மழையும் நதியும்

 

வேர்களுக்கு நன்றி

 

விதி முறிக்கும் மனிதம்

 

சுகமான சுமைகள்

 

Novelist, Spy and Gentleman

My first brush with John Le Carre happened when, as a kid, I discovered “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” and “The Looking Glass War”, among the books that my grandfather had left behind. Although I read those books many, many years later, somehow the names have stayed on in my memory and I still remember the red cover page of “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold”

John Le Carre was born, David John Morre Cornwell. His mother left them when he was 5 (he tracked her later- but could not mend the relationship) and his father Ronnie was a notorious conman, who would use David and his elder brother in all his schemes and also beat them up regularly. David never went to a proper school and grew up without love or books. This disturbing childhood left a deep scar (“Until I die the father-son relationship will obsess me”) and would be a recurrent theme in his books in some shade; especially so in the 1996 semi-autobiographical novel ‘A Perfect Spy’.

David had to adopt a pen name as he was a spy himself and worked with MI5 and MI6 and started writing his books while in service. His first book was 'Call of the Dead' in 1961. But it was the ‘The spy who came in from the cold' that turned the limelight on John Le Carre and he resigned from the service (probably asked to leave) and became a full-time writer. His writing was dark and realistic compared to the flamboyant and glamorous world created by the other British spy novelist Ian Fleming (who was also a British intelligence officer). The characters they created were also starkly contrasting; George Smiley and James Bond respectively. Smiley, is a lonely, brooding, (sometimes bumbling) and pudgy (often, he is referred to as a ‘toad’) character who, nevertheless, is a brilliant spy who is devoted to his country and profession.

Among this many books, I especially love the Smiley series but my favorite Le Carre has to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (also made into a successful movie in which a shapeshifting Gary Oldman plays a wonderful Smiley version). In this maze  of a story, Smiley goes about to find the Russian mole inside the agency and becomes the head of the crumbling MI6 the Intelligence agency known internally as the Circus and starts to rebuild it (Le Carre created a delightful set of spy jargons like Circus). The 6 part BBC mini-series “Smiley’s People” where Alex Guinness plays Smiley is riveting too – this is available on YouTube. But that is just me; if you have to read just one of his novels or looking for a book to start, then “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” is the place to start. This gripping story would raise many moral questions and will question the assumption that West was morally superior (during the cold war era).

Le Carre’s plots are complex and covered by many layers of intrigue; he brought a seriousness to the genre by creating a dark and treacherous world driven by the political interest that was morally ambiguous, especially during and post-cold war era. After the end of the espionage era; Le Carre takes up new villains in the form of corrupt businessmen, arms dealers, terrorists, and even big pharma and continued to write in everlasting righteousness and integrity till the ripe old age of 88 (his last book Agent Running in the Field (2019) is written with Brexit as the backdrop). For all his formidable writing, he notoriously shied away from recognition; he turned down an OBE; withdrew from the Booker nomination, and gave away the Olof Palme prize money to Doctors without Borders. With his passing, a giant who wrote serious fiction, and who wrote that, better than many serious non-fiction writers passed away. Writers come and go; but someone like Le Carre, who creates a genre, rules it for nearly 60 years, and thus influencing a whole generation of authors and creators, they don’t come very often. 

John Le Carre passed away on the 12th of December 2020.

A letter from the future (after a 3 year lockdown)

 

My Dear,

 

As we complete 3 years of shutting ourselves in, I thought of writing this to you, not because we are apart, but because we may read this on a day in the future when we want to look back at our best during the worst of times.

As home and office blended with each other and as the days and nights blended together, I am happy to be still working, more than working, I am glad I am still alive and that we are still a family, staying intact. I never thought I will miss my commute through these Pune roads, but there it is, I do miss the long journey to the office and back, I miss that bad canteen food, and to my surprise, I miss some people at work too (no, I am not going to name them nor am I going to say why I am surprised). But these are good problems to have, no?

Over these 3 years, we have come closer, we got to know each other better, we support each other in all we do, small and big. Our early thoughts and fear that spending more time alone, just the two of us, would only breed contempt proved to be wrong, rather happily. Of course, we get to see the rest of the world only through a zoom

I do not know how much longer we need to go on like this, do not know when we will have a vaccine or a pill to feel safer, to get out, and go back to what we used to call normal. We are tired of news of a miracle or a miracle medicine and have in fact stopped believing in all such news. We just brace for the lockdowns, one after the other. We shut out all data of the disease and the details of how many died. We just think of, ‘what to cook for dinner’ (with what little we have) or ‘what to watch on NetFlix or Prime’. We just take one small challenge at a time; we just look at each day on its own. After all these years, we have started to live in the present. A Zenish, mindful living; some would call it.

Yes, we have changed in other ways too, mostly for the good, we have learned to be frugal, right from what we eat, and to any other resource we use. We have learned to be thankful for trivial things. We are healthier than ever before.

