double standards

if the Vietnam War memorial in DC is an atonement, why is it dedicated to soldiers and not to the civilians killed?

in this highly militaristic country, a self-proclaimed-authority of a woman dares to say that Yemen is militaristic because it has an unfavorable sex ratio, that testosterone unchecked does exactly that. and that India, Pak, China and the rest can be talked about in a similar fashion.

i guess such American women cheer their men to righteous war

i think i've become a little insufferable. i don't easily trust anyone to do something better than me. especially when its in contradiction to my work.

the first step to the cure is the diagnosis...

and while it lasts, i hope i can turn it to positive productivity...

are those who are vain also those who are uncomfortable when praised?

Book Review 2

Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo

This National Book Award winner is a very old book, written in 1938 and first published in 1939; and is yet very relevant today. In fact more so today because reading it brings the realization, that wars have been raging in this world ever so often since this book was written. And one wonders when and where Trumbo’s anti-war message got lost in this world. For people my generation especially, who have never really witnessed a pacifist movement, this book forces one to think, to question the need for any war, no matter what purpose.

Before I begin on a critique of the book, it is important to place its importance in history. Notice the year in which the book was written. It seems to be an output of the revulsion of war that spread through the world after the World War I. And it was published two days after the second World War began. It was an immediate success on its publication but suddenly died out after Pearl Harbor happened and the need for anti-war sentiment was dispensed with, in the contagious nationalism and righteousness that increased the United States’ aggressiveness in WW-II. It is not just a popular myth that those of us born after the two World Wars see this world differently from what people who lived in Dalton’s age must have. For them the first WW must have come as a shocking realization of the havoc that war could cause; of the reach and effect that a war could have, of the numbers it could kill, and kill so easily with the invention of modern warfare. And yet the extreme violence and brutality perpetrated by the Nazis, and the vehemence with which the Allied powers (and their supporters) felt the need to act, strongly justified the second WW and temporarily erased the logic of pacifism. Much later the book became popular again during the Vietnam anti-war sentiment that spread through the United States.

The book begins as a semi-dream and it takes quite a bit of time on the reader’s part to figure out whether it really is a dream or whether it is subconscious rambling or what. Written throughout in the voice of a second-person narrative; the entire book moves as conversations, memories and thoughts inside one person’s mind. Joe Bonham wakes up from some reverie to the ringing of a telephone somewhere and to the realization of pain. His thoughts are confused to the point where there is a conscious knowledge of again being in the recurring memory of the day he had heard about the death of his father, when he used to work in the bakery. The phone may not actually be ringing at all. And yet it is ringing in his mind and he cannot get it to stop nor can he for some reason get to it.

The first thing that Trumbo’s character realizes about his physical condition is that he is wrapped in bandage, every part of him. And soon after he realizes that he is deaf. The way Trumbo introduces Joe’s physical state to the reader in such little bits through Joe’s own realization is both clever and riveting. The narration of Joe’s thoughts, on his realization of being deaf; have two important achievements. The first is that Trumbo gets his first opportunity to express scorn for the war. The words “Where did they get that stuff about bombproof dugouts when a man in one of them could be hit so hard that the whole complicated business of his ears could be blown away leaving him deaf so deaf that he couldn’t hear his own heartbeat” and “So he’d never hear again. Well there were a hell of a lot of things he didn’t want to hear again. He never wanted to hear the biting little castanet sound of a machine gun or the high whistle of a .75 coming down fast or the slow thunder as it hit or the whine of airplane overhead or the yells of a guy trying to explain to somebody that he’s got a bullet in his belly and that his breakfast is coming out through the front of him and why won’t somebody stop going forward and give him a hand only nobody can hear him they’re so scared themselves” are very powerful and full of sarcasm against war. The second achievement is that his deafness is the first bit to the piecemeal construction of Joe’s medical state, and at this point in the book it is the only known condition, to which Joe’s reaction conveys a sense of tragedy combined with gratitude. His thoughts are narrated as “What about the rest of the guys? Maybe they didn’t come out so lucky. … It isn’t anything to kick up your heels and dance about but it might be worse. Only when you’re deaf you’re lonesome. You’re godforsaken.” Both the gratitude that Joe feels at being only deaf (his realization so far) and the tragedy he feels he has been a victim to, are set by Trumbo in contrasting anticipation for what he will actually spring upon his audience. And when that unravels slowly, the reader tends to remember these thoughts of Joe when he was only deaf. The gratitude turns to anger and the tragedy is ever so heightened.

