#4 A book set in the future

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Okay, so this book isn’t exactly set in the future. But, in my defense this grim old classic was written in 1948, predicting a dystopian future set in 1984 – and that prediction may be coming true today. And it is uncannily creepy. 

[Statutory Warning: Any parallel one may find, connecting this dystopia to modern day life is purely intentional.]

Opening with one of the most memorable lines, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”, 1984 is set in an imagined dystopian society called Oceania. Winston Smith is the thirty-nine year old protagonist who works in the Ministry of Truth, or Minitrue as it is known as in Newspeak, the official language. The world in 1984 is divided into three states, originated from the ashes from World War II: Oceania (British Isles, the Americas, Pacific, Australia), Eurasia (Europe & Russia), and Eastasia (the rest of it). Continuous warfare between those three (who hold similar ideologies) is required to keep the society's order and peace.

The regime which governs Oceania has complete and manipulative control on the lives of the people. To begin with, there is the enormous poster with a man’s face staring at you , which is captioned ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’  - and it is plastered everywhere – in his room, in the corridors, in his workplace, across the streets….the all-seeing eye follows one everywhere. I don’t think one could convey the fact that you are always being watched more eerily than through this single image of the relentless eye.  

 “Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed – no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull” 

Winston’s life is merely a dull, lifeless, routine, made insufferable with mindless drudgery and continuous falsification of history (which was what he did daily). One day he begins a diary – a crime, which if detected could be punishable by death, or at least twenty-five years in a forced labour-camp. But he starts writing nevertheless.

At this point let me point out the importance of language, and why his act of thinking, and writing is revolutionary. As mentioned earlier, Newspeak is the official language of Oceania. It had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. The purpose of Newspeak was to provide a medium of expression to the devotees of Ingsoc, and simultaneously make all other modes of thought impossible. For instance, the word free exists in Newspeak in a restricted meaning, i.e one could say that , “This building is free from polluted air” or “this dish is free from artificial colouring”, but one cannot use it in the old sense of “intellectual or political freedom”  since such a concept doesn’t exist in Newspeak, it has become nameless. 

“Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.”

So a word like bad isn’t used anymore. Rather it is good or ungood. Or to express the superlative – doublegood or doubleplusgood.Newspeak is used with a conscious purpose – to make speech independent of consciousness. For instance, by abbreviating a name, its meaning is narrowed and slightly altered. It cuts off the associations with the word – for instance Nazi or Comintern or Gestapo. Comintern is the abbreviated form of Communist International – a phrase which makes you think of the idealogical standpoint of communism and its associated symbols, but when reduced to Comintern, one can utter it without any association to those concepts. Language which eliminates thought. Scary, right? 

“In a world of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Thus, when Winston writes, not in Newspeak, but in the language he is supposed to have forgotten, with an ink pen, which had become an obsolete instrument by then, becomes a revolutionary act in itself. 

At work, Winston has to constantly work on past news reports and alter it as per the requirements of the present. Let me explain, Oceania is at war at all times with either Eastasia or Eurasia. But this can keep changing…..crazy, but that is what happens. If the government was fighting with Eastasia for the past three weeks and suddenly they become their allies instead, ALL the reports have to be altered. “If all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.” That’s what the Ministry of Truth does, it didn’t merely change the past but changed it continuously.

Another word to be explained here is doublethink. It means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Conscious deception was the key to the party’s power – any power really. Let me use a dialogue from a 2011 film Detachment , where Adrien Brody in the role of a substitute teacher, Henry Barthes quotes Orwell, to emphasize the need to read: 

"How are you to imagine anything if the images are always provided for you? Doublethink. To deliberately believe in lies, while knowing they're false.

Examples of this in everyday life: "Oh, I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable." Our young men today are being told that women are whores, bitches, things to be screwed, beaten, shit on, and shamed. This is a marketing holocaust. Twenty-fours hours a day for the rest of our lives, the powers that be are hard at work dumbing us to death.

 So to defend ourselves, and fight against assimilating this dullness into our thought processes, we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds."

Well, if you think this is that kind of a book where, things are so bad, it can only get better – you would be wrong. Winston starts an affair with Julia, a co-worker. They meet in a secret room to avoid the constant surveillance and control imposed on them otherwise. But they get caught eventually. And after that, it is a painfully stark description of the torture meted out to these ‘thought criminals’ at the hands of the Thought Police. I probably shouldn’t reveal it all – but it is brutal, nasty and mind-numbing torture. They in fact torture their prisoners according to what scares them the most – individually. And what scares the living daylights of Winston? You wouldn’t have seen this coming – but the answer is rats. So, you can probably put it together.

Orwell’s vision of the future is grim, probably too grim. But with Donald Trump quoting ‘alternative facts’  we come to a shocking realization that what 1984 predicted is probably coming true.After all as he Winston himself realizes: “The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you already know.”

