John O’ Donohue

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison first novel The Bluest Eye published in 1970 deals with certain controversial themes such as racism, incest and child molestation. It rose out of Morrison’s remembering a conversation with a school friend who wanted to have blue eyes. Morrison thought of this when she was part of the Black is Beautiful Campaign during the 1960s. 

Set in Lorain in Ohio, against the backdrop of America's Midwest during the years following the Great Depression, the novel starts with a School Primer that describes a typical white family:

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, will you play with Jane? Mother laughs, Laugh, Mother, laugh. See father. He is big and strong. Father, will you play with Jane? Father is smiling.

Set in the 1940s, it has the protagonist Pecola who has assimilated the white standards of beauty so much that she wants blue eyes. 

Toni Morrison uses the black vernacular in order to create the experiences of the black community in the US and she manages to depict the damage done by internalised racism on a young vulnerable girl of twelve. The black girl Pecola is subject to the dominant American culture that says to her that she is not beautiful or relevant but that she is invisible. 

Pecola belongs to a dysfunctional family where her parents Cholly and Pauline constantly fight. She comes to stay with the MacTeers because Cholly has burnt the house down. The Breedloves’ initial years of knowing each other, courtship and marriage were happy. However, once the novelty of their relationship fades away, Cholly turns into an alcoholic and Pauline takes comfort in her job as a housekeeper and in movies. 

Pecola suffers much as her mother loves only the white children under her care and is abused by her father. She goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for blue eyes. Claudia prays for Pecola’s baby to survive but however just like the marigolds that they had planted in the garden, the baby also does not survive. Pecola turns mad but in her state believes that she has finally got the blue eyes that she had always wanted. 

Dark Angels :How Writing Releases Creativity at Work

Do you associate writing at work with creativity? Do you wish to improve your written business communication? If so, Dark Angels :How Writing Releases Creativity at Work is the right guide for you.We live in an age of information explosion. To survive and thrive in the business world we need to generate as well as communicate new ideas. Accurate use of language is vital for success in any profession.

Simmons points out that writing improves the clarity of communication and enables you to link better with those around you. The title celebrates the myth of human beings as flawed angels. Simmons reminds us that we, human beings are angels with a dark side of rebellious individuality. As dark angels we need to think, question and create rather than accept blindly as angels do. Creativity therefore is rebellion. The first step to unleash the creative genius within us is to learn to think for ourselves. Simmons points out through examples how to compose short and long pieces of writing.

Written in a simple and direct style this book teaches us to discover our own ‘voice’ as well as a sense of belonging to the common humanity. The author gives his own entries in his diary when he was in the process of creating a project on Dove. He also shares his experience as a creative writing instructor at a week-long residential workshop in business writing. He believes that all writers are dreamers and good at communicating their dreams to others.

The key idea in the book is the image of the dark angel who symbolizes personal freedom, creativity and rebellion against accepted norms of authority. Above all, in order to be a good writer, Simmons advises us to be a good reader. Thus this book skillfully combines creativity and business.  

Providence

In his essay The Over-Soul, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nineteenth century American Transcendentalist philosopher writes of his belief in Providence:

The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you, that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will, but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this, because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.

Many a time, I have seen the gifts of Providence in this life. Blessings were placed in my way so beautifully that all I had to do was just to open the door and see the miracle that was before me. When I see before me what I have always wanted, I recognize that a benevolent spirit provides you with the right answers throughout life.

Books, friends, help and a lot of other blessings have come at the right time so many times that rather than asking God for anything in particular I have always asked to give me the right thing at the right time. For who can say that you are praying for your needs?

It has happened to me that a lot of things that I pray for in life become superfluous once I get them. Such a situation is more like praying for a variable in this world of rapid changes.

This life has seen the world for a little less than three decades but I guess every little thing counts. So next time you before you start regretting the past, you need to sit still in the present and count your blessings!

A Spring without voices

On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring published in 1962 was about the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on the environment . It is a fable on the environmental apocalypse of the modern age. The title denotes the silence that comes over nature as the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird species have become extinct.It was a spring without voices.

