Obama's books

I am an avowed fan of Barack Obama. So, naturally my review of his books is going to be fulsome in praise and generous in applause. But it is not just sheer admiration of his persona that has endeared me towards the books, but also the content and context of the books, which are relevant to the core of the world.

‘Dreams From My Father’ is a beautiful narrative of an estranged child about the what-would and could-be life with his father. Barack was separated from his African father, after his parents’ divorce. He had remembrance though of a few odd years which he spent with his father during childhood. He built upon those memories to gather perspective of his growing as a black child among white neighbourhood, his teenage restlessness, his social work in the Black Colonies in Chicago and then his enrollment for Law Course in the Harvard. His life was as ordinary, or rather say, associative as a you-and-me on the street. The same youth’s wonders and wows, infractions and intransigence, love and hate….How could Barack rose unique then? Because of his belief and perspective. And he attributes in no less measure, the development of this perspective, to his unanswered wonderings about his father’s role in his life.

‘Audacity of Hope’ on the other hand is a much general outlook of world in general and US in particular. It does give an indication of the erudition and grasp of Barack’s ideas on the everyday life’s nerves. He speaks in tone of a commoner- why right is right, and wrong is wrong. Why US hasn’t followed the ideals it cherishes so proudly; why questions of race, religion, colour still mar their country’s achievements; why US stands on a precipice of descent into days of backpedalling; and why world needs a unified view with focus on individual country’s development. Afghanistan and Iraq’s wars are spoken in terms of righteousness, coming from a Senator’s mouth in its most veracious tenor. He paints a grim world, but he also lights the flicker of hope, and that was what catapulted him to people’s imagination and Presidency of United States.

Obama’s books are thus in a way or two a symposium of a commoner’s view, desires and achievements in this world. They lay the personal and professional ladders, for the view of everyone, and for every aspiring soul to climb. They are, in a nutshell, a dreamer’s delight. Obama’s books …. I heard someone say.

Shantaram

Shantaram is a magnum opus, if the word also means voluminous. It is 933 pages long book of immense quality, and its thickness needs to be mentioned as this is what confronts you when you get hold of it. But the book had confronted me long before, when my friends kept talking about it at various odd hours. Naturally they were proud to have read a newly arrived masterpiece or were gathering my attention to one of the characters-my namesake in the book.

So, finally I got the chance to read it, on the auspicious occasion of the New Year. The first 10 pages I read, and I was already exclaiming, What a Book! I wanted to scream it in my Facebook status, but I held on. I knew why I had been engulfed pronto by the book: Its verbatim portrayal of Indian life as viewed by a foreigner. The book arrived directly on my pulses, ever bitten by the Indophile bug. The things started unfolding then …

I am critical of my two bad reading habits: slow reading and short reading. But this time around, my short reading habit, around 1 hour daily, of the book gave me probably the best feel of the book. I was progressing daily as the characters in the book moved. Each day of my reading provided a unique view of the life of the main character, Linbaba- an absconding robber and heroin addict from Australia, who makes Bombay his new abode. His life starts getting involved into the Indianness of things, bringing an ever changing perspective of his beliefs. He meets people, he helps them, he falls in love, he joins mafia council, he is sent to Indian prison, he joins a war in Afghanistan: there are a myriad sub-stories in the whole run. The full story has to be experienced through virtual living though, not just read.

Gregory David Roberts’ attempt to imbibe such a touch into the novel is what this makes it a scorcher, as more often than not, we start wondering and marveling at his life and its various adventures. He has said that while the novel is based on his real-life experiences, most of it is fictional. Nevertheless the ‘fictional realism’ so intensely at work suspends our digressing thoughts.

This is probably why the book ticks, more so with the lovers, familiars and inquisitors of India. And this helps it tide over some of the major defects of the book. It is no doubt a great art to expound philosophical details, but if done to death without a similar parallel evolution, it gnaws at your mind and interest. I felt like skipping the pages, when the hyper thoughts pondered by the characters started erupting with no credo on display. The book does need editing on this front. Also the second half, I believe, is not able to sustain the momentum gained in the first half. I generally have liked the latter part of the books more often, as the writers deliberately provide the crescendo touch in an attempt to leave the reader in perpetual touch even after the end. Here I believe the story just tapered off to a plateau.

May be this was done to let the reader seamlessly segue into its sequel which is incidentally to arrive in the later part of this year. I do have high expectations of this book too. But really Shantaram’s experience can be lived only once, as Gregory Roberts too did, and so volubly expressed in the book. Just readit and live it, what more can I say?

No-use Readers

What is to reading that attracts so many? “A man who doesn’t read is no better than a man who can’t read,” thus had thundered Mark Twain. So, do readers belong to a different pedigree, higher in thoughts, ideas and understanding than the rank and file?

Or is it the art of the lost ones? Some, who claim to be free from its shackles and open to reveling in the other real worldly matters, high-handedly dismiss the tribe of pitiful readers. For them, reading is the refuge of the desolate, and so-flaunted knowledge the unwanted aftereffect. These readers are no more than mere charlatans who often take on the cloak of hyper-superior hue, and distance themselves from the reality surrounding them. They are mere book-pounders, lying aloof in a closeted room, scratching and scraping their infertile minds with esoteric concepts which they don’t fathom at all. Even if they comprehend, they don’t or can’t bring the learned things to any utility.

Such is the clique of these voracious readers ….such abominable readers …. such sorry readers.