Book Review - "Escher's Loops" by Zoran Zivkovic

Escher’s Loops is a delightful journey through the ‘degrees of separation’ that connect us together. It is a story without place and time, yet timeless in its message; and though the characters are nameless, they are at once universal in their appeal and intimately familiar due to their idiosyncrasies. The book is also a homage to Escher, a prose counterpart to his famous drawings.

The book is built in four parts, or ‘loops.’ Each loop connects to the one preceding it with one missing link – a link unknown in the previous part. What starts as a simple elevator ride soon turns into a roller-coaster of shared experiences, each more bizarre than the previous. Zivkovic uses the self-referential technique of storytelling (like Escher’s famous “Drawing Hands”) to move the story ahead.

Escher’s Loops reminded me of one of my childhood favorites – the Spirograph. If each protagonist was represented by an individual pen, then the entire story comes together as an intricately linked design produced by a spirograph that had multiple wheels that spun together in perfect unison. The threads of the story weave through each other to form periodic links, but the author’s sharp style keeps them from creating an entangled mess. We travel across a familiar Zivkovic landscape – dreams, passions, death, food, and – of course – books & librarians!

The author makes apt use of metaphors – locales (concert hall, prison, airplane, and even a firing squad) and people (pharmacist, explorer, butcher, athlete) – and conjures the most absurd situations that make us laugh when we read them, and ponder when we recollect.

Like all of his earlier novels, reading Escher’s Loops is a hard and honest look into one’s personal mirror. It is a quest to find that one thing that each of us holds dear in our heart, and offering it to some mysterious higher calling.

Rating:

5.0 out of 5.0

Book Review - "Steps Through The Mist" by Zoran Zivkovic

“Steps Through The Mist” is a delightful, and thought-provoking novel by the Serbian author Zoran Zivkovic. True to his style, the novel raises many questions than it answers,

The novel is subtitled “A Mosaic Novel”, and Zivkovic does weave a mosaic-like narrative. The stories form an intimate bond, while retaining their independent place in the scheme of things. Only when you have read the entire novel does the gestalt emerge - a well disguised mosaic that comes alive as the last piece is put in its place.

The novel starts with the chapter titled “Disorder in the Head,” a prologue of sorts for the successive chapters/stories. We are introduced to Miss Emily, a draconian teacher at a girls boarding school. Her stark character is established through little details that reveal her obsession for order and organization. The story begins with a deceptively simple plot -- Miss Emily evaluating the dreams of the class and identifying a trio of “bogus” submissions, dreams that are too fantastical to be true.

But hidden in the dreams are stories, tales of fate and chance interwoven with mystery and pathos. Hole in the wall, a dream-story of a girl in whose hands lies the ability to manipulate the multiverse, thread by thread. Geese in the Mist, a gentle awakening of the wings that make us want to fly, to dare to dream and then chase it. Line on the Palm, a tragic story of a man whose life was cut short, figuratively and then literally, by the lines on his palms. And lastly, Alarm clock on the night table, in which Miss Emily herself makes a special appearance as the protagonist.

The novel, as the author says himself, is about Fate, about missed chances and newfound opportunities. Of the cold blooded disposition of Death, to the gay abandon of Life.

As the novel glides from one dream to the next connected dream, we realize that the story is not just about dreams or fateful connections. A much darker (depending on how you look at it) subplot runs through the entire novel, focussing on a much drearier topic than idle dreams - Death. Zivkovic seems to suggest that death is also a dream (or waking up from a lifetime of dreaming?). Fate-Death-Life seem to be three forces that work as One. Death acts as the cause de transformation, turning animate into inanimate, and then something beyond. It need not be the end of life, it could also be the end of life-as-we-know-it, a process of rebirth that needs but the unfurling of wings, and flight into the heart of the Mist


Rating:

4.5 out of 5.0

Warriors of Dandaka

This blog is now hosted on the Epic India website

http://blogs. epicindia. com/warriors- of-dandaka

A big thanks to the EI tech-support team for their continuing good work !!!

