Learning Hebrew

I have dreamt and still dream of doing so many things. I am always planning about the steps that i got to take and assure repeatedly myself that i will not drag on and henceforth i will be a transformed( for worse?!) person. In the long list of dreams learning languages was one. While in college at chennai i made an attempt at learning sanskrit. I found out a student of Sanskrit college at Mylapore and became his first student. But after few days i became regularly irregular and dropped out without even informing. For post graduation i came over to JNU,Delhi which is an excellent center for learning foreign languages. My best friend Anbu was a student of German and thus i got to hear a lot about foreign languages and the modus operandi of learning. Still i could not move my honorable self in to any attempt at learning a language. After few years of endless 'Chai' sessions and big talk, i decided to learn Hebrew and enrolled at the Israeli Embassy at Delhi. Anbu also joined and thus my tryst with Hebrew and the Israeli embassy began.

I decided on Hebrew as i had planned to do my thesis on Israel. I, like many disinformed persons had a romantic notion of Israel as a valiant little David up against diabolical Goliaths from the staple reading list of any small town boy like me comprising Oh Jerusalem, Exodus, Mitla Pass, Entebbe Operation etc. I remember Kamal Hassan reading a book on Entebbe in a scene from Balachandar's movie. The course was of one year duration. My first Hebrew teacher was a Jew of French origin and wife of a diplomat. She had all the ignorance that is expected of a European who knows India well but she was a nice teacher.

After this misadventure i gave up all hopes of learning Hebrew. Fortunately after some months Israeli government decided to introduce Hebrew language in India by sending teachers from the Hebrew University and thus an one year part time course was introduced at JNU.I felt lucky and joined. For the first six months our teacher a senior faculty from Hebrew University was very affectionate and took effort to teach us. He was of the first generation in the new Jewish state and had the pioneering zeal which looked any questioning of the sacredness of Israel as blasphemy. He had taken the picture postcard image of India teeming with cows, snake charmers, elephants, maharajahs, disease and poverty a bit too serious and could never come to terms with the chaos that is India. For the next six months, we had a wonderful and sensitive teacher but from the initial strength of 15 we were only 2 after a few months. But she did not lose heart and enabled me to complete a language course at last! She was widely read and had a realistic idea of India as a nation that can only be felt and not understood. The Hebrew language course was discontinued after one year because of bureaucratic wrangling and Israelis who had withstood multitude of Arab armies fell before the onslaught of our red tapism and clerks and decided to cancel the Hebrew language program

Who is Afraid of Exams!

After going thru so many exams( annuals, semesters,entrances, scholarships, fellowships,competetive,)i was elated that my travails would be over once i landed up in a job.But alas there is no end in sight for my misery. Approach of exams always make me relaxed. I have never been able to take any exams seriously.Starting with my 12th to the present times of departmental exams, i have been always amused by the hullabaloo.The approach of the date and the feverish ambience inflicts sleeping sickness on me.May be that's why i am unscarred. During my higher secondary the whole lot of students( i was in science group with maths)aiming Medical college were totally focussed on the public exams and withdrew themselves from all the joy and adolescent creativity of school life.Our group was a bit off the track and was a eclectic mixture that was into trekking, quiz,culturals, sports and most importantly reading.(ofcourse not text books).my amma was troubled by my disinterestedness in scoring marks and tried her best to make me realize the necessity of being competetive as she thinks that 12th marks are the stars that decide our destiny in life.only two persons from my class didnot attend the tuition classes.one scored the highest marks in the state and i was the other lucky one but was one among the last in the class.For my final year BSc Botany practical exam we had about 15 experiments. But i could not make myself thorough with any of those even with my best efforts. So i put the burden cooly on lord Venkateswara of Thirupathi by promising him my hair and chose only one experiment to study. And true to his credential Lord Venky saved me.But looking back, i most of the times feel i have been right in the way i have dealt with the exams.

Idealism

A few years back i was travelling from Bangalore to Erode by bus.I was in the aisle seat and i happened to get a series of calls from friends from different corners of the country and the gentleman seated near the window became curious about me.He asked about what i do and other usual queries that are asked to fellow travellers.I told him that my job entails hell lot of travelling and is quite adventurous.We started getting along well.He worked in a leading IT company and has put in around ten years.His wife is also with him in the same company and i could gather that they are well placed in their company heirarchy and satisfied with what they have achieved.We then discussed about working conditions in private sector and government.After a while he pointed out a hoarding that extolled a cine actor as the only hope for the poor and asked me how i felt about this phenomenon where politics is the refuge of all scoundrels.i asked him whether he has ever voted in the elections. He replied with out embarrassment that he has never voted.

