Amit Goes Blogging

Little Women — Louisa May Alcott — (4/5) A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson — (3.5/5) What is History? — E H Carr — (4.5/5) Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett — (4.5/5) The Penguin History of the World — J M Roberts & Odd Arne Westadd — (4/5) Outgrowing God — Richard Dawkins — (3.5/5) The Courage to Be Disliked — Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga — (3/5) Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe — (2.75/5) The Doors of Perception (including Heaven and Hell) — Aldous Huxley (3/5) Gora — Rabindranath Tagore — (4/5) गोदान — Munshi Premchand — (4/5) A Room of One's Own — Virginia Woolf — (3.5/5) Sea of Poppies — Amitav Ghosh — (4.75/5) Dubliners — James Joyce — (4.25/5) The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk — (4.75/5) Maybe You Should Talk to Someone  — Lori Gottlieb — (3/5) The Vicar of Wakefield  — Oliver Goldsmith — (5/5) Babbitt  — Sinclair Lewis — (3.5/5) The Awakening — Kate Chopin — (4/5)  To Kill a Mocking Bird — Harper Lee...

They published what was yet a working draft. Very repetitive and does little justice to the subject it sets out to treat. Only the last chapter has some significant comments. Of religious sermons, I have had enough. The book is mostly anecdotes from the lives of spiritual men, quotes from scriptures, mostly Buddhist, and couplets. Arun Shourie merely restates scriptural statements and adds some personal account to back it up. He anchors the book with episodes from lives of a few great men towards the fag end of their lives and in their final moments. The author seeks lessons for us ordinary mortals in their acceptance of death and in their indifference to prolonging their earthly life. I wonder what can I learn from the lives of these men who were convinced of an everlasting life into which they will be delivered upon physical death. Besides controlling appetite(s) and coveting solitude, I don't think there is any other lesson or preparation possible for me. Appetite-control ruled ...

The only book in this genre I have ever read. I was reared on a heavy dose of Indian mythology, conditioned to read fantasy as mythology. When reading modern fantasy, that conditioning takes hold of me, only to mar the enjoyment this time. Hindu mythology sets out to explain the very origin and sustaining principle of the universe and breaks into legends and lore that capture the peopling of the universe. In doing so, it undertakes the ambitious task of providing  a commentary on the alleged historical events. So, w hile reading this book against that background, I was subconsciously seeking a bigger canvas for Rowling's stories. I don't the entire blame for this. The book's preface pushed me in that direction. For Hindus, mythology is an article of faith. Faith prevents us from seeing fantastic elements in our myths as fantasies. Hanuman crossing the ocean in a single leap is an event recorded by witnesses, not poetic imagination. The role of a poet is to compose devotiona...

This book can be one's baptism in philosophy. I was gifted this book when I was in the 10th standard. In the intervening years, I read it only in bits. It's a personal embarrassment that I had a gem of a book lying on my shelf unfinished. When Will Durant picks up a philosopher, he becomes the indistinguishable voice of the philosopher. So completely does he identify himself with the philosophy that you don't realize where the original thought ends and where the commentary begins. His paraphrasing embellishes the argument, supplying words the philosopher missed in the first telling. He offers a brighter lumen. Within each chapter, the last section is devoted to critical appreciation of each philosophy. Here, Will Durant detaches himself completely, exposing the loose ends of a taut system and the fault lines in a close-knit argument. The dissent is as impressive as the assent. When this happens chapter after chapter, you become conscious of your appreciation for subsequent ...

I believe that authors with maritime experience bring an unusual depth and aloofness to their writing. They have an opportunity for distant and wide-range observation. Their prose is quaint and fresh at the same time. With all the above qualities and a prophetic brilliance coupled with an unerring word choice, a gift given only to poet, Joseph Conrad in  Heart of Darkness  explores human expediency. Casting an inward eye on human motives, the author highlights how easily we press morals into the service of our exigencies, how superiority takes on the colours of nobility, how a supposedly civilized race asserts its right to determine the fate of other races, justifying oppression in the name of bringing civilization, a theme more fully dealt in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Difficult to imagine somebody who picked up the language in late adulthood display such facility with words. The thickening shades of darkness, the eerie silence of the jungle,  the chorus o...