1984  with its illustrious record, is however far from perfect. Its characters lack depth, its rhetoric is sometimes didactic, its plot (well, half of it anyway) was supposedly lifted from Yegeny Zumyatin’s We (written in 1924, banned from publishing in the Soviet Union till 1988). It is unlikely we would have heard of We, but it is said to have inspired both Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. See, a bit of erasure of history already at work!

 
Initially titled The Last Man in Europe , this dystopian fiction by George Orwell has withstood the test of time and is meant to show us what can happen if we give in to the powers of unconscious ignorance. In this age where conformity is more important than actual facts, it is important we preserve our own minds. Hopefully, we will.

#3 A book from your childhood

Heidi by Johanna Spyri 

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it. (As You Like It, Act II Sc i 562-65)

What could Shakespeare have meant by that? Well, Heidi was the one who gave me an answer.  

Growing up wouldn’t have been growing up if it hadn’t been for all the great stories and books that kept me company. So choosing a book from my childhood, was a not-so-simple task.But I did choose one in the end – ironically, this also happens to be book I had never read. Its fame and allure to me was in what it simply was.   

Heidi is a wonderful treasure of a story – it is about a little girl called Adelaide a.k.a Heidi who has to go and live with her grandfather up in the mountains in Dorfli, Switzerland. Since she is an orphan, her Aunt Dete is left with no other choice but to leave the child with her closest living relative. All the villagers warn her against leaving the young kid with Alm-Uncle (as they call him) since they say he is ill-tempered, never comes to church and stays alone on top of the mountains, as a social recluse. However, when Heidi comes to stay, all his reserve and bitterness slowly starts melting away. And why wouldn’t it? Heidi is a full of joy, gratefulness and childlike enthusiasm. We will be swept away by her innocence and genuine concern for those around her.

All doesn’t go well though, since her aunt comes back to take Heidi away and places her in a house at Frankfurt, where she is to be a companion to Clara, an invalid and the only daughter of Herr Sesemann. Heidi’s introduction to the housekeeper, Fraulein Rottenmeier will have us understand how much we forget the innocence of childhood in the hectic pace of growing up.

“Mercy upon us! You do not know how to read! Is it really so?” exclaimed Fraulein Rottenmeir, greatly horrified. “Is it possible – not to read? What have you learnt then?”

“Nothing,” said Heidi with unflinching truthfulness.

True, Heidi didn’t know how to read at that point. She had never been taught or gone to school. As her Aunt Dete explains, “she speaks exactly as she thinks”. Well, in real life, school will definitely put an end to that!  

Heidi became an important part of my childhood, when a TV series (anime version) began on Cartoon Network, which completely mesmerized the whole family! Everyone at home, grandparents, parents and we kids used to eagerly wait for the show and watch it in a delightful silence, taking it all in. It has never happened for any other show, and perhaps never will again. But, that’s what Heidi will always be – timeless.

However, looking back, it was probably the vivid evocation of the Swiss Alps and the simple, wholesome meals that captured my imagination. Have since then, wanted to live in the mountains, like Heidi, with milk, cheese and bread being the mainstay. Probably halfway there with my devotion to bread!

It was a great thrill to all when we stumbled upon a movie version (1937) starring the inimitable Shirley Temple and once again held us spellbound. Newer versions do come, but probably wouldn’t be able to capture the magic as young Shirley Temple does. 

 

The author who gave us this wonderful story isn’t very widely known outside Switzerland. It could be due to the fact that she wrote in German. Johanna Spyri published this book in 1880, and four years after she lost both her husband and her only son. She continued to work for charity and published over fifty books before her death in 1901. She may not have left behind a whole lot of stories which we (the English-speaking world) remember her by, but with just this one spellbinding character of young Heidi, her name will forever be remembered.

#2 A book with a place in the title

The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

             As most of the tales coming from Afghanistan goes (of course I mean Khaled Hosseini), this too is a heart wrenching story of two couples set in war-torn, Taliban governed Kabul, Afghanistan. It paints a terrible and cruel life under the Taliban regime – it investigates the effect of Islamic fundamentalism and unchecked violence in the lives of ordinary people.

The book is unrelenting in its depiction of human degradation; it begins with the execution of a woman by stoning in public and it ends in the same way too. The story happens in between these two public executions. It tells the tale of Mohsen and his beautiful wife Zunaira, whose lives are destroyed systematically by the Taliban regime. Mohsen had once dreamt of going into the diplomatic service and his wife, who was born into a prominent household and had been a lawyer who advocated for women’s rights before the Taliban regime brought an end to all of it. Since Zunaira refuses to wear the burqa, which is essential for a woman to step outside under the Shari’a law, she is mostly confined to her dilapidated house. Her diatribe against wearing the burqa by force resonates across the pages:

“I refuse to wear a burqa. Of all the burdens they’ve put on us, that’s the most degrading….it cancels my face and takes away my identity and turns me into an object…If I put that damned veil on, I’m neither a human being nor an animal, I ‘m just an affront, a disgrace , a blemish that has to be hidden.”

