A Tiger for Malgudi by R.K. Narayan

Feeling tired of reading quite some serious books in the recent past, I wanted to escape into some nice fictitious world without any ground-breaking theories or proofs or even thrilling plots, something that will lighten me up and thus I picked up this book.

Looking at its title "A Tiger for Malgudi", I was expecting a story focussed on the people of Malgudi terrorized by a tiger...But what i got was a pleasant surprise! and here's how I am going to spoil that surprise for you :-) It is an autobiography of a tiger from the mempi hills of Malgudi, talking about its violence-filled youth in the jungle, followed by its capture and then its life in the circus leading to its short stint in a movie and finally, its escape and enlightenment by a sadhu. All along, it is replete with R.K.Narayan's trademark sarcasm about the day to day aspects of the human life... For a more detailed overview of the book, click here.

Whenever I see an alien (in a movie ;-)) that has some kind of a face with some kind of eyes for vision, I realize that our imagination indeed does have some limitations imposed by the real world! And when writing a fiction about a tiger telling its story in first person, there is a great challenge for the author's imagination to really look at all the actions of a tiger from the animal's perspective without falling into the most common pitfall of bestowing human nature to the tiger. And R.K. Narayan avoids such a pitfall very masterfully - like the instance where the tiger loses its wife and children - you should read the book to see how R.K.N deals with such a "tragedy" like a tiger. Another example is when R.K.N deals with animal cruelty in the circus from the tiger's perspective without getting poignant or sentimental and still maintaining the light-heartedness of the book.

And even in the tiger's shoes, he does not stop making fun of some of the aspects of the human world and even the forest... I found it very funny to read the tiger's comments about humans calling Lion the king of the forest -

"Everyone I encountered proved weaker and submissive, but that submissiveness did not count - I delivered a fatal blow in any case when I wished and strode about as the King of the forest. By the way, who crowned the lion King of the forest ? Probably a fable writer, carried away by the pompous mane and beard, I suppose! A more slothful creature was never created. All his energy is conserved for hunting food, and once that is accomplished he lies down for days on end, so reluctant to move a muscle that he could be used by any other jungle creature as a mattress; it would make no difference to him if birds nested in his beard and laid eggs. As for his supreme strength I had a chance to test it in the circus ring once, when we were let out to fight and he fled into a waiting cage thanking the Creator for the damage of only one ear, which came off when I tried to comb his royal mane."

Though I felt that the book was a bit monotonous during the tiger's circus training period, as a whole it was a very relaxing, enjoyable read for the weekend with R.K.N's heart-warming humor sprinkled all along!

Nature vs Nurture - Case of the Feral Children

Have you ever wondered, whether we smile and laugh and cry, because we are just born human, OR we were taught to smile and laugh and cry ? Is the development of the human brain dependent on the stimuli we receive from the human society during our childhood ? Are humans naturally born with the capability to learn a language ? Are humans naturally endowed with traits like morality and spirituality OR are they just nurtured by the human society ? And finally, is it possible for a human to live like a wolf, eating raw meat and be nocturnal, hunting for food at night ?

These are some complex questions that cannot be easily answered by some experiments in the lab or by some demographic studies or surveys... (Unfortunately) scientists have managed to learn a good deal about such questions, by virtue of the feral children - children who have grown up without much contact of the human society due to some unfortunate circumstances...

Last week, I got to read this very touching real story of two girls called Kamala and Amala, who were captured living with the wolves, in a place called Midnapore,India in 1920... They were found during some hunting expedition by a priest by name Reverend Joseph Singh and are captured and brought to his orphanage. Rev. Singh and his wife, were kind and patient enough to try, for the next 8 years, to teach the girls to be human and fortunate for us, Rev. Singh kept a very detailed journal of his "experiments" with Kamala and Amala, along with some precious photographs...



This is a very small online "book" (the printed book costs $250) with just 42 pages, neatly organized into separate chapters for different traits and how they improved over time. Rev. Singh details many of his experiments that he did to find out the nature of the girls' minds. Some of the interesting things he observed are as follows:

• The girls' limbs were adapted to walk like wolves in all four limbs. Kamala, the 8 year old girl takes almost 3 years to be able to stand up in two legs. Even then, and after that, she could walk very slowly, and Rev. Singh records that, she would run on all fours when she wanted to go fast.
• The girls felt very comfortable going out in the dark - that was in contrast to the human nature of being uncomfortable or afraid in the dark. They are recorded to have a good night vision and be uncomfortable going out during the day.
• The girls, initially disliked being with humans and preferred to stay in the company of the dogs in the orphanage and other animals. It takes almost 4 years of patience before they bond with the other children in the orphanage. In the initial years, Rev. Singh records an incident where Kamala bites a child.
• After being taught by Rev. Singh and his wife for 8 years, Kamala the elder girl, still was unable to pronounce words with two syllables easily and was unable to construct meaningful sentences. Over 8 years, she had just acquired a vocabulary of a few hundred words and would just mention those words with hand signs for communication.
• Even, toilet training was difficult to achieve with Kamala. After 5 years, she would use the toilet, only when Rev. Singh's wife was around.
• Rev. Singh also records various interesting observations like the fact that Kamala always had a liking towards red colored objects and clothes. Another such interesting observation is this one: "The top was a puzzle to Kamala. She would watch the top whirling, while the boys were playing with it. At times, she would catch it while it was turning round and examine it thoroughly. She would throw it down, trying to make it go round, but when she found the top did not spin, she would get angry and bite it."

