Hillbilly Elegy by J.D.Vance

Stars: 4 Stars

I did not grow up in the U.S.A. So, my first introduction to Hillbillies was through those lovable fictional transplants to California. I refer to the TV show – The Beverly Hillbillies. I never thought about hillbillies after that, till coming to America. Then it slowly began to sink in, that for whatever reason, hillbillies were not held in fond esteem by the rest of the country, and I couldn’t see why. One of the things about being an immigrant is that there are some cultural nuances that we just won’t get. For example, when it is generally agreed that stereotyping is harmful, why then is it not considered offensive to label some poor people as ‘white trash’. I have heard that term casually tossed around in pop-culture, while another word is delicately expressed as the ‘n-word’. There seems to be a double standard there that I don’t understand.

In his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance explores the complexity of his family roots; and in the process, gives us an insider’s scoop into the hillbilly culture – the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of it.

“Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology, and community and culture and faith.”

Though Vance proudly identifies as a hillbilly, in his case, it is more an identity of culture and ethos. His hillbilly grandparents had eloped as teenagers from the hills of eastern Kentucky to start their life together in a suburb of Ohio. His beloved grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw, briefly enjoyed their share of the American dream, reaping the windfall of the industrial boom of the Fifties. However, they and their kin also exemplify self-destructive behaviors and attitudes that blight their chances of happiness and prosperity. As we see in Vance’s book, some of his family grow in awareness; and make conscious decisions to exercise better judgment, make better choices; simply, to live better. Because they’ve seen first-hand the alternative to that – living as their own worst enemy; no outsider can do to them what they do to themselves.

Despite his interest in sociology and his research, Vance does not write like an academic. I say that as a point in his favor. The statistics he cites, and the writers he references serve to anchor his personal narrative more securely. Because ultimately, it is his story that held my interest – the family lore; the grandparents who try to amend the mistakes of their youth by being the rock of their grandchildren’s life; the poignancy of a childhood held hostage by an unstable parent; and most importantly, the resolution that neither the odds stacked against him nor any possible inherited genetic traits would doom his destiny. I found that self-assertive optimism made this a remarkably ‘American’ book in every sense.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell


Rating: 4 Stars

Book Club November 2011 Pick

The literary universe offers endless possibilities for those of us with a critical bent of mind; predisposed to entertain ourselves with the analysis, assessment, and evaluation of books. There are however times when we have to admit defeat. There are some books that we have read too often, loved too well, and enjoyed too much to the extent that our perspective is hopelessly compromised. Those are the times when we shut the door on that opinionated little inner voice, and surrender ourselves to the enchantment of being transported to another world, where plot conventions have no more meaning than stylistic devices. Thank God for those occasions, and how I wish there were more of them.

Published in 1956, ‘My Family and Other Animals’ is an affectionate chronicle of the adolescent years that Durrell spent on the Greek island of Corfu with his eccentric and always entertaining family. The venturesome Durrells emigrate to Greece in the 1930’s in search of some balmy weather, and literary inspiration. The move is instigated by Larry, the eldest in the family. Lawrence Durrell (who later gained literary fame with works like his Alexandria quartet) is portrayed as a provocative gadfly of a personality – brilliant, caustic, and witty. Rounding off the rest of the family is the widowed Mrs. Durrell, and Gerald Durrell’s two other siblings – Leslie and Margo. Each character is endowed with their own peculiarities that are depicted with great relish. Fans of Gerald Durrell’s style of humor will savor this unconventional family’s quirks, and their assortment of equally colorful friends.

“…It was originally intended to be a mildly nostalgic account of the natural history of the island, but I made a grave mistake by introducing my family into the book in the first few chapters…by exercising considerable cunning…I managed to retain a few pages here and there which I could devote exclusively to animals.”

Gerald Durrell went on to become both a popular writer, and a renowned zoologist and conservationist. This book gives us a glimpse into the early propensities that made these dual careers as natural as they were inevitable.

