A Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets , by J K Rowling.

This book is currently sitting battered next to me after my second reading wave. It was the first Harry Potter book my father bought for me, and the doodles and stickers I find inside bring back memories of how I used to have reading marathons at home as a kid. Rereading the second book was quite refreshing, and as I mentioned in my previous review, it allowed me to look at the series with fresh eyes.

This book opens with an argument at breakfast between Harry and the Dursleys, about Hedwig, Harry's owl, being locked up.The Dursleys have locked up Harry's things and his owl, to prevent him from communicating with his friends and using magic. The Dursleys make plans to invite a builder and his wife for dinner, to seal a deal with Uncle Vernon's firm, and Harry's role is to remain quiet, unseen and unheard, presumed non-existent. Plans go awry when Harry finds a house elf, Dobby,in his room, who tries to persuade Harry not to return to Hogwarts, due to great 'evil' coming up in Hogwarts. Dobby's determination extends to brutal sabotage, where he performs magic in front of the guests, smashing a pudding , to ruin the dinner and lock Harry up.

Harry is rescued from his imprisonment by Ron and his brothers, the twins Fred and George in their father's flying Ford Anglia, escaping the Dursleys and landing at the Weasley's residence, the Burrow. They spend the summer there, and on the day they're to return to Hogwarts, they have trouble getting onto the platform, miss the train, and decide to fly the car to Hogwarts. They end up crashing into a tree, and are severely admonished for their rather dramatic entrance. Incidentally, they have a new professor for Defence against the Dark Arts a rather questionable, narcissistic celebrity, Professor Lockhart, who has a penchant for dragging a reluctant Harry into unnecessary spotlight. This year also marked Ginny's entry into Hogwarts, Ron's painfully shy and insecure sister .

Beginning with the caretaker's cat, when a series of Muggle born students are attacked and left in a state of frozen petrification, with threatening messages alleging the presence of a Chamber of  Secrets that means to purge the school of unworthies , a duelling club is organised for the students , where an encounter with a snake causes Harry and the rest of the school to discover his ability to communicate with snakes.Since this language, Parseltongue has been known to be used by Salazar Slytherin and dark wizards of his line, Harry is now the prime suspect behind these attacks.

Harry, Ron and Hermione try to find answers by working in a haunted girls' toilet , conjuring forbidden potions, where Harry comes across a mysterious blank diary that responds to what the owner writes, belonging to a Tom Riddle. When Hermione herself is attacked, they work faster to uncover a series of connections with Hermione's own clues, and eventually discover the Chamber of  Secrets, the person who opened it, the monster within , the real culprit and how it all revolved around Harry. A battle in the Chamber ensues, destroying both the monster and the vestiges of the culprit. They eventually manage to leave the Chamber, and clear the situation with Professor Dumbledore. Harry manages to free Dobby too, and the year ends on a high note again.

This book sees the characters grow up a little, but not much; they still have a healthy disrespect for school rules. The tone of the story is rather more serious, and the sense of wonder we see in the first book is now replaced with familiarity and curiosity, while navigating possibilities in a magical landscape. Witnessing Harry's abuse far more directly and vividly right from the beginning, the series ceases to be the fairytale it was in the first book. The topics of fame, insecurities, reputation, ability, truth, and loyalties start coming in. Gilderoy Lockhart craves attention and reputation and is willing to go as far as possible to further it, Harry struggles with his own reputation and tries to stay both away from attention and clear his reputation, Tom Riddle is trusted while Hagrid is punished, all on account of their reputations.  We also see a second social issue, that of social divide, possibly a reflection of racism and slavery, concerning the discrimination between so called Pure Bloods and Muggle born students, and wizards and other magical creatures.The conflict between these, and the struggle to resolve them, marks a turn towards tolerance and narrative seriousness. The book grows up a little, as does the reader's range.

I do have a point of debate with Rowling's narratives, in that, her stories gain momentum and the plot moves on, not as much with the deductions and adventures of the protagonists, which readers should ideally be able to do in parallel, but by introducing new bits of information present at each stage, culminating in shocking finales.The plot advances with the information presented. While one may argue that the wealth of magical knowledge in that universe is too vast for readers to be presented a concise picture to reason with, the fact that in each case, action could be taken by a trio of teenagers, in this case, twelve year olds, while adults save for Dumbledore, who did have access to greater information and awareness, could not connect dots, one can assume plotwise in the series that maybe they could have been streamlined to advance more on the basis of the characters themselves, and not newer information?

Perhaps, a factor for the series' success is the sheer bulk of information itself, their complexity, and requiring considerable of imagination in every scene, something maybe other fantasy authors would not have bothered with after establishing the scenario. In this case, the experience is like discovering gold nuggets in every sieving of sand, connections and parallels can be drawn at every point, with every re-read bringing up new insights.

The second book presents several important themes in a rather prophetic manner, something a reader would only realize after having read the series. If the first book established Harry's magical identity and his first adventure, the second book effectively introduced themes and positioned Harry opposite his nemesis, and set the tone for future books to follow. 

