Footnotes on Salim Ali

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Salim Ali was, in many ways,  more than unique - probably the only celebrated ornithologist from India, and one of those rare men of science who can claim both fame and influence on a larger, non-scientific community. For someone who chose a very, very rare profession for his time and kept it to its simplest form, he succeeded beyond probably his own expectations, and definitely beyond everybody else's. Among other things, the basic fact that comes out of a more-than-casual look at his life tells us that he was, above all, a man of science - and a field ornithologist who tried to make wildlife conservation a pragmatic activity rather than a sentimental one.

When one reads his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow, the struggles one sees from a young Salim to become what he was best at are illustrative: A serious lack of opportunity and enthusiasm in offical circles, lack of field enthusiasts and horrid travel arrangements, and a general lack of information about Indian birds during his early times. These illustrate the career of a man who shaped, and made a past-time to a profession for many in his country, rather than a mere practitioner.

A few side-notes in his memoirs actually help us understand his choice of career and life - it was definitely a love for birds, but more than that. He displays an innate dashing nature,  recalling a lifelong love for Shikar and Motorcycles. A free will with a distinct unwillingness to bow to any hypocrisy comes across, many times about the British (not least his frank appraisal of British toilet facilities at their annual derby race in London) and at one point on French arrogance. Nor does Dr. Ali come across as someone without a knowledge of his achievements - in fact, he gives a fairly exhaustive list of awards and accolades he got from various sources, both scientific and political, as encouragement to folks interested in birdwatching. But behind all this, he gives ample evidence of dedicated hard work into the study of birds. A lot of his work went into Bombay Natural History Society, or BNHS, which continues to publish a lot of his books.
   
Salim Ali's one of many gifts was his writing - simple, clear and arresting. This effective writings is what made his books so famous - they were not just records of birds, but highly readable ones. I have had occasion to refer to the famed The Book of Indian Birds, and have never been disappointed by his writing.

Interestingly, almost never does he record any sort of complaint about financial hardship or personal disappointments despite losing his parents very early, and his wife in his middle age. Tyabjis - Salim Ali's family - largely come out as a generally affluent family, and his wife Tehmina as more than a mere enthusiast in nature. The love and support he received from his family throughout his long life is one of the evocative and touching silver lines of his autobiography.

Thrilling Tales from the Cold War

Of the great events that influenced literature, cold war fed off innumerable spy novels, provided countless opportunities for budding novelists, spawned off a gazillion movies, among other things. Just highlighting two:

The spy who came in from the cold by John le Carré is considered a classic spy novel, arguably the best. It is blatantly realistic in approach, drawing from the experience of its author. Taking off all hype and concentrating on paperwork, patience and method, this books really brought out the spies from their James Bond-ish outlook to the real world.

The Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith is another one I enjoyed, albeit its unnecessary length. Looking at the world from Russia, it sets its act in Moscow and New York. The everyday life in the Soviet really comes out well, although it has very little to do with the actual cold war - most of the action happens around traditional crime taking advantage of national borders. But then, Cold war adds colour which, if missing, would have made the novel a bore.

The Trouble with The Trouble With Physics

Troubled Reading

Well, I confess that I did not complete the book. Mostly because it is my ever-lazy attitude, but the book itself contributed to a fair extent. As such, I may not do justice to the book itself, but I can atleast give an idea of what to expect.

The problem is the book talks about real modern-day physics. And that itself is not a problem, but it focuses on those parts that are not yet experimentally confirmed, which according to the author is largely the modern particle physics. Given that any subject's toughest part is its theoretical part, explaining something as tough as particle physics without empirical descriptions is bound to bore a lot of people. For me, lack of flowing prose and impressive explanations turned out to be turn-offs. And I think the writing is also boring!!!