A strange suspense runs throughout the book, as if Trumbo wants to keep the reader guessing about what could come next. Initially this is more of an expectation by the reader, eager to form the skeleton of the story that the author has in mind. Once this is done and the horror of the tragedy to which Joe has been victim has been communicated to the reader, the suspense takes on a hopeless view for a while. The realization sinks in that Joe is a living thing only in the technical sense but there’s nothing left to his life that could keep the story going. A human condition so extreme was beyond imagination because one does not normally imagine the level of injury that Joe has been through to be possible without causing death. Trumbo suddenly then twists the narrative with the fact that Joe has an intelligent thinking mind that can do a lot even though it has almost lost its body. An excitement grips Joe and along with him grips the reader as well. Then the suspense takes a more urgent note as the reader waits with bated breath for Joe to overcome his tragedy and to move on in some way, a hope that the reader thought was incapable of existing in the slightest.

There is a blurring of lines between dreams, memories, sleep and wakefulness carried along with the book as it advances. In fact this is probably the one quality of the narration that transports the reader into the bodily world of Joe Bonham. It is because of this that one experiences the possible state of being alive with a physical existence that falls short of being called a human body. Trumbo effectively uses this to involve the reader and to arouse in her the vehemence and the anger that he felt against war.

Joe’s vivid memories of his life before the war tells one of a normal happy childhood with parents in love with each other, his times spent with his father, and normal troubles of a young adolescence. There is a hint in the story of Joe’s family as never having enough money, and yet even this difficulty is to an extent washed down with the description of all that home-made/grown healthy food. Trumbo couldn’t have conjured up a more perfect contrast to Joe’s present state of being, to enhance the horror and to leave not a trace of doubt in favor of the idea of war and martyrdom for some larger ideology. More than once in the book, Trumbo’s disgust for ideological war shows through; in Joe’s conversations with himself, on his wasted life for someone else’s cause: “Maybe there are more things wrong with you than you suspect Joe. Oh why the hell did you get into this mess anyhow? Because it wasn’t your fight Joe. You never really knew what the fight was all about.” At one more point in the book Joe is talking to himself about liberty, democracy, honor, native-land, and all those ideas that they make people fight for and his simple sensible questions like “What kind of democracy? And whose?” and “Tell us how much better a decent dead man feels than an indecent live one?” send Trumbo’s anti-war message across very effectively.

Then there is the memory of Joe’s girl, the tenderness and freshness of finding love at an early age. It seems like a precious love, one that must be treasured. And yet again Trumbo is very clever in his narration because he does not let the two young people be with each other for too long. They seemed to have just found each other when war takes him away, and Joe’s tragedy erases every possibility of them ever getting back together. Trumbo builds up the scorn and anger against war with all these details. It becomes criminal for any war to destroy a life such as Joe Bonham’s and reduce it to its present state. And in his narration, he keeps Joe going on with the memory of Kareen. It’s the strength and consistency of love against the destruction of war.

I don’t know if there has ever really been a medical case like that of Joe described in this book. I remember the shock I felt when finally Joe realizes how very little is left of his body. Even if a person in such a state got rid of all pain, one would think there was nothing left in life for him. In fact, the first thought that probably came to my mind was that this was a perfect case for euthanasia. Death is the first hope even for Joe Bonham, when the enormity of his tragedy registers with him. This is what he thinks: “Oh no. No no no. He couldn’t live like this because he would go crazy. But he couldn’t die because he couldn’t kill himself. If he could only breathe he could die. That was funny but it was true. He could hold his breath and kill himself. That was the only way left. Except that he wasn’t breathing. His lungs were pumping air but he couldn’t stop them from doing it. He couldn’t live and he couldn’t die.” The entire thing seemed almost fantastic and unreal to me, and yet not once did I doubt the convincing story.

