Book Review: Books V. Cigarettes by George Orwell

 

This book was first published as an essay in 1940s. The author says that even if one buys books and periodicals, that does not cost more than the combined cost of smoking and drinking. Orwell shares his own experience of working at a secondhand book shop. He doubts whether ten percent of his customers at the bookshop are able to distinguish a good book from a bad one. Every month about a dozen books were stolen from the bookshop.

Orwell states that the job of a book reviewer includes praising trash, and majority of the books published are bad. Furthermore, he believes that the idea of intellectual liberty is under threat from two sides. First, is the theoretical enemy- the apologists of totalitarianism. Second, is the practical enemy- monopoly and bureaucracy. The weakening desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all. Regarding imagination Orwell says: ‘...we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will bot breed in captivity.’

The author says that in England the large numbers of well-trained and disciplined nurses are underrated. He also shares his own experience of living in St Cyprian boarding school in Sussex. He narrates how they were underfed, bullied and punished. With that they were also kept in unclean living spaces. He also shares stories of his poverty and how did he feel about it. In comparison with the underprivileged students the rich students were given preferential treatment.  

Ian Hy, Thackeray, Kipling and H.G Wells were Orwell’s favorite authors from boyhood. He also writes about the discussions between the different students who boasted their parents’ wealth. He says that: ‘In a world where the prime necessities were money, titled relatives, athleticism, tailor-made clothes, neatly brushed hair, a charming smile, I was no good.’ He feels dejected.

In this work, George Orwell touches on the themes of money, reading, bookshops, freedom of press, boarding life and patriotism. Anyone with an interest of reading about the early twentieth century England, should definitely read this.

 

 

Read More

Book Review: Friedrich Nietzsche Why I am so Wise translated by R.J. Hollingdale

 

Nietzsche lived from 1844 to 1900. This book has been compiled by including excerpts from Ecce Homo and Twilight of the Idols. The author says that the overthrowing idols is his business. According to him, philosophy is a voluntary living in ice and high mountains- a seeking after everything strange and questionable in existence, all that has hitherto been excommunicated by morality.

Nietzsche says: ‘It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter is more good-natured, more honest than silence.’ He believes that he has a right to wage a war on Christianity because he has never experienced anything disagreeable from them. Furthermore, he states that he does not speak to the masses because he fears that he would be pronounced holy. He does not want to be a saint. He thinks there is nothing more mendacious than saints.

Moreover, in the book the author considers himself as an immoralist. This immoralist involves two denials. First, denial of the man who has been counted as the highest and second, denial of Christian morality. In Maxims and Arrows, the author clearly states his mistrust of all systematizers and says that ‘the will to a system is a lack of integrity.’

Nietzsche states that he knows his fate. He writes: ‘One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful- of crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until the had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite.’

Read More

Book Review: The Closed Valley: With Fierce Friends in the Pakistani Himalayas by Jurgen Wasim Frembgen

 

Jurgen Wasim Frembgen is an anthropologist, who is one of the first to venture into the Harban valley. This book is an outcome of the authors several stays in the valley between 1989 to 1997. Frembgen explores the life of the mountain people in Kohistan region of Pakistan. The Indus Kohistan district was created in 1976.

In the first chapter he mentions that the Indus River is locally known as Aba Sin (Father of Rivers). In ancient Indian Sanskrit it is called Sindhu from which the terms Indus and India were derived. The author also mentions about the flora and fauna of the area. He writes about the presence of rhesus monkeys in the area. The forest trees include spruce, pine, cedars, juniper and holm oak trees.

Frembgen states that the reason why he was so interested in the people of Kohistan was the romantic ideal of freedom from any kind of authority. Before his visit he read the novel, The Pakistani Bride, which was based on a true story in Kohistan. Frembgen writes about how he went to Chilas and met the district court judge Mahmud Ghaznawi who had origins from Kohistan. He wrote a recommendation letter for Frembgen so that he could have an easy passage to Kohistan. Frembgen was warned by Bilal (the postmaster’s son) that the women in Harban were especially beautiful and a wrong glance could be fatal.

The local culture in Harban is that one of the members from the host family massages the guest. This is a kind gesture for a tired traveler who has walked great distance. There are four caste-like groups which consist of Shin, Yeshkun, Kamin and Dom. In Harban, no Kamin men or women are allowed to take part in funeral rites. One perspective noted by the author is that the Yeshkun and the Kamin were already living in Harban before the arrival of the Shin people.