Book Review: The Last Book

The Last Book
Zoran Živkovič
PS Publishing, UK

Anyone who is an avid bibliophile can readily assert that the one quality that separates an “excellent book” from its “very good” siblings is that it is unputdownable. This quality is a rare trait, and even rarer is its manifestation in the mystery genre of the short-novel type. Even scarce is that special kind of mystery - a literary mystery - the kind as experienced when reading Jostein Gaarder or Lewis Caroll or Umberto Eco. At a time when the market seems to be flooded daily with paperbacks that run along the alphabet, exhort the cliché, revel in presenting a stereotypical “Yuppie” outlook, and (to say the least) fondly follow a long-forgotten dogma that the center of the Universe lies in the Central Park; here comes a novella that makes a detour in time and style, that sparkles with effervescent originality and acerbic (yet heartwarming) wit that can only be found on the other side of the Atlantic.

“The Last Book” is a delightful short novel by the Serbian author Zoran Zivkovic (http://www.zoranzivkovic.com/). Zivkovic returns to his favorite subjects – books, more specifically, a rustic bookstore with a lost-in-time ambience; that also serves as a sinister backdrop for a series of unsolved murders. The “story” follows Inspector Dejan Lukic as he attempts to solve a series of bizzare deaths/murders at the Papyrus Bookstore. Vera Gavrilovic, the owner of the bookstore, dons the mantle of the required romantic interest, though she may well be the femme fatale herself. The only clue lies hidden in “The Last Book”, so called because it is indeed the last book. The plot twists and turns at a fairly brisk pace and every hint of predictability is brushed aside nonchalantly after every successive chapter. Its as though Zivkovic wants to issue a whodunit challenge to the user at every possible instance. Every clue, and red herring, is subtly sown into the plot, and for those readers who enjoy reading a mystery from the last page -- sorry folks, the last page, while providing an extreme dramatic twist (only understood if you have attentively read the previous chapters), does nothing to make you understand whodunit? Rather, the mystery is not just a whodunit, but a where-and-why-dunit as well. Zivkovic is at his best penning the verbal jousts between Lukic and Olga Bogdanovic, Vera’s business partner. An interesting array of eccentric patrons - the ‘patients’ - provide the soup of usual suspects, and the solution to the deaths may lie with more than one of them. But which one or ones? Read it to find out !!

My only grouse lies with the rather hurried ending, with events neatly folding (or unfolding?) into place and characters suddenly acting outside their comfort zone. However, to be fair to the author and the length of the novella, the rapid shuffling may well be justified as apt and needful.

Rating : 4.5 / 5.0

Rainbows End - Book Review

Imagine being thrown headlong into a brand new world. A world with its unique languages and modes of communication; a totally different way of learning (or unlearning!) everyday things; where YOU are over hundred years old -- not in terms of your biological age , but the age that you were born into.
Vernor Vinge's highly acclaimed novel "Rainbows End" (NO apostrophe, as the book says) takes us into a seemingly magical world into a not-so-distant future. Robert Gu, an erstwhile poet, gets a new lease on life after a radical treatment for Alzheimer's changes his physiology. De-aged and rejuvenated, he is "reborn" into a future where books are a troublesome luxury and huge conglomerates vie for the supremacy over thoughts of people.

Helpless against the onslaught of technology that-was-invented-while-he-slept, Robert tries to fit in with the family of his son, Bob. Estranged prior to Robert's resurrection (subtle metaphor here), Bob and his wife play formal hosts to Robert, till he is capable of living on his own. In an attempt to learn the ways of this new world, Robert enlists in the local high school class for repurposed seniors and juvenile underachievers. There, he meets several of the brightest minds of his time, who have been reduced to being reprogrammed because technology overtook them faster than they could adapt. Vinge makes a telling observation about the 'just-get-it-done' philosophy that seems to be the cornerstone of the consumerist world today. Little thought is given to the basic axioms, and in the end, it is the 'cool factor' that matters. Hence, it is not sufficient that you know your letters, if you cannot use the 'wearables' and 'Instant Message' with them, you have to be repurposed to fit into the society.

