An Inspector Calls

         An Inspector Calls by J B Priestly is an interesting play which thrills the reader in several different ways. Written in 1912, this play is a mixture of social criticism, religious idealism and family drama.
        The play opens in Mr. Birling's dining room where the family is hosting a dinner. Present in the room are Mr. Birling, Mrs. Sybil Birling, Miss. Sheila Birling (their daughter), Mr. Eric Birling (their son) and Mr. Gerald Kroft, who might marry Sheila. Mr. Kroft is to inherit his father's industry which has been offering tough competition to Mr. Birling's.
        As soon as Gerald gives a ring to Sheila as a sign of engagement, an inspector called Mr. Goole calls and the plot begins to thicken.
        Eva Smith, a young working class lady, has committed suicide. Mr. Birling admits that he had to dismiss the lady, even though she was a good worker, when she asked for a pay rise. He dismisses her from a photograph shown by Mr. Goole. He confesses that it was an unfair thing but he believes that he was left with no option. 
        Sheila who walks in also gets to see the photo and recognizes her as the girl she forced a ready-made shop to fire from service. This was the girl's second job. When she brought a dress to Sheila she first held it close to her body and it looked great on her. When Sheila tried it, it looked ridiculous on her. She noticed the girl smiling at another salesgirl. Infuriated with jealousy, Sheila forced the shop to dismiss her, using her father's position as an major industrialist and a politician.
        Now Gerald is also shown the photograph and he confessed that he also met her at a bar and gave her some money and a place to stay in. In other words, he kept her as his mistress. She had changed her name. During that time, he did not come to meet Sheila and his excuse was that he was too busy with his work. Sheila immediately returns his ring though she acknowledges his honesty.
         Now it is Mrs. Sybil Briling's turn. As the head of the charity committee she also wounded Eva when she approached her as Mrs. Briling. She was put of by the fact that the  fake name Eva used was her own. She asked the committee not to help her though the girl was pregnant. She also refused to believe the girl's story that the man who impregnated her had offered her some compensation but since it was stolen cash, she did not take it so as not to make the man a thief. Mrs. Briling asks whether a girl of her standing could afford to be so conscientious. Sheila tells her not to play into the inspector's hand by being so innocent as he might tear her to pieces. However, against Sheila's protest, Mrs. Briling says that the young man should be properly punished.
         The last one to fall in is Mr. Eric Briling. He admits that he was the one who impregnated the girl and stole the money from his father's office to pay the girl. In a way the girl didn't lie about her name this time. She considered herself as the wife of Mr. Eric Briling. So she introduced herself as Mrs. Briling.
         Eric and Sheila confess their guilt but their parents and Gerald sticks to the idea that it was the girl who should be blamed. The inspector walks out telling them that such uncivil practices will be met with fire, blood and anguish.
         After the inspector leaves, Gerald manages to find out that there is no inspector by that name in the entire police force. They also find that no girl had committed suicide that night. This makes the inspector and impostor and all except Sheila and Eric consider themselves exonerated. They vehemently argue their way out of it, though they admit that he was of a strange nature and behaviour. He knew everything even before they opened their mouths. 
         The play ends when they get a phone call informing them that a girl has committed suicide and that a police inspector is on his way to meet all of them.
          The real identity of the inspector is left to the reader's speculation. So is the question whether he was showing them the photographs of different girls. We also hear the parents and Mr. Gerald passing a poor opinion about some of the great writers of the time.
          If we take the play as a symbolic representation, it can be observed that Eva represents the woman folk from the working classes about whom the rich people has no regard. They exploit them in different ways. They are either workers, or sleeping partners for them. 
          The inspector's words 'fire, blood and anguish' refers to suffering in hell or at the hands of the revolutionaries or a stern legal system in future. We see that Sheila and Eric are willing to learn a lesson but the others refuse to do so. Everyone's real nature is brought out by the inspector. 

          Whether they all wronged the same girl or different one is not an important question. It is only as insignificant as the parents' and Gerald's question whether the inspector was real or fake. See holistically, this is what working class women suffer at the hands of the rich everywhere in the world, then and now. This is how the rich see their own mistakes, then and now. This is the lesson that many refuse to learn, then and now. In other words, this is a theme that goes beyond time and place. The writer is able to present it in such a way that it has several layers of meaning and all of them are more blatant and not subtler than the other. 

