafa teaches bee-keeping to the refugees. In the story, bees are the connection between the past and present of Nuri and Afra. It is a book about hope and happiness, even after facing huge tragedies.

“Pavilion in the Clouds” by Alexander McCall-Smith

Some 15-20 years ago, I had read a series of mystery books by the prolific Scottish author Alexander McCall-Smith, known for his detective and crime stories. Isabel Dalhousie was a very unsual detective in that series because she was a middle-aged philosopher-professor in Scotland, who edits a journal on ethics. I had loved reading those books.

Alexander is famous for his series of mystery books based in Botswana (the series of Ladies Detective Agency) - However, I did not enjoy that series. He has also written many other series of detective books including a Scandinvian series, but I have not read them.

This stand-alone book “Pavilion in the Clouds” was an exception and I was happy to finally find one of his books which I liked. It is about a colonial family living in a tea-estate in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in early 20^th century. Bella, the family's daughter has a English governess Ms White. The wife thinks that her husband is having an affair with the governess. The girl, influenced by her mother, tells a lie and creates the circumstances so that Ms. White can be sent away from their tea-garden. Only, some decades later, a meeting with Ms. White, will make Bella understand what had really happened during that period.

It has a gentle and unhurried kind of story and the surprise revealed near the end was very effective and satisfying.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 

This book is about 3 main characters in a small American town - an octopus called Marcellius living in a marine acquarium, a Swedish immigrant woman called Tuva, who had lost contact with her son some decades ago, and a good-for-nothing young man called Cameron.

Tuva has a special connection with Marcellius and feels that he is very clever - for example, she knows that at night, he can open the lock and go out of his enclosure, then come back and relock the enclosure, just like a crafty teenager.

Cameron, the young man, is going around in his camper looking for his father. He reaches that town and since Tuva has sparined her ankle, finds temprary work in the acquarium.  Marcellius can immediately make-out that Cameron is the son of Tuva's  long-lost son. The book is about the efforts of the octopus to help Tuva to reunite with her grandson.

It is a feel good book, not always very consistent with its characterisations, but I still liked reading it.

Last year I also saw a Netflix documentary about a sea-diver who makes friends with an octopus and discovers that they are intelligent creatures. Because of that documentary and this book, I don't like the idea of killing and eating octopuses.

Beyond that, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash 

This book tells the story of a young girl called Beatrix, who lives in London, and is sent to live with a American family in Boston (USA) during the second World War. Initially angry and unhappy, slowly Bea becomes a part of her new American family and falls in love with one of the boys. Heart-break comes when the war finishes and she has to come back to London.

It is a family story and a little love story. The book tells about the events from the point of views of different characters and is very well-written.

In an interview, the author had explained about the inspiration for this book, "Over 20 years ago, I read an article in The New York Times about a group of British adults returning to the States to see where they had spent time during World War II when they were young. I was fascinated by this — I was aware that children in London were evacuated to the country, but I hadn’t known that children were sent so far afield and often traveled alone."

One good thing by Alexandra Potter 

My last fiction book from 2023 is about Olive, a divorced, unhappy and depressed woman who decides to shift to a Yorkshire village where she used to go for holidays as a child. On an impulse, she has sold her city house and bought an old cottage in the village, hoping to make a fresh start.

The book is about her life in the village and in a new community, the challenges she faces and her decision to adopt an ill-treated disabled dog called Harry. The dog helps her to find friendships in the village community and leads to her healing.

The last quarter of the book was a little predictable with everything turning out to be perfect, including Olive finding her long-lost sister and the beginning of a new sentimental relationship. However, in spite of this, the book is very enjoiyable.

Reviewing my list of my favourite fiction books from 2023, I can see that it was an year of mostly reading books about family-dramas, relationships and love stories, instead of my usual preference for thrillers and action books. In 2023, I was a bit disappointed by the new books of many of my favourite thriller-and-action-book-writers. Or, perhaps, it means that my reading preferences are changing. 

PART 2: NON-FICTION BOOKS

About non-fiction, I tried reading a lot of those books in 2023, but most of them bored me. Often I read them in bits and pieces and then, left them. Here are a few, which I liked.

The Invention of Yesterday - A 50,000 year History of Human Culture, Conflict and Connections by Tamim Ansary 

This was one of my favourite books this year. It introduced me to the concept of social constellations, which are created by narriatives and meta-netarratives that we use to understand and explain the events and the world around us.

This book takes a wide overview of history, focusing on the inter-connections between events occuring in different places.

For example, the book explains the links between the policies of the Ming emperor in China and the tea-party revolution in Boston, leading ultimately to the independence of USA. America imported tonnes of tea, but the British started charging them big taxes for its sale, because of their trade-imbalances with the Ming regime in China, leading to the tea-party revolution. 

Another interesting part of the book is where the author looks at the reasons for the industrial revolution and the rise of the west. There were three Islamic empires around 1500 CE - the Ottomans in Constantinaples, the Safvids in Persia (Iran) and the Mughals in India. Ansary concludes that all three of them were backwards looking empires which didn't produce any significant innovation and inventions.

On the other hand, the situation was different in China and Europe. China made some interesting inventions like the printing-press and gun powder. In Europe, after the crusades, inquisitions, and the plague epidemics, the social control of the church was lost and thus advances in science could be made. For Europe, learning from the Chinese inventions was the first step, but even more imporant were the incremental innovations, which Europeans added to the Chinese inventions. For example, Europe learned about the gun-powder from the Chinese and added the innovations of guns and bullets to it.

I often wonder about the orthodox-dominence in most Islamic countries. Ansary is from Afghanistan and in his opinion, over the past few centuries, the middle-eastern worlds of Islam, with its subjugation of women, have been moving against scientific progress and innovation. He feels that this situation is bound to be changed by the people over the coming decades, because it excludes them from the benefits of the scientific progress which is helping improve the lives in the rest of the world.

I felt that the last parts of this book dealing with the future - role of machines, biotechnology, climate-change, etc., were a little confused and repeatitive. Still, at almost 500 pages, it was a rare non-fiction book for me, which I didn't skip in parts and read till the very end.

Two Books by Charles Duhigg 

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do by Charles Duhigg: I liked this book which talks about how our habits are formed, how we can analyse and understand them, so that we can change them.

I especially liked the first part of this book which focuses on the habits of the individuals, such as - how each habit is associated with its cues and triggers, what is the role played by the rituals in habit-forming, and, the idfferent kinds of pleasure/satisfaction that a habit provides. It is imperative to understand all of these before we can try to change our habits.

