“Translation is always a daunting task, especially when the translator has so much respect and affection for the author. It is also a creative task that often requires ‘leaps of faith’: a feeling for tone, sensing the author’s intention, taking the liberty to interpret and, sometimes, correct.”
– Sandra Smith
[Citation: Quote reproduced from Translator’s Note in Irène Némirovsky’s novel Suite Française, Vintage International 2007 edition, translated from the French by Sandra Smith.]
29 July 2008
25 July 2008
Outsider
He felt a sudden chill and shuddered involuntarily. He pulled the sheet over his body, upto his shoulders, deciding against getting up from bed to reduce the speed of the fan overhead. It was the damp monsoon weather which played tricks like this. It was not as if he had a fever coming. There was nothing wrong with his health. Probably the only thing God had blessed him with.
He was alone, in bed, re-reading Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’, an excellent piece of erudite writing if there was one. The book was now half-closed, a finger marking the place where he had stopped reading momentarily. The chill had unnerved him. He looked up at the wall opposite and sighed, prolonging the moment with a thought from the past.
This was mostly how his life’s been every evening. A nagging post-dinner routine: mindless TV serials, in bed by 11 o’clock, a book for company. He shifted uncomfortably, propping himself up against the pillow behind him, the slim book held firmly in his lap, readying himself to start a conversation with an invisible person at the foot of his bed.
Yes, this was exactly how his life’s been ever since Alpana walked away as mysteriously as she had walked into his life one day. It had happened almost in seconds. We should be on our own for a while, she had said before leaving. And she was gone. Alpana never took long to decide. But this decision, he envisaged, he hoped, had taken her time.
It wasn’t easy leaving someone you love. He had trouble leaving his home when he was younger. He recalled his parents standing at the door, begging him to reconsider, saying they had never wished him harm. But he had walked off anyway; a few thousand rupees in his pocket, a copy of Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ in his bag amongst his clothes, and a one-way air ticket to Mumbai.
Ten years later, in bed with the dog-eared book, his mind was jammed in a tangle of emotions. He recalled the look on his parents’ faces as he left them standing helplessly at the door of their Calcutta home. He recalled his immigrant life in the new city: jobs, friends, adjustments, and a roof over his head. He recalled how his heart exploded, the pain searing through every fibre of his body, when Alpana walked out of his suburban flat two years ago.
He felt the slow taste of his tears on the corner of his trembling lips as they trickled down his cheeks to the book in his lap.
He was alone, in bed, re-reading Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’, an excellent piece of erudite writing if there was one. The book was now half-closed, a finger marking the place where he had stopped reading momentarily. The chill had unnerved him. He looked up at the wall opposite and sighed, prolonging the moment with a thought from the past.
This was mostly how his life’s been every evening. A nagging post-dinner routine: mindless TV serials, in bed by 11 o’clock, a book for company. He shifted uncomfortably, propping himself up against the pillow behind him, the slim book held firmly in his lap, readying himself to start a conversation with an invisible person at the foot of his bed.
Yes, this was exactly how his life’s been ever since Alpana walked away as mysteriously as she had walked into his life one day. It had happened almost in seconds. We should be on our own for a while, she had said before leaving. And she was gone. Alpana never took long to decide. But this decision, he envisaged, he hoped, had taken her time.
It wasn’t easy leaving someone you love. He had trouble leaving his home when he was younger. He recalled his parents standing at the door, begging him to reconsider, saying they had never wished him harm. But he had walked off anyway; a few thousand rupees in his pocket, a copy of Albert Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ in his bag amongst his clothes, and a one-way air ticket to Mumbai.
Ten years later, in bed with the dog-eared book, his mind was jammed in a tangle of emotions. He recalled the look on his parents’ faces as he left them standing helplessly at the door of their Calcutta home. He recalled his immigrant life in the new city: jobs, friends, adjustments, and a roof over his head. He recalled how his heart exploded, the pain searing through every fibre of his body, when Alpana walked out of his suburban flat two years ago.
He felt the slow taste of his tears on the corner of his trembling lips as they trickled down his cheeks to the book in his lap.
23 July 2008
The Columbus confusion
I’ve always been suspicious of the story I’ve read (and heard) about how Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to discover the Americas – and along with it, proved to everyone that the earth was round. Apparently, before Columbus’ trips across the Atlantic, people (read that as the Europeans) believed that the earth was a flat disc, and if they travelled a reasonable distance, they’ll fall off the earth’s edge into an abyss.