Still, when I see the photos you have kept on display or when I hear the sound from the conch shell (which I found while cleaning the house), I slip back in time and recall how the waves used to wet our feet again and again, how you used to run those grains of sand through your fingers. Most of all, I yearn to just sit with you, and watch the full moon bathe the Shore Temple and turn the sea to silver… just, one more time.

 

Love,

K

July 17, 2023.

Ship of Theseus

 

Our Soul's Song - Celebrating SPB

The Pandemic of Our Minds

“But race is the child of racism, not the father.”

― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“So, let’s all get a little uncomfortable.”

― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

The killing of George Floyd by police during an arrest in Minneapolis on May 25 and the (US) nation-wide demonstrations and protests that followed the unfortunate event, kept me thinking about this complex issue of racism and I sought out to read some contemporary writings on the subject. Two books really stood out and came highly recommended; “So, you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo” and “Between the world and me by Ta-Nehisi Coates”.

I especially liked ‘Between the world and me’, which is written in the form of a letter from the author to his 14-year-old son, Samori. The book is an intense account of what it means to grow up and be black in America today. The writing reflects the depth of the author’s fear and anger while he was growing up in West Baltimore. Since Mr. Coates is trained as a poet, the book is structured and written elegantly. At some places, it made me pause and deliberate at the depth of the issue even today, but I reserve my thoughts as I will never be able to fully comprehend the feeling of being a minority and fighting against centuries-old systemic oppression.

Conversations on race and racism can make most of us uncomfortable and it surely is an area of uncertainty for people of all races. Ms. Oluo’s book is a simple and straightforward guide for handling those complex conversations with sensitivity and clarity making this an important book for everyone. Some of the ideas in the book - like the origins of the US police force, the ‘School to prison pipeline’, Model Minority were revealing, especially for a third person to the core topic of this book. Comparatively; this book is an easier read, (but equally powerful), will truly make us uncomfortable, and question some of the interactions we take for granted.

Both the books are mostly specific to the US, but the emotions and ideas expressed are common for all of us, and in that sense, they are profound, enlightening, and searing documentaries of our times.

Reading these books had me thinking about the biases we carry here in India. It is not news that we are one of the worst offenders when it comes to our love for fair skin. The huge market for fairness creams (valued around 4000 Crores. 62% of Indians in the age group of 15-34 are users as per a survey conducted in 2016, 39 % are regular users), the bombardment of the adverts for those creams during primetime (this is despite 2015 ruling against misrepresentation and 2020), the blatant matrimonial ads asking for a fair bride (yes, they are still there, I checked!) these are just the day-to-day signs of this underlying evil.

As individuals, we would have come across casual comments, name callings, etc. During my early school days, I remember one of my friends was called ‘crow’, an obvious reference to the skin color, he never seemed to take it seriously; or so we thought, until one day when I went to his home and his mother started narrating that he was indeed hurt by this name-calling and would be so disturbed when he came back from school and while narrating this she started crying; I would never forget that hurt and anger. Recently, one of my colleagues from North India, told/asked me in a typical conversational tone “most of the South Indians are black, no?”. Looking back, when the first incident happened and I did not realize the impact caused to my friend (and his family) and did not stand by my friend, but I did give a lecture of sorts to the colleague who was intrigued by the skin tone of the south Indians (not sure what impact that had). Incidents like these prove how deep-rooted this bias is in all aspects of our life. We may use these terms/comments intentionally, unintentionally, affectionately, ignorantly, patronizingly, or as aggression- in any form, it is just wrong.

Our obsession with fair skin is just the beginning of our deficiencies. We discriminate based on caste, religion, region, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, even what we eat would isolate us and make us susceptible to discrimination. If we really think about it, all these various forms of discrimination are the manifestation of the underlying ‘class discrimination’. It is always the ‘powerful vs the weak’. While we all, at some point would have been the victims of one or the other forms of discrimination; we would have discriminated against someone, for some reason, at some point in time too. Sometimes we are the aggressors and sometimes we are the victims; it depends on our ‘Position of Power’.

It is not easy to dismantle these deep-rooted societal structures; especially something like caste segregation that is historically ingrained for well over 2000 years. It is clear that we can’t rely on our leaders, gurus, and heroes (the 3 top influencers in this country) to come and change this for us. The change has to start with us; and the first step is to understand that as individuals we all carry such biases based on our position of power and once we acknowledge that fact, the next step is to be conscious and not letting these prejudices color our day to day interactions. So, as individuals this cycle of ‘1. Understanding 2. Self-checking and 3. Changing’ is critical for us to move forward.

I am not so naïve that I dream of an equal society anytime soon, but in recent times we have come some distance by taking a few steps in the right direction and the next generation holds out a lot of promise and hope.

Heroes