The age of insubstantiality

Ironically, we are living in the undefinable present that urges us to give up courage, make cowardice a virtue, and see that both real and virtual war doesn’t end.

There is no denying that we are living in anxious times, not knowing where we are treading from day to day. What prevails is a ubiquitous lack of substance with a deadly insubstantiality, which has left us with a painful sense of inadequacy. Much evolved though it may seem, both the society and the systems have instead invoked Nietzsche’s fateful phrase ‘Nothing is true, everything is allowed’. 

It is the truth that beholds onto us, that revives the echoes of W H Auden’s The Age of Anxiety. In this context, Roberto Calasso’s The Unnamable Present is a brutal but meditative inquiry into the undefinable present that urges us to give up courage, make cowardice a virtue, and see that both real and virtual war doesn’t end.  

Pulling nuggets from literature and philosophy of the recent past, the book examines the ongoing project of dehumanization that has blurred the distinction between the tourists and the terrorists. Aren’t both out there to destroy the creation of nature, he asks? With algorithmic information eating into human consciousness, mythomania has become the new normal. We only need a plug into it to ensure its constant supply. I found compelling reasons to agree with Calasso’s proposition that, much like the world that made a partially successful attempt at annihilating itself during the Second World War, our unnamable present too is hurtling towards a murderous path. When was the last time we were shown such a hexed mirror? 

Discomforting and disquieting, The Unnamable Present leaves a lot unsaid that the discerning reader can find strewn between the lines. One thing is clear that the past continues to haunt us. What may been seemingly been foregone returns in different form. Rightly said, people may have got rid of Hitler and Stalin but not the society that created them. 

Creation of democracy as an antidote to dictatorship has come to reflect a wishful nothing, extending to everyone the privilege of access to things that are no longer there, which lugs within it the seeds of self-destruction. Not an easy read though, but The Unnamable Present should be credited for raising new questions on the obscure process of transformation happening in our society. 

The Unnamable Present
by Roberto Calasso
Allen Lane, New Delhi
Extent: 193, Price: Rs. 799.

First published in the Hindustan Times, issue dated Dec 21, 2019.

Those who came to conquer it

Imagining geographical spaces through religion limits our understanding by imposing and justifying an ideology at the cost of ignoring its inherent richness.

Richard Eaton, who teaches history at Arizona University, argues that India was never a self-contained stagnant civilization as is often believed but one that evolved over centuries of intense engagement with other peoples and cultures. Starting from the conquest of Mahmud Ghazni to the exploits of Nadir Shah, Eaton reconstructs the most compelling but consequential historical accounts, from c.1100 to c.1765, which produced a hybridized composite civilization that has sustained its distinct identity. India in the Persianate Age defines those seven centuries as an epic period of engagement with the other regions, especially the Persian, which had contributed to producing a rather harmonious society. It was the British who reduced it to the Hindu-Muslim binary, thereby inflicting a deep divide that has continued to dominate socio-political discourse ever since.      

In his brilliant exposition spanning the prolonged medieval period in history, Eaton questions the convention of seeing a diverse and vibrant culture through religious lens. ‘Imagining geographical spaces through religion limits our understanding by imposing and justifying an ideology at the cost of ignoring its inherent richness’. The reading of history in terms of mutually exclusive religions has only helped one form of nationalism, however, at an enormous recurring cost to the society. Decoupling history from such an assumption alone can provide an unbiased measure on acceptance of the political authority, notwithstanding a ruler’s own religion, by a socially, linguistically and religiously diverse Indian society. 

What the colonial historians read as ‘Muslim conquest’ was indeed a period in history that had consolidated multiple ethnic identities viz., Rajputs, Marthas and Sikhs, and empowered them to define their terms of collaboration with then rulers. Far from acknowledging it, the self-serving Anglophone historians sought to paint the entire period as despotic and unjust to lay unilateral claim on pulling India from seven centuries of so-called Muslim subjugation towards modernity. It is no less than a historical conspiracy to erase that part of history as ‘dark and backward’, with the sinister aim of justifying the brutal suppression by the British as ‘mild and equitous’. Curiously, the colonial takeover was not branded as ‘Christian conquest’.    

Challenging the colonial claims on introducing India to modernity, India in the Persianate Age provides comprehensive account of the cultural exchanges between the Sanskrit literary traditions and the Persian cosmopolitan outlook that led the Mughals to rationalize their empire by applying the secular outlook to the religious traditions of their subjects. Noticeable is the fact that both Sanskrit and Persian were not the ‘language of place’, and consequently expanded over much of Asia not by force of arms but by emulation, and without any governing centre. This is a significant take from the book which provides perfect backdrop to medieval India becoming the centre for the patronage of Persian literature and scholarship.   

What makes Eaton’s assessment of the medieval history distinct and insightful is its treatment of the otherwise illustrious period on its own terms without today’s biases. From architecture to science and from trade to cuisine, the assimilation of the Sanskritic universe with its Persianate counterpart is well evident. The persistence of several Persian words including hukm (grace of God), langar (communal meal) and biryani (flavoured rice cuisine) in everyday usage signifies that it was a neutral language for daily correspondence and literary expression. Covering vast swathes of the Persian influence on the making of India, Eaton pays a fine tribute to the evolution of India as a compassionate civilization.  

Ambitious in its undertaking, India in the Persianate Age has enough to ruffle the feathers of today’s nationalists. It is a fat but immensely readable volume that elaborates the long-term process of cultural interaction and assimilation that is reflected in language, literature, attire, science, art, music, governance and warfare. It goes to the rich cultural traditions of India that those who came to conquer it, in the end, were conquered by it. 

India in the Persianate Age
by Richard M. Eaton
Allen Lane, New Delhi
Extent: 489, Price: Rs. 999.

First published in The Hindu, issue dated Dec 15, 2019. 

Pulling sense out of the wasteful

Travel offer the thrills of impromptu encounters and the pleasures of unpredictability, provided one is ready for it.

Boondoggles got me thinking. How could the 'word' which by definition is considered 'wasteful' be a subject for a book by an academic known for his scholarship on William Blake? That the book was less about the idiosyncratic views of the noted British poet, painter and print-maker but more on the curious adventures of a Canadian professor from his extensive travels, which accrued to him on being a scholar on the noted genius, eased my task of engaging with the book. For the raconteur extraordinaire Jerry Bentley, boondoggle meant being paid for doing something which he wanted to do anyway. Lady luck played generous on him!

Travels offer the thrills of impromptu encounters and the pleasures of unpredictability, provided one is ready for such forays. Jerry was undoubtedly ready, armed with the talent of creating research pretexts to travel to the far corners of the globe. Converting such travels into smart writing is no less challenging; the reader must find the mosaic of personal experiences and encounters engagingly relatable. After all, it is not the stating of simple facts but what the reader can make out of it. Boondoggles is an edited volume of the diary entries of the travels of a restless professor by his daughters, Sarah and Julia, who found a reflection of beauty and empathy in their parents approach to life worth sharing.