Whether the animals are more or less diverting than the humans populating the narrative is a moot point. What colors the humor of the memoir, and lends it its irrepressible joie de vivre is the appreciation of individuality wherever it is found; and apparently it is found everywhere. What is also found in abundance is that other precious commodity – beauty. When Durrell is not delighting with his exuberant, over-the-top humor, he beguiles with writing that never fails to drown me in its loveliness, no matter how often I read this book. Whether it’s the breathtaking verve in his tale of an encounter between a gecko and a mantis that is recounted as a battle of epic proportions; or, descriptions of sumptuous family picnics and get-togethers, the details are rendered in stunningly exquisite prose.

The memoir, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog is the most slippery of nonfiction genres. The successful memoirist engages his audience’s interest by playing a wily game of revelation and concealment, as enticing and illusive as any fan dance. This book is no different in that respect. Ultimately, the reasons I love My Family and Other Animals are complicated and deeply personal. Suffice it to say that, every time I lose myself between its covers, I rediscover with a sense of wonder and grateful relief, that what delighted once delights still. The dearest books have this in common with the dearest friends…we outgrow neither.

The Caliph's House by Tahir Shah

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

“…a life not filled with severe learning curves was no life at all.”

Reading ‘The Caliph’s House’ would give one the impression that it’s easier to take the boy out of the East, than take the East out of the boy. Though the writer is of Afghan origin, his family for the past two generations, seem to have lived mostly in the West. Shah has sentimental reasons for wanting to move to Morocco – he’s inspired by the example of his distinguished diplomat grandfather who spent the last years of his life in Tangiers; he has memories of happy childhood vacations spent there, and wants to give to his own children ‘a gift of cultural color’. Last but not least, he is hungry for adventure, for freedom from safety – apparently he gets more than he bargained for in that department.

In an act of overweening recklessness, he purchases ‘Dar Khalifa’ (the Caliph’s House), a place with an interesting history. In his initial description of the Caliph’s House, one can sense why it enchanted him – his details of fountains in the courtyard, intricate craftsmanship, and wisps of lingering glory would make anyone swoon, and Shah comes across as a man of lavish, expensive tastes, but with an exquisite sense of beauty and art. He sees the house not as it is, but as it can be, and dreams of restoring it to the grandeur stolen by the years. It seems to be love at first sight.

As the say, the path of true love is never smooth. Along with the house he inherits three ghoulish retainers, the Guardians, who in their turn are terrified of the malignant and powerful Jinn that they claim inhabits the house. Shah finds himself awash in unbridled superstitions, disgruntled neighbors, bureaucratic red-tape, and crafty artisans who see him as the proverbial cash cow that they intend to milk dry. Alas, ‘baraka’ (divine blessing) is not on his side. Indeed, he seems plagued by a series of misfortunes near biblical in proportion.

Shah had lured his wife to Morocco by promising her a battalion of domestic help, but soon they discover themselves over-ruled and undermined by their staff. Shah, after a dismal experience with his first personal assistant seems to strike gold with his second – the dazzlingly efficient Kamal, who soon proves to be more indispensable than his right hand, but also as shady as a backstreet alley. We tend to feel sorry for the author, but with the mental reservation that he has brought this all on himself.

The book is a highly personal and impressionistic account of Morocco. Perhaps, that’s why I would prefer to label this as a memoir rather than travel writing. Shah is a silver-tongued storyteller. He seems so chronically unlucky that the startling climax comes across as a jolt. The conclusion is surprisingly gratifying, and has us marveling, “Well, whaddya  know - the guy had baraka after all.” To check out the result of his magnificent obsession, just google images of Dar Khalifa.



Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua



Rating: 3 Stars

There’s a funny story about the Asian Family’s grading system:

A – average

B – bad

C – crap

D – Don’t bother coming home

At this point, no doubt I’ve ruffled some feathers. Let me explain. This ‘joke’ was told to my sons with great relish and complete seriousness by their Chinese American class-mates.

