The Motorcycle Diaries ~ Che Guevara (88 of 2024)

 

*The Motorcycle Diaries*

*by Che Guevara*

Che Guevara, for me, was a childhood idol.

India was left of centre initially, during the Nehruvian Era. During the Indira years, it became authoritarian and centrist. Rajiv Gandhi moved it slowly to the right, and during the Narasimha Rao/ Manmohan Singh Era, it became unabashedly right liberal. And with the advent of Modi, the country has moved further to the right; it has also become authoritarian, just one notch down from a certain European country under the regime of a guy with a toothbrush moustache.

But my home state of Kerala, located down at the bottom, has remained staunchly liberal. And secular. And left-wing. In fact, we were the first electorate in the world to democratically elect a communist government to power; and it is the only state where the communists are in power now.

My generation grew up hearing the heroic tales of the October Revolution and the Long March. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro et al were our role models. Our sacred texts were _Das Kapital_ and _The Communist Manifesto._ And Che, undoubtedly, was the mythical hero. The revolutionary par excellence, who threw away a lucrative career as a doctor; and eschewed a position as a minister in a newborn socialist country, just to plunge into the battlefield to liberate Latin America from the greedy clutches of Uncle Sam - and to die a martyr, looking into the eyes of the American GI who shot him, saying: "Shoot, coward, you are killing only a man."

As I grew older, I understood that truth was a little more nuanced, and that there were no blacks and whites, only greys - and that revolutionaries and communists were not all that they were cracked up to be. But my fascination with Che remained, even when idealistic youth transformed into disillusioned middle-age and then to the current jaded and cynical sixties. Because, you see, this revolutionary is no longer a man but a symbol.

Every hero undergoes a journey. He enters it as a raw novitiate and after the road of trials and tribulations, emerges as a sage. This trope is a staple of most myths and epics, and also of a lot of popular narratives in novels, TV and film. We rarely see it in real life. Che is one of the rare exceptions.

In December 1951, 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, both medical doctors, set off on an epic journey across South America on the latter's Norton 500 bike, named "La Poderosa II". The journey was ostensibly to visit leper colonies and study the disease: the real intention was just to have a good time: two red-blooded Latinos whooping it up, wining, dining and fornicating. But when it ended 1n August 1952, Ernesto had transformed into a man who was deeply disturbed by the distressing history of his unfortunate continent: twice enslaved, once physically by Europe and then economically by the USA, her riches bled dry to fill foreign coffers while her sons and daughters lived in abject misery.

As we read these memoirs which he kept during the journey, we can feel the change almost physically. The initial notes which are mostly about their mischievous escapades, slowly give way to long, thoughtful passages about the condition of the poor in Latin America, and the proletariat in general. For example, see how he describes a sick woman here:

> I went to see an old woman with asthma, a customer at La Gioconda. The poor thing was in a pitiful state, breathing the acrid smell of concentrated sweat and dirty feet that filled her room, mixed with the dust from a couple of armchairs, the only luxury items in her house. On top of her asthma, she had a heart condition. It is at times like this, when a doctor is conscious of his complete powerlessness, that he longs for change: a change to prevent the injustice of a system in which only a month ago this poor woman was still earning her living as a waitress, wheezing and panting but facing life with dignity. In circumstances like this, individuals in poor families who can't pay their way become surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and consequently, a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community who resent their illness as if it were a personal insult to those who have to support them. It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over. In those dying eyes there is a submissive appeal for forgiveness and also, often, a desperate plea for consolation which is lost to the void, just as their body will soon be lost in the magnitude of mystery surrounding us.

Or a Chilean couple, who couldn't find a decent job and were forced to live a pitiful existence, because they were members of the banned communist party:

> There we made friends with a married couple, Chilean workers who were communists. By the light of the single candle illuminating us, drinking mate and eating a piece of bread and cheese, the man's shrunken figure carried a mysterious, tragic air. In his simple and expressive language he recounted his three months in prison, and told us about his starving wife who stood by him with exemplary loyalty, his children left in the care of a kindly neighbor, his fruitless pilgrimage in search of work and his _compañeros_ , mysteriously disappeared and said to be somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

> The couple, numb with cold, huddling against each other in the desert night, were a living representation of the proletariat in any part of the world. They had not one single miserable blanket to cover themselves with, so we gave them one of ours and Alberto and I wrapped the other around us as best we could. It was one of the coldest times in my life, but also one which made me feel a little more brotherly toward this strange, for me anyway, human species.

The starving man is willing to share his frugal meal with the bums because "he, too, is a tramp." As Che says, he probably didn't understand what communism meant: but he could understand the slogan, "bread for the poor"!

By the time they reach Cuzco and Machu Picchu in Peru, Guevara has become acutely conscious of the rich Indian past of the continent, which the Spanish conquistadors destroyed mercilessly. However, he says that the hybrid culture that the mixing of the invaders with the indigenous people created was not like the insular one of North America, with the natives totally segregated and marginalised: Latin America was one nation, one people, even though separated into different countries through arbitrarily drawn boundaries. When Che talks of a defeated people who live on when there is nothing to live for, just because "living has become a habit", we understand the depth of compassion which kindled the fire within.

Read this book to understand the making of a revolutionary.

Thomas Matt's - Magic Mountain (87 of 2024)

 The Magic Mountain  is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature.

Mann started writing The Magic Mountain in 1912. It began as a much shorter narrative that comically revisited aspects of Death in Venice, a novella that he was preparing for publication. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions during a period when his wife, who was suffering from respiratory disease, resided at Dr. Friedrich Jessen's [de] Waldsanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, for several months. In May and June 1912, Mann visited her and became acquainted with the team of doctors and patients in this cosmopolitan institution. According to Mann, in the afterword that was later included in the English translation of his novel, this stay inspired his opening chapter ("Arrival").