Jerry helps the reader go back in time, from the 1950's to the 80's, when most of his travels were made. The world may have dramatically transformed over a short time, though. Back in the 50s, Jerry could not share a room with his wife Beth, both in Brussels and in Paris, as her maiden name was not matching in the passport. What’s more, getting the front desk at the hotels to read the amendment at the back of the passport was futile. Unlucky has a subjective connotation, as relationships between couples, straight or otherwise, draw multiple meanings today. 

Boondoggles give the reader the liberty to read the book in parts, as countries offer distinct social and cultural underpinnings to reflect upon. It is partly a book of adventure as the author traveled across continents with his young family in tow. To learn from a bear-researcher in Norway the art of coming out unscathed from wild bear encounters is gut-wrenching but educative. The book has lots on offer even on countries that a reader might have been to, as Jerry noted: ‘joy comes not from the fact but what you make of it’.

Perhaps what makes this book different from other travel writings of the kind is its treatment of the situations and encounters, swinging between plain anecdotes and curious reflections. That goes to its advantage too, as a reader can find quite a bit enmeshed between lines. Among many, I was particularly intrigued by Jerry’s interpretation on the versatility of how a lungi is worn in southern India. It is not without reason that it is worn floor-length, knee-length, thigh-length or even shorter. Could it be a kind of emotional flag, flying at half mast or full-mast, reflective of its wearer’s mood? Amusingly, it could be anybody’s guess!

Boondoggles makes for interesting reading, reflective, amusing and educative. However, the shorter boondoggles could have been excluded, and the academic endeavors held back for another volume. It would have made Boondoggles a slimmer book with diverse flavors.   

Boondoggles: Travels of a Restless Professor
by G E Bentley, Jr. 
Friesen Press, Canada
Extent: 297, Price: $ 17.63.

The quest to outwit superbugs

Antibiotic resistance is currently the cause for an estimated 700,000 deaths globally, and a business-as-usual scenario may force this figure to swell to 10 million deaths per year by 2050.

Released in 1997, Richard Ashcroft’s emotive and string-filled ballad ‘the drugs don't work, they just make me worse' is now a ground reality, as resistance to drugs has thrown millions into the throes of the biggest medical emergency of our time. Assigning medical meanings to the lyrics, Professor Sally Davies had cautioned the world on the diminishing power of anti-microbial and anti-bacterial drugs in her 2013 book with similar title ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’. Alarming as it is, antibiotic resistance is currently the cause for an estimated 700,000 deaths globally, and a business-as-usual scenario may force this figure to swell to 10 million deaths per year by 2050. In other words, the superbugs evolved out of such resistance are consuming a staggering 32 Boeing 747’s full of people every week. 

It has emerged as a man-made disaster since antibiotic development after Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin in the middle of 20th century did not keep pace with the growing microbial resistance, leaving the pipeline of drugs almost on the verge of drying up. Given in small doses over short courses, antibiotic research and development did not generate the profit margins for pharma companies, and consequently no new class of antibiotics has been discovered in the past three decades. In the meantime, bacteria mutated so fast that most antibiotics were left ineffective and redundant. However, for decades it remained the best-kept secret in medicine.  

With anti-microbial resistance attaining global attention, it is no secret that the world is moving towards a dark, post-antibiotic future. It may already have, given that in 2017 only 41 anti-biotic drugs were in clinical development compared to more than 500 for cancer. Just when the world needs more antibiotics to fight infections, their development has shockingly come to a halt. 

In these troubled times, Superbugs is a narrative of hope written from the front lines of clinical trials to fight resistant infections. Taking the readers on a ride through the troubled history and uncertain future of medicine, Matt McCarthy provides a gripping account of how he led a clinical trial to save Jackson, a gunshot infected victim, from a likely amputation or a possible loss of life. In an unnerving and unpleasant world of medicine that has held itself accountable to shareholders and not patients, McCarthy chartered a course of action to evoke Big Pharma to invest in the drugs than can save millions of lives and prove financial viable. 

It was a sense of urgency that led McCarthy to avoid colistin, the last resort medicine to treat life-threatening infection, as it had proved ineffective (rather fatal) on patients on last two counts. However, to preserve colistin from becoming ineffective in humans anytime soon, the Indian government has already banned its manufacture, sale and use in the poultry industry. McCarthy had other reasons to put a new drug,  Dalbavancin (or Dalba), on trial for which he needed volunteers to sign up. What followed is an educative and inspiring story of people like Ruth, George, Erwin, Gerard and Jennifer who had successfully volunteered to let future skin-infection patients, nearly twenty million develop a skin infection each year, deflect from the perils of the modern hospital. 

Superbugs could not have better timed, as anti-microbial resistance has gained worldwide attention as an important public health challenge, with serious impact on economy and development. It is relevant for India, which is home to some deadly infections like diarrhea, pneumonia, typhoid, encephalitis and dengue with cumulative human casualty across different age groups in excess of five million each year. While the challenge is to get the most out of the existent formulations by avoiding overuse and false prescriptions, there is also a need for more focused process to hunt for antibiotics in most unlikely of places viz., sewage, polluted lakes, and the intestines of insects. After all, dalba was made by extracting a large molecule from a bacterium found in Indian soil in the 1980s during a hunt for antibiotics. 

Essential take home from this path-breaking book is that microbes are engaged in making new chemicals under our feet that could eventually end-up saving millions of lives. Just beneath the topsoil are tiny molecules that could alleviate disease and stomp out epidemics. Researchers like Sean Brady at Rockefeller University have now confirmed that dirt is the best place to find antibiotics.  Brady’s team found two dozen new drugs from the genes harbored in dirt from Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Instances like these are pointers towards developing a strategy to scan the most unexpected of places for next big breakthrough in medicine. For Davies, nothing less than economic incentive for the pharma industry will make it scan the dirt lying around.  

McCarthy knack of storytelling comes handy in weaving an interesting narrative on unraveling the complexities of working among biomedical researchers, the pharmaceutical industry, and the drug administration. Superbugs are throwing new challenges and fresh opportunities as they pop up with equal ease in New Delhi and New York – overcrowding and insanitation being the common feature of urban living. Superbugs is a passionate account of one person’s quest for easing the tension between institutional bureaucracy and patient care, in testing a life-saving drug for the society at large. The story holds ethical and moral underpinnings, a compelling combination that allows the author to shed few tears as he describes the stories of his patients. It makes for an informative and absorbing reading, equally urgent and empathetic, on a subject that is close to our skin. Superbugs is a must read tale of medical ingenuity. 
.               
Superbugs –The Race to Stop an Epidemic
by Matt McCarthy
HarperCollins, New Delhi
Extent: 290, Price: Rs. 599

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine, issue dated Dec 9, 2019.

Emerging out of self-infliction

What women need to understand is that they too have power to make a difference.

Ancient myths and legends relegate women as proverbial sacrificial lambs in the gendered narrative of our history. Yashodhara is one such, who was made to suffer protracted isolation as her husband abandoned her in his spiritual journey to attain enlightenment as the Buddha. Although forced to suffer for none of her doings, her sacrifice did not find a respectful place in the grand narrative, and neither her story features prominently in the religious histories. Could there be more to the story that has been told in numerous times over the centuries? 

