Book Shopping!

The much awaited book shopping trip finally came!

and now i am the proud owner of Blasphemy, Can you keep a secret?, Bridget Jone's Diary and the Kite runner.
the number of books dwindled because *sadly* i didnt buy any pirated editions. but that was not because m fighting piracy with all my will and power but mainly coz there werent any pirated versions of the books i wanted. So now i can *proudly* add that i AM fighting piracy! :-D

I know Blasphemy is not a very nice book but there's been so much hype around it and I've been wanting to lay my hands on that one for quite some time now........so i bought this one FINALLy!

Kartography

By Kamila Shamsie

Published by Oxford University Press, Pakistan

Karachi with all its open manholes, Karachi with its broken roads, polluted air, overly decorated buses, beggars, crazy traffic, Karachi with its night life, parties, social class stratification, Karachi with its breathtaking but dirty beach, Karachi with its ethnic differences, political unrest- that is the background for this saga of love and friendship, life and politics written so artfully by Kamila Shamsie, author of three other books and winner of several literary awards.

For someone born and bred in this city of uncertainty, the novel holds a special meaning although the fact remains that the author has focused primarily on the handful elite of the city. People, who remain unaffected by the everyday problems of the middle and lower classes, people whose lives revolve around parties and drinks and social clubs. Nonetheless, the city remains the same and the place it holds is the same and the human relationships too, are as delicate as in any other class.

The story revolves around two best friends, Karim and Raheen. It’s a story of how far two people can get (“people just grow apart, that’s it!”) despite being so close that they know that “If I wasn't me, you wouldn't be you”, and it’s a story of betrayal, of love affected by politics and ethnic differences and of relationships so fragile that they could have been of crystal.

Although superficially it’s just another love story with the usual triangles and heartbreaks, but read carefully and you’ll find a superb plot unwinding through the years of political turmoil and its affect on lives of people, a plot rich with subtleties of language, and a greater theme at work.

The story begins with Karim and Raheen as 13-year-old kids living in Karachi at a time when it’s once again in grip of violence and ethnic battles. Even as kids they know the internal workings of politics and people and assess the situation only in a way smart kids can. And they wondered, “Did differing ethnicities mean that there was something fundamentally disparate about us at the core?”

Raheen has always regarded Karim, her one-time crib-companion and blood-brother, as her best friend and as someone who knows her so well he can complete her sentences. “Sometimes I think, if you put his brain into mine and mine into his, we won’t know the difference!” Their parents, too, are closest of friends, and as the story evolves, we learn that Raheen's father was once engaged to marry Karim's mother, and that Raheen's mother once pledged to marry Karim's father.

The fiancé-swap, as they call it in the story, had always intrigued the young minds of the kids but not even in their wildest imaginations could they have guessed the reasons behind it. And once they do, Raheen’s world comes crashing down as all she ever stood for becomes meaningless.

Although it’s just a change of partners as the ‘music changed’, but it serves to highlight something graver, something which has deep rooted implications on all of them. The fiancé-swap is tied to the ethnic unrest of Pakistan in early seventies and then civil war broke out and Bangladesh was formed. And as the breaking and paring of countries takes place, human relationships too are affected and the insidious prejudices seep into minds and ruin the already fragile bonds.

Years later, with Karachi in grip of chaos again, Karim’s father decides to leave the city and Raheen loses her alter-ego, her best friend and partner in everything. Time passes and they both grow into adults in their own different worlds but the past still lingers and only when they accept the horror of what happened decades earlier, are they able to move ahead.

It’s amazing how one can relate to the story years later and it’s equally amazing that after all these years Karachi is still the same. “…..Karachi with its colorful buses maniacally racing one another, men selling fruit and vegetables from wooden carts on the side of the road, deformed beggars dexterously making their way through traffic, laundry flapping from washing lines on the latticed balconies of low rise apartment buildings.”

I could very easily identify myself with the nonchalant youth in the novel, the way they have become desensitized to the death and chaos around them and the way they move ahead with life despite all its horrors. “This is Karachi. We have a good time while we can, ‘cause tomorrow we might not be so lucky.” This one sentence so simply wraps up the attitude in a few words.

The language employed by the author and the nuances of words are so tactfully placed that one cannot help but awe at the subtlety of it all. The name Kartography too, is heavy in symbolism as it is a cross between Cartography coupled with the fact that it’s based in Karachi. The novel, by going into depths of love and bonding is an attempt to create maps of the human hearts. And Karim too is a professional Cartographer, and hence the name Kartography.