If you read the full story of Kamala and Amala, you might realize for yourself, what Nature and Nurture can do to the human brain and how much of our "human" traits do we owe to our upbringing!

Finally, the feral children website has a lot more information about what scientists have learned so far, regarding the puzzle of "Nature vs Nurture" from many such feral children and what our understanding is, with respect to human traits like language acquisition, neurological development, dietary habits etc.,

Blog of the week - Tirunelveli Tamizhachchi

Here is one Tirunelveli Tamizhachchi who seems to have written about lot of things i have always thought about or merely discussed it within my circle of friends, no matter how controversial they are... Though her blog site is well traversable, i could not resist the temptation of highlighting some posts i enjoyed...

• Co-passenger - about a girl asking for help in a bus - reminded me of Ruskin Bond's Night Train at Deoli, where he meets an unnamed basket selling girl (ping me if you want to read it)
  
• Homeless caucasian in Perumalpuram - i have seen somebody in chennai and have pondered about how he wound up in chennai as a beggar...
• Mahabharatham as a feminist literature - very interesting and valid perspective, i should say!
• Myth of Menarche - interesting read, atleast for guys like me!
  
• Thamizhachchi's experiences on Women Staying Alone - an encouraging read, even for some guys ;-)
  
• Her experiences and advices about sex is something unique, in that none of our friends or brothers or sisters adviced us about - defintely helpful to the unmarried folks, like First Sex & Look at your vagina!

What happened after Einstein?

The book "Elegent Universe" by Brian Greene talks about String theory and its claim for the universal theory that Albert was working on. I am currently reading it and so far good.

Some more from the recent past

Tipping Point - forgot who the author was.
The Dark Elf - R A Salvatore
The Song of Fire and Ice Series- George R R Martin


more later....

Into Thin Air

This book is one of the most gripping books that I have read so far and Jon's narrative is so powerful that, my dreams were haunted by these incidents for a few days... I feel that looking at the color pictures of all the places in the trail to Mt. Everest that Jon mentions in the book like the "treacherous" Khumbu Icefall, Western Cwm etc., made my reading more vivid and interesting! ;-)

finishing this book with a HEAVY heart, i began to read more about the tragedy in the internet and here are some of my follow-up readings...

• Mt.Everest in IMAX

If you are one of those arm chair adventurers trying to summit Mt.Everest again and again, then you should probably watch the IMAX Everest movie and get this book on the IMAX expedition - "Everest : Mountain Without Mercy" - it is a large size hard cover book with spectacular pictures of Mt.Everest - it is a must-keep book for all the Everest Fans...

• "The Climb : Tragic Ambitions on Everest"
  

This book was written by Anatoli Boukreev & Weston DeWalt, to rebut the accusations made against Anatoli by Jon. I tried reading it very fast just to catch the differences but it was not as interesting as reading about this disaster first time. Nevertheless, after reading "Into Thin Air", if you feel that there were some mistakes on Anatoli's part, (like where he decides to descend first without waiting for others,) then "The Climb" will help you see Anatoli's perspective on doing such things.

• Anatoli Bourkeev / Lopsang Jangbu / Jon discuss the controversies from the book
  

• Rare color photos from Neil Beidleman and Scott Fischer's camera - (please beware that there is a picture of a dead frozen climber in the slideshow)

I think Scott's camera was collected by the IMAX team, which summited within a few weeks after this disaster. As is customary, i think all the dead climbers in the mountain, were left where their passion was...

Andy's Readings...

Thanks to the horrible Hosur road traffic... listed below are some books I read while commuting to office in the past 7 - 8 months !

Fictions:

Michael Crichton's:

• The Great Train Robbery (GOOD)
• Prey (OK)
• Timeline (OK)

Dan Brown's:

• Angels & Demons (GOOD)
• The Deception Point (OK)
• Digital Fortress (OK)

Jeffrey Archer, The False Impression (OK)

Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - (GOOD - 'I' liked it ;)

Scott Adams, Gods Debris (GOOD)

Non-fictions:

Freakonomics (OK - a bit boring with too many statistics)

Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions (currently reading - only for those who like to get the BIG picture ;)

Yet to start:

Mitch Albom, Tuesday's with Morrie (strongly recommended by my Bro)
Paulo Coelho, Like the Flowing River

Hello Book Nuts!

Its taken a long time for me to realize that, many of the books I read or wanting to read are those that my friends tell me about... Hoping that this blog will make it easier for us to share our thoughts and comments on the books we enjoyed...