Frembgen states that in the past it was important to be a warrior, so handling of a gun was important. Today diplomacy and Islamic religiosity were crucial for success in life. People in Harban, heavily depend on logging and because of this deforestation has accelerated. Satellite images show that there are regions in Southern Indus Kohistan which have lost one third of their tree population in just one decade.

The author stays at Sher Ghazi’s (local Jashtero in Harban) house as a guest.  He discovers that the house does not have a bathroom and the whole village uses the slopes to defecate. The area has a lot of Tablighi influence. The old meeting place for women in the village was abandoned in 1960s, because the Tablighi Movement disapproved it. They drove musicians out of the valley and also banned dancing.

The story of the carpenter named Qalanadar Shah, from Hindi village in Hunza is a very interesting one. Shah fled from his house because he had arguments with his parents and works as a carpenter in Harban. Another interesting story is of the Majzub Baba who lives in Chilas. Frembgen also sees fortified towers. The height of the towers demonstrates a family’s political power. They serve as protection from attacks. The author says that ‘In many cases these conflicts go back to affairs of jealousy and broken marriage promises, but also to their matters of honor and disagreements over land ownership’. He further stresses that accusations of forbidden love affairs are rampant.

The author admits that the ethnographic work in the field never unbiased. He also makes it clear that he could not complete his original aim- which was to write a monograph of field anthropology of Harban culture.

Read More

Book Review: The Secret Annexe from the diary of Anne Frank By Anne Frank

 

Anne was born in Frankfurt on 12 June 1929. She died in a camp because of typhoid and exhaustion, just three months short of her sixteenth birthday. Anne Frank’s diary was kept from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944. She provides an important eyewitness account of the events during the Second World War. The Secret Annexe begins on 10^th of November 1942, when Anne frank and her family spent more than a year in hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. This book is an extract from The Definitive Edition of Anne’s diary.

Anne had spent over a year in the annexe, together with her parents and sister, and the Van Daan family.  Albert Dussel was allowed in the annexe with the mutual approval of the two families. Anne states that she gets frightened when she thinks of her close friends who are at the mercy of Nazis. She says that people were shipped off to filthy slaughter houses and quotes the saying ‘Misfortunes never come singly.’

Frank shares her troubles during the hiding period. This includes stories of how food, books and other items smuggled into the temporary residence. She also shares her urge to read books, her troubles with her mother and development of problems with Dussel regarding their shared space.

The social and psychological tensions which she faced during the tough times is given in the book. Anne longs to have a home of her own where she is allowed to move freely and do her homework again. She wants to end living like a fugitive and go back to school.

Read More

Book Review: Money by Yuval Noah Harari

 

Harari was born in Israel in 1976. He studied at Oxford and lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the Middle Ages and World History. In this book the author starts with the history of money. He says that hunter-gatherers shared their goods and services through an economy of favors and obligations. Each village was a self-sufficient economic unit, maintained by mutual favors and obligations with a little barter trade with outsiders.

Rise of cities and kingdoms and the improvement in infrastructure created opportunities for specialization. Specialization also created a problem of managing the exchange of goods between specialists. For many societies creation of money was the answer.  Money could be anything that people use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods. It isn’t a material reality, it is a psychological construct.  Harari stresses that money is the most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

Harari states that history’s first known money is the Sumerian barley money. The first coins in history were struck around 640 BC by King Alyattes of Lydia, in western Anatolia. The Chinese monetary system depended on bronze coins, silver and gold ingots. According to the author, money is based on two universal principles. First, it has universal convertibility and, second it has universal trust. On page 21 Harari states money ‘corrodes local traditions, intimate relations and human values, replacing the with the cold laws of supply and demand.’

From the author’s point of view, in the modern era the new capitalist elite is not made up of dukes and marquises, but of board chairmen, stock traders and industrialists. Capitalism played a very important role not only in the rise of modern science, but also in the emergence of European imperialism. The Dutch won the trust of the financial system as their courts were a separate branch of the government, unlike Spain where it was subservient to the King. This helped the Dutch merchants gain confidence. While the French overseas empire was on decline the British were expanding. Like the Dutch the British empire was established by private joint-stock companies based in the London stock exchange.  

