books

Meeting Piscine Molitor Patel

When I meet new people, it matters what their tastes in books are – not because I judge people based on what they read, but because when you share a love for a book with someone that leads to deep conversations, and when they introduce you to new material, that gift widens your awareness of the world.

Ten years ago a friend recommended the book Life of Pi but I gave up halfway through because the descriptions were making me feel squeamish and seasick.  In the intervening decade, I’ve lost count of the number of people who have described it as one of their favourite books and who have expressed surprise at my lack of interest in reading it. Last week, curious about what all the fuss was about, I picked it up again, and this time around I thoroughly enjoyed the read.

Without giving up too many plot details, to read this novel is to realise that writing is a craft. It doesn’t make sense to moan and complain about not being a good writer if you wish to write, you have to be relentless in your practice. The author’s sentences are sturdy, his metaphors and similes are unusual, his pacing is wonderful, and he is all in all, a master writer and storyteller. (Days later while skyping with the Nephew, I tried to explain the story and the animals, and even my four year old friend was engrossed).

In addition to his skill with words, the book is powerful in its themes. In the main protagonist’s meditations on life he touches on belief, religion, saying goodbye and the compulsion to move (among other topics) and his insight in everything he addresses is keen. And meeting Piscine Molitor Patel, like meeting Dorothea Brooke or David Copperfield or Jane Eyre, changes you. He has gentleness with people who lack understanding, he is fiercely determined to survive, he longs for books, he cares for life,  he is unassuming. I feel I have much to learn from him, and this book was a reminder that great fiction impacts your personality,  your outlook on life,  your perspective on different issues and subjects, the traits you value in others, and the goals and dreams that you have.  This book was a reminder that novels matter because they touch us a way that non-fiction, important as it is, cannot.

Below, some of my favourite quotes from the book:

On Faith..

To choose doubt as a philosophy in life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation (28)

“What is your religion about?” I asked. His eyes lit up. “It is about the Beloved”,” he replied. I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.” ( p.60)

The presence of God is the finest of rewards.(p.63)

On Leaving..

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive. Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors, should understand that animals don’t escape to somewhere but from something. Something within their territory has frightened them – the intrusion of an enemy, the assault of a dominant animal, a startling noise – and set off a flight reaction.

“Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they’ve known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult? The answer is the same over: people move in the hope of a better life.” (p.77)

On Saying Goodbye..

What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape…It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let it go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. (p.285)

Face the World

Make people ashamed of their existence, Jean Paul Sartre said. Yes: make them aware of the possibilities they have denied themselves or the passiveness they have displayed in situations where it was really necessary to cling to the heart of the world, like a splinter – to force, if needed, the rhythm of the world’s heart; dislocate, if needed, the system of controls; but in any case, most certainly face the world.

~Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p.59 (Grove Press Edition).

A Matter of Perspective

Because, look – just look at the world below! The entire superstructure of a city reduced to a mere toyscape. Little toy cars moving about on little toy roads – noiselessly, aromalessly; little toy trees and little toy people. A city with a thousand years of history reduced to a view from a window. All its gates and gardens and towers; its monuments and markets, its politics, its ugliness , its many irregularities reduced to a fine palimpsest of design. This was the undeniable miracle of flight: not that it allowed you to travel great distances in small amounts of time, not the actual physics of getting 200 tonnes of metal to stay up in the air. No. It was the miracle of perspective. The fact that down there could be anywhere.

~The Pleasure Seekers, p. 214.

Flexing One’s Courage Muscles

With her pretty hair tucked into a little cap, arms bared to the elbow, and a checked apron which had a coquettish look in spite of the bib, the young housewife fell to work, feeling no doubts about her success, for hadn’t she seen Hannah do it hundreds of times? The array of pots rather amazed her at first, but John was so fond of jelly, and the nice little jars would look so well on the top shelf, that Meg resolved to fill them all, and spent a long day picking, boiling, straining, and fussing over her jelly. She did her best, she asked advice of Mrs. Cornelius, she racked her brain to remember what Hannah did that she left undone, she reboiled, resugared, and restrained, but that dreadful stuff wouldn’t ‘jell’.

She longed to run home, bib and all, and ask Mother to lend her a hand, but John and she had agreed that they would never annoy anyone with their private worries, experiments, or quarrels. (..) So Meg wrestled alone with the refractory sweetmeats all that hot summer day, and at five o’clock sat down in her topsy-turvey kitchen, wrung her bedaubed hands, lifted up her voice and wept. ~~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Chapter 28.