The Pursuit of Happyness

 19 men in pursuit of sadness

A movie is a kind of shadow play and there is a lot hidden in the shadows. For example, the 19 men who had worked at Dean Witter with Chris Gardner (including the one who didn't see the essay question) are left in the shadows. They probably went looking for a room in homeless shelters like the Glide. While we agree that the Smiths win our heart by bringing their off-screen relationship to the screen, we should not forget that the movie is just another advertisement of the great American Dream of hard work and guaranteed success. If hard work brought success to everyone, we wouldn't have half the world worming under the poverty line. But the movie maker is also an artist who has an inner motivation to tell the truth and evidences of him revolting against the movie being a sentimental comedy are explicit. The title of the movie itself gives it away. The hero insists that there should be an I in happiness. Happiness refers only to my happiness and Y (why?) has nothing to do with it. Yeah, sure, ignorance is bliss. Happiness is what I want and why should I think of the 19 others who didn't make it? Losers. We identify easily with the hero because of the perfect characterization and when he tastes success in the end, all our anxieties are over. Well, for the other 19 men, their pursuit of happiness has come to a sad end, at least for now, till they join another rat race. We now find the hero in a different crowd at the end of the scene, among people who are well fed, well dressed, happy. When the lights come on, the wretched faces at the Glide are no longer remembered. Mom didn't leave because of the son; she left because of herself. Hey, Chris, did dad have something to do with that? No? She said you she gave you a baby in return for your false promises and you still went on saying 'it is all right' . The hero himself calls the successful part of his life 'the little part', light at the end of a tunnel. Was his struggle worth it? Does it bring back Christopher's mom? The movie is silent about this. The president urges people to pay their tax. But the hero is in the business of helping people evade it. Only the poor lose it from their petty savings accounts. Chris, for example when he used to be a nobody. Knock knock. Who is there? No answer. The nobody has become somebody and that is how the movie ends. But not all movies lie..... Bicycle Thieves is a 1948 Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi Bartolini. It was given an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, and, just four years after its release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by the magazine Sight & Sound's poll of filmmakers and critics in 1952. The film placed sixth as the greatest ever made in Sight & Sound's latest directors' poll, conducted in 2002, and was ranked in the top 10 of the BBFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14. See the movie for yourself and find out how much of the movie has been copied by “The Pursuit of Happiness without acknowledgement.

hWat is dyslexia?

The English language has a lot of problems inherent in it and that is what makes it so cute. However, it causes a lot of problems for those who learn it as a second language. Isn't amazing that some of the learning problems is seen only in those who learn English and still we think they are school problems or the children's problems? In a world like ours where even sickness is seen as a potential market, there is more chance for a child to be learned dyslexic. If the diagnosis is a farce, the treatment that follows is a comedy of errors. Instead of letting the children find our what they are strong in, they are made aware of their weaknesses using snake oil therapies. Some children are proud of their problems since it guarantees them some initial attention. Some other see a potential excuse for not doing the homework. Some day the school gets fed up of them and leaves them to swim or sink, mostly sink.

Transferred Epithet

The beauty of language is that it allows you to break rules. You are not sentenced for doing so. Then there are figures of speech. Quite interesting. We use metaphors to make it clearer. But a metaphor sounds like you are confused about the names of things. Clarity from confusion, order out of chaos. By definition metaphor is "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable" (Wikipedia). So anything is a metaphor since none of the nouns or verbs have any god given connection to what they refer to. Most of them are generalizations by default. For example, the word 'cow' has a meaning for me which is not understood by you since our life experiences are way too different

Transferred Epithet is another figure of speech which we often use without realizing it. It is the clever art of purposefully misplacing the adjective. In this very sentence the word 'clever' is misplaces since cleverness is not in art but in the person doing it. 'Weary journey' and 'sleepless night' are also good examples. A clever one is: The transferred teacher told me what a smart epithet is.

Are you in on it?

It is said that during the industrial revolution, in Britain, the life style changed 50% in one's life time and today in what we call the post industrial Asia it changes by 10,000%. This means, in your own life time, the things that you see people around you use when you are born are replaced hundred times before you die. This will account for and demand a lot of additions and deletions in your beliefs, concepts, mindset and other mental gymnastics. Are you in on it? It is said that during the industrial revolution, in Britain, the life style changed 50% in one's life time and today in what we call the post industrial Asia it changes by 10,000%. This means, in your own life time, the things that you see people around you use when you are born are replaced hundred times before you die. This will account for and demand a lot of additions and deletions in your beliefs, concepts, mindset and other mental gymnastics. Here is what happened to a few old faithful proverbs. Hunt is on for more........

(Thanks to the computers) The keyboard is mightier than the sword.

(Thanks to the Internet) Good firewalls make good e-mates.

(Thanks to the metric system) A miss is as good as 1.609 km.

(Thanks to the Wright Brothers) Don't change your flights in midair.

(Thanks to the sunset in the British Empire) Cent wise, dollar foolish

(Thanks to the corporate world) A man is known by the firm that keeps him.

(Thanks to political correctness) All work and no play makes Jack a mentally challenged boy.

(Thanks to feminist movements) Like be-getter, like offspring.

(Thanks to fashion industry) All the world is a ramp.

(Thanks again to the metric system) Give him 2.54 centimeters, he will take 0.9144 meters.

(Thanks to the discotheques) They that dance must pay the DJ.

(Thanks to medical insurance coverages) To err is human, to forgive is insane.

(Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg) Two is a company, three is a social network.

(Thanks to the Civil Courts) Where there is a will, there is a law suit.

(Thanks to Residential Schools) Charity ends in the dorm.

(Thanks again to political correctness) Love is visually challenged.

(Thanks again to political correctness) Never speak ill of the biologically challenged.

(Thanks to unsolicited business promotions) Opportunity seldom spams twice.

The Art of Story Telling

Story telling is an art dating back to the ancient days, may be a time soon after people learned to speak. The story teller may want to talk about an incident which he experienced first hand. It would have brought certain emotions to his mind and he wants to bring up the same emotions in his listeners. Now, that is a hard task and so, he resorts to all the tricks in his book (that is if he has one) and then supplements them with gestures, tones, facial expressions and actions. He may even mimic the voices of his characters.Well, a story teller can do it but a writer can't and so he has to make use of other methods. Adding details is one of them.