A Review: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone, by J K Rowling

The Harry Potter series in recent decades has been a literary phenomenon and a landmark in fantasy writing over the ages.  My first Harry Potter was the second one, Chamber of Secrets, but as predicted, I could not make sense of what had then I read since I hadn’t read the first. A colleague of my mother was a Harry Potter buff, and lent me the first one. Like every other excited teenager, I too was hooked, got my books early, devoured them like religion and obsessed over the stories and characters. I grew up with the books, and read them over and over, often in competition with my cousins.  I also eagerly awaited the movies that came out, and slowly, my heart shattered. The Harry Potter  I had envisioned , and the way some of those stories were told had done little justice to reading the master pieces themselves, and, sadly, over time, I stopped obsessing over them as much as I used to. In fact, my reading methods changed. I no longer was as absorbed in the books I read, and ceased to retain a perfect memory of what I read.

I continued to read though, a tad impatiently, until a fellow bookworm friend asked me to revisit the books I used to read when younger, and maybe notice if I read them with different eyes.

I took up on that suggestion, and Harry Potter was the first series I challenged.  They had been a big part of me growing up. So re-reading it after a long time was also a nostalgia trip. I may receive brickbats from other Potter aficionados for my perspective on things, but in my defence, hey, after five years of separation, I am trying to get my religion back here!

In the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, we are introduced to the Dursleys, a seemingly picture perfect respectable upper middle class thatcherite family with a skeleton in their closet; their cousins, the Potters, a family as out of the ordinary as can be. Ominous occurrences, such as owls in daytime, people in cloaks, and shooting stars are a prelude to the surprising arrival of baby Harry Potter on the Dursleys’ doorstep. Harry, the tiny skeletal boy, the skeleton in the Dursley closet, grows up in a closet as the family’s punch bag, until the days leading up to his eleventh birthday, where the extraordinary pursues Harry and plagues the Dursleys to the point of denial. Answers arrive in the shape of Hargid, a huge friendly giant with a letter of acceptance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hagrid also reveals to him his true identity and calling, not only as a wizard, but as The Boy Who Lived, the only survivor of a fatal encounter as a baby, with Voldemort, a murderous malignant tumour on the magical landscape, a notorious, seemingly unsurpassable practitioner of dark magic, which has made him famous throughout the magical world.

Harry is fascinated by the magical world he belongs to and dealing with his new found identity (but not fame).

He enters Hogwarts, gets sorted into his house, Gryffindor (for the brave only), makes new best friends, Ron( his bro) and Hermione (the sensible ), encounters and learns things strange, interesting and fascinating, discovers a prodigal passion for Quidditch, runs into a pile of mischief like a good eleven year old, (one does wonder, if given the excessive punishment he received at the Dursleys’ , Harry has become rather subconsciously thick skinned, and knows he would be treated far better at Hogwarts, prompting his proactive risk taking?) and becomes the target of a professor,Severus Snape’s dislike. This dislike, taken along by a series of events whose dots he and his two friends manage to connect, uncovers a conspiracy to steal the famed Philosopher’s Stone. 

Given the dismissive response they receive from the professors, they take it upon themselves to save the stone, embarking in an overnight adventure that tests their mettle. And the surprise that meets Harry in the final stage, an unexpected face off with an enemy one could not imagine, and a memorable battle to save the stone, the day, and by extension, the world.

Harry wakes up in the hospital wing, well rested and recovering, to a pile of sweets and an indulgent headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, who has the answers and concludes their adventure.  Harry, Ron and Hermione reunite for a memorable term end feast, where, as the high point, their crazy adventure wins points for their house, Gryffindor, and wins them the House Cup.

The book ends on a note of euphoria, as the academic term ends, and the students have to head back home. Hagrid(is he Rowling’s take on Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant and Santa?) presents him one of his treasures, an album with pictures of his late parents. The story ends on a happy, hopeful note, with promise of something exciting to come.

Certainly the book has its light parts, but it also broaches things that most children that age start to think about. The non-obsessive detachment that Harry has, in spite of his issue-filled backdrop, and by simply being a normal eleven year old kid, and even viewing himself in that light, allows us to connect with him. His excitement at the magical world opening up in front of him, and the many sides, good, bad and ugly, washing over him, allows the audience to bathe in that sensation too. The way he has been written into this book, is that certain aspects of his life are revealed, and enough breathing space has been given in the character’s headspace, for readers to imagine his experiences, and draw up their own version of him. Harry may have begun as an Oliver Twist type deprived orphan, but he embraces his destiny, tries to rise to the challenge as much as an eleven year old in a magical new world can. This becomes a  symbol and a role model for his readers. This would probably explain how emotionally difficult it was for a lot of Harry Potter lovers to reconcile with the on-screen portrayal of the character, and the narration of the story. I suppose seeing Harry and his world tangibly contribute to the gap between the books and the films.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a fairy tale. It is a fairy tale, written with the whimsical quality needed to capture an eleven year old reader. The best thing about Rowling’s writing is that she does not underestimate the children who would read her book, and has therefore, imparted a certain strong writing quality to the book. 

As an adult, the feeling the book left me with, was a happy one; a book with a child protagonist I would love, the right dose of whimsical, magical and adventurous, a motley bunch of complete characters, and a treat to the imagination, and to good literature. A yummy book indeed! 

Writing online

Lately, it seems I haven't been doing too much writing, which is not good. I have restarted reading, and discovered the online writing forum, Wattpad. I've been reading a lot of stuff that has been put up, which is sadly, the usual "OMG that is ssoooooo haaaawwwwwwt! (drrroooooolllll) " type. What I admired about these people is that they love writing , and have put in some effort into narrating stories. But last night, when I encountered the nth story with the same storyline, I'd really had enough.

