Book Review - Fade into Red

 

What happens when an erstwhile investment banker turned lifestyle writer pens a book? A piece like ‘Fade into Red’ gets born. An upscale novel which takes you to Rome, into the vineyards, with Chianti and Brunello wine, and with rich businessmen, while weaving a story. The writer creates Ayra, a Mumbai living Chennai hailing girl, an investment banker who is transported to Rome by serendipity and undergoes a business and emotional change.  

The story assumes a movie like setting when Ayra is described to be engaged to the love of her life Kartik and in comes the young scion Ishaan Malhotra for whom she is set to work with in her short stint touring cities in Italy analyzing vineyards. The engagement ring at a time in Roman countryside appears like Frodo’s burden to her. Then to add there is a friend Narina back home who plays the agony aunt most of the times. Fultoo filmy.

What this book also achieves is introduces Indian readers to art of winemaking and vineyards. Celio, the Italian, gives practical lessons on what Materia prima of grapes is. Picking a bunch of grapes and its falling into the cart has been described in a little far-fetched manner with newborn baby. All the harvest (Vendemmia in Italian as the reader will be informed), fermentation, crushing description is interspersed with business deal narratives, competition, rivalry which makes the book interesting.

On the downside, the introduction isn’t as promising as it should be. Coherence in plot is sometimes missing. There are a lot of Italian words scattered through the body of the novel, few of which will require looking up or simply ‘googling’. Also a lot of business terms are thrown at the reader like SHA, NDA, which might throw a hapless reader off balance.

The book has its moments that makes it a good read. Be it the typical Chennai family at engagement or the description of perfect vineyards, the Roman Piazza narration or the conspiracy in the Redna. The book has all the trapping for it to be taken to the celluloid form. It connects largely with the young, urbane, ‘dyed-in-corporate-world’ readers. The writers descriptive brilliance shines throughout the novel.

 

Ends & Means - Yudhisthira at crosshair

Ends & Means – Yudhisthira at crosshair

‘Ashwatthama hato iti, Narova kunjarova’ (Ashwatthama is dead, but I am not sure man or elephant). These lines spoken by Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, the embodiment of truthfulness, the beacon of justice is a landmark moment in The Mahabharata.

To stop an unstoppable and rampaging Dronacharya, the Teacher himself, Lord Krishna devised a devious design. A design to convey to inaccurate news about Dronacharya’s son Ashwatthama’s demise. But the infallible Ashwatthama’s death was a news his father wouldn’t believe, unless and here comes the caveat, it was conveyed by the man who was the epitome of truth, Yudhisthira.

The information was not to be the entire truth because an elephant bearing the name Ashwatthama would be killed by Bheema. Only Yudhisthira who had vowed never to utter a lie could convey such news and kill the morale of Dronacharya leading to his ultimately getting killed by Dristadyumna.

And Yudhisthira did exactly that. It is also believed that when he said those lines, he mumbled through the second part of the sentence so that the meaning was drowned in the noise of the battlefield. Thus a deceit resulted in defeat of a major stumbling block for the Pandavas.

This is a unique moral or ethical dilemma. To achieve the end, that is killing of a powerful warrior, one who has been your guru, yet one who sided with the wrong, is wrongful means, if this is to be classified as one, justified.

Everything of course is not fair in love and war as the cliché would want to have us believe. The Mahabharata was all about the victory of good over evil, satya over asatya, dharma over adharma. While the Kauravas stood for all things evil, Pandavas were symbolic of goodness. But in order to achieve the victory are means of lesser importance?

We may view this situation through few ethical theories. Deontologism or Kantian Deontologism which says that rightness or wrongness is independent of consequence would be against the ‘lie’ of Yudhisthira. Could Yudhisthira have acted based on Moral Absolutism, which would mean that he would get to tell the ‘truth’ and something else or someone else would have stopped Dronacharya.

