Ideas are Immortal

One of the joys of reading fiction is its transgressions into the unbelievable.

One of the annoyances of reading fiction is its transgressions into the unbelievable.

It takes a genius to tip the scale towards the former, and Jose Saramago is one such gifted writers. Ever since I read Blindness almost a decade ago, I have maintained Saramago to be my favourite writer. I followed up Blindness by reading several of his other works. After a hiatus, where I was primarily reading non-fiction, I got back to reading him and was reconnected with the joy of reading fiction.

The book I took up this time was Death with Interruptions. In its premise it is similar to Blindness; a supernatural event disrupts the normalcy of the society while the narrator dissects the fragility of the social structure through its characters. With an added bonus of wit and dark humour.

In this book, death decides to go on a sabbatical within the geographical boundaries of a country. The rest of the story is about the chaos that ensues, with microscopic treatment of some of the aspects of society we take for granted. For instance, what would happen to the undertakers if no one died? What about life insurance if no one died? Or what is the point of religion if there is no after-life, as no one is dying in the first place!

Of course, none of these are treated in a matter-of-factly manner but in typical Saramago style of sharp criticism masqueraded as dark humour.

One of the other joys of reading Saramago is the meanderings in his prose. While most fiction writers spend plenty of prose for world-building, Saramago takes you on a wild ride on tangents that only he could come up with. In this book, more than any of his other works, the meanderings are even more eccentric and a fun riot. For any lesser writer, these tangents would be places where they would lose their readers. I was cracking up when wandering on these tangents myself.

If you get a chance, get hold of one of Saramago’s fictional works. They are hard to get into, as his writing style can be challenging at start. Once you start relishing his words the style would seem the most natural for his dark and morally ambiguous world that is as real as the real world could get.

Jose Saramago’s Blindness, for years now, has been my favourite work of fiction. In the past few years I have started to like Haruki Murakami’s works; reading them unscrupulously. Of late, however, reading fictional works seem to be getting harder. Not that they seem tedious per se; they are far easier to chug. But there’s a voice constantly questioning the point of reading (some works of) fiction.

After pondering a bit as to how I can parse some fictional works but not the others, I ended up with a couple of ingredients that make it easier to read and enjoy works of fiction.

Empathy: Success of a great work of fiction rests in its ability to enable readers to empathize with the joys and turmoils of its protagonists. This is a tough enough task already. Further, it is harder for me to connect with many works because the conflicts are distant and inaccessible. This is worse in science fiction and fantasy, as some of the conflicts, say induced by aliens or diabolical creatures, can’t easily quench my interest. These factors considered, reading some works of fiction ends up feeling like a chore and a poor return on investment (of my time). A work like Blindness or 1984 are great works of fiction because they scrutinize society within conflicts that are fictional but the rest of the narrative is engaging and not hard to empathize. Another subset of fictional works that I find engaging are mostly journalistic but use a fictional trope, like with Arundhati Roy’s two novels which can be categorised as social-realism. The protagonists here also have my attention and empathy, as the characters are mosaics of very real people.

Great writing: The second trait of works of fiction that I end up enjoying invariably have great writing – in the style and language. I use Murakami as an example for his unfettered and fluent writing that is a sheer joy to read. No plots or conflicts are necessary in these works. There are very few authors who are pantsters and can engage readers with their writing alone. Gabriel Garcia Marquez falls into this category in my reading.

Jose Saramago is the greatest in my view simply because he’s just the perfect blend of both traits I seek when reading fiction.

The one question that does not annoy me, even when it is incessant, is that why I run?! In fact, whenever this question is asked I might even be beaming with pride and joy. In a relatively short while running has come to define my personality. Not only in the sense that people identify me with it but that several traits in me are now adjoined with running.

This post is to trace the actual origin story of why I run or as some of you see it why I hurt myself!

The short answer is self discipline.

I had started running on a relatively regular basis during masters in Sweden. But this was the effortful, unenjoyable, peer pressured but ultimately utilitarian running. That which most new runners or non-runners end up feeling and imagine it to be. And I vividly remember how I felt then and try to be more considerate when running with newcomers now.

So what changed?

I started my PhD.

After moving to Copenhagen for my PhD in 2015, I was grappling with an entirely new research domain. It was hard. And I was trying to learn (a lot of new concepts) and conduct research that had to be productive under a well defined duration of time. I had to sharpen my skills of time management and focus. In attempting to inculcate new learning habits, I ended up taking MOOC courses like Learning to Learn, which I recommend.

And during this course, the idea of diffused mode of learning that happens at the back of your head when engaged in other activities, accelerated during physical activities, was reintroduced ( I had heard about this previously). I embraced it. And this time I believed in it.

Neither diffused mode of learning or running for fun worked. At first.

Irrespective of what the incentive is, it is hard to get into running and reach a stage where one can enjoy it. I was not enjoying the entire first year of running.