Smarter, Faster, Better - Being Productive in Life by Charles Duhigg - Duhigg writes in a clear and uncluttered way and brings in psychological insights by giving real-life examples. He does not use the psychology-jargon, which is a big plus. I wish I could write as clearly as he does.

Like the "Power of Habit" above, I liked the first part of this book where he talks about 8 areas which can influence our productivity, such as motivation, working with teams, focus and power of mental models, goal setting, innovation and working with data.

The second part of the book where he has shared his own life experiences and his struggles for improving his research and projects-writing was less interesting for me (in fact, I skipped large parts of it).

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, involved in writing, doing podcasts and giving talks. I appreciated his books because of his clear way of writing. Most of the time I am bored by the self-improvement and self-learning books because they focus on easy formulas for bringing a change and in my opinion, those easy formulas do not work. However, I enjoyed some parts of these 2 books.

We the Scientists by Amy Dockser Marcus 

Finally, this last book in my list, is about the coming together of doctors, scientists and the parents of children with a rare fatal condition called Neyman Pick's disease. It talks about the impact of the disease and the challenges faced by doctors and scientists to try to find a cure for it.

It tells the stories of children as they try the new and experimental treatments, their hopes and tragedies. It focuses on a new drug called Cyclodextrin, which initially seems to be effective but is difficult to administer (a cathetor must be put in the children's brains, leading to infections and strokes). After all the difficulties, the results so far did not seem to have clear-cut benefits.

A big challenge in finding treatments for rare conditions is that all the data about those conditions and their treatments remains scattered in different places. The book talks about the challenges in sharing that kind of information.

There were positive aspects in these stories, which show that scientists and doctors, with the help of parents, were able to overcome many barriers and start communicating with each other, but the individual stories of the children described in the book still have tragic endings. It was like reading a thriller with a sad ending.

It is a short book (137 pages, plus notes) and I read it in one go. It left me feeling sad and yet hopeful. If we can improve the communication between clinicians and scientists working on identification of drug molecules and sharing of data, perhaps an answer can be found for rare conditions. 

Conclusions

Increasingly I find it difficult to read most books - I start them and leave them after 20-50 pages. This happens to almost 90% of the books I try to read. At the end of the year, to have this list consoles me!

So I am keeping my fingers crossed for my book-reading in 2024. I have just started reading a new biography of Martin Luther King and it looks promising.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year 2024 and happy reading of books that you like!

If you have come so far, please do write a comment with a suggestion about a book that you have read and liked. I like communicating with my readers.

***

@sofiasegoviawrites @christy_lefteri @MirTamimAnsary @AmyDMarcus @cduhigg @40somethingfkup @shelbyvanpelt @McCallSmith

Life Beyond Us - Science Fiction & Essays

Recently I have read a very interesting anthology of Science Fiction writing with an euqally interesting twist - it also has essays about the science behind those SF stories. The book is titled "Life Beyond Us", it is edited by Julie Novakova, Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest (2023, Laksa Media).

It has stories by some of the well-known names of science fiction and is presented by the European Astrobiology Institute (EABI).

EABI on its website presents this book with the following introduction:

What would life be like if it evolved in a cold ocean beneath an impenetrable shell of ice? Or on a world whose haze obscured any view of the universe beyond? Is there a common template for life, or can we expect to find preciously fragile silicon creatures drifting in seas of liquid nitrogen? How would finding alien life change our society?

Life Beyond Us, a new anthology by the European Astrobiology Institute and Laksa Media, depicts the timeless quest for finding alien life in 27 science fiction stories and 27 science essays, aiming to imagine, inspire and illuminate.

I loved reading this book and would like to share some of its aspects which I found illuminating.

Science in the Science Fiction

SF is based on science and is different from fantasy. In SF writers can imagine the future or distant worlds, but they do so based on science or on scientific hypothesis.

However,understanding the science behind each SF story is not easy because it can come from different and specialised fields of expertise, from technology to physics to chemistry to medicine and innovation. I loved this book mainly because each story is followed by an essay which discusses the basic science behind that story. I loved some of the stories, but I loved even more some of the essays explaining those stories because they made me think in unexpected directions.

Below are some examples of the information in the essays which were new for me and which made me think.

Safety of Humans and All Aliens

Giovanni Poggiali in his essay about a SF story by Erik Choi wrote about the fears of humans to make sure that we don't import alien life forms to earth because we may not have immunity against them and they can decimate human and/or animal life. This is something we all understand.

However, I had never thought about the vulnerability of aliens to the pathogens from earth. When we send space-ships to moon or mars or to some other star outside our solar system, is there a danger that some of our bacteria or virus can go with them, and then infest and kill the alien life forms?

Poggiali's essay about ensuring the safety of all life forms on earth and on other planets, made me think about the difficulties of limiting contacts with our bacteria and viruses. We can't sterilise our intestines, also because our gut organisms are fundamental for our well-being and survival. In the long-term colonisation of other planets, I am not sure how this would play out.

Star-Forming Cocoons

Stefano Sandrelli in his essay about a SF story written by Renan Bernardo, talks of an astromical discovery by Bart Bok and Emily Reily in 1940s about a small black cloud which they called globule. They proposed that new stars were being formed inside that globule.

Sandrelli talks about Bok Globules to explain that the space is not empty and that approximately 2% of the total mass of our galaxy, the Milky Way, consists of low-density matter, mostly as a gas, called the interstellar medium (ISM). ISM is 91% Hydrogen and 8.9% Helium. However, 1% of ISM is made up of dust. I have always thought of space as being empty and this information was very unexpected.

Titan, Saturn's Moon

The essay by Fabien Klenner about a SF story by G. David Nordley explains that Titan is an iceball, with a thick atmosphere (4 times as dense as earth's atmosphere) and very low gravity (around 14% of earth's gravity). This information has been used to plan a Dragonfly mission to Titan in 2027 which should reach its destination in 2034.

On earth we have carbon-based life which needs water as a solvent. Titan does not have the conditions for a carbon-based life but it may have conditions for a nitrogen-based (azotosome) life.

Can azotosome based molecules create life and what kind of life it would be, is a tentalising question.

A Really Hot Venus

Sanjay is the hero of the SF story by Geoffrey A. Landis, who wants to go down from his space-ship to visit Venus. Dennis Honing, in his essay about this story explains that Venus is so hot that it cannot host earth-like life. It is hot because it is closer to sun and because it has a lot of CO2, a greenhouse gas.