For example.....

This is not something that I know directly but something that I heard from Mr. Kulkarni, a friend of mine who was working as a supervisor in an orange farm in South Africa. Yes, of course they do have orange farms there. And apple farms, grape farms and extensive vegetable farms too. Even the Chinese government has taken a lot of land on lease to cultivate edible crops.

Now, where were we? Yes, the story told by Mr. Kulakarni. Yes, yes, he is a very intersting man. One of his daughters made it to the Harvard and that too in Astrophysics. Yes, right in Mr. Robert Sawyer's class. Wonderful fellow, this Robert Sawyer is. Heard him live on BBC once. He was talking about the afterlife of something.

OK, now this story. I will make it rather short. It is actually about a father and a son. The son's name was Herbert and they called him Herbie for short. His father's name was John Foulton. The boy had lost his wife in an accident while they were living in Nigeria. The father and his son had just gone out to the city when there occurred in their village a flash flood and a landslide. See, flash flood is bad enough and a landslide is even worse. The father and the son were in the city standing on a bridge watching this river swell up and a lot of muddy water, trees and debris getting washed downstream. The roads were blocked and there was no means of communication and they couldn't go back home the same day and had to stay in a hotel. They couldn't send a message to Herbie's mom. But there was no need. Their house and the houses of several people were washed away by the landslide and several people including Herbie's mother had gone missing. The father and son came to know about this only the next day when they reached the village.

They left the village in a week and came to another village in South Africa. Herbie had to join a new school there and he had to learn Swahli. It was was hard for him.

Herbie used to be a voracious reader and he had finished his home library before he was fourteen. Reading took him to new thoughts and ideas quite different from those of his father and some of his classmates'. When he was thirteen, he and his father moved to a new house near Herbie's school. Now, the father had to take two buses to reach the mine where he worked as the supervisor but his son could just walk to school. This gave the boy quite a lot of time to pursue his hobby which was reading. When he wasnt reading, he would still wander in the garden with a book in his hand.

Their garden was a large one and part of it was wooded and the woods continued to the neighbour's property which was totally wooded. It was an impenetrable forest with tall trees, creepers and all that. Snakes too.

Herbie's father had asked him not to venture into the thick forest beyond their own property and Herbie too was afraid of those creeping things hiding in the grass and among the dry leaves.

Their house and the neighgbouring house once belonged to a carpenter who had sold it to a local merchant who worked at a local department store. He went back to Florida where he got involved in Oyseter farming. The last thing the present owner heard about him was that his farm was prospering and he had a shop near the Kilpatric National Museum of Fine Arts.

Wagabe, the present owner of the house had rented it to Herbie's father for a small rent on condition that he would take good care of the garden. Mr. Foulton loved gardening and he took special care of the garden and it was a sight to see. Two years after they occupied it, the garden had become famous among the villagers there. It had the look of a picture postcard. Shrubs, flowers and some very tall trees. There was even a Venus Fly Trap which gave such pride to Herbert that he invited his whole class to see it one day. But when his classmates came, the plant had no intention to eat, much to Herbie's disappoinment. But his classmates still liked his big house and they played hide and seek there till Herbert's father came back.

Apart from the Venus Fly Trap, there were two more trees which intersted Herbert so much. These were two tall palm trees which always confused him. Only one of them bore fruits since the other one was a male tree. He used to bump into them when he was young and he used to tell his father that those trees always got on his way. His father only gave him an enigmatic smile as a response. Of course, as he grew up he knew what a foolish ideas it was to accuse a tree of getting in you way. You get in their way since you are the one who moves, right? But, wait a minute. How can you get in their way? Their way? Silly, where are they going? They simply don't have a way for you to get in.

These palms were the most precious ones in the garden. They were planted by the house owner's grand aunt who had been excommunicated from the church when they found that she had learned witchcraft from a local medicine man. This medicine man was arrested for the death of two of his rich neighgbours. He was hanged to death. The fact that this lady had learned witchcraft from him came out only after his death when his house was sold and his personal diary was made public by the man who bought his house.

This old lady also died in an accident. People say that it was not an accident but a suicide. Anyway, for some strange reason, the owner of the house had asked Mr. Foulton to take good care of the trees. He had once put a hedge around them and the house owner didn't like it and he had to remove it.

The tree was on the northern part of their house and it was close to the study room on the first floor. From there, the palm trees could be seen.

Only if they were allowed to use the study! That room was under lock and key. Herbert had the desire to look into it several times, but his father told him on all those occasions that he had given his word to the house owner and he was bound to keep it.

Herbert had shared his interst in those trees with a freind of his who was studying in the fourth grade.This boy was four years younger to Herbert and he had missed one year at school since he had whooping cough for almost a year. Even now he looked lean and weak. His name was Hussein and he was a Moslem.

Herbert had asked Hussein to keep it a secret whatever he had told him about the palms. There was no need since what Herbert had told him was not believable anyway.

He had told him that the trees did move. He said that there were days when both of them would change places. He had not noticed this at first since it was hard to tell between them. So, he marked them with a piece of chalk and they didn't move about for a few days. They resumed their movements only after it rained and the chalk marks were washed away.