By giving a fictional spin to the grand old story, Sahitya Akademi award winning author P Lalitha Kumari aka Volga re imagines Yashodhara as a well-defined woman with a distinct spiritual mind, and an agency of her own. Far from being the victim that she has been made out to be, Yashodhara emerges as a woman of strong character who frees Siddhartha from family obligations to pursue the path of knowledge. ‘I must make the path of the pathfinder more comfortable for him to tread upon’. The young girl had a worldview that shaped the course of religious history, becoming the tower of strength behind Siddhartha. 

Yashodhara is an example of propulsive storytelling, bursting at the seams with insights and reflections on empathy and compassion. An important figure in feminist literature, Volga’s retelling of Yashodhara story is a call for women to partake in intellectual learning, and not to be left behind. ‘What women need to understand is that they too have power to make a difference’. In her rewriting of mythical characters, Volga’s feminist exploration grants them the strength to outgrow their victimhood and take an exemplary role of their lives. Such empowering narratives need to be heard more often in these troubled times.

Reimaging the epics from the eyes of its leading women characters has evolved as a genre, leading to a gendered retelling of the history. From Draupadi’s version of Mahabharata in The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Divakaruni to Urmila’s assessment of Ramayana in Sita’s Sister by Kavita Kane, feminist writing has come a long way in interpreting religious histories for the modern readers. Having narrated Ramayana from the perspectives of its female characters in The Liberation of Sita, Volga has added Yashodhara to her repertoire. It is a welcome addition to this genre, for building a nuanced understanding of our past. 
                                 
Yashodhara
by Volga 
Harper Perennial, New Delhi
Extent: 176, Price: Rs. 299.

This review was commissioned by The Hindu. 

The question of 'relevance' in changing times

If current happenings are any indication, universities are beset with the challenge of conforming to the political narrative that has swayed public opinion against the idea of freedom of inquiry.  

University may have been defined as a place for building human capacity to challenge, question, expand, and stretch oneself to the limits but in reality its power to advance knowledge and shape society is rapidly declining on account of stinking state funding, eroding teaching standards, and expanding market disruption. If recent onslaughts on Jawaharlal Nehru University and Central University of Hyderabad are any indication, universities are beset with the external challenge of conforming to the political narrative that has swayed public opinion against the idea of freedom of inquiry.  

The basic premise of 18 randomly arranged essays in the book is to reinforce The Idea of University as a crucible of academic freedom where researchers pool together their creative faculties to help society towards a greater common good. In a hierarchical and divided society like India, the authors contend that university campuses are rare public spaces where pluralism, cohesion, autonomy, and interrogation thrive to help build an egalitarian society, and these must be nurtured in the interest of the society and the state. With a deep contempt for the liberal scholarly enterprise, recent infringements on academic freedom have questioned the sanctity of such spaces in contributing to the political agenda of the right-wing dispensation. 

Deplorable nonetheless, recent developments have raised a set of discomforting questions on the internal functioning of the universities. Haven’t academic inertia, internal squabbles, and growing nepotism already weakened the edifice of knowledge at its core? There is no denying that the university education in the country is distanced from a wider society, and on account of its rather closed orientation has escaped public accountability too. Higher education system has almost reached the edge of the precipice: beset with internal bureaucracy which has not led to greater liberties but to more constraints on teaching and research; and autonomous status that has not strengthened but weakened the institutional structure vulnerable to favoritism and nepotism. 

Seeking academic freedom without being accountable will remain self-defeating. This is not to belittle academic freedom, but a meaningful envisioning of the university would mean an inclusive architecture that stands to fulfill the needs and aspirations of those millions outside the high gates of existing universities. In a majoritarian capitalist democracy that promotes the marketing and branding of everything and everyone, pulling the world of knowledge out from the trap of the business model that aims at investing in education for getting a good job would warrant a shift in rethinking on how to sustain public-funded universities. It isn’t an easy proposition, and the book touches such introspective aspects at the periphery. 

Contributors to The Idea of a University provide a multi-layered assessment of the idea of academic freedom, while lamenting the fact that academic freedom, rather than the denial of it, is in need of a justification. While a timely publication, it remains in a self-engaging mould seeking reification of the university as a harbinger of democratization without addressing the challenge of protecting the last remains of the public-funded enclaves of academic excellence from being appropriated by the state to further its hegemonic agenda. More incisive inquiry and critique was expected from such a collection to address the core weaknesses of the university, and help it to stand tall against external challenges of usurping such public spaces. 

Unless decades of woefully inadequate knowledge-production and dissemination is addressed by re-imagining an accountable public institution, it will be tough to subvert political forces from attacking universities and the broader society from harboring its angst against the ‘ivory towers of academics.’ It, therefore, becomes essential to ‘engage more with the public and explain what it is we are trying to do in universities.’ Without building an active engagement with large segments of the society, it may not be easy to reinforce The Idea of a University. 

The Idea of a University
by Apoorvanand (Ed)
Context, New Delhi
Extent: 272, Price: Rs. 699.

First published in the Hindustan Times on Nov 1, 2019.

Nudge is what push is not

In recent years, several countries have been drawn to nudges to makes progress on pressing social problems as these do not cost a great deal.

Nudge, first as a creative hypothesis and later as a compulsive policy prescription, has come a long way since a housefly imprint in the loo pots at Amsterdam Schipol Airport dissuaded millions to avoid unwarranted spillage, by targeting the elusive fly instead. Partnering with fellow economist Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein took the little-pot experiment to dizzy heights in their pioneering work Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, published in 2008, which helped the subject of behavioral economics gain an unparalleled political traction, and earned Thaler an Economics Noble Prize in 2017. Applied to influence public behavior, a nudge is any aspect of the choice architecture that helps people opt for change without any significant economic incentives. An alarm is a nudge, and so is a warning and a recommendation. 

In recent years, several countries have been drawn to nudges to makes progress on pressing social problems as these do not cost a great deal. Dozens of countries including Australia, France, Canada, UK and Germany have constituted their behavioral science teams whose work has reportedly helped reduce poverty, improve public health, and help clean the environment. Sunstein himself led one such team in the White House from 2009 to 2012. But nudge as a process of social change has accumulated its share of criticism, charged for diminishing autonomy, threatening dignity, and violating liberties. Nudging has also been criticized for being short-term politically motivated initiatives at the cost of long-term behavioral changes. 

Trusting Nudges is the outcome of surveys conducted in as many as 17 countries to understand why nudges are sometimes considered a form of manipulation, and are therefore rejected for being in pursuit of illegitimate goals. Across countries, however, there is consistency of acceptance for nudges that are designed to promote health, safety, and environmental protection. Cultural orientation and political lineage are known to play a significant role in public response to nudges. For instance, only a small majority will accept automatic change of women’s last names to that of their husband after marriage whereas a call that requires chain restaurants to tag calorie labels on their products is sure to win an overwhelming support. It may seem simple but in reality there are many a slips between acceptance and rejection of nudges, as choice architecture is often motivated with some form of unavoidable paternalism. 

