India and Manju Kapur

A few months ago I had the privilege to meet this wonderful young girl who chose to be a missionary and help poor children in India. She told me about her trips and experiences there and I realized that to my shame I knew nothing about the reality of this large country. As a result of our meeting I became interested in knowing more and I found this book in my parents’ house in Romania about India and its spectacular economic boom. I am not sure it is the best book ever written about India but I read it with enthusiasm as I had no previous knowledge and it offered me enough information to delineate my own ideas.

In my own library at home in Spain there laid a novel written by an Indian woman writer that I had bought in Madrid one day, I had tried to read and then had left untouched but not forgotten on a shelf, its mysteries still to be discovered. I know now that everything happens for a reason, as I am glad I did not read that book then, not before I read the other one that gave me a glimpse on India, its customs, religions, government, economics, poverty etc. I would not have been able to read Manju Kapur’s novel and understand it, otherwise. As it happens, I am part of a reading website where I saw that this book did not have very good reviews. I wondered why, but now as it is finished I think the explanation is that those people did not bother to go farther and wonder about Indian reality. For me, this book, A Married Woman, is far from being „unreadable”. In fact, I read it rather quickly and impatiently as it seemed to me to give shape and provide an example of what India is.

It is the story of a woman who feels trapped in a matrimony with a rather traditional husband who does not understand her. She is in constant battle between what traditional society and customs require from her status as „wife” and her own interests, passions and desires. She becomes an activist and she even falls in love and has an affair with another woman. The issues revealed by Manju Kapur make her very bold in my eyes. She talks about religious fanaticism, feminism, activism, bisexualism, governmental corruption, poverty, assassination, struggle for Indian unity. I strongly recommend this book especially to my female friends as I am sure that men may not completely understand some of the issues emphasized in this book and may not have the patience to read it to its end. I truthfully hope I am wrong in saying this. The book is available in English and Spanish for those of you who are interested.

Answer to Anonymous

Somebody, who chose to remain Anonymous, said the following in response to my latest post on language:

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare

Could we adapt Juliet's or should we say Shakespeare's simple, plain truth to the choice of language in writing? Can we honestly say that what one has to say would sound the same in English, French, Spanish or any other language? I'm afraid not. The music of our soul and mind takes a path, the one that feels right according to such different and many reasons. But indeed, who could deny or ignore or diminish the role of the print such complex mind and spirit as Woolf's has had on each of us, more for some, less for others...everything being so relative, each of us living, or choosing, or feeling our own reality, perspective, point of view.

***

I love Shakespeare and I love that quote from "Romeo and Juliet"! Anonymous, I would so much want to know your name :). Why do people choose to be Anonymous anyway? A name is just a name. :)

It is possible that my mind and soul play to the rhythm of English, at least they have done so until now. I do not know why as it is true that, with very few exceptions, writers choose their native language to express themselves. I can hardly consider myself to be a writer. That would be too presumptuous. Let’s just say that I did not choose English, but English chose me, at least for the moment and at least for this blog. And yes, Virginia Woolf’s complex mind and spirit has had a great impact on my mind and soul. She is my muse and I would give anything to be able to go back in time for just a day and take part in one of the Bloomsbury’s group meetings. I think it would be thrilling. They were all such interesting people individually, but together they must have sparkled with light.

Thank you for your comment and for taking a minute to read this.

Language

"Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sebastian, who seems to have read at least one of my posts, of which I am glad and grateful, asked me a few days ago "Why don’t you write in your native language?" I must say that he was referring to Romanian, because those are indeed my origins and a big part of what I am. This is a very good question! Why?

Unfortunately, I am afraid I do not yet have an answer to it. Before creating this blog, many of my friends encouraged me to write. I was always “afraid” to expose myself. Nevertheless it seems that I have somehow partially overcome that. Well, before taking this adventurous road, one of my biggest dilemmas was LANGUAGE.

I must confess I am a philologist and translator. My love for languages defines me and it is the core of my essence. I once asked a friend of mine „In what language should I write?” And he said, „Well, do it in your own language, of course!” It seemed simple to him as he is also a blogger and a pretty good writer in his own language, which is Spanish. It was not that simple to me though. It is true that I am Romanian and that I should be comfortable writing in my native language. But I have to say that I am a Romanian living in Spain who happens to love English and French! Now, what do you make of that? Do you begin to maybe understand a little my confusion?

