Notes on Notes on Grief

I have been reading much of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's writing off late. There's something powerful about her unapologetic sense of place and deep resonance with the characters that breathe through her words - fictionalized or not. It's increasingly rare to find writing that lacks shades of pretense or the attempt to sound intelligent. Writing that simply stands for itself, confident, unwavering in its meaning and purpose. Yet, I'd imagine, the meaning and purpose carried through her pages must change for each reader, different in their lived experiences. 

Initiated into her mind through her popularizing TED talk and her book on why We Should All Be Feminists, I found myself craving more. Her book 'The Thing Around Your Neck', an anthology rooted in the varied yet shared culture of Nigerians living both inside and outside their native country, left me introspective and shattered. Her resolve against pandering to a white manner of writing, retaining her original voice down to the language in which her characters think - translating dialogue only when necessary - was thrilling to read. It made me find footing in my own culture, relating to experiences I simultaneously have and have not had. She has a knack for addressing entrenched societal injustices not by shining light on them, rather, by showcasing the lives of people who live through them. Gender stereotypes, familial battles, sexual assault, political strife or even death - each navigated through parts that make up an individual, rather than the sole definitions of a character or their fate. There's more to life than its isolated incidents, gender, sexuality or marital status. The complexity of humanity, emotion and intelligence run far deeper.

This morning, I finally decided to read her recently published Notes on Grief. Three dear friends sent me a link to this bit of writing independently, each certain that I'd appreciate and echo her sentiments. Knowing to take their recommendations seriously, I consciously put off reading it. With the pandemic surging and bad news knocking closer home each day, I was far from eager to read what would be, no doubt, hard-hitting thoughts on grief while so many were actively living through it. Not surprisingly though, after having put a virtual pin in it for three weeks, I found myself tempted enough with a chunk of early daylight to spare. I'm glad I gave in.

Adichie articulates her thoughts from the months leading up to and following her father's sudden, unexpected death. Her bursts of emotion, written as punctuated chapters of what seem like fleeting ponders, were notably similar to how I process grief. While I don't express crippling sadness externally in the manner she recounts from her own reaction to the news, I find that loss leaves me feeling just as listless. The kind of listlessness that results in a constant internal dialogue between different voices - ranging from crumbling to optimistic - all canceling each other out to come across as outwardly composed. Warm nostalgia fills me like a sentimental hug on some days, resulting in several remember when's, while on others, I'm enveloped in a cloud of despair, with not much linking the two. 

Her jumping thoughts aptly represent what grief ultimately feels like. It's not a constant languishing, even though there is often the expectation for it to be. It's a shuffling of feet, a nagging discomfort and emptiness that makes little sense. I don't think the stages of grief are as straight forward as we're led to believe. It's not the neat succession of states of mind, rather, it's the jumbled coexistence of them all. It is often shared, but never directly. Everyone experiences, expresses and envisions it differently. Ever notice how we crave solidarity in sadness, but seldom find comfort in it? 

~

 Oh well. It's now been two days since I started writing this post, and my thoughts have dispersed and diffused. Perhaps I'll attempt making sporadic sense of my losses and grief here on out inspired by Adichie's note-making. I've spent most of my life note-taking, and making is an art I am still working on. It was striking to read words of vulnerability from a strong, awe-inspiring, independent feminist - one whose speeches and writing otherwise tend to invoke a sensation of power and solidity in me. Her notes were subtle reminders that (now more than ever) we should be kinder to ourselves, and make allowances for feeling. It's important. No one ought to be defined in one singular manner - not Chimamanda or you or me - like gender, sexuality, grief or self-expression, identity is fluid. (Yet another take, perhaps, on the Dangers of a Single Story.) 

I'll close now, and turn to her next promising piece -

Day 48: Nicobar Diaries

25th December 2017

Christmas. And now thirteen whole years since the tsunami wrecked havoc and changed the lives and personalities of nearly everyone on this island. 

I just made myself a stiff cup of tea and an omelet. My white-dog visitor, who trots in through the back door every morning is now looking at me with pseudo-paavam* in his eyes. He seems disappointed about my lack of leftovers. My rice-and-potatoes from yesterday have clearly raised his expectations, and my stiff roti isn't doing anything for him tonight. (It's averaging 40 degrees C with max humidity - I'm without a fridge and can't store anything, so I'm finally learning to cook for one.) What a darling, I still can't bring myself to name him.**

~~

Post-chai: Helene Hanff once signed 20 copies of 84 Charring Cross Road for some booksellers in Australia on 26th July 1971. The inscriptions say 'To an unknown booklover'. I had a brief moment of tearful eyes imagining holding one of those 20 books in my hands. 

I am very emotional these days, and I break down a lot. Living alone sure lowers one's inhibitions. 

Also - Helene was alive until 1997 - it's thrilling to think we overlapped for three years on this planet, although we would have been wrinkly (for different reasons) and far away from one another the whole time. 

Today's idle pondering led me to think about how I have the mind of an introvert but the heart of an extrovert. That the things I love to do, or dream of turning into a career, involve long periods of solitude or time with my thoughts. Too much time with my thoughts, though, can get a bit much. Apparently, I can think at 150 kmph, especially during long scooter rides at 30 kmph. I wonder if I'll ever strike a balance between these different versions of myself.

Yesterday was a long day, as were all the others between my entries. I've been distributing my citizen science calendars all over the island and it has taken me into the homes of a wide assortment of people and tugged viciously at my heartstrings. I had already given out ~100 by the 23rd, and had hoped to cover as many homes as I could (5? 10?) - holiday haze had already set in. 

