The Voyeur in me

Some days ago I was lying in bed reading J.K.Rowling’s biography by Sean Smith, while my wife was trying to catch my attention – something that is next to impossible when I have my nose sticking between the pages of an interesting book.

After a few unsuccessful nudges, she exclaimed : “Voyeur !”

“What ?” I didn’t quite understand her.

“I said you’re a Voyeur.”

“What did I do now ?!”

“Well, you don’t pay attention to your wife, and instead involve yourself in the pursuit of knowing the details of another woman’s life.” she replied, plainly.

My initial reaction was laughter. I had never heard anyone equate the pursuit of reading a biography to voyeurism, and it seemed rather amusing to do so. My wife, however, was not amused at all. I kept the book aside, for the time being at least….

Much later, I thought about that seemingly innocuous statement again. There was an interest in knowing the personal details of another person’s life, yes, and I realized that this had always been the case with the people whom I admired. Richard Feynman, J.Krishnamurti, M.K.Gandhi, S.Ramanujam and Garry Kasparov were some people whose biographies ( or autobiographies ) that I could recollect reading. The statement struck home more in the case of J.K.Rowling, since she had resented the large amount of public attention and interest in her personal life that her phenomenal success had generated, and it resulted her in withdrawing into a shell.

It seemed to me that it was debatable whether such an interest in the personal affairs of another human being was tantamount to an intellectual type of voyeurism. One could not, as I did earlier, dismiss it lightly ( it had indirectly lead to the death of Princess Diana ), and one could not take it too seriously either ( there is a lot to be learned from the lives of others ). What was needed was a balance between curiosity and obsession. Easier said than done, clearly.

The book itself turned out to be an engrossing read ( and I could not find anything which the celebrity author would possibly object to ). It is not as authoritative and fascinating as a good biography should be, but it is still the best single source we have yet about J.K.Rowling – I would recommend it to anyone who loves Harry Potter and has some desire to get to know the person behind the creation of the world of Magic and Muggles.

Democracy at work

Some days back I saw an interview with Tony Blair on the BBC. There were about a dozen people in the audience, who, along with the interviewer had one element in common : an anti-war stance. So we had Mr. Blair on one side, trying his best to defend his stance against Iraq, and a handful of fierce opponents to that stance on the other side.

It was a gripping hour – we were glued to our seats throughout – and Mr.Blair, with his lightning responses detailing the reasons behind every decision that was made, conveyed a sense of belief in his actions that was incomprehensible to some members of the audience. To them, logic and reason seemed unimportant – any act of war was unjustifiable.

What emerged out of the interview was Mr. Blair’s firm belief in the urgency of the moment to take some preemptive action against Mr. Hussein – if Iraq did not co-operate with the inspectors – before the rest of the world faced the consequences of not doing so. While the audience held the view that war was not the solution to the current crisis, the Prime Minister seemed convinced that the world must get rid of this potential threat as early as possible, and avoiding war now would only be a postponement of the inevitable.

Although some important questions – like the long term consequences of the war, the post-war image of the UK & the US in the eyes of Muslim communities all over world – were not probed much, the interview was still significant from a symbolic point of view, as an example of democracy at work. The premier of a democratic country was ‘grilled’ by a group of citizens on an important decision that mattered to everyone in the country, and even though this did not represent a ballot for making the decision, it played a role in the ongoing debate on the war by bringing the Prime Minister in direct contact with the thoughts and feelings of the common man of his country.

Later, I found more examples of such interviews with Mr. Blair – one was the BBC Breakfast With Frost interview, and another was a transcript of an interview where Mr. Blair answered questions sent by BBC News Online users and BBC World Service listeners. I could not find anything similar involving George Bush, however.

Reminiscences of a booklover

Years ago when I was in school, I discovered books from the Soviet Union available in select bookstores at unbelievably inexpensive prices. For around 5 Indian Rupees ( a little less than quarter of a US dollar, in those days ) one could buy a collection of short stories by Leo Tolstoy. The bulk of these books came from MIR publishers, and the subjects ranged over a wide array of topics, literature and science being my favorite picks.