Findings from their multi-country surveys have helped Sunstein and Reisch to conclude that nudges oscillate between comparative receptivity and comparative skepticism, driven by factors like age variations, cultural background, cognitive ability, political orientation, and trust in government. There is no one size that fits all. Considered covert, manipulative, and based on excessive trust in government, growing misconception about nudges have led many to believe that these are unlikely to solve large problems. However, the authors are convinced that nudges remain a way forward to maximize social welfare. 

To overcome bias and inertia, a list of guiding principles to frame a Bill of Rights for Nudging have been proposed. Trusting Nudges is a timely contribution for prudent policy-making, else governmental push - for toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission - will get counted as nudge. One of the guiding principles of the proposed Bill states ‘nudges must not manipulate people’ in staking unsubstantiated claims. For those who have followed nudge hypothesis, this book is a welcome addition to a growing literature on the subject that captures citizen’s central concerns in legitimizing the role of nudges in civic life.      
            
Trusting Nudges
by Cass R. Sunstein and Lucia A. Reisch
Routledge, UK
Extent: 145, Price: US$ 39.95

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine, issue dated Oct 21, 2019. 

Not really convenient, and yet

Trains are rolling libraries of information provided one is willing to relinquish home comforts; is ready for the unexpected; and is alive to searching the unknown. 

Monisha Rajesh’s seven months of uninterrupted travel with her fiancé on eighty different trains’ criss-crossing continents can hardly be about convenience, but surely reflects true grit and perseverance at this time when train journey is fast losing its allure. More so, as she had already traveled and published Around India in 80 Trains. Trains may mean different to different people, but to her it meant ‘an open window into the soul of a country and its people.’ With empathy fading from existence, a train journey allows an unrestricted peep into unedited footage of other people’s lives, without them being aware that someone had shared their life moment. Train journey can make the discerning feel to be part of the whole.   

Rajesh draws valuable lessons from her 45,000 miles journey, without being unduly bothered that she had only five different T-shirts to negotiate varying temperature regimes. That she dragged her boyfriend Jem, now her husband, on this arduous journey turned out to be a wise decision. But for such travel, they would not have discovered traits in each other’s personalities that only the dynamics of travel could unfold. As much an act of discovering the outside world, rolling from one side to the other in a confined space on a train can lead to an exploration unto oneself. 

Around the World in 80 Trains takes the reader on the twists and travails of train journey from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Tibet, Vietnam, North Korea, and to Canada and the US. Refusing to believe pessimist economists that railways is dying a swift death, Rajesh asserts that trains are rolling libraries of information provided one is willing to relinquish home comforts; is ready for the unexpected; and is alive to searching the unknown. The thrill of train journey is that it can never be fully under control, she cautions, and that is what makes it an exciting undertaking. 

Seven months on a journey can take the fizz out of any travel, unless one appreciates the unique qualities of the rail journey. Rajesh does it with aplomb, packing her multi-layered travelogue with hard facts, deep reflections, and intellectual acuities. Blessed with an elegant writing style, she shares her hits and misses of dealing with fellow passengers and the train staff, and the city life they were exposed to in selected places. While it is not uncommon to have moments of blind trust when travelling, the chances of being tricked is no less certain on travelling across territories. A woman dispensing a pack with just 36 playing cards at a throw way price indicates that certain habits are cross-cultural and trans-national.  

Rajesh’s eye for details is what makes Around the World in 80 Trains a delightful reading. More than a lifeline for commuters, trains have redefined its status in the race for appropriating resources from far-off geographical settings. It is still fresh in memory that the so-called British benevolence of gifting the railways to India was nothing but a fast-track plan to facilitate the plunder of loot from remote places. China is acting like the British in Tibet, the introduction of much-publicized train in Tibet is doing everything to extract everything they could at the cost of eroding the indigenous culture. Trains link the past with the future, via a troubled present. 

From Jules Verne’s historic world travel in 80 days to Monisha Rajesh’s world travel on 80 trains, the nature of travel may have changed but the contours of exploration and learning have been kept alive. Anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, but important is what such personal heroic can offer to the society at large. Rajesh offers essential insights from her travel for those who value adventure over risk. 

Around the World in 80 Trains
by Monisha Rajesh
Bloomsbury, New Delhi
Extent: 325, Price: Rs 599.

First published in the Hindustan Times, dated Sept 7, 2019.

Trees are from Eden

Liberalization of morality notwithstanding, the heroism of surrender and sacrifice is unlikely to fade anytime soon.

With the characters sticking on our minds and the songs staying in our hearts, Bollywood has turned repetitive scripts into a sub-culture of obsessive cinema from which there has been little escape. More by design than default, songs convey what the script cannot, in reflecting the overt and covert anxieties and aspirations of both the characters and the viewers. The combined effect of these two parallel strands created the cinematic possibilities of carrying forward the moral overtone of post-independence reconstruction of the society on the Gandhian principles of simplicity and celibacy. 

In his frame by frame decadal analysis of most popular films, Sanjay Suri sets out to establish that the dominant idiom of the films gets reinforced through moral obligations of the hero, reflected in his retreat from wealth and desire. In this intriguing analysis, cinema emerges as the creative paradox that triggers desire in the guise of austerity.    

A Gandhian Affair is as much exhilarating as entertaining in revealing a contrived method of film-making that cinematically projects the cultural necessity of rejecting desire. As viewers continue to identify with it, storytellers churn out much of the same stuff again and again. With slight deviation, however, desire in song and surrender in script makes our cinema stand out in its texture. Suri’s contention is that it couldn’t have been any other way, and there are any number of examples – from Mother India to Naya Daur and from Ram aur Shyam to Lage Raho Munna Bhai – to show how cinema defined its boundaries for and in a conservative society. 

Yet, the linear juxtaposition is not without its share of ambiguity! While the heroine resting her head in the lap of a man she was close to had outraged audiences to seek change in the ending of Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam, the most sexual song Aaj sajan mohe and laga re, janam safal ho jaye (Take my body to yours, my life will be fulfilled) was curiously accepted by both viewers and listeners. 

The glaring disconnect between prose and poetry provides a discordant note on the art of film making. That songs are a departure from the scripted values on which the film rests draws attention to the inherent contradictions in the society. Only cinema give audiences an opportunity to unleash suppressed sexuality through songs that it identifies with, and lives on. Suri asserts that while the hero’s conduct has been largely Gandhian, sex has continued to dominate cinema in a curious hide-and-seek game. The question remains whether or not the portrayal of sex should be taken as a cinematic reflection of battle to gain inner control over human desire? 

Much has changed in the millennium decades though, but Gandhi has not yet been totally unsighted. Unless all of India becomes at least middle class, argues Suri, an idea of Gandhi will continue to resonate in the mainstream cinema. Liberalization of morality notwithstanding, the heroism of surrender and sacrifice is unlikely to fade anytime soon.  

Bollywood has attracted serious writings in recent years. Sanjay Suri makes a significant addition to growing literature on the subject by helping us understand cinema the way it may not have been viewed. A Gandhian Affair with cinema is engaging and entertaining. 

A Gandhian Affair
by Sanjay Suri
Harper Collins, New Delhi
Extent: 247, Price: Rs 499.

First published in weekly Outlook, week ending Oct 21, 2019.

The surrender of intelligence

While there is no denying that algorithms have eased life by managing the information explosion, that it does so at the cost of reducing rich diversity into a world of niches has often gone unnoticed? 