Harari discusses whether intelligence or consciousness is important. He says that the idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking.  If algorithms outperform human capitalists, we might end up with an algorithmic upper class owning most of our planet. Harari is of the view that algorithms wont revolt and enslave us, they will be good at making decisions for us. With that the author also writes that not following their advice would be madness. New technologies of the twenty-first century may thus reverse the humanist revolution, stripping humans of their authority, and empowering non-human algorithms instead. The author adds that if one is horrified by this direction, one should not blame the computer geeks. The responsibility actually lies with the biologists.

The great human projects of the twentieth century including overcoming famine, plague and war- aimed to safeguard a universal norm of abundance, health and peace for everyone without exception. The new projects of the twentieth century- gaining immortality, bliss and divinity- also hope to serve the whole of humankind. According to the author this may result in the creation of a new superhuman that will abandon its liberal roots and treat normal humans no better than nineteenth-century Europeans treated Africans.

Read More

Book Review: The Storm's Call for Prayers: Selections from Shaikh Ayaz by Shaikh Ayaz, Asif Farrukhi (Translator) and Shah Mohammed Pirzada (Translator)

 

This book presents an English translation of some of the selected works of Shaikh Ayaz, the renowned poet from Sind. Ayaz was born in 1923 in Shikarpur. Throughout his life Ayaz was faced numerous challenges. He was banned by the government, imprisoned and declared a traitor. Later, he was also given Sitara-i-Imtiaz (an award by the government in recognition to his services). Initially, Shaikh Ayaz was a lawyer based in Sukkur. Later, during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government Shaikh Ayaz was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of Sind University.

According to the author Ayaz moved from his left-of-the-center leanings and later began taking interest in religion and metaphysics. Ayaz was also a translator and had translated Shah Jo Risalo in Urdu. From this translated work I wish I could quote all of my favorite ones, but below I do quote some of the short ones.

 

Posthumous Reputation

“I know a time will come

When suddenly my poetry will be washed by the moon in the rivers of the sky

I know that time will also come when there will be no prejudice against my language

Everybody will be enveloped in my fragrance

When the town and the path will become one

When my ideal will come to claim me

I know that time will also come

When you will cry over my buried dust hearing some traveler sing my song.”

 

Next Crop

“You must remember this

When I am dead and gone

And there appears a new poet,

Then it will be like

The sugarcane field

When after one crop

The new one sprouts by itself

From the roots of the old.”

 

Bird

A poet is a bird from the myths of old

 All wings and no feet.

It keeps on flying

 Till it drops dead.”

 

Some of the others from Shaikh Ayaz’s work which I like include Home, Rain and Thunder, Write, The Other Woman, Footsteps to the Sea, A Loss of Hair, Chameleon in the Fort and Farewell to the Earth. Anyone who wants to explore the works of a poet writing on different themes, Shaikh Ayaz should definitely be on your list.

 

Read More

Book Review: Dawood's Mentor by S. Hussain Zaidi

 

The author believes that Khalid Khan Pehelwan played a very important role in making Dawood the mafia mobster of India. He also states that Dawood owed his life and power to this man. Khalid’s ancestors migrated from Batkhela in the present day Malakand Agency of Pakistan.

In the book, Zaidi covers the rise of Dawood Ibrahim in the crime world. He also traces how Dawood befriends Khalid. From school Dawood and his elder brother were notorious. Their father was in the police force. Khalid was Dawood’s inspiration. Dawood wanted to be like Khalid. Khalid had later established contacts with the Galadaris of Dubai. Galadaris were among the elite Arab families of Iranian origin in Dubai.

There is a saying in the Mumbai mafia: ‘Beimani ke saare dhande imaandaari se hote hain (All dishonest businesses are executed with the utmost honesty).’ Dawood drew inspiration for power play and money, clothes and style from other places. The first major crime that Dawood committed was a bank robbery on 4 December 1974. The author states that in February 1981 Dawood’s elder brother Sabir was killed. 28 bullets were pumped into his body. Khalid had great contacts in Dubai and knew the logistics of the business so well that he was involved in the movement of gold from coast to coast. He played a very important role in making Dawood a millionaire.