He explains that on earth the long-term maintenance of climate is due to the carbonate-silicate cycle. CO2 in the atmosphere is dissolved in rainwater, forms carbonic acid, which interacts with silicate minerals. Its product, calcium carbonate, is deposited on earth in areas where tectonic plates converge. As it reaches earth’s interior, those carbonate sediments melt and CO2 is released back into the atmosphere. A main requirement for the whole cycle is the presence of liquid water on earth's surface.

I had read about acid-rain but it was the first time that I was reading about CO2 cycle and wondering if carbonic acid contributes to acid rain? Does this carbonic acid go into water bodies such as lakes and rivers? What impact does it have on the climate? It was a chapter, which left me with a lot of questions.

In Conclusion

The above are some examples of reflections and questions induced by the scientific essays in this book, written mostly by young European scientists. It was a long time that I had read a book like this one, which surprised me so much and made me stop and think so often!

If you like reading scinece fiction and are generally interested in science, this is the book for you.

*****

#sciencefiction #science #bookreviews #europeanscientists #anthologyofsciencefiction 

My favourite books from 2022

Over the past decade or so, my reading choice had been restricted to fast-paced books, such as mysteries, thrillers, action and adventure books. Often I started introspective fiction books but most of the time, I was unable to finish them. Finally, this year, especially in the last quarter, something seems to have changed, I can again appreciate different kinds of books (except for the fantasy and horror genres, which I continue to avoid).

All together, there are 8 fiction books in my 2022 list - the first 5 of them belong to the action-mystery genre. My favourite book this year was the meditative and lyrical "Touch" by the Icelandic writer Olaf Olafsson.

The last part of this post is about my own book, which I have finally finished writing this year, after trying for almost 20 years. First, before I start, wishing you all a happy Christmas with the Santa Claus and his two elfs from the central station in Milan.

Absence of Mercy by S. M. Goodwin

This is a historical murder mystery set in the New York of 1857. It brings together some very nicely drawn characters. The two detectives - Lord Jasper Lightner, as a British aristocrat and a war veteran struggling with opium dependence, who has been learning about scientific forensic investigations in Paris;  and, Hieronymus Law, an Irish pleb in a jail, have very interesting interactions. Paisley, the haughty and correct butler of Jasper, is another likeable character. The theme of the book about the maltreatment of sex-workers including that of minor girls set against the historical context of the fight against slavery, is a bit too graphic and gritty, but interesting. So, if you like well-written historical mysteries, do read it.

The Chaos Kind by Barry Eisler

This is an action thriller with a child-trafficker, who can't be touched by the law because he has incriminating videos of some of the powerful Americans having sex with minors and if he will be taken then all those videos will be released.

However, the attorney general refuses to back down, she is determined to get this man. So killers are engaged to kill her. Another group of killers-turned-into-good-guys are out to safeguard her life. The book reminded me of the Japanese film "7 Samurai" and the Indian film "Sholay", where a group of rogues-turned-good guys come together to save the innocents from the villains. It has nice action sequences and is fast-paced.

This book is part of a series about the "good-guy killers". It was the first Barry Eisler book for me and I enjoyed it even without having read any of the previous books in this series. However, I am planning to read more of his books.

When Darkness Calls by Mark Griffin

I liked this book for its graphic descriptions of the forensic and psychological aspects of serial killers. The book is about finding a serial killer and has a criminal-psychologist Holly Wakefield as the story teller. She works in a prison and teaches students, and is called by the police to help the profiling of the criminal in an investigation. The detective, Bishop, with an artificial leg, is also characterised very nicely. Mark Griffin is a new author, but he seems to have a flair for writing psychological thrillers.

We Know You Remember by Tove Alsterrdal

It is a Scandinavian police procedural about 2 crimes, separated by a gap of decades. Olof was convicted for rape and murder of a girl 20 years ago, when he was only 14 years old. Since he was a minor, he was sent to a reform home.

On the way to a work, he stops at his old home and discovers that his father, whom he has not seen for 20 years, has been murdered. He is the obvious suspect. It is a book which builds slowly and then gains pace to finally conclude in a nice ending.

Tove Asterrdal has been writing since 2009, but was probably not translated into English earlier - in any case case, it was her first book for me.

The Darkest Sin by D. V. Bishop

Last year (2021), D.V. Bishop's book "The city of vengeance" was my favourite read.

This year, Bishop is back again, with medieval Florence during the Medici family era and his detective Aldo Cesare, who needs to protect his gay identity. While Aldo looks for the killer of a naked man found inside a nuns' convent, his constable Carlo Strocchi is looking for the killer of a body found in the river. Strocchi's investigation points towards Aldo as the killer. Once again, a very nicely done mystery with great reconstruction of life in medieval Florence. It was a joy to read it.

Sea of tranquility by Emily St John Mandel

It is difficult to classify this book, probably it would fit in best as science fiction or speculative fiction. It has inter-connected events in different eras spread over 500 years, starting from 1912 when the second son a British aristocrat is sent in exile to Canada. One of the eras in the book is in future and is about a writer from a moon colony visiting earth for a book tour.

This book is built like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces scattered over different time-periods, which come together very nicely in the end. Emily St John Mandel is from Canada and has been writing books of different genre.

The Lovers by Paolo Cognetti

It is a small and lyrical book. Its original title in Italian "The felcità del lupo" means "The Happiness of a Wolf".

The book follows a year in the life of Fausto, a 40 years old man from Milan, who is in crisis because the woman he loved has left him. Fausto, running away from his old life finds refuge in a small mountain community, where he becomes a cook. During the summer tourists come and the ambience changes. During his mountain year, Fausto passes through loneliness and despair, has an affair, makes friends and rediscovers hope and his humanity. I loved reading it.

If you can read Italian, you can check Paolo Cognetti's blog.

This year, I had read another beautiful book set in the Alps in northern Italy - it was "Fiori nella Roccia" (Flowers in the Rock) by Ilaria Tuti. It is not in this list because it has not been translated into English so far.

Touch by Olaf Olafsson

This is the book I liked most this year. It is about a 75 years old Icelandic man Kristoffel during the Covid pandemic, who receives a message from Miko, a Japanese woman, he had briefly known and loved in London, about 50 years ago. Miko had disappeared one day suddenly and Kristoffel had never forgotten her.

He starts on a journey to Japan to meet her as she is very ill. It is a beautiful love story which connects the atom bomb in Hiroshima in the second world war to the Covid pandemic of our time. Like The Lovers above, it is not very long and written in a simple, sparse but lyrical language, it was a very satisfying read and has a beautiful ending.

I found an old interview of the writer whose actual name is Olafur Johann Olaffson- it seems that apart from being a writer he is a successful manager in a big multinational and lives in the USA - the interview touches on his background, his carrier and his books. In some ways, he reminded me of myself, except that he is younger and has many books to his credit while, till now, my writing so far has been restricted to a blog and a few short stories.