In her book, ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’, Amy Chua, American-born offspring of Chinese immigrants, Yale Law school professor, and the mother of two daughters elaborates on the principles of Chinese parenting that frequently results in high-achieving child prodigies. Chua does have some first-hand insights into the situation. Her daughters, Sophia and Lulu (Louisa), are both academically bright and musically gifted – in piano and violin respectively.

There is aptitude, and then there is inborn talent. Even among the talented, there are degrees of innate ability. Those of you who have read ‘Outliers’ will be familiar with one theory as to why some succeed, while others fail to reach their full potential. Those of you who have not read that book will probably have less sympathy for Chua, and her style of extreme parenting. There will likely be many tsks of disapproval at some of her Gestapo techniques, if not shocked outrage. Is Chua’s child-rearing brutal, myopic and regressive, or is it dedicated, single-minded and selfless? I will reserve my opinion on the matter and leave you to form yours. But one has to admit, it takes a brave/thick-skinned mother who will lay bare her parenting methodology to the cynosure of the world.

As can be expected, the book has generated a lot of talk, with Chua being excoriated by some and applauded by others. I would say that she was courting controversy with the subtext to the title which includes the phrase ‘why Chinese parents are better at raising kids’. For those predisposed to dislike her views, the author offers herself as a walking target, not only in the unrepentant tongue-lashings and psychological abuse she heaps on her children, but in her many pungent opinions: denouncing astrology in one sentence but then proudly identifying herself and her daughters with the Chinese zodiac for the full run of the book; her scathing indictment of some white men’s overwhelming preference for Asian women, while importantly adding that her good self was the one and only Chinese woman her white Jewish husband ever dated. You could be offended, or you could choose to be amused by the unintentional humor.

Personally, I found this a highly engaging book, but not one to be taken too seriously. Its interest to the reading public lies not in any parenting solutions that she offers, but in the many legitimate questions that are brought up about what it takes to raise a successful, happy child. Chua’s signal error is in identifying certain core virtues, such as hard work, respect, commitment as ‘Chinese’; then imposing them mercilessly on her daughters. My quibble would be that while she assails her children with these notions, she herself fails to follow certain other virtues that are also traditionally ‘eastern’ – wisdom, patience and restraint.

There’s a vapid generalization about tiger mothers vs. mother bears. While there’s a part of me that would like to chime in and say that it takes a human being to raise another human being, honesty compels me to admit that on several issues, I’m on the side of the tiger; albeit its mild side, not its wild side.

Related Reading:

‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell; Nonfiction

This is my favorite of all Gladwell’s books. Here, he expands the equation between success and hard work more persuasively and less offensively than Chua.

‘My Father’s Paradise’ by Ariel Sabar; Nonfiction

This book appealed to me with its sweet spirit and warm humor. That, and the fact that, despite geographical boundaries, and the differences in language and religion, the values of immigrants from the old world are astonishingly similar.

The Motorcycle Diaries - Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto Che Guevara

[Translated from the Spanish]

Rating: 3 ½ Stars

Before he became one of the most charismatic political icons of the last century, ‘Che’ was known simply as Ernesto Guevara (1928-1966). He is even now a polarizing figure. To some, he’s a true hero - the intellectual-warrior who saw revolutionary uprising as the only way to empower the downtrodden masses of Latin America. To others, who remember him for his Marxist ideology and his role in the Cuban Revolution, he was a dangerous incendiary.

On the cusp of completing medical school, Guevara decides to take a nine-month hiatus traversing South America. Accompanied by his friend Alberto Granado, on Granado’s bike optimistically called ‘La Poderosa II’ (The Mighty One), the two set off from their native Argentina, and in their travels cross Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and the U.S. before Guevara returns home. ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ is an account of those vagabond months.

Despite its impressive name La Poderosa was none too reliable. It was a tough, capricious beast of a machine with the spirit of a rodeo bronco. Guevara and Granado seem to spend as much time flying off the bike than staying on it. The pair meet with many comical mishaps, and come up with some conmen’s tricks to wheedle food and drink on the way. In return for meals, transport and shelter, they often take part-time jobs working at barbecues, doing odd jobs on ships (that they had boarded as stowaways), participate in football matches, or simply rely on the hospitality of strangers. South America seems a continent that, by and large, is very kindly disposed to unexpected guests. However, there are many occasions where one gets the idea that their hosts were glad to see the backs of the two young men.

