Reading April 2024

It has been a tough month for reading. Most in the household was laid low with a nasty virus. It took us a few difficult weeks to get back to normal, so the reading was a lot slower. Even though the number seems high, the books were processed quickly.

Articles:

Having listened to him talk, Harsh Mander is a writer I look forward to read, for the kindness and empathy he brings to his topics. Here is one about his visit to Auschwitz and what it means for us now, at this point in time.

This is something I read earlier in the month about the high rates of cancer among the young. It is scary, but also watching the cement every day on my car I wonder how much of it is going into our lungs. But that’s just air. We’ve reached a stage where nothing that goes in – water, food or air is really safe.

Margarent Renkl writes about nests in her backyard as it is spring in the US. The summer is raging here and the birds are noisy around my three bird baths – bulbuls mainly along with white-eyes and the occassional tits, sunbirds, tailorbirds, magpie-robins, cuckoos and jungle mynas. It made for excellent reading around that.

Books

I started the month with Tana French’s “The Likeness”. This is a sequel to her earlier “In the woods” and they’re kinda interrelated, a lot of what is going on here makes sense from the first. French is an author I hope to read more of, and while I was hoping to read one every year, I might up it to one every 6 months. Looking forward to the next already.

Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow’s “All the little bird-hearts” is a story set around a narrator who is on the autism spectrum. She struggles socially and misses a lot of cues. As a narrator she details everything the other people in her life say, including how they say it, letting the readers form their opinions about what is being communicated and what she is missing. It was an interesting read, and the cultural context also meant that I missed a fair lot.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “The Forest of Enchantments” is a retelling of the Ramayana from Sita’s perspective. While the telling is interesting, like most Indian authors the language is a let down. Americanisms and slang pop up out of nowhere and jarr. I wonder why so many Indian authors have this trouble with language and keeping slang out of where they don’t belong.

K.R. Meera’s “Qabar”, translated by Nisha Susan is a short novella about a land dispute and a qabar and viewing of our society through that lens, all the way till the Babri Masjid. The question she asks is about who’s history is who’s, when everything is so intertwined.

I’m currently rereading Shashi Deshpande’s “That Long Silence”. It is a short book, and I expected it to be a quick read given that it was a reread, but it is one of those books that makes you stop, slow down and proceed at its own pace, no matter how many times you read. That’s one thing I keep underestimating about Deshpande!

Reading March 2024

It’s been a tough last week dealing with a virus all over again across the family. This is probably the curse of living in Bangalore and with parents who don’t want to consider any other options.

Articles:

Arundhati Roy writes on Gaza, and how we’ve failed a people all over again.

M Rajshekar traces the story of the younger Ambani’s elephant collection regime and what it portends for India’s elephants and wildlife across the world.

Margarent Renkl writes about Flaco the Eurasian Eagle Owl who escaped the NY zoo and spent a year hunting in NY and was found dead. The cause of the death was found to be rat poison accumulated over time.

Books:

The War of the Worlds, HG Wells: Mars attacks, and in a few days they have humanity running for cover, before bacteria and viruses make mincemeat of them. That is the long and short of it. It is considered the first alien invasion novel.

Talking to my Daughter About the Economy- Yanis Varoufakis. This is almost a primer on how the modern economy works – debt, government bonds, currencies, how all these oil the modern economic wheels. Essential reading.

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives: Siddharth Kara. Kara goes deep into the provinces of Congo with the highest deposits of Cobalt in the world and sees how the metal is mined. It is a distressing tale, where all our smartphones, and EVs are dependent on child labour and massive exploitation of locals. It is a sad state that those countries which have the most minerals also have to face so much poverty and exploitation – be it Nigeria, Congo or Bolivia. And the person who benefits will be a Billionaire sitting far away.

Newcomer: Keigo Higashino. A quirky murder mystery where a woman is found dead and the detective on the trail runs around the different threads of the case before finding the culprit. Typical Higashino with a humane take on even criminals.

I wanted to read one more book, but last one week I’ve been mostly pooped with the virus.

What is not coloured Red?

In Cobalt Red, Siddharth Kara travels deep inside Congo to look at how Cobalt is mined. He tells us that Cobalt is the element that runs our smartphones, tablets and laptops, providing stability and slow release of power from Li-ion batteries. But, the biggest use for Cobalt now that these batteries are super-sized is from Electric Vehicles, where a 50g smartphone battery with 8-10g of Cobalt can be scaled up to 50Kg of Cobalt per 100 KW!

