Review of Rohinton Mistry's 'A Fine Balance'

I wrote this review for Goodreads, and thought should share it here as well. It's a long ass review for a long ass book, and hopefully comes somewhere close to doing justice to it.

Review 

Can one truly do justice to reviewing a book when the task is tantamount to reviewing life itself? I’m not sure, but let me open with the analogy below:

A Fine Balance is a knife buried in the heart of the reader. It starts twisting slowly to begin with. The pain is tolerable, even enjoyable in a masochistic way, until a certain point in the book, after which it starts to become uncomfortable, and then some more. Just then, the knife unwinds a bit, to let the reader relax. And just as he relaxes, it twists again. This cycle of extended periods of twisting of the knife punctuated by brief unwinding continues for a long, long time. Once the reader begins to think that the pain is intense but bearable and predictable, the knife is rapidly pulled out of the heart and replaced by a machete, using which the entire body is stabbed, slashed, cut, and eventually decapitated.

The analogy should make it amply clear that this book isn’t for the happy-go-lucky type at all, but let me come back to that in a while.

Sometimes, it seems impossible that a single human being was capable of writing this book. I mean, does Mistry suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder, or does he possess psychic powers, which have allowed him to simultaneously live the life of an urbane Parsi widow, a disabled beggar, a troubled teenager, a lower caste rural cobbler, a traditional Indian middle class mother, a still more traditional Indian middle class father, and so on and so forth? Moreover, how does he understand so intricately – and put on paper in an equally evocative way – the relationships between each of these very different and complicated characters?

Maybe I’m biased because the depiction of Maneck’s – the troubled teenager – relationship with his parents, and especially his mother, is almost a mirror image of my own relationship with my parents. Perhaps for the first time the book allowed me to understand how my mother sees our relationship from her perspective – and it broke my heart.

Some of the criticism aimed at the length of book is admissible, and there’s little doubt it could have been 100-120 pages shorter. However, the deeply descriptive 603 page tomb means the idiosyncrasies of each and every character are hardly read as such. Instead, they seem like the swaying top branches of a tall tree whose roots are buried firmly in the beginnings of the book.

Now, back to the analogy I made at the beginning. Never have I ever winced, grimaced, squirmed, writhed and twisted the way I did reading the matter-of-fact descriptions of destitution in this book. This would probably be far truer of an Indian reader than a foreign one because all Indians capable of buying and reading this book have developed within them an autopilot mechanism which helps them consistently ignore the shocking tragedy that is the lives of a majority of their fellow citizens, who live all around them. A Fine Balance relentlessly breaks down and destroys that autopilot. A few examples:

When Om – one of the four major characters and a rural low caste orphan struggling to make ends meet in Mumbai – has a lucky escape after a bicycle accident and gets Rupees 50 from the rich driver who almost crushed him, a passer-by says to him: “Never get up so fast. Always stay down and make some moaning-groaning noise. Cry for doctor, cry for ambulance, scream, shout, anything. In this type of case, you can pull at least two hundred rupees.” He spoke like a professional; his twisted elbow hung at his side like a qualification.

When Om throws away the last piece of a sugarcane without sucking it dry: A street urchin shooed away the gull and snatched the prize. She took it to the juice stall and washed off the sand in the bucket where the men were rinsing dirty glasses.

When Shankar, whose all four limbs were severed as a child – described as professional modifications elsewhere in the book – to make him an outstanding beggar, is in the process of retying the soiled bandages on his arms: The palms revealed he scratched them by rubbing against the tailors’ bedding. The sackcloth’s delicious roughness relived the itch. Then he began retying the bandages, the arduous process of neck and jaw in reverse. Om moved his own head in sympathy – up, down, and around, carefully, yes, around again – stopping when, feeling a little foolish, he realised what he was doing.

Here’s Shankar remembering his childhood as a beggar: “A child, a sucking cripple, earns a lot of money from the public. There were so many different breasts I drank milk from during those years”.

There are tens of such passages I could quote, but I will stop here. Mind you, this is far less horrifying than the sheer tragedy that ultimately befalls each and every character of the book, but I’ve avoided those examples to steer clear of spoilers. The point is, this book will break you down, make you beg for mercy till you stop begging out of sheer hopelessness. There is no reprieve, and there’s hardly “a fine balance between hope and despair”

Being alone, brown and non-American at a Trump rally

“Wear red, don’t utter a word, go with a white friend” – I kept repeating to myself as I finalized the plans, half expecting to get assaulted and fully expecting to get racially abused.

The understanding behind the above three precautions, reached after conferring with several of my well-wishers, was this: the red would camouflage me as a supporter (I was told I should pair it up with the right merchandise), keeping my mouth shut would prevent people from knowing I didn’t speak American, and a white friend could probably protect me if things got really bad.

Given my identity and the fact that I inexplicably ended up taking none of the precautions (the only conscious decision was to not wear the merchandise), I was a sitting duck at the latest Trump rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This rally was to be the first after Mueller report and Trump planned it to escape WHCD, so fireworks were expected. I was scared and anxious as fuck, but happy that I would get the real picture – what’s the worst that MAGA rallies have to offer, and how accurate is the media-driven fear surrounding them? – even if it came at the cost of losing a tooth or two.

Alighting the free-on-Saturday public bus a few hundred metres from Resch Centre, the venue of the rally, I saw a sea of white people, far greater in concentration than I’ve seen anywhere in America. The heads shaved, the beards long and the paunches large – the age demographics among the 10,000+ crowd were clearly in favour of older people. A teenage girl’s t-shirt said, “Raised Right”, which I thought was a brilliant pun. A vast majority was wearing MAGA merchandise. “Should have listened”, I thought to myself.

Queue outside Resch Centre

A loudspeaker alternated between blaring some of Trump’s most quotable quotes – “Is there any place that's more fun than a Trump rally?” – and a female voice that touted his support for first and second amendments. There were also calls for protestors to stay in the zone allotted to them. I didn’t spot protestors, though.

I walked towards the venue expecting the t-shirt slogans to get bolder. My eyes were on the lookout for “Fuck the immigrants/Go back to your country motherfuckers” or some more colourful variation of it, but almost to my disappointment, none such were to be found.

