Just read: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Told you I'm reading like I've been deprived of it for ages!

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards is a tale of dark secrets that starts with the birth of a couple's twins -- one of who has Down's Syndrome. The baby girl is given away, and a nurse raises the child.
How this secret plays out for different characters -- the wife Norah, doctor husband David, the son Paul, nurse Caroline and the girl, Phoebe, forms the rest of the story.
I enjoyed the book, and was really curious about the story's ending. The ending did not disappoint (a cliche would have been worse), though it was bit of an anti-climax.
For me, the book should have ended about 10 pages earlier than it had.
I almost feel guilty saying anything negative, because the book was quite a page-turner. I finished it in about three days.
It is a really well-written story, but the emotions overpowered me after a while.
I felt exhausted as one character after another fell into a downward spiral of emotions, briefly bobbing up before being dragged down again.
I wanted to shout, "That's the stupid secret," to all the characters who didn't know it. "Lighten up." Everyone seemed too serious, and talking about emotions all the time.
I may be the only one, but I find prose that actually has characters talk about feelings, rather than have them do things which reflect their feelings, not quite appealing.
All in all, though, a good book. And I need to get out of my spate of reading books about secrets!

Just read: The Last Friend

Am on a reading spree now! Had almost forgotten the feeling after reading a good book.
The last book I read, "The Last Friend," by Moroccon author Tahar Ben Jalloun, didn't do much to that feeling though.
A tale of a friendship tested to its limits, and told from two and a half perspectives (the neutral one is hardly a perspective), one of the greatest things about the book was that it was small!

**Spoiler Alert**
Part of my response to this tale of two friends becoming closer over the ages, and finally falling out, sort of, might be that I have been jaded by desi films, where the concept of secrets, terminal diseases, and feelings are thrown about callously.

**End of Spolier **

I liked the simple, lucid prose, and the juxtaposition of the political climate and race relations in Morocco with the simple tale of two friends.

Just read: A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

Just completed Janna Levin's "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines," about the lives of mathematicians Kurt Godel and Alan Turing.
The book does not really talk about their lives and their achievements, instead peeking into their psyche and their public persona -- Godel, a paranoid hypochondriac; Turing, weird and homosexual. The book moves through different points in their lives, and indeed has many gaps where their work was probably most renowned, and also interjects the author's life in the narrative.
The last mentioned was a turn-off, however, and I did fine by skipping the autobiographical portions.
For someone like me, who is interested in questions about reality, this book was a page turner.
Liked the writing style. For instance, the phrase, "like a tongue seeking out a sore tooth," still sticks in my mind!

Dumb me downs

We saw the much-hyped movie, "Syriana" a couple of days ago.
Now, I'd like to first off confess that I could not understand it completely, and had to have Vijay pause the film and explain it to me at crucial points.
Sample Q &A:
Me: Who is that old white guy?
V: He's the president of the company.
Me: Why did he just talk to this guy?
V: He wants to broker a deal.
Me: For what?
V: To get a license to open an oil field.
Me: What oil field?
V: The one they've been talking about throughout the film, dumbass!

And this was with the closed captioning on, mind you!
So, my feelings about the movie were obviously negative. Now, I'm not one of those people who shy away from intellectually challenging films-- ahem! But this one was really going above my head.
Now, one thing I can say for sure about me and movies is this: If I do not understand certain parts of a film, and the film still sort of makes sense, I take it as my shortcoming, and do not blame the film. But if, as in Syriana, which has multiple storylines, each lasting for a whole five minutes before cutting to the next, most storylines do not make sense, I tend to blame the filmmaker.
How can he make the audience look dumb? It's not a nice feeling -- feeling dumb --I can tell you that.

And then you blame the audience for gravitating toward shows like, "Deal or No Deal."

People often decry that media, especially the visual kind, is making fools of the general public, not letting them think, and making them passive receptors of information.
Now, it depends on what your definition of "making people think" is, as our dear former president would say :)

Making a person think of the consequences of what is depicted on the screen is different from making a person think, "What the hell does that mean?"
Intelligent media do assume a certain level of intelligence and general knowledge on the part of the viewer, and I believe the bar may be too high for "Syriana."

In spite of George Clooney, I do not see the merit in the movie. Even when I understood parts of it, the quick cutting away tended to irritate me.

Speaking of irritating cuts, does anyone else find characters talking and walking, on television series, irritating to no end?

I do.

Starting with "Law and Order," where everyone really is walking, mostly unnecessarily, from one end of the office to another, the list of this goes long.
Now, I understand that investigators are supposed to be up and about, but that does not mean just walking around the office.

Several shows, like "24" and even "Monk (does anyone else LOVE Tony Shaloub and this show?)," have realized that modern investigators probably spend a lot of time in the office, just sitting on the computer. "Law and Order" just doesn't get it, yet.

Oh, and let's not forget the latest from Aaron Sorkin, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," another walk-and-talk show, though it's probably justified to some extent. The show, however, has other problems.

I can see the show running toward its doom. The show, a fictional behind-the-scenes look at a comedy show akin to SNL, debuted at rank #22 in the U.S., and by the end of the season, had plummetted to #60 and above, also dipping in viewership and market share.

