Books

I added a page on this blog: Books. It consists of a list of most memorable books I have read so far. If books are windows to the world, they have been my windows. Truly.

Since I have created this list purely out of my memory, they are not necessarily listed in the chronological order of my reading. Besides, there are quite a few books that did not find themselves into this list. However, I was able to add some kind of time-line into the list. They are separated according to blocks of a few years in which I read them. These intervals of years signify different times in my life: 1996 to 1999 during which I enrolled myself into our village-library with the help of my friend, during which I was able to develop a penchant for reading, and during which I believed almost everything that appeared in books! Then 1999 to 2003 during which I was an undergraduate at Thrissur, during which I started speculating the truth of what I read in books, during which I developed a firm foundation for my reading and ideas, during which, with the help of my good friends, I was introduced into great writers and thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and so on, and during which I started understanding that there are no absolute truths, but everything is a perspective. Then 2003 to 2005 during which I was job-less mostly and then became a teacher, during which I struggled to develop my own perspectives and ideas and miserably failed. Next 2005 to 2007 during which I was a post-graduate student, during which I fully recognized and accepted my failure to develop my own perspective, during which I disowned many of my own ideas and perspectives, during which I disowned a lot of other things, during which I fully understood Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence and affirmation of ones fate and life ("amor fati"), and during which I became a complete nihilist and extreme atheist. Then came 2007 to 2012, my lonely Ph.D. days, during which I became what I am today, during which I read not just books but also a lot from the internet and watched a lot of movies, during which I learned to affirm my fate, and during which I don't still understand what all happened to me. 2013 was a stable year with a lot of developments in my life, during which I started getting regular salary and was able to buy any book I wanted, during which I pledged that I will not sacrifice reading for anything else and became so determined. My life, academic development, and other things revolve around all these years and the books I read.

So, that was my narration of my own story, which, indeed, is a lie from a pure psycho-analytic perspective!

Sandeep

Trivandrum

Dec 24, 2013.

Old Man Insights

You might have noticed that I am in a spree of posting here. All these posts are connected. They belong to the same stream of thinking. Where are they taking me? I swear I don't know.

I have noticed that my posts have been getting ever bigger. I have to be brief in an Internet age. 

But writing needs freedom. I try different styles, without much concerning myself about the length of the post. However, I may not be very good in the styles yet.

The writing style of this post is inspired by many posts in Evan Williams' new writing platform Medium; a style that is very concise. Recall Mr. Williams is the creator of blogger! And twitter, too!

Here we go.

Of late, I am having a strange thought: how would a 90 years old man or woman would like to recount his or her life?

I don't want to ask them directly. I want to imagine it myself. To imagine is more pleasurable! 

I find it more difficult to imagine like an old woman than an old man. Hence my attempt here, now, is to imagine like an old man.

Perhaps, he wants to look at his life by milestones. Like, by the age of 10 I started playing football; I was 18 when I went for my first job; I was married by 26; I became a father by 28, a grandfather by 55; and so on.

Human memory distorts the facts and one always remember nonlinearly. So, the old man would have some connecting dots that are his milestones and a lot of associated details connecting every dot with each other in complex and multiple ways.

Everything is connected in life. Everything happening influences every other thing happening. 

So, being 90 or more, the old man can see all his milestones and perceive all the connections at the same time. That gives him a massive insight to his life, and, perhaps, to human life in general! That is one of the biggest assets one can have, isn't that?

I envy the old man, since I lack that kind of richness now!

I love the way Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood look at their characters James Bond and Dirty Harry, respectively. The attitude is that: Oh! That character worked at that time; I cannot do the same character now; If anyone else wants to do it has to be different, suitable for the times; I had my nice time and now it is gone and it is absolutely OK.

WOW!

If only I could have such a full understanding of my life! 

Now, I can remember and connect the dots in my past. But I am always baffled by the uncertainty of the future and hence feel incomplete and discontent.

Final thought: If just a 90 year old man owns this kind of riches, what a man with immense knowledge in the history of humanity -- the likes of Umberto Eco and Slavoj Zizek -- would possess! The (almost) entire history of humanity! And they don't have to be 90 years old for that! That is so much of insight, man. So much. Massiver than the massive!

A Moment of Anguish

It is getting more and more wonderful as I think about it! Today,  I passed a moment of anguish by telling myself that nobody can kill my enthusiasm for reading and my urge for writing. The fact is that today I finished reading Prague Cemetery of Umberto Eco. Have ever lived in forgetfulness? Well!  That's how I felt while reading that novel. To say in Eco's style, I must be an extreme masochist to have selected this novel to read. What more, I am an atheist, but God willing, I am going to read all the novels by Eco. Two more to go: Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before. Looks good, no?

Dare to be an atheist.

"Enlightenment..."

Thor... placed the horn to his lips... . He drank with all his might and kept drinking as long as ever he was able; when he paused to look, he could see that the level had sunk a little, ... for the other end lay out in the ocean itself.

–-P.A. Munch, Norse Mythology
AMS Press, New York, 1970.

