Lost Horizon....

I finished reading a rather strange book some days ago. One of the strangest things about the book is that it is written by the same author who wrote the very real and not remotely surreal story about love in a warm, wistful, amusing, and rather lump-swallowing worthy, and matter-of-fact way - Goodbye Mr. Chips. I'll never quite forget Mr. Chips teaching Latin while shrapnel and shells are exploding and the guns are firing, and he's there gently urging his boys to concentrate while cracking jokes - 'you cannot judge the importance of things by the noise they make', before going on to remark about the importance of being employed with something appropriate if fate so decides that 'we are interrupted': the teacher who came to be regarded as a philosopher and prophet, and much in demand for his knowledge as much as for his witty one liners. It was a deep love story too, but one which ended too soon. It sort of makes my mind switch too many gears to think that it's the same author who wrote the book I just about read....but then again there are some writers who do jump worlds and with impunity, which always makes me wonder and blink some or stare or both.

The book is about Shangri-La and about one man, Hugh Conway. That magical place suspended somewhere between Tibet and India, and a man who went through the war as a young boy and worked not too rigorously nor too energetically but did just enough while working at the consulate later on. An unusual character once again but one whom I couldn't understand too well (although I harboured his head every now and again in different ways, and in an amusing way sometimes but maybe not too well). He too seemed suspended in that abnormally real and half elusive space of Shangri-La or to use two expressions - he seemed incredibly ordinary and incredibly extraordinary. I didn't know whether he was sane or not, whether he was passionate or not, whether he cared deeply or not, whether he did right or not, and he didn't share his thoughts too often and sometimes not at all - so it was difficult to guess. He seemed to be utterly unruffled on the surface and dispassionate and yet there was something underneath....quite what it was I couldn't quite get.

I didn't understand his reasons for doing what he did too well either. Indeed why he did what he did or why he even liked the young idiotic, annoying, simpering, pompous boy who was very seriously lacking any bit of substantial or likeable matter in the space between his ears. - I don't understand at all. It wasn't just the young boy. It was also about the young (ancient) Manchu girl as well who had eyes only for that young nitwit of a boy (she didn't have eyes obviously even though she could physically see quite well), and Conway did what he had to because as he said, right after he wandered around in a daze not being able to share a word of what he had heard and knew and about his own role in the world that was to come, in the whole wide world it was that stupid boy and the young (ancient) Manchu girl whom he cared for, and he didn't quite know how to explain it himself, it seemed! 'Course he had fallen for the Manchu girl. He probably even knew exactly what was going to happen but did what he did anyway. Not that his role had he stayed put didn't make me feel isolated, strange, unusual and in some ways it gave me the chills too. Now when it flutters by there is a strange lonely silence that fills me. In some ways Conway's possible role reminds me of Leto's role that he chose for himself....and regretted deeply, for the first time, in God Emperor of Dune...but that was bound to happen...didn't feel any better when it did though.

Very real in some ways and surreal in other ways and different. But unreal? That I don't know about. It felt quite real in that space and it didn't feel unusual. It was about different worlds, normal and perfectly regular ones and not-so-regular ones colliding and merging for a bit within the life of a man. I could almost perfectly sense Conway's sense of reality while talking with the ancient, ancient lama and feeling at ease in his presence, and a sublime feeling of tranquility while watching the young (ancient) Manchu girl playing on her harpischord...and then conversing quite normally with the other three characters all marooned in the monastery. None of it seemed to be particularly jarring to him until that one meeting with the lama....quite why it shook him up the way it did, I do not know. Because he had been expecting that as well. I didn't and couldn't figure out what Conway was going through when that bleating boy started bleating his head off when after Conway finishes conversing with the lama and paces around in a daze, the boy jumps on him. I just felt incredibly lonely and wished that Conway had one human being in that blasted place with whom he could talk.

Gives me an odd feeling: the book when it flutters around in my head. An eerie feeling too and a lonely one. White silence. But maybe that's not unusual given the vivid and beautiful descriptions of the place (I wish I remembered one off the top of my head). I wonder whether he went back to that world of Shangri-La or what he did. James Hilton doesn't quite say....

The book is Lost Horizon. I still can't quite believe that the same writer wrote Goodbye Mr. Chips. That really does seem to be the unreal part. Of course...if writers can't imagine what good are they?!....

