Reading Journeys of 2023

The flying arrow of time and the cyclical motion of the universe signal a year’s end for a pale blue dot flung into an obscure corner of the universe. Yet, the countless dreams, anxieties, hopes, fears and love emanating from its resident creatures fill the universe many times over. Reading books, for me, has always been about partaking in the multitude of thoughts animating our world and beyond; like dipping a finger in a gushing river to feel the cold current moving through one’s body. Here are some books that etched their mark on my mindscape in 2023:

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Non-Fiction)

The act of meandering isn’t appreciated enough, given the arbitrary linearity of thought, action and productivity embedded in the factory settings of society. In fact, meanderers are often seen as troublesome ‘deviants’, straying away from the existing path (never mind the warning signs along the way!). Yet, most things worth attending to, are to be found along the unmade paths, where trails of more-than-human point to unbounded possibilities. Solnit reclaims this wilderness through the political act of meandering through actions and evocative words. I loved her previous books and picked this one just to follow her words into yet another terrain enmeshing history, war and industrialization through the tender relationship of George Orwell with his garden. The writings ramble at a few places, but those are also enjoyable and reflective excursions. Here are some lines I picked, like wildflowers in an overgrown garden:

“Those obsessed with productivity and injustice often disparage doing nothing, though by doing nothing we usually mean a lot of subtle actions and observations and cultivation of relationships that are doing many kinds of something. It’s doing something whose value and results are not easily quantified or commodified, and you could argue that any of every evasion of quantifiability and commodifiability is a victory against assembly lines, authorities, and oversimplifications.”

Song of the cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Non-Fiction)

I don’t know why undergraduate and K-12 classes don’t include writings from authors like Siddhartha Mukherjee and Atul Gawande. These are authors I wish I had encountered earlier when I was a student, for the sheer wonder and inspiration they impart through their words, in addition to explaining dense concepts in a lucid fashion. Song of the cell traces the works of seminal scientists, their discoveries, failures and how every bit of knowledge, down to the level of sub-cellular functions reveals and deepens the mystery of human life simultaneously. Some book-marked quotes:

“‘The secret of learning is the systematic elimination of excess. We grow, mostly, by dying.’ We are hardwired not to be hardwired, and this anatomical plasticity may be the key to the plasticity of our minds.”

“It is one of the philosophical enigmas of immunity that the self exists largely in the negative – as holes in the recognition of the foreign. The self is defined, in part, by what is forbidden to attack it. Biologically speaking, the self is demarcated not by what is asserted but by what is invisible: It is what the immune system cannot see. “Tat Twam Asi”. “That [is] what you are.””

Lockwood and Co. by Jonathan Stroud (Vol 3,4,5) (YA fiction)

I ended up binge-reading these volumes on a weekend soon after watching the TV series based on the first two volumes. What’s not to love about teenage ghost-hunters and a wickedly clever commentary on power and class packed into a thrilling suspense?

Awe by Dacher Keltner (Non Fiction)

As someone who has long felt the moral need for experiences that can foreground the sheerness of the experiences itself; a momentary quietening of the mind’s desperate need to interpret, categorise and judge, this book literally spoke to my mind (with more than two decades of research to support specific arguments). Keltner traces the events that can give rise to awe across diverse contexts while explaining how such a transcendent emotion can be systematically studied and understood without lessening the sanctity of such experiences. If anything, the ability to feel awe can be consciously nurtured and enjoyed, as untethered oneness and an antidote to reductive categorization of perceptions.

The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer (Fiction)

I picked this book from the library display section, and getting to know authors this way has become my favourite mode of ‘surprise me’. Clover, who saw her kindergarten teacher drop dead when she was five, and lost her parents when they were vacationing in China at the age of six, is no stranger to death. Raised by her maternal grandfather in NYC, who has also died since,  she becomes a death doula, shepherding the passing away of people, and making notes of their final moments into categories of ‘Regrets’, ‘Advice’ and ‘Confessions’. Lonely, yet resistant to change, she is thrown into it inevitably to confront herself with difficult questions about her own collected regrets. A compassionate, warm story like the perfect ramen bowl you didn’t know you needed.

The man who wasn’t there by Anil Ananthaswamy

I have forever been fascinated by the big question in consciousness studies. Where does it come from? At what point do chemical and biological signalling between neurons give rise to the notion of ‘self’? Where do pathways of bodily electrical currents transmute into metanarratives of awareness? Through fascinating narratives of medical case studies ranging from schizophrenia, epilepsy, autism, Cotard’s syndrome and out-of-body experiences amongst others, Ananthaswamy explores the fragile connections holding together a sense of ‘I’, and how those threads can unravel to reveal fractals of awareness.

Divine cities Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennet

I began reading it at my brother’s recommendation and devoured the volumes like a proper glutton. Fantasy novels doubling up as a thriller are irresistible to say the least; A clever social commentary weaved into the story makes for extra intrigue. Just read it already!