In Conclusion

During 2001, I was based in Geneva for a few months, while I was working with the World Health Organisation. I was alone as my family had stayed back in Italy. It was there that I had started writing a book. Since then, I had tried completing that book a few times and tried writing other books - mostly in English but a few times in Italian - but I was unable to finish any of them. Finally, in 2020, with my retirement and the Covid-related lockdown, I tried once again, this time in Hindi and I have finished writing it recently. I am keeping my fingers crossed that next year it will find a publisher in India.

I have 2 more books to write. I think of these 3 books as my "Amar Akbar Anthony" trilogy, the well-known film by Bollywood director Manmohan Desai, because like that film, all of my books deal with separated siblings and lost mothers and fathers.

I think that writing my book has given me back the ability to appreciate calmer and more introspective books. The writing process this time has been very fulfilling and enriching - often while writing I forgot the passing of time.

While wishing all my friends and readers a joyful Christmas and a fulfilling 2023, I am also hoping for a productive 2023 for my writings!

***

The Kashmir Story

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading about the film “The Kashmir Files”, its box-office success, its impact and the heated discussions it has generated. Perhaps, after a few weeks, it might become available on some streaming platform and then I will be able to watch it, though I am not sure that I will – from what I have read, it has some very graphic violence and I have no stomach for watching violence.

However, reading about “The Kashmir Files” has reminded me of another film about Kashmir and the Kashmiri Pandits – the film was “I Am” (2010), and it was directed by Onir. I think that it was a good film that merited greater attention. I had translated its subtitles into Italian, when it was shown at the River-to-River film festival in Florence.

The Kashmir Story in “I Am”

“I Am” was an anthology of four short films, loosely connected with each other. Among those four stories, the Kashmir short film was the second story of the film. It had beautiful performances by Juhi Chawla as Megha, a Kashmiri Pandit, and Manisha Koirala as Rubina, as her childhood Kashmiri Muslim friend.

This part of the film started with Megha’s journey to Srinagar to sell her house. Rubina comes to the airport to pick her up and is happy to see her old friend. Megha is by turns, angry and anguished, at the memories the return has brought back. She is unwilling to give in to romantic nostalgia about the city, and maintains some distance from her friend.

During the 24 hours of Megha’s stay in Srinagar, there are only a few scattered moments of nostalgia for her childhood home. A visit to the ruins of her uncle’s home who was killed by neighbours, brings back the memories of her terror of those days when they had abandoned their home and ran away to the refugee camp.

An encounter with a group of youth on the road, brings out that the story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits has been changed and retold by the locals. In this new retelling, they were the cowards and villains, who had run away from the valley.

At the same time, Megha’s dispersion of her father’s ashes in the river, brings out the attachment of older generations for Kashmir and their dreams about the day when they will return to their original homes.

Those 24 hours also show Rubina’s changed life in the Kashmir valley – she is lonely, living closed at home and is unmarried, while the guy she used to love has left India. Her brother, who had become a militant, has repented and come home, but is disabled and a shell of his former self. Police comes to their home frequently to check because they are a militant family. The city is divided by barbed wires and check-points, which gets deserted as the evening falls and people rush to their homes.

Megha’s righteous anger and resentment at the fate of Kashmiri Pandits, has one final moment of push back from Rubina. A brief exchange between the two friends, brings out the tragedy of changed lives of Kashmiri Muslims, especially those of the women and youth. The awareness that in the end there were no victors among the ordinary persons on the two sides plants a little seed of mutual understanding.
Impact of “I Am”

“I Am” was a film dealing with other difficult themes along with the Kashmir story. Perhaps that is why its Kashmiri section did not receive proper attention. It had a strong impact on me because in the process of doing its Italian subtitles, I had spent a lot of time with each of its scenes.

This part of the film gave precedence to the view-point a Kashmiri Pandit. It was shot in dark and drab colours. It showed a Srinagar of barbed wires, road-blocks and sad people, and not the romantic town of lake and gardens from 1980’s Bollywood.

The whole sequence of Megha visiting the ruins of her killed uncle’s house, had a very strong impact on me. Its background score was filled with the shouts of slogans by angry people asking all kaffirs to leave Kashmir or be killed. I could identify with her refusal of Rubina’s sympathy, when she responds, “Don’t worry, I am not going to cry”.

The film also shows the impact of the events on the other side, through Rubina’s family. They have also suffered and continue to suffer due to the militants on one hand and Indian army on the other. However, I felt that it was more difficult to empathise with them, because their pain was closely linked to issues related to militancy and its violence.

For example, there was a sequence when Megha is accompanied by Rubina’s mother to a neighbourhood shop for buying saffron. The elderly shop-owner remembers that he had accompanied Megha’s pregnant mother to the hospital when she was born. However, their discussion also brings out that it was that same person’s son who had killed Megha’s uncle and later, died as a militant. Megha comes back from the shop full of indignation – “You only had that shop to take me, whose son had killed my uncle?” she asks bitterly.

While I could see the dismay, regret and frustration on the faces of the local Kashmiris, I also had a feeling at the back of my mind that “it was their sons and families who did it”! I think that is the biggest difficulty when we look at victims of Islamic terror, that we are less willing to acknowledge the pain of its Muslim victims.

The Elephant in the Room

I remember talking to Onir in Florence about the Kashmir portion of the film, expressing my appreciation and saying that it was a great pity that this episode of our recent history had been allowed to be forgotten.

To write this post, I watched again the Kashmir portion of “I Am”. I think that there is an aspect of the Kashmir situation which had remained untouched in the film – the rise of more conservative Islam which was linked with militancy. Traditionally, the Kashmiri Islam has been moderate and open, and it had a history of a peaceful co-existence with Hinduism. Over the past couple of decades, the more conservative version of Islam has become more common, but its role and significance in the Kashmiri Pandits' exodus was never mentioned in the film.

Whose sufferings need acknowledgement?

As far as I understand about the events in Kashmir, the problems worsened with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. To counter that the Americans started supplying money and arms to Mujahideen through Pakistan, which contributed to strengthening of the more conservative ideas of Islam in the region and reached Kashmir through Pakistani militants in the 1980s. Apart from the militants, it impacted different groups of persons, such as -Militants from Pakistan along with radicalised Kashmiri youth killed many Kashmiri Pandits and provoked their mass exodus in late 1980s and early 1990s.

