Infidel: keeping the faith

"Who are you?"
"I am Ayaan, the daughter of Hirsi, the son of Magaan."

Ayaan Hirsi Magan (she changed her last name to Ali in the Netherlands) ) could pay a high price for the effrontery of crossing the gulf that divides patriarchal, tribal Islam from western democracy; the price may be her life. She didn't just 'immigrate' from Somalia to Europe; she changed her definition of morality. And she didn't hold her newfound beliefs in silence, but proclaimed that these were superior to those she had left behind. This is why hardcore Islam pursues her like an avenging fury. This kind of Islam demands not only the 'submission of will' but also the suspension of disbelief from those who are born into it.

Hirsi Ali has written an autobiography, 'Infidel', which is full of shocking events that the reader must believe because the author's voice has the ring of truth. She does not give herself enough credit for her courage, which is her most remarkable quality. I read the book from start to finish one night because I could not put it down.

Hirsi Ali writes:
'Ma taught us to tell the truth because otherwise we would be punished and go to Hell. Our father taught us to be honest because truth is good in itself...From the beginning I was Abeh's (father's) favorite.'

The book was written largely in chronological order, and Hirsi Ali begins with her childhood in Somalia, where she and her two siblings were brought up strictly by her mother and grandmother, and taught their place in the clan hierarchy. Her grandmother forced the two little girls to undergo circumcision in their mother's absence, in spite of both parents' opposition. The author says: 'Imams never discourage the practice: it keeps girls pure.' She feels that this painful experience scarred her younger sister not only physically but also mentally; she became withdrawn and perpetually angry.

Hirsi Ali's father was scholarly and kind to his children, but he had multiple wives and abandoned his family for long periods of time. Her mother grew bitter and beat the children mercilessly. Hirsi Ali had to do all the housework from her teenage years onward, because she was 'the eldest daughter'. When she began to menstruate, her mother beat her and screamed: 'Filthy prostitute!'

The family lived in Saudi Arabia for a while, and the author's mother was heavily influenced by the 'pure Islam' she observed there. Hirsi Ali saw women in burqas for the first time: 'The front of them was black and the back of them was black too. You could see which way they were looking only by the direction their shoes pointed.' Her mother tried hard to be 'baarri' (the Somalian equivalent of the Hindu 'pativrata'). Hirsi Ali defines baarri thus: 'A woman who is baarri is like a pious slave. She honors her husband's family and feeds them without question or complaint. She never whines or makes demands of any kind. She is strong in service, but her head is bowed...She is a devoted, well-trained work animal.' But her mother could never forgive her father's disloyalty.

Somalia rapidly disintegrated after the colonial powers left in 1960, and the family moved to Kenya. Here, Hirsi Ali came under the influence of a teacher who was Saudi trained, and for a while she was a fervent believer in Wahhabi Islam. However, she fell in love with a Kenyan Christian boy who questioned her beliefs. Also, she began to hate the Saudi-sponsored Imam who shouted, 'TOTAL OBEDIENCE: this is the rule in Islam'.

Eventually, when marriage proposals for Hirsi Ali were discussed, she realized: 'I might have a decent life, but I would be dependent -- always--- on someone treating me well...Every Islamic value I had been taught instructed me to put myself last.' Finally, one day her father accepted a proposal for her from a Somali of the same clan who had emigrated to Canada. This horrified Hirsi Ali, who began to think about an escape route. En route to Canada, she managed to slip from her family's stranglehold in the Netherlands. She was ultimately tracked down and forced to account for her behavior. Her father was furious, writing: Go to Hell, and the Devil be with you.' Her mother was kinder(surprisingly), saying: 'You have made a terrible mistake, but you will always be my child.' When Hirsi Ali was asked to justify a divorce from her husband, she simply said: 'It is the will of the soul. The soul cannot be coerced.'

Hirsi Ali worked as a English-Somali translator. She says of this time: 'When I went to the awful places, the police stations, the prisons, the abortion clinics and penal courts, the unemployment offices and the shelters for battered women, I began to notice how many dark faces looked back at me.' Hirsi Ali worked towards her degree in Political Science and felt she had a responsibility to communicate the isolation of Muslims and the distress of Muslim women in Holland to the larger public (especially honor killings). She got her BA and then her MA, finally running for parliament on this platform.