Herbert tried other ways of marking them like tying strings around one and this too prevented them from moving about. So, he watched them from behind the bushes but never saw them actually moving. But he was sure that they do change places now and then when he was not around.

The first time when Herbert told his father about this was when he was too young and naturally his father didn't take him seriously. But later, years later, Herbet brought it up again when he returned from the city after finishing his Master Degree in Applied Mathematics at the Membua College.

This time his father couldn't deny his request to allow him to open the study room and watch the palms from there on a full moon night.

It was a really bright full moon and Herbert and his father were in the study room waiting to see any movement in the garden. The moon light shone brighly over every shrub and plant in the garden giving them an eerie look.

They didn't see anything for a long time. And then they saw something. The movement was not a subtle one. May be that is why they didn't notice it at first..

However after the initial confusion, they saw the palm trees sliding towards one another and with their palm fronds almost going around each other and slowly but rhythmically engaging themselves in a dance.

Two days later a botanist came and took a good look at the date palms in their garden.

See, that is what a story does to you. It is nothing but pure magic. It is the craft of the story teller or rather his witchcraft.

Shakespeare on Love

1. Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

2. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

3. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

4. If thou remember not the slightest folly into which loves hast made thee run, though hast not loved.

5. But love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit; for if they could, Cupid himself would blush to see me thus transformed to a boy.

6. If music be the food of love, play on.

7. Shall I compare thee to a summer day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate… When in eternal lines to time thou growst So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

8. Love asks me no questions, and gives me endless support…

9. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

10. The courses of true love never did run smooth.

Story Writing

Model Story with the letters in names

 As a practice exercise it is a great idea to take up writing stories with some constricting rules. Trying to write a story with each paragraph starting with each of the letters in a long word or even with the letters in your name is a good way of making your creative juices flow. Here is an example. The author's name is obvious.

Silence prevailed in the courtroom as the judge was about to pronounce the most important part of his verdict. Is the woman to be hanged or confined forever or let go free?

Really speaking, I didn’t care much about it. The court had a long session that day and I was in a hurry to go home.

Everywhere around me, I could hear subtle whispers and heavy sighs. Even the fans which usually made a droning noise were rather quiet today.

Every day, in the courtroom, someone is let go or kept in or even sent to the gallows. Witnessing all this for years had made me kind of insensitive. I was feeling hungry and I could already smell the hot meal in my kitchen a full thirty miles away. Lalitha wouldn’t have eaten but the kids couldn’t have waited.

Killing is not uncommon these days. When the state does it, it is called a war; when the public does it, it is called riot and when it is in the name of justice, it is even considered a good thing.

Usually, women don’t get hanged much these days. Their children or other encumbrances come to their rescue. This woman’s son had never come to the court to plead for her.

Many times I had pondered over the effect of punishments. It is one thing when you cane a child, but it is a totally different issue when an adult is sent to the gallows.

And then I heard it. Even the judge had a hard time pronouncing it. The woman was to be hanged till death. She didn’t scream or even weep. She only expressed her desire to see her son once before she was hanged.

Recalling the heinous nature of her crime,  I had no doubt that she deserved it. But two years later, when fresh evidence of her innocence came to light and the real murderer was arrested, I felt really bad. I didn’t go to the court for two days. But then I resumed my work. To err is human, to forgive is not exactly just divine…it is God himself.

Writing Radio Plays

Though we don’t realize it thousands of good radio plays are produced around the world every year and some media producers like the BBC offer awards and good remuneration to the best among them.

Radio plays are easy to produce. All we need is a really quiet room, some sound effects which you can easily manage if you are creative enough, a good story with a lot of dialogues, a few actors from among your friends and a recording device which can even be your mobile phone.

Using a narrator to compensate for the absence of visuals is an easy but effective technique. Choose a fable from Aesop and spend an afternoon writing, editing and producing and that alone is enough to get you going. Best Wishes!!!!

Writing Movie Reviews

Movie is typically a modern-day art form and it encompasses most of the other art forms, like music, literature, fine arts, theatre and dance.

Movie reviews of all sorts are available on the net and take a look at them. Great movies have been reviewed by great movie critics and such reviews are also available.

Writing a movie review is very much like a writing a book review. There are some differences in the aspects.

Steps: Read whatever is available about the movie or the movie makers and his crew before you see the movie. See the movie at least twice and take down notes regarding the different aspects like:

Introduction: Name of the movie, director, production company and the main actors

First paragraph

1. Theme 
2. Plot and the script
3. Characters
4. Dialogues

Second paragraph

1. Cinematography
2. Lyrics
3. Music
4. Dance

Third  paragraph

1. Technical Details: Sets, location, costumes, lighting, sound recording make-up, side effects and stunt scenes

Concluding paragraph

1. Popularity and critical acclaim

Writing Book Reviews

You can download any number of book reviews from the net. Times magazine publishes proper book reviews which could give you good models. There are five steps in writing a book review

