Beatrix Potter- a Fairy Tale Lived

It was today's Google logo which guided me to Beatrix Potter. Potter was a pioneer among children’s story tellers and illustrators. A bit isolated but beautiful childhood of her was nothing shorter than a fascinating fairy tale. Animals, big farms, the mysteries of nature, even a pet bat (can u imagine?); no wonder she became a writer for children. It was sad to know that she was one of the early martyrs of gender discrimination which must have really affected her scientific career. She was blindly denied the membership of British Royal Society, though she was considered to be one of the best fungi experts among biologists.She had sketched hundreds of Fungi patterns by herself looking into the microscope and still had to end up as an amateur biologist only because she was born a woman. A natural environmentalist, who used a big part of her fortune to protect the country side where she spent most of her childhood in. After the tragic dismay of her fiancée, she focused on buying farms and lived in the astonishing beauty of nature, something most of us can only dream about.

This beautiful picture of a young 15 year old Potter caught my attention. One could feel the beauty of innocence in it.

The sketches of a nine year old Parker.

IOWA digital library has preserved most of her famous works in a beautiful digital flip-page form which worth a visit. Have a look at the screenshot and pay a visit to the site by clicking on the imaage.

The Metamorphosis

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug”. This is how the divine Kafka magic starts and I am finally home to my reading days. After discovering the new passion of self induced, nicotine powered solitude, it was a pleasure and quite an easy task to find myself back again to the beautiful world of books. Thanks to those self invited, long lasting spells of non momentary depression which I had acquired and learned to live with recently, ‘The Metamorphosis’ turned out to be a mesmerizing reading experience where I was literally lost in the carefully crafted magical realistic setup. I had to pinch myself to ensure that I still live in the blunted but still a safe, human form. It was my late teens where I first heard about Kafka but the first attempt to read ‘Metamorphosis’ was a miserable failure undoubtedly because of my poor understanding of Real life situations and transformations which an average middle class adult goes through. Magical realism was also something which was not digestible for me in those days where a growing brain of my atheistic teen was always keen on dismissing the supernatural things in an impatient and merciless way to become a perfect rationalist. After years of wasteful existence with out books, I have now finally read this in a kind of sprinting pace. But the regret for not reading this in its original language prevails as I have come to know that it has been lost in translation to a much distinguishable extent when it came to English from German.

“Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop - that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions cannot be duplicated in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.One such instance of a Kafka translator's quandary is demonstrated in the first sentence of The Metamorphosis.(Wikipedia)”. Metamorphosis is considered to be the best talked about philosophical novella ever written especially on existentialism [Existentialism is a philosophical movement which posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to it being created for them by deities or authorities or defined for them by philosophical or theological doctrines]. As per wiki, “The apparent hopelessness and absurdity that seem to permeate his works are considered emblematic of existentialism”.

In a layman’s angle I could see that, Kafka was literally demonstrating how a person who was the most instrumental being for his entire family and for the individual lives of its members, becomes a burden to them due to a completely unimaginable and miserable accident in his life for none of his faults. The tragic side of this reading experience is the realization of the very fact that each one of us is a ‘Gregor Samsa’ at least in one point of our life time and we will never know when we may transform our self into an ugly derogatory being which the closest people of our life would love to get rid off. The point is as clear as water. A ‘Gregor’ is a ‘Gregor’ as long as he wakes up at the dawn, catches the earliest train, works all the day like a machine, and hits back home with nickels in hand. In short, a Gregor is a Gregor only when he is a Gregor. When he (or for the same reason each one of us) ceases to be being ‘Gregor’, he has to be ready to get thrown off. Idea is quite simple. Every living thing in the world, (human being is not exceptional) struggle for an individual survival with in or out of the robust crust of their relational bonds which he or she is attached with. Gretta has a life to live and the same with Mr and Mrs Samsa. The importance of the lives of these three individuals cannot be belittled or ignored only because of some miserable thing which happens in the life of Gregor though he had been scarifying his own happiness for giving happiness to them.

Metamorphosis is an amazingly matured piece of literature works which one can go through once and live with the thought provoking reminiscences of it's reading experience there after.

The Alchemist – How boring a book can be?

Many months, possibly even years passed after I decided to read the book ‘The Alchemist’ and its today that I finally finished reading it. It was beyond all my imagination that a little cute looking book with such an intriguingly interesting title can be this boring. A much hyped out ‘fable about following one’s dream’. I was so excited about Paulo Coelho’s way of writing after having read one of his beautiful works, ‘by the river Piedra, I sat down and wept’. That one had everything; Love, relationship, confusion, destiny, Sacrifice, Words those poke into the softest side of your heart and it’s not odd that a reader expects a similar magic from the Author.So sad it turned to be that Alchemist has got nothing, hardly any beautiful lines, which you would like to underline with your pencil to read again and again. On Contrary, all the book has got are Omens, Weird sounding dreams, Worst interpretations from the nature, the great Lord and his blunt messages, the stupid alchemy, a tasteless desert and a boring caravan. ‘Ok fine!’ you might ask, But what when all of these rotten ingredients mixed up in an Alchemist’s pan?. Good question dude, Coelho got them all, he mixed ‘Elixir of life’ into the composition and blessed it with the sorcerer’s stone, bud did the lead turn to pure Gold? . No, my buddy, it did not. It’s the same old lead which was bit blackened due to the hyper dose of childish mysticism. I bought this book a painful thrice; one for my sister, one for a dear friend of mine and the third, for myself and I am happy that I read, ‘River Piedra’ before I actually read ‘Alchemist’, Otherwise I would have preferred never to read a Coelho again in my life.

‘Under Suspicion’ ,a great movie experience

A Gene hackman, Morgan Freeman classic drama, ‘Under Suspicion’ was literally a great movie experience. Hackman could effortlessly portray the changing expressions of a noble man who is falsely accused of committing a nasty crime and has to undergo a painfully grueling interrogation session, lead by an old buddy of him played by Freeman. He is stripped off all his colorful decent attires of nobility to a mere pedophilic, straying, cheap old juvenile rapist though he had no connection with the actual crime. He is set free at the end at the cost of his lost privacy, ripped off secrets and the respect he saved by leading a gentle life through out. Freeman was amazingly good in playing a honest officer detective with a responsible father of young girl children dwelled into the uniform.

A beautiful technique was used for story telling where instead of showing silly flash backs time to time during interrogation, here one could actually see the events where the detective stands or walks in the crime scene observing every minute details. Freeman’s character says to Hackaman’s often, “Ok Henry, Lets go to the park once again”, and you see both walk around the park with out actually moving out of the room. I made a miserable miss to the Great Wimbledon final between Nadal and Federer while watching this movie, but to be honest, I don’t regret.