I have been reading “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai, which won the Booker Prize last year. It is rather interesting, a good book, but the characters are not terribly appealing. A misanthropic retired judge rotting in a villa amidst the mountains, his orphan grand daughter, the son of their cook who scrapes a living as an illegal immigrant in New York – I am listing them in order of attractiveness: the judge is a dead bore, the girl is so-so, the cook’s son enlisted most of my interest, probably because of his underdog appeal. Anyway, I didn’t finish the novel. By the time I had reached about two thirds of it, I had the growing impression that the whole story didn’t have enough momentum for it to reach a convincing end.

I didn’t quite understand how this book got the Booker, and I went googling to see what other people felt about it. Thus did I stumble on an awful article entitled “Wounded by the West” written by Pankaj Mishra, in February 2006 in the New York Times. The link is as follows:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/review/12mishra.html?ex=1297400400&en=a3d469a1782b2d59&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

Truly shocking, that article. The self rightedness of it. The just guy just lifts up everything which is wrong with the characters’ lives and personalities – the judge’s misanthropy, the servile anglophilia of the old crones whom the girl is friend to, the miseries of the illegal immigrant – and drops it all at the doorstep of the West. Just like that.

I don’t know if I’ve received a bad upbringing, but I tend to believe that people do share a bit of responsibility for who they’ve become, by the time they’re fifty. I didn’t know that a guy can spend his whole life as a bizzare, self-hating character, despising his fellow Indians, (badly) aping the British, but that it’s not his fault at all, no way, it’s because of colonialism. Oh really. Same goes for the old crones with their imported Marks and Spencer’s underwear or whatever.

You gather, reading Mr Mishra’s article, the idea that India was some sort of Utopia that was once invaded by some evil aliens coming from a mothership called the West, and they’ve laid the whole garden of Eden to waste.

But a few months before, I do remember having read part of an article from the same Mr Mishra, where he was telling how, after graduating from a provincial university in North India, he had spent one winter in the library at Benares University, reading all the novels that came by his hand, trying to pick up the latest names and trends in contemporary English literature. And after some research on him, I came to understand that it is when he himself made his way to England, that he became a successful author.

And that evil West that he is talking of, is it not also part of Kiran Desai’s inheritance ? She does have a German grandmother, doesn’t she ?

My point is, that Western culture which Mr Mishra is talking of like a clean sprightly elf talking of Sauron in his impregnable fortress, isn’t it part of Indian civilisation, in the same way as the Persian/Arabic heritage in Northern India, even stronger, actually ? When the top brass wakes up in India, they do read the Times of India and The Hindu at breakfast, don’t they, I mean, they read English language newspapers. And they do like to send their kids to Catholic schools, and later to English-speaking universities and IIM’s… Mr Mishra is part of that set up, the West has made him well-known and prosperous, and so is Ms Desai. I’m not blaming them for that, it’s just that one has to face the fact of life, which is that India’s elite does have a love affair with the West.

That does not mean the West is beyond reproach, far from that. But that Mr Mishra should come in on his high horses, like that, talking about the West as if he was some tiger-skin clad sadhu in the Himalayas, it’s pretty rich.

I suspect it’s a habit of the Indian top brass, of suddenly lecturing others as if they themselves were beings of light. The way they can just , at the drop of a hat, start talking of the “spiritual decadence of the West” always leaves me breathless. What on earth gives them the entitlement to talk of spirituality and morality, they who live in a society which is greedy and corrupt to the core ? I like the way they explain away the poverty and backwardness of their country by blaming it on the poor. Yessir, they do, I have heard Indians explain to me, without blinking an eye, that India is held up in its progress by its rampant population growth, and that’s because they’re a democratic country, so they just can’t enforce a one child policy like the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil Chinese do. So, they just have to let the poor keep breeding, nothing doing , yaar, hopeless bunch, those poor. Pretty clever explanation, eh ?

I must have been reading the wrong articles on sustainable report, but it just happens that whatever I read on the matter, I always come across the notion that one of the key elements for sustainable development is mass literacy, especially the education of the girl child. A literate girl child will, once married, have a greater tendency to be interested in learning about contraception, and to use it. She will also tend to see to it that her children get some education, as she herself can read and write. An illiterate woman, on the other hand, is ignorant and superstitious, and will feel afraid to go enquire about contraception methods or anything regarding her well-being, for that matter. She will feel ashamed that she won’t understand what is explained to her.

So, you’d expect that Indian society would care to give some education and basic health care to its poor. No go, man. Indian society is profoundly elitist, and Nehruvian “socialism” hasn’t changed that. On the contrary, Nehru, with his obsession with heavy industry and electric dams, saw to it that the country was well provided in universities and technical institutes. He didn’t care much about mass education and health care. India’s fabulous economic growth is happening in the cities. Its countryside is like the African bush – no roads lead to there, and there’s just nothing out there but mud huts strewn amidst the fields. One can read the World Bank reports about rural education and health services in India. It’s shocking.