1. Choosing a book
2. Reading it
3. Taking down notes
4. Planning and writing the first draft
5. Final draft

• Choosing a book:  For beginners, it is better to choose a 200 to 400 page novel with a good plot and interesting characters. It is good to buy a copy than to borrow one since you may have to scribble notes on the margins of the book itself. It is also good to choose a book in which the characters undergo some kind of change rather than those novels in which the characters are either heroes or villains, who have no change of mind or character, from the beginning to the end. Since you also have to mention a little bit about the writer, choose a novel by an established writer. Have some idea about a few of his other writing too so that it will be easy for you to see what the writer is actually telling us.
• Reading the Book: Read a little bit about the book before you actually read it. This will help you put the book in its right context and understand its true meaning. True meaning? Yes, some writers are good at saying one thing and meaning something else. For example, George Orwell’s Animal Farm is more about international politics than about an actual animal farm though the book keeps talking about animals and farms.
• Taking down notes: Since the book is quite long, it is easy to forget examples of different aspects of the book and its style, like dialogues and descriptions, characterisation and setting. So, it is good if you can keep some ‘running notes’ or scraps so that you don’t have to go back to the book or spent time searching ‘that crisp dialogue the heroine had with a rose-bush’.
• Planning and writing the first draft: Make sure you can write a convincing, interesting book review which will give a reader a clear idea about the book.   The following aspects should be mentioned in the review:

1. The author, his reputation, awards, publisher, year of publishing
2. The theme (what is it all about)
3. The plot, in three short paragraphs (how it all began, went ahead and ended)
4. Characters (what kind of people are they) the setting (where does it take place) narrations and style (how well written)
5. Personal Comments ( what is your final opinion on the book and why)

      5.  Final Draft: Make a good, legibly written final draft with no errors. Add a picture of the book or the writer at the end. Provide the list of URLs if you have browsed any. Read it out loud to yourself to see if it reads well.

Anna in The Siege

The Siege is a historical novel based on real events. Helen Dunmore makes it very realistic with her peculiar way of non-linear narration, descriptions and close study of human nature. The story happens during the winter of 1941 when Leningrad is under siege from the Germans as well as the Russians. Food runs short and death rates rises sky high.

It is in this background that we see Anna a 23 year old girl with her lost aspiration to become an artist takes charge of her family and manages to help most of its members survive as well as bring positive changes in the lives of other people.

Anna, the protagonist of the novel, lost her mother and gained a brother at once. He is 18 years younger to her and in Evgenia’s words clings on to her as if she is his own mother. He behaves with her the same way Anna behaved with her mother long ago. Even her father considers the young boy as Anna’s own liability and interacts with him only sparsely.

Marina, an ex-girl friend of Mikhail comes to Anna’s life mostly after her mother’s death. She meets Marina only once before her mother’s death. She meets her again when her father sends her to draw Marina’s portrait with a view to bring them closer to each other. Though it is not an instant success, when Marina later comes home, Anna extends her friendship which last a life time and Marina too make amends for the harm she unwittingly brought on Anna’s family.

Maria too is dreamy, romantic, artistic and imaginative but she is different from her father and his girl friend. She is more like her mother. She rises to the occasion and is sensitive to the needs of those around her and her family forms no boundary for her existence. She shares her son’s ration of sugar with her neighbour Zena for her child, even though Zena is not so fond of her.

She remembers her childhood friend Vasya who has gone away to Moscow with his family. She falls in love with Andrei so soon but restricts herself from getting to intimate with him so as not to risk having a baby. She understands how her father is fond of Marina and how her own mother was agonized by that. But she holds no hostile feeling towards Marina and in fact gives her shelter when she most needs it. She is not as Romantic as the rest of the characters and Andrei has to force her to agree with  him that she will sit with his dead body like Marina sat with Mikhail’s.

She is a typical Levin with her interest in books and knowledge thought it is fine arts that she really wants to pursue. A very perspicacious Evgenia tells her that she looks so academic. She is well informed about life science and her quick remedies come to the help of people around her. She is a person who can make tea with anything. She is highly skilled in drawing that she is able to catch people not only as they are but also as they want to be. This is because she is seeing more that ‘light’s scrutiny on form’. She sees deep into people. She observes them and tries her best to take care of the fragile Katinka while they go for digging trenches and when Katia dies, she is hurt more than anyone else.

Anna’s resourcefulness too is amazing. She thinks just like Pavlov and measures out rations very carefully and like him she too realizes that there should be some nutrition in leather articles and makes soup out of Kolya old school bag. She is good at farming and seasoning and uses every page in her skill book her mother taught her. She remembers poems like her father and keeps some fire in her mind all through the winter of discontent.

She is optimally optimistic and has no high hopes about Stalinism. She is known to rubbish it at times. Fredya, her neighbour, notices it. Her own boss knows she is efficient but refuses to acknowledge it. Her father, a writer who understands human nature, sees her almost as part of the furniture. He is caught much in himself. Her mother was very affectionate to her but her early death came as a blow to Anna. Incidentally, she has to guard Andrei from Marina like her mother guarded her father.

She is mentally and physically strong and nothing makes her fall sick. When she hears about the oncoming war, she rushes back from the dacha to their home in the city. She gets to work immediately. She had had two bad winters behind her but she stores whatever she can for the coming one as it is not just ‘General Winter but General Hunger’ too as her father has written. Her fight for a few chips of woods, her visit to the market to buy a heater, her meeting Marina at her dacha, her confrontation with the sentry on her way back from the dacha with the sack of potatoes, her passion for and resistance to Andrei, her understanding of her father’s relationship with Marina, her warm generosity to people who suffer with her in spite of their bitterness towards her are  all well portrayed vividly by the author to create one of the most memorable characters in English literature.