To join the queue, I had to pass by innumerable people, but was mighty surprised at having got no askance looks. I was scared that someone might push me out of the queue to replace me, but the queue culture turned out as strong as anywhere I’ve seen. The merchandise sellers were almost all black or latino, and everyone in the queue chatted away merrily with them. The topic of discussion among those at the rally was anything but politics. All I heard was the usual drivel about vacations, family and friends.

Before I could double check that I wasn’t at an Obama rally, I got confirmation that this was indeed a Trump rally: there was a wearable button featuring Hillary’s caricature saying, “Life's a bitch, don't vote for one”. Then, someone handed over a pamphlet to me which claimed that Trump had saved US from the greatest force in the world, the “British Empire”, and that US should collaborate more with Russia and China.

There were other, more pleasant confirmations too: a black merchandise seller, when asked to sell a MAGA cap for $5 instead of $10, retorted, “this is Donald Trump, man, not Bernie Sanders. There ain't nothing free here.”

About my resolve to keep quiet so as to not give away my accent? A few minutes into standing in the queue I felt safe enough to shed that pretence. I talked to several people around me, told them I was Indian, though stupidly maintained the cover that I was only a tourist and not there to take away their jobs. I am absolutely certain, though, that telling them the truth would have made no difference whatsoever.

The crowd management was pretty good, and it didn’t take me more than 45 minutes to be inside Resch Centre. I was a tad surprised to find that alcohol wasn’t being served for the day, and I’m not sure whether this is a protocol followed for all political rallies.

Inside Resch Centre

I have to say that the atmosphere inside was radically different from what it was outside (picture below). The first speaker I heard was a black woman – not Candice Owens – who belted out the usual tropes of “No Collusion”, “Fake News” etc. The crowd chanted “Lock Her Up” and “Build The Wall” as if to bring the roof down. The moment the speaker mentioned Obama and Biden (probably in regards to the Iran Deal), the chant switched to “Lock Him Up”, and I’m curious to this day about which of the two men they wanted behind bars (I’m hoping after due process). Maybe they should have just chanted “Lock Them Up”, but alas.

After surveying the fast-filling venue, I picked a corner seat to avoid being in the middle of supporters, and soon a mother-daughter duo took their seats next to me. I was positioned in a way such that Trump would have his back to me. There was a small contingent of people, very close to the podium, who were standing. Undoubtedly these were the apostles to Jesus Trump (I make that analogy hoping that there’s a Judas among them). For some reason, only Rolling Stones songs – some interesting history here – played every time there was a hiatus between two speakers.

One of the speakers was a Republican Congressman from Wisconsin – probably Mike Gallagher – who also happened to be a veteran. Of course, he started off by calling America the "greatest country in the history of the world", after which cum-cleaning machines had to be called in to deal with the collective orgasm of a 10,000 strong crowd. He thanked Sean Duffy, another Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, for being a “great catholic” because he had “done his duty” by producing seven kids. Planet Earth grumbled in disagreement.

The last speaker before Trump was his son, Don Jr. My greatest dilemma at this stage was whether to rise up and applaud the prick’s entry, which I hadn’t done for any other speaker till then, but of course this guy was different. I chose to do none of that, and faced no consequences at all.

Jr’s first act was to get people to chant “CNN sucks”, after which he spent considerable time talking about “collusion delusion”, the “devil” called Iran, and exhorting people to vote in 2020. Next, he attacked AOC for not being able to name the three branches of government before entering Congress, at which the old couple sitting right behind me laughed hard and called her “stupid”, though gave up on naming the three branches after several close attempts between themselves. The woman in the couple continued mumbling “we need to” or “we need that” at literally everything Jr pulled out of his ass. I wanted to turn around and say, “we need to….know the names of all three branches of government”, but decided against it.

For some reason, all of the speakers before Trump targeted Biden variously as old, inefficient, swampy, Obama ally etc. Maybe this signals who Trump considers the greatest threat, though Trump himself did not attack Biden much when he spoke.

There was a long break between Jr.’s departure and Trump’s arrival. I got chatting with my neighbour, the 20-something daughter in the mother-daughter duo, and told her about my nationality while still – stupidly – maintaining my tourist cover. She was a Green Bay resident, at her first Trump rally, and said she didn’t follow politics though could not have missed the chance of “being in the same room as the president”. I think she could have skipped the part about not following politics because that last bit made it obvious.

Trump entered at about 7:15 PM. It seemed everyone in the crowd wanted a piece of him. I was more nervous this time about not rising up and applauding, but nevertheless stuck to my guns without inviting trouble.

He began by congratulating Sarah Sanders, standing a few feet away from him, on being “the best” press secretary, and invited her to say a few words. In a (not at all unbelievable) show of pettiness, he commented that he wouldn’t want her becoming “too popular” as soon as she yielded the stage.

Trump asked, “By the way, Saturday night, is there any place that's more fun than a Trump rally? Can you imagine Sleepy Joe, Crazy Bernie…” and I had to grudgingly agree with him because this craziness was indeed a lot of fun, and I would never attend a rally by either of those two folks simply because they’re too predictable.

I thought he brilliantly killed two birds with one stone when, talking of Warren, he said that, “…it was found that I had more Indian blood in me than she did. And then it was determined that I had none, but I still had more.”

During his 80 minute speech, there was collective jeering when Trump brazenly lied – even by his standards – about Democrats killing babies after birth, and attacked India and other countries several times over trade, which made me want to sneak out of the room.

My neighbour, who took me for a Trump supporter, offered a MAGA poster to me which I promptly refused. Later on, I accepted one offered by her mother, sitting next to her, more out of courtesy to an older person than anything else, and placed it by my side.

After the end of the rally, I rushed out quickly to avoid the crowds and stood in a short queue to get popcorn. Right in front of me were two brown guys who talked loudly in what sounded like Arabic (but was probably a close cousin). I was a tad scared for them but nobody seemed bothered. I’m not sure whether their MAGA caps were meant to be a camouflage. Regardless, I don’t think there was any threat to them.