Militants and hardliners from Pakistan along with their companions in Kashmir started killing moderate Kashmiri Muslims and those seen as sympathetic or collaborating with India, starting from early 1990s and continuing even now. Around 7000 Kashmiri “political opponents” have been killed, though some say that the Kashmiri victims have been many times more. They specifically target the intellectuals and they can abduct or rape their families.

Since the 1990s, Indian army has been fighting the Kashmiri separatists and militants and once again, a large number of victims have been reported, not only among the militants, but also among the civilians. The army rule has also affected general life.

Each of these groups have their own stories to share. I have read of Kashmiri Pandit families weeping at the shows of The Kashmir File - they are happy that finally their sufferings have been acknowledged through cinema. Onir’s film “I Am” did not show that violence directly, it focused on its aftermath.

I think that one of the good films about the impact of army in Kashmir was Shaurya (2008), which touched upon the human right abuses.

Stories about the situation in Kashmir involve different and complex issues. The views of the Islamic hardliners and militants may not be acceptable or understandable for most of us. However, I think that our cinema needs to explore these different areas and view-points so much more. For example, little is known about the violence against moderate Muslims in Kashmir and it would also benefit from a greater exploration in literature and cinema.

Four Books from 2021

It has been some time since I wanted to write about a few books, and now I had four of them to talk about. The four books I wanted to talk about are - "Away with the Penguins" by Hazel Prior, "Bonnie Jack" by Ian Hamilton, "City of Vengeance" by D. V. Bishop and "The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict" by Trenton Lee Stewart. They are very different books, they belong to different genre but they also had something in common - I finished all of them without leaving them aside for days and without skipping any parts! Unfortunately, as the years pass, I tend to get bored with books very easily and I either leave them halfway or skip parts of them. It happens even with the books of authors whom I used to love till recently.

I wonder if it could be due to an over-consumption of books? I have been reading every day since I was 6-7 years old - without reading, my day seems incomplete. I read mainly in English, Hindi and Italian but at times I have read in French and Portuguese as well. There was a time when I read everything and used to think that if they had printed something on the toilet paper, probably I would have read that too. But lately, I get tired of most books very easily and they need to have something special to keep me going.

Warning - Spoiler alert - If you want to read any of these 4 books, be aware that this post may have some minor spoilers. If you hate the spoilers, perhaps you will be better off reading these books and then come here to check why I liked them!

Away with the Penguins by Hazel Prior

The best way to classify this book will be to call it a "feel-good" book. It is an optimistic book in which everything ends well, including an old lady who end up in a scientific laboratory in the North Pole.
It is the story of Veronica McCreedy, a rich old lady, who is disappointed by the meeting with her long-lost weed-smoking and loser-looking grandson, and who then decides to leave her inheritance for the welfare of penguins. However, before making the final decision about her testament, she wants to be sure that penguin research is useful, so she decides to verify it personally by visiting the arctic laboratory involved in doing penguin research.

It is a simple book with some twists. It made me smile and even laugh occasionally, and most important, it kept me engaged. I liked the characters of the old lady as well as that of her grandson.

In some way this book reminded me of the Italian film "Quo Vado?" with the actor Checco Zalone, which I had seen a couple of years ago. I like Checco Zalone and his films. So if you like reading "Away with the Penguins", you might follow it up with watching "Quo Vado?" of Checco Zalone, which does not have penguins and is about the Italian obsession with a permanent job contract in some state office - it was partly located in a scientific laboratory in the Arctic.

Bonnie Jack by Ian Hamilton

Ian Hamilton is a Canadian mystery writer. However "Bonnie Jack" is not a mystery book, instead it is inspired by the real story of his father. It is about a boy called Jack in Dublin Ireland, who is taken one day to a cinema hall by his mother and sister and while he watches the film, his mother and sister go to the toilet and never come back. The abandoned boy is adopted by an American couple and leaves Ireland. Many decades later, when he is a rich man and father of grown-up children, he decides to go back to Ireland to look for his sister and his mother.

Back in Ireland, Jack meets his sister and finds out that their mother is dead. He also finds out that when he was abandoned, his mother was pregnant and later, she had twins. She had run away from an alcoholic and violent husband. He also meets his father, who is still alcoholic and violent.

In the book, he does not like the person his elder sister has grown up to be - she is bitter, lonely and poor. Instead, he becomes good friends with his twin siblings and decides to ignore and not have any contact with that sister. I did not like it that he decides to ignore his sister, who was as much a victim as he was, though in a different way. She also had to live with the guilt of having abandoned her boy brother.

It has been a few months that I had read this book and every time I think of it, I feel a little angry at him, for not trying to build a relationship with that sister or at least be kind to her. So while I liked this book, it is here in this list because it is struck in my throat like a fish-bone. Every time I think about it, I feel bad about Jack's sister. Since it is based on a real story, I can't seem to let it go.

City of Vengeance by D. V. Bishop

It is a historical fiction book set in the renaissance-period Florence. The book is about the 3 men of the Medici family - Alessandro, Lorenzino and Cosimo. The history books say that Alessandro was killed on the day of epiphany, 6 January 1537. When I used to live in Bologna, I had been to Florence numerous times and loved visiting that city. In those days, I had heard the story about Alessandro while visiting the Medici buildings. However, Bishop's book brings to life the Florence of that period through two murder mysteries about a Jewish money-lender and a transvestite young man, who are killed in two separate incidents.

Thus, the book focuses on what it meant to be Jewish and to be gay in medieval Florence. The two murders are connected to the conspiracy for the killing of Alessandro de Medici, but the focus of the story is the investigation by Captain Cesare Aldo, who is charged with finding the killer of the Jew moneylender, while he tries to hide that he is gay and in love with a Jewish doctor.

It was a very interesting read - I finished the second half of this book in one long sitting, staying awake till late night. Knowing the places described in the book and having heard the story of murder of Alessandro de Medici, made it a wonderful history lesson, while enjoying it as a murder mystery.

Looking at Florence and the reign of Alessandro de Medici, under the benevolent hand of the Pope and fears of popular uprising of those who want the republic on one hand, and seeing the city through the eyes of the poor and marginalised including the prostitutes and gays, gives an understanding of the political machinations of that period which is impossible in the dry tomes of history. I am not sure if it is very accurate, but it is certainly interesting.

I wish there was a Hindi writer who could write about the Indian history in the way Bishop has written "City of Vengeance". There were 2 historical books in Hindi, which I had read this year - "Akbar" by Shazi Zaman (translated from English) and "Maurya Samrat" by Rajendra Mohan Bhatnagar, but TBH, I didn't find them very engaging.