Well, if you still don’t, I will tell you that it took me a while to decide. And then I just let myself be... and began to write ... and it just sort of came out like this. I guess my English muse and inspiration for this blog (Virginia Woolf) had something to do with it. I am not saying that I will always write in English. Maybe one day I will wake up and write in Romanian, or in Spanish, or French ... but for the moment, my mind and my fingers have their own little secret understanding and English is all that comes out of it. I hope this somehow answers a question many of you, my friends of different nationalities, maybe thought of at some point. Thank you all who have ever laid your eyes on the pages of my blog for giving me a reason to keep writing.

Wisdom

"True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance."

Akhenaton

Akhenaton was Egypt’s "heretic pharaoh" and husband of beautiful queen Nefertiti. He was thus called because he rejected Egypt’s belief in numerous traditional gods and instituted history’s first monotheistic religion. He worshipped the sun disk as the only true god.

He puts wisdom against folly and knowledge against ignorance.

How does one gain wisdom? Wisdom is to be gained through knowledge, experience and understanding. Knowledge in itself does not make anybody wise. One needs to make the best use of available knowledge and to carefully discriminate between right and wrong.

According to Akhenaton the wise man is a man who weighs things and is not afraid to change his mind, while the fool man once he’s made his mind he is unwilling to change, believing that doubt will minimise his power and authority.

Sophia – wisdom – is an ideal celebrated since antiquity as the knowledge needed to live a good life.

The greatest wisdom is to recognize one's own ignorance. The more you know the more you need to know. Wisdom shows one that knowledge is not finite.

Wisdom does not depend on age, although it may increase with age. We are accustomed when thinking of a wise person to imagine this very old man (maybe with a long white beard) who speaks slowly and moderately, or sometimes even parsimoniusly as if he did not want a drop of his knowledge to be spent in vain.

Freethinkers believe that wisdom may come from pure reason and perhaps experience, while others believe that it comes from intuition or spirituality.

Robert J. Sternberg said that " the recognition that total understanding will always elude us is itself a sign of wisdom".

Patricia Kennedy Arlin suggests that wisdom is a function not of the answers one reaches but of the questions one poses.

According to Plato there are three kinds of wisdom:

"There is wisdom as sophia, the special gift of the philosopher and of those in general who have devoted themselves to a contemplative life in pursuit of truth. There is wisdom as phronesis, the ´practical wisdom´ of the statesman and lawgiver, the wisdom that locates the prudent course of action and resists the urgings of the passions and the deceptions of the senses. And there is wisdom as apisteme, a form of scientific knowledge developed in those who know the nature of things and the principles governing their behavior."

In Plato’s view wise men may be illiterate and unwise (ignorant) men may be "versed in calculation, and skilled in all sorts of accomplishments, and feats of mental dexterity".

"The two classes are separated by a difference in character, by a principle of self-control, by their ability to subordinate passion and desire to the authority of reason. To be wise is not, therefore, to possess a high IQ or to be a chess master or a theoretical physicist. It is to be a certain kind of person, temperamentally and morally won over to a love of harmony, beauty and truth."

"The wisdom-loving person – the philo-sophia – is one who searches for the timeless and unchanging truths, never content with the shifting phenomena of the material world."

According to Epicurus "The wise man comes to grips with his mortality and recognizes that the prudent life is one that will spare him such pain as might reasonably be avoided. What is to be sought is a secure serenity. By removing oneself from the arenas of competition and envy and by disciplining one’s wants and needs, it is possible to minimize suffering. Wisdom is knowing how to achieve this end. The serenity is not one of indifference but one yielded by self-control and prudence: Let nothing be done in your life, which will cause you fear if it becomes known to your neighbour. (Fragment, LXX)"

These are just a few thoughts and ideas that I am challenging you, my faithfull readers, with. I am looking forward to your opinions and I truly hope that you will find this to be an interesting subject.

Books

"The substance of my being has been informed by the books I learned to care for"
Allan Bloom

I cannot imagine my life without them. I was 5 when I first discovered the miracle of reading. I was at my grandma's in the country and my best friend was 8. She was learning to read and to write and I was her shadow. I would not eat or do anything without her. A few years passed and she started to guide my readings. She and her brothers had this great bookcase in their big house. My grandma's bookcase was rather modest as it had been little by little deprived of its books by my uncles and by the time I turned 8 I was already an avid reader. My friend began to sneak books away from her house and from the inquisitive looks of her older brothers and bring them to me. We would read the same books and then talk about them and we would even act them out. I remember we had read "Shogun" by James Clavell once and the book had such an impact on us that we started acting as if we were Japanese. During the following weeks, we built a sort of house in which we would kneel when entering, we would drink sake and bow to each other while mumbling polite phrases from the book. Those were wonderful times. A few years passed and still under the influence of that book I even took courses of Japanese language and culture for a couple of years.