I know how Meg feels. I seem to cook fine when there is someone to ask if anything goes wrong, but on my own I question the progression of each stage. After a while, I just want to sob dismally, wring my hands, and escape someplace comforting. But after a lovely holiday of real basmati rice and proper curries and love in every meal, it’s going to be hard to return to the residence cafeteria  (though as cafeterias go it’s probably a very good one, and I do appreciate its halal options). So though it makes me nervous, I’m determined post-break to practice flexing my courage muscles and try cooking more often, because it’s really home-food that I love best, and I’d like to be brave enough to cook for friends on a more regular basis.

What Will You Do With The Things You Notice? (the beginnings of Idea Steep)

Near my bedside table are Thoreau’s Walden, and a book of essays and lectures by Emerson. Both are books that I can only read a few pages at time, and something different speaks to me with each reading. Today upon opening Emerson I came across the following passages:

What help from thought? Life is not dialectics.We, I think in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labour and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have gotten on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider, the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience.

I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods. (..) If we take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. ~Experience, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson’s words remind me of conversations with a mentor of mine last term, where I would be upset about something going on in international, national, or local news, or something that happened to me personally, or a program or policy that I thought could be designed better, or about the exhausted feeling I would get sometimes answering a question about the hijab/my ethnic background/Muslim women that I’d answered a million times before. Really whatever the matter would be, the question I would always get after I had finished my rant was what are you going to do about the things that you notice? Are you simply critiquing and making conversation, or do you have the ethical commitment to initiate change? And what will that change look like? What is the purpose of your professional and personal life Shagufta?

It’s a blessing to have someone ask you such questions. And that is perhaps one of the greatest blessings of graduate school, (though I hope it continues after school is done): you are surrounded by people who are brighter than you, more accomplished than you, who have more skills, who are more well-read, and who are actively striving to understand more about the world and what their place in it is. In such company, you find yourself marvelling at how different everyone’s research interests are, how inspiring their intellects are, and you grow because the company you’re in demands it.

I grow the most though, when the company I’m in is not just of fellow students who are genuinely interested in the questions they’re pursuing and are actively thinking about how they can make contributions outside themselves, but is of people who are also engrossed in the task of becoming better people. One of the best descriptions I’ve read of this kind of company is Rehab al Buri’s blog. (If you haven’t heard of her, she was an ABC News staffer who passed away on March 6th 2011 from cancer, at age twenty-five. ABC News wrote an article about her here, which is where I first heard her story). Her blog was about her reflections and thoughts about her illness, and in one of her posts, she writes:

“I’m also trying to keep company with those who are committed to leading meaningful lives…who don’t think making du’aa  (supplication) at the end of a get together is cheesy, and who won’t think I’m trying to be a goody-two-shoes for suggesting worship instead of entertainment, and who will call me out when I’m wrong.

Living up to the person I promised Allah I would become is a struggle. But I figure I can set myself up for success by making struggle my new normal.

Like Rehab, I too would like to keep the company of those who are committed to leading meaningful lives. Before moving to Toronto, I helped organize an event called Terry Tales, which was basically a gathering every couple of weeks at the University of British Columbia with tea, cookies, and awesome people. The event was originally supposed to be something similar to The Moth, but when we ran the event we discovered people were more interested in sharing ideas and reflections and gaining inspiration from one another than hearing stories passively, and there were really neat projects that came out of each session (just from engaged people who do wildly different things being in the same place, chatting and deciding they liked each other enough to actually work together). We also almost always blogged about the experience afterwards. Since moving to Toronto, I’ve been wanting to try something similar and call it an Idea Steep, and since my heart still feels so heavy and painful over leaving home, now seems like the right time. I think I’ll be hosting it at home (makes it more doable with school) so it’ll be small and simple, but I will blog about our reflections here. And if we come across a magical space with tea I’ll post the details here too.

Stay tuned (and if you have ideas of potential places, feel free to comment!)

Libraries, Planning Education, Thesis-ing and Holiday Reading

I was down with a cold recently and sounded too awful to podcast (though ironically, had to do two term project presentations with my sniffly voice) but I’m all mended now, and back to doing these short audio reflections. I’ve been worried about microphone quality and not knowing how to edit, but as a teacher told me tonight, the important thing is to begin and not worry about having the right equipment, and then the skills and other pieces can develop over time. Otherwise what sometimes happens is that you can become so worried about having the right tools that it becomes an excuse for never beginning the project you intended to begin in the first place.

And so with that reminder in mind, I am back, and ready to learn more through trial and error. All tips and feedback welcomed! In today’s episode, I’m reflecting on some of the things that I learnt through my term papers this year, the discipline specific reading I’m looking forward to over the break and asking you about what you recommend reading over the break. Look forward to hearing your comments!