The reason I’m suspicious of Columbus proving the earth was round is because, I believe, by the time Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, people in Europe were evolved enough to know the earth was round. I mean, Columbus achieved his feat in the late 15th century, right? Hadn’t the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy map the earth into 360-degree meridians way back in 150 AD? Thereby proving that the earth was round?
In fact, 200 years before Columbus, in late 13th century, the Italian trader and explorer Marco Polo had travelled from Venice all the way to China on ‘the Silk Road’, met the great Kublai Khan, stayed with him for many years, and returned to Italy by sea via Sumatra, India and Persia. Surely, Marco Polo’s journeys would have removed all doubts in the minds of the Europeans that the earth was flat?
So, I was delighted to read an explanation of the confusion over Columbus’ ‘the earth is not flat, but round’ story in Umberto Eco’s book, Serendipities: Language And Lunacy. Here’s an excerpt:
“So what was the big argument all about in the time of Columbus? The sages of Salamanca had, in fact, made calculations more precise than his, and they held that the earth, while assuredly round, was far more vast than the Genoese navigator believed, and therefore it was mad for him to circumnavigate it in order to reach the Orient by the way of the Occident. Columbus, on the contrary, burning with a scared fire, good navigator but bad astronomer, thought the earth smaller than it was. Naturally neither he nor the learned men of Salamanca suspected that between Europe and Asia there lay another continent. And so you see how complicated life is, and how fragile are the boundaries between truth and error, right and wrong. Though they were right, the sages of Salamanca were wrong; and Columbus, while he was wrong, pursued faithfully his error and proved to be right – thanks to serendipity.”
[Citation: Serendipities: Language And Lunacy by Umberto Eco.]
The reason I’m suspicious of Columbus proving the earth was round is because, I believe, by the time Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, people in Europe were evolved enough to know the earth was round. I mean, Columbus achieved his feat in the late 15th century, right? Hadn’t the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy map the earth into 360-degree meridians way back in 150 AD? Thereby proving that the earth was round?
In fact, 200 years before Columbus, in late 13th century, the Italian trader and explorer Marco Polo had travelled from Venice all the way to China on ‘the Silk Road’, met the great Kublai Khan, stayed with him for many years, and returned to Italy by sea via Sumatra, India and Persia. Surely, Marco Polo’s journeys would have removed all doubts in the minds of the Europeans that the earth was flat?
So, I was delighted to read an explanation of the confusion over Columbus’ ‘the earth is not flat, but round’ story in Umberto Eco’s book, Serendipities: Language And Lunacy. Here’s an excerpt:
“So what was the big argument all about in the time of Columbus? The sages of Salamanca had, in fact, made calculations more precise than his, and they held that the earth, while assuredly round, was far more vast than the Genoese navigator believed, and therefore it was mad for him to circumnavigate it in order to reach the Orient by the way of the Occident. Columbus, on the contrary, burning with a scared fire, good navigator but bad astronomer, thought the earth smaller than it was. Naturally neither he nor the learned men of Salamanca suspected that between Europe and Asia there lay another continent. And so you see how complicated life is, and how fragile are the boundaries between truth and error, right and wrong. Though they were right, the sages of Salamanca were wrong; and Columbus, while he was wrong, pursued faithfully his error and proved to be right – thanks to serendipity.”
[Citation: Serendipities: Language And Lunacy by Umberto Eco.]
21 July 2008
About decision-making in organisations
“The question I’d like to raise is something that I’m deeply curious about, which is what should organizations do to improve the quality of their decision-making? And I’ll tell you what it looks like, from my point of view.
I have never tried very hard, but I am in a way surprised by the ambivalence about it that you encounter in organizations. My sense is that by and large there isn’t a huge wish to improve decision-making — there is a lot of talk about doing so, but it is a topic that is considered dangerous by the people in the organization and by the leadership of the organization.”
– Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his pioneering work integrating insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty. Quote reproduced from Edge, The Third Culture.
I agree.
I have never tried very hard, but I am in a way surprised by the ambivalence about it that you encounter in organizations. My sense is that by and large there isn’t a huge wish to improve decision-making — there is a lot of talk about doing so, but it is a topic that is considered dangerous by the people in the organization and by the leadership of the organization.”
– Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his pioneering work integrating insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty. Quote reproduced from Edge, The Third Culture.
I agree.
19 July 2008
Zoriah
“My hands still shake and my heart pounds despite my fatigue. A combination of depression, fear, and adrenaline makes my thoughts race with the realization that a simple decision was the only thing that separated me from a body count that grows daily. I look at the images I took on the 26th of June, and realize they do nothing to capture the emotion of being an eyewitness to the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda suicide attack in Karmah/Garma... the smell... the sound of screams and crying.