The Education of Yuri by Jerry Pinto

Pinto has the gift of weaving stories as if you were always a part of it. Reading him isn’t as much discovery as it is affirmation of one’s innermost feelings that are then not so secret after all. The honest, gut-wrenching relatability of characters draws you into their world effortlessly. This book spans the coming-of-age of Yuri Fonseca in 1980s Bombay where he explores friendship, sexual intimacy, bumps into Naxalism, is swept by grief, and still find some ground to walk on. That’s life, and we can never tire of it. Witty, compassionate and reflective, the books is filled with bumper sticker gems.  

‘Wintering’, ‘Enchantment’ and the ‘The electricity of every living being’ by Katherine May

As you can see, I went on a trip with May and read all these books in quick succession. Reading her is a process of healing, without compromising on the need to engage with difficult aspects of one’s life and environment that seem so tempting to ignore. I’ll just mention a few quotes to illustrate the range of ideas discussed in the books.

“Doing those deeply unfashionable things – slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting – is a radical act now, but it is essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t then that skin will harden around you.” -Wintering

“Birds – ordinary birds – give the world its full three dimensions. Without them, the air is a flat surface, an absence of matter. Birds populate that space, explore it. They fill it with song. They mark the dawn and the dusk for us, the first heat of spring and the last gasp of autumn. In return, we are busy forgetting them.” – The electricity of every living being

“The deliberate pursuit of attention, ritual, or reflection does not mystically draw in anything external to me. Instead, it creates experiences that rearrange what I know to find the insights I need today. This is how symbolic thought works. It offers you a repository of understanding that can be triggered by the everyday, and which comes in a format that goes straight to the bloodstream. I don’t have the words to describe what it meant to play with my moon shadow. Instead, I feel it in my body, a kind of physical wonder at what is there waiting for me when I stop to notice.” – Enchantment  

This Country: Searching for home in (very) rural America by Navied Mahdavian

This was a heart-warming, compassionate take on the struggles of moving from a city to a rural place, where romantic ideas of idyllic rural life soon turn into grinding hard work and uncomfortable cultural differences. Without dehumanizing or vilifying the ‘other’, Mahdavian skillfully conveys the sense of displacement, alienation and homecoming, all wrapped into the complexities of moving into a conservative place in the US Midwest.

Woodsmoke and Leafcups by Madhu Ramnath (Non-Fiction)

Informative and reflective, this book is a first-hand account of Ramnath’s life in Bastar, where he spent more than three decades. What began as an impulsive act of a rebellious youth slowly turned into a lifelong commitment and passion towards the land and its people. Written in the form of journal notes, the book traces fascinating accounts of the community, rituals, cultures and tensions with the state machinery.

The case against reality by Donald Hoffman (Non-Fiction)

A mind-boggling and deeply unsettling book, if one were to follow the implications, Hoffman systematically builds on the argument that we can never perceive ‘objective’ reality, and instead rely on interpretations that maximize our survival in the environment, following the fitness and adaptation trajectories in evolutionary theory. A recent conversation between Hoffman and Swami Sarvapriyananda delves into the implications of the ‘consciousness-first’ view (as opposed to the materialistic explanations of the evolution of consciousness)

Rooted by Landa Lynn Haupt (Non-Fiction)

Some writings are gentle affirmations of our unspoken thoughts. Rooted was like that for me. To have someone describe eloquently, something that you have always felt intuitively, is a true pleasure. More power to extended kinship and kithship based on reciprocity and love for the world we live in.

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver (Fiction)

Set in a rural, Bible belt of America, the story opens with Dellarobia, an unhappy wife and a young mother of two, determinedly walking uphill to commence an affair; If life is going to hell, might as well sneak in some forbidden pleasure, she reasons. However, she finds her plans take an unexpected turn when her eyes land on what seems like a river of fire in the forest. She realizes she is surrounded by thousands of Monarch butterflies. The ensuing events offer a piercing commentary on how climate change is perceived by different communities, and the context in which specific issues are interpreted. Initially hailed as a miracle, then an inconvenience, and then a dire warning, the fate of the butterflies informs Dellarobia’s changing perception of the world, and what it would mean for her children. Searing, sensitive and poignant, Kingsolver weaves worlds with her writing. I look forward to reading more works by her this year.   

Determined by Robert Sapolsky (Non-Fiction)

Sapolsky is one of my favourite non-fiction writers, since I read ‘A Primate’s Memoir’ by him. I wrote about this book in some detail in an earlier blog. Basically, a 600-page neuroscience-backed argument against free will, with a passionate call to let this realization make us more compassionate towards ourselves and each other.

Of Time and Turtles by Sy Montogomery (Non-Fiction)

Sy is another favourite author of mine. I love her writing style, and ways in which she can get readers deeply invested in the fate of the protagonists of her books (turtles and people who have been rescuing them in this case). Describing the emotionally-fraught and difficult task of caring, Sy pulls readers into the world of turtles and people refusing to give up on them despite shocking injuries. Reflecting on the resilience of turtles, despite the massive odds against them, she writes, “These babies are brave because they are wise, imbued with a wisdom that stretch back hundreds of millenia. That’s where wisdom orginated – not in some creed that humans made up. For true bravery and wisdom, we have to go back to turtle-knowing, the ancient wellspring that we too, can draw upon as we struggle to live bravely on the earth.”