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart

This is a fantasy book for young people. I don't like fantasy books and I don't read books for teenagers, so actually I was not even supposed to open it, much less read it. However, I liked its title very much and started reading it without checking for more information about it. It has a crisp and clean writing style, which caught me straightaway. It is supposed to be the prequel of a series of books, which already have 3-4 books in it. Mr. Nicholas Benedict is shown as an old man in those books while in this book, it shows him as a young boy and is about how he became the venerable Nicholas Benedict of the later books.

I liked the lesson which this book gave against bullying and also about using intellect to fight the bullies. After finishing it, I was tempted to read the other books of this series, but I am not sure if I would do it.

If you have a teenager and you need to buy a gift for him/her, I strongly recommend this book. Try to buy it some days in advance and read it before giving it away. It is a real pleasure.

To Conclude

This year, I had also liked reading a couple of thriller and adventure books, though I can't seem to remember their names or their authors. That happens to me often with thriller and action books - I read them happily, but a few days later, I forget them.

This year, I had heard a lot of praise for the book "Fresh Water for Flowers" by the French author Valerie Perrin. It was an ok kind of book but I was bored by parts of it and I had skipped them. I had also read about the Icelandic writer Ragnar Jonasson, but I have found his books to be too slow moving for my taste in mystery books. I have to thank our local library in Schio, which gives me an opportunity to read so many new writers and their books.

At the end of 2021, I am looking for suggestions about Hindi writers, that I can try reading in 2022. As I wrote above, I would love to find good historical fiction books in Hindi, like the books written by Rangey Raghav, Chatursen or even Narendra Kohli, in the post-independence period in India. So if there are any Hindi writers with good books on historical-fiction, do share information about them  in the comments below.

I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that this Covid-19 epidemic will not stop me from visiting India in 2022 and buying some Hindi books! While I am happy to order English and Italian books online (if I can't find them in our local library), but somehow I don't like to order Hindi books online - for buying them I like visiting the bookshops!

I like the idea of writing about the books which I liked, as a way of remembering that experience. During my life, I must have read hundreds, if not at least a couple of thousands of them and yet if you ask me, I may be able to tell you only about 30-40 of them. I like this idea of trying to remember the books I had read decades ago and see what I can come up with - may be I will write a post about it as well.

*****

#bookreviews #booksilikedin2021 #trentonleestewart #dvbishop #ianhamilton #hazelprior 

River to River - Festival 2020

River to River (RtoR) film festival was started by Selvaggia Velo in Florence (Italy) in 2001. It was the first festival entirely dedicated to Indian films held outside India. For many years, while living in Bologna, which is not far from Florence, I regularly visited this festival. Some years ago, we shifted to Schio, about 350 km to the north of Florence, so participating in this festival became difficult for me. However, the December 2020 edition of RtoR was held online due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic. This gave me an opportunity watch some of the festival films. (Below a still from "Berlin to Bombay", one of the films in the festival)

My main interest was in watching documentary and short films in the festival. Thus, I watched only one full-length feature film - Kadakh. This post is to share a few impressions about some of the films which I liked in this festival.

Kadakh

Kadakh was the opening film of the festival, directed by Rajat Kapoor. It is a black comedy centred around a dead body in an upper-middle class drawing room in Mumbai, which is full of guests for a Diwali party.

Sunil (Ranvir Shorey) is the owner of the house while the dead guy is Raghav, husband of his office colleague Chhaya, with whom he is having an affair. Raghav has discovered their affair and comes to talk to Sunil. He is trying to be mature about it, but continues to get too angry to control himself and during one such loss-of-control moments, shoots himself. Soon Sunil's wife (Manasi Multani) comes back home and finds her husband with Raghav's corpse in their drawing room. He confesses his affair but there is no time to deal with the marital infidelity as they know that soon their guests for the Diwali party are going to arrive. So the husband and wife hide the dead body in a box, cover it with tapestry and get ready to welcome the guests.

The guests include Chayya, the wife of the dead man. You can imagine the comic-horror kind of mixed tension which drives this film. The last part of the movie is its most cynical and damning part, with the whole gang of friends (except Chaya, who has left) helping Sunil in getting rid of the dead body. When the film was ending, I almost expected it to show the whole lot going to the chautha (funeral) ceremony of the poor guy and express condolences to the widow.

I do not like the genre of dark comedy, but the film is well made and well-acted. All the actors are good. I especially liked Manasi Multani, who plays Sunil's wife Malti and Palomi Ghosh, who plays Chhaya. I also thought the guy playing Raghav (Chandrachoor Rai) was good in his brief role.

The Newly Weds, short film (5 min.) by Prataya Saha

You can watch this short film on YouTube. The film has a young man (Mahesh Gowda) and his wife (Suvin Valson) and it looks at the way they relate to each other, mediated by technology. When together, they hardly talk to each other and their eyes are constantly on their mobile phones and laptop screens. At night, a laptop stays in the bed between them. However, they expresses their love in the messages they write to each other, in which they open their hearts.

The tiny film presents the role of tech in a young couple's life as a kind of caricature. I felt that it could have been more relatable as a depiction of a long-married couple who does not have much left to say to each other. It felt a bit unrealistic for a young newly married couple, because it seemed to ignore their need for physical touch and sex. Their messages express a yearning, which is inexplicably missing from their real lives.

Berlin to Bombay, documentary film, 51 min. by Marco Hulser

For me, Berlin to Bombay was the most enjoyable film of the festival. It is the story of an Indian origin boy Abu Chaka Khan, raised in Berlin (Germany) and his fascination for the world of Bollywood. Abu works in a restaurant but his dream is to go and act in Bollywood. He does not want to work in German films where he can only play Indian or Pakistani roles - he prefers the idea of Bollywood heroes with their songs and dances.

He makes and sends his videos for auditions to India but when they do not get him any offers, he goes to Mumbai. The film shows him trying to negotiate his way through the barriers surrounding its film world, full of people who are waiting for bakras like him, selling them dreams and taking their money. Abu pays but finds himself playing an extra in a film. After his dreams crash against the hard realities of the Bollywood, Abu comes back to Berlin and to his restaurant.

Though film's storyline is an old theme, Abu has an expressive face and he comes across very well with his ingenuity, hope and dreams.

While the film ended, I was thinking of today's YouTube and TikTok stars. Now, people with dreams of making it in Bollywood, have some alternative pathways to become famous, even if that fame does not last very long. I think that I would like to watch a similar documentary exploring the worlds of the YouTube-TikTok stars.

The GesheMa is Born, Documentary, 56 min., by Malati Rao

Geshe Ma is the title of a learned Buddhist nun who has reached the highest level of religious knowledge. Rao's documentary is a glimpse into the hidden world of Buddhist nuns. I liked it because it showed a world which was unfamiliar to me.

