Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Legends of the rainfall: The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein

There are books that are ideal to read on days that promise rain but don’t really send down showers. When the sky is a little overcast — neither dark nor light — and the wind’s touch more like a caress than an embrace, a book that conjures up delicious imagery and carries the sound of rain with it, would perhaps, be the perfect companion.

The Cloud Messenger, by Aamer Hussein, is that type of book. The title would probably ring a bell. Not because it is very well known, but because it is taken from the famous classic written ages ago by the poet Kalidas — Meghdoot. I’m sure most of us have, at some time in our childhood, read about the Sanskrit masterpiece where a pining lover — a Yaksha, actually, sends messages to his wife, using a cloud for a messenger. There are no cloud messengers here, of course. But you would soon realise that the book’s protagonist, Mehran, who is ardently in love with poetry and literature, is himself the ‘Cloud Messenger’, drifting from place to place. If it were not for the author’s note at the very end, you would be tempted to consider this an autobiographical account. Since the author has been careful to correct that illusion, let us just say that this is an autobiographical account of its protagonist.

Shuttling chiefly between London, Karachi and Indore, and several other cities in between, it is the story of Mehran, a drifting man with a nagging need for belonging, for reassurance. Caught between the different realities that surround him since childhood — a mother from Indore, who yearns for rain in a rainless place like Karachi, a father and a sister who yearn for the British-ness they have left behind in London, and a shifting lifestyle — from one city to another—he comes to believe that relationships can never be permanent. And that is why he flits in and out of the various bonds that he forms. Despite all that, the people he loves are a near-permanent presence in his life, even though he never seems to stay close to them, always floating about.

In fact, the book is the message that Mehran, ‘the cloud’ sends out to us readers scattered over various bits of the earth — a message of love, of his griefs and longings that somehow echo our own, as a lover would send out to his beloved.

The book quotes liberally from Persian, Urdu and Sindhi writers, reflecting its author’s literary passion (Aamer Hussein is a Fellow of the Royal Soceity of Literature). The story is itself written in a style that borders on poetry, with a lyrical, ethereal feel to it. The descriptions of Mehran’s childhood might be vaguely familiar for a reader in either India or Pakistan — the great aunt who tells stories from fairyland, stopping at the time of dusk, “so that a traveller doesn’t lose his way”, the multiplicity of the languages spoken in the family, and the spilling over of a multitude of relatives — these are all things we are familiar with.

Most of us have ancestral homes in a different place, spend our lives in another one, and come to settle in a different one eventually. Mehran’s story resonates with that unconscious longing for a place to belong, and the parallel universes that we all live in at some time or the other.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Book Review: Shweta Punj -- Why I failed: Lessons from Leaders

The first thing that captures your attention as you hold Shweta Punj’s inspirational work “Why I Failed” is the book’s cover. It has a ‘thumbs down” sketch on it, with the words ‘Lessons from Leaders’ written upside down. You got it — when you turn the book upside down (which you will if you’re interested in perception puzzles), these words turn right side up, and the sketch becomes a “thumbs up”. It’s a simple enough design, quite obviously driving home the point of the book—it’s your perception that determines success and failure. And that you can, with a little bit of effort, turn that thumbs down right back into a thumbs up.
To illustrate her point, Punj has chronicled “sixteen failure aka success stories” in the book—sixteen well known people from different walks of life and their tryst with failure. The list is quite diverse, ranging from Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Narayan Murthy, Anu Aga and Prathap Reddy to the likes of Abhinav Bindra, Madhur Bhandarkar, Subhash Ghai and Sabyasachi Mukherjee. The stories are interesting and inspiring, both things that the book aspires to be. And you could be surprised at some of the ‘secrets’ that are revealed—you would have believed quite the contrary. Abhinav Bindra, for instance, attributes his miss at the London Olympics to his calm and relaxed state of mind. “In London, I was relaxed, composed and calm. Theoretically, it should have worked well. But it doesn’t work that way. You have to have rage. You have to be desperate.” And that’s when we thought being composed was the secret to success!
The book analyses various ‘types’ of failure, which Punj has neatly organised into categories, complete with ‘definitions’ of sorts. There’s ‘failure by design’ as in the case of Narayanan Vaghul,  one of India’s financial architects, who chose to fail in the eyes of the world rather than compromise with his principles and feel like a bigger failure.  And then there’s ‘perceived failure’ and failure of life’s circumstances. Punj has used another kind of failure – social failure – in the context of Sminu Jindal, the businesswoman who leads Jindal Saw – while in a wheelchair. This categorization however, feels a tad uncomfortable; can— and should— a person’s physical disability be termed as ‘failure’? Even if that was the reason for a whole lot of setbacks in her life, a world of hurdles that would not ordinarily be standing in the path of a ‘normal’ person, disability can at best be an obstacle, not a failure. In the zest to categorise the myriad reasons that cause people to stumble and fall, perhaps this tiny but important detail has been overlooked.
Punj’s background as a business journalist has played a big role in the shaping of the book, as company turnarounds and business decisions –both sound and unsound – have been discussed in much detail. Every leader’s story is a revelation of sorts, and there are those tiny nuggets of wisdom to be picked up from each. The ‘words of wisdom’ bit has been a tad over-emphasised, though. Each section is followed by bullet points under two headings, ‘Why I failed’ and ‘Advice’, almost in the manner of a school textbook on value education. But if that’s the author’s way of drilling it into the reader who’s looking for a morale-booster and a way to come to terms with failure, she’s bang on target.