The first family I visited was supremely enthusiastic about my work, and took me all over their plantation to show me some of the damage 'my' monkeys had caused - eaten coconuts left atop leaves or dropped to the ground, banana trees that had clearly been ravaged, some without a single fruit left on the stalk, young trees that had been killed because the monkeys yank out the apical bud which is full of juicy nutrients. They had put nets around the plantation, but I couldn't understand how they could ever work; they were no more than five feet high and the monkeys would have no trouble getting over them. A lot of these precautions are well-meaning, but fall short in execution because of the inordinate time needed to see them through, or their in-affordability. Monkey-proofing isn't cheap, and their steadfast problem-solving abilities don't help. They also have dogs tied around the farm that seem to be one measure that works - I later discovered several dogs kill monkeys during altercations; everyone keeps it mum, but they don't stop it from happening either. 

By this time I had already spent over an hour there, and they welcomed me into conversations like we'd known each other for months. Being Sunday, the two lounging brothers and one of their daughters offered to show me the Joginder Nagar beach where sea turtles come to nest. I agreed even though I'd been there before, and I'm glad I did. I got an in-depth tour of the areas where the tsunami hit them worst; where the old road used to be, how far the fields once stretched and, of course, the turtle nests. They seemed happy to have someone to remember the fateful day out aloud with - perhaps it was just the time of year. There aren't many nests so far, it's still early in the turtle season - one leatherback and four olive ridleys. One of the brothers mentioned that the appointed forest guards tend to inflate the number of eggs laid every year to maintain Joginder Nagar as an important place for turtle nesting. If not, they could get posted far off in Galathea***, and no one wants that if it can be helped. I followed them on my scooter along tire-width sand tracks by the coast to come to a tiny lagoon where one can occasionally see saltwater crocodiles. We returned to their home around noon after the informal tour, where the brothers said they were impressed with my skillful riding along the narrow gullies, when in reality I was certain I would skid the entire while. My stomach had unclenched only when my wheels hit tar again. 

For those who depend on agriculture/plantations, life isn't easy. They need to be (and have) watchdogs everywhere. Along the coast, they face cows and need to smear cow dung over the young trees to keep them away. They showed me the older coconut trees that were still standing after the tsunami. The point where the water hit them had shriveled, and all the growth ever since has been narrower than the rest of the tree. Some of them don't even fruit anymore. 

After much chatter and now with an irrefutable camaraderie, I ended up having lunch with them after all. Now, in the late afternoon, I realized there wouldn't be any point visiting more homes that day - everyone was either leaving to go to the Gurudwara or preparing for Christmas. After they (excitedly) shared some photos of a couple of whale strandings that they told me about at Joginder Nagar from years ago, and of them siting on a pregnant leatherback turtle (this seems to be a trend among the islandic youth), I took their leave and headed home. 

Enroute, I stopped at Mugger Nala to sit by the sea for a while, which was, as always is, lovely. I welled up again. It's been an overwhelming month so far - the travel, the solitude, the home-hunting, the forging of new friendships, the disappointments, the seemingly endless monkey-caused strife, building empathy, the independence, the grandeur of the island, and the helplessness of it all. I then felt tired of feeling so listless and sorry for myself and decided I'd go to the community church for midnight Christmas mass. I drove up to a sweet Nicobarese home I had visited before and enquired about the specifics of their celebrations - I'd come prepared. I purchased a Nicobari lungi and stitched it up for the night. I love it already and could live in it, they are uncomplicated and comfortable to wear, especially in the humid heat. (I also finally managed to get some good vegetables in the bazaar.)

Time to go find my monkeys - more later.

--

* paavam is a Tamil word that implies 'poor thing' 

** My neighbours and I did, ultimately, agree on 'Pandu'

*** Galathea is a bay at the southernmost part of the island, far removed from the villages and separated by ~5km of forest. It's quite a grueling posting for the forest guards, and rarely their first choice of work place!

Day 37 - Nicobar Diaries

14th December 2017

(I have no food on my table - plastic table and chair bought to aid work and provide one of those required surfaces upon which one can put things - and yet there are always tiny ants swarming over it. They climb over my arms while I work and then travel over the island with me.)

It took some time for things to get going once I got here. I spent two very long days on the ship, during which I had an attack of loneliness, a little breakdown when my cabin-mates weren't around and then wrote some cheesy letters to friends. It was only as the ship was approaching Campbell Bay - the three hours of crawling towards the harbour in sight - when I was introduced to Jaya and her daughter by the wonderful old man I spoke of, who chatted me up while I was looking for dolphins. Of all the introductions and meetings I've had so far, which is many, this one has truly blossomed. We've become dear friends seemingly overnight, albeit in a mother-daughter manner. She and her family (husband who works in the Stores for the Forest Department and two girls just younger than me) adopted me without taking no for an answer. They gave me a bed to sleep in while I struggled to find an empty shelter to rent for my stay.

Jaya still stresses out about my well being, especially if too long has passed since I dropped by for tea or a meal. I'll never stop being amazed by how hospitable people here can be. Coming from Mumbai where our door is often closed even to friends and family if unannounced, I wonder if I deserve such love and warmth. It's not easy being on either side of that door, and I'll be damned if I don't uphold Nicobari values well into my life.