Not everyone can coin terms like ‘idioddity’ and ‘arrafaction’, the former being a cross between ‘odd’ and ‘idiot’ and the later being a cross between ‘arranged’ and ‘affection’. These are only but two examples of many such witty terms in the novel. Even the nicknames used for people are unique; Karim being referred to as ‘Karimazov’ and ‘Cream’ and Raheen being referred to as ‘Ra’. Or the very unusual term of ‘Ghutnas’ being used for social wannabes in the Karachi social scene.

The wonder of the rich language Shamsie uses throughout, so very beautifully transmits the message of everyday day emotions we can feel but cannot find words to express. For instance, Raheen’s thoughts about how same people can behave so differently at times is so artfully described in her thoughts, “Sometimes you hear voices of people whose very cadence you think you know by heart. By heart. But then sounds emerge from their throats, sounds that you want to believe cannot belong to them, but its worse than that because you know they do; you hear the sound and you know that this grating cacophony belongs to them as much as does the music in their voices…”

Although not very deep and with no apparent message, the novel didn’t fail to evoke some dead memories attached with the city and with its people. Karachi with all its failings is still the bearer of our memories, the place we grew up in, and our home. Likewise, the people we grow up with, no matter how different they become, deep down the person you loved is still there, hidden underneath the debris of time and broken dreams.

The author so beautifully sums it up, “I love this place, Karim, for all its madness and complications. It’s not that I didn’t love it before, but I loved it with a child’s kind of love, the kind that either ends or strengthens as understanding grows.

I can see you, out there, reading between the lines.

Come home, stranger.

Come home, untangler of my thoughts.

Come home and tell me, what do I do with this breaking heart of mine?”

Destined to Strive

The Alchemist
By Paulo Coelho
Translated by Alan R. Clark
Harper Collins Publishers
ISBN 0 7225 3293 8
179 pp. UK £ 7.99

The debate between free will and determinism has been going on for years and continues to date. Some argue that it is one’s own will that shapes his/her destiny, while others go about proclaiming that one can only do what one is destined to do. There are many valid arguments for and against the latter. However, it is authors like Paulo Coelho which beautifully merge both sides of the argument with fiction. And so he has done in his best selling novel, The Alchemist.

The book revolves around a shepherd named Santiago. The story commences by reflecting upon his peaceful and predictable life in Andalusia (Spain), which is disturbed by a dream, in which a child leads him to the pyramids in Egypt and tells him that he will find a treasure there. Santiago seeks help from a gypsy woman who tells him he must go to Egypt, where he will find his treasure. However, the person who really convinces him to let go of his present life and wander into unknown places is the King of Salem, Melchizedek, whom he meets by chance. Melchizedek gifts him two stones named Urim and Thummim and tells him that he can use them if he is stuck at any point, and is unable to make a decision.

Thus, Santiago travels to Egypt, where he faces the first main hurdle. He is swindled by a thief and robbed of all the money he had obtained by selling his sheep back in Andalusia. With no money to get back to where he started from, he starts working in the shop of a crystal merchant. There, he manages to earn quite a bit as he convinces the merchant to introduce new marketing techniques. After a year, as he is planning to go back to Andalusia and to his life as a shepherd, he decides to once again wander into unknown territory. This time, it is the desert that lies between him and the pyramids.

And so, a new phase starts in the life of Santiago as he joins a desert caravan traveling to Al-Fayoum. He befriends an Englishman there, who tells him that he is looking for an Alchemist, who can turn any metal into gold, and has the possession of the Elixir of Life which is the source of immortality. Their journey goes on smoothly, till they have to seek refuge in an oasis from the ongoing tribal wars. It is there that he meets the Alchemist while reading and conveying the omens of danger to the tribal chieftains. When his predictions turn out to be true, he is asked to become the counselor of the oasis. Once again Santiago faces a choice between staying there and marrying Fatima, a woman he meets and falls in love with at the oasis, or leaving the caravan which is planning an extended stay there to move towards the pyramids himself. The Alchemist comes to his rescue this time, telling him that he must continue his journey, and that he will accompany him across the desert.