Much of the cool inventions look-and-feel cool -- not because they are from the future (its 2025 in the Gu-World) -- but because they seem perfectly plausible given the current rate of technology explosion. The jump from our dear old PCs to the very latest 'handhelds' to the contact-glass-wearables with their own Operating System (aptly termed Epiphany) does not strike us as a fools errand. In his own style, Vinge comments on the influence of technology over our senses, minds and lastly, over all rational thought. We see this world not only through the eyes of Robert Gu, but also as ourselves when we would be 'seniors' by 2025. It is to Vinge's credit that he does not go overboard with the technology. New inventions are described (for the benefit of Robert, as much for the reader) as they are introduced in the plot.

Vinge's futuristic world does give the user the feeling of falling-through-the-rabbit-hole, and the most important character in the book (IMHO) is known simply as the 'Rabbit'. An accomplished hacker of both systems and virtual avatars, he runs through the landscape as if he is the master and the world is but his dream (more subtle philosophy here!!). The Rabbit is the scourge of all intelligence systems in the world, and is recruited by a rogue RAW agent Alfred Vaz to destroy the traces of his illegal research carried out in a lab in San Diego. The Rabbit, for his part, recruits the unwitting Robert Gu to carry out his task in the guise of a student from UCSD, who intends to write a thesis about Robert Gu's work. In return, he promises Robert that he would help him 'find his words' (another Vinge masterpiece about the growing emphasis over technology and process in arts, over actual content). The paths of various the characters intertwine and cross each other, till they all come together for a (literally) grand finale involving thousands of 'belief-circle' members, the Gu family (most notably, Miri Gu, the granddaughter whose IQ seems to be way above the normal), the Rabbit, and Alfred Vaz himself.

In more ways then one, the story is a journey. A journey of a man born into a totally unfamiliar world. A journey of a 'bastard prick' who must learn to overcome his elitist biases and trust his underachieving partners in order to find himself. A journey of an estranged son who must walk that extra step to meet his helpless father. A journey of a loving granddaughter who must find a way to her gradfather's heart (with a secret agenda I will not describe here). But most of all, it is the journey of an excited reader who has a chance to live in Vinge's futuristic technopia. For one can truly say "There and back again"!!

Midnight Messenger

Midnight Messenger is a short story that I wrote today, in one go from start to finish. It’s a tribute (of sorts) to our boss Ashok Banker. Ashok, thanks for your vision and work!!

MIDNIGHT MESSENGER

"Rama", he relished the way that name rolled on his tongue. It echoed in his mind, each instance raising the hatred brewing inside. Oh, how he longed to sink his teeth into the mortal's flesh, drain the lifeblood out of him. And watch him as he died, his life squeezed out a drop at a time. He would get to that, eventually; but today, he had a job to perform. He had a message to deliver. Not in words, but in blood and death.

He watched the mortal from his perch. For three days, he had tailed them. He had been careful, slipping into the shadows, merging into the dense treetops, following Rama and his two companions. Sita, he had called her, Sita. What an ugly name, not to mention that she looked every bit ugly as his mistress had said. She was out of bounds, naturally, given the Lord’s obsession with her. Why did someone like Ravana, who could get the Apsaras of Swargalok to pleasure him, want this ugly little mortal? This was beyond his comprehension. Strange are the ways of the rich and powerful, he thought, but then, maybe Ravana’s purpose with the mortal woman was not pleasure. He felt a strange arousal, a bestial urge to watch what his Lord did to, or with, the woman. NO, he shook his head, he was slipping. He had to stay focused.

He positioned himself on the branches, spreading his bulk to lower the strain on the tree. It was not yet nightfall. He needed some rest. He would sleep till dusk.

He woke up some hours later, disturbed by the incessant chirping of birds. Foul creatures, they had sensed his presence near their nests. He hoped the mortals had not noticed this ruckus. The fair one looked up to the trees, his ears straining to catch the bird-speak.

“Yes”, he licked his lips, in anticipation. This was his target, the one who had insulted his mistress. This one he would kill today, and take back his head. And if last night’s teaser was any indication, his mistress would heap unimaginable rewards on him for this feat. He had to play the waiting game. He had to make sure this mortal was alone.