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook to Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson (Fiction)

I picked this book from the library display, thanks to its bright blue cover illustrations and curious title. I would have thought this to be something written by Terry Pratchett if the author wasn’t mentioned. It’s that much fun. A man waking up in what seems to be Medieval England, with fuzzy memories, scraps of a burnt guidebook titled The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, and a bunch of thugs after him is a pretty action-packed premise. The pace never drops, and I finished it in one go like a brisk jog. Will this count for cardio?

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekhara (Fiction)

This was a genre-defying book for me. From a baffling premise, to dream-like descriptions of places juxtaposed with group therapy and junk emails, the story is hard to pin down, much like the protagonist, Fetter. It felt like a book not as much concerned with the plot as it is with the mood. Rich descriptions of saints, mortals, anti-gods, political machinations and revolutionary uprisings could easily slip into incoherent prose, but Vajra skillfully weaves threads to lure readers deeper into the web of narratives until you seem to be sharing the conflicts of Fetter, with no comforting end in sight. Yet, there are ways to make peace and bask in the climax of revelations that come in the end.

As a writer, I draw endless inspiration from authors, and hope to gather enough thoughts to fill a book someday. Until then, I look forward to encountering more authors this year and picking nuggets of wisdom from their work. Feel free to comment on this post with any book that gave you company in the past year! I’d love to add it to my reading list if it’s new to me :).

Freedom from free will – an ambitious and compassionate take on understanding human behaviour

The notion of intentionality, arising from seemingly conscious choices is so deeply embedded in our understanding of behaviour that any challenge to it is likely to be met by almost reflexive defence. Yet, in Determined by Robert Sapolsky, he takes up this challenge head-on (or turtle down if you read the book). It would be unbelievably presumptuous of me even to attempt summarizing the vast domains covered in the book, ranging from Aplysia (sea slug) neurosignalling to quantum entanglement (He manages to do it in a style that would have you think he is sitting across the table and chatting with you, copious notes in hand), detailed episodes of medical and legal history, and a healthy dose of neuroscience details, all woven into a compelling set of arguments against free will. Still, here’s a stab at it, mostly to consolidate my own understanding of the text.

Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky holds up a copy of his latest book, “Determined” (Source: LA Times)

In the book’s first half, Sapolsky elegantly marshals extensive evidence from various corners of neurobiology to explain that every action taken at any given moment has an underlying cause and is thus determined and constrained by the specific outcomes. Humbug! You say (maybe you revisited Christmas Carol a while back?). After all, doesn’t it seem entirely a matter of free will whether you choose to stop reading right now and instead grab a much-needed cup of coffee? Well, tough luck, but no. Depending on the time frame of analysis, your decision is an outcome of neuronal signalling, which in turn depends on the behaviour of neurotransmitters, which could be sensitive to different environmental factors all the way back to the surroundings you were in as an embryo and beyond. In a more commonsensical way, we intuitively know that a person is less likely to be charitable, patient or understanding when hungry. There are now a slew of studies that the chances of being denied parole are significantly higher if the judges haven’t eaten in a while. The brain is an energy-intensive organ, with the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) a guzzler because it is central to executive function; in jargon-free terms, its function is essential when you have to make tough decisions in the face of temptations. As PFC functions become effortful with lower glucose levels, attending to the details of a case and weighing options becomes more difficult, thus making habitual decisions (denying parole) that are less energy-demanding and easier to make. The book delves into a lot of detail about PFC functioning (His earlier book, Behave, even more so) because it is one of the last regions to develop and is thus most sensitive to environmental factors in its moulding. Knowing this helps us look at our own teenage years (and others) much more kindly, as it is a time when capacities for actions have developed without the requisite mental brakes and gears to map out consequences. A significant implication of the analyses highlights how alluding to individual agency, grit, patience, laziness, and hard work as explanations of one’s success or failure would be akin to praising a rainbow, cursing a storm cloud or vilifying a virus. These are deeply counter-intuitive ideas and even more uncomfortable to implement because so much of our sense-making in society is derived from notions of free will. If early childhood experiences and specific cocktail of genetic factors over which an individual has no control ultimately shape the fates of the damned and glorified, who exactly is being punished or rewarded for their actions?