The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. It introduces the protagonist, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family. Following the early death of his parents, Castorp has been brought up by his grandfather and, later, by a maternal uncle named James Tienappel. Castorp is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his hometown. Before beginning work, he undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium in Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps. In the opening chapter, Castorp leaves his familiar life and obligations, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to visit the rarefied mountain air and introspective small world of the sanatorium.

Castorp's departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with slight fever is diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, Hofrat[a] Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis. Castorp is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves.

During his extended stay, Castorp meets a variety of characters, who represent pre-war Europe in miniature. These include Lodovico Settembrini (an Italian humanist and encyclopedist, a student of Giosuè Carducci); Leo Naphta, a Jewish Jesuit who favors communistic totalitarianism; Mynheer Peeperkorn, a dionysian Dutchman; and his romantic interest, Madame Clawdia Chauchat.

Castorp eventually resides at the sanatorium for seven years. As the novel concludes, the war begins, and Castorp volunteers for the military. His possible demise upon the battlefield is portended.

The Museum of Innocence ~ Orhan Pamuk (86 of 2024)

 The Museum of Innocence is a novel by the Turkish Nobel-laureate novelist Orhan Pamuk, published on August 29, 2008. The book, set in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984, is an account of the love story between a wealthy businessman, Kemal, and a poorer Fusun, a distant relative, whom he meet after a long time. 

Kemal has been engaged to a pretty girl named Sibel for two months when he meets a shop girl, Füsun, while buying a handbag for his fiancee. What follows in the next month and a half is an intense and secretive physical and emotional relationship between them. Kemal's happiest moment of life comes while making love the day Füsun confesses her deep love for him.

Though it is clear that he has also fallen completely for Füsun, Kemal keeps denying this to himself, believing that his marriage with Sibel and secret relationship could continue forever. His reverie is broken when Füsun disappears just after attending his engagement. Now he has to come to terms with his deep attachment and love for Füsun. He goes through a very painful period for about a year, unable to meet Füsun and deriving consolation from objects and places related to his beloved and their lovemaking.

Kemal's engagement to Sibel breaks off and finally Füsun responds to his letter and agrees to meet him. Füsun has got married, living with her husband and parents, and pretends to meet Kemal just as a distant relation, with undercurrents of anger. For the next eight years Kemal keeps visiting the family for supper and expressing his love for Füsun in various ways, while finding consolation in various objects related to her that he carries away from the house.

Finally after her father’s death, circumstances lead Füsun to divorce her husband. Füsun and Kemal are to be married after a trip around Europe together, but fate has something else in store and they become separated forever after a night of intense love-making. Kemal regards each object related to Füsun and their love, collected over the years, as portraying some discrete moment of happiness and bliss in the passage of those nine years. He decides to convert Füsun’s house into a museum of innocence, including all these objects and also other memorabilia related to the period.

The role of the museum is also one of ownership, as Kemal looks to own Füsun as a trinket in his own museum, rather than allow her autonomy in her own life.

Pamuk has established an actual "Museum of Innocence", based on the museum described in the book. It is housed in a building in the Çukurcuma neighbourhood of Beyoğlu, Istanbul, and displays a collection evocative of everyday life and culture of Istanbul during the period in which the novel is set.

Although created later, the museum and the novel were conceived of in tandem, displaying the obsessive romance between two Istanbul families, as well as eternalizing a perspective on upper-class Istanbul in the 1970s.According to the book, the museum allows free entry to those who bring a copy of the book.  A ticket placed in the 83rd chapter of the book will be stamped upon entrance.

OP has acknowledged Kiran Desai .

'Pamuk has created a work concerning romantic love worthy to stand in the company of Lolita, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.' --Financial Times

Orhan pamuk

 

Orhan pamuk covers in his books, Life pace of passing time. Passing of time is what a novel should help us understand according to him.

Living being is a feeling of time. We live secretly or openly.  That is a strong subject in his books. 

Time is finishing, and we have to be quick. If we are going to ask about Life and death in 20's you are going to be a good writer, but most of us think about it in their 70's. 

Don't exist like a peace of stone, in the remote corner of the world - write about them too in the novels. 

Arts, painting, Architecture, all are possible because of change in space or time. They are two basic categories as per Emmanueals theory. 

In 2003, he won the International IMPAC Award for My Name Is Red, and in 2006 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His novel, The Museum of Innocence, was an international bestseller, praised in the Guardian as 'an enthralling, immensely enjoyable piece of storytelling published in 2008.

"Pamuk's artistic accomplishment has been to play West against East, using the European novel's modernist tradition of formal experimentation in order to explore both his country's tangled Ottoman past and its contemporary politico-religious extremes. His books, which interleave Proustian family sagas with dervish allegories and reportage on modern-day paramilitary cults, have roused a furor in Turkey. Older Turkish intellectuals bred on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secularist dogma accuse him of playing with religion; Islamists accuse him of blasphemy; old-time leftists accuse him of cashing in. And meanwhile, Pamuk's new prominence in the Kurdish rights movement and his opposition to the police brutality and harsh penal codes that keep Turkey an authoritarian state threaten to alienate his popular audience. ''Columnists write, 'He is a best seller; now he's selling his country,' '' Pamuk says with amusement. ''If you do something new in Turkey, they look at you as a pervert. The future can only come from America.''

"Orhan pamuk is singularly well positioned to become the chronicler of his country's imperial neuroses. Turkey, after all, is not a conventionally third world country but a superpower that once stretched from Baghdad to the gates of Vienna, and Pamuk's own family history exemplifies in microcosm Turkey's efficient transition from a multiethnic empire to a modern nation-state."

