1962: Fifty Years On...

50 years have passed since India lost its first war with China. The defeat has left scars that will never really heal for Indians who were around at that time. Even as a 7 year old I remember the general atmosphere of doom and gloom. The older people would wait for the newspaper every morning hoping for some positive news, and crouch around the radio at night for more of the same. They were disappointed day after day. The shame was recreated in movies, fiction, art and poetry, and also of course in all the political discourse of the day. Fifty years on the media is busy with other stuff but some brave souls persist in holding up a mirror to all the scars of 1962. In hindsight it was all so avoidable.

Mohan G. has provided a short summary of the events. He, boldly, names the two people who played a big part in first building up and then mismanaging the crisis. Both the key people cleverly managed to protect their lapses subsequently. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/in-dubious-battle-at-heavens-gate/article3992126.ece

Abheek Burman has brought out several aspects of the crisis that were suppressed around that time. So much so that one whistleblower were hounded till long after the war. And one brave officer whose foresight and judgement was questioned in the build-up to the crisis -and who suffered the ignominy of capture and public humiliation in China- was further stigmatized by a gross and unfair whispering campaign. He later wrote his memoirs in an attempt to clear the air. Appropriately it was titled "Himalayan Blunder"...
http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/folk-theorem/entry/lies-forgeries-and-a-war

Madhu Gurung has chosen to share the human stories associated with the terrible events of that period. In three parts she has covered a lot of ground with survivors and witnesses:
Part 1: http://www.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/memories-of-an-unsung-war/article3941699.ece
Part 2: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/society/meenakshis-tezpur/article3967935.ece
Part 3: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/for-the-debt-of-salt/article3995720.ece

Madhu and her husband Shakti are both from my school. Shakti is a batchmate and a serving general in the Indian Army. Madhu's family also had a link with the Services. The shame, the pain and the urge to do right by the sufferers, the survivors and the witnesses is therefore even more pronounced in Madhu's case.

The Hindu seems to have done its bit by carrying Mohan and Madhu's writing. Economic Times' coverage was a pleasant surprise. But the definitive account of the debacle still awaits its Shirer...

Books Retired 2

This is the second list of retired books! There is some spill-over of authors from the first list: Castaneda and Von Daniken.  Then there is Lobsang Rampa, an Irish plumber who decided that he was actually a Tibetan monk who had been granted this body after the original body had become unusable after Chinese (or was it Japanese) torture and extreme privation.  Over a dozen books he spun a yarn about growing up in Tibet as a child, being inducted as a monk, being initiated into the most abstruse mysteries and meditation in chambers deep below the Potala palace, moving across to China and so on. All I imagine of Tibet is from what I first read in Rampa’s books as a child.  I went on to read authentic accounts by others eg Heinrich Harrer’s “Seven Years in Tibet” andk later, even more prosaic histories. Yet, somehow, the mention of Tibet brings up the images implanted in rich detail by Rampa. This would be tolerable if the same was also not true of Buddhism in general. No other account of Buddha’s life or of the four noble truths, or of the eight-fold path has been able to fully erase the images created by Rampa. Later reading , of other texts, only seems to add detail to those memories. For that, I cannot really forgive the rascal! (Update: I was somewhat dismayed to learn that Rampa wrote more than a dozen books. Evidently I had stopped buying his work after acquiring 12! But I was relieved to learn that many Tibetologist referred to The Third Eye as the book that triggered off their interest in Tibet and  related stuff - presumably including Buddhism   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobsang_Rampa )

While at school I had heard of a book that was the opposite of a dictionary. One went to it to get a word when one already knew the meaning. I never could buy a Thesaurus while in Dehradun and was therefore very happy to buy a copy in the Galgotia book shop branch located inside the IIT Delhi campus (on the ground floor of the main building itself). I went on to buy another copy as well, eventually, but did not much use either. Somehow the discovery that the thesaurus was essentially a listing of synonyms was a great comedown. What was I expecting, I wonder!

There was a period when, egged on by a fond teacher at the IIT, I started toying with the idea of a life in literature. Luckily I shook off that idiocy but could not shake off some of the baggage that I had picked up. Sheer sentimentality! I have retained a copy of Derrida gifted by Rahul and let go the others over time, including, now, the three survivors here (the one with the spine side up is a History of Modern Criticism, no less!).

Finally Sperling and Schindler were my first introduction to psychology made popular: a genre I was to encounter almost countless times in my reading. Both belonged to my father. There is no special reason to hold on to them. They were not classics in that genre but it is amazing how little popular advice has changed in matters of importance to lay people.

