The kite runner
If one talks about the quantum of meaning in an expression then it is said that a picture speaks more than a thousand words. For it is correctly assumed that for mind to see the depth, light, the expression the detail ..One requires more words than brush strokes. But then there is only so much that a picture can speak, and that is where the magic of words comes through. And every once in a while comes across a picture of words.. And then I wonder if words are a quantum of meaning and a picture is more than thousand then what number should one assign to picture of words; some thing that you will come across many times in 'Kite Runner'.
The novel must have generated interest considering it was an English novel by an Afghan, with its plot spanning Afghanistan from the time before the Russian invasion to Taliban. ( See how the book review by Kenneth Champeon begins ). Kite Runner is however not a political book. Khaled Hosseini talks about Taliban but only in the last leg of the book. He talks about revolution, infighting, Russian invasion not in terms of its politics but in terms of its consequences. The consequences of any violent conflict. He talks about loss, about getting uprooted and inexplicable cruelty that unleashes itself in such times. However Kite Runner is not about a land and its people under violence. At this time the scene of the novel shifts to America.
Kite Runner is a novel that is about things that you and me know of, set in a land and situations that you and me do not know of. Kite runner is about a father and a son. It is about friendship, the betrayal and the love. It is about a culture and pride trying to preserve itself in land of freedom. It is about divides of race and class. It is about guilt, punishment and redemption. It is about a lot of things. The greatness of the novel is that it is only after you are done reading the novel and think about that you realize the multitude of themes the novel touches. While you are reading all these themes beautifully blend into each other as the life of aimer...Something that you live with the book. While you are reading you don't think of guilt as a theme, instead you see the image of Hussein's trousers through amour's eyes and feel the tightening of your stomach. That is the power of Hossein as a writer; his ability to write through images...Through pictures of words. Something one does not understand until one feels the joy of Aamir running after the kite in the end.
Galaxy: Us and Them
Like twenty or under twenty somethings we liked to keep an uncomplicated view of life. It is not customary for people in the age as us to be burderned with the politics of grey zones, overlapping boundaires and fragmented society. We kept it simple. Our world was divided into two zones - us and them. As we entered the lush green campus of kanpur we were slotted into two different hostels - Hall II and Hall III. I entered Hall III and got introduced to the very simple social classification - those on the left hand side of the lawn tennis court were 'us' and those on the right side were them ( or vice versa depending on which side of the road you stand and look ).
Us and Them . A simple idea. The classicial dichotomoy one finds in any conflict worth its salt - from colonial struggles to presidential contests, the most interestring battles have been between the powerful two. There have been instances of multiples clases, and complex conflicts between these multiple classes, but somehow they never seem to capture the forces of the 'Us' and 'Them' conflict. You have one enemy and all your energy and passion is directed towards defeating that one enemy. Uncomplicated. There are no multiple targets, no varying degrees of enemity and friendships, no differing premiums on victories in different battles. And that is also why glaalxy was so fierce. There were no disctractions involved. We knew our enemy, our strenght and their weakness, we knew our battleground, we knew when we will fight, we knew for how long we will fight. We knew everything.- except who will be holding that shiled in their hands - 'us' or 'them'?
Us and Them. Two tribes. Two soceities. Two nations ? (And here i launch into a slef indulgent social analysis.... those who prefer anecdotal material and prefer to draw inferences on their own are advised to skip)....
{ In progress ]
The Magnificent Ruins
Aged by the weather,
weathered by the time.
Broken by the memory,
Trodden by the stares.
Not fallen it stands,
boundary of broken walls
signatures of existence,
Not dust, it is a ruin.
Some pieces refuse to move,
the moist plaster,
or no place to go,
or stubborness of fractured will.
No phoenixian attempts,
not yet been brunt,
No place in history,
forgotten but visible.
Some pieces defy themseleves
hanging in mid air,
bound by the pride...
a ruin...
but still a magnificent one.
Bored but not quite so!
Sitting on a sunday afternoon, in a small library overlooking the rhine, juggling between the explorer windows for unfinished assignments and online games, it is but abvious that random thoughts are having a field day in the obscure corners of the brains. From the highly practical problems of a non disposable toilet paper that conservea trees to much more existensial multilemmas, the imagination was working overtime to satiate me, myself and my boredom. Well if one has to be entirely honest, then i would not have called it boredom but for the lack of a better word and limitations of my own vocabulary. So there I was bored and not yet so.
