Amit Goes Blogging

T he Mother by Maxim Gorky was my first novel. I think I read it during Class VII vacations. I remember very little of what I read then: A meek mother who committed herself for the cause espoused by her only son. The son and his other factory worker friends were fighting injustice. My sympathies were completely with the mother and son. In the end, the mother is waylaid. Her anguished portrait in which she is seen distributing pamphlets in a crowd was my final impression from the book. When I read the book again this week, I knew a little more. The story has the Russian revolution of 1905 as its backdrop. The workers' lot had remained unchanged generation after generation. The workers broke under the burden of labour and gross exploitation. In the evenings, they would get drunk at the tavern and get into a brawl with one another. Women were in much more pitiable condition, living in the constant terror of being beaten up by the...

T o retell tales to the point of summing up the mythology of a civilisation is no mean feat. Edith Hamilton does complete justice to the subject which is evident in the way she puts together the disjoint tales, drawing upon the work of dramatists of later ages to straighten out a tale crudely rendered at the hands of the authors gone before. But, what struck me were the parallels that stand out so clearly between Indian and Greek mythic tales. Although the characterisation is distinct, the turnkey events bear startling similarities. Achilles’ heels are as vulnerable as Krishna’s. A lover going down to Hades to reclaim the life of the beloved is a Greek version of Savitri and Satyvan. But, unlike the Greek gods, the Indian gods are more rational. The Indian god Indra is notorious for his promiscuity, but there is no philanderer like Zeus. A Greek god doesn't give two hoots about his godly demeanour when favouring his subject or venting his anger on a hero who has wronged him un...