Thomas Matt's - Magic Mountain is one of his favourate books. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/07/books/the-best-seller-of-byzantium.html

We the children of Mother Earth

 

What Mother Earth need is more bridges and not walls. We are all interconnected, unfortunately divided by narrow walls, first build in the minds, and then constructed outside.

 

Individuals or groups are forced to flee their home country or location due to war, 

persecution, or violence. Their suffering, hardships and stories often explore themes of 

displacement, identity, survival, and the search for a new home. 

This has been human struggle and experience since immemorial. 

Within each of us, at times we become psychological refugee.

 All the movements of human are alienated from them and turned against them. 

If not from one place to another, human keep moving from one time to another, they keep moving in search of shelter, in search of refuge. Not all who move in search of refuge are called refugees. The movement could be voluntary migration who are called immigrants and they have the basic capability to provide and take care of themselves and their facilities. While Lin in the book ‘Shantaram’ by Gregory David Roberts does explore themes of exile and displacement, Lin is not a refugee in the conventional sense. He is a fugitive who chooses to flee his country to escape legal consequences, rather than being forced to leave due to external threats like war or persecution. There are so many true stories like that of Lin. People from all over the world, end up in metros, for survival.

 Humans seek refuge across time and space by holding the edge of this human society that change with time, they take with them their necessities. Human effort is not futile even in this frantic and helpless state, and the effort of a struggling human being is what makes life meaningful and worth living. Floating city, fleeing invasions, inhabitants along the coast of northeast Italy found refuge in the islands of Venice. Venice the City of Bridges. Made up of over 118 islands was founded on March 25, 421 A.D. Celtic people, called Veneti lived along the coast of what is now Northeast Italy. However, the decline of the Roman Empire saw many of them seeking refuge in Venice fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions. Attila the Hun was the leader of the nomadic Hun people, responsible for the extensive damage caused in the mainland of Italy. Thus, a beautiful new city was born.

Looks at history, when did the super-rich have to suffer hardship? It's poor people who stand in queue and suffer most of the time.  

Time and again the helplessness of the human being swinging at the opposite levels of slave and master, subject and king has been explained. 

 In every battle or war, physical, mental or emotional all the soldiers later have to seek refuge  from what they have fought for. Battlefields and graveyards alternate, before the weary  modern man, human history unfolds as an endless stream of refugees.

 Religions and philosophies provide only temporary relief to weak human beings.

 Most of the time, the real cause is not what we see superficially. That is the Chaos theory. The butterfly effect.  Whether it be the Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Syria, Israeli, Palestine, Latin America, West or Central Africa, look at the history of any country/region or place.  Why did the issue start say for example in Syria? Some would say it’s the Suni/Shiites conflict; others might point towards, Saudi Arabi and Iran. There are various state sponsored and non-state actors, who are part of it. Though issue came into limelight in 2011, it started during the three-year draught from 2007 to 2010. With increasing heat around, human head too got hotter and angrier.  

 Having served for a combined total of over 20 years, Sheikh Hasina the longest serving prime minister in the history of Bangladesh was asked to live the country within 45 minutes on Monday 5th August 2024.  Her premiership ended in self-imposed exile following a series of violent protests in 2024 following weeks of deadly protests that began as demonstrations by students against government job quotas but surged into a movement demanding her resignation. She was flown into India in a Bangladesh Military Helicopter. She has been in the lookout for better political asylum, and she can afford to. But there are so many others, who suffer and are brutally killed in due course.

 Cyril Radcliffe, a man who had never been east of Paris, was given the task of drawing the borders for the new nations of Pakistan and India within 5 weeks, he submitted his partition map on 9 August 1947, which split apart Punjab and Bengal almost in half, without considering the geography, or the aftereffects it would have on common people.  In ‘Partition, Bengal and After : The Great Tragedy of India’ Kali Prasad Mukhopadhyay writes, Before partition Jinnah had been cautioned by several experts that it would be difficult to manage both western and the eastern wings separated by twelve hundred miles of foreign territory and inhabited by people different in their habits, customs and lifestyle. But he had such confidence in the supremacy of his leadership that he believed that he would be able to put everything right. Now he became aware that neither he nor the bond of Islam would be able to knot together two such diverse people. The gulf in political, economic and social respect was very wide. Despite his ill health he rushed to Dacca to pacify the agitated people there. On March 21, 1948 when he reached there were no slogan's of 'Quaid-i-Azam Zindabad'.  Language was proving to be a much more powerful link than religion. He had declared Urdu to be the national language of Pakistan, when Bangladesh would not accept. This was of course, the most volatile, divisive issue in Pakistan politics. In Eastern Pakistan there was supression of news because of retaliation.  They were not fully out of the 'Direct Action Day' on the 16th August 1946 where thousands of Hindus were massacred and Muslim League volunteers set fire to Hindu houses, it was known as 'Great Calcutta Killing'. By the end of 1947 about 4,25000 Hindus had migrated from East Pakistan, of the 13 million Non muslims. Right from the beginning discrimination against the non-Muslims became the rule. Nehru suggested that Liaquiat Ali Khan and he sign an agreement to stop the recurrent massacres and large scale migration. But the people there were instructed to talk sweetly to minorities with a smile on lip, but not to appoint non muslims in government jobs, force hindu's to wind up their businesses, blame them for anything going wrong, thus encouraging foul play, and creating havoc with the rights of the minorities. These continued, situation worsened again in 1964 when 3000 refugees left from Bangladesh but only 1500 reached India. US Senatro Edward Kennedy in his report gives the following details about the refugees from Bangladesh in 1971. As on October 25th 1971, 9.54 million refugees from East Pakistan had crossed over to India. The average influx as of October 1971 was 10,645 refugees a day. In the 1971 war of liberation 2,00,000 women were raped hundreds of thousands were victims of mass murders.  Parties were created within on the basis of subreligion. Indigenious people had their own group. 