Google does what confidantes used to, lending advice for resolving personal and professional matters. Seeking out friends for addressing life’s travesties are seemingly passé as algorithms powered machine intelligence offers a staggering number of options. Think of a question, and Google has an answer. Smart gadgets have eased life by conducting mundane tasks of picking the best on offer, be it a piece of clothing or a restaurant of choice, and have thus made a vast majority believe that algorithms are all set to turn the tables on human intelligence, and run every aspect of our lives henceforth. 

The jury is still out on whether machine intelligence will make the cut in mimicking human brain. While there is no denying that algorithms have eased life by managing the information explosion, that it does so at the cost of reducing rich diversity into a world of niches has often gone unnoticed? What it does with a vast array of large data-sets and how it manipulates the same to generate preferences smacks of dystopian possibilities! Not without reasons issues related to data security and the privacy of citizens are proving contentious. Machine-driven artificial intelligence has its share of both intended and unintended consequences, warns Kartik Hosanagar. Drawing upon his experience of designing algorithms, the Wharton Professor brings on the table the potential risks of being blindfold to the ramifications of algorithmic decision making. 

By design, algorithm is a simple step by step method of resolving any problem by acting on available data-sets to draw recommendations on our behalf. As the users interact with algorithmic suggestions, the next generation of data is generated for it to work on, and so on. In the process, biases creep into algorithmic systems that intentionally narrows down the list of available choices leading to unintended consequence of creating digital echo chambers that have the potential to influence or control human behavior. Should algorithms be limited to serving our desires or allowed to stake control on human behavior?  

A Human Guide to Machine Intelligence weighs opportunities and challenges posed by modern algorithms to give the reader a nuanced understanding on how far it can go to serve us. There are safety-critical areas like health care and entertainment where machine intelligence does have a role to play, in behavior-centric domains like recruitment and therapies machine intelligence has the potential to go rogue. The case of Microsoft’s chatbot 'Tay' turning sexist and racist on the social media is a case in point, and so are the episodes of much-hyped self-driving cars meeting their fatal crash. Despite all this, machine intelligence is here to stay with its promises and pitfalls. ‘To discard them now would be like Stone Age humans deciding to reject the use of fire because it can be tricky to control.’  

As algorithms are fast transiting from their decision support role to becoming autonomous decision makers, the question of human’s leaving life entirely in the hands of a computer has refueled man-machine debate. Though an anathema to our craving for control, there are many significant instances where we have let the machine control our life. Auto pilots have been in existence for long, and so are button-controlled elevators. Research has shown that more than control, it is the trust in algorithms that is central to its acceptance. Since algorithms are seen as robotic and emotionless, the challenge before researchers is to develop trust-inducing interfaces for mistrust, hostility, and fear to melt away.  

Backed by latest developments on the subject, Hosanagar argues that transparency is the major factor in fostering trust in algorithms. Unless the tangled vines of transparency and trust are unfurled, people will continue to view machines for their limited ability to mimic our patterns of thoughts and conclusions. It is for this reason the electronic voting machines have yet to increase public confidence in the sanctity of the ballot. Electronic voting system is perfect example to lay bare the challenge of harnessing the power of transparency to induce greater trust in algorithms as more difficult than one might assume. The world is yet far from a robust, tested protocol for algorithmic transparency, which remains the biggest stumbling block on its progress. 

In the post-truth era, algorithms have greater challenge to win trust of its users. The problem, as Hosanagar elaborates, lies in the fact that most of the algorithms are created and managed by for-profit companies who protect it as highly valuable forms of intellectual property. If the companies were to let their algorithm source code known to the public, the chances of the systems being manipulated to serve vested-interests can be endless. If Google were to let its source code be known, internet companies can trick the search engine into ranking their websites higher, without concurrent improvements in their contents/services. Resolving the predictability-resilience paradox is next on the agenda to increase algorithms’ social acceptability. 

Seized of the fact that algorithms are heading towards reaching human-level intelligence in processing data and the scale of their impact touching billions of people, Hosanagar advocates developing a set of rights, responsibilities, and regulations to negotiate the unintended consequences of algorithms, including their failures and the steps required to correct them. Without doubt, such an initiative calls for cooperative efforts between the industry and government watchdogs. Because, the role of algorithms is not to accentuate human biases but to curtail them. It is in this regard, Hosanagar’s proposal for an Algorithmic Bill of Rights is timely at defining the boundaries of a responsible machine intelligence behavior. Because unlike chess, for algorithms the game continues even after checkmate.

A Human’s Guide to Machine Intelligence
by Kartik Hosnagar
Penguin Portfolio, New Delhi
Extent: 262, Price: Rs 599.

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine, issue dated September 16, 2019.

It's time to clear the air

Over years, an ecosystem of ignorance and denial has transformed air pollution from a meek cat into an assertive tiger. 

In a country where corruption continues to coexist with progress, indifference to pollution as a fatal fallout of development is bound to remain at the periphery of any meaningful social discourse. Four decades since the enactment of the legislative provision to control and prevent air pollution, and an estimated million people being consumed annually by air pollution, there are not many who yet acknowledge it as a serious scourge in India. And why would they when the government has continued to deny any direct correlation of death exclusively due to air pollution. Over years, an ecosystem of ignorance and denial has transformed air pollution from a meek cat into an assertive tiger. 

Dean Spears confronts this tiger head-on in his socio-anthropological analysis of air pollution as it registers its presence from sprawling urban jungles to degrading rural landscapes to conclude that India’s air pollution is not one problem, but a multi-layered manifestation of governance and market failure. Since air pollution does not respect the rural-urban divide, it poses formidable public policy challenge to fix it. Impact of stubble burning in rural fields on ambient air quality across urban centres has clearly shown that one cannot buy one’s own private escape. It is a collective problem that needs a policy directive on structural reforms to address it.   

It is no denying that air pollution comes from several sources, many of which are non-descript in an informal economy, and keeping a tab on its nature and extent is as challenging as designing incentives to put a cap on it. In the absence of credible data, the book takes the health route to correlate and raise concerns about air pollution. Through carefully curated data, Spears provides evidence on how exposure to air pollution not only results in babies born with low height but shockingly hold a positive correlation with infant mortality rates across the country. Such a piece of statistics points to the grim reality, leaving many wondering if buying homemade filter systems can provide the great escape from worsening air pollution. It should be more than clear therefore that the polluter can hardly keep a safe distance from the impact of pollution, and hence should play a proactive role in nipping the evil in the bud. 

Air, with its long title, provides a nuanced understanding on air pollution and the country’s deep vulnerability to it in future climate change. Since the policymakers have not invested in monitoring pollution and neither have experts developed tools to curb it, the book is directed at those enlightened voters who are concerned about the health of the society. In a country where life expectancy has caught up with rest of the developed world, there is no reason for it to remain home to one-quarter of the world’s neonatal deaths. More than a development challenge, there are clear social and economic reasons to fight air pollution. 

