Who do you think you are?

Two friends of mine from Chile, who are temporarily in India, frequently get asked where they are from and when they reply, a lot of people do not seem to have a clue about the existence of their country. When they say “Chile, in South America”, they are usually met with “Ah yes...Brazil? Argentina?”  It is only poetic justice that the following conversation happened with me while I travelled in a Chilean local bus or a “micro” last year on my way home from work.

                                       The micro we used to take to get back home from work 

                                                          (Photo from Google Images)

We live in a small city about two hours away from Santiago and our office used to be located bang in the middle of nowhere about forty minutes from our little town. When we missed the transport that was provided to us by our workplace, we had to return home on one of these micros. It used to be a fun lesson in anthropology, topology and sociology as the micro took a circuitous route through every single village between Curauma (our workplace) and Vina del Mar (home).

                                   Curauma - I believe it is Spanish for "amidst nothingness"

                                          

                                                     Glorious glorious Viña del Mar

                                                   (Photos courtesy Google Streeet View)

I was sitting next to the window in one of these micros one evening and the micro was quickly getting filled up with people from the neighbouring villages who were eager to visit our town, which they referred to as “the city”. An elderly gentleman sat next to me and realized in a few seconds that I was a foreigner and an Asian one at that. Here is the interesting little chat I had with him that day with my limited Spanish (I could only speak in the present tense at that point in time):

Him: Where are you from?

Me: India

Him: (his eyes light up) So that's in China?

Me: No, India – different country.

Him: (confused and disbelieving) Not the same as China?

Me: (feeling strangely apologetic about having to overturn his beliefs) We are neighbours, yes, but India is a different country.

Him: Oh ok, I have something in my bag from your country. It has something written on it in your language and you can read it out to me.

Me: Sure! But there are many Indian languages and I know only a few of them  – I hope I know the language on this thing that you have.

I am eager to find out what this “thing” is and he reaches in this bag made of polyester fibre that is stuffed with a hundred little things wrapped in old newspaper and searches for a couple of minutes. He takes out a little laughing Buddha with writing in Mandarin on the pedestal.

Me: Oh no no sir – that is not from India, it is from China. I cannot read what's written on it as I don’t know the language.

Him: Well, you could try to read it, couldn’t you?

Me: No, it is completely different from the scripts of Indian languages. I don’t have a clue.

Him: Oh well, but you speak Spanish and that is good. Which other languages do you speak?

(As I list out the languages I speak, he repeats each one after me)

Me: Hindi

Him: Indi

Me: Kannada

Him: Kananana

Me: English

Him: English

Me: French

Him: French

At this point, we arrive at his stop and he needs to get off the micro. But he says this as he makes his way out:

Him: (in all earnestness, not jokingly)..and you forgot Chinese. You speak Chinese. Have a nice day!

All the languages I listed a few seconds earlier failed me at that instant but I a managed a smile and waved back at him.

Living by the book

I finished reading 'Of Human Bondage' about a month ago. I have been reading my favourite sections from books I have read before and impatiently looking around for a next book to pick up ever since. I used to simply pick up the next book lying around and begin reading it back then when I read physical books and had a bookshelf to pick from. Now that my only access to books is from online stores, I sift through a range of review websites and blogs for a few weeks before eventually visualizing my bookshelf in Bangalore and remembering books that I had bought and left unread. That was precisely how I had chosen to read 'Of Human Bondage' - that paperback I had picked up at Blossoms with Such came to my mind and I had promptly downloaded it onto my Kindle.

The tragic opening chapter at once drew me in and ever so slightly made me want to get back to my cold non-fiction collection for comfort so that I could escape the pain and the grief in those opening pages. I remember the Saturday afternoon when I read the chapters on Philip's loneliness and hopelessness at boarding school and I remember hoping he would grow up already so that he could fend for himself. When he eventually moved to Germany, I was relieved, and for the first time since I started reading it, eager to see what lay ahead for Philip. Philip Carey's journey through Kent, Heidelberg, London, Paris and back to London is now legendary and is also sheer reading delight. While Somerset Maugham's virtuosic narration has been hailed in a million different articles and inspired in turn, several other literary works, this book stood out to me for one specific reason.

Philip's character grows from a helpless little orphaned boy with a club-foot to a relatively sure-footed 30 year old man at the end of the book. He goes from wanting to (or believing he wants to) join the clergy to considering becoming an accountant to an artist to a doctor by the time he reaches this age. I cannot help but use the insights from the only literary workshop I have ever attended in my life yet while reading fiction these days - this was a workshop on Characterisation during a literary festival in Birmingham, UK. I find it fascinating enough when I find a well-etched out character that I can begin to hear, see and know as I read through a book, but knowing a character as he grows from childhood through to adulthood and recognizing traits and quirks that could have come from a time of his life I have read about, I find, is a sign of a consummate skill in characterisation. One workshop does not qualify me to analyze a book through the lens of progression and characterisation but I do remember being equally taken in by this quality of writing in Une Vie long ago without knowing how to verbalize what it was that I had admired.

The few book reading sessions I have attended and writers' notes I have read have given me the impression that even accomplished authors whose stories happen to present a character at one particular point of his life would be able to detail the character's nature at all other ages. Even with this kind of intuitive knowledge of the character, it surely must take a bit of genius to weave a cogent, fascinating tale of all the stumbling blocks, inner demons, epiphanies, real and imagined joys and sufferings, and certainly the bondages, that make up the human experience. Of Human Bondage was a memorable read  because the book was as much about understanding Philip's inner world through his years of adolescent turmoil and recklessness of his youth to a man who is has begun to know himself as it was about what was around him, those things and people that give the book its title.

I began wondering halfway through the book if the novel was autobiographical in any way and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it indeed was. The fact that I too am 29, and know exactly how Philip felt that day near the National Gallery after all those years of mostly battling himself could also help in making this reading experience what it was.