There is one bit in the story that was to me the most horrifying and nerve-wrenching part. This is when Joe feels a rat chewing on him and there is nothing he can do to get it off him or to call for help. Later he thinks it may have been a dream and because his being awake and sleeping is so much a matter of what he believes he is doing, there is no way to verify the reality of the incident. At this point I almost lost my head along with Joe, and was really frightened that whether dream or not, this could recur; and if it did that would drive him insane. Simply reading about it and envisioning it was like some outrageous nightmare come alive. Thankfully, Trumbo does not do a repeat of it. He does use the rat to remind Joe of a slightly gross war incident when they stumble upon a dead Prussian captain in an abandoned trench. The position in which the body is found suggested that the Prussian had been heading into the dugout exactly when he was shot. He had one leg up in the air and the body was swollen, being dead, although the mustache was still waxed. And they find sitting on his neck a fat rat, chewing away at his face. One yell by someone sets them all at the rat and they don’t stop till they have beaten it to pulp. Trumbo’s words right at this moment make mechanical soldiers out of the men who had for a moment forgotten themselves : “Then they were all still for a second. They felt kind of foolish. They left the dugout and went on with the war.”

There is another war memory of Joe’s which has a certain black humor to it. It’s the narrative of the lone Bavarian who had probably wondered beyond what he had intended to, is shot at, and remains dead and ignored caught on a wire till he attracts orders of burial by his strong decay stink. And then is blown back from his grave by a mine to land on the wire again to decay further. This earned him the nickname of Lazarus. I kept wondering if Trumbo had been in some war or not, because one would think only a real experience would enable him to describe decaying human bodies with such ease of narration. But apparently Trumbo hadn’t been part of any war. In fact Wikipedia tells me that Johnny Got His Gun was inspired by an article Trumbo had read about a Canadian soldier who had lost all his limbs in WW-I and was visited in hospital by the Prince of Wales. This inspiration is directly depicted in one scene in the book when Joe gets some visitors and he realizes that they have come to honor him with a medal. His anger knows no bounds at this outrage and he expresses it in the only way that he can by rolling from shoulder to shoulder and puffing out air and in this hysteria he manages to create his first grunting sound vibrations.

Joe Bonham in the book is an intelligent person. He is curious about what state he is in, and he answers his questions himself. He reasons with himself and lists for himself everything in life that he will never again know, feel or experience. The most fascinating bit in the book is his fight to control his life again in whatever manner is possible. In fact, Trumbo separates this part of the book by calling it ‘Book 2: The Living’ as compared with the first half which is ‘Book 1: The Dead’. Joe begins with tracking time, at first counting to himself so he can keep an account of time and later more intelligently by sensing the sunrise and keeping a check on his perception of time with the visits of the nurse and his schedule of change of clothes and linen. It is amazing to read about such a brave and intelligent attitude. And then the whole idea of being able to communicate despite being just a chunk of flesh was superb. When the nurse writes ‘Merry Christmas’ on his chest, as a reader one feels like celebrating a fresh new birth of his contact with the world. Despite being a depressing story Trumbo manages to blend so much life and hope into it; although he does end the book again at a very morbid note. And the last Morse code speech that Joe communicates across with his demand to have him shown all over the world so people know what war can do, is the strongest anti-war speech I have seen or heard.

It’s a brilliantly and passionately written book. There was also a movie based on it and it did make some substantial changes even though Trumbo apparently wrote the screenplay and directed the movie too. In the movie, when finally Joe manages to communicate with the Morse code, what he asks is to be killed. I personally preferred how the book treated the story, made it less dramatic and yet more unexpected and finished off at an unknown point where Joe probably lives on, even though all hope and all life within him is killed with a refusal by the people around him to acknowledge his amazing success at communication and to set him free, and most importantly in his own words because they did not “want him”.

Book Review 1

Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell

I did not think this book was strictly a war memoir but I may be wrong in that, as I cannot claim to have read more than one or two war memoirs before this. However, a war memoir according to me would be a private narration strictly in the words of a soldier. And Orwell in this book does not appear a strict soldier throughout. Nor is his narration as private. He is more of an analyst of the war; at least more so as the book progresses.