I stopped by for about half an hour at a restaurant across the road from Resch Centre to get some food. The place was crawling with hundreds of people stepped in the most interesting MAGA merchandise – one lady walked in wearing a cap saying “D.E.P.L.O.R.A.B.L.E.” in shiny alphabets – and some of the reporters who had been covering the rally. A cocktail of Trump supporters drunk on alcohol and his lies, mixed with “fake news” reporters – this was the ideal setting for a showdown. But no, nothing at all even here. Folks were nice enough to offer me their glass of water while I was looking for one.

I left the place feeling stupid for having wildly overestimated the risk. Surely the media-created narrative is not an accurate representation of reality, which is not to say that my account is entirely accurate either. I think what helped most was the absence of protestors at the rally (at least I didn’t see any) coupled with the fact that the rally wasn’t in a southern state (although I’m sure the rally had people from the south too). The point is, you should check things out for yourself.

There was, though, one piece of truth in the whole saga – there’s no place more fun than a Trump rally.

Harvard Holi vs. Indian Holi: is the latter really that bad?

The above picture is the screenshot of a Facebook status update by an Indian girl (name withheld, hereon referred to as she/her) who, from the looks of it, has recently moved to Harvard. So, congratulations to her.

Of course, the title of this post should suggest that it isn’t about congratulating her. At the time of writing this post, her update has been shared over 1800 times and has over 300 likes. Given its popularity, which isn’t surprising, it’s important to talk about what it says.

Let me begin with a disclaimer: I am not writing this post to peddle national pride at the cost of exposing the truth. I believe that the latter is far more important than the former.

Talking of truth, there’s no denying India’s malignant problem of crimes against women. Eve teasing and harassment are commonplace, much more so in the north than in the south, and more heinous crimes – some perhaps uniquely Indian crimes against women include dowry deaths and honour killings – also happen with disturbing frequency and audacity. These crimes need to be talked about widely. If global pressure and shame bring some change, good.

But since truth is important, I will go ahead and make a rather bold statement: her claims are misplaced.

In making this statement, I realise fully that a large part of how she feels about Holi in India derives from her lived experience, to which I’m not privy at all, and commenting on those aspects of it would be presumptuous of me. I do know many, many women who have played Holi on the streets in India without much of an issue, but the truth is, if I were a father, I wouldn’t want my daughter venturing out on the streets on Holi day. This is especially true of the town, Allahabad, that she refers to.

So, why do I still beg to differ with her?

Because pitting India’s streets against Harvard campus isn’t a fair comparison of “public spaces”. An apples to apples comparison would be either American streets vs. Indian streets, or elite Indian university campuses (and other similar, exclusive gatherings) vs. Harvard-like campuses. In the latter case, India’s elite, closed campuses – I spent many years at one – offer complete security and safety to women to celebrate Holi, and so do countless other public spaces ranging from colonies where people live to different kinds of public gatherings. Indian streets do offer a horrific spectacle sometimes, but I doubt American streets would be perfectly safe spaces for women if Holi were to be celebrated there with the same fervour and historical significance. Likely better, but not entirely safe, depending on the region in question. After all, some of the ills pointed out by her – catcalling, misdemeanour etc. – are very much prevalent on NYC, and probably to a lesser extent, on other American streets too. And let’s not forget that 63 million Americans voted for a man who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy.

For a fair comparison, it would help to look at the state of some truly “public spaces” outside India, where men and women mingle freely. In all such cases – Burning Man, Coachella, San Fermin, etc. etc etc. – sexual harassment/assault is rampant. In fact, in one case, a Swedish music festival banned men altogether because of the problem. Needless to say, catcalling isn't restricted to American streets. Statistics on street harassment show that while Delhi continues to be among the worst cities in the world, other global ones are no havens.

Is any of this to justify what happens in India? Not at all. As I've repeatedly stated, the problem of harassment is likely significantly greater in (north) India than in most other parts of the world. But the sort of comparison that she makes paints an entirely distorted picture of Indian men in the eyes of non-Indians, particularly Western women - as if 700 million of us are an amorphous blob of misogyny and patriarchy. The truth is, educated Indian men are not significantly better or worse than those of any other nationality. After all, it would be safe to assume that a significant proportion of the men she played safe Holi with at Harvard, were Indian.

Her outright dismissal of scientific arguments against the alleged semen-filled balloon-throwing incident is also unsettling. There is no doubt that targeted balloon-throwing against women is a menace. Even so, those who rush to social media to allege particularly sensational incidents, and double down on them even after they’ve been disproved (in this case through forensic analysis), do no service to the cause of truth.

By contradicting her claims I commit the sin of going against the prevalent wisdom of #BelieveWomen. Let me outrage the outraged a bit more by saying that a large proportion of rapes reported in India are fake. As per a sample analysis done by a very credible female Indian journalist, nearly 75 percent of the 583 rape cases argued in Delhi courts, in the year 2013, were false or frivolous allegations. The motivations ranged from extortion to parental pressure on the girl. Of course, this analysis can’t be extrapolated without qualification to the nearly 40,000 rape cases annually reported in India, but it does give a sense of the exaggeration. Global outlets such as BBC and Guardian have also covered this all-important aspect of rape in India. The Supreme Court of India has also expressed deep concern over the misuse of anti-dowry law.

In the interest of truth, let me also point out that that a majority of actual rapes in India are not reported. Further, there are heinous crimes against women other than rape, which are not covered by the aforementioned analysis. Even so, statistics on false accusations put paid to the idea of #BelieveWomen. Instead, let’s #ListenToWomen and #BelieveTruth.

I am saddened that this young girl had to move outside India to fully partake in the joys of Holi. I wish she’d got the opportunity to explore the umpteen safe spaces in India that offer a chance to women to celebrate Holi without fear. Would she have been able to do it safely on Indian streets? Quite unlikely. Would she be able to do it safely on American streets? I don’t think so.

Sexism and crimes against women are deeply Indian, as well as global, problems. Being vocal about them – while still being measured and responsible – is crucial, especially for those who carry on their shoulders the burden of crafting the reputations of over a billion people.

Travelogue - Friendship Peak

The following travelogue - focused on travellers instead of the journey - is inspired by Manu Joseph's miraculous description of his Chadar trek (https://bit.ly/2FhglO7). If you don't have the patience to read mine, do read his. It's the most unique form of travel writing out there.