Guevara writes with verve, imagination, and an exuberant humor. At times there is also a self-conscious grandiloquence that reveals itself in the flourish of certain phrases, more evident in the beginning and end of the book. For the most part, he comes across not as your average slacker idling some time away from school. Rather, there is a telling intensity and purpose in his observations on regional politics, the living conditions of the working poor, and the dismal medical resources available vis-à-vis the medical needs. A clear intelligence pervades the narrative, a deep interest in the people, history and economy of the places he visits. The glimpse that we get of Guevara at that point in his life is not yet that of a militant revolutionary, rather a nascent crusader who sees urgent need for social reform in his beloved South America.

There is a noticeable hint of criticism in his mention of the United States. Caught in the stranglehold of Cold War paranoia, the U.S. grew increasingly alarmed at the idea of Communism/Socialism thriving in its backyard. In its self-proclaimed role of defender of the free world, it championed democracy everywhere. If none were available, it settled for the next best thing – any government friendly to American interests, no matter how despotic to its own people. Many of South America’s dictatorial regimes were propped up with support from the U.S. government. Guevara’s eventual assassination in Bolivia in 1966, where he had joined in support of Bolivian guerrilla fighters was engineered in Washington D.C.  No doubt the world has become a safer place since then.

It has taken the U.S several decades to learn that global poverty and social unrest can spread like ripples from distant lands before crashing like a tsunami on its own shores. At least, one would hope that the lesson has been learned. Guevara probably was representative of a generation of impatient young men who hoped to change the world for the better with guns. If he had lived longer, perhaps he could have seen that all the populist rebels who stormed in, brandishing weapons and promises of a brighter future outstayed their welcome, clinging to the reins of power even as rigor mortis set in. The more things change the more they remain the same. Perhaps he was aware of it and made his choice anyway, and that is why he remains an emblem of indefatigable, incorruptible youth.



My Father's Paradise by Ariel Sabar

Rating: 3 & 1/2 Stars

There is a point of origin for all immigrant stories; it could be language, culture, or faith. It doesn’t really matter which. Anyone could serve as a lynchpin for the others. Ask immigrant families why they drag their children willy-nilly to classes in their native language, arts, and religion. The answer in a nutshell would be: it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we don’t forget who we are.

In Ariel Sabar’s memoir, ‘My Father’s Paradise’, the author’s father, Yona Sabar is an immigrant twice over. At the age of twelve, he left his native village of Zakho in Kurdish Iraq for the newly founded state of Israel. It was to prove a mass exodus for the entire Jewish community of Zakho, with disillusionment following in its wake.

To Yona and his family, the Land of Israel doesn’t quite deliver on its Promise. The Kurds were by and large of unsophisticated peasant stock, and find themselves disparaged and sidelined in their new homeland, where the affluent and well-educated Ashkenazi Jews predominate. Yona finds deliverance where he least expects it; in the study and research of Aramaic, the ancient Semitic language that features in parts of the Bible, and is reputed to be the mother tongue of Christ. Today, there are estimated to be about 500,000 speakers of Aramaic, including the Kurds of Zakho.

Yona leaves Israel to pursue his doctorate in the United States. His scholarship and humility earn him the esteem and affection of colleagues and students alike; but this quiet man seems to be eternally longing for the simple village he left behind. He feels at home neither in the social hierarchy of Israel, nor the spiritual wasteland of America. The author, as an adolescent found himself growing increasingly estranged from a father who seemed an embarrassing oddity. It is only on reaching adulthood, and in looking into the eyes of his infant son, that he sees staring back at him the potential perils of turning one’s back on the past.