The only cruel act that she commits is when she destroys the excess produce in her farm so as not to be grabbed by the Germans. Though this act is done in self protection, she suffers later from shortage of food having been denied food to the hungry in the name of war and enmity. She too has all the frailties of a human being like exasperation and frustration, but she rises above all that when duty calls her, whether it is the duty to her nation, to her job or to her family. She always seems to know the right thing to do. Living in the long drawn shadow of her own mother’s death and with people around her falling off like flies, she looks fear at its face and conquers it. She is the symbol of life’s longing for itself. 

Why can I write?

True, this is a correct sentence. But something at the back of our mind tells us that something is not right. The question looks right if we use ‘can’t’ instead of ‘can’, right? There we have some clue to the strange sound of the title. When we can’t we want to know why and we ask why. When we can, we simply take the ability for granted. We never bother to ask why we can do something. When we can, we don’t want to know why we can, but how we can. Obviously it is a different question demanding a different answer.

This is a question that we should encourage the writers to ask themselves. They might be able to come up with some answers. I asked this question to myself recently though I can’t claim to be a writer of any notability or notoriety. But there is something that those who know me have figured out about me. I love writing. To me, the key board of the computer is better than that of the piano and for audible reasons too. I love to hear the tapping sound on the keyboard and surely, I have a preference for certain well sounding keyboards. After I learned touch typing, the sound of each key seems to be chasing each other with the backspace key coming in between and wiping it all out like a green monster in a child’s video game.

There, almost 250 words already and I have not said anything I intended to say. I am relishing it, revelling in it.  I also delete a lot of what I type, like a child making sand castles.

But the question remains. Why can I write, well or ill, while many can’t. Why am I different? Is it an ability to be proud of, a difference to be put right or a disability to be made use of? I asked this question to myself one of these days and came up with several reasons.

I write because I can. I can because I don’t fear. Growing up with people who didn’t know much English and among books which never had the guts to point out my errors, though they themselves were impeccably error-free, I was never a singed cat. I learned a little bit of grammar from a favourite teacher at school, just enough not to be laughed at. Nobody took the pain of making me feel bad about the errors. I corrected myself when I found that I didn’t mean what I had said and hadn’t said what I meant. I think the unsinged cat says it all.

And there is the passion too. There is music in the words, apart from the tapping of the keys. This is not new knowledge to anyone. Everyone knows there is something in writing like humming an old song. But there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Something inhibits their motivation, external or internal, to write. They do want to write and many satisfy themselves by talking or talking about the writing they are going to do. As I see it, it is just the fear of standards we set for ourselves or we let other set for us that prevent us from playing on this Apollo’s harp which can raise not just cities but an entire world, the Middle Earth for one.

Thus I believe that the magic potion that makes a prolific writer out of any kid we meet is nothing but our forbearance or shedding of our fastidiousness. When we think of the occasions when we correct them, if it is an honest introspection, we may find new answers. Were we trying to show them an error or show off our knowledge? Pedagogue of pedantic?

We should try to see a child’s writing just the way we see his drawing. It is not correct. But then his drawing is not realistic either, though he intended it to be. Bear with them. Let it come. Let it gush out and remove the clogging in the conduit. Let it come out in quantity and then we can work on its quality and accuracy. That is, if it has not gained them by then and in all probability it would have. 

Marina Petrovna in The Siege

Marina Petrovna in The Siege

Marina Petrovna is an important character in the Siege. She is an artiste and finds it hard to put up with things happening around her. It is hard for others to understand her. Even the heroine takes time to come to terms with her.

We are told about Marina in the very first chapter itself. Anna’s earliest memory of her is how he mother felt mortified after a casual meeting with her. She was trying to be nice to Vera and asked about her and her husband whom she lovingly refers to as Misha. But Vera could not tolerate such niceties coming from her husband’s girlfriend. In the following chapter we see Anna going to meet Marina and paint her portrait as demanded by her father. The first sentence of this chapter which describes where  Marina lives is striking.

                                    The track narrows down to a path.

This sentence in a way summarizes the life of Marina. She used to be a famous actor like Mikhail was a well acknowledged writer. They both lost their stature. But it Marina was more hurt by that.

                        Her name was wiped from posters, programmes and reviews.

She was lucky in that she was sidelined by the Soviet regime before it became too brutal. If she had been questioned a year later, she would have disappeared along with her name.

But an actress can’t burrow down and work alone, hidden. She’s got to have a stage, cast,   

director, lighting, and above all an audience.

But very few are willing to associate with her now. Even Anna doesn’t want her father to correspond with her and when a letter comes, asks he father not to keep it in the house. Marina too doesn’t use the Postal system anymore. She sends the letters only though people she trusts. Vera never read those letters even when they were handed over to her. ‘It is you she writes to, isn’t it?” Vera used to ask Mikhail when he asked her to read Marina’a letter.