René Descartes‘ illustration of mind–body dualism. (Wikipedia)

The fact that structural inequities play a significant role in amplifying or curtailing one’s personal and professional opportunities has been long argued by social scientists. Sapolsky furnishes proof of these effects as embedded in our bodies and brains. The admirable part comes from sticking with the consequences of these findings, even if they are deeply unsettling. He is critical of philosophers citing agency and ‘better senses’ as ways to overcome difficult situations. Don’t we read about such exemplary characters all the time? Saplosky would argue, dig deep enough and you can trace deterministic causes all the way to the beginning of time. I happen to be highly educated because I grew up in a print-rich environment, with constant intangible rewards in terms of encouragement and affirmation (translated into Dopamine kicks) associated with reading. Our neuronal circuitry largely remains similar to Pavlovian dogs, or sea slugs if you please, so reading itself seems rewarding over time. A child growing up in a stressful environment instead winds up with an overactive amygdala, mediating a host of other trauma-related behaviours. We don’t transcend our environment; we are made of it. Uncovering deterministic trajectories does not downplay the complexity or unpredictability of phenomena at different levels (Sapolsky devotes at least four chapters dealing with ideas of emergence, complexity, chaos and, hell, even quantum entanglement to substantiate the argument). This view does not seek to simplify the complex interplay of numerous biological, developmental and social factors, but instead tries to make explicit the causal connections giving rise to observable behaviour. Taking these seriously could help in designing environments that are more amenable to positive behaviour instead of sneakily withholding marshmallows from kids to predict their future success. It also explains why the groaning weight of self-help books in stores has limited effectiveness. They are premised on the idea of people freely choosing to engage in desirable behaviour when messy tangles of neurobiological factors won’t allow them to, whether it looks like laziness, cowardice, or stubbornness is anyone’s pick. The good news is that the tangles are malleable, and it is possible to change them through a combination of environmental (including social) and biological factors. This is a reason habits are powerful, and setting them into desirable routines lessens the work of PFC, which largely supports the illusion of free will. The narratives we build are always post-facto. 

Sapolsky further draws on historical studies to argue that a more humane legal and incarceration system might develop once individual culpability is understood as the sum total of processes beyond the control of willpower and its close associate, intentionality. Epileptic patients were burnt or imprisoned in the 14^th and 15^th centuries as cases of demonic possessions. Now, they are entitled to relevant health care and support systems. A similar trajectory should be possible for people now branded as criminals. In one place he writes how a malfunctioning car would either be repaired or at least removed from the road in lieu of public safety. It surely wouldn’t be cast as an evil car set on causing damage to life and property. With every moment shedding more light on the processes of environmentally-coupled brain behaviour, couldn’t the justice system move beyond the spectre of free will and individual blame? The moral thrust of the book-length argument shines in these lines:

“There is no justifiable ‘deserve’. The only possible moral conclusion is that you are no more entitled to have your needs and desires met than is any other human. That there is no human who is less worthy than you to have their well-being considered. … We already know enough to understand that the endless people whose lives are less fortunate than ours don’t implicitly ‘deserve’ to be invisible. Ninety-nine percent of the time I can’t remotely achieve this mindset, but there is nothing to do but try, because it will be freeing.” (p. 403)

Sapolsky is also deeply sympathetic to the argument’s corollary because really, really being a free-will skeptic also seems to give a free pass to nihilistic attitudes. Why bother at all, if nothing is in my control? Or, why show any restraint if nothing is really ever my fault as an individual? Are we zombies or amoral monsters? At this point, he makes a passionate case for realising the lack of free will as grounds to embrace forgiveness and understanding, in his words – “the absurdity of hating any person for anything they’ve done”. It still doesn’t convincingly overcome the paradox (do I choose to forgive or circumstances make me a forgiving person?), but the hope lies in the fact that we can change (for the better), even when we have no control over it (irrespective of whether we believe it or not). Perhaps it is about being the change you want to be.

Notes:

The buck still stops at the hard problem of consciousness, which is concerned with the question ‘who is you making the decisions in the first place?’ ( ‘The man who wasn’t there‘ does an excellent job of looking at the neuroscience of self through medical cases where the ‘self’ is perturbed)

For an interesting Advaita Vedanta perspective on the topic of free will, see: https://www.youtube.com/live/ugKBMwuB6Hg?feature=shared

Mapping mobility (and other things taken for granted)

Growing up, I realized I had no affinity for vehicles with more than three wheels. Owning a cycle was the pinnacle of my ambition as a 10-year-old, and nearly 25 years later, it hasn’t changed much. Despite the explosion of cars on the streets as I grew older and that my father worked in the automobile industry, I was, what one might say, blissfully ‘car-blind’.

My father made sure that I did some basic lessons and got a driving license (DL), but circumstances ensured that I never ended up needing a car. So, apart from occasionally using it as identity proof, my DL was relegated to a dark corner of my wallet. Instead, my excursions through various places in India were happily managed through other means of transport, plentiful as they are.

Then, I landed in the US recently. And just like that, all my travel options evaporated almost immediately.

My imagination of breezily cruising through the roads on a cycle were, well, mostly reduced to just a breeze. In the absence of dedicated cycle lanes, only the very brave or the very desperate can manage to hold onto their handles with cars zipping past 60-70 miles per hour. I soon realized that even walking on the apology of sidewalks was no mean feat.

A bonafide FOB (fresh off the boat, or plane in my case), it seemed to me that people mostly got out of their home, and then got into their cars, even if they just had to throw out trash, or do laundry in the shared residential spaces. I wasn’t wrong either, blame lack of alternate options, or just sheer inertia, but a 2021 report states that 52% of daily trips taken in the US are within three miles. Walking, here, feels like a designated exercise, best done by driving to a state park or a gym. Walking from point A to B for any work is suspicious, it seems, given the glances I got while I dragged my laundry trolley along the apartment roads.