Sorkin, the creator of the show, seems to have a stereotypical direction and dialog delivery style for his characters, which can be quite irritating unless you are a fan.

Also, the main story line of the show, which is that intelligent comedy cannot exist and thrive anywhere but the most liberal, blue states, is really dumbing down the mid West audience, and in its quest to provide a clean light sort-of comedy show, has become as bigoted and prejudiced as the people it seems to make fun of.

Newsflash: They aren't big fans of you, either, buddy! You are out. I give it two to three seasons, max. And definitely out of its prime time Monday night spot.

Show-related lingo and the issues they seem to refer to are not close to Americans' hearts, perhaps, and they don't seem to realize the value of viewership, really.

The usual response may be what the first episode of the show, ironically, begins with -- the lobotomzation of the U.S. television audience, but I, once again, beg to differ.

People liked the West Wing, perhaps because they cared, and perhaps because it dealt with international issues when there weren't too many on televisio n otherwise, but who cares about the lives of television comedy sketch writers?

And Sorkin, with Sports Night (far better, in my opinion than Studio 60), already spoke about the corporate nature of television drama and delivered that lecture from the pulpit. Why must we endure it again?

I kind of liken him to Maniratnam, the Indian director. The reason? Maniratnam started with romantic movies, and some of his best films are his earlier ones. Once he got bogged down with international issues, he lost his way, it would seem. His best scenes in his current films are also often the romantic ones.

The parallel? I feel Sorkin has mounted his high horse of cleaning television of its impurities, and though his strong point may be the plot of the story, he seems to have lost sight of it. Instead, he focuses on religion on TV, globalization of television and other causes that people frankly, do not care. Sorkin obviously does, being in the business, but why would I, a grocery store cashier, care?

Dinosaurs of the 21st century

I thought I was hip and trendy, and was reasonably caught up with technology-- until about six months ago, that is.
What's when our subscription to "Wired" magazine kicked in, and I realized that I was so offline.
I had never seen a video on YouTube, nor was I on MySpace -- two things that seemed to decide whether you were "in" or not.
There was a little sidebar on whether or not collective intelligence was good or bad -- wasn't even sure what that meant. Is that just a bunch of people talking?
I was slightly taken aback, as my ignorance would be ratified every month, as soon as the issue came in the door.
There was another cover story about gaming, and I had not even set sight on a Play Station, let alone play on one.
And yet, I asked myself, why do I think of myself as "in" with the digital?
In the office, the three people sitting closest to me are always listening to music on their headphones while working, something I still cannot bring myself to do. I did try to bring my headphones in once, but was paranoid about missing a call, or getting too distracted by the music, that I had to get rid of them.
Since subscribing to the magazine, I have seriously begun to contemplate the future of the newspaper. Now, how much news does a fairly retro person like me get on actual paper? Actually, probably none.
My attention span has decreased to automatically spam block any article over 2,000 words (unless the headline seems fascinating), and in the library, my hands automatically reach for the short stories.
And almost all my news comes to me online. And all the people I know in the United States are doing that -- getting their news online.
In 15 years, when I'll be looking forward to my retirement (as I am now), what choices might I have? Will my career be forced to change course automatically? Will the skills I learn as a journalist be relevant in this blogging, MyTubing world?
How fast will I have to adapt?
Perhaps it's all relative, I thought. A lawyer friend of mine resisted buying a cell phone for the longest time, and would ask his wife to store numbers, because he couldn't figure out how to do them. Now I was better than he, wasn't I?
But then, there's my father, whose learning curve on computers must have have been real steep, but he caught on amazingly -- perhaps by necessity. He would get in and out of chat rooms, and voice chat with us all the time, until, I believe, he hit the ceiling. Of learning and boredom, that is.
Yahoo! forever asked him to update to its newer version, and with falling telephone rates, he just thought it was easier to call us! He is probably not going back to the Internet for anything that he needs, probably just for entertainment.
The Internet may just be a pastime for my father, but for people like us, it is imperative to keep up. The future is indeed very digital, and analogs must die, for sure.
Even if some still believe that computers are not the god they are made out to be.
My mother-in-law, who worked in a bank her entire life in India, retired early, but finds her colleagues struggling with learning computers. These are people in their early 50s, and I can only imagine how difficult it must be for them, to just take that leap into computerdom.
"It's much easier, actually," said my mother-in-law recently, "to just do it by hand."


PS: Just after I wrote this, I wondered about how people are able to maintain blogs regularly -- and I realize I might not have adapted my message to the medium. A blog, perhaps, needs to be more chatty and writing a blog like I would a report (replete with AP style) may not be what this medium is all about!
But writing as a conversation may be a forced style for me, and it might require a whole different style of writing-- catch my dilemma? Change, my friends, change!

Talk about prolific, huh?