The beginning of the book is almost childlike in its enthusiasm for the revolution and for the fight against Franco the Fascist general-dictator. At more than one instance, Orwell talks about the war as if it were an ideological decision. To fight in favor of what he thought was undoubtedly the right, against the wrong; to fight for the rights of man – democracy, liberty and equality. The very first page of the book describes the strong impression an Italian militiaman had on Orwell. In describing this man Orwell makes him larger than life and talks about how this vision of one man signifies to him the “special atmosphere of the time”. He talks of the man as one who could kill for a friend, who had the “pathetic reverence that illiterate people have for their supposed superiors”. Orwell at the same time admits that he knew that the only way to preserve this impression was to never see the man again. Reading between the lines Orwell seems to me to be saying that he felt the romance and the idealism of the war that that one man represented for him at the moment, and also knew that the very emotions that he stood for, or that special moment itself, were fragile and could not be relived again. Once in the book Orwell credits the idealism to the inherent values of the Spaniards; to their cultural generosity and humaneness. His words “something rather pathetic in the literalness with which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrases of revolution” express his awe, admiration and strange tragic pity for the Spaniards all at once. It is almost as if he were saying that the Spaniards are too good to be living in this world and feeling sorry for them for the same reason.

Orwell’s description of the society in Catalonia as he sees it for the first time is very important especially because later the book contrasts this description with the changes that are obvious in just a few months. In December 1936, Orwell saw the revolution is full swing. The Anarchists were in control, industries had been collectivized, tipping was prohibited, there were no private cars, revolutionary posters could be seen all over the place, etc. He talks about there being no unemployment and no beggars, yet poverty and a severe food shortage, especially that of bread. And at the same time, bread was being wasted in the militia camps. Repeatedly the filth and chaos, and the unpreparedness and inefficiencies of the militia are mentioned. These little details represent the situation as one that was not stable, was inevitable to collapse. He implies this in retrospect especially, when he says that he overlooked to observe that many individuals could then have been impersonating as revolutionaries simply to save their skin, and the situation was not therefore as equal and liberated as it felt it was.

And yet Orwell says that what he experienced then was as close to a pure idea of equality that humans can achieve. Especially at the front, where all soldiers were equal and there were no rank or pay differences. At one point in the book, he talks about how it wasn’t as difficult to get people to obey orders even without the fear of superiors, as it may seem. And he explains how – in fact in the workers’ army discipline is a voluntary concept based on the consciousness of the need to obey, compared with that in a bourgeois army where discipline is simply based on fear. He himself uses the word “theoretically” to describe such voluntariness and one would think that such theory would be impossible to achieve in a large mass of people like a force or an army. But he surprises the reader by telling us that it did work though it took some time to get everyone to believe in it. I would however, still doubt that it could work everywhere. I rather think it needed the combination of the prevailing ‘atmosphere’ then and the inherent goodness (according to Orwell) of the Spaniards to achieve it. But that is a matter of pure opinion, and nevertheless I regard Orwell as having been lucky to have experienced such utopia.

The description of the actual war in the book, that is the days when Orwell spends at the front, reveals, as he admits, the non-war-like nature of it. Throughout the book he uses words like pantomime, racket etc. to describe the war. Add to that, the lack of weapons, fighting and battle. It is quite comic when on the front he states that most casualties were because of their own substandard weapons. Actually the dry humor comes up quite often in the days spent on the front; say for example, when Orwell says his life was saved more than once because of the marksmanship of the Spaniards. Moreover, in Orwell’s words, “the real weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone”. The whole concept of fighting by shouting at the enemy to have him convert over to your side sounded hilarious to me and so must it have to Orwell, and yet he says it was sometimes effective. Moreover, his words “deserters are actually more useful to you than corpses” brings home the logic behind it. The sad thing is that much of this kind of logic is seen to be missing from collective human minds in times of war. Most of the war described by him is defensive in nature, both at the front and during the street fighting.

The book also in a way gives an outsider’s opinion of some cultural aspects of the Spaniards. Orwell talks of them as being embarrassingly generous, chaotic, undisciplined, lacking the skills for warfare; and more so, lacking the intention to maximize their advantages in war. The humor is even more effective because as a reader one realizes that it is not his intention to sound funny, but simply that the situation was so ridiculous and laughable. According to him the very few weapons that they had were also not handed out such that the best men would have the best guns. Moreover, the few days when they receive some training before being dispatched to the front, is more an exercise in marching and not a single man is taught how to fire rifles or how to throw hand-grenades. He describes many young boys enlisting as “children” and talks of their excitement as being almost boy-scoutish. I often got the feeling that the whole thing was a matter of play for many people.