Mohsen, her loving husband, also undergoes a lot of painful and humiliating circumstances that leads him to question his identity, his beliefs and his sanity. He finds it shocking that one day, taken by the crowd he participates in stoning the ‘prostitute’ in the public execution. He is devastated as to what has come over him and confides it to Zunaina, who finds herself in shock to as what her husband had done. She understands that “they are not anything anymore”, they had forfeited their humanity when they didn’t defend it against the mullahs and Talibans who imposed a regressive regime.

                 

           Another story runs parallel to theirs – that of Atiq, a jailer and his ailing wife, Musarrat. Her illness has doomed her to certain death, even the doctors having given up hope. This leads Atiq to question his duty, his obligations and his God. His brooding silence and inner thoughts are revealed to the reader and paints a picture of a cynical and tired man. It is a startling revelation when one hears his friend’s advice when he reveals to him that his wife is beyond cure. The advice of his thrice-married friend is cringe worthy, “it’s simple…divorce her….you don’t owe her anything..she has little significance outside of what you represent for her.” Though Atiq has no idea how to help her or himself, he firmly knows he will do no such thing. Mussarat , his wife, is in constant pain, and seems like to be in last stages of cancer , but even then realizes the workings of her husband’s mind – she cooks and cleans so that he isn’t disgusted by the untidy house.

             

              The story of these two couples intertwine at a devastating climax, with their destinies becoming  inexplicably intertwined. I believe I will reveal too much of the story’s end if I continue and hence will bring my review to a close. This book was difficult to read in terms of the fact that all that happens is painful to accept to be the truth. But yet, it is a world where the Taliban thugs roam the streets with whips and the penalty for truth is death. In this unforgiving place it is in fact the men who crumble fastest. It is the housebound women - Zunaira and Musarrat, Atiq's fiery dying wife - who fight back.Hence the name of the book - the 'swallows' of Kabul. As Maureen Freely justly states, “they're caught in a man-made plot: the end of the novel is not what should have happened but what we ought to have known was inevitable.”

A note on the author: Yasmina Khadra (in Arabic it means ‘green jasmine’) is the pseudonym of a former Algerian army officer named Mohamed Mou-lessehoul. Yasmina also happens to be his wife’s name. He chose to write under a false name since he was still in the army when he wrote his first novel, so he used an assumed (and feminine) name to circumvent the military censors. He writes his novels in French and this is his third novel in English (translated by John Cullen). It was the first time I came across an author choosing a feminine pseudonym to get published, and that itself speaks volumes for what is happening in war-ravaged Afghanistan today.

 

"Don't ask me to become something less than a shadow, an anonymous thing rustling around in a hostile place." -  The Swallows of Kabul

#1 A book you read in school

#1 A book you read in school 

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks

This book was what growing up in the 90's felt like - filled with imaginative adventures, mostly made up games, and when books and characters and stories filled every second of the day.

This book was a chance encounter in my schooldays (around fifth or sixth grade) and it was a delightful read, and I enjoyed re-reading it for this challenge.

As always with some of the greatest stories – it involves a little bit of magic. Omri, is given a few ‘interesting’ gifts on his birthday. His friend Patrick gives him a second-hand plastic toy figure of a Native American, his elder brother gives him a small white metal cupboard and his mum helps him find a key that would fit in its keyhole. Putting all these gifts together is when the magic happens. Omri leaves the plastic figurine in the white box and locks it, only to find when he wakes up that the toy has been brought to life. What follows is how Omri starts to understand that Little Bear (that’s the Native American’s name) is a person and not just a toy, though he is really tiny. Little Bear finds himself in a strange situation, but is a very brave and courageous fellow – he wants to build his own house, hunt for his food and is mostly very stoic. He and Omri develop a strong personal bond of mutual trust between them (especially at the time when Omri takes Little Bear to school one day in his pocket).

 

The wonderful illustrations by Brock Cole also assists in bringing the story to life

 
This book was a delight then and is a delight now. I still remember how I waited, without success, for my plastic figurines of a karate kid and army man to come alive (thank God they didn’t!). Omri realizes that taking control of another person’s life is not as interesting or fun as he though t it would be, and so he decides to use the cupboard for one last time and send his Little Bear back to where he truly belonged.

This book also taught a few lessons along the way , which I realized only while I was re-reading it , the most prominent of all was when Omri tries to explain frantically to his friend when he doesn't seem to understand the gravity of bringing tiny people to life , "You use them. They're people. You can't use people." A timeless message that echoes true today as it probably did for me then.

This book seems to have had a lot of the right things in just the right amount - magic, reality, friendship, family, loyalty, trust, danger, excitement and imagination. It has been able to retain its appeal after all these years. Thus, my rating of it would be a 5/5. Best read while young!

This book also inspired me to read more about their many tribes, and also to give myself a Native American name - Little Feather or 'Shikoba' ;) Not that any of my id proofs would vouch for that. If you would like to know yours, try this small quiz and find out. Find your Native American name here.
 
May the Great Spirits blessings guide you! Until the next book then....Tchao!