One Reader, and so many Countries

At long last, I have been able to migrate the list of the books read over the last 10 years to GoodReads, a very neat site to keep track of one’s reading. Despite its very simple interface, I did like Bibliophil but it is not very intuitive or exciting to use. I also maintained a list on an html page. Except for a few minor glitches the list on goodreads is pretty accurate. I was quite tardy in keeping a record between 1991- 1997 though I do have a record for the four years before ’91 and will add them soon. That will more or less cover the entire history of my life as a reader, and bookshelves, I think Alberto Manguel remarked somewhere, tell the autobiography of their owner. In my case, for whatever its worth.

Over the past few years I have read mainly fiction, and the countries of the authors’  origin is displayed on the map below as well as tagged over at goodreads. I am quite proud of having covered South America  reasonably well (~ 75 or so)- especially countries like Uruguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua. There are quite a lot of writers from Argentina and though the count of books from Chile and Peru is also high, these are limited to single authors- Roberto Bolano and Mario Vargas Llosa respectively. I am still waiting for an English translation of Dona Barbara so Venezuela may remain uncovered till then, and am totally clueless about anything from Paraguay.

VG Kiernan

For those of us in South Asia, Victor Kiernan was known primarily as the translator of Mohammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. His works as a historian are relatively unknown. Even his translations, for that matter, are not so much read as they are appreciated, mainly because few need to when they can read the original in Urdu. His relative ignorance in India is also difficult to understand because he was one of the few of the British Marxist Historians who actually spent some time in India. In Kiernan’s case, he was even married to an Indian lady, though for a short time. For all this, however, India (and Pakistan) seems to have been a passing interest for him and his personal and intellectual association ended pretty much around 1950. He lived to the ripe age of 95, and passed on earlier this week on 18th February.

A google search yesterday led to a tract ‘Marxism and Gramsci‘ (pdf), written by Kiernan  in 1972 when Gramsci’s works were being introduced to English readers. Besides a number of insightful and critical comments on both Marxism and Gramsci, he provides a comment on the state of Marxism in India as well:

Charles Darwin and Materialism

(12th Feb 2009 marks the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin)

Reading about Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in school did not ruffle any feathers in our young minds. After all, once explained, the whole story about evolution made common sense. It was much later when reading Marx and Engels, especially Engels’ little classic The Part Played by Labour in the transition From Ape to Man, that one began to realize the great significance of the work of this British  naturalist. The oft quoted ‘fact’ of Marx wanting to dedicate his magnum opus, Das Capital to Darwin added another layer of awe for him. Unfortunately, this ‘fact’ was little more than a myth, as  Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx published in 2000 proved.

Slumdog Millionaire- A Good- Bad Film

Amitabh Bachchan does not make an actual appearance in Slumdog Millionaire, though he purportedly signs an autograph for Jamaal, the main protagonist. Nevertheless, both he and Hindi cinema cast a long shadow on the film. Even the title consisting of binary opposite words is reminiscent of Hindi films like Gora aur Kaala, Raja aur Rank and so on. In the epic tradition of Hindi cinema, it has two brothers, one goes on to become a gangster and the other, predictably enough, the millionaire.

Based on the novel Q&A by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, it has an innovative plot based on the Indian clones of the American television show,  Who wants to be a millionaire? Jamaal, who has honed his ‘knowledge skills’ in the slums of Mumbai is the contestant who makes it to the end and wins the jackpot. The amazing thing is that he is an illiterate 18- year old who serves tea in a BPO.

Each question that he is subjected to in the show is followed by a flashback where an incident comes to Jamaal’s mind and he answers the question accurately, surprising everyone in the audience. For example, to the question about who wrote the bhajan darshan do ghansham, his answer is instantaneous- Surdas. The story behind that answer is longer, and macabre. One of Jamaal’s friends in the slums, Arvind, had been blinded by a local gangster who lived off the earnings of child beggars. The reason for his being blinded is that Arvind sang this bhajan very well and being blind makes him more “marketable”. The movie is very gripping in the first half as question after question in the show is followed by searing flashbacks like this. Subsequently, the film follows the well- trodden path- Jamaal wins the contest, finds his lady love and all ends happily.

There are other problems with the film.