Quoting Hirsi Ali:' Drinking wine and wearing trousers are nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.' She was intoxicated not just by the social mores of Europe, but also by its democratic principles. She made a docu-movie about Islam called 'Submission' with Theo Van Gogh, which led to his assassination and to her living under the shadow of a 'fatwa'. Constantly accompanied by security guards, she lost her privacy and her peace of mind, but she declared nevertheless: 'I'm not going to apologize for the truth.'

Her beloved 'Abeh' could not bear to be estranged from her for long, and they began to talk again. To me, this is one of their most telling exchanges:

'"Abeh, if I ever return to the faith, you are the first person I will tell." My father was quiet. Then he said:"Meanwhile Ayaan, if anyone asks you, do you believe in God, don't answer. Reply that it is a very rude question".'

Profile of a fiend

Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element- Jeremy Bernstein
Joseph Henry Press, 2007

The making of the atomic bomb was one of the biggest scientific projects in history. Some of the brightest minds of the world worked against exceedingly demanding deadlines to produce a nuclear weapon in record time. To do this, every kind of problem imaginable in physics, chemistry, metallurgy, ordnance and engineering had to be surmounted. Many of the problems had never been encountered before and challenged the ingenuity and perseverance of even the best of the brightest.

To accomplish this feat, human, material and monetary resources were poured in on a scale unsurpassed till then. Factories were constructed at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Hanford that were bigger than anything built until then. The resources required were staggering; at one point the Manhattan Project was using 70% of the silver produced in the United States. Steel production in the entire nation had to be ramped up to fulfill the needs of the secret laboratories. Extra electricity on a national scale had to be generated to power the hungry reactors and electromagnetic separators. The factories at Oak Ridge were giant structures; one of them was a whole mile under one roof. The gargantuan factories and the resulting employment increased the population of the small town from 3000 to about 75,000. At the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of people and an estimated 2 billion 1945 dollars had been spent on the biggest technical project in history. The entire country had had to be mobilized for it. In just three years, the scale of the project was consuming about as many resources as the US automobile industry, an astonishing achievement. Only the United States could have done something like that at the time.

Of all the myriad and complex problems involved in the project, two stand out for their formidable complexity and difficulty. One was the separation of uranium-235 from its much more abundant cousin uranium-238. The differences between the masses of the two isotopes is so small that at the beginning, nobody believed that it could be done. Indeed, the atomic bomb effort in Germany largely stalled because its leaders could not think of any way this could be done in any reasonable time. An entire town had to be constructed at Oak Ridge to surmount this problem. Even today this is probably the single-hardest problem for anyone wanting to construct an atomic bomb from scratch.

However, the uranium separation problem was at least anticipated at the very beginning. Compared to this, the second problem was completely unexpected. It involved a material from hell that nobody had seen before. This material was highly unstable and difficult to work with, intensely radioactive, and its discovery was one of the most closely-kept secrets of all time. The material would play a decisive role in the project and in the nuclear arms race that was to ensue. Today, its shadow looms large over the world. This material is plutonium.

Now in a succinct and readable book, well-known physicist and historian of science Jeremy Bernstein tracks the history of a diabolical fiend. Bernstein has earlier written biographies of Oppenheimer and Hans Bethe and a recent book on nuclear weapons. He is an accomplished veteran physicist who has known some of the big names in physics of the century, Oppenheimer and Bethe included. Bernstein is a fine writer who recounts many interesting anecdotes and bits of trivia. But he does have one annoying habit; his constant tendency to digress from the matter under consideration. He could be talking about one event and then suddenly digress into a four page life history of a person involved in that event. One gets the feeling that Bernstein wants to put his opinion of every small and sundry event from the life of every scientist he has met or heard of on record. At times, the connections he unravels are rather tenuous and long-winded. Readers could be forgiven for finding Bernstein's digressions too many in number. But at the same time, those interested in the history of physics and atomic energy will be rewarded if they persevere; most of Bernstein's forays, though exasperating, are also quite interesting. In this particular case, they weave a complex story around a singular element.

