Field-time Companionship/How I Learned To Read Again

After nearly three years of (a) taking inordinate amounts of time to finish small-ish books, (b) starting books and not finishing them, and (c) hoarding up on newer, more interesting books nonetheless, I optimistically packed four books into my rucksack. I was headed out for about seven months of seclusion on the island of Great Nicobar, and four seemed overly-ambitions with my proximate track record. Boy, was I wrong.

I ended up reading around fifteen books, not including a couple of poetry compilations that kept me going on most days (living alone allowed me to strut about reciting loudly from Sarah Kay or Walt Whitman's collections. My heart was alive, as I professed poetically while cooking every night). It turns out, long ship rides aboard the M.V. Campbell Bay, sea breeze, complete solitude at my field base and the lack of internet facilitated my every loner hobby, reading included. 

Here are some of the books that stood out the most - they're now my trusty friends who have taken ship rides and tasted sea salt with me during my islandic isolation. 

The Hungry Tide
By Amitav Ghosh

This was my reintroduction into the world of fiction after a two-year sabbatical from it, and I couldn't have asked for a better one. I spent most of my first ship ride to the island sitting in the blistering sun on deck, reading my hardbound copy of The Hungry Tide. I mention hardbound, since it proved to hold up well against the fairly-frequent sea sprays that reached it. 

This book charts the story of an NRI cetologist, Piyali, who returns to eastern India to study the Irrawaddy and Ganges river dolphins around a tiger-inhabited island of the Sundarbans. Enroute, she encounters a similarly-aged translator from New Delhi, Kanai, who's visiting his aunt - a long-time settler of the island. Their paths entwine superficially, as she finds a field assistant, Fokir, who helps her navigate the seemingly unpredictable waters nestled in the estuaries of the Bay of Bengal. Amitav Ghosh has described, in painstaking and commendable intricacy, how Piyali and Fokir face challenges from society, the Forest Department and the raging waters themselves as a consequence of their field work. Apart from a parallel narrative through the book based on Kanai's family history, I occasionally forgot that it wasn't an account of true events, a testament to how well-researched the premise was. 

I have mixed feelings about how much I liked this book. I appreciated his attention to detail and the manner in which he interwove the histories of all his characters, but could sense it falling short in terms of where it went and how it ended. It was balanced precariously on the verge of cliche, rescued and held aloft by its eloquence. Nonetheless, I'm glad I read it, perhaps exacerbated by the open ocean, my own tussles with the Forest Department and my association with Juglu - my field assistant who seemed to embody Ghosh's description of Fokir. I wonder now about the manner in which someone outside of the marine/wildlife sphere would receive this book.

Academia Obscura
By Glen Wright

I read this book off of my Kindle app, which made it the perfect bathroom read - given the fact that I had an Indian toilet that needed squatting over. It's a satirical, cynical take on the world of academics - perfect for an idealistic researcher embarking upon her scientific career. I kid.

This book has been written by someone who was so fed up with the stagnation of his own PhD research, that he began collecting and compiling the works of academicians who chose to take themselves lightly. It's replete with Ignobel prize winners, offbeat publications, unusual grant applications and caricatures of the bizarre system that is our world of research. While certain parts of the book felt like a glorified version of Glen Wright's Twitter feed, with lists of academia's most unconventional components, it also hits upon some serious notes. Through examples of those who have tried to trick or fool the system, he has highlighted how ridiculous and anal journal publishers, postgraduate programs and PhD advisors can be. I would recommend this book to someone within academia who is either frustrated with the system or loves it intimately. It will either feed their annoyance or cheese them off - both of which would be fantastic.

84 Charring Cross Road
By Helene Hanff

Since 2012, this book has been in the 'Always Reading' segment of this blog, and rightfully so. Helene Hanff is a kindred spirit. Her words jump at me from the pages of this book, grab me by the collar and shake their fist at me, angrily questioning why I wasn't alive when she was holed up in her tiny apartment, hunched over her typewriter, littering her beautiful words with cigarette ashes and lint from worn sweaters. In 84 Charring Cross Road, Helene (look at me calling her by her first name) has arranged the letters of her correspondence with the Marks and Co. antiquarian bookshop in London, situated on 84 Charring Cross. Her unfiltered American sarcasm bounced off of the polished British courtesies of her correspondents, largely a Mr. Frank Doel, makes for a page-turner. You can see their friendship blossoming into familial ties, despite never having met over decades of exchanges. This book, single-handed, reaffirms my faith in people every time it begins to wobble.


The Dutchess of Bloomsbury Street 
By Helene Hanff

In this book, Helene visits London at last. After years of wishing she could, this book is the diary she kept on the trip she finally managed to salvage. After she published 84 Charring, her publishers packed her off on a book tour to the land of her dreams, feeding all her irrational anxieties of travel. She starts writing on the flight to London and doesn't stop. She calls herself the Dutchess of Bloomsbury Street, which is the street on which her hotel was, and lets you revel in her love for (and occasional frustrations with) this place that birthed and housed her every literary God. She describes each person she meets (including Joyce Grenfell!) and you find yourself intrigued by every interaction she has. It's also rather tickling to read about a single woman traveling alone in the 1960's, especially one of independent mind and intellectual (and eccentric) tastes. If you've read her letters, this book just confirms all you thought of her (good or bad) and lets you dive deep into her curious brain and sit there, smiling like an absolute fool.