Reading Three Comrades

The utter senselessness and insensibility, insanity, incongruity, gruesomeness and despicability of war sounds in the background. It’s about the young men who serve and return from war, of friendship, of the ties that bind comrades-in-arms, of humanity, of remaining humane in the midst of a grey world, of struggling and battling and not giving in, of finding room for laughs with a car put together (a car named ‘Karl the Road Spook’), of a birthday and listing of years, of not really hoping, of having a friend and two who would not give a thought about laying down their lives and everything they could for the other, of finding sudden hope in the midst of that not-hoping, of finding life, of being touched by an inexplicable love, of touching a human life and of being touched by another human being through curious tentative beginnings, of a sudden ray of light, of a friend who drops everything to come racing down through the mist and rain with a doc', of wanting to take care of another, of taking care of another, of being made to feel alright, of make believing that things are perfect, of playing silly games while walking down a road lined with shops, of not having enough money, of the wrong kind of people who have lots, of listening to music on a radio and identifying music with the first bars, of wondering in an odd moment that one might have been a music teacher in another world, of telling stories to make the other laugh and being egged on by the other’s laughter even as life is dripping out drop by drop…, of falling in love slowly and deeply and fully, of the bliss of being, of utter despair, of a sudden cheeky hope that one might be going too, of a light gone out.

It wasn’t a book where I bonded with the characters – I became one of them, and felt through and lived through one of them and identified with the primary character and his thoughts most of all (and sometimes with the other primary character). Maybe it’s because it's written in the first person, maybe because one lives then and for those moments through the ‘I’ of the primary character – there is no hope nor help for it. But not all books written in the 'I' do that. Not all stories do that. Here I did and this book did.

I can’t know what it means to return from war nor what it means to struggle against the greyness that greets one on one’s return. These I could see only through the primary character and the others and feel only in a ghostly and nightmarish way (as a writer very matter-of-factly once said, maybe we carry imprints of cultural memories in us...). I do not know what it is like to have a friend especially like Koster and I never will, and I will never be able to be a friend like Koster either. And yet many of the thoughts and feelings I could feel viscerally - the return of life, the coming back to life - just as I could intensely feel the hope, the loss of hope, the playing of juvenile games to preserve hope even while hope trickles through one’s fingers. It’s a matter of playing against time, of making deals, of saying that something has to last, something has to stay...but really, what must and why? The feeling of gentle revulsion and the feeling of indifference towards the flat greyness of the world, and then the hard, implacable and frightful intensity with which one suddenly compares and sees everything in the light of what one has found – something incomparable, and then knowing – as a reader not as the character that something is amiss, the slow and accumulating dread of knowing and distancing oneself from the character then and then from the book, even before the hope barely hints at slipping away but to have the character calling out for some reason to get back into his world and to have him drape one, and to let out even little laughs because of the warm and funny and perfect conversations, the tiny incidents, the tenderness, the camaraderie, and also because the thoughts of the character and his little quirks and his sudden sentiments and the slow ones and some of his actions are like taking involuntary glimpses in the mirror, and all the other characters have grown on one too, and so one starts reading again, lets go, and starts all over again and knows that one simply has to read all the way through (with a quiet fimh in the background), and so one does while pausing to catch one’s breath, forgets to breathe and remembers only on taking in a sudden breath still walking through that haunting grey nothingness which is pierced with the laughter of the soul which holds so much promise that it doesn’t feel very real until, before one knows it, one has reached the final lap and has started hoping without intending to even while knowing that the long drawn-out ending up in the mountains can end only one way. There is that utter and final loss that hits one from within one even as one intently focuses on simply reading the last two or three pages and then the lines, even while one clenches one’s jaws, even while one wills one’s inner self not to cry out. And there is no getting over that loss. There is no getting over and getting on with things. I don’t know what he did after that. After sitting there. In that room. What did he do? I don’t know what Robby did. I was hoping he would die. That would have made it less unbearable. But what would Koster do and what would he do if and when Robby went back?

And those fine lines. The lines expressing a thought, a sentiment or a feeling that one knows one has felt and feels but has never been able to articulate nor express nor found the words. Very simply put. Without fuss and without going into a three page long passionate explanation. Remarque does that. Just a line. Or two. Finished off with maybe a smile. An emotion, a sentiment trapped in words and then one realizes all over again – even though one had almost started doubting the sanctity of language because of one’s own inadequacies of expression and utter hopelessness of ever getting anything to sound right especially in the midst of an argument or in the middle of writing – the beauty and the grace of language, of perfect words one following the other, of fine writing. For that’s what it is. Somebody has expressed in language the inexpressible thought that one could spend a lifetime fumbling around with or trying to explain and justify and defend (or feel too embarrassed or ashamed to even want to express in words). Maybe those trapped lines don’t mean that one is right. Maybe they don’t always mean that one is normal or particularly mature in feeling what one does…but one does know that someone (worthwhile) somewhere has felt the same and that somehow makes it better. There is an unbreakable connection and a bond and also a deep gratitude. (I have felt that, yes, but sometimes I start wondering whether some rare writers forget what they write or pretend to forget ...!). I could type out some of the liners from this book that gripped me but I won’t. That would be like sharing one’s diary of thoughts on public space.