And it’s even more shocking to hear well-off Indians talk about their poor. A friend of mine just came back from Delhi and the Indian official who was guiding him through town said, acknowledging my friend’s shock at seeing the people living on shacks on the roadside: “Don’t bother yourself with these people. They live, breed and die on the streets. It’s always been like that”. Nobody sees the poor in India, not in reality, and even less on television, which is filled with fair-skinned, prosperous actors and actresses in the soap operas. Let’s not even talk of Bollywood. And they say that the West is racist….

It’s a pretty nice life, actually, being one of India’s elite. The state scoops up its meager resources to build you gleaming, state-of –the-art universities and IIT’s and IIM’s, while the rural poor squat under the trees around a piece of rotten chalkboard. Once you’ve squeezed the country’s educational resources to the limit, you get yourself a green card and fly to the States. But not only that, man, you also have a CLEAN CONSCIENCE. Ah mean, whatever’s going bad in poor ole India, it’s the fault of the White Man, and of the niggers in the countryside…

While I was doing some research on China National Highway 219 ( Xinjiang to Tibet) for my second novel, I came across this website whose candid style I like a lot:

http://www.tibettravel.info/get-to-tibet/xinjiang-tibet-highway.html

It's a Tibet travel info guide and it does not pull any punches:

The Xinjiang-Tibet Highway will be blocked by snow in winter and spring and it’s impossible to travel. The best time to drive is from May to the middle of October. The climate in the trip is terrible and food and accommodation condition is not good, either. Clothes to guard against the coldness should be prepared. Medicines against ailments and illness (medicine to stop diarrhea, diminish inflammation, and to treat the cold) according to the physical conditions of the tourists themselves should also be prepared. All people will have altitude reaction on Jieshandaban Mountain, so tourists are advised to take some medicines and oxygen.

Room and board conditions are not good along the highway. So it’s advisable to take some solid food and sleeping bag. Vegetables are short along the road, so some vitamin pills should be taken.

I like the slightly puzzled tone taken by the writer regarding the holiness given to Mount Kailash and lake Manosarovar. Here's an excerpt regarding the latter:

In Burang County, the Holy Lake, Manasarova (Mapam Tso), enjoys equal popularity as the Holy Mountain. The lake covers 412square kilometers (159 square miles) and its altitude is 4,587 meters (15049 feet) and is 77 meters deep at the deepest point. Judging by the area, altitude and depth of the lake, Lake Manasarova doesn’t stand out. But because it is called the “Jasper Lake” on earth [Jasper Lake is a place mentioned in clinical Chinese mythologies as a lake in the Kunlun Mountains where a Goddess lives], it is considered the most venerated queen of the plateau lakes. Many Buddhists deem that as long as they can gaze upon the lake, they are sainted. If they circumambulate the lake, it was just like the circumambulation around the Holy Mountain, which can accumulate benevolence and at least excuse the pain of being sent to the hell after their death.

Most mainland Chinese don't quite get the point about sacredness, in general. Of course, there have been a great many religious movements in Chinese history, sometimes taking on millenarian tones ( the White Lotus, the Heavenly Kingdom), but I get the impression that the main thrust of Chinese culture is literary, not religious. The mandarin, well versed in poetry and history , is the central character of Chinese culture.

Conversely, the central character of Indian culture is the brahmin, versed in sacred texts and in philosophical speculation. Indians are fond of philosophy, and the Chinese of literature and history.

In the opening paragraph of that website, the writer talks of the "overwhelming charm of lake Manosarovar" . The use of the word "charm" is interesting, I have the impression that, out of habit, he is using it when speaking of a lake, having read so much Chinese poetry about the Western Lake ( near Suzhou), and about the beauty of nature, in general. An Indian writer would have quoted text after text from the holy scriptures, about the sanctity of the lake.

When my son started talking, it was interesting to see that my mother's first concern was to make him learn prathna ( making Hindu prayers) while my wife was teaching him Tang Dynasty poetry -

Chuang qian ming yue guang

Yi Shi di shang shuang

Ju tou wang ming yue

Di tou si gu xiang

This is a website which gives three translations of this poem:

http://www.chinapage.org/libai014.html

It is probably the most beloved of Chinese poems.