Before a Trip, a Bit Of Alain de Botton is Most Necessary

It is always a treat to open a Alain de Botton book at random and see what it has to say. Today was no different.

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves – that is brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.

~Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel.

The Magic of a Library Card

A couple of weeks ago, I disconnected my Facebook account to carve out space in my day to read more. Not that reading online isn’t lovely (I hope you like this blog for instance) but time is finite, and I agree with Farhan Thawar‘s advice at the recent Nspire Discovery Series “The Modern Tools of Creation”  that it is important to prioritise your reading, so “if something is temporal, unless it’s the Harvard Business Review, just stop reading it and do something else”. He explained what he meant by saying “my own reading hierarchy is books>mags>blogs>twitter, and I always have a book with me. If you check my bag at any point, even tonight, you would find one there.”

And while I still love Twitter,  I’ve been taken aback by the difference more books and less social media has made to my happiness level. When I first moved to Toronto, I couldn’t get a library card right away because I didn’t have any paper bills yet, and then when I finally started receiving mail, I was so swamped with actual school reading and work that I just never made it out to the University of Toronto libraries or a Toronto Public Library branch to discover new book friends. But this all changed with the new semester, and in the past couple of weeks I’ve read two lovely books. I’m amazed at how this simple addition has made such a huge difference to daily joy, and my ability to be critical of myself and aware of my own shortcomings while still being kind and hopeful about progress on things I find difficult.

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Goodness. I Had No Idea Bookshelf Goodbyes Would Be So Darn Difficult.

From debating whether to go at all, there are now nine days remaining till I leave my beloved Vancouver and move to Toronto. And friends, the move is making my heart hurt.

Not because  leaving places and people I love dearly will be hard (that’s true but I’ve accepted it finally) but because I’m puzzled by how one decides what to take and what to leave behind.  During a trip to London in May 2010 Antoine Saint Exupery’s words “he who would travel happily must travel light” came to mind when I arrived and realised that tube stations don’t have lifts, and struggled waited for wonderful strangers to help me with my suitcase every time I took a train to a different part of the country, or transferred hotels within London itself. In those moments, I would look at other passengers with tiny bags going for weekend trips and admire how their luggage didn’t hinder their movement at all.  So it’s a sensible principle: journeying forward with relatively little physical (and mental I suppose) baggage just makes for happier, easier times.

Intellectually I get this. But my courage fails me with the thought of implementing it when relocating someplace new.  The logic still makes sense: if you pack lightly future moves are easier to do, storing things in a tiny apartment is less complicated and you save on the cost of shipping whatever doesn’t fit in your two suitcase allowance. But when your return date is uncertain, oh it becomes ever so much harder to do!

And I’m surprised by just how hard it’s been.  After all, I’ve never been fond of malls, I have such tiny feet it’s a pain to go shoe shopping,  and trying on clothes with a hijab can be quite an elaborate affair, so I’ve always thought I was the kind of person who had limited belongings. I was wrong, and as I examine the contents of my room, I’m amazed by the sheer number of things I possess. Books. Letter paper.  Moleskines filled with late night reflections, emphatic underlining and a complete disregard for paragraphs. Swimming gear.  Bundt pans.  Prayer rugs. Binders filled with extracurricular classes and beautiful essays (not my own) that I’ve saved over the years. I’m astonished to discover it all.

It is the books that seem the hardest to leave. Packing this afternoon, I looked at my well worn copy of Walden, my Urdu books and my copy of Anne’s first set of adventures (among many many others) and leaving them felt like leaving good, kind friends and teachers behind. Yet opening a box and collecting a mass of  ‘necessary’ titles wasn’t a great solution either; I realised that even leaving a full bookshelf behind, to take my required books means shipping a couple of boxes worth, and it felt troubling to be so attached to material things. In Pakistan people’s lives have been turned upside down by floods of the past few weeks, in other parts of the world people leave their homes at a moment’s notice, and the cost of postage could be better used to help people in genuine need. (and so for the first time, I’m questioning the act of buying books in the first place; they are heavy and hard to move around!) On the other hand, being on my own and not being able to decipher a bit of Tariq Ramadan’s words before bed might make it that much harder to adjust and create a sense of home. On the other hand (I’m an octopus apparently), how much time do grad students have to read anyway?

And so I return to my dilemma. Dear friends, what do you take when you move? Are you a proponent of the packing light approach or do you take everything you love when you go? Advice most appreciated.