Obviously, it was Anna’s father’s strategy to bring her and Marina close to each other that made him ask Anna to go to Marina’s place and paint her portrait. Anna is unwilling to go to see Marina and she has an argument with her father about it. He tells her Marina was a friend of her mother. But she knows it is not true. Her mother had explicitly told her so.

‘Isn’t she your friend as well mammy?’

‘Not really. She’s your father’s friend. He’s known her for a long time.’

‘But she wants to be your friend, or she shouldn’t write to you.’

‘I daresay. But friendship doesn’t work like that.’

This chapter and the next are written in such a way that we are intrigued about this character who appears to be living outside the main frame of the other actions in the story. The description of the dacha where Marina lives and how Anna tries to find her way into the house reminds us of Kafka’a novel The Caslte.  She lives thirty kilometres away from Leningrad and twenty kilometres away from the dacha. She lives with her own nurse and does not mingle much with the public. She has been blacklisted in her own profession in the theatre, just like her old time love Mikhail in his profession as a writer. Even those who associate with her could get into trouble. Her dacha is within a forest area and she is very discrete about whom she contact lest the state should take her away and imprison her. But it is Marina’s life that reminds us more of Kafka’s castle than her dacha itself. All her life she has been trying to reach something, finish something and dies without reaching there.

As Anna tries to finish Marina’s portrait and Marina tries to strike a warm conversation with Anna, we get to see a lot about their characters as if one is a touch stone for the other. Anna is trying to be as professional as she can, forget the old problems between Marina and her mother and concentrate on her work while Marina is trying to snatch every chance to get closer to her. Anna does her work and Marina is much impressed with it. She does she a lot of her feature for the first time only in Anna’s drawing. Towards the end of the day, Marina talks about Anna’s father but Anna shows the least interest.

Among other things, we forget about Marina and then she suddenly comes back to Anna’s life. The war has begun and Anna’s father is away at the battlefield making fortifications. Marian comes to Anna’s house when she finds that her own dacha is about to be attacked. She has brought a lot of food for Anna and tells her that food is the most important thing in war. Though she comes only for two days she neverl leaves and finally dies there. After two days, she asks Anna that she is free to go as volunteer to dig trenches and that she can take care of Kolya. Thus begins her close association with Kolya.

Both the women try their best to keep the rest of the family alive after Anna comes back from the trenches at the onset of winter and her father also returns wounded. There is a Andrei too living with them and he too is much impressed by Marina. Marina is still very energetic and she does a lot of domestic chores, quite a new thing for her who lived always with her old nurse.

Later in the story we find that she was pregnant from Mikhail. She met a doctor and effected an abortion. She had known it was a male foetus. She tells a fantasy about this to Anna and then she tells her what really happened. We feel that it was to win over her by giving Mikhail a son that Vera went ahead with her pregnancy so late in her life. But it is Marina who had the good fortune to bring take care of Vera’s death. Kolya has the same feelings for her and Mikhail, his father.

Marina fulfils one last thing in her life. She takes care of her lover till his death and even after his death for days since it takes several days for them to bury her. Before he is buried she too dies. Before she dies she gives them two bottles of jam which she was resisting to touch. But she dies without being able to touch the jam. Through her death she was able to help the rest of the family, with her rations and those two bottles of jam.

Marina’s is a tragic story which reminds us of what happens to artists in a totalitarian state and how they make is even worse by not being able to manage their emotional instability. In the present day society where family is the boundary of relationships, her love for Mikhail was not recognized even by Mikhail. She is able to hear his thoughts but he is quiet reticent near her. Everyone found fault with her. Only death was kind to her by putting an end to her life soon after Mikhail’s. They get to lie together in the same mass tomb, close to each other, a privilege she won over Vera. 