Books Retired 1

There are too many books in the house. Here is the first set of books that I am retiring. Mostly they belong to my father. He had many interests. I shared some and am retaining books relating to those. I do not share others any more. Hence this list..

Velikovsky had this interesting theory about disasters on earth that could have had extraterrestrial origins: meteoric collisions, proximity of other heavenly bodies and the like. He combined astronomical data and a close (and selective) reading of myths recorded in texts from different religions and regions to support his thesis. This was not completely outlandish as some accounts, eg of a devastating flood, are remarkably similar in renderings across the globe. Also, the fossil records do show mass extinction of species at regular intervals with a periodicity unmatched by any periodic physical phenomenon on earth or our solar system. An article in Nature some years back speculated on the possibility of a large comet with a highly elliptical orbit that might be passing close to earth at those kind of intervals. Respected astrophysicists like Hoyle and Wickramsinghe have speculated on the seeding of life on earth via comets …However Velikovsky’s work does not generate interest any more, except amongst some die-hard fans on the Net. He may have had smart ideas but astronomical data does not support his claims.

Carlos Castaneda spent time with Don Juan, a Yaqui Indian shaman,  trying to understand the spirit world. He went on to write several books on his encounters via Don Juan, with healing, with other spirits, with other shamans (who sometimes took the form of vicious animals) and even with death itself (which came in as a crow).  Since many of these experiences were preceded by extensive preparation including physical regimes and the consumption of Native Indian hallucinogenic drugs, Castaneda’s interesting experiences have been often discounted. Of course there is a tradition in every region, which parallels this. In India we have our own Aghoris, and Tantrics in general, whose canon is very similar. The fact that the disposals list includes two copies of “The Eagle’s Gift” shows my own deep, though, brief, interest in Castaneda. (I had to have my own copy. My father’s copy was heavily underlined to reflect his interests and that was a distraction for me because my reading of the same text was different…)

Charles Berlitz  created a whole genre of writing that saw the imprint of current and past alien visits everywhere and was also obsessed by tales of the mythical continent of Atlantis that was supposedly host to a technologically advanced civilization that vanished when this landmass sank in the sea in some strange cataclysmic event. This group of writers also credited governments with strange research and cover-ups. The Roswell Incident involves a captured alien and wrecked UFO. The Philadelphia Experiment refers to a battleship that was briefly rendered invisible with permanent mental disability to the crew.  The Bermuda Triangle has become too famous to need any description. And so on. Fascinating reading if one is prepared to suspend all judgment and ask no questions. Accounts of strange geometric properties and near-magical powers of the pyramid form in general, and the Egyptian pyramids in particular, are integral to this genre. The most outlandish of these is probably Ruth Montegomery, whose hardcover book is shown (spine side up) in the picture. She believes a lot in on-going alien encounters and abductions, and the presence of aliens amongst us in the form of both humans and animals. Scary.

Edgar Cayce is a fascinating case, of an ordinary average Joe who at one point of time started going into long trances. He seems to have spent most of his adult life in that state. While in trance, he would describe great technologically advanced civilizations of the past and the events that led to their demise. He would also describe events in the future (a bit like Nostradamus) and offer guidelines from on high for conducting life on earth. His utterances were recorded, transcribed and published as a series of books. They spawned a whole bunch of other books that sought to interpret Cayce’s words, summarize them and in rare cases, debunk them.

Erich Von Daniken looked at the shape of ancient religious structures like temples and saw spaceships. He looked at representations of gods with halos and saw spacesuits. He read the ancient texts describing the arrival and departure of gods (in noisy storms of dust) and saw flying machines. He read about the battles of gods and saw modern armaments including missiles. He visited Nazca and saw landing grounds for flying machines of a superior race of humanoids from another  planet -that sought refuge on earth and also continued their battles on earth. Fascinating reading again, with compelling illustrations and photographs! Sadly there are alternate explanations for all this, which do not involve extraterrestrials. (Update: It was interesting for me to discover that Ridley Scott has acknowledged Daniken for some ideas used in Prometheus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_Däniken )

“The Wit of Prince Philip” is an interesting exception. I picked it up dirt cheap, from  a pile on the street, because while the cover says what it does the book inside is actually “The Burnt-out Case “ by Graham Greene. (I had a lot of time those days and did not judge a book by its cover). Later I bought a proper copy of that book but kept this one for laughs and as a conversation starter. Neither reason is valid anymore.

There were originally many more books of the kind that I am disposing today. Over the years I got rid of them and kept a few representative ones. Why I did that, and why I am making this list only now when my father is dead, are questions that I cannot answer. Maybe I kept them on the off chance that he would recover from his disability and want to read his favorites again.  They had long ceased being of interest to me.