SO that brings me to my new mission. To write something a little sensible , and put it up on a regular basis, since I felt I had no right to criticize people who write, when I don't do much writing myself.
This blog itself has been an effort like that, for me to get back into writing .

As being the situation with most writers being voracious readers, I want to review the books I read on a regular basis to begin with, and turn that into a series for my blog, and tackle my tendency to procrastinate , killing two birds with one stone. Most of the books I review would be published ones, and if by chance I encounter some good writing and storytelling on Wattpad, I will review that too.

A Review: Ice Station Zebra by Alistair Maclean

My father , a thorough bookworm, has a sort of bias at home regarding buying books. He would rather spend money buying books that would last, be re-read, or referred to, or classics that are otherwise unavailable, and the others, were to be picked up at a library, or borrowed, due to their being one-time reads. In retrospect, the sight of our overflowing bookshelves leads me to believe he had a point.

The return home after submitting my thesis put me in a holiday mood, and I ended up rummaging inside the overflowing bookshelves at home, trying to find a read that would be fast enough, and engaging enough to take me through a lazy day. I came across a copy of the Alistair MacLean novel, Ice Station Zebra, which I had read once before, and remembering the good feeling I had that last time I read it, decided on it this time too. I wondered whether I would read the same book very differently a few years later, from the time I read it first, and to test this theory, picked it up again.

My first encounter with Alistair MacLean was through cinema, not books, specifically the Carl Foreman movie, The Guns of Navarone (which made me a huge fan of Gregory Peck, and World War II stories). I had picked up Ice Station Zebra in an airport, and it did not disappoint. It had the Alistair MacLean signature pace, and was a great read.

On a Scottish coast, in the Cold War era, we encounter the United States submarine, the Dolphin, a state-of-the-art submarine, that is ready to leave shore in the morning, heading to the Arctic circle when the crew are greeted with a surprise new addition, a Dr Carpenter, who insists on joining them , and with authority over the crew, citing orders from NATO, via telegram.The mission that the Dolphin has been deployed on, is to rescue the stranded British researchers on a meteorological station , the Drift Ice Station Zebra, on a drifting chunk of ice in the Arctic Circle, following a terrible fire accident there, that leaves few survivors, and little hope of survival, given the harsh conditions towards the North Pole. Dr Carpenter's presence and his insistence to join the crew turns a typical rescue mission into a matter of political urgency.

Dr Carpenter professes to being a doctor with specific training related to submarine and arctic conditions, and manages to convince the Captain, Swanson, and the crew to accept him on board, after confiding in the Captain that the Drift Ice station was in fact a top secret location for monitoring Soviet missiles, whose activities need to be protected. That the head of the Drift Ice Station Zebra, Major Halliwell, is Dr Carpenter's brother, is also revealed early on.  While the voyage is underway, we are introduced to the nuclear submarine's layout and features by the submarine's doctor, Benson. The submarine manages to pick up weak interrupted signals from the station, and dives below the Arctic Ice , in order to get closer, searching for a location with thin enough ice to break through and reach the station.

Carpenter, and two other crew members alight a few miles near the station, and braving a blizzard, reach  the station, where they are greeted with a scene of devastation.  A series of prefab huts built to house the residents and the equipment have caught fire,and the one remaining intact hut houses the seven starving, frostbitten and wounded survivors. Carpenter's brother unfortunately, was one of the eleven who perished, their bodies charred . While looking around, Carpenter finds evidence of foul play, and believes the fire to be caused due to arson and not by accident. They return to the Dolphin, which tries to get closer to the station by diving under the ice, and torpedoing its way closer, but sabotage in the torpedo area puts the submarine at risk, which is brought under control with great difficulty. The few members of the crew having Carpenter's confidence are on alert for foul play, following the alert, and they arrive at the station and pick up the survivors. The station is scrutinised again covertly, while providing relief and picking up the survivors.

After getting the survivors on board, the Dolphin and its crew are beset with a series of accidents, from engine malfunction, to physical harm. The sequence of these events and the culprits of the massacre at Ice Station Zebra are unmasked, following the revelation of Dr Carpenter being a member of MI6, the British Intelligence wing, and the eventual clever frustration of the culprits' plans (and eventually saving the skins of the US- UK bloc).

The book is a racy , fast paced read, with all the urgency of a military novel. Alistair MacLean writes crisply, and beautifully. As with all whodunits, there are a series of small clues and pick up points scattered through out the book, which the reader has to pay close attention to in order to connect things well. I ended up having to go back and forth, trying to make the cross connections. I felt that the pace of the book did not run hand in hand with the amount of information presented and digested in the plot. Many points in the book's narrative refer to the layout of the Dolphin, and also the layout of the station, which are helpfully provided diagrammatically in the first few pages, but the narrative causes us to flip pages repeatedly to recognise what the author refers to.

The book lasted a day, and left me feeling refreshed. The book caused me to think well, and kept me hanging off the suspense cliff reasonably often, and the narrative was engaging. The book is written to be read in one sitting if we are to make sense of its complexity, and in this sense,it is in the same league as Dan Brown's and John Grisham's thrillers, a book that, in spite of the dated context and story, reads like a contemporary thriller.