While the same Yudhisthira viewed through virtue ethics would come as a praiseworthy person, justification of his action could be provided by utilitarianism which believes in greatest good to greater number (in this case the people of the state who were under misrule of Kauravas). Such could be justified with ethical realism too which suggests choosing the lesser evil (in this case the obfuscation).

This mythological legend has bearing on our everyday lives. Just think about the cover and overt lies that we speak each day. On a greater scale, the lies or as many would like to listen ‘being economical with truth’, the leaders (business and political particularly) emanate and its bearing on the stakeholders is something that needs to be pondered on. The ethical dilemma is sometimes lesser and sometimes greater during such an act.

Pandavas won the war. Truth triumphed. Lord Krishna had no ethical dilemma for him the end was important not the means. What bearing it had on him is a different debate. However following the act, Yudhisthira’s chariot which galloped above the ground got grounded.

Free Verse on Rain

 

The north sky changed to a hue of orange

A pall of chill descended from above

The breeze swaying the trees subsided

Suddenly there was an eerie calm

Then the drops started like a music

On the leaves it fell which rustled

On the roof of cars a metallic rhythm

The soil emanated its rustic smell

The tar road now with black polka dots

The pace grew like a conductor in trance

Large droplets flattened on the fall

Like innumerable tapping boots

The breeze now aiding the falling drops

Against the distant street light

An exodus of droplets is seen

Like the sand dunes shift places

Now the depressions on land get filled

Tiny rivulets are synthesized as you see

On the edges of the road or a highland

Many of them join to form a stream

As kids one would set a paper boat on it

As adults apprehensive to wet ones feet

What was a plaything in the past

Now a thing to be avoided

For a farmer this is manna from sky

The beauty of rain is its falling from above

The pure unadulterated water

It washes the land and the soul

It replenishes the dryness of the earth

Power of People

This is not about the power of people that we have conventionally known or have been conditioned with. That kind of power of people is associated with democracy, mobocracy, movements, power-of-one and so on. But there is this another soft power, a subtle one, a not-so-obvious one, an under-the-surface one which is equally powerful. Over the past weekend people from a myriad of background, from a variety of age groups, from a wide range of beliefs, from diverse training converged and in a span of three days both received and exuded that power.

As we move ahead in the ladder of life, whose angle with the wall is not a subject of discussion here, one usually becomes an island. Your job, your family, your few friends, your colleagues, your boss, your newspaper-walla, your iron-walla fit in your scheme of things and remain there for long time. Though there are a minority who shake that system off their shoulders and consciously make effort to change (not girlfriend or wife of course). Thus the island becomes comfortable and we get complacent.

Islands come with their inherent problems. In this case under the lens, the problem is with not meeting enough new people if your profession doesn’t entail so. Now prima facie there could be actually no problem with it, for if people are equivalent to problems many a times, new people would mean new problems. Thus the comfort of the cocoon. But for horizons to widen, for perspectives to be understood, for relations to be forged, for associations to be made, one has to meaningfully connect to people.

Yes there will be those egoists whom you will despise, yes there will be many with whom you will never agree, yes there will be few whom you will not be able to stand, but then there will be those wonderful people who will fill you with joy, then there will be those who will add meaning to your context, then there will be few with whom you will forge a forever bond. Disembarking a journey for the fear of the former doesn’t do justice to the fruitfulness of the latter. And in the process people get empowered.

There is positivity in everyone. Sometimes negativity masks it but essentially there is positivity. It is on that goodness that despite growing mistrust, growing hate, growing dislike, bonds between people survive test of time. Draw on that goodness of people. Believe in the goodness. In that goodness is power. For if one seeks to learn something from another based on materialistic needs, such opportunism will be replete with negativity and will not take someone further. Soft power is in the former, in the goodness.

Our deep conditioning prevents us from trusting people. We label them few seconds into seeing them for the first time. The baggage we carry are huge. It is important to get rid of them to be without conflict. Large source of our conflicts are not materialistic goods but people, and the very people we like, we love. To be not judgmental when meeting new people is important. If one can achieve that then you will see wonderful people adding meaning to your life, for the power of people and power in people is enormous.