Inferno

Dan Brown’s Inferno (2013) though in the same mould of a thriller as his other novels such as Digital Fortress (1998), Angels and Demons (2000), Deception Point (2001), The Da Vinci Code (2003) and The Lost Symbol (2009),  is concerned with the global ecological crisis and its consequences.

 Usually, his novels revolve around symbols, codes and conspiracy theories. They follow the similar pattern of a hero who finds himself in a strange and unfamiliar setting, with codes, symbols and mysteries to crack and a beautiful woman to rescue. 

Though he writes thematic novels, Inferno stands out from the rest because of its slightly misanthropic stand on human population. In the earlier novels, it was possible to suspend disbelief at the kind of code-cracking that Robert Langdon practiced, this time it becomes a little bit tedious as the mad scientist Zobrist has written down all codes in poetry in the manner of Dante. 

The character of Bertrand Zobrist is a proponent of what is known as the Population Apocalypse Equation which is a mathematical recognition that the earth’s population is rising, people are living longer, and our natural resources are waning. 

He believes that with the increase in numbers, there will be a corresponding increase in human vices as well as predicted by Dante. This equation predicts that the current trend of exponential growth in population will ultimately result in an apocalyptic collapse of society. 

Zobrist held unconventional views on the reduction of population through the spread of epidemics and Black Death. Zobrist praises the role that diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS plays in keeping the population in check. 

He is of the view that the best thing that happened to Europe during the Middle Ages was Black Death. This event was seen as having so many socio-economic advantages as it thinned the human herd and led the way for Renaissance. Though the Black Death destroyed one third of the European population, Zobrist views it as a positive event in history because of its curbing of the human population. 

Bertrand Zobrist in Inferno is no theorist but a genetic engineer who sees a way to put his ideas into practice. He creates a solution to the population problem, a virus named Inferno that is initially suspected to be a plague virus but terms out to be a germ for creating sterility in every third person in the world. He follows the same mathematical equation of one third when trying to create the human sterility virus Inferno. He contrasts himself with the actions of the World Health Organization (WHO) that tries to create awareness about population control and family planning.

Inferno is about the need for environmental conservation and population control.

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understanding

Beannacht

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.



[Note: "Beannacht" is the Gaelic word for "blessing." A "currach" is a large boat used on the west coast of Ireland.]

Letting go

The Best

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead, written by Ayn Rand was published in 1943 and it made its author a celebrity and creator of a new philosophy called Objectivism. A celebration of  rationalism and individualism over collectivism and altrusim, the novel portrays the indestructible spirit of self as the source or fountainhead of all progress.

Ayn Rand highlights the strong individualistic characters in the novel by juxtaposing them against the weak or ‘second-hand livers’. For Rand, lack of integrity is a serious offense. Both Howard Roark and Dominique Francon are strong characters, who retain their integrity and independence despite the pressure of society on them. The affair between Dominique Francon and Howard Roark testify to the fierce degree of independence that both of them have, even when in love. Their relationship is cold and ferocious and unemotional, marked by strong physical revulsion and violence.


Howard Roark, a young architectural student expelled from college is the protagonist of the novel and the embodiment of the perfect man, uncorrupted and pure, with his own views and individual opinions regarding perfection in his work. He designs buildings using a holistic approach, after taking into consideration details like the nature of the terrain, the material and the most natural way in which the building should express itself through the material. This is in contrast with the corporate architects who design buildings using historical features and designs that are imposed upon the terrain. Roark is the projection of an ideal man, devoid of altruistic intentions, propelled by an inner fire rather than by social recognition or money and with an integrity that is unrelenting to the pressure of society around him.

Dominique stands as the only strong woman in the novel, unlike Mrs. Keating or Catherine, who represent a totally different picture of womanhood, one manipulative and the other manipulated. Though she has Roark-like qualities, she has no natural talent or drive with an element of masochism. Column-writer with The Banner, Dominique loves beauty, perfection and independence. Their first encounter occurs when Roark is working in a stone quarry while Dominique is living alone in her father’s estate. She is drawn to Roark and visits the quarry often to see him. Even then Roark’s sudden disappearance makes her happy because she can retain her freedom by remaining unattached to anything or anybody.

The love affair between Dominique and Roark involves passion, struggle and violence. She recommends Peter Keating to people who consult her about which architect to chose and writes articles against Roark’s buildings. But she tests Roark in many ways, by jilting him and robbing him of his commissions. At the Stoddard trail, she says that the world does not deserve such a temple and that it should be destroyed. She marries Keating because she is punishing herself for being in a world that is unfair to Roark. Later when Keating sells her to Wynand, she marries Wynand, though she still loves Roark.