The Woodbine in Manali looks too opulent a hotel to not have an elevator. The lobby is small but well-furnished. One corner has four sets of large couches arranged in the shape of a square, a thick red carpet covers slightly over half the floor area, and there are two wooden doors duly marked ‘He’ and ‘She’. No underpaid, untalented artists smearing the bathroom doors with moustaches that could be confused for lips and vice versa, leading to embarrassing situations. Just the letters displayed in bold – the way he likes it.

As he walks up the stairs to the first floor, where the four other trekkers from the group – all of them strangers to each other – are housed, he wonders why there isn’t an elevator. Maybe it has to do with the fact that a lot of the hotel’s clientele, just like himself, is part of the trekking community, and prefers taking stairs. Climbing up, he feels his muscles twitch, eager to conquer the 17,300 feet mountain that lies ahead of him. As he rings the doorbell of Room 102, a bald, stout man with an uncanny resemblance to Seinfeld’s George Costanza, answers. ‘Phew, I am not going to be the baldest person on this trek’, the words almost escape the confines of his oral cavity as he surveys George standing before him. He introduces himself to George as Fighter, explaining that he loved to fight his way through life. He doesn’t reveal that he was once known as Winner, a name he had liked far better.

 The snow-covered Friendship Peak in the distance

“So, where all have you trekked?”, Fighter asks George, a question that helps trekkers flex their muscles as much as break the ice. George, a government-employed scientist, proudly declares that he has under his belt several high-altitude jaunts, including the dreaded Chadar, a trek Fighter knows he would never dare attempt because of the cold. Fighter’s accomplishments are feebler, but he is fitter and at least a decade younger. ‘Enough time to outdo this guy’, Fighter thinks to himself, barely suppressing a soliloquy. Over tea, they discuss that the upcoming week-long trek to Friendship Peak is going to be the highest and the most difficult for both of them.

George tells Fighter that Room 201 has been reserved for a girl. “A girl? I thought this trek was a sausage fest”, says Fighter, already hoping that the girl is old and married, so that he can focus entirely on the trek. Human and natural beauty are almost mutually exclusive occurrences in the higher reaches of the Himalayas, but when they co-exist, it leads to confusion and chaos. Together they go through the list of trekkers, and settle on the only name which could remotely be a girl’s. Fighter calls her Hermaphrodite. George asks for the meaning and grins widely upon knowing – “I thought being gay was weird enough.” To make it easier to pronounce, they decide to call her Herma.

Just then, there is a knock on the door. George answers. A tall, fighting fit, dark-skinned man with salt pepper hair and beard, about 50 years of age, walks in. He looks capable of dating a hot young airhostess, but has a family with two kids. A man made for Everest, confined to Friendship Peak. A businessman from Mumbai, his trekking repertoire ranges from Kang Yatse II (6250 metres) to Mera Peak (6476 metres), and he once climbed Stok Kangri – India’s highest trekking summit – as an aside (“I was actually there to run the Khardung La Ultra Marathon”). Milind is a regular on India’s nascent ultra-marathon circuit, but his greatest achievement is that he has got there without resorting to a keto diet. George is about to share the Herma joke with Milind when Fighter stops him, fearing Milind might start running a Pinkathon in protest.

Obviously impressed with his feats, George asks Milind for the secret sauce. Milind reveals that the secret sauce is a group of four close friends and his love for running and the mountains. He emphasizes that long-distance running and high-altitude trekking are “personal endeavours” and not competitions, and casually follows it up with “Be it running or climbing, I always make sure I stand first among the four of us.”

Fighter calculates that he has a bit over two decades to match Milind’s feats, but it is probably not going to be enough. He has never run beyond a half-marathon, and lacks the expertise or the desire to climb so many difficult mountains. Winner would have got perturbed and started making plans, but Fighter, instead, suppresses the thought.

When Milind steps into the washroom, George confides in Fighter that he thinks Milind’s is a family business, not a self-made one, but avoids asking him this because he gets the impression that Milind understands only English. Fighter is a tad uncomfortable at this display of intimacy by a stranger, but secretly hopes that George is right about Milind’s business.

Milind gets a call from the group’s trek leader, who asks all of them to assemble in the lobby below. He tells him he needs time, and for some reason Fighter and George think they need time too, and wait till Milind’s ready. Finally, the three of them come face to face with Herma, a fifth trekker and the leader. George, giggling, whispers to Fighter that Herma’s looks don’t justify her name. But they can both see that all those years of climbing have made her old and weary, and heave a collective sigh of relief. The 40-year old trek leader’s teeth are soiled and the cheap red scarf around his neck makes him look like a Bhai fan. He stands leaning against a pillar and shoots off incoherent instructions about how to avoid AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), especially on the summit day when the team would go from 13,000 feet to 17,300 feet in the space of less than 10 hours. “Since you’re all reasonably experienced, I don’t need to tell you the little details”, he says. Then, without warning, he pulls out huge white Scarpa boots, each weighing about 3kg, which would have to be worn to negotiate the thick snow on the summit day. Except Milind, who is carrying his own light-weight snow shoes, the rest are used to walking only in trekking shoes and unsure how they would walk in 3kg boots. “We will leave tomorrow morning at 9”, he says before walking off, leaving the round of introductions upon the trekkers themselves.

Herma – an avid trekker and a yoga teacher – is unusually petite and demure for a sardarni, and laughs a little too hard when Milind passes a snide remark on George’s weight. No one, including George, thinks it’s too early for snide remarks; everyone’s in awe of Milind’s climbing roster, fitness and looks. The fifth trekker – a  Bong who hates fish – is wearing a t-shirt that screams “IIT Bombay” and points diligently to the caption while introducing himself. Fighter, an IIT-reject himself, is alarmed. He knows the adage ‘empty vessels…’ holds most true for those who have done only their master’s degree from the IITs. He considers them fake IITians. “Oh awesome, I always wanted to go there. What did you study?”, he asks, disguising his probe as admiration. “I studied....um, bioengineering”, comes the response. “I didn’t know IIT B offered a bachelor’s in bioengineering”, presses Fighter. “Well, it doesn’t. I did M.Sc. Bioengineering from there”, says the fake-degree Phenku before changing the topic, but the damage has been done. Phenku doesn’t wear a similar t-shirt for the course of the trek. Fighter’s bitterness over having failed to make it to the hallowed institution has claimed another victim. His mind briefly drifts to the day people stopped calling him Winner.