With this family's help, a lot of asking around, riding around on my scooter, some begging and groveling, I convinced a Mr Murugan to rent out one of two shelters that had been left in his care. He said I could have the one without a working bathroom, having promised the "good" one to a family who was to arrive soon. He and his right-hand-guy promised to help me fix up the house within 3 days, during which time I moved out of the Government guesthouse and into Jaya's home. After a week of their call-dodging, false promises and my nagging, I finally received the keys to a semi-functional home. It took me some days and a trench in my stipend to set it up and clean - and I live to tell the tale.

Work-wise highlights

-- I decided to begin conducting my interviews from Govind Nagar itself, as I was still setting up home in that village and it helped to not travel too far in that time. I got my surveys printed, charged up my dictaphone and set out. My first two interviews were awkward. I realized this only later while listening to my under-confident self on the recorder. I have a terrible recorded voice, so child-like and high-pitched, why do people speak to me over the phone?

Anyway, I picked up pace, confidence and structure soon enough and have managed to complete most of my interviews for this settlement. I am much more fascinated now than I've ever been. The stories and experiences that I get to hear make me feel for both the people and monkeys. Looking at conflict through avenues that bring me closer to the affected and the affectee is hard on my thoughts about the situation here.

The interviews are varied and every home is different in the way its members respond. Some homes have enthusiastic interviewees who answer most of my questions even before they escape my lips. A couple of people have enacted their experiences or the behaviours of the visiting monkeys. Some people are willing to share, but feel their experiences aren't worth sharing. One old man was so busy cleaning rice, he took 20 seconds of contemplation to answer each question. Sometimes it's easy and fun and intriguing, and at times there are long, awkward pauses and smiles. And generally, there's chai.

Most of the non-academic details from my interviews are in a document I'm maintaining on the laptop. The optimist in me thinks there's a book to be written from all this, the potential is mind-boggling. Gently having mentioned this to Ma and Nana over the phone led to them recommending illustrators for the book I haven't yet written. The instinctive encouragement on their part makes me want to give it a shot.

-- I've nearly habituated my troop entirely and it's a humbling feeling. I don't take this trust lightly, especially since I know what it was like when I first started out. I'm following the troop near B-Quarry beach, decided to do so after piloting with 4 different ones. The others were either inaccessible in spurts or outside the anthropogenic gradient I was interested in. I think I made a wise choice with this troop, since their home range covers forest patches, clearings, human habitation and coastal areas. I'm constantly discovering new things about their behaviour that I'd enjoy delving deeper into later on. I'm keeping record of these ideas, they keep me engaged.

I met a pujari whose temple is just at the beach. He feeds the monkeys regularly, much to the dismay of some people. Sometimes he shouts out to me, informing me that they're arriving. Often I'm following them already, but I humour him and thank him heartily for the help. He's a Tamilian and chats me up whenever he gets a chance. I've now developed a short-short hand so that I can continue making observations while he tells me about his life, the monkeys and Lord Krishna. He's been inviting me to his temple for evening prayers, I think I might go one of these days.

The pujari offering some coconut prasaad to my study troop

While the macaques are a bunch of naughty goofballs in most people's eyes, I can't help but be in awe of them. At the end of the day, these are wild animals - brilliant, intelligent and full of personality. Maybe our shared mannerisms and diet make them so relatable that we overlook these things. I also realized that I underestimated the time I need with each troop - it's a combination of now wanting to delve deeper into each one and juggling the behaviour work with my social surveys. I'm wondering whether to stick to just one and get to know them intimately and reliably.

-- I had an idea for citizen science a few days ago, which Rana seemed to really like as well. I'm flying with it. I start tomorrow and am hoping ardently that it works.

Only 5 months to go.

Non-work-wise, it can get lonely. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for all that's happened so far. Many people have helped me, struck up conversations and welcomed me into their lives, but I'm ultimately on my own for the most part. What makes it harder some days is knowing that this past month has crawled past, and I know that there's 5x to come. The rational parts of my mind tell me that the first month was bound to be a stretch. I was setting up the whole project and my immediate future, stress being my side-order to every meal. Once work begins in earnest, days are bound to fly by, and maybe when they do, I'll wish they didn't. 

Hullabaloos all around

Dear Akshay,

At the end of our master's course together, you handed me a book by Kiran Desai called 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard' with a characteristically-you, succinct, "Here's some sunshine for your life" note inside it. The cover intrigued me - a cartoon-y tree with the dangling legs of a person dropping into the frame from above. I didn't give it much thought when I started reading.

I began with no real expectations in mind - just the blind trust that you know me well enough to gift me a book I'd like regardless of its contents or genre. But then again, everything you do seems to stem from either purpose or reason, and I was secretly searching for either/or at the back of my mind as I progressed through the pages.

Kiran Desai's writing painted pictures of the mundane. She described sarees, food and the idle thoughts of a government employee with just the right number of adjectives and similes. She described each character in such delicious interwoven detail, that I was five chapters in with no clue about where the story was headed.

I took a break from the book for a while, shortly after Sampath, the head-in-the-clouds protagonist, let the characters of his reality into his mind for a quick peak, swiftly resulting in his routine life falling apart. This was also around the time I got sidetracked with work, travels and The Talking Ape. When I finished with that book, I got back to Sampath. Before I knew it, he was running further away from the life he had been thrown out of. He was literally running, with his dysfunctional family in close pursuit, up into a guava tree. The book's title began falling into place. While I was still skeptical about whether the bizarre events unfolding were happening in his head or in the book's real world of small-town Shahkot, I began relishing it.