I knew little about political science to understand the reason for the difference in prices of books from the western countries ( mainly US ) and the Soviet Union. To me, these books were simply a source of joy since they offered a luxury I never could dream of while still in school : buying books. The little scraps of currency notes I managed to save went into these books, some of which were too advanced for me to read in that stage of mental development. Two of my earliest books were “Entertaining Electronics” and “Diseases of the Ear Nose and Throat”; I bought these when I was only 11 years old, in a book exhibition held at the boarding school I was studying in. The rationale behind the purchase, as I can remember it now, was that these were books from the most likely streams of study I would choose later ( engineering and medicine ), so it was an investment for a future I believed I would be a part of.

With the break up of the Soviet Union, the source of these books ceased to exist. Bookstores which stocked books only from the erstwhile Soviet Union had to shift their product line completely, or face shutdown. The stores that managed to survive went through a phase where they had books from the Soviet Union juxtaposed with their counterparts from the western world. In such a setting, the difference in prices appeared more unreal, especially to someone who was oblivious to the past.

As late as 1997, I was able to visit such a store in Bangalore and pick up a full set of short stories by Chekov – the set of six books cost me around 100 Rupees. Needless to say, I was thrilled.

These thoughts, about a past long gone, came back to me while I was reading The business of books. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in books, since it delves into a matter vital to the future of this medium. The book is compact; it makes its points directly and offers a few anecdotes here and there – it does not go over the same point again and again : a malaise that is so very common in books related to management and business.

I discuss the book at length in my new section.

A Beginning

Well, here’s Yet Another Blog On The Block.

Po Bronson’s next book was released recently – “What should I do with my life ?”. I got to know about Bronson when I picked up one of his earlier books “The Nudist on the late shift and other tales of the silicon valley” sometime in mid 2000. My journal entry – a personal one, not a weblog then – records some initial impressions of that book :

2nd July 2000

I picked the book because the title looked catchy, and it gave the impression that the book was more anecdotal rather than filled with analysis of how things in the silicon valley are or should be or will be in xyz years. And I was not disappointed.

As mentioned in one of the blurbs, Po Bronson does not get judgmental in the book. He puts forward facts the way he sees it, period. There are no long winding analysis and theories, so there is little one can fault him with.

Bronson is at his best when he focuses on a single person. There are a few chapters like that ( where he talks about Sabeer Bhatia the entrepreneur or Hillis the computer scientist….)…

He begins with a problem most people have with the Silicon Valley : the lack of any physical entity which one can associate with the valley. When people come to the valley after hearing so much about it, they are disappointed since there is nothing that signifies the “valley” – it is just another place with its offices and homes. To get a feel of the valley, you have do what Bronson does : meet and talk to people working in different capacities in the valley.

This is the first of Bronson’s work that I have encountered, and I find his method interesting : he arranges for meetings with people working in the valley – programmers, salesmen, entrepreneurs, writers etc – and follows the thread of that part of their lives which has got something to do with the silicon valley ( which, in most cases, is almost their entire lives : there is little else in life these people seem to do ). He meets the same people from time to time and follows up their story. Thus, in the “Newcomers” we get to meet a few newcomers to the valley – few of whom are struggling to establish themselves; in the “Programmers” we are taken into the lives of a few freelance programmers working on a game project; in the “Entrepreneur” we get to meet Sabeer Bhatia, the man behind “HotMail”……

The new book is much more ambitious in scope – Bronson is no longer confined to the Silicon Valley. His method in the new book seems to be similar to the one outlined above : he has spoken to around 900 people all over the US and chosen a few of them to spend more time with for his “case studies”. But the new book is unlikely to have that one characteristic I found pleasing about his previous book : a non-judgmental treatment of his subjects.

The topic addresses a very fundamental question, and a very important one too, for the times we live in. The timing is clearly important for such a book to be relevant – one cannot imagine such a book being of much relevance in the last century, simply because there were not enough choices available for the common man to think about what to do with one’s life. So that is a crucial – and probably unstated – assumption in the book : asking ourselves what we want to do with our lives must rely on the assumption that we do have different alternatives to choose from ( or to create ).

For the audience it addresses – educated people all over the world ? – the assumption mostly holds true today, so for all practical purposes it is not a limiting factor. What could prove to be a limiting factor – and this is only a guess, since I have not yet read the book – is the fact that Bronson’s subjects are mostly Americans. It would be interesting to see to what extent the experience of people living in the US prove to be representative of the issues confronting people asking a similar question in other societies which are very different – culturally, socially and economically – from the US.

I’ve read an extract from the book, and ordered it from Amazon. I’m looking forward to encountering the familiar brown package at my doorstep ( Amazon’s packages are too big for my small postbox ).