Plutonium was discovered by the chemist Glenn Seaborg and his associates at Berkeley in 1940. In a breathtakingly productive career, Seaborg would go on to discover nine more transuranic elements, advise four US presidents, win the Nobel prize, win enough other awards and honors to have an entry in the Guinness Book, and have an element and asteroid named after him while still alive. After fission was discovered, it was hypothesized that elements with atomic numbers 93 and 94 might also behave like uranium. In 1939 Seaborg was a young scientist working at Berkeley when he heard about the discovery of fission. In the next year he performed many experiments on fission at Chicago and Berkeley. In 1940, another future Nobel laureate named Edwin McMillan discovered a radioactive element past uranium with a postdoc, Philip Abelson. In logical sequence they named it neptunium. Abelson and McMillan's June 1940 paper on neptunium was the last paper to come out of the United States on fission and related issues; the need for secrecy in such matters had already been realised by senior scientists. There matters stood until December 1941- a decisive time due to Pearl Harbor- when Seaborg, McMillan and their associates Joseph Kennedy and Arthur Wahl discovered element 94 by using tedious and clever chemical techniques. After uranium and neptunium, Seaborg decided to name the new element after Pluto- the god of fertility but also the god of the underworld.

Concomitantly with the American effort, the Germans were also trying to understand the properties of plutonium and Bernstein devotes a chapter to their efforts and background. A resourceful German physicist named Carl Friedrich von Weiszacker had observantly noticed the dwindling and disappearance of papers from the United States after the paper by McMillan and Abelson appeared in mid 1940. He also realised the advantage of using plutonium in a nuclear weapon. But as the history of the German atomic project makes clear, Weiszacker's report was not taken too seriously, and in any case the Germans were too cash and resources-strapped to seriously pursue the production of plutonium. Notice was also taken by accomplished physicists in the Soviet Union but it was espionage that provided them with information about the real potential and importance of plutonium. The fascinating story of Soviet espionage is superbly narrated in Richard Rhodes's Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.

Plutonium was soon isolated in gram quantities by Seaborg's team and its enhanced fissile properties were investigated. After the enormous problems with separating U-235 were realised, the great advantage of plutonium became obvious; plutonium being a different element, it would be relatively easy to separate from its parent uranium, thus avoiding the difficulty of isotope separation. After plutonium was discovered, it was found that it is even more prone to fission than uranium. Compounded with its relative ease of separation, this property of plutonium made it a key material for a nuclear weapon. It was also realised however that many tons of uranium would have to be bombarded with neutrons to produce pounds of the precious element. By 1942, it was known that at least a few kilograms of both uranium and plutonium would be needed for the critical mass of a bomb. To this end enormous factories were constructed at Oak Ridge (for enriching uranium) and reactors at Hanford in Washington state (for producing plutonium) in 1943. The reactors at Hanford would keep on producing the material for thousands of nuclear warheads until the late 1980s. A secret lab at Los Alamos was concurrently established, headed by Robert Oppenheimer. He would bring a group of "luminaries" to the mesa high up in the mountains for working on the actual design of an atomic weapon.

At Los Alamos, initial designs of bombs with both uranium and plutonium involved the "gun method" wherein a plug of fissile material would be shot down at great speed along a large gun barrel into another mould of fissile material. When the two met a critical mass would suddenly materialize and fission would result in an explosive detonation. However, a fatal flaw was unexpectedly encountered in 1944. When the first few grams of plutonium arrived at Los Alamos from Hanford, it was observed that Pu-239 had a very high rate of "spontaneous" fission due to the copious presence of another isotope, Pu-240. Even today, the feature that distinguishes "reactor-grade" plutonium from "weapons-grade" plutonium is the higher presence of Pu-240 in reactor-grade material. Because of the presence of extra neutrons from spontaneous fission, a gun type bomb though it would work for U-235 would be worthless for Pu-239 since by the time the two pieces met, fission would have already started and the result would be a "fizzle", a suboptimal explosion. Because of this difficulty the whole lab was reorganised by Oppenheimer in August 1944 and experts were brought in to investigate new mechanisms for a plutonium bomb.