Considering books with wartime themes, Alistair MacLean is one of the few authors who understands and brings about the wartime scenario very well in his books. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that he has lived through the second World War. A contrast in the style, or even in the simple portrayal of tumultuous war-like times, are two books, Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, and the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. All three speak of a War-like situation. Dr Carpenter is a man incognito on a mission, so are Harry and his friends. Anne and her family are in hiding trying to survive the war, as are Harry's supporters .

In Ice Station Zebra, we encounter the writing of an author who has been in the thick of action, in actual battles and therefore writes from experience. The crisp effectiveness of communication, the filtering of emotional drama, the need for the right action at the right time, and the urgency and weight of these actions are well brought out in his books. From Anne Frank, we learn of the oppressive daily life led by those in hiding, and the edge they have to live on. J K Rowling tries to draw both themes close in her last book, but the impression of the reading experience, or the scenario presentation is nowhere near as intense as Alistair MacLean's, or Anne Frank's , and ultimately,one has to fall back on Rowling's own imagination. But the reviews of both Harry Potter, and Anne Frank, will be dealt with later.

All in all, a wonderful whodunit, from a master of wartime intrigue. Who can say that racy thrillers are written only in today's time?

A Review: Manuscript found in Accra, by Paulo Coelho

Like maybe many of his readers, I have a tendency of associating Paulo Coelho with a highly philosophical bent of mind. So it came as no surprise when one of his recently released books, 'Manuscript found in Accra' once again approached life and philosophy, in alignment with his world view, that we see time and again in his previous books, starting with his prominent bestseller, The Alchemist.

 The book opens with a narrative account of the discovery of papyrus manuscripts in Hamra Dom, Upper Egypt, which are taken to the Cairo Museum. These manuscripts, now called the Manuscripts of Nag Hammadi , contained writings known as the Apocryphal Gospels, essentially, Gospels documenting the life of Jesus Christ that were rejected during a bishops' meeting for the compilation of the Bible in AD 170, since the Gospels were either written by women, or held views or portrayed the Christ in a manner deemed not coherent with the perception of the Christ that they wished to propagate.

Post this, a different manuscript, dated as recent as the 1300s, was found in Accra by a certain English archaeologist, Sir Walter Wilkinson. This manuscript had about 155 copies floating around, and they were all dated to the same period, and considered identical.The manuscript's copy was lent to Paulo Coelho , who transcribed it into the book presented to us.

It begins with a simple wish, stating that considering the narrator's time is over, whatever he has learnt has been bequeathed to us, the future generations with the hope that we make good use of it.

The narration is set Jerusalem, just before a Crusade invasion, variously dated the year 1099 by the Christian Calendar, 492 by the Islamic estimate, and 4859 by the Jewish calendar, where the occupants of the city of Jerusalem are gathered. The occupants are a mixture from all three faiths, and the soldiers of the city choose to guard it from the invading French Crusaders from their respective posts. All the residents are gathered in the same square where the Roman Governor Pontius handed Jesus over to the mob for crucifixion, and mentally prepared for a fight to the death , a slaughter awaiting them the coming morning at the hands of the French. It is ironic, that with the Crusades' efforts to reclaim Jerusalem as a Christian spot, we see people of all three Abrahamic faiths defending it equally.

They are gathered to hear the words of a Greek man who calls himself the Copt, in the presence of representatives of each faith, as last words before the slaughter at sunrise.
The Copt is an outsider, who does not practise either of the three faiths, but believes in the present moment, in a Divine Energy called Moira, and its one single law, which, when broken, would shatter everything. However, his own beliefs do not come through in the book, which focuses on common wisdom.

The Copt proposes a question and answer session with the public,setting the impending battle aside, as a means of sharing knowledge and wisdom as done by philosophers in Ancient Greece. He suggests leaving behind a legacy of wisdom for coming generations.

The first question is regarding defeat. The Copt says only he who gives up is defeated, and proceeds to outline what being defeated actually is. With the second question, he distinguishes Defeat from Failure, in the face of trial and doubt. The next question addresses Solitude, followed by the concept of self depreciation. He further goes on to address various topics such as being receptive to change, taking decisions, beauty and elegance, sex, unity, the passage of time and life, duty and happiness, luck, miracles and angels, anxiety, the future, loyalty, and many more.

The narrative arms its listeners with the one last song of wisdom they need to carry in the face of death.

It is an uplifting narrative. In certain parts we come across phrases, expressions and points of view that also appear in other books by Coelho. With most of his books carrying references to tenets in the Abrahamic faiths, one wonders if the common phrases he uses are his own, or out of the texts from these faiths. For those who do not follow either of the faiths, and are thus unacquainted with aspects of these faiths, we read them in good faith of their being the author's creation.

The tone of the translation carries the pensive pondering mood of a day in Middle East and Africa. In spite of being spoken in the face of impending death, the words carry none of the urgency ,resignation and hopelessness that is typically associated before certain annihilation. The words of the wise man are recorded, bu the moods and doubts of the listeners do not come through. For a fairly large population , the question answer session is recorded as a surprisingly civil patient affair.

This is yet another book by Paulo Coelho, where we see faith, wisdom, knowledge and courage becoming common denominators of an all embracing philosophy that he seems to subscribe to, regardless of culture and community and as always, tries to answer to the human condition.

All in all, a good read, that can be read in a single sitting. Paulo's writing is smooth, and easy on the reader, and the book can be read without caring for the sequence of chapters as well. A decent spot in modern philosophy and world view, and perhaps a voice of tolerance and calm, or rather, wisdom and understanding in a world increasingly rocked by religious hatred and reaction.