I want you to observe and comprehend what others live through on a daily basis – to see what the Iraqi civilians and foreign soldiers see. I want people who follow my photography to understand that although I am able to bring images of war to the world in a form of art, what actually goes on here is horror. My message is not that war yields great photography. My message is: War yields human misery and suffering.”
– Zoriah, photojournalist, recounting his experience about the Anbar Province (Iraq), suicide bombing on 26 June 2008; reproduced here from his blog.
Freelance American photojournalist Zoriah (known, professionally, as Zoriah; his full name is Zoriah Miller) was recently disembedded by the US Army in Iraq for his coverage of the 26 June 2008 suicide bombing in Anbar Province, Iraq.
Although Zoriah claims that he did not violate any of the rules of his embed agreement, he has been disembedded because he has published pictures of dead US Marines on his blog. Zoriah’s post on the aftermath of the Anbar Province suicide bombing, which went online on 30 June 2008 on his blog, recounts his experience as an eye-witness photographer and shows dead US Marines and other dead Iraqi civilians.
According to a PDNonline article by Daryl Lang, Disembedded: Marines Send a War Photographer Packing, dated 17 July 2008, quotes Zoriah:
“The official reason which they chose to use for disembedding me was that I had supplied the enemy with information on the effectiveness of attack,” he said. “I told the public affairs officer, listen, I really have to disagree with this, I didn’t provide any information that had not already, as of the night of the attack, been published by Reuters, The New York Times and the Washington Post.”
To read Zoriah’s eye-witness account of the aftermath of the Anbar Province suicide bombing, please visit this link from his blog. Please note: some images may be graphic and disturbing.
[Citation: Zoriah’s blog; PDNonline article.]
I want you to observe and comprehend what others live through on a daily basis – to see what the Iraqi civilians and foreign soldiers see. I want people who follow my photography to understand that although I am able to bring images of war to the world in a form of art, what actually goes on here is horror. My message is not that war yields great photography. My message is: War yields human misery and suffering.”
– Zoriah, photojournalist, recounting his experience about the Anbar Province (Iraq), suicide bombing on 26 June 2008; reproduced here from his blog.
Freelance American photojournalist Zoriah (known, professionally, as Zoriah; his full name is Zoriah Miller) was recently disembedded by the US Army in Iraq for his coverage of the 26 June 2008 suicide bombing in Anbar Province, Iraq.
Although Zoriah claims that he did not violate any of the rules of his embed agreement, he has been disembedded because he has published pictures of dead US Marines on his blog. Zoriah’s post on the aftermath of the Anbar Province suicide bombing, which went online on 30 June 2008 on his blog, recounts his experience as an eye-witness photographer and shows dead US Marines and other dead Iraqi civilians.
According to a PDNonline article by Daryl Lang, Disembedded: Marines Send a War Photographer Packing, dated 17 July 2008, quotes Zoriah:
“The official reason which they chose to use for disembedding me was that I had supplied the enemy with information on the effectiveness of attack,” he said. “I told the public affairs officer, listen, I really have to disagree with this, I didn’t provide any information that had not already, as of the night of the attack, been published by Reuters, The New York Times and the Washington Post.”
To read Zoriah’s eye-witness account of the aftermath of the Anbar Province suicide bombing, please visit this link from his blog. Please note: some images may be graphic and disturbing.
[Citation: Zoriah’s blog; PDNonline article.]
15 July 2008
Can we be blamed for our lack of creativity in our adult lives?
“A lot of parents crush their children’s dreams. I give many lectures at universities and colleges all over the country, and always say that parents kill more dreams than anybody. They squash any artistic drive that children have when they say, “We don’t want you doing this stuff, because you can’t make money and you’ll end up being a cab driver or a waitress.”
This can be devastating. I don’t know how you recover from that if you have a great love for the arts. You’ll end up hating your parents for that, especially when you’re stuck in some dead-end job that you really hate.”
– Spike Lee, American filmmaker
Some children, like Spike Lee, are lucky. Their parents encourage their creative instincts. Their parents support their love for music, for painting, for creative writing… and give a helping hand in its development. Their parents don’t brainwash them into believing that, unless they pursue an activity or a field of study that makes money for them in the future, or sets them up for it, they’re useless.
But, as Spike Lee’s words suggest, most of us have grown up with parents who have discouraged our creative endeavours during our childhoods. “You can’t make money as an artist or a musician or a writer,” they’ve said. We’ve had to pursue engineering, medicine, law, accountancy, and more recently, business management or software engineering. For women, it’s always been teaching.