Churchill, who in the early 1920s became colonial secretary, proudly claim to have cut off 75 percent of the territory of British Palestine from the proposed Jewish national home to create Transjordan, in order to give the Hashemite dynasty from Arabia a consolation prize of sorts. In Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone author Eduardo Galeano has dedicated a portion titled ‘Orgin of Two countries’ stating, how he and his men, sketched the borders with a finger in the sand. In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.

"Susan Abdallah, a Palestinian, knows the recipe for making a terrorist:

Deprive him of food and water.

Surround his home with the machinery of war.

Attach him with all means at all times, especially at night.

Demolish his home, uproot his farmland, kill his loved ones.

Congratulations: you have created an army of suicide Bombers."

And thus Eduardo Galeano in Mirrors introduced me to Susan Abdallah.

In her book “Mornings in Jenin” she says, 'Palestinians paid the price for the Jewish holocaust. All for the land without people for people without land.’

Nobody is born is terrorist, circumstances make them. When people go through tough times, they are bound to:

·      Freeze and surrender themselves to fate

·      Fight, with the hope of retaining what they have or

·      Flee towards a better place

 

Whatever they do, they do with hope, as heart has no borders. Hoping to return home and get back what they had some day. The scar would remain. Irrespective of the geography, every person whose foundation is shaken, either because of war, or due to economic, social, political, environmental, religious, caste, class or any other issues have to

 

·      Face the horror of leaving home and everything they own behind

·      Find a refugee – which is not at all easy, they will have to cross mountains, seas, and countries for it, spend sleepless nights

·      Start over from scratch in a new country.

 

Everybody suffer, but what men have to go through is different from women. The plight of women are described in books like ‘The Pearl that broke its shell’ by Nadia Hashimi covering the situation in Afghanistan across generations, how they embrace not only the pardha but also the Bacha Posh for survival. In ‘For the Love of a Son’,  Jean Sasson narrates her own story, of her wanting to leave the US dream having fled from Afghanistan, but having married to an Afghan man in US, how he got their son to Afghan, and brainwashed him against her to fight for Afghanistan.

 

Though we need more of bridges, human tend to construct more of wall, some loud, some mute. So much is said about the atrocities on Jews, but what there are others too, who had to go through similar situations.

 In 1959, the Dalai Lama and about 80,000 Tibetans were forced to escape to India after China's takeover of Tibet. Even today few thousand Tibetans flee every year, to India and other countries. Some after going through tough time, embrace peace while others proclaim war.  In ‘Left to Tell : Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust’ the protagonist Immaculée Ilibagiza with writer Steve Erwin recounts the author's harrowing experiences during the Rwandan genocide while also offering a message of faith, hope, and forgiveness. In ‘The Bite of the Mango’ again the protagonist Mariatu Kamara with Susan  McClelland writes about how there are genuine people willing to help, but there are people who do not want peace and those in power were not only looting all the grands and supports received from other countries, but also letting the refugees live hand to mouth with kacha houses.

 Jews were asked to leave Germany, they sailed from country to country for asylum, many were persecuted. German's have opened the doors for refugees, they teach their children the history and take responsibility. But not many other nations do. Because of war in the middle east people move to Europe and because of small wars in the back yards of Latin America, and other places, people tend to flee to US. Trump who’s forefathers had moved to US, is resistant to outsiders, so was Rishi Sunak, who’s parents had migrated first to Africa and from there to UK. In "They called us enemy"  George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker writes about his own story, about how he was in American concentration camp during World War 2 after Pearl Harbour bombing.

when his birth country went into war, with the country his father was born into. Who is right and who is wrong? Which is your country, and which is your nation? Who decides the borders? Do the birds, rivers, air and ocean, have the borders?

 There is so much to learn from history, but we fail to.

 In “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous”, Ocean Vuong narrates his experience of fleeing from Vietnam, suffering of his mother, struggle for identity, search for belonging and the trauma. In it there is a story where the villagers needed to butcher buffalo to survive, but the buffalo did not die immediately after being struck. Instead, it continued to struggle, and in its final moments, it managed to escape briefly, showing an immense will to live despite its inevitable death. Such is the life for some here. One of the most touching and a very lyrical book.

 Undoubtedly, everyone want love and is looking for peace. Would any mother want their children to fight among themselves? So would not Mother Earth. As kids we fight, but then make up. Let’s do that.  Let’s give a blow but ‘Turn the other cheek’, it is not week. Didn’t Elon Musk say that in a recent interview with Jordon Peterson. In ‘Love across the Salt desert’ by Keki N. Darwale, which was adapted into a movie named Refugee. The movie ends with the lead lady giving birth to Refugee's child at the border. The BSF and Ranger personnel discuss the child's nationality in a lighter vein. Do we need passport and visas? Who decides to which country the child would belong?

 Neeraj Chopra and Arshad Nadeem who recently created Olympic record and Personal Record in Paris Olympics 2024 reminded me of Luz Long and Jesse Owens  form 1936 Berlin Olympics. Politics and politicians would want to divide. But it takes a big heart to unite, value relationship and rekindle peace and happiness.

 This is what their mothers said after the match:

 Neeraj Chopra's mother: "We're happy with silver. The one who won gold (Arshad Nadeem) is also my child."

 Arshad Nadeem's mother: "Neeraj Chopra is like a son to me. I prayed for him too."

 What does it teach? Not just grace, humility, respect and peace but also that we are all siblings, mothers should govern the world, for it to be a better place. Respect One another. We are all One.

They called us Enemy ~ George Takei (85 of 2024)

 

A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.

George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.

In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.

They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.