Without doubt, the state has an obligation towards its people. There is no other political choice. If a not-so-free electoral democracy in China can cut down its particle pollution in Beijing as a popular step towards remaining in charge, India has seemingly better democratic credentials to tackle pollution both in urban and rural areas. Spears wonders if the government will pursue a carrot and stick policy of right incentives and punitive punishment to run concurrent in inculcating a responsive behavior among municipal managers and law enforcers. Isn’t it time that a free democracy like India enhance its institutional capacities to serve its vulnerable public? 

It is a handy and easy-to-read book on getting a social science perspective on the political-economy of development (read pollution). It doesn’t tell which boiler can reduce pollution from a coal-based power plant but stays firm that coal is not the energy future for the country. It adds more dangerous particles in the air than any other source. Cutting down on coal as a source of energy offers double-win solution: the co-benefits of reducing air pollution add up to reducing carbon emissions. For a country that is somewhat limited in its resolve and capacity to curb pollution, this is a case that should merit serious attention. The book leaves the reader with a set of open-ended recommendations to deliberate on further.  

Having been living in India for a while, Spears is privy to socio-cultural aspects of both rural and urban life which lends desired credence to his writings. Politics is a difficult way to improve policies, the book asserts, but independent citizens can contribute to democratic accountability by influencing politics. Air pollution is too important an issue not to be tracked by informed citizens to influence the state to act. 

Air: Pollution, Climate Change and India’s Choice between Policy and Pretence
by Dean Spears
HarperCollins, New Delhi
Extent: 258, Price: Rs 250.

First published in Hindustan Times, issue dated Sept 7, 2019.

Beginnings Without End

Early through the novel one learns a rather strange practice of women giving birth while ‘standing like a mare’, priding themselves that nobody other than the midwives witness the child birth.

An award-winning novel raises multiple expectations, not only on its substance and style but on its linguistic strength in connecting reader with the imagined world of possible realities. At the end, what counts are the lingering thoughts the prose leaves the readers to continue grapple with in solitude. Celestial Bodies, first Omani novel to win the coveted Man Booker prize, ticks all the boxes on being imaginative, alluring and irresistible at the same time. First published as Sayyidat al-qamar, the novel by academic Jokha Alharthi traces an Omani family journey over three generations, through the twists and travails in a country that emerged as an oil-rich Gulf state in the 1960s but was the last to abolish slavery in 1970. Carefully crafted on a historical canvas, it prisms lived experience of three sisters as they swim through changing times that opens life in an Omani village to the world. 

For American historian Marilyn Booth, who translated the book and shared the prize, there were surprises throughout. What attracted her to translate Alharthi was the absence of stereotypes in her analysis of gender, race, and social distinction. “Through the different tentacles of people’s lives and loves and losses we come to learn about this society – all its degrees, from the very poorest of the slave families working there to those making money through the advent of a new wealth in Oman and Muscat.” Alharthi weaves individual stories through a distinct but intricate and engaging narrative; while the third-person account deals with the person(s) on whom the chapter is named, the first-person reflections are by only one character, Abdallah – the lone voice in a man’s world who happens to be the husband of the eldest of the three sisters.

Celestial Bodies is set in the Omani village of al-Awafi and follows the stories of three sisters: Mayya, who lay immersed in her sewing machine but marries into a rich family after a heartbreak; Asma, who was at peace with her books and marries for duty; and Khawla, who spent better part of life with her mirror and waited to marry a man who had emigrated to Canada. Undoubtedly fallible but individualistic nonetheless, each has a share in the complicated inter-generational relationships in a domestic drama that connects ‘past’ with ‘future’ through a transitional ‘present’.  It is subtle artistry of the author that allows its characters to retain their individuality, but not without being part of a home that has externalities of influences at work all the time which sheds light on travesties of life in Oman.  

What makes Celestial Bodies distinct is its proclivity for details captured through varied voices and tones about cultural norms, social customs, and entrenched taboos. What comes out clear is that there is a silent quest amongst women to break free from the shackles of traditions, reflecting inner strength and a resolve to play different. Else, Mayya would not have dared to name her daughter ‘London’ despite sustained criticism on naming the little angel for a city in the land of the Christians. There is defying silence in her response to all-pervasive whisper around the issue, using silence as an act of perfection to guard herself. By creating a bubble of silence around her, Mayya found that nothing could cause her any pain. Alharthi allows her characters to evolve on their own, gaining distinct identity and drawing strength from their well thought-out actions. 

Early through the novel one learns a rather strange practice of women giving birth while ‘standing like a mare’, priding themselves that nobody other than the crowding midwives witness the child birth. ‘There is no longer any shame in the world as women have their babies lying flat on their backs, and the men can hear their screams from the other end of the hospital.’ Having herself been born through such a tradition, and cajoled by none other than her own mother about its virtues, Mayya had her baby slide out right into the hands of the Christians in a missionary hospital in Muscat. Symbolic as it may seem, the generational swing towards modernity has its virtues but that do not make life any less turbulent in the long run. Yet, change remains the essential denominator for defying the inherited values in a traditional society.

How change works out across generations is an altogether different subject? Although upholding the banner of ‘change’, Mayya found it hard to reconcile the fact that London was in love.  Why would she lock up her daughter and smash her phone? Having not had his share of love as Mayya remained glued to her sewing machine, Abdallah thought she never knew love and so did not know how to deal with her lovelorn daughter. Popping up as some sort of an interlocutor in Celestial Bodies, Abdallah doesn’t assert any authority but shares his vulnerabilities and accepts lack of control over things shaping around him. One begins to empathize with Abdallah who laments: ‘everything remained in its place even if I had no place.’ There is subtle artistry in Alharthi’s writing that lends a mix of psychology and philosophy to the novel.

Celestial Bodies has multiple beginnings, but no end. It is mosaic of complicated human relationships, where one begins to discover oneself by breaking the cocoon of myths and beliefs. Early in her marriage, Asma discovered that marriage was not the coming together of unmade halves (as she had long perceived) who find their other halves and miraculously become whole. Far from being each other’s halves, each one is a celestial sphere complete unto itself, orbiting only along its already defined path. It is through patience and self-examination that one learns that there is an inherent gain in creating enough space in relationships for each to orbit freely. Asma made peace with her better half after realizing that humans are but celestial bodies with a defined course of its own. Any collision or fusion is an act of temporary disruption, one must adjust into and move on. 

There is some kind of intuitive creativity with which individual characters emerge from their fallible existence to lend strength to the narrative. Alharthi lets them be, an embodiment of strengths, follies and eccentricities of life. Khawla’s long wait was over following the return of Nasir from Canada. Once she was settled in Oman with her husband and two children, she sought divorce from the one she had only waited to share her life with. Celestial Bodies is a multi-generational saga full of surprises, which also tells the story of a country that is evolving out of its past traditions. Alharthi captures multiple situations in presenting a nuanced understanding of the coming-of-age of a society in transition. A doctorate in Classical Arabic Poetry and author of three collections of stories, Alharthi has the makings of a literary giant that readers will only begin to wait for her next. 

Celestial Bodies
by Jokha Alharthi
Translated by Marilyn Booth
Simon & Schuster, New Delhi
Extent: 243, Price: Rs. 499.

First published in The Book Review, issue dated Sept, 2019. 