Who is Who 

Anna Mikhailovna Levin	Protagonist, Kolya’s mother, Vera’s and Mikhail’s father, nursery assistant at the local nursery school and works under Elizaveta Antonova, falls into a relationship with Andrei, her childhood friend, befriends Maria Petrovna, her father’s lover later in life, works hard at the dacha and saves her own and her brother’s life, very practical and hopeful, strong and aware of her own feelings and emotions and limitations, determined and persevering. She is 18 when her mother dies and 23 when the blockade happens.
Andrei	A dedicated doctor, talks medical science all the time, Romantic and falls in love with Anna. He comes from Siberia and stays with the Levins during the worst part of their life. He is very romantic and has great respect for Anna’s father and his work. One day on his way to hospital he almost gets lost in the snow storm. He is much loved by Kolya too.
Maria Petrovna	An actress, fall in love with her long time friend Mikhail after her gets married, tried to befriend Vera, her lover’s wife and fails, befriends her lover’s daughter Anna, lives with them during the siege and dies before it is all over. We are introduced to her through Anna’s memories of her childhood and then when Anna really goes to her dacha to draw her portrait as directed by her father. It is also interesting that Marina forces Anna to draw the portrait of her father as he lies dead. She was pregnant from her relationship with Mikhail before Anna was born, it was a boy but she opted for abortion. She was seeing a doctor who fell for her and she told Mikhail that she had had an abortion and he was upset and wrote some poems of grief and Vera found the poems insincere. She is not a supporter of Stalin and lives in her past glory. She is suspected to be a rebel and it is true. She later sort of sacrificed her life for Anna’s family by saving two bottles of jam for her and she couldn’t use them. A very interesting character, very much like Andrei and when Andrei hears that she sat near Mikhail’s dead body for days, he asks Anna whether she also would do the same. Anna refuses first and then yields.
Mikhail Ilyich Levin	A passionate writer, he speaks good German and French apart from Russian. The time he spent in two European countries as early as 1912 has enriched him and also made him a suspect. The government can always label him as man with suspicious foreign connections. He writes stories and lives on his translation and editing work. The writers’ committee has put a ban on his works. They found that his work is not as optimistic as Stalin expects it to be. It is full of gloom and doom. So, he keeps on writing and keeps them to himself. He is a lover of Pushkin’s poems and can recite most of them. When he dies Marina places a book in his hands and it is a book of poems by Pushkin. Marina sits near his dead body for days and when she dies, Anna and Andrei place their dead bodies together on the same bed and they are buried close together in a mass grave. They could never unite like this while they were alive. Anna says that Marina loved him but he only loved the fact that Marina loved him. He was very devoted to his wife and admired Marina for her artistic qualities and he is happy to see those qualities inherited by his daughter. His second child Kolya is very affectionate towards him as if he is his grandfather and not his father but we don’t see him showing much affection to his son Kolya. He dies after getting wounded in bombing. Andrei brings him home and the whole family takes care of him till he dies. His body is left like that for more than ten days since there is not one strong enough to drag it to the cemetery.
Kolya	He is only five or six and is unhealthy in several ways. He considers his sister like his mother and his father like his grandfather. His mother died at his birth. He is a typical child with his interest in war games, stubborn nature, hunger, insensitivity to the harsh realities of life. Anna says he is a typical Levin because of his studious nature. It is by pure luck and the care shown by the adults around him that he survives the blockade. When he is hungry, there are three things that Anna is able to provide him with during the blockade; a root of liquorice, her own fingers or a piece of his old leather school bag which was already used for soup a few days before!
Vera	Vera is a radiologist and she is totally aware of health issues but she relents to her husband’s need for a full fledged family and opts to get pregnant and dies delivering a child. Probably, when Mikhail heard that the foetus Marina aborted was male, it would have promoted Vera to try her luck at giving him a male child. A very amiable person, scholarly, unrelenting in personal matters, not so much of an artist, Vera is always upset about Marina and refuses to have anything to do with her. Paradoxically, it is Marina who gets to be with Mikhail on his eternal sleep. Anna has some sweet memories of her two-week life with her mother at the dacha during a vacation.
Olya	A student Vera was very fond of. After Vera’s death she lost her job and was suspected as a rebel and faced much hardship in life.
Elizaveta Antonova	Anna’s boss at the childcare centre; a typical bureaucrat who is not at all creative or sensitive and ironically she is in charge of very small children; she is a stern administrator as she throws her weight around; being a turncoat she manages to get to Moscow when the blockade gets worse and lives there safe and secure
General Hunger and General Winter	Though these are made to sound like the fantasy names of two kinds of hardships, later we find that the word general is used literally. Hunger and Winter affects everyone in general and they prove to be lacking in several humane qualities. They are the characters in a story written by Mikhail and it becomes a prophesy in his own life.
Darya Alexandrovna	She is Anna’s neighbour and she is the first one to inform Anna of the coming catastrophe. She demonstrates how people are going to behave from then onwards by refusing to giver  Anna  jar of honey she had promised.
Vasya Sokolov	Vasya Sokolov is one of the Sokolovs in Leningrad. He played building a dam with Anna when he was young. They had built it across a stream fed by melting snow. Anna’s hair grip falls into the dam and it disappears as their tiny dam breaks letting the water flow through. Later in life as Vasya is driving a government truck loaded with food for the starving village, his truck breaks down and all he needs is a hair grip to lengthen a circuit. He can’t find it and he dies in the snow with a small girl wail about a lost hair grip still ringing in  his ears.
Katya	She is a little 15 year old absent minded girl who dies in the trenches dug by the volunteers when a wall collapses on them. Being slow in movement, she is not able to move out of harm’s way. She was digging with Anna for more than a week and used to be very nice to her. They wrap her body in a some rag and throw it on the roadside.
Katinka	This is another young woman who is digging with Anna.
Evgenia	Evgenia another young woman used to be very optimistic about herself. She become a prostitute later on and comes to Anna’s help whenever she has some trouble in the market place or in the street.
Pavlov	He is in charge of the food supply or the rations during the blockade. His position is far from being a covetable one in that he is the one to take decisions about how much they are allowed to eat each day. He is the one has to prevent people from dying and at the same time hope that more people die to leave their rations for the living.
Zina	She is Anna’s neighbour and her husband who works at a factory in Leningrad has convinced her that the Levins are rebels and that they should have nothing to do with them. When her baby is weak, Anna decides to share Kolya’s ration with her though Mariana objects to this. A few days later she brings her baby who has been dead for three days to Anna and asks her to draw a portrait of her baby.
Fedya	Feyda, once against the Levins, is later moved by Anna’s selfish act of giving Kolya’s ration of sugar to his and Zina’s baby later patches up with her. He contacts kidney disease but he survives the blockade more dead than alive. His wife adores him.