Carson, a marine biologist pointed out that the reason for this destruction of the environment in the United States was the uncontrolled use of organic pesticides such as DDT, aldrin and dieldrin used to control pest insects in agriculture. Though these compounds led to agricultural benefits, they posed serious threats to animal and human life as Carson proves by giving scientific evidence.

This book was a clarion call for greater awareness about the great destruction that human beings were causing to the Earth.

A True Gift in Green

To know the mind of woman, he has to know first, the mind of the land.

Sarah Joseph is one of the celebrated women novelists of Malayalam literature and she has he has received numerous awards and honours such as Kendra Sahitya Academy Award, Kerala Sahitya Academy Award, Vayalar Award, Cherukad Award and O.V. Vijayan Sahitya Puraskaram. Her Malayalam novel Aathi was published simultaneously with its English translation Gift in Green by Valson Thampu in 2011. In her interview with Valson Thampu, Joseph speaks about how she modelled the land of Aathi on a island Valanthakkadu in Ernakulam district of Kerala. She was amazed by the lives of the people who subsisted in fishing, picking mussels and farming Pokkali rice. They earned as much as Rs. 300 a day picking mussels but never fished for more than that as they count on the fish and mussels as their fixed deposits. The author praises the subsistence perspective of the people of Valanthakkadu by basing a novel on their simple life.

The land of Aathi is pristine covered with water on all sides. The people lived the water-life, drawing sustenance from the water and the fields. Their water-life meant that their daily immediate needs were met from earth and water as they could collect enough food to feed the whole family just by working till noon everyday. The mangroves that surrounded the land of Aathi contained plenty of fish, which the people used to catch with their bare hands. During high tide, these fish and prawns were carried across to the rice fields, from where the people caught them. They also knew the secret of growing rice in salty waters. In Aathi, people from the ancient times lived the water-life, harvesting only what they need from nature.

The destruction of the pristine, land, water and its people starts with the advent of Kumaran, a business tycoon who sees in Aathi, the means of making money. With his coming, the modes of living such as the water-life and farming are replaced by construction of buildings resulting in pollution, creation of toxic waste and destruction of natural habitat. The novel also shows the environmentalist concerns of the writer as she describes the present-day issues of Kerala such as water contamination, lack of proper waste disposal systems, dumping of biomedical waste in rivers and waterbodies, the use of endosulfan to ensure profit in farming, the problems of landfilling, destruction of marshes disposal of plastic and biomedical waste and so on. However, nature cannot be exploited and contaminated forever and the waters of Aathi rise in a flood and purify the whole land.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

What happens when Love Laws made by the society are broken? The laws which dictate who should be loved, how and how much. Arundhati Roy’s debut novel The God of Small Things shot the author into fame and bagged the 1997 Booker Prize. The scene is set in Ayemenem, a small town in Kottayam in Kerala of the 1960s, where caste system reigns high. Ammu Ipe, an aristocratic young divorcee falls in love with Velutha, an educated untouchable carpenter. The day they start their affair is also the day when Sophiemol, Ammu’s nice arrives from Britain only to drown herself to death in the River Meenachal while on an adventure with Ammu’s children. Their nocturnal trysts are discovered and the affair brought to a tragic end. They break all rules of conduct in a close-bound and rigid society. But the punishment does not stop with the death of the two lovers- the murder of Velutha or the slow death of Ammu. It has got serious reverberations on the lives of the people in the family as well as society. It takes various forms and in the family it takes the form of silence of Estha and the emptiness of Rahel- Ammu’s two-egg twins who get separated after the tragedy. Strangely their lives are joined once again in defiance against the Love Laws of society. The book has a complex structure because of its shifts in time. The language is unique and repetition adds to the pathos in the novel. Written in an engaging style the book offers a culture and a flavour that is definitely Indian. The novel describes a society which is hypocritical and patriarchal as well as politically corrupt.