CONTINUITY OF PARKS

On By PGR NairIn StoriesLeave a comment

 CONTINUITY OF PARKS

By Julio Cortazar


He had begun to read the novel a few days before. He had put it aside because of some urgent business conferences, opened it again on his way back to the estate by train; he permitted himself a slowly growing interest in the plot, in the characterizations. That afternoon, after writing a letter giving his power of attorney and discussing a matter of joint ownership with the manager of his estate, he returned to the book in the tranquility of his study which looked out upon the park with its oaks. Sprawled in his favorite armchair, its back toward the door–even the possibility of an intrusion would have irritated him, had he thought of it–he let his left hand caress repeatedly the green velvet upholstery and set to reading the final chapters. He remembered effortlessly the names and his mental image of the characters; the novel spread its glamour over him almost at once. He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him, and at the same time feeling his head rest comfortably on the green velvet of the chair with its high back, sensing that the cigarettes rested within reach of his hand, that beyond the great windows the air of afternoon danced under the oak trees in the park. Word by word, licked up the sordid dilemma of the hero and heroine, letting himself be absorbed to the point where the images settled down and took on color and movement, he was witness to the final encounter in the mountain cabin. The woman arrived first, apprehensive; now the lover came in, his face cut by the backlash of a branch. Admirably, she stanched the blood with her kisses, but he rebuffed her caresses, he had not come to perform again the ceremonies of a secret passion, protected by a world of dry leaves and furtive paths through the forest. The dagger warmed itself against his chest, and underneath liberty pounded, hidden close. A lustful, panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes, and one felt it had all been decided from eternity. Even to those caresses which writhed about the lover’s body, as though wishing to keep him there, to dissuade him from it; they sketched abominably the frame of that other body it was necessary to destroy. Nothing had been forgotten: alibis, unforeseen hazards, possible mistakes. From this hour on, each instant had its use minutely assigned. The cold-blooded, twice-gone-over reexamination of the details was barely broken off so that a hand could caress a cheek. It was beginning to get dark.
Not looking at each other now, rigidly fixed upon the task which awaited them, they separated at the cabin door. She was to follow the trail that led north. On the path leading in the opposite direction, he turned for a moment to watch her running, her hair loosened and flying. He ran in turn, crouching among the trees and hedges until, in the yellowish fog of dusk, he could distinguish the avenue of trees, which led up to the house. The dogs were not supposed to bark, and they did not bark. The estate manager would not be there at this hour, and he was not there. He went up the three porch steps and entered. The woman’s words reached him over a thudding of blood in his ears: first a blue chamber, then a hall, then a carpeted stairway. At the top, two doors. No one in the first room, no one in the second. The door of the salon, and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel.

Source: Blow-Up and Other Stories

( Note to the reader: Julio Cortazar (Argentinean writer) is one of my favorite Latin American writers. He was a great sensation in the literary circles of Kerala in the vibrant eighties when yours truly also got exposed to some unadulterated Latin American stuff.
Pablo Neruda once said, ‘Anyone who doesn’t read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair’. I cannot agree more and anyone who has tasted Cortazar and Borges will assert that much of the fiction that one encounters these days is sadly insipid. This metafiction is an excellent example of Cortazar’s genius.
To read a gripping story is to be transported into its fictional world. Certain stories creates the illusion that I am no longer reading the story but I am actually in the story. ‘In continuity of Parks’, Cortazar memorably evokes this experience of total immersion in a fictional text. This story seamlessly shifts from two realistic narratives, finally provoking a metaphysical uncertainty about which is the text and which is reality.
A business man reads a novel sitting in his high backed green velvet armchair in his study. The novel he is reading tells of a desperate but resolute murderer who follows an avenue of trees that leads to a house; he climbs the stairs and locates the study,… ‘and then, the knife in his hand, the light from the great windows, the high back of armchair covered in green velvet, the head of the man in the chair reading a novel’. When the crime is about to be performed, the victim is revealed as the businessman sitting in the armchair at the opening. So at the climatic end, the real man reading a novel suddenly becomes a character in the novel just as the characters suddenly become ‘real’ to end the man’s life.
Cortazar involves the reader, first by constructing the business man as the narrative point of view and then, without warning, abruptly shifting to the lovers. The rapid conclusion is a bit jolting, not only because the text ends just before the murder occurs, but because the reader was earlier positioned in the victim’s point of view, assuming it to be reality.
Thus the text that the hero reads becomes the text in which he is read. The reader immersed in the thriller becomes the victim of the narrated murder, thus paying with his life the disappearance of the boundary between fiction and reality. Note the economy of words in this story. The ending line is superb, perfectly balanced, without any superfluous or gory words to describe a cool murder…In essence, the sign of great fiction!….PGR)

Midlife Blues

On By PGR NairIn GeneralLeave a comment
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“Middle age is when you have stopped growing at both ends and have begun to grow in the middle.” I had just delivered a speech at a Toastmasters Club in Saudi Arabia. During the break that followed, a young daughter of a Toastmaster who had attended the meeting as a guest, came to meet me. My face beamed with delight, as I was anxious to receive her comments.  “That was a very good speech, Uncle.” She was smiling as she conveyed her sincere appreciation.  My full-moon face swiftly shrunk like a wilted flower. The last word of her appreciation came as a bolt from the blue and that was the time when I first sank into my midlife blues. It was the beginning of those ‘intimidating Uncle calls’. My face invited widespread attention from the mirror in the days that followed and I still continue my vigilant watch against those tiny lines that secretly invade my face. Nowadays, whenever I smile at a good girl, she thinks that I am her father’s friend.  