Well, apart from that - actually you can learn a lot from this book if you are patient with the author. It is more like reading a textbook all over again, though :(

Crossed Careers - My Life as a Quant by Emanuel Derman

Crossed Careers

I chose to read this book hoping for some nostalgia about Columbia and NYC. The parallels I share with the author, even though for a very brief period and separated by 40 years of life - Columbia, life at the big apple and some degree of association with wall street made me buy this book, and the author definitely succeeded in evoking some degree of nostalgia in me. I definitely found what I was looking for - beautiful recollections of Columbia, Upper west side and Wall street culture in general.

Physics and Finance are explained in a not-too-complicated fashion, with most of the accounts limited to cursory topical introductions, just enough to give the reader a context. The cultural differences and similarities between academia, bell labs and wall street make for a very interesting read, and is the biggest take-away from the book. The narrative itself is never boring, and the book is very readable.

I guess people familiar with the finance industry obviously have a head-start to enjoy the nuances described by the author, but I don't think this makes it appealing only for them. I am hoping to read a few more such accounts from diverse careers, giving sneak peeks into the world of other careers.

Footnotes on Poochante

Poochante

Kannada literature is crazy about classifying its writers into categories, creating well-defined pigeonholes for every nook and corner of the language. I don't know where we got this culture from, but as a result we have more than a handful of literary movements which make no sense to the amateur reader, who just wants to have a good read. Gladly,  K P Poorna Chandra Tejaswi, or Poochante,  went off the beaten path and rejected all such pigeonholing. He professed that he would not be bound to any one method, and in his own words "started writing whatever came to his mind" (Quote from Annana Nenapu). And just for the record, this is not a scholar's critic, but an amateur's random notes.

The most striking thing in Poochante's Kannada is its style - the man was blessed with a writing style rarely seen in print. His writings are simple, fluid and effective beyond any other contemporary Kannada writer - and I am including people like  S L Bhairappa, U R Ananthamurthy etc in this list.  Add to this the honesty and simplicity of his writing - you won't see Poochante muddling his writings with half-baked convictions. The simple awesomeness of simplicity is that it makes more people understand, and so like, your writing. Truly. After reading and comparing the three authors mentioned above, I have a question: While it may be great to write social treatises and revolutionary essays, what is the point if your reader gets deadly bored, or gets dangerously confused after reading your work?

If we briefly look at the timeline of his works, we see that Poochante started writing in line with the Navya Sahitya (new literature) movement of his time. Starting with a collection of short stories and another collection of poems, wrote quite a few essays, and then moved onto novels, and these form the best of his writing.

In his early works, many of which are essays and critiques, we notice a clear opposition to sanskrit-inspired literature, an active resolution to fight against the traditionalism of the Hindu society. I think at least at some point Poochante had a very active thread against the so-called Brahminical Kannada Literature, and a conviction that such literature is not the true literature. I think he was convinced that literary movements which do not influence society into a transformation, sometimes resulting in a widespread change in a region's outlook to its country - read his thoughts on Tamil movement - were useless. I guess he retained most of these thoughts to the end of his career, but he does not seem to have written so actively, or campaigned for such a literary-societal movement in his later life.

But he did move away from all that, lived a farmer's life in a small corner of Karnataka, interacted with nature to an extent unheard of by other authors, and defined his own niche, where he explores human life and its interactions with mother nature. This forms the bulk of his writings, especially his masterpiece - Karvalo.

The biggest complain about his literary career I have is that he wasted a lot of effort into bringing out translations from English into Kannada. For a man of his originality, this was indeed a wasted effort - not that the output was in any way less than excellent - his translations of Kenneth Anderson's experiences hunting down man-eaters remain arguably the most vibrant record of hunting in Kannada. Many of his later books are collections of essays about geography, science and history - a far cry from the indecipherable connections created between elephant, man and nature in Krishnegowdana Aane, (Krishnegowda's Elephant) the short story I rate as his best.

But then, apparently he was that type of a person - interested in a lot of fields, curious about nature and man, and impossible to pigeonhole. His experiments at photography, sketching and other forms of expression remain an inspiration to our generation.