They used the good book

Whether the apex court which upholds constitutional obligations of the state has transformed to become the ‘Supreme Court of Indians’ is still open to interpretation.

In dispensing justice to a mason Moti Ram in 1978, whom the lower court had granted bail against a surety of ten thousand rupees to be realized within the same district, Justice Krishna Iyer had expressed shock at the manner of seeking such high surety from a poor man and reminded the errant magistrate that ‘our Constitution, enacted by ‘We the People of India’ is meant for the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker – shall we add the bonded laborer and the pavement dweller.’ It was a conscious reference to a statement by Justice Vivian Bose in 1956 who, while expressing anguish at procedural delays in getting relief for a petitioner had explicitly stated that the Constitution was not only for the exclusive benefits of the highly placed but as much for the poor and the humble.  

These and many such cases not only project the glory of our Constitution but demonstrate how marginal citizens operating in an informal economy have continued to use the constitutional provisions as an instrument to trigger public debates on state’s obligation towards individual freedom and social justice. Created by an elite consensus, it is interesting how the Constitution and constitutional remedies have been sought by individuals on the margins who take recourse through the Supreme Court to produce an alternative narrative on citizenship. Whether the apex court which upholds constitutional obligations of the state has transformed to become the ‘Supreme Court of Indians’ is still open to interpretation.

In claiming that the constitutional provisions have indeed transformed everyday life in the country, A Peoples’ Constitution argues that for a wide range of groups it acted as a powerful way to check on executive powers in framing and claiming their legitimate rights. The book examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws; Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control; Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws; and sex workers’ plea to protect their right to practice prostitution. What emerges is not a story of simple resistance to state authority but a process of civic engagement with the state to reshape the society and its economy.

Through the study of these landmark cases, Rohit De, an assistant professor of history at Yale University, shows how a claim to cultural autonomy alongside a choice of economic activity had not only generated democratic behavior but contributed to strengthening democracy too. That ordinary citizens have been in the forefront of rational legal battles with the state from the earlier days lay to rest the dominant assumption that judicial activism gained currency only in the 1980s. In effect, the legacy of forward-looking posture by the court had invoked touching faith and confidence among the underprivileged to seek recourse of law for their rights. All said, the Supreme Court is still an elitist institution, not for the faint-hearted without adequate resources.   

De’s insightful analysis leads the reader away from the judgement-driven narrative on ‘who won the case’ to a more nuanced understanding on the contingency and the contestation that make up the process of litigation. The anxieties of the legal process outside the court premises are at times more important than the actual outcome of the case. Despite the sex workers’ minimal success in the courts, the litigation succeeded in challenging the arbitrary powers of a local magistrate to evict any woman from the neighborhood. Similarly, in the prohibition cases expanded police powers came under judicial ire. The afterlife of a court case is critical, not only as a legal precedent for lower courts but also for its impact on executive practices.

Despite such incisive analysis, A Peoples’ Constitution limits itself to a celebratory note and as a consequence omits addressing the structural shortcomings in the system. Although it is the constitutional mandate to keep judiciary separate from the executive, in majority of the states the district magistrates are still drawn from the civil service. The book remains silent on the Supreme Court’s failure to address this malaise, as also on the abysmal state of the lower judiciary. Till both these aspects are tackled upfront, full realization of constitutional provisions will remain a work in progress. With constitutional consciousness growing among citizens, the judicial process needs to be made responsive to the everyday life of its people. 

A Peoples’ Constitution
by Rohit De
Princeton University Press, Princeton
Extent: 296, Price: Rs 435

First published in weekly Outlook, issue for the week ending Sept 16, 2019.

The soul of water

Spiritualism can redeem our dying rivers.

The Ganga’s sacredness doesn’t guarantee its purity, as devotees draw a distinction between material cleanliness and ritual purity. Paradox! Exploiting the very source of life for economic and political gains has reduced our individual and collective relationship with water. With the intrinsic value of water being ignored in its sheer assessment as a resource worthy of appropriation, an uncertain water future threatens humanity like never before. Drawing insights from her passion for understanding water and reflections from her study of religious worldviews, Elizabeth McAnally in Loving Water Across Religions advocates the need to reinvent our relationship with water by developing an integral water ethic. There is much to learn from religious practices in developing an integral approach to understand and preserve water.

Nothing less than cultivating an ‘I-Thou’ relationship with water can help circumvent the global water crises, stresses McAnally. Integrating her personal experiences with practices in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, she constructs an integral ethic that brings the study of religion into dialogue with natural and social sciences, with an aim at transforming the current objective assessment of water to include the subjective perspectives on this finite resource. “Seeing the physical world as a manifestation of the divine has the potential to lead religions to a more respectful relationship with the world.”

There is inherent value in what is being said, but how to reconcile religions that have already lost out to science? Despite religious practice being laced with compassion, respect and reverence for nature, the material world in contrast is a manifestation of indifference, scorn and contempt towards it.

Seized of the contrasting realities, McAnally argues for the need to integrate knowledge from as many different perspectives to address the complexity and urgency of the impending water crises. The world may have run the whole distance to manage water as objectively as it could; but there is still scope to make a fresh start by imagining it through an integral lens. Loving Water Across Religions is a clarion call for developing a deep love for water by acknowledging that water has interiority, an intrinsic value over and above its instrumental value. It seeks consciousness to realize it, and a conscience undertaking for enhancing relations between humans and water for overcoming our current destructive attitudes. It may be important to pay attention to such a proposition, but the author doesn’t offer empirical evidences to backstop it.

While invoking love and service as a crucial component of an integral water ethic, McAnally observes the state of the revered Yamuna with disdain, as one of India’s most sacred rivers has remained one of the worst polluted. Should the case of Yamuna belittle the significance of listening to water as a source of inspiration?

The challenge is to convert individual love and compassion for water into collective consciousness for preserving our rivers. The author’s hope that by combining individual efforts something much larger can be achieved is already a reality in Punjab. Efforts by Sikh Saint Balbir Singh Seechewal have restored Kali Bein, the 160-km long tributary of river Beas, to its pristine glory. The rivulet has also been cleaned some dozen times in the last two decades.

It remains an isolated case of empathy and compassion, to which McAnally’s philosophical basis can be the replicating catalyst.

Loving Water Across Religions
by Elizabeth McAnally
Orbis Books, New York
Extent: 180, Price: US$ 26.

First published in BusinessLine dated August 12, 2019. A shorter version was  published in AnthemEnviroExpertsReviews on July 23, 2019. 

Of goat sacrifice, cow love, and monkey hooliganism

The stories of goat sacrifice, cow love, monkey hooliganism, and bear sex are grounded in the recognition that each needs the other to survive and even thrive.

It is quite unlikely if anybody would value pigeon as a pet, since the ubiquitous bird has already attained the undisputed title of a despised pest. This widespread notion can easily change if one gets to hear about the experiments which are now engaging pigeons to collect and distribute information about air quality conditions to the general public - a despised pest being transformed into a veritable messenger. Gathering new data to imagine fresh engagement with the feathered critters may eventually help afresh strained relationship to address complexities of life. Such possibilities are worth exploring for building new sensitivities with fellow species as a means of fostering enhanced response-ability.