Middle age is that time of life when each passing day makes you feel two days older. That is when you feel that Saturday night is the same as Monday morning. That is the time when you wish there was some other way of starting the day than by getting up. Even when you wake up in the spring you feel that you are not springy. You discover that your memory is shorter, your experience longer, your stamina lower and your hairline higher. You think that anyone going slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac. I recently celebrated my 40th birthday. I have now stopped looking forward to my next birthday. I think the only time in life we like to grow old is when we are kids. Kids are often introduced as, “He is only two and half years,” or, “He is just one and half years old.” I don’t know why we elders avoid that precious fractional element while mentioning our age. Maybe it is true that, “Life begins at forty.” Well, life not only begins at forty, it begins to show as well. But everything else begins to wear out, fall out or spread out.  I asked my friend, Sunny Jacob, “What are the symptoms that indicate that you have reached this middle menopause?” “Well,” Sunny coughed and said, “PGR, there are three signs that you are middle-aged. The first is your failing memory. Well, the other two, um… I forgot!” I then knew that Sunny was not lying about his age.  

Midlife is the period of many economic and emotional crises. That is the time when your children leave one by one, only to return two by two. You are not bothered about where your spouse goes, as long as you don’t have to go along. That is the time when you want to see how long your car will last, rather than how fast it will go. It is then you start switching off the bedroom light for economic reasons, rather than for romantic reasons. You start moaning that you get less for your money every time you go to the barber. You suddenly realize that money really matters, and you feel that every cent is a dollar in waiting. But when you try to save it, your children blame you by saying, ”Papa is stingy.” If you don’t chase it, your wife complains that you lack ambition. If you spend it, you are termed as a spendthrift. Your home becomes the setting for a daily rehearsal of ‘war and peace’. Finally, everyone blames it on his marriage and concludes that marriage is not a lottery; because in lottery, you at least have a chance.  This year on the 4th of September, my wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. As usual, I went to a gift shop in Jubail to buy an anniversary present for my wife. I met a smart Saudi there and told him that I wanted a nice anniversary present for my wife. He had a good look at me and asked, “May I know how long you have been married.” I said proudly that I was celebrating my thirteenth anniversary. The Saudi pondered and said, “Siddique (meaning friend), our bargain counter is in the basement.” I saluted him for his understanding of the middle-age mentality.

 Middle age is the time to ponder over the reciprocal relation between health and wealth. You have money to burn, but the fire has gone out. Your daily dozen becomes weekly once, and you are afraid of it becoming weakly once. But you earn some status symbols in your health profile. Your life has become too sugary and that is shown even in your blood. You now attend many birthday parties and appreciate the wonderful butterscotch cake, but lack the will to eat it. You have withstood all the pressures in your life only to boost it on your Barometer. You surely now stay in shape, and ’round’ is the shape .A heartache that was sweet in your youth, is now a bit painful. You finally seek solace with a pacemaker. You now realize that caution is the only thing you care to exercise. You are even cautioned to slow down by a doctor, rather than by a traffic policeman.  

It is also the period when you are more concerned about your looks than your outlook. As the cream of your life fades off, you puff up your face with  more and more creams. Last week, when I was dressing up for a party, I told my wife that if anyone asks me about my age I am going to say that I am only thirty-five.

My wife said, “Don’t create an embarrassment for me.”

I asked her, “Why?” “Because, that way you will be going around and telling everyone that my younger son is illegitimate.”  

Midlife is also the period of many ‘metallic’ jubilees. You have silver in your hair, gold in your teeth, lead in your bottom and silicon in some vital sites. Last week, a colleague of me poked into my mouth while joking and said, “Hey PGR, you have very fine teeth!” I said, “They are all mine, I have the receipt from Almana hospital.”

When my friend Bajpai returned from Paris, I asked him about Paris. As usual he said, “Wonderful,” and added with a sigh, “PGR, I should have visited Paris at least twenty years back.”

“You mean when Paris was really Paris,” I enquired. “No, when Bajpai was really Bajpai,” he replied. It proves that you don’t have to worry about temptations, because it will avoid you. I do not want to disappoint my middle-aged readers with my words. I only wish to remind you that the art of life is to stay in rhythm with your age, whether middle age or old age. As Victor Hugo said, “If forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age”. Age is a function of mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. It is your attitude to aging that acts as your mind’s paintbrush. The best way is to accept each dawn in the dusk of your life gracefully and march with a smile on your lips. Remember that we don’t stop laughing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop laughing. As Sister Mary Gemma Brunke has so beautifully written, “It is the old apple trees that are decked with the lovliest blossoms. It is the ancient redwoods that rise to majestic heights. It is the old violins that produce the richest tones. It is the aged wine that tastes the sweetest.”  Well, my dear readers, you now know that fifty is the age of discovery…You just discovered that you are old. But to me, middle age is always fifteen years older than I am!

The Grave

On By PGR NairIn StoriesLeave a comment


by Guy de Maupassant
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson and Mme. Quesada

Introduction

The French writer Guy de Maupassant (185-1993) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered as one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. Maupassant took the subjects for his pessimistic stories and novels chiefly from the behaviour of the bourgeoisie, the Franco-Prussian War, and the fashionable life of Paris. 

Maupassant had contracted syphilis in his 20s and the disease later caused increasing mental disorder. Many of his famous stories and masterpieces such as the horror story, “The Horla” have their roots in the flashes of madness. The below story too was written during that period. He has also written amazingly beautiful stories such as “In the moonlight” which has infidelity as its theme. Perhaps one story that all of you must be familiar is, “The Necklace”, in which a woman’s vanity brings about the down fall and ruin of her and her husband. Its dramatic ending evokes deep pathos.

While the writer Maupassant is certainly familiar to many story writers in Sulekha, I am not too sure how many here have encountered this nugget of Mauppasant. This one is one of my favourites.