Dominique loves Roark but destroys him because society does not recognise his genius. She finds that Roark produces works of beauty, perfection and independence, which remains unappreciated by the majority who knows only how to criticize and destroy whatever is pure, sacred and beautiful. The vileness around her makes her destructive and she remains cold and detached by surrounding herself with people she dislikes. She can remain indifferent to others, but not to Roark whose integrity and purity of soul surprise her. Before the world can destroy him, she destroys Roark by marrying men she despises and later through articles in The Banner.

At Roark’s trial, Dominique is seemingly critical of Roark, but her intentions are different from that of others in that she recognizes Roark’s greatness. She writes about the Enright Building that nobody should be allowed to live in it. Dominique would rather break a perfect vase than see it used by the unworthy. With such an instinct towards the pure nature of Roark, she sets out to destroy him. She says at the trail:

When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return--it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and to let them become the occasion for a whole concert of grunting, transcribed by the court stenographer (Rand, 1943, p. 356).

For both Roark and Dominique, the separation that they chose deliberately is a way of retaining their independence. For Roark, it is his work that absorbs him completely while for Dominique, it is her detachment. Finally Roark destroys the Cortlandt with Dominique as an accomplice in bombing the building. Till that time, their affair is a secret one; but this incident brings her back to him.

She knew that every moment of seven years when she had wanted this and stopped the pain and thought she had won, was not past, had never been stopped, had lived on, stored, adding hunger to hunger, and now she had to feel it all, the touch of his body, the answer and the waiting together.(Rand, 1943, p.667).

When Dominique and Roark are reunited, it is only a natural ending to a battle of wills. With a passion that is strong, primordial, violent and instinctive, both Howard Roark and Dominique Francon are strong individuals uninfluenced by collectivism and struggling to keep their purity intact.

The strange course of events makes them realise the naturalness of their desire and union. Both Roark and Dominique are withdrawn from society and speak their mind openly without any regard to social regulations and rules. Dominique destroys Roark because she cannot stand other people destroying him by belittling his genius. Her bond with Roark is strange because it springs from revulsion, hatred, physical violence and fury and ends up as an intense love. When they re-unite, it is only natural, like some unwritten law of nature.

Words

love

Mehndi

Every time I put henna on my hands I hum that song

Where I write your name on the palm of my hand,
Hidden in the intricate shapes, curves and designs
The story of the day we met or the day we spoke.

We have walked countless times around the fire

We have uttered so many different sacred chants
Of holding a bond so close just by keeping it safe
Deeply tied to the sense of our sacred silences.

We have celebrated in rhymes, absences felt,

The emotions that run wild and the colours
We have sang of the endless days we wandered
Listlessly, aimlessly and perfectly in silence.

Yet when I put mehndi on these hands of mine,

You smell them, as if it’s our first time together.

irish blessing

Ancient Promises

Suresh was holding me by the arms and saying to Dr. Sasi, 'See this is what I mean. It's been like this for weeks now...all this talk about scholarships that don't exist...and running away with Riya...I can't ignore it any more, she needs help...she needs treatment. Sasichetta, help us!'

I could not believe my ears...Treatment?....Help? I started to struggle out of Suresh's grip as his plan dawned on me, he was trying to convince everyone I was mentally ill! It was preferable to have people sympathise over a wife who was mad than to bear the shame of one who wasn't mad but wanted to leave him.

Ancient Promises portrays the struggles of Janu in finding love and breaking away from the rules that limit her freedom. Audacious and original, Misra writes the story without the usual embellished writing of novelists. Only in the scene where Arjun and Janu meet after years, there is a little lyricism, where the prose flies like poetry.

Janu, a Malayali girl born and brought up in Delhi falls in love with Arjun,her senior at school. Arjun leaves for England for his higher studies and Janu's life turns upside down when she is hastily married off to Suresh Marar, a business magnate from her native town Valapadu in Alleppey.

Though she tries hard to belong to the newly family of wealthy and pompous Marars, Janu's dreams are shattered when her child Riya is diagnosed as mentally handicapped. Her life becomes a struggle to save Riya from the hostility of the people around her. She takes Riya to a school for children with special needs at the same time teaching children there. She finds out that in other countries' children with such defects as Riya's are not ostracized by society. She plans to take a course on teaching children with special needs.

Life drives her back to her Arjun. When she goes for the test in Delhi, she meets Arjun and the result is an explosion of desire and love that they had held up inside them for so long. When she comes back, she tells her husband about Arjun and asks him for divorce. Her husband convinces other people that she is mad and takes possession of Riya. But that doesn't stop her from going to England or from getting united with Arjun or from getting custody of her Riya.