I'm usually cynical when a book takes off on multiple tangential narratives as fillers for space and time, but this book did it brilliantly. It was so stuffed with characters and tales and little off-road, supporting stories, that I found it hard to stop reading once Sampath (and his paraphernalic-family) had set up shop in the guava orchard. I found it even harder to stop reading when the pages parted to make way for a notorious troop of monkeys, and irrevocably glued when the primates developed a taste for alcohol (there, I found my reasons*).

The book and its people danced in my head. You're teaching me to fall in love with good Indian writing - stories embedded deeply in intrinsically desi themes and characters. Having that added layer of relatability is exciting, and in a way, allows my imagination to create visuals with a lot more accuracy than if I were painting into place the extravagant lawns of Blandings Castle from a Wodehouse novel.

Never stop giving me your tried-and-tested book titles to read. So far, so very good.

Love always,
Ishika


*People I interviewed for my research work told me that monkeys would occasionally polish-off the left over bits of whiskey and rum in bottles from wine shops around Great Nicobar. The macaques would then either raid homes with a markedly lower sense of risk, or simply fall asleep. Upon hearing this, a certain Forest Department employee (only half jokingly) suggested we use alcohol as a mitigation measure against human-macaque conflict. Ah the colourful aspects of working with primates. 

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.

Anthropo-why?

Over the past couple of years, I've stumbled over, actively pursued and devoured several books on the topic of animal behaviour and cognition. It's a field that seems to be spoken about more frequently in books, which can be passed off as extended opinion pieces, rather than in factual, objective, scientific papers. Perhaps that's also because most long-time behaviourists find it easier to put their thoughts out into the larger, more accepting public than have them critiqued in the cautious world of scientific journals. The primary reason for this discouragement of juicy, emotional material in the academic world is one giant, taboo word - anthropomorphism.

I've wanted to write about this for nearly two years, but haven't because I was constantly reminded of the several unread, cognition-based books lying on my shelf that could change my mind about the topic. What I've found instead, with more reading, is nothing but mounting evidence for why the constant cautiousness regarding anthropomorphism may be unneeded. I received a final push to support the 'Of Course Animals Have Emotions!' team after reading what Carl Safina had to say about the matter.

"Evidence and logic can be trustworthy guides. In fact, one term for evidence+logic is: 'science'." 

This is the stance that seems to be lacking in the community of behaviour scientists who look solely at descriptive ways of recording behaviour and actions without attempting to interpret them. It is widely accepted to say, "The elephant approached her dead calf, ran her trunk over him slowly, and stayed with its carcass for three days before joining her herd that had moved on" but not to say, "The elephant was experiencing grief". By fearing that one is anthropomorphising an animal in doing so, one is being all the more anthropocentric.

I've finally learned that there is a wealth of undeniable evidence, from a cumulative of several hundred years of observations, of intelligence and emotion in the animal kingdom. This, combined with the logic that any scientist (or layman) who has been exposed to certain species for several years possesses, could come together to produce wonderful science, finally laying the foundation literature that better understanding of animal cognition must rest upon. An unnamed scientist once loosely mentioned, "I have no way of knowing if that elephant is any more conscious than this bush". I feel compelled to point out that elephants are known to make decisions, care for their offspring and, perhaps even more interestingly, share nearly the same nervous and hormonal systems as human beings. This is just one of many cases of ignoring hard evidence in the hope of remaining an objective, well-reputed researcher.

One of the reasons why most scientists only tell stories and write articles or books about their evidences for feeling and emotion in animals is that such 'stories' or 'anecdotes' fail to fit the scientific framework of collecting empirical data, analyzing it, and producing statistical evidence for or against their hypotheses. But, quoting an eloquent professor of mine, "there's no such thing as anecdotal data". This is further substantiated by an uncomfortably small niche of literature like this one. If more behaviourists or ecologists began publishing isolated instances of interesting behaviour, even if purely descriptive and non-inferential in nature, these so-called anecdotes could potentially collect over time to produce the statistical support needed to validate them within that very scientific realm. The collective support of past researchers who took the effort to inform the world about their chance anecdotes could encourage others to look closer for similar (or identical) behaviours, together building upon the subject and enriching it.

From Jane Goodall who speaks of emotion in chimpanzees to Rick McIntyre who studied wolves, multiple researchers and authors have passionately advocated for the recognition of emotion in the animal kingdom. A recent book, 'The Hidden Life of Trees', speaks of how trees, too, communicate and feel. The fact that animals perceive and respond to others around them and feel fundamentally physiological emotions like pleasure and grief, or feel the need to play and relax may be more readily accepted among the pet-owner community. I highly doubt that anyone who's known a dog, cat, pig, bird or any other (hopefully non-exotic) pet disagrees with the fact that animals can make bonds with other living beings and emote in ways that we can, at least partially, understand. Whining dogs or spitting cats are understood by their owners, behaviourists or not.

To truly understand an animal, we must delve into topics like consciousness, awareness, intelligence and emotion. None of these, however, have any standard definitions. Each of these could mean different things based on the fields we come from, and so, sentience - an amalgamation of all of these - remains undefined as well. We distance ourselves from these topics, trying to have an objective, outsider view of things, but this seems to me like losing valuable data. We are already on the inside. We share so much of the physiology that a plethora of other animals have, that we ought to be using our knowledge of how emotions manifest in our minds to better understand that of other beings.

Our evolutionary relationship with animals is sadly misinterpreted due to years of convincing ourselves that "humans" and "animals" are two completely separate categories. It's us versus them. Although we train animals to work for us, share diseases and living space, it's near impossible to believe or even imagine that we fall into the same bracket of beings. Our insecurities as a species are beginning to creep into our science and hinder it from progressing.