It is during these unexciting times, the newfound peer pressure helped. My research group had a thriving running group and was better to run with friends who keep you motivated. And it helped me get out on my (running) feet.

After a stint of stay in The Netherlands, where I had a new routine I ended up running with devotion and made a habit of it. I’ve written about this in another post.

Even then, I wasn’t running for fun. It was an exercise of self discipline. It took effort to commit and run 5km, 2-3 times a week, throughout the year. But making it a habit helped. And this self discipline seeped into rest of my routine. At one point my PhD advisor even noticed this, saying that after I had started running regularly, my project was making progress. At the least, in my head it had made me calmer and better focused.

What then about the diffused mode of thinking?

I have few anecdotal evidences, wherein I have solved a small research task and debugged my code, while running. But I wouldn’t cite these as the primary motivating factors.

By the time I was finishing my PhD, I was running longer and regularly. At this stage, I was running, not for any of the aforesaid reasons specifically but a new aspect had emerged: I was challenging myself. It does get mundane to be running the same one or two routes or the same distance every time! This has since led me to run short trails, and now longer on a regular basis.

And yes, by now it has also gotten to be fun! It is hard but fun in a unique way. The sense of accomplishment at the end of each run or after a new challenge is a precious reward. And these rewards can keep you going when there are otherwise problems and/or hindrances at work and/or on personal front.

This brings me to my current connection with running: it has also gained a spiritual status; in the sense, it can, and has lifted me up when the going has been tough. On a daily basis, to have something beyond one’s work to be content and feel proud of can improve the general well being. I’m fully aware this might simply be placebo effect. On the other hand, by being a believer in this regard I have gained immense benefits ( both physically and mentally).

In the end, if you ask me why I run now?! The short answer is that it makes me happy!

It rarely happens that in reading a particular piece of literature I end up finding beyond perfect articulations of some of my own unstructured ideas. It can be liberating and feels, even, cathartic! Or it might just be that I am learning.

This post is about one such recent reading experience.

I’ve been associated and working with several organisations that have taken up the cause of struggles of the underprivileged. These activities, predominantly, have been from a class antagonism point of view — that which many would attribute as Left-leaning. While I have understood and empathised with these organisations, I simultaneously held a strong opinion that there was something in the lacking in their primary focus. The classical class antagonism — say between the labourers and the employers that is so crucial to these struggles — have certainly brought hard earned rights to a large part of the working class (more evident in the Nordics, less so in India where the struggle is ongoing). However, such  fundamental and visceral class antagonism — with an image of a worker in a factory floor being brutally exploited — is no longer the most relatable formulation of why we are embroiled in dire crises, like economic disparity, massive poverty and climate change!

I’ve been unable to clearly point out what was lacking in these struggles, but I was able to identify and have been vocal about some symptoms of the crises.

For instance, the legitimacy that is given to manic and unscrupulous consumption in today’s world is mind-boggling. The compulsive behaviour to purchase stuff for the sake of it and not defined by its usefulness, and by the want of it and not the need of it, is deeply unsettling, to say the least.

Another instance that I was able to clearly disapprove was the notion of indirect taxation. In India, a goods and services tax (GST) was levied on almost all of the goods and services. While I am all for direct and progressive taxation at source, heavy indirect taxes have always seemed unfair to me. Think of a person who earns INR 3000/- per month paying the same 18% or whatever GST for a basic commodity, as does a person earning INR 30,000/pm or INR 300,000/-. This is plain stupid.

This can, of course, be extended to other essential services like healthcare, education and public transport, which are rendered unaffordable to a massive section of the population.

The labourer-employer based class antagonism driven struggles do not directly and effectively address these issues. Of course, these aspects are discussed at the peripheries, but my complaint has been these are never the primary focus.

While I have been grappling with these issues, I ended up reading David Harvey’s excellent treatise on the contradictions that are innate in capitalism. While I won’t get into all the seventeen contradictions he presents, the first category of contradictions that he brands as the foundational contradictions, elucidate a larger problem that encapsulates the severe discontent I have held.

In his book, he leads the readers to understand, how, by construction the modern globalised societies that, for the most part, are capitalistic thrive by dispossessing a vast majority of people. Like the ugly headlines that says 26 richest people possessing as much wealth as 50% of global population. This is still within the paradigm of class antagonism but taken well beyond the work place.

The hard earned rights and benefits at the work place are now extorted outside the workplace as exorbitant rents for housing, unaffordable healthcare, expensive education  (and commodification of many such essentials) and even State interventions as skewed indirect taxation and austerity measures! David Harvey sums up this construct as the accumulation by dispossession. And he clearly makes a case for contemporary struggles to be driven by the politics that recognises and fights against the system that allows a handful of  people to appropriate massive wealth at the expense of dispossessing rest of the human population.

Epilogue

A coherent framework that links several global crises as manifestation of accumulation by dispossession was the improved articulation of my unstructured concerns.

Book: David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions and end of Capitalism