Aramaic has a strong oral tradition, one that was kept alive by its village story-tellers. Sabar stays true to those Kurdish credentials. One of the arresting features of this book is its intensity. The other is the warm humor. The narrative draws us in early and doesn’t ease its hold. The author travelled widely to research his story, interviewing witnesses and scouring family archives. He candidly admits to reimagining certain scenes where no reliable first hand testimony was available.

Zakho in present-day Iraq is very different from the one of Yona’s childhood. Though under American aegis it is re-emerging as a Kurdish stronghold, the Jews have gone, remaining only in the memories of those old enough to remember. Those who remember, mourn their loss. For well over two millennia, the Jews of Zakho  had lived in brotherhood with their other Kurdish neighbors – Muslims and Christians alike, unmolested by the waves of inquisitions, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing that decimated the Jewish population in Europe. True civilization, apparently, can be found in the most surprising places.

Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Rating: 3 Stars

The memoir is a problematic genre, more so now, than it has ever been. For one, it faces the same challenge that ice-dancing does in the world of Olympic sports – what is its credibility in being classified as nonfiction? Readers may remember the recent debacle involving James Frey’s ‘A Million Little Pieces’ which was alleged to have scant facts, and some highly embellished ones at that. Add to that the memoirist’s selective memory, and wholly one-sided version of the story. Last but not least, there’s the snobs’ objection that one should have actually accomplished something before succumbing to the hubris of publicly sharing one’s life story.

I would like to say something in defense of these snobs, since I too belong to their cadre. I can only point to the myriad volumes of celebrity memoirs, and whiny tell-alls from the Average Joes and Janes who feel they’ve had a tough life. Still, we live in an egalitarian age – everybody has a story to tell, and some have a story that will sell, like Gabrielle Hamilton’s chef memoir. The title of the book may sound unnervingly like a sample recipe from Dr. Hannibal’s Lechter’s kitchen, but it’s an apt one. Hamilton’s story of her dysfunctional family, blighted childhood, and early anti-social behavior isn’t pretty; it comes with a lot of gristle.

She divides the book into three parts; ‘Blood’ covers some of the best and worst remembrances of her childhood, her accidental forays into the kitchen, her run-ins with the law, and her decision to get her act together. ‘Bones’ relates to her career as a chef, and the starting of her own restaurant. ‘Butter’ is about her unconventional marriage, motherhood, and her Italian in-laws.

I confess that my favorite portion of the book was ‘Bones’. Hamilton’s motivation in opening her restaurant seems to come from a vocation to serve in more ways than one, and is a testimony to both the sense of hospitality she inherited from her father, and the dauntless organization and hard-work ethic of her French mother. She effortlessly captures and conveys the frenetic energy zinging around in her restaurant, as she and her crew hustle a Sunday brunch for over 200 people in five hours in a space that seats thirty at a time. Perhaps that is why in contrast, I found the descriptions of her personal life embarrassing, wearying, and ultimately sad. This woman, who is admirable in many ways in her ablity to channel her clarity of purpose, commitment, sacrifice, and fearlessness when it came to her profession, is yet unable to stop her most cherished dreams of family from trickling through her fingers.

She is strikingly on message when she speaks about food. Even a casual foodie knows the different currents swirling around that topic. Food is both a science and an art; a victim and a cause on the battlefields of bioethics and conscience; swayed alike by philosophy and fads, and, in its manner of consumption either a conduit to well-being or ill health. Unlike many celebrity chefs however, Hamilton understands it, not as a rarefied concept to tease jaded appetites, but in its true essence as manna to slake life’s most primal urge.

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars

I’ve always found it interesting to read colonial experiences of Europeans, and have wondered whether they can legitimately be categorized under the literature of the nation in question. In Isak Dinesen’s case, the doubt resolves itself. Out of Africa is very much about the land and the people, albeit as seen by an outsider. Dinesen’s writes with the eye of a painter, and the voice of a poet. The book is a hymn to the allure of Africa. She seems to have the awareness of living on borrowed beauty; in the paradoxical situation of one who may have come to conquer, but stays to be captivated.