The result was one of the most ingenious concepts in nuclear weapons history and design- implosion. The idea was to suddenly squeeze a sub-critical ball of plutonium using high explosives into a highly compressed supercritical mass, causing fission and a massive explosion. The problem was that this microsecond compression had to be perfectly symmetrical, otherwise the Pu-239 would simply squirt out along the path of least resistance like dough squeezed within the cupped palms of our hands. To circumvent this problem would require the capabilities of some of the greatest scientists of the day. The Hungarian genius John von Neumann supplied the crucial idea of using "lenses" of explosives of differing densities to direct shock waves that would symmetrically converge onto a point, just like light through glass lenses. The concept required a paradigm shift- nobody had used explosives before as precision tools; they were generally used to blow things out, not in. Even after the idea was floated, the engineering and diagnostics obstacles were formidable. Chemist George Kistiakowsky from Harvard was put in charge of a division that would painstakingly develop the moulds for the lenses; machining had to be accurate to within microns as any air bubbles, cracks or irregularities would immediately impede the symmetrical shock wave. Another challenging device was the "initiator", a tiny ball of radioactive elements in the center of the sphere that would release neutrons right after the implosion, but not a moment before. Its design was so challenging that it is one of the few things that's still almost completely classified. One of the physicists who worked on both shock wave hydrodynamics and on initiator design was Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs. He was ironically brought in as part of a British team to replace Edward Teller, whose reluctance to pursue implosion and obsession with hydrogen bombs tested the patience of theoretical division leader Hans Bethe. Information obtained by Fuchs would prove invaluable to the Russians in building their own implosion bomb.

Compounding all of these difficulties was the hideously diabolical nature of Pu-239 itself. Chemists and metallurgists had never faced the challenge before of working with such an unusual and dangerous material. Pu-239 exists as several allotropes, different physical forms of the same element, depending upon the conditions. When one investigates the use of plutonium in a bomb and then looks at its allotropic behavior, it's almost as if nature had conspired to keep humans from using it. The reason is that at room temperature, Pu-239 exists as an allotrope named the alpha phase allotrope. The problem with this is that while it is dense, it is brittle and won't do at all for an implosion. On the other hand the allotrope of Pu-239 that is suitable for a bomb, the delta phase, exists only at 315 degrees centigrade and above. This is a catch-22 situation; the useful and machinable allotrope exists only at high temperatures while the one at room temperature is worthless. A very clever solution to this was discovered by human ingenuity; Cyril Smith, head of the metallurgy division at Los Alamos found that adding a small amount of the metal gallium to Pu-239 stabilized the valuable delta phase at room temperature. This was found only a few months before the first test of the bomb.

In the end, while the uranium bomb was reliable enough to not require testing, the implosion bomb was too novel to use without testing. On July 16, 1945, the sky thundered and a new force surpassing human ability to contain it was unleashed in the cold desert sands of New Mexico at the Trinity test site. Plutonium tested on that ominous dawn would reincarnate into Fat Man, the bomb that leveled Nagasaki in less than ten seconds.

In addition to Pu-239's unusual chemistry, there were of course its radioactive properties that make its name so dreaded for laypersons. But we have to put things in perspective. I would easily be within a kilometer of Pu-239 than within a kilometer of anthrax or VX nerve gas. Plutonium decays by emitting alpha particles and simple laws of physics dictate that these particles have a very short range. You could hold Pu on a sheet of paper in the palm of your hand and live to talk about it. The real danger from Pu-239 comes from inhaling it; it can cause severe damage to lungs and bone and cause cancer. Its half-life is 24,000 years and another law of physics dictates that half-life and radioactive intensity are inversely related. To help understand Pu-239's true nature, Bernstein narrates a fascinating study of 37 technicians and scientists at Los Alamos who ended up getting Pu-239 into their system. This group was whimsically named the "UPPU" (U Pee Pu) group as Pu-239 could be detected in their urine. The group was tested periodically at Los Alamos for many years. The verdict is clear; none of these people suffered long-term damage from Pu-239. Many of them lived long and healthy lives and some of them are still alive. As with other aspects of nuclear power, the danger from plutonium has to be carefully reasoned and objectively assessed. As with other nuclear material, Pu needs to be handled with the utmost care, but that does not mean that fears about it should outweigh benefits that one could get from its potential for providing power. There is naturally a real proliferation danger with plutonium, but even there, risks are often inflated. Terrorists will have to steal a substantial amount of Pu using special equipment from facilities which are usually heavily guarded. Stealing Pu and using it is not as easy as robbing a bank and laundering the money.

However, there are sites in the former Soviet Union where plutonium is not that heavily guarded and these will have to be secured. 5 kilograms of Pu-239 if efficiently utilised can be used for a weapon that will easily destroy Manhattan. It is very difficult to keep track of such small quantities through inspection. International collaboration will be necessary to keep track of and contain every gram of plutonium at vulnerable facilities. At the same time, power-generating plutonium is indispensable for the future of humanity. Forged on earth by human brilliance, Pu outlived its initial use. Most of the warheads in the US arsenal including thermonuclear warheads use plutonium for the fission assembly. Several hundred tons of both weapons-grade and reactor-grade plutonium have been produced and are being produced. Hundreds more sit in fuel rods immersed in huge water pools, glowing eerily with a bluish light. Plutonium production sites in the United States are facing a heavy and expensive backlog of cleanups.