Rhine is nowadsays foggy. It is foggy in the afternoons too. It is in these foggy afternoons as i amuse by boredom by juggling between the explorer window, rhine also amuses itself by a little game. It disappears. Beneath the translucent sheet of fog it vanished. Leaving by its banks a green path and a road. Looking though the window in the small library it is the edge of the world. Years of education of geography and physics take a backseat as my eyes are convinced that beyond the road outside my window there is nothing. Just white fog. Surprisingly though it is not an unpleasant thought. Sitting there just before the nothingness, as i tell myself that i have reached the edge of the world, i feel i have arrived somewhere. A very satisfying feeling to have when you are twnety three and are spending a sunday afternoon juggling between explorer windows. The only thing breaking the intenstiy of that feeling were the cars that were speeding on the famous German autobahn. Fast at the edge of the world. It was both frightening and wonderous.
Though this was not as wonderous as when out of the nothingness that seemed to be occupying the space wher rhine was materialized a man on a horse. A man on a horse! A horse with a light brown coat that would have probably blended in with other horses easily had there been other horses. However there were no other hosrse and that made the horse that had nothing extraordinary about itself as an extraordinary horse, a fact that had not escaped the knowledge ofthe horse and was clearly evident in the sheer pride of his canter. The horse moved easily and slowly. And it was not slow like the movies where a slow motion shot of a horse in a large field makes you want to go and run out. It was slow like when you know that someone was watching you because at that momemnt you were the thing to be watched. The man riding him was wearing cowboy hat, and had it been a was unihabited landscape the two would have made a good shot for a Marlboro ad. But there they were, on the green with a road with zipping cars on one side and a rhine with nothingness on the other side. It was inspirational. As i watched them with ease at the stage when you know that you are inspired but are on the cusp of finding what that inspiration for, a car zipped by. The sun appeared above the mist, the rhine bored by its games started going back to its palce and the horse and the man rode out of the sight.
I reverted back to juggling the explorer windows and getting bored but not quite so.
Galaxy - A mere competition
Chapter 1
For a long time I have been considering writing about Galaxy. The commonplace excuses of lack of time or inherent lazyness however do not explain why i have not yet written about it. It was the sheer enormity of the task that was daunting me. What right do i have to write about something that combines the passions of thirty years of batches? Just because i was there once, does not make mean that i know what it is all about. I would always end up misrepresenting it in some way or other, for galaxy was never separated from controversy. Is it even possible to write about galaxy without undermining it? Once i got tired of these I came up with a new set of arguements. Just as somethings get spoilt by a touch, or by a look, some things get spoiled by words. Words can never describe galaxy. The essence of galaxy prohibits it from being written about. However beneath all these arguements was the simple truth. I did not have enough faith in my ability as a write to write about it....
I still do not...
Yet i write about it today in the hope that someday, someone who understood galaxy better than me and was a better writer would read this and write about galaxy. In a way i guess it is my attempt to be assocaited with the insignificant history of an insignificant event. Galaxy as we knew it has ended and yet this is not an obituary or an eulogy.
Eight days; twenty four hours non stop; events from drama, debate, art, music and dance to cultural shows, parades to unique events as publicity events, backdrop making; over 1000 participants and in the end two hostels with years of rivalry between them fighiting it out for the coveted shield.
If you have not seen galaxy or even if you have seen it but you have not been a part of it then the above mentioned description will suffice. Maybe i can add in a few more words here and there and stretch it into a paragraph and the namybe you will end up remarking in some conversation some where that yes you heard about an event in IIT Kanpur and it is supposed to be great. That would be an easy thing to do, and i can get away with less words if i do that. However this piece might have some readers who are from IIT Kanpur, and of those some would have seen it happening, and of those some would have been part of it. And they know that the three line definition is jsut a label, it says nothing about Galaxy , and they would know that i know this too and yet i all i wrote was those three lines.
So i must go on and write more....
Garbage Can
An eager hand explores
An eager stomach drives,
Fingers sift easily and quickly
An assortment of our waste.
A broken bottle of gin,
A half smoked cigarette,
A packet of potato chips,
some moist some crumbled.
Doubtful eyes inspect
Nose confirms the odor of stale
Tongue detects the rancid
and yet it must be picked.
He is not so unwise
he knows stale has a degree,
He can still eat those chips
they are not as stale as him.
A mouth as eager as hand
crunches the moist chips
Taste, sight and smell forgotten
hunger is the strongest sense.
The whispering sound
or the crumple of ironed seam,
He looks up at the sound
a camera looks at him.
A satisfied click of shutter
The bent knee stands up.
The picture has been taken
And a mouth eats on.
He puts the camera in the cover
He straightens his tie to work
A brief yet welcome distraction.
A good photo and a good story.
The garbage can shudders
out of wind, out of cold
or out of tired shoulders
of an exploring eager hand.