Our parents have drummed it into our heads that the only successful professions are the ones they’ve grown up with, or know of. The ones guaranteed to get us well-paying jobs and set us up in a career they approved of. The rest were for shirkers… a waste of time. Particularly the arts. All musicians, painters and writers lived in poverty and died bankrupt. Except for those born with silver spoons in their mouths (Rabindranath Tagore’s name was often mentioned here).
As children, whenever we pursued our creative instincts, our parents have told us that it’ll lead to despair. That we’ll end up being peons, taxi drivers and farm labourers. Or worse, remain unemployed and depend on handouts from friends and family.
During a discussion on this topic, a friend presented another scenario. He said, although some children were encouraged to be creative, when they grew older they found themselves in a different world. Their parents, who had encouraged them several years before, as well as their teachers at school and college, and their bosses at work, all said the same thing: “Don’t try to be creative. Just follow the rules and you’ll get there safe and sound.”
With such encouragement, can we be blamed for our lack of creativity in our adult lives?
[Citation: Spike Lee quote from Creativity: Unconventional Wisdom from 20 Accomplished Minds, edited by Herb Meyers and Richard Gerstman.]
This can be devastating. I don’t know how you recover from that if you have a great love for the arts. You’ll end up hating your parents for that, especially when you’re stuck in some dead-end job that you really hate.”
– Spike Lee, American filmmaker
Some children, like Spike Lee, are lucky. Their parents encourage their creative instincts. Their parents support their love for music, for painting, for creative writing… and give a helping hand in its development. Their parents don’t brainwash them into believing that, unless they pursue an activity or a field of study that makes money for them in the future, or sets them up for it, they’re useless.
But, as Spike Lee’s words suggest, most of us have grown up with parents who have discouraged our creative endeavours during our childhoods. “You can’t make money as an artist or a musician or a writer,” they’ve said. We’ve had to pursue engineering, medicine, law, accountancy, and more recently, business management or software engineering. For women, it’s always been teaching.
Our parents have drummed it into our heads that the only successful professions are the ones they’ve grown up with, or know of. The ones guaranteed to get us well-paying jobs and set us up in a career they approved of. The rest were for shirkers… a waste of time. Particularly the arts. All musicians, painters and writers lived in poverty and died bankrupt. Except for those born with silver spoons in their mouths (Rabindranath Tagore’s name was often mentioned here).
As children, whenever we pursued our creative instincts, our parents have told us that it’ll lead to despair. That we’ll end up being peons, taxi drivers and farm labourers. Or worse, remain unemployed and depend on handouts from friends and family.
During a discussion on this topic, a friend presented another scenario. He said, although some children were encouraged to be creative, when they grew older they found themselves in a different world. Their parents, who had encouraged them several years before, as well as their teachers at school and college, and their bosses at work, all said the same thing: “Don’t try to be creative. Just follow the rules and you’ll get there safe and sound.”
With such encouragement, can we be blamed for our lack of creativity in our adult lives?
[Citation: Spike Lee quote from Creativity: Unconventional Wisdom from 20 Accomplished Minds, edited by Herb Meyers and Richard Gerstman.]
10 July 2008
We must revive the bonds of love and amity
“Age-old beliefs cannot vanish in a second. A lot of work has to be done for this. And when the beliefs go, the resultant vacuum should be filled in by education and health care for all. The social attitude to the status of women needs to be changed and an overall scientific outlook has to be developed. We must revive the bonds of love and amity, long lost, which we have replaced with hatred, greed and political violence.”
[Quote from Mahasweta Devi’s Witch-Hunting in West Bengal, published in Bortika June 1987, translated from the original Bengali by Nabarun Bhattacharya, reproduced in Dust on the Road, The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi, edited by Maitreya Ghatak.]
[Quote from Mahasweta Devi’s Witch-Hunting in West Bengal, published in Bortika June 1987, translated from the original Bengali by Nabarun Bhattacharya, reproduced in Dust on the Road, The Activist Writings of Mahasweta Devi, edited by Maitreya Ghatak.]
05 July 2008
Reading preferences can affect relationships
Discovered a gem of an essay in The New York Times going back a few months.
The essay, titled It’s Not You, It’s Your Books, by Rachel Donadio discusses how our prospects of finding and retaining a (soul) mate can be determined by our reading habits – or a lack of it. Even our interest in committing to a relationship can be influenced by our partner’s literary preferences (or a lack of it).
According to Ms Donadio’s essay, our reading preferences mark our social branding and either increase or discount our chances of succeeding in a relationship. Makes you curious, doesn’t it? Well, here’s an excerpt to get you started:
These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.” To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. “It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is,” Fels said. “It speaks to class, educational level.”