The only time he talks about the glory of war is when he is describing the sight of the Italian troops belonging to the International Column being seen off by the crowds at the Tarragona station. That vision described by him is impressive. He tells of the wounded and disabled in war cheering the fresh and healthy soldiers going off to war; and says that the sight revived the feeling that “war is glorious after all”. His words in these paragraphs bring back something of the ancient wars where there used to be codes for war and warriors were known to be brave and heroic.

Because of the manner in which Orwell brings out the political hostilities of the various parties even within the anti-Fascists, one comes off with the feeling of men being used as pawns. Very few people actually fighting are aware (according to Orwell) of what is actually going on. Each person seems to have a private reason for fighting and very often Orwell says in very clear words that facts are withheld knowingly from the forces at the front; and that sometimes this is justifiable but often not.

The feeling of men being used as pawns becomes even more emphasized when he talks of a possible reason for arresting the P.O.U.M militia being, to stop the news of the repression of the P.O.U.M. party carrying onto the front, which would discourage their people from fighting. Also he repeatedly talks of individuals from the forces of these parties as different from the minds ruling the parties. He emphasizes this by repeatedly telling the reader that away from the street fighting, all these forces were friendly with each other. And even on the front, the political rivalry could not be seen amongst the forces. The difference becomes stark Orwell explains the ban and the maligning of the P.O.U.M. which led to the hunting down of P.O.U.M. men mostly by the Communist secret police. Like he says he was never accused of being a Trotskyist or a Fascist spy by any rival forces at the front. In fact, from Orwell’s narration another point that comes across is the ineffectiveness of even the government in much of the political mishap that happened after the Barcelona street fighting. Also Orwell manages to convince the reader in the apparent autonomy of the Communist secret police which implies that they were acting under foreign interests. In fact he quotes some government officials and the evidence does seem to point at the Russian role and the helplessness of the government against it. Also the important point that Orwell manages to establish is that even the government the charges against the P.O.U.M. although they could not stop the arrests.

In comparing the situation of December 1936 with that which prevailed when Orwell returned to civil society after his first stint at the front, he describes what he called “swinging it (the revolution) back” by the Communists and Liberals; something he admits he hadn’t grasped earlier on as being possible to do. He talks about the sudden change in civil society where people had lost interest in the war, class and income divisions of society were reasserting themselves, beggars had sprung up, tipping was back in practice, the Popular Army was touted as being heroic and the other militias were blamed to be undisciplined etc., luxurious expenditures were back. And there was a general expectation of ‘trouble’ in the air.

After the street fighting in Barcelona things got even worse. Now, instead of people joining the militia voluntarily, they were being conscripted; which meant that they could no longer voluntarily quit and were regarded as ‘deserters’ if they did so. There was even worse censoring of newspapers, such that censored portions were filled up with other matter. Something that made the shortage of food worse for the people, especially so for the poor, was that there was now a shortage of small change of currency. When the P.O.U.M. was banned, it suddenly became safe to act bourgeois whereas when Orwell had first come to the country brimming with revolution, the only way to be safe was to look like a worker.

The political analysis of the war is the best treasure that the book holds. It is that, and the journalistic account of what happened during the Barcelona street fighting, that makes this book a document more than just a reference for the Spanish Civil War. Like Orwell says himself, “on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan”, no account of such a war should be believed without doubt. And yet, Orwell’s arguments and analysis are difficult to be branded as outright lies, and this is more because in most of the analysis Orwell does seem to be exposing the lies in the media rather than single someone out for blame. The book is more an effort to expose the plot to frame the P.O.U.M. party rather than to frame someone else.