Isak Dinesen was one of the pen names adopted by Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962). Born into an aristocratic family in Denmark, the young Dinesen received her education in art in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome. Having married her second cousin, she moved with him to Africa in 1914 to start and manage a coffee plantation in Kenya. The marriage ended in divorce in 1925, but the Baron left Dinesen a couple of things to remember him by – the coffee farm in the Ngong Hills that she managed to keep going till 1931, and the dreaded syphilis that stayed with her for the rest of her life. This book is a memoir of the years between 1914 and 1931. There is very little mention of her personal woes. Rather, it is a collection of slightly dreamy reminiscences of her life in Kenya.

The author comes across as a woman who was both courageous and cultured, and a gracious, hospitable hostess who threw her home open to her friends, most but not all of them, fellow colonials. While recounting the management of the farm, she speaks in no particular chronological order of the animals, people and events that she encountered. She is a clear-eyed observer of characters and customs, but there is in her writing the ambivalence that is probably innate to the colonialist. On the one hand, she is deeply appreciative of everything around her, and ironically refers to the “prejudiced civilized person”. This is however, in marked contrast to the undercurrent of condescension that pervades the book.

Inadvertently or not, she lays bare the ugliness of colonialism, and the willful and malicious harm inflicted by the European race on the people and wildlife of Africa. Her descriptions of big game hunting and the clinical, cold assessment of Africans often seem lacking in human empathy. This in understandable because to those who ventured to ‘shoulder the white man’s burden’, the land and the inhabitants of Africa and Asia were resources to be exploited, and lesser races to be subjugated. Only under such a delusion could colonization be perpetuated. 

Still, we cannot be over-critical of Africa’s past, especially when there’s enough to regret in its present. In the final analysis, colonial literature is itself the best testament to the times to which it bore witness.

The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Rating: 4 Stars

[Translated from the Gujarati by Mahadev Desai]

Recently, TIME/CNN released its list of top 25 political icons. Topping that list was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948). It’s hard to reconcile the image of the frail and cherubic- looking senior with the iron-willed patriarch of the Indian nation, who forced the most powerful empire of the age to back down and walk away. Once we read his memoir however, it’s easier to understand.

Gandhi’s ‘An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth’ covers his life from early childhood to 1921, and portions of it were written when he was imprisoned by the British government for his pro-freedom activities. It was originally written in Gujarati, and was intended by Gandhi to lay out the case for ‘Satyagraha’ (Abidance in Truth), the name coined for his non-violent and peaceful resistance of British occupation. Gandhi’s language is unostentatious, as can be expected by a man known for his ascetic simplicity. The reader is of course always at the mercy of the competence, or otherwise, of the translator. But the plain, factual language lets the unadulterated essence of Gandhi shine through.

Born in the village of Porbandar, in Gujarat, a state on the west coast of India, the Gandhis had for three generations been in public service. His father having passed away when Gandhi was relatively young, the responsibility for his education was assumed by his elder brother, who supported him in going to England to study for the bar. Once Gandhi returned to India, he was unable to find satisfactory prospects, and went to South Africa to pursue a career in law. He stayed there for several years to champion the cause of the disenfranchised Indian community. On his return to India, he joined the struggle towards a Free India. From being a marginal figure, his influence rapidly grew to spearhead the movement, on his own terms – under the banner of Satyagraha, based on the principle of Ahimsa (non-injury).

The reader has to contend with some obscure details of the Indian Resistance movement, many of which may not be of popular knowledge, but Gandhi always ties these incursions into Indian history to the subject of his autobiography – the application of Satyagraha, and its results. He mentions many of the stalwarts of the Resistance, but the main body, the Congress, comes across as a flabby, lumbering, and ineffectual piece of political machinery. Gandhi’s intense love for his country and compatriots does not blind him to the challenges he faces both within the country, as well as without. When he does speak of the English, there is a remarkable lack of rancor in his statements.

