And I got so caught up with relating my impressions of Manil Suri's book, that I forgot to comment on an aspect of Hindu weddings detailed in his book that particularly struck me in the context of my blog title as being another multiple circling of significance:
In a Hindu wedding, the central ritual of the ceremony is the circling seven times of the consecrated fire by bride and groom to sanctify the marriage - which Hindus see as a sacred relationship between souls that lasts beyond life.
The details of the ritual vary in different parts of India. The bride and groom may or may not be symbolically tied together by their wedding sashes; the bride may first lead the groom around the sacred fire one to three times before the groom in turn leads the bride around the fire for the remainder of the seven circlings. Even the specific prayers or blessings vary with local traditions.
But in all cases everywhere, it is a constant that they circle the fire seven times. Why seven circles?
Thursday 7 June 2012
Manil Suri's "The Death of Vishnu"
I have just finished reading Manil Suri's "The Death of Vishnu".
It is a beautiful book in a number of ways and it raises many memories.
Malawi was a multicultural place to grow up in. Most of the girls in my class in La Sagesse Convent that I attended in Limbe were Indian - Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. Actually, as a side note, few girls in my class were Christian, let alone Catholic. In the few years that I was there, I knew of only one conversion. An Irish Catholic girl became a Muslim.
My mother was also introduced to a number of Indian friends by our dear family friend, Aunty Joyce Mendonca, who was Goanese (and Catholic, since Goa was once a Portuguese colony). It was Aunty Joyce who showed us how to wear a sari and how to cook many Indian delicacies. On occasion, I would accompany my mother and Aunty Joyce to visit various ladies, and it was always well worth it for the food alone. No visit to an Indian household could be made without one being plied with food, and it is extremely rude to refuse what is offered, no matter how many other friends you may have just visited and eaten with. Indian ladies strive to out-do one another with novel delicacies. Visitors praise the food vociferously and there is much discussion about the ingredients, methods of cooking and what variations one might try. It is also an occasion for those who are not so keen on the hostess or who are jealous of her to insinuate that the food has too much of this ingredient or too little of that.
So I found Manil Suri's description of poor Mrs Pathak's preparations for her kitty party and their reception doubly hilarious, even while I felt keenly for her mortification.
In a way, living in Limbe was just a little like living in India. Limbe was then predominantly full of Indian shops ("dukas"), in which we haggled and chatted. (I loved most the shops that sold spices in large bins and whose aromatic mix of smells hung over the length of the street. I always looked with longing at the bin of jaggri - raw brown clumps of sugar molasses which I was occasionally given a taste of. The owner said that too much was dangerous to one's health - why did I believe him? Years later, while at university in Natal, I used to munch the molasses as my friend Ingrid and I prepared the feed for the horses on her family's small-holding).
With friends in Malawi, Natal and Cape Town, I have also had the pleasure of attending Hindu and Sikh temple ceremonies, being invited to Hindu and Muslim weddings, and sitting in ancient cinemas watching the original old Indian films in Hindi (with a friend translating), long before Bollywood semi-westernized itself. I have also derived great pleasure in reading the Ramayana (in translation of course - it is a wonderful story).
So "The Death of Vishnu" brought back so much to me as I read it: the book was vibrant and colourful-seeming: there were many references to Bollywood movies - indeed, several characters visualized their actions in terms of movies (as I am sure many of us have done from time to time in our own lives, even if it was only when we were in our teens).
An aspect of the book that I both enjoyed and admired immensely was the subtle humour and pathos with which mankind's great existential questions, spiritual beliefs and ethics were played out and considered in even the smallest everyday actions of the various characters throughout the entire story.
It was also a book about relationships, of how men and women understand and misunderstand one another, often over a lifetime and often in silently tragic ways. Here, Suri looks below the surface of the pettiness, meanness or ineptitude of his characters to their inner core with a compassion that makes wonderful reading.
And of course, since I have always had an abiding interest in and love of mythology and legend, "The Death of Vishnu" was delightful in what it had to say about the Hindu religion and its many legends - and of course about Vishnu himself. For anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of Hindu beliefs, this book provides insight with ease.