This conversation kept on coming back to me.I evaluated the contours of my life since i left college in chennai.After college I was at the University in delhi for around seven years.I am surprised to learn how far i moved away from being a believer in uncompromising idealism to being practical in life.Does every body believe in some fundamental ideals?universal ideals? I was a student activist in college and university.So i was in some sort of laboratory condition where one had the confidence that change for better is always possible through activism and all of us have some thing to contribute towards a better (ofcourse 'better' meant different things to different people)world. But that optimism and confidence started eroding so subtly that i failed to notice. I guess that for people who were not exposed to the possibilities of social dreaming being practical is the very essence of successful living.I am not eulogising activists. Most of them become pratical at one stage and get swallowed by the wider system. I believe that to hold on to one's ideals is a tough task given the material consumer culture that envelops our every aspect of life. The most important strategy is to be aware of our own actions and what they mean to us personally.Idealism should be sought not in great deeds but in every day life.In what we do at home,at office, in every day chores of life.

A Visit to Fathepur Sikri and Taj

A visit to Taj Mahal is a must for any tourist in India. I had been to The Taj a few years back in a pak(c)aged bus tour. The image of Taj was much better than the actual visual experience.I went expecting to see a beautiful structure made of pure white shining marble that one sees in modern monstrous buildings. But Taj is built of small pieces of marbles that are in all possible shades of white.
The general traveller in India is never bothered to learn beforehand about the places he is visiting.He simply wants to SEE the place without troubling about artistic or aesthetic aspects.So i also did the same. For this visit i thought i will read some thing on Taj and Fathepur Sikri. But i could not do it. I along with four of my batchmates from NACEN set out in a Qualis to Agra from Delhi on this saturday(21-06-2005).Just before we reached Sikandra where Akbar's tomb is situated our vehicle broke down. Fortunately, my batchmate Balaji had a friend who is working as a wild life vetenerian in the Bear Rescue and Rehabilitation center that was a Kilometer away. So we spent around two hours at that center discussing and learning about an interesting aspect of wild life conservation. The center rescues bears from the traditional tamers of bears who eke out a living by making the bears do some acrobatics.A community of Muslims called Qalandars is involved in this. The center buys the bear from them by persuasion and rehabilitates the bears.

I have read something on Fathepur Sikri as part of my civil service History mains preparation. I had the image of dilapidated and ruined structures in mind. But the remains are impressive.It is a very huge complex and it is among the best preserved palaces that i have seen.I earlier had a serious aversion to hiring guides while visiting any historical monuments.The guides had their own version of the historical events which are absolute nonsense. But over the period of time i have changed my opinion. We spend so much in travelling to these places and the cost of hiring isn't much in comparison. With out guide we might we miss out many features although their narration of history is of no use.

O.V.Vijayan

On reading about the famous malayalam novelist, O.V.Vijayan i was reminded about the nostalgic pleasure on reading his work The Legends of Khasak. It was in November 2001 just before i was to appear in civil service mains exams. i was preparing at Indian Agricultural research Institute (pusa institute), New Delhi. As it was my third attempt at mains i was pretty annoyed at having to go thru the ritual of giving exams. Anyway pusa institute was a better place than JNU for i had spent the first four years of my life in JNU in extra-career activities and built up enough avenues of distraction. my schooltime friend sasi had got admission into pusa institute and was in to civil services preparation. that's how i ended up there. Another of my friend P.S. who had a taste for literature was also at pusa institute . As i was finding it difficult to read anything distantly related to upsc\ civil services, i asked him to give me some novels to read. he gave me the legends of khasak by O.V.Vijayan. I started to read in the morning and at a stretch finished it. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it but on completing it i felt as if i was rudely being awaked from a dream that i wanted to last forever.

