Wise Words From 1984

This was the editorial we wrote for our yearbook, from 1984, written in the hallowed buildings of IIM Bangalore.

Bubbling moments. PJs bandied about with competitive zeal, Mural (the wall mag on a real wall) coming alive with yesterday's headliners.

Mimicking the Profs.. The inter-IIM trophy won in the first year and lost subsequently. Chorus chants of Beatles numbers and limericks to fill the darkness when the KEB calls the tune. Late-night efforts to bring out printed IIMBIBEs (our magazine). Finding places of solace on MG and Brigade. And discovering the mysterious ways back to the hostel.

All this and a lot more were what those two years were all about. We will look back upon the memories of this unpremeditated past- we are bound to. The new growing campus may, on some distant or not-so-distant date, become the epitome of all that is best in the best possible of worlds, a meeting place for enlightened, avante-garde haute-management. Or it may degenerate into the stale nemesis of dreams relinquished, academic might-have-been.

Whatever happens, we will have the consolation that we started it all.

dash n' gunds (Names by which the two of us were known)

Through the Window by Julian Barnes - Book Review

This is the third book by Julian Barnes that I have read (well, most of it). Each one was different. Only one was fiction.

This one is a collection of essays about authors. George Orwell, Michel Houellebecq (Atomised was the title his novel had in English, translated from French) , Hemingway, Flaubert (rather, Madame Bovary), Kipling, and a few more.

This is an intriguing book, because writers rarely write about other writers- at least not that much. Rather than a traditional review, I will give you a few passages/quotes from this book.

Michel Houellebecq

"It is in our relations with other people, that we gain a sense of ourselves; it's that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable."

"Anything can happen in life, especially nothing."

Orwell

"All art is to some extent, propaganda."

Ernest Renan, quoted in the chapter about Orwell

"Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation."

Some wonderful anecdotes, and more, about the lives and inclinations of some well-known (and some not) authors. If you are into this sort of reading, wonderful stuff. Well-written.

1984 by George Orwell- A Review

Rather late in life, I read a classic that I had missed out on. I would rate it as a masterpiece- can't find a more suitable word to describe it. A few countries in the world probably practice what Orwell has described as fiction even today. A few have stopped doing so recently, particularly the communist bloc of countries, and countless must have done so in different forms of oppression and colonialism.

What is important is to remember that Orwell was unhappy with British imperialism when he wrote it (around 1948), and not with some unknown dark force. He conjures up a great humdinger of a tale, which is about a ruthless, brutal and completely power-mad state operating out of London, the capital of a fictional State called Oceania, the other two being Eurasia and Eastasia. These three states are perpetually at war, or so the citizens are told. The hero works in a department which alters the truth by rewriting all newspapers, books, so that whatever the state says, appears to have been the only truth.

There is also a ministry of Love which tortures people brutally, and a ministry of Plenty which makes sure no one gets much to eat. All these are great parodies, and together with telescreens operated by the Big Brother (the head of this enterprise or govt.) placed in homes and elsewhere, make for a controlled existence (or extermination) for every citizen. Kids are taught to spy on and report their parents to the govt., there is a Hate Week where public indulges in rants of Hatred against the other two countries and their people.

There is a brilliant manifesto and slogans (and words like doublethink and Newspeak) through which propaganda is carried out to obliterate facts, and perpetuate the myth of an immortal and invincible Big Brother. A stupendous concoction of a tale about Bad Governance. Reminded me about the movie V for Vengeance, where a crusader battles a similar govt., surprisingly, again in England. Maybe it was inspired by Orwell.