Winston Churchill

Born 30 November 1874 at Blenheim Palace in Oxford shire. Attended Harrow and Sandhurst before embarking on an army career, seeing action in India, and Sudan. Became Conservative MP in 1900, but in 1904 joined the Liberal Party. Cabinet member from 1908, he was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 until the disastrous Dardanelles expedition in the early part of WW1. Served on the Western Front for a time, before rejoining government from 1917-1929. Opposition to Indian self-rule, warnings about the rise of the Nazis, and support for Edward VIII left Churchill politically isolated during the 1930s. After WW2 broke out, he replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, where his reputation as an inspirational wartime leader was cemented. They lost power in the 1945 election but were returned to power in 1951, and continued as prime ministers until 1955. Died on 24 January 1965 and was given a state funeral.

Winston Churchill, in full Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, January 24, 1965, London), British statesman, orator, and author who as PM (1940–45, 1951–55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory. After a sensational rise to prominence in national politics before World I, Churchill became notorious for making an erratic judgment in the war itself and in the decade that followed. Politically suspect in consequence, he was an alone figure until his response to Adolf Hitler's challenge regained lost glory and allowed him to the leadership of a national coalition in 1940. Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin fostered Allied strategy in World War II, and after the breakdown of the alliance, he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union. He led the Conservative Party back to the office in 1951 and remained prime minister until 1955, compelled to resign due to illness.

Churchill was sufficiently fascinated with Islam for his family to be concerned at one point that he might convert. And in 1940, his cabinet set aside £100,000 for the construction of a mosque in London in recognition of the Indian Muslims who fought for the British Empire. He later told the House of Commons: "Many of our friends in Muslim countries all over the East have already expressed great appreciation of this gift." "His relationship with Islam is far more complex than most people realize," Dockter suggests, noting that Churchill went on holiday to Istanbul and played polo in India with Muslims.

Dr. Sashi Tharoor writing a famous book “Inglorious Empire chronicles” the atrocities of the British Empire, said the former British PM should be remembered alongside the most prominent dictators of the twentieth century. He wrote the blame for the Bengal Famine rested with Churchill. In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal. This is the man whom the British insist on hailing as some apostle of freedom and democracy. In his view, he wrote that Churchill is really one of the rulers of the 20th century only fit to stand in the company of the likes of Hitler, Mao, and Stalin. Churchill has as much blood on his hands as Hitler does. Particularly the decisions that he personally signed off during the Bengal Famine when 4.3 million people died because of the decisions he took or endorsed. Not only did the British pursue their own policy of not helping the victims of this famine which was created by their policies. Churchill persisted in exporting grain to Europe, not to feed actual to use his phrase, but to add to the buffer stocks that were being piled up in the event of a future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. Ships laden with wheat were coming in from Australia docking in Calcutta and were instructed by Churchill not to disembark their cargo but sail on to Europe. And when conscience-stricken British officials wrote to the Prime Minister in London pointing out that his policies were causing needless loss of life all he could do was write peevishly in the margin of the report, ‘Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?'"During British rule many dark chapters of our colonial history, like the Bengal famine of 1943. At least three million people died of hunger. That's more than six times the British Empire's casualties in World War Two. Churchill's government turned down urgent pleas for food. 

Churchill had some sympathy for the Jewish Bolshevism " conspiracy theory and stated in his 1920 article "Zionism versus Bolshevism" that communism, which he considered a "worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality”, had been established in Russia by Jews: There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistically Jews; it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power come from the Jewish leaders. Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, countered that "he was familiar with the Zionist ideal and supported the idea of a Jewish state". But being anti-Semitic and a Zionist are not incompatible, says Charmley. "Churchill with no doubt at all was a fervent Zionist," he says, "a fervent believer in the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, and that state should be in what we then called Palestine." But he also "shared the low-level casual anti-Semitism of his class and kind", he says. If we judged every one of that era by the standards of 21st Century political correctness, they'd all be guilty, he notes. "It shouldn't blind us to the bigger picture."

 A 1937 unpublished article - supposedly by Churchill - entitled "How the Jews Can Combat Persecution" was discovered in 2007. "It may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution - that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer," it said. "There is the feeling that the Jew is an incorrigible alien, that his first loyalty will always be towards his own race." But there was immediately a row over the article, with Churchill historians pointing out it was written by journalist Adam Marshall Diston

"It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir… striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal Palace," Churchill said of his anti-colonialist adversary in 1931. "Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting," Churchill told the cabinet on another occasion. "We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the Empire if he died." It's unfashionable today to question Gandhi's non-violent political tactics. He is venerated in much the same way as Churchill is in the UK. But for years he was a threat to Churchill's vision for the British Empire. 

Dr. Tharoor, a former Indian government minister, delivered an emphatic speech filled with passion at the Oxford Union in July of 2015 which went viral. He wrote about the economic toll British rule took on India citing the reason "India's share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23 percent. By the time the British left, it was down to below four percent. Why? Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India."

Time Shelter ~ Georgi Gospodinov (84 of 2024)

In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a 'clinic for the past' that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.

As Gaustine's assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a 'time shelter', hoping to escape from the horrors of our present - a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.

Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov's reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, a major voice in international literature.

Dr. Gaustine starts a clinic for patients with Alzheimer's disease where they get to travel to their past. Each room is designed and designated to a particular time period in history, hence the title 'Time Shelter'. Once the clinic becomes famous for its work, people start rushing to it to relive their former lives, even though they are perfectly normal.

A political agenda is formulated, and people must now vote on which period and where they would all want to return. Is it Germany during the Great War, Czechoslovakia during the Velvet Revolution, Spain during the Spanish flu or Rif War, Poland in the 1920s, or Switzerland, which was considered a haven at the risk of soon being overcrowded? Were they the perfect time and place to revisit without causing any temporal chaos in the present? The narrator takes us on a ride through history to reveal the secrets of time.