Design?

The first question that my great uncle asked me was "what are you doing exactly, what is design?" when I told him I got selected to attend the National Institute of Design, in Ahmedabad. I did not have a clear answer to give him, but before I entered college, my perception of design was "aesthetics". When I told people I was a designer, they asked me if I did "Fashion". People up north were a little broader, they asked me if I did "Fashion or Interiors".  I do neither. It did leave me wondering as to how to define design.

I have tried to answer that question here. Please note that this is not an authoritative article, merely an informal attempt to define what design is all about.

So what is design? Design is often confused with Art. They speak of expression and communication, They elicit a response. It might be visual, like a logo, or a poster, or a film or an installation that puts a message across.It might be a well designed product, like an Ipad screen "asking" you to touch and feel its surface. It may be clothes that the wearer chooses to express himself with. It may be a space that encompasses you, a texture that you enjoy touching. The difference in Art and Design is this: Art is the expression of the artist, for the sake of the art. 

Whereas, design is for the people. It comes from the needs of the people, or the opportunity to make something better. Designs ultimately have to respond to needs in society, and their survival and success rate is dependent on how well they answer to the people's needs. A good example is the humble "Lotah" . Its form and function have been thoroughly refined over hundreds of years in India, and with the simplest of geometry, absolute economy of material , be it metal or earth, or plastic, and its fantastic ergonomics, it has the most beautiful design language native to India. There are lots of iconic pieces of Indian design, but a lotah is a much more fundamental one. 

So Design is not merely aesthetics. Aesthetics are a part of the design process, and help put the solution together, and the solution again forms and informs the aesthetic of the design. 

A cycle of "Form follows function and function follows form". 

Design is a process, also a  problem solving  way where an area is chosen, the appropriate research is conducted, especially into the context, the users, their habits and the culture they're a part of, and see how all these things come together to present a broad framework within which the solution has to come out. 

The next stage is the actual design phase. Concepts, metaphors and ideas are bounced around, put together, jumped on, squashed, mixed, made a khichdi out of, to see how they all come together and answer the problem. The solution is sometimes, a product, sometimes, a graphic or a communication , sometimes, a textile, sometimes an exhibition, sometimes a public space, sometimes, a system of things . This is eventually refined, and field tested to see how appropriate it is and how workable it is in the real world. If it is a success, then the design has a good chance of  working well when implemented for real. That marks a good design. 

Design worldwide has faced major changes, with time and the age influencing the design that is produced and consumed worldwide. There are several important phases historically. Since a large part of contemporary design approach is based on the west, the changes that have taken place there have influenced design heavily. 

A variety of eras, from Baroque, to impressionism, surrealism, to Dadaism, to Pop art, Modernism and Post modernism came about. Discussing them in detail will be an exercise for later ,  but they all came together to shape how design is done today. 

Design in the west is a lot about the person who designs as well. Buildings are remembered due to the designer involved. The brand is the designer. This is a strong reflection of the sense of promoting individual achievement, that the west tends to focus upon. 

Design in India has always been around. It has been and still is a grassroot cultural expression. The Architect plans the Taj Mahal, the local stone cutters from different communities come in and put their own motifs on it. So we see an intermingling of cultural symbols.
When you hurt your hand, you got o the local bone setter who is also a carpenter. Then you go to the blacksmith in your village and ask him to make you a series of vessels that can be customized so that you only need one hand to cook. He works the design out in front of you and promises to deliver next week. You then remember that the harvest festival is approaching, so you need new clothes made. Your neighbour shows you her new saree. You get an idea, go to the local weaver, and get your customized saree made, to be dyed , and delivered to your taste. This goes on. Villages in India attempt to be self sufficient usually, and due to the mix of communities present, this has been achieved, and design has a grass root status here. However, design also has the trademark of the community that is involved in its making. The weaver, the goldsmith, the carpenter, the potter, the toy maker, the local bard, the artist, the temple dancer, they all fall  into the category of "the Craftsman, the artisan". Here, the community, the culture, and the aesthetic tradition is important, not the person who made it. A reflection is in the act that though we have so many cultural and historical marvels in the country, we do not know the people involved in the actual making of the piece. Till today, due to the nature of current IP and copyright laws, and the community-owned design idea that Indian mentality has, we are still struggling to create a functional system and legal framework to accommodate and respond to these aspects.

In India, soon, after the dusk of the British Raj, the Nehruvian vision of an Industrialized India set in. The middle class consumed the affordable mass produced things available to them and  the craftsmen were unable to tackle the same needs, with the same pace and rigor of industry, causing a wide gap in contemporary urban Indian lifestyle (which looked at the west for want of a precedent), and the dying presence of typical Indian design.

Around this time, Nehru invited two highly well known American designers, Charles and Ray Eames, to invite proposals to see what could be done design wise in the growing Indian industry. The husband and wife pair traveled across India for six months,  and produced a landmark document, called the India Report that recommended that establishment of a professional education institute for design, and that students in India be trained to serve the needs of local tradition and industry in the country. This led to the establishment of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, in the 1960s.

