1.
Earlier this month the woods still wore shades of winter. Brown dominated the view, and in all the dryness there were few visible signs of plant life. The sun shone generously, and light reached parts inaccessible in other seasons. Parrots screeched above. Every so often, the deep rattle of a woodpecker echoed through the woods. Below, at the foot of some trees, moss clung to all sides and rose up along the north.
“Now, you are a real frog, am I right?”
“Yes, of course, as you can see. A real frog is exactly what I am. A product neither of metaphor nor allusion nor deconstruction nor sampling nor any other such complex process, I am a genuine frog. Shall I croak for you?”
Frog tilted back his head and flexed the muscles of his huge throat. Ribit! Ri-i-i-bit! Ribit-ribit-ribit! Ribit! Ribit! Ri-i-i-bit! His gigantic croaks rattled the pictures hanging on the walls.
“Fine, I see, I see!” Katagiri said, worried about the thin walls of the cheap apartment house in which he lived. “That’s great. You are, without question, a real frog.”
“One might also say that I am the sum total of all frogs. Nonetheless, this does nothing to change the fact that I am a frog. Anyone claiming that I am not a frog would be a dirty liar. I would smash such a person to bits!”
Katagiri nodded. Hoping to calm himself, he picked up his cup and swallowed a mouthful of tea. “You said before that you have come here to save Tokyo from destruction?”
“That is what I said.”
“What kind of destruction?”
“Earthquake,” Frog said with the utmost gravity.
An excerpt from ‘Super-Frog Saves Tokyo’, After the quake, Haruki Murakami
This morning, for no particular reason, I decide to go on a walk. It’s cold outside, close to zero degrees celcius, but it is a clear day and the anticipation of a sun-filled afternoon makes this morning feel less cold. Behind the low fences surrounding little gardens facing the main street I spot the first buds on bare branches. Spring is beginning to emerge from the shadow of Winter (UNDER CONSTRUCTION, as Dave says), but if you looked at the landscape from a distance, you wouldn’t know.
Continue reading “A Morning Walk”
As this may be new for some of you, let’s start with some definitions.
Carnival
-noun
1. a traveling amusement show, having sideshows, rides, etc.
2. any merrymaking, revelry, or festival, as a program of sports or entertainment: a winter carnival.Blog
–noun
1. a web site containing the writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Web sites.Blog Carnival
-noun
1. a collection of various online journal postings on a specific topic
[ Part two of a series – a conversation about the book Open City – that began here. You will find this post accessible even if you haven’t read the book – try it. Then, go buy the book. ]
The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.
Roland Barthes
Dear Teju,
I’ve been thinking, in these past few days, about classification. How does Open City compare with other novels in the reading experience? If I relate reading a conventional work of fiction – with its apparatus of plot, well-developed characters, a beginning, middle and an end – to the act of watching a tennis or soccer match, with its well-defined boundaries, roles and actors, winners and losers, a start and a finish, then Open City makes me feel, at this moment after a hundred or so pages, like someone sitting in the woods next to a gentle stream watching the water flow by, with its characters who appear, linger for a while, and go away, as it has been going on since millennia. There has been no beginning – the first sentence led me into the middle, really – and I do not expect an end. What I see in the stream is guided by Julius’s eye (he is both a character in the stream and, like me, an observer watching it) but my eyes can wander, and so can my mind. Unlike a match, where the anticipation of what happens next often robs me of the joy of the present until, in almost no time, it is all over, sitting by the stream and watching it flow is a reflective activity, unhindered by any plan of action, unlimited by boundaries of space and time.
On the flight to Brussels, as Julius entered into conversation with Dr.Maillotte, I was reminded of my weekend trips to Brussels (when Wife still lived in that city) and those train conversations. One particular encounter stood out; you’ll soon see why.
Continue reading “In the woods next to a gentle stream”
A new type of electricity pylon may soon loom over the countryside. It will look less offensive and leak less electromagnetic radiation than its predecessors.
The other day while walking across the countryside I spotted a pair of pylons ahead. They stood in the middle of a field, and the arcs hanging gently between them were dotted with silhouettes of birds. The wires continued further, almost endlessly, punctuated in regular intervals by identical towers with outstretched arms. There was a sadness in that beautiful vision: these objects were either ignored or routinely dismissed as ugly.
Continue reading “The beauty of pylons”
Dear Teju,
The book arrived today.
I was working from home, fighting a mild sinus infection. (Wife says I feigned sickness so that I could be at home when the book was delivered.) In the afternoon, after a short post-lunch nap, when I went downstairs I found the Amazon package lying near the bottom, on the second step. I knew I could kiss my afternoon goodbye.
Continue reading “OPEN CITY”
a. This is an essay in five parts.
b. The first part, the one you are reading right now, is an introduction.
c. The other four contain a review of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red, an extract from an essay on why criticism matters, a quote from an essay by Pamuk, and a journal entry.
d. These parts can be read in any order.
[This has turned out a strangely self-indulgent post, one suited more to a private diary than an online journal. I set out to write, on our tenth anniversary of arriving in Germany, an account of these last ten years here, but what got written, almost unconsciously, was a different score, cryptic and inward-looking.]
When we arrived there was no life plan. The move to Germany seemed like an interesting opportunity, although I do not remember trying to express – or even think about – why this was so. It may have been the allure of a new place, something exotic and unfamiliar. The little I had seen of Germany on a couple of previous trips had appealed. At a deeper level there must have been, although I wasn’t aware of it, the realization that I was doing what my father had done almost thirty years previously: take up a “foreign assignment”. But the similarities end there; I had it much easier. I was simply riding on a wave of Indian emigration westward; his move, in the early Seventies, was an exception. My destination was an advanced Western nation that provided a host of benefits; his was to a town in a small West African nation. I travelled with my wife; he had mother next to him and me, a six month old baby, in his arms.
Continue reading “Ten years”
Parmanu 