But why did Dr. Gaustine start the clinic in the first place? Did he do it for the patients or his own sake? As with the narrator, we don't get to learn much about him except that he assists Dr. Gaustine in running the clinic. But there are also moments in the book that made me doubt if the narrator actually existed or was just the doctor's second personality.

This book is so nuanced that a lot of nonfiction gets passed off as fiction as it's entirely based on European history in the late 19th and 20th centuries, and the author has decided to make an elaborate commentary on it without boring the readers - genius-level writing. Fifty years from now, this book might share space with Gabriel Marquez, Murakami and Co, and people might come up with their own theories and interpretations of the text.

I loved reading the book as I am a historical fiction enthusiast, but people who aren't would find it difficult. It needs attention to detail and patience to go through facts and fallacies to fall in love with this book. But once you get to the end, you sure will.

Georgi Gospodinov crafts a narrative that resonates like a blend of Italo Calvino and Franz Kafka, pulling readers into a world where the past, present, and future collide.

Life: A User's Manual ~ Georges Perec : Part 2

 Part 2: 

The Oulipo movement (short for Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, which translates to "Workshop of Potential Literature") is a group of writers and mathematicians who sought to create new structures and patterns in literature using constrained writing techniques. Founded in 1960 in France by the writer Raymond Queneau and the mathematician François Le Lionnais, the Oulipo group explores how literature can be generated through the use of mathematical constraints, formal structures, and inventive techniques.

Core Principles:

1. Constraints: The central idea of Oulipo is the use of constraints as a creative tool. These constraints can be linguistic, mathematical, or formal. The belief is that these limitations can stimulate creativity and lead to unexpected and innovative literary works.
2. Potential Literature: The term "potential literature" refers to the idea that the constraints create new possibilities for literary expression. The movement is not tied to any particular genre or style but is more about the exploration of what literature can become when pushed beyond traditional boundaries.
3. Mathematical and Formal Techniques: The group often uses mathematical concepts such as combinatorics, permutations, and algorithms to construct literary works. This can include creating texts that follow specific numerical patterns, such as lipograms (works that omit certain letters) or palindromes (texts that read the same forward and backward).

Notable Members and Works:

1. Raymond Queneau:
• Notable Work: Exercises in Style (1947) — This book presents the same mundane story told in 99 different styles, showcasing how language can be manipulated.
• Contribution: Queneau was instrumental in founding Oulipo and his works often employed the kinds of constraints that would become hallmarks of the movement.
2. Georges Perec:
• Notable Works:
• La Disparition (1969) — A novel written entirely without the letter "e" (a lipogram).
• Life: A User's Manual (1978) — A novel structured around a complex set of rules, including the Knight’s Tour from chess.
• Contribution: Perec is perhaps the most famous Oulipian and was known for his masterful use of constraints to create deeply engaging literature.
3. Italo Calvino:
• Notable Works:
• If on a winter's night a traveler (1979) — A novel that explores the nature of reading, with a structure that plays with the idea of incomplete stories.
• Invisible Cities (1972) — A novel that describes a series of imaginary cities, structured in a way that reflects mathematical symmetries.
• Contribution: Although not a founding member, Calvino joined Oulipo later and his work often reflects the group’s influence, particularly in his use of formal constraints and playful narrative techniques.
4. Jacques Roubaud:
• Notable Work: The Great Fire of London (1989) — An autobiographical novel that uses various formal constraints to explore memory and time.
• Contribution: Roubaud is both a poet and a mathematician, and his work is heavily influenced by Oulipo's principles.
5. Harry Mathews:
• Notable Work: Cigarettes (1987) — A novel structured around a series of interrelated vignettes that explore themes of love, betrayal, and identity.
• Contribution: The only American member of Oulipo, Mathews was known for his inventive use of narrative structures and playful literary techniques.

Impact and Legacy:

The Oulipo movement has had a significant influence on experimental literature. Its emphasis on constraints as a method of stimulating creativity has inspired writers worldwide to explore new ways of constructing narratives. The movement continues to be active, with new members contributing to the ongoing exploration of potential literature.

Oulipo's influence extends beyond literature into other art forms, such as visual art and music, where similar constraints and formal techniques have been used to generate new works.

"Life: A User's Manual" (original title: La Vie mode d'emploi) by Georges Perec is a highly regarded novel that has left a lasting impact on readers and critics alike. Published in 1978, the book is often considered Perec's magnum opus, combining intricate structure, rich detail, and a playful yet profound exploration of life.

Overview:

The novel is set in a Parisian apartment building, and the narrative focuses on the lives of the building’s inhabitants. Perec's writing style is unique, employing a meticulous and almost mathematical approach to storytelling. The structure of the novel is based on a complex set of rules inspired by chess moves (the Knight’s Tour) and other combinatorial principles, which dictate the order and content of each chapter.

Strengths:

1. Structural Innovation:
• The novel's structure is its most striking feature. Perec meticulously planned the layout of the apartment building and the narrative sequence, resulting in a book that is as much a literary puzzle as it is a novel. This structural complexity invites readers to engage with the text in a way that is both challenging and rewarding.
2. Detailed Descriptions:
• Perec is known for his attention to detail, and this novel is no exception. He vividly describes objects, rooms, and the lives of the characters with a precision that creates a rich, immersive experience. Each chapter reads almost like a still life, with every detail contributing to the overall tapestry of the narrative.
3. Exploration of Themes:
• The novel delves into themes of human existence, memory, time, and the passage of life. Perec examines the minutiae of everyday life, highlighting how these small details contribute to the broader picture of human experience. The title, Life: A User’s Manual, suggests that the novel is a guide to understanding life, albeit one that is as complex and multifaceted as life itself.
4. Characterization:
• The book introduces a wide array of characters, each with their own stories, backgrounds, and idiosyncrasies. Through these characters, Perec explores different aspects of life, from mundane routines to deep existential concerns. Despite the large number of characters, Perec manages to give each one a distinct voice and personality.