So sure, we may be one of the only species to feel sadness, happiness, love or pain in the poetic sense. But it's time we realized and acknowledged that these emotions do exist in other species that we've spent decades studying. Even if their grief is different from ours, it still exists. Truly comprehending the nature of these emotions is a huge task which will probably require the use of future advancements in science, but admitting that they exist is the first step towards it - one that we should have taken a long time ago.

Cynthia Moss, who spent over 50 years studying elephants in Amboseli National Park, had this to say:

"I'm interested in them as elephants. Comparing elephants to people - I don't find it helpful. I find it much more interesting trying to understand an animal as itself. How does a bird like a crow, say, with so small a brain, make the amazing decisions it makes? Comparing it to a three-year-old child - that doesn't interest me."

This is our biggest clue to overcome our ingrained fear of objectivity in studying animal cognition. We need make inferences about the animals we study without bringing to them our own emotional baggages and insecurities. Anthropocentrism, if not dealt with soon, could plague our research for good. The qualities and characteristics that we so staunchly believe are purely human, like friendship, compassion, sorrow, happiness did not suddenly come into existence with the evolutionary step into a world of Homo sapiens. These are deep-rooted in times that predate mankind. Our brain's origin is inseparable from that of other species'. Just like our mind.

A review of 'Environmentalism: A Global History'

Delving into over two hundred years of literature, policy and philosophy, Ramachandra Guha’s book ‘Environmentalism: A Global History’ succinctly follows the trajectory of environmental thought across the world. By segregating the history of environmentalism into two broad stages – the first encompassing ideas of scientific conservation, wilderness and returning back-to-the-land, and the second speaking of the transition of thought and criticism to movements and debates – Guha places thinkers, scientists, governments and environmental movements into chronological and political categories. This is one of the key characteristics of his book that makes it a welcoming textbook of international environmentalism, providing a basic background required to understand the philosophies of conservation today.

This book makes for an interesting read not only because of its broadened outlook towards the world of environmentalism, but also because of the author behind it. Guha, an award-winning historian, is the first Indian to have attempted to document the history of environmental thought spanning both space and time. His commendable effort to synthesize a world of literature began as an idea when he was first exposed to different kinds of environmentalism at Yale University in the 1980’s. As he broadened his own horizons in nations apart from his own, he discovered that environmentalism began with the advent of industrialization among the thinkers, novelists and poets of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. This period marks the beginning of his book, wherein he gives new life to the long-written words of John Ruskin, John Clare, MK Gandhi, Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth and others. By interweaving his own writing with excerpts from these personalities’ works, he illustrates how, ironically, industrialization was the ‘generator’ of environmentalism, kickstarting what would become a whole new field in the centuries to come.

Guha separates the two stages within his book by talking about three misfits who were, perhaps, before their time in the journey of environmentalism. Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford and Radhakamal Mukherjee were the first of many to come who looked at growing industrial and economic issues from the perspective of tomorrow, rather than yesterday. By looking into the future rather than an abstract past like the thinkers who preceded them, Guha suggests that their pragmatic outlook towards the environment and the people who constituted it were too radical to gain momentum at the start of the 20^th century. Their modern, yet unappreciated ideologies remained in the side lines, making way for the ‘age of innocence’, which continued until the 1970’s. Guha strategically calls the readers’ attention to these milestones, and the years following them up to 2014, when the book was last revised, unfold captivatingly.

The age of innocence, which overlapped with the blind technological advancements during the second World War, led to an ‘age of affluence’, when Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’ marked, as stated by Guha, the most pivotal time for environmentalist action across the globe in 1962. The affluent society began rallying for the environment, despite the fact that it was their effluents that were contributing to its constant degradation. An outburst of activism in Denmark by its enraged youth in 1969 has been documented in this book as the turning point in the history of environmentalism, after which every rung of society – across genders, ages and classes – became intimately involved in the cause. With his eloquent narrative of events and episodes, Guha grips his readers though the latter half of the 20^th century as the environmental movement transcended boundaries of religion and nations.

After having read this book, I’ve come to realize that environmentalism is a vast umbrella, under which an evolution of attitudes and ideologies nests. By describing various schools of thought, movements and events, Guha helps understand that there is no set definition for what environmentalism is, nor does he attempt to explain it at any point. Environmentalism has blossomed, along with industrial development, from a romanticized and often unattainable desire for the natural world to a holistic mentality that takes both peoples’ and the environment’s needs into consideration. It has transitioned from being the naïve, albeit powerful, voice of the literate elite to the rustic, oft desperate, cries of all society. Taking cues from feminism, socialism and nationalism, environmentalism has grown into what can only be called a belief system, whose community is ever-expanding.

Although this book is replete, cover to cover, with events and personalities from this world’s ecological history, it proves to be an easy read, devoid of unexplained terminology or indecipherable language. While it is heavy in its content, the manner in which it has been written allows the reader to absorb it entirely, without losing track of what the author is conveying. In addition, he has incorporated the writings of other authors, poets and politicians into his book seamlessly, making it seem as though several great minds have worked in unison to create this historical account of environmentalism. This book is thus, undoubtedly, a comprehensive, compelling yet concise read. It provides a gamut of information to anyone embarking upon this field for the first time, and insight to those who are environmentalists themselves.