Still curious? Read Rachel Donadio’s essay here.
[Citation: It’s Not You, It’s Your Books by Rachel Donadio, The New York Times, 30 March 2008.]
The essay, titled It’s Not You, It’s Your Books, by Rachel Donadio discusses how our prospects of finding and retaining a (soul) mate can be determined by our reading habits – or a lack of it. Even our interest in committing to a relationship can be influenced by our partner’s literary preferences (or a lack of it).
According to Ms Donadio’s essay, our reading preferences mark our social branding and either increase or discount our chances of succeeding in a relationship. Makes you curious, doesn’t it? Well, here’s an excerpt to get you started:
These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.” To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. “It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is,” Fels said. “It speaks to class, educational level.”
Still curious? Read Rachel Donadio’s essay here.
[Citation: It’s Not You, It’s Your Books by Rachel Donadio, The New York Times, 30 March 2008.]
02 July 2008
On Green Dolphin Street
On Green Dolphin Street by British author Sebastian Faulks is a romance, narrating the story of a 40-year-old Englishwoman’s love for her husband (and her family), and her passion for an American journalist. At the centre of On Green Dolphin Street is Mary van der Linden, the wife of an English diplomat posted in Washington DC at the end of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency.
The story describes a great deal of America from that period: war and politics (Kennedy-Nixon rivalry, the Cold War, McCarthyism, America’s involvement in Indochina); economics and affluence (the consumer boom, TV sets, cars with long tailfins, tall buildings); and indulgences (parties with free-flowing whisky, dry martinis anytime of the day and night, excesses of food, weekend holidays in yachts).
And, not to forget, jazz. In fact, the title of the novel, On Green Dolphin Street, is named after a jazz tune: a lingering theme from World War II, whose shadow is still cast over Eisenhower’s America and the three main characters of the novel. There’s Mary, cocooned in her own illusion of a permanently happy life; and two men struggling with their pasts, their careers, and their love for Mary.
On one hand, there’s Charlie, Mary’s diplomat husband, drunk and despondent, trying to get over his past ‘mistakes’, heading on a path of self-destruction. On the other, there’s Frank Renzo, American journalist, rising above his impoverished childhood and his career missteps, trying to rebuild his career and his life.
Content with her happy life, Mary doesn’t seem like a woman who would fall into an extra-marital affair. But she does, desperately, with Frank Renzo, in whom she finds the fulfillment of a love that has been missing in her life. It is this desperation for love that makes the characters and their emotions so vulnerable and so real.
On Green Dolphin Street weaves through Washington DC, New York and England, taking Mary through a path of self-discovery. But, as it is with such journeys, the happiness is as liberating as the pain is devastating. Sebastian Faulks excels in his narratives, his descriptions, and his handling of intricate human emotions, making On Green Dolphin Street an enjoyable romance.
[A personal feeling: women are likely to enjoy this book more than men.]
The story describes a great deal of America from that period: war and politics (Kennedy-Nixon rivalry, the Cold War, McCarthyism, America’s involvement in Indochina); economics and affluence (the consumer boom, TV sets, cars with long tailfins, tall buildings); and indulgences (parties with free-flowing whisky, dry martinis anytime of the day and night, excesses of food, weekend holidays in yachts).
And, not to forget, jazz. In fact, the title of the novel, On Green Dolphin Street, is named after a jazz tune: a lingering theme from World War II, whose shadow is still cast over Eisenhower’s America and the three main characters of the novel. There’s Mary, cocooned in her own illusion of a permanently happy life; and two men struggling with their pasts, their careers, and their love for Mary.
On one hand, there’s Charlie, Mary’s diplomat husband, drunk and despondent, trying to get over his past ‘mistakes’, heading on a path of self-destruction. On the other, there’s Frank Renzo, American journalist, rising above his impoverished childhood and his career missteps, trying to rebuild his career and his life.
Content with her happy life, Mary doesn’t seem like a woman who would fall into an extra-marital affair. But she does, desperately, with Frank Renzo, in whom she finds the fulfillment of a love that has been missing in her life. It is this desperation for love that makes the characters and their emotions so vulnerable and so real.
On Green Dolphin Street weaves through Washington DC, New York and England, taking Mary through a path of self-discovery. But, as it is with such journeys, the happiness is as liberating as the pain is devastating. Sebastian Faulks excels in his narratives, his descriptions, and his handling of intricate human emotions, making On Green Dolphin Street an enjoyable romance.
[A personal feeling: women are likely to enjoy this book more than men.]
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