But the book is mainly about how this Cobalt is extracted, through “artisanal mining” where basically locals go and dig it up with their tools with little safety or protection, and have to sell it to depots manned usually by Chinese to take home a pay of around 1$ per day after working almost all daylight. And eventually all this fuels into phones and EVs that earn their bosses millions of dollars with hardly any risk.

Kara goes into painstaking detail about the risks undertaken, about the families that are broken, about the local environment where villages where people managed with some farming and schools are now completely broken, taken over by mines whose profits go almost entirely to Chinese companies, and the amounts they pay as royalties or tax go to politicians higher up, with the locals left with nothing.

This sounds eerily identical to pretty much every large mining operation, be it for iron ore in Bastar, coal in Surguja or Bauxite in Malkangiri. Lithium in Bolivia, oil in Nigeria, diamonds in different countries of Africa, the list can go on and on. What is common in all this is how the mines are all in the global south and those who benefit are elsewhere, except in India where we have internalised colonialism within our classes.

It makes you wonder if there’s anything at all that is got in a fair fashion where the producers are paid a fair rate and manage to earn a decent livelihood. The food we eat is produced by farmers deep in debt. The clothes we wear also not only produced by farmers who can’t earn a livelihood of it, but also stitched by workers working in sweat shops while “brands” take all the cake. Our houses are constructed using exploited labour – look beyond the skilled workers and masons, those delivering your iron bars, bricks or granite.

It is an economy sustained by those who are regularly exploited, and the spoils flow to a few at the top, while those who pay have to pay to wear names, or experience food.

Coming back to the book itself, there’s a lot of movement of EV batteries away from Cobalt since the book came out, and since the human rights abuses became common. Tesla and BYD, the largest makers of EVs are transitioning away from Cobalt based batteries to LFPs. The price of Cobalt is likely to crash. The human rights abuses will vanish as the mining sector in Congo will likely collapse. Elon Musk and BYD can pat themselves on their backs for solving an inconvenient problem, never mind that they were the ones who caused it in the first place. Companies will move on to other minerals which will rain its own misery on those who live above those ores.

But, what becomes of the people Congo? Those whose lands forcibly taken and dug up, whose water sources and air poisoned, whose forests cut down, whose schools closed, whose children left with nothing but broken bones. If the prices of Cobalt crash, they will be left bearing the brunt of it, and might even have to pull more children out of schools to earn a living wage for the family.

Sometimes I feel there is only one option – to burn it all down, one billionaire at a time and rebuild the political economy from scratch into an equitable and just system based on fair prices. It is also what is likely to save the vast majority of us too.

Reading February 2024

Articles:

This has been a month of somewhat odd reading.

Margarent Renkl writes about squirreling things away and finding them decades later. There is also the feeling of growing up and old in the same neighbourhood. While there is the joy of the memories over the decades of bringing up a family, there is also the sense of loss as neighbours die, their old houses are torn down to “make way for the new”.

Derek Thompson writes in the Atlantic about the breakdown in direct social contacts. Fewer people have close friends than before, fewer people hang out. He traces this phenomenon to two things – how our cities are growing with people living farther and farther away from their friends and extended family, and the rise of social media and online content – more time watching Netflix and Instagram reels means less time to hang out or even play.

Gana Kedlaya writes about the language that is used when reporting on man-animal conflicts and how that makes all the difference in how we drive perception. Gana has been reporting on man-elephant conflicts for many years now and is an essential voice to follow to understand the nuances of a very complex issue.

Books:

I started the month with Margarent Renkl’s excellent “The Comfort of Crows”. The book is a week-by-week chronicling of a year observed in her surroundings – her backyard and her surroundings. The chronicling is about the changes that are seen in terms of birds, insects, plants and trees. While the author cheats and some times veers to her past with a tinge of nostalgia, it is usually a welcome take. After all, even as we observe a summer now, we cannot but remember a summer past.

I had to pick up a library book after this, and it was P.D. James’ “The Lighthouse”. Loosely based on Agatha Christie’s “And then there were none”, it is a murder mystery set on an island where everyone is isolated without signal (this is a modern day mystery). Adam Dalgliesh is now a top-hat in the department and is assisted by two other detectives.

Arundhati Roy’s “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” is her second novel after “The God of Small Things”. While expectations were high when the former was announced, it was mostly led down by comparisons to the latter. The book isn’t as great as her first one, but it wasn’t as bad as it is made out to be. There is more tell than show, which can grate at times, but it is still a necessary novel. In fact, there are two different threads in the book, each of which can make a novel by itself.

Sujatha Gidla made the news a decade back when her book “Ants among Elephants” was published. She was invited to a literary festival where she called out a lot of practices for being too religious and having no place there. Needless to say, it generated a lot of controversy. The book itself is a memoir of her family, her mother and uncle and their struggles. Her uncle was one of the founders of the People’s War Group which became the Maoist/naxal movement in India. These are necessary stories that need to be told, and its good that she chronicled it.