They both now continue their journey across the desert, where they meet more hurdles in the form of tribes and armed men, who at one point, even capture the two of them. Nevertheless, their journey goes on, till they reach a monastery. There, the Alchemist turns some lead in gold, and hands a quarter to Santiago to continue his journey. This he does, and finally he reaches the Pyramids, where he starts digging. However, he is soon surrounded by gangsters who take his gold and beat him till he confesses about his dream and the treasure he is looking for. At that, he is taunted by the gang. Finally, being so close, does he get his treasure? And if he doesn’t, how does he get back to Spain? And does he go back to the oasis, where Fatima is waiting for him? These are the questions whose answers are the conclusion of this book, and hence, they shouldn’t be revealed here.

The author, Paulo Coelho is a lyricist and novelist. He was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and attended law school there. However, he abandoned his studies in 1970 to travel throughout Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, as well as Europe and North Africa. Two years later he returned to Brazil and began composing popular music lyrics.

The Alchemist has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide and has been translated into some 41 languages. It is also a movie in progress produced by Lawrence Fishburne, who is a fan of Coelho. In addition he has written popular books like The Pilgrimage and Veronika Decides to Die. In October 2002, Paulo received the 'Club of Budapest Planetary Arts Award 2002' in Frankfurt, and the 'Best Fiction Corine Award 2002' in Munich.

The book is an amazing collection of what can be aptly termed as ‘words of wisdom’ or universal truths to which we usually don’t pay any attention in our day to day lives. Phrases like ‘It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting’ and ‘I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does’ relate to almost every one of us, if we ponder over their meaning in depth.

Also, the free will versus determinism debate discussed earlier is very apparent in this book. The King of Salem tells Santiago that the world’s greatest lie is that people are a product of their destiny. It simply isn’t true that there comes a point in their lives when they lose control of what is happening and have to rely simply on what has been already pre-ordained for them. The existence of free will is very apparent in the different choices Santiago makes in various parts of the story.

However, there is another side of the argument which is made clear in the fact that most characters do make an overt reference to determinism when discussing the different decisions that they faced in life. “Maktub” is the word used here, which means ‘it is written.’ It can be roughly translated to ‘you are destined to do…’ Hence, destiny and determinism also come into play here. When Santiago tells the crystal merchant that he is going to Andalusia to buy his sheep, the merchant tells him he won’t do so. When Santiago asks him how he knows, he replies ‘it is written.’ When Santiago is leaving the desert, Fatima tells him that if he is destined to marry her, he will come back. In our daily lives as Muslims, we do believe in the concept of ‘destiny’ as ‘Qadr’ a concept well documented in the Quran Chapter 57, verse 22:

“No misfortune can happen on earth or in your souls but is recorded in a decree before We Bring it into existence. That is truly easy for Allah.”

In conclusion, it would be safe to assume then, that this story tells us of the different ways free will and determinism come into play in our lives. It tells us that the ultimate choice is ours, but there are some occasions when destiny intervenes, either in the form of sheer good or bad luck, or a chance meeting with someone who leads us to the correct decision. But above all, it warns us that even if the correct decision does comes our way, it is the one which is the most difficult to carry out.

Valhalla Rising, From Potter's Field, Salt and Saffron, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sahara

Oscar Wilde is an absolute delight to read. His cutting insights on society at the time are immensely entertaining. Not to mention, he happens to have the distinction of being the only 'old' (forgive me, I meant classical) writer I've read somewhat extensively...and more importantly, voluntarily.

Though you may, if you want to be petty, lay the blame for that on someone who gifted me his complete works some 3 odd years ago, and our college play A Woman of No Importance, which made me buy the movie, The Importance of Being Earnest (purely to get a feel for the period), both of which in turn led to my absorbing those plays and going on to read others.

I'll leave you with some lines I collected from his works. I'm afraid I can't tell you which quote is from which story/play precisely, except for the quotes from The Picture of Dorian Gray which I read most recently. I could try to be thought-provoking and scatter this post with serious quotes, but seeing how his obscure, contradictory and seemingly useless lines amuse me more, I'll try to keep a balance.

'Why, anybody can have common sense, provided they have no imagination.'

'The advantage of playing with fire is that one never gets singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it that get burned up.'

'Then I am sorry I did not stay away longer. I like being missed.'

'I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.'

'I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.'

'Well, my duty is a thing I never do on principle. It always depresses me.'

'You are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are dreadfully expensive.'

'Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.'