In his book, Ramachandra Guha has done what any good historian ought to; without nudging the reader towards either side of the environmental argument, he has instigated thought and inquisitiveness by simply laying out the facts as they panned out in history. Having a clear image about the occurrences of any given time period against the context of its economic and political situation allows the reader to understand the workings of the environmental movement for themselves. For example, Guha provides a comparison of environmentalism in developed versus developing countries implicitly, simply by categorising them in different stages of his book. I’ve begun to realize now that the onslaught of environmentalism as a response to development in countries like India and Brazil was more effective than that of the 19^th century in Europe, simply because they had the knowledge of the destruction that comes with industrialization, and of how passive indignation did little good as retaliation, before delving into it themselves. It is, in that respect, truly a global history, where nations have constantly been learning from each other and building upon existent ideas – both to perfect the notion of environmentalism and keep up with corresponding developments in the world of economics.

This also lends itself to the realization that environmentalism is a global phenomenon as no nation or region functions in isolation without influencing or being influenced by the happenings of the world surrounding it. Changes in environmentalism cascade through time and geography, and, could even occur simultaneously, co-evolving under similar circumstances. Environmentalism is global in its history and in its present uproar that is more synchronous than sequential. Perhaps the next edition of this historical account should be titled ‘International Environmentalism’ to better represent the intricacies of the book.

Compiling a history as colourful and heterogenous as this is nothing short of ambitious, especially when envisioned at a global scale. Ramachandra Guha has succeeded in his bold venture with admirable eloquence and clarity. This praise, though, also forms my only strong criticism of his book. For all the literature and records that he combed through in order to produce this book, I feel cheated out of finer details and deeper information. This book has definite scope to be richer in the knowledge it disseminates, making it a tad more than a quick read, yet more welcoming than a historical textbook. Were this book more extensive in its discourse, a reader would scarce need to look elsewhere.

Wodehousian guilt

Books that hold letters of popular personalities, both personal and professional, are often published posthumously in an attempt to immortalize them. I enjoy reading letters and think they give me an insight into what a person truly was like - especially if they were writers or actors who portrayed only a part or none of their real selves in the public realm. It’s an intimate way of getting to know and, maybe, fall in love with those personalities even more than I did through the work I know them for.

Two months ago, I found 'Life in Letters', a book that put together all of P. G. Wodehouse's letters chronologically. Needless to say, I bounded with the kind of antiquarian joy that cannot be contained in a quiet bookstore, so I wielded my puny cash and clasped the goodness to my beating heart.

While reading the introduction to ‘Life in Letters’, I found it mentions that compiling this volume of letters comprehensively took a long time to achieve, and that this is the first time his life has been put in any kind of biographical order. PGW was a private man, hated intrusions into his life, and, even in his character sketches and writings, refrained from drawing parallels from his own life. He claimed that biographical evidence was irrelevant to understanding a work of art, and didn’t think his private life influenced his work in any way.
Despite the fact that this is a man of historical significance to the field of literature and that there are thousands of people eager to know what he actually was like, is it fair to abuse what he preserved all through his life simply because he’s long gone? By being famous and popular, does one automatically sign an unwritten contract to be stripped down bare and investigated? I'm worried about how unethical this is.

I feel Wodehouse frowning down on me for prying into his life and personal letters - letters that he probably wrote in the privacy of his home, that he was certain would find the eyes he intended them for alone. The cover of this book sports him smiling broadly, but I doubt that’s how he feels. I’m still wildly excited to know more about his life, to know what made him come up with the characters I’ve grown up reading, what drove the stories he created, how the brain of this genius of wit functioned. I want to put myself in the shoes of every recipient and fantasize about how it feels to hear from that beautiful mind - but this goes against his wishes. PGW, being someone I have respected, looked up to and loved for years, is haunting my conscience, and I'm convinced that I'm committing sacrilege.

The Memorables, or, My Top Books from 2015

A ZOO IN MY LUGGAGE- GERALD DURRELL

I first read My Family and Other Animals when I was in primary school, and read a host of Durrell's other novels through the next few years. His writing always fascinated me because they revolved around his global travels in search of animals for his zoos. He wrote of how he tracked them down, used local help, built make-shift enclosures and transported all the animals he collected. They were often humorous, and the idea of using zoos as an educational device interested me. It was also refreshing to read of the kind of zoos he designed and set up in contrast to the wasteland of an animal urinal we have for a zoo in Mumbai. A Zoo in My Luggage was like coming home to an old, weird friend. As a kid, the adventures and mishaps kept me entertained, but now, I learned to appreciate his humour, writing and the people within his stories. This particular book talks of his journey to the Cameroons where he's hosted by the Bafut, a royalty of sorts, and goes into detail about some of the animals they come to procure and bond with. The Bafut may be one of my favourite non-fictional characters. He's flamboyant, has a huge harem of mutually-jealous wives, and wastes no time in finding new ones. It was amusing to read about Durrell and his wife struggling to house the animals they found right under the nose of an indifferent, ever-jovial, dancing Bafut, who was kinder to them than any authority they knew. There was no question about whether this book ought to be on my list. Nostalgia aside, it was a delight to read.