He had watched the dark one kill his brethren, and in some ways, his presence was quite intimidating. But the fair one was a fair game. He smiled at his play on words, and shot out his tongue to grab the nearest bird. It was in his mouth and then in his belly in a matter of seconds. Tasty scraps, they would hold him for a few more hours.

It was dark when the mortals finally ate their dinner. They had been laughing and talking through the whole affair. Particularly, the woman and the fair one. Though he did not understand what they said, it gave an impression of light banter. The dark one was brooding, but he smiled occasionally, perhaps to convey his attention to their conversation.

He slithered downwards from his hideout, careful not to make the slightest noise. By the time he was near the ground, the fair one was alone, stoking the fires with his staff. Very good, and about time too. He was nearly dying from hunger.

He crawled across the mud floor, right behind the mortal. He stood there for a moment, feasting his eyes on the firm flesh of his human prey. He would strike high, near the base of the neck. That would stun the mortal for sure, making his next task easier. It was indeed easy to rip apart and eat up anything if it did not move or make any noise. He stood up, poised and ready to strike. That was his first mistake.

The blow struck him in the head. It was a blunt, heavy blow. He could barely make out the dark hand which carried the staff when he lost his balance and toppled over. This was not as planned, but now, he could take them out together – the fair one and the dark one. He spun around to face his assailant. That was his second mistake.

The fair one got up to his feet quickly, and by the time he had turned, the second blow struck him squarely in the face – drawing blood and fragments of his flesh. He ignored the pain and lashed out at the dark one, aiming for the right shoulder, and finding his mark. The dark one staggered under the blow giving him precious moments to deliver the final blow. He flicked his tail and threw the other mortal into the bushes. There would be time to deal with him later. He had to address the higher threat now. He drew himself up to his full height, over a half and a man to the mortal on the ground before him. “Rama”, he said again, enjoying the name itself. He drew back his head, ready to strike. That was his final mistake.

There was movement in the corner of his right eye, and moments later, he screamed. He screamed again, as the second arrow stuck in his right eye. He turned to face his attacker. The woman!!! He glared at her with his remaining eye. She stared back, unblinking, another arrow ready on her crossbow. He hesitated for just a moment, and the third arrow hit him in the neck, severing his vital arteries.

He fell on the ground. His vision clouded. The world grew dark. He could feel the mortals walking over to him, examining him as a butcher would inspect his days work. He felt dark, enveloped in a cozy darkness.

“Rama”, the name echoed as one final call.

And then there was Light.

Draupadi, by Pratibha Ray

I picked up "Draupadi" based on the recommendation of a fellow epic-Indian, and I must say I was not disappointed at all!! I have not had the privilege of reading the original in Oriya, but if the Hindi translation is any indication, the original should be a treat indeed. The Hindi crossover has preserved the lyrical element of narration, the de-facto style for retelling/reinterpreting an epic as old as Vedic civilization itself.

My only sour point (and I want to get it out at the onset) is that the book should actually be titled "K4" :) (Krishnaa, Krishna, Kiriti – another name for Arjuna -- and Karna), cos it’s as much their story as it is Panchali's. Ray spends a lot of time in developing the relationship between the four K’s, sometimes adding her own imagination to aid this process. That said, the book is a refreshing outlook towards the epic for its time, and provides much food for thought.