The Grave


The seventeenth of July, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three, at half-past two in the morning, the watchman in the cemetery of Besiers, who lived in a small cottage on the edge of this field of the dead, was awakened by the barking of his dog, which was shut up in the kitchen.

Going down quickly, he saw the animal sniffing at the crack of the door and barking furiously, as if some tramp had been sneaking about the house. The keeper, Vincent, therefore took his gun and went out.

His dog, preceding him, at once ran in the direction of the Avenue General Bonnet, stopping short at the monument of Madame Tomoiseau.

The keeper, advancing cautiously, soon saw a faint light on the side of the Avenue Malenvers, and stealing in among the graves, he came upon a horrible act of profanation.

A man had dug up the coffin of a young woman who had been buried the evening before and was dragging the corpse out of it.

A small dark lantern, standing on a pile of earth, lighted up this hideous scene.

Vincent sprang upon the wretch, threw him to the ground, bound his hands and took him to the police station.

It was a young, wealthy and respected lawyer in town, named Courbataille.

He was brought into court. The public prosecutor opened the case by referring to the monstrous deeds of the Sergeant Bertrand.

A wave of indignation swept over the courtroom. When the magistrate sat down the crowd assembled cried: “Death! death!” With difficulty the presiding judge established silence.

Then he said gravely:

“Defendant, what have you to say in your defense?”

Courbataille, who had refused counsel, rose. He was a handsome fellow, tall, brown, with a frank face, energetic manner and a fearless eye.

Paying no attention to the whistlings in the room, he began to speak in a voice that was low and veiled at first, but that grew more firm as he proceeded.

“Monsieur le President, gentlemen of the jury: I have very little to say. The woman whose grave I violated was my sweetheart. I loved her.

“I loved her, not with a sensual love and not with mere tenderness of heart and soul, but with an absolute, complete love, with an overpowering passion.

“Hear me:

“When I met her for the first time I felt a strange sensation. It was not astonishment nor admiration, nor yet that which is called love at first sight, but a feeling of delicious well-being, as if I had been plunged into a warm bath. Her gestures seduced me, her voice enchanted me, and it was with infinite pleasure that I looked upon her person. It seemed to me as if I had seen her before and as if I had known her a long time. She had within her something of my spirit.

“She seemed to me like an answer to a cry uttered by my soul, to that vague and unceasing cry with which we call upon Hope during our whole life.

“When I knew her a little better, the mere thought of seeing her again filled me with exquisite and profound uneasiness; the touch of her hand in mine was more delightful to me than anything that I had imagined; her smile filled me with a mad joy, with the desire to run, to dance, to fling myself upon the ground.

“So we became lovers.

“Yes, more than that: she was my very life. I looked for nothing further on earth, and had no further desires. I longed for nothing further.

“One evening, when we had gone on a somewhat long walk by the river, we were overtaken by the rain, and she caught cold. It developed into pneumonia the next day, and a week later she was dead.

“During the hours of her suffering astonishment and consternation prevented my understanding and reflecting upon it, but when she was dead I was so overwhelmed by blank despair that I had no thoughts left. I wept.

“During all the horrible details of the interment my keen and wild grief was like a madness, a kind of sensual, physical grief.

“Then when she was gone, when she was under the earth, my mind at once found itself again, and I passed through a series of moral sufferings so terrible that even the love she had vouchsafed to me was dear at that price.

“Then the fixed idea came to me: I shall not see her again.

“When one dwells on this thought for a whole day one feels as if he were going mad. Just think of it! There is a woman whom you adore, a unique woman, for in the whole universe there is not a second one like her. This woman has given herself to you and has created with you the mysterious union that is called Love. Her eye seems to you more vast than space, more charming than the world, that clear eye smiling with her tenderness. This woman loves you. When she speaks to you her voice floods you with joy.

“And suddenly she disappears! Think of it! She disappears, not only for you, but forever. She is dead. Do you understand what that means? Never, never, never, not anywhere will she exist any more. Nevermore will that eye look upon anything again; nevermore will that voice, nor any voice like it, utter a word in the same way as she uttered it.

“Nevermore will a face be born that is like hers. Never, never! The molds of statues are kept; casts are kept by which one can make objects with the same outlines and forms. But that one body and that one face will never more be born again upon the earth. And yet millions and millions of creatures will be born, and more than that, and this one woman will not reappear among all the women of the future. Is it possible? It drives one mad to think of it.

“She lived for twenty-years, not more, and she has disappeared forever, forever, forever! She thought, she smiled, she loved me. And now nothing! The flies that die in the autumn are as much as we are in this world. And now nothing! And I thought that her body, her fresh body, so warm, so sweet, so white, so lovely, would rot down there in that box under the earth. And her soul, her thought, her love–where is it?

“Not to see her again! The idea of this decomposing body, that I might yet recognize, haunted me. I wanted to look at it once more.

“I went out with a spade, a lantern and a hammer; I jumped over the cemetery wall and I found the grave, which had not yet been closed entirely; I uncovered the coffin and took up a board. An abominable odor, the stench of putrefaction, greeted my nostrils. Oh, her bed perfumed with orris!

“Yet I opened the coffin, and, holding my lighted lantern down into it I saw her. Her face was blue, swollen, frightful. A black liquid had oozed out of her mouth.

“She! That was she! Horror seized me. But I stretched out my arm to draw this monstrous face toward me. And then I was caught.

“All night I have retained the foul odor of this putrid body, the odor of my well beloved, as one retains the perfume of a woman after a love embrace.

“Do with me what you will.”

A strange silence seemed to oppress the room. They seemed to be waiting for something more. The jury retired to deliberate.

When they came back a few minutes later the accused showed no fear and did not even seem to think.

The president announced with the usual formalities that his judges declared him to be not guilty.

He did not move and the room applauded.