Soon, it was apparent to me and my partner (who is way more car literate than me, but was equally disinterested in getting one) that we ran a real chance of getting stuck without owning or renting a car in the US. Before that, we had to get a state license as well. By this time, adequately frustrated by the lack of options regarding public transport, I felt ready to drive a truck if I had to (again showing how little I know about these mechanical beasts, which are now loaded with softwares actually).

Public Transit users have declined in the limited areas they were available in the first place. Lack of affordable options to travel impacts the vulnerable populations the most. Source: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/us-public-transit-has-struggled-retain-riders-over-past-half-century-reversing-trend-could-advance-equity-and-sustainability

Thus began my driving lessons, where I had to unlearn every instinct of driving cars in India because of left-right reversal. Apparently, UK and her erstwhile colonies are the only places on the planet still driving on the left side. So, my initial learning mainly consisted of using the right indicator, and meaning it (instead of switching on the glass wipers and veering left). It didn’t help that I like birdwatching either.

After nearly a month of unlearning and relearning, the motivation to explore atleast nearby state parks (and get grocery) helped me secure a license (A supposedly merciful concession given to dependent Visa holders in the US, who are otherwise not even eligible to get a social security number. A sordid story for another time.)

In the meantime, Sid began car hunting in earnest. However, even used car prices have skyrocketed in the US post the pandemic for various reasons ranging from disrupted supply chains to semiconductor shortages (remember semiconductor chips the cars are made of), and classic capitalist greed. The situation was as absurd as second-hand vehicles costing more than brand new models! While I was willing to buy anything with a functional brake, Sid was thankfully more discerning. His online search quests, being dutifully tracked, soon every YouTube Ad on even my phone began to feature car models.

An intricate combination of our budget and Sid’s height (he is 6’2) helped narrow our options, and finally one evening he called from a car showroom saying, “I am getting the CX 5 Mazda I told you about. I just saw they have a model in blue, and I think I’ll go for it.” Now, in my mind, the bit that got registered was blue. Which blue? Ultramarine, Cobalt, Prussian, Indigo… eeks! I endured the suspense until he was back, but it was late night and I couldn’t get a sense of the car, except that it was big. The next morning, I finally got to see what I would be driving around the town.

“It’s a blue whale” I said, admiring the subtle metallic-blue shade. Sitting inside her cavernous interiors felt like the stomach of an animal, and I looked positively puny (though I am not). Sid, on the other hand, for once, didn’t look like he was clutching a toy wheel.

I christened her ‘Wonka the Whale’. I am still learning about her moods, through the purrs and revs of the engine powering her body. I yearn for better public transport, and am plotting to add bicycle racks to the car so that some amount of cycling is possible in more cycle-friendly areas. I also hope to join civic action groups advocating for safe, inclusive and accessible transportation options. Until then, I’m counting on Wonka to help me navigate the unknown contours of the land, check my blind spots, and accompany us on our adventures.

Symbiosis, forgotten?

We made a pact, you and me

That we would share our destiny

Churning experience into genetic fates

We carved into existence evolutionary traits

Paths diverged, as they often do

But solely one way back home holds true

You feel it in your bones, as the blood flows

The body remembers more than what the mind knows

Then why the pretence of individuality, the lonely island of ‘I’?

When the land submerges, it’s together we die

Or perhaps not. I heard you like to bet.

I made my pact with many, I knew you would forget.

Growth and Grief

Grief has no regard for entropy,
It doesn’t let chaos control the flow,
the mysterious dark matter of emotions,
the earthy body succumbs to its plough.

Vestiges of the past wriggle like earthworms,
cast under the harsh sunlight of introspection.
Some will find their way back,
to remind the body of lost affection.

The rain of sorrow will arrive,
and the parched soil will drink its worth.
rivulets of remorse will run its course,
until something sprouts beneath the earth.

A fragile plant of hope pushes from beneath,
the efforts of grief are not in vain.
life will course through the stalk once more,
its strength nourished through past pains.

Of big revolutions, and tiny resolutions

So here I am, a few more strands of grey hair later, having lived through another year of the pandemic and its seemingly unending uncertainties. There are many stars to thank, even as the night seems long. Birds, books and a few humans made for some comforting company, and I continue to rely on them for hope and support. Here are some authors who enriched my life through their writings.

“There’s grace in complexity, in actions cohering, in sum totals. We can find this in ourselves, in what we do alone, but also in what we enact together. Our own roots and systems interlace and tangle, grow into and away from one another and back again in a million subtle moments.”

• Finding the mother tree, Suzanne Simard

“Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behaviour. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.”

• Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith

  “Perhaps narcissism is best defined as a need to look on other people as mirrored surfaces who satisfy us only when they reflect back a loving or admiring image of ourselves. When we look into another’s eyes, in other words, we are not looking to see who they are, but how are we reflected in their eyes. By this definition, which of us can honestly disown our share of narcissism?”

• Mythos, Stephen Fry

“He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that” we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.”

• Circe, Madeline Miller

“Going easy on ourselves also reflects a key cognitive fact: we judge ourselves by our internal motives and everyone else by their external actions. And thus, in considering our own misdeeds, we have more access to mitigating, situational information.”

• Behave, the biology of humans at their best and their worst, Robert Sapolsky

Other gems include ‘How to be a good creature’ by Sy Montgomery, ‘A desolation called peace’ by Arkady Martine, ‘The song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller, ‘Earthlings’ and ‘The convenience store woman’ by Sayaka Murata, ‘Artic dreams’ by Barry Lopez, ‘Atlas of poetic botany’ by Francis Halle and ‘Becoming Wild’ by Carl Safina. I look forward to receiving more inked wisdom this year. Amen.

Norms, normality and some inconvenient truths

“Normal is a setting on a washing machine.” – Christopher Barzak

The stories we tell ourselves

The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould supposedly characterised humans as “the primates who tell stories”. Indeed, a large part of our cognitive machinery is geared towards responding and attending to others through social interactions. These social interactions coalesce into narratives and stories, gradually forming the bedrock of what we assume is the ‘culture’ of a society. These narratives are influential in shaping expectations, behaviour and collective goals. From creation myths to passionate speeches by political leaders, we are bound and inspired by shared ideas. However, as history has made amply clear, not all shared ideas are beneficial. Ideas of nation, race, gender, caste, meritocracy and class have sanctioned many forms of systemic violence. Industrialised, techno-centric visions of society have allowed for systematic exploitation of natural resources and living creatures. Insidiously, these narratives gain normative value and become aspirational goals at an individual and collective level. From status indicators to national ‘Growth’ indicators, the pursuit of what ought to constitute a good life is relentless. Social media ensures that it remains unachievable yet constantly available for comparison as well.

The unruly cog

So, what happens to those who find themselves unable to fit into the classic story? This question has become an increasingly personal one, owing to choices and circumstances that are not amenable to accepted explanations. So, chancing upon Sayaka Murata’s ‘The convenience store woman’, a novella laced with deadpan humour and incisive critique, had a mini cathartic effect. The novel revolves around an unmarried woman in her mid-thirties working part-time at a convenience store in Japan. Sounds unremarkable, perhaps downright dull, right? Yet, that is part of her commentary on society. People aren’t satisfied with the fact that someone might simply want to live that way. What about the milestones of normal progression (marriage, children, property, prosperity)? Where is the ‘empowered woman reaching for her true potential’ idea? Her plain existence goes against the unspoken expectations of society, even as she is perfectly content with herself. While it isn’t discussed if she is psychologically ‘normal’, her views hold a mirror against the hypocrisy and contradictions underlying societal codes of conduct. After a social gathering filled with unsolicited marriage advice, Keiko, the protagonist makes a mental note,

“So the manual for life already existed. It was just that it was already ingrained in everyone’s heads, and there wasn’t any need to put it in writing. The specific form of what is considered an ‘ordinary person’ had been there all along, unchanged since prehistoric times I finally realised.”

At another point in the story, her sister is visibly upset at Keiko’s idea of living with a man to escape prying questions rather than any mutual attraction. After an exchange, Keiko realises that her sister needs to make sense of her within frames of normalcy.

“She’s far happier thinking her sister is normal, even if she has a lot of problems, than she is having an abnormal sister for whom everything is fine.”

Murata’s book reminded me of Gail Honeyman’s ‘Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine’, another poignant story involving a young woman who doesn’t fit the accepted bill of normality. At one point she writes,

“These days, loneliness is the new cancer—a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.”

Murata and Honeyman’s commentary raises many questions about modern society that are now surfacing from various quarters. With technology making inroads into every facet of one’s professional and personal life, many ideas of what constitutes a relationship, a sense of community and one’s identity are changing at an unprecedented rate. With ecological and economic systems crumbling around us, pretending to go about ‘business as usual’ is an act of painful denial. While some may have the privilege of defining their position and engagement, most people find themselves increasingly ill-equipped to face the pressure, alienation, and constant exposure to a faceless system’s demands. Something has broken somewhere. Reading the writings on the wall, we know that the purpose of education and work merits serious rethinking because they form the edifice of our shared cultural narrative. We need new stories to continue from here.

Source: ‘The lost thing’ by Shaun Tan

Where do we go from here?

The pandemic, for all its havoc, is also a chance at redemption. A reflective pause for new beginnings. Maybe we can stop thinking of milestones and progress for starters. Perhaps, sharing grief can be made more acceptable and public. Work satisfaction and involvement can take priority over productivity. Tending the land can be as valuable as building a machine, perhaps even more. Maybe we don’t need grand narratives at all; instead we can make space for personal stories, small laughs, cosy dinners and humble ‘pay-it-forwards’. A life has to be lived, after all. 

Related Reading:

‘ A life more ordinary’ https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/elle-voices/a35854177/ambition-anxiety/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-intl-en

‘How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation’ https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work

‘The Right to Rest: Women at Leisure’: https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/right-rest-through-women-leisure?fbclid=IwAR2wVoc1RRkE48d6JJZ5njSTTQ1Ie6Yjp0qDlukP9N-L73pCrwabbk0y5cU

‘Our Collective Fixation on Productivity Is Older Than You Think’: https://www.gq.com/story/james-suzman-work-interview

‘Tell Me A Story: What Narratives Reveal About The Mind’: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/09/794683840/tell-me-a-story-what-narratives-reveal-about-the-mind

Homing

The sense of ‘what if’, is a question of longing
A leopard staring at the city lights
A person seeking refuge at the crossing.

Birds and animals return to a hacked canopy
The fish can’t scale the dam to meet the sea
‘Identity?’ someone asks, a card lost under the debris.

Memories of loss pile in the landfill of pain
The stench will draw the scavengers
To salvage the promise of their terrain.

Indentured labourers sung songs of mute sorrow
while the whales didn’t know the borders they crossed
Pristine, tall buildings cast dismembered shadows.

Waves of displacement wash over the shore
As glaciers give into Earth’s mournful sigh
Seismic waves of loneliness knock our core
As rootless feet now turn to the sky.

‘Tales from outer suburbia’ by Shaun Tan

Borrowed Breath (Part 1 of 2)

Last year has been an emotional, difficult journey for myriad reasons, universal and personal. Pushing against endless waves of existential anxieties has meant learning to build a strong life-boat, to ride along the currents. Often the tools needed to build such a life-boat come in the form of stories and experiences. Stories that we hear, stories that we read, and stories that we need to tell. As eloquently put by Author Barry Lopez, “If stories come to you, care for them and learn to give them away where they’re needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That’s why we put these stories in each other’s memories.”

My refuge (and privilege) of reading books stem from the desire to believe and hope in possibilities. These writers welcomed me to dwell in worlds, giving me the courage to stand my ground, even as fear and uncertainty threaten its very existence. So, as a gift, I share below some thoughts from various books that gave me company throughout. I look forward to encountering many more this year.

Breathing life into these thoughts comes in the form of tending – a careful attention that doesn’t allow entities or relationships to be taken for granted; a sense of wonder that doesn’t diminish with the passage of time; a feeling of gratitude that recognises the fact that all presents don’t come gift-wrapped, and that ephemeral sunbeam lighting up a loved one’s silhouette will shine in your memory if you make a note of it. From the wellspring of this raw emotions may gush forth the courage that is needed to defend what we love. Knowledge will catch up later. For now, let belief show the way.

—

“All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thought live on.”

“Because even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led; none of them could have been predicted, because of none of them was inevitable. Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that spawns such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.”

“It’s no coincidence that ‘aspiration’ means both hope and the act of breathing.”

–- Exhalations by Ted Chiang

“As though life was first and foremost about waiting and the meaning found in the gaps or in an abstract future that can’t be brought about by any means other than patience.”

“We should be glad that knowledge has its limits. This response isn’t just a a defence mechanism; it is also a way for us to understand the fact that the world is an incomprehensible place. There is something compelling about the mysterious.”

“You don’t have to believe in the miracle to believe in the meaning of the miracle. There are many ways to be a fool. And you don’t have to believe in the Gospel (or the eel) in a literal sense to believe what is at the heart of their message. Those who die stay with us in some form.”

— The book Eels by Patrik Svensson

“Mental activities do not just take place inside our heads – They are not just brain processes. Rather, they also involve activities we do in the world. In particular, the manipulation, transformation and exploitation of relevant environmental entities.”

“Love is sometimes sickening. Love can damn you for all eternity. Love will take you to hell. But if you are lucky, if you are very lucky, it will bring you back again.”

“For us no moment is every complete in itself. Every moment is adulterated, tainted by what we remember has been and what we anticipate will be. In each moment of our lives, the arrow of time holds us green and dying. And this is why we think we are superior to all other animals.”

“Because we are temporal animals – we both want our lives to have meaning and are unable to understand how are lives could have meaning. Temporality’s gift to us is the desire for what we cannot understand.”

“I never remember myself. I remember myself only through my memories of others. Here we are decisively confronted with the fallacy of egoism; the fundamental error of the ape. What is important is not what we have but who we were when we were at our best.”

— The philosopher and the wolf by Mark Rowlands

“It is awe that inspires the freedom for very different questions to be asked, questions that don’t need to be answered in order to renew our sense of ecological intimacy and kinship with the nonhuman living world, to remind us that we care. And this is what was so truly surprising and inspiring about Mimosa.”

“Human prosperity is not in conflict with the prosperity of other species and the plant; on the contrary, thriving abundance is made-with, cocreated with others in a continuity of exchanges and sharings.”

“Of course, we can choose whatever story we want, but given that stories frame what beliefs we elect to embody and which path we choose to walk on for our becoming as individuals and society, shouldn’t we be extremely observant and mindful of the stories we tell and subscribe to?”

“Forgiveness is not a doing. It is an undoing of the imaginary ‘self’, the one you have come to believe you are. The arrival of forgiveness calls for the annihilation of this counterfeiter and its belief system.”

— Thus spoke the plant by Monica Gagliano

“What belongs to whom? What, and how much can be taken from nature? Who pays the costs of what is taken and cannot be returned? Tricky questions. To answer would mean to admit that belonging and coveting have to be seen through historical prisms, for it is history that informs narratives about what is ours to take, and what is not.”

“The culture we are experiencing does not teach us how to talk – or sing – our way out of discomfort. Cultural disruption, and the resultant disattachment, is magnified in places where discrimination is normalised.

“Nostalgia is not always about the past, it can be retrospective but also prospective. Fantasies of the past determined by needs of the present have a direct impact on the realities of the future.”

— Bread, Cement, Cactus by Annie Zaidi

Long, long ago in a far, far place… yet so near and present with eyes closed.

Stripped – A bitter-sweet tale for the comic strip enthusiasts

Those Sunday special comic sections

I think almost every child growing up in the nineties or earlier would have some distinct, sweet memory of pouring over the cartoon strips featuring in the Sunday issues of newspapers. It was amazing how much creativity, wit, philosophy and humour could be stuffed in that limited space of 3-4 panels. Content aside, I loved the slightly blotchy splash of colours and the variety of cartooning styles. Apart from comic magazines sold at the railway stations (which I loved), comics, especially those created abroad where quite expensive to buy. So, the ones printed in the newspapers were a special treat. My partner recalls helping his grandmother cut out strips and painstakingly create entire issues of Asterix and Phantom over the years, till he began finding online versions of the comic issues. In a way, my brother and I owe our speedy reading habits to attempts of finishing entire comic books while sitting in clandestine corners of bookstores. I spent a good chunk of my first salary on buying the entire hardbound collection of Calvin and Hobbes, and we continue to find poor excuses to buy printed comic books (If this phrase confuses you, it’s because you don’t have Indian parents). Newspaper comics were also my earliest inspirations to draw, and my abiding love for the medium is evident in my brave attempts to depict my life in cartoons every now and then. So, when I recently came across a documentary on cartoonists talking about the art form how it is being impacted by the eminent death of newspapers, I was instantly hooked.

Bill Watterson created the poster for Stripped

From print to pixels – what’s lost in the translation?

The documentary explores the tumultuous, creative process involved in drawing, especially when it takes the form of daily deadlines. Even before reaching that stage, getting syndicated is terrifyingly difficult process wherein a handful of cartoons are selected (Usually 2 selected out of 5000 submissions a year) and sold to most newspapers through the syndicate. Punishing as the process may be, many cartoonists felt that it still meant that they were only expected to the one task they feel passionate about – draw. As the cartoonist Greg Evans commented, “We’re basically artists, and not entrepreneurs in that sense…”. However, with more than 2000 newspapers having to close down in the past 15 years (in US alone), it would seem that the rules of the game have changed considerably. Some cartoonists are geared up and even favour the transition, feeling that the new platform of web-comics is more egalitarian (anyone can publish!) and make it big, if they succeed. The ‘if’ part is easier said than done though. Apart from drawing, artists then need to have considerable business acumen to cater to public interests, popularise their work on various platforms, and create merchandise (almost 60-70% of their revenue comes from here) to make a living. Bill Watterson fought hard to keep Calvin and Hobbes from being merchandised. Nowadays, it seems to become an integral part of bread and butter. Not everyone sees it as selling their soul to the Devil though. However, this way of cartooning also makes it hard to create independent work. Audiences are now consumers, and an artist’s independent sensibilities or interests may not find a place among popular ‘likes’ of the day. With an exponential increase in content on the internet (anyone and anything can be published, remember?), it becomes nearly impossible to sift through things, visibility itself being at the mercy of whimsical moods of the netizens. There are chances of overnight fame, as there are of unpredictable disinterest when the crowd moves on.

Creativity can’t die, but what would the resurrection look like?

Moving into new media is not just transfer of images from print onto the screen. It also changes our perceptions and understanding of the phenomena in fundamental ways. In his book outlining the major shifts in culture and cognition due to the transition from an Oral to a Literary civilisation, Walter J Ong wrote, “Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but normally even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form. More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.” What shift in thinking structures will ‘swipeable comics’ bring? Does it call for a more immersive experience as artists are freed from the physical boundaries of the paper, and viewers can interact with comics in newer ways? Will writing itself become more visual in nature as various kinds of graphics become available? These are new frontiers for artists and viewers alike. The good thing is, cartoonists are compulsively creative and constantly reinventing themselves in all kinds of ways. Our shared love for storytelling is a big part of what makes us human, and images just make it more fun. So comics are here to stay, metamorphosing through new media and enriching our lives in imaginative ways. It’s not a replacement narrative either, print versions will be around as long as people love the tactile feel of the pages ( I like to sniff them too). Armed with brushes, pens, paper and Adobe Illustrator, cartoonists feel optimistic about the adventures lying ahead. I, for one, support their cause wholeheartedly.

Watterson’s famous last strip published in 1995