In my eagerness to commit to writing my conversion to atheism, I was missing the tiny wick of the lamp on the altar. The eagerness is not without a tinge of melancholy. Compared to the time I spent tending to my faith, my lapse from faith is very recent. I still hear the creak of that door shutting behind me. People ask what happened. I am at a loss to explain. Therefore, this blogpost. The idea of God always attracted me. He was a figure with whom I often conversed. While my trust in people always diminished on re-evaluation, God always grew in my re-assessment of Him. Troubles intensified my prayers, happiness made me grateful: Faith met no challenge whatsoever. I relished believing in an invisible Being. My reason became the handmaid of faith. Reason argued, “Faith cannot be rationalized; it is prior to reason. There is a reason why it is called faith, in the first place.” God had an unquestionable hold on me. Of course, if God is prayed to as a benefactor and arbiter, that belief c...

The cult of Krishna Vaishnavism is theologically rich and accessible. Gaudiya Vaishnavas have embellished Krishna Bhakti with scriptural sanction, a convincing doctrine of love, and a celebratory allure that must be seen to be believed. A few Vaishnava cults make Krishna subservient to Radha. If Krishna is our Soul, then Radha is the Soul of Krishna. Therefore, unlike Lakshmi and Vishnu, Radha and Krishna are not portrayed as husband and wife. Lakshmi sits at the feet of Vishnu, while it is Krishna who sits at Radha’s feet indulging her. This speaks of her exalted position. Their love is parkiya , extra-conjugal, although attempts have been made to legitimize their relationship. Contemplation of their dalliance is the fruit of devotion.  The idea of a Self ( Atma ) within all beings is accepted in Bhakti traditions, but it is not threshed out like it is done in the knowledge traditions of Vedanta.  Bhakti cults do have recourse to philosophical concepts of Atman and Brahman ...

I had targeted four novels of D H Lawrence: Sons and Lovers , The Rainbow , Women in Love , and Lady Chatterley’s Lover in that order. I have finished the first two. I wanted to write a review after completing all the four. But, here I am, not to let year 2020 go without a blog post. Readers must be familiar with fiction that takes you to the heart of the story. But, Lawrence takes you to the heart of his characters, where the stirrings of the human heart are yet in their rudimentary state, yet unsure whether they carry the rationality of the conscious, the accretive tension of the subconscious, or the subversive quality of the unconscious. He is not so much the author of the outer world as he is of the inner. Imagine someone drunk with feelings, that's Lawrence for you. His writing is a thick dab of raw emotions. You can't judge such authors. They are too deep and sincere in their expression. Lawrence is an experience. The subject might bore you but don't our lives too...

Most of the luggage was borne on shoulders and some of it wheeled out of the elevator. The cab was navigating off the track on the Uber app. The time lost in finding a cab had eaten into our buffer time. The nuisance of luggage was weighing heavily on my mind and shoulders. I was doing a mental check of my vitamin B12 and D3; the levels seemed not enough to care for an ailing wife and control a restive kid. Just three of us and at every point we halted, the bags were counted. While I was doing it a third time at the apartment gates, I heard hurried steps approaching us. They were two of them and they didn’t bother to look at us. Culturally, Indians gaze at strangers with a sense of entitlement. And, we were strangers with luggage. While crossing us, acknowledging the curious looks I was casting back at them, one of them gestured by a sign of hand under his throat and barely managed these words, “What they doing man?” The fracas was now audible in the direction they ran. Two second...

My writing ability multiplied manifold cannot play second fiddle to Orwellian portrayal. So, I am not reviewing the book here. I am here to congratulate Orwell and join him in the belligerent satisfaction of outsizing all literary yardsticks of evocative portrayals. Dystopian novel it is; but, the dystopia is so intense that a person not in excruciating physical pain and with reasoning ability intact will call our world a utopia. Emotional pain does not count because that can be treated (unlearnt). The book paints a world that is a brick kiln of emotions. Everything other than body and brain is vaporized. That is the fate of the citizenry of Oceania. The book denigrates dignity of emotion. Whoever believes in that idea has messed up with his organism. The book explodes continuously, and you cannot but blink uncontrollably. Towards the end, it felt I was reading the book with closed eyes. The horror of the portrayal is so disturbing that you stop empathising with Winston, the protagoni...