Postscript
This gruesome story of obsessive love and terrible madness is set in 19th century New England. As the grave robber is brought to trial, the stunned townspeople hear firsthand his bizarre, ghastly reasons for the unspeakable act which he committed.
While this one is indeed very affecting, what I find so impressive about the Maupassant story is that it is really about the power of language; in this it is modern before its time. You could even say that the dead woman is emblematic of the author as person, while the linguistic achievement of the lover’s oration is emblematic of the author’s achievement as artist. And of course to write this story, Maupassant had to meet a formidable challenge he had set himself. We know Chekhov’s remark that a revolver introduced in Act I must end up being fired in Act III. Well,  it may also have been Chekhov who said that a playwright has a big problem if he announces that a character who is yet to appear is a genius — because then when the character arrives, the playwright has to come up with what a genius would say! For Maupassant’s story to work, he had to produce an oration in the mouth of the character that would melt the jury (and with them, the reader).
In essence, this story is a paragon of passionate writing.
.

The Essence Called Excellence

On By PGR NairIn Motivational articlesLeave a comment


(Posted below is a Valedictory  speech that I gave early this year to a group of school students in the 9-12th grade who had participated in a Youth Leadership program, a well-structured communication and leadership training program lasting 8 weeks , conducted by Global Toastmasters Club in Jubail.)

Dear Club President, Fellow Toastmasters and my dear Youth Leaders

Good Evening!

Let me at the outset congratulate Global Toastmasters for wonderfully orchestrating this Youth Leadership Program that has helped many students to learn the rudiments of public speaking.

Tonight, I wish to share with you two incidents of my school days and a couple of other observations relating to this program.

When I was a grade 6th student, I began a love affair with a beautiful girl in my class.  Well, this girl’s mother was a teacher in the school where I studied and was a close friend of my mother , who was also incidentally a teacher there. So, in all my sincerity, I had thought it would be a perfect future alliance as both the families knew each other very well. The girl used come to my home with her lunch box to have a leisurely lunch as the school was located nearby. I would watch her taking lunch and after the lunch she would go to the pond in our compound to wash her tiffin box and then would straight away proceed back to the school. One day, I decided to write a detailed love letter to her. Like a good speech, it had a captivating introduction, a persuasive body and a pleading conclusion. The next day, as soon as she came back from the pond after washing her tiffin box, I gave her that letter. She took it and left immediately. I followed her with my eyes as she went to the school.I could see her reading it  as she walked along and finally she folded the letter and secretly kept it back in her lunch box. That was perfect and I was very happy. On that night at 9 PM, my mother came to my room and showed me my letter and asked whether I had written it. The rest is history. My parents took turns in caning me. That night I literally realized the pain of love.

That was my first set back in communication. That taught me a lesson that communication strategy has to be appropriate for each occasion. If I had developed my oral communication skills through a YLP like this, I would have then used  my body language, vocal variety and language skills to woo her. Well, I don’t know whether I realized it or not, the next year I won the first prize in the elocution competition and I got a violet soap box as a present from the school. Till early 90’s I had that soap box in our ancestral home and then someone thought of putting it to better use and I haven’t seen it after that. So, my dear Youth leaders, with YLP under your fore, you can be sure of avoiding such  setbacks. I can see the smile of confidence on your faces.

Now, let me share with you the second incident. When I was studying in the fourth grade in the same ordinary Malayalam Medium school at Vayalar (near Alleppey), I had a classmate named Sadasivan. He used to sit next to me. Every day, I would go to school with pocketful of guava and he would come with juicy mangoes. We would secretly exchange it while the classes were in progress. Notwithstanding our pretty pranks, Sadasivan was the most brilliant boy in the class and was the pet of our Maths teacher whereas I would duck my face when the teacher looked for volunteers to solve a problem on the black board. Years passed by and we parted our ways. A few years after I got my job as an Executive Trainee engineer in FACT, one evening I was returning to my village for a weekend. I got down from the bus and thought of walking a KM to reach my home. As I approached my village, I saw from a distance a wheel cart loaded with vegetables approaching a grocery shop. The man who pulled the cart wore a turban and had a haggard look. Life’s labors had prematurely aged him. As I came near him, he started smiling at me- one of the most hearty and utterly candid smiles I remember in my life. I struggled hard to identify the face behind the face. It was my Sadasivan.

Dear Youth leaders, opportunities for growth and achievement in life do not come to everyone even if you are more talented, more intelligent, smarter and hard working than my Sadasivan. Your destiny is often shaped by your circumstances. They are often more powerful than you. Perhaps the 24 students who had the opportunity to hone communication and leadership skills during the past 8 weeks in this YLP may not be the best and the most deserving of all the students in their schools. Consider that you were the luckiest students to benefit from this program and have that sense of gratitude to Global Toastmasters for giving you this opportunity. Remember that this club has spent time,money and energy for your self-improvement.

Mao Zedong once said -If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. This is very true in Toastmasters. You as young leaders got direct experience and knowledge on how to prepare and deliver a speech through this program. YLP that concludes today has given you the wings. I believe that wings are more important many other things. If you exercise them, you are going to excel in your life. I didn’t intentionally say succeed, as I don’t believe much in success. You can become a success tomorrow, if you win the Dubai festival lottery or You are made the anchor of “Kon Benega Karorpathi”. You as youths are more likely to be carried away by the successes of celebrities like Shahrukhan or Preity Zinta. Success has no permanence. But excellence has. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. It is the gradual result of always striving to do things better. That is why we, the Toastmasters, believe that building a better YOU is the key to excellence. The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor. Excellence is an intrinsic quality. Even when your body wrinkle like Madina dates, it will still carry that juicy essence called excellence. It is a growth within you like the blooming of a flower. The only difference is that that flower never wilts. My dear student friends- go for excellence in your life. It will help you to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Elephants are Different to Different People