The trekkers differ in their views on how tough the Friendship Peak summit is going to be in the big boots, but are unanimous in their opinion that their leader is a Leader Only In Name – a LOIN, which turns out to be an apt gender-neutral euphemism for what they come to think of him later during the trek.

Over the next two days, the five trekkers negotiate a moderately difficult trek up to the base camp. Speed or stamina, Herma gives each man a run for his money and leaves behind Phenku and George, who are always at the end, by a long margin. Though shorn of snow itself, the base camp is cradled among towering snow peaks. The 6000m+ Deo Tibba and Indrasan tease from a distance, while their shorter cousins Friendship Peak and Hanuman Tibba look deceptively climbable. Pointing to his altimeter, George exclaims that the group has, for the first time on the trek, breached the 4000 metre above sea level mark. “No, you’re wrong”, intervenes Milind forcefully, pointing to his own altimeter, which shows a figure just shy of the 4k mark. Everyone agrees with him.

The trail

View from basecamp tents

Herma, being the only woman, is privileged to a single tent. Fighter, too, sneaks out a tent for himself making up smelly feet as an excuse. About a month back, while zeroing in on Friendship Peak as the choice of trek, he had realised that the name of the mountain might have subconsciously influenced his decision. He had been broken by years of loneliness and wanted some genuine company. But after the lure of being alone in a tent proves irresistible, he knows that the malaise had more to do with himself than with others.

The trail

On the evening the trekkers reach the base camp, they are led to a large snow patch nearby to get acquainted with the gigantic boots, crampons, ice axe and safety equipment including harness and rope. LOIN explains that the safety equipment is there “just in case…” The team learns the basics of ice-climbing and self-arrest using ice axes in case of a fall. Milind, wearing lighter boots and trained in ice-climbing, literally runs up the patch even as others struggle to put one step after another. The only one remotely close on his heels is Herma, seeing which George wonders whether it’s the opportunity of spending lone time with Milind that’s driving her. After barely 60 minutes of slipping and tumbling in the snow, LOIN declares that the team has had enough training to successfully make a nonstop 8-hour climb in much deeper snow on the summit day. Pleas for more training go unheeded.

The trekkers soaking up the sun on the morning before the rain hit

Back from the training, Fighter hurriedly ventures out looking for a spot to relieve himself before it gets dark. There are two kinds of people in the high mountains – those who choose the nature to answer its calls, and those who choose the cramped toilet tents. Fighter is clearly the former. He can only sleep with the knowledge that he washed, and not just wiped, which is the only option available in tents. For this, he puts up with carrying a big water bottle, soap, and walking far away to find a spot that’s previously unused and provides him the right balance and cover, which could take up to 15 minutes. Every time he finds such a spot, he credits himself for the discovery but wonders how he had missed it so far.

“Why do they need a tent for it?” – The Cow

That night, the trekkers are treated to a sumptuous dinner of matar paneer which ends with gulabjamun. For city folk on a difficult trek, the one thing that suffers an even greater shock than the muscles is the body clock. Dinner’s served by 7:30PM and, in the absence of internet and electricity, one usually retires to bed – sleeping bag in this case – by 9PM. The fatigue ensures that sleeplessness, despite the claustrophobia inside a tent, isn’t a problem.

  The training session with ice axe and the huge Scarpa boots

Tonight though, the team won’t be sleeping peacefully, for the summit climb is scheduled to begin at midnight. Peaks with heavy snow are best climbed in the dark because sunlight softens up the snow, which makes both ascent and descent far more time-consuming and treacherous. The threat of weather’s turning on a dime is also lowest during early morning hours.

Perhaps the heartbroken unfairly blame the wavering affections of their former lover as the epitome of fickleness. To get some solace, they need to witness the weather on high mountains. At the time the team went into the dining tent, the weather had been crisp and warm – perfect for the summit ascent. By the time they step out, the base camp is enveloped in a pall of menacing dark clouds, and rain’s pouring down. LOIN sounds the alarm, “Rain here means snow on the summit. We can’t ascend in fresh, soft snow. If this doesn’t clear up, we might have to postpone the ascent by another day”. Thankfully, the schedule has a built-in reserve day to deal with exactly such an eventuality. But that night, little did the team know that one reserve day won’t be enough.

The next dry moment they witness comes exactly 60 hours later. The only thing more difficult than living in the mountains is living there while it rains. To those who choose the outside to answer nature’s call, a cold and wet butt is worse than a cold and dry one; and to those who choose the toilet tents, wet poop smells worse than dry poop. Moreover, the greatest charm of mountains – being out in the midst of nature – is lost, which is exactly what happens with the team as they spend most of the two days huddled inside the dining tent, making it to their soaked sleeping tents only after dark. The fact that everyone’s trying to postpone finishing their business doesn’t make for a pleasant-smelling dining tent.

To pass time, they turns to movies. George and LOIN are carrying some in their phones, but after LOIN refuses to share his, they’re reduced to seven, three of which belong to the Taken trilogy. The debate over which one to play first is settled as soon as Red Sparrow’s name pops up. “Man, I haven’t seen a woman in a week, and it has Jennifer Lawrence’s sex scenes”, says Phenku excitedly. It is at that moment the group embarrassingly realises they’re not all-male, even though Herma’s tried hard to keep it that way the past few days. They then sheepishly agree upon Argo. Over the next two days, the team would polish off seven movies on a 6-inch screen without external speakers, battling the noise made by raindrops falling on top of the dining tent. Given that Liam Neeson’s movies require the least hearing, they’re left disappointed when he stops after only three consecutive attempts at saving his family. At some point during the trilogy, Milind changes his wet clothes for dry ones. Fighter notices he doesn’t have abs, and wonders whether anyone without abs should be called Milind.