Letters to a Young Poet

Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must write. Accept it, however it sounds to you, without analyzing. Perhaps it will become apparent to you that you are indeed called to be a writer. then accept that fate; bear its burden, and its grandeur, without asking for the reward, which might possibly come from without.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote these words to the young poet Franz Kappus who had sent the manuscripts of his poems to Rilke. Much to Kappus' surprise, Rilke read all the poems with genuine interest and he wrote ten letters to Kappus for the next five years. These letters were published under the title Letters to a Young Poet. These letters reveal Rilke as a gentle and large-hearted person who went out of the way to offer his encouragement to Kappus. A must  read for all aspiring writers, as a great writer like Rilke advises Kappus not to listen to negative criticism and to understand that a creative spirit has to suffer from aloneness in life. 

joy

dedication

Haenim Sunim

"We should love people like the sun loves the earth. The sun loves the earth without choosing to. It nourishes trees and flowers, expecting nothing in return. It does not withhold its rays but brightens everything with its presence". Haenim Sunim

This weekend I decided to take a break from my phone. My usual pastime is reading and started with a novel, I gradually drifted on reading my favourite topic: Buddhist thoughts. I have a few feelgood books in my collection, what I would call soulfood, what invariably keeps on going on especially after facing heartbreaks, of various sorts.

It was a calming experience to read The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, though the touch and feel of a colourful feelgood book is something that you miss on the black and white screen of your kindle, it is good to shut yourself down at the weekend faraway from the temptation of whatsapp and take time to unwind after s hectic week. I remember that I had posted a few quotes after reading Love for Imperfect Things by Haenim Sunim, I am reposting a few of the quotes from the author.

I feel that though the anxiety over unfinished chores is a regular problem, the time spent on nurturing one's broken self is a fruitful episode in a comparatively uneventful life.

Beginner's Mind

You have taught me the art of the beginner’s mind, taking small steps, internalizing the rules and learning day by day. Though this art of being completely aware in the present moment has brought in its turn, both happiness and sorrow.

This mind was often like a cup ready to be filled in, with nothing to boast of or previous knowledge to fall back upon. It often stood still in silence and dreamt of a peaceful future with its soul mate and at times set on its own charting out territories to explore.

Yet it knows how to balance its trust in the infinite gifts of Providence yet to keep its eyes open for the wonderful gifts that each brand new day brings.

A Perpetual Wish

Driftwood

There were many when we started our race, the young brimming with energy. Some went ahead while some took their time to learn the lessons their way. 

Some fell out from the race while a few plodded on weary and tired not sure of the way. The struggles were many- judging the path and its difficulties. 

When you reached a milestone, it was a new experience, a new lesson in courage. But there was none to stand by you for you were shaken by the knowledge of your loneliness.

Yet what matters the most are the years bygone and the wisdom learnt on the way. This is what I want to yell and scream at the top of my voice, " I may be driftwood but I have 

Signs from heaven

I have this personal belief that when you are really sad or depressed, heaven sends you certain signs to know that you are needed in this world. Not that you'll win a lottery or meet your soulmate, but small signs that are too much of an accident and surprisingly delightful.

As children my brother and me looked forward to every edition of Balarama, which was published every fortnight unlike now when it is published every week. We both would run for it and at times struggle to get it first from the old man who used to bring us paper.I remember running with toothbrush in my hand and toothpaste in my mouth to get it ahead of my brother because whoever gets it first could read it first after coming from school.It was a time of intense waiting and struggles and one book full of colours meant a lot to both of us. 

Its with the same anxiety though there is none to fight with now, we both being grown up and understanding, that I wait for the Literary Review page in The Hindu on Sundays. This is because of the column Endpaper by Pradeep Sebastian. His writing reveals a book lover with much sensitivity and understanding.  The article that touched me the most came some  years back in May. 

I was in very low spirits at that time. It was exam time and I wasnt able to study well with my project incomplete and my heart sore over something that I now consider very trivial. Agitated and worried with the exams and some nerve-cracking people around me, I went on doing a lot of self-destructive activities- like skipping studies, tearing up all diaries, cutting my long hair and getting mad at anyone who tried to advise me. A radical and highly rebellious state of mind it was. 

Then in the evening, I was sitting with a vacant mind and my eyes fell on this article. It was called An Unlived Life about a story called "Babette's Feast" by Isak Dinessen. It spoke of how a congregation without any unity is changed by a feast given by an artistic cook who gives up whatever she has for the feast. 

I felt a big calm settle over me as I was reading this. Right after reading it, I went to my room, closed the door and began to write about what was worrying me-my indecisiveness about the life and career I was to take. Not that the problem was solved that day, but it made me feel better.You don't know what saves you from killing yourself. May be a little kindness from someone. Or some signs from heaven that reminds you of your most precious gift. Not lottery. Or a soulmate. This beautiful life. The General in the story gives this speech:"We tremble because we imagine divine grace to be finite. We tremble before making our choice in life and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we realize grace is infinite. We need only to await it in confidence and in gratitude. See! That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. For mercy and truth have had a lover, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!" 

happiness