Though ancient Buddhism spoke of nuns, modern Buddhism did not have nuns. It was Dalai Lama who had established the first nuns' order some 40 years ago. He had also proposed allowing the nuns to study religious books. This idea was discussed in the international council of Buddhist leaders from different countries, but some countries were against the changes. Finally in 2012, it was accepted that the nuns could study to become the learned teachers (Geshe).

The film follows a group of nuns in a monastery in Nepal who became the first group of women admitted to the Buddhist theological studies. The film focuses on the story of Namdol Phuntsok, who had earned the top marks in these studies and received the title of Geshe Ma in 2016.

The film moves forward and backward in time, with some interviews and unobtrusive observation of the lives of the Buddhist nuns. They talk about the setting up of the first nunnery. It looks at their celibate lives, their shaving of heads and their determined animation during theological discussions, where a raised leg-movement and clapping of hands in stereotypical gestures, looked like a dance to me.

GesheMa Namdol talks about her childhood and her family's opposition to her idea of becoming a nun, her desire for studying the Buddhist religious texts and how they must argue and debate their ideas and defend them against questions. The film concludes with the group of the nuns holding the coveted yellow head-dresses in their hands, which are a visible sign of their learning, walking in the room full of monks. They all don those yellow head-dresses, signifying a new beginning of the role of the women leadership in Buddhism.

Buddha of the Chadar, 28 Min. by Jean Whitaker

This film can also be watched on internet. It is about a father and son from Ladakh making a long winter journey on the frozen Zanskar River - a route known as the Chadar. They carry a heavy gold-plated statue of Buddha, which they plan to offer to a Buddhist monastery located at the top of the hill near their village.

The film brings out the solitude and difficulties of the long journey on the frozen river surrounded by beautiful snow-covered mountains. It also shows the on-going construction of a new road by the Indian Border Road Organisation, so that in future, the Zanskar valley will also be connected through a road and it should be possible to complete that same journey in a vehicle.

The film has beautiful photography and makes you reflect on the human urge to choose a tough journey as a part of a spiritual quest.

Silence in the Wind, 13 min. by Gautam Baruah and Ballav Prajnyan

This short film is about a father remembering his son, his desire to see him married and his initial rejection when he discovers that his son is gay. His initial reaction is of rejection. Then he remembers the day when his young son had risked drowning in the river and his desperation. The memory of that desperation helps him to say to his son that he does not understand but he will accept.

It is a beautiful film.

The Ashram Children, 67 min., by Jonathan Ofek

India is seen as the land of spirituality. It has many famous gurus with their ashrams, and followers coming from all over the world to seek their guidance. This film shows a hidden aspect of this spiritual quest - the feelings of the expat children about those Gurus.

The director of this film, Jonathan is from Israel and he feels scarred by his childhood experiences in an ashram in India. He feels that it was a cult which had gripped his parents. His parents, especially his mother, do not take his complaints very seriously - for her, it was not a cult and she was only going to the ashram for some months every year.

She tells him that he could have told her that he did not want to go and she would not have forced him. However, Jonathan feels that saying no was not easy for him, because he had grown up inside that experience from early childhood. The whole issue of obedience to the Guru in the ashram was experienced by him as something absolute, he had learned to not question anything and was afraid to express himself.

During the film, Jonathan goes to look for other expatriate children that he had met and known in the ashram during his childhood. Most of them agree with him that their childhood experiences of the ashram were negative for them. Most of them, now grown-ups, try to hide this part of their past lives and do not talk about it. One of these guys also talks about the hypocrisy of the Guru, who taught the lessons of detachment and spirituality to his followers, but also loved wearing gold, luxury watches, and using costly perfumes.

This film forced me to see how the spirituality-and-guru industry of India can be perceived by young children who are pulled in to this experience by their parents. I had never thought about it before in these terms. For me, many of the ashrams and their jet setting Gurus, who run their spirituality businesses like money-making exercises, are persons who profit from human frailties. At the same time, I believe that some of the non-commercial persons can be great spiritual teachers.

Conclusions

There were some other short and documentary films from the festival which I had watched but they were similar in terms of themes and treatment to others that I had seen earlier, so I am not writing about those.

In the past RtoR festival had been an opportunity for me to meet and talk to persons from the world of Indian films - persons like Onir, Rahul Bose, Aparna Sen and even Amitabh Bachchan. That was no longer possible with an online festival. I hope that in future, after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, River to River festival will continue to offer the possibility of online participation.

Women & Friends - A Book Review

Some months ago I had read an article in The New Scientist about an App for the mobile phones which can help you to keep in contact with your friends and remember their birthdays and children's names. While reading it, I had thought that it must be a dystopian world where you had to be reminded about such things. Our friends are people we really like, without whom our lives are incomplete - if we don't see them or hear from them for some time, we miss them. So I thought that we don't need Apps to remind us about them.

Perhaps the problem is more about whom do we consider as a friend? According to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the human beings can have at the most 150 friends, out of which not more than 15 can be called "close friends" and less than 5 can be "intimate friends".

This reflection about friendships was provoked by a book called "Miss Benson's Beetles" by the British author Rachel Joyce. The book is about two very different women, who embark on a journey in the early 1950s from England to the other end of the world in New Caledonia in the south-west Pacific.

The Joyce's book is about being a woman in a world dominated by men, and it is also a book about a female-bonding. This post is about this book and is also about friendships.

Two Women Friends Genre

Two women on a road trip or a journey, with elements of female solidarity and friendship, where the journey leads to an understanding about the self, can be considered as a specific genre. Some months ago, I had written a post about the book "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, which was on the same theme. Often discussions about this theme veer towards the film "Thelma and Louise" which is probably the most well-known work in the genre. They have a common structure. Often the two women are very different and that adds an element of challenge to their bonding, and acts as a point of tension in the story.

In India we say that all possible story-plots have been already described in the Mahabharata. Good writers can take a plot and add something unique to it. Rachel Joyce also has that knack - within the genre of "two women on a journey", she adds her own dimensions, which make for a wonderfully told story.

Miss Benson's Beetle

Miss Benson, the heroine of the book is not the kind of person who gets to play an important role in the stories. She is closer to fifty, a spinster, tall and big, and without much grace. Mrs. Pretty, the second woman of the book is younger, with curves and hair dyed yellow, with a hint of dyslexia, who tends to end up with the wrong kind of men. Both are running away from something and thus embark on a journey to New Caledonia, a French territory located in south-west Pacific.