Based on extensive ethnographic research in the mountain villages, Radhika Govindrajan explores multiple aspects of interspecies co-existence for assigning new meanings to intimacies with domestic and wild animals. Animal Intimacies captures the recursive play between life and death of six species – goat, dog, cow, pig and bear – which has violence at the heart of inevitable relatedness with the mountain households. The stories of goat sacrifice, cow love, monkey hooliganism, and bear sex are grounded in the recognition that each needs the other to survive and even thrive. Even in the otherness of the species there is a moral and ethical underpinning that defines interspecies care and reciprocity, which extends the narrow domain of such interactions beyond the conventional man-animal conflict.  

Relatedness is the key that holds stories in Animal Intimacies from the perspective of sustaining kinship. Drawing heavily from Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble, Govindrajan frames interspecies relations as kin‐like, which provides distinctive ways of defining intensity of such relationships in the mountains. Even the queer narrative of bear engaging women in sex is not without a sense of kinship, where they relate to one another by their shared desire of pleasure. Bear becomes the metaphor to critique the denial of legitimacy to female sexuality, as also highlights their social subjectivity and marginality. 

Animal Intimacies provides lively reportage on the everydayness of existence in the mountain villages, where interaction with domesticated cattle and encounters with wild animals constitute a better part of daily existence. Within the knotty nature of multispecies relatedness Govindrajan discovers the common experience of inequality and exploitation that has contributed to a distinct fellowship between humans and animals. Is the shared history of neglect and exclusion the cause for of goat sacrifice, cow love kinship in the mountains? Each story provides insights on how people perceive and relate to different animals, building a unique interspecies social equilibrium. 

However, in recent years two notable externalities - the right-wing political project on cow protection and translocation of monkeys from the plains to the mountains – have disrupted interspecies equilibrium which the local population finds hard to negotiate. The consequent flux of stray cattle and the growing monkey hooliganism have made the potential of participation in the life of the other impermeable. As hordes of people abandon land and migrate in search of better pastures, the everyday form of relatedness has taken a serious beating. It is an incredible loss, both to humans as a body and animals as an agency.

Through stories of interspecies interconnections, based on empathy and love, Govindrajan constructs the fleeting possibility of another world.  She doesn’t render animals as a symbolic foil but as subjects whose agency, intention, and capacity for emotion is critical in shaping the relationships that has the potential to dilute the impact of humans as a geological force. In this period of the Anthropocene, when places for people and other critters are being destroyed, the urgency of making kin with other species was never more compelling. 

The stories in Animal Intimacies lend credence to the notion that despite both animals and humans representing the world differently; it is in creative imagination of their relatedness lies the possibility of creating refuges for the humans and the non humans. Written with style and scholarship, Animal Intricacies provides fresh insights on the variety of human‐non human interactions that has the potential to take the urgency of making kin, with other critters, to an imaginative high. 

An assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Radhika Govindrajan has put together her research into an interesting and immensely readable book. 

Animal Intimacies
by Radhika Govindrajan 
Penguin, New Delhi
Extent: 327, Price: Rs 599.

First published in the Hindustan Times, dated July 20, 2019. 

A Bullet with Manasa's Name

Ghosh deploys myth and history to focus on the scary maw of a violated nature and the digitally-aided transfer of people. And we carry on, in denial.

Amitav Ghosh’s anxiety on the subject of climate change had come out clearly in The Great Derangement (2016), wherein his conjecture on our collective inability to fathom lurking dangers of climate change was united with an absence of serious literature on the subject. The world has changed too much, too fast and so profoundly that not much sense can be made of it in non-fiction. Therefore, the conventional cause-effect narrative on the emerging environmental catastrophe rarely engages a large section of the affected and elicits a collective response.

It is only through stories that the universe can speak to us, contends Ghosh, and our failure to listen may invite punishment. It makes sense as we are the only species gifted with the faculty of storytelling that helps us capture the inward mysteries of our existence. Gun Island provides the mythical backdrop that connects the past with the present in Dinanath or Deen’s journey in tracing the footsteps of the gun merchant who had supposedly traversed the world in search of a safe haven to evade the wrath of the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi. Deen’s travels from the marshes of the Sundar­bans to the gradually sinking Venice via fire-ravaged California is intermeshed with flights of imagination over dots of reality in building a compulsive story of contemporary relevance.

Plotted over a span of three centuries, from the little ice age to the current phase of global warming, the story remains alive to the unfolding ecological crises. The alarming decline of Irrawa­ddy dolphins in the Sundarbans and the invasion of venomous brown recluse spider in Venice provide evidence of shocking things happening around us. Ghosh brings to life non-human, silent, characters in the story—essentially a heady cocktail of myths, folklore and legends. “The primary literary challenge of our time is to give voice to the non-human”. Gun Island succeeds in integrating the non-human into an abs­orbing, partly thrilling, novel that blurs the lines between the real and the imaginary. Kneading past with present, connecting the human with the non-­human, and coupling myth with rea­lity emerge as its most striking feature, an essential prelude to looking beyond the obvious in making a sense of the pervasive crisis looming over us all.

Resting on the undercurrents of migration, a theme that has engaged the aut­hor since the Ibis trilogy, Gun Island provides astute observations on migration—posited here as function of pove­rty as well as a quest for connectedness. One of the most urgent and fraught themes that our political structures have sought to evade has fueled tales of escape from destitution and persecution. But Ghosh’s essential point is that the theory of deprivation is insufficient to explain the advent of the ‘people-moving industry’—one the world’s biggest and still growing enterprises. More than freak cyclones, smartphones and computers are stoking the desire for connecting with a perceived world of opportunities elsewhere. Does this notion of interconnection, while exp­anding small worlds, not play back on the abandoned rivers and fields?

The exceptionally gifted Ghosh crea­tes an imagery we may not have sensed bef­ore. Rising temperatures and shifting habitats are inextricably linked to our past, things humans have lost control over. It follows that we do not recognise the problems created by our way of life. As every individual is ince­ntivised to imp­rove his/her sta­ndard of living, with states driven by the capitalist model of growth, what will drive us to exit the comfort zone of this ‘new normal’ remains a vexed question.

Gun Island has all that which draws attention to the symptoms of demo­nic possession that the world of today presents. Towards the end of the novel, the glamorous Italian historian lets Deen get a sense of her predicament: “everybody knows what must be done if the world is to continue to be a livable place…and yet we are powerless, even the most powerful among us. We go about our daily business through habit, as though we are in the grip of forces that have overwhelmed our will; we see shocking and monstrous things happening around us and we avert our eyes; we surrender ourselves willingly to whatever it is that has us in power.”

As public response to climate change is caught between the polarities of widespread denial and overt activism—which is also under surveillance by the military-industrial complex—fiction has the power to knock society free of the shackles of cultural cognition and motivated reasoning. Ghosh argues that there can be no compelling period in human history to recognise the urg­ency for such an engagement.

Gun Island
by Amitav Ghosh 
Penguin RandomHouse, New Delhi
Extent: 286, Price: Rs. 699.

First published in Outlook, issue dated July 10, 2019.