I particularly admired Suri's almost living description of a vision of Vishnu. And (reading critically of course), I was struck by a sense of Vishnu being described in fractal terms in the vision. Of course, this would make sense with Suri being a professor of mathematics, though I have not come across him mentioning this aspect of the story as emanating from his experience as a mathematician. I love discovering how each writer consciously or unconsciously brings his or her own special interests and loves to his or her story.
I believe that Suri intends a trilogy. "The Life of Shiva" is published and I am off to find it. I also look forward to his intended book, "The Birth of Brahma".
Here is the link to Manil Suri's website for those who are interested: Manil Suri
It is a beautiful book in a number of ways and it raises many memories.
Malawi was a multicultural place to grow up in. Most of the girls in my class in La Sagesse Convent that I attended in Limbe were Indian - Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. Actually, as a side note, few girls in my class were Christian, let alone Catholic. In the few years that I was there, I knew of only one conversion. An Irish Catholic girl became a Muslim.
My mother was also introduced to a number of Indian friends by our dear family friend, Aunty Joyce Mendonca, who was Goanese (and Catholic, since Goa was once a Portuguese colony). It was Aunty Joyce who showed us how to wear a sari and how to cook many Indian delicacies. On occasion, I would accompany my mother and Aunty Joyce to visit various ladies, and it was always well worth it for the food alone. No visit to an Indian household could be made without one being plied with food, and it is extremely rude to refuse what is offered, no matter how many other friends you may have just visited and eaten with. Indian ladies strive to out-do one another with novel delicacies. Visitors praise the food vociferously and there is much discussion about the ingredients, methods of cooking and what variations one might try. It is also an occasion for those who are not so keen on the hostess or who are jealous of her to insinuate that the food has too much of this ingredient or too little of that.
So I found Manil Suri's description of poor Mrs Pathak's preparations for her kitty party and their reception doubly hilarious, even while I felt keenly for her mortification.
In a way, living in Limbe was just a little like living in India. Limbe was then predominantly full of Indian shops ("dukas"), in which we haggled and chatted. (I loved most the shops that sold spices in large bins and whose aromatic mix of smells hung over the length of the street. I always looked with longing at the bin of jaggri - raw brown clumps of sugar molasses which I was occasionally given a taste of. The owner said that too much was dangerous to one's health - why did I believe him? Years later, while at university in Natal, I used to munch the molasses as my friend Ingrid and I prepared the feed for the horses on her family's small-holding).
With friends in Malawi, Natal and Cape Town, I have also had the pleasure of attending Hindu and Sikh temple ceremonies, being invited to Hindu and Muslim weddings, and sitting in ancient cinemas watching the original old Indian films in Hindi (with a friend translating), long before Bollywood semi-westernized itself. I have also derived great pleasure in reading the Ramayana (in translation of course - it is a wonderful story).
So "The Death of Vishnu" brought back so much to me as I read it: the book was vibrant and colourful-seeming: there were many references to Bollywood movies - indeed, several characters visualized their actions in terms of movies (as I am sure many of us have done from time to time in our own lives, even if it was only when we were in our teens).
 |
| An 18th Century Indian painting of Vishnu resting on the Naga Ananta-Sesha, with Lakshmi massaging His feet. Ananta-Sesha is the endless primal being who holds all the planets of the Universe on his hoods and whose mouths constantly sing Vishnu's glories. When he uncoils, time moves forward and creation takes place. When he coils again, the universe ceases to exist and only Vishnu remains, resting on Sesha's coils, floating asleep on the cosmic ocean until Shesha uncoils once more. Sounds so much like modern physics. |
An aspect of the book that I both enjoyed and admired immensely was the subtle humour and pathos with which mankind's great existential questions, spiritual beliefs and ethics were played out and considered in even the smallest everyday actions of the various characters throughout the entire story.
It was also a book about relationships, of how men and women understand and misunderstand one another, often over a lifetime and often in silently tragic ways. Here, Suri looks below the surface of the pettiness, meanness or ineptitude of his characters to their inner core with a compassion that makes wonderful reading.
