Death for Life

I have been reading William Dalrymple’s new book Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. It is based on real stories of nine people in search of piece, divine and sometimes giving up materialistic world.

A first story is about a nun of Jain religion. She gives away all her life with the belief that all attachments bring sufferings and finally embraces Sallekhana- fast to death.

Her life talks about all sacrifice, control of emotions, pain, sufferings to take new life. “When the body withers completely, the soul will take a new one, like a hermit crab finding a new shell. For soul will not wither, and in rebirth you simply exchange your torn and old clothes for a smart new suit,” she says.

After reading the entire story I have failed to understand the philosophy of the religion. It goes against the basic theory of human birth. We are born to live and death is the ultimate reality.

Why one has to forcefully push oneself to death when we are born to live the life. Living is the basic instinct of human being. All the discoveries and inventions in human history may be good or bad came from this instinct.

Now the second half part of the philosophy, which says the death is only for the body but the soul gets rebirth. It means you have greed to get another body. So, to get a new body, you torture the earlier body by giving up food, pulling hair, refusing to wear proper clothes etc.

I wonder why these contradictions in the theory are not being raised by the followers.

A Foreign Correspondent

Some people are born to do some jobs, this is what I have concluded from the initial few pages of a book by Rober Fisk : The Great War for Civilisation. I am zapped by reading few hundred pages of the book. Fisk was born to work as a foreign correspondent. He has been working in Middle East for more than 30 years and settled in Beirut now. He was one of the three journalists who interviewed Osama Bin Laden before 9/11. Fisk has a great understanding of issues in Middle East and his stand has been always anti-imperialists.

The preface of the book is very inspiring. He says 'I suppose, in the end, we journalists try- or should try- to be first impartial witness to history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: 'We didn't know- no one told us'.

I think all the journalist should adopt this attitude, at least I will. I have finished just few hundred pages of the 1200 of the fat book. But they just kept me engaged that I never felt like keeping the book aside. The opening of the book is with his first encounter with Bin Laden. First interview is not very descriptive but the second is.

After reading Osama's version over US invasion in Afghanistan and some other Muslim countries, I was amazed. Osama's some of the arguments against US sound logical but the way he has adopted to fight against the US are wrong.

In today's modern world, one cannot win a war in the name of religion. There has to be a direction to the war, which would be beneficial to oppressed. But people like Osama have no ideologue and no logic to their war. The question which always disturbs me is how long this battle between Christianity and Islam would go, killing crore of innocent lives.

I think to find out my answer, Fisk's book would definitely provide me some background and details of root cause of today's scenario.

Too boring...

I have been reading former BJP leader Jaswant Singh's autobiographical work A Call To Honour for more than 10 days. It is too boring and unnecessary lengthy. I don't even feel like reading it further but I want to read about Kandahar plan hijack case. I need to bear the book for may be one more day. I should finish it tonight.


But after this experience, I am not going to read his new book, Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, which created lot of controversy and as a result he was expelled from the party. I completely agree that everyone has personal opinion and Singh expressed it through the book. However, forgetting the main culprit of the partition Lord Mountbatten, BJP again opened a fire against Jinnah, Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel.

The boring text is also affecting my life. I have started feeling very dull and without any enthusiasm. I think I should finish it fast.

Nemade in Crossroads

I went to crosswords yesterday after three years may be. Please do not get surprised because it’s not on my way. I saw a board SALE from outside and immediately went in. Thousands of titles lying on the shelf and table and discount were up to 50 per cent.

Most of the books were really ordinary Dan Brown, Robin Cook, Sidney Sheldon, Paulo Coelho, Orhan Pamuk and many more for which you don’t need an discount. These titles are always available from Rs 50 to 150 at any road side shop in fountain. I was bored. I saw the entire collection twice but couldn’t find anything interesting. Some good titles I already had.

I must mention that they had en entire collection of Noam Chomsky and Karen Armstrong. Finally I got a story book Where The Jackals Howl by Amos Oz.

But a book shelf with regional books attracted me the most. It had Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati books. I was happy to see them. Surprisingly, in the Marathi collection books, the store had all books by Bhalchandra Nemade, one of the great modernist writers in Marathi. They had Kosala, Bidhar, Zool, Jarila and Hool. Some other good authors like Uddhav Shelke, Shyam Manohar and Rangnath Pathare were also in the collection. I was very happy to see the small Marathi collection among western, American and English Indian authors.

There is a common complaint from publishers that Marathi books have no buyers. But I think if available easily at any book store or at least the big one like Crossroads would definitely have buyers.

Bonus!