Yeah, it comes and goes-- sometimes I write everyday, sometimes nothing for months together.
It's not writer's temperament or anything, it just depends on what else is happening in life and stuff.
Since my last blog, life has been going at quite a rapid pace, and I've been thinking about what it all means, what we really want from it, and what is the best way to get it.
And I often remembered the randomest things: like the poem called Leisure that I studied at school:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

I remember an accompanying picture, that of a man leaning on a fence, with a straw of hay in his mouth, staring at sheep grazing in a meadow nearby.

I thought then that it looked stupid, what would he do for a living if he just stared at sheep?
Now, the real meaning of the poem seems to have sunk in, and the idea of the guy on the fence is not laughable, but a goal to be attained.

I'm thinking maybe I shoud revisit alltime popular school poems like "The Solitary Reaper," and Robert Frost's "Miles to go before I sleep" poem. In any case, the last mentioned is a weird choice for a ninth grade textbook-- enough with the sleep and depression already!

General musings

Aah! How it must feel to be young!
At a recent cultural program staged by Harvard "kids," I experienced an emotion that stayed with me for a while -- that of longing. I wondered-- how great it must be to feel that your greatest problem revolves around the attention of a young woman, your greatest fear that you might miss a note while performing on stage, and your greatest pride your grades.
Off stage, I saw the parents of the very college kids, beaming at the achievements of their progeny. It was a South Asian program, and it was indeed a culmination of their dreams-- that their children not lose their heritage, and receive a good education! As the lights went out, the law abiding citizens flouted rules and flashed their cameras to record those moments for posterity.
As the children poked fun at their accents and their insistence on Indian culture-- the parents didn't break the smile on their face. They clapped heartily, and genuinely enjoyed the program. I spoke to parents who had come in from all corners of the globe to see how their children perform: It was like a pilgrimage for them. In fact, the parents said they typically did not get to spend nearly as much time with their children as they'd like.
And I wondered: How must it feel to be a parent, giving your all for someone else, overlooking all their little faults and completely giving up your ego? Probably equidistant from both, I figured mine must be the phase of life where the feeling is least.
In a week, I saw a friend's child tell her pal that she wished she were her little sister-- all she does all day is suck her thumb and coo!

De-generation

Been a long, long time since I wrote. Lots of stuff happening, but really not. But I ramble. I have recently started thinking a lot about life, and the finite nature of it.
So here is a take on what lies ahead.

You know you’re part of generation “W” (ahem.. the one before X) when:

1. Your hanging out and shopping at the city after a hard day’s work yields a cauliflower and a couple of bell peppers.
2. You are mildly irritated that older people are not being offered seats on the bus.
3. Night, for you, starts at 6:30 p.m.
4. You don’t understand the music on the radio (or) if NPR is on your car’s preset. In fact, if you just listen to the radio, you’re certified W.
5. You declare St. Valentine’s Day as a marketing gimmick.
6. Your town meeting is marked on your calendar.
7. You know the town meets every now and then.
8. You think cassettes are perfectly normal music storage devices.
9. You call people on the phone just to say “hi.”
10. You reminesce, not imagine, about life without technology and instant communication.
11. You read, voluntarily.

The wonder year

The weather’s been acting kind of weird, there was snowfall the other day, and then the temperatures really soared up to the 60s. It was even in the 70s one day, and it’s now November!
Anyways, the snowfall took me back 5 years, a wide-eyed student at Temple University, Philadelphia.
With dreams of a better career (than my previous one as assistant producer at a small TV production firm), such as an anchor job at CNN; learning everything there is to know about media, and improving the quality of Indian television were just some of the easier things on my agenda.
Dazed and confused through my first semester, I was just beginning to learn the ropes I was confident I would master.
Also, coming from a place where the average yearly temperature is 83F, even Fall was getting to be too cold.
Our [media and film] department was in the basement, perhaps to ignite the depression and moodiness that would make for better student films! So, out of the basement after a long day, I peer outside to see something weird, like a white sandstorm— it really took me a couple of seconds to realize it was snow.
A couple of students near me muttered and got ready to brave the snow, hoping they could get home before it got worse.
I just stood there; simply feeling one emotion— wonder. Is this what ‘wonderful’ really meant, and not when someone finished an assigned task, announces a weekend plan, or gets married?
I got out in the snow, fully prepared to be hit by the weight of the snow— I suppose I equated it with a hailstorm or something. I was pleasantly surprised by its weightlessness. Weightless, beautiful and pure—what better metaphor for life itself? Not to forget, fleeting!
After getting drenched, (is that even right usage?) in the snow, I made my way to the subway station, to begin my long ride home, but with a smile on my face.
That winter came and went quickly, and though I didn’t have to shovel, felt the strain that the winter put on people’s backs.
The first semester went by, and the second seemed to be looming in front of me. I wasn't quite sure of what to do, and what direction to take, when stories of visa horrors and the dotcom bust hit me. Suddenly, I learnt that media was not a hotspot for visas, and that CNN would probably not employ me as an anchor!
Winter seemed bleaker, but I trudged on. Long story short, I am not an anchor on CNN now, nor have I learnt everything there is about media. I think I’m doing alright, though.
Since that day, though, the first snowfall of every season makes me smile, reflecting an emotion felt five years ago- pure wonder.

M

PS: Looked for ‘wonder’ at the Grand Canyon—nada!