Getting to the finish line...

There’s this curious thing about people who read. Talk about a book they’re reading at present and if you ask them how much of the story they’ve covered, pat comes the reply: “Oh, a hundred and fifty pages (say).” Bully for you, but honestly, that tells me nothing about where the story is right now, so pray tell me what’s going on in the book at that point. That will actually tell me how much you’ve read.  

Somehow, this page-number phenomenon strikes me as indicative of our love for numbers and our instinct to “get to the finish line.” The experience of the journey is somehow less important; the distance covered matters more.

The same is the case with (and I’m truly sorry to be saying this) our reading of the Holy Quran. The month of Ramazan is supposed to be the “season of bloom (bahaa’r)” for the Quran. It is a time for the purification of the human soul, and the reading of the Quran is supposed to be one of the ways to achieve this. Naturally, there is a lot of emphasis on reading the Quran in this month. Here I must confess, my husband and I almost compete with each other over who finishes reading first. I can’t speak for him of course, but for me (sinner, alas!) it becomes more of a 'get-to-the finish-line' feeling rather than actually gaining any knowledge from it.

Last year, after much insistence from my mother, I had left the race-through-Arabic verse routine and focused on the English translation that she bought for me. Incidentally, she’s not a Ramazan-only reader but  a year-round reader of the Quran, and not just in Arabic but English, the language she finds easiest to absorb; the purpose is to read and know. So I followed her example and began to really “read” the Word of the Almighty.

That’s when I discovered why non-Arabic speakers like us do not emphasise the reading of the translation and just keep going over and over the Arabic verse. The latter is so much easier. Going through the complete meaning takes several times the time and effort. You read a couple of lines and you’re compelled to reflect. And then you take time to absorb. At times (and I hope the mullahs spare me for this) you feel confused and try to find out more about the context, about how much has been lost in translation (yes, there’s a very real danger of that) and you set out on a never-ending quest. Sometimes your doubts are put to rest and sometimes you just have to leave it for another time. In any case, all this takes much, much longer. And you can’t even gloat, “Oh, I finished so many chapters in just so many hours,” or "Oh, I finished so many Qurans this Ramazan."

But now I can proudly declare that I managed to read the entire translation and now have some inkling of what the Quran really says. I also vowed to keep reading different translations in the future. 

However, the instinct (and also outside pressure) to get to the finish line is really strong, and I’m back to reading just the Arabic version. Just human nature, I guess!

Chat with South African best-selling author Wilbur Smith

South African best-selling author Wilbur Smith isn’t kidding when he says he looks upon India as “almost a neighbour, with just a little sea between us”. It’s because he has been visiting the country for over 20 years now. In the city on Sunday on the Landmark Wilbur Smith tour to promote his latest book Those in Peril, Smith says he first got an idea of the huge energy and diversity of the country from reading British Indian writers like John Masters and Paul Scott. It isn’t surprising to hear him say he loves India, but what really baffles you is when he says, “I love the traffic!” to which he adds, “It is just like a videogame; except here, if you lose, you die.”

His favourite Indian author is RK Narayan, and the mother of his wife (who’s from Tajikistan) “feels deprived if she doesn’t get to watch a Bollywood movie everyday!”

Then he promptly breaks into a tale of how, when he visited Jaipur, his driver told him that to drive in India you need four things: Good brakes, good eyes, good nerves, and yes, the most essential — good luck.

That’s the 78-year-old writer of historical thrillers for you — every minute with him is full of anecdotes. For instance, there’s the story of how, when he was in Sydney once, a man had travelled over five hours to meet him. “When I was talking to him, I noticed that one of his legs was a prosthetic leg,” he recalls. “He told me he was in college when he lost his leg and wanted to die. But then he said, he read my book Leopard Hunts in the Darkness where the hero had also lost one leg, and that inspired him to get his life back. That’s when I realised I’m not just telling stories, I’m giving people visions of what life might be.”

His latest book, set in the Indian Ocean, is a story about a businesswoman whose daughter gets kidnapped by Somalian pirates. From ancient Egypt to colonised Africa and now a contemporary topic like piracy — how does he choose his subjects?

“I don’t choose my subjects,” he says, “my subjects choose me. Ideas gel over time; one book suggests another, one character I create wants to continue… It’s like painting an infinite mural— you never quite finish, you go on painting. You cover generation after generation, century after century…”

And this particular subject chose him when he bought an island in Seychelles. “There I had contact with pirates and met people who had been captured and kept for years. So you had something right there.”

You want to know what it was that he found from the pirates. “I found out what they look like and what their boats are like! I met the pirates in passing,” he explains. “The boatman on the island I owned was a Somalian and when we went out fishing, we saw the pirate boats passing close by. I remarked to the boatman: Those are your brothers. But he said they are not my brothers, those are evil people.”

There’s another kind of piracy that Smith feels strongly about — the e-book variety, which, he says is being practiced by Google and Kindle. “These companies are like shadowy nations of their own; their only concern is money. You can’t put any pressure on them to play fair. They’ll be quite happy to pirate books and they pay pitiful amounts of money. There’s a possibility that they would destroy all creative talent.” Ask him whether he thinks e-books would soon take over the reading scene, and pat comes the reply: “I would hate that to happen.”

But he also acknowledges, “If you’re not on Kindle, you don’t exist!”

Chicken with Plums: Soul-touching graphic novel by Iranian novelist Marjane Satrapi

Even if you’re not an ardent fan of graphic novels, you’re going to love this one by Iranian-origin graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi. Curiously titled Chicken with Plums, it’s a story that dexterously blends grief with humour and surreal spiritual experiences with a tongue in cheek take on everything in life.

It’s the story of musician Nasser Ali whose will to live is apparently destroyed by one major episode —  his wife breaking his beloved ‘Tar’, the source of his music and his joy, after an argument. For eight days, he awaits death in the confines of his room, lying on his bed. The novel traces the entire course of those days, flitting in and out of the mind of Nasser Ali, moving noiselessly from past to present and back again, exploring every relationship in his life that mattered. There is an entire life that unfolds in the images of those eight days.

In the process, Satrapi also touches, in an offhand manner, small observations on pre-revolution Iran — the politics and the society — and a reference to the ‘American dream’ as well as the hollow side of it. Remarkably, it is all done in the manner of the perfect storyteller — blending in, with a touch of humour, with no traces of preaching, pitying or judging. You can make of it whatever you like; her job is just to tell you the story.

The ‘graphic’ part of the novel is the heart of it. It’s not just a pictorial depiction of a story. The images add vital information, and more importantly, vital emotions to the story. You need to go through every character’s expressions to be able to truly appreciate the effect. The tale meanders through every contrasting image possible. The most surprising being, perhaps, the surprise appearance of Azrael, the Quranic angel of death. If ever the generally perceived-with-terror angel of death could be presented in an overwhelmingly touching manner, it is in this book.

But the best, as they say, is reserved for the last. Through all the little things that keep hitting you at small intervals, what blows you away with the force of its impact is the end. There’s perhaps no better storyteller than the one who can catch you unawares. From the first image to the last, it’s an intricately woven, entirely unbroken web that completes a full circle as it ends. It brings you right back to the beginning, and makes you see the entire tale afresh. The penultimate image — a slightly altered, repeat rendering of the funeral — is the masterstroke of the perfectionist. It’s a brilliant illustration of the phrase ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’: you could gaze at it forever.

As for the title, you could have your own interpretations for it. To me, it just stands for Nasser Ali’s longing for life. The one longing of his heart… that no longer remains the same.

This is one book you won’t be able to put down until you reach the end. Very few stories overpower your emotions so completely.