Last Chance To See
By Douglas Adams (and Mark Carwardine)

Reading a book like this one on field, after three semesters' worth of courses about wildlife conservation, can be very existential. Douglas Adams, who doesn't usually write about wildlife, tailed Mark Carwardine on his journey to seven rather remote locations, chasing the few individuals of some endangered species across the world. Quite literally, the duo undertook this series of adventures to areas like Madagascar, New Zealand and Zaire to look for species that were considered so very endangered, that it may have been their last chance to see them. Mark was an ecologist with the World Wildlife Fund, and Adams, a writer with a flair for humour, was assigned to accompany him by the BBC to help document his travels and raise awareness for these vanishing species.

Adams, being new to the trials of traveling to inaccessible regions for field work, found comedy in the logistical nightmares they faced. His narratives of the contrast between Mark's cool acceptance of the challenges of working with wild spaces, officials and scientists, and his own naivete towards them all, make for a fantastic read. Apart from the travelogue nature of this book, each chapter hits upon the ecology of each species, descriptions of the habitats they are found in and the threats they face. It's a wonderful mixture of the the seriousness of extinction, the vulnerability of certain ecosystems and the lighter side of the trials of conservation efforts. The BBC and WWF came together to choose the perfect man for the job, who could pinch your conscience and heart even through the smile he so firmly puts on your face.

Go Set A Watchman
By Harper Lee

I wrote about Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird in a post from 2014 just after having let its long-overdue read seep into my melting brain. There was something incredible about how that book wove through my neurons and sat there, staring at me from axonal corners, smiling in glee knowing that it had given me food for thought for a long time. After her book had affected me so deeply during my college days, I had kept away from this sequel of hers when it came out. I was afraid of disappointment. Then, my advisor visited me on field at a time when I was running out of books to read and left behind his copy of Go Set A Watchman with me, and it sat there taunting me for two weeks before I finally decided to read her. 

The book was not what I was expecting. Perhaps I didn't know what to expect. The book opens up to Jean Louise Finch returning to Maycomb for her annual visit from New York, where she now works and feels at home. She's grown into an intelligent, headstrong woman, firm in her ideals of the world - a contrast from the tomboyish personality of her childhood that Lee made you fall for in Mockingbird. The book winds through her current adulthood, throwing in pieces of the puzzle that comprises how her family and the people of Maycomb had transitioned between books. It made me squirm, since it shook the foundation of the characters I had laid in my mind. But as I progressed through the book, I found how it wasn't a discomfort that came from sub-standard writing, but from Lee's caution thrown to the wind. She found ways to build upon characters that were already well-established and make her readers question what they thought was morally right. You tend to misunderstand Scout (J. L. Finch) at times, because her moral dilemmas upon discovering new truths (with the reader) make her react to everyday matters drastically. Perhaps her own acceptance or understanding of the true nature of society in her home town helped me reconcile with it all. Did I like this book? I still don't know. But I certainly cannot directly compare it to Harper Lee's first.

Homo Deus
By Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari is the kind of historian who churns out compilations of humanity that make you reel backwards and realise you've always wondered about what's wrong with people. His first book, Sapiens, was fascinating in the history of our species that it laid out and thought-provoking in how it challenged certain ideas of religion and culture. This book, on the other hand, wasn't merely stating facts. He used our expansive anthropological journey to try and predict what our futures look like. Chapter by chapter, he discussed the various paths we may take as multiple races of the same species progressing into the rapidly-transforming unknown.

In each chapter, he is unapologetic in his commitment to the possibility of our shared future turning out a certain way. I found myself constantly being caught up in philosophical viewpoints that opposed my own and I began disliking Harari for taking that contrasting stance. But then I'd be reminded that he was simply laying out multiple well-thought out hypothetical scenarios, and that he did not advocate any of them in particular. It makes me wonder what he actually thinks will happen. It's a good book to read as long as you aren't someone who worries needlessly anyway, because if you are, this could land many sleepless nights or sudden frozen moments where you stare into space (or the sea) and simply want to mutter, "but why?".

Ghachar Ghochar
By Vivek Shanbhag

A dear friend of mine who was also working in the islands at the time came across this book (and its author) while on field, read it cover to cover, and had it couriered to me in Nicobar the moment he finished. Originally written in Kannada, it's been translated into English superbly. I was out on field looking for my monkey troop unsuccessfully, when a postwoman from a nearby village informed me that I had a parcel waiting for me at the post office. An hour later, I abandoned my search for the elusive troop and picked up the parcel, which produced this glorious book when unwrapped. I scootered home, thinking of taking an hour's break before heading out to resume field work, and took a crack at the book. It had me hooked so strongly in the first 15 pages, that I ended up sitting on my floor for four hours straight reading the entire thing.

The story is so very Indian that I related to it even though nothing like it has ever happened to me. It's a tale of a lower-middle-class family that comes into a lot of wealth due to the enterprising decisions of an uncle. Beginning with the modest life they once led, sharing tiny rooms, old furniture and floor space with persistent ants, the family moved into a larger home with disposable income and, somehow, an altered sense of purpose and entitlement. A new bride joins this family in its post-wealth period, and becomes a moral compass and reference point that unravels the many layers of every character that Shanbhag has created. The ending of the book is chilling, and I found that to be the case because I saw a little bit of my own family in his characters. Without driving a literal point home, this book had my gut by the fist.