Have you ever thought of the amount of all human knowledge so far? Have you ever felt the urge to learn it all? How much can we learn? How much we already know? What is the percentage of all knowledge that we can get? For example we know (at least vaguely) that,

1. Everything around us is made of atoms.

2. There are some particles called electrons.

3. Opposite magnetic poles attract, and the like ones repel.

4. While inhaling atmospheric air, our lungs absorb oxygen.

5. Plant and trees are living beings.

6. Sun light, when passed through a prism, decomposes into seven colours.

7. Fourier transform of a signal represented in time gives its frequency components.

8. Music can be compressed to MP3 format so that the file size is reduced.

9. Every living being on earth has to die.

10. 1+1 = 2 and 1x1 = 1.

Can I ever complete this list? I wonder and wonder about the amount of knowledge we have.

Yet the beauty is this: it is more important to understand one thing rather than knowing it all. This is what my teacher told me today, "Sandeep, you may read a lot and know a lot. But it is when you re-derive your knowledge you really understand them. And enlightenment comes through understanding."

 A particular knowledge may be known to man for a long time. That does not mean that you have understood it. You understand is a different case. And when you understand it in your own way, you see the real beauty--this is the joy of learning.

--Sandeep Palakkal

Tears, silence and some pessimism

On October 5th, 2009, I  woke up to the terrible news of  a huge flood that badly affected Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.  The photograph in the front page of The Hindu daily was very much disturbing.  No other photo of any calamity or anything else has ever wounded me so deeply before.  Expressing courtesy to The Hindu, let me add a copy of the same here; it is small and of low resolution, unlike the one in the hard copy of the newspaper.  The same, along with that day's news is available here: http://www.hindu.com/2009/10/05/stories/2009100557090100.htm.
The caption reads like this: "SHATTERED HOPE: A woman cries on seeing her submerged house at P. Garlapadu village, about 180 km from Hyderabad, in Mahabubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh on Sunday".

I invite you to take a close look at the picture, see the heartbreaking sorrow on her face.  This is not from a movie that I watch sometime: this is real, so chillingly real.  I don't know why I was deeply hurt by it...  I sat on my bed, wordless, looking at the picture for quite a while.  My mind was trying to imagine what all agonies were going on in  that poor woman's mind.  She must be one from that vast majority of the Indian population who struggle for their everyday meal, who don't have time, knowledge, patience and privilege to think about what people like me are worried about: faster internet connection, technology revolution, IT parks, economic recession, the poor quality of roads, whether Shashi Tharoor was right to use the word "cattle class", whether drinking coco-cola was unhealthy, if Indian movies are up to the mark from the international perspective, whether "The Name of the Rose" is the best novel I've ever read, whether ancient Indian contribution to science and mathematics is rightly acknowledged, whether finding water in moon was important to science at all, what are the best skills an engineer should possess, and so on.  All she used to worry about was just the everyday meal, not even about her children's education or diet, for they were too luxurious for her to afford.  Now, she has lost everything --- everything she has built on through years of hard work, which she can't even dream of doing again.  The loss of all hopes, all dreams, and the knowledge that she has no chance of being happy ever again... a bunch of emotions this emptiness can create in you --- this is what I can read on her face.  She, as her belongings, is encountering a horrifying state of oblivion from which there is no escape.  All she can do is just cry helplessly --- and that is what she is doing.  I feel deeply wounded, very deeply wounded....  I am more and more ashamed thinking of the privileges I am enjoying in this world, and all my complaints, anxieties, self-pride, self-esteem, self-respect, are belittled and silenced at once in front of her tears.

Time and again, we have said that India is yet to grow like the US or UK or France or Malaysia etc., that we don't have good facilities, that our people have no civic sense, that we have no self-respect and so on.  Now I understand the cold reality of the Indian situation, or broadly the human condition on earth.  And I understand my nation, its limitations and its poverty unconditionally.  I am just silenced, and I have no more complaints but only an inner awareness of a new enlightenment on the need to make India, not a super power, a hub of technology and science and business, but, at least, a place for humans to live, loving each other, without the need for  an unjustifiably herculean effort to do so.  She will be (is already) an inspiration for me throughout my life.

--Sandeep Palakkal

In the woods, with mysteries

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

--Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, 1923.

Thanks Frost for your really enchanting poem "stopping by woods on a snowy evening".  I still remember myself, as a boy, reading it, reciting it, and learning it by heart during my school days!

Hindsight: Taking a different perspective now, I understand that I have no promises to keep and no miles to go before I sleep.  I am man of no objectives; there is nothing to do, nothing to achieve... .  I too am astonished by the beauty and mysteries surrounding me.  Like a child under some magical influence, I have forgotten myself; I have forgotten the past and the future; I have forgotten where I am; and I no longer have a sense of anything else but this soothing existence.  I am feeling quite calm and serene  now.   Dear Frost, please forget me, I am not subscribed to your view. Let me stay here forever, just enjoying the lovely, dark and deep mysteries... .

Let me just believe that I am going to live forever...
My dear friend, what else is a better belief,
And what else is a better relief,
In this ephemeral existence full of grief?

--Sandeep Palakkal, 2009.