I got bonus last week. You may not believe but its true. One may wonder about the bonus in recession time so I have to tell the entire story. It actually started with a proposal of Maharashtra Government to build a 309 ft tall statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Arabian sea opposite to Marine Drive. The Government appointed an advisory committee for the project and Shahir Babasaheb Purandare was chosen as the president on it.


The controversy started when Maratha organisations opposed the appointment of Purandare alleging him to be biased and writing pro-Brahmin history of Shivaji. There were hot debates from both the sides (not from Purandare but his supporters) and some part of the history was questioned.


One of the allegation from the Maratha organisation was that the character of Shivaji's teacher Dadoji Kondeo did not exist. The Government also removed the mention of it from history books of standard 4th.


I have learned Shivaji mostly through my school books or short stories so this encouraged me to find the truth about the Maratha warrior. There are hundreds of books on Shivaji but I wanted to read some


One my friends suggested me a book by Jadunath Sarkar 'Shivaji and His Times'. It was published by Orient Blackswan. I went to them to collect the book. Years back, I was a frequent visitor of the office, as my friend was working there so knew some people there.


I just said hello to them and then came the surprise I mean bonus. One of the employees there offered me to write some review of there newly published books. I said ok and their kind sales manager handed me three books! (wow) namely This Gift of English (English Education and The Formation of Alternative Hegemony's in India) by Alok K Mukherjee, Good Women Do Not Inherit Land (Politics of Land and Gender in India) by Nitya Rao and Cinema and Censorship : The Politics of Control In India by Someswar Bhowmik.


One book about Indian cinema has been already taken by my friend in office and promised me to even review it. Now I am thinking which one to choose first for review.

Amen!

From thousands of years a man has been worshiping God in some of the other form. The world-wide belief is that 'He' knows everything and 'He' is responsible to run the World. 'He' is pure, holy and possess all the sanctity, which men don't. On the other hand, we think the human world is full of sins, ugliness and abuse. In order to preserve the sanctity, people prefer serving 'Him'. But the path is not so simple.

Former nun Sister Jesme' autobiography 'Amen' published in English recently opens 'the path' to the God's world which is full of sexual abuse, sex scandals, nun suicides, murders and corruption in Educational institutes.

Sr Jesme entres one of the Catholic church in Kerala during her pre-degree course as she gets revelation from Jesus Christ. She decides to become a nun and submits herself to the Christ with the hope of serving him, her entire life.

But as I told you its not so simple. She starts getting acquainted with the darker side of the Church organisation. She gets first experience of sexual abuse after realising girls in her batch were unsettled about going to the confession chamber. The complaint was that the priest there asks each girl if he could kiss them. When she opposes him, he tells her lines from the Bible on divine kisses.

In an other incident, a senior nun forces her to have sex and Sr Jesme has no option and accepts it. In one more incident where a priest asks her to strip. On denial over his demand he asks angrily if she had seen a man. When she says no, he strips himself, ejaculates and forces her to strip.
This is not enough she also alleges the educational institutes for being corrupt and discriminating poor and rich students. The discrimination among staff of the Church is also huge. The caste system very well exists in the Church.

The Church also tries to curtail Sr Jesme's honest efforts to bring transparency in the work. The Church wants to send her for psychiatric treatment and she has to leave the institution forever.
The autobiography is really shacking. It doubts the belief in religion or God. I wonder after so much of hardship and abuse that how can Sr Jesme still has faith in God and the institution. She says the belief only gave her power to deal the situation. Amen!

Dream comes to reality

I deposited my salary cheque today in account and was surprised to know that the account has some balance on the month end. It was like a dream come true for me that I have left enough cash to buy books on month ends.

After work I went to Oxford book store. A first book I saw was Amen by Sister Jasme, which was kept in new arrivals. I was looking for this book for quite a long time. It was much debated book since it reveals corruption and sexual abuse in Churches.

One of my friends was also looking for the same book and he had asked me to buy a copy for him. But the book was not available then. He thought that I didn’t want to buy it for him so avoiding.
He was repeatedly irritated me by reminding for the book. But what to do men it was not in the market. I gave him a list of leading book stalls from where he could have got it.

Finally he got the book two days before me. One of his friends bought it for him from Crosswords. Again the chap called me to tell this. Now what will I do if he has got the copy. I think he wanted me to feel jealous because he specifically told me that it is not available in any other bookstore.

I forgive him because he does not even know bookstores in Mumbai. Now I also have it and I can read with better speed than him.

Another book was A Case Of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. The book was available in paperback edition and in affordable price.

Moral of the story is dreams come into reality sometimes.