The Millions Room

I was stunned by the beauty of the Millions Room in the Schonnbrunn Palace in Vienna. The room was dimly lit when I visited it, as opposed to the glowing red in the photograph I stole from the Palace website. I was fascinated that Indian art was famous in 18th-century Vienna. I'll quote the palace website description of the room, because it gives a wealth of information:

Originally called the Feketin Cabinet, this room became known as the Millions Room on account of its precious rosewood panelling.

Set into sixty-one Rococo cartouches in this panelling are Indo-Persian miniatures showing scenes from the private or court life of the Mogul rulers in India in the 16th and 17th century.

In order to fit the miniatures into the asymmetrical shapes of the cartouches, individual leaves were cut up by members of the imperial family and put together to form new pictures in a sort of collage.

Another remarkable feature of this room is the chandelier, a piece of Viennese craftsmanship dating to 1760, made of bronze with enamel flowers. The bust behind the settee is of Maria Theresa's youngest daughter, Marie Antoinette, later Queen of France.

I do remember some of the minatures being scenes from the lives of Hindu kings and queens, and not only from those of Moghul rulers. If anyone is interested in doing a research project on this room (and knows how to get funding for a flight and stay in Vienna as well) count me in!

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

While reading Outliers, I reminisced about the time when I was in Business School, and was struggling with the art of cracking cases for management consulting interviews. Some interviews went disastrously, but I finally got the hang of deconstructing cases by the end of the 2nd-year interview cycle. But the fact is that I'm not in consulting, and my thought processes are far less structured now.

The book underlies how a systematic approach to problems can yield some eye-opening results. I admire the examples Gladwell presents, and depth to which he has researched each one. However his basic argument is very simple: that success is dependent on hidden advantages, extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies.

There's one point I don't agree with. In order to explain why Americans of Asian descent do better in college than the majority of Americans, Gladwell makes the generalization that all Asians come from rice growing cultures. I'd momentarily accept the argument that farmers who worked on rice fields learned to work harder than other farmers in other regions of the world, whose crops were more seasonal. However, assuming that all hard-working Asians can be traced to paddy fields, sounds a tad bit simplistic to me. When I was in the US earlier this year, I watched a high-school spelling competition on TV. About 70%+ of the finalists were of Indian descent. I can wager that their families in India had dramatically different backgrounds, and many of the competitors' parents may have immigrated from cities. The impact of an agrarian lifestyle on family culture could have been erased for at least three to four generations.

Firmin - Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage

What do lowlifes do? They "infest." Firmin, the rat-protagonist, says that "infested" is an interesting word. He writes, "Regular people don't infest, couldn't infest if they tried. Nobody infests except fleas, rats... When you infest, you are just asking for it. One day I was talking to a man in a bar, when he asked me what I did for a living. I answered, 'I infest.' I thought that was a pretty ironic thing to say, but the man didn't get it. He thought I had said 'I invest' and started asking me for tips on where he should put his money. So I suggested he invest in construction. The shithead."

You have probably realized that we aren't talking about a Ratatoille-like character (I haven't seen the cartoon, but everyone I talk to about the book makes that instant association) We are talking about a rat who reads literature; loves jazz and plays the piano; enjoys watching beautiful women, whom he calls "the lovelies," dance (yes we are talking about strippers); and is a connoisseur of blue movies in a rundown theater. If this was a description of a single man well into his 40s, we wouldn't bat an eyelid, would we?

He's had two serious relationships (no, not of the sexual nature, but friendships) in his short life. One with a bald bookshop owner, which is sadly imaginary, and another with a washed-out science-fiction writer. What begins as a light, funny novel, ends in, what on a rat-scale could be termed, an apocalypse. The neighborhood in which he lives is leveled to the ground by the city authorities. This includes the second-hand bookshop in which he grew up.

The author has the most fun in the book as he plays with and teases the reader. I only wish he ended the book as well as he had started it.

The black-and-white illustrations in the book bring Firmin into our world. I especially like the one in which he plays his tiny piano painted over with little flowers. The old book covers or title pages of early editions of books such as The Grapes of Wrath, Moby Dick, and Middlemarch dot the book irregularly, and remind the reader that this book is really about the love of books and reading. I think that this book is also about the death of the book and reading, at least in the Western world.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

One Sunday morning, I was listening to an NPR book podcast in which Junot Diaz was interviewed. I was intrigued by the concept of his book and when I chanced up on it at a Barnes and Noble during my visit to New York in June, I had no hesitation in picking it up. And what a good move that was.

The book is about the members of a Dominican family in the US. Since Dominicans rarely surface in literature, I found the book immediately interesting. However, the core of the novel is universal, and it's about how falling in love with the wrong person adversely affects your near and dear ones. But the book is more about how falling in love with the wrong person at the wrong time can ruin a family for generations. It's about how pain begets pain and abuse gets passed on from generation to generation. Despite the glum thematic summary, I loved the book, and raced through most of it.

Bandra-Worli Sea Link

Here is a photos of the Bandra-Worli sea link taken from the terrace of my friend Rajesh's apartment building at Kemps Corner. The sea-link was inaugurated later in the week by Sonia Gandhi. Sorry the photo isn't very clear. It was shot in rainy weather.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Pradip, a close friend of my brother's, read this book about 5 years ago, and recommended it to everyone. I chanced upon it during my recent trip to NYC, and was reminded by my brother, when he saw the stark grey cover lying on his couch, that I was a bit late on this one.