Red Earth Pouring Rain

Red Earth and Pouring Rain

I had read the novel " Love and Longing in Bombay" by vikram chandra a few years back and i liked it. I followed the duel between meenakshi mukherjee and vikram chandra on (IWE)Indian writing in English in the Hindu. Although i do not remember the arguements fully i can recall the bitter criticism of IWE as catering to western markets by depicting an unreal exotic india.What made me notice the book "Red Earth Pouring Rain" was the title.I was pleasantly surprised to know that the title is taken from a translation of the famous sangam poem by A.K. Ramanujan, the US based poet and translator.This novel is an interesting attempt at story telling. The canvas is vast and there is a conscious effort to
copy the style of puranas/epics. The main character is a monkey which is shot at and critically injured by Abhay an Indian student at an US university who has come back to his parental home.The monkey due to the shock starts remembering his previous lives.Lord Yama comes to finish of the monkey but hanuman appears as result of monkey's prayers and brings about an agreement.According to this agreement the monkey will have to tell a story and also keep the audience engaged.The monkey who was a poet,sanjay in the turbulent times of 19 th century northern india tells his story. The story has lot of History mingled with myths and magic. The lives and times of European military free lancers form an important thread in the narrative.Sanjay has an anglo-indian friend whose father is the most famous of European miltary adventurers in 19 th century india, Skinner.Their lives form the core of this story.

There are stories within stories.Thus Abhay also tells about his life in USA.Although there are many brilliant pages the excellence is marred by numerous stereotypical descriptions. Thus abhay has a girl friend whose mother had been the centerspread in Playboy , he meets a porn actress whose story is also narrated.The style and the width of issues dealt are most interesting.But as if to prove the critics of IWE right many characters lack depth and unlike many a work where only western stereotypes are portrayed vikram chandra has utilised his skills to give life to Indian stereotypes of westerners.

The novel is quiet big running around 520 pages.I found that the novel takes many meaningless deviations trying vainly to ape our epics.A few years back i met Indira Parthasarathy the famous Tamil literary personality in Delhi.He suggested one simple test to judge the quality of IWE. Try and imagine how would a work of IWE look if translated in any of the Indian languages. By that test Red Earth and Pouring Rain is average.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway
I had read Hemingway and like his works. I have a fascination for war(Ofcourse not getting into one but reading about). I don't know how i developed a taste for it. May be Amar Chitra Katha that i devoured in my childhood had some role.The romanticism of War grew further as a result of movies like 'Great Escape','Where Eagles Dare','Guns of Navarone'. My dad was very fond of Hollywood,more particularly cowboy and war films. Although i don't remember all that i saw,my dad took me religiously to all the hollywood films released in Erode till my fifth class.There was a steady clientile for the hollywood movies in all the towns.Same people used to come to all the English movies.A big board was kept just near the entrance to the Theatre on which the story was written in tamil.This helped the audience to intrepret the film and mostly the classics were seen as Action masalas that were only technically better than tamil films.Times have changed and now Globalisation has narrowed the gap between rich and poor by dubbing the hollywood films in to tamil spiced with liberal use of tamil proverbs, idioms and tamil movie songs. At the library in my residential school near Chennai i came across magazines , 'EliteForces' And 'WWII' and developed a taste for world war II.So the theme of both 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' and 'A Farewell To Arms' appealed to me. As i was going through the role of french resistance against Nazi occupation i found the role of leading intellectuals of France interesting

Library

I love libraries.I love the smell of books.I love to hear the whispers and murmurs that have a special resonance when heard inside the libraries. I love the sight of books neatly arranged and thrown around in heaps.Each library has it's own personality.Most public libraries in India are not well lit.They are dark and damp.Some are excellent.They have very high ceilings.They are airconditioned and have good amount of light.They have comfortable chairs and canteens.But the fundamental character of any library is determined by the qualities of the people who visit.Till my seventh standardI didn't hear of library.My first affair with the library started at a residential school,Triveni Academy near chennai where I joined for eighth standard .As I was away from home for the first time and being a pampered kid I was terribly home sick.I found solace in the library.Library became my home and librarian my guardian. The librarian took a liking for me and made me feel as if i am one of the books.I got hooked and this addiction has continued.
The libraries can be broadly classified in to two.(1)The libraries at academic institutions and meant for researchers and scholars have a totally different personality from those (2)frequented by the general readers.The first types are dry and haughty.They exude knowledge and the consequent arrogance. But the other type not infected by the professional intellectuals is full of wisdom.It is motherly and engages the reader unconditionally.The readers of the first believe they know a lot and visit the library only to substantiate and to find support for what is known to them.They have a defined purpose and they confine themselves only to the books and fail to feel the library as an entity in itself.whatever pleasure they have in reading is incidental and purely intellectual.The second type of library has readers who wander in without any agenda.They simply love to read They know all about the librarian and staff.They feel humbled by the wisdom stored in the books.Although passionately opinionated,they readily accept that they know only a little.They donot plan and read.They graze the books randomly and meander through all the subjects.Their pleasure is emotional.
Years of formal education has made me in to a reader of the first type.I am trying my best to unlearn.