Plutonium seems to be a classic case of the "careful what you wish for" adage. Glenn Seaborg would not have imagined the consequences of his discovery that hazy morning in December 1941, when after an all-night session the angry element revealed itself to a warring world, kicking and screaming from its fiery radioactive cradle. But as Richard Feynman once so lucidly put it, science is a set of keys that open the gates to heaven. The same keys open the gates to hell. Plutonium constitutes one of the keys to heaven that's given to us. Which gate to approach is entirely our choice.

Books: A mirror into your soulmate?

From the NYT: It's not you, it's your books:

Let’s face it — this may be a gender issue. Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. “It’s really great if you find a guy that reads, period,” said Beverly West, an author of “Bibliotherapy: The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives.” Jessa Crispin, a blogger at the literary site Bookslut.com, agrees. “Most of my friends and men in my life are nonreaders,” she said, but “now that you mention it, if I went over to a man’s house and there were those books about life’s lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”

Related story on NPR

Will this lead to more pretentiousness? However, I think after a while it is easy to tell the cheaters. So, guys get off the computer and read some books! Perhaps, to make it easy for guys, girls should wear t-shirts that self-identify them. Like, "I love nerds", or "If you're into books, I'm into you!".

Sacks's Musicophilia

Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who writes popular books and articles on the brain. His latest book Musicophilia is on music and the brain. The title of the book is inspired by this story of Tony Cicoria (Abstract of the first chapter). Tony after being struck by lightning suddenly developed a strong attraction for making music. At the age of forty he began playing the piano. This sudden love for music was beyond mere passion. Something had got structurally altered in his brain that made him play and appreciate music beyond the level of an amateur after having no training or practice for most of his adult life.

As far as we know, no animal has been trained to tap to an external auditory beat. True, animals make beautiful music, but not for pleasure; music does not drive them into ecstasy. Yet, there are many among us who can't hold a note, or manage to follow a strict rhythm. Yet, humans are unique in the facility to hear and enjoy music. Apart from the few who unluckily have amusia and others whom music drives them mad, the rest of us relate to music. Isn't it just structured noise?

My envy is directed to the one in 10,000 people who have perfect pitch, the ability to tell which note is being played or key without any external reference. For such people, each note or key has distinct flavor or 'color'. And, if you play a transposed (shift the key) version of the song, they can immediately tell that it does not feel right. In a manner we can tell that something is wrong if tomatoes suddenly appeared to be green or cabbages yellow in a grocery store. Apparently, Mozart had this ability and once told his colleague that since the last time they played together his colleague's violin was a semitone flatter.

Who is to blame? Language. Apparently, all of us have an innate ability to acquire perfect pitch. Learning of language between the ages of four and six interferes with tonality and we all lose this facility except for a few lucky ones. What attaches credence to theory is that musicians who are native Mandarin Chinese speakers are six times more likely to have perfect pitch than than musical American counterparts. Why? Because Chinese is a tonal language which may preserve this sensitivity to tonality that the rest of us lose.

Music is special to us. It has a precise mathematical structure and at the same time a lot of emotional content. Sacks talks about people who seems to have one, but not the other. Bathroom-only singers seems make up for lack of talent by volume and brio. A truly great artist is a master of both - technique and feeling.

The definitive and chilling history of terror

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
Knopf, 2006

Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower is the best history of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden that I have come across. Wright traces not just the history of the terrorist, but the fascinating if disturbing history of Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East, where religion was more intimately linked with people's way of life than in any other nation in the world, and where a perception of the world engendered by old tribal customs and anti-Western attitudes fanned hate and extremism that was nonetheless seen by its practitioners to be essential to maintain their culture and religion- a point that has been sadly lost on Westerners. As CIA agent and bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer says, they don't attack the US because of "its freedoms". They attack the US because they see the US as interfering in their quintessential Islamic way of life, what they hold dearest, irrespective of whether it's justified or not. They are as much in love with Islam as any one ever was with any entity. That is what is frightening.