His arguments are more in defence rather than an attempt at accusation and that is a more decent way to argue. In fact, Orwell himself states that earlier on in the war he was more inclined to agree with the Communist version and that he also thought it was them doing the real fighting. He is honest enough to accept that although he saw the romance in the revolution, it wasn’t easy for him to believe in the feasibility of the idea. And yet his loyalties for the P.O.U.M. party become stronger once he realized its unfair victim status in the local politics. He states some very reasonable arguments against the blame put on the P.O.U.M. (that they were Fascist spies) – and even provides post mortem analysis that reveals that the accusations on the party were never proven.

Plus, Orwell tries to give the broader picture that brings the Spanish Civil War in the context of world support and interests and Russian Communism. Orwell also has made a reasonable effort to separate words like Socialism and Communism, and to explain others like Trotskyism. The most important of these that I got from this book was the earlier mysterious concept to me of how Communism could be right-winged and of the Capitalist interests in any Communist agendas. All that he says gives a reasonable reason for how the various European countries behaved while this was going on, and how as he says “the whole world was determined upon preventing revolution in Spain” because of the interests that their investments in the country had built. The revolution was not mentioned in the foreign media because the best way to stop the revolution was to not recognize its existence.

There are however, a couple of points that Orwell makes, that one is not so convinced of, as a reader. He says that there was little doubt that arms were deliberately held from them so as to keep the Anarchists and revolutionary forces from having access to them once the fighting against Franco was over. This claim of his may or may not be true, because for once he does not give any basis for such a claim, other than the suspicion of a motive and an opportunity.

I think the most important point that the book makes, is about war propaganda. Orwell says “One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” This is so true almost everywhere in the world, even if those who have fought do talk to the world, it is almost always after the war is over; and hardly ever such that it can stop the exploitation of the emotion of war. The press, and the governments (foreign or local), are the ones who take control of the war and it is almost as if they maneuver it to strike upon that which benefits them most. Such a scapegoat in this war was the P.O.U.M. the one small-numbered, weak party that had no representation in any press outside of Spain, and the party that considered the war against Fascism synonymous with revolution (suppressing them was the surest way to kill the revolution).

The details about the secret jails and imprisoned people who were never tried and were denied access to even lawyers; and their secret exterminations in prison shows the covertness of the whole incident. The entire setting reminds one of Orwell’s later Nineteen Eighty Four, as it should because he wove that story around these experiences. And yet in this book Orwell says something to the effect that after Spain, his belief in humanity grew stronger.

mass euphoria without a just leader/direction is a dangerous thing

most people live a complacent life making the best of what they have got. its not easy to change one's conditions, environment, society etc. even if the change is highly desirable. and so most people comfortably settle down in the world around them as it is.

but most of these most also subconsciously always want to do something to bring about a desirable change. its a wish most die with. and as long as this wish is unrealized there is glued to it a feeling of failure, of incapacity, of inferiority compared with one's ideal. i have it and maybe you do too.

if not to change something then at least one wants to contribute to some higher cause. this is a compromise, an "at least". many think they achieve success with at least this compromise by forwarding an email that's supposed to benefit people in either spreading some critical information or in getting people together for some cause. doing this gives people a sense of contributing, of pushing aside their feelings of failure. and people can do quite a lot to feel that they are not failures.

in the last some years i have had a natural instinct to check every piece of information that i come across. and this naturally includes some forwarded emails i receive. some claim to be the cure to some fatal disease and passing them on will apparently save lives. others claim to be information and/or efforts to garner support for some 'good' cause. these are the emails people forward unhesitatingly, in order to rid themselves of those feelings of incapacity/inferiority/failure to bring about a change. its sad that i can confidently now (with some experience) predict that 90% of these forwards have wrong/misleading information.

sometimes its the same kind of belonging to some great thing that brings people out together to join some mass demonstration/protest/celebration. (i am not saying all mass movements are this, but sadly quite a few are). they either want to congratulate themselves for (and claim) a success that they are in no way responsible for, like the cricket World Cup win; or they want to be out there (and part of) what they think is the power of democracy to bring about a change.

if to achieve democratic success means to cripple democracy itself; then those smiling faces, singing patriotic songs and claiming to be heroes are dangerous crowds supporting blackmail. and all they had to do was to come out of their comfortable drawing rooms, look good on camera, and go along with the flow, blindly, without studying what it was they were trying to do. and they even managed to suppress that demon of failure for a little longer.