The Picture of Dorian Gray:

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Vice and virtue are to the artist instruments of an art.

Diversity of opinion about a work shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

All art is quite useless.

'I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.'

'I choose my friend for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.'

'Poets are not so scupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.'

'There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral...because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think with his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Ofcourse, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us.'

Was there anything so real as words?

'Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it.'

'I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.'

'I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.'

'Nowadays, most people die of a creeping sense of commom sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.'

He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

'I never talk during music - atleast, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is ones' duty to drown it in conversation.'

'Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.'

'He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.'

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

'Besides, every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience.'

'I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any questions - simple curiosity.'

'Being adored is a nuisance.'

'Nothing is ever quite true.'

'...mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did die, I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.'

'The one charm of the past is that it is the past.'

'Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation...'

'...loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.'

But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system.

His great wealth was a certain element of security. Society - civilized society, at least - is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest responsibility is of much less value than the possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreprochable in his private life.

'It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about saying things against one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.'

'Don't tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him.'

Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity is that one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin...In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak.

'Anything becomes pleasure if one does it too often. That is one of the most important secrets of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.'

'Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing.'

'You may fancy yourself safe and think yourselves strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play - I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.'

'You will soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired.'

-----

I have also read From Potter's Field by Patricia Cornwell, Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler, Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie and a few other novels in the past two weeks, and I'm on my way towards finishing Sahara by Clive Cussler.

From Potter's Field is a murder mystery with a mildly entertaining and entirely forgettable storyline.

Sahara, as I realized within the first few pages of it, is the book the movie Sahara is based on. No wonder I could give a fair background of the main character in the movie without remembering where my information was coming from. Valhalla Rising is based on the same character, Dirk Pitt, and you'll never heard a word from me against the book. I'm afraid I have a weakness for adventurous characters carved in the style of Indiana Jones. The only difference is that Indiana Jones keeps his feet on the ground, whereas, Dirk Pitt is more of an underwater/open-skies kind of guy. The novels often cover impossible, saved-at-the-last-second scenarios that are reminiscent of Bond movies. I started off with Clive Cussler's Raise The Titanic! a good many years ago (an excellent read, btw) and have continued with his later novels. Here are some links if you want to read more:
Dirk Pitt
Clive Cussler

Lastly, there is Salt and Saffron. I wish I could say I loved it, but it's really not my style.

Reading

I have just finished reading another book by Robin Cook. So that makes two. I've read Mindbend and Mutation. Currently I'm reading Godplayer. Both the books have been a good read. Robin Cook being a doctor has written all three of these books about medicine and health related issues. What I like about the books is that they keep you hooked, what I don't like is that there is always a happy ending and the books are really short.
I also read all of the Bourne Series, and the books are just great. A must read for espionage-and-thriller-books lovers. I don't know if the Bourne Series are the only three books written by Robert Ludlum but I do know that they are really good. Can't say the same about the movies. Its the typical Movie-made-on-Book-gone-bad scenario.
Anyways I've just got my hand on Anita Blake Series by Laurell Hamilton and am going to start on them as soon as I'm finished with Robin Cook. Any reviews on her books because I heard one of them won a NewYork Times Bestsellers Award.

Ive just started reading this book. I've read Mirage by the same author- Soheir Khashoggi, but i read it way back in O levels. i've heard this one's good. any comments on it without revealing too much of the plot??

Piracy issues

I am just soo confused about this issue, nothing makes sense at the moment.
we had a class discussion on book publishing trends and it streered towards book piracy and how it affects the book industry. my teacher had a very valid point; he emphasized on the point that piracy IS stealing, and stealing is unethical no matter how big or small, or for whatever reasons. most of us really dont take piracy as a very unethical issue, its a theoretical concept, yes.
but think about it, someone took all the pains to publish a book- paid for the mauscript, the editors, the layout designers, the printers etc etc. and someone else takes a finished product, makes copies outta it and sells it at one-tenth the original price, because it cost peanuts to them!
so, it did help us but the writer/publisher didnt benifit from the sale of the book. this does discourage more writers from entering into the field!

BUT the big question here is- what do we do? i bought 12 pirated books for a thousand rupees, and i bought 5 original books for 1200 rupees! thats such a big difference!
if we really do commit ourselves to fight piracy we'll have to stop buying pirated books at all costs! but where do we go then???????????????????????????