On By PGR NairIn General, PoetryLeave a comment

Image result for argument painting



I started my profession as a chemical engineer in a public sector fertilizer company named FACT (Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore) and soon moved to its design and detailed engineering division called FEDO, which was earlier one of the top five detailed engineering organizations in the petrochemical field in India. In 1994, I was appointed as the project Manager of a grass root Ammonia plant. I used to prepare the minutes of meeting for all progress review meetings and sundry vendor meetings such as for compressors, Boilers, Utility plants, Instrumentation etc. I was even jokingly called the MMOM, the master of minutes of meeting. One day, the Chief projects Manager called me and warned- ‘Look, you are a chemical Engineer. I don’t want you to prepare minutes of meetings that do not pertain to your area. Let the concerned coordinators from each engineering department prepare the minutes of the engineering packages they handle’. I was happy and felt relieved. The following week, we had a discussion with BHEL for a boiler plant. The people who came from Trichy requested me that they wanted to return by evening and wished to carry the minutes with them latest by 5 PM. I conveyed the matter to the new engineering coordinator of Static equipment dept, who had been branded as a tough nut to crack. He cynically looked at me but didn’t say anything. At 5 PM, I went to him to get the minutes. He told me that he had not started writing yet. I was damn upset and I told him that we failed to meet a commitment because of his lax attitude. An argument started and gained momentum very fast. Since both of us had thunder tucked in our mouths, the whole hall of his department reverberated with our alternating arguments. Well, many arguments are sound and only sound. Even people from neighbouring departments came to witness our verbal warfare.

The following day, I went to our General Manager (Project) and explained what had happened. He conceded with my viewpoint. However, a friend of me who had considerable experience in Projects management called me aside and advised -‘PGR, if you want any progress as a project Manager, you shouldn’t fall into an argument trap. As a project Manager, you have to please your engineering coordinators all the times and you need them every day till your project is completed’. He was right. I lifted my phone and apologized to that coordinator for all that happened. Believe me, we had excellent relationship after that inciting incident.

Do you know what issue causes the greatest number of arguments leading to conflicts in households in USA? According to a “USA Today” report, people argue most often about which TV show to watch! Would any couple or family have believed that the selection of television programs would become the major cause of their unhappiness? Well, it could be happening in many households in India as well. They often forget what is important! They stop thinking that relationships are built on love, respect, consideration, kindness, and understanding. They forget all those compelling and wonderful reasons that brought them together in the first place. Instead, they let minor inconveniences trumpet as major issues ripping their relationships. I don’t deny that positive and constructive arguments can be healthy and are a normal part of any relationship; however the problems start when we get into a vicious cycle of arguing about the same thing over and over again. I was reminded of the above incident when I chanced to see some blogs in Sulekha vituperating each other on an inane subject like hosting an EYC contest.  

Dear friends, an argument is like a country road; you never know where it is going to lead. The truth is that often it doesn’t lead us anywhere. When an arguer argues dispassionately, he thinks only of the argument. In the process, it produces plenty of heat but not much light. It is often a collision in which two trains of thought are simply derailed. It is very true that the more arguments you win the fewer the friends you will have. Sometimes, silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

An argument is question with two sides and no end. More homes and families are destroyed by fusses than funerals. More nations are at war to win their argument than work out an answer.

I wish to conclude my rambling with a poem by the great American poet Carl Sandburg


Elephants are Different to Different People

Wilson and Pilcer and Snack stood before the zoo elephant.

Wilson said, “What is its name? Is it from Asia or Africa? Who feeds it? Is it a he or a she? How old is it? Do they have twins? How much does it cost to feed? How much does it weigh? If it dies, how much will another one cost? If it dies, what will they use the bones, the fat, and the hide for? What use is it besides to look at?” Pilcer didn’t have any questions; he was murmuring to himself, “It’s a house by itself, walls and windows, the ears came from tall cornfields, by God; the architect of those legs was a workman, by God; he stands like a bridge out across the deep water; the face is sad and the eyes are kind;I know elephants are good to babies.” Snack looked up and down and at last said to himself, “He’s a tough son-of-a-gun outside and I’ll bet he’s got a strong heart, I’ll bet he’s strong as a copper-riveted boiler inside.”      They didn’t put up any arguments.      They didn’t throw anything in each other’s faces.      Three men saw the elephant three ways      And let it go at that.      They didn’t spoil a sunny Sunday afternoon;“Sunday comes only once a week,” they told each other.

 This is the way the world should be! Here are three men who are not blind! They don’t fight out their differences and spoil the day. We are all different with our different perspectives. When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.

 Let us not spoil this Sunday in arguments. After all, Sunday comes only once in a week.

THE DINOSAUR

On By PGR NairIn Stories1 Comment

THE DINOSAUR
 Bina Gupta has made a challenging proposition to Sulekha bloggers to write a poem or story of 55 words containing mixed emotions. When I saw that theme, I was reminded of one of the smallest (and one of the best) stories in literature titled ‘The Dinosaur’ by the great Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, who was well-known for his terse minimalist style of writing like that of Hemingway. The story has just nine words:
‘When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there’

