Chekhov

I had stayed away from short stories – I felt those don’t treat the people, their lives in enough detail to paint the picture in mind and the endings are also inconclusive. But then read Alice Munro’s stories a few months back which changed the perspective. Recently bookmarked this page to read a short story a day. Came across Anton Chekhov’s story, The Huntsman. Russian authors are more familiar to us Keralites probably due to the communist link, we have a Russsian cultural center in Trivandrum and public library has Malayalam translations of scores of Russian books. I had read quite a few during school and since then. But I never came across Chekhov, maybe since he wrote stories and plays. His ability to paint a portrait of people and their worlds in few sentences is like some charcoal artists making a picture with few quick strokes. People in his stories don’t seem to be perfect, good and bad mixed in them, vain and profound alternatively.  Even though it has been more than 100 years since these stories are written, it doesn’t seem old – it is interesting that while the world has changed unrecognizably in various ways, technological progress, human understanding of the universe, quantum physics and marching towards artificial intelligence, we still are nowhere near understanding ourselves.

Few good quotes. This one from the story, Ward No. 6, a debate on whether being happy is purely internal (a stoic) –

"I only know that God has created me of warm blood and nerves, yes, indeed! If organic tissue is capable of life it must react to every stimulus. And I do! To pain I respond with tears and outcries, to baseness with indignation, to filth with loathing. To my mind, that is just what is called life. The lower the organism, the less sensitive it is, and the more feebly it reacts to stimulus; and the higher it is, the more responsively and vigorously it reacts to reality. How is it you don’t know that? A doctor, and not know such trifles! To despise suffering, to be always contented, and to be surprised at nothing, one must reach this condition" — and Ivan Dmitritch pointed to the peasant who was a mass of fat — "or to harden oneself by suffering to such a point that one loses all sensibility to it — that is, in other words, to cease to live. You must excuse me, I am not a sage or a philosopher," Ivan Dmitritch continued with irritation, "and I don’t understand anything about it. I am not capable of reasoning."

 This from the story, Gustav. Being too honest, saying truth to the faces in every instance and keeping the eyes always open – it is a hard life.

"Yes, I always tell people the truth to their faces. I am not afraid of anyone or anything. There is a vast difference between me and all of you in that respect. You are in darkness, you are blind, crushed; you see nothing and what you do see you don’t understand. . . . You are told the wind breaks loose from its chain, that you are beasts, Petchenyegs, and you believe it; they punch you in the neck, you kiss their hands; some animal in a sable-lined coat robs you and then tips you fifteen kopecks and you: ‘Let me kiss your hand, sir.’ You are pariahs, pitiful people. . . . I am a different sort. My eyes are open, I see it all as clearly as a hawk or an eagle when it floats over the earth, and I understand it all. I am a living protest. I see irresponsible tyranny — I protest. I see cant and hypocrisy — I protest. I see swine triumphant — I protest. And I cannot be suppressed, no Spanish Inquisition can make me hold my tongue. No. . . . Cut out my tongue and I would protest in dumb show; shut me up in a cellar — I will shout from it to be heard half a mile away, or I will starve myself to death that they may have another weight on their black consciences. Kill me and I will haunt them with my ghost. All my acquaintances say to me: ‘You are a most insufferable person, Pavel Ivanitch.’ I am proud of such a reputation. I have served three years in the far East, and I shall be remembered there for a hundred years: I had rows with everyone. My friends write to me from Russia, ‘Don’t come back,’ but here I am going back to spite them . . . yes. . . . That is life as I understand it. That is what one can call life."

writing and reading

(1)

My writing education – http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/my-writing-education-a-timeline?src=longreads.  An inspiring article – on role models, good teachers, goodness in people, hope and persistence. Coming across a role model like this, who is infallible, a perfect human being – that is so rare.

Last week I happened to connect briefly with a blogger whom I was reading for more than 10 years – I was introduced to many interesting books based on his recommendations. One of which is still a hard nut to crack for me (A Thousand Plateaus – Deleuze and Guattari), but it is one of his lifetime favorites. For me it is like drinking green tea for the first time. So I asked him how he came to like it – he said parts of that book hit him like a train. I was fascinated by that – to be moved that much by a book. When I read some parts of this article, it reminded me of that phrase.

What we’re doing in writing is not all that different from what we’ve been doing all our lives, i.e., using our personalities as a way of coping with life. Writing is about charm, about finding and accessing and honing ones’ particular charms.

 Literature is a form of fondness-for-life. It is love for life taking verbal form.

 A story’s positive virtues are not different from the positive virtues of its writer. A story should be honest, direct, loving, restrained. It can, by being worked and reworked, come to have more power than its length should allow. A story can be a compressed bundle of energy, and, in fact, the more it is thoughtfully compressed, the more power it will have.

 Knowing him has helped us grow into better versions of ourselves: more dignified, less selfish. This, of course, is what a ‘role model’ is: someone who, by gracefully embodying positive virtues, causes you to aspire to them yourself.

(2)

I came across the above through http://longreads.com/. When the reading has reduced to sound bites in social media or short articles in newspapers which offer quick dump, long form articles exploring a subject or profile of a person is refreshing. Longreads features most read long form articles around the web every week and many times I come across some gems from there. Another of similar one is #7 Deadly Reads – Sitdown Sunday http://www.thejournal.ie/7-deadly-reads/news/. New Yorker, The Atlantic, Rolling Stones, NYT etc end up being the most featured. The Hindu in India does long form, but many of them are so scholarly that it is hard to digest. Not sure if there are any other good ones in India. ​

disappointed

One of those days where disappointment hits hard

When the clock that usually runs frantically, slows down

Disappointed with futility of lot of endeavors

How we convince ourselves that we are being useful

How we convince others that what we are doing is important

How we are all able to do more, but don’t  

 

Disappointed in leaders who promise hope and bright future

Talk a big game, higher purpose, incomprehensible philosophies

Because that is what they were supposed to do

To move people, bring about change

 

Disappointed to give in naively, believe in new fads

Disappointed in mediocrity, mine and others around

In doing something only until the tension builds

In doing something, only to honor the duty than because I believe

Disappointed in the charades, even when everyone knows

And plays along with it, not being able to change a thing

 

None of this is important, in larger scheme of things

Petty worries, irrelevant expectations, blown up only in mind

Knowing all that, disappointed in not being able to suppress

Knowing life is all these moments, good follows bad, wait out the bad

Though some say all this was part of the learning

Wouldn’t change a thing if we do all of this again

Isn’t regret a valid emotion too?

 

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Can’t write poems and couldn’t read it also, but one of the things I haven’t given up yet. Trying to read these days – subscribed to a poem a day. But this one just came out this way, on the way back from office, putting it out in its just born form. This is more like how we write powerpoint, nothing in full sentences. A slow day. But right before I reached home, RJs in FM was playing a game, asking people to repeat a dialog from a classic movie, on how to make chicken curry. Even though I don’t know about that being a vegetarian (even though I don’t look like one), it kind of reaffirmed why we mallus are always making fun. Of everything, of our politicians, religion and ourselves. Then they were talking about why Kasaragod mallus love more honestly, how Kannur mallus love so truly (irony since they are the most violent when it comes to politics, but maybe because they love so fiercely) compared to us in Trivandrum, who keep people at an arm’s length. All this within a small sliver of land, in a corner of India – happily living away, being all important – brought a smile finally..