In the beginning, Miss Benson can hardly bear to be with the constantly talking Mrs. Pretty and is determined to replace her with someone better suited to be her assistant. Instead, the events force the two women to be together and to face different adventures in their search for the gold-coloured beetle hiding in a tropical forest at the top of mountain.

The different situations force the women to face ever-new difficulties, and finding ways to overcome them. In the process, they learn to accept themselves and each other. Joyce writes the characters of the two women with sympathy and humour. It makes you laugh, even while you sympathise with their terrible situations.

Joyce has a way with words which I loved. For example, Barbara, the maid in the house of Miss Benson's aunts' is described as someone who "took all instruction as a personal affront." At another place, Miss Benson and Mrs. Pretty are described as "a brown ostrich coupled with a pink-hatted canary". When the ship leaves the port, "It wasn’t just the ship that had been unmoored. It was her entire sense of herself." Mrs. Pretty's suitcases look like "coffins for baby dinosaurs" while the light plays across the mountains "like emotion on a human face".

Here is how she describes them after they reach New Caledonia:

French. Another problem. Everywhere she went she heard words and sounds she didn’t understand. Vowels that ran like small motors, tongues purring, explosive combinations of consonants. She tried the everyday phrases in the guidebook, and no one had a clue what she was talking about. If anything, they looked concerned. She had no idea how to get it right.Fortunately, Enid had a flair for communicating in a foreign language that took everyone by surprise, including speakers of foreign languages. She didn’t give a damn about getting it right. She got the hang of basic words like fromage and café au lait, as well as scarabée for beetle, and the minute she got stuck, she mimed. “Bon shoor!” she would yell. “Have you seen un gold scarabée?” Or “Do you know un mountain dans le shape of un wisdom tooth?” She flapped her arms like wings; she pretended she had a great big beetle stomach; she even showed people her back molars.

However, it is through a marginal character, a woman called Freya who works in the natural history museum and appears towards the end of the book, that Joyce explains how she sees the place of women in professional spaces dominated by men, which really struck me:

She didn’t know why but she had a feeling they were the work of another woman. Maybe it was just her fantasy. She was lonely, that was the truth, really lonely. Her working hours were so long she’d given up on the idea of having a family - she couldn’t even hold down a relationship - and when she went on an expedition, she was set apart from her male colleagues by problems they didn’t have to think about. Not only periods, or where to pee safely, not even the endless jokes about her physical strength. But the sense she was never really going to get what she wanted. More than a few times a colleague had reached out a hand when she didn’t need help, and squeezed too hard. She’d been talked down and talked over. She’d missed a couple of promotions she should have got.And yet, deep down, she knew she couldn’t really blame anyone else. Out of some strange mad desire not to upset the status quo, she’d become complicit. She had laughed when she should have been angry, or said nothing when she should have said a lot. She’d belittled her own achievements, calling them small or unformed or even lucky when they were none of those things. And it wasn’t simply opportunities at work she’d lost out on: she had - and, again, this was her own choice - missed the weddings of her closest friends, just as she’d missed their children’s christenings.  

I greatly enjoyed reading Miss Benson's Beetle. Lately, I have problems with fiction books - most of the time, I get bored with them after a few pages - even with thrillers and mysteries. It was consoling to finally find a book in which I could lose myself. After a long time, here was a book that I tried to read slowly so that the pleasure of reading it could last longer.

That does not mean that I don't have anything critical to say about it. My biggest criticism of the book is about its lack of any local characters from New Caledonia because its world is exclusively colonial. I don't recall any of the local characters having a name, unless we can consider the local dog as a character. Giving names to persons is to recognise their humanity and it felt strange to me that with all Miss Benson's empathy, the people of New Caledonia were only nameless waiters, policeman or the shanty town kids, even when she lives with them for months.

Miss Benson explains how she sees the world at one point in the book - unless something is named and classified by a British institution, it does not exist:

“No, Mrs. Pretty. A thing doesn’t exist until it has been caught and presented to the Natural History Museum. Once the Natural History Museum has accepted the beetle, and read my descriptions and notes, and found that it is genuinely a new specimen, it will be given a name. And then it will exist.”

I felt that this was a completely colonial way of reading the world. The locals might have known about those beetles for hundreds of years, they might have their myths and stories about them, but the beetles were only "discovered" when Miss Benson would write to her museum in Britain about it and obviously she can name them after her father!

Since in early 1950s, the world was still largely colonial and as far as I know, New Caledonia is still a French territory, so probably we can justify this way of seeing the world as being realistic for those characters. Yet, the enlightened Miss Benson could have been a little more aware of other cultures and people. Anyway, it is a minor squabble and this lack of sensitivity towards the locals and their culture, did not really affect my enjoyment of the book.

Fiction books are imaginary worlds which the authors make seem like real. While the first 3/4th of the book has some semblance of realism, the last one fourth of the book turns into a fable. There is even an Avatar like scene with psychedelic colours, flowers and golden insects. Generally, I don't like fantasy books. However, in this book, by the time this part came, I was already in love with the two characters, and was relieved that they were spared additional challenges and the story could have an emotionally satisfying ending.

Female Bonding versus Male Bonding

The book also made me reflect on the differences between female bonding and male bonding. I have seen some films on male bonding during a journey, but I feel that is completely different from the kind of relationships between women depicted in Miss Benson's Beetle or in Remarkable Creatures. This particular genre of stories where excluded persons, whom life has bypassed or mistreated, one older and the other younger, and their relationship developing over the course of the story, does not seem to work for men. Scenes like the one in Miss Benson's Beetle, where after taking a nude bath in a forest pond, the younger woman lies down with her head on the thighs of the older woman, would have got a stronger sexual connotation with men, while in the book, it seemed more like an expression of tenderness and solidarity.

The relationship between Miss Benson and Mrs. Pretty develops through moments of being vulnerable and acceptance of tenderness. I don't think that we men are much open to being vulnerable or accepting tenderness, especially from other guys. Thus, a book about male road-trip story of self-discovery would probably have a very different feel.

Books about male bonding are those based in male-only schools, in ships with an all male crew and in some stories about wars. There are also stories like the Brokeback Mountain, which are more about gay love. In term of texture and characterisations, they are very different from these female-bonding stories. If you know of any other kind of good books which have male bonding between two very different men as a theme and are not about gay love, I would like to know about it - do let me know.

Conclusions

I had just finished reading this book, when I found that by coincidence, our reading group has decided to read another book by Rachel Joyce - "The incredible pilgrimage of Harold Fry". I am looking forward to reading that.

In the meantime, I recommend - do read Miss Benson's Beetle - I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I did!

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