A perfect story. Unbeatable power of persuasion, remarkable concision, perfect drama, color, suggestiveness, and clarity. A real minimalist narrative gem. ‘The Dinosaur’ is an interesting piece of writing because its simplicity makes it so complex. Monterroso leaves this text in suspense and offers to the reader an opportunity to become co-fabulator here. This enigmatic work has given rise to numerous doctoral theses.
In the book ‘Letters to a young Novelist’, the great Peruvian Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa discusses this story from the points of view of -the narrator, space, time and Level of reality. I have summarized it below.
The narration in ‘The Dinosaur’ is made in the past tense. So the narrator is situated in the future, narrating something that happened-when? In the near or middle past from the narrator’s future point of view? In the middle past. How do we know that the narrator is situated in the near or middle past in relation to the time of the narrator? Because between those two times there is an unbridgeable abyss, a gap, a barrier that abolishes all link or continuity between the two (The comma). This is the determining characteristic of the tense the narrator employs: The action is confined to a closed- off past, split from the time the narrator inhabits. The action of ‘Dinosaur’ takes place, therefore, in a middle past.
What is the point of view in terms of level of reality in this story? The narrative is situated in the plane of the fantastic, since in the real world you and I inhabit, it is improbable that prehistoric animals that appeared in our dreams–or in our nightmares–would turn up as an objective reality, and that we should encounter them in the flesh at the foot of our beds when we opened our eyes. It’s clear, then, that the level of reality of the narrative is an imaginary or fantastic reality. Is the narrator (omniscient and impersonal) situated on the same plane? We could venture to say that he is not, that he establishes himself instead on a real or realist plane–in other words, one that is essentially opposite and contrary to that of the narrative. How do we know this? By the tiniest but most unmistakable of indications, a signal or hint that the careful narrator gives the reader as he tells his pared-down tale: the adverb, ‘still’. The word doesn’t just define an objective temporal circumstance, indicating a miraculous occurrence (the passage of the dinosaur from a dreamworld to objective reality). It is also a call to attention, a display of surprise or astonishment at the remarkable event. Monterroso’s still is flanked by invisible exclamation points and implicitly urges us to be surprised by the amazing thing that has happened. (“Notice, all of you, what is going on: the dinosaur is still there, when it’s obvious that it shouldn’t be, since in true reality things like this don’t happen; they are only possible in a fantastic reality.”) This is how we know the narrator is narrating from an objective reality; if he weren’t, he wouldn’t induce us through the knowing use of an amphibious adverb (still ) to take note of the transition of the dinosaur from dream to life, from the imaginary to the tangible.
The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes rightly remarked the following about Monterroso – ‘He is one of the cleanest, most intelligent, transparent and smiling authors in the Spanish language’.
No wonder, ‘The Dinosaur’ became such a hit in Latin American literary history.

YOGI RAMAMURTI

On By PGR NairIn PoetryLeave a comment

There are some poems that tug our conscience at the first reading itself. The below one riveted me. I know the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski as one of the great literary journalists of last century , having read many of his books like ‘Emperor’  (On the fall of Ethiopian dictator Haile Selassie), ‘ Another day of life'(his dramatic account of the three months he spent in Angola at the beginning of its decades’ long civil war), ‘Shah of Shah'(on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran)  and my favourite ‘Imperium’ (His account of the collapse of the Soviet system). He spent the last half of twentieth century on the front lines, covering twenty-seven revolutions, rebellions and coups d’état who ranged and wrote across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America and bore witness to the collapse of colonialism in the Third world and the crumbling of Soviet Empire.

I was sceptical  when I saw a poetry collection titled ‘I Wrote Stone’ by him in Toronto Public library as I didn’t know  he wrote poetry too. This book gathers poetry Kapuscinski wrote over 40 years. Kapuscinski believed poetry could “illuminate dimensions of human experience that otherwise would remain unknowable.” These poems capture the moments between crises, impressions that carry a book-length argument in a few lines. The poems in this slim volume live up to that expectation. It is full of small gems like the one I have posted below. His poetry,  so sparing in expression, so simple and transparent, but also melancholic and impassioned enters and affects our psyche. Kapusciniski  was nominated several times for Nobel prize in Literature for transforming acts of incisive journalism into stunning works of literature.

.I could easily identify with the moral question and the poignant irony  in this poem as I have witnessed this ‘death for life’ many times in my village during my childhood.

YOGI RAMAMURTI

Yogi Ramamurti bids
he be buried in a grave
he will remain there one week
doctors will testify it’s not a scam

whoever wishes can go down the tunnel
watch through a window:
Ramamurti lies in a grave
not breathing

everyone is asked for a donation
the buried one wants to earn money
that’s why he went to the grave:
to survive

after a week they dig up the yogi
Ramamurti emerges
weakened
he’s touched the absolute
that’s always exhausting

he bows to the gathering
counts the donations
102 rupees
less than ten dollars

everyone disperses
an empty grave remains
Ramamurti was reborn
but he’s still a beggar

weeks pass
he has nothing to eat
he’s dying of hunger

I am going back to the grave
he says
only in death
life

            Ryszard Kapuscinski

Ref: I WROTE STONE: The Selected Poetry of Ryszard Kapuscinski . Translated  from the Polish by Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba. Published by BIBLIOASIS, Canada

THE PRECISE PERSIMMON

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On a winter evening in 2002, I was attending a meeting for a social cause at my friend  Shahul Hameed’s house. When the meeting was about to be over, he brought a tray of fruits as snacks. Among them, I saw something incongruous- a plateful of sliced pieces of what looked like tomatoes. No one touched the apparent ‘Tomatoes’ while we eagerly savoured the other fruits. Noticing our inhibition, Shahul told us that they were not tomatoes but sweet persimmons (It is called Kaki fruit in India). I tasted a piece and was struck by its smooth texture, its sticky sweetness, syrupy taste and indescribably delicious fruity flavor. I was literally tasting a new experience. Shahul said he too once bought it by mistake thinking it as tomatoes but was bowled over by its taste. There onwards, I have become an addict of this fruit, waiting for the season to savour the pleasurable persimmons. But the fruit has a split personality. The unripe ones , though sweet, carries a bit of astringent taste. The skin of a ripe and glossy one is so taut that one tough touch can tear its delicate skin and spill the jelly pulp.