Wright traces the roots of extremism in the Middle East through Saudi Arabia's history, where extreme and primitive religious traditions juxtaposed strangely with immense wealth driven by exploration for oil. It was in this milieu, after World War 2 that Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri grew up and acquired a taste of jihad. Often lucidly Wright talks about the environment where they spent their childhoods, and brings the rustic Saudi Arabian landscape to life. Wright also talks about the enduring influence of Syed Qutb, the devout Egyptian religious scholar who was disturbed by what he perceived as the hedonistic coed culture of the United States, when he visited the country as an exchange scholar in the 1950s. It was his writings and his image as a martyr- Qutb was jailed and executed as an extremist in Egypt- that greatly inspired Bin Laden's and Al Zawahiri's calls for worldwide Jihad.

Wright also documents in considerable detail both Bin Laden's and Al-Zawahiri's transformation from educated, well-to-do moderates to extremist radicals in love with the Quran and martyrdom. Bin Laden's extremism was only set aflame during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Wright vividly describes the deadly brotherhood and romantic visions of martyrdom that bound the Jihadis together in that war-torn country. It only helped that Bin Laden had the money to draw followers and finance missions. After that, it was only natural and a small step before Bin Laden turned his already brainwashed and transformed psyche towards the US.

On this side of the Atlantic, Wright also narrates the urgent and often heartbreaking efforts of the few CIA and FBI agents who recognized Bin Laden's threat in the 90s, the marginalized Michael Scheuer among them. The central tragic figure in the book is John O'Neill, the brilliant, swaggering but restless and tormented FBI agent who was desperate to snare Bin Laden, often fighting tenaciously against the foot-dragging and bureaucracy in the government agencies. A man who never achieved satisfaction in life, O'Neill was a heavy drinker who lived with three women at the same time. After many failed attempts to capture Bin Laden and convince the administration to be more serious about the threat- a journey that along with some other dedicated FBI agents led him around the world from Africa to the Middle East- O'Neill finally had enough and took up a new position as head of security...at none other than the World Trade Center. O'Neill could have escaped in the initial attacks. But keeping with tradition, he decided to go inside the flaming towers to save others. The man who more than almost anyone else had been trying to catch or kill Bin Laden tragically perished inside the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Wright's book is a gripping treatment of an urgent subject. It demonstrates what fearsome power religion can summon, how it can completely transform the minds of men in the service of romanticized deadly causes, how blind ideology can have devastating and heartbreaking consequences. It shows us how the Middle East is largely and tragically still a land stuck in time, where irrational beliefs and tribal brotherhood can manifest in the most violent ways. The story of these gentle-looking, pious Jihadis is chlling by any standards. It is yet another illustration of the insidious nature of religious faith. It deserves to be read, and we all deserve to read it and think about what we can do to stop such fanaticism. The leader of the United States is not even close when he says that the men of Al Qaeda are cowards and fanatics. They are anything but that; they are cold, calculating, determined men who have dedicated their lives to what they see as the most just cause in their lives. They need to be stopped at any cost, and understanding where they come from will be the first step in trying to do that.

Imitation as a form of tribute

I know there’s some of us who’d rather that people leave the classics well enough alone (in my case, the sentiment comes because of horrors like Mr. Reshammiya remaking Karz), but two readings in the past month have left me in no doubt that the fan fiction/pastiche genre is alive and kicking.

Exhibit A: Jamyang Norbu’s ‘The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes’.

For those who come in late, Sherlock Holmes is officially dead. He battled with Professor James Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls and fell to his death along with his arch nemesis.

Of course, he will return to London soon as chronicled in ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes’, casually explaining his two year absence away as

"I traveled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhasa."

Expanding on these two Watson-less years in the life of Sherlock Holmes means placing his adventures in the hands of an equally accomplished sidekick/raconteur – Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Hurree Babu’, in Her Majesty’s Service.

While I read Kipling too far back to have any lasting memories, Holmes features in my reading list at least once every year or so – frequently enough for me to comment on how faithful Norbu’s style is to the original. The typical fringe characters – the competent police officer shown up as bumbling by the infallible Holmes, the indefatigable enemy almost equal in skills to Holmes (but not quite) are all here.

