I saw this on Twitter and was absolutely fascinated. Urdu derives so much from Farsi.
As you know I've not learned Urdu in school. I only speak conversational Urdu and can read it slowly. I can watch Urdu dramas. But it's always a sense of loss that I didn't study Urdu in school.
English sometimes feels like such a functional language and much less richer than Urdu. I mean, English is so limited compared to Persian.
I truly feel comforted being surrounded by my books, my collections, tea mug and tea pot collection, and all the things I have loving acquired over the years.
I can't imagine not being surrounded by my books or ever losing them.
For anyone who understands what a feat it is to have a collection of books in Liberia! One has to buy them regularly from abroad and bring them back in luggage.
My books will always be precious to me.
Ironically, as this article in The Print says, I really only know Utpal Dutt from Golmal, one of my all time favourite movies. I know he's appeared in other 80s films I've seen but its him in Golmal which I'm fond of and honestly, I channel him all the time with my huffing and puffing and seriousness. I love how Bhavani Shankar is introduced: "He is a man of great likes and dislikes." That's me.
I'm blown away by this description of Utpal Dutt and his achievements. I watched this clip on Facebook years ago and was introduced to a glimpse of Dutt's repertoire: "My Religion is My Life". (a video clip from the movie "Agantuk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpJajZebLIE.
I love this photo of Utpal Dutt. I often use "old" actors' photos as my WhatsApp profile pic.
Kavita's reading The Marvelous Land of Oz. While reading it out loud to me, the name of one of my favourite songs "wonders never cease" popped up. And, "comrade" popped up too! I was told recently that L. Frank Baum was very interested in politics and, one can find a Marxist analysis in his stories.
This is a video from our channel of Kavita reading the whole page: Passage from Marvelous Land of Oz. We both will be reading passages from books we are reading.
Kavita is almost 10. She has to decide how much more she wants to be on social media, have her videos on YouTube. Is this what she really wants to do?
Looking forward to switching gears and re-reading God of Small Things after many many years. This book was probably purchased at Dubai Airport en route to Pakistan or coming back to Pakistan. Its pages are yellow now. I started copying the capitalisation of important words in a sentence from this book! I don't remember much about the novel anymore but look forward to re-familiarising myself with the story and characters.
Over the years, I've read so many of Arundhati's columns and even purchased a collection of her essays. I did read Ministry of Utmost Happiness when it came out and, it was a great read.
I've enjoyed watching science fiction Netflix series like Altered Carbon and Dark so much that it triggered a deep desire to start reading it too. Science fiction almost seems to have even more of a burning desire to capture the human condition than other genres do, or are limited in doing. Its landscapes are limitless.
So, I've read recently:
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Kindred blew my mind because one doesn't need to get into the book. From the first few words, one becomes absorbs headlong. With the same force that the narrator is pulled back into the past, one is wrenched brutally into the slave plantations. I finished that book in about 3 days.
I had the utter pleasure of watching Soviet Solaris in London at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square. I'd always wanted to watch it and, it was such a treat to watch it. It's a very slow film , very artistic and, even boring for the Netflix addicted minds of today. I found it hard to keep my interest in the slow camera work but I watched it and, found myself admiring the artistry and compelling mood and atmosphere that was created in this film without any technical marvel.
I purchased the book later and read the novel. Having watched the film, I found myself in a familiar terrain. That is the 'convenience' of having seen a film adaptation and, then being able to rely on the visual markers imprinted in our minds and, then reading the words.
The novel is stunning, it's so slim but it's overwhelming, the pages and pages of history of scientific exploration of Solaris. It's stunning to have lived in the space station above Solaris along with the characters who have been so affected by it and struggle to understand why. It's a profound psychological novel.
Le Guin's work is pure masterpiece. I think I found The Dispossessed to be even more mind blowing than The Left Hand of Darkness but I bet I'll be saying that with all her works. And, she's so prolific. Her name only entered my consciousness around the time of her passing, I think, and, that too on social media. One quote came up a lot:
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
It's interesting that one comes to know of someone only after their passing on social media.
We did not read science fiction at school: we read important English literature. I wonder how much it has changed since then.
The Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness study patriarchy, capitalism, gender, political organisation, etc through the eyes of aliens visiting strange planets on exploration visits. These violent and contradictory systems are seen through wholly new eyes.
Shevek in The Dispossessed though reacts to the society on Uras in a disturbed way. One of my favourite passages is when he goes shopping on a 2-mile street and is sickened by the infinite number of useless things one can buy and some of which is more astronomical more than what a worker makes in a year. It's "nightmare street":
And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession.
This part struck me because that's often how I feel when I leave Monrovia to visit a big city like London where the endless variety of things one can buy is so overwhelming. Even Pakistan has become so consumerist and, one can just buy, buy, and buy provided one has enough money. How many fashion labels do we need? How many different styles of plates and glasses can one fill up one's house with? The supermarkets in London are overwhelming, even a small one.
The conversations that Ursula writes in her novels are so tender, so powerful, so rallying! It's not merely an intellectual study of systems but also human yearnings.
I want to say that both The Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness can become reading material of feminist study circles. We can think about the systems that oppress us by reading these novels but also think about how resistance itself can become oppression.
Great bookshops make great cities.
And, great bookshops with great cafés make fun cities. (We don't have any coffeeshops in bookshops in Islamabad. And, whenever I get the chance, I make a critique of big bad Saeed Book Bank and how they don't have a coffeeshop).
Remember that insulting moment when the French asked Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie if there were any bookshops in Nigeria? The French - they can't really help being racist can they - were really asking whether people read, are intellectual, like to use their heads and spend money on books.
I was pleasantly reassured that the English are still reading, buying books, and using their heads. So, this is about bookshops I've visited or been introduced to during this visit to London.
My favourite introduction was to Housman, very close to King's Cross.
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| Treadwell's Bookshop in the Bloomsbury area, famous for books on occult and witchcraft 30 April 2022  Housmans , "radical booksellers since 1945", near King's Cross 4 May 2022 |
In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado's intensity doesn't abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and all, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be seventeen years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all wound up. Almost.