I was reminded of my above experience as I read this beautiful and powerfully painful poem by a Chinese Poet called Li-Young Lee. It also roused my own maudlin mango memories. 

     PERSIMMONS

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down,
I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.
Naked: I’ve forgotten.
Ni, wo: you me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat
but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang. The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father would stay up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolf tail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

           Li-Young Lee


There are several elements that figure importantly in this poem. Persimmon stand for painful memories of cultural barriers imposed by language and custom, and for a present-day loving connection to an elderly, blind father. The poet begins with a schoolboy incident in which he was punished for not knowing the difference between “persimmon” and “precision” and makes a play on other words which sound similar and “that got (him) into trouble.” He takes revenge later, when the teacher brings to class a persimmon that only the narrator knows is unripe, as he “watched the . . . faces” without participating. We now understands that the sixth grader’s misperception due to pronunciation finds the right revenge when the boy can handle the difference in meaning between these two words quite nimbly: “How to choose / persimmons. This is precision.”

Persimmons also remind him of an adult sensual relationship with Donna and of his attempts to teach her Chinese words which he himself can no longer remember. The speaker first suggests, perhaps shamefacedly, his detachment from his parents and their culture by embodying the source of his distraction in the figure of Donna, a white girl (or woman) with whom he lies naked in the grass. The speaker’s vacillating attempts to teach Donna Chinese and his own forgetting of some words due to non-use hint at the fading power of his parents’ culture and its values in USA.
Ripe persimmons continue to gain positive associations as the speaker next recalls his mother’s observation that “every persimmon has a sun / inside, something golden, glowing, / warm as my face.” The second part of the poem describes the role persimmons have played in his father’s life and in their relationship. To comfort his father, gone blind, the narrator gives him two sweet, ripe persimmons, so full and redolent with flavor that it will surely stimulate the senses remaining. The fruit links him with his father when he says ”forgotten” persimmons, “swelled, heavy as sadness, / and sweet as love.”

Later, in the “muddy lighting” of his parents’ cellar, with his father sitting on the stairs, the poet searches for something meaningful from his past: “I rummage, looking / for something I lost.” He finds three rolled-up paintings by his now blind father. As the father reaches to touch a rendering of “Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth,” he remembers “the strength, the tense / precision in the wrist” required to paint them. For both the poet and reader the search has ended. The poet has recovered two qualities embodied in and demonstrated by his parents that he has found so lacking in American culture: the rich, full warmth of his parents’ love, figured in persimmons, and their precise, caring ways, represented by their respective crafts. The poem ends with the father’s remark that “some things never leave a person”.
Indeed this  precisely crafted poem  reaches into the murky depths of memory to salvage the captivating characteristics of one’s parents and one’s culture. It is a sensitive and supreme example of how a fruitful emotional association such as with persimmon can transform and enrich our life

Ref : Rose (New Poets of America): Li-Young Lee (Author)
Gerald Stern (Foreword)

THE LAUGHTER

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THE LAUGHTER

A story by Heinrich Boll
(Translated by Leila Vennewitz )

When someone asks me what business I am in, I am seized with embarrassment: I blush and stammer, I who am otherwise known as a man of poise. I envy people who can say: I am a mason. I envy barbers, bookkeepers and writers the simplicity of their avowal, for all these professions speak for themselves and need no lengthy explanation, while I am constrained to reply to such questions: I am laughter. An admission of this kind demands another, since I have to answer the second question: ” Is that how you make a living?” truthfully with “Yes”. I actually do make a living at my laughing, and a good one too, for my laughing is -commercially speaking – much in demand. 

I am a good laughter, experienced; no one else laughs as well as I do, no one else has such command of the fine points of my art. For a long time, in order to avoid tiresome explanations, I called myself an actor, but my talents in the field of mime and elocution are so meager that I felt the designation to be far from the truth: I love the truth, and the truth is that I am a laughter. I am neither a clown nor a comedian. I do not make people gay, I portray gaiety: I laugh like a Roman emperor, or like a sensitive schoolboy, I am as much at home in the laughter of the seventeenth century as in that of the nineteenth, and when occasions demands I laugh my way through all the centuries, all classes of society, all categories of age: it is simply a skill which I have acquired, like the skill of being able to repair shoes. In my breast I harbor the laughter of America, the laughter of Africa, white, red, yellow laughter- and for the right fee I let it peal out in accordance with the director’s requirements.

I have become indispensable: I laugh on records, I laugh on tape, and television; directors treat me with respect. I laugh mournfully, moderately, hysterically, I laugh like a streetcar conductor or like a helper in the grocery business: laughter in the morning, laughter in the evening, nocturnal laughter and the laughter of twilight. In short: wherever and however laughter is required-I do it.

It need hardly be pointed out that a profession of this kind is tiring, especially as I have also-this is my specialty-mastered the art of infectious laughter, this has also made me indispensable to third-and forth-rate comedians, who are scared-and with good reason-that their audiences will miss their punch lines, so I spend most of the evenings in night clubs as a kind of discreet claque, my job being to laugh infectiously during the weaker parts of the program. It has to be carefully timed: my hearty, boisterous laughter must not come too soon, but neither must it come too late, it must come just at the right spot: at the pre-arranged moment I burst out laughing, the whole audience laugh with me, and the joke is saved.

But as for me, I drag myself exhausted to the checkroom, put on my coat, happy that I can go off duty at last. At home I usually find telegrams waiting for me:” Urgently require your laughter. Recording Tuesday,” and a few hours later I am sitting in an overheated express train bemoaning my fate.