100 HEARTBEATS- JEFF CORWIN

This book was my constant companion through the last few months of college. It's essentially a series of case studies from the world of conservation and extinction. Apart from the clean writing and inspiring/shocking/mortifying/worrying/touching topics discussed within its pages, the underlying premise of this book shook me up the most. The species that find their way into the 100 Heartbeat Club have only a hundred individuals or less left on this planet, and the list of members is unbelievably long. As conservationists strive to strike species off this list, more and more seem to make it, leading to a more fragile ecosystem than already at hand. In my eyes, Jeff Corwin was always the witty, clumsy, passionate ecologist who made 8-year-old me want to be a wild life expert when she grew up. I knew him for his love of nature and his light-hearted demeanor, which is why reading this book was an unexpected experience for me. He is serious, genuine and vulnerable through the book and opens up about how inspired he is by others and how humbled he is by the various species he has interacted with. I look at this book as a textbook that I can use through life to remind myself of how much irreparable damage we've caused as a race and of how much a handful of us are doing to better the situation. It's a book that teaches the truth behind conservation battles and the trauma of wild animals at our expense. My love for Jeff Corwin as a conservationist, scientist and human being quadrupled after reading this book, and I would certainly tremble in his presence from respect for his attitude and experiences. These are my celebrities.

[From his experience as the keeper for a newly orphaned elephant calf.] "He was having a nightmare, and I instinctively cupped his eyes so he couldn't see the light from the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling... Just as he was drifting off again, he started to twist a lock of my hair with the tip of his trunk. All 40,000 muscles in that miniature proboscis were working together to make sure that its tip- which is 10 times more sensitive than a human finger- brought him the soothing contact he needed. Suddenly, I grasped the trauma that a creature this sensitive must experience in the presence of a poacher's brutality."

GOODBYE SOLDIER- SPIKE MILLIGAN

I discovered Spike Milligan last year when I was browsing through the second hand books at Fountain. The fact that he was part of The Goon Show with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe attracted my attention. The first book I picked up was a collection of his poems and short stories, along with the occasional script from one of the Goon shows. It had me in peals and so, I kept reading more Spike. Goodbye Soldier holds notes from the diary he kept during WWII, wherein he played for a travelling jazz band that served as entertainment for the troops in Rome, Vienna and other places. His sarcastic and comical writing about his bunk mates, other musicians and his new-found love Toni, had me feeling like I was travelling with the odd ball bunch. The book is, perhaps, the most candid one I've ever read- offering insight into how simple, no-nonsense, vulnerable, and downright funny Spike Milligan was.

NO MATTER THE WRECKAGE- SARAH KAY

Spoken word poetry has been a part of my life for only just over a year, and Sarah Kay was one of the first few poets I was introduced to. I once spent an entire evening on YouTube listening to her perform poem after poem, and her poetry is what drove me to attempt writing my first spoken word piece. Even when simply talking, she seemed to make perfect sense, and I loved that ideas were clearer to me through poetry than they would've been otherwise. She led me to other poets and more poems of my own. "Poetry is like pooping, if there's a poem in you, it has to come out." Despite having dabbled with poetic devices and rhymes in the past, free verse and expression through poetry found its way to me only in the recent past, and I hand a chunk of credit to Sarah and her recitations for that. No Matter the Wreckage is her first compilation of poems and has come to be a portable bag of emotions for me. Reading some of my favourite poems off paper and discovering more that I had never heard of before was lovely, and it's hard for me to ever tire of such a book. I find myself reaching for this book on days when I'm both happy and low, and I always find a poem in there that lifts off the page and wraps itself around me in a comforting hug.

THE GIRL IN BLUE- P G WODEHOUSE

Astoundingly, this was the only Wodehouse book I read all year (I think?), and so, it made my list effortlessly. Like some of his other books, this one was filled with failed engagements, young and fickle love, and valuable heirlooms. Even though my all-time favourites like Uncle Fred, Psmith, Finknottle and Wooster were amiss, I ended up loving the fresher characters fumbling about in this tale as well. The book opens with lawyer Homer Pyle and his shop-lifting sister, and leads you on to Jerry West, the broke bloke in love, seeking money from his uptight Uncle Bill. Jerry, engaged to Vera Upshaw (the typical Wodehouse-ian, insufferable lady) ends up falling in love with Jane Hunnicut when trying to procure The Girl in Blue, the painting that was stolen from his uncle. Summarizing the plot here would be futile, for it's as convoluted as the Empress of Blandings' intestines. This is a good book for someone who is new to Wodehouse as well, for it needs no background knowledge of any of its characters. It's hilarious, witty and sharp, but like all his other books... ends. PGW can find me laughing aloud in the most populated trains in Mumbai, and this one was no exception. 

Jerry West, you're no Psmith, but you two would get along spectacularly, and for me, that's more than enough. 

THE TEN TRUSTS- JANE GOODALL & MARC BEKOFF

This book has ten chapters or trusts that one must honour as members and custodians of this planet. The trusts enlisted are simple, and have to do largely with the attitude mankind has toward the environment and species within it. Chapters like 'Respect all life' and 'Have the courage of our convictions' are backed up by Goodall and Bekoff's experiences, case studies, anecdotes and statistics. The book explores all life, including the animals we domesticate and the trees that grow in our shrinking forests. It talks about scientific attitude, basic human mentality and animal behaviour. All these themes come together to generate a more evolved sense of awareness in the reader's mind and paints an unadulterated, clear picture of everything wrong with the way man deals with his surroundings. This book also talks about the few victory stories the world has witnessed and draws inspiration from them. Goodall and Beckoff have managed to talk about the shortcomings of man and advise us about the right path to take without coming off as cynical, judgmental or hostile. With their individual, characteristic calm, they've driven home crucial points and observations that more people ought to know about. If these trusts were the fundamental guidelines to a religion, the world would be a better, more harmonious place.