Gandhi, the private man, is as interesting as Gandhi, the public figure. He was married at the age of thirteen to the unlettered, but spirited Kasturbai. Kasturbai had his passionate devotion, but he ruefully acknowledges tyrannizing over her. Theirs was an enduring marriage that weathered many storms. He admits to having made some mistakes in the raising of his four sons, and there is a note of pain in his mention of his estrangement from the eldest. One doesn’t doubt that it would have been hard living up to the Mahatma’s standards.

His influence on his family and friends is that of a benevolent dictator. Once he was convinced that he was on the right track, he spared no pains to persuade all around him to join him in his choices. This sounds autocratic, but we can easily credit that only a man possessed of  this unique combination of unbending conviction and mesmerizing charisma could have galvanized a nation onto the path of Satyagraha.

He certainly had his share of quirks. His dietary experiments seem to have gone beyond principles and eccentricity, to border on a reckless disregard for common sense and well being. Gandhi was also an enthusiastic proponent of home-schooling. While one can hardly argue against the need for active parental involvement, and values-based education, his execution of these ideas seem woefully ill-conceived, as well as  inadequate. The education of children is no undertaking for unprepared amateurs. One would wonder if perhaps, the Mahatma could have practiced moderation in these issues and others, but it seems to me, that like those who are addicted to extreme sports, he applied an ‘all or nothing’ philosophy to everything he did.

He was not comfortable with the title of Mahatma (Great Soul) bestowed on him by his adoring countrymen. He seems to feel that he didn't deserve it. He was a man acutely conscious of his own shortcomings. His reticence seems quaint in that it’s in such marked contrast to the public and private behavior of today’s elected officials, many of whom aspire to lead without ever having served.

Gandhi, from his earliest years showed both patriotism, as well as an all-embracing humanitarianism, but it is a revelation that many of the other qualities that we associate with him - his adamantine integrity, his courage, faith, abstinence, vegetarianism – were all hard-won, through a process of trial and error. They were in short, the very experiments that established him in the Truth so dear to him. Gandhi grew into his principles. Therein lies the beauty of his message and the power of this book.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Rating: 4 Stars

Reading Azar Nafisi’s entrancing memoir is like being granted a private audience with Scheherazade, the bewitching storyteller of the ‘Thousand and One Arabian Nights’. Azar Nafisi, however, is very much a product of her times, a proud, independent, female intellectual and academic from present-day Iran.

The unabashed literary leanings of this book are softened by an accessible style, and her vivid pathos and humor, as she describes living in a theocracy where religious ideology is used as a tool of political oppression. The tragicomedy is pervasive throughout the book, surfacing vividly in particular anecdotes – the film censor who is blind, the girls harangued by the morality police for eating their apples “too seductively”.

While the entire populace of the country has been victimized by the authoritarian rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nafisi is especially eloquent when she speaks of the indignities heaped upon the intelligentsia, and the daily humiliations and petty harassment that the women of Iran are subjected to.

The book is divided into four parts – Lolita, Gatsby, James and Austen. The first part is rather tellingly named after a literary work, instead of the author himself. This particular work deals with the rape and imprisonment of a young girl by a predatory older man. The analogy works very well for the abuse of Iran by its self-declared leaders.

In the second and third, the author chronicles her experiences during the Revolution that deluged the country in the late seventies, the Iran-Iraq war, and her attempts to lead her life, and continue the work she so passionately loved with any semblance of normalcy.

In the final part, she returns to the original premise of the book – the book club that this talented Professor of Literature started, and to which she invited a select few of her most dedicated students. These seven young women (“my girls”), differing widely in social backgrounds and personal beliefs are each depicted with an unbiased and tender regard. They are what make this book resonate in the memory.

While Nafisi does have an academic’s tendency to sound pedantic, and the reader is very much her captive audience, she is a brilliant raconteur, gifted with the exquisite turn of phrase – “… when the objects had vanished and the colors faded into eight gray suitcases, like errant genies evaporating into their bottles…”

What she shares in common with Scheherazade is her belief in the redemptive power of imaginative narration to transform and liberate the individual trapped in a nightmarish reality beyond one’s control.