I need scarcely say that when I am off duty or on vacation I have little inclination to laugh: the cowhand is glad when he can forget the cow, the brick-layer when he can forget the mortar, and the carpenters usually have the doors at home which don’t work or drawers which are hard to open. Confectioners like sour pickles, butchers like marzipan, and the baker prefers sausage to bread, the bullfighters raise pigeons for a hobby, boxers turn pale when their children have nose bleeds: I find all this quite natural, for I never laugh off duty, I am a very solemn person, and people consider me-perhaps rightly so- a pessimist.

During the first years of our married life, my wife would often say to me: “Do laugh” but since then she has come to realize that I cannot grant her this wish. I am happy that I am free to relax my tense face muscles, my frayed spirit, in profound solemnity. Indeed, even other people’s laughter gets on my nerves, since it reminds me too much of my own profession. So our marriage is quiet, peaceful one because my wife has also forgotten how to laugh: now and then I catch her smiling, and I smile too. We converse, in low tones, for I detest the noise of nightclubs, the noise that fills the recording studios. People who do not know think me that I am taciturn. Perhaps I am, because I have to open my mouth so often to laugh.

I go through life with an impassive expression, from time to time permitting myself a gentle smile, and I often wonder whether I have ever laughed. I think not. My brothers and sisters have known me as a serious boy.

So I laugh in many different ways, but my own laughter I have never heard.

POSTSCRIPT:

This short masterpiece of Heinrich Böll ,  the German writer and Nobel prize winner of 1972, weaves the tale of a laugher–a person whose laughter is required for recordings and live performances. The Laughter may remind you of the touching Hindi movie “Mera Nam Joker” or that professional mourner ‘Shanichari’ in Kalpana Lajmi’s film ’Rudali”. The character Laughter records canned laughter for soap comedy TV serials like “Lucy Show”. I consider this as a little gem, a moving grandiloquent soliloquy. I like this story for its great poignancy and irony of life. I once presented this story as a monodrama before an audience and they loved it.

The story touches the paradox of anything that is done on demand for the gratification of another, instead of for self. Even art can be taxing when it becomes a profession and ceases to be an indulgence by choice , i.e. when it is not pursued at one’s own will and for one’s own need/ pleasure. The persona in The Laugher may be equated to anyone who chooses to put on a cheery countenance for the public to see but is really formal, serious and humorless in his private side. This immediately brings to mind the two contrasting faces of theater–the sad and happy face. It further underscores the idea that it never pays to pretend to be somebody else you’re not.

Life will always have its smiles and frowns–it’s a fact of life. Perhaps, the character fleshed out in the selection may not have used his job (that of a laugher) as an avenue to escape from the silent bond that ties him to his uneventful life, like others do, but he remains to be a metaphor for the modern-day individual.
In short it touchingly portrays the tragedy of being service to others at the expense of personal fulfillment and keeping up pretenses, the tragedy of someone who has mortgaged his laughter forever.

Ref: HEINRICH BOLL 18 STORIES .Leila Vennewitz (Translator)

QUINTUPLETS: TRAVELING WITH STRANGERS

On By PGR NairIn StoriesLeave a comment
Image result for train painting india

These are five 110 word travel stories with a twist originally written for a challenge in Sulekha. Be candid and not candied in your comments.


Story No.1

As Venad Express was pulling out of the station, a young man clutching his briefcase leaped through the door. He stood puffing but victorious, mopping the sweat from his forehead, as the train gathered momentum. An older man on the train watched him with disdain.
”You young people don’t keep yourself in shape,” he said scornfully. “Why, when I was your age, I could carry a cup of coffee in one hand and run half a mile to catch the 7:30 in the nick of time and still be fresh as a daisy”
“You don’t understand”, panted the young man. “I missed this train at the last station!”
(110 words)

Story No.2

The stylish old man in impeccable suit sat next to me when he boarded the U-Bahn from Vienna. I was perusing the map to locate Schwedenplatz station to see the river Danube. Frustrated, I sought his help, but he replied that he would alight at a station before mine.
He described in advance the scenery I would see from my window–first the peach orchard, then the birch mountain, then oak alley….
Finally, the train halted at his station.
As I was helping him off the train, a young man, trying to get in, jostled him.
‘Would you let this blind man off first?’, the old man implored.
(108 words)

Story No.3

The Coromandel Express was approaching Cuttack station. The 2nd class compartment was empty except for him and the middle aged lady in deep slumber with a gold chain adorning her neck.
He needed a gift for his beloved for their 25th wedding anniversary. Business had turned him into a destitute. He vacillated and then in a sudden urge ripped that gold chain.
He was about to move away, when he heard a voice behind him, “If you will accept, I have a thicker one. It is a bit plain but one that fits all.”
He turned to see the lady with a handcuff and a pistol.
(107 words)

Story No.4

Panhandlers, of myriad categories, have always been a nuisance to commuters in the Flying Rani express. I generally avoid them. I was on my usual weekend trip to Mumbai from Surat. A young girl with beautiful blue eyes was collecting alms for the Lathur earthquake victims. When she approached me, with a flourish I pulled out a few notes from my wallet and placed it in her bowl.
“Two hundred rupees for your blues eyes”, I said looking into her lustrous eyes.
She smiled coyly, took the notes and put it in her pocket.
‘Now sir, could you give something for the quake victims as well?’
 (106 words)

Story No.5

It was his first day in Saudi. He was on a bus to the office. He spotted a pink palatial house and asked the Saudi co-passenger,
“Do you know whose house that is?”
The Saudi looked out and replied, ‘Mahdri’
Soon they came upon an even bigger sprawling mansion.
“Do you know who owns that?”
“Mahdri” came the reply.
The same query and the same reply over and over again, only increased our Indian’s admiration for Mahdri.
Mahdri must indeed be a big business tycoon.
A month later, he asked a smart Saudi who this ‘Mahdri’ was.
He replied, “My dear fellow, ‘Mahdri’ in Arabic means ‘I don’t know’ “
(109 words)