Reading January 2024

As mentioned in an earlier post, I plan to do a monthly catch-up of most reading done over the month.

Articles:

Mukul Kesavan captures the turns the country is taking in the wake of the construction of the temple in Ayodhya and its inauguration. He calls it both a milestone and a sideshow in the larger project of Hinduising the republic.

Samar Halankar captures the transformation of Modi from the “Chowkidar” to a man with a divine right to rule the country.

Harsh Mander writes about one specific lynching and asks pertinent questions about the direction the conscience of the nation, the aam junta is taking, and how it does not augur well for the country.

Arundhati Roy’s speech from Thiruvananthapuram on December 12th 2023 talks about what is happening in Gaza and how India is letting it happen without taking a stronger stance.

Outside of all that is wrong with the country, there was Kenneth Lorella’s older article on the ethics of pet ownership. He calls for fewer pets and to an end to breeding. It’s very hard to argue against this seeing what most pets suffer – neglect and sometimes abuse.

Books:

I started the year with Harsh Mander’s “Burning Pyres, Mass Graves and a State that Failed its People”. It captures the events of 2020 and 2021, specifically the mass migration caused by the sudden lockdown imposed across the country in March 2020, and then the frenzy for oxygen and hospital beds, and the mass deaths from the second wave of Covid in the summer of 2021. At all stages, Mander writes, the Government was warned about what could happen and, not only the need, but the steps to be taken to be prepared for it. They ignored it all leaving people to deal with the virus with little support.

Vasudhendra’s “ಹರಿಚಿತ್ತ ಸತ್ಯ [Harichitta Satya]” is about a Madhwa Brahmin family and the incidents around the family. It mostly offers a view of the ways of life of Madhwa Brahmins around Bellary. What stands out is the stringent and stifling caste restrictions imposed on the people, and the cost of being different or having to face challenges which your neighbours are always looking to use against you.

Perumal Murugan’s “Pyre” is about an intercaste marriage which goes horribly wrong for the bride. The boy’s relatives are interested in only one question – the girl’s caste and when they eventually find out the truth all hell breaks loose. Aniruddha Vasudevan’s translation is spot on here, painting a vivid picture of the suffocation of living in a hostile environment.

Salman Rushdie’s “The Enchantress of Florence” is a historical fiction which also combines elements of magic realism and reads like a Garcia Marquez novel. A sudden visitor to Akbar’s court sets in motion a series of stories coming out of hidden relatives and corners. Along the way, you get a glimpse of the unstable worlds of Italy, Persia and India of the 1600s. Rushdie’s superb use of language is always fun, combine that with some very interesting tales resembling the Arabian Nights, and the book is a treat!

J Krishnamurthi’s “Freedom from the known” is a refreshing take on the world as we know it, asking its readers to bring more awareness and attention to how we view everything – ourselves, our emotions, our relationships and our actions. He calls out the shallowness of the modern world and asks us to look beyond it towards ourselves. The goal is to foster a more peaceful world with fewer conflicts and Krishnamurti’s take is that for that we first need to remove the conflict in ourselves, understand and make peace with ourselves. It is not an easy book to read mainly because what he says needs a lot more understanding, and it will need a few more visits.

Remember this date

This might not be a great post. But this needs to be written.

I was 12 when the Babri Masjid came down. We lived in Chamarajpet, the last Hindu compound before the “Mohammedan Block” began. The city and the locality burned for weeks after that, we huddled against the violence that was unleashed. Shops that we knew were reduced to ashes – the bedding shop, the old papers shop – while their neighbours opened after the curfew and continued as if nothing had happened. But it was still considered a matter of shame. Amidst the chest-thumping that followed there was still a feeling that something was lost, and something deeply ugly had happened.

This is 2024, 31 years have passed. Today marks the culmination of what began that day. In terms of space, we now live in a layout surrounded by people “like us” – upper caste Hindus, occasional Christians (who are frowned upon, but tolerated as they give the area a semblance of liberality). The arrival of “those people”, however, is still looked upon with surprise and some concern. Visitors from my own family can be heard commenting, “once ‘they’ start coming, they’ll take over the area”.

The area is awash with saffron flags, but I still have to drive more than half a km to see them. Little mercies. Cousins complain about apartment associations on overdrive. An uncle and aunt I visit feel proud about the activities undertaken by their association for today.