I tried reading this book the first time while in Class XI or XII although I don’t remember from whom I’d borrowed the book. I’d read maybe twenty pages but I couldn’t go on. And for the last five years or so, I have tried reading it, at least, once a year (or Robby or maybe even Pat would call out from the book or God-only-knows who...)but I couldn't. I’d barely manage to get through the first 30 or so (yet again) and I’d feel the ghostly wrench. Nothing had gone wrong. There was hope, wasn’t there? But the chains would pull. There was something that was going to happen. Not just death. Something worse.

I got my current copy of the book from a library sale some 5 years ago. And I got it for 50 cents. This one, for some reason, is less widely available than All Quiet…, Spark of Life, The Road Back and Shadows in Paradise. The edition was brought out in 1958. It has a racy cover on the front (and Robby looks like a block and somewhat dimwitted and dull and somewhat cross-eyed and Pat looks like a shapely tart beckoning from an open window!) and a less racy one on the back. It looks like a cover for a cheap romance paperback, and it amused me in a dry way when it didn’t annoy me that the NYT book review blurb on the back said, ‘racy action and incident…’ and more. And it makes me laugh shortly when I see a comparison made between this and The Three Musketeers. Hmm (is it the 'three'?). Apparently this book '..is as racily written...'. Hmm. Makes me think that some things were the same back in the late 50's as far as selling books were concerned. And so no, the little blurb which talked about 'heartbreaking tragedy' had nothing to do with my own ghostly feelings. The print is fine and small and the pages are brown and of the sort that will not tear if not handled with care. The pages will break like a communion wafer. And inspite of all the gentleness with which I handled the book and while the book was held delicately by its binding when I bought it…upon one of my yearly attempts, the fragile book-binding – to my utter dismay – came apart. Down somewhere in the middle. And so I carried around both parts while reading it through this time. And as if that were not enough I made the mistake of carrying both parts in my bag just one day and a page came off and did break into two.

The book hits one in waves. I know I will forget most of it. But some of it will stay like very, very, very few books and writings and essays and stories have stayed within – even from the ones that I enjoyed reading when I did and have read more than once. There is something that gets absorbed from the book and gets absorbed within one’s being so that one will never forget an essence and some of the shards. They get implanted into one's being. And for now they and parts that I will forget later keep me company and gently rain or burst within while I go about doing normal and regular things that real humans do like walking (with fimh which might not be that normal).

Did I enjoy reading the book? I wouldn’t say that. I couldn’t say that. But one cannot not read it. I don’t know what may have happened if they had been together: would things have worked alright? Would they have been their quirky, not entirely comprehensible but strangely lovable selves who would have loved and lasted together? I don’t know these things (and there's little point in presenting the overheard arguments amongst the cynic, the mystic and the romantic in my head). Nor does the book tell me anything more about human responses to other humans. I’m just as utterly puzzled and sometimes laughingly or quietly puzzled as ever. People love and people like and people fall madly or slowly in love with and stay in love or fall more in love through time with those whom they do…and when they don’t – they don’t. And sometimes it all happens inspite of the reluctance and the accumulated cynicism (or marked scepticism) and wariness. There seems to be nothing terribly reasonable or explainable about the process. Why one and not another? Why those but not these others? Why that one and not this one? Who knows. And can one list off reasons? As Pat says at a point, 'If I knew all the reasons then it wouldn't be love'. Maybe that is so (still can't avoid prodding at it though). Maybe how humans love in the external world and whether they continue to love is a place where they have a choice...and human beings do love in different ways - that much (or little) I know. I don't quite know whether the book, for me, spells an absolute and horrifying loss of hope or whether it tells me that inspite of the horror and the loss there always is something that can be hoped for as long as people are living and alive and on the planet which makes its yearly swing around the sun or maybe both and some other stuff in between and besides. I know I’ll wonder ever so often, what did Robby do…?...and I'm not so sure I want to know.

...A dream lies dead here. May you softly go/Before this place, and turn away your eyes,/Nor seek to know the look of that which dies/Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,/But, for a little, let your step be slow....Dorothy Parker (from A dream lies dead)

A quiet 'Thank you...' to the characters from the books and other unnamed beings (human and otherwise) for egging me on to read the book.

Reminds me that I need to go back to the first 30 pages at some point....I didn't read them this time 'round. 'Night. - 28th June - 9th July.

P.S: This editing tool is driving me mad. It does whatever it wants to do with the formatting and then nothing looks right. I nearly deleted this post too!