And of course, since I have always had an abiding interest in and love of mythology and legend, "The Death of Vishnu" was delightful in what it had to say about the Hindu religion and its many legends - and of course about Vishnu himself. For anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of Hindu beliefs, this book provides insight with ease.
I particularly admired Suri's almost living description of a vision of Vishnu. And (reading critically of course), I was struck by a sense of Vishnu being described in fractal terms in the vision. Of course, this would make sense with Suri being a professor of mathematics, though I have not come across him mentioning this aspect of the story as emanating from his experience as a mathematician. I love discovering how each writer consciously or unconsciously brings his or her own special interests and loves to his or her story.
I believe that Suri intends a trilogy. "The Life of Shiva" is published and I am off to find it. I also look forward to his intended book, "The Birth of Brahma".
Here is the link to Manil Suri's website for those who are interested: Manil Suri
How shall I read thee? .... Let me count the ways!
I love reading and always have done so since before I could actually read. And so I should love reading, it seems, if I am to be a good writer: every great author consistently exhorts novice writers to Read, Read and Read Again! What a fantastically too-good-to-be-true enjoyable way to hone one's skills!! What fun to lie around with a book (or several), and to say earnestly to anyone who might ask what one is doing, that one is working - and working hard!
To say that I enjoyed reading before I could read needs a little explanation. When I was very small (being “but a wee lass” – we lived in Scotland), I recall kneeling on the carpet with my older brother one day, looking at a very large story book (It might not have been that large come to think of it, but it seemed enormous then). My brother was directing the proceedings (turning the pages) and seemed to know something about reading, so perhaps he had already started school, which means I would have been about three years old.
Until that memorable occasion, I had enjoyed books solely in the style of Alice in Wonderland: only pictures and conversation mattered. Now I learnt (in conversation with my brother) that the boring stuff that cluttered up the pages was called writing and that it was this stuff that actually told you what the story was – and if you knew how it worked you could tell yourself the story – without anyone else having to tell it to you (or inventing it ad hoc, as I suspect my brother was doing all along, guideing himself by the pictures).
What a revelation!!! What power! What independence! I wanted then and there to do this reading thing for myself! I eyed the hitherto ignored text with interest (but even with my attention on it, it still looked completely senseless). Then my brother pointed out some pictures in one story, each of which included a wavy stream of coloured words. It appeared that this was also writing. These wavy coloured words looked much more promising in terms of telling the story.
I proceeded to “tell” the story from the words in the picture. That is, I made the story up from the pictures and decided for myself what the writing was meant to convey. But the process was enchanting. I felt very proud that I could “read”. I continued to “read” even after my brother got bored and went off to do something more interesting.
Reflecting on this now, I see that in that long ago moment I experienced both my first pleasure in story-telling via the written word and the first headiness of scientific discovery (that is, I tested a received hypothesis. The evidence appeared sound - I looked at the words and sure enough a story occurred. Okay, the proof was not rigorous, but I was only three).
So there you have it - my “I was always meant to be a writer” story.
Of course it is by the same token my “I was always meant to be a scientist” story, or - as I have hitherto only ever considered it – my “I was always meant to be a keen reader” story.
The cynic might comment that the story did not reflect altogether to my credit, even if I was only but a wee lass. However, I did later make good on the reading bit. In the fullness of time (a mere two years later in real time, but nearly half a lifetime later for the three year old that I then was), I went to school. Though I have little memory of learning the mechanics of reading, I recall my delight at being allowed to read all the little Janet and John books one after the other.
Actually, I must have been a reading snob as a child. When I was about six, I noticed that “big people” read “big books” (lots of writing, few or no pictures) and so I was determined to read a “big book”. I had also noticed that big people did not read aloud – they just looked at the book. I determined that I would do the same.