BOSSYPANTS- TINA FEY

Tina Fey is one of my favourite women, because she is undeniably funny in a world where only men are considered capable of being comedic. Bossypants is full of unapologetic humour- humour that feeds off of her every embarrassing experience. She walks you through her clumsy childhood, extremely-awkward teenage years, her first jobs and finally, unravels how she came to be the SNL and 30 Rock star we know her as. When I started reading this book, I was worried I'd be disappointed. I hoped that her writing would live up to the image I had of her in my mind and that her comic self wasn't the result of a team of writers hidden behind a stage curtain somewhere. Turns out, she started out as one of those faceless writers and made her way to the audience-side of the curtain. My skepticism vanished two paragraphs into her introduction, and I ended up reading the next hundred-odd pages in the same sitting. Apart from being a breather from life, it also spoke about all the work that goes into putting up live and pre-recorded TV shows, and it made me respect the whole process a lot more than I did before. This was the breezy, well-written bit of heaven I didn't know I needed. 

LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET- RAINER MARIA RILKE

This was the last book I read in 2015. I ordered it off Amazon on an impulse and the eager, little fellow knocked at my door the very next day. This is a collection of ten letters that Rilke sent to a young Mr. Kappus, who wrote to him asking for advise and opinions. Rilke, through his wise persona, wrote warm letters that offer advise and suggestions so universal, they can be applied to more than just a young poet. I do not agree or accept in entirety all of what Rilke had to offer, however, his words are thought provoking and poetic even through the prose. These letters clearly belong to a former time, but it was lovely to read words that were once delicately fed to paper and sent with compassion and genuine heart. Despite the air of formality that comes with each letter, there's a sense of acceptance and belonging between the correspondents that is endearing. Although I imagine some of its beauty was lost in translation, this is a good book for anyone with a love of poetry and words that linger.

I'm Your Affectee.

Why do books, movies, music affect us so much? Why do we let them seep into the crevices of our brains- festering until they make us numb with wonder and emotion? Are we all romantic fools, or is there more to it?

I like to believe that it's more than superficial. I think stories penetrate- they penetrate our minds, our eyes, our lives. But they affect everyone differently. We take back from an experience, entirely based on our past experiences. We're constantly drawing parallels between what we're perceiving in the moment and what we've perceived and stored away. So, when I tell someone, "This movie made me cry." and when that person says, "I know what you mean." in response, is it true? Maybe many people cried watching that movie, but I'm not sure everyone cried for the same reason.

I recently read "To Kill A Mockingbird". It's a book that I started reading on several occasions over the past few years and never made it past the first couple of chapters. Sometime in June, I decided that it was about time I got my act together and read the one book that everyone but me has read. I would read in the train, to and from college- finishing not more than ten to fifteen pages a day. Eventually, I finished reading it. And when I did, I felt numb. Numb, but content.

The book started slowly, unhurriedly describing its characters, talking about their lives in detail. Scout spoke intelligently of her observations, articulating events with thoughts quite unlike those that an eight year old would possess. But then again, she was no naive, little girl in pigtails. This book was magnetic. The story didn't seem to be going anywhere, it seemed to be shifting imperceptibly, it seemed like the book would never end. And yet, I didn't want it to. I was glad in its apparent stagnation. However, I was beginning to wonder why this book made such a big deal of itself.

Scout was such a beautiful narrator, that I wanted to listen to her talk in person. Her words came to life in my mind and I could picture Jem, Atticus Finch and her, going about their daily routines, vividly in my mind's eye. Slowly, almost out of nowhere, the story got interesting. It reached into me and held my attention. Even when I couldn't read, I found myself thinking about the book.
Seriously, what was it about this book that I had begun to love?

I had two pages left to read and I hadn't got the chance to all day. Finally, back on the train, I sat down and opened to where my bookmark had been reluctantly placed. I read slowly and purposefully. As I read the last line, I felt goosebumps creep up my legs and down my arms. And I felt a strange knot in my stomach. I closed the book at stared ahead of me. The book had just blown my mind away.

I won't talk about the story, or of its contents, or of how much I loved it. I want to talk about this book's subconscious puppeteering. The first question I asked myself was, "Why is this book a classic?" My grandfather says you know you're dealing with a classic when you find something new and beautiful every time you read it. Since I've read this book only the one time, this wouldn't be the best way for me to judge it.
This book is special because it makes you think. It makes you think about everything that Scout mentions. It makes you think about people and question human nature. It makes you question everyday, mundane happenings. But it doesn't leave you frantic and curious with no answers. Somehow, this book guides you and helps you answer your own questions- indirectly. I also realized that this book has affected me uniquely because it's a book that lingers. The genius of Harper Lee's writing didn't hit me until after I had finished reading it and I had a chance to ruminate over everything I had read in the past month. Regurgitating, I found that the brilliance of the book lies within the simple fact that the story is nothing but honesty. It isn't an exaggerated account of injustice or a dramatic narration of wrong doing. It's calm, realistic, unfettered truth. I realize that the reason these things dawned on me only after reading the book was because while I was, I had become part of the story, living in Maycomb- being a silent spectator to the Finchs' antics. It wasn't until I moved away that I could look back at it with an outsider's perspective.

This book is, perhaps, the best way to put into perspective what human nature is all about. Not metaphorically like in Animal Farm or dramatically like in Skin. For it to truly hit someone on the head, it must be told plainly- plainly as the naked eye sees. Because our minds resist any and all information that's shoved in our faces; it only accepts and remembers things that we discover ourselves.

This being said, Harper Lee's book is now one of the best books I have ever read, and I await the time when my brain has finished processing all that it has learned from it so that I can read it once more- and look deeper for more.

Atticus Finch is the wisest man I have ever laid eyes upon.
"He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning."