Why I love Vikram Seth

Before this blog becomes an ode to this Indian writer, which it will not become, I want to share one thought: I may never be able to write anything original of what's in my heart, because Vikram Seth will have written it all.

Here's an excerpt from his latest novel:

"I knew of too many Indians who had begun to work there after college, fully intending to go back home after a few years. They had got ahead in their professions, bought a house with a mortgage, and found that their school-age children had become more American than Indian. After a few years they were so embedded in their temporary lives that they only went home for any length of time upon the death or severe illness of a parent. This thought struck an uncomfortable chord. I had been away far too long. I had no 'encumbrances' to hold me back, I had no ambitions in the standard sense, I liked the company of my family and missed them. Everyone was growing older - my father was now sixty-three, my mother fifty-six. Shantum, my brother, was not in India to give them support, and Aradhana, my sister, was growing up without my really getting to know her in the way one does through the humour and abrasion and affection of day-to-day living rather than the intense sociability of sporadic visits."

-Vikram Seth, Two Lives-

Reading...

"Two Lives"! Thanks to my friend Carrot, I managed to order Vikram Seth's latest novel online and am now reading it. It's a little bit of autobiography, and a little bit of the biography of two other people, Seth's aunt and uncle.

Honestly I'm not sure how interesting it would be to just any reader looking for a good story. I haven't read far enough to know. But to a fan like me, each little thing he reveals about himself in his usual witty prose is just a welcome part of the puzzle to me. I'm really enjoying it :)

A tall order

Anyone who's tried her hand at photography knows how tough it can be to achieve this described communion with one's camera, and anyone who's tried to live knows how challenging it is to respect such uncompromising equilibrium between one's mind, senses and heart. Yet this remains an endless source of inspiration:

"L’appareil photographique est pour moi un carnet de croquis, l’instrument de l’intuition et de la spontanéité, le maître de l’instant qui, en termes visuels, questionne et décide à la fois. Pour «signifier» le monde, il faut se sentir impliqué dans ce que l’on découpe à travers le viseur. Cette attitude exige de la concentration, de la sensibilité, un sens de la géométrie. C’est par une économie de moyens et surtout un oubli de soi-même que l’on arrive à la simplicité d’expression.

Photographier : c’est retenir son souffle quand toutes nos facultés convergent pour capter la réalité fuyante ; c’est alors que la saisie d’une image est une grande joie physique et intellectuelle.

Photographier : c’est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l’organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait.

C’est mettre sur la même ligne de mire la tête, l’œil et le cœur. C’est une façon de vivre."

- Henri Cartier-Bresson -

"Two Lives"

Vikram Seth's latest novel "Two Lives" is finally out, and is apparently once more different from his others. Can anyone actually believe that Indigo does not have it yet? It's been out for two weeks!

Here's a link to his latest interview in the Guardian. Reading it, I wonder whether Vikram Seth the writer could have been any other way than the way he is now. It sometimes feels that he lives each of his characters so intensely that, had he had a regular family of his own, he would have deprived his characters of an important part of his empathy.

As if being such a fine translator of people's experiences and emotions compels you to a life just on the periphery of those stories rather than allowing you to become a part of them.

Marathon Magic

My friend Mihaela ran the Montreal marathon for the second consecutive year this past Sunday. She made the 42.195 km in 4 hours, 12 minutes and 8 seconds, a sizeable improvement on her time last year. Once more, I was awed by the sheer determination, discipline and courage it takes to complete the distance. She said that at the 39th km, she felt nauseous and thought she might not be able to complete the run. But she made it and finished in very good shape, smiling.

There were much older runners too, and even one pushing his child in a stroller for the whole run! No matter how often you watch the finish line, each athlete who completes that run is a source of inspiration, and an incredible example of how a strong enough will and regular effort can accomplish wonders.

Observations from an afternoon in the park

-Give a dog a ball and he will find endless ways to have fun with it. The same goes with a stick or an emply plastic bottle.
-Stay in one place long enough and the mosquitoes will find you.
-Lying back under a tree and sky-gazing through the branches is a delightful thing we don't do often enough.
-Try to keep a dog away from the pond and the third thing he'll do is get completely wet. The fourth: get his master completely wet.
-Greetings among dogs vary from friendly kisses to snobbish ignoring to "m'as-tu-vu" types.
-Just because two dogs like each other does not mean their owners will reciprocate the liking. (Life is not "101 Dalmatians").
-You only think of what's on the grass under you when you catch a dog peeing a few metres from you.
-Greetings among people vary from friendly kisses to snobbish ignoring to "m'as-tu-vu" types.

There is pleasure in the sudden slight chill that falls after sunset, if you have a warm jumper with you.

"Nouveau" cinema

So I went to watch "Salaam Namaste", Yash Raj's latest film directed by 26-year-old Siddharth Anand. A great job for a newcomer. There's talent in Bollywood, no doubt about it. But if I have to see one more NRI film shot in Calgary, Melbourne or New York, and one more pumped up red hero passing for the regular tanned Indian, I'll scream. I'll admit there were very funny episodes. The dialogues are a hit in this film and the story is not bad. But the trouble comes with the packaging. The whole shiny and smooth but supposedly down-to-earth mode is getting suffocating. The small moments of deep emotion get glossed over by the patina of luxury and hipness.

It doesn't help that two days before I watched Hrishikesh Mukherji's "Abhimaan", a film from 1973, where there are funny moments, silly events and deeply troubling issues about the human ego, without ever falling into either slobbering sentimentality or slapstick comedy. The film simply takes you through a journey into a couple's life: its sweetness, its bitterness, its difficulties and glimmers of happiness. There were commercial imperatives even then, but you somehow get the feeling that Mukherji was first sharing a story rather than giving the audience what they want.

The product I saw yesterday was first the effort of a young man trying to prove how original and sleek he can be, which he managed to do, at the expense of a story's soul.

La tendresse peut faire fondre un monde.