Every hour the team mates break their torpor by venturing outside, hoping that the weather has become better. Every hour their hopes are dashed. The mountaineering folklore is loaded with warnings about AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), but it will remain incomplete until it adds Acute Rain Sickness (ARS) to its lexicon. The gloom and sloth induced by mountain rains has a knack of cracking open the toughest of trekkers. Hungry to touch the summit till the moment the rain hit, the team members are now down with homesickness to varying degrees. “B***d I really need to get back home to sort out my shit”, mutters Milind, and adds hurriedly, “all professional of course”, finally confirming that he does indeed speak Hindi. “I know what you mean”, concurs Herma, and deflects questions by Phenku on what’s troubling her. The marriages of both the married trekkers in the group seem to be on shaky ground. Is this their true motivation for spending so much time in the mountains?

The unmarried trekkers have their own problems. Phenku wonders whether the mini avalanche that rumbled down Hanuman Tibba is a result of a nuclear explosion afar. Unsure, he hopes that the explosion eliminates all the myriad non-trekking tourists of Manali so that he can make his home there. George takes time to fall asleep once inside the sleeping bag because he likes to contemplate how his life might have changed in the days he’s been cut off from civilization. Three nights of sleeping in a wet tent have made Fighter unsure about whether travel is a singularly rewarding activity. “If other gratifying pursuits of human life – romance, sex, food, audio-visual entertainment – can leave one confused and regretful, why not travel?”, he asks others, who want to agree but are unsure in the face of evidence to the contrary presented by IT professionals who gave up their low-paid sinecures to turn into only slightly higher-paid travel bloggers. He fiercely counters everyone, including Milind, who tries to pass off the 3-day ordeal as a “learning experience”.

The tourists that make Phenku wish for a nuclear explosion

The final river crossing with the rescuer holding the rope

After the rain eats up the reserve day and some more, the team decides to descend back to Manali. Their love for mountains, regret of not making the summit and slippery downward slopes are up against one thing – the promise of civilizational comfort. The zing in their steps shows that the latter far outweighs everything else. They face three river crossings of which the last, an especially raging and deep one, has to be negotiated using a rope. Back in The Woodbine, nothing except the room numbers allotted to them has changed. Almost disappointingly, there have been no nuke explosions and all the tourists are alive. Everyone’s jobs and family members are secure. Staying true to the name of the mountain they tried to climb, the trekkers make promises to see each other again, but they all know promises are meant to be broken. It would take a lot more than a week-long trip to the hills to change their lives.

An evolutionary perspective on the Chopra-Jonas marriage

This is a no-frills and more substantive version of an article by me that will appear in the media soon. It explains from the perspective of evolutionary psychology the societal disapproval of marriages between older women and younger men, the hook being the uproar over 36-year old Priyanka Chopra’s marriage to 25-year old Nick Jonas. I think this would be a good introduction to anyone curious about the extremely powerful field of evolutionary psychology. The underlined sentences will assist the TL;DR types.

#PriyankaChopra on Twitter is a good barometer of how a lot of people feel about a woman marrying a man 11 years younger to herself. Expectedly, liberal backlash has condemned and dismissed this as ‘patriarchy’ of the unwoke. No matter how well-intentioned, the problem with liberal backlash is that it assumes purely social roots to the institution of patriarchy. The liberals neglect, even hound, those who try to point out patriarchy’s obviously biological/evolutionary roots, which are well explained by evolutionary psychology. The implicit assumption, sadly, is that anyone attempting to do so is trying to justify patriarchy. In defence of the critics, they’re wary of the dubious pseudoscience that has been used in the past to shore up eugenics and male superiority, leading to untold horrors. However, given that we learn from our past, there is no reason to continue shutting down perfectly tenable scientific explanations. If anything, knowing the biological reasons behind patriarchy will allow us, as a society, to deal with it more effectively.

Before embarking on the discussion, readers must keep in mind three things: one, natural selection – the evolutionary force that shapes human behaviour – cares about one and only one thing: transmission of genes down the generations, that is, having the maximum number of children for every couple;  two, in fulfilling its aim, natural selection drives individuals to behave in a manner which will help them find the best possible mate(s); three, natural selection doesn’t choose or design the environment we live in, it only responds to the given environment such that we’re driven to find the best mate(s).

A strong indicator of something having biological/evolutionary roots is its presence across cultures, geographies and ethnicities. Seen from that angle, in a large majority of marriages that happen globally, the man is older than the woman. For example, in US, a nation far more liberal than most others, men are older[i] in 64% marriages and women are older in just 23%, whereas they’re of a similar age in the remaining 13%. This trend holds for the still more liberal Scandinavia. It’s commonplace across the world for women to be attracted to older men, and for men to eye young women. It’s evident that the roots of this trend are embedded deep in human biology.

Given the first fact about natural selection mentioned above, it’s not difficult to see why cohabitation/marriage in the hunter-gatherer era happened between older men and younger women: because women’s reproductive shelf life is much shorter than men’s, the men preferred[ii] younger women as wives to allow birth of more children. Women, on the other hand, preferred[iii] older men because they remained fertile even at later ages and the time allowed them to rise in status and resources, and thus become better protectors-providers.

In those times, given that physical attractiveness and child-birthing capabilities were a woman’s greatest assets, a man’s marriage to an older woman was considered a waste of his genetic potential. For a woman, a younger husband usually meant a feeble protector-provider. Thus, older women and younger men mutually discounted each other as marriage prospects.

Though circumstances in the modern era might have changed drastically – women have far more to offer, marriage is hardly done only for procreation, the role of men as protectors-providers matters much less and can certainly be fulfilled by younger ones – human emotions, endowed to us by natural selection in the hunter-gatherer era, haven’t undergone nearly the same metamorphosis. Seen in this light, it’s not entirely surprising that the ‘animal spirits’ sometimes unleash themselves in ugly ways, which is what, in most cases, accounts for the behaviour of those expressing disapproval of Chopra-Jonas marriage.