Overheard the other day on Radio France Internationale, a kind of literary commentator of daily life, telling the following anecdote: He found, in a newspaper, a classified advert which said ( I am telling from memory): “Dear unknown Miss, I am the young man who was sitting next to you in Restaurant… last Saturday. On that day, like every Saturday, I took my grandmother out for lunch. While she was talking to me, my attention wandered to you, you were the tall brunette dressed in (…) who was sitting at the next table, and were reading a novel. and while you were on your way out, you had the waiter pass to me a note which I found very touching. I would very much like to meet you again. Signed (…)” Isn’t the whole story touching, said our commentator. One imagines the young man, neatly dressed for the occasion, coming to pick up his grandmother, as on every Saturday. She herself is her best clothes, with a drop of cologne behind her ears, and started eagerly waiting for him a quarter of an hour before the time he usually comes. They go out, she probably chooses the same restaurant half of the time. She has ordered a lamb chop maybe and a Tarte Tatin, and is telling him for the umpteenth time how she met his grandfather on the eve of the feast of St Jean, in a provincial town. He, grown a little absent minded from the retelling, lets his eyes wander to the tall brunette, absorbed in a novel in the table next to them. He believes that she has not noticed him, but later on a note comes to his table, while she is on her way out. One would like the handwriting to be a beautiful cursive, so film-like , or novel-like it all sounds.

Touching indeed, and so classy. It must have happened in one of the provincial towns. Paris struck me as being such a mess, its people rude and tense.

As long as there are young men who take their grandmothers out for lunch every Saturday, said our commentator as a conclusion, and who afterwards pine for brunettes who left them some mysterious note, there is reason to hope about life.

It is the kind of story which made me long so much, in my youth, to go to France. Whatever disappointments I’ve had later on, I guess I’ll always love France for some things. The other day, I happened on the website of a not –too-well known, I guess, French publishing house, called l’Asiathèque, devoted to things Asian. Just on their literature section, these guys had published such books, all in French, as a collection of poems by two 18th century Korean poets, an epic poem by an early 20th century Turkmen, or what is Uzbek poet, another one by a modernist Bengal poet of the 1930’s, a collection of folk tales from an ancient Chinese writer who was interested in the subject, a sort of Andersen of his times.

And it just went on and on like this. Then there was the philosophy section, and still others.

That reminded me of walking near the rue des Ecoles, in the Quartier Latin, and coming on an old Armenian bookstore, like in a film, with a bearded old man wearing wire rimmed round glasses, and shelves crammed full of old Armenian books, but also travel books in different languages, and old bilingual dictionaries. Later on, another library I came upon was doing a special event on Octavio Paz and there were first editions of his works lying open on the front window. In the background, a big ornate hotel particulier was holding an exhibition on “Birds in sacred Western African Art”.

It’s all so densely packed. Everything in Paris is crammed, the culture, the business, the politics. It’s fascinating but impossible to live in, in the long term, unless one was born a Parisian. There is too much of everything, and it’s mostly ridiculously expensive. But thank God, it’s there. The world would be an awful place were it not for the French, you have to allow that to them. But if only they could spread out a bit out of Paris…

Yesterday I heard on the BBC that the Indian government conducted some ceremonies to mark the 150 th anniversary of the 1857 mutiny. By coincidence, the other day I was reading a book called “A Sahib remembers” which is a collection of interesting anecdotes and commentaries about the days of the British Raj. One of them was about the blowing up of the Delhi Magazine during the Mutiny. The Indian Mutineers had surrounded the Magazine, which contained a vast amount of weaponry and gunpowder, and was guarded by some British soldiers. The latter decided to blow the place rather than surrender, given the vital importance of that arsenal . Of course, that meant they would be killed on the spot.

Amazingly though, it seems that some of the British soldiers did survive the explosion. If I do remember well, one of them was picked up by a friendly Sikh soldier who hid him in his village for the rest of the Mutiny.

This morning, thinking back of the news about this ceremony in India , I was led to thoughts quite far removed from the politics and warfare of that period- I was thinking of that British soldier who survived what must have been a huge explosion. I was fascinated by the image of that man, probably in the redcoat uniform of the British Army of those days, flying up against the blue sky, his legs spinning as if he was pushing the pedals of an invisible flying bicycle. The cartoonish humour of it – the comical movement of his legs, looking for ground to tread on, he looking punily human against the vastness of the sky, that impression emphasised by his old fashioned uniform, all brass buttons and regimental insignias, a mere mortal visiting for a moment the domain of the gods, only to be punished the moment after by the fall back to the ground.

The image is funny yet one also feels some envy for him, as for all those who take to the skies, even for a brief moment. Of course we do fly nowadays, but in different manners, about which I guess there is a scale of disappointment corresponding to the degree of distance from what would be ideal flying. Lowest on that scale would be commercial flying, which is basically sitting in a narrow seat, flipping through magazines in a sort of train which happens to glide up high in the air rather than go on a railtrack. Much better is what one sees audacious people doing with delta planes, these big flying sail contraptions which take off from mountain slopes. They maneuver them with some levers by which they guide the sail up and down prevailing winds, and from what I have seen them do on television, it seems the more adept ones practice what is the nearest humanly possible form of ideal flying.