Challenges:

1. Complexity and Accessibility:
• The novel's intricate structure and the sheer volume of detail can be overwhelming for some readers. It requires patience and attentiveness, as the narrative does not follow a conventional linear path. Readers who prefer straightforward storytelling might find this aspect challenging.
2. Pace and Length:
• Due to its detailed descriptions and the need to adhere to the novel's structural constraints, the pacing can sometimes feel slow. The book is long, and some readers might find the dense, descriptive prose demanding.
3. Fragmented Narrative:
• The narrative jumps between different characters, time periods, and stories, which can make it difficult to keep track of the plot. This fragmentation is intentional, reflecting the complexity of life itself, but it can be disorienting for readers who are not accustomed to such a style.

Conclusion:

Life: A User’s Manual is a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, celebrated for its innovative structure, depth of detail, and philosophical exploration of life. It is a novel that challenges conventional storytelling, offering readers a unique and intellectually stimulating experience. However, its complexity and non-linear narrative may not appeal to everyone. For those who enjoy literary puzzles and are willing to engage deeply with a text, it offers an incredibly rewarding reading experience.

This book is best suited for readers who appreciate literary experimentation and are intrigued by the idea of exploring life through the lens of an intricately crafted, multi-layered narrative.

  

"Life: A User's Manual" by Georges Perec is indeed a novel that is famous for its intricate structure, which is heavily based on the Knight’s Tour from chess, among other constraints. The novel is a masterful example of Oulipo's philosophy of using constraints to generate creativity in literature.

What is the Knight’s Tour?

The Knight’s Tour is a classic chess problem in which a knight must visit every square on a chessboard exactly once. The path that the knight takes can be mapped out in various sequences, and it’s this concept that Perec employs in his novel.

Structure of "Life: A User's Manual":

1. The Apartment Building:
• The novel is set in a fictional Parisian apartment building located at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier. Perec meticulously designs the building with 10 floors, including the basement and ground floor, and 10 apartments on each floor, making a total of 100 spaces (though not all are apartments; some are staircases, elevators, etc.).
• Each chapter of the novel corresponds to a particular room or space within this building.
2. The Knight’s Tour Constraint:
• Perec uses the Knight’s Tour as a constraint to determine the order in which he describes the rooms of the apartment building. The narrative "moves" from one room to the next in the sequence dictated by the knight’s movement on a chessboard.
• The novel is structured around an orthogonal grid (10x10), representing the layout of the apartment building. The Knight’s Tour defines the order of the 99 chapters (one square of the grid is deliberately left empty).
3. Complex Narrative Weaving:
• Within each chapter, Perec describes the contents of the room in detail, as well as the stories and lives of the occupants or the items in that room. The narrative weaves between the present and the past, and between different characters' stories, all while being anchored to the specific location within the building.
• The movement from one room to another allows Perec to build a mosaic of interconnected stories, much like the pieces of a puzzle coming together.
4. Additional Constraints:
• Perec also imposes other constraints, such as:
• Spoonerisms: Words or phrases in the novel are sometimes deliberately altered to create a play on words.
• Lists and Enumerations: Detailed lists of objects or descriptions, typical of Perec’s style, are included in many chapters.
• Cycling Themes: Themes like puzzles, painting, and disappearance recur throughout the book, often tied to specific rules or motifs that Perec set up.
5. Puzzle-like Nature:
• The novel is often compared to a puzzle, both in its structure and in the way it invites the reader to piece together the lives of the characters and the storylines. Perec himself was an avid puzzle enthusiast, and this love of puzzles is reflected in the way he constructs the novel.

Why Use the Knight’s Tour?

Perec's use of the Knight’s Tour is emblematic of the Oulipo movement’s belief that constraints can inspire creativity rather than restrict it. By forcing the narrative to follow a pre-determined, non-linear path, Perec creates a richly layered story that challenges traditional storytelling methods. The constraint also allows for an exploration of time, space, and memory in a non-chronological and multifaceted way.

Effect of the Constraint:

The constraint of the Knight’s Tour, combined with the other rules Perec set for himself, results in a novel that is incredibly detailed and interconnected. Every small detail or story fragment contributes to the larger picture, much like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The structure also reflects the complexity and randomness of life, where events and stories are interconnected in ways that are not always immediately apparent.

In summary, Life: A User’s Manual is structured around the Knight’s Tour from chess, which dictates the order in which the rooms of an apartment building are described, and through this structure, Perec explores the lives of the building’s inhabitants in a richly detailed and interconnected narrative. This constraint is a prime example of how the Oulipo movement's techniques can create a novel that is both structurally innovative and deeply engaging.

In "Life: A User's Manual" by Georges Perec, the fictional Parisian apartment building at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier is home to a diverse group of characters, each with their own unique stories, backgrounds, and lives. The novel meticulously details the lives of these inhabitants, and while there are many characters, here are some of the main occupants:

1. Bartlebooth:

• Description: An eccentric Englishman and the novel's central figure. Bartlebooth is independently wealthy and embarks on a bizarre 50-year project: to learn watercolor painting, travel the world painting seascapes, have these paintings turned into jigsaw puzzles, and then reassemble the puzzles upon his return to Paris. Once completed, the puzzles are destroyed, leaving nothing behind.
• Role: Bartlebooth's project serves as a metaphor for the futility and transience of human endeavors.