Interestingly, the animal spirits can be unleashed even against younger female and much older male pairs, which is another evidence of its biological roots. One only need dig up the storm of tweets castigating Milind Soman for dating a woman nearly three decades younger, to be sure of this. The logic behind this outrage is exactly the same: a woman marrying a much older man, nearing the end of his reproductive life, is wasting her genetic potential. Though Soman was seen as the predator in this case, men usually take only half the blame for wasting the genetic potential of much younger women because these women – now often pejoratively called ‘trophy wives’ – have over the evolutionary past consented[iv] to such relationships, given the huge resources at the disposal of some much older men. In case of older female-younger male pairing, my guess is that usually the female is considered the predator while the male is let off as the gullible prey. I’ve tried to find an explanation for this in evolutionary psychology, but haven’t found anything concrete. Maybe it’s a straightforward case of men asserting their historically superior physical and political power over women, which would make for a classic case of social patriarchy. An expert would be able to reason out better, though.

It’s important to note that though natural selection dictates our behaviour, it works quietly without making humans conscious of itself. In other words, most of those who outrage against Chopra’s marriage to Jonas, or Soman’s to Ankita, don’t precisely know the reason for doing so, but act on an impulse. This explanation counters the notion of an all pervasive, carefully-knit and sustained social patriarchy, in favour of one that’s built into the environment in which these people find themselves. This environment is such that in order to succeed – that is, find the best mates – unconsciously practise patriarchy over egalitarianism. That’s not at all to say social patriarchy doesn’t exist. It does, and significantly so – the youth are deeply influenced by the actions of the elderly and the influential in their community. For example, taking selfies, an act unmatched in abhorrence by all the patriarchy that the world could muster, is a purely social phenomenon which implicitly teaches people that partaking in it enhances their chances of evolutionary success, and has hence spread like a virus.

On the other hand, what accounts for the behaviour of those who support Chopra-Jonas marriage? Are these superhumans who have overcome natural selection and magically developed altruistic qualities? The answer is an emphatic no. This happens simply because they have managed to build for themselves an environment in which natural selection promotes altruism and empathy as the emotions that help genes thrive. In other words, this environment – driven by an emphasis on increasing standards of living, which has brought about participation of women in the economy and countless other associated benefits – promotes altruistic and cooperative folk over the non-altruistic and vindictive ones. To succeed here, if you had to choose between emulating JRD Tata and Arun Gawli, I would strongly suggest the former. Indeed, altruistic emotions are more important to transmission of genes than aggressive ones, which is why the arc of human civilization bends towards peace and egalitarianism.

The far more interesting question is, how was this environment – one that encourages low birth rates, in clear contrast to the aims of natural selection – built? This is often the  great evolutionary mystery to those who are curious about evolutionary psychology, and a gloat to those who are dismissive of it. To the disappointment of the latter, there is an explanation available: natural selection, to drive us towards making babies, instilled us with the big O. It is in seeking this pleasure, and not babies themselves, that we end up making them. Using our highly advanced brains – also a gift of natural selection – we have found ways to enjoy the big O without worrying about the babies, thus outsmarting natural selection. Alas, being ‘evolved’ doesn’t come without its fair share of irony.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who find themselves in the clutches of patriarchy have not been able to create this noble environment. This is not to suggest giving a clean chit to those who troll Chopra and Jonas, because some people caught in this environment have still been able to deploy their mental faculties to select the right emotional response, going against the grain. In evolutionary psychology parlance, each individual follows what’s called ‘status hierarchy’, a natural order in which individuals unconsciously arrange themselves as per their capacity to attract the best mates. Of course, the hierarchy is not written in stone and keeps shifting, but to expect someone lower down to upend it is a bit much.

In a considerable majority of cultures, it’s highly likely that the right kind of nurture can provide the right environment, and thus bring out the right nature. It’s important to keep reminding ourselves of the struggles that some of the most liberal modern societies required before they reached where they are today. This, instead of blaming everything on the apparently incurable social patriarchy and denouncing completely those suffering from it, should be the emphasis of aspiring changemakers.

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[i] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/whats-the-average-age-difference-in-a-couple/

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Male_preference_for_younger_females

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships#Female_preference_for_older_males

[iv] https://bit.ly/2OnUR32

Will Love, Marriage and Procreation Stand the Test of Time?

The seeds for this post were sown in my mind about two years back, during a phone call. My friend was aghast to know that I had never been in – or wanted to be in – love, and that I didn’t want to marry or to have kids. Given the present state of society, she expressed concern that I would come to regret my decision if I didn’t get married by early 30s, because by then the marriage market would be out of supply.

I was aware of this, of course, and tried convincing her that I really did want to live and die a childless bachelor. But more than that, I tried explaining to her my vision of the future, upon which my resolve is predicated. In this future, love would be a far weaker force than it is today; marriages – if they happen at all – would happen much later in life, expire after a predetermined period, and the marriage market would retain supply even for older individuals.

Not surprisingly, this was laughed off, and for good reason. Under the prevalent circumstances, falling in love, getting married (once) and procreating completes the holy trinity of human life. Nevertheless, I believe that the trinity, no matter how ubiquitous, will not stand the test of time. Advancing technology will either crumble or change the trinity’s form to the point of non-recognition.

To a certain extent, I have already been proven right. Women empowerment, birth control, abortion and online dating have significantly shaken the traditional roots of the trinity. However, three upcoming technologies – the result of unprecedented advances in healthcare and genetic research – are set to disrupt it beyond anyone's wildest imagination. These technologies are: increasing life span, creation of artificial sperm and egg, and ectogenesis (pregnancy outside female body).

Let’s start with increasing life span. When it comes to marriage, the tacit understanding behind the ‘right age’ is predicated upon the duration of female fertility and the fact that human life is finite. There would be no ‘happily’ in ‘happily ever after’, if there was actually an ever after. Well, the ever after is now around the corner. As per conservative estimates, life expectancy by 2100 AD will be a mindboggling 160+ years, coupled with much longer sexual shelf life for both genders. The number could be much, much higher if certain technologies come to fruition. In such a scenario, I am curious to see who would be confident enough to proclaim someone as the ‘love of their (entire) life’ and take the marital plunge by 30 – the cutoff age at which concern for the unmarried turns into derision – and stick to the same partner throughout. Can people imagine living with one person for 130+ years? Longer life expectancy coupled with longer sexual shelf life for both genders, will ensure that marriages happen late, are no longer a singular event, and become contractual and limited to a few decades. This would also mean that the marriage market is profuse with supply at much later ages in people’s lives.