NID, and its students were taught in their time, by some of the greatest designers in their fields, such as Charles and Ray Eames, Adrian Frutiger, Helena Perheentupa, Mr H Kumar Vyas, Gajanan Upadhyay, Dashrat Patel, Ishu Patel,   and many such , establishing departments such as Product design, Furniture design, Graphic Design, Textile design, and over time, some disciplines also evolved, such as Ceramic and Glass design, Exhibition Design, Animation film design, Film and video communication etc, evolved. 

These disciplines have continued till today, and have also branched out to include other disciplines, in post graduation, in two campuses set up in Gandhinagar and Bangalore, including Apparel, Retail, Design management, Transportation , Digital and New Media, and so on. Through our respective disciplines, we learn to tackle different design challenges, and learn to design for a given context.

Currently, apart from NID, there are also several well known design institutes in the country, such as IDC in IIT Bombay, MIT pune, Symbiosis, Srishti, Nift, Pearl, and so on, However, the Indian design education in general overall still has to mature to the extent that the west already has.  Graduates from all these institutes are now working in various capacities in the Indian industry. 

A culture of extensive inquiry and discovery of the Indian design idiom, and constant efforts to preserve important arts and crafts, to revive them and bring them back into the mainstream through intelligent design intervention has been a very important facet of the journey of an Indian designer. We often ask ourselves questions such as " What is India?" " What makes something"Indian?" " Does it just have to 'look' Indian? "" What makes our culture what it is? What is contemporary India's culture? What is its visual language? what then defines Indian design, in an era of modernisation and worldwide standardisation? 

These questions constantly play on our minds.

One of our well respected professors, and design educators, Mr M P Ranjan has captured many such moments in his extensive blog which can be found here:

http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/

This blog is an amazing resource for anyone, be it a designer, or a non designer, and is often a reference for all of us. 

 And I should say we are extremely lucky to have been born in this country. As a designer, it is a treat to have an endless palette of things to inspire you, to have cultures and stories all around, to have situations that challenge our abilities (such as the Indian public toilet, and the attitude towards using a loo, in rural areas, and the cultural phenomenon behind it, and the challenge of bringing change), where every change is not merely in a small habit, but shows a ripple effect in culture, in caste and community, and by extension, in thought, outlook, and the world. 

As a designer, I hope to grow, to be able to answer to these challenges, and hopefully, build a better tomorrow for our country. 

Three Kilometre Pilgrimage.

We are all great book lovers in my family, and like any book loving Indian family, we’ve grown up reading Ruskin Bond. His idyllic writing, and warm depictions of life the north Indian landscape, especially his beloved Mussoorie, of his past, amongst Anglo Indians of a past era that he grew up in captured the imaginations of most school kids in India (Well, most ). My Mother taught them and we read them. He was like a familiar literary landmark of growing up in India . So when my father proposed a trip to Uttarakhand, we sisters and Mother team raised our voices emphatically, and declared that Mussoorie was a must on our Itinerary.

“We want to meet Ruskin Bond!”

“But he’s probably very old now, or busy,” our father said.

“He wrote that meeting fans delights him. He said they’re welcome at his place!” my sister countered. She was a bigger bookworm than I was, chewed and digested books and retained photographic memory of the contents on a regular basis. “Why would a self-respecting writer not keep his word?”

“ Yes, authors usually state whether they are able to meet their fans, and reply to their messages. I checked it on quite a few authors’ websites!”

“Anyway, it’s a choice between Mussoorie and Nainital. We’re keeping our itinerary flexible” our father finally said. And that was the end of our discussion.

Ruskin bond is a beloved writer. He was one of the few who wrote that meeting his fans delighted him, and was a popular figure that , in spite of getting on in years, still visited the Cambridge Bookstore in Mussoorie  every weekend, to meet his fans , give away signed books, and talk to people. My sister and I had tried to contact J K Rowling before this, only to be pushed away by her rigorous assurance that anything we’d send her would not be read and replied to. So you can understand how excited we were at the prospect of meeting this master.

We set off in early June, flew to Delhi, thence to Dehra Dun, where our tourist cabbie was waiting with his car , a tiny cramped Indica outside the Jolly Grant Airport. We then travelled first to Haridwar, where we got to see the Ganga Aarti before a Ganges in gloriously full flood, and thence to Joshimath. From Joshimath and its Narasimha Swami temple, we moved further ahead to Badrinath.

The colourful temple was a river, a hot spring dip and an excruciatingly long pilgrim line away.  I’d never seen queue discipline like this anywhere in India. People were simply not allowed to jump the line, for the rest of the people in the line would murder them on the spot. The frustration of waiting long left people in most uncharitable moods (that it was in the course of a darshan of the Divine did not matter). We stood in scorching hot direct sunlight for a good two hours, got pushed around by crowds and managed to catch a glimpse of the Idol in the sanctum sanctorum before the vicious stampede dragged us out unceremoniously. The first official darshan of the Chota Char Dham ended like that.

Post this experience,  none of us were keen to go to Kedarnath, our next destination. which involved long detours, a horseback trek, and more lines. I wanted to avoid horse back on starved ponies, my sister the crowd, my Mother the ridiculous trek and our cabbie wanted to save on fuel, so on popular vote, we decided to skip Kedarnath, decided against Nainital, since it would involve a long detour  and move on to Mussoorie.

Our uncle in Dehra Dun advised us “ Skip Mussoorie. It isn’t what it used to be. Why don’t you go to Dhanaulti instead?” Of course, he didn’t understand that it wasn’t just for the weather.