And so it came about that the first “big” book that I chose to read was the unabridged version of Pinocchio. I am not sure why I chose it - perhaps I liked the cover picture, but it was most enjoyable, even though many of the words I could neither pronounce nor understand. And, yes, I did make the transition to silent reading during Pinocchio by the simple expedient of whispering the words more and more quietly to myself until only my lips were moving – and then, with a great effort of will, even the lip movement ceased. Hooray!!! Grown-up reading!
I promptly chose as my second “big” book, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Reading a book where on every page knights smote one another and dealt mighty and dolorous blows (verily cleaving each other from the nave to the chaps, forsooth) until they were sore wounded, whereupon one quoth unto the other, “prithee, get thee gone! Yea, and hie thee hence, an it please thee!” made as much sense as anything else I might have read at that age. How was I to know that the language that I took such pains to learn to read was obsolete? It was a great book!
To say that I enjoyed reading before I could read needs a little explanation. When I was very small (being “but a wee lass” – we lived in Scotland), I recall kneeling on the carpet with my older brother one day, looking at a very large story book (It might not have been that large come to think of it, but it seemed enormous then). My brother was directing the proceedings (turning the pages) and seemed to know something about reading, so perhaps he had already started school, which means I would have been about three years old.
Until that memorable occasion, I had enjoyed books solely in the style of Alice in Wonderland: only pictures and conversation mattered. Now I learnt (in conversation with my brother) that the boring stuff that cluttered up the pages was called writing and that it was this stuff that actually told you what the story was – and if you knew how it worked you could tell yourself the story – without anyone else having to tell it to you (or inventing it ad hoc, as I suspect my brother was doing all along, guideing himself by the pictures).
What a revelation!!! What power! What independence! I wanted then and there to do this reading thing for myself! I eyed the hitherto ignored text with interest (but even with my attention on it, it still looked completely senseless). Then my brother pointed out some pictures in one story, each of which included a wavy stream of coloured words. It appeared that this was also writing. These wavy coloured words looked much more promising in terms of telling the story.
I proceeded to “tell” the story from the words in the picture. That is, I made the story up from the pictures and decided for myself what the writing was meant to convey. But the process was enchanting. I felt very proud that I could “read”. I continued to “read” even after my brother got bored and went off to do something more interesting.
Reflecting on this now, I see that in that long ago moment I experienced both my first pleasure in story-telling via the written word and the first headiness of scientific discovery (that is, I tested a received hypothesis. The evidence appeared sound - I looked at the words and sure enough a story occurred. Okay, the proof was not rigorous, but I was only three).
So there you have it - my “I was always meant to be a writer” story.
Of course it is by the same token my “I was always meant to be a scientist” story, or - as I have hitherto only ever considered it – my “I was always meant to be a keen reader” story.
The cynic might comment that the story did not reflect altogether to my credit, even if I was only but a wee lass. However, I did later make good on the reading bit. In the fullness of time (a mere two years later in real time, but nearly half a lifetime later for the three year old that I then was), I went to school. Though I have little memory of learning the mechanics of reading, I recall my delight at being allowed to read all the little Janet and John books one after the other.
Actually, I must have been a reading snob as a child. When I was about six, I noticed that “big people” read “big books” (lots of writing, few or no pictures) and so I was determined to read a “big book”. I had also noticed that big people did not read aloud – they just looked at the book. I determined that I would do the same.
And so it came about that the first “big” book that I chose to read was the unabridged version of Pinocchio. I am not sure why I chose it - perhaps I liked the cover picture, but it was most enjoyable, even though many of the words I could neither pronounce nor understand. And, yes, I did make the transition to silent reading during Pinocchio by the simple expedient of whispering the words more and more quietly to myself until only my lips were moving – and then, with a great effort of will, even the lip movement ceased. Hooray!!! Grown-up reading!
I promptly chose as my second “big” book, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Reading a book where on every page knights smote one another and dealt mighty and dolorous blows (verily cleaving each other from the nave to the chaps, forsooth) until they were sore wounded, whereupon one quoth unto the other, “prithee, get thee gone! Yea, and hie thee hence, an it please thee!” made as much sense as anything else I might have read at that age. How was I to know that the language that I took such pains to learn to read was obsolete? It was a great book!
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