It feels distressing, a bit scary too. It is like those neighbours, friends and family, those you live amidst and grew up with have suddenly sprouted longer canines and cannot stop baring them. But this has been the norm for a while now. It started with 2014, but was hidden behind homilies of “economic development” and a hyped up “Gujarat model”. You retreated as the fangs came out for a bit in 2019. Now, the fangs look like they are here to stay, well into the future. You are still family, they are not bared at you, but you know the look you get, as someone different, someone who has been defeated and they’re trying really hard not to gloat – “it’s only a phase, (s)he’ll come around.”

As Sachin puts it so eloquently, “this is a country which is smug. It does not know how to handle success well. It celebrates success by being a bully. It does not know how to take failure well.” And like true bullies, this country has lost its way and does not know or care about what real success is anymore.

I like to think that these are waves, and that eventually things will turn the other direction, but it needs to be acknowledged that the battles are not just electoral, it is for the soul of the country. A win here or there is not going to make much difference. Cases in point, this, and this.

For those who still can, this is my only advise:

Books List from 2023

I finished the year with 42 books, of which 2 were barely 50-60 pages. But then some of them were absolute tomes, so I can’t nitpick. A book is a book is a book.

Anyway, moving on to the list in usual grouping.

Kannada Books

1. ತೇಜೋ ತುಂಗಭದ್ರಾ (Tejo Tungabhadra) – Vasudhendra. A Magnum Opus set in 16th century Lisbon, Vijayanagara and Goa, it tells the story of normal people who are caught in the throes of the politics of the day.
2. ಮುನಿಸಾಮಿ ಮತ್ತು ಮಾಗಡಿ ಚಿರತೆ (Munisamy Mathu Magadi Chirate)- Poornachandra Tejaswi. A lovely set of shorts which is a translation from English of Kenneth Anderson’s tales set around Bangalore of yore.

2023- A Year in Books

When I look back at the year and what I read, it feels like a blur, similar to how 2022 felt. Books that I read earlier in the year feel like they were read last year, and am surprised to find that a book I read last year feels like I read recently. But that has been the nature of the years, events getting mixed up, some recent memories vague, and those from the last year more vivid.

But I remember starting the year with Vasudhendra’s “ತೇಜೋ-ತುಂಗಭದ್ರಾ”, an opus stretching across two continents and decades. It is a historical novel set in Lisbon and a small town on the banks of the Tungabhadra near Hampi. About the persecution of Jews in Catholic Portugal and Spain and the events taking place in Southern India at the very start of colonisation. Given the turn things have taken the past few months, it is an important book about how ordinary people are affected by the whims and shenanigans of those in power.

The Life and Times of Thomas Cromwell

He sands his paper. Puts down his pen. I believe, but I do not believe enough. I said to Lambert, my prayers are with you, but in the end I only prayed for myself, that I might not suffer the same death.

Thomas Cromwell lives his whole life looking to get ahead. Every day he is alive is a day to look for opportunities to rise up the ladder. And rise up, he does, being second only to the King in terms of power.

He is made Earl in May 1540. In a month, he is in prison, knowing that he will be executed, only the manner of his execution in question. The king shows him mercy, allowing him to die by the axe, than burn.

Through all this there is the question of his faith. What does he believe in? He keeps his beliefs close to his chest, where he also keeps a knife; I believe what the king believes. Mantel keeps those cards close to her chest too, showing you only glimpses into that part of his life, and that part of his mind. He doesn’t claim to be Lutheran, which is heretic enough to get him his death; he clearly isn’t Catholic, wanting to align with the Pope. He treads a thin line, getting the bible printed in English, but not going out of his way to rescue William Tyndale who does the translation and is served death in continental Europe for the crime. In his own words, he believes, but not enough to go the whole way to rid his religion of its shackles, preferring to rid his churches of its papal influence – that’s where the money is, and that’s what keeps him close to the king.

Those are heady times, made all the more heady by the presence of Thomas Cromwell. How much of an influence was he to where we are now? What role did his time play in British Imperialism? Maybe not much. To the shape of religion as it exists, today? Probably a lot! And that might be his biggest legacy, at least by how much I know.

Our law of treason in capacious. It encompasses words and bad intentions. We let More bring himself down that way, we let the Boleyns do it. Is a man a victim, who walks into a knife? Are you innocent, if you set up the damage for yourself?

Eventually he falls on the same knife that he uses on others – words uttered at unguarded moments, words said in jest, letters written to parties no longer favourable, turned on him by those he trusted. “Christ entertained Judas. Not that I force the comparison” he says when he learns who betrayed him – he had known it all along, trying to use the same person to bring down his archenemy only to find it worked the other way.