Ray develops Draupadi's relationship with Krishna in the first chapter itself. The entire book is a first person narrative in 'flashback' mode, with Draupadi talking to Krishna in the last moments of her life, lying semi-conscious at the foothills of the Himalayas. From early on, we are made aware that Draupadi’s life, like her birth, was pre-ordained to move in one direction only – the destruction of the Kurus. This is further reiterated numerous times, by Draupadi herself and by those around her. Ray's Draupadi therefore, develops into a fatalist individual, and every so often we have lines such as "And little did I know that Fate was mocking me while I enjoyed these fleeting moments of happiness". Being born a fully developed woman, she has very little notion of ‘childhood’ and ‘innocence’, and her naïve concepts are soon shattered when she is thrown headlong into the brewing political melee between the Drupads and the Kurus. Adding fuel to the fires is Karna’s humiliation at her Swayamvara, and here Ray sprinkles her highly imaginative talents for the first time, making Draupadi yearn for the fair, strong, blonde Prati-surya (like-Surya, the Sun God) Karna. Her dreams are swiftly crushed by her brother who rejects Karna on grounds of lower caste parentage. Draupadi is then won by Krishna's protégé and close friend Arjuna (Kiriti). An example of Ray’s comment on Draupadi’s plight as a woman is the realization that she has to marry Arjuna, when she longs for Karna. She accepts this quite stoically, "seeing Krishna" in Arjuna’s persona, and actually begins to like him as he takes her home to their cottage.
From here onwards, its pretty much downhill for the Princess, who is forced to marry all the brothers – Krishna himself lectures her to sacrifice her interests for the ‘greater good’, the good of the land, for she would surely have been the cause of discomfort between the Pandavas. What follows is a mini-endgame between Yudhisthira, Arjuna, Kunti and Draupadi. Ray emphasizes strongly (through Draupadi) the unfairness of such an action forced upon a woman, and argues against it. She looks at Arjuna, the rightful husband for support, but cannot find any!! Ray establishes the relationships between the husbands and the mother-in-law at this point, and the “rift” only widens as time progresses. As with most of the actual epic, and its retellings, the main players are Yudhisthira, Arjuna, Bheema (to some extent). The Madri-twins are relegated to subordinate positions and not fleshed out completely.
While Draupadi’s relationship with Krishna is that of total surrender, her relationship with Arjuna is an act of tightrope balance between loving the man who has won her, and then trying to win his heart. Arjuna never forgives Draupadi for agreeing to live with each husband for a year, and in Ray’s version, forces an exile onto himself by coming into her bedchambers whilst she is with Yudhisthira. This is his way of conveying his anger over such an arrangement. According to Ray, Arjuna and Draupadi are not fortunate enough to enjoy conjugal bliss long enough, first due to his exile, then due to his vow of abstinence till he slays Karna. While they appeal from a human perspective, the larger-than-life canvas of the epic requires a certain grandiose behavior from the characters. But Ray does convey the emotional depth of her characters aptly, through indirect means of subtlety. The most important scene in this respect is the scene (in my opinion) when (after returning from the exile if I remember correctly), Arjuna and Draupadi are alone for the first time, and he recites her poems by heart. That scene, I expect, is quite a hit with the female readers of the book.
Ray is clearly sympathetic towards Karna. She weaves her own version of Kunti-Karna-Draupadi triangle into the story. Here, Karna is the maanas-putra or ‘like-son’ of Kunti, who visits Karna’s home regularly and is friendly with Radha, his mother. Draupadi never gets over her infatuation with Karna – confessing on the eve of the war before her husbands and Krishna, her love for “all the sons of Kunti, from the eldest Pandava to the youngest”, the full meaning of which is understood only by Krishna himself. Karna is also quite fond of her, though his Kshatriya code of conduct forces him to never show it on his face, but only through behind-the-scenes actions. On her face, his exterior exudes a cool breath of revenge for the humiliation forced unto him (due to her). Ray has added incidents which depict this love-hate relationship between the two, though she maintains the boundary between mournful longing and an all-out illicit affair.
This “longing” is perhaps the strongest aspect of Draupadi’s life, not just longing for Karna, but for respect, for love from her husbands, for a simple life devoid of crafty politics and lecherous enemies. In the end, her life is just a sequence of questions, some answered, according to the norms of social status of a woman under men, and some just left unanswered because they were not noteworthy enough for the Men to take notice of. She journeys through the rise of her husbands as kings, her disrobing in the Kuru hall, and then to exile and back again, only to witness her relatives being wiped out in the most vicious war fought on the Indian soil. In some ways, her journey is the journey of women in some parts of the world even today – spent in a lifetime of efforts to just be recognized as human beings and not just objects of lust and power brokering.
Ray does not dwell on the gory part of the epic at all. The entire war is described in 3-4 sentences. The message could not be more obvious – this book is not about the Mahabharata war, it’s about Draupadi, the woman, the princess, the queen. Ray’s Draupadi is a striking insight into the heart and mind of the woman who helped shape the history of the Indian subcontinent, but has never been recognized for her true worth. Its time we paid her dues.