Between 1982 and 1985, the mafia became bolder and more violent. After Sabir’s murder, Dawood learned the importance of having access to power. Khalid managed to persuade a few big fishermen with trawlers to venture out into the open seas and cross the territorial waters. The territorial waters had a four-tier security patrol of the Indian agencies. Khalid’s men would get their speedboats close to the trawlers. In a few minutes the gold consignment was transferred into the fishing boats, some 30-40 km into the high seas.

Khalid and Dawood did not do business together as Dawood had asked Khalid to manage their businesses separately. Initially, Khalid was reluctant but he understood later. Khalid had a different way of doing business. The author states that Khalid and Dawood are still friends. For Dawood's the idea was simple. Break everyone either through money or threats. Dawood deceives his own business partners to make profit. Zaidi narrates the story on page 128 in the book.

After reading this book, now I am more curious to read Zaidi’s other work titled ‘Dongri to Dubai.’

 

 

 

 

Read More

Book Review: With Our Own Hands: A Celebration of Food and Life in the Pamir mountains of Afghanistan and Tajikistan by Frederik van Oudenhoven and Jamila Haider

 

This co-authored book provides the description of the recipes of a longlist of dishes prepared in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It also gives details of the various days of celebrations in this region. I found many interesting points in this book.

A day without Shirchoy in the Pamirs is impossible to imagine. Shirchoy isn’t from these valleys and tea cannot even be grown here. Shirchoy has become more Pamiri than most Pamiri dishes.

In the book the authors inform the reader that farmers in Tajik Rushan tell how, during the Civil War (1992-1997), foreign aid agencies promoted a high-yielding wheat variety to help prevent famine. Later they realized that they made a bad choice as the new variety rotted when placed in the field to dry and the taste was also poor. According to some people the best tasting mixed floor comes from Ghund valley in Shugnan.

One of the apple species found in the area is the ancestor of all cultivated apples in the world. Malus sieversii belongs to the Pamirs and the Tien Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan further to the north. Other fruit trees in the region includes Walnut. The oldest Walnut tree in the Pamirs is a 700-year-old tree in the Tajik valley of Yazguliam. A group of Cuban scientists did the measurements.

Talking about the factor of dependency one farmer from Chidz says: “We became lazy because we received everything”. “We became dependent on Soviet fuel and we are still dependent today. Afghans aren’t. The war has given them an instinct for survival. They are always ready to work. They are ready for everything. When we have a problem, we go and look for a development agency and ask for help. When Afghans have a problem, they look for a development agency and ask for help. When Afghans have a problem, they look for a solution. We feel powerless, because we have become linked to a global system which is entirely out of our control. If oil prices go up, we suffer. If Moscow hits a recession, we feel it here.”

In the book there is also mention of the Haji Rehman Qul. Russian soldiers came to Haji Rahman Qul’s tent at night. He and his father were given the option of getting shot or drink poison. They preferred poison. As soon as the soldiers left the khan fetched a large bowl of yoghurt and drank from it. They vomited it up and rid their bodies of the noxious fluid.

The Amu Darya is a very fast flowing river; only the Mississippi and the Indus move more quickly. As far as irrigation is concerned many villages were quite autonomous in the way they maintained and used their water supply, but as governments, and their thirst for water, changed, so did the freedom communities had over their water. During the Soviet collectivization of land in Tajikistan, first under Lenin then under Stalin, water managements continued to be collective, but its control was taken out of the hands of the people and transferred directly to the central state. Today very few Tajik Pamiri villages have a proper system of water management at all.

This heavy book has a lot of pictures and I doubt if anyone has more encyclopedic information on the subject of food in the Pamir region of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Read More

Book Review: Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Kyrgyz Republic published by UNESCO

 

This book provides brief and interesting information about the Kyrgyz way of life. It starts with the Akyns. These were the Kyrgyz epic tellers who combine singing, improvisation and musical composition. They were the figures who participated in story telling contests. The pre-eminent Kyrgyz epic is the 1000-year-old Manas trilogy which is known for its length (16 times longer the Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey). The Kyrgyz epic trilogy of Manas, Semetey and Seytek describes the unification of the scattered tribes into one nation.

The Kyrgyz population lives in yurt. Yurts are Turkic nomadic dwellings which remain the symbol of family and traditional hospitality, fundamental to the identity of the Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples. Yurts are made from natural and renewable raw materials. Felt is also used by Kyrgyz for making items such as carpets, cloths and headwear. Sheep wool is used for felting. The Kyrgyz male headwear is Kalpak and the female one is called elechek. In the past Kalpak showed the social status of a person.