Religion is a deadly weapon in the hands of those who rule. And we see this even today, how it can be weaponised to decide who is with you, and who is your enemy. Silly labels carry their own weight – a papist or a Lutheran would mean death. In the modern day, being called secular or an urban naxal comes with its weight, of being on watchlists, knowing there could be a knock on your door at the wrong time.

Power and its trappings come with their capriciousness. An uneasy king, always worried about who is plotting against him, listening to the whims of those in favour, ritual executions every few months. In the modern day, uneasy autocrats, constantly worried about electoral results, but always plotting to bring down their opponents – both within and without. Only the executions have changed.

I wonder what a modern day Cromwell would look like in the age of democracy where technically anyone can come to power from anywhere. But then, such a person wouldn’t be in the forefront, working his whims from the background. For Cromwell it was the coin that was the leverage, how to make more of it.

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They’re not affordable things. No prince ever says, ‘This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.’

I wonder about the courage to work his way up to be no. 2 after the King, especially when his career looked done with the death of Wolsey. Mantel’s trilogy is about what kind of person Cromwell could have been to “arrange his face” and show up to work, to do what he can to make more money for himself, for the king and for England.

Along the way, he shows kindness, convinces the king’s daughter away from sure death, gets Anne Boleyn an expensive executor so that she won’t feel pain – after building up a case for her death, saves the king’s niece from her death for falling in love with someone – royal daughters and nieces, even sons and nephews are for leverage with other kings, not to marry whom they please. Oddly the only person who bends this is the king himself, first lusting after Boleyn, then Jane Seymour and later Katherine Howard. I wonder how lonely it would have been to be a king. It is only hinted at, but strongly.

The reason for Cromwell’s death remains vague. He only guesses, about how the ground shifted under his feet without his knowledge, but the books are all from his perspective. He is in every room the scenes unfold even though it is written in third person. He guesses the King of France wanted him as price for a deal, that Gardiner and Norfolk talked the king into it. But then, at one point he almost threatens the king who wants to end his third marriage – a child bored of his new toy. But the ground shifts suddenly, too suddenly for him to do much. You also realise he’s grown too big and as he himself says – no prince likes to have an obligation to someone.

Rafe shrugs. ‘He is frightened of you, sir. You have outgrown him. You have gone beyond what any servant or subject should be.’ It is the cardinal over again, he thinks. Wolsey was broken not for his failures, but for his successes; not for any error, but for grievances stored up, about how great he had become.

In May he’s made Earl, in June arrested and by end of July he’s dead – executed without a trial, but by an act. The exact process he instituted to execute the Boleyns, and the noble families with claim to the throne.

Things change in politics, and towards the end he ends up not being able to read the way the winds are changing. Such is the capriciousness of politics and the times he was living in that the price you pay is your life. And the process is what you set up.

25 minutes of bliss

It has been close to 3 months since I went off twitter. The day the name and logo changed to X, I decided enough was enough, I don’t want to be around in a platform run by a maniac. And staying away has been surprisingly easy. The toughest part was suppressing the feeling of putting out any “clever” thoughts I got. That no matter how interesting or funny something I came up with was, I just had to content myself with being the single member audience for it. It was tempting to post it on Threads, but I chose the hard path of foregoing this kind of engagement, and over time I have been freed to a large extent of it.

Anyway, now that twitter is off, this blog should probably resume. Shoulder issues over the past few months meant that I have resisted sitting in front of the computer for too long. Now that that seems to be healing I hope to put more stuff out here.

***

I remember stumbling upon this video some 5 years back while I was going through the content of First Edition Arts(FEA) on Youtube. FEA are mostly a Hindusthani based channel with a few forays into Carnatic, mainly through T.M. Krishna. The best part is the content. The songs are all separated and are produced with really good quality.

The song itself was something I had not heard before, on the “vanilla” ragam Mayamalavagowlam. Over time the biggest question I’ve had is why we use MMG to teach the basics and not the more vanilla Harikhamboji, or Shankarbharanam which covers the most common swaram combinations seen.

The beauty here is how lost TM Krishna is in the song. There are some songs where he’s good and there are those where he elevates himself – touched by the divine, you could say. At one point, around the 9 minute mark, he stops with an “aaha” and sheds a quiet tear contemplating on the beauty of the song, but the magic continues to flow, through the “Maya shabalitha brahma roopam” neraval.

Akkarai Subhalakshmi gives perfect support on the violin. Praveen Sparsh and Chandrasekhara Sharma are incredible on the Mridangam and the ghatam, complementing the singing without overstepping into it. Once again, the quality of acoustics and recording is not something you experience usually, so kudos to FEA’s team for this.

Anyway, here’s the song. It is 25 minutes, so find a quiet place and use headphones for best effect.