And so, of course is Holmes. Norbu manages to invoke the side of Holmes not expounded upon in the Doyle tales as much – the melancholic violin-player and drug-inhaler, as also the world-weary philosopher who seems to perk up only at the sight of an intellectual challenge. Importantly, Norbu does all this without sacrificing the hard-nosed investigative nous the man exhibits at the best of times. Equally magical are descriptions of the ‘roof of the world’ – Tibet and the pair’s journeys through this most inhospitable territory. Palace intrigue, Eastern mystique and vintage Holmes. What more could one ask for?

This book won Norbu the Crossword book prize in 2000.

Exhibit B: Neil Gaiman's "Marvel 1602"

Somehow, the Marvel universe has always held a fascination for me. I personally prefer the muted film versions of Spiderman and X-Men over the flash and !!multiple exclamation points!! of the comic book versions. However, there's no denying the mythology that surrounds the best of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's work.

1602 takes these characters to a completely different place, yet retaining their essence. Transplanting the usual suspects of the Marvel universe to the early seventeenth century, this graphic novel adds in a generous dose of palace intrigue ( Queen Elizabeth, succeeded by King James of Scotland) , some other mythology and makes for intriguing reading. I had an easier time getting the 'in' jokes for the X-Men and Spiderman, though I'm sure there's a bunch I missed with Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Nicholas Fury and Bruce Banner (later to become the Hulk) livening up proceedings as well.

Strongly recommended, and not just for the comic book fan. 

Oscar and Lucinda

The 1988 Booker prize-winner, ‘Oscar and Lucinda’, is not magic realism. It’s real magic.

Peter Carey furnishes his characters with a wealth of detail, enough to match up to some great female writers; Eliot, Austen and Toni Morrison. These women put their fictional characters under a microscope and applied their tremendous knowledge of human nature to unraveling their intrigues. Carey does this too, but with the additional self-imposed burden of characters like exotic butterflies. Even Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple would be unable to find parallels for these strange creatures in St. Mary Mead.

Marquez uses lyricism to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality, but Carey uses rich and painstaking description to make you believe in the exploits of two oddball protagonists in 19th century Australia, Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda Leplastrier. They have in common a sinful obsession: gambling. Oscar is a clergyman and this exacerbates his sin, while Lucinda is a middle-class woman and this exacerbates hers. The roots of their shared addiction can be traced to their childhoods. Oscar (rendered motherless) was brought up by a stern Minister of the Plymouth Brethren, and then adopted by an impoverished couple who could not love him. He begins to gamble at Oxford to make both ends meet (but not for undue profit), and then he cannot stop:

"He had bet on dried peas, spinning tops and the progress of ants along a gold-topped walking stick. He had played cribbage for two or three pounds a game. But he had never bet from greed or avarice. The state of his coal scuttle, the condition of his shoes, all attested to that."

Oscar feels:

"It was not gambling that was vile. What was vile was his passion, the extraordinary excitement that he felt…"

Lucinda(rendered fatherless) was brought up by her unhappy mother in the isolation of their Australian ranch. One of her happiest memories of her father is the moment when they shattered a 'Prince Rupert's drop' together. The 'Prince Rupert's drop' was a beautiful glass object which could be fully enjoyed only by destroying it. Lucinda grows up to buy a glass factory with her inheritance, and Carey describes Lucinda's love of glass thus:

"She knew already the lovely contradictory nature of glass and she did not have to be told, on the day she saw the works in Darling Harbor, that glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but a liquid…in short a joyous and paradoxical thing, as good a material as any to build a life from."

Lucinda soon realizes that in Sydney society she is a fish out of water. She has lived a solitary life on her own terms for so long that she cannot adapt to conventional norms. She wants to take an active part in running her glass factory, but the male workers object to a woman's presence and authority. Gambling becomes her only pleasure, and she gambles without the nagging guilt that Oscar feels.

Before Oscar and Lucinda meet, they each have at least one loyal friend; Oscar can rely on the dissolute but good-hearted Wardley-Fish, while Lucinda feels some sense of companionship with the worldly Dennis Hasset. But after they meet each other, as they begin to draw closer, we know that it will never get any better than this for either of them. Or any worse; Oscar and Lucinda apart were already hated for their refusal to conform, and when they come together their relationship draws further societal ire.

The plot builds to a fantastic climax in which they Oscar wagers his love and Lucinda her fortune on transporting a fragile glass church across the breadth of the Australian desert. Anything less would not have been worthy of Oscar and Lucinda.

"If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise. "
-Johann von Goethe