The latter being flying such as we do in dreams : soaring up from the ground simply because you feel like it. In my case, I will occasionally , in the middle of a dream, realise that I am not subject to gravity and I will then slowly rise. I am aware, during the dream, that this is due to some special “technique” which I must master. There is some “lifting power” which enables me to go up, and it usually emanates from the palms of my hands. I must let go of the fear of falling, and then I go up, avoiding the tree branches and electric cables. At some point, usually a bit over the rooftops, I feel vertigo, and am afraid to rise further. I then try to move forward, but for some reason, it is pretty laborious. People are watching me, with amusement or annoyance rather than amazement. Sometimes they point at me and it seems they want to tell me to get down now.

Their annoyance I guess would come from the fact that they feel I am doing something reserved to a special few, normally saints and prophets: The Virgin Mary carried by angels , Prophet Muhammad on the Borak Mare, Elijah on his ladder, Saint Anthony on his pig. Or superheroes, our modern gods: Superman, Flame On, Iron Man (1).

Flying in a machine, on the other hand, does not bring about that idea of sacrilege. It is understood that flying this way is more like driving, and is usually even more cautious and rule based than driving a car. It is acknowledged to be the very serious business of steering an intensely serious looking piece of machinery.

In his anime works, Miyazaki constantly invents flying machines which correspond more to what, in our subconscious, flying machines ought to have been.

To begin with, they often have flapping or vibrating wings, like those of birds or insects. Airplanes strike us as being boringly machine-like because they have those static wings, jet engines being the worse, because at least turbo propeller airplanes have those fast moving propellers which make them look a bit insect like. His machines seem to be consciously doing the effort of swimming through the air. Even the huge evil looking bombers in “Howl's Moving Castle” have a row of slowly flapping winglets on either side. Real airplanes look like huge pieces of metal which hang in the air as if they negated it. One almost feels annoyed with scientists for inventing a piece of machinery which so completely defies common sense. ( In a post in December, I think, or maybe November , I have written about the discomfort we feel about scientific revolutions , because they tell us things which simply do not make sense- that the earth is round, that it is not the centre of the world, that we descend from apes, that a particle can be in two points in space at the same time, that the act of observing a phenomenon affects its behaviour)

Also, Miyazaki’s flying machines are often insanely maneuvrable , such as the dragonfly –like small airplanes of “Howl”, which even zip through the air with a buzzing insect sound. This is what flying a small airplane should have been like, an intensely fun roller coaster experience, instead of being so much about watching dials and checking coordinates.

Finally, they are not deadly. In the few Miyazaki anime I have seen, nobody ever gets killed from an airplane crash. If damaged, his airplanes simply zig zag down to the ground with a hurt sound. A real-world airplane, if damaged, plummets to the ground with merciless force, the speed with which it crashes down being revelatory of how profoundly alien to its aerial element it actually was. It is basically a sort of car engine which has been made to fly by some trick of playing with air lift.

Such is our destiny. Unfortunately, we are not a flying species, except maybe for some of our saints and prophets. Or maybe some of our deltaplane flyers. But I don’t know if even they can experience the lightness of being which ideal flying would be about.

Not even that British soldier was able to experience this blissful feeling: I have just checked about him in “A Sahib Remembers” ( by P.J.O. Taylor, by the way). His name was Raynor and he and his wife were standing under the one of the rare arches which did not fall down under the huge explosion, which was heard thirty kilometres away in Meerut. Both were uninjured and were helped through the rest of the Mutiny by friendly Indians.

Well, at least miracles do happen.

(1) Batman does not fly, but then he is a pretty special kind of superhero. He represents our wish to swallow a pill of evil, so that we could take revenge on those who oppress us – the child’s fantasy of becoming a big, fearsome man who will terrify the schoolyard bully. He is Night, but a Night in which we have become the bogeyman, that most earthlike of our frights, with his heavy steps, his rough, hairy hands and dark, unknowable face. The immense arsenal of weapons he hides under his mansion, those massively built, overweaponised cars and airplanes he rides in represent a wish to subdue Matter, so that we may fight back at Its grotesque, hostile manifestations ( the Joker, with his stiffened face and poisons, is a Troll of Matter). But, by virtue of his intimate contact with Matter, Batman cannot fly, for this is the attribute of the Spirit. He can only briefly hover and swing by the means of strong, steely wires ended with fierce looking hooks which grasp at Matter like sharp, precise claws.

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