Mostly, I thought it was brilliant and hillarious. It's challenging to keep a high standard of witty writing right throughout a book, and Sedaris almost gets full marks. I like his underdog approach, and the fact that he's irreverent about everything: himself, his family, his male lovers, America, and the rest of the world. But while he mocks everything in his universe, he's gentle as well, and is a lover of humanity and of eccentricities. This dual aspect of his writing, kept me hooked. He alternates between the formal and informal, which I found refreshing. He will write a beautifully structured and nuanced sentence, at times with self-conscious formality and then follows-up with informal, and often, brazen langauge.

My favorite piece (I don't know what else to call it because they aren't chapters, though the book is loosely autobiographical and chronological) is Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist. It's about his time in art school and is a masterpiece of writing.

Ramagiri, California.

In early June I visited Tomales, which is an hour-and-a-half north of San Francisco, and is across the Golden Gate and near Napa country. It's a little one-street town and is less than a mile away from the site of Ramagiri, the community center of the spiritual teacher, Eknath Easwaran, and his followers.

Easwaran, came from India in the 1960s, and taught meditation to a tightly-knit community of loyal followers in Berkeley. He wrote amongst the most accessible translations of the Bhagawad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada. Easwaran died in 1999. Today his wife, Christine and his close followers continue to live like a family in Ramagiri. They have dedicated their lives to Easwaran's teachings and are still an independent community. In the early days, they grew their own vegetables (which they still do), schooled their children, built their own houses, and even printed and bound Easwaran's books. It was inspirational to see people well into their 60s, 70s and 80s sticking to ideals and a path chosen almost 50 years ago, with enormous dedication and enthusiasm.

The High Line

Cheers to the High Line, an elevated walkway which was originally a railway track. It extends from around 13th street on the extreme Westside of Manhattan upto 2oth street. And It's not going to end here. I went there twice. Once on a lovely late sunny afternoon at around 5 and then the next day with my brother, when the sky was overcast. As you walk on the track, you realize how old some of New York city's buildings are, especially when they are rubbing shoulders with contorted shapes - today's ultra modern architecture. I'm sure the real estate prices have gone up in the area. One building opens out onto the walkway. With the tourist and local traffic the bridge attracts, restaraunts, coffe shops etc. are going to thrive along its exits. It's interesting how a simple construction can change the fortunes of a particular neighborhood.

Lost Worlds

Michael Wood's A South Indian Journey (previously published as The Smile Of Murugan) and Alice Albina's The Empires of The Indus are both about the loss of tradition and culture.

Wood describes his visits to the "deep south" in Tamil Nadu over 13 years (starting in the early 1990s), where he develops strong bonds with a family in Chidambaram, especially with Mala, the matriarch. He also travels the pilgrimage circuit, and observes ancient temple rituals and customs first-hand. The author's sensitive descriptions of temples and gentle portraits of people he encounters are wonderful to read. He immerses himself into everyday life, anthropologist-like.

Wood calls Tamil Nadu, the "last classical civilization" because Tamil culture has arguably withstood the effects of modernization more than other Indian cultures (or other ancient cultures of the world, for that matter). However by early 2000, he sees dramtic changes in the lifestyles of Mala's children as they grow older, marry and have children. Their lives in rapidly urbanizing cities such as Madras, though an intricate blend of east and west, have lost many of the elements that made their parents' lives whole. At the end of the book Wood laments,"But how wonderful is difference, and how diminished we will be, if the global culture takes hold everywhere, and destroys these worlds; thoughtlessly rubbing out encoded identities which have grown over sometimes thousands of years." He does however, acknowledge the economic and educational benefits modernization has bought Tamilians.

Albina travels the length of the Indus cataloging and recapping the history of cultures that thrived along the the river over the past few centuries. The river weaves it's way through Tibet, India (Ladakh), Afghanistan and Pakistan. Therefore her books spans Vedic times, Alexander's invasion, the growth of Buddhism in Afghanistan, early Afghan invasions of India, the birth and development of Sikhism and so on. Unfortunately, Albina's book reads more like a history lesson interspersed with her travel difficulties, rather than a diary of observations and insights. Wood's book is just the opposite. But her main point is is unmistakable, ancient ways of life along the river are fast disappearing, without a trace.

Fusion Architecture

The Lotus Mahal at Hampi is a wonderful combination of Hindu and Islamic architecture. After seeing a number of profusely decorated Hindu temples in Hampi, the restraint and minimalism of Islamic architecture can be quite a relief. The Lotus Mahal delicately balances the two. The roof of the building is clearly derived from Hindu temple architecture. The arches on the other hand are Islamic. However, the intense decoration around the arches is Islamic in form, but Hindu in spirit. Most of the walls are plain, indirectly leading our eyes to the arches of the doorways and windows. I also like the balance of openness on the ground floor which contrasts with the closeted feel of the first.

Buddhist Influences on Hindu Temple Architecture

During my undergraduate years, I took a class called Shrine and Image, under the tutelage of my favorite art history professor Diran Dohanian. In this class, he taught that the design of Hindu temples developed from early Buddhist stupas. I saw evidence to further support this theory during my visit to the temples of Aihole, Patadakal and Badami in Karnataka last week.

The semi-circular shrine chamber, pillared circum-ambulatory path, and pillared entrance hall, which are critical features of the Durga temple at Aihole (640-680 AD), all derive from early Buddhist shrines, such as those at Ajanta.

The structure and ornamentation of pillars at the rock-cut caves at Badami (6 to 8th c. AD) and the interiors of the temples at Patadakal such as the Virupaksha temple (740 AD) and the unfinished temple alongside it are strongly influenced by Buddhist cave designs.

A relief of a couple crowned by an overarching tree at the entrance of one of the temples at Patadakal can be traced to the torana reliefs at Sanchi(1st c. BC).

If these works of art were included in my course, I think Professor's Dohanian's argument would have been even stronger. However, the class would have lost much of it's mystery.