2. Winckler:

• Description: A skilled artisan who lives in the building and creates the jigsaw puzzles for Bartlebooth. Winckler is also a former prisoner and a puzzle enthusiast, whose work becomes increasingly complex and challenging as time goes on.
• Role: Winckler represents the theme of craftsmanship and the intricate, often obsessive nature of human projects.

3. Madame de Beaumont:

• Description: A widow and an art collector who lives in the building. She is an elegant and cultured woman who surrounds herself with beautiful things, yet she is also lonely and isolated.
• Role: Her story reflects themes of memory, loss, and the passage of time.

4. Valène:

• Description: A painter who lives in the building and has spent years working on a massive painting that attempts to depict the entirety of the building and its inhabitants. Valène's project is never completed, symbolizing the unattainability of capturing the totality of life.
• Role: Valène's work parallels the novel itself, as both are attempts to create a comprehensive, all-encompassing depiction of life.

5. Rorschach:

• Description: A wealthy man who is obsessed with acquiring and controlling rare objects. He is also involved in various schemes, including manipulating the art market.
• Role: Rorschach represents greed and the destructive power of obsession.

6. Moreau:

• Description: A former naval officer who has a fascination with maps and navigation. He is Bartlebooth's friend and helps him with his jigsaw project, although he is skeptical of its purpose.
• Role: Moreau's character explores themes of exploration, both literal and metaphorical, and the idea of charting one's course through life.

7. Madame Albin:

• Description: The concierge of the building. She is a key figure who observes the comings and goings of the residents, often reflecting on their lives and relationships.
• Role: As the concierge, Madame Albin serves as a bridge between the different residents and their stories, embodying the interconnectedness of their lives.

8. Marcel Appenzzell:

• Description: A tenant who is an antique dealer. His life revolves around his business and the history behind the objects he buys and sells.
• Role: Appenzzell's character delves into themes of history, memory, and the value we place on material objects.

9. The Marquises de L'Aigle:

• Description: A noble family who live in the building. Their apartment is filled with historical artifacts and furniture that speak to their aristocratic heritage.
• Role: The Marquises represent the theme of tradition and the weight of history, and how it shapes identity.

10. Georges Morellet:

• Description: A taxidermist who lives and works in the building. His apartment is filled with stuffed animals and various biological specimens.
• Role: Morellet's work with dead animals is a macabre reflection on life, death, and the human desire to preserve what is transient.

11. Madame Marcia:

• Description: A tenant who is a former opera singer. Her story touches on the fading of artistic glory and the inevitability of aging.
• Role: Madame Marcia represents the theme of loss and the ephemeral nature of fame and beauty.

12. The Grimod family:

• Description: A family living in one of the apartments, dealing with ordinary domestic issues and the complexities of family life.
• Role: The Grimod family reflects the everyday, mundane aspects of life that coexist with the more eccentric or grandiose lives of other residents.

13. Cinoc:

• Description: A reclusive scholar who spends his days writing an enormous, never-to-be-finished encyclopedia. He lives in isolation, surrounded by books and papers.
• Role: Cinoc’s work is a symbol of the futility of trying to catalog or contain all human knowledge.

These characters, along with others in the building, create a microcosm of society, where each resident’s life intersects with those of their neighbors. The novel’s structure allows Perec to explore a wide range of human experiences, from the ordinary to the extraordinary, all within the confines of a single apartment building. The detailed portraits of these characters contribute to the novel’s rich tapestry, making "Life: A User’s Manual" a complex and multifaceted exploration of life itself.

“Gaspard Winckler is dead, but the long and meticulous, patiently laid plot of his revenge is not finished yet.”

It's this silent and extended struggle between the puzzle-maker Winckler and Bartlebooth, that is the very essence of the novel. A core that both illustrate the futility of life and people's attempts to instill meaning in life through art. In Perec's authorship what is absent is at least as important as what is there. In the book's center there's a void: both metaphorically and on a deeper level there's something missing. What's missing metaphorically we don't know until Bartlebooth's very last page, and what's lacking in a deeper sense seems to be up to the reader.

For a decade Perec gathered information (emotions, color, style, furnishing, food, literature, music, accessories, toys, etc...) of every single room in the apartment house where the book is set, and sorted all the facts in 99 folders (one for each chapter). Once these facts were collected Perec began the actual writing, or rather describing of each room. The movement from room to room was determined in advance, based on the bishop's movement over a chessboard.

Chapter fifty-one, and one of the characters, an artist called Valène, considers painting a picture of the apartment block, with the front removed and he will paint all the inhabitants of the building in situ, including himself. Perec then proceeds to create a list which we soon realise is a list of short descriptions of characters in the book so far and, as we don’t recognise all of them, characters who will appear in the rest of the book. Because the text used for the list is a monospaced typeface, possibly Courier, it is obvious that each list entry is the same length, which turns out to be sixty characters. We then notice that every ten entries are blocked together and there is a separator after 60 entries. There is another separator at 120 and another at 180….well, not quite, it ends at 179.

If you look on the second image you may be able to see that a diagonal line appears from top-right to bottom-left. This is formed because of a further pattern that Perec has used. Line 61 ends with the letter ‘g’, the second to last letter in line 62 is also ‘g’, the third from last letter in line 63 is also ‘g’ and so on until we get to line 120 which starts with ‘G’ thus forming a diagonal of ‘g’s. Now that we know that the second block has this pattern we can see if the first and third blocks also have this pattern. Although it’s not so obvious we can see that there is a similar diagonal of ‘e’s in lines 1-60 and a diagonal of ‘o’s in lines 121-179, which together spells ‘EGO’. In French the diagonals spell ‘AME’, French for ‘soul’ and the German translator used ‘ICH’, German for ‘I’ . Is there any further significance of the 60 lines/60 characters structure?

It’s a fun book that can be maddening at times, and even dull every now and then.