We soon found out why he said that, though.

 Summer in Delhi is thoroughly unforgiving. Anyone in Delhi, with a car and a weekend flees to the hills the first chance they get. Usually, they make a beeline for Mussoorie. So when we got close, we were stuck in the kind of traffic jam that is usually seen happen in Delhi during peak hours when the traffic police is fast asleep. We decided to move higher up, to beautiful, peaceful Dhanaulti, but it was crowded even there, and we managed to find a tiny mouldy room with difficulty. 

In the night, my sister and I fantasized about meeting Ruskin Bond going up to his little cottage surrounded by a wild flowering garden, meeting the legend and feeling humbled in his presence,  about having a quaint cup of tea with the great man, and discuss the journey of a writer,his own journey as one,  something that most voracious readers try to embark on at some point, and the dream of finally seeing your writings read, life , and other profound things that can only be discussed with a Master. We could hardly sleep (it wasn’t just the fantasizing, though. The bed was cramped, the rug wet and mouldy, and the room stank). 

The next day, we set off on our pilgrimage, the big pilgrimage to Mussoorie, to the Central Library Ruskin Bond frequented, the roads he walked, the scenes he described, and to Landour, where he lived, and hung out , went for long walks and played cricket with  other well-known people like Tom Alter.

Mussoorie was so crowded that our cabbie refused to drive into town. He insisted on parking at the outermost parking lot available and refused to drive another inch. We decided to make it on foot. The Central Library was quite close by. A ninetenth century wooden building, it boasted of a hall with a hatstand and coat hangers, a traditional parlour with armchairs . The old well worn leather, wooden panelling and shelves and shelves of old books were simply beautiful. And like any traditional library, they had that old register of visitors and members, whose names, addresses and comments were all written down. We got Ruskin Bond’s address from there.

“ It’s up in Landour, about three kilometres away”, the girl at the reception desk said. “ You’ll find it near a Tibetan restaurant.” My sister noted the address,  and we took a few photographs in the waiting hall.

Then, we set off towards Landour. We had to pass by the shopping area, which was surprisingly clean, due to the town’s stringent policy, and the cooperation of the many vendors making up the market. It was thoroughly crowded, and few vehicles were visible. By now, even Father seemed excited as we marched up the hill, along the quaint railings on the Mussoorie Mall road. Three kilometres of walk to meet a celebrated author in person didn’t seem so bad. We passed trinket shops, exhibitions, book shops, clothing shops, all of which were chock full of eager tourists.  We paused a bit ahead for a breather, and asked a passer by how far Landour was. He said, about three kilometres from here.

We were confused. Not knowing how to get around, we asked for directions, and kept walking uphill.  Three kilometres uphill is a daunting task. We now knew why we hadn’t seen any overweight Garhwalis.

We paused at the Cambridge bookstore, the place where Ruskin Bond came down on Saturdays to sign books and meet his readers. The jovial owner was behind the counter, talking perfect, semi accented English, to the Man himself on the phone.

“ Oh yes, sir! Perfectly, sir. I’ve just sent the lad with a set of books to be signed. So, will you be in for your afternoon siesta, sir? Oh, yes, sir, absolutely sir! Have a good day, sir!” He hung up and noticed us. 

“To meet Ruskin Bond?”

“Yes. Do you know how we can get to his house?”

“Hmm… He’s gotten on in years now, and isn’t as active as he used to be. So it isn’t likely that you’ll be allowed to meet him. Do you know, you’re the eleventh group of people who’ve asked me for his address this morning? “

“We’ve come all the way from Hyderabad. We’re all avid book lovers, and we’d really love to have a chance to meet him.” My mum quipped.

“All right, I’ll give his address and number to you. But you mayn’t be able to meet him. But even if you don’t , why don’t you pick up a couple of his signed books to take back?”

So my sister and I got a couple of signed books.

We continued to walk uphill, across the clock tower, and asked other passers by how much further it was. The answer was three kilometres every time.  By which time, we were all thoroughly frustrated , with extensive foot pain and starving. My father started a round of I-told-you-so.  We were passed by a honeymooning couple ,  the man walking ahead and his wife trailing behind.  They asked for directions to Ruskin Bond’s house ahead, and moved on.

We met a friendly vicar’s family, and stopped for a rest and a chat. He was from Cochin, and his wife was from Guntur, so we bonded with them and their three daughters for a while. His eldest was a bit younger than I was, and was excited about getting into college.  We told them that we’d come this far to meet Ruskin Bond.  Mrs Vicar smiled and said that she was an English teacher herself, and everyone at her school was thoroughly excited to learn that she shared the same address as Ruskin Bond. They told us we were pretty close. 

So we moved a little ahead, and found that flamboyant Tibetan inn, Doma’s that everyone talked about, the one three kilometres away.  Moving a bit further uphill, we found his house.

It wasn’t at all like the quaint cottage we expected to see. It was more of a very normal, typical hillside flat, with a narrow dingy entrance leading up to the main wooden door. There was hardly any greenery around, save for the few potted plants near the entrance.  We knocked on the door, and a middle aged woman in a salwar kameez , opened. We asked for Ruskin Bond.