When I was in primary school I remember my mother tried to snatch books away from me. She said I was reading too much and that I would soon become blind if I did not stop. I did not stop and I am not blind. I do not even wear eyeglasses. I guess she must have been taken by surprise. She did not know how she was supposed to handle a quiet child who always had her nose into one book or another. She must have thought that something was wrong with me because I would not go outside and play with the other kids. But I had already discovered that there was a whole world out there waiting for me and that the more I read the more I needed to understand.

I have since read a lot. I seem to be always surrounded by books, I love them, I love the way they smell, I love to finger them and feel the softness or roughness of their pages and they have become my best friends. I always carry one in my bag, just in case I have to wait for somebody or something and I would otherwise get so bored I could not stand it. They accompany me wherever I go. I would certainly take a book (or several) on a desert island. After all these years, I must admit that I would also need to be connected to the Internet. I am absolutely and helplessly addicted to this new huge source of information.

I sometimes sit and think of all the books I have read and I realize that I hardly remember the names of the characters or the plot as a whole. But I never doubt for a second that each and every one of them has left me with something very important. My brain was shaped by the countless little facts and mental images I extracted from my readings. I owe who I have become to them.

Obstinate Love

„You're obstinate, pliant, merry, morose, all at once. For me there's no living with you, or without you.” (Martial)

Love and hate. How deep is the abyss between these two strong feelings? How easy it is to build bridges over this abyss. How interconnected they are... Committed love. Marriage. Union. Strong ties. How strong? What happens if one of the two disconnects, and the other just won’t let go? Is obstinate love healthy or safe?

I have read this story of a man who got drunk and shot up his girlfriend's car. When asked what he had learned from it, he said, "You can't make a woman love you if she don't."

I’ve seen people who seem to be deaf to the other half of the couple’s indifference. They cling and hold to something that just isn’t there. Is it pure love or is it vanity, I wonder. Is it excessive pride? Failure to admit to the other’s lack of interest. Or maybe just pure ambition. Infatuation - unrealistic love. Foolishness. Appearance. Denial. Rigidity. One-sided love... Does it work? Is it that the observance of decorum and propriety is stronger than truth? We are surrounded by happy faces. What do they hide? Frustration, maybe. Guilt. A person who is unreasonably adhering to something in spite of arguments, can really be conscious of his/her own doing/self? This unwillingness to give up ... where does it lead? I am fascinated by it, I must admit.

"A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain."
(Abraham Cowley)

Maybe „love” is not the right word here. I seem more inclined to call it „attachment”. Inflexibility. People appear to place varying degrees of importance on the kind of love they receive. Some settle for less, some always want more. Commitment is the essence of long-term relationships. It is not love, nor infatuation. We all make choices, I guess… all the time.

Freedom

Are we born free or do we become free? Is freedom an act of thinking? I think it is an act of perpetual self-awareness and acceptance. Freedom is an achievement of human will. When we are born we are not free, we are dependent on others. We do not think for ourselves. Thinking gives us access to the inner nature of things. We become free when we truly discover who we are or at least when we discover the path that leads us to spiritual freedom. I am free in my mind where I have my own world. I felt free when I realized that I had achieved inner autonomy.

I have always admired “free” people. By that I mean, people who do not have prejudices, who are not judgmental, who do not see others and feel envy or repulsion just because they are different, people who are able to see every person as he/she really is and accept it. Those are free spirits. People who do not feel the burden of their family principles, education, social system, religious beliefs, social background, but who are able to see beyond all that, the essence, the core of an individual. We are free when we realize that we are unique, that every one of us is different from the other and that it is wonderful that it is so.

Nevertheless, personal freedom also involves a degree of acceptance of other people’s freedom. One’s freedom ends where the other’s freedom begins. One cannot interfere with the freedom of another without causing some kind of damage and discomfort. ‘Live and let live’. It is as simple as that.

Can we attain to social conventions and rules and still be free? YES we can, if our minds are free, if our perspective is free, if we are aware that they are nothing more than that, i.e. mere conventions and rules and nothing more. They are necessary in the outer social world but they completely lack meaning and become ridiculous in our inner world.

Who made all these rules anyway? Why should not we be free to be who we really are without being subjected to the critical eye of others (society, family, friends, colleagues, etc.)?

I need to be free to dream, to hope, to love, to be sad and to be happy, so that I can breathe.
I do not feel the need to live up to a standard. Who invented them anyway? By what right?
I feel free in my inner world, where I do not feel the constraints of external reality.