Lastly, did I know the man? No, I never even met him - except for a glimpse of him in Shimoga in a function full of people, through a window out of the building, where as a 12-year old I had to ask my father to point him out for me. I know him only through his pen, and some say that is the easiest way to be misguided. But then, his pen has kept my admiration of him alive for nearly 17 years, and basically made at least one 15-year old sacrifice afternoon cricket and pickup books to read and re-read. Well, if that cannot make an author proud, what will?

Bangalore Book Festival 2010 - First Impressions

As most people in Karnataka know, The Bangalore book festival is back in the Palace grounds. I have made it a habit to visit every year if I am in the country, and unfortunately that was not the case for the last three years. People told me this year it is much better than previous years, and I have to say I had high expectations.

It was a quite pleasant experience - of course, we have to forget the bad language of people supposed to help us park - with lots and lots of options for Kannada book lovers. That was the part I loved most - every major Kannada publisher was there, with a considerable variety of books. So I was able to collected a few works missing my bookshelf in Kannada. Nice to know they have started to re-publish books like Rangannana Kanasina Dinagalu - not seen in print for a long time.

English would have been better - I kept seeing the same titles in every other shop, and was hard put to find rare books in English. I was rather hoping that Bangalore readers would be exposed to a somewhat wider reading world than they would from a usual visit to Sapna or Crossword, but for me that was not the case. The single English book I bought is the one available in every major bookstore - Ramachandra Guha's new book Makers of modern India.

Arts was the most disappointing section, though - it failed me completely in digital photography, and the usual display of Ravi Varma's paintings had a few more not-so-famous artists added to their list. I must say expansion in arts - both books and paintings - has been very little over the years.

Only one place selling ebook readers was there, and I am hoping the empty stalls will be occupied over the course of the exhibition with more tehno-enthusiasts. Not that I am a fan of ebook readers - quite the opposite, in fact - but that is the changing page of reading, and Bangalore bookworms deserve a display of available readers.

Overall, I must say it is pulling crowds, and is showing signs of succeeding beyond most other book fairs of today. The face that I spent only 1/10th of the budget I had gone with probably shows how much scope is there for expanding the range of works, even by the standards of a rank amateur like me, but overall it looks like it is doing its job.

Remembering Will Durant

Will Durant...he was the man who made philosophy popular, history thrilling, and reading a fascination in the early 20th century. It has been nearly a century since the ever-popular 'Story of Philosophy' came out, but its popularity has not reduced at all - even now from Bangalore to New York, the one book I see that is commonly flashed across in bookstores is the story of philosophy.

True - western philosophy has changed an awful lot, approaches to teaching western philosophy has changed, but the value of enjoying a historical account of some of the greatest people in history has not changed at all - Durant definitely has a penchant for studying people more than theories - that, and the wonderfully absorbing English of Durant is what makes this work a must in every bookshelf.
Durant has written somewhere that if we read Spinoza's ethics carefully, we will forever remain lovers of philosophy.Read the story of philosophy at leisure, and you will remain forever a lover of reading.

One great criticism of Durant's 'Story' is that he did not mention two of the most original philosophies of all time - Indian and Chinese. Well, some say he forgot to mention the motherland of philosophy when he omitted Indian philosophy. He sort of made amends to that in his 'Story of Civilization' series, though - his detailed account of philosophical thoughts is a rare thing to see in a volume dedicated to history.

Unlike the story of philosophy, this 11-volume set is no longer being printed - I had to buy a collectible edition for a small fortune to add this to my collection - and the later volumes are co-authored with his wife, Anne Durant. But the first volumes are just as lyrical, and make as compelling a reading as ever. Being a study of world history, Durant looks at history's major personalities, does not give us a list of events to read through, paints a rare picture where he tries to view history through its major people, not events. After all, isn't our society what we, the people, make it?

Agreed that after nearly 40 years of the last volume being published - and 70 since the first volume - much has changed. Both history and philosophy have grown, and the modern student needs to know more than what these books can teach us. But for those of us who want to sit back in an armchair, who can read just to enjoy reading, Will Durant remains a perennial favourite.