The other two technologies – creation of artificial gametes and ectogenesis – are far more radical than increasing life expectancy. To understand their impact, one must go back to the evolutionary reasons behind love. It is well established that sexual attraction – nature’s tool to make us lose our minds so that we make babies – is the progenitor of love.  But, what happens when humans know that, by forsaking sexual reproduction, they have a chance to have made-to-order babies, whose physical and psychological traits can be determined as per their preferences?

Would people let go of an ideal offspring in favour of endlessly worrying, as they do now, about their partner’s receding hairline, breasts being too small or too large, anorexia or obesity, and countless other blemishes – all of which mar the quality of offspring? Moreover, sexually produced babies will continue to be at a far higher risk of genetic diseases than their soon-to-come asexual counterparts. In such a scenario, parents who choose to reproduce the old way would perhaps not be considered too different from the anti-vaxxers of today, thereby bringing immense social pressure, and perhaps regulation, to adapt. In time, asexual reproduction would deal a death blow to sexual attraction, and consequently to love itself.

One can argue that despite babies being made to order, men and women will continue to love and marry as long as women carry babies in their womb, and for the upbringing of the child. Here’s where the genius of ectogenesis steps in. Ectogenesis will enable childbirth entirely outside the female body, thereby putting an end to the idea of men and women being ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’. Not to mention that all these technologies will eventually cost cheaper than to do stuff the original way.

The impact that this will have on human society as we know it, is impossible to gauge: the combination of several forces – asexual reproduction, women no longer hobbled by pregnancy, and their increasing economic ability to care for children alone – would mean the predominance of single parenthood and increasing asexuality among humans. Becoming a parent will simply mean sponsoring a made-to-order baby. The resulting children, knowing they were fed not by their mother’s umbilical cord but by a test tube, would hardly carry the level of attachment towards their sponsors that they do towards their parents. Shorn of the burden of childbirth, women will finally have a chance to compete with men on truly equal terms. On the other hand, men, unencumbered by their love for women and by their need for women to procreate, might try to ensure their control over resources while they still can. This would make people look back at the present gender war with fondness.

Sure enough, even with these technologies in place, millennia of evolutionary and social training won’t disappear overnight. The present humans, and possibly even some future ones, might balk at the idea of relinquishing the cherished motherhood and at the thought of their children not being truly ‘theirs’. Love and contemporary methods of marriage and procreation will put up stiff resistance before they are choked to death by the descendants of the very humans who have sung countless paeans to them. After all, what is human desire in the face of convenience, favourable economics, pressure to conform, and the lure of a fair-skinned, blue-eyed child?

Why do I, someone who won’t even have children that will be affected by the future, take so much interest in it? Part of the enthusiasm stems from the possibility of my vision coming true. The rest stems from the desire to pose a counter to everyone – from parents to friends and countless sundries – who question, pillory, pity and dismiss my life choices. Blissfully ignorant of the lurking future, they relentlessly lecture me on how ‘natural’ and blissful marriage, love and procreation are, the right age to take each of these steps, and the minimum number of children to bear.

It’s not that I don’t see reason for their angst. As things stand today, I am a regret of evolution, for I have resisted its most fundamental impulses, love and procreation. But my point is, these impulses are hardly as fundamental as they’re thought to be.

Like all else, love, marriage and procreation are nothing but stepping stones to a rapidly evolving future. There is but one truly fundamental human impulse – the desire to stand vindicated for one’s choices. To, at the end, be able to look one’s detractors in the eye and say, “I was right”. I don’t want to say these words literally. I only hope to stand vindicated by the choices made by my detractors’ kids and grandkids, to watch quietly as they horrifyingly witness their progeny make the very same choices that someone – who they thought was a fool to miss out on the joys of life –  made several decades ago.

Review of Kiran Nagarkar's novel, Cuckold

At the risk of jumping to conclusions – this being my first Nagarkar novel – I will say that the author is already one of my favourites alongside Manu Joseph, on whose recommendation I read him. Can’t say I’ve been disappointed at all. Let me also confess that I was biased towards this book even before reading it because it deals with the story of my ancestors, who have traditionally been neglected by the genre of historical fiction. One of the reasons I picked up this book – other than its catchy title – was to learn more about the Rajput kings of Rajasthan. This book isn’t classic historical fiction, since the language is contemporary and the author doesn’t necessarily strive for pinpoint accuracy in depicting social customs of the 16th century, in which era the book is set. Having said that, it is loaded with invaluable information about the statesmanship and philosophy of Rajput kings, methods of warfare, internal and external power struggles of Mewar and surrounding kingdoms, and Babur’s conquest of India. I disagree with those who think this book is primarily a love story, or that its central theme is the protagonist’s failed attempts to win over his wife, Meerabai (not once referred to by this name in the book). Agreed, this is indeed a leitmotif of the book, and has a profound impact on her husband, Maharaj Kumar, but this isn’t what the book is about. The quote below should put an end to this debate: "My wife, Kausalya, Leelawati, my friends matter to me, but the meaning of my life doesn’t revolve around them." Which brings us to what this book is actually about – a deep dive into the meaning of Maharaj Kumar’s life. I have hardly read something that explores a character’s heart, mind and soul in such excruciating detail. Often through deeply revealing mental dialogue, Cuckold unveils the different roles he plays in life – that of a husband to two different women, a lover to several others, a son to a father who suspects his son will unseat him someday, a brother to those who incessantly plot to have him killed, a visionary warrior who considers peace and commerce to be more important, and an ambitious statesman. In the end, the book reveals an endearing man who’s tough on the outside but deeply conflicted inside, constantly questioning his actions and decisions. I suspect, though, that this is a book written by a man, based on a man, and for men. Depiction of female characters solely from a male perspective, physical and sexual violence, and excessive details of battle strategies (which I thoroughly enjoyed, including the bit about jihad’s importance to war) give me the impression that it would put off most female readers, but then I could be wrong. And oh, keep a dictionary handy while reading Cuckold. Hardly have I come across a book which had so many unheard of words.