Komuz is the most popular and wide-spread string musical instrument in Kyrgyzstan. Metalworking masters are called usta or zerger. I might be a Persian word. For Kyrgyz people the most valued metal is silver, which is also as white metal. Silver is also used as an amulet against evil spirits.

The Kyrgyz have many traditional games. One of them is Besh tash, which literally means a game of five stones or group of stones). It is also mentioned in the Manas epic. Another game is Kyz kuumai, a game in which a woman rides a horse as fast as she can, while being chased by a male participant. First a man chases a woman. After reaching a certain point the woman chases the same man. If she manages to catch up with him, she whips him with a horse whip.

When a child is born, every child in the surrounding wants to be the first one who brings good news about the childbirth to other relatives. Genealogy played an important role in Kyrgyz culture, especially in choosing a partner for marriage. All Kyrgyz people must know at least seven generations of their forefathers.

Islamic Nikah is the main wedding ceremony. A cup of water is prepared for this ritual. Some sugar is added to water and sometimes a silver coin is placed at the bottom of the cup. After reciting verses from Quran, the newly-wed couple drinks water from the cup. The meaning of sharing water is that the couple agrees to live through thick and thin.

Some of the few Kyrgyz quotes are

“whoever does not know one’s forefather becomes a slave.”

 “a proverb is a father of words.”

“the one without a horse is like the one without legs.”

For food the Kyrgyz people eat lamb, beef, horse, meat, camel and yak meat. The most valued meat is lamb and horse meat. Horse meat is usually used for big celebrations. Chuchuk is a horse meat sausage which is made out of horse intestine stuffed with horse meat and fat.  Traditional Krygyz cuisine has seasonal variations. In spring and summer, most of the food is made out of fresh meat and the main beverage is Kymyz, fermented mare’s milk. Krygyz nomads use dried and jerked meat in winter. The winter beverage is bozo, a beer-like thick slightly alcoholic beverage. The main ingredients in Kyrgyz cuisine are meat, milk and flour. The youngest person goes around with a jar with water and a flat bucket and pours water to the hands of those sitting around the tablecloth.

Chuchuk, one of the main delicacies is a horse meat sausage. This is made out of horse intestine stuffed with horse meat and fat. Horse stomach, mane and boiled meat are also served as a meat plate. When Kyrgyz eat food the most respected person receives the sheep head. Gulazyk, is another meal of the Kyrgyz people. It is meat made into powder. This was done in the olden times for longer journeys. Kurut is also produced by Kyrgyz people. Kymyz- a drink made from horse, cow and camel milk. The one made out of mare’s milk is considered to be the best. Kymyz is considered to be the beverage of heroes.

This publication contains information on the intangible cultural heritage of the Kyrgyz people including traditional knowledge related to everyday life, livelihoods cultural practices as well as arts and crafts. This book could be of use to university students, scholars, tourists and the general public.

Read More

Book Review: Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan by Nasser Rabbat, Elmira Kochumkulova and Altyn Kapalova

 

I learn from this book that the Kyrgyz territory was formally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876. In Kyrgyz tradition the living does not visit the graves of the dead. There is a popular Kyrgyz saying that ‘a Kyrgyz is born in the yurt and will die in the yurt.’ Yurt is the traditional home of the nomadic Kyrgyz people

Due to Stalin’s sedentarization policy the Kyrgyz and the other nomadic peoples of Central Asia were forced to give up their nomadic life. While reading the book, I also came across many words in Kyrgyz language which are commonly used by other mountain societies in Central Asia. For instance, Boorsok in Krygyz language is referred to a particular type of bread. It is also used by other communities in the region.

On page seven of the book, one of the authors named Elmira says that for many Kyrgyz their ethnic identity overrides their religious identity as Muslim. Overall the hybrid nature of Kyrgyz cultural identity can be summed up in the following expression: “We are born as a Kyrgyz, we live as a Russian, but we die as an Arab.”. Furthermore, in the book I see the transition in the Gumbez structure. Gumbez is the traditional Kyrgyz burial marker.

The book has a lot of pictures and less text. The different ways in which Gumbez were constructed is shown. The most interesting thing for me is the yurt structure around the graves during the Soviet period. Metal replaced the original yurt material. This book gives me an idea of working in the change in burial rites and sites in my native district and region.

Read More