“ He’s ill. He’s asleep with a  headache. “

My Mother tends to be rather insistent  “We’ve come to meet him from afar. Could we just meet him for a little while? All of us are his avid fans. “

“ Sorry, he isn’t meeting anyone”

A little boy came out. “Are you Gautam’s brother?  Mr Bond often writes about you all” my Mother told him. He nodded, and said “Ruskin Bond has gone to Dehra Dun on some work”

We figured he was in no hurry to see us. Many of his fans land here in Mussoorie, but not many make it all the way up to the hill, it is quite an exhausting climb. But just one door, or a couple , and a few adoptive family members stood in the way of our meeting this literary maestro, this literary legend of every Indian school kid.

We humbly nodded, took a couple of pictures at the gate to his house to the adoptive family’s amusement, and walked away. We were too exhausted to be disappointed.  We moved up to Char Dukan, the market at Landour, and sank into the chairs of the nearest café.  Some beautiful Himalayan stray dogs kept us company. As we consumed noodles and fed biscuits to the gentle giants, I looked around. This place seemed like an expatriate haven. Caucasian missionaries, their wards and families, and Mothers home-schooling children, and exchange students learning Hindi.  I later learnt that under the British, while Mussoorie was open to Indians and Indian royalty in particular, Landour was the British Cantonment and had their convalescent sanatorium, and hence had more British and American missionary populace than the town itself.

My sister seemed down, at the one pilgrimage that wasn’t to be.

 I then remembered this one story that my Grandpa told me, about this man who went on a quest, seeking God, to obtain salvation. He travelled, searched everywhere, studied the various texts, debated with the learned, visited all spots of pilgrimage, and was told that his answers could be found in the Himalayas, those majestic mountains that are virtually the stairway to Swarga.

And so this man set off for the Himalayas, met sages, studied yoga, and wandered village to village, hamlet to hamlet as a mendicant, seeking God.

In the course of seeking alms as a mendicant, he chanced upon this one house with closed doors.  Above the door frame, in vermillion dye, was written “God Resides Here”.  He was beside himself with excitement. After his long arduous search, he was finally close to his goal. Just a door separated him and God. He raised his hand to knock.

He then paused, and started thinking about what would happen if he knocked. The door would be open, and he would be face to face with God, for whom he’d been searching so earnestly all this while, and that darshan would grant him salvation. But what about after that meeting? The rest of his life stretched out empty and meaningless, since now that he’d met God, and there was nothing higher than that, there would be nothing to live for, strive for and struggle for beyond that. The prospect of living a purposeless existence beyond this shook him, and he decided to leave the house alone. He turned around, and walked away, resuming his search for God everywhere else.

It got me thinking. The fact that we loved reading and writing, and aspired to write and be published, and read by many . Our admiration for Ruskin Bond was ever great. What if Ruskin Bond the man was not the man we imagined him to be? Our possible disillusionment at the meeting, and its consequences were rather unnerving. I had faced something similar previously with music and it was not something I’d want others to go through. 

So I turned my attention to the beautiful dogs at Char Dukan, and the prospect of a nice restful walk at Dhanaulti awaiting us. Maybe it was for the best. And God Knows, the man earned his laurels, but he’d also earned his rest. 

A Review: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

My tryst with Haruki Murakami began two years ago, when a College Professor recommended that I read his book, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle . As a student of Exhibition and Spatial Design, I was to learn and understand how space can be manipulated and transcended, and expressed across media.
I picked up many of Murakami san's books, except the one recommended to me. In time, I've grown to like the way he writes, to accept his brand of surrealism that is typically Japanese.
So, when I saw After Dark in a good friend's collection, I immediately asked to borrow it.

The story centers around the late night goings-on , centering around a young Japanese college girl Mari specializing in Chinese language studies, trying to while time away in a fast food joint reading  to put off going home. She meets a young aspiring musician, a guitarist in a band, who happened to meet her a few years ago, along with her elder sister Eri, a model, on a group date. He tries to chat her up, and she responds a little coldly as they catch up .
 He practices in a garage near a Love hotel, and after  a while, she gets a call, asking for help from a hotel manager of a love hotel. A Chinese prostitute has been brutalized at the Love hotel, and her client vanishes without paying up. The hotel manager can't understand what the poor girl is trying to say, and asks Mari to help translate.
Eventually the girl is picked up by one of her pimps, and the pimp and his gang are on the look out for the man who brutalized the girl.
We meet the offender, a late night office worker , and his lone time at work, and returning home at dawn. While the elder sister, Eri sleeps a long sleep full of mystery without showing signs of waking up.

I immediately fell in love with the book , as there are a lot of elements I can relate to and enjoy(yes, I'm a night bird). The late night stay-ups, the coffee, meeting people, and the mystery that only the night can possibly hold.
Haruki Murakami's writing is brilliant. Usually, in his other books, there is a certain consciousness crossover that happens when the reader encounters the surreal aspect, but in this book, it is a lot more constrained, and subtle. As usual, it stays surreal because Murakami san doesn't bother with explanations. Possibly, the surrealism in his book is far more muted than the others, and it is far more realistic.

His characters say things without actually stating them, and things that happen in his book spark possibilities , but ones that are deliberately not used (will he go out with her? Is he haunting her dreams?) and that choice not made establishes the sense of the mundane everyday.
His book is not to be analysed though, We just need to allow it to wash over us , sink into the feeling of late night neon light urban Japan, and the angst of college going people, awaiting the choices dawn brings them.
A very enjoyable read. Best read in a busy all night cafe, overnight, with a cup of strong espresso, and good music for company.